Plans to develop a massive, multi-gigawatt scale renewable energy hub combining wind, solar and storage in central Queensland have edged forward this week, with an up to 372MW wind farm winning state government approval. Developers RES and Energy Estate said on Wednesday that state planning approvals mark a major milestone for the Moah Creek wind…
Victoria’s Labor government is turning its attention to how best to electrify the state’s housing stock, with the launch of a new grants scheme to deliver bulk solar panels and electric hot water rebates for housing. The $10 million Residential Electrification Grants program was opened on Monday to entities providing installations to more than 50…
Three decades ago, I visited Nimbin’s Rainbow Power Company for the first time pondering a change of lifestyle and career. It felt like I had landed in an alternative universe. I found a ramshackle collective of Aquarius Festival survivors who had built a business out of saving the planet, creating right livelihood and mandating employment…
The 75MW Wyalong solar farm has been officially opened after “going live” and starting injections to the grid, and is backed by a power purchase agreement from Australia’s NBN Co, operator of Australia’s National Broadband Network. Located in the Riverina area of New South Wales, the Wyalong solar farm features around 127,000 panels over 260-hectares….
The Australian Energy Market Operator is teaming up with the CSIRO and two Australian universities to lead a new research centre that aims to fast-track the development of a completely renewable energy power grid. The Electric Power Innovation for a Carbon-Free Society (EPICS) Centre is a multinational program that also involves the US and the…
Rooftop solar fires are great mainstream news fodder. The most recent example turned up last week, when an ABC Darwin story about a home where a PV system’s DC isolator went up in flames (no one was hurt and the house survived unscathed) was spun into a bigger story about how there has been a…
Singapore renewables developer Vena Energy has pared back plans to install up to 500MW of solar alongside a big battery in central-western New South Wales, ditching the solar component entirely and settling on a stand-alone 408MW, two-hour battery. Vena, which is also proposing an up to 1GW offshore wind farm off the Victorian coast, says…
Pay Australians a bit more to shift their power use, and they will do it, says new research out of Monash University Business School. Researchers led by Dr Gordon Leslie found that if power retailers reward customers with low-cost energy during the day, Aussies will respond by changing their habits to make the most of…
Chinese solar PV giant Longi unveiled its latest Hi-MO 7 solar modules at the Energy Transition Conference 2023 in Malaysia,promising enhanced conversion efficiency, power temperature coefficient, and higher reliability. The industry-wide race to increase the power and efficiency of solar modules is relentless, with the global standard for large-scale solar modules jumping from 500W just…
A New South Wales-based solar company and its directors have been fined hundreds of thousands of dollars for falsely claiming rebates for dozens of rooftop PV systems that they did not, themselves, install. The Clean Energy Regulator, which governs the federal solar rebate scheme, says the Federal Court has ordered civil penalties totalling $240,000 against…
Europe’s solar industry has called for the immediate ban on the import of unethically produced solar panels, amid warnings that ultra-cheap Chinese modules are flooding the EU market and driving local manufacturers out of business. In a letter co-signed by more than 30 European solar manufacturers, start-ups and associated companies, SolarPower Europe calls on the…
After a flurry of social media excitement at the end of last week, Tesla has finally come to its own Powerwall 3 party with an official social media launch of the new home battery in the US, and with some firm details on what to expect, when it lands. So when does it land? Not…