Although there are numerous innovative projects seeking to improve the sustainability of Australia’s energy sector, one of the main barriers to making them happen is – as with most things – money.
With the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena) set to lose $1.3bn in unallocated funds, the agency has announced a raft of grants for green projects, including $17m for nine research and development projects that “have a pathway to being fully commercial” through industry partners.
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According to Arena’s CEO Ivor Frischknecht, the three-year projects all focus on integrating either more renewables or more energy into industrial processes or the grid to “help drive down the balance of system costs” while boosting sustainability.
We look at four of the multi-partner projects that could potentially make a big difference to greening Australia’s economy.
Increasing the uptake of solar photovoltaics in strata developments
According to Arena, more than two million households have solar power systems on their rooftops but installing and running solar installations on apartments – such as those run by strata agents – has been a harder nut to crack.
To tackle the problem, the agency has provided $900,000 to a $2.6m project aimed at producing a governance model for shared solar installations.
“The key question with installing solar panels on a strata development is how you govern a shared utility like this,” says Prof Greg Morrison of Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute, who is leading the project.
“The answer is that, right now, we don’t fully know how this governance could work, so the research will look at different type of models the developers can use.”
The project will involve around 50 units in three developments in Perth’s White Gum Valley suburb and will examine the shared benefits, risks and costs of such a system, as well as any legal implications for dwelling purchases and dwelling leases.
Using biogas in sugarcane transport and milling
Australia’s $2bn sugar industry may already be largely energy self-sufficient on the processing side, but little is done to utilise the waste sugarcane left over after harvesting.
Associate professor Ian O’Hara from Queensland University of Technology’s Centre for Tropical Crops and Biocommodities is leading a $5.7m project (with $2.1m Arena funding ) to convert the industry’s crop wastes (which are usually either burnt or left to degrade) into renewable fuels for farming and transportation.
“What we’re looking to do is take this trash and bagasse and convert it into biogas through anaerobic digestion, and then upgrade the biogas into biomethane for use in diesel engines. We’re really taking an environmental issue and transforming it into something positive,” he says.
According to O’Hara, the potential of the technology is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in sugarcane production by up to 80kg of CO2 per tonne of sugarcane produced.
There are four main elements of the project that will be demonstrated at Sunshine Sugar’s factories in the northern rivers region of New South Wales: finding a cost-effective way of collecting and transporting sugarcane trash to the factory; making the trash amenable to anaerobic digestion; upgrading the biogas to a transport-grade fuel; and upgrading the remaining digestate into a diesel replacement fuel.
O’Hara says that, if successfully demonstrated, the technology could not only benefit the sugar industry but other industries with waste crops, such cotton or grain.
Integrating solar thermal energy into the Bayer alumina process
Australia’s huge alumina market not only produces millions of dollars for the economy but also millions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions – largely produced from burning natural gas for heat in the refining process.
However a new $15.1m project (which has received $4.5m of Arena funding ) led by the University of Adelaide is hoping to sharply reduce the industry’s reliance on natural gas by identifying a cost-effective way to integrate low-temperature concentrated solar thermal (CST), solar reforming of natural gas, and high temperature CST in the Bayer refining process. The project also involves in-kind technical support from mining company Alcoa
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It is hoped the project could reduce the use of fossil fuels in the Bayer process by up to 45% and could potentially be expanded into other mining and minerals processing operations in Australia and overseas.
A robotic vision system for inspection and evaluation of solar plants
Drones are rising high in the world of technology at the moment, being used for everything including pizza delivery, postal delivery and even collecting whale snot. Now the flying machines are being trialled for their ability to inspect solar farms.
After construction, the primary costs associated with a solar power plant are from cleaning and maintaining, as a build up of dust and dirt on equipment (or worse, defective apparatus) can be a significant drain on power production.
But cleaning and maintenance takes up a lot of resources and can often result in equipment being cleaned only when convenient, rather than when necessary, which wastes water, a scarce resource in deserts, where solar farms are typically located.
A $3.1m ANU-led project (with $875,000 Arena funding ) is looking for a way in which drones could help to inspect solar photovoltaic panels and mirrors used at CSP farms in a cost-effective manner, and establish when best to clean them.
The drones, supplied by Canberra company 4D Surveying, will be fitted with “optical sensors, such as optical, polarization and thermal cameras, and laser scanners” and “powered by intelligent computer vision solutions” to measure the accumulated dust on panels and mirrors at solar farms.
Following this, software will diagnose possible faults and produce “optimal route planning” to establish the most cost-effective cleaning procedures for the facility.
According to ANU, if the project is successful, the efficiency of the solar power systems could be improved by up to 8%, which is a substantial amount given the size of these solar farms.
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