Thursday, 10 March

Ambitious plan to build the world's longest undersea cable to bring a remote geothermal resource to Europe

While we are quibbling in Australia about the cost of transporting geothermal electricity over a thousand kilometers of flat mostly unoccupied land, it is interesting to note that much larger distances across much more difficult terrain are seriously being contemplated elsewhere.

Iceland's biggest utility company, Landsvirkjun, has announced a plan to build the world's longest undersea cable at 1,180 miles long to carry up to five billion kWh of electricity a year to European countries. If you divide five billion kWh or five million MWh by the number of hours in the year, you get the capacity of the line as 600 - 1000 MWe, which is about the level it would take the the Cooper Basin geothermal resource to the Queensland grid. The mooted Icelandic cable however will be twice as long stretching over 1900 kilometers and it will be under the sea. "The idea is to meet demand during peak hours in Europe, as well as some base load," said Ragna Sara Jonsdottir, a company spokeswoman. The final decision on the project is likely to come within five years.

At current power prices in Europe, five billion kilowatt-hours corresponds to between 250 and 320 million euros ($350-448 million) at a unit cost of about 6 euro cents per kWh. Once the cost of the cable is amortised, this will be a significant ongoing export item for Iceland, a country still reeling from the effects of the Global Financial Crisis, which hit the country at the end of 2008.

Landsvirkjun is currently producing electricity from geothermal and hydrothermal resources, including the 60-MWe Krafla geothermal power station shown below.

 

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