HVDC Interconnectors

[Stinsy]

Yes, its happening again today, exporting 2GW to Fr, but its not cold yet. I still wonder if its tied to gas and even more so if the Belarus/Poland escalates.

But we're importing gas to burn to make the 2GW we're sending to France!

[nowty]

Yes, its happening again today, exporting 2GW to Fr, but its not cold yet. I still wonder if its tied to gas and even more so if the Belarus/Poland escalates.

But we're importing gas to burn to make the 2GW we're sending to France!

Yes but we have to burn a minimum amount or percentage to keep the spinning reserve to reduce probability of blackouts. On the bright side we currently have no curtailment. But if we did not export that 2GW to France I guarantee the current high wind generation would be curtailed.

[GarethC]

Great example of the benefits of interconnectors in terms of reducing curtailment then. I wonder if that impact is quantifiable?

Is the Scotland-England link still on the blink? It was for quite a while, wasn't it?

[Ken]

Perhaps not really because at the same time as exporting to Fr we are importing more than that amount from other countries.

Most of our gas comes from Norway and N Sea a little LPG and non really from Russia. On the other hand the EU is definetly reliant on Russia with those consequences.

[dan_b]

The Western Bootstrap HVDC is operating at full capacity - but that's not always been the case, it certainly had a long period of unreliability when it was first commissioned with for significant outages, and indeed it was a year late in starting operation due to faults in the cables.

Two Eastern HVDC links are planned for an extra 4GW of transmission potential from Scotland to England (one to connect at Drax, the other at Hawston Pit in County Durham) but the last I read is that neither of these additional lines will be in service before 2030.

[nowty]

Perhaps not really because at the same time as exporting to Fr we are importing more than that amount from other countries.

Most of our gas comes from Norway and N Sea a little LPG and non really from Russia. On the other hand the EU is definetly reliant on Russia with those consequences.

Its looks even more weird as we are importing from Netherlands and Belgium and exporting to France. Is there there no interconnector between Belgium and France ?

They do share a land border or is their interconnector down, or is there some strange market peculiarity where Belgium get a better price exporting to UK than France but the UK get an even better price exporting to France.

[Ken]

UK and Spain 3.6GW to Fr . Fr to Germany,switzerland,Italy 6GW

My guess would be the EU wants to hang on to all the gas it can in view of Belarus/Poland.

[nowty]

I found the interconnector leccy flows from https://app.electricitymap.org/map

Could simply be large variances of renewables in local areas giving rise to the peculiar energy flows ?

[Oliver90owner]

I don’t suppose that the HVDC connectors are the ‘be all and end all’ of international import/export. Quite possibly HVDC is more efficient than HVAC?

Whatever is going on, I expect the russians are closely monitoring how the european gas stocks are changing….

[Stinsy]

It is still unseasonably mild across Europe. When those many-millions of gas boilers start cranking the real games will start.

Meanwhile Russian troops/equipment continues to build up along the Ukrainian border…