  Output characteristics of the European XFEL have been previously studied
assuming an operation point at 5 kA peak current. In this paper we explore the
possibility to go well beyond such nominal peak current level. In order to
illustrate the potential of the European XFEL accelerator complex we consider a
bunch with 0.25 nC charge, compressed up to a peak current of 45 kA. An
advantage of operating at such high peak current is the increase of the x-ray
output peak power without any modification to the baseline design. Based on
start-to-end simulations, we demonstrate that such high peak current, combined
with undulator tapering, allows one to achieve up to a 100-fold increase in a
peak power in the conventional SASE regime, compared to the nominal mode of
operation. In particular, we find that 10 TW-power level, femtosecond x-ray
pulses can be generated in the photon energy range between 3 keV and 5 keV,
which is optimal for single biomolecule imaging. Our simulations are based on
the exploitation of all the 21 cells foreseen for the SASE3 undulator beamline,
and indicate that one can achieve diffraction to the desired resolution with 15
mJ (corresponding to about 3e13 photons) in pulses of about 3 fs, in the case
of a 100 nm focus at the photon energy of 3.5 keV.
