The Federal Network Agency has placed areas in the North and Baltic seas up for tender with a combined offshore wind capacity of 7GW.
Three sites, each with a capacity of 2GW, are located in the North Sea and one area with a capacity of 1GW is in the Baltic Sea.
The North Sea sites are located about 120km north-west of Helgoland, and the Baltic Sea zone is about 25km off the island of Rügen.
Commissioning of the wind farms is scheduled for 2030.
“The tenders are an important step towards achieving the offshore expansion target of 30GW by 2030,” said Klaus Müller, President of the Federal Network Agency.
“The capacity tendered today exceeds the previous annual auction volumes for offshore wind energy many times over,” he added.
In order to achieve the expansion target of 30GW, areas will now also be put out to tender for which the successful bidders must carry out the preliminary investigations to be carried out before the construction of a wind farm.
A state preliminary investigation of the sites, which analyses, for example, the marine environment, seabed conditions as well as wind and oceanographic conditions, does not exist for the areas advertised and are therefore referred to as non-centrally pre-examined areas.
Contracts will be awarded to bidders that register the lowest requirement for support for a wind farm in the zones.
If several developers waive funding for an area and submit bids with a value of zero cents per kilowatt hour, a dynamic bidding procedure will decide on the award.
Thereafter, the bidder with the highest willingness to pay is awarded the contract.
The successful developer is determined in bidding rounds with increasing levels, with 90% of the proceeds from the dynamic process used to reduce electricity costs, along with 5% to marine nature conservation and 5% to supporting environmentally friendly fishing.
Bids must be submitted by 1 June 2023.
The successful bidder receives the right to apply to the competent Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency for planning approval for the development of the areas with an offshore wind farm.
In addition to the tenders announced, the Federal Network Agency will launch further zones for offshore wind energy until 1 March 2023.
These concern areas centrally pre-examined by the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency with a total capacity of 1800MW.