IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v61y2013icp292-300.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The limits of HVDC transmission

Author

Listed:
  • Pickard, William F.

Abstract

Renewable energy is abundant, but not necessarily near the urban centers where it will be used. Therefore, it must be transported; and this transport entails a systemic energy penalty. In this paper simple qualitative calculations are introduced to show (i) that high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) power lines for megameter and greater distances are unlikely to achieve power capacities much beyond 2GW, although they can be paralleled; (ii) that most sources and sinks of electric power are rather less than 10,000km apart; (iii) that such long lines can be constructed to have transmission losses<˜2%; and (iv) that lines of such low loss in fact meet minimal standards of intergenerational equity.

Suggested Citation

  • Pickard, William F., 2013. "The limits of HVDC transmission," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 292-300.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:61:y:2013:i:c:p:292-300
    DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2013.03.030
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421513001845
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.enpol.2013.03.030?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Delucchi, Mark A. & Jacobson, Mark Z., 2011. "Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part II: Reliability, system and transmission costs, and policies," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 1170-1190, March.
    2. Trieb, Franz & Schillings, Christoph & Pregger, Thomas & O'Sullivan, Marlene, 2012. "Solar electricity imports from the Middle East and North Africa to Europe," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 341-353.
    3. Van Hertem, Dirk & Ghandhari, Mehrdad, 2010. "Multi-terminal VSC HVDC for the European supergrid: Obstacles," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 14(9), pages 3156-3163, December.
    4. Weigt, Hannes & Jeske, Till & Leuthold, Florian & von Hirschhausen, Christian, 2010. ""Take the long way down": Integration of large-scale North Sea wind using HVDC transmission," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(7), pages 3164-3173, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Thomas, Heiko & Marian, Adela & Chervyakov, Alexander & Stückrad, Stefan & Salmieri, Delia & Rubbia, Carlo, 2016. "Superconducting transmission lines – Sustainable electric energy transfer with higher public acceptance?," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 59-72.
    2. Kalair, A. & Abas, N. & Khan, N., 2016. "Comparative study of HVAC and HVDC transmission systems," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 1653-1675.
    3. Arcia-Garibaldi, Guadalupe & Cruz-Romero, Pedro & Gómez-Expósito, Antonio, 2018. "Future power transmission: Visions, technologies and challenges," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 285-301.
    4. Pickard, William F., 2013. "Transporting the terajoules: Efficient energy distribution in a post-carbon world," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 51-61.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Eskandari Torbaghan, Mehran & Burrow, Michael P.N. & Hunt, Dexter V.L. & Elcheikh, Marwa, 2017. "Risk-Based Framework (RBF) for a UK Pan-European Supergrid," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 124-132.
    2. van den Broek, Machteld & Berghout, Niels & Rubin, Edward S., 2015. "The potential of renewables versus natural gas with CO2 capture and storage for power generation under CO2 constraints," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 1296-1322.
    3. Arcia-Garibaldi, Guadalupe & Cruz-Romero, Pedro & Gómez-Expósito, Antonio, 2018. "Future power transmission: Visions, technologies and challenges," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 285-301.
    4. Chatzivasileiadis, Spyros & Ernst, Damien & Andersson, Göran, 2013. "The Global Grid," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 372-383.
    5. Najafi, G. & Ghobadian, B. & Mamat, R. & Yusaf, T. & Azmi, W.H., 2015. "Solar energy in Iran: Current state and outlook," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 931-942.
    6. Pierri, Erika & Binder, Ole & Hemdan, Nasser G.A. & Kurrat, Michael, 2017. "Challenges and opportunities for a European HVDC grid," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 427-456.
    7. Grossmann, Wolf D. & Grossmann, Iris & Steininger, Karl W., 2014. "Solar electricity generation across large geographic areas, Part II: A Pan-American energy system based on solar," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 983-993.
    8. Fei Guo & Bas J. Ruijven & Behnam Zakeri & Shining Zhang & Xing Chen & Changyi Liu & Fang Yang & Volker Krey & Keywan Riahi & Han Huang & Yuanbing Zhou, 2022. "Implications of intercontinental renewable electricity trade for energy systems and emissions," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 7(12), pages 1144-1156, December.
    9. Brancucci Martínez-Anido, C. & Vandenbergh, M. & de Vries, L. & Alecu, C. & Purvins, A. & Fulli, G. & Huld, T., 2013. "Medium-term demand for European cross-border electricity transmission capacity," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 207-222.
    10. Paula Díaz & Oscar Van Vliet & Anthony Patt, 2017. "Do We Need Gas as a Bridging Fuel? A Case Study of the Electricity System of Switzerland," Energies, MDPI, vol. 10(7), pages 1-15, June.
    11. Grossmann, Wolf D. & Grossmann, Iris & Steininger, Karl W., 2013. "Distributed solar electricity generation across large geographic areas, Part I: A method to optimize site selection, generation and storage," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 831-843.
    12. Hernandez, R.R. & Easter, S.B. & Murphy-Mariscal, M.L. & Maestre, F.T. & Tavassoli, M. & Allen, E.B. & Barrows, C.W. & Belnap, J. & Ochoa-Hueso, R. & Ravi, S. & Allen, M.F., 2014. "Environmental impacts of utility-scale solar energy," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 766-779.
    13. Kubik, M.L. & Coker, P.J. & Hunt, C., 2012. "The role of conventional generation in managing variability," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 253-261.
    14. Chih-Ta Tsai & Teketay Mulu Beza & Wei-Bin Wu & Cheng-Chien Kuo, 2019. "Optimal Configuration with Capacity Analysis of a Hybrid Renewable Energy and Storage System for an Island Application," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(1), pages 1-28, December.
    15. Pavičević, Matija & De Felice, Matteo & Busch, Sebastian & Hidalgo González, Ignacio & Quoilin, Sylvain, 2021. "Water-energy nexus in African power pools – The Dispa-SET Africa model," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 228(C).
    16. Blarke, Morten B., 2012. "Towards an intermittency-friendly energy system: Comparing electric boilers and heat pumps in distributed cogeneration," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 91(1), pages 349-365.
    17. David Gattie & Michael Hewitt, 2023. "National Security as a Value-Added Proposition for Advanced Nuclear Reactors: A U.S. Focus," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(17), pages 1-26, August.
    18. Schönheit, David & Hladik, Dirk & Hobbie, Hannes & Möst, Dominik, 2020. "ELMOD documentation: Modeling of flow-based market coupling and congestion management," EconStor Preprints 217278, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    19. Hiroux, C. & Saguan, M., 2010. "Large-scale wind power in European electricity markets: Time for revisiting support schemes and market designs?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(7), pages 3135-3145, July.
    20. Moroni, Stefano & Antoniucci, Valentina & Bisello, Adriano, 2016. "Energy sprawl, land taking and distributed generation: towards a multi-layered density," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 266-273.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:61:y:2013:i:c:p:292-300. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.