Excellence in Engineering

BritNed is incredibly proud to have won the ‘Excellence in Engineering’ award at the ER & DCR Excellence Awards 2024.

The Excellence Awards 2024 recognise the outstanding achievements within the electrical industry and celebrate the companies and individuals who are shaping each sector, displaying forward-thinking design and implementation, and championing the highest environmental, safety and energy efficiency standards.

BritNed was shortlisted in recognition of maintaining the highest operational standards for more than a decade, and utilising rigorous operational strategies and processes help to maintain a high service availability for customers, whilst placing safety at the core of everything we do.

The winners were announced at the awards ceremony in London on 16 May 2024. A few of the Operations team based at the Isle of Grain site attended the ceremony and accepted the trophy on behalf of the entire BritNed team, both in the UK and the Netherlands.

BritNed is a joint venture between National Grid and TenneT, the transmission system operators of Great Britain and The Netherlands. Becoming operational in 2011, BritNed has established itself as one of the early interconnectors in the North Sea, maintaining an innovative and pioneering approach to operations, whilst powering over 1.4 million homes per year.

Operating and maintaining a 260 km high-voltage direct current (HVDC) submarine cable that links the two countries’ electricity grids, BritNed operates with a capacity of 1000 MW and a voltage of 450 kV.

BritNed operates two converter stations which change Alternating Current (AC) to Direct Current (DC) and back again. One convert station is located on the Isle of Grain in Great Britain and one in Maasvlakte in the Netherlands. Each site is approximately 5 hectares. Both sites are almost identical and have the following areas: Control Room, AC Yard, Transformers, Valve Hall, and DC Hall. From each converter station, these cables enter the North Sea where they are buried 3m below the seafloor to protect them (at a seafloor depth of 40m). Each cable is made up of multiple layers to protect and insulate the copper core, and the two small fibreoptic cables that facilitate communication (supporting the identification of faults). Each meter of cable weighs 44kg and the total weight of both cables together is approximately 23,000 tonnes. Over 30 cable laying vessels were used to lay the cable.

Since becoming live in April 2011, BritNed has transported 72 TWh (terawatt hours) of power and recorded an impressive average annual service availability of over 93%, whilst 2023 saw a record 98.8% service availability recorded.

BritNed’s dedicated teams in the UK and the Netherlands work 24 hour a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, to maintain the assets and optimise operations to ensure excellent service availability.

Learn more about the BritNed interconnector assets here.