Government pumps $11 million into new transmission line
The Federal Government has added a new element to the National Electricity Market (NEM) equation by announcing it will provide up to $11 million to help progress the CopperString 2.0 transmission project in Queensland.
A duck for coal generators in VIC as twin outages failed to register through strong solar
Two outages at coal fired power generators in Victoria last weekend failed to faze the energy market as strong solar uptake ensured wholesale prices actually fell into the negative despite major units going offline at the height of summer.
Complementary hybrid PV systems can reduce reliance on storage
Looking back over years of research into the topic of hybrid systems based on different combinations of solar, wind, hydro and other renewables, an international group of scientists found strong potential for strategies to exploit complementarity between the different sources integrate more intermittent renewables onto regional and national grids. The scientists present a series of conclusions and recommendations that aim to push research in hybrid renewables forward.
2020 Year in Review
Soon 2020 will only be a worry to future high-school history students. But when they ask us if anything good at all happened in 2020, remember this review and tell them that solar PV shone in the darkness. Despite the mess of it all, 2020 has been another good year for Australian solar. The industry has demonstrated resilience, and significant progress has been made in the fields of energy storage, green hydrogen and others.
Transmission Project declared ‘critical’ as NSW pushes ahead with first REZ
The Central West Orana Renewable Energy Zone (REZ) Transmission Project has been declared a ‘Critical State Significant Infrastructure’ project, with the New South Wales Government granting it priority status throughout the approvals process.
50 Megs more of distributed storage called for in WA’s south west
WA continues to work through its precise roadmap to manage the state’s vast distributed rooftop solar resources and enable further uptake of renewable generation. Pre-Christmas, Western Power is seeking to engage private enterprise in providing a value stack of storage services.
New research gauges Australia’s battery energy storage pipeline at 7 GW
New analysis from Cornwall Insight Australia has put Australia’s current battery energy storage pipeline at 7 GW. Of course, the vast majority of that projection is still firmly in the proposal phase, but the over 900 MW of energy storage thought to be developed by 2024 is still far in excess of AEMO’s ISP 2020 forecast, begging the question, how is the NEM going to fit it all in?
The future of power electronics is distributed, aggregated and service oriented
IHS Markit released a white paper in which the analyst outfit shared some predictions for the power electronics market. First and foremost, inverters will become smarter, and after some power outages in key markets, these devices are gearing up to take on more grid stabilising tasks, which hitherto had been reserved for synchronous generators.
Asian Development Bank provides more than $1bn finance for renewables power lines
The development lender has followed up a $600 million loan for distribution infrastructure in eastern Indonesia with a $430 million credit line for installations in India.
Victorian DER marketplace trial funded as grid integration blueprint
The Australian Energy Market Operator has received funding to develop a major Victorian Distributed Energy Resources marketplace in an Australia first trial.
