Oceania

The small town of Yackandandah in northeast Victoria is one step closer to being powered by 100% renewable energy with the state’s first behind-the-meter, community-owned solar PV and battery energy storage system the latest addition to its community’s energy generation strategy.

Proponents of CopperString 2.0, a proposed 1,100-kilometre high-voltage transmission line set to connect Queensland’s northwest to the National Electricity Market (NEM), have declared the project is expected to be “shovel ready” within three months.

AGL Energy will shut down the first of four gas-fired 200 MW units at its Torrens Island ‘B’ Power Station in South Australia within three months as it looks to navigate “challenging” market conditions prompted by the ongoing penetration of renewables into the energy grid.

Japanese giant Marubeni Corporation is backing Providence Asset Group’s plan for 30 regional projects which will integrate LAVO’s ‘green hydrogen batteries’, a new technology developed at the University of New South Wales.

Chinese technology giant Huawei has introduced its series of modular off-grid systems primarily targeting Australia’s agricultural sector, Huawei’s Solution Director, Kenneth Loh, told pv magazine Australia.

The Victorian government has allocated $1.1 million in funding to Indigenous groups to determine how they want to be part of Victoria’s renewable energy boom. Fortescue has likewise awarded $350 million to a majority-owned Aboriginal business in Western Australia, its single largest contract under its Billion Opportunities program.

A renewable hydrogen target will spur massive investment, bringing the cost of the ‘God Molecule’ down the cost curve, and helping to secure Australia’s future in this century of decarbonisation.

Global infrastructure developer AECOM has run analysis on every petroleum fuel refinery and storage & import terminal in Australia and New Zealand as a novel means of locating sites well suited to future renewable development and hydrogen industries. “Some sites that were really suited to a wide range of end uses and those were our so-called ‘unicorn sites,’” AECOM’s Craig Bearsley told pv magazine Australia.

The federal government has awarded $5 million to the CSIRO to deliver a hydrogen research, development and demonstration program aimed at strengthening hydrogen knowledge both domestically and in cooperation with our international partners.

To truly seize on the opportunity afforded by the imminent battery boom, Australia needs to look beyond its historic role as a supplier of raw materials and broaden the horizons by adding value with downstream products and manufacturing, according to a recent Future Battery Industries report. Pv magazine Australia caught up with Vincent Algar, managing director of Australian Vanadium Limited – a company operating in this promising yet thorny realm.