West Australians will tell you there is no place on Earth quite like Perth. It has more sunny days than any other capital city in Australia. So it’s hardly surprising that Murdoch’s Rockingham Campus was chosen as the demonstration site for a new solar energy project developed at the Australian National University (ANU) in conjunction with the Australian CRC for Renewable Energy (ACRE).

Professor Andrew Blakers and his team at ANU have been developing parabolic photovoltaic trough concentrating systems for producing electricity. These systems consist of parabolic mirrors which focus sunlight onto a set of photovoltaic solar cells that are mounted along the focal line of the mirror. The main advantage of this system is that inexpensive mirrors can replace relatively expensive solar cells.

“The system has 80 mirrors that track the sun and concentrate light onto a line of solar cells,” project leader Professor Andrew Blakers said. “The solar cells produce electricity to feed into the power grid. The concentrated solar intensity on the solar cells is 25 times greater than normal, which means that 25 times fewer solar cells are needed to obtain the required electrical power output.”

The Rockingham system represents over six years’ of research and development on the con-centrator system in conjunction with ACRE, Western Power Corporation and commercial partner Solahart Industries. Electricity from the trough system will be exported into the electricity network and sold as part of Western Power’s NaturalPower Green Power scheme.

Whilst only at demonstration stage, it is expected that the Photovoltaic Trough Concentrator system will be in a competitive position to fill the demand in the remote area power supply market as restrictions are implemented on fossil fuel based technologies, such as diesel, in the future.

Students in the School of Engineering’s new Renewable Energy Engineering degree at Rockingham, as well as Energy Studies students from the Murdoch campus, are expected to benefit strongly from the collaboration with ANU and its project partners as the system becomes an integral part of teaching in these programs.

Professor Maurice Allen, Dean of the School of Engineering said that it was a great honour that Murdoch was selected to host the demonstration. The photovoltaic trough concentrator system is an ideal example of what can happen when researchers, government and research users work together. Professor Blakers and his team had an idea. The research and development partners made it a reality”, he said.

The project, from original research to demonstration stage represents considerable support from research, development and demonstration partners ACRE, Western Power, the Australian Greenhouse Office, the Alternative Energy Development Board of Western Australia, Murdoch University and South Metropolitan College of TAFE.

The project joins the 20kW wind turbine as another of ACRE’s key power generation projects to be successfully demonstrated this year, and was offically launched in August.