Keef Wivanef

Analyst: First Solar Reaches Grid-Parity Milestone

Did I hear someone say spin?


Herald-Sun

May 15, 2007 12:00am

PLANS for a private $30 million, 15-megawatt solar farm in one of South Australia's most arid regions are likely to be signed off today.

The public will be allowed to invest in the solar farm in a similar way that investors buy units in forestry companies.

Chief executive of Green and Gold Energy, Greg Watson, will today meet state electricity officials to put the finishing regulatory touches to a project set to save thousands of domestic users more than 50 per cent off their power bill without having to install expensive solar panels on their roofs.

"I'm confident there won't be any issues," he said.

Mr Watson, inventor of the award-winning SolarCube technology, told BusinessDaily yesterday the 200,000 sq m facility was likely to be located at either Leigh Creek or Woomera, near the old rocket range, or Roxby Downs, near the Olympic Dam uranium mine.

"They are the furthermost areas that the existing power grid extends to," Mr Watson said.

The site, which will be leased from either the state or federal government, does not need to be cleared for the farm.

"The land is already so arid, that we do not need to grade, scrape or bituminise it," Mr Watson said.

He said the project had not received any government funding and at this point was not expecting any subsidies like those provided to coal-burning companies that generate electricity.

Mr Watson said he was using his own capital which was generated from licence fees he collects from overseas distributors of SunCubes.

The company plans to erect 50,000 SunCubes initially and will sell a quarter to the public.

The offer, which is open to individuals only and not to commercial groups, will allow customers to buy up to four $1,500 SunCubes each.

"We will have measures in place to stop some rich guy on a hill coming along and snapping up all the 12,500 that we are selling," he said.

The solar farm could be complete and hooked up to the grid by the end of the year.

Mr Watson said he planned to add units to the farm in stages and had the manufacturing capacity to create a solar energy facility producing up to 500MW of base-load electricity.

Mr Watson expects to receive licences within a fortnight to set up two power companies - GGE Generation and GGE Retail.

GGE Generation will build the solar farm and infrastructure to link it to the power grid and sell the electricity to GGE Retail, which in turn will sell the electricity on to the wholesale market.

GGE Retail customers will benefit by having their bills' total kilowatt hours use reduced in line with the size of their SolarCube investment.

GGE will own all the carbon offset credits the farm produces and its customers will be able to boast that their electricity was entirely produced from a renewable resource.

SPIN ON THIS WATSON!
WOOF