“There has to be a better way to do this:” The dawn of an Australian solar Maverick

The launch this week of federal Labor’s Solar Sunshot program, inviting bids for a share of $550 million to scale up commercial manufacturing of modules, tracking and deployment technologies, has once again stirred debate.

Can Australia compete with China – or indeed, should it even try – on solar manufacturing? Is it an economic “flight of fancy” that is doomed to fail, as the Financial Review editorialised back in April when the policy was first laid out?

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency, or Arena, which is administrating the $1 billion Sunshot funding, is fully aware of the challenges facing Australia’s solar manufacturing ambitions, but not cowed by them. The agency’s chief, Darren Miller – among many others – has argued a good case in favour of the policy.

But for tangible evidence of what Australia has to offer in green manufacturing – given the right political and economic support – you could do worse than a visit to the Adelaide “manufacturing centre of excellence” of Australian solar innovator, 5B.

In an unassuming factory in an industrial precinct once dominated by automotive manufacturing, 5B is walking the talk on making stuff in Australia. In this case, not cells or modules, but solar Mavericks.

First conceived by UNSW renewable energy engineers Chris McGrath and Eden Tehan more than 10 years ago, the Maverick is a prefabricated, pre-wired, accordion-like unit made up of 90 modules totalling around 50kW capacity that is unfolded on site using a forklift (see picture at top of article).

“[Chris and Eden] were working on some of the first large-scale solar projects in Australia; hot, dusty, remote places … and they were watching how difficult that was,” 5B’s chief strategy officer – and a UNSW alumnus herself – Nicole Kuepper-Rusell told One Step Off The Grid last week at the Adelaide factory.

“They were seeing the packaging waste, the challenges with labour, the challenges with land; you know, working in an inherently risky environment, wet weather events and what that was doing to project delays.

“And Chris McGrath had a light bulb moment and thought, there has to be a better way to do this … and, essentially on a napkin, drew the first version of what a Maverick would then become.”

More than 10 years later, 5B has more than 150MW of its Maverick systems on the ground across seven countries in the world and currently has a 69MW project in the works that it will install in Puerto Rico, using the third generation of its technology.

At the factory in Adelaide 5B has gone from making one Maverick unit a day, to one every four hours. It has a manufacturing facility in Vietnam and is currently setting up another in India.

The company serves as a great reminder that Solar Sunshot is not really about making solar cells or modules – although that is part of it. It’s about making solar energy generation cheaper – and creating local jobs and industries in the process.

But as Keupper-Russell explains, getting to this point hasn’t been a walk in the park.

“You know, [Chris and Eden] quit their jobs, they ate baked beans, they lived on … couches for a while, and they built this company from scratch. They filed patents, developed prototypes, started selling the first 50kW, the first 100kW, the first 500kW; the first megawatt project, the first 10MW project.

“Over time and along that journey they have obviously captured the interest and imagination of a whole bunch of different investors and customers … who really see the value proposition of a technology that is prefabricated, that is rapidly deployed, and that is land dense, and what that means in the field, in particular in Australia.”

Keupper-Russell, herself an alumnus of the University of New South Wales, has seen first-hand the hard work that has gone into getting solar technology to where it is today. She says you can often date people by what the solar panel price was when they joined the industry.

“I joined 20 years ago, when I was studying photovoltaic and solar energy engineering at UNSW, and the cost of a module was about $8 a watt.

“And I remember Professor Martin Green saying, ‘imagine if one day it’s $1/W,’… And we were all so excited and working and innovating.

“And, obviously, so much of that innovation and talent, a lot of which has come from Australia … has now resulted in a world where the cost of a module is around 10-11 cents/W coming out of China, which is just eye-wateringly low.

“What happens when modules become ultra low cost is that then the challenge is really, how do you get those ultra low costs modules into the field as quickly and as efficiently and as safely as possible, as opposed to trying to extract as much value as you possibly can from those modules.

“And that was the that was kind of the future-back thinking that led to the development of the 5B Maverick product, which was like, Okay, well, modules will be really affordable. How will this work really efficiently?”

For 5B, the levelised cost of energy (LCOE) for a project using its second generation Maverick arrays hit price parity with the LCOE of single axis tracker solar towards the end of last year, and has steadily become cheaper as panel prices continue to fall.

“We’ve actually seen almost a tripling of our pipeline in the last six months, just with a whole bunch of interest ever since that inflection point was reached – from across across the country … and then also globally, a whole lot of interest in markets like the US, where there are inherent challenges around labor availability [and] land availability.”

On top of the Maverick’s built-in cost and logistical advantages over traditionally installed PV farms, it’s also really quick to roll out – making it a popular choice for powering off-grid mining projects. 5B’s current record deployment speed is 1.25MW in one day with eight people at the Liontown lithium mine in Western Australia.

The technology also suits projects proposed for pre-disturbed land. Already, 5B has completed deployments on landfill sites, on coal ash sites, on rock dumps – and it’s currently installing solar on a tailings dam.

“We can do a completely ballasted solution, which means no ground penetration. Or if we do do ground penetration, it’s significantly less than conventional technologies,” Keupper-Russell says.

“Because of that advantage, we’re then able to deploy on all of those kind of more challenging, but also easier to find parcels of land.”

But a huge part of 5B’s success lies in its approach to manufacturing, which has been methodical, realistic, consultative and open to guidance from experts. It has also been the part of the business for which government support has been pivotal.

“Our core competency was not manufacturing,” Keupper-Russell says. “And so very early in our journey, about six years ago, we partnered with IXL solar, which is where we’re at today.

“We recognised that capability as being needed, and worked with… IXL solar and they started to support the manufacturing and the industrialisation of what was essentially an R&D product at the time.”

This has evolved into what Keupper-Russell describes as a “glorious feedback loop” between the core R&D team at 5B’s original Sydney headquarters and its industrial team in Adelaide, where ideas for improvements are weighed against reality, like production line ergonomics.

“And so that … has led to us being able to innovate on our product a lot faster than we could if we didn’t have that capability.

“We’ve now gone from manufacturing one Maverick block, so a 50 kilowatt kind of unit every day, to manufacturing one every four hours, so two a day, and we’re on a pathway to manufacturing every one every two hours, very shortly.

“So what that means is that we’ve been able to, basically … double the productivity of the facility here every couple of years and that’s really helped us to drive the cost down of our product as well.”

Keupper-Russell says the productivity improvements that the company has notched up in Adelaide also have been supported by funding from Arena, in the shape of a $14 million grant provided over the last couple of years.

“We’ve really been able to drive that automation in our process, so that we’ve gone from kind of like a everything being built in a pod, essentially, to now… the Maverick being assembled in line, which has enabled those productivity improvements and …will set us up for even more productivity improvements in the future.”

And she believes the support the federal government is setting in place now, through its climate and renewable energy targets and through major funding programs like the Solar Sunshot, are vital foundations to future success.

“My parents are German, so I grew up spending every summer, which was German winter, and almost every summer in Germany,” says Keupper-Russell, recalling her fascination with her grandparents’ rooftop solar panels and their focus on sustainability.

“Chinese companies supported my PhD as well. So I have seen, I guess, the impact that German and Chinese government support can have on an industry – they’re probably the two countries that have had the biggest impact, I think, on the solar industry, ever.

“And I think it’s lovely to see that vision now being taken on by the Australian government, here. I think the target of 30 cents per watt by 2030 is this incredible target for us to all look towards.

“We have a very clear roadmap for how we will get to 30 cents per watt by 2030 and because of that … we’ve been fortunate to have Arena funding and I think that’s critical … that’s really supported a lot of the innovation … [that has] enabled us to manufacture here in Australia, cost-competitively.”

One Step Off The Grid traveled to Adelaide as the guest of 5B.