New South Wales introduced the Electricity Infrastructure Investment Amendment Bill 2026 in state Parliament on 5 August. It hands the state energy minister power to declare large-load access schemes that can authorise or prohibit grid access for facilities capable of drawing 5 MW or more, and to allocate network-upgrade costs to the connecting party rather than spreading them across consumers1.
At 5 MW the bill reaches far beyond the hyperscale campus. That level catches suburban colocation halls and single large enterprise sites, so the great majority of data-centre development in Australia's largest state economy would fall inside a scheme the minister declares. Cost allocation does the second job: a developer that wants a substation upgrade pays for it, instead of the upgrade landing in everyone's network charges.
Advice and statute landed within hours of each other on the same day, and they point in opposite directions procedurally. One asks ministers to design a test, in a determination still months from completion. The other gives a minister the power to refuse, subject only to the bill's passage. Texas took the third route when its regulator built a classification process rather than a veto, which puts the judgement in a published methodology instead of a ministerial declaration.
