The multiDC project addresses an area identified with urgent priority in national and international R&D roadmaps, with significant business opportunities, and facilitates a crucial build-up of know-how in one of Danish industry’s strongholds: the energy sector. multiDC focus is (i) on the North Sea Wind Power Hub ( https://northseawindpowerhub.eu/ ) and (ii) on the most efficient coordination of High Voltage Direct Current Lines (HVDC) which can result in millions of DKK savings per year.
The North Sea Wind Power Hub (NSWPH) has been identified by the newly elected Danish government as a crucial milestone to be achieved by Denmark by 2030. If successful, it will showcase Denmark’s leading position in massive integration of wind power, and unlock business opportunities in the range of 375 billion DKK for the Danish industry. This is almost 5 times higher than the value of the total Danish energy technology exports for 2017. multiDC is at the forefront of these developments, generating solutions that can make NSWPH a reality.
At the same time, Denmark is part of the most HVDC-rich region in the world, and among the first to have observed challenges related to the HVDC operation across multiple regions. multiDC is addressing a range of these inefficiencies and has developed and demonstrated solutions that can save Denmark and the Nordic region costs that could exceed tens of million DKK per year.
More concretely, related to the NSWPH, in the first two years multiDC has taken a deep look into the required electric system topology on the energy island, so that it can integrate up to 12 GW of wind per island while eliminating blackout risk (the peak electricity demand for Denmark is around 6 GW). It has proposed three different topologies. Given the immense scale of this project, and a concept that has never been tried before, each topology poses severe technical challenges. multiDC has investigated them and is proposing solutions to address them. These can help design a reliable, resilient, and cost-effective offshore AC grid that could unlock substantial business opportunities for the Danish and international industry in the range billions of DKK per island.
Related to better coordination of HVDC, multiDC has achieved two milestones. First, it has proposed a method to share frequency reserves over HVDC (Emergency Power Control – EPC) which provides better system response and could result in substantial cost savings compared to other methods. multiDC results have informed ENTSOe, and with the help of Svenska Kraftnät, a multiDC partner, they have motivated a set of guidelines issued by ENTSOe for the activation of the EPC functionality of HVDC. For the scientific component of this work, the multiDC team has won a best paper award at the North American Power System conference in 2018 (first prize in its category; third prize for the conference overall).
Second, the Nordic system operators are currently losing over 130 million DKK per year to cover HVDC electricity losses. The problem is especially pronounced in transit countries such as Denmark. multiDC has proposed concrete recommendations that capture these costs more accurately and allocate them in a fair way among HVDC lines and responsible parties. multiDC’s solutions relieve consumers in the Nordic region of costs exceeding 35 million DKK per year.
In short, besides designing and assessing offshore grid topologies that will facilitate the construction of Offshore Energy Hubs, such as the North Sea Wind Power Hub, and unlock business opportunities in the range of billions of DKK for the Danish and international industry, multiDC is also working on solutions that exploit the advanced functionalities of HVDC in order to save more than 100 million DKK/year for the Nordic utilities and Nordic consumers.