Offshore Power Transmission Concept
The UK faces a growing challenge. How do we satisfy the increasing need to generate and distribute electricity efficiently around the UK, with expensive and dwindling oil and gas resources as well as rising carbon emissions?
While the UK’s renewable energy resources offer a significant part of the solution, we need to be able to transmit that power to wherever it is needed. Many potential ‘green’ energy sites are in the northern parts of the UK yet the greatest demand comes from the population-dense south. Connecting the supply to the demand is a challenge which is yet to be fully resolved.
The main obstacle is the electrical distribution infrastructure of the UK. The current national grid is not sufficiently adequate to transmit electricity from the often remote areas where renewable electricity is generated.
The Offshore Solution
The Crown Estate believes one solution to this electricity distribution problem may lie in a new offshore high-capacity transmission system. This could consist of a series of High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) cables and sub-stations connecting sources of generation with demand up and down the east coast of the UK. To test our idea, we are carrying out some detailed studies. These will assess the technical and commercial feasibility of an east-coast transmission route. We then plan to seek development partners and commission further research. The results from our preliminary studies should be available by spring 2007 and we would aim to seek project partners sometime in 2008.
Completing such an ambitious scheme would take several years and is likely to cost several billions of pounds. But by looking at the problem now, we have a chance of delivering a system to match the UK’s changing energy needs over the next 20 years.
Further Information
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