The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

Allen and Joel speak with Frank Martinez, Talent Acquisition Specialist and Veterans Ambassador for Pearce Renewables. With 32 years of distinguished U.S. Army service and 13 years at Pearce, Frank shares invaluable insights on creating pathways for veterans in the renewable sector. Pearce is leveraging veterans’ unique skillsets and fostering a supportive work environment, with an impressive 10% of their workforce self-identifying as veterans. 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: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, joined by my co host, Joel Saxum. Today, we’re pleased to welcome Frank Martinez, Talent Acquisition Specialist and Veterans Ambassador for Pearce Renewables. Frank brings a unique perspective to our discussion combining 32 years of distinguished U. S. Army service with 13 years at Pearce Services. In his current role, Frank leads Pearce Renewables Efforts to recruit and train veterans for the renewable energy industry. This initiative draws on Frank’s extensive military background and his deep understanding of the renewable sector. During his military career, which included both active and reserve service, Frank trained over 40, 000 service members. Today, Frank will share insights into Pearce Renewable’s veteran recruitment and training programs. He’ll discuss how the company is creating pathways for veterans into renewables and explore the valuable skills. Veterans bring to the sector and Joel and I are looking forward to hearing about these initiatives in veteran recruitment and training for the renewable energy industry. Frank, welcome to Uptime. Frank Martinez: Good to be here, Allen. Thank you. And Joel for having me on the show today. Allen Hall: So Frank, you have an extensive career in the military. My gosh. And I want to touch upon that just briefly because you don’t run across people every day that have served over 30 years in the military. That’s right. And you want to just give everybody some insight into what you did with the U. S. Army? Frank Martinez: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, you’re right. I usually don’t meet too many people that have 20 plus years, let alone 30 plus years. So that said, I know that it is pretty unique. I will tell you that, I love being part of the Army because I really cared about the mission. And what was the mission over the last 20 years? As you remember, we were at war. I had a really vested interest in helping those that were preparing to go to war be part of that solution. And so I did that for the last 18 years of my career. I was an instructor trainer for units Army, Air Force, and Navy that were going overseas to deploy Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa, all types of contingent operations worldwide. So I was part of that and like you said there in the intro 40, 000 service members that I stood in front of and taught a subject to. And I’m very proud of that. So I was part of that solution that the army needed to get people ready to go to war. That is incredible. I think it’s incredible as well. Just the opportunity to do that. When I was in it I was 100 percent dedicated to that mission and how serious it was. Because we’re talking about people’s lives, we’re talking about America’s sons and daughters at this point. It really I knew at the time when I was doing it that it was much bigger than myself. And so just to be part of that I wanted to ride that as long as I could, and that’s Allen Hall: exactly what I did. So when you left active duty and then went into the reserves, then you transitioned also into the renewable sector, right? Frank Martinez: Let’s start there. So my active duty time is mixed in with my reserve duty time. So I went from active duty to the reserves and then from the reserves, I would get activated. for typically one year at a time, and then you go back to your civilian job. For me, like personally, I did I did three years straight at one point during that time in the reserves, in the reserves. Yeah. Three years, one whole stretch. Once again, training soldiers and service members going overseas When I came off of that is the time when I came to join this company that is now Pearce. That was 2011. So 2000, May of 2011 is when I joined Pearce. And then during that time since 2011 till now, or actually two years ago, when I officially retired there was three other times that I got called up for one year mobilizations of active duty. So while I was an employee of this company, I got called up for duty to go serve. And during that capacity, I did the exact same thing. I was getting soldiers ready to go overseas. Joel Saxum: But it plays directly into your military career, plays directly into your civilian career, because when you came over in 2011, of course, Pearce, Pearce right now, one of the largest, if not the largest, ISP in the United States, telecom, solar, wind, all the above, I know there’s a couple there’s four, four figure employees in just wind, so you guys are huge. But you’ve seen that kind of Growth through. Mean, with Pearce has been growth through acquisition, growth through organic growth. Hey, we’ve got a contract. We need to get all these people in. So you’ve seen that change in the last 13 years in Pearce and what would become Pearce and all these other companies. So you. They can lean on you by saying Hey this gentleman here has trained all these people. He has this experience. And I know when we were talking off air, you said when there was a point at Pearce where you got basically, Hey, we want to keep, we want you to be a part of the team. Frank, how can we utilize your skills to the best of what your ability is? And you basically created what you do now Out of thin air, out of that conversation to, to help Pearce. So how did that work out? Frank Martinez: So when I first joined the company, believe it or not, I came on board as what’s known as a detail engineer. And that is writing specifications for installing telecom equipment. I did that for exactly one month. My background in the military was signal. So I had a solid signal understanding and I had worked in that type of role before. That lasted exactly one month because the guy that was over procurement got fired. And so when he got fired, the office manager at the time recognized, you’re really like my military background. We spent a little bit of time talking about my background and he was like, I think you’re the guy that should be in procurement. I’m going to move you over to procurement. And so I became the procurement guy, did the procurement role for about maybe four or five years, then I became the procurement manager for Pearce. So I ran all that two years down the road after that, I became a project manager, and then after a project manager, I became the operations manager for the telecom division. So I really had a lot of career growth within this company just based on opportunities that were available at the time all the way to the role that I’m in now. The role that I’m in now also plays well into my military background. Of course, like you said, very extensive 32 years when I retired in 2022. That’s that pivotal moment where wow, 32 years, even saying that out loud it’s almost impossible for me to even comprehend it, but reflecting on it and, really proud of my service. Like how, what can I do? Now that I’m retired to still continue something involved with the military. So for a time now, I had already seen Pearce growing in renewable energy and telecom, and then thinking to myself like, man, these roles are really well suited for service members. And the reason I know that because as an instructor trainer, I’ve trained all types of We’re talking about engineer construction units. military police units, signal units, transportation units, you name it. I’ve trained them. Aviation units, maintenance battalions. Like I’ve been around all these soldiers and all types of different skillsets. So I’ve seen firsthand the type of equipment they use, how they work and operate to maintain that equipment. So I thought, I always thought to myself like, wow, there’s such an opportunity for those service members to find careers. Here at Pearson, almost any division that we have available. And then, so basically this ended up just having a conversation at a Christmas party, believe it or not with my supervisor at the time. My, my manager at the time was at this Christmas party and I just pulled him aside and said, Hey, listen, I just retired from the army and I want to know is why doesn’t our company have a dedicated military recruiting program? And he said, I don’t know, Frank, tell me why we don’t, I said, or why we should. And so I laid out the groundwork, like matching the skill set to the type of rules. Like these guys do this military service members and this specific skills have these skill sets. We need these skill sets. In this rule everything from renewable energy to telecom, you name it. We, those skills easily come across. So he’s Frank, that makes 100 total sense to me. We should figure out a way to get you transferred over to the HR team and figure out. How to get this initiative started. Officially in November of 2022, I transferred over to the HR department and they I’ve now the talent acquisition slash veteran ambassador for the company. Basically in that role, my main goal is to figure out ways to network with military installations, military service members, both active duty that are getting ready to transition out of the military and also veterans. They can reach out to me and we can walk together through okay, this is what I did in the military. What’s the best role for me. And so really for me personally, it’s a really great feeling as well, because I’ve still connected to the military in a little way. So I still doing my part to serve my country, help my brothers and sisters that are still serving that are about to transition out of the military, find a career. And as you guys know, like renewable energy, there’s no better career choice at this point. This is the time to get into renewable energy. Joel Saxum: But so Frank, your story at Pearce speaks very much to what I and Allen understand of Pearce as a company, right? We’ve talked with a lot of from Zach Dorfman up at the, heading up the wind side marketing, the training we, we know the organization, right? And what we hear from them directly is, what, we’re all about training. Training development of our people putting more back. I mean like the training center. You guys have built in Dallas now It’s all about cross training and putting more back into the people So your story directly speaks to what the Pearce experience is for a lot of people, right? It just makes sense to get to bring these, you know highly skilled individuals from them from the you know as veterans into the industry and hey You can go in the wind. You can go in a solar. We can cross train you. We’ll get you on all kinds of different renewable energy projects. It just makes sense. And I want to put one thing in perspective here for people listening. When you went into the military, I was three. And I’m 37 years old now, and I’m like I’m through a couple of like careers of my own. And you served within our military and our armed services for that long. That’s amazing. So I want to take a second just to thank you for your service to our country. So thank you, Frank. Frank Martinez: Oh I appreciate that, Joe. It’s my honor. It’s been my, truly, I tell people it was the honor of my lifetime to serve. And Allen Hall: Frank, Frank Martinez: because you are Allen Hall: an ambassador now, you’ve reached ambassador status, there you go. Frank. Joe. You’re out there looking for people that are exiting the military or in the reserves, maybe. Like you were that have skill sets. What skillset are you looking for? Do you think it’s like directly transferable to the renewable industry? Frank Martinez: Wow. Yeah, I often tell people when I talk to them about, those military skills that are directly transferable or closely transferable. There’s just a whole laundry list of them. Off the top of my head, those electronic maintenance, mechanical backgrounds, 100%. Are directly transferable over. So when you put that, depending on what branch of military you’re in, whether you’re in the Marines, the Navy, the Air Force, the Army, the Coast Guard, I’m not gonna count Space Force ’cause I think that’s all it But that said all of them have some type of construction or engineering fields. So those have the electrical, mechanical maintenance. Aviation, aerial defense signal every branch has some type of signal core. So that signal equipment, you’re working either on satellites or antennas or communications equipment, a lot of sophisticated stuff, technology is state of the art, top of the line they work to know how to work it, how to maintain it, how to fix it. Of course, mechanical maintenance on all these fields is everything from HVAC units to vehicles, right? And so you talk about vehicles, you’re talking about everything from a wheeled vehicle to to, to a tank tracked vehicle. Also aviation, right? Aviation has a lot of components in it, both mechanical and electrical inside of them. Some, a lot of people don’t put a lot into something like maybe even infantry, but infantry members also do a lot of maintenance on their equipment that they utilize. In, in their in their line of work. So there’s a lot of hand tools, power tools that are used as well in those field artillery, air defense armor just, that’s just off the top of my head. But once again, like anybody that’s doing something in the military with their hands for maintenance. We probably have a job that’s closely related to something that you’re already doing Joel Saxum: outside of whether or not someone’s doing maintenance Or they’re doing like what their actual job is. There’s a foundational level that makes veterans and military personnel awesome for any kind of industry The renewables being a specific one. We love them because they have that discipline. They’re used to traveling they you know, they’ve existed within a brother and sisterhood for a while So they understand that like Working for your, working with and for your compadres out in the field. So it’s there’s a foundational set of skills that transfer very well as well. No matter what your job was, coming into something like this, like working for Pearce is those skill sets are highly sought after. Frank Martinez: Absolutely. So like you mentioned, that discipline and that work ethic, that’s definitely at the top of the list. They, depending on how long they’ve been in, maybe they’ve been in there for as little as two years. Maybe four years, maybe over six years but they’ve been held accountable for either showing up to work and the duty assignments that they’ve been tasked with, right? So they have a good history of discipline and work ethic. Definitely need that. I think there’s a shortage of it in the whole industry, right? Not just in renewable energy, but it’s just across everywhere. Joel Saxum: There’s a shortage of it in the world. Frank Martinez: Of course, leadership’s there, as you work your way through the ranks. Your task was leadership roles, taking care of others under you making sure, being held responsible for those tasks that are assigned to you, adaptability and resilience, what can you say, there’s always, the old marine logo motto of adapt, improvise and overcome, right? Across all military branches, that’s a thing. You typically don’t have all the equipment or tools you need to get the job done. You typically don’t always have the manpower that you need to get the task done but you figure out a way to do it. So that adaptability and resilience definitely rises to the top as well. Of course, there’s also commitment. Like you said, teamwork, commitment to your team, commitment to the mission that you’re doing. So I often tell service members if you’re looking for a way to continue your service to America continue to serve your country in a different capacity, the critical energy shortage in America, you’re actually helping solve that. So you can continue your service by joining the renewable energy career fields. Allen Hall: Frank, a lot of obviously active service members that are moving into the private sector are going to be in the reserves. And if you join Pearce, like you were telling us earlier, you may be deployed for six months at a time. How does Pearce deal with that? And what’s that interface look like is to say, Hey, I’m in the reserves. I got to be gone for two weeks in, in August for training. How does that work? And how does that. How did everybody navigate that? Frank Martinez: I was always supported here. And so I always knew that. So it was never an issue. It was like, take as much time as you need. And also as being a senior leader in my unit I often needed more than that traditional weekend, two weeks, a year, right? Pearce has taken it one step further. And last year we, we signed a, what’s known as a statement of support with employer support, a garden reserve. So what that is, it’s a DOD program. Employer Support and Guard and Reserve is a organization that advocates for both veterans and companies to help them better understand the legal protections that service members have when they’re in the National Guard and Reserve. So when you sign a statement of support, your company is saying that we 100 percent stand behind our employees that serve in the National Guard and Reserve. They don’t have to worry about having to go away on deployments for any type of duties that they have in relation to their military service. We stand behind it. They’ll get the time and the support that they need from the company. So they don’t have to worry about their job here. And so that was to me is huge. Cause I think that just so much of a burden is lifted off of your shoulders when you understand that your company supports your service to your country. Allen Hall: Frank, you want to talk about the Pearce veterans employee resource group? Frank Martinez: Oh, absolutely. So we launched that as well last year. So employee resource group that we have here for veterans. Basically, that’s a place where we all get together and share our stories, share our backgrounds in the military, how we got to where we’re currently at, and then also share resources within the company. So we’re really excited to have that here now. It’s really a good way for veterans in the company to network with each other. If they don’t know, you might not know that somebody in your own division was also a veteran. And so maybe that’s an opportunity to connect with them. And to network within the company as well. And so I have seen it elsewhere as well, where people have joined these groups and then made connection with somebody else and said, Hey, by the way I’m I’m a solar tech, but I’m really, in the military, I was a generator technician. I really want to find out about how do I come over. to the generator team and so they start networking with themselves with other veterans that are in those other divisions within the company. Joel Saxum: Yeah, and so I mean speaking offline too we talked about the amount of veterans in the workforce as Pearce is a very large company but you had 10 percent of your entire workforce is self identified as veteran so they’ve stood up put their hand I’m a veteran, I’m a that’s a ton of people. And I think a lot of that, some of it is organic coming over, right? But a lot of that is from your efforts of, you’ve went out and you’ve networked with almost 20 military installations you’ve attended like 13 military career fairs at just in last year. You’re, you guys are doing boots on the ground, direct outreach to going to bases, to going to military career fairs, hanging that Pearce flag and saying, come work with us. We Frank Martinez: are very proud of that number. 10%. Of our workforce has self identified as veteran and so there’s a lot of stigma sometimes associated with identifying yourself as a veteran but we’re proud to say that 10 of our workforce has self identified so that’s that is a large number when you talk about almost any company And so I also feel like because it’s such a high number of self identified veterans within the company I feel like we’re doing something right to retain those employees here. So I think they really find a something that’s really Satisfying and also familiar to their military. So safety is number one here. We have core values that are established And I think they fit in well to the same values that you learn in the military throughout your career Allen Hall: There’s a lot happening at Pearce and with that 10 percent veteran community within Pearce It’s must be a big draw to join Pearce if you’re a veteran, how do you do that? Frank Martinez: Honestly, the easiest way is probably to contact me directly. I’ll share my email address, FMartinez, that’s M A R T I N E Z, at Pearce. services.com. I also urge you to check out Pearce renewables.com and Pearce services.com. We have two divisions. It’s a little confusing right now. I know because it’s two brands. Our telecom division is Pearce-services.com and then renewable energy is Pearce Renewables dot com. Allen Hall: Frank, it has been wonderful to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for your service. And thank you for all your efforts to bring new people into the renewables business. Frank Martinez: Thank you, Allen. Thank you, Joel.

This week, Allen and Phil discuss NextEra’s Inventus Holdings patent to increase the longevity of cable bundles on wind turbines. And Mitsubishi Heavy Industry’s system for measuring lightning current on a wind turbine blade. Plus a groundbreaking method for swinging on a swing… 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: Welcome to Power Up, the Uptime podcast focused on the new, hot off the press technology that can change the world. Follow along with me, Allen Hall, and IntelStor’s Phil Totaro, as we discuss the weird, the wild, and the game changing ideas that will charge your energy future. It’s been a beautiful day. Busy week in new ideas, Phil, and our lead off for this week is a cable bundle longevity on wind turbines invention from Inventus Holdings. And Inventus Holdings is actually who, Phil? Philip Totaro: It’s NextEra Energy’s holding company for all their IP filings. So, what’s interesting about this is not just the invention they came up with, but the fact that asset owners and operators in the past Let’s say five to seven years have started filing patents on a lot of different technologies, including something like this, where, they wanted something that would provide them better vibration isolation for the, the cables that are running up and down the tower on a wind turbine. And that’s basically what it is. It’s a, it’s a cable harness. It’s not particularly the sexiest sounding invention but it’s the design was something developed by NextEra because of their field experience. They saw that there were a lot of cable bundles that were having abrasion related reliability issues, and they, they developed this as a means to provide some kind of vibration isolation and, and abrasion isolation for the, the cable bundles to preclude them having to go out there and, and service these things more frequently as they were having to do in the past. So, kudos to to NextEra on developing something that’s going to. Save them time and money doing field repairs. So the, the concept, Allen Hall: it’s a little hard to visualize, but if you’ve ever used a lathe, if you have, you’re turning big objects in a lathe, you need a way to support it on one end it and let it rotate the same time. So it looks like a lay support it’s basically what it is where the harnesses can move around internally to without friction to cause damage because a lot of operators have cable damage right there at the yaw deck because the cables rub against one another and against, and against the deck, which is crazy because the resulting failure modes are ugly and timely take a bunch of time to repair and, So good on Aventus and good on NextEra for coming up with this idea. So our next idea is a lightning protection system for turban blades from MHI, Mitsubishi Heavy Industry. And this one’s a little unique. It’s sort of in my ballpark here in the lightning world. Where they’re trying to measure lightning current, where it attaches to the blade, and they’re envisioning, the Mitsubishi engineers are envisioning, putting a metal leading edge on a portion of the blade near the tip, obviously, and then having a metal tip, and to measure the current on each one of those, to see where lightning is striking on the blade. It seems rather simple at first, Phil, but I think the implementation of this can be difficult. Philip Totaro: Yeah, and it’s, it’s funny because, I mean, the question I have to you maybe is, is this really something that the industry needs? And how, how accurate could something like this even get? Oh, I think it can be very Allen Hall: accurate. The question is, do they need it? We’re working with a lot of operators around the world. At the moment, where lightning attaches on the blade is important, but if it attaches anywhere within the last couple of meters on the blade, not a big worry, as the structural engineers will tell you, once you get about 10 meters down and you start taking lightning punctures, the structural damage becomes more significant, of course, this patent doesn’t address it, but this patent is trying to get at, I think one of the key lightning issues at the moment is, Where is lightning attaching to the blade and what kind of lightning is attaching to a particular part of the blade? Very important information. It’s a, it’s a good idea and it must be based on some of the service history that Mitsubishi has run into with their wind turbines. Yeah. Good concept. All right, Phil, the last idea on the docket is a method of swinging on a swing. Philip Totaro: Sometimes during the course of the, the cataloging of all these patents, which, which we do at Intel store for technology intelligence and intellectual property risk mitigation. We come across things that are just so kooky that we have to talk about them. And this is a patent that was filed in the year 2000 for a method for swinging on a swing. And literally, we’re showing the picture now on screen, but if you, if you read through this thing, it’s literally not any more complicated than just either back and forth or side to side, or maybe combinations thereof. And that’s literally what these people have tried to patent with, with this, and I’m, I’m befuddled, as I usually am with these, with these wacky patents that we do, but I am just befuddled. Allen Hall: Well, the inventor called it Tarzan swinging, so you, normally you go sort of front to back on a swing. What this one was is going to side to side, which I’m sure the person in the hot seat here It would make you tremendously nauseous. Swinging by itself isn’t bad, but if you add in a side element to that, I see a lot of upset stomachs in this scenario. But, the one piece about this patent is the patent office came back and revised it. And canceled all the claims. Philip Totaro: Originally, right. Allen Hall: Right, so even though the patent examiner had blessed it and let it go through, evidently there was opposition to it, probably from people like you, Phil, that go through these patents and said, this is ridiculous. This can’t stand. And so the patent office essentially rescinded it. So good on the patent office. We like to see it more happen more often, I think. Philip Totaro: But I’ll tell you what, Alan, my absolute favorite part about this whole thing, besides everything we just covered, is that it’s literally stated in this patent application, actual jungle forestry is not required.

GE Vernova’s CEO, Scott Straszak, announced at a conference that the company is on schedule to lose about $300 million in Q3. It seems the blade failures at Dogger Bank and Vineyard Wind are resulting in a big chunk of these losses. And many European companies have decided to leave Vietnam due to the country’s relationship to China. Register to attend AMI’s Wind Turbine Blades Boston, October 2nd and 3rd. Enter to win 2 VIP NASCAR pit passes at the Kansas Motor Speedway! 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 Philip Totaro: Phil, you were just at RE+ in Anaheim, sunny Anaheim. How’d it go? I was extremely sunny and face meltingly hot on the first couple of days from the heat wave we’ve had in California. It was like a hundred and three degrees on Monday and then it started cooling off thankfully more recently, but there were, I don’t know the official number but they were telling me it was close to 40, 000 attendees. So I’ve done a few of these events before in at the Anaheim Convention Center, if you’re familiar with it. It can hold that capacity, but it was absolutely bursting at the seams. And people absolutely everywhere. I’ve never seen that so jam packed. The interesting thing about it is there were many different exhibitors there. But the overwhelming majority of them seemed like they were supply chain companies. Which was a little disappointing on my part. I was, I was there to try to talk to project developers and financiers anyway. But the supply chain companies that were there covering the spectrum of both residential and utility scale solar, as well as battery storage technology, really interesting stuff. There’s some, they’re making great strides in some of the solar module manufacturing and sell. Technology and even some of the packaging and integration is getting pretty slick. Keep in mind, too, that, CAPEX for solar compared to wind is still You know what about 15 to 20 percent lower at this point? Especially in the U. S. market anyway so you’re seeing, it’s rather substantial amount of interest at this point in solar and hybrid battery storage projects. And everybody that was there, the energy of the event was good. We didn’t sadly do an uptime wind energy podcast there. So they’re a little light on the the wind energy content that, that the, rebranded solar Power International re, which is now repl, but we hope to be able to address that in the future. Allen Hall: It’s a sunny conference for our solar and battery festival, which is really what it is. Makes sense. I just wish when we get to some of our wind conferences, we’re in places that are windy. We don’t tend to go to places that are windy, like Kansas or Oklahoma. Philip Totaro: I got news for you. It seems like next year we’re gonna be in Phoenix Arizona, right? So that, that’s gonna be hot and maybe a little miserable, cause I think it’s happening in May. Allen Hall: Yeah, we’re in a solar hotbed. We should be at a wind site. I know, irony. I’m Alan Hall, and I’ll be joined by the rest of the Uptime hosts after these news headlines. The United States is seeing significant growth in offshore wind development. Massachusetts and Rhode Island are moving forward with three offshore wind projects totaling 2. 9 gigawatts. The projects, named South Coast Wind, New England Wind 1, and Vineyard Wind 2, are expected to power approximately 1. 6 million homes. This development brings both states closer to their renewable energy goals, with Massachusetts aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. power sector carbon emissions by 50 percent by 2030 and 100 percent by 2050, while Rhode Island targets 100 percent renewable energy use by 2033. In a related milestone, the Revolution Wind Project has installed its first offshore wind turbine, marking Rhode Island and Connecticut’s first utility scale offshore wind farm. Developed by Orsted and Eversource, the project will feature 65 Siemens Gamesa turbines and generate 704 megawatts when fully operational. The installation is supported by efforts at three New England ports and is expected to create 1, 200 jobs. while advancing workforce development and infrastructure investments across both states. Further south, Festus has secured its first U. S. offshore wind order for Empire Wind 1 off the coast of New York. The 810 megawatt order includes 54 V236 15 megawatt turbines and a five year service agreement. The project will transform the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal into a major offshore wind hub, supporting the staging and pre assembly of wind turbine components. Moving onshore, Colorado is leading the nation in wind energy jobs, ranking third in wind energy related jobs per capita. For The state is part of a broader trend with wind turbine service technicians projected to be the fastest growing job in the United States over the next decade. Colorado’s renewable energy sector continues to gain momentum. With the state ranking seventh per capita nationwide for wind and solar generation projects last year. In support of this growing workforce, the National Fire Protection Association has launched the industry’s first Wind Turbine Technician I certification program. This initiative aims to provide the emerging wind workforce with the necessary skills to excel and work safely in the rapidly developing wind energy sector. The certification is designed for newcomers to the industry and those who have completed foundational courses in wind turbines and electrical safety. Turning to Europe, GE Vernova has announced a milestone agreement for onshore wind, signing a deal with Public Power Corporation Renewables. to supply 23 of GE Vernova’s 6. 1158 turbines for a wind farm in Romania. This 140 megawatt project expands GE Vernova’s presence in Romania, adding to their existing installed base of more than 700 megawatts in the country. The project is expected to be fully operational by the end of 2025 and will support Romania’s goal of adding 5 gigawatts of wind capacity By 2030. However, the European wind industry is facing challenges. German trade union IG Metall and employee representatives from Siemens Energy are calling for protection against unfair Chinese competition in the wind turbine manufacturing sector. Their concerns were sparked by a preliminary agreement between German renewable energy asset manager Luxgara and Chinese manufacturer Mingyang for 16 offshore wind turbines. The Union warns that heavily subsidized Chinese companies could distort competition and potentially endanger jobs and energy supply in Europe. In Asia, Eurus Energy Holdings Corporation has launched the reconstruction of the Adano Sawa wind farms in Japan. The project will replace 10 turbines with 7 new 4. 3 megawatt turbines supplied by Siemens Gamesa. Increasing the total capacity from 13 megawatts to 43 megawatts. This upgrade aims to maximize the use of local wind resources and is scheduled for completion by March, 2027. Lastly, in a development that could reshape the wind energy landscape, the H two mirror off grid wind project in Denmark has successfully integrated two electrolyzers with a megawatt scale wind turbine. This system could soon be replicated on onshore wind turbines, potentially reducing green hydrogen production costs. That’s this week’s top news stories. After the break, I’ll be joined by my co host, CEO, and founder of Intel Store, Phil Totaro. Joel Saxum: As busy wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial. And let’s face it, 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. Allen Hall: All right, Phil, we got a couple of items we need to kick off the show with and first is the AMI Wind Turbine Blades Boston event on October 2nd and 3rd. And if you haven’t registered for that event, you need to do that now and get your tickets to Boston, which will be beautiful. In early October, that conference is focused around materials, design, manufacturing, performance of wind turbine blades and along with all the testing and maintenance and life cycle management of blades. So anything to do with blades is going to be in Boston and you better be there. So just Google AMI wind turbine blades, Boston, and it’ll pop up, go ahead and register and get yourself to Boston. At Weathergard, we are having a contest, a VIP contest with NASCAR. And NASCAR driver, Kyle Weatherman, and that event is on September 28th at the Kansas Speedway in Kansas City, Kansas. So if you’re around that area and want to go. Do something really cool with NASCAR that allows you to get on track, get into the pits, get into the garage. You can watch the race from pit lane and you are right in the middle of the action. Then if you like that kind of stuff, now’s the time. This is free. If you can win these two tickets, the way to do it is to visit weatherguardwin. com slash contest. And do it quick, and hopefully you win. All right, Phil, a lot of news this week coming from GE Vernova, where Scott Straszak was at a conference and said GE Vernova, the wind business, is on schedule to lose about 300 million. Yes, Philip Totaro: and to be clear, this wasn’t their official Q3 release, but we understand because it’s also been widely reported in multiple news outlets that he said this at sounds a financial industry conference. It’s obviously a little concerning considering the fact that, uh, they were expecting to be a little more profitable than this at this point but it also sounds and again, going back to the comments he made at this thing that these blade failures that they’ve had two at Dogger Bank and one at Vineyard Wind in the past, I think it’s five or six months now are resulting in a pretty big chunk of these losses. It’s fascinating because when these issues started popping up, you had one and it was a coincidence and potentially concerning. You had another one at Vineyard. Okay, that was due to a manufacturing defect. So they said But now you’ve had three of these incidents, and it’s resulting in, just three incidents, and they’re having a 300 million loss. This is starting to be real money, as they say in, in the industry. At this point it’s getting to the point where they’re gonna have to do something to reassure people. Because as I’ve talked about on the show in the past as well, If these blade failures keep happening, and it sounds like regardless of whatever the, the issue was that maybe introduced a weakness in the blade, whether it was a manufacturing defect or some transportation damage or installation damage, their procedures when installing is what still seems to be instigating these blade buckling issues. And as a, whatever their scope of responsibility is during the EPC contract to get these turbines up and installed, they’re gonna have to re evaluate these procedures, whether GE’s doing it or it’s their procedure that an EPC contractor’s following. Something’s gonna have to be done about this to ensure that they don’t have any more of these failures, because. If it’s, just taking it on the average Ellen, it’s if, it’s three issues for three hundred million dollars guess what they can’t afford to have, a hundred million of a blade failure. The insurance companies aren’t gonna like it, nobody’s gonna like it. Allen Hall: That’s what I was trying to figure out. So in Q2 Renova the wind part lost about a hundred million dollars from what I can remember off the top of my head. So 300 million in QQ three is a big number. So the delta is a couple hundred million. How much do you really think is driven by the three blade failures? Philip Totaro: Keep in mind, too, yeah, it’s a good point, because keep in mind, though, that they’re seeing a bit of a soft revenue recognition potentially in Q3. Again, they haven’t released official numbers yet, but, Based on what the CEO of Vernova is saying, it sounds like, that’s the direction things are headed in, but the reality of it is the, because of the way that these contracts for the turbine supply and the EPC, again, Vernova’s responsibility during the installation and commissioning of turbines until the thing is actually fully commissioned and there’s been an official, switch. Flipped on this and the commissioning is taking place. There’s no handover to the asset owner or operator So it’s GE’s financial responsibility and keep in mind that you know It’s not just the losses aren’t just from the physical damage to a blade which can be replaced Although that’s you know, you’re talking about somewhere between 800, 000 and 1. 2 million per blade for those blades so that’s one part of it. The bigger part of it is trying to get the vessels necessary to do A, the cleanup, and B, the take the tear down and replacement of the blades that have failed. That’s extra vessel time, and, we all know that these vessels, particularly ones that are needed for a 12 to 13 plus megawatt turbine, those are 000 a day. That’s where it starts adding up. It doesn’t take into account the full 300 million dollar loss, but it’s gonna start adding up to be a sizable chunk of it. Allen Hall: This is also coupled with the projections of a really soft 2025 for GE. GE’s thinking about, in the single digits of onshore. Single digit gigawatts, gigawatts this year in 2024 and next year is not really looking much different for them based on their projections today. The onshore softness is a little unusual with all the ongoing IRA bill. Efforts more recent discussions on other news sources, the, I think the consensus around the industry is that the IRA bill, while exciting and maybe driving some new technology that’s years in the future, is not really making a substantial change in the onshore installations this year or next year, and it’s not really changing too much on the offshore side at the moment. Is GE then planning reorganizing around that Philip Totaro: softness? That’s a good question. But let me also underscore what the real issues are with the IRA bill. It’s we still have permitting and interconnection queue issues that are resulting in, these delays that are resulting in this quote unquote softness that may, in fact, as you suggested, require them to potentially restructure and reorganize a few things. But it’s the fact that we, you can pass an IRA bill that’s going to give people a PTC, but if they can’t build a project and get it in the ground, they can’t claim the PTC. So that’s part of what the issue is here, is we still have, Permitting reform to get through. If we’re going to get it through Congress, we got to do that. In the meantime, at state level and county level, you’re still seeing tons of jurisdictions that have moratoriums on wind and solar development, which is problematic. Coupled with these enormous interconnection queues, where a lot of solar projects that are never going to get built are taking up a lot of space, and both FERC and the regional ISOs are trying to figure out how do we even accommodate, these annual tranches of interconnection review studies and requests that we have. When we know like a lot of this stuff isn’t actually gonna get built because it’s never gonna get financed, they’re submitting proposals in the interconnection queue. A lot of these solar project developers in particular for on kind of a wish and a prayer that they’re gonna, get somebody to interested enough because they’re in the queue. They’re going to get somebody interested enough to provide them with finance, but it doesn’t look like that’s happening. So it’s having all these ancillary effects, including on GE specifically, where, you know I can assume that they’re seeing some softness in 2025. But again, this is, that is a bit problematic considering where they have previously stated they wanted and needed to be in terms of their, for Nova and particularly the wind business units profitability. By now, Allen Hall: there’s only so many turbines you’re going to repower at the moment, which is the vast majority of what is happening right now, existing farms that are just repowering to retrigger the tax credits, everything that’s new has been slowly developing and there are, have been some new sites developed, but not at the pace you would think they would be developed. Interconnection queue, I think being one of those big stopping points, the second one, which is being discussed all the time right now is interest rates. Interest rates still haven’t dropped to levels that they probably should be at right now, and the Fed is still Holding out and we haven’t seen any real direction from him in the last week or so. There’s a lot of discussion online in the Wall Street Journal and those news kind of sources are all anticipating a drop, but yet it hasn’t happened. That does make 2025 for GE and everybody else, soft, Philip Totaro: right? Exactly. And it’s like you say, it’s not just going to be a GE for Nova problem. It will also impact Vestas, who recently, overtook GE in kind of quarterly installations in the U. S. But it’s, if you also start looking at order book for everybody. You’ve got Siemens trying to come back into the market with selling the 4 megawatt 145, 155 platform. But I haven’t heard any, confirmed deals in order for that yet. You’ve got Nordax trying to, take a lot of those deals that should’ve been Siemens away but they’re, they’re making progress, but they aren’t announcing as many deals as one might hope yet. Although, again, the performance on the N 149 and N 163 has been fairly robust, certainly even globally, but they could be doing more in the U. S. market, but it’s just, it’s not even their fault, it’s just the market’s moving a little slow. And then, with Renova, they’re still largely selling the two point X platform. They’ve got, the one big deal with pattern to, to do the 3.6 1 54, but I haven’t seen ’em announced anything else on, on that turbine yet. And then what’s even happening with the six megawatt in the us for Renova and then as again, as far as Vestus goes. Yes they’re getting some orders sold with the, their V 163 and the V 150. And some, repowerings with the V 110 two megawatt platform and such, but it’s we’re lacking order book substantial order book to, to convince me that 2025 is going to be significantly robust, certainly in the first and second quarter. Now, things can be done to unlock more potential, but at this point, if you’re taking an order today, it’s for delivery and probably around 12 months minimum. So if they don’t start plumping up the numbers in terms of order book for the third and fourth quarter deal announcements this year, any of the OEMs. They’re going to have a problem. They’re all going to have a problem in 2025, Alan. The real problem is, I Allen Hall: think, the softness and the projections for GE and Vestas, which are the two big players at the minute, if they can’t change the direction. in terms of orders. I’m sure they’re beating all the bushes all around the world at the moment trying to make sales. If they can’t change that over the next couple of weeks, and from what I see, I think they got to really slow down on all the, any sort of advanced development is going to slow down. They’re not going to be hiring new people. That’s going to slow down. All the IRB, a bill benefits are going to slowly. Go away. And the part that is most troubling to me is you don’t see the Department of Energy discussing this or trying to react to it or provide any guidance on how we’re going to change it. It has been silenced for the last couple of months, most likely because of the election. However, that doesn’t help GE or Vestas and all the employees that they have. It is a self fulfilling prophecy at the minute. If you’re not going to say anything or try to do anything about it, then with interest rates remaining high, The outcome is pre baked, right? 2025 is going to be pretty well cooked here at the, in December of 24. It’s over, which is a shame, which is a real shame. Philip Totaro: Yeah. And keep in mind too, so the predominant benefit provided by the IRA bill is in and around the production tax credit, but it’s not the only one. There are these manufacturing tax credits that are also available through, the 48 C. But that’s only going to apply to GE for the 3. 6154 and the 6 megawatt 158 platforms. Which they haven’t really started, they’re just starting ramping up the production on the 3. 6154 at this point. Everything else is either 48c manufacturing tax credits that they may have previously been receiving or, TPI is getting the benefit of it for blades or et cetera, et cetera. So the point is that They, you’re right, if they don’t have order booked and they’re not able to take advantage of any of these new tax credits, that’s going to also mean that their, like you say, their R& D budget is going to be probably frozen and hiring is going to likely be frozen. It’s going to have a, Potentially big impact on what they’re able to do. And they’re still, look, despite the fact that Vestas had a good quarter last quarter and may have, overtook GE in their little, head to head competition now in the U. S. market. GE still controls the vast majority of the U. S. In terms of cumulative installed capacity and at the end of the day, if they’re not building new or they’re not able to repower, their entire fleet that’s going to have a dramatic financial impact. Allen Hall: When we come back, I want to talk about the bigger picture about where GE and Vestas are going to go if the United States. It doesn’t have a lot of activity, obviously Europe, but one of those places was Vietnam, but I think that’s changing rapidly over the last week. Let’s discuss that when we come back. 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: Phil, if everybody’s been watching the news There’s a number of European companies, wind related companies, that are leaving Vietnam and quickly. And you did a little research into why that is, because the public announcements just say, Hey, we’re refocusing in a different place, we’re pulling out, we’re pulling all the staff out. And leaving that marketplace in, in entirety, not even really keeping anybody there from what the announcements say, which is, I think, really odd, because even if you want to reduce your headcount in a particular country, you still want to have a presence there. And I think the same thing’s kind of happened in Brazil, by the way with GE and Siemens there. They evacuated the country. What is happening in Vietnam? What’s driving this? I Philip Totaro: don’t know. About three months ago, there was actually a meeting between top government officials between Vietnam and China. And as a result of that meeting they wanted to institute further closer ties and collaboration, particularly in industries around energy and renewable energy in particular. That was going to include manufacturing, that was going to include project development, investment et cetera. And subsequent to that again, we’re not here to speculate, but we’ll present the facts. The Vietnamese government has recently instigated a corruption probe, and I’ll maybe put that in air quotes here, saying corruption probe. These companies that are pulling out are mostly western companies. You had Econor, just today you had Skatex selling a a project in Vietnam to Susie Partners. And on top of that, Anel Greenpower, earlier this week, announced that they were also pulling out of the Vi the Vietnamese market. Vietnam’s a growing market but it sounds like if I can use a joke or a phrase from a Seinfeld episode, it was little communista simpatico. Between, the Vietnamese government and the Chinese government, where they want to be able to work together in a collaborative fashion, and they want the Western companies, largely speaking, to be out. How does that Allen Hall: play out, though, Phil? If China is going to declare areas off limits, then Why wouldn’t Europe do something similar? Philip Totaro: The European Union is going to be able to exclude Chinese companies from more markets than the Chinese would be able to in collaboration with, sympathetic governments like Vietnam. That’s not something that they’d be able to successfully do in, let’s say, Australia, or even Pakistan, or other, major markets outside of China where the Chinese have a big presence already. Thailand is another one for instance. So, there’s still, it doesn’t mean that they’re gonna start blocking off all of Southeast Asia for Western companies. What it does mean is that in this one particular market it, it feels like it’s a retaliatory action. Allen Hall: So what effect does that have on the bottom line of a GE or a Vestas at the moment where they see those countries being removed from the available marketplace rapidly? All this is happening in the last 12 months. Vietnam lost, a lot of Africa has disappeared, Brazil’s gone. Not in play at the moment for GE, at least it’s not. What does that mean in terms of numbers? What percent of the revenue was driven from those countries? And is it going to be a bigger problem as they go forward? If the U S and Europe do not ramp up their installations. Philip Totaro: Starting with the first part. The amount of revenue that a lot of these companies derive from different foreign markets varies for GE. The bulk of their revenue was always and probably will be always derived from the U. S. But for companies like Vestas, they are highly dependent on, international export markets outside of Europe where they want to be able to grow the footprint. But even, let’s take Brazil as an example. The challenge that they’ve had there is been based on we’ll call it PPA prices, coupled with this dynamic with the, between the independent power producers and the power offtakers, where And they’re not really amenable to given them, as favorable of a price given some of the currency devaluation and the fact that there’s a lot of hydro and solar that’s still available, that’s also cheap and they can take advantage of that. So that’s going to change some of the market dynamics, but it means also that, companies like GE and Siemens have had to pull out of a market like Brazil, for example, because. They just don’t have sufficient order book to justify waiting around for that market to pick back up. Allen Hall: Have the financial numbers and the basically the ticker price, stock price for GE Investus, because the market’s always about six months ahead, have they built that into their models, into their forecast for the valuation of these companies, because it feels like right now, It, it has, it, things are happening so fast that the stock values are increasing and rightly there would be future value there. However, it’s not being tempered enough by the loss of the marketplace combined with the interest rates. So I think they see a lot of news about renewable power, which pumps them up for sure. And rightly they should be pumped up because of that. However, they’re not. The European market and the United States market are not going to install as much as we had anticipated. Where does that come in into the stock price? And when does it affect the stock price? Philip Totaro: Yeah okay, so there’s a couple of things at play there, and this is a great question, actually. When a company like GE will pull out of a market like Brazil, or these other companies pull out of Vietnam or, other markets become inaccessible, It’s actually potentially a benefit to their stock price. The reason being is that they’re not spending capital pursuing what would otherwise be an unprofitable market. And so Wall Street looks at that and says, Oh, that’s actually a good thing. You’re consolidating and you’re, saving cash, which they expect is going to be paid out to them, and other investors in the form of dividends. So they, they look at that type of consolidation sometimes favorably if it’s being done in the right way that again it’s consolidating the portfolio of available markets down into those which are going to actually turn a profit albeit maybe thinner margins, but it’s at least not chewing up so much upfront capital costs to be able to go and chase a market that They’re not going to be successful in so that’s the first aspect of it. However, longer term, the fact that they don’t have access to growth markets and growth potential limits what they can ultimately achieve in terms of their, top line and their ultimate bottom line profitability when they are going to lack access to. Additional markets that would maybe make up for, like if sales drop in the U S and Europe, they could go into markets like Columbia or, again, Vietnam, Thailand, wherever in Southeast Asia and make up for those sales that are dropping in a market like the U S. Allen Hall: I think this is the real problem. I think the stock market is rewarding renewable energy companies for becoming leaner. You start to see that, obviously the news reports indicate that you’re becoming leaner. That generally makes everybody happy because it would make the profits higher. However, unless the U S and Europe step up installations, it is a problem area. It’s going to be a longer term problem area, not in 24, maybe at the end of 25, but definitely 26, 26 will be the year to watch. And as we get moving forward, that’s the outlook and where, what does the stock price look like in a year and a half or so? And where do they go? How big can they eventually grow to without major UK, eu, US government involvement to step Philip Totaro: up projects? This becomes a universal question where we’ve got things like the IRA bill in the us there are some, political maneuverings in the EU to get this, new deal done as they call it. But at the end of the day, they’re. They’re not really moving fast enough and they’re not moving in a way that’s actually helping to sustain the industry because you we’ve seen and we’ve talked about on the show. Over the past few months, companies that are pulling up stakes out of Europe and going up and setting up factories in China or India to take advantage of, lower cost access to raw materials or labor because they just can’t compete with or sustain what they’re trying to do with a limited amount of order book in Europe. Even if your order book goes down, if your overheads high. Which it would be in Europe, or even the U. S., where you’ve got, pension costs and all these other things, the overhead’s just higher. That’s less sustainable than if you go over to India, you set up a factory, and the order book is still similarly limited. You might at least be able to survive it better because your cash flow isn’t as, as heavily impacted. Gotta be able to do something. Allen Hall: That, for a manufacturer, is a very careful walk. You can’t deviate. That bridge is narrow to get to success there. As soon as you move your operation out of Europe to China or India, much less in India, I think, China and specifically, when the EU starts to retaliate and the UK and the U. S. is pretty much heading there right now, you’re stuck because you have lowered your overhead by probably 30, 40 percent, maybe more. However, now you’re generating product from this country, which may have tariffs. And when it comes into the U. S. So you may have lost all that advantage and you made the switch. It’s hard to go back. That I think is perilous for a lot of manufacturers. And that’s got to be the decision that’s happening in boardrooms right now. Do I make this move to China or do I just eat it? No, I’m going to have narrow profits, marginal profits for the next six months to a year in the hopes that EU and UK, US decide to be restrictive and then create its own marketplace. Philip Totaro: And to your point, are those governments, it’s like renouncing your citizenship in the U. S. or something. They deliberately make it a pain in the butt to do it, and they deliberately make you feel horrible about leaving, and are they really gonna be, welcome you back with open arms, like the prodigal son returning? I doubt it. And that’s the reality of that situation. So it is a a decision that needs to be measured in the boardroom. Allen Hall: It’s not a simple financial calculation at the moment. Five years ago, total simple calculation, absolutely gonna move it to the lowest cost country, which have been China or even Brazil in some instances. Now you’re, you may not do that because the political atmosphere has changed. Really interesting dynamics. Thanks. After the break here, Phil, I want to touch upon the latest PES Win Magazine that has just come out. And if you haven’t received it, we’re going to talk about one of the articles I’ve already read, which is from Bergalin, and all the cool things that they’re building right now. 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 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. Phil, in the latest PES Win Magazine, which you can download at PESWin. com or have it mailed to you. Mine is still in the mail from the Royal Mail. I’m not expecting any moment, but I had a little insight into the magazine. And the article that I first saw and was most intriguing at the beginning was this article from Bergalin. And if you haven’t looked at their products lately, you need to go do that. The one that is the hot seller at the minute is this one component top coat paint, basically. So if you’re doing repair out in the field. And you got a big area you just fixed with fiberglass and resin and all these great things and it looks all great. You want to coat that, right? So to prevent UV degradation and weathering of that. New composite structure you just built. Most of the kits you buy, the top coat kits are two parts. You have to mix them together and they cure. So you have this limited window in which you use it. And then you end up wasting a lot of material in my opinion, having done it. So the one component top coat is really interesting. And in fact, I’ve ordered that material and I’ve used that material and we’re playing with it now and evaluating it at WeatherGuard. It looks pretty good. It is a lot easier to use for sure. I don’t think it gives you as smooth a finish as maybe a two part system, which has a lot of other additives to it, I’ll call it, that may not be the best smelling additives but the one component system. It’s pretty simple to use. You just, it is literally a squirt bottle and you just take a roller and spread it around and it dries relatively quickly. And so far it has worked well on our tests. So thumbs up on that one. And, but Brooklyn has a couple of other things, Phil. One is they got this, um, UV cured system for composite. So you can actually cure, uh, pre preg using UV, which I think is the slickest thing ever. And I think a lot of operators in repair companies, ISPs are starting to use because of the speed of it. But they’re also working on some leading edge protection and some high temperature fillers, an erosion resistant top coat is in play at the minute. So the people at Bergland, you figure we’ve been, and Phil, you’ve been around us a long time. There’s been so much to do with the materials that are applied to wind turbine blades that extend a lifetime and we still haven’t reached that pinnacle. There’s still a lot of great ideas coming into that mix to make better materials and Bergalin, it clearly is working really hard on it. Good stuff. So if you’re interested in seeing the Bergelin information, just visit PESWin. com. That’s going to do it for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy podcast. Thanks for listening. Please give us a five star rating on your podcast platform and subscribe in the show notes below to Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter. And check out Rosie’s YouTube channel, Engineering with Rosie. And we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.

Doosan is localizing production of 10 MW wind turbines in Korea, aiming to increase the localization rate of components to 70 percent by next year. IPS has acquired the assets of ABB Industrial Services Business Unit. And Dongtam Group invests 200 million in a wind power equipment factory in Vietnam. 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: I’m Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech. And I’m here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Tutaro. And this is your Newsflash. Newsflash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you want market intelligence that generates revenue, then book a demonstration of IntelStor at IntelStor. com. Doosan Enerbility has announced plans to localize 10 megawatt class wind turbines as part of a national project. The company is collaborating with four public power companies. and five small and medium sized enterprises. The project aims to increase the localization rate of components to 70 percent by next year with demonstrations planned after 2027. Phil, a 10 megawatt turbine is a big enterprise to try to complete. Is Doosan ready for that? Philip Totaro: Yeah, this is a great question because obviously Doosan as an industrial conglomerate in Korea, they’ve got a significant amount of experience with, building, and, and system integration. And for those that aren’t familiar, Doosan also has in the past licensed wind turbine technology. And designs from different Western companies, including American Superconductor where, they’ve got I forget precisely the number of turbines, but it’s, maybe a couple hundred in, in and around Korea that, that they operate. They’re spending, what they’re saying, is gonna be about 50 billion Korean won on this, which is a substantial chunk of, of money to, to put behind an R& D project to get a, a 10 megawatt turbine built. And really why they’re doing it is because they want to, if, if people haven’t been paying attention, there was a recent announcement between another Korean company, Unison where they’re going to increase their collaboration and bring, Chinese developed technology into the Korean market. So, Doosan being I guess, patriotic national company wants to wants to be able to counter that, that move and develop their own, kind of homegrown or at least somewhat home developed technology, even if it, if it comes from a, a licensed design from a Western company, they’re, they’re looking to, build a lot of offshore projects in, in the Korean market. And, previously they were going to utilize 3 megawatt or 5 megawatt or even 8 megawatt turbines, but the fact they have the ability to, to hopefully go up to 10 should put them in, in good stead with some of the other project development companies that are, are going to be looking to use them as a, as a viable supplier. Allen Hall: Integrated Power Services has acquired the assets of ABB Industrial Services Business Unit. This acquisition adds five service centers across North America to IPS’s network, expanding their capabilities in electric motor generator and switchgear repair and maintenance. The new locations are in Arizona, Indiana, North Carolina, Alberta and Ontario up in Canada and they’re offering repair and on site services for electric motors up to 50, 000 horsepower and low and medium voltage switchgear from 480 volts to 15 kilovolts. Well, this is a unique acquisition. Why is ABB divesting of this holding right now? Philip Totaro: I’ll take a slightly different perspective on it, which is IPS is actually interested in this. And maybe that’s what they did is was to kind of pry this out of ABB’s hands. But for those that aren’t familiar, IPS is an existing vendor of is some, components, electrical system components, control system components for the wind energy sector and has been for a number of years but they’ve recently been building out their services business. And so for them to be able to take over as you as you described, their their motors, generators, switchgear, circuit breakers it gives IPS a much more robust capability. And so I think that’s where, again, my perspective, Allen, is that this was more of a desire and a pull from IPS rather than necessarily a desire on ABB’s part to let it go, but, they obviously let it go for the right price, and it gives IPS the ability to complement other acquisitions that they’ve recently made in the past three to five years, as well as that. Things that IPS wants to do with growing the services segment of their, their business. Allen Hall: Dongtam Group and CS Wind Corporation have announced plans to build a 200 million wind power equipment factory in Vietnam. The facility will be constructed on 124 acres of land leased by Dongtam to CS Wind Vietnam. It will be one of the largest wind power equipment production factories globally, with the capacity to produce tens of thousands of units per year, supplying equipment ranging from 500 to 4, 000 metric tons per item. This is unique, Phil. You see a lot of action happening in Vietnam at the moment, many European companies exiting The vietnam marketplace but see us when going in quick and putting a lot of money in what is the transition all about? Philip Totaro: Well this this is kind of fascinating because as we’ve described in, in the uptime wind energy podcast, there are a number of companies, particularly western european project developers that are kind of pulling up cs wind has had a presence previously in vietnam, albeit at a much smaller scale. But to be getting together with the Vietnamese company and investing 200 million in, in a new factory to, to do, towers and foundations and, and things like that really does give them much more access to the domestic market, which is growing but also international markets where, for those that don’t know, you know, besides China or any domestically made towers in Europe or the U. S. Vietnam and Indonesia are two of the biggest markets where towers are actually made and, and exported from. So this gives CS Wind in particular again, along with with Dongtam group the opportunity to, to collaborate and ensure that they can, continue the, the addressing the, the demand growth that we see for, for towers.

This week we discuss Vestas’ system to determine the quality of wind turbine blades before recycling and Siemens Gamesa’s noise reduction idea. Then Crosswind’s blade pitching system to increase wake mixing and a seemingly common to patch a hole in the wall. Visit https://www.intelstor.com/ to inquire about their IP Prism services! 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: Welcome to Power-Up, the Uptime podcast focused on the new hot off the press technology that can change the world. Follow along with me, Alan Hall and IntelStor’s, Phil Totaro, as we discuss the weird, the wild, and the game changing ideas that will charge your energy future. All right, Phil, this week, a number of really interesting ideas. This first one comes from Vestas and it is about recycling a wind turbine blades. And it’s a, it’s sort of a different approach. The quality of the material that they can recycle out of a wind turbine blade is obviously based upon how that blade has been treated or how, what its life looked like ahead of time. So they’re The patent idea is to use machine learning to determine the quality of the recycled material up front, so they can process the blades more efficiently. That’s an interesting approach. Come on. Vestas, Philip Totaro: obviously, very creative company. And to be able to characterize the, the lifespan of the material prior to trying to take it into the recycling phase. Because the quality of the material that you’re recycling may end up impacting the, post recycling usage. So for instance, if you’re trying to put it into concrete, you may need a certain grade of, fiber. That, that is something that could, as, as the industry continues to kind of grow with this recycling initiatives. This could come into play in the future, again, I don’t know that you necessarily need machine learning to facilitate all this, I think that’s a bit of a buzzword y, aspect of the invention, but Joel Saxum: In the grand scheme of things, the way I’m looking at this problem is this, recycling a blade engineer, or blades, hot topic. AI machine learning, hot topic, great way for Vestas to throw these together and boost this thing out for an ESG stamp that says, we’re working on this and we’re using AI to blah, blah, blah. At the end of the day, you need the bill of materials with what the blade was originally built with, and you need to know whether they got some crazy kind of LEP on it, or different blade coding for de icing or something, and that’s it. Allen Hall: The second idea comes from Siemens Gamesa and. It’s the, the Bose headset of wind turbine blades. That’s the only way I can describe this thing where it’s a noise reduction system. It’s active noise. So what they do like Bose does is they create an opposite signal. To, to knock, to cancel the, the noise that the blade is making. So they have an actuator that sits on the blade and then it has speakers in it and a little gas chamber to improve its sound ability. And they can do active noise canceling on a blade. Now Phil, what I’m wondering is, it’s a, it’s a cool idea and it’s been used in aircraft for a long time. Is it something that would be used on a Winturn blade? I mean, they only have very, very narrow applications, I would think. Philip Totaro: Here’s what’s interesting about it, is you’re correct that I, I haven’t actually seen this in use. I would assume that they’ve done some testing on it. Certainly some, lab testing and potentially some field testing, although likely at a test site. I as opposed to an actual wind farm. The technology we have today is pretty much all passive in terms of serrated trailing edges or other, you can even kind of orient the vortex generators on, on the blade to provide you with the, the performance benefit and the aero benefit of it, but also minimize the noise. But those are all passive solutions. Something like this, As you mentioned, it’s, it’s literally trying to do, active noise cancellation on, the, the vortices that, that come off the, the blade. And it’s a clever idea, to be sure. Whether or not we need it is another question, because as we’re looking, particularly in Europe, as we look to push setbacks to smaller and smaller distances, going from maybe 1, 500 meters to 1, 000 meters to 500 meters in some countries, this could come into play and you could need something beyond what you can get out of the, the, decibel reduction from serrated trailing edges, for example, And this act of noise cancellation may, may be necessary. Allen Hall: And our last wind focused idea is, and you see this a lot, is changing the orientation of a wind turbine upstream. So the downstream turbines you have are more efficient. Most of that is focused and that effort is focused on ya moving the turbines in ya. This patent by a company called Crosswind CV is. saying they can do a similar thing by pitching the angle of the blades as they rotate to vary the induction factor. And then that creates a wake behind the turbines that change over time, increasing wake mixing. So instead of just turning the turbine a little bit, Now you’re actively moving the blades to create a downwind effect. This sounds interesting, Phil. It’s a different approach, for sure. But there’s some load issues on the blades that I would be concerned about. Is, is that why it hasn’t been implemented yet? Because it does seem like a good idea. Philip Totaro: You are correct that a, a pitch only solution would necessarily introduce a some amount of asymmetric loading potentially, which does, introduce, fatigue issues, and, and, component life issues on pitch bearings, and, and even the main shaft, and, and, et cetera. But, there’s nothing that says that they wouldn’t necessarily try to combine this technology with yaw as well. Because what you really want to be able to do, the whole point of wake steering is that you don’t either introduce loads into turbines that are downstream from an upstream turbine, or you also don’t want to impact the air performance of the turbines downstream. So this is a way to Potentially combine this pitch control system with yaw control to be able to, specifically channel And steer that wake in in a way that yaw control alone wouldn’t necessarily allow you to do So it’s pretty clever and I’m, I’m gonna say, a lot of things are pretty clever but I believe that they are going to crosswind which again is Idiko and Shell. I believe they are going to test this at some of the new North Holland coast wind farms that they’re currently in the process of building and, and getting commissioned. So I believe this technology will be tested and they’ll, hopefully see a benefit out of the development of this this innovation. Joel Saxum: What I would like to see and maybe maybe crosswinds before they get out to the field with this is Alan and I just had a great conversation a couple months ago with R& D test systems engineers that are working on hybrid testing for and a lot of it is for pitch bearings and some of the other components that are hard to test. I’d like to see them put something like this. Through its paces in a hybrid testing environment before they get offshore, because offshore, I see a lot of costs skyrocketing by doing this. Now, again, I haven’t dove into the, the engineering completely behind this. I’ve just read a patent on it. So that might again, my opinion is from an armchair engineer, but unless you’re going to gain a significant amount of AEP on some large turbines, the O and M costs skyrocketing, In the long run may offset the a EP gains. Allen Hall: And for our fun patent of the week, we are looking into repairing a hole in a wall and who hasn’t punched a hole in a wall lately. And at an inventor in Newport Beach, California has a, pat has a patent that describes how you can fix that hole. You punch the wall after watching the Cowboys game. And basically, this patent is the world’s simplest thing, Phil, and I’m struggling to understand how they actually got a patent for this. So, you punch a hole in the wall, okay, you got this odd shaped hole in the wall, kind of fish shaped hole, and then what the patent says is, well, you make that hole square, a normal shape, and then you cut another piece of drywall out, that exactly the same shape, and you stuff it in there, and you patch it over. If this is a real patent, this gentleman from Newport Beach is extremely wealthy, because I’ve seen this on television, on those Home and Gardening Fix It Up shows, I’ve seen this used a thousand times. So is it Philip Totaro: real? Keep in mind that this particular patent, and it is a patent, Alan, it was issued in 2006, but filed by somebody originally in 2001. And, based on that, I would like to think that somebody had probably popped a hole in a wall before and patched it up with dry, drywall and a spackle, which is basically what this, this patent describes. I would like to think that prior to 2001, the that, that concept has been utilized.

Allen and Joel speak to Bryant Bertrand, CEO and co-founder of Ronin, to discuss their innovative power ascenders used in the wind industry. Ronin’s technology makes turbine climbs faster, safer, and less physically demanding for technicians, potentially transforming maintenance operations. Their products are designed with the technician in mind, from operation simplicity to weight. 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: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, joined by my co host, Joel Saxum. Today, joining us is Bryant Bertrand, CEO and co founder of Ronin. And for those of you who haven’t encountered their equipment yet, Ronin is a company at the forefront of vertical access technology. They develop power ascenders aiming to make turbine climbs faster, safer, and less physically demanding for technicians. In today’s episode, we’ll explore how Ronin’s ascenders are impacting maintenance operations from. Routine inspections to major component exchanges. And we’ll discuss the technology behind the devices, their safety features, and how they comply with industry standards. . Will also share his insights on real world performance data and user experiences from wind farms across the country. So whether you’re a technician looking to optimize your climb times or an engineer interested in the latest maintenance tech or a site engineer considering ways to enhance your team’s efficiency, this conversation promises valuable insight. Allen Hall: Welcome to the program. Joel Saxum: Thanks for having me on guys. Bryant, give us a, give us the rundown. Give us the general thing here. What are you guys doing? What is the product? Bryant Bertrand: Yeah. So let me give you just a little background on myself. My team, we came out of the rescue industry. Predominantly we were designing hoists and winches for helicopters. So this is the mountainside Coast Guard rescue that you typically see on helicopters and believe it or not, there’s not rescues happening every day and a lot of times these birds get multipurpose into commercial activities and those activities may be dropping a technician off on a transmission tower, an offshore wind turbine, oil and gas platform, but we would just see a ton of access issues for men and women that are climbing in these at height industries. And so we took a look saying how can we get some better access tools out there for these workers that are working on ropes. And we took a look at a lot of technology and specifically we looked at the military technology that was being deployed for power descenders. And you guys might have seen maybe videos of these devices coming out of the water SEAL teams or tactical teams doing on, off, offshore shipboarding with it. And we said how do we take this technology which is. Very nichey, very military, very high, highly tech and make a more commercialized product that’s more looked like a tool. And that’s really. Where Ronan was founded on, and we’ve seen great success there and bringing these tools in these industries. And they serve a number of great purposes in addressing access challenges and fatigue reduction and efficiency. And that’s really the core founding message of this business is to bring this technology to the forefront. And allow it to essentially elevate the workforce. Allen Hall: So the key I’ve noticed from the Ronin technology is it’s pretty compact and I’ve seen old style ascenders and technicians out there with these things that look like they’re from the 1980s and they’re just these big, massive machines and they don’t move that well. And I wonder about how safe they are. Ronan’s changed all that, right? Your stuff is clean. Bryant Bertrand: So when you look at what we’re trying to do, with the Ronan product line, is we’re trying to have it very closely aligned with traditional fall protection equipment. And so when you talk about rope access, and you talk about people up and climbing, and the tools that they’re currently using, It’s an industry where maybe size you don’t want larger size. You want smaller size, right? So you’re talking about workspaces. You’re talking about equipment in front of you and around you, stuff that you’re going to be positioning off. So size is really important. Really, when we took a look at the technology, we said, Hey, great technology. It’s out there. It’s a great access tool. Nobody has access to it. And so it’s really about fundamentally looking at why don’t people have access to it? And one of the things is size. And ability to priced accordingly and training and ease of use and all those things that allow this to have better access within industry. And so that’s really our core focus. And if you look at Ronan technology and where we’re always going to try to take it as our goal is to continue to get smaller, more affordable, better access, easier to use, easier to train, easier to roll out because, the biggest disservice we see right now with power to senders is. Companies are looking at this technology to really extract the full benefits you can get out of it. You need to really look at rolling it out across your workforce. And to do that, you need to have technology that obviously is trainable, priced appropriately, small, compact and available. And so it’s really about breaking down those barriers of interest, entrance, getting more technicians able to have access to equipment because it is transformed for their lives and it’s transformed for the businesses that are using it. Joel Saxum: I think something important here to touch on as well is you see this sometimes when innovative products come to the market, whether, it doesn’t matter what market or what industry it’s in, specifically here we’re in the wind industry, right? So when a product comes to market and you have to fight many fires to get it accepted within the product you’re not doing that as much, right? You’re, rope access is definitely a thing. Working at heights is definitely a thing. Lifting kit is already a thing. These are things that people are doing in the industry day after day, but they’re doing it manually. Or they’re doing it in a less efficient manner. Like the one we had talked off air a little bit, one of the things we talked about was, say someone’s out doing a big blade repair, and this blade repair may be, most, as we as these blades get bigger, and the repairs get bigger, and the damages get bigger you’re not working on a, a one square foot area right in front of your face. You’re working on a repair that might be a couple meters long. When you come down, and like I’m sailed down on the blade, and you start grinding, or you start prepping, or you start doing whatever, work task you need to do, a lot of times you need to go back up. So what happens then is you have to manually upsale yourself back up your rope. And I’m not a rope access guy, so I can’t tell you exactly how to do that. But I do know that it’s a manual process, right? So you’re going to wear yourself out. You’re getting fatigued at the end of the day. Sometimes, and I don’t want to, you don’t want to see this, but at the end of the day, if it was like, you may see people cutting corners cause they’re man, I got to climb back up there. But now it’s just the flip of a switch. You’re back up to the top of the repair. Bryant Bertrand: Yeah. So really, when you talk about, in, in speaking to the wind industry, they’re going to use this device and a number of core functions, one will be personal ascension. When talking about blade repair, and the efficiency to be able to go back up and down that blade on inspection and repair, super important. So when you look at climbing from a rope standpoint on a synthetic rope, as you’re jogging or footlocking or manually trying to get yourself back up a lot of wear and tear on the body, a lot of soft tissue muscle damage, you’re actually inducing a lot of shock load on the body just in that core function. That’s some of the stuff that wears our climbers out. And not only are they’re jogging up their weight, they’re jogging up their tools, their personal protective equipment. So you’re talking about your own body weight and typically 45 pounds on your body to move that. The power to center starts to. eliminate those challenges. So not only are you going to get better body ergonomics, you’re going to get better efficiency when you’re doing that type of work out there on the blades. Subsequently, this device is also being used in rescue. So if you had a rescue situation where you needed to do a two man pickoff, this is a device where when minutes matter, you’re going to be able to get down and do that assist and get to that climber. Many times, when you look at It, it injuries out there where there is a fall or there is suspension trauma times. What really matters, in that harness and that suspension state, it’s about 15 minutes to that body can go into cardiac arrest. So getting down there, relieving that pressure, taking that load off that individual and getting them down is extremely critical in that process. So you’ll see it being used in a rescue capacity also for an injured person. And then the third area is. is material hauling. So when you talk about inside that turbine, getting material up and down that center, maybe on a pitch motor change out or anything in that nature, this is going to be your tool that maybe that chain hoist or that electric hoist on the inside isn’t working. You have a difficult access point. Where a traditional fixed fixed hoist and winches are going to work well, you can be transitioning and using these ascenders. And from a material standpoint, that synthetic rope’s a lot easier medium to work off inside those turbines. So when you talk about a chain hoist or anything else and residents building up, that’s going to beat that infrastructure up, just wearing it out further, more maintenance. So it’s a very portable, very flexible lifting tool. It’s going to offer a lot to the industry. In terms of access. So again, people, material, rescue. You’re getting a lot of application out of one device. Allen Hall: So a lot of site managers are considering ascenders and it’s confusing looking out into the marketplace. What should they be looking for in an ascender for their crews? I think we hit on that a little bit earlier, Bryant Bertrand: When you’re looking at technology and typically, when the military has been purchasing ascenders for tactical operatives, they’re paying about 100, 000 in the center. That’s just not something you’re going to sit and deploy out to every single journeyman that’s starting their career, but you’re not even, you’re not going to consider it. And when getting them this career technology or in their careers when it matters, right? That’s how you promote career longevity. That’s how you promote retention in the industry. And number one thing is you got to get equipment that’s aligned price wise. And so something that you can roll out across your workforce. So a typical Ronin kit is going to start under 5, 000 for those kits. So it’s a little bit more closely aligned with what the cost would be outfitting your techs and traditional fall protection equipment, except it’s going to bring the Ascension portion to it, which is going to promote safety and efficiency that the rest of the person protective equipment. Is not going to be able to provide. It’s just adding the body weight and the reaction response in case there is an injury. So you’re going to get, a benefit to this worker immediately right away at a price point that you can say now we’re going to build a program around this, right? We’re going to get this, we’re going to bring it in and something that we can get across our workforce. Because if you just buy one or two of these and they’re sitting in the box, they’re not getting in the hands of crews, then you get no transformative benefits, right? You looked at the technology, right? You jumped into it, but you’re not really transforming your safety, your work environment, your efficiency. So we’re really much aligned with treat this item as a tool, a standard tool, build the standards around it, build it across your organization, extract the benefits. And that’s really, the message that we’re trying to do different with the technology. Get it out of this niche realm of gadget and head it into straight tool, a tool, something you can hand a worker. They can work with, it’s available, they know how to use it, and it’s there on site. Joel Saxum: I think we’ve seen, in other kind of ascending tools, like a friend of the podcast 3S Lift. Their lifts have been fantastic for the morale, the fatigue, all the technicians love them to the point now where they’re just requesting them on site. And that’s just the lift to get up in the turbine, right? And I’m not saying just because it’s a really important thing for those technicians. They love them. And so this, the Ronin Ascender, that’s the tool that is for everything else but that lift, right? Right there. Have the 3S lift inside, great for the technicians, you use the Roan and Ascender for everything else you do around the turbine to make sure that your guys are up and down. But I think what that rolls into as well is, it becomes, you can become part of the training and safety culture part of it, right? So when we go and visit training centers around the country, we see 3S lifts right in the training center, and I think that’s a big part of what you guys are doing. You’re working with Spratt. You guys are you’re right on with those guys. Bryant Bertrand: Absolutely. Training is, the training is the key. And so the Ronin goes into a ton of industries, outside of just when you’re talking telecom, oil and gas, mining. Our retreat care and they’re all going to have different methods of work and different methods of access. And so really what we try to do is work with the training houses to build certified programs around this technology that are industry specific that makes sense for that industry. So we’re always out there partnering with these training houses to develop these programs for early introduction into a technician’s career that makes sense for that specific industry. The red. And what’s crazy about adhide industries is you see it, technicians may start in one industry and they traverse to another industry That’s a climbing industry, but maybe in a different market And you know with technology like this and the companies that invest into technology like this They’re going to be able to retrain those workers. It’s not know, infrastructure is getting less complex and we’re not building more of it day in and day out and all infrastructure needs to be maintained. And these are difficult industries to recruit or train retain in, and really having this technology and recognizing its value to your efficiency and the worker is going to help you, retain the best, attract the best. and keep the best as healthy as possible. And we need it. People want their power, people want their cell connection, people want their gas, people want everything that infrastructure provides. And it is me, primarily maintained by men and women up on ropes. Day in and day out to make sure Allen Hall: this stuff Bryant Bertrand: is working that Allen Hall: we take for granted if you go to Ronin’s website Ronin power Ascender comm there’s a lot of good information there and Bryant I your website is really well laid out You can navigate it and understand what’s going on. Bryant Bertrand: I appreciate that And we try to do our best to lay it out in a very meaningful way where we have information so people can understand this because at the end of the day, this is new technology for many people. And so we’re here to help those businesses start that journey, start that education process. We don’t expect, business to get into this and be power centers, experts, and where OSHA regulations. And. And what they need to do to be working properly within regulations. That’s where we come in. That’s where we’re here to help you on that journey of exploration, understanding implementation and use. And that’s our jobs is a manufacturer not to just hand you product, but be there as a solution provider all the way through the process of adoption, especially with new technology. Allen Hall: Is there a particular ascender that the wind industry technicians are clamoring for that you get a lot of requests for? Bryant Bertrand: The newest, yeah, the newest ascender that we have is our Ronin TL ascender and that’s our smaller ascender. That’s one we’ve shrunk down in size. So that ascender, is roughly 18 pounds with the battery. And it’s going to be able to do single person ascension at 400 pounds, two person rescues at 600 pounds. And material hauling up to 1600 pounds. So a lot of lifting power out of a very small, very light device. That’s unique, right? That’s a 1600 pounds is a lot of kit. That’s a lot of kit. That’s a lot of lift in, in for most stuff that’s going to handle a lot of the material lifting that you need, for, The type of work that they’re doing. Allen Hall: Once I purchase a Ronin Ascender is what’s the typical maintenance on that piece of equipment? Am I sending it back to the factory or is there things that I’m doing myself to, to make sure it’s running properly? Bryant Bertrand: So you have a couple options. And so when we certified our device, what we did is we did a a time based certification. So we allow a business to take a device out of the box and use it as much as they want for a one year period. After that one year period, it needs to come back. For an inspection that can either come back to the facility or we can train the organization on how to do those inspections internally. It depends on the organization, what the program looks like, if they want that. So they have a number of options. They can be internally doing that inspection or sending it in for that inspection. And the reason we did a time based certification is that takes the burden away from the operator to track usage. So on the device itself, they can pull it out. They can use it. If they’re using it daily as a winch or daily as a, an, as an ceer, they don’t need to track usage or rope footage on that. Joel Saxum: I think that’s pretty standard in the industry anyways. Like a year, like of any PPE for climbing, whether it’s your har harnesses or ropes Yeah. Bryant Bertrand: Most life safety. You want to take it back and do an inspection on it, on an annual basis. Yeah. It’s really critical. In terms of really making sure that. Equipment and especially anything that you’re hanging on, is within that. And we do track that on the devices, every device is serialized and on the ID plate. We track that service acting as a calibration date, notifying when it needs to come back, when the next one’s due. And so we try to make it very visual, for that operator to know when they pull a piece of equipment out, I’m using a piece of equipment that’s in service or outside of service. Joel Saxum: Yes. In the wind industry, what has been the most uptake? Is it rope access repair people or where’s most of your sales come from? Bryant Bertrand: We see it across the board. So I would say, 50 percent of our sender sales within wind are going for rope access and another 50 percent are going for material hauling. One thing to keep in mind with this type of technology in this commercial industry, And so in rescue, you’re allowed to ascend a person and lift material on the same equipment. That’s how OSHA deems that acceptable. But as soon as you’re doing a commercial activity, you really need to dedicate ascenders for life safety and then ascenders for rigging. So they’re not going to let you mix and match. So you’re not going to be able to take an ascender that a person’s using for human ascension and then say, I’m going to take that same ascender and go, lift a pitch motor. Technically you would be breaking A violation there in terms of rules and regulations on that. So that’s part of the education process we train So when we look at job sites or crews, it’s really about matching Two pieces of ascender one for human one for material so that they have both those options And that’s where again pricing affordably makes a heck of a lot of sense because if you’re going to have multiple functions going on and you want to stay within regulatory bounds and get all the capabilities. You’re going to need to have equipment and we do a lot of things to help I. D. That we have different color coding options that we offer to to businesses so they can see, Hey, here’s my Ascender show winching. Here’s my one for human, we call out different nomenclature on the ID plates from. Which in standards as opposed to human standards. So there’s different visual IDQs that we do to help separate that technology, make it sense for the industry. Allen Hall: I want to go back to the website for a minute because it’s really good. And one of the things that also I noticed is on the safety portion of the website, you have a sort of training videos, which are on YouTube, but they’re in English and Spanish. Super helpful. Bryant Bertrand: Yeah, we’re trying to expand all the different languages. The Ronin goes worldwide and we started shipping these devices in 2018 and we’ve got about 5, 000 of them now out in the field in various countries. And this thing is touched and been shipped into about 40 different countries already. So we see worldwide use with the product at height work, it’s not just a us challenge. It’s a world, it’s a worldwide challenge. And, essentially people are really starting to recognize the technology and starting to bring it in at a large level, and that’s great for the industry. That’s where we want to see it. We want to continue to develop best practices and all these industries help develop better standards technology that makes sense. And so we’re continuing to see that. And, if you look the long term, If you look at the long term vision of where this product’s at, when you look at the things and how regulations come about, typically, most of the time regulations don’t start at the top and then flow their way to the bottom. It really starts at industries developing best practices. Those best practices then become standards. Those standards get evaluated for goodness and regulation comes in. This is what we’re going to do, and eventually you’ll see that with power to sender technology. There’s no other piece of personal protective equipment that I can present to you that’s going to do this much for fatigue and ergonomics stress. And if you take any look at NSE data, the top running issues right now that have been a number of years over, over exertion and fatigue, right? That’s a claim area that continues to rise. across all industries. It’s a reality. We’re working harder than ever before to maintain this infrastructure. And there’s very little tools I can present to you that’s going to really address that fatigue aspect, especially for climbers. And most of the stuff, time when you look at a climber, you’re just adding weight to their body. You’re adding personal protective equipment. That’s going to hopefully keep them safe from an injury, but it doesn’t have a lot of proactive preventiveness against something like fatigue, so it compounds it. And if you look at fall data and most fall data, you can see how fatigue and falls are very much coming together. If you look at most data out there and statistically, most falls are happening at the end of the day. Why are they happening at the end of day? That’s when the technicians most tired. That’s when they make the mistake. That’s when the accident happens. So we’re trying to bring this technology in as a way to say, Hey, this may possibly have a great, proactive, preventative approach lowering the two areas of claims that we continue to see rise year and year after year. So if you are a business and you are an environmental health and safety person or safety person within your organization, and you’re not looking at this technology, I strongly suggest. to spend some time to really understand it. It will transform your safety in a way that no other piece of equipment can right now. Allen Hall: Absolutely. And Bryant, how do people get a hold of you to order a Ronin Ascender? Bryant Bertrand: Obviously, they can go to the website, RoninPowerDescenders. com. You can, there’s a number on there where you can call in. We’re readily available and reachable. You can also find me on LinkedIn. Just hit Bryant Bertrand, LinkedIn. Ronan and you’ll find me there. You can ping me there. You can reach me on my email, which is bbertran at ronanascenders. com and reach out. I’m interested in talking to you, interested in how we can start to work with you, how we can get out there, demo with you. If you’re a training house and you’re interested to build a certification or training program around this, we’re interested in talking to you. We’re all about working with industry right now to help bring this technology up, elevate our workers. It’s the biggest. It’s the biggest disservice of any climbing of all climbing industries because you see it across the board These technicians start at the top but work their way to the bottom and we’re trying to change that right now Keep them doing what they love out there up there and healthy. Allen Hall: Amen. So if you’re interested in ronin power centers head to the website Or contact Bryant. Bryant, thank you so much for being on the podcast. This has been a really interesting discussion. Bryant Bertrand: Guys. I appreciate it. Thank you. We’re here. If the guys, if your listeners have any other questions or follow up, they can just reach out and we’re here to help.

The Uptime team does a deep dive on the Mingyang Ocean X offshore turbine, exploring it’s engineering features and possible effect on the offshore wind turbine market. Plus, you can wind two free NASCAR VIP tickets with Kyle Weatherman by entering at https://weatherguardwind.com/contest/! 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: Before we start the show, we have an announcement. Our favorite NASCAR driver Kyle Weatherman has two VIP tickets to the Hollywood Casino 400 NASCAR Xfinity race, and you can win these tickets. The race is held at the Kansas Speedway in Kansas City, Kansas. On September 28th, which is a Saturday, VIP tickets include premium access to the race, the pit area and the garage. You can watch the race on pit road and hang out with Kyle Weatherman and the DGM racing team. You will need to provide your own transportation to and from the race but it’ll be a great event. In order to enter this contest you need to visit weatherguardwind.com slash contest where you can enter. I’m Allen Hall and I’ll be joined by the rest of the Uptime hosts after these news headlines. The UK’s latest renewable auction has given a significant boost to the offshore wind sector. With a record budget of 1. 5 billion pounds, the auction awarded contracts to 131 wind, solar, and tidal projects, capable of generating almost 10 gigawatts of capacity. Notable winners include Orsted’s Hornsea 4 project in Iberdrola’s East Anglia two, and three projects. However, analysts note that this still falls short of the capacity needed to meet the country’s target of 60 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. The UK has reached a significant milestone in wind power generation capacity. The country has surpassed the 30 gigawatt mark of combined offshore and onshore wind installations. This milestone was achieved with the commissioning of SSE Renewable’s 443 megawatt Viking Wind Farm. in Shetland this past June. According to Renewable UK, the UK’s current wind capacity can meet the annual power demand of over 26 million homes and reduce carbon emissions by more than 35 million tons per year. In Sweden, Vattenfall has decided to pause the development of the Swedish Krikers Flak offshore wind power project due to unfavorable investment conditions. This project, located about 30 kilometers south of Trollberg, was estimated to generate 2. 7 terawatt hours of fossil free electricity annually. Fattenfall cited the lack of a reasonable connection point to the national grid offshore as a key factor in this decision. U. S. wind energy investment has seen a significant boost in the first half of 2024, according to Bloomberg NEF’s Renewable Energy Investment Tracker. While solar investment fell by 12 percent to 26. 5 billion, wind projects secured 12 billion in funding. This surge has contributed to a 63 percent increase in total renewable energy investment in the U. S. Orsted, the Danish company developing Rhode Island’s first commercial offshore wind project, has announced plans to expand its presence in the Ocean State. The company will open a new engineering, procurement, and construction hub in Providence, relocating to a 17, 000 square foot office building. Orsted also plans to double its existing 100 person workforce in Rhode Island in the coming years. Over in New Jersey, the leading light wind project is facing challenges. The company has requested a pause from the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities through late December due to difficulties in securing a turbine blade manufacturer. This setback follows Orsted’s decision to scrap two offshore wind farms in New Jersey last year, citing financial infeasibility. Western Australia has declared a new offshore wind zone off the coast of Bunbury, but with significant modifications. The area has been reduced by half to 4, 000 square kilometers and pushed further offshore, now starting at least 30 kilometers from the coast. This change aims to address concerns from local communities, particularly recreational fishers. The zone has the potential to support 11. 4 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity, enough to power the entire main grid’s current demands. And in New Mexico, they’re set to grow. to see two new massive wind projects on state land. EDF Renewable’s Silver Stallion project in Grant County will generate 400 megawatts, while Energex Renewable Energy’s project in Hidalgo County will produce 150 megawatts. These projects are expected to bring over 146 million in revenue for land beneficiaries, primarily public schools. The projects will likely take about three to five years to become fully operational. And that’s this week’s top news stories. After the break, I’ll be joined by my co host, Renewable Energy Expert and founder of Pardalote Consulting, Rosemary Barnes, CEO and founder of Intel Store, Phil Totaro, and the Chief Commercial Officer of WeatherGuard, Jules Sexum. 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: We haven’t talked about this item. For a number of weeks and I know it keeps popping up. So I thought this is a good time to discuss it, which is the Mingyang OceanX the V turbine has two 8. 3 megawatt nacelles on a V shaped floating platform. And what this means for the industry as we’ve been discussing for a number of weeks, months at this point as turban sizes get bigger and bigger, they seem to have more problems that are almost unrecoverable at some level, particularly when they’re out in the ocean and this Ming Yang approach seems to simplify it because they’re using two smaller, simpler turbans that are just bolted together. And I want to get Rosie’s opinion on this. Thanks. Just to understand, is this a good idea and is it making energy cheaper by this approach? Rosemary Barnes: I like the, it’s called a multi rotor concept when you have two or more rotors on the same tower. And I quite like it for a few reasons. So one of the advantages is there’s like a slight aerodynamic advantage from putting rotors close together. But I think the bigger advantage is that you can have the smaller rotor, which is, like a more reliable design. That’s better known, we’ve been making rotors of that size, like an eight megawatt rotor is a lot more yeah, like well known and I’m a lot more experienced making that size rotor than there is of a 16 megawatt one. So you can expect better reliability. It’s a lot easier, to get a factory that can make components of that size you would expect less defects and less like dire consequences if you stuff something up a little bit. And you can get that, but at the same time, get the advantage of having fewer electrical connections, fewer turbines to like fewer sites to visit, to do maintenance. That sort of thing. So it is a best of a both world type thing. Minyang aren’t the first ones to do it. Vestas like quite a few years ago now, like maybe five or more years ago, they had a multi rotor design that I think had four rotors on the one tower. And they made one, tested a concept turbine and got some interesting results, but found that it wasn’t necessarily yeah, like a economically viable at that time, I think that theirs was for onshore. And then there’s other like new concepts like wind catching and yeah, a few other lesser known ones that are also like looking into that. So yeah, I do think that, like going bigger and bigger with rotors is causing a lot of problems. Seems like I even see that onshore as well as offshore. And so I think that the multi rotor concept is like a really good chance to try to get the best of both worlds with the both big and small kind of. Joel Saxum: There’s some interesting parts of this thing though, too, being that it is for offshore floating because again, we’re in the, we’re in the early stages of offshore floating when there’s not really a whole lot out there for, utility scale, large installments at all. So you have a, they’ve integrated some other. Cool marine stuff that’s been done before but into this new concept. So there is a, on the back of this thing, it’s a single point mooring system. Like in the oil and gas world. We use it on an FPSO, which is like a big floating production facility. So you take a big thing and you just mow it on one point so that it can actually wind vein around as the prevailing wind direction changes the whole floating. mechanism changes instead of just like we’re used to with the pit, the turbine yawing itself. They also put in some weight saving stuff here, some weight and ease of construction savings, as far as not having to have for a 16 megawatt tower, which would be this thing would be a massive piece of steel, very heavy, huge bearings, all kinds of different things. What they ended up, what they were able to do here is to put small, smaller steel Basically, what would be the towers at angles and then cable stay them back and forth so you have less steel It’s a bit lighter a bit easier to handle key side So there is some there’s some really cool things that they’re doing here and maybe some of these maybe this thing goes Commercial and it’s economy of scale and they build a bunch of them And you see them start to get deployed either, you know in the APAC region or around the world Or, they do this and they take some of the concepts from it that proved to work really well and use it in the next generation of whatever they’re going to do for floating offshore. Allen Hall: I have some other unique pieces here, Joel, which I think are interesting. They’re using ultra high performance concrete as part of the floating platforms, like Three floats and concrete arms to connect them. I’m assuming it’s all pre stressed just to simplify it and make it more efficient. But they’ve basically tried multiple things in this design, right? It’s not just the V, right? The You have all the cables, the stay cables and all that together. So you probably put in what 10 different kinds of technologies at the same time. Is that indicative of just going for it? Let’s just build it. And if it stays together, we’ve got this really cool platform we can then build upon, or is it, Hey, we’re just checking out different technologies. I’m going to put one out in the water and. Wait a year to see what happens. Joel Saxum: I would be willing to bet within Ming Yang, you have those two camps probably fighting with each other. Or at least you would if that was an engineering project in the western world. You would have people saying, let’s just go for it and try it. Or the other half going we’ll see what comes of it. And we’ll use the technologies that may make sense and may not. Either way, there’s a couple of episodes of The Power Up here, isn’t there, Phil? Philip Totaro: Yes where we’ll talk about the the technology that they’re using. But I wanted to actually go back to something Allen asked, which is whether or not this is better LCOE. And I’m actually going to come down on the side of no taking into account the fact that this is not yet at scale. The reason that I think it’s not going to actually be better LCOE is because we already have Certain scale with monopile and other technologies. I know this is a floating one, but my point is that this idea of having multiple hubs and rotors on the same like tower and foundation structure, while there are absolutely rosemary’s right, there are certain aerodynamic benefits to it. The balance of plant. Doesn’t give you as much savings as you think because you still need a certain amount of material now. You don’t need, to foundations. I will concede that. But if you need a thicker, bigger foundation, you’re still spending the money. There’s also, different failure modes that are potentially introduced with the technology like this that aren’t yet a understood or be we don’t have a standardized way of doing an RCA and repairs for this sort of thing. So keep in mind that right now this is a science project, quote unquote in China while they investigate the viability of this. But keep in mind a couple of other things. Mingyang wants to do floating for some of these Italian offshore projects where they signed an MOU to build a factory there. They also just today, as we record signed an MOU with Unison in South Korea to build offshore turbines in Korea. Now I’m assuming that these are going to be more traditional ones, but keep in mind as well that there’s a ton of floating projects that are lined up in South Korea, so this technology, if they want to adapt it could end up being scaled up and used in that market. So there, there are some, there’s kind of benefits and drawbacks on both sides, but I’m not quite sold on the idea that the LCOE is going to be as, as good as what we currently have in the industry. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. But I think that like when you calculate LCOE, you need to know the long term operating and maintenance costs, which for floating offshore wind is. I don’t think that well known at the moment. Like we just saw the high wind Tampa and the first first commercial floating offshore wind farm has just come offline for months to have major maintenance done just a few years into the project lifetime. So I think that there is still, we’re still in the the period of floating offshore wind where we should be trying a lot of different ideas. And I feel like that’s the strength of Chinese technology development is that they just, they don’t spend I don’t get sucked into analysis paralysis. They don’t spend a lot of time deciding what is the very best thing that we could do next. It’s more okay, what are all of the possible ideas, including some that are just like, seem outrageous or stupid at first analysis. Yes. They just try it all and then see which one succeeds. And I don’t think it’s such a big deal if, the, there’s like spectacular failures now and then, but yeah, I just feel like I see that in all kinds of Chinese technology development, you’ll get energy storage they’re not only dominating lithium ion batteries, they’re also installing flow batteries much larger than anywhere else in the world. They’re also installing, yeah, lots of pumped hydro even gravity energy storage, like that energy vault concept. They’ve got a couple of those being built in China where everywhere else in the world they’re like, this is clearly a dumb idea. So yeah. I just think that’s their, it’s got to be their strategy, right? Like just the brute force method to try absolutely every idea. Then you’re guaranteed to have the best one that is, you’ve got the best one like automatically because you tried everything. Whereas if you, Pick winners. Then you might miss the good one. Joel Saxum: I think there’s something interesting to be said there about Chinese innovation as well, because classically Chinese and innovation isn’t really two words that go together. They’re usually a me too on the development side. They just follow what everybody else is doing. They don’t really come out with their own thing. And if you look at this Ming Yang concept from the surface, it looks like this big, crazy new thing. But. But as you’ve stated, Vesta’s tried a multi rotor concept. A lot of the things that they’re using in the marine portion of this, the actual floating foundation, they’ve been done in other areas and for other kind of infrastructure, but now they’re all just being pieces being put together on one thing. But yeah, it is interesting to say or to see. The difference in innovation I guess it’s, I wouldn’t say innovation. I’d say it’s just, to me, it’s the capital behind it. Like the, a lot of times the Chinese government is just get here’s the money, do this. Here’s the money, do this. Whereas in other places in the world, you have private money needs to do that. And it’s harder to fail at innovation doing that way. Allen Hall: Who’s the author of the book you like about when you do big projects, what’s the name of that author? Rosemary Barnes: Bent Flubia, How Big Things Get Done. Allen Hall: How Big Things Get Done. And there was a recent podcast. where he was talking about projects in China. And I think in particular, I think it was hydro and trying to get data on what the energy produced was, uptimes and those sorts of things. And he said, the data out of China is so hard to get, and you’re not going to get be able to tap into it. So it’s really hard to tell how a lot of these projects turn out, which then the rest of the world has to basically repeat. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s true. I didn’t use the example of those like hydro is one of those things where it’s like always a fairly unique project to do. Like you can’t do one hydro project and go, Oh, we know how to build the next dam because it’s a different dam, the the geography is different. You have to start from scratch to a certain extent each time, but I think it’s under, it’s undeniable what they’ve achieved with batteries and solar panels. And I guess to a certain extent, like there is some government subsidy involved that is skewing how cheap they’ve really become, but like for sure, China learned how to make solar panels very quickly, very efficiently, very cheaply. And I think that it’s it’s not just like unfair to not give them credit for the innovation that that came with that. But it’s also I think that it’s not helping us to be so obsessed with the fact that’s thinking that’s lesser than the, the science. I think that we’re really. Handicapping ourselves by minimizing the role that, that engineering and even other stuff like project management and finance, they’re having a big impact on the costs of these projects and. Yeah, if we’re just like, we’re just supporting more and more like early level science, I think we’re just going to miss out again. We’re going to have another example of yeah, like missing the boat on the next solar power or the next, like lithium ion battery chemistry or whatever. Philip Totaro: Keep in mind too, one, one other thing to add on this or a couple of things. First is this design actually wasn’t Ming Yang’s, it’s actually done by a European company Ming Yang’s licensed this technology from Aerovide Engineering now that said Rosemary’s right that they’ve absolutely taken in. The technology from wherever they got it from and they’ve scaled it, but they’re the reason and I actually wrote a piece for this in recharge back in 2016 that was like watch out for the Chinese and their innovation because it’s about to explode and guess what so the reality of it is the reason that I wrote that back in 2016 was the fact that the Chinese companies were getting all these profits. And they were installing so much, even domestically, that they were getting a ton of cash. So it’s not just that they get, a certain amount of government support. We all know that they do to a certain extent. But it’s the fact that they had a bunch of profits that they could plow back into doing basic R& D. But that they don’t just get something up to, like a TRL or something. And then stop like we tend to do in the West. They took it all the way to TRL nine, some of these, not every single technology or innovation that they had, but the things that they thought were good ideas they brought them into, commercial production. So this is, what we’re talking about this floating platform is one example of something that it could go into commercial production. It might not, but. It demonstrates the fact that they’re actually willing to put some cash behind doing, like a full scale prototype and not just like some design engineering and bench testing on things. They want to be able to get things up to TRL 9 so that it gives them more ammunition when they want to be able to go and strike these deals that they’re trying to get internationally. This is all part of a very long term strategy. They don’t look till next financial quarter. They look at the next 50 years and in 50 years, China wants to be the dominant force in the world. On energy technology, Joel Saxum: our wind farm of the week is from Republic County, Kansas near Bellevue. It’s the high banks wind project from next era. And this is to date as next era has a really good website that gives you some details about this project and they stayed on it to date. Invested approximately 1. 8 billion dollars into Kansas direct investment including eight operational wind energy centers So the high banks wind project will provide the county 224 million dollars in tax revenue over its life approximately 149 million in landowner payments and it Sponsored 350 construction jobs So the wind turbine is the largest wind farm and or the wind turbine farm is the largest one in kansas as well It’s 233 GE2X wind turbines capable of generating approximately 600 megawatts of energy. The project has 15 full time jobs on it and there’s a couple of really interesting things around it. There’s a lot of information online and I just dug through some of the economic impact. And there was an interesting statement where Kansas has a law where new wind farms can apply to be tax exempt for the first 10 years but what Nexter ended up doing here is instead of claiming that completely they got the tax exempt status but they decided that they would give basically a donation back to the county in lieu of taxes So they have a statement here and an agreement with the county that says As a new member of the local business community, NextEra wishes to demonstrate good citizenship by making a commitment to assist the county in improving and maintaining a physical, business, and social environment benefiting all members of the community, and directly contribute to the county for potential impacts of the wind project within or upon the county by making contributions to the county. And they have all kinds of different kind of items that they can contribute to and all these different things, but what it basically pours out to is every year NextEra will write a 750, 000 check to the county that their wind farm is located in. Yeah! And, furthermore, the life, there was a study done by, on this particular wind farm done by Kansas University. The Institute for Policy and Social Research finds that the total benefit to society and this comes from hard payments, tax payments also getting into ESG goals of offsetting climate change and other things. But the total benefit to society from this High Banks Wind Farm by Nextera in northern Kansas is 2. 5 billion with a B. High Banks Wind Project from Nextera up in Republic County, Kansas, you are our Wind Farm of the Week. Allen Hall: That’s going to do it for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy podcast. Thanks for listening. Please give us a five star rating on your podcast platform and subscribe in the show notes below to Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter. And check out Rosie’s YouTube channel, Engineering with Rosie. And we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

This week, Allen, Joel and Phil discuss RES acquiring drone inspection company Sulzer Schmid, EDF Renewables entering the Korean offshore market, and Equinor’s choice to downsize their renewables division. 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: I’m Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech. And I’m here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, Joel Saxum. And this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you want market intelligence that generates revenue, then book a demonstration of IntelStor at IntelStor. com. RES has acquired Solzer Schmidt. A Swiss firm specializing in autonomous drone inspections for wind turbine blades. This acquisition aims to strengthen RES’s digital solutions and operations and maintenance services. Solzer Schmidt’s 3DX blade platform uses autonomous drones for wind turbine blade inspections, providing 100 percent coverage and high quality inspection data, which is one of the reasons that RES acquired them, obviously. Phil, there’s just, does seem to be a number of inspection companies and O& M companies merging to grow bigger and bigger at the moment. Philip Totaro: There is. And what’s interesting about this deal isn’t so much, the, the companies specifically getting together. It’s the fact that yet another O& M company or an O& M generalist. Is getting a specialist in doing something, whether it’s blade inspections, whether it’s gearboxes, whether it’s anything. This has been happening over the past six or, nine months and we’ve been talking about it on, on Newsflash. And the reality of this is, this is yet another kind of piece of the puzzle where you’re gonna see more and more consolidation in the O& M space because the generalist O& M firms need the, the specialists not only for the contracts that they’ve got in place but also these capabilities because a company like res can bring scale to what they’re doing here and it’s it’s an impressive thing. We didn’t see any financial details of the deal disclosed, but it’s still an impressive opportunity for for both companies to be able to. Continue moving forward together. Joel Saxum: So, Sulzer Schmid and the ebb and flow of drone companies has kind of its own carved out spot. They do a lot of work in the, in Europe. They recently had a contract to inspect over 4, 000 turbines with Vestas over in Europe. I think they’ve had it for two years. So that’s very impressive on their side. They’ve gone in some of the technological directions of some of the others with You can fly your own, train your pilots on site fly your own drone. Here’s a smaller drone with an autonomous flight software as a, as as well as their, big enterprise drones to do inspections, but what’s really, it really is a shining part of their business is their software as a service. So that 3DX blade platform, if you’ve ever used it is very, very good. It’s seamless. It’s easy to look at inspections. The quality is there. So, big, good pickup by R. E. S. to grab Soltar Schmidt in my mind, probably the, the best fit for someone to grab right now of the large drone inspection companies, you have your Skyspecs and stuff, and they’re starting to grow arms and legs themselves, whereas Soltar Schmidt has remained in the kind of that The niche that’s good for an acquisition. So kudos to RES for strengthening their internal business portfolio. And congrats to Solter Schmidt for the sale. Allen Hall: EDF Renewables has acquired 100 percent of Shell Overseas Holding limited shares in West Sea Energy One, marking its entry into the South Korean offshore wind market. The company is now exploring the development of a large scale offshore wind project in South Korea. Three identified zones have been, three identified zones have an estimated capacity of up to 1. 5 gigawatts and wind measurements have already been conducted across these areas. Bill, we have seen a number of large operators withdraw from Asia, essentially. Why is EDF headed into that void? Philip Totaro: Exactly for what you just mentioned, Allen. Because Shell is the one that they bought this stake from, and Shell is the one pulling out of Asia. So why does E EDF want to be in South Korea? Because they have confidence in the market and they were probably able to get these assets at, at a, particularly good price, so it, it gives them the opportunity to continue the development process, which is likely to be lengthy in, in South Korea, while they’re still kind of figuring a few things out about the policy and, and the tax structure and whether or not they’re going to have local content regulations and, and to what extent. So it’s a good opportunity for EDF because eventually South Korea will become a major global market in offshore wind. And, EDF gets to kind of get in early. At a, pretty fair price. Joel Saxum: To follow on with what Phil said there, the South Korean wind market is interesting because like on shore, there’s less than 2 gigawatts. It’s there’s not very many. I think it’s like 1700 megawatts or something in the whole country and the government of South Korea has large renewable energy goals, just like everybody, every other major country does in the whole rest of the world. So the only place that they’re really. Is the best opportunity to grow, to get to those goals is an offshore wind play. So, there’s some near shore things. There’s also a lot of floating offshore capability in South Korea there. So the offshore play will be something that is going to get developed in South Korea in the next, three, five, 10 years. So good looking out by UDF getting in there. Allen Hall: Norwegian energy giant Equinor is planning to downsize its renewable energy unit to prioritize profitability over growth. This move reflects the challenges faced by the renewable energy sector, particularly in offshore wind, including rising costs and low returns. Equinor will implement fewer renewable energy projects, fewer markets. Phil, we’re really seeing a lot of withdrawals from European companies in other areas that tend to be focusing on Europe at the minute, and they’re also limiting their renewable investment and going back to oil and gas for a little while. Is that a long term strategy or is this just a short term recovery approach? Philip Totaro: It’s likely to be a short term thing but following on what we just talked about with EDF buying out Shell’s interest in South Korea Econor is pulling out of Vietnam, Spain, and Portugal canceling projects there that had been in largely the early stages of development given the maturity of the company in those markets. Or the markets themselves in the case of Spain and Portugal, they don’t really have, Portugal’s got a demo floating project. But beyond that, they, they just have a wishlist of, of offshore things they’d like to do. So I think that’s also part of it that, they’re, they weren’t making progress fast enough, but it’s also coupled with things that we’ve talked about on the show, for a number of weeks and months now where with interest rates being so high. Companies can’t get access to the volume of capital that would be necessary to fund all the projects. So they’re starting to reprioritize and they’re reprioritizing markets where, like in their case, Norway, where they think they’re going to have better success at building something as opposed to some of these, these far flung markets. So it’s unfortunate. It is, as, as you pointed out, Allen, likely to be a short term thing where. When renewables becomes more profitable again, everybody, including the oil and gas companies, will pile back in, but for now, they’re gone. They’re scaling back. Joel Saxum: So this is exactly as Phil saying, everybody’s BP got their new CEO in last year, the statement was, we’re going to return to profitability for our shareholders. And it’s making sure that they’re protecting their, basically economic interests. Econ or we’ll be back in the offshore wind world or not, not back, but they’ll, they’ll expand in it. But this is a, this is a, A temporary pullback to just make sure that all of their basically shareholders are happy. Funny note here, their main shareholder, 67 percent of the company is owned by the Norwegian state, right? So the Norwegian sovereign fund owns or is a part of a lot of what Econor does. So to maintain that, they’re wanting to de risk their operations, much like a lot of the other oil and gas majors are doing.

Allen Hall and Joel Saxum discuss the critical issue of failed blade bolt inserts with Edo Kuipers of We4Ce. Edo explains the problem, its widespread impact on the wind energy sector, and introduces We4Ce’s innovative solution – an upgraded blade bolt insert that can be retrofitted in the field, potentially saving operators significant downtime and repair costs. 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: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. On this episode, we’re addressing a critical issue that is plaguing the wind energy sector, the problem of failed blade bolt inserts in wind turbine blades. And these failures have a significant concern for wind energy operators, leading to downtime, costly repairs, and the potential for liberated blades. Our guest is Edo Kuipers, owner and engineering manager of We4Ce. And We4Ce is based in the Netherlands. We foresee offers a range of services related to the design and engineering of wind turbine rotor blades. And they have designed an upgraded blade bolt insert that can be retrofitted in the field. And this new insert product could dramatically lower a wind turbine operator’s downtime and blade repair costs. Edo, welcome to the show. Edo Kuipers: Thanks for having me here, Allen and Joel. Allen Hall: So this is a really interesting product, but I first, I want to get to how big of a problem do we have in the industry? And Joel and I have been traveling around the United States quite a bit. And pretty much every farm we stopped at had blade bolt insert issues. They didn’t know why they were having them, but they had them and they were deeply concerned about it because of what could happen to the turban. And Edo, are you seeing the same thing? Are you getting a lot of reach out that way? Edo Kuipers: Yeah, more and more we see this. I think in 2021, we were contacted by the Indian market for the first time. Those were 40 meter long blades, 1. 5 megawatt platform. And those blades were like 13 years on the turbine. And then all suddenly started flying off basically. And more and more recently, this is popping up basically not after 13 years, but after six years, for example, already on a 2. x platform. So yeah, we have been contacted first on the Indian side. We have seen it in Brazil. We have seen it in Thailand, for example, also. So it’s more and more addressing the problem. Also from the Northern America, we have the first context. Joel Saxum: So I think that if we describe basically the breadth of the problem so there’s the, when you bolt the blades on, and if you’re in a, if you’re a wind technician, this stuff, right? You’ve seen it, you’ve done it. You’ve been around these things. For some people that are, yeah, some people that aren’t as technician minded, you may not know exactly what the problem is, but what it is basically when you bolt the blades onto the hub, there’s all these studs, right? And the studs come through, or the studs stick out, you stick it into the receptor on the basically on the hub, and then you bolt ’em on. But if the, where the stud connects into the blade. It doesn’t stay true to its design and becomes loose, it starts to move, then however it’s bolted doesn’t matter at all. Edo Kuipers: Correct. Also, it’s not a bolt problem, it’s the connection between the steel bushing itself. This is like a plug in the wall when you hang up a painting, for example. This plug in the wall is getting loose from the laminate. Allen Hall: All right. So if the inserts are becoming loose. What’s the scale of the, what we think the scale of the problem is. Do we, is it like a 50 percent of blades have this issue? 20 percent of blades have this issue? Cause it sounds like it’s more than 10 percent at the moment. Edo Kuipers: It can be what we have seen, what we’ve noticed that in the past, blade designs had quite a lot of margin, safety margin in them. And what we’ve seen is that, yeah, in time we are as wind energy, we are reducing our margins. And because we are losing. these margins are getting closer to 1. 0. Let’s say like then where we had in the past like 6. These margins are getting lower and then the chance of loose bushings is also getting earlier with the, let’s say, the 2. x or the 3 megawatt turbines. If you Build it in exactly the same way, of course, and I’m not sure, we don’t know if the manufacturer has built it always throughout all these years in a consistent way. We don’t know that, of course. The only what we can do is observe what we see now. And what we see now is basically, first of all, the reserves or the mass moment, basically. The mass is getting higher with the given pit circle diameters and longer blades. remain on the same pitch circle diameter with the same number of balls for longer distances of rotor blades. So lower reserve margin, that’s one of them already. What we then also noticed, because we did three root cause analysis projects on different locations in the market. And what we noticed is that in all these cases, it was concerning polyester blades. It was concerning a special mat, which was basically wrapped around the bushing as an interface material. And this mat had what we have seen an irregular distribution of the polyester resin in it. And it had these dog bone shaped, yeah, it was prefabricated parts in there. And what happens there is basically, due to this, unregular distribution of the polyester resin, we get differences in curing cracks, basically, our curing features. Polyester resin is more sensitive to curing cracks, shrinkage cracks, basically, shrinkage cracks at the curing than an epoxy is. And if you then have this irregular distribution of your resin around these bushings, then you can also imagine that on different location, you get these micro cracks already from the start. And then it depends a little bit on the reserve factors, which you had from the start, how long this will last. So what happens is due to these micro cracks, we are losing a certain amount of the bonding area of the area that has to transfer the loads from the tip to the pitch bearing, for example. If we are losing this load carrying area, that means that the stress levels, they are going up, they are rising. And when we realize that there is a non linear relation between stress level on the, let’s say on the vertical axis of your diagram and your lifetime on the horizontal axis of your diagram, this is not linear, but it’s, let’s say a logarithmic. And. Realizing that if you are losing, let’s say 10 percent of your area of your load carrying area and, or with other words, if your stress levels are raising with 10%, you can already lose like 50%. You can halfen your lifetime already. Allen Hall: If I have a polyester blade, how would I know I have this defect in the blade? Is there any way to detect it before the insert becomes loose? Edo Kuipers: When you’re a park owner, you have always these six months inspection intervals or one year inspection intervals. Then you go inside the hub and there’s, let’s say like a sealing done between your blade root and your pitch bearing. This is this little line with sealing component filler. Check for cracks in that area, especially on the trailing edge, for example, and on the leading edge. If you see there are some kind of cracks inside, then cut it away with a knife and go with a filler cage inside. Check how the distance is and do it on different pitch settings. So turn the blade, different pitch orientation, and see again this distance. Then you can measure if there is a variable cap going on, yes or no. And if you see a variable cap, for sure you have some way a loose bushing there. Especially check for the trailing edge and the leading edge. Allen Hall: Is there an audio component to this? Can you hear it when the turbine is running? Can you hear the blade shift around a little bit? Cause it’s such a massive load. Is it making noise? Edo Kuipers: No, I would, I don’t expect that. I don’t expect. Maybe a little bit on your torque drives. You could see it in the pitching because you have a little bit more sweeping forward and backwards of your blades, if you are, but then you’re already really far and then you really have huge, loosened boostings, but you can imagine that the pitch inertia changes in that respect. So you will feel it on your pitch drives, but I guess Okay. Apart from that, the blade has then not flew off yet, but you’re already too far. Joel Saxum: It’s already too far off. That’s the question I want to ask. I want to get into here a little bit is okay. I’m now I’m asking from an operator standpoint. So if I’m an operator, if we’re doing a yearly inspection or end of warranty or whatever that may be, and we discover some of these gaps or we have, we go, Oh, here we’re suspecting that there’s something going on here. Okay. What is that, basically the delta in time between, I know you can’t say it’s 16 hours or, 22 days, but what does it look like? Do you have, if it starts to loosen up, does an operator have a year or do they have a day? Like, how long before his up blade decides to come off? Edo Kuipers: You have to ask a blade, but it depends in the mood when it’s maybe when it’s autumn earlier than it’s spring. Not sure about that, but no we have had these monitoring systems also are not us, but our customer have some kind of monitoring system. Try to expect exactly what you say here, Joe, try to monitor. How long do we have? It’s not years. It’s not days, but it’s two, three months, I would guess. Joel Saxum: That’s what I would think, too. Once it starts loosening. Because at the end of the day, what you’re trying to avoid is catastrophic blade failure. Blade breaks, blade takes down the tower, the whole thing can come down, or you liberate a blade. Safety for everybody, aside from the financial loss in the wind farm. So there’s a lot of, this isn’t oh, we have some leading edge erosion and we need to get it fixed at some point in time. This is a big problem that if you’re seeing the early signs of it, you need to address immediately. Absolutely. Absolutely. Edo Kuipers: Totally right. And the sooner you address this, the better it is for the repair as well. Because what we also noticed, what we are doing is with one customer, this is basically the launching customer here. It’s in Asia. What we’re doing is we’re checking at different locations of your blade route. What is the capping? So what is the variable capping? Let’s say, is it like 0. 2 millimeters variable capping? That’s the values where we are starting to talk about. Or is it also 50? millimeters variable capping. That’s also what we’ve seen. So we are trying to destillate the remaining strength of when the bushing is already, let’s say, loose from the from the laminate with 15 millimeters. What is the remaining strength? And what is the remaining strength if it’s only 0. 2 or 0. 5 millimeter loose? We are trying to quantify that to get a repair qualification scheme. Let’s say it like that. Hey guys, if it’s 0. 5 millimeters. Yes, lower down the blade. It makes sense to repair. But if it’s already like 5 or 10 millimeters, of course, also lower it down. But there’s not such a good chance that there is a suitable repair, because there is already so much damage going on in the surrounding area. With all the materials. Joel Saxum: Yeah, with all the movement. Yeah, I get it. And I think something important to touch on there, for just one bullet point is, you guys may you, we’re talking about a solution that you have, but in the grand scheme of things, what we foresee is, and you guys have been working in the sector for a long time, you are root bushing specialists, so this isn’t just like something that you’ve dreamed up a one off product, you’re good at you’re a consulting firm, you’ve designed blades for, or helped put things in manufacturing facilities and all kinds of stuff. Edo Kuipers: Correct. Since 2008, early 2008, with the first blade design, because we are not only the root expert here, if I may say so, but we are originally, we are a blade design company for aerodynamic design, structural design, et cetera, et cetera. So in our first design, we, from the start, we decided, okay, when we want to do this, we are going to do it with our own bushing. development included. And that started with the M30, so the metric 30 millimeters size of bushings, suitable for M30 threaded ends for the 1. 5 megawatts. And then we developed that through the years to a M36, which is quite popular in most of the turbines now, and also M42 we have fully certified. So indeed, based on this idea of the bushing, when we encountered the problem, we thought, okay, come on guys, we are, we know quite well what we are doing with our own bushing for new blades, although they are in epoxy blades, I must say. So let’s find here a solution. Let’s Alternate or let’s alter, let’s change our bushing for which we have already so much testing, testing coupons and test data available. Let’s alter our solution for having a solution for, yeah, let’s say the retrofit. Allen Hall: So the problem Edo is that the repair side, and you have these inserts, you’ve been putting inserts in Blaze for a long time. But if you have an existing polyester blade and you need to do a repair today, six months ago, what does that process look like? Is it even possible to make a repair without basically tearing the blade hub apart, the root of the blade apart? Edo Kuipers: That’s where we started with. In 2021, the first customer we started with grinding open the root. We said, we don’t have a solution. Just grind it open, use your grinder. It’s really labor sensitive. There’s a lot of dust going on. Of course, it’s not nice for the people underneath the sun, sunshine of the Indian sun, let’s say it like that. It’s also the quality where you’re ending up is really depending on how the person is doing the scarfing, for example. We also even have seen problems after these repairs that somebody did not do a proper scarfing job, for example. So you really need to. Take care who and what is going on there and who is doing the job. At that start, at that time, we said, okay, we need to optimize this. And we also need to concentrate on where the problem is. So when there is now a new customer popping up there, we always say we start with the root cause analysis. So we go up there, we take a piece. We do some, preferably a hydraulic puller test if needed preferably we cut down some roots and bring them to our office. We see if it is actually an interface problem, but We see many times, is it really an interface problem of the bushing with the surrounding laminate or not? If it is an interface problem, then we can offer a solution here by taking this interface layer out of it. We are using a drilling machine. We are having a cooperation there with the company called CNC on site in Denmark. They are really the experts in drilling. They are doing a good job there. And then once this hole in the laminate is created and the old bushing is thrown away, let’s say like that, then we have a clean situation. No interface layer is there anymore, is present anymore. And then we can come up with our own bushing, which we modified for a special infusion process on site. So then we implement our bushing. In there and we do an infusion strategy by infusing it from the front. We call it it’s a repair by means of front infusion technology. It’s let’s say like a big bushing and we have a steel part and which is wrapped around with all kinds of roving and it has a hollow threaded end. So what we are doing is we are implementing. This steel bushing with materials around it, we are implementing that in the hole that has been created. And we are vacuumizing it here. We are vacuumizing it, the bushing at the front. There is a special flange. There’s a special flange and we have a hollow threaded end and we are infusing, not injecting, through a hollow threaded end all the way to a dispenser at the back on the tip side of the bushing. And then gradually the resin will be pulled around this bushing, bushing with a roving around it to the front. So it is a really, yeah, a controlled process what we are doing there from the tip. infusing to the root site. And once the resting is coming out of the front where you have the vacumization connection, then you know that it’s almost full. You also have to go into the depth of the roving. And so you leave it for a while. And this process takes, let’s say 30, 40 minutes, and then it’s basically, then it’s basically full. Allen Hall: Okay. So CNC Onsite cleans out the existing bushing insert, creates a standardized clean hole, your new product, the We4Ce insert is then slid into this clean polyester hole. And you’re injecting, are you injecting polyester resin or infusing? I don’t want to say injecting. You’re actually pulling a vacuum, you’re pulling it through. Are you putting polyester resin back in or are you using a stronger structural epoxy to attach this insert? Edo Kuipers: We tried it with polyesters and it did not work. We do it with with epoxies, and it works great. It’s much stronger. Allen Hall: So the roving the fiberglass you have wound around your steel insert, when that becomes infused with epoxy, is then a new structural member of that blade. And how strong is that once it’s installed versus the OEM insert? Edo Kuipers: The good thing is that we are taking the certification body along with it. And so far they are saying it is equal or higher in strength than the original one was. Wow. Okay. I must say, Allen, the more you test, the more you learn. And sometimes you do, let’s say these tasks, like three steps forward and two steps back again. So we, yeah, that’s good. That’s good. And then you scratch behind your ears and you think, oh my God, what did we but is there still a solution? But as long as you know what was going on with this testing, then you can then make the next step again. Yeah, for sure. For sure. I’m still saying it’s good. It’s as equal as the original one is. And even if it would be, let’s say 10 or 20 percent lower in strength. It still is good enough to to have the remaining years on the turbine. We are going for, let’s say like 15 to 20 years. The original one is always going for 20, 25 years. So even in that case, it would be, for me, it would be satisfying. It would be good enough because our target is quite high. Quite high. We are testing with a bushing, which is our strength results on the testing are with the bushing, which is smaller in length. It’s around, I should wear my gloves here. It is with, let’s say a 60%. Bushing lengths from the one, which we are going to implement. In the real life later on. So we are basically already 40 percent more conservative with our results. Allen Hall: So the new insert and the approach you’re taking, which makes tremendous amount of sense, by the way that can be installed on site, right? So you would take the blade down so you can CNC machine, clean out these holes. Do the infusion, put the insert in, do the infusion, vacuum, pull through the epoxy, let it all cure up, that’s essentially it, right? You’re not replacing all of the inserts typically, how many on a blade are you replacing, percentage wise? Edo Kuipers: I would say we are now having, let’s say, a blade which has eight inserts. 92 bolts bushings. And we are going to, the idea is now that we are going to replace like 15 to 20 on the trailing edge and 15 to 20 bushings on the leading edge, because It’s not fully trading as, it’s not fully edgewise look loaded, but it’s a little bit between the flavis and edgewise in so that this is where we start. Allen Hall: So that’s good to know because I think a lot of operators right now who have this problem think I have to replace every single one of these inserts. Oh my gosh, that seems like a tremendous amount of time to do this. But the engineering says no, right? The loading and these inserts are failing on the leading edge and the trailing edge, essentially. So we’re going to fix those, provide more strength in those, which is going to stabilize the blade. Isn’t that the approach? Edo Kuipers: That’s the approach. Exactly. This is an interactive decision, basically. So what we are going to do is some testing with hydraulic puller system together with our customer. At the moment, the most suspicious one are at the trailing edge and leading edge side due to the high mass moment loading. And but for example, if the highest loaded would be exactly the training as we, oh and the first four would be the most suspicious one, then we always do one or two or three extra, of course, on the side. But if flap wise loading for this turbine is non issue, then don’t repair that. If you go to the dentist, if you have a toothache, he’s not replacing all your teeth, right? You’re concentrating on the problem area. Joel Saxum: Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. Yeah. One of the things again, from the operator standpoint is it’s going to be replacing costs. So I know I’ve looked at some of your materials and it looks like if you were to do a blade, you’re depending on the level of repair, 30 to 50, 000 euros per rotor blade for fixing. Which is a lot less than a new blade, right? Because that’s what you, that’s the alternative. If this thing’s loose, these are loosing up, the alternative is, hey, we have to replace this blade because there’s no other way to fix it. But you guys can do it. 30 to 50, 000 euros a blade is the conservative estimate. But how long does it take in the field? 10 days. Oh, wow. Because what we’re looking at for a market here, of course, there is the, there’s certain models out there that are having issues with this at early life, right? So there’s some possible serial defect thing here in a couple of these models that we’ve been hearing about. But. One of the other large looming things is. All right. The wind industry has been around since, it has been in a lot, big swings since the nineties early into the 2000. So there’s a lot of fleet at a global basis that right now is looking for lifetime extensions. That’s looking for I know like the country of Spain, they just put something out. That’s Hey, we’re in a hurt because we have a lot of our fleet 15, 20 year old mark where we’ve got to decide what to do with all this stuff. So you guys are looking at a big market. What do you see that for? Edo Kuipers: We see the same once this is heading off, then I see a huge demand for this repair technology. Absolutely. Allen Hall: And for safe Harbor blades, and a lot of operators in the United States have a number of blades and safe Harbor for the time that they got to go swap blades, right? They have them just sitting on the ground. If you have this polyester problem. Why are you not doing this insert while those blades are sitting on the ground so that when you do deploy them, you do not have this failure out in the field because that’s the point of safe harbor at the moment. And that seems like the almost the perfect situation for the We4Ce solution is blades are already on the ground that we’re going to be deployed pretty soon. Does that then. It helped fix this problem before it gets out in the field that we can fix these blades on the ground. Edo Kuipers: And you have to, you need to have the blades on the ground. It’s not an up tower solution. Unfortunately not. That’s not possible. I don’t see that working. So we, we have to hoist them down. And the nice thing is also, if you, once you have them down, you can also do an aerodynamic upgrade. If you want, you can also fix the leading edge erosion issues. For example, we have now one, one, one customer. This is he’s having the problems already. He’s ordering some new blades, of course, he’s combining sets. So he’s making from three turbines now, two turbines. So we are because of each of the three turbines has one blade with loose bushings. So he’s combining. Combining that to two new turbines. He’s keeping them in storage until he basically receives the machine from us. So this morning I had a conference call, call with him. Okay. So when do we get the order, then we can start building them, building the machine. But he’s nicely keeping them in place for us so we can start with those already. And then at the same time he can do the leaning edge erosion maintenance and repairs on that one even if needed an upgrade with vortex generators or whatever he wants, strike take? A lightning protection Joel Saxum: upgrade? Lightning protection upgrade. It makes absolute sense, right? So I’m thinking about this in the large scheme, right? Okay, because we’re, of course, we work globally, but we’re very focused on the U. S. market. So when I look at some of these larger wind farms here, I know some of them have a set of blades or sometimes two sets of blades at the O& M yard, right? So if they have one that has an issue, The, and the crane is there. They’ll take that down. If that’s going to be out for 10 days, they might even just throw the other blades up. So you, if you have, if you’re looking at a turbine, you’re like, okay, this has got some issues. We could work on these things. Drop that one, put your good ones on, and then you’re getting no downtime out of that turbine while you’re on the ground fixing it. And it’s just recycle as you go. Yeah. That’s what Edo Kuipers: we’re doing. And one of the biggest problems we will encounter, is crane availabilities. Absolutely. Absolutely. Joel Saxum: Because that’s, right now in the States, with how many are being built and how many, I tell, say this too, Allen, we’ve been talking to a lot of people doing main bearings and pitch bearings. So there’s a lot, there’s a lot of cranes running around, just dropping rotors and swapping bearings and going back up. So the crane availability I know is, it’s tough right now in the States. Edo Kuipers: Yeah. In Europe, we are developing systems working with cables that we throw basically a cable on the, around the hub. And then let’s, from the inside, lower the blades. It’s not our idea as we foresee that we are doing the service job ourselves. What we want is we want to hand over the technology to the market. So we want to have cooperation with service companies will want to learn the trick. And then we license the technology out to them so that on different areas in the world North America, South America India Thailand, for example, and we have different groups where we work together with, so we educate them. So CNC on site is educating them on the machine. We are educating on the refit implementation process. So we transfer the know how. We give, let’s say two weeks, three weeks, maybe one month. We guide them until the first turbine has been repaired, for example. And then we move on to a next customer and then, of course, the customers always can come back to us, but then this speeds up the process of the repair. If we want to do all in the house with a small group as we foresee, we are not able to do this is not, that’s not, it’s also not the fun part of the work, the fun part of the work to provide new technology to the market. Allen Hall: This is a really interesting product and it’s going to make an impact and already has made an impact. And we’re going to see a lot more of these new upgraded inserts applied in the United States and Europe and all around the world. And I’m just fascinated by this because this is the kind of technology that we need today to keep wind energy moving forward. And I really appreciate you coming on the podcast and describing this to us because. Joel and I have run into so many operators that need this service. So congratulations, Edo. And thank you so much for being on the podcast. Edo Kuipers: Thank you very much for having me here. It’s a really an honor to be in the show, Allen and Joel.

This week Allen and Phil discuss Siemens Gamesa’s accordion nacelle idea, Vestas’s innovative yaw control system, LM Windpower’s LEP install tool, and a helpful beach relaxation invention. Visit https://www.intelstor.com/ to learn more about their IP Prism services. 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: Welcome to Power Up, the Uptime podcast focused on the new hot off the press technology that can change the world. Follow along with me, Allen Hall, and idasaurus Phil Totaro, as we discuss the weird, the wild, and the game changing ideas that will charge your energy future. Hey Phil, the first thing on our list today is a unique patent idea from Siemens Gamesa. Which is for a wind turbine nacelle with movable sections to expand it out. Kind of like Louis Armstrong’s cheeks when he’s blowing that trumpet. It just pops out. And gives you a little more space to get some work done on the nacelles. This is a pretty cool idea, even though I have, we’ve seen other versions of this, we haven’t seen an expandable version of this, others have tried something similar though, right? Philip Totaro: Yeah, so this, Allen, this is basically what I’ve dubbed like the accordion nacelle, or bagpipe nacelle, I don’t know what you want to, how you want to label it, but the idea here is, and look, the bottom line is, I, to be blunt, I actually think this is a terrible patent, but it’s a clever idea, and I’ll explain what I mean by all that. So, in the world of going and, capturing innovation, whatever industry you’re in, You want to be able to capture Patentable ideas on things that a you’re going to use and manufacture because then it’s it’s protecting your own business or you want to get patents on things that are actually things that a competitor might want to use And by having the patent, you basically blocked them from, from going down that technological path. Unfortunately, I don’t think that this is this particular patent from Siemens Gamesa accomplishes that, because I don’t think that they’re gonna use this idea, and I don’t think that Competitors would necessarily use this idea. So, however What I do like about this is the, the inventiveness of the concept and the way that the engineers were thinking and doing the creative problem solving around a legitimate transportation related issue that we have in the industry. So for those of you that aren’t familiar, there are certain transportation constraints that we’ve got in, in wind energy where, particularly if you’re trying to ship something, that has to fit underneath a bridge, overpass, or through a tunnel, You might have certain restrictions on things like the nacelle width and height, the blade root, the maximum chord of a blade, things like that, or even the tower diameter, and it creates certain technological challenges. And so that’s actually why I flagged this idea to talk about today is because this is really great problem solving and very creative problem solving to say, look, We’ve got this challenge where in order to transport something, it’s got to fit within those constraints of being, approximately 4. 2 meters. Or less it’s about, what, 22, 23 feet or less for, for those of us on the, on the English system but the, the, there are different ways to skin a cat, basically Vestas has come up with this idea of having basically, cargo containers that are converted, or specifically manufactured, is probably the better way to say it, So that they can bolt on to the sides. And they’re using that on their offshore machines, the V236. They’re actually also, if you haven’t noticed, they’re using it on the onshore 7 megawatt turbine as well. They actually have a nacelle with An extra kind of cargo container or shipping container sized thing. Bolted down at the right or left hand side of the nacelle. To provide them additional space for all the up tower components. The hydraulic system, the cooling system. Pumps, motors, fans for lubrication systems. If they’ve got I don’t, well, they don’t have an up tower transformer anymore, but any of the other electrical cabinets or anything else that they need up tower, they’ve got to have some extra space. So going again, going back to the Siemens Gamesa invention, is it a good patent? No, because I think, as I explained, it doesn’t really accomplish what you need a patent to accomplish. Is it a good, clever invention and, and technological solution and, and creative problem solving. Absolutely. And I, I encourage that and I applaud that. So even though this idea might not get used, it’s, it’s still a very clever way to, to tackle a relevant industry challenge. Allen Hall: Well, another industry challenge is leading edge protection and our friends at LM wind power have come up with some really simple tools, sort of ingenious tools to create those leading edge shells. And if you’ve seen these protective devices, they’re kind of floppy, they’re not solid. And one of the critical pieces of that is to make sure that the trailing edge of that is cut cleanly and crisply. So you don’t create any kind of aerodynamic problems. Plus it makes it a little bit easier to install because you’re working along a straight line. However, Phil, if you’ve ever tried to cut. Like a jelly or something that’s moving. It’s pretty hard to get a straight line and that’s what it’s like cutting those materials. You want to shift every time you apply some force to them. So this is a kind of an interesting concept to figure out how to basically trim something that’s pretty flexible. Philip Totaro: Yeah. So this, this is a, it’s a relatively simple innovation in terms of, it’s just basically a kind of like a table almost with a little, circular saw, at least that’s how they’ve conceptualized it in the, in the, the patent application they’ve got. But what’s clever about it, in addition to what you just mentioned, Allen, it’s, it’s necessary to be able to shape the the leading edge protection strips so that it. conforms to the shape of the blade and doesn’t adversely impact the, the aerodynamic profile on, on the blade. And so you need to be able to cut a pretty precise straight line or curved line that doesn’t have any of these, sharp ridges or anything or waves to it. That, that would otherwise impact the that, that aero performance. So this is one where it’s a pretty simple and straightforward innovation. We believe by the way, that this is actually in production that this is an invention that we think is, TRL, eight or nine, basically, if you’re not familiar with technology readiness levels or TRLs, that’s basically a measure from one up until nine. About the technological maturity. So we’re going to be referring to, to this with some of the inventions we talk about. This one we think is actually being used in some of the the Ellen factories or potentially some of their subcontractors that are, that are making some of these leading edge parts for them. So this is a, this is a very clever way of being able to accomplish something that provides both leading edge protection and ensures aero performance. Allen Hall: And as we move on to the electrical world, we have a concept from Vestas, which deals with the yaw control. And on an electrically driven yaw system, you got two, two elements. Basic elements, you have a motor or series of motors, and you have a series of brakes. Pretty straightforward. However, that if the turbine is connected to the grid and the grid frequency or voltage fluctuates, you can get some really strange results. One of them being is that you damage the brakes or drag the brakes, as they say, and create yourself an expensive repair to keep going out and fixing because the voltage on a wind turbine, sometimes depending on the time of day and where you are, That’s fluctuate a great deal. Philip Totaro: Yes, this one’s actually kind of fascinating because I had never really seen a company Conceptualize a yaw control Strategy like this. So it basically if you read through this this patent what they’re talking about is trying to use the detection circuit for whatever the grid voltage is and And use that as an input to the yaw control system, whether you’re continuing a yaw action or clamping on the, the brake. And the reason that I think Vestas came up with this is we’ve heard some feedback from folks in the field, that even though you may have yaw brakes that are segmented and so you could unbolt a section of it if, a piece of it got worn out. And that, that was an innovation that, that somebody came up with a long time ago. And that was a very clever one. But in order to prevent excessive wear, as you mentioned, Allen, on the, on the yaw brakes and on the, in the calipers themselves because those are, those are expensive parts and we know there’s been supply chain issues in the industry and, and it can be hard to get access to some of these replacement parts sometimes. So this is a pretty clever way of using the control system to ensure that the brakes don’t drag or clamp. And hold and cause spalling or any other type of thing that, that might happen from, from having the brakes clamped on to an excessive degree. So measuring the, the grid voltage and determining the grid fluctuations as an input to your yaw control system was actually a pretty unique thing. And so that, that’s kudos to, to Vestas for. Coming up with something pretty clever that I think solves a real world challenge. Allen Hall: Well, here’s a real world challenge, Bill. When you, when you go out to the beach and you want to take a quick nap, I always bring a pillow, but the problem with that is you fall asleep and then you just get sunburned. You’re, you’re roasted like a raisin, right? So, it’s not the greatest situation. So somebody’s come up with a really unique patent here, and this is our fun patent of the week. Where they have attached an umbrella to a pillow, and this got approved. This is actual intellectual property, Phil. Yes, Philip Totaro: it is. But just like I mentioned with Siemens, the question, Allen, is do we actually need a patent on something like this? I mean, maybe, if Joel were here, he would probably say, you know what, that’s a product I’d like to have. But, is this something that actually needs a patent? I’m not so sure. But we find some of these patents sometimes that we just have to talk about because they’re a little bit preposterous. And we, we question whether or not the patent office is is really all there when they’re, when they’re approving these sometimes. I think this pillow with an umbrella attached falls into that category, Allen. Allen Hall: I don’t, Bill, I’ve gone through this patent very thoroughly, and there is one piece of this patent which makes complete sense to me. Inside this little umbrella tube, There’s an open and you can unscrew it and you can put your keys and your loose change in this to secure it so you won’t lose your keys at the beach. I mean, how many times you lost your keys at the beach? Philip Totaro: Well, that, that is a real world challenge, but I’ll tell you if there are, insidious characters out there at the beach, I think the guy with a pillow that’s got an umbrella attached is probably target number one for, for having something, having something stolen. They’re probably going to get your keys anyway.