At the first stage of the project, the company intends to bring into operation the 2.65 gigawatt (GW) Powell Creek power plant in the Barkly Tableland, a region in the Northern Territory (one of Australia’s federal divisions). The electricity generated by the plant will be transmitted by an 800-kilometre overhead power line to the settlement of Murrumujuk, which is located near the city of Darwin by the coast of the Indian Ocean. One-third of the plant’s capacity (0.9 GW) will be used to supply power to Australian consumers, and the other two-thirds (1.75 GW) will generate electricity that will be supplied to Singapore via a 4,300-km submarine cable. Both the overhead and submarine lines will transmit direct-current power, which will be converted into alternating-current power when supplied to Australian and Singaporean consumers.
Upon the completion of the first stage, SunCable plans to increase the capacity of the Powell Creek solar park by 3 GW. The additional electricity will be intended exclusively for the domestic market. During the last stage of the project, the company will expand its capabilities in order to ramp up its exports to Singapore, which plans to import 4 GW of clean electricity by 2035. This figure is equivalent to 7% of the capacity of power plants currently operating in Singapore.
Thanks to this project, Singapore will be able to increase its clean energy consumption. According to Ember research centre, the share of renewable energy sources (RES) in Singapore’s energy mix amounted to 2.4% at the end of 2022, while the share of gas-fired power plants stood at 93.8% and that of power units based on fuel oil and diesel fuel was 3.8%. As for Australia, the project will help the country reduce its consumption of coal, which remains its top source of electricity: coal-fired TPPs accounted for 47.9% of the country’s power generation in 2022, while the share of solar panels was 14.2% (with all other sources making up 37.9%).
