Billionaire to buy Sun Cable assets, revive plan to export solar power from Australia to Singapore

BILLIONAIRE Mike Cannon-Brookes will revive a stalled plan to export solar power from Australia to Singapore after sealing an agreement to acquire the assets of the failed Sun Cable project.

The deal gives Cannon-Brookes and Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners control of a vast renewable energy development in northern Australia, which went into voluntary administration in January following a dispute between the Atlassian co-founder and fellow billionaire investor Andrew Forrest. The two disagreed over a plan to transport electricity to Asia through a 4,200-kilometre submarine cable.

“We’ve always believed in the possibilities Sun Cable presents in exporting our boundless sunshine, and what it could mean for Australia,” said Cannon-Brookes, who backs the export plan.

Forrest’s Squadron Energy unit also put forward a proposal to acquire the assets, people familiar with the matter said in March.

Cannon-Brookes’s Grok Ventures office aims to progress plans for a first stage project to deliver 900 megawatts of clean electricity to Darwin and to export 1.8 gigawatts to Singapore, administrators FTI Consulting said in a separate statement.

Under the deal, Grok and Quinbrook will acquire Sun Cable’s assets, “including the shares in all of Sun Cable’s subsidiaries”, FTI said, without disclosing details of the acquisition price. BLOOMBERG

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