Energy Storage

AGL’s ambitious 850 MW target of new large-scale battery storage in its portfolio by FY 2024 is seeming less like an opportunity and more like an inevitability with each passing week. Following on from last week’s announcement of a 250 MW, four-hour-duration battery at its Torrens Island Power Station in South Australia, AGL has this week announced a 200 MW battery project at Victoria’s Loy Yang A power station.

The choice of battery storage technologies in support of solar energy supply is broadening to suit a variety of emerging applications. VSUN has just made its first power play for vanadium-redox-flow batteries in the off-grid residential market.

Mobile electricity storage systems (MESS) – batteries that are charged and then transported – could offer one of the best scenarios for electrification across the vast Indonesian archipelago, which spans more than 17,000 islands. A team at the University of Indonesia is working with multiple government agencies to bring the idea to scale and provide affordable electricity to rural Indonesians.

Following on from Social Energy’s launch in Australia late last year, the UK company has teamed up with SolaX to offer a rather appetising feed-in-tariff deal to go with a combined solar and energy storage system.

AGL, one of Australia’s biggest polluters, is working towards net-zero emissions by 2050 and new relevance in a renewable-energy-powered world. Think big batteries to replace the spinning reserve of some coal and gas generators, and digital management of its customers’ distributed rooftop resources.

Scientists in the U.S. examined the use of different conductive filler materials in a lithium-ion battery electrode, finding that adding single walled carbon nanotubes to a nickel-cobalt-manganese cathode resulted in better electrical conductivity and higher rate capability for the overall battery. The results, according to the group, could provide new insights into design of high power, high energy battery electrodes.

On Tuesday 13th October 2020 Queensland’s electricity spiked from approximately $25/MWh to $15,000/MWh (the current market price cap) in response to a tripping incident involving the constraint of 11 solar farms and one wind farm. The event is being seen as illustrative of just what needs to be addressed in the design of NEM 2.0.

A steady progression of targets, plans and policy adjustments come together in the ‘NSW Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap’ as the Berejiklian Government strives to get ahead of the retirement of coal-fired generators — and fire up the state economy!

The Northern Territory is advancing projects that will help it achieve 50% penetration of renewables into its energy supply by 2030. First up, the procurement of a 30 MW battery to boost reliability of the Darwin-Katherine grid.

Australian electricity wires are awash with sunshine, such that network operators have threatened to up the drawbridge on further rooftop connections, while limiting rooftop PV exports to the grid. But data streams hold the key to unlocking surprising existing capacity, stabilising voltage, and living the Aussie dream.