Renewable Energy in Australia - My Brisbane/Gold Coast Trip
- yangryan730
- Dec 3, 2024
- 4 min read
Updated: Dec 6, 2024
During the fall of 2024, I had the opportunity to diversify my interest on solar panels by going to Brisbane and Gold Coast, Australia. In this trip I was able to come back with a lot meaningful insights and was fortunate enough to learn a lot more on the topic.
Touring Gold Coast’s downtown, my family saw a lot of rooftop solar panel installations showing that they are very popular among local homes there. Even at construction sites, and the streets around the Gold Coast, I saw many different ways solar panels were integrated into society.
According to the Queensland Department of Energy and Climate "Around 850,000 homes and small businesses across Queensland have rooftop solar, generating clean energy with a combined capacity of over 5,300MW. Queensland has the highest rate of household rooftop solar installations in Australia, with more than 1 in 3 homes using solar."
On the field research trip, I visited
University of Queensland Renewable Energy Laboratory
Pan Pacific Recycling (specializing in solar panel recycling)
My takeaway from this trip :
The awareness and penetration of renewable energy applications is high in Australia while depending on various factors (weather, population density, government subsidies, etc.), different types of renewable energy seemed to be popular in different parts of Australia.
Based on the feedback from UQ renewable energy lab, Australia is an ideal place for research because of its size and diversity of applications.
The waste management to reduce environmental impact could be the area of further improvement or even business opportunity - Profit margin for recycling has been slim because of more efforts to dismantle the solar panels, but it seemed advanced researches to refine “Nano Silicon” from the panels are underway. Hopefully, this becomes a vital piece in the future.
University of Queensland Renewable Energy Laboratory
The University of Queensland is the first major university in the world to offset 100% of its electricity use with renewable power produced from its assets. The university operates a 64-MW solar farm at Warwick in the state’s southeast and we visited their Renewable Energy Laboratory which supervises the operation.
Through the lab’s leading Professor Tapan Saha’s arrangement, I met his two PhD students, Ms. Zhang, and Mr. Ma, and had the opportunity to tour the laboratory and see their advanced equipments.
Ms. Zhang is explaining to me about how they operate and test wind turbines
Ms. Zhang and Mr. Ma are showing me other developing renewable energy sources and how they test them
The simulator to monitor electricity transmission from the solar farm to the power grid
The wind turbine tester
Parts of the simulator for wind turbine
Pan Pacific Recycling
Pan Pacific Recycling is the first in Queensland specializing in solar panel recycling. The plant hopes to take apart 240,000 panels a year and recycle each element. The glass — about 80 percent of the weight of a panel – is smashed off, then ground up and recycled. The precious and semi-precious metals and raw minerals are then removed from the underlying panel. Providing a clean and alternative solution from throwing into landfills.
Used solar panels are stacked outside to be dismantled!
Background Research:
(1) Current Status of Renewable Energy Development in Queensland
In 2015, the Queensland Government started a renewable energy boom and established a 50% renewable target by 2030. In September 2022, the Queensland Energy and Jobs Plane (QEJP) built on a long-standing target with new commitments of 70% renewable energy by 2032 and 80% by 2035.
As of June 2024, 27.4% of electricity generated in Queensland is produced from renewable energy sources.
Source: https://www.energyandclimate.qld.gov.au/energy/reasons-for-renewable/renewable-energy-targets
According to the Department of Energy and Climate, the clean energy generated from small-scale rooftops is key in helping Queensland reach its renewable energy target.
(2）Lifespan of Solar Panels
The industry standard lifespan for most solar panels is 25 – 30 years and the oldest solar panels in Australia are starting to reach their “end-of-life” (“EOL”). According to the Smart Energy Council, 60 to 70 percent of used solar panels would have been shipped overseas for resale in the past, but such market had dried up. That's partially due to a "highly subsidized" solar panel industry in China pushing down the price of new panels, eliminating the need for second-hand products, particularly in Africa. It’s illegal for solar panels to be put in landfills in South Australia, Victoria, and the ACT, but not illegal in Queensland.
According to the research published by Hamilton Locke, Australia, as of August 2023, only 17% of solar panel components (specifically the aluminum frame and junction box), and the remaining 83% of a solar panel’s materials (including glass, silicon and polymer back sheeting) are not currently recyclable and treated as waste. The report also referred to the Scoping Study conducted by the University of New South Wales on the “EOL” management of Australian solar panels, and the projected accumulated solar panel waste will reach over 600,000 tonnes by 2030 (as shown below). The Scoping Study also found the EOL solar waste will be concentrated in major cities such as Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, and Adelaide, over the next 2 to three years.
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