Yarra Energy Foundation opened a state-funded battery in May. It is now in administration, with four federal batteries still listed as in progress.

On 8 May 2026, a neighbourhood battery and two accessible electric-vehicle charging bays opened outside the Collingwood Leisure Centre in Clifton Hill, Melbourne. The organisation that built them says the project was funded by a $750,000 grant from the Victorian Government.

Five months later, Yarra Energy Foundation Limited, ACN 145 846 091, entered voluntary administration. The company appointed Luke Francis Andrews and Duncan Edward Clubb of BDO as administrators on 14 October.

The foundation has more batteries planned than built. The federal Community Batteries for Household Solar program page, updated on 12 October, lists four projects under its name, at Altona, Manor Lakes, Richmond and Torquay, each with a $500,000 grant and each marked "In progress". Three sit on land controlled by councils or a water authority, and an electricity retailer has offered nearby households a bill credit once they run.

For those councils, the federal department, the retailer and the households near each site, the question is now practical: who is responsible for an unfinished battery when the organisation delivering it is under administrators' control?

The first creditors' meeting is at 11am on 26 October, online, with proofs and proxies due by 5pm on 23 October.

Is Yarra City Council in administration? No. Yarra Energy Foundation Limited is a separate company limited by guarantee, governed by its own board. The council established it and contributed to its operating costs up to and including 2024-25. The notice names only the foundation.

Voluntary administration is not liquidation, and it does not by itself end contracts or stop projects. The administrators take control of the company, investigate its affairs and report to creditors. Under the Corporations Act they must then call a second meeting, ordinarily within about five weeks of their appointment, at which creditors decide whether the company executes a deed of company arrangement, returns to its directors or is wound up.

The federal department's list of contracts open at 30 June 2025 records each of the four at $550,000. That is the same $500,000 grant with GST included, not a second payment, and neither figure shows how much has been paid.

Richmond is the oldest of the four. Its federal agreement began in June 2023 with an end date of 21 May 2026. As of 15 October, the foundation's own project page still said the location was to be confirmed and gave July 2024 as the expected completion. On 12 October, the federal program page still listed it as in progress.

That gap could have ordinary explanations, such as a varied agreement or a project page that was not updated, and it is not unique: the federal records show Melbourne City Council's Southbank battery past its listed end date and still marked in progress. The records do not show Richmond's current position.

The foundation won the other three in 2025, in partnership with the electricity retailer Diamond Energy, which it says will operate the batteries through its virtual power plant.

The foundation's 2024-25 annual report includes its financial statements for the year to 30 June 2025.

Revenue fell by about a third while staff costs rose, and a $204,000 surplus became a $227,000 deficit.

The cash balance went up, not down. But almost all of the year's increase in liabilities was income received in advance, which generally means money received for work not yet performed. The accounts do not say what that income relates to.

The statements end 15 months before the administration and do not show the foundation's position in October 2026, which the administrators' report will set out.

A Yarra City Council report from May 2024 sets out the funding history. The council gave the foundation $150,000 for operating costs, such as salaries, rent and utilities, in 2023-24.

It proposed another $150,000 for 2024-25, "marking the final contribution towards their operational expenses", as the foundation moved towards financial self-sufficiency. The foundation's annual report confirms it received council support that year.

That is the year revenue fell and the foundation recorded its deficit. The records do not show that the end of council support caused the administration, or what replaced it after June 2025.

The annual report says the foundation continued delivering two community batteries it owns.

One is the Fitzroy North battery, a 110-kilowatt, 284-kilowatt-hour unit commissioned in June 2022. A Victorian Government-commissioned review records the foundation as its owner and says the Victorian Government's Neighbourhood Battery Initiative provided $800,000, with the rest from the foundation and the distributor CitiPower. A research report hosted by ARENA, the federal renewable energy agency, records that it sits on land leased from CitiPower.

The foundation published that battery's numbers. In the year to June 2024, it earned $8,158 from trading in the wholesale market and $1,046 from CitiPower's trial network tariff. After $700 in metering charges and $79 in market fees, that left $8,423, excluding GST. The foundation's report says equipment failures and software problems kept it offline for 11% of the year, and a power-spike issue kept it out of the frequency-control markets.

That is a trading figure, not the battery's full profit or loss. It shows the foundation's batteries are working infrastructure with modest trading revenue, running on land and network arrangements held with other parties.

The Clifton Hill battery, opened in May, sits on land the foundation says is owned by the Victorian Government and operated by Yarra City Council. It received approval for the site in January 2024, and a Yarra City Council report in February 2026 called it "YEF's community battery" and said licence agreements between the council and the foundation had been "fully executed". The licence terms, including what happens if the foundation cannot keep operating the battery, are not public.

The accounts put the foundation's property, plant and equipment at $546,000 at June 2025, up from $232,000. That is a book value across all its equipment, not a valuation of any battery.

The foundation's pages for Altona, Manor Lakes and Torquay describe an offer from Diamond Energy: an annual $240 credit for up to ten years to eligible Diamond Energy customers near each battery, for a limited number of households, with priority for concession card holders, once the battery is installed.

That is a conditional offer for the future, not money anyone has been paid. It does mean residents near three sites have a stake in whether those batteries are built.

The foundation's public work ran wider than its own assets:

Community batteries look like one box on a footpath. Behind each one sit a landholder, a network, a funder, a retailer and an operator. On 14 October, the organisation at the centre of six such batteries went into administration.

We publish public-record information, not advice. The administrators are the authoritative source on the administration, and nothing here is a statement about any party's conduct or claim, or about the use or status of any grant beyond what the published records show.