German offshore grid connection compensation (Section 17e EnWG)
In Germany, the grid operator compensates an offshore wind farm cut off from the grid: 90% of its EEG payment claim from day 11 of an outage, from day 91 of a delay. The rest is underwritten.
In Germany, an offshore wind farm does not build its own grid connection. The converter platform and the export cable belong to the transmission system operator, TenneT in the North Sea for instance, and the farm depends on an asset it does not own. Connection delays in the early 2010s led lawmakers to write, at the end of 2012, a compensation regime into the Energy Industry Act, the EnWG, at Section 17e. For an outage (Störung): if the farm cannot feed in for more than ten consecutive days because of the connection, it receives from the eleventh day 90% of the payment claim it holds under Section 19 of the EEG in direct marketing, less 0.4 cents per kWh, whether or not the grid operator is at fault. The statute adds an annual count beyond eighteen outage days in a calendar year, and an outage caused deliberately is compensated in full from day one. For a delay (Verzögerung): if the line is not ready by the completion date once it has become binding, a farm ready to produce is compensated the same way from the 91st day. On June 13, 2023, the Higher Regional Court of Nuremberg held that the wake effect enters the calculation, wherever it can be established technically. Outages shorter than a day, which it had also ordered compensated, went up to the Federal Court of Justice, which ruled on October 21, 2025 (EnZR 68/23): read the judgment before counting hours. For underwriting, the statute acts as a first insurer. Business interruption caused by the grid remains a contingent extension, but it now only bears on the first ten days, the 10% haircut and the 0.4 cents, and the insurer deducts the statutory compensation from what it pays. The regime has been amended several times, notably for farms awarded without support: read the consolidated version before setting a retention on it.
Textbook case, in numbers. A 500 MW farm with an EEG payment claim of 150 €/MWh produces 5,400 MWh per day. The grid operator's export cable fails for 25 days in a row: 135,000 MWh lost, or 20,250,000 €. Section 17e pays days 11 to 25: 15 x 5,400 = 81,000 MWh x 0.9 x (150 - 4) = 81,000 x 131.40 = 10,643,400 €. The farm keeps 9,606,600 €: 8,100,000 € for the first ten days and 1,506,600 € of haircut (81,000 x 18.60). That amount, and only that amount, is what a contingent grid extension goes after. The calculation applies the haircut to the claim less 0.4 cents; read it on the full claim, then less 0.4 cents, and the compensation drops to 10,611,000 €, 32,400 € less.
Section 17e EnWG, offshore liability regime, grid connection delay compensation, offshore grid outage compensation
Follow the research
One letter a week. First, the week's underwriting note, when one is published: a dated, argued decision, signed by Paul Bernardski. Then what the observatory published on cyber risk, political risk and insurance. No account, no tracking.
No spam, one-click unsubscribe, no data ever sold.