Commercial & Industrial PV

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has briefed the National Party MPs on its recommendation to prematurely wind down taxpayer-funded incentives for sub-100kW solar systems by 2021.

Aevitas will design and construct a 3.6 MW solar PV array for Australia’s largest cotton producer. The Cubbie Solar Project will supply 40% of Cubbie’s electricity demand, during its peak ginning season between April and September.

An energy production and trading scheme designed for the Tonsley Innovation District in Adelaide will incorporate one of Australia’s largest rooftop solar arrays to provide energy to businesses and homes within the growing precinct.

The Tasmanian government is undertaking a review of the FiT support scheme, which it says will lower the cost of electricity for Tasmanian households and small businesses. With one of the state’s largest commercial solar PV projects commissioned yesterday, the government is edging towards its objective of making Tasmania’s electricity 100% renewable by 2022.

Canadian-owned gas network operator ATCO is developing a micro grid at its Jandakot facility, which will use solar power to produce hydrogen fuel. The Australian Renewable Energy Agency has committed $1.5 million to the project.

The Clean Energy Regulator (CER) has released figures showing that the number of small-scale renewable energy installs has passed the 3 million milestone, with rooftop solar accounting for 63% of the total.

Hybridization of power supply, through the inclusion of renewables, offers Australian mining companies the opportunity to score a significant “triple win” in the form of reduced cash operating costs, reduced fuel prices and reduced exposure to carbon risk.

With an unprecedented rollout of rooftop solar reaching 1.1 GW and around 700 MW of large-scale renewable energy projects completed and connected to the grid, last year was an important turning point for Australia’s clean energy industry, shows the Clean Energy Council in its latest report. However, seven times bigger capacity of utility-scale projects with financial support or under construction at the year’s end is poised to eclipse 2017.

The booming large scale and rooftop PV market in 2018 is providing many reasons to be optimistic about the future of solar under the Australian sun. In reflecting on his six-year tenure as CEO at ARENA, ahead of his departure in August, Ivor Frischknecht points to the role the agency has placed in bringing down the costs of large scale solar in Australia as ARENA’s greatest achievement.

Australian businesses are not waiting for lower power prices to fall. Instead, they are turning to roofop PV in record numbers, with a new report illustrating how C&I solar installations increased 60% from 2016 to 2017.