No Solar Energy? No Problem! Gigantic Undersea Cable Will Make It Happen

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The Intertubes completely lit up earlier right now, when the Australian authorities lastly green-lighted the large, lengthy awaited Australia-Asia Energy Hyperlink photo voltaic power mission. Below the purview of the startup SunCable, AAPowerLink will join the nation’s huge photo voltaic sources to the energy-hungry island of Singapore by undersea cable. The personal sector enterprise could appear quixotic at first look, however the know-how items are in place — it’s only a matter of subsequent steps.

Photo voltaic Vitality By (Very) Lengthy Undersea Cable: Not A Dream

The concept of transporting photo voltaic power by undersea cable is a comparatively new twist on an outdated thought. The usage of submarine cables for transporting renewable power is commonplace, partly by advantage of the offshore wind industry.

Lengthy undersea cables are additionally commonplace and they’re getting longer, particularly within the discipline of knowledge transmission. The brand new Meta undersea cable mission circumnavigating Africa, for instance, is 45,000 kilometers (about 27,961 miles) lengthy. “The deep-sea cable project will connect 32 other African countries and directly support economic development in Africa, fostering further growth of 4G and 5G and increased broadband penetration to millions of people and businesses across the continent,” Africa Enterprise Insider reported final February.

By comparability, the undersea photo voltaic power cable proposed by SunCable is available in on the modest scale of simply 4,300 kilometers (about 2,671 miles).

However, energy cables and fiber optic cables are usually not the identical factor. As an influence cable, the SunCable mission is by far essentially the most bold mission of its form. Thus far, the Danish-British Viking Hyperlink mission is billed because the longest undersea energy cable on the earth with a complete size of 765 kilometers (475 miles).

Expertise apart, undersea cables often fall victim to wreck, whether or not from passing anchors and fishing gear, deliberate sabotage, or collateral injury from geopolitical tensions. Nonetheless, that has not stopped stakeholders from investing in new cable initiatives. Earlier this yr, the agency MarketsandMarkets ran the numbers on submarine cables and reported that the undersea cable market is anticipated to succeed in $27 billion by 2029, up from $18.2 billion in 2024. The demand for energy cables is driving the market, in addition to the demand for fiber optic cables.

Australia To Share The Photo voltaic Vitality Love With Singapore

As for the small print, the SunCable AAPowerLink project surfaced on the CleanTechnica radar 5 years in the past. In its present iteration, AAPowerLink will draw on the wealthy photo voltaic power sources of Australia’s Northern Territory, with plans for establishing an unlimited photo voltaic array within the Barkly area.

The clear kilowatts will likely be shunted to Darwin by overhead transmission traces earlier than heading out to Singapore by undersea cable on a 24/7 foundation, with an help from on-site power storage techniques.

SunCable notes that the 800-kilometer overhead line will “generally” observe an current railway hall, with the intention of lowering building prices and mitigating environmental impacts.

“The project includes the development of the world’s biggest integrated renewable energy and battery storage facility in the heart of the Northern Territory which could over multiple stages have a capacity of up to 6GW of renewable energy to Darwin and Singapore,” SunCable provides.

That’s only for starters. SunCable is billing AAPowerLink as a flagship mission, with extra to come back.

“We have a clear and ambitious vision: to harness Australia’s incredible renewable energy potential to power cities, drive new economies, and support communities throughout the Asia Pacific region,” SunCable explains.

In help of that aim, the corporate is laying plans for in-house cable manufacturing to make sure speedy manufacturing. SunCable anticipates that its manufacturing operation will likely be a “critical enabler of SunCable and other renewable transmission projects in Australia and beyond.”

Huge Photo voltaic Vitality Venture Will get The Edge On Nuclear Vitality

Reuters was among the many many information organizations to catch the newest information about AAPowerLink right now. Reporter Renju Jose famous that the mission is going through opposition from nuclear energy stakeholderswho argue that Australia can’t substitute its coal energy vegetation by 2050 with out lifting a present ban on nuclear building.

That’s going to be a troublesome row to hoe. Until the Commonwealth Authorities all of the sudden wakes up at some point and decides to ban photo voltaic power, AAPowerLink is on a sooner observe.

In a press launch saying the approval, SunCable famous that the mission has now sailed by means of the Commonwealth EPBC Act in addition to the Atmosphere Safety Act of the Northern Territory, “paving the way for the next phase of development to deliver industrial-scale electricity to customers in Darwin and Singapore.”

Don’t maintain your breath for all that photo voltaic power to start flowing. Though AAPowerLink has gotten previous a years-long environmental evaluation course of, a Last Funding Determination just isn’t anticipated till the start of 2027. If all goes in keeping with plan, the photo voltaic power will start flowing in 2030.

Within the meantime, SunCable lists the next steps to come back, any one in all which might complicate the timeline:

• Persevering with negotiations of Indigenous Land Use Agreements (ILUAs) with Conventional House owners throughout the mission footprint within the Northern Territory;

• Partaking with Singapore’s Vitality Market Authority on the conditional approval utility for the subsea cable interconnector element of the mission; and

• Partaking with the Indonesian Authorities on regulatory and allowing issues to show the subsea route inclusive of data and hydrographic data-sharing.

What About The Vitality Storage?

The newly issued approval for AAPowerLink represents fairly a turnaround for SunCable. The agency was initially co-founded by Andrew Forrest of Fortescue Metals Group and the equally deep-pocketed Mike Cannon-Brooks of Atlassian. A battle royal later ensued and the corporate went into voluntary administration. Cannon-Brooks lastly emerged with the corporate in hand final Could, with an help from his Grok Ventures agency and the net-zero specialist Quinbrook Infrastructure Companions.

Whereas the bold mixture of photo voltaic power and undersea cable have generated a lot of the media buzz over the AAPowerLink mission, power storage can be going to be a key ingredient within the mission.

With that in thoughts, preserve your eye on one other Grok Ventures portfolio firm, Antora Energy. The California startup is neck deep within the discipline of lengthy period power storage innovation. The US Division of Vitality defines lengthy period as 10 hours at naked minimal, far outdoing the present 4-6 hour capability of standard lithium-ion battery arrays. For grid storage and different industrial-scale customers of wind or photo voltaic power, such because the AAPowerLink mission, the Vitality Division has its eye on even longer durations lasting days, weeks, months, and entire seasons.

When CleanTechnica final checked into Antora, it was working with the Vitality Division to refine its long duration “thermal battery” for business use, so keep tuned for extra on that.

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Picture: An undersea energy cable will transport photo voltaic power from sunny Australia to Singapore, serving to the island nation transition to carbon-free electricity (courtesy of SunCable).