FAQs

This is a subject of much discussion and study, and is even the focus of a current Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) funding opportunity. It does pose a looming waste management issue, with the design life of solar panels at 20 to 30 years, and many installed well over a decade ago. The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) estimates there could be 60 to 78 million tons of photovoltaic panel waste accumulated globally by 2050. It also estimates the recyclable materials will be worth $15bn in recoverable value.

It is envisaged that recycling solar panels will create industry and employment opportunities, keep valuable resources out of landfill, help to retain rare elements, and prevent heavy metals leaching into the environment. There are a couple of companies working in this space in Australia.

All reputable installers are registered with the Clean Energy Council. You can find out more in the Consumer section of its website.

Plans are underway to build the world’s largest solar farm in the Northern Territory’s Barkly region, exporting the power via a High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) cable. The $20bn project, known as SunCable, plans to send most of the power to Singapore, which relies on LNG for the majority of its electricity.

Producing green hydrogen (via renewable energy processes as opposed to fossil fuels) is another way to export solar. A National Hydrogen Strategy was developed by the COAG Energy Ministers and released in November 2019. It highlights the opportunity in the NT, given its proximity to Asia, and recommends a focus on exports and enhancing energy security in remote areas, amongst other market ideas.

Knowledge sharing is a key focus for (funding agency) ARENA, and the Future Grid project has a prominent knowledge sharing plan, delivery of which is led by CSIRO. Reports generated through the project are hosted on the ARENA Project Page for Future Grid. It is recognised that lessons learnt in Alice Springs can be scaled-up and applied to other grids, such as the Darwin-Katherine Interconnected System (DKIS) and the National Electricity Market on Australia’s East Coast. The project’s main target audience is industry and government, so it is expected these entities will be the primary conduit through which lessons learnt in Alice Springs are applied elsewhere.

The Future Grid project (and the Roadmap to 2030) has significant value nationally because some of the research and findings demonstrated in the Roadmap, set out ways different parts of the power system will need to work together in the future. A key characteristic of Alice Springs is that it is small enough that the opportunity exists to test and validate interventions, but big enough that the results have direct applicability across a range of different systems and grids in Australia. To this end, Alice Springs is sometimes said to be “small enough to manage but big enough to matter”.

There have been other projects around Australia carrying out investigations in many similar areas to Future Grid. The difference is that Future Grid looked at a series of interventions in aggregate and how they could integrate as a system on a technical, economic, and regulatory basis. This is what made Future Grid fundamentally different; it brought public utilities together with leading industry experts, and local organisations. We collaborated in a way that was simply not possible in other locations. For comparison, if we look to WA; Horizon Power has demonstrated many of the technical interventions we were working towards, but they are doing it in the context of being a vertically integrated energy supply company, so its activities don’t require complex engagement with other entities. In other areas, such as South Australia, there are fundamental differences in the market structure, which provide economic signals that are not available in the NT. What Future Grid did, which was different to other projects, is to work out how to bring parties and interventions together to collaborate.