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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

#91
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

Not sure it had to be a state operation. The attack could have been done by just a handful of guys with practically no funding. The pipe is not that deep underwater and would not require much incentive to blow.

Washington Post and Der Spiegel seem to be pretty sure it was Ukraine

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

#92
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we just agree to a phase down of that coal generator instead?

For how long would it need to be mothballed before you’d be comfortable demolishing it? Important to be conservative wrt grid stability, but at some point, burn the ships so there is no going back.

[dead]

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

#93
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh we're down to 1.1% of generation being coal in the last year; low enough to stop worrying about. Lets worry about how to get rid of the 33.5% of gas!

We've gone over a month without burning any coal, but then the Ukraine war happened and we were at risks of blackouts. That 1.1% is likely heavily concentrated as a much higher percentage on a relatively small days over winter and/or where wind levels were low. We probably want to be sure if gas imports are heavily hit again or a major interconnector goes down we'll be fine before entirely demolishing it.

Could you not just keep gas as a backup? I don’t see why you need both coal and gas?

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

#94
post #58

Lots of fun facts on the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_Link > Annual transmission capacity of 12.3 TWh. > The actual cable is made of copper, steel, paper and plastic and weighs about 40 kg per meter. > It is similar in capacity and length to the UK–Norway North Sea Link.

> weighs about 40 kg per meter

For reference, a human child weighs about 15 kg per meter. But since humans grow in 3 dimensions, a healthy adult human will be around 40–45 kg per meter, similar to the cable. In our current overweight society, realistic adult humans are of course heavier.

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

#95
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a 20 hour time difference from when the wind picks up in the UK until the wind picks up in Denmark

source? interested for the details please.

In Danish: https://ing.dk/artikel/efter-10-aars-arbejde-kom-der-stroem-...

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

#96
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

Not sure it had to be a state operation. The attack could have been done by just a handful of guys with practically no funding. The pipe is not that deep underwater and would not require much incentive to blow.

It's the most monitored underwater area in the world and the magnitude of the explosion as detected by seismographic stations looked like a small nuke. Not sure a handful of guys would be capable of that.

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

#99

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.

What are the reasons why an interconnect might be uni directional? I get that a DC interconnect might only go in one direction at a time, but might it not be able to change such direction that is?

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

#100
Better electrical connection to the mainland seems good all round. Denmark is electrically connected to the other neighbouring countries so this yields (indirectly) a higher current link to the rest of Europe as well.

Spikes in production and demand occurring at different places at different times and electrical storage being tricky makes this a good thing.

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