At the end of last year, the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) and the Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD) launched a multi-year measurement campaign to collect wind and sea data in an area approximately 280 kilometres off the German North Sea coast.
Since mid-December 2024, Fugro Norway, contracted for this purpose, has been collecting comprehensive wind and ocean data. The gathered meteorological and oceanographic data will provide valuable insights for the investigation and evaluation of future offshore wind farm areas on the outer edge of the German Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), according to BSH.
The campaign, called Meteorological and Oceanographic Reference Measurements (MeteOR), is expected to last at least three years.
“With the “MeteOR” campaign, the BSH acquires the basis for a safe and efficient development of offshore wind farms in remote areas of the German North Sea and thereby significantly contributes to the German energy transition,” said Helge Heegewaldt , BSH President.
Germany’s offshore wind targets are at least 40 GW of offshore wind in operation by 2035 and at least 70 GW by 2045. To achieve this, additional wind farms must be built up to 350 kilometres off the German North Sea coast. However, there is a lack of data on the prevailing wind and sea conditions in these remote areas, said BSH.
Fugro Norway has already installed two SEAWATCH measuring buoys in the target area and anchored two oceanographic measurement systems to the seabed. These systems record data such as waves, ocean currents, temperature, salinity, pressure, and oxygen content.
The buoys are additionally equipped with a LiDAR system, using laser beams to measure wind speeds at heights of up to 250 metres.
During the first storms that passed the North Sea shortly after the systems were deployed, exciting data was collected, stated BSH.
“Wind speeds of more than 90 kilometers per hour at a height of 160 meters and maximum wave heights of up to 11 meters were measured,” said Thomas Möller , one of the heads of the Maritime Climate Monitoring Department at the DWD.
In January 2025, BSH published a new Site Development Plan, outlining the auctioning of ten sites with a total capacity of 12 GW over the next four years, starting this year.
At the beginning of this month, the German Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) launched a tender for the N-9.4 site in the North Sea, which can accommodate 1 GW of installed offshore wind capacity.
The tender is open for bids until 1 June, with the maximum bidding value set at 6.2 eurocents/kWh as per Section 19 of the Offshore Wind Energy Act (WindSeeG), which established this price cap for non-zero-subsidy tenders from 2023 onwards.
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