Offshore Electricity Infrastructure in Europe - European Wind Energy ...

esults
(figure to the right) in Northern Europe, as assumed in
the 2030 scenario of OffshoreGrid: areas of low correlation
are illustrated in blue, high correlation in red.
The figures show that most of the offshore capacities
in the 2030 scenario are concentrated in the southern
part of the North Sea. In contrast to this, the onshore
wind power in the scenario is more or less evenly distributed
over Northern Europe. In total, wind energy is
clearly concentrated in the North. This concentration
will pose considerable challenges for power flows in
the future European electricity grid.
The correlation of the offshore wind power shows
a clear west-east pattern: the figure on the left in
Figure 4.2 reflects that the wind power production is
more correlated from west to east than between north
and south. Moreover the main wind direction is from
west to east, especially the low pressure weather systems
with strong wind speeds also move mainly from
west to east.
The analysis shows that grid interconnections between
regions of low weather correlation can significantly
reduce the variability of European wind power production.
Interconnectors running in a north to south
direction bring the highest benefit for the reduction of
wind power variability.
Spatial correlations of wind power
production between countries
With the simulated wind power time series, the spatial
correlations between individual countries were also investigated.
The results are shown in Table 4.1, which
confirms the findings above. The correlations are
highest in the east-west direction, for example a correlation
of 74% between the UK and the Netherlands,
67% between the UK and Germany, and still 29% between
the UK and Poland. This is much less in the
north-south direction, with correlations of only 44%
between Norway and Denmark, 16% between Finland
and Poland, and even only 5% between Norway and
France. The combination Germany-UK yields higher average
variations than a combination Norway-Belgium.
This means that from a wind power variability point of
view, a north-south interconnection between Norway
and Belgium would be more beneficial than an eastwest
interconnection between the UK and Germany.
The figures in Table 4.1 can be used in the preliminary
assessment of new interconnectors that are meant for
trading wind power. Low correlation would hint at the
need for new interconnecting capacity in order to fully
utilise the variable wind resource.
TAblE 4.1: cORRElATION cOEFFIcIENTS bETWEEN cOUNTRIES USING SIMUlATEd WINd POWER TIME SERIES FOR ThE
OFFShOREGRId 2030 WINd POWER ScENARIO (ON- & OFFShORE WINd TOGEThER) (%)
BE DK eT Fi Fr De uK IR lA lT Nl NO Pl Ru se
BE 100% 45% 12% 2% 59% 67% 66% 37% 20% 21% 79% 12% 28% 20% 22%
DK 45% 100% 32% 17% 32% 76% 49% 20% 44% 48% 77% 44% 78% 48% 73%
eT 12% 32% 100% 51% 10% 18% 16% 12% 66% 66% 22% 13% 36% 45% 69%
Fi 2% 17% 51% 100% 2% 6% 7% 4% 30% 34% 10% 23% 16% 19% 49%
Fr 59% 32% 10% 2% 100% 37% 49% 43% 16% 18% 46% 5% 23% 17% 20%
De 67% 76% 18% 6% 37% 100% 67% 26% 28% 30% 87% 40% 53% 32% 43%
uK 66% 49% 16% 7% 49% 67% 100% 62% 20% 21% 74% 37% 29% 21% 27%
IR 37% 20% 12% 4% 43% 26% 62% 100% 13% 14% 33% 14% 15% 13% 13%
lA 20% 44% 66% 30% 16% 28% 20% 13% 100% 89% 32% 15% 55% 74% 69%
lT 21% 48% 66% 34% 18% 30% 21% 14% 89% 100% 34% 17% 61% 88% 72%
Nl 79% 77% 22% 10% 46% 87% 74% 33% 32% 34% 100% 36% 50% 34% 49%
NO 12% 44% 13% 23% 5% 40% 37% 14% 15% 17% 36% 100% 24% 16% 30%
Pl 28% 78% 36% 16% 23% 53% 29% 15% 55% 61% 50% 24% 100% 65% 73%
Ru 20% 48% 45% 19% 17% 32% 21% 13% 74% 88% 34% 16% 65% 100% 59%
se 22% 73% 69% 49% 20% 43% 27% 13% 69% 72% 49% 30% 73% 59% 100%
34 OffshoreGrid – Final Report
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