Demand management is growing more complicated for power utilities. Rising global and regional electricity consumption is speeding the need for investment in expanded or upgraded networks. Many utilities, additionally, need to connect renewable energy sources, which can be distant from power demand centers. They also need to pay heed to carbon footprints by minimizing losses during power transportation. To cap it all, the use of overhead transmission lines is not always an option. Resistance to overhead lines is increasing in many countries driven by urbanization trends and negative land value impacts. This slows down rights-of-way approvals.
Options outside of overhead transmission depend on location. Utilities in some regions have chosen a proactive path, while others have required legalities and politics with decision making. The Netherlands and Germany offer interesting insights that could be relevant in other countries, particularly in the U.S., where many of the same challenges now exist. These two densely populated European countries have contended with complex power transmission challenges for many decades.
The Netherlands, a country of just 16.7 million people but with a population density of 397 people per square kilometer, chose underground cables for the transmission network. In February 2010, the Dutch government adopted changes to the Third Electricity Supply Structure Plan (SEVIII), capping the total length of the overhead transmission and distribution (T&D) network. These days, every new kilometer of aerial line must be compensated by changing a corresponding length at a different location from aerial into underground cables—a compensation principle. Regular evaluations determine if compensation impacts the implementation pace of new high voltage networks.
The Dutch approach is viewed as clear and consistent, overall, leading to the speedy implementation of many needed transmission lines. One downside is that some communities must tolerate more overhead lines than others.
Undergrounding was adopted by Germany as well, which has to meet the growing power demands of 82 million people across 357,000 square kilometers. The federal government recently approved a new energy policy to address this challenge. The policy includes the stipulation that the German grid must source 30 percent of its power from renewables by 2020, up from about 17 percent in 2010. Given that many of these renewable sources are offshore wind farms in the north of the country—a long way from some of the high population centers in the middle and south of the country—the new energy policy requires a 25 percent expansion of the transmission grid over the next ten years. That’s the addition of 3,600 kilometers of extra high voltage lines to the German national grid by 2020.