Big batteries soak up record amounts of energy as big solar floods the grid – but curtailment still bites

Résumé détaillé

Australia's main grid sets new record for maximum amount of battery-stored energy, as more and more big batteries soak up more and more abundant midday solar.

Australia’s main grid has set a new record for the maximum amount of battery-stored energy, as the steady stream of big battery projects joining the National Electricity Market soaks up more and more solar during the middle of the day to shift into the evening peak.

The new record, shared on LinkedIn by Geoff Eldridge from Global Power Energy saw the NEM hit a new instananous high of 20.17 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of battery stored energy at 4:15 pm on Friday afternoon – illustrated below on the GPE NEMLog graph.

As Eldridge points out, the NEM’s maximum recorded battery stored energy has tripled in just 12 months, up from the 6.66 GWh record set roughly a year ago on November 05, 2025 – an increase of 203 per cent.

A record was also set in New South Wales, with battery stored energy reaching 8.36 GWh, compared with 2.9 GWh set on October 08, 2025 – a 188 per cent jump.

At the same time, a couple of utility-scale solar records were also broken, including for instantaneous NEM solar availability, which hit 10,561 MW on Friday compared with 9,410 MW set on 17 October 2025 – a 12 per cent jump, says Eldridge.

Notably, even with batteries storing record amounts of the record amounts of solar on that day, there was still quite a lot of curtailment going on.

Across the day, GPE NemLog found that a total of 41.36 GWh of generation was curtailed, a mix of 26.67 GWh solar and 14.69 GWh wind. In NSW, 15.68 GWh of renewables was curtailed over the course of the Friday, almost entirely solar.

“Substantial renewable generation continues to be curtailed, including during positive-price intervals,” Eldridge says in the LinkedIn post.

“Battery charging at the utility and consumer level, and other flexible demand can help absorb available generation, but transmission constraints, local dispatch conditions and the location of storage are also important.

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