February 25, 2024
By Jonathan Leake

Britain to harness power of Sahara solar farms using 700 ft ship

The project will link solar and wind farms spread across the desert in Morocco - Fadel Senna/AFP

A project to power Britain using solar farms thousands of miles away in the Sahara is moving a step closer to fruition as its backers prepare to commission the world’s biggest cable-laying ship.

The 700 ft vessel will lay four parallel cables linking solar and wind farms spread across the desert in Morocco with a substation in Alverdiscott, a tiny village near the coast of north Devon.

Once completed, the scheme is expected to deliver about 3.6 gigawatts of electricity to the UK’s national grid – equating to about 8pc of total power demand.

Xlinks, the business behind the project, expects the ship to cost several hundred million pounds and be capable of carrying 200 miles of power cables, coiled and ready for deployment on the seafloor.

James Humfrey, new chief executive of subsidiary Xlinks First, said the vessel would lay two 100-mile lengths of cable at a time, then head back to the UK for the next two lengths.

On returning it would pick up the cable ends, connect them to the next lengths and repeat the process. Commissioning of the ship is expected later this year.

The ship is expected to cost several hundred million pounds and be capable of carrying 200 miles of power cables - XLCC

Mr Humfrey said: “This will offer a near constant, clean and affordable supply of electricity to the UK and play a key role in Morocco and the UK’s future prosperity.”

The Xlinks scheme involves laying cables carrying high voltage direct current power along the coasts of Spain, Portugal and France, coming ashore in North Africa.

There, they will connect with seven solar farms and up to 1,000 wind turbines built across an area of Moroccan desert roughly the size of greater London.

The expected energy output is slightly more than the power to be generated by the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant, which is predicted to cost around £46bn when completed in the early 2030s – more than double the cost of Xlinks.

A spokesman for Xlinks said: “Designs for the ship are complete and we expect to commission it later this year.”

Proposals for the vessel, which is yet to be named, suggest it will carry 80 crew with cargoes of up to 26,000 tonnes.

The ship will be owned by Xlinks’s sister company, XLCC, which is also building a factory at Hunterston in Scotland to manufacture the 10,000 miles of cable.

XLCC is also building a factory at Hunterston in Scotland to manufacture the 10,000 miles of cable - XLCC

The factory, adjacent to the town’s closed nuclear power stations, was granted planning permission last year and awarded a £9m Scottish Enterprise grant towards its £1.4bn cost.

Its centrepiece will be a massive 600-foot tower in which the cable will be coated in layers of insulation before being coiled onto giant reels for loading into the cable-laying vessel.

The project has already been declared one of “national significance” by Claire Coutinho, the Energy Secretary, who has also set a team of civil servants to work on it.

It means planning consents for the UK end of the cables will bypass Torridge district council in Devon and instead be determined by the Government. Financial backers include the Abu Dhabi National Energy Company, along with French giant TotalEnergies and British supplier Octopus Energy.

Simon Morrish, co-founder of the Xlinks project and group chief executive, said the aim was to overcome the intermittency of UK wind and solar.

The UK’s relatively small size means it can easily be blanketed by an adverse weather system that hits the whole country with low winds – meaning minimal output from turbines.

However the wind and solar farms in North Africa would be experiencing very different weather, of near-constant sunshine during the day and strong winds during afternoons and evening.

Mr Morrish said: “The wind is very reliable because it comes from the daily convection currents of the desert coming in the ocean. It means the wind picks up every afternoon, blows into the evening and drops again in the morning.

“When you add the solar plus batteries for storage we think we can generate an almost constant source of power for the UK – meeting up to 8pc of its electricity requirements.”

An analysis by Rystad Energy, a global energy consultancy, sounded a note of caution. It said: “At times of low wind and solar generation, natural gas or European imports will still be needed to cover demand.”

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