Australia

Intercontinental Energy, the company driving two of Australia’s largest renewable energy projects, has announced key milestones for the system architecture that is to serve as the backbone for the proposed giga-scale green hydrogen projects.

An ongoing collaboration between Australia’s Halocell Energy and U.S-based Sofab Inks finds that perovskite modules incorporating Sofab’s Tinfab electron transport layer maintain approximately 100% of their normalized efficiency after 1,300 hours under accelerated combined light and damp-heat testing.

The rollout is accelerated to eliminate the use of diesel from iron ore mining and processing.

MyNu Energy has launched a mobile solar generation and battery energy storage system designed to reduce reliance on diesel as the Middle East crisis continues to cause concerns about fuel shortages and uncertain energy costs.

Aggreko has unveiled plans to build what it says will be Australia’s biggest off-grid renewable hybrid power facility after signing a long-term power purchase agreement with the owner of Queensland’s largest proposed copper mine.

A new UNSW study shows that laser-enhanced contact optimization (LECO) can boost industrial TOPCon solar cell efficiency by improving contact properties and reducing recombination losses. By combining optimized firing conditions with LECO “repair” of contacts, the approach balances recombination and resistance, offering a practical path for conventional TOPCon cells to compete with PV technologies offering higher efficiencies.

Australia’s rooftop solar market has surged 19% in the past month with the latest data revealing a record 341 MW of small-scale rooftop PV capacity was registered across the country in March as consumers also raced to install battery energy storage systems.

Spark Renewables has secured final state planning approval for a solar and battery project that will add 800 MW of PV and 356 MW/1,574 MWh of energy storage capacity to the grid in New South Wales, Australia.

An international study found that the specific power of commercial silicon solar modules increased from 8.5 W/kg in the early 2000s to 23.6 W/kg today, driven by advances in module design, bifaciality, and temperature management. The researchers highlighted that glass and framing dominate module weight, and considering operating conditions like nominal operating cell temperature and rear-side illumination is essential for accurate PV system design.

Scientists in Australia claim that TOPCon cells are rapidly closing the open-circuit voltage gap with heterojunction counterparts, now under 10 mV, while offering greater wafer tolerance and high industrial scalability. Despite slightly lower efficiency, TOPCon-based perovskite/silicon tandems can achieve a levelized cost of energy comparable to heterojunction-based tandems due to reduced fabrication costs, according to the researchers.