Germany’s Largest Offshore Wind Farm Inaugurated as Commissioning Proceeds

Germany’s largest offshore wind farm, He Dreiht, located in the North Sea, marked its inauguration last week as the project moves toward full commissioning. It comes as Germany continues to debate the form of its future offshore wind efforts and the role of government in the projects.

The project consists of 64 Vestas 15 MW wind turbines and is located just over 50 miles northwest of Borkum and is approximately 68 miles west of Heligoland. When fully commissioned, it will have a capacity to generate up to 960 MW.

“He Dreiht is the largest single investment made by EnBW in renewables,” said Georg Stamatelopoulos, Chairman of the Board of Management at EnBW. “We need more projects like He Dreiht, which deliver affordable, secure and clean electricity. At the same time, we have to gear Germany’s entire energy system toward these three aspects. And this will only be possible if we show courage combined with pragmatism.”

EnBW was awarded the contract back in 2017 for He Dreiht in the first round of auctions for offshore wind farms in Germany, with no entitlement to state funding. It was built without state funding and is being financed solely through long-term power purchase agreements. EnBW holds 50.1 percent of the shares through a project company. The remaining 49.9 percent are held by a consortium made up of Allianz Global Investors on behalf of Allianz entities, AIP Management and Norges Bank Investment Management. Around 2.4 billion euros were invested in developing the project.

The Long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) signed for electricity production are designed to give companies long-term price stability and planning certainty. One key focus is the technology sector, where the project will help power the growth in digitalization and the growth of AI. Evonik, Google, the Telekom subsidiary PASM, Fraport, Bosch, Salzgitter, SHS Stahl-Holding Saar, Deutsche Bahn and DHL Group are among the contractual partners for He Dreiht.

Construction work on He Dreiht got underway in the middle of the North Sea in May 2024. At a hub height of 142 meters, the rotor with a diameter of 236 meters sweeps through an area of around 44,000 square meters per revolution – a single rotation of the rotor is enough to supply the equivalent of four households with electricity for a day. The network operator TenneT is responsible for connecting the wind farm to the electricity grid. The electricity reaches the coast via a platform in the sea and two submarine cables.

The task of transitioning He Dreiht into regular operation will be a gradual process that involves connecting the individual turbines to the grid one by one, testing them and starting them up. The first turbines are already feeding electricity into the grid, with the others set to follow. Based on current progress, the wind farm should be fully operational in the coming months.

EnBW highlights that the project is part of its overall strategy for expansion of renewable energies. The installed output is currently around eight gigawatts (GW), more than double the 2018 figure. Renewable energies account for over 70 percent of the total installed generation capacity.

At the same time, EnBW is already developing the next major offshore projects with Dreekant (1 GW) in the German North Sea and Morven (2.9 GW) in Scotland. By the end of 2030, around 80 percent of EnBW’s generation portfolio is set to consist of renewables. 

Germany has an operational offshore wind capacity of around 10.8 GW as of mid-2026, while the government has declared a long-term target of reaching 70 GW by 2045. The German Federal Cabinet recently adopted an updated amendment to the Offshore Wind Energy Act to recalibrate the build-out framework. The updated regulatory framework introduces two-way CfDs (Contracts for Difference) and extends the standard operating lifespan for new offshore installations from 25 to 35 years, but it has been met with criticism and calls to further revise the policy to support the required investments in renewable energy.