Assessment of energy production and costs associated with a massive exploitation of wind power in the North Sea

Abstract

A study to assess the potential of a massive exploitation of offshore wind power in the North Sea has been performed. The study includes both a prediction of the available wind resources and the costs associated with such a large-scale exploitation of the wind power in the North Sea. The main parameters of the model are wind turbine size, average distance between the turbines (determined from area and number of turbines), as well as wind resources (i.e. mean wind speed Weibull distribution) and water depths conditioned on specific locations within the North Sea. The cost model includes expressions for the most essential wind farm cost elements, such as costs of wind turbines, support structures, cables and electrical substations, as well as costs of operation and maintenance - all as function of wind climate, rotor size, interspatial distance between the turbines and water depth. A main outcome of the study, is that exploiting an area of 180.000 km2, corresponding to about 1/3 of the North Sea, covered with 60.000 20 MW wind turbines, may in average produce electricity corresponding to the consumption of Europe at a price of 6.2 €cents/kWh (in 2020 prices). Furthermore, more energy could actually be captured by installing the wind turbines closer to each other. As an example, doubling the average power by installing more wind turbines on the same area will increase the levelized cost of energy from 6.2 €cent/kWh to 10.1 €cent/kWh. Still, this may be relevant in case of scarcity of suitable sites for a massive exploration.