Danish Energy Agency :
Practically possible to establish even more offshore wind farms

The consulting company Cowi has investigated the Danish sea areas for possible areas for new offshore wind farms.

In a new report for Energisytrelsen, Cowi has looked at wind farms with direct connection to land and wind farms that can be connected to the future energy islands in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, respectively.

The screened areas included Hesselø, Krigers Flak II, Norsøen I (south of the future Thor offshore wind farm), all of which will be able to have direct connection to land, as well as North Sea II and III (west of North Sea I) and Bornholm I and II (southwest of Bornholm), which can be connected to future energy islands.

The screening generally showed that it is possible to establish offshore wind farms in all the screened areas. Cowi does not advise against any of the areas, although it is recommended that further analyses be carried out for the possible installations at Bornholm and Krigers Flak for the sake of selected bird species.

Best conditions in the North Sea

In both screenings, Cowi has ranked the possible sites after an overall assessment. For both offshore wind farms with connections to land and to energy islands, it is the screened sites in the North Sea that are most suitable and have the lowest lifetime cost.

For offshore wind farms with a connection to land, Cowi notes that Kriegers Flak is slightly more expensive than the North Sea, but cheaper than Hesselø.

A 2018 fine screening showed that Hesselø was cheaper than Kriegers Flak, but in this updated screening the Hesselø site is smaller, so the turbine density is higher (19 km²/MW) and the shadow loss is therefore greater. The wind resource at Hesselø has also deteriorated compared to the 2018 fine screening, as the areas that are no longer included in the Hesselø site had the best wind resource.

For the three areas in the North Sea (North Sea II, III and West) that can be connected to an energy island, Cowi estimates that there is potential for more than 3 GW of wind power. Each of the areas has been screened for 67 wind turbines.

An option could also be to distribute 200 wind turbines across the two Bornholm sites, which would also achieve 3 GW of wind power and a similar price to that in the North Sea, the report states.