Batteries excluded in major tender designed to secure new gas plants to solve wind and solar droughts

NSW has opened a 1.5 gigawatt firming tender explicitly designed to attract gas plants, by excluding standalone batteries and pumped hydro from competition. The tender is framed as insurance against "dunkelflautes", extended periods of low wind and solar output, expected to intensify after coal retirements from 2033/34 onwards. The government's language acknowledges that batteries and storage alone cannot bridge these gaps, requiring gas "to operate only occasionally" as a backstop when renewables are exhausted and stored energy is depleted.

Where this fits

This is the clearest admission yet from a major Australian government that a renewables-plus-batteries grid requires gas firming as a permanent layer. It confirms the Energy Realism thesis: weather-dependent generation creates demand for firm, dispatchable power that storage cannot satisfy alone. The tender's design, excluding the technologies that sit between renewables and gas, then defaulting to gas, exposes the cost and reliability problem central to the transition. It also sidesteps the sovereignty issue: gas is imported or domestically sourced and secure; China controls the battery and inverter supply chains underpinning the storage alternative.

What it means

NSW is locking in gas as structural infrastructure for the next decade. The government is implicitly conceding that the renewables-storage combination cannot meet peak demand during extended calm weather without a third layer. This tender will add capital cost, operating cost, and emissions to the electricity system, costs that would not exist if firm, low-emission generation like nuclear were available as an option. Instead, Australia builds higher-cost, higher-carbon, less-sovereign infrastructure, and does so openly, because the law forbids the alternative.