The Australian government has beefed up its commitment to community batteries to support the integration of renewable energy in the grid with more than 420 battery energy storage systems to be installed in neighbourhoods across the country as part of its Community Batteries for Household Solar program.

The Maryvale solar and battery hybrid project being developed in central western New South Wales in one of two renewables projects with a combined generation capacity of 312 MW that have secured long-term energy service agreements through the state government’s latest tender round.

A Queensland University of Technology project has been awarded almost $600,000 in federal funding to develop production processes to transform Australian resources into perovskite precursor to be used in the manufacture of next generation solar cells.

Australian EPC contractor ACLE Services has broken ground on a 5 MW / 10 MWh battery energy storage project in northern Victoria that is the first in a planned pipeline of 27 batteries that will be rolled out across regional Australia delivering a combined capacity of 270 MWh.

Singapore-based renewable energy fund manager SC Oscar has snapped up New Zealand solar project developer Rānui Generation as part of its strategy to build a portfolio of renewable energy assets in both New Zealand and Australia.

Power giant AGL Energy has teamed with Melbourne-based solar panel recycling company Elecsome to explore the development of a PV materials recovery facility at the site of the coal-fired Bayswater power plant in the New South Wales Hunter Region.

Coal will no longer be burned for power in Australia within 14 years. To replace it will require faster deployment of solar and wind, storage, new transmission lines and some firming gas capacity.

New South Wales power grid owner Transgrid is looking at rolling out up to 14 synchronous condensers and 4.8 GW of batteries with ‘grid forming’ capability to protect and strengthen the security and stability of the electricity grid as coal-fired power plants retire and more renewables come online.

Queensland-headquartered battery manufacturer Redflow has secured almost $20 million in government funding in the United States for a 6.6 MWh zinc-bromine flow battery energy storage system to be deployed in California.

South Australia-based Sparc Hydrogen has struck an agreement with an international partner that will see it advance the development of pilot testing of its photocatalytic technology to produce commercially viable green hydrogen from water using concentrated solar.