1.1 million NWO grant awarded for research into large-scale offshore wind production, offshore storage and transport alternatives

The Boards of the NWO domains Science and Social Science and Humanities have approved a project proposal, coordinated by professor of Energy Law Martha Roggenkamp, in the PhD@sea programme. Roggenkamp, together with several academic and societal partners, has received EUR 1.1 million for the project titled: Facilitating Large Scale Offshore Wind Production by Developing Offshore Storage and Transport Alternatives.

The ambition of the Dutch government to establish 75 GW offshore wind capacity by 2050 poses key challenges for transporting electricity produced to shore in the Netherlands and for coping with intermittency. This project analyses the feasibility of bringing large amounts of offshore wind energy to shore, varying from electricity offshore electrical pumped storage and hydrogen conversion to novel methods to transport electricity and/or hydrogen to shore.

Roggenkamp: ‘The combined efforts in this project will result not only in individual and joint academic publications, but also in a joint set of policy recommendations on the feasibility of the analyzed offshore storage and transport options’.

Novel technologies for offshore energy storage and transport options
The project is based on novel technologies for offshore energy storage and transport options. The aim of this research project is to move forward by assessing their feasibility by examining their technical challenges whilst also taking into account explicit market, legal/regulatory and spatial planning considerations. It will involve four parallel PhD projects that, on multiple occasions, will join forces in answering the research questions.

In addition to two technical work packages targeting on site electricity (pumped) storage and hydrogen conversion, it entails two social science work packages targeting offshore constraints, spatial planning and the need for an adequate legal/regulatory framework.

PhD@sea programme
The PhD@sea programme focuses on cross-disciplinary research projects that can help realise the planning, operation and maintenance of offshore wind farms. For this programme NWO works together with the Topsector Energy.

Partners
Academic partners in this project are prof. dr. A.I. Vakis and prof. dr. B. Jayawardhana of the Faculty of Science and Engineering, dr. C. Zuidema, Faculty of Spatial Sciences and prof. dr. M. Gibescu and dr. Mateo Gazzani, University of Utrecht.

Industrial and societal partners are: Ocean Grazer B.V., Loyens & Loeff N.V., New Energy Coalition, NOGAT, NOORDGASTRANSPORT B.V, Vattenfall Offshore Wind, Siemens Nederland N.V., TNO, Dutch Energy Law Association NeVER, NOGEPA, TenneT.

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This article was published by the Faculty of Law.

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