News

A snapshot of how politicians, scientists, institutions, industry, and civil servants have reacted to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, released yesterday.

The Victorian government has given the green light to a utility-scale solar farm north of Shepparton and released draft planning guidelines for the development of large solar farm projects across the state.

As part of its electricity market reforms, the Northern Territory’s government has announced plans to review its solar feed-in tariffs in order to encourage the existing solar households to add battery storage. It has also greenlit the 25 MW Katherine solar park, the state’s largest solar PV farm to date.

In addition to securing debt financing from a consortium of banks, the Australian-Chinese renewables developer has entered into a long-term equity partnership with global infrastructure investor John Laing for the investment and development of the Sunraysia Solar Farm. John Laing confirmed it will invest $108.6 million in the project, taking a 90.1% stake.

The Asian Renewable Energy Hub’s generation capacity has been boosted from 9 GW to 11 GW, as Macquarie Group has pledged to invest in the project that aims to export power to South East Asia, as well as supply big miners and green hydrogen projects in the Pilbara region, Western Australia.

A new report published by business consultants Frost & Sullivan expects around 90 GW of new solar installations by the end of 2018, in line with the predictions of other leading analysts. It further notes that PV remains the world leader in renewable energy capacity, and that markets are moving away from feed-in tariffs to make increasing use of auction models and private PPAs.

The All-Energy Australia 2018 exhibition & conference kicked off in Melbourne today. Safety of products and quality assurance was prominent in discussions at the country’s largest PV conference and trade show in its early hours. Big funding announcements at the opening plenary made headlines.

The Clean Energy Regulator says that around half of the six million modules expected to be installed on Australian rooftops this year will be covered by its new Solar Panel Validation scheme. The agency’s General Manager of the SRES program Michelle Crosbie spoke to pv magazine Australia about the program and the “full suite” of tools at the regulator’s disposal when it comes to compliance under the SRES. 

Owing to its state-based renewable energy initiatives, Victoria is in the box seat to create more than 6,000 jobs annually, shows a new analysis released by Green Energy Markets. Overall, renewable energy generation managed to exceed 25% of power supply for the first time across Australia’s main grids.   

With the first Quality Roundtable Australia set to kick off tomorrow at All Energy, Aaron Zadeh, Product Marketing Manager – Utility Solar at ABB sets out how advanced project simulation monitoring can avoid costly issues before they become a problem.