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.
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.
Edify Energy and Wirsol Energy have connected the 60MW Gannawarra Solar Farm in northwest Victoria to the grid, with a storage retrofit expected before the summer.
Australia-headquartered engineering and professional services company WorleyParsons said its first EPC contract for a battery storage project in the US shows how the energy sector is moving from “mega projects” to “portfolios of smaller projects”.
Bulgana Green Energy Hub, a renewable energy project powering commercial crop farms in Victoria, Australia, including large-scale wind and battery energy storage, will be designed and constructed by Siemens Gamesa.
