Australia

Australian energy major AGL’s plan to split the company in two are in jeopardy with software billionaire and climate activist Mike Cannon-Brookes’ Grok Ventures cementing a more than 11% stake in the power producer in a bid to stop the demerger.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has issued a call for homeowners to urgently check their residential energy storage systems amid a national recall of some LG-branded batteries which may overheat and ignite.

Australia’s rooftop solar industry has undergone a significant change with a new national standard that removes the requirement for rooftop PV installations to include a DC isolator now in effect.

A $150 million loan scheme introduced by the Australian Capital Territory government has sparked an uptake of rooftop solar in Canberra with more than 20MW of new solar PV rolled out across roofs in the nation’s capital.

The Northern Territory government has doubled down on its support for the world’s biggest solar PV and storage project with parliament passing legislation that will facilitate the $30 billion-plus Sun Cable Australia-Asia PowerLink project which is expected to transform the region into a green industrial hub and establish a new energy export industry for Australia.

The switch has been flicked on what has been labelled one of the Southern Hemisphere’s largest rooftop solar PV systems with Queensland government-owned Yurika announcing an almost 5MW system installed atop the Logan Hyperdome Shopping Centre is now operational.

The proposed 240 MWp/480 MWh Mornington big battery project being developed by solar and energy storage specialist Maoneng on Victoria’s coast is a step closer to realisation with the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) providing grid connection assessment approval.

Two new solar farms in regional New South Wales are now delivering clean energy to the National Electricity Market with e-commerce giant Amazon announcing its first Australian utility-scale renewable energy investments and are now operational.

Reclaim PV Recycling and the Circular PV Alliance (CPVA) have announced a partnership which will see the pair work together to develop standards and testing procedures to support the reuse and resale of solar panels in Australia. The union comes after Reclaim PV found more than 31% it collected in a Queensland region could be considered for reuse rather than recycling.

Researchers from the University of New South Wales have made a major breakthrough in what was previously conceived of only in theoretical terms, namely, ‘night-time’ solar power.