GERMANY and the UK have struck £1.5bn’s deal to construct an undersea “electricity superhighway” between the countries capable of transporting enough energy in either direction to power 1.5 million households.
The construction of the underwater power cable will be the largest bilateral energy project ever undertaken by Germany and the UK. The 450-mile-long “NeuConnect interconnector” will link the German transmission grid at Wilhelmshaven with its counterpart at Isle of Grain, a village on Medway’s Hoo Peninsula. When completed in the mid-2020s, the power link will be able to transport up to 1.4 gigawatts of energy from one national grid to the other.
The contract for the laying of the cable has been awarded to an Italian company, Prysmian.
German firm Siemens Energy, meanwhile, has been commissioned to construct the two converter terminals at either end of the interconnector which will convert the alternative current of the grids into direct current to reduce energy loss during transmission along the cable.
In a statement, the latter firm said: “Access to a more diverse and sustainable energy mix will increase security of supply in both countries.
“Through the more efficient use of renewable energy, the connection will result in savings of up to 16 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.”
As a result of transmission grid bottlenecks, Germany frequently finds itself with “excess” wind energy that it cannot put into its power network.
This means that wind turbines often have to be shut down, a process referred to as “curtailment”, in order to ensure that the grid isn’t overloaded,
Overloads can, in the worst-case scenario, lead to blackouts.
Siemens said: “In order to avoid this waste of energy and the costly curtailment in the future, the NeuConnect power link will transport the excess power from Germany to Great Britain, and vice versa if necessary.” https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1595160/energy-crisis-germany-uk-1-5bn-deal-undersea-electricity-superhighway?fbclid=IwAR2XpaWBPSNKUbETo8-UNZbbb23tmGASw3R3x5clJBX4zqRETcjfXE4ZHMA
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