Blog Details

In early September, Siemens Gamesa announced the appointment of Parisa Bardouni, former CTO of Aker Solutions, as Senior Vice President and Head of Nacelle Technology, based in Pamplona, Spain. The move came just a month after the wind power giant posted its first quarterly profit in four years. A new technology leader stepping in at the same moment the company returns to profitability — this is clearly about far more than filling a vacancy.
1. One Appointment, Two Signals
Start with the appointment itself. Bardouni spent a full 20 years at Aker Solutions. She joined in 2006 as a systems and testing engineer and worked her way up through subsea project engineering, subsea manufacturing, and subsea technology strategy before ultimately becoming CTO, leading a global technology team of more than 250 people.
Her expertise spans two worlds: offshore wind concept and product development, and the technical integration of full-cycle EPC (engineering, procurement, and construction) operations in the oil and gas industry. That combination — hands-on experience with complex offshore heavy-equipment systems plus a foot in both renewables and traditional energy — is exactly what Siemens Gamesa needs most right now.
The nacelle is the most critical component of a wind turbine, and also the one most prone to failure. Over the past few years, nacelle-related quality failures cost the company billions of euros and badly damaged its global offshore wind business. Putting a technology executive with deep experience in complex offshore systems engineering in charge of nacelle technology sends a clear message: quality must be fixed at the source — in the engineering itself.
2. The Quality of the Quarterly Profit: The Good News Is Real, but So Are the Concerns
Breaking down the results, this “first profit in four years” deserves a sober reading.
The good news is genuine. Quarterly revenue came in at €2.743 billion, up 13.5% year on year. The pre-special-items margin jumped from -17.5% to 2.7% — an improvement of 20.2 percentage points. Operating profit reached €56 million, with pre-special-items profit of €75 million. Siemens Energy CEO Christian Bruch called it a tremendous achievement by the team.
But the concerns are just as glaring. New orders in the quarter totaled only €1.05 billion, down 78.5% year on year, leaving a book-to-bill ratio of just 0.38. Free cash flow remained negative at -€518 million. At the group level, the third-quarter headlines were driven mainly by the gas turbine and grid businesses — the group posted quarterly revenue of €11.45 billion, orders of €17.93 billion, and net profit of €1.08 billion — which leaves wind power as the segment still most in need of support.
Bruch was equally candid on the analyst call: plenty of hard battles lie ahead. European offshore wind projects continue to suffer delays over electricity prices, grid connection, and installation vessels. If order intake does not recover by 2028, European manufacturing capacity could face contraction pressure.
3. A €4.5 Billion Tuition Fee for Quality
To fully appreciate the weight of this appointment, we have to go back to the storm of June 2023.
That was when Siemens Energy abruptly withdrew its full-year guidance. A review had found that failure rates for Siemens Gamesa turbine components were far higher than expected, with bearings, blades, and other parts wearing out faster than the design assumptions. The problems first concentrated on the onshore 5.X platform, then spread to offshore turbines. On the day of the announcement, Siemens Energy’s share price plunged roughly 37%, erasing about €6.9 billion in market value. Repair costs climbed from the initial estimate of around €1 billion to €2.2 billion, and total expected losses for fiscal 2023 reached approximately €4.5 billion.
What followed was a long process of stemming the bleeding: a CEO change and restructuring in 2024; in fiscal 2025, the loss before special items narrowed to €1.36 billion, down 23.5% from €1.78 billion in the prior year, while orders recovered from €7.26 billion to €9.32 billion. Then, in fiscal 2026, the operating loss in the first quarter narrowed to €46 million, and the third quarter finally turned positive — the first quarterly profit since fiscal 2022.
So this appointment is not merely “a change of executive.” It is about moving from staunching the bleeding to restoring growth: rebuilding quality safeguards from the technological source and building the leadership bench for the next round of product competition.
4. Competition Returns to Fundamentals
Zooming out, the dynamics among Europe’s three major turbine manufacturers are quietly shifting.
On the global stage, all five of the top turbine OEMs in BloombergNEF’s 2025 ranking are Chinese companies, and Vestas has dropped out of the top five for the first time since 2013. Outside mainland China, Vestas, Nordex, GE, and Siemens Gamesa still hold the European base, with deliveries of roughly 5.4 to 12.9 gigawatts each — European manufacturers still accounted for about 94% of the European market in 2025 — but their high-end overseas strongholds are being steadily eroded by Chinese players.
There is also intensifying competition within the big three. Nordex has narrowed its onshore delivery gap with Vestas from 268% to 64% over the past decade. Vestas defends its ground with a service business three times the size of Nordex’s. And Siemens Gamesa, after four years of losses, has fought its way back onto a profitable track, trying to hold its position with a combination of “external tech heavyweight plus quality overhaul.”
Fluctuations in order intake are only the surface. What will truly decide the next round of the competitive landscape is product reliability, delivery quality, and the pace of technological iteration — which is precisely where the hope for Bardouni lies.
5. Conclusion: The Real Test Is Quality
Whether this leap — from the world of offshore engineering into the nacelle workshop of a wind power giant — can help Siemens Gamesa crack the hardest nut of all, quality, may not become clear for a year or two.
But at the level of signals, at least, this battle-scarred veteran of the wind industry has begun to take technology seriously. For the industry as a whole, that in itself is a shift worth noting.