German offshore wind farms in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea generated 12.09 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity in 2016, a 45.7 percent jump compared to 8.3 TWh generated by wind farms off Germany in 2015, TenneT reports.
The rise in the offshore wind power generation can be attributed to the new capacity grid-connected in 2015 which has reached full production capacity in 2016.
Germany connected 546 offshore wind turbines with a total capacity of 2,282.4MW to the grid in 2015.
The total number of turbines connected to Germany’s grid by 31 December 2015 was 792, with a combined capacity of 3,295MW. In 2016, Germany added further 818MW of offshore wind capacity, with the total combined capacity reaching 4,113MW by the end of the last year.
TenneT currently operates nine connection systems with a total capacity of 5,221MW for the transmission of offshore wind energy to the grid.
“We have already implemented the off-shore expansion target of the Federal Government of at least 6,500 megawatts by 2020 to more than 80 percent. This means that the time when there was not enough capacity to dock in the North Sea to transfer wind energy from sea to land is now a thing of the past,” Lex Hartman , a member of the TenneT Board of Management, said.