“Three of Britain’s biggest energy companies have agreed to build giant underwater power cables to bring Scotland’s vast reserves of renewable energy to millions of homes in England.
“The multibillion-pound energy “superhighway”, to be built by Scottish Power, National Grid and SSE, could help to unlock the potential of the prime minister’s plan to build enough offshore wind farms to power every home in the country by 2030.
“The so-called Eastern Link will run from two separate points in Scotland – Peterhead and Torness – for more than 270 miles along the east coast of Scotland to Selby and Hawthorn Point in the north of England.”

It turns out Scotland is windy.

“The 2GW power project will use some of the longest subsea high-voltage power cables in the world to transmit enough clean electricity from Scotland’s wind farms to keep the lights on in around 4.5m homes in England.
“It will also have the potential to double in size to 4GW as Britain’s North Sea energy boom gains pace in the years ahead. The east coast of Scotland is already home to almost 1GW of offshore wind farms and hosts a pipeline of projects totalling 4.4GW. After the next leasing round for offshore wind licence areas there could be up to 10GW in Scottish waters in the coming years.”

So 2GW is 4.5 million homes, which means 4GW is 9 million homes.

I wonder how they define “homes”? How many people per home? Maybe it’s some kind of average? Two thirds of UK homes have 1 or 2 people in them, and there’s a total of around 28 million homes in all.

All in all, on the right track though. I wonder how previous projects of this type are doing?

“The new power cable project for the eastern coast of the country, follows the troubled £1.3bn Western Link project – developed by Scottish Power and National Grid – which is under investigation by the industry regulator for failing to start up on time, and continuing to experience problems.”

Fingers crossed, eh?

[Photo: Billy H.C. Kwok and Bloomberg]