😍😍😍

While this is good news it’s also not really the priority. Finland and Spain and Greece and Scotland aren’t even properly connected to each other yet. Grid connections *within* continents need to first be upgraded properly And then Morocco and Spain connections. And only *then* this. Still good

Once I was asked about viability of such a cable. Take Viking Link, 765 km of 1,400 MW capacity from Britain to Denmark, cost = £2.22B. To reach Nova Scotia, scaling up gives = £9.2B. And that’s before factoring in added complexity. I am betting on a more decentralized grid.

Pretty tough to build 1400mw of 100% renewable capacity for 9.2B especially at full CF

Even worse. Adding complexity, we came up with a multiple of 1.5 to 2 while excluding risk of potential Russian warfare against subsea cables. For that price tag, better to simply add batteries at scale.

Batteries require gen. Batteries are just temporal transmission. So if you have an energy issue batteries don't help much. I'm not saying it's a slam dunk, but I bet you the economics could be close

Last thought, we will need to treat the full loss of the HVDC link as a P1 and include it in all steady-state and dynamic contingency cases. Costly.

if you have a large nuke, that HVDC link might not be your biggest contingency.

It's all about where it lends. But for an operator in the Northeast, when that 4,200 km link trips at 2 a.m. in January, who’s taking the phone call and how is he/she redispatching in 30 seconds? To be frank, no system operators is betting on such cables... pipe dream.

i would argue whats the difference there vs Manitoba? we are entirely reliant on HVDC to transmit virtually all of our energy to our load. that overseas cable would be significantly lower as a total percentage of supply. again, if a 1.5GW nuke trips at 2 am. whos taking the phonecall to re-dispatch?

Only taking about inter-continental connection. If failures occur, the re-dispacthing is assumed by the receiver. So, we will need an equivalent reserve. + Repair time following a failure >weeks, so outages will be long and expensive; making sure contracts allocate real cost and schedule risk.

see my above. explain to me how 1.5GW of HVDC drop is any different then 1.5GW of nuke drop.

Agreed. But with an energy deficit in the Northeast, all attention is given on adding gen with limited or no emphasis or ability to add cross borders transmission capacity. As for this long HVDC cable from UK to Nova Scotia, lost will be on the order of 14–24% of the energy sent.

im just thinking that China is doing similar distances overland with its UHV system. also consider people are talking about trying space based solar with wireless transmission. so i mean, is that any less complicated or potentially costly?

Agreed. China has its State Grid Corporation with a LTP on building a national in UHV transmission + renewable energy. Us, we quarrel about any addition of transmission. We lack a vision + direction + financing.

@laurentsegalen.bsky.social is a moving force in this project, and he seems convinced of the economics. Factors I recall off the top of my head are the different timezones creating constant shifting demand and the seasonal and weather intermittencies being asynchronous across such a distance.

oh that part is easy, its the "does the complexity and cost outweigh the per unit energy cost"

Obviously yes, Laurent has a long history of successfully bankrolling energy projects and that's his calculation - it clearly does. Perhaps initial or subsequent survey work will cause a rethink, but he seems quite certain for now.

VL is mostly in the low 10s of metres and can be buried. We'd be looking at 3-4 thousand in the NA.

Also, a lot of the cost of Viking Link or other cables is in: the two landfalls, two HVDC converter stations, two grid connections and associated permits and consultations. Transatlantic would be much more cable but it still only has two ends, so maybe cost doesn't scale up linear with distance?

Oh sure thats fair its not simply x the distance. And equally to be fair the north sea has complexity on multi nation EEZs, other cables and oh bomb dumps.

Long time ago, I worked on a sub-sea merchant transmission cable in NY. The complexity was oyster farmers.

Now the sun never sets in the US. Unlimited solar. Poor drill drill drill guys.

This is brilliant, it’s always sunny somewhere!

US already exports lots of energy to GB/EU in the form of LNG for power gens and heat and oil for IC vehicles. Would this cable displace some of that shipping, gas power stations move to north America, electrons shipped to Europe to run electric cars and heatpumps?

Spatial arbitrage over long enough distances is pretty much temporal arbitrage. Neat.

The other place is the battery

right!

I was taught active listening

Trying to picture how big that cable is gonna have to be.