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Australian government approves AAPowerLink project to export solar to Singapore

pv-tech.org

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Re: Australian government approves AAPowerLink project to export solar to Singapore

#141

Post by i386 »

andrewstuart wrote: post #76

I'd probably prefer to get cheaper power here in Australia, but whatever - no decisions are ever made here to benefit the Australian people - it's always to help some vested interest or corporate interest or foreign interest or donor to the politicians. So presumably this whole bit of climate theater has a lovely feel good story.

Not sure why this is downvoted. Economic activity should be enjoyed by the commons. For example LNG being exported UNDER international value and Aussies buying it at international prices is idiotic.

Re: Australian government approves AAPowerLink project to export solar to Singapore

#142

Post by BLKNSLVR »

preisschild wrote: post #60
snoxy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Nuclear power plants, which have been successfully used for decades, are “unrealistic” now?

My understanding is that I the time it takes to build a nuclear power plant, a helluva lotta solar power generation can be built and up and running and generating power.

And in that time span as well, solar power will increase its efficiency.

And then batteries, to store and deliver that power outside of generation hours, are a parallel to that.

If a nuclear power plant could be built quickly and simply, the equation would be different.

Unfortunately, from the limited amount that I've read, nuclear power plant projects often run over time and over budget, exacerbating the time scale issue I described above.

Re: Australian government approves AAPowerLink project to export solar to Singapore

#143

Post by lazide »

audunw wrote: post #91
nroets wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technology is progressing so fast that something like space based solar or fusion power will replace terrestrial solar within 100 years.

Space based solar might not take a form where we just put mirrors in space to boost the output of existing terrestrial solar cells. The benefit is that the receivers on the ground can receive energy directly from the sun when the sun is up, and the space mirrors can be used to provide light to areas that are completely dark in winter. I don’t think microwave beaming is ever viable Most fusion concepts are thermal pow…

Space based solar (lens or microwave) is a non starter for one simple reason - it would be an ideal supervillain weapon to anyone who could steer it.

Re: Australian government approves AAPowerLink project to export solar to Singapore

#144

Post by lazide »

tdrz wrote: post #138
londons_explore wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AC is a sine wave, of which the peak is a factor of Sqrt(2) higher than the DC voltage. That means your insulation needs to be sqrt(2) thicker - ie. 41% more insulation material. On top of that, you also have losses to the cables capacitance with AC. But DC has the cost of the conversion stations to consider - both capital cost and efficiency causing operational cost.

> But DC has the cost of the conversion stations to consider - both capital cost and efficiency causing operational cost. I suppose you mean AC-DC conversion stations. Assuming only solar energy will be "pumped" over the wire, then the "only" conversion stations that are needed are at the consumer, right? I said it before, I don't know much about electricity, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

It’s really difficult to make solid state components that work at million+ volts.

It’s comparatively quite easy to make transformers that work at million+ volts.

So anytime you need to do any sort of voltage boosting, conversion, or the like, DC is going to be expensive and relatively fragile compared to AC.

If it’s just once, that’s not bad. If it’s often, that sucks.

Re: Australian government approves AAPowerLink project to export solar to Singapore

#145

Post by lazide »

duckmysick wrote: post #129
eru wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is held to a much higher safety standard (eg in terms of deaths per Joule) than any other form of electricity production. And that includes photovoltaic! Nuclear is so safe--even fully factoring in the accident at Chernobyl--that people very occasionally falling off rooftops when installing solar panels is a bigger health hazard per Joule produced.

How much bigger of a health hazard is manufacturing/installing solar panels compared to nuclear? Let's say, per one terawatt-hour of produced energy, how many people die doing each?

First you’re going to need reliable worker safety data and population cancer rate data out of China (which makes almost all panels), which…. Good luck.

Re: Australian government approves AAPowerLink project to export solar to Singapore

#146

Post by eru »

stavros wrote: post #105
eru wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you want to do orbital repairs? For the amount of effort required, you'd just send up a replacement.

And we're saying that deploying new solar sails (with integrated power transmitters) to orbit is cheaper than replacing a solar panel on earth?

Not at the moment, but at some point it might be. Real estate on earth has lots of competing uses, so it has a lot of opportunity costs.

Re: Australian government approves AAPowerLink project to export solar to Singapore

#147

Post by eru »

bigiain wrote: post #106
eru wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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 pr…

> I suspect there are more profitable uses to the Singapore economy for land reclamation than dropping solar panels on it?

Oh, I thought you were talking about power stations in general, not only photovoltaic.

Yes, there are more profitable uses in Singapore. Though for many uses you can add some solar panels on top of eg roofs of buildings.

Re: Australian government approves AAPowerLink project to export solar to Singapore

#148

Post by eru »

duckmysick wrote: post #129
eru wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is held to a much higher safety standard (eg in terms of deaths per Joule) than any other form of electricity production. And that includes photovoltaic! Nuclear is so safe--even fully factoring in the accident at Chernobyl--that people very occasionally falling off rooftops when installing solar panels is a bigger health hazard per Joule produced.

How much bigger of a health hazard is manufacturing/installing solar panels compared to nuclear? Let's say, per one terawatt-hour of produced energy, how many people die doing each?

You can check some numbers (and sources) at https://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_168.shtml

Re: Australian government approves AAPowerLink project to export solar to Singapore

#149

Post by eru »

mschuster91 wrote: post #116
eru wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Land will never become the limiting factor on earth, at least not for solar power. What makes you think so? There's always more you can do with more energy. 'Never' is a long time. And there are opportunity costs from other uses you could put land on earth to. You are right that it will be a while before remote corners on earth become more expensive than space for solar power generation. But not 'never'. (Btw, if y…

> What makes you think so? There's always more you can do with more energy. 'Never' is a long time. And there are opportunity costs from other uses you could put land on earth to. The entire world's power supply could be met by sacrificing just 3.27% of the US [1]. The Sahara desert is already economically useless as it is completely and utterly inhospitable, unable to support life beyond a few shrubs, insects and fe…

> The entire world's power supply could be met by sacrificing just 3.27% of the US [1]. The Sahara desert is already economically useless as it is completely and utterly inhospitable, unable to support life beyond a few shrubs, insects and felines.

So? We can always grow our energy consumption to meet supply.

> Simple, the amount of desertified space will grow, and so space that is now unusable for solar power because it can actually be used at the moment can then be used for power.

The oceans are a lot bigger than all the deserts put together.

Re: Australian government approves AAPowerLink project to export solar to Singapore

#150

Post by bobthepanda »

bigiain wrote: post #96
gonzo41 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data Centers, Green Steel production. Power == Opportunities. This is such a massive win for the environment.

I did a little back of the envelope calculation in a discussion here last week: 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 di…

Australia famously is not a good place to manufacture anyways because the “resource curse” makes AUD expensive and exports noncompetitive.
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