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Have you heard the good news on the energy front?

14/03/2024

We’re always on the lookout for positive stories about Australia’s energy outlook. We love sharing news that gives us hope for a future with greener, more reliable, and cheaper energy.

While some seem to be focused only on the challenges, others have been rolling up their sleeves and quietly working on advancements, innovations, and solutions. Here’s a wrap of a few of the good news energy stories we’ve spotted recently.

Sending solar cells into space

A Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) innovation that could help improve future space missions is currently being tested aboard Australia’s largest private satellite.

Optimus-1 has been fitted with a series of CSIRO’s flexible solar cells made using perovskite, an advanced material that is highly efficient in converting sunlight into energy, including when the sunlight hits the cells at non-optimal angles.

A major challenge in the development of spacecraft is low-mass, high-efficiency power systems, and the CSIRO-developed technology offers significant advantages over traditional silicon-based solar.

Eight mini-modules of CSIROs Australian-made printed flexible solar cells have been attached to the surface of the recently launched Space Machine Company’s Optimus-1 satellite.

It’s hoped that the innovative cells will transform spacecraft power systems and enable new possibilities for future space missions.

Rubbish power to make paper

Rubbish from Melbourne households will be used to power a new waste-to-energy plant running Opal Australia’s Maryvale Paper Mill in the Latrobe Valley.

Nappies, soft plastic, metal, and even dog poo will be incinerated, generating steam and electricity to power the mill.

The waste will be delivered to a bunker, then fed into a furnace which will combust the waste to produce heat. The heat converts water into steam and the steam drives a turbo generator to provide both electricity and an outlet of steam over to the pulp and paper mill.

The technology is already used at 500 sites across Europe and the combustion process produces no odours.

Is a water battery viable?

A research team at RMIT University is developing a new type of battery using water. 

The battery uses more abundant and safer metals such as zinc and magnesium instead of the rarer and more volatile lithium many rechargeable batteries now use.

Water acts as the electrolyte that replaces the organic molecules that make lithium-ion batteries function. 

Lead researcher Professor Tiyani Ma told the ABC that the batteries would be much safer and would be able to be discharged and recharged hundreds of times.

Professor Ma concedes that the energy density of the water battery is still only about one third that of a lithium-ion battery, which means that to get equivalent energy a water battery would be quite a bit bigger.

However, he points out that still makes it suitable for many applications where space isn’t an issue, making it already a viable alternative to lead-acid batteries, and he believes advances in the technology could see the watery battery “catching up” to the lithium-ion one in terms of energy density.

Hydrogen from seawater and Green Ceramics

The University of New South Wales (UNSW) Trailblazer for Recycling and Clean Energy (TRaCE) scheme has unveiled the first projects to be delivered as part of a $117 million investment in industry-co-funded research and development projects.

As the TRaCE website outlines the “industry research partnerships transform waste into circular economy solutions, from smart tank designs and sustainable materials used in aerospace and construction to the manufacture of Green Ceramics and Green Steel”.

A showcase of the TRaCE projects revealed a range of disruptive new technologies that are in the process of being brought to market.

One good example is the use of waste textiles and mattresses to create Green Ceramics, new bio-composites used in kitchen benches and construction products.

“It is clear that the work coming out of TRaCE will be a significant contributor to achieving net zero by 2050. At UNSW, as at UoN [University of Newcastle], we are at the forefront of supporting researchers in collaborating closely with industry to create and bring to market innovative technologies of long-run societal benefit, both quickly and efficiently,” UNSW Deputy Vice Chancellor, Research and Enterprise, Professor Nicholas Fisk said.

Community consultation on energy infrastructure in Victoria

The Victorian government has introduced a bill to establish VicGrid, a body responsible for all planning and consultation on energy projects in the state and implementation of the new Victorian Transmission Infrastructure Framework (VTIF).

The legislation aims to ensure that VicGrid has the powers to modernise the way energy infrastructure is planned and developed, while giving communities a voice in the process.

Only projects that have been through community consultation undertaken by VicGrid can be put to tender for development, a move designed to minimise the impacts a project may have on the community.

The bill would also lock in payments that recognise the crucial role landholders who host energy infrastructure are playing in the energy transition, with payments of $200,000 per kilometre of new transmission hosted, indexed and paid over 25 years (on top of compensation for the impact of infrastructure on their land). 

The next stages of VTIF will feature community funds to ensure the regions hosting energy infrastructure also see meaningful and lasting benefits from the energy transition.

The power of the sun, but much hotter!

Scientists and engineers in England have set a nuclear fusion energy record … by heating the fuel to 150 million degrees Celsius, around 10 times hotter than the core of the sun!

Nuclear fusion is the same process that powers the sun and other stars and is widely seen as the holy grail of clean energy. 

Using the Joint European Torus (JET) – a huge, donut-shaped machine known as a tokamak – the scientists sustained a record 69 megajoules of fusion energy for five seconds, using just 0.2 milligrams of fuel.

That’s enough to power roughly 12,000 households for the same amount of time.

It’s further proof that fusion, if it can be harnessed, could generate enormous amounts of energy with tiny inputs of fuel. Significantly, fusion emits zero planet-warming carbon in the process. 

The scientists fed the tokamak deuterium and tritium, which are hydrogen variants that future commercial fusion plants are most likely to use.

Raising temperatures in the machine to 150 million degrees Celsius forced the deuterium and tritium to fuse together to form helium, a process that in turn released enormous amounts of heat, which was harnessed and used to produce electricity.

Sounds simple when you put it like that (apart from that “10 times hotter than the core of the sun” bit)!

Let’s applaud the important work being done 

The challenge of finding better ways to provide affordable energy that’s sustainable and reliable is being taken on by scientists, engineers, academics. and people who think outside the box.

We think their efforts should be recognised and appreciated because they are so important. You never know where the next major breakthrough will come from, but we believe some amazing solutions will be found.

We’ll continue to keep an eye on these and other projects and keep you in the loop.

Filed Under: News

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