Wind Turbines Keep Getting Bigger. The Order Books Keep Getting Smaller.

Written 11 September 2026, on 2026 offshore project and turbine reporting from GreentechLead, the US Department of Energy and trade coverage.

Wind is in an odd position: the machines keep getting better and the businesses building them keep struggling. Siemens Gamesa returned to profit in the third quarter of its 2026 financial year on productivity and cost efficiency — while new orders dropped sharply.

That combination, improving margins on falling volume, is what an industry looks like when it stops chasing growth and starts trying to survive its own backlog.

• •14–15 MW offshore turbines are now standard for major projects, from Siemens Gamesa, Vestas and GE Vernova
• •Mingyang has announced 18–20 MW class platforms with rotor diameters approaching 280 metres, hardened for typhoon conditions, targeted from 2026
• •More than 300 GW sits in the global project pipeline
• •Denmark awarded Vattenfall at least 1.8 GW across two offshore farms in its latest auction

A 280-metre rotor is most of three football pitches across. The engineering is not the constraint.

Completion of the 2.6 GW Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project slipped roughly six months, from mid-2027 to the end of that year. Delays of that kind have been routine across offshore wind, and they are expensive in a way that solar delays are not: vessels, ports and installation windows are booked years ahead and do not wait.

India’s wind fleet is overwhelmingly onshore, and offshore has been announced more often than built. The read-across is less about turbines and more about two things wind shares with everything else here.

• •Wind output is variable and largely nocturnal in much of India, which makes it a complement to solar rather than a competitor — and both need firming
• •The CEA draft requiring co-located storage applies to new onshore wind as well as solar, so a wind developer is now a storage buyer
• •Turbine generators are the other large consumer of rare earth permanent magnets, tying wind to the same supply constraint as electric motors

That last point is the one most relevant to this business. A direct-drive offshore turbine can use a very large quantity of neodymium-iron-boron magnet, which puts wind and electric vehicles in competition for the same constrained material. Our series on magnets and motors covers why that material is hard to substitute.