IN Brief:
- Five German wind developments totalling approximately 188MW have received permits.
- The largest is the 100MW, 14-turbine Beerfelde project in Brandenburg.
- Gardelegen will replace six turbines with four machines while increasing generation.
PNE has received permits for five German onshore wind projects totalling approximately 188MW during the first half of 2026.
Spread across Brandenburg, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Thuringia, and Saxony-Anhalt, the developments cover a large new project, smaller regional schemes, a project extension, and the repowering of an existing wind farm.
Beerfelde in Brandenburg is the largest project, with 14 turbines and planned capacity of approximately 100MW. Its scale places it among the more substantial individual onshore developments progressing through Germany’s current permitting pipeline.
At Ehren in Lower Saxony, four turbines will provide around 29MW through a project developed with a regional cooperative bank. PNE will own one turbine, while the project partner will own the other three, creating a mixed ownership structure within the same site.
The Balver Wald development in North Rhine-Westphalia covers three turbines with approximately 21MW of capacity. In Thuringia, the Gebstedt/Willerstedt extension will add two turbines totalling around 14MW through a joint project with EDF power solutions, with one turbine allocated to each partner.
Gardelegen in Saxony-Anhalt is a repowering project in which six existing turbines will be replaced by four newer machines with combined capacity of approximately 24MW. Despite the reduction in turbine numbers, the replacement equipment is expected to produce substantially more electricity through larger rotors, higher hub heights, improved controls, and greater rated output.
The permits have been granted under Germany’s Federal Immission Control Act. Each project must still move through commercial and delivery stages that can include auction participation, financing, turbine procurement, grid agreements, detailed engineering, civil construction, and final commissioning.
Permits expand a competitive project pipeline
Germany has accelerated onshore wind approvals, creating a larger pipeline of projects able to compete in support auctions. Recent French and German rounds awarded more than 3GW, with the German auction heavily oversubscribed, leaving permitted projects to compete for a viable commercial route before construction begins.
High auction competition can reduce support prices, but it also increases pressure on developers to control equipment, finance, construction, and connection costs. Turbine availability, transformer lead times, access roads, crane capacity, specialist labour, and network reinforcement can all determine whether a successful bid remains deliverable.
The five PNE projects illustrate the varied electrical work contained within the onshore market. New sites require collection circuits, substations, protection, communications, metering, reactive-power control, and export connections, while smaller extensions must be integrated with existing plant without weakening the performance or availability of the original installation.
Repowering creates a different engineering problem because existing sites may retain useful land rights, wind data, road access, and grid infrastructure, while larger turbines can exceed the capacity of old cables, transformers, switchgear, foundations, and control systems. Protection settings and network studies must be revised around the new machines rather than carried forward unchanged.
Reducing six turbines to four can simplify some maintenance and collection arrangements, but each replacement unit represents a greater share of site output. Component failure or planned maintenance on one machine therefore removes a larger proportion of generating capacity, increasing the importance of availability, spares, remote diagnostics, and service response.
Grid connections are also becoming more demanding as renewable penetration rises. Wind farms may be required to provide reactive-power capability, voltage control, fault ride-through, active-power limitation, and remote dispatch, while curtailment risk can affect project income where network capacity does not expand at the same pace as generation.
Cooperative and shared ownership can broaden local economic participation, although it requires clearly defined responsibilities for construction, grid compliance, operations, insurance, and maintenance. Where several owners share one connection or substation, metering and commercial allocation must match the physical arrangement.
PNE’s permits increase the volume of German wind capacity available to proceed towards auction and construction. The projects now enter the more demanding phase in which consented megawatts must be converted into turbine orders, electrical infrastructure, network capacity, and dependable operating assets.
