photo: Ausra
Silicon Valley solar startup Ausra in January decided to get out of the solar power plant business and focus on supply solar steam systems to developers. As I write in The New York Times today, the company has announced deals in Australia, Jordan and, soon, the United States:
Ausra, a Silicon Valley solar start-up, burst on to the green-tech scene in 2007, bankrolled by marquee venture capitalists and armed with ambitions to build gigawatts of solar farms.
Earlier this year, though, the company abruptly changed course, abandoning its solar power plant business to focus on supplying solar thermal technology to other developers.
Now the deals are starting to roll in.
On Wednesday, Ausra said it has signed a contract to provide a solar steam system to a German developer, MENA Cleantech. MENA plans to build a 100-megawatt hybrid solar farm in Jordan that will rely on an oil-fired boiler to generate electricity when the sun does not shine.
Robert Fishman, Ausra’s chief executive, said his company also has agreed to build a 23-megawatt solar steam plant adjacent to a 750-megawatt coal-fired power station in Queensland, Australia. The company’s mirror arrays and boilers will produce supplemental steam to boost the coal plant’s electricity production.
You can read the rest of the story here.
Green Wombat 
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