Browsing by Author "Holm, Jonas"

Countries are worldwide faced with challenges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to achieve the climate targets. The EU has set ambitious climate goals to decarbonize the economies of Member States by taking various actions, including continuous development of renewable energy sources with the vision to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas by 2050. This includes targets of reaching at least 60 GW of installed offshore wind capacity by 2030 and 300 GW by 2050. Compared to todays 12 GW, this means a 25-fold increase, requiring investments estimated at EUR 800 billion. Finland has great potential for increasing its offshore wind capacity and has set out objectives to eliminate obstacles for deployment to lower greenhouse gas emissions. As large-scale offshore wind projects have been identified to have significant potential for greenhouse gas abatement, this thesis aims to identify barriers to grid connections and investigate possibilities of cost allocations to effectively integrate offshore wind energy. A clear determination of the demarcation lines between the responsibilities of the network operator and the wind farm itself is crucial for integration, and currently the cost allocation model results in several ambiguities concerning the connection conditions for large-scale offshore wind farms. An analysis of the unbundling principles in the light of offshore grid connections is conducted, and this study finds evidence that the current cost allocation model does not follow the principles of unbundling. The main argument of this thesis is that Finland should adopt a model where the state-owned transmission system operator would bear the costs for connecting offshore wind farms to the main grid, and consequently integrate offshore wind power. Not only would this comply with the unbundling principles, but by socializing the costs to the electricity network users, it would also remove one significant barrier for constructing offshore wind power plants.