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

Technology choices that were considered are based on those contained within the
Offshore Transmission Technology report [5] prepared by the ENTSO-E Regional Group
North Sea for the NSCOGI 12 and briefly described in the previous section.
In the case of the meshed network design, the potential for points of common coupling
(referred to as supernodes) to be selected was also considered at strategic points across
the North Seas region. The supernodes permit the meshing of the offshore grid to best
optimise the offshore grid development and may involve the integration of multiple
technologies at those points.
The number of reinforcement candidates for the radial and the mesh network designs has
similar numbers of candidates to consider. The differences in the candidate sets were
primarily in the offshore area, as the mesh configuration allowed for the inclusion of
supernodes and hence the opportunity to couple offshore reinforcements at sea, whereas
the radial variant did not allow these options.
The statistics associated with both the radial and meshed network designs are
summarised in the Tables below. The large number of candidates, particularly in the
largely undeveloped offshore grid space, allows for consideration of the widest range of
possibilities thus ensuring selection of the most economic connection points and
technologies for each link.
Table 7-4: Number of Candidates Considered for the Radial Network Design
Description Technology Number of
Candidates
Offshore Candidates
Onshore Candidates
Length
[km]
HVDC 1,865 435,759
HVAC 830 40,294
HVDC 265 55,928
HVAC 552 28,763
TOTAL 3,512 560,744
12 Offshore Transmission Technology, ENTSO-E, 24.11.2011
Page7-12