- Founded
- July 2024
- Based
- Northern Beaches, Sydney NSW
- Structure
- Three companies
- Directors
- Five
Company
A small company that builds real plant.
Upcycle Energy started in July 2024 with a workshop, a written-off Tesla pack and a question: if these cells are still in the mid-nineties for State of Health, why are they a waste problem? The first system went into a friendly user's garage. More than a dozen systems later, the same discipline is being scaled up into containerised plant for industrial and telecommunications sites. That first group of customers still matters more than their number suggests — they are early adopters who back the circular-economy case for second-life batteries and who enjoy being close to a company that innovates its way through problems, and their sites are what turned an idea into an operating record.
We are deliberately open about our size. What a large customer should expect from us is engineering rigour, documentation, and a business structured so that a commercial relationship is straightforward to establish — not the pretence of being bigger than we are.
People
The people you will actually be dealing with.
Mark Barnett
An electrical engineer with more than thirty years in telecommunications, Mark has held senior engineering and technology leadership roles across Australia, Asia and Europe, including with nbn, Nokia and Motorola, and has lived and worked in Singapore and Türkiye. His career has centred on large-scale network infrastructure and the power and energy systems that keep it running. He founded Upcycle Energy in July 2024.
Steven Barnett
A licensed electrician with over twenty years deploying electrical systems across the power and telecommunications industries. Steven leads high-voltage recovery work, build quality and installation — every Upcycle system in the field has been built and commissioned to his standard.
Outside the workshop, Steven was an Olympic diver, taking bronze at the 2004 Athens Games. More recently he has turned to motorsport, where he has held the third-fastest rotary drag racing time in the world.
Ray Owen
Steve Birch
Geoff Barnard
- Entities
- Three Australian proprietary limited companies
- Contracting
- Engagement is with the entity matching the work
Corporate structure
Three companies, one group.
Upcycle Energy operates as three separate Australian companies, so that consulting work, residential deployments and industrial deployments each sit in the right entity for contracting, insurance and risk.
The consulting entity.
- Engineering and advisory consulting services
- Feasibility, design and technical review work
Homes and small sites.
- Design, supply and installation of residential storage
- Where most of the proof-of-concept fleet has been deployed
Commercial, industrial and telecommunications.
- BPaaS Pod and industrial storage deployments
- Energy monitoring and analytics service
Guiding principles
The rules we set on day one, and still work to.
Safety is priority one
For the product, our people, our customers, and the installers and logistics partners who handle our equipment. Batteries and power systems are inherently dangerous; care underscores everything.
Affordability is the differentiator
Cost minimisation through smart design, smart procurement and second-life materials — not through cutting corners on the parts that keep a system safe.
Compliance early, not late
Certification and regulatory compliance are the hard part of this industry. We do the due diligence up front and design the approval path in from day one.
Security of supply
Reliable access to retired packs is what makes scale possible. We build supplier relationships across auction houses and wreckers, and design for more than one battery chemistry and brand.
Flexibility by design
Product and certification strategy is built to support a wider component sourcing base, so a single supply constraint cannot stop a deployment.
Circularity is the point
Every pack we put back to work is a pack that is not in storage, in landfill, or waiting for a recycling industry that does not yet exist in Australia.
Where it started
One ute, one recovered pack, one friendly customer.
Steven and Mark Barnett, on the way to fit the first Upcycle Energy system for a friendly user.