Technical Aspects of the North Sea Super Grid

The future electric grid development plan in Europe foresees the North Sea Super Grid (NSSG). This grid will need to integrate individually and independently planned projects, leading to a rather grown than optimised structure. This will offer a lot of technical challenges, since it is a clear pioneer project. Offshore cluster grids could be either realised in AC or DC, and significant advantages and drawbacks come along with both options. Power balancing might become a challenge, due to the characteristics of modern wind turbines, which will play an important role in the clusters. These clusters can be connected to each other and to shore via HVDC links. VSC technology is the most promising option nowadays, but CSC technology might also offer good solutions in the future and could either…