Hybrid offshore renewable energy parks
TU Delft participates in an important large-scale European renewable energy project that will pave the way for bankable hybrid offshore renewable energy parks across Europe by 2025. The project will demonstrate the combination of offshore wind with wave and solar energy. Delft researchers George Lavidas, Andrei Metrikine and Sukanta Basu focus on how the different renewable resources can interact so that there will be less variability in the electricity that will reach people’s homes. EU-SCORES is a 45 million € Horizon 2020 project under the lead of the Dutch Marine Energy Centre.
In traditional solar and wind farms, the revenue depends solely on the weather conditions. As a result, the park does not always produce the same amount of energy, which can lead to instability in the energy network. By using different sustainable energy sources together, you can counteract this. By combining wind, solar and wave energy, a continuous supply of 100% sustainable energy becomes possible. Hybrid energy parks would also use the space at sea more efficiently, leaving more room for nature, fishing and shipping. That is why the European Union wishes to install many commercially viable hybrid energy parks across Europe by 2025.
To demonstrate that hybrid energy parks at sea make a sustainable, resilient, reliable and commercially viable energy supply possible, the partners in this project are jointly building two hybrid energy demonstration projects in Portugal and off the Belgian coast.
The TU Delft team is developing a reliable modelling framework that can be the basis for any type of renewable energy, power generation and market analysis, with accurate long-term climate descriptions. The TUD team accurately quantifies each renewable energy source (wind, wave, solar) and identifies correlations between them in energy terms. This is necessary to achieve a better integration of all renewable energy sources in the electricity system and the entire energy system.
Subsequently, the energy production profiles for offshore renewable energy sources are estimated and used in an energy system model that runs for several years with the goal of a cost-effective decoupled highly renewable energy system.
According to project leader Dr. Lavidas, this project showcases the commitment that TU Delft has in researching the untapped possibilities for offshore renewables like wave, wind and solar. “These will be valuable in accelerating the Energy Transition, across all Member States, hence the uniqueness of this project is that it encompasses demonstration through research-oriented results. Without such projects advancing and pushing the innovation in future Energy Systems, the Energy Transition will not be easily obtained. As TU Delft, we have a strong network of international academic and industrial collaborations to help make the ambitions a reality.”
According to Prof. Andrei Metrikine, Group Leader of the Offshore Engineering (OE) group of TU Delft: “The offshore renewables are in the very focus of the current research of our group which is developing both the integral approaches to the use of the ocean energy and a world class unique expertise in the fluid-structure interaction phenomena, underwater structural acoustics, ice-structure interaction and monitoring of offshore energy structures.”
For more information, visit the website of EU-Scores.
Consortium partners
The EU-SCORES consortium partners are: Dutch Marine Energy Centre (DMEC), Oceans of Energy, TU Delft, SBM offshore, POM West-Vlaanderen (POM), RWE Renewables (RWE), CorPower Ocean, Uppsala University, Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology (LUT), Enel
Green Power, RINA offshore consultants, INNOSEA – a AqualisBraemar LOC Group company, EDP Labelec, WavEC Offshore Renewables, INESC TEC, Exceedence, Western Star Wave – a Simply Blue Group company.
Also supported by: IRO (Association of Dutch Suppliers in the Offshore Energy Industry), ENECO Group, Redes Enérgeticas Nacionais, Parkwind, Ocean Winds, Energie Baden-Württemberg.
