Australian Energy Market Operator

Ongoing grid connection issues and concerns about Australia’s unpredictable regulatory and policy environment have been identified as the key culprits with a new report revealing investor confidence in the nation’s renewable energy sector has slumped to a five-year low.

This week will see the official launch of a global taskforce that aims to support worldwide uptake and integration of renewables and achieve at least 50% reduction in emissions over the coming decade.

Sustainable intentions come together in the signing of a green loan to fund ongoing development of FRV’s Sebastopol Solar Farm, which lender ING says contributes towards its ‘ambition to align our lending portfolio with the Paris Agreement goals.’

The northern Australian region this week added nine solar plants to the two already threatened – along with a wind farm – with having their output halted under certain conditions.

The government of Victoria has decided to break from national electricity rules and introduce legislation to fast-track priority projects such as grid scale batteries and transmission upgrades, and make room for more large scale solar and wind. The announced reforms have prompted a flurry of reaction.

A minor concern it may be, compared to the tragic loss of life, livelihoods and biodiversity caused by the bushfires still ravaging parts of Australia, but reduced output by PV systems due to smoke haze is an unwelcome bi-product of blazes that have burned at a scale and ferocity never seen before.

By this time next year we may be able to wave goodbye to that old chestnut about renewables endangering security of supply. Elsewhere, the price of lithium – and the products it goes into – could go either way after tanking this year.

A new survey by the Melbourne-based Clean Energy Council shows that confidence in new clean energy investment has continued to weaken over the past six months. While a majority of Australian industry representatives expect to hire more people over the next 12 months, the biggest challenges to developing new projects remain unchanged, with the grid connection process, technical requirements, and policy uncertainty at the top of their list of concerns.

The authorities in Western Australia have revealed that two units at Synergy’s Muja Power Station will be retired from October 2022. The state government said the coal-fired units were only being used about 35% of the time, largely because rooftop solar has reduced demand on the grid.

The scheme will test the potential of distributed energy resources such as rooftop systems, battery storage and controllable load devices aggregated into VPPs to provide scalable energy and network services traditionally performed by large scale, conventional electricity generators. With registration open, the Australian Energy Market Operator wants VPPs to register to accelerate shared learning.