News

The worst effects of the pandemic may have passed, but supply chain disruptions continue to be felt across the world. The effects of the war in Ukraine are also evident to all of us in our daily lives, from commodities to energy, food supply chains and beyond. The disruption in the battery energy storage system (BESS) supply chain is no different, writes Cormac O’Laoire, senior manager of market intelligence at Clean Energy Associates. Indeed, as the cost of raw materials such as lithium climb, battery prices are being driven materially higher, on some accounts by 20% to 30%, rendering some projects uneconomical.

Australian green hydrogen developer Fortescue Future Industries and Italian gas and electricity giant Enel are set to partner on making green hydrogen cost-competitive with fossil fuel alternatives this decade.

French renewables developer Neoen has credited the Victorian Big Battery with almost tripling its storage revenues in the first nine months of 2022. To September, the company’s revenues totalled $547 million (USD 347.4 million), with growth in solar and wind revenues paling beside the massive surge from battery storage.

The New South Wales government has formally declared the state’s third Renewable Energy Zone (REZ). The South West REZ, as its called, is centred around the towns of Hay and Balranald in the state’s western Riverina region, with initial expressions of interest in the zone attracting up to 34 GW of generation proposals – more than 13 times the intended capacity of 2.5 GW.

Western Australia’s largest virtual power plant, the government-support Project Symphony, is live. The project is particularly noteworthy for its introduction of new markets to reward different services and its use of Dynamic Operating Envelopes.

While not one of the big five-year-cycle COPs like Paris or Glasgow, COP27 is still hugely important, write Wood Mackenzie analysts. The fallout from the conflict in Ukraine has tilted the precarious balance of the energy trilemma – sustainability; affordability; security – towards the latter. But despite this temporary setback, some progress should still be possible.

Australian headquartered mining giant BHP has signed a 70 MW baseload renewable energy contract with Neoen to meet 50% of its Olympic Dam mine operations in South Australia.

Longi has launched a series of modules featuring an all-new hybrid passivated back contact cell technology, with which it claims a maximum module efficiency of 22.8% in mass production. It will initially offer the modules in 54, 60, 66 and 72 cell formats, targeting rooftop and distributed generation applications.

US-based Erthos announced a 14 MW portfolio of earth-mount solar PV projects under contract along with a memorandum of understanding for a 107 MW project.

If the hydrogen economy was fuelled by announcements, it would be booming. In reality, little has come to operational fruition yet. More alarmingly, there is a complete “void of activity” in the Australia’s crucial early stage industry development, BayWa r.e. Australia’s Dr James Hamilton tells pv magazine Australia. “We’ve got a lot of ground to make up and if we don’t acknowledge that, we’re not going to make that ground.”