Solar and battery microgrid saves Lord Howe Island $1.5m in diesel fuel costs in two years

A solar and battery-based microgrid installed on the World Heritage-listed Lord Howe Island on the coast of Australia in the Tasman Sea delivered more than $1.5 million in diesel fuel cost savings in its first two years of operation, a new report has revealed.

Commissioned in April 2021, the Hybrid Renewable Energy Project (HREP) was installed to provide a sustainable supply of electricity for the 400 residents and up to 400 tourists on Lord Howe Island, slashing its reliance on costly and polluting diesel fuel generation.

The $11.1 million project, developed by Photon Energy and backed by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena) installed 1.3MW of solar with a 3.7MWh Tesla battery energy storage system and micro-grid controller, alongside the existing diesel system of three 300kW generating units.

It received $4.5 million in funding from Arena, while the Lord Howe Island Board secured a NSW government loan of $5.9 million, providing the remaining balance of funds from its own capital.

Within its first six months of operation, the microgrid proved its worth, with reports emerging that the solar and battery system had navigated stretches of up to five days and nights powering the island without any additional diesel-generated back-up.

But in a knowledge sharing report published this week, Arena says the project has outperformed expectations on a number of fronts, including the average amount of renewables it supplies, forecast at 67%. And it has saved the island hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

Humans infecting animals infecting humans − from COVID-19 to bird flu, preventing pandemics requires protecting all species

When the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020, humans had been the only species with reported cases of the disease. While early genetic analyses pointed to horseshoe bats as the evolutionary hosts of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, no reports had yet surfaced indicating it could be transmitted from humans to other animal species.

Less than two weeks later, a report from Belgium marked the first infection in a domestic cat – presumably by its owner. Summer 2020 saw news of COVID-19 outbreaks and subsequent cullings in mink farms across Europe and fears of similar calls for culling in North America. Humans and other animals on and around mink farms tested positive, raising questions about the potential for a secondary wildlife reservoir of COVID-19. That is, the virus could infect and establish a transmission cycle in a different species than the one in which it originated.

Researchers have documented this phenomenon of human-to-animal transmission, colloquially referred to as spillback or reverse zoonotic transmission, in both domestic and wild animals. Wildlife may be infected either directly from humans or indirectly from domestic animals infected by humans. This stepping-stone effect provides new opportunities for pathogens to evolve and can radically change how they spread, as seen with influenza and tuberculosis.

For example, spillback has been a long-standing threat to endangered great apes, even among populations with infrequent human contact. The chimpanzees of Gombe National Park, made famous by Jane Goodall’s work, have suffered outbreaks of measles and other respiratory diseases likely resulting from environmental persistence of pathogens spread by people living nearby or by ecotourists.

We are researchers who study the mechanisms driving cross-species disease transmission and how disease affects both wildlife conservation and people. Emerging outbreaks have underscored the importance of understanding how threats to wildlife health shape the emergence and spread of zoonotic pathogens. Our research suggests that looking at historical outbreaks can help predict and prevent the next pandemic.