By Oliver Wagg, Australia correspondent

The Australian federal government in May announced the shortlist of companies applying for funding through its Aus$1.5 billion Solar Flagship Program, narrowing down a list of 52 hopefuls to just eight - four based on solar thermal technology and four on photovoltaic.

Among the successful solar thermal projects, low-tech Queensland-based proposals combining with coal or coal seam gas (CSG) generation won favour, leaving many proven high-tech proposals on the shelf.

Queensland’s CS Energy, which predominantly operates coal-fired power stations across the so called Sunshine State, figured in two of the shortlisted solar thermal projects.

The government-owned electricity generator teamed with the UK’s Wind Prospect CWP in a proposal to build a 250 MW solar thermal plant at its Kogan Creek plant near Chinchilla. The idea is that power generated from its Linear Fresnel system will be boosted by the region’s vast coal seam gas reserves.

CS Energy is also a member of the shortlisted consortium led by US engineering company Parsons Brinckerhoff proposing to construct a 150MW solar thermal, parabolic trough power station, also at Chinchilla.

Elsewhere, the hybridisation theme is continued by Transfield Services, which proposes to convert its own coal-fired power station in Collinsville into a 150MW, gas-boosted Linear Fresnel power plant.

Lastly, Acciona Energy Oceania was shortlisted for its proposal to generate 200MW using parabolic trough technology at a site in either Queensland or South Australia.

Money for old rope

Companies using tall towers that collect and process solar energy, such as Abengoa and Brightsource Energy, and technology providers and largescale developers such as Solar Millennium and ACS Cobra, failed to make it onto the shortlist.

Matthew Wright, executive director of not-for-profit research organisation Beyond Zero Emissions (BZE), says the shortlist simply neglects the best available technology.

 “The government has pretty much gone for 1980s technology, if not worse - at least the 1980 plant was standalone,” he says.

BrightSource Energy is a case in point. No stranger to largescale solar projects and backed by Google, BP and Morgan Stanley, the company is actively developing 4 GW of solar power projects in the US’s southwest.

Federal Energy Minister Martin Ferguson says power towers were an eligible technology. But the shortlisted projects were independently assessed on a merit basis against the published progam. “Technology was one factor of many taken into account, including value for money, project risk, and commercial viability,” he says.

BZE’s Wright says the government seems “obsessed with validating existing coal facilities”.

The government takes the view that the economics of Solar Flagships projects will be improved by locating them close to the existing power generation system and transmission grid. But no Solar Flagships projects can use coal.

“The four shortlisted solar thermal projects propose to use gas boosting, but importantly, the contribution of gas to any solar project is capped at a maximum of 15 per cent, Ferguson says.

John Grimes, CEO of the Australian and New Zealand Solar Energy Society (ANZES) takes a much more pragmatic view.

“We are interested in solar for a sustainable future. If that means working in conjunction with coal-fired or gas power stations to reduce CO2 emissions, then that’s a great place to start.”

Safe and sound

Some experts believe the government plumped for the most appropriate technology given the industry’s nascent state here.

Professor Keith Lovegrove, solar thermal group leader at the Australian National University, approves of the government’s risk-averse approach.

“The first plant simply must work well technically, or the whole industry will be killed stone dead for another decade. The project must get up, it must get financial closure and it simply must work from day one, or the solar sector will all be in such disrepute that we’ll be back on the drawing board.”

Lovegrove says one of the key criteria set down by the government was that a project must prove the technology has been demonstrated in operation at a scale of at least 30 MW generation capacity for 12 months. If this had been strictly applied by the selection-committee, only plants utilising parabolic troughs would have been eligible.

Acciona and Parsons Brinckerhoff each propose plants with parabolic trough technology, while the other two candidates’ proposals are based on Linear Fresnel.

“The only surprise for me was that the projects exclude power towers,” Lovegrove adds.

Grimes is in agreement: “It’s not the step-up to the tower systems we have seen lately across the world. I was surprised by the omission of some of the companies – Abengoa for instance and Brightsource. You would have though some of these would be in the low-risk category.”

Another front-runner was California’s eSolar, which submitted a plan with BeSolar, Snowy Mountains Engineering Corp, John Holland and Siemens. California’s eSolar is a leading producer of modular, scalable concentrating solar thermal power technology. BeSolar’s local representative declined to comment on the selection process.

Cobra Energy, a subsidary of Spain’s ACS, was excluded from funding even though energy experts agree it is the most promising renewable energy proposal in Australia. Cobra was eyeing a potential $1 billion 250MW standalone solar thermal plant in Mildura, Victoria.

Cobra’s Australia-based general manager Alan Atchison says the group does not have any plans for solar projects beyond the Flagships Program. “There’s not a lot of incentive for us, apart from Round 2, which we might have a look at.”

“It would have been a massive project and it won’t get off the ground without government funding,” Atchison says. “Perhaps there was a feeling that we were more expensive; that our project would be higher cost than a hybrid solution. But we weren’t asking for more than anyone else.”

Cobra operates a number of solar thermal plants in Spain, including the Andasol-1 and Andasol-2 solar thermal plants near Grenada – some of Europe’s largest solar power plants.

Strength in numbers

Some are calling for broader, sector-wide policy-settings.

“There are now big companies looking at Australia and saying ‘maybe we up stumps for three years and come back for round two’. What a tragedy that would be,” ANZES’ Grimes says.

The solar industry’s trade body is calling for loan guarantees, renewable energy targets specifically aimed at solar sources, and feed-in tariffs (FIT) for big solar.

Grimes says he would have liked to have seen 32 projects proceed in a government funding initiative.

“Giving money to just two is certainly not the best outcome for largescale solar in Australia, to say the least.”

**Correction**

This article previously suggested that Solar Millennium and ACS Cobra develop largescale solar tower projects.

Updated: 17.06.10

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