Canada

Australia’s Origin Energy is the target of an $18.4 billion (USD 11.3 billion) takeover bid by a consortium led by Canadian investment giant Brookfield Asset Management which plans to divide the business and invest another $20 billion by 2030 to support the gen-tailer’s transition to clean energy.

Combining satellite images of Australian rooftops with those of real-time cloud cover to create accurate forecasts of distributed solar output for suburbs and perhaps even whole regions and states is the focus of a new Australian startup, Solstice AI. “We’re kind of at a point now where there’s so much solar that it’s causing all these issues but, if we can forecast it, many of these issues can be alleviated or managed much better,” the company’s cofounder and CEO, Julian de Hoog, tellspv magazine Australia.

Canadian startup Capsolar claims its flexible solar modules can be adapted to any type of low-speed electric vehicle with no extra modification and custom work. The panels have an efficiency of 21.3% and rely on 24%-efficient solar cells provided by US manufacturer SunPower.

Buildings-integrated photovoltaics maker Mitrex plans to deploy highway noise barriers with integrated solar that have 1.2 MW of capacity per kilometer. The technology is currently in the pilot phase at government entity locations in North America.

Adani Group and the Canada-based PEM fuel cell producer will examine various options to cooperate, including potential collaboration for hydrogen fuel cell manufacturing in India.

Victorian network utility AusNet Services appears certain to be entirely foreign owned after shareholders overwhelmingly approved the sale of the company to a consortium led by Canadian asset management group Brookfield.

Western Australian solar window company ClearVue says it has proven its products can reduce buildings’ carbon emissions by as much as 90%, qualifying the technology for the world’s most comprehensive future building standards for energy performance.

Following approval from the Foreign Investment Review Board in November, the long-awaited sale of grid-operator Spark Infrastructure to a North American consortium led by private equity giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts has been completed via a $5.2 billion “all-cash transaction”.

Underground hydrogen storage seems to be coming up a lot lately, and with the burgeoning hydrogen industry needing somewhere to store itself, it’s not hard to understand why. One of the countries with the best credentials for the future hydrogen economy is Australia. A newly published report has quantified the country’s “massive opportunity” for underground hydrogen storage.

Fotowatio Renewable Ventures’ (FRV) Australian platform includes 637 MW (DC) in projects already operational or under construction, and a pipeline comprising 7 GW of solar projects and 1.3 GWh of battery storage.