Developing a long-lasting offshore wind business case towards a Dutch decarbonised energy system by 2050

Abstract

The integration of large-scale offshore wind power in the energy system will have a major effect on electricity markets. It may lead to large market price volatility due to the inherent variability of wind energy in terms of power fluctuations, forecast errors and insufficient flexibility on the demand side. This study models future business cases for offshore wind farms in two reference national scenarios for the Netherlands, namely NECP2030 and TRANSFORM. Results show that the value of offshore wind in 2030, according to NECP scenario is 39.9 €/MWh, and that electricity price in the TRANSFORM scenario, which considers aggressive development towards a sustainable economy, is a high 104 €/MWh by 2050. To consider ways of improving the return on investment for offshore wind farms in future markets, an optimisation problem is defined, where the wind farm has the choice to either sell the generated electricity to the spot market or to an electrolyser. Results show a potential advantage in using an electrolyser to produce green hydrogen for offshore wind farms, with net profit of 41.4 M€, compared to when offshore wind farms sell electricity solely to the spot market, where the profits are 36 M€.