There is an "invisible" but impressive work that is proceeding according to plan, in the mountains on the border with France. It is being built by Terna, the company controlled by Cassa depositi e prestiti (Cdp), which manages the national electricity transmission grid. We are talking about theinterconnection between Italy and France, precisely. Piedmont, Savoy, valleys and peaks covered with snow for now do not hinder a project that has been rewarded even before being completed and which Terna expects to deliver in December 2019. "We are working on all the road sections involved - explains the Agostino Scornajenchi CFO of the group – and then on the A32 motorway and on the connecting state road. We expect to enter the Fréjus tunnel next year. That will be the most complex moment in the construction phase of the work, which will then lead to the test and inspection phase, which we hope to finish by the end of the year”.
The construction sites started in the summer of 2013 for a 190 km long infrastructure which will allow for the exchange of another 1200 MW between the two countries, in direct current at 320 kV, therefore at very high voltage. This is an increase in the exchange potential of around 40% which will add up to the 3.150 MW that already flow along the Franco-Italian border today. But these, however important and unprecedented in the world, are numbers for engineers because the beauty of this gigantic commitment lies in the fact that, at the end of the work, we will see nothing: no pylons, no cables, nothing at all.
The new network runs along roads and motorways, starting from the Piossasco station (Italy side), then passing through a tunnel and arriving as far as the Grand'Ile station (France side). The works walk along the motorway section, already integrated into the territory, and are proceeding regularly. For having planned and implemented the work and above all the financing to carry it out the private part – called Interconnector and made possible by law 99 of 2009 which provides for the involvement of Italian energy-intensive industries – Terna was awarded last Wednesday in London. The Pfim (Project finance international magazine) prize was awarded to her precisely for the financial instruments identified to support a project in which groups such as Ilva, Arvedi, Italcementi, Buzzi Unicem, Burgo, Solvay, Acciai Speciali Terni participate. The companies ensure for a transitional period of 10 years energy supplies at lower prices on approximately one third of the 1.200 MW of available capacity, which they return to the community upon expiry. On the other hand, they take charge of an investment of 415 million out of the approximately 800 million euros needed to complete both the public and private parts of the work. In the complex mechanism established by the 2009 law, it is envisaged that for years private individuals will be able to recover the price gap on energy, which in Italy is more expensive for industry than the European average, with a contribution that is repaid by bills.
But it is on the scope of the work that Terna insists. “We are pleased with the award – continues Scornajenchi – but above all we are anxious to make available to Terna's industry a financial instrument that supports this initiative”. In this case, it is a "bullet" financing which is not amortized in advance but is repaid by the work itself once completed "and it is not usual in complex project financing works such as this, confirming the good reputation it enjoys Triad. We are above all a company engaged in an innovative path towards an energy transition that will require massive investments in the networks, and finance will have to accompany this path”.
Terna for high voltage, as well as distributors for medium and low voltage, have to deal with the advance of renewable sources and the consequent revolution underway in the electricity system which, Scornajenchi underlines again, "requires and will increasingly require a much more robust transmission and distribution infrastructure to balance the system and make it work at its best. While on the one hand the cost of energy will tend to fall, the integration of green sources into the electricity system will require new investments in the networks. The framework for promoting this energy transition are also the Sen objectives, which envisage on the one hand a progressive decommissioning of coal-fired plants, on the other the ever-increasing development of distributed generation".
In practice, from a few hundred large electricity production plants, in just over ten years we have already reached over 700 points of introduction into the grid, which will continue to increase in the future. “We know that there is a lot to do, that time is not infinite and that an acceleration of investments in the coming years is necessary to encourage the development and safe use of energy from renewable sources. We are committed to making this happen – concludes Scornajechi – and this acceleration of investments will be visible in the new industrial plan that we will present on March 22nd. I can't say more now."
In addition to the Italy-France interconnection, Terna is also building the one with Montenegro (also ready by the end of 2019), which will represent the first "electricity bridge" with the Balkans. Furthermore, on the horizon are the interconnection projects with Tunisia and the new three-terminal electric cable that connects Sardinia, Corsica and Italy. The curtain on these new programs opens at the end of March.
