Batteries Sweep Australia's Grid Firming Tender, Gas Generators Claim Nothing
CIS Tender 7 awarded 7.8 GW across 19 renewable and storage projects after gas-fired generators failed to win a single contract.
Australia awarded 7.8 GW of contracted grid capacity to battery and renewable projects in its seventh Capacity Investment Scheme tender, shutting out gas-fired generation entirely despite the process being structured to accept it. PV Magazine reported 19 successful projects spanning New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, and Tasmania, with results announced around May 24-29 (2026-05-24 to 2026-05-29), exceeding the tender's 5 GW indicative target by more than 50 percent.2,34
Gas's complete absence from the award list matters for how the forward capacity market develops. The CIS is the federal government's primary mechanism for underwriting new dispatchable generation, and a deliberately technology-neutral process that produced zero gas awards establishes a benchmark: batteries are beating gas peakers on contracted terms in the current market. South Australia, where renewables supply more than 70 percent of electricity, is the model the scheme is extending nationally. Its spot market settled at A$78.44/MWh on Friday (2026-07-24), and the state is already the system most exposed to dispatch reliability risks as renewable penetration continues to climb.4,3
Eight of the 19 winning projects include storage, delivering a combined 2.0 GW and 7.9 GWh of dispatchable capacity. Six are solar-plus-battery hybrids, a structure that lets developers stack CIS contract revenue against merchant income from peak-price arbitrage.3
The largest hybrid project is Acen's Birriwa development in New South Wales: 600 MW of solar paired with a 2,400 MWh battery, backed by the Australian arm of the Philippines-based energy company. Malaysia-owned Spark Renewables secured two further NSW hybrid awards, Dinawan at 300 MW solar and 1,200 MWh of storage, and Wattle Creek at 180 MW solar and 720 MWh. British-owned Lightsource bp's 320 MW Gundary solar project also cleared the process.3
Nearly 2.5 GW of the total generation capacity will come from pure solar projects without co-located storage. The 200 MW Weasel Solar Farm in Tasmania, being developed by Malaysia's Gamuda Renewables alongside Melbourne-based Alternate Path, sits within that cohort, one of several Malaysian-backed ventures winning contracted NEM capacity from this tender alone.3
In Queensland, Grupo Cobra's Zero-E subsidiary secured backing for two projects: the 171 MW Moranbah solar and 100 MWh battery, and the 290 MW Gunning solar paired with 542 MWh of storage. The spread of international sponsors, including Malaysian, Philippine, Spanish, and British groups, reflects sustained offshore appetite for Australian government-backed revenue contracts, even as local execution risks grow.3
Origin Energy holds the single largest individual project award in the CIS program, its 1.45 GW Yanco Delta wind farm in south-west New South Wales. The company is targeting a final investment decision by late 2026 or early 2027, subject to state regulatory approvals.1
The tender opened in October 2025, and the oversubscription, 7.8 GW against a 5 GW target, suggests genuine developer competition rather than a thin field. But a competitive tender and projects reaching financial close are different milestones. Earlier CIS rounds produced awards that stalled on grid connection and financing, and several international sponsors in this cohort are navigating those processes without established local track records.2,1
Construction timelines, grid connection queues, and state planning approvals now determine how much of the 2.0 GW contracted storage commissions on schedule. South Australia is already above 70 percent renewable penetration and its spot market is priced to reflect that. Any slippage between contracted capacity and commissioned projects in this round will show up in dispatch margins before it surfaces in any official reliability assessment.4,3