Australia

Australia’s Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners has signed a supply deal with Chinese battery manufacturer CATL that is expected to support the deployment of more than 10 GWh of energy storage systems over the next five years.

A group of international researchers has developed a new perovskite-silicon solar cell design using a top perovskite PV device with an energy bandgap of 1.67 eV and a new self-assembly monolayer based on carbazole. The tandem cell achieved a higher efficiency compared to counterparts without the monolayer and passed the IEC 61215 standard thermal cycling test.

Province Resources, which is developing an 8 GW green hydrogen project in Western Australia, has secured additional state licences for more than 600,000 hectares of land, as well as over 864 hectares of the seabed near Carnarvon.

SunDrive Solar, a Sydney-based startup working to replace the silver in solar cells with copper, has obtained AUD 11 million ($7 million) from Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) to expand its metallized cell production to a commercial scale of more than 100 MW per annum.

Genex Power, the owner of a 50 MW/100 MWh battery system that caught fire in the Australian state of Queensland on Sept. 26, says the blaze was triggered by issues on the grid side of the Tesla Megapack battery unit.

Mining giant Fortescue has abandoned plans to build a 5.4 GW solar, wind and battery energy storage project that was set to provide renewable energy to power its iron ore mining operations in Western Australia.

Drone-mounted imaging of solar farm performance at the rate of one panel per second reduces the cost of current ground-based sampling methods by up to 20 times. A new strategic Australia-Singapore partnership is helping to ensure the output of PV assets is always at peak.

Renewables investor Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners has announced plans to develop a polysilicon factory in Australia.

Trina Storage unveiled its new Elementa 2 utility-scale battery at the recent All-Energy conference in Melbourne, Australia. It is offering design engineering services to support uptake of the 2 MW/4 MWh LFP battery.

Star Scientific, an Australian hydrogen technology company, is set to expand its market presence by partnering with a US-based research facility to advance its heat reaction technology, which efficiently generates heat for industrial use by using renewable hydrogen.