Dutch connection

As the nights draw in and the economic crisis bites, some in the UK energy industry are suggesting our collective misery may soon be compounded by the lights going out.

The National Grid has taken issue with reports suggesting surplus capacity is now so low that we are only one power station failure away from blackouts. However, many agree that while we may not be plunged into darkness this winter, sooner rather than later demand will outstrip supply.

One of the UK’s most influential energy experts, Prof Ian Fells, warned in a report published last month of the risk of blackouts within five years as the UK loses almost a third of its generating capacity.

Fortunately there is a solution, and it doesn’t involve sitting around with a candle patiently waiting for the next generation of power stations to be built.

Providing about the same capacity as a nuclear power station, but built at a fraction of the cost and in less than half the time, the BritNed Interconnector is a 260km long, 1,000MW sub-sea cable that will link the UK and Dutch national grids.

The aim of the €600m (around £470m) project — a joint initiative between National Grid and its Dutch equivalent Tennet — is to install a two-way high-voltage direct current (HVDC) sub-sea electricity cable between the Isle of Grain in Kent and Maasvlakte, near Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The cable will be connected into the AC grids of the two countries through two giant converter stations being developed by Siemens.

Work has just begun on the civil structures at these converter sites and, if all goes to plan, the cable should be in operation by the beginning of 2011.

Although the UK already has one 2,000MW link to France and another connector linking Scotland and Ireland, BritNed will be the first big UK interconnector for two decades.

The project has been on and off the drawing board for the past 20 years or so, but its National Grid programme manager Martin Croucher said growing concern about the UK energy gap has given it a renewed sense of urgency.

‘We’re seeing a situation in the UK where large amounts of the older coal and oil generation plants will be closed over the next 10 to 15 years. We’ve got the likelihood of more gas generation over the next five to 15 years and the possibility that we’ll see some of the older nuclear plants close down. Interconnection from other parts of Europe will enable us to use power when the networks require it.’

Fells, who touched on BritNed in his report, agreed that interconnectors are a prudent short-term measure that can take some of the strain while the rest of the energy infrastructure catches up. ‘It’s something that can be done very quickly, within two or three years, whereas anything else, with the exception of building more gas-fired power stations — which is exactly what we don’t want to do — takes rather longer,’ he said. ‘So this is buying time, making us more secure, more quickly than we might otherwise be able to do it.’

Coming hot on the heels of NorNed, a recently-completed 580km link between Norway and the Netherlands, BritNed also ties in with an EU-driven desire for an integrated pan-European electricity infrastructure, said Croucher. ‘From a security perspective, the better either of our systems are interconnected the more robust they are in terms of their ability to withstand problems on the network or our ability to meet demand at times when we can get support from other parts of Europe,’ he said.

The need for a harmonised system is, according to Fells, more pressing than many may think. ‘Europe imports 60 per cent of its energy — it’s enormously dependent on imports, so it needs a really good integrated system to provide security and supply all round.’