Comment by Gravityloss
2 days ago
There's at least one HVDC cable connected to Netherlands, Norned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NorNed .
As probably everyone knows, Netherlands is very flat and Norway very mountaneous. Norways is also very rainy. So it's a match made in heaven - Norway's mountain reservoirs can act as balancers for dutch wind power.
>Budgeted at €550 million, and completed at a cost of €600m
Amazing.
That's pretty good! Just a 10% overrun. By comparison, Hinkley Point C is now at "up to" £46bn from an initial £18bn. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68073279
It's good in its adherence to the budget (almost) and maybe its absolute price: €600M for 700MW is €0.86 per watt. That might sound terrible when compared to current mainstream solar panel wholesale prices of €0.11/Wp, but solar plants in the Netherlands have a capacity factor of only about 10% IIRC, so that is €1.10 per average watt, not counting balance of plant, permitting, etc. The cable may not run at a 100% capacity factor but it'll probably be over 50%.
Still, if module prices continue falling, even at poor capacity factors lime 10%, it'll be increasingly hard to justify paying such high prices to move energy around the continent; local overprovisioning and storage will be cheaper even if Norway is willing to produce the energy for free.
Which is a fair comparison because 700MW is a smallish nuclear reactor and that cable should last a long time.
And to Denmark:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBRAcable
While Denmark in term essentially is a trading hub for electricity between Scandinavia, the UK and continental Europe.
Thank you for the correction! That one is immune to quadcopters too.
Thank you for the correction! It's also immune to quadcopters.