Solar thermal that is. The Queensland town of Cloncurry, (see below) is going to lay down 7 million (Australian) dollars to build themselves a nice big solar thermal power plant.
This 10-megawatt plant will fit right in. Cloncurry holds the record for Australia’s hottest day (127 in the shade), and you can see below they have plenty of solar radiation.
They plan on building 8 thousand mirrors and reflecting light onto graphite blocks, water will be pumped through the blocks to create steam, the steam turns turbines, and wham 10 megawatts of renewable energy. Not that they have to worry much about this, but on the off chance that they have a cloudy day, the graphite blocks will stay hot for a long time and continue making steam (they also make energy at night).
The station would deliver about 30 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year, enough to meet the needs of the entire community. Ergon Energy would develop the project, which is expected to be completed by the summer of 2009/2010.
There is absolutely no reason why most of the southwest of this country couldn’t do the exact same thing. In fact most of northern Africa could do the same (and sell the energy to Europe) so could large parts of Asia. Solar thermal power generation has a bright (pun!) future. Combined with wind, solar PV, wave, geothermal, and small scale hydro this is the kind of thing that will power the future.