The Australian government has decided to increase the latest round of its renewable energy generation and storage auctions, known as the Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS). On Tuesday, AEMO Services, administer for the competitive CIS tender process, released its Market Brief for round three, outlining that 4 GW of ‘dispatchable’ power, meaning battery and energy storage projects, would be auctioned alongside 4 GW of renewable generation projects like wind and solar.
In total, the next CIS round will seek 10 GW of new solar, wind and battery storage projects. These will be tendered over the coming months and delivered into Australia’s grid by December 2029.
Speaking at the Australian Financial Review’s Energy Summit on Monday, federal energy and climate minister, Chris Bowen, said the decision to nearly double the round from 6 GW to 10 GW, including 16 GWh of storage, came from the flood of high-quality applications seen in the first two smaller rounds, which both received more than 30 times the amount of bids sought.
“The market response for this was huge,” Bowen said. “Our first national tender for 6 gigawatts of variable generation had 40 gigawatts of bids register and 27 GW of very high quality bids go through to the next stage.”
“We are yet to award the winners of this auction, but I have received advice from my department that the quality of the projects is very strong,” he added.
“Accordingly… we have decided to make the next round of auctions bigger than originally envisaged to get more of these high-quality projects connected to the grid more quickly.”
In its Market Brief update, sent out on Tuesday afternoon, AEMO Services also outlined a number of other changes between this and previous CIS tender rounds. These include changes to the treatment of hybrid projects, First Nations and social licence and opt-out provisions.
The next CIS tender rounds are set to formally open in mid-November.
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