SunCable says local data centres now first priority for massive solar and battery project

SunCable is now looking to produce electricity for data centres in the late 2020s, as the company confirms it will now look at earlier electricity sales for co-located and nearby customers ahead of supplying industrial users in Darwin and then Singapore.

The original plan for the whopping 20 gigawatt (GW) solar and up to 35 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of battery storage project in the Northern Territory was to deliver power to customers first in Darwin and then Singapore.

This week, Ryan Willemsen-Bell, the recently appointed CEO of Australia-Asia Power Link (AAPL), told a conference in Darwin that the plan has changed. 

“The heart of this project is the incredible resource that sits untapped in the middle of this Territory, a resource that we should harness, not just for our benefit here, but for our benefit over the entire region,” he said in comments reported by the NT News.

Jumping on the data centre opportunity means delivering power to co-located customers near its project site in the Barkly region sooner than the early 2030s, with Willemsen-Bell saying that customers were asking for electricity to be ready for use within 24-36 months.

Data centres are hungry for power, and the falling cost of both solar and particularly battery storage means that solar and battery hybrids are now emerging as a cost competitive, and more readily deployable technology.

A revised plan outlined in August last year was for a final investment decision in 2027 and electricity deliveries to Darwin to start in the early 2030s.  The next phase would be the construction of the AAPL transmission line to export power to Singapore in the late 2030s. 

And while the company is still committed to the full vision of solar exports to Singapore, delivering electricity sooner to customers in the Barkly region is a useful boost of confidence in the project, a SunCable spokesperson told Renew Economy.

“The option to supply customer projects in the Barkly on an earlier timeline allows us to demonstrate delivery, build momentum, and create confidence in the project, while continuing to progress power supply to Darwin and Singapore in our delivery schedule,” they said.

“Our immediate focus is a pragmatic one: building generation and storage capacity that can begin supplying customers in the near term, while laying the foundations for a larger, long-term energy export system.

“We are in active discussions with a range of potential offtakers across the full footprint of the project, including data centre customers. Our market engagement over the past 18 months demonstrates that the energy-hungry digital sector will be one of the first movers in the transition to large-scale renewable power supply.”

The pivot to looking to data centres in the 2020s as the early first customer segment comes as the company seeks more capital. In August it was forced to rebut claims that fundraising was not going well.  It also said at the time that data centres were always a prospective part of the customer mix. 

In Darwin this week, Willemsen-Bell did acknowledge the difficulty in selling the idea of a power source 800km from the nearest major centre to Americans.

“FIFO is not something the US understands and we would have to work well collectively to demonstrate we can execute that way,” he said.

Unlike other data centre services, those handling AI training or inferencing don’t need to be very close to their customers but do need huge amounts of very stable energy sources.

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