Germans Pay for Connection of Unbuilt Offshore Wind Farms

Offshore wind farms that are not even built yet, but their link to the national electricity grid is being developed, are putting more expenses on German customers.

Lex Hartman, a member of the TenneT TSO GmbH management board, told Bloomberg that German customers are paying millions of euros for the power transmission system of the unbuilt North Sea offshore wind farms. For connection of 1,000 MW the cost climbs over EUR 1 billion.

Namely, building the link prior to wind farms is demanded by the rules, according to which a grid operator is required to provide a connection adequate for the full size of the project after a developer only invests EUR 10 million in it.

“The grid operator has to build a connection, but developers are not obliged to build afterwards,” Mr. Hartman explains.

“It doesn’t work,” he concludes. “At worst we have either platforms without windmills or windmills without platforms and if we have both we don’t have a grid to transport.”

[mappress]

Offshore WIND staff, October 12, 2012; Image: TenneT