Dutch-German transmission system operator TenneT is to build a pilot artificial island in the North Sea as part of its plans to develop a “North Sea Wind Power Hub”, Recharge has learned.

The hub would be a large manmade island that would host a converter station and potentially link multiple offshore wind farms to multiple countries, and could act as an O&M base and even include battery storage, green-hydrogen production or a solar farm.

“This summer we should get to the stage where we can proceed with building a test site over the next three to five years,” Tim Meyerjurgens, TenneT’s chief operating officer, told Recharge on the sidelines of the Hamburg Offshore Wind event.

TenneT is yet to decide what equipment the pilot project would test.

“We are working on two different things — on the one hand, in the longer term, on the overall concept — what does it look like, is it one island, or will it end up as a number of smaller islands? And probably at the moment it is looking to be more than one island,” said Meyerjurgens. “And on the other hand we are starting to work on a very concrete pilot project where we ask ourselves, ‘Okay what is really necessary in the way of equipment and what will it look like?’”

The original plan, unveiled by TenneT and its Danish counterpart Energinet.dk in 2016, was to build a 6sq km island in the middle of the North Sea that would connect to nearby wind farms and six countries’ national grids, and act as a cost-saving offshore wind construction and O&M base with shared transport and port facilities. This Power Link Island was envisaged to be constructed after 2030 with airstrips, worker accommodation, an artificial lake with a beach, and a large number of solar panels — and was to be built on a huge North Sea sandbank called Dogger Bank, where water depths are only 20-40 metres and several gigawatts of offshore wind farms are planned.

“Building one or more artificial islands in the middle of the North Sea sounds like a science-fiction project, but it could actually be a very efficient and affordable way for the North Sea countries to meet the future demand for more renewable electricity,” Torben Glar Nielsen, chief technology officer of Energinet.dk, told Recharge in 2017.

Then last year, TenneT raised the possibility of building a smaller artificial island earlier — before 2030 — to connect offshore wind farms to just the UK and the Netherlands, which would enable increased power trading between the two countries.

Meyerjurgens did not say if the planned pilot was aimed at the smaller or larger versions of what TenneT is now calling the North Sea Wind Power Hub.

TenneT is also yet to decide where the pilot project would be built.

“We are looking at a number of really different locations for the island test site, including on the Dogger Bank in the UK , but also in Dutch, Danish, or even German waters. So we are really open to all suggestions,” said Meyerjurgens.

Wind

TenneT to build pilot of artificial island wind hub in North Sea