ABSTRACT
In a provocative article in The Economist in 2007 a grandiose plan was presented to link electricity grids all over Europe. According to the journal, the main driver for this project is the necessity to make our energy supply system more sustainable. One of the main obstacles to integrate renewable energy technologies, like wind and solar into the incumbent system, is the fluctuating and unpredictable character of these energy sources. The proposed HVDC Supergrid would enable wind energy to become the ‘Star of the show’, one of the major suppliers of electricity. Such a network, including storage options, would eliminate the disadvantage of fluctuating electricity generation by linking the large off shore wind parks with hydropower stations and very large scale solar power plants in southern Europe and North Africa. Recently, several more elaborate proposals for such a European Supergrid have been presented. At the end of The Economist article, even the option of a global network was mentioned, based on very large scale generation in remote areas as the Sahara, Siberia or South America (Economist, 2007). Initiatives like the Global Energy Network Institute (GENI) fit into this scheme. According to the mission GENI “the premier global strategy is the interconnection of electric power networks between regions and continents into a global energy grid, with an emphasis on tapping abundant renewable energy resources—a world wide web of electricity.” 1
