Of the company, please enter it into the Q&A panel within Zoom. I will now hand over to Frontier Energy Executive Chairman, Jamie Cullen, and Chief Executive Officer, Adam Kiley. Thanks, gents.
Thanks, Nathan. Yes, I am here with Adam Kiley. Adam is CEO. I am the Executive Chairman. We have divided the webinar into two parts. I am going to kick off and talk through the status and timing of our stage one project at Waroona, the funding that we have put in place and how the forecast profitability looks. Adam will take over to discuss the growth opportunities and look at the very favorable market dynamics and tailwinds that we have behind us. We have divided it up this way because it dovetails into the two key work streams that we are now running at Frontier, and these are firstly to deliver a world-class stage one facility on time and on budget, which on completion will generate 30 years of very strong cash flows with only a six-year payback.
Secondly, it is to grow our portfolio, which is something the market probably has not focused on yet, but we are by advancing the next stage at Waroona through FID and also developing other opportunities outside of Waroona. Before running through our first slide, I wanted to add that in the last six months, our shareholding base has climbed from around 2,850 shareholders in February to now around 3,500. So that is a 23% increase in only six months, and it signals that investors are starting to appreciate the opportunity that we have on our hands here. On screen, you can see part of our site, which is located just under an hour and a half south of Perth. It is a really strategic piece of land in a really strategic location. Just some quick facts for you.
The land area is 830 hectares, and this is all owned freehold by Frontier Energy. It is old farming land that is already cleared. It is nice and flat. It is away from any population. As you can see, it is only 500 meters from the key connection point, being the Landwehr Terminal, in one of the strongest parts of the grid with 330 kV power lines passing by. An all-important connection agreement with Western Power, so that is the state utility here, into the Landwehr Terminal is in place for the first 100 MW or so of capacity, and we also have major gas and water pipelines running adjacent to the property. So this site is primed for renewable energy, and we are installing 132 megawatts of solar and 81.5 megawatts of battery storage with 6.9 hour duration onto stage one.
This will take up about 300 hectares of the 830 hectares, or only 36% of our total landholding. The AUD 310 million CapEx budget, plus contingency, is actually fully funded already through debt and equity raisings. I will talk more about these shortly, but it allows us to finalize and sign our key contracts. All but one contract is now signed, and that is just only maybe a day or two away, and then everything will be fully contracted. Revenue generation will commence in the first half of calendar 2028, and on an annualized basis is forecast to deliver around AUD 62 million per annum in EBITDA. We have significant optionality over the remaining 530 hectares of available land, in great energy market conditions, which Adam will go into, including quite a bit of recent inbound interest from the data center sector.
All this makes the Waroona site extremely attractive and able to be developed in what I see becoming a multi-generational energy park. It has taken five or so years to get to this point, and a lot of work has been undertaken to secure and complete all of the various approvals, studies, permits, and agreements that really de-risk the project. Most recently, the team secured West Australian State Government annual reserve capacity payments that we will receive every single year after completing the facility, and also secured federal government minimum revenue underwriting under the Capacity Investment Scheme. This financially de-risks the project by providing revenue certainty, minimum revenue right out to 2042, ensuring that this is a bankable project.
Our contracting strategy, the way we have done it, I should say, provides a substantial financial benefit to our cost base, as we have negotiated direct contracts with leading global suppliers, and we are free issuing the equipment under those contracts to the installation contractors. These are all fixed price supply contracts, which in aggregate amount to around AUD 150 million out of the AUD 310 million budget. Essentially, these prices cannot move as they are all locked in and they are hedged. So very little risk around, well virtually no risk around those numbers moving in any way.
By free issuing the equipment, rather than having a fully wrapped solution delivered by one contractor, we believe we are saving around about 12%-15% markup on that AUD 150 million or so of equipment. We have also minimized the potential for variations by going through an early contractor involvement process with our main contractor, Monford Group, where we have done detailed design and scope review work over quite a lengthy period. That has been done over several months on a collaborative basis. What it does is reduces any scope ambiguity, and ensures that everything has been allowed for. Again, that process has really been done to minimize the potential for any variations or cost increases. We do have excellent and highly experienced contractors undertaking the installation work. Monford, I just mentioned, doing the bulk of the site.
They have completed many projects all around Australia and have completed the only other solar battery hybrid project in Western Australia connected to the grid. Global Power Services for the substation and Western Power, again, the state utility, will be performing the connection work. All these contracts, those three contracts, are on a fixed price lump sum basis. As confident as we are with the way that we've structured everything, we still need to ensure that we get what we pay for. To that end, we've put together a highly experienced owners team, to provide oversight. I've worked with them all previously. They're all now onboarded with Frontier and ready to mobilize to site in mid-September. All in all, I think the project is set up for success, from a financial, governance, oversight, and contracting perspective.
We're just really excited to get moving and break ground very shortly. I just want to touch on funding on this slide because a lot of work has gone into this over the last few months, and it's obviously crucial to build our facility, which you can see there on the right-hand side in render form. On the debt side, we've achieved certainty by securing a full underwriting from Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and Natixis CIB for AUD 280 million across several facilities. All the debt terms have been negotiated and are largely in line with our expectations. With gearing at 65%, a notional amortization term of 18 years, with conventional construction interest rates for a project like this. On the equity side, we completed an AUD 110 million equity raise, which settled in July. In this, the directors and executives contributed over AUD 3.3 million.
We've had a number of institutions come onto our register or increase their existing holdings. We've now also got research coverage that's come out of Ord Minnett and Bell Potter, with target prices around AUD 0.30 and AUD 0.35. Further research coverage is being initiated from another national broker as well. Just while we're on this slide, it's worth having a quick look at the render and pointing out that the main job of the solar array is to charge the batteries. They're the white boxes that you can see. So charging the batteries during the day, and then the batteries export the power onto the grid between 4:00 P.M to 9:00 P.M each day, being the peak energy price time. So we're selling the energy off those batteries every single day.
Any excess solar, once the batteries are charged up, that also goes into the grid and we get energy sales for that. But on days when the sun is not out, we can charge the batteries back off the grid. All the electricity from the solar and BESS farm is sent out at 33 kV into the substation, which is what you can see in the bottom right-hand corner there, where it's stepped up through a transformer, to 330 kV, and then sent into our dedicated bay in the Landwehr Terminal, which is just 500 m or so away to the right of that substation. Then the electrons go up into the 330 kV overhead transmission lines that are right there as well. So being incredibly close to the terminal saves us very significant connection infrastructure costs.
We don't need to build poles and wires to transport our electricity to the grid, which is the case on most renewable energy projects. Being so close, all we need is an underground cable 500 m or so that connects our project to the terminal. Big savings, again, there for the project. Need to go to the next slide. Yes. On this one, you can see our timeline for delivering stage one. With all of the approvals, permitting, contracts, and funding being completed, largely in the first half of the year. Site mobilization begins in the second week of September, to begin preliminary site works, and then the first equipment starts to arrive around December.
The equipment will continue to be delivered progressively under a sequenced delivery schedule throughout the next year and a bit, allowing the solar battery farm installation to be completed, as well as the substation. We'll start generating revenues during the commissioning period in early 2028. When commissioning has ramped up to about 100% by June, we'll have a fully operational facility that will generate revenue every day for over 30 years. This is the final slide for me. It just presents the key numbers and financials for stage one. I must say, for an infrastructure project with no counterparty risk, these are incredibly good returns I've not seen in my experience, which is partly why I was attracted to come and join Frontier.
Average total revenues through to 2032, which is the period through which the reserve capacity payments are at a fixed rate, they then move to a variable rate, are forecast at AUD 72 million. AUD 32 million of that is revenue received under the state government reserve capacity scheme. Again, it's fixed until 2032, and then it goes to a floating rate, but it is payable every single year. The reserve capacity payment is received just for us having the asset available to generate between the times of 4:00 P.M and 9:00 P.M each day. That's our obligation to receive that money. We also get to keep the revenues on top of that from discharging daily into the grid. To forecast those revenues, we've utilized Aurora. They've prepared extremely detailed independent forecasts for our bankers on a reliance basis, so you'd like to think they're conservative.
That's all gone into our modeling, and that adds another AUD 40 million or so per year to give us AUD 72 million of annual revenues over those first few years to 2032. It has the reserve capacity payment number fixed. Our OpEx costs are around AUD 10 million per year, so that leaves about AUD 62 million in EBITDA. Remember, this is a 30+ year project generating this level of EBITDA and AUD 35 million of free cash flow just from stage one. Compare that to a market cap sitting at AUD 220 million. Everyone can do their own maths, but if you look at this and then factor in the future growth, which Adam will be talking about in a minute, I'm super optimistic that there's only upside to come for Frontier.
I guess the last thing I wanted to refer you to on this slide is the level of debt servicing that you can see there is AUD 22.5 million per year. Just compare that to the AUD 32 million reserve capacity payment we will receive each year. We not only have our debt servicing covered by the annual government reserve capacity payment, but almost all of our O&M as well, which completely de-risks our project from a debt servicing standpoint. Of course, we have to go ahead and deliver the project and all eyes are on us to do that, and then once that is done, we can access these very attractive numbers. We will be providing market updates obviously along the way, informing shareholders and investors of our progress. That is all from me, but now here is Adam to talk about growth and the market.
Thanks very much, Jamie. Everyone, before I actually go into what the strategy is regarding actually expanding the project through stage two, three, four and into the future as well, it is probably worth touching on where the market is in W.A. at the moment because W.A. is quite different, obviously, from the East Coast of Australia. Really looking at where the market is today in terms of some of the pricing, where it is looking like it is going into the next number of years through the energy transition, and then beyond that as well. What is going to be the real key drivers for the market, and how can Frontier best leverage into that for our growth overall?
Just first off, if we look at the W.A. energy market today, it was obviously well reported in the news quite recently about the price of energy in the East Coast of Australia. It dropped quite substantially over the first six months of the year. W.A., however, was a little bit different from that. W.A. now does have the highest energy prices in Australia, and that is without including the reserve capacity price on top of that. Just to touch on it again, I think as everyone knows, W.A. is the only state in Australia that has reserve capacity. The reason why we have it here, it was introduced 20 years ago because we had blackouts in the state. It is because we do not have the ability to connect into other interconnecting parts of the grid if there is an energy shortage, therefore generators are paid this reserve capacity amount on top.
When you look at where those prices are in W.A. for the wholesale energy price plus that reserve capacity price on top, we are a long way higher. It is quite often talked about in Western Australia, as across the rest of the country, coal is coming off. Coal in W.A., whilst we have highest energy prices in the state, it is still there. Coal has not been coming off over the last number of years. It is still 25% of that base load. However, unlike the East Coast of Australia, coal is being retired in W.A., and it is being retired not so much because of decarbonization. It is being retired because those assets are old and tired, and they do not actually run all that well anymore.
If we have a look through in May and June of this year, the reliability of the coal assets themselves, it was really letting down the grid. That is a key reason why government is really moving towards this energy transition to get more of these assets up. Gas is still the backbone. Gas needs to be the backbone of any energy solution moving forward. Western Australia has long been, I suppose, the poster child of the country given our DomGas Policy and 15% of offshore gas has to come through for DomGas reservations. But what is maybe not talked about quite so much is that the North West Shelf is starting to run low on that gas moving into the future, and we already have domestic gas prices of around AUD 7 per gigajoule.
As those domestic gas prices start increasing over the next number of years, it is forecasted to increase to around AUD 10 a gigajoule, you are going to find that base load energy is going to start increasing. When we look at WA today, we have 42% of energy from gas, 25% from coal. That is our base load energy. 25% of that is going to be removed very shortly, and that 42%, that cost is going up. What are the other factors that have affected it? Well, there has been a lot of batteries, which I will touch on shortly, joined the grid in Western Australia, but there have not been a lot of new energy generation projects. And that has really had an effect on the state regarding the energy because that excess energy has not been there.
When you look at that bottom chart on screen, that is the percentage of time that prices have been negative. And that negative energy price has resulted in a phenomenon called the solar duck curve. The solar duck curve in WA, that has largely been eliminated over the last number of months. If you look at the number of periods now throughout the course of this year where energy prices have been negative, it is effectively at zero. And it is because those batteries which have joined onto the grid are now soaking up all of that energy on the way through. And because of the reserve capacity obligations, they have to be ready to discharge that energy every day. Whereas on the East Coast, they may sit there for a little bit longer and wait for those higher prices.
In WA, they have got to be ready to go every day to sell that energy back in. So it is quite often forgot about. Before a battery can discharge to balance out the grid, it has got to charge. And in Western Australia now, that is the largest energy consumer which has been added to the grid in quite some time. Everything has got to be forward-looking. And as we have already touched on, when you look forward in Western Australia, it is the retirement of those coal and gas assets, which is starting to come through. When we have done the numbers on it, and this is a slide we have presented before, but we have actually updated it more recently. There is around 11 to 12 TW of new energy generation, which is going to be required over the next four years to actually close that gap.
The West Australian grid today is around 20 TW of energy generation, so it is over a 50% growth that has to happen in just the next four years. It is going to be a challenge to actually get there, and it is going to be projects which are completely ready to go, which are going to be the biggest benefactors of this on the way through. What has been holding that back? Well, the grid for starters. Grids were not built originally for renewable energy generation. They were built for carbon emission. The grid did not need to expand for a long time. The government now is playing catch up to expand the grid as quickly as they can. They are doing a good job, but it is going to take time to grow that grid overall. Revenue certainty. Projects cannot be built.
It does not make a difference if you are an energy project or a metals and mining project. You need that revenue certainty to get up and going. There have been a number of initiatives which have come through, which we have obviously been benefactors of, through reserve capacity, Capacity Investment Scheme, and now there has been a couple of PPAs come out through Synergy as well. That is starting to help with the revenue certainty to get these new projects up. There is not enough. There needs to be more of this to actually help close that gap overall. Timing in these projects. You cannot just build a renewable energy project tomorrow morning, as we have said the whole way through. It has taken us over five years to get to this point.
Even if you are at this point now, you have to order those long lead equipment items a long way into the future, including transformers. Otherwise, you are just going to continue to fall behind. So there is the whole myriad of these various aspects. You have got to get ready to go for these projects to bring them through quite quickly. Otherwise, there is going to be a shortfall in that supply. The final one that I have already touched on is obviously gas. Gas in Western Australia, it is the backbone of the West Australian economy for energy. It will remain that way, but there is a shortfall forecasted from 2029 moving forward. That is going to result in higher gas prices. Higher gas prices will result in higher electricity prices.
Overall, when we look at the forecast for WA energy, we do believe over the transition period, which is going to be these next five plus years, it is going to be a challenge to get those energy prices down in the very short term. On saying all that, it is going to get there. But there has been this new thing which has now started coming through, which has obviously been across the world, and it has been data centers. Data center growth, to be completely frank, when you look at Australia and more specifically Western Australia, data centers across the country have been pretty low in comparison to the rest of the world to date. That is changing extremely quickly at the moment. Data center growth across the world, it is growing exponentially.
When you look at the forecast for the amount of energy data centers are going to consume by 2030, you're looking at over 900 TW of energy generation. Just to put that into some kind of perspective, that is the amount of energy that is consumed by the whole of Japan today. These are new phenomenons which have come through, and the amount of energy that they're requiring is exponentially higher than what was ever predicted before. Regarding that, we are seeing countries across the world and jurisdictions now realizing that these data centers have come through much quicker than expected, and it's putting a lot of pressure on electricity grids across the world. If you look at Ireland, for example, around 20%-25% of energy consumed in that nation now is from data centers.
It's forecasted in Malaysia by 2030, 30% of energy is now consumed by data centers. This is now forcing states where data centers are located, and more importantly, countries, now putting restrictions or moratoriums on these data centers just connecting to the grid. You now have to bring that energy solution as part of it as well. That's been at the forefront of Australia as well. The Prime Minister announced a couple of months ago that any new data center that's going to be coming through has to bring their own energy to the party as well. It's not just bring that amount of energy, they want them to bring more. It's going to help the economy overall to start bringing down overall energy prices. From our discussions with government, it sounds like that's going to be legislated early in the new year.
That's really a benefit for us as we grow on the way through, given what we actually have. The other key thing as well is it's a change now in location of where these data centers were. Historically, data centers were really connected in the cities, and that was where the low-hanging fruit was. Because you had the energy there, you had the fiber optic there, and they didn't need that much land given the size that they originally started. When you look to data centers now into the future, as can be seen by the amount of energy they're going to require, they're looking at building these things in which are called campuses, and they are huge. They're looking for up to a gigawatt of data centers on the way through now. It's not just they need the fiber optic and the power now.
They need to be able to grow that into the future as well. They also need a lot of land around it. Not just the land, you need the community support with that land as well. It's been widely reported at the moment that, across the world, a lot of data centers have been pushed back because communities have said, "No, we're not having them here." In Western Australia recently, there was a data center which applied for its DA. On the opening of that DA for public consultancy, there was hundreds of people that pushed it back straight away. You need to have those data centers located in areas where you're not going to have those populations that are going to push back for them.
The final one is sovereign security. What I mean by that is obviously, each nation is different. Really, when you look at where those chips are produced through NVIDIA, it is obviously U.S. You need strong relationships with the U.S. government for that on the way through. That starts really limiting where these data centers are going to be located, especially in the near term. That is now really putting Australia really at the forefront for data centers. When we have a look at the amount of energy potential we can produce from renewable energy, we obviously have a lot of land. There is community support if you put these data centers in the right locations. Obviously, we have sovereign security given the strength of the country and the relationships with the U.S. overall as well. Australia is in a very good position for data center growth.
Western Australia, I believe to date, has been somewhat neglected from data centers. As I mentioned at the outset, lots of these data centers were looking at being originally built close to those city locations. Now as you start to step out, and data centers want more of this land, want more of this renewable energy generation potential, Western Australia is now really starting to come to the forefront of data centers. The other big added benefit of Western Australia is obviously our proximity to Southeast Asia and the connectivity which is already existing with that as well. We do have a number of subsea cables which are already in place. Then there are groups like Google, which are building a new subsea cable out at Mandurah, which is about 30 km away from our project. It is going to continue to grow.
Why are we extremely confident about this? A number of data centers have directly approached us over the last month or so. We know that they are coming to Western Australia. They are looking for a foothold here in Western Australia. Then when we look at what we have actually got in and around our project already with the land, obviously the energy potential for growth, we have a grid connection. Obviously, the Landwehr Terminal, which Jamie spoke about, is one of the strongest parts of the grid overall. Water, the Stirling Trunk Main, which is our main water source for Perth, is located about 2 km away. Then we have done quite a bit of work regarding the fiber optic connectivity as well. You do start looking at the potential that it is not just a data center that we could potentially have connecting into the grid.
You do have the potential for a co-located data center where we are located down in Waroona as well. That is really a lot of work of what we are looking at now is where is this growth going to be for the company? How are we going to grow it? I think it is hopefully investors now are appreciating that it is not just going to be one track. We have to do exactly the same as what we did on stage one in terms of looking at reserve capacity or CIS. Now, we have obviously got that potential for a stage two, but we do have that other optionality as well. There are other PPAs which are now starting to open up in the West Australian market. We do have data centers now which are starting to come through on the way through, so there is a lot of optionality for growth.
The company in the background now is preparing as quickly as we can to start getting that stage two, but not just stage two, but that stage three and four ready to grow as well. On top of the Waroona project, we are starting to look and expand our search across wider Western Australia. Jamie, and he can touch on this a bit later on, he has got a lot of experience having grown Pacific Energy as an off-grid energy solution company where he grew that from around 200 MW up to 1 GW of energy generation by the time he left. He is now starting quietly in the background to formulate a strategy regarding that, and we are looking to really grow this company. It is not just going to be a one-stop shop for stage one.
It is going to be multiple stages of stage two and three in and around Waroona, and we are looking for further growth from there afterwards as well. Shammy already touched on as well that we are not doing this just to bring energy on the grid and have a job. We are doing this for shareholder growth. We are all major shareholders in the company. As mentioned at the outset, we participated in the last raise for about AUD 3.5 million. Management today owns around 10% of the company overall, which is an extremely high percentage. We are really driving this company for growth. When you look at where these things typically trade at, it is usually around the 20 times EBITDA multiple. I will let investors do the maths when you look at a AUD 60 million stage 1 EBITDA alone.
We are really looking to grow this, not just through stage one, but through future growth there afterwards as well, and that is where we really believe we are going to add a lot of shareholder value from here on. On saying all that is the overall presentation. I would like to now open up for questions, Nathan, if you have any on the way through.
Thank you. Just a reminder, if you would like to ask a question to the company, please enter it into the Q&A panel within Zoom. We have had a series of questions come through, so we will just work through these. First one: Will the minister's decision to retrospectively impose a proposed 48% duty on imported steel tubing affect the Waroona project?
No. I can answer that one really quickly, Jamie. Regarding the 48% increase in tariff, the only part of the equipment that affects for us is actually the tracker systems overall. We've already accounted for that in our overall cost, and it adds about AUD 1 million to AUD 1.5 million to the overall capital. As an investor, I wouldn't think the capital cost is going to go from AUD 3 to AUD 450 million. It's only increased by AUD 1 million overall. But we've had cost savings in other aspects of the project, so that's all completely balanced out.
Thank you. There's been a couple of questions regarding reserve capacity and the Capacity Investment Scheme. First one regarding this, do you have to keep applying for reserve capacity each year for stage one, even though you have a five-year fixed price?
Yes, you do. The way to think of it for reserve capacity is, I suppose, a little bit similar to your driver's license, to put it a very simple analogy. You've always got your driver's license, but every five years or one year, you've got to go through and get that re-appliance for it. That's exactly the same as reserve capacity. It's a process that you resubmit every year, but once you're on the grid and connected or you've got that initial reserve capacity, you effectively get it every year thereafterwards. The fixed price is related to the fixed price in terms of the credits that we receive, and that's fixed until 2032. From 2033 moving forward, that's removed to that variable price thereafterwards.
Thank you. Have you already applied or been assigned reserve capacity for stage two for 2028, 2029 capacity year?
No, not for stage two yet. We've got a little bit of work to do regarding stage two, just in terms of finalizing connections, a little bit of work regarding development approvals. Development approval is already in place. In terms of finalizing study and sizing for the project, once we've done all that, as well as have revenue certainty for that stage two in place, that's when we apply for that reserve capacity. Reserve capacity is essentially the last thing you go for when you're ready to go on a project.
Thank you. We've had a couple of questions regarding other energy opportunities to be pursued. Are you able to provide more information on these opportunities?
I might pass to Jamie on that one.
Yeah, I'll take that one, Adam. I guess we will always be on the lookout for any operating assets or late development stage assets that might come to the market. Having said that, they're usually few and far between and competitive processes are involved typically, but we'll always keep an eye out. More so, I see opportunities in the off-grid sector, which is where I came from for over the past 10+ years. I'm working on a, and Adam touched on it, I'm working on a go-to-market strategy for that space. That'll be focused more at the smaller end, to begin with, just to start to build a presence and be able to add to our portfolio with some off-grid projects. What we're talking about here is build and operate power stations on remote mine sites under power purchase agreements.
It'll take a while, but that's probably the main focus. I do see some opportunities in the market at the smaller end because the bigger players, I think, are not spending time on small opportunities and there are some really big projects out there that tie up all of their resources. Smaller projects fall to the wayside and that's where I think we might have some success picking some up over the next couple of years.
Thank you. Next question. Can you please provide more detail on your owners team? Is this just an internal team or does this include Monford and other suppliers? How regularly will you meet?
No, the owners team are Frontier Energy personnel that sit over the top of the contractors on site. Monford being the key contractor doing the lion's share of the work, and GPS are doing the substation. Really it's to provide oversight. The guys will be on site, co-located. But just making, again, I said it earlier, making sure we get what we paid for. We trust the contractors, but we have to make sure that the quality is to our standard, we have all the right checks and balances, safety is in place, et cetera. We'll have a permanent site presence. We already meet weekly with them in our pre-planning and that will continue. The aim here is to build a really strong and good relationship because we'd like everyone just to move straight on to stage two.
That's from our perspective, but also the contractors as well. I think you're going to see a pretty good and fluid relationship being built there. But again, back to the question, the owners team are all highly experienced renewable energy people. I've worked with them before, and they are Frontier Energy personnel sitting over the top of the project.
Thank you. Has there been any recent land purchases in the Waroona area that the company is aware of?
I am not aware, but Adam, I am not sure if you know anything else.
Listen, obviously there is, in terms of Frontier, we haven't acquired any additional land. That is probably all we can comment on at the moment. We are aware that there has been other groups that are looking in and around the location for land acquisitions, but I probably can't comment on what other people are exactly doing at the moment. But as we touched on with the growth strategy overall, we are in a very advantageous position. A lot of different other groups may be looking in and around where we are as well.
Thank you. Does the company need a specific solar grid connection and a battery energy storage system grid connection?
Listen, I think I know what someone's trying to ask there. Listen, the connection for that stage one is called an ETAC. That's all completely done, signed, sealed, delivered, locked away. The stage two connection application, that's underway. Our expectations are we should be hopefully given critical project status on that in the very near term. Once we receive that critical project status, that allows us to grow from stage two and beyond as well. Hopefully, that's answering the question that someone was asking overall. Probably just to touch on that in a little bit more detail as well. The connection that we have, this industry loves acronyms. We've got a DSO, which allows us to put energy onto the grid. We've also got a CMD. The CMD allows us to draw energy from the grid as well.
That ability to draw energy from the grid is for the battery component. If we have a day where it's not sunny, we are able to draw energy from the grid for whatever reasons we may require to discharge then at a later time as well. So we are able to pull energy as well as push energy back onto that grid.
Thank you. Where is the company at with regards to reserve capacity credits for stage 2?
Yeah, I think I've mentioned this one before. The stage two application, with a little bit of luck, we'll be ready to do an application for that next year, but we need to finalize first off the stage two connection application, get that all done and approved. We need to complete the study on a stage two as well. We don't expect that will take too long, but more importantly, we'll need to secure revenue certainty for that stage two as well. Really getting that reserve capacity, that's one of the last things that you get when you're completely ready to go for development for a project.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time, so I'll hand back to Jamie and Adam for closing remarks.
Thanks, Nathan. I'll just kind of wrap up, I guess. Hopefully, well, firstly, thank you for those people who've dialed in to listen. Hopefully, we've given you a lens into the stage one project status and timeline, and the de-risking strategy that we've employed. Of course, as I said, we're really excited to break ground there in the next couple of weeks and get going. Also some insight into the strong tailwinds that we have in this energy space. Also very exciting, and the growth opportunities to develop a meaningful portfolio of megawatts generating long-term cash flows. In my experience, people are prepared to pay quite handsomely to own those long-term cash flows.
Yeah, we've got a good few years of work ahead and I'm looking forward to building the portfolio and hopefully investors will start to see that Frontier Energy is not just a one project, one stage company. We're building something quite meaningful here in the years to come. Thanks everyone again for listening.