Technology

In many parts of the world, project developers and owners are increasingly looking to floating PV as the next long-term growth market in utility-scale solar. Gian Schelling, global business development manager for Hitachi Energy, says that PV-on-water can rise above the current challenges it faces by drawing on the lessons learned from offshore wind development.

Western Australia’s regional utility Western Power has confirmed plans to install another 4,000 standalone power systems across the state in the next 10 years after reaching a milestone in the rollout of the renewable energy units.

Progress on the $300 Eyre Peninsula Link transmission project in South Australia has hit a hurdle with the Communications, Electrical Plumbing Union issuing a statement saying it had shut down the construction due to “appalling” health and safety conditions.

Australia’s energy crisis affords it an intricate, if painful, look at exactly where and how our current electricity regulations no longer fit their purpose. According to analyst Gavin Dufty, now is the time to retrain our eyes on the prize: designing a new framework suitable for the future decentralised system. “But everybody needs to put their guns back in their holsters,” Dufty tells pv magazine Australia.

The Federal Energy Minister insists the Australian Energy Market Operator’s market intervention demonstrates that it is “more important than ever to manage the transition and get more energy into the system and more storage and transmission”.

The Tasmanian government is calling for registrations of interest from developers of new large-scale renewable generators and energy storage projects, and existing and proposed energy intensive load projects to participate in shaping the state’s first renewable energy zone.

A research group led by UNSW’s Professor Martin Green has published Version 60 of the Solar cell efficiency tables.

Western Australian developer Frontier Energy, a relatively new player in the renewable space, says preliminary findings from its green hydrogen study indicate it could be producing “significantly earlier than originally anticipated” from its Bristol Springs Solar Project, to be located south of Perth.

The Queensland government this morning confirmed it will not be changing solar feed in tariffs after Murdoch newspapers claimed a ‘sun tax’ was looming for the state. Meanwhile, New South Wales recommended upping feed in rates for solar households.

UK scientists have compared the performance of lithium-ion storage systems and vanadium redox flow batteries for a modeled 636 kW commercial PV system in southern California. They have found that both technologies, coupled with an oversized PV array, could achieve a levelised cost of electricity of less than US$0.22/kWh (AU$0.32/kWh), while offering a self-sufficiency ratio of 0.95.