Installations

Iconic Australian beer Victoria Bitter has partnered with Diamond Energy and Power Ledger to develop Solar Exchange, a blockchain-enabled platform that allows residential PV owners to exchange their excess solar for cases of beer. This is not an April Fool’s prank, miracles do happen, stay calm and exchange your excess solar for slabs!

A 1.2 MWp installation featuring more than 4,500 solar panels has sheltered a berry crop from high temperatures and damp to strengthen the claims made by agrivoltaics companies that their systems can offer climate change mitigation as well as clean energy.

Two recent studies have separately shown that many scenarios assessing global decarbonization pathways are still predicting too-low future PV capacity and too-high LCOEs for the solar technology. The researchers analyzed scenarios provided by scientific researchers, government bodies and non-governmental organizations, including the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the European Commission, the Indian government, the International Energy Agency (IEA), and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), among others.

New research shows renewables plus batteries would be able to offer Australia’s electricity grid the same energy security as coal and gas generators, leading to calls for regulatory changes.

AGL Energy has been remarkably busy in recent months trying to make itself look like a giant ship on the turn in the energy transition and not the Ever Given cargo ship stuck in the old sands of time. Now, AGL has announced plans to partition itself into two separate businesses which it says will provide them with the freedom to pursue their own agendas, but not everyone is convinced.

At AGL Energy’s Investor Day the energy giant revealed plans for a potential floating solar project on the site of its Loy Yang power station in Victoria. AGL, which is currently in the application process for a 200 MW battery at the site and is already producing brown hydrogen for export to Japan, is looking to leverage unused space to reduce emissions.

The German company expects to roll out its in-house proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysis technology to implement a gigawatt production of electrolyzers. BP partners with UK gas distributor Northern Gas Networks (NGN) to develop blue hydrogen and Saudi Aramco teams up with Hyundai Heavy Industries to do the same. Italy’s Snam wants to build hydrogen projects in the United Arab Emirates.

The new, Tiger Pro 54HC panel is based on a 182mm, 54-cell design and exhibits an efficiency of up to 21.3%. The manufacturer claims the new product is particularly suitable for residential projects in high snow or high wind load areas.

The Clean Energy Council has released its annual Clean Energy Australia report, revealing a string of smashed records, as states, territories and businesses continue to ramp up renewable ambitions.

Who says size doesn’t matter? The talk of the solar industry town at the moment is the increasing module size. Trina Solar is right in the thick of this revolution with the release of several larger format modules back-to-back in recent months. As pv magazine Australia gets ready to host a webinar with Trina Solar Australia this coming Thursday, we sat down with one of the company’s APAC directors, Andrew Gilhooly, to talk shop.