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

Could any C- high school kid believe that there are more top wealth management firms in Montana than there are in Florida, Texas, and California combined?

American Wealth Management Firms

At left we have something that illustrates why small wind is a concept in renewable energy that was abandoned about 15 years ago.

Germans are respected around the world for the quality of their engineering.  That’s good if you’re buying a Porsche, BWM, or Mercedes for $200K, but it’s terrible if you need something that’s really inexpensive.

And small wind needs to be dirt cheap, because your cost per KWh of electricity can’t be 50 times more than what you would pay to the local power utility.

If you want it cheap, it’s going to fall apart, and that’s particularly true if you’re talking about something that’s installed outdoors and spins every second of every day for decades.

German Engineering and Small Wind