New information has become available since AEMO released the 2023 Electricity Statement of Opportunities (ESOO) in August 2023 that warrants reassessment of the supply and demand outlook in the National Electricity Market (NEM). New information includes new commissioning dates for Project EnergyConnect, mothballed gas generators in South Australia, and approximately 4.6 gigawatts (GW) of new generation and storage projects.

While these changes to various existing and new developments across the power system change the reliability outlook in some market regions, this update to the 2023 ESOO reinforces that urgent investments in capacity in the NEM are needed to manage reliability risks. Continued investment in transmission, generation, storage and consumer energy resources (CER), supported by existing federal and state policies, is forecast to lower reliability risks, yet additional opportunities remain for market investments to reduce reliability risks to below the relevant reliability standard over the next 10 years.

This update to the 2023 ESOO includes:

• Updated reliability assessments on three sensitivities that featured in the 2023 ESOO, applying the updated information which has become available.
• New information on generation and storage development locations in the NEM that have the potential to improve regional reliability risks. Without further transmission development, this analysis in Section 4.3 shows that there are limited locations in each mainland region that can support new generation and storage that will benefit power system reliability.
• Information on the investments necessary to maintain power system security as thermal generators retire and are replaced by inverter-based resources (IBR). As explained in Section 4.4, these accompanying investments are necessary to support power system security so new sources of supply can be operated securely and deliver reliable outcomes.