Oceania

Australia’s Renascor Resources has confirmed it has raised AUD 15 million ($11.6 million) to fund its Siviour battery anode material project up to the construction phase. The project will be the world’s first integrated mine and purified spherical graphite operation outside of China.

The Australian Energy Market Commission has released proposals to reward fast frequency services in the National Electricity Market for the first time.

A new study from Australia has highlighted the potential of polysilicon passivated junctions for revolutionizing the commercial production of crystalline silicon solar panels. It also presented, however, the technical and economic hurdles that must still be removed to ensure its success, including the damage that this technology can produce for the polysilicon layers, due to the cell’s metallization process.

Solar installer Jake Warner has received surprising feedback from his customers after he chose to transition his company, Penrith Solar, exclusively to microinverters two months ago. “What I found is actually the opposite to what I expected,” Warner told pv magazine Australia

Province Resources has signed a memorandum of understanding with French renewable energy developer Total Eren, which could see the two companies have equal shares in Province’s HyEnergy Zero Carbon Hydrogen project proposed in northwest Western Australia.

Australian utility AGL is transforming its operations in a number of ways, from restructuring the company itself, to building energy storage facilities for flexible distribution of renewable energy into the future. The company is also planning to build a pumped-hydro facility at a disused open-cut coal mining site in eastern Australia.

The Australian unit of Germay’s Juwi has added another off-grid solar PV project to its burgeoning portfolio. It said it will construct a 13 MW solar farm at the site of the Gruyere gold mine in Western Australia.

Genex Power is set to begin building a 250 MW pumped hydro facility next to an existing 50 MW solar farm later this month, as it has secured the financing it needs to move forward.

Australian Vanadium filed a patent application this week for its vanadium processing route, while rival TNG signed a deal to commercialize vanadium redox flow batteries.

AGL has signed a memorandum of understanding with Finland’s Wärtsilä to develop large-scale hybrid energy systems for the commercial and industrial market.