As the renewables sector is licking its wounds caused by the victory of Donald Trump, one of the industry’s greatest triumphs is slightly overshadowed: the record-low winning bid by Vattenfall in Denmark’s 600MW Kriegers Flak offshore tender.

The price of €49.90 per megawatt hour is not only the lowest ever in offshore wind, but a price that beats that for solar tenders in Northern Europe and for support for onshore wind in many regions.

Reason to celebrate, despite the Trump-related hang-over?

WindEurope CEO Giles Dickson welcomes the fact that the price reached is lower than anything we’ve seen before in offshore, but he also stresses that it’s not a new benchmark.

“Every project is different, and countries share the costs differently, so you’re comparing apples and pears. But the trend is clear – offshore wind is fast becoming competitive with other forms of electricity.”

At Kriegers Flak, all transmission costs are covered by Danish transmission system operator Energinet.dk, Vattenfall says, while they had to be included in the bid price at the recent Danish near-shore tender that produced a still low, but higher winning bid of €64/MWh.

Off the record, some industry experts express more scepticism.

The price plunge shows that the offshore sector is living up to its commitments to a rapid decline in offshore LCOE, and shows that the industry has grown up, one bank analyst told Recharge.

But at the same time it raises the question how sustainable the current rock-bottom prices in offshore are, and whether those would be possible if Vattenfall didn’t have the possibility to finance the project out of its own capital, but would be dependent on outside third-party financing.

Denmark’s government, which recently had been wary of a too fast build-up of offshore due to its high costs, stressed that the low price for Kriegers Flak was the results of a more mature market, with more suppliers and therefore more competition.

“There have also been advances in technology, for example larger turbines that require fewer foundations and less installation work, and are likely to have lower operating costs,” the government said in a statement.

Sure enough, MHI Vestas, Siemens and Adwen now have 8MW offshore machines on offer and behind the scenes some OEM’s are developing even larger turbines. And with 600MW, Kriegers Flak is a rather large offshore array, giving Vattenfall scope to negotiate well with suppliers.

Cheap interest rates, low steel prices, and the availability of idle vessels due to the oil and gas sector slump also help.

But any of these factors could change, and too much cost cutting could lead to short cuts that result in expensive mistakes — which could put off investors for years to come or render financing more expensive, as past experience has shown.

Below €50/MWh prices for offshore wind may not easily be reproduced elsewhere, but the downwards trend in the technology has been so steep that prices above €100/MWh now seem unlikely in the near future.