Households with residential batteries have doubled in Queensland in the last two years, though cost remains a barrier – as it has with electric vehicles. As prices fall, however, the state is likely to welcome the technology with open arms, as it has with solar. 37% of Queensland households now harvest the sun’s energy and a further 22% looking to install or upgrade their systems, according to the government’s Queensland Household Energy Survey. Of those with solar systems, 93% would would replace their panels with the same size or larger, if they were to fail.

The City of Melbourne is planning a network of co-ordinated community batteries to be installed at council sites across the city, aiming for a potential capacity of 5 MW by 2024.

Burning biomass – essentially, wood – is defined by the Australian government and the United Nations as a renewable energy source. As Australia’s hydrogen pipeline balloons, projects proposing to produce the ‘future fuel’ by burning waste wood have begun to appear. It’s a model that has immediate benefits, complicated drawbacks and significant carbon emissions along the way.

Australian renewable developer Maoneng has revealed details for its 240 MWp/480 MWh big battery proposed for Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula which has now opened for public exhibition.

More than half of regional Queenslanders believe clean energy industries will be major employers by 2030, according to a new survey, while just shy of half support transitioning to a renewables-dominated grid in the next 15 years or sooner. The survey focussed only on regional Queensland, excluding greater Brisbane area and Gold Coast, an area renowned for conservatism.

Australia’s first lithium-ion battery manufacturer, Energy Renaissance, has received a half million dollar grant to develop its pilot manufacturing facility in the state’s Hunter region.

The number of residential home batteries in Queensland has doubled while electricity bill cost concern has almost halved, found the “biggest survey of its kind” conducted in the state. The survey’s findings, which set to be released in full later this week, were summarised this morning by Queensland Minister for Energy, Renewables and Hydrogen, Mick de Brenni, at a virtual event.

Southeast Asia could well become the global engine room of renewable energy expansion. Population and economic growth is expected across the three decades in which the world has to decarbonise, but the brimming bounty of renewables deployment will force developers to navigate the region’s systems. As it turns out, that could be a treacherous task.

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency will provide $2 million to ClimateWorks Australia for the next phase of the Australian Industry Energy Transitions Initiative, which is aims to support some of the country’s biggest companies to decarbonise.

In his first public address, the newly appointed head of the Australian Energy Market Operator significantly upped the Operator’s ambitions for renewable penetrations in the grid, conveying the importance of no longer constraining what he called ‘zero cost’ renewable energy assets.