The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

This week we discuss GE Vernova’s $600 million investment in its US facilities, ORIX selling its stake in Greenko to AM Green Power, and a 70 GW wind and solar project in Western Australia seeks federal approval. Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! Register for Wind Energy O&M Australia! https://www.windaustralia.com 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 hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, and Phil Totaro, discuss the latest deals, mergers, and alliances that will shape the future of wind power. News Flash is brought to you by IntelStor. For market intelligence that generates revenue, visit www.intelstor.com. Allen Hall: So this week, Phil, a number of really interesting moves in renewable energy. First off is the Western Green Energy Hub has submitted its proposal for federal environmental approval in Western Australia, someplace we’re going to be pretty soon. The project plans to install 70 gigawatts of wind and solar capacity through 35 power nodes. Now, each node will include 2 to 3 gigawatts of generation and about 1. 5 gigawatts of electrolyzer. Phil, Western Australia has a number of renewable projects planned. What makes this one unique? Well, Phil Totaro: it’s the first one. They’re Allen Hall: going to Phil Totaro: do it. Yeah. Because of all these mega projects that have been proposed throughout Australia. There’s some in Queensland and South Australia, and I think one in Victoria as well. And what we’re talking about is something that’s like, 30, 40, 50, 60, in this case, 70 gigawatts worth of generation capacity. That’s almost. I mean, 70 gigawatts is almost what the entire Australian grid produces on an annual basis. So what they’re doing with this is they’re saying, all right, it’s going to accommodate some, increased electricity demand. Although the, the amount that, that it’s going to increase is, is modest compared to the, the amount they’re going to be generating. But as you mentioned, they’re going to add all these, um, Electrolyzer is to be able to produce hydrogen on a lot of these mega projects in Australia that have been proposed. That’s their intent is to, build these these things with, turbines that are going to be at least 10. Megawatts each, if not bigger. The reality with this is it is the first of these kind of mega projects to, to get into this environmental permitting and consent queue. And so this is the start of what could be, a pretty major undertaking. Joel Saxum: Something to think about here too, is this is in Western Australia. So if you know anything about Western or if you know anything about Australia’s grid, it’s not very well connected East to West. And the major demand centers are all in the East. You have Perth in the West, of course, but that Western side of Australia, the grid doesn’t need much energy to support it. It doesn’t have a whole lot of demand compared to the rest of the, or the, to the Eastern parts of the country. So at the end of the day, 70 gigawatts is great, but the This is going to be just a, not just, but for the most part, a green hydrogen project, right? They don’t need 70 gigawatts of clean energy to fulfill the grid needs over there. That doesn’t demand that much. So most of this energy was used for hydrogen, green hydrogen creation. And that’s one thing that Australia does really, really, really well. They have a lot of natural resources and they know how to export. So you, you look to see this project. Project creating a green energy hub and a green energy powerhouse or green hydrogen powerhouse out of the country of Australia. And now you just got to find offtake. Allen Hall: Right, Phil. Where is this green hydrogen headed to? Phil Totaro: We’ll see, because they actually don’t, that’s one of the challenges for this project commercially, is they don’t necessarily have the, the full demand fulfillment. They will probably send some of it to well, actually, they might send some of it to China. They’ve been talking about exporting some hydrogen to some of the other Southeast Asian countries that are their, their kind of most adjacent neighbors. But that’s actually an important consideration that I don’t think they’ve fully addressed yet. Allen Hall: Next up, ORIX Corporation is selling its 20 percent stake in GreenCo Energy Holdings to AM Green Power BV for 1.46 Billion U. S. dollars. The Japanese company will also invest in convertible notes issued by AM Green Luxembourg, the parent company. Now, Greenco Energy operates about seven and a half gigawatts of renewable energy capacity, including solar, wind, and hydropower projects, and is developing large scale pump storage power facilities. All right, Phil, again, another huge financial transaction here involving a Japanese company. Obviously Japan is heavily involved in things like in the UK at the minute, offshore, floating wind. There’s a lot of activity going around there. What is the activity behind this acquisition? Phil Totaro: Yeah, well, for those that aren’t familiar, ORIX actually also owns El Juan Energy which is big renewable energy project developer in, in Europe, Spain in particular. The reason that ORIX got into both of these companies El Juan and now that they’re divesting GreenCo they, they wanted to, to plow some money behind renewable energy projects. But the fact that they’re taking this portfolio projects that Greenco has and selling it off for a rather stout amount of money, I have to say is, reflective of the fact that they think they can cash out. on something that’s kind of, in, in high demand, which are assets in India that are operational or potentially in need of repowering because they’re starting to get their act together over there and getting a policy framework in place in each one of the states in India to, to actually get repowering projects undertaken. Great acquisition and good deal on, on behalf of ORIX. They remain invested at this point in Elowan Energy. And ORIX, may end up redeploying their capital, the 1. 46 billion in. Other renewable energy investments as, as they decide to move forward. Joel Saxum: I think that’s the interesting thing here, Phil, exactly like you said, what’s OREC’s going to do next? Because, none of us are flies on the walls in these, in these conference rooms or in these strategy rooms behind, what’s an evergreen investment, which kind of investment has an end date on it. What are we trying to do for a structure here within our investment vehicle? We don’t know what that is. So there may have just been a date where OREC said, Hey. Beginning of 2025, we’re going to sell this thing no matter what, and either, I’m not saying that’s what happened, but that could be what happened. Either way, ORIX is sitting, going to be sitting on a pile of cash come March and it would be really interesting to see what they do with it. Allen Hall: They don’t have a pile of debt that they’re paying off, Phil, do they? Joel Saxum: No. Phil Totaro: They do not. Allen Hall: Okay. So this is, so this is a pure acquisition, moving cash around, finding more active markets for their deployable capital. Phil Totaro: Yes, and keep in mind too that they could be waiting for, making additional investments in Europe or the US. Or, I mean, they could go down into Brazil or who knows where with, with their next move. That’s the one advantage of having the pile of cash is that even in a high interest rate environment, you have choices as far as where you want to deploy capital. And, You’ll be able to selectively pick markets for either a strategic investment in a local developer or potentially acquiring a portfolio that, that might be available or building new greenfield. So there’s, there’s a lot of strategy options on the table for them to be able to move forward. So would you say Joel Saxum: they’re sitting in the conference room right now, looking to see what country has the best political framework to invest in? Phil Totaro: Well, and not for nothing, but countries that are not the United States at the moment have gotten the message of, hey, we need to make ourselves look a lot more attractive to get more foreign direct investment Allen Hall: at this point. Speaking of investment, GE Vernova will invest 600 million in its U. S. facilities over two years, creating about 1, 500 jobs. Now, this plan includes 300 million for its gas power operations, with about 160 million going. to their Greenville, South Carolina facility. The company will invest about 50 million for nuclear operations in Wilmington, North Carolina, which is a beautiful place, by the way, 100 million for wind manufacturing facilities and another 100 million for their advanced research center near me in New York. Now, the investments are part of a larger 9 billion global investment plan through 2028. So, Phil, some of the money that has come into Vernova particularly for some AI gas powered turbine projects is going to be reinvested into the company and to stabilize different parts of it and try to improve efficiencies. It sounds like where they’re going. Is that going to have an immediate return on investments? Like, are we expecting the stock price to bump up on this or is this more a longer term play to stabilize the company and make it profitable in 2028, 2030? Phil Totaro: Yeah, it’s actually, that’s a really great question because they’re. likely to make investments now that are, are they’re probably hoping are going to pay off in a number of years here. The last time they made these kind of investments was in 2004. In a lot of the facilities that they had. And what happened in 2004 was there was a gas turbine glut and prices dropped. tanked, and everybody was, couldn’t sell a gas turbine to save their life. And what happens in that kind of a market environment, which we’re even, you could argue in, is happening for us in wind and, and a bit in renewables at the moment. is when the, the market environment is not currently attractive for making sales, that’s when you want to invest in your manufacturing facilities and capacity so that you’re ready when you do get orders so that you can immediately respond and, and not have a huge order backlog and an order backlog. book. They are, as you said, spending, upwards of, a hundred million plus in some facilities to, to modernize and to ensure that they can meet the current, but more importantly, the future demand that they’re expecting. Joel Saxum: As we say this, I’m taking a peek at the stock ticker and it looks like, because this announcement was earlier today, it looks like after hours trading has a stock up about 2%. So that’s a good sign, but Alan, I want to ask you a question because this is something that’s near and dear to us is from the Uptime podcast and all of the people we talked to in the industry. Of course, G. E. Vernova a pylon in this industry that we’re all looking towards, but we’ve heard a lot of layoffs. A lot of jobs have been lost. A lot of engineers by the wayside, a lot of people in the manufacturing facilities. And this announcement says we’re creating 1500 new jobs. Is one of GE’s strategies, or something they’ve done in the past from your knowledge bring these old emplo these, these laid off employees back? Are those people going to get jobs back? Are they going to get offers? Or are they going to go to the new market for it? Allen Hall: The more recent layoffs have let go of a number of really valuable people. And if you look at the names on LinkedIn, you see people that will easily find jobs across the industry because they’re just high quality people. It’ll be very difficult for GE to run over to bring them back. I think whether Talking about as sort of more manufacturing level workers to build more products, not on the engineering side so much. So although this is interesting and it is good that GE Vernova is going to bring people back in terms of employment numbers are going to bump up a little bit. I think they lost a huge number of really critical people. So it will be a challenge over the next couple of years to keep up with the demand they’re about to have.

Jeremy Heinks from CICNDT (Composite Inspection and Consulting NDT) discusses how proper NDT programs can prevent costly failures and improve blade reliability. Drawing from his extensive experience, Heinks explains the challenges of implementing NDT in both onshore and offshore wind environments, emphasizing the importance of working with qualified experts to develop comprehensive inspection. Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! Register for Wind Energy O&M Australia! https://www.windaustralia.com 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: Welcome back to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight. I’m your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum today we’re joined by Jeremy Heinks a true veteran in the field of non destructive testing with over 25 years of experience spanning aerospace, renewables, and the space sectors. Jeremy is the owner of Composite Inspection and Consulting, where he specializes in advanced materials, testing, and inspection methods. And from inspecting rocket components at SpaceX to developing comprehensive testing programs for wind turbine blades, Jeremy brings a unique perspective on quality assurance and testing methodologies. Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering Tomorrow. Jeremy, welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. Thanks for having me. So you’re a person we’ve been wanting to talk to for quite a while. And I’m glad you’re on the podcast because NDT comes up all the time in our discussions when we’re talking to operators, when we’re talking to owners, they don’t know much about it, and they’re not even sure if they got NDT data, if it’s the right kind of data to help them, and you have a ton of experience. You’ve done aerospace, you worked at SpaceX, you’ve done all this cool NDT stuff. I want to know to start off with. What happens in the factory? What kind of NDT should be performed in the factory? And what are they trying to use it to detect? Jeremy Heinks: Yeah. In the factory, NDT has come a long way over the past 20 years or so but we start out with the basics people don’t understand like visual inspection is an NDT method and making sure that, that’s done in a proper manner, it’s regulated. There are rules and regulations for proper visual inspection. And certifying people to that in the NDT realm, it’s called VT here, Visual Technic but, uh, that’s a first just doing proper visual inspection and looking for Gross defects that way. Another thing, that’s another really basic one that we see in the plants is a tap test, right? And that’s another one. Tap test is a regulated NDT method. And typically that doesn’t, people don’t know that. It gets done incorrectly. 99 percent of the time your technicians that are doing tap tests have to pass certain certifications and regulations for hearing and all these types of different things. And the same with the conditions for the area to do the tap test. It can’t be a loud noisy area. You have to have, a certain amount of noise or certain, and then we get into a couple of the other basics. One is thermal testing or IR inspection. And when that’s done in a plant, it’s typically after the blade has been closed we’ve put the mold on top and we’ve closed up for the adhesive body to take place. And the mold is then opened after curing cycle and then pulled out of the out of the mold and set up. So typically we would do a thermal inspection there to make sure that the adhesive is curing properly. Typically if maybe you have an adhesive machine. that has issues. It would you’d see, areas that didn’t get the initiator or other problems to where maybe you didn’t get enough in there as a cooler area. A lot of different things go on there. And that’s a highly, regulated inspection method as well. It can completely be done improperly in the plant as as we see often. And another one that’s been pushed pretty far since the 2000s is ultrasonic inspection. That started out with just a really basic single transducer with an A scan squiggly line on a screen. And you’re just looking for a good bond between the laminate of the shell and a web and leading and trailing edge as well. As far as bond lines go. You can also use that and thermography for looking for dry glass. But we don’t typically see dry glass as much. That was a lot of the infusion technology has come a long way, so we don’t typically see dry glass like we used to but and then, UT morphed into, using a linear array with multiple elements, doing, being able to do a wider area at a single pass again, all, mostly just aimed at bottom lines. Over the years, we Also, a lot of the plants played with the root inspection because, it’s an important factor, there’s a lot going on in the root sections. But at the end of the day, it comes down to cycle time and how much time you want a plant wants to give to the NDT group if they have it. So those are the basics that we see in the plant. Joel Saxum: I think it’s important to touch on this is you say, those are the basics, but anybody that’s been close to NDT understands that NDT is nothing close to anything basic in general, right? It’s very stringent. There’s very, there’s high regulation on it. And the technology, like when you say, yes, the, an A scan, it’s just a squiggly line on the screen. It takes a lot of education, a lot of knowledge, a lot of experience to, to really be able to tell what these things are. And all of that is driven by process. And one of the things to touch here to our listeners, Jeremy here, CIC NDT, of course, he’s also been the person that worked in LM factories and built their NDT programs and has a ton of experience here. Can you speak to what it looks like when someone wants to build a program or what that looks like? Cause you’ve been Oracle racing team, Tesla, fighter jets, all kinds of crazy stuff you told us off air. Tell us what that, that, the importance of that program and why someone would implement that. Jeremy Heinks: Yeah, so the wind energy industry is still very much the wild west when it comes to that type of stuff. So it’s really comes to what is the end user or the customer driving the manufacturer to do. So a lot of it comes down to that. The other thing is if the manufacturer just wants to take it upon themselves to build a better system. Which we’ve seen in the past, but it typically, for whatever reason, doesn’t seem to stick. A customer will have, a manufacturer will have a problem with a bomb mine. So they’ll spend a bunch of money. We go in, we set up a full bomb mine inspection program for them, train inspectors get experience up, mentor them. And then once the problem goes away, they seem to think, oh yeah, we beat that. The process is now fixed. We have no more problems. And then five years later, we go through the whole thing again. But yeah we’ve built systems for a few of the blade manufacturers and yeah, typically you’re not going to go out and hire certified NDT technicians. You’ll get some, a group like my, like CIC or you’ll hire a single level three. And they’ll come in and build a system. And typically it’ll just grab people from the floor and toss them in a room and say, you’re our NET group now. And that’s something on the aviation side, oil gas side that doesn’t happen. And that’s, that makes you have to deal with a very large learning curve, right? So these guys the upside is if you’re pulling them off a production line, they know the part. And that’s. Coming from the naval aviation side, that was something that we were supposed to do too. It’s before I could even become an NDT technician in the Navy, I did five years working on aircraft as a, Hydraulics and structural mechanics. So I knew the parts. I knew the aircraft which just makes you a better inspector. Wow. Allen Hall: All right. This is a little mind blowing here because it’s really complicated. I think that’s one of the things about NDT that I always complain about is don’t know how difficult it is and management doesn’t tend to know doing an A scan is difficult. I. Did that in aerospace and was around a lot of people who were experts in it, and they could read things on that scope that I just didn’t see. And they, you’re right, they also have to know what they’re looking at first. You just can’t get a scan, a trace, and go, Oh yeah, there’s a defect here. That is not the case at all. That’s fascinating. So are we starting to see more sort of automation in the factory? We, Joel and I have been to a couple of conferences. Where they’ve talked about automating some NDT inspections just for throughput, to keep the rate of deliveries up. Is that where we’re going to go in the factory, or is it still really going to be a manual process because of the difficulties with it? Jeremy Heinks: That’s where we need to go. There’s been a few manufacturers that have tossed a ton of money at this problem. The problem being that they threw the money at an automation company that did not know NDT. So they came at it with a manufacturing automation set of mind, mindset. And it, every time I’ve seen it it failed pretty spectacularly with, they come up with a solution, but it was just, wasn’t practical. And you end up with a million and a half dollar piece of equipment sitting on a shelf or in a corner of your factory, just getting, collecting dust or being scavenged off of. Tip, this is where it’s going. We’ve got other industries that have this already done. It’s you’re not, you shouldn’t be reinventing the wheel. You should just grab the wheel off a different car and put it on yours basically. And yes, it has to get tweaked to wind cause wind’s a little bit different than everything. But but it needs to be driven by an NDT company that. That is either partnered with an automation group that knows NDT or has automation capabilities in house. I Joel Saxum: mean, that’s one thing drawing on your background, Jeremy, because you’ve seen I know the first time I talked to you about NDT specifically, we were just standing around and you were like, yeah, it could be this type or that type or this type or that type or this type or that type or this type. I was like, oh man, like I knew there was some, but I didn’t know there was that many. And to be to go even further than that, I know you guys are partnering with some other companies to build kit that makes sense for wind. Jeremy Heinks: Yeah. We’re going all in right now with working with Cobots. So we’ve partnered with a company called Omni NDE out of Tucson. They’re actually going to be moving in with us at our new lab facility in Ogden, Utah. And that’s where we’re going to be pushing for putting most of these methods on end of a Cobot. Cobots are easy to work with. They’re not like industrial robots. You don’t need a PhD to program them and make sure they don’t crash into your part and ruin, whatever technology you have on the end of it, plus your part. So that’s where we’re going. Other industries do this already. It’s not too innovative. It’s just, bringing it to, to wind. That’s, like I mentioned earlier, half of our work is in aerospace space DOD stuff. So we try and bring some of that more advanced methodology over to wind and try to bring wind up to speed with everybody else. Joel Saxum: So that being said, what are some of the problems that you guys are solving in the wind space right now? Jeremy Heinks: Right now, it’s just trying to standardize inspection. We’re starting to see the re resurgence of some defect types that, especially when we bomb mine. Bond line shouldn’t be an issue. Bond line inspection has been perfected since, like I said, the mid to late 2000s. There are very robust bond line inspection systems out there. And I know most of the manufacturers have had this in house for a long time. Whether it got kept up with or maybe it fell behind a little bit with technology. But, that’s something we’re seeing. Another one we’re pushing is root inspection. Whether it’s a design issue or manufacturing process issue, the size of these blades and the margins are running them off of, if our design is just pushing that whole area of the blade to the extreme. And we’re seeing a lot of failures. Some of them, on the newer blade types are like within the first year. Others are hitting that five to seven year mark and failing and root inspection will, even with a basic ultrasonic inspection on a root, you will find the, the precursors or the, the signs of premature failure in that area. And and then we can usually monitor it. There’s a few ways we can monitor it. Or, there’s a few groups out there working hard on on repairs that, that might be a solution as well. Allen Hall: So if we work ourselves from the root of the blade to the tip of the blade, can we walk through what are the NDT techniques and the blade bolt, the inserts, what should it be looking for there? What kind of tools should they be bringing to site if you need someone to do this Jeremy Heinks: properly? Root section for, the basic would be a low frequency ultrasound. Whether that’s a single element or an array that’s your bare minimum. We typically like to do it from the tool side. So the external of the blade, but because of the manufacturer of the cells and other things, accessibility is always an issue. So then we have to go to the inside and inside of the blade typically isn’t as smooth, or you’ve got some cosmetic repairs in that area. that have a lot of air and other things that would attenuate ultrasound. So we have all sorts of problems there. There’s some groups that are, that will log x ray equipment up and that will find yeah, it’s heavy, it’s cumbersome, and the safety stuff up there It’s a, it’s very it’s not an easy thing to do, but they’re doing it and you’ll be able to see whether you’re inserts or bolts or stuff are starting to come free. We’re actually working on a higher power CT which if anybody’s ever used x ray on composites, it typically doesn’t see what you normally could see with other methods. But if you tried, if we can do a CT, we can get some of that resolution and sensitivity in the inspection. So we’re working on that. And there’s a couple other ones that could work as well. And, that’s all it works because the Brit inspection has become such a large issue right now. It’ll be interesting to see what comes out over the next couple of years in regards to written inspection working way out. Another one is, yeah, transverse cracks, wrinkles. When we get into the thicker parts of the main laminate or the spark cap. And typically again, we’re still using ultrasound. There’s some work with microwave and I’m actually going to be working with a group on that and get some equipment out to try and, quantify or certify that inspection. Laser sclerography is another one which we didn’t really mention earlier, but it’s very good at detecting wrinkles because it’s a strain inspection. You’re going to have weak areas from wrinkles and things like that cracks and whatnot. So yeah, we worked through that. And then, we amid the main web bond lines looking for the adhesive bonding to the flanges of the web and the skin of the the blade shell. Some other things we hit there are are what they like to call kissing bonds or something being not chemically bonded. It’s physically bonded, but chem not chemically bonded. And that could be from. Having a chemicals that don’t match properly or you have contamination on the surface when you put, apply the adhesive. And that’s, that one there is really difficult because, composites are one of the most difficult, if not the most difficult material to NDT standpoint. When you’re doing ultrasound and you see a kissing bot or something like that, a lot of times all you’re seeing is a phase shift. You don’t get to see a dropout or anything else. You still have amplitude at the interface. It’s just a, a 180 out. And if you don’t have things set up properly or you’re not looking for it, you’ll miss it. And that’s, those are typical problems we have with those type of defect detection. And then from there, we typically go out to the leading and trailing edge. A big problem there is geometry, right? And again, a lot of times you have overlaminations on the trailing edge as well as leading edge. And when they do an overlamination, they don’t typically get all the air out when they’re putting the layers on. And, again any kind of air or contamination can really make any kind of ultrasound or other method difficult to complete because it blocks signal and energy. Yeah. And then blade tip areas, whether it’s transport damage or lightning strikes, which you guys know a bit about. Yup. Allen Hall: Yeah. A lot of that, Jeremy Heinks: When we get a lightning strike, yeah, you’ll see if the system worked or if it didn’t work, you’ll see where it hit. But a lot of times there’s damage underneath the surface that just isn’t visible and they don’t find it until they’re, how many layers in on a repair and your 10 inch repair turns into six feet, or, that might be pushing a little bit, but. Those are the types of things that we can find with NDT methods. That way the end user knows what they’re getting into with a repair. Allen Hall: That’s a really good use case. I think for lightning, because we see so much lightning damage over the past summer, a lot of times it just looks like a pinhole, what the operator describes as a pinhole. And then they start grinding away and realize this is now a 100, 000 repair and I’ve spent 40, 000 getting to the point of realizing that I have a 100, 000 repair. Why didn’t I bring an NDT? T person out here, just to scan it, just to get a sense of what the scale is here, and whether I need to shut the turbine off, or what the process is. Why, is it just a lack of knowledge to know how to do that, or what’s preventing that from happening? Jeremy Heinks: There’s a few things. One is cost. Again, one is time. It does seem to add time, even though in the end it usually saves time. And then it can save cost in the end. It’s just having the vision to see, farther down the line. Or just the knowledge that we can actually do those type of things on things like that where we might be able to say, okay, maybe you don’t do a repair. Maybe you just do a tip replacement. That’s a thing, it might be cheaper. There’s a lot of companies that do that. Just having an idea of what you’re getting yourself into can definitely make things better. Joel Saxum: I was talking to someone the other day, they showed us a damage and we dealt with some repair companies looking at it and stuff. It was a lightning damage, of course. And when you start to see blade like it’s peeled, like the, say the trailing edge opens up or something at that grander scale starts to split up the blade, in the industry we call it banana peeling the blade. What happens there too though is that you, what you may not see and you, what’s something that is critical to that repair is you need to check that bond line of the shear web. How far, cause it’s possible that it delaminated up way further than you think. And a simple tap test at that, because all of those laminates and composites are loaded in there and stuff like a simple tap test won’t always work to make sure that you’ve, guaranteed the structural integrity of that blade once the repair is done. And that’s where something that you guys could definitely help with. Jeremy Heinks: Absolutely. Absolutely. It goes back to tap tests being done properly. And then if the material is extremely thick, if you’re looking at 35 to 60 millimeters of laminate to try and tap through or core or any of these things. It’s tough and then to hammer it hard enough to get every, a signal change. You could cause damage. I’ve watched tap test guys to actually damage the blade while they’re doing the tests in a plant. And you’re like, Oh, we’ll be repairing that. Allen Hall: So what are some of the obstacles offshore versus onshore for NDT? Blades are much bigger, of course. Is that at, and it’s, you’re doing it on ropes. Is that just a huge challenge? Jeremy Heinks: It is. It’s a giant challenge. NDT from ropes has been a thing for a while, but it’s, and it, NDT and wind has always been an access issue. What can I, what technology can I bring to the blade where it’s at and in the conditions of that it’s in? When you go offshore, you just multiply that by a thousand, right? Now you have to get out there on a boat or whatever and then get your equipment from whatever vessel you were on onto the platform and then get the equipment up to the top and then get out on the blade and have. You, the equipment, everything’s secure by rope and and then you’re hanging there and you’ve got all these things going on. You have to run the unit, place the transducer or whatever method you’re using in the right position. Find the right position. Just finding the right spot on a blade that, where they think they have, damage. Is difficult because, a lot of your normal stuff that we take for granted when it lays on the ground, you just can’t do, right? So yeah, Joel Saxum: you can’t grab a tape and Jeremy Heinks: Exactly. So those are the challenges, access, location and then locating defects and then being able to just perform the inspection. And it’s just so much harder in that. And Allen Hall: CIC NDT has technicians with the capability to go offshore. They have all the qualifications to be there. There’s very few companies that can even do that work, right? Jeremy Heinks: Like I said, there’s a, there’s very few. And a lot of them are coming over from oil and gas because they’ve worked up offshore platforms for rigs and stuff. But those guys typically don’t have composites knowledge. So they have a massive learning curve when they get to the the blade. We’ve had guys that are, we’ve always had guys that are rope access qualified and all that things. But up until recently, we really haven’t had to, recertify and get everybody put together and back out there. Joel Saxum: So most of your, what would you say most of your. Customer base is in wind. Is it operators? Is it the OEMs? Are you getting called by insurance companies to look at stuff as a subject matter expert? What does that look like for you guys? Jeremy Heinks: It’s in the last couple years it’s really diversified. It used to be just the OEMs. Like we would go in they’d figure out they have a problem. They’d bring us into wherever the world that their, R& D facility was or the manufacturing problem occurred. It started from, and we’d work with their engineering groups for a few months, figure everything out. And then, if they wanted to, then we would then execute an inspection project with them. Now that wind is much more mature globally especially in the U. S. The wind farms are getting older, they get sold off. We’re at the, repower them. All these different things are going on. As well as, blade failures and so we’re starting to get a lot more end user stuff. And we have started working with groups that do, insurance claims and litigation as well. A little bit of everything. We tend to I really enjoy working with the end users now. It’s it’s a little bit, it’s pretty gratifying, but we work with everybody. It’s always good to stop a problem before it becomes an issue. So we’d like to Joel Saxum: be as far upstream as possible as well. Yeah. We don’t want, we want like less blade liberations in the market. And you guys are the ones that call to help that. Allen Hall: And if you go to CIC NDT’s website, one of the first things is consulting. And I think this is always the first move. Don’t bring somebody in to go look at a particular part of a blade without talking to someone like Jeremy, because he knows more likely what you need. It can get you to the solution faster. And that’s your website, by the way is fantastic. It’s extremely helpful as to what the technologies are, what the applications are, Who to talk to, and that’s, one of the things I always advise operators. Talk to an expert, someone who really knows. Don’t just hire an ISP to go out and do this thing. You want to talk to someone like Jeremy who is the expert. And Jeremy, how do people connect with you? You should get, as Joel has pointed out, you’re in aerospace, you’ve done space stuff, you’ve done boats, you’ve done all kinds of NDT work. How do they connect to you to get your expert advice on Jeremy Heinks: Yeah, the easiest thing is go to the website and there’s a couple ways to contact us there. Otherwise we’re on LinkedIn. Most of my team members are on LinkedIn and the company has a LinkedIn page as well. So those are the easiest way to get to all of us. If we don’t have the answers, we typically know people that do. We’re now well networked. We’ve been, a lot of my guys have been in the wind industry. That’s early 2000s, so we have a lot of expertise. We know a lot of people. Yeah, if we can’t answer your questions, we definitely know somebody that can. And the way we get past these these problems if we work together. Allen Hall: Absolutely. So go check out cicndt. com or reach out to Jeremy via LinkedIn and get some advice. Get your blades checked out properly. Jeremy, thank you so much for being on the podcast. We love talking to you. You’re so full of expertise on NDT. It’s really cool. Appreciate your time. Jeremy Heinks: No problem. It’s always good

Wind Power LAB’s blade expert Morten Handberg explains a critical wind industry problem: new turbine blades are failing years too early. These massive blades – now stretching over 100 meters – are experiencing unexpected structural damage due to complex aerodynamic forces. Handberg shares Wind Power LAB’s essential strategies for detecting and preventing these costly blade failures before they shut down your turbines. Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! Register for Wind Energy O&M Australia! https://www.windaustralia.com Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting – https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor – https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: As wind turbines reach unprecedented heights and blade lengths stretch beyond 100 meters, unexpected challenges are emerging from the field. This week we welcome back Morten Handberg. The renowned Blade Whisperer from Wind Power LAB. In this eye-opening discussion, Morten reveals why modern blade designs are showing structural issues earlier than expected and what operators need to watch for to protect their turbines. Stay tuned. Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Morten, welcome back to the show. Morten Handberg: Thanks, Allen. It’s great to be, be back again. Allen Hall: You are one of our most popular guests. You are the Blade Whisperer. And any time I’m at a trade show, people ask, how’s Morten doing? How’s the Blade Whisperer doing? Like, well, Morten’s great. Morten’s super busy, but Morten is great. And they want to have you back on. So here we are. We’re back on again. And. The topic of today’s discussion is about aerodynamic stresses that happen to blades, and we’re seeing more problems with that than some of the quality issues. I think it’s a combination of quality and aerodynamic issues. What is happening in the field right now with aerodynamic loading on some of these new, longer, more flexible blades? Morten Handberg: Well, it’s, it’s something that’s been been happening over time. So if we look 10, 15 years back, then the blades were of course shorter. The and they were a lot stiffer than they were today. They were heavily reinforced and you could say maybe they were. They were under optimized that they had a lot more load capacity and that were then what they needed. And, and in, in process of the, in, in, as the blades have been become longer than the, then that buffer have gone away, so, because the, in order to build a logger blade, you had to reduce the the, the thickness of your laminates to avoid an overly, you know, bulky structure, but something that could harness the wind in a more efficient way So that leads to slender, thinner blades that are a lot softer. And we can see that in the natural frequency that the, that the flap wise and edge wise frequencies, they have kind of gone down. And that’s because the blades become softer. And that also means that the way that the blade behaves with the wind direction means that the gravity loads are still a major, a major component, but Aeroelastic loading, which adds to shear and torsion loads, have become much more prominent loading conditions on the blades that we see today. Allen Hall: That’s interesting. Yeah, obviously the blades are lighter than they ever been for the length. I remember being at DTU a year or so ago and looking at one of the first offshore wind blades that Vestas had made, and it was beautiful. back into DTU’s laboratory being examined. And that blade was so stiff and so overdesigned that it could have lasted, it had, it could last another 20 years. It had been out in service for 20 years. It could have lasted easily another 20, maybe another 30 years because of the way it was designed, how stiff it was, how short it was. It was like a 20 meter blade. It wasn’t that big. But today when we’re talking 60, 80, 100 meters, those blades are just Dynamically different. Is it a combination of just trying to lower the cost of the blade or just the mere fact that the weight is so high? We’re trying to transport it. What’s driving down the margins here in terms of the blade design and making them a lot more flexible? Morten Handberg: Well, it is, it is an effective of well, by increasing the length, you also increases the power that you can harness from the blade. You know, that so, so it is a, it is a desire to create larger turbines and one of the. Easiest ways to do that is simply by making the blade longer because you have to, it, you can do it. It’s, it’s compared to increasing the sweat barrier or optimizing. And in other ways, it is a, it is a low hanging fruit and by lowering the rate of the blades, you can also live with a lighter drive train, less steel in the tower, smaller foundation. So all of these things play in into why that the blade is such a, so much in focus in terms of. Driving down cost overall is by reducing the the weight of the blades. And that comes as a consequence of it being more it, yeah, it has, has less design buffer and it also will have less lifetime compared to the, to the more conservative blades that we’ve seen before. You can say that, you know, some of the two megawatt turbines, I wouldn’t be surprised if you can from a blade perspective that you can, you know elongate the lifetime to 30, 40 years, because they’re, they’re so conservatively designed compared to what we see today. Allen Hall: Okay, so adding a kilogram to a blade has consequences all the way down to the foundation, which makes sense when you say it. Okay, so that just adds cost and complexity to every other component in that wind turbine. So the drive then is to lighten the blades and also lengthen the blades at the same time. Now, when we do that, I, as I talk to operators around the world, they come back and say to me, okay, yeah, sure we’re using longer blades, of course it creates more power, but they’re all being qualified. They’re all being tested, right? So we shouldn’t have anything to worry about what they’re in service. Has the test standards kept up with the rapid design changes that have been made? Not at all. Morten Handberg: As I said before, you know, gravity loads was the predominant load on all the blades. And that was also what did. Testing and certification standards focused on. And that’s still what it’s, what’s being, being done today. There are, you know more being done on hybrid loading, combining stepwise and edgewise, but that’s still gravity based loads. We’re not taking into account aeroelastic loads when, when, when testing and certifying, but that’s all only done in simulation. And then we learn about what have, what’s happening in, in operation. In operation. So. So the testing and certification has not kept up with the with, with the load conditions that are, that, that, that we see on, on the modern blade. Allen Hall: So I have a existing OEM that I like using, and I just want to go to the next generation of wind turbines, which is what is happening today. That design of that new wind turbine may not have the same robustness as the one you are used to using, particularly if you’d let 5, 10 years go by. And so then if you’re thinking about the blade design, you’re trying to evaluate blade design, you really don’t have the data in front of you then. If they haven’t tested that for torsional loading, aero loading effects, you really don’t know what the history of that blade will be. Just because you don’t have the data, right? You Morten Handberg: have no idea what the, what the fatigue lifetime is from these new combined loads and, and we are seeing, you know blades, structural blade damages, blade failures happening on, on wind farms. From a variety of wind turbine types, where there is no, no, no sign of manufacturing defects, there is no lightning strike, there is no sign of transport damage or failed repair. So, you know, it’s very difficult to prove exactly what kind of load it is without having the exact model or having other kinds of other types of data. But, you know, When leaving everything out, then you are starting to think about, is there something, some load condition going on here since we’re seeing these buckling related failures in areas where they, the blade simply shouldn’t shouldn’t have any kind of structural damage. We’re seeing a lot on On on shell sandwich panels where we, where we see deformation the damage and related to deformation defects. And very early on, actually, you know the blades are designed for 25 years, but in a wind farm, we can see, you know, multiple blades with long transverse cracks over the, over the, the, the shell panels, and there’s nothing to suggest any kind of manufacturing issue. otherwise that would have allowed for this defect to develop. And that’s again, one of the, one of the things that I think we need, we need to be mindful of with these new, new turbines. So how prevalent is this issue? What should I be looking for in the field? The need for inspection. We’ve been saying this for many years, also for the older blades, but it’s, Absolutely equally true. So you need to do, at least yearly inspection, maybe in the early years, do it a bit more often, you know, and do both internal and external because whatever you see on the outside, on the outside will likely have started on the inside. So doing an internal inspection is a really really important in order to, to capture the defects in time. And, and we need to look again, what we’re looking for is not, not different from what we did on, on the traditional blade. It, they just develop earlier and faster. So, so looking for, for structural cracks, looking for debonding, that’s typically what you would see. It just develops in the shield laminates. I am less concerned about beam structures in the new blades than I was before. Gravity loads are pretty well understood and the spar caps and, and beam structures, they’re there to handle those kinds of loads. So they’re not really as concerned anymore. If you have manufacturing defects, you know, wrinkles in them, that’s still a problem, of course, but when we’re talking just. Pure, you know, operation, lifetime fatigue, then it’s the shell structures that, that, that we need to have more, more in focus, which is, you know, opposite because earlier, you know, the shell was rarely something we even considered as an important part of the structure. So it was now rarely in focus because we never redesigned the defects. They aren’t like, unless they were made to lightning strike or otherwise, but they have started to, to show the defects early on. And that’s because that’s the weak structure. That’s the weak structure from aerodynamic loads. Allen Hall: Okay, that’s interesting. So we’re seeing more failures early on, probably within the warranty period in a lot of blades, but they’re showing up where they normally wouldn’t show up. So if I’m an operator, I may not even be looking for this because I wouldn’t assume that the, the shells are the weak point necessarily. I would look for more internal structure issues. What I think is The general method of inspection right now is going to get to the structure. So, if you’re looking for changes in core or wrinkles on the outside of these blades in places that you would not normally normally see them, that’s your first alarm bell that maybe this is not a des necessarily a design issue as, as much as an error load issue that wasn’t evaluated during the qualification phase. Exactly. Morten Handberg: I mean, you would do simulations from the OEM, but, but, you know, are they, are they accurate enough compared to the wind loads that we’re seeing out there? And with the buffer gone, then, you know, you might, you might do a simulation for a certain set of certain conditional wind loads, depending on your wind class. But is that actually then equivalent to, to the, to the low conditions we see on site? Is ice loading really considered? You know, ice loading in a gravity, from a gravity sense load, that’s not that big of an issue. They can handle that. But when you change the the inertia of the blades, then you also change the airline, the, the, the share and the torsion load. And again, the shell structures and areas that are, that are. susceptible to that kind of loading, they might see then an overloading that you otherwise wouldn’t have. Allen Hall: I want to ask maybe a controversial question here because I’ve been intrigued about this. When I see a lot of these longer, newer blades being installed offshore and they’re failing, it seems to happen during the construction phase when they’re not in operation. Is that because the Turbines maybe not be pointing in the right direction. The yaw is not engaged and maybe you have two or the three blades on or something that the aero loading is then different than what it would be in operation, which is creating unique conditions that overload the basic design of the blade. Is that the philosophy is what’s happening in offshore right now? Morten Handberg: I mean, any kind of loading that is where the yaw where the yaw is off. So the wind is not coming directly towards the blade. is a, is a problematic situation on any account because the blades are designed for the, for the heaviest load coming, you know, from the front of blade leading edge inward. But having loads coming in, you know, from it on the on the, on the pressure side, suction side shell or the trailing it can create load conditions or can create vibration conditions that cause the blade to go into resonance. which can lead to very rapid failures. I guess that, you know, that they can be your situations that don’t necessarily lead to a blade failure. That’s fine. But again, we’re flying blind if we’re just allowing the turbine to get wind directions from backwind, sidewind, all of that, then we don’t really know when and if, you know, the, the, that we reach a critical situation. So I would always be concerned. And you could also say, well, the blade was yards 15 or 50 degrees off from and, but the blade didn’t break. So obviously the turbine was designed for that. That’s not true. You could have just created an overload situation that meant that you shaved off, you know, a few years or five years of your lifetime. That doesn’t show as an immediate defect, but you, but the blade was still fatigued more than it was supposed to. So you, you lost a lot of lifetime in that event, but it didn’t break. But that’s still an issue. Allen Hall: Oh yeah, it definitely is. So weather forecasting during the construction phase is becoming critical then. Morten Handberg: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s always been an issue, you know, that, you know, when the, when the rotary is locked that, you know, you need to get the turbine installed and commissioned as fast as possible. So it can, it can start to operate as it’s, as it’s supposed to be. But with. Lower design margins problem have have increased in significance. You could say Allen Hall: that would explain some onshore things that I’ve seen also. All right. This, this is fascinating. So we have a problem out in the field. It’s really early still. What are some of the approaches to deal with it? Obviously inspection, probably more frequent inspection, probably during the warranty period, cause it’s going to happen earlier. But what are the, some of the things that Winpower LAB and you are recommending right now? Morten Handberg: So we’re, we’re recommending at least yearly inspection. And there are, you know, there are some turbines, wind farms that are receiving, inspections two times every year. Some even more often depending on what kind of conditions that they’re seeing. All of that makes a lot of sense because until we have some more data on how, on, on how these defects develop and what we’re seeing, then, you know, it, it is important to have, to have a data set because we’re, we’re dealing with a new generation of turbines where we don’t have a lot of historical data to lean on, on, on how defects would develop or, Under what circumstances. So having more frequent inspections is something that we do recommend. And, you know, or previously we would recommend an end of warranty inspection and that would be fine, you know, that, you know, then you’re pretty much good to go, but, but today, you know, it’s, you should, if you’re, if you’re building a new wind farm today, you should do yearly inspections from day one in order to, to, to to avoid critical failures, at least. Allen Hall: Let me ask you this question, and I’ve heard it discussed on certain wind farms, large wind farms, where in windy areas, when the blades are even on the ground. Is there a chance that those blades can get torsional loading that is unnatural or that it wouldn’t like to see and could decrease a lifetime? Morten Handberg: It’s actually an interesting, an interesting topic. I mean, when the blades are being transported, when they’re in storage, they are still introduced to to, to wind to winds, right? So there is still an interaction with the wind. That can create its own set of vibrations. It might not be the same resonance that you would, that you would see on a, on a, on an erected turbine, but it still is a factor. It’s really not well understood how much of an impact it has on the lifetime of the blade the storage conditions and something, you know, early on, it was just not considered. And again, that would, that would have been completely fair because the blades were stiffer. They were more robustly designed but today it might actually matter. But I think right now we can’t really say anything with certainty, but you know, yeah, it is something to look out for. I would definitely say that, but it’s not something I can add a lot of details to, unfortunately, because it’s, it’s something we’re still, you know, trying to figure out what, what it actually means for, for, for the blade. Allen Hall: Well, would that explain why some of the OEMs and some independent inventors are coming up with these sock designs that go over the blade for a significant portion, probably the outer third of the blade, to disrupt the airflow over the blade so it’s not creating lift and maybe not creating torsion in the blade? I’ve seen a lot more of those. Recently is, is that the rationale for those? Morten Handberg: It is, it is definitely a part of the rationale or something we’ve seen also during construction that they were, they were applied and that it’s typically something you would do if you, if you know, as a constructor, that a high wind system is coming in that is without within the limit that can cause edgewise via vibration. Then you can apply one of these socks or nets or however they look. And that will, that will create a disruption of the blade. So it’s not allowed to move as freely as it, as it would, if it had just been on its own. So that is absolutely something, but yeah, it, it, yeah. I mean, they are, of course, if you can prevent the blade failure, it’s absolutely worth it. But you have to be mindful, you know, it’s, it’s something that adds to the cost. It, it’s not, it’s not a, it’s not a trivial thing just to apply a 50 meter Saco over a blade, not at all. And what we’ve seen in, in, in Scandinavia where we have icing conditions is that ice can actually then start to build up on, on, on the net and start, you know, hammering in on the, on the blade. And that can create some structural damages on it, on it, on its own. I would. in general argue that, you know, these damages are lesser than what you would have suffered as if you had seen resonance from edge wise vibrations. The problem is though that then instead of having, you know, a few cases of a really damaged blade, you then see a wide sweep of damages across your entire fleet suddenly because these nets pick up a lot of things and and create some some damages to the blade on their own. So, It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s a solution to a, to a problem that, that we do recognize that we do know no, no, no one knows there. So yeah I, I would probably still apply them if it was, if I was the owner. But I would also, you know, open my eyes to that. Okay, doing this, but I’m also looking into a repair campaign afterwards anyway. That’s just, you know, to be expected, especially if you’re in Scandinavia. And I presume some of the, you know, Canada and some of the Midwestern states, they would have similar conditions. Allen Hall: They do. Does continuous monitoring systems play into this detection at all? Can they pick up some of these aero loading effects, the vibrational effects, in them and detect what they are and give an early warning that maybe you have a problem? Morten Handberg: You can absolutely see if something is going on. So, so I mean, I would generally say any kind of condition monitoring is better than no condition monitoring. Obviously if we want to learn about blade, the blade behavior that we have, that, that, that, that we have within the wind farm, we want to have sophisticated detection of damages early on. And we, if we want to get to a point where we can understand, What kind of wind conditions actually drive lifetime fatigue? Then we need to go for a more sophisticated system that monitors vibration or loads or otherwise. But right now, you know, it’s, it’s. Condition monitoring is not a given, and I think for older turbines, it’s definitely a good value proposition, but it’s really essential for the newer ones because we can, because if you have some kind of damage detection, there’s some, some kind of condition monitoring you can, you can prevent that you suffer from a complete blade failure. Not a perfect system. There can still happen things, but your, but your risk is lower significantly. But I would, if you’re, if you’re, if you’re, if you have a larger set of turbines and you want to go into more how do you say proactive operation maintenance and understand what yeah, what, what kind of things are actually driving the damages that I’m seeing. You need to have a really sophisticated either by vibration sensor or low load sensor that can tell you, well, I got this damage and this was how, but this, this is how the blade behaved before before, before the event or during these kind of wind conditions, my vibration signal is tripling or quadrupling. And, and this is something that is that is driving the, my, my, my lifetime, Allen Hall: fatigue. I want to tap into that Lifetime piece, Morten, if Blades are not properly aligned in pitch, or they have a lot of leading edge erosion where the, the air flow over a significant portion of the blade is not normal, not based on what the engineers had on their computer at the time. Does that change error loading enough where I start to worry as blades age that the error loading is changing and that I may then induce Vibrations or loads later on in life that I maybe wouldn’t have seen in year one or two. And do I need to be monitoring for that also? Morten Handberg: If you have leading edge erosion, then you are creating more turbulence around your blade. So from a logical perspective, I would say, yeah, that is something that is driving load. I would assume, I would assume that if it, what the magnitude is, that’s difficult to predict again without having any kind of load condition monitoring. Then. Where, yeah, we, we, we have no way of quantifying this. So that, and that’s also why it’s so important that we, because that it becomes more of a, a must have instead of a nice to have these kind of monitoring system. And I would say that both for lightning, but also, but especially for condition monitoring, given, given what, what, what, what, what we’re seeing in the industry today. Allen Hall: Wow, there’s a lot happening in blade design at the minute and then out in the field. It sounds like we have to be more vigilant than ever with these new designs. So Morten, this is fascinating because I’ve learned a ton here and I’m trying to absorb it all. So I’m going to watch this episode on YouTube probably several times after we complete it just to, you know, Learn all the things you’re trying to explain to me because I’m an electrical person. A lot of people you get out in the field also are mechanically inclined. They’re not aerodynamically inclined. They’re not blade structures people. If they want to get a deeper understanding of what’s happening and get some insights from you, how do they do that? Morten Handberg: You can reach me at well, I would say Intim, not anytime, but you can reach me at Wind Power LAB and we’re always happy to set up a meeting or or call with people. Owners or insurers who want to learn more about the the blade problems that they’re, they’re facing. And in wind power, we’re all about, you know, knowledge sharing and about raising the bar in the industry so that, you know, we all progressively, you know, learn what it is actually that we have to deal with for the next 25 years. And I think if we can do that. We also, we have a chance that these newer turbines, that they are, we can, we can, we can increase the lifetime compared to what we would likely look into if we don’t. Yeah, as you say, become more vigilant in our approach to operation and maintenance. Allen Hall: So you need to reach out to windpowerlab. com. That’s their website. A lot of great information on that website, windpowerlab. com. And you can reach out to Morten via LinkedIn. He’s available. He’s on there. Just reach out to Morten Handberg. Morten, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I really appreciate you coming back. You are our official Blade Whisperer. Love having you on. Fantastic being here and thank you so much.

We discuss some of LM Wind Power’s blade ideas, including a fiberglass fabric dispenser, flattened blade tips to reduce noise, and a blade window for their two-piece blades. Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! Register for Wind Energy O&M Australia! https://www.windaustralia.com Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting – https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor – https://www.intelstor.com This is Power Up, where groundbreaking wind energy ideas become your clean energy future. Here’s your hosts, Allen Hall and Phil Totaro. Allen Hall: Alright, Phil, some really interesting patents this week from our friends at LM. The first one is something you can relate to. You know, they say that necessity is the mother of invention, and that really the second saying about patents and ideas is probably one of the better places to come up with them is in the restroom. Well, this Definitely happened because this patent involves putting Rolls of fiberglass fabric in a dispenser mechanism, just like an industrial toilet paper dispenser. That’s what this is. So instead of having to carry those heavy rolls of fiberglass and put them onto the blade and basically lumbering them around, what they have is a basically a carriage system that holds multiple rolls and you pull from the roll. And once the roll is empty, it rolls back into a basic containment device to hold the tubes that are left and a new roll. So all this is a really great device and it is pretty simple and I’m sure it saves the people on the floor a tremendous amount of time and energy. Come on, Phil, this one came out of the restroom, right? I Phil Totaro: can’t speak to that, but what I can say is that the amount of manufacturing automation that we use in wind turbine blades is not what it needs to be. So this is a really good step in the right direction. In addition to being innovative and, and creative this is as you said, I mean, it’s a huge time saver not to have to hand roll anything, and it, it allows for better layup when you’re, you know, putting, putting different fabric layers down. So, you know, keep in mind that for the majority of the industry, and this includes all the blades that we still manufacture over in China, of course, The majority of the industry is actually still using a lot of hand layup process and not a whole lot of process automation. So for LM to have recently developed this type of concept and this type of technology, it’s a great application and certainly a necessary one. I’m not quite sure if they developed it in the toilet, but You know, hopefully it’s not in the waste bin either. Allen Hall: Our second idea is from, of course, LM Wind Power, since this is their week. And this patent describes a innovative turbine blade design that significantly Reduces noise, but maintaining aerodynamic performance. Now, the way this blade is designed, and it’s mostly a shape, is the pressure side is broken into three distinct sections. A convex curve near the leading edge, a concave section in the middle, and a straight curve. section near the trailing edge. So it kind of goes flat. So if you’ve seen some more recent blades, they’re kind of cupped, right? And in that cupping, you create this little skipping action of the air at the back end, and it makes this rapidly changing noise that you hear on the ground. So what LM is doing is sort of flattening out the blades at the airflow coming off. Is it nearly as loud? And there’s a couple of little tweaks they’ve done here, but. I have not seen this implemented, but it’s a really good idea. And I wonder if it is derived from some of the computational work that LM does. Phil Totaro: Yeah, and actually what’s interesting about this is that they’ve actually taken something that would have otherwise been incorporated into, you know, noise mitigation devices like serrated trailing edge that you put on the rear obviously the trailing edge of the blade and they’re actually trying to incorporate And some of that into the blade design. Now, not necessarily the trailing edge serrations but if you think about it, when you take a conventional blade and you put the trailing edge attachment on, it’s actually extending out the length of the cord length of the blade. And, and making it’s usually, you know angled surface on top and a flat surface on the bottom. So what LM is doing with this is effectively just lengthening the, the cord length of the blade a little bit and incorporating that flat bottom plate into the trailing edge into the blade design itself so that you don’t necessarily have to rely on so many add ons, which Add complexity, add cost, give you opportunities for, you know, having, you know, transportation related repairs and even on site repairs and things like that. It’s just more stuff to have to fix. So if you’ve got a low noise blade designed with the that type of technology integrated into it with this, you know, this cord length innovation, then I think this is a great idea. Allen Hall: Our third patent is a window device. Now, how many times have you thought to yourself, if I could only reach inside of this blade or cut through it? Get my head in there where I get some eyeballs on a problem. I could probably solve this, but I can’t because there’s no access to do it. Well, LM has fixed that problem. They’ve created these little windows. Now, remember that LM also designs these two piece blades, so there’s a big mechanical joint that happens there and an electrical joint for that matter. And so it’d be nice to be able to look in there and see how things are going. Well, They created this inward mounted panel that uses the blade’s internal pressure to keep the little window sealed rather than fighting against it and trying to, you know, mechanically hold it down. It uses the pressure differential to help keep it in place and They have a couple of interesting things just like velcro and some elastic bands that kind of hold this thing together So it’s relatively simple. So if it broke you could replace it or fix it in the field This is cool. Now. I have not seen this one Phil and I would with the two piece blades We just came across a two piece blade a couple of months ago out in the streets of Oklahoma and didn’t see a window So I’ve been shocked to see it, but this is still a good idea And I’m really shocked that LM hasn’t implemented it on blades, particularly like at Sun Zia, where there’s a lot of these two piece blades going in, where you’d probably want to look inside of a blade without having to, you know, put a little rover at the, at the hub end and push it up in. Doesn’t this make sense? Phil Totaro: This one is, is a bit more dubious for me only because I understand where they’re going with the innovation and wanting to have, you know interior access to towards the, the, you know, narrow tip part of the, the, the blade where you obviously typically can’t can’t get anybody in there, including potentially a, a crawler that would go, you know, inside the length of the blade in the first place. So. You know, that said, it creates that scenario where, okay, you’re, you’re making, potentially making repairs more accessible and all that. And that’s great. The problem is, is that anytime you cut a window into something, you’re weakening the structure necessarily, and you’re having to put a lot of reinforcement in there. Now, as you mentioned, that if you’re going to use this, a two piece blade is probably where it makes the most sense to use it. Because you’re already having a joint where you’re putting anything together. You know, we want a structure that is strong and continuous because that, that is lowest cost of manufacture, lowest cost of maintenance and least likelihood of any kind of physical damage. Anytime you put a joint into anything, you’re introducing another failure mode and another You know, area of potential weakness. So I like where they’re going with it conceptually in terms of being able to repair, but anytime you can avoid putting a joint in anything or putting a window into anything, probably the better.

This week we discuss Wyoming’s plan to bury blades in sealed coal mines, a Chinese patent that seems linked to subsea attacks, and a ruling that threw out the possibility of train-transported liquified natural gas in the US. Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! Register for Wind Energy O&M Australia! https://www.windaustralia.com Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting – https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor – https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Wyoming gets creative with turbine blade recycling while concerns mount over submarine cable security in European waters. Plus, a federal ruling on LNG transport poses new challenges for East Coast energy plants. This is the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. You’re listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, brought to you by BuildTurbines. com. Learn, train, and be a part of the clean energy revolution. Visit BuildTurbines. com today. Now, here’s your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes. Allen Hall: This is your last chance, everybody, if you’re planning on attending Wind Energy O&M Australia, which will be February 11th and 12th in Melbourne. You better get your tickets and do it fast, because you need to go to WindAustralia. com. Now, Phil, you want to give us an update of who all is going to be at that conference? Phil Totaro: We have currently more than 100 attendees representing more than 50 different companies, and we’ve got more than 40 speakers, um, who are, or panelists who are going to be talking about a diverse array of topics, including, uh, things like lightning, Uh, damage and detection and prevention, uh, damage prevention, um, uh, insurance, uh, implications of, uh, operations maintenance in Australia, um, uh, leading edge erosion. Remote inspection technologies, uh, condition monitoring systems, uh, as well as some advice and, and some interesting dialogue that’s kind of emerging around, um, the operators and how do you really, uh, get a grip on your O& M budget and in particular, how do you handle the fact that you’ve got, uh, uh, Windturbine OEM that you may have signed a long term agreement with that may or may not be living up to their obligations. So we’re going to have a fantastic event. Um, a lot of people, there’s going to be at least like nine or 10 different operators, owners or operators there. Um, and plenty of other people to talk to. So, uh, tickets are limited, uh, by the way, and we are running out. So register today. Uh, if you want us, um, meet up in, uh, in Australia in a few more days. Allen Hall: PES Wind, Europe’s leading wind energy publication, has joined forces with the Uptime Wind Energy podcast to create the industry’s largest combined audience. That’s a big announcement, right? With PES Winds millions of quarterly readers and uptimes 700, 000 plus YouTube and audio platform subscribers Advertisers now have unprecedented access to the decision makers across the entire wind energy sector from site managers to CEOs Your message will reach the right people through print digital and audio platforms all under one partnership So if you want to get your message out quickly to the world, particularly the wind energy world, reach out to us. You can just contact me, Allen Hall on LinkedIn, or Stefann Perrigot on LinkedIn, and we’ll get you hooked up. Unlock your wind farm’s best performance at Wind Energy O& M Australia, February 11th to 12th in sunny Melbourne. Join industry leaders as they share practical solutions for maintenance, OEM relations, and Discover strategies to cut costs, keep your assets running smoothly, and drive long term success in today’s competitive market. Register today and explore sponsorships at www. windaustralia. com. Allen Hall: Well, before the Biden administration left office, they approved decommissioned wind turbine power. Blades as fill material in coal mine reclamation. Uh, that approval came after nearly a four year review within the state’s proposal. So the state of Wyoming had a proposal to do this, but it needed to get, uh, reviewed by the federal government. That. The Wyoming proposal had already passed in the Wyoming legislature in about 2020. So it’s been sitting in quite a while for the feds to make a decision. So they made a decision before they left office. This solution, uh, addresses both mine reclamation needs and obviously the challenge with what to do with all the wind turbine blades. So it kind of goes like this, uh, you can fill the hole essentially where the Coal mine was, I think there’s a maximum limit as to the height that you can fill there, but it has to be all above groundwater, right? So you can’t put wind turbine blades in someplace where it’d be in the groundwater. And you have to note it, mark it. There’s a bunch of paperwork things that happen there, but there’s a lot of blades can fill a mine, Joel, because those mines in Wyoming are huge. Joel Saxum: I think this is a good use of, uh, of Uh, of that facility simply because there’s a lot of rules in place EPA environmental protection wise for these reclaimed coal mines because they don’t want anything that’s in that mine or as a part of that mining operation to leach out, leak out, move out, either way. So putting wind turbine blades in as a part of this process, like what we know about turbine blades is they’re, you know, mainly inert. There’s not a whole lot of things that can leach into the ground anyways. But there, if there was, they’re being basically put into a base in a bowl. That’s there where nothing can get out of it anyways. So I think it’s a good use. We have a lot of wind turbine blades. We know we’re working on all kinds of cool projects within the industry to recycle these blades, but capacity is limited, right? We know that we can’t run 200, 000 tons of blades, you know, in a year through all the capacity that we have out there to chip them up and use them. So. If we got to put them somewhere, why not put them in, into these, uh, reclaimed coal mines? I think it’s a great use. Um, I mean, Phil, have you ever been around a coal mine? Have you ever seen these things? So Phil Totaro: yeah, I, I haven’t been, um, uh, directly involved in, in coal mining, uh, or extraction, but, um, I, back in 2018, I first had a conversation with somebody about this kind of a proposal to, uh, store disused blades in coal mines. And I think a lot of people have the incorrect impression that we’re just going to like toss these things into some kind of, you know, tunnel or something, um, and, and bury over them, uh, and just forget about them and, and leave them there indefinitely. And the reality is when what we’re talking about with coal mines is we have more open cast mines than, than anything else. And so we can use these open cast mines just as temporary storage for the blades, um, until we do develop that Um, physical capacity to do the blade shredding, uh, where we repurpose it for, for things like concrete or other materials. Um, and we’re starting to get some chemical processes developed now where you can actually chemically decompose some of the polymers in, um, these, you know, legacy fiberglass blades where they weren’t developed with, uh, uh, recyclable resin, uh, material. And we’re, we’re gonna have, you know, within the next five years or so, we’re going to have the ability to chemically decompose a lot more blades than what we have the ability to do today. So, um, using mines as temporary storage for disused blades, not a bad idea. I, I like this one. Allen Hall: Yeah. Seamus Gamesa just had an announcement about that, Phil, where they are using some sort of process to pull fiber out of old blades and reuse it. I don’t know if you saw that, but it was probably a week or so ago that I saw the first news of it, and I think you’re right, I don’t think it had anything to do with recyclable resin. I think they were using existing resin systems and breaking them down. Which is interesting, right? And I think that’s a cool technology. So a lot of things happening right now. Joel Saxum: I think at the end of the day, the most important thing here is that we know we want to dispose of blades in a proper way, but we have to do it economically. And all of these new processes are great, but do they make sense economically and financially? This one of putting blades in the, in the coal mines does. I don’t know if. Heating liquids and chemical processes and stuff for each blade does make sense right now. Allen Hall: Yeah, the Siemens Gomezza process is a pyrolysis process. So you’re heating the blade up to remove the resin. Joel Saxum: Energy intensive, slow. Phil Totaro: And that’s the thing, Joel, is at least we’ve got the ability to have some place for storage of the blades until that chemical process can be made cheap enough where we can, we can do it. So I don’t, You know, I don’t see that being a problem either way. You know, once, once we’ve got enough cost, um, enough, uh, economies of scale with the chemical decomposition process, um, then, you know, we, we know where the blades are, we, we stuck them over there in this open cast mine. So, you know, it’s, I think it’s, uh, an easy enough conversation to have. Joel Saxum: As busy wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial. And let’s face it, difficult. That’s why the Uptime Podcast recommends P. E. S. Wind magazine. P. E. S. 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, P. E. S. Wind has the high quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit PESwind. com today. Allen Hall: A federal appeals court has struck down a Trump era rule from the previous Trump administration that would have allowed the transport of liquefied natural gas by rail. The U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with environmental groups in 14 states. States who challenged the rule, citing insufficient safety evaluations. Uh, the court’s decision comes as the regulation was under temporary suspension by the Biden administration until June of this year. So Joel, I think this is a huge problem. on the east coast in certain parts of the United States. Uh, recently in the northeast has pretty much stopped pipeline development for natural gas. And the way I assumed that was going to be, if there’s not gonna be pipelines, they’re gonna have to do it either by ships or by Trains, trains being the easier of them, I would assume, uh, or trucks, I guess. So if trains is off the table now, isn’t it harder to get liquefied natural gas into some of these northeastern locations combined with the fact that they’re trying to electrify? How are they going to do Joel Saxum: it? You, we as a, as a nation, we can’t keep shooting ourselves in the foot with all, all the regulations and rules around this stuff. Like you’ve got to pick and move, right? You can’t. You can’t say we want to electrify, but we’re not going to build offshore wind, or we’re going to put all kinds of hurdles in place of offshore wind, and we’re not, we can’t have onshore wind here, because we don’t have the space for it. Okay, so you’ve, you’ve shot wind in the foot. Um, you don’t want to drill, uh, so you, you don’t have geothermal, you can’t do that either. Um, and now you’re saying we don’t want pipelines because we don’t want, you know, to, to put pipelines through here. It’s, it’s difficult or whatever you, you think it’s an, it could be an ecological disaster. Okay. No pipelines. All right. Well, what about power lines? Okay. We can maybe put some HVDC, but now that gets a bunch of opposition from the local people as well, of being putting these big overhead lines in. So now you don’t want power lines. Okay. We got to put something in here to try to electrify our society is what the goal is. Well, the next step is, um, let’s put an LNG fired power plant. Okay, if you want to run an LNG fired power plant, you need a steady supply of a lot of liquefied natural gas. The way to get that is either a pipeline, which you’ve canceled, uh, or a train, which you’re saying you can’t do, so you’re left to trucks or shipping it and having a port facility offloading it there and then having a, I don’t know, a short pipeline to, to whatever the facility may be. But if you’re, if you’re going to move this all by trucks, think about all the diesel you’re putting into these pickups. So you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re counterintuitively doing this to yourself. If you’re not going to do the cleaner energy, you’re going to put roadblocks in front of that. You can’t put roadblocks in front of everything. Otherwise we’re going to end up with brownouts and blackouts and no power. Allen Hall: Right. Because a lot of the old cold fire generation plants were along the shorelines, right? And that’s why a lot of these offshore wind sites were feeding the electrification, the substations that were connected to old coal. Coal fired factories and coal fired generation plants, right? So all that infrastructure on the power grid is still there so that we’re trying to feed that with offshore wind. You remove offshore wind, you really can’t put LNG in there because it becomes difficult. Like you mentioned, you got to have a bunch of ships coming in and out of there and The gentrification of those areas, by the way, uh, makes it really hard to put a gas fire plant in those old coal fire plant locations. It becomes impossible. The logic of this doesn’t make any sense. Like there’s no planning about how they’re going to power the East Coast right now. Joel Saxum: Add to this the, the, every, everything that’s being used for LNG for large ocean going ships. Most of that LNG capacity is leaving the United States out of the Gulf Coast, right? It’s, a lot of it’s coming out of Texas, the port facilities down here. Those large LNG ships, to triage for market, they’re not, if they’re going all the way around Florida and da da da, they’re not going to go up to the East Coast. They’re shooting over to Europe where it’s three times the price. Because it doesn’t make sense to go up and around and sell back at the same price you got it for onshore in Texas. Phil Totaro: Well, guys, let’s also keep in mind who we’re actually dealing with here. So, we’re certainly in the wind industry familiar with people called NIMBYs, the Not In My Backyards. But there’s another acronym that is typically applicable for these type of people. Which is bananas. And that is build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone or anything. And that is, I think, entirely accurate to what these people are talking about. I mean, you can’t have modernization or electrification without doing something. So we have to do the thing that is going to be the least impactful, and actually offshore wind would end up being the least impactful, because as we’re talking about, first of all, you’re putting the power generation out on, you know, offshore, you know, upwards of potentially 30 miles offshore, um, and all you’re doing is running cables back to the existing electrical infrastructure that we already have, and we might have to modernize it a little bit, upgrade it a little bit, to be able to handle the, the new power capacity that we got, but um, That’s a lot more environmentally friendly and cost effective than any other solution that you’ve got. So the fact that we’re we’re being blocked on both the extreme right and the extreme left from doing something that Is a reasonable and sensible solution. I don’t know where where that leaves us. Joel Saxum: Phil, I think you touched on something well there and it was the fact that you’re looking to we’re looking to bolster What’s for the future? Right? The idea, even if you’re like, we’re going to put LNG into these places, if you’re going to truck LNG, how are you scaling for the future of what it, of what, what’s happening? Because the way our society works, it’s like when, um, this is something I’ve always said about drone technology. You can get on board with it. Or fight against it. But like, if you, unless you get on the train, you’re going to get run over by the train, that’s what’s going to happen within 10, 15 years. We’ll be going to be delivering pizzas and stuff by drones. If you haven’t received one already or packaged, like it’s going to happen. So you can either get on board with it or get out of the way. And that’s, what’s going to end up happening is you’re going to have these fight, fight, fight, fight, fights. And we’re in this stuck middle ground of, we have to do something. We’re trying to modernize for the future, spend money efficiently. Um, at the, at the state level, federal level, uh, at an, uh, you know, an operating grid level. We’re trying to, trying to do things as efficiently as possible, but if you keep putting roadblocks to every dang thing we try, what are we going to do? We’re not, we’re not setting ourselves up for success in the future. Allen Hall: Yeah, imagine New York City deciding to put a gas fired electrification facility in anywhere around New York City. There would just be huge protests about it, right? I think I’m reading the room correctly there. But, Vernova plans on creating or building about 20 gigawatts worth of gas turbines. a year starting in 2027. So there’s a big demand for it, but it’s not going to go to the East Coast. It’s going to go in places in the Midwest, which can handle it. Phil Totaro: Which is also G. E. Vernova, it’s G. E. Vernova hedging their bets, though, that You know, they’re either going to build it out through natural gas, uh, which the current administration wants to do, or it’s going to get built out through renewables, in which point, in which case you’re going to need both power generation, which they have with wind, and, uh, electrification and, and, uh, transmission lines, and which is another business unit they’ve got. So they’ve got all their bases covered. Allen Hall: Dealing with damaged blades? Don’t let slower pairs keep your turbines down. Blade platforms get you back up and running fast. Blade Platform’s truck mounted platforms reach up to 100 meters, allowing for a quick setup, improved safety, and efficient repairs. Book soon to secure your spot and experience a difference in blade access, speed, and efficiency. Visit BladePlatforms. com and get started today. If you’ve been following the news recently, you’ve seen a number of articles talking about the Chinese university that filed a patent about three or four years ago for a device to cut underwater cables. Now, that seems a little bit ironic that there was a patent for that device when, just a couple of weeks ago, there were a couple of cables damaged by a dragging anchor up by Finland and Germany, and this has set the Internet afire in certain countries. Parts of it, because the, the way that that played out with, uh, Yiping 3 damaging those cables was, oh, it’s just an innocent accident. It just happened. And then you start looking around a little bit. Oh, there is some invention related to this. I wonder what the anchor looks like off the Yiping 3. I haven’t seen a picture of it, Joel, and I wonder why I haven’t seen a picture of it. Because you’d think someone’s going to pull that up or go take a look at it to see if it is designed to cut cables. Joel Saxum: Yeah, you’re not going to see a picture of that one. I can almost guarantee you that. When we’re looking at this patent here, and you Lishui University, The Chinese government has a history of weaponizing university knowledge, right? Of using it for military power. What I see this is like, oh, this is a thing we’re going to use in case someone illegally puts a cable here, so we have this now. But what it looks like to me is a Push or a play for some military superiority because at the end of the day nobody’s laying illegal cables in water And if they do you can you can see the vessel that’s doing it and you can track them And if they did and you really wanted to get rid of this thing you’d send down like you would send on an ROV A work class ROV with a cable cutter, like they make those. There’s thousands of those out in the world and you would go down there. You’d look at it with a video and you’d be like, you know what, that’s the cable. This is the one that’s illegal. It doesn’t look like anything we know should be here, cut and then remove it. Like that’s what you would do. Um, this indiscriminate way of, we’re going to just drag an anchor through here. What have you hit other things? What, like. It doesn’t track. These things, this, this doesn’t, this doesn’t play well, uh, at least in my mind, um, for what it’s being Allen Hall: touted as. Well, it just seems like a stupid move. And you think the Chinese government’s a little smarter than that, and they tend to be pretty overbearing about releases like this, something that could look bad. It was just shocking that it took someone on the internet a couple of minutes to pull this out, and then, you Correlated to what’s been happening all around the world because it’s not just up in northern Europe It’s been happening off the coast of Taiwan too and other places. So Cutting a cable is a huge problem as NATO has mentioned like they are really looking into it and how to prevent it and how To manage it, but it’s a really simple device. You got to give the inventor credit It’s not particularly complicated to to get an anchor that kind of bores under the the top layer of sediment and then get down on those cables and pull them and yank them and eventually cut them. In fact, one of the discussions in the patent was you know what it works because you can take a look at the anchor after you’ve drugged this cable and snapped it that there be some residue of copper on it from the cable. Like, well, yeah, you would, right? But that that just indicates that the what the intent is here. You would know it’s cut because there’s no communication, right? Nothing’s going through it, right? Would you have to check for copper on the anchor? I don’t think so. The whole thing is just preposterous. Which is the frustrating bit. And why, why is that E ping 3, which I think is returned back to its original destination, Why is it, why did that happen? Where is the European Union and NATO stepping in to go, Hey guys, this ship is no longer yours. It’s ours. Joel Saxum: Yeah. What is the bo I mean, I guess I would have to ask, I’m not a, I’m not going to ever claim to be a, um, maritime political law expert, but what is the, what’s the body that would control that, right? Because in my mind, if you, if it’s just someone, it has, there has to be a sanctioning body. I don’t know who it is. We’ll just grab control of that ship. I would, I, you could see that es I think why it didn’t happen is you could see it escalating at a national level pretty high, pretty fast. Like if the, if, if, if the UN went and grabbed this thing, you would see, I think, the Chinese military, Chinese government going, Hey, that’s our ship, don’t touch it. Well, and then all of a sudden you’re like, it’s almost like an admission of guilt. Like, um, okay, well then tell us what happened here because something’s not aloof, right? It’s, it’s odd to me and almost a little bit angering that we haven’t heard anything about this Allen Hall: since. You want to get angered about it? You really want to get angry about it? Read the discussion about the inspection that was conducted on the ship by sort of NATO personnel. It was cursory. Okay. Yes, absolutely. Like, oh, let’s take a look around and see what we see, which the Chinese government officials, it sounded like, were on board to make sure nothing was divulged. However, do you really need to do that at this Joel Saxum: point? I don’t think so. You don’t need to get on that vessel. You can see what it did and how. You can watch the tracks. And if you, and if the AIS system was turned off. We’ve got satellite tracking of all these things anyways, like it’s not a big deal. And I want to iterate this to people that may not know, if you’ve never been on one of these big vessels, the power that these things have. is crazy to be able to drag and cut and move things. Like I’ve, I’ve had seismic spreads. I’ve been on crews. We had seismic spreads of cables out over a course of 10, 12 miles and just had like in the Gulf and just had shrimp boats catch a cable and them shrimp boats will pull a whole cable spread that’s miles wide for 10 or 12 miles before they realize they have it. And the whole spread, you’re millions of dollars of equipment gone. And it’s just destroyed. So, and that’s just a shrimp trawler, right? So a big boat like this, like there’s no, there’s no problem. It’s not like, Oh, can we pull this cable? Can we cut it? It’s just finding as long as that anchor comes across that cable on the bottom, it’s cut, that’s it. They have the power to do it. Allen Hall: How do you stop it? If we, if we’re unable, and I say we, I mean the greater we in terms of NATO, if a vessel comes through and starts dragging this anchor and cutting cables and you have no way of punishing the ship at all or the crew or the country that was engaged in it or let it happen or oversaw the activity, then why would it stop? What’s going to make that stop? There is no rationale to stop, just keep going. And I think that’s just what happened recently. It feels like, and I’m sure my European brethren will disagree with this. It feels like China got away with it and Russia has been getting away with it and nobody’s stopping it. And I don’t see that happening in a Trump administration. I think there’s going to be an escalation really quick about it. That you can’t start cutting cables anymore. We’re not going to let it happen. And Joel Saxum: the Taiwan one is the one that scares me because we’ve had a soft spot for Taiwan as a country. And if they start messing with them, if more cables are getting cut over there. There’s going to be a couple of plane flights first, and then there’s going to be something else if it doesn’t change. Lightning is an act of God, but lightning damage is not. Actually, it’s very predictable and very preventable. Strike Tape is a lightning protection system upgrade for wind turbines made by WeatherGuard. It dramatically improves the effectiveness of the factory LPS, so you can stop worrying about lightning damage. Visit WeatherGuardWind. com to learn more, read a case study, and schedule a call today. Allen Hall: You may have seen that there was another Trump inauguration recently and I’m following my friends on LinkedIn particularly over in Europe and there’s a lot of freak out going on and I want to just have everybody take a deep breath just breathe in breathe out inhale It’s going to be okay. Uh, because I think a lot of the things we’ve seen, even in the first 24 hours of a Trump administration would be unsettling if I’m from Europe and I’m trying to avoid reading too much news about it, but in the American system, there’s only so much power that a president has. Much of the power lies with the states. So there’s things that the federal government can do, particularly to offshore wind, and that is in process at the minute. But onshore wind, really nothing. And there’s actually part of offshore wind where the feds can’t touch, which is within three miles of shore, which is what’s going to happen in Louisiana. So there’s, I think, a deeper thought process needed when we start thinking about the Trump administration and what they’re going to be able to do and what they are not able to do. And we just need to calm down on the freak out. I’m with you. I’m pushing back on policy and those sort of things, which we’ll gladly promote on the podcast. The world is not ending. It’s just not ending. And I’ve just seen too many people being really frantic about it. It’s going to be okay, everybody. Yeah. If you, I mean, Joel Saxum: if you read into the, some of the things that were happening, executive order on offshore wind, the language in them speaks. pause until we can review what’s going on. It doesn’t say all stop, no more projects, this, that, the other thing. And I mean, Phil, correct me if I’m wrong. Did you, did you read into that? Phil Totaro: Yeah, I, I read the, I read the order, but concerningly, it also says that The Secretary of the Interior and Attorney General can go back and review any of the lease auctions that have already been held and potentially rescind the results of the lease, which is why I think, frankly, the, the Europeans might be entitled to a little bit of a freak out because if I’ve sunk hundreds of millions of dollars into this lease and now this new administration is going to tell me my lease is illegal, where’s my money back? Plus interest, and I’m getting the hell out of Dodge and never doing business with the United States again. Allen Hall: There is a court system in the United States, there’s no way you’re gonna pull those leases back without huge payments to the, the companies and the organizations that purchased those. That would not happen in my lifetime. And if you think about it, if they try to do it, uh, it’d be in court for four years, then it’d be over. I just don’t think it’s gonna happen. I would be interested Joel Saxum: to see how many of How many lawsuits have been filed since Monday? against the federal government. There’s, Phil Totaro: yeah, there’s going to be lawsuits no matter what. Allen Hall: Right. And states would sue, right? It’s not, and not just the individual corporations. It would be the states that would be suing. So it’d be tied up in court. And I just don’t see it. Uh, you can’t wipe away someone’s private property at that point or that ability to have a lease based on what? America moves slowly, right? That’s one thing we know. Having watched a couple of administrations, it’s that things move really, really slowly. Uh, there’s certain areas in which they can move quickly, but anything that has to do with bills that have passed Congress, legislation, the IRA bill, for example, was one I see a lot on LinkedIn. People are worried about that one. To undo that would be Joel Saxum: dang near impossible. I think at the end of the day, it’s Alan, you and I’ve talked about this many times, but it’s, if you were to squash the wind industry, the solar industry, renewables, whatever it may be, There’s just way too many jobs and too much financial economy stuff tied up in that to squish it. Phil Totaro: I mean, not for nothing, but the wind turbine technician is still one of the top three growing jobs in the United States. And for somebody to come out who is responsible for creating, you know, Wealth, security, prosperity in this country and basically say that the people who have their boots on the ground are doing a job that is basically totally worthless. That’s, that’s effectively what you’re saying when you’re blocking, you know, projects from being developed on federal lands, you’re blocking offshore wind leases from, from happening in favor of declaring an emergency over electricity, which we don’t even have, or energy, which we don’t even actually have, uh, and drill, baby, drill. I mean, that is just irresponsible. Allen Hall: But again, Phil, the federal government doesn’t drill. Corporations, people drill. And there’s a marketplace there. And they get the permission to Phil Totaro: do it Allen Hall: from the government. Sure, but they’re not going to drill, as Joel well knows, they’re not going to drill when the price is low. And the price is pretty low right now. And they’re not going to be able to start drilling in the U. S. unless the price comes up quite a bit, which it’s not going to do. So, you can say a lot of things, it just doesn’t make it happen. Phil Totaro: Look, as, as I’ve already predicted, and I will reiterate, this problem is going to solve itself in about six months when we end up having a scenario where corporations want interest rates down, and in order to drive interest rates down, they start massive layoffs, which is gonna, you know, more to necessarily drop interest rates. And then that’s actually, even though a lot of people are going to be unemployed, that’s going to foster an environment in which more people are willing to invest in renewables because we have such a competitive cost profile when interest rates are low. But that’s the only time we can take advantage of it. So, you know, not for nothing, if. If anybody wants to do anything, you know, we could, there’s a way to lower interest rates without laying off tons of people. And so, let’s get on top of that as, as a way to actually foster investment. Allen Hall: That’s what I think too, Phil. The interest rates are killing the industry. Killing it. Many industries, not just wind or solar, it’s killing a lot of them. For sure. Joel Saxum: So, so think of, this is a, this is a thing if you, if you’ve ever been a part of anything in the oil and gas industry that, A lot of executives follow. A lot of people follow as just, it’s the pulse. This is the pulse of the industry. This is where how many you can follow job, outlooks and all these different things. But there’s one number that you can follow every day that will show you the pulse of the oil and gas industry in North America. And it’s the rig count. And you can, and you can Google rig count, go Baker Hughes. A bunch of other people have been following this forever. The horizontal drilling rig count and the rig count today. It’s down 40 rigs from last year on this same day. And that has to do with pricing. Allen Hall: That’s right. Yeah. There’s not going to be more rigs out there drilling because the price isn’t right. Yeah. And that’s the reality, right? A lot of things would be said in Washington, D. C. or a lot of different parts of the United States. The reality is on the ground, they’re not going to be producing more oil and not going to be producing more natural gas instead of place to offload it, which as Joel has pointed out in this episode, it’s going to be Europe. Right. Right. Most likely. Joel Saxum: This week for the Wind Farm of the Week, we’re gonna, we’re gonna tip our hat to a different place. Uh, and this is in honor of the snowstorms coming across Texas all the way to Florida. The eight inches of snow on the beaches in Pensacola and all of the kids that had snow days. We’re gonna look at a Wind Farm of the Week from Hawaii because that sounds like a better place to be right now. Uh, this is AES’s wind farm in Hawaii called Napua Makani. It’s eight Vestas V136 machines. Uh, there was Commissioned in 2020 in the town of Kahuku on Oahu’s North Shore. So it’s on the opposite side of the island of Honolulu. Uh, there’s great wind resource out there. If you look around the islands of Hawaii, you’ll see kind of dotted wind farms all around the outskirts of almost every island there. Um, What AES has done here is really good. There’s a great website devoted to the information around this wind farm asking, answering a lot of questions, uh, that locals may have about it. Um, but they’ve given two and a half million dollar payments of a one time contribution to the community. Right as the commercial operations began, um, they’re giving money to the schools up there. Um, 80, 000 in an annual contribution to the hometown opportunities. Uh, they’ve got jobs into the island, um, done a lot of great things. So there’s eight wind turbines. It’s the V 136 from Vestas, 24 megawatts, uh, regularly generated there, 20 years of a PPA. Uh, and this power 16, 000 homes, which there’s not a lot of homes in Hawaii. So, uh, wind is powering quite a few of them. So our wind farm of the week this week is the Napua Makani wind farm from AES over in Hawaii. Allen Hall: That’s going to do it for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. Thanks for listening, and please give us a five star rating on your podcast platform and subscribe in the show notes to Uptime Tech News, our sub stack newsletter. And we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

In this News Flash, Ørsted pays $1.7B for delays and increased costs at their Sunrise Wind project, Aviva Investors invests €40 million in CIC, and Vibra acquires Comer Energia. Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! Register for Wind Energy O&M Australia! https://www.windaustralia.com Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting – https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor – https://www.intelstor.com Welcome to Uptime News Flash. Industry news, lightning fast. Your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, and Phil Totaro, discuss the latest deals, mergers, and alliances that will shape the future of wind power. News Flash is brought to you by IntelStor. For market intelligence that generates revenue, visit www.intelstor.com. Allen Hall: Well, starting off the week, Orsted has announced a significant setback, posting a 1. 7 billion dollar impairment charge for the fourth quarter of 2024 due to delays and increased costs at a Sunrise Wind Project near New York. The 924 megawatt project, located about 30 miles east of Montauk, around Long Island, faces construction challenges, particularly with monopile foundations. Despite these difficulties, Orsted’s CEO, Mad Snipper, reaffirmed the company’s commitment to the U. S. market, though project completion has been pushed towards the second half of 2027, Phil. This is a big deal for Orsted. Orsted has been really profitable and a strong company for a long time, but these American projects are a real drag on their bottom line. Phil Totaro: Absolutely. And I think they’re, they’re keen to get through all these things as quickly as they possibly can and, and also get to a point where they can, you know, have the project mature enough, either in construction or operation, where they can actually get an investor in. Which is what their original plan was with a lot of the utility companies in you know, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey and New York, I suppose with some of the proposed projects. And, and a lot of those utilities decided, you know what, not for us, taking too long, costing too much, and just not our cup of tea. So the quicker they can get this sunrise project done and move on to potentially others because they still have revolution that they’re trying to build as well. So Joel Saxum: you Phil Totaro: know, the quicker the better. Joel Saxum: Frustrating thing here, I think on this project from someone who’s been watching these in my seat for a long time and knowing what the soil characteristics are out there. These things, these studies have been going on since 2016, 2017 on what the soil conditions are that these monopiles are gonna be driven into. This should not be a problem they’re running into now. Now we know that there’s been a, it’s a weird. It’s like this quick, sandy, odd soil. We know that, but we’ve known it for like eight years. So, they should have come up with a solution for this beforehand. This shouldn’t be an impairment that they’re taking right now. But, they are, and it’s reality. So, they’ll have to push through it Allen Hall: to get this thing built in 2027. UK based Aviva Investors has made a 40 million euro investment in CIC, a German renewable energy developer focusing on northern and central Europe. Now, CIC specializes in onshore wind and solar projects, particularly in Poland and Sweden, and currently manages about one gigawatt’s worth of projects in various development stages. Now, Phil, I know Northern Europe is making a big push at the minute to get invested into renewables altogether to get away from some of the natural gas problems that they have. This is another move by a strong player. Phil Totaro: Well, and it’s a move by another UK investor into continental Europe. So this is follows on from, you know, moves by Brookfield that’s, you know, acquired some UK and, and European based companies and assets. Octopus has made similar moves. Aviva being another, you know, UK investment management company is You know, they already own a small portfolio of, of projects and assets in the UK and Northern Ireland, and this is giving them the opportunity to branch out into continental Europe where, you know, as you said, the, the demand is really driving some of the growth. And the good news, I guess, in Germany is that there’s been a significant amount of permitting through the end of 2024 that should give them a pretty decent build out pipeline for 2025 and, and beyond. So good timing and good move by Aviva. Joel Saxum: Yeah, Aviva looking into, or helping out CIC here and looking into Poland and Sweden. So Poland is, you know, an emerging market that has seen a lot of movement. Sweden is a market that’s growing fast, right? So one of the, some of the largest wind farms in Northern Europe all being built in Sweden. So there’s, this is a, it’s a play from Aviva. And most of the time when we talk on Newsflash about money going into things, it’s money for a big investment, for a pipeline, for development or something. But when you look at 40 million euros, that’s not for a project. That’s to bolster the team. That’s to get the company healthy and support them in growth. And I’d like to see Allen Hall: that. Down in beautiful Brazil, Brazil’s largest fuel and lubricant distributor, Vibra, has completed a strategic acquisition of Comer Energia, adding 2. 1 gigawatts of solar and wind capacity to its portfolio. The deal positions Vibra as Brazil’s largest multi energy platform and includes eight large scale solar parks, totaling 1. 5 gigawatts. Three wind farms with 280 megawatts of capacity and over 95 distributed solar plants. Phil, Lula in Brazil is a big proponent of renewable energy and is putting some limitations on the petroleum business. It makes sense for Vibra, which has been in the petroleum business for a while, to take Get into renewables also. Phil Totaro: And, and at this point, since they’re not doing a ton of new build on wind and even though they just approved offshore build out down there, that’s still a decade away from actually happening. So the reality is there’s an opportunity for a lot of consolidation in the market, and this is, you know, one of the, the first deals you know, that Utility and an oil and gas, you know, focused company is, is making and I think there’s, there’s more that of that that can happen. Thankfully, because of the high capacity factors down in Brazil, you’ve got assets, which are, you know, Normally profitable more profitable than others because you, even though you might have a low PPA, you also have, you know, a capacity factor that might be like 60 percent or higher which is kind of obnoxious But it’s, you know, just the, the site conditions you’ve got down there. So at the end of the day, I think it’s a, it’s a good move specifically for for Vibra to be able to do that. And in general, it’s. Kind of a wait and see measure for how the market’s going to evolve. You know, I guess it, it’s behooves a company like Vuber to have a pipeline and a portfolio of projects to be able to build out or repower, I suppose then, then just sit there waiting on the sidelines. Joel Saxum: This is an interesting acquisition for me personally, and anybody that likes business to see someone that’s coming from a space that tru Traditionally competes with each other. Traditionally, you don’t see the, you know, lubricants fuels type company grabbing renewables and then joining up together. And when you see businesses do this, they can do it right or they can do it wrong. So they do it right. They unlock all kinds of great synergies. They, they can mix cult, the, the company cultures together and create products. A very, very profitable organization. They can do it incorrectly and have inter fighting in competing because you have different, different thoughts and viewpoints and how the energy economy should look. So I will watch this one personally, just because I like to see what’s going to happen internally in these companies and rooting for them for it to go well. Because I think there’s a lot of synergy that can be unlocked here.

Søren Kellenberger, sales director at CNC Onsite, joins the Uptime Spotlight to discuss their uptower yaw ring repair method. He describes the root causes of yaw ring failure, makes projections for the future, and introduces CNC Onsite’s patented yaw ring repair solution. Their portable precision machine can be lifted uptower to replace a damaged yaw ring, potentially saving operators significant downtime and repair costs. Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! Register for Wind Energy O&M Australia! https://www.windaustralia.com Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting – https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor – https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: When wind turbine yaw gears fail, operators face a costly choice. Hire a crane for a complete replacement or attempt a risky repair. This week we speak with Søren Kellenberger, sales director and partner at CNC Onsite. CNC Onsite brings precision machining up tower. Making yaw gear repairs faster and more reliable without using an expensive frame. Welcome to Uptime Spotlight. Shining light on wind energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering Tomorrow. Allen Hall: Søren, welcome to the show. Thank you very much, Allen. And thank you for inviting me. Well, we want to understand first, what is causing yaw gear to break? teeth to be damaged in some of these turbines, because the photos I have seen are remarkable. The teeth are just gone. How does that happen? Søren Kellenberger: I think there can be a number or there can be a number of reasons. And it, it depends a little bit, I think, on the turbine, how the yaw ring was designed and stuff like that. But if you look at some of the older turbines the yaw ring. Wasn’t hardened. So there, in many cases, you’ll just see wear and tear from years of of use, operation. And typically in a, in a wind farm, you have a dominating wind direction, right? So, Especially in Denmark, it’s mainly blowing from the west. So all our wind turbines are pointing that direction most of the time, which means that they are yawing within a limited area of of the yaw ring. So a limited area is taking the majority of, of the wear cycles. So, so therefore they, you, you see some, some local wear and tear and, and finally they will be worn down razor sharp basically and, and break off eventually. So, so that can be, be just one cause of, of the, of the failure. We also see sometimes that even though they are hardened, they, of course, they don’t wear that much, but they will more break off and probably. Due to some extreme loading and I guess that can be caused by either some, some misaligned yaw gear it can be extreme loads. You have some sites where you have Really wind directions changing very fast that is causing unforeseen loads on the turbine. So you have actual extreme loads that are, that are higher than the design loads. You could probably also sometimes see foreign objects that are, are falling into the, to the ying and being squeezed between the ying and your gear, causing some, some damages. So. There are a number of, of different reasons for, for these damages, I guess. Joel Saxum: Do you see anything environmental? Like in my mind, I think of these Arctic turbines, right? The ones that are operating in this, in the extreme cold. When, when metal gets cold, it gets brittle. Do you see more, more yaw teeth get damaged in those territories as others, or is it just kind of across the board the same? Søren Kellenberger: No. We haven’t seen that, that these cold condition turbines are affected more than than others, but we do see that the weather conditions play a significant role. And. If you have maybe your ring damages on two to 5 percent of, of, of your turbine fleet, then they will not be evenly distributed across your different parks. It tend to be that if you have an effective park due to some special weather conditions in that area, you seem to have a lot of problems in that one park, and you can have other parks that will run perfectly fine for, for your the entire lifetime without any issues on, on the yaw ring. Well, at least these inspections aren’t super difficult. Yeah, it’s pretty obvious when they are missing. Allen Hall: What’s the effect when they’re missing teeth like that? Is it, is, is the turbine just not able to yaw anymore or is it, it really, it risks some structural overloading when that happens? Søren Kellenberger: Yeah. I mean, in in the beginning, I guess you, you won’t be able to, to yaw. So at least you, you, it would be less accurate if you have. where it will start being less accurate. And that will of course cause some loss production. Potentially if, if you are misaligned on your, your system, you’re also introducing unwanted loads to your, to your turbine. So I guess it could have also other consequences when you are other than. Just lost production when, when you have a yaw misalignment. But yeah, in, in the end you won’t be able to to yaw the turbine if you have too many damaged teeth. Allen Hall: So is the turbine sent out an alarm when that happens? Is it just a, a complete shutdown? The turbine just says no more. I can’t move and I’m stopped or it doesn’t recognize that this is even a failure. To be Søren Kellenberger: honest, Alan, I’m not 100 percent sure. And I think it depends also on, on on the turbine how, how, how new or old they are and how advanced their control systems and condition monitoring systems are. Some of them, they just have on off on the, on the yaw gears. And, and they won’t recognize that, that one yaw gear is just spinning in free air but you can have others that have more advanced control systems where, where you can see that some of the yaw gears are suddenly using a lot more power to to yaw the turbine, which will indicate you have some kind of yaw issue. If it’s a bad yaw. A broken yaw gear or if it’s some teeth missing in that area where that yaw gear is placed you, you can’t probably tell, but, but there are different warning systems possibilities, but again, depending on how old or how advanced your, your turbine is. Allen Hall: Wow. So this is really serious. It’s just beyond just the tooth missing. The consequences for the chairman can be quite dramatic. Now, CNC on site, obviously, is all about doing machining. How do you go about fixing this problem? Søren Kellenberger: Basically, we have a a smaller CNC controlled, three axis CNC controlled machine that we bring up tower and these machines are adapted to the different different requirements. Turbine types. As you can imagine, the turbines were not designed for these kinds of repairs. So the design engineers originally didn’t leave much space for for a machine in those areas. But so, so we, we customize the machines to fit the different turbine platforms and, and. Basically we use the internal crane of of the turbine to hoist the, the machine components to, to the turbine. Use the internal crane to, to position it at the yar ring. And then we mount the machine on, on the Yar ring itself. Which also gives us the advantage that even if the turbine is moving a little bit due to, to wind we are moving along with it. So it doesn’t influence our our accuracy when, when machining. Allen Hall: That’s quite impressive. Cause the alternative is, and what I’ve seen is you lift the whole, you take the blade set off and then you lift the whole in the cell off and then you go in, you try to replace the yaw gear, which is super expensive. Søren Kellenberger: That is, that is very, very expensive. Allen Hall: Yeah. So you’re really talking about taking up some precise machining equipment up tower. Doesn’t really matter if the wind’s blowing or not. You’re, you’re fine. You’re all inside. And you’re going in and machining what remains of those teeth. I mean, I, I want to have a sort of a dentist equivalent of this. So it’s like you have a broken tooth and, and the dentist comes in and goes, okay, we’re going to grind that tooth off and we’re going to smooth out. And we’re going to put a replacement. On top of it, like a crown, right? It’s basically a crown. So that process takes how long to do once you kind of uptower in your starting the machining process. Søren Kellenberger: If we if we use like the, the Vestas V90, three megawatt platform as a sort of baseline then it takes we have, we have our, our teeth segments, our crowns. If you, if you want in in segments of of six teeth and it takes roughly one day to once we are open and ready to, to replace six teeth. So for a replacement, you need to consider one day of hoisting and getting in place and then. One day for, for each segment you need to, to install and then one day to, to pack up and clean and get back down. So so we, we get quite a fair bit done in a week. Joel Saxum: Yeah, that’s, that’s impressive. So, so there’s a couple of activities here that have to be done, right? Of course, you’re getting up there, you mount the CNC equipment. That’s one big part of it. But then you’re, you’re, you’re milling up tower. So you have to deal with, you guys have a, you have a system to deal with all the filings and tailings and catching all that stuff. And then, and then once you put the new teeth or the new teeth get in place, is, are they welded in place or how are you, how are you attaching that? Søren Kellenberger: No we bolt them in place. So that because we have a CNC machine, we, we, we can do a very accurate milling process up there. So, so. So basically we, we, as you say, we, we remove the, the remains of, of the old teeth and, and we machine like a pocket in, in the yaw ring. And that one is milled within a couple of hundreds of millimeters in tolerance. And then we have the benefit because we know the design of the yaw ring. So we. We bring prefabricated segments that have the exact same shape as, as the original yaw ring. And, and they are of course manufactured in a, in a machine workshop. So, so they have very good tolerances as well. And then we basically create a press fit. So we either slightly pre bent the segment to, to install it or we, we freeze it. We have some small freezers we can bring up tower as well and cool the segment down to minus 80 degrees, which gives us just enough space to, to easily fit it. And then as it heats up, it’s a, it’s a press fit. And then we keep it in place with bolts as well. Allen Hall: Wow. I didn’t realize it was a press fit. That’s insane. That’s better than the manufacturer delivered on site when the turbine was new. Yeah, it could be. The other way I’ve seen this repaired, if you watch LinkedIn enough and Joel and I are constant viewers of crazy LinkedIn wind turbine repair videos and Instagram, there’s a lot of this in Facebook too, when they have broken teeth, you see guys up there with welders and they’re up in there and they’re adding filler, trying to rebuild it, trying to reshape it. Then you see them grinding on this gear. What are the problems with doing that approach? Søren Kellenberger: We do actually also work with some welding companies, but because you can have some situation where welding is your only opportunity, but, but we can, we can get back to that. But, but the, the challenges with welding is of course you have a big, massive, steel ring so it absorbs the heat quite fast. So controlling the the heat and the temperature in, in your welding process is is difficult. The space is just as limited for, for welding and they need to fit a person in there. So so you also have the disadvantage of, of having like hot works and confined space, which is, is not so nice. And then finally being able to grind those Teeth into the original shape is also relatively challenging. You don’t have much space when you are in there and you would want to try and get that contact surface quite straight to distribute your, the load from, from your York year when you start operating again, and, and I think that probably the most challenging part where we have the benefit of, of machining, bringing a pre machined segment that has that exact shape. I think that is probably one of the, the biggest benefits to, to, to our process. And, and because it’s such a manual process of, of grinding, it can be difficult to get that shape. And, and that can be, Can give you some extra loads on a, on a welded tooth which can lead to damages again faster than, than what we see on, Joel Saxum: on segments. There’s, I mean, there’s one thing for rebuilding teeth on like an excavator by welding, welding up a bunch of metal and, but, but, but teeth that need to be used in a, you know, basically a ring and pinion set or a ge you know, a a tooth gear thing. It’s gotta be exact. It has to be, because if not, you’re just gonna be back up there in a year or two. Doing the same process because it’s just not going to last. It’s temporary. Does the, there’s Allen Hall: a yaw motor gear and all the machinery that’s there and the mechanism there, does that need to be updated too? Because it’s been working against these, these gears that have been not the right shape for a long time, that in order to get this really fixed, you need to put the proper. teeth in the R gear, but also on the motor, you need to take a look at it and make sure it’s up to snuff. Yeah, Søren Kellenberger: I think that is a typically also a part of the inspection. They, they do that. They, they check that all the motors and, and gear wheels there are okay. It’s normally not a part of, of our process to do that, that, that would be the turbine owners or the, their own technicians who would check that. Up front or, or right after we, we complete our work. So, but yes I mean, when you are up there fixing it, I, I, I would definitely recommend that you check the remaining system and potentially also try to look for the, for the root cause if you do have. Misaligned your gears or something like that. It could for sure be an advantage to to get them aligned to avoid having the same damage again soon after the repair. So how many of Allen Hall: these teeth replacement are you doing in a year? Because my guess is it’s a good Quite a number from what I’ve seen out in the field, Søren Kellenberger: you can say it’s still a relatively new technology, even though we’ve been doing it for five years. It’s still a conservative industry. You know, they, they want to see new technology introduced and, and see how it operates and works. So it’s not that we do a oaring every. But we we have installed more than a hundred segments since we started and, and we see that it is taking off now the first segments have now been running for more than five years and, and proven them themselves very well. So, so we, we certainly do and also you see that. The turbines, the number of turbines that are reaching that age where you can could expect some, some wear or damages to your, your ring is also increasing significant significantly. So we, we will be seeing more repairs over the coming years for, for sure. Joel Saxum: I think that’s a big part of the conversation here is you know, looking, looking in the European market, like if you look at Spain right now, their fleet is starting to get to that Close to end of life or life extension. What does it look like? Is it repower? Is it refurbished? How do we keep these things running? And Alan and I just had a conversation with a company here in the States that’s doing a lot of repowers just the other day. And I was thinking about that there too, because in the States we have this, you know, PTC driven repower thing where you could put certain amount of value back into the turbine, still qualify for some subsidies. And I was thinking, man, with all these older turbines. What else can be done here? And some of that would be refurbish, refuel, fix these raw yaw gears, fix these kinds of things to make sure that you’re, you’re maintaining that level of performance that you want. Or, I mean, if you’ve been operating like this for a long time, you may be getting back to back to baseline as well. I mean, at a minimum would be nice to get that out of it. So I think that the market for what you guys are doing is going to grow massively. Globally right now, right? We’re seeing, we could see a lot of applications from here for it in the States with our 75, 000 and change turbines we have plus that European market that’s changing. So are you guys starting to get some calls from, you know, how, is it, is it more like damage during regular operation and this is what’s happening or, Hey, we’re at getting close to end of life. Can you help us do an assessment on what this looks like? Are you getting those calls? Both. Yes. Søren Kellenberger: So, so. Most most operators I guess they, they start really looking for this when they see an issue but if they have had turbines or in other wind farms, for instance, or, or even some of them that, that have been damaged earlier in the lifetime, they are more aware of these issues and, and they would also contact us for, for inspections and, and evaluations if, if what can be done and, and to get some, some budgetary quotes and, and stuff like that to see if there’s a return on, on investment within their potential lifetime extension. So, so yes, we, we do get both And, and I mean, we’ve been in, in Japan to, to fix teeth on a, on a turbine. We’ve, we’ve been across multiple countries and in Europe we’ve just sold a machine to New Zealand together with the first 25 segments. They will, they will get together with this machine. So it is picking up around the world. And, and we also have several inquiries from from the U S so, so I would be very surprised if we weren’t doing some turbines in, in the U S next year also on, on the Jolring site. Allen Hall: So can an operator buy the machinery and do this process themselves with your direction, of course? Or is it always required that CMC on site people be there to do the process? Søren Kellenberger: No, it’s a, it’s not a requirement that, that we operate a machine. It, it is a very much a case by case discussion with with our customers, if, if they have The technicians with the right skills and, and they have the volume of turbines to keep them up to, up to speed on, on using these machines. It can make sense that they buy a machine and we train them. Others prefer that, that we come and do an all inclusive service. So it is, it is basically up to, to the customer. And, and we discussed that case by case how, how we make the best project. Allen Hall: What process is used if you’re offshore on these massive 8, 10, 12, now 15 megawatt turbines? Is the process basically the same on those turbines? Søren Kellenberger: It is. Completely the same process only, only difference is is, is the transport there that we have to go by CTV and not not a, not by car. So that, that is basically the only difference if the turbine is onshore, offshore, doesn’t make any difference for, for us. It is still the, the exact same milling process and yeah. installation process. We don’t need any other external equipment. Joel Saxum: How big is one of these kits? Like, if you’re going offshore, if you’re transferring, I know like, on offshore, on the transition piece, there’ll be a little crane sometimes and stuff, but like, how, like, weight and dimensions, what, what does it look like? Søren Kellenberger: That depends on on the turbine. As I mentioned before, though, most of these turbines weren’t designed for this kind of, of repair. So, so we don’t have a one fit fits all machine. And, and the segments are also different because the yaw ring in a 8, 10, 15 megawatt turbine is, is way bigger. Bigger than in a two or three megawatt, of course. But if we take the, the two, three megawatt size turbines, our machine is around 80 kilos. And the segment is weighing eight to 10 kilos. So it’s, it’s, it’s easily transferable. And we always make sure that we can, if the machine is too big or heavy when it’s assembled, we always make sure that each component can be handled by the internal crane and go through the hatch in, in in the nacelle. Because that is very important also. And, and in terms of keeping the cost down that you don’t need any external cranes for, for this operation. But I think our, our heaviest machines for these large offshore turbines is around two, 300 kilograms. So when they are fully assembled. Joel Saxum: So for me, if I’m, if I’m, if I’m an ISP in the States and I’m listening to this podcast, I’m thinking, Ooh, new service line. I need to get ahold of Søren. And so I can, so I can be the, I can be the person that gets called in the States to do this. And Allen Hall: Søren, how do people get ahold of you? How do they reach out to CNC onsite? Søren Kellenberger: Either through our, our website cnconsite.dk where we have all our, our contact details listed or directly to me at my email ssk@cnconsite.dk or call me. Yeah, the, my phone number is also also on, on the website. So, there they are most welcome to to reach out to us. Allen Hall: It’s amazing technology and it needs to be utilized across the world because I’ve run into a number of operators with yaw gear problems and they’re stuck and they didn’t realize you existed. So hopefully this podcast gets to them and we can connect you up and get you busy because there’s a lot of yaw gear repairs that need to happen over the coming repair seasons. So. Søren, thank you so much for being on the program. Joel and I have learned a ton. Thank you very much for having me.

Dan Pickel joins the Uptime Spotlight today to discuss the NFPA’s Wind Turbine Technician I certification program. The program allows technicians to gain standardized recognition for their skills and understanding of safety protocols. With NFPA’s extensive background in fire and electrical safety training, the course covers the topics wind turbine technicians need to know and can be taken online. Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! Register for Wind Energy O&M Australia! https://www.windaustralia.com Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting – https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor – https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: We have a distinguished guest who is at the forefront of developing professional standards in the rapidly growing wind energy sector. Dan Pickel is the Director of Certification and Accreditation at the National Fire Protection Association. Today, Dan will be discussing NFPA’s groundbreaking Wind Turbine Technician I certification program. Which addresses the critical need for qualified technicians in our rapidly expanding wind energy sector. With projections showing a demand for over 500, 000 technicians globally by 2027, this certification program couldn’t come at a more crucial time. Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Welcome to the program. Dan Pickel: Thanks for having me. I’m really appreciative to be here today. Allen Hall: It’s great to have you because there’s so many questions about this new certification and we decided to just go to the expert and find out. So, you know, obviously the wind energy sector is growing at a tremendous rate. And with that comes issues about finding qualified technicians, and the new certification program is trying to address that, correct? Dan Pickel: Yeah, so we, we developed the certification program, and I know we’ll get into the, the meat of it later on, but it was meant to address that issue where there are, there’s a lack of, uh, knowledge and skills for individuals that are entering the, uh, the industry as a wind turbine technician. Joel Saxum: Yeah. You see, you hear that from a lot of service providers, right? Rather it’s blade repair, torque and tensioning construction. We’re at the point in the industry where we’re, we’re, we’re starting to just, I know this is for lack of a better term, but like grabbing warm bodies and training them up as fast as we can and throwing them out there. Well, what, what that ends up doing is it kind of shoots us in the footlong run because you end up with cost of port quality issues, you know, other, other safety issues and things on site, let alone the technical knowledge. Yeah. Uh, that’s needed to advance the, the wind sector here, especially in the United States. Dan Pickel: Yeah, definitely. I think there’s, we’ve spoken to, uh, some of NFPA’s customers in the past and their push is to get people to right trading. They want to make sure that their new employees have all the tools they need to be successful and to be safe out in the field. And they were struggling because there are some other training options out there. Um, they reached out to us about getting 70E training for electrical safety, but they were finding that wasn’t enough. There were still some issues on the field. They were telling us about some really unsafe conditions that were Caused by people just being unskilled and, and not knowledgeable in terms of what they should be doing. So that was when we really started to dig into the idea of developing a certification for entry-level wind turbine technicians, which is what we ended up doing. Allen Hall: So that lack of a. standardized approach or some sort of label that’s applied to technicians, like they’re qualified to be here, that really affects two ends of it. It affects the company that is hiring them, but it also affects a technician that is competent because they kind of get grouped into the larger pool where there’s sort of a mixed bag of, of technician qualifications. Dan Pickel: Yeah. And that’s, that’s where certification. Can really be a game changer for individuals. So if you look at two different candidates for the same job, um, you know, same education, same training, same experience, but one of them certified, I think what that shows is that there is a, um, that person invested in themselves. So they apply for the program. They take the job. You know, took whatever training they needed to, they studied for the exam, then they passed it. And certification exams are meant to be pretty rigorous, so it’s, they’re developed by subject matter experts related to the actual job role. So if you look at those two individuals, they will, who should I, should I hire? Most employers are going to go with the person that invested themselves because that’s a, you know, a predictor of success. Allen Hall: So let’s, let’s break this down a Program is relatively new. I think I first heard about it this summer. And what from the industry drove you? Was it just an industry consensus? Was it, uh, industry resource groups that were saying, Hey, NFPA, you do a lot of certifications. You’re the leading body, particularly United States, for this. We need you to develop something. Or how did this really come about? Dan Pickel: I get emails and calls all the time from people with ideas for certification saying this person or this group of people don’t know what they’re doing. We need a certification. So at that point, we look into the business case. It’s what’s what’s the industry? What’s the role maturity? You know, um, do we have any connection to that industry? As well, because NFPA works with fire life and electrical safety hazards, is this something that makes sense for us? In a lot of cases, it doesn’t. When we’re looking at the wind turbine technician role, uh, there’s a lot of, you know, electrical issues, um, electrical shock issues that we are hearing about. Um, there’s some fall safety, there’s PPE issues, there’s hydraulics and mechanical systems and, and a lot of those align with what NFPA does, its mission. So we looked at that and we thought, this makes sense. Is the role mature enough? And from what we could find, it was. So we talked with subject matter experts about this, and ultimately we invited people to, to join our certification advisor group. Now that’s a group of subject matter experts. They’re primarily based in the US, but, uh, several of them were based abroad. And, you know, we, we met with them to talk about what, what does this thing look like in terms of role? So we had a role delineation to determine what is exactly done by people that perform. And that involves a pretty robust job task analysis and a number of other steps to come to a, uh, you know, formalized exam blueprint, which is the basis for the exam. Allen Hall: Oh, wow. Okay. So who were some of the participants in this? And obviously a lot of the wind turbine, uh, Operators, and obviously the manufacturers, are not based in the U. S., so there must have been a lot of differing inputs into that advisory group. Dan Pickel: Yeah. So we have a, we have a, uh, a program overview that lists all of our, uh, CAG members, or the Certification Advisory Group members. Some came from GE, some came from Vestas. A lot of them had been working in the U. S., but then also worked abroad, and they traveled a bunch, so, and they’d worked at different companies, so they were, you pretty knowledgeable about what the different, uh, you know, manufacturers were doing, what the different installers were doing, and what, what maintenance companies were doing as well. So we, we were really, we benefited from their expertise quite a bit when developing the certification program. Allen Hall: Oh, that’s interesting. And the assessment that is performed to really determine competency, there are, from what I can see from the website, and if you haven’t visited the NFPA website, you should visit it and just put in wind turbine technician and it’ll pop right up to the page. Wonderful site. There’s a lot of good information there. There are really four general areas that the comprehensive assessment is looking into. Uh, mechanical systems, hydraulic systems, electrical systems, and then sort of working at heights in general safety. But when you look at the distribution here, there’s a lot about general safety, which is a little alarming. We should have that locked in already. Dan Pickel: We should, yeah. So the way that it works is, so we, we work with our subject matter experts. We come up with this job task analysis. So it’s, what are all the behavioral things? What are the tasks that someone needs to perform to be competent in a role? Okay. Thank you. So they put this list together and then what we do is we’ve sent it out as a validation survey to anyone that’s in the wind industry that works as a wind turbine technician. And they answered two questions in the survey for each of those tasks is how frequently do you perform the task and how critical is it? Now we use that as a way to understand. How much of the exam should be devoted to specific sections? And when we got the results of the survey, we saw that a lot of individuals were saying, you know, on the, on this final don’t, uh, content domain related to safety at heights and just general safety, this is where we really are spending our time. This is really critical. And that’s what we use to develop the, uh, the certification exemptions blueprint. Allen Hall: That’s fascinating, because you think that the PPE working at heights is just ingrained into every technician, but maybe because the industry is growing so fast, it’s one of those areas that kind of gets lackadaisical as you go along in the industry. Dan Pickel: Certainly could be. I mean, imagine someone is just getting into the industry and they don’t understand how to work at heights. Uh, they don’t understand how to, you know, properly use PPE. That’s, that’s really a critical thing. at that stage, but also it’s something they do frequently and it’s critical for their safety. So that’s where I imagine as they were going through this survey and indicating how critical is this, I would find it pretty critical as well. Joel Saxum: Honestly, though, when you get, even when we’re talking newcomers, but even people that are seasoned vets, one of the times that you get the A frequency, if you start looking at HSE statistics, a frequency of accidents, incidents, um, it happens based on complacency as well. A lot of them happen, a lot of times it happens, to someone who’s been in the industry for 5 10 years and they’ve done this task a thousand times, so they become a little bit, you know, lackadaisical or, in that sense, or, a lot of times it’s on a hitch. When someone’s been out for 28 days and on day 27 or day 28 in the morning, when they’re thinking about going home, that’s when something happens. So even having people brush up on these ideas in the midst of their career to achieve this certification is a good idea. So the people that were, that are being targeted for the certification that we’re looking at, People that work in the field, whether you work for an ISP, um, you’re a service provider of some sort, or you work for an operator and you’re a part of that operating team, or you work for an OEM, it’s basically anybody hands on that will touch a turbine in the field, correct? Dan Pickel: Yeah, that’s correct. Allen Hall: So let’s walk through the mechanical, hydraulic, electrical systems aspects of the assessment. It’s not, it’s not turbine specific. And I think a lot of technicians would get really worried about that. Like, hey, I just work GE turbines. I don’t know anything about Siemens turbines. So if you ask me, I’m not going to be able to answer that. Are these questions in those three sections, are they more generic, like this is how a turbine generally works, on the braking system, and those sort of things? Is it sort of top level understanding of what’s happening inside of a turbine? Dan Pickel: Yeah, it’s really high level, so we’re not looking at schematics for any particular type of manufacturer design. It’s, you know, do you have the high level understanding of hydraulic systems, of, um, of mechanical systems, of electrical systems, and it, it, it isn’t devoted to any particular manufacturer. Allen Hall: Okay. So, in the, sort of, the prep for this, if, if I’m interested in taking this exam and getting certified. What kind of prep work would I need to do before I took the assessment? Dan Pickel: Yeah, so we had initially been in conversations with, uh, GWO and, and part of what we did was we looked at their training, uh, curricula as we were developing the certification exam. So, um, there, right now there isn’t a, devoted training course to this certification and we were talking with some training providers about developing something like that. But I think when you look at G. W. O. ‘s basic safety training and basic technical training, those are going to cover most of what would be in the certification exam. Allen Hall: Uh, okay. So they probably already have taken courses, been schooled up This is not deep but it’s really, knowledge of a particular aspect. It is really just, hey, how does this term work? That, that’s, that’s fascinating because I think a lot of technicians would be interested in that if, if that’s the case. Are there eligibility requirements to take this exam? Yeah, Dan Pickel: there are. And there’s really two pathways here. So one of them is that you took a training course that covers the exam blueprint. And the other is that you’ve been working in the industry for six months. So that could be for an ISP or someone else, but you can verify that you’ve worked there and then you would meet that eligibility criteria and you could sit to take the exam. Allen Hall: So would that be part of an onboarding process? I think a lot of ISPs right now that are bringing in. Um, hundreds of technicians at a time is getting him on site, getting him working for six months, seeing how it all plays out, and then taking this exam to say, all right, let’s just check your competency. We’ll see how everybody’s doing. And from a company standpoint, that would make a lot of sense, right? Dan Pickel: You know, we think so. Um, when we look at certification, those exam blueprints, so what is it that, uh, goes into the role? What are the tasks that need to be performed? What’s the knowledge with the skills? On top of it being sort of the basis for our certification exam, it’s also meant to be the basis for potential instructional design. So it’s, we’re working with subject matter experts to understand what does someone do? What do they do? And that’s meant to be The, you know, a foundation for anyone that’s looking to develop a course that is teaching someone how to do those things. So we have those subject matter experts build that exam blueprint, hoping that it will become the, you know, the, the basis for a, an instructional design for a course that just going to prepare people for this type of a role. So when you look at how this could potentially be used. There are a lot of organizations out there hiring lots of people and the industry is growing a ton. So we want to make sure people are safe and understand the role. This is something that they look at, say, can we align our, our internal training with this certification exam blueprint? I think that’s maybe the first step if they don’t want to bring in an outside trainer. And then you can utilize a certification exam as a way to understand, all right. We went through this with our employees. Now, this is, this is meant to be sort of. A way to separate proficient from non proficient candidates. Let’s, let’s have our employees take this as a way to really set that, that benchmark for our workforce development, uh, internally. Joel Saxum: So the goal here is, is to roll this thing out to the wind industry. Is it just in the United States or is it going to be a global thing? Dan Pickel: So when we were talking with our certification advisory group, like my questions always, you know, how, how localized is this? Is this just an American thing? Um, is this a, you know, uh, you know, North American thing? And the response we got was that a lot of the, the wind turbines that are going up around the world are coming from the same manufacturers. So it was a lot of the same competencies. There’s a lot of the same skills. They, they plug into different grids, but outside of that, The role is largely the same. So people, you know, in Asia could take this certification exam if they speak English and, and they would, you know, it would benchmark them the same way that it would benchmark someone in America that’s working as a wind turbine technician. Joel Saxum: So you guys are actively trying to roll this thing out to operators, ISPs, directly to technicians. I know that was kind of a part of the goal too, is any which way it can get into the industry, but you’re looking for buy in from operators and buy in from the OEMs that this is a standard that they want to adhere to. Dan Pickel: Yeah, think that’s right. Um, I don’t know what’s going to be the most successful way to help this certification grow. And, and, and in that way, I mean, I want the certification to be utilized as a way for individuals to separate themselves, differentiate themselves from their competitors when they’re applying for jobs, but also as a way to, to make sure that they’re safe and they’re going home at the end of the day. Is that, that’s what we want. We want to make sure that we’re going to be able to hit our renewable energy growth goals. We want to make sure everyone is safe and revenue is great. But honestly, we built this because we wanted to make sure that that people are safe and that the companies that we work with. are able to understand what those, you know, what are those competencies that someone needs to have to be safe in that role. Allen Hall: I want to briefly touch on this because NFPA does a lot of certification work. It is not easy to, if you think that as an ISP, you’re going to create this set of standards on your own and, and go through the process that Tan has been through, good luck. Because creating exams and, and evaluations are a rigorous, Well thought out u usually multi-year process so that you’re getting the qualified candidate, your, your desire without having some skewed results. It’s kind of like when you got outta school taking me a g or, or SAT or a CT one of those exams. Those things are rigorous and, but there’s like scientists and evaluations and surveys. And all this work is done behind the scenes, I do think there’s, uh, uh, some emphasis going on right now in terms of the ISPs to try to have some sort of examination, but I’m always concerned, like, are you the right person to do that? NFPA is. Can you explain all the work that goes on behind the scenes, or how you got to this point of being like the certification expert? Dan Pickel: Yeah, it is a rigorous process. And I think people are used to the SATs. The SAT is meant to separate each person from everyone else along a bell curve, right? It’s a norm referenced exam. Just trying to figure out where do you fall along that bell curve. Certification exams are pretty rigorous. Primarily criterion based, which means the criteria is, are you proficient or non proficient? It’s not a bell curve. It looks a little bit like a skewed bell curve, but, uh, the, the important point is figuring out what’s the, what’s, what’s that line of proficiency and that’s where that cut score is. Now there’s, there’s a, a lot of work that goes into that as well. So, you know, we go through that whole job task analysis and the exam blueprint setting through the validation survey, which I mentioned. Then we do all the training with our subject matter experts to write items for the exam. Now, items are another way to say is questions. It’s not easy. And I think everyone thinks, Oh, I’ll just pump some out. Usually it takes someone like an hour to get the first one and it’s terrible. And then it, so it, it’s, it’s a tough process. And a lot of people are like, Oh, I want to, I want to contribute. And then they get in there. Like, I hate this. I can never do this. They’re like, all right. So if, if you’re better at just judging items, I have a spot for you as well. So once those, those questions, once those items have been developed, they are reviewed by NFPA tech services, uh, we review them as well for best practices. And then we have, we take the, the items that align with the blueprint and we go through a process called standard setting. That’s where we have a, a group of subject matter experts. We talk about, all right, what is a minimally qualified candidate? Cause that’s the line. So who would barely pass this exam? Now look at each one of these questions and determine what percentage of that minimally qualified candidate would get this right. Not should, that’s a different question, but what, what percentage would get this right based on your conception. And we go through that with them and then figure out, all right. So on a, you know, for the, the wind turbine certification exam, there’s 60 questions on there. What number of items do people need to get right? And because each exam is maybe more, more difficult or easier, that passing point, that cut score is different. So it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a little bit of a science, a little bit of an art to determine what’s that, that’s that line for the cut score. But at the end of it, we have this, this. Certification exam, which has a cut score, which has been developed by subject matter experts, and it, it separates individuals along that line. So we, we know who’s proficient, we know who’s not proficient, need some more training or more experience before they, they should take it again. Allen Hall: Very difficult task for sure. Oh, let’s just, let’s just bump into the, the cost of taking the, the, the certification process. What, what does that look like? Dan Pickel: To take the exam, there’s just one fee, and it’s 249. Uh, someone would go in through, you need to have an NFPA. org account. So, log in to NFPA. org, you click on a link for the Certification Management System. Then you fill out an application. At the end of it, you would pay the fee. From that point, uh, you would then decide whether you want to take the exam at a, an in person testing site through our Testing Vendor Prometric. And there are hundreds in the U. S. and, you know, more than a thousand globally. Or you can choose to take it as an online remote proctor exam where you need to have a webcam, a stable internet connection, and a relatively clean room. Uh, and then you, you would be able to schedule, um, pretty much at any time. You know, day or night, uh, you know, during the week or weekends, uh, they’re, they’re always running those things. So, uh, it’s, it’s whatever is most convenient for you. Now, what I should say is that there are people that love taking exams in that online remote proctoring environment, and there are people that hate it. And no one knows who they are until they do it. Um, but there’s no in between. You either love it or you hate it. So just want to put that out there. Um, if you’re not sure if you’re going to love it, I’d recommend going to an actual physical testing site. But if you’re far away, and part of the reason we, we implemented the online remote proctored environment is because some people live far away from testing sites. Now they would have to find childcare. They’d have to take the day off. Having that. Ability breaks down some of the traditional barriers to certification. So that’s why we offer it. But again, if you hate online remote projects exams, we have another option for you. Allen Hall: Oh, that’s sweet. Uh, so if I, you know, if I was to take this, I’m sure I would not pass it on the first go through. That was just the way that I take exams. If you don’t, what’s, what is the repeat effort look like to take a exam again? Is it another 249 or is it kind of built into the initial fee? Dan Pickel: So you get the one exam for the 249. I think it’s 199 for a retest. So it’s 50 bucks less. And, uh, and then it’s, you know, you just go back in through the CMS. It will update with your, uh, your failed score and you just click retest and you’re done. schedule to take it again. Allen Hall: All right. So if in every certification process, there’s a recertification effort that has to happen, how, how often would I have to recertify to keep this certification? Dan Pickel: It’s on the same timeline as all of our other certifications. So that’s every three years. So you get certified from the day you get certified, you have three years to recertify. And that’s a process where you have to, at NFPA, um, you have to earn enough points. Now this can be, these points can either be earned by, uh, working in the industry and, and verified that work or, uh, taking continue education courses. Allen Hall: Well, that’s like, okay. So there’s, there’s a real emphasis on continuing education, which there should be in the wind industry because it’s, it’s changing so rapidly. It’s, it’s hard to keep pace sometimes. Dan Pickel: Yeah, it’s absolutely right. I mean, I think we all have, you know, uh, degrees from whatever programs and they’re all, they’re all, you know, valuable, but they’re all sort of, um, that at that point in time, there’s no requirement to continue to, you know, learn anything else. Like I have some diplomas behind me that, uh, like this one says public policy analysis. You shouldn’t hire me to do a job in public policy analysis. I haven’t, I haven’t looked at the stuff in 20 years. Um, but for a certification, you earn it after taking a rigorous exam. And then you have to continue to prove that you’re in the industry. You’re still taking courses. Um, you could, you know, earn points by being part of a board or writing industry articles, or maybe doing podcasts. We don’t have that on there yet, but maybe that’s somewhere to go. Bud. But being involved in the industry is how you maintain that certification. And, uh, and when people see that, they say, all right, well, you know, not only did this person earn a certification, but there’s a requirement that they continue to learn, continue to grow, to, to maintain it. Allen Hall: If anybody wants to learn about the certification process for wind turbine technician, one, uh, certification, where should they go? Dan Pickel: Sure. So best way to find out information outside of listening to this fantastic podcast, um, is to go to nfba. org and you go to there, there’s going to be an option, um, click at the top, you’ll get a dropdown for certification. And then from there, you can choose the wind turbine technician one program and learn specifically what’s involved in that program on that page. There’s a program overview. That document includes the, uh, that exam blueprint. So you’re going to want to take a look at that first before you take the exam. I don’t, I don’t want to surprise anyone what’s on there. Uh, I know we, we touched on those main content domains, but take a look because if you’re missing some pieces from there, there’s a chance that you may not pass. So go through it, understand where there might be a gap in your knowledge, make sure that you’re filling that gap, and then go ahead and take the exam. Allen Hall: Absolutely. And if you’re a service provider or a training school in the U. S., do they reach out to you directly or do they also access via the NFPA website? Dan Pickel: Yeah, they can always, uh, look, they can always go through the certification management platform as well. If it’s a larger organization that’s interested in having, uh, their, you know, workforce go through the process. They can reach out to me and we can figure out a discount to get them all set up with, with vouchers to take the certification exam. Allen Hall: And how do they reach you, Dan? Do they go via email or LinkedIn? You find me Dan Pickel: on LinkedIn. A lot of people do. Um, but, uh, you can also reach out to me through email. It’s the best way to do it. So that’s, uh, dpickel@nfpa.org or DPICKEL, looks like pickle, but I pronounce it the fancy way, um, at NFPA. org. Allen Hall: Wow. This has been really interesting because it’s one of the missing areas in WIND right now is competency exams, and the NFPA is the right organization to go ahead and do this. Dan, thanks for your time and explaining all the intricacies and what goes on behind it, and Yeah, if any, if you’re a technician out there or you’re a training facility or an ISP and you wanted to get involved, reach out to Dan because he’s the right person to talk to. So Dan, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. Dan Pickel: Thanks for having me. This has been great.

This week we cover LM Wind Power’s patent for improved hybrid pultrusion plates for blades, trying to manage lightning. Also GE Vernova’s method for placing a crane assembly on the nacelle. And a double cereal bowl for slow breakfast-eaters. Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! Register for Wind Energy O&M Australia! https://www.windaustralia.com Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting – https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor – https://www.intelstor.com Phil Totaro: This is Power Up, where groundbreaking wind energy ideas become your clean energy future. Here’s your hosts, Allen Hall and Phil Totaro. Allen Hall: Alright, Phil, our first patent of the week comes from our friends at LM Wind Power, and it is for improved hybrid pultrusion plates for wind turbine blades. That’s a mouthful, by the way. But what they mean is that they have these protrusion plates that are the main structural element inside of the blade and LM likes to mix carbon fiber with fiberglass is a lot cheaper. So you can actually make stronger structural spars or spar caps by mixing carbon fiber with fiberglass. All that makes sense. The issue is lightning, actually. And when lightning likes to flow down carbon fiber quite naturally if you don’t do it right, if you don’t mix the fiberglass and the carbon just right and lay them out in certain orientations, you can get carbon sparking the carbon, which can damage the fiberglass, which can damage the protrusion, and your blade falls over. So LM has come up with a really unique way of controlling where the fibers go in a pultrusion. Phil Totaro: Yeah, and this is really fascinating to me because they have been one of the pioneers of developing this hybrid glass and, and carbon blade over the past, you know, decade or more that they’ve been investigating this type of technology. And what they’re specifically doing with this is, as you mentioned, it’s, it’s really about controlling the temperature. The fiber orientation so that you don’t have the arcing issues that you mentioned. But also, you know, when you’re passing the lightning current through anything, whether it’s copper wire, whether it’s carbon or what have you, it heats up and the way it heats up can, you know, with. With this type of an application can specifically weaken or damage or deform the blade. And that’s obviously undesirable. So this is really fascinating how they’ve kind of taken this kind of hybrid material technology to the next level with, all right, well, we figured out how to, you know, orient fibers but we need to tune it. in a way where you can actually conduct lightning that’s not going to, you know, overheat the blade and, and damage things. So this is actually really fascinating and I, I hope that they’re actually using this in or have this in commercial use because this is it’s quite an interesting idea and a really clever approach to You know, be able to address a, a pretty common problem. Allen Hall: Our next patent comes from GE Vernova. It, it’s a way of creating a crane assembly on the the cell by using the hub as a means of transport. So the concept goes like this. I have a winch on the hub. I lower that winch cable down, and I pick up this crane assembly and I’ll hoist it up to the bottom. of the hub, and I mount it to the bottom of the hub. Then I rotate the hub, so now this crane’s on top of the hub. I add some more support pieces into the nacelle, and now I have a crane on top of the nacelle without using another crane to get it there. It’s a pretty slick idea, Phil. Phil Totaro: Yeah, and this is obviously different than some of the other systems that are in use today, which either involve, you know, a crane pick to be able to get the, you know, nacelle mounted crane up the tower But this is entirely as, as described by GE Renova self installing as far as using a, a, a turbine based or ground-based winch system to hoist the, the, you know, hub mounted crane up to you know, hub height. And then as you said, kind of rotated around again. The difference between this being that this is hub mounted versus nacelle mounted. So it does add a little bit of complexity when it comes to balancing out your loads. Having something that’s nacelle mounted is necessarily safer in that you’ve got the tower basically directly underneath you, so you’re not creating this bending moment of inertia with, you know, having something kind of off axis from, from, you know, the tower support. But it’s. Potential for cost savings might actually outweigh some of those structural risks and for certain types of repairs potentially that don’t necessarily involve picking the entire gearbox out and lowering it down you know, for, for maybe smaller component repairs, this is kind of an ideal solution. So I, I really liked this one. Allen Hall: I think it’s already being in use, Phil. Based upon the patent and the description of it, it looks like they’ve sussed this out and have at least tried it on a Turbine, but I haven’t seen it done in the United States, but maybe over in Europe, they’re, they’re using us for some applications. Phil Totaro: Potentially. Yeah. And it’d be, it’d be great to see. And that’s one thing we try to do over at Intel Store is we want to be able to track the commercial use of these ideas that we talk about on the show. And so we’re, we’re constantly scouring for any publicly available information we can get. To to confirm the commercial use of any of these patented technologies. Allen Hall: Our next patent touches an area which we are all have experienced. You get up in the morning, you, you go to the kitchen, you pour yourself a coffee and a bowl of cereal and the. Treachery begins right there because your cereal gets soggy. You’re just not quite awake and it takes you a long time to get going. By the time you get active and just starting to eat the cereal, the cereal is soggy. Well, there has been an invention to deal with that situation. Now, if you can picture sort of two bowls connected to each other with a tube. The lower bowl holds the milk, the upper bowl holds the dry cereal, and the tube connects them together. So the concept goes like this. I only push in some of the dry cereal into the milk just before I’m ready to eat it so my cereal doesn’t get soggy. Now, Phil, this sounds like a contraption that I would tip over and spill milk on myself in the morning, making my breakfast even worse than when I started it. But, evidently this thing must have I did a little bit of search on the internet and there is a thing there that looks like it. So, it’s sort of a crazy idea, but seems to be in practice somewhere. Phil Totaro: I mean, Allen, you can buy almost anything that your heart desires on Alibaba, you know, over in China. But as far as mainstream usage and acceptance of this, I’m I’m not quite sure that it’s gonna meet everybody’s needs. It, it is a, it is a fascinating way to address a challenge, but you know, I, I guess for most people, they can just maybe eat a little faster or, I don’t know, before, before everything gets soggy.

We discuss the rapid rise of skills-based hiring in wind energy, with 81% of employers now prioritizing competency over degrees. Delaware strikes a major $128 million offshore wind agreement. We tackle the idea of “clean” natural gas. And mounting cybersecurity concerns arise as Chinese manufacturers gain control of critical supply chains. Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! Register for Wind Energy O&M Australia! https://www.windaustralia.com Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting – https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor – https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Skills based hiring shakes up wind energy recruitment, while Delaware strikes a 128 million offshore wind deal. Plus, what’s really behind those clean, natural gas claims? This is the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. You’re listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, brought to you by BuildTurbines. com. Learn, train, and be a part of the clean energy revolution. Visit BuildTurbines. com today. Now, here’s your hosts. Alan Hall, Joel Saxom, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes. Hey, Allen Hall: Uptime family. We’ve got something awesome brewing just for you. Want to help make your favorite wind energy podcast even better? Well, here’s your chance. And yes, there’s something special in it for you. We’ve created a quick five minute survey to learn what gets you excited about our show and what topics you’d love us to dive into. The best part, everyone who completes a survey and drops their email Will be entered to win one of our coveted Uptime Podcast mugs and they’re so coveted I don’t have one. It’ll go along with your morning coffee while catching up on the latest wind energy news And your input means everything to us whether you’ve been with us since day one or just discovered us last week We want to hear your thoughts and our Wind energy O& M Australia event is on in a big way. We’re all gonna be down there February 11th and 12th Bill, you want to give us the latest and greatest on sponsors and on the events at the conference? Phil Totaro: Yeah, so we just had two, uh, very big name companies, uh, sign up to sponsor corporate roundtables. One is GE Vernova, and the other one is Winergy. And at this event, we’re going to have topics covering lightning protection and damage, leading into erosion, Condition monitoring technology, uh, noise and nuisance, uh, drive chain refurbishment, insurance, you name it. We’ve got it covered. Uh, so please register today if you haven’t already. Allen Hall: And you can do that at windaustralia. com. So register now. Unlock your wind farm’s best performance at Wind Energy O& M Australia. February 11th to 12th in sunny Melbourne. Join industry leaders as they share practical solutions for maintenance, OEM relations and asset management. Discover strategies to cut costs, keep your assets running smoothly and drive long term success in today’s competitive market. Register today and explore sponsorships at www. windaustralia. com. Allen Hall: Well, the U. S. Department of Labor published a Skills First Hiring Starter Kit last fall, and this has touched off a broader discussion about worker qualifications. And in 2024, 81 percent of employers Uh, practice skills based hiring up from 73 percent in 2023 and just 56 percent in 2022, according to some research. So it’s up by 30%, almost 30 percent right now since 2022. Now, an analysis by Indeed, which is a job site, found the number of job postings requiring at least a four year degree fell to 17. 8 percent in January of 2024 compared to about 20 percent in 2019. So the number of employers who are requiring degrees to even apply for a job has dropped and there are more employers looking for skills. Rather than diplomas, which is an interesting trend. And Joel was mentioning before we started today that Elon Musk put out a Twitter post or I guess it’s an ex post now. about this particular topic. Joel Saxum: Yeah. Today he’s, he put a post out. It says, if you’re a hardcore software engineer and want to build the everything app, please join us by sending your best work to code at X. com. That’s not the important part. The important part here is what he states is we don’t care where you went to school or even whether you went to a school or what big name company you worked at. Just show us your code. And to me, I think that’s amazing because I guess there’s, it’s a pendulum swing. My whole life as a young person in the United States, it was, you got to get a good job. You got to get a degree. You got to get a degree. You got to get a degree. And then you see that being beat into the culture. And then the cost of these degrees just going crazy over here, right now. I mean, an average four year degree, you’re paying 80, 100, a hundred thousand dollars plus just to get over or more, right? Yeah. Alan’s, Alan’s giving me the thumbs up way more. So, so, you know, if, if I, if I I’m in Texas right here in Austin, if I want to go to UT Austin. It’s going to cost me like 40 to 45, 000 a year for your degree. That’s 180, 000 degree that like, that’s so, uh, like it’s so much of a hurdle to employment and to growing, uh, growing employment as a society and in good jobs, and I think that like, from my standpoint, I’ve always. Try to lean on this. If you’re a hard worker, if you’ve got some skills, I don’t care where you’ve worked in the past, I don’t care what school you went to, or even if you went to one, if you can do the job, let’s do the damn job. And that’s my take on it. Rosemary Barnes: Uh, so one thing that I think has changed recently is that in the past, like the reason why you would say you want X degree is because you want someone that has the knowledge that you would learn in that degree. Um, but these days there’s like nothing that you can’t learn well on the internet, just as well as in a degree. It’s kind of insane the way that now that we have the internet available, it’s insane to keep on doing it in the same way. So I think now, yeah, like we can still have the same requirement that we used to have in terms of knowledge. But it doesn’t need to be so gatekept by the universities. But that said, I do think that there’s some kinds of engineering, like a lot of what people call engineering, I don’t think needs a degree, you know, um, and especially the things that need engineering sign off. Like it’s really rare that you actually need to use your engineering judgment for something like that. It’s much more often, you need to just check what’s being done, check what the design standard says, and make sure that it fits within that. I don’t think you need a degree for that. Where I think you need engineers is where something comes outside of the design standard so that an engineer can make sure that, you know, everything has been considered that should have and, um, you know, do the analyses that are required and just, you know, use their professional experience and education to make sure that, You’re not inadvertently doing something unsafe. Joel Saxum: I think when, when engineering, when you talk engineering this way, the gap for me would be when liability rolls into place. So if you’re designing a bridge, I would like someone to sign off on that, that can demonstrate, demonstrate from. whatever training and these things that they’ve, they’ve achieved a certain level of being an engineer to, and in the States, that would be a structural engineer with a SCE stamp. And that makes sense to me. Rosemary Barnes: The higher the stakes, the less that you should be needing someone that has any sort of judgment applied to it. You know, it should be a really rigorous standard that was definitely developed by engineers. Um, make sure that that standard, you know, covers everything that it needs to. And then the person signing off should just be saying that it, It has done what the standard says it should do. I don’t think that there is, or should be, a lot of individual judgment in place about, will this bridge fall down? Will this aeroplane fall out of the sky? Will this, uh, I don’t know, um, petrol station explode? You know, like that shouldn’t be somebody’s like individual call on whether a valve is big enough or a bolt is replaced frequently enough. There shouldn’t be any judgment calls there. It should just be kind of, you know, do it as, um, as the design standard says. And that design standard is really rigorous and performed by engineers. Phil Totaro: Let’s put it this way. As we’re talking about engineering, you know, I think skills based hiring is potentially more applicable than it would be, say, in like the medical field, for example. Like, I don’t want somebody who’s just watched a bunch of YouTube videos on surgery to perform brain surgery on me. So, you know, there’s, I think there’s a difference. Uh, maybe we can, you know, there’s a bit more margin you can get away with. Uh, doing this sort of thing for engineering as, as society evolves and all that. But, uh, yeah, I, I don’t know if it’s applicable everywhere. Rosemary Barnes: I think that sometimes like in Australia, I’ve never heard that term skills based hiring and until today, but I have noticed, you know, early in my career, people cared that I had my accredited engineering degree and was eligible to be a member of Engineers Australia. I don’t know. It’s been decade, decades, more than one decade, probably since anybody cared about that for me. So I think it gets less important as you progress in your career. But one weird place where I have noticed that people really want an engineering degree is, uh, my project management roles for, um, construction of new wind farms, new solar farms and stuff. And that strikes me as a place where you don’t need an engineering degree at all. That, that should be pretty easy. like work experience, you know, um, build, building up to it. I know heaps of people that would be excellent at that sort of role, um, that aren’t engineers. And there’s, you do need to understand, you know, what the regulations are technically and make sure that, you know, things are happening correctly. So it’s not like it’s a non technical role, but it’s not one of those kind of creative engineering roles where you have to, you know, be. I don’t know, coming up with a lot of solutions on your, on your own. Um, so I think that that’s unnecessarily restricting something to, we don’t have that many engineers in Australia. I think that, you know, there’s a lot of people that could do that role that don’t have an engineering degree. Joel Saxum: And I think that that’s the basis of this report that came out from the department of labor in the U S here is you’re trying to, they’re trying to make the labor market less restrictive. Cause if you’re just going to put a thing in there and it says, you’ve got to have a degree for this. You’ve got to have a degree for that. You got to, some of them don’t even make sense. Like I. Anecdotally, here’s one from the state of Wisconsin. You can be a substitute teacher in the state of Wisconsin, but only if you have a degree, a four year degree, but that four year degree does not have to be in teaching. The four year degree can be in whatever you want. It can be from Rose Hulman University as an engineer. And, but you need that degree to go and sit in the math class for a day to make sure the students don’t revolt. That’s a weird one to me. Lightning is an act of God, but lightning damage is not actually, is very predictable and very preventable. Strike tape is a lightning protection system upgrade for wind turbines made by weather guard. It dramatically improves the effectiveness of the factory LPS so you can stop worrying about lightning damage. Visit weather guard wind.com to learn more. Read a case study and schedule a call today. Allen Hall: Delaware has signed a major agreement with U. S. Wind worth 128 million dollars, marking a key development in offshore wind infrastructure along the east coast. The deal enables installation of transmission cables through Delaware waters and the state park land to connect two Maryland offshore wind projects to the grid. Now, there’s a couple of interesting pieces to this agreement. $200 million is gonna be allocated for electrical grid upgrades within Delaware, and that’s gonna be focused on improving reliability and capacity. $12 million is for the cable right of way, which is pretty typical. Uh, $76 million, uh, of renewable ener energy credits are gonna be transferred to the state. Which, um, Phil will know a lot about that. And then there’s 40 million going to the community for coastal dredging projects, clean energy workforce training, scholarship initiatives, and state park improvement. So the thing that raises my awareness of these kind of transactions, having seen something similar happen up in New Jersey, is that every time there’s an offshore wind project off the coast of one of these East Coast states. They seem to extract hundreds of millions of dollars from the developers for state projects that may or may not have anything to do with the electrical grid. But raise the price of offshore wind, it has to raise the prices. Phil Totaro: Absolutely. Um, you know, everything’s got to be accounted for in, in the budget and, and anytime you start stuffing these, you know, political pork projects into, you know, some kind of budget allocation, it’s necessarily going You know, end up being paid for by the project developer, but then ultimately it gets passed on to us as rate payers, because how do you think the developer makes money? They want to be able to sell the power to somebody, and that means they also have to increase the power purchase contract price that they ask. Um, what’s interesting about this is, okay, so this is a deal in Delaware. New York actually also just announced that they’re going to do another allocation round, but only for the power generation because they have, um, you know, all the electrical infrastructure already being built and paid for by the preexisting projects. So they’ve got a, you know, spare capacity in the substations to be able to do the power offtake. So the industry is cheering and everybody’s assuming that it’s going to lower the prices for this, you know, sixth round in, in the state of New York. Um, Um, except when everybody still comes to the realization that we haven’t done anything about inflation in a meaningful way. Interest rates have come down a tad. I’m sure that, especially in a state like New York, they’re always going to find ways to start plumping up the price of things. Allen Hall: What was the Orsted agreement with New Jersey for a while? Was it 400 million, 500 million? 300. 300 million? Okay. And that was the federal money that was going to come to Orstead for developing the project, right? And then the state of New Jersey wanted to take that as a lump sum, Phil Totaro: or take all of it. And, and that’s, that’s exactly, you know, a good, a good example where, you know, it was, the whole, Reason that there was this federal allocation of funds to the project developer was said that it could offset some of the capex cost to the developer. And when the states see that somebody is, you know, getting 300 million dollars to go. do something to the benefit and of their state. They all start getting dollar signs in their eyes and saying, well, why aren’t we getting some of that federal money? Uh, and they devise clever ways and say, Oh, well, we’re not going to sign the power purchase agreement with you, or, uh, allow you to go build or hook into this substation over here, unless you give us some of that money. Uh, that, that’s basically what this amounts to. Allen Hall: but isn’t in The interest of the state to put offshore wind in it. Like Delaware is not the easiest place to get to for power generation. Right. And it’s, it’s a, it’s a little tiny state. It’s like 2000 square miles. Uh, there’s not a lot of power plants on it. They’ve closed down some of them. That’s how they get in the power on shore from us. Wind is a going right where an old coal generation factory was because the grid infrastructure, so it’s going to plug into it there. So the whole situation for Delaware is weird in that it’s relatively simple to hook up the wind turbines to the existing grid in Delaware. But now U. S. Wind is basically paying, what, 100, 000 per square mile to upgrade the electrical grid in Delaware? That seems like a lot of money to me. Joel Saxum: I think Phil was spot on when he said political pork projects, right? Because to me, these are all, it’s all like earmarks. When you listen, when you watch a bill go through in D. C. or at the state level, wherever, the bill may be about, you know, How many chicken wings we can eat this week, whatever it is. And, and, and then there’s an, there’s things earmarked. And you want the chicken wing bill passed? Well, you’re also going to give me 10 million bucks for this racetrack over here. And then I’m also going to get this, this thing passed in the same, the same breath. If you want that, you’re going to get this. And what it ends up doing is, is it’s shooting these. These people, these states, they’re gonna, they shot themselves in the foot multiple times. We saw it in New Jersey, right? Like, Dorstad took the right down, backed off, and said, like, we’re not doing this anymore. And we’ve seen this play out, this, this, I guess this, this concept is in my head right now, this pendulum swinging, right? Like, you’ve seen I’ve seen energy projects or watched the history of energy projects around the world where local geographies, local governments got taken advantage of, and they got resources pulled from them. That happens. And then the pendulum swings the other way, and they put so many regulations and so much stuff in there like this. Like, this, if you add these up, they signed a 128 million dollar bill. Agreement. Great. But then there’s going to be a 200 million electrical grid, 12 million for cable right away, 76 here, 40 here. You’re stacking this thing up to a 300 plus million extra tab just to develop a wind farm. You’re going to shoot yourself in the foot because the pendulum is that then the pendulum is swung too far the other way and you’re using up, uh, monies that Could be used for other things that in, in, in the development process. Phil Totaro: And let’s go back to Alan’s question, which is why would they not want to build offshore wind? I mean, the answer is, well, guess what? If you like creating jobs, particularly jobs in the new economy, if you like tax revenue, if you like providing clean electricity, et cetera, I mean, these are, these are things that You do want to get reelected. I’m talking to the politicians now. You know, you do want to get reelected. This is the way to do it is to ensure that you’re creating opportunity within the state. Um, you know, they’re, they’re taking advantage of opportunity by getting the cash, but then it’s not necessarily going to the benefit of everybody in the state because where do you think that cash came from in the first place? It’s all the tax revenue from all of us. Collectively, in the first place, whether it’s the federal government or the state government tax coffers that it comes out of, so we’re the ones paying for it. And yet we don’t actually have, you know, a say in how, you know, like Joel’s talking about these, these horse trades and deals that end up happening when somebody is trying to pass a bill. We have no say in how. That haggling happens. We elect somebody and we expect that they’re going to do a job for us, but I don’t necessarily always agree with the job that’s being done by the politicians that have been elected. I may not have even voted for them, and yet they’re deciding my fate. Joel Saxum: I think it, Phil, if we could do, let’s look at a model that has worked in the past that didn’t require a bunch of this stuff. If you know anything about the state of Alaska and the permanent fund dividend, right? The oil and gas companies are pulling oil and gas. Very, they’ve been doing it since the seventies. They’ve been pulling a lot of value in oil and gas out of the, out of the ground up there. So what they do is they have to do a, use a portion of those proceeds to fund a fund that goes back to the state. Okay. So that is a, that is an, uh, an after development cost. So you build that into your operating model. Instead of saying upfront, you got to pay us 300 million to do this. How about we work together? And maybe we get a couple cents for every kilowatt hour produced or something off of these offshore wind farms, like the state of Louisiana is doing. That’s where these things should go, in my opinion. Phil Totaro: And not for nothing, but Louisiana is also making these reinvestments into, you know, developing things around coastal erosion and, and protecting the, the natural resources that they’ve got there, which I think is actually important and necessary for them to be able to do. But that’s a decision that they made. And, and structured it in a way where it’s not impacting the CapEx cost of developing the project in the first place. And that’s the key thing here. Allen Hall: As wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it, difficult. That’s why the Uptime Podcast recommends PES Wind magazine. PES Wind offers a diverse range of in depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit PESWind. com today. Well Rosemary, I’m getting a little tired of hearing the term clean natural gas and that it is so much less expensive to use clean natural gas instead of renewable solar. Wind, hydro, uh, that, uh, it makes no sense. We have to tear down all the wind turbines, all the solar panels should go away because clean natural gas is a better, uh, energy source. And I think that’s a very US perspective. Rosemary Barnes: Can I just have two problems with that? Clean, natural gas. In that the only word that’s unproblematic is gas. We can all agree that it’s a gas, but, um, clean. I mean, I don’t even know what they mean. Uh, natural, it’s a, it’s a fossil gas, like a natural, we don’t say natural coal, natural oil, um, you know, it’s fossil gas, it’s methane, right? Like that, that’s, that’s what it is. Uh, it’s incredibly good. Marketing that, I don’t know, the term, um, came about well before we cared about climate change. So it wasn’t for that, but natural, natural gas makes it sound much nicer than what it is, which is fossil, fossil methane. How are they calling it clean? What’s their, what’s their definition or just that it’s cleaner than coal? Allen Hall: They’ve dropped the er part from cleaner than coal. And it is cleaner than coal, and I will give them that. Rosemary Barnes: I think even that’s debatable because, um, with methane, there’s losses, you know, like, because methane is like 84 times as strong a, um, a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide is. It really matters small amounts getting leaked, and there’s always leakage, especially from, yeah, where it’s extracted, but. in the pipelines all along. And I know that, you know, I’ve been following a little bit the research that’s been done on this area. And especially now that we can monitor with satellites, we find more and more and more leaks and the carbon or the, you know, greenhouse gas intensity of, um, fossil gas is increasing and increasing and increasing the more that we know. And I have seen some studies try and say that in a lot of situations, it’s actually, um, overall worse for the climate than, than coal. That’s not the mainstream view and it’s not true on every. Every type of project, you know, some countries are better at extracting it cleanly, more cleanly than others, but, um, yeah, I don’t know. How can they get away with that clean, clean natural gas? Come on. Allen Hall: Well, the comparison of the cost of clean natural gas to other energy sources, particularly renewables, is very U. S. focused. They’ll say, well, in the U. S., uh, wind is a lot more expensive, particularly offshore wind is a lot more expensive than putting a gas, uh, electrification plant in. True. For right now. True. But the rest of the world is not that way. Because the U. S. is full of natural gas. Pretty much Joel can walk around his backyard in Texas, drop in a pole, and get natural gas to come out of it. It’s not that hard. But if you look at the rest of the world, it’s much harder to find natural gas and the prices are widely variable. So this is why the U. S. can make this claim. The U. S. right now is paying about 4 per million BTU. Alright, not bad. The U. K. right now is 14. per million BTU. And Germany is about 1350, right? So they’re three times more expensive, almost four times more expensive than the United States. That changes the whole economics of natural gas versus renewables. So we are seeing renewable energy go in big time in France and in Germany, in the UK, and a lot of other places, but maybe not as much in the United States, uh, at the moment because natural gas is so low. So, Rosemary, do you see the same thing that this U. S. argument is being using globally? Rosemary Barnes: Well, I mean, it’s an argument about, uh, cost that ignores the climate impact, right? So, I think you first, we need to start with this only argument only works if we don’t care about the climate at all, which a lot of countries do. Um, Yeah, I mean, to a greater or lesser extent, and obviously it’s easier to care about the climate if the cost difference isn’t so great. Uh, I do think it’s a very, a very US thing, but, um, even, I mean, it’s relevant everywhere and I’ve heard the term called the, um, the spark gap, like how different the cost is between, you know, creating some sort of energy service by electricity versus with, um, natural gas. So, you know, it might be comparing, um, A electric heat pump for heating your home versus a gas boiler. Um, what’s the cost difference for, you know, getting your house to the temperature that you want it. And, you know, some places in the world it’s cheaper to do it with electricity. In more places it’s cheaper to do it with gas. I think that the US is like one end of a big continuum of the whole world dealing with that exact issue, but it’s definitely at, at the end, I think. Allen Hall: But every country needs to think about it for themselves, right? The economics in the United States are totally different than the economics in Germany, the UK, France, India, South America, Brazil. They’re just totally different, and I think we’re getting caught up, at least in the United States, that globally, wind is not an answer. Globally, solar is not an answer. Globally, hydro is not an answer. That the only answer is LNG. Which is just a complete distortion of what the reality is. For the time being, the natural gas is easy in the United States. Rosemary Barnes: It’s also, in terms of energy security, like, you’ve got the gas there, so you’re fine. Europe wants to get off gas regardless of how much it costs. I mean, that’s, that makes it extra, an extra incentive that is expensive. But they don’t have it, so they have to import it. So they would prefer to have energy security by, you know, having their own wind farms. Peace. Um, so I think that the US fails to see that as well, that there’s an energy security like for most countries, having your own renewables is, um, more better energy security than having to buy that, you know, your gas and your oil in from other countries. Allen Hall: Dealing with damaged blades? Don’t let slower pairs keep your turbines down. Blade platforms get you back up and running fast. Blade Platform’s truck mounted platforms reach up to 100 meters, allowing for a quick setup, improved safety, and efficient repairs. Book soon to secure your spot and experience a difference in blade access, speed, and efficiency. Visit bladeplatforms. com and get started today. Well, a stark warning has been coming from Europe about wind energy’s supply chain growing dependence upon Chinese manufacturers and a Dutch government backed report report. Along with comments from former MI6 chief, Sir Richard Dearlove highlights concerns about cybersecurity risks and strategic vulnerabilities in the offshore wind sector. Now the background on the Chinese manufacturers, I think it’s pretty well known to people in wind, but there’s six of the top 10 wind turbine manufacturers in the world are now based in China. And a lot of Chinese firms control the critical supply chain. Uh, it’s particularly for rare earth magnets, right? And there is a significant risk and concern among Intel officials like MI6 and my guess is the CIA, Joel, and others that, uh, putting Chinese manufactured assets into your grid makes them vulnerable, uh, which I, I think has been proven out time and time again from other different sectors of manufacturer from. As we learned, Wi Fi routers to cell phones and a variety of other things. It’s not inconsequential, but there does seem to be a big conflict coming among Europeans because there are developers that are really going after Chinese manufacturers, or at least talking to it. Is that going to stop now that the governments and the Intel officials are basically saying, don’t do it. We’re just not going to even consider Joel Saxum: it. I think that depends on how much control the grid operator has over these decisions, right? Like in the United States, you can, do your permitting, do everything, but at the end of the day, FERC has to sign off on your wind farm and they have the ultimate control from a federal level. Um, so the operators may have some, some sway and some pull, but not at the end of the day, it’s not their choice whether this happens to them or not, or whether they get to install these, these turbines or not. But I think it, it’s a viable concern. In my opinion, if we’re looking on the world stage of who, Foreseeable future we may have a conflict with. We don’t want the ability for someone that we’re in a conflict with to shut our energy supply down. Whether you’re in the UK and you’re Part of MI6 or were part of MI6. I guess you’re probably always a part of MI6 if you were a part of MI6. Does that make sense? Um, but you know, you don’t want the, a foreign operator or a foreign, you know, at that point in time, that could be an adversary to be able to have control over of what you’ve got going on. Uh, power generation wise, because it’s, I mean, that’s, that’s a, it’s a matter of national security and that’s my take on it. Phil Totaro: Well, and let’s, let’s also give some context to this because the developers in Europe were initially saying, Oh, we’re going to go talk to the Chinese to try and get commercial negotiating leverage against the Western OEMs saying, Hey, Hey, you guys are trying to pass on all these cost increases to us as project developers. We don’t want to pay more, so we’re going to go talk to the Chinese and maybe we get some of their turbines. Now, fast forward five years, we just had a tender in France for offshore where even Western, you know, hardcore Western project development companies, and I’m talking like NG, EDF, they were all quoting their, their project proposals with, you know, 20 plus megawatt Chinese wind turbines. The Chinese turbines have become more of an attractive option to developers that I believe are making bad decisions about whether or not they should be considering Chinese turbines in the first place. I don’t really think that’s They’re taking total cost of ownership into account. You know, the developer is the one making the decision on something that has profound impact to everybody that is downstream from a very early upstage, you know, development decision about what equipment to use. And how is that going to be maintained? How much does it cost, et cetera, et cetera. And security almost doesn’t even come into the equation, uh, at all. For this week’s wind Joel Saxum: farm of the week. We’re heading up to New York state, uh, by Allen there. Um, so the wind farm of the week is eight point wind. It’s a next era site in Steuben County, New York. And we’re focusing on this one because it is a big one. Big wind farm, not in number of turbines, but in megawatts per turbine. Uh, this is one of the first tur, uh, wind farms in the United States to install the GE 5.5 megawatt 1 58, uh, meter rotor machine. Uh, cool thing about it is eight point wind.com that NextEra put together has a comprehensive safety plan. a public involvement plan, and various fact sheets about partners, and what NextEra does, and how Steuben County is a leader in in the renewable energy space. So they’ve tried to, you know, be a little bit more forward and open with the residents around there about what’s going on with these big turbines being installed. So this wind farm also has a 16 and a half mile transmission line that was put in. As a part of it to, uh, uh, connect to the grid managed by the New York ISO. Uh, and it’s also producing enough clean, renewable energy, uh, to power more than 46, 000 New York homes. Uh, it’s expected to, uh, provide more than 40 million in revenue to local governments to support schools, infrastructure, and vital services, such as fire departments, which is a hot topic these days. Um, the payments to landowners are also estimated to be around 25 million over 30 year expected life of the project. So the Eight Point Wind Energy Center, uh, up in Steuben County, New York, you are the wind farm of the week. Allen Hall: Well, that’s going to do it for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy podcast. Thanks for listening. And please give us a five star rating on your podcast platform and subscribe in the show notes below to Uptime Tech News, our weekly sub stack, did I mention sub stack? Newsletter. And Uptime Wind Energy podcast.