Sunday Canberra Times
Sunday 9/11/2008 Page: 3
A Canberra company is in talks with an Indian group to build what would be the largest solar plant in the world at an irrigation development in the Indian state of Maharashtra. Wizard Power, which is marketing technology developed at the Australian National University, is in negotiation for a solar plant five times as large as the world's biggest plant at Nevada in the United States. After years in the wilderness solar technology has once again begin capturing worldwide attention.
Wizard is also in negotiations with an Israeli company and for five projects in Australia. Along with consortium partners Sanctuary Energy and the Springfield Land Corporation, it is behind the proposal to build a solar plant and data centre in Canberra with the support of the ACT Greens. At 100MW, depending on its completion date, the ACT solar farm could be the largest in Australia.
Unlimited energy from the sun has long been a dream of the sunburned country. However, for 20 years much of the research into sustainable energy has focused on wind energy, Keith Lovegrove of the ANU Engineering Department said. He said wind energy had moved ahead of solar because in many parts of Europe, where the sustainable energy movement was strongest, wind energy turbines were extremely practical.
But Dr Lovegrove who heads research into the solar technology at the ANU said Europe was rapidly running out of wind sites. "As a result there was a resurgent interest in solar for Spain and even North Africa with proposals for underwater cable to carry the energy to Western Europe. " Interest was once again growing in the United States, particularly in areas such as California and Arizona. Dr Lovegrove said the ANU and its partner Wizard Power were well-positioned to take advantage of the renewed interest with the most advanced combination of solar technologies in the world.
The ANU system uses a 500sqm mirror which could track the sun across two axes so that it captured maximum energy during the day regardless of the season. The heat generated was sufficient to superheat ammonia and separate it into its constituent parts which could then be stored. The ammonia could then be recombined, creating sufficient heat from the chemical reaction to run a turbine and produce electricity. In this way the plant could produce electricity clay or night.
A new mirrored dish is currently being constructed at the ANU to experiment with improvements in focusing solar energy and achieving higher temperatures. The proposed Indian plant would be easily the largest in the world at 325MV and would be used to pump water for irrigation.
"There is a lot said about the reluctance of China and India to commit to emission targets but the amount of work that is now taking place in those countries on alternative technologies could eventually see them taking the lead on sustainable power technologies," Dr Lovegrove said. Wizard Power chairman Tony Robey said the company was working on about five projects, all of which had the potential to provide up to 100MW of energy.
The best known is the project at Whyalla in South Australia which is well advanced and will soon be expanded. There are three projects under negotiation in Queensland including one at Greater Springfield, whose owner Springfield Land Corporation is working with Wizard Power and Sanctuary Energy on a solar farm and data centre plan for the ACT.
Negotiations are also under way for Wizard to provide solar energy for a large mining project in Western Australia. The scale of the proposed projects is vast - each dish is the size of a small house block, and a farm generating 100MW requires between 800 and 1000 dishes.
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