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Connection and Integration of Offshore Renewable Energy Farms into UK Power Systems - Offshore Study Scenarios Report


Citation Sinclair Knight Merz Connection and Integration of Offshore Renewable Energy Farms into UK Power Systems - Offshore Study Scenarios Report, ETI, 2010. https://doi.org/10.5286/UKERC.EDC.000712.
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Author(s) Sinclair Knight Merz
Project partner(s) Sinclair Knight Merz
Publisher ETI
DOI https://doi.org/10.5286/UKERC.EDC.000712
Download ESD_EN2001_6.pdf document type
Abstract The ETI has engaged Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM) to identify the opportunity for the development of innovative solutions for the collection of electrical energy from individual and multiple offshore renewable energy farms, and the transportation of bulk electrical energy from these offshore farms to the onshore power system. The study comprises four main tasks :
  1. Offshore renewable scenarios – to define the timeline of the expected volumes of offshore renewable generation capacities
  2. State of the art of offshore network technologies – establishment of the current state of the art of offshore network technologies and their prospective future development path
  3. Analysis at individual farm level – identification of the challenges and resultant technology opportunities from connection of individual large-scale offshore wind or marine energy farms to the UKgrid system, and recommendations for connection solutions for investigation.
  4. Analysis at multiple farm level – evaluation of the optimal architecture(s) that could be developed to collect, manage and transmit back to shore the electrical energy produced by multiple, large-scale offshore renewable energy farms.
This defines appropriate scenarios of offshore generation farm type, volume, timescale and technical characteristics.The UK has considerable offshore wind, wave and tidal energy resource potential. It has been estimated that the UK’s offshore renewable resource includes an offshore wind potential of 70 GW, 21 GW of wave and 7.5 GW of tidal stream. However, although the UK’s ‘ultimate probable’ offshore renewable resource is large, the ‘economically recoverable’ offshore renewable resource, based on what could reasonably be expected to be recovered, is considerably less.

We have generated two long-term scenarios to assess the UK’s economically recoverable offshore renewable resource. ?The first looks at a ‘low’ overall renewable development out to 2050. ?The second looks at a ‘high’ overall renewable strategy out to 2050. We assess the two scenarios over the period to 2020 (short term), 2030 (medium term) and finally out to 2050 (long term). Seven cases were considered in detail:
  • Distributed Smaller Windfarms
  • Large Windfarms
  • Very Large Windfarms
  • Small Marine (tidal and wave)
  • Medium Wave
  • Large Tidal
  • Combined Tidal and Wind
Wind generation has been given priority due to the current and expected dominance of wind generation over the other marine technologies up to 2050
Associated Project(s) ETI-EN2001: Connection and Integration of Offshore Renewable Energy Farms
Associated Dataset(s) No associated datasets
Associated Publication(s)

Connection and Integration of Offshore Renewable Energy Farms into UK Power Systems - Executive Summmary

Connection and Integration of Offshore Renewable Energy Farms into UK Power Systems - Individual Offshore Connection Architectures Report

Connection and Integration of Offshore Renewable Energy Farms into UK Power Systems - Multi-Terminal Offshore Connection Architectures Report

Connection and Integration of Offshore Renewable Energy Farms into UK Power Systems - Request for Proposal

Connection and Integration of Offshore Renewable Energy Farms into UK Power Systems - State of the Art Offshore Network Technology Report

Connection and Integration of Offshore Renewable Energy Farms into UK Power Systems - one page summary