Energy Storage by using HVDC Power Cables

The development of HVDC (high voltage direct current) systems closely follow the growth of global energy requirements. In particular, HVDC cables are conveniently used for the interconnection of geographical areas which need a low environmental impact and/or when submarines interconnections have to be built up. The paper investigates the stored energy value in an HVDC cable during its normal duty and if it is possible to take advantage of this energy when the cable is disconnected for some reason. In particular, the idea is to store the cable energy, which would be dissipated uselessly, by using a dedicated system and then reuse it when favorable conditions hold, e.g a convenient economic scenario in the electricity market context. An hypothesis on the use of a superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES) device as storage system is investigated and the shown simulation results confirm the validity of the proposed idea.