[korantu]

At $4M per km, a 4,300 km HVDC cable would cost a staggering $17.2 billion to import 1.75 GW of energy. Interestingly, building a Shin-Kori equivalent nuclear plant [1],[2] on a nearby island [3] would be significantly cheaper. If they can afford such a cable, it raises the question of whether it's even the best solution in the first place. [4]

[1] Aerial view of the plant: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Kori+Nuclear+Power+Plant/@...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kori_Nuclear_Power_Plant

[3] Possible location, suitable by size: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lazarus+Island/@1.2057214,...

[4] Singapore is not denying such possibility https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/nuclear-energy-fus...

[ben_w]

Depends how long the cable lasts, maintenance costs.

Some of the cables that start forest fires in CA have been there for a century by that point.

Even at 17e9 USD, if this lasts a century, and is in full use for that time, it's adding 1.1¢/kWh to the price of delivery:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1.75%20GW%2A100%20years...

I could easily imagine them doing this, and another similar one to India or twice as far to Kenya, and getting a decent amount of PV at night as a consequence.

(OTOH, as I'm not a grid or marine engineer, I am ready to be mocked for suggesting an underwater cable may last a century).

[s1artibartfast]

1) That is a pretty huge cost when wholesale cost of solar is only a few cents to begin with.

2) That equation ignores the time value of money, which is absolutely relevant. A dollar spent today is not the same as a dollar saved 100 years from now.

[SturgeonsLaw]

What's the cost of 12,000 hectares of land in Singapore? Since that is the area that the solar farm on the Australian end will take up

[s1artibartfast]

Im not saying local solar is an option. I'm saying the cost seems incredibly high.

[AtlasBarfed]

Roof or otherwise?

And if you have skyscrapers you have lots of side surface area to capture solar energy as well

[sourdoughness]

Is adding side-panels to skyscrapers a solved problem? It doesn’t seem nearly as easy or mature as rooftop or grid-scale PV.

[ben_w]

For 1, as this crosses timezones, the cost comparison has to be with storage rather than local generation.

2 is fair.

[Salgat]

Mind you that's completely ignoring the opportunity cost of investing that initial cost elsewhere.

[7952]

But it seems unlikely that this kind of private capital would be available for such a nuclear project. Nor would the expertise or industrial capacity be the same.

[sandworm101]

>> getting a decent amount of PV at night as a consequence.

Ring the equator with solar panels and then run cables north/south to wherever it is needed, providing consistent supply 24/7. It works well enough in Dyson Sphere Program.

[LorenPechtel]

Sure, if you can push infinite power through a wire with zero losses. Doesn't work so well with reality constraints.

I've never played DSP but I'm thinking of Factorio. Night falls equally across the world so you have to provide power from somewhere else at night or let your stuff go dark (which can actually be sane--I've put up radars with solar without any backup--it will show you the spread of the nests fine.) You have to start with burning wood or coal for power, solar comes before adequate storage. Thus if you go the solar route there's a range where you have solar, some storage and some steam. Unfortunately, while the game correctly prioritizes solar over steam it puts steam over storage. Thus the efficient approach is to put your steam behind a switch that keeps it isolated until your storage drops low enough. I've had a couple hundred megawatts flowing through one of the starter tech poles--it doesn't melt?!

[ben_w]

Sure, maths says it's fine.

Only takes a few hundred billion USD of aluminium for that ring to have a cross section of a square meter, which is enough to lower the resistance to 1 Ω.

Of course, only China actually produces enough aluminium for this, and you'd want to divide it between several cables both for redundancy and because putting 2 TW though one cable at any plausible voltage will give it a surface magnetic field strong enough to prevent most tools working on it, and the political issues are going to be huge, but on paper it's fine.

[matrix2003]

I mean, storage might be an easier option ;)

There are many alternatives, but I have a 10kWh LiFePO4 pack that is sufficient for my house 95% of the time.

There have been great strides recently in battery recycling and new chemistries. Not to mention alternatives to batteries.

To me this seems like one of those problems that seems impossible until the economics start driving innovation. I think we are heading in the right direction.

[bilbo0s]

I don't know if anyone would mock you, but no, it won't last 100 years. Not without a whole lot of work and a lot of things going exactly right for a hundred years.

Also, why, on earth, would anyone in Kenya need solar energy from Australia? It has some of the best wind resources on the planet in the Rift Valley alone. Not to mention its own ridiculously high levels of solar available. And all that before we've even talked about the expense and difficulty of laying such a line. Add in unparalleled mineral availability in Africa and the Chinese building out manufacturing in Kenya. (Heck, all over the EAC actually.) I just have a hard time even seeing storage batteries as much of a problem for Kenya in the near future.

You need places like Singapore. Where the resources are unequal to the need for this whole thing to make sense.

[ben_w]

> Also, why, on earth, would anyone in Kenya need solar energy from Australia?

Was thinking more that Kenya and Australia would sell electricity to Singapore during Singapore's night.

But Kenya <-> Australia also works, for nighttime coverage.

Wind may be better for each though, I've not looked at that kind of specific.

I'd assume Kenya would also be great for geothermal, having been past (IIRC) Olkaria V in Hell's Gate.

[sofixa]

There are nuclear power plants today in operation for 70 years, and whose life can be further extended. Considering our knowledge and safety today, it's not improbable that a nuclear power plant constructed today would last a century too, with regular maintenance.

[feisty0630]

The strangest part of this is that the cable will be run to Darwin, which isn't connected to Australia's national grid.

So the city's electrical grid will be connected to a foreign country 4,300km away before it's connected to the Australian grid (approx. 2,100km away by road).

[mppm]

Do you have a reference for that $17.2 billion cost? I've seen figures between 24-30 billion USD for the whole project -- solar farm, batteries, local infrastructure to supply Darwin and the subsea cable to Singapore. That would make the economics of this look merely stupid rather than insane.

[alephnerd]

You can't build a Nuclear Plant on Sudong Island.

Sudong Island is fairly important for the Singaporean Armed Forces as a forward landing strip for the SCS. In fact, the SAF is in the process of expanding the military presence and use of Sudong Island [0]

[0] - https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/more-land-to-be-recla...

[JimDabell]

Lazarus would be a horrible place for that kind of thing. It would destroy a nice, relatively untouched spot of nature that’s got a lot of biodiversity.

Singapore does use islands for this kind of thing, but this would be better placed on Jurong Island (which is already entirely industrial) or perhaps Pulau Tekong (which is currently for military use only). Alternatively, land reclamation is not unknown to Singapore, and there’s already big land reclamation plans underway in the coming years.

[torginus]

I wonder if anyone other than the Russians makes one of those floating nuclear power plants that can be moored at sea?

[sofixa]

The US and France do too, but they call them nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines.

[torginus]

That's a bit different though - those reactors use closed cycle liquid sodium coolant, and are not made for supplying power on shore.

I'm talking about something like this:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/is-the-world-ready-for-floating-nu...

[lupusreal]

Lol they do not use liquid sodium. They are PWRs. Rickover would spin in his grave.

[dctoedt]

> they do not use liquid sodium. They are PWRs. Rickover would spin in his grave.

Except for the early days of the (one-off) USS Seawolf, before its liquid-sodium reactor was replaced by a LWR. But yes, the KOG would surely come roaring out of his coffin screaming, "WTF are you idiots doing — wasn't once enough?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Seawolf_(SSN-575)

[bbojan]

Thorcon [https://thorconpower.com/] has a plan for this, but they're still years away.

[nmfisher]

Can't they just float them in the sea? Or does the salt water corrode the panels?

[fasa99]

Forget about the nuclear plant, the interesting thing here is geopolitics.

Singapore was kicked out of Malaysia back in the day straight up. The US equivalent would be "Hey Detroit, you're a mess, you're no longer part of the US, you're now the city state of Detroit"

So that means pragmatically Malaysia is about as far away as New Jersey from New York City (i.e. very close by). They're this more western gem completely surrounded on all sides by Muslim countries e.g. Indonesia as well. And now drawing this loooonnnggg power line past all these places to the Aussies.

Clearly the geopolitical pressure must be massive if they are spending this vast sum, which COULD BE much less, just to bypass all the neighbors. Not that the US understands Singapore geopolitics very well - whenever a Singaporean such as the tik tok CEO is hauled in front of congress they get grilled on which part of China they're from.

[MichaelZuo]

It would seem to only make sense economically if Australia was paying for the majority of the costs.