Lack of grid capacity lets output of Germany鈥檚 North Sea offshore wind turbines drop in 2023
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Grid congestion due to a lack of new onshore power line connections has let the output of Germany鈥檚 offshore wind turbine fleet in the North Sea decrease by 9 percent in 2023 compared to the previous year, grid operator TenneT 丑补蝉听. With a total output of 19.2 terawatt hours (TWh), the country鈥檚 offshore turbines contributed the equivalent of the annual power consumption of six million households to the German power mix last year, helping to push the share of renewables to over 50 percent throughout a whole year for the first time ever. However, turbines in the German North Sea produced 21.1 TWh of electricity in 2022. TenneT CEO Tim Meyerj眉rgens commented that grid expansion has finally started to accelerate in the past two years, but 鈥渕any lost years鈥 prior to that are now having an impact on production, as electricity has to be curtailed when there is not enough transmission capacity available in the grid. Another reason for the curtailing of offshore wind would be that there are almost no large central power plants operating in northern Germany anymore that could throttle down their output instead, Meyerj眉rgens added. 鈥淎s a consequence, the associated re-dispatch measures cut offshore wind power production.鈥
The expansion of Germany鈥檚 power grid to accommodate the rapidly growing number of renewable power installations has been plagued by delays and quarrels in recent years, although the government was able to overcome key hurdles to expansion in the past year. Besides bringing electricity transmission capacity to scale, the government is looking into other measures to ensure that renewable power is being used instead of curtailed.