Xlinks plans to build the longest underwater electric cable between UK and Morocco

Xlinks, a British company, plans to build the longest underwater electric cable in the world, stretching 3,800 km between North Africa and Britain.

The company proposes to complete the GBP16 billion link between Morocco and the UK by the end of this decade, which will provide enough electricity to power more than 7 million UK homes.

Ex-Tesco CEO, and one of the main project’s planners, Sir Dave Lewis said, to Financial Times, “We have acquired an area of about 1,500 square kilometers from the Moroccan government (…) On the ground, we are going to put together a solar farm, a wind farm and batteries that together will produce about 10.5 gigawatts of power.”

The aim of the project is to produce clean energy daily in Morocco, from the sun during the day and wind at night, with battery power to help bridge the gaps. “It’s renewable energy that acts like a baseload,” Lewis said. “We have nothing to do with the interruption.”

Some of the electricity will then be transported via four submarine cables to a site in Devon with a combined capacity of 3.6GW.

the project was also raising 800 million £ to build three production facilities in the UK in an effort to meet a growing demand for electric cables used for offshore wind farms and subsea connections.

The use of submarine cables, or interconnections, has increased in recent years as it enables countries to trade electricity.

The United Kingdom recently completed the longest existing interconnector in the world, between Norway and Northumberland in the north east of England, which costs about € 2 billion and stretches 720 km across the North Sea.

The rise of sea winds in the UK has made interconnections even more attractive, as it enables Britain to export power in times of surplus and to import it when needed.

However, a cable as long as the one proposed by Xlinks has never been built, and previous attempts to build extremely long interconnections, such as the IceLink between Iceland and Scotland, have not been successful due to the cost and obstacles.

Tom Edwards, a senior model at energy consultant Cornwall Insight, stated to Financial Times, that importing electricity from Morocco to the UK may not be cost-competitive by the time it starts operating due to the declining cost of wind power.

“An important challenge [for a project like this] is the cost, and the risk that it is not only delays, but also exceeds whether you have to change route at the construction of the submarine cable,”said Edwards.