Highlights

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.

The Greens are proposing to electrify an entire Australian town and a suburb in a major city, including providing electric vehicles for households, the party’s leader Adam Bandt has revealed. The proposed pilot, which would be enabled by a $235 million fund, was inspired by Australian Saul Griffith’s ‘electrify everything’ campaign.

Australian technology billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes has become the single largest shareholder in AGL after Grok Ventures, the private investment company he owns with wife Annie, bought an 11.28% stake in the public company last night. The move appears to progress the billionaire’s plan to use the free market to force the decarbonisation of Australia’s biggest emitter from the inside out. In other words, the world’s largest single decarbonisation project is back on.

The amount of solar installers offering storage solutions grew considerably in 2021 and promises to surge again this year, according to an annual survey by EUPD Research. The research centre has also released the top three 2021 brands for solar modules, inverters and storage in the Australian market, offering insights into where companies are buying equipment and which segments are seeing the most growth.