The European Supergrid
The idea behind the European supergrid is to link together Europe and the regions around its borders (from north Africa to the Baltic) with a high voltage direct current (HVDC) power grid.The advantages of this would be to facilitate the wider use of renewables across the whole region and the reduce the cost of power overall by introducing a more efficient market for electricity.The present patchwork of national electricity grids has difficulty absorbing the variable power generated by wind farms.A supergrid would allow for much wider use of wind energy,following the idea that ‘it’s always windy somewhere’ (for instance, it tends to be more windy in Europe in the winter, and in North Africa in the summer).In addition, wind resources in Morocco and Egypt, for example, as much more powerful and consistent that those in Europe. The supergrid would also allow the integration of Norway's immense hydropower reservoirs and Iceland’s geothermal power into the supply chain.The concept of the supergrid is linked to an idea known as DESERTEC, which proposes building a network of CSP plants in the deserts of North Africa to supply power to Europe. One estimation is that covering an area the size of Wales with solar plants would be enough to supply the entire electricity needs of the EU. The high solar radiation in the deserts of the Middle East and North Africa outweighs the 10-15 per cent transmission losses between the desert regions and Europe, which means that solar thermal power plants in the desert regions are more economic than the same kinds of plants in southern Europe – the intense sunlight makes them three times more effective: in order to meet today‘s global power demand of 18,000 TWh/year, you’d need to equip about three thousandths of the world’s deserts (about 90,000 km2) with solar collectors of solar thermal power plants.The supergrid concept envisages that eventually renewable resources would be sufficient to power an area spanning 50 countries and 1.1 billion people.
Dublin-based Airtricity and the Swedish engineering company ABB have jointly proposed a trial consisting of a 10GW wind farm located in the North Sea between the UK, Germany and the Netherlands, covering a total area in the region of 3000 km² with some 2000 offshore wind turbines located on the seabed in water depths up to 50m. ABB has already implemented several systems using their HVDC technology, including the 580km-long NordNed link which connects the electricity grids of Norway and the Netherlands – this landmark engineering project is the world’s longest and most powerful underwater cable. It could be seen as the start of the European supergrid.
Desertec website
By Nick Hanna
Format: Paperback
Pages: 196
Edition: 1st
RRP: £14.99
Due for publication: 24th May 2010
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