News

The Australian Alliance for Energy Productivity (A2EP) has released a free, online estimation tool to aid Australian businesses in sizing heat pumps to replace gas boilers. The tool estimates the capex, opex, net savings, and payback time based on inputs about heating, cooling, location, and temperature requirements.

An international consortium led by Israel’s Al-Zahrawi Society has launched the Regace project to develop agrivoltaic solutions for greenhouses. It will investigate the performance of a new tracking system across locations and climates and use carbon dioxide enrichment to improve crop yield.

Cabonne Shire Council in New South Wales is the latest of Australia’s local governments looking to latch onto the benefits of solar power, announcing it will develop a 4 MW solar farm and energy storage system to help slash its energy bills.

UK-headquartered fund manager Glennmont Partners has its sights firmly set on the Australian renewable energy market after announcing it plans to acquire, build and operate a portfolio of large-scale solar farms and energy storage assets as part of a $145 million (USD 100 million) strategy.

Energy Australia has been convicted and fined a total of $1.5 million (USD 1.04 million) following the tragic death of a worker at the Yallourn power station in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley.

Renewable energy developer Vast Solar will progress plans to deliver Australia’s first commercial-scale concentrated solar power plant after securing financial backing from the federal government to build a 30 MW/288 MWh facility near Port Augusta in South Australia.

Enerpoly produces low-cost, low-maintenance zinc-ion battery storage systems for durations of two to 10 hours. The Swedish battery specialist now plans to develop prototypes of a residential plug-in storage system with rechargeable zinc batteries in Europe, under an EU-funded collaborative project with Austrian startup EET.

Finnish researchers have proposed the use of solar, wind, and storage to provide desalinated seawater to restore forests. Their model predicts that an additional 10.7 TW of PV would be needed to actually do this by 2100, leading to a cumulative carbon dioxide sequestration potential of 730 gigatonnes.

A surge of community battery trials in Australia is seeking to make better use of the country’s vast distributed solar resource. But the results so far have battered expectations. pv magazine Australia’s Natalie Filatoff and Bella Peacock explore the motivations, challenges, and outlook for sharing and monetising solar rooftop riches.

Network operator Essential Energy has installed its first grid-scale battery energy storage system on the New South Wales electricity network as part of a “critical” trial designed to allow more renewable energy into the grid and drive better network utilisation.