Morocco-UK HVDC solar PV interconnection

[dan_b]

Well - I don't know what to say about this other than, is this snake oil?

https://electrek.co/2022/04/21/the-worl ... to-the-uk/

[Joeboy]

Heard about this a couple of years back. No reason why not, just need guard ships for the cable laying vessels as it comes up the European coast, seriously busy waterway. I think this one is a smashing forward planning idea. I'd have put money into this but I think its being bank rolled from the Moroccan end.

[Mart]

Funnily enough I saw an article about the cable manufacturing hub yesterday*, which mentioned the Morocco - UK project as if it was almost a certainty, which I hadn't realised. So good news if it can happen, but that length of HVDC must push up the cost per MWh significantly.

The project will include some storage to allow for continuous supply (I believe), though reduced through the night. Apparently Morocco on-shore wind has really high capacity factors, something like 50%+.

I'll keep my fingers crossed for this scheme, as it all sounds entirely feasible, it's only the unit cost that I was doubtful of, but looks like it has moved forward.

* Edit - Ah! I see that the comments are 7 months old, and this article has been updated with a piece about the cable manufacturer. That makes more sense, it seemed a bit old to me.

[Paul_F]

I'll keep my fingers crossed for this scheme, as it all sounds entirely feasible, it's only the unit cost that I was doubtful of, but looks like it has moved forward.

To enable us to raise the private financing we need, Xlinks just needs the security a UK policy commitment to a predictable price that a CfD would provide.

Translation: it's probably a bit expensive but not extortionate. I'd guess that price/MWh is in the region of Hinkley C albeit with a much shorter contract.
For scale, they're predicting 26 TWh/year - Hinkley is 25 TWh, and for comparison per DUKES the UK generated 5 TWh from coal and 99 TWh from gas in 2021. So just those two projects alone would halve UK emissions for power generation.

[Mart]

I'll keep my fingers crossed for this scheme, as it all sounds entirely feasible, it's only the unit cost that I was doubtful of, but looks like it has moved forward.

To enable us to raise the private financing we need, Xlinks just needs the security a UK policy commitment to a predictable price that a CfD would provide.

Translation: it's probably a bit expensive but not extortionate. I'd guess that price/MWh is in the region of Hinkley C albeit with a much shorter contract.
For scale, they're predicting 26 TWh/year - Hinkley is 25 TWh, and for comparison per DUKES the UK generated 5 TWh from coal and 99 TWh from gas in 2021. So just those two projects alone would halve UK emissions for power generation.

Hopefully it will come in at nuclear(ish) prices, since the Gov is at the very least pretending to support nuclear. And this scheme should be faster, and as you say, probably a shorter CfD, perhaps 15yrs not 35yrs?

Cost wise, I recall the Iceland link suggesting a CfD of about £80-£85/MWh, against a leccy cost of £20/MWh, so clearly the cost of the HVDC is the major factor with these contracts/prices.


Just a thought / ponder, but on other sites and articles about RE + HVDC, I've seen comments about foreign powers holding the buyers to ransom, a bit like Putin turning down the gas taps for Europe. Only my opinion, but I'd suggest intermittent RE is less vulnerable to such moves since the seller loses all of the revenue too, whereas with FF's, the seller/blackmailer still has the product to sell later. But with wind and PV, only a small portion of one days gen will be stored, after that all of the excess is wasted and the revenue lost permanently as you can't get that days wind or sun back, plus of course bad faith for future projects elsewhere.

[SafetyThird]

Oooh, I talked about this 40 years ago in the alternative energy project I did at school and said what we needed was solar farms where it's sunny and pipe power to where it's not, along with a series of wind turbines at the edge of the continental shelf separated by wave power barriers. Nice to see my prophecies coming to life

Also, Alverdiscot is 3 miles from my house and two miles from the airstrip where I've got my microlight so when the project starts, I'll snap some photos of it from above.

[dan_b]

What I don't understand is why this project would export all of its power to the UK and completely by-pass the rest of mainland Europe, or indeed local Moroccan demand first?

Wouldn't it be more useful in the shorter, and longer term, if Morocco first connected itself into the European Super Grid via Spain? It's just across the Straits?

Also i see Morocco's own electricity generation mix is, shall we say, dirty. They should/could decarbonise their own grid mix first?

coal (38 percent)
natural gas (18 percent)
hydroelectricity (16 percent)
wind (11 percent)
fuel oil (8 percent)
solar (7 percent)
others (2 percent)

[Mart]

Been playing on my mind that I'd seen a relatively cheap price for this scheme, since I recall doubting it could be done for 'that' when I first heard about it. Of course I hope I'm wrong, and it is possible to deliver cheaply, 'cheaply' reflecting the fact that this would be an almost guaranteed generation day in day out.

So I've been hunting and found it. Here's an older article with the low cost figure:

Subsea link to bring power to UK from 10.5-GWp wind, solar complex in Morocco

The Morocco-UK Power project is set to supply clean power to over seven million British homes by the end of the decade. The scheme will require an investment of some GBP 16 billion (USD 21.9bn/EUR 18.7bn), executive chair Dave Lewis told the Financial Times. He also said the company is hoping to secure Contracts for Difference (CfD), targeting rates of GBP 48 per MWh.

Perhaps the CfD they are hoping for would be longer than 15yrs, or the £48 may be using the standard 2012 pricing, which today would be approx £60/MWh index linked. But regardless, it seems very low, which could be good news if it's cheaper than I thought, or bad news if it's a nonsense figure.

Just a thought, but as it will be 4 cables, not 1 or 2, would that help reduce costs if all cables are laid at the same time, and in the same trench, or am I clutching at straws?


For context, the last (and cheapest) off-shore wind contracts have a cost today (post annual inflation uplift in April) of £48-£53/MWh (15yrs), and HPC is £114/MWh (35yrs).

[Paul_F]

What I don't understand is why this project would export all of its power to the UK and completely by-pass the rest of mainland Europe, or indeed local Moroccan demand first?

Wouldn't it be more useful in the shorter, and longer term, if Morocco first connected itself into the European Super Grid via Spain? It's just across the Straits?

Also i see Morocco's own electricity generation mix is, shall we say, dirty. They should/could decarbonise their own grid mix first?

• That's the easy one - a company based in the UK is funding it, and as far as Morocco is concerned they really don't much care where the power goes once it leaves their shores, just that the money comes in reliably.
• Sorta-kinda. Just connecting to Spain isn't terribly helpful since the Spanish have got lots of PV already. Given a strongly reinforced pan-European grid, absolutely - but at the moment the size of the interconnections between France and Spain is only 2800 MW and they're working to increase it to 5000 MW. Fundamentally Spin can't absorb this much additional power and as a result pricing would be very poor.
• Total electricity consumption in Morocco was 40 TWh in 2020 (last date I can find figures for) of which 30 TWh is fossil. They've got 10GW of wind and solar in the pipeline for their own use by 2030, which should provide 25-30 TWh/year. Essentially they're on course to more or less decarbonise their grid by 2030 even without this project.

[Paul_F]

Perhaps the CfD they are hoping for would be longer than 15yrs, or the £48 may be using the standard 2012 pricing, which today would be approx £60/MWh index linked. But regardless, it seems very low, which could be good news if it's cheaper than I thought, or bad news if it's a nonsense figure.

Onshore wind, batteries, PV and a monster HVDC cable for very marginally more than current off-shore wind in easy waters close to the UK? Hmmm...
For comparison Viking Link is 1.4GW and 500 miles for £1 Bn. So this is twice the capacity and 5 x the length, so ballpark £10 Bn just for the cable. And they're expecting to build everything for £16 Bn, at least when they're talking to the financial press. Not buying it.

Just a thought, but as it will be 4 cables, not 1 or 2, would that help reduce costs if all cables are laid at the same time, and in the same trench, or am I clutching at straws?

The risk of the cables damaging each other is far worse than the increased cost of another trench.