Thailand

Spanish tracker giant STI Norland has expanded to Australia with a new subsidiary office in Melbourne. The company is arriving on our shores with a keenness to compete with tracker suppliers who already have their foot in the door. With no solar farm too big or too small, STI Norland Australia CEO Alan Atchison sat down with pv magazine Australia to talk about how the company plans to make tracks Down Under.

Researchers have modeled how the combination of a virtual oscillator control mechanism and a cascaded sliding mode control can help regulate voltage and frequency in a distributed-solar microgrid.

Southeast Asia, when taken as a whole, is a global laggard in the uptake of renewable energy, but some countries are leading the way, such as Vietnam, the Philippines, and Myanmar. And as ‘Angry Clean Energy Guy’ Assaad W. Razzouk argues, policymakers in the region cannot hold back the tide of solar and wind for much longer.

Western Australian tech startup Power Ledger and Thai renewable energy company BCPG are expanding their partnership with the creation of a Renewable Energy Certificate marketplace for SE Asia on Power Ledger’s peer-to-peer blockchain platform.

Singapore-based commercial and industrial solar developer Cleantech Solar has secured a US$75 million in green finance from ING Bank, the Asia Pacific’s largest ever C&I solar green loan. As the world’s fastest growing electricity market, South East Asia is crying out for this kind of investment.

A new report from financial think-tank Carbon Tracker has found that coal developers risk wasting more than $600 billion due to stubborn resistance to the already cheaper electricity resources provided by renewable energies worldwide. The report finds, in short, that a new coal plant is about as prudent an investment today as a Clydesdale and cart. 

French floating PV specialist Ciel & Terre is teaming up with SCG, an Asian petrochemical company, to develop floating solar plants at hydroelectric dams in Thailand.

Renewable energy investment in the APAC region, excluding China, will overtake spending on oil and gas exploration and production spending by 2020, finds Norwegian consultancy Rystad Energy. And Australia is set to emerge as one of the leading investment destinations.

The Brisbane-based battery supplier has deployed 10 of its zinc-bromine flow batteries coupled with three li-ion batteries to store solar generated power in a far-flung village in northern Thailand.

Wrapping up the year in which it established its wholly-owned manufacturing facility in Thailand, the Brisbane-based battery supplier says it is negotiating contracts with a number of customers, sharpening its focus on key target markets in Australasia, Asia Pacific and South Africa.