The UK energy minister, Charles Hendry, is to visit Iceland in May to discuss the building of a transmission link connecting the UK to Iceland's abundant geothermal energy. "We are in active discussions with the Icelandic government and they are very keen," Hendry told UK newspaper The Guardian. He has already had a meeting withthe head of Iceland's internal grid.
The cable would have to be about 1500km long and by far the longest in the world. The current record holder at 580 km is the NorNed submarine interconnector between The Netherlands and Norway.
Such a link would also connect Iceland to the network of cables planned for the next decade to creat a Europe-wide supergrid, including UK links to Belgium, Norway ad possibly France, whose function is to more closely reconcile European supply and demand patterns by combining the wind and wave power resources of northern Europe with solar projects (such as Desertec) in southern Europe and north Africa and connecting them to the large load centres in the continent's most populated regions.
The UK government's legally binding targets to reduce carbon emissions is another key driver for the new interconnectors, which if all built could supply a third of the nation's average electricity demand, a high proportion of it from renewable energy sources. Another prospective interconnector would link England to Alderney, where the very strong tides could produce 4 GW of electricity, and then on to France and the new 1.6 GW nuclear power plant being built at Flamanville. Commercial agreements for this were signed in February.
Tony Glover, head of Press and Public Affairs at Energy Networks Association, commented: "From an energy industry perspective interconnectors will be important in enabling renewable energy by providing a solution to wind intermittency. They also add diversity to our electricity mix and strengthen security of supply. In the European context, they enable more integration with the wider European energy market and bring the benefits of converged prices." However Simon Less at the think tank Policy Exchange urged caution in relying on interconnectors for back-up. "Major new interconnection in north western Europe might not offset much of the need for backup plant because winter high pressure weather patterns can extend low wind conditions right across Europe."
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