Germany added a record 4.87GW in new net onshore wind capacity in 2017 – bringing the cumulative capacity of wind on land in Europe’s largest economy to 50.78GW – as developers rushed to build projects under the old feed-in tariff system amid a change to tender-based support.
The gross expansion last year was 5.34GW, but 467MW in mature onshore wind capacity was idled at the same time, thus lowering the net expansion, according to data by Deutsche WindGuard commissioned by Germany’s wind energy federation BWE and the VDMA Power Systems group that represents manufacturers.
