NEWS
UK POWER GRID SOON TO BE LINKED WITH GRID IN FRANCE
iemens has been awarded an order to supply a link between the French and British power grids. The customer is ElecLink Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Groupe Eurotunnel SE. The "ElecLink" high-voltage direct- current (HVDC) link will enhance power supply reliability in both countries and promote the integration of renewable energy sources into the power grid. Siemens will supply the two HVDC converter stations at both sides of the DC
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Combined heat and power technology will be installed at the new Pentland film and television studios under con- struction in Scotland. The £250m facility Pentland Studios with combined heat and power technology, as well as studios and stages, will also feature a data center and workshop areas. The site will be powered by a dedicated 100MW gas-fired combined heat and power (CHP) plant. Located near to the facility will be a satellite up-link enabling productions to securely trans- fer or transmit rushes, clips or entire programs for editing and viewing purposes around the globe. The studios are likely to be completed by late 2018.
power line, which will be routed as a DC cable through the Channel Tunnel. This cable is to be supplied by Prysmian and installed by Balfour Beatty. The volume of Siemens' share of the order is around €315 million. The link is scheduled to take up commercial operation early 2020. The foundation stone of the future converter station was laid on February 23, 2017, by Jesse Norman, Minister for Industry and Energy signalling the start of the construction work which, when complete, will supply enough electricity to power more than 1.65 million typical households per year. "We are extremely pleased to drive the development of a high-performance, European interconnected power system. With this new interconnection we support our customer ElecLink to implement efficient market trading arrangements and the expanded integration of renewable energy sources," Ralf Christian, CEO of the Siemens Energy Management Division tells WIP. "Siemens has already commissioned multiple HVDC links like BritNed, connecting Great Britain and the European continent and is currently implementing further projects like NEMO and now ElecLink." Steven Moore, Chief Executive Officer of ElecLink told WIP: "Today marks the culmination of years of hard work to make ElecLink a reality. I am delighted it can now proceed with world-class partners such as Siemens. The construc- tion phase of the project will bring together the world's best engineers and technologies to pursue the construction without interruption of the tunnel's traffic, and when complete, it will play a key role by helping to meet the governments' energy trilemma."
The HVDC link between France and Great Britain has been designated as one of the European Commission's projects of common interest to help create an integrated European Union energy market. As the cable goes through the Channel Tunnel there will be no subsea lay or burial in the Channel.
The scope of the order covers a 1000 MW converter system for a DC voltage of ±320 Kilovolt (kV). The two converter stations, one at Peuplingues in France, the other in Folkestone in the UK, will be linked by a 51 kilometer- long DC power cable. The scope of supply includes the overall system design and the supply, installation and com- missioning of all components. The HVDC transformers will be manufactured at factories in Nuremberg, Germany.
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Keppie Design, acting on behalf of Pentland Studios, first submitted plans for the film and television studio,
alongside a hotel, residential and retail on a 29-acre site at Straiton, Edinburgh. Pentland Studios was conceived in a bid to draw international productions to the country by offering facili- ties for both pre-and-post pro- duction together with 52,000sq/ft of workshop space and a large backlot area for outsize sets. Pentland Studios director Gordon Ash commented: “Our vision is to create the most modern film studio in the UK, with the scale and facilities to attract film-makers from all over the world.
In an interview with UKPN he reported: “Scotland has already shown in recent years, with productions such as World War Z, Cloud Atlas and Outlander, that it has the scenery and locations to compete on a global level.”
NEW SIMULATION: HARVESTING ENERGY FROM A BLACK HOLE
CHP FOR FILM SCOTLAND
He said: “What we are miss- ing, however, are the really large-scale studio, filming and production facilities which would complement our locations and enable Scotland to harness much of the high- level investment which currently goes elsewhere. “Our team comprises a range of film industry, proper- ty and finance experts with many years of international experience and we are very confident the location at Straiton offers an unbeatable combination of scale, facilities and deliverability.” The first four film stages could be complete by 2017 with a further four stages pencilled in for delivery during a second phase in 2018 – the largest of these will reach 30,000sq/ft and some 70ft in height.
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esearchers at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh have built their own ‘black hole’ in the laboratory. The team has done it to prove a theory that huge amounts of energy can be harvested from a spinning black hole. It is almost 50 years since physicist Professor Roger Penrose suggested an alien civilisation might be able to capture energy from one. Now Heriot- Watt's Extreme Light Group are trying to create the Penrose Mechanism here on Earth. Led by Prof Daniele Faccio, the researchers built the experiment by twisting laser light into a vortex. Happily for homeowners on the western edge of Edinburgh, this process just simulates the real behaviour of a black hole. In Penrose's theory, the vortex will swallow almost everything. But the stuff that escapes will pick up more energy from the black hole's spin as it skims past. The simulated black hole is an intricate tracery of laser beams, lenses and mirrors. It was costly to build, but at the heart of it is a short piece of copper pipe with standard brass plumbing fittings at either end. Prof Faccio is proud that this part of the experiment only cost a couple of quid from a hardware store. Filled with a graphene and liquid medium, this is where the action is.
If the Penrose Mechanism works as predicted, light will glance off the edge of the vortex. Some will vanish down the ‘drain’. But some will dart away, picking up energy from the rotational force. But according to Professor Faccio, we should be able to pull off a similar process on Earth without having to go anywhere near a real black hole. "The beauty of this physics," he says, "is that it's so generic it can be applied to nearly anything that's in rotation. There's something magical about rotation. Rotating objects seem to behave differently than any other objects that are not rotating."
MARCH ‐ APRIL 2017 UK POWER NEWS
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