Hitachi Energy – Hitachi Energy and Ørsted to ensure grid stability at Hornsea 4 with a technology first for offshore wind in Europe

EMR Analysis

More information on Hitachi Energy: See the full profile on EMR Executive Services

More information on Andreas Schierenbeck (Senior Vice President and Executive Officer, Hitachi, Ltd + Chief Executive Officer, Hitachi Energy Ltd): See the full profile on EMR Executive Services

More information on Grid Integration Business by Hitachi Energy: See the full profile on EMR Executive Services

More information on Niklas Persson (Managing Director, Grid Integration Business, Hitachi Energy): See the full profile on EMR Executive services

More information on Grid-enSure™ by Hitachi Energy: https://www.hitachienergy.com/markets/utilities/energy-transmission/grid-ensure + Grid-enSure™ is a fully integrated portfolio that comprises Hitachi Energy’s top end solutions, present and future, based on Power Electronics and Advanced Control Systems.​ Designed to enhance the flexibility, resilience and stability of the grid.

The Grid-enSure™ portfolio encompasses cutting-edge Static Compensator (STATCOM), High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC), Static Frequency Converter (SFC) and Energy Storage Solutions (ESS) technologies to deliver future proof functionalities such as fast voltage and frequency support, synthetic inertia, fault current contribution and system strength support. Technology is key for the evolution of the power systems and power electronics based solutions are strategic to enable bulk integration of renewables and utilize the grid to its full potential.

 

 

More information on Ørsted: See the full profile on EMR Executive Services

More information on Mads Nipper (Group President and Chief Executive Officer, Ørsted): See the full profile on EMR Executive Services

More information on the Ørsted Hornsea 1 Offshore Wind Farm: https://orsted.co.uk/energy-solutions/offshore-wind/our-wind-farms/hornsea1 + 

Powering over 1 million homes with green electricity

Hornsea 1, located in the North Sea, generates enough green energy to power over 1 million UK homes. The wind farm comprises 174 turbines and covers an area of 407 square kilometres (157.2 square miles), which is over five times the size of the city of Hull.

• 1.2GW The combined total capacity of the project
• 174 7MW wind turbines
• 900km Cable route

Located 120 km (74.6 miles) off the Yorkshire coast in the North Sea, Hornsea 1 is our 12th operational wind farm in the UK. It was the world’s first offshore wind farm to exceed 1 GW in capacity and produces enough green energy to power well over one million homes. 

Hornsea 1 became fully operational in 2019 and is operated and maintained from our East Coast Hub in Grimsby which supports a workforce of more than 370 people. 

The offshore wind farm is owned by Ørsted (50%) and Global Infrastructure Partners (50%).

More information on the Ørsted Hornsea 2 Offshore Wind Farm: https://hornseaprojects.co.uk/hornsea-project-two + Powering well over 1.4 million homes with green electricity.

Hornsea 2 Offshore Wind Farm is located approximately 89 km (55.3 miles) off the Yorkshire coast in the North Sea and adjacent to Hornsea One offshore wind farm.

Hornsea 2 key facts:

• 165 Siemens Gamesa 8MW turbines
• Hornsea Two will have a capacity of over 1.3GW and provide power to more than 1.4 million homes
• Located approximately 89km off the Yorkshire coast in the North Sea
• Hornsea Two will span an offshore area of 462km²
• Landfall at Horseshoe Point
• Became fully operational on 31 August 2022

More information on the Ørsted Hornsea 3 Offshore Wind Farm: https://hornseaproject3.co.uk/ + Hornsea Three offshore wind farm could meet the average daily needs of well over 3 million UK homes.

In August 2015, Ørsted acquired the rights to develop the Hornsea Zone from SMart Wind Ltd, who were originally awarded the zone in The Crown Estate Round 3 bid process. To date, Hornsea One and Hornsea Two have both received planning consent, with Hornsea One now operational and Hornsea Two currently under construction.

On 14 May 2018, we submitted a Development Consent Order (DCO) application for a  third project in the zone, Hornsea Project Three Offshore Wind Farm.

The application was accepted by the Planning Inspectorate in June 2018 and was granted consent by the Secretary of State for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on 31 December 2020. 

• Location:
  • Hornsea Three will be located in the North Sea, approximately 120 km off the Norfolk coast and 160 km off the Yorkshire coast.
• Size:
  • Up to 231 offshore wind turbines will be located within a 696 km2 area.
• Power output:
  • The wind farm will be capable of generating at least 2.85 GW of green electricity, enough to meet the average daily needs of well over 3 million homes.

More information on the Ørsted Hornsea 4 Offshore Wind Farm: https://hornseaprojects.co.uk/hornsea-project-four  + Hornsea 4 offshore wind farm has been consented on 12.07.2023.

Hornsea 4 is the first ever offshore wind farm to be examined alongside a derogation case including environmental compensation.

We are now reviewing the full detail of the Development Consent Order and will continue to work closely with stakeholders and local communities as we look to take Hornsea 4 forward sensitively and sustainably.

Offshore wind projects such as Hornsea 4 are key to the UK’s energy security and will bring billions of pounds of investment into the UK, provide low-cost electricity for consumers and thousands of high-quality jobs.

• Location: Ørsted is proposing to develop Hornsea Four, 69km (at its closest point) off the Yorkshire Coast.
• Size: We are currently investigating an offshore area of up to 492 km2 where up to 180 wind turbines could be located.

More information on Alana Kühne (Managing Director, Hornsea 4, Ørsted): See the full profile on EMR Executive Services 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EMR Additional Notes:

• Synchronous Condenser / STATCOM:
  • Conventional solution that has been used for decades for regulating reactive power before there were any power electronics compensation systems. A conventional synchronous condenser is an AC synchronous motor that is not attached to any driven equipment.
  • Synchronous condensers not only provide inertia and variable reactive power to support the transmission system voltage during events, but they are also able to deliver a range of additional ancillary services for grid operators that increase the robustness of the system.
  • STATCOM is the acronym for Static Synchronous Compensator.
  • STATCOM or Static Synchronous Compensator is a power electronic device using force commutated devices like IGBT, GTO etc. to control the reactive power flow through a power network and thereby increasing the stability of power network. STATCOM is a shunt device i.e. it is connected in shunt with the line. A Static Synchronous Compensator (STATCOM) is also known as a Static Synchronous Condenser (STATCON). It is a member of the Flexible AC Transmission System (FACTS) family of devices.
  • The terms Synchronous in STATCOM mean that it can either absorb or generate reactive power in synchronization with the demand to stabilize the voltage of the power network.

 

 

• Grid, Microgrids, DERs and DERM’s:
  • The power grid is a network for delivering electricity to consumers. The power grid includes generator stations, transmission lines and towers, and individual consumer distribution lines.
  • The grid constantly balances the supply and demand for the energy that powers everything from industry to household appliances.
  • Electric grids perform three major functions: power generation, transmission, and distribution.
  • A microgrid is a small-scale power grid that can operate independently or collaboratively with other small power grids. The practice of using microgrids is known as distributed, dispersed, decentralized, district or embedded energy production.
  • Smart Grid is any electrical grid + IT at all levels . Micro Grid is a group of interconnected loads and DERs (Distributed energy resources) within a clearly defined electrical and geographical boundaries witch acts as a single controllable entity with respect to the main grid.
  • Distributed energy resources (DERs) are small-scale electricity supply (typically in the range of 3 kW to 50 MW) or demand resources that are interconnected to the electric grid. They are power generation resources and are usually located close to load centers, and can be used individually or in aggregate to provide value to the grid.
  • Common examples of DERs include rooftop solar PV units, natural gas turbines, microturbines, wind turbines, biomass generators, fuel cells, tri-generation units, battery storage, electric vehicles (EV) and EV chargers, and demand response applications.
  • Distributed energy resources management systems (DERMS) are platforms which helps mostly distribution system operators (DSO) manage their grids that are mainly based on distributed energy resources (DER).
  • DERMS are used by utilities and other energy companies to aggregate a large energy load for participation in the demand response market. DERMS can be defined in many ways, depending on the use case and underlying energy asset.

 

 

• Kilowatt (kW):
  • A kilowatt is simply a measure of how much power an electric appliance consumes—it’s 1,000 watts to be exact. You can quickly convert watts (W) to kilowatts (kW) by diving your wattage by 1,000: 1,000W 1,000 = 1 kW.
• Megawatt (MW):
  • One megawatt equals one million watts or 1,000 kilowatts, roughly enough electricity for the instantaneous demand of 750 homes at once.
• Gigawatt (GW):
  • A gigawatt (GW) is a unit of power, and it is equal to one billion watts.
  • According to the Department of Energy, generating one GW of power takes over three million solar panels or 310 utility-scale wind turbines
• Terawatt (TW):
  • One terawatt is equal to 1,000,000,000,000 watts.
  • The main use of terawatts is found in the electric power industry.
  • According to the United States Energy Information Administration, America is one of the largest electricity consumers in the world using about 4,146.2 terawatt-hours.

 

 

• Final Investment Decision (FID):
  • FID is the point in the capital project planning process when the decision to make major financial commitments is taken.
  • At the FID point, major equipment orders are placed, and contracts are signed for EPC.
• Contract for Difference (CfD):
  • Financial contract that pays the differences in the settlement price between the open and closing trades. CFDs essentially allow investors to trade the direction of securities over the very short-term and are especially popular in FX and commodities products.
  • The Government’s primary mechanism for supporting new low carbon power infrastructure is the Contracts for Difference (CfD) scheme. CfDs work by guaranteeing a set price for electricity – known as a strike price – that generators receive per unit of power output.

 

 

• Power Electronics:
  • Power electronics is the technology associated with the efficient conversion, control and conditioning of electric power by static means from its available input form into the desired electrical output form.
  • Power electronics is the branch of electrical engineering that deals with the processing of high voltages and currents to deliver power that supports a variety of needs. it deals with the conversion and control of electric power using electric converters based on the switch of semiconductors.
• Power Conversion:
  • In electrical engineering, power conversion is the process of converting electric energy from one form to another. A power converter is an electrical device for converting electrical energy between alternating current (AC) and direct current (DC). It can also change the voltage or frequency of the current.

 

 

• SVC Light®:
  • SVC Light® is based on a technology platform also used in high-voltage direct current (HVDC) power transmission applications, namely HVDC Light®. The most important component is the modular voltage source converter (VSC), equipped with powerful semiconductors performing switching. SVC Light is available for system voltages up to 69 kV and converter ratings over -/+ 400 Mvar. For higher voltages, a step-down transformer is used to connect SVC Light to the grid. SVC Light provides a symmetrical operating range. For asymmetrical operations and in order to optimize performance, thyristor-switched reactors and capacitors are operated in parallel to form hybrid solutions.
  • SVC Light is a VSC concept, based on a chain-link modular multilevel converter (MMC), particularly adapted for power system applications. Physically, SVC Light can be considered a voltage source behind a reactance. It generates and absorbs reactive power by electronically processing voltage and current waveforms in the VSC, rendering unnecessary to include physical capacitor and reactor branches for generating/absorbing reactive power.  It is capable of yielding a high reactive power input to the grid more or less unimpeded by possible suppressed grid voltages, and with a high dynamic response.

 

 

• Reactive Power:
  • Reactive power is a function of a system’s amperage, and it is not consumed in the circuit, it is all returned to the source, which is why reactive power is often described as energy that moves back and forth within a circuit.
  • Active power is useful power that does some real work in an AC circuit, whereas reactive power is non-useful power that flows back and forth (in both directions from source to load) but produces electric or magnetic flux.
  • Reactive power flow, however, has a number of undesirable consequences. It increases the drawn current for the same load level, which in turn increases the losses, maintenance and cost of the power system operation. Moreover, it reduces the power stability margin.

 

 

• Capacitor:
  • A capacitor is an electronic device that stores electrical energy in an electric field by accumulating electric charges on two closely spaced surfaces that are insulated from each other. It is a passive electronic component with two terminals.

• Supercapacitor:
  • A supercapacitor, also called an ultracapacitor, is a high-capacity capacitor with a capacitance value much higher than other capacitors, but with lower voltage limits, that bridges the gap between electrolytic capacitors and rechargeable batteries.
  • Supercapacitors (SCs) are electrochemical energy storage devices that store and release energy by reversible adsorption and desorption of ions at the interfaces between electrode materials and electrolytes.
  • Supercapacitors are used in applications requiring many rapid charge/discharge cycles, rather than long-term compact energy storage — in automobiles, buses, trains, cranes and elevators, where they are used for regenerative braking, short-term energy storage, or burst-mode power delivery.
  • The supercapacitor is often misunderstood; it is not a battery replacement to store long-term energy. If, for example, the charge and discharge times are more than 60 seconds, use a battery; if shorter, then the supercapacitor becomes economical.