Strategic Alliances

Hydrogen offers so much potential to decarbonise industry and transport, and the race is on to resolve the complexities of cost and supply. How can German-Australian collaboration integrate existing and emerging technologies for accelerated outcomes?

A West Australian vanadium explorer, Technology Metals, has signed an agreement with a prominent Japanese company to explore the possibility of manufacturing vanadium electrolyte in Australia – a key component of the increasingly popular vanadium redox flow batteries.

This annual 1.8 GWh of green power came out of a long-nurtured passion project, and can now provide a successful template for other community groups to think big in their renewable energy aspirations.

All of BP’s service stations in New South Wales will be fuelled entirely by solar energy after Lightsource BP signed a power purchasing agreement with Snowy Hydro allowing it to move ahead with its 107 MWdc solar farm in the Riverina Region of New South Wales.

Blue NRG, a business-only electricity retailer, has decided to partner with Melbourne-based energy management platform carbontrack in a union that Spiros Livadaras, carbontrack’s Managing Director, admits is somewhat surprising. “Obviously people are saying, why would a retailer join forces with an energy management technology company that helps them reduce their energy consumption – it’s kind of counterintuitive,” he told pv magazine Australia.

Australian battery casing company, Vaulta, has signed a memorandum of understanding with Quickstep, an Australian aerospace composites manufacturer, to develop smarter technology for renewables. The partnership will likely explore integrating battery casing technology that reduces the number of parts needed to house the batteries in electric vehicles.

In what is believed to be a Victorian first, CitiPower and Yarra Energy Foundation will parter to create a community battery network in the Melbourne CBD and inner-city suburbs.

Hydro Tasmania and buyers Macquarie Group and ERM Power have signed a ‘Virtual Storage’ deal which will see the pumped-hydro company sell the rights to its highest priced periods of ‘discharge’ and buying a fixed MW block of low-priced ‘charge’. The innovative contract is the product of the ARENA-funded Renewable Energy Hub.

As the Smart Energy Council prepares to rollout the first pilot of its green hydrogen certification scheme, CEO John Grimes and consultant Scott Hamilton detailed the international discussions informing its architecture and what’s at stake for Australia’s export future.

The Australian Smart Energy Council and the German Energy Agency, dena, will work together to develop a scheme to certify renewable hydrogen and carbon neutral powerfuels.