Australia’s electricity demand is entering a period of critical change.
Homes, transport and industry are increasingly electrifying, while new manufacturing and mining loads are adding to the system. At the same time, a less traditional electricity customer is emerging at a remarkable pace: the data centre.
Driven by cloud computing, artificial intelligence and growing digital services, data centres are becoming some of the largest new electricity loads in the National Electricity Market (NEM).
The Australian Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO) 2026 Electricity Statement of Opportunities (ESOO) forecasts electricity consumption from data centres will rise from about 5TWh in 2025–26 to 34TWh by 2035–36.
That would increase their share of NEM electricity consumption from around 3 per cent to approximately 13 per cent over the decade.
It is a significant shift, but it is also one that comes with considerable uncertainty.
AEMO’s 2026 forecast considered 225 known data centre projects progressing through the connection process, representing around 67GW of proposed connection capacity. However, proposed capacity does not necessarily translate into actual demand.
More than 40 per cent of projects had either dropped out or moved backwards in connection status since the previous year’s forecast. AEMO has consequently adjusted its methodology to account for project attrition, the difference between connection capacity and actual consumption, and the time required for facilities to reach full operation.
For network businesses, this makes forecasting particularly important.
A new kind of load
Data centres are not simply another source of incremental electricity demand.
Large facilities can require hundreds of megawatts of capacity and may be concentrated in particular geographic areas. Their connection can therefore have implications well beyond the immediate site, potentially requiring investment in transmission and distribution infrastructure.
In the first quarter of 2026, 11 large-scale data centre projects representing 5.4GW of maximum demand were progressing through the transmission connection process. Around 60 per cent of this capacity was located in NSW, with the remainder in Victoria.
The scale of these connections means network planning needs to consider not only whether sufficient capacity exists today, but how quickly it can be expanded as projects are built out.
There is also a timing challenge. A data centre may connect with an initial load before gradually increasing towards its ultimate capacity, creating a different demand profile from a conventional large industrial customer.
This uncertainty makes it difficult to predict precisely when and where investment will be required.
A bigger demand picture
Data centres are also only one part of Australia’s changing electricity landscape.
AEMO expects overall NEM electricity consumption to increase by more than 40 per cent over the next decade. Electrification of transport, heating and industrial processes will contribute to this growth, alongside new mining, manufacturing and other industrial loads.
At the same time, around 15GW of coal and gas generation is scheduled to retire.
The challenge for the electricity sector is therefore twofold: accommodate substantial new demand while replacing ageing generation and maintaining system reliability.
There has been progress on the supply side. AEMO reports that 9.1GW of new generation and storage capacity connected during 2025–26, while around 40GW of committed and anticipated projects are expected to be delivered by the early 2030s.
The latest ESOO also indicates an improved reliability outlook, with no forecast reliability gaps before 2030.
That does not remove the need for continued investment, however. As demand grows and the generation mix changes, the system will need sufficient renewable generation, storage, transmission and other firming resources to meet demand when and where it occurs.
