Solar thermal to heat up Canberra industry

Canberra Times
Monday 6/7/2009 Page: 3

Dish project has opened the way for a multimillion-dollar manufacturing industry for Canberra. Larger and stronger than any comparable solar technology in the world, the second generation big dish is completed. Four times the size of any other dish, its unique mirrors accurately focus the sun's heat while adding to the dish's overall structural strength, lessening the amount of steel needed for its frame.

The advantage over other dishes sets the stage for a new high-tech industry in Canberra. While the prototype has been developed Canberra's Wizard Power has been fielding calls from Europe, North America, China, India, the Middle East and Australia to buy the technology to build power stations generating from 50 MWs to two and a half GWs.

Wizard will sell the licensing for the intellectual property needed to build arrays of big dishes and so far governments, international corporates and potential business partners have shown strong interest, with some in contract negotiations. Wizard is proposing a high-tech factory in the ACT capable of turning out $20 million worth of mirrors a year in stage one of development.

Wizard executive chairman Tony Robey said the market for mirrors was enormous. "The world's biggest manufacturer is hitting about a billion dollars worth of mirrors a year and we're still in the embryonic stage of the concentrating solar industry, so we expect those figures to go a lot higher," he said. The Big Dish's mirrors concentrate sunlight and one dish with 380 mirror panels (500sq in of natural mirror) generates enough heat to power 100 energy-efficient homes.

ANU's solar thermal group leader Dr Keith Lovegrove said the latest Big Dish was aimed at the sun for the first time last week. Even with most of its mirrors left with their plastic covers on, it focused enough heat from the sun to burn a hole through a piece of aluminium. "You snake all these mirrors and stick them tip there, it is quite a precision thing and if we haven't done our job well, the focus will be very spread out and won't be able to achieve the high temperatures we want," he said. "No mirrors, no smoke."

Dr Lovegrove said building a prototype was an enormous challenge in resolving lots of issues, like working in roasting heat on sunny days, but having pioneered it, future production would be smoother. The Big Dish will continue research while Wizard deploys the technology on a 80MW demonstration plant in Whyalla. Mr Robey said as well as having focal accuracy, the mirrors were nearly unbreakable. "You could fire a bullet through them and all there would be was a hole. They would still mirror from 90% of the surface."

Wizard had applied for a patent and hoped to manufacture in Canberra. "We are talking about hi-tech manufacturing, a pretty sophisticated environment, lots of robots and automated facilities for actually laying the things tip and bonding them together," Mr Robey said. Specialised equipment was being prepared in Australia and overseas, and once up and running the factory's multiplier would generate about 150 jobs.