Windpower Engineering has an article on a small step towards building a north sea supergrid - ABB positioned highest voltage converter in North Sea.

ABB says it has installed the world’s highest-voltage offshore converter station in the North Sea. AC electricity generated in three wind farms off the coast of Germany will be converted on the platform into high-voltage direct current (HVDC) for transmission to the mainland. The 320 kV converter station has an 800 MW power transmission capacity making it the world’s most powerful installation of its kind.

Reuters has a report on interest in using Norwegian hydro power for energy storage as part of a north sea supergrid - Norway hydro can aid Europe move to renewables: IEA

The International Energy Agency said Norwegian hydropower could provide the reliable base Europe needs to invest in solar, wind and other renewable energy forms and urged Norway to expand cable links to other countries.

"Norway can help Europe introduce more volatile renewable energy sources into the market by providing a sustainable backup," said Nobuo Tanaka, the agency's executive director, in an interview on Friday at a renewable energy conference. "To have more renewables, we need more interconnectivity." he said.

In particular, Tanaka threw his weight behind a proposal to lay two sea cables between Norway and the UK, which would let the UK draw on Norwegian hydropower when British windmills go still.

Norway's glacier lakes and roaring rivers already provide electricity for almost every household in the country as well as power companies in other Nordic countries and the Netherlands. When hydro capacity is low, Norway imports power from those same countries.

Christian Rynning-Toennesen, the chief executive officer of Statkraft, a state-owned company that operates more than 100 hydropower plants in Norway, called for the country to become the "battery of Europe."

Tanaka said he approved of the image. "Connecting Norwegian hydropower to the bigger European market would be far better than relying on gas for the same purpose," said Tanaka, whose Paris-based agency advises 28 member countries on energy issues.

Norway's minister of petroleum and energy, Terje Riis-Johansen, said he and the UK's minister of energy, Charles Hendry, agreed earlier this week to support an ongoing feasibility study of connecting the two countries by cable. "There is big interest in the UK in building cables from Norway," he told Reuters. "But we are having similar discussions with Germany and other countries. I think Norway's future in Europe is to be a peak producer that always has power stored. If we do that right, it can neutralize the bad aspect of big windmill projects, which is that their production is inconsistent."

The feasibility study of a 700-km dual-cable link between southwestern Norway and eastern England is to be completed within a few months, said Stewart Larque, a spokesman for the UK National Grid. ... The country is nearing completion of a subsea power link to the Netherlands and considering a second one to France. But Larque said the lure of carbon-free power from Norway is great.

The Statkraft CEO said the cost of a cable link, which is not known, would probably be born by its beneficiaries at both ends. "For the British it would cost a lot less than building new power plants as a back-up for wind," said Rynning-Toennesen.

Inhabitat has a post on a massive new wind farm planned for the North sea - OMA Plans Massive North Sea Wind Farm to Power Europe.

This week Rem Koolhaas’ Office for Metropolitan Architecture announced plans for an incredible array of oceanic wind farms that may one day produce as much energy as the Persian Gulf. Dubbed Zeekracht (sea power), the masterplan comprises a massive ring of wind farms centered around the Netherlands that spans seven adjacent countries. By calling for such a large network of communal infrastructure and knowledge, the plan takes a giant step towards ensuring European energy independency by 2025.

Thanks to its high and constant wind speeds, shallow waters, and cutting-edge renewable industries, the North Sea is one of the world’s most suitable areas for large scale wind farming. OMA states that “The potential magnitude of renewable energy in the North Sea in fact, approaches that of fossil fuel production in the Persian Gulf states today.”

The firm’s Zeekracht masterplan calls for a massive communal wind power infrastructure focused in an “Energy Super-Ring” around the Netherlands. The plan’s components include a Production Belt, which covers clean tech research and manufacturing, and an International Research Center that promotes cooperation, innovation, and development. Since large scale fishing is impossible in the vicinity of a windmill field, the areas will also be effectively converted into nature reserves that shelter fish and other sealife.

Earth2Tech reports that England may be left out of Scottish plans to join a European supergrid crossing the north sea - Scotland Snubbing England in Supergrid Plans?.

The Scottish government believes the North Sea could become host to an underwater renewable energy grid, supplying power from wind, wave and tidal power across Europe, but England could be left out in the cold. A new study from Scotland looks at the possibility of a supergrid between Scotland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands, but doesn’t mention Scotland’s big neighbor to the south.

Yes, Scotland is still part of the UK, and most of England’s east coast is also on the North Sea, but the word “England” doesn’t even show up once in the 21-page study and “UK” is only used in a couple of footnotes. It might just be an oversight, but the possible snub comes during the same week in which the UK government made a filing with the Commission on Scottish Devolution questioning the Scottish government’s powers covering energy.

Political wrangling aside, there’s a big push for wind and marine power in the UK, not just in Scotland, so the area could become a hub for renewable energy in the region. In October, the UK government said it surpassed Denmark to take the top spot in offshore wind power in the world, boasting 590 megawatts of offshore wind vs. Denmark’s 423 megawatts.

Sweden’s Vattenfall just announced plans to invest in wind power in the UK, teaming up with ScottishPower Renewables to make joint bids on offshore wind development, including areas in the North Sea. The two plan to build 6,000 megawatts of installed wind power capacity.

ScottishPower, part of Spain’s Iberdrola, is also looking at marine power, releasing plans in September to build up to 60 megawatts of tidal power capacity in Scotland and Northern Ireland. The UK’s Crown Estate, which owns the seabed around the country, recently opened up the Pentland Firth off of northern Scotland for commercial wave and tidal projects, aiming to generate more than 700 MW of power by 2020.

There are already big projects going on in England and if there was Scottish-only supergrid, it would lose out on connecting to the planned 1-gigawatt London Array offshore wind farm as well as the Wave Hub project.

A recent plan from Greenpeace for a €20 billion ($25.032 billion) renewable energy grid in the area was much more inclusive, with both England and Scotland making the list, as well as France. However, the environmental group did neglect Sweden, which only has access to the North Sea through the Skagerrak strait.

The Scottish government is still working on its plans for a North Sea supergrid and estimated that it would need £409,200 ($606,475) and about 17 months to do a full study on the project.

The Aberdeen Press And Journal has a report on Gordon Brown's new announcement about renewable energy strategy, in which he says "the North Sea has now passed its peak of oil and gas supply".

PRIME Minister Gordon Brown vowed last night to “turn the North Sea into the equivalent for wind power of what the Gulf of Arabia is for the oil industry”.

He delivered the pledge as he outlined a £100billion green energy investment strategy.

The strategy is designed to put Britain at the forefront in the drive for low carbon energy and energy efficiency and take a disproportionate share of the jobs that will be created worldwide.

Mr Brown, speaking at a Low Carbon Economy Summit in London, said his plans would secure energy supplies, tackle climate change and form the “basis of future prosperity for our country”.

The strategy includes detailed measures to meet a target to source 15% of all energy consumption from renewables by 2020 including 7,000 new wind turbines, 4,000 onshore and 3,000 offshore, and feed-in tariffs to boost micro-renewables in homes and communities.

Mr Brown said Britain will this year surpass Denmark as the country with the highest operating offshore wind capacity in the world, at over 400megawatts, adding: “By 2020 we will have installed around 14gigawatts – that is around three thousand offshore wind turbines, meeting up to 50% of our renewable electricity.

“The North Sea has now passed its peak of oil and gas supply – but it will now embark on a new transformation into the global centre of the offshore wind industry.”