The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

Buildturbines.com is a resource for people joining the wind energy industry, from technicians to sales and marketing. The website includes career path information with experience and certifications needed as well as salary ranges. With in-depth articles and a training school location map, buildturbines.com is what you need to get started on your new career path. 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 this July 4th edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, and I’m here with Joel Saxum, and we have some exciting news to share. Joel Saxum: So the exciting news is that we put a new website together. It’s called buildturbines.com, and why we did it is to get more exposure to the wind industry. We know we have a technician problem. Allen and I have talked to many people trade shows in person, our wind farm tours that we do, of course. Anybody you talk to in the wind industry, every single company is saying, Hey, everybody’s a recruiter. Everybody’s a recruiter. We need people. And then you even get down to the the training centers, the community colleges, they’re thinking, Hey, we need students. We need students. And just the simple fact that we have a little bit of reach in the wind industry. We said, what can we do about this? So we put together some resources. On a website, it’s BuildTurbines. com again and we’re going to continue to keep adding to it to make it into a resource for anybody that’s interested in getting into the wind industry, whether it’s from a technician standpoint. All the way to engineers and back office people, we want to put resources out there for them. Allen Hall: Yeah, and the big push from an industry standpoint obviously is in employment, trying to get people into the positions or having a really difficult time. That is obvious and that even though some of the trade training schools and community colleges, which are doing a lot of the training in the United States, are having a hard time keeping those programs up and running because just the number of people applying for those positions to enter into a trade school is relatively low. And I think it’s because a lot of young people don’t know that they can have a career and win. That is a long term career. You can make good money. You can raise a family on it. And you don’t have to have a college degree to go do it. And we’re just trying to raise some awareness about it and we’ve put out some information on the social media platforms LinkedIn, obviously. We’re on the web at buildturbines. com and then we also have an Instagram page, which, the Instagram page looks great so far, Joel. Joel Saxum: Yeah. Technicians are on Instagram, right? People are on Instagram these days. On the Instagram page, we’ll be sharing all kinds of resources. We’ll be sharing pictures. We plan to, right? This is our goal with this. And we want to share pictures from the field, videos from the field, people doing their job every day. What’s actually happening out there. And then get people interested in, get young people interested, get mid career people interested in the wind industry, get vets coming out of their respective branches interested in the wind industry. We sit in an odd space, right? The wind turbines are an oddly visible thing, right? They’re huge. You drive down the road, you see these things. So they’re visible to the person, but however, the industry isn’t that visible to the person, right? So you may see these turbines in your backyard or down the farm or in the next county over, but you look at them and you go I don’t know, how do I get in? How can I do that? How can I get in? How can I work on these things? How can I get into that industry? Where we have competing industries is in not the same space, but like spaces, say the oil and gas world. When the oil and gas world needs people, they say, Hey, come to this. They’ll put out, ads on the, in the paper and ads on radio and stuff of this sort saying, come to this, we’re having a hiring fair, come to this hotel, bring your resume we’ll get people into jobs in the oil field that way. We don’t do that as a wind industry because we do need a little bit of. Specific skills. If you’re, working on blades, you may have a work at heights thing. We might be working on ropes. There’s specific trainings that we need to go through all these things. Nothing’s really super basic. But we need a resource for everybody to go to, right? Allen Hall: So that’s what the, that’s what this thing’s going to do. Now, when you go to buildturbines. com, there is a jobs report. You can click on that link and you can download that jobs report. And what’s inside of there are the qualifications you need to be a win. Turbine technician entry level or blade repair person or to be a site manager and which a lot of people don’t realize like those skills are achievable for a lot of people already in oil and gas or already in another industry or Just coming out of high school or coming out of community college those skillsets you probably possess As Joel pointed out, you may need a couple of training programs to get you introduced to the field, but nothing complicated. We’re talking about usually a couple of weeks for a lot of these programs to get introduced, get the safety training you need, get yourself out in the field. If you have basic mechanical skills, basic electrical skills, you will be able to find employment relatively quickly in the wind industries, unlike some other industries at the minute. And I think that’s the point, Joel, is that a lot of people are looking in places where there are not opportunities, and meanwhile Wind is, you should be knocking on the wind door right now. Joel Saxum: Yeah, for sure. Every company that you talk to is looking for people, looking for good people. A lot of entry level technicians come out there just come, go out and do a hard day’s work, or a good day’s work, and you’re it. On the website, we have a few different things, right? One of them being just some articles. If you’re new to the winnings field and don’t know that much about it, there’s just some information. What a day in the life looks like. How, what kind of technology you’re working with. What does it look like to work in cold weather? Those kind of just general things or interesting things of little pieces of information that we’ve gathered over the years. And we’ll continue to add to that as well. We also have a section for training schools. So there’s a map and it has basically a nation, it’s a, there’s a nationwide search there for all kinds of training schools. We also have on that same page some of the featured wind energy training schools. And these are friends of the podcast. These are people we know, people we’ve visited, we’ve been to their facilities. We encourage anybody that has a, a wind energy training school, get ahold of us get some input on this thing. Share your marketing with us. How are we, how can we drive more people to you guys? That’s what we want to do here. We also have a section on the website about career paths, right? So we walk through the, wind turbine technicians, offshore wind technicians, site manager, project managers, engineers permitting specialists, safety, sales, all kinds of different things in this industry. But we’ve gone to a little bit further of a level saying, okay, what does the job do? So what does a wind technician do? What kind of qualifications are required? What kind of on the job skills will you learn? Or is it nice to have? What are the salary expectations, right? How can you earn a living? Like what, it’s a these are, this is the fastest growing industry by every job report that the federal government puts out and how can you earn a living in it? How can you make some money? The money’s there. The money’s good. Especially in some of these rural areas. So we have all of these different resources on the website. It will continue to grow. It’s a living document, right? It’s like anything and we are happy to grab any kind of input from the market too. Allen Hall: Yeah, and if you’re looking for a training school, and a lot of people new to the wind energy marketplace want to take some training, it’s probably the right thing to do for a lot of newcomers. It can be hard to find training schools around you just searching the web. I don’t know why that is at the moment, but some of them are well hidden on the web. They’re there. They’re probably within an hour or two of where you currently are. But it’s sometimes hard to figure out where those resources exist. So if you just go to build turbines. com and click on the link training schools, it’ll take you right there. There’s a map. You can find something real close to you and start talking to the advisors or the counselors at those schools and those training facilities to see what it would take to get started there. And I think that’s one of the impediments, honestly, Joel, is that a lot of newcomers to the industry don’t realize that there is training close by. Joel Saxum: Yeah, for sure. There’s 185 different programs in the states on this map in this resource from energy. gov. We know that there’s new ones popping up all the time, and some of the specific company ones may not be listed on here, right? If it’s a Pierce Renewables or something like that is an internal company one, they would grab people and they put them through training, of course. They may not even be listed on this. So there’s even more than 185 on here. But when you look at the map training centers in probably 45 of the 50 States, to be honest with you. Of course, a big concentration in the Midwest, right? So you see a lot of them in Illinois Iowa, Kansas, Texas up in even the Colorado, but there is also a heavy concentration of wind training schools over in the East coast. So we’ve got, of course, we’ve got some offshore wind happening over there, but the people may not know this very much, but there’s quite a few wind turbine farms. In Pennsylvania and there’s up all the way into Maine and New York and West Virginia has some, so no matter where you are around the country, there’s wind and wind energy and wind resources near you and, Training schools to boot. Allen Hall: And inside the jobs report, as Joel has mentioned, there are salary ranges, particularly for newcomers to the industry. Those salaries are pretty high. Good. Sorry. I was, when we put this together, I was shocked at some of the entry level positions of what you could get. And that’s great. What the industry is looking for is qualified people, and they’re having a hard time doing it. So this is the right time to get interested and to look into being Wind at any level. And that’s what buildturbines.com is all about. It’s just a resource for the industry to, to try to grow the number of people entering the industry that want to move up in the industry. And we do have a lot of resources there. And as, as Joel’s pointed out, it’s meant to be a resource for the industry. Use it. Go to the Instagram page. There are some great videos up already there about. Learning how to be a wind turbine technician, how to get in, what some of the training schools look like. Those are easy. A couple of minutes of your time and you’ll, you can get educated pretty well on what the next steps are. So it’s not particularly difficult to do and enter and to get started. But that’s the hard part, right? Getting started is the hard part. And Joel, particularly down in Texas, where the need for wind turbine technicians is so great, there’s a huge demand down there right now. Joel Saxum: Yeah, it’s massive. And Texas is, I think Texas says of 2020, Three produced almost 24 percent of the wind energy in the entire country, right? Like the amount of turbines down there is just astounding. It’s crazy. So we were talking Texas, but if you look at the whole country right now, we’re just shy of about 75, 000 turbines installed, 75, 000 turbines. That’s a lot of work that needs to be done. And this is what’s installed, right? So in this job on build turbines. com, we have also things that aren’t directly related to being a wind turbine technician. There’s some language in there about how to get further down the road of being an environmental or a permitting person or someone in safety or someone in sales and marketing in the renewable industry. We don’t need just technicians. We need the full gamut. Like this whole industry is booming. It’s growing. And we’re talking turbines here, right? Renewable energies is not just turbines, there’s battery storage and there’s solar and a lot of these skills can go from industry or I would say industry sector to sector, right? I know we talked with a very big ISP just the other day and they said that’s one of the things they’re doing with training their people. They got wind people and they’re training them to work on solar stuff. So when they can’t get out on wind projects, they can go work on solar projects or battery storage projects or electric vehicle infrastructure or freaking timing, climbing telephone communications towers, like all of these things intertwine. So they’re the. Opportunities are not just, hey, you can go work on a wind farm. There’s a lot of growth and a lot of career paths that can be chosen from here. Allen Hall: And I think you do point out a good fact, Joel, that a lot of people that are in solar, that are in battery storage, came from wind. That they got trained up and went because it’s a good place to really learn a lot get your hands on actual equipment Learn how to operate it learn the intricacies Understand what’s happening on the power generation side. Those are valuable skills that you can shop elsewhere So even if you wanted to change industries now, you’re loaded now your potential has gone way up in the meantime You’ve made a lot of money Pretty good living at being in the wind industry, and I think that’s key, and you have pointed out, too we’re not just focused on technicians, even though that’s where the demand, a lot of it, is right at the moment, but they need procurement people, they need front office people, they need back office people, they need people everywhere at wind. And engineering is another one too, Joel, right? That there’s just not enough engineers in it. We see this all the time. There’s demand for engineers is at an all time high, I think, in Wnt. They can’t find enough people. And that’s what BuildTurbines. com is all about. It’s just trying to raise awareness and connect you up with the schools and hopefully eventually with your future employer. Joel Saxum: Allen, I bet you in a month’s span, you and I probably have conversations with what represents 50 percent of the installed capacity in the United States. I would bet that’s the case and it is crazy how many times we run into people that are like, yeah, I’m in charge of whatever it may be rotating equipment for all of our turbines. It’s Oh, so you have a degree in that. And you’ve trained in it. It’s Nope, I’m just an engineer that just needed an engineer. So so many good people out there, but people that are specifically trained for wind. It’s hard to freaking find them. So we encourage everybody to check out the website. If you have any questions or input, get ahold of us. We’re happy to have a conversation, or if you have something where you point out on the website, Hey, this is not quite correct. Hey, we can adjust it, right? We own it. Let’s make this a resource for the whole industry and let’s do it as a team.

We made buildturbines.com to help people join the wind industry! In the news, Siemens Gamesa has received certification for their 15 megawatt SG14 236DD offshore wind turbine, 63 of which will be used offshore in the German Baltic Sea. They are also expanding a blade facility in Aalborg, Denmark. We discuss Bill Gates’ TerraPower nuclear project in Wyoming, moving to a discussion about where nuclear energy is a good solution. Then we move to the legal battle between EDP Renewables and the state of Wisconsin over restrictive local wind ordinances. And we highlight Canvus, a company that is recycling wind turbine blades into furniture and art. The Wind Farm of the Week is DTE’s Meridian Wind Park in Michigan! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting – https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor – https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Joel, we built a new website. buildturbines.com. Joel Saxum: And it looks fantastic. I’m here to tell you. Allen Hall: And this website is devoted to those future technicians, people that are looking to get a job in wind and don’t know where to start. Joel Saxum: I mean, the idea really comes from this, Allen. We’ve talked to so many people out in the field through our websites, through the podcast all over the places in the wind industry and around the wind industry. Of, Hey, how do I get in? How do I get one of these jobs? And, the wind industry scrambling, every recruiting department is saying to their company, Hey, everybody, here’s a recruiter. We need as many people as possible. Where can you find this? Do you have a friend here? Can we get some people here to the point where the DOE has put out a study? Through NREL as well. That’s there says we need over a hundred thousand, close to 125, 000 wind turbine technicians by 2030. It’s the fastest growing job in America. Allen Hall: Yeah, and if you visit some of the training facilities, particularly the community colleges, they cannot get enough students to keep those programs alive. So we’re at a real impasse at the moment. We need to be reaching out to those future technicians and the future engineers that will be helping keeping these wind farms up and running. And that’s why we started build turbines. com. Joel Saxum: Yeah. The idea is we’re going to put a bunch of information on your articles about being a wind turbine technician. We have some of this stuff. We talk to these people every day, right? Why not share this information on another platform? So what’s, what we’re going to put forth the qualifications that you need for certain types of jobs, what the salaries look like, what the outcomes could possibly be for a career. And we want to get this website and this information. We’re going to continue to build on it. So we’ll ask everybody from the industry. If you’re a training center, if you’re an ISP, if you’re a utility, if you’re anybody in the wind industry looking for technicians or want to have some words into, hey, this is what the language we’d like to put in. These are the things we’d like to use to attract people. Get ahold of us. We’ll want to put it on this website because we’d like to get this thing in front of everybody high schools and. Young people everywhere mid career, people transitioning anywhere. That’s a great opportunity for a fantastic career. That’s only going to grow. So we need these people. So let’s do a roundup everybody and do our part to get as many technicians out there as we can. Allen Hall: And that’s what the Uptime Podcast is all about. Communicating with the wind industry and raising it up and making it bigger and better every day and build turbines as part of that. So visit buildturbines.com. Welcome to the Uptown Wind Energy Podcast. I’m Allen Hall, and I’ll be joined by Rosemary, Phil and Joel after these headlines. Good news from Siemens Gamesa this week. They have received the type certification for their massive 15 megawatt SG14 236DD offshore wind turbine from TUV NORD. The turbine has already secured eight megawatt worth of orders and will be used in major projects like RWE’s Thor Wind Farm in Denmark and Ørsted’s Hornesea 3 in England. Up in Aalborg, Denmark, Siemens Gamesa is set to expand its blade factory in the port of Aalborg. The company will receive about 27 million euros from the Danish Green Investment Fund for this growth. The expansion will add about 400, 000 square meters to their premises for storing wind turbine blades. And Siemens Gamesa has signed a deal to supply 63 of its 15 megawatt turbines for the 945 megawatt Jannecker offshore wind project in the German Baltic Sea. This project is part of Germany’s ambitious plans to reach 30 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2030 and at least 70 gigawatts by 2050. 2045. The European Investment Bank is providing a 1. 2 billion euro green loan to RWE for the construction of the Thor Wind Farm in the Danish North Sea. The 1. 1 gigawatt project will be Denmark’s largest wind farm consisting of 72 Siemens Gamesa turbines. Once operational, it will produce enough green electricity to power over a million Danish households. The project is part of RWE’s broader 55 billion euro investment in renewables and clean energy technologies from 2024 to 2030. And Germany’s latest offshore wind auction has awarded 2. 5 gigawatts of capacity in the North Sea, bringing in 10 billion. Three billion euros for the government. NBV secured a one gigawatt area with a bid of one billion euros, while Total Energies won a 1. 5 gigawatt site for about two billion euros. Notably, RWE withdrew from its partnership from Total Energy, citing economic reasons. These projects are scheduled to begin operation in 2031, marking significant progress in Germany’s offshore wind expansion plans. In the United States, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has given final approval for the construction of Sunrise Wind, which will be New York’s largest offshore wind farm. Located south of Martha’s Vineyard and east of Block Island, the 924 megawatt project could power over 320, 000 homes annually. Oersted and Eversource, the companies behind Sunrise Wind, are making significant investment in New York’s offshore wind workforce and supply chain. For Including a 200 million contract with the Long Island based contractor. Construction is set to begin this year with operations expected to start in 2026. In Downer, Virginia, Dominion Energy has begun construction on what will be the nation’s largest commercial offshore wind farm located Off the Virginia Beach coast, the 9. 8 billion project will feature 176 turbines capable of producing 2. 6 gigawatts of electricity. The project includes extensive environmental protections, such as construction timing to avoid well migration and noise reduction techniques. Dominion plans to complete the project by late 2026. And that’s this week’s top news stories. Now here’s our panel. 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. Bill Gates’s nuclear power company, TerraPower, has broken ground on the new nuclear reactor plant in Wyoming. It’s a natrium plant and it’s expected to be operational by 2030 and will generate about 350 megawatts of electricity with the ability to boost output to 500 megawatts during peak demand. Now, in theory, it could power about 400, 000 homes. What is unique about it is where it is, and it’s right across the way from a coal plant that’s scheduled to be decommissioned, so they’re going to try to replace that coal fired plant with a nuclear plant. The Natrium plants, which are a little bit different, are a sodium cooled fast reactor, which means they have a, instead of using water for cooling and handling all the interactions with the nuclear material, It’s sodium, and obviously sodium is a metal, so it doesn’t expand water does, so there’s less pressure, it’s basically ambient pressure, so it’s usually a little bit easier to use as a coolant. And it has other benefits, like the reactor can use pretty much any nuclear waste to power it. So it has some advantages here. Now, if you have seen Rosemary’s YouTube video on Engineering with Rosie talking about, is nuclear power right for Australia? That has generated a lot of feedback online. And I wanted to talk to Rosemary about this because in Australia, nuclear is probably not the right answer, but this, when they’re discussing this natrium plant in the U S where there is not a whole bunch of renewable power, particularly where this is up in Wyoming, does a nuclear reactor then start to make a little more sense, especially since it does have the ability to be flexible on some sense Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, so the key thing that I think most of the controversy surrounding my video, most of the people that were very worked up about it failed to see the word Australia in the title that nuclear is, I used, I called it four reasons why nuclear power is a dumb idea for Australia. So it’s, a bit of a provocative title. So I wasn’t, I intended to stir something up. That’s how you, that’s how you get more views on your content. That’s the reality. But I’m definitely not saying that nuclear power is dumb just that it doesn’t make sense for Australia. And it’s not really, it’s not too much to do with nuclear technology itself. It’s a little bit to do with it, but it’s mostly to do with the fact that we have so such amazing renewable energy resources, such amazing wind and solar in particularly. And then the technological aspect is that nuclear doesn’t combine that well with a lot of variable power because, the traditional nuclear reactors really like to cost a lot of money to build it. The fuel is not that expensive, but there is a fair bit of labor that’s required to keep the plant safe. And those things don’t vary that much depending on how much power you’re generating, so in the video I had four, four main reasons why it doesn’t make sense for Australia. The first one is that it’s too slow. We don’t have nuclear already. It’s technically illegal on both the federal and most of our states as well have have laws banning it. The second one is it doesn’t play nicely with wind and solar power. So nuclear really prefers to have steady output or traditional nuclear, at least. The only countries with both a lot of nuclear and a lot of variable renewables are Sweden, which has 30 percent nuclear and 20 percent wind. And Finland has 35 percent nuclear and 16 percent wind. But both of those countries also have a lot of hydro 40 percent and 20 percent respectively, and hydro is a renewable resource that is very flexible. You turn it on and off when you want to. The third reason was that it’s too expensive. So it’s expensive. Everywhere, basically less expensive in countries that are building just lots and lots of it. Nuclear power is expensive and when you have alternatives that can do the job like Australia does, lots of wind and solar, then it doesn’t make sense to pay that extra. And the final point in my video was that nuclear power, it solves a bunch of really difficult problems, but they’re not problems that Australia has. One, it provides constant baseload power, but especially in Australia, baseload is dead by now. There is so much rooftop solar that there are a lot of times during the year, months in the year where every day in the middle of the day, There’s so much rooftop solar that’s providing close to the entire demand of the whole grid. The big thing that people say about nuclear as well, like wind and solar are a variable. And what about when the sun and shine don’t blow for weeks in a row? Dunkel flouter, they call that in Germany and Australia, it literally doesn’t have those problems. When you look at the last, we’ve got 42 years of good weather data. And yeah, when you look at. The data, the widespread dunkle flutter across the whole Australian grid they last hours frequently, occasionally a day, but like literally never weeks. In the last 42 years, there were no weeks below 50 percent and the worst ever winter month was around 70 percent of the whole year average. Yeah, like in countries where you have those problems, nuclear is going to be a really good solution for them, at least to make up a big chunk. So yeah, the video I did was really Australia specific. Allen Hall: It raised a good point, I think, in that there are a variety of different energy grids, different energy mixes. France is different than Sweden, Sweden is different from Australia, Australia is different from the US. So it isn’t like. Hydro is great in some places where they have it, right? And it doesn’t really work in the desert. But nuclear is one of those pieces where you can plug it in where needed and I was trying to get out of that video, which is really good, by the way, that what’s the complimentary piece for nuclear? And if it’s hydro, then that would make sense to me. Like you need to pair those two together to get to a more flexible grid, so to speak. Rosemary Barnes: I don’t think you need hydro cause you can do it with storage. If you have to, it just with batteries or whatever it is. Allen Hall: Yeah. But it’s a today problem though. It’s a, we don’t have the batteries today to do 500 megawatts. At least in the United States. Rosemary Barnes: It is plausible. It’s just it wouldn’t happen instantly, but if you’re embarking on a new nuclear project, you’ve got 10 years to sort your batteries out, and I think you could have hundreds of gigawatts of batteries in 10 years. If that’s what you set your mind to. But I think, I don’t think it’s so much about what’s a good country for nuclear. I think it’s more like nuclear can go anywhere but it’s not the first solution with the other alternatives that are out there now, the costs that they’re at now, nuclear is the biggest, most versatile, but also probably the most expensive option. So you use it where you have to, and if you can use something else, then you do. Allen Hall: Let’s ask the question, Rosemary, the Department of Energy is throwing 2 billion at this project and the investors are putting another 2 billion behind it. So there’s 4 billion going into this. Does that sort of upfront money into a new style of nuclear reactor change the economics going forward, or is it still going to be expensive and long term? Rosemary Barnes: It’s going to help with the development of this one, but if you look at competitors to this, like new scale, they, I can’t, I, I heard the figures recently about how much they’ve spent and they haven’t got a lot to show for it at this point. They’ve got the technology, but they don’t have projects. I don’t think it’s enough on its own. Philip Totaro: The person that’s championing this in Australia is named Peter Dutton, and they’ve done estimates of how much this plan is going to cost. And it’s 600 billion dollars, Australian dollars, but still. And it’s the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization did an estimate that said this is only going to produce like 3. 7 percent of the electricity in Australia. If they actually built all these nuclear reactors. So this is a, as Rosemary’s saying, it’s a preposterous idea to do it in Australia, but, if you had already built nuclear technology and you wanted to upgrade, potentially you could retrofit some of the pre existing plants with newer technology that might operate a little more efficiently, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense if you’re renewables resource rich. Okay. It doesn’t make sense to go nuclear versus going down the renewables route. Think about how much, we would get out of 600 billion, even again, Australian, but like that, that builds, almost a hundred percent of the needs of, Australia’s like electricity market. It could be fully renewable with 600 billion instead of spending it on nuclear, which is only going to produce 3. 7%. You spent 600 billion fighting Russia. Joel Saxum: That’s what I was just going to say. Or if you’re the U. S., you could fund a few wars. Allen Hall: Right. Joel Saxum: So it isn’t 600 billion has not been thrown around. This is, I think this is a side conversation from this one, but very intimately related to it. The general person reading these news articles, whether it’s Rosemary’s video that she did or it’s. We’re not gonna allow turbines, we’re putting a moratorium on turbines here, or we’re gonna, nuclear energy here, or the dangers of this or that. The general public has no clue about the intricacies of what we just talked about. Hey, gas peaker plants can fire up and produce power on demand. Wind only works when there’s wind, or if you have batteries, or you have a solar, like how these different types of generation interact with the grid, how, what are the ins and outs of hydropower? Why is it good? Why could it be bad? These kind of things, people just look at it like these are just energy generation sources as they’re all the same, which they’re not. They just don’t mix. Some of them don’t mix with each other depending on how the grid is built out, or what is available for natural resources in the area, any of those things. This is something that’s, could be, like a, someone should come up with a nice matrix of all the power generation things that we’d use in. Allen Hall: Who is sitting down with the spreadsheets? Joel Saxum: Nobody. Allen Hall: That’s what I’m trying to get at, Joel, is like, who is doing that now to say, hey, a nuclear reactor in Wyoming is the thing to do. Versus batteries in Arizona. Where does that all fall together? Who’s putting that spreadsheet together? This article here that says this thing could power 400, 000 homes in, in, and it’s in the Southwest corner of Wyoming where there is nothing. There’s only 250, 000 homes in the whole state. But The energy is going to go down to Arizona, down to Nevada and to Colorado. Los Angeles, right? That’s where it’ll eventually end up. Yeah, Joel Saxum: There’s raw materials. You’re there’s uranium all over Wyoming. So that’s nice, Allen Hall: yeah, but I think to Rosemary’s point, because Rosemary just brings up, hey, we could build the grid better. Okay. But who is looking at that? What is the agency? Who is the group of people that has an outline of what this looks like? Because I don’t think in the United States, there is, I’ve never heard of them. You would think it’s the DOE, but. You would think, but it doesn’t appear to be. Rosemary Barnes: There’s so much research, so much modeling about those kinds of systems, but. It’s really hard. A lot of them, maybe even most of them have really I don’t know, they’re coming at it from a specific angle, so someone from, and you can get whatever answer you want by tweaking your assumptions enough. We’re going to do a live stream with a friend of mine, who’s an accountant with this platform key numbers where you can, change all of the assumptions and see what the answer, what different answer you get. People complain are in levelized cost of electricity. Calculations, they always assume 30 year lifetime for nuclear power, but really, it should last a hundred years. So that’s not fair. You change that number, see what happens. On the other side, people against nuclear, like you never factor in waste disposal costs or yeah, decommissioning of the plant, put that in, see what happens to the cost. And yeah, we’re just going to go through and change. All those assumptions. Allen Hall: But is the problem though that because we’re so far down the electricity grid build out that you’re only minutely changing some of the variables because the grid is 100 percent right now. It’s completely built out for the population that you have today. It’s built out. So you have to start somewhere. And if you’re starting from that 100 percent build out, now you’re going to add 1, 2, 3 percent a year. You’re not going to change the majority of the grid anyway. Is that where that goes? Rosemary Barnes: In the CSIRO GenCost report, they’re definitely including quite a lot of extra transmission. If you assume that you have a lot of wind then you are going to need to build a lot of new transmission and that’s included. Allen Hall: That’s where I wanted to get to Rosemary, with your nuclear discussion was, we’re playing around with the generation side. But that doesn’t seem to make any difference in reality. It’s the transmission side where we’re going to struggle, but we’re not really focused there at the minute. Rosemary Barnes: Oh, I think there’s a lot of focus on transmission. It’s just so hard in, especially in the U S it’s pretty hard in Australia. I think it’s like incredibly hard in the U S there’s a lot of stuff. I don’t think it’s going to turn out to be as much of a problem as it seems today, that transmission, because there are a lot of other things you can do, especially when you’ve got a lot of distributed energy, like a lot of rooftop solar and more and more. Household batteries as well. Allen Hall: Is that where the answer lies though? We should be really focused on how to transmit electricity versus generate it. We know how to generate it pretty well. We can plug in solar, we can plug in wind pretty quickly, even plug in nuclear or hydro. But the problem is getting it distributed where it needs to be, where there’s high wind, great solar to where the cities are. That seems to be the problem, particularly in the United States. That’s where the problem lies today. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. It, I think again, it’s like really local, like what’s this generation, there’s transmission and there’s energy storage. Those are the three big things. And which one is the biggest will vary from country to country. At the moment in Australia, I personally think that we’re focused too much on storage and not much enough on generation. Wind is not getting built out at the rate that it will need to yeah to get to 90 percent renewables in yeah, 10, 15 years. But we’re building lots and lots and lots of batteries. A battery doesn’t generate energy. You need energy to store in a battery for it to be useful to you. So yeah, I expect in a year or two, we’re going to see an adjustment of where our attention is focused in Australia. Allen Hall: So Australia will be focused on. New additions and the United States we’ve built on, we’ll be building hopefully transmission lines. It’s transmissions is the only thing slow in it. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. What the solution is going to depend on how easy it is to build storage. If it’s easy to build storage, you’ll get a lot of solar. And if it’s easy to build transmission, you’ll get a lot of wind. I think that’s more the. The question while people are really focused on solar panels and wind turbines, they’re missing the point. It’s a little bit, yeah, a little bit removed from that. Allen Hall: Everybody should go watch Rosemary’s video, Nuclear in Australia, and then comment on it. Leave it a really long worded, heated comment because she reads all of those. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, and then if you disagree when you disagree with the assumptions, then you go back and check out the live stream that I did with John, the recording will be up after we do it and then you can see what difference the yeah every assumption we’ve gone through the comments and found the most common things that people complain about as being bad assumptions and we’re going to change them and show real time what difference that makes to the economics. So yeah, go through and check that out. Allen Hall: Up in Wisconsin, there is a legal battle unfolding that could have some really far reaching consequences for renewable energy across the state. There are two towns in central Wisconsin that are being sued by EDP Renewables or their subsidiary, which is Marathon Wind Farm, LLC, over the restrictive wind ordinances that they’ve put in place. These local ordinances, which were enacted About a year ago are stricter than the state laws and are part of a growing trend in the United States of local municipalities applying more restrictive laws to wind and solar. in their local neighborhood. So even though the state may allow wind farms to be developed the local ordinances is effectively don’t. So this is what the lawsuit is about and EDP is going to push the case here because this is one of probably a dozen or more places where they could have done this. This is Joel’s territory. He’s from Wisconsin. He knows this area. Is this area of Wisconsin ripe? For wind at the moment. Joel Saxum: So where these are, remember you were talking Marathon County. So you’re smack dab in the middle of the state. Marathon County is, there’s like a little trifecta there with Wausau, Stevens Point and Marshfield and Wisconsin Rapids, there’s a, it’s a little population center there in the middle. It’s not traditionally a place where there’s wind energy, right? Wind, if you’re in the wind industry, you don’t think of Wisconsin as a place there’s a lot of wind farms. There’s a few in the southwest corner along the southern side where it’s more farm country type things, right? And this is agricultural country up there in Marathon County where they’re looking. But and Allen, you and I were talking about the software, so I’ll give a little bit of a history lesson to the state of Wisconsin here, but this is most of the Midwest, right? The original surveys were done in the early 1800s, mid 1800s, and there’s a lot of. Six mile by six mile townships in the middle of this thing. Each of these places that is being sued by EDP, their towns, people say oh, it’s a town, it’s a city. These are country towns, right? Their townships with their six miles by six miles square, about their third, so 36 square miles. And between the two of them, so 72 square miles, there’s only about 2, 500 people that live. In the whole area, those 2500 people farmers work in the local area there. They’re going to have their thoughts and I’m going to go back to the idea of this is more my thought that wind and solar and renewable energies are more of a bipartisan issue. It’s more of a political issue than it is a technological issue. Because in these areas here, there’s no real reason to not have wind, right? It’s not oh, there’s a protected area or something or a bird population or you’re going to fly away for ducks or something of that sort. Or there’s, golden eagles that are protected by whoever. That doesn’t exist here in the center part of Wisconsin. That’s not a thing. So I go backwards to these townships are passing laws or regulations or whatever for the local thing. Their populations are less than 2, 000. I think one of them was less than a thousand, so of 900 people. There’s just no possible way or statistically there’s no way that there’s an actual grid energy or grid or any kind of expert there. I love Wisconsin. That’s where I’m from. I’m from one of those townships of 6 miles by 6 miles. It only has 500 people in it. And I can tell you right now that the town commissioner there has no business passing a law about what kind of energy production is done on the land because they don’t have the requisite knowledge to make that decision. So that’s part of what’s going on here. To me, it seems like it’s more of just a political issue. We don’t want those dang turbines in our backyards. Then actually this could help. This is a good thing. There’s some, there’s a population center on the outskirts of this stuff that could use some good renewable energy and jobs. You’re talking about some big wind farms going into, there’s 15, 20 full time jobs that could come from this and a lot of tax based revenue. Allen Hall: So these local governments do not have a lot of extra funds to go for. lawsuit and a lot of times, they’ll try to negotiate their ways themselves out of a lawsuit because the lawyer fees can add up so quickly. What is a likely scenario here? I’m surprised that EDP hasn’t tried to negotiate this already. I’m really shocked that they’re going down the legal route. Joel Saxum: I think the legal route has to be, in my mind, it has to be a scare tactic because yes, if you go to bat, if EDP goes to battle with these townships, unless some organization steps in on the behalf of these townships and pays for the legal fees, EDP will blow them out of the water in a month in legal fees. They just won’t be able to afford it. The tax, the revenue that these places have, it’s nothing. It’s peanuts. It’s spent in. Grading roads and putting salt down in the wintertime. I know it’s, but it’s twofold, right? If you, then if you are ADPR and you’re going to sue your way into creating a wind farm here, you’re automatically going to piss off everybody. Everybody in that county, everybody in that township, you’re going to make them angry. If I’m EDPR, to be honest with you, you’re better off pulling out. That’s the way I see it. I don’t like that, but it’s what I see. Allen Hall: Is it a longer term play though, Phil, that EDPR is looking in the future and going, okay, we’re going to repeat this process again and again, we need to get the state to step up and to enforce the laws that the state controls what happens on the ground. Not the local town. Philip Totaro: Because keep in mind that the state actually already has a law on the books that places a restriction on townships and counties passing these kind of ordinances unless three conditions are met. one of three. First is protect health or safety. Second is do not significantly increase the cost or decrease efficiency versus the whatever conventional power source they have now. And third is allow for an alternative system of comparable cost and efficiency. So basically what that all means is if you’re taking, if you’re retiring a coal plant and putting wind in, then it’s got to perform at the same level. Now, necessarily, wind doesn’t have the same capacity factor as coal, so you’re gonna have to build more megawatts, but it takes up less space, and it’s obviously less polluting. I’m not sure what legal ground these townships and counties have to stand on to say that they’re meeting any of these criteria. So they’re going to have a hard time fighting this, as Joel mentioned, not to mention just the cost, but the legal argument that they can make probably doesn’t really hold a lot of water. This is probably on their part just something to slow down the process or make it more expensive for the developer. But, it’s creating this animosity on both sides, which is, leading to a general trend where, again, in, in a state like Wisconsin, they’ve already got A state level law on the books that says that you can’t do this. Illinois is another state where they had to pass a law overturning the the local authorities control over permitting of projects. Because too many counties and townships in Illinois were doing the same thing just trying to put ordinances in place that were slowing down or stopping development of wind and solar, and the state had to step in. Because we know that, we are never going to get a federal policy, a coherent federal policy on this, the states are the ones that have to step up and, take matters into their own hands which is what a lot of people want anyway. It’s, states rights has always been at the core of this country. But at the end of the day, this is what’s unfortunately going to be necessary because People are, making these decisions based on a political motivation in all likelihood and not a commercial one. And that’s necessarily leading to this animosity that Joel’s talking about is that, because people are just behaving in a way that doesn’t lend itself to a collaborative and cooperative environment with project developers that come in and say, we want to help you. We want to, build this thing. It’s going to be better. It’s going to, reduce pollution. It’s going to do all these things. We just have an environment where, you know for whatever reason, people just don’t want change. Don’t we need to have people on the ground? Yes. So, what’s leading to this happening? Is, about 10 or 15 years ago, our lobby groups in this industry used to have, grassroots representatives with boots on the ground. And over time, they’ve shifted focus from grassroots efforts to federal policy, particularly PTC extension, and most recently, the IRA bill, which, to its credit, is doing something to attract You know, foreign companies to domesticate production. It is doing something to promote investment in renewable projects because of how lucrative the production tax credit is. But I’ve, I get the feeling that they’re stretched a little too thin because it’s left a lot of the grassroots efforts that they used to do from, the kind of the OEA or ACP level. Is now in the hands of regionally focused groups that are probably criminally understaffed and criminally under resourced in terms of budget and just the resources that they have to be able to go out and fight all these fires because now you have, according to this Columbia University report, which we’re Most of you will remember my famous rant last year about how I was mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. This year, I’m positively apoplectic about it because it’s gotten worse. We have another 55 counties or townships, in addition to what we already had last year, that have passed ordinances that are precluding wind and or solar development. And the only way that this is allowed to happen is if we don’t have the grassroots outreach. And the only way it gets solved is if we do. We have to be out there fighting a lot of these fires again with boots on the ground. And that means that there’s gonna have to be a shift in the allocation of resources away from Washington and what’s going on in Washington to what’s going on in the state. Legislatures where the states, as we just talked about with Wisconsin and Illinois, the states are going to have to take control over whether or not they have the power to preclude counties and townships from blocking wind and solar development, just on a purely, non scientific, mostly political basis. And let’s be real. That’s what’s going on here. I, that’s the only way I see this happening and getting better for us as an industry. Joel Saxum: If you send someone from Washington, D. C., I don’t care who they’re associated with, ACP, AWEA, Joe Biden, doesn’t matter. If you send someone from Washington, D. C. to central Wisconsin to talk to them about wind farms, they’re gonna get laughed out of the building. It’s not gonna work. It’s, you can do grassroots stuff the grassroots in central Wisconsin has to come from a farmer from Iowa or someone else from central Wisconsin that is in the same boots they’re in. They’re just like, it’s just simply not going to happen. I’m saying this from experience. Like you’re not going to even okay. So I’m a sports hunt. I just hunted a lot in Northern Wisconsin my whole life. That is a very heavily conservative area. They don’t trust anybody from Madison. Even though it’s the capital of the state to come up and have a town hall meeting about the deer season. They’ll push them out of the frickin state, out of the auditorium in the high school over deer hunting. They’re not gonna, they’re not gonna have someone from Washington, D. C. come in and tell them about what, putting wind farms in their backyard. It’s not gonna work. So you have to figure out a grassroots efforts to do this, yes. But you gotta figure out the right people to do it. You have to have someone that the people on the ground are gonna trust or at least align with before they agree to some of these things. That’s why we’ve actually talked Allen and I have talked with multiple people that are veterans that are doing that, that are doing this outreach that are, that have been through our military, and they’re going out and talking with people in the field. It’s someone that they can align with, someone that people can trust. But you’re not gonna, you’re not gonna take people from D. C. think tanks to Nebraska and Oklahoma and Kansas and tell them that wind farms are good, they’re gonna get pushed out. Philip Totaro: And not for nothing, but in, on the back of the Labor Department releasing yet another report that says that wind technician is the number one job in the United States, again, for whatever, the third or fourth year in a row. Joel, that’s really not the worst idea I’ve ever heard is to have the people who are, getting the benefit of, and a lot of them are veterans, get the people who are employed to work on and maintain and operate wind farms, go out there and tell their story about how, coming out of the military, this has changed my life and given me, the same kind of purpose that I had when I was in the military. To be able to have them go out and tell that kind of story to, the people who are their neighbors will have so much more meaning and so much more impact, and it’ll get people away from these hysterical arguments about, property values that it’s already been debunked and all this other, anything you want to infrasound, it’s already been debunked. It doesn’t matter to a lot of these people because they’re so locked into a way of thinking that Because they’ve got somebody that’s feeding them this, all this dis disinformation. The only way you counter that is by having somebody that they can trust, somebody from their local community who could tell ’em straight up what’s really going on out there at these wind farms. And the techs would be great spokespeople to be able to go do that. Joel Saxum: The guy that you might be at the local bar in a corner having a beer with on Friday. That’s the guy you want to talk to. That’s good for these meetings. Allen Hall: If you’re going to let the states lead the way in terms of setting up the electricity grid and creating the necessary power, then the governors and their staff need to be involved in directing that. And I haven’t seen a lot of governors get involved in renewables too much. Probably down in Texas, Joel, is where I’ve seen the most, right? Governor Abbott seems to be pretty involved in those things, but a lot of other states, not so much. And if they’re having difficulty at the local level, that’s where the governor and the staff needs to step in and try to negotiate that. And I don’t see much of that happening at the minute, maybe because they’re too busy doing other things, but it is part of their responsibility. In the latest PES Wind, And if you haven’t received your copy, you can go online to PESWIN. com and read it online. There’s an article that I found interesting, which was it’s a company called Canvas and Joel, you and I saw this and Phil, you saw it too. When we were in Minneapolis, they’re taking sections of recycled blades or recycling blades into pieces and then making. Furniture out of it. We saw some of that in Minneapolis at ACP. And, but also they’re having artists paint these pieces to make them more architecturally pleasing. And this whole operation is run out of Ohio, outside of Cleveland, Ohio. And, remember Joel, when you and I were walking down the highway that one day, we were like, Oh, there’s artists here painting these turbines. Joel Saxum: Yeah, I honestly thought it was something that ACP was just doing for the show, right? Sometimes they have those things. Or was it like ACP O and M this year, we were in San Diego and they had a top gun, like Tom Cruise look alike people. Or when we were somewhere else and they had some people line dancing in San Antonio or something like that. I was like, Oh, this is some gimmick that ACPs did. I didn’t realize it was a company that was doing this and it was a part of the, and they’re in the aisles. I stopped and watched a couple of different artists paint on these things. They were fantastic. I even Over by our booth on the far East end of the conference center. There was a bunch of these kind of set up in a little area. I went and took a couple of meetings and calls from them and sat down in the furniture and tucked away into the corner and had a phone call. It was comfortable. But yeah, really cool. So you see a lot of people of course, recycling blades is all the a lot of the talk on the, in the industry right now. And it’s, now there’s, we’ve got companies doing it, we’ve got people making making, New end user products. We can, we’re doing the cement kiln thing and we’re making a lot of things out of recycled wind turbine blades. But upcycling is also a thing. Upcycling, you’re seeing University of Georgia or Georgia Institute of Technology was making some bridges. They’ve done some bridges I’ve seen over in the UK and in Denmark, Ireland, Poland. Yeah. Yeah. So there’s a lot of things going on in that space and canvas out of the, out of Ohio there. They’re doing some really cool stuff. I’m making like picnic tables and outdoor furniture and civic art, some other things. So yeah, more things happening in that wind turbine recycling world. Allen Hall: Yeah. It looks like they can recycle about 2000 blades a year doing this is what they’re had the capability to handle. So that’s exciting. Pretty cool stuff. And if you want to see more about wind energy and all the different aspects and where the technology is headed. Then check out PES wind at PES wind. com. Joel Saxum: So Michigan’s largest wind park from also Michigan’s largest producer of and investor in wind DTE is now online. It’s called Meridian wind. It’s right in the from our Michiganders, it’s right in the middle of your knuckle when you make the mitten to show the state. So it’s a 225 megawatt park, a 77 GE 2. 8. 1 27 meter rotor turbines cost roughly around $300 million. It was built mostly by Michigan workers and can power over 78,000 homes. So it’s part of that $300 or part of that $300 million investment by DTE was over $4 million paid to local landowners who are hosting aspects of the project. So with the commissioning of Meridian Wind Park, DTE now has 20 wind parks in its new renewable energy portfolio. And a total investment in renewable energies of over 3 billion dollars. They also plan to add approximately 1000 megawatts of new renewable energy each year starting in 2025. DTE is making some big moves. One of the cool things about this project, on top of the staff that are already working there since 2023 when this thing was built they expect to create 12 to 15 more jobs to support operations administrative duties. So as a rule of thumb, if you’re not used to the wind industry we have typically one wind turbine technician for every 8 to 10 turbines. So they’ll have probably eight wind turbine techs out on site full time. So some new jobs to central Michigan with a lot of investment congrats DTE on meridian wind. Allen Hall: That’s going to do it for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy podcast. Thanks for listening. Please give us a five star rating on your podcast platform and subscribe in the show notes below to Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter and watch Rosemary’s YouTube channel, Engineering with Rosie. And we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.

Masdar acquires Greece’s Terna Energy for 2.4 billion euros, eyeing further European renewable energy investments. Nissens Cooling Solutions relocates production from Europe to Eastern Europe and China due to economic pressures, highlighting EU industry challenges. JSW Steel USA invests $110 million in Texas facilities to support U.S. offshore wind development, leveraging Inflation Reduction Act incentives. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting – https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor – https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: I’m Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I’m here with the founder and CEO of Intel store, Phil Totaro. And the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum. And this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you want market intelligence that generates revenue, then book a demonstration of IntelStor at IntelStor. com. Masdar has announced plans to acquire Greece’s Tera Energy. The deal, valued at 2. 4 billion euros, marks the largest energy transaction on the Athens Stock Exchange. Master will initially acquire 67 percent of Terna Energy shares with the intention to reach 100 percent ownership through a subsequent all cash tender offer. This acquisition is expected to significantly boost Greece’s renewable energy capacity and contribute to the EU’s net zero carbon footprint. By 2050 target. All right, Phil. Masdar’s back at it again. Philip Totaro: Well, and this starts off a campaign of theirs to invest in properties in Europe. Terna Energy’s got wind a little bit of solar, a little bit of hydro, and a little bit of biomass. It’s about 1. 2 gigawatts worth of wind at this point, but a six gigawatt renewables portfolio that they actually want to install. So this is going to provide them with, the capital that they need to be able to pursue that. But Mazda looks like they’re not done. They’ve come out in the financial times and publicly stated that they’re looking for other investment vehicles in Europe. And it sounds like there are some in. Germany and possibly Finland, Sweden maybe Holland as well, that, that they could they could gobble up here as, as they look to expand. Allen Hall: Danish wind supplier Nissens Cooling Solutions has decided to move all its production abroad to reduce costs. The company, which produces cooling solutions for a major European wind turbine manufacturers, will relocate its production to existing facilities in Slovakia. the Czech Republic and China throughout 2024. The decision comes in response to difficult market conditions, including geopolitical tensions affecting order timing and supply chains, as well as fluctuating material and energy costs. Phil, inflation is a big deal in Europe still, it is still causing major upset in the supply chain. We’ve seen a couple of other companies move out of essentially Europe into Eastern Europe and into China because of similar issues. This is just continuing for months now. Is Nissens still on the leading edge of this movement, or are there more to come behind them? Philip Totaro: It’s entirely possible there’s more to come, because, as you mentioned, inflation is part of it. It’s really the lack of support that the industry’s been given by The EU government and then the individual countries themselves, Denmark can’t, step in and save every single company just like we see with Spain not being able to step in really and do anything for Siemens Gamesa either. So this is a trend that is likely to continue happening as companies look to reduce their overhead and labor costs. That’s really the only reason you move to Eastern Europe and China especially. And it’s, it’s a pity because the, this has been talked about as an issue for a long time. And it feels like rather than addressing the substantive issue, the European Commission is trying to focus on these things in their, their, EU Green Deal that don’t have anything to do with addressing the, the financial viability of their domestic companies. It’s all about, let’s keep Chinese companies out of Europe. And, and that’s not going to really solve the problem for profitability for These companies like Nissens that are going to continue to facing profit challenges where they’ve got high operating costs under the EU umbrella. Joel Saxum: This is an interesting one as well, because this is what the EU has been like what they put forth for the EU wind power package back in October of 2023. Those two initiatives is the European wind power action plan and communication and achieving their, some of the EU’s wind ambitions. Transcribed One of the goals of this is to keep as much manufacturing and control of that manufacturing within the EU. And this week you actually see a lot of executives over in the EU traveling for wind Europe board meetings. And in their board meetings, this is one of the topics that was coming up. This is what they’re trying to make sure that they’re. Making as most moves on as they can. Right on the tail end of another company, another supplier for the wind industry moving operations. To the eastern part of Europe and to China. That’s not a good look. Allen Hall: JSW Steel USA, a subsidiary of India’s JSW Steel, has announced an investment of 110 million to upgrade its manufacturing facilities in Baytown, Texas. The investment will focus on steel plate mill modernization projects, aiming to facilitate goals and expand offshore wind energy technology. To 30 gigawatts by 2030. The investment aligns with buy America requirements and will produce steel for offshore wind towers, platforms, and hydrocarbon pipelines. Joel, this is in your neck of the woods, 110 million into a steel factory in Texas is a major deal. Joel Saxum: Yeah, Baytown is one of those old school, has been for a long time, oil and gas, chemical, industrial towns, right? It’s, Baytown is, if you’re coming up from the Gulf and you’re heading up towards Houston, past Galveston and the Straits there, Baytown is right on the water. So they have the cape of the, one of the reasons that it’s a great spot for heavy industrial is you can offload and onload things from heavy trucks and from ships right there. Right. So they can have little port facilities. One of the things that’s going on, like the offshore wind, yes, you have tubular monopiles and transition pieces and stuff, but the biggest part Piece that goes in the water in a wind farm is the offshore substation. Offshore substation expertise, Texas. You’re looking at the Gulf coast, right? So all this, all this steel plate, this milling machinery, everything can be, is going to bolster that ability to use the steel for offshore wind as mills, as well as other things. This same materials can be used in shipbuilding like the Eco Edison that just set sail is a couple of hundred miles down the coast from there. The substation for South Fork was built in Texas as well. So, as this trend continues, you’ll see more. It’s a good move on JSW steel. Philip Totaro: And keep in mind, this is exactly what the IRA bill particularly the manufacturing tax credits, was meant to inspire, is foreign companies who, this company being JSW, being from India, would face import duties on any steel or fabricated products that they brought into the U. S. So, by increasing the domestic production in the United States, they’re going to be able to avail themselves of the 45 X manufacturing tax credits. And they’re going to have this domestic content bonus for the project developers who are going to be using these foundations and potentially again, towers, transition pieces, anything that they’re going to be capable of making at this facility. The other thing that it does is it gives us the opportunity to start getting more large capacity. Fabrication equipment in the U. S. Investments like this are going to be able to help with getting, these bigger turbines fabricated and making us less dependent on Europe or China to import a lot of that technology. So, this is, again, exactly what the IRA Bill was, was meant to inspire.

Allen Hall and Joel Saxum interview Dr. Elif Ecem Bas, a PhD project engineer at R&D Test Systems in Denmark. Dr. Bas discusses how R&D Test Systems is leveraging digital twin technologies and hybrid testing to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of testing wind turbine components, particularly pitch bearings. 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 wind turbines grow in size and complexity, testing these components has become increasingly expensive and time consuming. To address these challenges, R&D Test Systems is leveraging digital twin technologies to improve the efficiency of their test bed. Benches, ultimately reducing testing time and costs. And if you don’t already know, R&D Test Systems is a leading company in the wind energy industry, providing testing solutions for wind turbine components on a massive scale. Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Ecem Bas, a PhD project engineer. At R&D Test Systems in Denmark, Dr. Bas earned her PhD in structural engineering from the University of Nevada, Reno, and is currently focusing on digital twin technologies at R&D Test Systems. In this interview, we will delve into the applications of digital twin technology and wind turbine component testing and learn more about Dr. Bas’s work in this cutting edge field. Ecem, Welcome to the program. Elif Ecem Bas: Thank you. And thanks a lot for the introduction. Allen Hall: So there’s a lot to learn here because Joel and I have been following the digital twin saga over the last several years because you see a lot of of news articles and information about digital twins and OEMs or have been looking at it and a lot of smaller companies have been trying to prove out digital twins. But we haven’t seen a lot of it being applied in a place where I think it’s important, which is in the testing phase. And R&D Test Systems if you haven’t worked with R&D Test Systems, build some of the largest pieces of test equipment in the world to test generators up to 25 megawatts and all kind of blades, just insanely big things. So what is the benefit of using Digital Twin on such large test equipment? Elif Ecem Bas: Let’s come one step back. As you mentioned in your introduction. Testing is necessity for all the wind turbine components and their subcomponents as well. This is required by the standards and this is required by the design and also the manufacturing. So we will not get rid of testing. Testing is very important. But as the wind turbines are getting bigger and bigger, this time to test these components takes also a lot of time. And for as an example for a blade to test the Fatigue test to make a fatigue test for a blade. It takes one year or more than a year to do the saw Joel Saxum: Constant movement. Elif Ecem Bas: Yeah, exactly to see all the damages through the blade. You have to do that and also for a highly accelerated lifetime testing of an assault. This also takes six and eight months and also testing this. These are large facilities, right? And testing this will also cost money. tens of million euros bought to establish and run this. And this leads, of course, longer time to market. For new and more powerful wind turbines. In detail systems, we are trying to develop digital tools to overcome these challenges and to have these turbines to roll onto the market. So and also yeah, cut cost on it. And what we are using digital twins in the testing, it is very necessary because we would like to reduce the cost of the down time in the testing itself, in the test execution itself. Allen Hall: So there are portions of testing, from my understanding, and I’m an electrical engineer and I’m a mechanical engineer, but I’ve spent about a lot of structural testing. Those tests take a long time, they’re very expensive, but sometimes the result we get out of those tests isn’t very useful in the real world. On the other side of this, you’ve got two problems. One is that, does the test match what’s happening in service? That’s a really great question. The second half is, how much do you know about this product before you start testing it? Or are you testing the way? You’re touching the engineering aspects properly to evaluate that for the real world. And I think you, you run into two problems here and I want to understand this part first, which is you model the component, but you don’t model all aspects of it. And I want to, I Can you walk through that a little bit, like what you’re trying to do with a device, a blade, or a gearbox, or anything else, a pitch bearing? Elif Ecem Bas: As you mentioned, there are two aspects. So in the component test, we just take one component and test it, right? And with our, Digital twin technologies, we focus on both simulating the complete system, whereas we only test one component and model the remaining parts. So this is one thing, and we call this hybrid testing because one part is tested experimentally, whereas the remaining components are modeled numerically. And we do this in In a closed loop system where we share at every time step, we share the commands and feedbacks with the test bench. So this is one aspect where we test. Only one component, let’s say it is the pitch bearing, and model the remaining part, which is the blade and the hub and the other parts, the other blades. Allen Hall: Alright, so that’s interesting. That’s a complicated model though, right? When you try to do that. Elif Ecem Bas: Exactly. Allen Hall: So you have to simplify it so you can model it. How are you finding those sort of the key characteristics so you can model it on a test bench properly? Elif Ecem Bas: Why we do hybrid testing? Hybrid testing is to get the both advantages from the experimental world and from the analytical world. So we do hybrid testing for the components that we cannot model properly. In this case, it is, we choose that it is the pitch bearing because it’s very hard to model. Joel Saxum: Makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Elif Ecem Bas: Yeah. And also the pitch bearing itself. So bearings are designed to roll, right? But the pitch bearing is rolling a little bit and then exposed to the bending moments for their lifetime. So it’s against to its own nature. So this is why also predicting the failure mechanisms of the pitch bearing is a bit hard. Another thing is, when it is failed, it is very hard to backtrace what was the cause of this failure, because you cannot model it properly. So what we are doing is, since this part is hard to model, we put it in an experimental setup. And the blade and the remaining part, the other kinematics are relatively easier to model. Joel Saxum: That’s a good word. Relatively. Yeah. Elif Ecem Bas: And so it took that part and we use that simplified models to apply more realistic loading scenarios to the pitch bearing. In order to get its behavior. Joel Saxum: A question here like Allen said earlier pitch bearings is a headache for, man, what would you say, 90 percent of the people we talk to, Allen? Oh, easily, yes. When we’re thinking about you guys advancing the testing mechanism for us, because it’s, it is, just, if you picture it in your head, It is, a bearing is designed for that rolling surface, however, this not only is exposed to the root bending moment of the blades, basically, on a fulcrum, pulling and pushing on it, but it’s also having gravitational loads at the exact same time, going up, sideways, down so you have this really complex load scenario. You guys coming forth with something that could hopefully accelerate lifetime testing, Elif Ecem Bas: Yeah. Also, we are looking into testing extreme cases in this scenario. So picking up extreme wind load event and test this and hopefully see the development of a failure with the test. Joel Saxum: That with everybody with pitch bearings. If you talk to anybody in the manufacturing sector, it’s it’s really hard to do an accelerate at any kind of lifetime testing. For that pitch, because it isn’t when you look at it in the crate, right? That is a robust piece of metal. That’s a big, bad thing, right? If anybody’s ever seen one of these it’s impressive how big it is and how heavy it is and how much steel there is. But to test that you can’t you can’t do a life cycle test in six months on that thing. It’s just not possible. Elif Ecem Bas: Exactly. And also what. We hear from the test centers that they cannot see the failures with this highly accelerated lifetime test on it. So what we are looking into, okay, we have this extreme load case scenario. Can we apply this with hybrid testing and can we see the development of the failure of this component? Allen Hall: Let me ask you about the complexities of pitch bearing, because I think Joel brought it up at a really high level, but I want to focus in, drill down to how complex this is. So you have this massively long blade, right? The blades are getting longer, so the center of gravity is moving further and further out, the center of lift on them is moving also, the blades are flexing, right? Then you got the gravitational pull. piece. But on top of that, now you’ve added a control system in the turbine, which is pitching the blades as they rotate around the 360. So you have this, and you’re not necessarily sure what the OEM is doing with their pitch control system. That’s not widely disclosed as to say it that way. So when you’re looking for failure modes on a, particularly a new blade with a new control system, On mostly an existing bearing structure, you have a lot of unknowns there. And we have, as we have, Joel has pointed out, we have a lot of operators around the world that are complaining about pitch for each breaking and yet they passed all the required tests for to get type certification. So now we’re going back and this is where I think the brain powered R&D Test Systems really matters here. Now you’re able to apply some knowledge because now we see these failures. And then can you model those failures? Are you able to digital twin the failure mode and then place that back into the new testing regime? Elif Ecem Bas: Yeah, first of all, we have to see that if we can track these failures with the hybrid testing while applying these extreme load scenarios. And as you mentioned, in our, now in our test configuration, we have two actuators, to apply the bending moment of the blade. And we also have the third actuator to model the pitch angle, to control the pitch angle. So we are also making it yeah, rotate to pitch, and then to apply the bending moments. We are But these cal these are all coming from the simulation world, so all these bending moment calculations are coming from the simulation world of this blade. So we calculate a bending moment at the blade, which will be applied to the pitch. And we apply this in the test bench itself. Allen Hall: So let me ask, let me go down this rabbit hole a little bit further. Because it’s a very complicated mechanical problem, right? It’s probably one of the most difficult mechanical problems out there today because of the quantities of product and the cost involved. You have this, you have a fixed hub diameter for the most part as the blades get longer. So the load paths in that are are unique. There’s not they’re not simple, right? So when you’re creating a piece of test equipment to go evaluate and in this hybrid condition, I’m trying to go through the thought process of what R&D Test Systems is trying to do here because you have so many variables you have this I’ll call it a black box of control system like there’s inputs and there’s outputs and so you’re looking at the outputs into the bearing How do you then when you go to create that piece of test equipment to test it? determine how these failures are occurring. Do you just, do you design the equipment based upon that control system, that digital twin? Elif Ecem Bas: So for this specific case, it is slightly different. We have this research and development project with the university, Aarhus University and FORCE Technology, and Together with this team, we developed this hybrid testing framework for pitch pairings. All of us together are, is designed this let’s say test setup. But this is not the similar ones that we develop here. We usually develop large scale test benches. This is considerably small, and we would like to get yeah, apply the know how and see the results of hybrid testing. And what we are also helping with our customers here, as you said, there are so many people are involved. So the the control system of the, uh, OEM is their own IP protected and the blade is maybe the blade model is that they don’t want to share. Allen Hall: Definitely IP. Elif Ecem Bas: Exactly. It’s also even the wind load could be an IP issue. So what we are also trying to to give our customers as a service is how to combine these pieces together. Allen Hall: Okay, that’s brilliant. All right, so then that drives the cost down because you’re applying so much knowledge ahead of time. So when you get to the test scenario, you know what you’re looking for already. These are the features. These are the failure modes because of the way the control system is designed and operating. This is how we’re going to test these bearings in a real world scenario. How much cost reduction and time shortening does that does that, does occur because of your digital twin? Elif Ecem Bas: Another aspect of digital twin, as I just mentioned, we are trying to provide a platform for our customers to put their models into. Together. So it’s not that high, only the hybrid testing that we are focusing on, but we are also focusing on combining different simulation models. So it could be if it is a test bench, it is the test bench and analytical models that are combined, but it could be also test bench models combined with OEMs device under test. So we are also looking into that. Yeah. So we are yeah, as also as you mentioned, this is extremely IP secured way and we are trying to solve this problem. In terms of time constant, like How much time can we reduce? Cannot give an exact number, but this will improve the collaboration between the partners. As an example, this is apart from hybrid testing to prepare for a test. This can take several months. So how does how the people test is they design a component in a digital world. And then they create some load sequences and they contact contact to the test operators. They say they want to test this test sequences in their test bench. So there are so many back and forth, even for the planning of this large tests. So what we are trying to do with these digital tools is to give our customers and also the test bench operators a platform where they can. Plug in their models and then execute these test scenarios beforehand before the test execution so that they can save time. in both planning and they can also reduce time in the test campaigns that wouldn’t make sense. Joel Saxum: Ecem, when we talked off air, we talked about a little bit about this, right? This kind of, this concept of the functional mock up interface and the function, yeah, and the functional mock up unit where it’s basically like you guys took the concept from the automotive world, from their advanced testing processes, right? Elif Ecem Bas: The FMI standard was developed Yeah. Yeah. By an automate by automated industry. So this was and this standard is out there for several years, and it is quite mature in that industry. And what we are trying to do in the wind industry or also in the testing, we are trying to adapt This technology to our models in our system as well. Joel Saxum: Yeah. The cool thing about that was you said basically, because it is a standard that’s been used for it, this is the black box stuff, right? This is how an OEM can protect it, protect their IP come to you guys. It goes through the functional mockup interface, that black box there, where they. And then everything comes into your side, you’re able to test. But the cool thing about that is, is since it is an automotive standard, it’s the practices out there. People have knowledge of it. There’s multiple. I think you said over 200 different tools are available to work through with this as well. So there’s a lot of stuff that’s. That’s there. It’s just getting the, basically the wind industry or the, that industrial testing that you guys do up to speed with the, what the rest of the world is doing and, or not the rest of the world, but different industries are doing. Elif Ecem Bas: Exactly. There are many commercial and also open source tools that are available to use this Functional lockup interface standard. Allen Hall: Can I walk through a test case? And I want to get a jams input on this because we see the, see this a lot. And Joel and I have been around a lot of wind turbines over the last couple of months. And as Joel has pointed out, pitch bearings is the main problem. You see a lot of cranes replacing pitch bearings. Okay. So the question we get asked all the time is, Hey, the OEM has offered us an upgrade to these pitch bearings to prevent this problem. I want you to describe the problem and say it’s a problem. In the meantime, I have other pitch bearing manufacturers saying they have a replacement that doesn’t require the fix. Now, both of those may be right, both of them may be wrong, but I think what’s happening now is that the operators are thinking about doing testing on their own. And if they do that, the, your hybrid digital twin approach makes a lot of sense for them because it’s going to, it takes the OEM and the other manufacturers of these devices out of the picture and lets them focus on what’s really happening. Now How would they I’m thinking of a couple large OEMs in the United States and in Europe that have this problem, how would they connect with you to do that testing? Would they just say, Hey, Ajam, this is the turbine we have, this is the bearing we have. We need you to look at this fix or solution and just let you go with it. Or how does that interaction work? Elif Ecem Bas: First of all, we define which part. So which. What component are we testing? Then we design the test setup accordingly for this test for this hybrid testing scenario. Because as I mentioned, we need to have the pitch actuator, we need to have the other actuators to apply this to that. And then, Once we want to involve the models, we have to walk through with them how to define these black boxes. Then we define, once we define the interface, because we will tell them what to share in between the test bench and the model. So we will not help with that. So they will have We can help them to put this in a black box. And also we tell them, okay, you need these five signals that are coming to this test bench, and you will get these five to your model. So we define these interfaces. together with them and then help them to put this in this black box, let’s say, and then help them execute this test campaign. Joel Saxum: Allen, what you’re saying here right now in my mind starts screaming joint industry project between the asset owners. Get a bunch of them together that have the same machines and go test them themselves. Try to find a fix. It could work. Allen Hall: R&D Test Systems is the place to test it because they test large items and they’ve been doing it for years and they have all the technical know how and the equipment to go test it. So R&D Test Systems is the right place to do it. I think you’re right Joel, connecting operators together to work with a job to create the control system, the black box, the hybrid, is the real link. that we’re missing at the moment. And that needs to be done. Elif Ecem Bas: Just to give a comment, we don’t have, we don’t own the test. We are not a test bench operator. We are test bench developers. So we know a lot about developing the test systems to test these equipments. So yeah, we don’t have our own test bench facility, but we help we know that side. And we can help our customers to develop these. Joel Saxum: Yes. All of the things that we’ve been talking about, this is your baby at R&D Test Systems. You’ve been your PhD is in it and the hybrid testing and everything like you are the expert in it. But my, where I’m falling down a little bit is that this is not this way of testing and this methodology and these idea of digital twins and hybrid testing, this isn’t standard yet. So this is not in the IEC standard. This isn’t. A rule that they have to, anybody has to follow right now. It’s still in that R&D phase. We you’re sitting in this chat, this should be how we do it. And I believe that this is definitely the future, but how do you feel about, like, where do you see it going? Do you see this being adopted as mainstream? This is how we’re going to test stuff, or is it still going to be an R&D thing for a while? Elif Ecem Bas: Yeah, very good question. I think the industry needs Kind of this collaborative platform, both for hybrid testing and also digital twins, because we can see that this is Requirements because everyone wants to improve their both modeling and testing, and we for sure need to collaborate more to do you’re right for hybrid testing itself for components. Hybrid testing. There is no standards, but there is hardware in the loop testing, which is in IEC standards, which is not exactly. hybrid testing, but it is also hybrid testing. So I can see that it would also come at some point for component testing as well. Yeah, I don’t know when, but it will come because this kind of there are so many challenges and we have solutions to these challenges. So I think it will come at some point. Yes. Joel Saxum: Yeah. You’ve got two great partners in the University of Aarhus and force technology bringing in the issues and helping you develop those things. But what you, I think what you are sitting on and your department, your team, what you guys are working on could be a fix for some of the large problems that our industry is seeing. You. Everybody’s complaining about OEM quality or OEM this, nah, I don’t want to bash on the OEMs, but like they’re getting components that are failing. The answer could be, advanced better testing to develop better products before they go out into the field because now we have Platforms with 000 machines out in the world where they have a component that keeps failing on them. While that’s good for the aftermarket companies and the people selling the extra bearings. That’s not good for the general grid and the energy transition, right? So you guys have that piece there that could be the link between making the wind turbines that are in the field more effective at staying, guaranteeing uptime. That’s what we want. That’s why you’re, that’s why we’re all here. Allen Hall: And Joel, That’s a good segue because I think we wanted to highlight Ajam’s and R&D test systems technology and make sure everybody understood that there is an alternative out there rather than just taking the component from the manufacturer and saying, yeah, trust me there is another way to do this, which is to actually look at it from a systems perspective and that’s what Ajam is doing here. Ajam, how do they, how do people get ahold of you and how to. How do people contact R&D Test Systems? Elif Ecem Bas: Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn, it’s Elif Ecem Bas. You can also find us in our website, rdtestsystems.com Allen Hall: Ecem, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I’ve learned a tremendous amount. I know Joel has. And thank you for addressing one of the big problems of wind energy today. I’m glad you’re working on this. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. Elif Ecem Bas: Thank you.

This week we discuss Sinonus’ innovative approach to using wind turbine blades for energy storage and the G+ Global Offshore Wind Health and Safety Organization’s report on safety incidents. Allen and Joel discuss Active Training Team’s (ATT) immersive safety training methods, featured in PES Wind Magazine. We also highlight Mississippi’s first utility-scale wind farm, Delta Wind, featuring 41 Vestas 4.5 MW turbines. 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: A UK plane passenger awoke from a long nap thinking he’d arrived at the destination, only to realize the aircraft was still stuck at the gate. And if you haven’t seen this little clip, this guy was sleeping for a couple of hours. Over in the UK, wakes up, asks his neighbor, Hey, are we there yet? And she turns and says, no, we haven’t left. We recently had that happen to us coming back from San Diego, where I took a nap, and I swear, it must have been an hour and a half later, we hadn’t moved. And I don’t, I think Rosemary, you’ve been on some really long flights too. Are you getting stuck on the ground for some of these flights? Rosemary Barnes: It is so annoying when you’re stuck on the ground, like before you’ve got a, I don’t know, an 18 hour flight or whatever to get stuck on the ground for hours. And you’re like, we’re not even, we’re not even progressing. It’s really hard to deal with mentally. But they do often make it up because obviously they can, they don’t fly as fast as they can around the world all the time. They fly in the way that’s most fuel, more fuel efficient. So sometimes they can burn a bit more fuel to get you there faster. If they, yeah, if there’s an economic reason for them to they’re going to have to, pay some penalties or hold a, of the next flight for people who are, yeah, need to transfer. Joel Saxum: You could have been on a flight like Allen and I were. Where, we were supposed to board at 4pm, we didn’t end up boarding until 9pm, and then once we boarded, and everybody got settled down and we were ready to push back from the gate, then they informed us that the pilots had timed out on their daily time limit, so they Did we all off boarded and then had to get moved to flights the next day. Philip Totaro: I once fell asleep on a train in Switzerland that eventually led me to being escorted out of the country. It can happen. Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m Allen Hall and here’s this week’s headlines. Vestas has received a massive 577 megawatt order from Tag Energy to supply wind turbines for the second stage of the landmark 1. gigawatt Golden Plains onshore wind project in Australia. Vestas will deliver 93 of their megawatt turbines during the first quarter of 2025 with commissioning expected in 2026. Vestas is currently working on the first stage of the project that will utilize 122 of the V162 6. 2 megawatt machines. When completed, the Golden Plains site will be Vestas largest onshore wind farm to date. Vestas has also secured a 660 megawatt order from RWE for the Nord Sea Cluster A offshore wind project in Germany. A delivery of the 44 15 megawatt turbines is expected in 2026. Vestas will also service the turbines under a five year agreement followed by an operational support agreement. Meanwhile in the U. S., Dominion Energy is installing its first model pile foundations for the 6. 2 gigawatt coastal Virginia offshore wind project, marking the official construction kickoff. The 9. 8 billion project, slated for completion in late 2026, will ultimately feature 176 turbines. On the West Coast, RWE is set to commence site surveys for its planned 1. 6 gigawatt floating wind farm 20 miles off of Humboldt County, California. RWE is using an autonomous underwater vehicle for the surveys to minimize impacts on marine life and fishing. In other U. S. news, the future of popular Chinese drone maker DJI remains uncertain as Congress weighs a potential ban over national security concerns. A ban could disrupt key industries reliant on DJI drones from agriculture to search and rescue and stifle competition and innovation in the drone market. However, proponents argue it would bolster American drone companies. This situation highlights the complex considerations around foreign technology, and national security. And finally, a new Columbia University report reveals surging local opposition is blocking hundreds of renewable energy projects across the U. S. with dozens of new restrictions in just the last year. Offshore wind faces particularly tough Stiff challenges as high profile developments battle lawsuits over impacts on endangered species and shorelines. While some opposition appears coordinated, experts believe much reflects the genuine grassroots concerns over perceived ecological risks. The report warns that growing resistance could seriously impede climate progress, underscoring the urgent need for officials and developers. To better address local worries and build community support for critical and renewable energy development. Failure to effectively navigate this opposition may threaten the nation’s ability to achieve a cleaner energy future. That’s the week’s top news stories. Now here’s our panel 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. In the race to transition to a cleaner, more sustainable future, as everybody has talked about on this podcast the rise of renewable energy sources like wind and solar have been a game changer, everybody. But the, one of the biggest challenges is storage, right? So there’s been a lot of companies looking at different kinds of storage. There is a Swedish startup that’s looking at, using the carbon fiber in wind turbine blades as a storage device. That company is named Sinonus and they are talking about structural batteries. So essentially taking the carbon fiber that’s used as structure for these really long wind turbine blades and using the carbon fiber as an electrode and a conductor and also load bearing structural aspects. Now, And this is Rosemary, and this is where I want to get you involved in this. They’re saying that they can add electricity storage without adding any extra weight to the structure. And I’m trying to understand. For multiple reasons, Rosemary, because you’ve been involved in blade design, structural design. You’re a composites expert. And you had the opportunity to play around with lightning and icing systems or de icing systems on blades. There’s a lot, electrically, that can happen on a wind turbine blade. Is using the carbon a good way to store energy? on a blade? Rosemary Barnes: I, it’s really disappointing that they haven’t even given a stab at how much could be stored in a blade. Because and I don’t fully understand the mechanism. I have worked on projects that used carbon fiber in blades as a, yeah, as a heating element. And even considered the possibility of using the. Connective parts of a blade as a lightning conductor, purposely doing it rather than, having to try. Obviously the blade wants that to happen. When lightning hits it, it does want to go through all those conductive elements, but to, design it so that it’s on purpose and that it won’t damage the blade structure. So definitely consider all that, but it was never like this article that I’ve read says that it’s a way of getting something for nothing. And I think that’s a a really strange interpretation of that phrase. Like when I hear the phrase getting something for nothing, I don’t think, Oh, you don’t add any weight to a turbine. I would think you don’t add any cost to a turbine, which obviously is not going to be true. It’s also not going to be true that you don’t add any weight to the turbine, because obviously there are components that need to be added. It doesn’t, there isn’t batteries in every single cup of fiber blade out there already, or you’re going to need to do some sort of tweaks, and I don’t know what they are, because it hasn’t been mentioned in the article. Yeah, definitely not something for nothing whether or not it’s worth it or not would just totally depend on how much energy storage could be in there. But it, I don’t know, to me, it feels so much it’s a kind of a recurring idea that pops up again and again in conversations that I used to have when I was, working, leading the Blade de icing team and now it pops up in comments on YouTube. People always want to, take what’s there. there and then get something else out of it. So a really common one that I hear is, okay, why don’t we store weights at the top of a wind turbine and then lower them with an electric winch when you the wind isn’t blowing and then you’ve got energy storage. Oh, Hey, you’ve got this big steel cylinder. You could be using that for compressed energy storage. Yeah, or pumped hydro, put a reservoir at the top of the nacelle. Everyone always wants to do these like little add ons. And I think that the first thing that you’ve got to consider is, how much would it cost to add a lithium ion battery that does the same thing as what you’re trying to do? If it’s a small amount of energy stored and it’s a small lithium ion battery, Then, but it’s so obvious that’s what you would do. It’s, it’s a very neat, simple system. You can just tie it into the existing electronics. It’s a pain working with electricity in the blades because, the blades rotate, you can’t just connect it with a cable cause it would just, spool itself up and I don’t know, and break it. So you need to get electricity through a slip ring and. That’s hard. If it’s a meaningful amount of of electricity, that’s always been a big constraint on anything that I’ve done electrically inside a blade. And obviously for lightning protection systems too, they’ve got to make sure that connection is maintained, even when the. The rotors turning, the blades are pitching. So there’s a lot of complication there and yeah, without knowing how much energy can be stored, it’s impossible to say if the cost benefit is there, it’s definitely not something for nothing. And my initial expectation is that it’s no way going to be worth the hassle to put it inside a blade. Yeah, but other things, that aren’t so hard to work with as a, a wind turbine and especially, yeah, electricity in the blaze. Yeah, sure. Maybe in. Buildings like they say, or I don’t know. But a lot of times people work from solution to problem. And it’s like the solution here is using less space to store energy in how many examples is space really the constraint for your energy storage? Not that many, not in buildings, I would suggest you can, quite easily shove a lithium ion battery in a basement or a garage or whatever. Yeah, so that’s my tentative negative take on it, but don’t know the details. Joel Saxum: Can I ask you a physics question, Rosemary? Maybe this is an Allen and Rosemary question, but if you’re going to somehow use basically a carbon fiber plank or sheet or structural member as a electricity storing mechanism, as a capacitor per se, Doesn’t that, wouldn’t that make it more attractive to lightning? Allen Hall: Maybe? Rosemary Barnes: It depends what you’re adding. If you’re adding, if you’re adding cables, like electrical cables and or wires or something, then yeah, that’s going to complicate your lightning protection system for sure. If all you’re doing is just connecting two little wires at the root of the blade, then that will be small compared to the other large, many large problems that you’ll need to solve. Joel Saxum: I’m just thinking yeah, we have enough problems with trying to keep lightning away from carbon fiber structural elements. Let’s not make them more electrically Charged or conductive already? I don’t, but I don’t, again, I don’t know the physics behind that. Allen Hall: In one of Rosemary’s YouTube videos, I’m pretty sure you talked about galvanic batteries. Two different metals touching or two different elements touching, creating a voltage. I think I remember that. You explained that. So the carbon fiber is like one of, galvanic chart that’s way over to one side. If they hooked it to something like aluminum, the other side, you can make a nice little battery with it. But I’ve never seen anybody implement that into a structure, that’s for sure. And it would need some sort of electrolyte on top of it, right? Rosemary Barnes: I’ve seen people do it by accident plenty of times. I haven’t seen it done. Joel Saxum: But by design, isn’t the battery gonna have, not, I’m not gonna say half life, it’s not nuclear, but doesn’t it degrade over time, the structural properties? If you’re going to make a battery out of it, so you’re going to be compromising the structural integrity of it while using it as a battery. Allen Hall: Rosemary, correct me if I’m wrong here, but the carbon fiber is the one that doesn’t get absorbed or broken down, so it would remain, I think, it’s pretty much inert, you really can’t really mess with carbon fiber and destroy it. So I think it would be fine. Rosemary Barnes: I don’t know. It also depends on the temperature as well. If the temperature is rising noticeably, then that’s going to cause issues. There’s a lot of testing that would need to be done. I’m not going to rule it out categorically. I’m assuming that these guys have at least made small scale examples in the lab and that the science is there. Maybe they’ve gone so far as to, consider what the lifetime of the system would be, I don’t know, but I’d be pretty, I think it’s pretty safe to say they wouldn’t have done any of the the work that you would need to do to integrate it into a blade and make sure that it’s not affecting the blade structure, the blade lifetime, that it’s not messing with the manufacturing process. There’s a whole big range of things that would need to be considered. And it’d be really interesting to talk to them. I think we should try and see if we can get them on for a special episode to find out more about it because, yeah, like all I’ve got for now is the same, yeah, need to yeah I don’t know, non, non fun interpretation that’s the same as every time. Yeah. Some way that you can shove an energy storage system into a wind turbine. Yeah, you, of course you could, you can fill your whole tower up with, I dunno, kerosene and then have a generator at the bottom if you wanted to there’s any number of , there’s any number of ways you can store energy in a wind turbine. And there’s a lot fewer ways that you should store energy in a wind turbine item. And currently they’re also, they’re connected to the electricity grid. Or they’ve got an electricity as a prop supply. They don’t just, they don’t only have electricity available when the turbine’s turning so if it’s only like a small amount of electricity that you could use to run a light or keep a data logger logging while there’s no wind, then that’s not useful because they already have that power connection and that problem’s already been solved. So yeah, it would have to be a meaningful amount of energy that you would actually make money from, selling that energy yeah, for it to make any sense. Philip Totaro: Okay. One, one thing with that though is there is, there are applications where this could come in handy. One would be if it’s enough power and we, neither of us knows whether or not it is, but if it’s enough power to, to power the the pumps and fans for an ice protection system, that could be one use case where this would come in handy. Again, if it’s, if it would work. The other one is if you lose the grid and you still need to power some of your ancillary systems, like pumps, motors, and fans on the turbine, having this capability, like being able to power your pitch system right now we use batteries or supercapacitors to power the pitch system. If this could be hooked up to that would be a useful. Or a, that would be a use case that would be beneficial. So that, that’s something that I would like to explore, but I don’t know how much power this thing really produces or could store. Rosemary Barnes: No, that’s it. And It’s got competition doing all the things that it could potentially do. There is already alternatives available, so it has to be better than them. It’s not a game changer. It would be potentially an incremental improvement is my expectation of it for a winter, incremental improvements are where it’s at for wind energy at the moment being a mature technology. So it’s not to say that it’s not worth pursuing, but Yeah, without any numbers. Joel Saxum: At that rate, you could just duct tape a bunch of those shake weight flashlights inside of it and make power. Rosemary Barnes: I did reference that shaker flashlight in a video one time about wave energy, because they have the problem of trying to convert back and forth motion into electricity generation, which is, yeah, harder than a rotational one. Allen Hall: Rosemary, you and I are probably the only two that have been around large carbon fiber structures and have gotten shocked by them. When did you were doing lightning testing and anti ice system? So you had electricity and carbon fiber. Have you ever been shocked by a carbon structure? Rosemary Barnes: I haven’t. I have set them on fire though. Accidentally. Let’s underscore that, accidentally. Allen Hall: Is that, yeah, is that on purpose or how does this work? Rosemary Barnes: No. One time, one time we were testing to see if it would catch fire. So I guess that you can say that’s not really accidental, but then also, yeah, times when I had thought that the risk of fire had been designed out It had not. Obviously, that’s better to know that this was not in, this was not in the field. This was in the research and development stage. That’s where you want to catch it. That’s why you do all that testing. But yeah, that’s why I know that when people say, you’ve designed out the risk of whatever happening you might have. Allen Hall: Carbon fiber airplane design days. We were involved with the carbon fiber hand layup, so this is very similar to wind turbine blades. So they made a carbon fiber airplane with hand laid up, and when that airplane would go fly through icing conditions, it would build up a really significant charge on it, and it would hold that charge. So if you, the technician or engineer walked up to the airplane without grounding the airplane first, you would get walloped, knocked to the ground. Even several hours later, it still would bite you. Rosemary Barnes: It can happen with glass blades as well. You have to, when you’re working on a blade in the factory, you have to ground the blade while you’re grinding because otherwise all that grinding builds up a static charge. And it can be severe enough that I heard of a a technician who, or yeah, a factory worker who was grinding an un, an ungrounded blade, and shocked themselves bad enough to stop their heart and have to go to hospital. They didn’t die, but. It was pretty serious. So static electricity sounds like it always sounds so trivial, right? Because every kid will, get a buzz by running down the, carpeted corridor and zapping themselves on the doorknob at the end of it. And, that’s what static electricity means, but it’s still electricity, it’ll still, build it up. Build up a big enough potential and you can hurt yourself. Lightning is an act of God, but lightning damage is not. Actually, it’s very predictable and very preventable. Strike Tape is a lightning protection system upgrade for wind turbines made by WeatherGuard. It dramatically improves the effectiveness of the factory LPS so you can stop worrying about lightning damage. Allen Hall: A troubling report was recently released by the G plus global Offshore Wind Health and Safety Organization, and the data shows an alarming 94% increase in safety incidents in 2023 compared to 2022. In total, there were almost 1700 reported incidents up from about 860 in 2022. These numbers are pretty alarming. The sharp rise can be attributed in part to the operational hours increasing because of offshore wind installations. Overall, if you look at the industry, the hazards were up pretty much everywhere. The biggest hazard tended to be during construction. That about a thousand incidents in total took place on construction sites. 560 happened during operational projects. About 70 occurred during the site development. So there seems to be an increased risk during construction, which would make the most sense Joel, that there’s just a lot of big moving pieces and moving parts and a lot of or mostly organized activity. But when things go sideways, it can, someone can get hurt. Joel Saxum: And there’s a lot of old development going on globally right now, right? You’ve got a lot of offshore stuff going on in Taiwan. We have the south fork going on in the U. S. Sunrise is coming in the U. S. There’s a bunch of wind farms coming, right? So that means that you’re going to be putting new people to work in these situations that they haven’t done before. So that’s usually the biggest hazard is when you introduce new people to new tasks, new jobs. You can train all day, but until you’ve been out there hooking things up, moving things around, you aren’t gonna see it. You’re not gonna know it, right? And if you look at the past installations, like I said, like most of the stuff is during construction. Absolutely. That’s when there’s the most moving parts. Of course, it’s gonna be during construction, but if you look at the, past history of offshore wind construction. Offshore wind construction has been mainly offshore. North Sea, right? And up in one specific area. There’s a few specific companies that have been doing the majority of that, and that means that you have the same people doing the same tasks as they’ve done before. All this other new development and all these different places in the world means new people, new tasks, new vessels, even just learning how a vessel works and getting that thing ironed out. Because you know how say you’re a crane operator, you know how the crane on this vessel works. Now you’ve got a brand new crane. You got to figure out how that one works. And there’s little nuances to everything. To me, it’s unfortunate. You hate to see these things grow. However, with the breakneck speed that we’re trying to install offshore wind capacity at It makes sense. I I could see foresee this happening. Philip Totaro: It is unfortunate. And the reality of it too, is the G plus doesn’t even have a complete picture for a lot of the injuries and even deaths that have happened in China. Where it’s obviously the biggest segment now of the offshore market and the biggest market globally. And they’ve had, from our, local affiliates and contacts there we’ve gotten reports that they’ve had multiple incidents over the years. They even had an incident with a vessel going down after it rammed into a monopile. They’ve, Unfortunately, this is, as Joel’s mentioned, a serious situation and something that really requires the proper training that, you know whether it’s GWO or some other organization that can provide the necessary background. It’s as much training as we can get for people. It’s going to be helpful, but you’re right. It’s Joel it’s procedures when you’re out there in the field or in the ocean, as it were. That are really gonna make the difference between, hazards becoming serious hazards or something, a situation that can be diffused. Joel Saxum: Yeah Phil, I’m gonna make an odd tie here, and I’m sure this is sitting in the back of your head, but If you’re talking about just the United States, if our injury rate looks any bit higher than it would to the same kind of insulation going in Northern Europe, you can attribute that directly to the Jones Act. Philip Totaro: To an extent, yes, because we’re precluding people that have experience from being able to crew the vessels that, we would be using over here and to, to a certain extent, this is why I’ve actually made the proposal to say, all right, look, maybe we make a Jones Act exemption or something, tweak it so that in the first 10 years, while we’re trying to ramp up the industry, let’s get it. Maybe it’s a foreign flagged vessel, but let’s have it crewed at least 50 percent or something by, U. S. citizens, green card holders, and the rest are people that have the requisite experience from Europe or Asia that, are going to be able to, because again, we can have those people come over and do you. Training, which is also important, but, having an experienced crew do something is going to make it safer and speed up the time it’s going to take to get up the learning curve. And that’s, I think a practical, I don’t know why that’s not being talked about as a practical solution to this Jones Act situation. Um, every time I talk about the Jones Act, the U. S. Merchant Mariners are always, chirping in my ear that you’re costing us jobs, but you want to be safe in your job too, and you need to be experienced in your job, and how better to do that than learning from the people who have pioneered this and been doing it for 30 years? Joel Saxum: Yeah, when you talk about the advantages of union labor, the advantages usually are this. They’re highly trained. They know their jobs they have support in the background, all these things, right? So that’s why you go and, you hire a union electrician or something, because you assume that they are the top tier people in that category to do the work. However, you may be a union mariner or someone, an offshore worker, but. I can guarantee you if you’re, there’s 99 percent chance you’ve never installed a wind turbine offshore in the U. S. If that’s what you are. So the things that you go for, the union labor work for, the qualities that you’re shooting for there, they don’t exist yet. They will, right? We will build that capacity. That’ll come in the next few years. But right now on T zero with our first, with just self work is just done, they’re all rookies. Allen Hall: Is offshore wind assembly and construction, is that just plain on the job training? There’s no place to go to school to get some semblance of how to do this, right? Or in, not in the States, there’s not. Joel Saxum: Allen, you and I talked to someone from Orsted a while back, and one of the things that they were doing was grabbing some people and putting them through rotations over in Europe before we did some stuff here. Remember that? And man, high five, virtual high five to that person because that is a great plan to get some people and now you’re not going to be able to do that with every single person, right? These, there’s a lot of, at the end of the day, there’s some people on these vessels that are cooks and stuff like that. Like they don’t, cooking, right? Nothing to take away from that. I love food. But there’s specialized activities that go on in these vessels that you will only learn unless you’re out there doing it. You know what I mean? You’re not going to understand it. Allen Hall: Isn’t there a problem right now? Onshore are trying to find new people to enter onshore. I’m guessing they’re having the same trouble offshore. Oh, absolutely. Philip Totaro: But again that’s partly a training issue. And that’s partly just being able to attract the right kind of people. Obviously the industry wants a depth and breadth of knowledge from as many people as they can get. But if we’re understaffed Then the only way you close that gap is with A, appropriate training and B, on the job experience. But we have to make sure that on the job experience is safe for everybody. It’s got to be a safe environment. Allen Hall: Yeah, I totally agree with you there. Going back to the new entries into the wind market, I’ve seen some more articles recently talking about how difficult it is for community colleges to attract students to their wind energy programs, and I’m assuming part of that is the location where these wind farms are. They’re not really near big civilization. So if you want to live next to a shopping center, you’re not going to be working at a wind farm. Generally speaking, this doesn’t, that does exist. For offshore wind, where you’re near big cities, but it’s just on off, right? You’re around New York City, you’re around Boston, you’re around Philadelphia. Joel Saxum: Yeah, but those skill sets don’t really cross, right? Someone that can go, someone that has built wind farms in Texas has no those, the only thing that makes sense is oh yes, when the bolts come together, they, that, okay. But going offshore that person’s skill set does not immediately transfer. Also, you have to be part of a maritime union, probably, to get offshore anyway, so that’s not a Philip Totaro: easy transition. And keep in mind, too, that going back to the point raised earlier, we do have some universities that have partnered with industry and have partnered with organizations like GWO to provide, Rutgers University is one, there’s one up in Rhode Island, there’s another one in Massachusetts, I can’t remember all the names of them, unfortunately, there’s another one in New York so we are starting to roll this out, but it’s slower, as with the pace of, installations in the U. S. The rollout of these training facilities and programs has been slower than it probably needs to be, if you’re hoping to deploy a workforce to start constructing sunrise or empire wind or et cetera, these people, revolution wind, these people need to be trained yesterday, to be able to get out there next week when, a lot of these companies are, desperately looking for people to start construction with how long it’s taken to get through the permitting process and the offtake and PPA execution process. ATT Allen Hall: And this quarter’s PES Wind Magazine, really good articles inside of there. If you haven’t downloaded it already, just go to peswind.com. You can download this issue. And this issue, there’s a really good article by Active Training Team, which is based in the United Kingdom, who do safety training. And they were involved in the Horn C2 project with Ørsted. And Ørsted was integral with the ATT on, and making the training more interactive, more immersive. And Joel, I know you have looked at the videos online from Active Training Team. It’s not like any other training program that I have ever been to. Joel Saxum: Yeah, to me, it reminds me of in the States here, sometimes you have a high school thing where they bring in a wrecked up car. And it’s, to avert people from drinking and driving. So they bring it out, they show you what can happen, and they bring in, they may bring in, to speak, a parent. Of a child who’s been, affected by it or by drunk driving or even the person who was drinking and driving and affected others lives and have them speak to you, so it’s an immersion into The reality of what the situation could bring. And that’s what it seems to me like this, that active training team is bringing to the industrial education space, because let’s face it, we’ve all been through, if you’re in any kind of industry, whether it’s oil and gas or wind or solar, or I don’t know, a smelting plant, whatever, you’ve been through a bunch of training videos that are boring. You sit there, you have to watch these twelve videos and sign off that you watched them and it’s like a checkbox. Yes, that gives you some knowledge. I have some knowledge of, smell H2S, look and see which way the wind is going. Go uphill and upwind. I remember those things from training, but this what they’re doing is, So immersive and engaging to all the senses you’re in there, you have actors in some of the situations showing, how people’s feelings and emotions can change what’s happening on the ground in real time. And everything you read from people that have done this training from companies like SSE, Siemens Energy, Siemens Gamesa, National Grid, RWE’s been the sit, the site, Ocean Winds, Equinor, Scottish Power, all of these operators up in North Atlantic, they’re taking advantage of this training that can really give their people a dose of reality and show them the ramifications of What it’s like if they don’t adhere to the safety culture that’s being built. Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s remarkable that many other safety organizations haven’t tried this method because it’s so interactive. And the actors, I thought, was a really interesting piece. There’s real people portraying an accident scenario right in front of you. And that makes it a lot more real. And ORSID have invested a good bit of money in the original training facility, like over a million pounds, going ahead. To do this. Joel Saxum: Yeah, I think it was like one, 1.4 million pounds. And when you break it down, they’ve or Ted put that money up, they’ve put over 2000 people through the program and that includes, it’s like a one day from senior leaders to the back office and frontline staff, anybody from horn C two. Break it down. 2000 people that have been out there over 1. 4 billion pounds. That’s only 700 pound per person investment. Of course, you’re paying for their wages and, ongoing people at the training facility. But 1. 4 billion pounds. If you’re a large company and you’re putting together training materials, you can spend that much, just putting together videos to have. So putting something in that’s in person, that’s immersive, that really shows the the outcome and can get the people to buy into it better. I think it’s a great investment. Allen Hall: It looks like Active Training Team is actually building a facility up in Scotland at the moment, or has built one. So it’s expanding, which is fantastic. I, I, Would personally like to see this up close because it’s so unique in the space, I’m thinking about all the onshore situations in the United States where this kind of training would make a huge impact on the level of safety. And I know we’ve had a couple of incidences in the United States recently, and this would, I think, would help to make it a little more real. When you look at Joel Saxum: the the little short bio about the author of the article here, that’s contributing to PES Wind is a Dermot Kerrigan. And what it says is they have an award winning team. ATT has an award winning team of professional writers, trainers, facilitators, actors, psychologists, and digital learning specialists. So they’ve got it, they’re taking a completely different approach to training, and I think it’s from my perspective, at least, it’s going to pay off. Allen Hall: Yeah. It’s unique. And I do think this, we’ll see this on the shores of America relatively soon. So if you haven’t picked up the latest PES Wind Magazine, go to peswind.com. And download it and take a look at the active training team article. It’s really good. 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 a noodle. Wind, PES Wind has the high quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit PES wind.com today. Allen Hall: As we do develop more offshore wind farms off the east coast of the United States and eventually off the coast of California the federal bureaucrats are looking into safety of these sites and one of those unannounced inspections happened just recently where the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement conducted its first ever inspection of an operational wind turbine farm. It took place at the South Fork Wind Project located off the coast of New York and Rhode Island. During the visit, the Safety and Environmental Enforcement Folks evaluated South Fork’s risk analysis procedures and controls, both at the onshore control center and the offshore turbine. Just give you a little bit of background on this. What they did is make an unannounced visit that was based upon a sort of a plan and a scenario. And the scenario went like this. A fisherman was out fishing. By one of these wind turbines out by South Fork and notice that there was some sheen on the top of the water Assumed it was oil called the call the beds I guess and the inspectors came out to go do an unannounced visit to South Fork and to see what South Fork would do In this sort of scenario and make sure they were ready I haven’t seen, I assume South Fork did just fine, but if you’re, my concern about this is that if this is something really new, somebody is going to screw up, right? Because it’s not, it’s everything is so new at South Fork, you really would have a hard time responding to that as cleanly as you would wish probably, because. Everything is new. You don’t, do you have the people on staff that would, you know, that just part of their daily life is thinking about this? If they drip some oil into the water? Joel Saxum: Yeah, you should. And from my, I hate federal oversight or government oversight in general. That’s who I am as a person. However, I think this is a good idea. South Fork Wind is a brand new wind farm. It’s going to be, it’s square in the public eye from, for the whole country, right? Everybody’s looking at this thing, especially anybody on the East coast. Whether you’re for renewables or not, what these audits are for is to make sure that, everything is in place, right? So if you do fail or you miss a couple of check boxes, perfect. Let’s get those up to speed because I can guarantee you that. You know the orsted people are the people in the construction companies. Everybody’s Dotting their eyes and crossing their t’s and doing everything they can to make sure safety is at all the safety policies procedures engineering design is adhered to however, you have to understand if you’ve never been offshore working the offshore environment is It’s its own animal, right? So it is, it’s very unforgiving. Something bad happens out there, it’s not oh darn, get it, grab, have Billy Bob run out here in his truck and grab this. Like if something bad happens people can die, right? It’s an animal. So having this inspection or audit and having them regular and unannounced, this is one of the times I don’t really have a problem with it. The one thing I don’t understand here is I’ve never heard of the Bureau of Safety Environmental Enforcement. Like we have OSHA and like the EPA and how many freaking agencies do we have? Ooh, I don’t understand. That’s the one that gets me on this. I Philip Totaro: will concur with what Joel’s saying and also remind everybody of when Deepwater Horizon happened in 2010. The government agency responsible for inspections and oversight had the guy who was responsible for doing the inspections for Deepwater Horizon was still in training and I don’t blame him for that. I, again, that’s an institutional issue, the, and the number of rigs multiplied by the number of inspections that are supposed to be required for the rigs meant that we would have had to employed as something like. 10, 000 more inspectors than what that agency at the time even had. Having moved on 14 years later from that, To something like this where, all right, this is the first time they’re doing it and they have to, yes, everybody’s got a learning curve to get up, Allen, the reality of it is that obviously the turbines usually not going to explode and spew oil all over. In the first place, but in the event that, we’ve all seen wind turbines that are leaking grease and oil and whatnot. If it starts becoming more of a problem, then the industry, looks bad. And the scenario that they’re gaming out here. Is not an impractical one, particularly for some of the fishermen in the Northeast who already feel a bit slighted about the process that’s been undertaken to get these wind farms approved. It’s easy for them to trigger, Hey, we’re going to bring the government out to, to just waste everybody’s time and do a bunch of unnecessary inspections because I don’t like wind energy. And that’s the sort of thing that we have to be able to be on top of as an industry is let’s not give these people a reason to raise a red flag. Joel Saxum: In most industries the number one hazard at work is driving. So here, and I’m not, I don’t, I’m not an HSE professional for offshore wind, but I would be in from cause I have been offshore. I have done boat to boat jobs. I haven’t done boat to platform jobs. The most dangerous thing that we always recognize on those projects was transfers. If you’re transferring from vessel to vessel or vessel to platform, that’s the most dangerous part of your day. It’s like the transit thing, right? Like driving onshore work, driving is the hazardous offshore work transfers is the most hazardous. So I would say that’s one thing that they wanted to make sure because that’s very hazardous activity and people, let alone the environmental part of things, oil sheens and stuff we’re talking about, but like the actual occupational hazard. I would say in offshore wind, the highest one is transfers and so they’re probably definitely putting a microscope on that. The wind farm of the week, this week we’re gonna go to a state we’ve never been before. So Mississippi is announced its first utility scale. Wind farm is officially online. It’s called Delta Wind. It’s near the Arkansas and Tennessee border, and it has the tallest onshore turbines in the us. There are 41 Vestas units There. At four and a half megawatts each and with a tip height of almost 700 feet in the air Amazon is purchasing the power from the 184 and a half megawatt facility, which is owned by a E S. And what they’re doing with it is powering data centers and logistics hubs. So back in January, Amazon had announced 10, a 10 billion investment in two data centers, the single largest capital investment in Mississippi’s history. So a lot of things moving down there. Yeah. For the wind farm sits on 14, 000 acres of private farmland, and it will generate over a hundred million dollars in tax revenue over its lifetime. So congrats to Mississippi with their first utility scale wind farm Delta wind. Allen Hall: That’s going to do it for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. Thanks for listening. Please provide 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.

TPI Composites sells its automotive business, Fortescue invests in Nabrawind’s innovative wind turbine technology, LiftWerx receives a majority equity investment from TowerBrook Capital Partners, and Denmark’s Export and Investment Fund supports Vestas’ involvement in Australia’s Golden Plains Wind Farm. 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. TPI Composites has decided to sell its automotive business unit to investment firm, Clear Creek Investments. This divestiture aligns with TPI’s strategy to focus on its core wind energy business. The sale is expected to improve TPI’s monthly cash flow by about 1. 7 million over the remainder of 2024. TPI composites accounted for around 33 percent of all onshore wind blades on a megawatt basis globally, excluding China. Now, Phil, it does seem like wind energy companies that have been dabbling in associated industries are trying to get back out of them. Philip Totaro: To a certain extent, yes. It’s, it’s interesting because we go through these periods where companies like to be able to vertically integrate in any one industry vertical or, or potentially dabble in, in others. But the timing of this is interesting in the context of. TPI wants to be able to strengthen their position and their relationship with GE, who obviously is going through, some tumult with LM wind power as they kind of right size that, that company. TPI doesn’t want to lose GE’s business because they’re, quite highly dependent on it. And with the rise of kind of Chinese wind turbine manufacture, blade manufacturers, they have increased competition. In the world for blade manufacturing that they didn’t have, even going back a few years, so divesting the automotive business segment is fascinating that it’s going to leave them to focus on the core wind energy segment. It hasn’t been, the best of times for them recently, but hopefully this allows them to continue. Growing their, their footprint in within the industry and throughout the rest of the world. Joel Saxum: I see this as a gamble, right? Because a lot of times if you are very dependent on one revenue stream, i. e. TPI, building blades, If you have another, and that building with that being tumultuous, right? There’s contracts come up, they come down, there’s TPI, there’s blade issues, you gotta have warranty claims, all these different things. So that’s a pretty, kind of a risky business model. If you have another thing it’s just like diversifying your portfolio, right? If you have another entity or another silo that makes money, Or is, is doing decent and supporting, I think, I would think you’d keep it at this point in time to be able to kind of like flatten out your revenues. Now, if you’re a company that’s a a large entity where you’re like a, and I’m, I know they’re connected business wise, but I’m saying just GE as example where aerospace and health and all these different things. Yeah, at that point in time, it makes sense to silo off some things and focus in. But if it’s TPI and you’re just doing blades and then a little bit of automotive, I would think you’d keep it to be able to kind of, bolster your revenue base, but going a different direction. There’s going switching to just blade. Philip Totaro: So, and keep in mind, this could be because they’re pursuing a deal with somebody and the deal they’re pursuing somebody saying, get rid of this automotive business because we don’t want it. If we’re going to acquire you or otherwise partner with you. So that could be driving it as well. Allen Hall: Australian mining and green energy company Fortescue has made an additional equity investment into Spanish wind turbine innovator Nabrawind. The investment aims to accelerate the commercialization of Nabrawind’s innovative products such as modular blades craneless blade installation systems and self erecting towers and the partnership between Fortescue and Nabrawind, which began in 2023, focuses on addressing challenges in onshore wind installations related to logistics and project delays. Now, Phil, we have seen a number of concepts and early adaptations of turbine erecting equipment. Why is Fortescue investing in Nabrawind at this point and where does that push Nabrawind? Philip Totaro: Hmm. Yeah, this is a really interesting kind of evolution of Nabrawind’s journey so far. Thank you. Whereas they’ve been regionally focused in Spain and, and also North Africa recently with some of the demonstrations that they’ve done. This really, they, they’ve also worked a little bit in China with some companies to try and bolster their position there. Through some technology and IP licensing, but the reason why Fortescue wants this now is Fortescue’s different business units, including Squadron Energy Wind Lab which are kind of merging together they want to be able to develop projects in remote locations in Australia where they aren’t going to be able to truck components out there very conveniently. And so having something that could do self erection on the tower and or the blades would be desirable. So that’s kind of the first bit, coupled with the fact that Forescue is building some of these mega projects that are, 10 gigawatts, 20, 30 gigawatts in size, and they want to use, megawatt onshore wind turbines. And so with that in mind as well, they want to have technology that’s going to allow them to be able to do that. You, if you know anything about the logistics kind of situation for the existing. tower manufacturers in Australia, they can’t get a lot of their towers trucked to the places where they need to go because they just don’t have the physical infrastructure in Australia to be able to do it. So having, this kind of self erecting technology comes in handy in, in that use case. Now that said this is pretty much it. Putting a lot of eggs in, in one basket at this point with a technology that’s, gone through. I mean, it’s been in development for almost 10 years now and it’s gone through a fair amount of, of technological diligence and whatnot. But it hasn’t actually really been. Kind of deployed at scale yet. So we have yet to see whether or not this is going to be a useful capability or not to me. Joel Saxum: This one is reminiscent of the oil business. Okay. So when oil companies, oil majors, specifically ones with really deep pockets, see the need for technology, whether it’s an offshore platform, subsea drilling, like the really difficult stuff. They invest in and or provide capital to smaller innovation and technology groups to develop it for them simply because building, doing that stuff internally is very tough, right? If you’re a, let’s take it for example, if you’re a Chevron, it’s a lot harder to build up an innovation department with a bunch of smart engineers and fund it and do all this stuff rather than an engineering group coming to the team and saying, Hey, we have a need for. Product XYZ, find us someone to build it, and then someone might have a sponsor, and they grab the cash, they give it to them, they build it, and they deliver it to them. That’s a model that’s used in the oil and gas business regularly, and this is reminiscent of it. The guys, the Squadron Energy team that’s gonna build, wants to build all these massive wind farms in Western Australia, they see a need for some, some new technology and they’re not going to develop it themselves. So they just grab the capital, give it to someone that will, and reap the benefits. Allen Hall: Tower Brook Capital Partners has made a majority equity investment in Canada based LiftWerx. LiftWerx has developed proprietary up tower crane technology for turbine servicing. Their innovative solutions are seen as faster, cheaper, safer, and more environmentally friendly compared to existing alternatives. This marks the third investment for Towerbrook’s impact strategy, Towerbrook Delta, launched last year. So LiftWerx has been making rapid improvements and getting out to a number of sites in Canada and the United States. We recently had them near a wind farm in Massachusetts near me. And it, the, the adaptation of that, the adoption rate of LiftWerx is astoundingly fast. Which means they need cash, right, though? Philip Totaro: Absolutely. And keep in mind, my understanding is that their kind of crane less or onboard crane technologies, avoiding the, the big crane callout, shall we say that lets you fix components up to about a three megawatt turbine size, I think? So they, what, what that facilitates is, as kind of average turbine sizes have, have grown and, and their technology is also gotten better, it’s seeing more widespread adoption because we, we know, from discussions we’ve had on the show before as well, that, Faults and failures are kind of increasing, particularly things that require either a large component swap out, like a blade or a gearbox, maybe an uptower converter or something. And this kind of technology that avoids the cost of a big crane callout is absolutely desirable to have. So this is a fantastic deal and I’m, I’m actually pretty excited. Joel Saxum: Yeah, there’s not a whole lot of innovations that come through the wind industry that are game changers. And to me, this is one of them. There’s a couple other companies in this space. Lyftra is one of them. But LiftWerx is definitely growing, growing, growing fast. And of course, we all know they need to, if you’re going to scale quickly, especially with something capital intensive like heavy steel, because that’s basically what they are, right? They’re heavy industries. They need the capital to get these things up and moving. And it takes smart people. I know there’s been a lot of people chasing lift works and it sounds like Tower Brook has made, made the move and got in the door, so congrats to them. Allen Hall: Denmark’s Export and Investment Fund have provided 1.3 billion Danish crowns in export loans for the second stage of the Golden Plains Wind Farm in Victoria, Australia. Vestas will supply turbines and handle construction service and maintenance for this stage. Which is owned by Portugal based tag energy. The project financed by the export and investment fund and a group of international banks is expected to generate enough clean power for over 750, 000 households upon completion in 2027. All right, Phil. So the Danish government or export fund is providing the funding to Vestas, one of its local companies, to build a wind farm in Australia. That doesn’t happen much anymore. Can you explain how this happened in Australia? Philip Totaro: Well, it’s, this is really interesting because this is a similar scenario to what a lot of these Western European companies are, are saying in regards to the Chinese. Coming into Europe and bringing their own capital in this case. What this 1. 3 billion Danish crona that amounts to, I want to say a little over 187 million. U. S. dollars so it’s not, like they’re financing the whole project. Tag Energy is still, primarily responsible for this. What this money goes for, though, is to help facilitate the Turbine fabrication and transportation to Australia for these components, which bolsters jobs in Denmark. So even though the project is being deployed in Australia, it’s still, helping out Denmark. It does, however, also help vestiges. Growth in their footprint in Australia, obviously with the, not only the project, but with a growing order book in Australia, did Vestas is actually looking at increasing factory space there for nacelle and drivetrain assembly. And tower production so this is something that, with these turbines for the Golden Plain site, they’re the six megawatt V 162s so Vestas wants to be able to domesticate some of that production eventually into Australia. This is a first step into helping to facilitate that but it’s just interesting to me that this is also, again it’s fine when European companies or, European governments help out European companies, even if it’s helping them facilitate growth in a foreign country. But when the Chinese tried to do it in Western Europe, it’s the end of the universe and they have to have countervailing duties applied. Joel Saxum: I think an interesting thing here is not so much on the economic side, Phil covered that, he’s a genius in that space, but the fact that Vestas is going to supply the turbines, handle construction, service, and maintenance for the stage of this wind farm. So it goes to kind of speak of how that, the, the wind industry is developing in Australia. We’ve known for a long time that it’s heavy on OEMs, but they’re, they’re, in the past year, two years, there has been more and more. independent service providers over there. However, with this wind farm, it looks like Vestas is going to build the turbines. You do the logistics for the turbines, install the turbines, maintain the turbines and service the turbines which is an interesting strategy.

Maya Malik, co-founder of KIMAenergy, joins host Rosie Barnes to discuss local content in offshore wind. Drawing on examples from the UK, Denmark, Japan, Taiwan and Australia, they explore policies to encourage domestic manufacturing. Maya shares insights on the key factors for success, including providing certainty on project volumes, offering incentives and infrastructure, and exploiting the potential for low-emission manufacturing in Australia’s growing offshore wind industry. 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 Rosemary Barnes: Welcome to a special episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Rosie Barnes, and I have with me today, Maya Malik, who is the co founder of KIMAenergy. Thanks for joining us, Maya. Thanks, Rosie. Happy to be here. So today we’re going to be talking all about local content and how countries can try to get more manufacturing in their region when they’re going to be installing a lot of wind energy. So I know this is an area that you’ve worked in a lot. Would you be able to just give us a bit of background about the kinds of work that you’ve done in this industry over the years? Maya Malik: Yeah, sure. So I have a 20 year background in energy and offshore wind. Actually I first started in, in petrochemicals working in Australia and Europe and Asia. On the construction projects and 13 years ago, I moved to offshore wind. So I worked on projects in the UK, in Europe and Asia. And then together with my business partner, we started up KIMAenergy, which we are an advisory company focused on offshore wind in APAC. And I guess our niche is doing offshore wind in new markets. For most of our careers, we’ve basically worked on projects that are, pioneering in nature in the countries that we’ve worked in. Now we are based in Melbourne and yeah, continuing to support other developers with their projects in new markets. Rosemary Barnes: Okay. So you’ve worked a lot on a lot of different offshore wind projects all around the globe. I know that from the conversation that we’ve had before, before this recording. Can you tell me about yeah, just a little bit of A few examples of some interesting offshore wind projects that you’ve worked on. Maya Malik: Most interesting and I guess most impactful for me was working on projects in Taiwan. I’d worked on projects in Europe but there, the industry developed quite organically over, a period of two decades projects, getting incrementally bigger and technology incrementally improving. And Taiwan, I would say was the first market outside of Northern Europe to implement offshore wind and also was doing it in a way to accelerate the industrialization. So go from, doing commercial scale projects over a period of multiple years to, a handful of years. Yeah I I moved there together with another colleague from my company, and we were essentially there to win projects and, do a show in for the first time in in Taiwan. And yeah, it was a really It was a cool experience. Yeah, just really not having, the suppliers, not having the experienced people on the ground and just, it was down to, you and what you knew and, the resources you could personally call on. To do to do projects. Yeah, it was a real growth experience, I think for all of us in the industry at that time. But yeah, super, super great achievement. Rosemary Barnes: You’re Australian, but you started in Australia. And then Europe, you’re in Denmark. Is that right? Maya Malik: I was based out of the UK working for the main Danish utility. So yeah, that was my second home. And then, I guess. Denmark did offshore wind, they were important in the innovation of the technology, but UK were the ones to really take it to a commercial scale. So put the policies and targets behind doing offshore wind at volume, allowing it to industrialize. And then the next market to do that would be Germany. I was quite involved on those projects as well. And then we started looking outside of Northern Europe. Yeah, there was an important period in 2017 when the auction price for Osherwind showed that, the LCOE was cheaper than gas. And then it really changed everything. And in our industry and I would say exploded at that point and then, yeah, and then the first market that, that would move to implement offshore wind fastest was Taiwan. And for me, it was, I’d lived in Asia before and I loved it and it was closer to home. So a great chance to do lots of things and tick many boxes. Rosemary Barnes: Okay. And now back to Australia where we’re only just getting into gear now. Can you talk a little bit about Yeah. What’s going on with offshore wind at the moment? I think a lot of our listeners are based in the US so might not be a hundred percent familiar with what’s going on in Australia, but yeah, it’s an exciting time. Can you, yeah, to summarize where we’re up to now? Yeah, sure. Maya Malik: So yeah, it’s a kind of, it’s a late market, quite an immature one, but actually they. did a fantastic job to very fast put in place the framework to award seabed rights. And I would say, the framework they put together is amongst the clearest I’ve seen globally. So it was very, transparent and easy to understand what you had to do to secure exclusivity for your offshore area. So Australia is following a two stage process to award project rights. So first, there’s a competitive price to give away CBAD exclusive rights for CBAD area. And then there’s a second process to give support for revenue. So this will be similar to U. S. and other countries like U. K. and Korea. And the process towards CBAD rights is done by the federal government. So they do it across all states in Australia. Yeah. And they have essentially looked across the states, where there’s developer interest, where it was viable to do offshore wind and where there was supporting infrastructure that could be developed by Carbis. And they basically narrowed it down to six areas. And they have released what they call a draft declared area for all sex and some are starting to be finalized. They also have released invitations to apply for what is called a feasibility license, which is essentially your exclusive right to develop in an area. And yeah, the first licenses have just been awarded weeks ago for an area in the state of Victoria called Gippsland. And I think the second area will be in New South Wales that will be announced soon. And then the next step, awarding revenue, is going to be run by the state government rather than the federal. So there’s limited information on the regime and exactly how it will work, but it’s expecting that it will, be very similar to the UK CFD regime. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, so the, they’ve announced six, six areas right in Gippsland. And then I saw that there’s another six shortlisted. And I was a bit unsure about what happened there. Did the government like divide up the area into parcels of, I want to always want to say land, but I guess parcels of seabed and let people bid on them. Or was it up to developers to pick what they thought would be a good spot and then choose exactly which area. First zone Maya Malik: has awarded licenses. So this is a zone of Gippsland. And then 12 licenses have been awarded in Gippsland. Yeah, equivalent to about 25 gigawatts of offshore wind. And of these 12 licenses, six are confirmed and the other six are in the process of being confirmed. Yeah, then in terms of how it, how the framework is designed and how you select and are awarded your sites. So what the government does is initially announces a declared area. An issue is an invitation for developers to apply for a feasibility license. And for Gippsland, the area was 15, 000 kilometers squared and each developer could apply for as many licenses they want. Each license was allowed to be up to 700 kilometers squared in size, supporting about two and a half gigawatts of offshore wind. And then, the process to decide. Your license area was up to individual developers. There was no coordination and there was also many prerequisites. So in other markets, you might need to pre qualify by having certain consents and so on. But here it was essentially you were. To write a proposal that showed, your technical capability, your financial capability, and also how you would benefit the economy. And then based on that application and the area you chose, government took that and made their assessment over a period of around eight months and they first decided who would Met the minimum merit criteria. So they had a criteria, financial ability and if you met merit criteria and put into the next level, and then they reviewed who overlapped with who, and then if you’re, if you met the merit criteria, but you overlap with someone else who also met it, then the government has a kind of discrepancy to decide who has more merit. And awarded to the person with more merit. So it’s a little bit of luck in this, if you choose an area that no one else chose, then. Then if you meet the minimum bar, you’re probably getting a license. But if you meet an area that a lot of people chose, then it’s going to go to the person who is deemed, yeah, is the best developer according to the government score sheet. And then in some cases they could say you were equal in merit. And then they would put you into a private negotiation to decide how to divide the area that you overlapped. Rosemary Barnes: Okay, but there was no auction or anything, like they ran in New York? Maya Malik: No, so there were, the regulations did allow for if if the two developers that were put into a negotiation couldn’t agree, it did allow the government to ask for each developer to then submit a price. And then the highest bidder would win that area. But of course, all developers would like to award that. And then there was yeah, that did not happen in this case. It could happen in future. But essentially yeah, it’s quite a cheap process compared to other markets where you need to, Commit to and pay for a seabed lease. This is this is not, you’re not getting a lease either. So the rights aren’t as firm as in other markets where you get a seabed lease in return, you just get a right to do your surveys and progress your development works, but you’re also getting that right exclusively. That as long as you progress the works and get it to the next stage. No one else is going to be able to do the same for your area. Rosemary Barnes: It sounds like a lot, right? Up to 25 gigawatts just in this first region. Any crystal ball gazing about how many of these projects will eventually go to fruition? And when do you think the first ones will start to come online? If Maya Malik: you step back and look at Australia, they’ve released a lot of seabed. If you add up all these declared areas, it’s around 100 gigawatts that it can support. And consider that Australia, the full installed capacity in Australia is 80 gigawatts. That’s a lot. And what I found quite interesting is more than half of it is for floating which is, going to have higher end costs and further away. And considering Australia also has lots of onshore energy options. And here it puts a question mark against, right? So what is actually going to be built out of all this seabed area released? That is the magic question. And then if you just look at Gippsland, so you had this, 15, 000 kilometers squared. So now what’s awarded in licenses is a lot less, but still 25 gigawatts. Then if you look at how much grid connection capacity is being allocated and built out, That’s seven gigawatts. Then if you look at what the state target is by 2040, that’s nine gigawatts. So it’s allowing for also some to be offshore wind to be done on the other side of the state where they also have a declared area. So of the 25 gigawatts, seven gigawatts can be connected to the grid. At least with, with the plans that are around today. Yeah, you are having still quite a lot of competition and I think like particularly in the auction stages, it will be highly competitive. I think it’s quite interesting at the 25 gigawatts. Also, a lot of that is floating. and naturally not be as competitive in an auction. So it’s I’m not sure how they would, Like when I’ll participate unless a separate regime is created to support that technology. Rosemary Barnes: Okay let’s move on a little bit because the main thing that I wanted to talk to you today about was the manufacturing associated with having such a, huge potential pipeline of offshore wind projects. Another recent little bit of Australian. government action in recent weeks was this future made in Australia announcement from the government that they’ve got, like a lot of money set aside for manufacturing renewables and energy transition stuff in Australia. There’s a lot for hydrogen. There’s a lot for critical minerals that then I think. It’s all kinds of clean energy in general. Yeah. So I just wanted to talk to you about what does it take to actually get manufacturing happening locally? And I know that this is something that you’ve been working on and you’ve seen other countries like Taiwan, let’s start with them as an example. What did they do to, when they, wanted to start up an offshore wind industry there, what actions did they take to make sure that industry also brought manufacturing industry with it to the country? So currently Maya Malik: you have just one state really committing to offshore wind by putting it into the energy mix. This is Victoria saying they do nine gigawatts by 2040. And then, yeah, you have a lot of seabed being given away. It’s still not really clear how big the industry here is going to be. And and will there be appetite in other states to support the grid upgrades and the offtake regimes that you need to realize projects. So in my view, until the industry or suppliers, can be confident about the volume and the timing of offshore wind build out in Australia, it’ll be really difficult for them to invest into manufacturing new facilities. But I think if they could see this or get this certainty, I actually I’m not as pessimistic as most Australians who are beating themselves up constantly about how bad we are at manufacturing. I actually think there’s a lot of potential and a lot could be done here. I really think the key thing, to address is this volume and certainty of projects because that’s when you get manufacturing. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, you definitely see with offshore wind around the world when there’s big projects that set in stone, then you do start to see factories opening because the components are huge, right? It’s over a hundred meters long and all the. Substructures are large as well. Maya Malik: And it’s so correlated. And let’s look at an example in the UK, you had the industry sector deal in 2018, 2019, this is between industry and government. And government essentially saying, we want lots of local content. What’s it going to take, and what agreements can we make around, developing local content. And, the agreement they came to is okay. Developers will aim for 60 percent local content. Starting from where they were in the twenties and thirties. And in return, government would provide a 40 gigawatts pipeline. Volume of projects and, steadily releasing X amount per year with, CFD regimes behind it to support. And, and then behind that was a number of other things like supporting the upgrade of harbors and tax reliefs, et cetera. But yeah, in essence the top level, give and take there was you give us 60%, I’ll give you volume as it, you can really break it down to that. And yeah, for me, that’s, that kind of piece is still missing. So it’s hard to move on to the next and then, because I think if you look at what we have now existing, so it’s not a lot of specialist vessels and a low manufacturing base capability. Okay. Thanks. So to get to that next step you need investment and you it’s hard to get the investment without the volume, without the contracts. So that’s the sort of yeah, thing to aim for. And then you have these other enablers, grants, tax reliefs, et cetera, that all help, right? All help to pull it together. So yeah. And I guess I can also add looking at the current situation we did in the last project I was on, we did quite a detailed local content study for offshore wind in Australia. And I found in summary, what it showed was actually the skills here. Really high quality and absolutely the right skills given our parallel heavy industries to do a lot of stuff locally. And then, yeah, the limitation is facilities quayside space, so harbors that can support manufacturing and specialist vessels. And so that leaves you in an area because you’ve got all the right skills of people. So we’ll do great in, development phase in operations and maintenance let’s say in civil structures. So yeah, you have very high local content and job creation where it’s more dependent on skills and people. And then you have, some scopes that are dependent on manufacturing and specialist vessels, like the turbines, foundations, installation, cables, the local content quite limited. And yeah, it needs a, it needs an investment. Rosemary Barnes: And what are, what other models are being used around the world? I know that when we talked before, you told me about. The approach that they took in Taiwan, for example, that was really different to that. It sounds like in the UK, it’s more a matter of, provide certainty. Manufacturers are going to want to put factories there just because that’s the most logical place to supply these huge components. But that’s not. That’s not what Taiwan did, right? They took a much more micromanagement approach. I don’t know if that’s the right word. So I think UK Maya Malik: is what I would call like a soft local content policy. And interestingly, I’ll go incrementally, so UK, quite soft I think they were also quite late and they were also stuck to a model for instance, when it came to developing harbors, very keen on more promoting private sector investment. Rather than government led upgrades, which is something let’s say Denmark did, and therefore did it much faster and we’re able to capture more manufacturing opportunities despite not having a low, a big local pipeline. So yeah, one thing you can do is soft policies and give industry like a clear signal that this is what you want. And then, those that, toe the line will get the projects and then then you have, the countries like Denmark, which is more focusing on what enablers, can I put in place and it’s a form of subsidy and they just, built a really, good, big harbor that was well placed and could support, industry and attract people to set up facilities and so on. And therefore, despite not having their own project pipeline who could capture the opportunities in the region. Then you have someone like Japan and they have a sector deal as well. So similar to the UK got together with industry and said, okay, we would like 60 percent by I think it’s 2040. And also gave grants for, setting up plants and factories and. And then took it a bit step further. So then also made it part of the auction process. So it’s part of the auction. You submit a proposal and percentage of score is your price and the percentage of your score is also your contribution to the local economy and your collaboration with local stakeholders. It it’s the. Becoming a bit more, hard requirements, but still giving developers a lot of flexibility about how they do it and also how much they want to do. But then obviously the more you do, the better you score. So you have a much better chance of winning a project. Then then we’ll go to Taiwan. And I guess they’re on extreme end. After doing their demo projects, they created a scheme. If they had the. Selection process followed by an auction process and the selection process was very much around, attracting global developers to, to come to Taiwan and, essentially make sure offshore wind happen. And then the selection process, the reward was a very high feed in tariff. And you weren’t required to submit a price that was predetermined, that tariff was your carrot at the end. And there was a qualification criteria, which you had to promise to meet a certain amount of local content, and then you were also invited to submit a proposal that showed, how. Great, you were technical, financial wise, but also gave you opportunity to offer even more local content. And then, person with the highest score wins and, you get a high score by offering more local content. And then this has evolved through various rounds. So in. In the very first selection round, the first project, they wanted to prioritize fast delivery, low complexity. So they said, you guys get a break from local content. And then there was another three gigawatts that were awarded with grid connection dates, across several years. And the earlier ones had to do less. And the ones awarded with later connection dates had to do more. Ironically, this ended up in a situation where you had quite a small volume of projects that had to do the most local content. And then therefore the contracts for these local content were quite small in nature and didn’t have the volume of pipelines ended up being very expensive. And yeah, you have this trend of, instead of cost going down cost going up. Then then you had a period of a, then you had an auction for another couple of gigawatts where they took away all of the content but they’re expecting that they had, already had enough pipeline that local content would naturally happen, but it wasn’t quite there. And because it was so expensive, um, it wasn’t the natural choice. So then when they brought in the next auction. They, um, they didn’t make it mandatory, but they made it a competition of local content. So who can deliver the most wins? And it’s gone through various iterations because so many developers are struggling with it. And yeah, and I would say regrettably in Taiwan, so now they have several gigawatts of projects. But. The costs there are increasing and continue to increase. So, yeah, it’s it can, it’s started to concern investors and some people have exited the market. And it, because like this increase in the content and costs is combined with reduce. Subsidies and support on the revenue side. So there’s a big squeeze, right? From a couple of angles. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, it’s interesting because it sounds so obvious when you say, we’re going to have this big industry here. It sounds obvious to say, Oh yeah we have to make all of that locally. Or as much of it locally as possible. That’s the best thing for the nation. But it obviously, the evidence shows that it comes with trade offs in terms of how fast you can get your industry started and how expensive it is too. So yeah, I guess that’s the other side of the coin that. We don’t seem to focus on too much. It’s always just, local manufacturing is good. But yeah, there’s trade offs. Maya Malik: Yeah. And it’s very complex, like these projects and particularly in new markets when you’re just getting an industry going. And I think the other thing is when you’re in a situation like Taiwan and potentially Australia. It’s not like a, it’s not like a natural evolution of projects. You’re really trying to fast forward the industrialization and condense it. And almost like before your first project is built, you’re already auctioning, something 10 gigawatts later. And you’re demanding people to price in the learning curve and the cost reduction that you haven’t actually seen yet. And so all the suppliers have seen is this first project that they did, that they really struggled with and was super expensive. Then you ask them don’t worry. This is in 10 years time, you’re going to be loads better by then. So just give me something really cheap. And they’re like, no, we’re still. Burning from that last time we did. And so like people don’t price in those costs reductions until they actually experience them. And you will get them and they will experience them initially, but you can’t get people to price that. in ahead of time. I feel like sometimes in these regimes, yeah, it looks great on paper. And in theory, also, you think that’s what should happen, but also because you’re pre planning and you’re running auctions many years before stuff is actually built. Yeah you Yeah, maybe it’s a bit unrealistic, the expectations that people will forecast the reductions and be confident to sign contracts against that. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. What is the typical timeframe to go from, starting to think about a project to actually turning on your first turbine? Maya Malik: I would say average is about 10 years. But it does depend on the country, but to get in the development phase, the like Australia, for instance, the critical path is actually approvals. And then these processes, these competitions for awarding CBAD and off take. Actually also add quite a bit of time to your schedule because there’s a lot that you don’t start until you have certainty because you don’t want to make investments and then that kind of has the effect of extending your overall timeline. I think in some kind of, actually in Taiwan it’s quite accelerated. So from when, when people were awarded their sites and tariffs. Like we were financially closing two years later, which is very fast. I think in Australia, from when you get your feasibility license, I think you’re more like five years later having a financial close and it’s another three years to construct. Rosemary Barnes: It’s Maya Malik: our Rosemary Barnes: expectation. So we’ll be very lucky to see anything in this decade. I think Maya Malik: you might get something in the early 2030s. Their target is two gigawatts by 2032. I think that’s realistic. Rosemary Barnes: I want to try and tie this up nicely. So knowing what you know about all the different, the ways that all the different kinds of local content encouragement has happened around the world, what should Australia be aiming for? I should we be manufacturing locally and if yes, what parts of it and how to encourage that? Maya Malik: I think, we have the volume and I would say if we have the volume, I think the first step is to really decide how much do we want and how much can really stand behind. Seabirds, it will be, my cup of tea. What are we willing to do to build good connections, to upgrade the harbors, to, give revenue support regimes and then combine that into a national target. You might even do a collaboration with New Zealand and say regionally. We’re going to be 40 gigawatts by 2040. I don’t know. And then then that is a kind of anchor figure. And that figure is not, I know targets get a lot of flack because people see them as, very fluffy commitments that never get delivered. The key is to make it not just a, figure that we dreamed up, but actually something that works that is, actually supports an energy mix and Yeah, I can say with kind of commitments behind it to give investors, suppliers the confidence to say, Hey, this is actually going to happen. And so we’re going to be ready for this. And then I think then it’s then putting in place the incentives and the infrastructure. Thing about offshore wind is the components are huge, they’re massive and transporting them inland, even short distances is really slow and difficult and risky. So all manufacturing needs to be done by the quayside. And you’re talking now big components, you’ve got to get, your materials in, you’ve got to fabricate, you’ve got to store half built stuff somewhere, you’ve got to store fully built stuff somewhere else while they’re getting ready to be shipped offshore. And so you need a lot of space on the key side, but also hinterland space. And, that those kind of harbors that are being developed 10 years work easily, right? So you need to be thinking about that and doing that, as soon as possible. And then there’s the things you can do on top of that like grants to give. It’s a bit like this Policy that’s recently been announced say make something here. We’ll essentially subsidize it. You can give to land that’s happened in places like us and Taiwan, where they essentially say, Hey, we give you this, this quayside land for free. Please build something here. You can give tax breaks. Like in the UK, the big T side development, which will now be, I think the biggest brownfield development in it is essentially a free port. No customs, no taxes very easy to operate in, export out or service, your domestic needs. Yeah, so there’s a number of things you can do to then, make it an easy decision. But I will say, so start starting with the volumes. Is really key, and you, then you and you could focus at least initially on what can you deliver just to support the domestic market. And if you can also show, then as a hub, it’s super attractive to, use this as somewhere to export out and support, other markets in the region is a natural evolution. I think Australia, yes, it’s it’s a it’s far. So you know, logistically it’s more expensive, but that’s also what will help it because it’s also going to cost a lot to make something somewhere else and ship it here. So actually you can have a bit of a cost advantage here making stuff because you’ve got that, that cost saving from not transporting it. And I think Ben, despite this cost and you’ll say yes, and probably, you More expensive resources. I think Australia seen, it’s got, low interest rates. It’s got a sort of stable economy, politically very stable. So I think within the region, it’s also got a lot of things going for it that will make people comfortable, English speaking workforce, things like that. Yeah, and I see something coming next, which is a demand for things to be made. With low emissions or no emissions, and then there’s going to be a race for not just who can manufacture the cheapest, but who can manufacture the cheapest using all green energy. And then I think a lot of energy intensive manufacturing is going to depend on how cheap your green energy is. And Australia has such a big there’s something to exploit, when that comes and in, in some, spaces it’s already there. And I think, yeah, it will be that sort of thinking that makes it more and more attractive to do stuff here, to support an industry here. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. That’s a really nice optimistic way to finish. And that’s one of my big hopes for Australia too, that one of the things that I, Constantly carry on about green manufacturing in Australia. Oh, good. It’s my rant too. It’s feels like it’s starting to, enough of us are ranting about this for enough years and now, Politicians are starting to talk about it too. So maybe we’ll finally manage to pull it together. Okay we’ll finish up there. Thanks so much for joining us. That was definitely interesting and I learned a lot give me a lot to think about. So thank you. Thanks. Thanks. I really enjoyed it.

Rosemary discusses emerging technologies from companies like Calix and CarbonCure to reduce emissions from cement production. Phil and Joel analyze how the European Parliament election results could impact renewable policies and the growing trend of co-locating wind, solar and battery storage projects. Plus Invenergy’s Purple Skies project is the Wind Farm of the Week! 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: YouTube star Alex Choi, known for his car stunt videos, has been charged with, by federal authorities, for orchestrating a dangerous video involving a helicopter and a Lamborghini. The 24 year old content creator allegedly directed a video called Destroying a Lamborghini with Fireworks, in which two individuals in a helicopter shot fireworks at a speeding Lamborghini in the El Mirage. Dry Lake Bed in San Bernardino County, of course, California. Troy faces a maximum of 10 years in federal prison if convicted of causing the displacement of an explosive or incendiary device on an aircraft. Now, Rosemary, I assume you have seen this, being the YouTube star that you are. You have seen this video of them shooting off Roman candles from this helicopter? Rosemary Barnes: It hasn’t come up in my suggested videos, no. Allen Hall: I’ve seen it like 12 times. Joel Saxum: Yeah, I’ve seen it and it’s awesome. I feel bad for these guys. They created a cool video. But if you go by the letter of the law, there’s a lot of things illegal about this. It’s like the same concept of if you shoot a drone down with a firearm, you can get the same exact penalty as if you shot down a plane with people in it. Because they’re both aircraft that are covered under law by the FAA. So the FAA has got some pretty stinch stringent laws, and if you don’t tow the line, you can get in a lot of trouble, as evidenced by This awesome video of shooting fireworks from a fire, from a helicopter at a Lamborghini in the desert. Philip Totaro: If precedent is anything, we had a guy in Santa Barbara County who, during COVID, took up his little, tiger cub plane or whatever single engine prop, and did a YouTube video of him crashing his plane. He got six years. These guys can probably expect a little more than six. Allen Hall: Wow. Don’t mess around with airplanes. I think that’s the whole point of this is don’t do stupid stuff around airplanes. They’re not toys, boys and girls. They are definitely not toys. And the Wild West is over. Maybe you can do that in Australia, but you sure can’t do that in the United States anymore. Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m Allen Hall, and here’s this week’s headlines. The International Energy Agency’s latest report reveals the clean energy investment landscape across top countries and regions. The United States invested 280 billion in clean energy in 2023, up from 200 billion in 2020. Europe leads with the highest clean energy to fossil fuels investment ratio, spending more than 10 euros on clean energy for every euro invested. And fossil fuels. China saw the most robust growth in solar, wind and nuclear power, while India’s clean energy investments reached 68 billion in 2023, a 40 percent increase from the 2016 to 2020 average. In related news, the increasing occurrence of negative electricity prices in Europe is raising concerns among investors about the profitability. Renewable energy projects. Negative pricing has become more frequent as solar and wind production ramp up. While consumers benefit from the free electricity during these periods, investors worry about the impacts on returns. Germany, Europe’s biggest power market, had about 300 hours of prices below zero last year, and that may double in 2024. The solution lies in building more energy storage systems, such as batteries, to absorb excess electricity and stabilize prices. However, the current scale of energy storage deployment is. Insufficient to mitigate the impact of negative pricing fully. Experts estimate that Europe’s energy storage capacity needs to increase sevenfold. By 2030 to effectively address the issue. And in Iowa region fiber, a subsidiary of Alliant Energy has opened a wind turbine blade recycling facility. The facility aims to divert 30, 000 tons of scrap wind turbine materials annually by shredding the blades and transforming the extracted components into premium products for use in construction materials such as concrete and asphalt. The eco friendly process provides a sustainable alternative to burning or land filling the blades. Reduces the carbon footprint of construction projects and enhances the durability and environmental resistance of materials. Region 5 has also established strategic partnerships nationwide to expand its recycling efforts. That’s this week’s top news stories. Now, here’s our panel. 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. Phil, over in Europe, the European Parliament elections are in, and this has caused a lot of consternation in the renewable energy markets. As is being described in the United States, the European Parliament is shifting right. And the word I hear a lot on the U. S. news is far right. Now, I’ve done some research into that, and I don’t Far right in the United States and far right in Europe are not really the same thing. So it’s moved a little bit to the right and it seems like a little more off center may be the best way to approach it because I think some of the left and the right have picked up some some votes or some elections. Here’s the rub, and Rosemary, I could use your input on this too. It does seem like the, there is a push within Europe from some portion of the citizenry to slow down renewables and to go a little bit slower than what the current pace is. Now, is that The European Parliament doesn’t have that much oversight, the European Commission seems to have the most oversight over what actually happens in Europe at the moment. Do these Parliament results really change the landscape for renewable projects in Europe, or is it just a little bump in the road? Philip Totaro: It changes them from the perspective of Influencing national elections as a result of these parliamentary elections, France already has announced a snap elections, Belgium Belgium’s prime minister announced that he’s going to step down and there’s going to be a reelection for the PM there. So the real influence of this is in pushing some of the member states in the EU. A little bit further to the right, which could have the consequence of having objection to or non adoption of some of the policies that have been proposed, like around this Green New Deal that they want to and that, frankly, Wind Europe got behind and has also been trying to champion. The reality of it is it can eventually have an impact. Anything that’s in the pipeline right now, probably unlikely to get affected by it, as long as, they’re far enough along the permitting process. But anything that’s earlier stage, That was hoping to get sped up as a result of permitting reforms in, in, France, Germany, Italy, Spain some of these things are looking a little more tenuous at this point. And as we know, the markets never particularly capital markets, never like uncertainty. They don’t want to put foreign direct investment into Countries where there’s uncertainty about what the policy regime is going to be because they want to be able to provide certainty to the returns. Joel Saxum: Phil, let me ask you a question here. And this is pardon my ignorance on the European Parliament. But do they, they don’t have direct influence over the country? So if I was a German developer and I was selling power within Germany and it’s not crossing my borders, the European Parliament can’t do anything for me or against me. It would only be if I’m going across borders or what is their actual influence? Philip Totaro: No, it’s a, that’s a great, it’s a great question. So yes, that you’re correct in that the European Parliament only does things at the EU level where it crosses country borders. However Since a lot of the there’s two, two things at play here. One is the shift to towards a little more center, right? In Europe is again, influencing what’s going on in the individual countries. So as I just mentioned with France, Belgium, you’re even seeing some things in Spain, you’re likely to see things in the Netherlands and a few other countries as well. Where this shift to the, the center right is gonna, play out in the individual countries and their country level parliament elections or, president or PM elections could could end up being influenced by this outcome. Generally what happens when. Things start becoming more protectionist and more kind of conservative is it slows down free trade, which is bad for the renewable sector, and it slows down foreign direct investment, which is bad for the renewable sector. So as you mentioned, while you’re right, they don’t have a regulatory influence on what happens in any one specific country. Other than how that is harmonized throughout the entire EU, so that when they want to enact policies across the entire EU, Parliament, can vote to adopt recommendations from the European Commission and Parliament. If they do that, there’s, presume presumption of ratification by all the member states of the EU and therefore adoption of whatever policies are done at the EU level. So that can happen. necessarily have an influence again if there are some of these permitting reforms that they were trying to enact that were going to be, you wide, those are things that are potentially in jeopardy at this point, again, also, In each member country, if there are permitting reforms, for example, that they were trying to adopt, the shift to the center right could slow down or stop those country level adoptions, irregardless of, even Poland. Poland is. Going through a big discussion right now where they’re trying to reduce the setback from 1000 meters to 500, and it would open 41 plus gigawatts of wind energy and solar potential in the market. If they did that, but they, they have to be able to reduce those though and get those setback reductions approved. If they’re going to adopt that, then, it opens up market potential, but, things shifting to the right a little bit throws that into question. Allen Hall: Rosemary is the only one that lives underneath the parliamentary system. France just called for general elections, snap elections as it’s being described in the United States. That’s not something we’re familiar with. We have elections every two years, generally every four years for president. So there’s a set schedule. When snap elections happen in a parliamentary system, Does that just destabilize the government temporarily? Does it, what does it do for investment? I’m just wondering if I want to do some offshore work in France right now, is that, this is, does it seem like the right time to do it? Because it does seem like there’s going to be some significant change in the government structure. Rosemary Barnes: I don’t even know the exact amounts of time that it is in Australia, but it’s approximately every three years you have to have an election after a certain amount of time and you can’t have it earlier than a certain amount of time. And so the government is always, the government has the advantage of getting to choose exactly when in that window that it will have an election. And yeah, they’re always choosing are they doing really well on their opinion polls early? Then let’s have an early election. And if they’re not, they’ll probably push it later. We also do have another way to have an election outside of that cycle. Most countries probably do. If something really bad happens in Australia the trigger is if the government can’t get its budget passed, then, you And they try, I think it’s twice, then they can yeah, call a double disillusion election where, you know, like all of the, everything is spilled and up for grabs. Yeah, so I I don’t know exactly how they do it in France. They’ll obviously be a caretaker period between when they announce the election and when the new government starts and how long is that in France? I don’t know. Allen Hall: If Macron’s party took what they described in the U. S. as a beating in the European Parliament voting, it seems like they’re calling an election at a time of weakness, not of strength. And I think you described it how I would think of it, is you want to call an election while you are strong, not weak, but Macron’s calling it when he seems to be the most weak he’s been in a couple of years. Why? What’s the play there? Rosemary Barnes: The European elections feel very separate to the country elections, at least that’s my experience when I lived in Denmark, and sometimes something that happens with the European elections can cause a backlash against it in the next yeah. The election of the, yeah, president or parliament or whatever it is that the individual countries are doing. So yeah it’s possible that they expecting something like that in France. The other thing is that, yeah, you wouldn’t want to call an election when you’re in a weak position, but if you see your position getting weaker and weaker as every day goes on, then earlier is still better. Even if you’re currently weak, you better than waiting a year until you’re like really just. So yeah, it’s more to do with how they see the trend going over the next little while rather than where they’re specifically standing now. Allen Hall: Phil, if Marine Le Pen has more of a say in French government, what does that mean for renewables? Philip Totaro: Not good things because she’s come out years ago when she was trying to contest an election with Macron and said she wants to gut the renewables industry, particularly wind energy. Not a big fan. So that would be Although, to be honest, if she wins, her party is unlikely to get a significant majority so they’re still going to have to work together and they’re still going to be, opposition from people that are still pro renewables. She’s very pro conventional power generation and nuclear wants to keep that going. And, at the end of the day, it’s, again, it’s going to destabilize investment and particularly foreign direct investment in France for the, especially with the offshore. What would you even overthink about that election since they have operations in France? That is a complicated question because it comes at a time when, are they really going to maintain a significant footprint there anyway if they’re You know, are they going to keep LM? That’s an open question. Are they going to sell off individual factories? Are they going to make those factories GE factories? I have, nobody knows actually at this point. So that is a big uncertainty at this stage. Joel Saxum: Throw in there for these renewable companies that are based in France as well. We just talked about GE talk NG, EDF, there’s some big players over there. French labor laws are not friendly to the company themselves. So that adds another layer of complexity into any kind of things that happen in the renewables industry over there. Allen Hall: It’s an amazing turn of events because the United States, the European Parliament elections were not really discussed before they happened. And now they’re a very frequent discussion on the news and on podcasts all across the states. It’s amazing how fast things turn. So the new PES Wind Magazine, speaking of Europe, has just arrived from the United Kingdom via the King’s Post, right? It’s not the Queen’s Post anymore, it’s the King’s Post. Joel Saxum: That’s not Europe. Allen Hall: Oh, sorry, Joel. It’s You’re right, but some part of the staff is working from France. I do know that. The new PES Wind magazine came out and I just received it. If you haven’t gotten your copy, just go to peswind.com and you can just read it online. This thing is full of really good articles. The one I saw, I was looking through and I thought of Rosemary was this article by Hitachi Energy because they were discussing about HVDC and how that is going to get implemented wider and wider. And some of the government decisions and the policy and regulatory environment and interest rates are playing into things like Hitachi developing newer and newer systems. And I thought, wow, this is, Really pertinent to a lot of discussions. We’ve had them on uptime over the last several weeks if you haven’t seen the new PES win magazine Go get it at peswind.com because it’s just full of great information Rosemary there’s been a big push in the United States to decarbonize cement factories And I think that push is happening all around the world And I know you’ve been doing a little more of a deep dive on it than I have Do you want to describe what is happening in the cement world? Rosemary Barnes: Yeah cement is last time I checked, it’s about 8 percent of global emissions, cement being the like glue that goes inside concrete. So everywhere you see concrete, then yeah, the, the main structural component to that is cement. And also that’s the main contribution to its emissions. And it’s, usually lumped in the, it’s always lumped in the hard to abate category of emissions because it’s not like decarbonizing electricity. You can use renewables instead of fossil fuels and decarbonizing transport. A lot of that is just going to be swapping out electric cars for fossil fuel powered cars with cement. The emissions don’t mainly come from burning fossil fuels. 60 percent of the emissions actually process emissions because to make cement, you take calcium carbonate, which is limestone. And you need to yeah, you need to turn that into lime. So you turn limestone into lime and the chemical reaction releases CO2. So it’s CO2 that’s been trapped underground in a fossil. Limestone is essentially fossilized sea creatures. And then you’ve got to release that CO2. And so it’s like a non negotiable part of that chemical reaction. And cement isn’t the only thing that uses lime. Lime’s used in a lot of different industries, but anywhere that you have you turn limestone into lime, you’ve got CO2 that’s being released. And there’s just no way around that. The technologies that people are looking at to address this include carbon capture, that’s one of the simplest ideas. And in fact, carbon capture is better suited to cement production than most other places where people were considering carbon capture because the CO2 is quite concentrated. Compared to how it is in in a fossil fuel power plant, usually the CO2 is only coming out, maybe 10, 15 percent of the flue gases are CO2. So it needs to be concentrated and in the cement plant, it’s much higher. And I was actually recently a few weeks ago, I visited an Australian company, Calix who have a new kind of calciner, which is basically an oven or a kiln. that is used to make this reaction from limestone into lime. And they’re doing it a bit differently instead of getting the, it needs about 900 degrees Celsius. And instead of getting that with a flame right in the middle next to the ground up raw meal, they’re heating it indirectly from they got a big metal tube. They heat it up from the outside to heat it hot enough that it starts to glow and radiate. And then the material inside breaks down and the CO2 is released, but because you’re not burning something inside it it, it doesn’t get all mixed in with other stuff. You basically get a very close to completely pure CO2 stream coming out. So you don’t need separation technology. You just need to grab the CO2 and yeah, take it away. Do something else with it. Yeah, so that’s one option, either traditional CCS or this kind of new CCS from Calix. And then there’s a few other technologies as well in play. Some American startups that are looking really interesting. There’s actually there might be Canadian. I can’t remember exactly, but say North American carbon cure, take CO2 that captured from somewhere else. And then they use that in the in the concrete curing process, they add CO2. So it’s being sequestered and also improves the chemical properties. There’s another company called Sublime who are making something that is chemically identical to Portland cement, but it doesn’t ever start, it doesn’t start from limestone. So it starts from materials that never had that CO2 to be released. So you can end up with something chemically identical without having to release any CO2. So that’s interesting. And then some of the biggest gains are going to be made with actually getting better at specifying how much cement we need to use. Cause it’s, it’s such a cheap and versatile material. It’s, it’s everywhere. Everyone that lives in a city knows how ubiquitous concrete and cement are. But it’s often used in applications where you could use something else instead, or you could use less of it. So there’s a big push to, Yeah, to make sure that all the, I don’t know, building codes and civil codes around bridges and whatever are actually specifying performance rather than telling you exactly how that you’re going to make it and that, the aim is that you will be able to use less. Allen Hall: Rosemary, has there, have there been demonstrator projects to evaluate these processes and materials? Rosemary Barnes: Yes. Yeah the, so I was visiting Calix in their facility near Melbourne. So I saw the several stages of calciner, the, calciner is the word for the kind of furnace, oven, kiln, whatever you want to call it, big hot tube. They’ve been through several different iterations and they have some projects in Europe now in traditional, existing cement manufacturing facilities where they are replacing bits of it at a time. So they’re already reducing emissions there. And the, yeah the cement that comes out the end is pretty good. is identical. They do all the quality testing. So that’s pretty, pretty far advanced and ready for the scale up. It’s a cool technology because it’s very modular. They’ve got one, one size tube at the moment, and that’s, small scale in terms of the throughput of a traditional cement manufacturing facility. But to scale up, they just need more of the same tube. They don’t need to, everything is the final size by now. So it will just be a matter of. Of rolling out more of them. Yeah, so that’s pretty cool. Allen Hall: When do you think you’ll, we’ll see wind turbine foundations using these new processes and materials? Rosemary Barnes: I haven’t seen anybody that has actually commented on the procurement of concrete. You could have it immediately. I think one reason why it might not be as fast as you might think, cause it sounds obvious, right? Like a wind turbine manufacturer, of course they should, they’re really worried about their supply chain and everything. A lot of them have net zero commitments. They’ve been through all their factories and sourced renewable electricity and all that sort of thing. But the way that wind farms are rolled out, usually the foundation is done by a local engineering company. It’s not the wind turbine manufacturer that does it. And so the emissions from it aren’t on their books necessarily. They’re not on the wind turbine manufacturers books. Maybe the developer or the owner of it would care in the end, but there is a bit of a separation there that probably doesn’t make it as early a target. But it’s one of my hopes for the industry for, yeah, for concrete, but also for other materials like steel, I would love to see government support these new technologies that are needed by procuring the green alternatives, because in, I don’t know, everything that I’ve looked at, there are green alternatives, they cost more, sometimes a lot more, sometimes just a little bit more. But the way that technologies get cheaper and by where that, that what Bill Gates calls a green premium, the amount of extra costs that you have to add on top for a green version of something compared to a fossil fuel version. The way that shrinks is by having more and more of that product rolling out. And, in terms of concrete, like that’s, governments are one of the biggest procurers of that. You’ve got to think of all the urban concrete that’s out there. And footpaths sidewalks I don’t know, bridges def, defense. Yeah. It’s just there’s a real opportunity to make a difference if they would start procuring that way. And it’s easier than forcing it on, private companies who usually don’t like to be told what to do. Yeah, I would say that’s the that’s a big opportunity actually to support these new technologies, which exist. In a lot of cases, cement’s never, it’s never going to be like, like wind energy is cheaper than, a coal power plant and in most places or electric cars are also going to be one day cheaper than buying a petrol car. Cement with carbon capture is never going to be cheaper than just letting it out into the atmosphere. But the, so it’s always going to be an economic challenge to actually, you have to want to do it. It’s not just going to, the technology won’t take care of itself. So it is going to need some government support. And I think that’s a, yeah, that’s a really way, good way to support it and get that green premium to shrink as fast as possible. Joel Saxum: You’re onto something there though. Definitely Rosemary, like in the United States. A lot of these big heavy highway projects so if you’re building a residential home and there’s a crew and we’re pouring concrete, if we pour 20 or 30 yards in a day for a floor and maybe 20, 30 yards for walls or something, that’s a big pour, 40, 50 yards a day that’s massive for a residential construction crew. Go to a heavy highway project. And they’re pouring thousands of yards a day. That money comes from the government to pay for all those things. So if they, if there’s a place that you want to get to an economy of scale, then those projects could be that, that Trojan horse to get some of this stuff to reduce the cost. Because if you’re repaving like a, a highway, chunk of a highway from say Austin to San Antonio, there’s hundreds of thousands of yards of concrete there more than they’ll pour. for years in that area. So there’s a vehicle there for it. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I think so too. For steel as well. All sorts of things. I would much rather see a government supporting in that way than, some of the other support mechanisms that they have chosen. Allen Hall: Rosemary, you had a video. A couple of months ago, if I remember correctly, that was talking about reducing emissions from cement. And since you have visited this factory, are you going to have a new video coming out about it? Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Yeah. There’s I’ve just got the nearly final edit from from my editor and because he’s European, he’s about to go off on holidays for three weeks. The final version will come out after that. Allen Hall: That’ll be interesting. So everybody just check out Engineering with Rosie. You’ll see the factory tour and how we’re going to decarbonize cement. That’s fascinating. Thanks, Rosemary. Lightning is an act of God, but lightning damage is not. Actually, it’s very predictable and very preventable. StrikeTape is a lightning protection system upgrade for wind turbines made by WeatherGuard. It dramatically improves the effectiveness of the factory LPS, so you can stop worrying about lightning damage. Visit weatherguardwind. com to learn more, read a case study, and schedule a call today. Allen Hall: Joel, when we were down in Oklahoma and Texas, one of the things we noticed was the integration of multiple kinds of renewables plenty of solar facilities, a ton of wind, you saw battery storage, you saw data centers, you, we saw all of it gas pipelines being put in still, all energy sources are on the table down in Texas. But it does seem like the combo of solar and wind on the same plot of land or nearby, not the situation at the moment. Is that something that’s coming up? It does seem like an obvious choice. If you have a wind development site, you have room for some solar. And what are the limitations that prevent people from doing that? Joel Saxum: It just makes sense, right? There’s numerous benefits for co-locating energy production systems or energy storage systems. You’ve already procured the land. You’re already dealing with those landowners on permits. You’re already have interconnection there. You’ve already developed the roads and pads. There’s so many cost saving mechanisms here that it’s amazing that this hasn’t been more of a thing. Some people say, if you read a lot of articles online or looking through some of the national lab stuff, some people are pointing at subsidies for saying, this is why we haven’t seen a lot of these things co located or hybridized together because we didn’t need to. Because the subsidies took care of some of the cost balance things, and didn’t force developers to basically optimize the financial models for these things. What you’re starting to see a lot more of these come online or at least be in pipelines and be planned. So there’s a couple of things to consider here as well. Co located and hybrid are two different things. So co-located would be like, if I have battery storage, you. And I have wind on the same site, but they’re not connected at whatsoever. They’re just into the same interconnect and we’ve saved some money by developing them, but a hybrid power plant would be if there’s coordinated operations of the sub components of them. Allen Hall: Does the financial model look better, Phil, when you throw battery onto a wind site? Does it make economic sense to do it, or are we not in the place like Europe is right now? We have net, or Australia, where there’s negative pricing in the States. Philip Totaro: Yeah, you even mentioned at the top of the show, Germany, seeing, or even, Spain and a few other markets in Europe that are facing negative pricing. This is becoming a little more common because of an increase in curtailments that is a natural consequence of adding more variable power generation from renewables to the grid. Now, you can balance the grid during, the middle of the day with solar and, evening, nighttime, and early morning with wind typically, because we know wind drops off a little bit during the middle of the day. But that’s the whole point of having solar there to pick up. But batteries are becoming much more prominent in places where people want to be able to do energy arbitrage. And that’s for us in the United States. That’s the Southwest Power Pool and ERCOT and a little bit in, in California as well. Where we’ve seen, periods of negative pricing out here too. But it’s starting to become more commonplace and to go back to your earlier question of why isn’t this necessarily happening everywhere it’s happening where they need to grid smooth or time shift first, but it’s probably going to become more prominent. I don’t know that every single, wind farm or solar park necessarily needs to have on site co located, or hybrid system, where again, it’s, integrated into the same substation or it’s, even companies like GE and Siemens have investigated putting the little batteries on the turbines themselves just part of the electrical connection. The question now is You know, we have a lot of storage in the interconnection pipeline as well. And at the end of the day, megawatts or megawatts, it’s just a question of, do you want to be able to produce from power generation, store them in the battery and deploy later, or do you want to be able to. Just produce your megawatts and produce your electrons and feed that in. It basically comes down to much more sophisticated grid studies that are going to be necessary from the regional ISOs and, anyone else that serves as a, an energy regulator from that perspective. Allen Hall: So if interconnects are the problem in trying to get an interconnect so you can plug into the grid, why would you not put storage on your site? Because the regulator doesn’t really care what the generation source is, right? It seems If I have a wind site, why would I not, especially in Texas, why would I not be putting storage there? Philip Totaro: For the most part, yes, there are some technical challenges that I don’t think we have time to get into. And I’m also probably not the most sophisticated expert on the actual battery storage technology to be able to say, how they need to be integrated. But the, at the end of the day, the. The storage that’s being deployed is usually being deployed hybrid with solar just because of the need to be able to time shift away from the middle of the day where, COVID really caused a lot of shifting patterns in. Electricity consumption demand. We now have with what everybody typically refers to is this duck curve. We’ve got it in California. They’ve got it down in Australia. As well where you just have this, bit of a peak in the morning dip in the middle of the day. Where people are now, just not consuming as much electricity as they used to, they’re not in the office, they’re not in the house, they go out in the middle of the day, whatever. And then, late in the afternoon and throughout the evening, there’s a huge spike again. So we need that storage to be able to time shift. We need that storage hybridized or co located. With solar to be able to time shift the the power generation to meet demand wind. It’s a little it’s a little more challenging, because we have a much longer, potentially much longer duration of storage that we’d require because you’re talking about from, 67 PM at night until about 67 PM in the morning. Is when you have your, ramp up and peak wind and then your ramp down again. But in order to get that wind that’s being produced overnight, time shifted to, 7, 8, 9 o’clock in the morning when the demand is there. You need storage technology that may or may not be capable of time shifting that long. Normally a lot of these things can only do 3, 4 hours, 5 hours. Starting to talk about doing 12 hours worth of time shifting for, megawatts. We’re talking about hundreds of, potentially hundreds of megawatts. That requires a much different system design. And frankly, a much different business case than what everyone is, has necessarily explored at this point. Allen Hall: Joel, let me ask you about the data centers we saw in Texas and how prevalent they are and the fact that I’ve read a couple of articles more recently saying the data centers cannot really live on renewable energy because they cannot go down. Those data centers have to continue running. So they’re talking about now putting in natural gas, yeah, peaker plants to keep those data centers up and running. Does it, first of all, that doesn’t make any sense. I understand what they’re trying to do, but it doesn’t make any sense. But is the demand so high that’s going to be the outcome? That they’re going to be putting in natural gas peaker plants just to keep the, your Apple iPhone running? Rosemary Barnes: But it’s not the, it’s not the data centers that are saying we need gas peaker plants. It’s the I don’t know what the system is set up like, but is that, yeah, the grid operator is saying, Oh I’ve heard that AI, I have heard that AI is a thing. And so we’re going to need all this new demand and it can only be done by gas picker plants. And partially because they have left it so late to think about adding new capacity that the only, they can only go for the fastest yeah, the fastest option. And also what they. And also what they already know. So I, I have seen a lot more cynical takes on it than that, that, they want to guess pica plants and have reverse engineered for, why that should be, but I’ve seen some really creative solutions being suggested for for data centers. The growth of. Power is not as much as you would expect from data centers. We are still adding new data centers and that’s new loads, but the increased computational requirements for AI have been offset by improved efficiencies with the, within the, yeah the chips are doing more for more calculations for less energy now. And. AI, AI algorithms are getting better at yeah, just, more efficient at doing the same things, but also not all like when you think of a data center, you’re thinking, Oh, when I send an email or I want to pull something off the cloud, or I want to do a Google search, it has to happen exactly when I want it. But with AI, like a lot of the energy is spent training new data sets and. That’s for any company that has an idea for a new AI product that they want, it’s like a huge cost that they’re going to have to pay for all that number crunching essentially. And there are companies now that are saying, okay you can If you want to buy this data, these data services from us, it’s really cheap between 10 AM and 2 PM and the rest of the time it’s really expensive. And for companies that are cost conscious, they’re like, Oh, okay, I can, save a huge amount on my development costs by doing my anything that can be shifted to those hours. I will. And so I think that. People are in the early stages of this AI boom, and it sounds in some ways similar to, I remember when the, the internet was becoming a thing and everyone’s Oh my God, we’re going to need, this many new power plants to supply all the extra energy for the internet. But actually, electricity usage has been pretty flat over the period since the internet, even though, people were right that the internet was a big thing and everybody is using it. So I think that, yeah, things that people are going from, like a tiny little bit of information and making huge extrapolations far into the future when things will be very different. And we’re not they’re doing it in the way that’s imagine if. This was a worst case scenario. And we generated electricity in the stupidest possible way and that we use the electricity in the stupidest possible way, then we would need this much. But it turns out that, in a capitalist society, there’s a lot of people whose company was the company’s success will depend on them not doing things in the stupidest possible way. And nothing’s going to turn out in this worst case scenario that people foresee at the very earliest days of a Allen Hall: I guess you haven’t met Microsoft, Rosemary. Rosemary Barnes: I didn’t say the smartest way. I said not the stupidest way. Allen Hall: That’s what I’m saying. Have you met Microsoft? Joel Saxum: Taking all these things into consideration, there’s another thing that battery storage does that people don’t regularly think of, right? They just think of like energy storage. However, the majority of the battery’s usage on the grid is for normalizing frequencies when power sources are coming up, down, or demand gets spiked, or demand goes low, because that’s how you need to even these things out, right? Say, take the ERCOT grid. The ERCOT grid is becoming more and more reliant on renewables, which are You know, solar coming online, power coming offline, and you have different frequencies and different, the grid being built out. And basically it was built out in a non smart way, getting smarter now, but to normalize these frequencies, you need that storage as well. So now if you’re implementing new power generation facilities, Why not put that grid frequency, basically levelizer, right on site where the power coming off of that site is intelligently managed before it even hits the grid. I think that’s another value add for adding storage systems to any renewables. So it goes, it also goes to show here, there’s, I have some numbers in front of me. This is from a report from 2020, end of 2022. So these numbers are now 18 months old. However, at that point in time. Utility scale, solar plus storage. There was 213 plants in the United States for a total capacity of 12 gigawatts. And wind plus storage at that point in time, there was only 14 plants in the entire United States that had those combined. And if you go wind plus solar plus storage. So like the trifecta that was only five plants in all of the United States, and that was for like less than 700 megawatts. It hasn’t been adopted at a huge rate, but it’s looking to be like smart investment and smart build out. We’ll see more of this in the future. Invenergy’s Purple Skies project in southwest Minnesota is going to move forward. They’ve been working on this thing for three to four years now. And it’s as a pseudo replacement for the Sherco coal plant shutting down in Becker, Minnesota I’ve actually lived not too far from that for a little while went to school in St. Cloud So I know that one. Xcel Energy is huge in this area So Xcel Energy is actually building a new 345 kV line and this project the Purple Skies project will be connected to that Invenergy even opened a regional office in Marshall, Minnesota. So this wind farm facility You Is going to be down by Lake Benton, Lake, by the Lake Benton Wind Farms. If if you’ve been in the wind industry for a while, the Lake Benton Wind Farms have been along for a long time. They’ve got some Zond Z50 machines, I think from 1998 or something’s installed on those farms. So this one is neighbors to that. So in that area, there’s a geographical feature called the Buffalo Ridge. And it is a nice high Ridge with a lot of good wind resource. Lateral is wind. Blow there heavily, but it blows regularly and consistent. So it is a very large project. Eventually that’s ultimate goal is to be a thousand megawatts in three phases. It’s across 110, 000 acres. They’re still in the middle of permitting and getting all the permissions for this but they are going to start the first phase, which will be two to 250 megawatts in 2026. Good thing here, Southwest, Minnesota, a lot of farmers but the locals are used to energy and they’re welcoming the project. Good. So the last thing to think about here is the purple skies project in Minnesota. Is this a tip of the hat to Prince’s purple rain being close to his hometown? Maybe, but we’ll never know. 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 subscribing in the show notes below to Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter, and also subscribe to Rosemary’s YouTube channel, Engineering with Rosie. And we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.

UK’s North Star secures funding for 40 new offshore wind service vessels by 2040. The IEA reports clean energy investment will hit $2 trillion in 2024, though challenges remain in developing economies. Yokogawa acquires BaxEnergy and Lotus Infrastructure Partners acquires PNE AG’s U.S. renewable business. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting – https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor – https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: I’m Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I’m here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum, and this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you want market intelligence that generates revenue, then book a demonstration of IntelStor at IntelStor.com. UK based North Star has secured up to 500 million in debt investment to fast track tech’s goal of adding 40 hybrid service providers. Operation vehicles to its fleet by 2040. The funding package includes term facilities and committed resources from institutional investors and banks. The capital infusion will support North Star’s continued growth in the offshore wind market. The company currently has several new belt SOVs in operation and under construction for major offshore wind projects to fill 40 SOVs can’t come soon enough. Philip Totaro: Indeed. And they’ve, as you mentioned, they’ve already got a fleet of. SOVs operational for various projects around Europe. These new ones where, I mean, 40, by 2040 is, is quite ambitious. That’s, one, one per more than one per year. This is obviously going to come in handy for what the industry needs. And more importantly, it’ll give them the option to be able to re flag or re domesticate those vessels for use in, other markets where they’re going to be needed, like the U. S., potentially, again, up to a point where we have Jones Act issues or markets like South Korea, Brazil Taiwan, etc. So, it’s much needed. Joel Saxum: So, for those of you who don’t know, or new to offshore wind, or haven’t followed the program before, an SOV is basically a floating hotel for all the offshore wind workers. It has a lot of deck space, usually has a small crane, not a big work crane, but enough to move things around on deck, or, or transition some, some gear that’s needed, some tools, or some equipment to the transition piece on an offshore ship. Wind turbine. So basically, these are the big vessels that kind of are resident out in a wind farm. They’ll go out for a couple weeks at a time until they have to do crew changes. Sometimes even doing crew changes at sea where the vessel just stays out there and a little transfer boat comes and moves people around. But these are the big vessels. These SOVs are the things that make the wind farms tick offshore. Without them they’re not going to stay up and running for very long. Allen Hall: The International Energy Agency reports that investment in clean energy technologies, including renewables, will be twice that of fossil fuels this year. Global spending on sectors such as wind, solar, grids, EV, nuclear, and energy storage is expected to reach about 2 trillion in 2024, while oil, gas, and coal receive dollars. However, the IEA warns a persistent low investment in clean energy in emerging and developing economies due to high costs of capital. And Phil, we’ve seen this play out in Asia at the moment and in Africa. Philip Totaro: Yes, and that’s probably where a lot of the new investment certainly supported by the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund would be made. The, the reality of this is that we’re all. I say we, countries are all suffering with the, this high interest rate environment and as we record this the U. S. Federal Reserve said that they’re going to continue to maintain interest rates where they are which is really not helping matters at all. So, it’s, it, we’re getting to a point where. This 2 trillion, whether that’s accurate or not, and I, I do question it because, when is the IEA ever produced an accurate forecast on, on anything to be, to be a little, a little blunt, I guess. But they, we, we can’t even spend the money if we were going to right now, because everybody’s just kind of taking a wait and see attitude with things. They don’t want to have to debt refinance later. And so. They’d rather either invest their money elsewhere or just park it and hold on to it until they can get a better cost of capital. Joel Saxum: I have read a couple articles lately that are kind of bemoaning the double standard. And this is a weird thing to talk about, but in developing countries, they are being told, you should be putting renewable energies in place. You should be putting renewable energies in place as you sit today. But they, they were basically, the talk is they’re being basically handicapped by the fact that they don’t get to use the cheap, easy power generation or electricity generation technologies of the past that. Spurned economies of developed countries along during the industrial revolution. So there’s this kind of a tit for tat thing going on there. Another thing, another note here as well, as there’s starting to become a market, and this is a really good thing. They’re starting to become a market for. used wind turbines actually to go to some developing countries. So, in the United States, when we have PTC driven projects where in 10 years, you’ll take something out of commission. A lot of times those don’t have their life used up, right? They’ve got 10, 15, 20 years of life, or if you maintain them or. Update them. They’ve got 20, 25 years of life left in them. They’re starting to become a market for taking those assets apart, repurposing them and rebuilding them in developing countries or in places where it’s hard to get energy resources built. So that’s, that’s a good thing. Allen Hall: Yokogawa Electric Corporation has acquired BaxEnergy, a leading provider of renewable energy management solutions. BaxEnergy’s proven solutions have been adopted by major power companies across Europe to manage over 120 gigawatts of renewable energy operations in more than 40 countries. This acquisition will enable Yoko Gawa to offer solutions globally supported by its consultation and after sales service through its worldwide network. Boy, Phil, the combination of big players at the moment, there’s still a lot of cash moving around for acquisitions. Philip Totaro: And that’s what’s interesting about a deal like this is, okay, first of all, Yoko Gawa obviously does a lot of, control systems, sensor systems, particularly in oil and gas and other industries. This gives them a bigger footprint in the power generation sector and ties them in further to utilities and, and renewable energy asset management and asset performance. But the, the bigger, the, the bigger picture here is that it’s coming at a time when as we talked about with high interest rates, you’re potentially going to see more deals happening because companies aren’t going to be able to go out there and get easy access to loans or other capital that they could use for growth. And so the pathway to growth is potentially through partnership or merger and that’s going to probably continue. We’ve seen a lot of deals so far this year, and this is a trend that can continue. Joel Saxum: Nice thing here that we see with this BaxEnergy being acquired is they’re, they’re now going to be able to offer their services to many more customers, right? They’re going to have some capital behind them. They’ve got, of course, an expanded network behind them. Allen and I were just on the phone today with a group that we’re doing this kind of the same idea of some software that can analyze data and improve efficiencies, right? Their software BaxEnergy claims can improve efficiencies by up to 10%. There’s a few companies out there doing this, but I, I believe there will be more and more of this data enabled performance upgrades coming to the wind industry and solar industry. For that matter, Allen Hall: US infrastructure investor, Lotus infrastructure partners has acquired the U S arm of German renewable developer, PNE AG the acquired business now. Now renamed Allium Renewable Energy has a pipeline of 18 wind, solar, and storage projects at various stages of development totaling over 3 gigawatts. Allium has already developed and monetized 877 megawatts of wind and solar projects to date. Lotus believes Allium’s projects identification and commercialization capabilities will significantly expand in its own renewable development efforts. Most of the large players in the renewables space are backed by large banks or financial corporations. What are those large corporations like behind P& E doing with these these sales and mergers? Philip Totaro: Lately, there’s been an uptick in infrastructure funds and investors wanting to get into renewable asset ownership because it’s an asset class that they understand now and they think they can make money with. Morgan Stanley, which is the, has been the majority owner of P& E has been trying to offload, the whole company, frankly, for a long time. But it seems like with this deal, they’re, they’re doing it a bit more piecemeal now. And so, getting the U. S. based assets off to this infrastructure fund, freeze them up to then pursue other deals, potentially regionally focused deals, in Europe and, and P& E has some, smaller assets elsewhere in the world as well. Some in South America, some in Asia where, those portfolios could also be segregated and, and sold off. It’s a bit unfortunate because P& E did a quite a good job over the past 10 to 12 years of, of building up the, the entire portfolio they’ve got. But this is also serving the market need is, as I just mentioned with the infrastructure funds wanting to, To plow more money into whatever portfolio they get their hands on, whether it’s something that can be repowered or a late stage project pipeline that’s already got, well down the interconnection queue and the interconnection studies to be able to get on the grid and start generating, PTC based revenue. That’s, that’s what they want. Joel Saxum: Yeah, as we’ve talked about in the last few weeks, there’s a couple of Canadian pension funds that have billions of dollars that they want to put in play and they can’t even find a spot to put it in play. So there’s a lot of money sitting on the sidelines right now that could be put into use. But a lot of things are holding up interconnection queues and, the finance rates and some other things. So when you start to see, we’re starting to see a lot of these moves, not starting to, we’ve been seeing a lot of these moves. But with large money banks it’s going to continue to happen until some of this stuff busts loose. I, I think it’ll be, hopefully, once the interest rates start to go down, it’ll be like a dam that starts to get some cracks in it and the water starts to flow as long as we can put it to use, depending on interconnection queues.

Allen Hall interviews Dr. Howard Penrose, president and founder of MotorDoc LLC, about the groundbreaking EmpathCMS electrical signature analysis system. Dr. Penrose explains how the technology can quickly and non-invasively detect developing faults in wind turbine components like generators, gearboxes, and bearings, helping to optimize maintenance and prevent unplanned downtime. 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. Our guest today is Dr. Howard Penrose, the president and founder of MotorDoc LLC, and the creator of the groundbreaking EnPath electrical signature analysis system. Dr. Penrose has over 30 years of experience in the field, authoring books, presenting at conferences worldwide, and providing training and consulting services to numerous industries, including wind energy. The Empath system Dr. Penrose developed is a cutting edge tool for condition monitoring and predictive maintenance of electrical assets like motors, generators, and transformers. By analyzing the unique electrical signatures of equipment, Empath can detect developing faults early, preventing unplanned downtime, optimizing maintenance, and extending equipment life. Howard, welcome to the program. Howard Penrose: Thank you very much. And I just have to correct you on one thing. And that’s the Empath system was actually originally developed at Oak Ridge National Labs and is is, construct, is basically built and maintained by Framatome ANP, which is International Nuclear Power Company. We are their non nuclear distributor and researcher. Large portion of what we do at MotorDoc is research the applications for electrical signature analysis and develop the algorithms. Allen Hall: So this is, we have a magician here today, so to speak, because the whole thing about wind energy and when you talk to the engineers is the vast majority of them are mechanical engineers. Drivetrain, blades, right? They know a lot about how the turbine works mechanically. But it is an electrical machine. It’s there to produce electricity. And that means there’s a lot of electric motors and obviously one big generator on the turbine. And that’s the heart of the system. And that’s the part that we really need to work. What? I think you guys have done is interesting because you’re using the generator to diagnose things that are happening onside the turbine that are not only electrical, but mechanical. You want to explain how that works a little bit? Howard Penrose: Okay. Well, with vibration analysis, for instance, I will use an accelerometer with a piezoelectric cell or some of the newer technologies that involve etching and certain other things of materials. And you put that on the casing of a machine, and you generate an electrical signal signal in that component, that accelerometer, for instance, or whatever other type of device it is for vibration. So you have to read all the movement of all the components inside the machine through the material. through that transducer into something else that then translates that data in, either as a rules based system using squiggly lines or a machine learning based system, that kind of thing. Electrical signature analysis is exactly the same thing, except we use the air gap of the machine, whether it’s a generator or a motor or a transformer, as our transducers, the little magnetic field. In between the components, not the rotor, not the stator. And we gather that information through just straight voltage and current. So the voltage and current comes out we use that and translate it in exactly the same manner we do with vibration. Matter of fact, most vibration analysts will recognize most of the signatures we look at when we’re looking at squiggly lines. The difference is you have to cross your eyes and stand on your head, but that’s about it. Allen Hall: So the Empath system, from what I’ve seen online, it measures a couple of voltages and some currents on some wires, which maybe you can describe what you’re actually measuring there. Howard Penrose: If we’re doing the generator in a wind turbine we’re measuring the voltage and current directly off the stator. If we’re doing the generator in a wind turbine we’re measuring the voltage and current directly off the stator. So if my transformer is uptower, that data has to come from uptower. If the data, if the transformer is downtower, say in a GE or some of the other machines, I can take that data downtower, which I prefer, to be perfectly honest. But the idea is you go in you clamp on to three phases of current and three phases of voltage for optimal voltage. analysis. Really, if I’m just analyzing the components, I just need one good phase, right? One, one sinusoidal phase. There’s a lot of things that happen electrically in a machine, in a wind turbine, that are odd as compared to other types of generators. So we have to work with that. And of course, whether I’m looking at a DFIG I like to call certain designs S FIG. Where I don’t have a feed to the rotor, I just have a switching system, such as in the old Suzlons. Or whether it’s an induction machine or a permanent magnet machine, each one is handled just a little differently, although the signatures are the same. Allen Hall: So you’re measuring three voltages, three currents. On those signals is the power that’s coming from the generator, basically. But there’s other things on top of that. What electrical signals are on top of that, those power signals? Howard Penrose: Every movement, every torsional issue, every component from the transformer to the blades. In a defig even in some of the newer ones and one or two older designs that have the dual planetary gear set. We just added this as a matter of fact, in American clean power, we just add the, into the gearbox playbook, electrical signature analysis is one of the prognostics for the gearbox. Through the air gap, we get to see. The transformer, we get to see all of the components in the generator that includes the bearings the Y rings and the rotor, which that’s, I think that’s one of the most popular reasons that were used is to define fracturing Y rings, and we’ll see those 14 months out. And then even wedge issues of either vibrating or missing wedges in certain stator designs. Then we’ll see coupling issues. We’ll see all of the bearings in the gearbox, including the planetary bearings. We will see all the gears in the gearbox. I can’t tell you if it’s broken, cracked, or whatever, but I can tell you that there’s something wrong. And not only that, I can tell you how much energy is being lost across that defect. And then the main bearings, we’ll even see when we have lubrication issues. One of the most common is when the lubrication is not changed out properly and you get dried grease at the bottom. We’ll read that as an outer race signature. And then finally, if the blades aren’t aligned right, they don’t, they’re not turned correctly within a couple of degrees. We will see that as a blade pass as the impulse as it, as each blade passes the tower. You’ll see that variation, which can get tricky because certain designs now start to turn the blade a little bit based upon wind gusts and what LIDAR picks up coming at the wind tower. Just by the way, what we didn’t include is the fact that I’m the chair of standards for ACP for wind. In the United States. So yeah, I have a little idea of what’s going on with the turbines. Allen Hall: Just a tiny bit. Now, let me give a little, just talk about your background just for a second here, because I think it’s important. You’re you started in the Navy. You’re from, originally from Canada, right? You came to the States and then you enlisted in the Navy. Howard Penrose: I’m dual. So I was born in Michigan while my dad was finishing his doctorate at University of Michigan. Then he headed up the fisheries department in St. John’s, Newfoundland, which makes me an official Newfie. So I joined the Navy. My worst class in A school was electric motors and generators. So I decided it was going to be my best subject. As I was one of the first hundred on board the Theodore Roosevelt, an aircraft carrier, and they said, what do you want to do? And I said, I want motors. And generators. I was a a conventional electrician, not a nuclear power electrician. So they put me down there and, um, basically being one of the first hundred, I knew everybody. As a matter of fact, the nickname MotorDoc came from the captain of the ship back when I was 19 years old. He authorized me to become the youngest electric motor repair journeyman in the Navy ever. I think to this day, so you have to sign up for six more years to get it. I didn’t have to I went to motor rewind school. I went to all the theoretical schools. I was enlisted. I got meritoriously advanced through E5 by the time I was 20. So I spent two years in a chief’s position running a motor repair shop as a journeyman on an aircraft carrier. Allen Hall: It takes a person like you that has the hand on hands on experience. Plus, a little bit of book knowledge, plus some education, and then have that kind of percolate for several years to go, okay, there is something to electrical signature analysis, and it’s real and to decode it. I think that’s the hardest part, is decoding what’s there. Howard Penrose: That, that is exactly the most challenging part, and the part, and the reason why most companies that have attempted to do it have failed is two parts. One is they’re trying to do it with current signature. I’m sorry, but a generator does not produce current. It produces voltage. Wind is definitely different in that it’s both. There’s times when it acts because of the rotor, it’ll act as a load, times when it’ll act as a generator. And then with all of the controls for VAR correction, voltage correction, things like that. It will do different. Wild things. The good news is I don’t care. What I do care about is that is that, for those who attempted the technology, not understanding that the technology measures the speed of the magnetic field, not the physical speed of the rotor. I don’t care. So if I’m a vibration analyst, I need feedback as to how fast the rotor is turning. If I’m doing electrical signature, I need to know how fast the field is turning. Because in order to, in a defig, to get 60 hertz out, my field, if it’s a six pole machine, which a majority are six pole, others are four pole, that’ll be 1200 or 1800 rpm. If it’s a, if it’s a 1200 rpm, it’s going to be running slightly over 1200 rpm, which is why you don’t get exactly 60 hertz, right? Because if you ran it exactly, then it becomes unstable, so you have to have it, yeah, you have to have it over speed just a little bit. That 1200 RPM motor, I’m just, I’m actually working on 320 turbines before we got on the call. The actual physical speed might hit as high as 1500 RPM, right? But if it did, and I didn’t compensate for that speed, I would have something like 80 Hertz. Okay. Yeah, coming off, and it would fly all over the place. Then I would have to control it. But one of the, one of the, magical bits about D Fig is the VFD that runs in parallel and feeds the rotor changes either if it falls under that 1, 200 RPM, speeds it up, and if it’s over, slows it down. One of the things we had discovered because of industrial work in active front end drives, which don’t have a DC bus, we can read through it. A motor that’s running at 35 hertz, on the incoming side, we discovered that all the signatures would be as if it were running at 60 hertz. If it was running as if it was on just a regular power source. So I applied that to electrical signature. I applied that with electrical signature analysis to wind turbines. And suddenly we were seeing everything. Allen Hall: So with that, you can see a lot of. noise or frequencies inside of that. You sampled it high enough now that you can start investigating, look inside of that data and you don’t need a lot of data. You don’t need a lot of time. You don’t have to sit there and analyze data for hours. One set of data. Exactly. And that’s part of the key. Howard Penrose: Now, this is a rules based system, right? Now we will, if we’re doing continuous monitoring, because we have that capability and we’re working on a capability with some of the OEMs to be able to just take data right from their towers, so we don’t have to have hardware. to do the analysis. But we need a sample rate of a minimum of 10 kilohertz in order to be able to separate things out. And when we fall below that, the load has to be way up on the machine. The prognostic machines that are at that take data at 7, 500 hertz or less, they have to have wind speeds of at least 10 meters per second to be able to see anything. We’re seeing it right at cut it. Which is bad. really interesting. Allen Hall: A lot of machines take data faster than that. 15 kilohertz is what I’m here. Some of them are doing at the minute. So there’s enough data there. Howard Penrose: But when they do 1500 kilohertz, they had, they only have very small data sets. So they switched that frequency so that we can get a longer data set. The length of time combined with that that sampling rate is what gives us the resolution. And then because we’re doing 12 kHz, that also gives us a 6 kHz FMAX. That means we can see out to 360, 000 CPM. And most everything on a wind turbine happens under 3, 000 Hz. Allen Hall: Oh, easy. Yeah. So that’s, and there’s your magic, right? Now you’ve sampled the data fast enough and long enough to analyze essentially anything that’s happening on the wind turbine. What you’re measuring voltage wise and current wise all that data comes in. You then, I’m going to use some fancy terminology and I promised myself I wasn’t going to do this, but here we go. They basically take a Fourier transform, right? So you’re looking at it in the frequency spectrum versus the time spectrum. And what that does, you start looking at rotating machines. They’ll start having peaks at certain frequencies based upon the mechanical principles in which they were designed. And then Howard, you come in and go. That is a bearing, or a gearbox, right? Howard Penrose: Yeah, and the nice thing is, the formulas are exactly the same. The multipliers for a bearing are the same as what I’d use in vibration. For instance, our technology we have a library of bearings in there with everything preset, so I don’t have to sit there and calculate out all the angles and number of balls and what the cage looks like and all that other crazy stuff that we learned in, in vibration school I just pull it out of a, out of a thing and the same thing that you do for, the multiplier time one RPM is the same multiplier times one Hertz. Yeah, so we, you get the one time multiplier and you plug it in and you can identify inner race, outer race, ball, or cage. The nice thing about ESA is I don’t get harmonics. I just look at the one time. For that value, just like if I have a rotor related issue, like for instance, somebody asked me, could I detect a failing Y ring with vibration? I said, absolutely. But you don’t have the bandwidth to do it. It would take too much memory because you would have to look out at four times the four times the. Slot frequency for the rotor, for certain aspects of the failure. Yeah, you’d have to in vibration. You might get lucky and see some pole pass frequency sidebands, which are twice the slip frequency. But that would be mechanically related versus electrically related. So that’s going to constantly vary. Allen Hall: So let’s talk about the wiring for a moment. So a wiring is, from simplistic terms, is how a connection internal to a motor that makes the thing spin. Howard Penrose: Wound rotor generator. Most wound rotor motors just have a connection made. they don’t have a ring. So in, in defigs, they normally have an actual ring like a hoop, and that goes around, and then they’ll have tabs that connect into it. Some will have direct connections. We’re working on some of those now. But what we discovered first off, we were asked by Chris Petrola from Axiona, and he did a whole presentation on this. So I dare throw him into the weeds. He’s now with the now and he’ll appreciate it. But he had us go up to Calgary. He called me one day and I happened to be when he called on an overhead crane and a steel bell testing a wound rotor motor for failing slip rims. So we were testing, while everything’s moving, we’re over the pit of steel, a hundred feet up, staring down into molten, whatever, and he calls. Of course, he called, so I had to answer. And he goes Hey, have you ever detected failing connections in the rotor of a defig generator? And I go, No, but I have a theory . So we go, we went up to Calgary to an to an Axion site, tested 40 turbines. He produced this at awe at the time, now a CP in 2018. Because we did it in 2016, and then the repair shop out of Quebec went there Dallon, went there and and replaced the Y rings and took pictures of all of them. Now, of the 40 turbines, we detected 20 of them with fractured Y rings, and one, I said, I had a questionable reading. And that turned out to be a partial fracture. They detected this, and then one year later, after we had detected them, Wind through the machines and pulled out the Y rings and replaced them up tower. Allen Hall: Okay, so this is the key here. So not only are you able to detect problems in mechanical equipment and electrical equipment, for that matter, early, and diagnose, like, where it is health wise, it can be done so quickly, you can do most of a farm in a day. Howard Penrose: So from 2017 to present, and wind is only about 20 percent of our work. I personally have been on over 4, 000 turbines collecting data, mostly in the US, some Canada. However, the technology is being used right now heavily in Brazil, Mexico, Canada, US. Asia and just a little bit right now in Europe, definitely in the Middle East too. Allen Hall: Sure. Anywhere there’s a motor or a generator, you’re there. Howard Penrose: I’m just talking about wind turbines. As far as the technology goes, it’s being used globally. The Empath system is one of the best kept secrets out there. We’re replacing vibration equipment in the industrial side, all over the place. Monday, I’m dropping off. enough to for Reynolds aluminum to finish replacing all their vibration equipment with over 400 of our systems. Allen Hall: Okay. See, this is where I first ran across you. I was on a wind site talking to a site manager. And I was saying, Hey, what’s cool. What’s the cool thing you’ve seen? And the response back was, have you seen MotorDoc? Those, that equipment came in and they diagnosed every motor generator problem, gearbox problem, bearing problem. We had on each of the turbines and a couple of minutes, literally a couple of minutes, and we started to dig. We thought okay. Maybe? So we dug into them and they were 100 percent right. Howard Penrose: I like hearing 100%. I usually tell people 85 to 90%. Even though the EPRI study that was done, looking at the technology and Empath was top. We were seen as well over 90. Closer to 95%. Allen Hall: I think if you guys is one of the, I don’t know, one of the best kept secret, cause you’re not a secret. You’re out there doing tremendous work and OEMs know of you, operators, some operators know you very well. Howard Penrose: OEMs, Almost all of the OEMs use us, meaning have, they have our equipment but we don’t put the names of our customers on our website to brag. We’ve actually been word of mouth for, 10 years. Really? I’ve been using the technology on wind. For over 20, since I think 2003 was my first set of towers in the Mojave desert Allen Hall: But that’s that’s an amazing piece to this I think your story Is that you’ve done your homework and you’ve been in industry a long time you understand The physics i’ll call it associated with wind turbines motors generators that electrical machines that then You can then used to happen 40, 50 years ago, when I was a kid that those people were around all the time. You could walk into a motor or a winding shop and people knew how these things worked and we’ve lost some of that. So you’re the part of that architecture of your, that kind of carryover into, hey we already know this stuff. Now we just need to apply some common sense to it and use it to our advantage, which is what you’ve done. Howard Penrose: Yeah and we continue to do it. People go why aren’t you worrying about how many you sell? It’s I have no overheads. I don’t have a hundred people that I have to pay. I just, there’s only a handful of us. And with all the systems we have in the field what we do is we work ourselves out of work by building all the rules into the software. We know that intrusive maintenance introduces faults. So everything we do, we try to do as non intrusively as possible. Allen Hall: This is why you’re on the podcast, because I want to make sure that the select portion of the world that doesn’t know you exist then finds you. Because it’s a quick diagnostic tool, and that’s, and that was the input I got from the O& M people. People operation maintenance people is that it’s a huge help. It’s such a simple device. They plug in you get the data it analyzes it doesn’t take a lot of Hand holding there Usually as soon as the data pops up it tells you exactly what it sees Right and you always have Howard to call if you get confused, but basically that thing tells you what’s wrong Quickly, and then you can go debug your turbine, or at least have a health status on your turbine, a real health status on your turbine without a lot of work. That’s genius. Howard Penrose: It reduces the wear and tear on the technician, right? They’re not climbing to to do other things. One of my good friends now from, the engineer from from H& N, Hank he got up and he explained how boroscope testing for the detection of the wiring issue is only about 50 to 60 percent accurate because you’re looking to see if something’s broken, like the insulation is broken, plus you can’t see the tabs and everything else. We’re seeing partial fractures long before that occurs. And like I said, Up to 12 to 14 months out. So I’ll usually give it an A through F. Nobody gets an A, but a B through F I’m a horrible professor, but no, no waiting. Those grades. No, B just means continue monitoring. I don’t want people to not check because we have seen like Brazil they’re now just so you’re aware of the wiring issue and everything else. We were the ones who discovered that was, along with Shermco and H& N, it was a joint project that it was actually fatigue, it’s not a problem with the design of the wiring. It has to do with a a subsynchronous resonance that exists on the grid. So the windings are constantly moving. They’re constantly flexing ring. Shermco had taken sections of a ring and had a metallurgist look at it. And we could see all of the fatigue points. Allen Hall: People don’t think of electric machines having fatigue, right? They just think them as just a bunch of coppers spinning around. Howard Penrose: Everybody since the dawn of time thought that all of these mechanical issues were strictly mechanical. And we’re finding that there’s electrical reasons for a lot of the mechanical conditions and there’s possible solutions to them. In fact, some of those solutions have already been worked on. But not for this reason. Allen Hall: And that’s what I think that’s the point, right? Is that we’re in some measure, we have old technology, proven technology, but we’re changing it drastically in the way that we feed it. Howard Penrose: From both directions, it’s not just the power generation, but we spend a lot of time on in the industrial side is what the heck they’re putting back in the system and utilities, we’ll go in, we’ll see these horrible harmonic conditions in power. ground and neutral. And we’re trying to correct it and the utilities are all going we don’t care about that. It means nothing. We don’t bill on that. No joke. It’s wait a minute, this is actually consuming a ton of energy. Plus it’s really dumping a lot of garbage back into the system that works its way all the way back because While the transformers and certain filters take some of it out, I can go onto the bulk grid and see some of those oscillations. Allen Hall: And that’s if you’re a wind turbine operator and you’re living with these conditions, you wouldn’t, your first thought is there’s something wrong with the OEM equipment that I purchased. I need to go debug this thing. But the mere fact that it’s connected to the grid may be driving the problem on the turbine. And we don’t think about it that way. We think about turbine out, not grid in. Howard Penrose: Yeah. And then a combination of, Some of the sites will do VAR correction or voltage correction and they’ll be correcting for their site next door. You know what I mean? So one site won’t be doing it, the other site will depending on the controls. And you find that one side or the other has a higher rate of failure of all their components because of the oscillation that occurs as a direct result. Allen Hall: Create a tank circuit. Yeah. But those, again this is, as we were talking about earlier the number of electrical engineers on staff at some of these operators is like a 1%, maybe? 2 percent of the staff? 2 percent if you’re lucky. Which there are electrical machines. That’s what they do. We need to have, we need to be a little bit I don’t want to say smarter about it, but we have tools. And this is where Empath come in and where you come in and MotorDoc comes in, you have the tools. They’re here. Howard Penrose: And what’s really funny about it is it’s mechanical types like vibration analysts and mechanical engineers that understand the signature they’re looking at. But they hear electrical signature analysis and all of a sudden everybody’s afraid. Or they go, oh no, that’s an electrical issue, that’s for the electricians. No, actually, the technology was originally developed to look for bearing and gear issues in motor operated valves in the nuclear power industry. It was never meant to look at rotors. It was never meant to look at all this other stuff. It was just incidental that it did it. And, um, it’s, what’s, it’s, what’s fascinating about, the technology and its application. Allen Hall: It’s wonderful. It’s wonderful. And for those who haven’t seen the system, how do they get onto your website? How do they find you? Howard Penrose: They can, they can go straight. The easiest way to go is motordoc. com motordoc.com and then they can go to EmpathCMS which i have some videos of wind turbine stuff or MotorDoc ai where i have a little you know podcast of maybe 50 people if i’m lucky where i talk about a lot of this and show how it works and so on so i’m trying to get the information out i published a book on it Practical Electrical and Current Signature Analysis of Electric Machinery and Systems, which includes a chapter on wind turbines. Allen Hall: I really appreciate you being on this podcast. I like talking to electrical people that are knowledgeable and have had experience in industry for a long time because you’re such a huge resource to everybody and we need to be using you more than we probably are. But, and it’s good to get the word out, right? Because there’s some parts of the world and some parts of America that may not have heard of you. So let’s get the word out. Hey, go check out Motordoc and get ahold of Howard because he’s a resource. Howard, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Howard Penrose: Absolutely. Thank you.