From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Joe Public
Another 4 billion down the drain. Still it’s only money, eh!
Ofgem has today confirmed its final approval on the costs associated with delivery of Eastern Green Link 2 (EGL2), enabling construction to start on the 525kV 2GW subsea connection between Peterhead in the north-east of Scotland and Drax on the east coast of England.
The energy regulator’s final decision on the project assessment for the 500km+ high voltage direct current (HVDC) connection is the key final approval in the regulatory process and allows construction to get underway later this year, with the connection due to be operational in 2029.
At a total expected nominal investment of around £4.3bn, it is the single largest-ever investment in electricity transmission infrastructure in Great Britain and one of the most significant, strategic investments in energy infrastructure the country has seen in recent years.
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£8.6M per kilometer seems a bit spendy.
From Technical and economic demands of HVDC submarine cable technology for Global Energy Interconnection:
“It is estimated that the comprehensive cost for unit lengths of ±500 kV/2000 MW and 3000 MW DC submarine cables should be less than $2.5 million/km [i.e. £1.95M/km]”
Don’t underestimate the UK’s ability to inflate overheads with Health and Safety and myriads of other regulations.
Of course, when wind power apologists talk about how “cheap” wind power is, they deliberately exclude costs such as this cable.
$2.5 million / km works out to $63.50 per inch. This doesn’t seem to be worth doing.
It wasn’t worth it. It isn’t worth it. It never will be worth it, but the brown envelopes have been stuffed and passed under the table, promises have been made, favours cashed in, and kompromat enforced.
Ending with an invalid link that goes nowhere and not a single word anywhere about the supposed purpose of the expensive project.
https://www.ssen-transmission.co.uk/news/news–views/2024/8/go-ahead-for-uks-biggest-subsea-connection-project/
This link seems to work. The idea is move the intermittent generation from off the north coast of Scotland to where it is needed, in southern England.
This way they will not (as now) have to pay for fuel to use gas generation for the south at the same time as they pay the wind farms in the north not to generate.
Put like that, its a great investment…! Just don’t ask how we got here in the first place.
And meantime the NE of Scotland (and other places) is being industrialised with giant pylons blighting the landscape
Since the UK is small but has a large population and still has some industry- for it to be net zero, I have an image of the entire landscape blighted.
“ I have an image of the entire landscape blighted.”
So do we, Joseph.
Unhappily.
Labour have a mandate – with about 20.5% of those able to vote on July 4th 2024, actually backing The Beige Knight and his minions.
It’s the system.
So we’ll get files of these giant pylons – at 50 or 60 metres tall, crossing the countryside like a rash.
And then there will be – eventually – the bat busters. Now, the biggest Chinese ones are over 1000 feet to the top of the blade’s arc. I imagine the Amazing Miliband will go for those – as the UK is to be ‘The World-Leading Lemming’ [TM] – if not even bigger – and more expensive. And less well-tested!
I want to wake from this woke nightmare.
Auto
Bill Ferny?
https://www.ssen-transmission.co.uk/news/news–views/2024/8/go-ahead-for-uks-biggest-subsea-connection-project/
It will be similar to the Western Link HVDC project (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_HVDC_Link) that runs down the Irish sea and comes ashore at Meols on the Wirral, running underground to Deeside power station.
As the main grid between Scotland and England can’t handle the intermittant, expensive wind generated electricity when the Scots don’t need it, we get to pay even more to run cables undersea.
The cables on land were buried over 1 metre deep and the work on the Wirral caused months of problems for residents. As Drax is at least 35 miles from the east coast that’s going to be fun for the people of Yorkshire.
I recall back in my college days, seeing a poster, stating that a trench equivalent to a six-lane highway is required to bury a HV cable
From perspective of outer space a six-lane highway is…
Obviously, you’ve never seen one being constructed.
Commuted through the heart of Boston’s “Big Dig”. Hated it, but it turned out to be a good idea.
That’s about right – the easement is required for construction and any subsequent repairs. But the cable being buried over a metre deep means that normal agricultural activity can continue above it. Just like an oil or gas pipeline.
Why bury HVDC lines?. I’ve tested and mitigated interference on nearby buried pipelines when during operational upsets one of the lines instead uses earth as a conductor. Hundreds of KM above ground.
Set against a programme of cuts in spending and tax increases across the board – starting with pensioners.
Words fail me. Miliband the misanthrope has barely got started.
He’s continuing where he left off when he was turfed out of office in 2010.
I tseems to me that putting your cables on the sea-bed rather than keeping them on land leaves them vulnerable to passing “trawlers” from a certain nation. Look what happened to the Nordstream gas pipeline!
Indeed. I wonder if anyone has yet asked that question of Millipede.
So that will add to the cost- if the cables are to be protected.
Why would US bother to sabotage power cables in UK?
Wrong.
Ukraine is going to blow up those cables like it did Nordstream?
Nobody knows who did it except who did it and sometimes but not always who saw it done.
They have a very different definition of the word ‘investment’ to mine.
same investment logic as my ex wife
The lefty definition of “investment” includes the sounds of flushing toilets.
Is there an impact on sea life? Will fish be landed ready fried so it can be sent directly to the fish and chip shops?
O/T. Ouch!
The GLA has this morning released the latest housing figures which show that last quarter only 71 affordable homes were completed. Precisely 2.3% of the 3,000 Khan would have to build to meet his targets…
…
Lord Bailey has written to Rayner asking her to put the Mayor’s Office and GLA in special measures such that they can receive “tailored” (and mandatory) support…
https://order-order.com/2024/08/14/sadiq-khan-achieves-just-2-of-affordable-housebuilding-target/
Bailey’s letter can be seen at the link
Effecient land development: Hire the experienced civil engr/surveyor and get out of the way.
Inefficeint: Hire the Architect and say go ahead.
<5% efficient: Let the govt planners run the show.
Not to be mentioned when lauding “cheap’ wind power.
Not to mention maintenance and repair costs of the HVDC cable that are not even part of the estimate.
500 km? DC? Are they crazy?
Has anyone bothered to compute the line losses?
At 525kVDC, line losses shouldn’t be that bad. OTOH, it might have been cheaper to use a land based transmission line.
4.3 billion pounds would buy a lot of CCGT capacity.
And alomst a GW of steady nuclear electricity (if bought from the efficient Koreans)
It is well known that you can’t efficiently supply AC over those distances due to reactive power losses.
(They are still crazy; just not in the way you suggest.)
Its DC
“Depending on voltage level and construction details, HVDC transmission losses are quoted at 3.5% per 1,000 km”
Since 500*3.5% >100% you need to put it into a compound interest – style formula.
Estimate 0.965 ^500 = nearly nothing.
Correcting for units… I’d assumed my quote source used meter not kilometer
Estimate 0.965 ^0.5 = not much lost.
500 km is 0.5 times the losses. So that approach is 1.75%, which is not what you suggested.
Line losses are I^2 R
Voltage drop is I R
Great… now estimate current and voltage.
That was the point.
525kV 2GW
Calculates to 3.8 kA.
Unknown if the full 2 GW is available.
How they combine the turbine outputs to achieve 515 kV is not known, nor is the converter efficiency at either end identified.
What the actual cable parameters are is not known.
One source puts the cable resistance = 7.2 mOhm/km for a single link.
That puts it at 3.6 Ohm for 500 km.
Times 2 for out and back is 7.2 Ohm.
I doubt they use a copper stake in the ground at each end for the return. Risk of electrocution would be excessive.
Assuming those data are the reasonably correct, the line loss is 27.4 kV (~ 100 MW).
Over all 5% loss with 100 MW warming the ocean floor.
It the cable has lower resistance, ok, the numbers improve.
It’s excess electricity. They want high line losses.
Yes let’s spend the most public money to transport the least reliable energy and thereby signal the highest level of climate virtue signalling possible. Not to mention this will be seen in retrospect as a massive success in signalling the catastrophic decline in the political IQ of a once great nation. I remember when the climate doomsayers predicted UK would become an impoverished backwater of no significance but I though it was bad weather that was supposed to accomplish that. Now it’s clear this was what the doomsayers were going to bring about by their favoured policies.
In USA I can’t complain in the way I did 30-ish years ago because tax dollars don’t pay for anything anymore here – almost all spending is deficit spending and taxes pay the interest. Is it the same in UK?
uk join ?s the 21st century? i guess thats news. imagine that building a connection to link generation with consumption. genius!
Imagine building generation so far from consumption. Genius!
Even more, imagine building generation so far from consumption to serve a plant that sits on a coal field!
We found a conductor lover!
A lot of copper or aluminum used.
We are worried about EV charging cable thefts…
A lot of copper….
Drax power station used to burn coal – nasty CO2 – but now it burns millions of woodchips but as the trees grow again one day – nice CO2 (not counted as part of our emissions). So we have useless intermittent windmills and fraudulent wood chips combining to produce very expensive electricity. But hey, we’re saving planet!
One man’s investment or modernisation claim is in reality nothing but an expensive bodge to compensate for a fundamental engineering fiasco. It is also pointless, given Labour’s plan to build wind turbines all over the land and sea down south too. England will have too much/little wind power at the same time as Scotland most of the time.
A $5.5 billion+ cable, susceptible to all kinds of natural and human damage, to connect a tree-burner and some wind abominations? Seems very green. As in money.