Here are a few things that I picked up at the Brisbane Roadshow:
When questioned about the decommissioning of Ceto 5, he made several points.
1. It was not left to continue operating because he required all of the manpower resources to be working on
Ceto 6.
2. The Ceto 6 concept was conceived back in 2012.
3. When Ceto 5 was first conceived, solar power output cost 50 cents/kWh. By the time Ceto 5 was deployed it had come down to 10 cents/kWh.
4. It is possible that Ceto 6 output might achieve output as high as 2.5 MW.
In dealing with Defence, MO said that they "hated" much being said about installations in security sensitive areas.
I take that to mean, information we receive about military projects will not have much detail.
An example of this was an aerial shot of the Delamere array had blurred out the rest of the base.
He said all contracts with Defence contained confidentiality agreements.
He reaffirmed what had been said at the other presentations about the delay in commissioning Garden Island was because of other work on the upgrade being done. He said there were up to thirty contractors doing work around the base. CCE just had to wait for their turn before cabling could be done.
He said it will be turned on very soon.
The CSIRO array at Murchison has similar restrictions as Garden Island preventing CCE saying too much. It too has a confidentiality agreement. He did offer however, that that the microgrid has been running since December.
Several questions were asked about other energy storage technologies. He reconfirmed that CCE were technology agnostic.
In regard to redox flow battery technology he mentioned Redflow as a company that has had to reassess how they go about commercialising their product. Right now they have not found their niche as Li ion batteries are beating them on cost. That is not to say that redox flow batteries don't have a future, it is just that they still have work to do to get recognition.
The 1414 degrees thermal energy storage system technology that heats silicon was mentioned. He said they had had discussions with them. He was non committal about any outcomes, other than to say that 1414 were in a very competitive field. I took that to mean that they will need to beat off the competition before CCE does anything with them.
On Ceto 6, he mentioned the possibility of a two leg mooring system.
He again mentioned buoys being constructed from concrete. This would allow for construction near deployment zone.
The CSIRO project is only the beginning of work at Murchison. I am pretty sure he said that another eighteen such arrays will be required when ASKAP is fully developed.
The expertise that CCE and CSIRO have developed on alleviating radio interference, will carry through to military projects as well.
The person I sat next to was formally an operations officer at Delamere Weapons Range and also at HMAS Stirling. He was very enthusiastic about the opportunities that CCE will get through the Department of Defence.
As at the other roadshows, he mentioned tenders for eighty SAP projects in Western Australia. He made the point that CCE had done all twelve of the systems in the trials done so far.
In explaining why Western Power were doing this, it basically came down to them being terrified that fringe of grid consumers would abandon them to install there own SAP systems. The only thing preventing them now is cost.
In WA legislation ensures consumers in Perth pay the same for electricity as those that are on the end of a two or three hundred pole and wire leg of the grid.
Western Power are trying as best they can to offer SAP to keep them as customers.
MO said just about anywhere on th e perimeter of the southern grid was suitable for SAP. About fifteen thousand systems could be required.
Regardless whether CCE builds them for Western Power or not, they should be able to sell the same product directly to the consumer, if that is what they want.
MO did mention that the details of another microgrid project should be known in about a month.
CCE Price at posting:
3.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
