Oceania

Dubbo, birthplace of Glenn McGrath, has announced its membership in the Cities Power Partnership (CPP) program as it looks to transition to renewable energies, particularly solar.

French renewable energy developer Neoen is looking to develop a massive battery near Geelong that will dwarf its largest project to date – South Australia’s 100MW/129MWh Tesla big battery.

A growing number of Australian electricity retailers are facilitating solar PPA adoption, allowing uptake to maintain strong. BRC-A is continuing to chart the PPA uptake as it prepares to release its guide for mid-sized buyers.

Katoomba High School student Estelle Dee is collecting signatures for a petition to NSW Energy and Environment Minister, Matt Kean, for the installation of solar panels at every NSW public school within the next three years.

Before social-distancing became a thing, Western Australia stood apart from the rest of the country. Defined by remoteness, the state is beginning to embrace its identity, and cure itself of network headaches at the same time, with the uptake of stand-alone power systems (SPS).

National utility Transpower said that solar could take a 9.3% share of the country’s generation mix by the middle of the century. However, real growth is only forecast to occur from 2035, with distributed generation expected to account for more than 80% of total installed PV.

Good news story: After more than six months of distress and compromise in the sunny but grid-challenged West Murray region of Australia, German solar equipment manufacturer SMA has developed an inverter-based solution that allows solar farms to play in harmony, and hopefully enables a long pipeline of renewable plant to carry on connecting until the transmission cavalry arrives.

Batteries are emerging as powerful enablers of renewable energy as grids Australia wide become challenged by the high penetration of renewable energy. The Northern Territory is investing in battery storage large and small, to capture the overflow of its incredible renewable resource and redirect it for the benefit of consumers.

In this time of residential confinement, it seems appropriate that governments and agencies are advancing plans to enable the uptake of distributed rooftop solar resources and their integration with grid operations. A part of this much awaited movement the Western Australian Government this weekend published its DER Roadmap.

Light- and elevated temperature-induced degradation (LeTID) of PV cells can have far-reaching impacts on the efficiency of modules. Alison Ciesla and Brett Hallam of the University of New South Wales argue that accelerated testing, such as that included in the forthcoming IEC standards, is critical for LeTID identification and quantification in order to manage these impacts.