Fostering Offshore Wind Integration in Europe Through Grid Connection Impact Assessment

Floating offshore wind energy is one of the solutions that can foster the ongoing climate transition in Europe. The ARCWIND project aims to contribute to this topic by considering multiple research activities designed to contribute to the development of multiple floating technologies, identifying high-potential deployment areas while considering their economic viability and the impact that these would have in existing power systems. Regarding the latter activity, a two-step methodology was implemented to first calculate the nodal capacity that existing electricity networks have to absorb energy from these potential new wind farms and secondly to assess the impact at the point of connection. This assessment is performed by identifying grid reinforcement needs, verifying the impact on short circuit current levels and measuring the impact on the existing energy mix at countrywide level. This article includes the description of this methodology as well as its application to six different use cases covering five European countries: Portugal, Spain, France, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. Results obtained seem to indicate that, in most cases, the current power systems have enough capacity for the possible connection of new floating offshore wind farms without major reinforcement needs and that these wind farms can have a major contribution to the countries’ energy mix and to the achievement of established climate targets.