Solar Systems is the Australian company that last month scored funding to build the world’s largest solar power plant. (More on that in an upcoming post.) The Melbourne outfit already operates several small-scale power stations in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. On Monday, I visited Hermannsburg, an outback community of some 600
people about 60 miles west of Alice Springs that uses what may be the planet’s most efficient and powerful solar technology to provide up to half of the town’s electricity.
What’s unique about Solar Systems’ approach is that it has created concentrator photovoltaic technology for large-scale power generation. Most photovoltaic uses these days are found in residential and commercial rooftop solar panels. The dominant technology for solar power plants is something called solar thermal, where solar radiation heats liquids or other substances to create steam that drives turbines to generate electricity. At Hermannsburg, each of the eight massive solar dishes focuses solar energy on an attached receiver made up of concentator cells that generate electricity that goes straight to the grid after being run through an inverter. That means no moving parts (other than the dishes as they track the sun). The plant runs on auto-pilot, with just one person needed to monitor the operation and perform minor maintenance.
As I drive up to Hermannsburg with John Lasich, Solar Systems’ founder
and technical director, the solar dish array can be seen on the edge of the town, a collection of pastel colored cement-block and tin-roofed homes scattered across the red desert. Beyond a building with a sign reading "If You Drink and Drive You’re a Bloody Idiot," is the community’s diesel generator and the year-old 192-kilowatt solar power station.
Other than a low background hum from the control building, the solar power station is silent. A horse that has wandered into the compound seeks relief from the 104-degree heat in the shade cast by one of the dishes. The receivers mounted on seven of the dishes hold modules made of silicon-based cells sold by SunPower (SPWR) of Silicon Valley. But the eighth dish uses a new type of solar cell developed by Solar Systems and Spectrolab, a Sylmar, California-based subsidiary of Boeing. Called a multi-junction cell, it does not use silicon – currently an expensive material in short supply – and achieves efficiency rates of around 30 percent, or about three times that of standard solar panels and some solar thermal power plants.
Inside the control room, real-time data on the dishes and their performance flickers on flat panel screens. "Right now we’re providing about 20 percent of the community’s power," says Lasich as he studies a display. The rest comes from the old diesel generator. On some days, when solar conditions are good and air conditioners are idle, Hermannsburg gets about half of its power from the solar station. Racks of batteries in an adjacent room act as a buffer, providing power to the grid when a cloud reduces output from the solar dishes. The three Solar System power plants in the Northern Territory save about 111,000 gallons of diesel a year and help fight global warming by eliminating around 1,700 tons of greenhouse gas emissions, according to Lasich. Plans are in the works to build another six to eight solar plants in other isolated Aboriginal communities.
The Northern Territory Power and Water Corporation buys the electricity from Solar Systems, which signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with the utility. "We’re making money," says Lasich.
Green Wombat 
How many kilowatts of power does this whole operation produce?
The Hermannsburg solar power plant is rated at 192 kilowatts.
Are those things mirrors concentrating the sun rays to the center thingy?
How much did it cost to build?
Really cool (or Hot)…
Thanks for posting this.
It is interesting how widely spaced the dishes are. I guess land is pretty cheap up there but still….
They should consider putting the dishes on variable height poles to give the array a much better fill factor.
I have bookmarked your site for future reference.
Feel free to add your URL to our kiosk page at http://www.solarhome.com.au/forums
Regards
Alex Fiedler
solarhome.com.au
The solar dish concentrates the sun’s rays to the attached receiver. The total cost for Solar Systems’ three solar power stations in three aboriginal communities was about AUS $7 million ($5.5 million).
“[T]he planet’s most efficient” solar tech by what criteria? Watts per square meter? Dollars per Watt?
Assuming the latter, a rated output of 720kW [1] for $5.5 US means $7.64/watt. That’s not bad, especially for what was essentially a pilot project. And it’s better than the typical residential PV installation ($8-$10/Watt), but I see numbers as low as $7.50/watt for a 3kW system installed [2].
And what about large-scale solar? Has no one else done better than $7.64/watt?
As early as 2001, BP was claiming that “the lowest installed cost right now of PVs for large scale commercial orders is about $6 per watt” [3]. Maybe the difference is in the details (what does “installed” encompass?).
Sources: [1] http://www.solarsystems.com.au/SPSA%20case%20study.pdf
[2] http://southface.org/solar/solar-roadmap/residential/residential_pv_paybacks.htm
[3] http://www.ecoworld.com/home/articles2.cfm?tid=259
The efficiency I refer to is the efficiency of the multi-junction solar cells in one of the dishes at Hermannsburg.
Generally PV cells become less efficient when the temperature rizes.
The temperature in the focal poimt of the dish mirrors must be huge, I do not see anny form of cooling.
What is the average temperature of the PV cells during operation?
What semi-conducting materials are used?
I must assume that this technology is patented, so there can be no objection to give an open answer to this question. It is essential for the dissemination of this technology and a bright future for Solar Systems that technicians can understand how it works. For the moment I don’t understand.
Each dish has a cooling system. (The black tubing of the heat exchange system is visible at the base of the dish in the above photos.)
At the PS10 project in Sevilla there is a field with PV panels which is slightly concentrating, concentration factor 2. There was no cooling. I was there in June, the panels could not be touched by hand because of their high temperature. Because of this temperature the efficiency of the Si panels was reduced by about 30%.
So again, what is the operation temperature of the PV cells at the focus of the dishes, and what will be the operation temperature at the focus of the large tower that is planned to be built in Australia?
A Visit to One of the Worlds Most Efficient Solar Power Stations
Solar Capacity Solar capacity is an environmentally affectionate choice to some added capacity-generating methods. Solar power is an excellent alternative. Portable solar power has been referred to as packaging sunlight. The abstraction is using an ad…
What is the energy and emissions payback times for your 154mb array, and for existing arrays such as the one I just visited at Hermannsburg
Is the US picking up onthis save the planet cost effective way of powering-up electricity?
Hi Mr Lasich,
I am from Singapore and has read with great interest in your solar farm. With the great availability of land and sunshine in Australia I am wondering whether it is possible to produce biodiesel or any organic based liquid in sufficient quantity and in cost effective price to compete with biodiesel produced elsewhere like Brazil? Is it possible to go straight from using the electricity produced to produce creat diesel with carbon dioxide from the air and hydrogen and oxygen from water?