When I first heard about it, I thought that this project sounded fanciful, because I didn't imagine the power transmission over that long a distance (and via undersea cable) would be efficient enough. But it would seem I was wrong:
SINGAPORE: The company behind a megaproject to deliver up to 15 per cent of Singapore’s energy requirements via a 4,200km undersea cable from northern Australia aims to start construction in 2024.
The project took a step closer to being realised last week, after being deemed investment-ready by Infrastructure Australia, a statutory body that advises the country’s government on key projects of national significance.
This potentially opens the US$20.7 billion intercontinental cable operation - called the Australia-Asia PowerLink - to investment that could include public funds.
Before construction can begin, all financing documents will need to be signed and prior conditions for the availability of financing will have to be fulfilled.
Sun Cable wants to build the largest solar farm and battery storage facility in the world in Australia’s Northern Territory and send clean power to the regional city of Darwin as well as Singapore.
Singapore is currently a gas burning nation, so it must be feeling the pinch at the moment:
It comes as Singapore looks to expand its renewable energy options and moves to import power as a solution to lowering its carbon emissions footprint - it currently generates about 95 per cent of its energy from burning natural gas, a fossil fuel that contributes to global warming.Anyway, the undersea cable is HVDC, which is maybe the only way it could work?:
“We need that ability to transmit electricity on an intercontinental basis to get from where that resource is abundant to where those large loads are and where they're growing fast. And that's what the evolution of high-voltage direct current submarine cable technology allows,” he added.
This article talks about HVDC undersea cables. Seems there are only relatively short ones around, so I hope the challenges of 4,000 km of such cable are not too much to overcome.
You wanted detail Steve.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jun/30/what-australias-power-grid-urgently-needs-for-once-in-a-century-transformation-away-from-fossil-fuels
"The company behind a megaproject to deliver up to 15 per cent of Singapore’s energy requirements via a 4,200km undersea cable..."
ReplyDeleteSingapore may be the most well-run state in the world today. With little Leichtenstein as a contender. But one of the factors could be listening to very high-performing graduate students. Who may have been indoctrinated to want a lot of bullshit ideas to work. I worry about this in the context of these Indian billionaires putting so much effort into hydrogen. Which I think is money wasted, since I believe its happening in the wrong decade. I think you need thorium saturation prior to ubiquitous hydrogen, and I think hydrogen usage must be close to source. So I see the potential for this super-performing young post-graduate experts leading us and the city-state astray here.
4800 kilometres? Seriously? How could that even be possible? They are going to make the cable out of pure silver? Sure that could work. But deep divers would be forever stealing the silver. I'm being facetious of course. The only other daydream factor I can apply to this would be are they relying on super frigid deep water (water that is way below Zero Celsius but that doesn't freeze due to high pressure) to turn the base metals involved into super-conductors?
If so, if thats what they are relying on, then THATS what we need to hone in on to see if they aren't making a gigantic mistake due to young expert brain washing.
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