RTS WIND GROUP: From First Foundation to Final Decommission
Combining a group of highly specialised wind energy players, RTS Wind Group is now able to provide a comprehensive package, supporting the ongoing success of existing assets and helping to drive the next generation of green power from turbines around the world. The company supports with servicing, operations, maintenance, and more, and new CEO Kevin Jones is keen to deploy turnkey solutions far and wide.
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Interview with Kevin Jones, CEO
Kevin Jones has spent his career at the sharp end of offshore wind. He was part of the team that built the UK’s first offshore wind farm in 2004, he managed operations at the largest offshore wind farms of their respective eras, and he led global O&M strategy at Skyborn Renewables across assets in Asia, the US and Europe. When he joined RTS Wind Group at the start of 2026, he brought with him something unique, built over time in the field and in the boardroom: a precise understanding of what an end client actually wants from a service company. “I am an electrical engineer by training and I joined RTS after successful spells with some of the biggest names in wind. I know what an end client wants from a service company because I have been that client, and I think that gives us an edge,” he says.
RTS Wind Group is a newly formed holding company drawing together a collection of specialist subsidiaries that, taken together, offer something genuinely rare in the wind services market: the ability to support a project across its entire lifecycle, from construction and commissioning through operations, maintenance and life extension, and eventually to decommissioning.
The group includes RTS Wind AG in Germany, focused on onshore support for Vestas, Nordex and Enercon; RTS Wind GmbH in Austria; OnRope in Portugal, a specialist in complex blade repairs including non-destructive testing; RTS Wind UK Ltd, focused on balance of plant for the offshore market; and Ventus Energy, a niche high voltage company providing cable testing, terminations, commissioning, asset management and ongoing support. Across those entities, 340 people are employed in the UK, Germany, Austria and Portugal, with teams being built in Poland and the USA.
“We have intentionally split the company to focus on three pillars — onshore, offshore, and high voltage,” Jones explains. “We work with Orsted, Vattenfall, GE, Vestas, RWE, Deme, Seaway7 and many more, and we are trying to be across the industry, showing our capability across the lifecycle.”
The new blade repair training centre in Poland, opened in 2025, is a tangible expression of where the group’s ambitions are heading. A second training facility already operates in Portugal through OnRope, and plans are in development for a high voltage training centre following the group’s accreditation for an international set of HV safety regulations. “We are allowing mobility as people don’t have to be retrained to work on one site and then the next,” Jones says. “This feeds into our end-to-end approach and we believe this gives us a further competitive edge.”
The appointment of seasoned industry leader Alexandra Richards as Chief Commercial Officer in the same period has helped to centralise procurement at group level, eliminating waste, achieving economies of scale and freeing the operational teams to focus on delivery – adding further competitiveness.
Jones himself has headed up critical departments at Vesta, Vattenfall, various offshore developments in France, Skyborn Renewables, before joining RTS. “I have always been at the cutting edge of technology,” he says, adding that the goal is to become a long-term strategic partner for wind energy developers.
LIFECYCLE IN FULL
The competitive positioning Jones is building at RTS is grounded in the conviction that the wind services market rewards breadth as much as depth. Most competitors can offer a slice of the lifecycle — a specialist blade repair team, or a high voltage contractor, or an O&M service provider. Few can credibly present a single partner capable of contributing from early-stage planning all the way to decommissioning.
“There are not many other companies that can work across the full lifecycle of a wind farm,” Jones says. “We can be there in planning and construction, all the way to decommissioning. I am keen to bring a consultancy offering into the early stages to help build OpEx plans. We know how much it costs to operate assets and we know what it costs to operate a wind farm because we have experience of doing it, so I want to provide that as a service for the many new wind projects that are coming.”
That consultancy proposition is particularly relevant for emerging markets. Canada and Australia, among others, are jurisdictions Jones has in his sights, where offshore wind ambitions are growing but institutional knowledge of long-term operational costs is limited. Modelling Opex assumptions and developing maintenance plans for projects that are still years from commissioning — and then being positioned to deliver on those plans when the time comes — is a commercial model that very few service companies are structured to pursue. It requires genuine lifecycle depth, which RTS is systematically building.
The commercial strategy under Jones is also shifting in a more fundamental way. The traditional model for wind service companies — time-based availability revenue, with performance measured against contracted uptime targets — is being challenged.
“We want to be radical,” Jones says. “We want to focus on revenue-based availability for the customer rather than time-based revenue. Potential energy versus what energy you actually produce is the way wind farm performance is measured, but what if we flip that and look at when the energy price is high between 07:00 and 19:00. Why would we ever switch off wind turbines during that period? We want to keep an active dialogue with customers so that we can help them achieve maximum revenue while we deliver an excellent service.”
The company’s multimillion EBITDA position gives the business a solid operational foundation, but Jones is clear about the gap between where RTS is and where it could be. “I strongly believe we can increase our turnover by unlocking new framework agreements and showing big customers that we want to partner with them to help them reduce the cost of energy,” he says. “I come from the utility background and I know how the pricing works, so I know the levers that we need to pull to bring extra value to the end customer.”
AN INDUSTRY IN FULL FLIGHT
The macro case for a business like RTS has rarely been stronger, and the numbers behind it are striking. The recently published Global Wind Energy Council 2026 Global Offshore Wind Report projects that global offshore wind capacity will quadruple over the next decade, reaching 420 GW by the end of 2035. More than 327 GW of new offshore wind capacity is forecast to be added in the next decade, with annual installations expected to double in 2026, triple by 2031, and surpass 50 GW per year by 2035.
Global offshore wind capacity reached 92.5 GW by the end of 2025, with the sector adding 9.3 GW of new installations during the year — the third-highest on record. Over $980 billion in investment is projected across the decade. Every one of those gigawatts will need servicing, and as the installed base ages, the operations and maintenance requirement will compound.
The seasonal challenge that any wind services business faces — carrying a full team through the quieter winter months — is one Jones is addressing through a deliberately global lens. “I am thinking about work in the southern hemisphere so we can balance demand and carry a core team that switches between geographies to work in the summer months,” he says.
With an Australian hub on the horizon, with visas and work permits the primary operational hurdle to overcome. Deploying teams between Europe’s summer season and the southern hemisphere’s equivalent would allow RTS to maintain a stable core workforce year-round rather than relying on the contractor surge model that characterises much of the industry.
The supply chain model is correspondingly lean. Materials for complex retrofits are typically provided by the customer; RTS focuses on the manpower, planning and execution. With a dedicated control room in Belfast monitoring high voltage networks, an onshore team covering Vestas, Nordex and Enercon assets, specialist blade repair capability in Poland and Portugal, and a balance of plant offshore team in the UK, the group’s cross-functional structure means it does not face the supply chain constraints that trip up single-discipline contractors. “We are now handling our procurement at group level to eliminate waste and achieve economies of scale so that we can be more competitive,” Jones explains.
That competitive nature is critical as the offshore wind industry enters its most consequential decade. Turbines are ageing, service agreements are expiring, and the volume of assets requiring expert independent support is growing faster than at any point in the sector’s history. At the same time, the pipeline of new construction is accelerating globally, creating demand for the early-stage consultancy and lifecycle planning that Jones is positioning RTS to provide. A business that can sit alongside a developer from OpEx modelling through to the final decommission of the last turbine is not a commodity service provider. It is a long-term strategic partner — and that is what RTS Wind Group is building itself to be.
Images © RTS Wind Group