Oceania

An educational event series aimed at upskilling engineers to enter the hydrogen industry is launching in February in Melbourne. The Hydrogen Industry Technical Series 2023 is being organised by the Victorian divisions of the Australian Institute of Energy and Engineers Australia.

Queensland-based ReNu Energy will acquire up to a 20% stake in fellow Brisbane company, startup Vaulta, which has developed battery casings designed for reuse and recycling. Vaulta will use the eventual $1 million (USD 700,000) investment from ReNu to scale its manufacturing capability and expand domestic and offshore sales.

“Gentailer” Origin Energy has granted the consortium behind its $18.4 billion (USD 12.8b) takeover bid, led by Brookfield Asset Management and US private equity firm EIG Partners, an extra week of exclusive due diligence. Neither reason nor timeline were offered by Origin’s brief ASX statement, fuelling concerns about the highly-priced deal.

Geelong is set to become home to a $300 million (USD 210 million) lithium-ion battery gigafactory. Recharge Industries, part of a portfolio from US fund Scale Facilitation, is aiming to start construction by the end of the year, targeting 2 GWh of production annually in 2024 and 6 GWh by 2026. The company is reportedly aiming to produce batteries without using Chinese materials, and appears to be part of a deepening supply chain play between Australia and the US.

The Australian government has unveiled a $70 million (USD 49 million) investment to aid the development of a green hydrogen hub in the north Queensland city of Townsville as it looks unlock the benefits of an industry which it says could inject an additional $50 billion (USD 35 billion) into the economy by 2050.

Sun Cable – considered to be the world’s biggest renewable energy export project – announced on Wednesday it had entered voluntary administration following “the absence of alignment” with shareholders.

Energy management software company SwitchDin will share lessons learned during Australia’s ongoing transition to a two-way power grid with counterparts in the United States after teaming with a coalition of companies to scale up the use of virtual power plants.

Following Risen Energy’s January announcement that the company is starting to mass-produce its n-type heterojunction technology (HJT) hyper-ion solar modules, it has revealed plans to increase production capacity to 15 GW by the end of 2023. Archie Chen, CEO of Risen Energy Australia, says n-type HJT panels will prove the favoured technology over the coming years, facilitating higher performing solar solutions.

Perovskite solar cells have created excitement in recent years, given their potential to improve virtually every area of PV, but we have yet to see such devices produced at scale. Scientists in Australia have outlined some of the challenges holding them back.

Australia’s capacity to achieve its renewable energy targets is under a cloud with a report published by the federal government-funded Reliable Affordable Clean Energy for 2030 Cooperative Research Centre warning a shortage of workers could cripple the electricity sector transition.