For a few years now I have been following the development of a number of renewable energy technologies. This is a keen interest of mine as my background has been predominantly in the power industry, and I of course am very concerned about the release that millions of years of stored carbon is having on the climate.
In August I visited the United States and as part of that trip, my intent was to stop at a number of solar company installations, preferably unannounced, to see whether what they were telling people was going on with their business, did actually reflect the reality on the ground.
This is what I saw, and my interpretation of where solar technology could be headed.
In a very long and detailed discussion on the previous Australian governments antagonistic, if not intentionally destructive policies towards renewable/alternate energy, I laid out the opportunities lost to our country as a result of this intentional market distortion approach.
Briefly these included Suntech, an Australian citizen having to move offshore where $6 Million in seed capital, turned into a $7.2 Billion business.
Ausra who was able to secure VC backing in the US for their solar thermal technology despite David Mills trying for many years without success in Australia.
Enviromission with a technology which has been declared a base load solar technology also finding friendlier policy in the US despite having tried for many years to garner government support with a tested and proven technology.
There are others, among them a company called CSG Solar who have taken their technology, the Australians who developed it and opened a factory in Germany, value adding to the German economy.
"According to Pacific Hydro, the decision to stop the MRET has sent overseas some $10 Billion in wind energy investment alone.
Much of the significant R&D, intellectual property and high tech manufacturing opportunities associated with these industries are being irreversibly lost to Australia."
So significant opportunities have been lost in the renewables sector as a result of intentional government policy. Were it simply a case of the government ignoring the industry that would be bad enough, however as all good stories of technology suppression go, the government introduced a process whereby interested renewable energy companies, back in 2005/2006, were invited to spend a lot of money in order to apply for grants which the Federal Government had already pre-determined the outcome of. Again go back to my article here to see what I am referring to. For a fledgling start up with a brilliant idea that is what government grants are intended to do. Give them a leg up. The Howard administration used it to make these companies spend operating working capital to apply for a grant which they were never going to get. Also to find out as much as possible about their technologies.
I have written on what got me thinking something was fundamentally wrong with our mechanisms we employ and impact we accept as the 'price of doing business' in our pursuit of energy in High Country to Appalachia. But it was also watching the science gradually work its way into news cycles, a hurricane here, flood there, wildfire or bushfire somewhere else, all pointing to something not quite right with our climate.
So from my point of view technology is the answer and in about March of 2008 I had come across a technology concept called concentrated solar. This is where diffuse sunlight was collected either through the use of mirrors, often in the form of heliostats, or Fresnel lens, to focus or concentrate the sunlight from a large area to a small area.
I'd first heard of concentrating the sun to create heat way back when I was an apprentice at a coal fired power station and had done a course on Energy and Society. A couple of the books I'd read as part of the course covered something called parabolic trough technology.
"the answer is there in the row upon row of mirrors, steel frames, pipes and generators at Kramer Junction. It works. 'It's an alternative energy source. No one can fail to get excited about that,' Norris said. 'In the long run, this is the way we as a people should head. We're here on this planet for ever and we'd better take care of it. I feel this industry, right, is going to be the grandfather of what we're going to end up with. We're doing a good thing.'
The near 50 hectares of trough shaped collectors at Kramer Junction are not only proof that solar energy on a grand scale works; they also demonstrate how government policy, in this case of both the US Government and the Californian Government, can get things moving; taking a fledgling technology, encouraging private investors to invest what eventually totalled $1.25Billion, and fast-tracking the concept to the point where it was a viable, job-creating, clean source of electricity. Kramer Junction power station employs 125 people - managers, operators, maintenance staff... and mirror cleaners....
Page 51 The Big Switch, Clean energy for the 21st century, (c) 1994, Gavin Gilchrist
In Luz's design, the solar trough heats a working fluid that circulates to a power station where water is super heated into steam, which then powers an electricity producing turbine....The power plant built at Harper Lake, California, in the Mojave desert in 1989....produce enough power for about 170,000 homes for as little as 9ckWh ........unenergy comment:down from 29ckWh in 1984 in their pilot plant
But then this...
Unlike the tax breaks for the U.S. oil and gas industries, which amounted to $8.8 Billion in 1989, the federal solar tax credit required annual renewal. In 1989, Congress renewed the credits for 9 months instead of the normal 12, forcing Luz to finish its 1990 project 3 months earlier than planned and driving up costs. The final blow came a few months later when a faulty analysis led California's finance department to temporarily revoke the company's tax exemption, leading nervous investors-who had already put more than $1.25 Billion into Luz- to pull the plug.
Page 145/146 Power Surge (c)1995 Christopher Flavin, Nicholas Lenssen
So a fairly new solar technology in 5 years had managed to move from pilot stage plant at a cost of 29ckWh to reduce costs down to 1/3rd of that, and remarkably two beauracratic decisions had created an artificial slump in investor confidence to shut down this technology from progressing further. This was despite the level of promise it had shown in such a short time.
At the time, 1995, 1996, I was just learning about coal fired power stations, boilers, and turbines, but can remember thinking even back then what an amazing future we have coming up when 1800's technology which relied on burning clumps of coal, burning dirt, may eventually be replaced by the input only of the sun.
However it was not to be, as I have previously alluded there were forces at work behind the scenes to see that people and the planet were not as important as profit.
We knew how to profit, not how to protect
A similar thing has happened in the US throughout its history with government being used as a force to kill developing technologies through short sighted policy. As per this chart below from this article.
the main reason there is not enough manufacturing capacity is because the US has an appalling track record in supporting the industry: 3 times over the past decade, Congress allowed the main regulatory instrument, the PTC, to elapse, causing a catastrophic drop in installations:
Discovering that there was new life being breathed into concentrated Solar power in March 2008, once again had me excited about this future which I had read about and briefly wondered when it would begin to happen all the way back in 1995.
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Green and Gold Energy I have discussed previously the process of the allocation of monies by the LETAG group for Australia's Low Emission Development Technology Fund.
That of the company attendees all are heavily dependent on high emissions of Carbon Dioxide.
Sam Walsh - Rio Tinto - Major coal miner
Wayne Osborne - Alcoa - Aluminum producer, heavy electricity user
Bob Driscoll - Edison Mission Energy - Coal fired power stations
Greg Maddock - Energex - Coal fired power stations
Grant King - Origin Energy - Coal fired power stations
Mike Oppenheimer - BHP Billiton - Major coal producer
Rod Pearce - Boral - Building materials, cement - heavy carbon intensive process
Graham Liebert - Orica - Explosives to the mining industry
I also pointed out that of the recipients of Australian taxpayer monies, all but one were highly profitable, fossil fuel organizations.
Chevron (TAPL) Pty Ltd: Gorgon carbon dioxide (CO2) Injection Project
CS Energy: Oxy-firing demonstration and carbon sequestration project
HRL Limited: 400 MW IDGCC Clean Coal Demonstration Project
International Power: Hazelwood 2030
The stand out being a Solar company developing a utility scale Concentrated Photovoltaic technology.
Solar Systems Generation Pty Ltd: Large Scale Solar Concentrator Power Project
I had tried on a number of occasions to contact and submit my CV to Solar Systems as I knew they would need engineering personnel to design, construct and commission their 154MW plant.
Despite having a very long background in the power industry in Australia, no response was ever received back from the company. However I'd been researching the different technologies and came across another Australian organization claiming to be developing the same technology.
The company was called Green and Gold Energy, based in Adelaide Australia who when I wrote an email to them sent me back the following details as to what they were offering with a device they had dubbed the Suncube.
A single unit at $1,800 installed, produces 750kwh per year. Negotiations are underway with state and federal governments in Australia which will see a reasonable rate of return on the wholesale electricity price. Investing in Suncube farms is expected to be accessible via means of units in a trust. These trusts are expected to return over 12.5% P.A. over the life of the cubes.
What the owner of this company told me in an email was that he'd designed a simple to construct, dual axis tracking solar concentrating unit which he was intending to sell to the public via unit shares in a large scale solar farm.
I figured this was fairly harmless opinion based information plus my site was lucky to be getting 30 hits a month back in early 2008. I also did a lot more research on this technology coming up with this page:
Concentrated Photovoltaics And at the time I had bought some shares and reported on one of the companies which had developed this technology called Emcore in these two financial articles.
Shining Light on EMCORE In the Cat Bird Seat: A Review of Emcore's Business
What I wasn't aware of was previous history of this Green and Gold company and the existence in the stock market of blogs which specialized in negative reporting in order to make money for their clients from the practice of short selling. So around the time my articles were published there was a lot of negative reporting directed specifically at the proprietor of GGE and Emcore directors.
Citron Research shines some daylight on Emcore's solar business 7 More mentions/articles here
Along with this campaign of negative reporting, there was a protracted battle between a number of bloggers on the Emcore financial message board who claimed that he had unearthed that this company GGE were a scam and thus ALL CPV companies were scams.
As I have indicated the loss of renewable energy technology opportunities to Australia have been multiple, so I chose to take on this blogger, or 'basher' as company criticizers are called, and have spent the better part of a year posting counter material to what he has been.
Blogging as Unenergy73.
The basher has multiple ID's listed here.
This technology, along with the potential for jobs in Australia, prompted me to fly down to Adelaide in March of 2009 (a new airline had a $22 fare special), and unannounced, as I was not sure who was telling the truth, visited Green and Gold Energy.
The owner or proprieter, Greg Watson had designed a simple dual tracking CPV system, first as a hemisphere or what he termed the Sunball in 2005 with a public airing in November shown below.
Mr Watson was a prolific blogger throughout the development of the prototype 'Sunball' above which he won an Australian TV show people's choice award for best invention in late 2005. But by January 2006, as I have indicated lack of Australian government support, Mr Watson who had been working closely with the Australian Greenhouse Office, found them not returning phone calls and in fact they had just gone all in stating complete support for an Australian nuclear industry at the expense of other alternatives. At the same time, Mr Watson also states that he will now be offering a Suncube, a cube based concentrating PV unit.
The first photo shows initial prototype, second larger Sunball, and first prototype of a 4 cell Suncube. The second photo shows the Suncube prototype, the third a larger 9 cell model.
Finally settling on the 9 cell Suncube design, Mr Watson eventually installed 10 Suncubes on the roof of GGE. Each capable of self aligning to the sun through some clever electronics, as well as producing about 330W/pk per unit. This is real, I have seen it installed and operating with my own eyes.
Here is the device going through an automatic lock on the Sun. Note it is a long and fairly boring video, but does actually show a unit which all along Green and Gold Energy had been stating they would be manufacturing and others attacked them for it.
ES Systems The process for getting this invention out into the wider world was one similar in structure to a franchise. Green and Gold Energy signed licensing agreements with firms in Korea and Spain which had at the time feed in tariffs. Also in Australia and India. The licensing allows these organizations to work together with each other and the chip supplier to continuously improve the robustness of the Suncube design which has been through about 9 or 10 major design variations. ES Systems is the Korean Licencee.
There is a short video here of the unit tracking. Many more here.
The company has lots of variations on the original Suncube design which is what I think GGE hoped would happen. Below are a few or you can visit their site and see a 595W, 522W, 713W and 357 Watt module here.
Note, I haven't been to ES System, but they do appear genuine even having been visited by a financial advisory firm who reported on their progress in the context of the cells they use from Emcore.
Square Engineering The Indian Company who became licencee are a company near Pune called Square Engineering. They have built a production line, factory and have commenced manufacturing. You can see a small number of the Suncubes they have installed on their factory site.
AC Gava The Spanish Green and Gold Licencee is a company called AC Gava who it appears have taken a variation of the original 4 cell module and built a supersized tracking unit with standard PV panels to compare the two technologies against. I just checked their site and they have a reference to an organization in Spain called ISFOC, who have bought together multiple system manufacturers of this technology into a test center which will allow them to see how each performs. I've just emailed Mr Watson now to see if they are working with ISFOC as I could not find reference to this on ISFOC Site.
There is a series of Videos on the Leonardo Energy site on the ISFOC installation.
I've done a lot of automation work in my time, and for about 2 years was a production line automation enginer, AKA robotics and PLC geek, at Ford Motor Company in Australia. So I know how mechanical stuff gets put together as I used to have to program the nitty gritty stuff where even a 1mm error in a spot weld or a bit of dirt on a sensor can cause major quality issues. I have also done a lot of Autocad design work. Mr Watson showed me what he and a small team had done, and I have to admit I was incredibly impressed. Putting aside all other considerations, had these guys been working at a place like Ford they'd be well respected.
They have complete 3D cad drawings for each component of the Suncube, materials listings and tolerances, designed their own software and tracking electronics, their own primary and secondary optics, heat sinking for dissipation of the concentrated heat from the lens, integrated it all together and have been running a system of continuous improvement on the device for well almost 4 years.
Mr Watson negotiated a deal with Emcore, had received 3,500 registrations of interest in his device, and then the bashers stepped in to take the industry down.
Now I don't want to seem overly naieve here, I know organizations fail all the time, particularly start ups, but as I said, I have enough experience in process automation to spot the b/s artists, and after spending about 6 hours unannounced, reviewing what this company have done, I personally think the device and the business model had potential. The negative Public Relations, targeted in this case, may have taken a heavy toll however limiting the ability of the company, which once again is a terrible shame for Australia, if not the US as a lot of the main components were coming from companies over there.
Below are the small servo motors and a common mounting bracket, machine gears and yokes, all of which I saw the detailed engineering drawings of, and how the Suncubes were easily assembled by hand. At the time GGE had outsourced component manufacturing, again a difficult thing to do to get quality suppliers, and was assembling the Suncubes at their factory which you can see pelletized and ready for shipping in the third photo.
I'd like to see this company succeed, as I think they do have a genuine product and something which can be simply manufactured in developing nations such as India very cheaply. However there are certainly many forces at work trying to make this never happen. People with a vested interest, whatever they may be who have never been to GGE and seen just what a single motivated individual is capable of doing.
Oh and if it did take off, it'd be a win for Australian ingenuity in sustainable energy systems, being kept in Australia for once.
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Sunseeker Looking into this in Australia I did come across another developer of the concentrated photovoltaic cell device who had built a product with many similarities to Green and Gold Energy.
This organization is located in Melbourne and I tried to contact them to have a look at their product earlier in the year also. The best I can ascertain is they have a different two axis tracking mechanism using heavier duty brackets and electronics, use the same cells as Green and Gold Energy and also have opted for the franchise model of their counterpart/competitor. Although reviewing their website it seems they have now gone down the road of capital raising on the Sharemarket in Germany.
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Solar Systems An Australian based business which had in fact installed a number of Solar parabolic dishes in remote areas on government contract. The only awardee of the Low Emissions Technology Development Fund from the Australian government which in past I have described was a tainted application process, I wanted to see Solar Systems installation without pre-judgement as they appeared to be one of the most advanced in terms of Concentrated Photovoltaic mass production and MW scale plants.
Their original design was a dual tracking parabola dish fitted with mirrors which redirected and concentrated the sun onto a small area. A number of these have been installed at Australia's CSIRO, ANU, a test site at Bendigo, and remote communities of Umuwa, Hermannsburg, Yuendumu and Lajamanu.
Original dish and concentration module which contains high efficiency chips.
However like many earlier developers of concentration technologies, reducing cost became a priority and the organization had shifted to a heliostat design with a centralized tower.
Heliostat on central tower
Around June of this year, I was in the local area staying with relations, and contacted Solar Systems to see if a meeting could be set up to visit their Test and Development site at a place called Bridgewater near Bendigo. I was able to speak to one of their long term employees for about half an hour, but unfortunately he was unable to allow any photographs.
What he told me was the tower they had installed was 36m tall. That they had 1 dish and were planning two more at this site. They had selected a site near Red Cliffs, near Mildura and an announcement of all permits and the start of construction would come within a couple of weeks, if not a month or so.
The test site was exporting power, and Solar Systems were affiliated, backed by TRU Energy a major power retailer and generator in the state.
The site photos I was able to take from the road are below.
Solar Systems at Bridgewater
Technology Solar Systems heliostat technology is described in the link above.
Solar Systems has developed an ultra powerful solar module, which can produce about 1500 times more power than a typical solar panel.
In an HCPV system, sunlight is beamed from mirror collectors, or 'heliostats', to the solar modules, which convert the concentrated light directly to Megawatts of power.
The wording of this is a little misleading, basically they take sunlight which has been reflected from about 500 mirrors, its concentrated on a small surface area, where the Gallium Arsenide, Multi-Junction cell, the type used in space, is able to convert higher than normal efficiencies of sunlight than normal silicon cells. GaAs cells convert at about 40% under test conditions, and about 32% once lens, mirrors are installed, where the best Silicon solar cell is much less at 22%. Further the Silicon cells lose efficiency rapidly with increases in temperature, where as GaAs chips are much more tolerant.
The company as part of its planned 154MW deployment at Mildura for which it had won the LETDF government grant and also a $50 Million Victorian government grant, according to the company guy I met at Bridgewater, almost ready to start producing at a new factory they'd built.
Remember that they had gone from Parabolic dishes to Heliostat's and were planning on going back to dishes. So I decided to go have a look at the factory to see if I could figure out what they were manufacturing.
I also took a few photos from the external of the building, unfortunately I could not see what was inside. However there was a new carpark, security access outside and I could see from a low angle in the top windows and there was a lot of new electrical cable tray, windows, ducting etc.
Solar Systems factory street view Front
Solar Systems factory Street view side
Unfortunately, although this was back in June, no announcement from Solar Systems occurred. In fact rather than making the statement that it was all hands on deck, the following occurred.
Shadow cast over solar plant future September 7 2009
Victoria's largest solar power project is in jeopardy as the company behind the power plant struggles to secure financial support for the $420 million project.
Solar Systems was awarded $125 million in state and federal government grants in 2006 to help build the the world's largest solar power plant, which is due for completion in 2013.
The Federal Government contributed $75 million and the State Government $50 million.
Tru Energy pulled the pin on the project basically sealing the fate of this particular company.
I am entirely suspect on Tru Energy's motives, as being a major carbon emitter, it seems they have now become the spokesperson for playing hard ball and fearmongering over the negotiations in Australia's Emissions Trading discussions.
So September 7 they defund Solar Systems who were almost ready to build.
November 4, 2009 State's clean-coal gamble VICTORIA will rely on fossil fuel for energy for decades, with leaked documents revealing the Brumby Government is set to take a multibillion-dollar gamble on ''clean coal''.
A high-level leak to The Age indicates the Government will embark on an education campaign around carbon capture and storage aimed at a public that it say does ''not understand the unique challenges facing the state'' under emission trading.
TRUenergy, operates a coal plant in Victoria that has been one of the most heavily polluting power stations in Australia, according to emissions analyst Dr. Hugh Saddler. The chief executive of TRUenergy in Australia, Richard McIndoe, kicked off his campaign by writing to Victorian Labor Premier John Brumby and Prime Minister Rudd, warning of "supply failures" if the power companies were not given more assistance under the emissions trading scheme.
November 9, 2009 TRUenergy plan 'close to blackmail' The Age yesterday revealed that the energy company was preparing a proposal to build a $2 billion, 1000-megawatt gas plant next to its brown-coal-fired Yallourn power station.
But TRUenergy said it would make the switch only if the Federal Government boosted its $3 billion compensation offer to Victorian coal stations under a proposed emissions trading scheme to at least $8 billion.
11 November 2009 TRUenergy's blackout "scare tactics" questioned The operator of one of Australia's most polluting coal fired power stations, TRUenergy, claims to have scaled back maintenance at it Yallourn plant because the proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme would be so detrimental to its business. The threat is that Victorians will face more blackouts, but Environment Victoria and the Australian Conservation Foundation have now requested the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) examines the accuracy of these claims.
November 23, 2009 Generators threaten ETS legal action COAL-FIRED power companies are warning of price volatility, threats to future power supply, a collapse in the electricity market and even a multi-million-dollar lawsuit against the government unless they win a big increase in compensation under the emissions trading scheme -- one of the final sticking points in negotiations between the Rudd government and Malcolm Turnbull's divided Coalition.
Coal power lobby mines new lows in late compo scramble TRUenergy, owned by Chinese conglomerate CLP, and International Power, owned by British multinational International Power PLC, ramped up their rhetoric yesterday in a desperate attempt to scam further compensation from taxpayers under the CPRS for their coal-fired power generation assets, especially Yallourn and Hazelwood in Victoria.
Both companies want a tripling of compensation under the CPRS to $10 billion over the next five years.
Their main asset, Yallourn power station was built in the 1970's. It is almost a 40 year old asset.
It looks as though they bought into the Solar company as a ruse, cut funding at the worst possible time to destroy a 154MW solar installation's chance at competing with their core business, coal, and are now wanting the Australian government to pay for their brand new power stations, threatening the Victorian government and Australian businesses and householders with blackmail tactics of shutting off their power.
Who said privatization never bought any benefits to the state?
