[leoedin]

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]

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]

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]

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?

[eru]

> 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.

[nsonha]

the country has a big housing affordability issue.

[bigiain]

Heh. Australia is _huge_, and we still have that problem.

[eru]

Yes, in the case of Australia, that's mostly self-inflicted.

[ivirshup]

But the majority of Singaporeans live in public housing where rent is adjusted for income based via a grant system?

[eru]

Not quite.

The vast majority of Singaporeans live in apartments they own, and don't pay rent. However you are right that most of these apartments were built by an arm of the government, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_and_Development_Board

There are grants for lower income people to make it easier for them to buy a home. Some people also rent directly from the government, but that's the exception. Most own.

Housing ain't cheap in Singapore. Whether you measure that in terms of rent, or in terms of monthly mortgage costs, or in terms of the opportunity cost of capital (for those who own their homes outright). As everywhere else in the world that's mostly a function of supply and demand, and where that supply comes from (public, private, etc) doesn't really matter too much.

Singapore has been building a lot of housing, and is still building a lot of housing. Both by public and private developers. But we are living on a small island with lots of people, and thanks mostly to immigration our population is still growing. (I myself am an immigrant here.)