The Brits and the French have spent centuries locked in a complex relationship stretching from the Norman conquest to Monty Python’s “Holy Grail” — yet the two countries still can’t get enough of one another.
More than 20 million people traveled the 31-mile tunnel under the English Channel — the French call it La Manche — that connects France and the U.K., in 2017. That includes 2.6 million cars, 1.6 million trucks, and over 10 million Eurostar high-speed train passengers.
For these travelers, a journey through the Channel Tunnel is a magical experience, with the English countryside’s rolling hills meeting the cliffs of Folkestone in Kent, before everything outside goes black. Moments later, passengers find themselves blinking in the daylight as their shuttle emerges in Pas-de-Calais, France.
Passenger volumes are likely to increase even more in the coming years, according to shuttle operator Eurotunnel, and that poses a problem. There is no margin to add to the existing infrastructure, which is made up of three tunnels to accommodate vehicle-carrying shuttles alongside passenger and freight trains. And digging an extra tunnel some 130 feet under the seabed would be too big an undertaking in the short term. The Channel Tunnel itself, which opened in 1994, was already a massive project. It cost $17 billion in today’s money and took six years to complete. The American Society of Civil Engineers was so impressed they named it one of Seven Wonders of the Modern World.
“We need a system to support the voltage, that will keep the increasing number of trains running,” says Louis Nivelleau, a director at GE Power’s Grid Solutions business based in Tampere, Finland. Top image credit: Getlink.
All things considered, Getlink — the Eurotunnel Group’s new corporate name — has little choice but to send more trains down its tracks. It sounds easy in principle, but the system is constrained by voltage issues. With nearly 400 trains passing through the Channel Tunnel each day at peak traffic, as many as eight trains can be running simultaneously through it. At those times, running trains draw heavily on the electricity grid, a situation that could lead to a drop in voltage and therefore power.
But Getlink has found a solution that will allow it to engineer its way out of the problem. The company has asked GE to build a voltage stabilizer for the network next to a substation by the sea in Folkestone, Kent.
When the project is completed in 2019, the load balancer will be the largest in the world at 4,000 square meters, or about three-quarters the size of an American football field. The system, called Static Synchronous Compensator, or STATCOM, reacts by balancing the voltage or managing its level, says Louis Nivelleau, a director at GE Power’s Grid Solutions business based in Tampere, Finland. “We need a system to support the voltage, that will keep the increasing number of trains running,” he adds.
GE and Eurotunnel estimate that the new STATCOM will not just reduce voltage variations but also will enable almost twice as much traffic to use the Channel Tunnel in the future.
It also will allow Getlink to continue to benefit from the purchase of electricity “where it is least expensive,” says Michel Boudoussier, chief corporate officer at Getlink. About 98 percent of the electricity used to power the Channel Tunnel comes from France, “because it’s cheaper and has a lower carbon footprint,” says Nivelleau.
A steady of flow of greater traffic through the Channel Tunnel should ultimately boost the U.K. and European economies too, given that a full quarter of British trade with EU countries — everything from postal and courier freight to food, cars, computers and electronics — passes through it.
Construction should take about 21 months, Nivelleau says.