Europe and Renewable Energy - the Supergrid

Another exciting development in Europe, which came up a couple of times at the UPEC conference, is the prospect of the European Supergrid. What is that you may ask? To illustrate and give you an understanding of the possibilities that arise with a Supergrid, I want to start with an explanation on renewable energy systems on a small scale.

   For instance, an area which is not connected to a grid of any sort receives a lot of sunlight. The people living in this area decide that they want to harness this energy by having photovoltaic panels set up to generate electricity. This is great, but then comes the problem of night time. Electricity will be generated plentifully during the day and then none will be generated at night, meaning that electricity will be scarce at night. Now there are two options here, firstly: add energy storage to the system. This can come in many forms (I think I will do a post about electricity storage in the next week or so) but then there is the second option of diversifying and bringing a different type of energy generation into the mix, for instance wind power generation. PV power generation is diurnal and therefore most of the intermittency in generation occurs at night. There is also the possibility of cloudy days and days when sunshine is not at its maximum value. In contrast, wind is solely intermittent when the wind does not blow which is not necessarily a diurnal situation and more dependant on weather patterns. So therefore by combining the PV and wind power generation system, the times and reliant factors of generation have been spread and the system has become more reliable.

Now this system also has failings, as what happens if the wind is not blowing and it is night time or cloudy in that particular area? There is still insufficient energy being generated.

So, the idea of the supergrid is as follows: if we take all the areas of renewable energy generation all over Europe, onshore wind farms, offshore wind farms, geothermal generation, wave power, solar power, etc. and join them using a grid, including large amounts of hydro storage reservoirs to store energy, surely at every point in time there will be areas generating energy. Because it is spread out over such a large area, there will always be wind at some of the wind farms and weather conditions will be right for energy generation and with large amounts of storage, the reliability of the system is hugely increased. So, that is what's been proposed.

It seems that the first step of this supergrid is offshore wind power generation sharing between offshore wind farms in the North Sea. The following countries have signed an agreement to this effect: Belgium, Germany, the UK, Denmark, Sweden, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Ireland. It is estimated that by 2030 this offshore grid could supply 150GW. The connections between these windfarms will be via HVDC cables.

I think that this is all very exciting. It makes a lot of sense to link these systems in this way to create a truely diverse network which would then need to rely less and less on conventional fossil fuel methods of power generation for base load reliability. I think it's going to be fantastic to see this unfold. It makes me think that there truely is space for us to be creative in our solutions for electrification, that we really need to thinking 'out of the box'. This is, however, a really expensive option and therefore  because of that and other political reasons including the stability of neighbouring countries, it will be important for us in South Africa to come up with our own solution to this problem. It does however, give us licence to 'think big'.

It also really shows that where national policy leads, it really is easier for more to be done.



Europe and Renewable Energy - UK

Interesting! So there are  many thoughts and plans afoot in Europe in terms of Renewable Energy. To start off with, let's talk about the UK. It seems that the UK has started and plans on going further along the path of offshore wind farms to supplement their energy generation methods and increase the renewable component of generation.
In 2007, the UK agreed to the EU goal of having 15% of the country's electricity generated by renewable means by the year 2020. They are looking to implement this by having about 33-35GW of wind power installed. At that point in time around 2.5 GW of wind power was installed, 2 GW of onshore and around 500MW offshore. In September this year, the UK passed the 5GW mark in terms of wind generation, with 1.2GW of  that being offshore wind energy.

While a number of onshore wind farms are still being installed, it is thought that this will soon be saturated and the emphasis has changed to offshore wind farms. While offshore wind farms are more expensive to build and install, they are less likely to be the target of environmental group fury and complaints, while being able to harness energy well.

In September this year, the government opened the largest offshore wind farm in the world with 100 turbines and covering an area of 35 square kilometres, thereby leaping it over the 5 GW wind power mark. This has also heralded the UK as the country with the most investment in offshore wind power, tipping them to become the leaders in this technology.

On a different note, the UK is also developing Smart Grid technology for the existing networks. Smart Grid technology in this context means smart meters in each household. Smart metres which control charging of electric cars, integration of small scale renewable generation for the household, energy storage, if applicable and with the possibility of further developments as the renewable network grows.
There seems to be a strong emphasis on electric cars as a viable alternative to conventional cars and the abundant use of these cars is also shaping the way that the UK is looking at its power future. The use of parked electric cars for energy storage and 'smart charging' - the ability of the system to schedule charging at low energy demand periods form some of these uses.

There is a strong emphasis in end user involvement in the process and in the movement towards efficient use of power and clean generation of power, which in my opinion is very exciting.
In addition, there is talk of an HVDC cable from Iceland to the UK, which could be a very interesting move too. There are other HVDC cables already installed in areas in the UK in particular in offshore wind farms connection with mainland UK and within the supergrid plans there are to be more HVDC cables. This is because the faults in HVDC cables actually decrease as the length of the cable increases, while in AC cables length increases cause an increase of faults in the cable. The cable from Iceland to UK would serve the purpose of connecting the geothermal power generation from Iceland to the growing demand for power in the UK.

All in all, the UK has some exciting things approaching as they work towards their goal for 2020. Some have said that they are putting too many eggs in one basket with their plans for off shore wind farms, but as it is currently a system that is working well for them, it is not a bad choice of investment. Perhaps after the following phase of off shore wind farms it would be important to look at diversifiying however, on the whole I think that the UK is looking quite holistically at the situation and making good decisions. I am interested to see how all of their plans will roll out.