Milestone for Germany’s first subsidy-free offshore wind farm: EnBW selects 15-megawatt turbines from Vestas

Karlsruhe/Hamburg. EnBW plans to build its He Dreiht offshore wind farm with the latest generation of wind turbines from Vestas with 15 megawatts per turbine. EnBW and Vestas will finalise the contractual agreements in the coming months and expect to sign by the year-end.

“Ten years ago, offshore wind energy in Germany was still in its infancy. Back then, we built Baltic 1, which was Germany’s first commercial offshore wind farm,” recounts Dr. Georg Stamatelopoulos, COO Generation at EnBW. “Since then, turbine performance has improved more than six-fold in the space of a decade. We are ready to be writing the next chapter in the history of German offshore wind power with He Dreiht,” Stamatelopoulos added.

EnBW secured the project in Germany’s first offshore tender in 2017. One thing that makes the 900-megawatt wind farm special is that it will operate without subsidies. “Offshore wind power is not only technically challenging. We have to go into the auctions with wind turbines that are not yet on the market at the time of the planning stage. There is no crystal ball here: the only answer is sound technical forecasting and knowledge of the market. And we made the right choices as project developers, as the outcome shows. We are going to use the most advanced and cost-efficient turbine technology, which means we can install He Dreiht without any subsidies,” Stamatelopoulos says.

EnBW He Dreiht will be located in the North Sea, 90 kilometres northwest of Borkum and about 110 kilometres west of Heligoland. It is among the biggest planned offshore wind power projects in Europe and is scheduled to go into operation in 2025. The final investment decision is planned for 2023.