Decades of mismanagement have eroded trust in South Africa’s state-owned energy utility, Eskom. Last year, households and businesses suffered daily blackouts of up to 10 hours, or even longer. Solar and battery energy storage are booming but a domestic PV manufacturing industry has yet to materialize.

Following strong global solar installation figures in 2023, Alexa Capital co-founder and partner Gerard Reid sees enormous potential for a renewables revolution.

The Australian government’s new gas deal is designed to head off any supply shortages at the end of the decade. Yet, the latest data shows that gas consumption dropped 16% in the October to December quarter compared with the same period a year earlier due to warmer temperatures in Victoria and lower commercial and industrial demand.

After years of improving quality standards, solar cell cracking appears to be on the rise again, perhaps due to new manufacturers entering the sector. Clean Energy Associates’ (CEA) senior engineering manager Claire Kearns-McCoy considers ways to stop the rot.

EnergyAustralia says it will increase the capacity of a battery energy storage system to be built adjacent to its Hallett Power Station in South Australia from an initial 50 MW to 150 MW, and 200 MWh to 600 MWh, after the successful completion of the first stage.

The Clean Energy Investor Group has warned that solar farms in southwest New South Wales and northwest Victoria could suffer from “large and unpredictable” swings in revenues because of material changes in marginal loss factors.

New Zealand renewables developer Lodestone Energy has received planning consent for three new large-scale solar farms on the country’s South Island as it continues the roll out of a PV strategy that it expects will deliver more than 500 GWh in solar generation.

Dreamworld on Queensland’s Gold Coast is now home to the largest solar system at an Australian theme park after the operators teamed with Origin Energy to install a 708 kW rooftop array that is expected to generate almost one quarter of the park’s annual electricity needs.

The shift from positively doped, “p-type” to negatively doped, “n-type” solar technology has sparked manufacturing expansion, says S&P Global’s Jessica Jin.

Frontier Energy has revised its strategy for the first stage of the proposed Waroona Renewable Energy Project being developed in Western Australia’s southwest to include a four-hour 80 MW battery energy storage system in a move that is expected to have significantly better economics than solar alone.