The REZ’s first wires are up. So are the First Nations Fund’s numbers, and they stop at 60 per cent

The wires, which matter more than the generators

Stringing has started. The release describes it plainly: Stringing is a critical stage of transmission network construction, involving the installation of high-voltage cables between towers to form a continuous pathway for electricity. And the count of what is already up: With 64 towers now standing, crews will work continuously to install cables to progressively connect each tower.

The cables run extending from Elong Elong through Merotherie to Barigan Creek, which is the spine of the network rather than a spur. EnergyCo says the project remains on track for energisation from 2028 and will unlock enough renewable energy and storage to power up to 2.7 million homes during periods of peak demand. That last clause does the work people usually drop: it is a peak-demand figure, not a count of homes continuously supplied.

EnergyCo chief executive Hannah McCaughey called it an exciting milestone for the Central-West Orana Renewable Energy Zone. ACEREZ chief executive Steve Masters, whose consortium is building it, put it in piecework terms: Every pull, every join, every metre of conductor brings us closer to delivering clean, reliable energy to homes and businesses across NSW.

Towers standing is the visible half. A tower with no conductor on it carries nothing, so the move from 64 standing towers to 64 connected ones is the part that turns steel into a transmission line.

The benefits number moved, and the reason is one table that used to be blank

The same release says the REZ is delivering $128 million in Community and Employment Benefit Program grants to the region and that More than $72 million has already been awarded to support 75 projects, spanning from housing to water infrastructure, skills training centres and sporting facilities.

We can check that, because we did the same sum six weeks ago. On 16 August we added up every amount in EnergyCo’s four published recipient tables and got $66,062,047.30 across 74 listed recipients. One stream, the First Nations Fund, listed 8 recipients and published no dollar figures against any of them. We recorded that as None published and said so.

Re-counted today from the same page, the four tables total $72,021,428.28. The difference is $5,959,380.98 to the cent, and that is exactly the sum of the First Nations Fund table, which now carries a figure against each of its 8 grants. Nothing else changed: the other three streams hold the same totals they held in August.

So the release’s figure of more than $72 million is the first version of that claim a reader could check against the tables, and it holds.

What the filled-in table shows

Three of the four streams have allocated essentially all of their money: 99.5, 98.9 and 99.1 per cent. The First Nations Fund has allocated 59.6 per cent, leaving $4,040,619.02 of its $10 million unawarded. It is the only stream with real money still in it, and it holds roughly nine times what the other three have left between them, which comes to $437,952.70.

That is arithmetic on EnergyCo’s own tables, not an allegation. There are ordinary explanations for a slower stream, and the obvious one is that this fund is the one that requires First Nations organisations to be in a position to apply, which is a different task from a council submitting a works programme. The 8 grants it has made average $744,923. Four million dollars is also a lot of money to still be sitting in a 2028 program while the other streams are finished, and it is the number to ask about.

One figure we cannot reconcile

The release says 75 projects. The four published tables list 74 funded entries, and 74 was also our August count of recipients. Counting projects rather than recipients does not close the gap either: the Legacy Infrastructure Fund’s 9 entries are 9 projects across 4 councils, which is how we reported it in August, and the other three tables list one project per row.

So the 75th is not visible in the tables as published. It may be a grant awarded but not yet listed, or a program counted alongside the streams: the $1.4 million Smart Farming Program announced on 12 August is described by EnergyCo as part of the community benefits investment, and it does not appear in these four tables. We are not asserting which. One project out of 75 changes nothing about the money, and we note it because a reader checking our sum against the release will hit the same discrepancy.

Where the money comes from, which is the part that keeps going

The program is not a grant from the budget. EnergyCo’s program page says the initial $128.4 million would be made available for community and employment benefits in the Central-West Orana REZ until the end of 2028, and the release says More funding will flow over the coming decades through fees paid by energy generators that connect to the REZ network infrastructure.

That is the mechanism worth holding on to while the towers go up. The wires being strung now are what generators pay to connect to, and those access fees are what funds the next decades of community money. The construction milestone and the benefits program are the same transaction seen from two ends.