The NSW government announced it had "smashed" its long-duration battery storage target under the state's Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap. The claim is technically accurate, and describes a different achievement than most coverage implied.

What was actually smashed: capacity awarded through the state's storage tender program, contracts signed with developers to build projects, not batteries currently online and dispatching power.

The gap: of the contracted capacity, only a modest fraction is actually operating today. The rest sits at various stages of construction and connection approval.

The bottom line: a target measured in signed contracts and a target measured in batteries actually keeping the lights on are two different scoreboards, worth checking which one a headline is using.