The Australian government has opened registrations for the Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS) Tender 11 in Western Australia.
Bidding for Tender 11 will open on 27 August 2026 and close on 22 October 2026, seeking nearly 1.8GW of renewable energy generation in Western Australia’s Wholesale Electricity Market (WEM).
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This is the fourth and likely last tender in the WEM, with awarded projects expected to start operations by 2030.
The tender represents the latest round in Australia’s flagship renewable energy support mechanism, administered by AusEnergy Services Limited (ASL) on behalf of the Australian government.
Tender 11 includes an 180MW First Nations Equity and Revenue Sharing Set Aside. First piloted in Tender 9 with 500MW of renewables reserved for First Nations communities, this latest tender aims to award specific projects that commit at least 5% of equity participation or revenue-sharing arrangements with First Nations communities.
Similar to previous tenders in Western Australia, successful projects must take part in the state’s Reserve Capacity Mechanism, which helps keep the power system reliable as more renewables are added to the grid.
Moreover, this is the fourth tender in the WEM region. Two of the previous tenders were for dispatchable energy and awarded 2.6GWh and 3.7GWh of BESS in Tender 2 and Tender 6, respectively. Whereas most of the renewable energy awarded under Tender 5 went to wind projects, while only a single solar-plus-storage project was awarded with a 350MW solar PV capacity and 2.1GWh of BESS.
Recent data from Australia’s Clean Energy Regulator highlighted the increase in renewable energy projects in the pipeline in the probable category. At the end of May 2026, the probable queue reached 32GW, which has mostly been a reflection of the registration of the CIS awarded Tenders 5, 6 and 7.
Despite that accelerated growth in the pipeline coming from CIS awarded projects, a gap between probable and committed categories reflected a structural challenge that has been building since the CIS programme began generating large tender outcomes.
For more details regarding Tender 11 and how to participate can be accessed here.
