Canberra Solar Dish

Wizard Power is the commercial development arm of the Australian National University, based in Canberra. They are soon to build the first commercial project using the “big dish” solar thermal technology at Whyalla, a real outback town. Wizard make a “big dish” - it looks like it belongs in a retro comic book, in a vision of outer space. It is an enormous, mirrored, parabolic dish that tracks the sun, and focuses it on to central collector. In keeping with Australia’s love of big things, the new design will have an area of 500m2, three or four times as large as any other existing example of the technology. “On a sunny day, you would get 100 homes powered off one dish, effectively”, says principle researcher Dr Keith Lovegrove of the ANU. To store the power, Wizard uses an ammonia solution and a chemical reaction that can run “forwards” to store heat or “backwards” to release heat. Wizard Power has an aggressive strategy for gaining energy market share, and the industrial use in Whyalla is just the first step. They are currently working on five projects around Australia, together with an energy company partner, each one between tens to hundred of megawatts scale. The next ones will be India and Israel and they are talking to contacts in China.