Oceania

Pumped hydro energy storage is ideally positioned to support reliability and reduce volatility in the energy market as Australia shifts from fossil fuels towards renewable power with former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull labeling the technology the “ultimate long-duration storage” solution.

Work on the long-awaited 280MW Cultana Solar Farm in South Australia appears set to begin with Simec Energy Australia announcing this week it is preparing to start construction on the $350 million project.

Following the early success of its solar integrated Gannawarra Energy Storage System, Edify Energy has again opted for Tesla Megapack as its preferred battery energy storage system for its combination of storage projects totalling 150MW/300MWh in the Australian state of New South Wales.

Elsewhere, the Fraunhofer ISE research institute has unveiled a new tool for high-resolution power-to-X kinetic analysis, and German entities have signed partnership agreements with the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.

Australian redox flow battery manufacturer Redflow’s push into the United States market has received a major boost with the company announcing it will work with California-based biowaste technology firm Anaergia on the installation of a solar and 5.5-6MWh battery energy storage solution.

Australia’s biggest power producer AGL has secured planning approval for a 500MW/2GWh grid-connected utility scale battery to be developed at the site of its coal-fired Liddell power plant in the New South Wales Hunter Valley.

Elsewhere, the Danish government announced a plan to deploy up to 6 GW of electrolyzer capacity by 2030 and Germany and Norway agreed to conduct a feasibility study on large-scale hydrogen transport, including via pipeline.

This week sees new technoeconomic analysis published on different aspects/materials for heterojunction: Important to consider as Europe in particular looks to be betting big on this technology for its manufacturing comeback. And a new report from NREL in the United States examines progress in degradation and durability to increase module lifetimes.

Australian solar startup SunDrive has announced “a breakthrough” in mass production-compatible heterojunction technology, after recording an efficiency result of 26.07% with a silver-free, commercial-size silicon solar PV cell.

“We’re not talking about incremental improvement, this is a really giant leap,” Hysata CEO Paul Barrett told pv magazine Australia. Hysata is commercializing a breakthrough made at the University of Wollongong which effectively, Barrett says, invented a “brand new category of electrolyzer,” vastly improving efficiency.