Show notes
Allen covers Energy Capital Partners buying TPI’s blade factories, GE Vernova’s $1.7 billion rescue of LM Wind Power, offshore wind cutting oil burn during a heat wave, Scotland’s Caledonia approval, and 19 states suing the Pentagon over stalled wind reviews.
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Good Monday everyone.
A few months ago, we told you about a Houston bankruptcy court carving up TPI Composites. Well, that story just got a whole lot bigger. On July sixth, TPI walked out of Chapter Eleven. Zero debt. New owners. A private equity firm called Energy Capital Partners picked up TPI’s blade factories in Iowa and Juarez, Mexico for about twenty million dollars. Twenty million, against more than a billion dollars in liabilities.
ECP did not stumble into wind blades. They bought Calpine back in twenty eighteen, inherited seventy-seven power plants, and became GE’s biggest private gas turbine customer in the Western Hemisphere. That relationship, forged in gas turbine halls, is what brought them to composite factories. GE Vernova signed a five-year supply deal requiring it to send blade orders to ECP’s factories. GE is ECP’s partner, its customer, and was even the backup buyer if the deal fell through. So TPI lives on, leaner, debt-free, with locked-in demand from one of the biggest turbine makers on earth.
But now, the other side of that coin. While ECP picked up two blade factories for twenty million dollars, GE Vernova recently pumped one-point-seven billion dollars into its own blade company, LM Wind Power. LM’s equity had fallen to negative 575 million euros. Revenue dropped ninety-six percent in one year, from 2.1 billion Danish kroner down to just ninety-three million. The Danish workforce, cut to about twenty-five people. LM Wind Power has lost money every single year since GE bought it in twenty seventeen. Nine straight years of red ink.
So think about that. Two American blade factories now serve GE Vernova’s onshore business. One in Grand Forks, North Dakota, owned by GE, inside a division losing four hundred million dollars a year. The other in Newton, Iowa, owned by ECP, zero debt, five-year supply deal. The independent contract blade business that TPI Composites built is gone. Vestas took the India and Mexico plants in-house. GE’s supply is locked to ECP. The OEMs and their financial partners now own the factories directly. And that is a new era for wind manufacturing.
Now, let us talk about what those blades are doing once they are spinning. Earlier this month, a brutal heat wave hit the eastern United States. Air conditioners running full blast. Grid operators scrambling to keep up. And off the coast of New England, two offshore wind farms stepped up. Vineyard Wind, eight hundred and six megawatts off Massachusetts. Revolution Wind, seven hundred and four megawatts near Rhode Island. Together they pushed hundreds of megawatts into the grid right when people needed it most.
And here is the number that matters. Oil-fired power plants met about ten percent of peak demand on July second this year. Last summer, at the height of a similar heat wave, oil plants covered nearly fifteen percent. That is more than a gigawatt less oil burned. The projects that survived lawsuits, survived construction shutdowns, survived lease freezes, are now keeping the lights on in New England.
Across the Atlantic, Scotland just approved two massive offshore wind farms. The Caledonia North and South projects in the Moray Firth, up to one hundred and forty turbines spread across one hundred and sixty-five square miles. Enough power for two million homes. Ocean Wind is leading the development with a commitment of about 1.7 billion pounds. And here is what makes this project different. Caledonia South will mix fixed-bottom and floating turbines, up to thirty-nine floaters. That blend of proven and next-generation technology on a single project is something to watch.
Back in the United States, nineteen state attorneys general are suing the Department of Defense. The reason, wind project reviews. Federal law says any wind turbine taller than two hundred feet must go through a Defense Department check, to make sure it does not interfere with military radar or flight paths. Last August, the Pentagon stopped reviewing those projects. No explanation. No timeline for starting again. Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown is leading the coalition, joined by attorneys general from eighteen other states including California, New York, and New Jersey. They want a court to force the Defense Department to start doing its job again.
And finally, a story from the sea floor. Down in southern New England, lobster populations have been falling for decades. Back in nineteen ninety-eight, there were about fifty million lobsters in those waters. By twenty twenty-two, fewer than ten million. But something else is moving in. Jonah crabs. Fishermen used to throw them back. Now they are hauling them in by the thousands, selling them as a cheaper option to lobster. And researchers at the University of Rhode Island are finding that offshore wind foundations are acting like artificial reefs. Algae grows first, then barnacles and mussels, then fish and crabs follow. The question scientists are working to answer is whether these structures create new marine life, or just pull it in from the surrounding ocean. Either way, the turbines are not just making electricity. They are making habitat.
Now, here is what to watch. This Wednesday, July twenty-second, GE Vernova reports second quarter earnings. And the numbers we just talked about will be in the room. One-point-seven billion dollars pumped into LM Wind Power, a blade company that has lost money nine years straight. Twenty million dollars to let ECP walk away with two factories and a five-year supply deal. GE Vernova is guiding for four hundred million dollars in wind segment losses this year. Meanwhile, its Power and Electrification divisions are printing money, nearly five billion dollars in free cash flow last quarter alone.
So the question on that earnings call is simple. If you are spending eighty times more to keep your in-house blade maker alive than a private equity firm paid to buy your contract supplier, how long do you keep doing both? Watch for what GE Vernova says about LM Wind Power’s future, about North American onshore blade strategy, and about whether that 1.7 billion dollar injection was a rescue, or a goodbye. The answer could reshape who makes blades in this industry for the next decade.
And that is the state of the wind industry for the 19th of July, twenty twenty-six. Join us for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast tomorrow.