Solar PV

South Australia’s renewables, particularly wind, have received firm dispatchable back-up as Barker Inlet Power Station begins generating energy for the first time.

Utility-scale solar is booming in Australia. Quality assurance, especially solar panel testing, helps achieve better performance and lower costs. Best-practice testing is key, writes Michelle McCann, managing partner at PV Lab Australia, but must be planned and fully integrated into a project from an early stage. This integration ensures flow-through from panel manufacturers to commercial buyers and large project owners.

Market intelligence company Navigant Research has developed a country forecast of the global market. Incentives and pricing will be the main driver of installations, though the market will continue to be concentrated in certain key regions for now.

Fossil fuel giant Shell is set to make its foray into Australia’s electricity market after shareholders in electricity retailer ERM Power voted in favour of a $617 million takeover bid.

The Philippines is desperately hungry for rooftop solar PV as it seeks to alleviate itself of energy poverty. Pathways are finally opening up for the vast Southeast Asian nation with investors readying US$20 million to fund four new renewable projects.

A result of a collaboration between global accounting and financial services firm KPMG, Canadian gas giant ATCO, Australia’s national science agency CSIRO and Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), H2City can be used to assess the costs and benefits of regional town or municipality switching to hydrogen.

As more and more shopping centres across Australia start to utilise solar PV atop their premises, carparks are becoming increasingly popular amid a lack of rooftop space. A solar array covering three double-parking bays at Dunsborough Centrepoint Shopping Centre will not only offer shade for shoppers but also almost completely cover the site’s daytime energy needs.

The Asian Development Bank has signed off a grant for the South Pacific island nation to move on its plans to be 100% renewable by 2025.

Four years ago in December 2015, every member of the United Nations met in Paris and agreed to hold global temperature increases to 2°C, and as close as possible to 1.5°C. The bad news is that four years on the best that we can hope for is holding global increases to around 1.75°C. We can only do that if the world moves decisively towards zero net emissions by the middle of the century.

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) expects to see further declines in Marginal Loss Factors (MLFs) next financial year on a number of grid-scale PV projects, primarily in south-west News South Wales and north-west Victoria.