North Sea Energy Hub Feasibility Study (pre-study)

The scope of the project is to perform a pre-study to investigate the feasibility of an approximately 30 GW North Sea Wind Power Hub (NSWPH) and to investigate its business potential. This will lay the foundation for establishing a national consortium including the key industrial stakeholders and for initiating a large Danish technology development activity. For the NSWPH it is envisioned to use the so-called hub and spoke concept, which is based on offshore hubs (possibly as physical artificial island(s)) and can lead to a cost-effective grid connection of large amounts of wind power combined with interconnection between countries and price zones.

The project will bring together experts from academia and industry to enable evaluation of different technical challenges and potential solutions, as well as to identify the needs of e.g. technology innovations. The project will focus on aspects related to offshore grid topology, integrated energy solutions with power-to-gas and operational benefits for the interconnected power systems.

The outcome will be a research and development program. The project is a pre-study, which will aim at the preparation of a large national technology development activity. The project will be realized in a similar way as in the EnergyLab Nordhavn project (EUDP file no.: 64013-0557 & 64014-0555), which has proven to be successful. One of the final deliverables will be a project proposal for a large research and development project from the established consortium of key stakeholders, which were identified during the project. It is envisioned that this project proposal will be submitted to EUDP at the end of the project period (spring 2020).

Based on today’s offshore wind power development and operation costs, DTU and DI Energi estimate that 30 GW wind power is equivalent to a market potential of ~70 billion DKK per year. For comparison, this corresponds to 82 % of the Danish energy technology export in 2017.