GE Vernova remains committed to offshore wind despite enduring a “tough summer” that is expected to culminate in staff layoffs and a downsizing of the business unit.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, chief executive Scott Strazik (pictured) said the turbine manufacturer will “keep working on offshore wind everyday” but noted “the industry has a lot to do for it to thrive”.
“The economics haven’t really worked for anyone in the value chain of offshore wind, whether it be my customers or the wind OEMs by any means,” he said.
“That said, we believe offshore wind matters to the world and want to play our part, but we need to continue to execute on what we have, which is a backlog that’s going to take us a period of time to complete.
“And we need the economics for the industry to reset and reset what best illustrates the risk and reward for what are very complex operations out at sea.”
The GE chief told the publication his company has “learned a lot” from a blade breakage incident in July, where a Haliade-X unit was damaged at Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners’ 800MW Vineyard Wind project off the US east coast.
“That has led to a very thoughtful, thorough summer for us to ultimately restart our operations on the other side of that event.
“We learned a lot from it to this point, but what we’ve been talking about with offshore wind is that it’s a nascent industry where we need to be thorough and not rushed, and that’s really how we’ve gone about this summer.”