WindEurope spotlights grids as new top bottleneck for wind

Grid access has now replaced permitting as a new number one bottleneck to the expansion of wind and other renewables, WindEurope said on Friday as it released a report analysing grid access challenges in Europe.

At the moment, over 500 GW of potential wind energy capacity in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, Romania, Ireland, Croatia and the UK are waiting for their application for a grid connection assessment to be processed. Italy and the UK each have more than 100 GW of projects in the queues, although not all of them will be built.

“The system is clogged up - and holding back hundreds of gigawatts of wind farms. This means less energy security and higher power prices,” said WindEurope CEO Giles Dickson.

“Some reforms will take time, such as more anticipatory planning. But some things can be improved immediately, notably better management of grid connection queues,” he added.

According to the organisation, countries should apply the principle of overriding public interest to the permitting of grid infrastructure to accelerate the grid expansion.

Giles Dickson said this has been a success for new wind farms, enabling Germany and others that apply overriding public interest to quickly ramp up their permitting volumes.

In addition, grid permitting authorities should move away from the “first come, first served” principle in awarding grid access to filtering and prioritisation criteria, so that the requests for grid connection can be managed more effectively.

The organisation noted that many countries are already using filtering criteria, and some are experimenting with prioritisation criteria.

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