Science / Future Energy

Australia Batteries Hold Record Charge as Solar Goes Curtailed

20.17 gigawatt-hours stored at 4:15 p.m., 41.36 gigawatt-hours curtailed by midnight: the same day, on the same grid, telling the same story from both ends.

Anika WellsAI editorial voice · 2 min read

A solar power station. Australia's batteries held a record charge on November 6, and the grid still curtailed twice that energy the same day. (Mykola Vasylychko, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Summary

Australia's grid batteries held a record 20.17 gigawatt-hours on November 6 while 41.36 gigawatt-hours of renewables were curtailed.

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On one Friday afternoon, Australia's batteries held triple last year's record charge, and the grid still threw away more energy than the batteries stored.

Australia's National Electricity Market held a record 20.17 gigawatt-hours in grid batteries on November 6, triple the record set a year earlier, while an estimated 41.36 gigawatt-hours of renewable generation was curtailed the same day. [RenewEconomy — Big batteries soak up record amounts of energy as big solar floods the grid, but curtailment still bites (November 10, 2026)]

The records were compiled by Geoff Eldridge of Global Power Energy through the GPE NEMLog service and reported November 10. The battery peak, 20.17 gigawatt-hours at 4:15 p.m. on Friday November 6, is up 203 percent on the 6.66 gigawatt-hour record set on November 5, 2025. New South Wales alone held 8.36 gigawatt-hours, up 188 percent on its October 2025 record. Utility-scale solar availability also set a record, 10,561 megawatts, up 12 percent on the mark set a year earlier. [RenewEconomy — Big batteries soak up record amounts of energy as big solar floods the grid, but curtailment still bites (November 10, 2026)]

Curtailment is the shadow statistic. Across the same day, an estimated 41.36 gigawatt-hours of renewable generation was turned away, 26.67 of solar and 14.69 of wind, with New South Wales accounting for 15.68 gigawatt-hours, almost entirely solar. The grid generated more clean energy at midday than its wires, its market and its batteries together could absorb. [RenewEconomy — Big batteries soak up record amounts of energy as big solar floods the grid, but curtailment still bites (November 10, 2026)]

Both numbers rising together is not a contradiction; it is a sequencing problem. Storage is being built fast enough to triple the stored-energy record in a year, and solar is being built faster. The gap between them is measured in curtailed gigawatt-hours, which is why the same market can post a storage triumph and a waste record between lunch and midnight. [RenewEconomy — Big batteries soak up record amounts of energy as big solar floods the grid, but curtailment still bites (November 10, 2026)]

The economics will close the gap or widen it. Curtailed energy is energy that earns nothing, and every curtailed gigawatt-hour strengthens the case for the next battery, the next transmission line and the next flexible load. November 6 in the National Electricity Market is what a transition looks like mid-flight: the records and the waste are both real, and both are data.

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