Australia’s Grid Operator Connects Record 9.1 GW of Renewables and Storage in FY26

The Australian Energy Market Operator says a record 9.1 GW of new renewable generation and storage capacity reached full output on the National Electricity Market in the 2025-26 financial year, more than double the 4.4 GW connected in FY25. The 34 projects that hit full output over the year also delivered 12.9 GWh of battery storage capacity, which AEMO says dominated the technology mix among new connections.

Batteries are now the largest share of what is getting built

AEMO’s numbers point to a market where storage has moved from a supporting technology to the largest single category of new capacity reaching commercial operation. That shift matters for how the NEM is run day to day: batteries connect faster than large wind or transmission-linked solar projects and can be sited closer to demand centres, which is part of why they have come to dominate the completions list even as gigawatts of wind and solar remain earlier in AEMO’s pipeline.

A pipeline growing faster than projects are finishing

The connections queue behind this year’s completions grew sharply: registration and application approvals reached 7.4 GW and 14.2 GW respectively, and the total connections pipeline expanded 42% over the year, from 53 GW to 75.4 GW. That gap between a fast-growing pipeline and a comparatively slower stream of projects reaching full output is the crux of AEMO’s reliability warning — a large paper pipeline only firms up the grid once projects actually finish connecting, and AEMO says the pace of that final step still depends on timely investment decisions across generation, storage and transmission.

Faster approvals, but still a multi-year process

AEMO also reported process improvements on its side of the queue: the average duration of an application review improved 9% to 8.6 months, and commissioning-reform measures cut commissioning time by 10% to 4.5 months. Faster processing helps, but it does not by itself close the gap between the 75.4 GW pipeline and the 9.1 GW that actually reached full output this year — most projects in that pipeline are still years from commissioning, and AEMO’s own efficiency gains only shave months off a process that remains inherently multi-year.

The renewables share this connects to

Across the NEM as a whole, renewable generation — including rooftop solar — supplied 46% of total generation over the year, topping 50% in the second quarter of FY26 and setting a new instantaneous record of almost 80% renewable contribution over a half-hour period in October 2025. The 9.1 GW of new connections is the capacity base that record-setting renewable share is built on, and AEMO’s reliability message is essentially that sustaining or extending that share depends on converting more of the 75.4 GW pipeline into completed, connected projects at a similarly fast pace.

Sources: Energy-Storage.News, “AEMO connects record 9.1GW of renewables and storage to Australia’s NEM in FY26, warns reliability depends on timely investment,” Sept. 25, 2026, energy-storage.news — FY26 connection totals, pipeline growth and AEMO commentary; PV Tech, “Australia achieves record renewables and storage connections with 9.1GW reaching full output in FY26,” 2026, pv-tech.org — project count and storage-capacity breakdown; PV Tech, “Australia’s NEM hits 42% renewables share in Q2 2026 as wholesale prices fall to six-year low,” 2026 — quarterly renewables-share data and instantaneous-record figure.

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Illustrative image. Photo: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons — source