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FEATURE:
The Future of Power and Electrification
Interconnectivity of Global Power Supplies
An Australia-to-Singapore High Voltage DC (HVDC) interconnector utilising renewable energy generated in the Northern Territories is a project on the drawing board of Director, Fraser Thompson’s SunCable. The project includes a 3 GW HVDC overhead transmission line system from Tennant Creek to Darwin; a town with one of the highest solar radiances in the world, located approximately 1,000 km south of Darwin on the Stuart Highway. A 2.2 GW HVDC subsea cable system connecting to Singapore’s transmission grid, supported by a Singapore battery. With an undersea cable of 3,000km in length, this combines to form a $20bn project currently under consideration by the private sector, with strong G2G interest into the options that an interconnector provides.
Southeast Asia is the only region the International Energy Agency forecasts the share of energy from coal to increase in the coming decade. A growth in energy-hungry data centres and existing intensive refining, petrochemicals and semi-conductor manufacturing industries, means having optionality of renewable energy via an interconnector worth studying.
Influential RE100 companies expanding into the region have pledged to be 100% renewable and cannot do this by existing generation, or solely by trading renewable energy certificates, would welcome the cable project in solving their carbon abatement gap.
A silent revolution in HVDC with over 250 projects in the works has meant the trade-off between transmission losses and capex and opex costs has reduced. A lot of modelling has gone into mitigating the losses. The AU-SG connector project could stack up economically to LNG, even with the assumption of no subsidies. For the rest of ASEAN and with talks at the ASEAN Secretariat of a regional power grid, a longer-term play could come in latter phases of the project. Precedence for underwater regional cabling is in place with existing subsea fibre optics. Archipelago connectivity as compared to isolated island-based grids could open up opportunities for economic development and improved healthcare.
Fuel cells are
becoming more efficient and are seeing greater use in transportation including shipping, buses and commercial fleets where they circumvent the charging time of battery electric.