Dutch Studying Eight Potential New Offshore Wind Areas

The Netherlands is studying eight new areas off its coast as potential locations where offshore wind farms would be built after 2030. All but one of the eight search zones is expected to have a lower Levelised Cost of Energy (LCoE) compared to the IJmuiden Ver Wind Farm Zone.

According to a preliminary study published by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO), these post-2030 search areas have the potential to bring the country an additional offshore wind capacity of 64.9 GW.

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The LCoE study into the eight new search areas in the Dutch North Sea, along with IJmuiden Ver Noord, Hollandse Kust Noordwest, and Hollandse Kust Zuidwest Wind Farm Zones, found that at the potential sites within the new search areas – not including grid connection systems – LCoE could be 4-5.5 per cent lower than for IJmuiden Ver.

IJmuiden Ver was taken as reference for this study as this wind farm zone is the last of the currently allocated wind farm zones within the 2030 Roadmap that will be developed. Furthermore, IJmuiden Ver will be connected with 2 GW HVDC grid connection systems, also assumed for wind farm zones in the new search areas.

When factoring in grid connection system (GCS) costs for the new areas, one of the areas turned out to be less attractive in terms of LCoE.

Namely, Zone 7, which holds an 8 GW offshore wind capacity potential, was found to have a net overall LCoE 2.3 per cent higher than IJmuiden Ver, when taking into account both the wind farm and grid connection system costs.

All other HVDC zones in the new search areas have a lower net overall LCoE, whilst the HVAC zones Hollandse Kust Noordwest and Hollandse Kust Zuidwest have a significantly lower net overall LCoE (-16.1 per cent and -12.7 per cent respectively).

“The choice of export landing area has a significant impact on the GCS LCoE results. Deviating from the current base assumption that the sites will be connected to the closest landing area increases the GCS LCoE of the sites compared to the reference IJmuiden Ver A with +10% to +30%”, the study says.

The study was carried out by BLIX Consultancy as project leader, Pondera, Energy Solutions, and TenneT TSO.