Belgium: 10 Energy Ministers Discuss Potential for Integrated Offshore Grid

Energy Ministers from the 10 countries around the North and Irish Seas (Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom) and the European Commissioner for Energy gathered on 3rd December to discuss the outcome of the analysis that has been carried out by Government authorities, transmission system operators and regulatory agencies as to the costs and benefits of different grid designs for the year 2030 and the possible regulatory, market and planning arrangements.

The Ministers of Energy recognise the opportunities for offshore wind. They acknowledge that an appropriate infrastructure will have to be in place in time. Since the cooperation began, together with the European Commission and experts from network operators and regulatory authorities, substantial steps have been taken to assess the need for a more coordinated offshore grid development and address any barriers to achieving it. At the meeting, just before the Energy Council, Ministers and the European Commissioner took note of the initial findings of the collaborative work.

Offshore grid developments are taking shape already, with the first cables and platforms already in place in the North Seas. But instead of purely radial connections from the wind farm to the coast and interconnections between countries, new possibilities of combining interconnections between countries with the connection of wind farms are being considered, where it might be cost-effective to do so.

This requires international cooperation. Over the past two years, the countries have worked together to carry out an important grid study and address related technical, legal and regulatory barriers. Findings indicate that the two grid design options studied – radial and meshed – are rather similar regarding investment costs and market benefits on the basis of the generation and demand scenarios used. Differences in regulatory and planning regimes exist but there are no insurmountable incompatibilities which might prevent more coordinated infrastructure development.

Options for trading across infrastructure combining offshore generation and interconnection and high-level principles for developing such coordinated infrastructure have been drawn up. Moreover, guidelines designed to facilitate coordinated planning regimes have been produced.

The Ministers recognise the value of this regional cooperation between all the parties needed to bring about investment in cross-border infrastructure. They have therefore asked the network operators, ENTSO-E, ACER and national regulators to continue working with the Government authorities and the European Commission to assess pathways towards possible future grid configurations for the North Seas area, using a range of generation and demand scenarios, and develop proposals to address the regulatory, market and planning barriers.

[mappress]

Press release, December 6, 2012; Image: awstruepower