Goldwind Brand Guidelines: From a Xinjiang Wind Farm to the GW Turbine Range

A research institute, a Danish grant and thirteen turbines.

Goldwind’s story begins before the company itself. Chinese Wikipedia traces it to the Xinjiang Water Conservancy and Hydropower Research Institute in Urumqi, whose electrical department began working on small wind turbines in 1982, and which in 1986 set up a wind-measuring station near Chaiwopu Lake, south-east of the city. In 1988 the institute formed the Xinjiang Wind Energy Company. Goldwind’s own website dates its “exploration” years to 1985–1997.

The defining project was the Dabancheng wind farm. With a grant from the Danish government, English and Chinese Wikipedia say, the institute bought thirteen 150-kilowatt turbines from the Danish maker Bonus, which later became part of Siemens; the farm was connected to the grid in October 1989, and English Wikipedia describes it as China’s first wind farm. German aid followed in 1994 for eight more imported turbines, and in 1997 the team brought in the technology to make 600-kilowatt machines in China.

The company proper was founded in 1998, when the Wind Energy Company, its staff and investors set up an independent business, Chinese Wikipedia says; it took the name Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology in 2001. English Wikipedia names Wu Gang as founder and chairman, and says the company was funded by the state through China’s 863 research programme. When it listed in Hong Kong in October 2010, the Chinese financial site Sina Finance reported, Wu Gang described Goldwind as a company with a 13-year history but more than 20 years in the wind business.

Its early turbines were geared machines built under licence from German designs: English Wikipedia says production started in 1998 with Jacobs 600-kilowatt models designed by the German engineering firm aerodyn. A factory in Urumqi, finished in 2002, could build 200 of the 600-kilowatt turbines a year, Chinese Wikipedia says.

Direct drive, a German partner and the letters GW.

The technology that shaped Goldwind came from Germany. In 2003 it signed a joint design and technology-transfer agreement with Vensys Energy for a 1.2-megawatt direct-drive turbine with permanent magnets, Chinese Wikipedia says. In February 2008 the trade site windfair.net reported that Xinjiang Goldwind had agreed to buy a 70 per cent stake in Vensys, saying the deal would help it make large wind turbines and that it planned a plant in Germany with its new subsidiary. English Wikipedia says Goldwind’s turbines are now exclusively permanent-magnet direct-drive machines, alongside a medium-speed permanent-magnet line.

The product names are plain. Chinese Wikipedia notes that every Goldwind turbine code starts with “GW,” short for GoldWind, followed by the rotor diameter and rating, as in the GW155 or GW171; the newer medium-speed models carry the prefix GWH. English Wikipedia lists the 16-megawatt GWH252 as its main offshore model as of 2024. Goldwind’s first nearshore project, for China Three Gorges at Xiangshui in Jiangsu, finished installing its turbines in September 2016, Chinese Wikipedia says.

Goldwind moved abroad step by step. Chinese Wikipedia dates its first export to November 2008, when six 750-kilowatt turbines were shipped to Cuba from Tianjin, and its first African project to 2011, at Adama in Ethiopia. The company lists offices in Chicago, São Paulo, Neunkirchen in Germany, Johannesburg, Sydney, Ho Chi Minh City, Istanbul and Tashkent. Chinese Wikipedia lists its factories, all of them in mainland China, from Beijing and Baotou to Yancheng’s Dafeng district and Hami.

Its scale is now measured by analysts. In its ranking for 2025, BloombergNEF said Goldwind kept its place as the world’s leading wind turbine supplier, with 29.3 gigawatts installed, as Chinese makers took the top six places for the first time; it put Goldwind second offshore, behind the wind unit of Siemens Energy.

Towers, blades and nacelles.

Wind turbine makers sell machines that few people ever see up close, so the pictures they publish do much of the work of a brand. The most familiar image is the finished turbine: a white tower and three blades on a ridge, across farmland or in a line out at sea, often shot at dawn or against a clear sky. Onshore and offshore are presented as two different worlds, one of fields and hills, the other of open water and service vessels.

The second set of images is about scale and movement. Makers like to show a single blade strapped to a long trailer on a country road, or rows of blades, towers and nacelles waiting on the quay of a port before being loaded onto ships. Port hubs and installation vessels have become a picture in their own right as offshore wind has grown.

Inside the factory, the pictures turn to process: nacelles lined up in high, bright halls, generators and hubs on assembly stands, and blade moulds the length of the building, with workers in overalls and helmets for scale. Service teams make up the last familiar scene, technicians clipped on at the top of a nacelle with the landscape far below, or descending a blade on ropes.

Behind the images is a heavy industry with a small number of large makers. BloombergNEF reported that 169 gigawatts of wind capacity were added worldwide in 2025, about 95 per cent of it onshore, and that Chinese makers took the top six places in its supplier ranking for the first time. This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it and where it says its turbines, blades and towers are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Urumqi and Beijing.

Goldwind is a listed company with state shareholders. Chinese Wikipedia says it listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in December 2007 and on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in October 2010; Sina Finance reported that the Hong Kong shares began trading on 8 October 2010. Chinese Wikipedia, citing shareholder data from October 2019, names a Xinjiang wind-energy company and China Three Gorges’ renewables arm among the largest shareholders. Sources differ on its base: Chinese Wikipedia gives the head office as Urumqi, while Goldwind’s own website lists its headquarters in Beijing’s Economic and Technological Development District, and English Wikipedia also says Beijing.

Goldwind’s home region has brought scrutiny. In June 2021 the US research group the Tech Transparency Project reported that now-deleted local government posts indicated a Goldwind factory in Toksun County, Xinjiang, had been in talks in 2016 to receive workers through a “labor export” programme from Hotan Prefecture, a type of scheme researchers associate with forced labour of Uyghurs; it said it could not determine whether any transfer took place. It also noted a December 2020 agreement with the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, which the US Treasury had sanctioned that July. Asked by BuzzFeed News, Goldwind called the allegations “categorically false,” said it had never engaged in the forced export of labour from any region of China and does not use forced labour of any kind, and said the turbines it supplies to North America and other regions are made and assembled on China’s east coast, not in Xinjiang.

The company describes itself today as a “trusted global strategic partner in clean energy,” and says its work now spans energy development, equipment, services and energy use, not only turbines. Its own history page groups its years into exploration, starting up, taking off, transformation and diversification, the last running from 2016 to the present.

For a design guide, Goldwind shows a maker whose identity is carried by a system of product codes and by the scale of its wind farms more than by any single shape. Compare Envision, another Chinese turbine maker, and Mingyang. For this guide we use a steppe blue, sky and sand with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Goldwind’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.