Artificial island will fully exploit renewable energy

Belgium is strongly focused on offshore wind, with an innovative project for creation of the world’s first artificial energy island. The futuristic Princess Elisabeth Island will sit in the North Sea approximately 45 km off the Belgian coastline. It will be circular, with a diameter of 280 metres and a surface area of six hectares, the equivalent of 12 football pitches. What is its purpose? The artificial island will host high-voltage infrastructure to transfer the approx. 3.5 GW of power generated by wind turbines installed on and offshore. There are also plans for it to become an interconnection hub for offshore wind farms in the UK (Nautilus) and Denmark (TritonLink).

This will enable access and connection to the grid of increasing amounts of renewable energy, reducing the use of fossil fuels and protecting the environment. This is a genuine energy revolution that will lead to a more sustainable and cleaner future. ELIA, the Belgian national grid operatorheading the project, received environmental authorisation for the island in October 2023.

To produce energy in an alternative and more sustainable way than burning fossil fuels, the right direction now appears to be artificial energy islands. But what exactly are they and what are the benefits? These new energy islands can be described as self-sufficient systems for the production and distribution of electricity, created offshore and optimising use of renewable energy. Wind power is particularly well suited to this type of infrastructure, as turbines can harness the strong and more consistent winds blowing offshore.

These islands are able to store the energy generated by wind-power systems located offshore and transport it through submarine cables, converting it into high-voltage electricity and sending it to the mainland, minimising losses. By doing so, electricity from an area with enormous wind-power potential can be easily transported to areas where it is most needed. Princess Elizabeth Island will serve as a hub for all of the cables from a second offshore-wind location, the Princess Elizabeth Zone, along with those from all other future wind infrastructure. Basically, the North Sea is set to become the centre of European renewable electricity.

The artificial island will be developed in various stages. The first involves creating the concrete foundations, the “caissons” that will be towed offshore and then filled with sand. Next, the island will be assembled on these rectangular “pillars”. There will be 23 in total, each approximately 58 m long, 28 m wide and 28 m high and specially designed for the installation of high-voltage infrastructure. The works will last approximately two approximately two years, from March 2024 to August 2026. The second phase of the project will then begin, with commissioning and execution of works for high-voltage electricity infrastructure between 2026 and 2030.

Three hundred kilometres of AC cables and 60 km of DC cables will be installed to connect all of the future offshore plants to the Belgian high-voltage grid. ELIA aims to reach full connection capacity by 2030. The project also includes a small port and heliport for maintenance teams to carry out inspections on the island. All of this will be done with complete respect for the marine environment.

This is an unprecedented engineering challenge for a highly ambitious project that will provide benefits for Belgium and Europe as a whole, also in terms of energy security and sustainability. The Belgian government has allocated more than 100 million euros of funding in the context of the Post-Covid Recovery Plan. The Belgian plan falls within the scope of the EU initiative to transform its electricity system, relying primarily on renewables. The target is to install approximately 300 GW of offshore wind systems by 2050.