Rystad Energy

Large-scale solar farms across Australia generated a record 16.2 TWh of clean energy in 2024, delivering a near 7% increase on the previous year and taking the contribution from renewables to a new record high.

Big BESS is booming in Australia, with almost 5 GW of projects under construction last year, according Rystad Energy. While encouraging, the analyst reports that the volume remains insufficient to overcome growing rates of renewable curtailment. “We have around 3 GW operational at the moment, but about half of that is still in commissioning. So you still only have 1.5 GW on the market where the average load is 23 GW,” Rystad Energy’s David Dixon said.

Lightsource bp has started construction of its million panel Goulburn River hybrid project in NSW and Woolooga battery energy storage system in Queensland, simultaneously bumping the nation’s renewables capacity starting construction over the 8 GW line.

Battery projects continue to dominate Australia’s large-scale clean energy build-out with 6 GW of new capacity added to the nation’s renewables project pipeline last month, almost 4 GW more than the combined capacity of new solar and wind added during the same period.

Australia has firmed as the world’s fourth-largest market for utility scale batteries with new data from research consultancy Rystad Energy revealing that almost 3 GW / 8 GWh of battery energy storage projects have started construction in the first seven months of 2024.

The increasing role of pumped hydro technology in Australia’s renewable energy transition is expected to be mirrored in the neighbouring Southeast Asia region with international consultancy Rystad Energy tipping the total capacity of operational projects will surge from the current 2.3 GW to 18 GW by 2033.

Data from international consultancy Rystad Energy shows that 82 new renewable energy generation and battery storage projects corresponding to more than 20 GW of capacity were proposed across Australia’s National Electricity Market in the first quarter of 2024, with developers largely focused on Queensland and New South Wales.

Australian-owned hydrogen and helium technology company H2EX, and US-based Black and Veatch conduct 5,991 square kilometre study on Eyre Peninsula in pursuit of white hydrogen.

As Victorian homeowners call for better grid infrastructure after outages left thousands without power this week, new data from research company Rystad Energy suggests the whole world’s transmission network may be a stumbling block to energy transition.

While facilitating utility-scale solar farms co-existence with agricultural land near transmission networks is an ongoing challenge in Australia, in Southeast Asia similar problems is resulting in the growth of floating PV (FPV) installations.