The Netherlands plan to increase their installed offshore wind capacity to 4,500 megawatts by 2023. With the related roll-out reaching round 3, one of the first tenders issued will be the 700 MW tender for the Borssele coast area.
The Dutch grid operator TenneT has been designated to become the operator of the offshore grid. TenneT will build both the connection cable to the onshore connector station and an offshore transformer station (“hub”), to which the wind farm turbines can be connected directly.
A potential risk of this new situation is that the hub is not yet ready when the turbines have been built or, vice versa, that only part of the wind farm is ready after completion of the hub. In a recent study commissioned by the Netherlands Wind Energy Association (NWEA), Ecofys has estimated the cost of such “stranded assets”.
In earlier studies, Ecofys also considered the cost and risk implications of the hub concept compared to the conventional radial connection case, where wind farms connect directly to an onshore connection station. Both studies conclude that the hub concept itself is not necessarily more cost effective than the traditional design and that strong interface management is required to assure that no additional cost arise from stranded assets.
Press release; Image: Ecofys