EDF Energies Nouvelles acquires offshore wind farm Operations & Maintenance specialist OWS

EDF Energies Nouvelles has announced the acquisition, via its Reetec GmbH subsidiary, of the German company Offshore Wind Solutions GmbH (OWS), which is specialized in the offshore wind Operations and Maintenance (O&M). Through this acquisition, EDF Energies Nouvelles confirms its ambition to expand in Germany and to strengthen its offshore wind activity.

Founded in 2014, OWS is responsible for O&M at the BARD Offshore 1 wind farm, located in the North Sea, 95km off the German coast. This wind farm consists of 80 turbines of 5MW each, giving total capacity of 400MW.

The acquisition of OWS comes alongside the renewal of the offshore wind facility maintenance contract for 10 years, by its owner Ocean Breeze Energy.

Through the acquisition of OWS, EDF Energies Nouvelles complements the O&M expertise of its REETEC subsidiary, which has mainly been active in onshore and offshore wind installation until today. With the 188 experts from OWS, Reetec will now have more than 350 O&M specialists across these two business areas.

OWS also has an Operations Control Center for offshore wind in Emden, the cradle of the German offshore wind industry. This center is ideally located, as it is in direct proximity to numerous North Sea offshore wind farms.

Antoine Cahuzac, EDF Group's Senior Executive Vice President, Renewable Energies and CEO of EDF Energies Nouvelles, commented: “We are delighted to welcome the OWS staff who will share its unique experience of the O&M activity in the offshore wind sector with EDF Energies Nouvelles. This deal is a good opportunity for the EDF Group which has strong ambitions in the offshore wind project development, in line with its CAP 2030 strategy aimed at strengthening its presence in renewable energies by 2030, both in France and abroad by 2030”. 

Today, EDF Energies Nouvelles operates, on its own account or for third parties, nearly 14GW of renewable capacity in 11 countries.