Australian concentrated solar power technology developer Vast Solar has struck a deal with the world’s biggest oil industry drilling contractor to become a publicly listed company on the New York Stock Exchange in a bid to take its technology to the world.
The Sydney-based company is to follow the well-trodden recent route of technology start-ups using a special services company – in this case Nabors Energy Transition – to list on the NYSE, and will drop solar from its name and become known simply as Vast.
The complex transaction will see Nabors – a huge oil industry contractor looking to expand into clean energy – and existing shareholder AgCentral, owned by the family of farming billionaire John Kalbetzer, each put $US15 million into the company.
The resulting listing – depending on the amount of redemptions in the NYSE listing – could more than double Vast’s equity base to up to $US580 million, giving it a platform to pursue multiple gigawatts of projects around the world.
The move comes just days after the company was pledged a $65 million grant rom the Australian Renewable Energy Agency to build Australia’s first full scale solar concentrated power plant in Port Augusta.
This adds to the $110 million in concessional finance from the Australian government, and a further $40 million from the Australian and German governments to add a hydrogen electrolyser and solar methanol conversion facility to the project.
Vast has built a 1.1MW pilot plant in Jemalong, NSW, which it says proves its technology, which differs from predecessors by using modular arrays of solar towers and receivers to capture and store energy from the sun and use it provide electricity of heat.
It has dubbed these attributes as CSP 3.0, following previous parabolic trough and large centralised tower technologies. Vast technology also uses sodium as a heat transfer fluid and says it has improved the efficiency of the solar collecting system, reducing capital and operating costs. It uses mostly steel and glass.
“We believe our CSP v3.0 technology represents a significant evolution from traditional CSP systems, with the potential to be able to produce 24/7 dispatchable energy from the sun’s rays,” Vast Solar CEO Craig Wood told an investor briefing in the US overnight.
Vast has ambitions well beyond the $203 million Port Augusta project, known as VS1 and sized at 30MW and 288MWh, and has plans for other projects such as a bigger 50MW CSP plant in the mining city of Mt Isa in Queensland.
It is also eyeing a possible expansion of the Port Augusta site into a 150MW facility, and has a joint interest with 1414 in a potential battery storage project at the same site, which was vacated by the failed SolarReserve.
Vast says its technology is superior to solar and other forms of storage because it can provide both power and heat and on a 24/7 basis. Its investor presentation released overnight says it will be able to do this at a cost of just $US50/MWh at scale, cheaper than its competitors.
It says the proposed business combination could become a catalyst for a world-leading CSP industry, and help Australia become a clean energy export superpower.
“Vast’s CSP technology collects and stores the sun’s energy during the day for delivery at any time, making around-the-clock, clean power a reality,” Wood says.
“While the cost of wind and PV solar have declined significantly, their intermittency remains a key challenge that can only be addressed with storage.
“By providing clean, renewable energy with low-cost, long-duration storage, our CSP system can be incorporated as dispatchable generation in a way that is not possible using PV solar or wind with batteries.”
Nabors, an oil industry drilling contractor valued at more than $US3.5 billion says it is interested in clean, baseload and scalable energy technologies, and can offer expertise in robotics and automation important to the CSP technology.
“Vast has the potential to deliver low-cost, clean, renewable and dispatchable power and heat, a combination that no other technology has yet been able to achieve,” said Anthony Petrello, the president and CEO of Nabors.
Wood told the investors call overnight that there is current an installed base of CSP in the world of 7 gigawatts, but this is forecast by the International Energy Agency to grow to up to 430GW by 2050.
“We believe Vast is well-positioned to seize opportunities in the market right now, as well as those that will develop as the market for CSP rapidly grows,” he said.
He cited project opportunities in the Middle East and in the US, where Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act will provide investment tax credits and other incentives projected to reduce the levelized cost of energy by up to 25% by 2030.
“This is significant,” Wood said. “This takes what was already a competitive technology and further reduces the barriers to adoption. We have plans to accelerate the development of our US project pipeline beginning this year.”
