Route 1: A main route from southwest to the southeast passing Portland and Germany in the middle part. An England-Ireland branch and a northern Europe branch leave the main route at Pairs and Hamburg. The advantage of this route is that it starts in southwestern Europe and connects to North Africa. At the same time, a lot of existing network lines were used to connect the two branches using the existing submarine network lines. At the same time, a lot of existing network lines were used in southeast Europe, the farthest end of which could be connected to Turkey.
Route 2: The whole grid uses the existing city network line to connect, travel through a large number of coastal key cities of the ring network line, at the same time in the UK and Northern Europe branches. The length of the cable is much longer than the first one, but the looping of the cable greatly increases coverage. At the same time, this version of Supergrid uses more existing network cables for connection, and the coverage rate is extremely high.
Route 3: The grid runs mainly east-west across the continent, extending north in three directions. The Supergrid features a connection between almost all the capitals. Compared with the previous two, this network line is thinner and more fragmented because it is more aimed at connecting the capital. Like branches, they branch off at different places in pursuit of fewer new high-voltage systems.
Route 4: This grid links mainly the major cities of continental Europe and is characterized by being connected through the south rather than the farther north. It’s not connected to any island country except London, to the four northern European countries and to Russia. At the same time, the northeastern region is connected by a route from Turkey, rather than through Poland. The characteristic of the grid is to connect only the countries in the intermediate region, and to maximize the number of countries that can be connected after the grid is built. Far places like Italy and Greece are not connected.
Route 5: This grid is the only one that connects all large and medium-sized cities, and it is also the one that requires the longest distance to build a new grid. The advantage of this power network is that it can fully cover the large and medium-sized cities identified in the figure. At the same time, it can expand through the existing power grid and cover the dense areas with multiple power grids, so as to achieve the highest coverage rate. Instead of point-to-point ultra-high voltage circuits, the new ones would be a complete grid, which could be connected in loops. But the drawback is that in order to cover all areas, there are a lot of long distance UHV connections just for one city.
According to the mountain map, only Route 2 and route 5 was severely affected in the Swiss region. They basically didn’t cross a lot of mountains outside of the first time.
Personally, Route3 or Route4 would be a better choice for Phase 1 construction. Not only can it quickly connect many cities, but it also makes a good foundation for later development (Route5, or other ways to completely connect all cities).