Serious About Solar

Sophie McCallum of The Transcontinental reports, November 16:

Alinta Energy is seriously exploring the idea of converting its Port Augusta power stations into solar thermal facilities.

Solar thermal was first proposed by renewable energy advocates, Beyond Zero Emissions and has already gained strong support by Port Augusta locals and leaders.

The idea has now been embraced by Alinta Energy, who is exploring replacement options if Playford is closed as part of the federal government’s buyout of dirty power stations, in which the company put up its hand to participate in.

So far, gas has dominated discussions as an alternative power source, but in an interview with The Transcontinental, Alinta Energy chief executive officer Jeff Dimery, said solar thermal had been identified as the most practical solution.

“We looked at all available options in reducing emissions of Playford and Northern and the way we would do that is by improving the performance of the plant as it stands today if at all possible.

“The issue with moving to a gas fired power station is there is no gas at Port Augusta and so, in order to deliver a gas fired station somebody needs to build a gas pipeline.

“From or our perspective if we were going to build to build gas fired station, logically we would build it close to a gas pipeline, which means it would not be built at Port Augusta.”

Concerned about the impacts on the community resulting from Playford or Northern’s closure, Alinta enquired if the government would fund the pipeline.

 “While they were supportive of the concept and understood where we were coming from, we didn’t get any commitment or we haven’t until this point for any financial funding to make that commercially viable,” Mr Dimery said.

“In addition to gas we explored the potential for renewable replacement options and the most feasible one we were able to come up … was solar thermal.”

Besides from providing environmentally friendly electricity, a solar thermal facility could use existing coal plant infrastructure and its workforce, while continuing to provide 40 per cent of the state’s power supplies.

Mr Dimery said Alinta was already progressing on a number of fronts to give the project “every opportunity of getting off the ground”.

“We’re doing a number of things at Alinta, firstly we are spending money on feasibility studies to look at the commercial pricing and market outcomes and what economics of the project would look like with varying degrees of funding from the government.

“We’re also actively engaged in discussions with solar thermal technology developer providers.

“In addition to that we’ve had a number of discussions with organisations such as the South Australian Conservation Foundation, Zero Emissions and the University of NSW around technology.

“So if we can at all make the project a reality, then that’s exactly what we intend to do,” he said.

The project, which could be the first of its kind in Australia, is estimated to cost hundreds of millions of dollars and Alinta is currently exploring possible funding opportunities.

One option the company is probing is the federal government’s $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation – a fund set aside for financing renewable energy and clean technology projects.

But Mr Dimery said continued community support was essential for unlocking government funding.

“There’s no doubt that we cross over into the political sphere with a project like this and that local community support really does count for a lot.

“We find ourselves in the position where we think this is a project that is good for the local community, good for the broader community and it should be good for Alinta and our shareholders as well.”

While admitting it would be challenging, Mr Dimery said a solar thermal future for Port Augusta power stations was achievable.

“Before I joined Alinta, I worked at AGL where I was responsible for its merchant energy group and while at AGL we managed to establish more renewables in the country than all other providers put together during that time.

“We built a number of wind farms in South Australia and we also built the largest hydro electric power station in main land Australia in 25 years.

“I don’t want to underestimate the size of the challenge, it’s certainly not a guarantee and it’s not going to be easy, however most things that are worth doing are hard work,” Mr Dimery said.