Oceania

South Australia has found itself at the heart of a 21st-century gold rush, though this time for naturally occurring hydrogen. Since February 2021, 18 exploration licenses have been granted or applied for in the state by six different companies searching for natural hydrogen.

An international group of researchers has achieved the highest fill factor reported for perovskite cells of any size to date. The device was fabricated with a nitrogen-doped titanium oxide (TiOxNy) electron transport layer aimed at improving charge transport between the cell’s perovskite absorber and the electrodes.

The New South Wales Government is forging ahead with plans to bring 12 GW of renewable energy and 2 GW of storage online by 2030 with the formal declaration of Australia’s second coordinated renewable energy zone in as many months.

Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto’s ambition to become one of the world’s largest lithium suppliers has taken a battering with the Serbian government pulling the plug on the company’s $3.3 billion ($US2.4 billion) Jadar lithium-borates project.

SUN Energy’s 100 MW Merredin Solar Farm in Western Australia has emerged as the country’s best performing utility-scale PV project in 2021. International consultancy Rystad Energy says it has delivered an average capacity factor of 29.6% for the calendar year.

Scientists in Australia have analyzed the state-of-the-art of all gettering technologies used in the solar industry. This technique, which is aimed at reducing defects in wafer manufacturing, may become more important in the future, as cell efficiencies increase and become increasingly sensitive to traces of metallic impurities.

SunWiz has identified the most popular solar panel and inverter brands in the Australian market. In total, 5.2 GW of solar was installed in Australia in 2021, putting the country’s cumulative tally at 26.9 GW.

Researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) predict that growth to 60TW of photovoltaics needed to rapidly reduce emissions to ‘net zero’ and limit global warming to <2 °C could require up to 486 Mt of aluminium by 2050. A key concern for this large aluminium demand is its large global warming potential.

KPS Power Generation has converted a 10 MW diesel-fueled power station at a mine in South Australia into a hybrid PV facility.

Genex Power says it is now ahead of schedule on the construction of a new engineering project to transform a retired gold mine site in Australia into a 250MW/2GWh pumped hydro energy storage facility.