Bolt-in electric vehicle kits in Australia have just got a leg up, with Melbourne startup Jaunt Motors joining forces with UK company Zero EV to operate a new, larger scale business to have production facilities and operations across Australia, the UK and, “very soon,” the US.

The Australian arm of Philippines-based AC Energy Corporation, or ACEN, has had its vision for an 8 GW clean energy portfolio including solar, wind, battery and pumped hydro supported by a $75 million (USD 48 million) investment from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

“Integration” was the war cry at this year’s All Energy conference in Melbourne, with an unmistakable push, especially among ‘premium’ brands, toward vertically stacked product suites bundling solar, batteries, energy management platforms, virtual power plants and electric vehicle chargers into one super solution. How big is the market for such a proposition in Australia though? And does streamlining stymie flexibility? pv magazine Australia spoke to a number of brands on the promise, and limits, of the full stack strategy.

Set to land on Australian shores in Dec. 2022, German solar panel manufacturer AE Solar has modified a panel to meet the continent’s particular stress factors, including our far higher temperatures, UV doses and humidity. “Since we think it’s a kind of localised, or environmentally adapted module, we think it can be a selling factor for this particular line,” AE Solar’s Head of R&D, Dr Hamed Hanifi, told pv magazine Australia during Melbourne’s All Energy conference last week.

In a project where the old world of energy meets the new, AGL will investigate the technical and financial feasibility of using thermal batteries to provide the steam for a 200 MW turbine at South Australia’s Torrens Island Power Plant, which usually run on gas.

ASX-listed Vulcan Energy, a company working on a project in Germany that it says will deliver ‘zero carbon’ lithium by combining geothermal plants with lithium electrolysis, today announced its pilot produced high grade lithium hydroxide which ‘easily exceeds’ battery grade specification.

In northern Australia, a new hardware-in-the-loop platform is being developed to test renewable projects aggregated generation control systems before commissioning. The platform brings control hardware together with software simulations of passive components to test in real time how different configurations respond. Should the platform successfully complete its upcoming demonstration, it could help solve Australia’s current connection crisis.

Western Power will begin allocating regional properties in Western Australia’s main grid the same electricity supply as their urban counterparts. The shift comes after sustained community pressure since pv magazine Australia first reported on the issue in July 2022.

The Western Australian government has allocated six companies land in the state’s mid-west to develop green hydrogen projects, including Fortescue Future Industries and BP.

The Australian federal government’s $20 billion (USD 12.6 billion) Rewiring the Nation program has kicked off with billions allocated to support two major interconnector transmission projects.