North Sea Energy Islands: Impact on National Markets and Grids

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the large-scale impact of North Sea energy islands on European power markets and grids, highlighting economic benefits, challenges, and system needs associated with offshore energy hubs.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive impact analysis of offshore energy hubs on the European power system and market, including publicly released detailed models.

Findings

Energy hubs increase overall EU economic welfare.

Benefits from energy hubs are unevenly distributed among countries.

Large wind energy influx stresses conventional generators and national grids.

Abstract

Taking concrete steps towards a carbon-free society, the Danish Parliament has recently made an agreement on the establishment of the world's first two offshore energy hubs, one on the island of Bornholm and one on an artificial island in the North Sea. Being the two first-of-their-kind projects, several aspects related to the inclusion of these "energy islands" in the current market setup are still under discussion. To this end, this paper presents the first large-scale impact analysis of offshore hubs on the whole European power system and electricity market. The detailed models used for such analysis are publicly released with the paper. Our study shows that energy hubs in the North Sea have a positive impact, and overall increase economic welfare in EU. However, when considering the impact on each country, benefits are not shared equally. In order to help the development of such projects, we focus on the identification of market challenges and system needs arising from the hubs. From a market perspective, we show how exporting countries are negatively affected by the lower electricity prices and we point at potential strategic behaviors induced by the large amount of new transmission capacity installed in the North Sea. From a system point of view, we show how the large amount of wind energy stresses conventional generators, which are required to become more flexible, and national grids, which cannot always accommodate large imports from the hubs.