Register of advice

The list below is a record of advice the Planning Inspectorate has provided in respect of the Planning Act 2008 process.

There is a statutory duty under section 51 of the Planning Act 2008 to record the advice that is given in relation to an application or a potential application and to make this publicly available. Advice we have provided is recorded below together with the name of the person or organisation who asked for the advice and the project it relates to. The privacy of any other personal information will be protected in accordance with our Information Charter which you should view before sending information to the Planning Inspectorate.

Note that after a project page has been created for a particular application, any advice provided that relates to it will also be published under the ‘s51 advice’ tab on the relevant project page.

Advice given between between 1 October 2009 and 14 April 2015 has been archived. View the archived advice.

Enquiry received via email

East Anglia TWO Offshore Windfarm View all advice for this project

21 October 2019
Alan Hatfield

Enquiry

Dear Secretary of State & Minister of State, I am writing to you both to draw your attention to the stupidity of siting a new sub station for the North Sea East Anglia Two and One windfarms in or near Friston. The power generated by the windfarms will far exceed the power required by the homes and businesses near Friston and consequently it will be exported to where it is needed by the National Grid. One of the reasons for choosing Friston was because it had access to the National Grid nearby. However, wherever the power is used, the losses to get it there will be in excess of the benefits of choosing Friston as a site of connection. Let me give an example with the sub station in Friston, consider 1Kw of electricity generated in the North Sea at the new windfarm. This 1Kw will travel say 70km on the Submarine High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) cable proposed, then be converted to High Voltage Alternating Current at the Friston sub station. This conversion will cause about .7-.8% loss (3). Then the reduced power will travel 160 km on the above ground grid to where it will be used in London. For this example using the figures in National Grids document (1) Resistance is .064(2) Ohms for HVDC and 1.62(2) Ohm for the HVAC circuit, Total 1.68 Ohms. Now consider if the sub station was in the Thames estuary, The same 1 Kw of electricity will travel say 140 km via a new submarine HVDC cable to a new sub station in the Thames estuary. There will be no requirement to bury this cable in 64m wide trenches that pass through an AONB as the cable can be laid on the sea bed. Once at the substation the power can be converted with the same losses (.7%)(3) as in the Friston example and then travel 30km via HVAC overhead to be used in London. The loss figures for this example are Resistance for HVDC 1.28(2) Ohms and HVAC .3 (2) Ohms. Total Resistance 1.58 Ohms. From this example it can be seen that there is a significant saving in power losses and as importantly the destruction to the environment is substantially reduced. From National Grids own document (3) it can be seen that the submarine HVDC is preferred for an even longer route of 385 km. There is a growing need for a strategic plan to site a new UK connector sub station so that subsequent windfarms in the North Sea and International power connectors such as Viking, NueConnect and NEMO (5) can connect to The National Grid near where the power is needed and I would suggest that location should be in the Thames estuary. Yours Sincerely Alan Hatfield References (1) National Grid Strategy Paper National Grid’s Strategy Paper to address Transmission Licence Special Condition 2K: Electricity Transmission Losses Reporting Period: 1 April 2013 to 31 March 2021 (2) Given that a typical DC resistance at 90°C of a 2500mm² copper conductor is 9.18µO/m and the AC resistance is 10.25µO/m it can be seen, by comparison with the DC resistance values in the table of section 3.2.2, that the overall resistances (and therefore losses) of cable conductors are generally considerably lower than those for overhead lines outlined in section 3.2.2. (3)The major sources of losses in HVDC converter stations are; the valves, converter transformers, ac filters, other reactive compensation plant, DC smoothing reactors and auxiliaries / station service losses. Typical converter losses are 0.7 – 0.8% of the transmitted power. (4)Over long distances, DC transmission losses (including conversion Losses) are lower than AC losses at higher voltages. A typical application for the preference of HVDC connections over AC circuits are where long cable circuits are required - for example the Western HVDC Link, which provides 2.2GW capacity at 600kV, via a 385km undersea cable connection8 . Transmission of power at DC overcomes the effect of capacitive charging current, which reduces the effective rating of cables in AC applications and makes the use of AC circuits increasingly impractical for long distances. In DC applications, there is no technical limit on cable length. (5) attachment 1

Advice given

Dear Alan, Planning Act 2008 (as amended) Proposals by ScottishPower Renewables (UK) Limited for the East Anglia TWO Windfarm (EN010078). I am writing regarding your correspondence sent to the Planning Inspectorate dated 20 October 2019 in relation to the above proposal. The proposed application is at the Pre-application stage of the Planning Act 2008 process. The Planning Inspectorate is unable to consider representations about the merits of any application until it is accepted for Examination. Further information about the process can be found in the link below to the National Infrastructure Planning website: attachment 2. Should the application be submitted and accepted the ‘Registration and Relevant Representation form’ will be made available on the project page of the National Infrastructure Planning website during the Pre-examination stage. Further information about registering as an Interested Party can be found in the Planning Inspectorate’s ‘Advice Note 8.2: How to register to participate in an Examination’: attachment 3. Please note that, should the applications for East Anglia ONE North and East Anglia TWO be submitted and accepted, to become an Interested Party in each examination you must register for both applications separately. Kind regards, Liam


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