EnBW moves into the top league of project developers for wind power plants in Germany
Karlsruhe. The intensive work carried out by EnBW in the development of new wind power projects will bear significant fruit for the first time in 2017. By the end of 2016, EnBW had approved wind farm projects with a total capacity of around 200 Megawatts on its books. Following the successful conclusion of the approval processes, 16 wind farms with a total of 64 wind turbines are now entering the concrete implementation phase and will be successively placed into operation during the course of the year.
The majority of the projects approved in 2016 – 11 wind farms with a total capacity of around 145 Megawatts – are located in Baden-Württemberg, while the remaining 5 wind farms are spread across the German states of Rhineland-Palatinate, Hesse, Lower Saxony and Saarland. The largest individual project is the Langenburg wind farm in the Schwäbisch-Hall district, which is the third largest wind farm in Baden-Württemberg with 12 wind turbines and a capacity of 40 Megawatts.
Measured by the volume of approved projects in 2016 and hence the already secured implementation pipeline for 2017, EnBW has thus become one of the leading project developers for wind energy in Germany for the first time. The expansion of the company’s own project development activities on an industrial scale has been one of the central pillars of the repositioning of EnBW since 2013 in order to achieve the ambitious growth targets for onshore wind energy. EnBW is now active across Germany: Around 90 employees are working closely together on new wind projects for EnBW at the project development offices in Hamburg, Berlin, Trier and Erfurt – and thus always providing the projects with a regional base. The market position achieved in 2016 represents a good starting point for the upcoming auctions in 2017. The goal is to continue the growth achieved in 2016 over subsequent years. In this context, EnBW will also continue to further expand its cooperation network with other project developers.
“The expansion of onshore wind power is an important pillar of our corporate strategy. We plan to place wind power plants with a total capacity of more than 1,000 Megawatts into operation in this area by 2020 and, beyond the project development sector, to also achieve further growth in the areas of maintenance and service provision. Where we are today developing and constructing wind farms, other colleagues will tomorrow take over their operation, maintenance and servicing because we also aim to cover these value-added stages at both our own wind farms and also those developed by third parties”, according to Dirk Güsewell, Head of Generation/Portfolio Development, who is responsible for the expansion of renewable energies at EnBW.
EnBW plans to expand renewable energies to make them one of the main pillars of the company and its Group operating result by 2020. In this context, the expansion of onshore and offshore wind power plays a central role. In addition, EnBW became a significant player in the fast growing area dealing with the servicing and maintenance of wind power plants with the acquisition of the manufacturer-independent service provider Connected Wind Services A/S (CWS) last year. CWS enables EnBW to open up new business fields with considerable growth potential and to further expand its position as a strong player in the Renewable Energies segment.