News

Western Australian energy storage company VSUN Energy has inked a deal with aspiring renewables developer North Harbour Clean Energy which will see the two companies collaborate on the development and installation of vanadium redox flow battery projects and vanadium electrolyte supply.

Australian liquor supermarket chain Dan Murphy’s has continued its deployment of rooftop solar PV as parent company Endeavour Group pursues its ambition to power all the of retailer’s more than 250 stores across the country with 100% renewable electricity by 2030.

The Australian arm of Philippines-based clean energy company AC Energy has commenced construction of a 50MW/50MWh battery energy storage system that will be connected to its 720MW New England Solar Farm being developed near Uralla in northern New South Wales.

The remarkable results of what is already being called a ‘historic’ 2022 Federal Election have put Australia “back on the map” in the eyes of big low-carbon investors.

Having warned of in-house solar wafer and cell capacity as recently as the third quarter of 2021, the company has announced it will be adding even more production lines this year.

The World Intellectual Property Organisation says China accounted for 69% of the patents filed for transport-related fuel-cell tech in 2020, with road transport significantly dominating applications.

Green Gravity, a startup proposing to use old mine shafts for gravitational energy storage, has raised $1.4 million in its first formal capital raise. The company, headed up by former BHP executive Mark Swinnerton, is now finalising its concept engineering in preparation for its demonstration plant. “I think we’re going to get the ‘and’ here,” Swinnerton told pv magazine Australia, referring to the technology’s potential to provide low cost firming (and more) by using yesterday’s infrastructure to solve today’s problem.

Researchers in Singapore have developed a new technique in which polycrystalline silicon is pulverised into powder and pelletised into ingots. The process relies on spark plasma sintering to dope the silicon with germanium and phosphorus.

German scientists have conducted a series of experiments on gallium-doped silicon solar cells to understand the causes of degradation in PV cells and modules treated with gallium rather than boron. They confirmed that the performance losses are caused by a bulk defect in the material, and found that the right combination of light and temperature can “heal” earlier damage and even lead to small improvements in overall cell efficiency.

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