News

In Australia, consumers generate about 4 per cent of electricity. Predictions by the Australian Renewable Energy Authority (ARENA) say this could rise to 50 percent in the next few decades. ARENA is funding to 12 projects and studies to further integrate distributed energy resources (DER) into the electricity system. What are distributed energy resources? In the twentieth century, large power stations generated...

In September last year, the world’s biggest offshore wind farm was opened. Located off the UK’s Cumbrian coast in the Irish Sea, it has an area of about 175 square kilometres, a capacity of 659 megawatts - enough to power 590,000 homes. It was a short-lived record as the Hornsea One wind farm, off the Yorkshire coast, comes on line this...

A housing estate in the Sydney suburb of Blacktown is being equipped with geothermal heat pumps to tap into year-round subterranean temperatures of around 20 degrees. In the first of its kind development, the Fairwater housing community will also play a major role in determining the feasibility of commercial-scale ground-source heat pumps. Last month the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has...

Clenergy Team Arrow, one of Australia’s most successful solar electric racing teams has invented a specialist, high powered, ultra-light lithium battery power pack for use in cars competing in the Bridgestone World Solar Car Challenge. The aim is to deliver a practical battery system for use in the 3000 km race, with a view that it could make its way...

Construction of a $30 million 30 MW / 8 MWh grid-scale battery at the Dalrymple substation on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula has recently been completed. The battery will provide storage to support renewable generation and will provide fast frequency response to stabilise the grid. On average, the battery can provide backup power to 4500 customers in the Dalrymple service area for two...

To celebrate the International Year of the Periodical Table the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemists (IUPAC) has published an interactive Periodic Table of Younger Chemists. You can click on elements to find either video or written profile of a young chemist explaining the importance of the element to their field of study. The table is a work in...

The STELR team would like to congratulate Connie Cirkony who has joined the 'Q Project' at Monash University Faculty of Education. Connie has recently been completing a PhD in science education and has been collaborating with the STELR team writing curriculum material and presenting at conferences. The Q Project aims to help schools to use research evidence to improve teaching and...

Applications will open for the 2019 Prime Ministers Prizes in Science on 6 February. There are two prizes awarded for teachers – one primary and one secondary. Each prize is valued at $50,000....

The Smart Energy Council reports that Solar PV records are tumbling with nearly three times the number of solar panel installations in 2018 compared with 2017. There was over 40 per cent growth in the residential and commercial sectors. NSW was the largest market for residential solar PV in 2018 with 326 MW installed and the state took top spot for...

In early 2017 STELR News reported on research being undertaken at UNSW to make solar cells from a material known as perovskite, instead of the more conventional silicon cells. Perovskite is a mineral of calcium titanium oxide (CaTiO3) that was discovered in the Ural Mountains in 1839 and named for Russian mineralogist Lev Perovski. Now the term ‘perovskite’ refers to any...