Monday, 2 November

The Solar Flagships program was announced in May 2009. It allocated $1.5b to achieve a target of 1000MWe from four solar power stations. Since then, Boston Consulting Group(BCG) has been conducting a survey of the stakeholders. Following the BCG survey, the Commonwealth Government last week issued the Solar Flagships Program Factsheet that lists the changes to the Solar Flagship program. These are some of the highlights of the update:

The program will only support commercially proven solar technologies. "Commercially proven" technologies are defined as those technologies "that have been demonstrated at an operational level of at least 30MW for twelve months or with a replicable module below 30 MW"

The 1st round will be held in 2010 to select one solar thermal and one PV project with a target of up to 400MW combined generation capacity

Energy storage is no longer an obligation but proposals with energy storage will be "viewed favourably."

Hybrid solar thermal plants will be allowed that combines solar energy with gas or other types of renewable energy as long as the secondary input remains below 15% of the total electricity output.

Funding from the Solar Flagships program will be in addition to revenues projects earn from sale of electricity and Renewable Energy Certificates.

"Project proponents will be required to demonstrate that they have sought funding for any project proposal at a ratio of at least two dollars from private and state or territory government sources for every dollar from the Solar Flagships program" I do not quite understand how this clause will operate in practice. Will the good intentions and honest effort to raise funds from other means be sufficient? I expect this to be clarified in the selection guidelines to be announced later this year.

From my point of view, I think the limit of 15% on the secondary source is unfortunate. I understand that this probably was put there to exclude proposals where solar energy is considered as feedwater heater in CCGT plants or similar. But this aim could have been achieved by requiring this limit to be applied only where the secondary source is not a renewable source. As it is now, the Solar Flagships program excludes some very exciting combinations of geothermal and solar thermal energy. It is disappointing. This does not mean that this Solar Flagships program update totally excludes geothermal+solar hybrids. It does not and there still are some interesting possibilities. But it would have been much more interesting if the 15% limit did not apply to renewable energy or at least applied at a higher level.

Regarding geothermal energy around the globe, the Nicaraguan government awarded two concessions to Magma Energy and its partner Polaris Geothermal Inc to develop the geothermal energy potential in two concessions, Volcn Mombacho and Caldera de Apoyo, both under the volcanic mountains along the Pacific Coast. Magma said that the exploration of each of the concessions may cover about 60 million square miles. The two Canadian companies committed spending $50m to develop the two sites for geothermal power generation. Exploration will start in 2010.

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