Markets & Policy

Australian natural gas and electricity company, APA Group, is set to build a 88 MW solar farm at Mica Creek in Mount Isa, central Queensland. The news just as APA was confirmed to have lost its bidding war for Victorian transmission network AusNet.

The fallout from the Woodside and McGowan government’s greenwashing of the former’s ‘H2Perth’ hydrogen and ammonia project announced last week continues, with Fortescue Future Industries and Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest making a mockery of Woodside on Twitter before announcing a massive green hydrogen deal in the United Kingdom for COP26.

It may just be an MOU, and there are no timeframes attached, but the agreement between two major emitters to continue and prioritise their development of green-processes for producing steel from iron ore bodes well for Australian manufacturing strength and marketability.

Overwhelmed by interest in its proposed Central-Orana Renewable Energy Zone and then in the New England REZ, the New South Wales Government has now opened the floodgates to the South-West.

The past 12 months have proved profitable for polysilicon manufacturers, as selling prices have soared to levels not seen since 2011. However, with major new capacity expansions on the horizon from most of the leading manufacturers, and new players planning to enter the scene, the market balance looks set to shift. Exawatt’s Alex Barrows rounds up where the industry stands and what might happen next.

Sujoy Ghosh, First Solar’s vice president for India and the Asia-Pacific region, speaks to pv magazine India’s Uma Gupta about the company’s plans to set up a 3.3 GW module fab in India to service the local market.

Owners of electric cars in South Australia will soon be charged for every kilometre they drive with the state government’s push to impose a tax on electric vehicles gathering speed with a Bill to allow the new road-user levy passed in the Upper House.

Israel-based Augwind has built its first 250 kW/1 MWh compressed air storage system for the collective community of Yahel, in the southern, desert part of the country. The commercial scale facility will be connected to a PV system and will be used for behind-the-meter services.

The input costs of the two biggest contributors to solar plant development expense have gone through the roof since the world began to come out of Covid-19 lockdowns, to leave project developers with some difficult choices.

The Tasmanian government is taking legal action against the owners of the Basslink Interconnector, seeking to recover more than $70 million owed because of a lengthy outage six years ago.