Australia

Neoen Australia has filed planning documents for a 500 MW / 1000 MWh big battery to be built west of Sydney.

Fortescue Metals Group Chairman Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest returned to Western Australia last week after a four-month worldwide search for green energy projects and resources. One of the deals secured on the trip was a circular green hydrogen partnership with South Korean steelmaker Posco.

The battery will serve the industrial precinct of Newcastle in the Australian state of New South Wales. It will not be directly linked to solar or wind generation but will be intended to charge and discharge directly from the grid in response to disturbances or market signals.

Redflow CEO, Tim Harris, is confident the company’s Gen3 flow battery will go into production in the first half of this year, once the results from its customer trial are evaluated.

As Christmas lights twinkled their last, South Australia’s electricity grid spent a whole day basking in sunshine and turning towards brisk summer breezes. Renewables ruled — a taste of future feasting on clean energy.

In the first year of operation, the thermal energy storage tank saved 4,232 tonnes of CO2 emissions – with 3,082 tonnes saved by the University of the Sunshine Coast through using solar power instead of grid electricity, and the rest by feeding solar energy into the grid.

A vanadium redox flow battery will be installed at a Western Australian caravan park in the new year. Supplied by VSun Energy, the installation advances its parent company’s vanadium endeavours.

The Australian Energy Market Commission’s latest annual Residential Electricity Price Trends report shows costs are falling as renewables build-out replaces inefficient coal-fired generation.

Centennial Coal has secured more than US$3.8 million in government funding to assess the feasibility of turning a coal mine near Newcastle, New South Wales, into a pumped hydro storage site that could supply 600 MW of renewables to the grid.

Cornwall Insight estimates Australia’s energy storage pipeline at 7 GW, although most of that capacity is still in the proposal phase. More than 900 MW of storage will be built by 2024 – far more than the market operator’s 2020 forecast.