HVDC Western Link

  • Press Releases

    Western Link outage and high wind sees constraint cost hit a record high

    The Western Link HVDC suffered an unplanned outage on 10 January, which caused it to remain offline until 8 February. This coincided with record-high levels of wind generation in GB with generation from transmission connected wind topping 6.3TWh. However, with 2.2GW of HVDC capacity unavailable, significant volumes of wind output...

  • Press Releases

    Scottish wind farms called upon in the Balancing Mechanism

    Management of wind resources is a critical tool for National Grid in dealing with system constraints, supply and demand imbalance and increasingly inertia*. Data from Cornwall Insight’s Balancing Mechanism (BM) Service highlights that wind was the first-most utilised renewable technology asked to turn down in the BM. Further analysis also...

  • Press Releases

    The full potential of the “Western Bootstrap” has yet to be realised

    The Western Link HVDC, aka “Western Bootstrap”, a 2,200MW, £1bn transmission cable was built to help the UK manage the changing nature of energy production. However, since commissioning commenced in December 2017, the cable has experienced its third unplanned outage, with the most recent issue occurring on 6 April. The...