Technology

Overwhelmed by interest in its proposed Central-Orana Renewable Energy Zone and then in the New England REZ, the New South Wales Government has now opened the floodgates to the South-West.

Israel-based Augwind has built its first 250 kW/1 MWh compressed air storage system for the collective community of Yahel, in the southern, desert part of the country. The commercial scale facility will be connected to a PV system and will be used for behind-the-meter services.

The ability of grid-scale batteries to provide fast frequency response and synthetic inertia services to the National Energy Market will be put to the test with infrastructure service provider Lumea confirming commissioning of the 50 MW/75 MWh Wallgrove Grid Battery in Western Sydney has commenced.

Some 90,000 individual solar panels will generate enough electricity to cover around 40% of the electricity used in two buildings for Google.

A number of Australian battery material recovery projects got off the ground this week, including the completion of Western Australian outfit Neometal’s battery recycling demonstration plant, a Queensland-Japanese joint venture studying the extraction of cobalt from copper tailings as well as the funding of Sydney-based startup Novalith.

Three companies are swapping out aluminium and glass in favour of plastic to save weight and add flexibility. We look at the pros and cons.

U.K.-based Gravitricity is planning to deploy its gravity-based energy storage solution at a decommissioned coal mine in Czechia. The project is part of a plan to commence a full-scale, 4-8 MW prototype scheme in a disused mine next year.

The record efficiency was obtained thanks to an interlayer placed between the electron-transporting layer and the perovskite layer, which eliminated the need for passivation. The cell was also able to retain around 90% of its initial efficiency after 500 hours under standard illumination.

Over recent years, the energy industry has been working hard to provide the structure and a regulatory framework for a market that recognises the value of coordinated demand response. Today marked the second wave — after the opening of the FCAS market in 2017 — of opportunity for organisations to trade their flexible electricity loads on the wholesale electricity market. The resulting efficiency gains are an important piece of the energy transition puzzle.

Underground hydrogen storage seems to be coming up a lot lately, and with the burgeoning hydrogen industry needing somewhere to store itself, it’s not hard to understand why. One of the countries with the best credentials for the future hydrogen economy is Australia. A newly published report has quantified the country’s “massive opportunity” for underground hydrogen storage.