Germany is Europe’s largest economy and has a growing renewable energy sector. However, the nation had yet to open an offshore wind farm despite other nations in Europe having done the same. Both Great Britain and Denmark are well grounded in the offshore wind farm sector, each of them having hundreds of megawatts of energy coming from turbines at sea.
Despite taking ten years to work around political and monetary issues, the first offshore wind farm in Germany officially opened recently. The wind farm has been named the Alpha Ventus project and is being considered a test project. The wind farm is located in the North Sea and will consist of 12 windmills and will generate 60 megawatts of energy. This is expected to be able to power 50,000 homes.
The Alpha Ventus is further from shore than any other current offshore wind farm that is in Europe. The farm had to be farther from shore due to national park land and bird refuges closer to shore. The wind farm is 28 miles from shore and in 100 feet of water.
Rather than seeing the location as a problem, those involved see it as a positive test of the conditions farther from shore. The total offshore wind farm potential of the European Union is 140,000 megawatts. A large portion of the megawatts will have to come from farther from shore, which makes Alpha Ventus a test project for future projects across Europe.
This wind farm will be just the beginning of a potentially booming offshore wind farm sector in Germany. Twenty-five other offshore wind farm proposals have been approved to be built in the North Sea and Baltic Sea. In total these proposals consist of 1,650 more windmills which will contribute hundreds more megawatts of energy to Germany.
