In Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM), grid-scale battery energy storage systems averaged 0.8 cycles per day in 2024. However, battery cycling rates often significantly varied from this average. This was based on factors that include seasonality, duration and revenue strategy.

This article looks at cycling behaviours of BESS in the NEM in 2024, both as a fleet and as individual systems.

Executive Summary

• Batteries cycled 0.8 times per day on average in the NEM in 2024, with significant variations between assets
• Batteries cycled to take advantage of price spikes in the evening throughout the year, and this increased during the winter to discharge during additional price rises in the morning
• Asset-specific factors affect cycling, leading to very different cycling rates even among batteries in the same state
• Batteries sometimes cycled at very high rates during extreme price periods to maximise revenues

Battery cycling in the NEM increases in the winter due to two-peak price shapes

Although batteries operated at an average of 0.8 cycles per day throughout 2024, cycles were higher in the winter from May to September. In July and August of 2024, average battery cycling actually increased above one per day.