Australia launches CIS tender 8, targets 16 GWh of clean dispatchable capacity

Tender 8 of the Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS) for Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM) is now open for registrations and bid submissions, and seeks an indicative target of 4 GW of 4-hour equivalent clean dispatchable capacity, such as battery storage, (16 GWh) in the National Electricity Market (NEM).

Registrations will close on 23 January 2026 at 5 PM AEDT.

A market brief released on 17 November for the first time invited aggregrate projects to apply.

Single stage tender process

The tender will be conducted as a single stage process. Proponents will submit a single bid comprising all financial and non-financial information.

Tender 8 is the second specifically targeting NEM Dispatchable capacity. The previous CIS Tender 3 for NEM Dispatchable selected 11 proponents for 16 projects to provide dispatchable capacity of 4.13 GW (15.7 GWh) of renewable energy to the NEM.

All were lithium-ion battery energy storage systems (BESS) with generation capacities ranging from 100 MW to 450 MW, and storage capacities from 300 MWh to 1,600 MWh.

The tender opened on 13 November 2024 and projects are to be operational before 31 December 2029.

The projects are under development across four states, New South Wales (NSW) (5), Queensland (4), Victoria (5) and South Australia (2).

From pv magazine Australia