Vast Solar has landed a total of $180 million in grant funding from the federal government as it comes into the final furlong to start construction on its ambitious and ground breaking Port Augusta solar thermal plant.
The latest round of funds from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) will underwrite at least half of the required investment for the projects and replaces – and augments – the 2023 promise of $65 million from energy minister Chris Bowen.
ARENA paid out half of that original tranche last year, before upsizing the grant to account for the steep spike in building costs in the last two years.
The new money is conditional on several milestones, however, including raising the rest of the capital for the $360-390 million project.
Much of this will come in the form of a $110 million concessional loan negotiated in 2022 from the then-Coalition government, originally slated for the huge solar tower project that had been put forward by US-based SolarReserve before its collapse.
Vast Solar CEO Craig Wood hopes French energy giant EdF, which invested $10 million into the company in December 2023, will come through with the remainder.
The Port Augusta Green Energy Hub project is a 30 megawatt (MW) solar thermal project with eight hours of storage (240 MWh).
The company finished its first-of-its-kind concentrated solar thermal power (CSP) receiver tower in February, and has completed the front-end engineering design work and commercial development for the whole project.
The last hurdle is to close on the final funding for the project, also known as VS1, and for Vast so it can start construction this year — a goal dependent on raising the last of that cash, rather than a deadline, Wood says.
Concentrated solar thermal uses arrays of mirrors, called heliostats, which direct sunlight to a single receiver set atop a tower.
That energy heats a liquid piped in behind the receiver – in Vast’s case a molten salt – which is kept in tanks and used to run a typical steam generator when electricity is needed, turning the solar generator into a battery as well.
The receiver is one of the final components in what will be Australia’s first large scale solar thermal project to be built and tested as an operational power station. Vast Solar has designed a receiver that is 50m high, rather than the giant 100-200m towers required by other projects overseas.
Vast has relied on the Australian government, through ARENA, and investors EDF and NYSE-listed Nabors Industries to get the project off the ground.
The company is also still working on adding a green methanol plant to the bigger green energy hub but last month told Renew Economy that still a work in progress – the pre-front end engineering design (pre-FEED) process has been completed and optimisation is now underway.
Last year the company was hoping to draw on the resources of French nuclear giant EdF, which has invested €10 million into Vast itself, to become an equity partner in the Port Augusta project.
At the end of 2024, the company cash and equivalents of $6.9 million available.
