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

found that some meshed design and hub solutions
are beneficial even if the elements to be
interconnected are built within time spans of up
to several years, simultaneous development in
compact areas should be facilitated politically
if possible. Ideally this coordination would be
done at international level. The NSC’OGI could
for instance support such a coordinated planning
of offshore wind farm development.
• Market and financing
– Market coupling with implicit auctioning is
needed. Interconnection capacity needs to be
traded day-ahead and intra-day to make optimal
use of the infrastructure for trade and balancing
purposes.
– Market regions have to include offshore areas.
It is necessary for the price levels between the
market regions to give investment signals for
further interconnection, including offshore.
– Offshore wind energy and in particular a meshed
international offshore grid lead to large infrastructure
investments and high risks. Therefore
investors are reluctant and capital attraction is
low. The support of pilot projects has already
been proven beneficial for offshore wind farms
and should be extended to offshore grid infrastructure
pilots. In order to put offshore grid
development on solid ground it is necessary
for offshore grid infrastructure investments to
be supported at national or European level. The
return on investment may further be supported
by exemptions from regulatory framework rules
which help to mitigate investment aversions.
The possibility of such a merchant interconnector
should however not entail conflicts of interest
as described above (in the ‘Regulatory’ section).
• Technology development and Research
– The timing of technology development is crucial
for the steady development of an offshore grid.
Apart from the fast circuit breakers that would
enhance multi-terminal development, larger cable
capacities could boost the development of
such a grid. This development would be driven
OffshoreGrid – Final Report
by a growing offshore sector that can rely on a
continuous offshore technology development.
Policy makers have to ensure that the conditions
for offshore wind energy development are stabilised
in order to lay the grounds for long term
project and equipment development.
– Research in many aspects of offshore wind energy
– such as offshore grid design, offshore
equipment, offshore operation and maintenance
concepts, and offshore wind farm control – has
mostly been funded at national and European
level throughout the last decade. The research
carried out has significantly accelerated the
development of offshore wind energy. It is absolutely
necessary that this level of research
support is maintained until offshore wind energy
can be considered a mature and proven
technology.
– The standardisation of offshore grid equipment
can open the market to further competitors and
significantly reduce costs. At the same time overstandardisation
can hamper further innovation.
– The standardisation issues should be studied
in detail at expert level in order to define the
right moment to standardise and the optimal
standardisation detail.
Political coordination is required to decide on and
implement the recommended solutions. So far, the
overall questions concerning the development of an
offshore grid have been addressed by a variety of
players such as the European Commission, the North
Seas Countries’ Offshore Grid Initiative (NSC’OGI) or
ENTSO-E. Some questions need a European approach,
while others can be better solved at national, bilateral
or regional level. Nevertheless, it is important to further
clearly assign responsibilities for certain aspects
to different selected forums and entities.
Because the NSC’OGI brings all the relevant partners
together, the OffshoreGrid consortium sees it as the
ideal forum to coordinate the political, regulatory and
market issues at international level.
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