Rob van der Hage, TenneT: Having Significant Responsibilities Requires a Vision

Rob van der Hage, Business Manager Offshore at TenneT Netherlands, will be one of the panellists in the closing discussion on short and long term potential at the Offshore WIND Conference and has provided an insight into the sector from an interesting point of view – that of an electricity transmission system operator.

Regarding his work and responsibilities within the company, van der Hage said that, in the last three years, he has been focused on shaping TenneT’s offshore wind activities which are an important driver for achieving the goals of Dutch Energy Agreement. Prior to this, van der Hage was working on the acquisition of transpower by TenneT and on financial aspects of the company’s offshore wind connections, as well as interconnectors to other countries, such as the one to Norway.

In the last couple of years, he has also been responsible for finding a proper position for TenneT with regard to the new laws which were the condition for making TenneT responsible for the Dutch offshore grid. Three bills involving TenneT were processed lately: one of them was rejected in December, and the other two were accepted by both chambers of the Dutch Senate. Also, two years ago, van der Hage was responsible for doing the analysis on what the appointment of TenneT as the offshore grid developer would imply for society in terms of achieving cost reduction and impact on the environment.

Since he is also responsible for relations with offshore wind farm developers, van der Hage stressed the importance of working together to get the best final result. “Therefore, we introduced interface meetings for an offshore grid with relevant stakeholders in this country for the first time, as we are well aware that it needs good coordination from the very first start,” van der Hage said, and further explained: “Interfaces are always an area that needs good care and that is why we take careful preparations. We have invited last year’s candidates for the offshore wind tenders to expert sessions every month to discuss important technical decisions with respect to our platforms and systems. This was done to make sure that we have all the knowledge and information from this part of the sector and that our design and roll out concept is in line with the ambition to cut costs as much as we can while having a working system for the wind farms.”

He emphasised that high transparency with bidders contributes to a very successful process and decreases the risk perception for those bidders, which also led to the successful bid announced last July.

Rob van der Hage has also been appointed within TenneT to study future offshore grid concepts and roll-out strategies for the period after the current energy agreement, both towards 2030-2035 and towards 2050.

For TenneT’s recently presented vision of a future large-scale European electricity infrastructure system in the North Sea – the Hub and Spoke concept – van der Hage, together with the company’s CEO, led a consultation process with NGOs and all important players in the Netherlands to obtain preliminary views on the concept before it was revealed in June.

“It was received very well and TenneT decided to take it further and to try to come up with a solid plan for 2023-2024, but also for the long-term to see if we can start up an international cooperation to make it happen,” van der Hage said.

When asked about his focus topic at the Offshore WIND Conference, van der Hage said he will focus on the future scenario for offshore wind.

“By nature, TenneT is a company that has to anticipate how things are going to roll out in the future. We are an industry player with the longest trajectories as we need to plan the construction of transmission systems and we need to be informed by all the players what is going to happen as early as possible. This is a prerequisite to realize the projects on time,” van der Hage said.

One of the advantages of having one transmission system operator responsible for the offshore grid is having a player who can think and build a future-proof offshore grid, as opposed to individual commercial players who try to have the best business case for a single wind farm, he explained.

“Now that we have been appointed within this role in the Netherlands, we feel big responsibility to have future-proof systems including all aspects we can think of to increase cost reduction,” van der Hage said. “The island in our North Sea Infrastructure vision has been built on the assumption that cost reduction is a general requirement.”

Reducing costs in large far-shore projects is a big challenge, he said, since building farther offshore is more expensive due to the need for more infrastructure, while this is not fully compensated for by higher wind power delivery.

Nearshore and onshore also have their issues, mostly due to the visual impact, so the solution has to be farther offshore. However, at the same time, it is hard to combine that with further cost reduction.  Since the infrastructure will play a more dominant role in the final cost, going farther offshore, it becomes crucial to use the infrastructure as efficiently as possible, van der Hage concluded.

Furthermore, he said that another important condition for cost reduction is increasing the scale. “Economies of scale can play a huge role in cost reduction and we also hear that from dominant players in the offshore wind industry. Economies of scale and a pipeline can create a solid basis for investments by companies wanting to build or buy bigger ships, invest in bigger turbines, new technologies, etc. Also, bigger scale means going farther offshore.”

Aside from this, further “natural cost reduction” within the sector is expected, which comes with a more developed and mature industry.

“In our view, imbalance in the market landscape is one of the reasons for higher costs. Once the market becomes more mature and there is more competition, we expect a decrease in the levelized cost of energy,” van der Hage said.

On the subject of a subsidy-free offshore wind future, van der Hage said this depends on the policy with respect to CO₂ emission costs. As long as there is no appropriate system assigning the costs for emissions to the parties that cause those emissions, it is going to be very difficult to have subsidy-free offshore wind. Making offshore wind competitive will be possible when an advanced CO₂ emission system with cost levels that are estimated by experts is in place.

“With the current programme in the Netherlands, the spectacular price outcome of the first Borssele tender, and the recent Vattenfall outcome in Denmark, we are already below 10 Eurocents per kilowatt-hour and some studies have shown that some fossil sources are now more expensive than that. However, with a lack of a fair system at the moment, I think subsidising is the second best option to make offshore wind happen,” van der Hage said.

On the advantages of events such as the Offshore WIND Conference, Rob van der Hage said: “These conferences provide an insight in the most recent developments. It is good to have a knowledge base and to build networks in order to be able to pick up the phone and ask questions, to know to whom you can reach out to. Also, innovations that are regularly presented during these conferences form an important knowledge base. In a very small timespan you get a broad overview of all the developments that are going on.”

He further added that, at the Offshore WIND Conference, he would like to hear some preliminary feedback on TenneT’s vision for the near future with respect to the areas in the Netherlands that should be developed after 2023.

“Also, there is no clear picture yet on the future Dutch offshore wind targets following the Paris COP targets agreed last year and the development plan still needs to be built. In order to align these targets, some further steps in current activities in the North Sea need to be taken” van der Hage said.

Rob van der Hage is the Business Manager in the Management Team of the Offshore Department of TenneT in the Netherlands, a recently founded department responsible for the realisation of an offshore grid in the country to connect future wind farms.

Before joining TenneT in 2009, he acquired 12 years of banking experience. He holds an M.Sc. in Applied Physics from the Technical University of Delft.

The Offshore WIND Conference will take place on 24 and 25 October 2016 in Amsterdam RAI.