Global Power Grids for Harnessing World Renewable Energy

Abstract

The Global Grid advocates the connection of all regional power systems into one electricity transmission system spanning the whole globe. Power systems are currently forming larger and larger interconnections. Environmental awareness and increased electricity consumption leads more investments towards renewable energy sources, abundant in remote locations (off-shore or in deserts). The Global Grid will facilitate the transmission of this "green" electricity to load centers, serving as backbone.This chapter elaborates on the concept presenting four stages that could gradually lead to the development of a globally interconnected power network. Quantitative analyses are carried out for all stages, demonstrating that a Global Grid is both technically feasible and economically competitive. Real price data from Europe and the USA are used to identify the potential of intercontinental electricity trade, showing that substantial profits can be generated through such interconnections.

A Global Real-Time Superlab: Enabling High Penetration of Power Electronics in the Electric Grid

“…The transatlantic link between INL and RWTH was established by a long distance HVCD line with both RWTH and INL laboratory simulating one converter station. The rationale behind this choice is the vision of Global Grid, a globally interconnected power grid based on Ultra HVDC lines connecting continents across the globe [10]. HVDC link allows for interconnection of grids with different system frequencies.…”

PI passivity-based control of modular multilevel converters for multi-terminal HVDC systems

“…In order to overcome this problem, a possibility is to employ an additional transformation of coordinates so that the resulting system is characterized by time-invariant steadystates. In order to determine the appropriate transformation to be employed, an analysis of the oscillations of the steady-states arising from (2) has been carried-out in [12]- [14], further validated by extensive simulations. In particular, under the above mentioned requirements, it was shown that the following approximations hold at steady-state conditions:…”

“…One possibility is to conceive new architectures that will take place at the boundary of the existing infrastructure, both at the low-and high-voltage levels. At the high-voltage level, a transmission system spanning the whole planet and connecting most of the large power plants in the world has been proposed, the so-called global grid or supergrid concept [2]. In this scheme it would be possible to integrate remotely located, high potential, aggregated renewable energy resources providing sustainable energy to the main grids by means of multi-terminal high-voltage direct-current (MT-HVDC) transmission systems [3].…”

Renewable energy from the high seas: Geo-spatial modelling of resource potential and legal implications for developing offshore wind projects beyond the national jurisdiction of coastal States

“…The above described advances of a maturing offshore wind energy sector make it now appear realistic that in the near-future offshore wind projects could technically and commercially be viable on the high seas. Such scenario has been theoretically envisaged in the context of their proposed global grid electricity network (Chatzivasileiadis et al, 2014(Chatzivasileiadis et al, , 2013. However, the location of potential high seas offshore wind parks was indicative only and remained on the conceptual level.…”