Canada’s Transcontinental Supergrid: Technical Report

A major coordinated effort promoted to move clean electricity “freely from coast to coast” is related to Canada’s Transcontinental Supergrid interconnecting all its provinces through highest-quality power transmission. The proposed Canada’s Supergrid would enable and ensure reliability, resilience and energy security of each of the provincial transmission grids and the Transcontinental Supergrid as a whole.

For Transcontinental Supergrid planning, adjusted total transfer capability limits for interprovincial and international transmission paths are proposed so as to establish an interprovincial coast-to-coast transfer capability target.

In Supergrid transmission planning, High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) is seen as a key segment leading in today’s AC/DC Transmission Merge. HVDC has demonstrated globally major improvements in its capabilities, increasingly needed to enhance the existing AC grid upgrade. HVDC multi-value makes it highly competitive technically and economically. High capacity, long-distance, controllable, multi-terminal HVDC technology is particularly valuable for transcontinental transmission across multiple jurisdictions.

HVDC Back-to-Back (B2B) solutions for provincial interties and international interconnections present a compelling case for the Supergrid planning. A set of eight HVDC Voltage Source Converter (VSC)-based B2B stations, 4,860 MW capacity in total, is proposed as a core Supergrid Solution to leverage prompt planning and deployment of Canada’s Supergrid.