Evidence before estimate
What can be shown from the record, separated from what is inferred and what is simply missing.
Research & insights
Open research on Australian industry, energy and investment
Published work built the same way as everything else here: from the public record, with every figure carrying its evidence grade and the unresolved questions named rather than filled in. Several pieces reach a negative conclusion — that a market is smaller than it looks, or that a route does not exist. Those are published for the same reason as the rest.
Industrial & Emissions
Energy Markets
Investment & Projects
Policy & Regulation
Maps & frameworks
In preparation
What these are
Analytical research notes, not formal academic publications and not investment advice. They are written to help owners, developers, investors and policy readers think more clearly about decisions that turn on evidence. Where research has been submitted to a public consultation, it is recorded on the consultations page.
Topic 01 · 2 published
Industrial & Emissions
What Australian industrial operations actually consume, burn and emit — established bottom-up from filings and reconciled against independently built accounts, rather than inferred from a sector average.
Policy & Regulation · Safeguard Mechanism
Lowering the threshold does more to the facilities already in
The 2026–27 Safeguard review asks whether to lower the 100,000-tonne coverage threshold. Because the statutory minimum baseline moves with it, the larger effect lands on facilities already inside the scheme — and it is in no table in the consultation paper.
Read research → Industrial & Emissions · National reconciliationMost of the diesel is on wheels
Australia burns 1,269.9 PJ of diesel a year, but only about 4 per cent of it makes electricity. Sizing the replaceable market from the national energy account down to what is actually left.
Read research → Industrial & Emissions · Weak-grid mine energyWeak-grid mines do not buy cheap energy
They buy operational continuity. Diesel is not just fuel — it is five roles at once — so the first question is which diesel exposure can be replaced reliably and financeably.
Read research →The facility-level evidence behind this topic is described on the platform page, and what has actually been analysed is indexed on the track record page.
Topic 02 · 3 published
Energy Markets
Pricing, tariffs, dispatch and the market structures that decide whether an energy position is worth what a model says it is.
Energy Markets · Locational pricing
The grid is being redesigned to charge you for where you are
The locational pricing debate carries a hard lesson for remote sites. In Australia it is already here — loss factors, REZ congestion — and it makes on-site solar + BESS a hedge, not a preference.
Read research → Energy Markets · Behind-the-meter tariffsThe demand charge is the line item a BTM battery can defend
How peak shaving works, which Australian tariff details matter, and why interval data must come before battery sizing or value stacking.
Read research → Energy Markets · Dispatch and saturationA BESS revenue forecast is not cashflow
Duration, market saturation and regulatory uncertainty can turn a strong central forecast into cashflow that cannot support debt.
Read research →Topic 03 · 9 published
Investment & Projects
What has to be true before a project can advance, and what a lender, sponsor or acquirer is actually underwriting when they look at one.
Investment & Projects · Contracted revenue
The first mistake in BTM BESS feasibility: treating customer savings as project revenue
Customer avoided cost is not SPV revenue. The cashflow chain a lender actually underwrites, the S1/S2/S3 cases, and why carbon value must not be counted twice.
Read research → Investment & Projects · Early screeningA Pre-DD screen is not a feasibility study
The useful early output is not a beautiful IRR — it is finding where the project breaks. How the F1–F4 workflow turns uncertainty into a sharper decision.
Read research → Investment & Projects · ReadinessMoney does not finance a project. Readiness does.
When capital is abundant, capital stops being the constraint. What utility-scale battery finance teaches industrial PV+BESS developers about what actually gets a project funded.
Read research → Investment & Projects · Time-to-powerOff-grid hybrid energy is becoming a mainstream time-to-power strategy
What development attrition, interconnection and equipment constraints reveal about the value of discovering fatal risks early.
Read research → Investment & Projects · Development readinessA BESS connection queue is not a construction pipeline
Why queued megawatts overstate deliverable supply, and how land, planning, grid, procurement and finance gates determine what gets built.
Read research → Investment & Projects · RTB completenessReady-to-build means no missing critical rights
RTB value depends on complete, transferable and consistent land, cable, planning, grid and delivery rights — not percentage complete.
Read research → Investment & Projects · Brownfield BESSThe scarce asset may be the existing connection
How brownfield infrastructure can avoid years of development, and which capacity, charging and revenue constraints still need diligence.
Read research → Investment & Projects · Emerging marketsDevelop the BESS backwards from the buyer
Start with who pays for flexibility, under which contract and currency, then work backwards to duration, connection, equipment and site.
Read research → Investment & Projects · Hybrid asset diligenceOne plus one is not two for hybrid assets
Solar and BESS share and compete for connection, controls and contracts. Their value must be modelled and diligenced as one system.
Read research →Worked applications of this thinking are on the projects and case studies page.
Topic 04 · 1 published
Policy & Regulation
The rules that decide what an industrial operation is exposed to, what abatement earns, and which public support is actually available to it. This is the newest of the four topics and the thinnest — it is listed as it is rather than padded.
Related, elsewhere on the site
The Safeguard Mechanism analysis — the statutory baseline floor, the band in which abatement earns no credit, and how a 2029 position is established for a specific facility — currently sits on the homepage and the platform page rather than as a standalone research note. Policy engagement built on this work is recorded on the consultations page.
Visual library
Industry maps & frameworks
Compact visual maps for discussing mining hybrid development, financial close, BESS responsibilities, remote mine architecture and industrial PV+BESS stakeholders.
In preparation
Research currently being written
Listed so the direction is visible. Nothing here is published yet, and none of it should be cited or relied on until it is.
A model is not a project: why Pre-DD matters for mine-site PV+BESS
In preparation
The four questions before a hybrid energy project becomes real
In preparation
Site suitability is not the same as empty land
In preparation
Why microgrid boundary matters before financeability
In preparation
How to turn public maps into a data-room request
In preparation
Themes
What this research keeps coming back to
Revenue that survives a contract
How customer savings become — or fail to become — stable, bankable revenue.
Reconciliation against something built differently
Two figures agreeing is only evidence when their inputs do not overlap.
Who can actually decide
Ownership, operator and contract control frequently sit somewhere other than where they appear to.
Weak-grid and diesel sites
The practical realities of operations where diesel is backup, peak support and reliability insurance at once.
Negative results are results
A market that is smaller than it looks is a finding, and it is published like any other.
Take it further
Working on a question this research touches?
Most of this work started as somebody’s real question. If you are looking at one — a facility, a market, a project, a policy exposure — a short, non-confidential exchange is usually enough to establish whether it can be answered from the public record at all.