00:02Mirrored dishes in the outback, the legacy of what's believed to be a world first commercial
00:08solar power plant.
00:09Steam into the piston, pushes the piston down, at the bottom there's exhaust ports
00:15like a two-stroke.
00:16The plant provided power to the remote town of Whitecliffs, three hours north-east of
00:22Broken Hill.
00:23It started as an experiment in 1981, built by a team from Australian National University
00:29to research solar thermal power.
00:32Engineers Australia described it as equal to the Snowy Mountains scheme or the Sydney
00:38Harper Bridge.
00:39It's nowhere near as big, but it's of that sort of importance.
00:43The dishes captured the sun's rays to make superheated steam, which drove an alternator
00:49and a DC generator.
00:51In a land of heat and sun, Whitecliffs was the perfect place to prove the technology.
00:56They went and put weather stations all around the state and they found that Whitecliffs
01:01had the most daily average sunlight hours than anywhere else in New South Wales.
01:06The station was mothballed in 2005.
01:10The old dishes now heritage listed.
01:13Whitecliffs is a small opal mining town with a population of 150 people.
01:19But with the plant's inclusion on the state heritage list, locals are hoping it will draw
01:25in more tourists.
01:26State heritage register items tell the stories of New South Wales.
01:31That's a big drawcard for people to come into regional areas.
01:35It's just remarkable.
01:35We know we've got the talent and the skill in this country to create something like this.
01:39Preserving the history of solar energy for generations to come.
