Comment by blibble
3 years ago
> Surely HVDC links between Scotland and England could be built?
why would this be necessary when the entirety of Great Britain is one synchronous grid?
3 years ago
> Surely HVDC links between Scotland and England could be built?
why would this be necessary when the entirety of Great Britain is one synchronous grid?
Strangely there already is one between Scotland and Wales and two more are proposed (see the article).
I suspect NIMBYism is a big part of the explanation. Airborne AC links are efficient but ugly. Underwater AC links are tolerated by Nimbies, but inefficient. So you end up with underwater HVDC links.
You are absolutely right. Building pylons through much of England means dealing with highly organized NIMBYism - from people who care a lot about their local 'environment' but very little about catastrophic floods or fires in other countries, and highly opportunistic landowners who can name their price for use of their land.
HVDC links are more efficient than terrestrial AC transmission lines over long distances.
Also a lot more expensive. The UK is not big enough for it to make technical sense.
4 replies →
DC links are usually built to better control frequency in grids.
They are expensive things, and typically not something left to popular vote.
> "why would this be necessary when the entirety of Great Britain is one synchronous grid?"
Because there are bottlenecks in capacity on the synchronous grid that restrict the amount of power that can be moved from north-to-south (or vice-versa).
It works out better/cheaper/easier to bypass those bottlenecks with efficient undersea HVDC links than to try and build more terrestrial AC transmission lines.