Aurora Solar Thermal Power Project


Aurora Solar Thermal Power Project was a planned solar power tower solar thermal power plant to be located north of Port Augusta in South Australia. It was planned to generate 150 MW of electricity after it was completed in 2020. Storage capacity would have been up to 8 hours at full power. The facility was expected to produce 495 GWh of electricity annually. It was to be north of Port Augusta on Carriewerloo Station.
On 5 April 2019, South Australian Energy Minister Dan van Holst Pellekaan announced the cancellation of the project.

Timeline

The premier of South Australia, Jay Weatherill announced on 14 August 2017 that construction would commence in 2018 and was expected to be completed in 2020. It was expected to cost to build, including a loan from the Federal Government. SolarReserve has a contract to supply all of the electricity required by the state government's offices from this power project.
The plant received formal development approval from the state government on 9 January 2018. At that time, finance was not yet all in place, but SolarReserve still anticipated commencing construction in mid-2018 and taking 650 workers two and a half years to build it.
On 5 April 2019, South Australian Energy Minister Dan van Holst Pellekaan announced that he had been contacted by SolarReserve who said the project would not be going ahead.
In December 2019, local South Australian renewable energy company 1414 Degrees announced it had acquired the project from SolarReserve, along with SolarReserve's early-stage solar PV projects in NSW. 1414 Degrees renamed the site Aurora Solar Energy Project, indicating it would develop the site as a solar photovoltaic farm firmed up using their proprietary GRID-TESS thermal energy storage system using molten silicon. In May 2020, it announced that the first stage would open in mid-2021 with 70MW of solar panels, followed by a pilot Thermal Energy Storage System.

Reasons for cancellation

Tim Buckley, the Director of Energy Finance Studies for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, said that the most likely reason for the cancellation was a lack of revenue certainty for the technical demonstrator project. The Aurora plant had the capability of firming up variable renewables by providing stored power from hot salt after the sun had gone down and solar photovoltaic panels had stopped generation. But no long-term contract was on offer to provide for a fixed price for electricity from the plant, particularly during the evening peak hours of 6 pm to 8 pm. This was due to lack of a government policy framework and to a lack of time of day electricity pricing.
South Australian opposition leader Peter Malinauskas blamed the failure to secure finance on the state government's plan to establish a new electricity interconnector to New South Wales. This interconnector was expected to reduce the peak wholesale cost of electricity.