News

Iron ore mining giant Fortescue Metals Group has revealed ambitious plans to build one of the biggest renewable energy portfolios in the world, delivering more than 235 GW of renewable capacity, or five times the current capacity of Australia’s National Energy Market.

Energy management software company SwitchDin has urged operators in the Australian renewable energy market to work collaboratively as the decentralised generation model becomes increasingly dominant.

On Tuesday 13th October 2020 Queensland’s electricity spiked from approximately $25/MWh to $15,000/MWh (the current market price cap) in response to a tripping incident involving the constraint of 11 solar farms and one wind farm. The event is being seen as illustrative of just what needs to be addressed in the design of NEM 2.0.

It remains unclear why Chairman Jin Baofang was detained, but the company said its operations will not be affected. The Paper, a Chinese state-owned media outlet, reported that Jin’s detention might be connected to the fall of Liu Baohua, the formal deputy director of the National Energy Administration, which has also been under investigation by the anti-corruption authorities since mid-October.

In an Australian first, newly re-elected Premier of Queensland Annastacia Palaszczuk has established a ministry for hydrogen in her new government. The move comes amidst a raft of recent hydrogen related policies throughout Australia and reinforces the nation’s determination to lead the global race for a hydrogen economy.

Australia’s green bank has invested over $9.5 million into Sunman’s lightweight, flexible eArc panels, saying have the “potential to revolutionise Australia’s use of rooftop solar.”

A groundswell of support for renewable energy has swept across the nation and world in the past week with Joe Biden’s victory in the United States followed by the unveiling of the NSW government’s ambitious renewables roadmap and the tabling of independent Zali Steggall’s Climate Change Act. The shifting Zeitgeist coincides with analysis showing record high shares of renewables in the National Energy Network (NEM) are displacing fossil fuels, ultimately cutting the country’s emissions more than the Covid-19 pandemic.

Deakin University’s Hydrogen Test Bed is set to position regional Victoria at the cutting edge of hydrogen research. The facility and its research is looking to determine whether Australia’s current gas infrastructure can be repurposed for the use of clean hydrogen.

PV modules are being sold with ever longer warranties, but when modules underperform or fail, making claims on those warranties is rarely straightforward. So are the warranties worth the paper they’re written on? Where does this leave installers? And how can this liability be mitigated?

“We need a ‘deployment’ energy secretary,” Generate Capital President Jigar Shah said several years ago. “One who understands how entrepreneurs move from research to revenue. One who understands the difference between venture capital and project finance.”