Dong Buys Three German Offshore Projects

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Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland) -- Danish energy giant, Dong Energy A/S (Fredericia, Denmark), has accelerated its drive into the growing German offshore windfarm sector with the purchase of three projects.

In a deal worth a total of €157 million ($193.6 million), Dong has acquired the Gode Wind I, II, and III offshore projects from PNE Wind AG (Cuxhaven, Germany). Located in the German North Sea approximately 30 kilometres (km) north-west of the island of Norderney, they have a combined generating capacity of up almost 700 megawatts (MW). Dong has made an upfront payment of €57 million for the projects, and depending a final investment decision on the projects, will pay a deferred sum of up to €100 million.

The German government has already granted permission for the construction for Gode Wind I and II, although Dong wants to apply to change their permissions to expand the capacity of each windfarm. Both windfarms have already received grid connection confirmation from grid operator, TenneT, for a total of 584 MW. Gode Wind I is rated at 332 MW while Gode Wind II will generate up to 252 MW. A planning application for Gode Wind III, with a generating capacity of 105 MW, has been submitted and Dong expects that permission will be granted sometime in 2013.

Dong believes the combined capacity of all three could be pushed to 900 MW.

"Offshore wind is a central part of Dong Energy's overall strategy and the acquisition of the three Gode Wind projects strengthens our already ambitious development pipeline in German waters," said Carsten Krogsgaard Thomsen, acting CEO of Dong Energy. "The Gode Wind projects in Germany are very interesting for us as we, if positive investment decision is taken, expect that construction of parts of the projects could begin by 2015 due to the available grid connection confirmations. This way, the projects have a good fit with Dong Energy's project pipeline, ensuring that our installation sequence of building large-scale projects successively could work smoothly and help bring down the cost of energy from offshore wind power."

PNE wind CEO, Martin Billhardt, added: "This deal marks the most important business transaction in PNE WIND AG's history. The deal solidifies our financial base and the funds provide resources for further project development and a perspective to pay dividends to our shareholders.

In March this year, turbine make REpower Systems SE (Hamburg, Germany) replaced Vestas Wind Systems A/S (ETR:VWS) (Randers, Denmark), as the preferred turbine supplier for the contract at Gode Wind I. The company won the contract to deliver 54 of its model 6M offshore turbines, rated at 6 MW each, to the project. For additional information related March 29, 2012, article - REpower Wins Gode Wind I Turbine Contract.

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