Ireland has some of the most favourable wind conditions in the whole of Europe. Wind production, in the mainland as well as offshore, is expected to grow rapidly during the coming years, as evidenced by the fact that some 6,000 MW of wind generation is currently awaiting connection to the grid onshore.
Given the massive potential for the exploitation of renewable energy resources
off the coast of Ireland, i.e. some thousands of MW, as well as the first requests of offshore connections, EIRGRID decided to undertake a study aiming
at investigating a potential grid structure as well as the most suitable transmission technology to facilitate offshore wind farm connections and
wind energy delivering, maintaining system reliability.
So far the point-to-point connection has been pursued elsewhere in Europe; however, EIRGRID considered this approach not suitable in a long term perspective, i.e. over the expected 20-30 years of offshore wind strategy deployment.
ollowing a cooperation agreement between EIRGRID and ERSE, the first stage of a study has been performed by using a long term transmission expansion planning methodology developed by ERSE to design an optimal network expansion plan aiming at transferring in the Irish Transmission System the potential amount of wind energy to be produced offshore in the Irish Sea..