Dominion Absorbs $800M in Tariffs, Nordex Profits Double

Allen covers Dominion's $800M tariff hit, Eversource's 84% profit drop, Nordex's record quarter, and a looming floating wind vessel shortage.

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Good Monday, everyone.

Let us start this week with a number. Eight hundred million dollars. That is what tariffs on steel and aluminum added to Dominion Energy's Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project. Dominion President Bob Blue shared the damage on a second-quarter earnings call. Two hundred and thirty million dollars … just in the latest quarter alone. That is on top of the five hundred and eighty million from the quarter before.

The project is eighty-one percent complete. Thirty-one turbines are already spinning … producing more than four hundred and fifty megawatts. But the finish line just moved. Completion is now expected by the end of twenty twenty-seven. Weather delays. Vessel maintenance. And some particularly complicated turbines to install. Blue says the project will still save customers money. And Dominion expects to pocket more than five hundred million dollars in savings from grid upgrade cost shifts. The total price tag … eleven-point-six billion dollars.

Now … if Dominion is feeling the squeeze in Virginia … Eversource up in New England is feeling something worse. The utility's second-quarter profit dropped eighty-four percent. Net income fell to just fifty-three-point-seven million dollars. Why? A one-hundred-and-sixty-four-million-dollar charge tied to the offshore wind projects they already sold. South Fork Wind. Revolution Wind. Eversource got out of offshore wind back in twenty twenty-four … but the bills keep coming. Higher-than-expected payments to Global Infrastructure Partners are dragging down the bottom line.

So one company builds through the pain. Another walks away … and still pays for it.

But here is some good news. Over in Hamburg, Germany … Nordex just posted a quarter that would make any CEO smile. Sales up sixteen percent. EBITDA … more than doubled … to two hundred and twenty-four million euros. Margins hit ten-point-three percent. Net income … one hundred and eleven million euros. Up from thirty-one million a year ago. And orders? Up thirty-two percent. Three-point-one gigawatts of new turbine orders in just one quarter. Their total order book now stands at eighteen-point-four billion euros. Nordex CEO José Luis Blanco confirmed the full-year guidance. The onshore wind giant is not just surviving. It is thriving.

Now … let us go to sea. Classification society ABS says floating offshore wind is about to create a brand-new problem. Not enough ships. A new report says demand for large anchor-handling vessels and multipurpose support vessels will surge as floating wind projects go from small demonstrations to full commercial scale.

Here is the number that tells the story. A single one-gigawatt floating wind farm needs about one hundred and ninety-eight anchors … and nearly two hundred kilometers of mooring lines. That is far more than a single deepwater oil and gas platform. ABS says shortages in certain vessel classes could hit as early as twenty twenty-nine. Global floating wind capacity is expected to grow from about two hundred and seventy megawatts today … to fourteen gigawatts by twenty forty. The race for ships … has begun.

And speaking of ships … Japan just finished building one. Mitsui O.S.K. Lines held a naming ceremony in Nagasaki for the Wind Whale. Japan's first coastal deck carrier built specifically for offshore wind. One hundred and forty-nine meters long. A flush deck designed so that monopiles, towers, blades and nace