eco mayjune 2013 web

issue 76 | may/june 13

What next for solar PV?

New ways with wind

Turning organic waste to energy

Smart storage

Inside:The Australian Solar Installers’

Guide 2013

Australia’s number one panelTrina Solar is proud to be the number one choice of solar panel in the Australian market*. Industry-leading products such as our “Honey” cells deliver higher efficiencies and excellent value for money. Combined with our standard 10-year workmanship and 25-year linear power output warranties, Trina Solar is an investment that delivers great returns and offers complete peace of mind.

It’s no surprise that with award-winning products and a commitment to powerful local partnerships, Trina Solar has become Australia’s number one choice in solar panels.

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*SOURCE: Australian PV – Technology and Brands Report 2013 by Solar Business Services.

CSIRO’s Chris Price checking the voltage on a battery at a test facility for renewable energy storage. Read more on page 54. Image courtesy of CSIRO.

Editor Lucy RochlinAssociate Editor Melanie RyanAssistant Editor Isabella AndresSales Manager Tim ThompsonSenior Account Manager Brett ThompsonAccount Manager Michael VillantiCreative Director Michelle CrossActing Design Manager Bianca BotterPublisher Zelda Tupicoff

Published byGreat Southern Press Pty LtdACN: 005 716 825ABN: 28 096 872 004GPO Box 4967VIC 3001, AustraliaTel: +61 3 9248 5100Fax: +61 3 9602 2708Email: [email protected] Website: www.ecogeneration.com.auISSN: 1447-2309



What next for solar PV?

new ways with wind

turning organic waste to energy

Smart storage

Inside:the australian Solar Installers’

Guide 2013

1800 SMA AUSSMA-Australia.com.au

Sunny Tripower 5000TL - 9000TLThe three-phase inverter for residential and commercial marketsThe SMA Sunny Tripower offers more than ever before, with new sizes available to suit the residential and small commercial markets. Packed with great features, the three-phase inverter provides for easy system design and plays an important role in grid management. Optiflex technology ensures the highest in flexibility while combining peak efficiency with the OptiTrac Global Peak system to generate the highest in yields. It has an excellent peak efficiency of over 98 percent and the MPP trackers adjust the voltage and current of a PV array so that it operates at its maximum power point.Webconnect, the new direct data exchange interface, is a standard integrated function for quick communication with Sunny Portal, which allows the user to track the key performance data of the system.The Sunny Tripower 5000TL – 9000TL is AS/NZS 5033 compliant.

contentsissue 76 | may/june 2013

Average Net Distribution 6,345 Period ending September 2012

This magazine is available to interested parties throughout Australia and overseas. The magazine is also available by subscription. The publisher welcomes editorial contributions from interested parties, however, the publisher accepts no responsibility for the content of these contributions and the views contained therein are not necessarily those of the publisher. The publisher does not accept responsibility for any claims made by advertisers.

Unless explicitly stated otherwise in writing, by providing editorial material to Great Southern Press (GSP), including text and images you are providing permission for that material to be subsequently used by GSP, whole or in part, edited or unchanged, alone or in combination with other material in any publication or format in print or online or howsoever distributed, whether produced by GSP and its agents and associates or another party to whom GSP has provided permission.

www.ecogeneration.com.au ecogeneration|may/june13

regulars4 From the editor61 Company news75 Upcoming events75 Environmental credits update76 Advertisers’ Index, Coming in future editions

clean energy wrap6 Solar8 Wind8 Energy efficiency 8 Co- and trigeneration10 Bioenergy10 Geothermal12 Policy

industry update14 Industry movements16 Policy perspectives outlined18 How the renewables market has transformed: 2000 to now24 What next for solar PV: is ‘the party’ over?30 Can Australia afford to waste its organic waste?34 The missing link: why Australia needs energy storage

advances in wind38 Global wind trends for 2013 and beyond42 Developing a social licence to operate

technology installations48 A remote and rewarding project51 Simplifying solar installations

smart grids54 How UltraBattery could help our grid

events56 Energy market reform top of mind at Clean Energy Week 201360 Solar industry insight: mastering new business tools

up close71 Up close with… Conergy Australia Managing Director

David McCallum and Rexel Energy Solutions Executive General Manager Michael Power

reader profile73 Mark Schneider, Head of Power Investment, Investec Bank Australia

project profile74 Sydney Airport Hotel Cogeneration

MWM12009-Anzeigenkampagne 2012_Anz_EN_Erfinder_DinA4_6.0_RZ.indd 1 30.07.12 14:40

ecogeneration |may/june13 www.ecogeneration.com.au

As this May/June 2013 edition of EcoGeneration makes its way to industry readers, clean

energy stakeholders are gearing up for the major industry events of 2013.

This issue of the magazine will be distributed at the Solar 2013 Conference and Expo hosted by the Australian Solar Council and AUPVSEE at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre from 23–24 May. See the EcoGeneration (and partner publication Solar Australia) teams there, at stand B17.

We’ll also be at Clean Energy Week 2013, incorporating ATRAA, from 24–26 July in Brisbane, and on page 56 we outline the highlights of this year’s Clean Energy Week program, such as an expanded Professional Development Day and recently-announced keynote speakers. We also reveal a few tips for making your Clean Energy Week award submission a winning entry.

Don’t miss EcoGeneration at the All-Energy Australia Exhibition and Conference from 9–10 October 2013 in Melbourne as the industry enjoys its busy end-of-year period.

Inside this edition, you’ll find The Australian Solar Installers’ Guide, a handy reference tool developed by EcoGeneration and Solar Australia in conjunction with industry experts to help Australian solar installers answer project-related questions. To request additional, digital copies of this useful guide for your team of installers, call 03 9248 5100.

The founding editor of EcoGeneration, Jessica Lynch (née Wilkinson), recently caught up with Green Energy Trading Managing Director and REC Agents Association President Ric Brazzale as well as Clean Energy

Council Chief Executive David Green to discuss the transformation Australian clean energy has undergone since 2000 when the magazine was launched. Read page 18 for the data and insights.

Also inside this edition, on page 24, Climate Spectator Editor Tristan Edis asks if the photovoltaic ‘party’ is over, and industry insiders respond from page 26.

Renewable energy storage is a key theme in this issue, commencing with international energy expert Richard Williams arguing on page 34 that Australia needs to focus on storage as energy’s ‘missing link’. On the same topic, CSIRO’s UltraBattery is surging ahead, quickly becoming a storage option for an Australian smart grid of the future – read more on page 54.

Page 42 provides a contention for why wind farm developers should have a ‘social licence’ granted by the local community to successfully operate a project, and in this edition’s reader profile, Investec Bank Australia Head of Power Investment Mark Schneider discusses why he values EcoGeneration magazine (turn to page 73).

The EcoGeneration team looks forward to catching up with readers at upcoming events, and hopes to hear your thoughts – either in person at an event, or by commenting at www.ecogeneration.com.au – on this edition’s exploration of clean energy storage.

Lucy RochlinEditor

4 editorial

fromtheeditor

EcoGeneration Editor Lucy Rochlin.

EcoGeneration is printed on BehaviouR paper. BehaviouR paper is 30–55 per cent recycled, is elemental chlorine free and is manufactured in an ISO 14001 and PEFC-certified mill. BehaviouR paper also contains premium white waste paper, reducing matter going into landfill.

Follow us on Twitter @

EcoGenMag

See us at Solar 2013!

Visit the EcoGeneration team at stand B17 at the Solar 2013 Conference and Expo:

23–24 May 2013Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre

Don’t miss EcoGeneration atAll-Energy Australia Exhibition and Conference9–10 October 2013, Melbourne

Don’t miss EcoGeneration atClean Energy Week, incorporating ATRAA24–26 July 2013, Brisbane

ecogeneration | may/june 13 www.ecogeneration.com.au

Projects

6 CleaN eNerGY WraP

Solar thermal feasibility for coal-fired Collinsville The Australian Renewable Energy Agency’s (ARENA’s) Emerging Renewables Program will

invest in a feasibility study that is investigating the conversion of Collinsville Power Station into a hybrid gas/solar thermal plant.

Former Federal Energy and Resources Minister Martin Ferguson announced that the Federal Government will contribute $2.5 million towards the feasibility study, spearheaded by RATCH-Australia Corporation.

The study, with a total cost of $5.6 million, will assess the viability of converting Queensland’s 180 megawatt (MW) coal-fired Collinsville Power Station to a 30 MW hybrid solar thermal/gas power station.

A key benefit of the project will be the production of knowledge that will help accelerate the deployment of concentrating solar thermal in Australia through hybrid projects, according to Mr Ferguson.

Broken Hill solar project development approvedThe New South Wales Planning Assessment Commission has approved development of the

53 MW Broken Hill Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Project, to be located approximately 5 km southwest of the Broken Hill township.

The New South Wales Director-General’s environmental assessment of the project noted that the Department of Planning and Infrastructure considered the project in the public interest, with its environmental issues adequately addressed and managed to acceptable levels.

AGL Energy will develop the Broken Hill project in conjunction with a separate 106 MW project at Nyngan in New South Wales. First Solar will provide engineering, procurement and construction services for both projects, as well as the use of its thin-film PV modules, and will maintain both projects for AGL for five years after their commercial operation starts.

AGL and First Solar received Solar Flagships Program funding from the Federal Government, in addition to New South Wales Government funding, for the two projects. The Broken Hill Solar PV Project is due to be developed from 2013, with construction complete in 2015.

Solar

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This essential industry tool is available now on the EcoGeneration online shop. For more information, or to purchase the Database, visit www.ecogeneration.com.au/shop

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Our energy future. Your industry news.

CleaN eNerGY WraP8WINDGE Vice-Chairman backs wind projects for australia

GE has commenced talks with third-party finance institutions to develop wind energy projects in Australia.

GE Global Vice-Chairman John Rice told The Australian newspaper “We are having discussions with third-party financial institutions about partnering in ways that will help get wind projects developed and other important energy projects.

“There is capital available, but it is not coming from the same places [as] before the global financial crisis,” said Mr Rice.

“So, if we want to be successful long-term in the infrastructure space, we have to be one of the groups that connects capital with those infrastructure projects.”

Mr Rice said that GE is committed to developing wind farm projects in Australia, despite some energy industry concerns that wind is still too expensive

“If I look at where [wind] has come from in the past 15 years, from 25 cents or more per kilowatt (kW) down to less than 10 cents, I look at the technology that is coming out now – 120 m rotors that are far more efficient than they were just three or four years ago.

“I see a segment of the industry that is still on the move, still capable of becoming more productive and much more cost-effective. It is a big mistake to say wind doesn't work,” continued Mr Rice.

Funding surge for UltraBattery as King Island construction commences

ARENA’s Emerging Renewables Program has awarded $480,000 in funding to CSIRO spin-off company Ecoult to optimise CSIRO’s UltraBattery technology, while the first sod has been turned on the construction to house an UltraBattery at the King Island Renewable Energy Integration Project in Tasmania.

Project funding for Ecoult was awarded by the ARENA to determine whether the UltraBattery can lower operating and storage costs by conducting testing on a storage pilot at CSIRO’s Newcastle facilities.

“In residential areas with a large volume of rooftop solar PV, or in off-grid and remote communities that are trying to displace diesel through renewables, battery technology will be crucial to maximising electricity from renewable energy resources,” Former Federal Energy and Resources Minister Martin Ferguson said.

“One of the benefits of the CSIRO’s UltraBattery technology is its suitability for managing energy intermittencies, smoothing power from irregular sources and shifting energy availability over time to ensure more regular availability.”

EnErGy EFFICIEnCy

Read more about the UltraBattery on page 54.

Co- and trIGEnEratIontrigeneration takes to Hunter Valley

Simons Green Energy has won a contract to design, supply and install a 152 kW natural gas-fired trigeneration system at the Maitland City Bowls Sports and Recreation Club in the Hunter Valley.

The trigeneration system will comprise a 152 kW ENER-G cogeneration unit and a Shuangliang hot water absorption chiller.

The system will be installed as complete factory-tested packaged units – the engine and generator set will be housed inside an acoustic enclosure, and will sit in a purpose-built plant room next to the absorption chiller.

The project, which received funding via the Federal Government’s Community Energy Efficiency Program, will provide a large portion of the Club’s electricity demand and will utilise the waste heat generated by the engine to provide space heating and cooling.

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CleaN eNerGY WraP10BIoEnErGynt biofuel plant gets a boost

Lignol Energy has formed an investment and technology collaboration with Territory Biofuels Limited worth $1.18 million, which will restart Territory Biofuels’ 150 million litre per year biodiesel plant and glycerine refinery located in Darwin, Australia.

The terms of the agreement provide for conversion into an equity position for Lignol Energy of between 20–40 per cent in Territory Biofuels, depending on a range of criteria related to the development of the Darwin facility.

Lignol will provide technical assistance with respect to both the restart of the facility and the potential integration of new pre-treatment technologies and catalysts to facilitate the processing of a broad range of low-cost feedstocks.

Study nuts out renewable energy opportunities 20 per cent of the Australian almond industry’s husk and shell waste could be used to offset its

energy demand by matching it with the availability of feedstock and technology costs, according to the Almond Board of Australia.

The Almond Board released the findings of a $60,000 study, supported by $32,000 in funding from ARENA’s Emerging Renewables Program, that examined ways to reduce the almond industry’s energy use by using almond waste products as fuel to generate bioenergy.

The Almond Board is now considering its options for implementation, which could include:• Undertaking a site-specific feasibility study• A physical trial to better understand the technologies that can be used to turn the shell

and husk feedstock into energy• Running an integrated, site-specific project to meet onsite and local supply and demand.

GEotHErmalGeothermal solution for cooling a supercomputer

A new project to be carried out by the CSIRO will use geothermal energy to cool the Pawsey Centre ‘supercomputer’, an $80 million facility currently under construction in Kensington, south Perth.

CSIRO Project Director Steve Harvey said “The system used for the project is known as groundwater cooling, and works by pumping cool water from a depth of around 100 m through an above-ground heat exchanger to cool the supercomputer, then reinjecting the water underground again.”

The CSIRO estimates that using groundwater cooling to cool the Pawsey Centre supercomputer will save approximately 38.5 million litres of water every year, in comparison to using conventional cooling towers.

Drilling work to implement the groundwater cooling system recently commenced at the Australian Resources Research Centre in Kensington’s Technology Park – the same site that houses the Pawsey Centre supercomputer.

According to the CSIRO, the challenge of cooling the new petascale computing system – which will provide expertise to support the world’s largest-ever radio telescope (the Square Kilometre Array) and other high-end science – was one of the driving forces behind the CSIRO Geothermal Project.

origin withdraws from Innamincka JV as Habanero project powers up Origin Energy has withdrawn from the Innamincka Deeps and Innamincka Shallows joint

venture (JV) with Geodynamics Limited.This move is subsequent to Origin’s decision in 2012 to cease funding its JV share of the costs

to complete Geodynamics’ Habanero-4 well.Meanwhile, Geodynamics reached a key milestone in its Cooper Basin/Habanero project,

commencing commissioning activities at the 1 MW geothermal Habanero Pilot Plant in South Australia.

A closed loop created between the Habanero-4 and Habanero-1 wells provides hot, circulating geothermal brine to generate the steam powering the Habanero Pilot Plant turbine. The trial of the plant is due to run until approximately August 2013.



Policy

12 CleaN eNerGY WraP

Federal Government re-commits to rEt The Federal Government has accepted a majority of the recommendations for the RET,

made by the Climate Change Authority (CCA) in its 2012 review of the scheme.The Federal Government said that it remains committed to the RET delivering the

equivalent of at least 20 per cent of Australia’s electricity from renewable energy sources by the year 2020.

As recommended by the CCA in its 2012 review of the RET, the Government will retain the existing framework for the scheme – including the current legislated Large-scale Renewable Energy Target (LRET) – and will implement recommendations to enhance the operation of the scheme.

“In making its recommendations, the CCA was conscious of the need for policy stability for the renewable energy industry, and of the impact of uncertainty on risk premiums required by lenders and investors,” the Government’s response stated.

“As such, the recommendations sought to leave the broad design of the RET scheme unchanged, but suggested changes to contain costs and improve scheme efficiency.”

The recommendations and responsesThe Government intends to implement approved recommendations in several stages:

• Recommendations that do not require legislative change will be implemented during 2013

• Recommendations requiring legislative change will be implemented through a package of amendments the Government intends to introduce later in 2013.

Three recommendations agreed to in principle by the Government will be subject to further consultation and analysis due to commence in the first half of 2013:• Large electricity consumers should be permitted to opt-in to assume direct liability

for RET obligations• In cases where the RET costs are passed through to emissions-intensive, trade-

exposed businesses, partial exemption certificates should be tradeable, and thereby able to be used by any liable entity to reduce liable electricity acquisitions

• Arrangements should be developed to allow for incidental electricity offtakes under the self-generators exemption, which provide community benefits in remote locations.

The Government decided not to pursue the following recommendations relating to the SRES and the non-eligibility of native forest wood waste:• The threshold for solar PV units in the SRES should be reduced from 100 kW; units

over the small-scale threshold would be included in the LRET, with five-year deeming• The SRES Clearing House should be amended to a ‘deficit sales facility’ whereby

new certificates would only be placed in the Clearing House when it is in deficit• If RET eligibility for native forest wood waste is not likely to increase the rate of

logging of native forests, then wood waste eligibility should be reinstated, subject to appropriate accreditation processes.

Solar Map of Australia coming soon

The 2013 edition of the Solar Map of Australia will be included inside the July/August Clean Energy Week edition of EcoGeneration magazine, showing the locations and details of all the proposed, under construction and commissioned solar projects in Australia of 100 kilowatts (kW) or more.

This large wall chart is produced annually to provide the clean energy industry with the latest information on solar projects across the country, and in 2013, the map will feature a range of new projects implemented during the 2012-13 financial year.

If you have a new or updated project of 100 kW or larger to share with the industry, email details to [email protected] before 24 May 2013 to help create the best resource possible for the industry.


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Industrymovements

Robert Bosch GmbH has announced that it will withdraw from the solar energy market and dispose of its 90 per cent stake in aleo solar.

Independently of this sale, Bosch has assured aleo solar of financing until the end of March 2014.

Bosch’s manufacture of ingots, wafers, cells, and modules will cease at the beginning of 2014.

True Value Solar has announced that existing major shareholder, German-based M+W Group, has acquired the remaining 35 per cent of shares in the company, and as a result now owns 100 per cent of True Value Solar.

In 2011, the German engineering and construction company acquired 65 per cent of True Value Solar shares.

M+W Group Chief Executive Officer Jürgen Wild says “Australia is a country where solar production and consumption profiles match excellently to further develop the residential and commercial market.”

Solar Inception has appointed Paul Scerri as National Sales Manager.

Based in Melbourne, Mr Scerri will lead Solar Inception sales throughout Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands and other international markets.

Mr Scerri brings 24 years of industry experience to his new position, most recently serving as Sales and Marketing Manager for Bosch Solar Oceania. Paul Scerri.

Kathleen Ryan has joined the Sales Support team at WINAICO Australia.

Ms Ryan has 18 years of experience in the clean energy industry, originally working for Pacific Solar where she supported the sale of the first solar kit, Plug& Power, followed by a Sales Support role at BP Solar.

The Green Energy Group – incorporating Green Energy Trading and Green Energy Markets – has expanded to include an advisory service for Australian solution providers, known as Green Energy Advantage.

Green Energy Group Managing Director Ric Brazzale says “Our aim is to use our expertise to inform business owners and their solution providers of energy savings options, the opportunities and the benefits that may be achieved through the adoption of cleaner energy alternatives.”

Mark Group has appointed solar engineer Christian Bindel to the position of Lead Solar Engineer.

Mr Bindel joins Mark Group from AGL Energy’s 159 megawatt (MW) Solar Flagship project, and will be responsible for leading the company’s commercial photovoltaic division.

Kathleen Ryan.

Ric Brazzale.

Grant McDowell and Christian Bindel.

Jürgen Wild.


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These perspectives provide a brief snapshot of some significant regulatory issues facing Australia’s clean energy

industry, and may change between the time of publication – May 2013 – and the election. Receive up-to-date news and views on the federal election at www.ecogeneration.com.au

Ahead of the federal election, organisations within the clean energy industry highlight policy areas that could impact renewable generation and energy efficiency after 14 September 2013.

16

Policyperspectivesoutlined

iNdustrY uPdate

Sustainable energy supplies crucial to economic growth and prosperityThe Clean Energy Council recently joined with the Australian Industry Group, the Australian

Petroleum Production and Exploration Association and the Energy Supply Association of Australia to express concern that non-evidence based policies are restricting the development of new energy sources in Australia.

The groups co-signed a strong message to federal ministers, shadow ministers and Council of Australian Governments (COAG) ministers outlining that government planning policies need to support new energy development, including support for established low-emission technologies such as natural gas, wind and solar as well as emerging technologies such as marine, solar thermal and geothermal.

“Sound, consistent and realistic regulations for energy project development are the key to ensuring a safe, reliable and affordable energy supply, and building a sustainable energy sector to meet our future needs,” the associations stated.

Noting that ‘knee-jerk’ policies continue to undermine the development of energy projects within this country, the associations stated “We believe it is urgent that all governments take the wider consequences for energy affordability, security and sustainability into account when considering planning and development.”

Energy Efficiency Council (EEC) Chief Executive Rob Murray-Leach says that while Australia’s major political parties disagree on many issues, there is a growing consensus between the Federal Liberal Party/Nationals Party Coalition, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Australian Greens that energy efficiency, cogeneration and demand-management are the keys to affordable energy.

The EEC believes that the energy efficiency and cogeneration sectors will grow strongly if stable market frameworks – rather than boom-and-bust subsidies – help the industry deliver real benefits to homes, businesses and the community.

In late 2012, Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Liberal and Labor premiers passed a number of energy market reforms at the COAG, including the EEC’s key recommendation around demand-side bidding.

“However,” Mr Murray-Leach notes, “in the hot political atmosphere in the run-up to this election, we don’t expect to see much more bi-partisan debate, or the Federal Coalition and ALP announcing big new energy policies.

“The public debate on the next wave of energy reforms will start after the election on 14 September 2013.”

Areas of consensus must produce action

With the date for the federal election now set, Australia’s peak body for green buildings and communities has called on all political parties to outline the policies and programs intended to drive productivity and sustainability in Australia’s built environment.

Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) Executive Director of Advocacy Robin Mellon says “We are now in the ideal position to assess all political parties based on sound policy, transparent programs and joined-up thinking.”

The GBCA is set to engage with political parties over coming months to advocate a three-point green plan for buildings and communities to help place Australia on a clear, long-term pathway to sustainability.

The three-point plan outlines the need to:• Provide visionary government leadership• Retrofit and improve existing buildings• Move beyond buildings to communities and cities.

“Greening the vast quantity of existing building stock in Australia is an enormous challenge, and all parties must have policies and plans which address, enable and encourage this,” Mr Mellon says.

Some state and territory governments are introducing a range of policy incentives to improve existing buildings’ energy efficiency and sustainability, and the GBCA has called on all political parties to outline the financial and non-financial incentives they intend to introduce to support more efficient, productive and sustainable buildings.

Parties encouraged to provide holistic vision


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In the lead story of EcoGeneration magazine in Issue One, August 2000: ‘EcoGeneration the way of the future’, then Australian

Cogeneration Association (ACA) President Andrew Stock stated that the Australian energy industry and the broader community needed “a wake-up call about the need for greater change to deliver sustainable emissions outcomes”.

On 11 July 2011, the Federal Government announced a target for Australia to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 80 per cent below 2000 levels by the year 2050. This was heralded as a significant commitment, by international standards, and heightened the call for market-based outcomes to decarbonise Australian society.

Case remains for greater changeClean energy is now a vital part of

Australia’s energy mix, and the market has transformed over the past 13 years. The key

development has been recognition of the clean energy industry as a significant market player with a voice, long-term viability and growing relevance to consumers.

According to Ric Brazzale, now Managing Director of Green Energy Trading and President of the REC Agents Association, sector growth has

been along the trajectory predicted by the ACA in issue one of EcoGeneration magazine.

A 10 per cent renewable energy share was predicted by 2010; analysis by the Clean Energy Council (CEC) indicated a 9.6 per cent share from 1 October 2010–11, and for the preceding 12 months it was 8.7 per cent.

The founding editorial team of EcoGeneration magazine, Ric Brazzale and Jessica Lynch, caught up in March 2013 to reflect on what has changed in the clean energy industry since the magazine was launched in August 2000. Ms Lynch also caught up with Clean Energy Council Chief Executive David Green, and provided a snapshot of market progress, 75 editions on from EcoGeneration’s launch.

18

Howtherenewablesmarkethastransformed:2000tonowbyJessicaLynch,FoundingEditorofEcoGeneration

iNdustrY uPdate

The transformation of energy industry representation

The Australian Industry Group supported the incubation of the Australian Cogeneration Association (ACA) in 1993, which commenced life to represent more than 200 members.

The ACA launched EcoGeneration magazine, and at the same time coined the term ‘EcoGeneration’, as a tool to inform government and industry, influence energy market reform, and showcase projects and technologies. The ACA was renamed the Australian EcoGeneration Association (AEA) by issue two of EcoGeneration magazine in October 2000, to better represent cogeneration, waste-to-energy, renewables and distributed generation.

In September 2002, the Business Council of Sustainable Energy was formed with a merger between the AEA and the Sustainable Energy Industry Association. A merger with Auswind in 2007 heralded the Clean Energy Council, which now represents over 600 members engaged in renewable energy and energy efficiency. Its primary role is to develop and advocate effective policy to accelerate the development and deployment of all clean energy technologies.

Great Southern Press has published EcoGeneration magazine independent of any association since 2009.

the renewable Energy target has delivered $18.5 billion in investment in renewable energy

infrastructure, with the potential for $18.7 billion more.

1993 2013


It was predicted by ACA that annual growth in electricity demand from 2000–10 would be 2.75 per cent per annum. According to Mr Brazzale, electricity consumption in the National Electricity Market (NEM) has actually been falling since 2008.

Over the past four years to 2012, consumption has fallen by 6 per cent. Significantly, Mr Brazzale believes roll-out of small-scale solar systems and energy efficiency improvements have contributed more than 50 per cent of the reduction.

transformation triggersMuch market transformation has been

delivered in the form of investment in jobs and technology innovation that should translate into a larger slice of NEM-installed capacity beyond 2020.

According to modelling commissioned by the Climate Institute in 2011, Australia’s clean energy employment has the potential to grow from 8,000 full-time equivalent roles in 2010 to 32,000 by 2030. Most of the employment growth is likely to be in wind and solar.

Transformation catalysts include incentive schemes – the major one being the Federal Government’s Renewable Energy Target (RET), introduced in 2001 by the Howard Government. The original target was

9,500 gigawatt hours (GWh), reset to achieve 45,000 GWh by 2020. The Federal Government’s $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which will operate like a green bank independent of the Government, is due to issue its first loan in 2013.

Installed capacity growth to date has also been stimulated by various state-based programs.

According to an independent report by SKM MMA for the CEC published in August 2012, Benefit of the RET to Australia’s Energy Markets and Economy (pages 2–3), without the RET, Australia would not have met its emission reduction target under the Kyoto Protocol.

Additionally, the RET has delivered $18.5 billion in investment in renewable energy infrastructure, with the potential for $18.7 billion more if the policy continues to be retained in its current form (see Figure 1).

The report also states that trends seen since 2001 are expected to continue, with wind energy expected to dominate investment in large-scale systems. Despite the winding-back of payments under feed-in tariff arrangements and under the Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme, uptake in small-scale systems is expected to continue at a steady pace.

According to the report, the RET has driven renewable energy capacity deployment, increasing from approximately 7,540 megawatts

(MW) in 2000 to around 13,340 MW in 2012. This comprised an increase in large-scale projects of 2,945 MW, and 2,855 MW in small-scale photovoltaic (PV) and solar water heaters. The average annual rate of increase since 2001 was 480 MW per annum.

Uptake has predominantly been in wind generation, which accounted for approximately 38 per cent of capacity installed since 2000, followed by small-scale solar water heaters and small-scale PV systems which accounted for approximately 20 per cent and 29 per cent, respectively.

Biomass capacity comprised approximately 6 per cent, and new hydroelectric capacity (mainly from upgrades at existing systems) also comprised approximately 6 per cent of installed capacity. Wind generation, being lower-cost, has been the dominant large-scale technology under the RET with nearly 2,200 MW of wind farms developed.

the EtS, Direct Action and voter power

In 2007, an emissions trading scheme (ETS) had bi-partisan support under the Howard Government. Since that time, it has been a highly-charged political issue, sparking significant turn-around positions by both major parties.

20 iNdustrY uPdate

Prompt supply from Victoria Warehouse


The Gillard Government introduced a carbon price on 1 July 2012 following negotiations with the Australian Greens and independent members of Federal Parliament, which will transition to full emissions trading in 2015.

The future of the scheme will be determined at the 14 September 2013 Federal election. The Australian Labor Party promises to retain a price on carbon, while the Federal Coalition of the Liberal Party and Nationals Party has pledged to abolish the carbon pricing mechanism in favour of an alternative incentive-based Direct Action Plan.

With five months to go until the election, de-mystification for voters of the complexities of the NEM and greenhouse gas abatement will remain a key challenge for industry and government.

Working for reform and consumer engagement

In Australia in 2010-11, more than $5 billion was invested in renewable energy – including $4 billion in residential solar – according to the CEC. This is a slice of the fastest-growing piece of the energy investment pie worldwide.

According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, globally, investment in clean energy for 2012 was $US268 billion, outstripping investment in traditional energy.

Energy efficiency is also a major part of the mix, and in Australia it needs a more consistent approach nationally. It will ultimately curb demand for energy, delay network investment and reduce energy bills.

David Green, CEC Chief Executive since September 2012, believes that for the clean energy industry to get where it needs to be, consumers and communities need to support the journey. They need to be engaged so that they can embrace change, rather than have change done to them.

Where are we now?The ability for Australia to meet its 2050

greenhouse gas emission reduction targets remains a major long-term challenge for the energy industry.

Thus far, the RET has delivered most greenhouse gas emission reductions. Oscillating policy positions – including the current Federal Opposition’s view to possibly reduce the RET target, based on reduced demand – have the renewables and broader energy industry questioning how and when the nation will move beyond market uncertainty.

The call continues for a strong and unified position to enable delivery of visionary emissions reduction outcomes for future generations.

On 13 March 2013, the CEC wrote a joint letter with the Australian Industry Group, the

Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, and the Energy Supply Association of Australia to all federal and state government ministers plus the Council of Australian Governments.

The call was for well-planned, evidence-based policies that support new energy sources, including established low-emission and emerging technologies, as well as for sound, consistent and realistic regulations for energy project development. The joint statement emphasised that such policies are key to ensuring a safe, reliable and affordable energy supply and to building a sustainable energy sector to meet Australia’s future needs.

In the inaugural lead story of the first edition of EcoGeneration magazine, Mr Stock said “If Australia is to avoid emissions embarrassment in the eyes of the international community, further initiatives are needed.”

Even after 75 editions of EcoGeneration, the case remains for urgent action. Significant energy market transformation is still required to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.

iNdustrY uPdate22

With six months to go until the election, de-mystification for voters of the complexities

of the national Electricity market and greenhouse gas abatement will remain a key

challenge for industry and government.

Wind

$9,193 M

$1,771 m

$284 m

$540 m

$584 m

$399 m$129 m

$5,296 M

Wave

Large Scale Solar / PV

Hydro

Bagasse

Other Renewables

Solar water heaters

Small-scale solar PV

m = Million

Figure 1: investment in new renewable generation since 2001 until 2011 (reproduced with permission from Clean Energy Council).

Investment in renewable generation 2001–11


The Australian solar photovoltaic (PV) party is over. The remarkable run of rapid growth solar PV has enjoyed since

Peter Costello ‘spiked the punch bowl’ with the $8,000 rebate back in 2007 is at an end.

Last year’s close to a gigawatt of installations will be the high water mark that will not be exceeded for several years. 2013 will herald a tough year of adjustment and consolidation.

The fact that the solar PV market has continued to plough on unabated, in spite of repeated cuts to government support, has led some to conclude that solar PV is some kind of unstoppable juggernaut set to wipe away everything before it.

But there were a series of three tailwinds that enabled this to happen, and these have now run out of puff.

declining solar module prices have now reached diminishing returns

When the $8,000 rebate was launched in 2007, module prices delivered to Australia were in the realm of $5 to $6 per watt. Australia was at the bottom of the queue for provision of module product, and it was actually difficult to get reliable supply at the quantity desired.

Since then, there have been incredible reductions in module prices, which meant that even with the steady cuts to government support, out-of-pocket prices for customers barely changed – and in fact, have steadily declined.

Since 2007, the module cost-per-kilowatt (kW) has dropped from $5,000 to approximately $550. This $4,450 saving was critical to solar’s ongoing sales, in spite of a reduction in government support per kW of around $8,000.

However, even if module prices drop by a further 20 per cent, this will mean a saving of just $110 per kW. Such a drop in prices seems incredibly unlikely, given PV manufacturers are losing huge amounts of money at current prices. Even if it happened, it’s just not big

enough to significantly increase customer uptake. It certainly can’t offset the loss of electricity revenue for customers from cutting the feed-in tariff from 44 cents to 16 cents in Queensland, nor the cut to approximately 8 cents in other jurisdictions.

the spike in electricity prices will abruptly end

Since 2007, Australia has experienced an exceptional spike in electricity prices, due to a range of poor regulatory decisions made by governments. These included changes that encouraged ‘gold plating’ of network capacity; installation of smart meters in Victoria that were charged for, upfront; and regulators hiking-up household regulated retail prices based on the assumption that wholesale generation costs would spike upwards when in fact they declined.

When combined with the hysteria around the carbon price, this bill shock motivated a large number of people, many uninterested in the environment, to actively consider purchasing solar.

However, in 2013 and 2014, we will roll over into a new regulatory period with new rules

that mean the regulator is highly likely to clamp down on network businesses’ expenditure proposals. Also, the depressed prices in the wholesale electricity market are likely to be passed through to consumers by new regulatory decisions. Plus, the costs associated with smart meter roll-out in Victoria will be largely behind us.

Western Australia is probably the only exception to this rule, as its retail prices are still not reflective of costs to supply, and need to increase further.

According to little-publicised forecasts prepared for the Australian Energy Market Operator, price rises across every state in the National Electricity Market will abruptly drop away, and prices could even decline in some states.

reductions in government support can no longer generate a ‘get in quick’ effect

Over the last few years, the Australian solar PV market has been characterised by sales surges, as customers were induced to buy before a reduction in government support levels. This was seen with changes to the $8,000 rebate, each time the Renewable Energy Certificate or Small-scale Technology Certificate multiplier was changed (except when Federal Climate Change and Energy Efficiency Minister Greg Combet surprised everyone in November 2012) and when the feed-in tariffs were cut in several states.

Governments are now left with little to cut. Households are now paid little better than the wholesale market rate for exported electricity.

While solar PV receives renewable certificates for fifteen years’ worth of generation upfront, the level of support is not noticeably better than what is given to large-scale renewables.

Customers now feel like they can take their time before buying. This may be a good thing in terms of improving the level of quality in the industry, but for sales, there’s nothing quite like a human being’s concern about missing out on free money to motivate action.

Climate Spectator Editor Tristan Edis outlines why he believes Australia’s photovoltaic ‘party’ is over, and clean energy industry stakeholders respond.

24

WhatnextforsolarPV:is‘theparty’over?

iNdustrY uPdate

Climate Spectator Editor Tristan Edis.


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Tristan Edis joined Climate Spectator in 2012 following his role as a Research Fellow with the Grattan Institute’s Energy Program. Previously, Mr Edis has worked as an Associate Director with Ernst and Young’s Project Finance Advisory Group, and as a Manager of Policy

and Research at the Clean Energy Council and its predecessor the Business Council for Sustainable Energy.

This article was originally published on Climate Spectator at www.businessspectator.com.au/climate

26 iNdustrY uPdate

Distributed roof-top solar, coupled with residential storage and smart home energy management systems,

will be an enormously disruptive grouping of new technologies that will continue to dramatically impact the antiquated business models based around centralised, subsidised, polluting coal-based electricity generation.

Solar module prices will continue to decline

In September 2012, Citi Research forecast that module prices could fall to $US0.25 per watt (W) by 2020, versus current prices of $US0.67/W, suggesting a compound annual cost reduction of over 10 per cent for the next decade.

While an aggressive forecast, Arkx Investment Management agrees with Citi’s view that is predicated on further dramatic economies of scale gains in manufacturing, plus continued technology breakthroughs in solar.

SolarBuzz forecasts global cumulative solar installs will double again by 2015 to 200 gigawatts (GW) versus 100 GW in 2012. We at Arkx expect this to be more like 230 GW by 2015.

technology gains will continue to boost productivity

The director of America’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Dan Arivizu, forecast in March 2013 that silicon module efficiencies would continue to rise from the current best-in-class of 18 per cent towards a theoretical maximum of 29 per cent. In April 2013, Sunpower Corporation launched its latest 21.5 per cent efficiency module, well ahead of the current 15–18 per cent norm.

The advent of cost-effective residential battery storage systems in 2014 will further boost the effectiveness of distributed solar systems, allowing a time-shift of solar production into the early evening, the newly

emerging peak demand point. This will encourage larger residential solar system installs and further erode grid demand.

Balance of system costs will continue to decline

SMA Solar Technology AG, in 2011, published a target to halve the cost of its world-leading solar inverter by 2015, consistent with what it had achieved in the prior five years. Given progress reported in April 2013 suggesting a cost of production -10 per cent per annum over 2011–12, I would suggest they will achieve this target. SMA has a global inverter market share of 25 per cent and spends more than €100 million annually on enhanced inverter research and development.

The lower the cost of modules and inverters, the proportionately lower will be the financing costs per watt for solar electricity generation. Financing is roughly a third of the total cost of a solar system.

Significant improvements in installation costs continue to be made through ‘learning by doing’. The latest figures from the United States show total residential system install costs fell 27 per cent year-on-year to $US4.74/W in March 2013. The rate of cost reductions is accelerating, not decelerating. We acknowledge that Australian residential costs are close to world’s best practice, but we forecast that total costs will continue to decline globally.

retail electricity prices will continue to rise

While the 15 per cent average increase in Australian retail electricity prices in July 2012 was an aberration, total electricity system costs per unit will continue to rise in the medium-term as further grid and generator capacity upgrades are undertaken, and total demand for grid electricity continues to fall.

The Australian Energy Market Operator forecasts that retail prices nationally will

rise 3 per cent per annum from 2013–15 to 31.3 cents per kW hour.

Total system costs for residential solar will continue to fall, retail electricity prices will continue to rise, and the total system functionality of solar with home storage will expand the total value offering. As Mr Edis warns, 2013 will be a tough year, no doubt – but this industry is here for good, and is less reliant on government subsidies than ever before.

A more orderly market will also focus attention on quality installers using Tier 1-quality modules, particularly expanding reach into the industrial and commercial market segments. Total installs will continue to surprise, on the upside. As such, the solar boom in Australia is really only now getting started – much to the utilities’ chagrin.

Tim Buckley is a Managing Director and Portfolio Manager at Arkx Investment Management, the Australian-based investment manager of the Arkx Clean Energy Fund, which invests in global, listed clean energy companies. Arkx is 28 per cent-owned by Ascalon Capital Managers, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Westpac Banking Corporation.

In this response to Tristan Edis’ view on the outlook for photovoltaics, Arkx Investment Management Managing Director and Portfolio Manager Tim Buckley disagrees – and says solar will be at the forefront of a major energy system transformation in the coming decade.

Thecounter-view:solar-ledenergytransformationstillhappening

Arkx Investment Management Managing Director and Portfolio Manager Tim Buckley.


28 iNdustrY uPdate

Australian electricity consumption is falling, and electricity markets are in the process of rapid change.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone who objectively tracks technology change.

Uptake rates of technology are never glacial in pace. Technology shifts are usually rapid and measured in the lifetime of a commodity.

While there have been suggestions that declining solar module prices have now reached diminishing returns, solar doesn't need to get all that much cheaper for momentum to be maintained without subsidies.

Government support is already at low levels and will continue to fall, and so will be less and less relevant as the market takes over, as final government support is removed as scheduled. We have reached the point where it makes no sense for customers to delay – customers not buying today and delaying tomorrow will be missing out on a return on

investment of more than 20 per cent. The generation of the electricity becomes the subsidy, and systems pay for themselves.

Solar is now commercially competitive for domestics homes versus the socket price of electricity. With 8 million homes in Australia, the market is not yet done. We’ve passed one million solar rooftops, and allowing for as much as half of all dwellings not having the right roof space, that still leaves 3 million homes to go.

Building Code of Australia standards will continue to add stars, and the next iteration of the building code is likely to make solar the standard.

Innovative approaches to financing are finally arriving in the market.

Even more roofs are waiting in the commercial sector; poor market rules and restrictive electricity market practices are preventing this boom from starting, but if we let the genie out of the commercial-scale solar bottle, more commercial roofs will go solar.

Ray Wills is a Board Member of the Sustainable Energy Association of Australia and an Adjunct Professor at the School of Earth and Environment, The University of Western Australia. Professor Wills is also a Member of the Advisory Board of the Curtin Institute for Biodiversity and Climate, in addition to his role as Director at Duda&Wills.

In this response to Tristan Edis’ view on the outlook for photovoltaics, Duda&Wills Director and former Sustainable Energy Association of Australia Chief Executive Ray Wills says new and different boom periods are still to come in the Australian solar market.

Thecounter-view:solar’spacenormalfornewtechnology

Duda&Wills Director Ray Wills.

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Around the world, biogas is already a significant alternative source of fuel, electricity and heat. Australia has the capacity to grow its biogas production sector if the current increase in demand for pre-project biogas services continues, and businesses make a concerted effort to overcome biogas market constraints.

Up until now, Australians have enjoyed the benefits of a low-energy-cost economy: this is rapidly changing. In

2012, a report by CME to the Energy Users Association of Australia showed that household electricity prices have risen by more than 40 per cent since 2007, and are projected to rise by another 30 per cent by 2013–14.

For some industries, there are alternatives to a pure reliance on grid-connected supply. Brisbane-based Utilitas Limited is demonstrating that it is now viable to use safe, reliable, mature biogas (anaerobic digestion) technology in Australia to recover energy, water, nutrients and carbon from Australia’s organic waste streams.

Internationally, biogas has already emerged as a major alternative source of fuel, electricity and heat. In a recent study by Global Industry Analysts Inc it was noted that “today, biogas competes on par with petroleum-based fuels in terms of performance, cost and other additional benefits such as reduced greenhouse gas emissions.” Although Europe is currently the dominant player in terms of biogas production, the Asia-Pacific market for biogas plants is displaying strong appetite for growth, and countries like Japan, New Zealand and the United States are also catching up fast.

Here in Australia, Utilitas is seeing increasing demand for biomethane potential testing, feasibility analysis, approvals, connection arrangements and the design and construction of biogas plants, coming from a broad spectrum of owners of organic wastes including:• Source-segregated municipal organic

waste• Animal manures• Food waste• Algal processing waste.

Biogas: often overlooked in australia

According to the Clean Energy Council, there are currently 29 biogas projects – more than 100 kilowatts equivalent (kWe) – in agriculture/food processing and wastewater treatment (WWT), providing installed capacity of approximately 49 megawatts equivalent (MWe). At least two of the biogas plants in WWT in Australia use co-substrate digestion, using a mixture of wastes, to optimise plant health, produce higher gas yields and earn additional revenues from gate fees.

Biogas technology has been proven in both an international and national context, however, up until now, plants have not been built in Australia

with a focus on achieving an internationally competitive levelised-cost-of-energy.

Politically, waste-to-energy has been a tad ‘on the nose’ in Australia with a couple of high-profile failures in biomass combustion/pyrolysis, which seems to have tainted the whole market.

As a renewable energy source, biogas is also often overlooked, with analysis tending to lump biogas in the broader category of biomass, or subsume it within data about the extraction of landfill biogas. Occasionally, biogas from sewage gas will be identified separately, but rarely is there an in-depth analysis of the full spectrum of the biogas opportunity in Australia. To make the biogas market opportunity story even more difficult, a large percentage of reports into the waste industry in Australia are considered unreliable.

Notwithstanding this, in 2011, a report by Zero Waste Australia indicated that Australia produces approximately 20 million tonnes of organic waste per year from domestic and industrial sources. Table 1 shows estimations of manure volumes, biomethane potential and electrical generation potential, which is based on data from just four sources of agricultural wastes.

If all of this organic waste (domestic, industrial and agricultural) was treated in biogas plants,

30

CanAustraliaaffordtowasteitsorganicwaste?byFionaWaterhouse,ChiefExecutiveOfficer,UtilitasLimited

iNdustrY uPdate

Market Operation type Number of businesses

Waste type Industry revenues (billion)

Substrate volume (tonnes per annum)

BMP(m3 per tonne)

Biogas generation (m3)

Energy potential(MW)

Agriculture Cattle feedlots 525 Manure 2.8 657,453 337 39,751,264 9.1

Piggeries 652 Manure 0.9826 3,733,844 450 65,528,962 15

Egg production 155 Manure 0.4408 240,240 385 36,626,990 8.4

Meat chickens 1,040 Manure 0.9235 2,031,820 385 309,771,277 70.7

Total indicative electrical generation potential 103 MWe

Table 1: manure estimations from four agricultural sources.


As federal, state and local air quality regulations become more stringent, incineration of gases becomes a more viable option rather than venting to atmosphere. In addition, there are regulations that require gas with any significant sour content be flared because of foul smell and toxicity.

Companies that engage in this type of activity understandably have important safety concerns.

Protection against flashback in systems that contain flammable liquid products becomes a serious issue.

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Flame Arrestors.indd 12 4/10/12 10:41 AM

there is potential for in the order of 650 MWe of installed electrical capacity, enough to power almost 1 million Australian homes.

In addition to the issues previously mentioned, the lack of supporting services has been another barrier to the development of the biogas industry in Australia. To help overcome this, Utilitas has established Australia’s first specialist commercial biomethane potential testing facilities at its headquarters in Brisbane Technology Park, using an automated biomethane potential testing unit to enable accurate modelling of the energy potential of waste streams, amongst other modelling.

A further impediment to biogas deployment has been the fact that negotiating network

connection arrangements with distribution network service providers is currently both time-consuming and costly. The ‘sweet spot’ for biogas plants is typically between 200 kWe–3 MWe, and unfortunately, this scale of generation seems to fall into a ‘no-man’s land’ where they are considered by network service providers as large-scale generation, but clearly are tiny in comparison to a large power station or other facility, for which the providers’ processes and procedures seem to have been developed.

There is an urgent need to streamline connection process to enable the deployment of this scale of distributed generation from biogas projects. A comparable streamlined connection and approval process for this type

and scale of generation was successfully implemented by the Ontario Power Authority in Canada as part of its Renewable Energy Standard Offer Program, catering for projects with an installed generating capacity of up to 10 MW.

There is also a critical need for the nascent biogas market in Australia to move early to earn the community’s ‘right to operate’. Other renewable energy developers have been surprised at the community outrage they have experienced. Although biogas technologies are mature, well-proven and widely-deployed as mainstream community infrastructure in other parts of the world, there is a need to move early to help the community understand the role they can play in making the most of this resource.

There is also a need to expand on this analysis, to more deeply quantify the biogas market’s potential in Australia and to comprehensively address its constraints. Surely, as Australia moves from being a low energy-cost economy to a high-energy-cost economy, it is time to stop wasting our organic waste.

Fiona Waterhouse is the Chief Executive of Utilitas Limited, a company that provides biomethane potential testing, approvals processes, negotiation of grid connections and project financing for biogas projects. The company’s current focus is to demonstrate that biogas plants can now be deployed at internationally-competitive levelised-cost-of-energy. It has provided services to 20 projects in Australia, including for feasibility and concept design and for construction contracts. In 2013, Utilitas led development of a Carbon Farming Initiative method for destruction of methane from piggeries using engineered biodigesters, approved in January 2013.

iNdustrY uPdate32Biogas plant fundamentals

Consumes: wet organic material, waste (low lignin content)

Produces:

• Biogas for direct use, or generation of electricity and heat

• Recycled water reclaimed for irrigating/cleaning purposes

• Nutrients which can displace chemical fertilisers

Captures: methane, and converts it to less climate-impactful carbon dioxide


DKSH00267_K+N DC Isolator Counter Cards March 2013_OUTLINED.indd 1 7/03/2013 11:26:16 AM

With renewable sources such as wind, wave and solar, energy is often created in the

wrong place at the wrong time, making it difficult to utilise. Australians aspire to use renewable resources but are thwarted by the practicalities of renewables’ use in future energy generation and supply systems.

In Australia, climate change legislation is driving decarbonisation. This will shift the energy provision and create new markets. The public mind, however, is on cost, accessibility and security of supply.

In the United Kingdom (UK), the electricity generation mix and the opportunities are very different. In November, the UK Chancellor announced that energy storage technology was critical to the future UK economy and will be worth £10 billion per year by 2050.

This value comes from understanding where the different energy storage technologies fit into the grid at generation, transmission and distribution. It’s not simply a

matter of providing storage capacity; governments have to determine how to configure a robust energy system to suit the changing energy mix and minimise the cost of transmission investment as the demand for electrical power grows.

Which way is the best way?Different applications demand appropriate

storage characteristics and a range of technologies are needed to suit the specific needs. Technologically speaking, energy can be stored in mechanical, electrical or chemical devices and in the form of heat. All are probably needed, but – apart from hydro-storage dams – Australia has few examples at a significant scale.

What might energy storage mean for Australia? It certainly should not mean simply filling the country with batteries for storing renewable energy. There have been some extensive battery park trials for regional storage in China and in the United States and

in other energy-constrained countries such as Chile, but this does not appear to be a widespread option suited for Australia.

Conventional batteries of different types have their place, but society really needs an alternative. This is not only driven by realisation of the cost, resource wastefulness, environmental impact and scarcity associated with rare earths components, but also by a growing public misgiving about safety.

Battery-related safety incidents have been growing rapidly over the last few years, in vehicular and air transportation, computers, large scale battery parks and wind/solar onsite storage locations. A range of energy storage

In visiting Australia regularly for the last two decades, I have never quite understood why greater value is not placed on the nation’s latent solar and nuclear energy assets. Perhaps it is because Australia thinks there is a vital missing link: the ability to store energy.

Themissinglink:whyAustralianeedsenergystoragebyProfessorRichardWilliams,Pro-ViceChancellorandHeadoftheCollegeofEngineeringandPhysicalSciences,UniversityofBirmingham

This article was originally published on

at theconversation.com/au

TechnologySize Range

(MW)Capital Cost

($/kW)Capital Cost

($/kWh)Efficiency

(% round trip)Geographical requirements

Use of advanced chemicals

Pumped Hydro 280-530 2,500-4,300 420-430 76-85Requires

mountainsNo

CAES (with gas firing)

180 960-1,150 60-120 46-48Requires caverns

No

NaS Battery <50 3,100-3,300 520-550 68 None Yes

Flow batteries <50 1,450-1,750 290-350 60 None Yes

Highview Cryo Energy System

10-200900-1,900

(depending on cycling)

260-530 (depending on

cycling)50-80+ None No

Table 1: costs of energy storage systems.

34 iNdustrY uPdate


methods are currently available; most of these have been reviewed recently. Figure 1 shows a summary based upon the scale of power rating and the call down time, expressed here as a discharge time at rated power.

liquid air: a great alternativeAs Figure 1 shows, there are alternatives to

batteries. For example, in the UK there is a growing interest in the notion of cryogenic liquids. These are reported to be a cheaper and better way to use solar energy to drive compressors to compress air to liquid air as cryogenic fluids. Liquid air is potentially an energy vector in itself; vaporising the liquid using low-grade waste heat makes for a very efficient system that then drives a generator.

The round-trip efficiency of these systems rivals batteries. These have now been demonstrated at a small scale with 350 kilowatt/2.5 megawatt (MW) hour-scale for on-grid electrical storage, and further developments to scale out to beyond 10 MW are underway. Some 100 MW+ systems with gigawatt hours of storage are deliverable using existing supply chains and components. Some comparisons of estimated costs for comparative storage systems have been mooted (see Table 1).

Such systems offer a means for low-cost off-grid generation. This can smooth power

requirements and provide security of supply by creating a national reserve.

Liquid air can also be used directly as a fuel. The first ‘cars that run on air’ are currently being evaluated and are attracting significant attention. Australia, like the UK, has existing infrastructure to support early adoption. The technology is from a mature supply chain and components with proven long life whose costs are known.

Liquid air storage is at low or atmospheric pressure, resulting in low cost, above-ground, safe bulk tanks. There is no fuel combustion risk. There are no geological or geographical constraints to location of stores or distribution pathways.

The energy density of liquid air compares favourably to other low-carbon competitors. There is great synergy with other industrial processes, including use of waste heat and provision of cold. And liquid air can be used as an energy vector to transport this stored energy around by road, as is currently done, or ship, as with LNG.

A major review of this opportunity is underway, and may have profound application for Australia if it turns out that liquid air can be used as a fuel. Meanwhile, UK Energy and Climate Change Minister John Hayes believes that liquid air may offer some radical solution with real economic stimulus to the economy.

Putting a value on energy storage is difficult. The value lies in different places for different applications. Take solar: the business model has a feedstock that is free, which means arguments based purely on technical process efficiency and cross-comparisons to other processes are not germane. Rather, it’s the benefit that needs to be quantified.

Australia too will need to grasp these emerging concepts as new opportunities emerge to better utilise renewable energy and mitigate escalating infrastructure costs associated with energy supply and security. I am increasingly confident that the decarbonisation drivers may open up significant new economic opportunities ahead.

Professor Richard Williams is a Fellow of Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, a professor at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom and an honorary professor at the University of New South Wales. Professor Williams is a co-author of the Royal Academy of Engineering and Chinese Academy of Sciences report into the future of energy storage technologies and policy. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, an advisor to NetScientific Solutions and member of the Liquid Air Association working group.

36 iNdustrY uPdate

Figure 1: system power ratings.

Cryogenic Energy Storage

Super Conducting Magnetic Energy Storage

High-Power Supercapacitors

Flywheels

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System Power Ratings, Module Size

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1 kW 10 kW 100 kW 1 MW 10 MW 100 MW 1 GW


Worldwide, the wind energy sector is expected to undergo reasonably rapid changes in market conditions

in the five-year period between 2012 and 2016.Global Wind Energy Council Secretary-General

Steve Sawyer says that a number of critical issues will crop up in key markets across the globe during this time. Mr Sawyer nominates one of these issues as being the difficulty of predicting outcomes for the United States (US), a large wind market but also the largest variable within the international industry.

“The US had a record year in 2012, but the re-authorisation of the primary federal support program for wind was delayed, resulting in a dearth of orders at the beginning of 2013,” Mr Sawyer explains. “[Success in this market] is a question of how quickly and how much the US market is going to recover in 2013.”

Mr Sawyer notes that policy is notoriously fickle in the US, and tied to a short-term, highly-politicised Federal House of Representatives. “US Federal Budget discussions don’t affect wind energy as immediately as they do the solar industry, but until they are resolved and the US figures out a way to make economic plans that last longer than a year or two, that’s always going to be the big variable.”

The Global Wind Energy Council is predicting continued dominance of Asian markets over the next five years – particularly China, but also India and emerging markets in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Mongolia.

There is also the potential for significant growth in Latin America – particularly in Brazil – and also in Mexico, as part of the North American economic bloc.

“Brazil is leading the way, but Mexico is catching up,” Mr Sawyer says. “Of course in Africa, there are, for the first time, significant additions happening in sub-Saharan Africa – in Ethiopia, last year, the first commercial project became available and there will be others in Ethiopia over the next two years, and the

South African industry is finally getting going – they have hundreds of megawatts (MW) under construction now and another 600 MW heading to financial close in May 2013.”

Global data demonstrates that Europe had a record wind energy year in 2012, but “the economic malaise and the wave of policy uncertainty in some of the southern European markets is going to mean that it’s unlikely to be repeated in 2013”, according to Mr Sawyer.

“Until there’s either a breakthrough in climate negotiations or a dramatic uptake in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) economies, I think that most of the market growth is going to be outside of the OECD.

“China will return to be a growth market in 2013 and again in 2014, on an even greater scale. They’re in the process of sorting out some of the structural issues that they ran up against because of dramatic growth since 2006.”

Mr Sawyer says that the global industry will have in the vicinity of 500 gigawatts (GW) of

total installed capacity by the end of 2016, and will be on track for somewhere between 800–1,000 GW total installed capacity by 2020.

Noting that the Clean Development Mechanism has “pretty much played itself out” in terms of the first commitment of the Kyoto Protocol being over, and the world entering a limbo phase in terms of global carbon markets, Mr Sawyer says that carbon pricing mechanisms aren’t functioning as much of a driver for wind investment at the moment.

“The gap between supply and demand is still pretty large; at the beginning of 2012, there was some 85 GW of total manufacturing capacity globally, and a market of about 45 GW this year – we’ve lost some of that manufacturing capacity,” he notes. “A lot of the smaller manufacturers in China have disappeared. That process is going to continue, exerting downward pressure on turbine prices globally.

“It will vary substantially from place to place, but the general trend will be the need to

Following his keynote presentation at the New Zealand Wind Energy Conference and Exhibition in late March 2013, Global Wind Energy Council Secretary-General Steve Sawyer spoke to EcoGeneration’s Melanie Ryan about the challenges and growth predictions facing the international wind market over the next five years.

Globalwindtrendsfor2013andbeyond

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GW

2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

Europe ■ 10.3 11.0 12.0 13.0 14.0 15.0

North America ■ 8.1 11.0 8.0 8.5 10.8 12.0

Asia ■ 20.9 21.4 22.0 23.6 25.2 25.9

Latin America ■ 0.9 1.6 1.7 1.7 1.7 1.8

Pacific ■ 0.3 0.5 1.0 1.0 1.5 1.5

Middle East and Africa ■ 0.1 0.5 1.2 1.6 2.0 3.0

The annual market forecast, by region, for 2012–16 from the Global Wind Energy Council.

Annual wind market forecast

38 advaNCes iN WiNd


compete more and more on a direct basis with incumbent conventional energy sources – at least for new-build. In most markets, we’re in a pretty good position to do that now, but most of the incumbents have been enjoying heavy subsidies for decades, so it’s a bit of a tough sell.”

However, Mr Sawyer highlights that the price of fossil fuels will do nothing but go up in the medium to longer term, while the price of wind will just go down. He notes “We’re at that critical cusp in a lot of markets at the moment where margins are very tight, and turbine manufacturers in particular are struggling –

especially stand-alone, wind-only manufacturers; one has to believe the old maxim that ‘whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’.

“This gives an advantage to the larger conglomerates for whom wind is only part of their business, such as Siemens, GE, Alstom, ACCIONA and more that are invested in wind now and doing reasonably well, but can carry a down year or two on their balance sheets without any great disruptions, which is much more difficult for stand-alone turbine manufacturers.”

Mr Sawyer says it’s possible that more stand-alone turbine manufacturers may be

purchased by larger conglomerates that don’t already have a wind production component to their business.

“Vestas has had widely-publicised negotiations with Mitsubishi which has not yielded a concrete agreement yet, as far as we know, and there are other such discussions going on and it certainly seems like a likely outcome in a number of cases,” he explains. “Precisely how that will play out is a deeply-held secret until the deal is done.”

Approximately 120 countries around the world now have some form of long-term target for renewables, many of them ensconced in legislation; discussions in Europe will open up in 2013 about what to do after 2020, in terms of laying a pathway to 2030.

“The Australian Renewable Energy Target (RET) is one that has been an important signal to investors and an important support to the industry, and it’s very gratifying to know that it has been upheld,” says Mr Sawyer, “but the RET and the carbon pricing legislation are thrown into question by what might happen at the September federal election in Australia.”

In terms of the opportunities available to Australian companies with the resources and sense of adventure required to turn their attention to overseas markets, Mr Sawyer points to the companies already operating in international wind projects in South America as an example.

“I think there are lots of opportunities in Brazil – although that market is getting a tad crowded at the moment – along with right up and down Latin America,” he says. “South Africa and Eastern Africa are the brand new markets offering new opportunities, and Pakistan is emerging as a substantial new market – the country needs energy and has very good wind resources. There’s a pipeline of up to 900 MW of wind there now, and more is in the offing.

“Sri Lanka has significant potential, and there’s a good pipeline emerging in Thailand. Wind resources there are not great, but they need the power, they don’t have fossil fuels and they have an interest in diversifying their energy supply and utilising Indigenous resources.”

With so many variables in play for wind energy across the globe, ‘interest’ certainly looks to be the key concept for wind sector companies. If they are interested in pursuing the emerging markets Mr Sawyer outlines, they stand to gain from the new opportunities arising in those markets between now and 2016.

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40 advaNCes iN WiNd


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Social licence’ to operate is the level of acceptance that a community and other stakeholders provide for

a particular development. It is a concept that originally emerged from the mining industry, yet is also applicable to the wind energy industry.

The Australian wind industry has expressed interest in exploring new frameworks through which to work with stakeholders to secure greater acceptance of wind farms, bringing about the need for further research into the social licence concept.

The overarching concept has currency within the wind industry and other energy technology industries, but to date there has been minimal research on its application. The concept currently lacks both depth and popular meaning, says CSIRO Project Manager and Social Scientist Dr Nina Hall.

“It is still a concept at this stage, but the work that we’re now getting underway is to take it from a concept to a working model,” explains Dr Hall.

CSIRO is carrying out a three-year project to understand and evaluate the working model with industry, government and civil society partners.

The project will liaise with wind farm developers through the initial planning stages of four wind farms to observe the negotiations, contribute to the development of what constitutes a social licence to operate with the local community and other key stakeholders, and evaluate how the concept plays out across the case studies from the range of stakeholder perspectives. Concurrently, this research will

complement and enhance the road-testing of the draft Clean Energy Council (CEC) guidelines on best practice community engagement for wind farm development.

“What was coming out a lot in our earlier research on community acceptance of wind farms was that stakeholders who held opposing views, or views of a negative nature about wind farm developments, would initially talk about technological concerns that they had. When we dug a little deeper, we often found that their opposition was based more on concerns about process,” explains Dr Hall.

“How stakeholders found out about the development, whether they felt they had a voice that was going to be influential in the decision of the design of the wind farm or the final decision about where and whether it would go ahead were all key process-based concerns.

“Our upcoming research project proposes to observe and evaluate the development of a social licence to operate with four case studies around Australia. CSIRO will be an independent partner in this research and we will be observing and evaluating what companies are currently doing, where they go beyond compliance and how community and other stakeholders respond to this,” says Dr Hall.

the aims of the social licence to operate project

This applied research seeks to provide the wind developers, wind farm industry and local stakeholders with greater clarity regarding securing and maintaining a social licence for their operation.

CSIRO Project Manager and Social Scientist Dr Nina Hall discusses the idea of holding a ‘social licence’ to operate wind farms in Australia, and a new CSIRO research project that is investigating this concept through case studies.

DevelopingasociallicencetooperatebyIsabellaAndres

‘

‘Social licence’ to operate is the level of acceptance that a community and other stakeholders provide for a particular development.

CSIRO Project Manager and Social Scientist Dr Nina Hall.


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The CSIRO’s research project aims to deliver insight and value through an integrated process to create:• A working social licence to operate model

tailored for four specific wind farms, including quantitative measures of specified criteria

• Community workshops to explore each company’s ‘boundaries of acceptance’ in the local and extended community

• Documentation of the experience of building and maintaining a social licence to operate with the community and other stakeholders

• Reflective feedback and enhancement of the CEC’s draft guidelines for community engagement regarding the social licence to operate

• Collaborative interaction between researchers, the wind industry, government agencies and civil society through involvement in the project’s Advisory Group.

• Links with CSIRO’s Future Grid Forum to map various scenarios resulting from the installation of wind farms and mapping of the communities potentially facing wind farm growth.

Investigating the social licence to operate

“The plan is to investigate the social licence to operate concept through a working model using case studies of wind farms in Australia,” says Dr Hall.

“We’re willing to start as early as possible with these case studies, and we see this research as having four levels. During the first level we will be observing and evaluating a social licence to operate as it is negotiated and then managed between a wind developer and local stakeholders.

“What we’re proposing to do is to observe which companies follow the community engagement guidelines proposed by the CEC. The CEC is hoping that this will set a new bar for engagement.”

At a second level, all case studies plus the CEC, community organisations and relevant government agencies will form an advisory group observing the findings that emerge from the case studies. “The exciting aspect of this is that we can compare and contrast what’s working at one site and why it isn’t at another,” says Dr Hall.

The third level also features the advisory group, and involves government agencies and renewable energy stakeholders discussing study findings in a way which allows for an informal policy discussion to occur between wind developers and government agencies about

this applied research seeks to provide the wind developers, wind farm industry and local

stakeholders with greater clarity regarding securing and maintaining a social licence

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the respective state-based legislation affecting wind farm development.

“The fourth level holds particular interest for the CSIRO in particular, given that this is very new research,” notes Dr Hall.

“Beyond CSIRO’s social research efforts, there is not much happening on social licence to operate as a working model. What does exist is very a theoretical and lacks a common definition. In this space, CSIRO will feature the Australian wind industry’s efforts at the forefront of this research.

“This provides an excellent opportunity to have the Australian wind industry showcased in a very positive way that shows a leadership role internationally.”

Key outcomes of the project“The unique aspect of social licence to operate

is that it repositions power,” Dr Hall says.“For most other licences, they are all about

the developer securing regulatory consent or approval – ticking that off and filing it away, whereas a social licence to operate is about being in the hand of the stakeholders. That really corresponds to the stated lack of power in decision-making that we heard in some of our earlier research interviews with community members and other stakeholders.”

CSIRO is now seeking project partners from key stakeholder groups, wind developers, government agencies and civil society organisations to join and contribute to delivering project outcomes.

Such new knowledge may enable improved community and stakeholder input to the local siting of a wind farm and may also provide

policy-relevant insights into community engagement and acceptance of wind farms in Australia.

“Ideal outcomes for this study would be four case studies that have found a negotiated level between stakeholders and the developer that allows the wind farm to be developed on terms that are deemed reasonable for everybody,” says Dr Hall.

Dr Nina Lansbury Hall is a social scientist with CSIRO’s Science into Society Group. This group specialises in applied social research on issues that are often socially contested, including technology assessment of technology, social licence to operate and behavioural change. Their aim is to inform decisions and improve scientific understanding, especially around energy technology such as wind farms. Her current research portfolio includes examining the issues around community acceptance of wind farms. In January this year she was the main author of CSIRO’s public report Exploring community acceptance of rural wind farms in Australia: a snapshot.

The Clean Energy Council (CEC) has devised community engagement guidelines useful to the Australian wind industry. The guidelines demonstrate a commitment to involving local communities in the development and management of wind farms.

The guidelines were developed by independent consultants the Australian Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility, and involved input from the wind industry as well as an external reference group made up of academics, practitioners from other industries, landholders and government representatives.

The guidelines address the six key stages of wind farm development (site selection, project feasibility, planning and approvals, construction, commission and operations, and decommissioning) and how developers should engage with the community at each stage.

Download a copy of the guidelines via the CEC’s website at www.cleanenergycouncil.org.au

“this provides an excellent opportunity to have the australian wind industry showcased in a very

positive way that shows a leadership role internationally.”

– CSIro Project manager and Social Scientist dr nina Hall

46 advaNCes iN WiNd


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Raymangirr is an Indigenous community located in the East Arnhem Region in the Northern Territory, and is home to

over 60 permanent residents. The Raymangirr community contains six houses, a school, a clinic and a workshop, all connected to a 20.9 kilowatt (kW) Bushlight solar system.

Before Bushlight Power for the community used to be

supplied by a 22.55 kilovolt, three-phase diesel generator, which ran from 6pm–8am, when diesel was available.

While the school was connected to a renewable energy system, the supply of power was unable to run refrigeration and the

charging of the school’s laptops, in addition to powering the building.

With these challenges in mind, a new solar photovoltaic (PV) system was designed to replace the diesel generator supply and to provide the maximum possible usage of solar energy.

technology specificationsThe 20.9 kW system, developed by Bushlight

and installed by Inland Electrical, has an average load capacity of 43.6 kW hours per day.

The system features 110 Suntech solar panels, one Selectronic 18 kW inverter and three Magellan Power charge controllers.

The system also features a 2,400 ampere-hour battery bank containing 120 Sonnenschein

cells, and seven Bushlight household energy management units.

System design and installationThe Raymangirr project required unique

solutions to local environment challenges to ensure successful delivery.

For example, the control enclosure was entirely manufactured from powder coated aluminum, specifically designed to withstand the harsh weather conditions in the Northern Territory. It houses the main system’s components, such as the regulator and the electrical switchgears.

To accommodate these components correctly and to maximise the expected life

At an Indigenous community in the Northern Territory, a 20.9 kilowatt solar installation is powering a town of more than 60 residents. The installation was the winner of the ‘Best design and installation of a stand-alone power system greater than 10 kilowatts category at the 2012 Clean Energy Week Awards.

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of the components, the enclosure was designed to minimise heat build-up while maintaining ingress protection from water, dust and vermin. The inverter sits alongside the control enclosure on a plinth for easy access and heat control. The whole system is contained within a thermally-efficient shed that features a cyclone-resistant roof.

The roof-mounted PV array is carried on this tropical roof, reducing the overall footprint of the installation. The shed is divided into an equipment room, a battery room and a generator room; all with the appropriate controlled level of personnel access.

The performance monitoring of this site is primarily done through the data collection functionality of the inverter. The inverter records internal parameters such as PV current, battery voltage, temperatures and loads. The inverter stores data at selected 15-minute intervals.

Each of the connected buildings has an energy management unit or energy meter fitted to control demand-side management. This ensures use by each connected building is monitored and splits the power into three discrete buses – essential, discretionary and generator only. The intent of this is to provide a staged shutdown of supply if the power use exceeds the allocated capacity.

Refrigerators, and lights are installed on the essential bus, while the balance of the lighting load, the ceiling fans and power outlets are connected to timed circuits on the discretionary bus.

Community engagementAs the primary contractor, Bushlight

undertook significant community engagement activities to ensure the Raymangirr community was aware of the work ahead, and to gauge the energy usage of each household.

The engagement activities, known as Community Energy Planning, included the development of household-specific ‘daily energy budgets’ that are agreed to by the residents of each house.

The daily energy budget is an amount of energy provided to the house and managed by residents via the energy management unit. The user-friendly interface allows residents to see how they are tracking against their energy budget.

Consulting the Raymangirr community was an important aspect of the project.

Project name: Raymangirr Solar Installation

Location: Raymangirr, East Arnhem Region, Northern Territory

Nearest capital city: Darwin

Demographic: Rural

Owner and contractor: Bushlight

Installer: Inland Electrical

Capacity: 20.9 kW

Commissioned: November 2011

Technology details: 2,400 Ah battery bank (120 x Sonnenschein cells), 20.9 kWp array (110 x Suntech panels), 1 x Selectronic 18 kW inverter and 3 x Magellan Power charge controllers, 7 x Bushlight household energy management units

The 20.9 kW Raymangirr Solar Installation.

Typically, solar systems are custom-designed following a detailed site visit that analyses the impact of

shade at different times of the day and year, as well as the planar orientation of roof surfaces and general climatic conditions. Additionally, the direct-current (DC) wiring found in central inverter systems requires a variety of speciality electrical components such as combiner boxes, large wire sizes and conduits. This can result in an overly complicated and laborious design and installation process.

It was exactly this combination of cost and complexity that faced Enphase Energy’s co-founder, Martin Fornage, when he bought a photovoltaic (PV) solar system for his home in 2006. After seeing how the string inverter

system worked, Mr Fornage decided there must be a way of building a more efficient and more effective solution.

This was the catalyst for creation of the world’s first commercially-available microinverter, which was launched by United States-based Enphase in 2008.

desperately seeking: an easier design and installation process

Microinverters simplify the solar experience, because the microinverter design process is as simple as dividing the available roof space by the size of a solar panel and ordering the same number of microinverters. Installers using this system do not have to spend time designing around shade, different roof orientations or multiple string sizes.

Solar technology should be simple and affordable; however, homeowners and businesses often find themselves facing high costs and lengthy timelines during both the design and the installation process. Microinverters present a solution.

SimplifyingsolarinstallationsbyRussellFrench,AustraliaSalesDirector,EnphaseEnergy

Enphase Energy Australia Sales Director Russell French.

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Microinverters require fewer electrical components than traditional inverters, and they are not limited by perfectly-matched solar panels. As a result, installers have stated that microinverter systems can reduce system design time by more than 40 per cent.

The installation process is reasonably simple; microinverters are bolted on to the same racking that is in place for the solar panels. Microinverters remove the need to find a place to install a central inverter, which in larger installations can require pouring a concrete pad and building an air-conditioned hut with a chain-link fence surrounding it.

advancing performance, reliability and safety

Microinverters are the first technology to transform low-voltage DC to higher

alternating-current (AC) voltages. Every module is connected in parallel and operates as an independent power producer.

Designed to optimise the power conversion process, microinverters attempt to ensure that if one panel suffers from environmental interference or failure – from shading, dust and debris, non-uniform temperatures or sub-optimal irradiance angles – it doesn’t affect the entire array.

DC circuits used within a central inverter solar system can generate and sustain electrical arc faults of considerable intensity, presenting shock and fire risks. This is because the solar panels continue to produce high-voltage electricity even when the circuit breaker has been shut off.

Microinverters, on the other hand, enable an all-AC system that eliminates the risk of DC arc faults. Each microinverter is utility-

interactive, meaning the disconnection from utility power by shutting off the circuit breaker automatically results in the complete shutdown of every solar panel.

the evolution of aC modulesThe logical next step is to integrate

microinverter technology directly into solar panels; AC panels further simplify the design and installation of solar systems, reducing the overall cost of solar.

Even though AC panels seem a natural evolution of microinverters, it’s crucial that technology is tested and proven as a stand-alone solution before integration into a solar panel.

Whether it’s a stand-alone microinverter or module-integrated, the trend toward microinverter technology is happening today in the global solar market. In the United States, for example, microinverters have increased their market share over the past few years.

Russell French has 17 years’ experience and full qualifications in the Australian solar power and electrical industries. Prior to joining Enphase, Mr French was Managing Director for Sun Empire Solar Systems, where he was responsible for company management and business operations.

A microinverter installation case study from the United States

When the St Louis Cardinals baseball team in the United States decided to install a photovoltaic (PV) system at its home base, Busch Stadium, it requested a solar system that would provide detailed performance reporting. Module-level monitoring was also a necessity for the stadium’s operations staff, who would be responsible for the system’s long-term performance.

Additionally, safety was a major consideration during the install; Busch Stadium, with a seating capacity of nearly 48,000, hosts baseball games, concerts and other events that attract large audiences. The three solar arrays for the project were to be located in high-traffic areas within close proximity to the public; this meant that a PV system incorporating high-voltage direct-current would not be an option.

Project manager Microgrid Solar says that there was a need for multiple arrays within the stadium, with different azimuths and tilts, necessitating the use of microinverters. Eighty-eight 240 watt (W) modules placed on the roof of the stadium’s ticket building required zero tilt; eighteen 235 W modules on top of the concession stand canopy are tilted 10 degrees. In addition, there are four modules positioned with 33-degree tilt on an awning over an interpretive display.

the installation process is reasonably simple;

microinverters are bolted on to the same racking that is in place

for the solar panels.

Microinverters can simplify the solar design and installation experience.

ecogeneration |may/june13 www.ecogeneration.com.au www.ecogeneration.com.au ecogeneration|may/june13

Dr Lan Lam, the primary inventor of CSIRO’s UltraBattery, retired in February 2013 after he and his team

turned battery technology into a storage unit that simultaneously brings down the cost of hybrid electric vehicles and makes it easier to integrate more renewable energy into a grid.

Dr Lam leaves quite a legacy behind him: this year, the first UltraBattery will be released in the automotive market, powering hybrid electric vehicles in Japan, the United States, South America, Europe and Asia. In October 2013, the battery is also due to be installed at Tasmania’s King Island Renewable Energy Integration Project, becoming the largest clean energy storage system in Australia.

The UltraBattery combines a traditional lead acid battery and a super capacitor into one; normally they are separate components.

“It sounds simple, but we have now created a new technology that is 70 per cent cheaper than current batteries used in hybrid electric cars, and they can also be made in existing manufacturing facilities,” Dr Lam explains.

UltraBattery technology has now been successfully installed in a large-scale solar power plant in New Mexico, United States; its storage capacity allows for intermittent renewable energy to be smoothly supplied to an electricity grid.

The CSIRO says that in comparison to alternate renewable energy battery options, the UltraBattery is more low-cost, durable, has faster discharge/charge rates, and has a life-cycle that is two to three times longer than a regular lead acid battery. When intermittent electricity from renewables is fed into the grid through UltraBattery’s smoothing process, power quality and stability are improved. UltraBattery can also store energy for use during peak demand times, assisting the grid to balance supply and demand and avoid local stress.

CSIRO UltraBattery team member Dr Peter Coppin says that a number of large-scale demonstration projects both completed and

in-planning have shown the battery’s applications in power system support and smoothing. These projects include wind smoothing at Hampton Wind Farm in New South Wales and grid support at the PJM in Pennsylvania, United States.

“These real-world, at-scale applications are very important, as they clearly demonstrate the commercial viability of the UltraBattery,” Dr Coppin notes. “It’s exciting, as the interest in the UltraBattery projects is building rapidly, as managing intermittency from renewable sources becomes more of an issue for grid integration.”

CSIRO’s energy storage team says that it will continue Dr Lam’s legacy by researching and developing the UltraBattery, aiming to make it lighter and more efficient. CSIRO is considering next-generation development with new materials and higher-energy-density technologies, such as lithium.

Low-cost, durable and fast with a long life-cycle – and it ‘smooths’ intermittent electricity from renewable sources. The CSIRO-developed UltraBattery could be the key component of an Australian smart grid of the future.

54

HowUltraBatterycouldhelpourgridbyMelanieRyan

smart Grids 55smart Grids

Q&A with an UltraBattery team leader

Dr Peter Coppin, Research Leader in the Storage for Renewables Stream at the CSIRO Energy Transformed Flagship, talks with EcoGeneration about the development work behind the UltraBattery and its future commercialisation prospects.

What is it that makes the UltraBattery unique, when compared with other similar battery types?

The UltraBattery is a remarkable CSIRO invention that has turned the conventional lead acid battery – a 150-year-old energy storage system – into a dynamic technology.

Testing has shown that the UltraBattery has a life-cycle at least four times longer, and produces 50 per cent more power, than comparable battery systems.

Most hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) use nickel-metal-hydride batteries, which can be expensive to produce. When used in HEVs, the UltraBattery is a leap forward for low-emission transport and the uptake of HEVs around the world, due to its significantly lower-cost and higher-charge and discharge performance. Production of the UltraBattery can be completed in existing lead acid battery factories, reducing production costs by 20–40 per cent than nickel-metal-hydride batteries.

UltraBattery technology can be applied to store renewable energy from wind or solar in remote areas. For electricity suppliers, this storage capacity and smoothing of fluctuating energy levels is vital for grid stability, and could become part of the solution to intermittency issues.

What are the next steps for continuing the commercialisation of the UltraBattery?

The UltraBattery has undergone significant testing, and will continue to undergo more testing with recent funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.

Ecoult, a CSIRO spin-off company, will further test the UltraBattery; this $1.16 million pilot project will run for 30 months and will investigate remote, off-grid renewable energy supply; distributed grid-connected storage for residential areas with small rooftop solar installations; and hybrid generation, such as diesel plus renewables, to improve fuel efficiencies. Testing will be completed at our facilities in Newcastle, and we’re pleased to be part of the project.

In the past, the UltraBattery has undergone testing in the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK) in preparation for commercialisation. The UltraBattery has passed longer-term testing for automotive applications in a Honda Insight, reaching 100,000 miles of driving at a UK research and development facility without maintenance.

Sandia Laboratories in the US has shown that the UltraBattery has significant lifetime advantages over other battery types in high-power stationary applications, such as electricity grid support.

The UltraBattery has been licensed to the Furukawa Battery Company Limited in Japan and East Penn Manufacturing in the US for manufacture and distribution across the globe.

How does the UltraBattery fit into a smart grid of the future in Australia?

Renewable energy is predicted to increase to almost a third of Australia’s energy supply by 2050. A smart grid in a future Australia would include seamless integration of clean energy to respond to the peaks and troughs of demand.

Energy storage will be an important part of a responsive and intelligent electricity grid; UltraBattery technology could fit into a grid that can dispatch and integrate renewable energy with its smoothing capacity.

The King Island Renewable Integration Project clearly illustrates the role storage can play in increasing the penetration levels of intermittent renewables, into both remote/end-of-grid and larger grid-connected situations.

Dr Peter Coppin, Research Consultant and Leader in the Storage for Renewables Stream for the CSIRO Energy Transformed Flagship.

From left: Dr Lan Lam and the UltraBattery team at CSIRO.

The UltraBattery technology.


EnergymarketreformtopofmindatCleanEnergyWeek2013

EcoGeneration is the Media Partner for Clean Energy Week, renewable energy’s industry-driven

conference and exhibition, incorporating Australia’s largest solar event: ATRAA.

Stay tuned to www.ecogeneration.com.au and the free weekly EcoGeneration e-newsletter, delivered direct to your inbox, for updates on Clean Energy Week 2013 as conference presenters are announced and exhibition information is posted.

In 2013, the event will showcase the hard work and successes of businesses and projects in Australian clean energy through its Clean Energy Industry Awards, and its Solar Design and Installation Awards.

Entries for the awards, closing at 5pm on 15 May 2013, can be for the following categories:

Clean Energy Industry Awards• Innovation• Community Engagement • Media

Solar Design and Installation Awards • Grid-connect solar photovoltaic (PV)

power system design and installation – under 15 kilowatts (kW)

• Grid-connect solar PV power system design and installation – 15–100 kW

• Grid-connect solar PV power system design and installation – over 100 kW

• Solar PV power system design and installation for stand-alone/grid-connect battery back-up

• Solar hot water/heat pump design and installation.

In 2012, Clean Energy Week Industry Award winners included Pacific Hydro for the Business Community Engagement Award; Dyesol for the Innovation Award; and Giles Parkinson from RenewEconomy for the Media Award.

In 2013, the Clean Energy Council’s Clean Energy Week returns with Hanwha Q CELLS as major sponsor to focus on ‘Rethinking Energy’ and bringing about energy market reform, while highlighting the innovative efforts of clean energy companies in the Clean Energy Week awards program.

Why attend Clean Energy Week in 2013?• Hear presentations from Federal Climate Change and Energy Efficiency

Minister Greg Combet, Australian Greens Leader Senator Christine Milne and international delegates such as Natural Resources Defense Council Senior Advisor Yang Fuqiang

• Receive updates on recent industry changes from key experts, with more speakers to be announced soon

• Learn about new industry standards, and what they mean for your business

• See and discuss the latest clean energy technologies in the large trade show in over 10,000 sq m of exhibition space

• Socialise and network with more than 2,500 industry peers, and hear from more than 170 speakers.

What’s on at Clean Energy Week in 2013?• The Professional Development Day earns installers 55 Continuous

Professional Development points towards renewal of solar design and install accreditation with the Clean Energy Council, held on Day Two and Day Three of the Clean Energy Week program: 25–26 July 2013

• The Clean Energy Debate, one of last year’s most popular sessions, will return bigger than ever on Day Three of the program – 26 July 2013 – join some of Australia’s best speakers and analysts as they nut out the future of Australia’s energy system and the role for clean energy

• Lunch with the financiers of clean energy on Day One of the program – 24 July 2013 – to help you learn how to pitch your business successfully to those who can offer funding

• A host of workforce development information.

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The Clean Energy Week 2013 Conference and Exhibition, incorporating ATRAA, Australia’s biggest solar

event, will be held at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre from 24–26 July.


Technical winners in 2012 included:• Best design and installation of a grid-

connect power system greater than 10 kW – Laszlo Csanyi and Alan Ropers, Todae Solar and Peter Wilson, Solar Technology Australia

• Best design and installation of a grid-connect power system less than 10 kW – Shaun Dangerfield, Reemerge

• Best design and installation of a stand-alone power system greater than 10 kW – Philip Robertson, Bushlight

• Best design and installation of a stand-alone power system less than 10 kW – Jeremy Wray, Lance Randall, Steve Dart, Karl Tunnicliffe, Luke Mellor and Adam Dudley, Aussie Solar

• Best design and installation of a solar water heating system – Going Solar Pty Ltd and Sustainable Solar and Plumbing.

In its submission for the category of Business Community Engagement Award, Pacific Hydro described its successful engagement with the residents of Portland in Victoria’s southwest for the four-stage Portland Wind Energy Project.

Pacific Hydro explained why the wind farms incorporated in the project continue to enjoy support locally, and how the farms have provided a range of positive social, environmental and economic benefits for the region.

“Pacific Hydro’s community engagement in Portland is more than a single project – it is about developing a deep and embedded connection in the community with an identifiable presence and ensuring that their local connection in the community is valued and visible,” the company said in its winning submission.

When collating a submission for the best design and installation of a grid-connect power

system greater than 10 kW, Todae Solar and Solar Technology Australia detailed their construction of a 10 kW solar system on the roof of the Senate Wing of the Federal Parliament House, Canberra, in June 2011.

“From the outset, the team carefully selected the framing materials and PV modules that would blend well with the building itself,” the companies explained in their submission.

“Being Parliament House, the team had various access restrictions and were often working around the clock to carry out the installation. This meant the project had to be organised and timed to perfection.”

This submission explained how the project will be used as a pilot to assess how its technologies could be further integrated across Parliament House buildings.

58 eveNts

Turn to page 48 to read a profile of Bushlight’s solar

project at Raymangirr in the Northern Territory.

Components Specification Relevant standard

PV modules 192 x Silex 185 Wp CEC-approved IEC61730;IEC61215

Inverters 4 x SMA Stp10000tl CEC-approved AS4777

Framing Clenergy, Solar Matrix Pro and Ballast Tested and accredited to AS1170

Surge arrestors Direct-current (DC): DEHN Class II type surge arrester (on roof); SMA DC overvoltage protector (Type II), inputs A and B (inside inverters) Alternating-current (AC): class I type SPD

IEC61643-1

Balance of systems

All BOS, string protection, AC and DC wiring, earthing, labelling in accordance with CEC and ActewAGL requirements

AS3000; AS5033; AS4777

Winners of the ‘best design and installation of a grid-connected power system greater than 10 kW’ award at Clean Energy Week 2012, Todae Solar and Solar

Technology Australia, included a detailed summary of system design and installation features such as these facts and figures on system components:

Renew your EcoGeneration subscription online atwww.ecogeneration.com/subscribe or call 03 9248 5100

Renew your subscription to EcoGeneration magazine today to receive the Financing Clean Energy Projects and Technologies guide (valued at $44) as a gift – it features key funding advice from industry experts to help you move your project or technology to its next stage of commercialisation. Offer is for a limited time only.

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Why subscribers love their EcoGeneration subscription:

“We’ve subscribed to EcoGeneration for three years and Solar Australia since it was rolled out. Both magazines and newsletters are critical components of our information channels.”

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with updates on policies and projects.”

- Mark Schneider, Head of Power Investment, Investec Bank Australia

DON’T MISSAN ISSUE!

ECO_Subscription_ad_FP_May_June13.indd 3 15/04/13 8:34 AM


More than 100 solar industry professionals from across the country attended EcoGen Events’

recent Master Class series on commercial-scale solar. The Class provided the tools required to help their businesses grow alongside the trajectory anticipated in the commercial market.

Sponsored by Si Clean Energy, and held in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide

throughout March 2013, the Master Classes were an opportunity for professionals to learn about key market growth segments, commercial-scale financing solutions and where the new business opportunities lie in Australian solar.

Master Class presenter Nigel Morris, Director of SolarBusinessServices, tailored his presentation to attendees by providing answers

to attendees’ crucial commercial-scale questions, and also shared his own insights based on more than 20 years spent servicing the solar industry.

Each class was followed by networking drinks, also sponsored by Si Clean Energy – an opportunity for Master Class attendees to keep the solar conversation going with Nigel and industry peers in a relaxed and casual setting.

EcoGen Events’ recent Master Classes on commercial-scale solar gave attendees exclusive data on where and how the commercial solar market is set to grow in 2013.

Solarindustryinsight:masteringnewbusinesstools

60 eveNts ComPaNY NeWs 61

The Radian inverter features an advanced transformer with low-idle topology that increases operational efficiency. Its intelligent power management technology allows it to set more

effective energy priorities, and to more efficiently manage individual inverter power-save levels in ‘stacked’ multi-inverter systems.

Specifically, the Radian is capable of keeping a battery bank charged entirely using renewable energy, instead of relying on grid power to hold the batteries at full charge. This is especially important in a grid-interactive system, and it is why battery management is the Radian’s top priority – followed by using any surplus to run loads and selling the remainder back to the grid, if anything is left over.

In effect, the Radian can master virtually any grid, renewable or utility scenario, allowing its user to always get the highest value out of the conditions present.

Beyond operational energy savings through lower losses and improved design, the Radian takes efficacy to a higher level as a single platform capable of not only operating as a grid-tied and off-grid inverter/charger, but also managing divergence of applications and energy flow to cover a much wider range of needs as residential and commercial power demands also evolve.

With renewable systems expected to make greater contributions to conventionally-fuelled power grids of every size and type, increasing network complexity will dictate combining the best attributes of high-performance off-grid and grid-tied inverters into next-grid inverters, a category best exemplified by the grid/hybrid Radian.

These are some highlights from its power mode portfolio:

GeneratorAt OutBack Power, we often joke that the real competition to an

inverter is a generator. The Radian is equipped with sophisticated generator functions, capable of auto-starting, stopping and controlling a generator either to stand in for the grid or augment renewably-generated electricity.

If a downed grid does not come back up, for example, a Radian in off-grid mode would use both generator and renewable energy sources to run loads instead of running down batteries. Even without a continuous source of renewable energy present (as in overcast or night conditions), the combination of inverter and generator is a significant gain in efficiency for the energy system. The generator runs loads part of the time, but can simultaneously charge batteries so that the inverter can run those same loads later without a corresponding increase in fuel usage.

Back-upBoth stand-alone and interactive grid-connected systems will need to

protect and manage the expensive battery banks upon which they operationally depend. The Radian provides safety features such as monitoring and adjusting for battery temperature compensation and other parameters.

In locations where computers and other sensitive loads are present, the value of a smarter inverter that can switch between on-grid and off-grid operation seamlessly is obvious, especially in UPS applications.

In the second of a two-part series for EcoGeneration on the importance of innovation in inverter products, OutBack Power Senior Marketing Manager Mark Cerasuolo explains the features of OutBack’s Radian inverter.

Raisinginverterefficacy:thenextspecificationfrontier

See the March/April 2013 edition of EcoGeneration magazine for part one of this article, which covered the key elements to raising the efficacy of inverter systems and explained why mere efficiency isn’t everything when it comes to inverters.

Find all of the information you need for upcoming Master Classes and enrol at www.ecogenevents.com.au

Media partners for the EcoGen Events Master Classes:

Slides from Nigel Morris’ presentation in the March 2013 Master Classes on commercial-scale solar.

“I found the master Class very interesting again. nigel does a good job and knows his stuff.”

– returning attendee anthony devlin, director, Smarter Green

The grid/hybrid Radian inverter/charger in a typical system, capable of both off-grid and grid-tied operation.

terms such as efficacy and hybrid will be increasingly used to describe

the more complex and competent products making up the systems for

the next grid.


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When Australia’s solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity reached 2.144 gigawatts at the end of 2012,

this represented 3.2 per cent of the country’s energy mix. While a 110 per cent boost in solar capacity since 2010 is no small feat, the continent known for its abundant sun certainly holds the potential for more explosive growth.

Average household electricity prices in Australia now exceed those in Japan, the European Union, the United States and Canada. According to a report by the Energy Users Association of Australia, electricity costs will only continue to increase, likely reaching 30 cents per kilowatt hour by 2014.

A combination of these high electricity prices, ample sunlight and a dry climate with undeveloped land make Australia one of the world’s most promising markets for solar power generation. Residential-scale solar in Australia has already achieved grid parity, and homeowners from coast to coast are seeing major savings on their electricity bills.

While empty rooftops and undeveloped land offer a host of opportunities to grow the country’s solar capacity, they also pose challenges for traditional PV systems where each module is connected in series circuits and tied to a central inverter.

Say, for example, your rooftop is prone to partial shade from gum trees. A conventional PV system set-up is such that it will instinctively lower its output to match that of the worst-performing module and negatively impact your overall power output.

The same thing goes for systems built on uneven terrain; multiple module tilts mean some are receiving more light than others and, again, the system’s performance will drop.

Fortunately, the emergence of ‘smart’ modules has addressed these issues and more. Smart modules contain embedded intelligence from technologies like power optimisers, which work in tandem with a central inverter to achieve stronger conversion efficiency.

Power optimisers enhance PV system performance and design flexibility, offering a

simpler installation process and increased tolerance to shade. Smart modules also enable monitoring and alerting of individual module performance through intuitive software and mobile applications, affording project owners greater transparency into the health of their solar investments.

For system operators, this feature takes the guesswork out of issue detection, saving them precious time and financial resources.

Upsolar, which recently introduced its smart module to the Australian market, integrates Tigo Energy’s power optimisers into the module’s junction box to increase system production.

In 2012, the two companies unveiled the world’s largest smart solar array in the United States, implementing smart modules for a 2.2 megawatt project. This enabled a system design that flowed with the vast contours of the surrounding land, preserving the site’s natural beauty without compromising system output.

Smart modules allow Australians to combat high electricity prices while overcoming the performance and design challenges of traditional solar design schemes.

Smart modules are a natural evolution in solar PV technology – one that instantly expands the scope of viable project sites across Australia.

Upsolar Australia Country Manager Maree Viotto explains why smart modules are an efficient solution to drive further expansion of the Australian solar market.

HelpingAustraliameetitssolarpotential

Remote monitoring provides module-level visibility and insight into the performance of a smart module system.

Smart modules are a natural evolution in solar PV technology – one that instantly expands the scope of viable project sites across australia.

SupportSome energy scenarios involve chronic supply problems, such as weak

local grids, inadequate local generators, or both. The Radian inverter/charger with battery back-up can temporarily draw power from the batteries to augment a problematic alternating-current supply, by making the power management decisions necessary to precisely balance available sources and maintain stability.

OffsetAn inverter capable of energy divergence – managing multiple sources

and directional flows – is capable of sending excess energy downstream to run loads after storing up all the direct-current the system can handle, in lieu of selling energy upstream back to the grid if that is limited by local regulations.

In places such as Hawaii, with both very high electricity costs and limited sell-back options, the ability to put every bit of renewable energy to work is invaluable, and that is exactly what the Radian was designed to accomplish.

Mini-gridIn systems with sufficient renewable energy, this inverter function is really

the inverse of a back-up system. Here, the batteries and renewable sources are the primary electricity source, and the grid is a distant secondary, mostly used for conditions when renewable energy is in short supply.

This means that in such a system, an inverter may be an off-grid type up to 90 per cent of the time, but capable of switching over as conditions warrant – again, something for which the Radian was designed.

As more people realise the benefits of combining off-grid independence with grid-tied economics, multi-talented hybrid inverters such as the Radian, capable of operating in multiple modes and with higher efficacy across all of them, will be frequently found at the centre of smarter, more diversified power systems.

Terms such as efficacy and hybrid will be increasingly used to describe the more complex and competent products making up the systems for the next grid – and maybe even challenging some of the closely-held belief systems going back to renewable energy’s beginning stages.

Mark Cerasuolo manages marketing at OutBack Power, a designer and manufacturer of balance-of-system components for renewable and other energy applications. Previously, Mr Cerasuolo held senior marketing roles at the state of Washington’s Department of Commerce, the Leviton Manufacturing Corporation, Harman International and the Bose Corporation, and was active in the Consumer Electronics Association.

A Radian system using back-up and generator modes.

A Radian system using offset and support modes.

A Radian system using mini-grid mode.

Both stand-alone and interactive grid-connected systems will need to

protect and manage the expensive battery banks upon which they

operationally depend.


EcoGeneration: What has been the biggest change in the inverter industry in the past 12 months?

Sam: Other than the obvious declines in prices across most segments of the inverter market, one big change that we are witnessing (and participating in) at Solarland is the significant trend towards the increased use of distributed electronics in commercial photovoltaic (PV) systems.

We are seeing a lot more string inverters being used in large commercial sites that would previously have used larger central inverters. Twelve months ago, it was not common to see microinverters used in commercial PV systems (greater than, say, 50 kilowatts). Now, at Solarland and amongst our microinverter competitors, we are routinely seeing alternating-current (AC) modules and microinverters used in commercial systems of up to 1 megawatt (MW) around the world.

Commercial system owners are recognising the benefits of distributed electronics in terms of energy harvest, system up-time, safety, and operations and maintenance costs. This is the same kind of trend that has been happening in information technology, where the benefits of distributed processing and redundant systems have made it the dominant paradigm in computing. Interestingly, this trend has not yet reached the large utility-scale PV systems, although we expect that over time, it will.

EcoGeneration: What are the biggest obstacles you see that the inverter market has to overcome?

Sam: Quality and reliability remain the single biggest problem for the inverter market. The market has a track record of releasing products that do not meet customer expectations in terms of failure rates, up-time and quality.

A recent study published by SunEdison pointed to inverters as the single largest source of maintenance in their PV fleet – more than 50 per cent. While module lifetime has been established at more than 25 years, inverter lifetime is still in the 5–10-year range. In a central inverter system, a failure means lost

revenue and expensive emergency repairs.Solarland, with our partners at SolarBridge,

has been almost singularly focused on product reliability since its inception. SolarBridge was the first manufacturer to offer a 25-year inverter warranty, backed by a patented design that eliminates all of the components that typically fail prematurely in inverters, giving Solarland the confidence to offer back-to-back 25-year warranty on panels and inverters, offering a true AC module.

Our goal is to set the expectation for the industry that an inverter can and should be as reliable as a module, and that an AC module with an integrated warranty is something customers can rely on for the life of their PV system.

EcoGeneration: What are the most common solar applications for microinverters?

Sam: To date, grid-tied residential PV has been the most common application for microinverters and AC modules. The most recent data I’ve seen is that microinverters now account for over 30 per cent of all residential PV in the United States, which has been an amazing disruption to the PV market.

Our target at Solarland Australia is to bring the same level of disruption to the Australian market. In the last 12 months, however, we have seen an increased interest from our customers in the use of AC modules in residential and commercial PV systems. Our belief is that the main driver is the reduction in

operating and maintenance costs as a result of having no single point of failure in the system. This allows maintenance to be scheduled on a predictable basis.

EcoGeneration: What benefits do aC modules offer over detached microinverters?

Sam: One of the greatest advantages of AC modules over detached microinverters is decreased installation time for installers.

As discussed, the price of PV components has fallen dramatically over the past 24 months, meaning that balance-of-system components and labour costs are taking up a much larger part of the equation. Enabling installers to install AC modules twice as fast as it would take them to install detached microinverters means that installation costs are reduced, and consumer prices come down.

In addition to this, installers and consumers alike have a single point of contact for support. Solarland has a local technical support team in Australia that can provide all of the support necessary for both panel and inverter servicing requirements, as well as providing all other balance-of-system components – there is only one service contact number required.

This, in addition to the greater energy harvest, reliability and safety of AC modules, provides a significant value-add to any distributor, installer or consumer in the market today. Solarland is excited to have the opportunity to bring this new technology to the Australian market after its proven track record in the United States.

Are inverters becoming more reliable? What do central inverter and microinverter companies predict next for the inverter segment of the solar market? Solarland Australia Managing Director Sam Andrews provides his thoughts to EcoGeneration to help answer these key inverter questions and more.

DebriefingwithSolarlandAustralia

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“Commercial system owners are recognising the benefits of distributed electronics.”

– Solarland australia managing director Sam andrews


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There has been a lot of ‘buzz’ of late about solar hybrid alternating-current (AC)-coupled systems that enable energy

produced from renewable resources to be stored until needed – that is, during peak times.

Energy storage and smart grid technologies will continue to enter the market during 2013, with some potentially big breakthroughs in market-ready batteries and their battery management systems possible during the year, along with other mechanical storage solutions.

This is largely being driven by multinationals such as GE, Siemens, and Chinese and Korean firms – although there are some active Australian companies, such as Selectronic.

With reductions to feed-in tariffs and other government incentives for renewable technologies happening all over the world, consumers are looking for ways to gain energy security away from the national electricity retailers, and secure the price of electricity they pay for.

Using a battery bank in the home can be an effective way to store energy for future use. Surplus energy from a photovoltaic system can be stored in battery packs, as a stand-alone or to power up electric vehicles.

An additional benefit of energy storage is to reduce peak-usage charges on an electricity

bill. Some retailers offer time-of-use rate plans, in which the price of electricity varies based on the time of day. Rates are higher during the afternoon when electric demand is at its ‘peak’ across the whole network.

A storage system may help save more money by drawing power from a battery instead of from the grid during higher-rate peak hours; the battery can then be recharged during lower rate, off-peak hours.

A traditional grid-connected solar power system doesn’t give fully independent power supply. If the grid goes down, power is lost. Inverters are designed to shut off automatically during black outs.

The good news is that it’s possible to add a battery storage option to most systems to attain an uninterrupted supply. It’s possible to run an entire home, office or other commercial site from a hybrid system during grid outages. To keep costs down, consider running only essential electrical items during an outage.

A typical battery back-up option would use a 400 ampere-hour, 24 volt battery bank, providing approximately 6 kilowatt hours of back-up power – enough to run a refrigerator, freezer, lights and a television for a day, or longer if it’s sunny. This adds approximately $10,000 to the cost of a standard grid-connected system.

Gel batteries require no maintenance, as long as a back-up generator is connected to keep battery levels high when solar or wind is not maintaining this supply. Solar360 recommends Selectronic’s SP Pro inverter in this case, as it will manage this type of system well.

At Solar 360, we offer a complete range of Selectronic SP Pro inverters along with all hybrid and off-grid equipment requirements. This innovation in our product range will help our customers adapt to an ever-changing and challenging solar market.

What does the Australian solar sector need to keep in mind when it comes to energy back-up and storage? Solar360’s James Grant takes a look at what is quickly becoming Australia’s hottest topic.

Hybridsolarsystemsandtheirstoragepotential

For further information about the inverter, hybrid and off-grid equipment range available through Solar360, visit www.solar360.com.au

a storage system may help save more money

by drawing power from a battery instead of

from the grid during higher-rate peak hours.

Working in diverse spheres, Regal Electro’s advanced battery technologies keep

the company at the forefront.

Systems available at regal Electro

Up to 48 kilowatt hours (kWh)In this sector, Regal recommends our Power

Charge Endurogel range: VRLA (sealed lead acid) batteries with gel electrolyte and a unique catalyst.

Incorporation of a catalyst extends life by preventing water loss, and by enabling excellent performance to be sustained in hot Australian conditions. The advantages of this technology have been proven by many government and international corporations – for further information on the Endurogel catalyst, visit www.regalelectro.com.au

48–144 kWhWe recommend OPzV technology in this

storage range; plates used in our OPzV batteries are manufactured in a manner that extends battery life by ensuring active materials are more tightly attached to their grids. Power Charge OPzV batteries also incorporate a unique sliding pole technology, providing higher durability through prevention of ruptures.

4.8 kWh and above (lithium)Our ENLIFEN batteries cover a wide range

of lithium polymer systems commencing at 100–200 ampere-hours, 48 volt direct-current, and extending to containerised solutions of 1–2 megawatts and above. Over the years of our experience in supplying lithium batteries for use in numerous applications, there have never been any fire or explosion issues.

Benefits enjoyed by lithium battery users include:• High cyclic ability – our premium lithium

batteries attain up to 4,000, 80 per cent DOD cycles

• Lower weight-to-charge ratio, greater durability in high-temperature applications and lower internal resistance

• Faster charge and discharge capabilities providing critical advantages including capacity to quickly absorb solar energy in conditions of limited sunlight.

Regal Electro provides the finest energy solutions teamed with the best service, making the company an industry leader in the fast-evolving world of renewable energy storage.

PoweringexcellenceinstoragebyPhilipDaries,RegalElectro

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ENLiFEN LITHIUM POLYMERTubular Plates and Sliding Pole Technology ensures this battery is one of the most versatile for energy storage.

Available from 2V211Ah–3222Ah C/10

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Regal Electro’s team looks forward to providing solutions for energy storage projects. For further information, visit www.regalelectro.com.au


What defines a high-quality solar module? Does country-of-origin really matter in today’s solar market?

When I commenced working in solar in 2005, the total number of megawatts (MW) of solar photovoltaic (PV) installed in Australia up to 2005 was just under 2 MW in total. Industry sentiment undeniably supported the notion that solar module quality was ruled by the Europeans. The Asian output was defined by the likes of Sharp and Kyocera from Japan, and Suntech Power was only just getting started.

Today, almost every state in Australia installs well over 1 MW of solar per month. 2012 saw close to 1 gigawatt (GW) installed during the year, and more than 90 per cent of the product imported into Australia came from China.

Back in 2005, SCHOTT Solar was considered an industry leader. Owned by German company SCHOTT AG, a 127-year-old company, SCHOTT Solar embraced its parent company mission – expertise, experience, and a manufacturing excellence ‘made of ideas’.

This philosophy produced world-class solar panel innovation. Manufacturing in Germany, Czech Republic and the United States, SCHOTT Solar defined Tier 1 German quality, and China seemed a very far-away place for the industry in general.

SCHOTT Solar was one of very few companies holding independent long-term test results beyond 25 years. By October 2012, however, it seemingly ended for SCHOTT: all manufacturing

in Europe and the United States ceased. Was it the end of an era? No.

SCHOTT Solar polycrystalline modules are definitely still here; in fact, they never really went away. A global financial crisis, a European crisis and several political changes contributed to altering many industries – uniquely so the renewables industry. China, at the same time, solidified its intentions of being a global solar powerhouse.

As I made my transition out of SCHOTT Solar and into PIVOTAL Solar Solutions in late 2012, I had to respect the changing playing field. The market signals were clear – reduce price, and/or lower production costs to meet market price in the face of a persistent solar glut, or perish.

In speaking with many mainly Asian module and inverter manufacturing companies at the time, it was refreshing to realise that the solar industry is capable of changing not only for its survival, but in essence, for the better. China, as a manufacturing hub, is maturing and delivering in this sense.

SCHOTT recognised this too, partnering with Hareon Solar Power Company to produce modules in China from a SCHOTT module manufacturing-dedicated plant. The plant produces 300 MW of SCHOTT Power and Perform modules annually, continuing the SCHOTT Solar success story.

PIVOTAL Solar Solutions believes the quality of the SCHOTT Power and Perform Poly 250

modules from China retain the design and manufacturing excellence they were always known for – being made by the SCHOTT Hareon Solar company. They remain German-designed, and, now manufactured in best-in-class manufacturing facilities in China, ‘German ingenuity’ is retained.

Things have changed substantially in 8 years, and country-of-origin should no longer matter, as there are many examples – such as SCHOTT Hareon – of companies utilising the highest-quality manufacturing machinery, regardless of country-of-origin.

I discovered in my own research that SCHOTT Solar is every bit the high-quality, if not better, product today that it was always known for in 2005.

PIVOTAL Solar Solutions Sales Director Gonzalo Muslera reflects on how the solar industry has changed over time, by looking at changes in the lifecycle of the SCHOTT Solar module between 2005 and 2013.

68

Modulesthatpoweronandperformagain

ComPaNY NeWs

Then (2005–08) Now (2013)

SCHOTT Solar Poly 200-225 SCHOTT Solar Power and Perform Poly 250

Potential induced degradation-resistant, new 35 mm frame

Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE 25-year long-term test study

Fraunhofer Institute 25-year long-term test study

Öko-Test – ‘Excellent’ Grade

Solarpraxis test – ‘Excellent’ Grade

5-year manufacturing warranty 10-year manufacturing warranty

25-year, two-step performance warranty 25-year linear performance warranty

Made in Germany, Czech Republic, United States of America by SCHOTT Solar AG

Made in China by SCHOTT Hareon Solar Power Company PIVOTAL Solar Solutions Sales Director

Gonzalo Muslera.

PIVOTAL Solar Solutions is a national solar and wholesale distribution company, and has a range of modules on offer – including SCHOTT Power and Perform Poly 250 modules, inverters, racking and balance of electrical, for all installation needs.

For further information, contact 1300 935 145 or [email protected]

SCHOTT POWER POLY 250

Contact us on [email protected] phone us on 1300 935 145

SCHOTT DESIGNED MODULES WITH 25 YEAR LINEAR WARRANTY!

German Designed

Above 90% yield after 26 years

Oko and Solarpraxis test approved

PID resitant, hotspot free

New SCHOTT module designed with 50 years experience.

All new frame design, strong and robust construction – makes handling better!

When QUALITY matters, use SCOTT!

SCHOTT SOLAR MODULES ARE BACK!

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www.ecogeneration.com.au ecogeneration|may/june13ecogeneration |may/june13 www.ecogeneration.com.au

70 ComPaNY NeWs uP Close 71

Conergy Australia Managing Director David McCallum has seen several peaks and troughs shape Australia’s solar

industry over his seven years of involvement in solar with Conergy. Mr McCallum notes that it has been an exciting and buoyant ride; despite 2012 being a tough year, Conergy has made strong progress, and the industry is entering a new phase in 2013.

Reinforcing this upturn was the announcement from Bloomberg New Energy Finance in 2012 that Conergy holds the Tier 1 position as the highest-ranked European brand for solar modules most frequently used in large developments.

“The Australian solar industry has established itself exceptionally well within the global market; rebates have been utilised and gradually retracted over a number of years, and we are now focusing on solar array generation for consumers and business, rather than purely focusing on the cost of purchasing a system,” Mr McCallum says. “The market mindset – not only in Australia but globally – in regard to perspectives on the performance of a system has changed, progressively moving away from ‘how cheap can I buy one?’”

Conergy sits well within this new phase, Mr McCallum contends, because of the company’s position as an early adopter and market leader in Australia, having entered the Australian market in 2005. Far from resting on its laurels, the company is looking ahead to future growth areas.

“We are positioned well within the Australian market, but we’ve gone through changes. Like all businesses, if you’re not moving, searching and seeking the next step, you’ll find yourself no longer in the industry,” he notes. “We’re always on the lookout for

where the market will turn to next, and where Conergy’s next position will be within that market to best service our customers and the end user.”

The direction Conergy Australia is taking in 2013 is different to past years. Whereas previously the company was readily available to everyone in the market, in order to meet the requirements of that market’s ‘intensive distribution’ configuration, it is now restructuring to create dedicated networks with exclusive distribution partners.

Mr McCallum explains “On the back of feed-in tariffs adjusting, where the industry now needs to stand on its own two feet and deliver services to the market at a fair price, there’s an opportunity for Conergy to reorganise its position; we have done that, scouring the country to look at every state and territory and to restructure our sales strategy.”

Since early last year, Conergy has worked to develop a network of exclusive Conergy PowerPlus Partners for its German-made PowerPlus solar module. These partners have exclusive territories around Australia, selling Conergy’s premium product for domestic and commercial applications.

“We provide them with great structure and support for the delivery of service into their dedicated areas, giving the partners a lot of stability, and the ability to market and deliver services on an exclusive basis within their territory,” Mr McCallum says.

“In most metropolitan cities in Australia, we’ve now concluded our invitations to business partners, and nine out of ten have accepted those invitations to join our future. We look forward to building on that as years roll by for a healthier and more sustainable business model, and to better service our customers and enable

our products to be available nation-wide through exclusive channels.

“In addition, there are territories within Australia where there’s room for expansion of the Conergy PowerPlus Partner program, in locations where we haven’t as yet identified an appropriate partner – there’s room for that expansion without diminishing the benefits of the program to the existing partners with their exclusive, defined territories.”

PowerPlus partnerships primarily service the domestic market, and on the back of this, Conergy has entered a wholesale market partnership with Rexel Energy Solutions to service a wider installer network, allowing smaller photovoltaic (PV) businesses to access Conergy products as well.

Rexel Holdings Australia, Australia’s largest electrical wholesale group, incorporates several brands in every state and territory and has more than 170 branches. Mr McCallum says that in distributing Conergy products, Rexel will enable installers to pick up a single component of a product or system, or to order kits from their local store.

Following his appointment as Conergy Australia’s Managing Director in mid-February 2013, David McCallum explains how Conergy’s new distribution partnerships are emblematic of Australian solar’s next growth phase. Michael Power, Executive General Manager at Conergy partner company Rexel Energy Solutions, also details the installer benefits arising from this new distribution format.

Upclosewith…ConergyAustraliaManagingDirectorDavidMcCallumandRexelEnergySolutionsExecutiveGeneralManagerMichaelPower

Power-One, a global manufacturer of renewable energy and energy-efficient power conversion and management solutions, has surpassed the one million mark for solar photovoltaic inverters sold worldwide.

This milestone can be attributed to the significant growth Power-One has experienced over the

past several years, Power-One says.In 2010, Power-One took over the number

two spot in global market share for solar inverters, with an installed base of 3.2 gigawatts (GW).

Today, Power-One has an installed base of more than 10 GW, representing a more than three-fold increase in just over two years.

Power-One Renewable Energy Solutions President Alex Levran explains “We are extremely proud of reaching this important milestone of one million inverters sold, and are even more pleased with our impressive global installed base of 10 GW.

“This truly speaks to our technology leadership, our steady stream of new and innovative product introductions, our geographic expansion strategy and our strong distribution and post-sales network. We continue to respond to the evolving needs of our customers, by delivering comprehensive solutions across all market sectors and major geographies.”

As a technology company in the solar inverter category, Power-One has leveraged innovations to introduce products that are highly regarded in the photovoltaic (PV) industry, based on their flexibility and performance.

Power-One has launched a stream of products over past years, including most recently the Aurora Ultra series of central inverters that deliver the lowest levelised-cost-of-energy in the utility-scale segment, according to the company.

Other products offered by Power-One include the Aurora Trio family of three-phase string inverters designed for commercial rooftop applications, and the Aurora Micro, an alternative for the residential market.

Geographically, Power-One has a presence in regions including North America, India, Australia, Latin America, Japan, China, the

Middle East and Africa, and is positioned to serve the global PV market with a full complement of products.

SurpassingtheonemillionmarkforPVinvertersales

To learn more about Power-One’s Aurora inverter products, visit www.power-one.com/renewable-energy

Conergy Australia Managing Director David McCallum.


reader Profile 7372 uP Close

www.ecogeneration.com.au/jobsVisit

and fi nd your job today

Qualifi ed. Professional. Experienced. Get the very best.

GET THE VERY BESTJOBWe’ve created a dedicated jobs board for people in the clean energy industry.

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How long have you been involved in the clean energy industry?

I first engaged in wind farm development work in 1998 – that makes it 15 years. How time flies!

What do you love about the industry?

First and foremost, I love the idea that we work in an industry that is playing a critical role in ensuring that our way of life is sustainable.

I also like the fact that the industry is full of people who value integrity and honesty. I find that relationships in the renewable energy industry, even between ostensible competitors, are underpinned by respect and trust.

Our dynamic industry is never short of challenge, but neither is it short of opportunity.

What do you find most challenging about the industry?

I find it challenging that there seems to be a twist around every corner, and always a new uncertainty to deal with. Just when you think that the uncertainty is over because the Climate Change Authority has completed and published a positive review of the Renewable Energy Target, a federal election is announced…

Why do you read EcoGeneration magazine?

EcoGeneration is the most professional magazine covering the issues that I find interesting and important in the industry. I like the mixture of technical or technological information, with updates on policies and projects.

ReaderprofileMarkSchneider,HeadofPowerInvestment,InvestecBankAustralia

What role has Investec Bank played in Australian clean energy?

Investec Bank Australia’s Power Investment team is a leading developer of clean energy projects in Australia and New Zealand.

In March 2010, the team completed the pre-construction development of the Collgar Wind Farm in Western Australia, a $750 million, 206 megawatt project. As developer of the Collgar project, the Investec team was responsible for the full gamut of development tasks including securing development approval, arranging for the sale of power and Renewable Energy Certificates to Synergy, negotiating a network connection agreement with Western Power, contracting for turbine supply, construction, operations and maintenance with Vestas, and arranging external equity and debt finance for construction.

Some of the team’s other successes include the Oaklands Hill wind project in Victoria and the Coopers Gap wind project in Queensland, both sold to AGL Energy in December 2008. The team is also the developer of the Cherokee project, a large-scale, low-carbon-intensity, gas-fired power station. Investec is currently extending its development activities to include grid-scale solar power.

Investec Bank Australia Head of Power Investment Mark Schneider.

Mr McCallum adds that times of past years where small, medium and large retailers were ordering and being supplied bulk container volumes of inventory have reduced, in terms of the number of clients operating in that capacity with the capability to receive large volumes into their own warehouse.

“A PV installer or retailer can now go to any Rexel store nation-wide and place orders for PV kits, and Rexel will provide Conergy modules, inverters and mounting systems along with all of the ancillary electrical equipment required. If the installer has sold five systems this week, he or she can call into Rexel next week and order the five systems.

“Working capital-wise, and business management-wise, for the smaller installers and retailers this will provide a significant advantage and benefit to them in terms of how they are able to access inventory without having to purchase it in large pallet or container volume quantities.”

Rexel Energy Solutions Executive General Manager Michael Power agrees, pointing out that installers can “get on with business, dealing with their customers and lining up work, and they can rely on us to get the products to them as and when required”.

“Their focus becomes more about the customer interface and installation aspects,

rather than having to worry about supply chain issues.”

Mr Power adds that Rexel has business development managers in each state, who can support installers with product awareness and general advice on Conergy products.

“We can depend on Conergy to back us technically, and we provide the access points across the country to provide services for their products, meaning Conergy can get on with developing solar farms and continuing major investments in the PV market,” Mr Power explains.

“We have three solar experts within Rexel that can provide advice on installs – one in Sydney, one in Brisbane and one in Darwin. If the local branch doesn’t have an answer, they know who to access to get a quick and easy response back on any query.”

Mr McCallum adds “Behind Rexel, we provide engineering, design, installation and grid connection support, plus other procurement and construction services.”

Mr Power says that what Rexel can offer over and above what an installer would have received dealing with Conergy directly is that with the Australian solar market maturing, the size of the market is maturing, and installers need other projects to work on.

“Within our offering, we not only do renewables such as solar, we also do energy

efficiency products – and we can help installers understand how they can get into energy efficient lighting applications, sensors, motors and drives, heating and ventilation, pool pump power-savers, power-quality equipment, monitoring systems and more.”

Rexel is bringing a new energy monitoring system to Australia in mid-2013 from its business in the United Kingdom, which Mr Power points to as an example of a product that installers could offer as a value-add to their previous PV customers.

“These customers would obviously have an interest in power consumption, as they’ve done something about it previously by installing solar,” he says. “We can offer a cloud-based system where home or business owners can measure energy use – right down to the appliance – to make decisions and change behaviour to further reduce their power consumption. The system requires installation, so for businesses who are installing solar, we can train them to install these products as well.”

Businesses or individuals with questions about the Conergy PowerPlus Partner network or the Conergy/Rexel distribution network can visit www.conergy.com.au or www.rexelenergy.com.au, or email [email protected] with enquiries.

What type of articles do you most look forward to reading about the industry?

My favourite articles are those that report on projects happening around Australia. They offer a ready means of finding out what is actually happening throughout the country.

What are you looking forward to for renewable energy in 2013?

I think we are on the verge of a very exciting period as the prevailing Renewable Energy Certificate surplus starts to drop off.

It may be a couple of years yet before the surplus turns into a deficit, but given the lead-times for new projects, we should shortly see growing activity with an imminent rise in construction starts for grid-scale renewable energy projects.

Mark Schneider is Head of the Power Investment Group in Investec Bank Australia. Mr Schneider’s team is responsible for originating, implementing and managing power industry investments for the bank and its clients, with a particular focus on clean energy. Prior to joining Investec in 2002, Mr Schneider worked for the National Australia Bank and Societe Generale. He was a member of the Participant Advisory Committee to the Board of the National Electricity Market Management Corporation (NEMMCO) from 2003, until the responsibilities of NEMMCO were assumed by the Australian Energy Market Operator in 2009.


Simons Green Energy supplied and installed a SEVA Energie cogeneration system that is due to provide the new

Rydges Airport Hotel at Sydney Airport with 70 kilowatts (kW) of electrical power to supplement power purchased from the grid.

Also featured in the installation are domestic hot water storage tanks with sufficient capacity to supply the hotel’s potable hot water requirements; hot water tanks will be powered by the waste heat from the cogeneration system’s engine.

Site locationThe cogeneration unit and hot water storage

tanks are installed on the roof of the Rydges Hotel building in a weatherproof enclosure.

Simons Green Energy’s engineering team was responsible for the design, sizing, supply, installation, commissioning and ongoing maintenance of the natural gas-fired cogeneration system. For more than two years, the team worked with asset owner Denwol Group and appointed builder Lipman to ensure installation and optimum system performance.

System detailsThe packaged SEVA Energie cogeneration

system comprises a 70 kW unit, featuring an engine supplied by MAN. The system was supplied as a complete factory-tested, skid-mounted unit with engine, generator set, controls and heat recovery systems all on board.

The unit is configured to run in a number of different modes, including: • Parallel grid connection • Emergency island mode to provide power

to pre-selected ‘critical services’.Electricity produced by the cogeneration unit

will provide a portion of the hotel’s requirements; the waste heat from the engine’s jacket water and exhaust gases will be captured to produce domestic hot water at 65 °C.

The hot water will be stored in three 3,500 litre Edwards LEX350 hot water storage tanks. As the hot water is produced for ‘free’ via the waste heat of the cogeneration plant, it will reduce costs by decreasing the amount of hot water needed from the site’s traditional natural gas-fired hot water boilers.

delivering resultsThe Rydges Hotel cogeneration system is

capable of producing up to 350,000 kW hours of electricity and close to 485,000 kW hours of thermal energy per year.

Simons Green Energy Chief Executive Derek Simons says “The cogeneration system installed at the Rydges Sydney Airport Hotel will be a great platform for other hotels to follow. The system is technologically advanced and very efficient at about 85 per cent conversion efficiency compared with 30 per cent efficiency for conventional grid-supplied electricity.”

The system has an expected life span of more than 20 years.

rydges goes environmental The Rydges Sydney International Airport Hotel

will officially open in May 2013, and has embraced environmental initiatives in accordance with the Sydney Airport Corporation Limited Environmental Management Strategy, including:• Energy management and reduced

greenhouse emissions through cogeneration• Water management (storm water quality,

groundwater quality and water conservation)

• Waste and resource management with 80 per cent of demolition and construction waste being recycled

• Biodiversity and conservation management• Soil and land management.

Denwol Group Director Phillip Wolanski says “Our objective in following this path was to show some foresight and real environmental sensitivity. We wanted any green initiatives to be practical, have strong environmental outcomes and provide us with financial payback over time. The cogeneration unit provides us with these three criteria.”

Atop the roof of the new Rydges Sydney Airport Hotel sits a 70 kilowatt cogeneration system that is expected to deliver energy savings of up to 350,000 kilowatt hours per annum.

74 ProjeCt Profile

SydneyAirportHotelCogeneration

No. of certs created to date April 2013 March 2013 February 2013

Large-Scale Generation Certificates (LGC - $/MWh) 151,526,912 36.15 35.75 37

Small-Scale Technology Certificates (STC - $/MWh) 98,787,892 36.7 33.7 31.7

Victorian Energy Efficiency Certificates(VEECs - $/MWh) 16,218,122 17 17.45 19.1

Energy Savings Certificates(ESCs - $/MWh) 2,960,843 22.45 29.35 32.75

Environmental credits updateThere are a number of domestic and international markets that now exist for what can be termed environmental credits – this is where other

attributes to the generation of electricity are recognised and rewarded. Businesses active in the sustainable energy industry need to be aware of the emerging opportunities that may be available both in Australia and overseas.

The following information has been provided by Nextgen (www.nges.com.au) and relates, unless otherwise indicated, to the spot prices in Australian dollars, as of 12 April 2013.

2/01/2013 2/02/2013 2/03/2013 2/04/2013

$/MWh

36.5036.0035.5034.5034.0033.5033.0032.5032.0031.5031.00

Daily Closing STC WASP

2/01/2013 2/02/2013 2/03/2013 2/04/2013

$/MWh

Daily Closing Prices

39

38

37

36

35

34

Weekly WASP

90DaySpotSTC 90DaySpotLGC

75eNviroNmeNtal Credits uPdate

Project Name: Rydges Sydney International Airport Hotel Cogeneration System

Site Owner: Denwol Group

Cogeneration system supplier and installer: Simons Green Energy

Commissioning date: March 2013

System type: Reciprocating cogeneration system

Total Electrical Power: 70 kWe

Operation modes: Parallel grid connection and island mode emergency power connection

Capacities: 70 kWe, 109 kWt

Fuel Source: Natural gas

Manufacturer: SEVA Energie

Engine: MAN

Upcoming events

Solar 2013 Conference and Expo23–24 May 2013Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre

Wind Farms 201327–30 May 2013Bayview Eden, Melbourne

Clean Power Asia Conference and Expo29–30 April 2013Bangkok, Thailand

Global Wind Day15 June 2013Worldwide

Clean Energy Week 201324–26 July 2013Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre

All-Energy Australia Exhibition and Conference9–10 October 2013Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre

Registrations now open!

Registrations now open!

See EcoGeneration at stand B17 in

the exhibition for Solar 2013!

The Rydges Sydney Airport Hotel Cogeneration System.


76Advertisers’ Index

Edition Feature Feature Feature Feature deadline

Jul/aug 2013 Solar map

Solar GasPowered by

the seaHydrogen

31 May 2013

Sep/oct 2013 BioenergySolar

heating and cooling

Delivering wind projects

Investment in renewables

26 July 2013

nov/dec 2013 Region reviewEnergy

efficiencySolar

Financial and legal matters

27 September

2013

Jan/Feb 2014 Events Wall

CalendarWind Geothermal

Co- and trigeneration

Project logistics

15 November

2013

For more information on advertising in future editions, contact Tim Thompson on 03 9248 5100, or [email protected]

Coming in future editions

All-Energy Australia 2013 47

Altenergy Power System Inc. 9

Canadian Solar 43

Clean Energy Week 2013 57

CMA Solar 27

D.C. Solutions Australia P/L 40

Delta Energy Systems 45

DKSH Australia Pty. Ltd. 35

EcoGen Events 53

EcoGeneration Jobs 49, 72

EcoGeneration Subscription 59

EnaSolar 21

Growatt New Energy Co., Ltd 48

Hareon Solar 37

MML International 11

MWM Energy Australia Pty Ltd 2

Neo Power 20

Neolec 39, 51

Omnik New Energy 31

PIVOTAL Solar Solutions 69

Power-One 19

Pressure Systems Pty Ltd 33

Ragu Technology Co.,Ltd 15

Regal Electro 67

ReneSola 29

Samil Power Co Ltd 1

Si Clean Energy IBC

SMA Australia Pty Ltd OBC

Solar Inception Pty Ltd 44

Solar Lord 32

Solar-Log Asia Pacific 28

Solar360 41

Solarland Australia Pty Ltd 65

Surpass Sun Electric 17

Trade In Green Pty Ltd 13

Trina Solar Ltd IFC

Up Solar 25

Weidmuller Pty Ltd 5

Wolong International 23

XQ Solar 46

Yingli Solar 7

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Sunny Tripower 5000TL - 9000TLThe three-phase inverter for residential and commercial marketsThe SMA Sunny Tripower offers more than ever before, with new sizes available to suit the residential and small commercial markets. Packed with great features, the three-phase inverter provides for easy system design and plays an important role in grid management. Optiflex technology ensures the highest in flexibility while combining peak efficiency with the OptiTrac Global Peak system to generate the highest in yields. It has an excellent peak efficiency of over 98 percent and the MPP trackers adjust the voltage and current of a PV array so that it operates at its maximum power point.Webconnect, the new direct data exchange interface, is a standard integrated function for quick communication with Sunny Portal, which allows the user to track the key performance data of the system.The Sunny Tripower 5000TL – 9000TL is AS/NZS 5033 compliant.

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