South Australia is planning to build the world’s largest solar thermal plant.

SA’s acting energy minister, Chris Picton, says the Aurora solar plant in Port Augusta will provide 100 per cent of the state government’s electricity needs by 2020, with construction to begin this year.

The $650 million, 150-megawatt molten salt plant has been approved by state government authorities, and will be built by American company SolarReserve.

The project is expected to create 650 local jobs during construction.

Aurora is slated deliver over 500 gigawatt-hours of energy annually – providing fully dispatchable baseload electricity to the network when electricity is needed most.

Storage will enable the solar thermal station to operate just like a conventional coal or gas power station, reliably generating electricity day and night – except without any emissions.