Best Paths discusses the future of the European energy grid

Nearly eighty people filled the room in Madrid on 22 November 2017 for “Innovating grid technologies for sustainable energy”, a workshop hosted by Red Eléctrica de España and Iberdrola within BEST PATHS. The project was the largest FP7 research project the European Commission had ever financed in the energy sector, and its consortium brought together transmission grid operators, energy companies, research centres and universities.

As more countries came to rely on renewables, BEST PATHS set out to address the next steps the grid would have to take in response. Its work covered the connection of offshore wind power to the electricity grid, new materials and technologies for ultra high capacity cables, and the upgrading and refurbishment of existing transmission lines, in alternating current, direct current and high voltage direct current (HVDC) applications.

Vicente González López of Red Eléctrica de España, the project coordinator, told the workshop: “The whole European power sector is under great pressure to keep its traditional technological leadership and system competitiveness. Innovation is one of the key answers to the challenge of the energy transition and to face the competition from outside the European Union. But synergy among Member States and companies is critical. The individual demonstrations composing the Best Paths project are running in parallel, and show a great deal of cooperation among different, in some cases competing, players.”

What the five demonstrations reported

The leaders of the five demonstrations gave detailed presentations on what had been achieved in the previous year, and a panel of international experts then took questions from the audience. Many of the results were close to their final stage, since the project was due to finish in September 2018. The results highlighted in Madrid were:

• a real-life simulation of offshore wind energy connected to HVDC grids (Demonstration 1);
• tests of the interoperability of HVDC converters supplied by different manufacturers (Demonstration 2);
• new converters, cables and overhead line components for HVDC interconnectors, aimed at upgrading the Sardinia–Corsica–Italy link (Demonstration 3);
• repowering of AC transmission lines, better live-line maintenance and a dynamic line rating system built on low-cost sensors (Demonstration 4);
• the development and testing of a superconducting cable with ultra high capacity (Demonstration 5).

The presentations and the agenda of the day were published by the project after the workshop. Greenovate! Europe acted as its dissemination partner.

The Sardinia–Corsica–Italy link named in the third item is SACOI, a 200 kV line first commissioned in 1967; its replacement, SACOI 3, is under construction with a planned capacity of 400 MW, as the SACOI 3 page sets out.