ORSTED WIND POWER A/S

Their core work

Ørsted Wind Power is the offshore wind development and operations arm of Ørsted A/S (formerly DONG Energy), one of the world's largest offshore wind energy companies. Their core business is developing, constructing, and operating large-scale offshore wind farms, primarily in the North Sea, Baltic Sea, and beyond. In H2020, they contributed as an industry partner bringing real-world offshore wind infrastructure knowledge — first to advance meshed HVDC transmission grids that connect wind farms to shore, then to develop offshore hydrogen production integrated directly into wind turbine structures. They represent the rare case of a major energy utility actively shaping the research agenda for the next generation of offshore energy systems.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In their early H2020 engagement (2016-2020), Ørsted focused on the transmission problem: how to move large volumes of offshore wind power to shore efficiently using meshed HVDC networks, covering protection systems, circuit breakers, and grid regulation. By 2021, their focus shifted from moving electrons to converting them — the OYSTER project explores producing hydrogen directly offshore, bypassing long-distance electricity transmission altogether. This reflects a broader industry shift: as HVDC grids remain a long-term infrastructure challenge, offshore green hydrogen is emerging as an alternative pathway to unlock stranded offshore wind potential.

Ørsted is moving toward offshore hydrogen production as a strategic complement to wind power, suggesting future collaboration opportunities lie at the intersection of offshore wind, electrolysis, and green hydrogen supply chains.

How they like to work

Ørsted participates exclusively as a consortium partner — never as coordinator — which reflects their role as an industry anchor providing operational expertise and real-world test conditions rather than leading research administration. Both of their projects were in large consortia (PROMOTION alone had 35+ partners), indicating comfort working within complex, multi-country research structures. They bring industrial credibility to academic and technology-developer-led projects, likely serving as the "deployment reality check" partner that keeps research grounded in what offshore operators actually need.

Ørsted has engaged with 54 unique consortium partners across 12 countries through just two projects, suggesting they entered large, well-networked European consortia rather than building a tight bilateral network. Their collaborative footprint is broad but shallow in H2020 terms, consistent with a commercial operator that selectively joins high-relevance research initiatives.

What sets them apart

Ørsted is not a research institute or an engineering consultancy — they are one of the few organizations in Europe that actually builds and operates offshore wind farms at gigawatt scale, which makes their participation in any consortium a direct link to real deployment conditions and future commercial offtake. For researchers working on offshore energy technologies, having Ørsted as a partner means access to operational assets, North Sea data, and a credible path to industrial validation. For businesses, Ørsted's involvement in a project is a strong signal that the technology has commercial relevance in the near term.

Highlights from their portfolio

• OYSTER
  With EUR 1.13M in EC funding, this is Ørsted's largest H2020 investment and one of the first projects targeting fully integrated offshore hydrogen production, placing Ørsted at the frontier of the emerging offshore green hydrogen value chain.
• PROMOTION
  An early and ambitious attempt to design meshed HVDC offshore grids for the North Sea, a technically complex challenge that remains unresolved at scale — Ørsted's participation brought direct operational context from live offshore wind infrastructure.