In fact one of the most important niches to emerge does not advocate any particular technology innovation but rather a particular grid topology. This is the so-called “Design Grid” concept,which also originates from Belgium. his proposes linking only North Sea electricity trading cables into a massive integrated trading platform. Notably, to reduce costs, these would not be meshed with offshore wind-farms. Instead, offshore wind would be left to develop by itself, and would not resolve its intermittency problem via systematic meshing at sea, although it would benefit indirectly by the greater opportunities for balancing and exporting of electricity from higher levels of interconnection. Although superficially similar to NSCOGI, the Design Grid niche is actually a rival to NSCOGI because it separates out the ambition to mesh with offshore wind-farms at sea.