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https://reneweconomy.com.au/csiro-spin-off-raises-record-amount-to-fund-solar-heat-and-power-tech-get-industry-off-gas/>
"A new concentrated solar thermal company spun out of Australia’s national
science agency, CSIRO, is promising to deliver zero emissions, 24/7 heat and
power that is both technically and economically competitive with gas.
The new company, FPR Energy, launched on Tuesday after raising $15 million in a
venture capital funding round led by RFC Ambrian. It is the largest seed
funding haul for a CSIRO co-founded venture to date.
FPR’s technology captures solar energy using heliostats to heat abundant and
low-cost ceramic particles, which then store energy for on-demand industrial
heat or continuous electricity generation.
The CST technology has been tested at a 1 megawatt scale (1MW) and shown to be
able provide around eight hours of electricity generation and 16 hours of
storage, and is capable of producing temperatures up to 1200°C – an industry
first.
The provision of non-fossil industrial heat at the temperatures and scales
required by industry – according to FPR nearly half of industrial heat demand
exceeds 500°C – is a particularly valuable at the moment, in the race to net
zero.
But the record-setting fund-raising attracted by FPE Energy also suggests that
it could be CST’s time to shine, after a number of false starts and commercial
stumbles in the shadow of the enormous success of solar photovoltaics.
“From our perspective, we’d like to think that this is probably one of the
reasons why CSIRO has taken the steps to to form a new venture and to create a
new entity in an emerging industry,” FPR’s senior technology advisor, Greg
Wilson, tells
Renew Economy.
Wilson, who was core to the CSIRO team who developed the particle based CST
technology and led its commercialisation and spin-out to form FPR Energy, says
it’s likely a combination of huge unmet demand and the attributes of company’s
technology that has hit the spot with investors.
“The technology that FPR Energy is developing enables a diversity of
applications, and that’s what our customer base has been impressed by in some
ways,” he said on Tuesday.
“You know, you can use the technology for electricity provision; it’s got
integrated storage for dispatchable demand and, importantly, high temperature
industrial heat … [for] those hard to abate industry sectors that are looking
for renewable energy sources and solutions.”
One of the barriers standing in the way of CST’s commercial success has been
cost, but Wilson says modelling carried out by the CSIRO team and published in
peer review articles shows that at a 50MW CST plant is “pretty commercial” at
around or below $12 a gigajoule.
“That’s very close to the parity for gas, and that can become one of the
attractions for our industrial partners,” he tells
Renew Economy."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
