Prospects of energy storage technologies for offshore renewables in the North Sea region

Abstract

The North Sea region has ambitious plans to increase the installed capacity of offshore renewable energy sources (RES). Having a larger share of Variable Renewable Energy (VRE) sources integrated into the grid reduces the dependence on fossil energy sources. Yet, this shift introduces new challenges, such as the intermittency issue of power output and the lack of large synchronized power plants to provide inertia. Increased use of energy storage will be necessary to address both the intermittency issue and the need for flexible frequency control. This paper presents a brief literature review on energy storage technologies and their potential use cases. We focus on the North Sea region, as the regional countries have ambitious plans to increase the installed capacity of their offshore wind farms. The use cases consider on offshore renewables and are classified under energy management and ancillary services. Energy management covers curtailment minimization, capacity firming, and arbitrage. Ancillary services include frequency control, voltage support, and black start services. We further describe two use cases concerning harbours on shore power supply and using hydrogen as a fuel for vessels. Based on our review, we foresee a growing market demand for different kinds of energy storage technologies.