OffshoreGrid

Book excerpt: Summary: The OffshoreGrid project proves the financial benefits of building a meshed European grid offshore and outlines two cost efficient designs. Contents: Offshore grids, connecting North and Baltic Sea wind farms and electricity consumers, can be built substantially cheaper than expected. Building “hub connections” at sea instead of using cables to connect single wind farms individually to the shore will result in lower investment costs of 14 billion Euros. Additionally if these hub connections would be combined with an even more interconnected “meshed grid”, the necessary additional costs of 7 billion Euros would be compensated by 16 to 21 billion Euros of additional benefits over 25 years of grid operation.