Canada Considers a Subsea Power Cable to Europe

Canada’s prime minister has expressed interest in exporting Canadian energy such as LNG to Europe, along with renewable energy. Other recent discussions have focused on a unique possibility: an undersea electric power cable extending across the North Atlantic to Northern Europe.

The concept of transporting energy under the ocean dates back decades. Earlier examples of the concept involved undersea pipelines carrying natural gas and oil. While the first undersea electrical power cables carried telecommunications signals (telegraphs), modern undersea electrical power cables carry grid-scale electrical energy. Such cables are widely used to transmit electric energy from offshore wind turbines to shore-based power grids.

Discussions dating back some 15 years focused on the possibility of transmitting electric power from geothermal sources in Iceland to power grids located in Scotland and England.

During that period, Canada had commissioned a study on domestic coastal kinetic ocean energy potential. Every 24 hours, lunar gravity pulls several hundred cubic miles of ocean water from the North Atlantic into Hudson Bay and into the Bay of Fundy which has the highest tides in the world. Present technology can only convert a small portion of the hydrokinetic energy to electrical power. Several hundred uninhabited small islands located along the eastern side of Hudson Bay and the eastern side of Ungava Bay have potential to support wind turbines, with additional potential for offshore wind energy.

This story was originally published by The Maritime Executive. Read the full story at The Maritime Executive →