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UK announces commercial operations of longest land/subsea interconnector
- figmert 3y agoWill this finally decrease some of these bills? Or will this just mean even more record profit for the energy companies?
- Faaak 3y agoBoth
- altacc 3y ago“ 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 scarce (which seems to be most of the time). https://www.nrk.no/sorlandet/ny-kraftkabel-kan-fore-til-dyrere-strom-1.16694950 https://www.nrk.no/sorlandet/ny-kraftkabel-kan-fore-til-dyre...
- OscarCunningham 3y ago£500 million over 60 million people over 10 years is £1 per person per year. I can believe it.
- louthy 3y ago67 million people (as of 2020, so probably not far off 70m now)
- jonplackett 3y agoBut we had to spend 1.7 billion. So looks like we need to wait 37 years for payback…
- OscarCunningham 3y agoI don't know if the UK government paid the full amount, but £50 million a year for £1.7 billion is a 2.9% interest rate, which is approximately sensible.
- tonyedgecombe 3y ago>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.
- hardlianotion 3y agoThe interconnector is with Denmark, which is connected to other countries as well. Presumably it is this extra demand that could cause the price rise.
- tonyedgecombe 3y ago>Presumably it is this extra demand that could cause the price rise. The cable works both ways. Having an inter-connector opens the market to a larger pool of suppliers on both sides of the cable. You would expect this to lower prices rather than increase them.
- ta1243 3y agoIt will lower the peaks of the prices, but at the same time increase the depths. Currently those on market driven tarrifs can sometimes get paid to take electricity, and certainly have low prices. For example Octopus Agile is charging under 5p/kWh from 2230-2300 today, and from 0600-0630 actually paid its customers 4p/kWh With Denmark able to buy 1GW this will increase demand at the cheapest bits (when supply is high), but with Denmark able to sell 1GW it will increase supply and thus drive lower price. The majority of people in the UK don't pay market prices for electricity and instead pay a government set "cap" which is based around hiding the actual cost in the marketing material because far too many people in the UK don't understand what you can do with 1kWh or how it affects your bill - some people on think that turning 30W of LED lights off makes a material difference to the monthly cost they pay for example.
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- ta1243 3y ago> If you believe that I have a monorail to sell you! Why pass onto consumers what you can take as profit. That's about 15p per month per household
- _dain_ 3y agoheaven forbid someone build infrastructure because of the profit motive
- patcon 3y agoRe: 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, because they can more readily pay for high mitigation costs when consequent losses would be high. Anyone else know how to thing of the tradeoffs between public vs private infrastructure here?
- 1920musicman 3y agoAFAIK 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.
- Scubabear68 3y agoIndeed, I wonder if convoys will be resurrected to protect shipping in the Red Sea area.
- patcon 3y agoYeah thanks for stating it clearly. That distinction makes sense to me too :)
- davedx 3y agoThink the bigger problem is proving beyond reasonable doubt who did it, see Nordstream
- mcfedr 3y agoThat'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
- DamonHD 3y agoHurrah! I thought that it wasn't coming on-line until January!
- riffic 3y agolook what's three days away
- corradio 3y agoIf you’re curious, you can follow it live on https://app.electricitymaps.com https://app.electricitymaps.com Right now it’s transporting ~20MW from Denmark to the UK
- WJW 3y agoUp to 779 MW now, maybe they're ramping it up slowly?
- justinclift 3y agoInteresting. The map seems buggy for Canada. The "Country" map for Canada seems to be wrong, as it looks like it's subdivided into several pieces (as if it was the "Zone" view).
- corradio 3y agoIndeed I’ve reported the bug here: https://github.com/electricitymaps/electricitymaps-contrib/issues/6298 https://github.com/electricitymaps/electricitymaps-contrib/i...
- greenbit 3y agoDidn'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.
- davedx 3y agoI 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 :(
- mikeyouse 3y agoCurrently it’s only 800MW at 525KV but eventually they’ll bump that to 1,400MW so 2,700A if my math is right?
- formerly_proven 3y agoIt’s bipolar (+- 525 kV) according to W
- greenbit 3y agoSo while each line is only 525kV relative to the environment, it's 1.05MV between the two lines. A megavolt seems to have been practical HVDC tech for a while now, I was just idly wondering if they had taken things up a notch in this latest project.
- jameshart 3y agoThe ‘Viking Link’ connector, projecting Danish power across the North Sea… I feel a song coming on… Aaaa-aaaaaa-ah! Aaaa-aaaaaa-ah! It comes from the land of the ice and snow From the midnight sun where the cold winds blow The hammer of the gods Will turn the blades of turbines To light the grid, sing and cry Wind power, I am coming…
- davedx 3y agoBeautiful. Rousing. Has the Danelaw come again? Someone call Uhtred!
- hkt 3y agoThis is genius tbh
- londons_explore 3y agoMy attempt: (Tune begins with a rising, powerful melody) Verse 1: From the shores of the Danes to Britannia's realm, Where the sea meets the sky in a watery helm, There's a thread made of power, so silent and sleek, A marvel of might that the ancients would seek. Chorus: Oh, Viking Link, your cables enfold, Uniting the lands as the sagas once told. Electric currents, like legends of old, Viking Link, forging futures so bold. Verse 2: Beneath the North Sea where the mermaids do sing, Lies a path of pure energy, a power-bringing string, Connecting the heart of the emerald isles, With wind-harnessed force that covers the miles. Chorus: Oh, Viking Link, your currents so free, Dance 'cross the depths of the deep, briny sea. Blending the watts as the mead-masters would, Viking Link, for the greater world's good. Bridge: Hark! As the turbines spin round and round, A whisper of Odin, in kilowatts found. Thor might have thundered with fierce, mighty sound, But our silent giant lies under the ground. Verse 3: From the fjords where the Vikings once launched their great fleets, Comes a new age of conquest, where technology meets. And the UK replies with welcoming hands, Together they stand, where power demands. Final Chorus: Oh, Viking Link, your saga's begun, Tales of electrons, from dusk until dawn. May your current flow steady and strong, Viking Link, in our hearts, your song lingers on. (End with a triumphant harmony)
- allanrbo 3y agoHow come Denmark can produce cheaper and less carbon intensive energy than the UK? Can't offshore windmills be built in the UK too?
- dukeyukey 3y agoThey can, and the UK is one of the largest builders of offshore wind. But Denmark has spare capacity, and UK electricity prices are high.
- Angostura 3y agoIt’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.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoThis 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38807469
- dukeyukey 3y agoAbsolutely. It's a given with stuff like wind.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- fbdab103 3y agoIs that rare? I naively thought that all electrical infrastructure could flow in whichever direction there was need.
- scrlk 3y ago
- toomuchtodo 3y agoTime to phase out that last coal generator! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_coal-fired_power_stations_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_coal-fired_powe... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratcliffe-on-Soar_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratcliffe-on-Soar_Power_Statio... Edit: interconnector already ramped to 800MW importing to the UK. Let’s gooooooooo!
- labster 3y agoCan we just agree to a phase down of that coal generator instead?
- toomuchtodo 3y agoFor 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.
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- Reason077 3y agoMothballed plants don’t really contribute to grid stability. They need to be kept in a pretty active state, ready to spin up at a moments notice in order to be any use. The fuel (coal) left onsite is also an environmental liability and really needs to be gotten rid of by burning it, necessitating a carefully planned shutdown schedule. Realistically, there is no going back: once the last coal-fired plant is closed (in September 2024), it will be gone for good.
- NooneAtAll3 3y agothey can't, or else british clocks wouldn't be ahead :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bij-JjzCa7o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bij-JjzCa7o
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- tapland 3y agoI'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.
- WJW 3y agoWell 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.
- Havoc 3y agoThere is a nice UK grid dashboard too [0]. The UK grid is actually quite variable given the amount of wind input, so imports/exports tend to be quite twitchy depending on what's happening - frequently going to negative and also substantially positive on pricing. [0] https://grid.iamkate.com/ https://grid.iamkate.com/
- londons_explore 3y agoUnfortunately, Denmark has many of the same winds as the UK, so on the exact same days the UK has excess power, Denmark doesn't need power...
- petermonsson 3y agoThere is a 20 hour time difference from when the wind picks up in the UK until the wind picks up in Denmark
- lewj 3y agosource? interested for the details please.
- CPLX 3y agoThe fact that it’s 800 miles away and the weather is moving at 40mph or so?
- OnlyMortal 3y ago… and the UK has prevailing winds straight of the Atlantic.
- 4rt 3y agoThat made me laugh
- petermonsson 3y agoIn Danish: https://ing.dk/artikel/efter-10-aars-arbejde-kom-der-stroem-i-viking-link-det-er-helt-vildt https://ing.dk/artikel/efter-10-aars-arbejde-kom-der-stroem-...
- KaiserPro 3y agoThe 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.
- zeristor 3y agoA large amount of wind power generation is in Scotland, four further interconnects are being built to transfer this to SE England, but it’ll take a while.
- KaiserPro 3y agoindeed! there is a bottleneck between scotland and england in terms of grid capacity that needs to be solved. Its not cheap, and probably not as lucrative.
- dukeyukey 3y agoWhich could theoretically supply nearly half of Denmark's electricity demand, at peak transfer.
- silvestrov 3y agoNo. The connection is 1.4 GW and Denmark typically use 4 to 5 GW. See https://energinet.dk/ https://energinet.dk/ (scroll down to map at look at "FORBRUG I DK")
- askvictor 3y agoWhat 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?
- tomatocracy 3y agoRegulation and tax are big ones. The ElecLink UK/France interconnector was significantly delayed due to disagreements in how it should be regulated and taxed. Similarly, things like the EU Carbon Border Adjustment mechanism have the potential to make it unprofitable to import electricity into the EU without affecting exports (because even significant price discrepancies would be swallowed up by the additional carbon tax which might be imposed). (In the case of the UK the EU will likely agree to waive the carbon tax but it's not certain even there).
- londons_explore 3y ago> with more than four million working hours spent to get to this point. A typical Brit might work 80,000 hours in a lifetime. So this interconnector is the lifetimes work of 50 people. It is approximately 1 millionth of the total work output of all people alive in the UK. Not sure if that is more or less than I expected...
- 7373737373 3y agoI wish there was a Wiki table/website that showed total working hours for many projects
- flemhans 3y agoA bit less than I expected
- myself248 3y agoThe choice of a .com TLD instead of a .uk for a thing called "national" is really odd to me.
- timthorn 3y agoNational Grid has operations in the USA these days, it's no longer a UK only business.
- seabass-labrax 3y ago.com is short for 'commercial'. The USA has their own .us TLD, but for some reason the Americans never particularly wanted to use it. National Grid Ventures is registered in the UK, so they would be eligible for a *.uk domain if they wanted one.
- mkl 3y agoAnd .gov is short for "government", but only the USA's, and .edu is short for "education", but only the USA's. There were strange third-level-only location-based restrictions on .us for a long time, created by the one guy (!) responsible for it, so it didn't get much use in the critical 1990s period. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.us https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.us
- lmm 3y agoLots of "national" US companies use .com instead of .us, it's not that unusual.
- gary_0 3y agoLots of fun facts on the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_Link 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.
- o11c 3y ago> 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.
- chmod775 3y agoCan you convert that to football fields?
- ukoki 3y agoThis is the UK so our standard units for populist science writing are "Wembley Stadiums", "Wimbledon Tennis Courts", and "Royal Albert Halls"
- MagicMoonlight 3y agoWhat’s the cost difference in using people vs cable? If we make the assumption that people can be bought at insurance rates and have equal capacity to a cable.
- hokkos 3y agoIf you want to see the exchange for the whole europe zone : https://energygraph.info/d/7dWs1mVVk/interconnect-physical-flow-and-commercial-exchange https://energygraph.info/d/7dWs1mVVk/interconnect-physical-f...
- CapitalistCartr 3y agoSo it has a payback period of over 3 decades. Lots of talk of all the resources spent building it, only the carbon savings of usage. I wonder how long the carbon payback is. In an era of rapidly improving renewables, this doesn't seem like picking low-hanging fruit.
- justinclift 3y agoIt's done by NGV, which was described as: NGV develops, operates and invests in energy projects, technologies and partnerships to accelerate the development of our clean energy future. Maybe they're one of those places which invests in developing infrastructure tech, to pave the way for subsequent generations?
- MomoXenosaga 3y agoI take it for granted but living in a continent without brown outs is nice indeed.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago> payback period of over 3 decades That's quite good for infrastructure, considering that it operates for hundreds of years - that's the age for most bridges, tunnels, etc.
- malwrar 3y agoAre there any safety concerns around 1.4GW flowing through a cable surrounded by salt water? I’m entirely uneducated in the ways of zap juice, but that sounds like a recipe for spontaneous electrocution if that cable breaks anywhere.
- chpatrick 3y agoI'm not a physicist but I would imagine it dissipates quite quickly due to some inverse square law.
- ivix 3y agoThink about how lightning exists, and you'll see why this is not an issue.
- seabass-labrax 3y agoThe power cable operators don't want to waste any energy and will have power monitoring systems at least at both ends, so much as with a fusebox at home, I'm sure that the cable would be switched off very quickly if that happened. In addition, the power would be dissipated close around the source of the breakage by the (not insignificant) electrical resistance of water. Since the North Sea is about 100 metres deep, the only victims in such event would be fish and other seabed creatures. I don't tend to chew power lines, though, so don't worry about me.
- reverendjames 3y agoNo.
- chx 3y agoI posted 1.5 months ago about how a potentially catastrophic grid event three years ago instead showed how successful the EU cooperation is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38251463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38251463 As an aside, the UK is still part of this but thanks to Brexit they got the opportunity to finance this interconnector by themselves and not avail themselves to the vast funds from the European Energy Programme for Recovery. For example Malta did and while the Malta Interconnector is not a world record in length but it certainly is in the relative amount: currently it's already above a quarter of the energy needs of Malta and in 2015 the relevant EU report said it's expected this to grow to 35% eventually.
- blibble 3y ago> but thanks to Brexit they got the opportunity to finance this interconnector by themselves and not avail themselves to the vast funds from the European Energy Programme for Recovery the UK was a net contributor to the EU everything it "received" from the EU was paid for by itself https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48256318 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48256318
- chx 3y agosigh The UK’s net EU budget contribution in 2014 was £9.8 billion https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7214/#fullreport https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-... Meanwhile the UK exported $276 billion worth of good to the EU more than half of its total https://www.worldstopexports.com/united-kingdoms-top-import-partners/ https://www.worldstopexports.com/united-kingdoms-top-import-... Not counting anything else just these two we could say the EU had a 3.6% tariff on UK imports (insanely low! check https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/statis_e/daily_update_e/tariff_profiles/GB_E.PDF https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/statis_e/daily_update_e/ta... -- and note the post brexit deal only created a 0% tariff on goods and not services). And even that is a severe exaggeration because there were other benefits to this. On the other hand, the way these things went it's very likely the UK already contributed to the EERP but got nothing out of it.
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- dn3500 3y agoUnfortunate wording here: "The cable was laid on the seabed using a custom-made vessel The Leonardo Da Vinci which was then buried using Asso trenchers."
- PeterStuer 3y agoThe cable was laid, then needed a post lay burial with an (optional) depressor. Inuendo by AssO (not a nsfw actor name). Who said trenchers don't have a sense of humour?
- wifnxiwjfn 3y agoUK concerned that they’ll need the Scots to keep the lights on and so they’re ploughing British cash into a Danish interchange
- JonChesterfield 3y agoBetter 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.