Adding value to Australia’s historically underutilised battery proposition
To truly seize on the opportunity afforded by the imminent battery boom, Australia needs to look beyond its historic role as a supplier of raw materials and broaden the horizons by adding value with downstream products and manufacturing, according to a recent Future Battery Industries report. Pv magazine Australia caught up with Vincent Algar, managing director of Australian Vanadium Limited – a company operating in this promising yet thorny realm.
Australia’s first privately funded big battery to be hosted in Melbourne
Lumea is planning the first big battery to be financed without any government support at Melbourne’s Deer Park Energy Hub.
‘Benchmark’ agrisolar trial in Victoria proves successful with sheep reportedly loving panel shade
Gannawarra Solar Farm, Victoria’s first large-scale solar farm integrated with a big battery, has forayed into the world of agrisolar by integrating sheep grazing on site. The sheep are reportedly loving the shade offered by the panels, which has allowed them to graze even during the hottest parts of the day, with the animals unperturbed by the solar farm’s tracking devices.
‘Residential batteries are less profitable than selling excess power to the grid’
Although self-consumption of solar power is the optimal economic approach, the expense of household batteries at present outweighs the increased ability they offer to use electricity generated on the roof. Whether aggregated ‘virtual batteries’ offer better returns is an open question, due to lack of electricity company transparency.
Maoneng lodges application for 225 MW/450 MWh big battery
Australian renewable energy developer Maoneng has lodged plans to construct a ‘critical’ 225 MW/450 MWh utility scale battery energy storage system at Gould Creek in South Australia.
New tool to evaluate economic benefits of hydrogen storage
Developed by U.S. scientists, the Hydrogen Energy Storage Evaluation Tool (HESET) can assess the economic and technical characteristics of individual system components and the modelling of each hydrogen pathway. Furthermore, it can help understand how hydrogen storage can be used for various grid and end-user services.
Powerlink eyes bespoke solution to system strength issues
Queensland network operator Powerlink has indicated battery storage will be a critical part of a bespoke strategy designed to solve system strength issues that have emerged as a challenge for renewable energy generation in the National Electricity Market.
Sulphur-based redox flow battery with 15 consecutive hours of runtime
Researchers from Hong Kong have applied a novel charge-reinforced, ion-selective (CRIS) membrane to a polysulfide-iodide redox flow battery they had built in 2016. The redox flow battery showed a capacity decay rate of just 0.005% per day for 1,200 cycles, and a lifetime with over 2,000 hours’ cycling, which the academics said corresponds to approximately three months.
Advanced battery and hydrogen research facilities to be built by Victoria’s Deakin University, backed by government funds
Deakin University has received funding for two multi-million dollar facilities, one devoted to advanced battery research and the second for the development of hydrogen technology. The projects’ aims will be to overcome hydrogen’s hurdles and, for batteries, to improve existing technologies while also investigating sustainable alternatives like sodium batteries.
Using the oceans’ depths to store renewables, compress hydrogen
Underwater gravity energy storage has been proposed as an ideal solution for weekly energy storage, by an international group of scientists. The novel technology is considered an alternative to pumped-hydro storage for coasts and islands without mountains that are located close to deep waters, and may also be interesting for PV if used to store green hydrogen.
