$20b NT solar farm on track

The world’s largest solar farm proposed in the NT is on track and going full steam ahead

The world’s largest solar farm proposed near Tennant Creek is on track.

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THE world’s largest solar farm proposed near Tennant Creek is on track and going full steam ahead.

Sun Cable managing director David Griffin was in Darwin yesterday to update the business community on the project’s status and said the company is working as fast as it can to put the myriad of project components together and get to the final investment decision target date of October 2023.

The $20b Sun Cable project, which will supply solar power from Tennant Creek to Singapore via the world’s longest subsea high voltage cable, has been forecast to generate 1000 jobs in Darwin and another 1000 in Adelaide during the construction phase and a further 300 onsite solar farm jobs in the Barkly.

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Mr Griffin said the subsea survey between Darwin and Singapore, which started in September has gone well.

“The first 750km of the subsea geophysical survey of the route from Darwin to Singapore has been completed and geotechnical sampling will now be done to understand the nature of what is beneath the surface,” Mr Griffin said.

“That process will continue for the next couple of months and then we commence the subsea survey for the rest of the route through to Singapore in January.

“Our overall timeline remains the same — the objective to achieve final investment decision by October 2023, commence construction, first electrons to Darwin in the first quarter of 2026, first electricity to Singapore in early 2027 and fully commissioned in early 2028.

“One of the key design elements that is really relevant to Darwin is what scale of capacity we are proposing to design the system to deliver to Darwin. The current electrical load to Darwin minimum ranges around about 70 megawatts and the maximum is up around 300 megawatts.

Eni entered the Australian renewables market with the acquisition of the 33.7MWp Katherine Solar Farm – from a joint venture set up by Australia’s Epuron and the UK-based Island Green Power. SUPPLIED

“We are proposing to design the system to deliver up to 800 megawatts of capacity into the Darwin system.

“The whole logic behind that is there is a whole series of new industries that want to come to Darwin, things like data centres, chemical processing, and minerals processing.

“They all have some common requirements and the bulk supply of competitively priced electricity is one of those common denominators.

“We are proposing to design the system to enable that bulk supply of electricity so that they can plan accordingly and bring in those new large loads.

“We want to take the Darwin economy from circa 150 megawatts economy to a gigawatt plus economy.

“And we want to do that starting 2026.

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“That’s a pretty radical change that would represent an enormous economic change in Darwin … profound economic growth and wealth generation in the Darwin region.

“We are still working through the economic case as to exactly what the scale of capacity is that we design in the system to deliver into the Darwin to Katherine system.

“So we know that we are sending 2.2 gigawatts to Singapore but we really have to work on what is the right size of capacity into Darwin.

“We want that to be 800 megawatts and we think that’s a good target to achieve and it will be fundamental to growing the economy.”