Experts applaud Australian plan for world’s largest solar power plant

CANBERRA — Energy experts on Tuesday hailed the South Australian government’s decision to build the world’s largest solar thermal power plant.

South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill announced that construction on a 150megawatt solar thermal power plant would begin in the town of Port Augusta next year at a cost of A$650 million ($512 million).

According to the government, the plant will be the biggest of its kind in the world and will employ mirrors to reflect light and heat to form concentrated solar power.

It is hoped the plant will be capable of providing all of the state government’s needs.

On Tuesday, experts applauded the announcement of the groundbreaking facility, which would also include a battery to store up to eight hours’ worth of electricity in case of emergency.

Doctor John Pye, energy expert at the Australian National University, said it was “very exciting to see large-scale CSP finally coming to Australia”.

“This project, like all large projects in the global CSP market, are critically important in helping CSP to ‘come down the cost curve’ and allow CSP to take up a role in the wide range of technologies that are needed for round-the-clock, fossil-free power for Australia and anywhere else where the sun shines brightly,” Pye said in a statement on Tuesday.

Doctor Ariel Liebman from Monash University, said the plant would complement Tesla founder Elon Musk’s South Australian battery storage project, announced last month.

“The Port Augusta solar thermal plant will be a great complement to the range of new technologies now in South Australia and the rest of the nation such as wind, solar PV and electric batteries, such as the Neoen/Tesla battery announced last month,” Liebman said.

When announcing the plant on Monday night, Weatherill declared catastrophic blackouts — such as those experienced in South Australia over the summer — would be a thing of the past once the plant and Tesla’s battery storage facility are completed.

“This, in addition to our state-owned gas plant, and the world’s largest lithium ion battery, will help to make our energy grid more secure,” Weatherill said.