Technology and R&D

A former car manufacturing site turn “innovation precinct” in Tonsely Adelaide is now home to one of Australia’s largest rooftop arrays at 4.83 MW. Completed by CleanPeak Energy, the system will supply around 75% of the energy needs of the 56 hectare site, with batteries set to arrive before summer.

Germany has launched the world’s first operational hydrogen trains and US researchers have presented a novel design for a tubular PEM fuel cell. ABB and Hydrogen Optimized, meanwhile, have expanded their strategic ties and Slovakia has moved forward with a major gas-blending pilot project.

A team of Australian researchers have developed a way to use rooftop solar PV to run air conditioners to pre-cool residential and commercial buildings. They have identified several factors that could help reduce a building’s energy costs.

The two will study the scaling and integration of fuel cell systems for stationary power generation.

Japanese researchers have developed a new way to improve water splitting, while South Korea has completed its largest hydrogen production complex. Scotland and England have announced new hydrogen investments, and Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power have agreed to collaborate on hydrogen projects.

South Australia’s Whyalla, the site of the state’s government-backed hydrogen hub, has begun producing a vital component used to make green steel: magnetite concentrate. The steelworks is owned by billionaire steel tycoon Sanjeev Gupta through his global company GFG Alliance. Gupta has described magnetite concentrate as “a critical enabler of our global green steel strategy.”

Modelling 5 to 10 GWh electrified containerships, researchers find that 40% of routes today could be electrified in an economically viable manner, before considering environmental costs.

New Zealand and Germany have partnered up to provide NZ$2 million (AU$1.8m) each to three green hydrogen research projects, including one to develop more efficient anion exchange membrane electrolysers which promise to be cheaper and more sustainable to manufacture.

Combining satellite images of Australian rooftops with those of real-time cloud cover to create accurate forecasts of distributed solar output for suburbs and perhaps even whole regions and states is the focus of a new Australian startup, Solstice AI. “We’re kind of at a point now where there’s so much solar that it’s causing all these issues but, if we can forecast it, many of these issues can be alleviated or managed much better,” the company’s cofounder and CEO, Julian de Hoog, tellspv magazine Australia.

Indian researchers have developed a new hybrid system featuring a conventional rooftop PV system, a solar tree, two gravity power modules for building (GPMBs), and a vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB), with power exclusively provided by the two solar installations.