Germany offshore wind power generation hits a record 14.6 terawatt hours in first half of 2026

Germany offshore wind power record in 2026

Germany offshore wind power generation hit a record in the first half of 2026. Offshore wind turbines, turbines built out at sea, generated 14.6 terawatt hours of electricity, a terawatt hour equal to a billion kilowatt hours, the unit used to measure large amounts of electricity generation. The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems states, from its own Energy Charts monitoring platform, that generation rose from 11.4 terawatt hours in the same 6 months of 2025, up 28%, Clean Energy Wire reports. Onshore wind, turbines built on land, also grew, from 48.7 to 52.8 terawatt hours in the same period, and together wind supplied 30% of net public electricity generation, power actually fed into the public grid, up from 28.8% a year earlier.

A second measurement, a different scope

A separate measurement puts the same half year offshore total higher, because it counts on a different scope. The German energy industry association BDEW and the research institute ZSW state that offshore wind generated 15.0 billion kilowatt hours on a gross national basis, power generated across the whole country rather than only what reaches the public grid, also up about 28% from a year earlier. BDEW and ZSW also state that Germany added 0.9 gigawatts of new offshore wind capacity, capacity meaning how much electricity generating equipment can produce at once, in the first half of 2026 alone, against 0.5 gigawatts added across the whole of 2025. Kerstin Andreae, chief executive of BDEW, said, "Investment will only flow where there are reliable rules in place," pointing to what the industry says it needs from policymakers to keep building.

He Dreiht adds a wind farm the record does not count

Weeks after the record period closed, He Dreiht, at 960 megawatts the largest offshore wind farm in Germany by installed capacity according to trade publication offshorewind.biz, was inaugurated in the North Sea. The project, led by the utility EnBW, cost 2.4 billion euros and sells its power under long term contracts to companies including Google, Deutsche Bahn and DHL Group. Its capacity of 960 megawatts, a smaller unit of the same measure as the gigawatts above, is close in size to the entire 0.9 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity Germany added nationally in the whole first half of 2026, one project roughly matching a half year of national additions, and none of its output counts toward the 14.6 terawatt hour record because construction finished and the farm was inaugurated after that 6 month period had already closed.