Transmission of wind energy from the North Sea to German mainland has increased sixfold in 2015, with around 7.4TWh fed into the national grid, compared to 1.25TWh in 2014.
This means offshore wind power produced in the North Sea in 2015 accounts for 9.6% of the total wind power generation in Germany (77TWh). In the previous year, this stood at 2.3% (55.3 TWh).
“In the first half of 2015, we greatly increased our offshore connection capacity from 575 megawatts to 4,300 megawatts,” said Lex Hartman , member of TenneT’s management board.
The highest total offshore wind output was 2,631MW, which was recorded during a strong wind day on 11 November, 2015.
The total yield of North Sea wind power that was fed into the grid was significantly higher in the second half of 2015, due to the increased expansion of generation and transmission capacity. Some 2.3TWh were available in the period from January to June, compared to around 5.1TWh from July to December 2015.
With around 0.8TWh from the Baltic Sea, where TenneT is not in charge of the grid, added to this calculation, the entire German offshore wind power feed in 2015 stands at around 8.2TWh. In 2014, this amounted to only 1.45 TWh.
The average availability of TenneT’s offshore connections in 2015 was 93%, the company reported.