Willi Balz, CEO of Windreich AG welcomed the signing of the agreement between TenneT TSO, Stattnet and KfW on a submarine cable between Norway and Germany.
He said that this is an important first step towards establishing a genuine European interconnection network. Thus, the integration of efficient base load generation from wind power in the North Sea and the cost efficiency of the entire system can be further improved.
By using modern direct current technology with a transmission capacity of 1,400MW the transmission losses on the planned route of 600 km are expected to be limited below 4%.
The potential for renewable energy in Scandinavia and the North Sea complement each other perfectly. The rather weak water and cold Scandinavian winters are compensated by high North Sea wind strengths in the same months. For Windreich’s North Sea projects Global Tech I, MEG 1, German Bight and other projects in the planning and development, this means that they can always produce at the highest level and can supply without worrying that in some situations a part of the CO2-free production will not actually arrive to consumers because of potential network restrictions.
[mappress]
Offshore WIND Staff, December 5, 2012; Image: Windreich