Electricity market and power flow impact of offshore grids in the Baltic sea region

This paper analyses offshore wind power development and offshore grid options in the Baltic Sea region. The approach in this study links offshore wind power plant clustering, onshore connection point determination, offshore grid structure optimisation, unit commitment and economic dispatch simulation and power flow calculation together. The study compares the investment costs of different offshore grid topologies as well as the impacts of the offshore grids on the total operational costs of the power system, electricity production by fuel type, wind power curtailment and greenhouse gas emissions. The results show that additional interconnections between price regions are beneficial in the Baltic Sea region and topologies consisting of two-terminal links may beat multi-terminal links in profitability