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Thank you for coming.
Today is a big day for solar power in Australia.
Today, the Commonwealth Government is announcing the two successful projects under round one of our $1.5 billion Solar Flagships program.
Under the Solar Photovoltaic stream of the program we are pleased to offer funding of $306.5 million to the Moree Solar Farm consortium, led by BP Solar.
This funding will go toward the construction of a 150 megawatt (MW) photovoltaic power plant near Moree here in New South Wales.
This is nearly twice the size of any photovoltaic power plant operating in the world today.
I am delighted to have so many representatives of the consortium here with us.
I also acknowledge the support of the New South Wales Government for this important project.
This partnership, between the consortium partners and the state and federal governments, is a big step forward to making large scale solar power a reality for Australia.
The second project selected in the solar thermal category is the Solar Dawn consortium led by Areva Solar.
The Australian Government has offered $464 million in funding for this project to build a 250MW solar thermal gas hybrid power plant near Chinchilla in Queensland.
It will be the largest solar power plant in Australian and if built today would be the largest solar power plant on a single site in the world.
Together, the two projects will leverage a total investment of over $2 billion.
They are expected to generate enough power to meet the electricity needs of more than 115,000 Australian homes.
The two projects will start construction next year and will be fully operational by December 2015.
They will also bring the Solar Flagships program closer to its goal of creating 1,000 megawatts of solar power capacity.
This program is laying the foundation for the rollout of large scale solar power stations across Australia.
We need to overcome technological challenges and cost barriers if we are to move to a lower emissions economy and source more of our power from clean and renewable sources.
The Moree Solar Farm and Solar Dawn projects aim to commercialise the technology to make this happen.
To be internationally competitive in the future we need to focus on what we do best – innovation, research and development.
We want to make the advances that will allow Australia to secure export opportunities - not just in the raw commodities that have been a traditional source of wealth - but in skills, expertise and the licensing of world class technologies.
The selection process for these two round one projects was highly competitive and I congratulate both project consortiums on their hard work developing the project proposals and on their success in securing this funding.