Veja Mate: Vattenfall begins marketing its balancing reserve with offshore electricity
Unlike on land, the wind at sea is usually constant and predictable. Electricity from offshore wind farms can therefore make a significant contribution to the stability of the electricity system – the sale of balancing energy from the Veja Mate offshore wind farm is a strong indication of this.
November 2026
Vattenfall is supplying balancing energy to the electricity market in Germany from an offshore wind farm for the first time, providing 200 megawatts – the largest pre-qualified capacity of balancing energy from offshore wind to date.
The Veja Mate wind farm used for this purpose is located around 95 km north-west of the island of Borkum in the North Sea and has a total capacity of 416 megawatts. 67 wind turbines generate electricity equivalent to the needs of 450,000 households. The wind farm is owned by a consortium comprising Commerz Real, Ingka Group, KGAL Group and wpd invest. As the direct marketer, we place and optimise the energy generated on the electricity market.
Pre-qualification of the offshore wind farm
For wind farms, the focus is particularly on positive and negative secondary control power (Automatic Frequency Restoration Reserve, aFRR) and minute-level reserve (Manual Frequency Restoration Reserve, mFRR). To this end, we worked with our client to have the Veja Mate offshore wind farm pre-qualified within the control area of the transmission system operator TenneT TSO. The pre-qualification process required close coordination between the plant operator, the direct marketer and the transmission system operator, sufficient human and technical resources, and compliance with a wide range of legal and technical requirements:
Contracts
To gain access to the balancing reserve market, the direct marketer must be authorised as a balancing reserve provider and must conclude a framework agreement for the provision of balancing power with the transmission system operator responsible for the relevant control area.
A direct marketing contract, ideally covering several years, is also required, as well as a separate balancing reserve marketing contract setting out the key commercial terms.
Technology
Particularly resource-intensive aspects include the redundant design of IT systems and the secure control system connection of the plant. For pre-qualification, evidence must be provided of, amongst other things, marketable capacity, technical controllability, metering and verification capabilities, the IT and service delivery concept, operational testing, and a control system test.
Economic Viability
Revenue is generated primarily through the provision of balancing power, but also through the delivery of balancing work. The amount depends in particular on pre-qualified and awarded capacity, the product, availability, the call-up of power and work, the bidding strategy and opportunity costs.
The future of renewable balancing reserve
Vattenfall has for some time been making part of its power station capacity available for balancing reserve. Whilst conventional plants were primarily used in the past, today the main contributors are flexible pumped-storage power stations with a total capacity of 2.7 gigawatts. In addition, we are working flat out to implement further pre-qualifications in order to integrate more fossil-free plants into the balancing energy market. These include further offshore wind farms, solar parks combined with large-scale batteries, and external battery storage systems, which we are optimising for the electricity market.
Do you have any questions about marketing balancing energy with Veja Mate? Please feel free to get in touch!
<a class="arrow">renewables@vattenfall.de</a>
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