INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENTS BATTLE (OF A GOOD KIND) OVER THE BIGGEST BATTERY
SMART ENERGY COUNCIL’S ZERO CARBON CERTIFICATION SCHEME Through its division Hydrogen Australia, the Smart Energy Council is developing a national, industry-led certification scheme for renewable hydrogen, renewable ammonia, renewable metals and other derivatives. The industry-led Guarantee of Origin Zero Carbon Certification Scheme will help accelerate the development and deployment of renewables. Read more on page 18. UNSW chemical engineers have demonstrated how to make ‘GREEN’
AMMONIA from air, water and renewable electricity. The laboratorybased proof of concept does not require the high temperatures, high pressure and infrastructure generally needed which produces more carbon emissions than any other chemical-making reaction.
CEP.Energy is building what it claims is the world’s biggest battery, the 1,200MW at Kurri Kurri in the Hunter Valley Economic Zone which is in proximity of the Liddell Power Station. The first stage will be delivered by 2023 but the supplier is yet to be nominated. Meantime Hornsdale Power Reserve owner Neoen is building “the biggest lithium-ion battery in Australia”: a 300MW/450MWh big battery near Geelong. That’s treble the initial size of the Tesla big battery at Hornsdale. Neoen has secured $160 million in finance from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation for the Geelong project that is scheduled for delivery before summer. This adds to the already strong pipeline of projects by French developer Neoen: the 900MW/1800MWh battery at Goyder South in South Australia and the 500MW/1,000MWh big battery west of Sydney. Origin Energy is planning a 700MW battery at the Eraring coal-fired power plant in NSW, and AGL is rolling out 1000MW of batteries across several sites including the Loy Yang A coal plant in Victoria and the Torrens gas generator in South Australia. A fundamental storage shift is underway.
IMAGE COURTESY UNSW
ON THE MOVE The ACT Government has commenced its ZeroEmission Transition Plan for Transport Canberra involving 90 zeroemission battery electric buses and associated charging infrastructure, maintenance and energy supply. www.tenders.act.gov.au The move follows the ACT government’s 2019 pledge to transition its own vehicle fleet; by mid-year half its 600 passenger vehicles will be fully electric. Compared to the ACT (and Europe) the rest of Australia is lagging in EV uptake with a snail-paced increase in EV sales from 0.6 per cent to 0.75 per cent from 2019 to 2020. IMAGE COURTESY ACT GOVERNMENT
MELBOURNE WATER’S EASTERN TREATMENT PLANT is destined to become one of the largest behind-the-meter solar installations in the nation as its 19MW solar farm takes shape and on completion generates about 65 per cent of ETP’s power needs from renewable energy. Melbourne-based Beon Energy Solutions has been contracted to build the solar farm that is due to be up and running by mid-2022.
IMAGE COURTESY MELBOURNE WATER
4 AUTUMN 2021
IMAGE COURTESY NEOEN
MARKET EVOLUTION According to industry analysts Rystad Energy battery storage and hydrogen electrolyser projects in Australia spiralled to 19.2GW during 2020, matching that of the solar PV and wind energy capacity pipeline. Utility scale solar added 17.5GW of new projects and wind energy 21GW. The Australian Energy Market Operator’s recent State of the Systems report revealed 12 new wind and solar generators with a total capacity of 1,560MW came into commercial operation in 2020, and 32 more generators, 3,301MW all up, are ready to flick the switch. Fifteen more projects, capacity 3,004MW, are committed and 342 are proposed. In total, there is a pipeline of 225GW of renewable and storage projects, which pragmatists would state marks the end for coal-fired power generation. Rooftop PV now comes in at 11GW and that will double to 22GW by 2025 according to Tristan Edis of Green Energy Markets; almost equalling the capacity of all of Australia’s coal-fired power plants. GEM and the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) estimate renewable energy will comprise between 40 per cent and 50 per cent of electricity by 2025, forcing output from coal-fired power stations to fall by 28 per cent and gas-fired by 78 per cent over the seven years. Further, they estimate falling revenues for individual coal plants on the wholesale spot market between 44 per cent and 67 per cent by 2025.
