rooftop solar

Solar ‘lease-to-own’ installer ShineHub has chosen Hanwha Q Cells as preferred solar panel provider for its Community Solar Program under the South Australian battery scheme.

A $2.2 million trial run by Jemena, AusNet Services, and UNSW Sydney will explore how existing network infrastructure can better integrate with solar power, as Australia’s rooftop PV uptake goes from strength to strength.

Australia’s more than 1,300 golf clubs can each spend upwards of $100,000 a year on electricity bills in the process of managing their greens and running their clubhouses. Today AEES Group announced an exclusive partnership with Golf Management Australia, to provide customised energy-efficiency audits and solar solutions that can reduce Australian clubs’ carbon footprint, and their grid-derived energy by up to 60%.

The first sod has been turned on a $30 million smart microgrid which is to power Deakin University’s Waurn Ponds Campus. The project, featuring a 7 MW solar farm and a 1 MW battery, is delivered in partnership with AusNet Services and its subsidiary Mondo with the goal to provide an integrated research and education platform, and contribute to the university’s sustainability goals.

As scorching heatwave drove up air conditioning power demand, faults at coal-fired power plants were directly responsible for blackouts across Victoria and South Australia. Extreme weather is debunking arguments for new fossil fuel generation, and signaling Australia’s energy security lies in renewables.

Japanese industrial giant Sumitomo Corporation has fully acquired Infinite Energy, Western Australia’s solar installer and electricity retailer, thus expanding on its local coal-focused portfolio.

The Australia Institute’s first emissions audit of 2019 shows renewables pushing coal aside to reduce Australia’s emissions 20% below the peak recorded in 2008; and the load that January’s high temperatures would normally exert on the grid has been mitigated by high uptake of rooftop solar.

The opening of SolarShare’s Mount Majura Solar Farm to investors this week represents a significant milestone in the community-energy sector in Australia, says Nicky Ison, founding Director of the Community Power Agency. “It is the first community solar farm in Australia that is grid connected in front of the meter,” she says, and at 1 MW capacity it will also be the country’s biggest community-owned solar farm.

German discount supermarket chain Aldi is set to roll out solar PV across 30 stores and distribution centers in New South Wales and Queensland. Netherlands-based renewables developer Photon Energy will deliver the rooftop PV arrays.

South Australian-based company Reclaim PV estimates it will open Australia’s first commercial solar-panel recycling plant in mid 2019. Its high-energy founders also have a broader mission — to inform better environmental practices throughout the solar value chain.