Monthly Archives: May 2010

Solar Flagship Shortlist Announced

11 May 2010

John Grimes, CEO
Australian Solar Energy Society (AuSES)
Website: www.auses.org.au
Email: CEO@auses.org.au

The Australian Government has announced eight projects that will be invited to participate in the second stage of assessment for Round One of the $1.5 billion Solar Flagships Program. The shortlisted projects will share up to $15 million in feasibility funding going into the second stage of assessment:

Solar photovoltaic
o AGL Energy proposes a multi-site project using thin film cadmium telluride solar photovoltaic technology generating up to150MW at multiple sites across Australia including ACT, NSW, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia;
o TRUenergy proposes a single site near Mildura, using thin film cadmium telluride solar photovoltaic technology to generate up to 180MW;
o Infigen Suntech’s crystalline silicon solar photovoltaic technology would be deployed at up to three sites in New South Wales or Victoria to generate up to 195MW; and
o BP Solar proposes a single axis tracking photovoltaic system to generate 150MW from plants constructed at several locations in New South Wales.

Solar thermal
o ACCIONA Energy Oceania proposes to generate 200MW using solar thermal parabolic trough technology at a single site in either Queensland or South Australia;
o Parsons Brinckerhoff proposes to construct a 150MW solar thermal parabolic trough power station at Kogan Creek in Queensland; o Wind Prospect CWP proposes to use linear fresnel technology at Kogan Creek in Queensland to construct a 250MW power plant; and
o Transfield proposes to convert the Collinsville coal-fired power station in Queensland into a 150MW solar thermal linear fresnel power plant.

The Solar Flagships Council has also made recommendations relating to the siting of photovoltaic projects.

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Sun Rises on Big Solar

11 May 2010

John Grimes, CEO
Australian Solar Energy Society (AuSES)
Website: www.auses.org.au
Email: CEO@auses.org.au

The sun is rising on Australia’s Big Solar industry following some important announcements in last night’s Federal Budget. “The Australian Government is really starting to back Big Solar in Australia”, said John Grimes, the Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Solar Energy Society (AuSES). “Last night’s announcement of two major solar projects, the short-listing of eight Solar Flagships proposals and funding for solar research and development mean the sun is starting to shine on Big Solar”. “AuSES congratulates its member companies Wizard Power and AREVA Solar and their partners for successfully obtaining funding to build 40 and 23 megawatt solar power plants. I look forward to seeing the ground turned on these major infrastructure projects, and I can’t wait to see clean energy jobs being created in Queensland and South Australia.” “However, Big Solar won’t become a reality in Australia until Federal Parliament approves the Enhanced Renewable Energy Target, and AuSES calls on all political parties to pass the legislation as soon as possible.” “Once the legislation is passed, the Australian Government should turn its attention to expanding a strong and sustainable Big Solar industry. Without a price on carbon, that means ensuring Big Solar delivers its fair share of an expanded Renewable Energy Target, and introducing a competitive feed-in tariff, tax reform and loan guarantees for Big Solar.”

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What does the ‘e’ in solar-e mean?

Garry Baverstock
Co-Founder & Director, solar-e.com
Email: g.baverstock@solar-e.com

The ‘e’ usually means e-commerce on the Internet. It represents the primary goal in establishing the website over 10 years ago. However, true sustainability of this planet in addressing the threat of devastating climate change makes this ‘e’ more cognitive to the ‘e’ in enlightenment and the ‘e’ in solar economy.

It has been obvious to the founders and current management of the site that to solve the dramatic challenges ahead in the 21st century, we all need to move from a fossil fuel economy to a solar-based economy. Hermann Scheer wrote about this in the late 1990s and there have been many calls from scientists and enlightened political figures such as Al Gore, to act in a way that produces solutions.

The website is therefore focused to create enlightened self interests for those who engage with solar-e and create more ethical products and systems that enable more solar energy to be used in our lives.

For a modern economy to create a sustainable world we need more than ever, innovators and business minds need to work out diverse ways that we can use solar energy to restore a thermal balance on planet earth. Hopefully, in doing so we will allow future generations to enjoy life as we are living today.

It is obvious people and communities need to take action. Waiting for the political systems throughout the world will mean too little too late. How soon do people seem to have forgotten the lessons of history. The socioeconomic causes of WWI and WWII were the result of the  failure of governments to adapt to technological changes and population growth. Business as usual stopped working and political networking proved inadequate to prepare the populous for the changes in thinking to keep the peace.

We all need to take responsibility and action ourselves. In doing so, such action will help to gently push governments to keep pace with the changes we all need to keep the peace on planet Earth, while creating an ecologically sustainable global environment.

The directors, managers and experts involved with solar-e will be clearly defining the reasons why we desperately need a solar economy by starting to act not with the usual self-interest common to all mankind, but enlightened self interest.

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