Electricity Across Oceans: Is HVDC the Future?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 พ.ค. 2024
- How can we connect power grids across long distances or across seas and oceans? The answer is high voltage direct current, or HVDC, interconnectors.
In this video, I’m going to explain how these differ to regular AC, alternating current transmission, the recent technology advances that are causing HVDC interconnectors to start popping up all over the place, and what challenges remain to be solved if we are going to connect places as far flung as Europe and North America.
00:00 Intro
01:08 Why do we want to connect different grids?
01:35 The classic question of AC vs DC
02:29 Types of Transmission Line Losses - Resistive, Inductive and Capacitive
04:19 The Different Layers of an HVDC Cable
05:20 HVDC Projects around the globe
05:25 ElecLink
06:23 North Sea Link
07:13 Basslink Interconnector and Marinus Link
09:15 Sun Cable
09:38 Xlinks
10:20 Technological challenges for these projects
12:15 The other, bigger challenge - Politics
13:12 Outro
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The Engineering with Rosie team is:
Rosemary Barnes: presenter, producer, writer
Kevin Irman: research, calculations, assistant editor
Javi Diez: editor www.linkedin.com/in/javierdie...
Cowritten with John Bone - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Hey, high voltage test systems engineer here.
This is an awesome explanation video! I love the representation of HVDC you are doing here. Economic reasons and technological feasibility have a great balance here.
You said the cables have a high capacitance due to their proximity to the ground or water. 4:10 While this is technically not wrong, the reason for the high capacitance is their outer, grounded sheath! These cables are under ridiculously extreme electrical stresses compared to open air transmission lines. Their insulation is quite high tech, but the sheath is a key feature. It homogenises the electric field inside the insulation, greatly reducing stress. Also, it keeps the electric field inside the cable, so the outside is (nearly) field-free. Very important as to not disrupt all kinds of stuff going on outside the cable.
Always happy when experts add to the content. Thanks for your info.
Given the oportunity i simply must ask: EU to US transatlantic UHVDC cable is still not a reality because...? I mean is it really still technical or economic at its core? According to Rosie 3% per 1000km would add up to 24% for 8000km. That's significant. 10 to 15% sounds like something we could live with. Is there a technological potential here or are we pretty much at the margins? Really excited about the future prospects of this technology!
@@aleksandrsnaumovs4277Rosie answers that question in the video: because we literally don‘t have the ships to handle that much cable at once, nor the cable factories to produce all of it (yet).
@@screwaccountnames She never mentioned anything about the losses of 8000km cable. I extrapolated that. The plan she mentioned is in it's infancy. Factories, ships and all that...these mobilization costs. We'll cover this blue marble in a web of wires if there is profit to be made AND the technology is mature enough. So...where are we? Are we still developing the tech and procedures?
@@aleksandrsnaumovs4277 Electrical resistance goes down if you make your wire thicker. This means that theoretically, it should "just" be a question of making your sub-ocean wires thick enough to reduce losses to an acceptable level. However, that's obviously also a huge cost factor, and maybe even a materials science problem (I don't know things get too stiff / prone to breaking if you make the cable too thick).
However, even if we built the production facilities for that much cable and the ships capable of laying it on the ocean floor, I don't know if those huge investments would be justified by the economical benefits of a connected grid.
We also have an HVDC across the ditch in NZ connecting hydro in the South Island to the population centres in the North Island.
The ditch. Love it.
There is a great B&W doco covering this on TH-cam……NZ really raised the bar when it came to these hydro projects.
@@Travlinmo It's what Kiwis call the Tasman Sea
@@banyantree8618 Do you know the name or have a link? I'd be keen to watch. I was lucky enough to work with engineers who worked on the last stages of the Mackenzie hydro scheme and Clyde. Proper hydraulics.
"The ditch" = Taman sea not the Cook strait
Where I live (Manitoba, Canada) we have three HVDC transmission lines in operation. Most of our power is from hydro and the vast majority of it is produced in the northern part of our province on the Nelson River. Most of that power gets consumed in the southern part of the province and back in the early 1970's two HVDC lines were run north/south. These were known as Bipole 1 and Bipole 2. These two line were run side by side in the same right of way and in the 1990's a tornado knocked both of them down. In the early 2000's it became necessary to run a third line and for security reasons (both weather and terrorist) it was decided this third line should be run down a different route. This is were the story veers from engineering to politics. The best technical route (i.e. shortest) was down the east side of the province. However, the government of the day decreed that it would run down the west side of the province. No amount of reason would sway them and the engineers in the project remained quiet for fear of losing their jobs. The retired engineers from the original Bipole projects had nothing to worry about and there was a constant barrage of reason and logic aimed at the government in the opinion section of the newspapers of the day. They christened it the "Western Manitoba Heater" and pointed out that the extra 200 MW of line losses over the east side route would consume all of the power of the most recently completed dam. None of it worked and Bipole 3 was built on the west side for considerably more money than the east side route and will now lose an extra 200 MW in perpetuity. It's no wonder you see so few engineers in politics.
Wow, that's just so dumb. I guess you could add (bundle) a conductor or two to reduce the losses. Another way would be to increase the voltage and reduce the current. But that would require upgrading all the insulators and the inverters.
I would just like to say that Canada's boondoggles are minor compared to ours down here in the US - they're a lot worse.
That right there is why Québec has multiple corridors for energy transmissions. Redundancy goes a long way when problems arise.
are they overground or underground? 200MW losses is rather high for 1000 km
@@janami-dharmam Above ground. The only place in Canada where you will find an underground powerline is in the center of large cities.
taxpayer pockets are bottomless
600 million for eleclink? That’s how much the feasibility study would cost in Australia
Looks like someone is in line to make some serious money for persuading the chunnel people to let them hang a cable in the tunnel. Looks like it makes a lot more money than the trains do. Eurotunnel (Getlink now) made a loss every year up till restructuring in 2007 (from starting in 1994) and made about £140 million profit in 2019. Eleclink is making about 4 times that much. Mind you, 2022 was a very unusual year in electriity prices so will probably not be representative. Still it looks like a very god business to be in, although as more cables get built the arbitrage profit will decrease. But any project that pays for itself in a year or 3 is an amazing deal.
@@xxwookey Probably because the trains need to pay for the tunnel, and the cable gets a (nearly) free ride or something.
The map showing your Trans Atlantic 'sub sea' cable route, omits the Republic of Ireland, through which your cable must go, if it doesn't take a huge detour.
Wouldn't it make more sense to connect the UK to Faroe, Faroe to Iceland, Iceland to Greenland, and Greenland to Canada? That avoids many of the problems associated with super long cables, as well as avoiding some of the deeper seas. For example, From St. Ives in the UK to St. Johns in Canada (the shortest possible stretch), the cable would be over 3,000km long and have to be over 4.7km deep in some areas - most of it 3km or more.
By comparison, from Thurso in Scotland to Kirkjubomururin in Faroe (415km, depths mostly in low 100s, with the middle dropping to 1km), Eioi in Faroe to Faskruosfrorour in Iceland (450km, depths mostly below 500m), Isafjorour in Iceland to Kulusuk in Greenland (640km, depths mostly below 600m), and Narasarmijit in Greenland to West Bay in Canada (1000km, of which around 800km drops to 3.5km but avoids the mountain range down the middle of the Atlantic. Add around another 800km between Kulusuk and Narasarmijit around the coast because it doesn't look like Greenland have an electricity grid, and I don't foresee anyone building HVDC across the landmass.
This seems a lot more achievable, not to mention cheaper, than trying to lay a cable straight from the UK to Canada, and adds the benefit of Faroe's hydro and Iceland's geothermal along the way. Both, as well as Greenland, could probably turn themselves in to major energy players, with landscapes highly suited for hydro and pumped hydro. Well, in the summer, at least!
Isn't your suggestion straighter than going straight? Our aeroplanes, even from southern UK airports, fly over Iceland as the shortest route.around the globe to the USA, rather than the straightest route on a 2D map!
@@nigels.6051 Atlantic coast to Atlantic coast, the shortest path is over the Atlantic. You usually only overfly Iceland if you are traveling to/from someplace close to the Pacific coast or the airline you are using avoids unnecessary trans-oceanic flights.
Any truly shortest path which does touch Scotland, Iceland, and Canada will have to contend with Sea Ice and that is many times more expensive than running cables deep in more southern parts of the Atlantic. And also end up in a part of Canada which is not tied into the national electric grid.
@@nigels.6051 It's curves a bit further north than the usual airine path, but yeah, that's part of the reason I thought of it. The distances I gave above are only the sea surface distances, it excludes slack needed to follow the contours of the seabed, and it assumes existing grid infrastructure across the land masses involved. Total distance would definitely be longer, but I would think the benefit of connecting countries along the way and dealing with shorter cable lengths would more than outweigh that.
As far as Iceland, yes that makes sense, but I think it would be easier to run cables in the ocean than run cables across Greenland.
I don't think that Icelanders are very keen - I've read that the public are concerned that, once they are connected to the rest of the world, their cheap geothermal energy will be hoovered up on the international markets (which would mean it's political suicide for any Icelandic government that proposed to actually build it), and that the cost of wind energy in the UK is dropping to the point where building out wind farms is cheaper than the HVDC connection to Iceland - which is why the plan has gone nowhere for the last four or five years.
Since 1992, Hydro-Quebec already operate a 1500 km of DC line. They are looking to get many more of them online soon. The current line is transiting about $1M in electricity, every day.
Regarding politic, it already a problem for Hydro-Quebec (Canada). The state of Vermont (USA) is dependent on HQ. Furthermore, The state of Massachusetts (USA) often consider that it will be imprudent to get more electricity from Quebec. New-York city is also VERY Reliant on HQ. HQ already supply some electricity to Ontario (Canada). All in all, if HQ were to shut down the delivery of electricity to New England, the NERC NPCC regions will likely crash.
That the reason HQ looks at Europe. HQ is 94% Hydro. It does want to develop the WIND resource too. So, with Europe, what HQ will like to do is become the"BATTERY" where it does purchase electricity cheaply on the European market... and resell some when the sun is not shining or the wind not winding enough. HQ has an impressive amount of dispatchable electricity with Hydro.
BTW, when we talking so much about connecting countries and even continents in one grid, why is some countries (like US or Australia) actually have several NOT connected grids one close to another?
Like US have so much timezones, that sunshine in a one cost will provide power for the twilights time in another. But somehow in US they still have 3 separate grids. Why?
Same question about Australia
Good question! IDK why the US has separate east and west grids, but Texas has a separate grid due to its political inclination to be independent. Electric power would not be a barrier to Texas becoming a sovereign country again.
Historical reasons, always. One of those 'made sense at the time' decisions. Sometimes period politics, sometimes rival commercial interests.
Always wondered why DC was being used for these long links while most long distant lines are AC. Thanks for the explanation!❤😊
DC connections are also used when two grids that is not in sync needs to be connected.
@@srenjensen3817 or different frequencies like EU 50Hz & USA 60Hz.
or if you just want whales to stop asking "what's that bloody humming noise?"
@@MattOGormanSmith its a cable it doesnt make noise
@@Blox117 High voltage AC electrical appliaces make an audible hum when active.
When you turn on an electric shower you can sometimes hear this noise over the sound of the water.
It's so nice to have an Australian lady to teach us about AC and DC.
😂🤘
High Voltage! Done Dirt Cheap
Electrical engineer here:
Only benefit of AC is cheap and efficient change of voltage inside transformer.
Now, with modern DC-DC converters, they are almost as efficient.
Benefits are:
Grid does not have to be in synch any more, as all is DC, so whole world can be connected.
Power routing is easy, as you need to have a little adjustment to direct flow of power, by boosting voltage a little on power line.
Efficient home solar instalation, as you would not need to convert it from DC to AC for appliance use and just use 240V solar battery (or central tap 120-0-120 in split phase system).
Most device in home can run on DC power supplies:
Any swtich mode power supply (chargers, PC power supplies)
Stoves and other resistive heaters (like boilers)
Most LED and all incadesent lights
Devices that can be adapted:
Any device with universal motor (vacuum cleaner, blender), but you would need to give up speed control or change the circuit
Inverter air conditioners and fridged
Devices that would not work on DC and need am inverter to work:
Anything with old iron core transformer
Anything with an induction motor (fans, pumps)
Anything with a dimmer circuit (ligjts, vacuum cleaners)
Clocks dependent on grid frequency
Great info you've added here, thanks!
There is a problem for long-distance cables…
A transAtlantic cable must cross the mid-Atlantic ridge, which is where the two tectonic plates are moving apart (a few centimetres a year, I think).
But I trust the engineers know this and plan for it.
Although, 19th century engineers did not know about it, but the telephone cables were just fine
@@mikeaugust "the hegemon"?
@@mikeaugust no you said "the hegemon" as in something that exists not a "hegemony" as you defined.
@@orionbetelgeuse1937 just 10% cheaper than the local power plant & you print money from your overseas connections. And yes these are obviously on the terrorism 101 target lists.
As you're laying the cable just get the boats to do a couple donuts in that area.
Now you have enough cable for years of the plates moving.
Fantastic video, plenty of information which is easy to understand and no in video ads. I'm going to show my daughter your videos as she's in high school right now and i've shown her engineering videos for a few years now and she's quite keen on becoming one and I think you'll be a real positive influence on her :)
In the winter you can get a few extra hours of solar power in your system going north to south. It's always a 12-hour day at the equator. If you're lucky enough to get some place on the other side of the equator you can get Summer sunlight all year round
Sadly I have but one thumbs-up to give your excellent video
How about HVDC across Australia and hook WA into the National grid?
This was an awesome video! I remember my Power Engineering professor talking about this stuff a year ago. It seemed like such a cool idea, but I never even thought of its potential to unlock renewable energy. So cool that this is happening!
I think it would be more profitable to link Scotland to Faroe, then on to Iceland, Iceland to Greenland, then finally down to Canada.
Total route 4,400km but in ~1000km spans makes it easier to swallow. Iceland being connected to Europe and North America would be amazing given Iceland's renewable energy supply capabilities. The hydroelectric potential of Canada then being linked in makes it very special.
Very informative and well presented. Love the new studio setup with different camera angles. The visuals were outstanding and well integrated into the presentation. Thanks for doing this.
13:20 love it. Dunkelflaute!! I did not know this german word got integrated into english language.
For years now, Norway and The Netherlands are connected as well ... North Sea. The Dutch also have an energy platform island in the North Sea, this allows connections with sea based wind farms (windmills connect to the platform, operational already!). The platform provides an opportunity to connect with the UK grid. Another Danish - Dutch platform will be built for more Dutch and Danish wind farms and to connect Danish and Dutch grids. Sea based connection platforms can be the interconnection nodes in cross sea networks.
Love the new production setup. I hope this upgrade doesn't cost a fortune, sure seems professional and very enjoyable to watch!
Great glad you like it and thanks for the feedback! Fairly affordable at a local studio and something I can spend money on due to my kind Patreon team!
Excellent video with a good explanation of DC vs AC line transmission for this non-engineer- thanks!
Thank you Rosie. My first reaction to the notion is for us to do everything we can, genuinely green can, before we embark on the massive deployment of resources to yet another piece of infrastructure. If we can get by without it, we must. If we cannot get by without it, we must do it. I cheering for the side that says we get by without it.
Hi Rosie, great video! Interconnectors are incredible and we need more videos like this one to help inspire future engineers! Just as a small FYI though, ElecLink does not make it's money from buying power in one country and selling it into another. The revenue is generated on a capacity auctioning platform called the Joint Allocation Platform (JAO). Basically energy companies can auction for the rights to transfer power a cross the cable and ElecLink recieves the money from each auction. The only time ElecLink would ever buy power from one country and sell into another would be during the commissioning phase of the project.
*Joint Allocation Office
thx. for the informational video. You said the DC power losses over long distance is ~3%/ 1000 km, what is the comparative loses to AC power for the same distance?
It is 7% per 1000km for HV-AC
(Source: IEA ETSAP - Technology Brief E12 April 2014)
Really good❤ presentation of energy transfer. I remember college days many moons ago. 🙂 if only we had a lecture like that the math would have been far easier. Understanding the problems and fundamentals is really important not just studying for the exam.
This excellent video prompted me to read the Wikipedia article on the NZ "HVDC Inter-island" link connecting hydro in the South Ssland up to the North Island which has an interesting history of upgrades since it was built in the early '60s.
Great video! You mentioned connecting Montreal to Liverpool. That means connecting to Hydro-Quebec, a vast and not fully utilized resource. It generated about 225 TWh in 2022, an average of 25 GW. Quebec itself uses about 80% of that. HQ has been trying for decades to get links down into the US Northeast, but they get blocked by local opposition. E.g. there was to be a line across Maine down into Massachusetts that was strongly supported by the state of Maine, but delayed by a referendum paid for by a Florida natural gas company. It's not quite dead, but in a coma. The nominal reason was the effect of the power line right-of-way on Maine's forests. Running an undersea cable down to Boston and New York might actually be easier!
I also keep hearing about HVDC from Iceland to Europe to distribute geothermal power, but so far it seems more economic to use the power to make aluminum. HQ does that too.
Norway has done the same thing. There, in order to provide more 'green' power to their grid, they increased the depth of the smelters' reservoirs by a few metres. The smelters are connected to offshore wind turbines, and use them to pump water into the reservoir when they don't have a need themselves. The reservoirs were then connected to the grid for the first time.
However, these sources are in the North of the country, a long way from the main centres of population and industry. The result is that after the Norwegians went EV in a huge way, Norway was taking electricity from their HVDC connector to the Eurogrid. The result is that the EV 'revolution' in Norway is being fuelled by coal fired power stations in Poland and Germany.
@@nicktecky55 When did Norway import from Poland? The only time Norway import from Germany is when the price in Germany is very low, exclusively when Germany has excess renewable output. And the EV impact on consumption and prices is so far insignificant. I did an estimate on Sweden, going all EV would increase demand with 10 to 15 TWh, and Norway has maybe 40 % less cars than Sweden. So Scandinavia going all electric on the roads would mean an increased demand amounting to less than 10 % of current consumption. At the same time some different cleantech projects, like Hybrit and H2 Green Steel, will each consume more than that.
Really pleased to see the use of non pumped hydro as a battery for wind and solar.
I was very surprised when commentators assured me that only pumped hydro could be used as such for reasons that were far from clear.
If only the electricity market in NZ was somewhat sane, we should be doing a lot if this here. Savecthe hydro for when the wind isn't blowing.
This is intetesting. Nonpumped hydro requires a bypass of some sort during dormant periods. If that is truely available and cost effective...perhaps we really already have an overlooked battery just sitting there and waiting for proper integration into the 100% renewable grid. This would be interesting to analyze. Has Rosie addressed this allready?
@@aleksandrsnaumovs4277 My local "power station" is non-pumped hydro, been operating since 1962, only at peak periods as there is not much water available. It does the same job as the UK-Norway HVDC link (where Norway is the local area), and was built mainly to avoid upgrading the power grid which can't support peak periods but can support average load - it is effectively a battery, but recharged by the river rather than the grid.
Why would you think that does not presently happen.? Hydro can be throttled quite readily as compared to geothermal or coal, and does indeed balance vs wind in NZ just that wind is still a small overall portion
Then it's not really a battery.
@@Robert-cu9bm It is stored power, discharged when needed and recharged when not needed. Definitely a battery.
Montreal is a very appropriate choice as the western end of your proposed trans Atlantic cable as it is probably the largest city in the world that achieves 100 percent renewable electricity and does so for a far lower price per kw/h than anyplace depending on wind or solar. Unfortunately many people who want to see renewables replace fossil fuels seem to be completely opposed to what is the most viable. It would not be solar energy from an area that sees sun twenty hours a day that would keep the power on, it would be the massive hydropower dams north of Montreal
Fascinating insight into the financials behind HDVC - thank you. 🙏
Excellent video! Very informative as always! 👍
Can you talk about the energy losses at the AC->HVDC and HVDC->AC conversion stages compared to the high voltage AC step up and step down transformers?
I would like to hear Rosie on this topic. Perhaps as part of a broader topic.
These losses are quite significant on the interconnectors under the English channel, which require rectifying to DC for the undersea transmission and then converting back to AC. Not stated in this video - where can the data on this be found?
Typically 1% is lost at each converting station. The biggest contributors are the transformers and converter valves but you also have some other HV equipment and of course all the auxiliary systems required for the station's operation.
@@55damien55I expected the in the conversion stage to be much higher.
@@drescherjm , I wonder how much you think it is, I work in HVDC and 1% per station is not a bad approximation. Of course each station is different but this is the kind of numbers we are talking about for this application.
Very nice summary Rosie. In my view, you've got the level of detail exactly right.
I never thought about the capacitive losses of ac cables in land or water. good video.
There are two more uk projects in the works too.
One to connect to Germany, and another to connect to the Orkney islands (off north Scotland) to tap into the wind and tidal potential.
Great videos Rosie, thanks.
Quite a few more in fact. The Viking Link (UK to Denmark) is about to take the crown for World's longest when it goes live later this year. Additional connections to France, Ireland, the Netherlands and Belgium are also at different stages of development (in addition to the ones we already have to those countries).
@@chriscox3460How wonderful and all while Scotland suffers fuel poverty despite more KW of energy than our small population can use is being generated to be used by others! I guess it's normal for colonies to export goods they produce but can't afford though.
Very interesting. Very long cables in the order of 1 km will also radiate energy (think very low frequency radio). I really enjoy your rational, well-thought out videos, with no hype, you are one of a kind on TH-cam, actual expertise with no axes to grind!
If the cable was only carrying DC electricity, would it still radiate RF (or are you discribing something similar to but not actually RF?)
@@chrismarshall25A DC cable wouldn't emit any RF, because it is steady state. Electromagnetic fields/waves can only be created with changing currents.
Yes, DC conductors create a magnetic field around themselves. The field varies as much as the current varies. If the current is constant, then the magnetic field will be constant-- just like a magnet.
@@peteinwisconsin2496 that wasn't my point 50 or 60 Hz create electro-magnetic fields that will radiate on very long lines. this radiation is a power loss, like losses due to resistance.
@@SuperFredAZ 0hz is not a radio frequency
Very well done. Thank you for explaining all of this.
Thanks for the explanation, as a civil engineer my knowledge of electrical things is very limited.
As a Canadian, I’d like to point out that Montreal is no where near where you labeled it! It would be better to end that transmission line in Labrador as that is where the bulk of the hydro generation is.
There is currently a proposed transmission line from Eastern Quebec to NE US that is being block for running through wilderness areas. I wonder if an undersea from Labrador to Massachusetts would be feasible 🤷♂️
Thanks again
I like how the map just deleted Ireland and pretended there was nothing West of the UK all the way to the US. Sounds like the dream of many UK governments
What is the voltage limit for HVDC?
1 million Volts like in China?
Or it could be made to higher voltage like 10 mil or maybe 100 mil to make intercontinental power link much more viable and accelerate the transition?
I have to do some calculations but I'm sure there is a limit. Electrons will spark through air (sparkplug). In water it will be worse.
@@wiegeroord9822 They use polyethelyne or teflon as insulator which has a much higher resistivity than air. PE has around 10^20 Ωm of resistivity, air has around 10^16 Ωm. So you can replace several meters of air gap with a millimeter thin layer of PE. Perfectly fine for hundreds of kV.
Depends how much insulation you are prepared to use. A cable with a 1m diameter would handle extremely high voltages, but it would be very difficult to lay it.
Losses in AC lines come as she said from resistance, inductance and capacitance, but a very important loss of long AC lines is radio radiation. When the length of the line becomes significant relative to a quarter wavelength (1200-1500km) this becomes a really large loss component and this should have been mentioned
This is an excellent video, I plan on showing to my non-engineer colleagues when they ask about HVAC and HVDC. We build offshore wind with both types of transmission systems but people who are not power system engineers struggle to understand the differences.
Thanks for the vid! In looking up undersea cable laying, I found out about floating solar farms - curious to know your thoughts!
It's a fascinating idea - and as with offshore wind farms, would probably use HVDC to get the electricity back to land where it can be of use - but there _are_ some disadvantages. They need to be anchored to the seafloor so they don't drift around and strain the HVDC cables - but still be able to rise and fall with the waves and the tides. The floating platforms need to be large enough and sturdy enough to withstand ocean storms, and made of materials that won't degrade in the corrosive salt water and the relentless UV of the sun. Marine environments are no joke to engineer for.
And then there's repairs and routine maintenance, which will be somewhat less convenient than on land. Also, will salt spray and mineral deposition become a problem on the PV surfaces, or will rainwater regularly wash them clean? If you have to manually clean them every so often, that could hurt the economics. Or do you come up with some sort of solar farm Roomba?
Rosie this is amazing! I've been preaching this EXACT thing for a decade! But it should be broken up into segments. I've been talking about a Canada -> Greenland -> Iceland -> Faroe Islands -> Scotland/Norway HVDC link so much that my engineering friends just roll their eyes when I bring it up. It just makes so much sense.
Each link in that chain has huge value and can stand on its own right, but together it makes renewables make sense WITHOUT the huge reliance on storage. Canada has been desperate to electrify Northern native communities for ages and will fork over boatloads of money for anyone willing to do it. Greenland needs cheap power. Iceland is begging for some way to export their surplus of energy. Faroe Islands uses expensive dirty old fuel oil for electricity and this would be a boon for them.
And the math works out with current technology. You don't need any crazy year 3000 science fiction superconductors; it can be done with existing cables. And Siemens, GE, Hitachi and (I think?) ABB and Panasonic are already manufacturing the inverters. It just makes too much sense.
I recall reading somewhere that Iceland isn't really "begging" for an interconnector any longer - the Icelandic public are concerned that their current cheap geothermal electricity will be hoovered up by the Europeans once connected to the world (well, European) energy market leading to higher consumer prices for them, the aluminium producers who moved to Iceland for cheap electricity are concerned for the same reason (both of which would be political suicide for any Icelandic politician who voted in favour of building a cable), and evidently the falling price per Kw for wind generated electricity in the UK, so it's now more cost effective to build out wind turbines than the HVDC, has reached the point where the original rationale for the cable doesn't hold true any longer without government subsidies - and neither government is likely to do that.
Greenland only has 56,000 people living there - you could probably install an individual PV/wind turbine + battery in every household for less than the cost of the interconnector, although clearly community based projects would be better. Ditto the Faroe Islanders - 52,000 people whose main industry is fishing / fish farming. And I'm guessing the same issue applies to Canada's Northern territories - the few inhabitants are mostly widely scattered in small population clusters. None of these are candidates for an HVDC mega-project - although they're certainly candidates for diversified green energy projects.
You speak of these other countries (with small populations) as if they could contribute, but they are too small to make a difference. In order to tap off even a small part of the HVDC power, they would have to pay for an expensive megavolt inverter station.
@@acmefixer1 No they would be intermediate links in a chain so you don't have to run 3-4000 km of continuous cable. That's even mentioned in the video. Being able to utilize some small potion of the electricity is only a secondary benefit.
@@joels7605
The cables are handling HVDC, which *cannot* be stepped down with a relatively inexpensive transformer. The inverter is a building full of expensive equipment, and a small island most likely can't justify the expensive inverter station to supply so few customers.
@@acmefixer1 Right. Much easier to build the world's largest ship to pull an impossibly long cable. It's vastly cheaper to run conventional high tension lines overland than lay HVDC undersea cables. If you can save a few hundred kilometers of undersea cable it pays for the HVDC inverters.
10:45 You mention Montreal. I think that I need to correct one very important detail about Québec. We have very little solar power. Almost all of our power needs are provided for by giant dams located a thousand kilometers north of the population centers. There's also a number of wind farms. In eastern Canada, the potential for wind energy is greeter than solar. It probably would be the right place to connect an undersea cable given that the power grid is rather well developed in Québec. Eastern Canada has gotten a few upgrades with the lower Churchill project, and there is room for another dam to expand capacity.
This is not only a good idea economically, but also politically for the western blocks.
Amazing new set! Any plans on adding more props and some dampening for the echo? It would definitely improve the already astonishing quality!
The echo is a struggle, especially played through a TV.
The graphic at 1:00 appears to show a connection between the Isle of Man and Marystown, Newfoundland, not between Liverpool and Montreal. And most of Ireland is missing.
Wow, lots of great info about HVDC. The 3 sources of losses and the details about the cable were especially interesting. Just a small nit. At 10:33 your HDVC cable is going to the province of Newfoundland in Canada. The city of Montreal is in the province of Quebec, about another 800km west. Love your videos.
While its about 800km from Newfoundland border to Montreal, its 1300km to the coast. The same is true for the European side, while its "only" 230km" from the Irish westcoast to Dublin, if we talking about any amount of power that will make even the slightest dent, then the whole grid of Ireland, that is really not the strongest grid int he world, will not be sufficient. Have to go to the main Scottish interconnect. This would extend the length of the cable to about 5000km in total. making it pretty much totaly unviable.
Your videos are fantastic and unmatched. You have been a great resource throughout my studies. Thank you for making these great resources.
Very interesting, as always!
Great video. Can you please consider covering Japan's odd 50/60hz HVDC interconnects in another video? Benefits or challenges would be super interesting to hear.
Japan was my first thought.
What is a 50/60hz HVDC cable? Surely you can't have a DC current and AC current in the same conductor?
@@richardrichards5982 For annoying historical reasons, Japan has two electrical grids: One at 50Hz and one at 60Hz. The simplified explanation is that electrification started during a period when politics were not good for central planning, so there was no immediate agreement on which frequency to use. The only practical way to transfer power from one grid to another is through a DC intermediate connection.
Wow, excellent explanation! Brilliant. Thank you.
Egypt and Jordan are connected via a cable under the Gulf of Aqaba/Eilat.
It is nice to see where the cable dives under water.
I don't know what system they use, AC or DC, but as the distance is not great it might be AC.
I liked the way how the topic was explained.
Thanks 👏
Thanks for explaining HVDC in lay persons terms. For many years I was told only the only way to transmit power over vast distances was by high voltage AC. HVDC makes so much sense over long distances for all the reasons you have highlighted. I wonder if a country like Canada that has a small wide spread poulation can benefit from replacing overland HVAC lines with HVDC transmission lines?
Canada has used hvdc for many years. Nelson river and Pacific interviews are two examples.
For many years that was true. Advancements in semiconductors that allows them to handle more power and higher voltages have enabled HVDC to exist at all. There weren't diodes powerful enough to rectify AC into DC, nor the semiconductors to do the opposite at the other end. Thus, you were told right, some time ago.
How old are you? - When I studied 40 years ago I learned about the Itaipu HVDC line in Brazil which was installed then.
@@Henning_Rech I got my degree in 1978 in Argentina so Itaipú was relatively close and we knew very little about it but HVDC wasn't in the curriculum at that point and not available to us anyhow being based mostly on proprietary technology. So, the basic recipe at the time was long-distance => HVAC. Anyway, I just meant to confirm that what @vincentrobinet heard was, indeed, the way things were done. That is also backed by the story of the Edison vs. Tesla, DC vs: AC dispute, which is also well known.
Thank you for another well-explained evaluation Rosie. You mentioned the move from Cu to Al due to weight concerns. I keep hearing from a friend that "the world is running out of Copper!!!" as a reason for not moving to anything like 100% renewable power. I have not seen any reliable data put forward in the "debate", so I gather this is more of a reactionary trope than a real shortage. Do you know what the basis of this claim is? Is it a valid concern?
Roughly our current known supply of copper is less than the projected demand for copper if going to 100% renewables with available technology
Some big proportion of copper handled by humans is tied up in telephone wires. That was one of the motivations for going to more optical fibers.
@@b43xoit: there are many old technology uses that can be recycled/repurposed when price points make if feasible. It’s not far off when most homes will be DC wired…it soon will transition to new builds being DC…it’s only the stubbornness of old methods resisting transition holding it back. Anyone doing their own solar should look into DC household wiring.
Not only copper, most renewable technologies require so much materials they are far from green when installed. Why do you think lithium is not produced in Western countries with huge reserves like Germany, or copper, aluminium?
If we want to reduce co2 releases there is no other way than going full nuclear for base load current, spent fuel should be the least of our worries because coal only kills 800.000 people each year. I think we might be too late to do it due to increasing methane releases but it is worth a try.
Copper is also lower resistance per unit than aluminium and thus better for conductors. However it is supposedly more expensive which would give credence for the shortage theory. Also that was why so much cable theft was and is performed. It is for copper not aluminium cables.
This is the best summary so far
Thank you for sharing.
Interesting video, thanks!
Do you also know about Ultra-high-voltage DC or UHVDC? I have been reading that there are several in production already, especially for long distance (thousends of kilometers) . They work with voltages up to 1,100 kV and are supposed to minimizing transmission losses. Notable examples include the Three Gorges-Gezhouba-UHV DC transmission line in China, the Rio Madeira HVDC link in Brazil, and the North Sea Link connecting the power grids of Norway and the United Kingdom.
There is basically 3 types of cable. Monolithic under sea cable, segmented under ground cable, and air cable.
Air cable can carry about 1MV of potential. Under sea cable can carry about 500kV of potential and under ground cable can carry about 350kV of potential.
So its all down to what you select. If you do select 350kV you can do all 3 types. 500kV only sea and air, and if you do anything above 500kV you can only do air.
The reason why under sea cable is not used on land is that it have to be monolithic, that is in one bit, so it have to be transported by ship. There is not a truck that can carry a 5000 ton cable. (sometimes when they do under sea cable they link up like 10 bulldozers and pull the cable a few km inland, that way don´t need to have the station right by the sea).
What you can´t do is have a 1MW land cable then just connect a sea cable. Also there are no DC transformers, so if you want to step down 1MV to 500kV, you need to convert it via AC power, that is of cause very inefficient and expensive.
On top of that, a DC decouple have not yet been implemented. There is one that have been tested, but it have never been implemented. So currently there don´t exist any DC network.
So its not like the UHVDC is a other technology, its just the same, but with a different potential.
@@matsv201 Sentence 5 makes no sense (step down 1MW to 500kV), I assume MV? The whole point of the presentation is that for very long distances HVDC is more efficient. ALL transmission systems have losses. If the conversion losses of one are lower than the other then it must be more efficient?
@@icarossavvides2641 well the conversion loss from DC to DC is much higher than from AC to DC. So you really don't want to do a DC-DC conversion.
As always, a great video and an excellent explanation on the causes of loss on AC lines. When I read about the UK to Morocco HVDC project, I wondered why would they do that. It doesn't seem to me to make sense to have a direct line to a single source of power which, BTW, doesn't get any sun when you are both at night, when you could make shorter parallel connections to continental Europe and get into a big grid that spans multiple time zones and expand the connections from there to Morocco. You need far less resources (cable, ships), transmission losses and exposure to harm with multiple connections both by land and the sea than a single set of cables. Plus, you have the advantage of making money by sending power both ways. Am I missing something in the technical side? My first reaction was that there are some clever guys selling the project to a brexiteer government willing to waste money on anything as long as it bypasses the EU. Thanks.
I don't have all the answers but I got some better understanding after I listened to a podcast with I think the CEO or maybe CTO of XLinks (I think it was on Cleaning Up). First, they're trying to get more renewable energy into Europe, especially in the winter I expect. The XLinks guy said they didn't want to connect into Spain and just buy from existing continental interconnectors because then if there is a supply shortfall in the continent then the UK is out of luck. Politically they could really only get support to go directly to the UK. that's my rough recollection anyway, check out the interview for yourself, it was interesting.
You got it: British exceptionalism. - in stupidity.
@@EngineeringwithRosie I found the video you mention, thank you, and I found the reasoning quite solid. I have to admit, living in Spain, that continental power networks are still an issue. France is always reluctant to agree to interconnections across the Pyrenees, of which there is a clear deficit as per EU guidelines, since Spanish renewables are cheaper than France's nuclear so, yes, I guess it is not something they want to depend on. Thanks again for the info.
@@danielbarreiro8228 Look on the bright side - if it wasn't for the lack of interconnectors & pipelines to the rest of Europe Spain and Portugal would never have got EU permission for the government subsidies to energy prices over the last 18 months or so.
I had exactly the same thoughts when I read this. Further, it's a diversion from job#1 for UK energy expenditure, namely rapid expansion of grid capacity, especially north south (Scotland to Midlands). This grid bottleneck is harming so many energy developments, so it must be solved as a matter of extreme urgency.
This is so cool. A quick note for 5:55, that €420m is income (revenue), not *net* income (profit). And the profit is what makes the system "pay for itself", not the revenue. If ASDA makes £1B in revenue, but it cost them £1.2B to make those sales (from the cost of buying the products, paying the employees, renting the buildings, etc.), then they've lost money, even though revenue is high. In the Getlink case, it still looks like their net income (profit) is very high, so the effect on investors in the industry is likely exactly as you say. But it would still take 3-4 years to pay for itself, even though that's a really quick turnaround relative to other industries. Cheers!
So interesting! Thanks a lot. This is my favourite TH-cam channel ❤
Fantastic breakdown. I've been surprised how few people even know HVDC exists!
I'd love to know more about the inverters that handle the super high voltage DC. Do they use conventional semiconductors in parallel, or are they large single unit devices that don't use silicon in the same vane as the old mercury rectifiers?
I'm studying a PhD in Power Electronics so I can help here. The recent development of wide band gap (WBG) semiconductors, specifically Silicon Carbine (SiC) and Gallium Nitride (GaN), allow us to use 1200V and 600V respectively. GaN also has enough charge carriers to permit very fast switching, so we can use smaller inductors and produce almost pure sin waves to the output load. If you're specifically interested in transmission voltages the principals remain the same, but the equipment is bigger. The semiconductor devices themselves can be built deeper so they can sustain higher voltages, but this has technical drawbacks. They can also be built broader, but this also has drawbacks. The packaging of very large SiC and GaN WBG devices has yet to stabilise in the market and the manufacturers are floundering about not co-ordinating their efforts! If you leave the new devices aside, the current technology is thyristors but they have significant control constraints which limit the circuit topologies available to us, and they don't have the efficiencies and design freedoms that the latest WBG devices offer. Hope this helps, feel free to ask Q's and if I can't answer I can find someone at the Nottingham PEMC (Power Electronics and Machines Centre) who can.
Hello! High voltage cable engineer here, you are awesome! What a fantastic short video summarising what is happening in the world of HVDC cables!
Hi, High voltage cable engineer, can you please explain Rosie's statement that the inductance of the cable causes losses. Is it magnetic hysteresis loss in the steel sheath or something else?
Hello @@petehiggins33, the alternating current at say 50Hz causes dielectric polarisation due to an electric field between the conductor (+ capacitor plate) and metallic sheath (- capacitor plate) oscillating 50 times per second, which causes a redistribution of the charges within molecules from dielectric hysteresis rotation of polar and induced dipole molecules, thereby causing losses in the form of charging and leakage currents.
@@MrMilanista1994 That's very interesting and may explain the capacitive losses but my question was about how the inductance causes losses. 2:59
The Basslink cable slashed the communications cost to the island - as it contained 24 cores of fresh SMOF. It broke Telscum's monopoly on the route - and added 100's of GB to the island.
As a German, I was surprised to learn that the word "Dunkelflaute" has made it into the English language 😅
Robert Llewellyn has popularised the word on his million sub "Fully Charged" TH-cam channel.
I think that the future belongs to decentralized systems. Each household, each settlement, each section of highways can have its own sources of renewable energy and its own energy storages connected with neighboring ones. And large power plants will be needed only for large factories.
I think it's going to be a lot at both of the extremes and not much in the middle in the future. I will have some videos on community and household scale stuff coming up soon.
@@EngineeringwithRosie I live in Vic, and I'm a bit of an electronics tinkerer. One thing I've often wondered is why, with our high uptake of household solar, there isn't anyone marketing micro-grid DC systems between neighbours. I have chatted / emailed a few times with people in 2 levels of government and they've got little interest in it, to the degree that someone at DELWP said (and I'm paraphrasing); "what neighbours do over mutual fencelines is none of our business". The reason why I bring up DC is that a lot of household stuff can now be found at competitive prices in DC, and it's also possible to rig up AC-DC chargers to take AC or DC depending on what's available. And further; DC is less strictly regulated, in terms of installation & utilisation.
This is a bit of a ramble, but I think a sort of 'micro-grid kit' without expensive inverters could very cheaply allow the distribution of DC to neighbours of people with rooftop solar.
Maybe if there was more, smaller scale, local generation, the interconnects could be smaller, because you would only need to "top off" the supply of your neighbor, rather than importing a large percent of their consumption. I wonder how that would work in practice... if everybody only has wind and solar then it might be a pretty large area that needs an external supply. If you have small modular nuclear reactors in every town, it might be a different story.
@@jamesrowlands8971 Possibly because they're probably illegal without a lot of licencing in most countries? There is a company that makes exactly the kind of product you describe - they install in less developed countries in villages that are too small and isolated to be connected to their national grid economically. But there are already local grids in developed countries - mostly in places where a distributed energy generation makes sense like rural communities, rather than a residential block in Sydney or New York.
@@DFPercush For every 1 sq.m. surface per year accounts for 1000 kWh of solar energy in Europe, and ~2000 kWh in Southern Europe. Current technologies make it possible to convert approximately 20-25% of this amount directly into electricity and 50-80% into thermal energy. This is actually enough for the roofs to fully provide energy for 1-16-storey residential buildings. The problem now is only in the qualitative transformation, storage and distribution of thermal and electrical energy. But this is also a completely solvable problem. And the closer the energy source is to the consumer, the lower the cost of energy delivery.
Huge fields of solar panels are a temporary problem until combined systems (PV + heat and PV + agricultural) become widespread.
I had not realised my physics was so rusty, thanks for the refresh 😃
A superb video, thanks for all of the info!
It's not just politics - these connectors offer a wonderful target for an enemy. I think they are still far to attractive to give up on.
Nord-Stream for example...
how is that not politics?
Just came across your channel and instantly subscribed 🎉🎉 , btw i was doing research on different methods of energy export , and came across the idea of flow batteries. Do you think these types of batteries would be a good candidate for energy export ? Since the power and energy a separate and we could export the anolyte and catholyte (in theory ) Would love to hear your thoughts on this 😊
Well done this was my first video I've enjoyed of yours. I look forward to many more. xx
I always just assumed we needed superconductivity (at ambient temperature) to make these intercontinental interconnects a viable option. I learned something new, thanks!
We're gonna need a bigger boat
I would love to know how the inverters on either end (AC to DC... DC to AC) are done. Is it possible to do solid state at these voltages, or is it 'tubes'? What is maintenance like? What are the failure rates? Is there automatic switchover to a backup, etc. Thanks!
I'm pretty sure they use solid state, at least in the UK. I saw a documentary on their HVDC infrastructure a while back. The transistors are the size of a bus, and the whole inverter is a rather large building. I suspect that those large transistors are made up of many small ones, all connected to a single heat sink. I don't think any foundry makes silicon wafers that big lol.
Seems like a lot of work to just avoid building more nuclear power plants and more hydroelectric dams.
Neither of those technologies pay for themselves in a year though!
@@EngineeringwithRosie I don't deny that. However, electricity generation, transmissions, and distribution infrastructure is inherently long-term infrastructure. Nuclear power plants, as well as hydroelectric dams, pay for themselves over their lifetime. I like the idea of having a cheap, reliable source of zero-emissions power, as opposed to having intermittent solar and wind, backed up by natural gas.
I mean, you mentioned Hydro in Tasmania. Places like Tasmania, Quebec, British Columbia, Manitoba, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, Brazil, Washington state, and many others have plenty of gravity dams, which is perfect if you're talking about adding more wind and solar in countries, states, provinces, and territories that don't have adequate hydroelectric potential of their own.
Quick returns are important to VCs, investment funds, and banks. Those same institutions were investing in coal, oil, and gas not too long ago. They were motivated by money then, and they're motivated by the massive returns from energy arbitrage now.
When the concern is climate change, and how to marshall financial resources to build necessary generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure, I don't agree short-term profits are an important metric.
Also, to phrase it another way, long-term energy assets like nuclear power plants and hydropower plants are under *no obligation* to pay for themselves in the span of a year when they're built specifically to stay in operation for decades.
@@firefox39693 I completely agree with you.
Interesting I'm a big fan of HVDC power transmission. That being said these huge transmission lines pose another engineering challenge if dealing with failure. This is in addition to the political issues you have already mentioned. Given that undersea fiber optic cable get damaged all the time I'd like to learn more about the exciting fireworks if the power cable gets damaged by an ill placed ship's anchor and possible damage to the ship itself.
Straddling time (solar) and climatic zones (wind) sounds like a great idea since we are a long way from implementing massive electrical storage.
Wow! Exciting episode. What would a 5000 km HVDC cost to install? Surely too many of these and the OLD ME might return. (I tend to be eco-modernist, and used to think the grid had to be at least a third nuclear.) But I've got to remind myself Andrew Blakers says storage and HVDC are about 30% of the cost to get to the good stuff - the 70% of the grid costs that are about installing super-cheap, super-abundant renewables.
Also, a side benefit is it would give us a political and economic incentive to STOP BOTTOM TRAWLING THE OCEAN where those cables lay! (Man we're trashing this planet.) Great episode Rosie. Great information. The production values seem to be going up too!
So, the main barriers are capitalists and politicians, eh? 🤔
When the Morocco - UK link was first proposed, my Swedish friend thought it'd be WAY better to run the link to Spain then route the energy through the Spanish/French grids, then to the UK. France, pretty much the next day, threatened to cut power to Jersey because of a minor fishing dispute. You can never underestimate the ability of politics to mess things up that are a simple engineering problem.
@@marksherborne391The Jersey dispute was due to overnight license requirements to french fishermen without prior notice and issuing the fines immediately. Not even a heads up. That was 1000% a dick move.
Don’t take crap out of context the UK did France dirty in this case.
@@carlosandleon And threatening to cut power to Jersey wasn't a dick move? 100,000 people without power, vs (I think) 40 fishing boats inconvenienced.
In any event, bypassing France with an extremely long and expensive HVDC cable seems like a wise plan.
Perhaps we should have engineers solve more of our political problems. Vote 1 Engineer Rosie for benevolent dictator.
That's a fair description of the Communist Party of China 🤭
@@OneEyedMonkey9000 Imagine thinking the CCP was comprised of engineers lol
I have read than many of the Chinese ccp are numerate educated types, some of whom have engineering backgrounds.
Compare with typical UK type. Classical education, history, politics, Greek mythology, all very useful for the modern world!!
I always ask why are most politicians non science/engineering background?
Engineers solving political problems = Manhattan project and alike... Engineers shouldn't go anywhere near politics.
Brilliant! Thank you.
Excelente explicación sobre HVDC, greetings from 🇪🇨!!!
As we have seen with gas lines, there is also sabotage.
Or ... hear me out ... just build out nuclear power 🤷♂
Nuclear is unsustainable and economically unjustifiable.
We do that once they pay for themselves after 1-2 years
@@devluz To expect a payback time of 1-2 years for an investment that will deliver value for 60+ years is obviously ridiculous.
Fully agree, nuclear is expensive mostly because fear mongering has made planning, financing, and building it exhorbitant.
We have unlearned how to build nuclear rather than getting better at it over time. Thanks Greenpeace et al for ruining a great source if low carbon energy.
@@russelldesilva1560 I will be in favor of the first nuclear plant with insurance. right now we the tax payers take the risk for private profits.
Great explanation. Thanks. Just imagine if we could interconnect the world's energy grids with superconducting cables without line loss.
Short of a breakthrough in physics though, you still have the overhead of condensing enough nitrogen to keep the cable cool. And the construction costs are very high - superconducting materials are hard to manufacture and work.
@@vylbird8014 I said "if".
I like to learn more from you all. Thank you for sharing.
Yes, geopolitical insecurities are likely to become more and more important issues to factor into undersea HVDC. While battery storage (from pumped hydro to various cell chemistries) is seemingly more expensive, I believe the cost/kWHr storage will abruptly fall year by year in the next half decade as newer and more cost-effective stationary storage plants come on line around the globe. Furthermore, it is MUCH easier to use such storage to smooth peak-demand on grids locally.
And last but not least, the massive and enthusiastic trend for home owners to go solar and also contribute to virtual power plants has been proven in the UK to remove massive stresses from ageing and (currently - no pun intended) inadequate electrical grid structures.
B.T.W. Seriously clear explanations in this one Rosie. Thank you.
Thank you for the great explanation of subsea HVDC transmission lines. I concur with you that eventually the world will be interconnected into a super grid, but the connections will begin with smaller projects between friendly countries.
Wow great video! So informative and well spoken! 👏
My guess is Canada and the UK get along well enough that they would be all right sharing power lines.
What a great explanation with the animation.
Really great video, good job ❤
Very practical with engineering problems to solve and current costs. Thanks.
Always love your videos. Super interesting
Absolutely brilliant video!!!
thanks rosie really like the content really has matured also thanks to john bone for cowriting this episode huge shoutout to you guys providing free educational content to the public so we can learn from industry experts such as yourselves!
With how incredibly intertwined the Canadian and American energy grids are (not including Texas, friggin' Texas lol), developing HVDC connections from likely Newfoundland to Ireland or the United Kingdom, and then making sure its connected accordingly to the European Union, we can greatly tackle major energy concerns. This would only further act to intertwine NATO nations, which would honestly be a really good thing.
Wow this is fantastic. Thanks for the video!