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UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

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Re: UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

#21
post #7

Didn't see mention of the voltage/current specs. 1400A at 1MV maybe? HVDC is morbidly fascinating, and the gear to transform has that awesome 1950s sci-fi look.

I actually drove all the way out to the Britned HVDC transformer station near Rotterdam earlier this year. Absolutely huge bunch of gear, mostly enclosed though and no public tours :(

Re: UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

#22

How come Denmark can produce cheaper and less carbon intensive energy than the UK? Can't offshore windmills be built in the UK too?

They can, and the UK is one of the largest builders of offshore wind. But Denmark has spare capacity, and UK electricity prices are high.

It’s not really said in the story, but this is a bidirectional connector.

There are certainly times when the UK generates excess energy from wind.

Re: UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

#23
post #15

How come Denmark can produce cheaper and less carbon intensive energy than the UK? Can't offshore windmills be built in the UK too?

The UK has very large amounts of offshore wind, unfortunately it isn't enough and we're not developing more capacity fast enough. It doesn't help that the government has utterly screwed the incentives: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/08/what-wen...

Also, when the wind blows too much, we produce more than we need. Christmas day had negative prices before 7am, as we had too much wind power.

Re: UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

#25

How come Denmark can produce cheaper and less carbon intensive energy than the UK? Can't offshore windmills be built in the UK too?

Geographical spread of wind (and solar) generation helps produce a more consistent overall supply.

Re: UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

#26
post #7

Didn't see mention of the voltage/current specs. 1400A at 1MV maybe? HVDC is morbidly fascinating, and the gear to transform has that awesome 1950s sci-fi look.

Currently it’s only 800MW at 525KV but eventually they’ll bump that to 1,400MW so 2,700A if my math is right?

Re: UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

#28
post #8
post #2

Will this finally decrease some of these bills? Or will this just mean even more record profit for the energy companies?

“ It will bring more than £500 million in savings for UK consumers in the first ten years.” If you believe that I have a monorail to sell you! Why pass onto consumers what you can take as profit. Norwegian news is reporting that the price of electricity will increase a tiny amount (about £10-15 a year) in both Norway & the UK as an increased flow of power means more bidders for it, pushing the price up when power is…

£500 million over 60 million people over 10 years is £1 per person per year. I can believe it.

Re: UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

#29
post #8
post #2

Will this finally decrease some of these bills? Or will this just mean even more record profit for the energy companies?

“ It will bring more than £500 million in savings for UK consumers in the first ten years.” If you believe that I have a monorail to sell you! Why pass onto consumers what you can take as profit. Norwegian news is reporting that the price of electricity will increase a tiny amount (about £10-15 a year) in both Norway & the UK as an increased flow of power means more bidders for it, pushing the price up when power is…

>Why pass onto consumers what you can take as profit.

Because other suppliers will outbid you.

>Norwegian news is reporting that the price of electricity will increase a tiny amount (about £10-15 a year) in both Norway & the UK as an increased flow of power means more bidders for it, pushing the price up when power is scarce (which seems to be most of the time).

That doesn't make sense, if energy is scarce in one country but not the other then the additional supply should lower prices.

Re: UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can, and the UK is one of the largest builders of offshore wind. But Denmark has spare capacity, and UK electricity prices are high.

It’s not really said in the story, but this is a bidirectional connector. There are certainly times when the UK generates excess energy from wind.

This interconnector was already exporting to Denmark earlier in the week when the UK was experiencing record wind generation (per Electricity Maps [1]). The link currently can’t be maximized from West Denmark to the UK due to transmission constraints on the DK side.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38807469

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