Origin Energy has agreed to buy Yanco Delta, a 2.3 GW wind and battery project in New South Wales, from Virya Energy. The headline consideration is $195.7 million. Less than half of it changes hands at the start, and the rest depends on what happens to the project next.
Key takeaways
- Origin Energy agreed on 12 April 2024 to acquire the 2.3 GW Yanco Delta Wind Farm in New South Wales, Australia, from Virya Energy for an equity consideration of $195.7 million.
- The Yanco Delta consideration comprises an upfront payment of $81.5 million and a variable payment of up to $114.2 million that is paid as the project progresses.
- The Yanco Delta project combines a 1.5 GW wind farm with an 800 MW, 800 MWh battery energy storage system on a 33,000-hectare site about 10 kilometres northwest of Jerilderie.
- Yanco Delta received development approval from the New South Wales Government in December 2023 and approval under the federal EPBC Act in February 2024.
- At $195.7 million for 2.3 GW, Origin's Yanco Delta purchase prices at about $0.09 million per MW, in line with the roughly $0.08 million per MW Enerdatics records for the other priced late-stage Australian wind deal since 2023.
How does the payment structure split the risk?
A variable or contingent payment is money a buyer promises to pay only when agreed milestones are met. For a development project, those milestones usually track the steps that turn a permitted site into a buildable one. The seller keeps some upside if the project advances, and the buyer avoids paying full price for a project that might stall.
Yanco Delta is split close to 40 and 60. The upfront $81.5 million is about 42 percent of the total, and the remaining $114.2 million is a ceiling rather than a promise. Spread across 2.3 GW, the cash paid on day one comes to about $0.035 million per MW. That is the figure Leap records as the project's developer premium, the amount paid for development work on top of what the physical assets will cost to build.
Leap does not record the specific milestones behind the variable payment. What it does record is where the project sits: late-stage, with both state and federal approvals in hand. The remaining risks are commercial and financial rather than environmental, which suggests the deferred payments are tied to reaching construction rather than to permits.
What exactly is Origin buying for the money?
The 2.3 GW headline combines two different assets. The wind farm is 1.5 GW, and the battery is 800 MW with 800 MWh of storage. Battery duration is the number of hours a battery can sustain its rated output, so this is a one-hour battery, built to respond quickly to price spikes rather than to shift solar or wind output across a whole evening.
Measured against the wind farm alone, the full consideration works out to about $0.13 million per MW. Both readings are fair, because the record values the two assets together. The project is planned to connect to the grid at the Dinawan Substation and can power more than 750,000 households a year.
The purchase price is small next to what comes after it. Leap's project records put the investment for the wind farm at about $2.39 billion and for the battery at about $550 million, with financial close expected in mid-2027 and operation in mid-2029. On those figures, the $195.7 million consideration is under 7 percent of the build cost.
How will Origin fund and sell the output?
Origin plans to pay the purchase price and the development spending from its corporate debt facilities. For construction, it intends to assess capital-efficient options, including partnerships with capital providers. With roughly $2.9 billion of build cost ahead, that leaves the door open to sharing the project rather than carrying it alone.
On revenue, Origin intends to secure PPAs for the majority of the electricity Yanco Delta generates, using it to meet its own customers' demand. That gives Origin a natural offtaker in its retail book, which a pure developer would not have.
Origin is building a pipeline quickly. In February 2024 it bought the 1,320 MW Walcha Energy project, a deal noted in Enerdatics' analysis of how EDPR entered Australia through a Canberra developer. The seller here, Virya Energy, is the renewables arm of Belgian retailer Colruyt, whose ownership of the business changed when Colruyt sold a 30 percent stake in Virya Energy to Korys. Green Giraffe acted as financial advisor and HWL Ebsworth Lawyers as legal advisor to Virya.
Enerdatics records 42 Australian wind transactions from 2023 to 2025, and only six of them carry an asset-level price per MW. The two priced late-stage deals sit close together: Yanco Delta at about $0.09 million per MW and a 372 MW project sold in October 2023 for $29 million at about $0.08 million per MW. Projects further along command much more. The two priced ready-to-build Australian wind deals came in between $2.11 million and $3.02 million per MW, including a 285 MW project bought in August 2024 for $860 million. The gap between those two groups is the value that construction readiness adds.
What does the deal signal for Australian wind?
Large, approved Australian wind sites are changing hands at prices that look tiny against their build cost. Buyers are paying for permits and grid position, not for steel. A contingent structure lets them pay even less until the project proves it can reach financial close.
For sellers like Virya, the trade-off is time. Most of the value they can capture sits in the variable payment, which only arrives as the project moves toward construction. For integrated utilities like Origin, which can fund development from the balance sheet and sell power to their own customers, that structure makes gigawatt-scale pipelines cheap to assemble. The real cost arrives in 2027, at financial close.
Frequently asked questions
How much is Origin Energy paying for Yanco Delta? Origin agreed an equity consideration of $195.7 million, made up of an upfront payment of $81.5 million and a variable payment of up to $114.2 million as the project progresses.
What is the Yanco Delta project? Yanco Delta is a 1.5 GW wind farm with an 800 MW, 800 MWh battery near Jerilderie in the Riverina district of New South Wales, Australia, approved by the state in December 2023 and under the EPBC Act in February 2024.
Who sold Yanco Delta to Origin? Virya Energy sold the project, advised by Green Giraffe as financial advisor and HWL Ebsworth Lawyers as legal advisor.
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