December 1, 2011

Top Plant: EnBW Baltic 1, Darss-Zingst Peninsula, Mecklenburg Province, Germany

By Angela Neville, JD

Owner/operator: EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG/EnBW Renewables GmbH

Germany’s first commercial offshore wind farm—the 48.3-MW EnBW Baltic 1—consists of 21 Siemens wind turbines, each with a capacity of 2.3 MW and a rotor diameter of 93 meters. Siemens constructed the facility in an area covering about 7 square kilometers in the Baltic Sea.

Courtesy: Siemens

Providing a reliable power supply from offshore wind turbines can be daunting because, typically, winds at sea are much stronger than onshore winds. Consequently, the logistics of installing ocean wind energy facilities and connecting them to the grid are much more challenging than carrying out similar operations on land. Despite such hurdles, Siemens recently completed successful installation of EnBW Baltic 1, an offshore wind farm located in the Baltic Sea approximately 16 kilometers (km or 9.94 miles) north of the Darss-Zingst peninsula.

The project, owned by EnBW Energie Baden Württemberg (EnBW), the third-largest energy company in Germany, was officially put into operation in May 2011. (A 60-MW offshore “pilot” project went into operation in late 2009. See our Feb. 2010 Global Monitor for coverage.) The wind farm’s electricity is transformed at the project’s transformer platform from 33 kV to 150 kV; the transformer is connected to the land grid by the company 50Hertz Offshore GmbH. With a projected output of approximately 185 GWh a year, the project will supply more than 50,000 German households with clean energy.

“This is an important milestone in the use of German offshore wind power. Onshore, Germany was a pioneer in wind power—and now it’s important to rapidly tap the huge offshore potential,” said René Umlauft, CEO of the Renewable Energy Division at Siemens, in May. He projected that by 2030, wind farms with total capacity between 20,000 MW and 25,000 MW will be operating off Germany’s coasts and delivering electricity to German customers.

He added, “We’ll soon be introducing a new wind turbine with a capacity of six megawatts.” The new turbine will be gearless and well-suited for offshore wind farms.

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