Insurance

More than 300,000 residents in Queensland and northern New South Wales were left without power earlier this month after Cyclone Alfred battered the region, prompting Sydney-based infrastructure management solutions company Neara to say current energy models are no longer viable in an increasingly volatile climate.

Scientists have quantified the impact of wildfires on the availability of direct normal irradiance and global horizontal irradiance at the state, regional, and national levels in the United States. They have found that direct irradiance is more sensitive to smoke than the PV-relevant global horizontal irradiance.

With hailstorms in Australia and the United States severely damaging solar arrays – including “golf-ball sized” hail at the 350 MW Fighting Jays project in Texas in March 2024 – insurers are raising premiums and reducing or canceling hail coverage. Everoze Partner Simon Mason discusses the challenges the industry faces in minimising its hail risk exposure.

A New South Wales-based Agrivoltaics Resource Centre report reinforces utility-scale developments can successfully co-exist with agriculture but improvements to development application processes could pave the way for better project outcomes.

Lithium-ion batteries are generally safe and unlikely to fail but they can catch fire if they are damaged or stored or operated incorrectly. There is a tremendous amount of research and engineering effort going into making batteries safer but are technological advancements being rolled out quickly enough?

A worker is being treated in hospital for burns and police are investigating after an inverter burst into flames at the 30 MW Mannum Stage 2 solar farm being developed near the town of the same name in South Australia’s Riverland region.

A study by engineers at UNSW, published in the Renewable Energy journal, shows that aerosols and greenhouse gas emissions reduce the productivity of photovoltaic installations and that this differs according to the global region.  

Extreme weather is a growing risk to solar farms. Future-proofing through advanced technologies, leveraging data from novel sources, and by building both collaboration and acceptance of risk is vital, but rarely achieved today for a number of reasons. Insurers, lenders, developers, contractors and manufacturers come together here to discuss solutions to the intractable problem of weather risk.

Neoen’s Capital battery project in Canberra is facing significant delays due to connection compliance testing, with the company flagging potential for it to pursue damages from EPC contractor Doosan GridTech. The completed battery was expected to be operational in early 2023.

Amp Energy’s 150 MW / 300 MWh battery storage project in Bungama, north of Adelaide, has secured a grid connection agreement with South Australia’s grid operator and owner ElectraNet.