Energy Storage

The Northern Territory is an energy powerhouse, pulsing with oil and gas expertise, LNG processing plants and a burgeoning solar scene. The government’s new Renewable Hydrogen Strategy seeks to leverage such skill sets and infrastructure towards a green-hydrogen industry and net-zero emissions by 2050…

The Northern Territory Government has released its Climate Change Response, a directive officially adopting a 2050 net-zero emissions target and 50% renewable energy by 2030 target. The Climate Council has welcomed the response, saying that the NT now joins the rest of Australia’s states and territories in effectively forming a “de facto national net-zero target”.

The Nowanup property is a keystone in south-west Western Australia’s biodiversity regeneration, and now, with the installation of a stand-alone power system (SPS) from Western Power, the spur of the line property is no longer subject to routine outages from storm and bushfire interruptions. With self-sufficiency, Curtin University can now expand its Bush Campus into the property to better facilitate Noongar education.

The Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) has decided to give energy businesses an extra three months to prepare the IT overhaul necessary for the five-minute settlement market reform. The decision comes in response to concerns that the unprecedented impacts of Covid-19 necessitated extra breathing space.

The Korean company has committed to invest in solar innovation in Germany at a time when the EU and member states are desperately trying to kick-start the Covid-19 recovery.

The startup is building a battery using Prussian blue analogue electrodes and a sodium-ion electrolyte. Investors include ABB Technology Ventures, NanoDimension Capital, Volta Energy Technologies, Chevron, Khosla Ventures, and Prelude Ventures.

A key lithium-ion battery cathode material could be produced in Western Australia, a Queensland University of Technology (QUT) feasibility study has found. The study, released by the WA state government today, investigated whether superior nickel-rich nickel cobalt manganese (NCM) can be produced cost effectively and sustainably in the state in which nine of the ten mineral elements required for lithium-ion battery cells are present.

Scientists led by MIT have suggested chitin, a carbon and nitrogen-rich material made from waste shrimp shells, could produce sustainable electrodes for vanadium redox flow batteries and other energy storage technologies.

A New Safe and Reliable Energy Storage and Conversion Technologies Research Hub is one of five grant recipients of the Australian Research Council’s funding for Industrial Transformation. The Hub will seek to develop new technologies in energy storage to eliminate the risk of fire, as well as addressing the environmental impact of current technologies. 

Energy storage is in high demand, to help manage a growing proportion of renewable energy in global electricity grids, to free off-grid communities from the tyranny of diesel, and to enable the aspirations of people not yet connected to a power supply. These two promising technologies have reached important milestones…