BEST PATHS videos: the project film and its five demonstrations

Six films made up the project’s video series. The first, released as the project’s main video, set out its purpose: developing and deploying technologies that would let far more offshore and onshore wind power into the European electricity system by 2020 and beyond, and how a multi-disciplinary team of experts would go about it.

Five shorter films introduced the demonstrations one by one, and in September 2017 the project presented them together as its demonstrations “explained in 3 minutes”:

• Demo 1, “Offshore wind integration”. The subject: connecting large offshore wind farms through HVDC links. The written account is on the offshore wind demonstration page.
• Demo 2, “Multivendor interoperability”. The subject: HVDC converters from different manufacturers working on one DC system (Demo 2).
• Demo 3, “Upgrading multiterminal HVDC links”. The subject: new components for the SACOI link between Sardinia, Corsica and mainland Italy (Demo 3).
• Demo 4, “Innovative repowering of AC corridors”. The subject: more capacity from existing overhead lines (Demo 4).
• Demo 5, “Superconducting links”. The subject: a magnesium diboride cable for 3.2 GW in direct current (Demo 5).

Between them the five films track the project’s three strands: HVDC grids in place of single lines, more capacity from the AC and DC assets already built, and superconducting DC links inside a meshed AC network. The set went out together on 5 September 2017, a year before BEST PATHS closed.