Australia's power prices fall after record battery rollout

Australia's power prices fall after record battery rollout

Batteries' share of the electricity grid on Australia's east coast rose from around 3 percent to nearly 10% in one year. From July 2026, power prices will fall, and households could save up to 10%.

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  • Batteries' share of the electricity grid on Australia's east coast rose from around 3 percent to nearly 10 percent in one year.
  • In the first quarter of 2026, batteries discharged more than three times as much power as the year before.
  • From July 2026, power prices will fall, and households could save up to 10.7 percent.

Rapid expansion

Over the past two years, Australia has built out large-scale energy storage faster per capita than any other country. In 2025, more new battery capacity came online than in the previous eight years combined. Between January 2025 and January 2026, batteries' share of the grid rose from around 3 percent to nearly 10 percent.

The country's combined capacity of batteries that are operational or about to come online is the second largest in the world, after China and the United States.

Lower prices

The effects are showing up on the electricity market. In the first quarter of 2026, the power that batteries fed into the east coast grid was more than three times greater than during the same period in 2025. The wholesale market price fell by 12 percent. Batteries set the price of electricity almost a third of the time.

From July 2026, Australia's benchmark power prices will begin to fall. Households could save up to 10.7 percent and small businesses up to 20.9 percent.

From ridicule to grid function

The expansion took off after an event in 2017. A severe storm knocked out the entire power grid in the state of South Australia. About six months later, the state government decided to build a large battery to solve the problem.

The Hornsdale battery had a capacity of 100 megawatts and was the largest in the world at the time. It was built at the initiative of Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Several leading politicians were skeptical and dismissed the project as a curiosity with no practical use for the grid.

Warp News has written earlier about the fight around batteries in Australia.

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