COPENHAGEN: The government of Denmark has approved an application for a new grid interconnection with Germany, according to recent reports.
To be more specific, the Danish Minister for Energy, Utilities and Climate, Lars Christian Lilleholt, approved Energinet.dk’s application to invest into a new interconnection through the Baltic Sea (between the Eastern Danish and German electricity grids).
As it stands, grid investments in Denmark exceeding DKK 100 million require approval from the country’s Minister for Energy, Utilities and Climate. The new interconnection will feature a capacity of 400 megawatts (MW), and will be developed jointly by Energinet.dk and 50 Hertz (a German transmission system operator).
The project will apparently be the first in the world to interconnect the offshore wind farms of two different countries.
The Minister’s approval is important and helps create the future, cross-border electricity market, where much more electricity must be traded back and forth across borders. On the one hand, Danish power stations and wind turbine owners can sell more electricity to German consumers and make a profit on it. On the other hand, Danish consumers can buy electricity in Germany, for example when the wind is not blowing and the wind turbines are not spinning. This makes the green transition less expensive and more effective, said Torben Glar Nielsen, Executive Vice President, CTO, at Energinet.dk.
The Danish offshore wind farm, Kriegers Flak, which the Folketing decided to erect in the Baltic Sea based on the energy agreement from 2012, will be connected to the submarine cables, which run from the German side to the two German offshore wind farms Baltic 1 and Baltic 2.
The unique Combined Grid Solution (CGS) can thus not only transport electricity from three offshore wind farms to consumers in the two countries, it can also export electricity from power stations, onshore wind turbines, solar cells, etc to consumers in the other country. As the interconnection connects two different electricity areas, it is necessary to build a facility in Bentwisch which can synchronise electricity from the Eastern Danish and German systems.
The connection is expected to be ready by the end of 2018, and will feature a budget of €320 million. The EU is apparently putting €150 million from the European Energy Programme for Recovery into the project.
