Energy Storage

The South Australian government is looking to extend its Home Battery Scheme subsidy of up to $6000 and low interest loans to rental properties, property developers and aged care facilities.

With the approval for a 176 MW solar farm and 66 MW battery storage facility near Murray Bridge, South Australia’s utility-scale wind and solar pipeline has reached some 10 GW.

The Northern Territory has given major project status to an ambitious plan to develop a 10 GW solar farm coupled with a 20-30 GWh storage facility near Tennant Creek and export solar power harvested in the Australian desert to Singapore via subsea cables.

The South Australian government has given its tick of approval for the development of a 5 MW/10 MWh compressed air energy storage facility, which will store excess solar and wind power at a closed underground mine.

Wholesale prices in the National Electricity Market have climbed significantly in recent years. The increase has coincided with a rapid increase in the proportion of electricity supplied by wind and solar generators. But that needn’t mean the increase in wind and solar generation caused the increase in prices. It might have been caused by other things.

A report published by New Zealand’s state-owned transmission grid operator Transpower finds the widespread uptake of distributed battery storage could play an important role in supporting the power system as rooftop PV and electric vehicles are increasingly adopted.

New research released this week by The Australia Institute shows that ‘time of use pricing’ (ToU) facilitated by smart meters is likely to drive up household energy costs by $429 a year on top of already high prices. Analysis of national electricity market data suggests that demand for electricity in Australia is very inelastic, which makes ToU more likely to increase the profits of electricity companies than to assist consumers. Households with solar PV and batteries, however, are best suited to cope with this type of pricing. 

Australia’s first large-scale project to use pumped hydro to store solar generated power, the Kidston facility in north Queensland, has landed a $610 million loan from the Federal Government’s the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF).

On the back of a combination of its industry-leading solar program and energy efficiencies, Vicinity Centers has announced a zero net carbon target by 2030 for its 34 shopping centers.

Under the right conditions, solar batteries are economically beneficial for South Australian homeowners and can pay for themselves off within the warranty period, a new research finds.