The Australia-Asia Power Link: Record-Breaking Feats of Engineering

Discover the ambitious Australia-Asia Power Link project by Sun Cable, aiming to build the world's largest solar plant, largest battery, and longest submarine power cable to send clean energy from Australia to Singapore and Indonesia. Learn about the challenges and opportunities of this game-changing endeavor.

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[mekanickrew]

Australia contains six states—New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, and Tasmania—and two internal territories—the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory, which contains Canberra. I have never heard them referred to as provinces.

[sajbuckby]

It's already gone under. The two billionaire backers parted ways. Also, that route is unfeasible to to unstable geology and deep trenches. It's why Browse gas goes to Darwin rather than Timor which is much closer. It would be very expensive by the time it got to Singapore.

[ploxxybb]

As an American, I really appreciate using Shaq as a measurement unit, other wise I would have never grasped the sheer size.

[rmar]

The argument between Forest and Brookes has to do with which tech that they use. Forest wants to use the power generated to power electrolysers in order to create and export green hydrogen. Whereas Brookes is in favour of sticking to the original plan.

Personally, I’d like to see a combination of the two projects. Firstly build the green Hydrogen plants. Kero enough on site to power Darwin 24/7 from renewable energy and then export the rest. Then use the profits derived from the export of the Hydrogen to fund the next phase of the project. Though I would be connecting to Jakarta first and then continuing on to Singapore. Who knows in the future, the system could be expanded to add connections to Indonesias new capital of Nusantara and another connection to Port Moresby in PNG.

[ns]

I hope they can work out the details and find success in this. We need to find out if solar is going to be viable for large-scale and these are the types of projects to do that. Good on you, Aussies, for giving it a try!

[greasybrownie]

A mine site in WA called Christmas creek has a MASSIVE solar farm they use to offset the diesel they use and to great effect. I just really hope we use these solar farms all over Australia as we definitely have enough sunlight to make it worthwhile
should also add the Christmas creek solar farm powers 2 massive mine sites

[TheDanEdwards]

Nearly all of Australia is sunny. As such, it makes more sense to implement solar energy locally rather than have all PV cells in one region in the remote area.

[geralddegraaf]

Though they are not looking for extra costs, paying transit fees to Indonesia would help get them on side. They might even agree to a lower rate during capital cost recovery, and a higher rate during the subsequent period.

[revinhatol]

Bataan Nuclear Power Plant: Allow me to introduce myself.

[toddgreener]

Minor note: atlassian ACQUIRED Trello. They had their own project management software called Jira, and they didn't like that people were using Trello without their permission. Classic "buy 'em out boys" move, but at least they didn't just throw Trello in the trash

[whiskeyinthejar]

I used to supply electrical hardware for commercial solar installations. (In Australia) Not farms, mostly rooftop on shopping centres etc. Biggest was 1.08 megawatts. The industry sure had a lot of cowboys. One caught fire, luckily only a small section. Pushing stuff right to it's electrical limits on top of a hot roof isn't ideal.

[owenwilson]

If I recall correctly the trouble began with the local electric supplier refusing to allow the first operational parts of the farm to hook in their power; cynics might suspect the supplier wanted to hobble a competitor but they assured everyone it was over legitimate concerns whether the solar project could synchronise its supply with the local grid's AC.

[brendanshannon]

Northern Territory is not just one climate... while a lot of it is dry desert, it is still very much tropical and wet in the North.

[ThSu]

The one thing that kept crossing my mind when thinking of the undersea cable was how much power loss there could be with that long of a cable system. I realize there is probably some engineers working on ways to minimize the losses, but there still has to be a pretty significant loss.

[autopsipath]

Tasmanian here just checking in to say that all our energy is renewable down here, mostly hydro. Takes alot of habitat damage to build all the infrastructure when you build down here in the bush. Makes heaps more sense putting solar panels in the desert and they seem to have less cons than windmills even if they take up more sufrace area.

[bamwesty]

Trade skills in mining and heavy industry installation and continued maintenance projects (of which Australia has a large skilled workforce) definitely transfers to green energy projects. If anything, green energy is simpler to install and maintain and the overall project is less complex than mining operations from what I’ve personally seen on job sites.

The areas I think would require training and investment in the workforce would be in manufacturing and production of green energy equipment. Turbines, blades, solar panels etc although manufacturing would likely be outsourced to India or somewhere. As much as I’d like things to be produced at home, it may not be cost effective.

In my mind this is a perfect path forward for Australia, we can utilise our skilled workforce as we phase out mining and become significant energy suppliers to all of Asia.

[plot]

This is exactly what I was talking friends about energy generation in Africa and cables to Europe for transportation.

[ignitionfrn]

1:25 - Chapter 1 - The vision
7:25 - Chapter 2 - Development & problems
11:20 - Chapter 3 - Implications for the future

[wheels.]

This is not far from me, it is mind blowing to look at in person. The Panel arrays are acres and acres of panels.

[owenbradshaw]

I knew a lot about this project, but I had no idea how profitable it was going to be, insane.