In its latest quarterly scorecard, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) says new generation and storage projects in the final commissioning stage have grown year-on-year from 1.5GW to 7GW, highlighting investment momentum in renewables and firming technologies in the National Electricity Market (NEM).
For the March quarter, seven projects totalling 1.7GW received application approvals, seven were registered (2.4GW) and five reached full output: the Blyth Bess (200MW), Gangarri Solar Farm (150MW), Crookwell 3 Wind Farm (56MW), Mokoan Solar Farm (46MW) and Kingaroy Solar Farm (40MW).
AEMO onboarding and connections group manager Margarida Pimentel says the pipeline of new projects needed to replace ageing power stations and to meet future demand is the largest to date.
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“It’s a new record of renewable and firming projects working to connect to the National Electricity Market,” Pimentel says.
As of March 2025, the pipeline of new generation and storage capacity exceeded 51GW—a 37% year-on-year increase.
By technology type over the same period, standalone batteries have increased from 11GW to 20.5GW, hybrid solar and battery projects have increased from 4.5GW to 5.6GW, wind projects from 7.5GW to 8.7GW, and solar from 10.2GW to 12.1GW.
Across the NEM states, 36% of this capacity is in New South Wales, 31% in Queensland, 23% in Victoria, 10% in South Australia and 0.25% in Tasmania.
“So far this financial year, 42 project applications have been approved (9.2GW), 28 projects (7.5GW) were registered, and 16 projects (2.5GW) reached their full megawatt output,” Pimentel says.
Along with the growing diversity of projects connecting to the grid, there are also an increasing number of applications for alterations to a generating system being made, including adding batteries, firmware updates, like-for-like replacements and plant alterations.
Of the 10 alterations in registration, seven are battery additions, making up an additional 480MW of added storage capacity. Three of the six alterations in commissioning are battery additions, making up an additional 304MW of storage capacity.
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Working in collaboration with industry as part of the Connections Reform Initiative (CRI) a suite of guidance documents has been developed in the NER 5.3.9 workstream to aid in the execution and acceleration of these applications in the connections pipeline.
Also of note during the March quarter was the stage one release of Project Energy Connect, a new transmission line connecting South Australia and New South Wales, with a spur into Victoria.
“With stage one of Project EnergyConnect built and tested, AEMO, ElectraNet and TransGrid have released 150MW of electricity to flow between South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria, which will enable capacity for new generation in these areas,” Pimentel says.
