EnBW Begins Construction Work on 187 MW Solar Project

EnBW has begun constructing its “Weesow-Willmersdorf” solar park with an installed output of 187 MW on an area covering 164 hectares in Brandenburg.

EnBW (Energie Baden-Württemberg) has announced that it is constructing its “Weesow-Willmersdorf” solar park with an installed output of 187 MW on an area covering 164 hectares. The solar park is located almost 26 kilometres northeast of Berlin in Werneuchen, Brandenburg. The park will be able to supply around 50,000 households with environmentally friendly energy through its annual yield of 180 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, saving about 129,000 tonnes of CO2 each year. The entire project is due to be commissioned before the end of 2020.

“Major photovoltaic projects like this one are just what is needed to push forward renewable energy and the Energiewende in Germany,” said Dirk Güsewell, Head of Generation Portfolio Development at EnBW. “This solar park is our first renewable project without state funding. It also marks a milestone for photovoltaics in Germany and demonstrates that this technology has achieved market maturity.” This is possible because of synergy effects due to the size of the park and the fact that costs in the photovoltaic sector have fallen by more than 80 percent in the last ten years.

The electricity will be fed into three 110 kilovolt overhead cables operated by E.DIS Netz GmbH. Two new transformer stations will be built to the west and southwest of the park in close vicinity to the high-voltage lines. EnBW is currently laying seven kilometres of cables to the planned transformer station to the southwest of the park in the district of Blumberg. The almost 4-kilometre long connection to the planned transformer station to the west of the park near Börnicke will be completed later.

The around 465,000 solar modules at the park will face south, have a construction height of around three metres and will be installed at an inclination of 20 degrees to the supporting structure. They will be distributed across four solar fields, divided by the local road network which will still be publicly accessible.

In October 2019, we had reported that EnBW had taken a final investment decision (FID) to build what will be Germany’s biggest solar park when fully constructed. It was announced at the time that the solar park will have an installed output of more than 180 megawatts (MW).