Construction of Australia's first commercial CSP plant to start in

mid-2018
Feb 6, 2018

SolarReserve is on schedule to to begin generating power at its Aurora project in South Australia around

the end of 2020 and is in talks with half-a-dozen groups about becoming equity partners, CEO Kevin Smith

has told CSP Today.

This rendering shows SolarReserve's Crescent Dunes plant in Nevada superimposed on to the Aurora site in South

Australia (Image credit: SolarReserve)

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The South Australian government granted SolarReserve development approval for the 150 MW Aurora project last

month. Construction on the plant will begin in mid-2018, and will take 30 months to complete. The plant includes a

240m tower, and will generate 495 GWh/y of electricity. The state government has signed an offtake agreement with
SolarReserve; the power generated from Aurora will be enough to meet 100% of the government's power needs,

including public buildings such as schools and hospitals.

A few things still need to be finalized, including debt-equity structure, contractors, and water and electricity

connections to the plant, Smith said. SolarReserve has been in discussions with around half-a-dozen Australian and

non-Australian groups about becoming equity partners in the $650 million project, and will make an announcement

on its equity and debt structure in the next two to three months, he said. Aurora will require only about 25-30% of the

amount of water used at conventional coal plants of the type which once existed in the nearby town of Port Augusta,

one of the reasons residents were enthusiastic about bringing solar thermal to the region.

Shades of Nevada and South Africa

American firm SolarReserve has established itself as a major player in the past few years with multiple projects in

three separate locations: Nevada, South Africa, and Chile. Its three projects in Chile’s Atacama Desert enjoy the

world’s best solar resource, thanks to a combination of high altitude and high number of sunlight days, Smith said.

However, the sites in Nevada and South Africa have similar specifications to Aurora – which enjoys direct normal

irradiance of around 2,450 kWh/m2/year and is located just 30 km north of the town of Port Augusta.

Although the offtake agreement has SolarReserve supplying the state government with 100% of its own electricity

needs, the government wants Aurora to inject in peak periods. At 10am, when most public buildings are open but

power prices are otherwise low, the government will purchase from Australia’s National Electricity Market, which

facilitates the cross-state operation of the wholesale electricity market, Smith said.
In a solar thermal system with energy storage, the heat transfer medium - molten salt - retains heat so well that it

enables the plant to generate electricity when the sun is not shining (Image: Solar Reserve)

Aurora is being built with eight-hours storage, the equivalent of around 1,100 MW energy storage, “so really the SA

government will want us to generate during the day and then inject at the peak hours to try to bring down those

(electricity) prices during the high-demand periods,” he said.

“We might run from 12 midday to 9 at night, because that’s the (peak) period; so we could generate at a couple of

peaks per day – say four to five hours – turn off for a couple of hours, and then bring it back later in the day.”

Smith credited the storage with allowing SolarReserve “to take advantage of market economics” and guarantee the

SA government a maximum purchase price of A$78/MWh ($62/MWh).

People power wins day

The South Australian government has been aggressive in its policy of encouraging renewables projects, with Tesla

opening the world’s largest lithium-ion battery next to the Neoen-operated Hornsdale Wind Farm late last year. Tesla

chief Elon Musk agreed to build the battery after Australian billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes called on his company

to end South Australia’s energy problems. The Tesla battery has the capacity to power 30,000 homes for up to an

hour in the event of a blackout. Smith noted that the SolarReserve and Tesla projects have different roles in the South

Australian energy market, with Tesla designed to meet short peak periods, and Aurora daily peak loads.

Whereas one billionaire convinced Tesla to come to South Australia, the voice of the entire Port Augusta community

was behind the push to bring SolarReserve to the state. Repower Port Augusta was founded by locals five years ago

on a platform of bringing solar and wind in place of Australia’s two oldest coal plants, Playford B and Northern.

Some of the group members walked the approximately 300 km (186 mi) from Port Augusta to the state capital

Adelaide, and put up signs outside the premier’s office demanding that he bring solar thermal to their region. Others,

including broadcasters from the local radio station, called SolarReserve to tell their story.

“Typically we’ve had strong local support” Smith said, “but we’ve never quite seen this local proactive action to

really solve a problem that they identified – which was the closure of a large (coal-powered) generator that employed

a lot of people.”

Smith and some colleagues went to the region to look at land options, and when the state government launched a

renewables tender – they were well placed to win. “It started with a few local people and grew to hundreds,

billboards, radio interviews, and it attracted us; we have the technology,” he said.
SolarReserve will employ 650 people in the construction stage, with an estimated 4,000 direct and indirect jobs to be

created in that period. This is significant given there are just 14,000 people living in Port Augusta and an additional

15-16,000 within an hour’s drive of the town.

Australia is now firmly on the CSP map, and Smith confirmed that SolarReserve is looking at additional sites in

South Australia as well as in the states of Western Australia and Queensland. However, he said Aurora is “99% of

our focus right now”, and explained: “Getting the first project on the ground is always difficult, new technology for

the region for investors and contractors to learn about. Once that first project is in the ground it makes it a lot easier to

do follow-up projects.”

By Nadav Shemer

Chinese firm announces plan for 2 GW CSP plant; Study

confirms viability of Namibia CSP-desalination plant
Feb 6, 2018

Our pick of the latest solar thermal news you need to know
Namibia has an operating desalination plant just north of the town of Swakopmund, pictured (Image credit:

Wikimedia Commons / Wolkenkratzer)

Related Articles
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Chinese company announces plans for 2 GW CSP plant

China’s SPIC Shijiazhuang Dongfang has announced it is planning to build a 2 GW concentrated solar power plant in

Inner Mongolia province, according to Reuters. If constructed, it would be the largest CSP plant in the world.

The project would cost about 46 billion yuan ($7.3 billion), the company said in a statement to the Shenzhen stock

exchange. It did not say when construction would begin or when it expects to complete the project.

SPIC said it would invest 4.6 billion yuan ($730 million) in the first phase to build 200 MW of capacity, including

additional equipment such as transformer substations, according to the Reuters report.

SPIC is majority owned by state-owned Power Investment Corp, with a minority of shares in public hands.

China has set an ambitious goal of 5 GW of power generation from CSP by 2020, a figure equal to the current total

capacity of global CSP installations. Chinese authorities have so far approved 20 CSP demonstration projects with a

combined capacity of 1.35 GW, most of them located in the north and west of the country where direct normal

irradiance (DNI) typically reaches 1,800-2,000 kWh/m2/year. Central tower technology accounts for roughly 50% of

the total capacity of these projects, with parabolic trough contributing around 35% and linear fresnel 15%.

Study points to viability of hybrid CSP-desalination plant in Namibia

A Stellenbosch University study has concluded that a 100 MW CSP plant adapted to co-generate water via multi-

effect distillation (MED) could be financially viable for Namibia.

Including MED would add relatively little additional cost to that of a standalone CSP plant in Namibia, according to

the study, which was published in Renewable Energy and reported by SolarPACES.

Namibia’s state utility NamPower is planning a solar park in Arandis, roughly 15 km from the world’s largest open-

pit uranium mine. A number of major CSP research centers are conducting CSP-desalination research, according to

SolarPACES; these include MIT and the Cyprus Institute, which are demonstrating a prototype for Mediterranean

islands, and CIEMAT and DLR in Spain.

The theoretical 100 MW CSP-desalination plant would be more expensive to construct and operate than the existing

desalination plant just north of Swakopmund, which uses grid-powered reverse osmosis, the study concluded.

However, the authors found that co-generation of electricity and water would have additional benefits over the

current plant. One advantage of the hybrid plant is that it would generate electricity, as opposed to the existing

desalination plant which consumes electricity.

The study said the CSP-desalination plant would provide dispatchable solar to supply 15% of Namibia's peak demand

into the evening, helping it meet its target of generating 70% of power from renewables by 2030.

With a population of 2.5 million, Namibia’s peak load in 2017 was around 656 MW, of which 347 MW was supplied

seasonally by local hydro power from the Ruacana Hydropower Scheme. Namibia imports around 60% of its annual

electricity from neighboring countries, most of it from South African utility Eskom’s coal-powered plants, according

to study co-author Ernest Dall.

ACWA, Engie, EDF Energies Nouvelles bid for 800 MW in Morocco projects
Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power International and France’s Engie SA and EDF Energies Nouvelles have bid to conduct

the engineering, procurement and construction for Morocco’s 800 MW Nour Midelt complex, Obaid Amrane of the

Moroccan Agency of Sustainable Energy (MASEN) said in an interview with Bloomberg.

The government will award contracts for the two 400 MW CSP projects by the end of this year, and the plants could

take two-and-a-half years to build, Amrane said. Engie and ACWA Power confirmed their bids to Bloomberg, and

ACWA said it expects to submit a financial proposal by April or May.

Nour Midelt, in the province of Errachidia, 450 km south-east of Rabat, is the second of five CSP complexes with 2

GW combined capacity being planned by the Moroccan authorities. The first complex has already been partially

constructed in Ouarzazate: the first 160 MW parabolic trough power plant is in operation, and the second and third

phases – a 200 MW plant based on parabolic trough technology, and a 150 MW plant built around a power tower -

are under development.

New Energy Update