Exergy Power to invest AUS $600 million in a 115MW CSP plant in Australia

At least two companies have expressed their interest in developing a CSP plant at the Mungari Industrial Estate, near the city of Kalgoorlie-Boulder, in the region of Western Australia.

According to The Kalgoorlie Miner, Exergy Power, a company involved in the development of CSP and PV projects, announced last week its intention to invest AUS $600 million in a 115MW CSP plant.

Brian Reddy, Exergy Power’s chief executive, was quoted as saying that the facility would cover an extension of 700 hectares and would employ 1,500 people “during a three-year construction period and up to 70 people once operational.” Similarly, Reddy said his company had received purchase power requests from four mining companies in the Goldfields.

He said the proposal has the support of the following organisations: Goldfields Esperance Development Commission; Regional Development Australia Goldfields Esperance; the WA Government’s Department of Finance and the Kalgoorlie-Boulder Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Reddy also added that his company was undertaking engineering drawings and seeking equity investment while the project was going through the final stages of the regulatory proceedings. He mentioned that construction works could start “as early as 2016.”

Another company interviewed by the magazine, US-based SolarReserve, said that CSP had a lot of potential in Mungari. Daniel Thompson, the company’s director of development Australia, highlighted the zone’s main benefits, which are its closeness to the population centre and important industrial base.

However, despite of these factors and Kalgoorlie’s excellent solar resource, Thompson reminded of one of the main hurdles to develop solar projects in the area, which is the uncertainty regarding the Federal Government’s Renewable Energy Target.

“At the moment, there is reluctance from electricity retailers to purchase additional renewable electricity over a long period until there is some certainty on the RET,” he told the newspaper.

Saeta Yield’s shares priced at EUR 10,45

According to Reuters, ACS’ renewable energy business unit, Saeta Yield, priced its initial public offering (IPO) at EUR 10,45, the lowest end of expectations on Friday 13th, “to take advantage of improving sentiment for Spanish listings.”

As a result, the estimated value of the company is EUR 852 million (USD $972 million). The recently launched offer was “more than twice oversubscribed,” with demand mostly coming from U.S and British hedge funds, as stated by Reuters’ sources.

Saeta's portfolio of assets includes 16 wind farms and three CSP plants in Spain, with a total energy generation capacity of 688 MW. In the opinion of sources consulted by Reuters, the dividend yield on Saeta at this price is about 6.7%, compared with an average 4.8% on shares in the Spanish energy sector.

Reliance Power and the Rajasthan Government sign MoU to develop 6,000 MW of solar projects

Reliance Power and the Government of Rajasthan have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to develop a 6,000 MW solar park in the Northern state over the next ten years. However, there was not a specific announcement with regards to the technologies to be employed to deploy this capacity.

Late last year the company announced its Reliance Areva CSP 1 project had entered into commercial operation, becoming the world’s largest operating Fresnel plant.

The project was allocated to the company under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM) in 2010. Using Areva’s linear Fresnel technology, the project received an investment of approximately US $340 million. The funding was granted by a group of financing institutions, including the Asian Development Bank, the US Export-Import Bank and the Dutch development bank.

The off-taker is the NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam Limited (NVVN) and it has a 25 years power purchase agreement to deliver 100 MW.

Hybrid CSP/CPV system proposed by researchers at NCEPU

A team of researchers from the North China Electric Power University (NCEPU) has presented its findings with regards to the development of a hybrid CSP/CPV system in issue number 4 of the Chinese Academy of Science’s publication, Science Bulletin.

The system, explains Professor Xu Chao, the project’s leader, “is mainly composed of CPV modules and their evaporative cooling subsystems on the back side and of a solar thermal receiver surrounding the CPV modules.”

Chao claims that the system’s overall efficiency “can be increased from 28.4% for the conventional CPV system to as high as 44% for the hybrid system with 500 suns.” This would make the proposed CPV/CSP hybrid “a viable way for high-efficient solar power generation.”