Creditors are owed about $8 million after the death of a project that had a piece of Canberra-created technology at its heart.
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ACT company Wizard Power is in the hands of an administrator after the federal government pulled a $60 million grant it had pledged to the emerging solar power enterprise.
With this money, Wizard Power - part of the Solar Oasis consortium - was going to help build a $230 million plant in Whyalla, South Australia.
Central to the project was Wizard Power's ''Big Dish'' innovation, which its owners describe as concentrating solar power (CSP) technology that converts solar energy to electricity at least 50 per cent more efficiently than other CSP technology.
The project had been expected to create 200 jobs in the Whyalla region as well as initiating the development of new high tech manufacturing facilities in Australia. The 40 megawatt first stage of the project was planned to expand to a $1 billion, 200 megawatt solar power plant.
The Australian Renewable Energy Agency, which was in control of the grant, said it pulled the funding because conditions of the agreement were not met.
ARENA chief executive Ivor Frischknecht said a range of options were pursued to make the project work but the tough decision had to be made.
Wizard Power founder Tony Robey said the program had been beset by delays caused by the Commonwealth.
''The Commonwealth's use of these delays as an excuse to terminate a project which was vital for Wizard Power and a great opportunity for the Whyalla region and the nation, rather than providing the support needed to make this project the success it should have been, is devastating and unreasonable,'' Mr Robey said.
He said, in all likelihood, the Big Dish technologies would join the long list of Australian inventions that had ended up in the hands of overseas companies.
Wizard Power's administrator Henry Kazar said there was still a possibility creditors would be repaid.
''The [intellectual property] could be quite valuable,'' Mr Kazar said.
He said similar innovations in the same field of technology had been worth hundreds of millions of dollars in the past, although added a figure this high was probably unrealistic.
