Work Begins On New Substation For World’s Longest Electricity Cable Between Denmark and Lincolnshire
The title of this post, is the same as that, of this article on Lincolnshire Live.
This is the sub-title.
Britain and Denmark will be able to share enough clean energy to power 1.5 million homes.
The Viking Link is a 1400 MW at 525 KV electricity interconnector between Bicker Fen in Lincolnshire and Revsing in Jutland, Denmark.
This Google Map, shows the location of Bicker Fen, about halfway between Boston and Sleaford.
This second map shows an enlarged view of the Bicker Fen area.
Note.
- The village of Bicker in the South-East corner of the map.
- In the North-West corner of the map is Bicker Fen Wind Farm.
This third map shows the wind farm.
Note the thirteen wind turbines between the two sub-stations full of wo electrical gubbins.
This sentence from the Wikipedia entry for Bicker, gives more details of the wind farm and the future plans for the area.
North of the main line of 400 kV pylons is the Bicker Fen windfarm consisting of 13 turbines producing 26 MW (2 MW each), enough for 14,000 homes. The construction of the windfarm met some local objection. The windmills sit north from Poplartree Farm and were built in June 2008 by Wind Prospect for EdF. They are of the type REpower MM82, made in Hamburg. Bicker Fen substation is also the proposed landing site for a 1,400 MW power cable from Denmark called Viking Link, as well as the proposed offshore wind farm Triton Knoll.
Triton Knoll is a big wind farm, with a planned capacity of 857 MW and should start producing electricity in the next couple of years.
Conclusion
The Viking Link and Triton Knoll are obviously a good fit, as the UK will be able to exchange energy as required.
But it would appear that there’s one thing missing from this setup – energy storage.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see a large battery built at Bicker Fen. Something, like one of Highview Power‘s CRYOBatteries might be ideal.
The Anonymous Widower 
Last night IFA1 (original French I/C) was off line resulting in 2GW deficit. As this is usual in max import mode result 2.9GW of Coal was bought on line for the evening peak.
This is the problem with these interconnectors is that NG need to have enough back up capacity just in case. On this occasion it looks like it was planned downtime or forecasted but a sudden loss of this level of power needs very rapid response as there is limited inertia in the systems now when wind and solar are dominant generation to support frequency. Batteries and the Gravitycity solution would be ideal for this situation.
Comment by Nicholas Lewis | December 3, 2020 |
Situations as you outline, is why I would like Highview or other systems to be built at important nodes in the electricity network.
My limited knowledge of process engineering, indicates, that once Highview prove the system works, that systems up to a GWh are surely possible. They just add more insulated tanks for the liquified air. All of the gubbins, except the control computers, they use have been around for a couple of centuries.
The most environmentally-unfriendly substance, they use is probably lubricating oil.
The other big contender is Siemens Ganesa’s hot rock system, which can even reuse old steam turbines and their associated generators.
Gravitricity will help, but it is a tiddler compared to Highview and Siemens.
Comment by AnonW | December 3, 2020 |