While energy storage can be considered “critical” to Australia’s transformation to a distributed, low carbon energy mix, a lack of investment and planning for the technology could have negative consequences for the network.

Australia has launched new interactive maps of the electricity grid specifically to support decentralised usage of distributed energy resources (DERs) including battery storage, renewable energy and smart demand management.

Australian redox flow energy storage maker Redflow says a Thai factory set to start producing its batteries could be producing 30Wh annually when it becomes fully operational.

The Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) have both financed the Kennedy hybrid solar, wind and storage project in north Queensland, which is being developed Windlab and Eurus Energy.

Australia’s government has dropped plans for introducing a Clean Energy Target (CET) post-2020, opting instead for a technology-neutral plan that it claimed would prioritise reliability and bringing prices down.

Australian energy provider MPower has been selected to deliver a grid-scale battery energy storage system in New South Wales that could save the local grid operator AU$1 million (US$0.78 million) a year in network upgrades.

Solar Citizens has welcomed South Australia’s Liberal Party’s AU$100 (£59.1 million) commitment to support solar households in shifting to battery storage yet opposed them scrapping the 50% renewable goal as a missed opportunity.

Queensland’s tender for 400MW of large-scale renewables and 100MW of energy storage has received 115 proposals from 79 different entities spanning a wide range of technologies, according to the state’s energy minister Mark Bailey.

Four months after its CEO declared to Energy-Storage.News that hybrid vanadium redox flow-lithium systems would be the “optimal” way to deliver multiple applications for energy storage, redT has delivered equipment to its first such project.

While headlines about energy storage in Australia have been dominated by news of batteries in large-scale utility projects and the residential sector, the country’s government and renewable energy agency have identified numerous possibilities for developing pumped hydro storage assets.