Sunny prospects with solar energy

Since 2008, one area of focus for our electricity generation activities has been on the development of solar parks. We inaugurated our first large solar park in 2010 in Leibertingen, a municipality located in the district of Sigmaringen, Baden-Württemberg. Since then, we have been continuously expanding capacity and operating the parks. We look carefully at potentially suitable sites. These include former agricultural land or industrial areas, so-called conversion sites.

Between 2015 and 2019, we participated in various tender processes and were awarded a total of 14 contracts for 64 megawatts. Even back then, this made us one of the most successful companies and the leading energy supplier among those submitting tenders for solar energy.

At the end of 2020, we connected Weesow-Willmersdorf solar park to the grid. It is situated to the north of the town of Werneuchen, in the district of Barnim, Brandenburg. With an output of around 187 megawatts, it is currently Germany’s largest solar park (as of December 2023). Following a construction period lasting almost a year, there are now 465,000 solar modules on 164 hectares. What’s more, Weesow-Willmersdorf is the first large-scale PV project in Germany to be realized without state subsidies.

The stated number of households supplied is based on the average annual electricity consumption of around 2,900 kWh for a three-person household.

In January 2021, construction work began on Gottesgabe and Alttrebbin solar parks in Brandenburg. Both large-scale projects were connected to the grid at the beginning of 2022 and generate enough electricity on an area the size of 380 soccer pitches to supply the equivalent of around 90,000 households. Their combined installed output is 300 megawatts. These were the first two parks where EnBW used bifacial modules, which also capture sunlight on the back and therefore achieve a higher solar yield. Together with Weesow-Willmersdorf solar park, the three parks form a solar cluster with an output of around 500 megawatts, reducing carbon emissions by approximately 325,000 metric tons.

Even though we already had battery storage systems in use across several locations, on the occasion of installing the storage system for the newly built park in Bruchsal, north of Karlsruhe, we announced that we would become the first German energy company to begin incorporating battery storage systems into our solar park plans in principle. There are only likely to be exceptions in cases where local conditions do not permit this. The storage systems we operate ease the load on the electricity grid by capturing the energy generated when a solar park’s feed-in capacity into the regional distribution grid is limited. The battery storage system at Bruchsal solar park has a capacity of 3.5 megawatt-hours – the equivalent to around 100 electric cars.

At the end of 2024, our solar portfolio boasted an output of 1.2 gigawatts. This represents an important step toward our goal of generating at least half of our energy from renewable sources by 2025 – and achieving climate neutrality across the Group by 2035.

In the future, however, we will not only be combining solar parks with battery storage systems, but also building wind farms and PV power plants on the same site. We expect to connect the first park of this type to the grid in mid-2025, in Gundelsheim in the district of Heilbronn, Baden-Württemberg. The 64-hectare site is suitable for the construction of both photovoltaic power plants and two wind turbines. This combination in particular makes optimal use of the site because the generation methods complement each other – when the sun is shining, it is usually less windy. If it is cloudy, there is generally more wind. This makes it easier to balance out generation fluctuations.

From public consultations to websites, local authorities benefit most from our solar parks when we involve their citizens in the land-use planning process at an early stage. One exemplary project in this regard is Langenenslingen-Wilflingen solar park in Baden-Württemberg. The 80-megawatt park is scheduled to come on stream in spring 2025 and will offer the best possible protection for the environment with the help of newly planted shrubs, hedges and trees and a range of conservation measures. Görlsdorf solar park in Brandenburg, which is set to be commissioned in the fourth quarter of 2025, is another good example of how citizen participation works. It also shows how parks can serve as grazing areas for sheep and as new habitats for native plant and animal species.