April 2016 - The Australian RenewableEnergy Agency (ARENA) has awarded industry-researcher collaboration funding totalling $17 million to nine renewable energy projects.
According to ARENA's chief executive officer Ivor Frischknecht, the successful project are expected to deliver commercially viable solutions that will solve current industry challenges.
ARENA's investment will leverage a total of $54 million in contributions from private and public sectors.
The Australian National University (ANU) attracted the greatest share of the available funding - $4.7 million for three projects. It includes $2.9 million for a study led by Professor Sylvie Thiebaux, who will develop a system to estimate the power that is produced by rooftop solar PV in a given area.
However, the by far largest single grant, worth $4.5 million, was awarded to a project from the University of Adelaide. Leveraging a total of $15 million in investment, the project will investigate whether concentrating solar thermal technologies can be integrated into the Bayer alumina refining process used at Alcoa's Australian refineries.
Other funded projects include:
University of Wollongong ($2.7 million; total project value $10.6 million) - Smart sodium storage system for renewable energy storage;
Queensland University of Technology ($2.1 million; total value $5.7 million) - Utilising biogas in sugarcane transport and milling;
University of Western Australia ($994,000; total value $3.6 million;
Australian National University ($1 million; total value $3.3 million) Real-time operational PV simulations for distribution network service providers;
Australian National University ($875,000; total value $3.1 million) A robotic vision system for automatic inspection and evaluation of solar plants;
Curtin University of Technology ($900,000; $2.6 million) Increasing the uptake of solar PV in strata residential developments;
University of South Australia ($995,000; total value $2.1 million) Maximising solar PV with phase change thermal energy storage