Australia

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency has announced AUD 15 million ($10.3 million) in research funding to investigate end-of-life issues for PV modules. Ultimately it is hoped that the research will increase solar PV efficiency while lowering costs.

A global study has found that Australia lacks interest in electric vehicles, due largely to the impedimental admixture of cost, range anxiety, and a lack of charging options.

Tasmania’s ambitions of becoming the “battery of Australia” improved following early reports on the proposed Marinus Link, a second interconnector between the states of Tasmania and Victoria, which show that the project’s economic advantages far outweigh expected costs.

With almost a decade having passed since electric vehicles hit public roads, the price of battery packs has dropped 87% since 2010, according to a report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. With rising efficiency and evolving supply chains, the market research group suggests cumulative demand will bring prices down to parity with internal combustion engine vehicles by 2024.

The transformation of South Australia’s energy system has taken another step forward with early site works at a green hydrogen facility near Adelaide. The plant will integrate what is billed as Australia’s biggest electrolyzer of its kind.

Adelaide-based storage specialist 1414 Degrees has announced plans to acquire SolarReserve Australia II, which owns the Aurora Solar Energy Project in South Australia and two other PV projects in the state of New South Wales. The company wants to use the Aurora site to build a massive 400 MW solar farm with several thousand megawatt-hours of thermal storage capacity.

A new survey by the Melbourne-based Clean Energy Council shows that confidence in new clean energy investment has continued to weaken over the past six months. While a majority of Australian industry representatives expect to hire more people over the next 12 months, the biggest challenges to developing new projects remain unchanged, with the grid connection process, technical requirements, and policy uncertainty at the top of their list of concerns.

The Australian investment bank has become the latest company to sign The Climate Group’s RE100 initiative, bringing it into a growing pool of businesses that are focused on the global energy transition.

To have any hope of restricting global heating to a maximum of 1.5 degrees Celsius, the renewables success story which saw 108 GW of solar deployed last year needs to be cranked up to the next level – and fast.

Australian startup Power Ledger wants to scale up its offerings for much larger communities, as it has already verified its technologies in projects around the world. The Australian Energy Market Commission last week proposed a similar agenda.