Final Remarks
Nowadays, wind energy can be categorized as a mature technology, but the large- scale expansion is limited by factors such as the land use and the visual impact of facilities on land. The development of the offshore wind energy industry can overcome the above-mentioned limitations. One of the greatest challenges is the transmission of large amounts of energy over long distances.
For interconnecting the OWFs there are two alternatives: HVAC and HVDC. Today, HVAC is chosen in most of the projects located at a relatively short distance to the shore since HVAC cables have a high capacitance per length, which require excessive reactive power and this reduces the total current delivery capability.
For offshore applications, HVDC becomes a more attractive solution in terms of investment and operating costs as the distance from the shore increases. There are two HVDC technologies: LCC-based HVDC and VSC-based HVDC. Most studies on the grid integration of OWFs have been focused on VSC. However, LCC has the lowest power losses and the lowest cost among the converter for HVDC. This chapter has presented several concepts that used LCC and other types of devices that can be used for the grid integration of OWFs.