Singapore has granted conditional approval for solar-generated electricity to be imported from Australia via undersea cables stretching thousands of miles. The power will be produced by Australian solar project developer Sun Cable at a massive solar farm to be built in the southern region of Darwin. The Singaporean government is in favor of importing clean power generated by renewable energy, even if the projects take some years to get off the ground.
Singapore welcomes clean power imported from Australia
Australian renewable energy company Sun Cable has reached a critical point after being granted conditional approval from the government of Singapore to produce power for exporting to the Asian country under its Australia-Asia PowerLink (AAPowerLink) interconnector. The project involves the construction of a vast solar panel farm in Darwin, the state capital city of Australia’s Northern Territory.
The project is projected to cost $24 billion and will see 1.75 GW of green electricity being sent to Singapore via 2,672 miles of 2 GW high-voltage direct current (HVDC) undersea cables. Considering that construction of the solar farm hasn’t even begun yet, it’s going to be years before the project is commissioned. Sun Cable says that if all goes according to plan, the first power will start being supplied sometime after 2035.
The signing of Sun Cable’s approval wasn’t without complications
The Sun Cable project was initiated in 2019 and construction was supposed to have started in 2023 already. Sun Cable had planned to begin installation and construction operations at the start of 2026 to be completed by the end of 2027.
However, the project collapsed in 2023 due to factors that had nothing to do with the Singaporean project. Sun Cable entered voluntary administration over a funding dispute between tech firm Atlassian’s co-founder, Mike Cannon-Brookes, and Australian mining magnate Andrew Forrest. By May 2023, the company had been bought by a consortium led by Cannon-Brookes’ Grok Ventures and the takeover was finalized by September.
The Australian government approved the power export project in August 2024 with principal environmental approval from the Northern Territory government and the NT Environment Protection Authority.
The capacity target is 36.42GWh and 42GWh of energy storage and 4 GW of clean power supplied to Darwin’s industrial customers over two stages of development: 900MW will be provided in Stage 1 and around 3 GW in Stage 2 along with the 1.75 GW sent to Asia under the AAPowerLink project.
Solar energy is being invested in other parts of the world too. Switzerland is taking innovation to the next level with the installation of solar farms in high-mountain regions.
Renewable power in the Singaporean context
Singapore has an imported renewable energy target of 6 GW, meaning that when it’s in operation, the Australian Sun Cable solar farm will supply 29% in 2023. In addition to the Sun Cable project, 5.6 GW of import deals have also been finalized with Vietnam, Indonesia, and Cambodia.
Singapore’s Second Minister for Trade and Industry, Tan See Leng, explained on the second day of the Singapore International Energy Week at the Asia Clean Energy Summit that the project is ambitious, considering the distance that the power will have to travel between Australia and Singapore.
Sun Cable developer describes the project as the “world’s largest renewable energy and transmission project in development” and will deliver “more than AU$20 billion in economic value” to the Northern Territory over construction and the first 35 years of operation.
The benefits of solar power
Solar power is critical as the world transitions to new ways of generating renewable energy. Here are the reasons why solar energy is one of the key solutions in the renewable power world:
- Clean and sustainable: Solar electricity doesn’t produce harmful by-products and it cannot be depleted.
- Carbon footprint reduction: Solar energy replaces the burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal, which lowers carbon emissions.
- Energy independence: Countries that reduce their dependence on fossil fuels will develop more robust economies. Solar-generated power can also be produced and supplied in outlying areas.
- Economic growth and job creation: Countries that manufacture and export solar equipment benefit from GDP revenue. The installation, operation, maintenance, and development of solar power systems create employment.
In more news about solar energy in Asia, Japan’s government has made a firm decision about the future of solar power technology, and the direction chosen is the development of perovskite panels.