eli5 Why is there no giant solar farm in Australia?

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My cursory Google says that it’s not impossible. So why?

EDIT: Answer seems to be that (politics aside) practically it’s cost prohibitive and the tech can’t transfer the energy over the distance required.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Australia has a lot of coal and fairly easily accessible and transportable. So that has been the traditional source of energy. Still, the latest statistics are that Australia generates 30% of their electricity from renewable sources.

The problem, particularly for solar, is distribution and storage. This is still rather expensive making it somewhat uncompetitive especially if coal is widely available nearby.

Still there is interest:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link)

Somewhat more interesting is why Australia shuns nuclear power especially since Australia has a fair amount of uranium locally.

I’d guess (likely inaccurately or too simplistically) that the vested interests in Australian coal are not making it easy politically. The mining industry is a major part of Australia’s economy – it is the largest sector of its GDP.

The other thing to note is that Australia is HUGE and sparsely populated. The optimal areas for solar and wind generation might not be very close to where the demand is.

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