North Sea Offshore and Storage Network Pre-project(NSON)

The main objective of the pre-project has been to build the knowledge required to establish a Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) for offshore grid development in the North Sea. The SRA also identify knowledge gaps to be filled within technology, market development, system planning and policy in order to realize a future offshore grid. This has been done in a collaborative way between SINTEF Energi (Norway), Fraunhofer IWES (Germany) and Univ. of Strathclyde (UK). Later in the project period the collaboration was extended to included DTU (Denmark), ECN (Netherlands) and UCD (Ireland). The activities were divided into 4 work packages: WP1: Technology perspectives; WP2: Cost-benefits sharing models; WP3: Political challenges and possible solutions; WP4: Strategic Research Agenda An evaluation of technologies for offshore grid has been completed and has been presented at NSON seminars in 2014 and 2015. An international peer-review article on the terminology of HVDC grids has also been issued. The NSON concept has been discussed at several DeepWind conferences and in relevant engineering journals, including the Norwegian "Energiteknikk". The consortium will continue to pursue a goal of establishing a common European Research Agenda. The meeting in March 2015 between the NSON partners had as the main theme cost-benefit analysis for the involved nations. The focus of the seminar was a preparation of a year 2050 scenario. The scenario will include installed capacity per nation, and estimated demand for electric power. Several studies support that a common undertaking, with shared costs among the different stakeholders over a long timeframe, will be considerably cheaper than a case-by-case approach. The overall cost will be minimized and future industrial initiatives in the region (such as more wind, ocean energy, electrification of oil and gas industry) would see a relatively lower marginal integration cost. A key point for the build-up of offshore power transmission is to avoid sub-optimal solutions consisting of only non-flexible point-to-point connections. A successful development of a North Sea offshore grid, which the project aims to contribute to, will lead to better dispatch of hydro power, more MW of offshore wind and more efficient cross-border power exchange. Benefits of offshore grids are expected for power plant owners (onshore and offshore), consumers (onshore and at oil/gas platforms) and society in general due to stronger market integration that facilitates a higher share of renewables in the power system. The final stages of the cost/benefit analysis was integrated with the German work and guest researcher exchange was done in the spring of 2016. This includes the work to conclude on a common Strategic Research Agenda. The Political analysis (WP3) is now also finished and the results have been disseminated at workshops and with NSON partners. And the final year a comprehensive work has been done to draw up a common Strategic research Agenda (WP4) for the Northern Seas grid between the NSON initial and new partners, representing 7 North Sea Countries. There has also been good dialogue with major stakeholder groups in the national TSO's

The main objective of the pre-project is to build the knowledge required to establish a Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) for offshore grid development in the North Sea. The SRA will also identify knowledge gaps to be filled within technology, market develo pment, system planning and policy in order to realize a future offshore grid. This will be done in a collaborative way between SINTEF Energi (Norway), Fraunhofer IWES (Germany) and Univ. of Strathclyde (UK). It is planned that the pre-project first step t owards a full-scale NSON RD&D programme, also involving key industries and stakeholders as well as more countries. The pre-project should be considered as a pilot tri-lateral Berlin model type of project, rather than a KPN-project per se. The activities are divided into 4 work packages: WP1: Technology perspectives WP2: Cost-benefits sharing models WP3: Political challenges and possible solutions WP4: Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) Several studies support that a common undertaking, with shared costs a mong the different stakeholders over a long timeframe, will be considerably cheaper than a case by case approach. The overall cost will be minimized and future industrial initiatives in the region (such as more wind, ocean energy, electrification of oil a nd gas industry) would see a relatively lower marginal integration cost. A key point for the build-up of offshore power transmission is to avoid sub-optimal solutions consisting of only non-flexible point-to-point connections. A successful development of a North Sea offshore grid, which the project aims to contribute to, will lead to better dispatch of hydro power, more MW of offshore wind and more efficient cross-border power exchange. Benefits of offshore grids are expected for power plant owners (onsho re and offshore), consumers (onshore and at oil/gas platforms) and society in general due to stronger market integration that facilitates a higher share of renewables in the power system.