German offshore wind market off to a strong 2015

Germany Trade & Invest has announced an impressive list of accomplishments in the country’s offshore wind market this year, with installations in the North and Baltic Seas making a significant contribution.

The EnBW Baltic 2 project completed installation of half of its 80 turbines in January. Covering ​​27 km² in the Baltic Sea, the wind farm is four times as large as its predecessor, EnBW Baltic 1, and can produce six times as much power.

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 that will produce green electricity for around 320,000 German households every year. The first of 80 turbines were meanwhile installed at the 288 MW Amrumbank West site, which will be completed in autumn this year.

Operations have begun at Europe’s first purely communal offshore windpark, Trianel Windpark Borkum, where 40 wind turbines with a 200 MW output have been brought online successively. The second stage of the project, featuring a further 40 turbines, has been planned and approved.

Finally, the first 24 turbines at the Butendiek offshore windpark have started delivering power. The farm will eventually comprise 80 turbines, with a total capacity of 288 MW, and provide 360,000 households with renewable energy.

“The German offshore wind market is really taking off,” said Esther Frey, a wind energy market expert at Germany Trade & Invest. “We expect 3 GW of offshore capacity to be feeding into 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.”

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