Data Centres Drew Nearly 600 MW From Australia's Grid in Q1 as 5.4 GW Queues, AEMO Says

Data Centres Drew Nearly 600 MW From Australia's Grid in Q1 as 5.4 GW Queues, AEMO Says AEMO put data-centre load at the centre of its planning rethink, tightening the NEM's demand outlook even as a record battery build absorbs midday solar. Data centres drew an average of nearly 600 MW from Australia's National Electricity Market through the first quarter of this year, AEMO told Australian Energy Week in Melbourne on Wednesday (2026-06-03)⁴. In the same quarter, 11 data centres totalling 5.4 GW of ultimate load were working through a transmission network connection, a pipeline several times larger than the load already running⁴. The gap between 600 MW drawing power and 5.4 GW queued is what should concentrate NEM participants⁴. AEMO's chief executive told the conference that batteries are fundamentally changing the electricity system and the outlook for the Integrated System Plan, the blueprint that guides where transmission and generation get built³. A demand source of that scale, arriving faster than firm generation can be permitted and built, reorders the planning question³. AEMO is reweighting its core documents toward demand. The Electricity Statement of Opportunities and the Gas Statement of Opportunities have folded in more demand-side analysis over time, but the operator said the primary question now is how to plan around large, lumpy loads, alongside work on connection arrangements, data sharing and planning frameworks⁴. For anyone holding NEM exposure, a 5.4 GW pipeline against a grid still retiring coal is demand the spot market has not had to price before⁴. The supply response so far is batteries, not new firm capacity. Australia became the third-largest utility-scale battery market in the world in 2025, behind only China and the United States, after a record 2 GW of new big-battery capacity was added over the year, a 233 per cent increase on 2024, according to the Clean Energy Council². Another 4.3 GW and 13.5 GWh was financially committed during the year, worth $4.8 billion of investment, a 67 per cent rise on 2024². The fleet additions are concrete. AGL's Liddell Battery contributes 500 MW and 1,000 MWh, though only its first 250 MW/500 MWh stage began commissioning at the start of the period². The 600 MW, 1,600 MWh first stage of the Melbourne Renewable Energy Hub, jointly developed by Equis and Victoria's State Energy Corporation, was another major addition². Akaysha Energy's Ulinda Park in Queensland brought a 55 MW/298 MWh first phase into commercial trading by December². Batteries shift energy across hours; they do not generate it. The Clean Energy Council expects big batteries to compete more often with each other than with gas peakers, and increasingly to be paired with solar farms². That arbitrage logic caps peak prices and erodes the spreads gas plants once earned, but it adds none of the steady supply a 5.4 GW data-centre pipeline ultimately needs overnight and through still, cloudy stretches². The firming fuel is not cheap or abundant. Australia may hold the title of world's largest LNG exporter, but the east coast faces rising seasonal demand against maturing supply, and without significant new reserves the domestic market tightens through the mid-2020s, according to Wood Mackenzie¹. The pandemic and the 2020 oil-price crash delayed new east-coast supply, with APLNG cutting roughly US$250 million of capex in 2020 and Beach delaying its Otway development by a year¹. The signal to track is the connection queue⁴. If a meaningful share of the 5.4 GW clears its transmission connection over the next several quarters, NEM evening prices tighten faster than new firm supply can answer, and AEMO's next Statement of Opportunities will have to say so⁴. The battery build buys flexibility, not energy. The data centres need both.