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UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector

nationalgrid.com

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

#31

Post by Scubabear68 »

1920musicman wrote: post #9
patcon wrote: post #3

Re: cutting undersea cables. For critical infrastructure like this during cold war style conditions (i.e. Russian-NATO conflict), I wonder how pros/cons of public vs private ownership compare... For example: I could imagine sabotaging public infra is more akin to an attack on the state (therefore disincentized). But on the other hand, I suspect private interests can be more clever in protecting their investment, beca…

AFAIK attacks on sufficiently important private infra is also considered an attack on the state. There is no meaningful difference, other than the scale of the attack and the importance of that infra. The main defining factor in how the state responds to such an attack is whether escalation is in the interest of the victim. E.g. recent attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea.

Indeed, I wonder if convoys will be resurrected to protect shipping in the Red Sea area.

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

#32

Post by swarnie »

allanrbo wrote: post #12

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 already has a stupid amount of offshore wind with multitudes more in the planning / development phase.

This is part of a wider strategy with The Netherlands, Denmark and Germany and interconnect their energy markets using the north sea renewables as both generation and interconnection.

The future is bright.

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

#33

Post by hardlianotion »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #29
altacc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ 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 cou…

The interconnector is with Denmark, which is connected to other countries as well. Presumably it is this extra demand that could cause the price rise.

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

#34

Post by VBprogrammer »

martin-adams wrote: post #14
allanrbo wrote: post #12

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, but the problem they face is that they can't get any of the developers to want to build them because the ROI is set too low. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/08/what-wen...

That's a very recent phenomenon though right? Presumably the current rates of inflation have a big impact. It wasn't so long ago that we were seeing record low strike prices being accepted for offshore wind, down to about £40/MWh.

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

#35

Post by dukeyukey »

Angostura wrote: post #22
dukeyukey wrote: post #17

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.

Absolutely. It's a given with stuff like wind.

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

#36

Post by WJW »

tapland wrote: post #24

I'd assume this also sets the lowest price in the danish zone to the UK market price when exporting? NordPool market zones are crazy and some zones see insane price surges when demand prices for neighboring zones are high.

Well at least for the first 1.4 GW, yes. Also there is some nonzero transmission loss so that needs to be taken into account.

The cable can move electricity from the UK to Denmark too btw, so some of the price surges in the Danish region could get damped because the UK will start exporting electricity and the additional supply will bring down the price again.

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

#37

Post by mcfedr »

davedx wrote: post #20
patcon wrote: post #3

Re: cutting undersea cables. For critical infrastructure like this during cold war style conditions (i.e. Russian-NATO conflict), I wonder how pros/cons of public vs private ownership compare... For example: I could imagine sabotaging public infra is more akin to an attack on the state (therefore disincentized). But on the other hand, I suspect private interests can be more clever in protecting their investment, beca…

Think the bigger problem is proving beyond reasonable doubt who did it, see Nordstream

That's surely more about convience, i.e. no one in Europe wants to actually deal with Russia so will faff around pretending they don't know who did it as long as possible

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

#38

Post by louthy »

OscarCunningham wrote: post #28
altacc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ 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.

67 million people (as of 2020, so probably not far off 70m now)

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

#39

Post by WJW »

mcfedr wrote: post #37
davedx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think the bigger problem is proving beyond reasonable doubt who did it, see Nordstream

That's surely more about convience, i.e. no one in Europe wants to actually deal with Russia so will faff around pretending they don't know who did it as long as possible

There's only three possible outcomes that have any chance of being true and none of them are good:

- It was the Russians, and the demands by the public to respond might escalate the current situation from a nice contained proxy war into something that might get actual voters killed.

- It was the Ukrainians, which would be politically awkward because we're supposed to be allies.

- It was the USA, which would also be politically awkward for the same reason.

So in all cases it would be better to not find out in the first place, hence the current faffing about.

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

#40

Post by KaiserPro »

The good thing about this is that its bidirectional, so can be used to offload ~4.2% of the total generation capacity of the UK, or should they need it, import that amount.

That should also cut the tops and bottoms off the spot price of electricity.

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