Suzlon’s Record Quarter, Wind O&M Australia, Critical Minerals in US

This week, Allen Hall and Joel Saxum explore Suzlon Energy’s record-breaking quarter, featuring a 5.1 GW order book and 96% earnings increase. They detail plans for the Wind Energy O&M Australia conference in Melbourne, aimed at sharing global technical expertise. Allen and Joel discuss the game-changing discovery of America’s largest lithium deposit in Arkansas, and spotlight Michigan’s Isabella Wind Farm project, which powers major automotive companies while generating substantial community benefits.

Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

Pardalote Consulting – https://www.pardaloteconsulting.com
Weather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.com
Intelstor – https://www.intelstor.com
Wind Energy O&M Australia Conference – https://www.windaustralia.com

Allen Hall: Well, Joel, we just don’t seem to have the luck of some people, I’m telling you. Because a gentleman down in North Carolina found a 20 bill laying on the ground outside of a gas station and used it to buy, of all things, a scratch off lottery ticket. And that ticket was worth one million dollars.

Joel Saxum: You know, Allen, sometimes they say, you gotta play to win.

And if someone, if some, by some luck of chance, you get 20 and it’s not, you’re playing with the house’s money, then. I think that, uh, maybe we need to just keep our heads on the ground a little bit more.

Allen Hall: He had the opportunity to buy all kinds of lottery tickets. I don’t know if you go into a gas station in North Carolina, there’s several kinds there.

He couldn’t find the one that he wanted. So he ended up buying just one that seemed okay. And that was the winning one. So if he had chosen the ticket that they had, the ticket that he wanted, he wouldn’t be a million dollars richer. Now, the real funny thing about this is they asked this gentleman, well, what are you going to do with all that money?

And it says, we are going to head straight to Golden Corral and eat everything they’ve got. So he’s gonna spend like 40 bucks worth of it? It’s hard to spend a million dollars at Golden Corral. But, however, I, it did force me to take a look at the dessert menu. Cause that’s one thing about Golden Corral is that they have a lot of desserts.

It’s like, it’s a big dessert bar thing. And If you, I will read some of these to you and go, wow, okay, this is not bad, right? Chocolate dip marshmallow skewers. Come on. I’m out on that. No way. So they have cakes and pies. They always have cakes and pies. All right. All right. Right? Pumpkin pie, peanut butter pie.

The Sweet Home Carolina cake, which is popular. Uh, carrot cake. Are you a carrot cake fan? I am, but it has to have good frosting. It’s gotta be a cream cheese frosting. Otherwise, I’m out. Carrot cake is an acquired taste. I think it’s an American taste, weirdly enough. Now, do you want it with walnuts? No walnuts.

No nuts. I want it clean and clear. And I have had one with a little bit of ginger in it that was

Joel Saxum: really good.

Allen Hall: Oh, the ginger is terrific in carrot cake. I have to admit, I’m a recent convert on that one because I thought, there’s no reason to put ginger into a cake. What are we doing? But it is quite good.

So this, this gentleman is going to be a golden corral quite a while. I wonder what the calorie intake is going to be in his life for the next couple of years.

Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Halladay, and I’ll be joined by my Uptime co hosts after these news headlines. Vattenfall has expanded its landfill ban to include more wind turbine components beyond blades. The Swedish developer will now prohibit landfilling of permanent magnets, nacelle canopies, and nose cones from its wind farms.

The company aims to achieve 100 percent recycling of these components by 2030, with a particular focus on recovering the rare earth elements from permanent magnets. This latest initiative builds upon Vattenfall’s 2021 blade recycling commitment and is already being integrated into current wind farm decommissioning contracts.

The strategy underscores the company’s dedication to reducing dependency on newly mined materials while decreasing environmental and social impacts associated with Rare Earth Mining. In Texas, RWE’s Champion Wind Farm will power Rivian’s DC fast charging Adventure network through a new 15 year purchase power agreement.

The 127 megawatt facility is undergoing repowering with 41 upgraded Siemens Gamesa turbines and six new 3. 1 megawatt units. Once completed by mid 2025, the wind farm will generate enough electricity to power nearly one billion miles of renewable driving annually. The project demonstrates innovative circular economy practices with decommissioned turbine blades being repurposed through regen fiber for use in construction materials.

These recycled fibers will be incorporated into concrete To enhance strength and durability, extending infrastructure lifespan. Belgium is advancing the world’s first artificial energy island with a 650 million euro green loan from the European Investment Bank. The Princess Elizabeth Island, to be constructed 45 kilometers offshore, will channel 3.

5 gigawatts of wind power, enough for over 3 million households. The project scheduled for completion between 2024 and 2027 will feature both high voltage DC and AC infrastructure. Foundation caissons are already under construction in the Netherlands. Additional funding includes 100 million euros through the European Recovery and Resilience Facility.

GE Vernova has launched an online store for wind turbine components in Latin America, featuring over 30, 000 items. The digital marketplace aims to reduce turbine downtime during maintenance and repairs across the region, where GE currently operates more than 3, 400 onshore wind turbines. The platform follows successful implementation in the United States and Europe, allowing wind farm owners to purchase spare parts and essential items in a single transaction.

And Fred Olsen of 1848’s Floating Wind Foundation, Brunel, has received DNV Basic Design certification. The semi submersible steel foundation features a modular design with two forward leaning towers, and a single point mooring system. The design is specifically engineered for the North Sea conditions and aims to utilize existing global fabrication capacity.

The Foundation’s weather veining function enables a passive ballast system that continuously optimizes its position relative to wind thrust force. The certification validates comprehensive design methodologies for primary steel design, secondary steel mooring, manufacturing, assembly. Integration, logistics, transportation, and installation protocols.

That’s this week’s top news stories. After the break, I’ll be joined by my co host, the chief commercial officer of WeatherGuard Lightning Tech, Joel Saxom.

Lightning is an act of God, but lightning damage is not. Actually, it’s very predictable and very preventable. Strike Tape is a lightning protection system upgrade for wind turbines made by WeatherGuard.

It dramatically improves the effectiveness of the factory LPS, so you can stop worrying about lightning damage. Visit weatherguardwind. com to learn more, read a case study, and schedule a call today.

Allen Hall: Well, Joel, we have been to a number of conferences, including SkySpecs annual forum. And there’s so much O& M activity at the moment, all over the world, it’s insane.

Yeah,

Joel Saxum: and you know, the problem is, is getting the right people in the right room to talk about it. Like you said, the Sky Specs Forum, to be honest with you, okay, it’s a private event, it’s like invite only, right? But that’s one of the best events I’ve been to, uh, from a knowledge sharing standpoint, in the wind industry ever.

And to me, the reason being is, is you have all the people that are dealing with the same problems that have their own solutions that have figured things out in lessons learned and best practices to make their wind farms more profitable to solve problems in the field. Uh, so everybody together in one room and kind of breakout sessions about specific things.

We, we were there, we did one about lightning, right? And we had a room in there, small room, not like we weren’t speaking to 2000 people, right? We’re speaking to 20 and everybody kind of broke, broke down and broke some barriers down because we’re all. Engineers in there talking about technical stuff. So I think that that’s, there’s a huge amount of value to that.

And that’s why we got to the point where we said, you know what, let’s do this wind O& M Australia thing, because a lack of technical conferences, uh, in that part of the world, uh, it just kind of means that there’s nobody really talking about the things that matter day to day in the wind world, right? How do you run these turbines?

What do you do to make them more profitable? How do you solve this problem? Um, and a lot of that knowledge exists. It just needs to be shared.

Allen Hall: Yeah. And there’s not a lot of infrastructure in Australia at the moment, even though there are a significant number of turbines, there’s no blade factories there.

There’s no nacelle factories there. Everything that they’re doing in Australia is imported. So the expertise doesn’t necessarily lie in country, unlike Europe and the United States where there’s. People that have worked in factories and what we find a lot of the people that are working on the O& M side in the United States have worked at an LM or a Siemens Gameso or a GE.

So they have that inside knowledge of how these turbines work and then they’re applying that knowledge to an operator and that is a unique case evidently for Australia. Probably Rosemary is one of the few people that actually has inside plant experience that she can apply over to the wind farms in Australia.

Which is pretty amazing. Really curious because it’s, it must be a struggle, right? Yeah, for sure. And I

Joel Saxum: mean, a lot of that struggle comes at, um, the term, you know, within economies of scale. So the Australian wind market sits around nine to 10, 000 megawatts installed right now with another three in development, which is sizable, right?

However, there’s operators like in the United States that have much more than that, just one operator, right? You’re talking about the next eras of the world, the EDFs of the world over here, so many, we’ve got 75, 000 turbines in the ground. So there’s just lessons that come with seeing lots of problems.

You got a lot of turbines in the ground, you’re going to deal with a lot of problems, so you’ve got to figure out how to manage them. And here, you know, Uptime, the Uptime podcast, our network is, is very broad reaching. Uh, so I mean, between you and I, Allen, how many times a week do we get just a call from someone or a comment from someone like, this is a problem I have, how do I fix it?

And we’re able to kind of, Hey, you know what, bearings talk to this person. Torque and tensioning. There’s a cool new technology over here. Do this. Uh, oh, LEP. What’s the latest LEP product? How do I install it? What’s the most efficient way? Oh, you talk to these people. So, since we know that stuff, or we have access to that network, why not share it?

That’s, I guess, the way we’re looking at it. And because we have compadres in our network, You know, uh, Rosemary, of course, at Parleau Consulting, uh, Matthew Stead down there, he’s in Adelaide, uh, at Eologics Ping, that have been friends for a long time, and they see this kind of gap in the market down in Australia of, of some of this knowledge, um, let’s, let’s deliver it to them.

Allen Hall: Right. And it does seem like there are a couple of universal problems, uh, that exist in Australia. Leading edge erosion being one of the bigger ones that I’m sure, the environment there is tough, right? It’s not, it’s not Denmark, that’s for sure. And, and then lightning was the other one and a couple of others.

I think, uh, uh, bearings is obviously a problem worldwide at the minute, knowledge about blades and what the internal structure is and how blades are being addressed as part of an FSA. Those, those problems are, are huge and some of the technology that exists over in Europe and in the United States, um, has done at least a fairly decent job of trying to solve some of those problems.

Australians are very, uh, intuitive and self sufficient, no doubt. But it’s always good to hear from others about how they’re trying to tackle some of these problems.

Joel Saxum: You know, you touched on one point there, the FSA, the OEM controlled wind farm. And that’s, uh, of course, a contract and a use case all over the world from Brazil to America, Sweden, Germany, you name it, that thing is everywhere.

Um, and it makes sense at some point, especially if you’re a financial investor, um, but what we’re seeing is, is as this industry evolves, the OEM relationship with the service contracts is taking a different feel onto it, where some of these operators are wanting to. Um, you know, at the Sky Specs event, we talked about shadow monitoring.

Shadow monitoring to me is great. Uh, that, you know, that the idea that yet while you may have an FSA, you might want to put your own CMS on there. You might want to do your own inspection so that you can understand what’s going on with the assets you own. But then that takes in, there’s, there’s intricacies of that, right?

Because every one of these full service agreements has certain contract language of what data the operator or the owner of the assets is entitled to. And what kind of access they have to the wind farm. And that rolls into much different, um, areas as well as, okay, when, when something goes wrong, what, what price am I on the hook for?

What does that market even look like? And those are the, some of the things that we want to share with the mark, the Australian market at this, uh, technical conference we’re putting on as well as how do you, how do you navigate those intricacies? Because. It’s not easy. And, um, you know, it, it, to be honest with you, it’s not easy for either side of that ball, because in Australia, whether you’re a Festus, a Suzlon, Goldwyn, GE, whoever you are, that’s that OEM down there.

They have a limited access to a supply chain as well, because at the end of the day, Australia is an island and they don’t create the products there on site. So there’s, there’s some things that we would love to share about lessons learned around those things from, um, other parts of the world that we think can help, um, get some of these wind farms into a more profitable status.

Allen Hall: Yeah. And if you’re interested in attending the Wind Energy O& M Australia event, it will be held on February 11th and 12th in Melbourne, Australia. Uh, you can go visit the website, windaustralia. com, and on that site, there’s a number of pages. One of them is about general registration, if you want to attend it, uh, there’s another piece if you want to speak there, and I, we’ve talked to a number of people from Australia that would be great speakers at this event and get those signups in.

And then if you would like to sponsor, uh, it would be a great opportunity for your company to highlight the work that you do in Australia or outside of Australia, even. And bring that knowledge to everybody in Australia. And so far, Joel, our conversations with, uh, Australian operators and ISPs has been remarkable.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. Everybody that we talked to about the conference and what we want to bring to the, to the country there, they’re like, Oh, this is going to be amazing because all the other conferences, mostly in Australia, are focused on permit, finance, regulatory policy, all of those great things that make wind energy move forward and the energy transition happen.

However, Uh, one of the comments we got was, yeah, those conferences are great. And then you see the couple of engineers standing in the corner talking to themselves, well, we’d like to give a platform and a forum for those engineers to be able to share with them amongst each other and get these, these, some of these problems that they’re dealing with solved.

But like you said, Allen, um, even from, uh, us, our European counterparts, our friends in the States, like, yes, this would be, This will be something we would love to get involved with. We’ve got quite a few experts that want to come speak. Um, stay tuned to, you know, our, our LinkedIn pages and, uh, windaustralia.

com website, because we’ll be announcing some of the sponsors and some of the attendees and, and, uh, kind of keep you up to date on what’s going on with that conference.

Allen Hall: Yeah, so just check out windaustralia. com. As wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it, difficult. That’s why the Uptime Podcast recommends PES Wind magazine.

PES Wind offers a diverse range of in depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit peswind. com today. Well, Indian wind turbine manufacturer Suzlan Energy has reported a really strong second quarter with a record breaking order book of 5.

1 gigawatts, Joel. That is really good. Net earnings increased 96 percent year over year to 23 million U. S. dollars and revenue reached about 250 million U. S. dollars up significantly from the 168 million dollars the previous year. And in fact, they delivered 256 megawatts of turbines up 94 percent from year prior.

And they have secured India’s largest wind energy order. of a little over one gigawatt from NTPC Green Energy Limited. Now, that is impressive. All these numbers are amazing, and I was watching some of the sort of television coverage in India, uh, about this. It’s remarkable the turnaround at Suzlon and the growing Indian wind market is amazing.

Thank you. Substantial. Suzlon has taken advantage of it.

Joel Saxum: I think that’s the big key there, right? Uh, Suzlon is, that’s homegrown, right? That’s like, uh, if you’re in Detroit and you’re driving a GM or a Ford, that’s what you’re doing. Uh, India’s wind market, that’s the, that’s the home player. Of course you have Adani, that’s kind of, they’re trying to start up and some other things.

But Suzlon, that’s the home team, right? And as India’s growth just keeps building and building and building, if you Pay attention to the news over there, or if you talk to, if you do any work, we have some friends that do a little bit of work over there as well. Besides, I mean, Weather Guard on the, on the Strike Tape side, they have a lot of lightning in India.

So we get a lot of contact from over there. Um, you constantly are hearing about growth, growth, growth, growth, growth. And it’s reflected here, right? Of course, in these numbers that they’re doing. But if you watch news about Suiclon. I mean, Allen, how many, how many new turbines have we seen that they’ve, or new models that they’ve debuted just in the last year, like type certificates for like three different turbines, I think?

Allen Hall: Right. Yeah. So the largest right now is like a three megawatt turbine, the S 144, I believe. And that turbine is big, right? And I think it really fits the Indian market. I’m not sure if they’re going to get to six megawatt kind of turbines. I know Adani’s talking about that, but. Suzlan seems to take a more, uh, reasonable approach on growth because as we see in the United States, going too fast is a problem.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, for sure. And one thing that you see over, uh, that Suzlan does in India, that’s interesting, um, that I’m, I’m not quite sure, and I don’t know around the engineering reasons behind this. Why we don’t see it in the States or anywhere else to be, for that matter, is they do these hybrid towers. And I think the, I mean, of course, one of the reasons is, is they’re trying to get up higher into the, uh, off the ground, uh, AGL wise to get into, uh, though, you know, some nice wind, uh, resource, of course, but you see the bottom being a lattice tower and then the top being, um, uh, you know, just a mono steel tower.

Uh, so that’s an interesting thing that you see in the Indian market that you don’t see in other places, but. I think that part of that’s driven by wind resource as well. However, it’s the same type of, like you said, three megawatt turbines, but you’re seeing, man, I think we saw one the other day. That was 140 meter tower height.

That’s interesting.

Allen Hall: Yeah. The tower height keeps getting higher because the winds at ground level in India don’t tend to be great and it’s a sort of a low wind area, however. The resource is still there a little bit higher up like it is in most places and, uh, the Indian marketplace demands higher towers.

I think that all makes sense. You know, it comes down to a cost structure and, and trying to get deployment in India, which I think is constrained much like the rest of the world for interconnects. But the amount of order book that Cezanne is taking right now is astonishing. When you look at other OEMs at the minute, Western, what I call Western OEMs, They’re not doing as well, necessarily, as what

Joel Saxum: Adani,

Allen Hall: Adani and Susslund are

Joel Saxum: doing.

So, so let’s think about this. Uh, we have watched news in Europe about the pushback against Chinese market coming in. We’ve seen the Chinese market come into Brazil. We’re sitting in the U. S., staring down GE and Vestas as really the only two big suppliers. Nordex is, is here, of course. Siemens Gamesa is here, but Siemens hasn’t sold a turbine in a while, and for whatever reason, people kind of push back on Nordex.

Could you see Suzlon taking some of this success and pushing it around the world?

Allen Hall: Oh, yeah. I think there’s an opportunity for Suzlon to start entering the U. S. market, the Australian market. It must be something they’re thinking about. Um, because it’s relatively close and it’s all imported into Australia.

So why not? Why not? Yeah. Right. Yeah. It would be an easy sale there. I think it just, it comes down to what can they manage efficiently. I think that’s one thing about Suzlon is that several years ago, one of the problems that they had historically was management control over all the assets that they have.

That seems to have changed. They look like they’re a lot more focused now than they were 10 years ago.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, if you are familiar in the U. S. market, you saw, you know, 12, 15 years ago, some Suzlon S 88s and S 64s being installed. They’re still, they’re still standing. Uh, the, they may not look super pretty, but they’ll operate.

Um, so one of the reasons that they pulled out of the market is a little bit back then. And people had, some people had a bad taste was just the support, right? So it’s like, what can you focus on? What can you get done? So having the OEM support in country was tough. However, Like you said, um, they focused and grown and maybe there’s a change on the horizon for Suzlon, um, moving outside of India’s borders.

Allen Hall: Well, the stock price has risen over a hundred percent year on year. So the markets are indicating that Suzlon has a huge growth potential because the Western OEMs do not show that sort of growth. In fact, they’ve shown the opposite of that. And even the operators, if you look at operators, Western operators are not showing that kind of growth.

So there is an opportunity here. And I guess this is where. Uh, when you start looking at, uh, Chinese OEMs and Western OEMs, who’s in the middle here? Well, there’s really kind of two, Brazil and India. Those are the places that can slide in and play on both, both sides of that fence. This is going to be fascinating over the next couple of months, because I do think with the amount of cash influx that’s coming into Suzon, that they have an opportunity to do something unique.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, I mean, cause we talked about, uh, Nordex quite a bit. Then you also have the Enercons of the world, right? But that’s our, that’s our Mercedes turbine that usually is just developed in Europe or Canada. Uh, but there’s other players out there. You’ve got Suzlan. Okay. You have Senvian, who’s making a push as of late in the news.

You see Adani who is looking at, uh, you know, they’ve developed some of their own turbines. Uh, down in Brazil, you have WEG or WEG as some people call them. Um, and that’s outside of these, uh, the Chinese manufacturers that every week, I feel like I see a new name for one over there. You have Dongfang and Mingyang and, um, you know, Chinese Electric Corporation, a lot of different things.

So, um, interesting that when you see the news and people are pushing back on the, uh, the Chinese side, trying to move into places, nobody says anything about pushing back on. The other players that could be coming. Um, so, you know, it’ll be interesting to see how the market develops.

Allen Hall: How does Suzlon’s O& M business look over the next couple of months?

Uh, just because GE and Siemens have pulled out essentially out of India. That must mean there is an opportunity on the operation and maintenance side for Suzlon too.

Joel Saxum: Like put together a team to bid on the multi, like to bid on the Siemens Gamesa service business when they pulled out and then kind of expand into more of that multi brand service.

I think they did. I don’t know who won that thing or if it even has gone through yet, but I know Siemens was selling their service department and I think Suzlon was bidding on it. That would be smart, right? Because. Um, then, then they expand their presence in there. They’re again, the local, the local home team, another win and a bit of expansion.

Um, but from an operations and maintenance standpoint, even just take the Indian market. They have a lot of other complications that are pretty extreme there that we don’t see in other places, right? Like one of the things, Allen, again, you and I reviewing blades and blade images for strike tape installations to protect against lightning damage.

We see a lot, like the dirtiest blades in the world, but the reason being is, is they actually burn some of their crops off over there. And it’s a dusty environment. So when we look at these blades, we see a lot of leading edge erosion and a lot of propensity for leading edge erosion building because of all the particulate in the air.

So the maintenance market over there just for leading edge is huge.

Allen Hall: Well, is there an offshore market? That is worth going after in India, or is it mostly going to be an onshore game? Because Cislan is, looks like it’s focused on onshore at the minute.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, they’ve, the government, and I don’t know the name of the agency, but they’ve put out some, like, preliminary tenders along the, I think, southwest coast?

Um, for offshore, I don’t know if it’s a huge play right now, to be honest with you, because there is so much good onshore, um, wind resource. Where we see a lot of the turbines, of course, is in the northwest corner. Um, that’s where there’s that crazy 30 gigawatt development that’s supposed to be going on.

in one spot and then along, uh, behind like the first hill, basically I call it, as you come on from the coast, there’s tons of just flat agricultural plain land where it’s filled with turbines. But there’s a lot of, India’s a big country, right? There’s a lot of, a lot of, a lot of ground. So, um, like you said, transmission, I think is an issue there for sure.

Um, if they can get that grid interconnected, I think growing onshore is probably a lot easier. However, the government there is not wanting to miss out on what could be an offshore push as well. I mean, that brings jobs. It brings, uh, economic influx, uh, among other things, um, and they have strong good winds there.

Allen Hall: I will say just our presence on the Uptime Wind Energy podcast, one of the most active areas we hear from is India, that there is a huge interest in wind energy and the expansion of wind energy. In India, and on top of that, a lot of, uh, people trying to enter the industry because it, it is growing, right?

It is, uh, if being a wind technician is a, probably a pretty good job like it is in most places. So you see a lot of, a lot of activity. Obviously, there’s more interest in India on what the technology is in wind than there is even in the United States, uh, of which there, there’s quite a good bit of interest.

So it is a fascinating market. And, and I know from the Strike Tape standpoint and WeatherGuard. We’re busy in India and there’s a lot of lightning damage. And as, as the wind turbine market expands, you’re going to be pushing more and more into lightning prone areas. Hey, good time to reach out and contact Joel here and get some strike tape on your turbines.

Because boy, oh boy, you don’t want downtime in India. That’s not going to be profitable.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. We can tell you from experience as well. Um, doing business with locals. is definitely the way to go down there. Um, so we have some connections. If you’re looking to get something done in India, give us a call and we’ll connect you up.

Uh, whether it’s lightning protection or leading edge protection, repairs and whatnot, inspections, we’ve got you covered.

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Book soon to secure your spot and experience a difference in blade access, speed, and efficiency. Visit bladeplatforms. com and get started today. There was landmark research done in the United States. Uh, in the last couple of years and they have found through a lot of investigation, America’s largest lithium deposit in the Arkansas smack over formation.

Now smack over is a very, kind of a funny word for, for a lithium formation, but, uh, the discovery, which was published in Science Advances, uh, really could totally reshape the United States position in the global battery supply chain and electric vehicle manufacturing. Uh, this deposit, which it’s, I think is huge.

It ranges somewhere between five and 19 million tons of lithium and represents upwards of a hundred percent of the total, total current US lithium. Resource, uh, that estimates. So they basically doubled the amount of lithium that they thought they had available in the States and which then dramatically lowers the cost of lithium.

Because if you bring it in from Australia or someplace like that, it gets expensive because of the transportation costs. So this is fascinating because Joel, one of the things that always bothers me in renewable energy is we have to have access to specific minerals. Yes. And so we get very fixated on where those minerals exist today and say, well, we must get it from generally China.

So let’s just work on the China movement of materials and try to negotiate or navigate agreements there. In the meantime, it does look like there’s a lot of research going on in the continental U. S. to find some of these minerals, lithium, probably being one of the most prevalent materials on Earth, actually, probably close to salt, it’s got to be close to it.

It is generally everywhere, but in enough density that it makes sense to go ahead and try to mine it. Everything about U. S. battery production and electric vehicle production, right?

Joel Saxum: Yeah, I agree. I think the, um, one of the things that, um, as Americans, we’re really lucky in natural resources. The way that this country, you know, over eons and eons of years, was developed and, you know, whatever happens on geotechnically.

We have A ton of oil and gas. We have a ton of good resources, uh, mineral wise. And now we see this all of a sudden, boom, I saw the map too, Allen. I was looking at the Smackover Foundation. I love the name of it. Um, but it is, it goes all the way from, um, East Texas down dang near into Florida. And when I see that region from an, from a technical and economic standpoint, some of that is some pretty tough area to get through.

I’ve worked in, um, Mississippi, Northern Mississippi. I’ve worked in. In Nifield in Northern Louisiana, in Eastern Texas, some of that’s, it’s some pretty unforgiving territory. However, it’s also a great opportunity economically for those communities. Because all of those places could use jobs, right? There’s an, and what this could bring now there’s, it’s going to be very controversial because if you look at anything that you see on the internet about lithium mining, it’s like, oh, these big pools and brining and all these crazy things, and you’re ruining the environment to make electrical cars and yada, yada, yada.

I think that because we’re seeing an influx, uh, or not an influx, because we’re seeing this discovery of lithium there, I think that this could drive advancements in lithium mining and, uh, lithium production and refining because the, the current methods are, they are a little bit archaic. Um, they’re just fairly, fairly basic.

And I think that we can do better there. Uh, but the fact that there’s enough lithium here, because I mean, I’ve talked to people that are, uh, one of my friends on Houston represents a group that is bringing a lithium battery manufacturing facility to Houston. Which is great for that economy and that market.

However, at this point in time, they’re bringing all their lithium in from overseas. Well, if now they could just ship it down from, you know, the smack over foundation to Houston. Well, that changes a lot of stuff. And what we’re seeing now with the energy mix on the grid, and it’s not just a United States things, it’s everywhere.

Um, we want to solve this duck curve problem where we have solar during the day, wind resource at night, wind cools off during the day, and you need to balance that load. Well, the answer to doing that is batteries. And if we can get some of these, um, this lithium that we’ve found here now locally that’s a resource for us into battery technology.

Well, then we can really start pushing on the energy transition, and it can be homegrown, and that’s huge. And I wonder if there’s other deposits like this. Don’t you? Yeah, for sure. I mean, have you ever, have you ever flew, what was the last time you flew? Okay, so, uh, one of our team members, engineers on the strike team, or on the weather guard team here, lives out in San Diego.

So when you fly out to see Adam, how many times have you looked out the window when you go over Nevada and Utah, and you see this massive expanse of area? That’s full of rare earth minerals. Like the mining that goes on in Nevada that people don’t know about is crazy. When you look out the window and you’re like, wow, it’s beautiful.

It almost looks like Mars in some places when you’re looking. And then all of a sudden you see like. A development, you know, like what is this development? Well, that’s mostly all rare earth minerals or some kind of mining that’s happening out there. I guarantee that the other big lithium deposit in the United States that we know about right now that we’re actively mining is in Northern Nevada, I think.

Allen Hall: Yes. Oh yeah. Yeah. That’s where Tesla is. Right. And when they’ve got a battery factory there, it’s amazing. And just North of there too, kind of push up towards what’s the Oregon border. There’s a lot of useful materials sitting right there. Which is not heavily populated. That’s a pretty empty space if you’ve ever been up that way.

So the amount of material you can get from those places that hasn’t really been developed is shocking at times. Like, we don’t know what we have in the ground in a lot of places. We know where the oil is, for the most part. But, minerals, not so much, because unless it was, well, unless it was coal. Yeah, we know where all the coal veins are across the U.

S.

Joel Saxum: Coal veins are co located with methane gas and oil and gas, natural gas. But, you know, like, I even, I remember listening to a, um, a podcast with Elon Musk on it a couple months ago, and he was talking about a massive lithium deposit beneath the Salton Sea in Southern California.

Allen Hall: Oh, really? Okay.

Joel Saxum: Well, that would make sense actually.

Yeah, absolutely. So, and, and, and that was where I think you mentioned it before. He mentioned the fact that, uh, when people are saying, oh, we’re running on a lithium or lithium prices are changing, well, actually lithium is one of the most common materials. It’s just in the ground. It’s just, where do you find it in concentrations that make, you know, economic sense to, to mine?

Uh, so having find, finding some of these areas that is making economic sense to mine or could make economic sense to mine. If we can, if we can turn that around as a, as a, you know, a burgeoning sector of the U S energy transition economy, uh, that could be huge for us. And you can put a lot of, there’s a lot of experienced miners that, uh, as coal plants shut down, need jobs.

So, um, some of these areas could, could boom.

Allen Hall: It is always amazing to me that. We panic without doing any of the work ahead of time, and maybe it’s just a new cycle we’re in at the moment, but when we need special minerals, we always say it’s always somewhere else, and we just haven’t really done our homework, and it is fascinating to watch.

You know, the one thing about all of this is that you start to worry about the energy future, what renewable energy is going to look like, how expensive is it going to be? That’s the real killer, is the cost. Thank you very much. If all of a sudden those materials are under your feet, life just got a lot easier.

Joel Saxum: So for our wind farm of the week, this week we are taking a trip up to the big mitten, uh, IE to the locals, the state of Michigan. So Isabella one n two, uh, we’re gonna loop, limp them. Loop. We’re, we’re gonna loop them together as one wind farm, uh, built by Apex. Uh, it was sold to DTE, which is a big energy company up in Michigan in 2021.

It’s 383 megawatts, uh, powered by 136 GE. 2. 8 megawatt, 127 meter rotor machines. Uh, they push energy into the commercial and industrial space, uh, as well as onto DTE’s, uh, renewable programs. But some of their customers include Ford, General Motors, and the University of Michigan, which you would expect being you’re up in Michigan, some car companies and some universities.

Uh, cool thing here is, um, there was a lot of grassroots effort. Uh, I really liked it. I was reading a bunch of articles about these wind farms when they were being built and how the, the community came together and they, they took, uh, proponents and opponents of the wind farms out to other wind farms to show them what they were like.

They did tours, um, when they were trying to build this thing. And what that resulted in was, um, over 600 Isabella County landowners signing leases, um, with them. So a lot of money thrown around. Uh, generate the Isabella wind facilities will generate approximately 30 million in tax revenue for the local communities.

And 100 million in landowner payments over the lifetime of the projects at 350 jobs and up to 20 local long term operations and maintenance jobs. And that’s a big one because those are, um, you know, central Michigan, those are some good paying, um, jobs that will keep that community running for a little while.

So the power from this thing powers about 86, 000 homes. Um, and from it, they have done a lot of good up there. They’ve taken some money that the counties have made and they, they built a new jail. Um, they’ve also, uh, got, um, some revenues and wins to pay off some school debt and some other things that they built.

So, uh, some wind farm development up in central Michigan doing good for the community. Uh, Isabella 1 and 2 from DTE.

Allen Hall: You’re the wind farm of the week. That’s going to do it for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy podcast. Thanks for listening. And please give us the five star rating on your podcast platform and subscribe in the show notes below to Uptime Tech News, our weekly substack newsletter.

And check out Rosie’s YouTube channel, Engineering with Rosie. And we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.