Jochen Eickholt, the chief executive of Siemens Gamesa, has stated his shock at the extent of quality issues with components in its onshore wind turbines.
In a press conference this morning Eickholt said that a review of the Siemens Gamesa fleet begun earlier this year had exposed more problems with turbine components than first thought, specifically referring to bearings and rotor blades and “legacy turbines”.
He said: “The result of the current review will be much worse than even I would have thought possible.
“This is a disappointing, a bitter setback.
“The quality problems go well beyond what had been known hitherto, in particular in onshore.”
He referred to failure rates affecting components but they are also “new forms” of failures, adding that “problems are linked to certain components but also with suppliers”.
Tackling the problems will be time-consuming and is expected to come at a cost of more than €1bn, staggered over several years, the CEO said.
During an analysts call, also held this morning, Siemens Energy chief executive Christian Bruch said the setback is “more severe than I thought possible”.
“Siemens Gamesa will incur higher losses this year and will take longer to reach an appropriate level of profitability.”
Bruch continued to say that the turbine maker’s corporate culture need to be fixed “urgently”.
“Too much has been swept under the carpet.
“We will use the fact that we will soon own 100% of Siemens Gamesa to drive this change so that it will become a reliable contributor to Siemens Energy’s results.”
Both CEOs held press and investor calls, following the news on Thursday night that Siemens Energy was withdrawing profit guidance for Siemens Gamesa, due to the troubled manufacturer’s onshore unit looking likely to book additional costs of over €1bn associated with quality issues.