Europe forms supergrid alliance

Northern European Supergrid

An organisation has been set up to drive forward European policy towards the construction of a supergrid that will help the continents green energy revolution.

Friends of the Supergrid is made up of ten European companies from the sectors that will deliver the high voltage direct current (HVDC) infrastructure and related technology, and sectors that will develop, install, own and operate that infrastructure.

A pan-European electricity grid will be essential to fully harnessing all the new sources of renewable energy EU members plan to develop in an effort to meet its target of cutting carbons emissions by 30 percent by the year 2020.

The newly formed organisation will primarily focus on developing an offshore supergrid that will allow us to harness the full potential of northern Europe's offshore wind power. Friends of the Supergrid says the offshore supergrid is not an extension of existing or planned point-to-point HVDC interconnectors between particular states. "Even the aggregation of these schemes will not provide the network that will be needed to carry marine renewable power generated in our Northern seas to the load centres of central Europe," the organisation adds.

Open trade of electricity

The HVDC technology will be used "supernodes" to collect, integrate and route electricity to energy markets.

Mainstream Renewable Power's Chief Executive Dr Eddie O'Connor, says: "The UK Government has recently shown its commitment to large-scale offshore wind by announcing the development of up to 50GW by 2020.

"We now need to integrate this huge resource into Europe to enable the open trade of electricity between Member States."

At the end of last year nine countries signed up to the North Seas Countries Offshore Grid Initiative which aims to connect green energy projects around the North Sea region. With the network of cables, electricity will eventually be transmitted across the continent from wherever the wind is blowing, the sun is shining or the waves are crashing.

Membership will be kept to a maximum of 20 companies representing an industrial and geographic cross section. The base will be in Brussels.

So far the members are:

* 3E (company specialising in renewable energy and energy efficiency)
* AREVA T&D (provider of low-carbon power generation and electricity transmission)
* DME Blue Energy (a hydraulic engineering, dredging and offshore contractor)
* Elia (Belgian transmission system operator)
* Hochtief Construction AG (construction company)
* Mainstream Renewable Power (developer and operator of renewable energy plants)
* Parsons Brinckerhoff (energy and infrastructure project developer)
* Prysmian Cables & Systems (provider of high-technology cables and systems for energy and telecommunication)
* Siemens UK (engineering and technology company)
* Visser & Smit Marine Contracting (maritime contracting entity)

Image: Friends of the Supergrid

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Daniel Jones

Daniel is a Politics and Philosophy graduate from Cardiff University where he also worked as a section editor on the award winning student newspaper. After university he joined an IT support company where he was a B2B online writer. He loves anything to do with sport and joined GDS in July 2009.

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