UK consultancy Intertek has been chosen to undertake a UK permitting and planning study by the North Sea Wind Power Hub (NSWPH) consortium.
The study will help the consortium gain a better understanding of the key environmental legislations, risks and constraints associated with the North Sea Power Hub project.
The consortium partners are the Dutch and German businesses of grid operator TenneT, Energinet, Gasunie and the Port of Rotterdam, which have teamed up to develop a large-scale European energy system for coordinating power supply from offshore wind in the North Sea in future decades.
The NSWPH collaborators are proposing a ‘hub and spoke’ concept, where offshore wind farms will connect to one or several hub islands via alternating current (AC) cables.
The AC power is then converted into direct current (DC) electricity by converters on the hub islands before being exported by a series of interconnectors – spokes – to connecting North Sea countries.
Through the ‘hub & spoke’ system, the consortium aims to optimise the spatial efficiency of both offshore wind farms and interconnectors in the North Sea.
The project could also use power-to-gas systems on the hub islands to convert offshore wind-generated power into hydrogen, which would then be exported via new and existing gas pipelines.
Intertek energy and water environment lead Beth Monkman said: “We are very pleased to utilise our extensive stakeholder knowledge and experience of permitting offshore projects in the North Sea while conducting this initial study for such an exciting, internationally-coordinated renewable energy concept.”
Intertek’s project experience within the North Sea includes the planning and permitting of offshore renewables projects, oil and gas projects on the UK Continental Shelf, and offshore power transmission and telecommunication cable projects.
Services the company offers include environmental impact assessments and scoping studies, site selection and characterisation, feasibility studies, metocean assessments, and risk management for a variety of offshore renewable developments.