U.K. - Offshore energy grid for wind planned

The U.K. government pledged to build an power distribution grid offshore, removing one of the barriers to expanding wind and tidal energy planning to new plants to generate electricity. The commitment was included in a “program for government” today by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties, which last week agreed to form a coalition. An offshore grid is “absolutely critical” to delivering the planned turbines, said Ian Parrett, energy analyst at the consultant Inenco.

Britain has valued its offshore wind program, the world’s largest, at 75 billion pounds ($107 billion). Britain last month surpassed 1 gigawatt of capacity, enough to power about 650,000 homes. Up to 40 gigawatts of turbines are planned by RWE AG, Vattenfall AB, Centrica Plc and other energy companies by 2020. “If you’re going to be generating all this power, you have to be able to bring it onshore,” Parrett said today in a phone interview. “You also have to be able to redistribute the power if the wind’s not blowing in one place but is in another.”

At present, offshore wind power developers are able to construct their own point-to-point connections, which account for about 15 percent to 20 percent of the cost of a project. Energy regulator Ofgem has put the cost of connecting 33 gigawatts of turbines to the grid at 15 billion pounds, and in December it listed National Grid Plc and five other bidders to own and operate networks for nine offshore wind developments.

E.ON’s Plan:
The Department of Energy and Climate Change said it has no further details on plans for the offshore grid. E.ON AG, owner of a 30-percent stake in the London Array, a planned 1-gigawatt wind farm east of the capital, said it welcomes the announcement, though more details are needed.

“It depends if they mean building a full offshore grid in the North Sea, or just a grid connection from individual wind farms to shore,” Mike Lewis, managing director for Europe at E.ON Climate & Renewables, said today in a phone interview from Dusseldorf. “We welcome anything that will help promote investment in offshore wind.”

Any grid built for offshore wind will also be able to serve the U.K.’s nascent wind and tidal power industries, said Steph Merry, head of marine renewable at the Renewable Energy Association.

Merry said the current U.K. grid is designed to take power from a central power station out to communities in far-flung corners, and what’s needed for offshore renewable is a grid that can take power from the peripheral areas out at sea to more central locations.

“An offshore grid would remove one of the biggest barriers we have at the moment to wave and tidal power,” Merry said in a phone interview from Aberdeen. “If you can’t get the power from the device to the customer, you can’t make a business case.

For more information please contact Trevor Sievert at ts@windfair.net