Oceania

As Australia’s rooftop solar wracks up records, price cannibalisation has resulted in a “struggling” large scale market segment. Victoria University’s Energy Policy Centre head Bruce Mountain says that increasingly depressed wholesale electricity prices during the day is squeezing out big PV.

Akaysha Energy has received planning approval for its proposed 100 MW/200 MWh Palmerston battery energy storage system (BESS) in Tasmania. The battery is located close to the TasRex Northern Midlands solar farm development.

The Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) is one of five institutions confirmed to back Neoen’s South Australian 238.5 MW / 477 MWh Blyth Battery, further securing its 70 MW green power contract with BHP to supply the Olympic Dam mine site.

Data analysis and clean technology research company, Next System reports 2024 is set to see a further doubling of public fast charging sites. Next System has found that the number electric vehicle (EV) charging stations in Australia almost doubled in 2023.

The NSW state government’s Rebate Swap for Solar program has attracted 2,700 households to the scheme, which it says will take $600 a year off energy bills. The energy, environment and climate change ministry announced the scheme’s progress this week.

The Silicon to Solar (Roadmap) study has found Australian PV supply chain manufacturing is viable and calls for immediate action to establish it as a strategic priority industry and set up a solar manufacturing taskforce.

Renewable energy supporters and unions were activated last weekend to attend simultaneous family events in Wollongong and Newcastle, NSW, Gippsland and Portland, Victoria, and Gladstone, Queensland in support of solar, wind, and large scale energy storage. The events stood in contrast to growing community resistance to renewables and electricity transmission projects.

While investigating on the effects of wildfire smoke on rooftop PV installations, University of New South Wales (UNSW) researchers have found that solar arrays, due to their sensitivity to smoke, could serve as an early warning detection of wildfires by providing temporal and spatial information on the presence and approximate concentrations of smoke.

Researchers from the University of New South Wales have rejected suggestions that end-of-life solar panels will create a “waste mountain” in Australia, saying instead that they could serve as valuable material reservoirs for future production.

Australia’s green hydrogen project pipeline continues to progress with a string of announcements in recent days, including from Abel Energy which has appointed Worley to assist with the front end engineering design for its Bell Bay Powerfuels project in Tasmania.