Gravity Strikes Again: GE’s Mega-Turbine Collapse Kills Offshore Wind Industry

When your industry depends on mega-myths and hyped-up hubris, get ready for Armageddon-scale disappointment. GE’s rent-seeking wind power harm, Vernova pumped up its planned 18MW Haliade X offshore turbine with the kind of fanfare once reserved for NASA’s efforts to land men on the Moon.

These things have a predilection for plummeting to earth with seismic results. STT regularly reports on the phenomenon, noting a very significant increase in the number of collapses in the last 18 months – and that, accordingly, insurers are cranking up the premiums they charge their owners.

At a time when America’s offshore wind industry is in complete financial freefall, the last thing it needs is a super-expensive mega-turbine that can’t stand on its own pile-driven feet. With GE ditching plans to build its 18MW monster, rent-seekers are using the ‘loss’ of the promised giant as yet another excuse to explain away their financial woes, as this lament from EE News outlines below.

How the death of a mega-turbine rattled US offshore wind
EE News
Benjamin Storrow and Heather Richards
22 April 2024

The wind industry’s global race to make ever-bigger turbines stumbled to a sudden slowdown last week, jarring U.S. offshore wind projects, says E&E News.

When GE Vernova confirmed that it was canceling one of the largest wind turbines ever designed, it signaled a pause in an arms race that for years had led manufacturers to go higher, longer and wider when building towers, blades and other components. Now, that decision is reverberating across U.S. efforts to build wind projects in the Atlantic.

New York canceled power contracts for three offshore wind projects last week, citing GE Vernova’s decision to abandon its largest turbine model, a massive 18-megawatt machine. The timing could hardly be worse. Offshore wind is the keystone of New York’s plan to generate 70 percent of its power with renewable energy by the end of the decade.

The timing could hardly be worse. Offshore wind is the keystone of New York’s plan to generate 70 percent of its power with renewable energy by the end of the decade.

The canceled projects pushed New York further adrift of meeting its goal. Today, a little more than a quarter of New York’s power comes from renewable sources, the vast majority of it hydropower.

Offshore wind was supposed to help the state reach 70 percent, with New York officials targeting 9,000 megawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2035. Last week’s decision nixed almost half of it.

“It’s obviously a setback. I mean, there’s no way to sugarcoat it,” said Fred Zalcman, director of the New York Offshore Wind Alliance. “It was to be a big part of New York’s portfolio — and kind of the linchpin — in getting to nine gigawatts by 2035.”

The cancellations owe to a variety of factors. The offshore wind market is still adjusting to the effects of inflation and higher interest rates.

It also reflects New York’s push to link offshore wind projects with manufacturing facilities onshore. And it came just as GE Vernova emerged as a stand-alone company from General Electric, with a struggling offshore wind division that reported a $1.1 billion loss last year.

But many analysts and industry officials cited the push for ever-bigger turbines as the leading issue for the projects’ failure. GE announced last year that it intended to develop a supersize 18-MW version of its Haliade X turbine, in what would have been one of the largest pieces of wind equipment ever built outside of China.

GE was a leader in the industry trend to build larger and larger turbines. In theory, a bigger turbine could help developers deliver more power at lower costs. It means they could install fewer foundations or string less cable to bring power ashore.

But the reality is more complex. More port space is needed to assemble gargantuan turbines and larger boats with stronger cranes are required to haul and lift them. There’s also this: Bigger machines tend to break more, according to analysts.

A growing number of people in the industry had called for a halt in turbine race in hopes of allowing supply chains to catch up and enabling manufacturers to standardize their processes.
EE News