The Australian state of Victoria has doubled down on its rooftop solar and home battery subsidy programme as part of a drive to help households cover the cost of their power bills while making properties more energy efficient.
Two UK-based firms, energy supplier OVO Energy and integrated home battery storage provider Social Energy, have expanded into international markets in Spain and in Australia respectively.
Maxine Ghavi, head of grid edge solutions at Hitachi ABB Power Grids speaks to Energy-Storage.news about the role of battery storage in the global energy transition.
After a series of large-scale battery announcements in Australia from Federal and state governments, utility company AGL has followed up by saying it plans to build a battery system in South Australia with up to 1,000MWh of capacity.
While the Federal government of Australia resists public and political pressure to commit to net zero targets, the states of Victoria and Queensland have made progress in advancing plans for a large-scale standalone battery project and a wind-plus-storage plant respectively.
A grid-forming project in South Australia combining power electronics and battery storage to integrate wind and solar at a site near the end of a 120km 33kV transmission line is being replicated worldwide, the Head of Grid Edge Solutions at Hitachi ABB Power Grids has said.
South Australia’s state government has contracted for renewable energy retailer ZEN Energy to supply its facilities with power and in doing so has secured the future of a 280MW solar farm as well as a 100MW battery energy storage project.
Wärtsilä has installed the first utility-scale battery storage project in Singapore and received an order from a customer in Southeast Asia for a further 90MW / 90MWh of battery storage.
The acquisition of Advanced Microgrid Solutions (AMS) saw energy storage technology provider and system integrator Fluence take on AMS’ artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled optimised bidding software for energy storage and renewable energy assets. Energy-Storage.news editor Andy Colthorpe asked Fluence CTO Brett Galura and former AMS CEO Seyed H. Madaeni some key questions about the acquisition.
The federal government of Australia has given Major Project Status to the Asian Renewable Energy Hub, which it said will include “the world’s largest wind and solar electricity plant,” producing green hydrogen and ammonia.