I've had this discussion around why we export iron ore and coal rather than steel. Which seems ridiculous to me. Why are we building huge port facilities for vast shipments of coal and iron ore, and not smelters with much smaller port facilities for shipping steel?

The answer I got was that smelters are hugely expensive and last longer than the mines, and so it makes sense to build the smelter near the factories, and ship the raw materials to the smelter from wherever they are being mined currently, rather than building the smelter near the mines and then having to ship raw materials there anyway once the mines run out. I've always thought this was a bit dubious (why is commercially viable to build smelters in Korea but not Aus?), but it does kinda make sense.

So the problem isn't "not enough excess power" but "insufficient infrastructure" coupled with "insufficient government willpower to build a decent manufacturing base here".

export aluminium - often called solidified electricity.

Seems obvious considering Australia is the world's largest producer of bauxite.

Yup. Australia is one of the world’s largest Aluminium exporters currently, although I doubt that has much to do with using excess solar energy.

They aren't though. They're only number 6, despite producing the most bauxite by far.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_primary_a...

Australia is the 6th largest producer and 5th largest exporter of aluminium. To me that fits well within the statement “one of the world’s largest”

Of course Australia also sells a lot of bauxite to China.

crypto-mining comes to mind

True. In the same way that car-crashes and other pointless disasters come to mind.