Battery storage adjacent to a planned major substation — New England, NSW.

The site sits adjacent to a planned major substation — one of the largest new connection points being built in the New England REZ. A 500 kV bus, a 330 kV switchyard and a wide construction laydown were going in on the parcel next door. For a 200–500 MW BESS developer, this is the kind of corner you cannot engineer your way to. You either secure the neighbour or you do not get the connection economics.

The landholder approached Advantage Access before the substation development was publicly announced. He had known one of our regional officers for years through our other work in the district. When he started getting calls from project scouts about hosting a battery, he picked up the phone to the person he trusted, not the person who got to him first. That gave AA roughly a one-week head start over the next-fastest developer.

Timing pressure. A competing developer had already made contact directly with the landholder. The substation announcement was weeks away, after which every developer with grid intelligence in the corridor would be running the same play. Any delay between landholder consent and executed agreement meant losing the site.

Competing infrastructure interests. A nearby wind farm developer was separately pursuing easement rights across the same parcel — rights that, if granted first, could block the BESS connection back to the substation. What the landholder signed next was not just about price. It was about which infrastructure had right of way to which piece of grid.

Developer matching. Several of AA's clients had New England BESS positions. Only one had a strategic fit — geographically clustered with an existing battery in the region, the right MW band, and an investment committee posture that could move on a one-month timeline. Getting this wrong would have burned the landholder's trust on a developer that ultimately could not close.

Stage 1 — Desktop Discovery. Light-touch in this case, because the site was already known and the grid signal was unambiguous. Title and constraint review confirmed no encumbrances that would block a BESS lease. The connection corridor back to the substation was mapped against the competing wind-farm easement footprint.

Stage 2 — Sentiment Discovery. Inverted from a normal programme: the landholder approached us, not the other way around. The work here was confirming his willingness on commercial structure, surfacing what the competing developer had offered, and validating that the substation programme was on the timeline we had heard from grid sources.

Stage 3 — Securing Access. Developer match made within days. A face-to-face kitchen-table meeting at the property — not a remote proposal — opened negotiation. Three weeks later the agreement was executed. The substation went public a fortnight after that; by then the site was off the market.

Stage 4 — Sustaining Access. The option is now progressing toward DA. The competing easement matter is being managed through a parallel workstream so the wind-farm developer either consents or routes around. The landholder relationship continues to run through the same regional officer.

Access signed in less than a month from client approval. First developer to secure access at the site, ahead of the competing direct approach and ahead of the substation's public announcement. Three weeks from professional proposal to executed agreement, face-to-face at the property.

For the developer, exclusive access to a premium 200–500 MW BESS site on a high-capacity corner of the New England REZ. For the landholder, fair commercial terms negotiated in person, and an ongoing relationship with AA that protects his interests as the project advances into DA and connection.