AFRY supports the North Sea Wind Power Hub on the development of the hub-and-spoke concepts
AFRY supports the North Sea Wind Power Hub on Market Setup Options for Hybrid Projects
The North Sea Wind Power Hub (NSWPH) consortium has joined forces to develop concepts and solutions to support large scale rollout and integration of North Sea offshore wind at the lowest possible environmental impact and cost.
Currently, the approach to plan, design and operate offshore grid infrastructure is predominantly nationally focused. But this is lacking a total system perspective which allows for cost-efficient development and operation of offshore infrastructure overall. A new approach to offshore wind connection and grid integration is, therefore, required to support the scale of the offshore wind roll-out required to meet the Paris Agreement climate targets.
The NSWPH programme sees it as their responsibility to structure and inform the discussion amongst policymakers on the main topics. One of the primary discussion topics is the market setup for generation linked to multi-purpose or hybrid transmission infrastructure – that is, transmission which provides both for connection of offshore windfarms to onshore systems and for market-to-market flows. The discussion centres on defining how offshore windfarms connected to such transmission assets are allocated to specific bidding zones and how cross-zonal capacity between these bidding zones is allocated. To inform these discussions, the NSWPH consortium commissioned a study by AFRY Management Consulting to provide insights into the effects of different market setups, focusing on the potential impact of key economic indicators such as electricity price dynamics and income distribution for relevant stakeholders.
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AFRY supports the North Sea Wind Power Hub on Analysing the Utilisation Behaviour of Interconnection and Hub Internal Connection Capacity
Earlier work of the North Sea Wind Power Hub (NSWPH) consortium has led into the hub-and-spoke concept: a modular 12GW hub consisting of six 2GW modules connected by hub internal connectors. The modules connect 12GW of offshore wind capacity and are connected to multiple countries via either interconnectors or hybrid assets, with the definition depending on the market setup. These transmission assets have the function to both transport offshore wind energy onshore and facilitate interconnector flows.
Whereas multiple configurations have been considered in previous studies, which cover the connected countries and interconnectors capacities, the required hub internal connector capacities have not been analysed before.
This AFRY study, entitled ‘Analysing Utilisation Behaviour of Interconnection and Hub Internal Connection Capacity’, is based on power market and load flow modelling and it aims to quantify the flows on the interconnectors and the hub internal connectors which connect the 2GW blocks under different hub-and-spoke configurations.
