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Hewson’s Solastor promises world’s cheapest 24/7 solar power By
Sophie Vorrath on 7
June 2016
Further detail has been released on
the proposed development of a “baseload” solar thermal and storage
power plant in Port Augusta, South Australia, using Australian made
technology owned by NSW-based company Solastor.
The ambitious 170MW, $1.2 billion project was officially launched in Adelaide
on Tuesday by Solastor’s high profile chairman, John Hewson, who said he was
confident the technology could produce the lowest-price 24/7 solar power in the
world.
And according to Solastor, this low cost of the technology, along with its
“dispatchability”, makes it “the ideal technology” to replace the almost 20,000
megawatts of coal-fired power plants “that will inevitably be phased out over
the next 10 to 20 years,” as well as diesel generation systems such as those
used in remote communities, islands and mine sites.
In Australia alone, the company says, there could be a market for 400
Solastor plants.
Hewson – an economist and one-time leader of the federal Liberal
Party who advises the current Coalition government on climate change and
the low-carbon economy – says the proposed Port Augusta plant will be
funded mostly by private investors (
he has also suggested that one bank has offered to fund “the lot”) with possible added support from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and ARENA.
“Basically, we don’t see that there will be any difficulty financing it,” Hewson said in interviews on Tuesday.
“This is world-class. We think this is something we can roll out not
only across Australia but internationally. It’s Australian technology,
it gives Australia a real edge … in actually being able to turn sunlight
into effective baseload energy,”
he said.
“We’re going to break (the Port Augusta project) into two stages:
50MW in the winter and 80MW in the summer is stage one, then repeat it
stage two. So that’s $530 million to raise in the first stage and we’re
pretty confident that we’re well-advanced in terms of that financing.”
Hewson said the plant, which would have a capacity of 110MW in winter
and 170MW in summer, would use technology that had been proven in
China, at a small pilot plant built in the Jiangsu province (pictured
below).
The main advantage of the Solastaor system, he argues, is its storage
capabilities, which allow it to provide 24/7, “dispatchable” clean
energy – a feature of all solar thermal technology that makes it a
favourite technology for 100 per cent renewable scenarios.
But unlike many other solar thermal technologies, which use molten
salt for storage, Solastor uses a “high purity” block of graphite – 10
tonnes per storage tank, per 24 metre tower – which can be heated to a
maximum of 800°C and store “effective energy” for up to a week,
according to the company, depending on thermal losses and the energy
draw-down rate of the system.
In an extensive Q&A on the project and technology released by
Solastor at the launch, the company appears to suggest that its graphite
storage systems are safer that their molten salt counterparts, which it
associates with bird deaths and fires. (
Giles Parkinson examines this and other possibly questionable claims in his feature article today, here.)
In terms of bird deaths, this is likely a reference to the US Crescent Dunes CSP tower plant which, as was
reported here last year,
caused the death of 115 birds during testing of the heliostats in
standby position, when they are not aimed at the tower receiver but
somewhere in the air. The problem – basically, the “halo” of intense sun
rays reflected by 3,000 heliostats killed the birds as they flew
through it –
was, however, promptly resolved by SolarReserve engineers.
Solastor says this is unlikely to happen with its technology, which
is modular – so rather than pointing thousands of heliostats at one
central tower, clusters 86 sun-tracking heliostats around each tower (as
you can see in the Chinese example pictured above). It will have 1700
such towers in a facility of the size proposed for Port Augusta.
Another claimed advantage of the modular design, according to
Solastor, is that plants can be constructed on uneven terrain, making
their location more flexible.
The company says it is aims to build a five-tower, 1MW demonstration
plant by the end of this year, which it would connect to the grid via
the existing connection at Port Augusta.
And if it succeeds, and expands the plant to a 170MW facility,
Solastor says it would be able to power more than 200,000 homes and fill
the gap left when the last of South Australia’s coal-fired power
stations shut down in Port Augusta last month.
“Solar thermal heat storage and power generation is more
cost-effective than solar photovoltaic or wind energy, which require
expensive electric battery support to provide uniform power delivery,”
Hewson said at the launch on Tuesday.
According to Solastor’s calculations, the price for power from one of
its power stations will be approximately 12c/kWh, including generation
and storage, which will then fall to 6c/kWh once financing costs are
paid and then 4c/kWh in the second half of the facility’s 50-year life.
“We can produce the lowest price 24/7 solar power in the world and we’re confident of that,” Hewson
told Indaily.com.
Hewson also argues that solar thermal generation is cleaner than
existing solar PV and wind generation, which he says “often require
fossil fuelled generation support to level out intermittent power
delivery to the grid.
“With this new facility, South Australia will be able to increase its
renewable energy capacity and reduce its dependence on power imports
from Victoria, after having lost approximately 25 per cent of its
baseload power supply due to the recent closure of the Port Augusta coal
fired power station,” Hewson said at the launch.
Meanwhile, Solastor is working to generate bi-partisan support “at
all levels of government” for the project – federal environment minister
Greg Hunt was front and centre at the launch, as was his Labor
counterpart Mark Butler and representatives of the SA government – as
well as support from the local community.
The latter may be more difficult than it sounds, considering the
proposed 110MW-170MW plant would include 1,700 24 metre tower modules.
According to the aforementioned Q&A, each module occupies a
footprint of 2,400m2, and with allowances for access, the power station
and associated facilities, would amount to approximately 4 modules per
hectare.
A “typical” large-scale Solastor power station capable of providing
50MW in winter and 80MW in summer – so half the size of the plant
proposed for Port Augusta – would be made up of 780 modules and occupy
approximately 200 hectares.
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以下轉載自: http://hiltonparkexperience.com.cy/events/eosolar 2017年6月8日
Nicosia, Cyprus: On the
8th June 2017 as part of EU
Sustainable Energy Week (EUSEW) Alfa Mediterranean
Enterprises Ltd has organised an event
at the Hilton Park which will be
attended by high ranking officials of Cyprus
to update them on the EOS Green
Energy Project and its contribution to
Cyprus and Europe’s Energy Efficiency and
Safety. The project was ranked
1st and awarded €60.2m by EU NER300
Programme and the CY_CSPc_EOS Green Energy
Project is a 50MW Concentrated Solar Power
(CSP) Plant with thermal STORAGE to be
built in Alassa, north of Limassol,
Cyprus in partnership with FOSS Research Centre for
Sustainable Energy of the University of Cyprus The
theme of the event is the presentation
of the high ranked NER300 project
CY-CSPc_EOS Green Energy project receiving a
€60,2 million grant to build and
operate a 50 MW CSP plant using the
innovative technologies of EOSOLAR (technology
provider) with state of the art
storage, facilitating the efficient use of
solar energy over 24 hours. The
project has completed all due diligence
procedures of the EC and EIB for
constructing the project in Cyprus with
total budget of €175 million. EOSOLAR
together with SOLASTOR of Australia are
partnering in this project to deliver
the first of its kind CSP in Cyprus
with adequate thermal storage. This
capability renders it to be a fully
dispatchable generating unit capable of healthily competing in
the electricity market of Cyprus thus contributing
to the evolution of a competitive market in
Cyprus moving away from the monopoly
that currently exists The Technology providers
have proceeded to commercialisation in China
(plant commissioned) and Australia (plant
commissioned) and now are in the
preparation stage for projects to commence
in Cyprus, Greece, Morocco, Egypt, Oman,
other Middle East locations and Africa
together with EOSOLAR and Alfa Mediterranean
Enterprises Ltd.
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模块化的单个系统塔高24米，配置100面定日镜，储热系统可存储3MWH可用热能，约可发电1MWh。理论上组建一个10MW的每天可持续运行12小时的塔式电站，需要120个模块系统就可完成；如果需要24小时连续发电，则需要240个模块系统；同样，一个20MW的每天可持续运行12小时的塔式电站，需要240个模块系统就可完成；实际中可能会有所出入。轉載自:
http://www.cspplaza.com/article-856-1.html
