POWER FROM NORWAY
By F. J. ERROLL, M.P.
SEVERAL references have appeared in newspapers and technical periodicals recently to the possibility of bringing hydro-electric power from Norway to Britain by means of submarine cables laid in the North Sea. During the latter part of 1946 a British group of engineers visited Scandinavia and studied the develdpment of elec- trical transmission in Norway. This mission was followed by the publication of a White Paper by the Norwegian Department of Commerce on the practicability of exporting surplus electric power to Britain, and the proposals set forth in the Paper evoked con- siderable public discussion. It is the purpose of this article to re- capitulate the essential points in the " Power from Norway " project, and also to examine its many problems.
Norway's electricity is generated almost entirely by harnessing water power, and although the domestic and industrial consumption has shown a considerable increase since 1945, only 16 per cent. of Norway's water power has so far been developed. The total resources have been calculated by the Norwegian Waterfall and Electricity Board to be about 8o,000 million kilowatt hours per annum, of which about 13,57o million kw. hours have been ex- ploited. Expansion of Norway's power plants to meet the increased needs, including the electrification of the railways, will in the future account for a further 15,600 million kw. hours, but Norway will still not have used more than one-third of her total resources, and approximately 50,000 million kw. hours will be available as surplus hydro-electric power. It would be folly to deny the great value of this surplus to power-starved Britain, for 50,000 million kw. hours would be sufficient to satisfy a large proportion of our present indus- trial and domestic requirements. Coal, our principal source of energy, is strategically and economically vital to Britain. But our 'coalfields are not limitless, and many of the most productive mines will cer- tainly have become exhausted by the turn of this century. If one takes this long view of our power resources, the Norway project becomes a matter of very real significance.
The transfer of electric power over long distances is not a new
idea. For over fifteen years Denmark has been .importing electricity from Sweden, and Switzerland for many years has been exporting a great volume of power to France and Germany. This long- distance power transmission hitherto has been by alternating current, necessitating the use of overhead transmission lines. Except for comparatively short distances, underground or submarine cables cannot be used, as the current losses increase rapidly. To bring Norway's surplus hydro-electricity to Britain, however, would re- quire the use of a. submarine cable of such a _length that only direct current could be passed through it. There is no great difficulty in designing a cable for high-voltage direct current, but the problems of converting the alternating current generated in Norway into direct current for the undersea transmission, and then converting it back again to alternating current for .the British grid, are admittedly formidable.
During the war technicians in Germany worked at high priority towards a solution of direct current transmission. Power stations were built at Berlin and Dessau, rectifiers and inverters were designed, and it was proposed to- transmit high-voltage direct current through single-core cables laid over the seventy miles separating the stations. How successful the experiments were it is impossible to say. After the occupation of Berlin by the Russian armies the experimental stations at Berlin and Dessau were dismantled, and, together with the equipment, removed to Russia. But there is a growing inter- national interest in the problem. Much work is being done in this country, and the possibilities, and difficulties, are being closely examined in Sweden and America. The investigation and develop- ment of high-voltage direct current transmission ought to be under- taken, whether the power from Norway project is entertained or not. But it should be recognised that power cannot be imported from Norway until the problem of the satisfactory conversion of the current has been solved. We may reasonably hope that within the next ten years a solution to the problem will have been found.
There are other factors to be considered. It is a common fallacy to suppose that hydro-electric power is cheap. The cost of dams and other civil engineering works constitutes a large proportion of the initial outlay, and in a period of sharply rising prices it is impossible to estimate the cost of new installations in Norway. In addition, there would be the cost of the receiving-station in Britain. The project, as now known, envisages a cable 36o miles long, run- ning under the North Sea between Egersund, in Southern Norway, and Berwick-on-Tweed. The cost of this cable has been calculated at £5,000,000, and the laying would cost at least another £n000,000. In all large power schemes the balance of advantages of one system against another is a fine one. Atomic power, so widely acclaimed after the bomb was made public, is now thought by many to be too expensive in capital equipment and running charges to succeed in becoming an effective competitor to steam generating-stations. So with the Norway project we must balance the cost of hydro-electric works in Norway, and of the undersea cable, against the probable cost in money and resources of steam-generation in Britain in ten years' time. When high-voltage direct-current transmission has been proved possible then the missing factor in the Norway power scheme will be known. Only then can a fatal decision be taken— and by that time we shall have a much fuller knowledge of the possibilities, and limitations, of atomic power.
Finally, there is the strategic position. The weakness of any scheme employing power from a foreign source is, of course, that during a period of strained relations the supplying nation could threaten to cut off or curtail supplies. In time of war the supply might be completely halted by invasion of the supplying nation's territory or by the action of enemy submarines against the cable. Such a loss of a large part of the country's power supply would occur at a time when it could be ill afforded. Conversely, however, in peace-time the " Power from Norway " scheme offers a neW medium for international co-operation, and if the project becomes a reality we can hope to establish a valuable partnership between engineers, technicians and consumers in Britain and those in Norway, a country which is one of our oldest allies.
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