The Western Australia government has introduced new legislation to parliament as it seeks to integrate distributed energy resources such as small-scale solar and residential batteries more efficiently into the state’s electricity grid.

“To ensure Australian consumers continue to have access to reliable electricity supplies, it’s critical that planned investments in transmission, generation and storage projects are urgently delivered.”

Australian energy technology startup RayGen has officially opened a 4 MW solar and long-duration energy storage project in Victoria, describing it as the world’s “highest efficiency PV project” operating at utility scale.

Snowy Hydro has revealed the budget for the Snowy 2.0 project has blown out to $12 billion (USD 7.8 billion) and the giant pumped hydro storage project is now expected to commence operations seven years later than originally scheduled.

The Australian Energy Market Operator says a 248 GW pipeline of proposed generation and storage projects, transmission developments and government energy programs have the potential to address many of the risks outlined in its latest market forecast – if they are delivered to schedule.

Australian manufacturer Incat Tasmania is building the world’s largest all-electric ship at its yards in Hobart with the 130-metre-long vessel to be fitted with a 40 MWh battery energy storage system that will power a series of electric propulsion system and waterjets.

The development and deployment of renewable energy-based microgrids in First Nations communities in regional and remote Australia is to be accelerated as part of a new $125 million (USD 80 million) program financed by the federal government.

Energy market analyst Cornwall Insight Australia has flagged that proposed new rules for the operation of big batteries could have negative effects on the energy storage market, suggesting the changes could reduce the revenue streams available to batteries and cut their lifespan.

Australia’s national science agency has teamed with corporate advisor RFC Ambrian to form a new company to commercialise electrolysis technology that the CSIRO said can produce hydrogen with 30% less electricity than existing alkaline and polymer electrolyte membrane technologies.

Northern Territory government-owned Jacana Energy has opened a tender calling for the private sector to submit proposals to build up to 100 MW of utility scale PV and 30 MW/30 MWh of grid-forming battery energy storage in the Darwin-Katherine region.