Dong Building Gode I & II German Windfarms

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Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland) -Denmark's largest utility, DONG Energy A/S (Fredericia, Denmark) continues its major drive into offshore wind by confirming plans to build two German windfarms with a combined generating capacity of 582-megawatts (MW).

The company will forge ahead with the Gode Wind 1 (330 MW) and 2 (252 MW) windfarms located in the German part of the North Sea. They will use of 97 turbines rated at 6 MW each from Siemens Wind Power (Erlangen, Germany) and be capable of providing enough power for approximately 600,000 German households.

The windfarms, which will cost €2.2 billion ($3 billion) to build, have already secured unconditional grid connection confirmation from the transmission system operator (TSO), TenneT TSO BV (Arnhem, Netherlands).

"The investment in the 582 MW Gode Wind projects will be our biggest ever and will cement our leadership position in offshore wind," claimed Executive Vice President, Samuel Leupold, who is responsible for DONG Energy's wind power activities. "Being constructed in an area with good wind and soil conditions, relatively close to shore and in a cluster where we can harvest synergies from other offshore wind projects, the Gode Wind projects provide a sound business case for DONG Energy."

DONG has agreed a deal which will see it receive a fixed price per kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity produced for the first 10 years of operation, after which it will receive the market price.

"We remain hopeful that the new German government will soon announce a viable support framework for the period post-2017," Leupold continued. For an industry with project lifecycles of 30 years it is critically important to obtain visibility beyond 2017 in order to continue to innovate and mature the technology, bring down production costs, and make a substantial contribution to the German Energiewende. Longer-term visibility is also a prerequisite for our ability to continue to attract significant private capital from pension funds and asset managers who are ready to invest in the modernisation of the German energy system."

It is an uncertain time in the German renewable energy sector. The formation of a new coalition government will see less offshore wind projects green lit. Potential coalition partners have committed to cutting the feed-in tariffs (FITs) available to renewable energy projects. Solar photovoltaic power will escape the cuts, but not wind energy. The coalition will seek to reform the Renewable Energy Act (EEG), which has helped fuel Germany's renewable energy boom in recent years. Reports suggest that the country's goal of installing 10,000 MW of offshore wind energy will be cut to 6,500 MW under the new government.

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