Oceania

With large-scale battery developments emerging as an increasingly important component of Australia’s energy mix, India-headquartered multinational Sterling and Wilson Solar has revealed plans to expand its renewable energy offerings to include providing engineering, procurement and construction solutions for energy storage projects.

Corporate power purchase agreements are the second most adopted purchasing method in the world, and they’re growing fast. With the U.S. and Europe picking up the pace in the last year, the Asia Pacific is not going to be left behind, with Wood Mackenzie estimating corporate PPAs in the region doubled in the last year.

In a campaign style speech, Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest, founder of Fortescue Metals and one of Australia’s richest men, outlined his ambition of producing mammoth quantities of green hydrogen, a task he sees as imperative to stop the “planet cooking” while also cornering a market he believes will soon be worth trillions.

President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Michele O’Neil, says renewables industries have fallen short in their treatment of workers and urgently need to do more to provide quality jobs which are secure and fairly paid.

Solar as a solution to poverty – it’s the route Brisbane-based charity SolarBuddy is taking, bringing Australian school children with it. Crucially though, the charity’s founder Simon Doble told pv magazine Australia it’s also a unique opportunity to learn about the rollout of clean technologies unencumbered.

Researchers at Monash University have published a new study in which high voltage lithium batteries, such as those used in electric vehicles and grid scale energy storage systems, are tested with a novel lithium salt shown to be far less hazardous than current conventional materials.

Three PhD students from Melbourne are moving their research into recycling lithium-ion batteries from the labs into pitch meetings, vying to become one of the first companies in Australia to recover the metals and minerals from spent batteries. Their method, they say, is simpler, less toxic and more cost competitive than those widely used.

Western Australia will install electric vehicle (EV) stations at 45 new locations, creating a fast charging network spanning more than 3,000kms.

The latest news in the NEM is AEMO’s goal to be capable of handling periods of 100% instantaneous renewables penetration by 2025. This is a significant challenge and fitting given the pace the NEM is moving to
supporting increasingly higher levels of instantaneous (and increasingly asynchronous) renewables on a regular basis.

LG Energy Solution has agreed to take 100% of the cobalt and nickel from the proposed Sconi Project in Queensland. The company says the deal will give it an “upper hand” in EV battery production and improve its ESG competitiveness.