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

esults
• Costs and benefits of the Hub Base Case scenario
2030
The costs for the offshore wind farm connections
are significantly reduced in the Hub Base Case scenario.
As a large number of wind farms is connected
with cost efficient hub design concepts, the overall
infrastructure costs are decreased by €14 bn to
€78 bn (incl. TYNDP interconnectors). However the
hub design connections do not build new transmission
corridors between countries, therefore the
annual power system generation costs remain at
the high level and no generation costs benefits are
produced.
• Costs and Benefits of the Direct Design scenario
and the Split design scenario
The direct and Split Designs are built on the Hub
Base Case scenario 2030. Additional grid infrastructure
is added: direct interconnections,
hub-to-hub interconnections, tee-in interconnections
and meshed grid designs. As additional
infrastructure is added in both cases the costs are
increased compared to the Hub Base Case scenario.
The overall costs of the Direct Design offshore
grid amount to €86 bn. The Split Design offshore
grid is €2 bn less expensive and costs €84 bn in
total. At the same time the annual system generation
costs are largely decreased as both designs
add new electricity trading capacity to the system.
The annual benefits of €1.02 bn (Split Design) and
€1.3 bn (Direct Design) amount to a net present
value benefit of €16 bn (Split Design) and €21 bn
(Direct Design) across a lifetime of 25 years.
• The additional infrastructure costs to develop the
Direct or Split Design on top of the Hub Base Case
scenario 2030 are relatively low. They represent
only 7% (Split Design) to 9% (Direct Design) of the
Hub Base Case wind farm connections and the
ENTSO-E TYNDP interconnectors. At the same time
they generate large benefits of about three times
the investments.
The enormous investments into offshore grid infrastructure
have to be put into relation to the offshore
wind energy produced. The offshore wind farms considered
in OffshoreGrid produce about 530 TWh annually
which is about the annual consumption of Germany.
Across 25 years this amounts to 13,300 TWh. Based
on average spot market prices of €50/MWh, the value
FIGURE 4.39: chANGE OF PROdUcTION PER TEchNOlOGY IN ENERGY MIX bY AddING ThE OvERAll OFFShORE GRId dESIGN
(FOR ThE dIREcT dESIGN ANd ThE SPlIT dESIGN) [chANGE IN GWh/YEAR)
Change in energy mix
by adding the overall
offshore grid design
(GWh/year)
60,000
50,000
40,000
30,000
20,000
10,000
0
-10,000
-20,000
-30,000
Hydro
Nuclear
Lignite
Hard Coal
Split Design Direct Design
Other RE
76 OffshoreGrid – Final Report
Gas
Oil
Wind