Marching through quicksand for the transition

Hey Reader, welcome to The Energy's weekly data newsletter. This week we explore AEMO's latest Connections Scorecard and where projects are getting stuck.

Hard slog

The energy transition seems to be marching through quicksand more often than not.

The Australian Energy Market Operator’s latest grid Connections Scorecard shows encouraging progress in getting new capacity online, as well as key areas where Australia needs to do much better to get anywhere near transition targets by 2030.

On the positive side, progress in getting new projects to full output was sharply up on the same stage last year, and the aggregate pipeline of projects in the application, proponent implementation and commissioning to full output stages is well up too. (These are defined at the end of this section.)

That’s the good news, holding out some hope that Australia can somehow overcome the dismal current rate of new final investment decisions on large wind and solar projects, and get them moving much more rapidly through the grid connection process.

The bad news is twofold. Approved applications and registrations — those that can move to the next stages — are running behind the rates of last year, and aggregate projects in the registration stage crept up just 2% for the 2026 financial year to date.

And while the aggregate pipeline was up a handy 14% at 64GW — which compares with existing National Electricity Market capacity of about 73GW — it is dominated by batteries.

Batteries are useful for making better use of existing wind and solar generation, including by reducing curtailment due to grid constraints or uneconomic prices.

But they don’t add to generation itself — for that we need more wind and solar projects to move more quickly through the application implementation, registration and commissioning processes.

Application stage: projects’ interaction with the grid is assessed as designed — 90% of projects at this stage proceed to full output.

Implementation: developers and networks work on an agreement, build a network interface and apply to AEMO for registration (99% to full output).

Registration: developer demonstrates project performance as built (100%).

Commissioning to full output: AEMO assesses projects’ physical interaction with the grid at successive MW “hold points” (100%).

Standout

Aggregate capacity commissioned to full output jumped 89% in the first half of the 2026 financial year over the same period in 2025. *Source: AEMO's Connections Scorecard*

The standout achievement in the Connections Scorecard for the December 2025 quarter was an 89% increase in cumulative project capacity commissioned to full output (full output achieved) of 3.8GW for the 2026 financial year to date (FYTD).

That compares to 4.4GW for the entire FY2025. Including partially commissioned capacity the figure at the end of December was 6.6GW. The total in the process of commissioning to full output was 7GW, up 26% on a year ago. (AEMO publishes the Connections Scorecard to shine a light on the notoriously sticky progress of grid connections and hopefully show some improvement.)

If that rate can be maintained — and improved upon — for the rest of the financial year, and in subsequent years, 2030 targets may not seem so distant (rooftop solar adds about 3GW a year without going through AEMO connection; home batteries added 4.3GWh in the last six months).

For now, those targets are distant. Even so, there’s good news elsewhere in the pipeline. Capacity was up 60% from a year earlier at 26GW in the application stage, and 29% to 26GW in the implementation stage. Momentum is healthy in the early stages too.

Capacity was up sharply in the application (60%) and implementation (29%) stages.
*Source: AEMO's Connections Scorecard*

Indigestion

But this momentum is not uniformly distributed. Aggregate capacity in the registration stage — the last before commissioning — crept up just 2% to 5GW.

To maintain the encouraging growth in the commissioning stage, you would want project capacity in the registration stage to be growing at least as rapidly as it is in the commissioning stage.

Unfortunately it’s not. Approved applications for the FYTD lagged last year's comparable effort at 5.6GW, and approved registrations were also lagging at just 4GW.

Capacity in the registration stage crept up just 2% compared to a year ago.

Approved registrations and applications lagged the previous year for the FYTD.
*Source: AEMO's Connections Scorecard*

This can be put down to the perennial planning approvals obstacles (community hostility, glacial and bureaucratic processes vulnerable to orchestrated campaigns) and supply chain issues plaguing utility scale wind, solar and hydro projects.

The other big problem is that the pipeline is dominated by big battery projects, which are beginning to play a bigger role in “firming” wind and solar power and threatening to eat gas peaking plants’ lunch.

That’s useful, but not enough. The grid needs new wind and solar generation — and lots of it — to achieve climate targets.

Unfortunately wind and solar projects are more prominent at the application and implementation stages than at the critical registration and commissioning stages, where they’re dwarfed by batteries.

In other words, planning approvals delays hit wind and solar projects much harder than battery projects (though battery developers also confront orchestrated misinformation and community hostility).

That's the quicksand, and state and federal governments are working hard to turn it to firm and predictable ground.