New South Wales

An ongoing collaboration between New South Wales-based Halocell Energy and Sofab Inks finds that perovskite modules incorporating Sofab’s Tinfab electron transport layer maintain approximately 100% of their normalised efficiency after 1,300 hours under accelerated combined light and damp-heat testing.

A new UNSW study shows that laser-enhanced contact optimisation can boost industrial TOPCon solar cell efficiency by improving contact properties and reducing recombination losses. By combining optimised firing conditions with LECO “repair” of contacts, the approach balances recombination and resistance, offering a practical path for conventional TOPCon cells to compete with PV technologies offering higher efficiencies.

Sydney-headquartered vanadium redox flow battery company EORA Energy has launched in Australia with a pipeline of long-duration energy storage projects in mining, data centres and regional infrastructure.

New research from the University of New South Wales shows that PV module degradation varies widely with system design and location, driven by UV exposure, temperature, humidity, and atmospheric conditions. Tropical and desert regions face the highest stress, highlighting the need for climate-specific testing and system design.

Scientists at the Australian National University claim that TOPCon cells are rapidly closing the open-circuit voltage gap with HJT counterparts, now under 10 mV, while offering greater wafer tolerance and high industrial scalability. Despite slightly lower efficiency, TOPCon-based perovskite/silicon tandems can achieve a levelised cost of energy comparable to HJT-based tandems due to reduced fabrication costs, according to the researchers.

Spark Renewables has secured final state planning approval for a solar and battery project that will add 800 MW of PV and 356 MW / 1,574 MW of energy storage capacity to the grid in the New South Wales Riverina region.

A UNSW-led team found that annealing conditions significantly affect stress, strain, and microstructure in copper-plated heterojunction solar cell contacts, with fast annealing increasing microstrain in both copper and indium tin oxide.

Trucking company New Energy Transport says electric road freight is possible now and already commercially viable in Australia after completing what it is calling the country’s first fully electric ‘end-to-end’ heavy road freight delivery.

New South Wales transmission company Transgrid has shortlisted nine battery energy storage projects with a combined capacity of 2 GW to provide essential system strength services to the state’s electricity grid from later this year.

Inland Rail has recently upgraded two level crossings to operate on fully solar-powered systems as part of finishing works on the Narrabri to North Star (N2NS) Phase 1 section of the project.