Wind Power Succeeds to Meet Energy Needs

While European wind giants like Maersk and Ørsted face cancellations and layoffs, America’s offshore wind projects in Virginia and Massachusetts are surging ahead, proving that genuine energy demand trumps political headwinds when the physics and economics align.

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!

It’s an interesting time to be in wind energy….In a shipyard in Singapore, there’s a vessel worth four hundred and seventy-five million dollars. It’s ninety-eight percent complete, built specifically to install wind turbines off the coast of New York. And it’s just floating there… abandoned.

Maersk Offshore Wind walked away from the contract last week. Just cancelled it. Left Seatrium, the shipbuilder, holding a near-finished vessel with nowhere to go. The ship was supposed to build Empire Wind, but now lawyers are circling and nobody knows what happens next.

This is happening at the same time Orsted, the company that pioneered offshore wind energy, announces it’s cutting two thousand jobs. That’s a quarter of their entire workforce. In Germany, Eno Energy just filed for bankruptcy, leaving two hundred and eighty workers unemployed and the state government holding thirteen million euros in loan guarantees.

You might think the wind industry is collapsing.

But, you’d be wrong. Very wrong.

Thirty miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, workers just accomplished something remarkable. They hammered one hundred and seventy-six massive foundations into the Atlantic seabed, finishing the job in just five months… ahead of schedule… in what everyone agrees was perfect weather. And the weather along the East Cost of the US has been splendid this year.

This is Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, and when it starts generating power next March, it will be America’s largest offshore wind farm. Two-point-six gigawatts of power, enough for half a million homes.

But here’s what makes this story truly odd in today’s US political environment….

Republican Congresswoman Jen Kiggans from Virginia Beach stood up on the House floor last month to defend this wind farm. Not attack it… defend it. She explained that this project provides a five hundred million dollar power grid upgrade to Naval Air Station Oceana. She called it a matter of national security.

House Speaker Mike Johnson from Louisiana, oil country, personally told reporters he delivered Kiggans’ message directly to the President. “We want to do right by Virginians,” he said.

Think about that for a moment. In this political climate, a Republican Speaker is defending wind power. Why? Because Virginia desperately needs electricity. Data centers are consuming power at unprecedented rates, the military requires reliable energy, and this project has already created two thousand American jobs while pumping two billion dollars into the economy.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, something interesting is also developing. Chinese manufacturer Ming Yang Smart Energy just announced they’re investing two billion dollars to build a turbine factory in Scotland. They’re promising fifteen hundred jobs for Scottish workers, with production starting in twenty twenty-eight. The job creations and investment amount sounds great, but there are still many hurdles to overcome. The reliability and insurability of Ming Yang turbines is still a hot topic amongst wind energy engineers. And security concerns with Chinese turbines will surely raise eyebrows of the UK, EU and US governments. Only time will tell….

Remember that ship floating in Singapore? Here’s where the story gets interesting. Dominion has just taken delivery of Charybdis, the first American-built wind turbine installation vessel. When it finishes its work in Virginia, it will be available for other projects — like the Empire Wind project off the coast of New York. One company’s cancellation could become another’s opportunity. We shall see….

And before I forget, up in Massachusetts, without fanfare or political drama, Vineyard Wind has quietly reached fifty percent capacity. Thirty turbines are now spinning, delivering four hundred megawatts to the New England grid.

Here’s what years of covering energy markets has taught me: Politics is temporary, but physics is forever.

The companies struggling today made a bet that political support … and interest rates….would remain stable. The projects succeeding made a different bet entirely. They bet on need and they have flexibility.

Virginia needs power. The military needs energy security. Data centers need electricity to keep the internet running. And when genuine need meets engineering capability, politics usually steps aside.

That abandoned ship in Singapore won’t stay abandoned for long. Those unemployed German and Danish engineers will find new jobs.

Because here’s the secret that wind energy professionals understand but politicians sometimes forget: We’re not running out of wind, we’re running out of power….and money.

The move to lower cost power sources shouldn’t really be about politics anymore. It should be about pocketbook math. And the simple reality that our electricity demand is growing faster than older energy sources can supply.

Ultimately the winners in this industry won’t be the ones with the best political connections or the loudest voices.

They’ll be the ones who understand that when you’re building infrastructure designed to last generations, you’d better be building something the world needs and can afford for years to come.