Built 85 miles out in the open North Sea with no state money, 64 of the largest turbines ever commercially deployed fed Germany’s grid for the first time this September
Eighty-five miles from the nearest German island, the North Sea does not ease into a welcome.
Yet on a Thursday in mid-September, Germany’s largest offshore wind farm was inaugurated in those waters with every one of its 64 turbines standing in place.
The farm is named He Dreiht, Low German for “It Spins.”
Connecting elements were produced in Belgium, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Poland, with components shipped from the ports of Esbjerg and Eemshaven.
It earned that name without a single euro of public subsidy.
What makes it remarkable is not just the distance but the machine that had to get there. How does a rotor that wide actually reach a site that far out?
Why the rotor diameter alone changed what the installation vessel had to do
The Vestas V236-15 turbines, each capable of generating 15 MW, are being used commercially for the first time at He Dreiht. That rotor diameter of 775 feet is not an incremental step. The turbines reach a hub height of 466 feet, with the rotor sweeping roughly six football fields of air with every turn.
At that scale, each blade root sits higher above the waterline than the top of a 14-story building. Because the nacelle alone weighs more than any previous commercial offshore unit of this class, installation vessels had to manage lifts that exceeded the normal offshore envelope.
Wind Orca commenced the project in April 2025 before Wind Keeper took over the remaining scope, marking Wind Keeper’s first offshore installation campaign since her acquisition and comprehensive upgrade.
The foundations beneath a machine this size, and why German steel mills got the contract
The wind farm’s 64 foundations are steel pipes 30 feet in diameter and 230 feet long, manufactured exclusively in Germany. Connecting elements were produced in Belgium, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Poland, with components shipped from the ports of Esbjerg and Eemshaven.
A 30-foot diameter steel pipe is wide enough to park a semi truck inside it. Two hundred and thirty feet of it sinking into the seabed creates an anchor that must hold a 960 metric ton machine through North Sea storms that arrive without warning.
Getting those foundations to a site 85 miles offshore required over 60 ships at peak construction and more than 500 people on site, coordinated by the offshore office in Hamburg. The logistics alone elevated He Dreiht into a class of project where the supply chain is almost as complex as the engineering.
What the numbers actually show, and where the evidence was hardest to come by
Once fully operational, the 960 MW farm is expected to generate enough electricity to cover the equivalent consumption of around 1.1 million households, with around 2.4 billion dollars invested. Not a cent of it came from the German state.
Its installed output makes it Germany’s largest offshore wind farm, financed solely through power purchase agreements. A large share of generation capacity has already been committed: 100 MW to Google, 150 MW to Evonik, 85 MW to Fraport, 50 MW each to Bosch and Salzgitter, and 20 MW each to DHL Group and Deutsche Bahn.
The board member responsible put the case plainly. “Offshore wind is a domestic, renewable energy source that can generate considerable amounts of electricity for many hours a year,” he said, calling it key to “maintaining security of supply and decarbonising the electricity system.”
The blade incident that arrived before full commissioning was finished
Not everything went cleanly. Vestas was investigating after damage was discovered to a rotor blade in late July. A fragment fell into the sea and was later retrieved by the German Federal Police, with the developer noting on August 7 that Vestas was examining the damage.
That kind of blade event carries particular weight on a platform making its commercial debut. Any flaw on turbine 40 of 64 raises the question of whether the same stress pattern exists on turbines already spinning, pushing back the date at which every megawatt in the nameplate can actually be claimed. Blade damage at remote sites shares that same logic of access; offshore, sea state adds a variable no road ever does.
What He Dreiht proves, and what it still leaves open for the next project in the queue
He Dreiht is already supplying electricity to the German grid, with full operation expected in the coming months as commissioning proceeds in stages. That roster of industrial buyers, a steelmaker alongside a freight carrier alongside a technology company, is a meaningful signal about where firm offshore power contracts are landing.
Yet the blade incident leaves an honest caveat. The developer is already advancing a 1 GW farm in the German North Sea and a 2.9 GW project in Scotland, both likely using the same turbine platform. Root-cause findings from the July investigation will feed directly into their installation planning.
What He Dreiht proved is that the V236-15 can be installed at commercial scale and feed a national grid under real conditions. What it left open is whether the maintenance regime for a machine this large, this far out, has yet been fully written. The value locked inside the previous turbine generation is already part of that arithmetic, since materials costs for the next build depend partly on what the existing fleet returns to the supply chain. He Dreiht, standing in heavy water with no public money behind it, is at least evidence that the math can work at 960 MW.
Hugo is an engineer with strong technical expertise. Multilingual from an early age, his writing combines technical clarity with a strong interest in science and energy.
