TenneT Offshore

TenneT is the leading offshore transmission system operator (TSO) in the European Union. With our vast experience in offshore grid development and innovative solutions in that field, we help to secure a stable supply of green energy for European households and industry alike – in an efficient, safe and sustainable way. That is our obligation. That is our expertise. That is the responsibility we shoulder. 

With our current offshore grid connection systems, we safely transmit more than half of the EU’s entire offshore wind capacity from sea to land. To satisfy rising demand for green energy in Europe, we are working hard and systematically to expand our offshore energy grid – at an increasing pace. 

Europe is determined to become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. Germany even aims to achieve net zero by 2045. Meanwhile, compared to 1990 levels, the Netherlands plans to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 49% by 2030 and by 95% by 2050. As a green transmission system operator (TSO), TenneT embraces these goals and supports both countries and the EU on their individual and collective journeys.  

These will entail a major increase in electrification. In the EU, the share of electricity in the energy system is expected to grow from around 20% today to more than 50% in 2050. Without a doubt, to meet rising demand and achieve net zero, member states must quickly ramp up their renewable energy supplies. Part of the solution to this, however, is right on our doorstep.

The European Union has acknowledged the North Sea’s great potential and set ambitious offshore energy goals: it targets at least 60 GW of offshore wind capacities by 2030 and 300 GW by 2050. Member states additionally defined goals of their own. Some have gone even further than the EU: 

With our offshore solutions and initiatives, we are supporting the European energy transition and helping to make Europe’s energy supply safe and independent. We draw on the knowledge gained from implementing 17 offshore grid connections and four interconnectors that transmit green energy across European borders in the North Sea region. Our four interconnectors are beacons of European energy cooperation and connect Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom. Combined, they transmit 3.8 GW.

Together, our grid connection systems and interconnectors cover more than 3,600 km and transmit 14.4 GW of electricity – or enough to supply more than 18 million European households with clean energy. Learn more… 

However, to reach the ambitious offshore goals, we have to keep pushing. In addition to rapidly increasing capacities, Europe must also urgently expand its offshore grid to safely bring the much-needed green energy from sea to land. 

To make this happen, TenneT will invest more than €40 billion in offshore grid expansion by 2031, making us one of the largest investors in Europe’s path to a green energy future. We will more than triple our current capacity. This will be a mammoth task and one for that all of us – industry, politics and society as a whole – must pull together. 

The acceleration in grid expansion needed will be supported by increasing the individual transmission capacity per system while introducing comprehensive standardisation at the same time. At TenneT, we have made this challenge our mission and are now making it a reality. 

We have put our emphasis at an early stage on developing new standards for offshore grid connection systems. Through standardised models and technological innovations, we aim to make planning and implementing new offshore grid connections much easier and more efficient and to thereby make wind energy from the North Sea scalable. This way, we have saved time, resources and money – and have helped to deliver more and more power from sea to land. And we keep going ahead. Ever since our first connection, we have continuously developed new standards to transmit ever-larger capacities of energy from the North Sea: from 700 MW alternating current (AC) to 400 MW direct current (DC) to 900 MW DC to, most recently, a whole new level: our new 2 GW high-voltage direct current (HVDC) standard for offshore grid connection systems. This has the capacity to handle an energy volume more than twice as large as previous systems.

With its immense degree of harmonisation and its strong focus on interoperability, our new 2 GW standard lays the urgently needed foundation for a much stronger form of European energy cooperation: a fully meshed European cross-border HVDC offshore grid system in which green wind energy can be allocated flexibly and used much more efficiently among the North Sea states.  

We are convinced that offshore hubs will also play a key role in this future and facilitate the smart use of wind energy. TenneT is currently working on planning the first offshore hubs in both the Netherlands and Germany. Here, we are drawing on our extensive knowledge and studies from the North Sea Wind Power Hub (NSWPH) programme. This programme has evolved from the initial vision of a large international energy island into a modular concept of smaller, linkable hubs.  

Furthermore, we need hubs to connect off- and onshore grids. With the concept for a wind power booster, we presented a concrete and visionary idea in 2021 of how the expansion of offshore wind energy can be accelerated through the long-term meshing of the DC grid at sea and on land as well as through the clever integration of industry and electrolysis projects. In addition, together with 50Hertz, TenneT will be building Europe’s first multiterminal hub together in the Heide region of Schleswig-Holstein.

Tackling Europe’s green transition from offshore is a highly promising endeavour – and an enormous challenge. More and more wind farms as well as offshore grid connection systems must be built in less and less time. At the same time, fragile supply chains and sharply rising prices on the world market, such as for raw materials, make prompt and cost-efficient implementation increasingly difficult. We have to deal with these challenges together – in a collective feat of strength. Given these circumstances, we have made partnership a core value in our operations and fostered a fundamental change in values. Suppliers and clients are now forming even stronger partnerships. We are committing to each other and will – as a team – accelerate expansion in a safe and sustainable way, manage costs and conserve resources. Forming the foundation for this will be mutual trust and transparency.

And we mean it! In accordance with the 2 GW standard of our offshore grid connection systems, we have launched an innovative market approach. Instead of tendering each offshore grid connection system individually, we now form framework agreements for technological components for a whole series of systems with several partners at once.

We aim to take a leading role also in terms of how responsibly we conduct our business. And even though we quickly need to ramp up our capacities in power production and transmission in the North Sea to satisfy growing demand for renewables, this can only happen in a sustainable way – with regards to the environment and people alike. We have formulated a Code of Conduct featuring clear guidelines on how we carry out construction, operations, and maintenance – always in accordance with safety rules and nature conservation laws.