AEMO has today published its June connections scorecard for the National Electricity Market (NEM), tracking the progress of generation and storage project applications to reaching full output in the NEM.
The scorecard is produced through AEMO’s work with market participants, as well as transmission and distribution network service providers (NSP) involved in the comprehensive connection process.
AEMO Onboarding & Connections Group Manager, Margarida Pimentel, said: “Compared to the previous 12 months, the capacity of projects working through the connection process have surged from 30 GW to 43 GW.”
“Early-stage application approvals involving the NSP and AEMO have increased 74%, from 6.9 GW to 12 GW, and the typical duration reduced by 1 month, from 10.9 to 9.7 months.
“AEMO has helped reduce the time taken for application approvals through collaborating, specifically by addressing key design elements early in the process and using opportunities to split scope between the NSP and AEMO to reduce duplication of work,” she said.
Over the last 12 months, projects that have application approvals from their NSP and AEMO are taking longer in the ‘proponent implementation’ stage, the stage when contracts are established, and plant is constructed.
In FY24, 75% of projects completed this stage within 21 months, compared with 12 months in FY23. The volume of projects currently in this stage has been steadily increasing and is currently sitting at 15 GW compared to 11 GW a year ago.
These delays can be attributed to issues such as longer equipment lead times, refinancing, delayed contract execution and construction due to the limited resources available across a growing pool of projects, and changeovers in original equipment manufacturers.
“While both registration and commissioning has not changed significantly compared to last year, we are starting to see a steady increase in new package submissions for registration, close to 7 GW compared to 1.5 GW at the same time last year,” Ms Pimentel said.
“On a positive note, there has been a significant decrease in the time projects are taking to progress through commissioning, with 75% of projects commissioned to full output within 6.9 months, compared to more than 11 months in June FY23.
“Contributing to this is a new approach to commissioning AEMO is using with a number of projects, taking learnings from the Federal Government’s summer readiness program and industry-supported Connections Reform Initiative trials, which has helped reduce time taken for plant to reach full output,” she said.
During the month of June 24, four projects totalling 0.72 gigawatts (GW) received application approval, with the majority from battery projects (365 MW), followed by wind (276 MW) and solar plus battery (80MW).
Hastings Generation site was registered in June, connecting 43 MW which is now proceeding to commissioning. No projects reached their full output in June. However, 19 projects totalling 2.2 GW reached full output in FY24, which was slightly down on the 3.8 GW last year.
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