The North Seas Countries' Offshore Grid Initiative - Initial ... - Benelux

Going forward, additional scenarios should be developed assessing each corner of the
‘kite’ described in Figure 1-4. In the absence of agreed national/ Regional/ European
2030 energy targets, these should be developed with key stakeholders. based, as far as
possible, on common underlying assumptions
6.1.3 Grid designs
Under the grid expansion methodology special attention was given to the integration of
offshore RES, but it also met the requirements under the other pillars of energy policy, as
defined in the European Energy Infrastructure Package, i.e. Integration of Energy Markets
(IEM), Implementation of Renewable Energy Resources (RES) and Security of Supply (SoS).
An important finding of this study is that, under the Reference Scenario, further market
integration is facilitated through the development of additional cross-border links. The
analysis also shows that it is essential to take the impact of offshore grid developments
on the onshore network into account. These impacts provide a critical element in the
future grid designs.
Two main offshore grid structures were considered:
A radial design with offshore RES independently and radially connected to the
onshore grid, separately from the establishment of point-to-point interconnectors
An integrated (meshed) design where offshore RES and interconnectors can be
connected to the onshore grid or to offshore hubs.
Both designs provide access to all of the offshore wind parks assumed in the Reference
scenario and therefore facilitate the renewable energy ambitions of the 10 Governments
as set out in the Reference scenario.
Because of the relatively small volumes of offshore RES expected between 2020 and 2030,
there are limited opportunities for ‘meshing’ with only small differences between the costs
(annuitised investment cost and annual VOM for the grid) and benefits (reduction in
production costs, including CO impact and VOM for the generation) between the radial
2
and meshed designs. The results show an annual difference between radial and meshed of
77 M€ p.a. in favour of a meshed approach. This difference may not necessarily be seen
as significant enough to distinguish the results from a net break-even result for either
design. Further investigation would be needed before taking project decisions based on
these results.
Any future offshore grid will not be built from blueprints or NSCOGI impressions for the
future. It will be developed gradually based on robust business cases for individual
projects The optimisation of candidate reinforcements does identify some opportunities
for meshing in the reference scenario (in particular in the English Channel and between
Belgium, the Netherlands and Great Britain). This is a contrast to other studies, e.g.
[12],which found meshing opportunities for long-distance offshore assets – but used
much higher offshore wind volumes (126 GW) than in the Reference Scenario (56 GW) as
basis for the study, as further studies on future RES integration did [15] -[18], [21]; [23].
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