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The UK has approved five new electricity interconnector cables to Ireland and continental Europe, costing a total of about £7bn, to increase the flexibility of the grid in an age of increasing renewable power.
Ofgem, the energy regulator, said the projects, which will increase individual electricity bills by between £2 and £5 a year from 2030 to 2055, will boost the North Sea wind industry and power millions of homes.
Two of the five projects will connect the UK directly to wind farms in Belgium and the Netherlands.
The other three run between England and Germany, Wales and Ireland, and Scotland and Northern Ireland. The projects, which have a combined capacity of just over 6GW are expected to all be operational by 2032, taking total interconnector capacity to 18GW, according to Ofgem.
Connecting electricity infrastructure across Europe makes it easier to keep grids balanced despite the intermittency of renewable energy generation. The new cables will help the UK to export excess electricity on windy days, or to import electricity when renewable generation falls.
Currently the UK has nine operational cables and two more under construction. In the second quarter of this year, 13 per cent of the UK’s electricity was imported through interconnectors, according to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.
“It is a good thing that the UK is building them rapidly because we need them to keep the lights on,” said Dieter Helm, an energy markets expert at Oxford university. He said the UK’s energy plans to 2030 envisage about 20 per cent to 25 per cent of demand being met through interconnectors and “active demand management, which I call voluntary power cuts”.
But he added that the UK sits outside the EU’s internal energy market, which creates added bureaucracy for the use of interconnectors, and that it was not clear how force majeure events would play out. “If there is a problem, will EU countries continue to send their electricity to the UK or reserve it for their domestic market?” he asked.
The UK imported a record 12.1TWh of electricity in the quarter, a rise of 31 per cent year on year, but also exported 2.9TWh, a 75 per cent annual increase. Ofgem predicted that by the 2030s, as more UK wind generation comes online, the UK will swing to being a net exporter of power.
“As we shift to a clean power system more reliant on intermittent wind and solar energy, these new connections will help harness the vast potential of the North Sea,” said Akshay Kaul, head of infrastructure at Ofgem.
He added that the infrastructure would play a key role in making the UK’s energy supply “cheaper and less reliant on volatile foreign gas markets and associated price spikes”.
The projects approved by Ofgem include the £2.4bn Tarchon line to Germany, the €860mn MaresConnect project and the £700mn LirlC project, as well as the two lines to Dutch and Belgian wind farms being built by National Grid.
Ofgem said it typically took six to 10 years for interconnectors to go from planning to operation, with construction taking three to five years. Some recent projects have been delayed, however, because of the high demand for cables and other infrastructure.
The UK has put in place a cap and floor mechanism, providing developers with a minimum return for their projects and a limit on the potential upside over a 25-year period.