Australian solar and thermal energy storage company RayGen says it has achieved a major international milestone with the commissioning of a 1 MW concentrated solar plant in Brazil.
Image: RayGen
RayGen has installed a 1 MW concentrated solar system in Brazil with local power company Axia Energia, formerly known as Eletrobras, investigating the technology’s potential to help power ‘AI factories.’
RayGen Chief Executive Officer Richard Payne said the new facility is now fully operational, showcasing the Melbourne-based company’s concentrated solar technology in one of the world’s fastest-evolving energy markets.
“This is a proud moment for RayGen and for Australian innovation and advanced manufacturing,” Payne said in a Linkedin post. “Our unique technology, which generates clean electricity and thermal energy, is being rolled out internationally.”
RayGen’s PV Ultra technology uses an array of mirrors, or heliostats, to concentrate sunlight onto PV modules located in a central receiver. The solar generation system is traditionally coupled with a thermal water-based energy storage system but the Brazilian project has so far been limited to the concentrated solar element.
The new 1 MW facility, deployed at Axia’s Petrolina site in Brazil’s northeast, features a standalone PV Ultra system, comprising a heliostat field, receiver tower, PV Ultra modules and plant control system.
Axia, responsible for 17% of the Brazil’s power generation capacity and 37% of the total transmission lines in the national interconnected system, said the Petrolina site will be used to test the technology under local conditions prior to their potential deployment at scale.
Axia Executive Vice President Technology and Innovation Juliano Dantas said pioneering RayGen’s technology opens up alternatives to combine renewable energy, energy storage, and inertia.
“It is about enabling solar generation driven by demand, with power quality, which is very much aligned with Axia Energy’s philosophy of serving the market,” he said, adding that the company “intends to further investigate how this system can help power AI factories.”
RayGen’s integrated solar electricity generation and long-duration energy storage technology has been on show at a test facility at Newbridge in Victoria since 2015. The company also operates a commercial facility at Carwarp in the state’s northwest. That facility, that came online in 2023, consists of 4 MW solar and 3 MW / 50 MWh storage, capable of delivering 17 hours of continuous power to the electricity grid.
The Carwarp facility is under an offtake agreement with AGL which has also acquired the rights for an approved utility-scale project planned for Yadnarie, on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula.
The Yadnarie project would include 200 MW of solar generation and thermal storage of 115 MW capable of running at full capacity for just over 10 hours (1,200 MWh.
Updated April 1 to clarify the project does not include energy storage element.
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