Grids & Integration

Tasmania’s ambitions of becoming the Battery of the Nation improve after early reports on the proposed Marinus Link, a second interconnector between Tasmania and Victoria, show the project’s economic advantages far outweigh expected costs.

The release of AEMO’s 2019/20 Summer Readiness Report has set the scene for another summer of excessive heat and risk for the grid. However, AEMO has stressed the importance of the influx of solar PV to the grid.

The 90 MW West Wyalong Solar Farm has become the latest addition to the swelling solar PV pipeline in the Riverina region having secured the NSW Government’s approval.

Yates Electrical Services, through its newly-formed retail arm YES Energy, is using automatic dispatching technology on its 40 MW solar fleet to avoid export during periods of negative prices. German monitoring provider Meteocontrol has introduced its new Remote Power Control feature to Australia, with YES Energy reporting that it has allowed it to “seamlessly” curtail production when required.

A $280 million meat production recently unveiled by Hilton Foods Australia in south-east Queensland, is sporting one of the country’s biggest rooftop solar arrays.

The national science agency, CSIRO, has mapped the critical research steps Australia must take to realise a potential 7600 jobs and $11 billion a year by 2050 from the burgeoning hydrogen industry.

The transformation of South Australia’s energy system has taken another step forward with early site works at a green hydrogen facility near Adelaide. The plant will integrate what is billed as Australia’s biggest electrolyser of its kind.

Adelaide-based energy storage specialist 1414 Degrees has announced plans to acquire SolarReserve Australia II, which owns the Aurora Solar Energy Project in South Australia and two solar sites in New South Wales. The company proposes to use the Aurora site to build a massive 400 MW solar farm with progressive thermal storage capacity to several thousand MWh.

Western Australia’s South West has attracted the interest of Melbourne-based developer South Energy, which has proposed two utility-scale solar projects for the region. One has already secured development approval, while the other one will be discussed next week.

A survey run by the Clean Energy Council shows confidence in new clean energy investment continued to weaken over the past six months. While a big majority of industry representatives expect to hire more staff in the next 12 months, the biggest challenges to developing new projects remain unchanged with grid connection process and technical requirements and policy uncertainty at the top of their list of concerns.