Australia's 1.5GW Marinus Link Receives First Offshore Transmission Licence

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On 25 September, Australia's Marinus Link Pty Ltd announced that the Marinus Link cross-Bass Strait transmission project, connecting Tasmania and Victoria, has been granted a Transmission and Infrastructure Licence (TIL) by the federal government. This is the first transmission and infrastructure licence issued under the framework of Australia's Offshore Electricity Infrastructure Act 2021, covering the construction, installation, operation, maintenance, repair and decommissioning of subsea cables and associated fibre-optic facilities. The licence is valid until 2090.

Marinus Link is planned as a bidirectional high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission corridor with a total capacity of 1.5GW, implemented in two stages of 750MW each. The transmission route is approximately 345 kilometres in total, of which about 255 kilometres are subsea cables crossing Bass Strait and about 90 kilometres are underground cables in the Gippsland region of Victoria. Converter stations will be built at Heybridge in Tasmania and Hazelwood in Victoria at either end of the project, with fibre-optic communication facilities laid alongside.

With the TIL licence secured, Marinus Link has completed a key federal approval required before entering large-scale construction. The project previously received approval under Australia's Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act in July 2025. In the next phase, the project company will submit a design notification and prepare an offshore project management plan, setting out safety and environmental management requirements for subsea cable construction, operation, maintenance and decommissioning. Onshore early works began in 2026, and the main construction of Stage 1 is planned to commence further towards the end of 2026.

Stage 1 will build the first 750MW HVDC circuit, while completing shared infrastructure for both stages, including site preparation, horizontal directional drilling for the landfall sections, road and river crossings, and underground cable conduits. Stage 1 is scheduled for completion and commissioning in 2030; the second 750MW circuit will be built subsequently in line with market demand and is currently planned to proceed after Stage 1.

Once completed, Marinus Link will enable larger-scale bidirectional power exchange between Tasmania and the Australian mainland grid. During the day, surplus solar and wind power from Victoria can be transmitted to Tasmania, while Tasmanian hydroelectric power can flow in reverse when mainland demand is high, thereby further integrating Tasmania's dispatchable hydro resources and Victoria's solar and wind generation resources into the National Electricity Market.