'Storage technology and concentrating solar power (CSP)'

INTRODUCTION

The following is a brief article about some of the latest developments in storage technology that have
been successfully integrated into concentrating solar power (CSP) systems. I thought it would be
interesting to try and discuss these developments through some lenses, or principles, of permaculture. I
didn't think anyone would mind too much if I quoted extensively from the class textbooks (referenced,
of course) – there is just too much good stuff to pass by on a discussion about renewable energy in a
permaculture blog.

It's hard to know where to begin so I'll start with some background on CSP then try to provide some
relevant quotes grouped under permaculture principles cited from Holmgren (2002).

Concentrating solar power (CSP) systems basically work on the principle of concentrating the diffuse
flow of sunlight and heat onto a small area of mirrors which then reflect this light, and intense heat,
onto a receiver. Mirror array configurations vary eg. Parabolic or paraboloidal dishes, parabolic
polished stainless steel troughs, circles of flat mirrors surrounding 'power towers', compact linear
fresnel reflectors (CLFRs) etc. as do receiver types eg. Photovoltaic cubes, thermal tubes, graphite
block storages (!!), as do the storage technologies required for storing energy during periods of low
solar insolation i.e. Really overcast days or night time, such as conventional pv battery storages,
graphite block storages and ammonia-based batteries.

Some examples of CSP systems include those manufactured by 'Solar Systems' in Melbourne which
use nano-scale solar photovoltaic cells (originally developed for satellites) configured in a cubic
structure to 'receive' sunlight – thus electricity can be generated onsite however if the systems are
standalone i.e. Not grid connected/grid interactive, expensive batteries are required to store the energy
– this is commonly recognised as a limiting factor for the photovoltaic industry in general. CSP
systems that 'concentrate' diffuse solar heat are the most common types of solar 'thermal' CSP systems.
This is advantageous from a storage perspective when compared to the relatively expensive and short-
lived (and generally extremely toxic if improperly recycled) storage systems of photovoltaic based
systems. OK – maybe it smells of energy 'storage' propaganda but basically heat or thermal energy is
an efficient and 'cheap' way to capture solar energy in a range of solar applications (including solar hot
water systems). Take, eg, the graphite block storage solutions manufactured by the Australian company
'Lloyd Energy Systems' (Hollis, 2009) which can be used as receivers AND storages (high efficiency,
high productivity and simple CSP system integration)! A modified ground-based graphite block storage
is also now available for wind-powered energy systems – think integrated solar/wind systems that use
graphite block storages and share the same steam generation system (Hollis, 2009). And what about
the 'Closed loop thermochemical energy storage system using ammonia' (to be used by the affiliated
company 'Wizard Power' in their latest parabolic CSP systems) under current development in the solar
research lab at Australian National University (ANU). The not-for-profit think tank 'Beyond Zero
Emissions' are a great reference to stay up-to-date on developments such as these, as well as in a range
of other 'sustainability' areas.

PERMACULTURE PRINCIPLES (in “italics”) (Holmgren, 2002)

“Catch and Store Energy: Make hay while the sun shines”
• “In modern affluent societies, the flow of energy in forms useful to people (food, materials and
services) has become so reliably available that energy capture – and more so, energy storage – has
ceased to be a major concern. So long as people have a flow of money to buy, the provision of basic
needs has been left to farmers, mining engineers, and so on.” (Holmgren, p.29)
• “In an emerging low-energy world, we will rediscover opportunities to harvest and store
immediately available (on-site) renewable energies and wasted resources across our rural and urban
landscapes and in our households and local economies. This will be essential to avoid disasters
from inevitable disruptions to energy and resources supply lines.” (Holmgren, p.29)
• “After a period of unprecedented energy flow, people are particularly blind to new or novel sources
of energy, especially if they are modest and situation specific” (Holmgren, p.30)

“Use and value renewable resources and services: Let nature take it's course”
• “The energies coming into our system are such natural forces as sun, wind, and rain. Living
components and some technological or non-living units built into the system translate the
incoming energies into useful reserves, which we can call resources. Some of these resources
have to be used by the system for its own purposes ( stocks of fish must be maintained to
produce more fish). An ideal technology should at the very least fuel itself.” (Mollison, p.16)
• “Renewable resources are those which are renewed and replaced by natural processes over
reasonable periods without the need for major non-renewable inputs” (Holmgren, p.93)
• “The limited and often erratic flows of renewable energies are the reason they have tended to be
displaced by fossil fuels which have very high and regular flow rates. As we go through the
essential transition to declining energy, the limited and erratic nature of renewable energies
provides a valuable negative feedback, reminding us that all natural resources must be used
carefully and respectfully.” (Holmgren, p.94)
• “Careful and appropriate use of non-biological resources (fossil-fuel-based machinery, artificial
fertilisers, technical equipment) in the beginning stages of a permaculture is OK if they are used
to create long-term, sustainable biological systems and an enduring physical infrastructure”
(Mollison and Slay, p.16)

“Use small and slow solutions: The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Slow and steady wins the
race”
• “Before fossil fuels, people depended on “solar economies” of hunter-gathering or agriculture
where, allowing for variations due to rainfall and fertility, energy was dilute and distributed
across the whole landscape. Consequently, human populations and development were
decentralised and small in scale. Following the clustering patterns of nature, nodes of high-
energy availability along edges...between water and fertile land and between mountains and
plains supported the development of towns and cities.” (Holmgren, p.188)
• Hmmm...could CSP play a role here?

“Obtain a yield: You can't work on an empty stomach”

• A yield is “...any useful resource surplus to the needs of the local system and thus available for use,
export or trade” (Mollison, p.16)
• “...we should design any system to provide for self-reliance at all levels (including ourselves) by
using captured and stored energy effectively to maintain the system and capture more energy. More
broadly, flexibility and creativity in finding new ways to obtain a yield will be critical in the
transition from growth to descent.” (Holmgren, p.55)
• “Without immediate and truly useful yields, whatever we design and develop will tend to wither
while elements that do generate immediate yield will proliferate” (p.55)
• Just how fast can a modular, scalable CSP systems be deployed and operational to obtain
'immediate and truly useful yields' i.e. Energy? In Australia, pretty fast I imagine with more
money (private and public) and reasonable 'gross' feed in tariffs (FIT)...which may in fact work
far more effectively than increasing the RECs multiplier by 5 for solar PV systems from July 1
as part of the Federal government's carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS) in order to
sooner meet the MRET targets 'on paper'. Compare this scenario with the years (and cost and
 carbon footprint and ERoEI) required to construct large-scale 'non-renewable' power plants, eg.
do we have the time to wait for the largely unproven 'clean coal' 'solution? How long will it take
to grow a 'local' nuclear power industry with online power plants?
• How can one measure the energetic 'yield' of a technology? Howard Odum et al developed
'EMERGY' accounting which can be applied to create an 'EMERGY yield ratio' that “compares the
EMERGY (inherent value) of a resource with the feedback of EMERGY from the economy
required to produce the resource.” (Holgren, p.65) However, it's beyond the scope of this blog to
apply this methodology to determine the 'EMERGY yield ratio' of the ammonium-based battery or
graphite block storage. A different way of looking at energetic 'yield' is to use the 'Energy Return
on Energy Invested' (ERoEI) ratio which has been defined and pioneered by Charles Hall (2008) as
“the energy delivered by an energy-obtaining activity compared to the energy required to get it.”
(Hopkins, p.50). You only have to search for 'EROI' or 'EROEI' on “The oil drum” website to
conclude how much interest (and controversy) this energy measure is generating within the energy
community. According to a table sourced from 'The Ecologist Magazine' (Hopkins, p.51), the
ERoEI ratio for 'Concentrating solar energy' (CSE, also known as CSP) is 17.5:1 on average. CSP
technology, such as Wizard Power's parabolic dish system with ammonia-based battery or Lloyd
Energy Systems graphite block storage tower would presumably have a similar or higher ERoEI
ratio. CSP technology is starting to look impressive 'energetically' when compared to other
stationary energy sources such as: 'Solar pv' (photovoltaics) at 8:1, 'conventional coal' at 8:1 (!),
'geothermal' at 7:1, 'nuclear' at 3:1 and 'clean coal' at 2.5:1 (!!). Although 'tidal range', 'sewage and
landfill gas', 'offshore wind', 'small hydro', 'onshore wind', 'large hydro' all have higher ERoEI ratios
compared to CSE or CSP, I would guess that CSE or CSP would have more locations available for
deployment in general (i.e. Anywhere with average solar insolation and human settlement is
probably an appropriate location – Australia has vast areas of high solar insolation, including the
Tanami desert which has the highest solar insolation levels in the world at 6.8 peak sun hours
(PSH)) and will gain importance accordingly, especially when combined with ammonia-based or
graphite block storage (and therefore the ability to provide the constant flows of energy to which
modern consumer society has become accustomed – holy ground that was previously the exclusive
domain/stranglehold of our energy baseload providers).
• At this point I think it is important to quote Hopkins (pp.52-3) for an energy 'reality check', “The
decline in EROEI in our energy sources, together with the combined peaks of oil, gas, coal, and
uranium (probably in that order), means that we need to acknowledge that we are as energy-rich a
society today as we are ever likely to be.” Once again, the spectre of astrophysicist Paul Taylor's
'Peak Civilisation' quip comes to mind and Richard Heinberg's 2007 book titled “Peak Everything:
Waking up to the Century of Declines” (recommended by Rob Hopkins).
• 'Maximum Power Principle' (Holmgren, p.56-7)
Relevant if you consider that a battery storage integrated in a CSP system is a key part of
developing 'high energy storages' within society that follows Howard Odum's 'list of ways in
which all successful and persisting self-organised systems maximise power to meet the needs of
survival' (Holmgren, p.57)

In conclusion, well...there are more principles to apply, like “Creatively use and respond to change:
Vision is not seeing things as they are but as they will be”. We have already lost our 'Sun King' to
China, Europe's solar market to Germany when we clearly had the solar R & D edge back in the day
and Professor David Mills to the U.S.A. who founded 'Ausra'. We're climbing back on top so it's time
to make hay while the sun shines (and we still got plenty of sunshine despite the recession)!!!

REFERENCES

- Hollis, Steve, Steve Hollis discusses Lloyd Energy System's graphite block storage (in interview with
Scott Bilby), http://www.beyondzeroemissions.org.au, April 2009
-Holmgren, David, “Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability”, Holmgren Design
Services, Victoria, 2002
-Mollison, Bill and Slay, Reny Mia, “Introduction to Permaculture” (2nd Edn), Tagari Publications,
Tasmania, 2002
-Mollison, Bill, “Permaculture: A designer's manual” (2nd Edn), Tagari Publications, Tasmania, 2002
-Hopkins, Rob, “The Transition Handbook: From oil dependency to local resilience”, Green Books,
U.K., 2008
APPENDIX

Closed loop thermochemical energy storage system using ammonia

If solar energy is to become a major contributor to our energy supply, means to store it have to be
found. One promising method is "closed loop thermochemical energy storage using ammonia".

In this system, ammonia (NH3) is dissociated in an energy storing (endothermic) chemical reactor as it
absorbs solar thermal energy. At a later time and place, the reaction products hydrogen (H2) and
nitrogen (N2) react in an energy releasing (exothermic) reactor to resynthesise ammonia.
2 NH3 + Heat N2 + 3 H2

A fixed amount of reactants (ammonia, nitrogen and hydrogen) are contained in a closed loop, and pass
alternately between energy storing and energy releasing reactors with provision for storage of reactants
in between. Because the solar energy is stored in a chemical form at ambient temperature, there are
zero energy losses in the store regardless of the length of time that the reactants remain in storage. The
reactors are packed with standard commercial catalyst materials to promote both reactions. Counter-
flow heat exchangers transfer heat between in-going and out-going reactants at each reactor to use the
energy most effectively.

Feeding the reactors with pure reactants is possible through the natural separation of reactants and
products in the storage system: at the pressures applied, ammonia condenses.

By ensuring that the stuff leaving each reactor transfers its own thermal energy (sensible heat) to the
stuff going in - using heat exchangers - most of the solar energy is stored in the change in composition
of the chemicals which are kept at ambient temperature.
Advantages
Apart from the ability of the ammonia system to allow for continuous energy supply on a 24-hour
basis, other advantages, that are not necessarily shared by other solar thermochemical or photochemical
systems, make this process unique:
• A high energy storage density, by volume and mass.
The reactions are easy to control and to reverse and there are no unwanted side reactions.
• All constituents involved are environmentally benign.
There exists a history of industrial application with the associated available expertise and
hardware.
• A readily achievable turning temperature of 400oC to 500oC (depending on the pressure). This
helps to reduce thermal losses from dish receivers, avoids some high temperature materials
limitations, and allows lower quality (and hence cheaper) dish optics to be used.
• All reactants for transport and handling are in the fluid phase, which provides a convenient
means of energy transport without thermal loss. This is an important point, particularly if large
arrays of paraboloidal dishes are being considered as the method for solar energy collection.
• At ambient temperature the ammonia component of reactant mixtures condenses to form a
liquid, whilst the nitrogen and hydrogen remains as a gas. This means that only one storage
vessel is required for reactants and products.

Production of ammonia is one of the world’s largest chemical process industries, with in excess of 100
million tonnes produced annually and about 90,500 tonnes produced in Australia in 2004, the bulk of
which is used for fertilizers (~90%). The industry has a 100 year history of operation.
OTHER STORAGE DEVELOPMENTS

Steve Hollis discusses Lloyd Energy System's graphite block

storage.
Thu, 2009-04-02 09:48 — admin
Listen to Podcast Scott Bilby: Today we are talking to Steve
Hollis, CEO of Lloyd Energy Systems, an Australian company
that has created a large scale, low cost, energy storage system
based on high purity graphite.
Welcome to the show Steve.
Steve Hollis: Thank you.
Scott: Can you tell us in simple terms what your storage
solution system is and how it works?
Steve: Yes, well it is very simple. We are using high purity
graphite. High purity graphite has a unique combination of
properties simply because the combination of properties in relation to heat storage don’t occur, that
graphite has, don’t occur in any other materials, man-made or natural, so it’s an ideal thermal storage
medium.
Now the system we have simply collects solar energy via tracking heliostats, which are mirrors that
track the passage of the sun across the sky, and focus the sun’s energy in a very sharp image and project
that image into our ‘storage block’, we call it. That storage block-does three things. It collects the
energy into a receiver which is concentrated and focused into it be the tracking heliostats. Once it is in
the block it is absorbed by the high purity graphite and it just sits there until you want to retrieve the
energy in the form of electricity. The graphite has conventional heat exchangers embedded in the
graphite and when electricity generation is required we simply pass water through the tubes which is
like a normal steam blower that makes steam, and that steam drives a conventional steam turbine to
create electricity. Really, there are very few moving parts and it’s quite a simple system.
Matthew Wright: Just for our listeners there’s a couple of questions perhaps raised there. So,
heliostats I understand are mirrors and so you have many mirrors in a field that focus light on a tower
and the graphite block sits on top of the tower. Is that right?
Steve: That’s correct. We’ve designed it as a modular system. As you have probably heard and seen on
TV there are a few high tower systems constructed and in operation around the world. They produce
steam at very high temperatures and transport that steam off to turbines to generate electricity by the
same concept.
The difference between our system and those high tower systems is that those high tower systems don’t
have any inbuilt storage. Some of them utilise storage reservoirs for the fluid and some use molten salt
as a transfer fluid.
So, storages that are attached to those high tower systems are somewhere else. They’re not in the
collection system themselves. They’re taken across and stored somewhere else. That’s the major
difference between those systems and our system. In our system the storage is actually at the point of
collection of the solar energy.
And also, our’s is on a different scale. Those towers that you’ve seen pictures of are over 100 meters
tall. Our towers are only 20 meters tall which is in fact the same height as a rural windmill for example.
In fact the towers we are standing our blocks on are windmill towers so we refer to our technology as
being on an agricultural scale. So the block, which weighs about 15 tonnes all up, sits on top of this 20
metre high tower and each block is surrounded by 110 heliostats, which are the mirrors. Each mirror is
10m2 in area which means we’ve got approximately 1100 square metres of collection area, of
heliostats, directing the concentrated energy into this 15 tonne block.
The block incidentally has 10 tonnes of graphite inside it, so that just gives you an idea of the scale of
the system and the whole concept of the system is that it’s modular. Each of those modules occupies
about a quarter of a hectare, or an acre, and we can determine the size of the plant that we produce by
the number of modules that we have and the size of the steam turbine that’s attached to it.
Scott: Now Steve, just to frame the discussion for the sake of the audience, can you tell us what uses
these storage blocks are going to be placed in and how it’s going to help hopefully revolutionise
renewable energy in this country?
Steve: Sure, the two projects we are undertaking at the present moment are located in remote rural
areas that are at the end, or the outline branches, of the grid. At the present moment, as electricity
consumption has increased over the years mainly because of domestic air conditioning, a lot of those
branches of the tree once they get right out to the edges of the grid in fact have difficulty supplying
power.
So, that brings a number of problems. Firstly there are problems with power quality and voltage
fluctuations and the people living in those areas know very well that their digital clocks start to flick
and this sort of stuff because the voltages go up and down.
And also, in some areas, the electricity utilities are having to resort to reasonably dramatic and
environmentally unfriendly means of boosting the capacity of the system by actually putting diesel
generators beside the substation in those remote locations.
This technology simply replaces an alternate generation system so at Lake Cargelligo and in
Clonclurry, the two projects on our plate, those projects do three things. Firstly they generate renewable
energy, which is a substitution for non-renewable energy. They are at a location where the grid, or the
transmission system, is stressed, and it can no longer get enough electricity out there to service the
customers. And it also provides what they call ‘network support’, so as the grid starts to struggle, by
pushing the electricity back into the grid it stabilises the voltages and so forth and serves a grid support
function.
Scott: Now Steve, you mentioned Clonclurry in Queensland, population of about 5,000 people, I’ve
read it’s the first town in Australia to depend exclusively on solar power.
Steve: Well, that’s in fact correct. What we will be installing in Clonclurry is a system that will
generate 80 megawatt hours a day and it will have a 10 megawatt generator. That means it will have a
capability of generating 10 megawatts for 8 hours or 2 megawatts for 40 hours, however your
arithmetic works.
So, if the town of Clonclurry is connected to the Mount Isa grid, which is not part of the total eastern
Australia grid, it’s just a separate, small grid. The way the plant will operate will, it will actually
operate as a peaking plant for 8 hours a day will put 10 megawatts into that small grid. But it will put it
in at Clonclurry where the town load is.
If, for some reason, the lines to the generator plant near Mount Isa were cut then it would be capable of
supplying the town. At a varying load obviously over the day, but it would be capable of supplying the
town independently.
Matt: OK, so it has the higher value when connected to the greater area grid of being able to provide
that very important peak power, but in isolation it can actually run autonomously for that town and
keep it’s energy security, I guess.
Steve: Yes. Well, in a way, I guess that’s why the technology we have developed has a lot of potential
to move forward and replace significantly a lot of non-renewable generation simply because it’s
available on demand. The problem with solar energy – in fact solar energy is more expensive to
produce than wind energy at the present moment and that’s just a function of the state of technology
development. Which means to a grid owner, or an electricity utility, it doesn’t have a lot of inherent
value because it’s only there when the sun’s shining, it can’t be used at other times. By applying this
technology that we have and having it stored and available on demand the gap between the cost and the
value closes because it can be used on demand, it can be used as peaking source and it can be used as a
network support function, so the value goes up from say four or five cents a kilowatt hour to ten or
twelve cents a kilowatt hour and that’s around about what the generation cost is. So, by having that
utility function, or that capability to be available on demand, closes the gap between the cost and the
value.
Matt: So, we’ve got this 15 tonne block of graphite sitting on top of a 20 meter tower and you talked
about very low losses. Can you tell us a bit about it? It must be super insulated and have opening to
allow the light in. Can you explain a bit about that?
Steve: It is insulated obviously, but the secret is that, remember I referred earlier to the properties of
graphite and how it lends its use to thermal storage, one of the very useful properties of graphite for this
purpose is that high purity graphite, which is crystalline in structure, does not in fact emit radiated heat
like other black bodies do for example. Normally, if you remember from high school physics, a perfect
black body radiates at a factor of one. Most grey materials of the colour of graphite radiate energy at a
factor of about 0.8 - 0.9. Graphite is an odd one because of its crystalline structure it radiates at a factor
of about 0.2. That number incidentally is called the emissivity; it has an emissivity of 0.2.
What that all means, getting away from the scientific goobledigook, is that if you have a block of
extremely hot graphite and if you put your hand close to it, 50 mm away from it, you actually can’t feel
it because it’s not radiating heat. Mind you, if you touch it you might lose your finger! It’s that property
that contains the heat. So over a day, and obviously there are some differences with ambient
temperature conditions and so forth, over a day our blocks lose about 3 to 5% of the thermal energy
heat contained within them. Now that depends on wind and temperatures and so forth, but that’s about
the average. So, in other words, if you heated the block up and didn’t take any energy out of it, it would
take well over a month to actually just cool down to where it started from.
Scott: The properties of graphite are amazing; I wasn’t aware of that. We are speaking with Steve
Hollis, CEO of Lloyd Energy Systems and we’re on 3CR community radio. Now Steve, this graphite
storage, do you think it will help solar or wind power get grid parity with non-renewable forms of
energy coming onto the grid?
Steve: It’s certainly now very close to reaching pricing parity with alternative energy sources in the
solar application. The commonly available forms of renewable energy these days are wind obviously,
and I won’t talk much about that because most people know the issues involved, solar energy is divided
into two basic categories if you like.
In one category you have photovoltaics which is the direct version of converting sunlight into electrical
current and everyone’s familiar with those and you can see them on roofs and places, they’re
commonly used now for small scale applications. The problem with them of course is that the
electricity only comes out of them when the sun’s shining. So, if you want to make it available on
demand or around the clock you’ve got to then take that electricity and put it into a battery because
electrons are very difficult things to store and batteries at the present moment, capacitors are really the
only way we know of storing electrons. So that’s a severe limitation on the use of photovoltaics as a
replacement for baseload power and also the cost at the present moment of photovoltaics, even without
storage, is relatively quite high. If you then add the battery storage component it becomes even higher
again. So, photovoltaics as a large scale replacement for non-renewable energy - I think we are decades
and decades away from that.
However, in the other category we have solar thermal power and of course the major difference with
solar thermal power is that heat is much, much easier to store and everyone knows how to store heat, so
there’s much more potential on the concentrating solar power side; CSP is the term that is generally
used. There are a number of different technologies that concentrate solar power. There’s the parabolic
troughs, there’s large dishes, there’s the CFLR which is the Compact Fresnel Lens Reflector system
which are a series of flat mirrors across the ground turned at different angles that simulate the parabolic
shape.
All of those linear systems, the parabolic troughs and so forth, they’ve got two limitations; or they’ve
got one limitation that has two effects. That is, they don’t get to very high temperatures. They get to
300 or 350 degrees. At those temperatures the generation of electricity through steam turbines is quite
inefficient, very low efficiency.
The next problem is that the energy is collected in a fluid and you’ve got to take that fluid off into some
sort of storage; be it a storage tank for steam or a storage tank for hot water or molten salt, which is
also stored in tanks, so you’ve actually got to take it away. But storing it at those low temperatures
means that you have to have enormous storages because the storage density is very low.
Now, if you go to high tower systems, and some of the high towers are now coupled up to molten salt
systems, they overcome this because they have very high temperatures, say up to 1000 degrees, eight or
nine hundred degrees, which means that if you’re generating steam at high temperatures above 350
degrees you have much more efficient electricity generation in steam turbines.
That’s the first factor, and the second factor is that if you can get it in to storage at those high
temperatures then storage density is much higher and you can pack a lot more energy into the space. It
makes it more efficient and cheaper.
And our system of course, we have temperatures of up to 800 degrees in our blocks, so we’re storing at
a very, very high energy density and also we are able to take the steam off at high temperatures and
generate electricity using high temperature steam turbines, which again have the efficiency of those two
factors. All of that says that concentrating solar power is where we’re going to be going in the future
for large scale replacement of non-renewables – using solar energy – for the simple fact that you can
actually store thermal energy much more easily than you can any other form of electricity, and also
storing it before you convert the solar energy into electricity means that theoretically the storage is
almost 100% efficient, whereas most other storages have got an efficiency factor which increases the
cost and you lose energy in the process.
So, the future I think, for renewable energy to replace, to make a large impact on our energy generation
inventory, the future lies with concentrating solar power plus storage for a whole number of good,
physical reasons.
Matt: So, just on that storage, if you do have cheaper sources of variable renewables like wind power,
is there potential after hours, as a last resort, to dump excess wind power into the graphite blocks that
are already sitting on top of these towers?
Steve: Yes, our technology is available in two packages if you like. We have the solar storage system,
which is the block sitting on the tower, but the energy that is produced from a wind turbine is obviously
electricity. We have another product, another storage package if you like, which is blocks that are
actually heated by electricity, and they sit on the ground, they don’t sit up in the air, there is no need for
them to be in the air.
And in fact, we have a project which is being undertaken by a licensee of ours on King Island in
Tasmania where that is exactly what they are going to do. There is a lot of wind on King Island and
they have a far more wind energy available than they can actually utilise because of the mismatch
between the availability of the wind obviously and the demand.
So, what they’re going to be developing there is a system whereby all that surplus wind is transferred
into the mach11, or the second type of block that we produce, and stored as heat once again and then
re-generated as electricity. So, that’s the second application for the technology; using the wind energy.
That’s a market we are also in. As I said that King Island project will be the first of that type.
My point is really though that throughout the world, and particularly throughout developing countries
in the world, the greatest potential for penetration of renewable energy into the mix of generation we’ve
got now lies with solar power, not with wind, simply because there’s more of it available.
Matt: So, I guess what I was actually asking is it possible to bring the King Island, I guess they’re
called resistive elements or resistive coils, the less efficient version using wind power, is it possible to
bring that together with the solar tower so that you might have already used some of your heat at 10pm
or 11pm and then suddenly you have a burst of wind in the middle of the night and you’ve got nothing
to do with it, would it be possible then to make double use of these solar powers and heat those as well?
Steve: In principle, yes. In practice it’s actually better to have your electrically heated blocks just
sitting on the ground and then coupling the two steam generation systems together, but in principle yes,
in practical terms it would just work a little bit differently. You wouldn’t actually put the electrical
energy into the blocks on the towers, you’d actually have a block sitting on the ground and put it (the
electricity) into the block on the ground still running the same steam generation system but by two
different - machI and machII type - blocks.
Matt: Ok. I guess I was just asking from a perspective of the economics. If the blocks cost quite a bit
of money I thought that there might be a bit of value in combining the two.
Steve: Ahh, no, the economics would stack up. What you’d generally find though is that there are not
all that many places – we haven’t investigated every place in the world - we have a couple of locations
we’ve looked at where we are doing that, for example Norfolk Island. Norfolk Island has both. It has
wind and it has solar and we’ve looked at putting the dual system if you like. In fact we put a proposal
to the government at Norfolk Island some time ago where we’ve got a dual system, a solar and wind
system, where we’re getting the best of both worlds.
Where the best solar resources are in places like Cloncurry and so forth there is actually very little
wind, and where the best wind resources are, which is generally around coastlines there is a lot of cloud
so the sun is not so good. But where you’ve got a location where you can do both, yes, certainly that’s
very viable.
Scott: So, ultimately you could have a dual system but if you have a good solar resource you just go
for the solar system on its own because that’s going to be the best solution.
Steve: It will certainly be the cheaper solution, there’s no doubt about that.
Scott: Now, can you tell us about the status of some of your current projects.
Steve: Yes, sure. The Lake Cargelligo project, it’s a project we’re doing supported by the Federal
Government through the advanced Energy Storage Technologies Program, from The Greenhouse
office. They’ve given us a grant towards that project. That project has physically commenced on the
ground now. We are doing site works and so forth, the development applications and so forth are all
through council and we are manufacturing all the components for assembly out there.
Our program there is that we’ll put one block up there just so we can do a final check on insolation
rates and those other things before we put the next 15 up. So, we’ll have 16 units that plant is designed
– it’s only a relatively small plant. It’s 3 megawatts which will operate for a different number of hours
in the summer and winter. Mostly that coincides with the peak demands of the network out there.
Once again, it’s capable of supplying the two towns of Lake Cargelligo and Condoblin on its own if it
had to, but what we will do is we will actually run it flat out when it’s running and any surplus
electricity can just go back down the line into the grid. That project should be, the first module will be
completed up there by the beginning of March. The next stage is half the modules up and the steam
generator in, running at half capacity by July and then the rest of it about 6 months later. So, by the end
of 2009 that project will well and truly be up and running. The Cloncurry project is probably about nine
months behind that in terms of the development program.
We have eight other projects under negotiation at the present moment. A lot of those projects though
are for off-grid applications for mines that are currently using diesel, where it’s a diesel replacement
exercise. Diesel generation is extremely expensive, not as expensive today as it was three or four
months ago when the diesel price was much higher, but we’re looking at prices like 40, 50, 60, 70 cents
per kilowatt hour for mines off-grid to generate electricity using diesel. So, it’s highly costly and it’s
highly environmentally unfriendly. All of the miners, without exception, are now coming to us and
talking to us about putting in our system, and we can deliver 24 hour power in remote locations for a
fraction of the price of diesel. Even though it’s more expensive than grid electricity, but they don’t have
the option of grid electricity.
So, it does two things for the miners. The sort of systems we are talking about, our system and other
solar systems, are very, very capital intensive. They’re very expensive to install, very cheap to operate,
whereas diesel for example is very cheap to buy and install but extremely expensive to operate. So, the
beauty of our system, and solar systems, is that once you’ve got them in 90% of the operating cost, or
the production cost, is in fact in servicing the capital. The operating cost is 5 to 10% of the production
cost, so therefore to someone like a mining company that says well we have diesel costs that are going
skywards and we’re then going to have to meet some form of carbon tax in the future, and that’s an
unknown quantity at this stage, so we’ve got a cost curve which is just going upwards.
If we put in a solar system such as ours, we can actually lock in a price, fix it for 20 years and it doesn’t
change because we’re simply servicing capital, and that appeals to miners. Same thing to a lot of other
users of power that generate power off grid.
The biggest market for our technology, and you’ve seen it happen with Ausra, Professor David Mills’
company, they’ve gone to California where the pricing structures are such there that their solar products
are viable and that’s where it’s all happening and for our technology that’s exactly where we’re getting
a lot of interest from America. But also of course from Southern Europe where there is a lot of sun, and
in Spain and the Mediterranean islands where there is plenty of sun and they have a feed-in tariff for
solar energy. So, you haven’t got to go cap in hand to the government to say we want a subsidy for this,
it’s automatically there through the feed-in tariff. So, we have a lot of enquires, and in fact some heads
of agreement, to do projects in the Mediterranean right now.
Matt: That’s excellent. Just one last question before we have to finish up the interview. Can you tell us
a bit about the history of how the idea of this carbon block came about?
Steve: Yes, it’s an interesting story. The name Lloyd Energy Systems comes from the name of Bob
Lloyd whose the inventor. Bob came from a background in the power industry and he was obsessed,
and we are talking about 40 years ago, he was obsessed by the problems of coal combustion and he
always had the view that we are mad because we burn dirty coal and then we try and clean up the mess
afterwards. We have ashes to get rid of, we have noxious gases and so forth, and we’ve also got an
inefficient combustion system because we’re taking all the rubbish that comes with coal through the
combustion, where what we should be doing is cleaning up coal before it goes into combustion.
He did a lot of work over about 25 years and produced a clean coal product which produced coal that
was 99.8% pure which doesn’t produce any knocks and socks emissions and has lower carbon dioxide
emissions.
You can also put it through a jet engine type generator, a gas turbine type generator, which is more
efficient than steam generation plant and it doesn’t produce any ash and residues afterwards, but in
1985 when it was patented nobody knew about greenhouse gases then. Bob was 20 years ahead of it
time so it foundered.
So, he used that same process for cleaning coal to clean graphite. His method of production of clean
graphite which has got all these beaut properties which we’ve just been talking about, that was the
genesis of this technology.
Scott: That’s fantastic. Now the invention of Robert Lloyd is something we are quite impressed by, and
we are also impressed by the information you’ve given us during this interview. It’s actually been very
informative, so thank you very much Steve for the interview.
Steve: You are very welcome, Scott.
Scott: And I wish you all the luck with future projects and it’s great to see you guys getting into
southern Europe and California and getting in there with the real big hitters.
Steve: I might just add there at the end that it has taken a fair bit of money to get to this stage and until
we got this last grant for the project none of it’s been with government funding. It’s all been from
individuals with a vision for the future, no corporates, nothing. Just individuals who were prepared to
invest in it because they believed in it.
Matt: Fantastic.
Scott: It’s a great story for Australia. Thank you very much, Steve.
Steve: Thank you.
Scott: We’ve just been speaking with Steve Hollis, CEO of Lloyd Energy Systems, an Australian
company that has created a large-scale, low energy cost, storage system. For more information visit
their website at www.lloydenergy.com.