Figures show total capacity reached 1,049.2MW from 258 turbines installed in the North and Baltic Seas.
There were 142 new turbines connected last year totaling 528.9MW — more than double the capacity installed in 2013, according to German wind energy association BWE.
BWE also said there are another 268 turbines totalling over 1.2GW in capacity that are waiting to be fully connected.
Norbert Giese, board member of the German Offshore Wind Energy Foundation (SOW) and vice president of offshore at Senvion, expects capacity to triple in 2015, reaching 3GW by the end of the year.
Giese also highlighted the importance of the sector to Germany's economy. "A turnover of about €1.9 billion had already been reached in the German offshore sector in 2013, with some 19,000 people employed in the offshore wind industry. We were able to approximately sustain these numbers in 2014," he said.
BWE said the new Renewable Energy Act, approved in June 2014, caused a spike in investment and installations.
In December 2014, Germany broke its monthly wind output record when it produced 8.9TWh. The figures were released by IWR, a German renewable energy research institute.
IWR believes the record could be broken again in 2015 as Germany brings online a number of offshore projects, including Vattenfall's 288MW DanTysk and RWE's 295MW Nordsee Ost.
Statistics firm Deutsche WindGuard collected the data for VDMA Power Systems, BWE, the Wind Energy Agency (WAB) and SOW.
.png)
.png)
