Western Australia-based AVESS is set to deploy demonstration batteries at a WA mine site in the second half of the year. The deployment is about proving the company’s technology, as it plans to move towards manufacturing the flow batteries in Australia from 2024.

Since opening in Sydney in 2022, renewable energy underwriter GCube Insurance has officially launched in Australia and is set to offer a broad range of new products to meet the needs of Australian developers and projects.

The Brookfield-led North American consortium courting Origin Energy has finally come back with a revised bid for the company, valued at roughly $18.2 billion (USD 12.5 billion). The offer is only fractionally lower than the initial bid, which came as a relief for the market, and has been endorsed by Origin’s board.

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has renewed calls for Australia to expedite generation, transmission and storage projects to ensure reliability of the country’s electricity supply. Interestingly, AEMO’s update notes South Australia, the state with the biggest share of variable renewable generation, faces the smallest reliability gap, meanwhile big batteries are successfully plugging short-term concerns.

Australian graphite miner turn integrated lithium battery company, Magnis Energy Technologies, has signed a significant offtake deal with electric vehicle giant Tesla. The agreement comes the same month the company quietly dropped its plan to build a 18 GWh lithium-ion battery factory in Townsville, northern Queensland.

Analysis from Sunwiz has revealed Australia’s breakdown of top rooftop solar and inverter manufacturers for 2022.

Last December, Australia’s first large-scale battery funding round fast-tracked eight new grid-forming projects with a combined capacity of 2.0 GW / 4.2 GWh. That same month, the country’s fresh federal government announced it would enact a major underwriting scheme to incentivise renewable storage across the country. The moves echo those which inaugurated big solar in Australia, but the transformative potential of these storage plays will, it seems, take a different shape.

The Greens will back the government’s hallmark Safeguard Mechanism policy reforms, but only if the government agrees to a moratorium on new coal or gas projects. The Greens hold the balance of power on the policy’s fate and their resolution has sparked fears that Australia could see a repeat of the dreaded climate wars.

Australian concentrated solar thermal company Vast Solar has struck a deal with the world’s largest oil drilling contractor, Nabors Industries, announcing it will go public via the partnership and expects to list on the New York Stock Exchange midyear.

Western Australia-based Hybrid Systems Australia has commissioned 42 MW of interconnected battery storage for two Fortescue mine sites in the Pilbara region, noting the installation is one of the largest for a mining application.