New Zealand

Renewables developer Lodestone Energy will build a 220 MW solar farm on one of New Zealand’s iconic high-country grazing properties, with the landowners targeting the PV facility to help rehabilitate redundant land.

Singapore-based renewable energy fund manager SC Oscar has purchased New Zealand solar project developer Rānui Generation as part of its strategy to build a portfolio of renewable energy assets in New Zealand and Australia.

Aurora Energy Research says it has recorded a sharp increase in green hydrogen projects, with 90% of them in early phases of development, while E.ON says that Germany’s hydrogen ramp-up is stuck due to an investment backlog.

New Zealand’s transition to a renewable energy future has taken a significant step forward with the nation’s first grid-scale battery energy storage project now offering injectable reserves to the electricity market for the first time.

Fonterra, a New Zealand-based dairy producer, has started operating a new heat pump in combination with a solar thermal facility. The hybrid project transforms excess heat from chillers and compressors into a heat source for industrial use.

Lodestone Energy has started generating electricity at its solar plant in Kaitaia, New Zealand – the nation’s largest solar array and first utility-scale PV installation to date.

A global research group has compared static, customized dynamic, and dynamic-by-default energy allocations at a collective self-consumption project in France. They have found that dynamic customization performs better due to tax benefits.

The new heat pump can purportedly provide hot water at a temperature of up to 70 C. It is specifically designed for climatic conditions with temperatures ranging from -10 C to 42 C, as well as coastal locations.

Researchers from Massey University in New Zealand have developed a robotic lawn mower with three 50 W solar panels and a 20 Ah lithium-iron-phosphate (LiFePO4) battery. Two of the PV panels can be retracted and stacked inside the robot. They slide out when it needs to recharge its batteries.

New Zealand’s large-scale solar market is set to shift up a gear, with the government referring two PV projects to an independent fast-track consenting panel. The installations have a combined generation capacity of more than 500 GWh per annum.