Solar Power Exports From Australia Liquify

Voluntary liquidation

Sun Cable is a proposed project that aims to export solar power from Australia to Southeast Asia. The project which was being developed by a group of Australian and international companies, would involve the construction of a massive solar farm in the Northern Territory of Australia, along with a high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission line that would connect the farm to Darwin, where the power would be converted to alternating current (AC) and then exported via undersea cables to Singapore and other countries in Southeast Asia.

But this week (18 January 2023) it announced that it was going into voluntary liquidation.

The plan

The Sun Cable solar farm, which was planned to be located near Tennant Creek, would be one of the largest in the world, covering an area of around 15,000 hectares and delivering up to 10 GW of power. The current largest solar farm is Bhadla Solar Park in India with an output of 2.7 GW.

10GW would be enough to power around 5 million homes in Southeast Asia. The HVDC transmission line, which would be around 3,800 km long, would run from the solar farm to Darwin, where it would connect to the existing power grid and then be exported via undersea cables to Singapore and other countries in Southeast Asia.

I recently spent a month is Darwin on my boat and was glad to leave. It's bloody hot there, the sun is fierce. Plenty of free energy. I grab 800 W with my modest array of panels.

The Sun Cable project was budgeted at around $22 billion and would be a major boost for Australia's renewable energy sector, creating thousands of jobs and helping to reduce the country's carbon emissions. Australia exports a vast amount of coal especially to China.

The scheme would also provide a reliable and sustainable source of power for Southeast Asia, which is currently heavily reliant on fossil fuels.

Grid stability

The project would also help to address the issue of grid stability in Australia, which is currently a major concern due to the increasing amount of renewable energy sources being connected to the grid - the wind doesn't blow 24/7 and the sun goes down at night. But the reasons are otherwise:

• Exporting excess solar power during periods of high solar output, reducing the risk of grid instability caused by excess generation
• Utilising HVDC transmission line for efficient transmission of electricity over long distances and reducing the susceptibility to voltage fluctuations
• Using undersea cables to reduce the impact of transmission losses and improve the overall stability of the grid.

HVDC transmission is nothing new - 220,000 volt power lines are common in grids. It's on account of heating in a cable being proportional to the square of the current. The heating is a transmission loss. So, for a given wattage, keep the current low and the voltage high.

Fossil fuel dependency

Another major advantage of the project is that it would help to reduce Australia's dependence on fossil fuels, which currently account for around 80% of the country's electricity generation. The solar farm would provide a sustainable and clean source of power, and the HVDC transmission line would allow for the efficient transmission of electricity over long distances. This would help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants, and would also help to mitigate the impacts of climate change.

Other large scale solar export projects

There are several other large scale solar export projects underway or in the planning stages, principally exporting from North Africa to Europe:

• Desertec: This project aims to export solar power from Tunisia to Europe. The project is expected to have a total generation capacity of around 5 GW.

• Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation (TREC): This project aims to export solar power from Tunisia to Europe and has a planned generation capacity of around 3 GW.

• The Egyptian-European Solar Power Plant: This project aims to export solar power from Egypt to Europe, specifically to Italy and Spain. The project is expected to have a total generation capacity of around 1 GW.

• The Maghreb-Europe project aims to export solar power from Algeria to Europe, specifically to Spain and Italy. The project is expected to have a total generation capacity of around 1 GW.

• The Xlinks Morocco-UK Power Project, as it’s known, will cover an area of around 579 square miles (1,500 square kilometers) in Morocco and will be connected exclusively to the UK via 2,361 miles (3,800 km) of HVDC subsea cables. Xlinks will construct 7 GW of solar and 3.5 GW of wind, along with onsite 20GWh/5GW battery storage, in Morocco.

One thing is for sure. Putin's adventurism in Ukraine has thrown the issue of energy into sharp focus. The cost of renewable energy continues to fall rapidly.

If anything, Putin has accelerated the movement away from fossil fuels towards renewables, and probably doomed the Russian economy in the process.

I'm sure that the sun will rise again for Sun Cable.

Final thought

Just imagine, Singapore at night. All the lights go out...

Yes, that's one of the problems with solar power.

But it's here to stay.

You just need a lot of batteries of one form or another.

And candles.

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