Western Australia

The Western Australian Government has announced $1 million in funding for the first phase of a feasibility study into a 600-800MWh battery and green hydrogen industrial hub in the coal town of Collie. The state government has promised the town, which has been powering Western Australia with its two coal mines since the 1880s, a ‘just transition.’ Sunshot Energy, chaired by eminent energy economist Ross Garnaut, is undertaking the study which could deliver a ‘just transition’ to Collie and green ammonia and urea to the agricultural and industrial sectors.

Western Australian company Infinite Blue Energy has today announced it will purchase Northam solar farm, which sits an hour east of Perth. The acquisition will accelerate the company’s green hydrogen project as it aims to produce up to 4.4 tonnes of renewable hydrogen daily from next year.

A West Australian joint venture seeking to recover high-purity vanadium from a steel industry waste product using a carbon negative process has won the support of the European Union. “We’re not the first people to look at that project, but we’re the first people to look at it through a different lens and use this type of process,” Neometals’ General Manager of Commercial and Investor Relations, Jeremy McManus, told pv magazine Australia. The project, which is still in the early stages, is already been sought out by potential offtakers “desperate to secure green vanadium,” McManus added.

The extensive power outages experienced in Western Australia last Christmas were a result of extreme weather rather than human failure, an independent review has found. The report’s author, AEMC’s Michelle Shepherd, notes such instances will likely become increasingly frequent with climate change.

The rollout of rooftop solar in the remote coastal town of Broome in northern Western Australia is set to get a boost with state-owned regional energy provider Horizon Power installing two centralised community batteries that are expected to unlock more than 1,400kW of solar PV hosting capacity.

Mine sites across Western Australia are decarbonising after Zenith Energy and modular solar pioneer 5B signed an Ecosystem Framework Agreement-Deployment, which will see 5Bs rapidly deployable Maverick solar systems installed along with battery energy storage systems at multiple mine sties.

Emerging Western Australian renewable energy project developer Frontier Energy is pushing ahead with “significantly advanced” plans to develop a large-scale solar PV farm in the state’s southwest after the successful completion of an $8 million capital raising.

With the global demand for lithium accelerating, Australian miner Core Lithium has inked a deal to supply United States-based electric vehicle and battery maker Tesla with up to 110,000 tonnes of lithium spodumene concentrate.

Australian-based mining giant Fortescue has commenced the development of an electric train that recharges itself using gravity after the resources company this week settled its $310 million purchase of UK-based technology and engineering services business Williams Advanced Engineering.

The merits of pre-assembled and modular solar solutions have been showcased by independent power provider Nomadic Energy which this week revealed it had taken less than 21 days to complete a 2MW install at Northern Star Resources’ Carosue Dam gold mining operation near Kalgoorlie in Western Australia.