Tyrrhenian Link: path towards a decarbonized electrical system

Abstract

The increasing awareness of climatic impact of fossil fuels and the effort pursued by all stakeholders to reach climate goals are pushing States towards green policies, based on renewable sources deployment and the decommissioning of traditional power plants. To support the penetration of renewable energy and more efficient thermoelectric generation, HVDCs (VSC technology) offer many advantages in terms of flexibility, stability of the grid and system controllability.The present paper describes the HVDC project named "Tyrrhenian Link" which connects Sardinia with Sicily and Sicily with the Italian peninsula. Carried out studies evidenced the crucial importance of the Tyrrhenian Link project in the next future to guarantee the adequacy standard for Sicily and Sardinia, considering the forthcoming coal phase-out and avoiding further new thermoelectric capacity in these Regions. Moreover, static and dynamic analyses emphasize the essential contribution of the new planned project both to the dynamic stability and to the security of supply in case of HV grid contingencies, showing the fundamental role of this new project for the Italian electrical system of the future. Performed comparative analysis shows that the optimal solution from economic and operation point of view is the Tyrrhenian Link full configuration.