National Italian TV RAI’s flagship programme ‘Report’ released an important new documentary on the advantages of a pan-European Renewable electricity grid with considerable input from SuperNode leadership and a visit to SuperNode’s cutting edge Dublin based-labs.
Renowned Italian director and author Michele Buono travelled around Europe interviewing leading stakeholders in the renewable energy and electricity grid industry. He visited SuperNode’s Dublin Headquarters ‘The European Cryogenic Centre for Superconductors’ where he interviewed CEO, John Fitzgerald, and Chair, Eddie O’Connor, who outlined the need to develop a pan-European energy grid based around renewable energy. Without this new approach to grid planning designed around the specific characteristics of renewable energy, Europe will not meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and will not achieve a successful and timely decarbonisation.
Mr Buono also met with SuperNode’s Italian CTO Emiliano Frulloni who took Mr. Buono on a tour of the lab facilities and introduced SuperNode’s revolutionary superconducting transmission technology and explained how it will be key to enabling a pan-European grid. SuperNode have identified a crucial bottleneck in energy transmission which threatens to derail the energy transition. Current cable technology is capacity constrained (2GW in a single cable) and will not be capable of transmitting the levels of renewable power that Governments have targeted. It is clear that we need new grid technology, without which will result in an excessive number of cables, platforms, space, materials, landing points and environmental impact.
SuperNode’s solution is to develop superconducting transmission cables as a highly efficient cable capable of carrying much higher power densities in a single cable, up to 10GW, both onshore and offshore. This will alleviate the grid bottlenecks, enabling a rapid build out of renewable energy and the efficient interconnection between national grids.
You can watch the full episode of ‘Report’ here.