Pooling the cable: A techno-economic feasibility study of integrating offshore floating photovoltaic solar technology within an offshore wind park

In this paper, a techno-economic analysis is performed to assess the feasibility of adding an offshore floating solar farm to an existing Dutch offshore wind farm in the North Sea, under the constraint of a certain fixed cable capacity. The specific capacity of the cable that connects the offshore park to the onshore grid is not fully used due to the limited capacity factor of the wind farm. The principle of cable pooling allows to add floating solar capacity. Using weather data it is found that adding solar capacity leads to forced curtailment due to the cable capacity, but this is quite limited as result of the anti-correlation of the solar and wind resource. For the economic analysis, different scenarios regarding subsidy measures are considered for the calculation of net present value and levelized cost of electricity. Also the optimum additional PV capacity for each scenario is computed. The results show that with higher cost per Wp, optimum PV capacity decreases, but more favourable subsidies lead to higher optimized PV capacities. As the aim of the paper is not limited to a case study a methodology is developed for generalization of the techno-economic analysis of a hybrid solar/wind park. In this generalization, the initial investment, system degradation, cable capacity, number of hours when each system is active, and energy price, are implemented to compute the optimum PV capacity regarding the net present value as an indicator for economic analysis of the project.

Automated summary

This paper evaluates the feasibility of adding an offshore floating solar farm to an existing Dutch offshore wind farm in the North Sea, considering factors such as cable capacity, weather data, and subsidy measures. The study shows that while there is some forced curtailment due to cable capacity, the optimal PV capacity decreases with higher PV costs, but increases with more favorable subsidies.