System integration
The perfect match
OranjeWind aims to achieve the perfect match between green electricity supply and demand. The project balances the intermittent power generation of offshore wind with a variety of innovative flexible demand assets such as batteries, e-boilers and electrolysers. With these investments and innovations, OranjeWind serves as the blueprint for the future offshore wind farm.
Click on the hotspots below to learn more about how OranjeWind will achieve this perfect match.
Battery systems can store excess renewable energy, making it available when it is needed most. As such, batteries play an important role in system integration solutions. For OranjeWind, several battery solutions are being developed.
RWE is constructing its first utility-scale battery storage project as part of OranjeWind, with an installed capacity of 35 MW and a storage capacity of 41 megawatt-hours (MWh). A total of 110 lithium-ion battery racks will be installed at RWE’s biomass plant in Eemshaven on an area of around 3,000 square metres. The storage system is planned to supply control energy and to operate in wholesale markets as of 2025.
RWE starts construction of utility-scale battery storage project in the Netherlands
Ultra-fast inertia batteries
At RWE’s Moerdijk power plant, construction has started for a 7.5 MW/11 MWh inertia battery. With its ability to provide or absorb electricity within milliseconds, the system will help to safeguard the electricity grid. This function is called inertia.
Sustainable electricity sources (such as offshore wind farms like OranjeWind) can have sudden fluctuations depending on wind force. Our grid is not suited to handle these sudden fluctuations. This battery’s technology can help with this issue, by quickly injecting power into the grid when there is a sudden drop in generation. This is called synthetic inertia. This technology is now being tested for the first time in the continental European grid, at Moerdijk. This innovation is part of the blueprint for system integration of OranjeWind.
After commissioning, there will be a two-year pilot phase. During this phase, the transmission system operator TenneT will be a partner of the project to further develop its technical requirements and grid compliance procedures for the grid-forming features of the battery storage system.
Hydrogen can support the industry in making their production processes more sustainable. At the same time, hydrogen can be used to store green electricity to balance the flexible generation by offshore wind. For OranjeWind, several electrolysers are in development, producing green hydrogen from the wind farm’s electricity.
RWE is developing a 100MW electrolyser for green hydrogen production at Eemshaven in the Netherlands, as part of the OranjeWind system integration solutions.
RWE’s green hydrogen ambitions for Eemshaven region strengthened by plans for 100MW electrolyser
TotalEnergies will dedicate its share of the renewable electricity production from OranjeWind to power ~350 MW electrolyser projects with Air Liquide, producing about 45,000 tons per year of green hydrogen for the decarbonisation of TotalEnergies’ refinery in Zeeland and the Antwerp platform. These projects will cut CO2 emissions by up to 450,000 tons a year.
Ocean Grazer’s Ocean Battery is a scalable, modular solution for energy storage that is produced by renewable sources such as wind turbines and floating solar farms at sea.
To store energy, the system pumps water from the rigid reservoirs into the flexible bladders on the seabed to store it under high pressure. When there is demand for power, water flows back from the flexible bladders to the low-pressure rigid reservoirs, driving multiple hydro turbines to generate electricity.
As part of project OranjeWind, Ocean Grazer will be further developed in an inland underwater testing location.
The offshore floating solar technology, as developed by SolarDuck, establishes a new frontier for solar energy and provides an answer to increasing land scarcity for the generation of renewable energy. The integration of offshore floating solar into an offshore wind farm is a more efficient use of ocean space for energy generation (using the space between the wind turbines) and allows for synergies with regards to the construction and maintenance of the multi-source renewable energy plant. The result is a more balanced production profile due to the complementary nature of wind and solar resources. This means the TenneT transport cable will be used more efficiently in the future.
RWE and SolarDuck are currently collaborating in the first pilot installation off the Dutch coast: Project Merganser.
As a winner of the RWE innovation competition in 2022, Verlume has been working to deliver their unique offering for system integration at OranjeWind.
Verlume is bringing multi-purpose storage solutions offshore through a subsea lithium-ion battery with integrated intelligent energy management, which has a modular and highly scalable design that will lead to a more balanced power output by shaving the peak power production offshore.
Beyond preventing grid curtailment, the storage solution can provide multiple offshore services, such as frequency response, black start capability for wind turbines and charging of hybrid or fully electric service vessels and providing residency for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs). This will enable further reductions of the CO2 footprint of offshore wind farms and associated logistics.
ForWind, the Center for Wind Energy Research at the University of Oldenburg, won the RWE innovation competition in 2022 with their proposal for the development of an innovative power forecasting methodology based on LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging).
This method has the potential to support grid stability and significantly improve the integration of wind power in future energy systems, by accurately forecasting sudden changes in power production as a consequence of strong variations of wind speed over a short period of time (so-called “wind ramp events”). If not forecasted accurately, both in timing and amplitude, these can result in critical grid imbalances and in the longer term hamper the further growth of offshore wind energy.