Germany’s Federal Network Agency has announced the awards in the offshore tenders for centrally pre-examined areas as of the bidding deadline of 1 August 2023.
RWE has been granted awards for Nordseecluster B.
This involves the N-3.6 and N-3.5 sites in the German North Sea, on which RWE intends to develop, build and operate two wind farms with a total capacity of 900MW.
For N-6.6, RWE Renewables Offshore HoldCo Four was awarded the contract, while Vattenfall Nordlicht II Offshore Wind has a right of entry for the area.
It has the right to enter into the award of RWE Renewables Offshore HoldCo Four.
Waterkant Energy was awarded the contract for N-6.7. There is no right of entry for the area.
The subject of the tenders were four areas in the North Sea with a total capacity of 1.8GW, which had been pre-examined by the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) with regard to the marine environment, the subsoil and the wind and oceanographic conditions.
The commissioning of the wind farms on areas N-3.5, N-3.6, N-6.6 and N-6.7 is scheduled for 2028.
For the first time, a bidding process with qualitative criteria was carried out for the four tendered tracts.
In addition to the willingness to make a monetary payment in euros for the respective area, criteria such as the decarbonisation of offshore expansion and the use of environmentally friendly foundation technologies were also included.
With the award, the successful bidders will be entitled to carry out a planning approval procedure for the construction and operation of wind turbines on the site as well as to be entitled to connection and grid connection capacity.
Around 90% of the proceeds from the tenders, amounting to €784m, will go to reduce electricity costs and 5% each to marine nature conservation and the promotion of environmentally friendly fisheries.
The proportions of the bid values awarded in each case intended for sustainable marine protection must be paid to the federal budget within one year.
Starting with the completion date of the wind farm from 2028, the electricity cost reduction component is to be paid to the transmission system operator obliged to connect in constant annual instalments over a period of 20 years.
The results of the tenders for areas that have not been centrally pre-examined with a total proceed of €12.6bn were recently published by the Federal Network Agency.