The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

Nicholas Gaudern, CTO at PowerCurve, discusses the growing focus on data-driven insights in wind turbine operations, emphasizing the importance of laser scans, digital twins, and aerodynamic add-ons for enhancing efficiency and performance. 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! Allen Hall: Nicholas, welcome back to the podcast. Hi. Thanks Allen. Good to see you again. There’s a lot going on in wind right now. Obviously the elections that happy the United States are changing the way that a lot of US based operators are thinking about their turbines and, and particularly their blades. I’ve noticed over the last, even just couple of weeks that. Operators and the engineers are paying more attention to what they’re actually getting on site. Nicholas Gaudern: Yes. Allen Hall: Instead of, uh, the sort of the full service agreement where, hey, they’re under warranty for two years, I don’t really need to do anything for a little while approach. That’s changing into, I want to know what arrives on site, what am I getting and what problems are there with these particular blades that I may not know about because they’re new to me. Even though these blades, there may be thousands of these blades out in service. Mm-hmm. Me, my company doesn’t know. Yep. How they operate. How they perform, particularly at this, this new site, I’m Repowering or, [00:01:00] or building new. That is a complete shift. From where it was a year ago, two years ago, five years ago. Yeah. And I think the biggest performance piece that people are looking at is aerodynamics, and I’m trying to understand how these blades perform, how they move. Yes. What kind of loads there are, what kind I expect over the next year or two. And I think they’re just becoming now aware of maybe I need to have a game plan. Nicholas Gaudern: Mm-hmm. Allen Hall: And I, and that’s where power curve comes in, is like in the sense of have a king plan. Understand what these plates are all about. Yeah, yeah. And try to characterize ’em early rather than later. Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, exactly. I think there’s been an increased focus on, on data and for operators, as you say, to understand more what they’re getting and not necessarily relying on just what they’re told. So, uh, I think a nice case study of that is last year we were helping a customer to build a, a digital twin. Uh, of one of their turbine models that they, that they purchased. So what that involved [00:02:00] is, uh, going to site, doing a laser scan of a blade, understanding geometry, helping them to build up some aerodynamic and structural models of that blade. So then that customer was going to build an AEL model themselves of that turbine so that they could run load calculations. They could look at, uh, site specific, uh, changes that could be relevant to that turbine’s configuration or how they operated it. And this isn’t really something that you saw a lot of, uh, a few years ago, but I think it’s great that operators, particularly when they have a larger engineering capacity, are starting to get into that game. Uh, and it’s tough because it’s a lot of what the OEMs do, it’s their kind of specialist knowledge, but there’s a lot of smart people out there. Uh, there’s a lot of companies you can work with to help gather that data and build these products up. Allen Hall: The OEMs right now are. Lowering the number of engineers. Nicholas Gaudern: Mm-hmm. Allen Hall: Staff reductions. Yeah. Uh, so getting a hold of somebody on the engineering staff, particularly with aerodynamics, can be quite hard. Yes. And in fact, I’ve talked to [00:03:00] some smaller operators that can’t get access to those people at all. Nicholas Gaudern: No, no. We, we get told that a lot that, um, there’s, there’s customers calling OEMs and they, yeah. They can’t, they can’t speak to anyone who really understands that the issues that they’re facing. But free now we, we have contact with a lot of OEMs. I would say that we have more aerodynamicists and power curve than some OEMs have now. Oh, that’s true. And that’s quite, that’s true. Surprising. You know. Um, so it does mean that I think from a customer support perspective, it is harder for the OEMs to take on some of those really detailed or nuanced questions that an operator may have. Allen Hall: Right. Operators are getting smarter. Nicholas Gaudern: Yep. Allen Hall: And asking more pointed questions, not generic questions anymore. Uh, we’ve had, uh, junker on the podcast and I, when I ran into her last summer, she was basically saying that like you, you’re talking to operators now that are getting smarter about what they’re doing. Yes. They’re asking more pointed questions. The OEMs can’t respond. So now what do you do? Yeah, that’s, that’s the Global Blade Group. Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, exactly. Allen Hall: [00:04:00] Perspective, right? Where everybody’s starting to pool the resources together. I think that’s an Nicholas Gaudern: absolutely great initiative. I mean, it’s something that’s been going along in various forms for a few years now, but um, now big it has joined Stack rt. It’s kind of been relaunched in, in this new form that you were discussing with us. So, um, we are really excited to be part of that, I think kind of the way, uh. Our role sits within the group. We’re still working on, on the details, but we’re definitely gonna be part of that group in helping to, to share knowledge. So the aim is that we will help, uh, educate basically to, to raise discussion points, to, to lead forums with operators about how they can understand their aerodynamics better, how they can ask more relevant questions of the OEM. So I think that’s what a lot this is about, just asking the right questions. I think sometimes operators can feel a little bit, uh, blind. Uh, as to the best way to navigate a problem, but by knowledge sharing within the Blades group with other forums, um, I think that’s gonna make that a lot easier for everyone. Allen Hall: And you’ve been tapped as [00:05:00] the lead of the aerodynamics group within the Global Blade Nicholas Gaudern: Group? Yes. Yep, yep, that’s, that’s correct. Um, we haven’t had a, a kickoff yet as such, but that will hopefully happen in the next couple of months. But yeah, the idea is that power curve will kind of. Lead that knowledge sharing around the aerodynamic subject. Allen Hall: Yes. So if you haven’t joined the Global Blade Group, it’s free. Yep. If you work for an operator, you can just join it and you should. So get somebody on your staff to sign up to get ahold of Burger and get going with that, because then you can tap into all the resources that they have. Them being, uh, the most recent one is the leading edge protection campaign that was just summarized, uh, a couple of weeks ago. So that data set is out there and you want to have access to that. Mm-hmm. But I think more importantly, as the group goes forward now and has been emboldened again, the aerodynamic piece is the missing link for most operators. Yeah, it is. Nicholas Gaudern: And it’s, it’s often an area that is, um, hasn’t had as much attention historically. Uh, there’s just not so many engineers out there with that background. You know, it’s, um, [00:06:00] I wouldn’t say it’s any more or less hard than lots of other of the complex subjects within a wind turbine. There’s just, there’s fewer people, uh, who, who know the same, uh, level of, um, stuff. Allen Hall: Yeah. And there’re being, those resources are being, uh, taxed quite heavily at the minute, uh, with all the activity it happen in the OEMs. Now, as operators, uh, start to receive newer blades and you see. OEMs obviously moving to bigger turbines and to specific models, so there’s actually fewer varieties of blades than there were a couple years ago, but there’s still quite a number of blades out there. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So you, you’re going to get generally a more generic blade type at your specific wind site? Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, quite possibly. Allen Hall: Yeah. I, I think especially ge renova is, is gonna be driving down to a, a limited set of blades and a limited set of turbines. So they’re gonna be trying to apply that turbine. More globally than they have in the past, instead of tailoring a specific set of blades vest is, it’s gonna do something very similar, I think. Mm-hmm. Uh, and in that mode, [00:07:00] if you’re an operator and you’re receiving these blades, you don’t really understand what’s about to happen unless you do your homework ahead of time. And I think that’s where the opportunity lies today to do something really inexpensive and smart up front. To understand what’s likely to happen. Yeah. Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, exactly. And I think that all starts with, um, as we talked about, gathering good data, whether that be a laser scan or detailed photographs or measurements or NDT, uh, putting some sensors in the blade, some CMS equipment. I think all of that stuff to help really build up that knowledge base early. To help start planning for future o and m, uh, operations? Yeah, Allen Hall: so the simple one as blades come on site is to do a laser scan. Nicholas Gaudern: Mm. Yep. And that takes how long? A few hours. And, and it’s much easier on the ground than it is a tower as well. And then you can use that full kinds of things. Yes. It’s very useful to do aerodynamic studies on. But then, uh, other stuff that might not seem so [00:08:00] exciting, but is super important. How do you move blades around a, uh, handling yard if you have a CAD model that’s much easier to plan? How do you, uh, look at a new stacking frame or a, a lifting device that you might need to purchase? Well, it all comes back to having that initial data. And I think what we see, uh, at Power Curve is there’s a huge variety of aerodynamic upgrades that are shipped with blades. And even though, um. Two customers might buy the same blade. They might not necessarily have the same upgrade pack on from the, uh, from the OEM. So really understanding what’s in your fleet from the start. Where are those VGs? Where are the serrations, where are the spoilers? That’s critical going forward to understand how to manage those blades. And we talk to a lot of operators, uh, about VGs and other upgrades. It’s, uh, surprising to us how few know what is on their blades. They just don’t know. They don’t have that information. They just arrive. Yeah. So, so what happens if some of those add-ons need replacing? What happens if you are missing [00:09:00] potential? Well, you don’t have a good data set to go back to, to really understand the problem. So yeah, we’d really encourage that from the get go to, to document that. Allen Hall: The, the discussion I’ve seen at operators about trying to get a blade model out of the OEM goes like this, Hey, OEM, uh. I would like to have the blade model so I can do some analysis and we can operate this thing once it comes off warranty, obviously. And the OM says no. Nicholas Gaudern: Hmm. Allen Hall: All right. Well, can I scan it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, you own the blade at the end of the day. I own the blade so I I can scan it all day. Yeah. But they will not give you the model, but you can scan it. And scanning’s not expensive. I get it. If they sent you the model, it’d be less expensive. Yeah. But that’s not going to happen. And you can’t even contractually get it because it’s ip. Yeah. Even though you can go scan the same blade. Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. Allen Hall: It doesn’t make any sense why you’re not scanning the blade at this point. It’s so easy. Five years ago. Yes. Difficult Nicholas Gaudern: today. Simple. Yeah. The scanning process [00:10:00] itself, I think where the real, uh, complexity comes in is then how do you convert that scan? Into a usable CAD model. I think that’s where the, the experience and um, and the skill of a, a good CAD engineer is really important. So within, uh, power curve, we’ve been drawing blades for years and years and years now. So 30, 40 different blades we’ve scan, we’ve drawn, we’ve analyzed, and um, even the best laser scan may still have a few question marks around how you should interpret the data. So I’d encourage you that if you are going to go down that path. Then, then call someone who’s done it a few times before and, and understand what’s going on. Allen Hall: And then getting the details about the aerodynamic upgrades. I’ll call them quote unquote upgrades because sometimes I wonder if there are upgrades or not. Yeah. Uh, especially VGs getting those identified. It’s exactly where they are on the blade matters. Trailing ulcerations, the kind of trailing ulceration you have, the sizes of them because they all vary in size [00:11:00] as you go up and down the blade, knowing where those are exactly out on the blade. And to me, when I see a variety of blade, a variety of blades made the same blade model, same blade revision. Yep. But you start looking at ’em and you see those manufacturing tolerances move around quite a bit. It makes sense not to scan just one blade, but I’m probably gonna scan a variety of blades once they come outside. Yeah. Maybe they, Nicholas Gaudern: maybe the OEM changes the philosophy about what they wanna do and I think with add-ons, um, there is a lot of, um, design philosophy involved. With aerodynamics, as with lots of other disciplines, there’s a few ways you can skin the cat, right? There’s different ways that you can have a very similar effect with different products or different configurations, and I think you see that with aerodynamic upgrades quite clearly. So from some manufacturers we see, they’ll ship blades with bgs almost from root to tip. From from the get go. You’ll see some OEMs that just have them in the route. You’ll have some that have none at all, and that that is still quite surprising, I think, because. Vortex [00:12:00] generators, particularly down in the root region of a blade to me, are, are kind of obvious now they’re proven. Uh, there’s a big stall zone in the root of the blade. A VG array will help reduce that level of stall. Now you still have to engineer that solution. So perhaps one of the reason we don’t see all blades with them is the OEM didn’t have the capacity to engineer that solution because they didn’t have enough aerodynamics. Or they were too busy working on the next blade or whatever. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t benefit from those products being there. So this is why it’s important to, to understand what you’re getting and to ask the questions, well, why, why doesn’t the root of my blade have VGs on? Have you done a calculation that shows that they didn’t work? Uh, and if you didn’t, well maybe, maybe you could, or maybe you could talk to someone else. Um, Allen Hall: yeah, because you do see the offerings today. And the two obvious ones we see mostly in the states, particularly with VGs and add-ons, is Siemens VGs and trailing inspirations are everywhere. Yeah, all [00:13:00] over those blades. Nicholas Gaudern: I think Siemens have been for a long time now, uh, very keen on add-ons. And I like that philosophy personally. I, I think there’s, there’s a school of thought that says if you put an add-on on a blade, you’ve kind of, you’ve kind of failed. You know, you should have addressed in the design that problem, and therefore you don’t need to put an add-on on, but I would make an argument that there are so many things that an add-on product can do that are incredibly hard to achieve in a molded, uh, product. So even if you think you could include everything in the mold, maybe the cost or the complexity of doing that. Is much harder than just sticking something on afterwards. So I, I don’t think there should be any discussion around it being like a bandaid or a cheat or a fix, or there should be an integrated part of a design process. A VG will give you more stall margin. So if you design with VGs, maybe you can design your blade, uh, twist distribution a little bit differently. Uh, if you integrate serrations into your design [00:14:00] process, maybe you can change the type of error fo you use or the tip speed ratio that you run at, because the serrations can help reduce the noise. So if you’re considering all of that from the get go, there’s a lot of power in these devices that are, as I say, are very difficult to achieve in just, uh, out of the mold product. Um, I, I think a lot of operators Allen Hall: don’t realize how much impact those little plastic devices. Yeah. Can have on, on power production and which is revenue. Yes. Straight revenue. That’s all that it is. Exactly. And they sort of discount them on some level because they made out of plastic. I don’t know why that is. It’s the, all the engineering and the literally thousands of hours of engineering and being in the wind tunnel, which is super expensive. Yes. To go figure these things out because you can’t calculate them with excel. No, it’s, it’s way more complicated of a problem than that. You need, Nicholas Gaudern: you need some higher fidelity tools. And again, I think that’s why there’s been, uh, differing levels of uptake among the OEMs, among different operators because it does require some, [00:15:00] some hard calculations to be done. Maybe some full rotor CFD calculations, but that is all within the grass. Of what you can do quite economically today. You know, huge increases in computing, power cloud computing services. You can do this stuff Allen Hall: Well. That’s the thing that I bring up to the operators quite often is I said, you use Chap GPT, right? Yeah. Yeah. And they go, well, yeah, yeah. Well, you realize the amount of compute power that exists behind those, that amount of compute that’s being built today is also gonna do CFD. Yes. Is also gonna do all those complicated aerodynamic problems and solution sets. That we weren’t really able to do 10 years ago will be instantaneous to us in a couple of months. Yeah, Nicholas Gaudern: I mean, we work with a, a cloud computing, uh, service, uh, at North. So they’re, they’ve been our cloud computing provider for, for a number of years now to run CFD on. They’re just building some new data centers now in Denmark, and I believe they said one of them had a rate of power of 250 megawatts. Allen Hall: Right. [00:16:00] Yeah. They’re having Nicholas Gaudern: to build, imagine the, imagine the computing power behind 250 megawatts. Right? Allen Hall: Because as GE Renova has mentioned in a couple of their more recent public, uh, notices, is that gas turbines are a big business for GE Renova for data centers. Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. Allen Hall: And how much data center can you build in a year? Well, evidently about 20 gigawatts worth. Yeah. Quite a lot. Yeah. That’s a lot of compute power. Way more than the planet has ever had before. Yeah. Nicholas Gaudern: So I think there’s, there’s some, I mean. The work we do, we think we’re quite innovative. We think we’re kind of, uh, leading the way in, in some fields, but we have to be very careful to, to stay on the train because very soon, uh, the computing power that’s gonna be available. Might blow some of the stuff we are doing now out of the water. Sure will. So we, you know, we need to keep our eye on this fidelity. Yeah. The Fidelity’s gonna go Allen Hall: way up, but the engineering that goes behind it still has to be there because garbage N equals garbage out. Exactly. You, you have to have people with Nicholas Gaudern: the experience and the knowledge and the fundamentals because [00:17:00] even with things like vortex generators, there’s so many different ways you can use them. And I think the two, the two biggest ways, uh, you know, going back to that comment about Blaze being shipped with VGs from root to tip. If you have VGs in the root, they’re fundamentally addressing stall from thick aerofoils. If they’re towards the tip, it’s more about robustness of the power curve, so helping the turbine deal with sub, uh, standard surface conditions, whether that be dirt, bugs, ice, fungus, erosion, whatever. So even though you may be able to compute all this stuff, some of these fundamental nuggets of knowledge about how these add-ons should work or could work. It’s critical to help set up the problem. And, um, that’s, that’s where we come in hopefully. Allen Hall: Well, let’s talk leading edge for a minute, just because there’s been a lot of data. The Global Blade Group has published some five year study from a variety of operators that are trying different kinds of coatings and solutions. One of the things that I get asked weirdly enough is how much can I [00:18:00] possibly lose in a EP due to leading edge? And the numbers that are thrown at me are crazy. Yes, people will tell me they’re losing 10%. There is no way you’re losing 10%. And Nicholas Gaudern: that’s, that’s because they’re not using an engineering driven approach. Right. So we’ve, we’ve talked about data capture and, and sensible engineering. It applies to everything. And I think leading edge erosion is an example of something that just has too many reckons involved. Well, you can actually work it out. Um, you can go to a wind tunnel, you can do CFD simulation, you can do our elastic simulations, and you can come up with a much more, uh, engineering driven and consistent, uh, loss number. So something that we’ve been working on for a long time now in power covers. How do you understand those losses? And, uh, a year or two ago, we launched our ERA Vista tool, and that is. Uh, designed to take data from the field that real data we’ve been talking about, and combine it with the best engineering knowledge we can [00:19:00] to come up with that loss number. So, uh, a real blade model taken from a real laser scan, CFD simulation, scarda data, coupled into a, uh, a model of a turbine in, uh, in a blade element momentum form. That is how the turbine would’ve been designed in the first place. So kinda this consistent tool chain. And what we find with leading a ros after analyzing a couple of thousand turbines now with a vista is losses one and a half, 2%. Something in that that’s, that’s a bit more realistic as a loss number. Those are still significant numbers, but that’s, you should be worried about that number should. You don’t need to have it at 10% to be worried. No 1% on a big turbine is plenty enough to worry about. Right. Especially when you have a hundred of them. Yeah. So, so we don’t need the scaremongering, you just need that consistency and that, um, and that focus on what, what is actually happening and, and can I justify it? So Allen Hall: this goes back to a discussion you and I had a, a couple of months ago [00:20:00] about the spreadsheet that’s being shared around that was created at a university that supposedly. Tells us what the, the a EP loss is in an Excel like form. Yeah. That is being used so incorrectly right now. Nicholas Gaudern: Uh, and it is like any tool, if you, if you use it in a smart way, then maybe you can get a sense of answer. But trying to do something consistently and to see any kind of real difference between turbine models will be. Very challenging. Yes. Um, so what I like about some of these simple tools is it can help put you in a ballpark, right? That stops us having these silly conversations about 10% losses or 0% losses. You know, it helps to kind of narrow the band, but if you then want to really understand, uh, what the answer is, much, much closer to reality. Then you have to have the blade data. Yes. Because every blade is different. Every turbine model is different. [00:21:00] You can’t have that generic setup if you want to have that, that subtlety so you can actually spend your money wisely. Allen Hall: That’s the problem is that that tool’s being used sort of globally across a farm and everybody that’s involved on the engineering side and particularly on the finance side of the operators realizes I’m probably not gonna fix all of these. Yeah. Turbines. A hundred turbine farm, very common in the United States. 200, 300 plus. Now I need to know what turbines I need to go after based on real data. If I have a hundred turbine farm, I really want to pick out the 20 turbines that I’m gonna go put. Leaning as protection on. Yeah. I need to know that, but only when I really know it is to run it through Arab Vista. And then it does give me the Yeah. The top 20 Nicholas Gaudern: EE Exactly. And that, and that’s exactly what it’s designed to do, to take, to give confident analysis that you can then base business decisions on. Yeah. Um, because there’s a lot of operators out there who would love to optimize how [00:22:00] they’re spending their, their own m budget. And this tool will allow them to do that. Right. And I, Allen Hall: I just, I’m starting to see more adoptions at Vista because that accounting Nicholas Gaudern: Yep. Is starting to take place and then you can start planning for the future as well. Right. So, so let’s say you have five years worth of inspection data that you can run through the system. You can then see how the AP loss has progressed over five years. Yes. Where’s it going in the future? Uh, maybe I’m finding that my turbines from one OEM are performing way worse than turbines from another OEM. Sure, and that’s just useful information. Allen Hall: Well, even on the a EP loss from existing leading edge protection systems, some of the more draggy lossy, uh, leading edge protection systems. Are still being applied today. So as those systems fail, the amount of drag, a lawsuit that is created when the system eventually wear out is way more than just leaving the, the turbine alone, honestly. Yeah. So it’s not, you [00:23:00] need to think of it as a, a, a larger problem. You Nicholas Gaudern: have, you have to take that system level approach for sure. Right? You need to think Allen Hall: about, yes. Okay. Then my blade has say it’s 1% right now I’m gonna put this coating on, but the coating’s gonna last three years roughly generally. What happens at year three? Well, I’m gonna have a 3% loss break. Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. May maybe the l break in some, in some cases might make the situation worse. Right. So, you know, it’s about just choosing the right, the right tool for the problem, isn’t it? It is. When should I put, uh, protection on? When should I not, when should I clean a blade? When should I not? When should I apply VGs? When should I not? But unless you have the data coming in and you have that, uh, setup that we’ve been talking about earlier in the, in the discussion here, that’s really hard to do. It is. So it’s, Allen Hall: it’s really hard to do. And even the discussion about leading edge protection, the, the, the issue I have with a lot of them is that they do leave a significant lip Yeah. Right. In a croker area. Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. Allen Hall: Some of [00:24:00] the providers of those systems are, are like, well, it doesn’t really make that much difference. And they don’t have any aerodynamic data. And I’ve talked to a person that doesn’t know that much about aerodynamics obviously. ’cause there’s only a few handful of people mm-hmm In wind that know that much, but. I think, okay, yes, you’re gonna recover the 1% a EP loss that the blade roughness did have, but you’re not really recovering all that. No, not necessarily necessarily what a vista will help also tell you, it helps, it Nicholas Gaudern: helps make a good decision around that, Allen Hall: right? So you may have a, a preferred LEP solution, but if it really doesn’t change your a EP, then what are we doing? Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, exactly. And perhaps the structural implications weren’t that big on that turbine. Right. So, so yeah, again, having that balance of the structural risk, the aerodynamic risk, I think, um, as you start gathering more and more inspection data as operators are having now that kind of risk, a score based approach where you’re bringing together structural risk, aerodynamic risk, financial risk, um, [00:25:00] and bringing all those things together, that’s, that’s where the money lies. Allen Hall: The industry is getting smarter. About the way they spend money, which once interest rates went up and they know filter tower on the program. Every episode talks about interest rates and what effect it as. Yes, it does have an effect, but on an engineering group it has a really significant effect because you need to have a better model. You need to have a better approach. You just don’t throw money at these problems anymore. You need to have an ROI based solution. That’s where Aero Vista comes in. That’s a real solution that’s been validated and has proven itself, and it’s gonna get you to the proper solution, the most cost efficient solution, the fastest way. I haven’t seen a product out there, and I’ve been around quite a bit. I haven’t seen another product that even approaches that. No, no, Nicholas Gaudern: I’m, I’m, Allen Hall: I’m glad to Nicholas Gaudern: hear Allen Hall: that one. And it’s not gonna be on the spreadsheet, so if you’re working on a spreadsheet today, stop, pick up the phone, get on the internet. [00:26:00] Look up power curve. They’re based in Denmark, but they’re worldwide. You guys are everywhere right now and start talking about cost effective solutions. Yes. Start looking at how to spend your money more wisely. Nicholas Gaudern: Exactly. Exactly. Allen Hall: Now’s the time to do that. How do people get ahold of you, Nicholas? How do I get people get ahold of power crew. Nicholas Gaudern: So they can check at our website. That’s, that’s power curve. Uh, dk, we have all our contact details on there. You can look up myself, uh, on LinkedIn. Also our CEO, Neil’s Business Development. Emil, we’re all on LinkedIn. You can reach out there through the website. Yeah, we’d love to talk to you. Allen Hall: Absolutely. So this year is the year to get your a EP figured out and to get all your add-ons figured out and to get your LEP approach, uh, aligned with the cost. And I, I think this is the time that Power Curve will be in the lead of this. And hopefully your phone starts ringing a little bit more because we, we’d love to help them do [00:27:00] that. Absolutely. Because I do, I think there’s so much opportunity for operators to save money Yes. And, and to have more production. Yep. Which is what we need. We need the industry, particularly the United States, need to be able to prove itself more than ever. Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. Just use, use the data, use the expertise that’s out there and Uh, absolutely. And uh, yeah, give us a call. Nicholas, thanks for being back on the podcast. It’s been great. Thanks, Allen.

In this insightful episode of Uptime Spotlight, Allen Hall and Joel Saxum welcome back Armando Costa Rego, CEO of ArthWind, to discuss their groundbreaking new software platform, ArthNex. This data-driven solution transforms wind turbine blade management by connecting field technicians directly with engineers in real-time, dramatically reducing downtime and optimizing repairs. Visit ArthWind at https://arthwind.com.br Connect with Armando on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/armandocostarego/ Allen Hall: Alright, Armando, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you guys. It’s a pleasure to be here again. Yeah. It’s been a couple of months since we’ve last had you on the podcast. But a lot has happened since then. Earth, wind, obviously huge Brazilian presence. You guys are working with most of the operators or much of most of the installed base in Brazil, and you’re expanding out into the United States and other places. But the product offerings you have created over that short time span since we last talked are quite amazing and you want to announce this new software product. It’s called what? ArthNex. Armando Costa Rego: Art Next, yeah. Yes. Yeah. This predator came from the idea to, to go deep in the value chain of the hippers, you know, everybody in the march, I think since 2017, the industry has experienced, uh, a fast improvement in the drone solution, the rover that we started like four years ago, and everybody’s talking about how long it takes an inspection and how long pressure to produce in minutes. So we are talk 30, 20, 25. For me, what matters if we, we create data to hipper, so the, the discussion of the architect is, okay, we jump into this phase of, to discuss how fast an inspection we are now, uh, uh, using this data to provide it to the owners in operators, OEME, whatever, in the player in the market would be interested to use our. Maybe he pair knowledge capabilities to go direct to actions that can prioritize what to do, how to do, and sometimes why to do. Yeah, that’s the question. Nobody do this question why to do that. Yeah. Those make sense or not? So the data will tell you what makes sense or those not make sense. Joel Saxum: Yeah. So what, like when we look at most platforms out there, asset management blade inspection platforms, it’s here’s your inspections, here’s the findings from them. Here’s a Allen Hall: spreadsheet. Joel Saxum: [00:02:00] Stop. Yeah, that’s it, right? There’s that. There’s no just looking at the earth Next platform. When Alan and I were peeking at it yesterday, it was like. Here’s a dashboard that shows you where your leading edge erosion status is on, on all your whole fleet. And this like, oh, that’s great. Like, oh, your overall risk score is this, oh, this turbine has a risk score of that. Like, oh, what’s going on here? These are the ones that you need to stop now. Look at in two weeks, look at in 12 weeks, like. There was actionable data and that’s before we even get into the operational part of repairs, but actionable data that you can look at dashboard. Now I know what decisions I need to make today. Armando Costa Rego: Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. So it is a clean data, it’s clear data. We can interact with the image. We are not focused in show, like the entire blade in the platform because that consumes a lot of dev time of development, you know, so, and we note that only 4% of the emails have something to tell you. Yeah, right. So some point of internet. So we work exclusively. And that information that’s really useful to the operator. Allen Hall: Yeah, and I think that’s the problem, right? Is that when we get drone images or internal inspections, there’s a lot of data. Yeah. That then as we’ve talked to operators in the United States, we have engineers, usually junior engineers, going through all that data, trying to pick out what’s important and what’s not important so that they can develop a plan themselves internally, but they’re wasting. Thousands of engineering hours doing it. Yes. Joel Saxum: And the tr one of the troubles that we talk about regularly on, on the show is lack of technicians, but also the lack of engineering knowledge and support. So when you have a blade engineer that’s, this regularly happens in the states, I’m in charge, I’m the blade engineer, I’m in charge of a thousand turbines. What? So they don’t have the bandwidth to take care of, to look through all of these different things, and that’s where the earth wind. Team with the Arthrex platform and all the engineering expertise you guys have in the background can help operators like that out a lot because they become their, you know, turn the tap on, turn the tap off blade engineering team that they can use. Armando Costa Rego: Yeah. You know, in ArthWind we combining, we have a tried that we involve right people, we are talking about knowledge. And the experience of these people. Out of the 140 people that work for art in Brazil now have experienced some parts of the value chain, or in blade design, or in blade manufacturing, or in the OEME or make root cause analysis in broken blades. You know, so we cover all life cycle. And the second pilot is technology. So we were the first company, maybe the, the South hemisphere in the world. To make an inspection with autonomous drone back in 2017. So in Brazil there nobody was talking about drone. And the last one is methodology. We are. Very confident that we cannot change the methodology, otherwise we will have a mess with data. So since 2017, we created our own blade book, just to be straight to what this data does means. Yeah. Okay. If there is another, uh, categorization, for example, everybody’s talk about categorization, that’s a huge discussion. I disagree that we need to categorize from one after five. You know, I think that blade can talk much more than five levels. Uh, but when you have our own methodology, we can combine the data from the inspection that we did from the ground, from in the manufacturing, and we can have a much more clear view during a root cause analysis when you will go to the blade, the data book and check the results. Yeah, that is no confusion. If you crack, if the elimination, if the a Cat 5 is a Cat 3, we tell the history of each damage and the cause, the potential cause of those damage because our engineering is backed by blade designer. So they know what they are looking and what it, it can make this damage happens in the field, you know? Allen Hall: Absolutely. And I think, uh, something that’s missed for American operators is realizing the talent that sits in Brazil, because Brazil was a blade manufacturer. That’s right. Long before America really started ramping up in blades and then even after America slowly stopped making blades. They were still being made in Brazil. Yeah, so the, the manufacturing technology is in Brazil. The engineers who design blades and know all the inner structures of the blades and how to repair the blades and why certain blades performs this way and other, and others that way, that knowledge base is in Brazil, which makes art wind so. Valuable because you have just a huge people resource that doesn’t really exist in other parts of the world. Maybe the only a place I would assume is like Denmark is where you have that kind of relationship between people that worked in the factory and understand how the bill blades then moved up to engineering and then moved up to management. That’s kind of there. But your people are hard to find in the states. Yeah. And that and that thought process that goes along with it because you had to suffer through all the things that happened in the blade factory and then out in the real world. You develop some of these systems long before United States operators have. So that gives you like. Literally a 15 to 20 year jump of what’s out there otherwise, which is why Earth Wind is so valuable and whatnot, which I don’t understand why American operators aren’t using your resources as much just because you have the technology, you have the knowledge Joel Saxum: and that, and now, like today, we wanted to make sure we talked about Earth Next, the new platform. Yes. And that knowledge base is what built that platform. Absolutely, it did. It’s people that understand the whole value chain from manufacturing. I guess this, this sounds like a sales pitch for you, but we liked it so much when we saw I was blown away a lot, Armando Costa Rego: you know? You know, yes. Back into 13 x we, we spent the last, the last seven years only processing data from the inspection, but we, all of us came from the Heary industry. Yeah. Yeah. I started the business of in Europe in 2009. Yeah. Yeah. So I was dispatching two technicians for 23 countries like pizza, you know, 48 hours with, yeah. Armando Costa Rego: And I, I thought that the way that we was managing repair 15 years ago. It’s not the way that we can accept anymore with modern blades, because if you see the margins, the uh, uh, the safety margin of the blades do not allow lack of no less during the hip air. So that point that a x will play a crucial value in this field, because if you go to the hipper, everybody talk, uh, how long takes your inspection, doesn’t matter how long are you, save you in downtime with my data because. The new feature of the architect, we are going through the hip air value chain and we are broken in pieces, each task, and connecting the field technician direct with engineering. Yes. What happens in the industry today after your technicians go? With a standard procedure, they start to grind. So it take three hours maybe to access the damage. They start to grind, Hey, I found a wave here. There was nothing procedure. So they climb down. They full stop. Yeah, let the turbine stop it. Go to the engineering by WhatsApp or whatever else saying the engineer, start to prepare the word documentation and send back to the, to the selected. This is if you’re lucky. Joel Saxum: Usually this is like a 24 hour delay in process. Oh, easy. Armando Costa Rego: You know that it can take like 48 hours in downtime. So we are very focusing in reducing inspection time. But what is looking how to help this parts of the value chain and the aex? We do, we connect the technicians through the app with the standard procedure and if they, uh, found something different, they immediately in the tab, they press the button. That it will be a pushup in the mobile, the engineering that you will start to work to the hip air. Yeah, no, you’ll not wait till overnight process. For tomorrow day, you solve the doubts of the technician not preparing a word. Give instruction because they know what to do and they just need to redact and say the instructions and pictures. Send mockups, send the drafts, handmade drafts, you know, just to give you more research to the technician. Take decisions. You [00:10:00] know, and it, we are looking that we are already saving a lot of downtime in Brazil with this technology that we have for a customer applying, and the, the data that we are collecting is a good feedback from the blade repair companies. Because it’s making the life of the bladed technicians much more easy. Yeah. They do not need to arrive in the hotel tired and prepare the reports. No, the work is done. Allen Hall: The back office work is being done. Which is need in real time. In real time. Yeah. That, that’s the beauty of what Art Next is doing because you. Been through the other way of doing it. Yeah. And you’ve seen how lossy it is and expensive it is. And the delays and the technicians you’ve created the platform though, that is easy to access. And I think that’s the, the hard part for a, a lot of people to grasp about Artex is you’re putting all that knowledge in a mobile phone. It also appears on a desktop for the engineers to go through the, the communication interface is so much better than the WhatsApp we’ve been doing. Yeah. Text message, text messages, and also the track and Armando Costa Rego: the data, the history of the, the story line of defect because when we broke the value chain of the hip air, there is a complex tasks. Yes. Maybe a simple prepared 12 tasks. Right. Grinding, cleaning, et cetera, et cetera. So when we transform this offline data is online data. We generate gorgeous metadata, you know, because we can, uh, measure the fishings of the campaign, right. And also, uh, a second point of our tool that we control the quality assurance. What kind of materials being employed, right? What’s the calibration certificates? Joel Saxum: Yeah. Armando Costa Rego: So we, we provide a, a full quality assurance services digital to the customer. For one year later, if there something is happening, you have all documentation of the damage. So you can use that with insurance companies to score qualified new suppliers for sure. Yep. ’cause we are raising the bar of the quality controls of the industry. Allen Hall: Yeah, and that’s the big problem I see mostly in the states, is that when they have an ISP show up on site. They don’t have discreet hours of how long it took to do this repair. They don’t know why it took longer than it did. They haven’t looked at how long should this repair really take and how do I budget this properly? On top of it, I’m just getting a PDF after it’s done. I don’t see anything live. Yeah. So to speak, which is a huge problem because I think US operators don’t, can’t realize how much money and time they’re losing in that. Space. It’s millions. Millions of dollars. Millions of dollars. Easily, easily, easily. And that’s where Artex comes in because now you’re tracking ISPs, you’re tracking almost to a technician level the quality of the work engineering consisting of the work, the engineering of the work. Right? Exactly. So now what? When I’m starting to do repairs, I come, I come in much more knowledgeable. And I have much better cost control measures in [00:13:00] place when I do it. So I can watch it go. I get alerts when the budget is running out. Yeah. Right. So that the, something happened, I, I got assigned budget to this. I can’t go over, I need to know that our next provides me that, that look real time as the repair is happening. Um, Armando Costa Rego: those are huge advantages. Uh, you know, I, I think that. Okay. We need to agree that to, to make bleed he air in the environment, in this environmental that we are living now with climate change, et et cetera. That storm, we never have been some storm is knowing we’re so people is not ready how to plan. Right. So, uh, it’s very difficult to forecast how long you’ll take the repair today. Speaker 4: Yeah. Armando Costa Rego: So if you have more data. We can, uh, uh, learn a little bit more about that location to schedule or to make the, a better strategy, not changing the hip repair methodology, but change the chron, the, the timing. Yeah. When to do that because, you know, sometimes I recommend to my customer to inspect the blade, the high wind season. That’s crazy. You lost production. No, you lost like. 30 minutes, but you, you prepare your campaign that that is the point. You know, you lose a lot of money, you know? Right. I think you, you’re touching Joel Saxum: people on all sides of the value chain with the Earth Next platform. So you’re making engineers happy by giving them qa, qc. Yeah. You’re making the procurement and the finance people happier because you’re optimizing the repairs themselves. You’re saving money there. Material. Material control. Material control. The asset managers like so from, I put my asset manager hat on when we were looking at the platform yesterday, and I see this. Basically this entire health timeline of the blade, like from the factory inspections we did to the post commissioning end of warranty, all through the whole thing. It was like, on this date, we did this. On this date, we did that. And you’re able to see it in a flash Allen Hall: in, in a graphical form. Yeah. Easy to digest. It’s not images where I have to keep clicking the image to see the thing, and then I gotta figure out how a crack is progressing. It’s broken down, so it, it is visually easy to scan, which is what engineers have been asking for for the last five years, is I need to go in and scan a thousand blades. I need to know which 20 I’m gonna go look at today. But I don’t wanna spend eight hours on each of these blades because I’m wasting my time. Going to Armando’s system and ArthNex, I can scan it. I know what my top priorities are for the day. That is an important feature as we get more cost conscious. And over the last, well, we had an election in the United States. You may have heard about it, but we’re getting very cost conscious about how we spend our money. Are we spending the money wisely? The way that we’re gonna do that is with systems like Artex that’s gonna help us save money, be more efficient, get the repairs done, and extend the life of these turbines and produce more power. So it ultimately comes to power? Armando Costa Rego: Yes. Because we are connecting engineering. Yes. So the field. Yes. Without going to the building. So, uh, I have had some situation with field technician that where there, I don’t know what to do here. You know, and they do wrong tasks. No, it, we will, the damage will be still there. So we go, okay, we can make a good finishing. Okay, but three months later we will, the crack will be still there. So I think that uh, uh, uh, one of the main points differential of our snacks, uh, people is asking, Hey, how fast did you do develop data? Two years, but there is a knowledge of 20 years of experie of my team. So, and the, the best parts of that job, product owner, for example, he came from the field, he was a field inspector, so he started to. Creating small, uh, uh, uh, uh, programs to make his life better, you know, to make automated report. And you saw, hey, I think that we can create our own technology on that. So when you have the, the, the both of the developers that have been the field and really smart guy, I think that’s very [00:17:00] quickly to digitize the industry. Uh, if you go to the positive, for example, if you are only a tech company and you try to figure out. What to develop. It’ll take longer. You’ll need much more trial, you need much more feedback. But when we know that we’re digitizing from fields. To the office much more fast. The, yeah, so, Allen Hall: and the, uh, one of the advantages to the Earth next system is a lot of operators have 3, 4, 5 years of drone images, external, internal plus repair, PDFs, generally speaking their PDFs. And if they wanted to implement the Arthrex system, it would be easy to do. You’re just gonna import that into the system. Arthrex is gonna. Digitize it, digitize it, and then analyze it so that you can see those trend lines almost within a couple of days. I think you could be up and running with the our next system for a lot of operators in the United States or globally Australia, I think in another place. Yeah, they could use it. You’re gonna be busy. Armando, I you’re gonna be on an airplane quite a bit. Yeah, Armando Costa Rego: we do. We actually do that. Uh, we have like customer, I, I think that we are achieving four gigawatts of contracting. Yeah. That’s Wow. But we feed three years contract, but we inspect more than 20 gigawatts per year in Brazil. Right. For the spot inspection. Yeah. Which, Allen Hall: which is important for everybody to understand. So what earth wind is doing in Brazil is. Gigawatts after gigawatts after gigawatts of inspection, which doesn’t really happen in the state and historic call. Historical year by year. By year. Yeah. Right. Joel Saxum: That’s the trust, right? Allen Hall: That’s the difference. There’s the trust Joel Saxum: that that market has in you guys to get the solutions, right. Um, we want to export that. Yes. Let’s use that trust. Let’s use that track record to help. ’cause I mean, we talked about some of the successes that you’ve had, of course with Earth Wind, but with just the art Next platform guys have like four gigawatts you’ve onboarded here and then. Yeah, on multiyear contracts, like great. Yeah. Armando Costa Rego: And plus for megawatt wind turbine, so it’s modern turbine, auto turbine. We have a mix of technologies there. And also, uh, looking to what is the next, I think that we need to be much more concerned. Everybody’s talking about the standardization inspection, but we can go through the hipper as well. How to communicate a hip pair, how to report. So if you go to the ax now where you press the bottle automatically, you have a beautiful report of five page. Joel Saxum: Yeah. Armando Costa Rego: Wow. We are receiving not 60 pages. Oh yeah. 60. No, it doesn’t matter. Not a photograph album for the wedding, you know, so it’s, uh, we need to have a registered to be used technically in the future with insurance company, with some discussion, technical discussion with OEMs, owner, et cetera. Uh, but I think that the most beautiful is really to digitize this knowledge, you know, and put in the front line because our, we are very obsessed with the front line. We are always thinking how Aex can be better to the field technician because they are our customer. If they don’t like nobody use, so we are collecting this experience. We are talking with technician. What’s the challenge of language? What the challenge of technical information doesn’t make any sense. To make a high technical procedure for someone that just need to understand, hey, how kind of layer. How is the size of the, the scarfing and how much product I need to prepare. So we don’t need to complicate the terminology to the field operation. You need to make it easy, and I think that ArthNex will cross this bridge. Yeah. Yeah. Allen Hall: Well, I, I want to touch on the insurance part of this. Yeah. Because insurance companies, as Joel has mentioned a number of times, run the world. So whatever insurance companies will pay for is what the industry will do. What they won’t pay for, uh, is not gonna happen. And, but getting insurance buy-in into a system like ArthNex is really critical because they see the consistency of the repairs, they see the quality of the product. They can track it. They can also see where maybe an ISP is not doing the right thing and say, Hey, all right, you know, we need, we need to get address that. The insurance industry is, is overseeing all of this at a tight level and they would love to have access to Aex to understand general trends that are happening in the industry. In Joel Saxum: terms of blades. Exactly. I’m saying that dashboard, that quick look at a wind farm. If I’m a, if I’m an engineer, a renewables engineer from an insurance company. And it’s renewal season and now I have to look at a hundred wind farms and some of them are printing out our next reports that are just like, risk score. Here’s this, here’s the top five, this is what we did this year, here’s my timeline. Boom. Check. They’re good, right? Boom. Reduce deductible. You’re gonna reduce the for Armando Costa Rego: record that I have two keys to talk about. Uh, you know, I think the info information. Affect the valuation of the wind farm. Yeah. We cannot forget that we are in m and A market in Brazil, for example. A lot of position in Brazil. Big companies are quite a big one. Right? You know, and the way we have the information organized, we have all technical details. And the buyer will see this information, Hey, I can buy this risk. Yeah, yeah. Right. So you increase your valuation. But when we hide information, okay. Nobody buy. So decrease the valuation. Yeah. Due diligence becomes quick. We do a lot of due diligence. Brazil. Yeah. And when? When the buyers see our documentation. Okay. It’s very well, I know that there’s a methodology that people, who knows what is saying. Okay. That is the documentation. And also a second point of insurance. I have a good case now we have good relation with insurance company. We do not work directly. But they told me sometimes, Hey, if I see this kind of dashboard, I can buy this risk. ’cause the problem is buy a risk that I do not know. Yeah. So if this li of management, I can reduce the premium and they can do more inspection. They can do more repair, they can be more proactive, you know? So I think that we need to join this mines to create value to the market, the industry, you know, Joel Saxum: for that, that, that, that process. Think about this, we’re gonna go buy a truck, right? And I’ve got two of them sitting there, but one of ’em. Has maintenance booked every record, every oil change, every tire rotation. What do rotation you do? Yeah. Yeah. And then it has a platform that I can look at it in. I’m like, I’m gonna buy that one. ’cause it’s reducing my risk. Yeah. It, it gets rid of the worry. The one with all the details and everything organized well for me. That’s what I’m buying. Allen Hall: Right. So Aex has sort of broken that barrier. Yeah. That we’ve been up against for the last couple of years in terms of understanding globally what is happening to Blades, how we can more efficiently take care of them, update them, keep them in good repair for a longer time without spending so much money and so much engineering time. Spending around that is a huge value to the industry, and I know. I just saw Artex for the first time last week and were just blown away by it. ’cause I’ve seen a lot of operator inside monitoring systems and the spreadsheets and the picture and yeah, they’re kind of the same. They’re roughly the same. The ui ux is different, but what the data you’re getting out of Joel Saxum: is basically the same. It Allen Hall: is. And it’s, it’s not super scannable. Yeah. And then the RX comes up. Mano says, look at this. But you know, I, even, I electrical engineer Armando Costa Rego: understood what to do with those blades. You know, uh, we are a good threat company. We are not selling product to investors or vc, et cetera. So we are selling product to the market, you know, that solve the problem of the industry today. Not tomorrow. So we need to solve the problem in the industry today. Okay. Right. Uh uh, what I see on that is everybody’s looking for a SaaS. Yeah. SaaS doesn’t work without people. Armando Costa Rego: Right. So our business model engineering as a service, the software is only the communication channel. That’s the problem. So we have people, we have an hour in Brazil, 25 people giving instruction to the customer through the platform. Wow. Have the AI in the platform. The ArthNex now brings the AI for this typical question, Hey, how many blades I affected with seven, five in two seconds. It’s faster than to go to download the hip or call someone. The AI will tell. So for basic question, the AI is there for, even for, uh, people that don’t know nothing about Blades. Yeah, just it’s channel system, you know? Yeah. We’re having the hipper, uh, environment of the artex. We have a chat that we can send message, general message to the field. For example, imagine that you are loud. Managing hundred drills that are more than 200 technicians. Yeah. And need to communicate something. Yeah. Now that’s important. So when you go in the shed, you select the work orders where you need that, this communication go through and you’ll send a note Now. Hey everyone, stop the work today for a safety induction. So for project manager to have this level of communication and log in the platform that that is historical is very powerful because it’s very difficult to put everybody in the same page. Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. Fragmented also for safety conditions. Yeah, yeah, for sure. To have the finding, Hey, everybody, stop their work. Lightning. Yeah. The same time, right? Allen Hall: Yeah. Armando Costa Rego: You know? Yeah. So. If you are talking that the industry is paying like, I dunno, a hundred, $120 per hour per technician, why not you pay $40 per for a starlink to have this kind of connection that you save a lot of money in the Joel Saxum: states and safety. This works at almost every window everywhere. You’re not everybody. Not so much for you guys. Yeah. Well, Allen Hall: yeah, we’re working on that. Elon’s working on that. So as an operator and a lot of operators listening to the podcast, in fact pretty much all of them do worldwide. How do they contact you to learn about Aex and get that demo so they can see this thing live? How do they go about doing that? Do they just Google ArthNex, A-R-T-H-N-E-X and then it pops up or they go Armando Costa Rego: to your website? Uh, they’ll go, they’ll find more details. Direct refers. So they can go to the commercial@arthwind.com gear or like to me. I’m very pleased to talk about ArthNext with everyone. No, because I can solve a lot of doubts. I’m very, to talk with people is a product that I, we really believe that’s changed the industry, you know, so, yeah. So they can reach me out in Armando Costa at. Our twins.com. Do beer w beer. Armando Costa Rego: Don’t not forget the beer com. Allen Hall: And we’ll put Armando’s LinkedIn information please to the show notes so everybody can follow you and, uh, follow our next. It’s a truly remarkable product. I know you’ve spent a lot of time developing it and it’s been vetted out. Now’s the time to get it globally out there. Yeah. Armando, I love having you on your podcast just. Such a resource for the wind industry. So thank you for appearing. Thank you guys. Thank you. Armando Costa Rego: Thanks, buddy.

This week we discuss a $5 million investment in a wind worker training center in Australia, challenges faced by RWE’s US offshore wind projects due to recent policy changes, and the recent power blackout in Spain. Plus an article from PES Wind Magazine about cybersecurity in wind energy. 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! You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now here’s your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes.  Allen Hall: Down in Victoria, Australia. They’re investing about 5 million Australian dollars to establish a wind worker training center, which is focused on developing technical skills for both onshore and offshore wind energy roles. And the initiative is looking to create a skill workforce pipeline for all the wind projects that are happening down in Australia. This is a really unique. Program, uh, Rosemary, just because Victoria is looking to have about 67,000 workers in energy by 2040 and they think they need about 4,000, [00:01:00] uh, people to work construction for onshore wind at about 2,500 data for offshore wind. That’s a sizable number of people, but Victoria is headed towards 95% renewable generation by 2035. So you’re gonna need to build a workforce pretty quickly. $5 million for a training center is a good first start. Is it enough though?  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I mean, they need to have a first step I guess. I mean, not that it’s the first step, there’s already a lot of, a lot of workers in the state. Um, but I mean, for sure Victorian needs more, needs more service technicians and yeah, a bunch of other, other workers. I mean there’s also still a lot of new wind farms being built, so there’s that as well. It’s also not just Victoria, you know, all around. Um, there was quite a lot of going on in Queensland, although the future plans have, I think been, um. Uh, toned down a lot because the government changed. Um, south Australia also has, uh, still got, oh, it’s got a lot of wind, already got a lot of plans to build [00:02:00] more. Um, and yeah, there’s new renewable energy zones that are, you know, hopefully coming on, maybe even offshore wind starting in the next five years or so. So yeah, if you want to, you know, suddenly expand your industry, then you do need to think a few years ahead. Um, otherwise you’re gonna end up. With a big, a big crunch. Everyone wanting to build a project at the same time. And also, you know, a lot of wind farms. Uh. Getting past that first, you know, like the first few years where not too much maintenance is needed. Um, there’s a lot more things that can go wrong in the, you know, middle to end of a wind farm’s life. And we’re seeing a lot of that, especially in Victoria where they had most of the early wind farms in Australia. So I definitely think it’s timely and uh, hopefully this one’s successful. And, uh, yeah, we’ve got an election coming up. Probably will have already happened by the time this episode’s released. We’ve got a federal election. There has not been a whole lot of talk about renewable energy actually. Um, and especially the jobs that are created by Renewal Energy, especially wind, you know, like it’s a, it’s a [00:03:00] downside of the technology that it needs maintenance, but it’s a real upside in terms of that, you know, a lot of maintenance means a lot of maintenance jobs, and these are good jobs. I hope that, yeah, by the time we have our next election, people can, um, be talking a bit more about what we need to really turbocharge the, um, rollout of renewables in Australia. This will be a good  Joel Saxum: first step. I think there’s a couple interesting things about, interesting things about that is right before we went down to Wind Australia, we were talking to a lot of people involved in that industry and uh, I did talk with an ISP that was a part of this. They were, uh, advising, kind of like partnering with the university that’s putting this thing together because they noticed a, a gap, right? And one of the gaps when we talking, like again, talking with some of the people down there was. Uh, they want a workforce, right? They want people in there, so, but you need people to transition over from other jobs or come in because it’s hard to have, because of local content laws, and correct me if I’m wrong here, Rosemary, you can’t really, or [00:04:00] it’s a lot easier to use local talent than it is to bring other people in. You can’t really just rely on a, a migrant workforce or, you know, you can’t bring people in from Europe every year to do all the maintenance. You really kind of need to have that local talent.  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I mean, I don’t think that Australia has particularly strong, um, we don’t have many local content laws at all. Um, but then in terms of. Labor. Yeah. Like most countries, you just, not just anybody can come in and just start working in Australia, you need permission. And, um, you know, there’s caps on the, the number of visas of that kind that are allowed. Definitely. Um, there are people coming over from Europe constantly to work here. It’s a long, it’s a long way. Um, I don’t think that it’s so much about the laws in Australia being unusual as it is just that sheer number of people that are needed and the logistics of actually getting. Enough people to make a meaningful difference. Um, coming over from Europe, I, I mean, think about it. Would you want to go [00:05:00] somewhere, um, for three months away from, you know, your family and, uh, friends and act activities, anything like that? Definitely in the longer term, much better too. Um, yeah, develop, develop the workforce. And I mean, as much as, you know, I, I love that the, um, wages are high in, in the industry because, you know, I’m in the industry and I enjoy that. But, uh, if we have a lot more workers, like enough workers, then the prices will start to go down a bit more. And like the cost of labor, I. Is a big thing in, um, you know, how much wind farms are spending, are maintaining, uh, operating and maintaining their wind farms is, you know, like it’s a lot more than it is in other countries. And I think that a lot of that is because of the high cost of labor here for, for that specific type of role. But I mean, that also does mean that right now, like if you get in early, that’s a, a really, really great industry to move into because you’re probably going to. More, it’s very satisfying work as well. You, you know, like it’s, it’s really good to, you know, there’s a wind tur, a wind turbine, [00:06:00] it was offline because, you know, something was wrong and hey, I helped fix it. And now it’s online generating clean electricity. That’s, I find that incredibly satisfying to be part of that. It’s really, you know, tangible things. So I’m hopeful that, um, yeah, more training centers like this that we will start to see the workforce expand, uh, quite quickly.  Allen Hall: If you haven’t opened the recent edition of PES Win, you need to do that. You can visit ps win.com and download the uh, the. Electronic version of the magazine or you can put in a request, again a paper copy and you will want to get that paper copy ’cause it is an elegant magazine full of information. So this quarter there’s an article from Cyber G and Joel and I have been talking about cybersecurity to a lot of operators all over the world. It is a huge topic right now and uh, in that article it does go on to say like, 1% of the win assets have. Adequate cybersecurity protection. And Joel, there are days that question [00:07:00] that’s even 1% on some of the farms we’ve been around. And the SCADA systems are the open door, uh, that needs to be closed. There’s a lot going on in Europe, much more in Europe than there is in the United States. The European Union has that network and information system directive two, NIST two. You hear people say, NIST two, I need a NIST two. Uh, that requires that they have reports, cybersecurity incidents. Have some transparency on what’s happening. They actually can deal with it. Uh, this cyber energy article is good and another alarm to the industry, like, Hey, in times when things get a little slow. We gotta clean up and, and take care of the, of some of these entry points into these turbines and these wind  Joel Saxum: farms. Well, I think that you like, like anything, you follow the money, right? And if you watch the insurance markets, you’re starting to see cyber, cyber attack, cyber security insurance being a new product that’s coming into almost all of these brokers. So that’s the thing that’s happening. It’s a known issue. Right. I [00:08:00] wanna highlight one of the projects that’s being done here in the United States is there is a bank of turbines. If you have a product or a solution that you want to test for cybersecurity, and they’re testing SCADA systems, it’s in involved with one of the, uh, national labs. Very cool project. Just get a hold of Alan and I, we can give you some details on that. Um, but yeah, I mean, as cybersecurity goes, you’re seeing Europe, they’re on the, you know, there. There’s a, there’s a conflict happening right out their back door. So this may hit a little bit closer to home to them, but we’ve had things hit our, our grid as well here in the states in the last few years. So, um, if you haven’t addressed some of these things, I think it’s, it’s, it’s high time that people do and cyber energy, it can help you out. They have a product called  Allen Hall: Sentry, C-E-N-T-R-Y. Get it Century instead of an assets at c. So it’s, it’s a, it’s a protection platform. It’s pretty slick, right? It’s a real time monitor of the wind assets and it’s providing the protection that a lot of wind operators need. So if you are interested in cybersecurity and, [00:09:00] uh, pretty much every operator around the world should be at this point, you, you wanna look at cyber energy as website and check them out, or just go visit. Uh, PES win.com. Read the article and find out all the details.  Joel Saxum: As busy wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it difficult. That’s why the Uptime podcast recommends PES WIN Magazine. I. 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 ps wind.com today.  Allen Hall: Well, Spain had a large power blackout, including Portugal and, and parts of France for a little while, and Spain’s grid operator is denying that the situation was caused by the dependences on solar power mostly. And most of Spain was shut down for several hours, like north of 12 [00:10:00] hours. This is, uh, sort of a problem for renewable because if you go online on LinkedIn, or if you, you go on Twitter, one of those social media sites you see a lot about, oh, renewable energy causes problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So let’s just go to some of the details. We do know at this point, at the grid, at that moment was, uh, operating it at about 50% solar. And about 10% wind and about another 15% for nuclear and gas. Uh, and they right now, they think there were maybe two separate incidences in southwestern Spain at substations that created the incident. Now. It looks like it was a frequency variation was the cause of the shutdown. I saw some things on LinkedIn. Of course, your source for all news lately is that the, the frequency varied and you can actually measure that up in Lafayette, which is a [00:11:00] long ways from Spain. So that frequency variation when it occurs in one place does transmit all over the grid in Europe. And frequency variation is a huge problem because that the system is designed. For one frequency, 50 hertz, and all the equipment is designed particularly for that. So as you vary off of that, the loss is increased. You can have a lot of bad things happen. So there are safety mechanisms in place to disconnect if the frequency or vari frequency variation is to. Big and it looks like it was. Um, and as Rosemary has pointed out in some of your videos, the way you fix that is you have synchronous condensers on the grid, which are, rosemary me, can describe what a synchronous condenser is  Rosemary Barnes: to take back a step. What traditional. Electricity grid with a lot of thermal generation, uh, in it. What, what it behaves like is, you know, these traditional thermal generators are really big and really heavy and they’re spinning. They’ve got a lot of inertia, right? It is actually really [00:12:00] physically hard to slow them down or speed them up suddenly. So it kind of acts as a natural. Um, damper on the system. When the frequency gets out of whack, then all of this spitting mass just naturally helps to, um, keep it stable. So if you have a lot less of that, you can either, uh, because you don’t have a lot of thermal generators online, then you can either replace it with. More spinning mass, which is what a synchronous condenser is. It’s basically like a generator, but, um, instead of spinning it up by burning something and you know, making steam to spin it, you spin it using electricity instead. So it’s still a big spinning mass and you can put a few of those in. It’s certainly not the case that you can’t have a high renewables, um, penetration system. That, uh, doesn’t have sufficient inertia. I understand that they had about 80% renewables, uh, in the grid at the time that of the disturbance. That is not an abnormally high amount. Like it’s definitely far from record breaking. Um, there [00:13:00] was a, yeah, um, some, something weird happening with frequency oscillations and I don’t know why. You know, obviously the Spanish grid deals with frequency variations all the time and has a mechanism to, um. You know, address that. I don’t know the specifics of that or why it didn’t go right, but that would be one factor. Another thing was that there was a lot of solar power that, um, suddenly tripped off shortly before the blackout. So that would be another destabilizing event, but again, it’s not unique to, um, to renewables. Um, and then there was another thing that happened early on was that the. An interconnection between Spain and France, um, which I believe was, uh, at least a couple of gigawatts. I’m not sure exactly the size, but in, in the gigawatts range that tripped off. And then that makes it harder if Spain say, Spain has to all of a sudden act as an island, or Spain and Portugal have to act as an island. Um, so, you know, it’s hard to say that was a cause or [00:14:00] effect. Um, and then after a few of those things had happened, then generators in Spain started tripping and going off, and so there was just no, um. There was nothing there to con control the system. So obviously, you know, like they did have, yeah, like maybe up to 20% of their generation was from these big spinning, um, masses, which should be enough to keep things stable. But if they start tripping off, then they’re not providing any kind of service anymore. So, um, you know, it, it also might be that there were some, um, settings that, you know, were not as robust as, um, they, they should have been.  Allen Hall: But in that grid, it’s really hard to model those kind of failures. I think that’s what the problem is because Texas has had something very similar. It’s actually had it multiple times if you pay attention. They’ve had sort of, uh, a cascading series of events that pull off mostly solar. Then take down adjacent, uh, substations. And when you have so many [00:15:00] different technologies all on the same grid and you’re not sure exactly how they respond to every situation, it’s impossible to model one because the detail there would be incredible. Two, you’re just trying to make sure everything’s playing happy all the time. And I, I, this, this is, I don’t think this is unique. I think it, the scale of it is pretty big, but Joel, when they had the ice storm down to Texas in 2022, Yuri? 21. 21, okay. So in the, the amount of Texas that was offline, which was a huge amount of Texas plus it was offline for like three days. As they tried to figure out what was happening,  Joel Saxum: that was an extreme, like the RCA points to extreme weather event, right? Where that was a bunch of natural gas plants that, like valves froze up. They weren’t winter ice correctly, things like that. But you’re exactly correct. Like one, when things started cascading, they just started cascading big time, right? And this went click, click, click. We, you know, we need Alan, we need Joe Shahan from [00:16:00] podge to, to, to, to, to do  Allen Hall: this. Yeah. I, yeah, he’s. He’s gonna tell you it’s complicated. That’s gonna be his response because it is, it’s really complicated.  Phil Totaro: It is. But you wanna also know what happened. I, after they had that blackout that Rosie talked about in South Australia, what did they do? They put in energy storage. So you wanna actually fix the problem. I, if you’re not gonna see the, because the thing that we’re all talking about right now is if you’re not gonna modernize the grid to handle all those different. Types of generators being on the same thing, connected at the same time, and responding in whatever ways they’re gonna respond. You wanna know how you, you immediately, and you know, at least somewhat cost effectively, address the situation in the shortest timeframe possible is just by putting. Grid connected storage on there that absorbs or deploys depending on what you need, um, you know, what the grid needs. And, you know, I mean, that’s, that’s the way that you can handle both short term, [00:17:00] um, you know, frequency fluctuations. And anyway, the short answer is you wanna fix this quick, put storage on the grid. There you go.  Joel Saxum: And that’s what we’re doing. Yeah. There’s constantly records being set by, by energy storage.  Phil Totaro: The longer term fix is to modernize the grid, to accommodate all these other, you know, things. Uh, what that basically what everybody talks about. Oh, what does modernize the grid means? It means that you need better. Energy management software and the right kind of hardware to be able to provide that kind of frequency response and balancing. So again, unless you’re going to spend the money to modernize the grid, which is necessarily gonna be more expensive than just deploying energy storage, deploying energy storage is gonna get you the quickest way of, you know, precluding. Massive grid fluctuations and potentially blackouts from happening.  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I would’ve like to say though that the, um, Spanish grid hasn’t, hasn’t modernized [00:18:00] before that. I have seen the, you know, the eventual root cause analysis and, you know, there’ll be probably more information coming out in a few days and then in a few weeks, but it will probably be a year before the, you know, with the South Australia, it was it. I think it was most of a year before, like the full list of, you know, every single thing that had to happen at the same time in order to cause the, the blackouts before that. It’s like really well known. Um, it takes, takes a lot. So it, yeah. Obviously something has gone wrong and I don’t think we know yet whether. It was predominantly about how much renewables were in the grid because Spain frequently has a lot of renewables in the grid and, you know, has not had this problem before. So it was more, it was definitely more than just that. Um, but yeah, it will take a while for us to know, um, you know, people who are usually, you know, communicators that are similar to me in terms of. Wanting more renewables in the system. I do see a lot of them. Their take was to immediately say, well, obviously this was nothing to do with renewables, because essentially renewables are perfect and nothing can [00:19:00] ever go wrong. That’s not the right, that’s not the right take. That’s not the path to having, you know, a hundred percent clean electricity grid to pretend that there’s no problems. You know, when something. Goes wrong. You learn what you can from it and to do anything else is just absolutely crazy. So I, I think it’s definitely frustrating that every time a crisis like this happens, renewables get blamed and that kind of like sticks in people’s minds ’cause it’s the first thing that they hear. And you know, like years later, lots of people still think the South Australian blackout was caused by wind energy, which I guess literally it was if you include like the energy of the wind blowing over power lines. But you know, like it’s, it’s equally wrong to say that it had nothing to do with renewables. At this point, we don’t know, and certainly many of the weird things that happened before the blackout were related to a lot of renewables, and you need to. You need to learn from that. Otherwise, we will never get a a hundred percent clean electricity grid.  Allen Hall: Don’t let blade damage catch you off guard. OGs. Ping sensors detect issues before they become expensive, [00:20:00] time consuming problems from ice buildup and lightning strikes to pitch misalignment and internal blade cracks. OGs Ping has you covered The cutting edge sensors are easy to install, giving you the power to stop damage before it’s too late. Visit eLog ping.com and take control of your turbine’s health today. All right. Uh, RDB has suspended work on its US offshore wind projects In response to recent policy changes by the administration and the CEOR to B and announced the decision a ahead of the company’s annual meeting, which was just held recently. And this has caused a little bit of a ripple effect. So from what we can tell right now, and Phil’s going to give us all the details, there are three separate places that I had where Rwb is involved up in New York, down in Louisiana. They got that plot down in Louisiana, and then obviously in California. But there may be some sites in North Carolina also, or off the coast of North  Phil Totaro: Carolina based on what. Has been [00:21:00] made public, uh, RWE themselves has said that they’ve sunk more than 1.1 billion into development cost and lease payments for the areas that they either own or co-own or, uh, what have you. So that’s, that’s a lot of money to have put up already. Uh, to basically not have confidence in being able to move forward. Now, if we go back and review what the government said, it’s number one, they’re not doing any more lease auctions on anything that hasn’t already been done. Okay? So that’s one thing that doesn’t impact R-W-R-W-E at this point, other than, you know, they were also interested in doing projects in Maine, et cetera, et cetera. But that’s not why they’re pulling out. What’s happened more recently is the inconsistency of the application or lack thereof of tariffs and the, uh, the note from Boem, uh, to EOR and, you know, regarding Empire [00:22:00] Wind, in which Boem is basically saying we are gonna reevaluate every single permit, uh, that’s ever been issued. You know, regardless, I guess regardless of who’s done it. Um. Because there were actually some leases that took place and some permits that were issued during Trump’s first term. Uh, it wasn’t all just, you know, Biden administration trying to rush everything through and get it in under the wire. You know, some of these projects have been, you know, in the, the lease auction and permitting phase for. You know, almost a decade. And, and in the case of Empire Wind, it was something like 14 years, uh, when they first started considering, um, you know, that, that, uh, lease area. So what RW is upset about is the fact that it’s just, it’s, it’s the inconsistency and the uncertainty around policy that has caused. Them as project developers and the financiers who we’re gonna be backing them to [00:23:00] say, you know what, we’re gonna take a step back because it doesn’t look like you’re gonna be able to build this project very quickly or conveniently like you want to. And there’s also uncertainty about the power off. Take agreements. Um. You know, if the government’s also gonna have some kind of say around, um, you know, the, the transmission infrastructure as well. So besides the, the projects, which is what everybody tends to focus on, the electrical infrastructure is also something that, you know, boem and technically the federal government, since these projects are in our, our outer continental shelf, it’s federal water, um, they have jurisdiction over some of the permitting that that goes along with. Uh, the transmission infrastructure. And so if you can’t build a project and you’re not guaranteed to have power off, take, uh, you know, what else can you do, but hit the pause button.  Joel Saxum: Well,  Phil Totaro: I think  Joel Saxum: at the, at the end of the day, Phil, it’s just like, uh, uh, you say it often is political versus technical, right? Because [00:24:00] that the technical argument is sound. Uh, it’s been sound for offshore wind. Uh, but politically we are, we run into a bunch of problems and the, those problems extend and extend and extend. Right now we’re talking about job creation. That was a big thing. That’s one of the, one of the big deals with the IRA bill, bringing all these things into, into the United States, like say, uh, uh, this week, uh, one of the, the articles that we have, PRIs PRIs me and cancels a, um, blade or blade, uh, cable factory for offshore wind. So that’s, that’s a $200 million investment with how many jobs that that thing could have been. Those are good, good high paying jobs as well. Right.  Phil Totaro: But this is also part of a, a wider issue that we’ve talked about before, which is you never really had US based companies that were all that committed to the offshore wind market to begin with. Now you’re introducing uncertainty and the people who were coming over here were the Europeans and some Asians, but. You know, mostly [00:25:00] the Europeans that wanted to, to actually plow money into the us. Now they’re, you know, going back to the, the genesis of this, which was RWE pulling up stakes. I don’t think the, they’re, they may be, you know, one of the first companies, but they’re probably not gonna be the last. Um, and you know, you’re gonna. I mean, you can antagonize offshore wind all you like, but you’re, you’re going to find your wallets up to $75 billion lighter, um, based on doing that because, you know, in addition to the project CapEx that doesn’t get spent, as Joel just said, it’s jobs and factories that don’t get built. That’s also tax revenue. It’s r and d investment. Um, and you know, it, it’s, it’s. Everybody, basically, everybody loses. Um, so. You know, it’s in instead of this, as I said kind of before the show, we were all kind of anticipating that, you know, the current administration was probably [00:26:00] gonna not be too friendly to offshore wind and that it would be maybe like a, a five year window of, of a downturn in the market, or at least a, a nominal leveling off of the market. Now you’re talking about this is, has the potential to set us back 10 years because getting all these European. Investors and project developers back into the US is gonna require a heck of a lot of convincing.  Allen Hall: That’s gonna do it for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy podcast. Thanks for listening, and give us a five star rating when you can press a little button, make sure it says five stars, or don’t be a mean person. You know what I’m saying? Five stars is good. And also check out Uptime Tech News, our substack newsletter and that thing has exploded everybody. Uh, so if you want weekly or sometimes daily content about wind energy or other, uh, random facts, you can check out. Uptime Tech News are Substack newsletter. And we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy [00:27:00]Podcast.

RWE successfully installs the first monopile for the 1.1 GW Thor offshore wind farm in Denmark, China investigates a fishing vessel collision with a wind turbine, Texas House approves bills for recycling renewable energy equipment, and Enel launches an international wind turbine design competition. 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! Allen Hall: RWE has reached a milestone in constructing the 1.1 gigawatt tho offshore wind farm in the Danish North Sea, with a successful installation of its first mono pile foundation. The project will eventually include 72 such foundations, the massive mono piles measuring about 100 meters of length and weighing up to 1500 metric tons each. Which is equivalent to about a thousand small cars. Were shipped from the Netherlands to the construction site, approximately 22 kilometers off jut Ludens West coast. The vessel La Aliza is handling installation with each shipment carrying five monopiles. The CEO of RDB offshore wind called this quote, A highly [00:01:00] symbolic moment and a great achievement, unquote, following years of planning. The Thor Wind Project features several sustainability innovations, including reused hard covers to protect the mono piles. CO2 reduced steel towers for 36 turbines. Recyclable rotor blades for 40 turbines. When fully operational In 2027, the wind farm will generate enough green electricity to power more than 1 million Danish households and create 50 to 60 local jobs. Over in China, a fishing vessel that sank after colliding with a wind turbo in China’s yellow sea failed to maintain proper lookout according to report from the China Maritime Safety Administration. The collision occurred around 12:25 AM local time on August 24th last year when the ZDUU vessel struck the southeast side of the Ong H one dash 40 wind turbine while returning from fishing operations, the accident sent [00:02:00] all 10 crew members overboard. Eight were rescued, but one died and another was never recovered. The collision caused severe flooding and eventual sinking of the vessel while the turbine sustained only minor damage. Investigators determine the primary cause with the vessels, quote, failure to maintain proper lookout and negligent navigation practices. High intensity work, lights, impeded visibility, and the crew didn’t properly utilize radar equipment. A secondary factor was inadequate public notification of the wind farms precise layout, unquote, by the operating company, which led to navigational oversight. Moving over to Texas. The Texas House recently passed two bills aimed at improving recycling of retired renewable energy equipment. Currently, most wind turbines and solar panels end up in landfills when decommissioned, despite Texas law requiring complete removal of the infrastructure and land restoration. House House Bill 32 28 requires renewable energy companies to recycle all components. [00:03:00] Practicably capable of being reused or recycled and properly disposed of non-recyclable parts. A complimentary bill House Bill 32 29 establishes reporting and financial assurance requirements for recycling facility owners to prevent situations like the one in Sweetwater, Texas where GE allegedly paid millions of dollars to a company that shut down. Without recycling the turbine blades. And energy leader Enel has launched wind design, a international competition seeking innovative wind turbine designs that better integrate with landscapes while maintaining functionality. The contest. Offers substantial prices, including 250,000 Euros for first place, with special awards for design excellence, technical feasibility, and sustainability, innovation, open to architectural firms, engineering companies, startups, students and universities worldwide. Wind design accepts [00:04:00] first phase submissions until June 16th of this year. Projects advancing to the second phase receive 5,000 euros. With final submissions due September 29th of this year. Participants can join workshops on May 15th to learn more about the requirements and ask questions directly to the NL team. To register or get complete details? Visit the website shown in the show notes below. That’s this week’s top. News stories. Stay tuned tomorrow for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

Nick Martocci, founder of Tower Training Academy, discusses their nationally recognized apprenticeship programs for wind turbine technicians and battery energy storage specialists. The company focuses on creating partnerships and initiatives that support career development and veterans’ transition into the renewable energy sector. 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! Allen Hall: As renewable energy technology gets more complex and specialized every day, the industry needs skilled professionals ready to climb those towers and maintain critical systems. This week we speak with Nick Martocci founder of Tower Training Academy in Las Vegas. Tower Training Academy offers nationally recognized apprenticeship programs for both wind turbine technicians and battery energy storage specialists, helping everyone from recent high school graduates to career changers develop essential skills and certifications, while providing lifelong career support. Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering tomorrow. So we were just talking, it’s been a year since we’ve spoken to you and I follow your Tower Training Academy YouTube page, LinkedIn page. I think you’re on Instagram also. Nick Martocci: Yep. Instagram. We got [00:01:00] Facebook. A lot of social media. Uh, a lot has happened in the last time since we’ve chatted. Uh, been able to send a few more apprentices through the wind turbine program. Uh, I’ve been able to help out a lot of veterans. We had one veteran actually come through my program, uh, work with us vets to help veterans, uh, transition, uh, into the renewable sector, if you will, and help them out also with transferring them out of a bad situation. Uh, the veteran, he just. Fell onto some harm times and, uh, no, no lie before he was with my program, was actually living in his car and so he got with us vets and uh, was able to get a little assistance from them. Also got with Salvation Army, got some assistance from them and the US vets actually pointed him towards my program. We were able to get him a sponsorship and to this day it’s changed his life and he’s still, even right now out in the field. Doing torque contention work. [00:02:00] That’s awesome. Allen Hall: That’s a great story. And I, on your LinkedIn page, I’ve noticed a couple of ribbing ribbon cutting ceremonies with local dignitaries. Nick Martocci: Yeah, we had a congresswoman Susie Lee, her office was very, very helpful with getting, uh, some other help that we needed. Uh, moved along with, uh, a few other pieces, but she was out there to help us, uh, announce that we actually did become a, the first. Approved apprenticeship for the Department of Labor that’s active for our battery energy storage apprenticeship program. And so now we have both programs since last year. Uh, that was something that we had to kind of keep hidden behind the green curtain, if you will. And so I was working on that and now that’s already up and running. Uh, we had one apprenticeship approved before us a few years ago and they haven’t sent anybody through it and. At the end of this month. Right now we’re in March, so at the end of this month [00:03:00] we’ll have 10 coming through my program already. Joel Saxum: I think that’s super important for the industry right now where that, that the renewables industry, because battery storage growing. Right? I, I mean, I live in Austin, right? So it’s just batteries after batteries going into the Ercot market and there’s a lack of people, lack of technicians, lack of engineering expertise, to be honest with you. Yeah. About how do we, how do we handle battery storage systems from an o and m perspective. We know how to install ’em. Nick Martocci: Yeah. Joel Saxum: Or if, I guess if you ask the insurance companies, they don’t think we know how to install ’em yet, but, but we know how to, we know how to get ’em out there. How do we maintain ’em? It’s awesome that you guys are doing this because I don’t know of any other real facility putting battery storage o and m capable people. No. Nick Martocci: It, it, it was a lot of grunt work, if you will, of putting everything together for our standards. Uh, I, I used a lot of other handrail systems that are out there as far as ideas. Uh, kind of like this Tony Stark moment, if you will create a framework and just keep messing with how this [00:04:00] works and integrate changes. Uh, a big piece was to, and again, I wanna thank them, is a DO uh, a DO helped me out with a lot of the standards. They do a lot of the training for me. So that partnership there is, uh, a big piece that really helps out the technicians themselves with the certifications because it is accredited. Through is E. And so that allows them now not only to have those skills and that training and certification, but also allows for that forward progression in their careers. Because like I said, it’s accredited so they can take those credits and start working on their degrees as well. So this is something that allows, not just for that immediate, okay, let me get a career piece going. But now also that forward thinking piece of actually what’s the next step for me as far as becoming a manager, getting my degree, things of that nature. Anything that I put together with my programs, there’s always a what’s next for that person. Just like I was telling you guys about last year, the biggest thing that bothers me is that what’s next for me as a person in this industry [00:05:00] with a lot of jobs, it’s clock eight, clock out. Yeah. Hope to see you tomorrow. Yeah, I, that’s why I have IFC there to be able to help out with that progression. And now I’d love to announce also that they’re now a 5 0 1 C3. They’re a nonprofit. And all of the donations go and we’ve partnered with PBS, uh, or partnering, working, um, with PBS to be able to offer PMP and CMP certifications. So that program management, project management certification. Joel Saxum: Yeah. Okay. So I know you were before the i is it IFC Infinite Fidelis Nick Martocci: consultants? Joel Saxum: That’s what, it’s the easiest Nick Martocci: way to say it is IFC. Yeah. Joel Saxum: Because we were helping technicians not only go through the training, get the skills, but then. Placing them with, with people, placing them in companies, getting them onto their first day at the job. And I know you were helping people even build resumes and all kinds of great stuff to actually, you know, take your fellow man and carry him along for some success. So I like to see that now even, even with that, the [00:06:00] addition of the idea of putting PMP uh, training into people. Now they can become project management professionals and kind of, I’m not, I’m not just, I’m not, I’m not a technician anymore. Now I’m upskilling. Now I can get to this next level. That’s, that’s awesome. Nick Martocci: Because the big piece is the development of the workforce. They’ve gotta be able to, one, be empowered with their knowledge, make sure those standards are understood. One, also for their safety, but two for their personal and professional development, Allen Hall: because they’re not gonna be a technician forever and they need to on move on to next. You can only clean towers for so many years, right? That’s right. Right. Yeah. You work on batteries. Yeah. For so long now, tower Training Academy is in Las Vegas, and that’s a. Becoming more of an energy resource area is a lot of projects surrounding Las Vegas, not necessarily in Las Vegas. Where are the technicians, the future technicians coming from to train at your facility? Nick Martocci: So I’ve had folks come from all over the USAI. I’ve had folks from Maine, from Massachusetts, from Utah, [00:07:00] Arizona, California, all coming Texas, Oklahoma, uh, because my apprenticeships are national apprenticeships. My reach is the entire US right now, and I know this is a military term, but lower 48. Um, but so far lower 48 is really what I’ve seen the most engagement with. And so I’ve also worked on getting on a lot of workforce programs for, with the states, uh, also known as ETPL, uh, which is, uh, a, a eligible training provider, which means that OLA funds federal funds will be there to help assist individuals to be able to pay for the training as well. I. And so paying for the training is another big piece. Uh, some companies will sponsor individuals, others will have to have an individual basically take care of the bills themselves, if you will. So having those wheel of funds and other funding grants, things of that nature, teaming up with IFC, infinite Fidelis Consulting, having them be able to help fund through donations, training and certifications for [00:08:00] people is a big, big piece. Wow. Allen Hall: Okay. ’cause usually when we talk to training facilities. The people that are attending are within probably 60 to a hundred miles Yeah. Of that facility. Yeah. Yeah. There’s not a lot of draw outside, which in my neck of the woods in Massachusetts right now, there’s not a lot of places to go. So you’re gonna travel somewhere? Yeah, right. Why not travel to Vegas? It makes a lot more sense, especially since you have a program set up to accept people like that and makes it a lot more accessible. To the general Nick Martocci: population? Well, the big piece, I mean, Al also, and I get, and I’ve spoken with a lot of folks, uh, the, there is a concern with negative, uh, negative concern with Vegas and I get it, but the biggest piece is also understanding that I’m as far north as you can get of Vegas without not being in Vegas anymore. I’m literally right across the way from Nellis Air Force Base. Uh, I get to watch the Jets take off every day. I’m right by the raceway. So all of the above, that little two mile piece that people have concerns about, I’m, I’m way away from that. And I even have [00:09:00] partnerships with the hotels in the area to be able to allow people to have accommodations and keep things closer to me than all of that. Sure. Allen Hall: But that allows to keep the cost down because you have access to all the facilities and Las Vegas is a city. Yeah. So they’re, everything’s accessible. I, I realized, yeah, you probably wanna stay off the ship if you’re smart and you wanna keep your money. However, the thing about Vegas that I like about Vegas, and I’ve been there many times and I’m not a big strip person, is that it is a big city. There are things to do there that don’t involve gambling and carrying on, but all the services are there. The air force’s great. Yes. It’s inexpensive. You can live there for a while. Mm-hmm. Which, if you’re training, you’re going through this program. Joel Saxum: Can make the difference I’ve had, oh, go ahead. I think that’s a big, an important part of the training. So, so many places are like, yeah, we’ve talked to a lot of training facilities. Um, a lot. We know a lot of ’em connected within the industry and they want people to come from all over the place, but not all of them are putting [00:10:00] together. I have a partner with the hotels or partner with this. So like, and like I know this is a cross industry thing. Um, there’s a, there is a. Lineman training school like down in Georgia. Right. What was the name of that? I don’t, either way. But they put their package includes housing and all this stuff, right? With it. Right. And that’s a huge thing. If you’re trying to draw people in, you gotta go stay. You know, if you’re gonna be there for a month or something, you gotta stay in a hotel for a month. If you guys, you know, which is a normal technician thing to do, it’s good training right in that part. But to have that partnerships kind of set up already for that makes it that much easier. Greasing the wheels for people to be able to come. Yeah, Nick Martocci: because these folks are coming from all across the us. I’ve even seen folks get an Airbnb for about 800 bucks for the month. Oh, wow. Which really isn’t bad. You’re sharing it. Uh, and then like I said, with the hotels, it keeps it really, you know, cost effective. To your point, as far as flying in, and I’m being sarcastic a little bit, but I don’t know, there’s a, for some reason, a round trip ticket in and out of Vegas is heat is.[00:11:00] It’s the cheapest in the United States, and I don’t know why it’s super cheap. I don’t know why. So, I mean, you take that couple hundred dollars instead of paying the airline. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, and so you can get a, a, a future technician around trip ticket really inexpensively. And then again, housing’s not that bad. Uh, if it’s comparable to the most places. And like I said, yeah, it, uh, it, it, it’s gonna be. Really, really what they need as far as all of the technical trainings for the technical pieces, and then also the apprenticeship, which we’ll see how things go, but will be part of the IRA as well. Allen Hall: Yeah. So what is your core technician? Draw from? Like where, where, what kind of jobs were they doing before they came to Tower Training Academy? I’ve had, or were they coming outta high school or they coming outta the military? I’ve folks from both, Nick Martocci: uh, I, I’ve had folks that basically were 18, 19 years old, just finished high school. I’ve had folks that were iron workers for years and decided to make a change ’cause they were tired of sitting on their couch [00:12:00] for a while. Uh, I, I, I’ve had folks that were in sales, something totally different and then made a major shift. Uh, I’ve had folks that were in retail, you know, working at, you know. Calvin Klein or Aero Postel or something like that. And I, I’ve had folks from everywhere and every age I’ve had folks as, like I said, as young as 18 and 19. I think the oldest was in their fifties. Allen Hall: Yeah, that’s, I think that’s really fascinating. ’cause we talked to other training facilities and what they say is they’re coming from retail, which is odd. I thought, oh, they’re coming from farming communities, or something like that. Right. They’re a mechanic and like, no, no, no. A lot of ’em are come from retail because they’re bored outta their mind and then they wanna go, go do something that has a little more adventure to it. And they’re young and they wanna earn some money, right? They want don’t wanna earn minimum wage, they wanna have a a career of which Tower Tri Academy gives them. Oh yeah. Nick Martocci: That is a huge advantage. But yeah, the big advantage that I see, like I said, is the partnership between Tower Train Academy [00:13:00] and IFC because anyone that’s an alumnus from Tower Train Academy will immediately have access for life. F to IFC, right? And Infinite Fidelis Consulting will be there always to be able to help out with resume writing, interview prep, job placement pieces, or if they just want the professional development pieces of the CMP and p and p certifications. It, it, it’s there for you to be able to take advantage of. Allen Hall: So all these new technicians and apprentices are coming to Las Vegas to get trained up. Where are they going when they finish? Uh, Nick Martocci: I’ve worked with all different types of company, epic tack on, and you know, so on and so forth. Optic energy. Um, for the battery pieces and I’ve worked with others. Uh, I’ve had a very blessed, blessed OMS this year. Uh, I’ve made a lot of connections here and I’m looking forward to sending technicians to many more companies. Wow, that’s fantastic. Allen Hall: So you’ve grown in size, you’ve grown in scale, and it’s literally been scope Scope. Yeah. It’s been 12 months since we last talked to [00:14:00] you and it. That’s tremendous. That’s a lot of work to do in 12 months, by the way, you’re working your tail off. Congratulations. Nick Martocci: I’m trying. What does the next 12 months look like? Well, the growth is actually the piece. Um, I’ve got everybody in the office on a quote right now that I got from church, and I’m not trying to put my religion on anybody, but what is your 2026 gonna look like based on the decisions and choices you’ve made in 2025? And so that’s really been the big piece. The other part is the growth. Because of the growth I’m looking for. And that’ll probably be our announcement next year. Uh, ’cause I’ve got about 12 to 13 months left on my lease and so we’ll probably be moving and finding a whole new location and so wait for updates on that one. But, uh, we, we are definitely bigger than what we need to be as far as our head count in the facility. And so we, we definitely need a new facility to be able to accommodate all the training that we’re doing and. Some of the things that we’re wanting to do with a DO, [00:15:00] like I was saying, and I think there’s gonna be a lot, a lot coming down the pipe with that one as well. So Internet’s, so ISPs Allen Hall: and OEMs and operators across the United States. If you haven’t heard of Tower Drain Academy, you need to get on to the website and check this place Nick Martocci: out. How do they do it? Uh, really easy. They just Google Tower Training Academy. Uh, I have folks all over that are willing to send out, uh, information and when we post this video, I’ll make sure that there’s a link for, for sure. Uh, but literally all they gotta do is just Google Tower Training Academy and it pops right up and go to the Instagram page. It’s actually Instagram, uh, Facebook, LinkedIn, uh, and then we have a YouTube channel. You can follow us anywhere. Allen Hall: It’s good stuff on your social media, on the YouTube. Yeah, very helpful. If I was new to the industry, I would be going to your, your sites to check it out because. I will learn so much in a short amount of time just to get a flavor for what you’re doing in Las Nick Martocci: Vegas. [00:16:00] It’s, it’s quite good. Well, with the social media piece is, what I try to do is be more informative of the industry itself, more than just to myself of, Hey look, this is Tower Training Academy. This is what we got. Um, I wanna be able to also showcase everything that the battery industry is doing. Everything that the wind industry is doing, offshore pieces. There’s more than just what we do that impacts this entire industry. So. It, like you said, if I was somebody off the street and I wanted to learn a little bit more, having access to that type of information more than just me, you know, swinging my own bell around and saying, Hey, check me out. Um, it it, it allows them to really, really learn and understand the industry. And that’s the biggest piece is keeping everybody informed. Yes, absolutely. So check Allen Hall: out Tower Training Academy, Google it, go to the social media. Great to have you back, Nick. Thank you so much. Pleasure. Thanks for having me. We’ll, we’ll hopefully see you in 12 months or sooner. And we need more updates because Nick Martocci: things are happening rapidly there. Well, if you guys are at re plus, I know [00:17:00] it’s not OMS, but if you guys are at another, uh, another event, uh, that that’ll be in Vegas this year. Yeah. Feel free to pop in and come and check out the facility. Cool. Sounds great.

Larry Ketchersid, CEO of Media Sourcery discusses their partnership with Everpoint Services to improve the recycling process for blades and solar panels, proving the circular economy. Their method uses innovative blockchain technology to create verifiable proof of proper recycling. By implementing this tracking method, asset owners can be certain their blades have been properly disposed of. 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! The recycling crisis for wind turbine blades and solar panels demands better solutions as these materials pile up without proper processing and documentation. This week we speak with Larry Ketchersid, CEO of Media Sorcery, who’s partnered with Everpoint Services to tackle renewable waste recycling. Their innovative blockchain technology creates verifiable proof that your decommissioned assets actually reach proper recycling facilities, not abandoned in fields or landfills. Stay tuned. Allen Hall: Alright, Larry, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me. So we met yesterday with Everpoint Services who is doing a quite a bit of business at the minute doing solar panel recycling and wind turbine blade recycling. Correct. And we’ve talked about it on the podcast more recently about the efforts. To make sure that what leaves the facility is actually [00:01:00] recycled. There is a industry problem where blades leave a site and they get stacked up in some farm somewhere or some disposal site and never get chewed up or ground up and, and recycled properly. And it’s a black eye on the industry, right? Joel Saxum: Yeah. You get, uh, I mean, we. The wind industry has detractors. We already know this. Right? And then when you have something that’s like that, especially wind turbine blades, ’cause they’re big, uh, and it’s very visible, the problem then exacerbates itself. Right? I mean it, like you said, black eye on the industry. But even with that happening, we still haven’t gotten all the way to solving that problem that’s, that’s existing there. But you guys are working on it. Larry Ketchersid: We are. We are. We, we have a solution that we cut our teeth on with, uh, tracking things like COVID-19 test kits. Okay. Right. So we, we started proof of authenticity when, uh, we were in the healthcare business. And during Covid we had a partner that became an importer of, uh, COVID kits from Korea. And what [00:02:00] people didn’t realize is if you leave the Covid kits out of the freezer, the efficacy goes down. So we had a automated workflow system that we turned into a proof of authenticity for. Tracking Covid kits from the manufacturer. So we put little, I mean this was four or five years ago during the pandemic, we had these chemical barcodes that were temperature sensitive, and we put ’em on the, on the covid kits. So, and, and you had to scan ’em. So they weren’t really interactive sensors, but from point A to point B, you could scan ’em. Did the, the temperature go above a certain amount for a certain period of time, which made ’em bad, yes or no? And then we just track ’em all the way through. So it, it’s very. Similar to what we’re trying to do with tracking, recycling. I mean, we use this solution to track, uh, all sorts of things, but recycling is a really obvious use case for it. So what we try to do is we, we, we take an asset. So an asset can be a solar panel, it can be a pallet of solar panels, it can [00:03:00] be a blade, it can be a tractor trailer, full of blades, whatever the customer wants. And we take as much of the evidence about an event and the life of that asset, whether it’s. Demolition for at the first part, transport for the second part, and then grinding or recycling for the third part, and then whatever comes after that. And, and we, we take all that evidence, uh, put it on decentralized public ledger storage so that it’s there, um, maybe not forever in some cases, but it can be forever in, in whichever cases we want. We hash all that information. We put it on the blockchain so it’s there forever. For each one of those events, and then at the end we take that proof of authenticity and we turn it into an NFT. If we think there’s value in it, because an NFT is a, a blockchain construct for a non fungible token, so we can, we can save that as an NFT along with all the metadata. So if there’s value in that later, [00:04:00] we’ll come back to it and we’ll have that NFT as a tradable entity. And when I say value at later, I’m talking about potential greenhouse gas emission savings for, for the way that we’re doing proof of recycling. Allen Hall: Okay. That was a lot. I’m sorry. I wanna unwind that a little bit. Yep. So let’s work on the process first and I’ll, we’ll figure out the NFT part here in a second. So the process is on a wind turbine, we take down the blades or take down, typically take them to the cell down and a bunch of other things. Yep. They’re sitting on the ground. You come in and you start tagging each one of these with an RFID, or is it something a little more complicated than that? Larry Ketchersid: So we have four or five different trackers that we use depending on what we’re tracking. So for wind turbine blades, we can use one of two. We’ve got an industrial tracker. Uh, that does three different kinds of, uh, of back haul, we call it. So it can do GPS, it can do something called [00:05:00] Lower wan, which is long range wide area network. Yep. Uh, it can use wifi if it sees wifi stations and, and that one is industrial, we, we screw it in to the fiberglass blades on, on a truck. That’s, that’s the first way that we did it. When we did, uh, Candace Wood and I from Everpoint services did one of these. 2002. 2022. Um, what we have now are sticker trackers that have 3M adhesive on the back. Uh, they’re, they’re very, very thin. Um, I think, did I show you one yesterday? I think I showed you one yesterday. I saw one. Allen Hall: Yes. Larry Ketchersid: And, and we just, we can slap that on there. And we, we like using that method because when that goes through the grinder. We know it’s, we know it’s dead and it’s, it’s inexpensive enough that it, it’s cost effective to put it on each piece of a wind turbine blade. It’s not cost effective enough to put it on every solar panel, but you can put it once they bound the solar panels together on a pallet, we, we stick it in between the top one and the middle [00:06:00] one so that the signal can still get out and when, when that one gets ground up. We’ve already associated every serial number for the pallet of solar panels to that serial number on that sticker tracker. So we know once one of them’s ground up, we assume the whole pallet’s ground up. Joel Saxum: That was the question I was gonna ask was, and you kind of touched on it, was around the cost. Yep. Right. So all of those things say Everpoint is gonna do a service for someone. Is that built into the bid? Like the tracking It is. Okay. Okay. That makes sense. Larry Ketchersid: It is. And you know, uh, the reason we work where Everpoint for a variety of reasons. One, full disclosure, my company invested in Everpoint, uh, way back in the day. Okay. ’cause we believed in what they were doing. And the reason we believe in what they’re doing is they, they want to make sure that the, the stuff that they’re taking down, the demolition work that they’re doing is going somewhere. Right. Right. And, and they, you know, previously they would contract with people and they, you know what you don’t know, you know, what people are doing with it. You guys mentioned it at the beginning of the podcast. There’s, [00:07:00] there’s, there’s a lot of, uh, dump. Where, where stuff gets put and you know, it’s, it’s just not, it’s not the full circular economy that we’re trying to promote in our company and that Everpoint services are trying to promote as well. Allen Hall: So now you have basically an air tag on each of the blades or a pallet of solar panels. Correct. It may be the simple way to think about it. Yep. And similar to air tags, you can actually watch as the truck pulls the blade along or the blade sections along. To where if ever it’s Everpoint’s gonna take it to be ground up or whatever happens to it on the recycling side. So not only do you identify it at this farm where it’s been pulled down from, now you’re constantly tracking this piece of blade or these sections of blade or this whole thing to its end of life. I, I think that’s where a lot of operators are concerned about is like when it leaves my site, it kind of, I can’t track it. I don’t know where [00:08:00] it’s going anymore. Right, right. And I’m not sure, as some OEMs have pointed out, I’m not sure where it ends up at. ’cause I have no way of following. So unless I physically follow this thing. I don’t know. So as an operator working with Everpoint, I can actually see that the blaze that are leaving my site or the solar panels that are leaving my site, I can actually see where they’re going live, so to speak. Larry Ketchersid: That’s correct. That’s correct. And we, you know. Cool. We, we put it on a dashboard. Um, they can share it with whoever they want to, so you can see them going. Um, we had 460 pallets from this last job that we did, so the map gets a little busy, so you kind of have to separate it out, but it’s, it, it shows, it shows ’em going everywhere and, you know, occasionally. It’s not perfect. Um, sticker tracker wouldn’t put on. Right. One fell off. We had to make some assumptions, but, but once you have that tracking, so we also have, um, trackers that we can put in trucks. [00:09:00] So we’ve got, um, cryptographic, uh, sensors that can go in the OBD diagnostic port of a truck. And when I say cryptographic, it means I, it’s on the blockchain. I, I know that it came from this tracker. Uh, I know that this tracker’s in this truck. It’s got GPS on it. So I can also see the trucks if I want to. Sometimes that works well if the company owns their own trucks. If they’re, if they’re hiring somebody out, they probably don’t wanna be tracked, but, but it’s another option that we can use for that. But then. So if, if a sticker falls off, and I know that I put 28 pallets on the truck and I’ve got 27 stickers, right? It’s, it’s proof enough, right? What, what we’re trying to do with proof of authenticity is show all the evidence that we have. Somebody can call BS on it and say, well, there’s one pallet missing. Well, it, we knew it was on the truck, so. Allen Hall: So then the goal is those stickers, those trackers go with the solar panel pallet or the wind turbine blade until it eventually gets shred and this tracker then gets [00:10:00] destroyed. But you know where that happened at. So you know, okay, there’s a shredding site, correct. It gets destroyed there. I know that I don’t have to worry about this asset anymore, that, that, that blade goes properly taken care of. Exactly. That is the, probably the hardest part right now and probably the most risky part for any operator when they have a company come in to recycle. Is that it, to know that it got ground up or it went somewhere? Joel Saxum: Yep. What, so, so the proof of authenticity thing though, one of the questions I have is timing. So these, these trackers are, they’re running GPS, they’re running communications, they’re, they’re sucking power. Is there solar panels on ’em? Do they have a six month battery life, or what does that look like? Larry Ketchersid: Uh, it’s a good question. So the sticker trackers, uh, normally only update every 15 minutes. Okay. So they can last for a year. Um, we, we have a rules engine that we use, so we put up a geofence around the work site. Right. So we had a, [00:11:00] a, a geofence around this, uh, solar panel work site, and we put a geofence around the recycling system. So if the sticker trackers are sitting there, we don’t want ’em using batteries. So we’ll tell ’em, you don’t need to tell us stuff that often, but when we know that they’ve left the facility, we tell ’em, you know, send it to us as quick as you can so we can track ’em all the way through. And then when they get to the. To the site if we think they’re gonna be stored. I mean, like we, we used Ocon recycling this time. We had really good communication. I was at their facility four or five times. They told us when the trucks got there, we sent a signal down to all the sticker trackers going, we know you’re there. They’re not gonna be recycling these because we had a winter storm. You know, quit sending signals to the bad. I mean, and we, we were way within the range. If somebody’s gonna go store a bunch of solar panels for six or seven or eight months, it’ll get close. Yeah. But if, and if they’re gonna storm ’em for more than a year, we’ll use some other technology that, like the, the ones I was originally talking about, they’re called, um. Oyster trackers from a company called Digital [00:12:00] Matter. The ones that screw in, it’s a 10 year battery. I mean, they’ll last forever. But those aren’t ones that you want ground up because those expensive, they’re expensive and, and they probably might hurt the grinder because they’re Yeah. Robust. They’re hard. Yeah. Yeah, they’re hardy. Right Allen Hall: on. So that changes the game. I think he does. Larry Ketchersid: And I, I think the next part that we’re working on, which is, you know, what we wanna do is track what happens after the grinding. Right. Okay. That’s Allen Hall: the more important part, right? Yeah. So once you grind this material up, it’s now has a downstream life. How do you know that that material doesn’t necessarily land up in a landfill, but it’s actually used for something beneficial to society? What does that process look like? How do you track that? Larry Ketchersid: Yeah. So that, that process we’re working on, we know how to do it right now, but it’s expensive. Right. Okay. So there’s, there are products, uh, that we looked at when we were doing, we also have used this product on medical cannabis [00:13:00] be so that people want to know which plant, if you’re taking some medical cannabis for epilepsy or lupus or whatever, you wanna know which planet it came from, what cannabinoids are in it. So we link the plant. To the distillate, to the product sample all the way through. And there was, there’s a spray that you can spray on and you can tell the spray, um, to put a code in what’s sprayed on that’s unique to whatever you’re trying to track. And then you get what? Whoa, whoa. Back up. What? Yeah, so it’s, it’s a, it’s a chemical spray that you put on the plant and you use some kind of mass spectrometer. And I’m gonna get way outta my realm here because I’m a software guy and, and you read it and it basically gives you a serial number from what you read off of that plant, from the Allen Hall: bottle of spray that you apply to this plant. Yeah. I think Larry Ketchersid: it’s probably more of a spray. Some, someone was talking to us Joel Saxum: about this, uh, about putting it in, in fibers in turbine blades. Yeah. Really, so, Larry Ketchersid: so then if you take the plant and you go harvest it and you [00:14:00] do something with it, that chemical signature survives all the way through. So you can use a mass spectrometer, it’s probably a different device. I’m probably screw this up, but you can see what the serial number was to say it came from this farm and it’s this kind of plant. So theoretically right, you could spray that on the wind turbine blade. You probably won’t wanna spray it on all of them, but maybe you spray it on one and then it gets ground down. You go, you know, look in the Gaylord box and scan all the crap and figure out which one it’s in. They take it somewhere for whatever the, the downstream usage is. You go scan it there and you’ve got GPS coordinates for your scan. You’ve got the scan, so you’ve got further proof. The problem right now Allen Hall: is Larry Ketchersid: cost. Allen Hall: Sure. But in something like a blade. Where you really wanna make sure that that blade has been recycled and is being used appropriately downstream. That seems like a pretty simple way of tracking it without getting [00:15:00] complicated with sensors and batteries and things of that sort. Oh yeah. You could really track, you wouldn’t wanna track all of it all the time. You just went over that the process is working and eventually sample it, which I, I, I can imagine as an an OEM, uh, wind turbine blades would love to do to know that. Yes. Our company is contributing to this beneficial part of society, and we can check it and then we can blockchain it. Larry Ketchersid: Yep. That has a lot of value. Absolutely. And I, and I think there’s, you know, and there are ways that we can get there slowly but surely, even with using sensors. So we, we’ve worked with, um, a lot of other projects where we wanna read. Um, meters and dials and everything else, right? So, so let’s say there’s a grinding facility and we set up, we, we have these sensors, uh, from a company that are called vision AI sensors. So we put a, some machine learning in a camera, and we tell that camera, look at this dial, and I want you to record where you [00:16:00] are with your GPS, what the dials set up, what time of day it is, and everything else. So if you’re grinding, I know what you grind ground up. When you ground it up and how much you ground it up. Right. So I got a sticker tracker on something coming in. It got ground up. I got a sensor looking at the gear. I know what it was ground up. Then maybe for now I go put a, a tracker on one of the Gaylord boxes that it came out of. Or maybe it’s a bag or whatever. And I don’t do all the bags because I don’t wanna raise the cost up so I can sneak up to the the nice little spray, which I really want to do, frankly. ’cause That’s cool. Mm-hmm. Uh, but, but you can get there and you provide as much evidence as possible. That said, uh, sticker tracker got ground up. My vision, AI sensor says the gear was set on this. I put a tag on the box or the bag. It went in the box, or the bag went to where, whatever facility or whatever it’s being used at, if it, and. I, I’ve got, I, I can extend the end of that proof of authenticity. Allen Hall: So then you’d have a true [00:17:00] value product. And I’m thinking of like insurance companies and all the value chain and a when, when energy company that you’d want this to happen. Safety would be involved. Joel Saxum: I. I think about, so like you, you, you touched on it earlier, the, the value of these things in the future. So like there’s ETFs right now on the stock market that, like KRBN is one of them that track carbon credit markets. Yep. Right, right. And it that, while that is a thing like EPA type credits in the states, there isn’t like a free market, open market capital market for it. But there is in other places, like in Europe. Yep. It’s a, it’s a tradable thing. Right, so I know that, I mean, wind turbine blades, recycling them full circularity of a wind turbine. Great things that our industry is moving towards. But like you said earlier, Alan, it needs to be a value like it. If it, if it, if you’re not using it for something good, then what does it matter? Right. Right. So at the end of the day, you may be solving by being able to NFT these things, like you were saying earlier, maybe solving one of the critical issues is, [00:18:00] is right now it’s not economically feasible to grind turbine blades up and truck ’em around and all this stuff. Afterwards, so people struggle with the, the business case of recycling it. Larry Ketchersid: Right. But yeah, the, the Department of Energy, um, specifically the Oak Ridge Labs and Sandia Labs have a really good white paper comparing all of those different ways of disposing of a wind turbine blade. And they, they measure the greenhouse gas emissions and compare them to dumping them in a landfill. Yeah, right. And, and mechanical grinding is the best, but. The, the lifecycle analysis they did stopped at, at, at that point, right? What, what we want to do, um, and we’re actually going to Oak Ridge, uh, Thursday to talk to ’em about it some more, um, is, extend that all the way to the end product. So how much, you know, what, what’s the real savings and, and there’s a cost, right? There’s some more transport costs, there’s some more grinding costs, [00:19:00] but what’s the savings of doing something correct and good with those grinding results? In greenhouse gas emissions and then that NFT becomes valuable ’cause I can take that carbon credit or that greenhouse gas emissions savings and either use it as a scope three emission savings or an inset or an offset or, or whatever makes sense. Allen Hall: I could see states like Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, that have a lot of wind turbines in them, Wyoming. Where they would require something like that. If you’re gonna recycle, I’m gonna ask you to recycle them and you have to post these bonds that we’ve been talking about on the podcast. Yeah. Recycling bonds. Joel Saxum: Yeah, Allen Hall: that you would have to wait to verify it. The state would always want a way to verify it. How would you do that without having it on the blockchain? There world be no way to really do that. I think it’d be complicated. The blockchain and the trackers makes it the most efficient sense. We’re talking about reducing overall cost to track this and make sure it’s done. This makes a lot of sense. So Larry, Joel Saxum: you work with Everpoint on [00:20:00] this project and, and and, and fixing this for this market for with them. What other industries have you touched where you’ve solved kind of the same type of problems? Larry Ketchersid: Um, well we talked about the Covid kits, uh, then that was. Thankfully short-lived, probably not as short lived as we all wanted it to be. Yeah. Um, but, but cold chain is an easy one, right? I mean, proving that something was kept at a proper temperature. Yeah. Um, the, the medical cannabis one, uh, I, I have a lot of respect for the people in the medical cannabis industry. Um, we were, we were working with a company in Oklahoma City called Nature’s Key, run by Veterans. Had a lot of good PTSD products. Uh, if, if they could ever get off the ground and get the regulation out of the way, um, difficult that, that product has a lot of legs, but, uh, it’s, it’s a dangerous area to play in with, with some of the stuff that we do. Um, we’re working with a company now on tracking, um, methane emissions for, uh, oil wells that should be capped and making a certificate for that proof of [00:21:00] authenticity for that’s difficult. That’s difficult. Um, and just to prove that they did what they were supposed to do. Yeah. Um, and, and feed that into carbon credits. And, and we’ve done some carbon credit proof of authenticities as well. Joel Saxum: Okay. Larry Ketchersid: Um, just. We, we had a, uh, a person ask us to prove that, um, the carbon credits they wanted to buy from a hydroelectric plant in Brazil were not fiction. Wow. Um, so we did the research and put all the evidence together and put it on the blockchain, and he went around and finally sold his carbon credit. So Allen Hall: even think about like balsa, that’s still using wind turbine blades. The problem with that, where. It’s improperly harvested. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And tracking it, and a lot of efforts done on blade manufacturers to make sure that that piece of also actually came in a tree from that was approved to actually take down as part of a, a lumber effort. Right. Sustainable, sustainable process. That would be, Larry Ketchersid: that would be a cool use case. That would be really cool. That, Allen Hall: so the, the uses for this sort of [00:22:00] technology seem to be endless in wind energy. We just haven’t really implemented it. And I bet you a lot of OEMs have no Yeah. Information about it. Have never heard of this before, but it does seem like from an operator standpoint and an OM standpoint, this can make a lot of sense because the costs have come down. Right. I think Who doesn’t use an air tag today? Yep. Yep. Right. Everybody has an air tag into the luggage. Rolling. Where are we today? Where, yeah. My phone will constantly beeps at Joel Saxum: me. You’re being followed by an air tank. No, no, dude. It’s mine. Allen Hall: Yeah. Right. Yeah. So the world has changed very rapidly in that way, and tracking is the way to do it. And, and the blockchain is the way to make sure that that information is secure and proper and Yeah. Unaltered. Larry Ketchersid: Absolutely. Wow. Okay. And we’ve, you know, part of what we’ve done for a living at Media Sourcery is, uh, workflow automation. So, so. Yeah, this last project with Everpoint services, we, we wanted to do it without touching anything. So the first few, we kind of manually massaged to make sure everything was working. And, and when I say everything, the creation of the NFT triggered [00:23:00] by the sticker tracker getting ground up, right? So when the, when we know that the job is done, and at this point the job is done, when the sticker trackers ground up, it may go further later. We, we launch a process to. Automatically create all the data we need to make the NFT, we go write it to the Avalanche blockchain, and it’s in a shared wallet that media, sourcery and Everpoint services have access to right now. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s cool. I mean it’s, uh, as a, as a geek, it, uh, it, it turns me on a lot. Yeah. Allen Hall: So, Larry, how do people get ahold of you to learn more about how these trackers work and what Everpoint Everpoint services is doing with them? How do they, how do they find that information? Larry Ketchersid: We have a, uh, working demo website of all of the proof of authenticity examples@proofofauthenticity.net. Um, it also has a case study that we sent out just before this. Um, it’s got a link to a case study that we sent out just before this conference about the solar panel [00:24:00] recycling and talks about the entire process. So that’s, that’s the best place to start. Allen Hall: Wow. Alright. Better check that out. Proof of authenticity.net. Proof of authenticity is where you can go check that out. Wow. I’ve learned a tremendous amount. This is fascinating. Larry, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Larry Ketchersid: Good questions.

In this episode, we discuss an offshore vessel collision in the North Sea, highlight Louisiana’s offshore wind ambitions, the latest developments in South Australia’s renewable energy expansion. Plus we highlight an article from Buoyant Works in PES Wind Magazine. Register for the upcoming SkySpecs’ webinar on turbine repair challenges! 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! Allen Hall: On Wednesday, April 30th at 11:00 AM Eastern, get that on your calendar. SkySpecs, Uptime and PES Wind are hosting our next session of a 10 part series of wind related items on their webinar. So this time it’s gonna be about the the biggest challenges facing turbine repair teams today. And we’re gonna have four experts besides Joel and me. I guess we don’t count as experts, Joel. So we’re gonna be talking to real experts. Sheryl Weinstein from Sky Specs, Alice Lyon from Lyon Technical Access. Craig Guthrie, who I’ve known forever from Takkion, and Jose Mejia Rodriguez from RNWBL. We’ll be there to, uh, explain how you should be planning for this repair season. What are some of the approaches that the operators use and what works and what doesn’t work? Things that if you’re in the repair business or if you work. For a large, uh, operator or even a small operator you want to hear and participate in, there’ll be a q and a session. So get all your questions ready, but [00:01:00] you first have to register and you can register in the link and the show notes below. Do not miss this event. April 30th, 11:00 AM Eastern. You won’t wanna miss it. Speaker 2: You’re listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now here’s your hosts, Alan Hall, Joel Saxon, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes. Allen Hall: Up in the Netherlands, three crew members were injured when an offshore support vessel struck a windman foundation. In the North Sea and the Royal Dutch Sea Rescue Society had to evacuate two of the injured crew members from the privately owned vessel. And a third uh, crew member went to get medical attention once they got back to port. Now, this occurred about 15 miles from the Netherlands shores, and the Dutch have opened an [00:02:00] investigation, and my first responses to reading this news was. How are we driving ships into foundations still? And Joel, can you explain all the technology that is there to prevent you from doing this? Joel Saxum: Well, every one of these vessels that operates in that environment is going to have a, a helm display, right? That’s gonna have all of the things called stent and aids to navigation. So it’s gonna have all the buoys, everything in the water that you could possibly run into. Some of ’em even have detailed stuff like pipeline data and stuff so you don’t drop your anchors in certain places. But either way, they’re gonna ha they’re gonna have knowledge of this besides the fact that you can look out the window and see the tur, see a turbine that’s 500 feet tall in front of you. That’s a different story maybe. Um, but a lot of these vessels too, of this size. So this is a, um, a support vessel offshore. So there’s all kinds of different classes of boats, things they do. But this thing may work in a wind farm. It may work for oil, uh, platforms, it may work for the fishing industries. Like it can do a lot of different stuff. But as a, as a [00:03:00] emergency response. Uh, vehicle. They also should be DP one. And when I say DP one, that’s dynamic positioning. So that means that you should be able to have a button in the, in the vessel that says, boom, hold me here. And, uh, DP one means you just have one methodology of, of positioning. So that’s like GPS. I’m at this GPS point. Hold me at this GPS point. Um, so there’s a lot of safety mechanisms built into these things, and there’s a chain of command and all these vessels. I think it said it was crude by eight people. Correct? Correct me if I’m wrong, Alan. That sounds about right. For a hundred, 150, 150 foot operating vessel, eight people’s. About right now, everybody has their own job, right? There’s a captain, but there’s usually this, you know, a second mate and there’s other people on the vessel that someone at all times is looking forward or is supposed to be at least. Uh, but like Phil said earlier today, when we were kind of doing some podcast planning, if you saw the pictures of this thing in port, it looked like it ran square on into the turbine headfirst. I Allen Hall: think it was the, uh, [00:04:00] mechanical error or where an operator error just from the damaged photos. I think it’s Joel Saxum: operator error. I think that’s someone not chain of command, not paying attention Phil Totaro: somehow. Well, it’s just one of those, the, you know, unfortunate and frankly frustrating things that, and this is, I believe in the last five or six years, the. Sixth vessel that’s run into something like a foundation under construction or an operating wind turbine or something out there. Um, I mean it’s happened in Germany and, and now. Here in, in Holland with the, with the Holland Coast, uh, three and four project is my understanding Vattenfall project out there, um, with the Siemens 11 megawatt turbines. So it’s unfortunate that this keeps going down, but I don’t know what I mean. To Joel’s point, I don’t know what more. You could do with technology to warn you that something’s out there. ’cause in addition to everything that Joel mentioned, we [00:05:00] also know where the wind turbines are located. There’s, there’s geo coordinates for all the turbines in the wind farms and there’s theoretically some kind of geofencing around the wind farm that tells you, Hey, by the way, you’re entering this zone. Which I mean, as an SOV, presumably you’re supposed to be kind of nearby, but. I just don’t like, I don’t know. I mean, this isn’t a technological problem to, to me this is, this keeps sounding like human error. What’s the next step? Joel Saxum: Phil is the next step. We put like a, we put radar on the transition piece with like an audible alarm. Like when something gets within 500 meters, it just goes. I don’t know what else you can do. I mean, they can’t see Phil Totaro: him apparently, so they gotta hear him. Maybe. I don’t know. Well, to be clear too, I don’t think this was like, uh, you know, a situation where they had fog and or some other kind of obstructed vision. It was a, to my understanding, it was a reasonably clear day. So I just don’t understand how that’s gotta be some level of human failure, how you [00:06:00] just smash into a thing that’s that big, uh, you know, right in front of you. It’s Joel Saxum: like fog being one thing or like pours visibility. But I’m looking at the picture of this vessel and this vessel has. A radar on it. It has its own radar, so it’s gonna pick it up on the screen next. So no matter what, you should have either been able to look out the window or look at the screen and see the thing in front of you, or look at the GPS coordinates of the, the, you know, problems Phil Totaro: out there. So, I, I don’t know to, to answer Joel’s question, I don’t think we need more technology, uh, because even though you could, you know, avail yourself of, of radar on every vessel, I mean. Those that gets expensive and somebody’s gotta pay for it. And guess who ends up paying for it? Is, you know, the vessel operator ups their contract. The, you know, project developer has to increase the overall cost of the project and then it takes them longer to, to. Get paid back with the the PPA and or CFDs or whatever other mechanism they have, [00:07:00] and we as electricity rate payers are the ones that end up paying for that at the end of the day. So I don’t, you know, if this is something that can be solved without. Additional technology upgrades. I’m kind of all for that, but something needs to be done as far as like, Hey, there’s a big thing like, you know, a few hundred yards right in front of you. Try not to hit it. You know, Allen Hall: speaking of not running into wind turbine foundations, there’s actually an article in PES win, and if you haven’t downloaded the latest addition of PES Wind, you can do that on your own@pswin.com. You just type it into the old Google and. Push the button and there it is. Now, there’s a lot of great articles in this quarter’s edition and a good bit of offshore in it. The article I wanna highlight today is from Buoyant Works, and if you’ve been to the Buoyant Works website, you can see all this sort of the polyurethane bumpers that they have created for not only the. The towers, but also the CTVs, which is really important because they [00:08:00] do run into one another once in a while and it has become more of an issue is that, uh, there’s damage on some of these vessels. And just trying to minimize the, the complexity of trying to get close to a turbine without damaging it is, is a huge problem. And if you have read the article here, and I encourage you to do that on your own. There’s a lot going on, uh, as these CTVs approach these turbines and just trying to avoid damage and trying to keep from having bump incidences where the, the crew gets rocked is important here. And Joel, as you have pointed out many times, safety is of the utmost here, uh, on these crew transfer vehicles. Joel Saxum: Yeah. If you haven’t been offshore, there’s something to understand, uh, in operations that maybe most people don’t. So if you’re seeing, like if you’re at a boat ramp at, at the, your local lake or river and you see a boat go back off a trailer, they usually kinda like throttle down and sit there and they’re waiting for people or whatever. When you’re [00:09:00] in a marine environment, when you’re dealing with big vessels and you’re doing any kind of operations, whether it’s pile driving, rock lay, or whatever it may be. That vessel is almost always throttled up. You’re a, you’re at a certain amount of throttle all the time because that’s how you’re able to hold position. So it’s the same thing when A CTV approaches a, a, a transition piece or a wind turbine, they nudge up against where the ladder is and there’s mechanisms designed there, engineering mechanisms, and that’s what. Uh, they do here at Buoyant. Uh, there’s their Buoyant works all of their different systems to make sure they slip, but they put that boat right against the transition piece and they throttle it up to hold it there. So it’s nice and steady. But when you’re in the North Sea or somewhere offshore and you got two three meter heaves going on, you’ve gotta be able to. Efficiently slide up and down that transition piece while you’re throttled up. And that’s what their, uh, their systems allow people to do safely. ’cause if you’re not doing that safely, the boat starts to pinch and move and squeak and it get, get hung up or held. You can’t have that, otherwise you can’t transfer. Um, [00:10:00] so these, uh, what, what you looking at here is, oh, this is cool offenders. No, they actually are the things that allow us to safely transfer people offshore. Allen Hall: So check out the website, buoyant works.com. And take a look at their polyurethane products and accept no invitations. Buoyant works.com. Speaker 5: As busy wind energy professionals staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it difficult. That’s why the Uptime podcast recommends PES WIN 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 ps wind.com today. Allen Hall: As part of our oil and gas, uh, oversight because I am really tired of reading about, oh, a wind turbine had a problem. Yeah. So does oil and gas, and you may not have read in your local newspaper about the spill they had in the [00:11:00] Keystone, Keystone Oil pipeline up in North Dakota, but it dumped about 140,000 gallons of crude oil on the ground. They had a mechanical problem where one of the employees heard a. Boom, and then realize maybe we’re leaking a little bit of oil. Uh, this goes back to, uh, a couple of other incidences that have happened with pipelines, particularly this pipeline and that pipeline. Joel runs from, uh, essentially Alberta. Uh, kind of down across to Manitoba, I think it is, right up, which is right above North Dakota. Then takes a right and goes, goes straight down through North Dakota, South Dakota into Nebraska, then heads over towards, uh, Illinois. So, you know, yikes. Transporting oil is not easy, not as easy as it’s claimed in the media at the moment. Joel Saxum: Yeah, this time of the year is, uh, difficult for the northern latitudes as well. So that area of North Dakota, a lot of organic [00:12:00] soil. This is a weird geo geotechnic conversation, but the reason that you have pipeline breaks this time of year is because the frost is coming outta the ground. So when, when those pipelines, when they get pressurized and they move things, they get a lot of, they get heat built up in ’em. So you have a warm pipeline and then you have it running through soil that is half frozen, half not, and the ice is coming out so that soil starts to move and, and bend. So when they say, Hey, I had an employee that heard something, pop break, that’s because the soil itself is actually moving. Um, and you’ll know that if you’ve ever been up there driving on highways in the springtime, uh, we call it, we call it breakup season when everything starts moving. But that’s what happened. Right? And it, and it is a, it’s a, it’s a really, I mean, it’s a black eye for, for the oil industry. Uh, but it happens more often than you think. Uh, pipeline breaks, whether it’s, whether it’s crude or whether it’s natural gas or, or whatever’s being pumped. Um, these are, these are rigid pipelines that are run across ground that moves. So I think the, you know, your, your, your alternatives to [00:13:00] moving crude like that are either on a train or on a truck. And pipelines are safer than those. So this is the, the least of the, uh, the evils. Allen Hall: Yeah. It’s still a problem. I, I, I am just really tired of hearing oil and gas representatives talk about how wonderful it is. Like they don’t have any problems. They have problems and there’s a lot of problems, but we’ve, it’s become normalized. It’s, it’s back to Rosemary’s point from several months ago now, like when you have disasters all the time, it becomes normal. It’s okay. No one reports on it. It’s not, it’s not news anymore. Joel Saxum: At a certain level, there’s like the nimbyism thing, right, where people get really bent outta shape about renewables because they can see it. You can see turbines everywhere, right? When they’re, when they’re up on the horizon, you can see ’em miles away. You don’t see pipelines. But I, I bet you, I don’t care which one of us I’m talking to, even here on the panel or whoever’s listening, within a mile of your house, there’s a pipeline somewhere. Uh, yes. You just don’t see ’em. You don’t know. You don’t see ’em. So you don’t, it’s not, it’s not an issue until it’s an issue. Wind [00:14:00] turbines, solar panels, battery storage, all these different things. They’re very visible, so it’s easy to see. I encourage anybody who thinks that, that it wind is an eyesore to drive up to Midland, Texas. And take a vacation out there and then, and then give me a call afterwards and tell me what you saw. Allen Hall: And let’s go to a country where things are going in the right direction. In South Australia’s renewable energy sector, they are expanding, uh, with plans to what become the state’s largest wind farm and Tilt renewables has proposed. The, and Rosemary, you’re gonna have to correct me on, on. The Australian pronunciation of this Nwi wind farm, which at the 1.2 gigawatts in 148 turbines, and included with this wind farm are two batteries. Storage systems that can offer up to 300 megawatts of capacity for eight hours of storage duration. That is massive, Rosemary. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, it’s huge. And I think it also comes, um, like, uh, I believe that the intention is construction would begin in [00:15:00] 2029. Um, and so yeah, it would come online after 2030 when the state, I think already plans to be a hundred percent renewable, um, in its electricity, uh, generations. So that’s a really interesting point, like what are, yeah, what are tilts plans for this, uh, huge amount of clean energy once the state’s already at a hundred percent, um, clean. So, uh, a clue might be in the location. It’s right next to Whyalla, which, um, Australians can’t help but be aware of because for some reason this small town is raised at every single election. There is some sort of publicity stunt involving Whyalla. Um, it’s a big steelworks community and yeah, it’s been used as a example, uh, from, from both sides of um. The climate change debate about, yeah. Originally it was cited as an example of, this town will be wiped out if we, you know, choose to act on climate change. Um, yeah. ’cause they’re manufacturing steel and currently steel produces a lot of emissions. But then on the [00:16:00] flip side, I. Well, you know, there’s the potential for this to become green steel, given that there is such a huge renewable energy, um, potential in that region. So that’s my, that’s my guess. Probably a pretty safe guess that there’s some, some sort of plans for industrial uses for this huge amount of green energy that would come online. Joel Saxum: I think an interesting thing here too, in the article they’re mentioning 90 meter blades and, and I don’t know if they have a turbine model planned or they’re just expecting that’s what it’ll be, but because the port, the port of Al’s right there, they only have to transport those big old blades. 50 kilometers out to the site. Like that’s, that’s amazing. That’s great. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I think they also cited that might come from port, port of Adelaide might be used for transport as well, so it’s a little, little bit further, but still not, not that far in, it’s not like a really lush, vegetated region with a whole lot of huge dense forest right up to the road. It’s um, you know, it’s a fairly, um, arid, uh, [00:17:00] climate in that region, so I don’t think that transport is gonna be a huge, huge issue for them. Um, yeah, but I do think that also that’s, that’s all I hear for, um, for new big wind farms in Australia, all I hear is huge wind turbines like much bigger than what you typically see for, for onshore. Like, I don’t, like six megawatts is kind of like. The smallest for things that are coming on very soon. And then after that, people are talking like 10, 12 megawatts. Like I, obviously these turbines barely exist now beyond, you know, like computer models and, um, maybe some prototypes, but obviously. They’re making really big offshore wind turbines. It’s a lot easier to probably go in the direction from offshore to onshore than the other way around. So it’s not like anyone doubts that it’s possible to make wind turbines like that. Um, onshore wind turbines that big, but. The, um, logistics of installed them seems hard. Joel Saxum: You know, Alan, correct me if I’m wrong, [00:18:00] but, but, uh, one of our friends down in Australia told us that GE was gonna be installing only one model, the 6 1 1 58, 6 0.1 megawatt machine from here going forward. And I think, Rosemary, to your point, he also told us that this is the, one of the first turbines that they’ve extensively tested. For a longer duration. So this was the first one that’s been like the, the, you know, serial, serial number, number one has been installed and will have been running for a year before they even install serial number number two in the field. So that’s a, so tackling both things here, bigger turbine. Yes. Uh, and that’s the only one they’re gonna go with. So they can focus on, it is a workhorse machine and they can make sure they’re maintaining it correctly, but they’ve also got some, uh, they’re gonna have more operational history on it before they actually go and start. Building tons of’em. ’cause we know we’ve heard of those wind farms where they, the turbines don’t even have a tech certificate yet and they’re sending a two, 300 of ’em out there. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, well, I mean it’s really [00:19:00] normal that you know, like your, um, and you know, obviously I know, I know blades primarily, but you know, your serial number one is your test blade. Maybe there’s a two as well. That’s also a test played sometimes. Not usually. Um, and then, yeah, like, so serial one is a test blade. Serial number two is in the field, and so is 3, 4, 5, 6, you, you know what I mean? Like you start the test. You’ve probably passed like some, some of your tests, maybe the, um, static test is completed already, but then the fatigue test is only partway done by the time that you’re installing, um, blades in the field usually. So, I mean, it’s, it’s because people have become very good, um, the design codes, the, you know, the materials factors that they. They know it all really well. It’s really proven out over decades of experience, and so they felt very safe and it was incredibly rare that you would see a problem until recently. Now it’s not such a big problem. So I think that’s a, a fantastic, um, step to make, to be a bit more certain. But I mean, [00:20:00] even that is not I adding. All that much safety, if you think about it, one turbine in one location in the world. I thought what you were gonna say is that GE are only doing one turbine type in Australia and that they have taken the effort to understand that Australia’s specific conditions and, uh, you know, know that the. Leading edge protection is UV resistant and so will last more than one year. That Yeah. The, you know, lightning protection system performs well under the types of storms that we see in, uh, the places in Australia where they install a lot of, um, big wind farms. Um, that, yeah, like there’s some, uh, higher temperature resistance because you know, a lot of, um. A lot of wind farms are in deserts where the temperatures are frequently above 40 degrees during the day. And everyone knows, everyone that’s been in a wind turbine knows that inside the wind turbine, inside the blade is at least 10 degrees hotter than that, right? Pushing up, butting up or past, um, material safety limits. So, um, that is what I would, I [00:21:00] would really like to see. Allen Hall: Don’t let blade damage catch you off guard the logics. Ping sensors detect issues before they become expensive, time consuming problems. From ice buildup and lightning strikes to pitch misalignment in internal blade cracks. OGs Ping has you covered The cutting edge sensors are easy to install, giving you the power to stop damage before it’s too late. Visit OGs ping.com and take control of your turbine’s health today. Yeah, the classic cultures, a delegation from Louisiana traveled to Denmark to learn about, uh, wind energy from the experts in Denmark, which is a smart thing to do, and I wish more states would do this actually. Uh, the tour, which is organized by the center for. Planning excellence included state and local officials from Louisiana, academic researchers, industry experts, and of course port authorities, which are so critical to the success of offshore wind farms. And they went over to, uh, learn all they could from [00:22:00] everybody in Denmark. Now, the, the ports in Denmark are really unique in the sense that they have been redeveloped over time and they are. Are extremely powerful in supporting denmark’s wind energy, uh, organizations. And they support a lot of ’em, uh, right from the ports in Denmark. Now, one of the things I thought was a little interesting is that Louisiana, which really doesn’t have any offshore wind, is actively pursuing it. And even though the, the, the, the federal government in the United States is not looking to announce any more win sites, Louisiana, I think it’s going to push for some. Because it does provide a number of jobs, and Louisiana is really set up and our friends at Gulf Wind Technology have created a low wind speed wind turbine blade that will make it possible to have offshore wind near Louisiana. Joel, does this make sense to you? Does it seem like Louisiana has taken a very forward first step? Joel Saxum: I think there’s a couple of ab, absolutely, completely agree. Alan, I’ll just [00:23:00] start with that, but there’s a couple of things here Louisiana Wise that people may not know. First one. When they started developing offshore oil and gas in the North Sea and Norway and all this stuff, and back in the seventies, they called people from Louisiana to come and teach ’em how to do it. ’cause the, ’cause the, the Cajun Navy had been doing it in, in the Gulf for a couple years already. So they knew how to do it. They took their expertise and they went and gave it to. The North Sea, right? So now the tides have turned, the louisianans are heading back up to there, to, to the North Sea to get some knowledge to bring it back. And uh, so that’s one little kind of equipped story. But the other one that’s interesting here too, and Phil, you and I have talked about this. I know Alan, we’ve talked about this as well. Louisiana’s the only state that has tried to do offshore wind within their state boundary waters. And they’ve put in. They put in legislation to share in the profitability of these wind farms, which is a great move in, in, [00:24:00] in my opinion, the same thing that like Alaska has done and Texas has done with their oil reserves. If the, is the reserves there, someone’s gonna make money on it, the whole state should benefit. So they’ve done that. Um. They’ve got the infrastructure, like you said, Gulf Wind Technology. They got a key side facility. There’s all kinds of ship manufacturers. The ship, the Eco Edison, that’s up in or on Ted’s sites up in New York that came, that was built in Louisiana. So like the, I think that was, was Thatwe who built that one? Maybe Phil, you know that, was that Edison SCH West? Yes. Yes. So I think they’re based in Houma, which is, you know, right there. So. They have the key side facilities. They have the vessels. They know how to operate offshore. They’ve already put legislation in place. I think that the, the government of Louisiana is, is charging forward. I did read something the other day too that said, um, quietly there has been some onshore development in Louisiana. They’re like fi five different wind farms that have been then property rights and those kind of negotiations are going on in the background that. The general, you [00:25:00] know, the general wind industry. You wouldn’t think of Louisiana as a place for wind, but it’s happening. Allen Hall: Well, let’s talk about, the one item I wanted to talk about, about this is the food culture and the clash between the two food cultures. So having been to Denmark and Rosemary took, uh, Valerie, my wife and me to a, uh, really nice, uh, restaurant with where they have SMI board gr, which is this open face sandwich on rye bread. That is about the consistency of a two by four Delicious, but it is very thick and dense. So, uh, you have to, you have to, it isn’t the same what you’re gonna pick up and eat. You’re gonna have to cut it with a knife and a fork. It’s really thick. Delicious, though. Quite delicious. And Louisiana is known for the Cajun cooking, right? Everything New Orleans is fantastic. I did a quick look to see how many Michelin stars are in the state of Louisiana and Louisiana’s about. Three times the size of Denmark. There are no Michelin restaurants in the state of Louisiana, which is hard to believe. ’cause if you’ve been to New Orleans, [00:26:00] they have a lot of great restaurants. Rosemary Barnes: It has a reputation for good food too. It’s not like the rest of the world is, is knows that there’s good food there Allen Hall: everywhere and where you stop. But Denmark has over 30 Michelin star restaurants. Joel Saxum: Copenhagen has the most. The most of any city in the world. Copenhagen is the, the head. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, Denmark’s really good for, um, like it’s expensive to eat out, even like bad food is really expensive. If you wanted to, I dunno, I never ate McDonald’s in Denmark, but, you know, something like that or around that level, like pizza, very expensive, not very good, but one step above that is not. Very much more expensive, but is like amazing quality. So if you go to like the local inns, they’re called Crow. Um, they, uh, usually like bordering with fine dining. They’re just, the food is amazing. Like it’s a little bit more relaxed atmosphere, but just absolutely fantastic food. And in fact, one time we went to a place that was because we were living in Colding. It’s a town of like 60,000 people, like in. Fairly [00:27:00] rural jet land. We went to a place in a, a nearby, even smaller town, um, and went to this restaurant. Fantastic. Like I’ve never had such good bread and butter was like the thing that stands out. Most of that meal for me was how good the. The bread and yeah, the bread and butter is, um, and then like a month later, it got a Michelin star, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t like it was known as a good restaurant, but it wasn’t like no one is being fine dining or anything. But that’s like, that’s what I’m saying is that there’s a lot, like the bulk of the nice ish restaurants in Denmark are right on that cusp of being fine dining. Um, so it’s, yeah, it’s a little, it, it, it’s, it’s quite cool once you get the hang of it. And once you realize that. The lower tier, just no point doing that. You know, you either stay at home and eat, or you spend a tiny bit more and get amazing food, but don’t do that like, you know, don’t go out for pizza. It’s, um, it’s hard to find, find something good like that. Joel Saxum: I think, Rosemary, you nailed it. When we were talking earlier about premium ingredients, and that’s one of the big [00:28:00] differences between Denmark Food and Copenhagen Restaurants and Louisiana, because in Louisiana you may eat something and it tastes delicious, but you’ll have no idea what is in that food. You, you, you’re gonna know that the base is probably a ro or they use the holy trinity at some point in this dish. Bell pepper, onion, celery, that’s the holy trinity in Louisiana. And most all dishes are gonna have some form of that in it. So you might be eating like a soup or like, sometimes it looks like a paste. I don’t know, but like a good tufe. Is it lump crab? Is it crawfish? Is it what’s in here? I don’t know. Here you go. But it’s delicious. It’s gonna be good. Allen Hall: Roseberry, you have a very important announcement. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Uh, coming up we have uh, Australian Wind Industry Forum, which is on Tuesday, May 6th. And I’m very excited ’cause I’m speaking this year. I have, um, I have tried to speak at this conference for a few years and it’s gonna be in a session. There’s a session on turbine design. [00:29:00] Um. Related issues, uh, turbine design and technology. And so I’m gonna be giving a presentation. It’s called. Innovation in wind energy lessons from the front lines. So I’m gonna be talking about how the design certification process works for wind turbines and then also what happens when something goes wrong. You know, when you, uh, are in the field and you have, uh, I don’t know, serial defects or you suspect serial defects, you’ve got a lot of blades breaking. You’ve got a lot of. Lightning damage. You’ve got, I dunno, problems with, uh, excessive downtime for whatever reason. Um, yeah, gonna talk about that. And then also, like I mentioned earlier in the show, Australians really love to be the first ones to get a new type of turbine. Um, how could you make sure that you can be a leader without being a Guinea pig? So gonna talk about some of the things you can do because actually, um, you, a customer, an an early customer, if they’re a large customer, does have the opportunity to be part of that design process. And in particular. You can request [00:30:00] certain tests are, are, are done. Um, I’m not saying that it’s guaranteed that the OEM will perform them for you, but you certainly, you and your bank and your insurance all have the ability to, you know, be part of that, um, design process if you are an, an early adopter with a large order. So we’re gonna be talking about yeah. How to, how to manage all of those issues in the Australian context. So come along Allen Hall: and where can I go to register for this event, Rosemary Barnes: you can go to wind industry forum.com au. Allen Hall: That’s gonna do it for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy podcast. Give thanks for listening. Please give us a five star rating and tell your friends. Tell your neighbors. Tell your neighbors friends to start listening to the show. We’ve had a lot more people join us lately. And we want that trend to continue. So thank you for listening, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy [00:31:00] Podcast.

The first Vestas V236 15 MW turbine has been installed offshore, GE Vernova makes significant improvements in wind for Q1, and Siemens Energy has an upgraded outlook following strong performance from Siemens Gamesa. 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! Welcome to Uptime News. Flash Industry News. Lightning fast. Your host Allen Hall, shares the renewable industry news You may have missed. Allen Hall: The first of 64 Vestas V 2 36 15 megawatt wind turbines has been installed at EnBW’s He Dreiht project off the coast of Germany. This March the first time Vestas’ flagship turbine has been installed at an offshore wind farm. Uh, the installation is being carried out by Cadeler’s Vessel Wind Orca, which recently completed similar work at Scotland’s Moray West Wind Farm. According to ENBW with a total output of 960 megawatts, HDR is Germany’s largest offshore wind farm, currently under construction, and will produce enough electricity to supply an equivalent of 1.1 million households. The project is expected to start operation in late 2025. [00:01:00] GE Vernova reported significant improvements in its win segment for the first quarter of 2025. While wind orders decrease 43% organically to 640 million driven by lower onshore wind equipment in the US, revenues increase 13% to $1.85 billion driven by higher onshore wind equipment deliveries, and improved pricing. The company invested more than $100 million to improve performance in its approximately 57,000 wind turbine installed base, and terminated. Its last remaining offshore wind supply agreement. Is proceeding towards completion on both Vineyard, wind and Dogger Bank for its 2025 Outlook. GE Vernova expects wind organic revenue to be down mid single digits with segment EBITDA losses between 200 and 400 million. Siemens energy, ags win business. Siemens Gamesa continues to outperform expectations with its lost before special items [00:02:00] narrowing to 249 million euros in the second quarter of fiscal year 2025. This marked an improvement fund, 446 million Euros a year ago and outperformed analysts consensus estimates of 342 million euros. Revenue grew 16.2% on a comparable basis to 2.71 billion euros, beating forecasts of 2.38 billion euros while orders declined marginally year over year to 875 million euros. They still exceeded consensus expectations. Siemens Energy is working to turn Siemens Gamesa around aiming to reach break even in fiscal year 2026. Now, following these better than expected results, Siemens Energy has upgraded its full year outlook now forecasting comparable revenue growth of 13 to 15% for the overall company with Siemens ESA expected to record revenue growth of zero to 2%, improve from the previous forecast [00:03:00] of negative growth. And that’s gonna do it for this week’s news flash. Stay tuned for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast tomorrow.

You may have missed this fantastic with Loren Walton from NSK, so we’re sharing it again. He discusses the challenges of main shaft bearing failures in wind turbines and NSK’s Super-TF bearing technology as a durable solution. Loren also covers the limitations of previous diamond-like carbon coatings and how NSK’s advanced heat-treated steel can improve turbine longevity. Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! 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! Allen Hall: With modern wind turbines growing larger and main shaft bearings failing prematurely. The industry needs innovative solutions rather than relying on yesterday’s technology. This week we speak with Loren Walton, manager of corporate accounts at NSK. NSK has developed super tough bearing technology, a special heat treated steel that creates a significantly harder surface without coatings delivering long lifespans and eliminating catastrophic failures in today’s larger wind turbines. Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Loren, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Appreciate your time today. Loren, we brought you in the program because you’re an expert in bearings. You’re with NSK, A lot of knowledge, a lot of history there. First, I want to ask a real simple question because we’ve run into operators all across the United States and the world. Generally speaking, we just got back from Australia who are having problems with main shaft bearings. And maybe the first thing to do here is to describe what some of the problems are that operators are facing with the traditional main shaft bearings. Yeah. So Loren Walton: traditionally what we were saying was a whole lot of, I guess I’ll say combined loading, right? So it’s a, radio load that is, up and down and some axial thrust that’s coming in from the wind shear, right? So combining the weight of the main shaft, which is you’re taking up from that radio load with that wind shear. So then you end up having some combined loading where. The downed wind row is seeing a little bit more of load share than the upwind row. That’s getting through the lubricant regime, which is then creating some micro welding and shearing, any amount of metal, any steel. When it’s created, it’s going to have some disparities. I use my fingers as the disparities, right? So your roller, your raceway, or your raceway, your roller. There’s gonna be some welding and shearing that happens when that is under high pressure. And so your lubricant is supposed to create a little bit of a gap between those. When you don’t have that gap you end up with the welding and shearing, you end up with what we call peeling damage, and then that peeling basically goes over and over again, and you start having high levels of debris. Inside of the system. And then once that debris starts going all bets are off, right? ’cause you can’t really even model debris very linearly. It just goes into additional sping and then you end up, if you keep letting it run, you end up with a through crack inside of one of your components, which is typically your inner ring. ’cause it’s press fit on the shaft. Joel Saxum: And a important concept here as well is because main bearings are basically a sealed lubricant system. There isn’t filters on these, right? So like when you start to get debris moving around in the system, it stays there. It just, it’s not oh, let’s go change oil on this thing. And we remove the debris, we put a new filter on it, we’re good to go. It’s not, it’s just, it’s in that system now. If it, because it’s a closed loop basically, right? Correct. Yeah. So the grease shift is in there, Loren Walton: there is an opportunity for you to have, replenishment, right? So you can put new grease in so that old grease comes out. But even then, you’re reliant on gravity and whatever you can get out of the system. You’re hoping that as you put new grease in, old grease comes out. But depending on how long you’ve been running, it is very possible too that you might end up putting new grease in and new grease out, right? Because the old grease is so stuck in there. Is now hard to move. It’s very difficult to get that old grease to actually come out. So depending on, if you have maybe a auto lube system or something like that, it might be, you might be running that grease a little bit more consistently. Otherwise, yeah. You’re stuck with what you’re stuck with once that debris gets going. Allen Hall: So what you’re saying is as the weight of the shaft and the rotors, everything has gone up on basically two and a half megawatts seems to be that critical area. And above that, depending upon the bearing design, the coatings or the finishes combined with the lubricants, you can actually, or what is happening is we’re micro welding the bearings together because of the weight and the, just the the friction that’s between those two things that. I don’t think anybody from the technical side realizes it’s happening. It’s not something you think about in a bearing. That gets me into the next question of obviously the bearing manufacturers try to treat the bearings some way to prevent that from happening. It seems like diamond, like carbon coatings were the solution a couple of years ago. Why was that chosen? Why did that thought process happen? Is that something that was successful previously on smaller turbines and was this implemented on the larger turbines or what was the engineering behind that? Loren Walton: Yeah, so I started my career in the when generation space in bearings somewhere around 2011. And at that time, that was when. We were moving from the kilowatt class to the megawatt class turbines. And that was when we first started seeing a whole lot of main shaft bearing problems. And it is all the stuff that I just described, right? The micro welding the micro welding, macro micro pitting, leading the macro pitting, leading the sping, all that stuff, right? So that was something that was very prominent once you started going from that kilowatt class to that megawatt class and to combat that. DLC was introduced and the thought there was you have a dissimilar material. So what I just described is that, again, I’ll bring my disparities back that micro welding happening, that welding and shearing. That only happens because you have two of the same like materials. That doesn’t happen if you have a dissimilar material. So DLC di like carving. So what you have is an amorphous tsin carbide that you adhere to the surface of one of those components. So in this case, the roller is what you adhere, the amorphous tsin carbide too. So that was a game changer. That was huge, right? We went from a few years of life, maybe on average three to five. To I remember seeing a report where A DOC bearing came out after 10 years and still looked beautiful. It was, sorry I like bearing, so I use terminology like beautiful, right? That I don’t know if that I caught myself after I said the word beautiful for bearing, but that’s just, bear with me. So when we were doing inspections on some turbines that were greater than two megawatt we found. Some abnormalities, we’ll say, in some of our inspections, we didn’t expect to see certain things that we started to see. We started to see more issues on the inner ring instead of the outer ring, we started to see more issues on rollers than we had seen before. And these were on coating rollers, right? So somebody had already gone to the solution of DLC because it had worked before. And in this case, the customer we were working with. They actually shortened their life. They went from four years of operation to two years of operation on average when they were using a product that had the coating on it. So again, an abnormality, something that we weren’t used to seeing. So we did all of our investigations, all of the inspections that we normally run through. We saw that there was actually damage to the DLC. There was the DOC was being harmed. We saw that there was also subsurface wide edge area, wide edge cracking that was also in, in the inner ring and in the rollers. So then we saw that when you compare the uncoated to the coated, the once the DOC was harmed, now you have actually an accelerant to failure. It. It wasn’t that the DOC was wrong, there was nothing wrong with the DOC. But once it was harmed, you had an accelerant to failure. So instead of it lasting about four years, you’re saying it lasted two years. Joel Saxum: When you have starting to have a failure with DLC, what are the things that an operator should be looking for, whether it’s a, the DLC ones, because they’re very common right now. The, in the say the US fleet, there is a ton of DLC coded bearings out there. What are things that an operator should be looking for to see a failure before it turns into a really big problem? Loren Walton: Yeah, so you’ll primarily see some amount of vibration signatures in your rollers is what I’ve understood from some of the people that I’ve talked to. It’s really hard to see though, I think. I think that is still getting, like people are still getting better and better at identifying it. Unfortunately, in a lot of cases, what you have to do is see. If you have to look backward on your vibration to see, okay, this was the point because in a number of cases, you might look on Monday, let’s say you see it on vibration, you go do a physical inspection and the rollers look fine. Finding damage to DOC is not typically something that you can easily catch with the eye. When you’re doing a physical inspection, you’re limited on how many rollers you can check. You’re limited on. What you can actually see. There’s strong limitations there. I don’t fault anyone, if you’re, if you end up with a bearing that blows up because you had a catastrophic roller failure, that isn’t usually something that you can quickly catch unless have learned what the signature looks like from your vibration. For us, the way we see it is a little, we cheat, right? We have a scanning electron microscope. Where we can see the damage, we can see it almost looks like fractured glass. If you can think of when maybe something hits your windshield and it shatters, right? It looks like that for us under the microscope. So we can see the damage to the DLC, we can see where there’s maybe some sort of a slit or something like that on the coating. So that’s easy for us to find because we’re. Checking it after it’s already out. Joel Saxum: There was a certain time, right? It went from the kilowatt class, then we started putting DLC in and then we got a little bit bigger, and then the DLC started to fail. In between that one and two megawatt class, it worked really well. And maybe that’s the, is it the weight of the rotors or like why did it, why is it starting DLC starting to fail now in these larger rotors, in your opinion? Loren Walton: For as a bearing manufacturer? We have to adjust to whatever is thrown our way, right? So I, I don’t get to change anything about the application. I am told this is the application, this is what’s failing. Make it better, please. So that’s the constraint that I’m left. You play the car as you do, right? I can’t ask for a reshow. There’s a lot of investigation that’s happening. I think that there’s a number of different. Things that are happening. I think people were looking for one smoking gun, but I think we’re more so standing in front of a brigade. I don’t think that there is one. I think there’s a bunch of them. That there’s things like, as the turbine gets larger now, the angles are changing on what is, what was the plane of where the bearing was sitting. The angles are now changing. You have the aspect of people are seeing that there’s more current that’s going through that, that they weren’t finding before. But even you can’t discount the part of the rotor size today. I think that there is still a multitude of different. Problems that we’re addressing, but the biggest one that I see is that we know that the DLC is being harmed. So we have to address that because that is the biggest, known right now. I think we have to be willing to change what was the mindset before that. DLC is the solution to everything. And we have to change that to, we have to come up with solutions that are agnostic to the coating that are just. Able to still combat that peeling damage without needing the coating to be the way to to solve it. Allen Hall: Yeah, that’s a really interesting way to look at it. At some point you just go, it doesn’t matter why it’s failing. We need to move on to some other technology and. NSK has a lot of bearing knowledge and treatments, and the one I’ve seen for main bearings more recent, most recently is what you guys call super tough. It’s not a coating, it’s a heat treatment, but it’s unique. Can you describe what that treatment is and why it is so effective in these two megawatt machines? Loren Walton: So super tough is a medium carbon base steel with varying alloy elements that gives it some different properties and then it’s heat treated. It’s a cargo nitrite, heat treatment that then leaves the surface significantly hard while having a a mediumly softer core. That’s a bunch of words. I’ll go into a little bit more of what that means. There’s different parts of why that is important, right? So we talked about peeling damage, we talked about the disparity contacts. We talked about some of that already. The important thing to think through on that is if you look at the matrix of the skin of a steel component, they’re made up of something called carbides. Carbides are basically the hard parts that the bearing runs on. If you have those carbides organized in a very fine and uniform dispersion, you now have uniform wear. If those are also very hard, they also now I guess push against each other in a stronger way as opposed to. Welding to each other like we described before. So a harder surface is harder to have a welding and shearing than a softer surface. Super tough. It leaves a significantly hard surface, harder than other I’ll call ’em competing. Technologies, whether it’s a through hard or a case car rise significantly harder than both of those. And we lead with super tough because of the peeling damage that it combats super tough. Was created originally four applications similar to main shaft, where it was slow speed. It was high low. There was the debris, but typically the debris was coming from the outside in. In the case of main shaft, typically the debris is created by its own bearing. The bearing is eating itself alive, right? It’s from the inside out. And yeah, super tough is got a number of different characteristics that we like. And to be honest for NSK, for material, that’s one of our core competencies. Super tough wasn’t the only option for us to choose, but it’s the one that made the most sense. We had a few other choices that we could have gone with. We have other materials that we use for slow speeds and high lows and applications like steel making and things like that. For the size of the shafts. For the operations, it made the most sense to use Super tough. Joel Saxum: This isn’t something that you engineered for win. This is something that you’ve adapted to win because you have a track record of using it in other places as well. What other, like from an NSK standpoint, what other kind of bearing applications do you use? Super tough in just to to understand. The track record of it, it was created for, Loren Walton: Like I said, steel making was one of the big places where we use the NSK as a Japanese company. Steel is manufactured heavily in Japan. Japan is known for steel. Other places where we would use it would be like paper mining, heavy industries basically, where we would use super tough wherever there was a situation where we needed a combination of. High loading and ability to combat any amount of debris that’s being put into the system. So it was introduced into wind, actually, I wanna say in gearbox because there was some other things that we saw that actually you could combat. Why X area and YX cracking. So actually I should probably take a step back and say from when we were doing our inspections and we saw that the DOC was being harmed, and I mentioned that we also saw a wide edge area and wide edge cracking inside of the inner ring and the rollers. Another reason that we used super tough as the way to combat was because we had already had success with using super tough to combat wide edge cracking. So when we started seeing it in main shaft, in addition to having the ability to combat the peeling damage. Also when we started seeing why that area in main shaft, another reason that it made sense to go away from just standard through hard, going into the super tough. And Allen Hall: as we talk to operators across the United States at the moment that have DLC throughout their turbines farms you get a lot of worried looks and. Until we had talked to you and to Corey MIT lighter, we did not have any suggestions. And now that we’re talking with you here NSK seems like an obvious choice. How do operators start to implement the super tough design into their turbines? What does that look like? Can they, how fast is a swap out? Do they need to do a lot of engineering ahead of time? What does that process look like? Loren Walton: Yeah, so the bearings that we’re offering are the same construction, right? So it’s a. Spherical roller bearing same IDOD. With that, the OEM design had it with it there shouldn’t be any sort of retrofitting or changing of anything required. Honestly, the biggest thing is I think for most people, understanding that we are making changes from the inside out is the biggest thing to understand, right? Because if we look at one shiny round object and another shiny round object. And one of them has black rollers and you say yeah, that one looks like it’s different. Or one has a change to contact angle. Yeah, that one looks like it’s different. It’s a little bit harder to see, yeah, we make some changes to the internal geometry, but you can’t see it. Or we made changes to the material and the heat treat, but you can’t see that. So we are, usually having to educate. What you are not seeing is what you’re getting from us, right? It’s all of the information, it’s all of the gathering, it’s all of the inspections. And then knowing that we can combat that with a different approach than what was used previously. So everything for installation is exactly Allen Hall: the same. Alright, so if an operator wants to start working with NSK, and it sounds like they probably should start talking to you, Loren, because you’re a wealth of information and you can help them out greatly speed up this process to get the DLC bearings off of their turbines and get running again before they have really big problems. How do they do that? How do they get ahold of you? You, Loren? How do they get ahold of NSK? Where should they go? Loren Walton: Yeah, so I guess I hope that they listen to this podcast and then we are visible, right? We attend all of the major events, right? I just came from presenting at the Drivetrain Reliability Collaborative LA this week week after next I’ll be at the operation Maintenance Safety conference for a CP. I’ll also be at Clean Power in Phoenix. I typically go to all three of those conferences every year. But it’s not just me, right? We also have a team of engineers and segment personnel that work and win. But if you’re specifically looking for me I guess I can give out my email address. It’s my, my last name Walton, W-A-O-T-O-N, and then my first initial L and that’s at. k.com. So Walton l@nskcorp.com. So you could email me at any time, always looking for the next science fair project to work on, and you need to go Allen Hall: to nsk.com and check out the website. There is a great deal of information about wind turbine bearing specifically. Really informative videos to go along with it. You can see the super tough coding and all the details there on the website, and you obviously you can connect with Loren on LinkedIn. He’s available there too, so reach out to Loren. Loren, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Learned a great deal today. We need you to come back and talk bearing some more. Loren Walton: Yes. Yes. Appreciate it.

Mark Hoppe, VP of Public Affairs & Business Development at SkySails Power, discusses their containerized airborne wind energy system. The innovative technology captures high-altitude winds with kite-based systems, producing up to 50% more yield than traditional turbines. Mark delves into the operational mechanics, deployment in remote and island nations, and future market expansion. 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! Allen Hall: With traditional wind turbines, limited by location and high material costs, the industry needs innovative solutions for clean energy in remote areas. This week we speak with Mark Hoppe at SkySails Power. SkySails has developed a containerized airborne wind energy system that captures high altitude winds with unique kite technology producing up to 50% more yield than conventional turbines while being deployable nearly anywhere on the planet. Stay tuned. Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Mark, welcome to the podcast. Mark Hoppe: Yeah, thanks, man. Nice to be here. Allen Hall: I’ve been looking to talk to you for. Ooh, going on at least two years because I saw SkySails in Hamburg at the Hamburg Wind Energy Show, and I thought, wow, this is really cool. And then, and the display was [00:01:00] good and the information was good. I just didn’t know how much effort had gone into it at that point. And, and we’re two years further along, obviously. The SkySails technology and the problem you’re solving is really fascinating because there’s a lot of places on the planet that could use wind energy, but a standard horizontal axis wind turbine is probably the not the right approach, and diesel ends up being the winner on a lot of these places. Mark Hoppe: That’s a problem. Definitely, definitely. So yeah, our technology solves a lot of these problems, but of course our technology is not just meant for these kind of places. So this is the entry point where we go in as, these places, they’ve faced a lot of issues when it comes to logistics, prices of the diesel because of the transport costs. That also includes in, in the diesel prices, which then makes the diesel even, even pricier. So, and due to, they have to spend a lot, a lot of money on the diesel. Then they have the issue that they don’t have [00:02:00] the money for social development, for example. ‘Cause they have to subsidize their power prices and all this comes along.  So what we have as a solution for that problem is that we have a containerized wind power system. It’s so-called airborne wind energy system which uses the high altitude wind, which is more powerful. So we fly in heights between two and 400 meters, sometimes even higher. It depends on the width direction and everything.  And due to that we can use the higher wind and then produce 50% more yield than the typical wind turbine at the same size. So that’s crazy. Allen Hall: Yes, that’s, that’s really good. I think the technology and the approach is innovative. So the, the solution to get rid of all the dependence on diesel and some of these electric grids that are very unreliable is to put in basically electric [00:03:00] generation through a, a kite in the sense the technology seems. Relatively simple, but I’ve looked at this up close. There’s actually a lot of technology here because the system itself is really containerized. It’s like dropping a diesel generator on site somewhere, but except it’s a kite. Instead, you wanna explain basically how the system operates and what someone would see if they’re watching it work? Mark Hoppe: Yeah, sure, sure, sure. So basically we, we always divide it into two subsystems more or less. So we have the ground station, which is a container. It’s a 30 feet container, so you can ship everywhere and just need one truck to to, to actually transport it somewhere. So this is really easy. And then you have the flying system. And the flying system at the ground station, they’re connected via the start and landing mass. And the start and landing mast, so in, in the front of the start and landing mast, you have the kites. So when the start and landing mast goes up, [00:04:00] the in floating wind unfolds the kite and then the, the, the wind takes the kite upwards. And underneath the kite you have a robota, you can call it, we call it the control po.  It’s, you can compare it to a paraglide pilot more or less. And there you have an autopilot who steers to the whole system. Then what does is, I don’t know, have you, have you ever been kite surfing before? Allen Hall: Yeah, I’ve seen it, yes. Mark Hoppe: Yeah, so, so when you have kite surfing, you, you try to fly your kite in, in the so-called power zone, ’cause you have the wind window, so in the middle of it you have the power zone there, you have the most force and the autopilot does the same. So it actually tries to fly inside the power zone all the time. So you have a lot of force on the, on the tether. And when the tether is unwind from the, from the winch inside the ground station, the rotational energy is converted into electricity, [00:05:00] and then you have 800 meter long tether on the drum. And then when, when the 800 meters gone all the way out, the autopilot takes back the kite in nose dive, so it actually pitches the kite and then it falls down from the sky, and then it has, yeah, nearly no force. Then the generator X as a motor wheels in the, the tether again. And then when the autopilot is at a hundred meter, it starts all over.  So you can compare it to a yo-yo, you know. Allen Hall: That’s a very good analogy. So the kite deploys out several hundred meters, 800 meters. Providing energy because of that pull force, turning a generator. And then in, when it reaches this extended length, it basically simplifies itself, lowers the drag, comes back in and repeats it. So does, does that create continuous power then, or how does it handle the, the inward time in terms of. Power production? Is there a battery involved? What does that [00:06:00] look like? Mark Hoppe: Yeah, so we always deliver our system in different configurations. So a little bit depends on this site conditions. So of course you can use it off-grid. So what we would do then is we always deliver. So our system comes in a 30 feet container, and then you have another smaller container where you have a grid converter or a battery pack inside. And then so what we do with this solution is that we can always comply to the grid code but also of course can deliver an off grid system. So you can either store the energy produced or use it direct or grid connect the whole system and then feed it into the grid. So that’s, that’s up to our customers on this side. Joel Saxum: I think that one of the important things here to think about, like in the beginning of this conversation of how this thing looks, how it operates in the field, is that it [00:07:00] is modularized, right? Like you’ve guys have taken the smart approach of putting this in a container because a lot of the places that this technology can be used can be on demand. Hey, I, in my mind, I’m thinking disaster response. I’m thinking military uses, remote microgrids. Like we have, we’ve had on the podcast before Hatch. Hatch works with a lot of First Nations up in Canada where they’re in these really remote places. It’s hard to get infrastructure in there, but if you can bring this in on a truck, great. Right, so there’s a lot of places around the world, and I know this is, that’s just one use case, right? These remote, these Caribbean islands, like Allen was saying. Diesel generators, but they’re paying exorbitant amounts of cost for fuel. So this thing, this and, and the fact that you can switch over to different grids right. So different her hertz ratings and voltages coming out. Really important. So where have you guys been able to deploy the system so far? Mark Hoppe: So, so [00:08:00] far, and, and so far we have been installing systems. So we have one system in, in northern Germany, which is our research development side also.  And that one has also been grid connected now for five years. More or less and also been operating since then, but we use it for short durations in our the research development cycle. Then we have another system which has been installed Mauritius for now, also two and a half, three years, something.  Also grid connection, which has been operated all the time because of duration tests. So we actually get some figures about, okay, how last. How lasting are materials and what do we need to do to make them even last longer? So we learned a lot in the, in the past years on that. And now we take all this into our product development cycles, and now we have another two systems [00:09:00] which are now being delivered to Taiwan. So the next installations will be in Taiwan, and then. We have some projects going on in the Philippines, Cape Words Hawaii. So all, all of these like island states and island nations, they, they, we were really active in these spaces right now. French Polynesia is also really interesting so far remote places. And all these island states, they have a bigger issue. They have a really big issue ’cause they’re feeling the, the climate crisis first. So they need to solve it. And also, and, and also what, what we are look also looking into, which is a really interesting market, is the Caribbean.  Because there you have the same issues. You have hurricane region. So what they have to do is that they have to rebuild more or less the whole infrastructure every five to 10 years because everything has been destroyed. So they can’t even install any wind turbines because they’ve just been blown away. And [00:10:00] in Mauritius we have proven that our system actually is feasible to withstand a typhoon many times. Joel Saxum: Well, and these are good places to do installs too, I suppose from a business perspective. You get to go to the Caribbean, French Polynesia, like that. That sounds amazing. So one, one of the questions I’d ask you is kind of reviewing your technology here. Do you, do you have a special kind of parachute material and a tether material that you guys use because it’s, you know, it’s long duration. In my mind, I think a parachute is, you know, down, repack put away. But this thing is gonna be out there for a long time. So throughout these great that you guys have had five year tests and it, you know, a two, three year test, have you developed those…or how have those technologies developed? Mark Hoppe: So well, it has developed a lot and, and there’s still a lot to do. So because we still do a lot of material tests and now we extend them by far what we have done [00:11:00] before. So when you look at the materials, what we use now is for the tether we use Dyneema which is even used in, in, in shooting rests, I think. And, and it’s like it’s. It’s, it’s better than steel. So it, it’s makes you made for a lot of force. And, and so you can think of, so we, we use a 40 millimeter tether. diameter 40 millimeter. And it, it, it withdraw. It’s, it’s made for I think six tons design load. And and yeah, so, so it withstands a lot.  Then what we use for the kites it’s actually the same kind of materials which we use in sailing, nowadays. And also what they do in development. When you look at the, the sales nowadays also, especially for the performance sail, you know, for the races, what they use there. This is these kind of materials we also [00:12:00] kind of use and also will extend because they are made to last for a lot of force, but they’re in light and all what we need.  And then for example, what we have done now, so we just bought the biggest tether bending machine in the world to actually do the tether testing and to extend all this knowledge, you know, because this is really important, you know, it’s also for the safetyness of our system because everything is built around the tether. Well, Allen Hall: Dyneema is the right choice there. That material has been proven over and over and over again in aerospace and in sailing. It is an extremely tough material. Yeah, and you’re only using the, a line that’s about a 10th of an inch wide diameter. That’s actually really small, but it does make sense because that’s the right choice. Now, in terms of operational aspects one of the things I get ask about SkySails, well, how many hours a day [00:13:00] does it operate? Is it up there 24 hours a day? Is it up there five hours a day? What do you typically see in some of these installations? Mark Hoppe: Our systems, they, so. Like looking over a year. I think it, it, it’s, it’s good to compare also the different technologies when you look at how many operational hours you have over one year.  And there you always call it full-load hours that you can have over one year. So if you have installed one megawatt then you have 5,000 full-load hours, and then you have 5,000 megawatt hours a yield per year. It’s pretty easy. So, and one year has 8,700 something hours, I think. So and our system has up to 5,000, full-load hours, depending on the size. Allen Hall: That’s a lot. Joel Saxum: That’s a, that’s a high capacity factor. Yeah. That’s higher than a, like a horizontal access. Yeah. Mark Hoppe: Yeah. So if you, for example, compare a coal-fire plan t they have [00:14:00] coal power, power plant, they have ’cause of the service cycles and everything like this. You have 4,500 full-load hours if you have a offshore winter turbine buying Europe. Depending on the site, 4,000 full-load hours. So what we do is we have offshore wind on onshore sites. Joel Saxum: And, and what’s the output? Mark Hoppe: Yeah, so for now now the systems is really small because also because of the sites we want to go into.  So they now have a, we call it cycle power because this is it’s not like what we know from conventional wind turbines. We, we call, we, we always talk about installed power. But we, in our industry, talk about cycle power. So what’s you have in a one power cycle? Yeah. And this is a 200 kilowatt system that we have now in the market. Allen Hall: Okay. That’s a lot larger than I thought you were at right now. So that a 200 kilowatt sheen can help a lot of people, particularly in rural communities or whether it’s been through a hurricane. Just getting back up [00:15:00] and running is huge because the, the, the load is really simplistic. Lights, maybe cooking those kind of things, air conditioning. Mark Hoppe: Yes. So the year would be 780 megawatt hours a year depending on the site, of course again. But that would be enough power for I think so just talking in German households. ‘Cause I have the number in my mind. So that would be something between two and 400 households. For one with one transmission.. Allen Hall: Yeah. It seems like a, the proper solution in, in a lot of cases. So what’s the deployment plan then? If you have a larger community, would you deploy two SkySails systems? Would you install a larger system? What does that look like in terms of the, the right approach and the units and to the community? Mark Hoppe: So what can see now, so looking at our, how, how we go into the market now. So now we have this 200 kilowatt system which is actually meant for like all these [00:16:00] remote places where we have diesel hybridization with PV hybridization. All these places like remote off-grid solutions mostly and mini grids, micro grids. And then next step would be, and this what we are already have the pipeline is to develop the next bigger system. Which is then also meant for more developed countries because you have a different load so which you can match. Then of course you match better the needs of, of these specific markets. And then also already planned is next step after that one. So first step would be now something between four and 500 kilowatt, and then the next step is already megawatt system.  And this is already planned to do. So this is already in project plans and everything. Allen Hall: So what does a megawatt system look like in terms of the kite size? Does it expand? I, I don’t know what the math is. There is by, is it square function? How, how big does kite get versus a 200 kilowatt system to a [00:17:00] megawatt? Mark Hoppe: Yes. So the 200 kilowatt system uses kites up to 180 square meters. Also depending on the wind distribution. So if you have a high wind site, you use a smaller kite. If you have a low wind site you use a bigger kite. So you can use the same system, but you just exchange kite, which is also really great.  When it comes to material intensity. Then if you look into the megawatt system. The kite size would probably be something between 700 square meter up to a thousand. Joel Saxum: How do you, okay, so I’m thinking, I’m thinking in my this is my traditional mind thinking about wind, wind farm, siting and these other things. So of course, like if you, Hey, we’re gonna build a wind farm here. You know, a year before that we put a mast tower out there. We measure the wind resource. We have a general idea of what it looks like at 10 meters above the surface and sometimes, you know, 50 or a hundred. How do you measure the [00:18:00] wind resource at 400 meters of, of height? Like what does that look like? Because I don’t, I’ve, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a map that says, here’s the wind resource at 400 meters. Mark Hoppe: So actually there is no, so this is why you’ve never seen one probably. Yeah, and this is a really interesting question actually, because, yeah. How do you measure the wind? So nowadays we have what we do, we do kind of the same. So when we do project development so what we do is first, okay, our customers come to us and they, okay, we have an idea of a site which would work for us. And then what we do, we, we have, internal developed tool chain, which we use then do a small, like, like a really fast site scouting to get an idea of, okay, if this is this site actually feasible. With weather data, which we can just get from databases, everything is calculated. Like is there a business case? Like pretty, pretty, pretty easy stuff. And then after that next step would be that we go there [00:19:00] and then we actually put a lidar on, on the site. And then we do a lidar measurement campaign. So also wind measurement campaign, but by, by using a lidar we can use we can measure the wind power up  far higher. And that’s, that’s it. Allen Hall: All right. So this sounds really doable. I just did a quick Google search to see what the square meter area of an Airbus A380 is. It, it’s about, it’s about 850 square meters. So you’re talking about a kite that has the wingspan roughly as an Airbus A380, which is, it’s big, but doable. I mean, obviously those airplanes are flying around, so it is not particularly hard to, to make something of that size, particularly in, in a kite form. So this seems relatively straightforward. Once you cross that megawatt threshold, then your market expands dramatically. Correct? Mark Hoppe: Yeah, it expands dramatically. And then and, and, [00:20:00] and even for what, what, what then is the steps do is actually to put them offshore. To put them on the floor because then it expands even wider because what, what we, what we can do with this technology compared also to conventional technologies, which we have on the market nowadays.  Is that also there the floater can be much, much smaller because if you compare it to wind turbine. So the, the wind turbine has all the weight up in the sky and what does it do with the float? So the float must be really big because. Take care of the binding moments up in the ocean. And if you not have these binding moments, you don’t even need a floor, which is that big because if you look at our system, all the weight is on the ground. So the only thing you need is actually an anchor, so it doesn’t swim away because of the kite. Allen Hall: Alright, so let’s, let’s walk through the, the math of that for a second. So instead of putting out a 15 megawatt turbine and all the, [00:21:00] as Joel has pointed out on the podcast numerous times, the complexities of doing that, the ships, the pounding, the monopile, all the regulatory aspects. Mark Hoppe: The material intensity. Joel Saxum: Pure cost. Yeah. Allen Hall: Pure cost, right? So you’re cutting out all the steel. Pretty much out of a wind turbine. Mark Hoppe: Even the rare earth, because like if you, if you look at the wind turbines because they need to take care of the weight they need the rare earth is because otherwise the generator and, and, and the mag magnet inside for the, for the gear would be too to, to, to, would, would have too much weight, you know?  And since we don’t have that issue, we can use other materials like yeah, other materials, which is, which are not that easy, which are much more easy to get, you know. So because we don’t have the weight issue. Allen Hall: Okay, so the cost would come way down. The simplicity would be there, the deployment would be easier. Are you seeing [00:22:00] interest in this and on offshore applications? I’m thinking Joel, I’m thinking California. Joel Saxum: I’m thinking Gulf of Mexico. Because now, now you’ve, now you’ve solved the hurricane problem. Hurricane’s coming, wheel ’em in, shut ’em down for a second. Hurricane blows through, put ’em back up. So you remove that blade problem that we have in the Gulf of Mexico. Mark Hoppe: That would be, that would be great. That would be a great site to actually, to, to develop such systems. And then yeah, and even though, even, even even sites like the, the coast of Japan, because in Japan you have the deep sea really deep sea coast, which means that it’s really hard to install any other wind turbines ’cause it’s deep, you know. Allen Hall: As this technology develops over the, the next roughly year or so, you must be ramping up on the factories and the scale and to be able to produce these units. But that does seem like. There’s a lot of advantage here, particularly on the cost side. Man, even in like UAE, saudi Arabia, places like that, where there, there is wind, [00:23:00] just deploy it, boom, boom, boom. Right? So what does that look like? Are you scaling up at the minute to, to take some of these orders because the math works out it looks like. Mark Hoppe: Yeah, so actually we talk in the right moment. So what we do now is actually, so. We have, we have taken the step to develop the technology and we have proven the technology also by having the first, also being the first company in our industry to have a verified power curve last year. So we, we made the proof for the technology that it actually works and produces power. And this year’s all about to go into the market. And we do this making big steps forward. So as we have a lot of customer inquiries and we’ve not done any. Any outreach from our side, so it’s all inbound.  Which is great. But now, so, so now we say now our customers are actually [00:24:00] ready to reserve their production slots. This is what we do now. So they can reserve the production slots and then we will deliver the system when they need them. Allen Hall: So where can they see a system today? Like if, if I wanted to see a system in action, would I, would I just go to YouTube? Would I, would I travel over to Germany? I. Where would, where I go to Mauritius, where would, where would I go to go see this live? Mark Hoppe: So to see them live, of course it’s always good to go to Northern Germany or to Mauritius. But then of course in the near future, where you will see some flying in Taiwan.  And then we will extend to the Philippines. And then probably will be next or French, we will see, which is faster. And hopefully also Hawaii. Allen Hall: I love Hawaii. Joel Saxum: There we go. That’s where we want to go. Mark Hoppe: Yeah, yeah, of course. I, I’m happy to invite you when, when you, when you’re ready to, to, to run, we take another podcast there I would say. Allen Hall: That would be terrific. Mark Hoppe: Yeah. We, so we actually, we are just ramping up, huh? We just ramping up this [00:25:00] whole, this whole market and, and this is really exciting to us. Joel Saxum: Every country is different with airspace laws. Now there’s some, there’s some global stuff, general guidelines, right? But there’s every country’s different. Like there’s these, you can’t fly a kite over 500 feet in the United States. Then you run into airspace and you have issues. How have you guys circumvented or dealt with some of those local airspace regulations? Mark Hoppe: In our industry. There are different approaches right now. Because some of them, if you, if you compare the technologies they’re two different concepts. So the one we use is the textile kit, and then you have other companies which uses rigid wing which, okay, we have our, why we use textile kite. We have a lot of yeah, issues why we do that and not do the other approach. But if you compare them, then the rigid wing companies, they claim that they’re kind of a drone [00:26:00] because of course they kind of look like a drone, a tether drone, more or less.  It looks like an airplane like a small airplane. But if you compare our kites with them then our kite is not an airplane.. Sorry. It, it’s not as immovable. And it so what we classify as is an obstacle. Joel Saxum: Like a tower. Mark Hoppe: Yeah, like a tower. Yeah. Like a structure. And then because of that we of course we need some marking, which means we now also have developed an integration concept, which comes with different kind of  yeah, safety measures. So, ’cause what we always have to take care of in, in using the airspace is that you have to take care about the safeness, of course. So all the other airspace users, they need to be aware of what you’re using as an airspace. Which means that you need marking. And the marking could [00:27:00] be that you have lighting. It’s like a wind turbine. You have every 50 meters. You have some, some lighting on the tower flashing. And then, then, and what we use, we use kind of the same. So we have a lighting on the ground station, on the, on the mass, and then at the controlled part. And then the kite is also a white and red color.  And then what we also want to implement is a a map mark for the for the aerospace maps. For like a symbol for, for, so, so that, you know, okay, there’s an obstacle. And then you of course need some awareness campaigns to to, to make all them aware of the technology. And like, this also comes with more installations, of course.  And then for now, what we, what we try to get is a solution where we use EDDs danger zones. So like they, all the pilots are aware of, okay, there’s something, [00:28:00] but you can fly in, you can fly through. So it’s not a restricted zone, but it’s like a danger zone. So they even use these danger zones for, in Europe, they use them also in other countries for drones, for example for drone use spaces and stuff.  So yeah, that’s the way to go now. Joel Saxum: In the States, it would be covered under a. I think right, Allen? A certificate of authorization for use, then that’s filed. Filed with the FAA, then they can go from there but. Allen Hall: ‘Cause there are buildings that are operate, that exist, that are taller than what you’re flying at today in the world. So you’re, you’re not the tallest object on the planet at the minute. And obviously there’s hills and mountains and things that are much taller. So I, this makes a ton of sense. So anybody who wants to find out about SkySails, you need to go to the website because there’s a ton of great information. They, yeah. And the website is skysails-power.com. but they’re also on LinkedIn. You can see a lot of SkySails information there and their [00:29:00] YouTube channel. Yeah, YouTube is, the YouTube channel is really good. And, and check it out there. Mark, how do people get ahold of you if they want to acquire one of your systems or see a demo? How do they do that? Mark Hoppe: So it’s actually the easiest way would be just to visit our website and, and file us an inquiry. Or you can just send us a yeah a message on LinkedIn. Allen Hall: Great technology. Fascinating. And the, the growth of this technology is astounding. One megawatt kites or sails does seem like a way to make more wind energy pretty slick. So check out skysails-power.com. Mark, thank you so much for being on the podcast and keep us up to date as things progress, especially if you go to Hawaii. Mark Hoppe: Yeah, we will do that. Thank you Joel and thank you Allen