Technology

Ongoing innovation in PV cell technology will have major impacts as solar is deployed at a “multi-terawatt scale” over the next two decades, according to a global team of scientists.

Italian researchers have compared the performance of hydrogen and electric buses in northern Italy. Meanwhile, Australian company Worley has collaborated with Princeton University to devise a 10-point action plan for Europe’s renewable hydrogen sector.

Smart meter reform recommendations have been handed down by the Australian Energy Market Commission, which advised accelerating the national rollout and introducing a mandate for customers to have free access to their real-time data. Reaching 100% penetration by 2030 would provide $507 million (USD 328 million) net benefit value to the NEM, the Commission’s review found.

A German consumer protection association, Verbraucherzentrale NRW, has issued a warning about five misleading assumptions about PV-linked residential battery systems.

Jaguar Land Rover and Wykes Engineering are building a 2.5 MWh storage system with electric-vehicle batteries taken from Jaguar I-PACE cars. The large-scale system will store wind and solar at an undisclosed location in the United Kingdom.

Australia continues to rank poorly for investment in science and research, spending just 1.68% of its GDP – well below the OECD average. This underinvestment is a growing problem for the clean energy industry, with fellow nations actively poaching innovations to capture future manufacturing markets.

Australia’s federal government has allocated $3 billion (USD 1.93 billion) from its Rewiring the Nation program to upgrade Western Australia’s two islanded grids, which lag the eastern states in their renewable energy share.

Researchers in Morocco have created a new energy management system that allows the combination of rooftop PV with gravity storage. The proposed system is reportedly able to perform smart energy distribution within a household while also lowering electricity costs.

Researchers at Edith Cowan University have redesigned zinc-air batteries to an extent where the team’s study found the technology to be preferable to lithium-ion batteries, even for electric vehicles.

Queensland iron flow battery company Energy Storage Industries is delivering 1 MW/10 MWh of flow battery energy storage to Queensland’s Stanwell Power Station just outside of Rockhampton. The flow batteries are part of a new government-run clean energy testing ‘hub’ at Rockhampton, which will also include hydrogen and workforce training programs.