The Australian outback is set to become home to the world’s largest solar farm, with the project expected to provide power to places as far away as Singapore.
Called Sun Cable, the 10-gigawatt solar farm will occupy 120 square km (46 square miles) in a remote corner of the country’s Northern Territories. Construction is expected to begin in 2023 and is forecast to cost a whopping $20 billion to build. It's being backed by the Australian government, plus a handful of billionaire investors.
Mr Cannon-Brookes, one of the lead investors, said: "In a carbon-constrained world, Australia should be a winner. This is a massively exciting project with world-changing potential. We have the resources, the ingenuity and the drive to get it done - we just have to put it all together. If we nail this, we can build a new export industry for Australia, create jobs and set our economy up for the future."
Once finished, the farm will initially provide renewable energy to communities in northern Australia, and later on, the plan is to export much of the energy to other countries. According to Sun Cable CEO David Griffin, two-thirds of the power would eventually be exported to Singapore by high-voltage undersea cables, feeding around a fifth of the city-state’s energy needs.
While a remote patch of desert more than 2,000 miles away might not seem like the most obvious location to put Singapore’s power supply, Sun Cable think it’s hit upon the ideal location for its vast solar farm. As part of the project, Sun Cable is also working to create training schemes and offer green jobs to members of local Indigenous communities.
If Sun Cable’s project goes to plan, its solar farm will be almost three times as large as the current biggest, located in northern China. Furthermore, Sun Cable's farm will be large enough to be seen from space.