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

To that extent, a 1,000 MW ‘spine’ was established between
the Idunn hub off Norway, the Dogger Bank hub
off the UK and the IJmuiden hub off the Netherlands to
Belgium 31 . Sensitivities were then performed on this
initial mesh around 32 :
• the effectiveness of each of the links within the
‘spine’,
• adding additional 1,000 MW offshore links to
Belgium and Sweden from the IJmuiden hub and
Idunn hub respectively,
• adding additional 1,000 MW offshore links to Belgium
and Sweden from the Dutch and Norwegian onshore
networks mesh connection points respectively,
• uprating the individual mesh links to 2,000 MW,
• removal of the ‘redundant’ hub-to-hub link between
Idunn and IJmuiden from the base model.
31 As can be seen from Figure 4.23, some parts of this ‘spine’ already existed in the model. As a result of the hub-to-hub analysis,
the Dogger Bank hub was already connected to the Gaia hub in Germany, and the Idunn hub was already connected directly to
the IJmuiden hub. Belgium, France, and Sweden were already connected to the Netherlands and Norway respectively via onshore
reinforcements in the base model.
32 Unlike for the direct interconnections and the hub to hub connections the possible variations in mesh topology were not exhaustively
modelled although several sensitivities assessing the effect of changes in capacities, connection points and removal of links around
the core initial mesh and alternative mesh designs were analysed to arrive at the design presented here. (Further details of these
sensitivity studies are represented in Annex D.III.I to this report).
Whilst other alternative mesh designs are certainly possible and may even be more beneficial, it was felt that the proposed design
demonstrated the benefit of a meshed offshore grid and was already sufficiently complex to make implementation by 2030 ambitious.
OffshoreGrid – Final Report
Figure 4.23 shows the overall final grid design after
step 3 of the Direct Design Methodology for the North
and Baltic Seas.
Results – direct design
Figure 4.24 shows the infrastructure costs (cumulatively)
and the total system generation costs, and Figure 4.25
shows the net benefit of the overall Direct Design.
As can be seen from Figure 4.24, the cumulative investment
cost curve (blue bars) for the Direct Design
is reasonably linear for the direct interconnectors. This
reflects the discrete investment required in converters
and cable for every investment. The few larger steps
for Sweden-Latvia and Ireland-France reflect the greater
amounts of subsea cable required for longer interconnections.
The investment cost curve begins to plateau
for the hub-to-hub cases implemented, as these require
only an investment in extra subsea cable and utilise the
FIGURE 4.24: dIREcT dESIGN - cUMUlATIvE cAPEX INvESTMENT cOSTS (blUE, lEFT) ANd SYSTEM GENERATION cOSTS (REd, RIGhT) [€ bN]
Cumulative investment
cost (blue) (€bn)
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Base case
SE-DE
FI-EE
SE-PL
SE-DK
SE-LV
GB-FR
SE-DE
Cumulative investment costs
GB-BE
Direct interconnections
Hub-to-hub and Tee-in Mesh
Omitted as not bene�cial. Shown to compare with direct design
GB-FR
SE-PL
SE-DK
IE-FR
IE-GB
GB-BE
NO-NL
Annual system generation costs
SE-DK
System generation
cost (red) (€bn)
NL-GB
GB-DE
Mesh
100,5
100,0
99,5
99,0
98,5
98,0
63