Highlights

Queensland’s first community-scale battery is nearing completion after the delivery of its 4 MW Tesla battery. The battery, to be charged with excess solar power from Townsville’s residential rooftop PV, should connect to the grid by the end of the summer.

The Australia Institute (TAI) has criticised the Government’s $2 billion bushfire recovery fund, questioning why the taxpayer should foot the bill when a levy on fossil fuel producers would be a better way of funding the recovery.

Australia’s bushfire crisis is beginning to expose a National Energy Market over-reliant on vulnerable individual elements. Does Australia’s changing environment necessitate a localised energy future?

Scientists at Monash University claim to have developed the world’s most efficient lithium-sulfur battery. They say the new device could enable an electric vehicle to drive more than 1,000km on a single charge.

This cataclysmic bushfire season demonstrates the risk that climate change poses to Australia’s economic and social prosperity. Stanford’s international roadmap to freedom from fossil fuels by 2050 says Australia needs another 280 GW of solar PV and tens of billions of dollars of investment to turn down the heat.

A microgrid installed on an apartment block in Melbourne will provide clean and affordable electricity to 52 low-income households. It is the first site of Ovida’s Community Energy Hubs project, which will deliver shared solar PV and batteries to more multi-tenanted buildings in the city.

The Clean Energy Innovation Hub has hit a major milestone as ATCO started testing blending renewable hydrogen into the on-site natural gas network in Jandakot.

The Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) has come together with private sector infrastructure fund manager Infradebt to invest in smaller utility-scale renewable energy projects for community and commercial energy users. The move aims to close an investment gap for projects of 25 MW or less.

Fossil fuel giant Royal Dutch Shell has snapped up a 49% stake in one of the biggest Australian utility-scale solar developers furthering its expansion into the market.

Western Australia’s (WA) publicly-owned grid operator, Western Power, has announced its largest battery is on its way to Kalbarri. The battery, the biggest utility-scale battery ever to be connected to the Western grid network, departed from Perth today on its way north to the laid-back coastal town.