Oceania

It has been a chaotic few weeks on the east coast, culminating with the national electricity market being suspended on 15 June 2022, an outcome not seen in the modern version of the NEM. There has been much coverage of the key drivers of the crisis. It stems predominantly from a perfect storm of two main factors: thermal unit outages and high thermal fuel costs, as the NEM largely relies on thermal generation.

The Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics will receive up to $45 million in federal funding over the next eight years as it seeks to develop the next generation of efficient and ultra low-cost solar technologies.

Australian renewable energy tech start-up Okra Solar has raised $3 million to scale up distribution of its solar-based hardware and software solutions and electrify more than 290,000 off-grid homes in Nigeria in the next three years while expanding its operations in Haiti and other countries.

Days after announcing it would abandon coal-fired power by the end of the decade, the Western Australian government has set an ‘ambitious’ interim emissions target in a bid to reach net zero by 2050.

Australian renewables developer Energy Estate is seeking to raise more than $500 million to support its development activities and bankroll the construction of renewable power plants in both Australia and New Zealand.

Eight of the 24 bidders in the latest renewables auction in the Philippines are focusing on solar, along with eight bidders looking at wind, seven linked to run-of-river hydro, and one connected to biomass.

The Northern Territory’s Desert Knowledge Australia Solar Centre will soon play host to a large-scale battery energy storage system which is expected to facilitate the transformation of the multi-technology solar testing facility into a local microgrid.

The market operator today announced a “staged” return to the national energy market’s normal operations as 4000 MW of generation capacity comes back into operation.

Both New South Wales (NSW) and Queensland handed down their 2022-23 state budgets on Tuesday pushing the line that clean energy investments would lead the states to future prosperity.

In aviation news, Qantas has announced a partnership with Airbus to invest up to $285 million to establish a sustainable aviation fuel industry in Australia. Meanwhile, startup Aviation H2 says it is in the process of acquiring test engines it will modify to run on hydrogen, which are due to arrive in the next five weeks.