Batteries Set the Pace at All Energy Australia as US Utilities Double Down on Gas

Batteries, not auctions, set the tone at All Energy Australia this year. The Melbourne trade show ran on 28 and 29 October. pv magazine's write-up on 3 November put attendance at more than 22,000 people, up about 5,000 on 2025. More than 490 exhibitors filled the floor.

The numbers behind that confidence are storage numbers. Nine grid-scale battery projects representing 2.3 GW / 7.1 GWh were switched on in the first half of 2026, according to pv magazine. The whole of 2025 added 2 GW / 5.1 GWh. A further 13 projects totalling 1.6 GW / 6.5 GWh reached financial close in the same six months. No other part of the Australian market matched that build rate over the same period. That explains why the show floor skewed toward storage vendors rather than generation developers.

On the residential side, more than 550,000 home battery systems have been installed in the 15 months since the federal Cheaper Home Batteries programme started. The scheme subsidises roughly 30% of the cost of an eligible system, pv magazine reported. Growth has steadied since the first rush. Suppliers at the show were not ready to call the segment mature, though.

"Residential has stabilised over the past few months but there is still a lot of potential in that segment," EP Cube sales manager Sudeesh V said at the event. He pointed to South Australia, Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory as the places with room left. Melbourne and Sydney are slowing.

What the auction headlines miss

Readers who follow renewable energy through tender results will find the All Energy picture a useful corrective. Australia's storage buildout is driven less by auction design than by a household subsidy and by merchant and contracted revenue at the grid end. The closest thing to an auction signal is the federal government's decision to raise the Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme eligibility cap from 100 kW to 1 MW. That change extends Small-scale Technology Certificates to mid-scale systems and cuts their upfront cost by about 20%, according to pv magazine. That is a certificate scheme, not a competitive tender. It targets commercial and industrial rooftops rather than the utility-scale queue.

The distinction matters when reading the wave of auction stories coming out of Europe and Asia this week. Capacity mechanisms and reverse auctions are doing real work in those markets. In Australia the money is moving through a different channel.

Rystad Energy's vice president for renewables and power, Sally Bogle, told the Melbourne audience that battery storage is seeing "a very, very significant penetration." She called storage systems "a silver bullet for the power market." She stressed their role in curbing daytime solar curtailment: "It allows a solar or wind facility to really maximise their asset and optimise the grid connection."

Arizona goes the other way

Not every market is moving in the same direction. On Friday, Tucson Electric Power and Arizona Public Service filed their 2026 Integrated Resource Plans. These are the 15-year blueprints that states use to steer utility procurement. CleanTechnica reported on 2 November that both keep fossil fuels at the centre of the plan. APS has the most planned fossil gas of any utility in Arizona, adding over 4,000 MW by 2041, according to the CleanTechnica account. That includes the planned Desert Sun power plant and the Redhawk expansion, which would build eight new methane gas-fired turbines in Maricopa County. The utility has also signed a coal supply contract extension that keeps the Four Corners plant running to 2038. It abandons an earlier plan to exit in 2031.

There is a rate case attached. APS is asking the Arizona Corporation Commission for a 14% rate increase that would add roughly $240 a year to the average residential bill, CleanTechnica reported. TEP plans to convert units 1 and 2 at its Springerville plant from coal to gas by 2031 rather than retire them. It also plans to add 300 MW of new fossil gas generation. TEP had committed to an 80% cut in carbon emissions by 2035. It now says in its plan that it will not meet that goal.

Sierra Club Grand Canyon Chapter director Sandy Bahr criticised the filings: "We're seeing these utilities protect their own bottom lines, instead of making the most economical decisions for ratepayers like you and me." Both plans go before the Arizona Corporation Commission for approval. The public can comment.

The contrast with Australia is sharp. One market is adding batteries faster in six months than it did in a full year. It also subsidises home storage at scale. The other is extending coal and building gas turbines, with the regulator as the only check.

Ballots as the other auction

In the United States, some of this week's most consequential energy decisions are not auctions at all. Canary Media rounded up five ballot measures on 30 October that will be decided on Election Day. Two of them bear directly on how clean energy projects get built and paid for. California's Proposition 45 would set a 365-business-day limit on most state environmental reviews under the California Environmental Quality Act, excluding fossil fuel construction. Supporters argue it speeds up clean energy and other infrastructure. Opponents say it curbs tribal input on projects. In Michigan, Proposition 2 would go further than any other state in keeping utility money out of elections. It would bar utility-funded political action committees from giving to campaigns. It would also stop utility executives and their families from donating. Utilities have spent at least $215,000 opposing it, according to the Energy and Policy Institute, as cited by Canary Media.

Eugene, Oregon, votes on a fee aimed at companies with $1 billion or more in gross profits nationally and at least $500,000 within the city. The money would go to electrification and clean energy job training. Colorado's Amendment 82 would write a right to natural gas for cooking and heating into the state constitution, backed by the conservative group Advance Colorado. Ann Arbor, Michigan, is weighing whether to create a municipal utility board. That board could discuss taking over DTE Energy's grid assets in the city, a prospect opponents say could cost as much as $1 billion.

Eugene has already moved on a separate track. On Wednesday, 28 October, the city council voted 6-1 to adopt a Home Energy Score disclosure ordinance, CleanTechnica reported. That makes Eugene the fifth Oregon city with such a rule, after Portland, Hillsboro, Milwaukie and Bend. The policy requires an energy score assessment when a home is listed for sale. It scores the house from one to ten and lists recommended upgrades and available incentives. More than 1 million Oregonians, nearly one in four residents, now live in a jurisdiction with a disclosure policy, according to the report.

"The vote is an important step forward to tackling building emissions, reducing energy costs, and meeting the City's Climate Recovery Ordinance goals to reduce emissions by 50% by 2030," said Bethany Cotton, conservation director at Cascadia Wildlands. Dylan Plummer, deputy director of the Sierra Club's Clean Heat Campaign, tied the ordinance to the Ninth Circuit's April 2023 ruling that invalidated Eugene's residential building electrification ordinance. He called that decision a setback for local climate action.

CATL, Google and the demand behind the bids

Storage demand is also reshaping corporate strategy. CATL, the world's largest battery maker, has doubled down on battery swapping and energy storage. The company is looking for new growth drivers amid price wars and pressure on profitability, the South China Morning Post reported on 31 October. The paper noted that Nio is already well established in swapping. BYD has strengthened its position in energy storage systems. Lucas Zhang Liutong, director of Hong Kong consultancy WaterRock Energy Economics, told the SCMP that competition in both sectors was "already quite intense."

On the demand side, Google and Voltus said on Thursday 22 October that they are targeting a gigawatt of virtual power plant capacity in PJM Interconnection. That is ten times the 100 MW goal the companies set in June, Canary Media reported. PJM has seen the cost of securing enough power for peak demand rise more than eightfold in the past few years. The grid operator forecasts 30 to 34 GW of new large-load demand by the early 2030s. The system recently peaked at 162.6 GW.

Voltus chief executive Dana Guernsey said the first 100 MW "was always the first bite." The company is securing commitments from customers to cut energy use or supply battery power through 2040. That is far longer than PJM's three-year capacity auction horizon. Voltus manages more than 9 GW of demand response and virtual power plant capacity nationally. It has targeted 20 GW by 2030, after raising $225 million earlier in October.

None of this is an auction result in the narrow sense. It is the same underlying question, though: who gets paid to provide firm capacity, and for how long. Australia is answering with batteries and a household subsidy. Arizona is answering with gas, coal and a rate case. PJM is answering with demand response contracts that stretch to 2040. The tender calendars will keep producing headlines. The more revealing numbers this week came from an exhibition floor in Melbourne and two utility filings in Phoenix.