By Beth Gibson – ABC News – 14 June 2019

PHOTO: The battery stores 100 per cent renewable energy generated from the solar panels. (Supplied: Edify Energy)

Australia’s largest integrated battery and solar farm was officially opened in Victoria’s north on Friday.

The 50-megawatt battery system just outside of Kerang stores 100 per cent renewable energy and feeds directly into the state’s electricity grid.

It is Tesla’s second biggest battery in Australia, after its 100-megawatt lithium ion battery in South Australia, with the capacity to power 16,000 homes.

Victoria’s Energy Minister, Lily D’Ambrosio, said it was a huge step towards the government’s renewable energy target of 50 per cent by 2030.

“It’s producing clean, renewable energy from a really important natural resource that exists in north-western Victoria, and that is the sun,” Ms D’Ambrosio said.

Last year the Victorian Government and the Federal Government each gave $25 million to fund two 50-megawatt batteries in Victoria — one in Kerang and in Ballarat.

The integrated system has been running since the end of last year and Minister D’Ambrosio said it was crucial during Victoria’s heatwave when a lot of the older energy sources, like the Loy Yang power station in the Latrobe Valley, struggled to function.

“Everyone will remember that in January we had record extreme temperatures, especially in north-western Victoria where there were temperatures of 49 degrees,” she said.

“This battery was still be producing and providing electricity during those really extreme heat temperatures.”

Chief executive of Edify Energy, John Cole, described the battery as a sophisticated piece of equipment that was unlike anything else in Victoria’s energy network.

“The battery can be used to provide strengthening to the network when required, it can store power, and it responds to network issues in milliseconds rather than minutes,” he said.

Boost to small regional economy

Manager for economic development at the Gannawarra Shire Council, Roger Griffith, said the project was great for the small town of about 4,000 people.

“If you look at the positive profile of renewable energy around Kerang, it’s probably a much more positive profile than the town had 25 years ago,” he said.

During the construction phase of the project about 180 people were employed for 10 to 12 months.

“Just the food and provision that the workers consumed while they were working on site, it was in the tens of millions of dollars,” Mr Cole said.

“I think I’ve probably seen it 100 times and every time I see it it still amazes me as to the scale and complexity of the project,” Mr Griffith said.

In addition, the project has attracted a number of other businesses to the region.

“We have planning permits in pace for eight large-scale solar farms,” Mr Griffith said.

“This is the first, the second one is under construction, and the other six are at various stages of development.

“Once all of those projects hit the ground that’s when we will start to see the real benefit.”

While most of the community were onboard, Mr Griffith said that there was some local opposition to the farm.

“It’s part of change,” he said.

“The world’s changing, the world will continue to change, we can either sit back and watch it change or try and jump in and try and benefit our local economy and community.”

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Making ocean water safe to drink is usually an expensive and polluting prospect. This Finnish startup has found a way to do it with clean energy and a tiny footprint.

By Adele Peters – Fast Company – 23 May 2019

In a coastal city in Namibia, a small shipping container near the beach sits surrounded by solar panels. Inside, new technology uses that solar power to turn ocean water from the Atlantic into drinking water.

Namibia is in the middle of a prolonged drought. The president recently declared the second state of emergency in three years because the lack of rain is leading to severe food shortages. But if scaled up, this technology could help supply households and agriculture with fresh water. The basic tech that it uses for desalination, called reverse osmosis, isn’t new. But because the system can run on solar power, without the use of batteries, it avoids the large carbon footprint of a typical energy-hungry desalination plant. It’s also significantly cheaper over the lifetime of the system.

“Basically the running costs are zero, because solar is free,” says Antti Pohjola, CEO of Solar Water Solutions, the Finland-based startup that makes the technology. Desalination usually uses large amounts of electricity because reverse osmosis requires keeping water at a constant pressure. The new tech keeps water at the right pressure independently, so it can work without connecting to the grid or using a set of expensive batteries to store power.

In some remote communities, especially ones on small islands, the systems could replace pricey, polluting diesel-powered desalination. Because it can eliminate the operating cost of diesel fuel, the technology can pay for itself within three to four years. “We focus on remote, off-grid areas where there is no electricity infrastructure available,” Pohjola says. The technology is also useful far from the coast; in Kenya, the company has installed systems in rural villages where groundwater used for drinking is too salty for healthy consumption. Plus, the process also filters water through a membrane that removes bacteria, viruses, and other contaminants. The devices are modular, and a smaller system can produce 3,500 liters of water an hour.

In Namibia, the first system is in place on the campus of the University of Namibia, and the water will be used in part to irrigate a new “carbon garden” of trees planted to help remove CO2 from the atmosphere. But similar systems could help address the country’s water challenges at a larger scale, and could help the country prepare for a future that’s likely to involve more drought as climate change worsens. The same could be true in other countries, with networks of small desalination plants providing water locally rather than delivering it long distances. “In Asia and Africa, not only the electricity will be made by decentralized smaller systems, but we could also make water infrastructure local through decentralized systems,” says Pohjola.

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By Giles Parkinson – RenewEconomy – 23 May 2019

Alinta Energy has won regulatory approval for the 212MW Yandin project 150kms north of Perth, which will be the biggest wind farm in Western Australia and one of the most efficient in the country.

The Economic Regulatory Authority on Wednesday said the project had been approved to proceed, and would likely begin construction in July. It received no submissions against the proposal to construct 51 Vestas turbines, each with a capacity of 4.2MW and standing 180 metres high. It is located near the Brand Highway near the town of Dandaragan.

The wind farm is predicted to have a “capacity factor” of around 50 per cent, putting it among the most efficient in the country, and at 212MW it will beat the 207MW Collgar wind farm near Merredin as the biggest in the state.

It also continues the rush of new development in the past two years since the demise of the former conservative government and a three-year investment drought for large scale renewables.

Construction will be undertaken by Decmil, which won the contract in April.

“We’re pleased to receive the generation licence from the Economic Regulation Authority,” a spokesman for Alinta said in an emailed statement. “It’s obviously another step in the right direction.

“The project is on track, and with construction plans and the appointment of contractors firmed up, we’ll become more active at the site from July.

“We’ll also engage with the local community to update them on our plans and seek their feedback.”

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Phys Org / 25 April 2019

An international research team led by The Australian National University (ANU) has made a new type of silicon that better uses sunlight and promises to cut the cost of solar technology.

The researchers say their world-first invention could help reduce the costs of renewable electricity below that of existing coal power stations, as well as lead to more efficient solar cells.

Senior researcher ANU Professor Jodie Bradby said silicon was used as the raw material for solar cells because of its abundance, low-cost and non-toxicity.

“But the standard form of silicon does not use all available sunlight,” Professor Bradby said.

“Just by poking silicon with a tiny hard tip, we’ve created a more complex silicon capable of absorbing more sunlight than the standard type commonly used in solar cells.

“We have proved that we can easily make this new kind of silicon—previously thought unobtainable under normal room temperature and pressure—which could be used for making more efficient solar cells and lead to cheaper energy.”

Dr. Sherman Wong, who worked on the study for his Ph.D. at ANU, is the first author of the paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

He said the team was exploring a little-known property of silicon—its ability to exist in different crystal forms.

“Silicon can also take many crystal forms that have different and useful properties,” said Dr. Wong, who is now at RMIT University.

“The new type of silicon we’ve created is called r8-Si. Instead of the atoms being square or cubic like in standard silicon, it’s more complex—shaped a bit like a diamond on playing cards, only it’s in 3-D.

“It’s an exciting field and there is a multi-billion dollar industry built around silicon manufacturing, so silicon is a super important material that’s worth optimising.”

Professor Bradby said the team would use unique high-pressure facilities at ANU to develop ways of making enough material to produce a prototype solar cell.

“We now need to measure how well this material absorbs light and behaves electrically,” she said.

“We also need to scale up and then work on integrating this material into existing solar industries. This will take another three to five years.”

The shape and complexity of the r8-Si was measured using X-ray diffraction at the Advanced Photon Source in the United States. The study was conducted with a large group of colleagues at the University of Melbourne and several overseas organisations.

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For further information please call us on 1300 656 205 or go to our website at http://www.energystuff.com.au