Markets

Perth-based mining giant Fortescue has fast tracked its zero emission goals through a $4 billion dollar battery-electric vehicle deal with Swiss company Liebherr and a joint venture to build a battery-electric locomotive, with Sydney-based engineering company Downer.

New data from the Clean Energy Regulator shows Australia is on course to add more than 7 GW of renewable energy generation capacity this year, almost double what was previously anticipated.

Australian manganese miner Element 25 has been granted $243 million by the United States government to support the development of a refining facility that will transform the metal into a battery-grade product.

The Australian government will in November open applications for a $50 million funding program that is to support the development of more diverse solar PV, hydrogen electrolyser and battery supply chains in the Indo-Pacific region.

It took eight years of field measurements for researchers at the RWTH Aachen University in Germany to estimate the usable capacity of home battery energy storage systems and develop a dataset covering 106 system years and 14 billion datapoints. Their key finding was that home battery systems lose about two to three percentage points of usable capacity per year on average, meaning good news for the industry as most warranties in the market can be met with the implementation of capacity reserves.

The Solomon Islands Renewable Energy Development Project will finance two solar farms and a utility-scale grid-connected energy storage system on the Solomon Islands. The Asian Development Bank, SAsian Development Bank and Solomon Power are all financing the project.

Queensland Hydro has announced more than $190 million in work packages linked to the construction of the 2 GW / 48 GWh Borumba pumped hydro energy storage project being developed near Gympie in the state’s southeast.

Genex Power has struck an offtake agreement with Queensland government-owned energy giant Stanwell Corporation that will underpin the development of the 775 MW first stage of the Bulli Creek solar and battery project planned for the state’s southeast.

This year’s UN Climate Change Conference could adopt a target to increase global energy storage capacity more than sixfold by 2030. To achieve this, the world would need to add more than 158 GW of energy-storage capacity annually.

Spanish-Japanese renewable energy company Univergy Solar and Australian partner New Energy Development have secured New South Wales government approval to build a 100 MW solar farm and 45 MW / 90 MWh battery energy storage system in the Yass Valley.