Australia

In the final days of 2018, Australia’s New South Wales government gave its tick of approval for the construction of the state’s largest solar farm to date, rounding off a year that saw a flurry of utility-scale solar construction activity and an unprecedented number of big solar additions in the state.

At the end of another year or record rooftop PV installations, national Minister for Energy Angus Taylor warns Australian state governments to “consider the potential risks” of rapid solar industry growth.

Vales Point coal-fired power station owner, Delta Electricity, will purchase most of the output of the 275 MW Darlington Solar Farm in New South Wales under a deal that both sides see as a demonstration of the growing role of renewable energy.

After approving a major solar+storage project at Darlington Point this week, Australia’s New South Wales (NSW) Department of Planning and Environment has just greenlit two more utility-scale solar PV projects: The 170 MW Suntop Solar Farm and the 47 MW Gregadoo Solar Farm.

The New South Wales Department of Planning and Environment has given the green light to a massive solar farm coupled with a utility-scale energy storage facility. The Australian project proposed by Edify Energy is valued at AU$407 million.

Australia’s New South Wales Government has launched its ambitious pumped hydro roadmap designed to back the rising level of wind and solar in the energy mix. Meanwhile, the board of government-owned energy provider Snowy Hydro has given the green light to its landmark $4 billion pumped hydro expansion project, Snowy 2.0.

Australia-based perovskite solar cell specialist Greatcell Solar has failed to secure refinancing for its activities and has been forced to appoint administrators. The company lays the blame at the federal government’s door, pointing to the R&D rebate changes and policy settings that are unsupportive of renewable energy investment as the reasons behind its downfall.

The Clean Energy Council has tallied the numbers underlying Australia’s large scale renewables boom. And big PV is shattering all records, with almost AU$11.5 billion in projects currently being constructed.

PXiSE will deploy its Active Control Technology to manage up to 50,000 distributed energy resources across Horizon Power’s 2.3 million square kilometre network, which it says will enable higher levels of renewable energy.

Hydrogen holds promise for harnessing renewables to produce clean fuel for transport, growing a green energy-export industry, and overcoming seasonal intermittency challenges in the grid. On the road to viable hydrogen production every cost-efficiency measure counts.