[Music plays and text appears: Bringing our solar expertise to Cyprus]

[Image changes to show Mike Collins, CSIRO Mechanical Engineer]

Mike Collins: My name’s Mike, I’m a mechanical engineer here at CSIRO. I travelled to Cyprus in 2014 as part of the Cyprus Solar Thermal Project to build the heliostats and install them into the field there.

[Image changes to show aerial footage of a field of heliostats]

[Time lapse footage of the heliostat field being constructed plays on screen]

We got to enjoy the fantastic coastal location of the heliostat field there; it’s built right on the edge of the ocean where they access sea water for desalination.

[Image has changed back to show Mike]

The project has 50 heliostats, which concentrate light up onto the top of the tower where they can use the heat from the heliostats, which comes from the sun; they can use that heat to desalinate water and to also create electricity.

[Image changes to show time lapse footage of the construction of the heliostats in a factory type setting and then changes to show footage of the heliostat field being erected]

The field, in total, can collect around 150 kilowatts of energy, so around about enough energy to boil a two litre jug of water in around five seconds.

[Image changes to show Professor Costas Papanicolas]

Professor Costas Papanicolas: Cyprus, an island state, the southernmost and easternmost state of the European Union has lots of sunshine, not enough water and is cut off from the continental power grid of Europe, so we need electricity and water. So solar energy, we think, is the answer to part of this problem.

[Time lapse footage of the heliostat field being constructed plays on screen]

Trying to desalinate water with using solar energy, and at the same time produce electricity.

[Image changes to show Professor Papanicolas and CSIRO staff walking through the heliostat field together and then changes to show Professor Papanicolas]

CSIRO has a lot of those technologies, frankly, we think among the best in the world, and we would like to learn from the research being done here, import some of these technologies and develop a cooperation agreement so we can exchange ideas, what we learn, to achieve those goals, which are useful, not only for Cyprus, but for many parts of the world.

[Image changes to show Wes Stein, CSIRO Solar Research Leader]

Wes Stein: This project has been fantastic for us; it’s the first time we’ve built our heliostats outside of our own backyard. That was a big step for us.

[Image changes to show Wes Stein and Professor Papanicolas walking through the heliostat field together and then changes to show Wes Stein]

Normally we don’t do that sort of thing, but in the case of Cyprus they were a fantastic partner, they understood the research initiatives that we were undertaking, they understood the issues associated with developing a new facility in a new country, so that partnership has worked really well and, I guess, it now sets a platform for a decade of ongoing, collaborative research between our countries. In addition, it’s given CSIRO a lot of confidence in understanding how we’re going to deploy these things outside of our own safety zone and into other environments. So that’s where we want to go, we want these things to be commercialised and build on the good research that we’re doing now.

[Music plays and CSIRO logo appears with text: Big ideas start here www.csiro.au]