AEMO’s Integrated System Plan is the national grid’s build sheet, revised every two years, and its status words carry precise meanings. Committed means the project has met AEMO’s formal commitment criteria and is being delivered. Actionable means the plan says it should proceed, but it has not yet crossed the commitment line. Anticipated means it is progressing toward that line; a development opportunity is a costed idea whose time has not come. The 2026 edition, published 25 June, places a Hunter project on each rung.
Dates are each project’s target full-capacity date as stated in the 2026 ISP (tables 2 and 9 and pp. 99, 111-112), which AEMO records “as advised by proponent.” Solid = committed; tinted = actionable; open = anticipated; dashed range = development opportunity (earliest feasible window). Cost figures carry the ISP’s ±50% class estimate, in 2025 dollars.
The committed rung: 2028
The Hunter-Central Coast REZ network infrastructure project, delivered by Ausgrid for EnergyCo, moved up from actionable in the 2024 plan to committed in this one, with 82 km of new line build and target full capacity of July 2028. Its first stage was completed in May; it is the one Hunter transmission project that is now simply happening.
The actionable rung: a 110 km line and two ministers
The Hunter Transmission Project is the big one: a 110-kilometre overhead 500 kV line from Bayswater in the Upper Hunter to Olney in the Lower Hunter, which EnergyCo says will “create a 500 kV ring of transmission infrastructure that will provide the backbone of the state’s new electricity grid,” carrying supply from the Central-West Orana and New England renewable zones. The NSW Government has named Transgrid as delivery partner. In the ISP it remains actionable, not committed, with target full capacity in November 2029.
Where it actually stands is a planning question with an unusually clear answer on EnergyCo’s EIS page. The environmental impact statement was publicly exhibited from 27 August to 24 September 2025; EnergyCo has since lodged its submissions report and amendment report with the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure, and the project is in the government’s independent assessment phase. Because it is Critical State Significant Infrastructure, it must be approved by the NSW Minister for Planning and Public Spaces, and separately by the Commonwealth Minister for the Environment and Water under the EPBC Act. EnergyCo’s words: the project “needs the approval of both Ministers before it can go ahead.” If approved, construction is expected to start in late 2026, which is to say: within months.
One discrepancy in the public record belongs on this page. Transgrid’s project page still explains the line’s rationale by reference to “the planned 2025 closure” of Eraring, while Origin’s current announcement puts the closure at April 2029. Each figure is its proponent’s own statement; we cite both and note that Origin’s is the later and operative one. We reported both pages as they read on 18 July 2026.
The anticipated rung: Bayswater becomes a junction
The quiet entry on the ladder is the New England REZ network infrastructure project: two 500 kV double-circuit lines plus associated 330 kV circuits connecting Bayswater to the New England renewable zone, 692 kilometres of new line, delivered by EnergyCo, listed as anticipated with target full capacity in January 2034 (ISP p. 99). Put it beside the Hunter Transmission Project and a reframe drops out: Bayswater, a coal station with a scheduled endpoint, is becoming the junction where a line south to Sydney’s ring and a line north to New England meet. Whatever else happens on that site after coal, the grid is being rebuilt through it, not around it.
The option: a wire to the smelter
Last rung: the ISP costs a “Hunter-Central Coast REZ Expansion” as a development opportunity, needed, in the plan’s words, to bring Hunter renewable generation to the demand centres of Newcastle and the Tomago aluminium smelter. Two options are on the table: one at an estimated $636 million with optimal timing 2030-31, one at $327 million optimally timed 2038-39 but feasible from 2030-31, both ±50 per cent in 2025 dollars (ISP pp. 111-112). Nothing about it is decided; that it is costed at all tells you where the planners think the next constraint sits.
For scale, the same plan projects NSW adding 46 GW of grid-scale wind and solar by 2050, with 5 GW of it attributed to the Hunter-Central Coast (pp. 66-67). The ladder above is the wire that either does or does not let that happen on schedule. Each rung has a next event we can check: stage completions for the committed project, two ministerial decisions for the actionable one, a commitment test for the anticipated one, and, for the option, whether it appears in the next plan at all.