The recent interruptions to businesses around the world and resulting supply impacts have brought the subject of supply chain sustainability and the risks of relying on a narrow customer base into focus. Can Marinus Link play a role in increasing the resilience of Tasmania’s electricity supply?
Although Tasmania has tens of thousands of commercial and hundreds of thousands of residential electricity customers, over 60% of the electricity consumed in Tasmania is used by around just 20 customers. Just four – Bell Bay Aluminium, Norske Skog, Nyrstar and Temco, account for 50% of Tasmania’s electricity demand. While 80% of Tasmania’s connections are residential, they only make up around 20% of demand. This means that without additional export capability, much of Tasmania’s revenue from electricity generation is dependant upon a very small number of customers.
Currently, exporting any electricity from Tasmania is limited by the capabilities and capacity of the 15 year old interconnector, Basslink.
Tasmania’s Hydro already has around 400MW of latent capacity and it is estimated that with minimal capital investment and changes to operations, that could be doubled. That represents an enormous amount of clean energy that could be sold, returning revenue to Tasmania and growth to the state’s economy. Pumped hydro and additional wind and solar generation could eventually add thousands of MW of profitable, clean energy generation.
But without new infrastructure to export or consume that capacity to a wider customer base, there is no way for Tasmania to realise this massive potential revenue.
