Construction completed on Germany’s first privately-financed offshore wind farm

WindMW GmbH, a joint-venture of Blackstone Energy Partners, Blackstone’s energy-focused private equity business, and Windland Energieerzeugungs GmbH, announced on April 4th, the completion of Meerwind Süd ?Ost, a offshore wind farm located in the German North Sea.

Construction of Meerwind began in 2012 and was completed on schedule within 18 months.

Jens Assheuer, CEO of WindMW, stated:

I would like to thank the project’s investors, staff, suppliers and other stakeholders for their significant commitment and support. The completion of the project on schedule and at the highest quality standards is a result of the contributions of all parties involved.

Meerwind was the first German offshore wind project to be fully financed by private investors, was the largest German offshore wind farm to achieve a full financial closing, and was the first to close under Germany’s KfW financing program, which is focused on helping Germany meet its renewable energy targets by providing debt financing to greenfield energy projects.

Sean Klimczak, Senior Managing Director at Blackstone, stated:

We are very pleased to have reached this important project milestone, bringing Germany one step closer to meeting its green energy targets. Together with our partners, we would like to thank our suppliers and their hard-working teams for their efforts to make our project vision a reality.

The offshore wind farms Meerwind Süd and Meerwind Ost are a 288 MW project located in the German Bight in the North Sea 23 km north of the island of Helgoland. The wind farm will consist of 80 wind turbines with a power output of 3,6 MW each. All turbines will be connected to a farm internal transformer platform to which the grid connection will be installed.

The location, which is one of the most promising in the emerging offshore wind business in Germany, has the combination of best offshore wind conditions with convenient water depth of 22 m to 26 m and the nearby island Helgoland to be used as a maintenance base.