Ørsted Finishes Drone Trial, Iberdrola Exits South Korea

Good Monday everyone. Every wind farm is at least a twenty-year promise. This week … the industry learned which risks it can engineer away … and which ones it cannot.

Start in the North Sea. A delivery just went out at Hornsea 2. No crane. No vessel at the base of the tower. No technician hauling a heavy bag up the turbine.

Ørsted and Skyports just finished a four-week cargo drone trial there. The drones carried maintenance kits from the service vessel to the top of the turbine. Each kit held the tools and parts for one job. Each one weighed fifty-five to sixty-five kilograms. The kits arrived before the technicians did. When the work was done … the drone flew them back. A new automatic hook picked up each load. Nobody had to clip it on by hand. And the turbine kept making power during the delivery.

Then came the milestone. The team flew its first delivery beyond visual line of sight inside a working wind farm. About four kilometers … run from the vessel. Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority cleared the airspace. It says routine flights like this are the next goal. Ørsted’s project lead says the trial confirms the plan. Drone maintenance is moving into routine operations.

Stay in Britain … where the next generation of offshore wind is getting a proving ground. The government’s research agency just gave three million pounds to the European Marine Energy Centre. The money moves a project called DeepWind toward a final investment decision. DeepWind would be a national test site for floating and deepwater wind. The target is twenty thirty.

The center says Europe’s test sites don’t offer the depths and seas that Britain’s future projects will face. Testing a floater in calm water is one thing. Surviving a deepwater winter is another. Moorings, anchors and dynamic cables would all be proven at full scale. The center’s operations director says the goal is simple. Make deepwater wind insurable … and bankable.

Three million pounds won’t build it. It pays for two years of design, permits and planning. And the center is still asking developers and suppliers what they need the site to do.

So the engineers are taking risk out. The politicians … are putting some back in.

Germany wants to cap what wind farms pay for land. Under a draft reform of its renewable energy law … rent could not top three and a half percent of a wind farm’s yearly revenue. The cap would last twenty years. It would even cover some leases already signed for projects not yet running. The first draft said two and a half percent. The states and the industry pushed it up.

Germany’s municipal utilities back the plan. They say it could save about thirteen billion euros in support payments by twenty forty-five. A landowner would still get about thirty-two thousand euros per turbine each year.

But eighteen banks wrote the ministry an open letter. They say the cap adds uncertainty. And checking every lease for twenty years costs money. Enough money, they warn, to wipe out the savings. Germany’s renewable energy federation says one cap can’t fit every region. Forest owners and family farms go further. Their legal opinion says the cap may clash with Germany’s constitution. And a landowner who doesn’t like the deal … can simply say no.

Now to Spain … where one of the world’s biggest wind companies explained why it walked away from South Korea. Iberdrola signed a deal with GS Energy in twenty twenty-one. It never built a thing there. Iberdrola’s head of international business says the problem was not the wind. It was the government. A wind farm runs for twenty years or more. But in South Korea, the terms of power contracts could change with every new administration.

Iberdrola is not alone. Equinor dropped its Korean offshore projects this year. It says it will not be back. Corio Generation closed its Korean office in March. Shell left in twenty twenty-four. RWE is scaling back. They point to slow permits, weak grids and rising costs.

The Iberdrola executive points to America, too. This year, the Trump administration halted several offshore wind projects. Still … she says the door to Korea is not locked. Demand is high. And Iberdrola is watching.

So what should wind professionals take from this week? First … technical risk is getting cheaper to solve. A drone trial and a test site cost a few million. And they lower the risk for every project that follows. If you make moorings, anchors or cables … DeepWind is asking for your input right now. The specs written in the next two years will shape that market for a decade.

Second … watch the cost of capital, not the headlines. Germany’s cap saves money on paper. But when eighteen banks object in writing … those savings can come back as a higher interest rate.

And that is the state of the wind industry for the 12th of October 2026. Join us tomorrow for the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.