I blogged about the huge Northern Territory solar farm exporting energy to Singapore last year, saying I’d keep an eye on it. Well it looks like it’s a goer.
And that’s massive for copper. The $20B, 12,000 hectare, 10 GigaWatt solar farm—the world’s biggest—will use a hell of a lot of copper in the panels, transmission wires and battery storage—also the world’s biggest—but sending the energy overseas will too.
Sun Cable—the company running the project at the Newcastle Waters cattle property once owned by Kerry Packer—has also proposed building at least two 4,500-kilometre undersea cable linking Australia with Singapore.
That’s a major undertaking just on its own. Indications are it will involve 200mm or 100mm diameter cables, or roughly 300,000 tonnes to 1,300,000 tonnes of copper, if that’s the primary material the cable is built from.
But Aussie renewable energy exports to South East Asia look set to grow into a very healthy industry. Not only will it help grow our clean energy sector but help cut greenhouse emissions at the same time.
The West Australia government has also just approved a 15,000MW solar and wind project to export electricity to Indonesia. The Pilbara based project is just the first stage of the proposed Asian Renewable Energy Hub, or AREH, which is targeted to expand to 26,000MW.
That suggests there’s a lot of goodwill by both government and industry to get this business moving. The Morrison Government granted Sun Cable major project status mid year, while billionaire investors like Andrew Forrest & Mike Cannon-Brookes are backers.
Of course there are a lot of challenges to overcome in getting it right. Sun Cable has started the process of putting its environmental approvals in place, making a referral to the Northern Territory’s Environment Protection Authority.
A final investment decision is yet to be made, but if all goes to plan construction is expected to start in late 2023 with solar energy reaching Darwin by 2026 and Singapore the following year.
Cheers, John Fennell
