Rosie talks about HVDC subsea cables

[Stan]

The payback can be extraordinally fast.

[dan_b]

Aah this is on my list to watch, the HVDC geek that I have become!

[Mart]

Watched this yesterday, and immediately thought ......... Dan will be in heaven.


Also made me realise that a potential trans-atlantic cable may be viable/economical. No idea if it is, or will ever happen, but time shifting wind and PV across/around the globe is a dream worth pondering.

[Ken]

When ever i see HVDC i can only think of the problems they had doing the west coast one, broke 3 times was it? This was all within our control in one legal jurisdiction. A cable is either working or its not and if not there is no work around unlike the Nat Grid in general. A bit like the Russian gas pipeline. Dont put too many eggs in one basket.

I also think the earths surface is not stable enough ie tectonic plates? In every eg she quotes it goes across a plate join line.

Thermal expansion of the cables?

[dan_b]

Western Link had 4 outages pretty early on in its life yes, plus it was also 2 years late.


Ofgen investigated - various blame laid at the cable manufacturer, as well as the installation contractors, and a not thorough enough testing regimen. As a result, the owners had to pay quite a lot in fines - £150 million or something like that.