The State Electricity Commission (SEC), a state-owned energy company in Victoria, Australia, has inked an agreement with the state government to supply it with 100% renewable energy from its portfolio.
As confirmed by the Victoria government, from 1 July 2025, the SEC will power Victoria’s schools, hospitals, museums, trains, trams, traffic lights and more with publicly owned renewable energy.
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The SEC’s portfolio largely comprises wind and solar PV power plants, whilst it is bolstering this with battery energy storage systems (BESS), often co-located, to maintain grid stability.
For solar PV, this includes the organisation’s 119MW SEC Renewable Energy Park, a solar-plus-storage site featuring a co-located 100MW/200MWh 2-hour duration BESS. It is being developed in the regional city of Horsham, around 300km northwest of the state capital, Melbourne.
It is hoped the SEC Renewable Energy Park will come online in 2027 and is being developed with the support of Swedish solar developer OX2.
The SEC is also developing the Melbourne Renewable Energy Hub, which features a 12.5MW solar PV plant and a co-located 1,200MW/2,400MWh BESS. The hub will be constructed in two phases and will cost around AU$1 billion (US$640 million).
As reported by our sister site Energy-Storage.news, construction on the Melbourne hub started in early September 2024, with the first 444 Tesla Megapack battery components having been installed.
The SEC will also supply renewable energy from projects that have received Victorian Renewable Energy Auction contracts.
Revitalisation of Victoria’s SEC
The SEC previously had a major role in Victoria’s energy sector, being the sole agency for generation, transmission, distribution and supply, before it was privatised by former Victoria premier Jeff Kennett and the Liberal Party in 1994.
This led to the SEC being divided into five distribution and retail companies, five generation companies and a transmission organisation.
However, in 2022, Daniel Andrews, who served as premier of Victoria between 2014 and 2023, and leader of the Labor Party, pledged to revive the SEC as part of the party’s election manifesto to support the state’s goal of achieving 95% renewable energy by 2035.
Earlier this year, the ‘Constitution Amendment Bill 2023’ passed the Victorian Parliament. It enshrines the SEC in the constitution and guarantees future public ownership of renewable energy assets. The new agreement to supply energy to the Victoria government is now the first time it will deliver power in over 30 years.
Lily D’Ambrosio, Victoria’s minister for the SEC, believes the SEC Renewable Energy Park and Melbourne Renewable Energy Hub developments will put the SEC back on the Victoria energy map.
“The SEC is back – and it’s powering Victoria with cheap, reliable, publicly-owned renewable energy,” D’Ambrosio said.
