Markets & Policy

Vector Powersmart has completed construction on New Zealand’s largest solar array, which is also, incidently, New Zealand’s largest floating solar array. The 1 MW system isn’t just floating around doing nothing though, it’s generating approximately a quarter of the Rosedale Wastewater Treatment Plant’s energy needs.

The Clean Energy Council has lambasted the Morrison Government’s Federal Budget 2020 as a missed opportunity for a widely popular renewable recovery effort. In fact, not only has the Morrison Government failed to fund Australia’s future, it has succeeded in funding the nation’s decaying past, including money for the controversial Vales Point coal-fired power station.

Despite weeks with a Morrison Government sponsored gas cloud overhead a silver lining has appeared in the form of SunDrive, an Australian startup which just received $3 million in ARENA funding to help scale its low-cost, high-efficiency solar cell and manufacturing process.

The iron and steel sector is the ‘world’s largest industrial source of climate pollution.’ This steel mill in Pueblo, Colorado, will be the first in North America to rely on solar power.

As some parts of Australia’s distribution networks threaten to blackout under the flow of rooftop solar exports, ARENA announces funding for a trial that will enable flexible exports in line with what the networks can bear. Smart software is the answer.

The Western Australian Government is expanding its battery of solar-smoothing energy storage systems, with a 100 MW BESS proposed to move into the site of the old fossil-fueled Kwinana power station 30 km south of Perth.

Researchers from the University of New South Wales have run the numbers, run them again, and then run them a third time to make triply sure. Australia’s solar resources and the rapidly falling costs of solar-powered hydrogen production mean that the future hydrogen economy is green whether the Morrison Government likes it or not.

ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr has promised that if ACT Labor is re-elected in October, his government will invest $100 million over the next five years toward the construction of a 250 MW citywide battery network. A battery of that size is unprecedented but certainly achievable, and every Canberran can take part.

Green Gold Energy has proposed a 185 MW and a 120 MW solar farm within 50km of each other at the South Australian end of the to-be-constructed SA-NSW Interconnector.

Doubling down on renewable energy investment and energy transition spending is required to ensure a truly green global recovery from the Covid-19 crisis and its economic aftershock, claims the International Renewable Energy Agency.