25/10/2013
Interview with James Fisher from Vast Solar.
Written by Michael Castaldo
On Friday I sat down to chat with James Fisher the Chief Technology Officer from Vast Solar the guys behind the Concentrated Solar Thermal Project to be constructed out in Forbes. The project for those not familiar with CST will harness sun light to focus it with mirrors to boilers atop five 25m towers, this then in turn heats molten salts which when fed through a heat exchanger produces steam to drive turbines that generate electricity similarly to the boilers that operate in the coal fired plants in Australia. All with one exception, instead of releasing carbon dioxide and other harmful pollutants into the atmosphere they release none what so ever. These molten salts which are heated act like a battery to generate power when the sun doesn’t shine by releasing heat that has been stored up during the day. This project is looking likely to kick off in the New Year once all the funding has been finalised and locked away, as all of the other planning approvals are now in place.
Speaking with James Fisher (Mechanical Engineer) who has been with Vast Solar working toward this project for the last four years, he told me a lovely anecdote from his time studying at university…. “well… back many years ago during my student days studying at Sydney University I remembered one of the professors saying that to power Sydney you would need to cover the whole state with solar collectors”. So James assuming the Professor knew what he was talking about noted it and did not revisit the question for many years, assuming like most students that the Professor must have checked it out, you know run the numbers and it just wasn’t a possibility.
Then 4 years ago he revisited the question he took another look at where things were at and decided the Professor from hi Uni days was not quite right back then and was definitely not right now. So James went on to found Vast Solar where they developed a 1.6MWth pilot plant that has been up and running for the last 2 years. Many lessons were learnt from this small scale project and refinements have been made in planning for this next vastly larger and more complex project. Vast Solar believe this has given them the confidence and expertise to tackle this scaled up version.
Vast Solar brings together an experienced team in Australia and also draws on the experience of larger multinational European energy companies and further experts from all over the world. The aim of this scaled up project is show what can be done here in Australia with Vast Solar’s current technology. In the long run Vast Solar believe adamantly that this technology will significantly out compete Australia’s aging Coal Fired Plants in whole of life costs, once it has been developed and scaled up. And this is as James points out without including the environmental costs associated with fossil fuelled generators. At the moment around the world costs per KWH for similar CST plants are between 18-25 cents per KWH. Vast Solar believe they can hit a price point with their current technology once scaled up of approximately half that and with further reductions coming with refinement in design, construction and operation.
Vast Solar plans to build all of the solar heliostats, the mirrors on trackers that follow the sun with an onsite local based workforce due to the fact that mirrors don’t transport too well and it’s also much more cost effective to have your mirror factory on your door step.
One large challenge facing Vast Solar that James took much time in explaining was the current oversupply of power to the market from the existing power plants. This is greatly due to the rapid uptake of Solar by Australian households causing a glut of power production between 9am till 5pm each day when the sun is shining at its brightest. To get around this Vast Solar’s initial plan is to provide power during the day but more specifically also during the peak periods between 5pm and 8pm in the nights when wholesale power prices are at their peak. Vast Solar’s initial plant will store peak output power for approximately 3 hours specifically for this period. If all goes well with this initial project, plans are in place to build a 30MW Plant.
The final question that I had to ask James was, what role does the government need to play if projects like this are to be a success and allow Australia to move towards more renewables for base load power production?
“We need a roadmap for the future with yearly targets and a bipartisan approach so business can plan and invest with a degree of certainty for the future, without that it will be very difficult”
Here at The Batteries Are Coming we are going to be staying in touch with James and his team at Vast Solar every 6 months to see how progress is going and to see if they’re hitting they’re targets in driving renewable to the forefront of base load power production for Australia.
