Nine interesting renewable energy projects
The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) says it’s not your typical grant-giving agency, as it won’t just fund ‘blue sky’ research. Rather, everything it backs must have a pathway to being fully commercial.
So with plump pockets at the ready, the agency has now revealed nine cutting-edge renewable energy research projects who will receive $17 million through the latest industry-researcher collaboration R&D funding round.
ARENA CEO Igor Frischknecht congratulated the winners, announcing the funding allocation to each project. Read on for a summary of what the winners will be doing in the area of integrating renewables into grids or industrial processes in order to help drive down the balance of system costs.
1. Curtin University and Land Corp — Integrating solar and storage into strata
Cost: $2.6m. Grant: $900,000.
What’s it about? This project is about increasing the uptake of solar photovoltaics (PV) in strata residential developments. It will develop governance models to allow shared solar PV, battery and monitoring systems to be used in medium-density apartments. Testing will take place at 50 units at the White Gum Valley development in Perth.
2. University of South Australia and Glaciem Cooling Technologies — Storing solar energy for industrial refrigeration
Cost: $2.1m. Grant: $1m.
What’s it about? The University of South Australia, together with refrigeration company Glaciem Cooling Technologies, will be looking at developing low-cost phase-change material able to store solar energy for the industrial refrigeration market.
“This is interesting,” said Frischknecht. “We’re actually storing energy in the form of thermal energy, as opposed to in the form of a battery... it’s much cheaper to store energy that way, but of course you need to have a use for that heat, for the cooling, in order to make it work.”
3. University of Wollongong and Sydney Water — Developing a sodium-ion battery
Cost: $10.6m. Grant: $2.7m.
What’s it about? Due to begin in mid-2016, this project will look at developing very low-cost storage with a new type of sodium-ion battery — not lithium-ion. It will develop and integrate a new type of sodium-ion battery in a low-cost, modular and expandable energy storage system to be demonstrated at the Illawarra Flame House and Sydney Water’s Bondi Sewage Pumping Station. According to researchers, sodium is abundant, cheap and lends itself to being a ready replacement for lithium.
4. Australian National University and Reposit — Renewables on Bruny Island, Tasmania
Cost: $2.9m. Grant: $2.9m.
What’s it about? This project will develop an automated control platform and new payment structures that will enable consumers with battery systems to provide support services to a constrained electricity network. Reposit is a software company that looks at ways to get more value out of a battery, grade the energy and, for example, make it available to networks.
“[Bruny Island] have a particular problem, in that lots of holiday-makers go there, so there are times of the year when they have lots of demand, and if they have lots of demand and there’s no sun or wind at that moment, what do they do?” explained Frischknecht. He said the project will look at designing a whole network to try to use renewables and storage in combination to supply secure energy to the people there.
5. Australian National University and 12 network companies — Real-time operational PV simulations for distribution network service providers
Cost: $3.3m. Grant: $1m.
What’s it about? This project will enhance the Regional PV Simulation System (RPSS) into a product that provides network service providers with real-time distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) simulations mapped to their electricity networks.
“The ANU project is a partnership with about a dozen network companies, which is a tremendous achievement in and of itself, to get a dozen energy networks to work together on one project,” said Frischknecht. “[It] is about estimating the power produced by rooftop solar.”
6. Australian National University and FRV — A robotic vision system for automatic inspection and evaluation of solar plants
Cost: $3.1m. Grant: $900,000.
What’s it about? This project will develop a cost-effective robotic inspection system that will monitor solar PV power plants using cameras mounted on the ground as well as aerial drones. The project aims to bring down operation costs and to work out when modules aren’t working; for example, when they’re dirty, when there are leaves on them or when mirrors are broken in solar thermal.
7. University of Western Australia and Carnegie — Wave energy cost reduction through location and configuration optimisation
Cost: $3.6m. Grant: $1m.
What’s it about? This project will involve investigating the optimal number, size, arrangement and location of wave energy device arrays to minimise the cost of installation and infrastructure while maximising power output.
8. Queensland University of Technology and sugar companies — Utilising biogas in sugarcane transport and milling
Cost: $5.7m. Grant: $2.1m.
What’s it about? This project aims to develop technologies to further integrate bioenergy into the sugarcane production, transport and milling process in order to lower costs and emissions intensity. Simply put, it’s about working out how you can turn the sugar trash, ie, the materials left over in the field, into usable energy. In particular, the researchers are going to generate thermal energy through that process. The sugar industry already uses the gas that’s left over after you squeeze the syrup out of the cane for energy production on a routine basis; however, this project is about bringing the next phase of waste into the economics.
9. University of Adelaide and Alcoa — Integrating concentrating solar thermal energy into the Bayer alumina process
Cost: $15m. Grant: $4.5m.
What’s it about? This project is about turning bauxite into alumina. It will evaluate the potential for energy produced from concentrating solar thermal (CST) technologies to be integrated into the Bayer alumina refining process for Alcoa’s Australian refineries and beyond. Overall, it will develop the technologies and process knowledge to enable the progressive integration of low-temperature CST, solar reforming of natural gas and high-temperature CST into the existing Bayer process.
“Aluminium refining and smelting is obviously big industry in Australia, so this is about exploring options that use solar thermal to generate that heat as opposed to vast amounts of gas, or some plants use coal,” added Frischknecht.
For more information on other renewable energy projects, go to www.arena.gov.au.
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