Australia's Solar Flagships at risk as CS Energy pulls out

Australia’s government-funded Solar Flagships programme is at risk of disintegrating as state-owned CS Energy is quitting the A$1.2bn ($1.27bn) Solar Dawn consortium.

It leaves France’s Areva Solar as sole operator of the proposed 250MW solar-thermal plant in Queensland’s outback.

The consortium, which includes Wind Prospect CWP as developer, plans to install two 125MW arrays of Compact Linear Fresnel Reflectors (CLFRs), that Areva Solar acquired in 2010 from Ausra, a company founded by Australian industry veteran David Mills, Peter Le Lievre and Graham Morrison in 2002.

In June 2011, the partners secured A$464m towards the cost of the project on top of A$70m from the state government, on condition that…

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