HVDC Transmission Between Europe & North America Makes Fiscal Sense – CleanTechnica

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As someone who spends a lot of time looking at HVDC electricity interconnectors globally, and holding the position that HVDC is the new pipeline, I’m very pleased with the latest Ember report, Security and efficiency: The case for connecting Europe and North America.

Let’s step back. I’m sure many of you are thinking that putting a power cable across the Atlantic couldn’t be possible. Among other objections, you’d be thinking that it’s just too deep. However, I ask you to cast your mind back to 1866, 160 years ago. That’s when the first trans-Atlantic communication cable was put into operation, connecting Ireland to Newfoundland. It runs across a plateau in the North Atlantic, avoiding the deeper parts. It’s still deep, but it’s not the Marian Trench. Ireland maintains a dominant position in this industry, with roughly 30% of all trans-Atlantic data links terminating there, which also accounts in part for the large and growing number of data centers in the country.

We have cables of multiple types running thousands of kilometers. Further, we have much more challenging pipelines running thousands of kilometers underwater. Nordstream 1 & 2, before they were blown up by parties still not confirmed, ran 1,200 kilometers under the Baltic Sea. Bluestream from Russia to Turkey runs 1,200 kilometers under the Black Sea. The Langeled Pipeline runs about 1,200 kilometers under the North Sea.

Moving electrons underwater along solid-state direct current cables is much simpler than moving molecules through subsea pipes. HVDC transmission doesn’t require substations along the way as alternating current or compressor stations like pipelines. A 3,000 kilometer length of transmission just sits there with power flowing in one end and out the other, with modern HVDC cables seeing under 1% losses per 1,000 kilometers. Meanwhile, the typical pipeline has compressor stations every 100 to 150 kilometers. Long underwater pipelines are made of advanced materials and have much higher-pressure compressor stations at landfall points to avoid having to build and maintain stations underwater.

Technically, there’s nothing particularly difficult any more about running power cables long distances underwater. That’s why so many of them are being built. When I spoke with John Fitzgerald, CEO of superconducting transmission startup Supernode and someone who built HVDC interconnectors in the British Isles prior to that in Brussels recently, he couldn’t count the number of them off the top of his head just in the Isles. The Sun Cable from northern Australia to Singapore received Singaporean signoff on a key planning stage a few weeks ago. The EuroAsia Interconnector connecting Israel, Cypress, and Greece is being built to run 1,200 kilometers under the Aegean, Mediterranean, and Levantine seas. The Black Sea Submarine Cable has been approved to run 1,200 kilometers between Georgia and Romania under the eponymous sea.

As I and others keep banging on, one of the easiest ways to deal with the intermittency of renewables is big HVDC grids going in several directions to bring electrons from where there are surpluses to where there is demand. It’s one of the key levers for large scale electrification and decarbonization, along with lots of renewables and a bunch of firming storage. Building out all three roughly in parallel is shown time and again to be not only the cheapest way to decarbonize, but also results in a much cheaper energy system than we have today for the same economic outcomes.

Geographies that skimp on transmission, as the west has done in the past couple of decades for a variety of reasons, end up having to build more renewables and more storage because they can’t move the electrons around much, or just don’t get nearly as much decarbonization of electricity nearly as quickly. As I said in Brussels to the audience for the launch of the second edition of the book Supergrid Super Solution, which details the case for a European mesh direct current grid, China and India didn’t skimp on transmission, and as a result are seeing much lower curtailment than the west.

And now we’re talking about an Atlantic east-west cable. The Ember study is fascinating reading. As the executive summary says:

“In their quest for cheaper energy prices, security of supply and decarbonisation, transatlantic interconnection could be a valuable tool. Despite the high capital cost, it could be cheaper than other tools being considered by policymakers, such as nuclear and hydrogen.“

Why? Let’s start with solar.

Four times a day there is an opportunity for electricity sales arbitrage reversing direction from North America to Europe and from Europe to North America, depending on where peak sunshine happens to be. Electrons from sparsely populated eastern Canada could be lighting up the Eiffel Tower in the evenings.

But it’s not just the sun. Winds are rarely strong or weak at the same times on the two continents.

Ember did modeling over ten years of weather data and found that there were significant opportunities for electrons generated by wind energy to flow back and forth between the continents as well. When big offshore wind farms on the east coast of North America or the west coast of Europe are humming in gale force winds at night, the electrons could be crossing the Atlantic instead, powering industry and transportation where demand is highest.

But wait, there’s more. Hydroelectric isn’t daily like solar, or close to daily like wind, but there are strong opportunities there as well.

Wet years in Europe, when hydroelectric can run at full capacity, occur mostly in different years than wet years in North America. That enables even more movement of electricity, providing the potential for a sophisticated market for trans-Atlantic capacity and energy security trading.

Of course, a lot of this has to do with differences in peak demands on the two continents that occur every day. It also has strong implications for northern Europe’s dunkelflaute conditions, when clouds cover everything, the wind barely stirs and depression sets in even further. If Europe is dismal and becalmed, North America typically isn’t.

But those aren’t the only opportunity for matching demand with distant supply. Ember also looked at both hot and cold days.

This is the hot day correlation study results, or rather the lack of correlation results. The cold day results are similar. Basically, when it’s brutally hot in major cities in Europe, air conditioners don’t tend to be humming as loudly in North America, and vice versa. When its brutally cold in North America, it’s frequently mild in Europe and vice versa. Every winter and summer there will be opportunities to move electrons from mild weather systems to extreme weather systems instead of turning on the gas generators.

Of course, none of this is a surprise to me. I’m peripherally involved in the North Atlantic Transmission One Link (NATO-L) project, which is planning to build a 6 GW HVDC connector between the continents. I did the wet dry year modeling myself early this year to assist principal Laurent Segalen, investor in clean energy through his firm Megawatt-X and recipient of a couple of awards this year including Renewable Energy Leader of the Year 2024 and Leading Voice in Commodities 2024. My podcast channel, Redefining Energy – Tech, hangs off of Laurent and his co-host Gerard Reid’s Redefining Energy, one of the most listened to and influential podcasts related to the energy transition. I’ve reviewed Laurent’s modeling of many of the same things as he has been considering the business case for this over the past two years.

His thesis that interconnectors are built on trust, very strongly aligned with my argument for strategic energy interdependence with HVDC as a core technology, which I advanced as one of the outcomes of the Russian invasion of Ukraine a couple of years ago. Europe and North America, despite frictions, remain strong and trusted partners compared to other actors in the world, notably Russia at present (something Europe really should have seen coming).

In addition to Laurent and Gerard, long time and successful business collaborators who happen to have a podcast, Simon Ludlam is one of the founders of NATO-L. He built the HVDC interconnect through the Chunnel, was instrumental in the Greenlink interconnect which is now under construction, is CEO of the MaresConnect interconnector planned to be in operation in 2029, and off the side of his desk is also Chairman of the GB Interconnectors’ Forum. The trio have deep knowledge of power markets, green investment banking and interconnectors, so have the conditions for success to make this happen.

NATO-L’s 6 GW isn’t that big compared to the power demands of the continents. It’s not going to be keeping all the lights on, all the trucks charged and all the heat pumps whirring. But it’s big enough to be a strategic supply that will be part of the biggest machine in the world, our emerging global electricity grid.