Offshore Wind Farms Large-Scale Integration in Turkey

project summary

Turkey is one of the fastest-growing energy markets in the world, with an annual 8% increase in energy demand. By the end of 2018, the total installed capacity and electricity production of Turkey was 88.5 GW and 300.7 TWh, respectively. Nowadays, more than 70% of all electricity production is supplied by fossil resources, and almost 30% of all electricity production comes from renewables, mainly hydro, while wind constitutes only 6.6 % of the total electricity mix. The wind and solar energy rate in total consumption are planned to be increased by at least 30% in the coming five years according to the 2023 vision plan of Turkey. However, due to the intermittent nature of wind energy, large-scale wind power integration may pose some serious challenges to Turkey’s power system. Therefore, planning analysis and designing efforts are required to ensure the smooth, secure and reliable operation of Turkey’s power system and electricity markets considering large-scale wind power integration.WindFlag then aims at solving relevant challenges of large scale offshore wind power plants (OWPP) deployment and integration into the Turkish grid, such as extreme weak-grid situations, islanding conditions, and large harmonics and resonances. The project will create new tools, models and control architectures taking MG control technologies as an inspiration, thus converting OWPP in autonomous controllable blocks to be integrated into the grid. The findings and the outcomes of WindFlag will provide worthwhile information for the offshore wind energy road map of Turkey. It will thus benefit all decision makers and stakeholders including energy authorities, the transmission grid operator, market players, private sector, and potential investors.