Earlier this year, Germany commissioned its first commercially-developed offshore wind farm. Situated about 16 kilometres offshore, Baltic 1 (48.3 MW) is the first of its kind in the Baltic Sea and joins Germany’s only other large offshore wind park, Alpha Ventus, situated in the North Sea. Consisting of 12 5-MW turbines, Alpha Ventus began generating electricity in April 2010, but was initially only launched as a test pilot by the German government.
Finding a replacement for nuclear power
While it has traditionally led in the onshore segment, Germany has been slow to realise its offshore potential, being left behind by its neighbours in the UK. However, this all looks set to change as events in Japan earlier this year forced the German government's hand into abandoning nuclear power and steering toward alternative energy sources.
The large scale and centralised nature of offshore wind is attracting some of Germany’s major energy suppliers and despite limited coastline availability and the need to move into deeper waters for environmental and transport reasons (compared to first two rounds of offshore wind development in the UK, for example), the German government has so far given the green light for around 23 offshore wind farms in the North Sea (total capacity of 5,650 MW), and three in the Baltic Sea (1,040 MW). Developers have also submitted applications for a further 56 arrays in the North Sea and 15 in the Baltic Sea.
Germany’s shift towards offshore wind is beginning to gain momentum, driven by a new package of energy reforms by the German government designed to accelerate the roll out of renewable energy projects which included up to €5 billion in financing from the state-backed KfW infrastructure bank for 10 offshore wind farms, and delaying the planned reduction in subsidies for offshore wind developers from 2015 to 2018.
"We want to expand wind power at sea in the next 20 years, to a capacity of 25 gigawatts," Transport and Construction Minister Peter Ramsauer told reporters after the reforms were announced during the summer. "That is equivalent to the generating capacity of 18 to 20 nuclear power stations."
Ramsauer’s government has also revealed plans to accelerate the installation of new transmission lines connecting wind farms in the North Sea and northern Germany to industrial hubs further south.
Energy investment firm, Blackstone, is just one company that has been attracted by the measures taken to ramp up German offshore wind, announcing at the end of August that it has funding lined up to develop Meerwind, a 288-MW offshore wind farm in the North Sea. If completed, Meerwind will not only be Germany’s biggest offshore wind farm – at least for a while – but also be the country’s first to be developed privately.
Blackstone said German government policy was critical to bringing in the private money for the project. “The long-term, fixed feed-in tariff and a requirement that the local grid operator must construct and pay for the interconnection of the wind park to the onshore grid (20%+ of total project costs) are innovative ways in which the government is incentivising private investment,” the company said.
Spanish renewable energy giant, Iberdrola, also took a step closer to building its first offshore wind farm in Germany in August, after submitting a key part of its planning application. The company is aiming to construct the 400-megawatt (MW) Wikinger wind farm, located approximately 35 kilometres off the northeast coast of Germany, beside the border with Denmark and near the island of Bornholm.
Personnel trained to work offshore a requirement
All these developments bode well for Germany’s workforce. Whenever a new offshore wind farm is being built, two jack-up barges each over 100 metres long and with supporting legs which can be raised and lowered as required, high speed vessels for transporting personnel and small-scale equipment, pilot and guard ships are needed to service the construction site. In total, a crew of 50 is needed to transfer the 200 plus technicians and engineers required to assemble and commission the turbines on a fleet of up to 30 ships.
After commissioning, permanent jobs will also be created to operate and maintain the wind farms. The state of Schleswig-Holstein, for example, is expected to profit when seven planned wind farms with a total of 560 wind turbines are constructed off the west coast of the region. As soon as the rotor blades begin to turn, at least two service ships per wind farm will be on regular duty, checking the generators, fire protection systems and foundations. Helicopters will also be frequently used for transporting staff.
The Bard I wind farm is currently under construction 100 kilometres off the coast of Borkum, while the energy utility RWE plans to lay the foundations for the Nordsee-Ost offshore project northwest of Helgoland before the end of this year. On this deep-sea island alone there are likely to be more than 100 new jobs in service and maintenance of the offshore wind farm.
However, trained and qualified personnel are rare and the subject of skills shortages is already on the agenda of many offshore wind developers in Germany. The international Offshore Business Meetings and Conference (OBMC) in Husum on 7 and 8 November 2011 will provide a platform for contacts between small and medium-sized enterprises, job seekers and the large wind plant manufacturers and operators.
Representatives of the wind and maritime sectors will be giving talks in the NordseeCongressCentrum on the current opportunities for training and further training courses, while the supporting programme at the 2011 conference will include for the first time a job fair, attended by representatives from offshore wind farm developers such as e.on and Vattenfall.
Many in the offshore segment see the oil and gas industry as a source of trained personnel. "This year we are extending the cross-sector nature of our network meeting to include representatives of the oil and gas industries. We aim to bring together the old and the new energies and to close the gaps in the value added chains," explains Dr. Matthias Hüppauff, Project Administrator for the network agency, windcomm schleswig-holstein.
The motto of the OBMC 2011 is "Learning from the oil and gas sectors" and the lectures will thus be mainly reports on experiences gained in these sectors.
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