The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

Blackstone has acquired a majority stake in Westwood Professional Services. Corio Generation signed a memorandum of understanding with Brazilian shipyard EBR to explore offshore wind in Brazil. AGL Energy has acquired Firm Power and Terrain Solar for $250 million Australian. 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, 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. Australian utility giant AGL Energy has announced a major acquisition, agreeing to purchase two domestic renewable energy developers, battery storage specialist Firm Power and solar farm developer Terrain Solar for 250 million Australian dollars. This deal will add an impressive 8. 1 gigawatts to AGL’s development pipeline, bringing their total to over 14 gigawatts. The acquisition includes 6. 1 gigawatts of battery storage projects across five states, 1. 8 gigawatts of solar schemes, and 250 megawatts of onshore wind project in New South Wales. AGL CEO Damian Nix emphasized that this high quality pipeline will help firm renewable energy generation as thermal baseload generation exits the national electricity market. Now Phil There’s been a lot of discussion most recently in Australia about removing natural gas and other forms of thermal energy from the electricity grid. This makes a lot of sense for AGL to step into the void, right? Philip Totaro: It does. And when you also consider that they’ve had a lot of, recent price fluctuations which a lot of wind and solar opponents were trying to blame on wind and solar, but in reality, it’s, it’s because they don’t have the right kind of balance and mix in the electricity market. And as we talked about on the show before as well They don’t have intrastate energy trading and market balancing that allows them to really take advantage of supply and demand disparities. So the fact that AGL, which is kind of a national utility, they have the ability to do things, across multiple states that will be to the benefit of the entire grid and state level stability. Joel Saxum: So the, the, one of the things I love about what a Australia does in the renewable energy grid is they’re, they make pretty good moves to, to really remove some of the old stuff. And their solar gen generation and their wind generation are kicking butt. But what this deal, really what shines in this deal to me, is the 6.1 gigawatts of battery storage. So whether you’re using battery storage. Depending on what kind of battery storage it is, because batteries don’t mean, double A’s that you have in your calculator. They can be all kinds of different things. But it’s a really good way to get rid of the thermal base load generation, because if there is slowdowns, in peak periods or whatever, the batteries can kick in to make that happen. So, of this, these acquisitions, 6. 1 gigawatts of battery storage is really nice to see, and I’m excited to see some of the same things start to happen in the United States. Allen Hall: Offshore wind developer Corio Generation has signed a memorandum of understanding with Brazilian shipyard EBR. This partnership aims to explore offshore wind development along Brazil’s south coast. Specifically, the company is looking at how EBR’s existing infrastructure near Rio Grande port could support two planned 1, 200 megawatt wind farms, the Casino Offshore Wind and Rio Grande Offshore Wind projects. Even though Brazil has been quiet. Recently, there now seems to be renewed activity south of the equator. Philip Totaro: They’re trying to get their act together with federal policy still hasn’t been finalized yet. So we’re still several years away from this happening, but one of the world’s largest infrastructure funds that already owns or co owns a lot of offshore winders developing a lot of offshore wind around the world, Taiwan, South Korea, Australia, throughout Europe. And now getting something in place in Brazil, that’s going to allow them to facilitate the the site assessment and the construction of, these, these projects that are a part of a rather sizable portfolio at this point. I think the last time that we updated our project tracking in Brazil at IntelStor, it was more than about 140 gigawatts worth of projects that have been proposed in the market. At this point so they’re, they’re well underway to try to develop, this, this pipeline and the fact that Corio is making it a point to enter into the market with this MOU is, is going to help facilitate everybody’s confidence in getting the policies in place that are going to unlock the investment. Joel Saxum: From past knowledge of working in Brazil, the Brazilians know how to get it done offshore. And this is from the oil and gas world. They’ve they’ve been very successful in some of their developments there, and they’re going to take the same skills and knowledge that they’ve built in that space and transferred over to the wind industry kind of like we’re doing in the U.S. If we develop in the Gulf or what happened to wind energy in the North Atlantic in Brazil. So they’re positioned to do do it right. And they’re getting in the early stages of getting some shipyards involved. And I know they make some good boats down there. I’ve been on some Ulstein vessels and they’re very nice. Allen Hall: Blackstone’s energy transition arm has acquired a majority stake in Westwood Professional Services, a key player in renewable energy project engineering and design. While the exact terms weren’t disclosed, this acquisition is part of Blackstone’s significant push into the energy transition space. For With committed investments of 1. 3 billion since June. Westwood focuses on front end engineering design services for renewable energy generation, power grid, and infrastructure projects. So again Blackstone is making another move. What is the grand scheme? For them moving forward through 24 and into, into 25. Philip Totaro: Well, this is actually relates back to something that Joel mentioned on the Uptime Wind Energy podcast last week, which is, these big infrastructure funds are now getting wind of the fact that independent service providers are going to be a bigger part of. The overall operations and maintenance space as they start plucking some deals away from from OEMs or asset owners and operators really want to be able to shift and have a way of doing that. So having a company like Westwood, which also recently made, within the past two years or so made a couple of acquisitions themselves to bolster their business. Having them now backed up by a company like Blackstone is an enormous vote of confidence in, having their services backstopped, having the liabilities associated with performing that kind of operations of maintenance capability backstopped. So I think it’s, it’s a really clever play and it’s probably not the last of those kinds of deals that is likely to happen where an infrastructure fund steps in and starts backing up an ISP. Joel Saxum: I think there’s a trend here that Phil’s touching on that you’re starting to hear with some of the investment companies and some of the, consultants and stuff in this space is how can we de risk the entire renewables industry by adding, more. Expertise together. So are we adding ISPs and engineering and front end and, and people that own assets? How can we, the big players like a Blackstone can, they can pull up some cash and grab three, four of these companies, put them together. And now all of a sudden you’ve got a conglomerate that can do everything. Own their own assets, operate their own assets, do their own engineering, do their own development, and then you de risk an entire portfolio that way. So I think we’re going to see, I mean, of course, we talk about we’re going to see more, we’re going to see more, we’re going to see more, but I think this is going to be a big trend. I mean, you look at, look at a Brookfield or someone of that sort, that’s what they’re doing right now. And it’s it’s playing out well.

A lawsuit has been unfolding between the Osage Nation and Enel since 2010, potentially ending with Enel dismantling their 150 MW wind farm. What can wind developers learn from this? How can they avoid these situations moving forward? Expert Doug Sandridge explains the intricacies of Native land rights in the US and why understanding those rights is crucial to expanding the wind industry. Follow Doug on Substack, Linkedin or reach out via email doug@fulcrumef.com. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting – https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor – https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, joined by my co host, Joel Saxum. Today, we’re diving into a complex and significant issue at the intersection of renewable energy development and Native American rights. Our guest is Doug Sandridge, a veteran of the energy industry with over 40 years of experience. Doug is currently the senior vice president at Fulcrum Energy Capital Funds, overseeing land operations and strategy for this private equity firm that invests in energy assets across North America. He’s also an adjunct instructor for the executive MBA and energy program at the University of Oklahoma. And I’ve only heard good things about that, Doug. Today, Doug will be sharing his insights on the ongoing dispute between the Osage Nation and Enel Green Energy regarding the Osage Wind Project. And this project, which consists of 84 wind turbines, has become the center of a long legal battle that touches on critical issues of tribal mineral rights. and the development of wind energy on Native American lands. Doug, with his extensive background in land management, regulatory compliance, and stakeholder relations, is uniquely positioned to help us understand the complexities of this case and its potential for implications for the future of wind energy development. Welcome to Uptime. Doug Sandridge: Man, it’s a great pleasure to be here. And I don’t think I’ve ever had a better introduction. Wow, can I? Thank you so much. That’s great. Joel Saxum: You can play that one the next time you start a new class at the University of Oklahoma. Where you walk in, turn the lights down a little bit, and play the clip. Doug Sandridge: Excellent. Allen Hall: So thanks for being here. And you and I have been corresponding for quite a while now. About what is happening in Oklahoma and for those outside of the United States, Oklahoma is right smack dab in the middle of the continental United States. And it has a unique history. It’s different than pretty much any other state in the U. S. Because of its history with Native American tribes. And this has led to some unique situations, which now, it now is in the middle of. And Doug, I want to walk through just the basics of what happened on the O. C. A. When project here, and maybe you could just introduce that background and how we got to where we are today. Doug Sandridge: Absolutely. And I just want to start by saying whatever we say here today, I don’t want it to be reflected as some sort of black eye or. A a bad image for wind in general, this is just an isolated, unique situation, a unique case, and we should not paint the wind industry or the renewable industry with a broad brush thinking that this is how things are done. We just happen to have a unfortunate situation taking place in Osage County, Oklahoma. Osage tribe is located primarily in a county in northeastern Oklahoma near Tulsa called Osage County and that’s their tribal reservation. They actually bought that reservation from the Cherokee tribe. The Osage were originally located in the Missouri, Ohio Valley area of Missouri and then were relocated to southeastern Kansas. For And then white western European encroachment kept pushing on them, and the federal government decided that they wanted that land that was the Osage reservation in southeastern Kansas, they wanted that for white settlers. And so they, federal government actually purchased that reservation from the Osage, and with the money that they had from that sale they purchased their own reservation in what is now Oklahoma. At the time, Oklahoma was not a state, it was called the Indian Territory, and it was called the Indian Territory because that was in a real crass way, where the U. S. had been pushing so many tribes. From the southeastern United States, from central United States, even from the northern United States, they were pushing them all into this small area called Oklahoma, or called Indian Territory, which is now Oklahoma. Cherokee Nation had a huge reservation, and they sold one some land to the Osage, and that Osage became Os, what is current day Osage County, and that that became the permanent reservation for the Osage tribe. So that’s how we got to where we are. And the Osage tribe, when they when they bought the land, they were still considered a sovereign nation by the United States. And so they had their own rules, their own laws, and they governed themselves in that county in Oklahoma, in Osage County. But as the U. S. was trying to assimilate the Native Americans or first Americans, into the greater United States culture. They were trying to get tribes to give up their tribal sovereignty for citizenship. And so what happened is they basically went to the tribe and said, We will make you U. S. citizens if you’ll do X, Y, and Z. And what they ended up doing is, as they say, allotted, they gave all the land in Osage County was allotted to all of the members of the tribe at that time. So the surface of the land, all of the surface, was divided equally or fairly equally among all the tribal members. And so they all own that land. They could do with it whatever they want. They could live on it. They could sell it. They could farm it, ranch it. And as it happens, a lot of the surface has over the last hundred years. has gone out of the tribe. The tribe no, tribal members no longer own a lot of the surface. A lot of the surface is owned by farmers and ranchers and white people and not basically non Osage. I don’t know what the percentage is. I’m guessing probably at least 80 or 90 percent of the surface in Osage County is actually owned by non Osage. But a lot, a lot of the county is still governed. You still run by owned by and operated by and the communities are Osage there still but they own the surface. But the critical point is at the time of allotment, the Osage tribe negotiated with the federal government and basically the government agreed that the Osage tribe as a whole would keep all of the minerals. And they would hold those minerals in trust for all of the Osage tribal members. The individual tribal members owned the surface. This person owned this section, somebody else owned something else. But the minerals underlying that each of the entire county was retained by the tribe. And the tribe had the right to, to lease it for oil and gas, lease it for mining, for whatever purposes. And you can’t do any business related to the minerals in Osage County without dealing with the Osage tribe. Doug, can I ask you a question Joel Saxum: about this then? Because when we talked a little bit in a pre interview process, just walking through this thing, that was, like, like you said, they watch the other tribes do certain things. But there’s a certain, there’s four or five other tribes in the area, and they’re Ownership of their lands or their tribal rights to the surface or subsurface is different than what the Osage negotiated with the Osage have. Can you explain the difference there? Doug Sandridge: Yes. And there, there are very multiple differences. For instance, the the so called wild tribes, which are the tribes of Western Oklahoma that were the Apache, the Comanche, the Kiowa the Arapaho, those tribes. At the time, it was believed that they had not been exposed to Western law and Western customs enough to deal in their own real property. And in order to protect them from being swindled by, Westerners by Western Europeans the entire process of leasing from them was maintained by the federal government, so the Bureau of Indian Affairs. So even today, I believe. If you want to lease anything, even if someone, even if an Indian or a Native American owns those rights individually, they are not permitted to lease them because they’re still governed by the process of the Bureau of Indian Affairs monitoring managing their affairs for them. And so then, but in any event, all of the different tribes have different rules that are there that are assessed to their, but the unique the Osage have a unique situation. And I. I said in my Substack article, I studied Indian law a long time ago at University of Oklahoma, and the general takeaway from it was you had three types of law in Oklahoma. You had the law of the civilized tribes, which was the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, the Creek, and the Seminole Indians. Those tribes were tribes that had been affected by and been around Western civilization for a lot longer because they were on the East Coast. And so they had become, these are not my words, but in the words of the government, it had become more civilized and so those so called, not my words of legal words of art, those so called civilized tribes were moved to Oklahoma, but they had different rights than the wild tribes and the wild tribes had different rights. So you had three types of law, the law of the civilized tribes, the law of the wild tribes. And then the law of the Osage, which was different than everyone else. They were unique. Allen Hall: Very interesting because the complexities of Oklahoma are not the complexities of the adjoining states. And I think this is where Enel had problems. So In about 2010, Enel leased about 8, 400 acres in Osage County from the land owners. So that would have been mostly outside Osage Nation people, for the most part, right? Doug Sandridge: I understand that the majority of them were non Osage, but there were two, I believe, two tribal members who owned lands. That did agree to lease, but generally the Osage as a, the tribe and most of the members of the tribe were against the wind turbine Joel Saxum: project. The important thing here is Allen Hall: they leased the surface. That’s right. Just to give some context here, Osage Nation has mineral rights about 1. 5 million acres. So 8, 400 out of 1. 5 million. It’s a small piece of a larger set of metal, right? So it’s not that big of a piece of land in contrast. However, and as you pointed out, the Osage nation went to court to stop the Enel project back in 2011. And They lost that initial suit, correct? It went for a couple of years, but they lost. Doug Sandridge: Yeah, so what happened is, let’s just be honest, I wasn’t clear until I started interviewing members of the tribe and I, a few weeks ago, interviewed one of the former assistant chiefs of the tribe. I wasn’t certain of this, but what apparently, I think it’s a fairly accurate statement to say the tribe as a whole, the official tribe and most of the tribal members, were not interested in having wind development in their county. And, they just they have a deep love of the land. They had a deep love of the vistas. They really just didn’t want wind development. And so I think it’s fair to say that was what they, that’s how they felt. So before Enel even began constructing the project the tribe did file a lawsuit in federal court asking the federal court to stop them from building the wind farm. And the federal court said, look I understand your concerns and it totally legitimate. And I know there’s a lot of people who don’t want to see wind turbines, but from a legal standpoint, we have no basis to stop development of this wind farm. And they have valid leases. They have valid permits from the county authorities. To build a wind farm. And so the federal court denied their request and returned it with a, we’re not going to, we’re not going to injunct them from building it. Joel Saxum: So we’re in this timeframe here of 2010, they started now the wind farm that exists today, there’s a hundred or sorry, there’s 84. 84 turbines is 150 megawatt farm. It’s a bunch of GE, like 1. 7 or whatever out there, but those did not get commissioned until 2015. Doug Sandridge: That’s correct. So they sued him in 2010 or 2011. And the court said, no, we can’t stop the construction. They have legitimate legal rights to be there. They’ve got the permits, they’ve got the leases. And so then Enel started building the wind farm, I believe in 2013, approximately. And then it came on, I think it came on in 2014. Allen Hall: 2014 is the critical year in all this, because at this point, the Osage noticed that, and when Enel was putting the foundations in, they were, and this territory is rocky, if you haven’t been to this county, it’s rocky, so Enel’s digging into the ground, and bringing up rocks. And then setting them aside to put the foundation in, but in this transaction of moving the rocks, they decided to then crush the rocks and use them in the turbine installation. That’s essentially what happened. And that one move started a chain of legal proceedings. That’s correct. Doug Sandridge: And so let’s be clear the United States is almost unique. Most countries in the world. Private citizens and private organizations cannot own minerals. The only private mineral ownership in the world is primarily in the United States to some degree in Canada. I understand there’s a very few places in England and a few places in Australia where there’s some very old legacy mineral ownership by some old people, nobility, but basically the U S and Canada is where you have private ownership of minerals. So a lot of people around the country, around the world have no idea that several, that minerals can be severed from the surface in this way and that there’s private Allen Hall: ownership. That would make sense. Now the Osage noticed that, Hey, Enel is crushing the rock. Those rocks are ours. Those are not Enel’s rocks. Doug Sandridge: That’s right. So let me throw another concept out here to understand though. If you. Allen Hall goes and buys a piece of property, and he buys a piece of land, just the surface, he doesn’t buy any minerals. And he wants to build a house, or a Kroger grocery store, or something like that. He has the right to use the subsurface a reasonable amount of the subsurface. So you want to build a house and you want to build a basement, or you need to put a foundation down, or if you’re going to build a footer for a Kroger grocery store. So the fact that you own the surface does not mean that you don’t have the right to use a certain amount of the subsurface. You have the right to use a reasonable amount of the subsurface. necessary for the full enjoyment of the surface. So that’s the rule, no matter where you are in the U. S., you can use subsurface. What you can’t do is use the subsurface minerals for commercial purposes. Enel starts digging these huge holes in the ground, and they have the right to do that. Even though they only own the surface, they have the right to use the subsurface to build these wind turbines. They dig the holes, they put in steel for reinforcement, they fill it with concrete, They have the right to do all of that. There is nothing wrong with that. What they don’t have the right to do is to take the rock out of the hole, take it to a refiner, crush it, process it, refine it, sort it, and then use it for commercial purposes because that constitutes mining. And so in this particular case, they were taking the rock and using it in a way described by the law as mining. They were mining rock. That was owned by the Osage tribe and they were mining it without a permit or the right or a license from the tribe. Now one important point is, I’d heard some people previously indicate the tribe is greedy. They should have brought this to the attention of Enel earlier. They’re just trying to, extort them out of some money. The reality is, Immediately following the first excavation, as soon as the tribe saw that they were excavating this rock, putting it on trucks, taking it, refining it, processing it, and making it commercial quality, immediately, literally within the first few weeks, they notified Enel that what they were doing was illegal. This isn’t something they came and did 10 years later or 3 years later, they did it immediately. And so Enel basically made their first mistake by saying, Sorry, we don’t recognize your authority. We don’t believe you. We’re going to keep mining it regardless. And so the tribe then went to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and said, Look, this is what’s happening to us. We’re being taken advantage of. No one’s taking us seriously. Can you please intervene? And so the Bureau of Indian Affairs researched the matter themselves, came to the same conclusion that they, Enel had no right, they, Enel had the right to dig the foundations. They had the right to construct them, but they didn’t have the right to make commercial use of the rock that they excavated. They sent a letter to Enel and told them to cease and desist. And Enel said, No they just ignored it. They went on. They ignored not only the tribe, but now they’ve ignored the Department of the Interior and the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs. And so this is big mistake. Allen Hall: I think this adds some complexity to it. If it was a generic landowner anywhere else in the United States that was arguing about mineral rights, I could see any developer questioning that and probably getting it settled in court. In this case, the unique piece is that the Osage now have the federal government behind them with infinite resources to fight on their behalf, which is what happened. So it’s not the Osage nation going to court to fight this. The federal government goes to court and goes after Enel. Doug Sandridge: Yeah. So they, first of all they notified him by letter. Enel ignored it. Now, this is also important because it shows intent. Enel, I can’t speak for what Enel was doing, why they were doing it, I can only speculate. But I have had multiple sources, including the former vice chief of the tribe, assistant chief of the tribe, and also multiple local reporters tell me that as soon as they got this letter, they started they ramped up their operations to 24 hour operations. This shows bad faith, because what they now see, they see that they’re getting challenged on this, And instead of stopping and doing the right thing and trying to make it right and trying to negotiate and try and settle, trying to do the right thing, they bring out the light plants and start constructing 24 hours a day to speed up the construction. Presumably, I don’t know what Enel’s purpose for doing that was, but a lot of people believe they sped it up because they felt like, If we can just get this built, then nobody’s going to make us tear it down. And so that, that was the second mistake they made by doubling down and working 24 hours a day to accelerate completion of the project. So then the federal government sued them again the first time when they were sued by the tribe, but then the federal government sued them. And originally the court ruled against the tribe. Originally said that they didn’t do anything wrong, but they persisted and the eventually the courts determined from the fact situation that Enel had in fact been illegally mining this rock. And the irony of this is that Enel at any time could have continued to construct this wind turbine, this wind farm, they could have continued to do it legally without using that rock. And they would not be in any trouble at all. They might owe a few hundred dollars for the rock they use, but they, at any point during the time, if they made the right decision and heeded the court and heeded the tribe and heeded the Bureau of Indian Affairs and heeded the department of the interior at any time, they just finished the wind farm using legal methods, the wind farm would be fine, but instead they kept snubbing their nose at all of those agencies, government agencies, and the federal courts. Allen Hall: Yeah, and obviously Enel’s a big corporation, right? So who in the organization was involved in that decision, that’s really hard to tell. But as a corporation, the whole corporation is held accountable for that. So it turns out to be a much more significant than they first probably thought. But it all comes down to, and this is where the court case went, the definition of mining. That we think of mining like, Hey, we’re digging down there looking for gold, oil, anything really to get under the surface and to have a commercial purpose. The mere fact that they crushed the rock is defined as mining and used it for commercial purpose. Joel Saxum: Yeah. So I think that there’s a, Doug, you touched on this earlier, but The definition of that separation between surface rights and mineral rights and not being known to a lot of people outside of the United States, to be honest with you, a lot of people in the United States don’t even know about that. Like I’m from Northern Wisconsin. That’s not a thing up there, right? There’s not like people, if you say, Oh, do you own the mineral rights and the surface rights? They’re like, what are you talking about? This is my land. It’s not a, it doesn’t exist that way now. In a legal standpoint, it does exist, but people don’t recognize it. People don’t see it so Enel again, being an Italian company and a lot of the operations being the way Enel works internally, a lot of the operations or the majority of decisions and operational decisions get made in Italy, right? Even the people that work, I’ve spoke with a lot of people that have worked for Enel in the United States, even at, Hey, do we repair this blade or not? They make a decision and then they go, oh, we gotta get it stamped by. Italy. So we’ve got to go, we’ve got to go back there. So most of these decisions are not being made, large decisions are not being made on United States soil. They’re being made over there. So you can, I’m not making any kind of excuses here. I’m just trying to put some context to it, right? You can see that there’s a, there’s like a, there’s a disconnect in, like you said, when they were like, we don’t value your rights or we’re not saying this because they don’t, they didn’t understand it. I think if they were to or maybe you can help us understand, consulting land men or lawyers within the, within Oklahoma that are familiar with the specific laws there. Doug Sandridge: I think you’re right. And I have had other people in the renewal industry tell me that the companies that have the hardest time dealing with these issues are the foreign companies because it is so foreign to them, but, and so I don’t know what went on in the decision making process and now, and so we’re not going to speculate, They had a lot of really high dollar, high powered attorneys working on this over the last 10 years. The attorneys they’ve had working on this are not your run of the mill 200 an hour attorneys. These are high powered attorneys, and so they’re either getting bad advice from these attorneys, or, I suspect, and again, we don’t know, I suspect they’re getting good advice from these attorneys, and Enel is choosing not to follow it. We just don’t know. Yes, I think it is partly because they’re foreign countries and they don’t understand the complexities of U. S. land. But the end result is, Joel Saxum: or the end fact is, you are doing business in the United States. You are doing business in Oklahoma, and in this case in Osage County, and you have to abide by those rules. So you better make sure that you do. And at the end of the day, What has happened here is they’ve been ordered to remove these turbines. They’ve been ordered to basically tear this wind farm down at an estimated cost of, oh, north of 300 million. Yeah, that’s And these are, so they’re built in 2015, if we’re just looking at normal wind energy practices. They’re 8 years, 9 years old right now. They’re probably ripe for a repower coming up. None of that really matters anymore because they’re all going to get taken down. Doug Sandridge: Yep, they are still producing. I was, I drove through there a couple of weeks ago. I was driving from Oklahoma back to Denver where I live, and I just took a little detour, and they are still going strong, and I think this is a cautionary tale. I don’t, this is a cautionary tale for wind and solar developers across the country, but I do want to make sure, this does not set a precedent. We’re not about to tear down all the wind farms in the United States. This is a very unique situation. This is not a precedent is going to be applied to a lot of other places. And this is a problem that could be easily overcome. First of all, there are a lot of people, there are a lot of places where you’re building wind farms, where you don’t need to use any of the mineral estate. And I talked to several developers. They all told me if we’re going to use the rock that we’re excavating, we have a mineral permit before we even break ground. So the normal practice in this industry. Is to do the right thing. Most people are doing the right thing. This is an isolated case. And unfortunately there’s a The truth is they would not have been asked to tear down this wind farm were it not for their arrogance and their continued fighting of this for ten years. The judges basically said that. The judges essentially said The reason we’re having you tear it down is not because you mined the rock, we’re having you tear it down because we’ve told you over and over again for 10 years that this is illegal and you’ve continued to defy the federal court and the federal government. Allen Hall: Doug, there are two pieces to that though and fought this for 10 years, the financial aspects, at least according to news reports, if Enel were to remove that wind farm, it would cost them about 300 million to do that. The value of the rock that they could have just brought in instead of using the rock they excavated is only about 70, 000. So if they just brought in rock, it would have cost them about 70, 000 and all this would never have happened. So they got this 300 million issue sitting in front of them. On top of that, the Osage and the federal government on behalf of the Osage, It’s seeking damages of about 37 million, which is actually a lot less than what they started at. It does seem likely there’s going to be penalties applied damages applied here because of this long history of not following the court’s instructions at times. So it is a huge financial impact to do this and time impact. And Joel, you’ll know typically wind turbine farms are repowered every 10 years. So we’re into this 10 year repower situation at the minute, is there now a negotiation that happens between the Osage and Enel that goes, hey, we’re going to repower this thing, we’re going to take the turbines out, but we could keep them there and let’s negotiate this? Are they back to the negotiation because of that 10 year time, Doug Sandridge: time span? Personally, I don’t see that happening because the tribe has never wanted this to begin with. And you just have to get into the mindset of the Native Americans, First Americans, the Osage. They look at the world differently. And they really, this is their sacred land. And they feel like they’ve been violated. The bald eagle is sacred to the tribe. And so Enel is gonna go get, take permits from the U. S. Fish and Wildlife to allow them to kill a certain number of bald eagles. So I think this fundamentally for the tribe, there is, I don’t think there’s any way that, this is just my sense of it. I don’t speak for the tribe in any way, but from all the people I’ve talked to, I don’t think there’s any chance that they’re going to negotiate. They want these wind turbines gone. They want their wind turbines gone. their vistas in their sacred lands back and not scarred by this. Joel Saxum: If you follow the history of the, any native American tribe in the country, let alone the Osage are a specific case because they have been wronged many times in the past by people from outside of the tribe. So they’re, they have historically had some, people, Pressing on them pushing on them and doing things to them that aren’t fair to them And so they’re I would agree with you doug. I have no idea but I would say that Negotiation here is probably off the table for them. One thing i’d like to touch on though, too So in the industry, like you said best practices what’s actually really happening on the ground in a normal case There’s a lot of really intelligent and experienced professionals like yourself You That are what we would call in like the oil and gas world, land men land men and land women. So those people are they’re a special mix of contract, almost like a contract lawyer, real estate agent, negotiator, arbitrator Business development person, sales person, all in one, but with technical prowess. So when you run into any kind of permitting agency or environmental agency that is, hired or contracted by a developer or even on the developer’s direct team, these people do exist. They’re very specialized. I know Doug, you have a Massive storied history of your experience in the oil and gas world Those people can come directly from that oil and gas side As well and help with the renewables because they know it very well. We’ve been doing oil and gas permitting land Negotiations for a hundred years. So this isn’t something that’s new but it’s new in the respect of renewable energies Doug Sandridge: It is new for renewable and let me just give you a little perspective about what we do So let’s say we want to go drill an oil and gas We say we have a place that we want to go drill. And so they send that me out as a landman to buy a lease. I buy the right to drill that well. So I have to go out to that land, the piece of land. I have to say, okay, we’re going to drill the well here. Who owns this land? And I need to make a deal with the surface owner and the mineral owner. Cause I have to make a deal with the mineral owner and the surface owner could be the same, but if they’re not, the mineral owner owns the right to the oil. The surface owner controls where I put my drilling rig to put it out there. So I have to go make those negotiations and determine who owns it. But what I don’t, what I don’t do is walk out there and see the little farmhouse sitting there and walk up to the farmhouse and say, Hey, knock on the door and say, Hey, we want to lease this. And the old lady says, okay, how much are you going to pay me? And I pay her. That’s not how you do it. Because the problem is you have to know with certainty who owns that land just because she owns the farmhouse. She doesn’t necessarily own it. She might be renting it. It might be her brother’s, it might be that she owns it, but so do her other seven siblings, so you have to determine that. So we go to a lot of trouble to figure out who the true owners of that property are to make sure that we’re buying the, because what we don’t want to do is buy it from the old lady at the farmhouse, drill a 10 million dollar well, and then find out that she didn’t have the right to lease it to you. She was just renting the property. She presents a rent check to somebody else. So it’s very important in our industry that we identify the correct ownership right up front. And what I do see happening with some, not all, but there are some unsophisticated people in the renewal industry who are just getting in, do not understand the immense importance of understanding you’re building your wind farm or your solar farm on a piece of property that you own the rights to do because you don’t want to build it and then have to tear it out later. And that’s what’s happening to Enel. It is important to get good land and legal advice wherever you are. And it’s different in every state. Literally the surface rights, the mineral rights are different in every state. And even in like in Oklahoma, they’re different even within the different counties. So you have to have some local knowledge of what’s going Joel Saxum: on. We can add some add a little bit of complexity that from my oil and gas past so people listening can understand It’s not just the subsurface That has rights. It can also be stratified layers. There can be different owners depending on depth. So there can be someone who owns the first 500 feet, the next 5, 000 feet, and then you can get into different layers of ownership. So title research and these kinds of background things that you must do. I’ve been a part of projects where you’ve had a team of 10, 12, 15 people in courthouses for a year doing research before you even get started on the ground. So there’s a lot of things going on behind the scenes for all kinds of development projects that people just don’t see. Doug Sandridge: Yeah, I’ve seen places in South Texas, I personally have worked on a project where there have been 25 to 28 different stratas with different owners. So, it can’t happen, but we’re getting off the subject here. The reality is that from a wind farm developers, they need to take seriously the land issues. They need to be sure they understand who owns it. And we just got to make sure somebody pointed out the other day. We’ve been doing this in the oil and gas business for 140 years. So we’ve developed a lot of experience doing this and the people that are getting into renewables. Some of them are just now learning these lessons, but they can be hard lessons. And so let’s engage properly with the community. Another big problem with Enel was, is that they were basically not engaging with the local community. And I think wherever you’re working, whether it’s wind, solar, oil, you have to be good citizens. You have to have a social license to operate and you have to operate in good faith with your community. with the people in your, in the neighborhood where you’re working. Allen Hall: Doug, it’s been really good to have you on the podcast. I know we’ve talked a number of times, particularly about this issue and some others, so we need to get you back on the podcast, but if someone wanted to get a hold of you and pick your brain about land matters, how would they do that? Doug Sandridge: Really the best thing is to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I’m most active on LinkedIn. You can also, I’ll, you can provide them my email address. I don’t mind people emailing me directly, linkedIn or email. I also write this. The article that you guys read was on my sub stack. So it’s called energy ruminations on sub stack. And I write about all things energy, not just oil and gas or wind. But I write about all subjects related to energy. So subscribe to my sub stack. And I don’t write prolifically. I have a full time job like you guys do. So I write when I can. But sub stack LinkedIn or send my email is fine. Allen Hall: Doug, thank you so much for being on the podcast. It’s been a great discussion. Doug Sandridge: You guys have been brilliant. Keep up the great work. I listen to you every week. Let’s stay in touch.

The discussion dives into Siemens Gamesa's surprising financial struggles and a steep drop in their wind turbine orders. The hosts debate the company's assertion that quality trumps price when competing with Chinese manufacturers. They also highlight potential impacts of Chinese turbines making their way into European markets, raising important questions about competition and trust. Additionally, the conversation touches on operational challenges faced by OEMs and the geopolitical tensions influencing global trade in wind energy.

Suzlon Energy will acquire a 76% stake in Renom Energy Services for $79 million. Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp has announced the sale of its non-hydro renewables business to LS Power. Haizea Wind Group has secured a €35 million green loan from the European Investment Bank. 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, 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. Suzlon Energy will acquire a 76 percent stake in Renom Energy Services. For 660 crore rupees or approximately 79 million U. S. dollars. This move is set to strengthen Suzlan’s position in the operations and maintenance sector. Renan Energy Services is currently the largest multi brand operations and maintenance service provider in India, managing assets totaling 1. 7 gigawatts in wind, 148 megawatts in solar and 572 megawatts in BOP. Phil, with the advent of G. E. Vernova and Siemens Gamesa leaving India slowly and leaving the maintenance up to other organizations, Is this a good move by Suzlon to try to fill that void? Philip Totaro: It is. It’s a very interesting move as well because of how fragmented the Indian market is, just in general, both on the OEM side and on the maintenance side. So, as you mentioned, there’s a couple of Western OEMs that are kind of pulling up stakes, and frankly, Vestas hasn’t been getting the same level of sales in the past that they have in India either. With the growth of Inox Wind. And the introduction of Adani’s turbine as well. So for, for Suzlon, this is an interesting move because, as you mentioned, it gives them access to a maintenance provider that is not only kind of the biggest ISP in the market, but they also have a multi brand portfolio that they are servicing, giving them access to a wide array of of different technologies. As I mentioned, it’s a fragmented market. And so the reason why there isn’t. A big dominant player in operations and maintenance in the market is because you have some OEMs that are still kind of contractually obligated on certain projects, but they’ve pulled up stakes. Other OEMs that used to operate in the market don’t anymore. And so you’ve got a particularly big market opportunity for. Susan and read on to step into here. The Indian market is now, I think, 46 gigawatts of onshore wind installed and another, I want to say, 80 something gigawatts of solar at this point. So, it’s a it’s there’s a lot more opportunity for growth in this segment. Joel Saxum: Yeah, Allen and I actually were on a call this morning with some people from India that are a large developer over there and it seems like every time we’re on a call with anybody from India, they are a large developer or they have a large pipeline. One of these, one of these pipelines was two gigawatts in the next few years. Another one we talked to a couple weeks ago was four gigawatts in the next four years. So there’s a lot of big plans for wind in India and Suzalon right now through this move is looking to capitalize on that. On ensuring or being in the position to ensure the wind energy sector in India remains strong, right? They’re the largest wind energy OEM in India right now. Suzan, when you hear Suzan, India, right? So they’re, they, they had put on some bids when Siemens was pulling out, and they’re grabbing some other O& M activities. They’re building new wind farms. So, Suzlon looking to be a power player over there and they’ll, they’ll spread their wings in that sector as well. Allen Hall: Moving over to Europe, Spanish wind turbine component manufacturer Hesia Wind Group has secured a 35 million euro green loan from the European Investment Bank. This funding will be used to implement advanced manufacturing technologies, automate and digitalize processes and advance R& D applied to large metal structures for wind turbines. This includes towers, monopile, foundations, and offshore wind farm transition pieces. Now, Phil, with some recent elections over in Europe, there is a renewed effort to support local industries within the EU. Will we see more of this over the next year or so? Philip Totaro: I think so, yes, because there’s been obviously a push from the European manufacturers to say, Look, support us, or we’re pulling up stakes and moving our manufacturing operations over to India or China. And I guess who can blame them with a lower overhead cost and ample support that they would get being in those markets, employing local resources and receiving local tax breaks there. There are even companies in Europe. They’re looking at the United States particularly with renewable energy manufacturing in mind. So this is kind of first steps at. A wider package. There’s been other money that’s recently been allocated as well that the European Commission or the European Investment Bank or other entities in Europe have committed to companies that are going to also commit themselves to domestic manufacturing. So, I think it’s it might be a small amount at 35 million, but it is something that’s important for HESIA because they actually have I want to say something like above 50, probably around 55 percent market share for transition pieces in, in Europe, particularly for European offshore projects. So. They’re a, they’re a big player and they will benefit from having this this level of support. You can expect it to hopefully propagate to other companies here and in the near future. Joel Saxum: Let’s take 30 seconds to dive into this thing a little bit on a technical level. So Alvaro Quintana, the, the wind group finance director says this loan supports their goal of helping clients work towards a more sustainable economy. That’s pretty cool. That’s word speak that everybody in the wind industry is going to use or anybody in the renewable energy. It doesn’t really mean that much. But when you dig into it, what they’re going to use these funds for is manufacturing technologies to automate digitalized processes, right? That is something that the wind industry needs to become. More cost effective to become more competitive on a global basis. So if you can, if you can take this money and you can put it into automating, making better products faster, more efficiently with a higher quality, that’s what the wind industry needs. They’re talking about steel here because that’s what Haysia does. And that’s great. So we’re going to get some, hopefully get some more research and development into automating some of these processes. The next thing I want to see one of these loans go for is. Freaking blades. That’s just my take. Allen Hall: In a significant move in the renewable energy sector, Canada’s Algonquin Power and Utilities Corp. has announced the sale of its non hydro renewables business to LS Power, a U. S. based power and infrastructure company. The deal, valued at up to 2. 5 billion U. S. dollars, marks a strategic shift for Algonquin towards becoming a pure play regulated utility. Under the terms of the agreement, LS Power will pay 2. 28 billion dollars in cash at closing With an additional potential earn out of up to 220 million dollars based on the performance of certain wind assets. Algonquin expects to receive approximately 1. 6 billion dollars in net proceeds after accounting for debt repayment, taxes, Phil, this is a huge deal, and we’ve seen a number of large operators get out of the non regulated business. What is the push to do that? Philip Totaro: Yeah, this, this is fascinating because, as you mentioned, Algonquin was really spending a lot of time with, between Algonquin Power and Utilities and their subsidiary companies like Liberty for those that are familiar. Yeah. They were spending a lot of time building up this portfolio with the rather, sizable chunk of, of wind and solar. And they actually have a very, healthy portfolio of, of projects. In fact earlier this year, we identified at IntelStor the fact that Algonquin has the number one performing portfolio of wind projects in the United States right now. Based on comparison of their actual energy output versus. Their predicted output so it’s no surprise to me that they were able to sell for, a price premium going back to the question of why are they doing this and pulling out and, and just focusing on the regulated utilities market. It’s because of profit margins. They would rather take some of the cash that they have and redeploy it towards the regulated utility business segment. And as a result of that, they are going to, kind of Forgo the potential growth in, expansion of that, of that portfolio in favor of allowing LS power to to kind of capitalize and consolidate what they’re trying to build. So I think the reason that a lot of these utility companies or utility focused companies that also had a renewable development portfolio have pulled back and said, we’re going to focus on the regulated market. Is because the fact that it’s a regulated market, it provides them more certainty, plus the additional cash that they now have from the sale of this kind of a renewable portfolio. We’ve again, as you mentioned, we’ve seen it before and this probably won’t be the last time either. Joel Saxum: Allen and I actually in a road trip this week, we were sitting in the car together talking about the difference between unregulated and regulated assets and why companies are Keen to sell them, right? So when you get to an unregulated asset, there’s a little bit more risk. There’s a possible higher return, but it makes budgeting and engineering decisions a little bit more difficult because you don’t know your budget could change throughout the year, right? So if you go, if you’re selling your unregulated assets, going back to just regulated assets, as Alconquin’s looking to do here, you end up stabilizing the business you have fixed PPAs. You know what money’s going to, should be coming in. You know what money should be going out. It’s easier to make a little bit of engineering decisions and just less risky in general and these may be Some of these other moves we’ve seen like this in the market may be people looking for investment on the outside to do things it’s easier or not easier, but it’s Less it’s more risk averse for a company to look at someone that is only playing in regulated assets to invest in as well So when you’re talking about teachers pension funds and those kind of things deploying capital, this is a good way to do it

Allen and Joel catch up with Will Friedl, CEO and co-founder of Prometheus Wind, based in Colorado. The company has been growing rapidly in the industry, conducting maintenance, blade repairs and more. Will discusses his experience as a business owner in the wind industry and the lessons he has learned along the way. To learn more, visit https://www.prometheuswind.com/ or call 1 (800) 487-4460. 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 special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, along with Joel Saxum. We’re here with Will Friedl, who is the CEO of Prometheus Wind. And if you’re not familiar with Prometheus, they’re based in Colorado and they do a ton of turbine work from blade repair to foundation. Torque and tensioning, pretty much anything to do with wind turbines they’re involved with. And Will is a graduate of the Air Force Academy and is a veteran, and this is their third year in operation. And we wanted to touch base with Will. Because when we get an update of all the things that have happened, and there’s been some tremendous growth at Prometheus Wind, so Will, welcome to the program. Will Friedl: Hey, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it, sir. Allen Hall: Let’s start off with I think the most exciting development, on top of everything else that’s happened, is the training center. You’ve now built out a training center. Yes, sir. Can you tell us about it? Will Friedl: Yes, sir. Yeah. I think there’s a fundamental difference between companies that, are hiring for talent and then going out there and doing work. And of course we’re a bootstrap company that’s what we had to do for the first two years of our operation. But it was quickly apparent. It’s Hey, we need to get a training center so we can upskill our guys so they can grow, they can earn more money. But also so that we can check people coming through the door to make sure that they have the skills that they need. And so that was a big initiative, a huge lift this winter time, during the. Quote unquote off season we built out a a small training center here in Greeley, Colorado about two hours away from where I live. And and we’ve had great success with it. So we’ve had, we’ve run all of our guys through that. Everyone who’s new goes through that training center. We get, we able to do a thorough evaluation of their skill sets, put them on the correct, educational track, and when they graduate, they they get the appropriate skill level identification and the qualifications that they need. That we provide. So it’s been a huge success. It’s not something that, immediately, you flip the switch and it comes online. There’s growth to it. You learn how to train, you learn how to change your curriculum to be more effective. But overall just right out the door, we’ve seen a lot of success with it. Seen a lot of extra buy in from guys who are appreciative of being up skilled. We’ve seen better retention. We’ve seen, higher quality and more, a better production rate of guys in the field. So it’s been a, it’s been a huge blessing for us. Joel Saxum: Will, I know you and I were catching up at ACP and earlier than that in the year, I think O& M as well, over in San Diego with your team, we were talking about the build out of the training center and what it looks like for you guys in the future and what that was going to do for your program. And it sounds like, it’s been a success, right? Like better quality in the field, better buying, you’re able to impart your company culture, which I know is really important to you guys. From the early stages before people hit, yeah, before people get out to the field, they’ve already got that base of this is who Prometheus is. This is how we operate. This is what goes on in our company. And I know that this is this is your third year in business. Like you said, so you went year one, year two, and talking off air, you’ve two X your business every year. So congratulations on that as a bootstrap business. That’s tough to do. Will Friedl: Yeah. Thanks. Appreciate that, man. Allen Hall: With the training center and the organization in which you run and being a former military veteran through the Air Force Academy and organizing all kinds of activities that which you can’t describe to me, I’m sure it does seem like one of the things you notice about Prometheus is you’re very well organized, like you have, Systems in place to make sure that the customer gets what they’ve asked for. And the technicians are doing what they’re supposed to, and the technicians have the proper tools and that, and getting every, that organizational piece is really important to Prometheus, which you don’t always see in all the ISPs, especially at your size and at year three, a lot of times you just don’t see that kind of organization. How, what does that air force training bring into Prometheus? What do you think it brings to the aspect of Prometheus? Will Friedl: Yeah, that’s a great question. I really appreciate you asking. Working in the air force, the military is, unquestionably the biggest bureaucratic organization in the world. As part of the U S government, the biggest the most systemized entity that you’ve ever seen. And so when you learn to work through that system, you really learn, all the different process controls that are in place to produce certain results, in, in the military environment is one of extreme risk, and so you have to manage this risk and it’s also one of extreme chaos, there’s always things popping up. And so you have to be able to manage and communicate through those issues that pop up. And what’s been really cool about us is that, my background isn’t in wind and it took me a long time to learn the technical aspects of the business, through and through. And I’m always learning more, you can always talk to an engineer, you always find out how much you don’t know. But but what’s interesting is that, what the strength that I do bring in and I was, is the vision of okay, this is how a good organization works and works every single time. And as we’ve gone through the process, we’ve had these, we’ve had mistakes and we’ve had, things that are suboptimal, additional expenses here and there. And what we found is that what’s made us really resilient is our ability to say, okay, Hey, this doesn’t work. We need to change it. And then have the exact. Yeah. Know exactly what lever we need to pull to change that outcome, and, maybe next time it’s a little bit closer, but it’s not always there, but once you figure out what we need to do, we’ve been really good at taking the same systems that I’ve been working with for over a decade in the military and applying them into the company and saying, okay, Hey, this is how this is going to run. And if we, in the future, we need to change it, this is the process for changing it. And that’s made us really adaptable. We, you talk to a lot of small companies and they’ll say, I’m super adaptable because I, and they have that attitude because they can change what they’re doing in the moment. But what I think is really important in order to be able to scale and do that well, is that not just change what you’re doing in the moment, but also almost immediately implement a system that will allow you to shut your brain off to that side and every single time it goes that way now that doesn’t always happen, right? And there’s always errors and you’re always adjusting it. But at least we, like I’m, my team now is very familiar with, okay, Hey, this changed. Okay. I need to update this, this procedure, I need to update this process. I need to inform this person and then boom, we make that change and then we just roll in a slightly different direction. It’s a little bit more on target. So I think that’s been the thing that’s allowed us to grow and to learn from our lessons and do such a ineffective job and basically de risk our operations. It’s interesting, for blade repair, we had a kickoff meeting yesterday and the client was, very experienced very experienced program manager for blade repair. They’d been doing this for years and years. And we showed up and, most clients, they show up and they’re like, okay, let’s, what do we need to do? And we have a procedure that we do that leads leads them through the step by step conversation so that we cover all the bases, and they showed up with their stuff and we went through that and then we’re like, okay here’s our stuff what about this? What about this? What about this? And, and we had just, we had taken lessons learned and implemented it immediately into that, in that process. And you could just see that they were just like, we’ve been doing this for a long time. We’ve never really seen this kind of thing. Like this is very, it just sets that precedent, and we still have to go out to out there and execute well. But in the military we say like a good plan makes a good execution. So I think we’re starting off. on the right foot and we’re starting off the right foot because we did this very methodically. Joel Saxum: So with that one in mind, like that client experience you had just this week, right? You are a part of the advanced and veterans advanced energy project. And I know that we’ve talked about this in the past. We had Kevin doffing on, we talked to some other people about it. Give us an update on what’s going on with that program, because I know Allen and I, we’re not intimately involved with it. So we know about it on, in, on that surface level but what are you, what’s your involvement with those guys this year? Will Friedl: The Veteran Advanced Energy Project basically takes veterans from across the industry and tries to upskill them and allow them to get exposure to different parts of the industry. And the way they do that is they create a fellowship of a handful of people who come together and we have monthly meetings and go over, leadership developments updates to the industry. And we talk about our different sectors of the industry. So there’s a lot of already. Just built into that system. There’s a lot of cross pollination that happens. And then also every veteran who’s a part of it has to write a policy proposal paper. And so you work with people that are way smarter than you. I have a lot more research background. And they just know a lot of things that, you know, that I, for one, don’t know, and so working with them, they help you to write this policy paper and, you interview multiple people and you get an idea. The idea is that you get a depth of knowledge into a sector of the industry that, that is totally outside your scope. And you come out of that fellowship, not only do you have good friends, you’ve got a network across the industry. But also, you’ve got this depth of knowledge in an area that you would not know otherwise. And so my focus is currently, and I’m not done with my policy paper. So I’ve got lots of research to do, you can imagine I’m busy doing other things, at the same time but my, my research is in, the economics of the wind industry and how that’s, how that money is currently flowing and and whatnot, because, the industry is like a river, and there are certain rivers that are slower and certain rivers that go backwards, and I’m trying to get an understanding of what that river’s and so yeah, that’s. That’s the update for where I am with that process. Allen Hall: I think that’s good because you have that veterans network, you have a broader view of what’s happening in the United States in terms of renewable energy and wind. What are you seeing with Prometheus wind? What things have you noticed over the last 12 months? Joel Saxum: Yeah. So the industry is from the, from a perspective of a small, yeah, small business owner, ISP, what, how does what’s going on in the wind industry affect you right now? How that affects me is basically Will Friedl: The more the more development that goes into this industry, we have a little bit on the construction side, but we do mainly maintenance services. And the currently established let’s see market share is just the amount of wind turbines that are out there. So the more wind turbines that get. That get added, the larger the market share. And generally speaking, if you keep the same percentage of the market share, that means that things look good in the future, and then, the converse is also true. So I’m really plugged into that because I think it’s really important to understand, Hey, what is, what’s coming in the future? How big is this market going to be? Is it going to grow? Is it going to decrease? What are some of the threats to that? And then, how do I respond to that? I just, because I think it’s important for everybody who’s in a leadership position in this industry to really understand that and to understand the implications to help drive, their policies and their future predictions. So that’s how I I’m looking at it. And I see the trickle down effect. The difficulty is, when you talk about what have I seen in the, in, in Prometheus wind we’re, we started real small. So we’re getting bigger and bigger. And so I, it’s hard for me to see that because I haven’t reached a normalized state. Once we reach a normalized state, then we can see those fluctuations a little bit more. Right now we’re just like, exploding in certain, like we’re really seeing a lot of success in what we’re doing and we don’t, it’s hard to say, Hey, this is coming from the market or, Hey, we’ve just been around long enough to have our name out there. And now we know what we’re doing so we can have better sales conversations or expanding our market value. So yeah, so that’s how I’d answer both of those questions. Allen Hall: Are you getting more phone calls reaching out to you now, instead of you having to knock on doors, has that flipped a little bit? Will Friedl: It has, Still nothing beats knocking on doors, right? You just have to, you have to find the right person at the right time. And and have your values align your opportunities line. But what’s, what we’ve noticed is that, as we’ve gotten into these larger companies through pyramids, what’s cool is And I tell people all the time, wind industry is interesting because it’s not like a level steady state industry, right? There’s this huge expansion of work that happens in the summer. And site managers, they don’t staff for that to cover that. They, have, they have for instance, blade repair or inspections, anything that’s outside the norm, they’ll have that built into their budget. And so once you come in and you do a good job. It’s I need to fill this, I have this gap in my capabilities. I need to fill it with somebody. And once, once you come in and do that, good job, there’s. There’s very little that’s going to happen to keep you from coming back to that site. You know what I mean? Or at least them, keep them from requesting that you come back to that site. And that’s what we’ve seen essentially is once we capture it, we hold, and once we cap, we capture and hold, I guess it’s a little bit like warfare but yeah that’s what we’ve that’s what we’ve seen. And still need a lot of, still need a lot of outreach, but generally speaking, once we’ve done a certain scope of annualized scope of work, we get that phone call ringing. Every single time. Joel Saxum: And then once you’re, I know you’re in with a couple of larger operators and I know if you work at one wind farm for them and you get a rave review there, of course, that, that operator is going to say, Hey, go to this wind farm. We need you at this one. Now we need you at that one. Now I need you at that one. So yeah, that expansion. But that speaks to the quality, right? So it speaks to this quality and the service that Prometheus offers. Will Friedl: It is. It’s been awesome. I don’t want to say Hey we jumped in and we did everything perfectly from day one. You know what I mean? That’s not the, that’s not the story that we have. And that’s not what I’m trying to highlight. We’ve made mistakes like everybody else, but we’ve had this. Constant drive to to improve and improve and to identify where are we failing? Where do we need to get better? And I would say that we’ve done that very well. And so we’re what you’re left with is a very consistent product that has a lot of quality. That’s not just happenstance. We didn’t just jump into the right, to the right role and systemize that. Now we started off with a couple of assumptions that were wrong. We changed those around and we got through maturity, we got to something that’s, and I would say consistently excellent. Joel Saxum: What would you say? What would be the lesson if you could go back and give three years ago, will a piece of knowledge? What would it be? Will Friedl: This is not inspiring. This is not inspiring. This is going to be like first off, things are going to be okay. And that’s what there’s so many times when there was just so like the burden of stress was, I can’t even tell you I went through a program in the Air Force where there’s 90 percent washout rate and that program, is a very difficult program. But it’s only, it’s only 20 weeks long. And every day for the last 10 days, Two to three years, with the exception of a couple of months ago, once we started picking up steam this season has felt like I was a day in that program. It was that stressful. And like I’ll go back and I go back and do my job and it’s so everything’s so easy. It’s so straightforward. You had a military, it’s Oh, you just need to know this procedure. You need to know who to communicate that the problem solving infrastructure and the problems that you face are their problems are like, they’re filtered. There’s a filter before they hit you. And then once they hit you, it’s okay, you’re getting trained for those problems that are going to hit you. Here there’s no filter and there’s no system. And then it’s been it’s been a lot. And basically I think a good amount of encouragement. The other thing I would tell me is it’s focused on sales because you’re not going to know, you don’t know what your assumptions are until you, put them to the test and and then and focus on growing in a slower, this year, last year, I think we grew too fast and we had some issues and we pared our teams down. And then we kept going from there. And this year we’ve been very deliberate on how fast we grow and maintaining. Okay. Hey, if I’m going to bring a team on, I need to make sure that they have this qualification. I know exactly what I need to train them on and I’m going to, I’m growing them one at a time. And so that by the time, I’ve got as many teams that I need they’re all good and I don’t have to, I don’t have to be fielding calls all day long just to keep them operational. Allen Hall: Yeah. What are your growth areas now? Where do you see your business expanding? Will Friedl: The spring is the growth time, right? That’s where, I would say the winter time, we purposely were training setting up the training center. So that was like hair on fire all through that, trying to get it ready by spring. And then and then the springtime you’re sitting on all these clears. And so you’re trying to make sure it’s working to go. And so that’s hair on fire time. And so my next thing is, we’ve grown to a certain amount and, being on these calls, that call that I mentioned, what’s cool about it is that I wasn’t the one running that call, that was, that, that was my project manager. That was my operations guy. They were the ones running that call. And and so it’s like a, so my next thing is to, okay, sweet. We’ve gotten to a certain size. We might still build, Add a couple of teams here and there, as projects pick up throughout the summer. But I think the next stage is to, okay, let’s sit, let’s wait, let’s see what happens. Maybe I can take a vacation, de stress a little bit. And and then we can identify where to go from there. So I would say the Air Force, they got this thing called the OODA loop, the Orient, it’s for fighter pilots. But part of that is, okay, Once you understand the situation, just orient yourself to, to what’s going on and then decide to go from there. So we’ve gone through the hair on fire stage backstage. Let’s do some orientation and decide, very methodically what we’re going to do next. Joel Saxum: Will, you guys are, of course, we know, doing blade work. What are your other scopes that you’re taking on this summer? Will Friedl: Yeah, great question. We do a lot of inspections too. We’re really good at bore scope inspections and a warranty that kind of thing, tower walk downs. We’re getting staffed on some construction sites to do some basically some inspections for the customer to make sure that, the turbines that are built or the turbines that were purchased, and and that’s not always the case and and to a great expense sometimes, and we’re on sites doing that we’re doing end of warranty we do a lot of into warranty, especially in Q4, as you can imagine. And and then we just, we do maintenance support as well. So we’ve had crews several crews out doing full maintenance schedules for turbines and and then whatever else is needed. Sometimes it’s for a contention gig. Sometimes it’s the full scope. Sometimes it’s Hey, we’re here. We just had these bearings go out. We need some or we need some inspections on these bearings, we need re grease. A lot of different things. It’s amazing. These things these. These machines are so technical. And so there’s so many different failure modes. There’s so many different maintenance procedures. There’s so many different things that can happen where you’re just like, Hey, I don’t have, I don’t have a guy on my crew who’s got the bandwidth and the specialty to do this. I need to call somebody. And that’s what we feel. We feel calls like that. And we sometimes we can, sometimes we can’t do it, but most of the time we can. Joel Saxum: And I know, cause a lot of the operators, like especially site supervisors, once they have a team on site that they like, they’re just feeding them work because they’d like to keep them there. That cause that’s, the technician shortages are regular, right? So if they leave that. A site supervisor may be like, I don’t know what I’m going to get these guys back. So while they’re here, I’m going to try to get as much work out of them as I possibly can. So that’s when you have scope creep or scope changes and those kinds of things. But it sounds like you guys have got a pretty good system for dealing with those as they come up. Will Friedl: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We I it could, it comes down to just the systems that we have, not only for training our people, but also for managing our people. So when things change we’ve got, you’ve got a way to figure out, okay Hey, how do we address this? How do we how do we walk away so that, or how do we, make sure that the customer understands, Hey, we’re making this a priority. We’re going to get this problem solved. And we’ll figure out what we need to do to make that happen. And and, all along that process, you talk, you just took the nail on the head. Things are constantly changing, right? Hey, you’ll be out there and there’ll be like, We’ll get some bad Boar Scope results, and I’ll be like, okay, Hey we actually want to, increase the number of Boar Scopes that you’re doing on site or whatever it is, or, Hey, we need you to give us a little bit more analysis on this. Can have an engineer look at this? And as we go through that process, it’s constantly changing. And so because it’s dynamic, it requires a lot of good communication, right? And so that’s where, our communication systems and how we come into play, we’re usually in front of those things. So we’re asking the questions and And my brother has this great saying just a little bit of background. When I started the business, I started with two, two brothers who have a lot of wind industry experience. But he’s always starting their cat. He’s like, yeah, we just got to kill those cats. He’s he’s got to ask those questions, kill those cats and move on. Allen Hall: Since you brought up bearings and you guys are looking at bearings, there appears to be a significant issue with bearings in the United States at the moment. What are you guys saying? Will Friedl: We are seeing those issues. I had that’s the first thing. And we’re finding those issues. We don’t do, I do want to say we don’t do major component exchange at this year. And that’s something that we’re looking to add. We were originally looking at it this year. We’re probably going to add it next year. Again, very methodical steps forward. We’re not, swapping those things out all the time, but when we do the inspections for them we’re seeing a lot of issues, a lot of breakdowns for it now. It sounds like it’s a good business at the moment though. It should be. It really is. It really is. I think sites, they appreciate when, when you can consistently show up on the right, with the right equipment, with the right people, who have a professional attitude, who communicate well through the project, where you get your results and your inspection results in a timely manner, that’s in a professional, like easy to read format. And just the process is smooth and it happens without them having to make phone calls or ping things. And the questions are coming from the vendor instead of them going to the vendor. I think that experience is something that a lot of sites appreciate. And and yeah and being able to do that we’ve had a lot of really good business. Allen Hall: This has been a really good update of all the things that are happening at Prometheus wind and really excited for you. It sounds like the growth is in action at the moment. So if you have. Wind farm and you need some maintenance inspections or end of warranty campaigns being conducted. You needed to reach out to Prometheus Wind. How do they do that? How do they reach you? Will Friedl: You can go to our website, www.prometheuswind.com, and Prometheus is P-R-O-M-E-T-H-E-U-S. Everybody messes that up. Or you can reach us by phone. Our phone number is 1 800 487 4460. Allen Hall: It’s great to have you back on the program and great to see all of all the success. Will Friedl: Hey, thank you so much. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you guys. It’s always awesome to listen to you guys and to be able to come on and talk every once in a while. So thanks so much.

BOEM has cancelled its Gulf of Mexico offshore wind lease auction due to lack of interest. We explore why companies are hesitant to put turbines in the gulf, examining challenges and opportunities for wind projects in Texas and Louisiana from both financial and technical perspectives. Phil and Rosemary discuss downwind turbine designs for hurricane-prone areas and the complex economics of wind energy projects in the region. Our Wind Farm of the Week is the farm built for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, showcasing the potential of wind energy on a global stage. Register for the AMI Wind Turbine Blades Event! 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: Have you seen the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile up close, Joel? Have you been around that thing? Joel Saxum: I have, I’ve actually sat in it and I think I know where this story is going. Allen Hall: I been up close to it and I don’t remember where it must have been an automobile museum and to the peanut mobile Which is another engineering marvel not seen that I saw them both driving down a highway one day I thought man either I’m really tired Strange vehicles on the road today But the wiener mobile flipped over outside of Chicago, did you see that It looked like a, did it look like somebody fell asleep and hit one of those concrete barriers that you can always find in Chicago? Joel Saxum: My thought was, I was actually joking with a friend about it, is cause I’m from Wisconsin, so there’s this rivalry between Chicago and the people in Wisconsin. And it was brats versus the all, the all beef hot dogs in Chicago that they make the Chicago dogs. And they’re saying that they wanted to keep the Wienermobile in Chicago so much that they, someone actually sabotaged it. I don’t know, that’s probably not what happened, of course, but that was the joke. Allen Hall: Is there a Bratmobile? Joel Saxum: There’s not. I will tell you this, if you’d like to see some great American entertainment, tune into a Milwaukee Brewers game and watch the Sausage Race. And you will see hot dogs and brats, polishes. Italian sausage. That’s the fourth one. Are these the four food groups up in Wisconsin? Yes, yes. Yes they are. Number five is cheese curds and number six is beer. That rounds it out nicely. So the Wienermobile needs a little TLC based on the photos I’ve seen and they’re gonna have to put that thing back together. That’s a hallmark of America, right? There’s things to be proud of. That’s one of them, man on the moon, Wienermobile. I’m Allen Hall, and I’ll be joined by the rest of the Uptime host after these news headlines. In our first story, German wind turbine manufacturer Nordex is reporting a significant turnaround in its financial performance. For the first half of 2024, the company saw a dramatically reduced net loss of 12.6 million euros, a substantial improvement from the 298 million Euro loss reported in the same period last year. This positive trend is further underscored by a 24.7% increase in sales reaching 3.43 billion euros. In light of these encouraging results, Nordics has revived its 2024 guidance upward now projecting an EBITDA margin between three and 4%. Amid these industry dynamics, the United Kingdom is making bold moves to accelerate its wind energy sector.  The British government has unveiled ambitious plans to support an additional 20 to 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. Central to this initiative is the creation of a new government owned energy company, aptly named Great British Energy. Joel Saxum: This new entity will spearhead a public private partnership aimed at attracting up to 60 billion pounds in private investment. Completing these policy initiatives, the UK is also investing in critical infrastructure. Construction is underway for what will become the world’s largest monopile factory in Teesworths. The 90 acre wind monopile factory represents a significant boost to the local economy with plans to create over 2, 000 jobs. This includes 1, 500 positions during the construction phase and 750 operational roles once the facility is fully functional in 2026. Across the Irish Sea, Ireland is also recognizing the immense potential of offshore wind energy. A recent report has projected that if properly developed, Offshore wind could contribute a staggering 69 billion euros to Ireland’s economy by 2050. To fully capitalize on this opportunity, experts stress the need for strategic investments in port infrastructure and manufacturing capabilities. In North America, an intriguing development is unfolding in St. John, New Brunswick, up in Canada. The virtual wind farm is making headlines by selling electricity to St. John Energy at less than half the price charged by the provincial utility. New Brunswick Power. This remarkable price difference has enabled St. John Energy to achieve record profits and implement more modest rate increases for its customers. The success of this project could serve as a model for other municipalities looking to reduce energy costs and increase renewable energy adoption. And despite these positive developments, the wind industry continues to grapple with the challenge of intermittency. Recent data from the United States highlights this issue showing that wind generation plummeted by 78 percent in July during a high demand. In response, power producers significantly increased their reliance on natural gas generation. And in a groundbreaking development, energy giants Total Energies and RWE have joined forces to implement the innovative Oranje wind project in the Netherlands. The 795 megawatt offshore wind farm located 53 kilometers From the Dutch coast is set to become the country’s first system integration project in the wind sector. What sets Oranje Wind apart is its comprehensive approach to energy system integration. The project aims to implement a range of flexible demand solutions including electrolyzers for green hydrogen production, smart chargers for electric vehicles, e boilers for heating, and even battery storage systems. Additionally, Aranjawin will serve as a testbed for cutting edge offshore technologies, including floating solar farms and advanced energy storage solutions like seabed battery systems. Construction 2026, with full commissioning expected in early 2028. Once operational, Orange Wind will generate enough green electricity to power over 1 million Dutch households annually. 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 Barn. CEO and Founder of IntelStor Phil Totaro. And the Chief Commercial Officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum. Mark your calendars for AMI’s Winter in Blades Conference happening October 2nd and 3rd in historic Boston, Massachusetts. This two day event, which is similar to the well established edition in Europe, will bring together the whole blade value chain to examine market outlook, innovations in blade materials, design, manufacturing, testing, and lifecycle management. With a special focus on the North America market. Gain insights from experts from Vestas, Nordex, TPI, and DNV. Along with scientists and engineers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Plan your trip to Boston this fall by visiting the link in the show notes or just Google 2024 Blades Boston. Allen Hall: Down in the Gulf of Mexico, Boehm has canceled a planned offshore wind lease for about 400, 000 acres of land. of Louisiana and Texas due to, of all things, lack of commercial interest. Only one company, RWE Offshore showed interest in the latest lease sale notice. And this contrasts with other auctions that have happened, particularly along the East Coast. But despite the cancellation, BOEM received an unsolicited lease request from Hecate Energy Gulf Wind LLC for areas off the southeastern part of Texas. Okay. I bring this up because Joel and I were, our producer were just down in New Orleans right where this activity is planned to take place. And it does seem like if all the places in the United States you could put some decent wind in relatively inexpensively. It is Texas and Louisiana because the infrastructure is there. Joel Saxum: Yeah. We went and visited Gulf wind technologies this week and their facility is on, is in another facility, right? It’s an active port. The port is for the facility, the one we were on mile and a half long, it used to have over 26, 000 employees working at it every day. They used to build ships here. It’s a deep water access, deep water port. We drove around in a truck key side up against the coffer dams. The size and scope of this thing is crazy, but they’re there and they have to this specific port we were at, or not, I wouldn’t call it a port, but Pacific facility we were at, they have brought in the cells. They brought in over a hundred blades last year. When say the port of Houston didn’t have the capacity to bring these boats in and they have all the cranes, they have all the working stuff. Along that Gulf coast. All of the infrastructure that is needed for offshore wind is there. The people are there, the vessels are there, the support is there, and the people, and the local communities want the jobs. So they’re all about it as well, right? So when we were sitting there talking with a lot of the Gulf wind people, it was like, they’ve been working on a holistic view under contract for a while about how to make the wind. Our wind energy in the Gulf of Mexico basically go forward, right? In the most efficient way, in the most, in the safest way and the most cost effective way. The thirst is there, the capabilities are there, and you knock some hurdles down, right? When we’re, I think last fall, we talked about on the show, a deep water port being put in, or a deep water quayside being put in up in your neck of the woods, Alan, up in Massachusetts. And it was like, seven different entities, everybody fighting over it, and you had to have this permission, and that permission, and this permission, it was delaying things and all they had to do was add a couple hundred meters of Causeway or something on the leg or to one end of a facility these facilities exist It’s literally just roll in and sign a contract to be able to pull your boats up. So it’s there It’s ready to go. You know right now we have a lot of other wind Focus going on in the united states. There’s a ton of things going on the east coast There’s the west coast a lot of people paid a lot of money for auction. Lease You areas out there so money’s tied up all over the place and To be honest with you people are probably a little bit concerned about you know Just our political climate right now instead of spending money on more leases. Allen Hall: So is it the financial risk that is limiting projects off of Texas and Louisiana or is more of a technical weather related risk? Philip Totaro: It’s really Competition with, especially in the ear cot market where you have cheap onshore wind and solar PV that really negates the need for substantial capacity. Of offshore wind but as you mentioned, at the top of this with canceling this auction for additional lease areas. And this unsolicited bid by energy. They are specifically trying to do a project that would be powered by offshore wind, but for hydrogen production. So this is not the only project that’s been proposed down in the Gulf for that purpose. But what’s interesting about it is Ahektae already has a 40 percent interest from Repsol, the Spanish oil and gas company Repsol, and Repsol’s now made an offer to take 100 percent control. So there’s obviously some, investment looking to come in but there, a lot of the other Developers, the reason that frankly canceled this tender for the Gulf of Mexico, the 2nd round of the Gulf of Mexico was they received, I think, something like 25 different comments from some of the potential participants in the auction. Who all indicated to Boehm that the market climate just isn’t right now and there have even been some, um, European utility companies or, sovereign wealth funds Ecuador, for example, in Norway. And one of their executives came out and said that they’re a little concerned about, you know, they frankly think if Trump wins, it’s going to be, the end of offshore wind in the U. S. for a little while. The reality of that is if fear is going to hold people back from making that kind of an investment, Then I guess Boehm had to pull the plug, but there are still companies that are interested in those lease sites, it’s just that the use case is not necessarily supplying electricity the way most offshore wind is doing in the world right now, it would be for this kind of hydrogen application. Where, you know, that hydrogen production facility would take the bulk of the power offtake and then a little bit might go into a merchant market. Joel Saxum: It makes sense though, Phil, right? Have that kind of hybrid production usage ready, right? Because you’re in now, this is a completely different market, right? When you talk about all the projects that are going on the Northeast part of the United States, they’re looking to secure a We secured a PPA for X amount of megawatt. And we know we’re gonna make that throughout the life of the project. If you’re shoot for shoving energy into the Ercot market, there’s times when the prices are peanuts, like you’re not making anything. However, there’s also times when you’re , a couple years ago you’re making $9,000 a megawatt hour. So there’s if you’re gonna have a yeah. Backup production of hydrogen or a focus on hydrogen production makes sense. And then if you have the ability to flip the switch. When prices in that merchant market or cut go up, that could be attractive to someone. However, right now it’s just it’s Allen Hall: really risky, like you said. So it’s more of a longer term play then, right? Phil, is that what I’m hearing is that you need to have different, create different things with electricity. Rather than just feed the grid straight off, and green hydrogen would be one of them, of probably several. Philip Totaro: If you’re gonna do a project in the Gulf of Mexico, given where demand is right now, and what Joel just mentioned, that in, in some cases you get negative pricing in ERCOT even if the offtake was going into, Louisiana and, Southwest Power Pool, et cetera, You’re still, it’s not that Southwest Power Pool is that much better at the moment, you’re still getting, somewhere around 30 a megawatt hour. If you’re also getting the PTC, that obviously helps but the point being that I, I think a lot of project developers, yeah, like weather related risks, like you mentioned that’s kind of part of it, but it’s really the offtake situation. That’s what. Everybody’s really concerned about, having to build, a billion dollar offshore wind farm and a, at least, half a billion dollar transmission capability, substation and, export cables et cetera to be able to plug that into a market that’s already saturated with renewables. That’s going to be, a hard sell in, in the near term. Allen Hall: But Phil, wouldn’t you design it to be lower cost if you knew that was a constraint? You wouldn’t put a brand new 15 megawatt turbine out there and you wouldn’t put it out so far. You put it closer to shore so the cabling’s shorter. You may use a four or five megawatt turbine just for simplicity’s sake. There’s a lot that goes into that though. It the model on the model on the East Coast right now is to put turbines further and further away from shore, which makes the cost go higher and higher because Construction costs go up, cabling goes up. Everything just gets more expensive for every kilometer you’re offshore. Louisiana is talking about putting turbines within the three miles of their shoreline, so it’ll be state, what is considered state waters. Louisiana is the only one doing that. Does that then make the projects less expensive? Within the ppa price doesn’t matter so much Philip Totaro: it does but also again keep in mind that this the power coming off anything in Louisiana would probably not go into your car to would be spp so it’s like I said it’s a little easier to justify but you’re still also talking about something where with. interest rates still so high, it doesn’t matter necessarily how far away. Something closer to shore, shorter cables, etc. Yes, it makes it easier. It makes the foundations easier because the amount of pile doesn’t have to be so deep or the jacket, whatever it is. So that’s a consideration, but I don’t think it’s the governing factor of why Okay The developers don’t want to get into the Gulf of Mexico at this point. I think they just look at the overall kind of economic picture and say to themselves, I don’t think this really makes sense when I could just go build a solar plant on shore or a wind farm. Onshore. Allen Hall: So I, I think there’s two pieces to this, right? Obviously, as Phil’s pointed out, you get the financial piece, selling the power, where’s it gonna go? All those financial constraints and the weather, right? But after the break, I wanna get Rosemary in here and talk about the technical issues about putting blades in these hurricane conditions because we had talked to Gulf Wind Technology. And learn a couple of things about how it could be done. So after the break, let’s talk to Rosemary. Joel Saxum: As busy wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial and let’s face it difficult. That’s why the Uptime Podcast recommends PES 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: Well, Rosemary, after visiting Gulf Wind Technology down in New Orleans, we were really impressed, Joel and I, of all the things that were happening there. And one of the discussion points was, what do we do about hurricanes and the design of wind turbines? We had some feedback about that, which we cannot disclose. We’re sworn to secrecy there. However, you’ve been looking into these hurricane turbines and what we call downwind turbines, which the blades are on the wrong side. And is there some update on that? Is it useful in hurricane conditions? Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, maybe. It’s one of the questions that I get asked a lot about. And I think one of my very first YouTube videos is about that. How do you design a wind turbine so the blades don’t hit the tower? So the way that a regular wind turbine is designed, the Blades are on the upward side of the tower. So as the wind blows the blade and it bends towards the tower. So that’s one of the major design constraints when you’re designing the blades is they have to be stiff enough to not hit the tower, obviously. And yeah, smash into it while they’re rotating or in a strong gust of wind. But there’s a lot of interest in designing blades that are more flexible. And one of the reasons for that is so that in strong storms, they wouldn’t need to be as, have as much material. If you don’t need to design it as stiff, you can use less material. Yeah, and so that, that is helpful in a strong storm. Because it’s challenging to put a normal wind turbine in an environment like that because the blades aren’t stiff enough to be sure that they’re never going to hit the tower. And then there’s other reasons as well, why you might want a more flexible blade, like if you can make the blade more slender, which will skinnier blade, that will naturally make it less flexible, but there’s a lot of interest in doing that and having a higher tip spread ratio, you can get more efficiency and again, better performance in these extreme wind loads. People did try, there are downwind designs out there and still today like small wind turbines are often made in a downwind design and you can make them so that they behave like a weather vane. They just naturally follow the wind. So that’s one benefit, but it really only works for small ones. Back in the day, utility scale wind turbines were sometimes downwind, but it’s been a few decades since anyone did that seriously, because there were a few big design flaws associated or design challenges associated with the downwind design. And the major one is that Every time that the blade passes behind the tower, it goes from having the wind pushing it to all of a sudden having no wind pushing it. And when the wind pushes a blade, it bends away from the wind. And then when it goes behind the tower, it suddenly springs back. And so that does two things. One, it makes a thump. Every time that the blade passes the tower, you go thump. And then the other thing that it does is it it, is challenging for the, those kinds of loads that are happening on the blade frequently. Yeah, cause fatigue loading, fatigue damage of the blades. And that was hard to get around. But yeah, some researchers at NREL have been looking into ways to make more flexible blades. And this was the, downwind orientation is one of the really obvious ways that you can do that. So they thought. We’re not going to go off data from the 80s and 90s that we had when people used to make big wind turbines that way. Let’s just take they’ve got a 1. 5 megawatt wind turbine, a test wind turbine at their disposal and they’re like, we’ll just flip it. So they just literally took the rotor off, turned it around, whacked it back on I guess change the polarity of the generator and maybe a couple of other little things. But yeah, that, that’s what they did. So now it’s a downwind rotor. Yeah. And then they instrumented it up and tested how it went. And yeah, the TLDR is that downwind orientation is still a bad idea for the same reasons that it always has been, but now they have a lot more confidence in that it’s it’s ruled out a whole path of investigation that they were maybe going to go down. And it is, I’m in two minds about this experiment. Cause it’s like on the one hand, like you probably could have predicted that was going to be the outcome. How many millions did they spend on it? But on the other hand, it’s it’s stopped them from, spending years engineering a perfect downwind turbine to, build a whole turbine and see what happens. So I love these quick and dirty things of just, yeah just take what you’ve got. make it work. Now you don’t need to talk about that anymore. All of your, instead of, splitting your research team in two with half of them working on downwind rotors, now they’re all working on upwind and solving the next biggest uncertainty. So yeah, it’s pretty cool. They also got a lot of information from the measurements that they took in terms of yeah, loads and strain, and they can use that to validate some of their models. Cause it’s really challenging to model. The aerodynamics and the blade structure, how they interact together, especially in these kinds of challenging environments where you’ve got, disturbed blow. Yeah, so they’ll get a lot of learning from that as well. So yeah, I think it’s not so much it’s easy to just look at it and go, what a waste of millions of dollars. But I think that there was a lot of learning that happened And, worthwhile thing to do. Allen Hall: Why don’t we have paddle turbines? They’re not efficient. No, I know they’re not efficient, but we’re talking about Like a water wheel. Yeah, Philip Totaro: You have a steamship. Barrel, like a horizontal orientation barrel. Rosemary Barnes: You can half your efficiency that way. I Philip Totaro: like to do Allen Hall: that. You put a blade on either side, right? Bounce it out. Rosemary Barnes: No, just the drag type device is inherently half as efficient, roughly, as A lift type device that’s just, yeah, they’re aerodynamics. You can only go as fast as the wind when you’ve got drag pushing your turbine around. What compared to, yeah, a lot faster from having lift on your side. Allen Hall: Yeah. But we’ve seen all kinds of other types of turbines, not only downwind recently, but if it’s going to keep the turbine operational where it’s not going to break or tear itself apart, why would you not look at. Other things, or why wouldn’t NREL be investigating things that could possibly work, especially since if I was going to go with a downwind turbine, I would call Rosemary or somebody that knows what they’re talking about and say, is this even possible? And the answer would be no. Don’t do it, which I think is what Rosemary would tell me. It is possible. Rosemary Barnes: They did it. Allen Hall: They did it. I know they did it, but they got the output that you would have told them about two years ago. Rosemary Barnes: No, I’m all for that, like periodically reassessing if the, assumptions that you’ve been making for the last few decades, if they’re still valid, because things have changed a lot since the 80s and 90s. I think it’s fair to revisit. I think that they learnt a lot, and I don’t know the exact we’ve got to wait for the full paper to be written up, but so I don’t know the exact deal breakers that led them to their conclusion, but I would expect that none of them are insurmountable, that, you could, with enough money thrown at it, you could make a perfectly reliable and efficient downwind wind turbine these days, and that it would cost more than the the standard arrangement, And that’s the other thing. We can already make hurricane proof wind turbines if you just want to throw materials at it, basically, put twice as much carbon fiber and make it make it twice as stiff, then there you go. You got a hurricane proof wind turbine. But the problem is that then it costs so much more that you would, no one would ever actually want to build a project with those turbines. That’s where we’re at. It’s always the, like we talk about it, like engineering Oh, can we solve this technical problem or that technical problem? But the true answer is 99 percent of the time. It’s like engineers could do it, but it wouldn’t be cost effective. So you wouldn’t. And I think that’s where we’re at with this as well. Joel Saxum: That’s the same conversation, Alan, we had with all the SMEs at Gulf Wind Technology this week is building that problem statement at the beginning and understanding the economics of it before you get into the engineering of it. Because if it doesn’t make sense economically let’s not waste the time to build or design something like this. And Rosemary, I got to tell you something, and this is from someone who doesn’t have that many gray hairs. I’m embarrassed to say I actually had to look up what TLDR meant because I didn’t know what it meant. Oh my god. Rosemary Barnes: Oh my Philip Totaro: god, Joel! Joel’s like Dr. Evil in Austin Powers, he’s I’m with it, I’m hip, and then starts dancing the Macarena. Exactly, sharks with freaking laser beams on their heads. Joel Saxum: One million dollars. If you’ve been watching any kind of news, and or if you’re on social media, or however you get your news, you’ll see that the Olympics are going on in Paris right now. So in honor of the ongoing Olympics in Paris, I’m going to throw it back a couple years to 2018. When the Olympics were in Pyeongchang, South Korea, so that was Winter Olympics, so not the Summer Olympics. But at those Summer or Winter Olympics in South Korea, a wind farm was built to power the Olympics. There, the wind farm that was built to power the Olympics was 203 megawatts during the games and this was a hundred and four percent of the energy required to power them So it the South Koreans when they put this plan together they were creating the most green Olympics and wanted to make that a Kind of a flagship for the rest of the games as they move forward only one bad thing happened with the wind there and it didn’t have anything to do with the wind farm but the wind was so extreme on some of the outdoor events that there was actually, they got canceled or they got delayed. And there was actually some issues with the wind blowing so hard up on the mountains in South Korea. But the the Olympic wind turbines outside of Pyeongchang, South Korea, in the province of Gangwon, 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, which is now on Substack. And you can check out Rosemary’s YouTube channel, Engineering with Rosie, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. /po

Acciona has identified around 6 GW of its global capacity for potential sale. Invenergy has partnered with Patria Investments to acquire a portfolio of wind power complexes in Brazil. Arclight Capital Partners has launched SkyVest Renewables, a new renewables initiative which has already acquired a 160 MW wind farm in Texas. Repsol is in talks to acquire the remaining 60% stake in Hecate Energy. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! 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 Intel Store, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, 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. Arclight Capital Partners has launched SkyVest Renewables, a new initiative focused on operating and optimizing renewable energy assets. With an initial 500 million capital commitment, SkyVest has already acquired a 160 megawatt farm facility. And Texas, the company aims to target operating utility grade wind and solar assets in North America, implementing best practices to generate near term cashflow and mitigate risks. Phil, there should be a lot more companies entering this marketplace. It can be a big revenue generator. Philip Totaro: Well, and this follows on the trend that we’ve been talking about for months, which is, I mean, for those that don’t know, ArcLight already has ArcLight Capital Partners, the, the kind of umbrella and parent of, of this infrastructure company. They already have some ownership of assets wind and solar throughout the U. S. It’s a smaller portfolio, but they were kind of dipping their toe in the water, and now You know, standing up a new project development and asset management company with SkyVest is is fantastic to see. And I think, with the capital commitment they’ve got with 500 million, that’s a good place to start. But in reality, there’s probably a lot more coming and you should expect that that Arclight’s going to be doing a lot to help them raise funds. and deploy that capital following on that, that trend of infrastructure companies doing, doing that throughout the globe. Joel Saxum: I know I talk about oil and gas and lessons learned and like things that can be taken from that sector, but in the oil and gas world, you’ll see that people buy and sell oil fields left and right. There’ll be group, large asset grabs or, or even a single well or something like this, but a lot of times it’s a field. And we’re starting to see that more and more in the wind industry, because what people will do in the oil industry is buy that field, optimize it, they’ll do a little CO2 injection, or they’ll do work over, bring in work over rigs, clean up the wells, get them working better, and then they’ll dump it, sell it to someone else that wants to operate it. So we’re seeing some more capital come into the space now where they’re buying up wind farms, our ArcLight Capital, bought that 160 megawatt wind farm in Texas. And they’ll optimize it, right? They’ll put a little bit of money in it. They’ll put some, do some best practices stuff and they’ll get that thing running better. Whether it’s through just best practices or whether it’s through new sensor technologies or new LEP upgrades or lightning protection upgrades or whatever they may be, get that thing up and moving and then possibly sell it in the future for a profit. And that is starting to happen more and more and more in the wind industry at a global scale. Allen Hall: Spanish oil company Repsol is in talks to acquire the remaining 60 percent stake in U. S. renewable energy company, Hecate energy Repsol already owns 40 percent of Hecate energy group, which develops renewable projects in the U S and this move follows Repsol’s recent acquisition of ConnectGen for almost 800 million, further expanding its presence in the U S renewable energy market. Phil, why is a large Spanish oil production company moving to renewable projects in the U. S. right now? Philip Totaro: They actually are seeing potentially better returns for those that don’t know this company, Hecate Energy, They have already deployed some battery storage projects in the U. S. They have a significant development pipeline, and most recently, they just proposed to develop a, an offshore wind farm. in some of the project sites that were pulled from a BOEM auction in the Gulf of Mexico, specifically for hydrogen generation. So they’re, they’ve got quite an interesting pipeline and it’s a play that Repsol obviously wants to be not just a Spanish oil company, They want to be a global energy company. And this is a way in which they can kind of get their foot in a market where they see a lot more opportunity that potentially what they see in investing in renewables in Spain. Joel Saxum: Yeah. To partner on with what Phil’s saying there, Repsol, of course, large oil major running operations all around the world, offshore, onshore, all the above. But in the, when you’re talking in the renewable sector, specifically in wind in Spain, there’s a lot of aged assets. And where they’re hooked into the grid there and the availability of good wind sites, a lot of them are, you’re 15, 20, 25 years old. You’re starting to get to lifetime extension projects. Whereas when you come to the United States. Of course, the geography is larger. There’s a lot more space for more wind projects. And it is an, it’s a newer market, right? So the assets are younger if you’re trying to buy into other assets and those kinds of things. So, you can see some oil majors starting to pull out of wind or make different moves around it like BP or Shell. But Repsol diving further in. Allen Hall: U. S. based Invenergy has partnered with Brazilian investment fund Petria Investments to acquire a portfolio of wind power complexes in Brazil. The 600 megawatt portfolio purchased from Contour Global and Electrobras consists of four projects, all of them located in the northern states of Brazil. Invenergy will own 10 percent of the portfolio and provide operation and maintenance services, marking its first ownership of installed wind capacity in the country. Now, Phil, Invenergy’s been involved in a number of projects in the United States for a long time, and they do O& M on those projects in the U. S. Now they’re moving into Brazil, what is the incentive to, to move to Brazil to acquire some part of that growing marketplace? Philip Totaro: Well, this is a really interesting play because this, the, the company they’re partnering with Petria Investments or Petria Investimentos, technically. They are kind of a Brazilian version of an infrastructure fund, if you will, where they are starting to gobble up some of the legacy operational wind and, and even a little bit of, of solar assets in the country. But specifically bringing in somebody with experience to operate and maintain which I think is interesting that they wouldn’t have worked or partnered with any of the companies down in Brazil. But Invenergy does have an investment strategy that they wanted to kind of. Start getting their, their tentacles out and, and, into different markets. And Vennergy’s talked about diving into projects in Spain, they’re developing projects in Japan and elsewhere in the world. And so this gives them an opportunity to get a foothold in the Brazilian market. So it’s, it’s a very, very interesting, Joel Saxum: One of the things Invenergy does in the States, as Allen was talking about earlier, is they will go and build a prod, they’ll, they’ll go through the whole fermenting pipeline, get everything ready, build a project, and they’ll build it with the, basically a selling agreement already in place, right? They’ll build it and then they’ll sell it to an operator. Immediately once it starts commissioning is complete, then they’ll stay on and they’ll sign an agreement to be the, basically the FSA holder and run the wind farm for them. So I think you could see that possibly that strategy rolling over into Brazil. So once they’ve established a foothold in Brazil with all these projects, understanding how to operate there, understanding how to do the O& M on these, because of logistically and spare parts and all these different things you have to figure out, I could foresee Invenergy starting to actually do the same thing down there is develop, sell, and continue to run. But that’s going to be, of course, in the future. Allen Hall: Spanish renewables company Acciona Energia is considering a major asset rotation strategy amid challenging financial results. The company has identified around six gigawatts of its global capacity for potential sale, representing nearly half of its total installed and consolidated capacity. Actiona Energia’s first half profits for 2024 have crashed by 84 percent year on year to 65 million euros, primarily due to extraordinary conditions in the Spanish market. Phil, Actiona Energia selling half their assets has got to be a little bit of a warning sign, right? Philip Totaro: Yes, especially when you consider what Joel just mentioned in regards to, in the Spanish market, you’ve got kind of, a concentration of very experienced companies, but they’re now managing a much older kind of asset portfolio there that is kind of ripe for repowering. So this could actually be a good thing for them to be able to sell off a portfolio and potentially still have some kind of. Agreement where, you know, because of their ownership stake in, in Nordex potentially get some Nordex turbines in on these potential repowering projects but also gives them, a substantial amount of cash for, for six gigawatts worth of projects that they can also redeploy. And that’s why they call it kind of this asset rotation. So for those that aren’t familiar, that’s. Asset rotation usually means they’re, selling off an asset that they already own, taking whatever cash they have, and just following the same project development pattern. Again, up to the point where, they can sell off a mature asset to another another owner, potentially a financially focused owner. Joel Saxum: Something for the listeners to understand here as well as when we say ACCIONA ENERGIA, there’s a lot of ACCIONA group companies. So you ENERGIA, you have ACCIONA ENERGY, which is different. You actually have just ACCIONA. So if you’re thinking, Oh man, this must be affecting these people. It might not be. In the United States, I know they’re completely kind of separate from the Spanish entity and they operate with different principles as well. So, just something to think about when we talk about this, but that what we’re talking about here with this asset rotation thing, absolutely. A lot of these assets coming to end a life in Spain and something new being needed, needing to be done with them. So there could be some opportunities here for some OEMs to slide in with some big repower projects and sell some turbines.

Diane Waghorne, founder of Tech Safety Lines (TSL), and instructor Matt Wehrle explain their approach to wind technician safety training. Allen and Joel had the pleasure of visiting their excellent facility in Dallas, Texas and discuss their impact on the industry. Drawing on expertise from fire and rescue professionals, TSL prepares technicians for high-stress rescue scenarios. The company’s global recognition for providing top-quality training is evidenced by their GWO Training Team of the Americas Award. TSL initially began with selling the military compact descender and has recently had their SRK rescue kit certified to ANSI Z359.9 standards. 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. Today, we’re diving into a crucial topic that affects every professional in our industry, and that’s training. As the wind energy sector continues to grow rapidly, the need for standardized high quality safety training has never been more critical. GWO training has become the gold standard for ensuring that the wind industry professionals are equipped with the essential skills and knowledge to work safely and efficiently. Our guest today is Diane Waghorn, president and CEO of Tech Safety Lines, and Matt Wehrle, Tech Safety Lines instructor as well as a firefighter and paramedic. Tech Safety Lines is based in Dallas, Texas. And from their founding, Tech Safety Lines has been focused on safety through their start with the Military Compact Descender, to a series of safety products, and now with GWO training, Tech Safety Lines is a leader in wind energy safety. In fact, Tech Safety Lines recently received the GWO Training Team of the Year Americas Award. Diane and Matt, welcome to the show. Thank you for having us. This is exciting because Joel and I visited the tech safety lines facility a little while ago and we’re just super impressed. I don’t know how else to describe Joel Saxum: it, Joel. Yeah, blown away. It was a great facility. Yeah, from the time, we met Diane when we walked in to everybody that we ran into in the facility, shaking hands, Hi, nice to meet you. Who are you guys? Welcome in. Let’s show you this. Let’s show you that. Everything clean, ready to go. It was an impressive facility, to say the least. Diane Waghorne: Oh, thank you so much. We’re very proud of our facility and we just welcome visitors and I’m glad you had a good time seeing our facility and allowing us the opportunity to share our instructors with you. It was just a great time. Allen Hall: Diane, I think we ought to start with A little bit of your history, because it is so unique to the industry. You really got your start after 9 11 with something called the military compact descender. You want to just touch on how that all got kicked off? Diane Waghorne: I’d be happy to, um, when 9 11 happened during that time period, I was a stay at home mom. And I’ve been a business major in college, but then when I had my children, I wanted to stay home with them. And when 9 11 happened, my son was in college and my daughter just turned 16 and got her driver’s license. If I was ever going to go back into the workforce, that was a good time for me. And when I witnessed what happened with horror, as we all did, we just could not believe what we were seeing on our televisions. I just had this gut feeling that there could have been something, there had to be something. And I thought, the United States military, surely they had something. So I, we had Google back then and you, you start networking and I heard of a product called the Military Combat Descender. And back then it was only on paper. But Cape Roads is a military manufacturing plant in Connecticut, and they were tasked with finding a way for our servicemen to descend with one hand and have their weapon hand ready. And It was on this miraculous rope that was very small. Back then it was only a three millimeter rope. I think Fort Bragg may still have that three millimeter rope, but I visited with them, I flew out to see them, and it was really astonishing they even gave me an interview, because you just don’t do that, a housewife from Dallas, Texas, but back then no one trusted anybody, so they said I could come out. And I think I got on a plane with only 2 other people on the plane. This was about 3 weeks after 9, 11, if we can remember those days, and I just met with them and said, look, I’ve heard of this military compact to sender my only ask is that when it’s available now, please bring it to the SWAT leaders and the firefighters in my state of Texas. And that’s how it started. I started off my kitchen table. I became a distributor for them. I started doing different. SWAT shut us, but then. Meeting different people and started making some sales. Then long story short, I ended up buying the patent and brought the manufacturing here in Texas. And now I owe my husband some money because I bought this patent from the Rockefeller family. And I say, okay, what am I going to do now? So I went after the largest construction company in the world. I went after Bechtel and they saw the product. They loved the product. And they said you’re going to have to train in order for us to provide, this to our people. Again, I’m a state home mom, and I did not know anything about training. I went to the city of Dallas and asked to speak to the chief, who would not see me, and passed the note to the captain Captain Brent Wise. And I made a batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies. I went to the I popped open my Tupperware and that’s how we all got started. He’s a top notch holland. We wrote the curriculum and we became the seventh company globally authorized to train for Bechtel. So we’ve been to Angola, Africa, to LNG plants. The company now, I believe we have 40, 000 square feet of training here. I believe I’m in 35 different countries. We have over 50, 000 military combat dissenters. People often say, how the heck did this happen? To me, we all have most of us have someone to me is a superior force. I, I don’t take credit for this. I was guided to this and I’m very passionate about this and I’m very dedicated. I really don’t even think that I work. I think it’s just such a miracle that I am blessed to be with great people like Matt Wehrle is one of our instructors. He’s on the city of Dallas. He’s on the Urban Search and Rescue, Task Force One, and all of that. And part of being a business owner is to be smart enough to surround yourself by great people. And so I have Matt, and I have so many great people here. But I’d love for Matt to be able to tell you a little bit more about the training because the training is really what sets us apart. Yes, we have a great equipment. There’s other great equipment out there, but it’s really the training, I think, is the importance of making sure that your employees get the right training, the proper training. To ensure that they go home to their families every day, just like we get to when they should be able to as well. Allen Hall: I think that’s where tech safety lines may differ from a lot of other manufacturers of equipment, of safety equipment, right? That the manufacturers of safety equipment are not really in the training business, so to speak. But you have taken a slightly different approach where you have a, now a series of safety products that if you go to techsafetylines. com, you can just check them out online. That website is exceptional, so it’s easy to see and browse through. But the more important piece of this is getting trained in that equipment and to know what to do in an emergency situation. And that’s where Matt comes in, that, Dad, you brought in some real experts, people that, that work in emergency services to train the WIND technicians in particular, of all the things to think about or be prepared for when an emergency situation happens. When Joel and I visited, that’s why we were so impressed. Everybody we met either had come from a fire or ambulance or some sort of situation like that. And that’s an everyday event for fire rescue people. And that’s why Matt’s so important here. And Matt. When you bring people into your training program, you’re just not showing them how to clip on a harness, right? You’re trying to provide them more instructions on what to be aware of, right? Matt Wehrle: Yeah, absolutely. There’s so much more that goes into the rescue, the training, the aspect of what’s the implementation of that when this event actually goes down in the field. I think we’ve often taken training for granted. Just, name, whatever training you’ve been to, we’ve all been to some form of training. We’ve got lists of it. Yeah, hands up, right? We’ve all done it. It’s check the box. I’ll show you how to do this. It’s more of a monkey see monkey do. You did it. Great. You move on. We like to train more of a cultural aspect, right? And that all starts from the top gallery. Talked about the facility, how Diane sets the stage for our culture here. And that trickle down effect happens through our instructors. And then once we get to the floor and we get training with the students, the idea is not just. ABC and D move on down the road. The idea is how do we train that theoretical approach? So nine, 10, 12, two years, months from now, we can replicate this rescue to success. And as we talked about earlier, Joel, Manage anxiety in the moment of rescuing people I think that’s something that’s grossly underutilized in this industry is the acknowledgement of what it’s like to rescue people that you potentially know and develop relationships with. Because these wind technicians, they’re in remote places all across North America, if not the world. They’re working in crew sizes of, varying sizes, three, six, seven, eight, nine on MCE, large construction crews. And they’re going to end up developing personal relationships and becoming friends and close acquaintances amongst themselves. That’s different than what I do on a daily basis in the fire service. Generically, 99. 9 percent of the time, we’re going to rescue people that we’ve never met before. So it’s very much a kind of cut and dry revert back to the training. I have a well trained crew that’s prepared for the moment that we get to work with every third day. Now we’re trying to prepare these folks to manage that anxiety where they maybe get to do a remedial training. Once a month, we at least once a quarter, we hope, and how do we, from a cultural aspect, teach them to manage that anxiety in that moment to be successful? That’s really, that, that is one of the main things that our training helped dictate. We get into all sorts of different theoretical approach of training, whether it’s crawl, walk, run mentalities, and there’s a various amount of things and tools we use to get the students there, but ultimately, it’s how is this repeatable? Not tomorrow, the day they leave training, 9, 10, 11, 12 months from now, when they’re out in remote West Texas, having to pull this off on someone that they know and care about. That’s really our kind of our main angle there at the end result. Joel Saxum: Yeah, I’d say like we talked about earlier when we visited the facility and how great it was. It was full. You guys had, there was 40, 50 people in there, all in harnesses, they’re getting stuff done, tunes cranking. Like it was a good facility, right? But when I was in there, I felt like I was surrounded by subject matter experts. So you’re, you walk in and you’re not just talking to some person that was, a trainer here, you guys, there were some people from the wind industry. There’s, of course, the large contingent of you firefighters that are well versed in all these things. And when you’re around subject matter experts, so And they ask little questions here and there. If you’re open to listening, man, you can learn. And that was what I learned from you, man. I was like, wait a second. We were just coming through the bottles, wait, talking about, yeah, that’s exactly what you said. You’re going to be working. You may, or you may have to save someone that’s in a, a trauma situation. You actually had a beer with last night or like you went to his kid’s birthday party the day before. Yeah. So that there’s a whole other aspect of that, that I’ve been in oil and gas and wind world and stuff for 15 years. I’ve never come across anybody that’s attacked training in that manner. So you’re starting to get people to open their eyes. And so like tech safety lines, of course, have the great equipment and a fantastic story behind that and the continuing to innovate and make new things there. But you’re also training on the equipment. Plus your training, all kinds of other scenarios. You even have a blade training facility at this place. So catering to the wind from whatever feedback you’re getting from the field, you guys are making it happen there. So let’s jump into some of that training. I know Allen was saying earlier, GWOs, you guys have some awards on the walls from GWO. Diane Waghorne: We are very blessed and we won training center of the year for the Americas. And I, we went to I believe it was in Copenhagen for the award ceremony, and we had been nominated along with MERS in Brazil, and RWE, and these are billion dollar companies. I didn’t even bother to prepare an acceptance speech, like there was no way, except when they called our name, I was shocked, and it’s probably better that I didn’t prepare a speech because I would have been trying to remember what the heck it was, but anyway, it was such an honor. And we continue to just receiving great honors from G. W. O. call Henry. 1 of our instructors has been nominated for structure of the year for G. W. O. and I believe it’s in October of this year in Orlando would be that award ceremony. We’re very glad to have the relationship with the global organization that we do. We continue to add a module. To our facility they’re interesting. I believe the Slinger Singer one, we rent cranes to come out into our yard to be able to teach that class. And we just try to make it as realistic as we possibly can. Allen Hall: Yeah, I think the realism is part of that training, right? And when Joe and I visited, We definitely saw having realistic scenarios, right? Trying to get somebody out of a turbine off the edge experience, which is unique to wind energy, I think, where it’s. It’s a long way down and just trying to simulate those situations, which brought the realism to it. And then you add the firefighter aspect of someone who knows what they’re talking about to it. It amplifies that GWO experience. I think you’re right. GWO is obviously the worldwide leader in training and especially in wind, but you’re ramping that up, right? You’re bringing it to the next level, which is if I’m a technician. And I’m in the Texas area or anywhere in the United States, I would travel to Texas to take that training and What does that, I want to get into that a little bit. If I’m a technician and I’m getting into the industry, how do I go ahead and get started with tech safety lines? Do I just go on the web and fill out a form? Do I show up at your doorstep on a Monday? How does that work? Diane Waghorne: Our website is the best way in to fill out a form. And honestly we encourage people that call us and want to take our class. We say, your employer will actually help you pay for this class. Let us help you find a job. And so we had numerous clients to say, if anyone comes in, we’re hiring and so a lot of times, we’ll go ahead and make the introductions and the resume over and help that young person get it gainfully employed and go through the training. The wind industry is growing. I don’t see any slow down whatsoever. And the more that we can educate the young people I think college is great, but also there is, it makes good sense to go ahead and maybe become get a tray, like a wind, begin in wind. I still think you should take some business courses, so you’ll know what to do with your money once you earn all that money. You don’t want to waste that money. We want to invest it, take care of you in your older ages. But anyway. Wind is a great industry. Joel Saxum: Maybe that’s the next TSL module is a financial management of all your wind career earnings, TSL financial services. So we went over there and we met with Greg Schmidt which is running your blade repair training facility and Greg had a fantastic setup over there all the way down to. Hey guys, this is where we’re sanding. This is where we’re grinding. These are some generic repairs. This is what a layup looks like. This is what scarfing looks like, all of those things. And then, but then he took us through another door and there was a full like GE 62. 2 meter blade cut up in pieces in there to show everybody the different layups and how things are built. And he had all kinds of huge plans for what was going to be in the future of that facility. But can you walk us through a little bit of that? Yeah. What are you guys doing in the blade training world? You’re going to have to interview Diane Waghorne: Greg on this. Separate segment. I cannot keep up with all the different frames that he is doing. But I do think it’s a fun thing to mention that we got the blade that was my mother’s day gift Whatever mother wants. Yeah, I know. I was really excited. My girlfriends couldn’t quite relate to that. But anyway I had to hire a driver to lead it through so we could get it here in dallas. But anyway He is doing so much. He does advanced blade repair, spark cap and lamination techniques and There’s several different things he will customize knives a course for a specific client that might be having a special project that they’re meeting and so he’ll has to make it for him. I’ve really been blessed by meeting Greg. I just can’t imagine meeting someone with as much knowledge as he has for blades and, so it’s just working out great. It really is. It’s just fun to see the next things that he’s saying I need this. And I said, okay we’ll figure it out and we’ll make it happen. Allen Hall: And I want to go back to Matt for a minute, because I want to ask the kind of clientele that walks into your door. And we’ve been really pushing for a lot of new entries into the wind industry and trying to raise awareness there. The new entries to win when they come into your training program, what typically, what skills do they possess? Just are there mechanically inclined, electrically inclined? Have they been in the oil and gas business before they walk in? We’re seeing Matt Wehrle: probably a myriad of all that we’re seeing trades from previous, everything from carpenters, HVAC, plumber, electrician, technicians. All the way to corp. We’ve even had corporate America jobs where just tired of that kind of that rudimentary nine to five office job when you get out there, do something with their hands. We’ve had them we’ve had fresh out of high school, Diane spoke on the leverage of college and how expensive that is now trades are starting to come back up and be more valid as an option for these post high school graduates. And we’re seeing some of that. know, we’re touch I really can’t say it’s o younger people as they, y into my forties. Now I’m shift like, what are you’re doing? And as the, becomes more technologica their wheelhouse perfectl Whether it’s O& M technicians or even commissioning level stuff where they’re doing a lot of data work, a lot of things driven off laptops and computers and in the background it’s in their absolute wheelhouse. And GWO is cool to touch back on that, where we can take anybody from any level, because GWO re leveled the playing field a little bit in North America, right? So we may have a room full of 15, 20 year veteran people of wind and a brand new person that’s never seen a harness in their life. And to some instructors, that may be overwhelming, like, how do I balance this class to extract information from the senior member to give value to the new member and not to over intimidate him? And I think we do a really good job of that here, trying to blend that. And that all starts from the cultural setting that we build here to say, hey, listen, we’re all in this together because ultimately it’s our job to paint the picture for that new hire all the way up to that senior member that’s been there 15, 20 years. That we’re all in this together because on your worst day, you’re out there. You’re only relying on each other. I’m not showing up in my big fancy million dollar fire truck to help you. And so I think we’ve done that. But yeah, bounce back on who we’re seeing and what we’re getting as far as new applicants and what these folks are higher it. We have seen the gamut. It would probably blow your mind. Some of the fields. These people are coming to. And being very successful in when we see them on their research and they come back through and we get to build a really good relationship with our students as they come back through. They really enjoy coming here and oftentimes re request to only come back here through us. And so we see him again, develop relations. We oftentimes get phone numbers and we’re following up and talking on social media with them and stuff all the time. And I think that’s really got to where we’re starting to be able to gauge their successes in the industry a little more. Yeah. We’re seeing, Hey, now I’m a site manager. Oh, that’s awesome. Hey, I’m running a crew now. Hey, that’s awesome. And you can see you know what? First week of training. I saw that. I saw that coming for them. And so that’s fun to see that expansion of their careers within the field. Diane Waghorne: I thought that you were going to say he also trained Ginger Z from Good Morning America, so they had to do an episode, they used our equipment and so they flew Matt out to train Ginger Z so she could take her kit up. Good Morning America. Matt Wehrle: You wanna talk about where, corporate America, we’re talking about Good Morning America for reporter based camera, crew support staff, makeup and ginger. All to be able to do what we do in a compressed amount of time. We got it done though, so it was a, but it was, high learning curve, but they were. Attitude wise, you couldn’t ask for a better group. They were all in and it made it a lot of fun to train them out there. Allen Hall: So as a new person into wind industry, how much training do I need to really get safety’d up? Is it a couple of days? Is it a couple of weeks before I feel like I’m competent to get out there and do some work? Matt Wehrle: So I think it’s like any rescue professional industry you’re never going to be perfect, right? This is a evolving thing as your job titles and tasks and stuff change. But from like a GWO standpoint, since we’re on that topic, we’ll talk about what the minimums we see for most companies. A lot of it is very site based on what they require, but the BST standard is going to be the gold standard. We’re going to see everybody has to have at a minimum to go do, you’re the run of the mill wind jobs that you’re going to see out there, your own technicians, part of your MCE crews, things like that. A lot of the other sites are then going to require the three day ART on the back of that, which is the advanced rescue techniques. So you’re going to see roughly five to seven days of kind of basic training to really be there. Almost every company that we’re experiencing now is stick, sticking around for the ART. I’d say that the, that’s the rule, not the exception at this point is that they’re sticking around for the extra three days of the advanced rescue class. And I would always encourage that. because the BST in the time frame doesn’t allow us to quite hit everywhere we want to hit where the A. R. T. Opens that door up any place where you could access that wind turbine. We acknowledge the need for rescue there and show you how to do it. So that would really be the turnkey package that I would recommend for anybody getting in is the BST standard. That’s two days of working at heights, which is climbing, fall protection, harnesses, inspection and ladder rescues. And then it’s going to be a day of first date. And that first day covers for us. You get a C. T. R. Card out of that. Some certification acknowledgement with that, which is a nice touch. And you get that from medical professionals, which is a little different than most. So GWL for the BST doesn’t require someone to have a medical license to teach that first aid module. You just have to have gone through their train the trainer program. We obviously get to take that to the next level because we are all either active or longtime former paramedics on the streets of Dallas and have been in every situation that you can imagine. I still am an active paramedic as well. Even as a Lieutenant, I still carry my license, but Just so I can stay up with my paramedics, but that allows us to give them a little more again back to that realism touch and how to manage the moment. It allows us to give them that better angle on how to process that information. And then that last that last day, you’re going to get RSRK training. We’re going to show you how to use RSRK kits, which is a nice little caveat. And then another thing that allows us to be better at here. Because on the fire side is the fire awareness curriculum for GWO, the fire behavior and how things act and how to maybe mitigate these hazards before they start, we can expound on that at a level that I, just because of our fire training and our background and our certifications, we can take that to a level I think most can’t. Allen Hall: I like that. Okay. That’s interesting. And then can you give me a summary of what recertification looks like? How often is that? Matt Wehrle: Sure. So for GWO, their window. It’s two years of recertification, so it’s a 24 month certification window for their curriculum. Yes. Allen Hall: Diane, I know you have some exciting news to, to tell everybody about. Diane Waghorne: Yes. We just had our SRK rescue kit certified to Ansi Z359.9 . The dot four has been around for over 20 years. In fact, if you look at the original dot 4 and the authors, it’s my name. So it’s been around for a bit now. And so it just changed the dot 9. and so we had it certified by UL and we’ll be releasing it within the next 30 days or so and it’s up to 210 meters. So we’re very excited about that. And what is the biggest difference between dot nine? And the dot four is the outside temperature of the outer sleeve. The max that it’s allowed, it’s 118 degrees. And so this is our 210 meter kit and this is still dot nine for the, it’s that goes to the two or 10 meters. We started with UL, and then we went to Munich, Germany. We just got back, Reggie and I did, and Brent I guess it’s about 10 days ago, to have it meet the EN standard. I’m really proud that on the Tax Safety Alliance kits, they’re third party certified. It’s not me saying it. It’s third party by UL. For the, and by to for the and standards. It’s to me, if I was just the person in charge of the safety of my employees, I don’t know. It’s just a relief to know this third party certified by two independent laboratories, so we’re very proud of this accomplishment. Joel Saxum: Is this going to be something where in three months, six months, a year, that’s going to be the standard that it has to be adhered to? Or will people get a choice in there? Because I know sometimes it’s safety glasses have to be Z87 approved. If they’re not Z87 approved, then they’re off site. Is that going to happen with these as Diane Waghorne: well? Just remember ANC is It’s a suggestion. It’s not the law. OSHA is the law. And when I think about it, I really don’t know what’s what the marketplace is going to do when they change the strength gate on the carabiners. It was overnight. We had to have the latest 1. I don’t know if that will be the case with this changing from dot 4 to dot 9, but dot 4 has had a at the end of a retired a little parentheses are not close parentheses for about a year now. From my memory. So people have known that this was going to eventually make a change. So I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out. Joel Saxum: I think the market will soak them up quick because it’s needed. Allen Hall: Absolutely. Diane, how do people reach out to you? How do they connect with Tech Safety Lines? Diane Waghorne: It’s the best way is through our website. And then, or just to give us a call, we pride ourselves on our customer service. We try to get back with everybody the same day. Maybe, for the holiday, it might take an extra day, but that’s our goal. Allen Hall: Go check out techsafetylines. com. There’s a wealth of information there. Sign up for some GWO training. Matt and Diane, thank you so much for being on the program. We really enjoyed having you. Diane Waghorne: Thank you for having us. Matt Wehrle: Thanks, y’all. It was fun.

GE Vernova recently held their Q2 investor presentation, sharing the company will focus on their the 3.6-154, 6.1-158 Cypress, and Haliade-X 15.5-250 turbine lines. So far, the company’s wind division is not headed toward profitability in 2024. What can the company do to turn their financials around? And then a focus on the 2024 US presidential election–what implications will it have on the wind industry? Does the IRA bill hang in the balance? In other news, Siemens Gamesa will resume production of their 4X wind turbines this year, Dogger Bank A has installed interarray cables, and a carbon-free cement plant is planned for Massachusetts. 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: Joel, we’re moving to the 2020s. We now have our email newsletter, Uptime Tech News on Substack. Ooh, nice. I like it. It’s slick. It’s almost super modern. And if you haven’t subscribed to Uptime Tech News, you need to, because who else is going to go through the news? The right way and pick out those articles that the technical people working in wind and the financial people working in wind need to know besides us engineers who filter through it and get all the riffraff out and give you the stuff that you need. That is the whole point of Uptime Tech News. So if you haven’t subscribed to it, do it. You can actually go on Substack and search Uptime Tech News. You can subscribe via Substack. And it’s on LinkedIn. The newsletter is nuts, crazy busy. There’s thousands of people who are subscribed to our newsletter, Uptime Tech News on LinkedIn. I like LinkedIn, but I like the Substack version even more. Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m Allen Hall, and I’ll be joined by the rest of the Uptime host after these headlines. Kicking off our headlines, Siemens Gamesa is set to breathe new life into its turbine production. The company plans to resume manufacturing of its 4X wind turbines later this year, following a pause due to technical issues. This move is expected to reactivate sales of the 4X turbine, with production of the 5X model slated to follow next year. The news comes as a welcome relief to staff, as the current order book has been running low, and this development could signal a turning point for Siemens Gamesa, which has faced challenges in recent months. Shifting our focus offshore, a major milestone has been reached at the world’s largest offshore wind farm. Over 200 miles of interarray cables have been successfully installed at Dogger Bank A, the first phase Of this ambitious project. The 66 kilovolt cables manufactured by Hellenic cables will connect 95 massive Haliade-X 13 megawatt turbines to the offshore converter station. The EU is doubling down on its commitments to renewables reelected EU commission president, Ursula von der Leyen. Has announced a new clean industrial deal, emphasizing homegrown clean energy. This plan includes support for clean tech manufacturing and a new EU competitiveness fund. Von der Leyen has also promised to cut red tape and expedite permitting processes for renewable projects in the coming years. Vestas is pushing the boundaries of onshore wind technology. The company has completed the installation of its V172 7. 2 megawatt prototype at its test center in Denmark. This behemoth is Vestas largest and most powerful onshore wind turbine to date. Based on the Inventus platform. It promises a 12 percent increase in annual energy production compared to its predecessors in low to medium wind conditions. Meanwhile, in the U S the town of Nantucket in Massachusetts is making waves in the legal arena. Town officials are contemplating legal action against vineyard wind following a turbine failure that left debris scattered on local beaches. The incident, which occurred on July 13th, prompted federal officials to suspend operations at the wind farm. The town’s concerns center around potential hazards to swimmers and sailors, highlighting the importance of safety measures in offshore wind development. A Massachusetts startup is making strides in zero carbon cement production. Sublime Systems is planning on building a 150 million carbon free cement plant in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and they have secured a 2, 000 ton cement order from Vineyard Offshore. The cement will be used for offshore wind turbine platforms and onshore projects, significantly reducing the carbon footprint of future wind developments. Wrapping up our update, according to Level 10 Energy, which runs an online marketplace for energy transactions, wind power purchase agreement prices rose 7 percent in the second quarter, while solar PPA prices saw a modest 3 percent increase. Wind PPAs continue to face ongoing challenges, including land scarcity, interconnection delays, and rising insurance premiums, while solar prices remain relatively stable thanks to recent government incentives. That’s this week’s top news stories. Now let’s welcome our co hosts, CEO and founder of IntelStore, Phil Totaro, and the Chief Commercial Officer of WeatherGuard, Joel Saxom. Mark your calendars for AMI’s Winter in Blades conference happening October 2nd and 3rd in historic Boston, Massachusetts. This two day event, which is similar to the well established edition in Europe, We’ll bring together the whole blade value chain to examine market outlook, innovations in blade materials, design, manufacturing, testing, and lifecycle management with a special focus on the North American market. Gain insights from experts from Vestas, along with scientists and engineers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Plan your trip to Boston this fall by visiting the link in the show notes or just Google 2024 Blades Boston. GE Vernova just had their Q2 investor event and it was quite a show Phil. I don’t know if you got to watch this online but It was a real stage show, right? They had the first speaker was about safety and the culture of safety and safety is job one, and then the CEO gave presentation. Great talking about the overall GE Vernova performance and where they were going. There’s really good pieces of GE Vernova at the minute that are making money and they have growth opportunities for sure. When Vic Abate was talking about GE Wind. Those the wind part was rather, um, maybe the word is troubling in terms of where they want it to be right now. Maybe that’s where I’ll put it is that if they were hoping to be cash flow positive this year, right now, and they’re not going to be, and that is from a couple of different sources. Problems that they’re sorting through right now, which is one, I think they’re still dealing with supply chain and what it seems price increases coming up through that supply chain, the ability to sell product at a decent margin, plus the backlog they’re going through, particularly offshore. There is a lot of concern outside of GE about their offshore. Portfolio that they’re going to lose money on this thing, and they locked into it. So they have to produce it, lose the money, and then come out on the other side. So as I put into Slack today for everybody what GE, the win part was saying was, we’re going to be profitable sometime in 2025, maybe 2026. That’s the way I read it, which is a little bit of a setback. And if you, and also the orders have come in. It’s about year on year, about half of where they were in 2023. That I think is due to a large order. I think that was Sunzea probably that was driving some big numbers there, but still seeing an uphill climb for GE Vernova on the, in the wind sector. Now, guys, I think there’s a lot going on in the United States at the minute. And I wish Rosemary’s here because she could give us some Australian point of view. Is GE going to turn that corner on the wind side? Because the other parts of GE Vernova are profitable. Philip Totaro: Allen, if you remember about a little over a year ago, we had a chat about Vic Abate being brought back in, at which point, this was obviously before the Vernova spinoff, and they were talking about things like, the power generation business, including wind being profitable by the end of 23. Yeah. I think they technically achieved that, but the wind business has taken longer to turn around for some of the reasons Allen mentioned. But at the end of the day, it their order book is down because we’re still stuck with a lot of projects in the consenting queue. And the interconnection queues and the price increases that have, necessarily so subcomponent costs are increasing, the turbine prices are increasing and the cost of capital is still very high because interest rates are still high. Everyone was deferring orders in anticipation of all these costs coming back down a little bit. And now that the market’s kind of realizing that these prices are high, it’s getting baked in more and more. And a fundamental kind of tenet of economics, if the price keeps going up, demand is going to keep going down a little bit eventually. And that’s just the situation we’re in at the moment. Until everybody can acclimatize to the new the new market reality. Joel Saxum: Yeah. Interesting thing here in some of these metrics that they put out in their Q2 report here is that services are doing well. Their service revenue year over year has grown. I think they’re up like 12 percent or 15%. It’s the new order book, like you said, Phil, that’s falling down. That’s not doing as well. So that’s the developer side of things, right? There’s two different customer bases. You have the developers, IPPs looking at building some wind farms, and then you have the people that are, we’ve got wind farms in play and we’re servicing them. We’ve got work to do on them. So the services revenue is high now. Is that driven from, more work out there or is it driven from, we actually have to work on bearing failures and generator swap outs and these kinds of things, because not all of those, some of those are just invoices, right? Purchase orders. They’re not part of an FSA. Allen Hall: This is what Vic Abate was talking about in terms of the three platforms that they were gonna go forward with. And it was only three. The 3.6 megawatt 1 54, which is the one that’s being used in Sun Zia, the New Mexico, the 6.1 1 58, so a 1 54 for the Con SunZia project. Large project was. Good capacity factors, 158 for land constraints. So if you have two, three turbines somewhere, and then the Haliad and the offshore seem to get downplayed quite a bit, in my opinion, reading between the lines, the vast majority of their income is going to come onshore. And if they’re having basically two specific platforms, there are trying, it looks like trying to reduce the amount of factory people needed to build turbines. And bringing it down to two base models and emphasizing that they are, all of them, offshore, onshore, are all US manufactured. Joel Saxum: Now, that’s new. That is very new, and I don’t believe it. There’s, they may have some components US manufactured, but the reality is if they’re going to put these out at scale, they can’t. manufacture them all in the United States. There’s not enough capacity. Allen Hall: This is where they’re trying to combine the different segments of GE Vernova. So one of the areas in which the gas turbines and wind turbines are combined is in Schenectady, New York. So there’s an existing gas turbine factory has been there forever. They put the nacelle plant in there for the 6. 1 megawatt machines in basically the plant, the same plant or next door. Using the same basically work crews to go do that. So they’re cross training as how I read it is that they’re using this knowledgeable work group, bunch of employees that have been doing gas turbines, it’s not out of their capability to start building some nacelles, which it looks like they’re doing. Which means, to me, smaller footprint, factory wise. Philip Totaro: Yes, although let’s also be clear, because even on the, their supply chain for the 2 megawatt platform, some of it comes, blades are made all over the place. So a lot of their gearboxes come from China to be blunt. I don’t, again, I, they may be doing final assembly in Schenectady for the Cypress. But that’s, as Joel said, it’s still, I would also question whether or not it’s going to be a hundred percent U. S. made everything inside. Allen Hall: They didn’t say a hundred percent, Bill. They did not say a hundred percent, but they say it’s U. S. manufactured, which means I, I read that as assembled. Philip Totaro: But again, yeah, exactly. So the final assembly is one thing, but like we even talked about, what, a week or two ago? What’s the difference if it’s, Is it really a U. S. made turban if it’s a bunch of Chinese parts inside a fiberglass shell that’s manufactured in the U. S.? Which, by the way, it might not even be, because some of their suppliers for the nacelles are down in Brazil. They may be doing final assembly here, but that’s not quite a U. S. made product. But do you see where they’re headed though, Phil? Allen Hall: Do you feel the draw to U. S. territory and that G. E. Vernovas is going to claim the U. S. as their prime real estate and try to keep everybody else off of their playground? Philip Totaro: Yes and we’ve been here, we’ve been here before, when They first bought the assets of Enron Wind. That’s exactly what they tried to do as well, and they developed the 1. 5 megawatt platform to do precisely that. And it was, for the most part, domestically manufactured. Eventually, they started having to get international suppliers because of the scale of what they had. But, they had, they had some of the fabrication happening in Greenville, South Carolina in various factories throughout the U. S. With these two, future focused platforms, the 3. 6154 and the 6. 1158. It looks like they will domesticate most of the production here, or final assembly here. The blades, it, my understanding is that anything for the the 3. 6154 will be done by either GE to a certain extent, but mostly by TPI domestically. And, but again, potentially if they need to source from Mexico, there’s nothing stopping TPI from, putting some blades across the border. It’s also my understanding that LM in South Dakota would be retooled to do the blades for the 158. But I don’t think that decision has been made final yet, because there’s obviously some conversations still going on about LM and the future under GE. And, taking into consideration now what’s happened at Vineyard Wind. LM is under even more of a microscope than they, they were before. Allen Hall: Yeah. So now LM is having financial difficulty. They’ve been having financial difficulty for a while, but in more recent news reports, they’re bleeding about a hundred million dollars a quarter kind of number, roughly speaking. So the turnaround hasn’t happened at LM. They’re still going to be involved in GE, at least in the short term, from what it appears, Phil. I understand the TPI involvement in GE and it gives them a lot of flexibility, but LM is still, at least at this point, still part of GE, Vernova, does the restructuring that’s happening at GE now, and obviously they’re taking their pain pill now, mostly because they have to. Does that put them at a stronger position against their main competitor in the U. S., which is going to be Vestas? Joel Saxum: Let me preface that one, Phil. An interesting point, right? So we’re looking at this 6. 1 megawatt machine, 158 meter rotor. That competes with the V162 directly. Because the V162 is a 6 megawatt machine. There is zero to date GE installed 6. 1 machines. And there is a small handful of the V 162s that are already on the ground. So I think there’s some in, I know there’s some in Oklahoma cause Allen and I saw them. And I think there’s some up in Michigan or Pennsylvania or something like that. Pennsylvania. And there’s a few in Michigan too, right on the tip of the thumb. There’s a dozen of them or something. So there’s, while that’s going to be the, that’s the two competing ones there. I think what one of the things that GE is doing to be more competitive here is we all know the struggles that they’re having at this time with the one 16 and one 27, whether it’s lightning rotors, gearboxes, these kinds of things. If you’re bringing this you’re basically signposting that you’re going to bring all of, as much as you can, manufacturing into the United States. That gives them the ability to have, in my mind, a better QAQC mechanism over their operation, over their Manufacturing operations. And I think that’s part of the problem that we’re seeing is when you have, like Allen, we’ve seen those wind farms with the same turbine with four different blade manufacturers from 10 different places in the world. That’s a hard thing to get right. A hundred percent of the time. So if you can narrow down your models that you’re putting out there, which they say they’re going to do. And then domesticate some of your production. It’s easier for, an engineer from Greenville or an engineer from Schenectady to take a rip out to Iowa or South Dakota, North Dakota, or wherever you’re going to be building these things at and do a site, do a factory visit, sit with the technicians, make sure everything’s going well. While you’re building these. So I think that in the long run, it may not change something But in the long run, I think that’s a good angle to get some quality injected back into the GE brand. Can’t Allen Hall: argue with that. Right? Making the turbines simpler, less variations, is going to produce more consistency in the product. I think that’s where GE recently has had trouble. Right? Bearings blades, pretty much the whole thing at a million suppliers and sub suppliers from all over the world. A lot of suppliers, right? And they’re trying to manage that managing suppliers is not easy, especially if they’re spread out all over the world, which currently has done. So it definitely looks like a change in direction, or maybe more loudly proclaiming the change in direction than when they were part of GE, the larger GE. Philip Totaro: I would agree. The thing that’s interesting about that though is to shift supply chain in that way. The more global diversity you have, the more you have the ability to negotiate for better price. You, you start narrowing down the number of suppliers and you’re going to have to price take a lot more than you would. If you had at least two competing suppliers or three competing suppliers for, the same spec of components. So the interesting thing there to me is. Are they going to go back to doing more build to print versus build to spec components for these? And I don’t know that I’ve heard enough about that from them, not specifically their engineers telling me stuff they’re not supposed to, but I, I don’t know that I have a sense of whether or not they would have the ability to go get a secondary or a tertiary supplier, because, again, just Siemens Gamesa, having a supplier issue, if you don’t have a backup in place that can provide you with, something of comparable quality at a comparable price, it’s going to shut down your entire production capacity for, months on end. So it’s a risk. Joel Saxum: Phil, can you gimme do me a solid here once, and this is for my benefit and for the rest of the listeners as well, can you gimme the middle school? Differences between build to print and build to spec. Philip Totaro: Yeah, no, so this is a great question because it’s timely in, in terms of when we started off as an industry. Everything was build to print, which what that means is I’m an OEM. I’m going to design everything, down to the smallest detail. My CAD model gives you, everything you could possibly ever need to see about how this product is, what it does, how it’s supposed to function, all the parts that go into it, how it’s assembled, everything. If I’m then contracting you as a subcomponent supplier, you’re gonna build me what I’m telling you to build me according to my CAD drawings and, again, all the assembly instructions, everything. Okay? So that’s more or less build to, to print. Build to spec is I’m going to create a broad based product specification, but I don’t do the CAD drawings, you do them as a supplier. You come back to me with something if it’s a bearing, it’s gotta fit into, my main shaft and my drivetrain architecture. If it’s a pitch bearing, same thing, or whatever it is. It’s got to plug into my system, but I’m leaving it to you to have more control over what that thing is, how it, again, I, there’s a lot of different ways to skin a cat. I’m going to allow you to tell me what the best, your preferred way of doing it, and it might be different from that of a different supplier. Now, when you do a lot more stuff from a supply chain standpoint and a servicing standpoint, particularly with wind, when you do more stuff, that’s build the spec. All those little things I just talked about somebody may have some kind of specialized way of making their component and while it might physically fit into my wind turbine, if I have a problem with it, I’m basically dependent on going back to you as a subcomponent supplier to, to get the thing fixed. If there’s a problem. And that’s actually what’s going on with GE right now, with this whole, SKF thing, and we talked about that, last week, I think, on, or two weeks ago, on, on the show. Shifting your product strategy and your supply chain strategy back to a build to print model makes you more potentially vertically integrated, and as you mentioned, Joel, it takes more of the quality control and brings it back in house. Because then, even if you have a subcomponent supplier, they have to do it your way, not, or the way that the OEM is specifying, not necessarily their way. Yeah, so the nice thing Joel Saxum: would be, like, if you’re, if you buy a fill to taro turbine, and fill to taro turbines are all built to print, then if you have an issue with that turbine, you can go back to fill and get an answer. If it’s built to spec and Phil basically subs everything out and you have someone in India making your bearings and someone in Brazil making your generator and someone, yeah. And six different people making your Philip Totaro: blades. Everybody starts going, pointing fingers at each other saying how do I get an answer? Exactly. Exactly. Joel Saxum: So in your opinion, is that why we have some of the large problems within the wind industry? If you went, if some of these manufacturers would bring more of it back in house. Allen Hall: Yeah, Joel. All right. Boeing went through the same issue, right? And we’ll just put it a little broader context. And I know we’re focusing on GE here, but this is a wider More complex issue, right? So Boeing did a similar thing where they outsourced pretty much everything and they were the final assemblers of the large components and they let all the sub tier suppliers design the component and Boeing just went to meetings and sat through a little design reviews and went, yep, that looks good. And meets the spec and off they went. And then we had the seven, eight, seven, and then we have. Just enormous problems with that sort of system. And so now Boeing’s trying to pull it all back. So they got rid of Spirit Aerospace to build fuselages, inspect it all out. And then Boeing is buying that whole company back because neither system is perfect. It all depends on the economics of the particular time and who you have for employees and all kinds of things. But as Phil’s going to point out, there is no winners. You have to pick one or the other. Philip Totaro: And you may have picked the wrong one. And Allen, you just also nailed it because it’s dependent on the state of maturity of the market. And when the market was really immature, you have to almost do a build to print because the supply chain companies aren’t sophisticated enough to know how to build something to spec, even if you went to them. Once the industry matures up to a point, you can start D vertically integrating, if that’s a word or, D, centralizing your supply chain and even some of your engineering work out to your subcomponent suppliers, because they’ve developed that expertise, the reason at this state of the industry that everybody wants to vertically integrate again. Is because of this profitability question. And it’s not just, I talk about interest rates and all that crap all the time, but it’s more if you’re at a point where you’re not profitable enough, you probably will get more levers to pull, to get profitability out of your own system. If you’re vertically integrated, you’re doing everything in house as opposed to outsourcing it where yes, you might have more negotiating leverage, but you’re still theoretically paying a price premium because in addition to. If I, again, if I’m an OEM And I’m selling to a developer. I charge them, for, the build cost plus margin. But if I’m doing build to spec, everybody else that’s supplying me components also has a huge amount of margin built in and all those margins stack up exactly, Joel. That’s where you get stuck a little bit because. It, it can be less profitable to do that, but you also might be able to react faster to customer requirements or a new order or what have you. So again, as Allen saying, there’s just different reasons why you would want to vertically integrate at any given time. Joel Saxum: The trouble with any of that is, is if you’re going to bring the engineering in house it’s a function of human resources, right? How much engineering horsepower do we have? And can we take this on? Allen Hall: Engineers are not making the decision there. Financial people are making the decision there. And then that’s what trips that decision, right? In the aerospace world, because I lived through all this multiple times, when they start specking out systems to suppliers, and they force the suppliers to participate financially in this aircraft project, which they don’t have any control over, It’s a huge deal, right? So there’s actually bidding going on to participate in a project. They’re upfronting money to the main company to participate. And then they’re going to make all the money in the backend, but the program is severely at risk, whether you’re going to get to an actual product or not. It’s highly risky. So as the top level, top dog in the supply chain, I am the OEM. I control everybody. That’s the Boeing move, right? It, it was a GE move for a number of years, but Phil’s pointed out that has to happen in a developed industry where everybody knows what they’re doing. When Boeing decided to outsource 787, totally new stuff, composites, carbon fiber, all this cool stuff, but supply chain didn’t know how to manufacture it. That was a wrong move because now you have suppliers that are way out of their element trying to create something new that they’re not very good at and they failed time and time again. Boeing ended up buying facilities, buying whole companies, and it continues to do it. Because of the logic they put into the 787 financial decision years ago, and GE is going to go through that too, right? GE is going to go back through that because technology advanced faster than the suppliers could manage. Blades being one of them bearings being another that’s what I was just gonna say is blade Joel Saxum: now take blades, right? So now you have again, you’ve got ten different manufacturers all over the world that are new models all the time now we’re introducing carbon fiber now we’re doing this There’s these different ideas and they can’t keep up and so that’s what I think one of the reasons why we and then on the same card we turn around we talk about this on the podcast all of a sudden you see in massive engineer layoffs So it’s here’s an issue. Yeah. It’s here’s an issue that you need this engineering resources for. What is your response? We just fired all of our engineers. What? Everything’s driven by the market, right? So you can go to, we can point at wall street for that decision. Allen Hall: Well, Joel, but listen to the language like GE, Brnova gave today, they’re focused on, at least it looks like on the U S market. So they’ve truncated the amount of work that they’re going to possibly do. So what engineering, somebody had to do the numbers like you did Joel in the back of your envelope there, you go, Hey, you don’t have the engineers to support the whole world. Guess what? We’re pulling out of Brazil. We’re pulling out of India. We’re going to start pulling slowly out of Europe to some measure. We’re going to pull out of parts of Asia because we can’t support that right now. We have to totally restructure our business to bring, I think Phil’s pointed out, bring it in house until it becomes stabilized, which is where Vic Abate is talking about. We’re going to have free platforms. We’re going to do them really well. And then we’re going to go back down the supply chain to have people make these parts for us over time. We just can’t do it today. We just can’t. Isn’t that the pathway out of this, Phil? Philip Totaro: Yes. And I here’s what’s also interesting. If you compare and contrast this philosophy that we’re talking about right now for Vernova versus what the Chinese OEMs are doing with, hey, let’s build a new, bigger turbine all the time. They haven’t yet gotten to that critical mass of All of these problems that the Western OEMs have just faced. Now, that’s also the reason why you see companies like Vestas and Siemens Gamesa saying, We don’t necessarily need or want to be part of that, bigger turbine size contest. It’s a scenario where they can, everybody’s starting to wrap their head around the fact that, all these other things that impact profitability are tied to not only your product development strategy, but your supply chain strategy. And if you don’t have the right philosophy in place at the right time, as Allen’s talking about, you’re necessarily going to end up going through this huge period where, your margins are just destroyed because you’re going to be servicing You know, 13 types of different turbines instead of one platform. Joel Saxum: But I think that the fundamental difference between say a Vestas, whoever, and a Chinese manufacturer is in the, for the most part, the Chinese manufacturers in better control of their supply chain. Cause it’s local. They’re not getting, they’re not sending stuff around the world as much as we are to get these turbines built. They’re doing a lot of it themselves. Allen Hall: Their economics are different. Can we say that? Philip Totaro: Although they are getting a lot of their control electronics from Europe, by the way, particularly for the larger turbines, because they don’t have the capability to do it over there. But what’s also interesting is, by contrast, they are now starting to put in place a lot of the castings and forgings facilities that They do it themselves. Exactly. Joel Saxum: That we don’t have. Allen, you said their economics are different. I agree. We all know their economics are different. However, that doesn’t change the fact that they have a local supply chain that they can rely on to Change, adjust, make moves get things out the door. And they’ve shown that by the amount of turbines that they’ve installed in the last five years. Allen Hall: It’s all driven by government policy in China for the most part, right? They’re making strategic investments into infrastructure there in specific industries. And I want to talk about this after the break, the U. S. is going through an election cycle and there’s been a lot of changes in the last two weeks to who could possibly be heading up the country. When we come back, I want to talk about that and get back to your point, Joel, what it means for U. S. industry. Dealing with damaged blades? Don’t let slow repairs keep your turbines down. Blade Platforms get you back up and running fast. Blade Platforms truck mounted platforms reach up to 100 meters, allowing for a quick setup, improved safety, and efficient repairs. Book soon to secure your spot and experience a difference in blade access, speed, and efficiency. Visit bladeplatforms. com and get started today. Okay, we’re back with the Uptime Podcast. During the break, oh my gosh a lot of heated talk about the U. S. elections. And obviously there’s been a number of changes. President Biden is not going to run for president anymore. And it looks like Vice President Harris is going to be the Democrat nominee Which is astounding. Okay, so we live in strange times and former President Trump was attacked, be the nice way to say it. Both sides are heated at the moment, and I do think this has implications on what happens in renewables, for sure. I think there’s two pieces to this, Phil. First is, what’s going to happen to the IRA bill and the financial structure that exists around renewable projects. I think that’s one piece. The second piece, I think, is a broader economy, which is what’s driving, I think, driving the slowdown of renewables worldwide at the moment, more than any IRA bill. So first off is if Trump or Harris are elected, does anything really happen to the IRA bill here? Philip Totaro: Probably not wholesale. What if Harris is elected, presumably the current kind of status quo from the Biden administration would be continued, if not potentially improved upon, particularly around permitting and a quicker pace at which the manufacturing tax credits are doled out. Because that’s one thing that’s been holding up a little bit of progress in addition to the interest rate situation, which I’ll come back to. Thank you. If Trump’s elected, the biggest thing that He, his administration would have an impact on would be the pace of permitting of anything that’s not already consented, but what’s interesting about it is we’ve got a ton of projects that are actually stuck in the interconnection queue and the consent queue right now, both onshore, offshore wind, solar batteries, everything that, they’re looking for transmission is one thing. And they’re also looking for capital. Transmission’s hard to come by just because it’s not physically available. Capital’s hard to come by because there are people who would rather be investing it in other things in the current interest rate environment. That’s the second piece of this is, okay, if Harris wins, presumably the current pace of Federal Reserve rate cuts is going to be maintained, albeit at this kind of slow, a bit of droning pace, if you will, that, that has been holding back at the potential investment in renewable energy, both from, institutional investors, private investors, and the importantly, the oil and gas companies who in a high interest rate environment have gone and plowed their money back into what they know best. Thank you. Rather than taking a punt on, renewables that are, if they were getting, 150 or 190 a megawatt hour offshore wind PPA, but their production costs were down lower than what they are, they might still be investing and they might still be pursuing that. But that’s, the simplest way to, to say, or explain why they haven’t they haven’t continued. Now, here’s the thing. If you look at Trump’s previous administration, during 2017 through 2020, That time frame actually saw one of the biggest build outs of onshore wind, certainly, in the country’s history. About a third of what we now have installed was built during that time frame. But as I’ve talked about before on the show, nothing gets built, in five minutes. It has to go through a consent process, and a environmental approvals, all that sort of thing. It, that occurred largely during Obama’s second term. So there was a lot of projects in the queue that were ready to go for the period of time when Trump was president, but we also had lower inflation and therefore lower interest rates back then. So capital was a plenty for those projects because of COVID, but also just because of other macroeconomic things that happened between, you 2021 and today. We are in a, an environment where a lot of the project permitting got slowed down during Trump’s administration, which it took Biden’s administration a long time to catch back up. And they’re now trying to, ram a crapload of projects through the consent process, particularly an offshore wind. It’s certainly not happening as fast as it could be, by the way, but that’s a different conversation. But we’re now getting to a point where, you know, and I talked about, alright if Harris wins, interest rates might probably stay higher than, they would if Trump was actually president. So with a massive queue of projects, By the end of Biden’s term, plus the likely outcome of Trump’s administration would be to, get rid of the chairman of the federal reserve, put somebody in place that’s going to lower interest rates faster. You’re going to have a dearth of projects plus lower capital or, cheaper or access to cheaper capital, more plentiful access to cheaper capital. Let’s say it that way. That is potentially going to unlock a deluge of new project construction between 2025, 2026. The real question then becomes, is Trump’s administration going to do anything to slow down the pace of permitting and consenting again, which would have an impact on, In the latter years of his second term and potentially well into whomever would be president from 2028 or well, 2029 onwards. Allen Hall: So the heated talk about Trump shutting down all kinds of renewable projects that I hear on the clean energy side of the political spectrum, it seems really overblown, right? You had four years of history there and Trump essentially did nothing, right? There was too many other things going on in that time frame where you can’t focus on that It’s not something that is focusable Philip Totaro: and let’s be clear to he That’s why the Biden administration right now is rushing to get a lot of stuff rammed through this consent queue, because if something’s already consented, and it’s just looking for capital, everybody, the next eras of the world, the Invenergys, the, mid Americans of the world, they’re gonna, they’re gonna be screaming bloody murder if they can’t build these projects that have been consented because the plug gets pulled on the projects themselves. At the end of the day, the Republican president is not going to do anything to undercut business. Largely speaking, anything that’s already consented is going to be fine. It’s the, anything that’s in an earlier stage of project development that is desiring to be consented, what kind of, you know, enthusiasm is that going to receive versus, having the administration’s attention go towards, approval of oil and gas, drilling out in the Gulf of Mexico or wherever. Allen Hall: You really can’t pump more oil or petroleum products than the United States is doing at the minute. It’s at all time record highs, right? So there’s no lever that Trump has gone to pull to pump more oil and Joel’s seen that business. It’s crazy how much. Petroleum products, the United States is pumping and delivering outside the United States. On the economic side, though, I think every administration has levers that it wants to control, right? A Trump administration is going to want to control the Fed a little bit better, I think. A Democrat administration is going to want to pass bills in Congress, which seems to be their thing. Both of those have widely different responses in the U. S. economy. You pump money into the U. S. economy today, inflation is going to go crazy. Joel Saxum: But what is one thing that both sides of that aisle And that’s a good jobs reporting. Allen Hall: You’re not going to get it. If you cause inflation, the wind farm of the week is the North Bend wind Joel Saxum: farm out in South Dakota, near the river. It’s got 71 GE 2. 8 to one 27 rotor wind turbines with 89 meter towers. The total height of these things is 152 and a half meters, which is right at 500 feet. The cool thing about this, if you look online about this wind farm, they actually. Posted some of their service and maintenance. That they’re going to be doing contractually to the South Dakota state government. So this is once operational, the project service and maintenance carefully plan and divide into the intervals. So they have it posted right online. The first service inspection will take place one to three months after the wind turbines have been commissioned, and they will pay particular attention to tightening bolts and a full greasing of the turbine, then they will also have semi annual service inspections, which is every six months after commissioning. And the same thing, lubrication and safety tests of each turbine. Then they also have an annual service inspection, which is lubrication, safety checks, checking bolt assemblies, tightening and loosening or tightening and logging loose bolts if they’re detected. And they also have a two year service inspection, which is an annual inspection plus checking and tightening of all of the terminal connectors in the entire turbine. So a lot of work to be done out at the North Bend Wind Farm out by Chamberlain, South Dakota. So you guys 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. And please give us a five star rating on your podcast platform and subscribe in the show notes below to Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s YouTube channel, Engineering with Rosie. We’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

Nordex has announced the N169 5. X turbine, specifically designed for the American market. Infinity Power, a joint venture between Egypt’s Infinity and Abu Dhabi’s Masdar, has outlined a plan to develop one gigawatt of renewable energy projects in Sierra Leone by 2033. Modvion has received a €2 million investment from CMPC Ventures, the innovation arm of the Chilean forestry company CMPC. 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, Joel Saxum. And this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you need market intelligence that generates revenue, then book a demonstration of IntelStor at IntelStor. com. First up, German wind turbine manufacturer Nordex has announced a new addition to its product line, specifically designed for the U. S. market. The N169 5. X turbine boasts a rotor diameter of 169 meters and can generate up to 5. 5 megawatts of power. This new model is optimized for regions with low to medium wind speeds and limited grid capacity. Okay, Phil. Nordex must be seeing a market develop in the United States and they developed a turbine for that. What’s their ability to build that turbine in the United States? Philip Totaro: First of all, let’s look at why they’re doing this in the first place. So, About six or seven years ago, I had spoken to some of their product folks and said, Hey, look at this Acciona three megawatt, 140 meter rotor product that they had. And this was just after the merger, before they started designing this Delta platform that they got. That product, fit a gaping hole in the US market where they needed something low wind speed at a higher average power rating than, the 1. x and, the stuff that we had in the market. And it’s actually what led GE to also go in that direction and develop something that was a 3 megawatt 140. It evolved into a 3. 6 154. Vestas launched last year, and they’ve been installing recently the V163 4. 5. So, this new Nordax turbine is based off of their Delta 4000 platform, which, for those that don’t know, that’s their N149, their N163, 155. That’s between, 4. 5 and, and five megawatts. What they’re doing with this is besides having a longer rotor, which gives them access to lower wind speed sites, they’re leveraging the. Supply chain infrastructure that’s already in place. So they’ve got, generators, they got electrical equipment converters, controllers, et cetera, that fit that kind of, 4 to 5 megawatt product range where they’d be able to leverage that supply chain for this product. They are, probably going to be building these in addition to what they already publicly announced with restarting their factory in Iowa. They’re probably going to be building these in Iowa as well and it looks like they will be able to take advantage of some of the domestic content. Bonuses for the production tax credit and potentially even some of the Manufacturing tax credits as well. So I think all in all a great fit for a market need. Joel Saxum: And this comes at the same time as Nordex is making moves in the United States outside of offering this new product They also input a new CEO of Nordex is North American operations Manav Sharma on June 1st of this year. So, Nordex making some moves, looking to be a bigger player in the North American market, definitely. Allen Hall: Moving over to Africa, Sierra Leone is poised for a significant boost in its renewable energy sector. Infinity Power, a joint venture between Egypt’s Infinity and Abu Dhabi’s Masdar, has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Sierra Leone government. This agreement outlines a plan to develop one gigawatt of renewable energy projects in the country by 2033. Now, Phil, Sierra Leone is not a very large country. It’s about half the size of New York State. One gigawatt of renewable projects is a significant amount of energy. Philip Totaro: It is. And the key takeaway of this for me is that Mazdar is also plowing money into yet another different market. We’ve talked in the past few weeks on newsflash about how mass stars making moves throughout Europe Germany, Spain they’ve been talking to and Disa and now looking within, kind of continental Africa at different opportunities. They’ve also been making moves out and, the Asia Pacific region with investments in places like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. But this is really, Mastar kind of extending their tentacles, if you will, I know they’re not octopus energy, but they’re still extending their tentacles in into a bunch of different markets. Joel Saxum: Yeah, the cool thing to see here is Sierra Leone getting investment as an emerging market in a place that has, it’s electricity can be a scarce resource sometimes. And the nice thing here is, is you, if you look at the same way that a lot of African countries adopted cellular technology. Where like say in the United States, we went through three, four different versions of LTE, 3G, 4G, 5G, all this stuff. And over there, they were able to go boom, 5G right away. Cause they didn’t have to go through all the hurdles of getting through all this other infrastructure. Same kind of thing here instead of, Hey, do we have a, what, what are the power plants look like? And can we substitute renewables on the grid when you’re building, looking at one gigawatt of renewables? Well, you can design your grid specifically for those one gigawatt of renewables in a pipeline. So you have the better possibility of actually developing those cheaper for the transmission side of things. So, really good to see here that a Masdar is playing in those emerging markets. Allen Hall: Swedish company Modvion known for developing wind turbine towers has received. A significant investment from CMPC Ventures, the innovation arm of the Chilean forestry company CMPC. The 2 million euro investment will support Modvion’s global growth, including the construction of an industrial plant in Europe. Modvion’s unique approach uses laminated wood for wind turbine towers, offering benefits such as a 90 percent reduction in emissions compared to steel towers and improved carbon capture capabilities. Okay, Phil, so why is a Swedish company connecting with a Chilean forestry company? It seems like they’re quite a ways away from one another. Philip Totaro: They are, but this is actually a, an interesting and kind of clever move for them regarding their locking up their supply chain. So if you’re familiar with Modvion, they’ve already been engaged with some forestry companies in Scandinavia. As well as other companies, project developers like RWE are taking a look at their technology, Vestas is involved in some of their prototype development as well. But there is kind of a, a finite amount of the type of wood that they need for making these laminated veneer towers. And so they want to be able to look to markets like Chile or even markets like I wouldn’t be surprised if they looked at markets like Ecuador in the future where we actually still get a significant amount of our, our balsa wood core for wind turbine blades out of, out of Ecuador these days. So. Diversifying your supply chain in South America is a clever move, and being able to leverage it with investment from the Forrester Company’s venture arm is a bit of kudos to them. Joel Saxum: I would like to see, for my de risking, I would say, I’d like to see a little bit more of a track record with these things before sticking a bunch of money in. Into it. But that’s just in my mind. Interesting tie up Chile to Sweden, although Sweden does have a lot of forests just the wrong kind of trees apparently.