By P Gosselin
The Alpha Ventus offshore wind farm near German North Sea island of Borkum is set to be dismantled after being in operation for only 15 years.
It has become too unprofitable to operate without massive subsidies.
Symbol image, produced by Grok 3 AI.
Alpha Ventus is noted as being Germany’s first offshore wind farm. Construction works commenced in August 2007 and the first turbine was installed in July 2009. The pioneering wind farm was officially commissioned on April 27, 2010.
According to Blackout News, a decisive factor for dismantling the pioneer project is the expiration of generous subsidies made possible through Germany’s EEG renewable energies feed-in act. The subsidy meant that the Alpha Ventus wind farm got 15.4 cents per kilowatt hour after being put in operation. Now that the subsidy has run out, the wind farm operators receive only the basic tariff of 3.9 cents per kilowatt hour, thus making the farm unprofitable.
Another factor: the older Alpha Venus wind farm is being eclipsed by more modern, more efficient turbines.
Offshore wind farms have high costs
Overall, offshore wind farms are significantly more expensive to operate than onshore wind farms due increased maintenance costs, poor accessibility, harsh environments and the specialized equipment and personnel needed to conduct operational works.
Offshore wind farms are significantly more expensive to operate than onshore wind farms due to a combination of factors stemming from their challenging marine environment and remote locations.
Offshore turbines are exposed to corrosive saltwater, strong winds, large waves, and potential storms, which acts to accelerates wear and tear on components. This leads to more frequent failures and the need for more robust and expensive materials.
And when turbines break down offshore, the time required to access, diagnose, and repair them is typically much longer than for onshore turbines due to weather limitations and logistical challenges. This results in more significant losses in electricity generation and revenue.
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What a pathetic waste of valuable resources.
It would be interesting to see a project review for this disaster.
I looked up some numbers. It coast EUR250M. It cannot make money now at 3.9c/kWh. So the margin during its operation was say 11c/kWh. It produces 200GWh in its good years. So lets say 2.8TWh over its life. The gross revenue around EUR308M. So a return on investment of 1.4% over 15 year life.
I know why the German economy is in the toilet.
Australia’s lignite coal producers can make money at fractions of a cent per kWh.
And then there’s the cost of decommissioning …
Don’t forget inflation of the money supply by the ECB to ‘stimulate’ the economy. 2025 euros buy A LOT less than 2010 euros.
The planning and building of this windfarm took probably more than the 15 years this windpark was running.
And the biggest joke of all.
Just recently the WEF , this time posing as german green party,
removed the biggest competition,
by shutting down all nuclear power plants (while at the same time germans been paying for the maintenance of Ukrainian nuclear power plants).
Yet they were still not competitive enough and had to shut down.
These renewables are such a big pile of potemkin shit that they can’t even perform or win even if you remove the competition.
They are the Biden-Harris of energy production that can not exist on their own.
Don’t blame the Green Party for the German nuclear power plant shutdown. That was the doing of Angela Merkel who was the leader of the Christian Democrats, the supposedly center right party. Bitter laughter.
Governance in Germany, like most other parliamentary states, is a matter of coalitions. Just telling us who the leader of the lead party in a coalition doesn’t tell us much regarding the motivations for a move. The Greens have been king makers, in regards to which coalition runs Germany, for many decades.
Merkel would have never been able to get it done (neither did she had a mandate for this).
The green party on the other hand gets always everything they really want(not the fake pretended Bernie Sanders stuff to keep people on the plantation ).
Just now, despite being just a tiny 10% shit party,they got 100 billion from the Merkel party for climate.
They ran policies in recent years and they still do.
Like I have been saying. Political parties are all rubbish. They are a rubbish idea centred on collectivism. A communist notion in fact. Look further right and you will see a landscape devoid of political Parties.
And the Tories are what. I only know that under Boris J. and Co they looked more like a ‘green’ pro Eu party.
re: “What a pathetic waste of valuable resources.”
Materials: Copper, aluminum, steel etc.and advanced (at the time) control (e.g. SCADA) systems.
And manpower/brainpower – NRE (non-recurring engineering) costs turning into non-recoverable engineering (effort expended for NO return) costs … for manufacturing (of everything involved), planning (the ‘site”, power collection grid), installation (boats, barges, manpower, technical specialists) and operation expenses.
Who could possibly have predicted that offshore wind farms would turn out to be a financial and operational disaster? Answer: Everybody but green policymakers.
Please send complementary copy to maniacal Ed Milliband !!
I think he probably realises the folly of offshore wind and that’s why he is doing everything he can to remove democratuc objections to on-shore wind projects.
“A financial and operational disaster?”
Surprising since the wind is ” free”. It’s all the other stuff that costs money!
Dr Gordon Hughes did 🙂
I suspect that most of them knew it would be a disaster as well.
It’s just that they didn’t care, since they, or their friends were getting rich off the scheme.
On Sunday, I asked DEEPSEEK to list the top 10 countries by wind and solar penetration with GDP above USD1tr. This its the answer based on its 2023 data:
Here are the top 10 countries by wind and solar power penetration (as a percentage of total electricity generation) with a GDP greater than USD 1 trillion (based on recent data):
Germany: ~35% (wind and solar combined).
Spain: ~25% (wind and solar combined).
United Kingdom: ~25% (wind and solar combined).
Italy: ~20% (wind and solar combined).
Australia: ~20% (wind and solar combined).
France: ~15% (wind and solar combined).
United States: ~12% (wind and solar combined).
China: ~10% (wind and solar combined).
Japan: ~10% (wind and solar combined).
India: ~8% (wind and solar combined).
I then asked it to provide the coefficient for the best fit trend line of cost per kWh for each percent increase in wind and solar penetration. It advised USD0.021 per percent penetration.
I then asked it to forecast the cost of electricity in Australia in 2030 if the Federal Government achieves its 82% target. It forecast USD1.50/kWh. If you think that a 5-fold increase from 2023 to 2030 is ridiculous then you only have to look at the present price increases of around 10% per annum that is making very little difference to the penetration. Also in 2007 you could buy an ounce of gold for AUD1000. Today and ounce of gold takes AUD4,600.
Inflation is rampant In Australia and it is going to get worse unless there is a 180 degree change in course and coal gets back to the front of the energy queue.
You need to check the sources of AI very carefully. I know for certain that Grok and ChatGPT use MSM, and in particular, Guardian references extensively.
I have spent hours refining queries I set by referring them to scientific papers instead, none of them particularly controversial, and the response they returned were dramatically different to the original MSM reliant response.
Even then it’s still clunky, repetitive and robotic. ChatGPT finally revealed to me in 2024 after a couple of hours of interrogation that it couldn’t access live data, it was just a database, it was last updated in 2022, and it had no idea when it would be updated next.
re: “You need to check the sources of AI very carefully. … I have spent hours refining queries I set by referring them to scientific papers instead”
Sounds like the old ‘domain and range’ of a function problem (in maths, calculus, etc).
Given the proper domain (input material) something reasonable (range) can result. No guarantee, however.
The old (maybe not so old) is garbage in garbage out. A logical analysis of garbage will still produce garbage. This is why AI is a moving target, like most technology and we see it is designed to dumb down the top 25% of the world’s intelligent beings.
Rick:
Did DEEPSEEK take into account the amount of subsides for construction, running and the cost of power lines?
Bowen and Albo don’t seem to mention these coast we pay.
Are those percentages in watt hours or name plate capacity?
15 x 3% =45% reduction
Nobody mentioned that problem
‘Now that the subsidy has run out, the wind farm operators receive only the basic tariff of 3.9 cents per kilowatt hour, thus making the farm unprofitable.’
Euro 0.039 per kWh? I thought electricity was supposed to be expensive in Germany. Right now in CT (second or third highest electricity prices in the US), the ‘standard service rate’ for energy provided by the utility is USD 0.1119 per kWh.
Australian States are no longer paying for rooftop solar sent to the grid. It creates stability issues for them so they are discouraging it. My poles and wires provider is offering battery at cost price to households to try to soak up the excess solar so they can manage the instability. .
It is quite evident the intermittent generation imposes greater cost than the value of the energy. Unless the generation is dispatchable, it is actually worse than useless. the EUR0.039’kWh is a lot more than it is worth. Your USD0.1119/kWh will be for power when you want it not when the wind is blowing. And there is a big difference between wholesale price and retail price. German retail price was USD0.40/kWh in 2023.
Thanks. I guess it would have been helpful to have known what was meant by the ‘basic tariff’. From what you are saying, I take it that the grid operator probably is required to pay the supplier of intermittent wind energy Euro 0.039, but then has to go out and pay additional amounts to other grid suppliers in order to maintain system stability.
How does the so called “smart meters” come into play.
My suspicion is that if the house is WiFi these can change operation of such units.
“How does the so called “smart meters” come into play.”
In the UK they will be required for rationing power. It’s totally disingenuous, they are touted as helping you monitor your energy consumption, but that’s the fig leaf. They can in theory turn a single dwelling off, whereas with the dumb meters whole areas have to be turned off.
One look at the energy system in the UK tells you, rationing is not very far off.
re: “How does the so called “smart meters” come into play.”
We have electric retailers in Texas that, as part of your adopted, agreed-upon rate plan, will give you two days a week ‘free electricity’ (transport/delivery charges not included I would wager) … silly smart meters allow silly marketing ploys like this to exist, although one could work this to one’s favor by doing all laundry (assuming electric appliances) and baking on those two days.
The other ploy is offering free electricity at night. The AC needs to run every day and most of the night during the four or five hottest months of the year.
My son was telling me that more than 20 years ago while busy with his engineering degree one of his profs clearly spelt out the problem with solar and this has not gone away. Engineers tend to be much more practical people and are interested in things that work efficiently so why were people like this not listened to? If a small prototype works then there are people with money who will be prepared to invest and scale it up without government subsidies. If it fails it puts pressure on the developers and engineers to resolve why it could not be scaled up successfully without burderning the taxpayer.
“My son was telling me that more than 20 years ago while busy with his engineering degree one of his profs clearly spelt out the problem with solar and this has not gone away. “
I am sure that this professor was denigrated and ostracized by the university for voicing these truths. Heretics are not treated kindly by the educational system.
re: “Euro 0.039 per kWh? … Right now in CT … the ‘standard service rate’ for energy provided by the utility is USD 0.1119 per kWh.”
The difference between wholesale bulk rate cost (right off the generator more or less) versus retail rate charged residential customers.
The retail sales to individual residential customers involves a LOT more overhead in the way of delivery infrastructure (transmission lines plus distribution lines and associated substations) PLUS customer service billing and a ‘call center’ somewhere to handle phone calls ..
The $0.1119 is for retail energy only, assuming one has signed up with the utility to procure energy under its ‘standard offered service’. There are additional charges for ‘wires’, aka T&D, and the so-called ‘Public Benefits Charge’. Right now, with retail customers paying about $0.30 / kWh, it’s breaks down roughly to $0.10 / kWh each for energy, wires and ‘Public Benefits’,
Right, I know. Did you just fully research this? This sort of thing is broken down in my bill each month.
So, we have similar rate structures in Texas. I didn’t go into detail because the names for various fees/services varies region to region and country to country.
The BIG difference is still between ‘retail’ residential customers and larger industrial customers with their own fee structures from the bulk supply utilities. Big consumers of electric energy can make their own deals with bulk electric generation sources.
At one time here in Texas we had an electric retailer who was buying power (energy) on the spot real-time market and selling directly into the retail market with that real-time pricing, taking a small percentage for their management fee for the process. The problem was, the Feb 2021 catastrophic cold snap in Texas did them in, with some customers (who did not switch to other ‘providers’ in time; they had been advised to do so shortly ahead of time) paying very high spot prices for each kWH consumed.
I live in central Washington State where where large dams on the Columbia River provide power. A map here:
counties.png (600×396)
Douglas County 2.33¢/kWh
Chelan County 2.7¢/kWh
Grant County 5.9¢/kWh
Kittitas County 10.21¢/kWh (My county. I also pay a set fee of ~$26/month)
My county doesn’t own/control any dams.
Lucky you! I once worked on a consulting gig wherein the (WA) utility was looking for a way to procure downside price protection during the spring run-off period when wholesale energy prices typically dropped way below levels needed to cover wear and tear on their turbines. My guess is that WA’s progressives have made great strides since then to make electricity more expensive for everyone.
“It has become too unprofitable to operate without massive subsidies.”
I thought that applied to all wind farms.
Not in the UK…. apparently.
Unbelivable! Next you will tell me that unicorns don’t exist!
So, how much energy did this wind farm actually generate in its 15 year lifetime? And how much energy was required to build it and now dismantle it? Basically – what was the total EROEI? If it was positive (which I doubt) this should be quoted in terms of the total subsidy to report to German consumers just what they have paid for this political bit of virtue signaling.
I personally don’t care about the CO2 balance because CO2 is plant food for me, but I bet that calculations is negative as well. I don’t know how these turbines were anchored, but you can bet there were tons of concrete involved.
Should the question not be, how much money did this wind farm actually generate in its 15 year lifetime?
We know that the money was a negative number because as soon as the subsidy went, the farm has closed, but governments are justifying subsidizing wind farms because they produce energy.
If they are not producing more than they consume (or only a small amount more) then the entire justification collapses. I have seen arguments against biofuels that say they are energy negative because you use more fuel to produce them than you get you, but wind and solar keep being touted as “free, because the wind and sun are just there”.
We know the financial side is rubbish, but what about the actual energy itself? I really would like someone who has the data to crunch these numbers.
To continue, Euan Mearns explains EROEI well here:
https://euanmearns.com/eroei-for-beginners/
but considers that it is often so complex to calculate that it gets boiled down to cost.
However, this case – a wind farm which has completed its life – is a much simpler proposition: The energy required for construction, operation and decommissioning can be converted to GWh, and compared to the GWh produced over the lifetime. People can argue the value of the energy (was the energy usefully etc.) to their hearts content, but a simple energy in – energy out should be calculable by someone who has the relevant data.
Is there anyone out there who can do this?
The only way that I psychologically survive looking seaward from shore at my location in New England and seeing a (thickening) forest of turbines is the knowledge that I am staring at the past of a better future, one in which the wind farms here have been dismantled as well.
Be patient…it will happen.
“Another factor: the older Alpha Venus wind farm is being eclipsed by more modern, more efficient turbines.”
Which also won’t be profitable.
Efficiency is not the problem.
Great! I assume then that the “more modern, more efficient turbines” won’t need any subsidies.
Betz law limits turbine design efficiency by showing the limit to the % of energy that can be extracted from wind to 59%. So you get left with looking for windy areas such as off shore and higher meaning bigger and taller turbines. Chasing your tail is the result.
Is anybody privy to the maintenance logs of these offshore wind systems?
Repair records, reliability figures and the like?
What is the ‘uptime’ figure (negating lulls in wind) – is it even ‘two nines’ (99%)?
Does anyone know or is there a report showing how many of those wind turbines are/were still actually operational when this decision was made? Given the environment, I would not be surprised if a significant number were no longer working.
No matter what the price is, the value of non dispatchable energy is likely negative. Nobody would buy this power if it was not mandated by law.
Let me guess what they’re going to replace it with.
Hurrah! The collapse continues, with breathtaking speed
It was a matter of time, and therefore a matter of how much damage was done to ordinary people before these companies and all the other blood suckers were sent packing
Thankfully, although much damage has been done, the preposterous net stupid never really took off in most of the developed world, except for evs, which have also reached the end of the road, pun intended
Witness in the coming months/years many of those who promulgated climate religion in one form or another either undergo fake Damascene conversions or go totally quiet
The UK has a functioning off-shore Windmill Farm that is getting ready to shut down because their subsidies expired.
The UK needs lots of generating capacity.
Why don’t the Climate Alarmists in the UK government propose to continue paying the subsidy to keep this windmill farm online?
It appears they don’t want this windmill farm to continue.
Strange. How does this make sense to a Climate Alarmist? Money is no object? Right? You’re saving the World! Right? Maybe not.
because their subsidies expired.
I thought wind was free? Why do they need the subsidies then? 🙂
I think the windmill promoters lied to us about that.
“And when turbines break down offshore, the time required to access, diagnose, and repair them is typically much longer …”
This seems logical, but how many and what type of “break downs” have happened? One, two, or two dozen: Inquiring minds want to know.
Hence my question above. Would LOVE to see the repair records on these wind farm fields … a listing of the trouble tickets turned in, the dispatch records for crews doing the servicing … what shows up for daily alarms (tripped for non-normal operation or operation out of limits, loss of phase line, tripped feeder circuits, bearing temperature alarms, abnormal vibration detected etc.)
30 year life, right?
In the US, some 6000 on-shore WTs have been replaced by 4000 larger ones in the last 28 months. No press notice, of course.
They would rather buy Chinese solar panels made with slave labor in western China and an array of coal fired power plants. The same goes for EVs and batteries made without enviro regulations.
Maybe airdrop leaflets of this news to voters in NJ, NY, MA, RI, and DE.
geez. what is it about salt water, iron, and electricity that just won’t cooperate?
Are there any stats on total cost to build and total energy created?
As a business man these issues are blindingly obvious, right from the get go.. how these projects ever get off the ground is something that amazes me. Clearly there is a lot of lies being told.
More good news, stop building them they are not a substitute for fossil fuel and nuclear. Everybody knows that.
It is the same – at different levels of course – with all off shore generation. It is lunacy and it has to stop.