Die Wind industry has in Germany the second best year in its history: In 2025, 958 wind turbines with a total output of 5,232 megawatts (MW) were newly installed on land. This is an increase in construction output of 58 percent compared to the previous year. Only the year 2017 was a little higher with an expansion of 5,524 MW. Since 456 systems with an average age of 23 years of operation were shut down last year, there was a net increase of 4,602 MW. The industry associations presented these figures on Thursday.
A new system now has an average nominal output of 5.46 MW. That’s doubled in the last ten years. This increase was made possible by an increase in the average rotor diameter from 104 to 151 meters since 2015. The towers have also become increasingly taller; The hub height is now on average 146 meters.
The leader among the federal states in terms of expansion was North Rhine-Westphalia, where 1,358 MW of new systems were built, followed by Lower Saxony with 1,156 MW. The increase in output in Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saxony-Anhalt and Schleswig-Holstein was below average, reports the wind and solar agency.
That was at the same time Stromp travel level has recently been relatively high on the stock exchange: last year the average price was 8.9 cents per kilowatt hour, while in the 2010s it was usually 3 to 4 cents. As a result, there has so far been no significant wave of decommissioning of the old plants, which no longer benefit from funding after 20 years.
If prices fall, there is a risk of closure
There are currently around 10,400 fully funded existing systems with a total of 12,650 MW still in operation in Germany. Since the machines have long since been written off, they can often continue to be operated without funding as long as no major repairs are required. However, if wholesale electricity prices fall significantly again and the number of hours with negative electricity prices continues to grow, an increasing number of old systems could be forced to give up.
The number of onshore wind turbines in Germany is currently around 68,000 MW (68 gigawatts, GW). Despite a record expansion of 8 to 8.5 GW expected by the industry in 2026, the “target path will not be achieved,” says Dennis Rendschmidt, Managing Director of the mechanical engineering association VDMA Power Systems. This results from the goals of the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG): 115 GW should be installed by 2030, which would require an annual net increase of a good 9 GW in the remaining five years. That would be twice the value in 2025.
There are enough projects for even higher expansion figures: last year, a record output of a good 20 GW was approved in Germany. This is also because the authorities have been working quite quickly recently. The approval processes, which were completed in 2025, only took 16.8 months on average. Two years earlier the period was 25.9 months.
In return, however, the duration of projects to be implemented became longer and longer. Most recently, the period between approval and commissioning was a full 29 months – a new record. Last year it was 27 months, ten years earlier it was only 12.8 months. One reason for the long time required for implementation is the lack of networks, which often only allow a delay in connecting the systems. “The grid operators are responsible,” says Bärbel Heidebroek, President of the Federal Wind Energy Association. This also means that the networks need to “become smarter” through more digitalization.
Industry complains about too few tender quantities
The wind industry also complains about what it sees as too low tender volumes. In order to receive the guaranteed remuneration, a project must be awarded a contract in one of the four EEG tenders every year. Around 10.9 GW will be put out to tender in 2026, but there is already an approved system volume of 14.8 GW. It is therefore already foreseeable that in 2026 almost four GW of the already approved systems will not be awarded, calculates Jürgen Quentin, consultant for the energy industry and EEG at the Wind and Solar Agency.
Since the industry expects a further 20 GW of approvals for 2026, by the end of the year there could be projects with a total of almost 24 GW that are not guaranteed funding. Industry lobbyist Heidebroek is therefore already calling for higher quotas in the tenders. But over the course of this year the cards for the industry will be reshuffled anyway: The federal government The EEG will be revised, so that a lot will change in the promotion of renewable energies in the coming year.