Baltic InteGrid

The Interreg project Baltic Integrid shaped a plan for a coordinated Baltic Sea offshore electricity grid - a big leap forward to removing one of the most important bottlenecks for the development of renewable energy sources in the Baltic Sea region.

The opportunity

Because the Baltic Sea is shallow, has low wave heights, and neglectible tides, it provides very good prerequisites to install large offshore wind power devices. The full potential of offshore wind power can be exploited if the countries around the Baltic Sea established large transnational meshed offshore wind grids based on the same standards and methodology.

While today, offshore wind parks are typically connected to land individually, and national grids have few large connections, a meshed grid connects several wind parks from different countries at sea with few connections to land in the different countries. In such a meshed grid energy losses for transportation are considerably lower. Thus, few large meshed grids would make use of electricity produced offshore much more efficiently than current networks in place and and they would deliver more stability and security in energy supply to all countries connected.

Budgets

Baltic InteGrid
in numbers

3.95

Million

Total
3.04

Million

Erdf
0.00

Million

Eni + Russia
0.00

Million

Norway

Achievements

Baltic InteGrid has framed and coined the debates around offshore wind energy development in the Baltic Sea region with excellence in research and professional dissemination efforts, laying the ground for further exploitation of the project results by key actors.

The right players are on board

The project created a knowledge and cooperation platform in which all the relevant stakeholders from the offshore wind energy supply chain meet, exchange and plan their cooperation. The number of stakeholders who can play a decisive role in such a large infrastructure project is limited. There is maybe a dozen companies who would be able to operate such transmission systems and only larger energy suppliers have experience in building and operating wind parks in an offshore environment. Baltic InteGrid has gotten most of them onboard. However, at the core of the cooperation platform are the authorities of all countries involved who are responsible for designating suitable offshore areas and issuing construction permits. To make the circle complete in terms of knowledge needed, Baltic InteGrid involved renowned research institutes and several companies known for producing reliable wind mill components.

A common vision based on sound calculations and planning

Based on the joint expertise of practitioners and scientists from different disciplines from in total seven countries, the project calculated a potential of 35 GW by 2050. In 2018, only 2.2 GW were installed. The project partners elaborated a common vision of what such a grid could look like and put down a plan that defines the necessary steps and procedures to plan, finance, implement and operate such a meshed offshore wind grid. The concept was tested and verified in two pre-feasibility studies covering a potential meshed grid between Poland-Sweden-Lithuania and Germany-Sweden-Denmark.

Good prospects for a joint offshore electricity grid

By firing up an expert discussion about a joint offshore electricity grid in the Baltic Sea, EUR 3.04 million from the European Union brought the macro-region closer to removing one of the most important bottlenecks for the development of renewable energy sources in the Baltic Sea region. Picked up by the right players in the market, the research activities and knowledge exchange initiated by the project can initiate changes in policy, regulation, investment decisions, technological development and planning towards the Baltic Offshore Grid. By actively addressing powerful players, the results of Baltic InteGrid have already reached influential organisations, e.g. the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity which consider the Baltic InteGrid vision in its Ten Year Network Development Plan. The results of BalticIntegrid are spread further through the project platform Capacity4MSP.

Outputs

High Level Concept for the Baltic Offshore Grid

This concept contains the major findings of comprehensive and concerted studies on planning and implementing a meshed offshore wind grid in the Baltic Sea. The document informs political decision makers, operators of electric transmission systems and offshore wind industry about the current status, possibilities and challenges related to the implementation of a meshed Baltic offshore grid. It covers all relevant areas such as policy/regulation, planning, public acceptance, construction and technical matters as well as market conditions and supply chains. It is an excellent source of quality information and a practical guideline for the countries around the Baltic Sea.

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Baltic Offshore Grid Forum

The Baltic Offshore Grid Forum was created as a network of all relevant stakeholders from politics, industry and science that need to be involved to found a joint offshore electricity grid in the Baltic Sea. The forum continues the work of the Interreg project Baltic InteGrid and is the place of on-going discussions and initiatives aimed at implementing a meshed offshore wind grind in the Baltic Sea by 2050.

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Recommendations to the Ten-Year Network Development Plan (TYNDP) on the development of a Baltic Offshore Grid

These recommendations about establishing a concerted meshed offshore electricity grid in the Baltic Sea region are based on the findings from the transnational cooperation project Baltic InteGrid. They condense in a single place the full knowledge and analytical results developed within the project. They reflect case studies and experts’ opinions based on very precise offshore wind energy projects and interconnectors. They also name the potential in terms of future development of projects. These recommendations target one of the most important stakeholders in the field of wind energy: the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E). ENTSO-E represents 43 electricity transmission system operators from 36 countries across Europe. In its Ten-Year Network Development Plan (TYNDP), ENTSO outlines how the electricity nets in the EU need to be developed over the next 10 years in order to meet the energy consumers’ needs. The content of these recommendations was presented to ENTSO-E’s in the light of the next Ten-Year Network Development Plan (TYNDP).

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