Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg AG, Germany's third-biggest utility, says financial investors in the country's wind parks will follow a move by Babcock & Brown Ltd. and begin selling assets this year.

"Investors are coming together to force sales," Dirk Guesewell, managing director at the utility's renewable energy unit, said in an interview in Frankfurt yesterday. "The small guys are saying ‘just get out'."

Australia's Babcock & Brown Infrastructure Group said in November that it would sell wind turbines and other energy assets to cut debt after credit markets froze. Other investors in search of cash will sell a total of "several hundred megawatts" of onshore power generation capacity to German utilities at a discount to what they paid, Guesewell said.

Subsidies for electricity from windmills rose this year in Europe's biggest power market after the German government decided to favor turbines over solar panels in its bid to cut emissions of the gases blamed for global warming.

Asset sales would allow companies without capacity to add turbines of their own, according to Ulf Gerder, a spokesman for a German wind power industry association.

"If you're a newcomer, it's a tough circle to break into," said the spokesman for Berlin-based Bundesverband WindEnergie e.V. "Most of the locations for parks are already known."

Wind Power Capacity

Gerder's association of small business and communities owns 20 gigawatts of the 24 gigawatts of German wind power capacity. The rest of the country's 20,000 turbines are held by financial investors, its four biggest energy suppliers and other companies, he said.

E.ON AG, RWE AG, Vattenfall AB and EnBW control more than 80 percent of power generation in Europe's largest economy.

"Larger" municipal utilities like that of Munich and HEAG Suedhessiche Energie AG will likely buy some of the wind parks up for sale, said Jochen Lamb, a lawyer at CMS Hasche Siegle who helped EnBW acquire 52 megawatts of new turbines last month.

Guesewell didn't say if his company will bid for the older units that become available. Karlsruhe, Germany-based EnBW plans to buy a maritime company as early as this year to provide transport and maintenance at sea for its planned offshore wind parks, the unit chief told reporters earlier.

EnBW wants 20 percent of the power it supplies to come from renewable sources by 2020, according to slides released at a presentation its law firm gave on mergers and acquisitions in the alternative energy industry. That's up from about 12 percent now, said Guesewell.

Falling Prices

Turbine prices have fallen since reaching about 1.1 million euros ($1.5 million) per megawatt of capacity in 2006 on cheaper steel and as tighter financing forced clients to delay new projects, according to Felix Losada, a spokesman for windmill maker Nordex AG. He declined to say how much the Norderstedt, Germany-based company currently charges for its products.

EnBW, which is 45 percent-owned by Electricite de France SA, bought its three new wind parks from Cuxhaven, Germany-based developer Plambeck Neue Energien AG. They feature turbines made by Nordex's larger Danish rival Vestas Wind Systems A/S.

The utility will also seek opportunities for "targeted cooperation" in solar power generation in Germany, Guesewell said, without specifying which companies EnBW plans to work with or how much it will spend.

Babcock & Brown Ltd., which invested in property, ports and power stations around the world, collapsed last month, becoming the biggest Australian casualty of the global credit crisis.