The ambitious project may take more than a decade to finish, but the technology is almost ready
ByK.G. Chan
The desert outside Tennant Creek in Australia’s Northern Territory may hold the key to addressing Singapore’s future electricity supplies.
The world’s largest solar farm that could light up Singapore’s glittering shopping malls and office towers will be built on the barren dunes there.
It was reported that a huge amount of panels as well as supporting battery storage devices with a combined capacity of 10 gigawatts would be spread across 15,000 hectares of land there to ensure the solar farm could make the most of the outback’s clear skies and bright sunshine.
The bulk of the green electricity generated by this US$14.1 billion project would be exported to the city-state in Southeast Asia – equivalent to roughly one-fifth of its annual electricity consumption – via high-voltage submarine cables that will stretch about 3,800 kilometers.
The Northern Territory project to power Singapore, however, is still at a relatively early stage of planning.
The Guardian and Singapore’s Lianhe Zaobao reported that it could take four years for the massive solar farm to lock in finance, with production scheduled to start mid-to-late next decade. Yet the project is now under the auspices of both governments in Singapore and Australia’s Northern Territory state government.
Singapore aims to shed its reliance on expensive gas-fired power generation and on supplies from Malaysia and Indonesia, while Australia, with the best renewable energy resource in the developed world, also aims to export more green energy instead of liquefied natural gas and heavy-polluting coal.
HT/Codetrader
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Wait til they have to negotiate land, sea and sunshine royalties from the Aboriginal councils.
Have they run this past The Voice yet? What’s Bob Brown’s take on it?
he’ll like it
and flimflam will invest pdq
turney would be a a natch for promoting it..no ice he can have problems with;-)
Yes its a crazy idea, plus what about the lose of energy in a long under sea cable.
MJE VK5ELL
Yes, a very, very long under sea cable that would have very huge HVDC cable losses including from the rectification to AC/DC/AC. If they really wanted to use the OZ outback for solar generation, it would be much better to make a long term deal between Indonesia and Singapore, and take the HVDC cabe to Indonesia and use those electrons to power up part of Indonesia and then Indonesia sends a similar amount of their electrons on to Singapore after accounting for losses. The electrons go to the nearest load if designed to do so on the same circuit, so in effect OZ is is still selling the power to Singapore…it is just being cascaded down the line so to speak and becomes a bookkeeping exercise. The batteries would have to be located in OZ, and then the base load firm energy would be a lot lower than the peak output at noon. This is the way that selling large blocks of power can work thru multiple national utility’s such as BC Hydro selling electricity through WA and OR to California.
Which end of the cable would be the best place for the batteries?
The far end. Why store energy at the near end if much of it will be lost at the far end?
Why lose energy in line loss and have to have 3x the transmission capacity for use 1/3 of the day and idle 2/3?
It’s a moot point, the company is probably too small to attempt the project. More likely they will buy power much closer.
The end where he juice comes out so they’re easier to recharge
Decisions decisions…always damn decisions but first the environmental impact study and whether we’d be colonising and oppressing an LDC with Western capitalism and Green racism.
This will be great for generating electricity from 6am to 3pm in Singapore… I.e. when nobody is needing the electricity.
when nobody is needing the electricity.
Except those who run air conditioning, which must be >90% of the population now; when I lived there – 1995 or so – many bus stops were getting air conditioning, and non-A/C buses were cheaper to ride . . .
Auto
The claim on the map image says that it will “Supply all of Australia’s and the worlds electricity”. I suppose if you are out to tell a lie, make it the biggest lie imaginable….but how could it ever get past the editors.
If wishes were horses I’d wear one by my side,
If onions were watches beggars would ride.
Something not quite right hear.
I hope I live long enough to see the aftermath of millions of spent, dead, solar panels and how they get disposed, or just abandoned .
Perhaps someone should google DC electricity before they spend their first few billion on this project…….?
DC current which they are proposing doesn’t travel too well.
DC is ideal and the only option for long distance transmission by cable.
(I am a power systems engineer)
Then why did Edison’s DC system require generators every couple of miles, while Tesla’s AC system could have the generators hundreds of miles away? BTW you cannot increase/decrease voltage of a DC current. Transformers only work with AC current.
Tesla’s system was low voltage which meant it needed high current.
There’s a big difference between long distance distribution and local distribution.
In Edison’s day, DC had to be used at the voltage it was generated at. Therefore you couldn’t have high voltages for long-distance transmission. So alternating current, with a voltage could be changed in a transformer, was the best choice.
Now we have high-voltage DC – up to 750 kV – that is converted from AC to DC and back again using electronic converters. Over long distances, this is more efficient and cheaper than AC transmission.
This is true. However, you want to rip up that existing infrastructure?
Maybe take your own advice and google HVDC interconnectors
Anyone contemplating a project such as the one described in the story should make sure WUWT finds out about it. The denizens of WUWT will gleefully point out all the glaringly obvious problems involved. It would save a bunch of money that might otherwise have to be spent on engineering and planning. It’s kinda like how President Trump uses the media to vet his nominations. link
“Supply all of Australia’s and the worlds electricity” …..from the map image. Wow, how could the media allow such fake claims to be published as news, 1984 has been and surpassed.
Golly I’ve done it again, sorry…I forget that comments do not instantly appear, and thinking I did something wrong, I post my point again. My first comment is a few comments above.
lol. When the sun is shining in Australia but not at night?
I was under the impression that Singapore is actually one of the most sensible capitalist nations in the world.
Maybe this is just a marketing puff piece by those who want to sell Singapore such rubbish. I guess it really shows how the economic boot is now increasingly on a different foot.
You know what happens when the guy with all the great ideas and makes billions and gives control to his kids…then he dies and the kids and grandkids proceed to screw it all up? Singapore.
Think of the UHI effect of such a large area of black. Central Australia is already hot enough – the last thing it needs is the largest heat absorber ever built
All good, everything out there ends up covered in red dust anyway. It wont be black for very long.
How many GW hrs of battery storage, and why locate the batteries in Australia. Surely they would be better in Singapore?
And if it gets built, no power generated will be used in Australia. Our Govn’t has just had to have a chat with Trump to secure millions of barrels of oil.
yeah while we have a huge oilbasin mid SA..and they went very quiet about it after months of promoting it heavily
same shit OS usa would be doing the setup and making the money
meanwhile we have sfa storages and a less than 30day supply of petrol or diesel
and if we keep OUR noses our of the mid east, we shouldnt have supply issues
Aaaah, there’ll be sacred sites, endangered moths and newts etc to stop the farm. Won’t there?
This location has very good solar resource. Tracking arrays will do much better than the 6.5 hours per day average depicted on the map. The average increases to about 9 hours full sunshine per day with tracking array:
https://www.rpc.com.au/pdf/Solar_Radiation_Figures.pdf
The output would not change much over a year because the loss in efficiency with rising temperature in the higher insolation period would reduce the output to a similar level to the lower insolation period.
This region does not get much cloud. There is little variation in insolation between best and worst days during the lower sunshine months:
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=193&p_display_type=dailyDataFile&p_startYear=2018&p_c=-45908915&p_stn_num=015135
Tracking arrays have almost constant output from 9am to 3pm so, allowing for the time shift, this site could cover the morning peak in Singapore.
If there is a benefit, it would be related to the cost of gas and resultant fuel saving. At current gas prices in Asia approaching USD20/GJ (say USD180/MWhe), I expect this project will have economic merit despite the engineering challenges. It is unlikely LNG prices will fall in Asia.
https://www.ema.gov.sg/Residential_Electricity_Tariffs.aspx
Tracking panels…………gee we better double the initial build cost nd maintenance estimate.
Probably best to have the batteries here in Oz as it is hotter and far more humid in Singapore.
The dust would be the real killer here, very dry and dusty conditions, its real desert not that fake stuff, the costs of construction would be eyewatering and then there is the tropical storms which sweep across from the NW shelf, they have a habit of causing flooding out there in the desert so you simply cannot just plonk a few million panels anywhere you like.
Suggest this is the usual BS from the media to keep the believer flock in check
I expect most large scale SSFs in Australia will use tracking arrays on at least one axis. The 333MW Darlington Point SSF will have single axis tracking arrays.
Without tracking ability, the SSFs in Australia have limited opportunity to generate. They are already curtailing lunchtime output during the peak of rooftop solar when wholesale price goes negative. That will occur more often as rooftop capacity steadily increases.
With tracking arrays, they should be able to generate enough in the morning and afternoon to make money. Those without tracking will only be able to deliver energy when the market is swamped with rooftop and prices collapse. The price of LGCs is so low now that they can no longer afford to send out power when the wholesale price goes negative. The coal plants know that they can keep generating and hurt the subsidy farmers rather than bearing the cost of taking plant off line.
Lunchtime power in Qld was down to AUD26/MWh on Monday 5th. Lunchtime power is forecast to be -AUD133/MWh on Tuesday 6th. These negative costs are becoming more frequent and SSF proponents have to be making forward projections.
While negative pricing for lunchtime power may not be relevant for Singapore, tracking technology is being increasing used in Australia and will certainly improve the economics of any large scale solar installation in Australia no matter what market it is supplying.
Square kilometre after square kilometre of tracking panels operating in the desert, just imagine the maintenance. Restarting after a dust storm would be fun 🙂
Look for any image of Singapore at night and they may be better off reducing their power needs rather than having their [power] cake and eating it too.
Not much chance of a reduction so we have to have these wild-a$$ schemes that sound good from a clean, green perspective but no change in lifestyle.
wont be able to help them much at night with Tennant Creek being 90 mins ahead of Singapore
I guess thats were the fantasy batteries kick in
3,800km. How power is going to be lost in that transmission?
As other posters have noted there is so much bad with this idea. It really doesn’t make sense to just pick a few thing, but here goes. Supposedly this project would provide 1/5 of Singapore’s annual power need. Since many hours it would be zero, that would mean some hours it would be providing 40 or more percent of the total power. All that power coming in at one point would (without incredibly costly redundancy) , under a single contingency. So Singapore would have to have considerable amount of spinning resume ready to pick up should that source disappear.
The “proposed” project is longer the the longest current HVDC line by almost 60%. It seems unlikely the billions for the tranmsissi N component are in the cited total.
The Plastic Paradise of Singapore’s days are numbered. People LOVE IT!!!!, but if you can see through the fakery and the numbers that “just don’t add up” you would have written it off in 2018, 2019 at the latest.
Singapore will implode BEFORE there is an “Ice free summer in the arctic”. I would bet my own (not other peoples) money on it.
This Muskian virtue signalling is to divert attention from fact it is the most expensive place to live on earth and their workforce is bussed in daily from Malaysia and bussed back at night. Massive job layoffs are looming on the horizon. But keep those fake smiles coming, Singaporeans. Wave and smile.
Surely this is a joke, up there with perpetual motion machines. Besides all the problems mentioned above, the face panels will surely be etched by the highly abrasive dust carried by the almost perpetual winds. Efficiency will be considerably reduced in months. This is one of the most unpleasant places on earth (and I have been everywhere). The wind blows all the time except for short periods at dawn and dusk. And as for battery storage – they must be joking.
There is old oil all over the region. Maybe not right in SIngapore, but all over indonesia.
Couldn’t they just frack the **** out of it, like Texas has, and have 10 years of Gas? In Ten years they could have a new design Nuke they could plop down on one of those nasty polluted islands off the southern shore.
The entire purpose of the project is to move away from fossil fuels.
“The solar farm could make the most of the outback’s clear skies and bright sunshine.”
During The Wet?
The Northern Territory project to power Singapore, however, is still at a relatively early stage of planning.
After a long lunch.
What percentage of the power is going to be lost over those 3800km?
Heck with providing enough power to replace the solar panels, will this “project” ever provide enough power to replace a 3800km cable?
I think 3800km is a fairly optimistic great circle distance , I doubt it will “only” be that long.
I hope the have included the inevitable Australian Government Sunshine Tax.
I wonder if Singapore is virtue-signaling because they might be getting embarrassed about having banned the song “Born This Way” by Lady Gaga, on the basis that song supposedly promotes homosexuality. Singapore ranks low worldwide for political freedom.