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Sam Shead
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Iceland's volcanoes could power the UK: but at what cost?
The government is considering the possibility of using geothermal energy generated in Iceland to power homes in the UK through sea-floor cables that would link to a Europe-wide supergrid. But what are the technical and political implications of creating a new European supergrid?
The idea of introducing new interconnector cables over the next decade to link the UK to a Europe-wide supergrid — that would also harness wind and wave power of northern Europe with solar projects in Southern Europe and North Africa — has been backed by the UK’s Prime Minister. There are two existing international interconnecters linking Britain to the Netherlands and France but nine more are at various stages of development, including the UK-Iceland interconnector.
In theory it’s possible to pump low-carbon electricity from Iceland to the UK to meet up to a third of the UK’s average energy consumption through thousands of miles of high-voltage copper-cable that would be placed along the ocean floor.
Interconnector cables can be laid at 30km per day but for the plan to work, the cable would have to be by far the longest in the world - between 1,000 and 1,500km - with each kilometre containing 800 tonnes of copper. While this would undoubtedly be a huge engineering project - with costs likely to be far greater than the £500m Britain-Netherlands interconnector - it could still be completed relatively quickly.
The financial costs are one thing but many people may believe that we should not be looking overseas to meet Britain’s energy demand. The UK used to be fairly self-sufficient in oil, gas, and coal, but that has changed recently as the North Sea oil and gas reserves near depletion and coal’s damaging effects to the environment are recognised. While there are other energy sources available in Britain — such as wind and solar — their cost effectiveness remains uncertain.
Jonathan Farr, a DECC spokesperson, told The Engineer: ‘The idea of the Iceland project is to ensure we’ve got access to energy when we need it. The UK has lots and lots of power — enough to meet demand — but it’s the intermittency [of the renewables] that is a problem.’
Farr used the example of UK homes in the middle of winter when someone boiling a kettle in a fully heated house with the TV on, compared to 3am in the middle of summer when next to no energy is being consumed. ‘Now is it worth having all that capacity built and ready standing, if elsewhere it’s just there and available through a pipe?’ Farr asked.
The ambitious idea of pumping energy to the UK will be discussed in greater detail in May when Energy Minister Charles Hendry visits Iceland to discuss connecting the UK to its abundant supply of geothermal energy. Hendry believes that a web of interconnector cables ending the energy isolation of the British Isles will keep household energy bills down, as they would allow access to the cheapest energy at any particular time.
The general idea of pouring surplus renewable energy reserves into one big European pot is a sensible one. But the project will only become a reality if sufficient private funding can be located and governments across the continent can agree on the appropriate terms and conditions for investment and exploitation.
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Readers' comments (39)
Nick | 16 Apr 2012 12:43 pm
Er, how did it go the last time we pumped a lot of cash into Iceland?
Not so well I seem to recall, our local governments lost millions from our overpaid council tax reserves!
I do fear that history will repeat itself.
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Roger Faulkner | 16 Apr 2012 1:03 pm
To answer a few of the comments above;
1) that estimate of 3% loss/1000 km is way off; that is a proper figure for 800kV HVDC overhead power lines, not cables, which are more like 7%/1000 km (NorNed cable basis);
2)max capacity per cable pair < 1.0 GW (NorNed is 700 MW); we'd need 10 cable pairs to make a dent;
3) it should be be considered that a more robust EU supergrid deserves the priority: deep water undersea cables are quite expensive and difficult to repair, but on land and in near-offshore areas "elpipes" based on aluminum conductors and having up to 30X as much power capacity are feasible.
I am not at all oppose to this idea conceptually, but for such a massive undertaking, it makes sense to consider and develop advanced technologies before beginning.
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Iain Wallace | 16 Apr 2012 1:35 pm
Not sure the cost of a Cu or Al cable compares to the pointless and massive £35billion proposed for further wind farms. Even this figure equates to over 4 million 4KW solar panel systems for the same number of homes. Shale gas ?, each well requires around 3 million gallons of water, we don't have enough of that to wash the car even. Sounds like a no brainer to me but hey I'm not a politician
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keith eyles | 16 Apr 2012 1:42 pm
Someone commented that the UK could use deep hole geothermal. I guess Iceland would have to do the same ? ( Although the hole would be less deep ).
There is plenty of 'surface' hot water and steam, but it's low grade for electricity generation, though it is used. When Iceland put in the big hydro system in the East, for the new aluminium smelter, they dammed a glacier river high in the mountains. ( Environmentalists were not in favour ). They did not use geothermal.
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Malcolm | 16 Apr 2012 2:19 pm
I wonder if it would be viable to produce liquid fuel isobutanol using the power in Iceland and transport it by bulk carrier or steel pipeline. 1.2MTonnes of copper is quite a lot.
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John Douglas | 16 Apr 2012 7:12 pm
The comments on this article have taken my thoughts back once more to stories of the Second World War. It was said that London was able to survive the blitz because it had a huge diversity of power generation sites (300 separate centres?)
It strikes me that we should be increasing diversity once more rather than continuing to concentrate the power supply into fewer and fewer channels. The article points to three, or was it 10? Even at 10 or 11, any failure would have an awful lot of us sitting in the cold and dark.
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Dave Ridgeon | 17 Apr 2012 12:13 pm
I was in Iceland 10 yrs ago and remember the guide who took us down a lava cave talking about this. Good to hear that the concept is racing ahead now.
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m.hogan | 17 Apr 2012 12:17 pm
would these cable possibly affect simple magnetic compasses on ships\boats?
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david carpenter | 19 Apr 2012 1:56 am
Editors Comment?, DC would have less loss? I thought Tesla won that argument with Edison long ago. Line losses are I^2R, AC can be transformed to high voltage (therefore low current) to minimize line losses; this presently done all over the World. Where is anyone transmitting DC power long distances?
I'm shocked, pun intended.
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A Newns | 19 Apr 2012 3:17 pm
The hot rocks project in Cornwall 20 years ago failed, due to excess fracking of the ground. A great deal of money was spend drilling extremely deep hole. The excess fracking meant that most the huge volume of water pumped down one hole was lost. Very little hot water returned to the surface.
A similar scheme is being discussed near the Eden project, but again vast amounts of water are required, basically flooded clay pits. I think it has stalled due to funding being withdrawn.
I believe the hot ground in the UK is very deep. I guess it a lot closer to the surface in Iceland. I've been involved in drilling and wouldn't want to spend my own money drilling pairs of very wide, very deep holes in the UK for the water to vanish and the scheme fail.
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Anonymous | 20 Apr 2012 3:38 am
There really must be a DECC file marked 'old ideas to create a media splash' which is used to seek headlines for ministers. I remember reporting on the geothermal Iceland power link back in the late 1980s. I will be surprised if much comes of it now.
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Bry B | 20 Apr 2012 2:33 pm
energy losses, what about using the Superconducting cables in the latest Engineer article?
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John Douglas | 23 Apr 2012 1:36 pm
Having read the item on micro-hydro in today’s epistle, I feel I have just read a much more relevant contribution than this mega-project description.
Diversity in small sources will give us great resilience, and if micro-hydro can work, why not micro thermal. Not hot rocks, but forestry thinnings.
Every hedge in the land seems to have been strimmed and scattered across the byways of the nation, but a bit of collection and recovery could put this "waste" to good use, along with crop residues, stable waste and all the other high calorie side streams, including genuine forestry by-products.
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Alan | 23 Apr 2012 9:01 pm
Making up some order of magnitude numbers, were 600 geothermal installations at a £20m each able to provide power for towns of population of 100,000, (60 million people in all) the bill would be of the same order as the raw material cost of the proposed cable. If these guesstimate figures are anywhere near the mark, it would suggest that local geothermal power would be cheaper the imported variety. Add to that the strategic and economic advantages of distributed local power generation, and the advantage increases.
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tom kawala | 23 Apr 2012 9:39 pm
Power from Iceland? - maybe using superconducting cable. Interesting engineering challenge. We can learn new skills.
Anyway, the UK shoreline suggests that the best will be harnessing tidal power. Abundant, regular, reliable and predictable. Compare with wind power, at low altitudes is very irregular.
More to say, there are locations with strong currents where harnessing energy can be lucrative business, staying very close to to shore line.
Good for start and for technology evaluation.
Positive example: The trials at Strangford Lough, Belfast.
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david carpenter | 24 Apr 2012 4:56 am
AC is the only way to transmit power long distances, not DC. AC can be transformed to very high voltage at low current which greatly reduces I^2R line losses. Tesla won that argument with Edison decades ago.
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Anonymous | 25 Apr 2012 12:21 pm
just a pipe dream. cost should be nothing as they owe us loads and loads of money.
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Dinos Kynigos | 1 May 2012 5:03 pm
Good Idea but please anyone can put figures on the following questions:
1. What would be the % loses of power to convert from AC to DC at the power stations in Iceland and convert back to AC from DC in the UK ?
2. Dose anyone has calculation of how much energy we can produce by harnessing tidal energy correctly ? I suspect that tidal energy can satisfy all the energy demands, electrical energy and all transport energy including private car use and haulage lorries.
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Harry Clegg | 9 May 2012 2:58 pm
Perhaps a more sound idea is the one made earlier by Carolyn Knight. The following link is for a Geothermal power plant in the south west. see:
http://www.geothermalengineering.co.uk/page/projects-and-developments.html
Power often causes trouble, it would seem at least in the last decade so perhaps it would be wise to keep things local.
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