Tagged with renewables

ACT pours another $5m into battery storage research

An Australian National University research program that aims lead the world in grid-scale battery storage innovation and integration has been awarded $5 million in grant funding from the ACT government.

The funding, announced on Wednesday, has been provided as part of the Renewable Energy Innovation Fund, which was set up off the back of the ACT’s first and second wind energy auctions.

Last week, the Territory government announced the winners of the second round of its battery storage auction, part of a nation-leading plan to deploy 36MW of cutting edge distributed battery storage in more than 5,000 ACT homes and businesses by 2020 –  and the largest government supported battery storage program in Australia by quite a distance.

ACT climate and environment minister Simon Corbell, the architect of the highly successful reverse action schemes, said on Wednesday that the development of the ANU-based Battery Storage and Integration Research program showed his government’s renewable energy initiatives continued to provide benefits for the sector.

The ACT government and ANU will jointly invest the funds in the $8 million Battery Storage and Integration Research Program over the course of five years.

The international effort will be coordinated by ANU’s Energy Change Institute, which will support the program with $3 million in cash and in-kind contributions, including $2 million for new laboratory infrastructure to support battery storage and integration research.

ANU Vice-Chancellor Professor Brian Schmidt said the Territory’s support would help establish Australia as research leaders in the battery storage field, which was increasingly important as more renewables were brought into the power generation mix.

Schmidt said the ECI would also engage with the emerging renewable energy sector in the ACT, while also fostering international renewable energy partnerships.

“The ACT is one of the world’s leading jurisdictions and the leader in Australia when it comes to renewable energy policy, as exemplified by the innovative wind and solar reverse auctions,” he said.

Professor Ken Baldwin, Director of the ANU Energy Change Institute, also welcomed the announcement.

“As the proportion of renewables in the grid grows, battery storage and its integration are becoming increasingly important to address intermittency in renewable energy supply,” Professor Baldwin said.

“The… funding will generate enormous economic benefits for the ACT.  It will enhance local industry capability and competitiveness, attracting innovative energy companies to the ACT and building the ACT’s reputation as a global leader in renewable energy and storage,” he said.

Read more.

NT Labor proposes 50% renewables by 2030 ahead of election.

The Northern Territory Labor party has promised to adopt a renewable energy target of 50 per cent by 2030, in new policy detail released ahead of the NT’s August 27 election that they are expected to win easily.

The proposed target would put the NT in line with most other Labor state’s and territories in Australia – as well as federal Labor – and puts it ahead of the federal Coalition government, which is aiming for just 23 per cent renewables in 2020, with no target set for beyond that date.

Solar-PV-installation

Giles has also weighed in on the South Australian “energy crisis”, pointing the finger at the Labor governed state’s high penetration of renewables as the main driver of high power prices and using this incorrect assessment of the situation to push his plans for gas power expansion.

In a media statement released on Sunday, the NT’s Labor leader, Michael Gunner, said that his party – if elected – would put in place a long-term plan to combat climate change, including an energy policy that transitions the Territory from fossil fuels to renewables.

As well as adopting the ambitious new renewables target, Gunner said his government would commission a Roadmap to Renewables report, to be delivered next year and establish a dedicated renewables department to advise on the technological, financial and legal requirements to achieve the target.

Gunner also said Labor would provide ongoing R&D funding to support the renewables roll-out, retain government ownership of the Territory’s power and water utilities, and guarantee that any electricity price rises were capped at CPI.

Funding was also promised to boost rooftop solar installation across the Territory ($5m) and to further the development of Alice Springs as “the Centre for Excellence for Solar Energy” ($5m).

And, perhaps in recognition of the situation in South Australia, Gunner also said his government would ensure that the territory’s gas-fired power generation continued “to provide base and peak load power during the transition to renewables.”

As Gunner notes, the current NT government, the CLP has no renewable energy target or policy of note, at this stage.

Read more.

Renewable energy fund: QIC, Future Fund back AGL

renewable energy fund

Renewable Energy Fund QIC and the Future Fund will tip $800 million

Renewable energy fund: Queensland Investment Corporation and the Future Fund are set to become major players in the race to meet the renewable energy target, backing a $2 billion-$3bn fund with diversified energy group AGL that will build up to a fifth of the new capacity needed.

QIC and the Future Fund will tip $800 million into a fund that plans to build 1000MW of new wind and solar farms along the east coast in a deal that breaks a long-running deadlock between investors and energy retailers.

AGL chief executive Andy Vesey said the fund, to be announced today, will have $200m of equity from the company as reported by Andrew White.

He said it would be backed by power purchase agreements (PPAs) from AGL that would underwrite returns and aim to stimulate the development of new capacity.

The balance of funding will come from banks to provide levered returns in the fund.

“We are taking down the road blocks one by one and the fund basically shows that there is appetite from quality investors and that we can show that by people bringing equity, there is debt willing to come in,’’ Mr Vesey said.

The deal is a breakthrough for the renewable energy industry, with the Abbott government’s review of the RET in 2014-15 stalling new investment and electricity companies unwilling to provide the 20 year-plus power purchase agreements developers and investors say they need to underwrite new projects.

The industry estimates $10bn needs to be spent building another 5000MW of capacity to meet the 2020 compromise target agreed between the government and Labor last year. If it hits its targets the Powering Australian Renewables Fund could end up building a fifth of the new capacity required and owning 10 per cent of ­Australia’s renewable energy generation.

It will be seeded with AGL’s existing 102MW Nyngan and 53MW Broken Hill solar plants, with the balance of the fund to come from new developments.

Renewable energy fund projects

A decision on the first new project is expected by March next year. QIC, whose involvement was first flagged in the DataRoom column last month, will invest the money for the Future Fund and other clients in its global infrastructure fund.

QIC’s head of global ­infrastructure, Ross Israel, said the deal was a breakthrough for the $70bn investor, which had been looking for a way to get into the renewable energy market in the scale required for a major institution.

“Having those plants in Queensland and NSW provides us with diversification in wind and solar as well as geographic spread, and the PPA with AGL makes it attractive for us in the long term at a time of disruption in the energy market,’’ Mr Israel said.

The PPAs will run for just five to seven years, with Mr Vesey ­saying he was unwilling to risk AGL’s balance sheet on longer agreements when he did not have matching contracts from customers on the other side.

“The kind of people who could cover those would be my non-residential and commercial customers and they tend to churn very highly, so it is very hard to write a contract like that,’’ Mr Vesey said. To read more click here.

Renewable energy fund will be discussed at The National Sustainability in Business Conference; renewables, markets, innovation, opportunities and capital will be held 23 – 24 March 2017 at the Hotel Grand Chancellor, Brisbane.

To express your interest in the Conference CLICK HERE.

Boost to renewable energy target

RET-collageRenewable Energy: Ross Israel from QIC and Andy Vesey from AGL Energy are the new breed of renewable energy evangelists.

They view Australia’s renewable energy target as an opportunity to generate a mainstream discussion about decarbonisation of Australia’s power generation, while at the same time pioneering new methods of financing for large scale solar and wind projects as reported by the Financial Review.

Vesey, who is chief executive of AGL, believes Australia is yet to seriously address the fundamental question of how to solve the problem of an oversupplied energy generation market. He takes every opportunity in public forums to highlight the paradox between the need to meet a renewable energy target at the same time as oversupply is driving down the wholesale price of power.

Creative solutions to this issue will involve complex negotiations between coal-fired power generation companies, federal and state governments, and communities. These big structural changes must be negotiated in tandem with a new approach to the management of the mix of renewables in the national electricity network.

The problems associated with the wrong mix of energy sources have been laid bare in recent weeks in South Australia.

It is clear that the intermittent supply from renewables must be matched with predictable energy sources. One way of solving the problem is large scale battery storage, which is probably coming faster than you think because of the race between providers of battery technology in the United States, Europe and Korea.

Israel, who is head of global infrastructure at QIC, is a big believer in the revolutionary implications for the economy of the combination of battery storage and renewable energy. He says mass adoption of battery storage within the next 15 years will transform Australia’s electricity sector into a decentralised generation model.

Renewable Energy Targets

Israel’s renewable energy evangelism was in full flight on Tuesday when he revealed a strategic partnership between QIC and AGL Energy to create the $3 billion Powering Australian Renewables Fund. The ultimate objective is to have a $3 billion fund, with $1 billion in equity and $2 billion in debt, to invest in large-scale renewable energy infrastructure.

In the first instance, the QIC Global Infrastructure Fund has tipped in $800 million and AGL has invested $200 million. The QIC Global Infrastructure Fund has a range of institutional investors but only the Future Fund was willing to put its hand up as a client. Its contribution is not known but is likely to be significant.

The  Powering Australian Renewables Fund is underpinned by a long-term energy supply contract with AGL Energy. It is anticipated that AGL’s proposed wind farms in Silverton (up to 200mw) in NSW and Coopers Gap (up to 350mw) in Queensland will be the first two projects offered to the fund.

The fund expects to acquire AGL’s existing 102mw Nyngan and 53mw Broken Hill solar plants as seed assets and to commit to its first new project by March 2017.

The significance of the deal announced by QIC and AGL Energy should not be underestimated. When fully invested the Powering Australian Renewables Fund will provide about 10 per cent of Australia’s renewable energy capacity. To read more click here.

Renewable energy and renewables will be discussed at The National Sustainability in Business Conference; renewables, markets, innovation, opportunities and capital will be held 23 – 24 March 2017 at the Hotel Grand Chancellor, Brisbane.

To express your interest in the Conference CLICK HERE.

Developing reliable renewable energy sources

renewable_energy_global_recordsAs the world’s population continues to grow, so does our consumption of natural resources. Many of these resources are non-renewable, so research into renewable sources of energy is vital. Research led by Bournemouth University’s Dr Zulfiqar Khan is tackling this issue through reducing corrosion, improving heat transfer and fluid dynamics, and using nano coatings to enhance surface effiencies in renewable energy systems as reported by Science News.

The European Union’s (EU’s) Renewable Energy Directive states that the EU should be producing 20% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020; a challenging target for any country. Dr Khan’s research is a direct response to this initiative and to the challenge of finding sustainable and renewable ways of meeting our future energy needs. His research is supported by a team of PhD students, many of whom are part funded by industry.

One of his major areas of focus is developing solar thermal technology, which is available abundantly due to its nature. “Currently, we are very reliant on Solar Photovoltaic for our solar panels, but we do not have a large supply of the materials used, so using it won’t be sustainable over a long period,” explains Dr Khan. “I am developing a means of using readily available and sustainable materials in solar panels, which will help our future energy use. I am also looking at ways to move away from standalone panels to integrating them within standard building practices.”

Dr Khan explains the different components in the system: “There are four parts to this system. One part focuses upon generating heat for colder climates, while within warmer climates it focuses on generating electricity. The third part of the project looks at thermo-fluids, with the aim of improving the efficiency of fluids within the solar energy system. The final part will be the integration of heat recovery system from waste.”

At the moment Dr Khan and his team of three PhD students are testing the system for generating electricity in warmer climates. Funding from Future Energy Source Ltd. has allowed Dr Khan and his team to set up labs in Poole, which include a scale model of the solar thermal system — an invaluable tool for testing. The first phase of heat generation in cold climates is nearly at the point of being commissioned, while the third phase of testing thermo-fluids will begin in early 2016. To read more click here.

The National Sustainability in Business Conference; renewables, markets, innovation, opportunities and capital will be held 23 – 24 March 2017 at the Hotel Grand Chancellor, Brisbane.  To express your interest in the 2017 Conference CLICK HERE.