12 ms·

Does it actually make economic sense to run a cable large enough for that kind of power from Australia to Singapore? I would have guessed there must be enough

Does it actually make economic sense to run a cable large enough for that kind of power from Australia to Singapore? I would have guessed there must be enough domestic customers or in Indonesia that would make more sense.

rv3392 2y ago
I'm unsure about Indonesia, but domestic customers in that region would be pretty limited. The closest major power users would be in Queensland (>1000km) away.
- gonzo41 2y ago
  Data Centers, Green Steel production. Power == Opportunities. This is such a massive win for the environment.
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    You need water for all of that and that part of Australia is pretty arid.
    - boffinAudio 2y ago
      Might finally provide a viable use for the Ord River catchment, though ..
    - tdrz 2y ago
      With cheap energy, desalination might make economic sense for Australia.
  - eru 2y ago
    For that, you'd need to make massive investments in a part of that world that has mostly untouched nature. It might or might not be a good idea. But you need to then compare those massive investments to the relatively modest investment of the power cable to bring the electricity to a part of that world that already has all the other infrastructure needed, and also already has lots of water.
  - bigiain 2y ago
    I did a little back of the envelope calculation in a discussion here last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41220499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41220499 If Australia refined _all_ of the 40,000kt of Bauxite we export each year into "frozen electricity" Aluminium, that'd only require about 600GWh, or about 4% of the 1.7GW 24x7, or 15,000GWh per year this would send to Singapore. Large datacenter are in the 100MW sort of range, so only single digit GWh per year. Australia generates a few hundred TWh per year. 272 TWh in 2021/22 - or 272,000GWh, around 20 times what this project will export to Singapore. Data centers and Aluminium and Iron smelters are big electricity consumers. But they barely even move the needle compared to cities with millions of households.
    - Rastonbury 2y ago
      If you count those 2 maybe but those aren't the only industrial. Residential consumption is 33% and industrial is 46% in Indonesia. The mix is similar for most countries https://www.statista.com/statistics/1233761/indonesia-electricity-consumption-by-sector/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1233761/indonesia-electr...
    - bobthepanda 2y ago
      Australia famously is not a good place to manufacture anyways because the “resource curse” makes AUD expensive and exports noncompetitive.
      - worthless-trash 2y ago
        Can you expand on this, I don't see how it can be.
        bobthepanda 2y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease Natural resource sales send USD to Australia. AUD is now worth more because it is backed by more USD. Manufactured exports are also traded in USD, so Australian exports become much more expensive because workers and local materials are paid for in AUD.
dyauspitr 2y ago
Indonesia probably has enough land for its own panels.
- defrost 2y ago
  Indonesia is ~ 17 thousand islands, many steep equatorial jungled volcanic slopes and at 275.5 million is the fourth highest population for a country globally. Land is in tight demand with food a priority over panels and issues that may not be apparent (clear slopes leads to instability, and keeping them clear is a Sisyphean task, etc).
  - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
    Indonesia is possibly the best place on the world for floating PV at sea (rather than inland lakes as it usually is).
    - 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
      Is anyone floating solar panels in the ocean? That sounds tough, but obviously worth exploring.
      - worthless-trash 2y ago
        I do not believe that we can design a system that will withstand waves and wind from tropical monsoons or even most tropical storms or cyclones in the pacific. I can't speak for other oceans or areas of the world, but I believe that this design requirement will probably make it a non starter.
      - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
        It's at pilot stage in various places. Japan is leading on this, as they did in floating voltaics generally. Places with offshore wind are also looking at it as a way to share cables.
    - defrost 2y ago
      I'm guessing you've never actually been at sea in the region during the tropical monsoon | the annual cyclone season.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
richrichie 2y ago
Singapore with a native population of about 4 million has reserves of about $1 trillion. They can afford to splurge to claim green/net-zero status. Shopping calculations for them need not be about economic cost benefit analysis.
- eru 2y ago
  > Shopping calculations for them need not be about economic cost benefit analysis. But there's also no good reason not to apply cost/benefit analysis. > Singapore with a native population of about 4 million has reserves of about $1 trillion. They can afford to splurge to claim green/net-zero status. Of all numbers to bring up here, why did you pick foreign exchange reserves? GDP or wealth might be more relevant?
  - richrichie 2y ago
    No one applies economic cost benefit analysis to buy a Louis Vuitton bag for $50,000. Prestige, signalling, membership to exclusive club, etc dominate the consideration. Reserves are cash in hand and represent immediate and hard spending power.
    - eru 2y ago
      > Prestige, signalling, membership to exclusive club, etc dominate the consideration. So? These _benefits_ also fit into a bog standard cost/benefit analysis. For example, Singapore would need to weight this project against buying everyone a luxury handbag.. Btw, in any case keep in mind that the project is privately financed and will make money selling electricity to Singaporeans. The electrons that power my gadgets at home don't have any colour, so I can't even tell if my electricity comes from a particularly prestigious source. It's all intermediated by the wholesale market. > Reserves are cash in hand and represent immediate and hard spending power. That's about on the same level as arguing that having a money printing press represents raw spending power. Most central banks around the world conduct monetary policy via domestic interest rates and affect these interest rates by buying and selling domestic government bonds. Thus they will have lots of government bonds on their balance sheet. But it doesn't mean that they can just take these bonds and use them to buy solar farms. The Monetary Authority of Singapore is (almost?) unique in foregoing interest rate as a channel of monetary policy, and instead working via the foreign exchange rate. They affect the foreign exchange rate by buying foreign currencies via freshly minted Singapore dollars (or selling them to remove Singapore dollars from the market). And just like the American Fed keeps the government bonds they buy on their balance sheet (and pretty much has to!), our Monetary Authority of Singapore keeps the foreign currency on the balance sheet, and they show up as reserves. By design, Singapore has at least as much in foreign exchange reserves as we issued domestic currency. In a sense, most of the eg Euros in our reserves are already 'spent', but they are spent in the form of SGD in circulation. (I say 'most', because we have more reserves than we issued SGD. Singapore is cautious like that.)
snoxy 2y ago
Aussie politicians are too busy propping up coal and proposing unrealistic nuclear solutions to seriously focus on renewables.
- chii 2y ago
  > proposing unrealistic nuclear solutions to seriously focus on renewables. they're doing unrealistic nuclear proposals, because they know it takes a long time to ramp up, and in the mean time, their buddies' investments in the coal industry gets time to exit and profit properly. It's designed to prevent losses in fossil fuel investments. Not to mention that australian nuclear cannot be profitable imho - not when solar is so cheap. Their current proposals for nuclear basically requires taxpayer subsidies.
  - Gibbon1 2y ago
    Last time I visited this it felt to me that Australia's metro's are small and spread far apart so that a typical sized nuke plant is overkill.
    - eru 2y ago
      The South East of the country has some decent sized metro areas that aren't too far away from each other.
    - TimJRobinson 2y ago
      50% of Australia lives in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. Having a nuclear power plant for each would make sense. Melbourne would make the most sense first as it gets a lot less sun than the others.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
- preisschild 2y ago
  Nuclear power plants, which have been successfully used for decades, are “unrealistic” now?
londons_explore 2y ago
Power cables are getting cheaper and cheaper. The expensive part used to be the voltage conversion stations at the ends, but with mass production of MOSFETs for EV's these have now become far cheaper than the JFET's and other exotic silicon that used to be used. In turn, that means voltages can be higher, letting one use more of the cheaper PVC or XLPE insulating material and less expensive aluminium for the same amount of energy delivered a large number of kilometers. To be honest, I don't think we're many decades away from the cable+conversion stations themselves cost being irrelevant, and the administration costs, land purchase costs, etc dominating.
- Kuinox 2y ago
  What material is made the power cable ? I thought copper was getting more and more expensive ?
  - londons_explore 2y ago
    Some use Copper, but usually Aluminium is used. Aluminium is far less dense, which in turn makes the whole cable bigger, which has other costs (eg. fewer kilometers of cable fit in a boat). Usually it's still the best choice overall though.
    - Kuinox 2y ago
      Thanks for the reply
- ikekkdcjkfke 2y ago
  Would they be using AC or DC? I heard that very long cables using AC can be more lossy
  - nsonha 2y ago
    is there any thing special about the nature of such project that makes you ask this question? By default, long range transmission is always DC for that exact reason.
christophilus 2y ago
My very first thought was: that cable gets snipped in wartime. Not a big deal, if your grid can handle the loss, but this certainly can’t be the gameplan for the bulk of your power.
- roenxi 2y ago
  While Singapore is a surprisingly martial country, if they get into a war with anyone in SEA they're running a very real risk of being destroyed. Indonesia alone has 5x their GDP and 20x their population. There isn't much difficulty choosing which city to target first when going up against Singapore either. In Singapore's situation, they can probably invest assuming that they are not in a military conflict with anyone. If they get into a war with anyone who can cut that cable they will be returning to the stone age anyway. If Indonesia objects to them they will go, if someone with the power to coerce Indonesia objects to them they're in deep trouble.
  - eru 2y ago
    > While Singapore is a surprisingly martial country, if they get into a war with anyone in SEA they're running a very real risk of being destroyed. Indonesia alone has 5x their GDP and 20x their population. Wikipedia gives an estimate of $1.47 trillion for Indonesia's GDP in 2024. The estimate for Singapore is $525.228 billion. The factor seems to be less than 3x. Where do you get 5x from? Are you going by PPP or so? > In Singapore's situation, they can probably invest assuming that they are not in a military conflict with anyone. If they get into a war with anyone who can cut that cable they will be returning to the stone age anyway. If Indonesia objects to them they will go, if someone with the power to coerce Indonesia objects to them they're in deep trouble. You can't make those assumptions, if you don't want to be bullied. Singapore doesn't have that cable right now and we ain't in the stone age. That situation ain't no different from having a cable, but it being cut.
    - roenxi 2y ago
      I was looking at the PPP figures. By accident as it happens, I was looking at the first box in Wikipedia with "GDP" in it. But I think that is still fine in this context. > You can't make those assumptions, if you don't want to be bullied. Singapore doesn't have that cable right now and we ain't in the stone age. You aren't at war either as far as I know, and hopefully it stays that way. But if Singapore happens to be at war with someone who thinks cutting that cable is a good option then the stone age beckons. And not because of the cable.
leoedin 2y ago
Yeah - from a purely technical point of view it seems strange that you'd run a power cable 2000 miles to Singapore to service 4 million people, running alongside the coast of Bali, Java and Sumatra - population 210 million. Presumably those in Singapore have a lot more buying power though. And the politics are more favourable for big capital investment projects.
- gizajob 2y ago
  Yeah, they also have zero room left so I guess the option was between more dirty power stations in Malaysia or this. Seems like a wise, forward-looking initiative.
  - eru 2y ago
    Singapore has plenty of room left, and we are making more via land reclamation. The question is just one of opportunity costs: what else could you do with the land?
    - bigiain 2y ago
      I'm pretty ignorant about Singapore, but... I get the impression it's quite small. Wikipedia says 750 sq km. The solar farm powering this Suncable project is 12,000 hectares, or 120 sq km. So the solar farm is 1/6th the size of Singapore. Although Singapore is only planning to buy around 1/3rd of the capacity, so maybe this'd be equivalent to only 40 sq km, or 1/20th the size of Singapore. I suspect there are more profitable uses to the Singapore economy for land reclamation than dropping solar panels on it?
      - nsonha 2y ago
        the country has a big housing affordability issue.
        ivirshup 2y ago
        But the majority of Singaporeans live in public housing where rent is adjusted for income based via a grant system?
eru 2y ago
> I would have guessed there must be enough domestic customers or in Indonesia that would make more sense. Australia is a big place. The northern tip of Australia, where this project is based, isn't really that much further from Singapore than from the Australian population centres in the South East of the continent. Indonesia is much poorer than Singapore, and has awfully inefficient bureaucracy and regulatory environment.
angled 2y ago
Not really? The company behind this, SunCable, has some history: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/billionaire-cannon-brookes-acquires-sun-cable-renewables-project-2023-05-26/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/billionaire-cannon-b... https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-11/sun-cable-enters-administration/101845100 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-11/sun-cable-enters-admi... I guess MCB found a way to make it work pending future investment that may not occur until 2027: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-21/suncable-receives-environmental-approval-for-power-link-project/104250094 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-21/suncable-receives-env... > The approval paves the way for the next phase of development to deliver industrial-scale electricity to customers. But it still has some way to go, with a final investment decision not expected until 2027. and > However, SunCable still needs to negotiate Indigenous land use agreements with a number of different traditional owner groups along the transmission line route to Darwin.

rv3392 2y ago

I'm unsure about Indonesia, but domestic customers in that region would be pretty limited. The closest major power users would be in Queensland (>1000km) away.

gonzo41 2y ago
Data Centers, Green Steel production. Power == Opportunities. This is such a massive win for the environment.
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  You need water for all of that and that part of Australia is pretty arid.
  - boffinAudio 2y ago
    Might finally provide a viable use for the Ord River catchment, though ..
  - tdrz 2y ago
    With cheap energy, desalination might make economic sense for Australia.
- eru 2y ago
  For that, you'd need to make massive investments in a part of that world that has mostly untouched nature. It might or might not be a good idea. But you need to then compare those massive investments to the relatively modest investment of the power cable to bring the electricity to a part of that world that already has all the other infrastructure needed, and also already has lots of water.
- bigiain 2y ago
  I did a little back of the envelope calculation in a discussion here last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41220499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41220499 If Australia refined _all_ of the 40,000kt of Bauxite we export each year into "frozen electricity" Aluminium, that'd only require about 600GWh, or about 4% of the 1.7GW 24x7, or 15,000GWh per year this would send to Singapore. Large datacenter are in the 100MW sort of range, so only single digit GWh per year. Australia generates a few hundred TWh per year. 272 TWh in 2021/22 - or 272,000GWh, around 20 times what this project will export to Singapore. Data centers and Aluminium and Iron smelters are big electricity consumers. But they barely even move the needle compared to cities with millions of households.
  - Rastonbury 2y ago
    If you count those 2 maybe but those aren't the only industrial. Residential consumption is 33% and industrial is 46% in Indonesia. The mix is similar for most countries https://www.statista.com/statistics/1233761/indonesia-electricity-consumption-by-sector/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1233761/indonesia-electr...
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    Australia famously is not a good place to manufacture anyways because the “resource curse” makes AUD expensive and exports noncompetitive.
    - worthless-trash 2y ago
      Can you expand on this, I don't see how it can be.
      - bobthepanda 2y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease Natural resource sales send USD to Australia. AUD is now worth more because it is backed by more USD. Manufactured exports are also traded in USD, so Australian exports become much more expensive because workers and local materials are paid for in AUD.

dyauspitr 2y ago

Indonesia probably has enough land for its own panels.

defrost 2y ago
Indonesia is ~ 17 thousand islands, many steep equatorial jungled volcanic slopes and at 275.5 million is the fourth highest population for a country globally. Land is in tight demand with food a priority over panels and issues that may not be apparent (clear slopes leads to instability, and keeping them clear is a Sisyphean task, etc).
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  Indonesia is possibly the best place on the world for floating PV at sea (rather than inland lakes as it usually is).
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
    Is anyone floating solar panels in the ocean? That sounds tough, but obviously worth exploring.
    - worthless-trash 2y ago
      I do not believe that we can design a system that will withstand waves and wind from tropical monsoons or even most tropical storms or cyclones in the pacific. I can't speak for other oceans or areas of the world, but I believe that this design requirement will probably make it a non starter.
    - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
      It's at pilot stage in various places. Japan is leading on this, as they did in floating voltaics generally. Places with offshore wind are also looking at it as a way to share cables.
  - defrost 2y ago
    I'm guessing you've never actually been at sea in the region during the tropical monsoon | the annual cyclone season.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

richrichie 2y ago

Singapore with a native population of about 4 million has reserves of about $1 trillion. They can afford to splurge to claim green/net-zero status. Shopping calculations for them need not be about economic cost benefit analysis.

eru 2y ago
> Shopping calculations for them need not be about economic cost benefit analysis. But there's also no good reason not to apply cost/benefit analysis. > Singapore with a native population of about 4 million has reserves of about $1 trillion. They can afford to splurge to claim green/net-zero status. Of all numbers to bring up here, why did you pick foreign exchange reserves? GDP or wealth might be more relevant?
- richrichie 2y ago
  No one applies economic cost benefit analysis to buy a Louis Vuitton bag for $50,000. Prestige, signalling, membership to exclusive club, etc dominate the consideration. Reserves are cash in hand and represent immediate and hard spending power.
  - eru 2y ago
    > Prestige, signalling, membership to exclusive club, etc dominate the consideration. So? These _benefits_ also fit into a bog standard cost/benefit analysis. For example, Singapore would need to weight this project against buying everyone a luxury handbag.. Btw, in any case keep in mind that the project is privately financed and will make money selling electricity to Singaporeans. The electrons that power my gadgets at home don't have any colour, so I can't even tell if my electricity comes from a particularly prestigious source. It's all intermediated by the wholesale market. > Reserves are cash in hand and represent immediate and hard spending power. That's about on the same level as arguing that having a money printing press represents raw spending power. Most central banks around the world conduct monetary policy via domestic interest rates and affect these interest rates by buying and selling domestic government bonds. Thus they will have lots of government bonds on their balance sheet. But it doesn't mean that they can just take these bonds and use them to buy solar farms. The Monetary Authority of Singapore is (almost?) unique in foregoing interest rate as a channel of monetary policy, and instead working via the foreign exchange rate. They affect the foreign exchange rate by buying foreign currencies via freshly minted Singapore dollars (or selling them to remove Singapore dollars from the market). And just like the American Fed keeps the government bonds they buy on their balance sheet (and pretty much has to!), our Monetary Authority of Singapore keeps the foreign currency on the balance sheet, and they show up as reserves. By design, Singapore has at least as much in foreign exchange reserves as we issued domestic currency. In a sense, most of the eg Euros in our reserves are already 'spent', but they are spent in the form of SGD in circulation. (I say 'most', because we have more reserves than we issued SGD. Singapore is cautious like that.)

snoxy 2y ago

Aussie politicians are too busy propping up coal and proposing unrealistic nuclear solutions to seriously focus on renewables.

chii 2y ago
> proposing unrealistic nuclear solutions to seriously focus on renewables. they're doing unrealistic nuclear proposals, because they know it takes a long time to ramp up, and in the mean time, their buddies' investments in the coal industry gets time to exit and profit properly. It's designed to prevent losses in fossil fuel investments. Not to mention that australian nuclear cannot be profitable imho - not when solar is so cheap. Their current proposals for nuclear basically requires taxpayer subsidies.
- Gibbon1 2y ago
  Last time I visited this it felt to me that Australia's metro's are small and spread far apart so that a typical sized nuke plant is overkill.
  - eru 2y ago
    The South East of the country has some decent sized metro areas that aren't too far away from each other.
  - TimJRobinson 2y ago
    50% of Australia lives in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. Having a nuclear power plant for each would make sense. Melbourne would make the most sense first as it gets a lot less sun than the others.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
preisschild 2y ago
Nuclear power plants, which have been successfully used for decades, are “unrealistic” now?

londons_explore 2y ago

Power cables are getting cheaper and cheaper. The expensive part used to be the voltage conversion stations at the ends, but with mass production of MOSFETs for EV's these have now become far cheaper than the JFET's and other exotic silicon that used to be used. In turn, that means voltages can be higher, letting one use more of the cheaper PVC or XLPE insulating material and less expensive aluminium for the same amount of energy delivered a large number of kilometers. To be honest, I don't think we're many decades away from the cable+conversion stations themselves cost being irrelevant, and the administration costs, land purchase costs, etc dominating.

Kuinox 2y ago
What material is made the power cable ? I thought copper was getting more and more expensive ?
- londons_explore 2y ago
  Some use Copper, but usually Aluminium is used. Aluminium is far less dense, which in turn makes the whole cable bigger, which has other costs (eg. fewer kilometers of cable fit in a boat). Usually it's still the best choice overall though.
  - Kuinox 2y ago
    Thanks for the reply
ikekkdcjkfke 2y ago
Would they be using AC or DC? I heard that very long cables using AC can be more lossy
- nsonha 2y ago
  is there any thing special about the nature of such project that makes you ask this question? By default, long range transmission is always DC for that exact reason.

christophilus 2y ago

My very first thought was: that cable gets snipped in wartime. Not a big deal, if your grid can handle the loss, but this certainly can’t be the gameplan for the bulk of your power.

roenxi 2y ago
While Singapore is a surprisingly martial country, if they get into a war with anyone in SEA they're running a very real risk of being destroyed. Indonesia alone has 5x their GDP and 20x their population. There isn't much difficulty choosing which city to target first when going up against Singapore either. In Singapore's situation, they can probably invest assuming that they are not in a military conflict with anyone. If they get into a war with anyone who can cut that cable they will be returning to the stone age anyway. If Indonesia objects to them they will go, if someone with the power to coerce Indonesia objects to them they're in deep trouble.
- eru 2y ago
  > While Singapore is a surprisingly martial country, if they get into a war with anyone in SEA they're running a very real risk of being destroyed. Indonesia alone has 5x their GDP and 20x their population. Wikipedia gives an estimate of $1.47 trillion for Indonesia's GDP in 2024. The estimate for Singapore is $525.228 billion. The factor seems to be less than 3x. Where do you get 5x from? Are you going by PPP or so? > In Singapore's situation, they can probably invest assuming that they are not in a military conflict with anyone. If they get into a war with anyone who can cut that cable they will be returning to the stone age anyway. If Indonesia objects to them they will go, if someone with the power to coerce Indonesia objects to them they're in deep trouble. You can't make those assumptions, if you don't want to be bullied. Singapore doesn't have that cable right now and we ain't in the stone age. That situation ain't no different from having a cable, but it being cut.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    I was looking at the PPP figures. By accident as it happens, I was looking at the first box in Wikipedia with "GDP" in it. But I think that is still fine in this context. > You can't make those assumptions, if you don't want to be bullied. Singapore doesn't have that cable right now and we ain't in the stone age. You aren't at war either as far as I know, and hopefully it stays that way. But if Singapore happens to be at war with someone who thinks cutting that cable is a good option then the stone age beckons. And not because of the cable.

leoedin 2y ago

Yeah - from a purely technical point of view it seems strange that you'd run a power cable 2000 miles to Singapore to service 4 million people, running alongside the coast of Bali, Java and Sumatra - population 210 million. Presumably those in Singapore have a lot more buying power though. And the politics are more favourable for big capital investment projects.

gizajob 2y ago
Yeah, they also have zero room left so I guess the option was between more dirty power stations in Malaysia or this. Seems like a wise, forward-looking initiative.
- eru 2y ago
  Singapore has plenty of room left, and we are making more via land reclamation. The question is just one of opportunity costs: what else could you do with the land?
  - bigiain 2y ago
    I'm pretty ignorant about Singapore, but... I get the impression it's quite small. Wikipedia says 750 sq km. The solar farm powering this Suncable project is 12,000 hectares, or 120 sq km. So the solar farm is 1/6th the size of Singapore. Although Singapore is only planning to buy around 1/3rd of the capacity, so maybe this'd be equivalent to only 40 sq km, or 1/20th the size of Singapore. I suspect there are more profitable uses to the Singapore economy for land reclamation than dropping solar panels on it?
    - nsonha 2y ago
      the country has a big housing affordability issue.
      - ivirshup 2y ago
        But the majority of Singaporeans live in public housing where rent is adjusted for income based via a grant system?

eru 2y ago

> I would have guessed there must be enough domestic customers or in Indonesia that would make more sense. Australia is a big place. The northern tip of Australia, where this project is based, isn't really that much further from Singapore than from the Australian population centres in the South East of the continent. Indonesia is much poorer than Singapore, and has awfully inefficient bureaucracy and regulatory environment.

angled 2y ago

Not really? The company behind this, SunCable, has some history: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/billionaire-cannon-brookes-acquires-sun-cable-renewables-project-2023-05-26/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/billionaire-cannon-b... https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-11/sun-cable-enters-administration/101845100 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-11/sun-cable-enters-admi... I guess MCB found a way to make it work pending future investment that may not occur until 2027: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-21/suncable-receives-environmental-approval-for-power-link-project/104250094 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-21/suncable-receives-env... > The approval paves the way for the next phase of development to deliver industrial-scale electricity to customers. But it still has some way to go, with a final investment decision not expected until 2027. and > However, SunCable still needs to negotiate Indigenous land use agreements with a number of different traditional owner groups along the transmission line route to Darwin.