Energy Storage

Chemical engineers at the University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney have made a significant technological breakthrough in the development of green ammonia. The breakthrough could not only alter the global ammonia industry, but more easily use solar to produce green ammonia for export to countries like Japan and Germany instead of straight hydrogen.

Hydro Tasmania and buyers Macquarie Group and ERM Power have signed a ‘Virtual Storage’ deal which will see the pumped-hydro company sell the rights to its highest priced periods of ‘discharge’ and buying a fixed MW block of low-priced ‘charge’. The innovative contract is the product of the ARENA-funded Renewable Energy Hub.

A new report from Wood Mackenzie suggests costs of front-of-the-meter battery storage systems in the Asia Pacific region could decline by 30% by 2025. The declining costs are already having a palpable impact as 2021 has opened with a slew of large-scale battery project announcements.

After a rocky start the Victorian Labor Government’s ambitious Solar Homes program gets the rebate recipe right and celebrates a major milestone in the push to have 50% renewable energy in its grid by 2030.

Origin Energy has announced the progression of plans for a 700 MW megabattey with a dispatch duration of four hours at the site of its Eraring coal generator in the NSW Hunter region. The ageing Eraring Power Station is Australia’s largest, supplying approximately a quarter of NSW’s energy needs, and set to retire in 2032.

Newcastle Council operations may already be 100% powered by renewables, but the Hunter Region’s first mega storage asset, boasting 28 MW capacity, will support the entire region’s expanding green energy ambitions.

Soon 2020 will only be a worry to future high-school history students. But when they ask us if anything good at all happened in 2020, remember this review and tell them that solar PV shone in the darkness. Despite the mess of it all, 2020 has been another good year for Australian solar. The industry has demonstrated resilience, and significant progress has been made in the fields of energy storage, green hydrogen and others.

Vena Australia has reached financial close on its 100 MW and 150 MWh Wandoan South Big Battery thanks to ING Australia. The international bank is increasingly financing green energy projects but this is the first standalone battery project it has financed in the Asia Pacific. Vena Energy Australia says this phase is just the beginning of a project that is to feature 650 MW of solar PV and 450 MW of battery storage.

WA continues to work through its precise roadmap to manage the state’s vast distributed rooftop solar resources and enable further uptake of renewable generation. Pre-Christmas, Western Power is seeking to engage private enterprise in providing a value stack of storage services.

New analysis from Cornwall Insight Australia has put Australia’s current battery energy storage pipeline at 7 GW. Of course, the vast majority of that projection is still firmly in the proposal phase, but the over 900 MW of energy storage thought to be developed by 2024 is still far in excess of AEMO’s ISP 2020 forecast, begging the question, how is the NEM going to fit it all in?