Introduction: SPEN has taken out membership of the Electrical Power Research Institute (EPRI) in order to gain technical guidance and expertise to support the 2020 Project. This project will employ technologies that have not yet been used in GB and membership of EPRI provides access to a wide range of technical documentation and expertise covering HVDC, series compensation and wide area monitoring & control which feature in the 2020 proposals. EPRI provides a wide range of information in other aspects of power engineering such as smart grids and asset management.

SPEN is one of the principle organisations involved in the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) Electricity Networks Strategy Group (ENSG) work on the 2020 vision for the transmission network. This work has set the footprint for the transmission system in GB to facilitate the delivery of renewable energy in Scotland in excess of 10GW by 2020. An essential deliverable of this work is the HVDC link between SPEN and NG. It is proposed for this link to be operational by 2016 to facilitate the flow of the expected renewable energy from Scotland to England. This is the first off many proposed DC links in the UK to deliver the 2020 vision.

Objectives: Involvement with EPRI will provide information in the technology areas applicable to the HVDC link development.