Australian govt approves plans for major outback solar farm

Canberra, Aug 21 (IANS) The Australian government has granted environmental approval for a plan to build the country's largest solar farm in the outback.

Tanya Plibersek, the Minister for the Environment and Water, on Wednesday, announced the government has approved the first stage of SunCable's Australia-Asia PowerLink (AAPowerLink), reports Xinhua news agency.The project aims to supply renewable energy to customers in Darwin - the capital of the Northern Territory (NT) - and eventually export green energy to Singapore via 4,300 kilometres of undersea cables.

Under its first phase, up to 10 gigawatts (GW) of solar generation and battery storage capacity will be built on pastoral land near the outback town of Elliott over 600 km south of Darwin.

Environmental approvals have been granted for 800 km of overhead transmission lines from the facility toDarwin and an underwater cable from Darwin to the end of Australian waters.Once completed, the AAPowerLink will deliver up to four GW of 24/7 renewable energy to Darwin - enough to power three million homes - and 1.75 GW to Singapore.

According to SunCable, the project is the world's biggest integrated renewable energy and battery storage facility and will deliver more than 20 billion Australian dollars ($13.4 billion) in economic value to the NT in its first 35 years.

"This massive project is a generation-defining piece of infrastructure. It will be the largest solar precinct in the world and heralds Australia as the world leader in green energy," Plibersek said in a statement.

"Not only will this project help turn Australia into a renewable energy superpower, it will be a huge boost for the Northern Territory economy," the statement added.The NT government and NT Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) in July approved plans for the generation and storage site, transmission lines, a Darwin converter site and an undersea High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) cable from the converter to the end of Australian territorial waters at the border with Indonesia.