Energy Centres

Renewable energy systems allow for savings on infrastructure

Eurowind Energy has for the past couple of years worked on the concept of Energy Centres. These large renewable energy plants will include wind turbines, solar, batteries, and PtX (hydrogen production). In addition to this, the integration of biogas and hydrogen refining is part of the centres.

The starting point is solar and wind turbines. Those technologies produce the green power that is used in the other parts of the energy centre. The battery will provide balancing services to grid and electrolyse will produce hydrogen. There is a major need for more locally produced biogas in combination with green electricity production. More biogas will help to phase out the use of Russian gas and natural gas from the North Sea.

Creating large energy centres will allow for substantial savings on infrastructure. As part of the power is consumed on-site, large expensive connections to the power grid can be replaced with smaller cables combined with gas pipes. The price of transporting energy through pipes is approximately 10% compared to cables.

The ability to transform the energy from power to hydrogen, will also create the opportunity to store green power, something that has been seen as crucial for the success of the green transition. Since the electrolysis process generates significant heat, there will be opportunities for the supply of heat for district heating or to accelerate the gasification in biogas plant.

Eurowind Energy is set to launch five large land-based energy centres in Denmark, which are to be completed over the coming years. The five energy centres will have a total capacity of approximately 2.5 GW. Eurowind Energy has secured agreements with the landowners for the use of the land on all five projects. Eurowind Energy is in positive dialogues with the municipalities and for two of the centres, the public planning process is already ongoing.

The concept of large energy centres will be exported to the Group’s other markets with very limited modifications to reflect local conditions.

What is the future of green energy?

Society has become accustomed to the energy sector as a series of silos – e.g. the gas, heating and electricity sectors – for many years the focus has been on creating savings within each silo. However, a rethink of how energy is produced, stored and used across the silos is needed. If successful, we can store excess energy from one type of energy in another sector before it is used in a third, entailing energy is never wasted. For example, we can utilise the CO2 from existing biogas and CHP plants in Power-to-X production. And the excess heat from hydrogen production made with electrolysis can go into district heating systems.

If society really is to benefit from new green technologies, it must start thinking about the energy system in a circular way.