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.

The economics of rural electrification using microgrids should be considered an investment for the future, akin to how Silicon Valley tech providers plough money into initially loss-leading products and services, the chief of developer and manufacturer Solar Philippines has said.

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.

Solar modules and deep cycle batteries have been stolen from seven secondary public schools in two municipalities in southern Palawan, in the Philippines.

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.

State-run utility Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) is planning to facilitate 1GW of hybrid floating solar-hydro projects across eight dams throughout the country, while the national government is piloting large-scale battery energy storage.

Fluence will supply the latest large-scale battery energy storage system set to be deployed in South Australia, which has secured non-subsidised debt financing.

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 smart grid pilot will be put into action in the Thai province of Mae Hong Son, to integrate and balance growing shares of renewable energy using battery energy storage systems (BESS).