An oversupply of solar radiation in northern Africa and high energy consumption in the economic centres of Central Europe gave rise to the intercontinental networking of renewable energy supplies. The expansion of high-capacity power line routes is fundamental to this. This alone allows the energy to be transported economically from the production sites to the distant consumption centres. In advance of the project, however, little was known about how to determine an optimal route. Within the framework of the project, a methodology was therefore developed and illustrated which makes it possible to spatially optimise the transport of electricity between North Africa and Europe. For this purpose, the decisive spatial influencing factors (e.g. land use, slope, bathymetry) were recorded during the planning of power line routes and presented by means of GIS. The optimal course of a direct current line between the Algerian hybrid power plant site Hassi R'Mel and the Brussels consumption centre was calculated and visualised as an example.

selected publications:

• Walter K., Bosch S. (2013): Planung einer Stromleitungstrasse von Hassi R’Mel (Algerien) nach Brüssel. In: GIS.Science – Die Zeitschrift für Geoinformatik, 26 (4), 119-126.
• Walter K., Bosch S. (2013): Intercontinental cross-linking of power supply – calculating an optimal power line corridor from North Africa to Central Europe. In: Energy, Sustainability and Society, 3 (7). https://doi.org/10.1186/2192-0567-3-14