November 4, 2025

expert reaction to study of extreme winds and wind turbines

A study published in Nature Communications looks at extreme winds and offshore wind turbines. 

Prof Chris Vogel, Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, said:

“The opening sentence in the press release about 40% of offshore wind farms experiencing high wind speeds has the potential to cause confusion, as it pertains to the maximum wind speed for IEC Class III turbines, not necessarily the turbines actually installed at a location. I don’t have a database of all wind turbines and their classes installed in different wind farms, but many of the recent offshore wind turbines installed around the UK, for example, are rated as Class I and therefore have a higher maximum wind speed that they can withstand. The authors have been quite careful in their wording to discuss the wind speeds associated with an IEC class rather than the class of the turbines installed at a location, but this distinction might not be obvious to a general audience.

“The general point however that offshore turbines are subjected to high wind speeds, and that they are more exposed as they grow taller, is correct and one of the engineering challenges associated with building larger and larger turbines. As discussed in the paper, strong typhoons have caused some turbines to collapse due to the high loads they experience, highlighting the challenge of designing such large turbines for some parts of the world.

“Increased wind speed variability and stronger storms bringing the very highest wind speeds are anticipated as ocean temperatures rise. However, distinguishing long-term trends from interannual variations in mean wind speed is challenging and it is necessary to use long period datasets as in this paper to separate these phenomena. The authors show a slow increase in extreme wind speeds over time which is in line with other work published over the last few years. The rate of increase around the UK appears to correspond to an increase of 1-2 m/s over the typical 20-25 year lifetime of a wind turbine. Noting that many offshore wind turbines being installed in the UK are Class I and therefore rated for the highest wind speeds, while the changing wind speeds will be important for load calculations, based on the trends in this paper we wouldn’t necessarily expect to exceed the class rating for the turbines during their lifetime.”

‘Increasing extreme winds challenge offshore wind energy resilience’ by Yanan Zhao et al. was published in Nature Communications at 4pm UK time Tuesday 4 November 2025. 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-65105-3

Declared interests

Chris Vogel: None declared.