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Comment by nnx | Hacker News Reader

Interestingly, there is also a version to watch French's grid http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/france/

It looks like France is exporting to neighbouring european countries (including to the UK), the equivalent more than the UK's total current nuclear supply (~7.89GW).

I had no idea it was possible to transport such power by submarine link (2GW power to the UK).

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It's also a d.c. link.

Remember it's only 34 kilometres between the closest points. The current inter-connector is currently 70km, with the planned second connector longer at 230km (but with a reduced capacity of 1 GW)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_Cross-Channel

http://www2.nationalgrid.com/About-us/European-business-deve...

Somehow ironic that Germany stopped their own nuclear plant to buy energy to France (mostly nuclear)

Also interesting to note is that the UK and Germany top a list of the EU’s most polluting coal-fired power stations. These were the findings from a recent report by environmental campaigners. The report called "Europe’s dirty 30" looks at CO2 emissions from coal power plants in the EU.

From the report:

"Germany and the UK are the self-declared climate champions of the EU. However, Germany uses more coal to generate electricity than any other EU country, while the UK comes third in absolute coal consumption for power after Poland;"

Here's the 10 most co2-polluting thermal power plants in the EU according to the report

  1. Bełchatów, Poland
  2. Neurath, Germany
  3. Niederaussem, Germany
  4. Jänschwalde, Germany
  5. Boxberg, Germany
  6. Drax, United Kingdom
  7. Weisweiler, Germany
  8. Agios Dimitrios, Greece
  9. Brindisi Sud, Italy
  10. Lippendorf, Germany

The full ranking of 30 power plants is in the following report (3.1 mb) http://awsassets.panda.org/downloads/dirty_30_report_finale....

Or you can read the summary from this Guardian report http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/22/germany-u...

I'm not sure I understand what the point of that list is, Drax is the UK's largest coal-fired power station, of course it emits the most CO2! Were it replaced by two power stations of exactly half the capacity it wouldn't be in the list anymore, yet the end result would be the same.

Electricity exports from Germany are on an all-time high though.

Ironic, or just a sad indictment of populist policies when it comes to energy supply overruling the glaringly obvious :|

If you look at the French data, there is a lot of solar in the mix there.

If I remember correctly, I think the link was established initially with the assumption that it will be good for the UK since it will mostly be used for exporting electricity to France.

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