Published

9 months ago

December 8, 2025

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Australia Loses Offshore Project, Ecowende Moves Forward

Allen covers Ecowende’s first monopile installation in the Netherlands, designed to be the most ecological offshore wind farm ever built. Plus Ireland’s offshore potential proves far smaller than hoped, Australia cancels its third offshore project in recent months, LiveLink Aerospace solves radar clutter in Scotland, GE Vernova secures a Romanian turbine deal, and Canadian tariffs threaten BC Hydro wind development.

Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

If you want to see the future of offshore wind… look to the Netherlands.
Off the Dutch coast near IJmuiden… about fifty-three
kilometers out to sea… something special is rising from the waves.
They call it ECOWENDE.
VAN OORD’s installation vessel BOREAS just planted the first
monopile there on December third. Fifty-one more will follow. And when
complete… this seven hundred sixty megawatt wind farm will become… the
most ecological offshore wind project ever built.
Why most ecological?
The monopiles come in two sizes. Research shows taller turbines give
birds more room to fly safely between the blades. Some turbines will sport
red blades… to make them even more visible to passing flocks. The seabed
gets eco-friendly scour protection. And those massive VESTAS fifteen-megawatt turbines? They will sit atop foundations built by SIF
and SMULDERS.
Power for the Netherlands by end of twenty-twenty-six.
Meanwhile… across the North Sea in Scotland…
At ABERDEEN Offshore Wind Farm… LIVELINK AEROSPACE just solved
a problem that has plagued the industry for years.
You see… wind turbines create radar clutter. Their spinning blades confuse
military and civilian radar systems alike. But LIVELINK’s Air Intelligence
System… mounted on the nacelle… eliminates that clutter
without emitting any signals of its own.
The UK’s Department for Energy Security funded the test through the one
billion pound Net Zero Innovation Portfolio.
BEN KEENE of LIVELINK says the technology unlocks offshore wind’s full
potential… while strengthening national security.

Clean energy AND defense. Together.
But not every nation is celebrating.
IRELAND just discovered… its offshore wind dreams may be smaller than
hoped.
Energy Minister DARRAGH O’BRIEN received
confidential maps this spring. The assessment initially found potential for
forty-eight gigawatts offshore.
The realistic number?
Between three and eighteen gigawatts.
Deep waters. Shipwrecks. Arms dumps. Undersea cables. Protected
habitats. All these stand in the way.
The Irish government had targeted five gigawatts by twenty-thirty. They
face fines of up to twenty billion euros if they miss their climate goals.
Social Democrats spokeswoman JENNIFER WHITMORE says she is
surprised detailed mapping took this long.
Four years from the deadline… and they are only now learning which sites
will not work.
Down Under… the news is worse.
AGL Energy just cancelled GIPPSLAND SKIES… a two-and-a-half gigawatt
offshore wind project in Victoria, Australia.
That makes three offshore wind farms scrapped in recent months off
Australia’s south coast. German company RWE abandoned
its two-gigawatt KENT project in October. BLUEFLOAT ENERGY dropped
GIPPSLAND DAWN in July.

AGL says it will focus on onshore wind… batteries… and pumped hydro
instead.
But there is bright news from Eastern Europe.
GE VERNOVA just signed a deal with GREENVOLT POWER to supply
forty-two turbines for the GURBANESTI wind farm in
ROMANIA.
Each turbine… six-point-one megawatts. Combined with another recent
project… these two farms will bring five hundred megawatts online…
powering more than one hundred ten thousand Romanian homes.
Turbines start arriving in twenty-twenty-six.
And in British Columbia… Premier DAVID EBY has a fight on his
hands.
A twenty-five percent tariff on imported wind towers threatens BC HYDRO’s
electricity supply.
PATRICIA LIGHTBURN of the Canadian Renewable Energy Association
says the tariff could derail projects already announced. BC HYDRO is
counting on those wind farms to close an impending power gap.
Canada’s Energy Regulator expects wind to fill seventy percent of
renewable demand growth through twenty-thirty.
The tariff? Nobody saw it coming.
Now… for those of you heading to Edinburgh this week…
The UK Offshore Wind Supply Chain Spotlight takes place Thursday.

JOEL SAXUM and I will be there… meeting with innovating companies and
entrepreneurs who are building the future of this industry.
If you are attending… come say hello. We’d love to hear from you
And that is the state of the wind energy industry on December 8, 2025.
Join us tomorrow for the Uptime Wind Energy Pocast.

Australia Loses Offshore Project, Ecowende Moves Forward

Renewable Energy

Nordex Outsells Vestas, GE Vernova Rebuilds Wind Team

Published

11 hours ago

September 8, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Nordex Outsells Vestas, GE Vernova Rebuilds Wind Team

Nordex closes in on Vestas in onshore orders, GE Vernova rebuilds its wind team, Nexxis buys BladeBug, and wooden blades draw doubts.

The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

Nordex Outsells Vestas, GE Vernova Rebuilds Wind Team

Renewable Energy

Siemens Gamesa Builds Hornsea Blades, NEMS Invests in Perth

Published

1 day ago

September 7, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Siemens Gamesa Builds Hornsea Blades, NEMS Invests in Perth

Siemens Gamesa starts Hornsea 3 blade production in Hull, Germany approves an Offshore Wind Act amendment, and Nexxis buys BladeBUG.

Episode Transcript

Uptime News Flash
September 7, 2026
Happy Monday, everyone. Well, let’s talk about the biggest wind farm on earth. It doesn’t exist yet, but its blades are being built right now. Over in Hull, England, Siemens Gamesa just started making blades for Ørsted’s Hornsea 3 offshore wind farm. That’s two point nine gigawatts, one hundred and ninety-seven turbines. Each blade is longer than a football pitch. Fourteen hundred workers build blades in that factory, turning raw materials into finished product. When complete, Hornsea 3 will power more than three million British homes. It’s the single largest offshore wind farm in the world.
And if we slide over to Germany for a moment, the German cabinet just approved an amendment to the Offshore Wind Act, the WindSeeG. It’s headed to the Bundestag next. The goal? New rules by January first, twenty twenty-seven. But the Offshore Wind Energy Foundation says the draft does not go far enough. Sixteen gigawatts of awarded projects are still waiting on final investment decisions. Sixteen — that’s quite a few. The foundation wants a new way for developers to hand back sites they can’t build, so those sites can be re-tendered quickly under conditions that actually work. Sort of a use-it-or-lose-it approach. That’s the idea.
We’ll head a little further east to India. India ranks fourth in the world for installed wind power, but probably not for long. A government official said this week that India will overtake Germany and become the world’s third-largest wind energy nation by twenty thirty — one hundred seven gigawatts of installed capacity. India added a record six gigawatts last year alone, shattering their previous record of a little over four gigawatts. And twenty-eight more gigawatts are under construction right now. Impressive.
Let’s head down to Western Australia, because a company called National Electric Motor Services, NEMS for short, is building a one million dollar facility in Perth to test and repair wind turbine generators. Right now, Australian wind farm operators ship their broken generators overseas for repairs, and that takes months. NEMS is the only authorized service center for ELIN Motoren in all of Western Australia. This is the fifth project funded through Australia’s Wind Energy Manufacturing Co-investment program. Local repair, faster turnaround, and homegrown capability — that’s all good.
And staying in Australia, Perth-based Nexxis Technology just bought a British robotics company, BladeBUG. BladeBUG is a robot that uses suction cups to crawl across wind turbine blades. Nexxis already has a robot called Magneto that uses electromagnetic adhesion to climb steel structures. If you put the two together, you can inspect almost any surface on a turbine, or about anything else. Add AI and machine vision, and you have robots that can see what human eyes might miss, from places human hands shouldn’t have to reach. It’s safer, faster, and it’s going to be a lot smarter.
One more story before we finish today. Siemens Gamesa has now installed more than 300 recyclable blades in six countries. The secret is a new resin. Unlike conventional resins, this one lets you separate the blade components at end of life, so you can separate the fabric from the resin. Cool stuff. Jonas Pagh Jensen, head of sustainability at Siemens Gamesa, says the technology is ready for full-scale use. And Siemens Gamesa has already installed 36 GreenerTower units — steel towers with 63% lower carbon emissions. So although sustainability may have faded from the headlines, it’s still in tender documents, and it’s showing up more than ever. In Denmark, the Netherlands, and France, buyers are all asking about recyclability and decarbonization before they award contracts.
So what should you be watching this week? Recyclability is no longer a nice-to-have — it’s a must-have, and it’s showing up in tender scoring. If your blades can’t be recycled at end of life, you may not win the contract to begin with. And a lot of supply chains are going local. Australia doesn’t want to ship generators overseas anymore. India is building its own turbine factories. The countries buying wind power want it built at home. For professionals in the wind industry, the competitive edge is shifting — it’s not just who can build the best turbine, it’s who can build it locally, recycle it fully, and inspect it without putting a person in a harness.

Siemens Gamesa Builds Hornsea Blades, NEMS Invests in Perth

Renewable Energy

Climate “Superfund” Will Require Legislation at the Federal Level

Published

2 days ago

September 6, 2026

Alice Rush

A judge has ruled that New York State’s climate “superfund,” modeled after laws that provide money to clean up toxic waste, runs counter to federal law and is therefore invalid.

Eventually, we will have laws that force companies whose actions are ruining the planet to pay for the remediation that must happen to avert environmental collapse. In the meanwhile, we need to expect the fossil fuel industry to continue its ruthless legal attack such legislation.