After several months of construction, the new solar park at Gerbstedt in the Mansfelder Land region in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, is complete. It is more than a standalone installation. Developer WPD Onshore has used it to extend an existing wind farm, with the array finished in November 2025 and now in operation.
Pairing the wind farm with a solar park brings clear advantages. The solar installation makes use of infrastructure already in place, including the existing substation. The regional grid faces no additional load, as both installations share the same grid connection and their generation profiles largely complement one another. The sun typically shines when the wind drops, and the strongest winds tend to coincide with overcast skies.
No grumbling about grid bottlenecks
Should both installations generate electricity simultaneously, the wind farm has priority for feed-in to avoid overloading the grid. "The lighthouse project in Gerbstedt is a striking example of how innovative approaches to expanding renewables can prevent bottlenecks in the power grid," said Armin Willingmann, energy minister of Saxony-Anhalt, at the commissioning of the hybrid plant. "We need more renewables, not fewer, because they are our affordable home-grown sources of energy," Willingmann added. "What matters now is not grumbling about grid bottlenecks. We can avert them with pragmatic solutions. And we cannot afford to lose any more time in the consistent expansion of the power grids."
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Solar park remains viable despite wind priority
The new ground-mounted solar array has a total capacity of around 54 MW and is expected to supply roughly 20,000 households with electricity. According to the operator, the installation remains economically viable despite the priority given to wind power, because wind generation is concentrated in the winter half-year while solar output peaks in the summer months, the energy ministry in Magdeburg said. An overarching park controller manages the combined generation output, regulating the solar park's feed-in so that the grid connection is never overloaded.
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86,000 solar modules installed
Projects of this kind also represent the future of energy supply for WPD Onshore. "With the electricity generated by around 86,000 solar modules across 53 hectares, we are helping to make the economy independent of fossil energy imports, involving the town and its residents under the federal state's participation legislation, and reducing electricity costs for everyone," said Matthias Lehmann, head of technical project management and director of the eastern regional office at WPD Onshore. "This allows us to bring together our existing eight wind turbines and the new solar park at our own substation. It is made possible by the innovative concept of a hybrid grid connection point, which combines factors such as local feed-in conditions, the grid's absorption capacity and the investments involved into an economic optimum," he said.
