Germany inching closer to new wind capacity

ESSEN, Germany, June 6 (UPI) -- German renewable energy company RWE Innogy said Friday it finished work at an operations base for its Nordsee Ost wind farm, a 295-megawatt offshore facility.

The company said Friday it finished work at two-story building in Heligoland, a German archipelago, that will serve as the maintenance and operations base for the offshore wind farm for the next 20 years.

"With Heligoland we have found a safe haven and are looking forward to operating our Nordsee Ost wind farm from here for at least the next 20 years," Nils Feil, head of the new RWE service station, said in a statement Friday.

Germany aims to rely on wind power to meet the bulk of its renewable energy needs. For European member states, the country had the highest level of carbon dioxide emissions last year.

The German energy company started installing the 48 turbines for the offshore wind farm last month.

Nordsee Ost, which RWE says will be among the largest of its kind for Germany, will provide at its peak 295 megawatts of power, enough to meet the annual electricity demands of 300,000 German households.

Nordsee Ost will be connected to the German energy grid by early 2015.