Co-Location of Hybrid Offshore Renewables for Off-Grid Electrification: Case Study on North Sea Assets

Abstract

Operators in the North Sea are looking for solutions to reduce their carbon emissions to meet the North Sea Transition Authority's target of carbon-neutral assets by 2050. Wind energy as an offshore mature technology has been adopted in all electrification concepts proposed for neutralizing assets emissions, despite its challenges in terms of intermittency and seasonal availability. These challenges would limit the penetration level of renewable energy due to a higher Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) which is recorded with scenarios based on wind energy only. This study investigates the technical and economic feasibility of an islanded (off-grid) microgrid comprising a mix of renewable energy resources such as wave energy, floating solar PV and floating offshore wind for electrification of offshore assets. A case study is presented considering assets in the Central North Sea area to validate the level of battery storage capacity needed and LCOE using various mixes of renewable resources available. Hybrid Optimization of Multiple Energy Resources (HOMER) software is used as a specialist platform for the optimization of renewable energy systems to obtain the optimal share of different energy resources at various penetration levels of renewable energy. The outcome of this paper is promising where the system LCOE and the size of the battery storage are dramatically reduced by considering a mix of renewable energy resources instead of a wind-only scenario. The idea of the renewable mix, proposed in this paper, proves that electrification with higher penetration levels could be achieved with lower LCOE which is a milestone for achieving net-zero assets.