U.S. wind turbine orders reached 2.8 GW in the second quarter as developers rushed to start construction before the July 4, 2026, tax credit deadline, Wood Mackenzie said in a report released Oct. 26. The same quarter brought about 5 GW of onshore installations, most of it from the 3.65 GW SunZia project in New Mexico, the country’s largest wind project to date, Utility Dive reported.
SunZia is owned by Pattern Energy, with turbines from GE Vernova among its suppliers. One project carrying a quarter tells you how lumpy wind construction has become.
Tax credit deadlines drive wind turbine orders
Last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act pulled forward the deadlines for wind and solar to keep the 45Y production credit and 48E investment credit. Projects that began construction by July 4 have until Dec. 31, 2030, to be placed in service. Projects that missed it must be in service by Dec. 31, 2027.
“Policy is the variable with the greatest impact on wind installations,” Wood Mackenzie analyst Tyler Gifford said. Developers are prioritizing projects that can be running by 2030, so the firm left its five-year onshore installation outlook unchanged.
The onshore wind construction outlook through 2030
Wood Mackenzie still expects 39 GW of new onshore capacity by 2030. More than half of the 2026-2028 project pipeline is already operating or under construction, which the firm says limits near-term risk.
Repowering is softer. The upgrade forecast for existing farms fell 1 GW from the prior quarter because fewer repower equipment orders came in than expected, though the report says tax credits and rising decommissioning still support fleet renewal through 2030.
Offshore is a different story. Wood Mackenzie sees only 5 GW of offshore wind delivering in the next two years, with federal policy blocking new development.
Design is another cost to watch. The report says the American Society of Civil Engineers is expected to publish guidelines next year requiring turbines in tornado-prone areas to meet certain design requirements. That would show up first in foundation and tower design for projects in tornado country.
What the wind market report means for contractors
For balance-of-plant contractors, the work through 2030 is mostly spoken for. Projects that met the July deadline are the ones getting built, like Invenergy’s $750 million Philip Wind project, where Blattner is installing 55 Nordex turbines. Civil and electrical crews should expect fewer new starts to show up from developers that missed the cutoff, since anything without safe harbor faces a much tighter window.
That window is the number to watch. A project that missed July 4 has about 14 months, until Dec. 31, 2027, to be spinning.