A wind turbine in the eastern German state of Brandenburg has reached its final height of 365 metres, developer Gicon said this week, making it the world’s tallest wind turbine and placing it just three metres shy of Berlin’s television tower, Germany’s tallest structure.
The high-altitude turbine, located in Schipkau, a small town roughly 100 kilometres south of Berlin in the Lusatia region, has a hub height of 300 metres and reaches 365 metres at the tip of its rotor blades, surpassing the Eiffel Tower by some 35 metres. Finishing work was briefly delayed by strong wind gusts before crews completed the structure. Germany’s Wind Energy Association recognizes it as the world’s tallest wind turbine, eclipsing the previous commercial record of 285 metres, held by an installation in Bavaria.
The project was built by the Dresden-based Gicon Group on behalf of Germany’s Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation, known as SPRIND, based on a design originally conceived by East German engineer Horst Bendix, who died in 2023. Construction began in September 2024 and took roughly two years to complete, with an inner tower section raised into position using a specialized telescopic mechanism. The turbine pairs a 300-metre lattice tower with a Vensys 126 turbine rated at 3.8 megawatts and a rotor diameter of 126 metres.
Gicon said the structure is designed to capture stronger, more consistent winds found at higher altitudes and could generate roughly twice as much electricity as a conventional turbine with the same rotor diameter, enough to power up to 7,500 households once operational. German Federal Environment Minister Carsten Schneider said the project would help reduce the country’s reliance on imported oil and gas. The turbine is scheduled to begin generating electricity for the first time in November, after which developers plan to prepare the technology for serial production.
The installation sits in Lusatia, a region long dominated by lignite coal mining that has been undergoing a broader shift toward renewable energy as Germany phases out coal-fired power.
