Construction will start on Australia's biggest lithium ion battery plant in Townsville next year if an Australian-led consortium secures debt funding when it completes a feasibility study at the end of September.

With annual production targeted at 15 gigawatt hours, the plant in Townsville, in north Queensland, aspires to be more than 100 times bigger than Elon Musk's battery in South Australia, which has a storage capacity of 129 megawatt hours.