News

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.”

An Israeli scientist has proposed a way to achieve uninterrupted PV power on the moon without using energy storage. The proposal involves the installation of PV panels around a 360-degree latitudinal ring close to one of the moon’s poles. There would be no inter-array shading, and static vertical PV arrays and arrays mounted on single-axis vertical trackers could be viable mounting structures.

US scientists recently put different bifacial solar cells and modules through a series of tests at elevated temperature, humidity, voltage and mechanical stress levels. The tests revealed a range of light-induced and potential-induced degradation mechanisms that modules will likely suffer in the field.

Australia’s two dominant tracker companies, Nextracker and Array Technologies, are launching terrain following products which the companies claim mitigate, sometimes even eliminate, the need for earthworks on site, opening up a host of previously unsuitable land for solar. Nextracker has just completed its first terrain-following project in Australia, with Array Technologies’ line set for delivery in the second half of 2023.

“Australia’s critical minerals are at the centre of an important moment in history which could dictate the shape of the world that we will live in for the next century,” federal resources minister Madeleine King told the Rare Earth Conference in Canberra. With the strategy to grow critical mineral supply chains between Australia and the US gaining momentum, this concept of “friendshoring” was in the spotlight at All Energy 2022.

Bolt-in electric vehicle kits in Australia have just got a leg up, with Melbourne startup Jaunt Motors joining forces with UK company Zero EV to operate a new, larger scale business to have production facilities and operations across Australia, the UK and, “very soon,” the US.

In an unexpected move, the government of Thailand has introduced a feed-in-tariff (FIT) of $0.090 (THB 2.1679)/kWh over 25 years for solar and a 25-year FIT of THB $0.075 (THB 2.8331)/kWh for solar plus storage.