The bad performance of wind power installations again in this year’s Texas cold snap pointed to a bigger picture: Offshore wind turbine builders are also underperforming, and losing a lot of money.
General Electric’s turbine business, one of the larger builders, lost a whopping $2.2 billion in 2022, and is cutting its workforce by about 20%; only the new tax credit in the mislabeled Inflation Reduction Act might save it.
Siemens Gamesa, the wind turbine unit of the German industrial giant which calls itself “the global leader in offshore power generation,” lost just $974 million in its fiscal first quarter of October-December 2022 alone, according to Reuters on Feb. 1. According to Fox News, it didn’t receive a single offshore turbine order in that quarter, and its orders for onshore turbines dropped by 46% from a year earlier while the costs for those onshore windmill giants rose by 25% on the year.
