IN Brief:
- Running from October 2022 to March 2026, HVDC-WISE is now validating planning methods for hybrid AC/DC grids across mainland Europe, Great Britain, and an offshore EU-GB use case.
- The project’s work spans reliability and resilience studies, interoperable modelling approaches, and protection and control validation for future HVDC-heavy systems.
- Final outputs are expected to feed into model sharing, resilience-led grid planning, and possible updates to codes and regulations as HVDC deployment expands.
HVDC-WISE has moved into its closing phase as European transmission planners look for grid architectures that can move larger volumes of renewable electricity over longer distances without increasing system fragility. Coordinated by SuperGrid Institute under Horizon Europe, the project has spent the past three and a half years turning HVDC concepts into planning methods and software tools intended for use on real transmission systems rather than purely theoretical studies.
The timing reflects the direction of travel in Europe’s power system. Cross-border flows are rising, offshore build-out is accelerating, and transmission planners are being asked to assess not only conventional contingency performance but also how the system behaves during wider disturbances and how quickly it can recover. HVDC-WISE was set up around that shift, with a brief focused on reliability and resilience for widespread hybrid AC/DC transmission systems linking continental Europe and Great Britain.
The consortium brings together 14 partners from 11 countries across transmission system operators, universities, research organisations, and industry. Its technical work has centred on a reliability-and-resilience-oriented planning toolset, new grid architecture concepts, and the modelling of emerging HVDC technologies. Those methods are now being pressure-tested on three large-scale demonstration cases: a mainland European system, a Great Britain-based system, and a multipurpose offshore HVDC grid linking the EU and GB. Protection and control studies are also being validated under realistic operating conditions, an important step for any future network that relies on multiple converters and more complex control interactions.
One of the more practical parts of the programme has been the effort to improve how studies are run across different tools and institutions. Model exchange, interoperability, and consistent planning workflows are becoming more important as offshore and cross-border projects involve larger sets of stakeholders, longer development cycles, and more specialised software environments. HVDC-WISE has also published open-access deliverables and software resources, giving planners and researchers access to model libraries, resilience methodologies, and tools for transmission expansion analysis and cascading event assessment.
That gives the final stage of the project a clear purpose. The remaining work is less about proving that HVDC has a role in Europe’s future grid and more about showing how it can be planned, coordinated, and regulated at scale. Final outputs are set to include guidance on model sharing and interoperability, practical approaches to embedding resilience into planning, suggested changes to existing codes and regulations, and a technology roadmap for wider HVDC deployment. Public deliverables and open-source resources are available through the project’s resources page.
Europe’s next phase of grid expansion will depend not only on adding transfer capacity, but on building hybrid systems that remain coordinated and recoverable when the wider network is under stress.
