At a glance
AirTrunk argued on 12 August that Australia should phase in the requirement that data centres match their power with new renewable generation.
It also argued that operators should publish demand forecasts tied to progressively firmer project milestones.
AEMO asked the AEMC for live readings from the largest grid-connected loads on 21 July, and Chris Bowen asked for a public 5MW register the next day.
Rule change requests go back to energy ministers in September, which is when the phase-in gets argued.
An operator with signed leases already writes those forecasts for its lenders, so the reporting proposal costs it administration rather than capital.
AirTrunk wants the renewables requirement phased in
Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen named four requirements for large data centres at the National Press Club on 5 August: bring new renewable generation, contract firming to cover your own demand, pay your own connection and network costs, and offer the grid flexibility. National Electricity Rule change requests go back to energy ministers in September, which leaves about six weeks to argue the detail.
AirTrunk's managing director for corporate and international, Carly Wishart, set out the company's position in InnovationAus on 12 August, in an article produced in partnership with the company. Wishart backs all four requirements and asks for one change to how the first is applied, a phase-in she calls a glide path. She also argues that credibility should run both ways: "Data centre operators should provide transparent demand forecasts tied to progressively firmer project milestones, so networks do not plan around speculative capacity."
AirTrunk's associate vice president for energy and utilities, Sabooh Whitelaw, made the same argument at the Australian Clean Energy Summit on 28 July, reported by Energy-Storage.News two days later, so the position has been public for three weeks.
AEMO asked for a version of that reporting on 21 July, Bowen asked for another on 22 July, and energy ministers agreed on 28 July that the rule changes would treat data centres in the National Electricity Market as market participants. All three predate the InnovationAus article.
Generation and transmission take five to ten years
The requirement Wishart wants phased in is additionality: a data centre has to bring new renewable generation to the grid rather than draw on what is already there. Energy ministers agreed on 28 July to progress in-state additionality rules, with every jurisdiction except Queensland and the Northern Territory behind it.
A campus takes about two years to deliver, Wishart writes, while major generation and transmission projects take five to 10 or more. A rule that demands matched supply from the first day of operation therefore prices a gap the operator cannot close on its own. She proposes filling it with long-term power purchase agreements, direct investment, retail products, storage and certificates used as a bridge, with the test being whether the commitment delivers capacity that would not otherwise have been built.
Additionality is the requirement with a balance-sheet cost, and it is the one Wishart asks to have phased in. Australian operators pay their own connection and network costs already, and firming contracts and new generation sit alongside them as capital commitments.
Ireland is the closest overseas precedent, and Whitelaw named it in July. Its energy regulator decided in December 2025 that a data centre above 1MVA must meet at least 80% of annual demand with additional renewable electricity generated in Ireland, phased in over six years from energisation, and that decision is now under judicial review. The AEMC's assessment puts the Australian certificate obligation at about 12 months to implement.
New South Wales published a number on 17 August. Its data centre guidelines set no contracted volume for a project's first three years, and from the fourth year require contracted supply to equal annual average demand, under ten-year agreements with New South Wales generation and storage projects that have not reached a final investment decision. Four years to a full match, against Ireland's six, from a document the state has been consulting on since March.
Those guidelines also exclude renewable energy certificates, on the reasoning that a certificate moves the output of plant already built between buyers. Wishart lists certificates used as a bridge among the instruments she would fill the gap with, so the one Australian government to have written a phase-in has ruled out one of her proposed methods for meeting it.
AEMO's request, Bowen's register and the AEMC's advice
AEMO lodged a rule change request on 21 July titled Operational integration and visibility of large inverter-based loads, covering sites whose power electronics can change their draw within seconds. Transmission-connected sites and the highest tier of those loads would send live readings of active and reactive power, voltage and frequency, and all qualifying loads would warn AEMO ahead of significant demand shifts. AEMO also wants to cap how fast a large load changes its draw and to instruct it to change, under the clause the rules already apply to generators.
Bowen lodged two requests the next day. One would create a public AEMO-hosted register of every connection of 5MW or more, carrying the proponent, the site, the requested capacity and voltage, the bulk supply point, the requested ramping rate, the dates of initial contact, enquiry and application, and where the project sits in the connection process. Distribution and transmission businesses would file all of it. The request sets the bar at 5MW and says doing so "also helps manage, and provide insights regarding, boundary effects that could arise if developers seek to avoid regulatory requirements that apply to loads of 30MW or greater."
The Australian Energy Market Commission, which writes the National Electricity Rules, advised ministers that data centres above a defined size should become registered market participants with AEMO, leaving the size to detailed design. Ministers considered that advice on 28 July and the commission released it on 5 August. New South Wales introduced a bill on 5 August that would let the minister declare access schemes over any connection capable of transmitting 5MW or more, or a higher threshold set by regulation.
The commission has initiated none of the three rule changes. Each page carries the same line, that the AEMC has not yet initiated the request and will publish a consultation paper when it does. Two other processes are open. AEMO's Market Visibility Framework covers large flexible loads, published an approach paper on 4 May, has a consultation paper due this month and reports to energy ministers in December. New South Wales opened consultation on its energy cost recovery reforms on 17 August, closing 14 September.
Instrument | Date | What it would collect |
|---|---|---|
AEMO rule change request ERC0455 | Lodged 21 July 2026 | Live power, voltage and frequency readings from the largest loads, plus warning of demand shifts |
Bowen rule change requests ERC0448 and ERC0456 | Lodged 22 July 2026 | A public AEMO-hosted register of every connection of 5MW or more, filed by the networks |
AEMC advice to energy ministers | Considered 28 July 2026, released 5 August 2026 | AEMO registration for data centres above a size set in detailed design |
NSW Electricity Infrastructure Investment Amendment Bill 2026 | Introduced 5 August 2026 | Ministerial power to declare access schemes over connections of 5MW or more |
Source: AEMC rule change register and its advice on data centre regulatory pathways, and reporting of the NSW bill by pv-tech, August 2026.
Lenders require the forecasts before they fund a campus
Lenders and shareholders require a forward demand schedule against signed leases before they fund a campus. An operator with contracted income produces one as a matter of course, and publishing it is an administrative task. AirTrunk's Australian portfolio is leased, so those schedules already exist inside the company.
Wishart's proposal is therefore inexpensive to AirTrunk and to any operator in the same position, while the phase-in it accompanies is worth money on every project either of them builds.
"Progressively firmer project milestones" carries no definition, no filing standard and no verification, so an operator that sets its own test of what firmer means can satisfy the sentence with very little. Bowen's register is the harder instrument, because networks file it from their own connection records.
12 of the 17 queued projects are at application stage
AEMO counted 17 data centre projects and 9GW of maximum connection capacity in the National Electricity Market's transmission connection process at 30 June, up from 11 projects and 5.4GW three months earlier.
12 projects representing 7.6GW are still at the application stage, and five representing 1.4GW have reached implementation. AEMO reports each figure as the maximum draw a proponent asked the network to accommodate, and says realised demand is typically lower.
A public register would put that stage marker against each project by name. Operators holding a connection position while still seeking a first customer carry the cost of that, and surfacing exactly those projects is what the register is designed to do. The New South Wales guidelines ask for maximum and average demand forecasts too, but take them through the planning process on a commercial-in-confidence basis, so the data reaches the planner rather than the market. AEMO's 2026 Integrated System Plan puts data centres at almost 10% of the market's underlying demand by 2050, against about 2% of grid-supplied consumption today, so the planning value of separating firm demand from requested maximums grows with the number.
Wishart backs flexibility "where it is technically and commercially workable". The AEMC frames it the same way, proposing to encourage demand shifting and co-location through connection agreements. New South Wales has put a figure on it, asking a project to show it can cut grid-supplied electricity by 25% of its forecast average load for up to two hours, using load shifting or storage rather than diesel.
AirTrunk reports 86% of its Australian energy use matched with renewables, and grid-scale battery projects under way with partners at its Sydney and Melbourne sites.
What to watch
The September ministerial meeting. Rule change requests go back to energy ministers in September, and the phase-in is the change Wishart's article asks for. Whether ministers write a transition into the certificate obligation is the decision worth tracking, and New South Wales has now given them a four-year model to work from.
The NSW consultation. Submissions on the state's energy cost recovery reforms close on 14 September, days before ministers meet.
The definition of a firmer milestone. A forecast obligation without a filing standard costs an operator nothing and tells a network little. Watch whether the AEMC's detailed design turns Wishart's sentence into a schedule with dates and evidence attached.
The threshold. Bowen's request proposes 5MW and the NSW bill uses 5MW. The AEMC's proposed access standards use 30MW, and it has pushed their final determination to 29 October, citing "the complexity of the issues raised in response to the draft determination". AEMO's 100MW describes the level at which these loads combined could push the system into an insecure operating state.
ERC0455. Operators and networks will argue the ramping limits and the duty to follow directions once the commission initiates AEMO's request and opens consultation.
The 2026 Electricity Statement of Opportunities. AEMO's annual reliability outlook is due within weeks; the 2025 edition came on 21 August. It is the next document to restate data centre load against firm supply.