Best Paths: Boosting renewable energy integration

Integrating renewable energy resources to EU grid

By 2050 the majority of Europe’s electricity will come from renewables. But bringing this electricity to consumers requires the modernisation of 300,000 km of transmission lines and cables.

Best Paths – (acronym for “BEyond State-of-the-art Technologies for rePowering Ac corridors and multi-Terminal HVDC Systems”), the largest energy project funded under FP7 – focused on the development of high-capacity transmission networks needed to meet Europe’s long-term energy goals and incorporation of renewable energy sources. The project united expert partners around five large-scale demonstration areas focused on ensuring increased network capacity and system flexibility – incorporating innovative transmission systems and industrial solutions to link offshore wind farms and improve the interconnections of the entire power grid.

The project included includes an MgB2-based power transmission line among its five constituent demonstrators. Led by Nexans and bringing together transmission operators, industry and research organizations, this demonstrator aims at validating the novel MgB2 technology for very high power transfer (gigawatt range).

The main challenges were: 

• Integrate power from renewables into Europe’s energy mix, including the development of high-capacity transmission networks.
• The development of high-voltage DC (HVDC) solutions for bulk power transmission over long distances.
   

Nexans solution: a 320 kV DC superconducting loop

Nexans designed and built a 320 kV DC superconducting loop including a single 30 m cable carrying a current of 10 kA for a rated power transmission capacity of 3.2 GW.

It also included a complete sequence of voltage testing at 1.85× the rated voltage (up to 592 kV) and impulse tests. The project culminated in the first-ever qualification on a test platform of a full-scale 320 kV HVDC superconducting loop.

World first: Highest power transmission.