We’ve already noted:

• ‘Elevated prices in South Australia through the day on Thursday 30th July 2026’ at the end of the day on Thursday 30th July 2026; and then
• ‘A brief recap of the timeline of elevated prices in SA at the end of July 2026’ over the weekend, as the dust had settled.

Readers here will recall the questions asked about battery operation during the 4-day wind lull late in June 2026 (a month ago now):

• On Tuesday 23rd June we published this ‘… summary of bidding in South Australia over 4 days (including the volatility)’ (Article #1).
• On 24th June we shared ‘(The start of) a retrospective on Battery Operations in South Australia in recent days’ (Article #2).
• Then on 9th July we shared ‘The next step down the rabbit hole – an introduction to unit-level battery operation on Sunday 21st and Monday 22nd June 2026 in South Australia’ (Article #3).

So it’s with these memories (and unresolved questions) front of mind that we take a first look at battery operation in South Australia

Trended aggregate stats (including State of Charge)

Utilising the same ‘Trends Engine’ query from ez2view used a month ago in Article #2, we see the following:

Remember:
1)  to click the image to open a larger-resolution view
2)  and that those with a licence to the software can open their own copy of this trend here.

Readers might want to compare a larger view of this chart side-by-side to this larger view from June 2026 in Article #2 at the time … because clearly there is a key difference in the operating regimes of the batteries:

1)  On Sunday 21st June 2026 we see that:

(a)  the batteries started with lower aggregate SOC,

(b)  ran heavily early;

(c)   and so were empty for the later spike that evening (and again Monday morning 22nd June 2026)

2)  Whereas on Thursday evening 30th July 2026 into Friday morning 31st July 2026:

(a)  the SOC was much higher at Thursday afternoon

(b)  and remained so through the evening and into the morning

(c)  because discharges were quite minimal … a lower blip into the price spikes in the early hours of Friday morning.

Trended battery bidding

We need to (again) refer to the ‘Bids & Offers’ widget in ez2view (like we did for Article #1 and by unit for Article #3) to understand why such a low rate of discharge:

From this chart we can clearly see that there’s been a big change in approach across all of the battery fleet, with a 3-day period of almost no volume bid in green.

1)  which was a way of managing a renewed awareness of shallow energy storage;

2)  compare that, for instance, with what we saw here in this larger image from Article #1 in late June.

Exploring further?

Time permitting, we’d be interested to delve further …