Markets & Policy

French company Neoen has seen its storage revenue “more than tripled” as a result of its recently commissioned Victorian Big Battery coupled with Australia’s energy crisis. In other news, the company signed a 10 year power offtake agreement with Flow Power for its “flagship” Goyder Renewables Zone project in South Australia.

Australian mining technology company TNG Limited, which owns the world’s most advanced vanadium project – the Mount Peake Project in the Northern Territory, is having its leadership team formally challenged by a shareholder campaign criticising the project’s setbacks and slow progression.

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.

The Northern Territory is set to install its first hydrogen energy storage system as part of a pilot being operated by the Charles Darwin University in Darwin.

Australian hydrogen tech company Hysata has raised over $40 million in funding, attracting backing from major institutional players including CEFC, Hostplus and Bluescope. Hysata is seeking to commercialise a breakthrough made at the University of Wollongong which CEO Paul Barrett describes as “brand new category of electrolyser” with 95% system efficiency.

Wood Mackenzie places Australia fourth on its list of the globe’s top 10 storage markets, coming in just behind Germany, with the US and China unsurprisingly topping the list. The analyst expects the world’s cumulative storage deployments to reach 500 GW by 2031, according to its Global Energy Storage Outlook released today.

West Australian natural hydrogen startup H2EX will work with Australia’s national science agency, the CSIRO, to study natural hydrogen systems in South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula, describing the research as a “pivotal first step” for the nascent industry. Natural hydrogen proponents believe projects could deliver some of the world’s cheapest hydrogen quickly and with a minimal footprint.

New research from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) predicts cumulative polysilicon demand of 46-87 Mt will be required to achieve 63.4 TW of PV installed by 2050.

The 2022 pv magazine Roundtables Europe focused on decarbonization throughout the continent. Linking sustainability to financial performance is a big part of this goal, as the second session, “Sustainability in action, raising the corporate bar,” attested to. During the panel discussion, four experts discussed end of life, circularity, material supply, project development, and the social community, as we approach terawatt solar scale.

The Australian Energy Market Operator has declared skyrocketing power prices and unprecedented market disruptions have confirmed the “urgent” need for the nation to fast-track its transition from a coal-dominated system to renewables, including wind and solar PV backed by batteries and other energy storage technologies.