Transmission System Operators in the Baltic Sea Region Publish a Roadmap to Connect Countries with an Efficient and Sustainable Offshore Grid

Transmission system operators in the EU countries of the Baltic Sea region are developing a common roadmap to connect countries with an efficient and sustainable offshore grid. The Baltic Sea is estimated to have the potential for up to 93 gigawatts of offshore wind power. Safety and protection play a vital role in the planning of maritime infrastructure. 

The Transmission System Operators (TSOs) of eight countries bordering the Baltic Sea have jointly published an expert-paper on increased cross-border cooperation in the field of offshore wind energy and the associated electricity transmission grid infrastructure. The strategic guidance was presented at the Baltic Energy Market Interconnection Plan (BEMIP) ministerial meeting held in Warsaw on 12 May.  

The cooperation between the transmission system operators of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Sweden aims to develop a common roadmap to increase offshore wind power in the Baltic Sea and bring it to market as efficiently as possible. In the collaboration, called the "Baltic Offshore Grid Initiative" (BOGI), questions of safety and protection of the maritime infrastructure play a vital role in this paper. Given the increasing number of expected offshore wind projects, the Baltic Sea region could become more attractive for industrial investments into manufacturing sites and has the potential to generate a lot of jobs across the value chain.  

The offshore energy production potential of the Baltic Sea is approximately 93 GW, with the current capacity being less than 5 GW. The purpose of the expert paper is to promote the utilization of this potential, including the still lacking regulatory and economic conditions, for the benefit of Europe. 

The BOGI project originated from the Vilnius Declaration signed by the Baltic Sea countries in 2024, which included a clear mandate for transmission system operators to strengthen regional cooperation. At that time, the Baltic Sea countries had set a target of 26.7 gigawatts of offshore wind power capacity by 2030 and nearly 45 gigawatts by 2040. In the newly published expert paper, transmission system operators analyze the possibilities for several electrical connections between the EU countries in the region and illustrate options in the Baltic Sea network map. These options include traditional direct cross-border connections, hybrid connections linking offshore wind farms between two or more countries, and cross-border radial connections where wind farms located in the territorial waters of one country are connected to the electricity grid of another country. 

In the expert paper, transmission system operators propose several measures, such as closer coordination of regional planning between different countries and transmission system operators. The expert paper examines, among other things, the impacts and performance of offshore wind farms, possibilities for alleviating supply chain bottlenecks through standardization and coordinated scheduling, and issues related to project cost financing. 

The eight transmission system operators in the Baltic Sea region are 50Hertz (Germany), AST (Latvia), Elering (Estonia), Energinet (Denmark), Fingrid (Finland), Litgrid (Lithuania), PSE (Poland), and Svenska kraftnät (Sweden). 


More information
Viljami Yli-Hemminki, Fingrid Oyj, tel. +358 30 395 4488
firstname.lastname@fingrid.fi