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The Mediterranean Ring Project: Status and Plans

Publication Date: March, 2006
Pages: 50
Price: US$495

• North African, Eastern Mediterranean and Gulf States Cooperation Council Continue Development of the Largest Multi-National Electric Power Interconnection Arrangement in the World
• The Mediterranean Ring Taking Shape As Regional Energy Security Concerns Override Political and Technical Issues
• Many Bilateral Power Exchange Agreements among Mediterranean, North African and Middle Eastern Countries Already in Effect

The third edition of this report on the status and development of the Mediterranean Ring, a major international electric power interconnection project initially conceived of during the 1960s, has been published March 20076.

The goal of the ongoing Mediterranean Ring project is to provide interconnection of electric power transmission grids among the countries and regions that encircle the Mediterranean Sea. This, in turn, will increase energy security in the entire region, and enable more efficient power flows at lower costs and with a need for fewer power plants to meet rapidly increasing demand for electricity in the southern and eastern Mediterranean regions.

The concept involves linking electric power grids from Spain to Morocco through the remaining Maghreb (North African and Western Arab) countries, on to Egypt and the Mashreq, (Eastern Arab) countries, and from there up to Turkey. From Turkey the ring would then link back into the European grid via Greece or through the newly interconnected Eastern European country grids. See Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: Illustration of the Proposed Mediterranean Ring

The European Union nations have taken the lead in assisting the Mediterranean region in its quest to be synchronously interconnected to the European grid. The objectives of such a huge system of electric power interconnections include these:

1. Provide increased levels of energy security to participating nations;
2. Defer or avoid construction of new power plants by importing/exporting electric power among nations;
3. Balance the load and the demand for electric power across the region; and,
4. Cut back on the primary electricity reserve requirements within each country.

Organizational Involvement in the Development of the Med Ring Project:

There are several international groups heavily involved in the development of the Med Ring interconnection project. Because of the implications of linking grids from one region to another region that have such different operational and technical characteristics, standards organizations, regional electrical associations, and even the European Union are necessarily involved parties to this development.

The reason for such high levels of involvement in reviewing grid interconnections is that the stability of existing mature networks in Western Europe is paramount to that highly electrified region. All new connections must be equally stable.

European networks are highly meshed, consisting of high voltage lines, with high consumption and high density of consumers, and predictable load patterns. Grids in the Southern Mediterranean region are typically lower voltage grids, non-redundant, serving fewer loads, concentrated in highly urbanized areas, and strung out through the countryside at lower voltages.

This 50-page report is priced at US$495 and includes detailed discussions of the electric power infrastructure of the involved countries. It also contains several illustrations of the region and its electric power linkages, plans for expanded interconnections with the Gulf States, listings of current and planned links between countries, and descriptions of each of the associated technical and financial resource organizations involved in the Mediterranean Ring project.

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