Viking Hyperlink – World’s Longest HVDC Cable Connecting UK & Scandinavia Now On-line

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The world’s longest electrical energy cable connection, Viking Hyperlink, started pushing electrons from Denmark on to the UK final week. The DKK 13 billion ($1.92 billion) funding has been virtually 4 years within the making and is the primary bodily connection between the 2 in any other case utterly separate vitality methods. Viking Hyperlink allows much more renewable vitality to be produced and balanced over a really massive geographical area of northern Europe.

The Danish system operator Energinet has constructed the 765 km (475 mile) lengthy electrical energy connection between Denmark and Nice Britain along with its accomplice, the UK’s Nationwide Grid, and on the twenty ninth of December within the afternoon the primary energy from Danish wind generators was despatched out to English shoppers. Over such lengthy distances, solely Excessive Voltage Direct Present (HVDC) is feasible. Energy is transformed onshore to AC.

Thomas Egebo, CEO of Energinet, mentioned, “Creating an electrical energy connection between Denmark and England is in itself an enormous achievement — Viking Hyperlink is definitely the world’s longest cable connection. However the connection can also be of nice significance for the utterly inexperienced electrical energy system of the longer term. We make sure that the inexperienced electrons from wind generators and photo voltaic cells will be managed and despatched the shoppers’ sockets, in a secure and inexpensive trend.”

Denmark already has excessive capability electrical energy connections to Norway, Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands, and with this extra connection to a neighboring nation, Danish producers can promote and export electrical energy to a good larger extent when the wind is blowing and the solar is shining. Conversely, Denmark can now additionally purchase electrical energy when there may be loads on the opposite facet of the North Sea — for instance when a wind entrance from the west hits Nice Britain a day earlier than it hits Denmark, after which when the wind entrance hits the Danish wind generators, the surplus vitality will be despatched again.

On this a part of Europe, the wind coming from the west is a secure and recurring sample, so this cable makes it doable to degree out the inherent intermittency of wind energy to a big diploma. I feel this can be a massive deal, and the information within the coming years will present what works and what doesn’t. Some will argue this challenge could be very costly and why not construct nuclear energy in Denmark? Nicely, I don’t assume there may be any comparability on this specific case, in that a few billion {dollars} received’t get you a lot nuclear energy, not even factoring within the very lengthy timelines of commissioning and decommissioning. Nonetheless, IEA does preserve the view that nuclear energy nonetheless performs an vital function within the total low emission targets.

Together with the 1,600 MW cable from Denmark to Norway, and a number of excessive energy connections to Sweden and Germany, the structure for vitality arbitrage within the area has grow to be far more fascinating now. Nonetheless, in the interim, the brand new cable will solely be utilized as much as 800 MW of its complete capability of 1,400 MW. When extra wind generators have come on-line within the area in 2025, it will likely be dialed up.