Five of us from the Global-Roam team, myself included, were in Melbourne last week for All-Energy 2025 — the largest annual event on the Australian energy conference circuit.

With over seventy sessions (and many running in parallel), no single person could see it all or be across all the different topics on offer — so this short wrap-up article brings together a few NEM-related observations that stood out to us over the two-day conference.

As distributed energy economics converge, an identity crisis looms for utility-scale

During the “Transition in Tight Times” panel session on Day 1, Tim Nelson (Nelson Review) observed that the economics of aggregated home batteries are now beginning to mirror those of grid-scale systems, suggesting that the traditional advantages of scale may be diminishing. It was later distilled in the panel that one of the core challenges for the utility-scale industry is working out how to recoup the cost of delivering everything else — such as firm capacity, inertia and system strength — that aggregators cannot easily replicate. 

That shift was also reflected on the exhibition floor. Long-time attendees of All-Energy will know that the exhibition hall often serves as a barometer for which technologies are in vogue. In past years we’ve seen the floor space dominated by solar panels, EVs, HVDC fast chargers, and even the occasional hydrogen car. This year, batteries (particularly residential batteries) were everywhere — a visible sign of where industry focus is moving.

At various points in the hallways, I found myself in conversation with other attendees about the Commonwealth’s home battery scheme — which added more than 2 GWh of capacity in its first four months — and what the continued expansion of home batteries might mean for market dynamics and pricing.

There is an evolving recognition that government-backed contracting isn’t going as planned

Regular WattClarity readers may have seen our recent four-part series examining how government underwriting mechanisms such as the CIS, LTESA, and VRET have performed so far — and whether they’re delivering the investment acceleration originally promised.

So it was with particular interest that, during a panel session on Day 1, moderator Ben Coles (Jarden) — the former Chief of Staff to Matt Kean — acknowledged that fewer projects have reached financial close than they would have anticipated by this stage. Coles, who was intimately involved in the design of the NSW Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap (and the LTESA scheme), remarked that while several lower-risk, more straightforward projects have managed to progress, the scheme has not yet assisted larger and higher-risk developments in the same way. 

There were similar remarks from Day 2 by David Dixon (Rystad Energy) who showed that only nine of the sixty-nine CIS-awarded projects are under construction.

As the system gets more complex, spare a thought for control room operators

During the ‘Grid, Network Reliability & Security’ session on Day 2, it was continually highlighted that the system’s growing complexity now touches every layer — physical, digital, and human. Enrique Rojas (SMA) offered a vivid account of Spain’s recent blackout, where a voltage disturbance cascaded into system failure, serving as a reminder of how fragile and dynamic interconnected grids can become. Jason Krstanoski (Transgrid) reinforced that point closer to home, noting the exponential increase in transmission control-room alarms compared to a decade ago and the immense challenge of managing a network that’s shifting from centralised generation to thousands of distributed assets.

The conversation extended from grid hardware to the humans and software behind it. Mitch O’Neil (CAPRA) highlighted the cyber risks inherent in vast DER fleets — urging operators to “know what’s connected” and to plan for contingencies before they happen — while Sarah Goodwin (Monash University) demonstrated how human-centred visualisation can reduce cognitive load in AEMO’s control rooms. 

In the ‘Commercial drivers for the NEM’ session on Day 2, Ellise Janetzki (Overwatch Energy) drove the message home in her talk, reminding the audience that bidding, trading, and dispatch are not the same as plant control, and that humans — not software — must stay in the loop to maintain real-time system security.

All-Energy doesn’t really cover all energy

During our Monday morning team call this week, one colleague noted the irony that, for a conference branded as ‘All-Energy’ — gas still seems to fall into the category of topics that the conference organisers prefer not to include.

Stephanie Bashir (Nexa Advisory) stood out as one of the very few speakers to talk about gas at all. During here presentation in the ‘Reform of the NEM‘ session on Day 2, she described gas-powered generation (GPG) as “a bridge, not a destination”. Her remarks acknowledged that gas will continue to play a role in maintaining reliability in the interim — before she outlined why that role should be minimised as quickly as possible. Her remarks felt subtly different from her earlier commentary, where she has argued that the NEM can manage the closure of plants like Yallourn and Eraring without any change to the role of GPG.

In that sense, this reflection is less about what was said at All-Energy 2025, and more about what wasn’t. This silence stood in contrast to the NEMDEV conference in Brisbane just three weeks ago, where several seasoned industry practitioners spoke candidly about the increasingly complicated — yet often underestimated — role of gas generation. 

As a further example of what the modelling is signalling about gas, the AEMO’s August 2025 Electricity Statement of Opportunities (ESOO), drawing on data from this year’s Gas Statement of Opportunities (GSOO), projected that peak-day gas demand by 2029 could reach around 2,900 TJ/day, roughly a 30 per cent increase from today’s southern Australian peak of about 2,200 TJ/day. At the same time, total available supply from existing, committed, and anticipated infrastructure is expected to decline from about 2,500 TJ/day — raising obvious questions about adequacy.

It left our team wondering about the consequences of such coyness around the role of gas at major conferences like All-Energy.

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While All-Energy 2025 covered familiar ground, it offered a valuable pulse check on the sector — and a reminder of where some of the blind spots remain. It was also a welcome opportunity to reconnect with familiar faces from down south and exchange ideas about the challenges across our different corners of the industry.

Finally, special shoutout to the Currently Speaking blog and Let Me Sum Up podcast for hosting a very chaotic, but enjoyable, energy-themed trivia night. The WattClarity team (Watt the Flux) didn’t have our best showing, but I’m sure we’ll be back with a friendly vengeance next year 😊