The latest home battery system from Q Cells, owned by South Korea’s Hanwha Solutions, will the “first to market” to provide a standard 15 year product warranty. The Q.HOME CORE will be available in Australia from March.

Australian company Natural Solar has seen a 400% increase in battery installs across Australia within two years. The company’s CEO Chris Williams told pv magazine Australia that Victoria has led demand, growing 350% in the second half of 2021 alone. Williams believes the surge has been driven by several compounding factors.

Australian concentrated solar thermal power company Vast Solar has been shortlisted as a finalist for BNEF’s Pioneers 2022 program.

Queensland will soon be home to two solar recycling and materials recovery plants after Solar Recovery Corporation announced its partnership with La Mia Energia, an Italian consortium which has developed a panel recycling process it claims can recover up to 99% of raw materials. The partnering companies are planning to expand across Australia in the next two years.

AGL has this morning rejected an “unsolicited” $8 billion takeover bid from software billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes’ Grok Ventures and Canadian fund manager Brookfield. Cannon-Brookes described the consortium as “disappointed” by AGL’s decision, saying it will continue to “move forward” with the bid which would dramatically accelerate coal retirements in Australia.

ARENA has opened round two of its Future Fuels Program, allocating $127.9 million in funding to support fleets to shift to new zero emissions vehicles over the next four years, be that electric, hydrogen, or biofuels.

The wide-open spaces of the Australian outback make it ripe for solar development, but doing so without the true inclusion of Indigenous communities may repeat the mistakes made by resource extraction companies in the past. However, Indigenous-led companies and an innovative new initiative are looking to put power and ownership into the hands of the land’s traditional owners, reports pv magazine Australia’s Bella Peacock.

A bill which would make home batteries up to $3,000 cheaper nationwide has been tabled by Independent MP Helen Haines. Haines proposes making home batteries eligible for Small-scale Technology Certificates, the same scheme behind Australia’s thriving rooftop solar sector.

The Victorian government will be expanding its Solar Homes rebate program into the world of Virtual Power Plants (VPPs), announcing on Tuesday that households who install a battery and sign up to the pilot before July 2022 will receive a rebate of over $4000.

Australia’s first national battery recycling scheme, B-cycle, launched today giving Australians the opportunity to drop their spent household batteries at a collections bins in supermarkets, stores and community clubs across the country.