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Australian government approves AAPowerLink project to export solar to Singapore
- ggm 2y agoEh, Factually correct (the best kind) but to be a little more specific: > "... Renewable energy developer Sun Cable has secured approval from the Australian government for the Australian element of its Australia-Asia Power Link (AAPowerLink) interconnector. ..." So they have licence to make the PV farm, and to cable it to a head-end, and to run HVDC to the edge of Australian Exclusive Maritime Zone. What happens after that is still subject to other people. There's hope of a domestic customer as well. That's important because the location is pretty unpopulated and otherwise under-developed. Prospects for onshore HVDC to customers are low right now: the closest thing is a service called "Copperstring" targetting the mining/metals industry being done in Qld but its about 1000km away and there are few customers except at the end of a long line That aside, Darwin and Port infra will be there but on the normalised "3 million homes" model of scaling Darwin is 60,000 homes or less.
- dyauspitr 2y agoEdge of its exclusive zone is still 200 miles away from its coastline. That’s no joke though it only about 10% of the way to Singapore.
- ggm 2y agoRealistically the first big sell is Indonesia. No cable to Singapore will make sense but it transits Indonesian waters and you would think a willing buyer and seller is there. Shorter path so less transmission losses.
- gdiamos 2y agoHow much copper would you need for a 4,300km 2GW subsea cable?
- jillesvangurp 2y agoThat depends. It could be that they use aluminum instead. Apparently that's quite common in HVDC cables and interesting for cost reasons.
- ben_w 2y agoAluminium is almost as good by cross section, much cheaper, and the global (mainly Chinese) production is sufficient for a global (40 megameter) multi-terrawatt power grid every 18 months or so. And yes, I did do the maths; and also yes it's really just China at the "global terrawatt" scale (they've become a dominant aluminium supplier), but a much smaller distance and power rating is probably fine even if China doesn't sell you the metal.
- bigiain 2y agoInterestingly, Australia is amongst the world's biggest exporters of Bauxite, which pretty much just needs electricity to turn it into Aluminium.
- Tade0 2y agoAt this length aluminium would have been used instead most likely. With a typical HVDC line not exceeding 1200mm2 conductor cross section it's about 13k tonnes, so 0,025% of global aluminium production.
- raverbashing 2y ago> not exceeding 1200m2 conductor cross section Technically right but I think you mean 1200mm2 (a radius of approx 20mm)
- Tade0 2y agoYes! I actually had an autocorrect suggestion for "1200m2" in there for some reason.
- jibes21 2y agoCan someone explain how this makes sense economically, isn't it really expensive and lossy to transport electricity such a long distance?
- Maakuth 2y agoYou double the voltage and halve the resistance. With longer cables you can invest more in more expensive stuff at the ends to deal with the high voltage.
- left-struck 2y agoResistance stays the same, loss due to resistance goes down. I’m not sure it halves either, it might be better than halving but I’m not sure myself. Edit: Basic power loss formula is P=I^2R, so yes power loss is divided by 4 for a 2x increase in voltage assuming the target power delivered is held constant.
- adrian_b 2y agoUsually the resistance does not stay the same, because it is preferred to use a thinner cable, to reduce its cost. At a given power, double voltage means half current. If the resistance is kept the same, that means 4 times lower losses. If the resistance is doubled by using a thinner cable, that still results in two times lower losses.
- left-struck 2y agoYeah I agree, I was just pointing out that a wire won’t change resistance due to voltage going up. Of course notwithstanding the wire heating up or something.
- Maakuth 2y agoThank you for the correction.
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- Djdjur7373bb 2y agoDoes it actually make economic sense to run a cable large enough for that kind of power from Australia to Singapore? I would have guessed there must be enough domestic customers or in Indonesia that would make more sense.
- rv3392 2y agoI'm unsure about Indonesia, but domestic customers in that region would be pretty limited. The closest major power users would be in Queensland (>1000km) away.
- gonzo41 2y agoData Centers, Green Steel production. Power == Opportunities. This is such a massive win for the environment.
- bobthepanda 2y agoYou need water for all of that and that part of Australia is pretty arid.
- tdrz 2y agoWith cheap energy, desalination might make economic sense for Australia.
- boffinAudio 2y agoMight finally provide a viable use for the Ord River catchment, though ..
- eru 2y agoFor that, you'd need to make massive investments in a part of that world that has mostly untouched nature. It might or might not be a good idea. But you need to then compare those massive investments to the relatively modest investment of the power cable to bring the electricity to a part of that world that already has all the other infrastructure needed, and also already has lots of water.
- hunglee2 2y agoAustralia is going to have make it Rd2 of being an energy commodity superpower. 40 years of exporting coal to China, it can look forward to 1000's years of export solar to APAC.
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- twelvechairs 2y agoWhat advantage does Australia have over other Asia pacific countries to justify the infrastructure costs? Only Singapore where space is at a premium. Other countries can generally find space (even if over the water) and their worker costs for maintenance will be far lower.
- nroets 2y agoTechnology is progressing so fast that something like space based solar or fusion power will replace terrestrial solar within 100 years.
- stavros 2y agoWhy? When will it be cheaper to deploy in space than in some remote area somewhere?
- RamRodification 2y agoThe render of the planned solar panel array looks like sci-fi art. Very cool (hot?). Maybe there are already vast fields of solar panels like that, and I just haven't seen it before?
- oxym0ron 2y agoThere are actually already fields like that. Look at the ones in China or the US. Scaling it up is the next step.
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- hengheng 2y agoFrom the article, it looks like they are installing 20 GWp of solar cells. ("peak power" that is only achieved when the sun is right above the solar cells with no atmosphere in between). The plan seems to be to store 36-42 GWh, and to deliver 2 GW max. That makes for a 20h energy storage at full power, and a big enough power reserve to recharge that storage during the day while delivering at full power. Likely a reserve for morning/evening/clouds. Easy to add more storage. So, it's a 2 GW power link, not a 20 GW power link. It's a 20 GWp site, and that's impressive too. At 200 Wp (STC) per sq m, that is 100M m², or a 6 mile square not counting any access roads. Huge, but if five of these is all it takes to power Singapore, then I guess we're looking at a bright future.
- wmstack 2y ago> So, it's a 2 GW power link, not a 20 GW power link Yup, my bad. Title is wrong but I can't change it now. I was looking for quick figures and saw the solar capacity numbers and put them. It seems only about 1.75 GW are actually planned to go through that link.
- MaKey 2y agoMaybe @dang can help with the title
- dang 2y agoHappy to, but can someone suggest what a better (i.e. more accurate and neutral) title would be? p.s. @dang doesn't work, which is why I didn't respond to this sooner. For guaranteed message delivery, you (or someone) need to email hn@ycombinator.com.
- dyauspitr 2y agoYeah when you look at the amount of road, rail and underwater cabling humans have done over the past 50 years, five of those seem easy.
- stavros 2y ago> I guess we're looking at a bright future. We have to, otherwise the solar panels wouldn't work.
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- tdrz 2y agoThis sounds good! I don't know much about electricity, can anyone tell me if such an undersea power cable could be technically feasible between Europe and North America? Possibly taking a detour through Iceland which has significant geothermal resources. I understand that it would take much more than just the cable between the two continents to make this work - right now there are issue on the continents themselves to get the electricity from one place to another. But with the sun shining most of the time on one of those two continents and with other (hopefully renewable) energy sources on either side of the pond, we might get to have green and cheap energy!
- eru 2y agoIf you just want to move energy between day and night, batteries can also do that job.
- topherhunt 2y agoThis is totally unresearched, but my gut says it would be much higher ROI for Europe + North America to independently source solar from their respective nearby deserts, paired with batteries?
- tdrz 2y agoI would hope Europe has learned a lesson not to depend on unreliable partners for its energy.
- xandrius 2y agoBut if it's cheaper, let's take those easy wins and think about that later!
- dyauspitr 2y agoIf it’s cheaper, vastly cleaner and viable, we shouldn’t let isolationist cynicism ruin that opportunity. Without oil from the Middle East and Russia, a lot of the world would grind to halt, but most countries cannot rely on their own reserves so the isolationist angle doesn’t even come up.
- m2f2 2y agoSignificant turning tables moment when big bully China aims at being the sole APAC superpower. That might explain why Singapore are interested and why 4200km of cable aren't such a big issue.
- boffinAudio 2y agoWho do you think is manufacturing the solar panels? Certainly not Australians.
- csomar 2y agoNot sure how a 4200km cable is more secure than a few gas tanks. I am actually surprised they’d go with this as it’s impossible to monitor the whole range of the cable.
- energy123 2y agoGas imports from Indonesia can be cut off in exactly the same way so there's no large difference.
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- seatac76 2y agoWill be easy to cut so this isn’t really secure.
- andrewstuart 2y agoI'd probably prefer to get cheaper power here in Australia, but whatever - no decisions are ever made here to benefit the Australian people - it's always to help some vested interest or corporate interest or foreign interest or donor to the politicians. So presumably this whole bit of climate theater has a lovely feel good story.
- eru 2y agoAs far as Australia is concerned, this is a private investment project. And it does not prevent any other private investment projects to generate and sell green electricity to Australians. Australia isn't exactly short of sunshine, and the Chinese will happily sell you all the solar panels that you could ever want.
- i386 2y agoNot sure why this is downvoted. Economic activity should be enjoyed by the commons. For example LNG being exported UNDER international value and Aussies buying it at international prices is idiotic.
- DavidPiper 2y agoHell yeah! So cool to see Sun Cable progressing. Australia is obscenely well-positioned to be a solar energy powerhouse. So much open and uninhabited land, geologically stable and uniquely suited climate with a ton of sun all year round. Could have done it sooner with more political will, etc, etc. But I'm so over the whole renewables and climate change debate (still very much alive here sadly). We're way beyond the time for talking and into the time for action, and seeing this project pull us into a more sustainable world is awesome.
- jaimex2 2y ago4,300km of subsea cable... I'm must completely be missing something. We can't get renewables into our own grid let alone over the hemisphere. https://reneweconomy.com.au/nem-watch/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/nem-watch/
- Sabinus 2y agoIt's vastly more simple to run one cable through the ocean than run heaps of high voltage lines between all the remote renewable generation sites and the consumers. Even with the solar built into a suburb, you need to built much thicker connections to transfer it to other consumers than what you do in the old generation system. Distributed grids are complicated.
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
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- vlasky 2y agoI'm Aussie and I can't believe this Sun Cable project is being taken seriously by our government. The longest submarine power cable in the world - the Viking Link - is a mere 756 km long and cost US$2.2bn to build. Sun Cable calls for a 4,200km submarine cable to be built! I do not expect the construction cost to scale linearly and I shudder to imagine the maintenance difficulties and expenses. Back in December 2015, Australia's 290km long undersea Basslink cable broke causing the 2016 Tasmanian energy crisis. It took 6 months to get it working again. Basslink eventually went into receivership on 12 November 2021. Something to ponder.
- gonzo41 2y agoTasmanian energy crisis was because of a drought, not because the cable was cut. Tassie exports energy and the power company had lowered the dam levels selling power to Victoria that year expecting regular winter rain. That rain didn't happen. That, then combined with the line fault caused the issue. In fact, the suspected cause of the line issue was that the power company Tassie Hydro zapped the export line with too much current trying to make money from Victoria. That combined with the lowering of dams, perfect storm of greed and bad luck. In addition, the boats that service these cables are mostly in the northern hemisphere, where most of the undersea cables exist. So there was a ~5 month wait on the repair. I'd expect a 4000Km cable to have it's own fleet of boats for servicing.
- jbsimpson 2y agoWhen Tassie dams get low, they import power from the mainland. It’s a common seasonal thing. Drought + Basslink outage had the gov buying and running diesel gen at huge cost to keep the grid running. The Basslink outage made a problem a crisis.
- cjbgkagh 2y agoWhy would it be superlinear instead of sublinear? I can understand that the combined probability of breakage along the line could be a maintenance problem but the construction cost should have many amortizable components that deliver some sort of economics of scale. I haven’t done the math so I have no idea on actual viability or if it’s a good idea or not.
- giantg2 2y agoI wonder if there are non-energy uses for this that aren't being disclosed. Perhaps one could use undersea power cable to inductively sense large metal objects that are submerged nearby.
- monkeycantype 2y agoSomewhere there is a doco about the guys who lay these cables, I’ve forgotten the name, does anyone know it? It has a focus on the guy who has his hand on the lever that controls the speed of the spool the cable is rolling off. This guy needs to have mastered the mysterious art of ‘slack control’, the intuitive understanding of exactly how much cable to drop down to the depths of the Atlantic. In my memory of the doco there are only a handful of people who do this professionally, and it’s not worth the hundreds of millions it would cost you to figure out what they know not to just hire them at eye watering rates to lift and lower the control lever guided by the secrets they know which you don’t I feel like I saw it at imax, but it seems an odd topic for an imax movie?
- Arbalest 2y agoI keep seeing stuff about the viability of the cable being laid. The thing that gets me though, is the timezone shift around peak solar generation is the wrong way around. In Australia at least, peak demand is in the evening, when people get home and turn on their ACs, or cooking devices etc. I don't know about the demand patterns in Singapore, but given their heavy use of AC, I imagine their demand for power does not peter off in the evening much. Meanwhile the peak of solar generation around midday in Australia is being sent off to Singapore in the morning who are a couple hours behind us. Presumably the morning is when the least AC will be used there. By the evening in Singapore, it'll be night in Central Australia, meaning there will still have to be plenty of peaking generation or, will need a massive ton of batteries which has still not quite there for grid scaling.
- onethought 2y agoThere are batteries included as part of this project. So I don't think time really matters.
- Arbalest 2y agoYes, but will it wipe out the advantage of solar by adding cost to the generation capacity? As I said, batteries still aren't cheap, and their replacement lifetime is still not good. We could rely on future technology, but is that a sound investment plan? If this project is viable, then it'll probably be more viable to have a massive solar farm coming from India, where the timezone shift is in the correct direction, and it would outcompete Australia.
- onethought 2y agoI think any project is going to need some form of capacitor as a grid would just become unstable if you dump a huge amount of peak solar onto it without the consumption. So either way you need batteries, and all the problems they bring. Just about "how many".
- Arbalest 2y ago
- richardw 2y agoThis is still backed by Mike Cannon-Brookes from Atlassian, isn’t it? Not mentioned in article but: “May 2023, a consortium led by Cannon-Brookes' Grok Ventures won the bid to acquire Sun Cable,[7] with the takeover finalised on 7 September 2023. The revised plans involve supplying electricity to Darwin by 2030, and to Singapore a few years thereafter. ” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link
- jaidan 2y agoI am curious about a couple of things to do with this project. Given the solar panels will cover about 30,000 acres of land [0], and a factory is being built to manufacture the panels (because there are so many), how will decommissioning of the solar farm be done at end of life? How does one process that many panels in an environmentally friendly way? It sounds like another factory will need to be built to process the waste. I hope that the decommissioning of this kind of solar farm is better managed thant the likes of the Northern Endeavour FPSO, where Woodside offloaded it to a small company to dodge the decommissioning costs of the field, leaving the taxpayer to foot the bill[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link [1] https://www.industry.gov.au/mining-oil-and-gas/oil-and-gas/offshore-oil-and-gas/decommissioning-northern-endeavour https://www.industry.gov.au/mining-oil-and-gas/oil-and-gas/o...
- evolve2k 2y agoGive it a rest already with the default cynicism, we need more bold record breaking large green infrastructure bets to help get us out of this mess that years of conservative policy has caused in the first place.