Gympie and District Sustainability Alliance

14/06/2026

Great news

a thought worth pondering

10/05/2026

Queensland is forging forward with renewable energy!!

Queensland is rapidly emerging as a powerhouse of clean energy, with wind, solar, and battery systems delivering record breaking output in April. Strong sunshine and rising wind generation pushed renewable production to new highs, while battery storage stepped in to support the grid during peak hours with unprecedented performance.

This surge had a direct impact on fossil fuels. Gas fired electricity, once a key backup for the grid, dropped to its lowest monthly level in more than 20 years across the National Electricity Market. As batteries and renewables handled more of the demand, the role of gas continued to shrink.⚡

05/05/2026

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=122211194582563025&set=a.122115540842563025&type=3

🌊 Australia deployed its first commercial wave energy array in 2026 — and the Southern Ocean swells rolling onto its coastline are now generating clean electricity for coastal communities.

Australia's southern coastline faces some of the most consistent and powerful ocean swells on Earth — the Southern Ocean fetch extends uninterrupted from Antarctica, building wave energy across thousands of kilometers of open ocean before it arrives at the Australian coast. That wave resource has been recognized and studied for decades. Converting it into electricity has required technology development that Wave Swell Energy — an Australian company — has been pursuing with a device design that uses the natural oscillation of ocean waves to drive compressed air through a turbine.

The Wave Swell Energy UniWave device — a concrete structure installed on the seabed just below the waterline — uses the oscillating water column principle. As waves enter an internal chamber, they compress air that drives a turbine above the waterline. As waves recede, air is drawn back through the turbine in the reverse direction. The Wells turbine used in the system generates electricity from air flowing in both directions — capturing energy from both the compression and rarefaction phases of each wave cycle.

In 2026 Wave Swell Energy commissioned its first commercial array off the coast of King Island in Bass Strait — the same stretch of Southern Ocean that Victoria is developing for large-scale offshore wind. The King Island installation demonstrates that wave energy and offshore wind can share marine infrastructure, grid connections, and operational support vessels — reducing the per-unit cost of both technologies when developed together in the same high-energy marine environment.

Australia's Southern Ocean never stops moving. In 2026 it started generating electricity.

Source: Wave Swell Energy & Australian Renewable Energy Agency, 2026

25/04/2026

https://share.google/zx9Qkh08UMPa4Lx20

Bunnings is rolling out its solar-battery subscription service to cities across the east coast after proving the idea in a trial across Sydney and Newcastle.

22/04/2026

13/12/2025