Who is the leading manufacturer of today's wind energy?

1. Leaders by Capacity

Siemens Gamesa continues to be the dominant offshore wind turbine manufacturer, with a 55% market share, but the data show its market share in future projects will decrease to 43% as Vestas, GE, and Chinese OEMs gain market share.

Vestas is the second-largest OEM in terms of the market share of existing capacity. MHI-Vestas was established in 2013 to help Vestas expand its position in the capital-intensive offshore wind market. However, in October 2020, Vestas announced they were acquiring the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ share of the joint venture (Vestas 2020).

GE Energy, which was largely focused on the land-based market until its acquisition of Alstom in 2015, was the first of the major OEMs to scale up. GE advanced from the 6-MW Haliade wind turbine to the 12-MW Haliade-X turbine announced in 2018 and has seen its projected market share, based on announced projects, increase to nearly 15 times its current installed offshore operating capacity.

In China, Sewind (Shanghai Electric), MingYang, and Goldwind appear to be the dominant players based on announced project commitments.

Like fixed-bottom offshore wind developers, floating offshore wind developers want to use the largest commercial offshore turbines available on the market to lower costs. To date, no OEMs have announced plans to develop floating-specific offshore wind turbines, although some adaptive features may be needed, such as stiffer towers and advanced controls, to mitigate tower motion. It is likely that OEMs will wait until there is a larger and more advanced pipeline of floating offshore wind energy projects before committing to investments in floating-specific.

2. Turbine Size

Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy and Vestas are pursuing aggressive development timelines of less than 2 years between the announcements of their 14- to 15-MW wind turbines and the planned date of operational prototypes (Siemens Gamesa 2020; Vestas 2021a). This development timeline is on par with GE’s Haliade-X 12-MW prototype in Rotterdam, which was installed less than 2 years after the announcement (GE 2018, 2019). Historically, it has taken OEMs longer than two years to achieve an operating prototype after it is announced.

The largest wind turbine currently operating in the world is the GE Haliade-X prototype in Rotterdam, which has been updated to 13 MW by increasing the generator and drivetrain capacity (GE 2020). The practice of updating an existing turbine nameplate rating with the same rotor has become more commonplace among OEMs in the offshore wind markets and has been a strategy to increase wind turbine rating on the same platform without retooling blade production. This practice of increasing generator rating allows the wind turbine to generate more energy and helps the economics of the wind power plant, but the developers must carefully consider the potential for increased fatigue loading and decreased design life.