Germany Deals with Further Grid Connection Delays

Germany is dealing with more delays in connecting planned offshore wind farms to the grid.

That is, RWE Innogy has been notified by TenneT TSO GmbH that there will be much more than 12 months of delay in connecting the Nordsee Ost wind farm, the Dow Jones Newswires reported a confirmation from a RWE’s spokesman.

Earlier, RWE had warned about substantial cost overruns due to the delays. According to Tennet, the reasons for these setbacks are prolonged approval procedures and difficulties which the subcontractors are coping with.

Recently, TenneT gave a statement that there will be further delays in connecting offshore wind farms because of continual difficulties in building offshore converter platforms and that they are now scheduled for completion in 2014.

Nevertheless, interruption in connecting the offshore wind farms to the electricity network is a big obstacle on the path towards 2020 government’s target of installing 10GW of offshore wind power.

The 295MW Nordsee Ost wind farm was initially expected to begin with electricity production in 2013.

[mappress]

Offshore WIND staff, June 25, 2012; Image:  RWE