Wind Tech Training Excellence at Deutsche Windtechnik

Momme Feddersen and Russ Leach from Deutsche Windtechnik discuss their innovative training programs for wind turbine technicians. Momme, as Head of Training Center, and Russ, as Director of Quality and Ops Support, explore how the company is tackling workforce challenges through apprenticeships and advanced training methods in both Europe and the US.

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Allen Hall: Wind Energy is facing a critical workforce challenge, finding and retaining skilled technicians to maintain the growing fleet of turbines. This week we speak with Momme Feddersen and Russ Leach from Deutsche Windtechnik. Deutsche Windtechnik is setting new standards for technician development through their comprehensive training programs, combining hands-on experience with cutting edge technology.

Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering Tomorrow.

Allen Hall: Momme and Russ, welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight.

Momme Feddersen: Thank you. Good to be here. Thank you so much.

Allen Hall: Well Deutche Wind Technique. Has always, to me, been a really high standard in terms of a company. But that comes through training. And Deutsche Windtechnik spends a great amount of time and energy on the training side.

I want to talk to some of the challenges that are out there first, and what are some of those challenges that exist in training wind turbine technicians today?

Russ Leach: Yeah, so they’re the same ones we’ve had since my entire time in wind. It’s finding the qualified personnel who are ready, available to climb that turbine and do great maintenances and great troubleshooting.

The problem has been exacerbated with the growth of renewables with wind, right? They’re harder to come by. Um, And we’re all fighting for the same people, aren’t we? So that’s why we have our training programs, right? We have to start people out from nothing many times and build them up and get those competencies out there with them.

Um, and, um, that’s the main challenge. Plus the distributed nature of the workforce, right? We’re, we’re across the country here in MoMA, they’re, they’re across Europe. And, um, so you have to put mechanisms in place to get the training to them many times and get them competent and, and verified as competent many times out where they’re at.

So it’s a combination of Training facilities, which are very valuable, but also training that extends out to the field with the people themselves.

Allen Hall: And Mame, let’s talk about the technical challenges because wind turbines have gotten more complicated. There’s more computers in them. There’s more electronics in them.

There’s more cooling systems. How has that impacted the training of technicians? Did it just make it harder because there’s so much new things happening?

Momme Feddersen: Here in Deutsche Windtechnik, we have to, we are focusing more and more on the, um, not on the, on the, on the MOOC. Highest moderns, tur, modern turbines, um, but more, um, on the older ones.

So, um, but uh, when we look into the future, the, the topics you say are, are exactly the topics we have to, we have to face. Um, what what we did in the past was focusing on the practical side of the training and not focusing on the theoretical side. That’s why I think we did a. Kind of, um, interesting approach, uh, how we train here in Germany.

Um, as you know, we are a multi brand, uh, company. We are servicing different brands. We are not focusing on Vestas or on Anaconda or something like that. We are, we have all of them. Also a challenge. And that’s why, um, we did that approach here in Germany, uh, what I think is outstanding in the, in the home.

Allen Hall: And that comes with a unique thing that Deutsche Wing Technik does, is that you do have resources for the variety of turbines, which I think just makes this really complicated. Discuss the sort of the differences between what happens in Europe for Deutsche Wind Technique.

Momme Feddersen: Yeah, we have different, uh, different, um, ways of training here in Germany.

It depends on your experience. It depends on your age, on your, uh, on your skills you already got. Um, so for example, the, the people who are, who come directly from school, then they don’t know how to do it. So we have to start with, with the real basics. Um, our apprenticeships program, uh, starts when they are 18 years old, uh, directly from school.

And they are in, in Deutsche Windtechnik for three and a half years, just with education, just with learning, just with everything. So, um, there are ways to shorten the time, but, um, yeah, you, you learn the basic. mechanic work in, in our training center, for example. Um, this is one way to learn it. The other way is when you have more experience, um, we got a level training for the people who are already working in the field.

So we don’t stop working on ourself. We don’t stop educating ourself. Um, we have a level training from basic to level two or level three, where you learn how to troubleshoot very well. And the third one is the, uh, the, the career changer program. This is one of my favorite programs, I have to say, because these are people who are highly motivated.

These are people who come from completely different fields, uh, uh, uh, in, in Germany, they all have, uh, uh, uh, uh, had a job before. So for example, they are plumbers, they are carpenters, they are something else. And in our training center, they learn, um, the real, uh, the, the, the, to be a wind technician, wind technician, they learn it in about six months, but only in the training center they are here for six months.

And then they’ll go out and they start working what they learned here in the training center. And they did it and they do it then in the, in the field. And that’s my favorite program because, because the people. see this as a second chance in their life and they learn something completely new. Say they learn, um, to be an electrician.

Um, and as you said before, the turbines are more and more complex. They are more and more, um, you have to be perfect in so many things. You have to be a mechanic. You have to be a technician, an electronic specialist. You have to be a Um, and yeah, so different things, so, um, yeah, it’s, it’s quite complex.

Joel Saxum: That’s a stark difference from what we see in the United States because, um, and Russ, you can probably speak to this. You hear these, sometimes you hear horror stories from whether it’s an ISP, you know, OEM, it doesn’t really matter where it’s like, Hey, you’ve got your GWOs or even, you know, your equivalent of GWOs.

You’ve been safety trained. You got a couple of tickets, get out in the field and now you’re expecting to produce. Uh, throw, thrown right into the fire. And, you know, from someone who grew up in some oil and gas worlds, that’s a tough place to be. That is a pretty , pretty, pretty stressful thing. Um, and so I know when Alan and I initially talked with the DWT team about the training, how it goes on in Germany, uh, it blew my mind.

It was like three and a half years of, of actual. Really, uh, curating these technicians to get them to the point where they can get on their own in like three and a half years in the States. I’m thinking, that’s a bachelor’s degree. I’m at university. You know, that’s a really advanced person. Are you guys taking some of the, the lessons learned and the training and, and applying that in the States to your, your technicians here too?

Russ Leach: Absolutely. We have our own apprenticeship program. We stood it up in May. Um, it’s a WIN Laborer. It’s part of the Department of Labor’s Office of Apprenticeship, um, under Construction Laborer. Really excited about it. Um, the model is MoMA and what they do over there. Ours is a two year. It’s a two year. Um, and it combines many of the same things.

Um, we have our, uh, online learning. We have our in person training. It’s called Related Technical Instruction in the Apprenticeship World. And we got a heavy dose of on the job learning. It was structured on the job learning, well documented on the job learning that leads to competency verification. So, We’re really excited about it.

Um, that, and it’s right now, it’s geared more towards the, uh, well, our existing training program. That was the beauty of it, right? We had our existing program that we just rolled right into a two year apprentice program. Um, but it’s geared more towards repower right now. What we’re doing in January, I’m super excited to say, is, is standing up one for O& M Techs.

Probably be two year. And many of the same things, slightly different, um, around that too. So we have a structured learning path now for our people. Again, we had that already here in the U. S., right? But now it’s registered with the Department of Labor to their standards, with all the requirements for on the job learning.

You need 2, 000 hours a year minimum on the job learning. You need 144 hours of what’s called related technical instruction, which is basically, Classroom type stuff, right? And, and certain structured, uh, um, competency verifications there. We got all that. It’s launched right now. And at the end of the day, they get a certificate that’s valid wherever, wherever they go.

And, uh, and, and Momay mentioned life changes. We have something kind of similar to that too with veterans, with veterans. Um, we’re really excited to just get signed off on, uh, with the Veterans Administration to be a training facility where young men and women coming out of the military, can receive their GI Bill benefits while they’re earning money with us, their hourly rate.

That’s huge, Russ. Congrats on that. Yeah, we’re really proud of that. We’re going to be bringing in a lot of veterans to us. But the main thing is, are they learning, right? Are they learning the safety things that matter? Um, the electrical, the mechanical, how to hoist and rig and things like that. That’s all part of it.

Um, and that all leads to getting the all important competency verifications, the sign offs. What we say here is all roads lead to competency verifications, or JPMs. We call them job performance measures, right? They have to be able to understand hazards. Well, first understand the paperwork, the job safety plan, and the lockout tagout paperwork.

How to call the operation center and shut down the turbine. Then they have to be able to recognize the hazards in the task and do it with high quality. And they’ll go perform the task, and then roll it back out, take off their lotto, fill out their paperwork, and they get signed off by, by what we call journey workers, or the more senior level people who are already signed off, or a technical instructor.

It depends on the situation, really, right? So, so really the key to the kingdom in training is not the training itself. It’s the end result that they are competent to perform the task safely and with high quality, and that’s where our program’s going. I

Joel Saxum: think it’s important that you just mentioned it is well, uh, on your repowers.

You’re focusing on your repowers because there’s that nuance in the IRA bill of you must have an approved apprenticeship, a program, and you guys have to have that in place for PTC credits to roll for on those repowers of people working them. So the, that’s a huge part of that. And, um, I’m really liking, like, like that part of it.

Russ Leach: Yeah. That’s a major forcing function in the industry. I will say that, um, the industry is moving towards, or the U S I should say, is moving towards apprentice programs slowly anyway, from 2011 to 2021, the number of apprentices went about 60%. But it’s still a small number compared to our, our, our, um, colleagues in, in Germany, right?

They are, where they’re 1. 9 percent of their population is in registered apprentice programs. Here it’s 0. 18, right? So it’s really small. Yeah. But the IRA Act is a major forcing function around apprenticeship. If you have four more people in your company and you’re doing work that applies to the Inflation Reduction Act, for that owner to get the tax credits, they have to employ a Registered apprentices.

15 percent of the labor hours have to be from registered apprentices.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, so let me, let me ask you a question about this one. So, at the end of the day, when we’re talking training, when we’re talking all these things, It’s a function of recruiting and resourcing for people to do the jobs. One of the problems that, and I know this is a global thing, but really exacerbated in the States is, um, basically retention of technicians because you may get them in and get them trained up and get them working on your processes.

And then because there’s such high demand, it’s like, Oh, I’ll get, these guys will give me another dollar an hour. I’m over here. I’m over here. I have to imagine that the training programs and what you guys are putting in place to really build these, these technicians up in their career has to have a positive effect on retention rates.

Are you seeing that too?

Russ Leach: Yeah, it absolutely helps. Yeah. And of course the, uh, and you’re right, they’ll leave for a dollar an hour somewhere, but it’s a combination of culture and what’s in it for them and their future. Right. So we try to wrap them in a, in a really respectful culture that, In a growing company that people are having fun, but at the same time, especially with the apprentice program, give them a goal.

Give them a goal. They want to stick around because they’re going to get this, this really valuable certificate that’s valuable for their career. Um, and if not a certificate, just a lot of training, right? Um, for instance, January, we’re, we’re, we’re standing up a two week intense, very intense intermediate troubleshooting course.

What do we, what do we find out this last year? Lesson learned from us. We had a one week troubleshooting course that we set up, but 60 percent of the technicians who ran through it didn’t pass because we got them from other companies because we’re growing quickly, right? So we, we hire a lot of people from other companies and we put them into this, uh, senior techs into this, this troubleshooting course.

And, and 60, like I said, 60 percent of them didn’t pass because they had not had training, detailed training around schematics and how to, and how components function and things like that. So. Lesson learned, right? Lesson learned. So what we did was, now we’re blowing that out to two weeks, two intense weeks where we’re focused on fundamentals, and then they get into the troubleshooting.

But here’s the thing, here’s the really unique thing about it, they also teach, they’re taught how to teach back, they have to do teach backs. Um, you know, the, the, in this business, the team leader over the technicians, is almighty, right? They, they dictate everything that happens to them, right? So if they’re good instructors, if they’re trained to teach, if they’re trained to pass down that knowledge around, um, schematics, around how components work, around whatever, right?

It’s just going to make the, these technicians, their experience just that much better and they’re more likely to stay around because somebody’s paying attention to them. So, to keep people, you have to give them a good culture. You have to pay them attention. You have to tell them what’s in it for them.

And they have to see the value in that. And that’s one thing. That’s why we’re investing so much. I’m, you know, pinch me, right? Momi has all these nacelles, these beautiful nacelles in his facility. Guess what? We just signed an agreement. We’re getting a seamless 2. 3 megawatt nacelle this first or second quarter into our training center.

As well as a Mitsubishi simulator. We have a lot of Mitsubishi 1000s. Great little machine if you, if you operate it right and maintain it right. We’re sort of taking the guts out of that and we’re putting that in there as well. And then after that it’ll be probably a GE15, I think, 1X of some kind in there.

Just to get really hands on experience in our center. Similar to what Maume is doing there. Couple that with the apprentice program and you’ve got a winning combination that the Germans have proven over time. Right? Um, a good center, good apprentice program, on the job learning. And you wrap all that together and you get really good text out of it.

Allen Hall: Moment. I want to talk about the type of people that are attracted to your training program in Germany, and I’m going to come back and ask Russ the same thing, but who are those people that are attracted to being wind turbine technicians today?

Momme Feddersen: You have to learn, love to work with your hands. You have to work on your own.

It’s a real tough job. I think you all know that. I think you, you need the experience in your job. I doubt that you are the person who, uh, That a person who always wants to go to the same shop, do the same thing is the real, um, uh, turbine technician. You have to be excited about everything. You have to be excited about the height.

You have to be excited about, uh, small rooms. Um, I think, and you have to be really passionate about what you’re doing. And you, I think that’s the, the type of person. Um, who work in that and in our company and, uh, work in the bread.

Allen Hall: Do they come to you straight out of school or are a lot of them coming from other industries and deciding to getting to win, to get a little more venture, maybe get out of the office?

Momme Feddersen: All kinds. Um, so the apprentices all come, mostly come from school. The career changer already has a, has a different job, but we also have The ones who comes from other companies like Vestas, like Anaconda, or something like that. So we are, we are hiring about, just here in Germany, we are hiring about 150 people a year, just in the field.

So we are growing quite fast.

Allen Hall: And Russ, what does that look like in the United States? I think that the demographic for Future wind turbine technicians is a little bit different. What are you seeing in the U. S.?

Russ Leach: A lot of entry level people or people who have tried other jobs and it just wasn’t fulfilling for them.

We get a lot of folks who’ve, uh, just a few I’ve talked to recently worked at an auto store, like an, um, well, auto parts store, for instance. I’ve got others who come from the prisons, lots from the military, which we love. Um, and it’s really all across the board, but they all have some things in common is that they don’t want that office job.

They see it as a challenge. They’re very proud of what they do. They’re all smart. They’re really smart. And, uh, they just want to do something that’s different than everybody else. And climbing wind turbines is as different as you can get.

Joel Saxum: We see that as like an adventurist spirit sometimes, like a lot of, a lot of the, uh, the blade people we know, like when they’re done with the blade season, they go rock climbing and they’re free soloing in the Tetons and all kinds of crazy stuff.

And it’s like, man, you guys are really nice. Um, but that makes that the right person to be. I mean, when you look at like, say again, like blade repair techs, they’re hanging from ropes, like, you know, hundreds of feet off the air. Like that takes a certain person that wants to do that. Or when you walk into the base of a turbine and you look up that ladder, there’s a specific person that is cool, that wants to climb 80, 100 meters every morning.

Russ Leach: Well, they’re mentally and physically tough, right? If you’re climbing a turbine in South Texas or Oklahoma in August, you know, you’re not weak mentally or physically. And I have so much respect for the men and women who do that every day.

Momme Feddersen: And what I really like is Our technicians are really proud to be that.

Um, when you, when you have a look at our, for example, Instagram channel, you always see pictures from, from our technicians who are on a turbine. You see how proud they are, what they are doing, how thrilled they are about what they are doing. It’s, it’s, it’s so cool.

Allen Hall: And what does that look like if you want to join Deutsche Windtechnik and you, and you want to be part of this apprenticeship program or, or try to advance your career or get out of the auto parts store or get out, you’re coming out of the military, what are they looking forward to?

What is the next six months, year look like for them?

Russ Leach: We start out with a one week of onboarding, which is just intense safety stuff,

Allen Hall: right? Uh,

Russ Leach: uh, individual, you know, competent climber, rescue training, the things you’re familiar with. We also throw in a high dose of, uh. Hydraulic tooling, because there’s a lot of fingers, fingers have been lost over time with hydraulic tooling.

First day CPR, OSHA 10, things like that. NFPA 70 is a big one. Electrical safety, of course. Um, and, and of course, just the company policies. That’s, that’s the first week. And then they get assigned a whole bunch of training, and they go out. People learn better on, for wind turbines or anything, if they’ve been exposed to it already.

So to get out there, working under the PAE, Primary Authorized Employee, from an OSHA standpoint, the person who’s there to make sure everybody’s working safely, also known as a team leader in many ways, working under them, um, and start getting sign offs on competency verifications on the, on the basic things.

This is how you start a turbine, right? This is how you connect a bucket, for instance, just to keep things simple. Um, and they, they start going through that, and then, then when they’re ready, then we, we start cycling through more, more formal training. That we do now, and especially as we build out our center more, there’ll be more of it.

That two weeks of training, for instance, um, that we talked about for troubleshooting and then, and it’s just a lot of experience on the job learning sprinkled with, of course, the regulatory online stuff that everybody has to do from an OSHA standpoint, um, and other training. And it takes time. It takes time to cook a good wind technician.

It really does.

Allen Hall: Deutsche Windtechnik has been involved in e learning, online learning at the same time, because you have people deployed. all over the place that need to keep up to date on the technology, on the training, on those certifications. You want to talk about what that looks like once you get into the Deutsche Windtechnik system?

Momme Feddersen: Um, we are starting to do that because, um, we want to reduce our, uh, time in the training center with where you just learn theoretical stuff. We want to reduce the travel time. To, to training center. We want touse our, so, um, and, uh, that’s why we developed some online trainings. But, but especially the in instructions, what we have to do and especially the safety instruction where you, what you have to do on a regular basis.

Um, but uh, as I said, right now we are focusing on the older turbines, but in the future we have to be. Um, prepared for the newer ones, and that’s why we, um, uh, develop kind of 360 degree, uh, videos of turbines, what we can use in our training facilities. Um, we have different things here in the training center where we can, what we use.

Um, yeah, but also, uh, virtual reality is also a topic, what we are developing right now, where you can use your hands, do something without having the turbine in place, without having the tools in place. Uh, so that will, that will be a part of the future, definitely.

Russ Leach: Yeah, we, we made a lot of custom, uh, e learning, uh, using our own internal developers and outside developers.

There’s a lot of value around custom e learning. What we found is that technicians don’t like e learning that doesn’t specifically apply to what they’re doing every day. They don’t like it. They don’t want to waste their time on it. But you get one that’s specific to that, say, CEMAS that they’re going to work on every day, now they have a lot more interest, right?

But like Mome says, we’re moving into this new realm. For us, in first quarter, we’re making one for, well, two of them, probably a Mitsubishi and a GE, this 360 degree type training where, You got these special cameras that you go film the whole turbine. And you, you load it in your software and you can look any direction like a 3d thing.

But the main thing is you can, um, click on a cabinet. Well, it’ll cabinet opens, click on a component, zooms in on that. You got links to, um, hazards or work instructions that, that goes with it. And the cool thing about that is you can now tie it in with your engineering support and your technical support, where they can say, Hey, go check this component out, let’s take a look.

And they open up the software and they zoom in on that contactor. You know, check the DIN rail behind this contactor. Let me show you which one it is. You know, especially if you have somebody who’s just learning troubleshooting. Um, or the site manager who might be really, really experienced in the turbine, you know, looking on their phone.

Here, go check here. So we’re trying to leverage that to increase the, uh, to amplify the effectiveness of our technical teams to get the turbines up quicker. So we’re super excited about that. That’s rolling out this next year for us. Germany’s already using it.

Allen Hall: That’s remarkable. Uh, to be a wind technician now is the right time doing it.

10 years ago, it just seems like it, it is a hundred years ago because the technology has got so much better and the training is light years, uh, away from where we were just a couple of years ago. And the investment by a number of operators and Deutsche Wind technique being the forefront of this is tremendous.

Uh, so if you are interested in being a wind technician. You better get in line right now because there’s going to be a line at Deutsche Windtechnik store because of the training and the skill set you’re going to get from a high quality company. Now, Mami, how do people get a hold of Deutsche Windtechnik?

How do they get into your system over in Germany?

Momme Feddersen: The regular way. Uh, apply online. Uh, we got an awesome recruitment department. Um, so when you apply, I think a week later you have a, uh, an appointment with our recruiter. So nice people. Um, yeah, so it’s, we are extremely fast. Um, that is outstanding. I think here, I worked at different companies before and it took.

Month to, to, to hire new people because the, the recruitment departments were slow and, uh, the, yeah, it should be honest. And I think this is really different here, um, to be fast, to be able to find the right people, to talk to people, um, to, and yeah. And for example, here at the training center, we, Always have people, um, who come, who come here to, to, to see what we are doing and, uh, to be able to see something, what, uh, when technicians do, um, even if they don’t work here, they, they see the training center.

They see how serious. We, we do our things and, um, that’s why they are really interested in, in working for Deutsche Windtechnik.

Allen Hall: And Russ, how does that happen in the, in the United States? How do they get a hold of Deutsche Windtechnik and get into the training program?

Russ Leach: Very similar. The best way is to go on our website and our jobs listed and apply.

That gets you into the system. We have some wonderful recruiters as well who are, uh, who are right on it. Talk to them, and it starts a sequence of interviews,

Allen Hall: right?

Russ Leach: And, uh, and once they, you know, everybody agrees to, that they’ll come on, then we schedule a date for them to come on. We have an onboarding every month, sometimes two onboardings a month in the summertime, kind of our peak hiring season.

We’ve had up to 20 people in these. We average around 10 ish, uh, a month, uh, coming on. And, uh, they, you know, they come on. That starts their journey with us, uh, depending on where they’re going to go. We have our traveler teams, about 80 or 90 of those who travel everywhere. That’s right. We have our O& M teams or fixed sites.

We got our new repower team that, that, that we’re building right now and is already operational, um, that can go there. Um, they’ll hire on for one of those teams. And then, um, of course, leadership development is a big deal, right? We have our leadership development program and the best and brightest can go in there and start moving into lead positions, manager positions, and things like that.

We always prefer to hire from within our leadership because they know the company and they earned it, right? So they also have a chance to get into our LDP as well over time.

Allen Hall: That’s really, that’s really impressive. So if you’re out there and you’re thinking about getting into wind and being a technician, and there’s a lot of opportunities right now.

Think about Deutsche Wind Technique and you need to go visit their website, which is www. deutschewindtechnique. com. Uh, you just Google it and it’ll take you right there. And Momme and Russ, this is great. Thank you for being on the podcast. Well, we really appreciate you having us on and we look forward to

Russ Leach: doing it again.

Maybe we’ll have one on quality someday.