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Energy giant AGL will partner with a technology company backed by its biggest shareholder, billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes, to assess building a first-of-its-kind solar panel manufacturing plant on the site of the decommissioned Liddell coal-fired power station.
The agreement between AGL and Sydney-based SunDrive to begin feasibility work on an advanced manufacturing facility comes nearly a year after AGL shuttered the Liddell generator in the NSW Upper Hunter region, which had reached the end of its technical life.
Mike Cannon-Brookes built an 11 per cent stake in AGL in 2022.Credit: Wolter Peeters
AGL chief executive Damien Nicks said the deal marked another step in the company’s ambitions to transform the sites of its coal-fired power stations in Victoria and NSW – the last of which is due to close in 2035 – into low-carbon energy “hubs” spanning renewable energy generation, big batteries and green tech manufacturing.
“Our vision for the Hunter Energy Hub is to create a low carbon integrated energy hub – designed with circular economy principles – that brings together industries that can make a positive contribution to the energy transition,” Nicks said.
Cannon-Brookes, the co-founder of tech firm Atlassian and one of the country’s richest people, built an 11 per cent stake in AGL in 2022, which he used to launch a successful push to overhaul its board of directors to bolster the ASX-listed power and gas supplier’s response to climate change and clean energy opportunities.
The billionaire’s investment vehicle, Grok Ventures, is among the high-profile investors in SunDrive, a start-up founded in 2015 that began as a PhD project at the University of New South Wales aiming to reduce the cost and enhance the efficiency and sustainability of solar cells.
AGL is planning to turn the site of its shuttered Liddell coal-fired power station into a low-carbon industrial energy hub.Credit: Janie Barrett
SunDrive – also backed by Blackbird Ventures, Main Sequence Ventures and former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull – has patented technology that replaces silver with copper, a cheaper more abundant material, in solar cells’ construction.
After developing the world’s most efficient commercial-size solar cell in 2021, SunDrive founder and chief executive Vince Allen said the company now wanted to begin manufacturing them at its first commercial-scale manufacturing plant at AGL’s Hunter Energy Hub if the feasibility study is successful.