Antinuclear

With development of battery storage, Australia’s renewable energy will go ahead

Storing renewable energy starts at home, DW Jonathan Gifford 16 Dec 13 Almost all of Australia’s solar energy comes from the roofs of private homes. There’s no shortage of sunlight, but to develop solar power, a storage solution is needed. Vast solar power plants may be commonplace in Germany, but in Australia the turn to renewable energy has largely taken place on an individual basis. More than one million Australian homes now have solar panels, but how to store that energy for when it’s needed is emerging as the next challenge.

Australia’s recently elected coalition government has wasted no time in taking measures to halt the expansion of renewable energy. It has passed legislation to repeal the previous government’s carbon price mechanism, closed the Climate Change Commission and slashed funding for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.

Much of Australia’s renewable energy, and almost all of its solar efforts, however, have been deployed in the country’s suburbs on the roofs of private households.

This also brings with it challenges, and electricity grid operators have begun taking measures to limit the amount of solar power that can be added in an area. In Western Australia, the utility Western Power is preventing large installations – bigger than 30 kilowatt peak (kWp) – from feeding any electricity produced back into the grid. The utility that supplies remote or rural parts of the state, Horizon Power, announced in October that if a solar system is installed, it needs to be equipped with some kind of “renewable energy smoothing” technology – essentially some form of battery………

http://www.dw.de/storing-renewable-energy-starts-at-home/a-17266796

December 17, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, energy