Oceania

The 5 MW Woods Point Solar and Storage Farm in South Australia is open – it is one of three identical solar storage projects being commissioned by SEI and Yes Group in December, and part of a much larger mid-scale play.

The first large-scale battery to be connected to the grid in New South Wales has officially reached full production, providing fast frequency response and synthetic inertia services to the transmission network as the state looks to fill the soon-to-be-revealed gap created by retiring coal-fired generators.

Danish renewable energy developer European Energy has acquired a majority stake in a 3.6 GW integrated solar and battery energy storage facility and green hydrogen production plant being developed near Gladstone on the central Queensland coast.

The Australian government is taking the next steps to roll out 400 batteries in neighbourhoods across the country as part of the $200 million (USD 134 million) Community Batteries for Household Solar program.

Australia has declared its first offshore wind farm zone off the southern coast of Victoria and has also awarded Major Project Status to the 2.2 GW Star of the South project being developed off the Gippsland coast.

The Australian government has announced a $176 million (USD 117.5 million) funding injection which it expects will unleash almost $3 billion of investment in advanced battery technology, delivering a step change in grid-forming capability across the National Electricity Market.

The catchphrase ‘there’s no transition without transmission’ seems to get thrown around more and more. Much of the discussion that follows centres around increasing capacity to allow for more wind and solar farms. But perhaps less discussed, is the emerging challenges that face the existing transmission network in ensuring system security

Chinese-Canadian PV manufacturing heavyweight Canadian Solar said it will begin mass production of 690 W TOPCon products in the first quarter of 2023. The modules will feature a cell efficiency of 25.0% and a bifaciality factor of more than 85%.

A reduction of silver consumption in PV production is required on the way to terawatt scale. Given this, the time may have come for the commercialisation of new copper plating technologies – doing away with the need for silver in cell metallisation altogether. However, the history of plating technology is littered with cautionary tales.

The South Australia government has called for proposals from industry partners to build a $593 million (USD 398 million) green hydrogen power plant, including 250 MW of hydrogen electrolyser facilities and fit-for-purpose hydrogen storage infrastructure at Whyalla on the east coast of the Eyre Peninsula.