Installations

Makati-based Solar Philippines has said it saw the potential of solar six years and is now aiming to help other companies accelerate the nation’s energy transition.

With technological progress, falling costs, and favourable subsidies all incentivising Australian households to replace serviceable modules and upgrade their rooftop array, a stockpile of useable second-hand modules is mounting. But efforts to embrace reuse rather than refuse are taking shape.

Australian miner Northern Star Resources has partnered with independent power provider Nomadic Energy to more than triple the capacity of the solar farm at its Carosue Dam gold mining operation near Kalgoorlie in Western Australia.

Victoria’s Hobsons Bay City Council is powering ahead with plans to establish a virtual power plant, confirming the installation of a combined 4 MW rooftop solar PV system across more than 40 council-owned buildings has begun in earnest.

The system has dimensions of 834×417×1,766 mm and weighs 205 kg including the design panel. It achieves an electrical efficiency of 56% and can be connected with a hot water storage unit.

Converting all home appliances and cars to run on electricity could save Australian households $40 billion a year by 2028, according to a new report from thinktank Rewiring Australia, the work of Australian-American entrepreneur Saul Griffith.

Beyond curtailment of abundant solar and wind output lies a giant sponge of industrial need. Engie Impact is determined to connect the dots.

Australia’s module supply landscape could experience a supply shock as legislation looms to stamp out the use of forced labor. Chris O’Brien, Maxeon Solar Technologies VP for the APAC region says that the measures that have left modules stranded at the U.S. border could very well occur in Australia soon.

PV’s contribution to a cleaner future can go well beyond generating emissions-free energy, but maximising the opportunity is not always straightforward. Ragna Schmidt-Haupt, partner at Everoze and a board member at Skyray, argues that investors and lenders have to start making decisions today to fulfil the required disclosure regulations and make sure their fleet has a positive impact on biodiversity. The key challenge is to weigh the techno-economic-ecological risks, opportunities, costs and revenues.

The project includes a solar park coupled with what HDF Energy claims is the “largest green hydrogen storage of intermittent electricity sources” at 128 MWh. Importantly, the company also simultaneously announced expansion plans into Australia, saying its hydrogen technology will soon be available here, adding that it has “projects already in development for Australia”.