In any case, it is the role of the government to ensure services for the public as well as public security. Due to the fragmentation into many small market participants, there is no major player that could take the lead in the evolution. This regionalisation is considered to be the main game changer in a liberalised market. New technologies can turn every house owner into an energy producer, making the distinction between supply and demand unclear. Some input comes from inspection of other industrialised areas with emerging renewable energy markets, such as the USA. Based on Germany´s leading role in terms of renewable energy, the scope includes the bigger, integrated European market. Therefore, the study inspects the market conditions given by the special character of the uniform product "electricity". Whilst they are in good condition they will produce energy at almost no cost. In the coming years, more and more photovoltaic systems will cease to have contracts with fixed remuneration. No such changes ever impacted on more than one fourth of the overall market, which is the case for renewable energies today. Later, the co-generation of power and heat was invented and power plants came back, again closer to the consumers. The market thus far had seen some transitions from local power plants within the cities to huge power plants beyond the gates of the cities. The constant availability of current is therefore not a given thing, but something that involves ongoing hard work. Yet unlike air, power has to be obtained and distributed. The ubiquity of electrical devices in our daily life is not something we think about anymore in the industrialised world. Since renewable energies entered the German market 25 years ago, they slowly started to change some fundamental conditions. Weserwind managing director Dirk Kassen says the orders include EUR 60 million worth of firmly financed business, EUR 125 million of orders that are part of project financing deals and another EUR 200 million in joint deals with EEW-SPC.Just one hundred years ago, electricity was classified as a luxury good. It is to consist of 80, 5 MW Multibrid turbines. Weserwind will also partially supply the German Borkum West 2 project developed by Prokon Nord. Areva is to supply the project with Multibrid turbines. The company says it has orders for 39 monopiles for the Baltic 1 and Nordergründe stations and for 87 tripods to cover part of the needs of the 105 MW Côte d'Albâtre project, developed off the French coast by Germany's Enertrag and Prokon Nord. At the same location, Weserwind is assembling transformer stations for four projects: Bard Offshore 1 the 60 MW Alpha Ventus offshore test station, being built by a group of German utilities and to consist of Repower and Multibrid turbines Energiekontor's near-shore 90 MW Nordergründe project in the Wester estuary, also to use Repower turbines and to start construction this year and Baltic 1 off the north German coast, at 52.5 MW to be made up of 21 turbines.Īt Weserwind's third factory, at Rostock on the Baltic Sea coast, it is cooperating with Erndtebrücker Eisenwerke Special Pipe Construction (EEW-SPC) in the construction of monopile foundations with transition pieces to connect to a variety of turbine towers. In total, Weserwind expects to make 80 foundations a year, using 80,000 tonnes of steel.Īt Wilhelmshaven, the company is currently building 12 tri-pile foundations for Bard Engineering's Bard Offshore 1 station, an 80 turbine development. Jackets will be made for Repower Systems, tripods for Multibrid offshore turbines and tri-piles for Bard Engineering. In Bremerhaven, the company will produce three types of foundation for all three offshore turbine competitors. Weserwind already makes foundations at a facility close to the new factory and also operates factories in Wilhelmshaven and Rostock. To serve the needs of the three companies, all of which expect to be supplying turbines to projects in German and French waters this year and next, Weserwind is constructing a purpose-built factory in Bremerhaven to build foundations from 2010. Weserwind Offshore Construction, part of the German Georgsmarienhütte steel group, is rapidly becoming a one-stop shop for both turbine foundations and transformer stations for all three of the country's budding players in the offshore wind sector: Repower Systems, Bard Engineering and French nuclear group Areva, supplier of the Multibrid turbine.