Nemo Link Marks First Full Year of Operation

Nemo Link, a power cable between the UK and Belgium, is celebrating its first full year of operation with outstanding performance figures.

The subsea cable has been available to import or export power more than 96% of the time in the last 12 months.

Stretching 140 km from Bruges on the Belgian side to Richborough in Kent, Nemo Link is a joint venture between the Belgian transmission system operators Elia and National Grid in the UK.

It began operating on January 31, 2019, offering a range of products that enable energy traders to move electricity back and forth between the two countries.

The Nemo Link cable, the first subsea HVDC project to use cross linked polyethylene (XLPE) cable technology, has a capacity of 1,000 megawatts. 5889.4 GWh were exchanged in the direction of the UK against 175.9GWh in the direction of Belgium.

“We’ve seen in the last year how Nemo Link has used innovative new technology to bring significant benefits to Belgian and British energy consumers. By enabling the market to react immediately to rapid changes in supply and demand, Nemo helps to better balance an energy system that is more reliant on intermittent wind and solar energy. In the coming years, interconnectors like Nemo will play an increasingly important role as we look to share renewable energy resources across borders to help the UK and Europe get to net zero carbon emissions by 2050,” Jon Butterworth, president of National Grid Ventures.

“We are delighted to mark our one-year anniversary by announcing that the Interconnector Nemo Link has performed exceptionally well. The advanced technology used for this cable is unprecedented in the world, we have designed and provided a resilient and efficient interconnection which guarantees available power when needed,” Markus Berger, director of Infrastructure at Elia.