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Comment by stefan_ | Hacker News Reader

Can't export solar very well from Australia

Sun Cable is trying

A good mate of mine runs 5B, the company that may end up deploying all the panels if it goes ahead. He’s a legend and if it happens throughly deserves the success. Would totally change australia!

Hydrogen is a possibility. Some serious investigation are underway.

https://www.aemc.gov.au/hydrogen-new-australian-manufacturin...

Just a thought, what if Australia had ways to use excess power and export the result. e.g. refining ores and exporting metals instead of exporting ores. You don't need to literally "export electricity" in order to leverage a surplus of energy, for export.

export aluminium - often called solidified electricity.

Seems obvious considering Australia is the world's largest producer of bauxite.

Yup. Australia is one of the world’s largest Aluminium exporters currently, although I doubt that has much to do with using excess solar energy.

They aren't though. They're only number 6, despite producing the most bauxite by far.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_primary_a...

Australia is the 6th largest producer and 5th largest exporter of aluminium. To me that fits well within the statement “one of the world’s largest”

Of course Australia also sells a lot of bauxite to China.

crypto-mining comes to mind

True. In the same way that car-crashes and other pointless disasters come to mind.

I've had this discussion around why we export iron ore and coal rather than steel. Which seems ridiculous to me. Why are we building huge port facilities for vast shipments of coal and iron ore, and not smelters with much smaller port facilities for shipping steel?

The answer I got was that smelters are hugely expensive and last longer than the mines, and so it makes sense to build the smelter near the factories, and ship the raw materials to the smelter from wherever they are being mined currently, rather than building the smelter near the mines and then having to ship raw materials there anyway once the mines run out. I've always thought this was a bit dubious (why is commercially viable to build smelters in Korea but not Aus?), but it does kinda make sense.

So the problem isn't "not enough excess power" but "insufficient infrastructure" coupled with "insufficient government willpower to build a decent manufacturing base here".

It would be a good start, if australia would not burn so much coal anymore. Apart from that ... build energy intensive industry, anything with metal. And then if you still have a surpluss (very possible) export hydrogen or biofuel. Or build high voltage direct current power lines to asia.

Australia biggest export is iron ore, followed by coal.

If you have a lot of energy and iron, a great way to combine the two is steel. Sweden is currently experimenting with the idea of green steel, using hydrogen as an replacement for coal.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-06-09/future-of...

Ultra high voltage DC ultra long distance submarine cables.

You could use the electricity to make hydrogen, ammonia or aluminium and export that.

It’s like any other exchange of electricity between grids, which already takes place within larger countries. You just need to run a cable to create an export grid. Offshore wind farms have to run high voltage marine cables to the shore, for example. It is laid using the same techniques as underwater communication cables - with specialized ships.

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