Presentations

Abstract

With the EU now targeting 60 GW of offshore wind by 2030 and 300GW by 2050, Europe's offshore wind industry is starting to map out what delivering at that scale will look like. Many challenges around supply chains, grid capacity, vessels and port capacity will need to be tackled but in this work, ERM considers the questions of where will these likely tens of thousands of turbine be built and what will be the impact of these mega-clusters (mega-wakes? mega-blockage?!) on existing projects, if they are still operational or re-powered, and on each other? Further we consider whether different approaches to lease area and auction design might be needed beneficial in order to maximize the overall European yield from offshore wind. Building on information from ERM's Global Renewables Infrastructure Projects (GRIP) database on existing and anticipated lease areas and the industry's current and future manufacturing and installation capacity, ERM will present its view on the anticipated build-out, year-by-year, of this new capacity over the next 6 years and then the following 20 years. Once these scenarios have been established, we present the magnitude of neighbour turbine interaction effects that are likely to be experienced at a site level for projects in different development areas, considering standard wake and blockage models as well as the latest research into offshore wind farm cluster wakes and wake persistence over significant distances. Applying industry-standard energy assessment methods we derive a first P50 estimate of annual energy production (AEP) of all offshore wind in the EU in 2030 and in 2050! We further demonstrate that a collaborative approach to wind farm siting and design between countries, and individual projects, results in improved overall outcomes and countries should perhaps consider auction criteria that ensure that multiple developers and projects are incentivized to maximize their cumulative contribution to the energy mix, and not focus only on maximizing the yield of their own project.