New Car Sales Hit Record High - Australia Car News

Sales of new motor vehicles jumped by the most in five months in August to reach their highest on record, a sign consumers have the confidence to splash out on big ticket items.

Government figures out this morning show new vehicle sales rose by a seasonally adjusted 3.6 per cent in August to 93,379, following a revised 1.1 per cent decline in July. Sales were up 6.4 per cent compared with August last year.

Sales of sports utility vehicles extended their meteoric run with an increase of 4.3 per cent to a fresh all-time high of 26,452. Sales of passenger vehicles rose 4.7 per cent, while sales of other vehicles, including trucks, edged up 0.4 per cent after a very strong result in July.

The robust vehicle numbers contrast with softness seen in retail sales for July and suggest consumer spending is not as weak as some fear.


Industry data out earlier in the month showed Toyota retained first place in the sales ladder with 19.2 per cent of the market in August.

Holden held second spot with 12.0 per cent. Hyundai and Ford tied with 8.3 per cent, while Mazda took 8.2 per cent.

Solar Incentives Slashed Under New Rules

The Baillieu government has cut incentives for rooftop solar panels for next year as part of a shake-up of how small-scale renewable energy is priced in the state.

The changes reduce the Victorian feed-in-tariff for solar to eight cents for each kilowatt hour fed into the grid in 2013 - down from the existing rate of 25 cents - and fulfils recommendations by the state's competition advisory body.

The changes will not affect customers with existing contracts and tariff rates. Households that have paperwork lodged by September 30 with electricity suppliers can also still get access to the existing 25-cent tariff.

A review released today by the Victorian Competition and Efficiency Commission recommends a six-to-eight cents a kilowatt hour tariff be put in place, with the government accepting the top end of that range for 2013.

The tariff will then be adjusted by the government each year in 2014, 2015 and 2016 based on the wholesale electricity price, before moving to a fully floating market price in 2017.

The tariff scheme will also be opened to other forms of renewable energy systems generating 100 kilowatts or less.

The changes fall short of calls by the renewable energy industry that a fair rate of tariff for solar was 12 to 16 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Announcing the changes this afternoon, Energy Minister Michael O'Brien said the falling costs of solar panel systems and rising power prices meant households were taking up solar without the need for over-generous subsidies from other power users.

He said an older 60-cents per kilowatt-hour tariff — closed by the Baillieu government last year — would cost Victorian households $41 million a year to 2024 through electricity bills in subsidies to homes with solar panels.

"People in public housing, tenants who cannot access solar, are paying higher electricity bills in order to subsidise the rooftop solar for other people. Now that wasn't sustainable at those rates, they were over generous," Mr O'Brien said.

Labor's energy spokeswoman, Lily D'Ambrosio, criticised the decision, saying thousands of Victorian families were installing solar panels to reduce their power bills amid increasing cost-of-living pressures.

''The Baillieu government has again shown it just doesn’t care about supporting families who want to reduce their energy costs while also doing their bit for the environment,'' she said.

Complacent Monopoly Unlikely to Innovate

Opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull says a monopoly service provider would not push itself to improve its effectiveness and efficiency for customers.

Mr Turnbull responded to a speech on Monday by NBN Co chairman Harrison Young, who said a natural monopoly could serve the entire market at a lower cost than at least two suppliers.

This thesis denied the "dynamic, creative forces" that only competition could deliver in the market, Mr Turnbull said.

"A monopoly is always likely to be complacent - there is nothing to stir it to innovate, to improve its efficiency," he said in his blog on Monday.

Mr Turnbull said the opposition supported all Australians having access to very fast broadband but it preferred the private sector to deliver that aim in a competitive environment rather than by a government-owned monopoly provider.

The coalition has criticised Labor's $37.4 billion national broadband network (NBN) as too slow and too costly.

Under Labor's plan, NBN Co will deliver high-speed fibre-optic cable to 93 per cent of homes, schools and businesses by 2021, with fixed wireless and satellite technology to provide the rest of Australia by 2015.

Mr Turnbull opposes the NBN's plan to roll out fibre to the home in Australia, preferring a mix of technologies including fibre, cable, wireless and copper.

Mr Young said ongoing analysis of NBN's plan was "good".

"We are spending a lot of the public's money," he said in his speech at a Committee for Economic Development of Australia event in Sydney on Monday.

"There ought to be scrutiny of our plans and performance."

He said the potential cost savings of a fibre-to-the-node network would depend on how far ahead planners looked.

The coalition has said it prefers a mix of technologies to provide broadband services as quickly and as cost effectively as possible.

As part of the coalition's policy, fibre-to-the-node (or corner) would underpin a significant part of its plan to provide broadband across Australia.

Mr Young said maintaining the copper that connected the nodes to the premises and coping with inherited information technology systems were both dear.

"The apparent cost advantage of fibre to the node decreases as you lengthen the time frame you look at," he said.

Gold Production Falls, But Miners Still Profitable

Australian gold production has fallen by 4 per cent over the last year.

A higher gold price has meant miners are now targeting lower grade ore and just 261 tonnes of the shiny metal was pulled from Aussie soil last financial year.

Dr Sandra Close, from mining consultancy firm Surbiton, says despite the drop, producers are still keeping their heads well above water.

"That's what's happened, they've been taking advantage of the high gold price and making the most of their deposits and treating slightly lower grade ore, so of course we have a little less gold," she said.

"But what's the most important thing there really is the margin between the sales price and the cost."

The Super Pit at Kalgoorlie, WA, is currently 3.7 km long, 1.5 km wide and 450 metres deep and one of the largest gold producers in the world. (Emma Wynne)

AustralianSuper to Manage Equity In-house

The Australian has reported that AustralianSuper, Australia's largest industry superfund, is planning to manage some of its $15 billion of Australian equity investments, which are currently managed externally.

AustralianSuper head of equities, Innes McKeand told The Australian that the fund was 'in the process of putting a platform in place' to oversee some of its Australian equity investments.
The move would be a blow to the funds management industry which is already struggling with low volumes, soft equity markets and fund outflows.

The moves come as active equities managers face pressure to perform in the face of a shrinking number of investment mandates, driven by super fund mergers and a shift to other asset classes.
Mr McKeand told The Australian that while AustralianSuper would continue to award mandates to external managers, its internal platform was being built 'to cope with a significant amount of funds' to be run by fewer than 10 fund managers.

It is thought that other funds such as UniSuper and Telstra Super are considering a similar move due to their build-up of an in-house stock-picking team.

Costs 'Could Rise' With NBN Plan Switch - Internet Australia

The chairman of NBN Co, Harrison Young, hopes to broaden the debate about the merits and cost of the government's National Broadband Network in a public speech today.

Mr Young will argue that changing the network design to the Coalition's preferred "mix of technologies" could increase the long-term costs of the network and fail to deliver key policy targets, at a forum about “Australia's Digital Future" and hosted by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) in Sydney.

Mr Young's speech outlines three "interwoven" aspects of the NBN – a super-fast broadband network that will cost about $40 billion to construct - the telecommunications market structure, infrastructure and future applications and benefits of the network, according to a draft copy obtained by Business Day.

While saying he wants to stay out of the debate about whether fibre to the premises is needed when fibre to the node technology exists, Mr Young says that “if you retain Telstra infrastructure as part of the national broadband network, even just the last bit, you will not have accomplished the separation of [Telstra] wholesale from retail that was a major objective of Project NBN”.
A fibre-to-the-premise model runs fibre optic cables all the way from an exchange into households, while fibre-to-the-node only runs fibre cable from the exchange to an air-conditioned street side cabinet – the node - serving dozens of premises but keeping the copper wire between the node and households.

Mr Young also says fibre-to-the-node is more expensive over the long term than NBN Co's current design.

“The apparent cost advantage of fibre to the node decreases as you lengthen the time frame you look at. In the long run, as Keynes famously said, we are all dead. Estimating costs is an engineering problem. Deciding on the relevant time frame is a policy question.”

Opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull has promised a Coalition government would deliver “very fast broadband sooner, cheaper and more affordably” using a mix of technologies, including fibre-to-the-node.

A future Coalition government would also keep the pay-television and internet cable owned by Telstra and Optus, which is connected to about 1.2 million households in wealthy inner-city areas.

NBN Co has struck commercial deals with Telstra and Optus to buy their cable customers and decommission the cable, a move that is heavily criticised by the Opposition.

But Mr Young will today tell the CEDA audience that since the cable networks were only built in suburbs containing Australia's wealthiest households, forcing NBN Co to keep to cables and not build fibre would create the “ironic situation that the wealthiest suburbs have the lowest-quality broadband in the country”.

NBN Co's super-fast fibre network will start operating at 100 megabits per second, but can be upgraded to 1 gigabit per second and faster speeds in coming years. The existing cable network does not have the same upgrade capacities.

Mr Young, who is a director at the Commonwealth Bank, former director at the Bank of England and former chair of Morgan Stanley Australia, lays out the policy and market reforms the current Labor government wants to achieve and says natural monopolies can be the most most efficient use of society's resources.

Using the example of bridges, he says building two toll bridges right next to each other would halve the flow of traffic on each bridge and push tolls to cover the owner's construction costs higher than a single bridge-owner would have to.

Further, NBN Co will not become another Telstra because it is not allowed to sell services at the retail level, he says.

“The problem with Telstra is not that it is a regulated monopoly supplier of wholesale services but that it has been able to behave like a monopolist in the provision of retail services, which is not a natural monopoly.”

Mr Young will be speaking alongside the chair of Regional Development Australia, Dave Abrahams, managing director of IBM in Australia and New Zealand, Andrew Stevens, head of customer relationship management and Medibank, Dermot Roche and head of telecommunications research at Ovum, David Kennedy.

Solar Australia: Fotowatio Plans to Build Australia’s Largest Solar-Power Project

Fotowatio Renewable Ventures, the solar-power plant developer backed by U.S. energy investor Denham Capital Management LP, won the right to build a 20-megawatt project near Australia’s capital.

Fotowatio will participate in the Australian Capital Territory’s feed-in tariff program, which rewards generators of solar power by paying above-market prices for the electricity, Simon Corbell, ACT minister for the environment and sustainable development, said today in a statement.

The Royalla solar farm, to be built about 25 kilometers (16 miles) south of Canberra, will become the largest in Australia by 2014, according to the statement. The venture will help in an effort to lower carbon emissions and shift away from fossil fuels, the ACT government said.

Fotowatio, which is based in the Netherlands, sought a new project in Australia after losing a competition earlier this year for federal government funds to build a large-scale solar plant in New South Wales state. Denham Capital in March reached an agreement with Fotowatio to invest $190 million in solar projects in markets including Australia.

A Tipping Point For The Australian Economy?

Tipping Point: The prevalence of a social phenomenon sufficient to set in motion a process of rapid change; the moment when such a change begins to occur. - Oxford English Dictionary

As social science writer Malcolm Gladwell says in his book of the same name, when the tipping point is reached little things can make a big difference.

Fortescue cuts spending staff as ore prices fall

While Gladwell was largely writing about society and ideas, in the markets the impact of the tipping point, the butterfly effect, or whatever you want to call the apparently minor change can be even more extreme. With the price for assets, both physical and derivative, already set at the margin, when sentiment shifts it doesn't take long for things to change significantly.

Over the past few weeks, sentiment towards Australia and the sustainability of the mining boom has been shifting. While for some time at Macro Investor we've been talking about the fall in bulk commodity prices and the impact this move will have on national income, it's now entered the mainstream consciousness globally.
Everywhere from Financial Times to the Sacramento Bee the talk is that the mining boom is over, that China is not going to stimulate its own economy in the manner it did last time, that the forward-looking indicators of global growth are parlous. Australia has gone in a short space of time from the lucky country to the country whose luck is running out.

But on the main stage we still see business leaders, top commentators and politicians in a tizz, either denying there ever was a mining boom, saying it never mattered anyway, or reassuring us that it will endure for another 20 years.

And just to add to the confusion, the Australian government has distracted the electorate by removing the carbon price floor of $15 a tonne and offering big new packages for dentistry and education. With risks to balancing budgets from mining now compounded by risk to budget blowouts from carbon, schools and teeth, our much-vaunted AAA-rating will come under question if the government isn't clear and careful.

Less cocky

While we don't want to get into a partisan slinging match, foreign investors and media are watching with incredulity.

Before, Australia looked so smart: it had escaped the GFC, its banks were worth more than Europe's (despite serving a tenth the population) and its residential property market continued to outstrip wages, rents and inflation.

But now, Australia looks dumb: it's hitched its wagon to a flailing Chinese dragon, its got a series of budgetary black holes and its political debate looks as crazy as a Republican primary.
In a week where the headline economic news is likely to be dominated by industrial production data, European central banks and US non-farm payrolls, there are some serious questions being raised about the state of affairs down-under.

What happened to Australia's counter-cyclicality? What happened to Australia's competitive advantage? Are Australia's banks really worth that much when you can get a Credit Suisse and a Standard Chartered for the price of a CBA?

Moreover, are Australia's houses good value when a shack in Byron costs more than a flat in Paris? Are Australian wages reasonable when a truckie in Kalgoorlie earns more than a team in Jo'burg? Is Australia's dollar fairly priced when it buys you an ice-cream in Brisbane for the same as a dinner in Singapore?

Flagging

When those answers are met with incredulity or proclamations that we're the best country in the world and that's the way things are, don't expect more than a cool response from the international hedge fund and asset management community.

Whipping up the patriotism might work when you're playing for a home crowd, but it won't impress those who observe our situation from the perspective of distance or neutrality.

Some are seeing this sudden crescendo of negative overseas sentiment towards Australia as a crowded trade, but it's perhaps crowded for a reason.

If commodity prices do not recover sustainably then the mining boom is very close to its peak. A large current account deficit is in the offing as LNG construction and still-too-high consumption drives big imports but export revenues fall heavily.

Then there's the drive to government surplus which supports the nation's public and private credit ratings and keeps at bay the ever-present questions about our expensive houses.

Indeed, once the herd starts moving, those in the way better move out of the hooves' way.

Short sighted

With the Australian dollar where it is despite no action from the US Federal Reserve and with Aussie bank credit default swaps pricing in smooth sailing despite brewing September storms in Europe, both these assets are looking like obvious shorts.

And with China facing a situation where it cannot risk stimulus without risking inflation, despite a rapidly weakening construction and export market, signs are few that there'll be a rebound in mining in the short term.

Things look rosy when viewed within the prism of Australia's unique position in the global economic landscape, but look beyond our shores or the last reporting season and confidence looks misplaced or worse.

Just like that fabled moment in time, when the grounds of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo were worth more than the entire real estate market of California, we wonder if a tipping point has been reached for Australia.

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Australian Capital Cities: Where's Hot, Where's Not

DARWIN was Australia's best-performing capital city for property values during the past quarter - up 5.2 per cent - and showing year-on-year growth of 4.2 per cent, according to the latest figures from RP Data.

The RP Data-Rismark August Hedonic index shows Adelaide is the weakest performing capital city, with the change in dwelling values sliding 2.2 per cent during the past three months.

The monthly figures were more optimistic though for Adelaide, showing 1.4 per cent growth for August.

Sydney and Melbourne both recorded only 0.1 per cent growth for the month, but are performing better for the quarter, at 2.4 per cent and 2.5 per cent respectively.

RP Data research director Tim Lawless, said the figures showed a flat winter season that could be the foundation of a strengthening Spring.

Combined with the lowest transaction levels since the late 1990s, prices could also soon be expected to drift upwards after years in the doldrums.

"Spring is going to be better than last year,” Mr Lawless said.

"This is the first time that we have seen total listings across the capital cities the same as they were last year.”

Mr Lawless said lower listing levels were good news for vendors because it meant there was not as much choice in the market which could improve prices.

"In November last year, the listings were 30 per cent higher than they are now,” Mr Lawless said.
"They are currently only 0.5 per cent higher than last year, which means that we have a good benchmark level."

From a supply perspective, it’s a sign that there aren’t as many homes on the market at the moment and that means homes are selling a bit faster and vendors discounting a little less but transaction numbers stabilising.”

Mr Lawless said transaction volumes were at their lowest since 1998 - and were currently lower than during the Global Financial Crisis.

"At the moment based on June data, transaction volumes are 7 per cent lower than the same time last year,” Mr Lawless said.

"We’re averaging 30,000 sales each month and that’s fairly steady across 2012.”

But the lack of stock was being treated calmly by potential buyers who are showing patience about finding exactly the right home.

"A lot more people are attending local houses and showing interest in the market place but there is still not a level of urgency that will push buyers into making a purchase decision rapidly,” Mr Lawless said.

“Purchase decisions won’t be rushed, buyers are playing vendors off against each other and are negotiating pretty hard.”

Figures from the data showed:

- Hobart prices grew 3.9 per cent for the year to date
- Sydney prices grew 1.9 per cent for the year to date
- Darwin prices grew 8.4 per cent for the year to date
- Brisbane prices grew 0.6 per cent for the quarter
- Perth prices lifted just 0.2 per cent for the quarter

Over Regulation Driving Mass Exodus in Australia's Resources Sector

 

The New Trend for Primary Sector resource Companies operating in Australia is to go offshore seeking reallocating their capital to projects with less overhead cost and greater certainty.

2012 Has seen the introduction of a Carbon Tax (Carbon Trading System) and a Mining Tax which combined with a heavily reduced Iron Ore price and weakening demand has seen any new or planned venture on paper, look far less economical.

There has been an incremental shift in Australian Companies increasing profiles overseas where the cost of business are seen as being significantly less such as Papua new guinea and South Africa.

The Australian Governments Justification for the Mining Tax (Resource Super Profits Tax) are basically two fold:

The Commodities Prices are rising so fast the taxation system is unable to stay in-line with the super normal profits mining companies are experiencing during this resources boom.

Most of our mining companies are majority foreign-owned and are receiving a huge windfall at the Australian taxpayer’s expense.

The Carbon Tax will also progressively increase the costs of production capabilities for miners and primary resource companies in an indirect way through increased costs such as electricity which is one key input to mining and yielding primary resources, some to a break even and shut down point where the cost of production is outstripped by costs and economics uncertainty. 

The outcome of these creeping legislation's are that incrementally Australian companies will and have been considering a more international approach as the disincentives to operate inside Australia grow to a level were companies will be forced into this position.

The eventuation is that the price put on commodities in Australia will ensure that they are plentiful for generations to come as the opportunity cost of mining in Alternate resource rich countries becomes too much. 

This Legislation is effectively creating commodities world where 3rd world countries seek out cheaper countries to do business in and in a way at least its almost like Australian Government was slow to catch on to Globalisation and outsourcing production to countries with cheaper labour and less Government Bureaucracy where businesses and economies thrive.

Energy Build Costs in Australia Very Worrisome, Says Shell

A SENIOR Royal Dutch Shell executive said today the cost of building energy projects in Australia is becoming "very worrisome" as the European oil giant prepares to decide whether it will spend billions more dollars in the resource-rich nation.

Shell has already committed almost $US30 billion to Australian gas-export projects being built over the next five years. The company's Australian head, Ann Pickard, said the figure is poised to become $US50 billion if final decisions are made on other projects that Shell has on the drawing board.

"So the costs have to stay competitive," Ms Pickard told a conference.

Australia is central to the growth plans of many big oil companies including Shell and Chevron as they attempt to meet intensifying demand for cleaner-burning fuels from fuel-strapped Asian nations such as Japan and rapidly industrialising countries such as China. Natural gas has overtaken oil to count for 51 per cent of Shell's total fossil fuel output.

Australia's vast natural gas reserves, political stability and proximity to Asia make it an attractive place to invest. Over $US175 billion worth of gas-export projects under construction on its coastline stand to catapult the country above Qatar as the world's biggest liquefied natural gas, or LNG, exporter by the end of the decade. LNG is natural gas chilled to liquid and exported by sea.

The industry here though faces challenges. A lack of skilled labour combined with a surge in development activity that's also occurring in the country's booming mining sector has squeezed labour supplies and made Australia one of the most expensive places in the world to produce LNG. And a soaring Australian dollar is making locally-based skills and equipment more expensive for foreign-based companies.

Such cost pressures are building at a time when companies mull whether to start exporting LNG to Asia from North America and East Africa, potentially increasing competition for Australian projects, particularly those not currently under construction.

Shell hasn't yet made a final decision on whether to proceed with a massive LNG venture in Queensland with PetroChina that will attempt to chill gas trapped in coal seams for export. And although Shell's just increased its shareholding in the Browse LNG development in Western Australia, an investment decision on that project isn't expected until next year.

"I'm hoping we can get some more projects going but the costs here are getting to be very worrisome," Ms Pickard told reporters.

Shell is hoping it can source workers more easily and more cheaply by timing a final investment decision on its Queensland LNG joint venture a few years after three rival developments there. Still, Ms Pickard said it's possible Shell could process its gas through a rival LNG plant in Queensland rather than build its own plant.

"That's certainly an option. But the intent of PetroChina and Shell, of course, it to continue with our own project," she said.

As for Browse, joint venture partners including Woodside Petroleum Ltd. (WPL.AU) are spending over $US1 billion investigating the commercial viability of piping the gas to a new LNG plant in the environmentally sensitive Kimberley region.

Shell's decision this week to almost triple its stake in the project by taking Chevron's 17.5 per cent interest has fanned speculating the resource could be processed on a floating LNG, or FLNG, vessel instead. A pioneer of FLNG technology, Shell is targeting first production from the world's first FLNG vessel from its Prelude field, located near Browse, in 2016.

"We'll take the cost estimates and see if we've got a commercial project in the Kimberley or not. Then, obviously in consultation with the government, we'll make a decision on whether we'll go forward in the Kimberley or look at other alternatives," Ms Pickard said.

Legacy of the Sydney Metro Line Land Grab

THE defunct Sydney Metro is still sitting on a $100 million property empire, with at least two office towers about to be demolished more than two years after the former Labor government pulled the pin on the project.
 
In late 2009 the department behind the short-lived Rozelle-to-city Metro line snapped up $124 million worth of property along the proposed route, including several CBD office blocks, and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars more to turf tenants out of some of the buildings.

In February the following year premier Kristina Keneally killed off the project, which by that stage had already cost the taxpayers $356 million.

However, instead of selling off the property portfolio - or at least releasing the properties to earn some much-needed income - the department has held on to the buildings, and two of them are about to be demolished.

Property records reveal Sydney Metro still owns at least seven buildings it bought during the spending spree; some of those are just standing empty.

The biggest single purchase, the $45 million building at 8 Castlereagh St, has since been relet. Two adjacent 11-storey office blocks in Clarence St, above Wynyard Station in the city - which cost taxpayers a whopping $39 million - have sat almost entirely vacant for the past 2 1/2 years.

At 30 Clarence St, just the ground floor retail space remains occupied after the former government spent more than $500,000 in compensation to tenants to end their leases.

Next door at No. 36 the last of the tenants moved out in July after the 10 other floors sat empty for months.

Both buildings are now set to be demolished to make way for the Wynyard Walk, an underground passage linking the station to Barangaroo.

In late 2010 Ms Keneally announced the $300 million Walk as an alternative link to Barangaroo after the Metro axing left the $6 billion redevelopment with limited public transport.

CBRE leasing agent Tim Molchanoff said similar B- and C-grade buildings rented for upwards of $520 a square metre, meaning the government had also missed out on $3.4 million in rent.
A spokesman for Transport for NSW said all the other buildings were leased.

"These seven properties were acquired by Sydney Metro and all are now owned and managed by Transport for NSW,"

Clean Energy With a Pinch of salt

A sodium-ion battery being developed in Australia is set to increase solar energy use and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, according to researchers.

Although bulkier than commonly used lithium batteries, sodium-ion batteries will be cheaper, less toxic, and more environmentally friendly, said Manickam Minakshi, a chemistry and mineral scientist at Murdoch University, in Perth Australia.

“Our water-based sodium-ion battery has shown excellent potential for affordable, low-temperature storage,” he said.

Better batteries

Other batteries used for renewable energy storage – such as molten salt or molten sulphur – only work at high temperatures, making them expensive and impractical. Also, like lead-acid batteries, they are very corrosive and environmental pollutants, which aren't problems with sodium-ion batteries, said Minakshi.

The Murdoch team is now moving towards large-scale commercialisation, and the future could see these batteries connected to solar panels in every home. “This is a very exciting time,” said Minakshi.
The new sodium-ion battery has particular potential when coupled with the green power of solar energy. Widespread use of power from solar panels is limited because there are periods known as ‘non-generation’ times, when power cannot be produced. These include, for example, overcast weather or night-times.

Power in the dark

“Using solar energy panels to get power will only make sense when you can store the power when the Sun’s not shining,” said Stephen Thurgate, vice-president of program development partnerships at Sydney’s Macquarie University.

Murdoch’s new sodium-ion batteries could have applications in small networks with their own battery systems or ‘smart grids’ that use information and communication technology to reduce dependence on centralised power stations, said Thurgate.

While commonly used rechargeable lithium batteries have a higher voltage, making them more suitable for transport and vehicular power sources, they come with a lot of issues, said Minakshi.

Sodium: cheap and abundant

Lithium, for example, is more expensive and far less abundant than sodium in the Earth’s crust.
Another advantage of sodium-ion batteries is that they have a higher density, meaning they are able to store more energy for their weight. Combined with their low costs, they could open up affordable green energy to the developing world.

Lithium and sodium share similar chemical properties, but the sodium ion is 2.5 times the size of lithium, and a big challenge for the Murdoch researchers was finding a ‘host material’ for these large ions.

“Ions travel out of the cathode and into the anode to form a current,” said Minakshi. “As an imperfect analogy, you can think of them as mesh filters that ions pass through. We had to find materials with larger gaps in their mesh.”

Paving a path for alternative energy technology

Murdoch’s new development doesn’t spell the death of the lithium battery, which is still ideal for transportation because of its lighter weight, said Danielle Meyrick, deputy dean of the School of Chemical and Mathematical Sciences. “Sodium is slightly heavier and is much more suitable for stationary energy storage applications [such as] industry,” she said.

The sodium-ion technology could also enable the use of renewable energy in households, moving away from traditional energy generation sources.

“This kind of battery facilitates security of supply and continuity of electricity supply to households," said Meyrick. “It facilitates storage in times when there’s no sunlight, when there’s no wind, [and] when there’s no snow.”

Although there is more research to be done on finding the optimum scale of the battery and cell size, Thurgate said the findings were promising.

“The fact that [sodium-ion batteries are] based on readily available materials, that it’s an aqueous solvent [water-based] – so there’s no fear of the thing being flammable – [and] the fact the energy density is very high... are all great,” she said.