Markets & Policy

Moving with Australia’s Zeitgeist, Stuart Parry, managing director of Energy Storage Industries, is working to bring battery manufacturing onto Australian shores – and his approach is, if not novel, certainly well advanced. “It’s about being smart in how we do it,” Parry tells pv magazine Australia.

Two of Australia’s key mechanisms for delivering the country to its climate commitments went into review in 2022 with the change of federal government. Australia’s carbon credit scheme and its Safeguard Mechanism, which aims to drive down emissions from Australia’s biggest polluters, are both inextricably linked and infuriatingly opaque. With those reviews to be handed down shortly, pv magazine Australia offers a brief recap on where we’re at.

IREC’s handbook contains energy storage installation codes, hardware standard, and lithium-ion risk mitigation tools.

Ranking the world’s largest producers of solar energy based on the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2022.

Boundary Power, a union between West Australian standalone power system (SAPS) leader Horizon Power and Ampcontrol, has installed its first off-grid system for an unnamed east coast utility in regional New South Wales.

Chinese battery maker Hithium and Australian solar developer Sun Valley HK Group have agreed to work together on eight solar farms either under construction or in planning in Australia, presumably deploying Hithium batteries at the sites.

The cost of megaprojects is becoming increasingly difficult to estimate, which is causing budget blow outs. Analysis by the Grattan Institute shows that governments in Australia spent $34 billion more on transport infrastructure than first estimated, and that there was a 21% total cost blowout of $20 million-plus projects in the past 20 years. This is a strong example of the need for chief financial officers (CFOs) to participate in managing the cost of inflation through improved communication with stakeholders across supply channels.

Renewable energy developer Lightsource bp will begin full construction activities on two large-scale solar projects with a combined installed capacity of 515 MWdc in Australia after successfully closing a $540 million (USD 365 million) financing package.

Another of the coordinated clean energy zones planned for New South Wales is a step closer to being developed with the state government announcing the Hunter-Central Coast Renewable Energy Zone, which has already attracted expressions of interest for almost 40 GW of generation, has been formally declared.

Australian technology start-up Infravision will team with New South Wales network operator Transgrid in a trial of a “next generation” line-monitoring system designed to optimise the performance of existing electrical transmission infrastructure and support the roll out of more renewable energy.