Use your solar photovoltaic panels to heat your water too, and you could cut the amount of excess electricity you give away cheaply to the grid.
zstock/Shutterstock.com
Most solar power households feed excess electricity back into the grid, for very little financial reward. A hot water heat pump could put that power to better use, by heating water for evening use.
Renewables or oil? The former means betting each-way on energy storage. The latter means hoping to pull off a trifecta on carbon storage.
Hans Engbers/Shutterstock.com
The question of whether the future will be powered by coal and oil or by renewable energy is crucially important, both to the medium-term future of the Australian economy and to the long-term future of…
Increasing Chinese investment in renewables is driving costs down.
The Danish Wind Industry Association / Vindmølleindustrien/Flickr
Mining is the fourth-largest energy consumer in Australia, using roughly 10% of Australia’s total. Some of this comes from the electricity grid — but much is supplied offgrid in the form of diesel and…
Is solar power the technology of the future? It is certainly the fastest-growing energy generation technology in the UK. By the early 2020s, according to a new report, it will be cost-competitive with…
If Australia’s to have nuclear power, there’ll have to be policies to support it.
flokru/Flickr
No sooner had foreign affairs minister Julie Bishop announced that Australia should take a fresh look at nuclear power than Prime Minister Tony Abbott responded that nuclear power would only be supported…
Roof-top solar panels are just one part of the micropower revolution.
Presidency Maldives
There is no shortage of shouting and dire warnings about the state of the climate and our need to phase out fossil fuels. But there is a more silent revolution happening too — in micropower. Small-scale…
Plants use photosynthesis to build molecules and energy they can use. By copying plants, humans can make cleaner fuels.
Ranjit Bhatnagar/Flickr
Most of the energy that fuels our lives comes from plants. Whether it is a fossil fuel that was formed hundreds of millions of years ago or the food we eat, all carbon-borne energy has its ultimate origins…
Kagoshima power plant: is floating solar the future?
Kyocera
Two companies in Japan recently announced they are to begin building two huge solar power islands that will float on reservoirs. This follows Kagoshima solar power plant, the country’s largest, which opened…
A cloud is hanging over Australia’s renewable energy industry after the government’s review recommended that the Renewable Energy Target be scaled back.
Leon Brooks/Wikimedia Commons
The review of Australia’s Renewable Energy Target (RET) has recommended deep cuts to the scheme. If implemented by the government, the changes could mean closing off the scheme to new large-scale wind…
Clouding the issue: the latest analysis of the impact of the Renewable Energy Target contradicts previous reports.
Bo-deh/Wikimedia Commons
The review of the Renewable Energy Target is due to be handed to the federal government any day now, yet amazingly there are still conflicts over whether the policy makes electricity more or less expensive…
Layers of cool: a thin layer of glass added to solar cells could help them work better for longer.
Minoru Karamatsu/Flickr
Self-cooling, longer lasting and more efficient solar cells are within reach simply by adding a thin layer of glass. A paper published today in the online journal Optica outlines a possible solution for…
Battery costs can make up a quarter of the cost of an electric car such as this Tesla Model S.
Shal Farley/Flickr
At the heart of the current debate around energy is the question of storage. In cars, how to build batteries that run for hundreds of kilometres; in electricity, storing energy from solar panels for when…
Wind farms: great, unless it’s not windy.
mattinbgn/Wikimedia Commons
Australia has some fairly ambitious goals for green energy: a renewable energy target (currently under review) of 20% of electricity from renewables by 2020, and a forecast to get 51% of electricity from…
Water storage is used to smooth the output from hydroelectric power - but it can be used with other renewables too.
Martin Kraft/Wikimedia Commons
More and more renewable energy sources are being plugged into Australia’s electricity grids. South Australia, for example, will get 40% of its electricity from wind and solar once the Snowtown wind farm…
We’ll need more of these, wherever they end up.
Andrew Milligan/PA
Do we have enough onshore windfarms, or do we have too many? And who decides what “too many” looks like? The Conservative Party has announced it would end subsidies for new onshore wind farms if it won…
While Australians love Michael Leunig’s whimsical ducks, there’s another ‘duck’ pushing your power bills higher.
Used with permission from Michael Leunig
Rooftop solar power has slashed Australians’ demand for electricity during the day, but left evening peak power demand largely unchanged. That’s why, as strange as it may sound, we now need to behead a…
Solar panels: a tale of the haves and have-nots?
Mtaylor848
Energy-generating solar panels provide the opportunity to generate low-carbon electricity from the roof over your head, at a cost that has fallen dramatically and continues to slide. So many governments…
The new budget has served up a big hit to Australia’s environment.
Anton Balazh/Shutterstock
Budgets are often framed as give and take. But in the case of the environment, the government is taking large amounts of money in cuts, while giving little back beyond funding the Direct Action climate…
Australia has a possible path to 100% renewables – if governments and business can be persuaded to take it.
AAP Image/Alan Porritt
The political outlook for renewable energy is not great – and I’m not just talking about the view out of Joe Hockey’s car window. The Renewable Energy Target (RET), which aims to deliver 41 million megawatt-hours…