Germany’s offshore wind parks, being built to replace most of the nuclear reactors closing in the next decade, are headed to miss construction targets because of delays in connecting turbines to the power grid.
EON AG and RWE AG, the country’s biggest utilities, have threatened to halt investment in wind projects unless obstacles are removed, which RWE blames mainly on slow permitting and problems with acquiring cables and transformer stations.
The difficulties undermine the government’s aim to have 10 gigawatts of sea-based turbines, or the equivalent of about nine atomic plants, installed by the end of this decade, according to the wind industry’s main lobby group. About 0.2 gigawatts were in place at the end of last year.
“We won’t reach 10 gigawatts by 2020, and everyone in the industry knows that,” Hermann Albers, the head of the BWE wind- energy lobby, said in an interview in Berlin. Grid operators, which are responsible for the connections, and their suppliers have underestimated the challenges of connecting projects that can cost upward of 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion), he said.
The sluggish start to Germany’s offshore wind expansion is a setback for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s plan to transition to a nuclear-free energy mix based on 80 percent renewable sources by 2050. It signals greater reliance on other energy sources and delays for wind-project suppliers including Siemens AG, Europe’s biggest engineering company, and ABB Ltd. of Switzerland, the largest maker of power-distribution equipment.
‘Not in Danger’
The German government says the delays won’t affect its goal of shutting all nuclear reactors by 2022 and raise the share of renewables to 35 percent of the total installed capacity from about 20 percent last year.
“The energy overhaul is not in danger,” as installations of land-based turbines and solar panels exceed expectations and “overcompensate” for the offshore wind delays, Juergen Maass, a spokesman for the German Environment Ministry, said by phone.
The government’s longer-term target of 25 gigawatts of offshore wind generators by 2030 “will be met, just the curve to get there may look different,” he said.
