Sustainability

In a move which is sure to pan out well for Granny Smith gold mine in Western Australia, Aggreko has installed one of Australia’s largest renewable energy microgrids comprising 7.7 MWp of solar energy generation which will integrate with the site’s existing power station. pv magazine sat down with Aggreko’s Managing Director of Microgrids and Storage solutions, Karim Wazni, to discuss how microgrids and energy storage can help transition Australia’s resource sector.

Sustainability-linked debt financing is experiencing ever increasing popularity and the success of green bonds has driven other products linked to social performance and other sustainability criteria. The total volume of such investments to date passed the $2 trillion point this year.

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.

Solar and energy storage play an essential role in Project Gilghi, an off-grid water security innovation that has the potential to help a great many Australians, particularly Indigenous Australians, and people around the world who are struggling with poor access to potable water and sanitation.

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.

Built in Gangba County, in Xigaze, Tibet, the 40 MW/193 MWh facility was deployed at more than 4,700m above sea level and is functioning as a demonstration project for the ancillary services the technology could offer the Tibetan grid.

The CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, has signed a 10-year PPA with Ross Garnaut’s Zen Energy. The deal will see solar energy from the Nurmurkah Solar Farm and the Nevertire Solar Farm halve the agency’s emissions.

South Australia’s new solar installation regulations came into effect on September 28. The regulations, designed to better manage a distributed energy system, are thought rushed by some in the industry, but ultimately they should facilitate more solar integration.

Over 500 separate protests, many of them virtual, took place on Friday as students and young Australians across the country again demonstrated their determination in the face of an inveterate Federal Government. Due to the restrictions of Covid-19, many of the protests took on imaginative shapes.

Once upon a recent time, installing and extracting value from solar PV installed on commercial rooftops was viewed as extremely complex. Innovators such as Energy Action have been smoothing the experience, such that now you can almost just sit back and watch it happen…