THE ENERGY INDUSTRY TIMES - AUGUST 2017 6 Europe News Dutch aim for subsidy-free wind farms as offshore costs continue to fall DISCOVER AND SOURCE THE LATEST POWER TECHNOLOGIES, PRODUCTS AND SOLUTIONS FROM AROUND THE WORLD! Meet with top manufacturers, suppliers and technology providers to source products and services essential for the development of Nigeria’s power sector. NEW VENUE LANDMARK CENTRE FREETO ATTEND 100+ KEY REGIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL COMPANIES 10+ COUNTRIES REPRESENTED 11+ INFLUENTIAL SPEAKERS 3 COUNTRY PAVILIONS 2 FREE POWER CONFERENCES 1 FREE WORKSHOP Brought to you by 5 – 7 SEPTEMBER 2017 LANDMARK CENTRE, LAGOS, NIGERIA www.power-nigeria.com Main Sponsor Bronze Sponsor A BRAND OF Utility Partners Organised by Siân Crampsie The Netherlands is to hold an auction for 700 MW of offshore wind energy capacity for developers interested in building the developments without subsidy support. Minister of Economic Affairs Henk Kamp has announced that the tender for sites I and II of the Hollandse Kust Zuid zone to the west of the Netherlands will initially be opened on a subsidy-free basis. If there is no interest in building the two 350 MW wind farm zones without subsidies, the tender procedure will go on as planned, Kamp added in a letter to Parliament. The move follows recent offshore wind farm auctions held in Germany, where three out of four wind projects were won by developers on the basis of subsidy-free bids. A developer in Sweden has also recently announced plans to build offshore wind farms without subsidies, serving as further evidence of the falling costs of offshore wind technology. The Dutch subsidy-free tender will assess bids on criteria such as developer expertise, design quality, wind farm capacity, social costs, and risk identification and analysis. “Three years ago it was expected that up to €18 billion would be needed for the five wind farms off the coast of Zeeland and Holland,” said Minister Kamp. “That included €4 billion for the offshore grid, necessary to get the power ashore. But now the costs have been more than halved and the expectation is that they will fall further.” And developers are continuing work to further drive down the costs of offshore wind. In July, Dong Energy and Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy joined forces with several UK academic institutions to establish a five-year working programme on offshore wind technology. Working with the universities of Hull, Sheffield and Durham, Dong and Siemens Gamesa will examine current and future challenges of reducing offshore wind technology costs. Operations and maintenance will be a key theme of their research, Dong said. “As we build more offshore wind farms in the UK, we are investing heavily in operations and maintenance activities, so understanding if these costs can be reduced by condition monitoring is key in our aim to reduce costs further,” said Benj Sykes of Dong. In Sweden, Svea Vind Offshore says it wants to build six new wind farms off the coasts of Gävle and Oxelösund, and plans to submit the permit application for the first 200 MW project later this year. The wind farms will be built without subsidies, with factors such as good wind conditions and proximity to the shoreline helping to reduce costs, Svea Vind said. The company believes that the cost of production from its wind farms will be less than €50/MWh. The Netherlands has six offshore wind sites in the pipeline at the two Hollandse Kust zones: four at Hollandse Kust Zuid, and two at Hollandse Kust Noord. Each of the sites at the wind farm zones can accommodate 350 MW. The tenders for the 700 MW Hollandse Kust Zuid zones III and IV are scheduled for 2018. The Hollandse Kust Noord tenders are slated for 2019. Plans for a floating wind farm demonstration project off the coast of Scotland are in doubt after the developer decided to call in the administrators. Dounreay Tri has submitted a planning consent application to build a 10 MW scheme off the north coast of Scotland, near Caithness, demonstrating a semi-submersible foundation developed by its owner, Hexicon AB. However Dounreay Tri has appointed accountancy firm French Duncan as administrators. Earlier this year the firm awarded the construction contract for its development to Global Energy Group and struck a deal with Scrabster harbour to service the scheme. n Investors in the proposed Swansea Bay tidal energy scheme have put funding for the project on hold until the UK government makes a commitment to back it. The 320 MW scheme has planning permission but requires support in the form of a contract for difference (CFD) to make it financially viable. Plans to modernise Spain’s electricity distribution networks and the digitisation of electricity meters have won the support of the European Investment Bank (EIB). Spanish electricity firm Iberdrola has signed a €500 million loan agreement with the EIB that will help it to realise its so-called Star project, North coast of Scotland: wind plan in doubt which aims to improve the quality of electricity services and supports smart grid development. The company will initiate the project across several counties in the country including Aragon, Cantabria, Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y Len, Comunidad Valenciana, Extremadura, La Rioja, Madrid, Murcia, Galicia, Asturias, Navarra and the Basque Country. It will install more than four million remotely controlled digital meters that can monitor consumer information in real-time. Iberdrola has already installed 9.5 million digital meters in Spain, it said in May 2017, as well as the smart grid infrastructure to support them. n Dong, Siemens embark on new UK study n Svea Vind plans subsidy-free projects Floating wind farm project sinks EIB supports Spanish grid scheme
Energy Industry Times July 2017
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