Rystad Energy

After the deluge of announcements last year, 2022 will see the trickle of big batteries actually operating in Australia turn to a flood. According to Rystad Energy, the country’s battery capacity is set to double before the year is out.

SUN Energy’s 100 MW Merredin Solar Farm in Western Australia has emerged as the country’s best performing utility PV project in 2021 with international consultancy firm Rystad Energy noting it delivered an average capacity factor of 29.6% for the calendar year.

Renewable energy and battery storage has racked up another banner year in 2021, according to end-of-year analysis from Rystad Energy. While there was growth across segments, residential solar has seen the most impressive gains, surpassing the commercial and industrial (C&I) segment for the year.

The continuous rise in solar panel prices may affect PV projects of up to 1 MW tendered by the Korea Energy Agency and the domestic solar module industry may not be able to provide the necessary production capacity to respond to the recent supply bottleneck.

The input costs of the two biggest contributors to solar plant development expense have gone through the roof since the world began to come out of Covid-19 lockdowns, to leave project developers with some difficult choices.

Australia’s determination to establish itself as a major player in the green hydrogen market has seen a flood of government funding and announced projects in recent months but new analysis from international consultancy firm Rystad Energy has highlighted a potential hurdle for the industry.

Australia’s single axis tracker market has been deemed “highly concentrated” with just two companies, Nextracker and Array Technologies, commanding 77% of the market, the equivalent of 5.8 GW AC, according to analysis from Rystad Energy RenewableCube.

Solar rules in any scenario of what the world needs to work towards over the coming three decades, to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees. But analysts at Rystad Energy have arrived at a far greater tally than recent IEA projections of how much PV people will be plugging into.

Minh K Le, senior renewables analyst at Rystad Energy, examines five key trends to watch in Southeast Asia utility-scale solar, as mega-scale projects ramp up, Indonesia emerges, and Vietnam steps back.

Australia’s solar and wind generation surged in March, according to Rystad Energy’s latest Watts Generating report, and perhaps most importantly a new wave of solar PV — primarily in energy-hungry NSW — is in the commissioning phase to come fully online in coming months.