This Week in Solar: A breakthrough in Solar technology

1. Aussie tech gurus driving local, low-cost solar panel breakthrough

An Australian startup that developed breakthrough solar technology to supply households with cheaper, more efficient rooftop panels has secured federal government support to develop a commercial production process and local manufacturing.

2. Off-grid solar solution provides water security breakthrough for remote communities

Solar and energy storage play an essential role in Project Gilghi, an off-grid water security innovation that has the potential to help a great many Australians, particularly Indigenous Australians, and people around the world who are struggling with poor access to potable water and sanitation.

3. ‘There has never been a better time for hybrid microgrids’

Australia’s well-known grid congestion issues and associated federal government negligence dominate the headlines, but in the smaller-scale, microgrid, and off-grid frontiers of the renewable energy transition, there is a new solution-oriented approach. And as Aggreko and Gold Fields have demonstrated, it is paving a solar-panel-bricked-road to a renewably powered resource sector.

4. Australian researchers seek cheaper, better and easier to dispose solar panels

Better performing solar panels and solving questions about what to do when they reach the end of their useful life is set to be the focus of Australian university research projects sharing in more than $15 million in grant funding.

5. Solar installations go through the roof despite Victoria’s lockdown

A near-record number of rooftop solar systems were installed in Australia last month, despite a plunge in Victorian installations during COVID-19 restrictions and lockdown.

6. Australia’s first utility scale solar farm is now four times bigger

Australia’s first utility scale solar farm, the 10MW Greenough River solar project near Geraldton in Western Australia, is now operating at four times its original capacity as the finishing touches are put on a long-awaited expansion.

7. Bright Energy cuts ribbon on 180-MW wind farm in West Australia

Renewable energy project developer Bright Energy Investments has officially opened its 180-MW Warradarge wind farm in Western Australia’s Mid-West region.