Highlights

South Australia’s Flinders University has installed 20 vehicle-to-grid (V2G) chargers to fully utilise the battery capacity of its growing electric vehicle fleet. It plans to use the distributed EV fleet to supply power to the campus grid in the evening. The initiative is supported by $350,000 (USD 220,000) of funding from the state government.

The market operator today announced a “staged” return to the national energy market’s normal operations as 4000 MW of generation capacity comes back into operation.

Both New South Wales (NSW) and Queensland handed down their 2022-23 state budgets on Tuesday pushing the line that clean energy investments would lead the states to future prosperity.

Sydney-based solar company Solaray Energy says its inquiries have doubled since the federal election, rebounding back to the record demand seen in 2020 ad 2021. Moreover, the company’s director and co-founder Jonathan Fisk says interest in batteries is “making solar fly,” with half of the potential new customers looking to add storage.

Selected projects will be awarded a fixed rate under a 20-year contract under the country’s renewable energy certificate (REC) scheme and will sell electricity to local power distributors.

The Australian Energy Regulator has begun consultations to allow distributor-led standalone power systems (SAPS) to become part of the national electricity system. Proving highly successful in Western Australia, these SAPS could soon be properly rolled out in the east.

pv magazine summarises the products we covered at the recent Smarter E exhibition, in the first of a series of reports on all of the new releases from the annual trade fair in Munich, Germany.

The best performing large-scale PV asset in Australia this month was Genex Power’s Kidston solar farm in Queensland, according to Rystad analyst Dave Dixon, who noted total generation from solar and wind assets in Australia grew 23% compared to April 2021.

As people have gradually migrated to the world’s cities, urban areas have migrated upward to scrape the sky. And yet, while one of the first principles of power generation is to generate as close as possible to the point of consumption, energy systems have long been designed to deliver electricity to major cities from distant hubs. But now, thanks to recent advances in solar panel energy density and building-integrated PV, vertical cities could soon be standing tall under their own power.

The war in Ukraine has acted as a brutal wake-up call for governments to act and reduce their dependence on Russian fossil fuels. Many have pledged to hasten project timelines for renewables, but there are mixed reports about impacts on investor confidence and projects under development in Ukraine’s neighboring countries. Marija Maisch reports.