Research

A study of the investment and innovation needed to achieve the European Green Deal’s aviation ambitions has highlighted the key role that synthetic fuel can play until hydrogen and electric flights become a reality.

Plans to build one of the world’s largest renewable energy powered electrolysers in Queensland continue to gather pace with the Australian Renewable Energy Agency awarding $13.7 million (USD 8.8 million) to the proponents of the project to help finance a $38 million front-end engineering and design study.

Smart technology that controls energy flow on power grids could soon be the norm in the Northern Territory with a trial launched in the outback town of Alice Springs that will test the economic and energy efficiency of a rooftop solar-driven virtual power plant.

Researchers in Egypt have developed a synthesis method that uses the high microwave absorbance of silicon carbide content in rice straw ash and takes just 60 seconds to produce sodium iron phosphates-carbon nanocomposites (NaFePO4-C), which can be used as sodium ion battery cathodes and as symmetric supercapacitors.

Multiple factors affect the productive lifespan of a residential solar panel. In the first part of this series, we look at the solar panels themselves.

Renewables developer Bright Energy Investments has reported positive signs after launching a sheep grazing trial to replace mechanical methods of maintaining vegetation growth at the 40 MW Greenough River Solar Farm in Western Australia’s mid-west.

Australia’s car manufacturing industry could be restarted as the federal government considers ways to increase the affordability, supply and uptake of electric vehicle technologies.

An international group of researchers has demonstrated an aqueous zinc battery with excellent performance in terms of capacity, rate capability, specific energy, and output voltage. The supercapacitor-battery hybrid device has also shown unprecedented cycling stability 99.2% capacity retention after 17,000 cycles at 100% depth of discharge.

Google will be using Australian company Enosi’s technology to trace its energy use in Sydney, part of its journey towards time matched renewables – a far more ambitious and globally favoured standard.

Researchers in the United Kingdom have developed a new method of extracting silver and aluminium from end-of-life PV cells using iron chloride and aluminium chloride dissolved in brines. According to the research team, the cheap solvents retrieve up to 95% of the metals within 10 minutes, achieving a 98% purity of silver chloride.