The push to slash home energy costs by swapping out gas hot water systems for efficient, electric air source heat pumps has delivered a new record for uptake of the technology in Australia, according to the latest Quarterly Carbon Market Report. The Clean Energy Regulator says an all-time high of 34,000 air source heat pumps…
Millions of homes were built before Australia introduced housing energy efficiency standards in 2003. They’re leaky. Gaps around windows, doors and between building materials allow air to move in and out. So people tend to compensate, with more heating and cooling. It’s costly and damaging for the environment. Using a national sample of 102,000 Australian…
If you took the wind, solar and storage developers operating in Australia at their word, you would be wondering what the problem was. There are no shortage of plans to build multiple gigawatts of this, and multiple gigawatts of that – but the grim reality remains that most are stalled at the starting gate. The…
The potential highs and lows of developing solar projects in New Zealand have been underlined this month, as the country’s first utility-scale solar farm began generating power less than a fortnight after a regional government blocked an even bigger 88MW solar farm. New Zealand renewables developer Lodestone Energy announced last week that the 39.4MW Kaitaia…
Seven regional Queensland councils have joined forces with the founders of the CopperString transmission project to develop a new 930km “clean energy corridor” in the state’s north, featuring 4.2 gigawatts of solar, grid-scale battery storage and a high voltage transmission line linking Hughenden to Biloela, via Barcaldine. The huge plans were outlined in a memorandum…
Australian thermal energy storage company Graphite Energy has broken ground on its $29 million Lake Cargelligo facility in New South Wales, a renewable energy precinct designed to power sustainable agriculture. The Lake Cargelligo facility is the first stage of Graphite Energy’s larger Lake Sustainable Energy Precinct which has been designed to generate renewable energy to…
The first stage of what could be the biggest solar and battery system on a shopping centre in Australia has been completed, with the installation of 2.6MW of rooftop PV solar and 12 onsite batteries with a combined capacity of 4MW/10MWh of storage. The solar and battery microgrid, which is being developed in stages to…
The Albanese government has “noted” – but not agreed to – a recommendation from the Climate Change Authority to extend the federal rooftop solar subsidy beyond 2030 and expand it to include household batteries. A proposal to extend the Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme post-2030 and expand it to include home batteries as well as private…
Australia’s state and federal energy ministers have agreed to develop a national roadmap for customer‑owned energy resources, and will consider taking a national approach to the rules governing assets like rooftop solar, home battery storage and electric vehicles. The National Consumer Energy Resources (CER) Roadmap – Powering Decarbonised Homes and Communities to deliver national reforms…
Federal energy minister Chris Bowen’s grand plan to secure at least 32 GW of new wind, solar and storage projects through his Capacity Investment Scheme may deliver a power shift in more than one sense: It might just loosen the shackles of dominance from Australia’s biggest energy utilities. A common complaint from developers of wind,…
NBN Co has signed its third renewable Power Purchase Agreement, inking a 10-year deal that will help to underwrite the construction of a new 120MW solar farm in south-east Queensland. The deal, announced on Friday, will see NBN take more than 20 per cent of the output from Munna Creek solar farm, being built by…
Residents of Melbourne’s social housing portfolio will see their power bills cut by as much as $400 per year thanks to a new partnership which will use onsite solar PV and renewable energy from the grid to power the apartment complexes. At the beginning of the year, the Victorian state government banned new residential embedded…