The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

Allen Hall and co-host Joel Saxum discuss Pearce Renewables’ new state-of-the-art training facility in Dallas, Texas with John Hornbeck and Travis Dees. Pearce is addressing the growing demand for skilled wind turbine technicians through innovative hands-on training methods, including the use of real equipment and cross-training opportunities across renewable energy sectors. Learn more at https://www.pearce-renewables.com/training/. 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. The wind energy sector is booming, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts wind turbine service technicians will be the fastest growing job this decade. But with great growth comes a need for skilled workers, and training enough qualified technicians is vital to keep wind farm projects up and running. Pearce Renewables has been a leader in technician training, and they recently opened a new training facility in Dallas, Texas. And if you’re not familiar with Pearce Renewables, and boy, you’re missing out. They are the largest ISP in the U. S., and they have a great need for well trained technicians. Our guests are John Hornbeck, Manager of Learning Organizational Development, and Travis Dees, Senior Vice President of Operational Support. John and Travis, welcome to the show. Travis Dees: Thank you, Al. Happy to be here. Allen Hall: Joel and I visited your brand new, fancy training facility in Dallas, Texas. Man, is that thing impressive. Joel Saxum: Yeah, we were there while you guys were still building things, right? You had people climbing around, you were installing TVs and stuff. And at that time it was impressive. We walked in, we’re like, wow, look at this place. Look at the size of it. The, I think that to be honest with you, the layout of the training rooms and everything. There’s a lot of things going on there. You’ve got capabilities to run people through a lot of different training mechanisms as well. Travis Dees: Yeah, when we started the design in the facility, it was trying to build for the future, not for what our needs were today, right? As you said before, we’re growing very quickly and the need for technicians is definitely upon all of us, but us specifically. Making sure they’re trained and equipped properly before they go out in the field is our goal. We’re trying to build a facility, not just in Texas, but other places as well. Starting in Texas and growing our California facility where the technicians actually want to come. They come there to get their training, but we want them to want to come back. I want them to go to the field, get some hours under their belt, and be like, hey, when do I get to go back to Dallas and hang out at that place? That place was cool, the trainers are great, they’re really informative. We’re trying to set out, for an awesome vibe. We want it to be. something that our people are proud of. Therefore they take that with them in the field and they, it rubs off on our other technicians and it’s building our culture. You know what I mean? Like it’s the, we have one opportunity to shine for our employees and this was our opportunity. So we took it and working with, incense and other companies to get all of the equipment inside of the facility was amazing. They designed an awesome jungle gym when I call it, man, that thing is awesome. And John and the work that he did getting our wind turbine and everything put together and the time frame and the layout works, the flow is really cool. I think it really helps the technicians, keep and retain all the information that we’re feeding them versus them losing it, and what you guys didn’t see is We have a section in there now where all the technicians that come through can autograph a wall which has been fun because some people like to draw some pictures and box letter their names And there’s some really cool signatures and at the same time We wanted our trainers to have a place. They wanted a training, you know Don’t get me wrong. It’s dallas. It’s hot. Like it was hot there yesterday and those guys were all over that tower. But And we put some big fans in there. It’ll cool it down. And, I keep saying, Hey, it can’t be air conditioned because then they’re going to get they won’t be working in their elements. The wind turbines, they’re out in all of the elements. So when it’s cold, it should be a little chilly and when it’s hot, it should be warm. So you don’t want to spoil them. No, absolutely not. They, I think they’re already spoiled as it is, but but no, I think the team and John specifically and his team have done a great job with making sure that we had the right equipment, to give our technicians and, even some of our clients they’re people, the best training we could possibly offer up and we’ll continue to grow and improve. I think there’s always opportunity for improvement, but we’re really excited about the Dallas facility. Everyone that comes in there, we bring a bunch of clients in and yeah. Wow. That jungle gym is, it is a wow factor. Joel Saxum: So Allen and I came to the facility back in April and you and John welcomed us in and John was giving us a tour of basically the, you have a bunch of classrooms. Of course, there’s some, of course you have a, then it’s a little bit of a Pearce facility, right? So you’re going to have some meetings or something. You’ve got really nice conference rooms and stuff in there, but training rooms that were air conditioned and nice for certain things. But then when we walked out into the The big facility, right? The big warehouse type facility. The first thing I saw on the corner was a legitimate nacelle. Sitting there ready to and John was like, we’ll get to that in a little bit. We’ll take a peek at that thing. Let me show you some other stuff. And also, there’s a freaking nacelle in here. That’s amazing, right? We’ve been to a lot of places. Training facilities and such. And you don’t see that very often for one, right? They’re tough to get ahold of. Nobody wants to that’s expensive. It’s a piece of kit, right? That could be used in something else. So people don’t really want to get it, get you get rid of it. But the guys are really going to have the capabilities of doing some hands on training. John, you want to walk us through some of the other things that are out in that warehouse? John Hornbeck: We’re training our employees to be the best they can so that our ISP can keep growing. But the way when we first landed the building, even when it came to the jungle gym, we contracted, worked with ENSA to sell some materials. But they were open as a company and they said, Hey here’s what some other designs look like. I visited a couple of facilities. I looked at some of other training centers designs. So the team and the trainers and I, we sat down and we drew up, Hey what makes ours different? And we came up with a big U shape. And that was a little bit too big for what we needed at the time, which was fine, so we cut it down, but just the way that we put thought into it of, hey, here’s all the ladders going up underneath. The deck that, that simulate coming up into a wind turbine main shaft and how we shaped the advanced rescue training section and put things on the second level made it different than everybody else’s and it made it cooler and it looks amazing, and then with you pointing out the wind turbine, that was the other thing, not everybody has a fully, can be powered up or in the middle of powering it up right now, getting it wired to, to put power to it. at a low voltage so that we can do training and and teach everybody how to work on it without actual high voltage in front of the cabinets. But there’s only a couple of facilities out there that will have that ability to train on a live wind turbine inside their shop. Not just the wind turbine that’s in there that sets us apart as we’re gonna be able to do live power loop training on that. So we have the same thing. For the solar and the battery storage in the divisions we have partnered with some folks and given us battery storage cabinets and inverters that and helping us power those up so that we can do live training. Not only for customers, but to highlight that to potential clients and things that other partners that we work with. Allen Hall: So at Pearce Renewables, when you train somebody up, they’re training on real live active equipment. It’s not a simulation. It’s just not a box on a bench. You’re actually using real equipment, especially like battery storage, which is really interesting too because there’s not a lot of training facilities doing that at the moment. That is a unique piece, I think, because the worst time for a technician is those first week or two or six months where they’re, everything is just new. You’re trying to, to de-risk that in a sense, by giving them access to real working equipment. John Hornbeck: E Exactly. And that’s what I said that earlier, we wanted to. Do the things that set us apart from just your, I’ll call it the cookie cutter trainings. There’s plenty of great training facilities out there and there’s, they all do a great job, but there’s a cookie cutter method there. You come in, do the standard training and go out to the field. We wanted to change that. And add that additional, real live training for our technicians so that, they leave not only knowing how to work safer, but they’re actually getting out there and working smarter right out the gate. So then our customers benefit from that because we’re delivering employees that have been trained on most of the things that they would end up doing in the field for their first few weeks. Now, there still is field training and very specific. Equipment training that, that not anybody can offer because you might need 15 or 20 different kinds of, cabinets in your shop to train on. But when we offer up that live aspect of training, it’s just that, that one more step, towards getting your cut your technicians out there and just having them hit the ground and work safe and do a great job. Joel Saxum: Yeah, and you mentioned the components, but you also touched on like a grease nipple. Another thing you showed us, John, was the slew of tools from all kinds of different manufacturers. You guys have there, right? So it’s, they’re not going to be, it’s not gonna be the first time they pick up, a torque tool or something like that. They’ve handled it. They know the ins and outs of it. They probably already used it, let alone handle it. But they’ve used it on those test facilities that you have. And I know that you were saying, Hey, I’ve got this, we’ve got this set up. But I’ve got these tools coming in and these tools coming in and those tools coming in. So you, I know you had a lot on the plate there as well. John Hornbeck: We talked a lot about electrical, but yeah, one of the other things that set this apart too, is you saw all those bolting stands. We built those out of bearings and flanges that are completely simulated to, putting up towers and bolting on hub bearings and putting blades together. But not only that, it’s exactly the same as getting that live training. We can go into the turbine and we do this. We’re working on the G. W. O. bolting standard, which is pretty new to the industry going across all the training centers. We can, we go into the wind turbine, put the hydraulic or electric, large powered torque tools on the actual main shaft in the pillow block and pedestal blocks. And so those are common things that the technicians are going to have to check in the field. So they literally are going to walk in there, go into the turbine. Put the tools on these actual bolts and, get a feel for, Hey, I got to watch where I’m stepping, and I’ve got to carry this tool and, get things in place and not leave my cords out where I’m going to trip. So we’re really proud of the, the bolting and torque class that we’re able to teach there. Allen Hall: I think one of the issues for new people to enter into the industry, become wind turbine technicians. Is I think there’s a thought, at least I’ve talked to people who have done this, they thought that they needed to have a lot of mechanical experience before they apply it. Like they needed to be a NASCAR mechanic or they needed to be working for a utility before they decided to apply. Like they thought they had to bring all this expertise to the job. That’s really not true because of all the work companies like Pearce is doing right now, right? You guys are training up people that have general basic. Mechanical skills to then go off and serviced wind turbines. And I think they miss that point. This is a little bit different than showing up at an auto mechanics place. You’re going to get trained up in wind. You’re going to get trained up in solar. You’re going to get trained up in, in battery storage before you go out to the field. And that just, I think if a lot of new people to the industry knew that. They’d be much more likely to apply because we’re like, we need like roughly a hundred thousand more technicians over the next couple of years. That’s a crazy number. Travis Dees: Now, anybody that has a mechanical, electrical or just the want to have a career, call us up, man, call us, we’ll help you get there. We will get you the training you need. To be safe out in the field and you’re really going to gain the knowledge with time in the field Working with individuals that have that experience, but we’ll make sure before you get out there On your first day, you’re not going to just run away. You’re going to be safe You’re going to know what you’re looking at. You’re not going to be afraid to get dirty you’re going to have that knowledge with you. So that’s really our goal John Hornbeck: I would say to say you can go people right out of high school They might have only worked on their bikes when they were young You But we’re going to provide what they need to go work in the field. So they don’t necessarily need to have any, background. You can be, fresh and looking to go into a different industry because you were an IT person. They’re pretty valuable nowadays, but. It doesn’t matter. We give the training that people need to join our industry. Joel Saxum: So you have this fantastic training facility that can do solar, battery storage, wind, all the above. We know that there’s some of these industries, like wind, that have this shoulder season, right? Where you’re busy spring, summer, early fall, and then winter comes and you’re, you might not have that much to do. So if you have the capability of, Training your in house technicians to be able to take on extra tasks in their downtime. That’s a wicked strategic advantage as an ISP. Travis Dees: Yeah. So that’s one of the things that we focused on and we’re talking about now is how do we’ve done it in the past and we are a smaller company, is you could take a wind technician and go put him in the field, helping solar, but you can’t take a solar tech and put them in a wind turbine because they got to have the ability to climb safely and understand all the safety equipment. Now with the GWO standard, it takes us time to get them trained up, but we’re looking at abilities to where the technicians that want to transition between wind and solar is to give them that opportunity and bring them in for the additional trainings. We’re also a telecom company. So we are we’re working with those guys as well. And we like, there’s not just wind towers. There’s also telecom towers, EV as well. That’s another sector we’re big in. We’re a lot, if not the largest EV service provider. In the market today, and we are actually working diligently with another client of ours and we’re gonna be installing several ev charging stations outside the facility that will actually, the public will be able to use. But our technicians that come in to get trained, they’re gonna go out there and get hands on. actual operating EV stations. So we do offer and continue to push and to grow the ability to cross train all our individuals. Joel Saxum: Yeah. So guys, we’ve we’ve talked to a lot of training centers. We talk with a lot of people that are involved in the veterans communities on the, in wind or outside of wind. But what we hear from them is man, when we get vets in, they’re fantastic. They’re ready to work. They’re used to tough conditions. They’re used to traveling. And most of them come with some technical aptitude straight out of whatever branch they were in. So they end up being rock stars on these renewable energy crews out in the field, whether it’s solar storage, wind, it doesn’t really matter. How are you guys engaging with that community to help boost up peers? Travis Dees: We have a recruiter. His name is Frank Martinez. He’s an actual veteran himself. His one job as a recruiter is fully to go find veterans that are either already retired or getting ready to retire and getting them into Pearce. Like we are dedicated to working with the military. Frank’s an outstanding recruiter. It’s awesome. And I believe To what everybody else is saying, I’m gonna jump on the bandwagon, man. These guys coming out of the military, they understand what it is to be organized, they understand the importance of being part of a team, showing up on time and delivering, like they’re amazing. And we do up here, we have dedicated an individual, his only job is really to recruit vets that were part of all types of other organizations. That, that are specialized in recruiting veterans straight out of the military, or even those that have been retired that are finally like, Oh, all right, I gotta go find something to do now. So we’re pinpointing it. We’re finding it. And our COO was given a, an award this year from the veterans for our continued participation in recruiting vets. So that was a pretty cool moment for for our new COO this year. Allen Hall: Travis, I’m new to the wind industry or an experienced technician. How do I connect with Pearce Renewables to get enrolled in some of these things and get up and get out in the field? Travis Dees: Yeah, I think the easiest way to find us is on social media. Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, like we’re everywhere. Obviously our website at PearceRenewables. com or PearceServices. com. Either one of them, I’ll take you to the home page. Allen Hall: So Travis and John, thank you so much for being on the program. The Pearce Renewables training facility is amazing and we will definitely have to come back out and visit it again.

Rosemary just got back from a conference and, like many of us recently, feels discouraged. Attendees and meetings were insightful, but the presentations and panels lacked impact. Allen has often felt the same. The two unpack their issues with recent wind energy conferences and discuss possible solutions to make them more valuable. 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 my great co host, Rosemary Barnes, who is just back, fresh back from the Australia Wind Energy 2024 Conference in, of all places, Melbourne, Australia. And Rosemary and I were just talking offline about some of the proceedings and the events that happened in Melbourne, and I thought it’d be a good discussion to get out into the greater uptime audience. Rosemary, first off, welcome back, and can you give us just a couple of just top level what was going on in Melbourne australia at this wind energy conference? Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, it was actually really focused on offshore wind this time. We I would say two thirds, three quarters, maybe more of the sessions were like explicitly about offshore wind, it seemed, and when it wasn’t explicitly about it, then people were trying to shoehorn it in, which. On the one hand, it makes sense because that’s the, next big exciting thing coming. But on the other hand, we have literally zero offshore wind currently, and we have many things that could be improved with our current onshore wind rollout. I did think that there, it was a bit unbalanced in that way. This conference, it was amazing in terms of everybody shows up to it. I, I think I was just back to back meetings the entire time really targeted at all the people that I, Wanted to talk to for, the various projects that I’ve got going on. So in that sense, it was incredibly successful and and had a great time. But yeah, when I did find the time to step into some of the presentations, which is what you pay for after all, it’s 1, 500 for two days. And yeah, the sessions that I went to, they’re just getting. Worse and worse. It feels less and less like anybody cares what the experience is like for the attendees, what they might be hoping to get out of it. And it’s just purely about extracting money from everybody, extract money from the exhibitors, extract money from the sponsors, extract money from the keynote speakers. People don’t realize that the keynote speakers are all, they’re all paying to stand up there and speak to you like, like a lot. Yeah, pretty significant amount. And some of them are good, but you don’t know ahead of time. And for the most part, people pay their 10 grand or whatever it is and stand up there and give you a sales pitch. And that’s not valuable to the majority of the audience. Yeah, another complaint just on the panel discussions. The panels are just way too big. You have a panel with 10 different people on it you spend half of the session just introducing everybody and then they’ve got to give their little pitch about their company because they’ve got to get something out of it. And then, yeah, there’s not, there’s too many people to have an actual discussion, usually not many, or maybe not any questions from the audience, certainly not addressed in a meaningful way. And you have sessions like a session on, it sounds like it should be interesting session on supply chain challenges. That’s a huge challenge for for wind everywhere in the world at the moment including Australia. And. You have a, an hour long session and they mentioned the word supply chain, but it’s just Oh yeah, and obviously supply chain is an issue. And then, move on to talk about something else. Allen Hall: And let me ask you about that. Let me ask you about that because I’ve been to a number of conferences this year and I don’t want to name the ones I’ve been to specifically, but the attendance in the discussions was quite small, typically, unless it was a technical subject, something that people were having problems with out in the field. Thanks A couple I remember from this year or last year was like concrete foundations and problems with concrete foundations on turbines, right? That’s a big issue. Another one was lightning damage or qualification of damage to blades and trying to quantify what’s cat one versus cat five. Trade and industry standard, that was well attended. But some of these that are policy driven or politically driven discussions are just not well attended. Is that the same thing you’re seeing on Australia? Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. It’s actually interesting that you should mention foundations because that was the sole good keynote that I saw was a guy from total ground engineering who has a, his He presented some very compelling information about why the current standards for foundations are becoming less and less appropriate as the turbines get bigger and presented some innovative solutions towards that. So that was a win. That was probably the sole interesting thing that I actually learned from sitting in the audience. Yeah, I and you’re right that they’re not very well attended because probably everyone is thinking the same thing as me, that this is not the point of the conference anymore. The point is that people that you meet and yeah, early, like a few years ago when I moved back to Australia and I found myself with no network in Australian wind industry. So I went to the conferences and, I needed to Randomly chat to people and bump into people and pull people aside after a presentation to talk to them. But this time, every single conversation I had gotten in touch with them. Either I already knew them or I had planned out ahead of time and got in touch on LinkedIn. So yeah, I’d say that the last bit of value that’s left at these, the conferences that way that they’re being run is the app that they have where you can actually, search by company, say who’s going to be there from the different companies and then. You figure out who you want to talk to and send them a message. They also had a semi cool feature where you can send a meeting request. And if you put your availability in the calendar, then it will hook you up and you go into this room. It had a real speed dating vibe about it. Everyone’s just like awkwardly looking around for who they’re supposed to be meeting. And then, yeah which, yeah, it was funny but that’s actually useful. But yeah, it’s just, it is becoming pretty hard to justify the price and. I don’t know. It’s been years since I went to a European conference. So maybe they’re following this same same business model as the Australian and American ones now. But the last one I went to in Europe, it was really about the information, that they had people presenting and they would ask people to talk because they thought they had something interesting to say, not because they wanted them to pay a lot of money. To get up there and talk. Yeah, so I just really think that they’ve got to rein it in a little bit. Get at least keep your panels of a moderate size. I know you’ve got to let every sponsor have a spot on the panel, keep it at a size that where it’s possible to have some sort of interesting communication happening. Get a moderator that actually knows how to moderate with the audience in mind, okay. Given the session title and the participants, what are the audience going to want out of this? And then, keep people on track. Don’t allow it to become just like a a sales broacher of them, verbal sales broacher for their company talk about the things that people are hoping to learn about otherwise, are people going to keep on going? Maybe it’s irrelevant, but I would have thought that exhibitors are only paying because. The number of people that come through the door and the same with the sponsors of the conference. They’re not going to want to sponsor. Yeah. Like 10, 000 keynote that has three people in the audience attending. I could, you know what? They could better spend that money on sponsoring social media content instead and get a much wider view. Yeah. Viewership, listenership. Allen Hall: Let me ask you why you think this is, because I have a couple of thoughts and I’m going to throw some at the wall here and you tell me what sticks. First, is that they choose conference venues that are super exclusive slash expensive, like overly done. And so those conference places cost an enormous sum of money to book, to hold, and to then to make some money on as a conference exhibitor or a conference holder. The economics are not in your favor when you do that. Used to be when we held conferences, I’ve been to a lot of Holiday Inn, Ramada kind of conferences in the United States, a lot less expensive, more attendance just because the entrance fee went down, then the hotel wasn’t as expensive. I think cause you’re, you mentioned the 1, 500 to attend. There’s a reason why that is, I, was it one of those fancy Melbourne hotels or conference centers? Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Yeah. It’s in the Melbourne convention center, which they all, they always are that. Yeah. They’re all there. And then. It’s fine. It’s nice, but it’s also expensive. You want to stay close. So then your accommodation is expensive too. Allen Hall: See that, that, that doesn’t help the attendees. So if you want people like Rosemary and me to attend, you need to be usually a notch down from that, generally speaking, because 1, 500 is 1, 500. It’s, it is real money. That if we’re a small business, both of us run small businesses, our own business, 1, 500 comes right out of our pocket and it better be worth it. And what Roseberry is saying, and I think what I’m saying is it’s not worth, some of these conferences are not worth it right now. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. And it’s the time cost as well. Everybody’s the same. And actually I did meet up with a few people that are like, Oh my God, did you buy a delegate’s pass? Why would you do that? It’s obviously you only need the exhibition pass. So that let. Yeah. Okay. I am. I’m starting to come around to that, but I do think that for 1, 500, if you had good sessions it should be allowing you to put your finger on the pulse and figure out, what’s the vibe of wind energy in Australia at the moment. What are the big problems people are having and then, some potential solutions, some people talking about things that are coming up that you might not have heard about yet. I do think that there’s a lot of value in that, but they’re not trying to get good speakers. And not trying to make it good for attendees. And I just think surely it can’t continue much longer of this because it’s worse and worse every year. Allen Hall: So let me ask you about this, the second question I had about attending. Is it because the speakers are less technical? More salesy, more executive office people rather than frontline direct hands on knowledge of what are their expertises, be it blaze, be it nacelles, generators, whatever. That it then draws less of a crowd because then you do think, yeah, I’m going to see an executive vice president for this large operator. It’s maybe interesting, but I’m not going to take anything really out of this. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, and because they’ve all, they’re just giving the same talking points that they give. Yeah, the higher level, the less interesting, probably, or less. Surprising what they have to say is going to be, I think personally, yes, I prefer, yeah, the European conferences that I used to go to did tend to be a lot more technical and I personally like that, but I’ve also been to some that are more based at a, at a higher level industry in general, because even though, yeah, I’m a really technical person, I still need to know what’s happening in the industry here. Yeah. And in Australia, there’s not, no one’s designing wind turbines in Australia. We’re buying them and installing them and, I still need to know, Oh, what’s the problem this year? Is it community acceptance of new wind farms? Is it getting enough cranes on site? Is it transmission? Is it yeah, like lightning damage causing problems on sites or, Anything like that I still want to yeah get my finger on the pulse. That’s a big part of why I would go to a conference like that. And it did, we did get that to a certain extent in this conference but yeah very little. And yeah, even this same conference a few years ago was better. It still annoyed me at the time, but Allen Hall: Do you think these exhibits and conferences need a steering committee to help guide them as to what would be important topics to discuss? I feel like we’re missing that right now. Rosemary Barnes: I think with this particular conference, it’s not it’s an international conference organization group. They’re not Australian. And I think that it shows that they are Not really, like conferences are nicer. If I think of, for example one conference that used to go to a lot in Europe was Winter Wind and it’s about, yeah, like wind turbines in cold climates. Have you been? Allen Hall: Yes, I have. Rosemary Barnes: The organizers were all from, yeah, the Nordics. They really cared about. Making sure that wind energy was suitable for these cold climates and that the technologies were improving. And, like they started the conference because they wanted to improve knowledge and improve the the state of the industry in that niche. And so it kind of permeates through the whole thing. They invite speakers who they’ve, cause they’re like involved in the field and they’re paying attention all year round to who’s saying what, and then, they’ll pick out, oh, this person has something really interesting to say, let’s invite them to be a keynote speaker. And, it’s it’s just a totally different experience. And I can’t even recall the cost of it. It’s not like it was a cheap conference. It wasn’t in a shoddy venue or anything like that. There were, all these in beautiful places. One time I went to one at at Aura. Actually, you went to one at Åre too, I remember saying. Yeah, it’s like a ski, Swedish ski resort. The conference venue has saunas on the, bottom floor and so it’s not, they’re not cutting corners on, that aspect of the conference junket, but the value that you get, if you want to know, if you’re entering that kind of part of the industry that you need to know about what matters in cold climate wind. You’re guaranteed to find that out there. And if you go year after year, you are guaranteed to find out, what has the progress been and to meet relevant people and everything. So I just think that it’s much easier to get a good value conference from a, like a small organization that is really dedicated to, The topic of the conference, we need someone within the Australian wind industry to start up a better conference. Allen Hall: And. Do you think that the attendees are mostly technical people or sales people, or is it a 50, 50 mix there? Rosemary Barnes: There’s so few technical people in Australia. Like it’s just the industry is not technical here, if that makes sense. Not nearly to the definitely not to the extent of Europe and not even nearly to the extent of the U. S. So you never hear people like that presenting. Allen Hall: Because that, I think that was the key to Winter Wind the last time I attended. It was focus on this problem. Let’s hear some solutions to this problem. Let’s try to understand the problem a little bit better. Here are some possible ways to address this. So it was a problem solving session and I think you were right. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. And they come in from all different sides as well, cause they’ll have the, like I was there representing LM wind power. And like I didn’t even present every year because you didn’t always have something new to say, but you are basically, doing the company line, giving us the sales brochure and presentation format. Yeah. Okay. Those sessions were usually a bit boring, but then they would also invite people who were operating wind farms and they’d be like, Oh, we have, brand X turbines and their icing system sucks. Look at all the different ways that it sucks. This is all the ways that it broke. And it, it’s so valuable, that information, because obviously, no one the manufacturer of that system is not going to, broadcast that knowledge. But that’s how, yeah the industry can improve and what problems there are, then many people can, step in to solve them. Allen Hall: Isn’t it fun when you see a contrarian point of view at these conferences too, like you see the OEMs and they have a certain sort of cadence to them and they’re pretty similar. Then you get this one rogue scientist or engineers that comes in and just goes, I’ve worked out in the field, I’ve used these components, they’re terrible, here’s why, and this is what we should be doing about it. Those sort of discussions set the tone for the conference, I think. In terms of how good you feel about when you leave them Oh, something happened. It may not have been, I may not agree with this person, but at least I now am thinking about this problem in a wider context. And that helps move the industry forward. Did you feel like the industry moved forward after you finished the conferences in Australia? Rosemary Barnes: No. No, and I don’t recall hearing a rogue voice either. Allen Hall: Yeah, that’s the, I think that’s the issue, right? Is that we need a Rosemirror on the panel to go, that’s garbage, and here’s why, and this is what we should be doing about it. Gets the discussion going, gets the blood flowing, gets people into seats. That kind of discussion. Rosemary Barnes: They mention supply chain, they mention transmission, but they’re not really, um, there’s no, I didn’t hear anything new, any new ideas for solving that, any anything that would really, that I feel would like really give people the knowledge and the drive that they need to go out and, make things happen in those spaces. So I think it’s a wasted opportunity. Allen Hall: All right. So how do we make these conferences better? Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. So I think the first thing is that just choosing which ones to go to. Then the organizers of those conferences should be making sure that they are focused on what the attendees are getting out of it. And that probably means. Picking good keynote speakers based on what they have to say, rather than what their their job title is, how, high up their job title is and also when you’re going to have panels, keep the panel to a meaningful size, make sure everybody is actually going to talk about the topic that people have come to listen to them talk about and get moderators for the panels that actually know how to keep everything focused on, what’s providing value for the audience. Allen Hall: Yeah I’m with you on that I think keeping the costs down, I’m okay going to a lesser hotel to have a conference, totally fine, because I’m not there to it’s not a vacation for me. It is a learning experience, and it’s a vacation for some, obviously, we’ve been to some conferences in San Diego, and the reason a lot of people go there, especially from Denmark and cold places, is because it’s a nice, warm, sandy beach to be on for a while, so a vacation spot does turn into more attendance. However, in those conferences that I’ve attended, the sessions, no one’s in them. They’re all out at the beach, so that’s a problem. So again, getting back to What the conference is about, what the talks are about, they need to figure that out and get that I think a committee together that is our industry people that said, these are the hot button topics that will bring people in and focus on those. And you’re right, Rosemary, the moderators is a big problem. And when you just ask a person that was sitting at a desk at a large OEM or an operator and that’s their, their day job is running this thing. And then you ask them to be in front of this group of people and to hold this panel discussion. That’s not their expertise. They may not be that good at it. And it just leads to this kind of wishy washy discussion that doesn’t really go anywhere. And I think you and I have been on too many of the, seen too many of those and we’re like, oh, that’s shame. If they had a good moderator here. There’ll be a lot more information coming out of it because the people, the panel people up on the dais there are smart. They have information in their head. You need to extract it out. You need to give them the opportunity to speak their knowledge and get out of the way. The best moderators are the ones you don’t remember. Those are the best. And sometimes we just don’t have that. It’s hard, right? You and I speak a lot on YouTube and the internet and on podcasts. It’s hard, right? It’s not an easy thing to do. Rosemary Barnes: And I feel I would be unfair if I didn’t mention there are quite a few good Australian conferences, but none just focused on, on wind as far as I can recall. Anyway, there’s yeah, the clean energy council does some good events and I am kicking myself about not going, I don’t have the energy to go to another one next week. So yeah there is that one. There’s a smart energy council also. Does good events. And there was one called all energy, which is pretty good too, but they’re all like more, more broad, can’t get into the technical stuff. And then, the other one, it’s not a conference that’s the event, but the everything electric show that I’ve done a couple of times from the guys from fully charged show. Yeah. They’re incredibly audience focused and yeah, they take great care in making sure they get good moderators. Yeah, they get a lot of YouTubers to come and present because, they know how to make it fun for the audience. And they’re appealing, they’re not appealing to a professional audience. They’re appealing to just, people who like, like cars, like home electrification. Yeah, and, the exhibitions, they’re fantastic, but so are the presentations, and I think that’s a pretty good example of how, like, why can’t it be more like that for professionals too we could also enjoy ourselves and learn a lot. Allen Hall: Rosemary, this has been great. I’m glad you gave us the post exhibition conference data dump. Because I think we all have been thinking this the last couple of years about these conferences we’ve attended and have invented. And so I think we hit you at just the right time. Rosemary Barnes: Yes, I’m feeling good. I got through it, but yeah, you definitely did catch me at the right time if you wanted a big rant. Allen Hall: Thanks Rosemary for being on the podcast. We love having you as one of our co hosts and we’ll see you next week.

A blade has failed at the Vineyard Wind Farm off the coast of Nantucket–what will the fallout be? How is GE responding? Will this effect the US Presidential Election? Plus a warning about electrostatic eliminators and mid-blade lightning protection: they don’t work. And Mechanix Wear’s TRACK (Trial Research and Collaboration Kit) program offers on-site assessments to identify specific hand protection needs for employees. NextEra’s Walleye Wind Farm in Minnesota is our wind farm of the week! Visit AMI’s website to book a spot at the Wind Turbine Blades conference! 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 AllenHall, and I’ll be bringing you this week’s top stories in the wind energy sector. Siemens Gamesa has secured a 1. 2 billion euro line of green guarantees from the Spanish government and major banks. This support comes at a crucial time for the wind energy subsidiary of Siemens Energy, which has been grappling with financial challenges. The Spanish export credit insurance company and a banking syndicate led by BBVA and BNP Paribas are backing this initiative. The Spanish state is providing a 50 percent guarantee, up to 600 million euros. Sharing the risk with the guarantor banks. This line of guarantees is designed to support Siemens Gamesa’s projects in technical guarantees, allowing the company to execute its substantial order backlog of 40 billion euros in the wind business. We now turn our attention to the competitive landscape in the U. S. offshore wind market. Siemens Gamesa is currently leading the pack with a commanding 57 percent share of the order pipeline for offshore wind projects that have already selected a supplier. This translates to six projects with a capacity of Denmark’s Vestas follows in second place with a 32 percent share, while U. S. based GE Vernova rounds out the top three with 11 percent. Shifting gears to labor news, approximately 300 workers at a Siemens Gamesa wind turbine factory in Hull, England, Are being balloted for a potential strike. The dispute centers around a pay offer that the Unite Union claims amounts to a real terms pay cut. The union warns that a strike could cause significant disruption to production. The Unite Union argues that the workers’ pay has fallen in real terms since 2018, due to below inflation increases and a performance related bonus scheme. The hull factory specializes in constructing 108 meter long blades. In technology advancements, Orsted has successfully tested a new lower noise installation method for offshore wind foundations in Germany. The groundbreaking technology could revolutionize the way offshore wind foundations are installed. The new method, tested at Goda Wind III Offshore Wind Farm, uses a patented jetting technology attached to the monopile. This allows the foundation to sink into the seabed, replacing conventional installation methods such as pile driving. The result is a substantial decrease in underwater noise levels, with a reduction of 34 decibels compared to most commonly used installation methods. This installation not only enhances marine life protection, but also has the potential to make installations more efficient and cost effective. On the equipment front, German company Emitech is launching a new wind turbine blade turning unit designed to facilitate easier on site service and maintenance. This innovative unit allows a rotor blade to be pitched on the ground around its longitudinal axis, enabling smooth and continuous rotation for repairs. For The company believes this technology could save millions in service costs by allowing most repairs to be carried out directly at a wind turbine site, eliminating significant logistics efforts. Emtec plans to debut this new technology at the Wind Energy Hamburg event this September. Lastly, we have a developing story from Texas, where Senator John Cornyn has called for the Pentagon to shut down a wind farm linked to a Chinese billionaire, citing national security concerns. The wind farm located in Val Verde County was initially blocked due to fears of potential espionage given the owner’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Although the rights to develop the Blue Hills Wind Farm We’re sold to a Spanish energy firm last year. Senator Cornyn believes there still may be Chinese involvement in the project. He has requested an urgent investigation, emphasizing the potential threat to a nearby Air Force Base. That’s this week’s top news stories. After the break, I will be joined by my co host, renewable energy expert and founder of Pardalote Consulting, Rosemary Barnes. CEO and founder of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum. I guess this is a consumer alert. We, Joel and I have seen a lot of lightning products being offered to wind turbine operators. And if you’re not a lightning expert or haven’t been around the business about 30 years, like I have it’s hard to gauge what’s real and what’s not. There has been, more recently some companies selling electrostatic eliminators, basically devices that, in theory, would suck all the charge out of the cloud, preventing lightning from hitting your wind turbine. Those don’t work. They’re very serious. They’re very serious. It’s, it’s a dangerous situation, everybody. Those devices don’t work. They’ve been tried on multiple, multiple occasions and all around the world. They don’t change the equation. If lightning is coming down from the sky It’s coming down from the sky. What it hits is random. And if you’re the tallest object out there, you got a pretty good chance of being hit regardless of what device is on it. That’s the first one. The second one I’ve seen advice more recently where someone’s doing a repair, say halfway up the blade, three quarters up the blade. And they want to put some lightning protection on that area. Again, that can be a big mistake. If it’s not tied to the lightning protection system, a lot of times where there’s damage on a blade, the lightning protection system. Is, is not around there. There’s no receptor or any place to ground to. Putting some sort of lightning protection device in the middle of a blade is going to encourage lightning to strike there again. And let’s just be aware of that, everybody. And you don’t have to take advice from weather guard Joel or me. We’re here. You can call us. We would love to help. But I understand you want to get a second opinion. Go get it and get somebody who actually has worked in wind or worked on aircraft for a long time. And knows what works and what doesn’t, and has a good sense about it. Cause you can get yourself into a world of hurt, playing around with lightning and wind turbines. Very expensive. Philip Totaro: Allen, let me ask the, the supposedly dumb question here. Aren’t, when you put something two thirds of the way up the length of the blade, and it’s not connected to the receptor and conductor, et cetera, And you’re ionizing the air around that area, that’s what you’re saying is necessarily going to result in additional strikes in that area. Allen Hall: Yeah, that, that material you add is going to connect the down conductor through the blade to the lightning on the outside. So it’s going to create another puncture, probably where you’ve just repaired it. And it’s just going to be horrible. And, and that’s, that’s a dilemma, right? So just putting lightning, lightning protection on a blade seems simple. It is not, you need to get good advice from people who’ve done this out in service and have a track record like us at WeatherGuard, right? So just be, just be aware because we’ve run into this quite often recently in the United States because there’s been so many lightning strikes and so many damaged turbines that every operator is reaching out just to try to get some information. We at the Uptime Podcast try to bring you a lot of good information on all kinds of subjects. Lightning being one of them. So if you run into difficulty, feel free to reach out to Joel, reach out to me, and we can get you pointed in the right direction. 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 America 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. Off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard at the Vineyard Wind offshore wind site GE had a problem. One of the new wind turbines there had a blade bust and parts of that blade hit the water. Now, this happened on a Saturday, so there was, obviously, people were around that area and saw the debris, the ship, boats and things, saw the debris in the water and started posting images on Facebook and on Twitter about it, and the Coast Guard cordoned off an area and Vineyard Wind has been working to, to find out what’s going on, but today, which is Tuesday, Four days later now, they’re finding debris up in Nantucket, so the, as Rosemary well knows, when the blades are full of foam, it likes to float, and that foam from that blade, when it came apart, float out to sea and ran into the south side of Nantucket, so he marked his vineyard on the west, and then Nantucket on the east, and so Nantucket has a beach full of foam. And Penny Wynne’s out there trying to pick all this stuff up at the minute, but Joel, as and Phil, as being Americans, a lot has happened over the last several days on the political front, and the Republican National Convention’s going on at this moment as we’re recording. And the candidate on the Republican side is not a big fan of offshore wind. And then we had a GE turbine essentially break without spending any production time. It’s, it’s essentially new. So first off to everybody, what do we think happened here with that blade? And did this has, has this happened previously with this particular kind of turbine? Philip Totaro: Too soon to say if this is, so they did have an issue with the same product platform at Dogger Bank. I believe they said it was a similar type of issue where there was potentially some type of mistake or something got hit or whatever during the installation process. And either they didn’t notice it or they checked it and cleared it but then it failed anyway type of a situation. It sounds like a similar scenario here. From the public statements that have been made so far but it’s obviously, it’s too soon to say what was really the root cause of this the reality of it is stuff breaks all the time, whether it’s a wind turbine or any other piece of industrial equipment, your car breaks all the time, hopefully not, but, things break and, but the timing of it is bad as Allenmentions, because we’re at a point where we’re trying to whip up support. For offshore wind and get everybody excited about the fact that we’re, greening the electricity supply and all that good stuff. But it’s coming at a point in time when this is going to end up being used as as bad optics against the industry. And it’s just unfortunate that that’s the reality. I guess. Joel Saxum: Yeah, I think going back to that blade. Some of the reports say that there was a lifting or handling issue with it. When you look at the image it looks like somewhere right, just north of like the, basically the root. It looks like it broke. So it’s not the whole blade didn’t hit the water. The blade’s still hanging there from the turbine. But of course, lots of pieces and debris floating. And like you said before, Alan when it’s the core foam and things like that, they’re going to float right at the top and then they’re very visible. But yeah, as far as I’ve heard, or I know nothing, serial Lee wrong with these blades. I Allen Hall: don’t know everything. How do you split a blade open that’s not under some severe strain? I guess that’s my first question. If it was damaged in lifting, wouldn’t that be noticeable? Rosemary? Who has lifted blades and had blades shipped and fallen off ships and all kinds of other things happened. Rosemary Barnes: Lifted them with my own, my own bare hands. Pretty tall, so I just, I just picked them up and put them on. Allen Hall: So how do you, how do you break a blade when you’re installing it? Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, you can see from the pictures that the failure was a little bit further outboard than where, like at the blade route, it’s like a cylindrical cross section, and then it becomes like a wing shape a little bit further out. And it seems like it’s broken just after that transition. It’s at the blade route where it’s a really big chord. And you can see from all the debris that’s washed up and been floating around, there’s a lot of foam around, so it would have been in one of the sandwich, the, the, yeah, the sections where there’s a lot of damaged material. So I’m, I’m going to assume that there was some sort of failure that went, a damage that went undetected and then it failed in buckling, seems a likely. Likely way for it to fail based on where it’s happened. The only other option would be that yeah, there’s been a massive damage that has gone unnoticed, which seems unlikely, or a really, really bad manufacturing defect that went unnoticed. Yeah, it does seem unlikely. I’d be pretty surprised if this is like a serial defect because it’s obviously a bad enough defect that he didn’t, it wasn’t even operating right. So it’s not like it’s a big storm has caused this to get overloaded and it’s broken. It’s broken at the first, the first little puff of wind that’s pushed on it. So it was, it was pretty significant. And if it was a serial thing, then this would be the norm for that, for that blade, like there’s no way that you would have had, many turbines installed already without this happening. So yeah, it, it seems likely to me that it’s probably a one off some, some damage somewhere to one of the big panels that have foam in them. And then, yeah, with buckling is, I don’t know if that’s like a commonly understood term, but it’s when you crush an aluminum can it can take a lot of force, but as soon as there’s a slight deviation away from the, the direction that the force is being applied, then it will bulge out suddenly. And then there’s just no, no strength in it at all. So if it’s a small defect, then that really significantly reduces the load that it can take before it buckles. So I’m going to, yeah, make it, it’s total guess, but I will just say, it makes me so sad to see it, to see these it’s what are these birds, like 107, 108, I can’t remember exactly, meters long. Yeah. And so that’s like longer than an Olympic sprint. And they’ve got, it’s like the largest man made structure, basically like one single component. So solid and then it’s hanging there like a banana peel, cause it’s just it’s just been split apart. Yeah, like grabbing a banana and just squeezing. It’s, it’s really sad to see that. I feel, yeah, I feel great looking at it. Allen Hall: Is there any load monitoring? Rosemary, when they install a blade like that offshore, is there any load monitoring on the blade as it’s lifted and connected to the hub? Rosemary Barnes: No, not that I know of. There’s like very few blades have load monitoring, installed within the blade. Sometimes you do that for maybe a prototype blade or something, or there was some attempts a few years ago to, Try and do all sorts of tricky things by monitoring the position and strain in blades, but it’s yeah, no, I would be expecting, no, it’s, it’s very complicated and painful and expensive and just creates a whole lot of data that you have to then do something with. You need more people. It’s, it’s not normally done. Allen Hall: Having moved blades on ships, would that be possible? If there was going to be some sort of problem when they were lifting it or moving it, it would make a lot of noise. That’s a big blade. And if something happened inside of it, structurally, it’s, you would think someone would Joel Saxum: notice. It’s, it’s so loud on a, it’s so loud on a vessel, especially you’re on the back deck or you’re in the crane. Like things can happen out there that you, you’d have no idea. Like I I’ve seen with my eyes, 20 foot containers get dropped on the deck and you don’t even hear them. Yeah. So there’s, there’s, with the motors going, especially if that, those vessels, whether it was installed with a jackup or a DP two or a DP three vessel, when those motors are cranking and stuff like you just, it’s, it’s, it’s like you’re in an industrial facility on that vessel the whole time. Philip Totaro: Because also normally when you install. a blade and the turbine is yet to be commissioned, you typically pitch the blades downwind to prevent the buckling. Did they just not get to that? Or, why would they have left it in a position where the blade would have been subject to these, potential buckling loads that, that would have caused this if there was some type of, minor defect or whatever, from, from transportation, presumably, or installation. Joel Saxum: There would be Phil, right? Cause that, if that blade, say that thing’s pinwheeling, it’s not locked out cause it’s just been built, but not in production. And that blade is pitching flat, pitch negative. Then you are, you, you are on that buckling side. Rosemary Barnes: I don’t think you would eliminate all, all the forces from that, that could cause it. But that’s what I’m saying is that it, it, it was not a, extreme load that’s caused this, it was something small, which means that it, there’s some big enough. Defect, or yeah, whether it’s a manufacturing defect or it’s damage that’s occurred, it was big enough that something very small set it off. Allen Hall: And in the U. S., the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement has oversight over the Indian Wind Project. It looks like they’ve put put out a press release just this is Tuesday. So it was about four days later talking about it. But if they were lifting a blade and something like this were to happen, where they have a blade with a break, that’d be a huge safety issue. So for right now, I think they have stopped all the turbines at Vineyard Wind. And I’m curious as to what next steps would likely be. Are they going to have to do a full data review, corrective action before they turn the farm back on again? How, how long will this take? To get some power out of vineyard wind. Rosemary Barnes: They’ll, they’ll move some way through the root cause analysis to have a, a decent understanding of, of what’s caused it and whether it’s likely to be present in other other blades in the, in the wind farm. But what I think is strange is that you do a visual inspection usually right before you would install a blade. And it’s, it’s was that either not done or. Was the damage not visible from the outside? And that’s like really scary if that’s the case that you could have such a large damage and that’s not yeah, just visible to the eye. Because yeah, like you need to. Not just be sure that this is not likely to be there in other blades, but you need to, ensure that it can’t happen again to other blades. So I guess like probably the best case scenario is that there was no visual inspection done. That would be, like a really nice finding actually, like terrible that the procedure wasn’t followed, but at least you know how to fix it. But, if everything was done according to the normal procedures. And this still happened. That’s kind of a bigger, a bigger problem because then it’s really hard to know how you can. Make sure that it’s not going to happen again and also give your customers trust that it’s not going to happen again, give the, yeah, the government the locals in places where you’re installing these turbines, you’ve got to give them confidence as well, because yeah, like it’s in a way that we’re lucky that it was such a bad failure that it happened immediately because imagine if it didn’t happen until they turned the turbine on and then, you’ve got the, the thing rotating at the same time as it might snap off and then it can, it can javelin away hit someone out to, out to sea. Yeah. So my, my point is it could have, it could have been worse. So it needs to be taken so seriously. Joel Saxum: So say the inspection was done, an external inspection was done and an internal inspection, internal inspection being as much as open the hatch and look in whatever, that’s usually what happens on a site now offshore. I’ve never been there, so I don’t know. So what I’m thinking is this, this thing is 107. It’s 107 meters long, built in a mold, two shells. You put the shear web in or multiple shear webs, whatever they are, close the mold up. When you, before you do that, you have to apply glue to that shear web. So when the second piece of the shell closes on, it gets the. Now, when you’re doing that to a 40 and 50 meter blade, that’s one thing because you’ve got 40 or 50 meters to run and put glue down. Now you’ve got 107 meters to run. Not the whole thing, right? But proportionally that much longer to go and put glue down. Is it possible that this thing closed up the blade looks fine. However, that mechanical or chemical bond for the shear web. Isn’t that good in that, like they left the mold open too long or something. And then, so the thing goes through transportation fine, everything looks great, and then you hang it up and then there’s no strength in the shear wipe. Rosemary Barnes: So I think that you’re right that the glue bond is a like a good contender for the root cause of this problem. I’d be incredibly surprised if it’s because they left the mold open too long. They have a big, when you’re closing up a blade in the factory everyone is acutely aware of the amount of time that you have to work safely while before the, the glue cures and you’ve got a big, like a big shot clock there counting down. And it’s like that, that, that part of the manufacturing process is just like a choreographed dance. Like everybody knows exactly what to do, exactly how long it’s going to take exactly where to be. People are, you probably have a dozen or maybe even more for such a large blade. People yeah, like walking all over the blade, doing all of their little jobs. And then when, you’ve got, I don’t know, 30 seconds left on the clock, everyone just knows to everyone at the exact same time is finished their job and walks away and then it and then it closes and. If if, if they, something happened and they couldn’t close in time, then they would have to they wouldn’t close it because you, you can save it at that point because you can scrape all the glue off, you can grind it back to, to fresh and have another go the next day. It’s super unlikely that that’s what it is. that, what else could it be? Could it be a bad batch of glue? They do as part of the closing process, they will take little samples of the glue and save them. So they’ll be able to go back and and test that glue if in case there was something wrong, if it was, not the right one. If it was past its shelf life, if it, I dunno, wasn’t mixed in the right ratio. And that’s definitely not just done. Like they don’t just eyeball it like you do when you’re doing like a little epoxy repair at home, there’s there’s a lot of it. There’s a lot of equipment in place to make sure that, that, that is done right, because it is so critical. And then after it’s closed, they do inspect those glue joints yeah, with non destructing testing methods, but it, it is one of the challenging, the challenging parts of quality control is making sure that the glue, the glue joint is correct all the way along. And that sometimes it can look like it’s joined, but really it’s just just, just touching, just kissing, they say. And so it’s not really structurally there, but you can’t tell. And that’s a known thing. It’s been known, it’s been a, a challenge for probably decades in the, in the wind industry. They get around that by they, they use a lot more glue than they actually need. If you look, you’ve been inside a blade, you, you, there’s lumps of glue. Everywhere kind of like, like coming off and some of it even flings off during the first operation and, try and try and get it all out. Yeah, so definitely that is a critical, a critical joint and that buckling failure mode that I mentioned, if, if your webs aren’t attached, then that would definitely be a trigger for a buckling failure and much smaller load than what it was designed to withstand. So yeah, it’s definitely a possibility. Yeah, it could also, there’s any number of, of defects. If it was a defect in the main, a manufacturing defect in the main laminate as well but because it’s known that, that these kinds of defects are so critical, they have like really, they really take a lot of care in the factory. And they keep good records. So the root cause analysis, we’ll be able to go back through and make sure that all their proper inspections were done. You can look at the images that were taken from the non destructive testing. And everything, everything like that. So there’ll be an answer found if that’s what the, if that’s what it was. But I tend to suspect that I think it’s probably more likely that some damage has happened in transport that got missed. And that to me is a little bit more worrying because. Yeah, like when it’s something that happens in the factory, like that’s a really controlled environment and you can just, change your procedures to make sure that this never happens again. But when it happens during transport and it was missed, then that’s harder to say what are you going to change to make sure that we never see a failure like this again? Allen Hall: I want to take a quick break right here, but when we come back, I want to talk about the certification authority. and what involvement they’re going to have in this investigation. And second, what the political consequences of this are being we’re in a political season. As wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial and let’s face it, difficult. That’s why the Uptime Podcast recommends PES Wind Magazine. PES Wind offers a diverse range of in depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit PESWind. com today. Alright, we’re back. Now, Joel, Rosemary, Phil, there was a certification body that Put a stamp on this wind turbine. And if this all goes away, I think it’s going to go, there’ll be two. Failures of this particular turbine type offshore where blades have broken, I believe the first one over at Dogger Bank was due to some lifting error that blade was damaged in transport or during the lift, though the one in at Vineyard Wynn, we don’t really know yet, but kind of Rosemary has pointed out it was probably something to do with the lift or the transport. How does the certification body fit into this? Will they be involved in the investigation? Was there anything done during the type certification of the wind turbine that said, this is how you lift it. If you lift it this way, it’s going to be fine. Did any of that Philip Totaro: happen? Typically not. The certification body would potentially be involved in the RCA, but it sounds like if it was a transportation issue or installation issue, they’re not going to have liability. GE is going to be the one with the liability. Joel Saxum: I’d agree with Phil on and what, how I would say is it happens is like this. There’s probably going to be about four concurrent RCA’s here. There’s going to be one by the, by Vineyard Wynn. There’s going to be one probably by Vineyard Wynn’s insurance company. There will be one by, more than likely, whatever marine logistics company is out there, just for CYA there, and then there will probably be the finance one will probably be done through that Philip Totaro: insurance company. But the state, the, the state or the feds, Joel, the, the state or the feds are also going to do an investigation. Joel Saxum: Of Philip Totaro: their own, Joel Saxum: but I don’t think there’s won’t, there’s won’t be an RCA. There’ll be more of a safety investigation, right? It won’t, they won’t dive into the, why the, the deep, deep dive of why the failure happens, but what it’s going to be is it’s going to be a lot of finger pointing based on trying to figure out if, what was it? Down to a manufacturing error, or was it this or that? But either way, the certification body probably won’t have any, their documents will be pointed to through by all the RCA’s, the documents will be pointed at, they’ll be called out in every one of the reports, but I don’t think there’ll be a part of it unless they’re called, say it’s some, a group that has another, technical arm that will go do an RCA, they won’t get called directly to the certification body people. Yeah. Unless, unless it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and you, then you run into a, and a federal inquiry or something of a serial defect type, then you, then you shouldn’t deal with a certification body. Allen Hall: So if I’m an investor or an operator, an offshore wind, say I, I purchased some of the bite auction territory and with the political environment I’m in, and I, I, I would, I’m going to say, I think they probably overpaid for that spot of, of ocean. Now, with the political changes that are happening in the United States at a very rapid pace, this week we’re recording is the week of the Republican National Convention and the future Trump administration show, if it happens. But has made it clear they’re anti offshore wind, what are you doing right now as an operator or developer on offshore wind, particularly off the east Philip Totaro: coast? Trying to get your steel in the water before he takes office, Joel Saxum: january 20th, yeah, get your steel, as much steel in the water as you can by January 20th. Philip Totaro: We don’t have the ships to do that. But by the way, Alan, that’s why BOEM’s speeding up the pace at which they’re approving things, because if they can get something approved before a new administration comes in, this is what happened, and we talked about this before too if you look at the installation data During 2016 to 2020, it all looks up, like the installations were going crazy, and it’s why would that happen during an administration where they supposedly hate wind? But wind farms don’t just get rubber stamp approved in five minutes, after you make the, the application. It’s years and years worth of permitting that goes into place before you get to go build the thing. And the point is that all that stuff that was built between 2016 and 2020 was You know, approved during presumably the previous administration. If you look at the early years of the Biden administration, installations went down, but it’s because the approvals were down during 2016 to 2020. And so that’s, now, Biden’s administration, frankly, has some culpability there, because they could have sped up the process a little faster rather than waiting till Six months or less before the election to start getting on the project approval bandwagon here You know that so that’s on them But the reality is that’s like Joel saying get as much steel in the water as you can At this point so that you can guard against the plug getting pulled Anything that hasn’t been already consented is likely to get stopped. So that’s any future Boehm auctions. This is Oregon, potentially Maine, which probably isn’t going to happen before January, further off the Atlantic coast as well. Beyond the projects that have already been permitted out there. We’re talking Maryland, up to, New York, New Jersey bite and then back down even towards Virginia, South Carolina, North and South Carolina, I should say. That’s, that’s the sort of stuff that probably gets the plug pulled on it. The other thing, the other complication to this that I would introduce is, besides all this political drama, this comes on the heels of GE having this public, and again, this, the, the thing that we talked about a couple last week or two weeks ago on the show about the AEP issue with GE and their failure to, to fulfill the obligations under their warranty agreement, that lawsuit is triggering a lot of conversations in the industry and potentially more lawsuits against GE as an OEM for not fulfilling their obligation. Now, if they have some kind of liability issue, and again, it’s either going to be down to the EPC contractor here, or a combination of. The EPC contractor and GE is going to probably have to share liability with this. And again, they may have a certain amount of insurance to cover this, but. And again, one blade isn’t the, like a whole turbine coming down or something, they, they, the reality is it’s, it’s coming at a bad time for GE when, people are questioning their service agreements. They’re questioning. The investors are necessarily going to question the amount of service revenue that GE is getting. I don’t think something like this is going to cause somebody to cancel an order, per se. But the fact that there was an issue, that sounds like it was a similar issue, at Dogger Bank, where there was a transportation and logistics error. And the thing got installed anyway, and then it failed. You have a similar issue here, where there’s a transportation issue, the thing got installed, and then it failed. That is starting to sound like a, a bad process. And, we’ve talked before about the issues Boeing has had on the show, hopefully this is the last of these issues because if it happens again, we’re going to start having the conversation. Do they have a cultural problem? Joel Saxum: So when Trump administration got in the office, their first thing was we’re going to erase the Obamacare. We’re going to try to gut it as much as we can and get rid of it. Is it possible that something like that happens with a new administration if it happens to the IRA bill? Because it is such a beacon of. Green spending Allen Hall: bills are harder to break, right? And, but when you’re, when you’re, it’s just like with the oil and gas up in Alaska on federal land, offshore wind and federal waters is the same. The president said, stop, Joel Saxum: it stops. So that was, that was one comment. And then the other one was when there’s administration change in the United States, whether it goes from left to right to left, it doesn’t really matter. There’s usually always a correlating market change. That you could have something where the markets go crazy, or you could have something where markets dive. But there is a big possibility that in the next year, with an election change here, with an administration change, if that happens, that the fight, it might be easier to get financing for some of these wind farms, or rates might come down. That’s possible. So that could be something where like it may not line up with agendas, climate change, green spending, all these different things. However, it might be easier to get some of these projects moving Philip Totaro: because it’d be cheaper cash. And that’s a good point because it, it would necessarily address some of those issues we’ve talked about because you start lowering Interest rates. It starts triggering more developers to even foreign direct investment. More developers are going to say, all right we can make this feasible. Now that unlocks investment in factories. That is jobs. And that’s good for the, the electorate and and whatever administrations in power because then they can claim. Oh, look at all the jobs we created during our administration. That’s the sort of thing they, they want to be able to do, and, and look, at the end of the day, for, for all the rhetoric during Trump’s first administration, he didn’t actually really slow down, other than, some of the stuff with Offshore, with Boehm, where he did really screw things up. He didn’t really do anything for onshore wind. It, it, no, no big deal. We, we still managed. Allen Hall: So in the latest edition of PES Wind Magazine, there is an article very applicable to Joel, who tends to hurt himself. That’s true. It’s from Mechanicsware. And if you’ve ever seen this product or series of products, it’s PPE, right? For hands. So it’s protection when you’re working around hot environments or sharp environments or turning wrenches or those kinds of things. And the, if you haven’t seen their products, just Google it. You’ll find it everywhere, but they have this really interesting program called TRAC, which stands for trial research and collaboration kit. And it’s an onsite assessment to identify the specific hand protection needs for your employees. So this is a free service evidently. And. They come back and say, here, here’s where, how we can upgrade you in the, the hand where, so your employees spend less time getting fixed up. And I thought this was really interesting because you see this in helmets a little bit, get the helmet fitted just right. Make sure you write, have the right helmet, but they’re, they’re standardized when Joel, when you get to gloves. Those are really specific, right? If you’re working with thorny material brush, you want to have specific kind of glove, you work in a hot areas, you want a different kind of glove. So those gloves do make a difference, right? Joel Saxum: Oh, absolutely. Everything’s foreign for, for what you’re doing. It was one like, like I was saying off air why I do hurt myself a lot. I hurt myself today. I should have been wearing gloves and cut myself on a piece of wire. But I have a whole bunch of these in my pickup because of mechanics. Whereas these, this is not new, right? Mechanics where has been a really good brand of gloves. They’ve been around for 15 or 20 years. I remember working in the oil field and trying to get your hands in a pair of because sometimes the HSE guys didn’t want to. Bust the PPE budgets out for the nice stuff. But yeah, you get into the area where it’s too hot or you want cut proof gloves or your you’re just handling equipment. You should always be using gloves. PPE is people think about it as, it’s personal protective equipment. However, PPE and the, the matrix of safety is the last line of defense, right? You have engineering safety mechanisms in place and all kinds of other stuff before you get to PPE. PPA is the last line of defense. People always think hard hats and safety glasses. Safety vests, safety toed shoes, gloves are always on that list. So the fact that they’re doing this program to come out to industrial facilities, walk through with them as a, as a partner rather than just a sales outlet, I think it’s awesome. And I would have loved to have seen them come through and, and I hope they come through with boxes of free gloves that they can just hand out everywhere. Allen Hall: So if, if you’ve used their products, obviously they wear better than the stuff you get at Walmart, right? They’re purposeful, they work, and they’re comfortable while you wear them. Absolutely. Absolutely. So if you want to learn more about mechanics where you need to go check out the latest PES wind magazine at PES wind. com and check it out. Joel Saxum: The wind farmer of the week is next era’s walleye wind project. Why it is the wind farmer of the week is because I am up in the Midwest and I went for fishing for walleyes the other night and I caught a couple and they were delicious. The Walleye Wind Project is 109 megawatts encompasses approximately 31, 000 acres, which is about 49 square miles and it started up in production December of 2022. So there’s 40 turbines on the project, mostly GE 2. 8s. And some smaller GE 2. 3s. An interesting thing about this wind farm is, most, most, if not all wind farms should have a decommissioning plan. But this wind farm’s decommissioning plan is actually available online. It’s an interesting read. It’s very detailed, what will happen with roads and pads. Agricultural land interactions and silt some other things, but it actually outlines the costs of decommissioning this wind farm With of course some offsetting steel prices, but three and a half million dollars in 2020 US dollars another interesting part about the wind farm is that only 47 acres over the 31, 000 project acres We’ll have permanent impact of vegetation. I thought it was a cool number to show that even though we getting all this production out of these wind farms green power, the only soil that’s being disturbed is, is of that 47 acres is a 45 acres on cultivated land, just for roads and pads. So this wind farm about 135 to 140 million when being built is in Southwest Minnesota and it is the Walleye Wind Farm. You’re the wind farm of the Allen Hall: week. That’s going to do it for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy podcast. Thanks for listening. Please give us a five star rating on your podcast platform and subscribe in the show notes below to Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s YouTube channel, Engineering with Rosie. And we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.

Siemens Gamesa has received a €1.2 billion line of ‘green’ guarantees from the Spanish government along with a group of major banks. Masdar is finalizing a deal with Endesa to acquire a 49 percent stake in their 2, 000 megawatt renewable energy portfolio. Leeward Renewable Energy has secured $1.25 billion in financing for its construction warehouse facility. The Welsh government has established Trydan Gwyrdd Cymru, a publicly owned renewable energy developer. 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 WeatherGuard Lightning Tech, and I’m here with the founder and CEO of Intel store Phil Totaro and the chief commercial officer of WeatherGuard, Joel Saxum, and this is your News Flash. Newsflash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you want market intelligence that generates revenue, then book a demonstration of IntelStor at IntelStor. com. In Spain, Siemens Gamesa has received a crucial financial boost. The Spanish government and major banks have granted the company 1. 2 billion in green guarantees. This support will help Siemens Gamesa, which has been facing financial challenges, To back its wind energy projects, the company is also undergoing leadership changes with Vinod Philip, set to become the new CEO in August. So Phil, this backing by the Spanish government and banks within Spain is a welcome entrant into the Siemens Gamesa financial situation. Philip Totaro: It is and it’s something that they’ve been asking for for a while in terms of receiving some level of support. It seems a little lower than what they wanted unfortunately for them. And keep in mind, this is almost like a, a line of credit type of thing. They don’t have to necessarily tap into this unless they, they actually need it. First of all the second aspect of this is that, the unions are also going to be all over this saying, well, this is ample evidence that you can, keep us on board and keep paying us or it, as it turns out, may have been necessary for them to receive this funding to be able to keep the, the unions happy. So. We’ll see how much of this they, they end up actually needing. This will presumably be part of their financial reports in the future. How they’re, how they’re putting these funds to use. But hopefully they don’t need to tap into it too much and they can, get back to being a thriving company. Joel Saxum: My, my main concern with it is if it’s a prop up or is it, is it real, right? So is this something that’s going to really boost them along? Do they really need it? Is it too, is it too little too late or is it just going to sit in an account and not be used? So. I think that what you’ll see from Wall Street and the investors and stock prices is going to be a little bit different than what reality is. Allen Hall: Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy group, Masdar, is making moves in the Spanish market. After a failed bid for Nanergy, Masdar is now finalizing a deal with Endesa to acquire a 49 percent stake in the 2, 000 megawatt renewable energy portfolio. This could be one of the largest renewable energy deals in spain this year phil Philip Totaro: yeah this comes on the back of master making moves in europe as we’ve talked about on newsflash and on the uptime podcast previously so the reality of this is this is you know also uh kind of building on what we talked about last week with china. This is the Middle East deploying their capital and, and putting their money to to work in the renewable space. The, the deal with Endesa, which for those who don’t know, is basically Enel’s Spanish subsidiary. This is actually a pretty important step. Now, this isn’t getting 49 percent of all of Vendessa, just to be clear. It’s only, as Allen mentioned, the renewables portfolio. But it’s still a pretty big step for them to make. And gives them, ample reason to to want to continue kind of building out their, their footprint throughout Joel Saxum: Europe. Yeah. Masdar is taking the path of everybody else. It just seems odd to us because Masdar, Middle East money, but it’s the same exact thing that’s happening with a lot of the big money around Europe in the Western countries, right? Blackrock and Brookfield, these other guys doing the same thing. Like, like Phil said, we’ve talked about on the podcast regularly. But. Just a Allen Hall: different player in the market. In the U. S., Leeward Renewable Energy has secured 1. 25 billion dollars in financing for its construction warehouse facility. This three year committed capital will fund the construction of six wind, solar, and battery storage projects, totaling nearly one gigawatts of capacity. Bill. This is quite amazing. Billions of dollars, again, going into renewables. That’s good. Philip Totaro: Yeah, it is. And what’s, what’s interesting is that you’re seeing some of these companies tapping, these billions of dollars for multiple different projects, cross cutting a lot of different renewables. It’s not just, we’re going to give you, 400 million to go do one project or 500 million to go build something that might be a hybrid project. This is, as you mentioned, billions that is going into building these kind of cross disciplinary and cross technology. Renewables projects that are actually going to provide, base load during the day and at night, plus some battery storage capability that will, help back up and stabilize the grid. So this is actually really great to see. Joel Saxum: Leeward a great great independent power producer, right? They’ve been buying some assets, moving some stuff around. Nice to see that they’ve got some capital behind them. I’ve worked personally with some of the engineers over there. Great people. Some really smart engineers. So they’ll, they’ll do well. It’s nice to see solar and wind kind of in that, that same development Allen Hall: build out plan at the same time. Over in the UK, the Welsh government is taking a direct approach to renewable energy development. They’ve established Trydan Gwyrdd Cymru, a publicly owned renewable energy developer. This new entity aims to develop at least 250 megawatts of new renewable energy capacity by 2030 with an additional 750 megawatts by 2040. focusing particularly on onshore wind projects. Now, Bill, this is a little unique that Wales is taking this step. Do you think I think this is a start of many such efforts to promote onshore and offshore wind. Philip Totaro: That’s kind of fascinating question. I mean, you’ve seen other kind of sovereign wealth funds or, national funds or things like that from a financial standpoint, get stood up. It’s rare that a government in this case, the Welsh government has stood up an actual, project development company that’s supposed to have, a development pipeline and portfolio. They do have plenty of people that know what they’re doing over there. So I don’t think they’re going to be hurting for, for getting experience on board with doing it. But it is a bit interesting because Wales does have some locations that are kind of constrained from, from build out because of culturally sensitive areas that they’re not necessarily going to be able to, to fully build out in Wales, but there is still plenty of places in that part of the UK where they, they can certainly build out the rest of this portfolio that they, they want to do. And it should give them an ample. Vehicle to be able to do it with this this government.

Allen and Joel speak with Michael Tosi, founder and CEO of HeliService USA, which is providing helicopter transportation for the offshore wind industry. HeliService USA provides efficient, safe, and environmentally-friendly transport for technicians and equipment to offshore wind farms, providing an advantage over marine vessels. With the highest safety standards, cost-effectiveness, and speed, HeliService is making offshore wind travel better. 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. As offshore wind continues to develop in the U. S., transportation of technicians and equipment is becoming a big issue for developers and operators to tackle. HeliService USA provides helicopter transportation and support services for the offshore wind industry in the U. S. Based in Rhode Island, the company is utilizing the unique capabilities of helicopters to deliver personnel, cargo, and equipment. and conduct maintenance operations efficiently. Our guest is Michael Tosi, founder and CEO of HeliService USA. Michael is a helicopter pilot and also served in the U S air force. Michael, welcome to the show. Michael Tosi: Thank you, Allen. Really appreciate you having me today and look forward to chatting more. Allen Hall: You’re in a really busy place right now because the pace of construction on U. S. offshore projects has really picked up. And you’re flying technicians back and forth. How many flights are you conducting right now a week? Michael Tosi: So it, it varies. There’s two big scopes that we cover. So the first scope we cover is actually the construction of the wind farm. For the construction of the wind farm, we’re typically flying offshore workers who are going to be on vessels for, two, three, four, five, six weeks, depending on what their shift schedule is. So that involves flying out to an installation vessel, a heavy lift vessel S. O. V. potentially, depositing those passengers we usually bring folks back to the other direction. And so those flights go on per vessel, sometimes once a week, twice a week, per vessel in the field. And now, of course, because they have several turbines up, more than several at this stage we’re also helping with operations and maintenance even prior to the wind farms being completed. We are actually going to be commissioning flights as well. To certain turbines. I think that’s the first time at least that I’m familiar with that certainly has probably occurred in Europe. But at least from what our customers tell us that some of the first times they’ve used helicopters for commissioning were as well on the turbine. It can be a bit cyclical on the demand, depending on when the vessels are here or not. But just for some numbers, I think it’s a good thing. We’ve been in operation for about a year and transported over 6, 000 people offshore during that time. To my knowledge, I think we transported certainly more than any other with just 16 folks offshore. So it’s been a busy year. Joel Saxum: Let me ask you a question, Michael. What does it look like for a technician that’s going to go Fly out to a turbine for work. Do they arrive at your facility with all their gear ready to go? And five minutes later, they’re in a helicopter or how, what does that look like? Michael Tosi: It’s a pretty quick process. It’s a little bit different for the folks who go offshore to construction vessels. They’re they use helicopters, not necessarily less, but there’s less flights. So a technician may go out every single day of his hitch. So if he has a 14 day schedule, you may go offshore with the helicopter 14 times out 14 times back. Plus sometimes intra field work, so turbine to turbine, or SOV to turbine, you name it. So they may do, in a 14 day span, they could do over 30 flights, over 40 flights, depending on how you look at it. So they get very accustomed to working with our crews. I don’t want to say they’re part of the crew, they’re not technically part of the crew, but a lot of rapport builds up between our hoist operators, our pilots, the technicians, because they’re working with them intimately every single day which is pretty neat. So when they show up Especially for the folks who fly with us all the time, who’ve been breathed and are ready, they have to watch a briefing video, but really, they just throw on their harness do the briefing video, which is a legality at that point, because of course, they’ve seen that many times before, but by FAA regulation, they have to watch it, get that video, head out to the helicopter, and they’re airborne pretty quick, so from the start of their day to, on a turbine is an hour or mass. You’re talking a second team, an hour and 20 minutes or less to get them offshore. So it is extraordinarily quick from the point where they take off to the turbine depending on the project for at least the ones we serve now is about 13 minutes. So it’s an astonishingly quick. Can you, and if you’re on the helicopter, that goes really fast. Allen Hall: And the big question, obviously, between CTVs and helicopters that always comes up is emissions and emissions are a big topic in the wind industry at the moment. Are helicopters more efficient from an emission standpoint than ship transports? Michael Tosi: Drastically it’s not one of those things in the margins. It’s not single digit percentages. You’re talking to orders of magnitude. The easiest way to think about it is assume exactly the same fuel burn rate, which is not necessarily the case. But assuming the exact same fuel burn rate, you’re taking 8 to 10 times as longer to do the same exact transportation. So even if we burn twice, which we don’t, depending on the CTV, my understanding is we burn the same or less per hour of operation. And that CTV is out there potentially 24 7, certainly 12 hours that it’s running. Whereas for us, 13 minutes out, 13 minutes back. At the end of the day you’re talking collectively that helicopter rarely is going to fly for more than a couple hours a day. Certainly not 12 depending on the busyness. So overall drastically more efficient. We expect to see as they start getting worked into bids and proposals, having to account for your missions and your O& M means is that helicopters will start to see a massive step up. Allen Hall: There are some other training besides throwing your harness on that has to happen. So you can go offshore. You want to describe what some of that is? Michael Tosi: Yeah, certainly. So one of the biggest concerns that we see from folks who aren’t familiar with helicopter operations, helicopter hoist operations, it looks pretty dramatic. And you think military, you think search and rescue, you think Coast Guard. What they do and what I’ve done in the military and what I continue to do part time in the Air Guard as a search and rescue pilot is drastically different than this kind of hoisting. This is, I don’t want to say vanilla per se, but it’s intended to be repeatable. It’s intended to be done. One of our customers looked across their entire fleet. All of their operators do 20, 000 plus waste a year without incident. So it’s designed to work incredibly well and incredibly safely. And it does have the highest safety record or none in terms of access means to a turbine. That includes SOVs, Amplements, and CTVs. And with that, though, it is not tremendously complex to train a technician. Even if they’ve never seen a helicopter before, they require one day of underwater egress training. So that’s if lord forbid, a helicopter were ever to ditch, how to get out of it from being upside down, anyone who’s ever worked in the Gulf. It’s probably done that before. Some people love it, some people hate it. I will say that. Generally, 80 percent of the class thinks it’s one of the coolest things they’ve done. 20 percent never want to see that thing ever again. It can break either way, depending on your familiarity and comfort in water. I really enjoy it. The only thing I don’t enjoy is my sinuses after being upside down in a pool all day. So that’s about one day. Very easy class to get through. Again, there’s almost no attrition in that. The next thing you need is a one day hoist course. So you come to our facility you go through the hoist course. You spend about three to four hours in the classroom. Then you go out and we hoisted the aircraft in the hangar. So on level ground, basically, without an airborne. We then go out to a nice open area. So like a little grassy field or a taxiway, you do our voice there about three per. And then we go to, we have a little mock turban. It sounds very fancy. It’s really a context container with a turban, a nacelle basket or a hoist basket welded onto it. Pretty basic, but it does the job really. Accurately simulates the turbine and that’s another maybe four hours. So you’re talking two days to become a hoist trained and qualified technician, at least in terms of helicopter operations. It was very basic. Allen Hall: I had the privilege of visiting your facility in Rhode Island and watching that training happen. It is impressive. And the consistency of which you move people around and drop them on top of the simulated turbine top. That is amazing to see because it would just as an outsider, like I’ve never been dropped from a helicopter before, but it, as a technician, you would think, oh, I’m swinging around. I’m doing all this crazy stuff. It’s not. It’s very controlled. It is. And it’s very consistent. I was amazed at the. Accuracy and the steadiness of it. We were there on a day that wasn’t the greatest day. It was sunny outside, but it was a little bit breezy and boy the amazing skills of the pilots to put technicians. And move them around and put them on specific places was really incredible to watch. And I attribute that to a number of things. One of them, you mentioned your military background, your facilities and your aircraft are spotless and everything that technician sees. Spotless. Is that part of the military background that you’re bringing in, into your business? Michael Tosi: It probably factors. We, I’ve always said I don’t trust getting into a helicopter unless it’s immaculately clean. Cause you can’t keep it clean and you can’t keep your facilities clean. How well are you, can you, I really trust that you’re maintaining that helicopter. It’s the easiest thing to do is keep something clean. Certainly compared to complex maintenance. We think it’s really important for our customers. They do pay very good money for the service and we expect it, always to be a magnet, to be clean, to be very professional. Certainly appreciate the confident we try. It’s it’s always a never ending battle, especially with white helicopters, as you might imagine, to keep clean, but you certainly know when they’re clean. In regards to the precision Yeah, there’s a couple of factors in that one is just the inherent nature of the work to we do have very skilled pilots. So many of them are former search and rescue pilots, former military or civilian pilots are all come from very diverse and impressive backgrounds of doing external load work. So if you’ve ever seen that the folks that look like they’re dancing with the helicopter when they have those, barrels under it or firefighting those guys, so they can really place it if you, I think there’s the, I forget the exact name of it, that childhood game twister where you have to put your, your different limb on a different, different little circle. Our crews should be able to in 40 plus not wins deposit someone exactly on one of those circles. It’s not hard to get within just a single foot. Like we can say, Hey, we’re gonna put that guy exactly there. We actually use remote hook operations so we can pick up cargo. without someone necessarily there to hook it up. What that requires is the pilot and the hoist operator work really closely together to basically hit a spot about that big with a magnet that then latches the hook on and comes up. So that gives you an idea of the level of precision that they have to be able to do. It’s a bit like the crane game except you’re 35 feet in the air with 40 knot winds. And, it’s all very stable, very consistent. That’s it. They’ve always to make it look as effortless as possible. Allen Hall: What is the ratio roughly of cargo transport versus technician transport? Are you doing mostly trans transportation of technicians at the moment? Michael Tosi: It’s that the two typically go together. There’s a couple of things we can talk about in terms of logistic strategies. There’s been some developments in recent years that I think break towards making helicopters increasingly more usable. But typically we’re taking technicians and the cargo out. By using remote hook operations, we can actually go out and pre position cargo. So we can go leave cargo at the top of certain missiles. To pre position it so that way when the folks go out to work via any means, they could even get out via CTV, and that saves them the up and down time in the turbine. A variety of strategies that have been looked at and developed recently, but I’d say it’s a 50 50 mix. For every technician, there’s typically a bag. Joel Saxum: At the end of the day here, what helicopters bring to the game, you’re doing it safely, you’re doing it with less emissions, but you’re bringing efficiency. To operations, right? Whether it’s during commissioning or during service operations or whatever it may be moving tools, moving kit, moving people, you’re doing it more efficiently, right? So there’s an option here. So I’ve done some helicopter operations in the past. When I did helicopter operations, it was because there was no other option. Like you’re not going to get there unless you use a helicopter. In the offshore world, there is an option. You can use a CTV. You can be on an SOV, a walk to work with an Ampleman or a crew transfer with a CTV, up the ladder and whatnot. However, what you guys are doing is we talked about earlier orders of magnitude, more efficient. Now, if I’m, if I have a technician going to work, would I rather be paying them for six to seven hours of the day to sit on their butt in a CTV or would I, and then get there and then be able to work for four to five hours? Or do I want them in the helicopter out there and putting a 10 hour shift in on that piece of equipment. So the cost starts to really balance out just by the more efficiency of the personnel in the field. And another thing too, it’s like when we talk with 3S Lift. You’re not beating these technicians up all day long, right? They’re getting to work, their brains are ready to go, they’re not tired, they haven’t been bouncing around in a CTV all day on the way out there. They’re, less basically tired. They’re able to focus on their job more because they’re there to do a job. They get there, boom, arrive at your site, get on the bird. They’re out there real quick and able to get to work. So you guys are not only making, the technicians hours more workable but you’re driving efficiency for the whole operation. Michael Tosi: Yeah. And I think increasingly as helicopters become more prevalent, I think the industry is starting to see this, particularly as they wrestle with costs with contracts is. The inertia the preconceived notions that folks have, just because that’s what they’ve always done doesn’t necessarily work anymore, particularly in the U S with the Jones act, the price of vessels, folks have been forced to like elsewhere. And to your point, it is ultimately efficiency. I’ve yet to see the business that can waste its labor for 50 percent of the day with its people. And continue to be effective. You just can’t do that. It’s, it’s an employer. I’m always looking for every way that I can use any employee. And also employees enjoy it more employees, at least good employees that you have on your team don’t enjoy downtime. They enjoy working and they enjoy being productive. They enjoy being efficient. It’s just adds to a better quality of life. And your point, just not sitting on a vessel, hammering away. For four, four hours each direction, or even three you’re talking four hours time on turbine versus you go via helicopter to any relatively near shore wind farm. I’m talking nine to ten hours minimum time on turbine per day, which is a substantial portion of the workday. Joel Saxum: One of the things that we have in offshore projects, there are, it’s a lot different than onshore projects, whether it’s wind, oil and gas civil project, anything, is There’s items defined in the scope is critical path. And when you talk critical path, it’s things that like, unless this milestone is hit, or unless this part is here on time, or unless this gets done on this day, everything else behind it gets extended, everything else starts to lose their, it’s foothold in the timeline of getting the project built. And a lot of these projects are based on milestones, right? So whether it’s an investment decision, when you’re going to get money, when the PPA starts, all of these different things, these projects need to stay on. Online and on board. So you have other things in the construction process that are. Up and moving. So a specialized wind turbine installation vessel, that vessel cannot get held up. If that vessel gets held up, they’re hundreds of thousands of dollars a day and just day rate, right? So as HeliService, as a big part of this now booming industry, When someone calls you, I’m imagining that you guys are just like, yeah, we provide rides. It’s more of you you have conversations to be a partner. You get in, you look at the logistics. How can we optimize this thing? How does that work? When someone engages with you guys. Michael Tosi: Online via LinkedIn, wherever else our team is always going to be available for these types of discussions. But to your point, it’s a lot more education. It’s being a partner with the customer very early on. And. No different than vessels or any other part of the project. Helicopters aren’t Uber. You don’t just get to call them, 15 days before your project starts, and expect them to show up. They’re, very expensive. Anywhere from 12 to, low 20 millions of dollars. Per helicopter, depending on the size and the type, so it’s an expensive asset that’s finance over a long time, and it’s really important that gets integrated to a project early because there’s a lot of synergies throughout construction as you talked about O and M and also emergency rescue services, and you can use that helicopter for three. If you really segmented and talk really quickly or speak really quickly before the project you lose a lot of the economies of scale that it costs more, and there may not be any availability. So what we like to do is speak with customers very early. Certainly more than two years out. Hopefully, four to five years out as they’re looking at their entire logistics concept. And we’ll come in and get involved with them. We’ll do case studies where we take a look at it. Try and back up their data. It’s just to facilitate the discussion. We all know that a case study isn’t necessarily perfect. There’s a lot of real world aspects to it, but we can talk about those with helicopters. A lot of folks in the industry almost always have green affairs or folks with vessel background in their on their teams. And a lot of them don’t necessarily have helicopter expertise on the team. And so there’s a lot of preconceived notions, be it about the safety, be it efficiency, be it lead time, the ability to call up and expect a service. Most offshore wind has existed in an area with a built up offshore infrastructure. So in Northern Europe, where you had oil and natural gas work, you have a lot of operators. Here, there’s not just that excess capacity, and there won’t be for a long time. So folks need to have those conversations early. And again, we like to sit there and look holistically at the project. We mentioned construction. Construction is the one where we see the least amount of debate. Almost all the tier one companies understand the need for helicopter operations. I haven’t spoken with a single one that would not prefer to use helicopters because for your, to your point, that asset is so enormous enormously expensive and also enormous size wise. They, that goes down and it’s not just the vessel that costs the most. Four or five, six, 700, 000. It’s the entire operation, because it is all revolving around that one vessel. So if that vessel goes down, be it because the crane operator is sick, they need the 5 bolt. Gotten many of those phone calls. Yeah, we need this now. I’ve learned about a couple professions I want to get into, because sometimes we’ll get a desperate call to get someone offshore. And they’re like, no, this is the only guy in the world who can do this. And I was like you mean the only guy in the world? I’m like, that guy sounds like he has great salary negotiating power. Like, how do I sign up for that job? Joel Saxum: To your point, I’ve been a part of oil and gas operations where they have to bring a tool or a part or a piece to a platform in the gulf 80 miles away. So this 100 piece now costs 10, 000 because it has to be there now. And if you were to put it on a vessel, you would keep that whatever it is, offshore drilling rig, offshore platform, you’d keep that thing on stall. For a day. Now you’ve got a helicopter, you dispatch it out of OMA and it’s there, the parts there in a couple hours. So like the difference is amazing. Michael Tosi: Or you just don’t have access for seven to 10 days. There’s, there was a stretch here where a couple of the jackups out there doing installation did not have the ability to get an SOV or a CTV out there for seven days straight. And if you don’t have a helicopter to access that installation vessel the entire project, the installation vessel is. A couple hundred thousand a day, which is not a chump change, the entire operation, probably even worth the 5 million a day. And so at that point, helicopter, I was paid for itself in a single day. I can anecdotally tell you points that every single major wind farm that we’ve worked on, which is the entire Northeast cluster, where we have single handedly paid for ourselves. It’s not hard anecdotally, let alone with the case study, but we obviously like to go through all of that start to finish. Joel Saxum: And we’re talking, what about weather windows, right? So when you’re on a CTV there or an SOV, there’s always a wave height weather window. And I don’t know exactly what they are because they’re different for each vessel. Michael Tosi: We, we can get out there right up to our limits our 45 knots depending on, we have some slightly different configurations, the helicopter 45, sometimes up to 60 with one of the helicopter configurations, obviously I’d get to meet the technician or The company that would like to be deployed in 60 knot winds. However, we do frequently waste up to 40. I’ve been out there wasting technicians at 40 knot winds. And it’s again, on the pilot side, it’s a little bit of work, but that’s why we pay the pilots, the, the big bucks is to do that. Do it well and do it safely. And to answer your other question, I think this actually does hit on a key point. I think this is a little, I don’t want to say it’s a source of friction, but for folks coming from the maritime world, they’re very used to looking at a schedule for seven days and they know. For better or worse, what that next seven days is going to look like now, the downside of it, particularly in the winter is you may not be able to go out for seven days we’ve seen on the projects in the Northeast. I’ve seen frequent stretches of seven days or more where there hasn’t been a single S O V or CTV. This January and February, there was at least three, at least two, if not three stretches where they saw seven days with no CTV access or SUV access. And if you look at loss production and that’s where it really comes to the efficiency. That’s where the numbers really make sense. As these turbines get bigger and bigger every hour, they’re down as an enormous amount of money. And then is it? It cascades, say you are planning a ton unscheduled per year, you got 60 turbines so you call it just to make the numbers a little easier, closer to 70. You’re talking over the given day, you’re going to see somewhere between three to five on schedule down down turbines. Now multiply that over seven days, but in the end of seven days, you’re looking at 20 turbines that are down and not producing to the tune of Certainly six figures, but all my math suggests seven figures or more you’re losing per, yeah, per day. Oh, it’s seven figures for sure. Joel Saxum: Yeah, because I mean you’re looking at, okay, so if we’re, say we talk about a 10 megawatt turbine, if you’re saying it operated 24 hours at 150 an hour PPA, that’s 35, 000 ish per turbine per day. Michael Tosi: Like you said, into the seven figures, you’re talking that in those three stretches of land here in the northeast, you could pay for, easily pay for a helicopter if not two without question. And it’s the fact that there’s still projects that go in. And expressly say they’re not going to use helicopters for O& M is astonishing. And I don’t think that will last for long. Joel Saxum: No. Cause if you’re talking a 30 knot sustained wind at sea, this wind flex, say some South Fork is it 35 miles offshore or so? Michael Tosi: About it’s a little bit different from Rhode Island, Block Island, and the Vineyard. It’s equidistant, but approximately. Joel Saxum: But when you get out that far in the ocean, you’re going to have, if you have sustained 30 knot winds, you’re going to have Fifteen to twenty foot waves? You’re not transferring on a CTV in that kind of wave height, like it, it’s just it’s unsafe. So that’s, there’s going to be HS, safety limits on that. However, you guys could still be bringing people to work on the helicopters. Michael Tosi: Yeah, but, and there’s also limits on SOVs. That’s another common fallacy is that SOVs are some sort of placebo. And I’m also not going to tell you helicopters run every single day of the year either. But what you don’t see with helicopters is you almost never see, Combined stretches of more than a day without being able to fly. So you never get that cascading effect. Because for us, the only thing that really keeps us in the ground is essentially fog. Or lower cloud decks or some sort of, very significant convective activity that will keep us in the ground. But I really don’t remember the last time that we had more than one day. And very often, it’s You know, there’s a morning you can’t fly, but for folks who are used to marine planning, I do sense that’s a little bit of, a little bit of friction there, a little consternation because they want to plan their week out before. And with the helicopter, it could be very much like hour by hour. Now of course, what you look at, I’m sure it’s hour by hour, but you waited four hours to take off in the morning, but you still got more time in turban that had you taken the CTV. Early in the morning and your workers show up ready to work because they were able to relax for the morning and went out Really quickly. So I think the benefits just far outweigh that and so overall accessibility rates for helicopters are well over 90 percent I’ve never seen an operator or operation where you don’t see 90 percent or greater Whereas CTV access rates in the winter 30 40 percent at best year round 60 70 even if it was 80, there’s still a substantial Delta. Allen Hall: So I would imagine, Michael, that there’s standards for operating offshore, particularly around wind turbines versus something onshore, like helicopter delivery service, crop dusting, those kinds of things. There’s just a completely different thing. What are some of those standards that you have to meet in order to do this work? Michael Tosi: It’s a great question. As with any industry working offshore particular but also any industry that’s Very often the regulatory standard is not sufficient for safe operations, and aviation is 100 percent that way. I could safely operate, offshore not safely, I could buy a regulatory standard. I could take your local tour helicopter, like a very small 400, 000 helicopter powered by what sounds like a, a 65 Chevelle engine. Fire that thing up. With no floats, no life raft, no anything. Just give the guy all that’s required by regulation is that I give the passengers a little vest. I can fly that offshore to a 300 million vessel that is completely permissible by the regulation. Needless to say, the industry cannot count on the regulations to ensure a safe operation. So a lot of the more sophisticated players have folks with an aviation background to help audit suppliers and all of the OEMs. So bestest GE and SGRE, I’m a team that comes in audits. All of the offshore helicopter operators that are flying their personnel out to a wind service. That’s the first start. But what they audit to is a specific set of industry standards. So how the offshore. Has standards, wind recommended procedures, wind rep, and then also IOGP is not directly, it’s not directly translate, but it’s pretty close. Those two are not very far off. And if operator is living up to IOGP standards, it’s it’s very easy to get up to the Helios for standards or vice versa. So either way you’re looking for an operator that flies to those standards and is audited by the team of OEMs, that’s the best way to do it. And of companies in the world that meet that standard, it certainly takes less than two hands worth of fingers to list off those companies. So maybe a little over a half dozen around the world that can successfully do this. It’s a complex job. There’s an incredible safety record. I don’t like to say it because they don’t want to jinx it, but it sounds awful lot like zero in terms of fatalities. The industry needs to keep that up. To continue to build faith in our access means and we as helicopter operators strive to do that every day. So it’s it’s critically important that operators be at, or sorry, tier ones and developers adhere to those standards. Allen Hall: Oh, let’s touch on the safety aspect. And we have been talking on the podcast about. Offshore wind injuries, technicians getting hurt on site, particularly during the construction phase, we have a lot of big heavy equipment around big blades, tower sections, nacelles moving around and cranes people get hurt is their part of, or is there a standard or something for emergency services to fly people back and forth that may have been injured on the job? Michael Tosi: No, unfortunately not. That’s That’s I want to say it’s short subjects for the industry, but it’s something the industry needs to look at very closely to my knowledge right now on the east coast. This is the only area in the developed world where there is offshore construction going at a substantial level. Thousands of people offshore right now working where there is no commercial service, none. And the Gulf of Mexico has learned that the hard way. They learned that they needed to have a commercial service. They spend tens and tens of millions of dollars to run that commercial program in the Gulf. To provide basically commercial search and rescue and EMS services for workers injured offshore. My team’s intimately acquainted with it. My director of ops and director of maintenance were very senior managers in that program as a chief pilot and SAR program manager. So they understand intimately why those exist, because they’ve done those calls. They’ve seen those calls. And while the Coast Guard is a great backup, and it’s a wonderful organization, I have people who are alive because of the Coast Guard. Friends from my line of work in the military. Unfortunately, they’re not a commercial service, and they are not here to serve a specific industry. And their ability to deliver high level medical care is non existent. They know it. They say it. I was at a G plus meeting and the Coast Guard District 1 rep says one covering the Northeast said that if you are counting on the Coast Guard as your primary means of medevac, you are setting yourself up for failure. That is directly to the industry, spoken as clear as day. Fortunately, we’re starting to see some traction starting to see some discussion on it. So I think that message has been heard. And I think that will change very quickly here, which is exciting. But it is certainly something that the industry needs to take to heart. Oil and natural gas, certainly understand is maybe I don’t want to say different core values, certainly from maybe political dispositions there’s a reticence to listen, it’s viewed as this sort of dirty oil and natural gas. Those folks knew how to do work offshore, they know how to do it extremely safely. Yeah. There’s a lot of lessons to be learned about offshore health and safety from the oil and natural gas industry that they, they’re certainly not perfect but I would say they are, in fact, ahead of offshore wind by a substantial margin. I think the data backs that out. Allen Hall: And Michael, you’ve chosen the Leonardo AW169 for your fleet, and the safety record of that aircraft is excellent. And what benefits does that helicopter bring to your service? And just by, just as a note. We did take a ride in the 169. That is a magnificent aircraft, by the way. Michael Tosi: I appreciate it. No we’re I always joke, the helicopter industry is it’s a lot of fun to work in. It’s not the best way to make money, selling software is probably a better way. It’s very capital intensive. It’s it’s a very high standard that you have to perform to. That you’re expected to because without saying aviation, you have every regulator imaginable there. You have customers. It’s complex work. So very difficult business in general, but we do love, the fun part of the day is opening the hangar door and just looking at that, looking at the helicopters because they are certainly beautiful and extremely high performing. And the reason that we go with the Leonardo AW169 specifically, it’s because of its hoist performance and its single engine safety margin. Just for everyone’s reference the safety margins built into this are absolutely incredible. This helicopter is able to, anytime we’re conducting a hoist with live human beings on the hoist, we’re able to have a single engine failure. In the hover out of ground effect. I won’t go into advanced helicopter aerodynamics, but basically the higher up you go over a certain altitude, it starts to stay the same, but over about 50 to a hundred foot hover. It takes a lot more power than hovering about 10 feet off the ground. So it’s like the worst power state is you could be in. If we have an engine failure out there at 380 feet, we can sit there for two and a half minutes and nothing changes. So you could be on the turbine, throw a wrench in the engine. Completely eats itself and the other engine will just fold it there for two and a half minutes and then you can clean up the hoist fly away just for reference cleaning up a hoist or terminating it to like quite quickly in a safe manner takes maybe five seconds. So that two and a half minutes is an eternity. You can have an entire conversation. You could eat half a sandwich. That is a long time. So it’s an enormous amount of margin and then furthermore That margin allows me at all regimes of flight to be incredibly safe. So you always have a single engine performance to give you some reference, the military helicopters. I fly, which are very impressive, very large, very powerful. I never have that power margin. I never had that performance. I can’t do that on the ground with no fuel. So even when I’m completely empty in the PAPOC helicopter and I’m hovering at 10 feet, by losing engine, we’re going to go right down on the ground. So that’s the Delta in performance is pretty incredible. The 169 is really the only helicopter that has that level of power, and then it also enables us to do crew change because it has a nice big cabin with eight passengers. We can go off and also support construction during the same phase, whereas the H145 just similar, it’s over my head, I have time flying that aircraft, love the aircraft, it’s a really great aircraft, especially for EMS operations. For offshore wind, it doesn’t allow us to do the diversity of mission stats or have the same power. Now, certain companies use it and in a certain circumstance, it can work, but the one six die is unquestionably the best civilian helicopter on the market for offshore wind without question. Allen Hall: How many helicopters you have in service at the moment? Michael Tosi: So right now we have three in active service supporting all of these projects they’re all pretty busy. Right now we have two separate bases. We have one on Martha’s vineyard to service the vineyard wind project. And then we also keep one, it wants it to serve as South Fork, Rev, Sunrise and Block Highlands. Which was very excited to get pulled into that or under that umbrella because they were very excited to find out about that access meets which was, it was pretty cool. We got a very quick phone call from when they found out about it. So we’re excited to, to start working that hopefully relatively soon. And then we keep our extra helicopter there at Quonset. So anytime we have to plus up for extra demand or we need to rotate one in for heavy maintenance, we can cycle that in. Allen Hall: And what happens as the wind industry moves further south, like in Virginia, the offshore project there, and as we move all the way down to South Carolina, are there expansion plans? Already in place? Michael Tosi: For us. Absolutely. I say there isn’t a substantial project. There’s a lot so I can’t say 100%, but I’m pretty sure we’ve talked to or been involved in some fairly detailed discussions for nearly all of them. And I think. Particularly in the U. S. There is more of an aviation culture. Europe, there’s not a general aviation culture. It’s not in the blood. If you like, obviously, people are certainly open to it there. But in the U. S. People are very receptive. It’s just part of sort of normal business in the U. S. And so I think there’s a lot more. Open mindedness. Also, some of the all the factors we talked about, Europe grew up a smaller winter, but it’s close to shore for the U. S. It’s right in the deep end. On the intended. I don’t know. For me, maybe when they get to the West Coast and floating window will be a little more in the deep end. But either way I think people are very open to it. And we’ve talked to nearly every project. So I wouldn’t very much expect to see helicopters and hopefully continually HeliService USA helicopters moving further south. Allen Hall: How do companies needing to transport technicians get a hold of you? Michael Tosi: Yeah, our website, or certainly reach out directly to you folks or anyone else. We hopefully have enough contact for our website to get a hold of us. And Very responsive sales and business development team that certainly hungry to continue growing. We’re we very much enjoy our current operation and love the area. It’s a wonderful place to be based up here in new England. We’re certainly here to continue to grow and hopefully serve the industry for a long time to come. Allen Hall: Michael, thank you so much for being in the podcast and thank you for allowing us to visit your facilities. They are immaculate. Michael Tosi: Very much appreciate it. You guys are always welcome. I know you’re pretty close neighbors up here in New England. Hopefully we’ll see you again soon.

Chinese-made drones disguised as wind turbine parts were intercepted in Italy, sparking debate on China’s role in the global wind energy market. Allen, Phil, and Joel explore how European manufacturers like Vestas and Siemens Gamesa can compete against subsidized Chinese firms such as Goldwind and Mingyang. Do EU protectionist policies address China’s growing influence in renewable energy? In other news, Statkraft has reduced its target for renewables, the UK has lifted their onshore wind ban, Archer is moving into the offshore wind industry, and Louisiana is installing their first wind turbine. Visit AMI’s website to book a spot at the Wind Turbine Blades conference! 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 Allen Hall, and I’ll be bringing you this week’s top stories in the wind energy sector. We start with a significant announcement from Statkraft, the Norwegian energy giant. The company has revealed plans to reduce its target for building solar PV, battery energy storage systems and wind farms from 2026 onwards. Statkraft is adjusting its development rate for solar, battery and onshore wind from two and a half to three gigawatts to two and a half gigawatts. Even more notably, their offshore wind targets have been cut from 10 gigawatts to 68 gigawatts by 2040. This shift comes as Statcraft aims to prioritize investments in its home country of Norway. The company cites challenging market conditions for the entire renewable energy industry as a reason for this strategic adjustment. Despite these reductions, Stackraft remains committed to expanding its hydropower capabilities with plans to initiate at least five major capacity upgrade projects in Norway by 2030. Moving to England, the de facto ban on onshore wind development has been lifted with immediate effect. This decision is part of a broader commitment to double the capacity of onshore wind in Britain by 2030. and boost energy independence. The policy change places onshore wind on equal footing with other energy development in the National Planning Policy Framework. This move is expected to significantly accelerate the growth of onshore wind in England. The government has also announced plans to streamline the planning process for large onshore wind proposals by potentially incorporating them in the nationally significant infrastructure project regime. This could lead to faster determinations on planning applications for these projects. In corporate news, oilfield services firm Archer has made a strategic move into the floating offshore wind sector. For The company has fully acquired Moreld Ocean Wind, a Norwegian floating offshore wind solutions provider. This acquisition includes a minority stake in Osergy. U. S. French technology company. Morelde Ocean Wind specializes in project management and engineering for the fabrication and assembly of floating wind structures. With a team of about 30 engineers based in Norway, Morelde Ocean Wind is currently engaged in various studies and engineering contracts for some of the world’s largest energy companies. This acquisition positions Archer to capitalize on the growing floating offshore wind market and support its energy customers ambitions in the energy transition. Exciting developments are also happening in Louisiana, where the state’s first wind turbine has arrived at Avondale Global Gateway. After a transatlantic journey from Ireland, the onshore turbine is now being prepared for installation at the Port Fortran Coastal Wetlands Park. The project led by Gulf Wind Technology marks a crucial step towards realizing the full technical and economic potential for offshore wind in the Gulf of Mexico. The arrival of this turbine not only demonstrates Louisiana’s readiness to support offshore wind, but it also showcases the state’s pre built infrastructure that could easily become part of the offshore wind supply chain. Lastly, in an unusual turn of events, Italian authorities have seized Chinese made wing long drones off the coast of southern Italy. These drones, apparently headed to Libya, were disguised as wind turbine parts in an attempt to evade the United Nations arms embargo on Libya. The disassembled drones were found in crates marked as containing parts for wind turbines. Highlighting the complex geopolitical issues that can intersect the wind energy sector. Mark your calendars for AMI’s Wind Turbine 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 American 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. That’s this week’s top energy news stories. Now let’s welcome our co hosts, CEO and founder of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the Chief Commercial Officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum. As I talked about at the top of the program, I think made a real critical mistake recently over in Italy, where they were trying to, from what it looks like, ship like a UAV, a big drone, sized, a big airplane, basically over to Libya through Italy, and they marked the drone components with the wind turbine language. So this is a wind turbine access. This is a wind turbine component. And they also put some wind turbine blade sections into these containers also. So it was a mixed bag of once you open these shipping containers. This is a huge problem that with all, everything is happening on the wind front with China and the Europeans where right now Germany is doing an investigation and the EU is doing an investigation into China, wind turbines coming into the European Union. Once. This was found out, I don’t know how the EU just doesn’t heavily penalize China and prohibits them from entering the EU market. And I would see the United States doing something similar. Joel Saxum: I think one thing to note here too, and we’re talking drones now, we talked about, yeah, this is a UAV. This is, this thing is akin to what the United States has in the MQ 9 Reaper. Like it’s a long duration, like you can put surface to air missile or air, or I guess it wouldn’t be surface to air. It’d be air to surface, air to ground missiles on this thing. And they’ve been used. These drones have been regularly used in that conflict within the Libyan, with the Libyan government. So the Libyan government likes these things. They’ve been trying to get their hands on them as many of as possible. So I can see some spinning going on here about who’s responsible. How did they get them? Is the Libyan government actually trying to import them or is the Chinese sending them to them? But the biggest thing here is I haven’t heard anything about it in the Western news. Like I’ve seen it pop up on a couple of websites and stuff. And I’ve looked at the pictures and went through, like what you’re on websites like. Thewarzone. com and stuff like that, and you’re like, okay, you can see this it’s here, but I haven’t heard anything from anybody in our government, I haven’t heard anything from anybody in European government talk about this, or what the ramifications could be. Allen Hall: Phil, are they going to be allowed to say anything? If I’m the EU right now, I’m probably saying nothing, and I’m looking through more shipping containers that have come from China. Philip Totaro: Yeah, which, it begs the question, why was this going through Italy in the first place? Like, why, if you’re trying to get something from China to Libya, can’t you just, there’s ways to just deliver it that don’t involve Italy, particularly where there’s an ongoing, investigation into amongst other things, Chinese made, wind technology, solar technology, battery technology, etc. That is, is already putting quite a big spotlight on the Chinese and their manufacturing practices and their export practices in the first place. Nothing leaves China without some kind of government rubber stamp. So unless somebody was doing something on the sly, I’m not even sure how these got out of China like this in the first place. And for it to be packaged up and for them to be pretending that it’s wind turbines Is curious, very curious. Joel Saxum: That’s the that’s probably one of the worst things you could try to hide it as. Philip Totaro: So that’s what I’m saying. If you’re trying to sneak something into Libya, just do that. I’m not trying to encourage espionage here. I’m just pointing out, like, why would you send it through Italy in the first place? It doesn’t make any sense. Allen Hall: Do you think the Italians knew that was coming or that they had indications that this had happened? Obviously. The U. S. military and the European Union is monitoring what’s happening in Libya, so if they saw drones appear over there, they must have thought they’re coming from somewhere, they must be shipping them there, I wonder where they get shipping them through and figure, did the research and figured out it was maybe Italy. Cause it just seems like if that’s the storage container you’re going to open, it’s pretty lucky, right? There’s a lot of storage containers running through Italy. Joel Saxum: It sounds like they’ve also taken other suspect containers, like from that same vessel and held them aside as well. There’s, there, they found this one, yes, but in one of the reports I’m reading is that they found a handful of other ones and they’re gonna. Allen Hall: So does this give the EU the now almost unilateral power to stop all Chinese wind development in the EU? They just needed an excuse, right? They needed something to happen. There is a big push, but the OEMs in Europe would be happy. To cut off chinese suppliers in the you. Philip Totaro: Yeah so let’s okay let’s sub let’s segregate this whole drones is wind turbines thing from the rest of this because it is i mean it’s related but it’s not really the same thing. The EU investigation into Chinese wind turbine manufacturing and import into the EU market. Let’s deconstruct what’s going on there. First is, there are international agreements related to tariffs and duties that are applied to goods from different countries, including things that might contain Chinese steel. There’s already pre existing tariffs on that in the EU, in the U. S., in other countries as well and so those are things that everybody’s got to abide by. There’s also international agreements on if your government so China’s government subsidizes Industries, including solar wind both through direct subsidies by providing, cash or other tax incentives to these companies for domestic production of, goods or services related to these industries. Or. support through things like the Belt and Road Initiative that China’s had, where they will provide preferred financing, frankly Chinese companies can’t seem to get from western financiers, to help Chinese companies, project developers, and OEMs get sales in markets that they probably wouldn’t otherwise get. And so that’s what the EU’s investigating. And again, they started investigating it in, I think it was six or seven different countries. They’ve now added Germany as a result of Lux Cara signing a deal a conditional order. At this point with Minyang to supply 18. 5 up to 18. 5 megawatt turbines for a less than 300 megawatt project site that Luxkara wants to build in Germany. And why Luxkara did this is it’s either get these cheap made Chinese turbines to build the project, or we can’t really afford to build the project if we try to get, Vestas or GE or Siemens turbines because they’re too expensive for the size of the project. And that’s just the reality for them. It’s either cheap Chinese made product or nothing. Again, it’s a conditional order. Whether or not that order goes through is, going to be subject to all the outcome of these investigations. The tariffs that will almost inevitably be implied to, Chinese made wind turbine goods from legitimate companies. Again, not disguised as drones or drones disguised as wind turbines, whatever, but the reality of this is, the, basically what the EU is saying is that it’s unfair to Vestas, Nordex, Enercon, Siemens, Gamesa, to have cheap made Chinese goods being brought into the EU market and sold at a discount to what they’re able to produce. Because if it’s being manufactured in China, they’re taking advantage of cheaper labor, cheaper raw material cost, and the subsidies from the government that I mentioned, again, in the form of either cash or, Um, tax breaks that, that, other companies don’t enjoy. Now that’s what’s going on. So let’s look at, there’s one of two ways you can deal with this. One is you can be protectionist and you can, tax the crap out of, an import duty, the crap out of Chinese made goods, and that’ll get the price of, the Chinese goods back up to the same price as what you would get. If you were buying it from a European company, that’s one way to do it. I have a different approach that I would recommend we take in terms of international trade, which is, look, China’s not going away anytime soon. And if you’re fearful that they’re gaining in power, you can address that in kind of one of two ways. You can work with them and control the rate of their expansion in the world. Or you can, find ways to leverage them like exchanging, like we’ll let you import, up to, let’s say three gigawatts worth of your Chinese wind turbines a year. If you give us access to such and such mega tons. Of terbium, which we use to make permanent magnets for wind turbines and EVs. Allen Hall: Do you think the EU and China have that kind of relationship? And more broadly, does the United States and China have that kind of relationship? Because I don’t think they do at the moment. Philip Totaro: No. And that’s exactly the point, is what we’ve done so far, and what we are looking to continue to do, is maintain this protectionist stance. My point with that is, protectionism is not going to solve Vestas problem, Nordex’s problem, Enercon’s problem, and Siemens Gamesis problem, which is they can’t sell wind turbines, whether it’s in the EU or outside, where, by the way, the EU’s reach only extends that much. It’s the EU. If you’re talking about other Eastern European markets, Africa, Southeast Asia, other markets, where, and South America for that matter, where, the Chinese are also gaining prominence. The reason that they’re able to take their export finance from China, their goods from China, and go do turnkey projects in places like Brazil, for example. or Australia is because there’s no domestic manufacturers that those countries have to protect. Here’s the, but that’s the rub to this. Where is, besides applying import duties, what exactly is it that the EU is doing to protect Vestas, Siemens and GE for that matter, that also has some, factories in Germany, etc. But that’s my problem with this whole thing. Protectionism, frankly, from a trade perspective, doesn’t really work. It slows them down, but it’s a speed bump. My whole point is, let’s control them. Let’s actually work with them to get something out of them in exchange for them going and doing what they’re gonna do anyway. Allen Hall: There’s a global situation as it stands right now in terms of what’s happening in Eastern Europe. And also in Taiwan, prohibit that, and I’ll add to it, right? So if you’re paying close attention, you see the Belt and Road effort in Brazil at the moment, and the United States has not been willing to even talk about that, as far as I can see. I see nothing in the press about it. And that exists in Eastern, pretty much all of Eastern Europe, Africa, as you pointed out, right? There’s, none of those situations are being addressed internally. If you’re watching the United States political action, State Department, you see almost nothing. The China just walks in, starts pouring in money, and the U. S., it just looks the other way at the minute. Now, I know the State Department are here defending themselves, they would say no, we’re having negotiations with China all the time, which is probably true. But the reality is that the balance of power in the renewable sector is heavily weighted towards China, right? And we haven’t really shifted that in the last four years at all. In fact, we’re probably getting more lopsided than we have been previously. So what do you think they’re going to, what do you think the EU is going to be able to do? Like, how do they even address it? How does the US even address it? Philip Totaro: If you’re going to just apply countervailing duties on Chinese imported goods, it’s going to slow down, but not stop, the rate at which Chinese goods are imported. It also does encourage these Chinese companies to domesticate their production, which, by the way, Envision Energy is doing in Spain right now with a massive factory for EV batteries. Mingyang is talking about a factory in the UK, they’re talking about a factory in Germany. I don’t know that this little order from Luxcar that they got would be enough, because it’s only 16 turbines, but, that’s not gonna be enough to get a factory in Germany going, if that gives them a beachhead in that market, that would necessarily encourage them to make the foreign investment in creating the factory in the country and creating jobs in a tax base. Which, if that’s what you’re trying to do as a government, then do that! What’s the difference if it’s a, if it’s a Chinese owned company or some Malta owned company, or an Australian owned company, or a Brazilian owned company? Allen Hall: I’ll give you the problem with it, which is, how much of a Vestas turbine is sourced from China today? Philip Totaro: A ton of it. I don’t know the number, but it’s high. It’s, yeah, it’s more than 10. It’s around maybe 40 to 50 percent of the components inside a Western made wind turbine are already being sourced from China. And we’ve talked recently on the show about EU based companies, including some in Denmark that are shutting down their manufacturing facilities in Denmark and relocating to India and China specifically to take advantage of a lower cost of production. And because at the end of the day, we as consumers, want to pay less. Everybody just wants to pay less. And so unless you have human rights concerns about China, and you’re gonna say that’s gonna preclude me from buying Chinese made goods if I’m given a choice between a Chinese thing at, 75 or even 50 percent cost versus an EU made thing, Then, as long as quality is comparable, and that’s debatable, but as long as quality is comparable, why am I not gonna ever choose the Chinese made thing if it’s cheaper? Joel Saxum: But that’s the that’s where we’re at, though. It’s not just the capitalism part of it. It’s the human rights part. I know someone that works for the State Department that is a trade lawyer for the United States. And that’s what her concern is most of the time when they’re going to any of these things. Yes, it needs to be fair economically. We want to level playing field when we come in and out. That’s where we do these tariffs. However, the biggest, one of the biggest problems is in the manufacturing. There is the human rights violations that China’s either accused of or guilty of or not guilty of. I don’t know. I’m not there. But that’s on the table. So that’s, I think that’s a big part of actually the European unions. Quote, unquote, investigation into it in the wind space as well. Philip Totaro: And look I’ll agree that’s an important consideration, although I would say it’s outside the, we’re now getting off into a discussion that’s not really wind energy anymore if we’re talking about human rights record. But my point with all of this is, you can apply countervailing duties, you can be protectionist, you can try and, solve the problem that way. If you’re the EU government or even the US government. But that’s not really going to end up protecting the US based companies or the EU based companies that are trying to sell product not only in their domestic market, Maybe that helps protect those domestic markets, but it certainly doesn’t protect them globally. Which is more of the concern, especially for the European manufacturers, where they’re the ones who are going up and competing against the Chinese in, in all these other markets. Brazil, Vestas against Goldwind and other Chinese companies in Brazil. In, throughout Eastern Europe, you’ve got You know, Shanghai Electric, you’ve got Envision Energy, you’ve got Goldwind, you’ve got Dongfang has even sold turbines, Dongfang even sold turbines to Bolivia. And that’s the point, is if, it’s got nothing to do with the EU or the US, but my, that’s why I’m saying, my point here is, if you want to be able to control China, you can do it from a protectionist standpoint, I don’t think that’s gonna work. I think the way to work with China is to get them to give us something. in exchange for them being able to go and proliferate their power and their control over all these foreign countries now. Let’s get them to give us more access to raw materials so that we can take advantage of fabricating steel in the United States, but with cheaper raw material to be able to do it. Or make magnets, or make whatever. You’re suggesting quid pro quo, Phil. I’m suggesting that protectionism isn’t working, so let’s try something else, instead of another hundred years worth of protectionism, Joel. Allen Hall: But isn’t that the trade off that Australia makes right now? Joel Saxum: That’s what they do. Allen Hall: Yeah, and it’s not going so well for Australia. And my point of view, I’m sure Australia thinks otherwise, but in the balance of power, it seems to be very lopsided. Obviously China’s a much bigger country, population wise, Australia is at the moment and economy wise, so they’re in a little bit in the driver’s seat, but if the EU, my take on it, the problem has been is that when we put politicians in the middle of this, they either get weak need. Or they say a lot of great stuff and nothing ever happens. Meanwhile, the mom and pop, the small startups, the small companies, the small businesses that exist that do supply to the wind industry get obliterated. And when the politicians come in to regurgitate this industry that has just been wiped off the map in their country, What do they do? They want to do something big and flashy, so they want to put a blade plant in. This is what’s happening in America right now. They’re going to put a blade plant in, they’re going to put a big nacelle plant in, they’re going to make it look great, but every, almost every component that factor would use is being sourced from China. So if I’m China, like I won, I absolutely won unless I’m sourcing my fiberglass from the States or Denmark or somewhere. Unless I’m sourcing my steel from America or the Europe, European somewhere, Poland, then what do I have? I have basically assembled Chinese components in an American or European shell. So it isn’t the problem that we should start smaller and try to then build it up that way. Philip Totaro: But why don’t we start by, as I mentioned before, Protectionism isn’t gonna help. The vestiges of the world, et cetera, et cetera. You want to know what is if we start getting the European union or the U S government to start subsidizing the companies the way, and this is obviously a slippery slope, but let’s start competing with China in the U S we used to take U S money, go out, do foreign direct investment for turnkey infrastructure projects like roads, like power generation facilities, like Anything in Africa, in South America, Central America Eastern Europe, India. We don’t do that anymore because a lot of people in the U. S. said, Why are we spending our money out there in the rest of the world? And that starts getting, again, into a political discussion. But the reality is, if we don’t go and do that, China’s going too. If the European Union doesn’t go and start spending money on helping to facilitate companies like Vestas or Siemens Gamesa get projects built in the EU and outside the EU, then China’s going to take over. They are slowly accumulating wealth in China that they are going to start deploying capital in a way that we’re not going to be able to compete with in the future. If you want to start small, Allen Let’s do that, but this is the other way that, besides protectionism, that you can solve the problem. Allen Hall: I I’m with you, Phil. I, I think that’s an approach, right? What has been in China’s inflation rate over the last four or five years? Did it hit 9% like it hit did in the States? No, it hasn’t. It’s hit two or 3%, right? Because they, they have a different currency. They got a different monetary structure. They gotta have a different economy, right? They can handle their own economics in a different way because of the way the government’s structured versus what the United States has done. But when you throw four, five, six, eight, nine percent inflation on an industry, a small business in America that’s trying to compete against China, you’re totally screwed because you’re six percent behind from the start on the, on borrowing money. So if you’re trying to borrow money against a Chinese manufacturer, You are way behind the power curve here. There’s no way you’re going to be able to do that. Even if you can get the employees and the tech and everything set up what the United States has done on the inflation front and Europeans have followed along on that matter of fact. Has really killed some of these smaller wind energy businesses and solar businesses and renewable energy businesses in the larger context. Am I missing something here? It seems so obvious. We’ve done it to ourselves. Philip Totaro: Yes, exactly. And we continue to do it to ourselves, by the way, by A, keeping interest rates where they are, number one. And B the complete. Unwillingness to actually, it’s , let’s hands off, let the market work kind of thing, but the Chinese aren’t hands off, let the market work. Whether it’s a communist regime, or a democratic regime, or a republic regime, or whatever your system of government is doesn’t really matter, because at the end of the day, what they’re doing, and it may come from communist roots or whatever, but at the end of the day, what they’re doing is they are supporting their domestic industry in a way that matters. The EU companies, the U. S. companies, we don’t have that luxury. We don’t get the same level of treatment, and that’s what everyone’s really complaining about. They just want to level playing field. So you can either tax the crap out of Chinese goods and level the playing field, or you can level the playing field by getting off your ass and start putting money behind US companies or European companies to make sure that they can compete in a global market. Allen Hall: Not wiping their hands of the inflation rate, which is what I felt like when we were going through that a year or so ago, two years ago, it was being done. Oh, it’s transitory. Don’t worry about it. If you’re trying to run a small business, you have to worry about that. That is a super critical function of your business. You can’t raise prices as fast as inflation is going up. Not as a small business. You can’t, cause you don’t control that marketplace. So you have to just eat it and which is what happened to a lot of the smaller manufacturers in the renewable business is they collapse under that inflationary trend that it still hasn’t gotten to where back we have been historically, which is generally 2%, 3%. So we’re like 50 percent over our normal rate of inflation at the minute. That’s a big deal versus China. They’re at 0. 2 percent year over year right now. So I see it a little bit different. I feel the Chinese are not I’m trying to discover it’s pretty smart, right? They know how to play that game. And I feel like we’re still learning how to play the game or we’re being soft shoed a story, which is only going to hurt us in not only the short term, which it is right now, but over the next five to 10 years, it’s really going to hurt. And it would be very difficult to pull away from China. Joel Saxum: I think that’s Phil’s argument, right? That the protectionism is we feel as Western governments, like we have the upper hand, we know what we’re doing, we’re going to do this. But in the grand scheme of things, the Chinese government is the ones that are building and building and building. And if we just keep playing the tit for tat with tariffs, they’re going to keep building building, and then we’re not going to be able to catch them. I think Phil, that’s a good argument. How to fight that? I’m not sure because then you feel like you’re boxing and someone is consistently hitting you right in the beltline, that’s just about illegal, but not quite, and you feel like they’re not playing by the rules, but they’re still gonna beat you eventually, do you go down there? Do you hit someone in the beltline? Do you stoop to that level? I guess is what our government would be saying. Do we go and play Philip Totaro: in the mud with them? In a hundred years, we can all celebrate how morally superior we are when we’re all speaking Mandarin because China has friggin taken over the world! And that’s what I said, that’s the problem. Joel Saxum: That’s what will happen because we the moral superiority is a perfect way to put it. Because that’s what’s happening at the higher levels of government or the decision makers here saying our moral superiority, we’re not gonna do that, we’re not gonna go play in the mud, we’re not gonna play like that, but, at the end of the day It doesn’t matter if you, if, if you end up losing. Allen Hall: Yeah, I don’t feel like we’re competing at the minute. Does anybody on this panel think we’re competing? Philip Totaro: Not on a level playing field. Which, again, goes back to why the EU triggered the investigation in the first place. Not a level playing field. But again, there’s two ways, or multiple ways, of solving that level playing field. Protectionism and countervailing duties on Chinese imported goods is one way. I don’t think that’s getting the job done because that’s not solving the root cause of the problem for the domestic companies in the EU that can’t manufacture goods at a cheap enough rate. They don’t get the same raw material costs. They don’t have the same labor costs. And I’m not just talking about, like cheaper labor because of foreign trade or whatever, or cheaper labor rates, it’s also all the overhead that they have, all the pensions look what socialism has done in Europe to, it’s great for society. And I’m sure Denmark is you 99th year in a row, the happiest country in the world, which is great when the government pays for 95 percent of what you need. But, if you’re losing business to China, how happy are you, really? Eventually, it’ll catch up with you. Eventually, it’s gonna catch up, right? Joel Saxum: It’s gonna, if it continues going in this way, history will look at it like a great experiment for a while that ended up failing. As busy wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial. And let’s face it, difficult. That’s why the Uptime Podcast recommends P. E. S. Wind magazine. 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: In this quarter’s PES Wind magazine, a lot of good articles. If you haven’t checked it out, go ahead and go to PESWind. com and download a copy or read it online. Joel, I was reading about Renuware and they’re a company in Southampton, England in the UK, of course, down way down South that is a supply company and provides a lot of epoxies, adhesives, coatings to the wind industry and also to the, it looks like the shipping industry. Obviously it’s a lot of shipping down there, a lot of ships and boy the, you and I deal with. Adhesives all the time as part of strike tape. And we know how difficult it is to get a hold of the material you need when you need it. And when I read this article, it’s Oh, this is a company that we’re probably should be working with just for the challenges anywhere in the world. And when we go to the UK and put strike tape on the UK. Getting a lot of materials and get them on site is always an issue. And Renuware is trying to take that hurdle out of your way. It’s pretty innovative. Joel Saxum: Yeah. So I spoke with some people from Renuware not too long ago, and the company really cut its teeth in that maritime world, right? There’s a lot of coatings, whether it be, we’re talking wind turbine blades and proxies and resins and that kind of stuff here. But when you look in the, Northern Europe there, which is where they’re based, there’s a lot of shipping. So they’re, they’ve been giving coatings for whether it’s paint or anti rust stuff or biofouling to the maritime and vessels and shipping industry for a long time, and it just makes sense that when you’re doing coatings in one space, you start, then they started doing coatings in the, offshore infrastructure, world paint, coating jackets and monopile stuff like that. And right over into wind turbine blades, it’s just an, it’s a neighboring market, so it just makes sense. And since they already had built up the company scaled it up in the Marine world man, they have the back office, they’ve got all the warehousing support, they’ve got the expertise of being a really good cog in the supply chain to keep the wind industry moving. So Reneware’s really, and they told me some of the people they’re working with over there. I was like, Oh, I know them. Oh, I know them. Oh, I know them. I know them. So they’re working with a lot of the big industry players over there. Philip Totaro: It looks like Reneware also does a lot of work with. UV curing on prepreg, and while we don’t typically use a lot of prepreg anymore in blade fabrication, there’s a lot of repair work out there that requires requires prepreg, as I’m sure both of they’re positioned in terms of the the scale and scope of product offerings that they bring to the table. Allen Hall: So if you haven’t checked out Renuware, go download the PES Wind magazine at PESwind. com and learn all about them. This week’s Joel Saxum: Wind Farm of the Week is a next era wind farm in northwest Indiana called Jordan Creek. So Jordan Creek Wind Farm is near Williamsport, Indiana, next to the Illinois border. The 71, 000 acre project has a nameplate capacity of 400 megawatts. So to make up those 400 megawatts of production, you have 131 GE 2. 8 machines. And also one they got a little mixed bag. So you got, and then you got one 2. 5 machine and 14, 2. 3 machines. So there’s a total of 146 turbines out there. The reason this one is on the wind farm of the week this week is there’s some really interesting information about it online. Now, a lot of these wind farms, when they’re being built, they’re Permitted going through the process with federal agencies or local agencies, county governments, all this stuff. They have some rules and regulations they have to abide by, but this one was easy to find some pretty cool little bullet point lists on. So lots of interesting things. If you’re not used to the way wind farms are built. One of them was they use no eminent domain for the project. So eminent domain would be if you’re taking private land for the use of public good. Next era said, Nope, we’re not doing that. We’re going to have great relationships with everybody on site. So we want to make sure we don’t use eminent domain. They also had a rule where the collection and transmission lines must be underground. They had another one was a 1550 foot setback from the center of any wind turbine to a dwelling. And this is of a non participating landowner. So if you didn’t have wind turbines on your property, you had to be 1500 feet away. Then they set noise limits between 10 p. m. And seven a. m. Of residential dwellings of not participants and non participants. And they had him set at 45 I know the decibel thing is hard to understand, but that’s small. They also have shadow flicker limits of 30 hours per year at residential dwellings of non participants. So that’s the amount of time that the shadows would cast basically over the windows of non participants. And then they had a lot of cool notes in there about Hey, this is how you’re going to handle crop. Damages during construction. This is how you handle drain tile damage during construction. Another neat one was they have to next era has to subsidize the local farmers that are close to the wind farm for his crop spring. Because the air, they basically, the small airlines and airplane or airlines, the small airplanes around there have charged them a little bit extra to fly near the wind turbines. So next era has to pay them like 50 cents an acre when they crop spray around it. But the last one I thought that was pretty cool was they have a good neighbor policy. So the good neighbor policy states for any landowner that’s located less than a half mile from a turbine, next area’s got to hand them a 1, 500 check every year. You see some of the things that happen with the permitting process here for the Jordan Creek Wind Farm in Northwest Indiana. So that 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, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.

Vestas in Turkey has suspended their generator factory project and blade production in the country after loosened locality requirements for wind. Avangrid has sold its Kitty Hawk North offshore lease to Dominion Energy for $160 million. LS Greenlink invests $681 million in a Virginia factory, creating 330 full time jobs. 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 NewsFlash. 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. Avangrid, a subsidiary of Iberdrola, has announced the sale of its Kitty Hawk North offshore wind lease area to Dominion Energy for approximately 160 million. The deal includes a nearly 40, 000 acre lease and associated assets with Dominion Energy paying 117 million for the lease acquisition and reimbursing Avangrid for development costs. Avangrid is retaining ownership of Kitty Hawk South Lease, which it plans to continue developing. All right, Phil. There seems to be a lot of swapping of of repurchased ocean land. Off the coast of the United States here, what is going on? Why is Avangrid selling one site and keeping another? What’s happening? Philip Totaro: Well, I simply put, this sounds like they, have a bigger slice of cake than they can maybe eat by themselves so to speak. So they just want to be able to, this is one way that they can kind of divide up the site. a chunk of it without having to bring in an equity partner on the full project site, which is actually pretty clever, right? So I have to give them credit for that. Keep in mind as well that, of the projects in the US that have now been officially consented, Avangrid’s got something like 20 something percent of them. So, this is, uh, it’s getting expensive. And Iberdrola wants to be able to, control their costs. This is also one way of doing that, too. Joel Saxum: Another thing to think about here with Dominion Energy, if you’ve been following the offshore wind plays along the east coast here for the last year, two, three, four years, as we have here on the podcast, Dominion Energy is one of the groups that has actually been able to go through with their leases. Development costs, getting vessels ready, getting some turbines getting ready for development, getting ready for offshore without really too many hiccups. So the money’s there, the PPAs are right, everything is moving forward for Dominion. So they’re doing things without too many issues and that may point to this as well. Allen Hall: South Korea based LS Greenlink is investing 681 million to build a state of the art facility in Chesapeake, Virginia. This facility will manufacture high voltage subsea cables for offshore wind farms and is set to create more than 330 full time jobs. It’s a significant step for the U. S. offshore wind industry as it’ll be the first offshore wind cable manufacturer in the country. Now, Phil, this obviously has tax implications. What is driving LS Greenlink to really build a facility in Virginia? Philip Totaro: Well, besides market demand of which, this factory and fabrication facilities has a total price tag of something like 681 million which is an awful lot of money. But they’re actually getting a 99 million 48C manufacturing tax credit. So for those who aren’t familiar, the 48C tax credits. We’re included as part of a production, a U. S. based production and investment tax credit package that was passed. I forget exactly what year, but many years ago, where there were, I think it was actually 2008 or 9 in the financial crisis recovery package where we wanted to basically incentivize domestic production of components for both onshore offshore wind, solar batteries, et cetera, et cetera. So this is actually Alice cable and system, which I believe is the biggest cable manufacturer in the Asia Pacific region outside of China. I think Ningbo orient is probably the biggest within a pack. But they’re, L. S. Cable and system wants to have a big presence. They obviously with this level of investment, they expect to be able to take advantage of a significant amount of transmission build out in the U. S. And they’re going to have both, I think, inter array and export cable manufacturing capability with this with this factory. So they are really well positioned and, taking advantage of the tax credits that were designed to bring. Foreign direct investment to the United States. Joel Saxum: One of the important things here, guys, 330 full time jobs being brought to the U S that’s fantastic. That’s what we want to see. That’s what a lot of these tax credits and everything are built upon is creating jobs in the U S of bringing manufacturing back here. Another thing to think about here as well as yeah, everybody’s focused on what’s going on the East coast, right? We’ve got all kinds of wind farm developments with what Phil was saying. Exactly. Massive. Export cables, but also the inter array cables, which they’ll be building both of. However, where the big cable play is offshore west coast. When we get into floating wind, there’s much more cables to be put out in the water than there is in the fixed bottom. So, and they’re a little bit different design. Everything’s a little bit, custom made for the application. But there’s a ton of cables to be built here for offshore wind in the States. Allen Hall: Vestas Turkey CEO has revealed that they’ve suspended their generator factory project and blade production in the country. This decision comes as a result of loosening locality requirements for wind investments. The situation in Turkey highlights a broader issue in the wind industry, the delicate balance between promoting local manufacturing and maintaining market competitiveness. Okay, Phil. So, Turkey has been at a real impasse the last couple of months with GE Vernova, LM Wind Power, and now Vestas. It would seem like, where winds are strong in Turkey, they should be having some manufacturing in the country, but they’re loosening their requirements. What’s driving that? And is that a play to bring more Chinese manufacturers in? Philip Totaro: Potentially, yes. So there’s a couple of things at play in the Turkish market at the moment. One is for years they had a very generous subsidy if you did actually have local manufacturing and local content. They’d give you I wanna say it’s up to the equivalent of about 80 euros per megawatt hour if you had your nacelle, your tower. And your blades all assembled within Turkey, which, by the way, Enercon is still doing although Enercon’s market share is a little bit a little bit down, but there’s still, so there’s still plenty of domestic production and fabrication in Turkey, even from Vestas, who is still sourcing towers. In Turkey but with the reduction of those local content requirements and the associated tax credits for domestic content, it creates that scenario, like you just mentioned, Allen, where it, you can have other companies and Goldwin’s already got some turbines in Turkey, they’re going to be installing more throughout the course of this year and next year. At a few different project sites. They don’t have a very big market share there yet. This would encourage production from lower cost markets like China or even India, where you could bring turbine technology into the Turkish market. So the wind market there is still strong, still growing. Albeit at a bit of a moderate pace compared to what we would hope for they still haven’t unlocked their offshore wind market yet, which actually would probably encourage companies to redomesticate some of that that production capacity. In the country, but for now this is the current scenario. It’s unfortunate for the job losses but they want cheaply made goods and they’re going to get them. Joel Saxum: Yeah, what Phil is saying about the possibility of things happening and opening back up there. In the future for offshore wind. The other thing to think about here is there’s another empty factory with the LM blade plant closing down. So Turkey’s been hit by kind of a one two punch in the wind sector here. Just hope that there’s no more of this fallout in the future form. Allen Hall: In South Korea, GS Intec is making waves with a 217 million investment over the next two years. to upgrade its plants and manufacture offshore wind turbine substructures. They’re focusing on enhancing their production capabilities for monopiles, which are becoming increasingly popular among global offshore wind operators due to their cost effectiveness and shorter production times. All right, South Korea, which has plenty of manufacturing capability. All the ships pretty much in the world are manufactured in South Korea at the moment. Plenty of steel. Plenty of knowledge there. South Korea is really set up to be an offshore wind giant and GS Intech is definitely making investments to do that, right, Phil? Philip Totaro: Yeah, this is interesting because aside from their obvious domestic market opportunity where they’ve got something like 58 gigawatts in their pipeline I think in total they also have some commercial relationships with project developers in Vietnam and other, kind of, again, ex China other Asia Pacific countries where they want to be able to go partner and supply them with monopiles or they also, I believe fabricate some jackets for substations as well. So, this puts them in a great position to be able to capitalize on that that opportunity. Joel Saxum: Yeah. When you think about South Korea, heavy steel industry, that’s been around for a while. They’re good at it. Like Allen said, they’re good at it. They’ve got the expertise. They have the raw materials. Everything works out well when they produce things. But you have to also listen to the global offshore wind market is booming, but We’re really booming in the APAC region as well. A lot of countries exploring offshore wind over there and then also the onshore wind stuff. So the jet Japan’s installing turbines. Vietnam’s installing turbines, a lot of other APAC region countries making wind a priority. So well positioned and should do good things for them. Philip Totaro: By the way, this could also give them an opportunity to dive into the Australian market as well and get some partnerships going there where Australia obviously has a burgeoning pipeline that they want to be able to get get going. monopile or floating. So it looks like they’ll be well positioned either way.

Allen Hall and Joel Saxum interview Alex Jones, co-founder of DSPTCH, about the app’s evolution from a wind farm locator to a comprehensive operations management and IRA compliance tool for renewable energy. They discuss new features, prevailing wage and apprenticeship tracking, industry adoption, and how DSPTCH improves efficiency and safety in wind farm operations. Visit https://dsptch.app/ or download at https://dsptch.app.link/. 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. When we first discovered the software app DSPTCH, Joel and I used it to find wind farms but DSPTCH is so much more than a wind map today. DSPTCH is now widely used by operators for managing projects, handling forms, timesheets, apprenticeship tracking, and so much more. Our guest is Alex Jones, co founder and president of DSPTCH. Alex, welcome to the show. Alex Jones: Yeah, thanks for having me. Allen Hall: So I. Went back into my DSPTCH app and got access to the online computer version of the DSPTCH app and was just astounded at all the advanced features you’ve added roughly over the last year. I think I, I picked up the app when we were in New Orleans at ACP and. it to full fine wind farms, particularly with technicians on site that didn’t know where their own wind turbines were. So it was really helpful there, but you want to talk about some of the things you guys are doing now? Alex Jones: Yeah, for sure. This year at OMS, we launched a new product the safety side, we call it oversight and it really just gives asset owners and EPCs, really anyone who wants to come in Yeah. The ability to manage that site, add points put in emergency documents, emergency contacts. And we’ve really gone long on that front. So we had one of our clients and utility partners reach out and they were making flyers for DSPTCH for fire departments, EMS, so on and so forth. And we were like, okay explain what you’re doing. And we’ve turned that into a product now, and we’ve seen a huge surge in local first responders, emergency teams getting on there’s been a few Incidents recently in the industry and then you add in tornadoes and wildfires and all these other things. So people are looking to map. Hey, I want to know where my tornado shelters are. I want to know local emergency response teams phone numbers for emergency contacts and then even things like helicopter landing points. So we now support adding all of those things to the map and then updating any information like about the site itself, adding documents, those sorts of things. And so we’ve really seen that take off and become a part of site orientation for a number of asset owners and so on. And it’s evolved into a pretty neat safety tool. Joel Saxum: Yeah. I was thinking about this I’m speaking from the mind of a traveling wind turbine technician, right? Cause this comes from my oil and gas past every site you go on every O& M building you visit. They hand you your sheet of paper. This is your ERP, your emergency response plan. This is where the, the tornado shelter is. This is where the O& M building is. Here’s the closest hospital, all these different things. Now you have a living one that’s in your phone. Every technician has their phone on them all the time. That’s just a given, right? So then, and if there is a massive update, Oh, we’re using a different thing. Are we moved the truck? Cause we’ve seen the, Alan, you and I have seen those moving tornado shelters, right? Basically you just pick them up on a truck and put them somewhere else. They’re crazy. But that’s a living document now, right? You’re not scrambling or you get in your truck and you’re like, Oh man, someone got bit by a snake. Who do I call? And you’re going through the ERPs or in the advisor or in, tucked away in the back of the seat or something like, Oh, what’s that phone number? Now you know, you have it. Cause you’re on, you’re on wherever you’re at XYZ wind farm. Boom. You’re boom. There it is. That’s fantastic. So the oversight part of the product gives people the ability to claim, Hey, this is my wind farm. And then, Hey, we’re going to add all these different things in. They can keep it private or is it all public or how does that work? Alex Jones: Yeah. So a few different ways we have the ability. So we’re rolling out pretty soon the site checking capability. So anybody who’s physically on site, we’ll get access to a little bit extra. You can’t have company documents, company forms. One of the things that we’re working towards is right now our form tool allows you to have a sort of a single pane of glass. So the idea is any vendor, any technician that comes to your site, you’re getting full tracking of every work order, every, QA, QC document against a turbine and all of that just being a nice standard way that you don’t have to have PDFs and CSVs and all those things flying around for every internal and external vendor. And then to some degree, it allows a number of these companies as they move to self perform to just improve their ability to do that. They’re not locked into some tool or have their data behind a paywall. If they pick one partner or the other. And then we’ve seen a large adoption with EPCs lately, just. They want to map lay down yards, roads before they’re there. One of those stories we had was, getting a gearbox during a cell delivered to the wrong tower. Now you’ve got, crane sitting idle, you’ve got folks sitting idle and it’s okay, I’ve got to go find a flatbed, get them to come back out here, pick it back up and move it a quarter of a mile. And by the time you’re done with that, it’s okay, we had two days of everybody kind of twiddling their thumbs, waiting around for one thing to move. And Yeah, that’s been a nice use case. I think the safety side is really where we’ve seen the most uptick, but now with all this new build growth, it’s a frantic phone call or text message of hey, why isn’t this site in DSPTCH? And it’s like you are, You’re literally building a lay down yard right now. I don’t know how you thought we would know that. Joel Saxum: But if you’re killing those inefficiencies, right? Those are the things that just plague large projects. Rosemary on the podcast always talks about the book of how big things get done. But there’s some practical use to that, right? Logistics inefficiencies on site because in this world too, it’s You may have an, like you say, you have an EPC contractor out there. Okay there may be 20 people on the site when it starts, and by the time that thing is over with, there may have been 500 different people roll through that site in 6 months, if you’re building a wind farm, from 5, 10, 15 different subcontractors, and all these different people, so knowing that they’re all on site, they have a live map, basically a customized version of Google Maps to get around the site, know where to put things, know what to do killing inefficiencies, that’s huge. We, I say in this, cause we had a conversation with Heli Service USA yesterday, and it was all about how can we tackle inefficiencies in offshore wind. Now that’s what their goal was that you guys are doing the same thing, but for onshore wind, tackling those inefficiencies. Alex Jones: Yep. And we’ve seen some interesting things come out of it. We’ve had a few sheriffs let us know that And I had never put my self in the position of a local sheriff, but if a angry landowner calls and says there’s a loud turbine or one leaking oil, it becomes, their responsibility to track down who owns this turbine, where’s the O& M building, this, that, the other, and they’re, They may have received some onboarding documentation, but yeah, they, they have to track all that down. So we’ve got a handful of sheriff’s departments that really like the fact that they can, open up a, open up the app, figure out who owns that, where the on end building is. And then some feedback from our folks have been the construction on building and the operational on building may be different. And so somebody’s, vendors are calling and they’re like. Hey, I think I’m here. And really they’re at the, O and M building from the construction phase, and then it’s 30 minutes, all these sorts of silly things that happen just day over day. Allen Hall: Let’s talk about the IRA bill and what it means for keeping track of your employees and the apprenticeship piece of that. It does seem the paperwork requirements have grown quite a bit. And keep, and knowing. Who’s doing what and where they’re at on top of it. I understand that I don’t have employees in that situation. However, I was noticing on the app, you can actually track that now. Alex Jones: That’s right. Yeah. We got thinking of, Hey, we’ve got these really interesting site maps. We know where every tower is, where assets are or so on and so forth. How do we tie that into making IRA compliances here? And so as you traverse counties, you The wage determinations for what you’re supposed to pay people for failing wage change. And if you have a time card, one, we’ve got geocoding on the time cards. And then two, if someone logs time to a particular tower, we know what county that’s in. And there’s, it’s not like there’s a sign on some of these glitchy roads that you’ve just entered Lincoln County. But that has, Like implications, the wage determination and rate you’re supposed to pay people can change and there’s even sites that cross state lines, which adds to the complexity, so our view was there are, if we’re going to actually achieve the clean energy goals that we’ve set out, We need to find ways to make sure that there’s a really wide tent of folks who provide those services. And so when you think about, crane operators who’s who have, a single admin who’s doing payroll, doing invoicing, doing all those things. And that person now has to figure out all the hoops and complexities that come with prevailing wage. It becomes dizzying. And quite frankly, some of them just say, I’m not going to, take this work because the headaches are too much. And so we, we’ve done things from, every single state and province level, overtime calculations are out of the box, doing those at a day level, this, that, the other, really just making it as turnkey as possible so that folks can comply and the adoption has been really exciting. We’ve seen a bunch of folks getting on, particularly on the smaller vendors and adoption among EVs amongst EPCs, and then. Kind of surprising to us is we’ve gotten pulled into hydrogen and CCUS projects and now even projects that are getting transmission funding via the bipartisan infrastructure law are required to comply with some of the same prevailing wage and apprenticeship ratios. Yeah we’re quickly going to where clients are asking us to go, but the dizzying requirements and compliance check boxes you got to hit we’re just trying to make that a lot easier for everybody out there. Joel Saxum: Let me ask you this one, the CCUS project. So for people who don’t know what those are, it’s carbon captures, of course. Yeah, and underground storage and sequestration for some people, but so in those projects what are they what employees, what are they tracking? Are they, how does that work? Alex Jones: So a number of sites where they’re building out, entire pipeline networks going from a CO2 source and then to an actual injection site building some of the injection sites themselves. And so one. Crossing a ton of different counties, a lot of folks working on there between folks delivering the actual steel for the pipes inspecting welds, welding, so on and so forth. And end of day, the technology we’ve built allows you to comply, whether it’s a hydrogen electrolyzer, whether it’s a CCUS project and then transmission very similarly, you’re, If you think about Sunziya, how many counties that would touch you’ve got these just mega projects where if you’re the average payroll clerk and you’re supposed to know exactly what county every hour of every work day was spent for each individual employee, it’s like, yep, nevermind. I don’t want to do this. Gotten ahead of what we think are the biggest audit risks. On the apprenticeship side, what we do is there’s a number of tools out there, but none of them really have the, Ability to work across vendors. And so since we’ve got, right now we’re at roughly 26, 000 users on DSPTCH. We believe that represents an excess of 80 percent of the, wind and solar techs in the U S and Canada. If somebody is working on a project and they are an apprentice working alongside a journeyman or another company you can have your DOL apprentice logged hours verified by a journeyman from another company and all of that rolls up so that both the employer can see it. The EPC can see it. And then if you have a separate apprentice sponsor, so if you have a community trade organization someone like Airstreams coming in and being your apprentice sponsor, they’re handling the DOL logs, all of that jazz in conjunction with, the employer that’s supposed to report that up to the EPC or the asset owner or so on and so forth. And so we really just smashed all of that into one pane of glass. And now you’re getting that reporting. Every single day instead of looking at it for five weeks and rear view mirror of hey We’ve been out of compliance for the past month. So you know that I think is making things a lot easier and then you know when we were talking with the department of labor their quick audit check seems to be hey, dol apprentice logs and then You know, dump us your payroll logs and let’s find the weeks where someone was on PTO and R& R and yet they log some apprenticeship hours. And since a lot of the existing solutions in the market aren’t your timekeeping slash payroll or whatnot system, when they start to find those little red flags that’s when you get invited to a, multi year audit. And I think that’s what everyone’s trying to avoid. We’ve made it so that After you do your time card, you’re only able to allocate those overtime eligible hours. Your jury duty hours, PTO bereavement you can’t allocate more than what you actually worked. And then you can get that verified by anyone, whether they work at your company or another company. Allen Hall: So the adoption rate’s very high, but there’s like another roughly 20 percent that hasn’t adopted the DSPTCH app, which is astounding, quite honestly, because every technician that I have run into over the last year is using it. And so for those who haven’t downloaded the free app, what do they, what should they expect to see on their phone when they download the app? Alex Jones: Yeah. So when you download the mobile app both on Google and Apple app store, you get a full map of every single, wind, solar battery site, Met tower EV charging station that we can find in US Canada and Mexico, and then the ability to dive down into those see individual towers, make some models of those towers, and then increasingly information about, site contacts emergency procedures, so on and so forth. And all of that kind of map feature really drives a lot of the, Oh, I found this cool product. It saves me a bunch of time. And then we also do if you put in like your GWO ID, we’ll pull in all your certs and we’ve maps, call it 300, 400 or so industry standard certs that you can upload. And I’ll give you reminders when those are going to expire. And then if you go onto the website, you can claim any one of the sites that you like and make edits, update tower numbers, this, that, the other. And right now we get, we review all the edits, but the internet has not broken us. So I’m excited about that. Techs just are passionate that, this is actually tower nine, not tower eight, and they’ll go in and fix that, but no, one’s come in and, graffitied any tower data so far. Joel Saxum: So the last time we had you on the podcast, Alex, you were at like 4, 000 people signed up and you said a little bit ago, you’re at 26, 000 now. That’s six and a half, six and a half times ish growth. That’s huge. Alex Jones: Yeah we really haven’t spent any money on advertising. It’s been word of mouth from the folks in the field. And, as soon as we start seeing that, trailing off, we probably need to go, figure out what else we can do to make tech slides a little easier. But right now that organic growth is the biggest compliment in my world. Allen Hall: So Alex, what should the ISP or operator expect in the back office? Because there’s a lot of backs office people now using DSPTCH to, to manage their projects. What does that look like? Alex Jones: Yeah. So you can build out a project, um, inside DSPTCH. You can invite your vendors to join as different subcontractors, and then you get real time visibility into the hours that are being logged, the apprentice logs as they come in, the ratios across the project and then the ability to export just a bunch of data that export and or directly integrate with your payroll system. Information about, daily overtime hours overtime According to every single state level overtime calculation and all of that, just coming in a nice, neat package. So you don’t necessarily have to jump payroll providers in order to comply or all sorts of hoops that people are going through today. And then. The ability to push in all of your payroll data. We do a bunch of different calculations that I have a lot of gray hairs to attest. Do fringe benefit calculations and hourly rate calculations so that you can then submit certified payrolls and WH 347 documents and this, that, the other. Allen Hall: Does that then have a, from a site supervisor’s standpoint, there’s, as you can well imagine, right? Every site supervisor, particularly these large sites, they’ve had 20, 30, 40, 50 plus. People on site every day scattered around a dozen miles or more. What does the site supervisor use DSPTCH for today because it seems so powerful? Alex Jones: Yeah, so site supervisors will come in. When you sign up for oversight, we do a heavy handed initial onboarding. So we go through hey, let’s check this road network. Are there any minimum maintenance roads that you don’t think fire trucks or ambulances get through? We’ll go edit those so that, we’re not navigating someone down the wrong roads. And then they’re able to go in, edit all the points all the information and data there. They can go create new forms. Upload documents that are available for anyone who comes to that site. And then visibility into at least their folks as they’re on site. Last known locations for all those folks. You do have the, tornado alert or whatnot. It’s more than just walkie talkies. It’s Hey, I need to make sure that I count noses or whatever you want to think of it as. Where I don’t know where Bob is or whoever might be still lingering on site. Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s really key. And we have seen a number of really bad storms. And I know the first thing everybody’s trying to do is where is everybody at? Is everybody okay? Getting that heads up and DSPTCH can help with that. That’s fantastic. What, so what does the future look like for DSPTCH? I you’ve grown it so quickly over a wider, basically project management area. Where’s the push now? What, where are the requests coming from and what does that look like? Alex Jones: Real time lightning alerts, adding that into oversight, and then we think that the way some of the products today approach it is a little odd. We think of what is the duty of care of somebody when they show up to your site. If you’re an asset owner it doesn’t really matter what logo someone has on their shirt. You want to make sure that they’re safe. And our view is if a site is subscribed to oversight, anyone who shows up to that site would get lightning alerts, just provided to them as a function of being there. And then for folks that want to sign up as a company, our thought would be no matter what site they’re at. They’re able to get site, alerts. Joel Saxum: I’m thinking about a nice if you’re a site supervisor, anybody that has logged into your site can get push notifications and stuff from the, that, that’s huge. Alex Jones: Yeah. So that’s that’s on the near term horizon. And then we’re just chasing down a number of the the long term maintenance efforts. So you know how detailed some of that stuff can get. Allen Hall: So there are two ways to download DSPTCH, right? There’s a way to download it on your phone, and then there’s an online Desk based version, laptop based version. Can you explain how to get to both of those? Alex Jones: Yeah. So mobile app is on both Google play and Apple store. You can download it, DSPTCH, no vowels, DSPTCH totally free to you, just navigation profiles, certs, all that fun jazz. And then. On dsptch.app, um, you can go on the website and claim a site poke around, see some of the functionality we have around forms and jobs and timekeeping. And see what you think. Allen Hall: It’s such an amazing piece of software and you’ve done great things with it. And just by the adoption rate alone, it tells you it’s, it is making a real mark on the wind industry and associated industry and capture, which is great. That’s fantastic. Thank you. And as things continue to grow, you got to come back and keep us informed because it’s a really cool thing. And it has made tremendous changes in the wind industry. And that’s good. Thanks Alex for being on the program. Alex Jones: Yeah, no, absolutely. Thanks for having me.

GE Vernova is suing SKF USA for $386 million over failing bearings, and American Electric Power (AEP) is suing GE Vernova for wind turbine failures. WUPROHYD is looking to combine wave, solar, and wind power generation into a single floating structure, potentially revolutionizing offshore renewable energy production. BP’s CEO is moving company focus away from renewables. DOF Group acquires Maersk Supply Service for $1.11 billion in a cash and stock deal. Jupiter Bach is facing challenges due to EU sanctions on Chinese fiberglass. Nordex plans to restart production at its facility in Iowa. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has issued key approvals for two major offshore wind projects: Atlantic Shores South and New England Wind. 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, and I’ll be bringing you this week’s top stories in the wind energy sector. BP is making significant changes to its strategy under new CEO Murray Auchincloss. The oil giant has implemented a company wide hiring freeze and paused new offshore wind projects. This marks a stark departure from the previous leadership’s focus on rapidly transitioning to renewable energy. Auchincloss is redirecting the company’s focus back to oil and gas investments, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico and U. S. shale basins. Dozens of employees previously working on new renewable opportunities have been reassigned to existing projects, and the company is also expected to make job cuts in its renewable sector, though specific numbers haven’t been announced. These changes come as BP faces investor discontent over its energy transition strategy, And underperforming shares. The company is now aiming to balance its decarbonization goals with the current high demand for oil and gas. Industry analysts see this as a significant shift in BP’s approach to the energy transition, potentially setting a new trend in the oil and gas sector. Moving on to global shipping news, Norwegian supply shipping company, Dof Group, has agreed to acquire Maersk Supply Service for about 1. 1 billion. Dof will pay 577 million in cash and issue new shares worth 1. 1 billion. Merrick Supply Service Holding set to own 25 percent of Doff’s shares after the transaction. The combined company will operate under Doff’s name and remain listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year. DOP plans to finance the acquisition through a 500 million dollar debt facility and up to 125 million dollars in equity. In related news, a new company called Maersk Offshore Wind has been launched to accelerate offshore wind deployment. The company will provide installation services. Using a new wind installation vessel concept, which is estimated to reduce installation time of offshore wind turbines by about 30 percent compared to conventional methods. This efficiency is expected to lower overall installation costs for developers. The first vessel is scheduled for delivery in 2025. Maersk Offshore Wind, a spinoff of Maersk Supply Service, is owned by AP Moller Holding and will be headquartered in Denmark. The company aims to support the growing offshore wind market, particularly in Europe and the U. S., where ambitious targets for install capacity have been set for 2030 and 2050. European wind industry supplier Jupiter Bach is facing challenges due to EU sanctions on Chinese fiberglass. The company’s CEO warns that high tariffs on raw materials But low tariffs on finished products are incentivizing production in China over Europe. JupiterBot is recommending that the EU require locally produced content in the wind industry to maintain European production capabilities and knowledge base. In U. S. manufacturing news, Nordex Group has announced plans to restart production at its facility in West Branch, Iowa. The company will manufacture nacelles for its current N163 turbine model and a new product designed specifically for the U. S. market. Production is scheduled to begin in the first half of 2025 with an annual capacity expected to exceed 2. 5 gigawatts. This move is part of NORDEX’s growth strategy in North America and aims to meet domestic content requirements while creating new jobs in the U. S. Lastly, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has issued key approvals for two major offshore wind projects, Atlantic Shore South, which will generate up to 2. 8 gigawatts for New Jersey, Received a record of decision. New England wind is set to generate up to 2. 6 gigawatts for Massachusetts. Got approval for its construction and operations plan. These approvals mark significant progress in the U. S. offshore wind industry, with BOEM having now approved nine projects tolling more than 13 gigawatts of offshore wind energy in the development pipeline. That’s this week’s top news stories. Now let’s welcome our co host, CEO and founder of InterStor, Phil Totaro, and the Chief Commercial Officer of WeatherGuard, Joel Saxo. In some recent legal developments affecting the wind energy sector in the United States There are two significant lawsuits involving GE Vernovo. And the first one is with SKF bearing manufacturer for about 380 million. And then the second one is with AEP suing GE Vernovo over wind turbine failures, primarily focused on SKF bearings. So this is a big deal. Where, wherever this, these lawsuits go, whether they settle or not, which they probably will there is a significant bearing issue out in service on a bunch of GE turbines. And I would assume this probably exists on other turbines, but maybe just not as well noticed. But it has to do with the coating on the bearings, Joel, there’s a diamond light coating, a very hard coating that’s applied to some of these bearings. that from what I’m hearing from the field starts to flake off and then gets stuck into the lubrication system and then gets all caught up in the bearing. It is a huge problem. And I know when we traveled through Texas and Oklahoma operators brought this up to us. Joel Saxum: Yeah, for sure. Imagine going to your car and opening up the oil reservoir and just pouring some metal chunks in there and then expecting your motor to last. That’s just not how it works. So when this coating flakes off, it gets ground up a little bit smaller than the flakes, but not much because the coating is super, super hard. So it just creates. Basically debris within the lubrication system. So where they’re supposed to be. Solid bearing material, solid ball bearings or rollers rolling against a, or a guide you now and with grease in there, of course, you now have impregnated in all of that grease, all kinds of little particles that are chewing up your bearings. We heard to the point where the bearing races got chewed through by this basically mixture of this coating and the grease so much that the roller bearings were falling out of the actual bearing race. And that, That’s extreme. Allen Hall: And Phil, this has implications on a grander scale about service agreements, right? That I think AEP is using GE. I think it’s maybe under warranty still, but there are also a lot of operators that are, have service agreements with GE. It puts a lot of pressure on GE Vernova at a time that they don’t really need it. And it opens a door, I think, to a lot of ISPs offering services that maybe GE doesn’t want to do anymore. Does that make sense? Philip Totaro: The reason why this is a big deal now is that A, it was leaked out. It’s not, it’s public information, but it’s not something that people would have necessarily known about had it not been for somebody tracking and finding the complaint that got filed in the state of New York where there’s also, an ongoing legal battle between GE and a bearing supplier SKF on, some of those main bearing issues that you mentioned, including the diamond light coating. But AEP’s complaint against GE, they actually identified pitch bearing outer raceway issues gearbox torque pin migration they also identified cracks in TPI made blades Let’s see, blade edgewise vibration issues on TPI made blades, LM blade root delamination issues. There was also a blade liberation event that they specifically identified. This has impacted three of AEP’s biggest project sites, which use GE 2. 0 I want to say 2. 5 116s and 2. 0. 8 1 27. And this is more than a gigawatt worth of capacity installed between these three project sites. The traverse Maverick and Sundance projects in Oklahoma. So these turbines are, probably not unique in the issues being experienced. Although again, a lot of this does come back down to how are they being operated? What’s the turbulence intensity at the site, et cetera, et cetera. And that’s been GE’s kind of position is, an owner operator brings up these kind of maintenance issues and these breach of contract issues on. The faults, failures, and the general state of operation and the availability of the plant. GE’s kind of, it feels according to AEP and the complaint that they filed, it feels like GE’s slow rolling them on a response. They’re basically saying, oh, we need time to investigate what’s really going on, and do all this root cause analysis, et cetera, et cetera. And AEP’s hey, we’ve been telling you almost since day one that there’s been some issues. And you guys haven’t been fully addressing it. Allen Hall: Joel, doesn’t this bring up a number of different operators and their affiliated OEMs? I can think of one in particular that’s having a similar issue, not with bearings but with some blade issues. That seems to be pretty widespread, but in these cases where it is a difficult engineering problem to solve, and we’re pushing the boundaries very rapidly on what can be manufactured and what can be produced these kind of events, Joel, seem like they’re inevitable at some level, right? That you push a diamond like coating hard enough, eventually it’ll fail. If you push a blade hard enough in particular aspects that eventually it’ll crack. We just don’t have enough history on some of these turbines to show a 20 year lifespan isn’t that part of the point, is that we’ve just designed ourselves into a corner, taking away some of the safety margins and those sort of things, just trying to lean them down to be more cost efficient. Isn’t this the likely outcome? Joel Saxum: It is. And the trouble here is that, okay, say take that same platform Phil was just talking about. The one about the AEP GE SKF lawsuits. That 2. 3 to 2. 8, so we call them the GE 2X machines, right? The 116, 127 meter rotors. There’s something like 9, 000 and change in those installed just in the U S. So what happens with these people, whether this is a GE problem or you’re talking about other issues in the marketplace, Festus, Siemens, Kamesa, whoever it is they all have this. Some kind of serial defect type thing going on at some level. There’s, you can find a mistake like that in almost every manufacturer’s product line. They don’t have the horsepower to go and fix these things, right? If GE all of a sudden goes, there’s this lawsuit goes through, everybody hops on board right behind AEP. And this thing turns into 10 operators suing GE and trying to get some kind of recourse from it. There’s not enough money, time or people right now in the wind industry to go and fix all these problems. You’re not there. You’re not going to go and replace 9, 000 main bearings. Sorry. Like we don’t, there’s not enough cranes. There’s not enough people. There’s not enough money to go do that right now. So engineering, these opportunities. So this is the follow, but like getting back to your question, Allen We’ve, in my opinion, now I’m not a engineer in a factory building wind turbine parts. I’m not Rosemary, right? I’ve never done that. But yeah, we’ve pushed ourselves so hard in this arms race to get the biggest, baddest, best turbines out there that we’ve cut safety margins down and changed things so fast and didn’t possibly, this bearing thing is a hard thing to test. To be honest with you, because they not, it’s not like it’s a high speed rotating piece of equipment where you can, figure some meantime before failure out by just cranking the thing up. This is a slow rolling, doesn’t really move a whole lot kind of piece of equipment much like a pitch bearing is the kind of the same thing. They’re hard to test. Allen Hall: If there’s going to be this defect problem, let’s go, let’s call it a defect just to simplify the situation. So say there’s some sort of defect. In the bearings, GE still may not know what’s causing them. I agree with Joel here. They probably did a ton of testing on these bearings and have service experience with the coating. I think it wouldn’t fail. These wind turbines are getting, becoming more complex, right? As they have reduced safety factors, they’re getting modes of loads that are slightly different. That’s why they have this blade cracking issue. Probably also, is it just The combination of all these variables that’s adding up, that something is happening to the bearings, and subsequently. Is there a fix that doesn’t involve replacing all the bearings? Do we know that yet? Philip Totaro: This is more of a, if we’re gonna call it a serial defect issue, again, this is what’s in the AEP, legal complaint against GE they’re calling it a serial defect issue. That’s a, first of all, a different scenario, but it’s not as much necessarily related to operation. This is, what we sometimes refer to, and slightly unfortunate phrase here, but infant mortality rate of components in the industry. So there’s that kind of a a scenario that has to be dealt with. And those components just need to be swapped out. But if they’re seeing an actual operational related failure within, these projects were, installed in 2021 and operational in 2022, they shouldn’t be seeing where related faults and failures that fast, unless there was a manufacturing defect. Allen Hall: But I think the other factor, which is unknown from the bearing manufacturer’s standpoint. Is things like generator currents and currents flowing around the nacelle up there that. You as a bearing manufacturer have no control over either, right? And I think that’s actually comes up in one of the complaints is talking about current flow in the nacelle running through the bearings. Philip Totaro: We need more data sharing in the industry. Because that is the only thing that is going to solve this problem. Show us your data. Get that stuff out there so people can start looking at it. It doesn’t mean that it’s going to drive up your insurance premiums. There are ways we can shield that information from people that you don’t want to share it with. But start putting mechanisms in place where people that are having similar problems, other owner operators that have similar problems to you, are able to take a look at the data you’ve got, what problems you’re having, start a conversation, and share information, and that is going to reduce these faults and failures. Allen Hall: I do think that the operators, especially large operators like AEP, Participate in ESIG and a number of other types of operator conferences where they do discuss these things. I think the missing link right now is who at an operator’s site has someone super knowledgeable about the coding that is applied to a GE bearing. I don’t know who that would be. I haven’t run across that person. I’d say they don’t exist, but it doesn’t seem like someone you necessarily carry on your staff. And that’s a problem, right? I think it’s also a limited number of people with the knowledge to go investigate it and to come up with some conclusions. I know there’s, GE’s full of smart people, right? I’m sure they have applied smart people to a difficult problem. But from my read of the situation, it doesn’t look like they have identified a one possible cause. This seems like there’s three, four, five of them right now. Philip Totaro: That’s correct. And to their point, they do need to do a full RCA and all this stuff. Whether or not they are culpable under the contract for having allowed some of these potential serial defects into, because what, here’s what happens when GE signs a supply contract with SKF, or Timken, or anybody. They have certain guarantees provided by that subcomponent manufacturer. But at the end of the day, in the turbine supply contract to, in this case it was Invenergy that built these sites, and then sold them to AEP, there’s like a line drawn in the sand that says GE is liable here. And that if there’s an issue with the performance of the bearing, even though it’s technically, GE has to go work it out with the bearing supplier, GE’s the one that’s contractually liable to the owner operator. Joel Saxum: A trade off there. Phil, you say share the data. Allen, you say, yes, great, but there’s not always an expert. Why not get the, do the share of the data, but get the subject matter experts involved? So where does this go? Allen Hall: What’s the likely outcome of all this? Between AEP, GE, and SKF. Joel Saxum: Phil’s right. I think Phil said, I think you said earlier Phil it won’t go to trial. They’ll settle. There’ll be some money changed hands. And then GE will do a little bit of horse trading with AEP. Philip Totaro: You’re right, Joel. This isn’t the first time that an OEM’s been sued for issues or had issues with an owner operator. But it, the fact that this has been, Made so public, it’s triggering a lot of conversations now amongst ISPs independent service providers, and owner operators. And, OEMs to say, look, if we’re not getting what we need from you, we’re going to cancel your, full wrap service contract. And we’re going to go to this independent service provider, or we’re going to start domesticating that knowledge and capability in house. To repair our own stuff. Joel Saxum: Let’s do some simple math here. Let’s just, this is just for interest sake. Okay, so let’s take Traverse. And we say there’s 356 turbines on that farm. And we’re gonna say half of them have an issue. 178 turbines have an issue. So say we gotta replace the main bearings on 178 turbines. That is, you have a crane on site. Basically, it probably takes a, you can hook the thing in a morning, get it down to the ground. How long do you think it takes to swap that bearing out? Say it’s two days. So you’re looking at 300, we’re going right back up, 356 working days. Okay, we’re not working on Sundays, so we’re gonna take that out of there. You’re looking at 60 weeks of working time with one crane, and that’s without encountering any weather, which you’re going to have. If you had one crane, it would take you probably two years To do those of it nonstop and a crane is sometimes depending on what the crane is, those things are 20, 30, 000 a day. Philip Totaro: Well, which by the way is what makes was it Treehouse that just invested in Liftworks? That’s what makes that investment so important, I think, at this point. Allen Hall: From a GE looking forward perspective and a little bit looking back, I think. Is this something that they knew was in the background for the last year or so, and this explains why they’ve made some of the decisions they made to essentially reduce staff, cut down on the number of models, probably focus on what they have, and less on development, obviously they said they were doing that. Does this problem, and maybe just because of how maybe widespread it is, force that kind of action upon G. E. even though they weren’t really talking about it, they had to have known in the background this was going on. Philip Totaro: Oh yeah, they would have had to have known that this was gonna be coming. Again, considering how we operate projects in the U. S. now, this isn’t just this PTC farming that I keep talking about, that’s not new. This has been going on since we started doing the repowering, the PTC driven repowerings, in 2017. We’re getting experienced enough. Allen Hall: Where’s the certification body in all this? Philip Totaro: Counting their money. Allen Hall: Did anybody mention that? Who’s, Joel Saxum: who is going after the type certification body? Contractually, they’ve got something that, that makes them non liable, I almost guarantee that. Allen Hall: Sure, right? And the airplane world is very similar. An airplane crashes, the FAA comes back and looks at it, and says everything was within process, the standard process, everything, all the boxes were checked properly. Things just broke. Okay. We’ll go back and future airplanes won’t have that problem. Here, the certification body, which is a private organization is putting their stamp of approval on these turbines. And then two years in they’re having massive Serial defect issues, something’s wrong, right? Cause GE is going to point to the certification body. AEP probably is also, right? I got the certificate. It says everything’s cool. And SKF as a bearing manufacturer says, I passed the CERT test, the type certification test for this application. Everybody’s just gonna be pointing at one another, right? And when it gets into court, somebody’s gonna say that. They’re gonna ask what was the consequences of having a certification if we’re just ignoring it. When things get tough. How do they step out of this? I don’t know. But it does seem like that is part of the missing link. As wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it, difficult. That’s why the Uptime Podcast recommends PES Wind magazine. PES Wind offers a diverse range of in depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit PES wind.com today. So in this issue of PES Wind Magazine, a good article, and we don’t talk about this a lot, but I’m interested in Wave Energy and you don’t see a lot of deep articles about how to use wave energy. I know there’s some really good designs that have been out there. Putting them in the field and getting something tested. That’s a different story. And I think there’s been a lot of worry about wave energy, how durable it’s going to be and those kinds of things. But as we move offshore, particularly for floating wind, I think wave energy is a possibility, and I think there’s some unique opportunities at the moment to do something. And there’s a Polish design firm called WuProHyde, W P R O H Y D. that is working on innovative wave turbine technology to take power out of the ocean waves. And they’re, what they’re. Describing in the magazine is a three part system, an energy island, so to speak of wind, floating wind with solar on these platforms and on the top of the platform is solar, on the bottom of the platform is a wave energy system such that they can maximize the output of these Energy islands. And if they give some numbers here, but basically what they’re saying is somewhere between 21 and 34 megawatts could be generated by the system in the North Sea per module. That’s a lot. That’s a lot of power generation without a lot of more complexity. Obviously there’s some here you’re building this little platform for these solar panels and wave generators to sit in, it looks fairly straightforward. And my question to everybody here is, why haven’t we seen more combos of solar, wind, and gas? Wave, wind, wave solar being thought of or trialed right now. Joel Saxum: So last year, Allen, exactly what this article is about. I sat in a panel at OTC, the offshore technology conference, mainly focused on oil and gas, but they had some renewable energy technologies in, which was great. But one of the panelists actually the lead was talking about designs for this exact same thing, like we hate. We’re gonna, if you have offshore floating wind or offshore fixed bottom wind, you already have the infrastructure in place, the cables are ran the expert, like everything’s there. Why not add more generation to it? The other side of that, too, is if you put in the wave generators for power. Now you’re creating power at night. During the day, during different weather patterns, all kinds of different stuff, right? So you’re optimizing the time, the, the uptime of that generating asset. So it just makes sense. And all of us have been to the beach, all of us have been to the ocean. Like the waves are always rolling, even when there’s a light breeze, there’s always waves moving. This, and there’s actually quite a couple, there’s a couple of other concepts out there that are taking advantage of tidal. Currents, because again, like that’s something you could set your clock by when title currents move so that resource is always going to be there. So I think that this is something that should be explored a little bit more. The tough thing I think that you’re going to hear from people in the industry is the operations and maintenance on it. That’s something we’ve got to make sure that we can sort out. Philip Totaro: That is part of it. The other reason why, going back to Allen’s original question, why we don’t see more of these being commercially deployed is the insurance companies are, unfortunately, as they tend to be, pretty risk averse, particularly when you start combining these different power generation systems on a single platform. And the fact that, one thing happens, it takes down, three power generation sources now, instead of them being three independent ones. You’re also talking about more electrical infrastructure out there in the water. Bigger substations, bigger converters, etc. So there’s kind of trade offs, both commercially and technologically, to that. The other thing is that the wave energy converters haven’t been as reliable or efficient. When you can go out and get 50, 60, whatever percent capacity factor from an offshore wind farm, with particularly low turbulence intensity, these wave energy converters are maybe doing 8 to 10 percent conversion efficiency. It hasn’t been the best performing technology, but it’s early, and there’s obviously some economies of scale that can happen. I don’t, however, ever see the wave Energy technology being deployed as a commercial power generation source by its own. I do the concept of combining it with different power generation technologies to do what Joel was just describing and take advantage of, continuous power generation, regardless of, whether or other operational circumstance. So that seems like a reasonable thing to be able to do. Allen Hall: So if you haven’t, Okay. Received your copy of PES Wind, the latest issue. You can download it at peswind.com. A lot of great articles in this issue a lot to catch up on. So check it out at peswind.com. Joel Saxum: This week’s Wind Farm of the Week is the Richland Wind Farm is in Iowa, owned by Aligned Energy, so SAT county, Iowa, and it’s started, it’s, producing of energy in September of 2020. There, the wind farm has 53 GE 2. 5 megawatt machines with 127 meter rotors for a 131 megawatts total hub height as about 295 feet on these things. So they’re pretty high. They were designed for a medium wind with a design speed of 17 miles per hour. So this wind farm was part of a line energies strategy of putting over 1. 8 billion into wind energy back in the, this was in the 2020. So the last one, this was the last wind farm of a larger plan to add five new wind farms to Iowa, which they did right before COVID. So some interesting things about this wind farm. I found a little bit of information online October and November, and then jumping to March and April are the, actually the best producing months year by year for the Richland wind farm. And by that, that’s when they make the most amount of power. So the most recent data shows that about a little over 560 gigawatt hours of annual generation came from the Richland wind farm in the last 12 months. And that is good to be number 40 out of 123 wind power plants in Iowa. And I bet you didn’t know there was 123 wind farms in Iowa. So number 40 out of 123 in Iowa and 335 out of 1, 329 in the United States nationwide and that’s for wind power plants. The interesting one, you expand that to all the power plants in the country and if you rank the Richland Wind Farm by how much power it produced in the last 12 months, it ranks number 1, 239 out of 11, 249 total power plants. So Richland Wind Farm in Iowa? You are our windfarm 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 5 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, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.

Siemens Energy has announced plans to hire 10,000 new employees over the next six years as part of a $1.3 billion investment to boost its grid technologies business. GE Vernova has received approximately $30 million in funding from the Norwegian state agency Enova to build a prototype 15.5 MW offshore wind turbine. Invenergy and Patria Investimentos have jointly acquired a 600-megawatt wind power portfolio in Brazil. The U.S. Department of the Interior has announced an offshore wind energy lease sale in the Central Atlantic, scheduled for August 14, 2024. 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 newsflash newsflash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you want market intelligence that generates revenue, then book a demonstration of IntelStor at intelstor.com. Siemens energy has announced plans to hire 10, 000 new employees over the next six years as part of a 1. 3 billion investment to boost its grid technologies business. The company aims to capitalize on growing demand for electricity and grid equipment. The new hires will be spread across Europe. The US, India, and other parts of Asia and Latin America. Siemens Energy’s grid technologies unit has seen orders more than double in recent years from 7. 6 billion in 2021 to 16. 3 billion in 2023. Okay, Phil. There’s a lot happening on the electricity grid market besides on the renewable wind turbine solar panel side. Looks like Siemens Energy is taking advantage of that. Philip Totaro: Their thermal business is still going pretty strong. Obviously the wind business is not so strong. But this is what we call in the industry kind of a classical pivot. Which is to say if you can’t sell your wind turbines, then let’s figure out how to do something else in the meantime. While the wind division gets its act together. So this is something that’s actually going to help facilitate future sales by ensuring that they’ve got more grid related technology deployed. And since there’s so much grid modernization necessary around the world and just new greenfield build out of. Needed transmission, particularly to help facilitate wind. I think this eventually is, is gonna, play right into the hands of their power generation business units. Joel Saxum: Yeah. As Siemens Energy looks to do a little bit of recovery in the wind sector from this past few years, I think. Think there’s a pretty good strategic play here, right? If you’re them and you’re talking to some large grid operator or a utility, and it looks like they’re going to, he’s have some BOP money to spend and build a new wind farm. Well, why not package it all up? Let’s sell them wind farm, let’s sell them BOP, grid integration and grid technology kit as well. So these two things could play together. This is also on the heels of one of their biggest competitors, Schneider electric being, being named the most sustainable company in their sector in the world. Allen Hall: GE Vernova has received approximately 30 million in funding from the Norwegian state agency Innova to build a 15. 5 megawatt offshore wind turbine. The turbine will be installed on land at the Bergland based in Norway and tested for up to five years starting in 2025. After testing, it’s expected to produce electricity for another 25 years. This project aims to advance offshore wind technology and reduce costs for floating offshore wind in the long term. Phil, why is GE testing a turbine in Norway when they have other facilities to test an offshore wind turbine? Philip Totaro: Yeah, obviously with, with the grant that’s been provided here by Innova, it obviously makes it attractive to want to place this in, in Norway. GE does have some history in, in Norway vis a vis offshore wind. Probably history they’d prefer to maybe forget a little bit with the acquisition of ScanWind, but It looks like this is going to be an opportunity, Norway is trying to be a test bed for a lot of different technology platforms. The first floating wind was done in, floating offshore wind was done in Norway. The Tetris bar technology is being developed and tested in, in Norway. And now this gives GE an opportunity to also get a new prototype up and running so that they can demonstrate the Capabilities of this larger machine to the wider European market presumably they’re going to have some, they already have some sales in the U. S. for this product model and they’re going to get installed over here and, and tested, but they don’t actually for, for G. E. S. offshore business, they have sales for the the Haliot X, 12, 13 megawatt platform in Europe. At this point, they don’t have anything firm yet for the 15. 5 megawatt platform. So this is kind of a necessary step, I think, in order for them to, demonstrate to the wider market throughout Europe that they’ve, they’ve got a viable product here. Joel Saxum: Yeah, I say that’s something that technology companies run into all the time that to the internally to them seems kind of silly. If it works in US waters, it’s more than likely going to work over in European waters. But hey, we hear these arguments all the time. An interesting thing here as well is in this article they state the project aims to advance offshore wind technology and reduce costs for floating offshore in the long term. So it may be that this 15. 5 megawatt machine is going to be a floating focused machine. Allen Hall: U. S. clean energy developer Invenergy and Patria Investimentos, a Brazilian investment manager, have jointly acquired a 600 megawatt wind power portfolio in Brazil. The portfolio includes four wind farms located in the northeastern Brazilian states. Invenergy will hold a 10 percent stake and manage operations and maintenance, while Patria Investimentos will own the remaining 90%. That wind farms output is being sold to local distribution companies through a long term contract. Now, Phil, Invenergy is a huge developer in the United States. Is this their first foray down in Brazil? Philip Totaro: Officially, yes. So they, they’ve actually been looking at different project sites globally including throughout Europe, a little bit in Asia. And they’ve also kind of explored Australia as, as a potential market. What’s interesting, though, is that Contour Global and Electrobras which are selling these projects, were originally just going to sell them to Patria without anybody coming in as, as a partner. They went out and got Invenergy as a partner in kind of a very symbiotic relationship for them because as we’ve talked about before on the show, you’ve got a lot of companies that are financially and investment focused that don’t have the operational experience, bringing in somebody like Invenergy brings that operational discipline to bear and Patria’s got a lot more capital to deploy. And there are plenty of projects in Brazil that are. Still looking to get built or potentially looking to get repowered as they’re coming up now on the beginning of a, a repowering market, which is, 20 years plus in, in asset age or with assets that are 20 years plus in, in asset age. So. It’s, it’s looking pretty promising. If this is going to be the first of, of several new steps for, for both companies. Joel Saxum: Yeah. It looks like if you look at the breakdown of the percentages, Invenergy will hold a 10 percent stake. So it’s very, very much a minority stake. However, that increases our bottom line, right? That’s just operations and maintenance revenue. It’s like almost like signing a nice FSA for them and getting a little bit of equity on the tail end is what it looks like to me, at least. This is interesting as well, because I know. Talking with you, Phil, and our different friends in Brazil, there has been quite a bit of market changes down there with some OEMs pulling some resources out and some other things. So the fact that invent energy is going down there and jumping out into this one is is interesting. And I think it’s a, could be a good move on their part because a lot of those turbines down there are. Fairly new in that market. And as they keep getting their toes wet in the market, they may be able to expand into some of those on an FSA standpoint. Allen Hall: The U S department of the interior has announced an offshore wind energy lease sale in the central Atlantic scheduled for August 14th. The areas to be auctioned could generate up to 6. 3 gigawatts of clean energy, potentially powering 2. 2 million homes. The sale includes two lease areas, one offshore Delaware and Maryland, and another offshore Virginia. This initiative is part of the Biden Harris administration’s efforts to expand offshore wind energy opportunities and combat climate change. Now Phil, it does seem to be a lot of leases being auctioned. At the moment, how is this one going to impact the 30 gigawatts by 2030? Philip Totaro: Oh, we’re still not going to get there unfortunately, but we’re at least, putting the mechanisms in place, we’ve got 13 gigawatts now that it’s approved again, 30 by 30 was what they said originally they wanted to build, then they changed it to say, well, we’re going to permit that. They can theoretically, they might actually be able to achieve the permitting of, 30 gigawatts by 2030. But the reality is the reason they’re expediting things now is the fact that they are expecting a change in, in the regime. And while the presumption is that projects that are already in the permitting and consent queue aren’t going to get the plug pulled on them. Any, particularly anything that’s under construction, anything that’s already been kind of auctioned off, consented, et cetera can, can continue to move forward. But there’s a fear here amongst people at BOEM that, particularly for their own jobs that, the people who aren’t political appointees. They’re gonna be sitting there twiddling their thumbs with nothing to do, on offshore wind leases for four years if they don’t, get the, get the ball rolling on these things now. So, they’re, they’re moving at, at quite a, a judicious speed and, it’s going to be good for, for, um, the, the project developers that want to have the opportunity to build more capacity. And, and I think a generally good thing as, offshore costs can continue to come down, it’s going to start displacing, more of the conventional onshore power generation that tends to be very expensive in the Northeast. Joel Saxum: This is an odd thing to say, but there’s a, almost a glutton of global auctions and leases up right now. Like there’s, there’s a ton of them all over the world happening at a pretty regular pace. It’s like every few weeks you see, Hey, auction here. Hey, auction here. Hey, there’s an auction here. I don’t think we’ll see anywhere near the prices for the, the federal revenue for these, what we saw in the past, especially, 7 billion went out for those lease areas. This, these won’t touch that. And I’m really actually quite curious to see what kind of who’s going to be bidding on these and if there is any kind of interesting like basically joint ventureships or kind of other kind of vehicles of that sort bidding on them, like there was in the offshore more floating areas in California, which was like. Five different companies that won these things. We had to research who was actually involved, but you got down into them and it was the same operators that you normally see, but they were all joint ventures and all kinds of other things. So be interesting to see what kind of players show up to raise their hand at this one.