Comment by hyperionplays

Jumping on this bandwagon - these days I'm working in the submarine telco cable industry.

Considering a cable from singapore <> LA direct can run up $1.4bn USD. I think author needs a lot more research.

1. route planning takes a long time, the ocean floor moves (see: Fault Lines, Underwater Volcanos, pesky fisherman) 2. The ships do move _ a lot_ even with fancy station keeping and stabilisation. 3. cables get broken - a lot. Even now there's 10-15 faults globally on submarine cables. There are companies (See: Optic Marine) who operate fleets of vessels to lay and maintain cables. I'm sure the HVDC industry has the same.

Cool idea, I have been pondering it a lot myself, I figured maybe a ground return HVDC cable might be better for inter-country power grid links.

I know Sun Cable out of Australia want to build a subsea powercable to sell energy into ASEAN.