The push towards using more renewable sources has lead to the connection of an ever growing amount of new generation. The majority of this is located in the North of the UK, quite far away from the main load centres. To avoid constraints in the ability of this new generation to export its power, extensive reinforcement of the onshore Transmission network is required. The NOA (Networks Option Assessment) published by the SO has indicated ‘proceed’ signals for a number of HVDC bootstraps down the East coast of the UK as a key solutions to relieve the potential constraint and facilitate the move to renewable sources.
The National HVDC Centre has been supporting the technical work going into the development of the designs for these schemes.