“Government wants to put the brakes on wind power development in the North”

Wind power development in Germany’s windy northern states will be limited to cope with lagging grid expansion, according to a regulation draft by the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA), seen by Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ). Mecklenburg Western-Pomerania, Schleswig-Holstein, Bremen, Hamburg and the northern half of Lower Saxony will be declared “grid congestion zones”. In these areas, only about half of previous capacity additions would be allowed in the future, writes Michael Bauchmüller in SZ. This would amount to 902 of the total yearly addition of 2500 megawatts wind power capacity. The government had previously planned to include Hesse and the southern part of Lower Saxony in the grid congestion zones, according to the article.

Read the article in German here.

Also read the CLEW article Wind development has to wait for grid expansion for background.