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Comment by Keppl8R | Hacker News Reader

I wonder why they don't build and sell power to the local market in Australia and then use those funds to build the cable?

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The NEM (National Energy Market) is doing fairly well on rooftop and PV Solar. Current growth is actually causing problems as typical base load power (coal & combined cycle gas) are becoming uneconomical during solar hours. As the NEM covers the east coast and south Australia (at least major population centres), that doesn't leave much place to sell it. WEM (Western Australian Energy Market) is more regulated and have their own PV capacity.

The only way this could be economical into Australia would be if it had an energy storage capacity. Someone might do the math and build a battery to be powered from this and inject into one of the grids, but longer term, if it is to supply singapore, it makes more sense to put the batteries at the singaporian end.

Here's a link to NEM mix this week in case anyone else is interested:

https://opennem.org.au/energy/nem/?range=7d&interval=30m

Maybe power from further away could help toward replacing the base power. A little more sunlight for the east coast peak. Less chance of a cloud or a still day on the east coast causing an issue like Callide coal exploding the other day. Yeah it is a stretch (literally thousands of kilometres).

If we're being ambitious, I'm excited about off-shore wind. If end game for NEM is 2/3 wind and 1/3 solar (with storage/hydro/gas in single-digit percentages filling the gaps) there are many inevitable projects and growing pains to come.

A lot of the local markets in Australia are further away from the NW corner than Singapore!

There isn't currently a national network. There's the eastern seaboard with S.A. and there's W.A. we don't routinely send power these distances in Australia.

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