The North Seas Countries\u2019 Offshore Grid Initiative would knit together the power grids of the countries adjacent to the North Sea, and enable a far greater share of renewables\u2014especially offshore wind\u2014on the northern European grid than would be possible otherwise. It would also make it possible to use Norway\u2019s substantial hydro capacity as a giant battery to balance out the variability of wind and solar on the grid. And in the longer term, it could be a key part of a European \u201csupergrid\u201d that would connect the transmission grids of all of Europe, and potentially even tap the massive solar capacity of the Middle East and northern Africa. These are big, bold ideas, and implementing them won\u2019t be easy or cheap, but the benefits would be enormous\u2026 so much so that building these transmission links might be inevitable. But the planning alone has already gone on for at least seven years, and while some of the countries that would connect to the North Seas Offshore Grid are already building parts of their contribution to it, there is still much work to be done\u2026and building the physical infrastructure might be the easy part! In this episode we talk with a Dutch expert who has been directly involved in evaluating and planning for these supergrids to see where they now stand, what their potential costs and benefits are, and what we might expect in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The North Seas Countries\u2019 Offshore Grid Initiative would knit together the power grids of the countries adjacent to the North Sea, and enable a far greater share of renewables\u2014especially offshore wind\u2014on the northern European grid than would be possible otherwise. It would also make it possible to use Norway\u2019s substantial hydro capacity as a giant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[111],"tags":[190,191,192,18,193,194,144,195,196,197,198,199,200,45],"class_list":["post-424","xen_episodes","type-xen_episodes","status-publish","hentry","category-energy-transition-show-podcasts","tag-100-renewables","tag-borssele-wind-farm","tag-e-highway2050","tag-energy-transition","tag-european-commission","tag-european-supergrid","tag-european-union","tag-heat-pumps","tag-hvdc","tag-netherlands","tag-north-seas-countries-offshore-grid-initiative","tag-nscogi","tag-passivhaus","tag-wind","xen_guests-kees-van-der-leun"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n