Bowen seeks 1.6 GW wind and solar, 2.4 GWh of storage in super-sized CIS tenders for largest isolated grid

Federal Labor has launched new tenders for 1.6 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity and 2.4 gigawatt-hours of “dispatchable capacity” to add to the Western Australia grid in the latest two rounds of its Capacity Investment Scheme.

The new Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS) tenders, announced Friday morning, are the latest to target WA’s isolated Wholesale Energy Market (WEM), which is still heavily reliant on coal and gas and where the majority of new renewables development has been off-grid, to power the state’s vast resources industry.

Western Australia is already playing host to the country’s biggest battery storage project, with more on the way, as it prepares for a grid with no coal power from 2030, but there has been little in the way of new wind and solar, and more battery storage is also needed.

A market brief published on Friday morning says CIS Tender 5 will seek an indicative target of 1600 MW of new renewable projects that will connect or intend to connect to the state’s main grid, the South-West Interconnected System (SWIS).

Proposed projects should be no smaller than 30 MW, and would need to demonstrate a credible pathway to starting commercial operations by or before the end of December, 2030.

The market brief for Tender 6 seeks projects with a minimum storage duration of two hours and a minimum registered capacity size of 30 MW, totally an indicative target total of 2,400 megawatt-hours of dispatchable capacity, connected to the SWIS.

Bowen says the two CIS rounds will unlock an estimated $4 billion of additional private investment in the WEM for the south-west region of Western Australian, including Perth.

The new projects are expected to add enough new solar and wind energy generation capacity to power more than 900,000 homes a year, and enough storage to cover the peak load of 550,000 households for four hours.

Successful tenders will secure Western Australia’s energy grid by contributing to the state’s CIS capacity allocation of at least 2.3 GW of renewable generation and 4.4 GWh of clean dispatchable capacity, complementing earlier tenders.

Bowen says proponents will have 10 weeks to submit their bids under the new streamlined CIS process, with bidding due to close on November 07.

Bids will be assessed on deliverability and value for money, but also on their contribution to grid reliability, strength of engagement with First Nations communities, and commitments to deliver shared benefits.

“These latest tenders will deliver certainty of progress to the Western Australian market and households with support for cleaner, more reliable renewable energy,” Said Bowen on Friday morning.

“We know the Capacity Investment Scheme is working, with investors and developers outbidding each other for the chance to deliver even more renewable energy for Western Australia this decade.”

WA energy minister Amber-Jade Sanderson the latest CIS tender will give investors the confidence to build more projects in the state.

“CIS is already enhancing our energy transition, and adding a further 1.6 gigawatts of renewable generation will further strengthen our clean energy credentials and boost the capacity of our standalone our energy grid,” Sanderson said on Friday.

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