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The European Super Grid: A Gap between Theory and Practice
In January 2007, the European Commission announced its “Renewable Energy Road Map – Renewable energies in the 21st century: building a more sustainable future”, setting the goal of generating 20 % of the EU energy needs from renewables.
Member states – some with more enthusiasm than others – endorsed the task, hoping for a positive mention in the Commission progress reports. Often heavily subsidised, sets of wind turbines were constructed and roofs were covered with solar panels. The electric power generation of hydropower plants and biomass-fired cogeneration plants is also promising. Wave and tidal energy are about to be commercialised.
A pioneer country like Denmark prides itself on putting 25.000 people to work in its wind industry, which has produced over 5.000 wind turbines for the domestic market only. Studies bombard their readers with the dazzling amount of megawatt that can potentially be produced by the different inexhaustible sources of energy.
However, if Europe really wants to switch over to green power, the whole electricity grid needs to be adapted and preferably organised on a larger scale. If not, power will be generated, but not ready for use. The current transmission networks are not capable of transmitting electricity from offshore sets of wind turbines to cities on the continent. The electricity grid is not prepared for a very unstable supply, depending on the whims of the wind. A serious difficulty related to electricity remains the difficulty to store it. Therefore, smart grids, which by means of weather forecasts are able to cope with peaks and troughs in electricity generation, are necessary to keep supply and demand in balance to deliver electricity 24/7. All the links of the network should be in permanent communication with each other.
The ideal picture would include smart electricity meters that could turn on the refrigerator or the dishwasher whenever energy abounds (for example because of abundant sunshine), and is therefore cheap. As opposed to the classical top-down grid, the decentralised grid receives energy from different sources like solar panels and hydropower plants. Surplus electricity could also be extracted from electric cars. This way of meeting energy needs is miles apart from the current inflexible and static system, in which nuclear energy usually delivers the base load to avoid supply interruptions. The disadvantage of atomic power stations is that they cannot be brought into action in a flexible way: it would be too expensive to switch them on and off. Therefore, nowadays, sets of wind turbines are halted as soon as there is an oversupply of electricity, while polluting coal power stations need to keep on running. Such policy would not be very energy-conscious.
Only when every member state has managed to develop its national smart grid, we can start thinking about a European super grid, connecting offshore sets of wind turbines in Northern Europe with solar power parks in Southern Europe and North Africa, an idea of the Friends of the Supergrid. To put it mildly, the adaptations to the current high-tension networks will be substantial. Current distributors will have to develop a cross-border pattern of thought. HVDC (High Voltage Direct Current) transmission networks and distribution generators need to be linked up and new software will have to be installed. All this involves staggering costs. The Desertec project alone, which will put up numerous mirrors in the North African desert, costs around 400 billion euros and requires an unprecedented interregional cooperation between Europe, North Africa and the Arab world. Expectations are that the electricity invoices of the consumers will soon face an upward trend.
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