Australia

The rollout of rooftop solar in the remote coastal town of Broome in northern Western Australia is set to get a boost with state-owned regional energy provider Horizon Power installing two centralised community batteries that are expected to unlock more than 1,400kW of solar PV hosting capacity.

Australia’s biggest power producer AGL has secured planning approval for a 500MW/2GWh grid-connected utility scale battery to be developed at the site of its coal-fired Liddell power plant in the New South Wales Hunter Valley.

With residents across New South Wales and southeast Queensland still cleaning up after the devastating floods that ripped through their communities earlier this month, solar industry advocacy group Safer Solar has issued a call for Australia to mandate rapid shutdown technology on solar PV systems.

The Australian Government has committed more than $240 million to critical minerals projects in a bid to end Australia’s reliance on China and cement its place in the rapidly growing global electric vehicle and battery markets.

Work on the long-awaited 280MW Cultana Solar Farm in South Australia appears set to begin with Simec Energy Australia announcing this week it is preparing to start construction on the ~$350 million project.

German-owned renewable energy developer Wirsol Energy has added another 313MW of solar to its Australian operation and maintenance portfolio, securing the contracts for three utility scale solar farms.

Australian solar technology startup SunDrive has announced “a breakthrough” in mass production compatible heterojunction technology after recording an efficiency result of 26.07% with a silver-free, commercial-size silicon solar PV cell.

Australian redox flow battery manufacturer Redflow’s push into the United States market has received a major boost with the company announcing it will work with California-based biowaste technology firm Anaergia on the installation of a solar and 5.5-6MWh battery energy storage solution.

“We’re not talking about incremental improvement, this is a really giant leap,” Hysata CEO Paul Barrett told pv magazine Australia. Hysata is commercialising a breakthrough made at the University of Wollongong which effectively, Barrett says, invented a “brand new category of electrolyser” vastly improving efficiency. “This is a 20% gain. This is really a seminal moment for the hydrogen industry.”

German luxury carmaker Mercedes-Benz has made public its plans partner with Primobius, a 50:50 joint venture between West Australian company Neometals and Germany’s SMS Group. Mercedes has said its intention is to build a 2,500 tonne per year lithium-ion battery recycling plant in southern Germany with Primobius as its technology partner.