French oil and gas giant to pay $208m for gigascale North Sea site with required 'overplanting' of up to fifth of grid connection capacity

TotalEnergies, for the third year in a row, has won a gigascale acreage at a German offshore wind tender that went into negative bidding.

The French oil and gas giant was successful against one other unknown bidder in the auction for the right to build and operate the 1GW N-9.4 far offshore site in the North Sea, with a pledge to pay the German state €180 million (US$203 million).

Germany’s federal grids agency BNetzA yesterday held a so-called ‘dynamic auction procedure’ (negative bidding) after two bidders had handed in zero-subsidy bids in the first leg of the auction in early June.