Representatives of a group of powerful companies in the European offshore engineering business have officially launched 'Friends of the Supergrid', an organisation dedicated to promoting a single ambitious project – a marine power transmission grid to link renewables power generation sites to each other and to mainland power hubs and nodes. The proposed grid would link proposed offshore wind farms in the North Sea to load centres in central Europe via a network of HVDC lines. It would enhance security of supply, open up markets and boost levels of renewable energy generation across Europe, say its backers.
What this means in practice, initially at least, is linking together existing and proposed Baltic and North Sea offshore wind farms with an HVDC transmission spine that runs from the Baltic Sea to the English Channel (La Manche, if you are reading this in French) with direct HVDC connections to nodal points in Germany, the UK, The Netherlands and Belgium and through them to central Europe. A longer distance version would include southern Europe and the Mediterranean, becoming part of a larger European plan to strengthen and unify the continent's existing cross-border transmission network and link it, potentially, to giant solar fields in North Africa. What makes it a practical engineering and economic proposition is the near-future prospect of tens of GW of offshore wind new build in the seas around northern Europe and, if Europe is to meet its 2020 and 2030 renewables and CO2 targets, the expansion of that figure to hundreds of GW of wind and other marine generation in the years to come.
What makes it arealistic poliltical proposition is that the European Commission has also made the development of a blueprint for a North Sea supergrid a priority while a group of nine northern European states have also committed themselves to promoting the project off their own shores with the signing in December last year of a joint political declaration for the “North Seas Countries Offshore Grid Initiative”. Norway signed the declaration in February.
The supergrid concept was first publically proposed ten years ago by EPRI founder Chauncey Starr as land based superconducting power lines in a pipeline grid that also delivered hydrogen, but in this specific European form is generally reckoned to be the brainchild of Dr Eddie O'Connor, founder of Airtricity and Mainstream Renewable Power. The founding members of the new group say that FOSG will help to progress policy towards the construction of the supergrid. They include Areva, Siemens, Prysmian, 3E, Elia, Mainstream Renewable Power and Parsons Brinkerhoff. The other founding members are DEME Blue Energy, Hochtief Construction and Visser & Smit Marine Contracting.
Speaking at the launch on behalf of the members, Mainstream Renewable Power’s chief executive Dr Eddie O’Connor said, “The UK government has recently shown its commitment to large-scale offshore wind by announcing the development of up to 50 GW by 2020. We now need to integrate this huge resource into Europe to enable the open trade of electricity between Member States.
“The Friends of the Supergrid is uniquely placed to influence policy-makers towards creating the supergrid and ultimately changing how we generate, transmit and consume electricity for generations to come.”
The inclusion of technology and engineering companies as well as companies that would develop, install, own and operate the grid infrastructure, gives FOSG a “unique insight” into the policies needed to create a supergrid as well as the expertise to deliver it in practice. “The FOSG is solely able to present ‘cradle to grave’ interconnection solutions to the policy-makers and others looking to develop energy policy across Europe through to 2050,” said the group in a statement.
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