Batteries sweep Australia's federal grid firming tender as gas sits out
Fifteen battery projects claimed all 16 GWh on offer in CIS Tender 8, announced Wednesday by the federal Labor government.
Australia's federal Labor government named fifteen battery storage projects as the winners of its latest Capacity Investment Scheme auction on Wednesday (2026-06-24), filling a 16 gigawatt-hour capacity target in a round described as a "storage-only affair." The result left gas peakers without a contract and pushed the government's clean dispatchable total closer to its 4-gigawatt target across the National Electricity Market.2
The CIS Tender 8 results roughly met the government's goal of 4 GW of four-hour equivalent clean dispatchable capacity. Nearly half of the selected projects are destined for Queensland, a state that faces acute evening peak demand pressure as coal plant exits accelerate. The remainder are spread across Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia.2
The outcome reflects a practical shift in the economics of grid firming. Over the first quarter of 2026, large-scale batteries averaged more than 1 gigawatt of output during the evening demand peak, the window peaking gas turbines have historically owned. Westerman said batteries were already "reducing the need for more expensive peaking gas generation," a claim backed by dispatch data before the Tender 8 results were scored.2
Among the named winners is the Gelston Energy Park, a 400 megawatt / 1,600 megawatt-hour project backed by Sydney-based Ascera, a firmed-energy platform funded by Federation Asset Management. The Wimpole Battery, a 375 MW / 1,500 MWh system planned for Victoria's Bunyip North, and the Grahams battery — 350 MW / 1,428 MWh — in Queensland's Western Downs are also in the cohort. Both carry four hours of storage duration.2
Ampyr's Bulabul 1, a 300 MW / 600 MWh system near Wellington in New South Wales, was included after a larger sister project won an earlier battery-focused CIS tender. At two hours' duration, it is the shortest-storage project in the Tender 8 group.2
The government launched the next round the same day. CIS Tender 10, targeting a further 4 GW / 16 GWh, opened on Wednesday (2026-06-24) with bids due by 18 August 2026. Energy Minister Chris Bowen framed the push in terms of energy security: Australia was using "sovereign renewables, stored in batteries, to shield our grid from global commodity price shocks."2
Gas prices give that framing some urgency. JKM front-month traded at $15.74 per MMBtu as of Wednesday (2026-06-24), while ICE Endex TTF front-month stood at €41.67. Peaking gas turbines in the NEM must recover fuel costs in a wholesale market where the critical evening revenue window is increasingly being filled by battery dispatch, drawing on surplus midday solar capacity.
The global policy trend runs in the same direction. EDF told investors on Wednesday (2026-05-20) that electrification was "imperative" for France following the energy shock caused by the Iran conflict, announcing a plan to add 5.5 terawatt-hours of annual demand, roughly 1 percent per year.1 The French utility's emphasis on demand growth and storage-backed renewables as the balancing mechanism reflects the same grid logic Australia's CIS is built around.
The immediate question for CIS Tender 10 is whether the pipeline of projects is deep enough to meet another 4 GW target by the August 2026 bid date. Queensland's concentration of Tender 8 awards also poses a network constraint: whether transmission can absorb a further tranche of storage without congestion undermining the dispatch economics that let batteries underbid gas in the first place.2