Japan

South Australia’s nascent green hydrogen industry has attracted financial support from the Japanese Government which has awarded funding to the Marubeni Corporation which is planning to export the zero-emissions fuel produced using large-scale wind and solar energy in the state to the Indo-Pacific region.

Japanese energy company Sinanen offers a scalable solar carport that can host a minimum of four vehicles and can be deployed in the parking areas of factories and commercial buildings. The basic system is offered with a minimum capacity of 10.80 kW.

A report from Australia’s Future Battery Industries Cooperative Research Centre which analysed the development of battery hubs in the U.S., Germany and Japan, has found that co-location and cooperation between industry and government were key to hub success. For Australia to play the same game, it will have to leverage its wealth of resources, and clean up its act along the way.

Singapore-based VFlowTech has secured funds to scale up manufacturing of its vanadium redox flow batteries. The company currently offers three modular products that can be scaled to multi-megawatt-hour systems.

The system has dimensions of 834×417×1,766 mm and weighs 205 kg including the design panel. It achieves an electrical efficiency of 56% and can be connected with a hot water storage unit.

Storing hydrogen in carbon nanotubes and other nanostructures is still far from reaching commercial maturity. A Japanese research team, however, has developed a new simulation technology that may help better estimate the energy needed to favour the ideal interaction between hydrogen and its storage material.

Next Energy and Marubeni are developing a blockchain tech for PV module inspection – with the support of the Japanese government – which they claim is able to provide data on a panel’s traceability and components as well as verifying that the data were not modified or tampered with.

Corporate power purchase agreements are the second most adopted purchasing method in the world, and they’re growing fast. With the U.S. and Europe picking up the pace in the last year, the Asia Pacific is not going to be left behind, with Wood Mackenzie estimating corporate PPAs in the region doubled in the last year.

Japanese scientists have developed a new lithium-sulfur battery by using titanium oxide and titanium nitride to prevent the formation of polysulfides during the fabrication process. This allows the battery to retain 85% of its capacity after 500 cycles at 2 C.

Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has released a draft energy plan with ambitious revisions to the nation’s previous energy and emissions targets. The proposed plan will sees a doubling of renewables compared to the previous target, and significant cuts to coal and gas, much of which it buys from Australia. Meanwhile, Australian Resources Minister Keith Pitt reiterated the Coalition Government’s “Gas-Fired Recovery is the right policy for Australia.”