Baltic Sea region on its way to connect offshore electricity grids

Regions need to jointly tackle the offshore grid challenge

Because the Baltic Sea is shallow, has low wave heights, and neglectable tides, it provides very good prerequisites to install large offshore wind power devices. However, the full potential of offshore wind power can only be exploited if the countries around the Baltic Sea established large transnational meshed offshore wind grids based on the same standards and methodology. Existing national offshore connections lose a lot of energy during transportation and are much more vulnerable to disturbances. By 2050, 35 GW of offshore wind power could be produced, but only 2.2 GW were installed in 2018.

Interreg helped regions to shape a plan for an offshore grid

The EU funded Interreg project Baltic InteGrid created the knowledge and cooperation platform Baltic Offshore Grid Forum in which all the relevant stakeholders from the offshore wind energy supply chain exchange and plan their cooperation. The project partners elaborated a common vision and defined the necessary steps and procedures to plan, finance, implement and operate a meshed offshore wind grid. The concept for the Baltic Offshore Grid was tested and verified in two prefeasibility studies covering a potential meshed grid between Poland-Sweden-Lithuania and Germany-Sweden-Denmark. Estonia, Finland, and Latvia contributed to the concept as well.

Leaping forward together

By firing up an expert discussion about a joint electricity grid in the Baltic Sea, the Interreg project Baltic InteGrid brought the Baltic Sea macro-region closer to removing one of the most important bottlenecks for the development of renewable energy sources in the Baltic Sea region by 2050. That's how Interreg helps regions to jointly tackle challenges that go beyond borders. And that's how the #EUinvests into our future.

Interreg Baltic Sea Region is an EU funding Programme that funds cooperation projects which support public authorities, research institutions, sectoral agencies and associations, NGOs and enterprises in finding solutions that meet their needs.