Germany Builds the World’s Tallest Wind Turbine, 365 Metres and Taller Than the Eiffel Tower

October 5 (IT Home) — A wind turbine described by its developers as the world’s tallest now stands in a sparsely populated stretch of open country in eastern Germany, with a total height of 365 metres — taller than the Eiffel Tower.

The giant turbine is located at an existing wind farm in the Lusatia region, south-east of Berlin. The area was once a centre of lignite mining and has been gradually shifting towards renewable energy in recent years. The prototype unit completed its full-height construction last week and is expected to be officially inaugurated in mid-November.

Jochen Grossmann, chief executive of the Dresden-based engineering company Gicon, which built the tower, says the design can take advantage of stronger, steadier winds at higher altitudes. The hub height of a conventional wind turbine — the distance from the ground to the centre of the rotor — is generally far below 200 metres.

Speaking on Thursday, Grossmann said: “At 300 metres, the wind is steady and strong. Put the same equipment at that height and it can generate more than twice as much electricity as models at conventional heights.” He added that, compared with existing models, this turbine can also generate for longer periods each year.

As IT Home understands it, the hub height of this turbine is 300 metres, and with the blades included the total height is 365 metres. The Eiffel Tower in Paris is 330 metres tall, so this turbine is taller than the Eiffel Tower — though it still falls slightly short of Germany’s tallest structure, the Berlin TV Tower at 368 metres.

Construction work on the turbine is not yet fully complete: internal wiring still has to be finished before its planned inauguration on 19 November. The purpose of building this prototype is to measure exactly how much extra power generation ultra-high towers can deliver.

Gicon plans to use the data from this prototype to go on and develop a wind farm deploying three to five such ultra-high turbines, paving the way for larger-scale production.

In Grossmann’s view, giant turbines could also help solve the shortage of land suitable for wind farms. Existing sites could be upgraded into “double-decker” wind farms, mixing tall and short models, while new sites could be planned with this approach from the start.

Germany has been steadily expanding its use of wind, solar and other renewable energy for years. Under its long-term plan, Germany shut down its last nuclear power plants in 2023. Energy prices rose sharply after the Russia-Ukraine conflict, however, and that nuclear phase-out drew considerable criticism at the time. Germany also plans to stop coal-fired power generation entirely by 2038.

Data from Germany’s Federal Statistical Office shows that in the first half of 2026, 59.1% of the energy Germany produced came from renewable sources. Wind power was the single largest contributor, accounting for 29.4% of all electricity generated.