Ireland already has two interconnectors with Wales in the UK. The UK has interconnectors with Norway and France as well. Everyone is scrambling to secure energy supplies as the net zero-inspired green wall approaches, and no one has any storage to speak of.
“The UK has interconnectors with Norway and France as well. “
Norway is the battery depending on the year Norway generates 90-99% of its electricity from hydroelectric power. They have very steep fjords and lots of snow and rain. They can and do ramp up and down gigawatts worth of hydro. This is exactly why there is HVDC links to Sweden, the UK, Denmark too. Norway is literally Europe’s battery. The beauty of the links is they are bidirectional so when there is wind howling in Scotland or Denmark two of the windiest places anywhere both having class 6+ wind fields those are 45% capacity factor area’s proven with actual turbine data anyone who has ever stood in coastal or northern Scotland knows exactly how bloody windy it is mate’s. Having links to Norway allows Norway to import cheap wind when its available while keeping water behind its many dams in storage offsetting what would have been hydropower flows. When the wind dies down Norway can within a few minutes bring gigawatts of hydro turbines on line and push power back.down the links out to Europe its like pumped hydro but no pumps needed gravity and the water cycle did it for you.
Ireland is also a 40% plus CF look at the spatial map red is class 5 or above class 5 is 40% CF deep.red is 6+ and 45+% CF. This is why Ireland is being brought into the European smart super grid. HVDC moves every 1000+km with single digit losses.
China is kicking the world’s butts with HVDC million volt 12,000 megawatt per link and million volt ultra high V AC lines too they have well over 30 links in action and more are coming from their solar fields in the Gobi desert and wind farms in the Tibetan plateau.
China added three Texas worth of solar in 8 months of 2025 simply kicking everyone else’s butts. Remember china don’t do climate change BS they correctly recognized that when the Sun shines solar in a desert is the cheapest form of energy humans have ever come up with period full stop the IEA has mountains of real.world data backing they up AI will retrieve and summarize it for luddites in seconds.
China is doing what Norway is they have the largest amount of hydro in the world and are in the process of constructing the single largest plant anywhere in the Tibetan plateau it will make Three Gorges look like a stock pond when that lake is filled behind it. All the big hydro power is linked via HVDC or UHVAC to the Chinese super grid those are the batteries in the hundreds of gigawatt range with thousands of gigawatt hours stored behind the dams.
Chuna recognizes that solar and wind are energy harvesting machines and in mountains and deserts there is virtually unlimited energy to be harvested it is a storage and transportation / distribution issue. They massively have storage and they have built out a super grid of million volt DC and AC transmission and distribution systems unparalleled in this planet. Everyone else is playing catch up at this point. The great leap forward was exactly that they leaped past the rest of the world because the one thing central planning is good at is massive infrastructure and build outs.
China is run by engineers and scientists not lawyers they win by that fact alone.
https://vortexfdc.com/resources/europe-wind-map-1km/