A 250-home ‘virtual big battery’ was switched on in Canberra, Australia last week, allowing residents to sell solar-generated power at a significantly higher price than available to them through feed-in tariff (FiT) policies.
Applications made to the government of New South Wales in Australia for two solar farms totalling 285MW of capacity are open to comment from stakeholders and members of the public.
Trade associations the Australian Solar Council and counterpart the Energy Storage Council have merged together to form the national Smart Energy Council.
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.
