The overall objective for the Green Platform Project Ocean Grid is to develop new technology, knowledge and solutions to enable profitable development of offshore wind in Norway, both bottom-fixed and floating, new green jobs and increased export revenues and at the same time contribute to us achieving the climate goals.
The project focus on offshore grid technology to reduce cost of offshore wind. The project is organised in five subprojects of which four are industry led addressing high technology readiness level and a 2030-time horizon, whereas the fifth is an open research subproject (KSP) to address longer-term issues.
Equinor is the project owner of the main project and partners are Fred Olsen, Hafslund Eco, Aker Offshore Wind, Agder Energi, Deep Wind Offshore, DNV, ABB, Aibel, Aker Solutions, Benestad, Hitachi, Nexans, Statnett, NTNU, UiO, SINTEF.
The project will focus on:
•In Offshore grid development the objective is to analyse and propose new market designs and the associated regulatory framework to enable profitable deployment of offshore wind farms in Norway in 2030-2050. Aspects related to HVDC interoperability are also analysed.
•In Wet design cable the objective is to reduce direct and indirect cable cost with focus on inter-array systems based on new cable technology and material without metallic water barrier.
•Subsea substation: objective is to assess cost reduction potential for subsea substations based on smart and standardized solutions, and to develop a 66 kV subsea connector system to meet requirements from 15+ MW wind turbines.
•Floating HVDC platform: objective is to develop standardized, integrated and CAPEX effective solutions for floating HVDC substations for large scale floating offshore wind installations, give input to relevant regulations and develop verification tools.
•The KSP Ocean grid research will support the development within grid expansion optimisation, energy market design, system interoperability and Wet design cables.
Our vision is that offshore wind power plants connected to an offshore grid will provide a large share of the energy supply in Europe to reach climate targets, and that Norwegian companies will be actively engaged in this endeavour as leading wind farm developers, operators and suppliers of technology and solutions. This project is an important step towards realizing this vision. It will develop new technology, knowledge, and innovations to support the realignment of the Norwegian industry from oil and gas activities towards the growing offshore wind sector, creating new green jobs and increasing international sales, and it will help to meet the climate targets by enabling large-scale deployment of offshore wind farms in Norway and internationally. The project focus on offshore grid technology to reduce cost of offshore wind and to achieve significant international sales. The project is organized in five subprojects of which four are industry led addressing high technology readiness level and a 2030-time horizon, whereas the fifth is an open research subproject to address longer term issues.