Massive offshore solar blocks plan to beef up Vattenfall North Sea wind farms
Standardised 150MW format between four offshore wind turbines seen allowing for optimised energy farms within scarce sea space
Dutch offshore solar pioneer Oceans of Energy, Vattenfall and 14 other technology developers, consultancies, testing laboratories and think tanks have started an EU Joint Industry Project to scale up offshore solar to standard blocks of 150MW that can fit within existing or future North Sea wind farms.
Placing large solar arrays within offshore wind farms makes better use of the sea space, increases energy output, provides more continuous power over the seasons, and will push down costs for green power production and the energy system, Oceans of Energy said.
The planned 150MW solar building blocks are much bigger in scale than previous North Sea floating solar projects.
“We are kickstarting the development of a standardised offshore solar building block, which fits right in-between four offshore wind turbines,” Oceans of Energy CEO Allard van Hoeken said.
“This allows for optimised multi-source offshore energy farms without competing for scarce and limited land space.”
The collaboration on standardised offshore solar blocks is being coordinated by Italian certification firm RINA and includes Swedish utility Vattenfall as potential client for implementation.
Four technology developers are also on board (Solarge, TKF, Pauwels Transformers, SolarCleano), as well another four technical and environmental consultancies (ABS, Aquatera Ltd, Aquatera Atlantico, and WavEC), three testing laboratories (MARIN, Fraunhofer CSP, SIRRIS), and marine science–policy think-tank European Marine Board.
“This project will contribute to enabling feasible business cases of solar renewable energy offshore”, said Andrea Bombardi, carbon reduction excellence executive vice president at RINA.
“RINA, thanks to the leading experience in the provision of energy yield assessment services for solar plants and in floating offshore systems, will pioneer the development of a new predictive yield model applicable to this emerging technology.”
The partners plan to resolve remaining challenges for the rollout of large-scale offshore solar into new and existing wind farms, including through proving the robustness and performance of solar panels in offshore conditions and researching the impact on the environment.
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