New Zealand

New Zealand’s transition to a renewable energy future has taken a significant step forward with the nation’s first grid-scale battery energy storage project now offering injectable reserves to the electricity market for the first time.

Fonterra, a New Zealand-based dairy producer, has started operating a new heat pump in combination with a solar thermal facility. The hybrid project transforms excess heat from chillers and compressors into a heat source for industrial use.

Lodestone Energy has started generating electricity at its solar plant in Kaitaia, New Zealand – the nation’s largest solar array and first utility-scale PV installation to date.

A global research group has compared static, customized dynamic, and dynamic-by-default energy allocations at a collective self-consumption project in France. They have found that dynamic customization performs better due to tax benefits.

The new heat pump can purportedly provide hot water at a temperature of up to 70 C. It is specifically designed for climatic conditions with temperatures ranging from -10 C to 42 C, as well as coastal locations.

Researchers from Massey University in New Zealand have developed a robotic lawn mower with three 50 W solar panels and a 20 Ah lithium-iron-phosphate (LiFePO4) battery. Two of the PV panels can be retracted and stacked inside the robot. They slide out when it needs to recharge its batteries.

New Zealand’s large-scale solar market is set to shift up a gear, with the government referring two PV projects to an independent fast-track consenting panel. The installations have a combined generation capacity of more than 500 GWh per annum.

New Zealand renewables company Lodestone Energy’s plans to develop an initial suite of five large-scale solar farms with a combined generation capacity of more than 365 GWh per annum has reached another milestone with construction beginning on the second of the projects.

The New Zealand government will investigate the viability of establishing a pumped hydroelectric facility on the South Island. The project could provide up to 8.5 TWh of annual generation and storage capacity to support the nation’s transition to 100% renewable electricity generation.

MAN Energy Solutions is building an industrial-scale heat pump that generates steam without using gas. It will produce steam to dry dairy ingredients at a milk farm in New Zealand.