Quantifying Supply-Side Mitigation Strategies for Offshore Wind Energy Droughts on a Global Scale

Offshore wind energy offers substantial potential. However, its inherent intermittency leads to the frequent occurrence of offshore wind energy droughts, which pose challenges to electricity system stability. Mitigation measures aim to reduce the number, duration, or impacts of such droughts. Among the different mitigation approaches, supply-side strategies act directly on wind power generation at the wind farm level. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of supply-side mitigation strategies remains poorly understood. This study addresses these gaps by systematically quantifying the potential of three supply-side mitigation strategies: (i) spatial diversification of wind farm locations, (ii) advances in wind turbine technology, and (iii) reductions in downtime and wake losses, to minimize the number and duration of wind energy droughts across 40 key exclusive economic zones (EEZ) worldwide. Hourly, daily, and monthly drought characteristics for both moderate and extreme offshore wind energy droughts are analyzed using wind data from the ERA5 reanalysis for the period 1993–2022. The results show that spatial diversification across multiple sub-regions is the most effective strategy for mitigating offshore wind energy droughts at the EEZ scale. In addition, the effectiveness of all mitigation strategies exhibits pronounced scale-dependent limitations, which are most evident at the monthly time scale. Overall, this study provides a robust basis for energy-policy decisions and highlights the importance of supply-side mitigation for enhancing the reliability of future electricity systems.