Highlights

Commercially printed solar cell technology developed by the University of Newcastle is being put to the test to power an electric vehicle’s 15,097 kilometre journey around the entire coastline of Australia.

In the second piece of rare earths news this month, construction has begun on Lynas Rare Earths’ new processing facility in Kalgoorlie. The refined products are used in batteries and other renewable technology, with Lynas moving the processing it currently does in Malaysia onshore for the first time.

Compared to fossil fuels, the renewable industries’ lobbying is weak and the sector does not advocate for itself with enough force, Independent MP Zali Steggall said yesterday.

Over 90% of Australia’s fuel is imported – something recent geopolitical events have illustrated is a serious vulnerability. This issue was the focus of an emergency fuel security summit held yesterday in Sydney. The event was attended by a number of industry leaders and independent members and candidates who put forward solutions to tackle the devolving situation.

In a big week for solar in the land of the long white cloud, Lightsource bp has announced a 50/50 partnership with New Zealand’s Contact Energy to pursue a large-scale solar portfolio in the country, generation which Contact Energy will purchase through a power purchase agreement.

Nitin Gupta, chief executive officer and co-founder, Attero Recycling, speaks to pv magazine about the supply chain concerns for lithium battery storage manufacturing in India, current battery recycling scenario and Attero’s capacity.

The results from solar glass company ClearVue’s greenhouse trials at Murdoch University have found the company’s product performed better than predicted overall, demonstrating both strong power generation and thermal value.

TBEA-owned Xinte Energy says it cannot produce polysilicon quickly enough to meet demand and wants shareholders to back its bid to quadruple its manufacturing capacity by mid 2024.

A partnership between Quantum Power Asia and Berlin-based ib vogt is proposing a 3.5 GW solar and storage facility in Riau, Indonesia, an archipelago of islands south of Singapore. The AUD$6.7 billion potential project aims to export the generated solar to the Singaporean city-state by 2032, meeting 8% of its electricity needs.

The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL) final report on the future of storage presents “key learnings” from a series of six in-depth studies.