Electricity Across Oceans: Is HVDC the Future?

How can we connect power grids across long distances or across seas and oceans? The answer is high voltage direct current, or HVDC, interconnectors. In this video, I’m going to explain how these differ to regular AC, alternating current transmission, the recent technology advances that are causing HVDC interconnectors to start popping up all over the place, and what challenges remain to be solved if we are going to connect places as far flung as Europe and North America. 00:00 Intro 01:08 Why do we want to connect different grids? 01:35 The classic question of AC vs DC 02:29 Types of Transmission Line Losses - Resistive, Inductive and Capacitive 04:19 The Different Layers of an HVDC Cable 05:20 HVDC Projects around the globe 05:25 ElecLink 06:23 North Sea Link 07:13 Basslink Interconnector and Marinus Link 09:15 Sun Cable 09:38 Xlinks 10:20 Technological challenges for these projects 12:15 The other, bigger challenge - Politics 13:12 Outro If you would like to help develop the Engineering with Rosie channel, you could consider joining the Patreon community, where there is a chat community (and Patreon-only Discord server) about topics covered in the videos and suggestions for future videos and production quality improvements. Or for a one-off contribution you can support by buying a coffee ☕️ here — The Engineering with Rosie team is: Rosemary Barnes: presenter, producer, writer Kevin Irman: research, calculations, assistant editor Javi Diez: editor Cowritten with John Bone