"So when you come to manufacturing, we only have to produce one fifteen hundredth of the stuff," Lasich explains. "It's a massive advantage because it costs you roughly three to five dollars per watt of annual production capacity to build a photovoltaic factory.
So if you wanted to build a facility that could produce 100 MWs a year, it would cost you around A$300 million for solar panels, whereas it would only cost us a fraction of that price."
High-performance solar cells driven by intense beams work wonderfully well, converting sunlight into AC power at very high efficiency — about 25 per cent. "That's the same as they get at Loy Yang [a large Australian coal-fired power station]," he says. "But we can turn light into electricity instantly, whereas with coal you've got to have something that's been worked on for 20 million years."
Lasich has been developing photovoltaic systems ever since the mid-1970s, first as a student, then in his own backyard, and finally at Solar Systems, which he founded in 1990. An electrical engineer-turned-physicist by training, Lasich also has extensive experience of building large-scale thermal and control systems for the petrochemical and power industries.
The mirrors and tracking devices that will constitute 85 per cent of the new plant are made from laminated windscreen glass, steel and concrete — all relatively cheap materials. In place of dishes, the plant will consist of arrays of 250 heliostats — individual mirrors that track the Sun and reflect it at solar cell modules housed on 40 metre-high towers.
It will be built over seven years at several sites, covering 800 hectares in total. They are located in the Mallee, an inland area that is the hottest and driest part of Victoria.
Ultimately, the plant will be connected to the national power grid, functioning as a 'peak lopper'. That is, it will help to deal with peaks in demand that occur on the hottest days of summer, when everyone simultaneously turns on their air-conditioners.
Hotter weather and lower prices have led to a boom in air-conditioning, making Australia one of the world's 'peakiest' countries. Happily solar power, unlike wind, can be relied upon to match daytime supply with demand since, when demand for air-conditioning is greatest, the Sun is also shining.
With the economies of scale developed in building this first large-scale plant and the technology of non-silicon solar cells continuing to improve, Lasich is bullish about the future.
"I think we're at a watershed," he says. "Solar power is about 10 bucks a watt now, our stations that we've built out there are now about eight bucks, and the cost per unit in a big plant is vastly less. If we can get below the three-dollar-a-watt mark, it's just going to explode."
What percentage of the demand for electric power could solar be realistically expected to provide? "You could put 10 per cent into the grid without disturbing it too much," he suggests, "because the daytime peak is about 10 per cent above night-time.
With current electricity generation capacity in Australia almost 50 gigawatts, 10 per cent would be five gigawatts; it would be around A$15 billion worth of photovoltaic. That's enough business to establish a whole new industry."
