Evaluation A plan backed by Atlassian co-CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes – geared toward offering 15 % of Singapore’s electrical energy wants utilizing photo voltaic power generated in Australia – has collapsed.
The Australia-Asia PowerLink (AAPL) venture envisioned putting in 120km2 of photo voltaic panels able to producing 3.2 gigawatts in Australia’s Northern Territory, storing the output in a large battery close to the town of Darwin, then piping it 4,000km by means of an undersea cable to Singapore.
At first blush it sounds bonkers, however its particular person elements do not appear to date out of the query.
The Northern Territory is gigantic and sparsely populated, so putting in 120km2 of photo voltaic panels is possible – if difficult.
A large battery can also be doable, and Cannon-Brookes has expertise on such a venture: he and Elon Musk famously labored collectively in 2017 to put in a 150MW battery within the state of South Australia. The battery has labored properly since, serving to the state to capitalize on investments in wind generators.
And naturally undersea cables are well-known: humanity is fairly good at working them throughout oceans to hold information.
Why, it is so loopy it simply would possibly work.
The venture was estimated to price over AUD$30 billion ($21B) and attracted over $150 million of funding – a lot of it from Cannon-Brookes’ funding automobile Grok Ventures and Australian mining billionaire Andrew Forrest. The pair poured cash into an entity known as SunCable that was charged with making the PowerLink occur.
Infrastructure Australia – a authorities physique that assesses the viability and worthiness of infrastructure tasks – rated it “investment-ready” as of June 2022.
That evaluation was vindicated 4 months later, in October 2022, when Singaporean power patrons signed up for as a lot juice because the AAPL may carry, after which some.
The venture attracted numerous consideration resulting from its sheer audacity, the involvement of a minimum of two billionaires (and the likelihood Elon Musk’s Tesla may construct the battery). There was pleasure that Australia may change into a clear power exporter, and by doing so ship on long-held hopes of turning its largely empty north into an financial powerhouse.
However that enthusiasm all however ignored the venture’s monumental complexity. The photo voltaic farm and battery would have been the world’s largest, which means numerous alternatives for price blowouts and unexpected challenges.
The lengthy, lengthy, extension twine from Australia to Singapore was predicted to be devilishly complicated to construct, and worryingly fragile.
That evaluation got here from Bevan Slattery, an Australian entrepreneur (and perhaps this story’s fourth billionaire) who has run corporations that construct and function submarine information cables.
In a prolonged LinkedIn publish, Slattery defined that the route from Australia to Singapore traverses deep water, oil pipelines, quite a few telecoms cables, and essentially the most harmful waters on this planet for these cables. In his opinion the cable would additionally want totally new ships to construct and preserve it.
He additionally rated the cable “unrecoverable” if damaged – and cables break on a regular basis. This one would have a better than typical likelihood of breaking due to near-constant tectonic exercise on its route.
SunCable final week introduced it had entered voluntary administration – a situation akin to chapter.
The corporate cited “absence of alignment with the goals of all shareholders” as one cause for coming into administration. It added: “While funding proposals have been offered, consensus on the longer term course and funding construction of the corporate couldn’t be achieved.”
That is extensively held to be code for “Forrest and Cannon-Brookes couldn’t agree on fund SunCable and make the venture occur.” Forrest can also be recognized to have invested in hydrogen power, so maybe prefers the thought of utilizing photo voltaic electrical energy to energy electrolysis and ship the gasoline to Singapore, avoiding the dangers of constructing a cable.
The assertion asserting SunCable’s entry to voluntary administration notes that it “at present has a portfolio of an additional 11GW of proposed tasks, which is equal to over 3 times that of the AAPowerLink.”
Cannon-Brookes’s canned quote reads: “SunCable has achieved a lot because it was based in 2018. I am assured it’s going to play an enormous function in delivering inexperienced power for the world, proper right here from Australia. I absolutely again this ambition and the workforce, and sit up for supporting the corporate’s subsequent chapter.”
However at this level, solely he appears to have an curiosity in writing that chapter. And with Atlassian’s share value at lower than half its late 2021 peak, his potential to fund additional adventures just isn’t as in depth because it as soon as was. ®