All Energy 2015 wrapped up in Melbourne yesterday, and the exhibition floor revealed an industry that is maturing and becoming mainstream. Floor space was up by 600 square metres compared with last year, much of it to cope with the bigger, more eye-catching stands. As for products, the big change this year was,unsurprisingly, battery storage. Many battery systems vied for prominence with solar panels and inverters as a large number of players latch onto the excitement created by the release of the Tesla Powerwall. Certainly the Powerwall was the most elegant package on display, but it will be interesting to see how the market develops.

In this sector it was good to see old friends and local company Selectronic kept busy. We featured Selectronic and their pioneering hybrid inverters back in 2011 when there were only a couple of players in this field, a case of Australia leading the world.

 

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The overwhelming focus of the All Energy trade exhibit remains solar power. This is likely down to the nature of the industry which has greater diversity of participants and relatively low barriers to entry compared to wind power, geothermal energy and marine power. Or, as some commented, it might result from solar having been able to hold onto a politically more favourable position than wind power. Let’s see what impact an new PM has on that.

There was a token electric vehicle presence; a Nissan Leaf, a BMW i3 and the quirky Renault Twizzy. Unfortunately, the Renault representative was unable to say when progress might be made in allowing small EVs onto the roads in Australia.

That’s another decision for government, and it will be interesting to see what progress is made on all things clean energy by the time All Energy 2016 rolls around.

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