The role of offshore wind energy hubs in the Baltic Sea energy system

This study assesses the role of offshore energy hubs in North-western Europe with a particular focus on cost-effectiveness and potential deployment in the Baltic Sea region. We apply a comprehensive energy system model, Balmorel, and extend the detailed representation of offshore wind grid infrastructures to the Baltic Sea region. In addition, the study considers large-scale wake losses, which are computed using a detailed offshore wind generation simulator. The results show that that increasing sector coupling and electrification levels leads to higher deployment of offshore wind energy hubs. The overall results show a deployment of offshore wind in the Northwest-European energy system between 100 GW - 385 GW, with the Baltic Sea region accounting for 15 GW - 82 GW, depending on the scenario. More specifically, the offshore wind energy hubs in the Baltic Sea region constitutes between 11 GW - 35 GW, where the Southern regions is preferred. Furthermore, the wind farm sizes are found up to 4 GW due to wake loss effects and cost competition with other regions and technologies. Finally, the sensitivity analysis shows that deployment of radially connected offshore wind is more sensitive to onshore potentials than offshore energy hubs configurations.