Australia

Defying election predictions, the right-wing Liberal-National coalition celebrated a “miracle” victory on Saturday evening. But, the Australian solar sector has little reason to rejoice.

At the Clean Energy Council Large-scale Solar Forum yesterday, principal sponsor Longi launched its new Hi-MO 4 range of solar panels in Australia and spoke with pv magazine about its intention to better serve the local industry by opening a fully fledged sales and service office in Australia.

One of the hotly contested issues in the run-up to the Saturday federal election is whether a proactive response to climate change is more expensive than doing nothing. The Australia Institute has examined 22 reports from academics, government agencies and consultants modeling higher emissions reductions by 2030 and found that none of them shows action on climate change is ‘economy wrecking’. Counting the costs of the major parties’ climate change policies, UNSW finds that impacts of inaction on climate change for both Australia’s economy and jobs outweigh the costs of reducing emissions.

As the federal election campaign slowly grinds to a halt, one thing is indisputable: climate change has emerged as the make or break issue in this year’s election. The main parties have come up with a wide range of policies, but some are more supportive of the green energy sector than the others.

With the annual cost of energy per bed across the aged care sector on the rise, C&I PV and energy efficiency specialist Verdia says that a major energy transformation is underway across Australia.

A research team from Monash University has introduced an intrinsically stable, ‘self-healing’ catalytic system based on earth abundant elements to promote the water electrolysis process in a strongly acidic environment and elevated temperatures.

The Western Australian Environmental Protection Authority is seeking public submissions on the massive Asian Renewable Energy Hub proposed for the Pilbara region.

Canadian company CellCube Energy Storage Systems and Pangea Energy have signalled their intention to install a 50 MW/200 MWh energy storage system in Port Augusta, South Australia. 

American EPC Signal Energy has entered the Australian large scale solar marketplace, opening regional headquarters in Sydney. The U.S. firm, which has already won two construction contracts for major solar projects in western NSW, is a long term Canadian Solar project partner.

Solar-plus-storage could be competitive against gas peaking power plants in Australia within the next five years, as the average solar-plus-storage LCOE across the Asia-Pacific region is set to fall from $133/MWh this year to $101/MWh by 2023, according to a newly released research report.