The first large scale working demonstration of a solar energy storage system based on research undertaken at The Australian National University will be developed thanks to a $7 million grant from the Commonwealth Government announced today.

The system uses ammonia-based thermochemical solar energy storage and is intended for use with   ‘Big Dish’ solar concentrators. The prototype Big Dish, located on the ANU campus, is the world’s biggest dish solar concentrator, with an aperture area of 400m2.

The technology was developed by Dr Keith Lovegrove and colleagues at the ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science, and is being commercialised by Canberra company Wizard Power. Wizard Power has received the grant from the Australian Greenhouse Office to build a commercial scale demonstration of the storage system.

“The ability to build in high capacity energy storage is one of the key competitive advantages for solar thermal,” Dr Lovegrove said.

“Because we are storing energy before generating electricity, we can deliver multi-megawatt base-load electricity and meet peak loads on-demand in the same way as coal, nuclear or gas fired power stations do.  The efficiency of our storage system is also very high because we use a chemical process that has no extra energy losses regardless of how long the energy is stored.

Our partnership with Wizard Power is the essential element that we need to get our technologies into the market place. It has also provided valuable resources to accelerate our joint R&D program.

With the world increasingly looking for utility scale renewable energy the time for solar thermal power has finally come,” Dr Lovegrove said.

ANU Vice-Chancellor Professor Ian Chubb congratulated the ANU research team and Wizard Power.

Professor Chubb echoed Dr Lovergrove’s comments on the potential for this technology to play an important role in meeting the World’s future energy needs and noted the grant will encourage further significant investment in the research and commercialisation of this leading edge technology.

For further information: Amanda Morgan, ANU Media Office, 02 6125 5575 or 0416 249 245