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Cerulean Winds has announced plans to build an offshore integrated green power and transmission system that North Sea oil & gas platforms can plug into to access clean power.

The plans were revealed after green infrastructure developer Cerulean and partner Frontier Power International were awarded three lease options for the Central North Sea in the Innovation and Targeted Oil & Gas (INTOG) leasing round.

The North Sea Renewables Grid project will be powered by floating offshore wind developed across three 333km2 sites.

According to Cerulean, the location in the Central North Sea will enable a basin-wide offshore transmission system to be built which oil and gas platforms can access, allowing them to replace gas and diesel generation with greener alternatives.

Humza Malik, the founding partner of Frontier Power, explained that each wind farm is located within 100km of the others and will be connected together to form an ‘offshore ring main around the Central North Sea’.

Malik added that High Voltage Alternating Current (HVAC) transmission will maximise generation up time by providing availability and redundancy. “The scale allows for offtake to other parts of the North Sea through a new High Voltage Direct Current (HDVC) network. For the oil and gas companies, this diversity of offtake provides robustness to the scheme and added flexibility. For Scotland, the HVDC transmission not only provides clean energy to the National Grid, but provides export of power directly to continental Europe,” added Malik.

The £20 billion ($25.3 billion) project will be delivered with project partners including NOV, Siemens Gamesa, Siemens Energy, DEME and Worley.

The project, according to Dan Jackson, founding director of Cerulean Winds, will aid the oil and gas sector in meeting the North Sea Transition Deal emissions reduction targets, as well as boost the UK’s energy security and scale up floating wind.

Jackson added: “We are targeting a build out before ScotWind developments, allowing the supply chain to respond, creating crucial partnering opportunities for the ports and getting the market ready to deliver floating wind at scale. It will make a material impact on Scotland’s emissions, removing millions of tonnes of CO2 a year to support a just transition. Basin-wide scale gives greater flexibility, lower pricing and supply robustness. Work with end users has begun in earnest so that we can aim for first power availability in 2028.”

Phase 1 of the NSRG will focus on oil and gas operators to support their brownfield modifications with future phases exporting green power to the grids in the southern UK and Europe.