New wind and solar remain stalled at the gate, but battery starts are charging to new records

The addition of new wind and solar projects remains stalled and well behind the pace needed for the country’s renewable energy targets, with no wind and solar projects registered in June and the total for the first six months half of that in the previous six months.

New data released by the Australian Energy Market Operator late last week reveals that just one project was registered on Australia’s main grid, known as the National Electricity Market, in the month of June. That was a 43 megawatt (MW) gas project at Hastings in Victoria.

The total capacity of new projects registered for the financial year was just 2.4 gigawatts (GW), just behind the 2.5 GW registered in the previous financial year. The number does not include rooftop solar, or other small distributed assets.

According to a separate study by analysts at Rystad Energy, just 683 MW of new capacity was registered in the first half of 2024 in the NEM and the West Australia grid. This numbers is consistent with the AEMO data.

Approvals were higher – with 2 GW of new large scale solar and wind capacity approved across the country – but again this was well short of expectations.

“Unfortunately, this is far below what is needed,” Rystad’s David Dixon observed in a LinkedIn post over the weekend. “Our estimates are that we need over 4 GW of utility PV / wind approved per half (8 GWac) per year to reach 82% renewables by 2030.”

The one strong component – as it has been for much of the last 18 months – is battery storage, helped along by some specific contracts to support greater capacity on the grid, or to time shift solar from the middle of the day to the evening peak in states such as Western Australia.

Grid scale batteries accounted for 2.5 GW (ac) of new capacity that began construction over the first half of 2024, compared to just 1.4 GW (ac) of new utility scale solar PV and wind.

“For context this is the most capacity of utility solar, wind and battery capacity to start construction over a 6 month period ever in Australia,” Rystad noted. “However, it must be noted that installations of utility solar and wind need to increase in order to reach state and federal targets.”

According to Rystad, investor interest in Australia remains huge, with another 76 GW of new project proposals added to Rystad’s database in just over six years. Again, nearly half of this (34 GW) is from grid scale batteries (with varying amounts of proposed storage). NSW leads with 28.3 GW of new project propsals.

Most of those projects are jockeying for position for an underwriting agreement through the federal government’s Capacity Investment Scheme, which will seek 32 GW of new capacity over four years to help propel the country towards the 2030 target of 82 per cent renewables.

Already more than 40 GW of projects registered their interest in the first tender, and 25 GW lodged bids. Federal energy and climate minister Chris Bowen, who travels to China this week, has said the government may increase the size of the first tenders to help accelerate the rollout.

AEMO gave a breakdown for both the month of June and the full financial year.

“During June, four projects totalling 0.72 gigawatts (GW) received application approval and moved into the proponent implementation stage, bringing the FYTD (full year to date) total to 56 projects (12.0 GW),” it said.

“One project completed registration bringing the FYTD total to 17 projects (2.4 GW). No projects commenced operating at full output in June, so the FYTD total remained at 19 projects (2.2 GW).