AEMO 2026 ESOO: 40 GW pipeline pushes Australia’s first reliability gap out to 2030-31

The Australian Energy Market Operator published its 2026 Electricity Statement of Opportunities on 25 August 2026, reporting a pipeline of about 40 GW of committed and anticipated generation and storage projects and no forecast reliability gap in the National Electricity Market until 2030-31. That is the clearest Australia grid reliability outlook the annual report has carried in several years, and AEMO attaches a condition to it: the projects have to arrive on time.

The ESOO is a ten-year outlook, in this edition covering 2026-27 to 2035-36, and is based on information available as at 1 July 2026. AEMO assesses supply against a reliability standard of expected unserved energy of no more than 0.002 per cent of the energy demanded in any region in a financial year. An interim measure of 0.0006 per cent applies until 30 June 2028 for the purposes of the Retailer Reliability Obligation. The report states plainly that “forecast reliability gaps are not forecasts of power outages”.

What the 2026 ESOO found about Australia grid reliability

Roughly 24 GW of newly committed and anticipated generation and storage has entered the pipeline since the 2025 edition, taking the total to about 40 GW, which AEMO describes as more than half the capacity in the NEM today. A further 33 GW of publicly announced projects have been awarded government investment support. In 2025-26, about 9.1 GW of new developments reached full output, more than double the capacity connected in 2024-25.

Against that build, AEMO records announced retirements over the ten-year horizon of 13.0 GW of coal, 1.4 GW of gas and liquids, 0.8 GW of wind and 0.1 GW of utility storage. AEMO’s media release rounds the fossil component to “around 15 GW of coal and gas generation”; the itemised table in the report body sums coal and gas to 14.4 GW.

When each region first exceeds the reliability standard

AEMO runs the assessment twice. The Committed and Anticipated scenario counts only projects that have met AEMO’s commitment criteria. The Government Schemes and Actionable Developments scenario adds projects backed by federal and state support and the transmission upgrades in AEMO’s plan.

Source: AEMO, 2026 Electricity Statement of Opportunities, 25 August 2026.

For the Retailer Reliability Obligation, AEMO reported no reliability gaps in 2027-28 or 2029-30 and requested no T-1 or T-3 reliability instruments.

AEMO Chief Executive Officer Daniel Westerman said the outlook “has improved, supported by record levels of new generation and storage, and a strong pipeline of projects expected over the next decade”. He added that “beyond 2030, the next wave of investment will be critical to maintaining reliability”.

Household batteries are now outpacing rooftop solar

The federal Cheaper Home Batteries Program has added 2.4 GW and 7.4 GWh of household batteries since 1 July 2025, on data available to AEMO as at March 2026. The report also records a shift in what households install: for every 1 MW of rooftop photovoltaics added in the past year, 2.5 MW and 7.7 MWh of storage went in alongside it.

Source: AEMO, 2026 Electricity Statement of Opportunities, 25 August 2026.

Winss Solutions has covered both ends of that trend, from Australia passing 500,000 Cheaper Home Batteries installations to the Australian Energy Regulator’s finding that batteries set NEM wholesale prices 16.3 per cent of the time.

Data centres become the fastest-growing load

AEMO’s forecasts considered 225 known data centre projects at various stages of the connection process in 2026. Proposed connection capacity across all development stages rose from 38 GW to 67 GW. The report expects data centres to consume around 5 TWh in 2025-26, or 2.8 per cent of NEM operational consumption, growing nearly seven times to around 34 TWh, or 13 per cent, by 2035-36.

AEMO also reported heavy attrition in that queue: more than 40 per cent of data centre projects tracked since 2025 have dropped out or moved backwards in connection status, about 36 per cent of the entries on the 2025 project list were cancelled, and more than 30 per cent of projects previously classified as committed were cancelled. Mature data centres are projected to draw about half of their connection capacity.

Overall electricity consumption is forecast to rise by more than 40 per cent over the decade. Underlying consumption moves from 204.2 TWh in 2025-26 to 308.4 TWh in 2035-36, and operational consumption from 175.7 TWh to 249.4 TWh, a rise of 42 per cent.

Two discrepancies worth noting

Reports of the ESOO differ from AEMO’s own numbers in two places. pv magazine’s account of the report applies the “more than 40 per cent” growth figure to both consumption and peak demand; AEMO’s release attaches it to consumption only, and the report contains no matching figure for peak demand. Separately, the release issued by the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, puts the data centre share of grid-supplied electricity at “almost 15 per cent” by the mid-2030s, where AEMO’s own figure is 13 per cent. The minister’s release also supplies the 77 GW total for current NEM capacity that AEMO itself does not publish; the ESOO says only “more than half the total NEM capacity today”.

Bowen said the report “shows the pipeline is strong and reliability is improving”, while adding that “there is more work to do and AEMO is clear we need to keep building”.

About AEMO

The Australian Energy Market Operator was established by the Council of Australian Governments and began operations on 1 July 2009, running on an independent, user-pays cost-recovery basis with ownership shared between governments and industry. It operates the National Electricity Market across Queensland, New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania, took on Western Australia’s Wholesale Electricity Market in 2015, and operates Victorian gas transmission and east-coast gas markets as well as the Northern Territory system.

The Electricity Statement of Opportunities is published annually under clauses 3.13.3A and 3.7C of the National Electricity Rules and sets out the investment needed to keep supply reliable over the following decade. This edition runs to 124 pages, against 100 in 2025, and was released on a Tuesday, breaking three consecutive years of Thursday publication. AEMO has scheduled a webinar on the report for 2 September 2026. The 2026 outlook is the first in several years to place every region’s first forecast reliability gap beyond 2030, and AEMO’s own framing ties that result to whether the 40 GW pipeline is delivered on schedule.

Sources: Australian Energy Market Operator; AEMO 2026 Electricity Statement of Opportunities; pv magazine; iTnews; The Energy; Mirage News, reproducing the release of the Minister for Climate Change and Energy; WattClarity

Featured image: photo by Petr Ganaj on Pexels (free Pexels license).

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Figen Sekin

I specialize in sustainability education, curriculum co-creation, and early-stage project strategy. At WINSS, I craft articles on sustainability, transformative AI, and related topics. When I’m not writing, you’ll find me chasing the perfect sushi roll, exploring cities around the globe, or unwinding with my dog Puffy — the world’s most loyal sidekick.