Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Storm Damages ENGIE Wind Farm, Mexico Plans 7 GW

Allen covers a storm that damaged ENGIE’s South Dakota wind farm, Sumitomo exiting two Belgian offshore farms, Envision’s loss in Denmark, and Continental building its own wind farm.

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Happy Monday everyone.

Sometimes … Mother Nature reminds the wind industry who is really in charge. Late last month … hurricane-force winds ripped through Hyde County, South Dakota … tearing into the Triple H Wind Farm operated by French energy giant Engie. One hundred and thirty-one miles per hour … as strong as a Category Four hurricane. More than twenty of the site’s ninety-two turbines … damaged. The two-hundred-fifty-megawatt complex is out of service … and turbine supplier GE Vernova is on-site now … assessing the wreckage. No injuries … but the governor declared a state of emergency. The machines that harvest the wind … taken down by the wind itself.

Now … while one wind farm goes dark in the American plains … ownership is reshuffling across the North Sea. Japan’s Sumitomo Corporation has exited two Belgian offshore wind farms … selling its stakes to joint venture partner Jera Nex BP. That is the partnership between oil major BP and Japan’s largest power generator Jera. Jera Nex BP now has full ownership of the two-hundred-nineteen-megawatt Northwester 2 … and has raised its stake in the one-hundred-sixty-five-megawatt Nobelwind to eighty percent. Both farms operate out of Ostend, Belgium … and have been generating power since 2017 and 2020. Sumitomo walks away … Jera Nex BP doubles down.

Meanwhile … in Denmark … China’s Envision Group is seeing red for the first time in fifteen years. The company’s global innovation center in Silkeborg … a strategic research hub for wind turbine components and advanced manufacturing … posted a loss of just under one-point-three million Danish kroner. That is a swing of more than one hundred fifteen percent from last year’s profit. The culprit is not the technology … it is the currency. The U.S. dollar fell nearly twelve percent against the Danish krone in 2025 … and Envision’s books took the hit. Revenue also dropped eighteen percent … but management says the underlying operations remained stable. The machines still work … the math just changed.

And speaking of money flowing into wind … a Turkish energy company just tapped an unusual source. Aksa Enerji … the largest publicly listed independent power producer in Turkiye … has secured one hundred twenty-four million dollars in financing backed by China’s export credit agency Sinosure. The money will fund a one-hundred-megawatt wind-plus-storage project in the southern province of Mersin. This is the first renewable energy project in Turkiye to receive a license as a storage-integrated facility. Aksa now operates power plants across seven countries … with more than three gigawatts of total capacity. Chinese capital … backing Turkish wind … with battery storage baked in from day one.

Now … here is a story that might surprise you. Continental … the German tyre maker … yes … the tyre company … is building its own wind farm. Three Nordex turbines … each standing two hundred sixty-seven meters tall … right next to its tyre factory in Korbach, Germany. When they are online … those turbines and the factory’s existing solar panels will cover two-thirds of the plant’s electricity demand. Fifty-five gigawatt-hours a year … powering rubber mixing and extrusion lines … directly from the wind. Continental calls it a model for its production sites worldwide. Cheaper power … more predictable costs … and less exposure to volatile energy markets. The wind industry just gained a tyre company as a customer … and a competitor for electrons.

And finally … south of the border. Mexico has eight gigawatts of wind power installed today … more than thirty-three hundred turbines across sixteen states. But the next chapter is already being written. The government plans to add nearly seven gigawatts of new wind capacity this term … part of a broader push for thirty-two gigawatts of new generation overall. More than two gigawatts of wind projects are pending allocation right now … and the industry estimates this next wave could mobilize four to five billion dollars in investment … building thirteen to fourteen new wind farms before the decade is out. The final decisions come in October.

Here is what stands out this week. The wind industry is no longer just selling kilowatt-hours to utilities … it is selling energy independence directly to manufacturers … and that changes the customer base entirely. At the same time … capital for new wind projects is coming from places it never came from before … export credit agencies … cross-border joint ventures … and government allocation programs with billions on the line. The money is there … but so are the risks … currency swings … extreme weather … and the constant reshuffling of who owns what. For wind energy professionals … the takeaway is simple … the industry is growing … but the business model around it is getting more complex by the quarter.

The turbines keep turning.

And that’s the state of the wind industry for the 5th of July 2026. Join us for the Uptime Wind Energy podcast tomorrow.