Markets & Policy

Solar manufacturer Jolywood, which supplied almost 500 MW of its bifacial tunnel oxide passivated contact panels for Oman’s Ibri II facility, has claimed the power plant is the biggest to date to deploy the high-efficiency technology.

The Australian Energy Market Commission has opted not to move “the goal posts on network charges” for energy storage projects, including large-scale batteries and pumped hydro, rejecting a request from the Australian Electricity Market Operator to exempt operators from being charged when drawing power.

Quality assurance and testing of solar farms is vital worldwide, but particularly in Australia where projects tend to be bigger and the climate more severe. Hugo Silva, Global Sales Manager at Enertis Applus+, takes a look at the different stages of testing and why they are an investment that will yield returns.

The Chinese manufacturer appears to have shouldered higher input costs in return for carving out a larger slice of the world’s biggest solar market – although it’s not clear from the company’s third-quarter update that CEO Xiande Li received the memo.

Western Australia has today announced the launch of its $35.5 million Virtual Power Plant trial, Project Symphony, which will examine the ways in which residents, utilities, and network operators can join forces to centrally orchestrate the output of rooftop solar, batteries and other distributed resources to best serve both customers and the grid at large.

Melbourne-based company Green Peak Energy has attracted the backing of one of the world’s largest investment firms, CBRE Investment Management. While deal’s details remain confidential, the Australian company, which focuses on operating renewable systems in the C&I segment and providing power purchasing agreements (PPAs), described the agreement as an endorsement of the problem it set out to solve.

German company sonnen, a wholly owned subsidiary of Shell, today launched a new residential battery storage system specifically developed for Australia and New Zealand. Chief Commercial Officer of sonnenGroup and Managing Director of sonnen Australia, Nathan Dunn, told pv magazine Australia its sonnenBatterie Evo is the culmination of a new approach and may go on to inform how its future products for global markets are developed.

Western Australia has become the second state to give network operators the capacity to remotely switch off residential solar systems as an emergency grid stability mechanism.

Geelong Port, one of Australia’s major ports southwest of Melbourne, today announced it will invest $100 million to establish a hydrogen hub in partnership with biomass gasification outfit CAC-H2.

Scientists in the United States pieced together data from hundreds of different sources, looking to establish the key factors that have led to consistently falling prices for lithium-ion technology since their commercialisation thirty years ago. They find that public-funded research, primarily in chemistry and materials science, has made the largest contribution to cost reduction. And they offer suggestions on policy and investment to ensure that the research can continue to make these important contributions to reduction in battery costs.