SunCable Is Back On.

This project from MCB (Mike Cannon-Brookes) started to hit the news a few years ago, and I covered it back then and was most enthusiastic. Then Twiggy (Andrew Forrest of Fortescue Minerals Group) decided he didn’t agree with Cannon. Now it seems they’ve made up.

The Story So Far

Sun Cable was originally envisaged to provide a “backup power” contract with Singapore, to supply some percentage of their energy needs, I think I remember 30%-ish? And the nearly 4,000km undersea cable was one of the least outrageous things it was going to do. Even in the initial planning it was going to be big. I mean, BIG. It also aimed to provide power to an industrial area in Darwin.

But as I understand it the original plan fell apart because Andrew Forrest wanted to put most of the output into creating green (no emissions to make) hydrogen from the output. The original deal would have been to supply a steady contract to Singapore (not a bad thing to have a fallback income) and a certain amount (900MW I think) to give Darwin a desirable industrial precinct and attract a lot of new industries to the top end.

When completed, this “solar precinct” will be visible from space and be the biggest of its kind. And I am thinking that even if this supplied only Singapore and Darwin that would already be pretty large power plant. But I also remember that this was considered to have been phase one of the project, and only about a third of the final capacity.

What Other Uses?

Twiggy (Andrew Forrest to anyone that doesn’t know the nickname) may still get a huge chunk of the output for green hydrogen.

I also wondered at the time if that extra capacity could be extended west and east, It’s a similar distance from the Sun Cable precinct to either direction, albeit one that would require much more (ugly and aboveground, or safer but order of magnitude more expensive underground) infrastructure.

In a submarine cable, the cable itself is expensive but getting it from one end to the other is almost trivial compared to digging trenches or erecting massive pylons. But going east and west would hook up with existing grids much closer. Just saying.

I Wonder If …

• Any thought was given to putting some of that capacity out to sea and powering a few barges to condense the sea mist and pump the resulting fresh water ashore? This method of harvesting fresh water doesn’t affect the salinity of the seawater around it, doesn’t create any toxic wastes around it, and in fact creates a marine life habitat underneath it.

• The point here, I guess, is that you can use excess energy production for more than just charging batteries. The hot sunny climate in the Northern Territory is idea for growing a range of fruit and vegetables, the only choke point being the cost and availability of water.

• Of the industrial energy supplied to Darwin, it would only be fitting if some of it was put to use building electric and hydrogen vehicles…

URLs

• https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/cannon-brookes-record-breaking-solar-farm-plan-gets-plibersek-s-tick-20240821-p5k416.html
  
• https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/green-light-for-worlds-biggest-solar-precinct-in-australia/ar-AA1p98VX
  
• https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/abc-news-daily/the-billionaires-plan-to-export-our-solar-power/104276544

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