UNSW

With the joint-feasibility study between Australia and Germany into the viability of a renewable hydrogen supply chain between the two nations now underway, Western Australia, perhaps the most eager Australian state to establish a green hydrogen export industry, has hosted an inaugural roundtable with some of the two nations biggest industry hitters.

The joint-feasibility study into green hydrogen production and trade between Australia and Germany has officially begun, work on what the German Federal Minister of Research has dubbed the “Wasserstoffbrücke,” or “hydrogen bridge”.

The University of New South Wales will lead a consortium of Australian and German researchers and industrial partners in a feasibility study to tease out and provide solutions for the obstacles for the trade of green hydrogen from Australia to Germany.

PV modules are being sold with ever longer warranties, but when modules underperform or fail, making claims on those warranties is rarely straightforward. So are the warranties worth the paper they’re written on? Where does this leave installers? And how can this liability be mitigated?

The 2020 Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science took place virtually this year, but that won’t quash the recognition of Xiaojing Hao, UNSW’s solar pioneer who took home (or rather, received at home) the prize for Physical Scientist of the Year. Hao’s work in thin-film photovoltaics is leading the world in fashioning new and sustainable applications for solar PV.

Solar system power losses due to degradation can be a hidden destroyer of PV value. Researchers from the UNSW are conducting world-leading research into degradation phenomena such as Light and Elevated Temperature Degradation (LeTID) and have found the problem widespread. Encouragingly, UNSW’s Alison Ciesla says that mitigation in production is possible.  

Despite weeks with a Morrison Government sponsored gas cloud overhead a silver lining has appeared in the form of SunDrive, an Australian startup which just received $3 million in ARENA funding to help scale its low-cost, high-efficiency solar cell and manufacturing process.

Researchers from the University of New South Wales have run the numbers, run them again, and then run them a third time to make triply sure. Australia’s solar resources and the rapidly falling costs of solar-powered hydrogen production mean that the future hydrogen economy is green whether the Morrison Government likes it or not.

UNSW Faculty of Engineering doctoral researcher Bruno Vicari Stefani won the University’s Virtual 3 Minute Thesis Final by creatively reimagining the fable of the Three Little Pigs to demonstrate how combining hydrogen with low-cost silicon in solar can improve efficiency.

Scientists led by the University of New South Wales have looked into the long-term degradation of silicon-heterojunction. Their findings suggest that illumination at high temperatures could actually improve cell efficiency, but also risks activating multiple light-induced degradation mechanisms if not carefully controlled.