Canberra’s growing renewables sector will receive a boost from a new round of Renewable Energy Innovation Fund grants, Shane Rattenbury, ACT Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, announced.
Up to $1.5 million of grant funding will be made available to support innovation and development in Canberra’s renewable energy sector.
The Renewable Energy Innovation Fund is an industry-funded initiative to develop the ACT’s renewable energy industry long-term.
“The Renewable Energy Innovation Fund grants program is a great opportunity for businesses, researchers, and other groups working in the renewable energy and green technology space to kickstart their projects,” Mr Rattenbury said.
“Investing in new and emerging technologies is key to building our growing renewable energy sector and addressing climate change, while also supporting local businesses.”
The new round will develop and commercialise new businesses and projects in the renewable energy, battery storage, and zero emission transport sectors.
Applications for round three of the Renewable Energy Innovation Fund will be open until 16 January 2023.
Previous rounds of Renewable Energy Innovation Fund grants supported underground large-scale hydrogen storage solutions; an Australian-first solar panel testing laboratory; and new products that help to integrate solar and batteries with the electricity grid.
“Solcast created ‘short term commercial solar forecasting’, which uses satellite imagery to predict when cloud cover will impact energy generation for large scale solar farms,” chief technical officer Nick Engerer said. “Before we received the REIF grant, we were a young Canberra-based company with only two paid employees. This grant allowed us to expand our team and start building the proof of concept. We have now expanded to a team of 12 and service over 30 solar farms nationally. The software is now used by 17,000 clients globally.”
Dr Keith Lovegrove, managing director at ITP Thermal, said his company’s REIF grant from the ACT Government came at the perfect time. “It has allowed us to build our idea for low-cost underground hydrogen storage into a new start-up company. The REIF funding has supported the engineering studies to prove the concept. Our company is now ready to trial its first commercial pilot.”
Those interested in applying for a grant are invited to attend an information session at the free Sustainable Business Expo, at 10:00am 3 November, Southern Cross Club, Woden. For more information on the information session and to register, click here.
For more information and to apply for a REIF grant, contact [email protected] or click here.