Hydrostor’s Compressed Energy Storage Technology Requires Caverns Built in Igneous or Metamorphic Rock, A Closed-Loop Water Reservoir, and Both Air and Water Shafts

      Company Hydrostor has patented its compressed air energy storage (CAES) technology, which utilizes constructed caverns in igneous or metamorphic rock. The company builds its caverns in a ‘room-and-pillar’ fashion, similar to underground mines. The system uses air pressure provided by large compressors and water pressure provided by water pumped in and out from a surface reservoir.

     Building the system in igneous and metamorphic rock severely limits where it can be deployed, but those rocks have low porosity and permeability, so that air and water do not leak out, which would make the system less effective. When the air is injected into the cavern, the water is pushed out to the surface reservoir.

“To increase the energy density of the cavern and improve the operating efficiency, the cavern is flooded with water and connected to a water reservoir on the ground surface – referred to as hydrostatic compensation.”

     Below, it is shown how the caverns are constructed.

     Below is the company’s Willow Rock Energy Storage project in Kern County, California, which is at an advanced stage of development. The company also has active projects in Australia, Ontario, Canada, and near Phoenix, Arizona.

     The technology is basically emissions-free when it is running, but things like cavern construction and rock analysis through drilling cores are generally emissions-intensive. There is no information about costs, which are likely to be high, especially for the cavern and shaft building. The rock removed needs to be stored or moved for disposal. Moving rock is energy-intensive, and storing it may have environmental impacts. I have not seen anything about the economics of these projects, but they are likely to be very high, as most long- duration energy storage (LDES) projects are. This limits their applicability. Thus, issues like cost and the lack of availability of suitable rocks will limit where such facilities can be built. However, LDES projects can provide important benefits to places where intermittent renewables are saturating power grids by storing excess generation and limiting the need for backup power that is often provided by natural gas.

   

 

References:

 

What Lies Beneath: Unearthing Advanced Compressed Air Energy Storage. Hydrostor. 2026. What Lies Beneath – Unearthing Advanced Compressed Air Energy Storage - Hydrostor

 

LGBTQ Rights are Basic Human Rights, and We Should Accept Them as Such

 

 

       It’s Pride month, so I will post about LGBTQ issues, specifically the data on its growing acceptability around the world, and where it is dangerous. In some societies, it is not acceptable, and people found guilty of it are imprisoned, tortured, and generally treated badly. Many people see homosexuality as a crime, as unnatural, as a disease, or as something to scorn and choose to shame those involved with it. Homosexuals were tortured and killed by the Nazis, just as the Jews and Roma people were, all considered less than human. Is it unnatural? If you have ever had farm animals or even pets for that matter, you would know that it is indulged in by animals. That certainly suggests that it is not unnatural at all, but a common feature of nature.

     Some people will point out that many child molesters indulge in homosexual behavior. This is true, but it is often perpetrated by people who are not openly gay or bisexual, and often by those who openly oppose such behavior even though they indulge in it privately in a criminal way.

     Many people like the events of Pride Month, but others hate them, especially things like gay parades. Societies where human rights are suppressed, like Russia, openly hate gay behavior, seeing it as too open and associating it with more permissive European societies. Perhaps they see it as “satanic,” like some religious groups see it.

     As the graph below from humanprogress.org shows, the legality of homosexuality continues to grow around the world and is not likely to backtrack.

     GZero World notes that while acceptance of homosexuality continues to increase, there is still much opposition to it, and the world remains divided about it.

“Twenty-five years ago, the Netherlands became the first country to legalize same-sex marriage. Thirty-seven countries have since followed — but same-sex marriage remains illegal in far more places than it's legal. In Sweden, 92% support it. In Nigeria, just 2%. As Pride Month begins, the world remains deeply divided on LGBTQ rights.”

     Below, they give the data on same sex marriage for selected countries. The graphic is based on Pew research that shows the percentage of people in different countries who support or oppose same sex marriage.

     Acceptance of same sex marriage allows those people to enjoy the same rights afforded to couples with heterosexual marriages, such as tax advantages, spouse medical coverage, and other rights afforded to spouses. This is simply an issue of fairness.

     I think we can glean from the data that strongly religious in general oppose it, including majority Christian societies (Hungary, Kenya), Muslim societies (Indonesia, Malaysia, and likely many more not listed here), Jewish societies (Israel), and even some Buddhist majority societies (Sri Lanka). There may also be cultural taboos against it.

     In the U.S., generally speaking, it is accepted more by Democrats than Republicans. Republicans tend to be more traditional, supporting religious reasons for opposing it. A case in point is a post and comment thread from two Republican Reps, one anti-gay and the other gay, shown below.

     Unfortunately, many gay people feel oppressed by society, even in societies that generally accept them. In the U.S., acceptance can vary by state. Gay people often move to states where acceptance is higher, to escape perceived oppression. Lots of people hate ideas like Pride Month because they say it promotes gay behavior and grooms people to want to experiment with it. Of course, acceptance does not in itself encourage people to try it, but more people will experiment in societies that accept it. That is a natural side effect of acceptance that those who oppose will just have to accept it and deal with it. Gay people have existed throughout history, sometimes thriving, but often being oppressed as well. Warriors in ancient societies often practiced homosexuality and transsexuality, and at times, such behavior was considered normal.

     Some may argue that events like Pride Month are overly celebrated and that we shouldn't have companies celebrating it. The argument there is often that we can accept it without promoting it. That is a legitimate argument. It is also often associated with so-called "woke" ideologies. 

     My own view is to accept it. It’s not a big deal. People who oppose it tend to make it a big deal, but it’s really not. It’s just loving, liking, or being aroused by whoever you want. As they say, love is love, but also interest is interest. Religious people may see it as the work of Satan, but others see that as a foolish notion that should not hold sway in society. Some people are afraid of being turned gay by a permissive society, but we shouldn’t care about their hangups. Gay is here to stay. It ain’t going away, so get used to it. As the humanprogress.org graph shows, acceptance of it is a trend that is not likely to reverse itself.  

Natural Gas Demand Growth in the U.S. Northeast: RBN Energy, Now a Part of NOVI Labs, Forecasts 1BCF/Day of New Demand by 2029

     RBN Energy, which was recently acquired by NOVI Labs, recently analyzed and forecasted natural gas demand growth in the U.S. Northeast. Over the past decade and a half, as Appalachian shale gas production skyrocketed, much of that natural gas in the Northeast has been produced for transport to other U.S. regions since it could easily meet regional demand. More natural gas power plants have been built in the region, replacing coal plants, improving air quality, and reducing carbon emissions. However, with growing demand, particularly in the power sector, that is changing, as local and regional demand begins to grow faster. RBN classifies fourteen states as far south as Virginia and as far west as Ohio, as northeastern states.

     Below is a graph showing the four sectors where natural gas is used: residential, commercial, industrial, and power. Three of the four have remained steady for years or have had small increases, but the power sector has doubled its natural gas consumption over the past decade. One big reason for the rise is gas replacing coal. However, as RBN author John Abeln notes, as coal retirements have slowed down, natural gas demand has continued to rise. New demand from AI data centers is one reason.  

     The graph below shows the seasonal profiles for daily energy output for natural gas, solar, and wind over the past five and a half years. Three obvious conclusions are that solar output is highest in summer, wind output is highest in winter, and natural gas output is highest in summer but can also be high in winter. Solar generation peaks in June and July at around 136% of the annual average, while December is the low point, with just 54% of the annual average. Wind peaks in November and December and is lowest in June and July, almost the reverse of solar. That makes wind and solar seasonally complementary in general. Natural gas typically fills the seasonal shortfalls of solar and wind output. Natural gas output peaks in July and August and is at its lowest in April.

     RBN used EIA Form 860M to do initial calculations for forecasting natural gas demand growth over the next five years. However, they note that using that alone is quite incomplete, and they have developed their own formula for predicting demand growth by analyzing the probability of a project coming into service based on its current stage of development.

“The EIA data and our analysis indicate that Northeast capacity growth will be strongest in the solar sector, with smaller growth in wind capacity and a decline in coal capacity. Gas-fired generation capacity is expected to be the same five years from now after adjusting for project likelihood. However, we anticipate an increase in the utilization of that capacity as changes in the market require more baseload power from gas plants. Therefore, we forecast a 230-MMcf/d increase in gas-for-power consumption over the next five years — based only on the EIA data, that is.”

“The 230-MMcf/d increase is dramatically smaller than the rate of increase seen over the past five years. But this analysis only looks at new power generation reported in Form 860M. We at RBN have identified six projects under development in the Northeast that are not on this EIA list and have the potential to have a much larger impact on regional gas demand.”

     Those six projects that they identified are shown on the map below.

     Below, they analyze those projects and plug them into their formula to derive 1BCF of possible new demand over the next five years. However, they also caution that some of those projects are likely to be slower to come online than predicted and that big changes in the bigger ones, such as a cancellation, could change the numbers significantly.

“If we assume 90% utilization of these facilities and use our standard conversion rate (where 1 TWh is equal to 7.15 MMcf/d) then these projects would increase Northeast gas demand by 1 Bcf/d by 2029, which dwarfs the 230-MMcf/d increase based on our analysis of EIA 860M. As shown in Figure 4 below, most of the increase from our suggested six-plant buildout is in Pennsylvania (blue layer) but with a substantial portion in West Virginia (red layer) and smaller amounts in two other states. This 1 Bcf/d assumes that all of the projects come online on schedule, which is unlikely. Also note that more than 60% of new capacity comes from just two projects, which makes prospects for increased gas usage in the Northeast highly dependent on the decisions of a few companies.”

     As they note below, the forecasted increase, even at the high end, is just 13%, compared to the 20% growth in demand in the past five years. They also note that Marcellus and Utica producers could easily meet that demand increase with more rigs, but for a real drilling boom, they would still need more pipeline takeaway capacity out of the region. They suggest that several BCF per day of new takeaway capacity would be needed. They also note that there are new pipeline projects planned to come out of the region, and they plan to write about them in future posts.

“The roughly 1.2 Bcf/d in incremental in-region power demand that constitutes the high end of our expectations over the next five years — 230 MMcf/d from our assessment of the EIA list and 1 Bcf/d from the six other projects — represents a 13% increase from the 9.2 Bcf/d of the power-related gas demand in 2025 (see orange layer in Figure 1). That’s noteworthy, but even a full jump of 1.2 Bcf/d by 2030 would be smaller than the 20% increase we saw over the past five years.”

 

 

 

References:

 

Who Says You Can’t Go Home – How Much Gas Demand Growth Will Come from Within the Northeast? John Abeln. RBN Energy. May 29, 2026. Who Says You Can’t Go Home – How Much Gas Demand Growth Will Come from Within the Northeast? | RBN Energy

Singlet Fission Via a Molybdenum-Based Near-Infrared Light-Emitting Spin-Flip Emitter Shows Promise for Breaking the Shockley–Queisser Limit of Solar Cell Efficiency

  

     Japanese researchers have devised a means to capture extra energy from sunlight using a metal-based system that reduces heat losses during conversion. The method involves a chemical structure known as a spin-flip emitter made of molybdenum, which captures multiplied energy created during a process called singlet fission. This is an important discovery for potentially improving solar cell efficiency by up to 130%.

     When solar cells convert sunlight into electricity, they only utilize some of the available energy. There is a limit to how much of the available energy can be utilized due to “a mismatch between photon energies and how semiconductors respond,” as noted below. This creates a solar cell efficiency limit known as the Shockley–Queisser limit. The new research is one of two main methods being explored to break that limit.

“One long-known ceiling comes from the mismatch between photon energies and how semiconductors respond, which means some photons fail to trigger electrons while others lose excess energy as heat.”

“This efficiency cap, known as the Shockley–Queisser limit, has pushed researchers to explore methods that reuse lost energy instead of letting it dissipate.”

The Shockley–Queisser Limit and the Implications of Breaking It

     Wikipedia explains the Shockley–Queisser limit as follows:

“The Shockley–Queisser limit is the maximum theoretical efficiency of a solar cell using a single p–n junction to collect power from the cell where the only loss mechanism is radiative recombination in the solar cell. It was first calculated by William Shockley and Hans-Joachim Queisser at Shockley Semiconductor in 1961, giving a maximum efficiency of 30% at 1.1 eV. The limit is one of the most fundamental to solar energy production with photovoltaic cells, and is one of the field's most important contributions.”

     Note that it is about 30%. That means if efficiency improves by 130%, then the efficiency of the solar cell would increase from 30% to 69%. Such an efficiency increase would be truly groundbreaking, and a new solar revolution would ensue. However, this is still in the research phase, and more breakthroughs will be required to initiate commercialization.

Summary by Wayne Williams for TechRadar Pro

     Wayne Williams of TechRadar Pro does a good job of explaining this research breakthrough. I found the abstract of the paper, which was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, but much of the explanation in it went over my head, so his explanation is a useful summary.

“Singlet fission, described by the researchers as a “dream technology” for light conversion, plays a central role in the experiment because it allows one high-energy excitation to split into two lower-energy ones, theoretically doubling the number of usable energy carriers.”

“Capturing those duplicated excitons has been the harder problem, since competing energy transfer processes can redirect energy before it becomes useful.”

“The team addressed that bottleneck by pairing singlet fission materials with a molybdenum-based near-infrared spin-flip emitter tuned to absorb specific triplet energy states.”

“The energy can be easily ‘stolen’ by a mechanism called Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) before multiplication occurs,” said Sasaki. “We therefore needed an energy acceptor that selectively captures the multiplied triplet excitons after fission.”

“Experiments using tetracene-based materials in solution produced quantum yields ranging from just over 110% to about 130%, meaning more energy carriers were generated than incoming photons absorbed under laboratory conditions.”

“Results remain limited to solution testing rather than full solar devices, meaning practical application still depends on translating the chemistry into solid materials compatible with working panels.”

“Future work will focus on combining these materials into solid-state systems where energy transfer efficiency can be tested under conditions closer to real solar cell operation.”

 

 

References:

 

Japanese researchers develop spin-flip material to increase solar panel efficiency by up to 130%. Wayne Williams. TechRadar Pro. May 3, 2026. Japanese researchers develop spin-flip material to increase solar panel efficiency by up to 130%

Exploring Spin-State Selective Harvesting Pathways from Singlet Fission Dimers to a Near-Infrared-Emissive Spin-Flip Emitter. Percy Gonzalo Sifuentes, Samanamud Adrian, Sauer Aki, Masaoka Yuta, Sawada Yuya, WatanabeIlias Papadopoulos, Katja Heinze, Yoichi Sasaki, and Nobuo Kimizuka. Journal of the American Chemical Society. Vol 148/Issue 13. March 25, 2026. Exploring Spin-State Selective Harvesting Pathways from Singlet Fission Dimers to a Near-Infrared-Emissive Spin-Flip Emitter | Journal of the American Chemical Society

Shockley–Queisser limit. Wikipedia. Shockley–Queisser limit - Wikipedia

Solar-cell efficiency. Wikipedia. Solar-cell efficiency - Wikipedia

Equinor’s Hywind Tampen Floating Offshore Wind Project Helps Power Oil & Gas Platforms and Proves That Floating Wind Can Be Reliable with Large 8.6MW Turbines

     Morning Overview’s Everett Sloane, with help from AI, just published an informative article about Equinor’s Hywind Tampen floating offshore wind project in the deep waters of the Norwegian Sea. About 140 kilometers off the Norwegian coast, there are 11 wind turbines deployed in open ocean where the seabed is much deeper than the roughly 60-meter depth limit that conventional, bolted-to-the-seabed offshore wind farms require. The floating turbines are “mounted on a spar-buoy hull anchored by mooring lines, riding swells that would topple any fixed foundation.”

     The Hywind Tampen project, with 11 floating turbines, has a combined capacity of 88MW. It became the world’s largest floating offshore wind farm, and now it is proving that floating offshore wind is a viable technology that can withstand the rough sea conditions that deeper water facilities may encounter. The strongest and steadiest offshore winds occur further offshore, where these floating turbines can harness them.

     Below are some technical resource assessments from NREL for U.S. offshore wind, including both areas where an attached substructure is viable and where floating wind is required due to depth. Adding in the floating wind potential, the total wind technical resource is more than doubled. Globally, the potential technical resource of floating wind dwarfs that of wind potential requiring substructures.

     The Hywind Tampen project supplies electricity to the Snorre and Gullfaks oil and gas platforms, offsetting some of the natural gas used by them to run their operations.

“The spar-buoy hulls, each ballasted to stay upright in North Sea storms, demonstrate that floating structures can support full-size turbines (8.6 MW each) and keep them generating through harsh conditions.”

     As of yet, there are still many unknowns about floating wind potential. One thing to keep in mind is that as facilities move further offshore, this means longer and more transmission cables are needed. This increases cost, increases transmission losses, and may have more ecological effects for organisms on the seabed. Sloane lists some of the unknowns below:

     In the offshore waters of the U.S., there is some leasing via the Bureau of Ocean Management and some potential projects moving forward, particularly off the Pacific coast of Oregon and California, where waters are too deep for fixed turbines.

“Developers including Equinor, RWE, and a joint venture between Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and others have secured leases or expressed interest in West Coast sites. On the East Coast, the Gulf of Maine has emerged as another focal area, with the state of Maine and federal agencies coordinating research into floating technology suited to its deep, cold waters.”

     While these projects are moving forward slowly, it will be several years before the U.S. has a floating offshore wind project deployed and in production.

“The physical resource is well characterized. The economic and ecological dimensions are not. Hywind Tampen and the handful of smaller floating pilots that preceded it, including the WindFloat Atlantic project off Portugal, have shown that the engineering works. What comes next depends on cable costs, permitting speed, supply-chain investment, and political will. The wind is there. The question is whether everything else can catch up.”

      

 

 

References:

 

A floating offshore wind farm just started sending power ashore from water too deep to anchor anything — opening trillions of watts of ocean wind to the grid. Everett Sloane. Morning Overview. June 1, 2026. A floating offshore wind farm just started sending power ashore from water too deep to anchor anything — opening trillions of watts of ocean wind to the grid

Offshore Wind Energy Technical Potential for the Contiguous United States. Anthony Lopez, Rebecca Green, Travis Williams, Eric Lantz, Grant Buster, and Billy Roberts. National renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). August 15th, 2022. Offshore Wind Energy Technical Potential for the Contiguous United States

Should Scientific Journals Endorse Political Candidates? Pielke Jr. Argues That It Leads to Increased Polarization and Erodes Public Trust in Science: Counterarguments Say It Depends on Whether the Journal is Privately or Publicly Funded

   

     I remember finding it odd when I read that Scientific American had endorsed Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. It begged the question whether scientific journals should be doing this. When the magazine endorsed Kamala Harris in 2024, Tom Nichols of the Atlantic noted that “a magazine devoted to science should not take sides in a political contest,” because it undermines public trust in science. Staff of the journal Chemical and Engineering News (C&EN) defended Scientific American’s decisions to endorse:

“{Scientific American} is a for-profit journalistic institution (owned by Springer Nature, but editorially independent), not a publicly funded scientific institution. As such, its editors have the same right as those of any other for-profit journalistic outlet to hold an opinion and endorse whomever they please. The Washington Post, the New York Times, and even the Atlantic itself regularly make political endorsements. Just because Scientific American primarily covers science doesn’t mean it should be apolitical.”

     More specifically, the C&EN staff cited views about gun safety and reproductive rights as key reasons they endorsed Harris. They said her policy positions on those topics were supported by science. They also noted that Scientific American is a popular science magazine rather than a strictly academic journal like Nature, which also endorsed Biden in 2020.

“As a popular science magazine, Scientific American shouldn’t be held to the same standards of objectivity one might expect from an academic journal like Nature. But it is still reasonable to assume Scientific American’s endorsement could reduce trust in science and the publication’s reporting among Trump supporters. It is also reasonable to assume that Scientific American’s editorial board knows this is a possible outcome and chose to proceed with an endorsement anyway.”

     Scientist Roger Pielke Jr., an expert in climate impacts and the science/policy nexus, offers some interesting analysis of the impacts of scientific institutions, public and private, that endorse candidates.  

     Pielke Jr. notes that the 2017 ‘March for Science’ was basically an event to show disapproval of Trump and his attitude toward science. He notes that of 110 scientists surveyed who participated in the event, only 1 identified as Republican, while 72% identified as Democrat.

     He also cites a study that concluded that the effects of the march were an increase in political polarization. He notes:

“New empirical research finds that partisan political advocacy by authoritative institutions comes at a heavy price paid in diminished overall public confidence — not just among conservatives but also independents — as well as increased polarization.”

     Here, he cites a study that found abundant confidence in scientists dropped from 39% in 2020 to just 23% in 2023, and low or no confidence in scientists increased from 12% to 27% over the same period. He also cites some recovery in a 2024 Pew poll where “88% of Democrats express confidence in scientists versus 66% of Republicans, and Republicans remain far more likely to oppose scientists’ active engagement in policymaking.”

     Pielke Jr. has been interviewing presidential science advisors, including many advisors to former presidents, since 2005. He cites a new and larger experiment in Nature Human Behavior that concludes that journal endorsements lower public trust in science. This is especially true for conservatives, but also for moderates.

     Pielke Jr. pointed out that he thinks individual scientists, as U.S. citizens, should be free to speak their minds about political issues. However, he argues against scientific institutions, such as academic journals, endorsing candidates, mainly because doing so tends to erode trust in science, which the evidence clearly shows.

“A journal holds a very different position than an individual expert: It is an institution of expertise. Its authority derives from its claim to serve science — and through science, to serve the public, all of the public whether far left, far right, or anywhere in between. When an authoritative scientific institution — whether a journal, university, or national academy — uses its authority in service of a subset of the public and opposed to another subset, there can be no surprise that those being opposed (or perceiving being opposed) respond by questioning the legitimacy and authority of that institution.”

     It is also true that there are some scientists who are strongly partisan and political. Some of these I refer to as activist-scientists. Some are well-connected into media so that when they co-author a paper giving conclusions that support their partisan views, the press often amplifies them. Pielke Jr. notes that non-partisan scientists are considered more credible than partisan scientists:

“Recent research on 98,000 academics on X/Twitter found that non-partisan scientists draw the most public credibility, and more intense political expression is associated with less perceived credibility. Yet, even so, many scientists recognize this trade-off and nearly half post political content anyway, credibility be damned.”

     He cites his own 2012 book, The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics, where he divides the roles of scientists into four types: pure scientist, science arbiter, issue advocate, and honest broker. By choosing to be partisan, scientists do risk their credibility, and should remain aware of that, since there will be costs.

“Institutional partisan advocacy — overt or stealth — comes with a price paid in the erosion of public trust and increased polarization over science.”

  

References:

 

The Price of Partisan Advocacy by Science Institutions: New evidence should have us asking: is it worth it? Roger Pielke Jr. The Honest Broker. May 6, 2026. The Price of Partisan Advocacy by Science Institutions

Editorial: Scientific American has every right to endorse a presidential candidate: Suggesting otherwise diminishes the role of science to inform policy and our values. C&EN editorial staff, Chemical & Engineering News. September 27. 2024. Editorial: Scientific American has every right to endorse a presidential candidate

 

 

China Has Built and is Now Deploying the World’s Largest Offshore Wind Power Converter

 

      China has recently shipped the world’s largest offshore converter station for installation at sea. It is planned to connect two massive offshore wind farms to the national power grid.

     According to Interesting Engineering:

“The platform, a two-gigawatt (GW) energy hub named Haifeng Heart, was built by heavy-duty equipment manufacturer Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. (ZPMC). It departed from the port city of Nantong in China’s Jiangsu Province on Wednesday, May 27.”

     Once installed, the converter is expected to deliver about six billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of wind-powered electricity per year. The converter is expected to support the Three Gorges Yangjiang Qingzhou V and Qingzhou VII offshore wind farms.

     The converter station is huge and required special manufacturing and assembly methods.

“The eight-story steel structure is about 281 feet (85.5 meters) long, 271 feet (82.5 meters) wide, and around 144 feet (44 meters) high. It also weighs an astonishing 25,000 tonnes (27,557 US tons).”

“It is among the largest offshore energy structures ever built. ZPMC revealed that it was constructed using a modular fabrication approach, with onshore assembly, equipment integration, and installation progressing in parallel. This placed high demands on supply chain coordination and production management.”

“Yan Bing, ZPMC senior specialist, stated that the company adopted an integrated construction model featuring “onshore assembly, transport as a single unit, and float-over installation.” This improved the efficiency and execution quality, while providing a model for future projects of this type.”

     With a single-unit transmission capacity of 2,000 megawatts (MW), it is the largest offshore converter station in the world and has set several other records as well. It is the world’s highest-voltage offshore wind flexible direct-current (DC) transmission system. It is expected to run at ±500 kilovolts (kV).

“It is the first offshore wind project to combine alternating current (AC) and DC transmission technologies within the same system. Additionally, the project is the first centralized offshore wind flexible DC transmission system of its kind.”

     It is also the first use of ±525 kV DC subsea cables for long-distance transmission of renewable energy generated offshore. The DC conversion near the source of the wind turbines reduces power losses compared to AC or compared to DC conversion further away from the generation source.

“By converting offshore AC into DC, they reduce transmission losses over long-distance subsea cables, unlocking access to high-quality wind resources located more than 100 kilometers [62 miles] from shore and supporting expansion into deeper and more remote waters,” ZPMC concluded

    

References:

 

World’s largest offshore wind converter with 6 billion kWh annual capacity heads to sea. Georgina Jedikovska. Interesting Engineering. May 29, 2026. World’s largest offshore wind converter with 6 billion kWh annual capacity heads to sea