The $20B Plan To Power Singapore With Australian Solar (theguardian.com) 127
The desert outside Tennant Creek, deep in the Northern Territory, is not the most obvious place to build and transmit Singapore's future electricity supply. Though few in the southern states are yet to take notice, a group of Australian developers are betting that will change. From a report: If they are right, it could have far-reaching consequences for Australia's energy industry and what the country sells to the world. Known as Sun Cable, it is promised to be the world's largest solar farm. If developed as planned, a 10-gigawatt-capacity array of panels will be spread across 15,000 hectares and be backed by battery storage to ensure it can supply power around the clock. Overhead transmission lines will send electricity to Darwin and plug into the NT grid. But the bulk would be exported via a high-voltage direct-current submarine cable snaking through the Indonesian archipelago to Singapore. The developers say it will be able to provide one-fifth of the island city-state's electricity needs, replacing its increasingly expensive gas-fired power.
After 18 months in development, the $20bn Sun Cable development had a quiet coming out party in the Top End three weeks ago at a series of events held to highlight the NT's solar potential. The idea has been embraced by the NT government and attracted the attention of the software billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes, who is considering involvement through his Grok Ventures private investment firm. The NT plan follows a similarly ambitious proposal for the Pilbara, where another group of developers are working on an even bigger wind and solar hybrid plant to power local industry and develop a green hydrogen manufacturing hub. On Friday, project developer Andrew Dickson announced the scale of the proposed Asian Renewable Energy Hub had grown by more than a third, from 11GW to 15GW. "To our knowledge, it's the largest wind-solar hybrid in the world," he says.
After 18 months in development, the $20bn Sun Cable development had a quiet coming out party in the Top End three weeks ago at a series of events held to highlight the NT's solar potential. The idea has been embraced by the NT government and attracted the attention of the software billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes, who is considering involvement through his Grok Ventures private investment firm. The NT plan follows a similarly ambitious proposal for the Pilbara, where another group of developers are working on an even bigger wind and solar hybrid plant to power local industry and develop a green hydrogen manufacturing hub. On Friday, project developer Andrew Dickson announced the scale of the proposed Asian Renewable Energy Hub had grown by more than a third, from 11GW to 15GW. "To our knowledge, it's the largest wind-solar hybrid in the world," he says.
Tesla would be proud (Score:3)
The next logical step is to put solar panels into LEO (Low Earth Orbit ~200 miles up) and beam electricity to folks on the ground.
--
The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.-- Nikola Tesla
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Obviously. Just like building Space Factories is the next logical step to building factories here on Earth.
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Don't beam. Charge batteries and drop them from orbit for use on the ground.
That's a great idea, once we're mining asteroids, and manufacturing things in space. But we'll want to do both, so we can recharge the batteries on earth, instead of having to send them back to space.
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I can't wait to mine asteroids
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Don't beam. Charge batteries and drop them from orbit for use on the ground.
Just so we are clear, would we be dropping these on friendly territory or unfriendly territory?
I recall seeing a similar concept before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Don't beam. Charge batteries and drop them from orbit for use on the ground.
Just to be sure!
Microwave power is fine when NO disasters is on (Score:4, Funny)
Microwave power is fine when NO disasters is on
Or wait for 2050 for Fusion power
Re:Microwave power is fine when NO disasters is on (Score:4, Insightful)
Microwave power is fine when NO disasters is on
Or wait for 2050 for Fusion power
Can we wait that long? Is fusion power assured to come then? Doesn't it require some actual research and development to happen? Who will fund this research and development, and who will get the funding? What should we do until 2050 and we have fusion power? Sit on our thumbs?
I have an idea. Since this will take 30 years it will be worth our time to do something productive until then, big things. Build some nuclear, hydro, and wind power for our electricity, since those have very nice returns on investment. As we replace coal and natural gas with wind, hydro, and nuclear this will free up natural gas as a transportation fuel. Given that a typical automobile rarely lives to see their 30th year in use this is a 30% reduction of CO2 from transportation over that time. Electric cars are nice too but natural gas can be a replacement for fuel on long haul trucking and ocean crossing ships. Replacing aviation fuel will not be so easy due to size and weight constraints, so synthesized fuels should be considered. Synthesized fuel technology will be directly applicable to fusion power so such an investment will be worth it on the long term, and potentially allow for a synthesized replacement for natural gas for vehicles, heating, and other uses too.
Perhaps not an ideal solution but better than doing nothing while we wait for fusion to come, if we ever get it to work at all.
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Nuclear is a money pit, Singapore doesn't have room for hydro, but they could do a lot with offshore wind.
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Nuclear is a money pit
I don't believe you.
they could do a lot with offshore wind.
Offshore wind is a money pit. Don't believe me? Here's something I found with a few seconds on Google.
https://www.iea.org/Textbase/n... [iea.org]
There's probably more recent studies, so if you can find something to show offshore wind being cheaper than nuclear in or near Singapore then I'd like to see it.
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Besides, where would Singapore put a new nuclear plant, and where would they get the fuel, and where would they dispose of it? Nuclear is really, really unsuitable for Singapore.
Even by your numbers, which are way higher than the current cost in Europe for some reason (Trump trying to support coal?), that would still be affordable electricity by Singapore standards.
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"where would Singapore put a new nuclear plant" Where Singapore puts all its utilities - Malaysia. Singapore's water and sewage treatment is already located in Johor Baru.
Singapore is small but it has a big backyard called Malaysia and an Airforce ten times the size of Malaysia to keep Malaysia in line.
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Besides, where would Singapore put a new nuclear plant, and where would they get the fuel, and where would they dispose of it?
You have to ask this in a comment thread about Singapore running an underwater power cable to Australia?
Australia produces about 10% of the world's uranium.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And they have plenty of known reserves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Even by your numbers, which are way higher than the current cost in Europe for some reason (Trump trying to support coal?), that would still be affordable electricity by Singapore standards.
How is that an argument? Cheaper is better, is it not?
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Singapore has no room in the global economy in the future. That kind of transport and trade hub will die and should already have done so through computerisation of trade and shipping movements. Better organisation with less wasted energy in pointless moves in trade hubs, with cargo transitions handled in many ports to suit shipping efficiency and avoiding wasted trip to a twentieth century trade hub concept. Big investments targeted Singapore and probably targeting the previous centuries economy.
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Yes, but there is also Indonesia that they are going through to get to Singapore, and Malaysia just north of Singapore. 300 M people primed for some rapid economic development. So a big potential market for electricity.
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Actually till we have replicators, goods still need to move physically and geography dictates most ships will pass through the Straits. And basic graph theory states that the best point to transship is where the maximum edges are coming into a node. You can run your fancy simulations and the answer they will spit out is transship in Singapore. Geography doesnt change or in other words "Location,Location,Location"
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With No Disasters on
It seems as though you missed the reference to Sim City.
Great comment otherwise. Just don't believe that the OP really believes fusion will be here by 2050. That was game time, nothing to do with reality. :)
We've been pushing that since the mid '70s (Score:2)
The next logical step is to put solar panels into LEO (Low Earth Orbit ~200 miles up) and beam electricity to folks on the ground.
We've [wikipedia.org] been pushing this since at least the mid 1970s.
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And no one has done it for 50 years because it is an incredibly dumb idea. Just build solar farms here on Earth instead of wanting to build everything in Spaaaaaace.
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Where on earth do they have sun 24/7? That's what you have in geosynchronous orbit, except for a couple of months a year when it's 23/7. It's just a race to see whether battery prices go down faster than launch costs. Right now it's hard to predict because both are undergoing rapid technological change.
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I'll wager that two solar generation plants on opposite sides of the planet are cheaper than a single solar generation plant in orbit.
Try thirty.
- One multiplier of five (4 4/5) because on the ground you get about 5 solar hours per day vs, 24 in orbit.
- Another multiplier of about six for having no atmosphere between you and the sun.
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And no one has done it for 50 years because it is an incredibly dumb idea.
No one has done it for 50 years because for most of that time NASA was the only game in town. You had to convince them that it was a good idea for them to spend their budget on - or convince congersscritters it was enough in THEIR interest to put pressure on them.
As I understand it, at one point, early on, NASA DID do a study on one of the proposed designs. It was an orbital flash-boiler steam-turbine design on the generation side.
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The next logical step is to put solar panels into LEO (Low Earth Orbit ~200 miles up) and beam electricity to folks on the ground.
It's logical to put them where drag will deorbit them?
Solar power satellites go in GEO, not LEO.
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Actually, I think Musk's long game with Tesla is providing power to the grid from intermittent renewable sources. He aims to be, not Henry the Ford of the 21st Century, but the John D. Rockefeller. That's why he got all pissy when Trump pulled the US out of the Paris accords.
Re:Tesla would be proud (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd bet that Elon Musk would get pissed if he saw the largest market in the world decided to tear up a treaty that demanded more solar power.
Elon Musk also has a pet peeve about space based solar power, he will exclaim loudly that space based solar is a bad idea.
https://www.popularmechanics.c... [popularmechanics.com]
One thing we learned today: While Musk loves electric cars and spaceflight, there's one thing he hates: space solar power. "You'd have to convert photon to electron to photon back to electron. What's the conversion rate?" he says, getting riled up for the first time during his talk. "Stab that bloody thing in the heart!"
He doesn't react well to bad ideas. Hey, everyone's got a pet peeve.
He studied economics and physics in university, and was in a PhD energy physics program before dropping out to go into business. I'd think he knows what he's talking about.
Here's someone that did the math for everyone.
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/201... [ucsd.edu]
If someone believes that the math does in fact work out in favor of space based solar then I'd expect a lot of people would like to see it, including me.
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Like the idea. I can only think of a few problems with it being in LEO.
First, having these in LEO means they will also need some sort of propulsion system to keep them there or they'll need to be replaced fairly regularly. Second, you will need a constellation of them as objects in LEO move pretty fast in relationship the Earth, meaning that you could only get electricity from one satellite for a few minutes at the top. Third, of course, is that the satellite will end up behind the planet and completely
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The next logical step is to put solar panels into LEO
LEO is not a good place because it only has sunlight not much more than half the time. Also, those solar arrays are going to be huge and things in LEO are going to fall down eventually, if they aren't destroyed by collisions with the thousands of other LEO satellites. And, most obviously of all, you can't beam the power down from LEO without ground stations all around the world.
GEO is the place for in-orbit solar where the sun shines 24/7 (23/7 for a few days around the equinoxes) and you can beam down to
It's a twofer! (Score:2)
When the beam 'slips' it also helps with overpopulation.
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You mean continuously along your ground track?
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Re: transmitted by direct current? (Score:1)
No. HVDC is excellent for long range transmission because it lacks inductive and capacitive losses. High power electronics does the conversion.
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Exactly, the power from this plant would be more efficiently used within Australia... Only if there is a significant surplus should they consider exporting it.
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If the cost of producing electricity in Singapore is significantly greater than the cost of producing it in Australia, it makes sense to export it even with transmission losses.
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They can produce it in Malaysia or Indonesia instead.
Clouds (Score:4, Interesting)
Many of the equatorial regions have clouds during the afternoon, which is when you want your a/c to be working. Northern Australia does suffer from this but not as much as further north.
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Many of the equatorial regions have clouds during the afternoon, which is when you want your a/c to be working. Northern Australia does suffer from this but not as much as further north.
I'm not sure which parts of Australia they're talking about, probably either the Kimberley or Pilbara regions of Western Australia given Singapore's location. Most of these areas are extremely arid so will see very little cloud cover. Average annual precipitation will be around 300 mm and around 30-60 days of rain per year. Most rainfall will occur around the coastal regions. The main reason that many equatorial places experience high rainfall or cloud cover is that many of them are tropical.
The big prob
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Indeed this place appears to be about 1800 to 2300 km from the population centers of Australia. And 4000 km from Singapore. Doesn't make sense to bring it there, especially since Australia is still burning fossil fuels to generate electricity.
Re:transmitted by direct current? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly, the power from this plant would be more efficiently used within Australia...
That fact is irrelevant to the Singaporeans, who want to use the power in Singapore, not in Australia.
Australia has bitchin' insolation, and more land than they can use. It's a great place to put solar panels, until we start putting them in space, which is really just waiting for costs to come down.
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Exactly, the power from this plant would be more efficiently used within Australia...
That fact is irrelevant to the Singaporeans, who want to use the power in Singapore, not in Australia.
Obvious solution there is for Singapore to invade Australia, but let's not give them any ideas.
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Especially since the Singaporean air force is twice the size of the Australian one. Singapore is the highest spender on weapons in South East Asia - way more than Indonesia, Philippines,Malaysia or even Australia.
Re:transmitted by direct current? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly, the power from this plant would be more efficiently used within Australia...
It depends on whether you think about "efficiency" like an engineer or like an economist.
Suppose half the energy put into the Singapore transmission line is lost; from an engineering standpoint that's shockingly inefficient. But suppose Australia pays $100/Megawatt-hour and Singapore is willing to pay $200 for that same Megawatt-hour delivered on their end. It makes no economic difference whether you sell 2 Megawatt hours to Australia or 1 Megawatt hour to Singapore; either way you've expended 2 Megawatt hours and got $200 in return.
Now if Singapore was willing to pay $200.01/MWh, it'd be more economically "efficient" to lose the energy in the transmission line than to use it in Australia, even though it'd be physically less "efficient". Note economic "efficiency" doesn't count external costs like pollution or impact on carbon emissions.
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But if there was competition and alternative sources, the Australian power prices wouldn't be as ridiculously expensive as they are now, and power companies wouldn't like making 1200% profit on their investments.
So we'll just ship all the cheap power overseas instead.
Re:transmitted by direct current? (Score:4, Informative)
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Quick back-of-envelope calculation for you:
- The HV in HVDC stands for high voltage - typically order of 100kV to 1000kV, so let's say 500kV for argument's sake.
- They want to deliver about 10GW of power, so the current will be about I = 10^7 / 5.10^5 = 100/5 = 20A.
- Distance is order 4000km.
- For arguments sake let's assume a copper conductor with 2cm diameter - so about 1 ohm/km (in reality it the conductor would be much bigger, so losses would be smaller, but 1 ohm/km is easy to work with).
So, we have 20
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I think you are off by three orders of magnitude: 10GW is 10^10W, so you are looking at 20kA @ 500kV. Luckily, a 2cm diameter copper cable only has a resistance of ~0.05 ohms/km, so 214 for the entire run.
Unfortunately, 20kA through a 214ohm resistor gives ~85GW of heating, so to get the power to Singapore using that cable and voltage would be problematic: 21kW/m of power would be enough to make the cable glow/melt, even underwater...
That's not a cable (Score:4, Funny)
*this* is a cable!
Doomed to fail (Score:1)
The technology of solar PV currently has an energy return on energy invested (EROEI) ratio below 5. Adding batteries lowers this even more. A modern society requires EROEI above 7 to sustain itself.
Citation:
http://euanmearns.com/eroei-for-beginners/
Maybe someone could argue about the specific numbers but there is little to dispute on the ranking of various energy sources. Here's a few other sources for numbers:
https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the-environment/energy-analysis-of
Nuclear Energetic Return (Score:2)
That Forbes chart list nuclear as heads and shoulders above all other energy... then why is it economically unfeasible?
Economic debt can be shuffled and hidden. However Energetic debt cannot. This is the point of Energetic Return On Energetic Investment or EROEI. The main work that has been peer reviewed by 10 or more Universities around the world is called Nuclear Power insights [stormsmith.nl] by Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Smith for the Dutch Government.
The document, in 47 parts, examines various aspect of the EROEI of the nuclear industry in Petajoules (PJ).
There are a number of reasons that come together that affect
Nuclear Energetic Input: Mining (Score:2)
So the insanely toxic In situ Leech mining technique was developed to pump a mix of hydrogen peroxide and sulfuric acid to disolve rock in the ground. Instead of mine tailings you get hundreds/thousands of megalitres of radioactive sulfuric acid to de
Nuclear Energetic Input: Enrichment (Score:2)
Enrichment. You have to move around a lot of Uranium hexaflouride to enrich the ore and use it in a reactor. This process creates CFC114. The main plant that did this in the US was powered by two coal power plants. So there is a double whammy there with the greenhouse gas issue as this was the US's biggest CFC release even during the Montreal protocol. By the way the byproduct here is killing the zytoplankton in the water that creates most of the oxygen we breathe.
There is more to say on enrichment,
Nuclear Energetic Input: Reactors (Score:2)
Reactors
This is a core reason that the materials technology affects the EROEI of the nuclear industry, the "Service Life" of the Reactor. Typically designed for 40 years, they have been extended to 60 years. The main thing affecting service life of the reactor is "neutron embrittlement" of the reactor vessel and adjoining pipes. Obviously you don't want the pipes of the reactor to break off so it looses cooling, so retiring the reactor *before* this starts happening is the goal of the service life.
Nuclear Energetic Input: Spent Fuel Containment (Score:2)
Re:Doomed to fail (Score:4, Insightful)
Just for shits and giggles, I read your "for beginners" blog post, and noted in the incredibly microscopic text, that the Solar Panel costs, efficiency, and useful lifetime, assumptions being built for this metric, are based off of "Cleveland, et. al, 1984".
There have been significant improvements to the qualify, scale, reliability, and lowered materials cost since 1984. This is reflected in PV panel pricing, which is now considerably lower than many fossil fuels.
These investors are not stupid. They would not be pushing this project if it did not pencil out.
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Just for shits and giggles, I read your "for beginners" blog post, and noted in the incredibly microscopic text, that the Solar Panel costs, efficiency, and useful lifetime, assumptions being built for this metric, are based off of "Cleveland, et. al, 1984".
There have been significant improvements to the qualify, scale, reliability, and lowered materials cost since 1984. This is reflected in PV panel pricing, which is now considerably lower than many fossil fuels.
The link from World Nuclear is kept up to date.
https://www.world-nuclear.org/... [world-nuclear.org]
The fact that it's on a nuclear power advocacy site shouldn't scare everyone off, they cite their sources and they are far more current than 1984. If you don't like their numbers then I propose finding other sources, and maybe even sending World Nuclear a note to update their website.
These investors are not stupid. They would not be pushing this project if it did not pencil out.
I expect that they are not stupid either, only desperate. An EROEI of 5 to 15 from solar might seem terrible compared to the 20+ that can be had
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The fact that it's on a nuclear power advocacy site shouldn't scare everyone off
In this case it should certainly scare some people off. Advocacy organizations aren't always untrustworthy: some of them have a cause, come up with a plan of action, and advocate for that action. This is fine. Consumers Reports is against the Sprint / T-Mobile merger, for example, on the grounds that it will limit consumer choice. Their motives are not suspect and reading their take on the topic is unlikely to be misleading, even though they can't be described as unbiased.
For other advocacy groups, the p
North Africa could power Europe the same way (Score:4, Interesting)
Nice to see the US falling further and further behind in technological innovation because entrenched interests like coal and oil frackers are in control of our national policy. Owning the government is a great investment up to the point where your beachfront villa is destroyed by rising sea levels.
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What is this, a beachfront villa for ants?
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Owning the government is a great investment up to the point where your beachfront villa is destroyed by rising sea levels.
Oh, don't worry about that. When it happens, the government will pay you back the value of your lost property.
Re:North Africa could power Europe the same way (Score:4, Insightful)
There have been studies about solar power from North Africa being sent to the European grid.
Yes, such studies have been done. Dr. David MacKay did a talk on this.
https://www.ted.com/talks/davi... [ted.com]
He published a paper and website on it.
https://www.withouthotair.com/ [withouthotair.com]
What he intentionally left out was what conclusion one should draw from it. As he was suffering from cancer he made his own opinion quite clear.
https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
This data from Dr. MacKay is getting old, and he's not here any more to update himself, so it may need someone to update it to reflect the actual numbers for today but the conclusion should still be the same for most any nation. That conclusion being, unless you have a hot and sunny climate there will be a need for fossil fuels (with carbon sequestration) and/or nuclear power.
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From your Guardian article:
Prof MacKay argued that solar, wind and biomass energy would require too much land, huge battery back-ups and cost too much to be a viable option for the UK.
Too much space? Does he have any idea how much space we have? Offshore wind resources in the UK's exclusive economic area could power the entire country 20x over by conservative estimates.
And in North Africa... Turning vast tracts of desert into solar farms would be doing them a big favour, as it would also help stop the spread of those deserts.
Then be brings out the old battery backup chestnut. Aside from the fact that you don't even need any for wind, just some smoothing capacit
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And here is a link to a more thought out version of this: https://www.theatlantic.com/sc... [theatlantic.com]
Problem - Indonesian subduction zone (2km trench) (Score:3)
The Australian continental plate slides under the Pacific plate just north of Australia.
There is a 2km deep trench just off the coast of Indonesia that would need to be crossed - not a trivial technical matter.
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https://www.abc.net.au/news/20... [abc.net.au]
Huge battery and multiple cables required (Score:4, Interesting)
10-gigawatt-capacity array of panels [...] backed by battery storage to ensure it can supply power around the clock
That's going to be some battery. Australia installed what was the world's biggest battery not long ago; it's specs are around 100MW and 100MWhr. On the face of it, the battery for this new project would need to have 100 times the power and well over 1000 times the capacity. I wonder if they've checked the cost of using solar thermal instead because that way they can store the energy as heat instead of needing batteries.
Another issue is the reliability of the cable feed. A feature of underwater cables is that it can take months to fix faults. They'll need to run multiple cables (probably required anyway just for capacity reasons) with enough capacity to run with at least one cable out at any time. They also need to run them via diverse routes since undersea earthquakes can take out cables.
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Re:Huge battery and multiple cables required (Score:4, Informative)
It's probably going to be thousands of smaller batteries, not a single large one.
The word battery just means many units grouped together, so many batteries working together is still just one battery. Originally the term came from using many cannon to batter down a fortification but, when the electrolytic cell was invented, the word was applied to groups of cells connected together to achieve a higher voltage. That's why common 9V batteries really are batteries, with six cells inside, but individual AAs are only cells and, strictly speaking, not batteries at all.
If you look at the details of the 100MW battery [abc.net.au] you can see it's already many cabinets clustered together, with each cabinet no doubt containing multiple smaller units inside. Yes, it would make sense to have multiple clusters spread amongst the solar panels rather than a single cluster if you needed 1000 of these, but it's still just a single battery.
If the area is large enough, sunrise and sunset times and cloud cover are going to differ across the array
15,000 hectares is only 150 square kilometres, like a square 12km on a side. It's not nearly big enough to have a substantial variance in sunrise and sunset times.
Re: Huge battery and multiple cables required (Score:2)
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I think this is some BS made up by the journalist who didn't understand what the battery is for. Looking at the Sun Cable web site it mentions a battery, but not the claim that it will provide 24/7 power. More likely it's just for output smoothing.
overhead lines? (Score:2)
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> that seems insane given the cyclones that hit that area
Can't speak for cyclones, but we've had 5 instances of "100 year winds" in the last 10 years here in Canada. Good thing climate change turned out to be a Chinese hoax!
I mention this because Canada is also home to two of the largest and most critical overhead lines - the Manitoba Bipole and the James Bay Project. They both deliver many GW of power on the same order as this project over thousands of km out in the open. The former has been damaged by
Australia exports huge amount of dirty electricity (Score:4, Informative)
Batteries? (Score:2)
Why not just charge batteries and ship them. Ship back the empty batteries. Ships which used to ship coal can be repurposed instead of spending on an underwater power cable which can get affected by natural disasters.
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Batteries have comparable energy storage densities to Crude oil and we ship Crude all the time. A typical tank of gas lasts 400 miles. In a similar space we are able to store 300 miles of range in today's electric cars. So about 75% energy density. If Singapore wants clean fuel and also disaster proof power a 25% penalty is not too high and battery tech is getting better all the time. If you put in a fixed cable the sunk costs means you wont upgrade for at least 20 years. Also this way the ships which used
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Batteries have comparable energy storage densities to Crude oil and we ship Crude all the time.
In what universe is this true? Maybe if the batteries are ground to a powder and burned in pure oxygen they will get something close to crude oil densities. But then after that I'm not so sure what is shipped back will be all that useful for a recharge.
A typical tank of gas lasts 400 miles. In a similar space we are able to store 300 miles of range in today's electric cars. So about 75% energy density.
Is that the entire car you are talking about? Look up the mass of the battery compared to the mass of the fuel. You will see that the battery will weigh about 1200 pounds and the gasoline about 120 pounds. You do know that gasoline will float on water, d
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For Shipping volume is generally the constraint not mass as due to the low friction of water does not take too much acceleration to move the ship. Almost anything will float on water if there is enough air space and any modern ship has a lot of airspace inside.
I would go even one step further - retrofit Oil tankers with large banks of batteries. Charge them on the Australian coast and then sail to Singapore and hook up to the grid. Once almost discharged sail back
Also the ship themselves can run on electric
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And Oh BTW. Cool down and Australia in the same sentence?
Make sure to run the numbers (Score:2)
$20 billion for a project with 10 GWp production. That's $2/Wp *all in* for the panels, **storage and delivery**
That makes it, by far, the cheapest large-scale (>1 GW) power source, ever. Hydro is around $1, but that does not include transmission. NG co-gen is a little cheaper, but again, that does not include either the transmission nor the (relatively cheap, admittedly) piping to get the fuel to the plant.
This is Australia, which does tend to be sunny, but if these prices can be replicated elsewhere th
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uh? Australia itself?
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Re: In your face coalies! (Score:4, Insightful)
I wouldn't worry too much about the earthquakes, there are already many other cables in this and similar areas and problems are rare.
To come back to diversification, you want to get more of these solar and wind plants, each with their own cables and infrastructure.