Ambitious Icelandic wind project aims to export power to UK grid
Ambitious Icelandic wind project aims to export power to UK grid
Uncorrelated output from North Atlantic would diversify UK’s existing wind generation profile, but the project is a step-up in industry ambition
The UK could start importing vast volumes of offshore wind power from Iceland via dedicated long-distance subsea cables, just in time to replace the last retiring coal-fired power stations. That’s the vision of Anglo-American joint venture wind developer Hecate Independent Power, which has unveiled a highly ambitious plan for 10 GW of fixed and floating wind turbines in the Icelandic portion of the North Atlantic.
The HIP Atlantic Project would utilise long-length, high-capacity, high-voltage direct current (HVDC) submarine power transmission cables. These would be manufactured at a £200 million bespoke power cable plant to be built at a port in the north-east of England.
HIP has lodged four connection applications with National Grid for an initial 4,000 MW of grid connections to the UK’s 400 kV electricity transmission system across four connection sites.
Each wind farm – or “pod” – will consist of 1 GW of wind capacity, located in a different North Atlant…