Via gCaptain, June 17:
World’s Longest Subsea Power Cable Sparks Up
he first megawatts of electricity will flow between Norway and the U.K. Wednesday along the longest submarine power cable in the world. Once fully operational Britain is expected to import supplies of low carbon power on a regular basis.
Tests on the 1,400-megawatt, 450-mile long cable will be complete in time to transport power from Norway’s hydro reserves this winter. In return, Britain will be able to send Norway its excess wind-generated power.
“We expect Norway to export fairly consistently through the North Sea Link over the short/medium term,” said Glenn Rickson, head of European power analysis at S&P Global Platts. “As of now Nordic stocks are at the top end of the recent historic range so, unless there is a prolonged dry spell this summer, that should be good news for flows to the U.K.” by the winter.
The extra supply is needed. The U.K. experienced record power prices this winter as tight margins brought National Grid Plc’s supply buffer to alarmingly low levels. Supplies were particularly low after the BritNed interconnector with the Netherlands had an outage and the start of a new cable to France was delayed.
Given some of the recent issues with existing interconnectors it is understandable that there may be some concerns about the North Sea Link, Rickson said.
The interconnector will provide the equivalent of about 4% of U.K. demand, according to consultant EnAppSys Ltd. That means any failure will cause big swings in day-ahead power prices with expensive plants needed to fill the gap, said Phil Hewitt, director at EnAppSys.
As Britain builds offshore wind capacity to reach a 40 gigawatt-target by 2030, flows should start to equalize in both directions, Hewitt said....
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