Australia’s biggest solar farm has been approved and is set to be built despite significant doubts over the viability of the $30 billion project that will export much of its power to Singapore.
The Sun Cable Australia-Asia Power Link plant has received federal government approval to build a 12,000-hectare solar farm in the Northern Territory.
The project, which has the backing of Atlassian billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes, is set to be built on a former pastoral station between Elliott and Tennant Creek and backers say it will ultimately create 14,000 jobs.
The approval by federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek on Wednesday includes an 800km transmission line from the plant to Darwin and an underwater cable to the end of Australian waters.
The cable will send much of the generated electricity to Singapore.
‘It will be the largest solar precinct in the world – and heralds Australia as the world leader in green energy,’ Ms Plibersek said.
‘Australians have a choice between a renewable energy transition that’s already underway creating jobs and driving down prices; or paying for an expensive nuclear fantasy that may never happen.’
She said the project would deliver almost six times more power than a 700-megawatt large nuclear reactor could deliver, criticising what she called ‘an expensive nuclear fantasy’ being pitched by the federal opposition.
The Sun Cable Australia-Asia Power Link is expected to generate 4GW of renewable energy through a solar farm in the Northern Territory, creating over 14,000 jobs
The 12,000-hectare solar farm, which has the backing of Atlassian billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes (pictured), is set to built on a former pastoral station between Elliott and Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory
However, fantasy is also a word that has also been attached to the Sun-Cable project, due to the colossal investment cost that had already seen the company put into administration.
Billionaires Mr Cannon-Brookes and Andrew Forrest were early investors in the project but disagreed over funding of the estimated $30 billion in costs for the plant, the batteries to store the energy, and the very ambitious 4,200-kilometre undersea cable.
The pair disagreed over the viability of the project, but Grok Ventures, Mr Cannon-Brookes’ private investment company, injected $65m into the company while it was in administration.
The first stage of the project will be to get the panels and batteries built and operational to deliver up to 4GW of power to Darwin.
The second stage will aim to supply 1.75GW of electricity to Singapore via an undersea cable 4,200km long – a proposal that has been criticised by many for being too ambitious.
The longest submarine link yet proposed is just a fifth of that size – the 767km Viking link between the UK and Denmark.
But Mr Cannon-Brookes hit back at the sceptics last year, claiming the ambition is ‘proportionate to the challenges and opportunities of the renewable energy transition’.
‘So while I acknowledge some people might think it’s too ambitious, we don’t believe it is,’ he said at the time.
‘Frankly, the technology exists to make this happen. We’re extremely confident that modern cable technology can reliably carry more electricity over long distances and through deeper waters than was possible in the past,’ he added.
It still has a long way to go, however.
The final investment decision on the project is not expected until 2027, and if it goes ahead, supply of electricity will not begin until the early 2030s.