Opinion & Analysis

Solar power is now the cheapest source of electricity in history, according to a 2020 report by the International Energy Agency. But there’s something holding this clean energy powerhouse back: space.

Annual battery storage installations will exceed 10 GW/28 GWh in 2021, following a particularly strong year in 2020, despite the challenges created by the global pandemic, writes IHS Markit analyst Mike Longson. Combined solar and storage will be a core focus for new deployment in 2021, as the front-of-the-meter and behind-the-meter energy storage markets are both expected to grow significantly in the months ahead.

It’s come to this. The Australian Energy Markets Commission has produced a draft decision that will make households and small business with solar panels pay to inject their surplus production into the grid.

840 million people still don’t have access to electricity today, according to the World Bank. But the radical decrease in the cost of the green technologies of solar and battery storage provides an unparalleled opportunity to close this gap and achieve universal electricity access by 2030.

Over 2,000 MW – or around 55% – of South Australia’s firm supply capacity was unavailable on March 12, 2021, along with virtually all of its large-scale renewable supply (a further 1,800 MW or so) but the lights stayed on – just.

It has now been over a year since City of Newcastle made the switch to a 100% renewable electricity supply contract, as one of the first Local Governments in Australia to do so. For those that love energy data, it tells an interesting tale.

Last month, the Australian Energy Market Operator imposed new obligations on utility-scale project developers in the National Electricity Market. These new obligations attend to the test requirements for simulation models in grid connection. Tony Morton, global technical head for power systems at Vysus Group, argues that these new requirements put a lot more work on project developers, but should provide greater certainty.

Given the huge opportunities crowdfunding presents, we argue that Indonesia could resort to this strategy to fund green projects and help overcome the country’s stalled development of renewable energy.

Renewable energy capacity in Australia is expected to double, or even triple, over the next 20 years. There is one oft-overlooked question in this transition: where will it all be built?

Less than two decades ago, South Australia generated all its electricity from fossil fuels. Last year, renewables provided a whopping 60% of the state’s electricity supply. The remarkable progress came as national climate policy was gripped by paralysis – so how did it happen?