With prototyping now complete and $180 million of conditional funding recently announced from ARENA, Vast is taking its commercially ready concentrated solar thermal technology to the world of renewables. Here’s what’s happening.
Founded more than 15 years ago, Vast manufactures concentrated solar thermal power (CSP) technology solutions that capture, store and generate zero carbon, on-demand heat and power.
“We’ve developed the world’s leading CSP technology,” said CEO, Craig Wood.
Wood said the idea behind the technology originated from a realisation that, to completely decarbonise, Australia needed a renewable energy technology that had long-duration energy storage capabilities. While he admitted that all renewable technologies are excellent, the challenge remains the “annoying thing called night-time,” when intermittent renewables – like solar PV – are not available.
“Our technology can take daytime energy, store it, and then reliably generate during peak pricing periods at nighttime. It’s one of the few technologies that we still need in the energy mix to transition to a properly green future,” he said.
Vast has strong backing from government, with its first utility-scale project, VS1 in Port Augusta, recently awarded up to $180 million of conditional funding from the Federal Government-owned Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA,) and up to $110 million of concessional finance from the Australian Government already committed.
In addition to Australian Government support, in 2023 Vast also expanded its reach globally by listing on the NASDAQ under the symbol VSTE and is backed by global energy leaders EDF and Nabors. After recently completing prototyping, Vast is primed to take the renewables manufacturing market by storm with a pipeline of demonstration and commercial scale plants in development around the world.
An idea over a decade in the making
Behind what is already becoming a successful manufacturing business is a first of its kind technology. Vast’s next generation CSP technology utilises large mirrors – called heliostats – that are precisely curved to concentrate the sun’s energy towards a receiver tower that gathers sunshine and stores it within a sealed chamber full of molten salt. After it is stored, the energy can be taken and used directly as electricity or heat to power the grid, fuels production for shipping and aviation, specialist industries such as data centres, and hard to abate industries like mining and refining.
“What we’re doing, it’s very similar to a kid shining sunlight with a magnifying glass, except it’s on a giant industrial scale,” said Wood.
Each standard Vast solar module contains around 2500 heliostats pointing at the receiver tower, which itself is 50 metres tall and contains a 4.2-metre by 4.2-metre solar receiver.
“Each of those heliostats is 6.4 square metres of glass, has one gearbox, a foundation and the capability to track the sun,” said Wood. “We concentrate up to 1000 suns on the front face of the receiver, and then we cool the receiver and take that heat away using liquid sodium metal. There’s a door on the tower that keeps the receiver warm so that sodium doesn’t freeze. The door seals to create a little hot box to keep the sodium loop contained overnight.”
A past, present and future of projects
The first project developed to demonstrate the viability of this technology began 10 years ago when Vast first got involved with mechanical and thermodynamic systems to capture, concentrate and move heat.
“This research ultimately led to the development and operation of a 1.1-megawatt grid connected power station,” said Wood.
The project was the first that proved the company’s technology and the scalability of its modular systems. It consisted of 3,500 heliostats configured into five modular tower arrays and was successful in connecting to Australia’s electricity grid. This project garnered international attention, receiving International Energy Agency’s SolarPACES 2019 Technical Innovation Award.
In the five years since this project was commissioned, Vast continued to perfect its technology, resulting in the development of the utility-scale clean energy project, VS1, in Port Augusta, South Australia.
“Since running that demonstration project for nearly three years, we continued to refine the technology, develop the manufacturing methods, and push towards the first commercial reference plant, which will be a 30-megawatt power station with eight hours of storage located in Port Augusta, South Australia,” said Wood.
The 30MW plant will use Vast’s modular tower CSP v3.0 technology and is expected to commence construction after reaching final investment decision in 2025.
“The 30-megawatt plant is going to have eight of our modules,” said Wood.
Vast is also developing a co-located green methanol production facility, South Australia Solar Fuels in Port Augusta, in partnership with global energy company, Mabanaft. This world-first renewable methanol demonstration plant is set to receive approximately $40 million in funding as part of the German Australian Hydrogen Innovation and Technology Incubator (HyGATE). It will use the renewable heat from VS1 to produce methanol, leveraging VS1’s clean energy to decarbonise the hard-to-abate shipping industry. Once operational, SM1 has the potential to produce up to 7,500 tonnes per annum of renewable methanol.
Another future Vast project with large implications is VS2, a hybrid 50MW commercial plant that will use the company’s CSP v3.0 technology, combined with solar PV for daytime generation and a large-scale battery and gas engines for firming to produce a generator that delivers low-cost, dispatchable, clean energy 24/7.
“VS2 will have 30 of our modules to allow us to gather more energy,” said Wood.
Wood also noted VS3, a project in the pipeline that will be co located with VS1 in Port Augusta, and have in the order of 70 to 80 modules.
Developing capability for such an ambition
Wood emphasised that the potential scale of eventual operations has meant the company has prioritised modularity within manufacturing processes to ensure costs remain low and processes remain straightforward.
“We don’t want unnecessarily complicated manufacturing techniques that mean that the end product ends up having a cost without a better outcome,” said Wood. “We’re simple people. We just like using things like steel and concrete and glass. We think that they result in high quality system with a much more straightforward, cheap and reliable supply chain.”
Thanks to its modular manufacturing capabilities, Vast is set to scale up to automated manufacturing to support its project pipeline. With a team of just over 50 people of diverse expertise, Vast’s has leveraged largely manual manufacturing processes for prototyping and testing to date.
“Our office is in North Sydney and our main manufacturing facility is near Ipswich in Queensland. That facility is where we’ve done all the development prototyping and testing,” said Wood.
Upgrades to manual manufacturing capabilities are already in the pipeline for Vast, who are set to purchase an automated manufacturing line from a German partner. The line will be purpose-built for Vast’s site in Port Augusta, and will have the ability to be packed up and moved to the next project.
“When it’s installed, it will have capacity to manufacture in the order of 200,000 to 250,000 heliostats per annum. The line itself has significant capacity,” said Wood. “We need a production line of this sort because our technology really works best when it’s at 100MW+ scale, with 12 to 20 hours of storage. With those size plants, you will have 70+ solar fields, and 200,000+ heliostats per plant.”
Wood said that embedded throughout the company’s manufacturing capabilities is an emphasis on quality assurance and quality control (QA QC). Because what Vast does is a precise operation – with mirrors curved to within one millimetre of accuracy – it has spent time working on automated solutions and ensuring appropriate quality measurements are met.
“At each point, we’ve worked extremely closely with our supply chain partners to make sure that our quality measures are integrated through the systems that they’re working on,” said Wood. He attributed his focus on quality to the importance that nothing happens at the factory.
Partnerships and funding
The progress Vast has made in its manufacturing capabilities and technology expertise wouldn’t be possible without partnerships that emerge in “two different buckets,” financial backers and research partnerships.
“In the somewhat heated renewable technology debate in this country, I think there is an understanding on both sides that our technology is important, and that’s why we’ve been supported by both sides,” he said. “We have been backed by ARENA for 10 years and the level of support has increased. It’s just been critical in terms of technology development.”
Wood also said that in addition to support from ARENA, another large investment came from a high-net-worth backer who took the company through the first 14 years and eventually brought it to the point of being listed on the NASDAQ. He believes that there are huge opportunities for Vast in the US.
“We have three staff in Houston. And while we are an Australian company, the reality for us is that there are major international opportunities, and the first one that we’re focusing on is the US,” he said. “Our technology works best in hot, sunny places, so places like Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, West Texas and California are great for us.”
Aside from financial backers, Wood also emphasised the importance of research partnerships with the likes of ASTRI (Australian Solar Thermal Research Institute), CSIRO, EDF, Fichtner, Mars, Nabors, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the U.S. department of energy and the German Government. These partnerships helped Vast pull expertise from a lot of people in a lot of different areas.
“We’ve gone to the very best people in the world, and said, ‘Here’s what we’re trying to do, we want this from you. Are you prepared to work with us on that basis?’ Often, people say yes,” said Wood. “You can see that we’ve gone and found the right people to work with from all around the world and within Australia that have contributed to getting to where we are now.”
Going forward
Moving forward, Wood has emphasised the importance of building CSP plants in Australia that are critical to decarbonising our country, rather than exporting technology to the rest of the world. To achieve this, he noted that the Government must continue to support sovereign efforts.
“What we have at Vast is actually a homegrown opportunity to be the world leader in this technology,” he said.
In the near future, Wood also expects to explore other global markets, including the Middle East, which lacks a viable alternative to CSP.
This global vision represents the ambition of Wood and his colleagues at Vast, a company that is now primed to scale up manufacturing operations and take its already functional technology to change the international energy landscape.