BEST PATHS publications: reports, deliverables and press releases

Close to thirty documents make up the published record of BEST PATHS, from the kick-off press release of April 2015 to a set of slides shown to a European standards group in November 2018. They fall into three groups: technical deliverables from the five demonstrations, the Europe-wide assessment reports that scaled those results up, and the material written for events and the press. The list below runs newest first, with the date each item was published; undated items are grouped at the end.

2018

• 6 November 2018. Dissemination workshop organised by Demo 2 for CENELEC TC8X/WG 06. Slides from a joint workshop with the European working group on system aspects of HVDC grids, presenting four years of results on multivendor interoperability in VSC systems, with recommendations for the standards body.
• 15 October 2018. White paper: advancing superconducting links for very high power transmission. An assessment of a new 3-gigawatt-class superconducting cable, covering its technical design, electrical insulation and grid connection, its environmental benefits and the obstacles to using it, with recommendations for industry and policymakers.
• 20 September 2018. Project recommendations. How the project’s experience could be repeated and how to remove the barriers to deploying the technologies it developed.
• 20 September 2018. Press release: “No time to lose: equipping the future electricity grid”. Issued on the day of the final conference in Brussels, organised by Greenovate! Europe and attended by around 120 experts.
• 5 July 2018. Press release: new superconducting cable sets records for power transmission. Results of Demo 5 presented in La Spezia by cable and wire makers including Nexans and Columbus Superconductors, with the operators Terna and RTE. An Italian-language version was released the same day.
• 6 June 2018. Press release: pioneering methodology found to solve interoperability issues in DC transmission technology. RTE’s announcement of its tests on AC/DC converters from different manufacturers.
• 9 May 2018. Press release: power grid interconnecting Sardinia, Corsica and Italy is laboratory for beyond state-of-the-art technologies. The Demo 3 workshop at Codrongianos on HVDC components.
• 9 April 2018. Simulation toolbox, Demo 1. The MATLAB/Simulink toolbox for connecting offshore wind farms through multi-terminal DC networks: the building blocks of each electrical component and their initialisation scripts, distributed on condition that the models were not passed on or used commercially.
• 6 April 2018. Press release: novel technologies to repower extra-high voltage electricity lines unveiled in Budapest. The Demo 4 results on repowering existing high-voltage lines.

2017

• 24 November 2017. Report from the third dissemination event, Madrid. Report and presentations from “Innovating grid technologies for sustainable energy”, held on 22 November 2017.
• 23 November 2017. Press release: Best Paths discusses the future of the European energy grid. The Madrid workshop, the third annual dissemination event, organised by Red Eléctrica de España and Iberdrola.
• 27 July 2017. D3.2, results and conclusions from simulations and studies in Demo 1. Summary of how offshore wind farms connected by VSC-based HVDC links operate and respond to control.
• 22 June 2017. Demo 1 converter models evaluated against vendor models in Demo 2. A comparison of the open modular multilevel converter model built by academic partners with three “black box” models supplied by HVDC manufacturers.
• 12 May 2017. Press release: special stakeholder workshop on HVDC links in offshore wind farms. Issued after the first special workshop, held in Trondheim.
• 28 April 2017. D8.1, offshore integration demonstrator. Description of the laboratory-scale replica of an offshore wind farm connected to a multi-terminal HVDC system, built to find interoperability issues.
• 10 February 2017. Simulation toolbox, Demo 1: user manual. How to use the toolbox and build new systems from its components.

2016

• 27 October 2016. Report from the second dissemination event, Berlin. “Upgrading Europe’s grid to new high-capacity technologies”, held on 26 October 2016 at the Amano Grand Central Hotel, with the presentations.
• 25 October 2016. D4.3, first recommendations to enhance interoperability in HVDC-VSC multivendor schemes. Advice for standardisation bodies, system operators, vendors and researchers.
• 22 January 2016. D2.1, data set, KPIs, tools and methodologies for impact assessment. From Work Package 2 on barriers, indicators and assessment methods.

2015

• 16 November 2015. Press release: innovative network technologies and the future of Europe’s electricity. Issued after the first dissemination workshop on 5 November 2015.
• 6 November 2015. Report from the first dissemination event, Paris. “Innovative Network Technologies and the Future of Europe’s Electricity Grid”, 5 November 2015, with the presentations.
• 6 November 2015. Demo posters. One poster for each of the five demonstrations.
• 1 April 2015. Project brochure.
• 1 April 2015. Press release: Best Paths kick-off. The announcement of the project’s launch in October 2014.

Undated items

These items carried no publication date. Most come from the Europe-wide assessment that scaled the demonstration results up; the last two belong to Demo 2 and Demo 5:

• KPI (levels 1 and 2) assessment and conclusion. The method for calculating the project’s first- and second-level key performance indicators, and the results.
• Cost-benefit assessment. The costs and benefits of the project’s technologies scaled up and deployed across Europe, seen from the point of view of European society, in a qualitative and a quantitative part.
• Identified barriers for replicability. What could stop the technologies being repeated in the near future.
• Definition and building of the Best Paths scenario. The methods used in Work Package 13, “Integrated global assessment for future replication in EU27”, to model European scenarios for judging the technologies’ benefits.
• Technical and economical scaling rules for the implementation of demo results. The performance limits of each technology applied on a pan-European scale; the report states that finding a cost-optimal solution was not its aim.
• Final recommendations for interoperability of multiterminal multivendor HVDC networks. The principal findings of Demo 2, issued at the end of the project.
• Demo 5 flyer. A short description of the prototype superconducting cable built by ten partners to show that superconducting HVDC links are technically mature.

For what each demonstration did, see the five demonstration pages; the project overview gives the funding and timeline.