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Both major parties in the election race for the Australian state of New South Wales have put forward plans focusing on solar and storage for households, with some mixed but mostly positive reaction from the industry.
The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has approved A$6 million of funding for the country’s first compressed air energy storage (CAES) project.
A megawatt-scale energy storage system will be rented out to power a gold mine in Western Australia by Aggreko, the mobile power solutions company which bought up energy storage provider Younicos last year.
Eni Australia, a subsidiary of Italian oil and gas firm Eni, which has been active in Australia since 2000, has acquired a 33.7MW construction-ready solar-plus-storage project in the Northern Territory of Australia, from Katherine Solar, a joint venture between Australia’s Epuron and UK-based firm Island Green Power.
In the previous instalment of this blog, we looked at how our respondents from across the energy storage industry had viewed 2018’s biggest challenges. This time out we look at what some of 2018’s biggest successes were.
Work is underway on an energy storage project in South Australia that will use biogas to generate power to be stored in modules of molten silicon, from startup 1414 Degrees.
Hornsdale Power Reserve (HPR), the 129MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) deployed by Tesla and developer Neoen in South Australia in just 100 days, has been found to have had a positive impact on the local network.
Steven Marshall, the Premier of South Australia, has welcomed the start of assembly-line work at Sonnen’s new factory in Adelaide, while rival Tesla’s virtual power plant (VPP) in the state is beginning its second phase of development.
Redflow will provide 32 of its zinc-bromine flow batteries to two new children’s centres in its native Australia.
In order to address intermittency in its grid, the South Australian Government has introduced a AU$50 million (US$36 million) Grid Scale Storage Fund (GSSF) to help accelerate the deployment of new large energy storage projects, including pumped hydro, hydrogen, gas storage, solar thermal, bioenergy and battery storage.
Australian Vanadium (AVL) and VSUN Energy have signed an agreement to work with the Future Batteries Industry Cooperative Research Centre (FBI CRC) on developing vanadium extraction and processing skills, particularly in Western Australia.
Contruction of a Tesla powerpack battery at the 60MW Gannawarra solar farm in Victoria, Australia - said the be the first battery storage system that has been retrofitted to an existing solar farm in the country - has been completed ahead of schedule.
A 30MW / 30MWh battery energy storage system has been inaugurated with a ceremony in Victoria, Australia, with one project partner describing the switching-on as “a real watershed moment in the continuing modernisation” of the state’s energy supply.
Australia is to trial using solar and wind power to produce hydrogen via electrolysis, with the hydrogen then being used for long-term energy storage in the Sydney gas network.
The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has partnered with Monash University and technology provider Indra Australia to trial a microgrid as a first step to powering Monash’s Clayton campus entirely with renewable energy by 2030.
With a view to creating a mass market design for vanadium flow batteries, Australia’s Protean Energy will deploy a 4MWh battery energy storage project in South Korea that will be researched over eight years of operation.
juwi Renewable Energy and the University of Queensland signed off on an agreement on 30 August 2018 to develop a PV / flow battery hybrid power solution at the Heron Island Research Station located in the Great Barrier Reef.
Subsidies will be available to residents of South Australia who want to purchase home battery systems from next month, while Sonnen looks set to open up a manufacturing and shipping centre in the state.
The Australian state of Victoria has been given a “taste of what’s possible” with the launch of utility Origin Energy’s first virtual power plant (VPP) project to date.
Three more vast projects pairing battery energy storage with utility-scale renewable energy installations are in the pipeline in New South Wales, Australia, through developer CWP Renewables.
A modestly-sized grid-scale battery will be installed at a natural gas plant in Queensland, Australia, boosting the efficiency of the existing power station and providing emergency backup, as well as helping integrate local renewable energy.
Cheap solar electricity will be traded between neighbouring residents in apartment blocks in Western Australia, enabling peer-to-peer trading of electricity in a project supported by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).
Redox flow energy storage systems, earmarked by Navigant Research to be one of the fastest growing electrochemical storage technology sets over the next decade, are being deployed in recent or upcoming projects by Cellcube Energy Storage Systems and Redflow.
Australia’s energy and environment minister has hailed the country’s accelerating residential energy storage sales as a report has emerged from Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel which says the “financial equation is straightforward” for adding batteries to home PV systems.
Australia's 'peak national body' representing transmission and distribution organisations in both electricity and gas, Energy Networks Australia (ENA), has pushed for a more consistent approach to grid connections of solar PV and battery storage by issuing a set of guidelines.
A ‘green energy hub’ including a huge 120MW wind farm and up to 100MW of battery energy storage in Queensland, Australia, by French developer Neoen has received planning approvals from local government.
Australia's National Energy Guarantee (NEG), which has been waived through for a final decision in August, would significantly harm the country's large-scale renewables pipeline, with just 1.5GW expected to be completed by 2025 despite the current 16GW pipeline, according to the head of the country’s solar and storage council.
South Australia state-run firm SA Water plans to deploy 152MW of solar PV and 35MWh of energy storage over the next two years in order to reach its target of zero net electricity costs by 2020.
News in brief from around the world of energy storage.
As much as 40% of grid-connected battery storage projects that have been announced worldwide propose co-location with solar PV, from a pipeline of more than 10GW, analysts at IHS Markit have said.