Britain is on its way out of Europe – but as the Eurozone and other countries in EU27 continue make quiet progress, investment programmes are afoot right across the continent.
One such infrastructure plan that is being explored is for a 6 sq km artificial island to be constructed on the Dutch sector of the Dogger Bank to act as a service hub for offshore wind, a site for AC/DC conversion between the wind turbines and transmission cables, an interconnector switching station and a solar farm.
The island will be large enough to provide quays and docking facilities, a specialised airport, storage and maintenance depots.
Three transmission system operators, TenneT TSO BV (Netherlands), Energinet (Denmark) and TenneT TSO GmbH (Germany) are involved. In March, 2017, they signed a trilateral agreement in Brussels in the presence of European Commissioner for Energy Union for the development of a large renewable European electricity system in and around the North Sea.
The target date for the building of the island, to be called the ‘North Sea Wind Power Hub’ is 2035.
When operational, interconnectors will run between the island and terminals in Germany, Holland, Belgium, UK, Norway and Denmark.
The TenneT Group is already in a partnership with National Grid running the BritNed DC link between the Isle of Grain and Rotterdam and Energinet runs undersea interconnectors between Jutland and the Danish islands and with Norway and Sweden.