World Largest Solar Farm to Be Built in Australia - But They Won Get The Power

   A major renewable energy project in Australia billed because the world's largest solar farm in development has had its proposed location revealed.

The AUD$20 billion facility – the center of an ambitious electricity network called the Australia–ASEAN Power Link – are going to be built at a distant cattle station within the district, roughly halfway between Darwin and Alice Springs.

The gargantuan 10-gigawatt array – opened up across some 20,000 football fields' worth of photovoltaic panels – could be situated near the center of the Australian outback, but the energy reaped from the plant will ultimately be transported far, remote from the sunburnt country.

That's because the ability Link doesn't just involve building the world's largest solar farm, which can be easily visible from space. The project also anticipates the construction of what is going to be the world's longest submarine transmission line, which is able to export electricity all the way from outback Australia to Singapore via a 4,500-kilometre (2,800 miles) high-voltage electrical energy (HVDC) network.

(Solar Farm)

For this gear to figure, the PowerLink, being developed by Singaporean company Sun Cable, will have to build the world's largest battery, which is able to be stationed near Darwin on the northern coast of Australia.

The idea is that the network will transport current from the array at Newcastle Waters roughly 750 kilometers north, where it'll be stored at the Darwin battery.

Some of the present will enter the local Darwin grid, but the bulk is exported internationally via over 3,700 kilometers of undersea cables laid along the ocean bed, first through Indonesian waters, before eventually making it all the thanks to Singapore.

Once the electricity reaches its ultimate destination, it's expected to produce power for over 1 million Singaporeans – about 20 percent of the sovereign island's population – and ultimately there are plans to supply power to Indonesians also.

A rendering of the solar farm. (Sun Cable)

Of course, for this hugely ambitious multi-year renewables project to be accomplished, plenty of things should go right.

Once all the approvals are secured – including environmental assessments for a project expected to require up to around 120 square kilometers (almost 50 square miles) of land – construction is anticipated to start in 2023, with energy production commencing in 2026, and also the first exported electricity can be flowing in 2027.

If all goes as planned, the facility Link may be a watershed moment not just for alternative energy except for the clean energy industry as an entire, illustrating how renewable energy may be shared and relayed across international networks, spanning vast distances and even oceans.

"It is an extraordinary technology that's visiting change the flow of energy between countries. Its visiting have profound implications and also the extent of these implications hasn't been widely identified," Sun Cable CEO David Griffin told The Guardian in 2019.

"If you have got the transmission of electricity over very large distances between countries, then the flow of energy changes from liquid fuels – oil and LNG – to electrons. Ultimately, that's vastly more efficient thanks to transport energy. The incumbents just won't be ready to compete."