Technology

Authorities have provided developer CWP Renewables with the tick of approval for what will be the first big battery in Australia to be added to an existing wind or solar farm with the same connection point in the National Electricity Market.

With Australia’s energy system rapidly transitioning from a traditional dependency on coal-fired power generation towards a future built on renewables, the market operator has detailed the engineering roadmap required for the country’s main power systems to operate on 100% renewable energy more frequently and for longer periods.

A holiday house in New South Wales is thought to be the first residential property in Australia to make the switch to a hybrid solar and green hydrogen standalone power system with network service provider Essential Energy trialling the off-grid technology.

In a decidedly confusing announcement, Swedish molten aluminium storage startup Azelio says it has secured a conditional order from relatively unknown Australian company MPG Built. Azelio says the order will see it provide “energy-as-a-service” using five of its TES.POD storage units combined with solar power.

A research group has developed a new methodology that shows PV systems located in the same area could have similar distributions of power ramps. Their three-step method could be used for the dimensioning of rooftop arrays and the scheduling of daily operations.

Omani researchers have compared the performance of PV and concentrated solar power (CSP) in terms of energy generation intensity and the effective use of land at low latitudes near the Tropic of Cancer. They described nine project typologies and ranked them with three different simulation tools.

An irrigation community has built a 786 kW floating solar array on a small water reservoir in Murcia, Spain. The facility will provide power for a solar water pumping system, a desalination unit, and the community itself.

The Australian Energy Market Operator has launched an online connections simulator designed to improve and accelerate the grid-connection process for new energy generation and storage projects in the National Electricity Market.

Renewable energy developer Neoen has inked a connection agreement with network operator ElectraNet which will allow for the first stage of its $3 billion (USD 2 billion) Goyder South project to connect to the grid in South Australia, paving the way for future wind, solar and battery storage opportunities at the site.

A research group led by Professor Martin Green has published Version 61 of the solar cell efficiency tables. The tables include a world record for a silicon heterojunction cell, announced by Longi earlier this week, as well as five more new results.