Iberdrola will submit a bid for the construction of a new offshore wind farm in the Baltic Sea in the ongoing offshore wind auction in Germany, the company said on 30 August.
The Spain-headquartered offshore wind developer said it would file its proposal for the Windanker project on 1 September as part of a plan to expand its Baltic Hub to more than 1 GW by 2026.
In the German part of the Baltic Sea, Iberdrola has the 350 MW Wikinger offshore wind farm, in operation since 2017, and the 476 MW Baltic Eagle which is under construction.
The new project would bring the company’s Baltic Hub to more than 1.1 GW, according to a press release from 30 August.
Iberdrola to Exercise Step-In Rights?
The Windanker project is not completely new as Iberdrola applied with it in the auction Germany held in 2018, but the project did not make it through the second transitional tender , organised before the country switched to the new tendering model.
Following this, some developers were allocated pre-emption rights for their respective project areas, which they can exercise in the public auctions that include those areas.
In this tender, which has the maximum bidding price limited to 7.3 Eurocents per kWh, Iberdrola and other developers with the same rights can step-in based on the lowest bid of any other bidder and acquire the right to construct and operate their projects.
One of the developers set to exercise these rights is Northland Power. In this tender, Northland Power holds a step-in right for the N-3.8 area in the North Sea , for which the company developed its Nordsee 2 offshore wind project.
In the North Sea, Germany is auctioning 658 MW across two sites: N-3.7 and N-3.8. In the Baltic Sea, the O-1.3 site, where Iberdrola’s Windanker is located, is put to auction with 300 MW of allocated capacity.