Australia’s renewable energy build-out is accelerating at a pace that’s rapidly reshaping the grid, with the pipeline of projects seeking connection now nearing the size of the entire existing National Electricity Market (NEM).
The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has released its Connections Scorecard, highlighting a 67.3GW pipeline of projects progressing through the NEM connection process, just shy of the NEM’s existing 73GW grid-scale capacity.
The pipeline has increased 33 per cent from 50.5GW at the end of the first quarter (Q1) of 2025 to 67.3GW in Q1 this year.
“There is positive momentum across the connections pipeline, with strong growth in projects progressing through the early stages of the application process,” AEMO Group Manager – Onboarding and Connections Margarida Pimentel said.
“Projects in application stage, where the performance of project design is assessed, increased by 51 per cent over the past year, from 19.7GW to 29.8GW, with 18 projects totalling 5.5GW in the March quarter alone.”
Pimental noticed 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.
AEMO said new capacity would be critical to meeting an anticipated 28 per cent increase in electricity demand by 2035, while at the same time offsetting 11GW of traditional power generation set to retire across the next ten years, largely which is coal-fired. This includes the Eraring, Bayswater and Vales Point facilities in NSW, Yallourn in Victoria, and Callide B in Queensland.
Standalone battery capacity made up 33.2GW of the connection pipeline in Q1 2026 (up from 20.5GW a year before), while grid-scale solar increased from 17.7GW to 20.7GW and wind rose from 8.32GW to 9.75GW. Hydro remained steady at 3GW, while gas dropped from 0.9GW to 0.2GW.
Batteries now make up 49 per cent of the NEM’s connection pipeline, 74 per cent of which are grid-forming projects.
