The 6-hectare Princess Elisabeth artificial energy island will use both direct and alternating current, expected to be completed in 2026.
Princess Elisabeth Island is part of the larger Princess Elisabeth Area, an offshore renewable energy production area in the North Sea, Interesting Engineering reported on April 26. This facility is located 45 km from the Belgian coast, with part of the construction funding coming from the European Union. This will be a marine power grid, providing high voltage electricity in the form of direct current (HVDC) and alternating current (HVAC). The high voltage infrastructure on the island will incorporate renewable energy sources to distribute electricity to the Princess Elisabeth Area. The island also serves as a prototype for future network integration, handling energy exchange needs between countries and connecting to many new wind farms in the North Sea.
To create an artificial energy island, engineers used an estimated 2.3 million m3 of sand. From September 2023, a team of 300 workers works every day on the construction site in Flushing, the Netherlands. They were busy building waterproof diving tanks. Each diving tank takes 3 months to complete and is an important part of building Princess Elisabeth Island, the world’s first artificial energy island.
The diving tank will form the outer wall of the island. Made from concrete, each diving tank is 57 m long and nearly 30 m wide. The production process is divided into 5 stages, each stage takes 20 days to complete. The most impressive of these is the sliding formwork stage, which creates a diving barrel wall. Every hour the wall of the diving tank grows nearly 10 cm higher and lasts for 10 consecutive days.
Once ready, the diving tank weighs 22,000 tons. A semi-submersible vessel will transport it to port to be placed underwater for temporary storage. Later this summer, the diving tank will be shipped to its installation site in the North Sea. There, construction of the energy island will be completed in 2026, after which workers can begin installing electrical equipment.
Princess Elisabeth Island will be operational in 2030. As countries seek to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels, renewable energy solutions such as wind power and solar power are increasingly popular. European countries bordering the North Sea are building large wind farms in cold waters to maximize power capacity from strong winds. However, they need supporting infrastructure to transmit the renewable energy produced to homes as capacity increases. That is also the reason why Belgium built an artificial energy island near the wind farm.