Markets & Policy

Australia’s first commercial-scale manufacturing plant for grid-scale, long-duration batteries being built by Energy Storage Industries Asia Pacific has received a $65 million boost through Queensland government and private investment.

New data from the Clean Energy Regulator shows Australia is on course to add more than 7 GW of renewable energy generation capacity this year, almost double what was previously anticipated.

A New South Wales-based Agrivoltaics Resource Centre report reinforces utility-scale developments can successfully co-exist with agriculture but improvements to development application processes could pave the way for better project outcomes.

Australian manganese miner Element 25 has been granted $243 million by the United States government to support the development of a refining facility that will transform the metal into a battery-grade product.

Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners has tapped United States-headquartered energy equipment manufacturer GE Vernova to deliver an integrated battery energy storage system solution for the 250 MW / 1,000 MWh second stage of its Supernode project being developed in southeast Queensland.

The Australian government will in November open applications for a $50 million funding program that is to support the development of more diverse solar PV, hydrogen electrolyser and battery supply chains in the Indo-Pacific region.

Chinese solar giant Trina Solar has unveiled plans for a 660 MW / 2,640 MWh battery energy storage facility in Western Australia that it says will enhance grid stability and support the state’s increasing renewable energy demands.

The International Energy Agency’s latest report warns that failing to support integration at the point of deployment could jeopardise up to 15% of solar and wind projects by 2030. This shortfall would reduce their combined share of the global electricity mix by 5%.

In a laboratory setting, researchers from two Sydney-based universities are working to dramatically reduce time to anneal pervoskite cells, paving the way to replace toxic disposable battery sensors with a sustainable power source.

It took eight years of field measurements for researchers at the RWTH Aachen University in Germany to estimate the usable capacity of home battery energy storage systems and develop a dataset covering 106 system years and 14 billion datapoints. Their key finding was that home battery systems lose about two to three percentage points of usable capacity per year on average, meaning good news for the industry as most warranties in the market can be met with the implementation of capacity reserves.