Cerulean Winds and Frontier Power International have announced their plans to build the North Sea Renewables Grid (NSRG), a green power and transmission system that will be powered by floating wind. The NSRG will consist of hundreds of floating turbines located on three 333km2 sites, producing multiple gigawatts of electricity. This system will be constructed close together in the Central North Sea, enabling a new basin-wide offshore transmission system to be created. Oil and gas platforms will be able to plug into the NSRG to access clean power.
Cerulean and Frontier Power International have been offered the majority of seabed leases in the recent Crown Estate Scotland INTOG round. They will work with partners NOV, Siemens Gamesa, Siemens Energy, DEME and Worley to deliver the project, which is expected to be one of the country’s largest infrastructure investment projects, costing around £20 billion.
Dan Jackson, founding director of Cerulean Winds, said that the oil and gas sector is struggling to meet the North Sea Transition Deal emissions reduction targets whilst supporting UK energy security. He added that a reliable basin-wide approach is needed to achieve meaningful reductions at the necessary pace, and the NSRG will provide the infrastructure for the next phase of the North Sea’s life.
The NSRG project will create 10,000 jobs and contribute over £12bn GVA to the UK’s economy. Cerulean aims to build the NSRG before the ScotWind developments, which will allow the supply chain to respond, create partnering opportunities for the ports, and get the market ready to deliver floating wind at scale.
Humza Malik, founding partner of Frontier Power, said that each wind farm site will be located within 100km of the others and will be connected together to form the offshore ring main around the Central North Sea. A High Voltage Alternating Current (HVAC) transmission will provide availability and redundancy for maximising generation uptime. The scale allows for offtake to other parts of the North Sea through a new High Voltage Direct Current (HDVC) network.
Cerulean and Frontier Power International’s plan is to focus on oil and gas operators in Phase 1 of the NSRG project to support their brownfield modifications. In future phases, the NSRG will export green power to the grids in southern UK and Europe. The HVDC transmission will not only provide clean energy to the National Grid but will also allow for the direct export of power to continental Europe, which will make a material impact on Scotland’s emissions and support a just transition.
