Energy Storage

BloombergNEF says falling battery costs and “surging” renewables penetration make energy storage a “compelling flexible resource in many power systems.” Australia is among the predicted top markets.

According to Chinese researchers, using abandoned coal mine goaves for pumped hydro facilities in combination with large scale solar and wind is not only technically feasible but can also provide an efficiency of 82.8% in yearly operation cases. They applied the model to wind and solar-rich northwestern and southwestern China.

The battery was fabricated by Chinese scientists with a low-cost electrolyte made of a derivative of TEMPO, which is a well-known electroactive aminoxyl radical used with several applications in chemistry and biochemistry. According to the researchers, the battery shows high redox potential and is crossover-free.

COP flack for Australia’s insubstantial and unstructured response to decarbonisation has not made the country more attractive to investors. Has our first-mover status cruelled our investability, and what could the next Federal Government do to revive investor confidence?

Western Australia leads the world in successfully implementing renewables-based energy generation for far-flung customers. Unique joint venture and pioneer in the field, Boundary Power, has been widely recognised for its innovations and is ready to repeat its SAPS successes across Australia and the Asia-Pacific.

French energy giant Engie has developed a transfer function method based on a model used to assess PV plant variability. Its researchers claim that the new approach does not overestimate the levelised cost of hydrogen (LCOH) of an alkaline electrolyser powered by offgrid solar, finding that in Australia green hydrogen produced with such systems may already be cost competitive with blue hydrogen.

Western Australian miner IGO is building upon its renewable energy options at its Nova nickel operation after signing an agreement with Perth-based energy storage company VSUN Energy to trial a hybrid standalone power system backed by a vanadium redox flow battery.

The US battery manufacturer entered the stationary storage business with a new product for residential customers. The lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery is compatible with new or existing PV systems.

The town of Marble Bar in Western Australia’s remote East Pilbara region is famed for at one time recording 100 consecutive days of temperatures exceeding 37 degrees Celsius. So it’s no wonder the town’s residents have excess solar and nowhere to put it. That is, until now, thanks to the installation of a battery energy storage system beside the town’s centralised solar farm.

Sydney-based zinc-bromide battery technology company Gelion will deliver 100 MWh of energy storage to Mayur Renewables for its clean energy projects in Papua New Guinea under a new deal.