A surge in grid-scale batteries is driving strong growth in the pipeline of new generation and storage projects seeking to connect to the National Electricity Market (NEM), with total proposed capacity now nearing today’s installed levels.
The Australian Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO) latest Connections Scorecard shows 67.3GW of projects progressing through the NEM connection process, compared with around 73GW of existing NEM generation and storage capacity (excluding consumer energy resources). Batteries account for around half of the total pipeline capacity.
AEMO group manager onboarding and connections Margarida Pimentel said the overall project pipeline has increased 33% from 50.5GW at the end of Q1 2025 to 67.3GW in Q1 2026.
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“There is positive momentum across the connections pipeline, with strong growth in projects progressing through the early stages of the application process,” Pimentel said.
“Projects in application stage, where the performance of project design is assessed, increased by 51% over the past year, from 19.7GW to 29.8GW, with 18 projects totalling 5.5GW in the March quarter alone,” she said.
Pimentel said it was critical that projects continued to move through registration and commissioning to deliver energy and capacity to the market.
“We’re seeing a continued trend of projects taking longer in the proponent implementation phase, due to prolonged funding uncertainty, project ownership changes, supply chain and resource constraints, and design modifications.
“What’s important is that these projects continue through to registration and commissioning to full output, so they can support reliability and the transition of the power system,” she said.
This new capacity will help meet an anticipated 28% rise in electricity demand by 2035, while also offsetting the planned retirement of 11GW of predominantly coal-fired power stations over the next 10 years, including Eraring, Bayswater and Vales Point (NSW), Yallourn (Vic), and Callide B (Qld).
By technology type over the past year, standalone battery capacity in the pipeline increased from 20.5GW to 33.2GW, while grid-scale solar rose from 17.7GW to 20.7GW and wind from 8.32GW to 9.75GW. Hydro remained stable at 3GW, while gas capacity decreased by 74%, from 0.9GW to 0.2GW, with the Hunter Power Station commissioning to full output.
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Batteries now comprise 49% of total capacity in the NEM connections pipeline, with around 74% of battery projects being grid-forming.
The Connections Scorecard is published quarterly and provides transparency on the progress of generation and storage projects through the NEM connection process.
