Ann: Nebo-Babel Scoping Study, page-117

Gosouth, Just in answer to your question about ERJ's system and why it shouldn't be used.

"Take a look at the announcement by ERJ yesterday re a solar thermal hybrid power station at Jundee for NST. I suspect this is close to the cutting edge for solar power at remote mining projects at the moment. "
Details of what they envisage for remote mining is located here....

http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20150203/pdf/42wcm8whl1q56t.pdf

For $15.1m you get a 750kw of electricity runing pretty much 24hrs/day producing 5,500MWh of electricity.

750kw does no go far in a mine, usually the grinding alone uses 15-25kwh/tonne of material so even a 4mt/a plant is going to use 100,000MWh just for grinding at 25kwh/t. Cassini has plans for 30mwh of generation capacity in the scoping study, or 40 times the energy provided by the ERJ unit.

Looking at solar PV as per the quote the Mt Remarkable shire received in Dec 2013, $15m would provide for 7.5MW of panels. In a place like the West Musgraves, where the AVERAGE solar insolation is 9.6hr/d, plus using the single trackers provided for in the quote, this provides at say 7.6hr/day (allowing for some loss) 7.6hr X 7.5Mw X 365d = 20,805MWh of electricity.

This is 4 times the output of the ERJ unit for the same money. The solar PV is not going to provide the entire electricity, but it reduces the fuel demand for the diesel generators by a large amount. At 27c/kwh being the approx minimum cost of running diesel generators (I got this figure from executives at Sandfire) then the 20,805Mwh = 20,805,000 Kwh = $5.61m fuel cost saved every year by having plain PV, yet the ERJ system will save only $1.485m.
You need over 10 years operation to pay off the ERJ system without allowance for O+M throughout the year. It takes just 3 years for plain PV to pay itself off.

Like I stated ages ago, renewables done properly will save a fortune in running costs, but done incorrectly like the ERJ system, then they don't show much benefit at all.

The desert is often a windy place at night, large wind turbines would be the perfect balance for solar PV, especially if some of the hilltops can be used. The rest of the time use diesel generators, but the fuel cost of using them could be brought down to a minimum if done properly, ie possibly only 10% of the current envisaged fuel cost. Currently fuel would be one of the largest costs in the scoping study.