I realize I have next to no understanding on how long distance energy transport works.
How does one transport energy over such a long distance ? Wouldn't there be massive loss in form of heat due to the fact that cables are not perfect conductor ? I kinda understand that normal cables goes around this by having high-voltage (and needing a transformer to step down the volage for home usage - much safer!), but I assume this is only good for 100s of km. Does that scale up to thousands of km ? Or do they assume that Australia is so energy rich that it doesn't matter if there are big losses ?
Can we do the same in Europe and put massive solar panels in the desert of North Africa and import the energy northwards ? (I realize this is a super naive approach, and the main problem is energy storage rather than generation)
which is not the "regular" AC multiphase power transmission. There are existing HVDC links in Europe to join various unsync'd parts of the European grid and its good for quite long legs between stations (there will be a few between Australia and Singapore).
Yes, there's also an aspect that Northern Australia has so much open space and sunshine that transmission losses can be sustained ans still turn a profit.
Unlike European supergrid there are not many news about this project. And given that last mention was in 2013 and completion date is set for 2020-2025, it looks abandoned.
"Depending on voltage level and construction details, HVDC transmission losses are quoted at 3.5% per 1,000 km (620 mi), about 50% less than AC (6.7%) lines at the same voltage." [1]
The Moore-like downward costs of solar panels and battery backup killed satellite mounted panels, worldwide grids with cables across Pacific and Atlantic oceans, mechanical trackers etc. Seems Singapore is an outlier.
I do wonder what the politics is that makes this a better deal than, say, Malaysia or Indonesia. Singapore itself is quite close to the equator, and Indonesia spans it.
Look up their gods and racial distribution, and their neighbors' gods and racial distribution, and then you have your answer. I leave you to draw your own conclusions.
> Were you aware of the fact that sharks chew through undersea cables that are an integral part of the internet's physical infrastructure? Scientists are unsure why they do it, though they suspect that the electromagnetic fields emitted by high-volume fibre-optic cables may make them look like live prey.
Given how many undersea gas pipelines, fiber-optic cables, etc. have been damaged in recent years, this seems too risky. Even if Singapore had a huge navy (it doesn't) keeping all the "accidental" anchor-draggers and sabotage submarines away from 4,300km of cable would be an impossible task.
Meanwhile in Australia we suffer frequent brown outs year round and rolling outages in the summer because the majority of the power generated and made available to people is from coal and other unclean sources. https://www.iea.org/countries/australia/energy-mix
Note for anyone coming along - we don't actually experience frequent brownouts or rolling outages here in Australia, compared to almost everywhere else in the world... We have extrememly high grid reliability standards and the grid operator pulls out all the stops when a possible lack of reserve is forecast.
There have been the rare cases of load shedding, usually when thermal generators are unexpectadely offline (one a few years ago was when a coal plant actually blew up).
We really do, they're very common here in Melbourne. Most summers we experience brown outs / load shedding and throughout the year the grid here struggles with changes in load (dimming lights, short-lived UPS activation etc...).
Interesting! May I ask what area you lived in (not due to the power distributor, but the age of the infrastructure in the area). The areas I've had issues are Brunswick, Thornbury and Footscray. Folks at work (we're a bit spread out but mostly Melbourne based) often talk of minor outages etc...
I actually had some electronics fail quite recently after a number of minor outages and speaking with insurance they were saying it's very common in certain areas where the infrastructure is aging or has recently been struck by lightening.
I have noticed the operating voltage in the inner north seems to vary between as low as 217V to 246V, but it's quite frequent you notice the lights dimming in houses round here. I don't think there were any last summer (if you could call it a summer) but usually I'd experience 2-5 (ish) complete outages on hot days, when I spoke to someone in know they said this is normal as they load shed you can experience short outages.
It isn't my experience either, having lived in various suburbs in Melbourne since 2012.
Power outages happen, but I've been through maybe half dozen in my time here.
Same with brown outs. Not unheard of but far from common.
Although I spend my days at the office so maybe I miss some things, but equally I get an email if my home UPS activates and that has happened perhaps twice.
Can you point to at least 10 different trustworthy sources that show the reliability and quality of power? Specifically in Thornbury, Footscray and Brunswick.
Even if that is the case, shouldn't a bigger grid make those events less frequent/extreme? It is not a one-way cable afterall and usually those kind of projects want to make money when prices are high (as they should be in a brown-out situation).
Edit: okay, maybe not at the other end of the continent. But then you have an insufficient grid and need to invest in that too.
In Sydney there’s so much rooftop solar generation that feed-in tariffs for grid connections frequently go negative. Ie: you have to pay the grid to have it take your excess power.
From memory South Australia has had multiple occasions of being 100% powered by renewables with all their fossil generators shut down.
Yeah we definitely have work to do in completing the shift away from coal. The natural gas export contract situation is a shambles which makes it difficult to use for the transition as planned. It’s certainly not doom and gloom, though, and apart from lines getting aced by trees falling during storms, the wall holes are always full of electrons at my place.
I'm going to point out to you that insufficient power generation capacity and/or transmission infrastructure, the reasons behind brownouts and blackouts, has nothing to do with "unclean" energy sources.
In fact, if the cause is insufficient generation capacity then renewables will exacerbate it because fossil fuels are much more energy dense and consistent.
I realize I have next to no understanding on how long distance energy transport works.
How does one transport energy over such a long distance ? Wouldn't there be massive loss in form of heat due to the fact that cables are not perfect conductor ? I kinda understand that normal cables goes around this by having high-voltage (and needing a transformer to step down the volage for home usage - much safer!), but I assume this is only good for 100s of km. Does that scale up to thousands of km ? Or do they assume that Australia is so energy rich that it doesn't matter if there are big losses ?
Can we do the same in Europe and put massive solar panels in the desert of North Africa and import the energy northwards ? (I realize this is a super naive approach, and the main problem is energy storage rather than generation)
The starting point for this is High-voltage direct current (HVDC)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current
which is not the "regular" AC multiphase power transmission. There are existing HVDC links in Europe to join various unsync'd parts of the European grid and its good for quite long legs between stations (there will be a few between Australia and Singapore).
Yes, there's also an aspect that Northern Australia has so much open space and sunshine that transmission losses can be sustained ans still turn a profit.
> Can we do the same in Europe and put massive solar panels in the desert of North Africa and import the energy northwards ?
Yes, they’re actively working on it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medgrid
Unlike European supergrid there are not many news about this project. And given that last mention was in 2013 and completion date is set for 2020-2025, it looks abandoned.
There's another attempt currently in the works:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xlinks_Morocco%E2%80%93UK_Po...
Is this really still a thing? There hasn't been any news in many years now.
"Depending on voltage level and construction details, HVDC transmission losses are quoted at 3.5% per 1,000 km (620 mi), about 50% less than AC (6.7%) lines at the same voltage." [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current#Ad...
The Moore-like downward costs of solar panels and battery backup killed satellite mounted panels, worldwide grids with cables across Pacific and Atlantic oceans, mechanical trackers etc. Seems Singapore is an outlier.
Singapore is really small and mostly already urban. There's some space for roof-mounting panels but otherwise it's really at a premium.
>HVDC transmission lines have losses of about 3.5% per 1,000 kilometers, while HVAC lines have losses of about 6.7% at the same voltage.
Which Northern African country would you pick that is trustworthy enough to have your economy depend on for energy need over the coming decades?
One that they(EU) don't see bombing or invading
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I do wonder what the politics is that makes this a better deal than, say, Malaysia or Indonesia. Singapore itself is quite close to the equator, and Indonesia spans it.
Malaysia has a history of signing agreements with Singapore and then stalling or trying renegotiate the terms after the fact.
Any dispute which has a Wikipedia page (like the Malaysia/Singapore water dispute) is:
- Too complicated to assign blame to one party
- Futile to rehash in HN comments
I'm no expert on the project, but I think the argument for Australia is the large tracts of land available for solar panels.
Per the article, Singapore has already approved projects to import electricity from Indonesia, Cambodia, and Vietnam.
Perhaps Australia has less clouds?
Middle of Australia has a number of deserts with a dry and arid climate.
Versus Malaysia / Indonesia which is hot and humid.
Look up their gods and racial distribution, and their neighbors' gods and racial distribution, and then you have your answer. I leave you to draw your own conclusions.
What, Australia is the only country with the Sun God to power the panels?
Oddly, considering the massive scale of this project, there’s no mention of projected costs in TFA.
A kilometre of undersea HVDC line costs $4mln, or less than half the price of the same length of highway in the EU on average.
It's expensive, but an economy such as Singapore has the means to pull it off.
That's a monster of a cable. Wow
Imagine the size of the (underwater?) rat that nature will need to evolve to chew on that. ;)
Nature already evolved this type of rat!
> Were you aware of the fact that sharks chew through undersea cables that are an integral part of the internet's physical infrastructure? Scientists are unsure why they do it, though they suspect that the electromagnetic fields emitted by high-volume fibre-optic cables may make them look like live prey.
https://www.diplomacy.edu/blog/can-sharks-eat-the-internet/
Electromagnetic fields? Emitted by fibre-optic cables?
The cables are powered. There are also signal repeaters.
yes, its not just fibre in undersea cables.
The matter of the Giant Rat of Sumatra is something for which the world is not yet prepared.
Single point of failure
Given how many undersea gas pipelines, fiber-optic cables, etc. have been damaged in recent years, this seems too risky. Even if Singapore had a huge navy (it doesn't) keeping all the "accidental" anchor-draggers and sabotage submarines away from 4,300km of cable would be an impossible task.
I thought extension cords were not supposed to be used permanently.
Meanwhile in Australia we suffer frequent brown outs year round and rolling outages in the summer because the majority of the power generated and made available to people is from coal and other unclean sources. https://www.iea.org/countries/australia/energy-mix
Note for anyone coming along - we don't actually experience frequent brownouts or rolling outages here in Australia, compared to almost everywhere else in the world... We have extrememly high grid reliability standards and the grid operator pulls out all the stops when a possible lack of reserve is forecast.
There have been the rare cases of load shedding, usually when thermal generators are unexpectadely offline (one a few years ago was when a coal plant actually blew up).
We really do, they're very common here in Melbourne. Most summers we experience brown outs / load shedding and throughout the year the grid here struggles with changes in load (dimming lights, short-lived UPS activation etc...).
I live in Melbourne (on Jemena’s distribution network) and this isn’t my experience.
Our power is very reliable and rarely goes out. Every few years a car hits a pole or something and we get a brief period of quiet time
Interesting! May I ask what area you lived in (not due to the power distributor, but the age of the infrastructure in the area). The areas I've had issues are Brunswick, Thornbury and Footscray. Folks at work (we're a bit spread out but mostly Melbourne based) often talk of minor outages etc...
I actually had some electronics fail quite recently after a number of minor outages and speaking with insurance they were saying it's very common in certain areas where the infrastructure is aging or has recently been struck by lightening.
I have noticed the operating voltage in the inner north seems to vary between as low as 217V to 246V, but it's quite frequent you notice the lights dimming in houses round here. I don't think there were any last summer (if you could call it a summer) but usually I'd experience 2-5 (ish) complete outages on hot days, when I spoke to someone in know they said this is normal as they load shed you can experience short outages.
That wasn't my experience when living in Melbourne, though I moved away in 2022.
It isn't my experience either, having lived in various suburbs in Melbourne since 2012.
Power outages happen, but I've been through maybe half dozen in my time here.
Same with brown outs. Not unheard of but far from common.
Although I spend my days at the office so maybe I miss some things, but equally I get an email if my home UPS activates and that has happened perhaps twice.
Can you point to at least 10 different trustworthy sources about this?
Can you point to at least 10 different trustworthy sources that show the reliability and quality of power? Specifically in Thornbury, Footscray and Brunswick.
> when a coal plant actually blew up
Is that when entire states power (2gw) went from being produced to being consumed as a massive electric motor to 50k rpm and shooting into sky?
You also pay extremely high prices for electricity because the big coal plant operators are in bed with the government
Even if that is the case, shouldn't a bigger grid make those events less frequent/extreme? It is not a one-way cable afterall and usually those kind of projects want to make money when prices are high (as they should be in a brown-out situation).
Edit: okay, maybe not at the other end of the continent. But then you have an insufficient grid and need to invest in that too.
Which part of Australia are you actually in where that's happening?
Doesn't seem like a thing in at least the capital cities.
It's been a problem here in Melbourne for at least the last 8-10~ years.
The large issues (not the local failure) are listed at https://www.aemo.com.au/market-notices?marketNoticeQuery=&fr...
It's very rare to see the load shedding applied/recommended. Are you sure it's not just the local part of the grid being crap?
That's weird.
When I was living in Melbourne (inner western and eastern suburbs) from roughly 2019 through to 2022 it wasn't.
In Sydney there’s so much rooftop solar generation that feed-in tariffs for grid connections frequently go negative. Ie: you have to pay the grid to have it take your excess power.
From memory South Australia has had multiple occasions of being 100% powered by renewables with all their fossil generators shut down.
Yeah we definitely have work to do in completing the shift away from coal. The natural gas export contract situation is a shambles which makes it difficult to use for the transition as planned. It’s certainly not doom and gloom, though, and apart from lines getting aced by trees falling during storms, the wall holes are always full of electrons at my place.
I'm going to point out to you that insufficient power generation capacity and/or transmission infrastructure, the reasons behind brownouts and blackouts, has nothing to do with "unclean" energy sources.
In fact, if the cause is insufficient generation capacity then renewables will exacerbate it because fossil fuels are much more energy dense and consistent.