Part One: History repeating itself
This post was not intended to be that long, however, we found that it was worth exploring some of the history behind projects in the desert and HVDC links.
In just one month the term “HVDC” made it to the front page of many Australian and South East Asian news websites multiple times, something quite peculiar for those of us who live in Australia and are actively engaged in HVDC technology research. The main reason behind this “HVDC news renaissance” was the release of the “The 10GW Vision” report, a plan for the Northern Territory (NT) to create a renewable energy Hub. The headline claims for this article were, obviously, about the economics. The potential to create over “8000 new jobs and bring $2B in revenue by 2030”. The report, that was prepared by Beyond Zero Emissions (available online at https://bze.org.au/research/regional/repowering-nt/), most importantly for us, identifies opportunities to “exploit” and export the renewable energy via an HVDC link to Indonesia.
The second project is even more optimistic. The Suncable project (https://www.suncable.sg/) aims to power 20% of Singapore through a 3800 km HVDC cable, again with a starting point in the NT. Equally interestingly, the NT government also upgraded the project to a major status giving further exposure to the link.
Before we explore the major barriers today for both projects and what we think are extremely optimistic timelines presented in both reports–something that we will go into detail in Part 2 of this post, we decided to take a short trip down memory lane (and apologies if we missed any prior mentions–we limited our scope to projects that we remember while living in Australia).
Hardly a new idea…
The concept of solar systems located in remote sunny areas (well, deserts) providing power to the grid is (obviously) not new. In fact the idea of building such a plan in the Sahara desert and powering all of Europe–a location much closer to much greater loads–has been prominent for almost 20 years. The DESERTEC foundation was established roughly a decade ago, in 2009, in order to promote the North African – European Interconnection.
An offshoot of the main DESERTEC program was in fact desertec-Australia. The Australian part had two ambitious plans, one to power the east coast load centres and interconnect to the NEM bulk renewable energy generated in concentrated solar (CSP) power plants, and, more importantly for our context, a possible interconnection to Asia by “[connecting] Australia to the Indonesian grid or […] to connect Australia to China through an HVDC cable laid across the South China Sea that feeds into China’s own planned HVDC system.”
Unfortunately the desertec-Australia website is no longer active to find all related material to the proposal but can be accessed through the wayback-machine in the following link: https://web.archive.org/web/20090122132148/http://desertec-australia.org/content/twf-3-connectingtoasia.html
(We would recommend all those interested to have a read and draw some parallels)
One resource still available is a promotional video for the project which can still be found on YouTube!
I do personally also recall parliamentary hearings and enquiries on renewable energy all the way back to 2009, interestingly enough asking questions about HVDC projects for renewable energy interconnectors not only for solar but even for tidal power plants of the coast of Western Australia (WA). It will take quite a bit of digging to find my notes from back then, though.
Fast forward a few years, we can find a workshop that explores the very same idea–an Australia – Asia Interconnector. “For the Australia – Asia interconnector it was suggested the most likely route was from the north coast near Darwin across to the lower coast of Timor.”
The report also identifies the route of the cable and the geography of the location as the key technical barriers in the development of this project due to both the length and depth for laying the cable as “this would still require crossing the Timor Trench, which is a significant depth (around 3 km). It was noted that it is not impossible to lay at such depths however it has not been done before.” (It still has not been done to this day–and more recent reports opt for longer shallower routes)
A 2015 report published by the Nautilus Institute brings again up the notion of the Asian Supergrid….
Samantha Mella, “Does Australia Energy Export Future Lie with the Asian Supergrid?”, NAPSNet Policy Forum, May 18, 2015, https://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-policy-forum/does-australia-energy-export-future-lie-with-the-asian-supergrid/
… while the comprehensive 2017 “Prefeasibility study” completed with the support of the Pilbara Development Commission (available online at https://www.pdc.wa.gov.au/application/files/2315/0405/7606/Prefeasibility_Study_Final_Version_030817.pdf) explored the very same theme, “… the potential to export Pilbara solar resources to the proposed ASEAN grid via a subsea high voltage direct current interconnector”. The numbers in the 2017 report are very similar to the Beyond Zero Emissions report and also the Suncable project. A 3GW interconnector that spans a few thousand km between Australia and Indonesia–or Singapore in the case of the Suncable– delivering renewables to South East Asia.
In fact, many of the aspects addressed in the 2017 PDC report directly relate to the challenges that apply in the 2019 NT proposal and the two projects that followed up. For instance:
- The case for further renewable integration in ASEAN
- MultiGW projects in remote Australian regions
- A local collection grid and an HVDC interconnector
- The lack of current HVDC cable technology that enables these projects
- And that each project requires more than 2000 km of the currently non-existent cable.
One additional element is the estimation of the costs for the HVDC link and how these estimations are made. Each of these projects will require breakthrough in technology, not only for cable length but also cable depth, cable reliability, maintenance etc. (We should also keep in mind that the parallels draws to long distance HVDC connections in China would be harder to justify, given how the Chinese projects effectively kick-started the HVDC industry in China with significant local capabilities–unlike Australia or Indonesia.)
Now back to the $ estimations. The 2017 PDC report estimated the cost at approximately $4M / km for a total cost of ~$9.5B GW. A recent CIGRE study on the global grid estimates a minimum cost option for the Australia – ASEAN interconnector at €3.1B / GW to a total cost of €9.3B ($14.5B) for the 3GW proposed link. The cost question remains unclear–every single one of these links would be (by far) the longest and deepest HVDC cable and even assuming such a cable exists, the technical difficulties in installation and maintenance of the link would define a great deal, the potential of such projects.
We should also note, referencing to the figure below, that in the CIGRE modelling the Australia to ASEAN interconnector, is by far the most expensive interconnector in the study. To add to this, the remaining interconnectors to the ASEAN node are of 8 to 20 times less cost which can make competition to the link quite interesting.
In the second part of this post, we will explore how the projects to connect the NT and Pilbara to Indonesia and Singapore would compare to existing HVDC projects.
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