• invalidusernamelol [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    4 days ago

    Australia only needs ~200GW of capacity to meet demand I believe (5882PJ --> ~1.6M GWh, 8760h/year --> 186.5GW) math might be wrong there, but even if Australia was fully solar powered it would still have only 50% of China’s installed capacity.

        • Redderthanmisty@lemmygrad.ml
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          3 days ago

          To where? The ocean?

          Undersea cables connect the UK with the rest of the EU’s power grid, even going all the way to Norway.

          I don’t see any reason, other than political, why a similar system can’t be engineered in Australia to connect its power grid to Papa New Guinea, New Zealand or Indonesia if it hasn’t already.

          • invalidusernamelol [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            2 days ago

            That’s ~400km to Papau New Guinea and ~700km to Timor, longest current undersea cable is UK to Denmark (764km). So definitely doable. They’d also need the power to be linked into those countries grids, and they don’t control that.

            Would be an interesting Mega project to wire up all of South East Asia to Australia to import solar energy.