New North Sea windfarms to get multi-national connections...

Yes, right up to the point where countries on the eurpean continent pull the plug under protest from their 'locals' because local prices are being driven up by demand from those countries whose generating capacity has not been invested in over the decades. Look at the situation in Norway right now. Their govt is talking about turring off the taps to external cusotmers because foreign demand is driving up prices. Another vulnerabilty is over reliance upon the French - no wonder they won't act on stopping illegal immigration when all they have to do is to threaten to turn off the UK-Franco interconnections if we so much as push the issue beyond certain boundaries..

I had seen that article. It makes sense to me. Sometimes there is too much wind: if the surplus can be sent to Europe, so much the better.

up to the point where countries on the eurpean continent pull the plug under protest from their 'locals' because local prices are being driven up by demand

The way I read it, these interconnectors will only import into a country, not export, so "pulling the plug" at their own end wouldn't help their domestic arrangements at all. They might find at times there's international competition for the windfarm's output, which might push up the cost of the imports - but that hardly any worse than buying gas (or any other fuel) from the open markets.

Perhaps they could be re-configured into more general multi-directional interconnectors (from an engineerring point of view, the extra resilience for the overall grids could be quite useful) but that doesn't seem to be the intention.

     - Andy.

I'm wondering how the subsidy and support arrangements will work?

Currently in GB, windfarms bid into the Contract for Difference (CfD) auctions to secure an inflation-linked, fixed price contract for their generation, paid for by GB consumers, on the basis that all the power is flowing into GB, benefitting GB consumers.

Of course if that wind farm is now connected to two or more countries, with the power potentially flowing to different countries, varying continuously depending on wholesale prices, that's a much more complex question of how to determine where the power should flow, how that power should be valued and how the subsidy costs should be apportioned between the different countries and their consumers.

A free market. Hooray!

fixed price contract for their generation

As I understand it, it's fixed per unit price (per MWh) - so if the power goes elsewhere, they won't get paid for it.

   - Andy.

But another country will get electricity subsidised by the UK.  CfDs work on the basis that all the electricity is supplied into the UK, - a certain amount of capacity is being funded and the expectation is that the UK will benefit from getting power at a cheap rate when electricity prices are high, partly funded by us paying over the odds when electricity prices are low.

If the electricity goes elsewhere when prices are high then we lose out.  Of course, the UK would be quite happy not to pay over the odds for electricity when prices are low, but if prices are low will there really be that much demand from elsewhere?