Ørsted Finishes Revolution Wind, RWE Wins German Auction

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Welcome to Uptime News Flash, Industry News, Lightning Fast. Your host, Allen Hall, shares the renewable industry news you may have missed.

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Happy Monday, everyone. Off the coast of Rhode Island this past week, the last turbine went up. Now hold that thought. First, let's talk about money and the banks.

Bloomberg NEF says global banks put $1.15 trillion behind low carbon energy last year.

That's a record. For every dollar banks lent to fossil fuels, they lent 97 cents to clean energy.

Five years ago, that ratio was 79 cents. So big shift. Wind project finance in Europe grew 75% in a single year. The money is moving. And here's an example of where it lands. Over in Texas, Oracle just signed wind energy deals across 10 projects. That's right, 10 projects, 1.7 gigawatts. Partners include RWE, Engie, Clearway Energy and Scout Clean Energy.

It all feeds the ERCOT grid. All powering Oracle's data center campus in Abilene. Oracle wants 100% of its AI data center electricity matched with carbon free power by 2035 Big tech needs big power and wind is answering the call.

Now let's cross the Atlantic. RWE won 119 megawatts of onshore wind in Germany's latest federal auction. Two projects, the first, UConn 3, it's 84 megawatts on reclaimed land at the former Garsweiler Coal Mine in North Rhine-Westphalia. The wind turbines on a former coal mine, that's pretty interesting. And the second, which is Zadorf Wind Farm in Lower Saxony, that's five old turbines totaling nine megawatts replaced by five modern machines at 35 megawatts. Nearly four times the power in the same number of towers. Both projects target 2028 And just north of Germany, Denmark just made a move. The Danish government scrapped its cap on onshore wind turbines. That cap was set in 2018, 1850 turbines by 2040 But the government's own forecast says Denmark will need 3,300 turbines. Climate Minister Samira Nawaz said tearing down working turbines because of an old cap would be outrageous. But the Danish Chamber of Commerce warns more turbines need more grid.

Now, let's head back to Rhode Island here. Ørsted's Revolution Wind has installed its 65th and final turbine.

704 megawatts, $6.2 billion.

The federal government issued two stop work orders against the project. Federal judges threw them both out. Revolution Wind kept building. And now it joins South Fork Wind and Vineyard Wind as a third complete large scale offshore wind farm in the US. And what about those offshore wind farms? Well, during Winter Storm Fern, Vineyard Wind showed up big for New England. And during the July heat wave here, offshore wind kept oil-burning peakers pretty quiet. So here's what matters. The banks are landing at near parity with fossil fuels. And that's good. Big Tech is signing gigawatt scale wind deals. And that's fantastic. Turbines are going up despite political headwinds. The constraint now is the grid behind them. Denmark said it this week and Germany's Offshore Foundation said it last month. The next decade of wind energy growth will be won or lost on transmission and interconnection. So it's not the turbines. It's really not even the money. It's the wires. And that is the state of the wind industry for the 21st of September, 2026 Please join us for The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast tomorrow.