All 60 turbines installed in less than three months

London — Construction of Germany's 385 MW Arkona offshore wind farm in the Baltic Sea has been completed with all 60 turbines installed in less than three months, co-developer E.ON said Wednesday.

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The Eur1.2 billion ($1.4 billion) project jointly developed by the German utility and Norway's Equinor, is feeding power into the grid since September with full commissioning scheduled for early 2019.

Turbine commissioning is proceeding step by step over the next months, E.ON said following early completion of the offshore substation and inner-array cabling.

Grid connection is through the Ostwind-1 cable developed by TSO 50 Hertz. This in on track for 2019 completion.

Engie has been contracted for four years to market the estimated 1.5 TWh/yr annual output from Arkona.

OVER 6 GW OFFSHORE THIS WINTER

With the 396 MW Merkur and 450 MW Borkum Riffgrund 2 projects in the North Sea nearing completion, German offshore wind capacity is set to rise above 6 GW this winter from 5.4 GW as of end-2017.

Remaining projects awarded feed-in-tariff support are set to bring total installed offshore capacity to 7.7 GW by 2020.

Beyond 2020, Germany is moving to an auction system with over 3 GW awarded in two tenders including four 'zero-subsidy' bids to be realized by 2025 latest.

For 2030, the government maintains a 15 GW target due to inner-German grid bottlenecks despite Germany's Northern states calling for a boost to 20 GW.

--Andreas Franke, andreas.franke@spglobal.com

--Edited by Maurice Geller, maurice.geller@spglobal.com