Solar thermal power plant announced for Port Augusta ‘biggest of its kind in the world’, ABC, 15 August 17,A 150-megawatt solar thermal power plant has been secured for Port Augusta in South Australia, State Premier Jay Weatherill has announced.
Construction of the $650 million plant will start in 2018.
Concentrated Solar Power Simple Explanation
Aurora facts:
150-megawatt solar thermal power with eight hours of storage
Plant will deliver 495 gigawatt hours of power annually, or 5 per cent of SA’s energy needs
Equivalent to powering more than 90,000 homes
Located 30 kilometres north of Port Augusta
Company says it is “completely emission free”
Mr Weatherill said the Aurora Solar Energy Project would be ready to go in 2020and would supply 100 per cent of the State Government’s needs.
The Government will pay a maximum of $78 per megawatt hour.
Mr Weatherill said the solar thermal plant was “the biggest of its kind in the world”.
“Importantly, this project will deliver more than 700 jobs, with requirements for local workers,” he said…….
A 150-megawatt solar thermal power plant has been secured for Port Augusta in South Australia, State Premier Jay Weatherill has announced.
Construction of the $650 million plant will start in 2018.
Mr Weatherill said the Aurora Solar Energy Project would be ready to go in 2020and would supply 100 per cent of the State Government’s needs.
The Government will pay a maximum of $78 per megawatt hour.
Mr Weatherill said the solar thermal plant was “the biggest of its kind in the world”.
“Importantly, this project will deliver more than 700 jobs, with requirements for local workers,” he said.
Mirrors to direct sunlight onto tower
Solar thermal uses heliostats, or mirrors, to concentrate sunlight onto a tower that heats molten salt. The heat created is then used to generate steam.
Solar Reserve said the plant willbe able to provide between eight and 10 hours of storage and had no requirement for gas or oil generated electricity as a backup.
It is expected to employ 50 full-time workers on an ongoing basis once it is operational.
The company said the power station will operate in a similar fashion to a coal or gas station, meaning many of the jobs would “require the same skill sets”.
Solar thermal power plant supporters and locals welcome greenlighting of Port Augusta project, ABC North and West , By Khama Reid 14 Aug 17 The Port Augusta community and its clean energy supporters have welcomed the news that the world’s largest solar thermal power station will be built in the region.
It was announced yesterday that US operator Solar Reserve would build the 150 megawatt power station known as the Aurora Solar Energy Project at Carriewerloo Station, about 330 kilometres north of Adelaide……
The Government and company attended a public meeting at Port Augusta where they were met with applause and cheering…..
Local Aboriginal leader Malcolm ‘Tiger’ McKenzie said he could see many opportunities in the project to boost employment for Aboriginal people.
“We’re 30 per cent of the population but we don’t participate in the workforce as much,” he said.
Mr McKenzie said he wanted to work with the Government and Solar Reserve to get the best employment outcomes.
BY the end of this decade the skyline of Port Augusta will be marked by a massive tower generating enough power to supply all the schools, hospitals, police stations, government offices, and electrified trams and trains across the state.
Plans were confirmed yesterday to build a sprawling hi-tech solar thermal power plant just outside the regional city.
Residents, environmentalists and politicians have lobbied for years to secure the renewable energy source as the city faced the closure of its long-standing Northern coal-fired power station.
Yesterday they recorded a much-anticipated victory which will benefit the Upper Spencer Gulf region, and the wider state.
US-based company SolarReserve will stump up $650 million to erect the plant, featuring 12,000 “billboard-sized” mirrors focusing the sun’s rays to a point atop a 227m tower to a temperature of 565C.
The technology will enable the mirrors to follow and reflect the sun’s rays with pinpoint precision.
SolarReserve executives said they chose the Port Augusta site, in part, because it boasts workers skilled in power plant operations, who will be buoyed by the new employment prospect.
About 700 direct jobs, and up to 4000 indirect roles, will be created as a result.
The site could even prove to be a tourist attraction, like a similar – but smaller – plant in the American state of Nevada.
And the increased energy market competition should contribute to lower prices for all users.
Unlike previous construction job creators, such as the new RAH or South Rd upgrades, no taxpayer funding was needed for the project.
Instead, the State Government has signed a contract to buy all the power it requires for the next two decades – and at a cheap price, according to the Premier.
South Australia has faced searing criticism in recent months for its unstable energy supply and desperately needs a baseload generator like this to improve reliability and costs.
BRISBANE, Australia–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Aug. 11, 2017– First Solar, Inc. (Nasdaq: FSLR) today announced it has been awarded a 241 megawatt (MW)DC module supply contract by RCR Tomlinson Ltd (ASX: RCR) as engineering, procurement and construction contractor for Edify Energy’s Daydream (180.7MWDc) and Hayman (60.2MWDC) solar projects in Queensland, Australia.
This contract takes First Solar’s delivery pipeline to over 500MW in the next 12 months, cementing it as the leading module supplier for large-scale solar in Australia.
Located across two sites north of Collinsville, the projects will utilize an optimized technology solution that includes single axis tracking technology from Array Technologies, Inc., and more than 2,026,565 First Solar advanced thin film photovoltaic (PV) modules, to produce approximately 531,000 megawatt-hours of sustainable energy each year.
The First Solar Series 4 modules chosen for the projects are ideally suited to the hot and humid environmental conditions of the Whitsunday Region, due to a superior temperature coefficient, and better shading and spectral response.
“First Solar’s unique energy yield advantage enables our solar projects in North Queensland to produce more energy per MW installed than other available PV technology,” said John Cole, Edify Energy’s Chief Executive. “This is of significant importance for asset owners and operators looking to maximize energy production.
The First Solar team has been very supportive and a key enabler of these projects.”
On completion, the projects will provide significant environmental benefits, producing enough sustainable energy to displace 429,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year combined.
This will serve the needs of approximately 73,000 average Queensland homes, the equivalent of taking approximately 115,000 cars off the road.
Construction on the projects is scheduled to commence in Q3 2017, with module delivery in Q4 2017 and Q1 2018.
Another 93MW of solar PV was installed on Australian homes and business in the month of July, as booming markets in every state continue to deliver the nation’s best year to date, with a total of 568MW installed so far in 2017.
In its latest monthly market update, solar analysts Sunwiz said the solar PV market had maintained the record-breaking momentum of the previous two months, painting a picture of “a market that is level – at exceptionally high levels.”
According to Sunwiz, this July marked the second highest ever for registrations in that month, maintaining the record solar tally for any year to date that has put the market 47 per cent ahead of the same time last year.
The report notes that part of the reason for this sustained PV market momentum is that every state is doing so well at the same time, not least Western Australia, which is having its best ever start to the year.
Of course, one significant down-side to the booming installation market has been the sudden drop in small-scale renewable energy certificate (STC) prices – which, as we reported here, caught many PV installers off-guard and pushed up the cost of installing solar by around 10 per cent for households and small business.
According to Sunwiz, STC prices – which last month fell from around $40 to as low as $26 – are likely to keep falling as long as the STC creation rate continues to exceed the target, “something we feel is very likely to happen,” it says.
“So expect a soft STC price that will only turn north in early 2018.”
Elsewhere, the report notes that commercial solar systems of larger than 10kW notched up record high monthly and tri-monthly figures, with 33 per cent of volume in June down to commercial installations.
In July the proportion of commercial fell slightly to 31 per cent, as the volume in the 6-10kW range expanded to 20 per cent of the market.
NSW again led the pack on commercial installs, although it was briefly overtaken by Victoria and then Queensland, “but rounded out July on top again” after Victoria stalled and then Queensland fell, the report says.
In the residential market, average rooftop solar system sizes remained steady at and average of 6.5kW, sustaining a new record.
Equis plans 1,000MW solar farm in heart of Queensland’s gas country, REneweconomy By Giles Parkinson on 7 August 2017 Singapore-based renewable energy developer Equis Energy has announced plans to build a 1,000MW solar farm – which would be Australia’s largest – in the heart of Queensland’s coal and gas region in the Surat Basin.
The Wandoan solar farm, to be built near the town of the same name, adds considerably to the huge pipeline of wind and solar projects in Queensland, which now stands at more than 4,000MW.
Wandoan won approval from the Western Downs Council late last week and will begin construction when the first of several negotiations on off-take agreements is complete.
The $1.5 billion project is expected to be built in stages, and Equis could go bigger – this plant is likely to cover 1,400 hectares but is has more than 5000 hectares available.
Equis is taking advantage of existing infrastructure, including new transmission assets, which has been built to support the gas industry. Demand for energy is highest in the region because of the gas export industry.
Equis is also planning to build the 127MW Tailem Bend solar project in South Australia, to be built near a 28M diesel plant owned by Snowy Hydro.
That solar farm will begin construction when negotiations for contracts are concluded, and Equis also has an interest in the 150MW Collinsville north solar farm, where PPAs are also under construction, and other projects in the pipeline in South Australia and NSW.
All project are considered to be “battery storage ready”…….
Why doesn’t this otherwise excellent article mention green energy supplied by Powershop? I’m poor and I use renewable energy, (on scheme that supports community projects, too) from Powershop.
Poor households are locked out of green energy, unless governments help, REneweconomy, By Alan Pears on 7 August 2017, The Conversation
The underlying issue is the fundamental change in energy solutions. As I pointed out in my previous column, we are moving away from investment by governments and large businesses in big power stations and centralised supply, and towards a distributed, diversified and more complex energy system. As a result, there is a growing focus on “behind the meter” technologies that save, store or produce energy.
What this means is that anyone who does not have access to capital, or is uninformed, disempowered or passive risks being disadvantaged – unless governments act.
The reality is that energy-efficient appliances and buildings, rooftop solar, and increasingly energy storage, are cost-effective. They save households money through energy savings, improved health, and improved performance in comparison with buying grid electricity or gas. But if you can’t buy them, you can’t benefit.
In the past, financial institutions loaned money to governments or big businesses to build power stations and gas supply systems. Now we need mechanisms to give all households and businesses access to loans to fund the new energy system.
Households that cannot meet commercial borrowing criteria, or are disempowered – such as tenants, those under financial stress, or those who are disengaged for other reasons – need help.
And while bringing solar to Byron Bay might be a bit like taking coals to Newcastle, that’s just what the Byron Bay Railroad Company is doing. “I think this is a world first,” said John Grimes, chief executive of the Australian Solar Council, which is not connected to the project.
“There is a train in India that has solar panels to power lights and fans, but not a whole train.” The Byron Bay Railroad Company, operated by mining executive Brian Flannery, expects to have its two-carriage heritage train running before Christmas, said Jeremy Holmes, a spokesman for the company.
It will operate on part of the disused Casino-to-Murwillumbah line, which closed in 2004.
Dan Cass, a renewable energy specialist at the Australia Institute, said: “This is the first we have heard of a train this size that is literally solar powered, with PV modules on the roof.”
One-quarter of Australian homes now have solar http://reneweconomy.com.au/one-quarter-of-australian-homes-now-have-solar-70886/, By Sophie Vorrath on 6 July 2017, One Step Off The Grid New data has confirmed the effects of a second rooftop solar boom taking place around Australia – driven by falling technology costs and increasingly volatile electricity prices – with nearly one quarter of all Australian households found to have invested in solar panels. The survey, published by Roy Morgan on Thursday, shows that on average almost one in four Australian households (23.2 per cent) own a “Home Solar Electric Panel”, as at March 2017. Uptake is shown to be strongest in South Australia, at 32.8 per cent; then Queensland, at 30.2 per cent; and Western Australia, at 26.6 per cent.
The numbers are in keeping with the findings of May 2017 data from SunWiz, which suggested Australian households – and businesses – were installing rooftop solar PV at a rate not seen since 2012.
In its May 2017 report, SunWiz said that a total of 5.7GW of rooftop PV had been installed on 1.7 million households and businesses at the end of May, capping off a record first five months of installs in any year in Australia’s history.
The survey, published by Roy Morgan on Thursday, shows that on average almost one in four Australian households (23.2 per cent) own a “Home Solar Electric Panel”, as at March 2017. Uptake is shown to be strongest in South Australia, at 32.8 per cent; then Queensland, at 30.2 per cent; and Western Australia, at 26.6 per cent. The numbers are in keeping with the findings of May 2017 data from SunWiz, which suggested Australian households – and businesses – were installing rooftop solar PV at a rate not seen since 2012. In its May 2017 report, SunWiz said that a total of 5.7GW of rooftop PV had been installed on 1.7 million households and businesses at the end of May, capping off a record first five months of installs in any year in Australia’s history.
And in Western Australia – as we reported here – the residential PV uptake has resulted in a dramatic reduction in both the scale and the timing of peak demand in the state, reducing peak demand by 265MW, or 7.2 per cent in the last summer. Continue reading →
Solar farm developer Maoneng, which has built the smaller 13MW Mugga Lane solar farm in the ACT (pictured below), said it received the planning approval last week nd hopes to begin construction by the end of the year and to be complete by the summer of 2018/19.
Maoneng says the solar farm will be located in one of the sunniest parts of NSW and is expected to produce around 530,000MWh of electricity a year. It is considering adding storage at a later date.
According to RenewEconomy data, a total of six solar farms have already begun construction in NSW – on top of the four already completed – and Sunraysia is one of at least 21 aspiring solar projects
“The development approval will be followed by further consultation with various stakeholders in developing detailed construction management plans,” Maoneng vice president Qiao Nan Han said in a statement
“This process will run in parallel to our current contractor selection process to ensure that all conditions of consent are correctly adhered to. We are looking to start construction by the end of the year with an anticipated construction period of 12 months.”
Belectric completes second solar farm, plans two more Germany solar and storage developer Belectric says it plans to complete two more solar farms in Australia by the end of the year, after finishing a 4.77MW solar plant at Goondiwindi , Queensland, using a new, low cost installation system. http://reneweconomy.com.au/belectric-completes-second-solar-farm-plans-two-more-65632/
Finkel Review: What’s in it for solar and storage customers like Jenny? REneweconomy By Dominic Adams on 14 June 2017The focus of this piece is about what the Finkel Review delivers for a Mojo customer, Jenny. Jenny has solar on her roof and a smart battery in her garage.
Having your attention though (and also my cake and eating it) I’d like to start by noting that we should think carefully before opposing the Clean Energy Target (CET), the big ticket item in the Finkel Review designed to reduce emissions in the power sector.
It’s become more important to put the carbon wars behind us for a time than to find the perfect policy.
The CET is far from perfect. It’s all carrot and no stick. It’s a political and environmental compromise. But it’s our last best hope of ending the lost years of uncertainty in the generation sector that are now leading to wholesale electricity price rises that will start flowing through to customers like Jenny in a few weeks.
The CET can also form the bones of a scheme that can evolve over time to sweeten the carrot for renewables or add a cane for fossil fuels, when the political will returns.
Mojo’s mission is to drive down the costs of energy for its customers (including Jenny), and we think that ending the uncertainty in the policy environment is an essential step in that direction.
The CET however makes up just a fraction of the 212 page report. It’s a few paragraphs out of the 7 pages packed with recommendations 1.1 through 7.14. It’s fair enough to ask the question, what’s in all those recommendations for Jenny?
The answer is somewhat unclear at this stage, but the signs aren’t great for Jenny in the short to medium term.
The big problem that the Finkel Review is charged with solving is how to decarbonise the energy sector while keeping the system secure and inexpensive for consumers.
A key focus however is on the security of the system in the wake of a particular storm in South Australia (plus more than a few in teacups in Canberra). The security issue is summed up well in the Review:
“Because [system security services such as inertia, system strength and voltage control] were historically plentiful, as essentially a by-product of power supply from synchronous generators, they were not explicitly valued in the [National Electricity Market (NEM)]. With their growing scarcity, the hidden value of these services has emerged. New mechanisms will be needed to source these services, or appropriate alternatives, from synchronous machines and a range of other technologies.”
As more renewable energy pushes into the NEM, driven initially by policy, but increasingly by sheer economics, system security services are in decline. The same process contributes to reliability issues, where the lights go out because available supply can’t meet demand in the NEM.
People with batteries and controllable devices behind their meters (the so called prosumers, or Jenny) can provide system security services to the market as well as help supply meet demand in the NEM.
The key issue in the Finkel Review for Jenny is what the mechanisms for sourcing these services will be, and whether she will be able to benefit from the value that her assets provide……..
What it ultimately means for Jenny is that her solar system and battery are less valuable. Her assets can’t access all the value in providing security and reliability services because initially the markets don’t exist for those services.
In the longer run, when the markets may exist after the long process of review and policy development, the value may not be there anymore. The lions share of the value could be taken by the grid scale batteries and other devices that were required to be built in the non-market phase.
We think a better approach is to fast-track the development of market based solutions to these issues. Doing so will not just increase the benefits for Jenny, but also reduce costs for other consumers not fortunate enough to afford solar and a battery.
At Mojo we will keep up the fight for Jenny and our other customers, because they have better things to do than read the Finkel Review.
WA, UK team announce $200m big solar pipeline for Australia,REneweconomy, By Sophie Vorrath on 13 June 2017 Western Australian large-scale solar start-up Stellata Energy has joined forces with UK based renewables investment specialist, Ingenious, to build what they say is a $200 million pipeline of solar farms across Australia, starting with a flagship 120MW ground-mounted project in their home state.
The companies said in a join announcement on Tuesday that they were seeking approval to build a 120MW ground-mounted solar plant in the regional town of Merredin, roughly half way between Perth and Kalgoorlie.
The partnership signals the arrival of yet another European investor into the Australian market, in the rush to meet the remainder of the 2020 renewable energy target as technology costs continue to fall.
Stellata, which has been around for roughly one year, says it is well placed to deliver large-scale solar in Western Australia, with an executive team with extensive previous experience developing more than 600MW of ground-mounted and rooftop solar across Europe.
Trump vs Nuclear Waste: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
Nuclear Weapons: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
Climate change – the global emergency – theme for August 2017
The Uninhabitable Earth, Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak — sooner than you think. By David Wallace-Wells
To read an annotated version of this article, complete with interviews with scientists and links to further reading, click here.
I. ‘Doomsday’Peering beyond scientific reticence.
It is, I promise, worse than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible, even within the lifetime of a teenager today. And yet the swelling seas — and the cities they will drown — have so dominated the picture of global warming, and so overwhelmed our capacity for climate panic, that they have occluded our perception of other threats, many much closer at hand. Rising oceans are bad, in fact very bad; but fleeing the coastline will not be enough.
Indeed, absent a significant adjustment to how billions of humans conduct their lives, parts of the Earth will likely become close to uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable, as soon as the end of this century.
Even when we train our eyes on climate change, we are unable to comprehend its scope. This past winter, a string of days 60 and 70 degrees warmer than normal baked the North Pole, melting the permafrost that encased Norway’s Svalbard seed vault — a global food bank nicknamed “Doomsday,” designed to ensure that our agriculture survives any catastrophe, and which appeared to have been flooded by climate change less than ten years after being built.
The Doomsday vault is fine, for now:……..
In between scientific reticence and science fiction is science itself. This article is the result of dozens of interviews and exchanges with climatologists and researchers in related fields and reflects hundreds of scientific papers on the subject of climate change. What follows is not a series of predictions of what will happen — that will be determined in large part by the much-less-certain science of human response. Instead, it is a portrait of our best understanding of where the planet is heading absent aggressive action. It is unlikely that all of these warming scenarios will be fully realized, largely because the devastation along the way will shake our complacency. But those scenarios, and not the present climate, are the baseline. In fact, they are our schedule……..http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html?utm_campaign=nym&utm_medium=s1&utm_source=fb
