Offshore wind delivers first electricity to Polish grid

On 10 July Poland celebrated a major offshore wind milestone. For the first time, a Polish offshore wind farm delivered electricity to the country’s power grid. On the same day, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk inaugurated the Choczewo substation in Pomerania, Poland’s first major grid hub to receive power from offshore wind farms in the Baltic Sea.

Poland’s energy sector has opened a new chapter. Last week the Baltic Power offshore wind farm was Poland’s first offshore wind farm to deliver electricity to the country’s power grid.

The electricity generated offshore is brought ashore to the newly inaugurated Choczewo substation, Poland’s first major grid hub dedicated to offshore wind from the Baltic Sea.

At the inauguration ceremony, Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk highlighted offshore wind’s role in strengthening national security. He said: “Wind energy provides us with energy sovereignty. The fact that in these uncertain times, we have energy sources in many places and wind energy is independent of geopolitics means a lot.”

Building a new energy system from the ground up

Poland is undergoing a historic transformation. For decades, its energy system has run on coal — and that reliance is slowly coming to an end. Coal is an increasingly hard sell: expensive CO₂ emissions, air pollution, and economic pressure from a fleet of ageing power plants.

In its place, Poland is building a cleaner, more independent and more competitive energy system, with offshore wind at its core. Poland is set to have 5 GW of offshore wind by the end of this decade. The Government aims to install 18 GW of offshore wind by 2040, making it a key pillar of Poland’s energy security ambitions. Offshore wind represents one of the largest industrial investments in the country’s modern history: tens of billions of Euros mobilised, thousands of jobs created, and an economy being reshaped from the ground up.

The Baltic Power offshore wind farm represents an investment of around €5bn and is expected to cover around 3% of Poland’s electricity demand. The project is jointly developed by Polish energy company ORLEN and Canadian developer Northland Power. It currently moves through its phased commissioning process. Upon completion later this year, Baltic Power will have a capacity of 1.2 GW.