Willi Balz Acquires Austerngrund Wind Farm in North Sea Through his Company Windreich AG (Germany)

Willi Balz has acquired a further 400-megawatt wind farm in the German North Sea in the shape of the “Austerngrund“ project, through his company Windreich AG. The project has progressed well down the approval process. Windreich AG has thus further strengthened its market leadership in offshore wind power.

“Particularly thanks to its “unobstructable” location right on the western perimeter of all future North Sea wind farms, meaning that no other developments could create a wind shadow, Austerngrund will remain for all time the German North Sea project with the highest winds,” reported Dipl.-Wirt.-Ing. (FH) Willi Balz, Chairman of the Board and sole shareholder of Windreich AG.

The North Sea wind farm “Austerngrund” will be erected in 2014 on an area covering almost 60 square kilometres and located 50 kilometres north of Borkum. 80 5-MW wind turbines will achieve a total annual output of 400 megawatts. This will produce some 1,700 million kilowatt hours of available electricity a year, enough to supply around one million people with clean energy. In terms of the goal of providing CO2-free mobility, the project can compensate for the CO2 emissions of 450,000 cars with combustion engine covering an average of 10,000 kilometres annually, or even “fill up” three million four-seater electric vehicles. The output of a single 5 MW wind turbine is for example also sufficient to power the latest generation of ICE train at top speed.

“Now that we have acquired this very promising offshore project, we will shortly be starting negotiations with representatives of the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) to make preparations for having the wind farm operational by 2015. “We have been working successfully in the wind energy business for more than ten years and the “Austerngrund” project marks one more step towards generating clean offshore energy from a particularly reliable source,” said Dipl.-Ing. Heiko Roß, Technical Director of Windreich AG.

From the German government’s point of view, the generation of electricity from renewable energies will be one of the largest growth industries in the next few decades. The government’s energy concept provides for the share of electricity generated from renewable energies to reach 80 percent of the total gross electricity demand by the year 2050. The lion’s share will be generated offshore.

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Source: Windreich AG, July 12, 2011;