Residential PV

The Australian Energy Market Operator warns every Australian jurisdiction in the national grid could see electricity demand outstripping supply within the decade – though only if anticipated renewable projects do not come to fruition.

A team of Australian researchers have developed a way to use rooftop solar PV to run air conditioners to pre-cool residential and commercial buildings. They have identified several factors that could help reduce a building’s energy costs.

Construction has commenced on a $45 million grid-scale battery storage system that will support further uptake of solar PV among households and businesses in the Northern Territory and help the government achieve 50% penetration of renewables into its energy supply by 2030.

Combining satellite images of Australian rooftops with those of real-time cloud cover to create accurate forecasts of distributed solar output for suburbs and perhaps even whole regions and states is the focus of a new Australian startup, Solstice AI. “We’re kind of at a point now where there’s so much solar that it’s causing all these issues but, if we can forecast it, many of these issues can be alleviated or managed much better,” the company’s cofounder and CEO, Julian de Hoog, tellspv magazine Australia.

Indian researchers have developed a new hybrid system featuring a conventional rooftop PV system, a solar tree, two gravity power modules for building (GPMBs), and a vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB), with power exclusively provided by the two solar installations.

Australia has been provided with a glimpse of its renewable energy future with solar displacing coal as the number-one fuel source in the national electricity market for extended periods in recent days.

Australian module manufacturer Tindo Solar has unveiled a new solar panel based on M10 wafers for residential and business rooftop systems. The new addition to the company’s Karra range has a rated power of 410 W at 20.6% module efficiency and 23.1% cell efficiency.

Horizon Power, the state government owned electricity provider for much of regional Western Australia, is set to rollout energy management technology which integrates the utility’s assets with distributed energy resources. The technology, which uses predictive analytics, hopes to unlock access to renewables in the regions.

The latest modelling from Bloomberg senior clean energy analyst Rob Barnett indicates a 30% increase in global PV deployment this year, and double-digit growth through 2025.

India installed 12.3 GW of solar in the 12 months ending March 31, 2022. The nation is expected to add a record 20 GW in the current fiscal year.