SOLAR POWER BUILDER MOVES INTO THAILAND

Solarlite’s first mover advantage
Rikki Stancich, 11 February 2011 (CSP Today)

"Germany-based CSP OEM and developer Solarlite last month raised €4.5m (US$6.1mn) to develop small to medium-sized solar thermal power plants and establish a foothold in Thai and other international markets. The financing round, which attracted institutional and private investors, lays the financial foundation for the company’s international expansion…Solarlite develops and builds grid-connected as well as off-grid solar-thermal parabolic trough plants for power only or combined heat and power generation (steam, thermal energy and power)…"

[Moritz von Plate, Chief Financial Officer, Solarlite GmbH:] "The parabolic trough structure is different in comparison to the common steel or aluminium design, given that it is made out of composite material, which makes it very lightweight…The direct steam generation is independent of the trough. We don’t use thermal oil as the heat transfer fluid, which is expensive, toxic and flammable; instead, we use water that is evaporated in a controlled fashion to directly power the steam turbine…The design allows for a lower cost and smaller… [5-30Mwe] projects other big developers like Abengoa and Solar Millennium cannot cater to…"

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[Moritz von Plate, Chief Financial Officer, Solarlite GmbH:] "The technology is geared toward mid-sized industry players, such as paper mills, clothes dying facilities, hotel operators, which need both electricity and heat. These can benefit from the co-generation aspect of our technology…[W]e are now seeing players who used to do PV and wind projects now looking at the CSP market. The market potential is huge for smaller power plants, especially when you combine with the cogeneration facility. It is just a matter of time before you see more investors…"

[Moritz von Plate, Chief Financial Officer, Solarlite GmbH:] "The advantage of developing smaller projects is that their financing is simpler with an equity portion and a bank loan. The regulatory hurdles are also a lot smaller. Given the smaller scale, there are more opportunities to feed into the grid particularly in less developed countries…[and] smaller scale CSP projects have a much lower water requirement, which makes it easier to get permits in arid regions like MENA and Northwest India."

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[Moritz von Plate, Chief Financial Officer, Solarlite GmbH:] "Thailand is one of Asia’s tiger economies; it has a good solar resource; a strong supplier base; and a good feed-in tariff. Our presence is Thailand is also due to historical reasons – the CEO was active in Thailand…before he founded Solarlite…[We] are just as active and interested in other markets such as MENA, India, southern Europe or Mexico…[E]ntering the US is only a matter of time for us."

[Moritz von Plate, Chief Financial Officer, Solarlite GmbH:] "We are constructing [in Thailand] a 5MWe project and have signed contracts for 2 projects…of 9MWe each. The project in Kanchanaburi Province, a sunny region in the central part of Thailand, will be the first large scale direct steam generation (DSG) based parabolic trough power plant in Asia and will have a nominal capacity of 5 MWe. The second is the Suphanburi project, which will produce a nominal capacity of 9 MWe. It will be capable of producing 21 GWh per year that will be directly fed into the state-owned electricity grid…"