This week, SEA Electric’s Bill Gillespie joins us to share exciting developments in the world of zero emissions heavy vehicles.

Their trucks are now in operation across some of Australia’s biggest fleets, ferrying deliveries for Woolworths, IKEA, Australia Post and DHL, and also helping local councils to reduce emissions.

Founded in Australia and now based in Los Angeles, SEA Electric is expanding into international markets, with a growing presence in the US, Europe and Asia.

As well as helping companies to meet their customers’ sustainability expectations, Gillespie explains that the growth of electric trucks offers fleet operators a way to make “extreme” savings on their fuel bills.

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Australian solar pioneers have set a new efficiency benchmark with their next generation cells.

From humble beginnings in a garage in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, solar startup SunDrive is on a rapid rise.

In September, they announced that they had developed the world’s most efficient silicon cell, claiming the record from China’s Longi Solar.

The record is made more significant by the fact that SunDrive’s cells are manufactured with copper in the place of silver, a precious metal that is in limited supply.

This week co-founder and CEO Vince Allen joined Rewired to discuss their new world record for solar efficiency, and what it could mean for the transition to renewable energy.

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Fresh off the back of launching ARENA's new investment plan, CEO Darren Miller joins us to explain how renewables could soon shake up the heaviest of heavy industries.

In our conversation he explains that investment decisions made today will be key to transforming our energy system and achieving net zero emissions.

We also explore the bold vision that underpins ARENA's new investment plan. As well as helping to decarbonise emissions-intensive industries, success could see more value captured from Australia’s renewable energy and new opportunities created in jobs-rich manufacturing industries.

Read more: arena.gov.au/blog/darren-millers-vision-for-a-prosperous-renewable-future/

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Working on solar since the 1990s, Professor Renate Egan has helped to transform the way we consume energy, recently taking up the challenge to “electrify everything”.

Professor Egan is living her vision, investing in a small solar system in 2008 that she has since expanded and backed up with battery storage. Renate's electrification journey has seen her switch to an electric vehicle and she aims to replace her gas cooktop and water heater within the next year.

In 2013 Renate co-founded Solar Analytics, which provides monitoring information to help solar households understand their energy generation and usage.

Read more on ARENAWIRE: arena.gov.au/blog/electrifying-our-lives-with-professor-renate-egan

 

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Cheap, abundant and variable wind and solar is shaking up the electricity market, forcing traders to rethink how energy is bought and sold.

The Renewable Energy Hub, an offshoot of global carbon brokers Tradition, is taking up the challenge, creating new renewable-specific ways to trade energy.

In the newest episode of Rewired, founder Chris Halliwell joined us to discuss the Hub’s work, explaining that electricity is amongst the most volatile and unpredictable commodities in the world.

Read more on ARENAWIRE: https://arena.gov.au/blog/new-trading-toolkit-for-a-transforming-energy-market/

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Energy transformer Dr John Lasich has helped to take solar from “witchcraft or alchemy” into the cheapest form of energy generation in history.

The RayGen founder joined Rewired to discuss how an idea he developed in his shed has attracted $42 million in capital and will soon be deployed on the site of AGL’s Liddell Power Station.

His “solar thermal” technology concentrates sunlight to central solar PV receivers to produce electricity, while employing an innovative approach to capture the heat by-product to provide long term energy storage.

Read more - https://arena.gov.au/blog/solar-pioneer-breaks-down-his-game-changing-invention/

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Green hydrogen offers a renewable alternative to natural gas, but is it a viable energy source for our homes?

With 15 years in the energy industry and a background as a chemical engineer, AGIG’s Head of Strategy and Innovation Kristin Raman is one of the quiet transformers having a big impact on the way we use energy.

She joined us to discuss AGIG’s plan to transition its natural gas network to hydrogen and explain why she thinks our homes should be repowered with renewable gasses.

Read more - https://arena.gov.au/blog/role-for-renewable-gas-in-our-homes

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ARENA’s podcast Rewired is back for its biggest season yet.

This season, we will introduce you to some of the people transforming Australia’s energy landscape that you might not have heard from before.

From startup founders disrupting traditional business models, to the people investing new technologies that could power our lives in the future, Rewired will give you unprecedented access to the front line in the energy transition.

Not just generation

We will hear how ARENA funding is helping to trial new ways of producing metals like steel and aluminium using renewable energy.

Experts will share progress commercialising technologies like renewable hydrogen and electric vehicles, which are finally achieving long-held potential.

And we will explore how Australia’s riches of wind and solar could unlock opportunities to undertake more energy-intensive processes onshore, creating jobs and wealth.

This is our most ambitious season to date, with twice as many episodes giving us the chance to showcase more of the ways Australia is unlocking a renewable energy future.

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Could cheap, plentiful supplies of renewable energy give Australian manufacturers an edge?

Around the world, industrial energy users are embracing renewable energy. Global giants IKEA, Lego, Apple and Coca Cola are amongst hundreds of companies blazing a trail, making the RE100 pledge to power their operations entirely with renewables.

Closer to home more Australian manufacturers are seeing the benefits of cheap, dependable power - from food producers, to remote mine operators and even companies that produce chemicals in massive volumes.

In the final episode of this season of ReWired, we speak to one of the local businesses leading the way, trading their LPG powered boiler with a Danish-made biomass system. We hear from a Queensland business refining liquid fuels from waste products, and some now familiar voices help to put the bioenergy opportunity into context.

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ARENA Rewired: Solving the Energy Puzzle is available wherever you listen to podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe now so you get a notification when new episodes are released. While this is the final episode in this season, we hope to release more episodes soon.

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One of Australia’s oldest and most prolific methods of generating energy is poised to transform the electricity network - again.

In this episode of ReWired we take a deep dive into one of the oldest energy storage technologies - pumped hydro.

More than a century on from the establishment of the Tasmanian Hydro-Electric Department, new hydro projects are being developed as part of work to prepare for a future powered by renewables.

In this episode, we hear from Hydro Tasmania CEO Steve Davy about the vision for the island state to become a national powerhouse. Chief Scientist Alan Finkel and AEMO CEO Audrey Zibelman share their insights into how pumped hydro will fit into the future energy mix, and ARENA CEO Darren Miller outlines some of the work underway to help this technology become commercial.

How could it work?

While the technology that underpins pumped hydro is not new, there are only a few working systems around the country.

The two biggest projects in the pipeline - Snowy 2.0 and Tasmania’s Battery of the Nation - have a collective capacity of about 4500 MW. According to Snowy Hydro, the 2000 MW Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro facility could power three million homes for more than a week when operating at full capacity. 

The large output and long duration makes pumped hydro well suited to complement large-scale renewables, with the capacity to store energy from windy and sunny periods for when generation drops.

One challenge is sending electricity from remote sites suited to large-scale pumped hydro facilities to distant population centres where it is needed. Tasmania’s plan to build the “Battery of the Nation” to bolster the National Electricity Market has a particularly big hurdle to overcome - Bass Strait.

With the existing BassLink interconnector at capacity, work is underway to advance the plan for a second connection to the mainland. The business case for the proposed “Marinus Link” is well-developed and the second interconnector is on track to enter service as soon as 2027.

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ARENA Rewired: Solving the Energy Puzzle is available wherever you listen to podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe now so you get a notification when new episodes are released.

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