Australia’s federal government has designed a Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS) tender to encourage investment in renewable energy generation in Western Australia, such as wind and solar projects and dispatchable capacity. It is now seeking feedback on the CIS 2025 Wholesale Electricity Market (WEM) Design Paper through the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW).
Designed for the Western Australian WEM, this will be the 1st CIS tender seeking to underwrite renewable energy generation capacity in the WEM. The latter operates in the South West Interconnected System (SWIS) where the Western Australia state government expects to locate up to 51.5 GW of new renewable energy and storage capacity by 2042 (see Western Australia’s Gigantic RE Plans For SWIS).
CIS is the federal government’s flagship scheme to support the installation of 9 GW of clean dispatchable capacity and 23 GW of variable capacity by 2030 (see Australia Announces Plans To Auction 32 GW RE Capacity).
Through the design paper, the DCCEEW is seeking feedback on the approach to support hybrid projects for the 2025 WEM CIS tender to be launched in mid-2025 for 1.5 GW of renewable energy, and 400 MW/1,600 MWh of dispatchable supply.
“The proposed 2025 WEM CIS tender is expected to cover both generation and clean dispatchable capacity projects. Projects will bid into either the generation or clean dispatchable capacity component of the tender as appropriate for the project’s technology type (but not both),” reads the paper.
Dubbed CIS 2025 WEM Design Paper, this proposal includes hybrid projects either as part of generation capacity or a dispatchable capacity. To be eligible for inclusion in the CIS tenders, projects must have submitted requests to Western Power for grid connection.
Announced on February 28, 2025, the WEM Design Paper is open for public feedback till March 31, 2025.
The 1st CIS tender in the WEM called CIS Tender 2—WEM Dispatchable targets 500 MW of 4-hour equivalent dispatchable capacity. It opened in July 2024 with results expected in March 2025.
In December 2024, 6.4 GW of new renewable energy capacity was selected under the country’s maiden CIS auction (see Australia Selects Over 6 GW RE Capacity Under CIS Tender I).
