GE Vernova – Bringing Good Things to Life in Australia

GE Vernova is making bold moves in Australia with their Cypress 6MW workhorse turbine. With a renewed focus on power production and reliability, GE Vernova’s Nicholas McVey – ANZ Service Director highlights all the changes with Joel and Allen.

GE Vernova Australia is looking for qualified technicians and electricians to join their team. Contact Nicholas on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/nicholas-mcvey-2802bb5b or via email at Nicholas.McVey@ge.com.

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Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight. I’m your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. Today, we’re joined by Nicholas McVey, Service Director at GE Vernova, where he leads operations and maintenance for wind farms across Australia and New Zealand.

With over 15 years of experience in operations and commercial leadership roles, Nicholas brings valuable insights on maximizing wind farm performance and implementing strategic upgrades. Prior to his current role, he served as Contract Performance Manager at GE Vernova and has extensive experience in project management and commercial operations.

Nicholas, welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight. We have a global audience that is listening to this episode for sure. And I would like to know, and I think a lot of people would like to know, what are some of the challenges you have in Australia in regards to turbines and O& M? Because it does seem like a relatively harsh environment.

Nicholas McVey: Look, of course Australia is a harsh environment. We’re very different environments. We’ve got and we call it down here the tyranny of distance. So we’ve got a lot of different got wind farms in a place called Broken Hill, which is, almost in the middle of Australia.

Extremely hot, extremely dry, lots of dust, sand. A lot of challenges specific to that environment. We’ve also got a wind farm in in the snowy mountains, we’ve got, one of the things about Australia is that you’ve got every environment you can think of in the one place.

From an environment perspective, it’s harsh. 

Joel Saxum: I know when I first heard actually Rosemary on the podcast, talk about going to the snowy mountains. I was like, there’s not snow in Australia. What are you talking about? Cause from a American, I didn’t think that. And then she’s yeah, of course we, she’s we have jungles, we have deserts, we have extreme heat, we have snow, we have cold, we have all these things.

And of course, like you said, the size. So all of that from an O and M’s perspective, because Nicholas, that’s what you do every day. You’re concentrated on. The operations and maintenance of GE’s turbines within Australia. That creates Logistical nightmares. It also creates a lot of different problems, right?

So if we’re talking about the turbines that are out in the dust there, it doesn’t matter what OEM it is. You’re going to have leading edge erosion issues, and you’re going to have different things that pop up based on that environment. 

Allen Hall: So Nicholas, how big is the organization you run in Australia?

Because I think the sense of scale would be helpful here. I know you’re scattered all around Australia and Australia is a gigantic country. There’s a lot of square miles in Australia. How many people do you have and how many turbines are you trying to cover right now? 

Nicholas McVey: Yeah. We’ve got we’ve got 674 active turbines, over 12 sites.

And and obviously Australia is growing exponentially at the moment. We’ve got a pipeline to get to about a thousand in the next five years. Obviously a big part of that it’s our partnership with Squadron and there’s a lot of a lot of projects on the, on the horizon.

So yeah it’s a big business. We’ve got the operations and maintenance, we run a hybrid resource model. So we’ve got about 40 technicians on the ground and then we work with contractors. So that’s our kind of base resource. And then we have, we work with contract partners on various things from annual maintenance Through to our inspection regimes and our blade work, et cetera.

So yeah, no, it’s a growing business. 

Allen Hall: What size turbines do you use in Australia? In the U S a lot of them are two megawatt machines primarily, but in Europe, they tend to be much larger. What’s the focus in Australia? 

Nicholas McVey: So we have predominantly three X at the moment. So our current fleet is mostly three X.

We’ve got two Cypress sites. Okay. And from going forward we’re only selling Cypress in Australia. We’ve got the two types of Cypress in Australia. We’ve got the the six megawatt 158s and we have that there’s a one called Bangon and one called Marawara and another called Goita.

So we’ve got three sites with that model. And then going forward we’re selling the Mark two, if you will, Cypress, which is a six megawatt 164. And that’s our workhorse product. So that’s our global workhorse Cypress product that is being assembled and shipped from Schenectady.

And and it’s a really exciting product. I was there very recently and Schenectady got to see it on the factory floor. And it’s a really impressive machine and we’re extremely excited to have it here. 

Joel Saxum: I think that’s a really exciting thing for that Australian market going forward.

Cause when you talk about it, like engineering is difficult. Engineering for 15 different models of turbines is 15 times harder, right? You have all of those intricacies built in for all this little, that little of that. So when you talk about, Hey, we’re moving forward. We’re going to have one workhorse type machine.

That’s what we’re going to sell onto this market. It’s, it gives you guys the ability as GE service and operations. To really hone in on these are the exact things we know this, you’re going to know that machine in and out. So that’s the plan going forward. What do you see for the, like the technicians?

Are you guys going to be training and putting them into some training abroad or training ahead of time before those things get moving? What’s the plan there? 

Nicholas McVey: Yeah, absolutely Joel, both, we’re, we want to be absolute experts in our product, right? That’s where we’re going. We want to be GE, we are our GE technicians, the GE experts in a GE product.

And we appreciate that it’s a flexible market and that our customers are going to want. Differing types of O& M. So they’re going to want a full FSA, but some might want, self performance and they may rely really heavily on our engineering and product expertise while they perform, the farm themselves.

Yeah. So we’re putting a lot of effort going forward into both local training, but also, getting people over to the U S in particular to do exactly what I just did, which is learn about the new Cyprus, the differences between the old and the new Cyprus and also get on the floor and see it being made.

So that they can come back and be absolute experts in this product. 

Joel Saxum: So that leads me to another question. A little bit ago we talked about resourcing, right? Australia’s an island. It’s sometimes tough to get resources there. And one of the most important resources in anything is people.

So how are you guys how are you attracting technicians in and training them up? And what does that look like from your chair? 

Nicholas McVey: Yeah, no, it’s a really challenging area. In, in Australia, there’s a, it’s pretty well documented that there’s a significant shortage in electricians in Australia.

And I think there’s something like 32, 000 needed by 2050 or something like that. It could be earlier than that, but but there’s a lot of electricians needed in Australia, not just for wind but across the board. We’re really and I guess we really want to be a little bit different in the way that we, hire and and treat our people, we want our technicians to be GE technicians.

We want them to be, really buy in and really want to be part of GE and see where this company is going. So I guess on that point, we’re really moving away from an O& M perspective. We’re really moving away from the FIFO model. And and really investing in local talent and that doesn’t necessarily have to be wind talent.

We’re really investing in the transition. We’ve had a lot of people over the last sort of 12, 18 months that have come into wind straight out of a mine. And and they’ve never seen a wind turbine before, but they’re. Really experienced electricians, got a really great safety record, mature mature talent and we’re just showing them the wind industry and really grabbing onto that really amazing talent and experience and then applying it to to, to turbines.

We’re finding that is really working. Sure. It takes a little bit longer and, we, we allow six months for somebody to get up to speed and get through their training and get through their understanding of GE as well. GE is, Vinnova is a. A company that is an extremely large company with its own nuances and systems and and ways of working.

So we’ve got to get them into that as well. But no, we’ve seen some fantastic results. And I guess the key thing there is that we’re not necessarily looking for people that have wind experience. We’re looking for, we’re looking to get the best talent, in a local area so that they can go home every day, and have a really great work life balance as well.

Allen Hall: So in, in terms of scale then, as Vernova is going to grow substantially in Australia, how are you trying to manage that? You’re bringing in Cypress turbines, those are big turbines, six megawatts are big machines, and sort of the scale, Squadron Energy being one of your larger customers there, how do Also in terms of scale, a really big renewable investment coming from Squadron, that’s a lot of ramp up in a short amount of time.

How do you try to capture that? How do you try to plan for that? Because it does seem a monumental task for you, Nicholas. The key 

Nicholas McVey: is planning, right? And looking ahead, understanding our pipeline, knowing is knowing that the, where things are and those areas. And I think, the local hiring strategy and and also, really working with our parts and tooling teams and, it is key and getting ahead of that, and so we’re putting a lot of.

A lot of work in future planning to make sure that we understand our supply chain. We understand when things are turning out but also, having a really great strategy around, okay, where are our parts located from an ONF perspective? Which ones are, from the site to the local warehouses to our, APAC warehouses, so one of the, one of the good things about being Australia is you’re not that far from China.

We can have some really great lead times, coming from China, as long as we understand that and know that, we can really, we can plan ahead and we can make sure that we’ve got enough in country. For the immediate needs, but also, we’ve got some really great safety spares that aren’t very far away.

Allen Hall: Yeah. The planning for parts is so critical to future success. I know in the States right now, getting access to some parts is really difficult. And some of those parts are made in country. It’s just a supply chain issues and trying to address that ahead of time with a workhorse product. Makes infinite sense.

The decision to even to do that simplifies your supply chain greatly. It’s such a smart move. Does that, then, as you’re planning ahead you’re, are you, and you’re going away from the hub and spoke model, which also congratulations on doing, because I think a lot of technicians really would appreciate that in Australia.

Those two things really set you up for future growth, and I know when we podcast quite a bit, Full service agreements always come up, that we see some really long 30 year full service agreements, which just seem out of norm with the rest of the world. What is GE’s, Vernova’s approach to FSAs in Australia going forward?

Are you looking towards longer 10 ish, 15 year kind of contracts or are you looking more towards the five year FSA agreements? 

Nicholas McVey: Yeah, no, it’s a great question. Generally speaking so we’ve, we have significantly changed our strategy there in Australia. So we, we do have currently on foot some 20, 30 year contracts where we’re not signing those contracts anymore.

We’re signing short term contracts, five, 10 year contracts, and we’re also completely out of EPC. So we’re focusing on what we do well. We’re focusing on turbines. And from an O& M perspective with that with that five, 10 year, the reason for that is, is essentially twofold. The first is to, because this is a developing market, right?

And we’ve seen, certainly in offshore. The perils of signing up to large agreements, with indexing that doesn’t match inflation, doesn’t match the changing nature of the market. We want to have that flexibility to be able to to offer different pricing as it comes up at the end of those 10 years, but also we have, we’ve introduced a a series of sort of FSA light, and other options where.

You can, a customer can pick and choose what level that they would like. So they don’t necessarily, it’s not FSA or, or BUST. It’s, you might want to just have a contract where, you know you want us to do the the annual maintenance and be there for the, be the experts for unscheduled maintenance.

But you might want to take the major component risk. You might want to decrease the price and take on a bit more major component risk. So we’ve got those options in the market and available to customers. So that’s a really big point. And the other one is also we don’t know what our customers want yet.

A lot of them, whether they want to self perform in the future. We’ve seen that sort of bigger players like AGL have decided to bring all of their wind farm operations and maintenance in house. What’s to say that somebody else doesn’t want to do that.

And ultimately if they want to do that, they want to have the flexibility in their contract to support. So that’s another reason that we want to remain flexible. 

Joel Saxum: We’re hearing that globally right now, to be honest with you, the, that people are pushing back on long term FSAs and it’s simply exactly what you say.

They want that flexibility. The way the market conditions can change, the way the, whether it’s the power market we’re talking about, or just the supply chain market all of those things are adjustable as time goes on as economies change, all these things. So I think it’s kudos to you guys in, in, in your operation.

Now a question for you there is, that’s happening in Australia, of course, that’s your market, that’s where you’re focused. Is GE doing that more around the entire world, or is that more just in Australia thing? No, my understanding is 

Nicholas McVey: it’s pretty global. It’s a pretty global approach.

I can’t necessarily speak for every for the Europe and the US. We, no, our commercial director said it said it. Gillan said it well recently where he said, look, We’re really interested. What, while we have this workhorse product, we want them, and that’s based on quality and performance.

We also want to be flexible to our customer. We want our customer to tell us what they want. We don’t want to just say we don’t want to be, I guess we don’t want to be a workhorse commercially, I guess is a way to put it. So we want to be a workhorse in our product, but not necessarily in a commercial sense, because ultimately the customers is the one that knows.

Joel Saxum: Business 101. I love that you guys are getting back to that. 

Allen Hall: And the Cypress as a workhorse this Mark II version of the Cypress, which you’re going to be installing pretty soon in Australia. A lot of work has been done on that turbine before deploying that. You want to describe all the effort that has gone into ensure you have a quality product when it gets to Australia.

Nicholas McVey: Yeah, absolutely. So the, and this may not be the official name for it. It’s just my name for it, but but that’s what I’m calling it. It’s the first time it’s ever going to be installed in the field for a customer is in Australia for Squadron at Ungopa. And that’s coming in, I believe it’s 2027 is when we will see that.

This product has been something that, is part of that quality journey that GE’s been on, part of the workhorse strategy is, we want to make sure that this thing is, is a quality product, is working, is performing, and it hits the ground running. And so there’s been a test side In Europe for about 12 months before we, we actually started manufacturing this turbine.

And we, it’s had, it had a full run of 12 months and at a 98 percent availability. It’s tested in the field. Sure. We talked about Australia and its harsh conditions. It, it’s, it hasn’t been to Australia yet, but it ultimately that.

They’re minor, when you look at a product like this, it’s been in the, in operation for 12 months and it’s had that kind of performance. We’re not sending it into the desert. It’s still going into a normal, windy area that is perfect for its, that has a nice little wind speed that’s nice and perfect for its its use and and we’re really confident that’s going to do really well here.

Allen Hall: Australia is so solar dominated at the minute that there’s some batteries coming online. It’s a fluctuating market. It is so unique in the renewable world. And Australia is, in my opinion, the leader in renewable energy, clearly because of how much it’s being delivered at the moment. When does that missing piece How do you see that wind fitting into that solar landscape as it exists right now?

Nicholas McVey: What we’re finding in Australia is that there’s some very clear areas where state governments are building wind farms, right? So they’ve carved out these particular areas. And the reason that they’re doing that, I can’t speak for the reasons that they’re doing it, but.

But from my perspective it’s to ensure that they can firm that wind power into the grid and make sure that it’s a consistent entry into the grid. We’ve got the, we’ve got, we’ve brought a call reses. And and squadron is the ones that we’re building for squadron are in the the New South Wales res, which is has a significant amount of wind farms planned for that one area and also has, significant transmission line upgrades associated with that area so that it can confidently pump that that energy into the grid without curtailment.

So I guess the point there is that yes, it will, there will be an offset with solar and the idea is to is to utilize both of them so that, we can provide a consistent, a consistent energy source. So that’s where it’s going and there are, yeah, for one I’m not an expert, I’m sure maybe Rosie would have a lot better idea about this, but what is that there are some very significant transmission pathways, around New South Wales, the top of Victoria, down in South Australia where these res areas are pumping into that.

Allen Hall: So is Vernova being an international company in electricity, generally speaking they’re involved in interconnects and all the grid infrastructure, and it’s a great business right now. If you look at GE Vernova, the infrastructure, electrical supply is Fantastic. Is that a business that Vernova is going to pursue in Australia because of this interconnect issue and did the distribution of power from windy areas to the cities?

Nicholas McVey: Yeah, absolutely. Yep. We’ve got a, we’ve got a really strong grid team here already. We, we’ve seen certainly from the time that I’ve been at G Vernova, I’ve seen a significant increase in the, I’d say the relationship that our grid team is having with AEMBO and having with, with the NSPs.

And and we’re starting to really see a breakdown of a lot of red tape, which is really encouraging. Of course, we always say that they need, the less red tape, the better but I think what we’re finding is that it’s all about that relationship and, regulators and MSPs understanding our product, understanding, the the underlying factors that are in, Involved in generation.

So we’ve really got to be on the front foot with that and really transparent as much as we can be to give them the confidence they need to allow our customers to generate. That’s really where the grid team is. 

Allen Hall: That’s why you choose GE Vernova, is because they can create the power generation piece, be it wind or in the US, sometimes natural gas, and they’re big in both those areas.

Plus the distribution equipment. You want them to work together. And GE Brnova brings that as a package in a lot of part of the world, which makes complete sense. It just simplifies the process in getting the grid infrastructure and the power distribution already set up as one item. Now, Australia is poised for big growth as we had discussed.

And wind, what does that look like over the next year or so? You mentioned what it looked like over the next couple of years. What does your next year look like? How busy are you going to be? 

Nicholas McVey: They’re going to be extremely busy for the foreseeable future. So we’ve got which is fantastic and it’s not just us it’s our competitors in this market as well.

It’s really, it’s a really strong market. And there’s some really great customer relationships happening and there’s some. And, our supply chains are are looking really strong. I guess it’s the, over the next year, there’s from an, I guess I could talk from a project perspective, we’ve got we’ve got Goita, which is the key one that we’re working on at the moment, but it’s, we’re about, it’s about halfway through.

It’s 75 Cypress turbines they’re 6. 0158 turbines. And aiming to, to have that sort of finalized and in production next year. So that’s probably the key one for next year from an O& M perspective. We’re really just, continuing to make sure that we’re set up correctly and for the future, we’ve for me it’s really about making sure that I’ve got a really robust safety processes, really robust production.

And productivity and making sure everyone’s happy. And that we’ve got the right people that, that are doing a really good job and that it’s an industry where, availability is always what we’re striving for, but there’s only so much you can plan for but we really want to work with our customers.

To give them that the forward data that they need to be able to understand their generation and work with us. I guess the key thing that we’re doing at the moment is we’re putting together, 12 month look ahead availability forecasts presenting those to our customers.

And then saying, look, how does this work with your generation budgets, do we need to ship something, can we move things around to make sure that you’re increasing your generation while we can, while allowing us to do our work for you. So having that conversation and that relationship with the customer, really make sure that even if we do have something, some major part of work to do that might take the fun down for a little bit that, that’s understood and that we’re ensuring that we’re not, that the generation losses are minimized.

That’s our focus, a really strong, happy team and a really strong relationship with our customer is really what I’m focused on for the next year. 

Allen Hall: So if you’re interested in connecting with Nicholas and buying some of these new Cypress turbines. Or, working with Nicholas as part of the O& M team, how do they connect with you?

How do they reach you? 

Nicholas McVey: They can always email me or Vic Dean, probably a couple of good ones. I’m happy to share my details on with you guys and we can share that. I’m also planning to be at the the O& M conference next year in Australia, which is, um, please come along to that and bam me up.

And but look, really happy, I guess on your point about people, it’s really important to reiterate that point that you don’t have to be from wind to, to get into wind, we’re really interested in. Making sure that if you’ve got a wind farm, I know it might be hard to figure out whether it’s a GE wind farm or not, but if there’s a wind farm nearby and and you’re mechanically trained, electrically trained and you’re interested please feel free to reach out to us and we’d be more than happy to talk to you.

Allen Hall: Yeah. If you want to get into wind, now is the time in Australia. You don’t want to miss out. You want to get hooked up with GE Vernova as quickly as you can. Nicholas, thank you for Thank you so much for being on the podcast. It’s been great speaking with you. We will see you in February for the O& M conference, and we’re going to have a great time.

So thank you so much for being on the podcast. No 

Nicholas McVey: worries. Thanks, guys.