When I heard last year about a plan to send solar energy from the Northern Territory to Singapore I thought it was a pipe dream. I wasn’t alone.
The plan by Singapore’s Sun Cable involved building the world’s biggest solar farm in Tennant Creek to export 3 gigawatts of power via a 3,800-kilometre cable to Singapore. A copper intensive cable of course.
It was a $19B gamble by Sun Cable to supply a fifth of Singapore’s electricity. But it appears to be paying off.
Two major backers are now saying they’ll support it. The 1st was by Aussie tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes-he cofounded unicorn startup Atlassian-via his Grok Ventures private investment company, and the 2nd by Singapore’s largest green energy retailer iSwitch.
“I’m backing it,” said Cannon-Brookes at the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York recently. It obviously caught the attention of iSwitch who quickly joined in.
They may be the start of an investor rush. Given the huge cost, Sun Cable has given itself a financial close date in 2023 with start date of 2027, but 2 investors in a single week is a big deal.
Engineering the whole project, on the other hand. is also a big deal. Overhead transmission lines & battery storage-also copper intensive-will send electricity to Darwin to plug into the Northern Territory grid. But the bulk would be exported via a high-voltage direct-current submarine cable snaking through the Indonesian archipelago to Singapore.
Those are massive distances, but high-voltage, direct-current submarine cables are changing the economics of what’s possible. Sun Cable’s chief executive, David Griffin, calls it the “greatest unsung technology development”.
“It is extraordinary technology that is going to change the flow of energy between countries,” he said recently.
I agree, but there’s still some huge challenges facing this project. If Sun Cable can pull it off it will put Australia at the heart of an industry the world desperately wants—clean energy or minerals processed with clean energy.
I’ll be watching to see what happens next.
Cheers, John Fennell