Coal retirements, liberalised energy markets and declining costs continue to improve the business case for energy storage in Australia, but the coronavirus pandemic is among factors creating uncertainties and risks, new research has found.
Fluence’s proposal to use two large-scale battery storage systems to ease electricity transmission issues between the Australian states of Victoria and New South Wales has been published by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) this week.
The business case for behind-the-meter (BTM) battery storage in Australia appears to be positive, according to a University of Queensland report on the performance of a 1.1MW / 2.15MWh Tesla battery energy storage system (BESS).
An Australian government-backed trial to create “virtual gas wells” using renewable electricity may demonstrate that small-scale, “stackable” units could be viable in making power-to-gas technology work at scale, the company providing electrolysers for the project has said.
Australia’s government-owned green bank, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), has pledged AU$300 million (US$192 million) of existing funding towards “building investor confidence in renewable hydrogen”.
Targeting a national economic goal in mind of making hydrogen competitive with natural gas, Australia’s government has put AU$70 million (US$44.3 million) into a “deployment funding round” for renewable hydrogen.
“The elimination of solar energy’s intermittency and ensuring its 24-hour availability at grid-competitive cost is the holy grail and RayGen has found it”.
Australian state governments of Western Australia and the Northern Territory have budgeted for measures to support renewables in the past few days, primarily through supporting batteries at large-scale, residential and community level.
“The bottom line is that this is a good business decision. We will get back our money in eight to 10 years at the current price of power. As the price of energy goes up, we’ll pay it back even quicker.”
