Amber’s Tim Barson on how home batteries are turning into a money spinner. Plus: Rooftop solar shattering records across the grid. You can find previous episodes of the Solar Insiders podcast here or on your favourite podcast platform. Pylon is a proud sponsor of Solar Insiders. nextracker is a proud sponsor of Solar Insiders….
Europe’s largest concentrated solar thermal project has been commissioned in Belgium with a solar field peak yield of 2.7GWh thermal power and storage capacity of 5MWh thermal power. Global packaging and materials manufacturer Avery Dennison officially commissioned the project built in collaboration with CST expert Azteq and long-duration thermal storage provider EnergyNest. A total of…
Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (Fraunhofer ISE) and Dutch research institute AMOLF announced last week that they have fabricated a multijunction solar cell with a record efficiency of 36.1%. The two research institutes presented the new record at the European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference (EU PVSEC) in Lisbon late last week, believing it…
A two-way electricity tariff being trialled in New South Wales is delivering a daily profit to one Northern Sydney solar household, peaking at times at $20 a day and making the purchase of a Tesla Powerwall battery a no-brainer. The trial, a collaboration between distribution company Ausgrid and retailer Amber Electric, offers households on the…
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…