Plans for a $15 million solar thermal power project, which were shelved by a wheatbelt town in Western Australia, will be redirected for use at a currently unidentified mine.
The Morowa Shire Council, which has been plagued by blackouts from poor electricity grid supply, last year announced the $20 million solar thermal project would not proceed, citing the power project as too ambitious for the local council,” as reported by Energy Business News.
In an ASX statement, Perth-based renewable energy company Enerji Ltd announced it has formed an agreement with Carbon Reduction Ventures (CRV) and Morowa Solar Thermal (MST) for the development of a hybrid solar thermal power project.
The project will use $3.7 million funding allocated by the WA State Government’s Low Emissions Energy Development (LEED) Fund, originally announced for the Morowa Shire project.
Upon completion, the $15 million project will generate around 5500MWh per year and will have a heat storage capacity of 10MWh. Stage one of the project will generate power within 15 months, with stage two producing power from solar thermal within 24 months.
The project will apply Enerji’s ATEN 3 system to collect thermal energy from two sources with distinctly different heat characteristics, as reported by Energy Business News.
Medium-temperature heat is harvested from the exhaust of the host power station, and high-temperature heat is collected from concentrated solar thermal.
