Orsted Wins Tax Fight, Vestas Breaks Onshore Height Record

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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. Well, wind turbines are supposed to be a threat to national security. At least, that's what some people are saying. But the militaries that actually operate near them, and they're turning those turbines into weapons of defense. Now, hold that thought.

First, let us go over to Germany. In the little town of Wenberg, Vestas just set a record. The tallest on-shore wind turbine ever built. An Inventus 172, 7.2 megawatts, sitting on a hub height of 199 meters. That is taller than a 60-story building. The tower is a concrete hybrid, and a second turbine is planned for next year. Vestas says the height lets the machine reach stronger and steadier winds, which means more energy and more value. It's a really simple idea. Build taller and capture more.

Well, let's stay in Germany, but head north to the Baltic Sea. Skyborn Renewables just closed financing on the Jenaquer offshore wind farm. That's 3 billion euros, 976 megawatts, 63 turbines.

And when it is running, Jenaquer will produce 3.8 terawatt-hours a year, enough to power about 1 million German homes.

Sixteen commercial banks and the European Investment Bank put up the money. And Jenaquer already has power purchase agreements from Unipair and, of course, Amazon.

Commercial operations start in 2028 Speaking of the European Investment Bank, the EIB just signed a deal with Danske Bank out of Copenhagen. A 250 million euro guarantee. Now, here is why this matters. Before a wind turbine maker can build a single machine, it needs a bank guarantee for the buyer. No guarantee, no production, no turbines, no wind farm.

This deal lets Danske Bank issue up to 500 million euros in guarantees to European wind manufacturers. It's the first deal of its kind in the Nordic region under the EU's 2023 wind power package. The IB is backing all this through a 6.5 billion euro wind program aimed at building 32 gigawatts of new capacity. Now, let's cross the English Channel. Orsted, the Danish offshore wind giant, just won a huge tax fight. Back in 2020, Danish tax authorities claimed 6.6 billion Danish crowns and taxes. That's about a billion dollars. And they're claiming that on two British wind farms, Walney Extension in the Irish Sea and Horn Sea One in the North Sea. Orsted said these projects were built, owned and operated by British subsidiaries, that they already paid UK tax.

An advisory commission under the EU Arbitration Convention just ruled in Orsted's favor. These projects have genuine purpose in Britain. They are taxable there. Orsted says the ruling will mean a minor adjustment in Denmark, largely offset by tax reductions in the UK. And Orsted expects similar cases to be resolved on the same legal principles. Now let's head across the Atlantic. Danish service company Global Wind Service, GWS for short, opened a business unit in Canada. GWS has been in the United States since about 2017

They helped build Block Island, Vineyard Wind 1, South Fork, Coastal Virginia, Offshore Wind.

But now they're heading north and offering services up in Canada. That's a very interesting move. Canada is going to be a huge growth area for wind energy. And finally, a quiet deal in Denmark. Polytech, a Danish wind industry supplier, just bought DansGummi Industry. It's a family-owned company founded in 1915 So well over 100 years old.

Four generations of the same family. Brothers Peter and Christian Thompson decided it was time to let somebody else take the company forward.

DansGummi makes transport solutions for moving blades, towers and the cells.

Politech has about 460 employees. CEO Rene Bala says that the deal helps Politech expand beyond wind and into other industries. And that's true. Now back to where we started. National Security and Wind Turbines. Defense experts across Europe say the threat is real. But it's totally manageable. Yes, spinning blades create radar returns. But modern phased array radars can see right through them. The Trump administration itself quietly ordered $438 million in phased array radar from Collins Aerospace, a company that markets wind farm radar mitigation as a core feature.

And here's the twist. Poland now requires defense sensors on every offshore wind farm. Its first Baltic project sits about 200 kilometers south of Kaliningrad, a Russian military outpost. Sweden's Saab tested radar on Orsted's Horn C-1 wind farm in 2021 and extended surveillance beyond the reach of the ground-based systems. The UK ordered 11 of those radar units. Belgium and the Netherlands are doing something very similar. They're not treating wind farms as obstacles. They're turning them into forward surveillance platforms. And that is how they should be used. As one former Danish Special Forces commander put it, you're changing the battlefield. But is it a change to your advantage if you use it as a tactical lever? So the takeaways for this week. The supply chain bottleneck is not turbines or steel. It's really the guarantees. The EIB-Donska Bank deal tells you where the real friction lives. Manufacturers cannot start work without bank paper. And if you're an operator waiting on turbine deliveries, this is the deal that moves your timeline. And if you're still hearing that offshore wind is a security threat, the people who actually defend the coastline are building their radar networks on top of the turbines. That threat narrative is just outdated and it is backwards. And that is the state of the wind industry for the 14th of September 2026 Please join us for The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast tomorrow.