German Offshore Wind Celebrates an Incredible Start

Berlin (gtai) The list of accomplishments made in Germany’s offshore wind market this year is already impressive. February saw the offshore windpark Borkum Riffgrund 1 feed electricity into the grid for the first time. Once complete, the 312 MW project will consist of 78 turbines. February also saw the first turbines installed at the 288 MW Amrumbank West site and the start of operations at Europe’s first purely communal offshore windpark, Trianel Windpark Borkum, where forty 5 MW turbines are being brought online successively. The first 24 turbines at the Butendiek offshore windpark have started delivering power while engineers working on EnBW Baltic 2 celebrated reaching the half-way mark when the fortieth of 80 turbines was completed in January.

Esther Frey, wind energy market expert at Germany Trade & Invest: “The German offshore wind market is really taking off. We expect 3 GW of offshore capacity to be feeding in to the grid by the end of 2015 – even more will be installed awaiting connection. This continues the positive trend from last year when more than 5 GW of new on- and offshore capacity started delivering clean power to the grid.”

Historically strong in the onshore sector, Germany is now making major advances in offshore wind. More than 90 percent of offshore generation capacity is installed off the coastlines of northern Europe, with the North and Baltic Seas surrounding Germany making a large contribution. Significant new opportunities will present themselves to international offshore wind energy players in the years ahead.

Germany Trade & Invest will be holding a workshop on March 11 at EWEA Offshore 2015 in Copenhagen entitled “Setting up business in Germany - offshore market outlook, networks & public support”.