The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

The podcast explores the International Energy Agency's surprising 27% cut to offshore wind forecasts, highlighting policy shifts and project cancellations. There’s a focus on Australia's fledgling offshore market, where many projects are stalled. The discussion then shifts to GE Vernova's latest financial results and strategies for profitability amid a U.S. market slowdown. Innovations like Ming Yang's ambitious 50MW dual-rotor turbine are debated, raising questions about certification timelines and operational risks for new technologies.

This episode covers three major wind power milestones: Germany hitting 51 GW of wind output with negative electricity prices, France launching its first floating offshore wind farm without subsidies, and Australia’s Goyder South becoming South Australia’s largest wind farm at 412 MW. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Welcome to Uptime News. Flash Industry News Lightning fast. Your host, Alan Hall, shares the renewable industry news you may have missed. Allen Hall 2025: There is news today from three continents about wind power in Germany. Last Friday, the wind began to blow storm Benjamins swed across the northern regions. Wind turbines spun faster and faster. By mid-morning wind output hit 51 gigawatts. That’s right. 51 gigawatts the highest. Since early last year, wind and solar together met nearly all of Germany’s electricity needs, and then something happened that would have seemed impossible. 20 years ago, the price of electricity went negative. Minus seven euros and 15 cents per megawatt hour. Too much wind, too much power, not enough demand. Meanwhile, off the coast of Southern [00:01:00] France, dignitaries gathered for a celebration. The Provenance Grand Large floating offshore wind farm. 25 megawatts. Three Siemens Gamesa turbines mounted on floating platforms. France’s first floating offshore wind project. a real milestone, but here is what caught everyone’s attention. No government subsidies. EDF, Enbridge and CPP investments. Finance the entire project themselves. Self-finance, offshore wind in France. Halfway around the world in South Australia, Neoen inaugurated Goyder South. 412 megawatts, 75 turbines, the largest wind farm in the state, the largest in Neoen portfolio. It will generate 1.5 TERAWATT hours annually. That’s a 20% increase in South Australia’s total wind generation.[00:02:00] The state is racing towards 100% net renewables by 2027. Goyder South created 400 construction jobs, 12 permanent positions, over 100 million Australian dollars in local economic impact. Three different stories, three different continents, Europe, Asia Pacific, all celebrating wind power. But there is something else connecting these projects. Something the general public does not see something only industry professionals understand. 20 years ago, wind energy was expensive, subsidized, and uncertain . Critics called it a fantasy that would never compete with coal or natural gas. Today, Germany has so much wind power that prices go negative. France builds offshore wind farms without government money. Australia bets its entire energy future on renewables, and here is the number that tells the real [00:03:00] story. In 2005, global wind power capacity was 59 gigawatts. Today it exceeds 1000 gigawatts the cost per megawatt hour. It has dropped about 85%. Wind power went from the most expensive electricity source to one of the cheapest in about two decades faster than pretty much anyone had predicted, cheaper than anyone had really forecasted. the critics said it could not be done, and the skeptics said it would never compete. The doubters said it was decades away, and they were pretty much all wrong. Today France celebrates its first commercial scale floating offshore wind farm. And Germany’s grid operator manages negative prices as routine Australia plans to run an entire state on renewable energy. Within about two years, the impossible became inevitable, and you, the wind energy professionals listening to this, you [00:04:00] made it happen. Engineers, technicians, project managers, turbine designers, grid operators. Every one of you helped prove the skeptics wrong. 20 years ago, you were building a dream. Today you are powering the world.

Eric van Genuchten, COO and Co-founder of Sensing360, explains how fiber optic technology is changing gearbox monitoring by catching failures that standard vibration sensors miss. The company’s system uses light-based sensors mounted directly onto planetary gearboxes to measure tiny steel deformations and load changes, providing early warning for the 10% of catastrophic failures current monitoring can’t detect. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering. Tomorrow I am here with Eric van Genuchten. Uh, so Eric is the COO and Co-founder of Sensing 360. Um, and they are bringing optics, um, to monitoring for gearbox, other rotational equipment. Uh, we’re gonna talk a little bit about what that means for the wind industry today, implementation retrofits, uh, from the factory, all kinds of good stuff. So, Eric, can you give us a little bit of a, of your background? What’s, what makes you an expert in the space?  Eric van Genuchten: Uh, that’s a good question. So basically my background is. Uh, I studied physics when I was much younger than I’m now, so, uh, I’m not gonna disclose when, but, uh, I’ve been working since roughly 20 years and I have a background in SKF in the [00:01:00] bearing, uh, uh, manufacturing space. And basically I’ve been working within SKF as condition monitoring, uh, solution developer. So I’ve been in condition monitoring for almost 15 years now. And from SKF, where we developed, uh, condition monitoring systems for all kind of applications, but also wind of course, we went towards, um, load sensing of barrens to be very specific to help our large customers. And for that we used, uh, fiber sensing. And, uh, eight years ago, seven and a half years ago, uh, I started with two colleagues. I started sensing 360. Which is the 360 is of course the rotation, but we are using five optical sand or optics, uh, for rotating equipment, mainly bearings, large bearings, gear boxes. And uh, we have been focusing a lot on wind, uh, the last five years, uh, mainly on the planetary gearbox because that’s a challenging part from the rotating, uh, [00:02:00] system to monitor. So that’s where we, uh, think we can add some value.  Joel Saxum: So I know like, uh, I, I wanna share this with the users too. Our listeners here too, because I came across your technology man, three, four or five years ago or something, uh, over in Europe. I, I think it was, we were in Copenhagen, wind, Europe and Copenhagen. Um, and I remember seeing you guys in like the startup space and I walked over and you had like, basically what looked to be, um, a stainless steel bearing race on the, on the table. With your sensor package on it and a live readout. And I looked at it and I went to pick it up and I was like, this is interesting. And when I picked it up, just my hand on it, I looked at the screen and I could see all the deflections happening on the screen from just me grabbing this. And I mean, it was, I mean, you remember what the product thing there was? It was probably four millimeters thick of stainless steel. Like that’s not, I’m not squishing that thing with my hand, but you could see it. Eric van Genuchten: Yeah, no, a lot of people checked if we had a camera around it to see if they were mimicking the move. But basically, [00:03:00] if you ring about it, it’s, it’s this, this product still, we still have it, it’s still operational. And this is the, the, the type of bearing a small, relatively small one for, for let’s say, um, wind. But it’s, uh, 22 kilotons of bearing and you can still see the pinching of your arms. So, uh, indeed. And that’s basically what we do. We, we, we integrate our sensors in steel and make, uh, I don’t say stupid steel smart, or if you put it around, we made rotating equipment smarter if you rephrase it vaguely, basically. Joel Saxum: I like that. I like that. So, um, you know, in the wind industry, if you’re, if you talk about the past, the past was. Uh, when blades were shorter, of course now everybody’s worried about blades, blades, blades. That’s what we hear all the time. But when blades were shorter and more robust, the problem was gear boxes. It was, what are we doing about this rotating equipment? We’re having failures. This is a, this is a regular thing. Um, we’ve gotten a little bit past that, um, with. Better bearing [00:04:00] technology, more iterations of gear boxes, different things of this sort. But there’s still issues out there. Um, and, but this is your mission statement, right? So can you describe the problem of basically what you guys see in the field and what you’re trying to solve?  Eric van Genuchten: Yeah, so the problem in the field where we see gearbox specific and also what has been accomplished with several OEMs, because we, we like to work with customers because that basically brings the real problems outside is, is still. And it’s, it’s valid for all slowly rotating equipment, but it’s still, uh, if it’s slowly rotating, there’s a lot, a lot of energy to do the classical, more classical vibration monitoring. So you have a challenge to predict failures, and that’s what we are still, uh, focusing on eliminating failure. So let’s say in a bare main bearing, they get 99% of the failures by vibration monitoring. In the high speed shop bearing, they get the same amount, but in the. Gear In the gearbox, they get 90%, so there’s still 10% of fillers they cannot detect. And [00:05:00] planetary gearbox fillers are pretty catastrophic. They are, let’s say, huge replacements, cranes downtime. So, um, yeah, we, we want to predict it better. And secondly, um. Like all rotating parts basically. Do you translate the rotation to It’s the fixed world and it’s, it’s as we say, I used to say the bearing is not, the victim is not the cause, but the victim of a failure. Um, it is, you can derive almost all your running conditions from that single point of, uh, measurement. So operation conditions, misbalance unbalance where, so you can make predictions about, this is my. Yeah, statement prediction about this is the drive line. And of course, as you mentioned, a wind turbine is not only a drive line, the weakest link kind of defines the total life, but the drive line is an essential part of it. Uh, so it’s still a complex system to monitor. It currents [00:06:00] current vibration monitoring, and we, we add basically load and strain sensing towards it. Therefore we do better predictions.  Joel Saxum: Yeah, because I mean, the answer here is, or the, the, what we’re trying to arrive at is we want to have early prediction of what would be a failure, right? Because we want the up tower repair. We want the 20, 30, 40, $50,000 repair versus the. 300,000, $400,000 repair where you’re replacing gear boxes or planetary or all kinds of things of that sort. Um, so the tech, the technology that you guys have, of course you’re using fiber optics, which we can, you can arrive at, uh, a much more finite measurement. Can you explain how that works? I guess let’s take the first, the, the, the first side of it. Let’s explain how it works, if it’s integrated, say from an OEM standpoint. Yeah.  Eric van Genuchten: So  Joel Saxum: if it’s  Eric van Genuchten: integrated from an OE EM standpoint, and we’re working with two. Two of them, and there’s not that many. So basically when you integrate it, you put it directly on the outside of the, the ring gear, so the freely accessible site, uh, [00:07:00] uh, part of the system, and it’s directly put on the outside. And as you mentioned, you can integrate more very sensitive sensors. And due to the fact that you have more sensors and that they’re so sensitive, you can distinguish between temperature, uh, loading, uh, misbalance, so you have more information than just one. Basic string gauge. Uh, so we integrated on the outside. Then basically when the planets are rolling, so you have the planets and you have the sun, the planets are rotating. It presses basically the steel way. And we measure that. And that measurement can be done, integrated at the OEM. And then, uh, you get a, a smart gearbox basically, which measures, uh, torque and load sharing and used for prediction, even as you mentioned. To prevent the, the, the, the small opt tower repairs or to actually to prevent the big non-op tower repairs, but do the small opt towers, repairs, and even winning time if you have to replace it anyways, the whole logistics saves a lot of money and time if you know it six months upfront instead of two [00:08:00] weeks. Joel Saxum: So speaking of OEMs though, right, because of course weather guard here, we’re an aftermarket product company and we speak with OEMs about integrating from the factory level and, and those kind of things quite regularly, uh, as well as operators, right? You’re starting to see operators put aftermarket solutions that they’ve deemed to be good in their turbine supply agreements are in their turbine RFPs. Hey, hey. OEMs, we want this. Um, you guys are working directly with OEMs. That’s a tough thing to do. Congrats on that. Right? Um, so what are they using it for? What I mean, of course we know sensing, right? But if it’s, it’s an advanced thing. It’s not on every turbine. Why, why your system? Why, why are they using it? Eric van Genuchten: The main reasons, the two main reasons to use it maybe have to make three reasons to use it, is the. The main reason is that there’s now a trend towards journal bearings. They’re cheaper, they’re essentially longer life. So in the planets there’s and different type of bearings which are not possible to monitor with vibration sensing. And we are able to monitor by looking at the, the load changes [00:09:00] over time. That’s the main reason. Extra condition monitor, better condition monitor. And secondly, I think gearbox OEMs will also want to extend their. Let’s say piece of the puzzle or piece of the cake, they want to be become more important so they become more digital. I think you have seen the platforms by By 360 or Thrive, and they want to do the digitalization, but in the end to to, to provide extended warranty because that’s what their customers are asking for, and. You can give extended warranty if you know what happens with your system. And that’s why they use it. They use it for the real operation and usage monitoring of their gearbox.  Joel Saxum: Well, I think that, that, that makes sense, right? If you’re trying to extend a warranty period, or like, I guess for, uh, a gearbox manufacturer, they get to sell an extra bit of warranty, right? So they’re happy with that. Um, but you were getting closer and closer to, and, and I know this, this. Term always kind of bothers me. It’s like when people say, oh, this is ai, eh, it’s not always ai. Sometimes it’s machine learning, sometimes it’s algorithms, whatnot. But when we get closer to [00:10:00] that term of a digital twin, you guys are, are making progress towards getting the industry at that level for slowly rotating equipment, fast rot or quick rotating equipment. Is, is that part of the, the, the marketing sales pitch from Sensing 360? Is the digital twin or what does it look like?  Eric van Genuchten: Yeah, so it’s input for the digital twin. So basically we provide information for data teams to make a digital twin. And it’s nice that you say that because I mentioned already we measure torque or loading, and 20% more loading on a gearbox or on a bearing is half of your life and the other way around, 20% less loading. Double your life. So if you have a digital twin, the crucial part is what is actually the operating, uh, to do any yeah. Scenario planning or maintenance planning. So we provide the information for the digital twinning. We don’t make the digital twins. Um, we might, we grow, but at this point  Joel Saxum: I like, well, I like the idea, [00:11:00] right? Because when, where you hear a lot of times like, oh, this, this turbine has this issue. Let’s, let’s de-rate it. We’ll de-rate it for this amount of time or this, this part of its life, or, or even if we’re into a lifetime extension scenario, we’re gonna de-rate it for the rest of its life. That happens. It’s happening around the world. So, uh, but actually having knowledge and having, um, information and data, hard data, and I, I, I stress this with everybody, uh, and it’s not just a wind industry problem, right? It’s a, it’s an industry problem. Quantitative data versus qualitative data. Uh, but I stress quantitative data. So now you, you have the ability to produce that, hey, you’re reducing loads by 17% or 22%, whatever that may be, and the lifetime extension could look like this. Um, that’s an important part of the, of furthering the wind industry, is we get to aging assets, especially here now in this, in the states as we see this last one big, beautiful bill thing changing our ability to do. [00:12:00] PTC repo driven Repowers, right? Which was like, ah, run this thing hard for 10 years. ’cause at year 11 we’re gonna repower. That’s not a reality anymore. Over here in the United States, you know, who knows what could happen in four more years or eight more years. But right now we’re switching operational strategies, o and m thought processes to. How can we get a lifetime extension out of this? So, so let’s speak on that a little bit. You know, you guys are integrating from the factory. Great. Now. Fantastic. However, retrofit, what does retrofit look like?  Eric van Genuchten: Retrofit looks the same. I would say. We still integrate it on the outside of the ring gear, even on the outside of the paint by, so something called, we call a sensor strip, which you can. It takes an hour to install, basically opt tower, and then you have the same data as you have from the five factory installation. Of course, you need to think about, will I do with magnets? Will magnets live for long enough? So there, that’s always, is it acceptable, blah, blah, blah. Um, [00:13:00] but that gives the same load data. Now, the good thing about a wind turbine is of course, that it runs. It rated power most of the time. So you can derive a calibration while running institute. So you don’t need a whole kinds of, uh, high level simulations or other thought to solve it. But looking at that, we measure for a month as an example, and then you get the, the, the torque levels, the load levels, the, the curtailment stops, the start stops, the, the, the breaks. And we get all these effect. And every day you make a statement like, I have used this much life according. To the load I had and to the time I was running, and that comes to reduced capacity. Of course, you have to go back to make an estimation about the future, but you basically take a period of three months and you go back and forward with it with the same regime. She can say, well, based on what we have now, now there six years left in this park. And then you talk about extension. If you have [00:14:00] multiple turbines, you can play with load balancing over the turbines to. Take the hard ones to, to, to, to reduce the air of loads and take the, the, the ones who have, based on the data, seen less load, take them a bit more load so you can kind of maximize energy output. At least you have the information to do so. I don’t know if, if, if park owners are fully equipped to do it, but that’s one of the, the,  Joel Saxum: the,  Eric van Genuchten: the input parameters you can use to  Joel Saxum: do extension. Well that, that, that leads me to another question here. So sensing 360, of course you guys create the technology, uh, the hardware, the sensors, and you know, a software platform to look at the data. But are you guys providing those operational insights or is that a part of your business model to say, Hey, you should do this or you should do that? Um, because one of the problems we see in wind and we, and talk about this all the time, is tons of data. We’ve got big data, big data, big data. What do we do with all of it? And at the same time, you’re seeing. Engineering staffs shrink, uh, you know, some layoffs and things like [00:15:00] this, so they’re losing some internal resources. Is this something that you guys can help people with as well? Yeah, so our,  Eric van Genuchten: so our solution gives a recommendation. So in the end we are, don’t own the park. So we, well, most of the time not allowed too many control on it, but it makes it, and I like to say it, and of course I would like to say that, but it makes condition monitoring basically one side simpler, and also the information more dedicated. So you need. Less of a degree to analyze it because if you are in the vibration space, looking at vibration spectrum and analysis and making the correct conclusion is still a science. It’s still quite some, and of course AI is increasing there and we can look at an analogies and, but you still physically need to understand it to make. A good estimation. That is what we, since we have both usage and vibration monitoring, we both have, let’s say more, we have both information at one point. So we use that to make it simpler. So also run in times are a lot shorter, basically. And secondly, a [00:16:00] statement like you have six years left is a relatively simple statement, but even financial people can translate into what, this is my cost over time. So. Yes, that’s our goal and we give recommendations and advices. That’s still the case. Um, unless they won’t be to control their park. So I would love to build, build. I would love to build a business model, Joel, with, I get extra production. I get paid for in at least production. I don’t, but I’m not there yet.  Joel Saxum: I like that. Um, okay, so I’m gonna ask a couple questions then, I guess from an operation standpoint. Say I am. Wind farm owner, X, Y, Z, and I have two parks and one of ’em I’ve been losing some gear boxes in, or I’m getting towards, uh, you know, a lifetime extension type thing. What, what does my journey look like if I call Eric and team and say, Hey, I would like to monitor these things. I, I need more insights of what’s going on in my rotational equipment. How, what does life look like for me? If I’m trying to implement the solution?  Eric van Genuchten: They never [00:17:00] immediately start buying everything for the whole park. Which is understandable because we are not like, uh, the big, big, huge condition monitor company. So there’s still some, some trust issues, I would say, or, uh, but basically it starts with an assessment. So basically we have now developed, uh. A two true, um, a suitcase where we will go up, we will put our sensor there with a magnets, with magnets measure for a day or an hour and then say, okay, this is what we can gather. This is the information and this is what we can see. Now we do that on one turbine and preferably three, four, if you have a pocket problems, it’s slightly different because then they know the problems we had in the past we cannot see with our current system. So. We’re gonna instrument several of them and, and look together at the data. ’cause we have kind of proven that we can pick point teeth breaking, uh, bearing failures in the plan. So we, we have a story. [00:18:00] This is working if we go about lifetime extension. Yeah. That’s still, the proof is still in the pudding, let’s say, or in p the end proof is in the eating of the pudding. Um. That’s still going together. Look at this data. Okay? We can see now last month with this one GI one wind turbine. We, this is the status and we see you have six years left and then you slowly go to two turbines, four turbines, whatever, turbines. That’s  Joel Saxum: the story, I think. Okay. When I look at the solution from the outside, I think, oh man, this must be difficult. Um, but it seems like you guys have come with, uh, the hardware solution that’s not right, maging onto the outside of the, the planetary. Pretty f pretty freaking simple. Um, deploy a couple systems on some thing on a couple of different turbines. I, if you are leaving it now, I wanna get a cybersecurity question if you’re leaving it behind. Um, what does communications and power look like up tower,  Eric van Genuchten: and that’s a good one. So, so basically you, you put on the sensors and you have a small computer [00:19:00] box, which both gets in the light, reach the light out, and does the calculation. Then there is the, the, the, the, the most classical ways to put it directly into the current systems, scatter systems, monitoring systems, which you already have, which have the security there, and also are managed on the security level. Uh, and the data goes to the customer portal. That is the integration with current systems. Then parts problems, and especially older parks, do not always have condition monitoring systems. Uh, and then you need to indeed, uh, find a either a 4G connection, 5G starlink. There’s, there’s many options. And then there’s a secured connection towards our cloud according to the latest standards. Uh, it depends per company. Indeed. What are the demands of your securing systems? But we have for. We know that there was, um, a huge hack, uh, at Nordic and, and, and so they have improved their security levels and we meet those. So that’s basically, [00:20:00] uh, currently there, but it, it’ll remain a, an ongoing, um, work evolution of what a secure what’s not. Joel Saxum: Yeah. It’s continued to change all the time and, and I think you’re, you’re starting to see people. Get more stringent, right? We’ve, I’ve even had things where I’ve dealt with clients sending ’em an email and they’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa. We have to look at your email processes. Like, what? This is a bit ridiculous. Um, but let, lemme go to another question. So this is a big one. Um, you’re working, so you’re, I wanna give a little track record for the company you’re working with OEMs. Uh, so you’re integrating things from the factory. Again, kudos on that, that’s difficult to do. You’re doing retrofits, uh, multiple different styles of gear boxes, uh, for different manufacturers. How many, how many wind farms are you guys on? Or how many, uh. Turbines you guys on out in the field? I hope to,  Eric van Genuchten: to reach the 50 by the end of the year, but we’re currently at three, five turbines.  Joel Saxum: Yeah. Kudos to you guys. I think that, I mean, it’s a difficult place. It’s a, that’s a difficult hurdle to cross, right? From a startup with a [00:21:00] bunch of really smart technology and smart people, uh, creating a product, getting it into the market, and then starting to expand the fact that you’ve done it with OEMs already. Again, difficult. Uh, so, so good work on that. Uh, Eric, um, what other message would you like to get across to the wind industry about, um. About their gear boxes, what do they need to be doing? What’s the, what’s the best practices from Eric seat?  Eric van Genuchten: So there’s a statement from one of our earlier cooperators, which was Siemens, Gaza, uh, and he said it would be ridiculous with the increase of complexity and value of a gearbox to not instrument them with fiber optic sensing, which is a statement of course I would like to bring out. And basically it is if you start integrating a couple of hundred euros of sensors in a gearbox, which is. The half a million, I have no idea. But in those ranges and failures are up to two tons, why not do that? And digital twins and AI start with making the physical, [00:22:00] physical digitally. So basically you still need the feed of data towards all these models to optimize an ai. And if you, for me, it’s just we have more computing power and therefore the same equations we had 60 years ago are now actually. Being used, which wiser, but you need to make the physical, digital, and then you can start making all these great models. So I would say for me it’s a no brainer. And of course I will say that, but it’s also what our customers say. And for the long term, this, it’s ridiculous not to do it.  Joel Saxum: We’ve talked about gear boxes, planter gear boxes, being able to sense the load changes on ’em. Slow rotating equipment. Okay. We’ve talked to a lot of people that test these things, uh, and they’re doing hybrid testing simply because it’s so difficult to test, say bearing pitch bearings, uh, rotor bearings, these kind of things because they are slower speed. Can your technology be used, uh, for, for those types of applications as well?  Eric van Genuchten: Yeah, so that’s where we are currently also in the development roadmap. On, on, on the, the [00:23:00] large, slowly rotating parts. Pitch bearings in marine, you see more of them, the ones which keep the cranes on place, et cetera, slowing bearings, they’re nicely, but basically those are hard to monitor because there’s not enough energy to do vibration or to do sound measurements. And by changing, loading or changing, uh, response of the outing. ’cause that’s what we are measuring the deformation. Uh, you can see cracks, you can see uneven loading, you can see other issues. So we are able to predict failures much earlier than, than what’s now ongoing, so that we are extending our, uh. Now I talk about a dream extending. If you have one optical part in it, you can do the blades, you can do the pitch bearings. The the main bearing, the, the, the, the, the, the, the gearbox, the generator, probably the jaw, the pole fully optical monitoring. That is for, for me, it’s the long term goal to go  Joel Saxum: there. I, um, I’m gonna, uh, send some, some [00:24:00] thought energy to a specific OEM here in the states that needs helps with pitch bearings. Call Eric and his team to get a project going so we can see the failure modes and these things before we start keep cracking hubs out in the field. Uh, but Eric, I I really want to thank you for the time today. Um, if anybody has any questions about fiber optic, sensing, slow rotating equipment, gearbox is all the above. Eric and team are fantastic. How can, how can the listeners reach out to you?  Eric van Genuchten: On my site, there’s even my direct number still as a contact, so that’s why I’m ENS three sixty.com. You can look at contact and my number is there still. So that’s the perks of being a small company. And LinkedIn. We are pretty active on LinkedIn, getting active on YouTube, but mainly a VR site. That’s how we are easiest to contact. Or you can do the simple one, eric@sensingthreesixty.com. That also helps.  Joel Saxum: Perfect. Uh, thanks  Eric van Genuchten: again Eric. Thank you. Thanks for having [00:25:00] me.

Register for the next SkySpecs Webinar! Allen, Joel, Rosemary, joined by Yolanda Padron, discuss RWE’s pilot project using drones to transport equipment uptower. Plus Mingyang has announced plans to invest $2B into a UK offshore wind manufacturing center. And Renvo’ article in PES Wind Magazine highlights the needs for a convenient spare parts marketplace in the 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! You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now here’s your hosts, Alan Hall, Joel Saxon, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes. Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Alan Hall in the Queen city of Charlotte, North Carolina. And I. Have everybody else on the podcast is in the same state. Rosemary is in Texas, in Houston, Texas. Joel’s in Austin, Texas, and our newest employee, Yolanda Barone, is in Austin, Texas. Yolanda, welcome to the podcast. You’re, uh, just joined us a couple of days ago and we’re super excited to have you. There’s been a lot going on in the wind business. Uh, Rosemary’s actually over here for a conference and Joel’s been helping [00:01:00] out at that conference. Just so everybody knows, Yolanda’s gonna be our blade expert at Weather Guard helping us with a, a number of issues that operators have around the world, uh, for things that Rosie can’t take care of. Call in Yolanda. So leading off this week, an interesting story from RWE and a big press release about it. Joel, uh, RDB has achieved a breakthrough in offshore wind logistics. By successfully testing cargo drones at its German wind farms, and, uh, the first time in German offshore airspace. Both long range autonomous drones and short distant cargo drones have been used in daily wind farm operations. Uh, the pilot project demonstrated how different drone types can deliver spare parts, tools, and supplies to turbines. Uh, they were able to move up. About 10 kilograms, which is like roughly 25 pounds over about 40 kilometers. [00:02:00] That’s a pretty good rate. Uh, this is unique though to Europe because I think in the United States we’re not even allowed to do this, right? Um, you can, it just depends on getting special permits. So it’s called a bv, LOS or BV loss, uh, beyond visual line of sight. Uh, so you can get, if you have specific, uh, software packages and you’re not over a major city and certain things, you can get those kind of, um, certificates from the FAA, but they’re not easy. Uh, the, the cool thing about this is, I mean, let’s just put our technician hat on for a second. Even an onshore wind farm. I’m up tower and I go, oh, Alan and Rosemary and Yolanda and I are up tower and, and I go, who brought up the 10 millimeter socket? And none of us did. Now we have to draw short straws to see you, has to climb all the way down and get the 10 millimeter and come all the way back up. Whereas with a drone, you could just fly up, land on the nelle and you have your tool, but it also means that you don’t have to [00:03:00] bring everything that you might conceivably need with you up there. So like when you are climbing towers every day, you’ve, you’re taking so much junk with you every time you go up, every time you go down and. Like it sounds easy. Oh, they’ve got elevators in there. And that’s true. You don’t have to like put it in a backpack and climb up a ladder with it. Um, in towers that have a lift, but it’s still, once you get to the top of the lift, you still have to climb up a ladder to get into the nasal. And then if you’ve gotta get out into the hub. And so you are still like picking up huge bags of stuff and um, yeah. Hauling them above your head. Always definitely exceeding the limit that you’ve just done your special training to promise that you’ll never lift more than 20 kilos. Um, you, yeah, it’s just like, it’s crazy the amount of stuff that you go schlep around with you because you don’t wanna have to go back down if you forget something. So this means you can take up your toolkit for what you’re expected to need. Of course, you’ve got a lot of bulky safety [00:04:00] equipment that you have to take up ’cause you don’t know when you’re gonna need that. Um, but yeah, it’s gonna massively reduce the amount of stuff that you need to take up. Rosa, you bring up a lot of good points. Right? And that’s just the, the daily active operations. And we’re, and we’re, I’m just thinking right now with Onshore Wind Farm, now go offshore and it’s, it’s boat landings into transition pieces. The, the amount of HSE risk just to transfer onto, uh, a tower or off of a tower to get components. It’s that much more complicated. It’s that much more HSE risk. So. This makes absolute sense and these technologies have been kind of floating around for a while. Um, and one of the big things was, you know, of course it’s just the basics of drone stuff. So it’s can we safely lift this much, can we get the permits to lift this much? Because like the CAA over in the EU there, they had a limit for a long time as well of, I think it was. 25 kilograms or something like that for like the whole drone setup couldn’t, it, couldn’t exceed that. Um, so you have to get certain permits [00:05:00] to do all these different things, but then it was, how do we safely precision land and take off and deliver the stuff? So new advancements in, um, LOC localization, so like slam technologies, um, simultaneous location and mapping. So not just relying on GPS, but actually sensing what’s around you, whether it has, you know, a QR type. April, April tag codes that the drone camera follows and then kind of maps itself onto. Or if it’s has that, uh, the ability to see the blades and make sure it doesn’t run into them autonomously. So the, the drone world has matured enough where this technology is like something that’s pretty normal now. You can see these things, drones, landing autonomously on boats that are driving by themselves and on the back of cars. Like it’s pretty cool stuff. Uh, but it was only gonna be so long until it made its way into industrial uses. And this is a great one. You’re reducing risk, you’re reducing time, uh, saving money, all of the, you’re, you’re literally ticking [00:06:00] every box for operations. That makes this cool. I, I really like this. Uh, kudos to R to B for, for making this happen. Well, Yolanda, they should be doing this onshore too, right? Because a lot of o and m buildings are not necessarily close to the wind farm. How many wind farms in Texas have we driven? Ooh. Five, 10 miles just to get to the turbine. Man, it would be a lot easier just to have a drone, wouldn’t it? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it, it would save the team so much time and just so much effort. Like Rosie was saying, to climb those turbines. The way we’re doing it now is with electric truck, right? Isn’t that, uh, RWE was doing a lot of the Ford, what’s the Ford Electric pickup truck, Joel? Wasn’t that RWE or was that Orad? That was Vestas. The Ford Lightning, we could just buy a bunch of cyber trucks and they could drive themselves out to the site, I suppose, if they can last through all the potholes on these sites. That’s another thing you have to think about is technician time and the wear and tear on vehicles and stuff. If you at these o and m buildings, if you could, yeah, grab that piece of kit and, oh, I’m at, I’m at, uh, [00:07:00] tower, you know, WTG 17, but also the drone delivers you, your, your nuts and bolts or your package or whatever your name may or your lunch maybe. That would be a good one too. Cup of coffee. What do I feel like the majority use of this drone technology will be for lunch? Hot lunch to the top of the tower. Come on. I’m sure I’ve told this story before, but I think it was New Brunswick when I climbed there, everybody had this specific electric crockpot that they would bring up with them and they would plug it in first thing, like as soon as they got up to the um, miss Cell, they would plug in their crockpot and then they would have a hot lunch. And I had something that I had bought from the seven 11 ’cause that’s all there was in town. It was, it was miserable every single day. Here’s a question for you. I’m gonna ask this one. Maybe we should ask Alex Forer from Enertech this one. But, um, so as a, as a, um, a, a young worker in northern Wisconsin, I learned how to warm up my lunch and or breakfast on the intake manifold of a log [00:08:00] skidder by wrapping it in tinfoil and putting it into a certain puff spot in the motor. Is there a thing in the tower up tower in the Nelle that gets hot enough? If you had a tinfoil wrapped, say a panini or something, that you could actually warm it up up there. The gearbox is warm. If it was running overnight, if the turbine was running overnight, you can sit some somewhere on the drive train. It’s all pretty warm. That was my hot tip. When I, um, uh, when I was commissioning, uh, some turbines in Sweden, uh, the client demanded that I was, that we had an engineer there. Of the whole every day for the commissioning period of several months. So me and an electrical engineer traded off. He had actual work to do, but I was just there to satisfy the client. So I just brought my laptop on and sat on the. Sat on the gearbox and um, I did get to see the Northern lights on some of those trips, so, you know, maybe it was worth it. Are you worried about unexpected blade root failures and the high cost of repairs? Meet eco Pitch by Onyx Insight. The standard in blade root monitoring Onyx iss [00:09:00] state-of-the-art sensor tracks blade root movement in real time, delivering continuous data to keep your wind farm running smoothly and efficiently. With Eco Pitch, you can catch problems early, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars. Field tested on over 3000 blades. It’s proven reliability at your fingertips. Choose Eco Pitch for peace of mind. Contact Onyx Insight today to schedule your demo of Eagle Pitch and experience the future of blade monitoring. Well over in the uk, China’s Ming Yang Smart Energy, has announced plans to invest up to 1.5 billion pounds. That’s about $2 billion into a. Offshore wind turbine manufacturing facility and, and that’d be the UK’s first fully integrated offshore wind turbine manufacturing facility. Uh, a three phase project would provide up to 1500 new jobs and create an offshore wind hub. Which would serve the UK and the rest of Europe. [00:10:00] Uh, phase one was supposed to include up to 750 million pounds to build a manufacturing facility for turbine to sell some blades with the first production planned in late 2028, and, and it would grow on from there. This is a big story in the UK and I’ve seen a little bit back and forth in editorials regarding whether the UK should allow Ming Yang to build this factory. Obviously the, the Vestas of the world and Siemens ESAs would not be happy. Intercon Nordex would not be happy with this. And I would think that, uh, there’d be pressure on the UK government not to allow for a myriad of reasons. But, uh, a lot of articles more recently are. Proponents of this saying it will be the cheapest way to develop offshore wind in the UK and around Europe is to use a, a lower cost manufacturer like Min Yang and [00:11:00] Rosemary. You probably have the most, uh, direct hand knowledge of Chinese manufacturing since you’ve been over in China. Looking at some of the manufacturing capabilities. What is the chance of this kind of facility being built in Scotland? Um, I’m not sure. I think that there’s two issues. The first is that the UK has or at least wants to have its own manufacturing capabilities. Then there’s factor two, which is that they have legitimate, like they have real net zero goals that, you know, the government seems to be legitimately, um, trying to achieve. It’s a reverse situation of what happened 10, 20 years ago when, you know, wind energy came out of Europe. They developed the, the technology. Yeah, there was a little bit of stuff going on in America too, but predominantly it was Europe that, you know, like developed, um, modern wind turbines as we know them today, and the manufacturing methods for the hard stuff like blades. [00:12:00] Um, and then all of the manufacturers, uh. Um, opened factories in China where at the time it was a lot cheaper to manufacture. Um, and, you know, close to some other markets. China got really, really great at building wind turbines. Um, and then, you know, they started, um, developing their own companies, their own designs, but they had lots of labor that knew, knew how to do it ’cause they’d worked in the factories. You know, they, they had those skills. So this is the opportunity to learn from, um, this company. Uh, you know, there’ll be UK workers working there and they’ll learn some things and there’ll be a bit of information sharing. It doesn’t even, you don’t even have to believe that China has surpassed the west in wind turbine technology, which I personally don’t believe that they have yet. Um, but it is different and, you know, you can always learn something from, um, yeah, from, from getting a bit of a, you know. A little bit of diversity of ideas and, uh, going and seeing how somebody else does it, it’s [00:13:00]always gonna help. I would say China is not really open to sharing information. You, we know very little of how, uh, China operates as turbines or how they manufacture ’em, or what their performance is, or how they have done over long periods of time or. What upgrades have been made and there’s just so many unknowns there. How can they avoid that if they, like, do you think the UK government is gonna let them staff it entirely by, um, temporary Chinese workers? Like there’s no way. I mean, and they definitely shouldn’t. So how can they possibly avoid the knowledge getting out if they have a factory that is stuffed by, um, UK. Uh, people, then they’re gonna learn some things, and that’s, you know, if you, the more that they also, China is selling more and more turbines outside of China and they don’t usually maintain even, you know, do the full service agreement themselves. So people necessarily have to learn about it. They, they, there is no option if you wanna sell outside of China and manufacture outside of China, but that [00:14:00] knowledge is gonna get shared. I mean, we all, we, we all learn that. 20 years ago, you know, is it knowledge worth having? I don’t know if we know that yet. I don’t think we can say that we, yes, yes or no. I don’t think we know that yet. I’ve got no doubt that it’s worth having. I think that this, this is an interesting point though with people, if you say the people thing, right, you’ve got, you know, they’re gonna, they’re saying three phase project, providing up to 1500 new jobs, and right now they’re looking at Inverness, which is way north in Scotland, and 1500 jobs up there would be man, huge for that, that local area. And you’re, you’re correct in saying that there’s no way they’re gonna staff this with like, transient workers. So that leads me to, to this question. One of the reasons Ming people even look at a Ming Yang turbine, in theory it during a TSA or an RF PS style, time of the project is because of cost. Well, one of the reasons that the cost is way lower is because raw materials and manpower is way cheaper in China. Well now if you have to get your raw materials to or [00:15:00] from, uh, you know, Northern Europe, into the, into uk and you’re paying local wages, are those turbines still gonna be as advantageously cheap? To even think about. Does that make sense? You’re right. But how could they possibly have got past the back of the envelope calculation for whether they should proceed if they weren’t sure that it was gonna be cheaper? Yeah. And that, and that’s what I’m, that’s what I’m, yeah. What I’m, what I’m asking like in when they go to the uk, so we’ve heard the number before that if you were to buy a megawatt to megawatt onshore turbine, it’s, it was 30% of the cost of a Western one. And if you’re, and if that still is rings true, great, but there’s no way it’s still gonna be that cheap it, but it might only, it might be 70% of the cost of offshore turbine made by Siemens or Vestas. That 30% savings might get just some people to pull the trigger. Well, it isn’t like a European manufacturers don’t have facilities. UK Vestas has the Isle of White facility. Siemens has a big Blade factory and Hull. Right. So [00:16:00]does GE have any facilities in the uk? Maybe there’s a research facility in the uk. Rosemary, they had isle of some stuff on, um, on Southampton, uh, but not major manufacturing. We’ve talked about great British energy of them being the lead and, and developing energy in the uk. Why don’t they just start their own wind turbine manufacturing facility? They have the resources to do it. You could bring in people to, to obviously to help run it and, uh, use technology. You know, we, we, even if you had a hire a, a vest as to come in and take over the plant and to do the day-to-day stuff. It’s all being built in country, which is ultimately the goal right? Is to try to get jobs in Scotland. Yeah. I mean the, the cool thing about this project, the way they’re proposing it is, is that it is going to be, um, fully integrated. It’s going to be everything. It’s not gonna be a Blade factory and ne it’s gonna be everything in one spot. I think that’s great because that doesn’t exist elsewhere in the world. [00:17:00] Super plan. Um, but. What is the, what’s the catalyst here? What is the kickoff? What’s the trigger? How does Ming Yang end up doing this? Is it, do they have to get an order for 400 megawatts of offshore turbine? Or they’re not just gonna build a, it’s not gonna be, if you build it, they will come. That’s not gonna happen. I thought, uh, they had been shortlisted for a couple of offshore projects. They’re shortlisted for Green volt. For green volt, but I thought there was a second one. But Rosie, you, you would know this more than any of us. If, if someone says, if, uh, you now got the turbine supply agreement, great. Now you have to start a factory. Is that even plausible from turbine supply agreement to a maybe, I don’t know, 18 months, some year down the line, are you gonna have a fully integrated wind turbine manufacturing facility ready to kick out a turbine? I know that, um, the general, you know, um, off the record opinion from people that I’ve talked to is that they’re totally doubtful whether it’s going to go ahead, that it just kind of keeps on kicking along as a [00:18:00] maybe indefinitely. It’s all global companies that are involved. Everyone’s gonna be once bitten, twice shy. It’s, it’s hard to open. Wind turbine factories. I mean, something that I’ve worked on a fair bit in Australia with governments here that wanna have wind turbine manufacturing, but nobody wants to make sure that companies have certainty about their pipeline. And so no one wants to build a factory. Like you don’t even need to induce someone that much to build a factory. Like you don’t need to give them huge tax, tax breaks or free land. Like all that stuff is is nice, but the critical thing that you have to have is. You need to know that you’re gonna be able to sell whatever you’re making. It’s gonna, you know, if you can make one every day, you need to be able to sell one every day. You can’t, um, you know, sell one every day for eight months, and then you don’t know when your next project is gonna be. Like, that’s just, you need a decade’s worth of pipeline that’s pretty certain. And nowhere in the world really has that. But you know what, if there’s anywhere that has the, um, [00:19:00]like the size of the economy and the, you know, like tendency to place. Big bets, it’s the Chinese government. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they, you know, saw it. If they think it’s strategic for them to have factories outside of China, then they will give whatever guarantees they need to make sure it happens. And that’s something that, like in the West, we’re not prepared to make those kind of commitments. We’re gonna lose. And it’s not, it’s not by any means just wind energy. It’s everything that China is dominating at the moment. That’s how they do it. They do it by going big. Early, not worrying about losing money, not worrying about that. You know, 990 of the thousand startup companies are gonna fail. You know, they only care that they’re gonna have the 10, or, you know, the one or two left at the end. And, um, they’re the only ones that have the, you know, that are playing that strategy. Yolanda, on the development side, the wind turbine history for Min Yang is not well known. How [00:20:00] much risk is that put into a project? And as a developer, what would you be thinking about if this factory is built? Is it something that you would try to mitigate with extra insurance, or could you even get insurance? Would you look for additional funding for repairs that you just haven’t thought about? How would this even be approached without having a lot of information available to your teams? Right. You can’t really. See what the full risk profile of a project like this would be. Right. So it would be a little bit difficult to get the funding to, to put in all those values to a forecasting for a site. So would the Ming Yang have to fund the project in a sense? Would they have to provide the financing for their own turbines or find someone that’ll provide the financing? I think, yeah. I think your traditional bank, your traditional banks would be hard to come by. Right. The people that are, that are. Backstopping, all these other programs. I think that you would have to have someone in the [00:21:00] Chinese government, like Rosie was kind of mentioning, or Ming Yang themselves, offer the credit facility to get one of these things off the ground. ’cause insurance isn’t gonna play with it either. You gotta get the insurance and the finance to agree that the risk profile is low enough to make it happen. And I don’t think you’re gonna have the traditional, like, like downtown London isn’t gonna jump on this. I think you’re gonna have to have some, someone from China or Minging themselves, backstop it. So we’re not talking about a million and a, or sorry, a billion and a half pounds. We’re now thinking it’s somewhere north of 5 billion pounds. Yeah. Wouldn’t binging have to know that before they decided to move forward that it’s not one and a half, it’s 3, 4, 5 times that probably. But that goes right along with what Rosie said. They’re willing to, you’ve seen that, you’ve seen ’em take on industries elsewhere in Africa, in South America. Where they’re just pouring money into these places to get ’em off the ground and not worried about the losses as much. ’cause they know that [00:22:00] I, you say it way, way, said it way better than I did, Rosie. But they know they need to just kind of get their foot in the door and they’re gonna have to maybe lose some money. And take some risk by doing it themselves. As wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it difficult. That’s why the Uptime podcast recommends PES Wind Magazine. PES Wind offers a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit PES wind.com today. Well in this quarter’s, PES WIN Magazine, of which you can download yourself@pswin.com, a number of great articles. I’ve been reading one on Revo, which is a slightly different company. Joel and I were talking about it before we were recording today, and Joel described it as the eBay of wind turbines. So I guess that’s sort of true, Joel, but [00:23:00] they connect sellers of decommissioned turbines with buyers and seeking basic cost effective solutions for repurposing those wind turbines, which is great. Uh, obviously Rosemary talks a lot about recycling of wind turbines. This is an easy way to do it, but it’s, it’s a difficult problem, right, trying to connect buyers. Uh, uh, to sellers of older wind turbines. Where is this data? Where is this Amazon? Where is this eBay of spare parts? And then there’s the complications behind that, and the complications behind that being valuations of them. Um, how do we get the right people in, in line to make a a transaction happen? How do we get the logistics completed? Is this a, you know, down to the serial numbers of certain things? Is it compatible with my wind farm? Do I need a different invert or are we at, you know, I mean there’s the basic questions. Is it 50 hertz or 60 hertz? Like, but that’s, those are things that not everybody’s thinking about. And me, uh, from a, my personal standpoint, I’ve been a part of some of these transactions from a, from a distance just [00:24:00] watching and, and seeing the moves. And they get really complicated. And I think that’s what Revo ISS trying to solve here is access to these parts. Uh, access to the consultants that can, you know, help evaluate or value your equipment, and then tailor made support to making the transaction happen. And that’s what’s really, really needed in the marketplace because there is capability of this. We heard from the insurance industry about how they can’t find obsolete parts, and we’ve heard from, uh, people that are extending, doing life asset extensions. And like right now, if you need a, I don’t know, send me on mm. 92 blade. Good luck. Unless you know the right people who know the right people who know the right people, you’re not gonna find it. ’cause it’s not like you can just go down to Home Depot and buy one. Uh, so that’s what Red Vote’s trying to do here is, um, solve some of those problems in the industry. And Yolanda, having worked for a large operator in the United States, is this something that even the larger operators could use? It does seem like it is difficult to find. [00:25:00] Parts for older turbines or just to replace an older turbine? Yeah, absolutely. I think especially as operators start moving towards using ISPs a lot more, they can’t necessarily get things from the factory level that you would typically see from an OOEM, right? So even if you’re replacing something as small as like a LPS receptor, it’s really, there are parts that are really difficult to come by. So if there could be an eBay type. Forum for people to get those things from site to site, that would definitely help out and help lessen the downtime that you have from just not having, uh, a part to replace on site in Rosemary. In Australia, there’s a lot of, uh, rural businesses, farms across the country. They could buy a turbine for about 600,000 euros per megawatt. That’s a pretty good discount. It may make sense in a lot of smaller. Operations, not big industrial wind farms, but if you had a, a cattle farm or [00:26:00] mines. And mines. Yeah. Yeah. Mines are starting to generate more and more of their power from. Solar because Australians are familiar with and comfortable with solar. Um, not so many mines getting into wind energy. There’s a few, there’s a gold mine, um, I think it’s called Agnew Gold Mine. And of course there’s recent news about Fortescue. They’re moving ahead on their plans to put a whole lot of, uh, wind power into Western Australia. But smaller mines, I think it could make sense. I think one of the issues with, um, wind energy for mines is that. It’s not easy for them to get wind turbine techs out there, right? They do a lot of fly in, fly out work and um, they don’t wanna add probably another specialized kind of, um, employees. So some of these older wind turbines were much more the kind that any, you know, anybody who can maintain mine equipment would be able to maintain a wind turbine. So I do think it makes a lot of sense. Well, you should check out the Revo article in PES Wind. Just go to ps wind.com. [00:27:00] And download your copy. So when this episode comes out, it will be next week. Uh, and so I’m saying this as next week, but future me, I will be in Copenhagen. So I’ll be visiting some, some local, uh, vendors, clients, friends, uh, the wind industry operators as a whole. Uh, so reach out to me, uh, Joel dot saxon@wglightning.com or shoot me a text, uh, 832-593-2782. We’ll grab a cup of coffee, talk wind, uh, but I will be in Copenhagen all week. So, uh, hit me up. That wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you, and you can reach out to us on LinkedIn. Even Yolanda, you can reach on LinkedIn, so don’t forget to subscribe. And if you found. Value in today’s conversation, please leave us a review. It really helps other wind energy professionals discover the show and we’ll catch you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy [00:28:00] Podcast.

Solar and wind power are outpacing coal for the first time globally. However, the US faces challenges in meeting clean energy goals due to material shortages, a lack of skilled workers, and political roadblocks. 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! Something remarkable happened this year. For the first time in history, renewable energy generated more power than coal worldwide. Solar grew thirty-one percent in just six months. Wind and solar together outpaced electricity demand. China built more clean energy in half a year than the rest of the world combined. India’s renewable growth beat demand. Their fossil fuel use dropped. Why? Simple economics. Wind and solar are now the cheapest sources of electricity. But here in America, we have a problem. Johns Hopkins researchers just discovered we’ll fall thirty-four percent short of our clean energy goals by twenty fifty. Not because renewables cost too much. Because we don’t have the materials to build them. Nickel. Silicon. Rare earth elements with names like neodymium and dysprosium. China controls ninety percent of the processing. And last week, they announced export controls. Meanwhile, in Britain… They’re creating four hundred thousand clean energy jobs by twenty thirty. Plumbers. Electricians. Welders. Building wind farms. Installing solar panels. Running smart grids. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband put it simply: “Where are the good jobs of the future going to come from? This is the answer.” The Sizewell C nuclear plant alone needs ten thousand workers. But here’s the rub – they need to triple their welders, double their plumbers. The workers don’t exist yet. Down in North Carolina… Duke Energy just announced a new plan. They’re delaying wind projects. Extending coal plants. Not because coal is cheaper – it isn’t. But because artificial intelligence and data centers are driving electricity demand eight times faster than expected. Glen Snider from Duke says they need reliability while demand surges. The irony? Duke’s moving away from the cheapest new sources of power – wind and solar – just when they need the most electricity. They’re choosing to extend expensive coal plants that cost more to run. Australia sees opportunity… Treasurer Jim Chalmers is in New York meeting with Blackstone and Wall Street. Australia has lithium, manganese, rare earths. They claim they can deliver the world’s lowest-cost renewable electricity by twenty fifty. “Australia has exactly what the world needs, when the world needs it,” Chalmers says. Think about this… The technology works. Solar and wind are cheaper than coal. Batteries can store the power. Countries using these technologies are seeing their energy costs drop. But America faces three bottlenecks: First, we don’t control the materials. Second, we don’t have the skilled workers. Third, states like North Carolina are choosing reliability over cost savings. President Trump calls renewables “a joke.” But JP Morgan says something different. They say America will have to use renewable energy whether we like it or not. Nuclear takes too long to build. Fossil fuels cost too much. The numbers tell the story… Britain: Four hundred thousand new jobs. America: Seven hundred thirty gigawatts short of materials. North Carolina: Eight times the demand growth. Global renewables: Cheaper than coal for the first time. We’re watching the free market work. The cheapest energy is winning worldwide. Except in places where politics and supply chains get in the way. The future of energy isn’t about saving anything. It’s about economics. And right now, the economics are clear. The cheapest power comes from the sun and wind.

Allen and Joel speak with SkySpec’s Chief Revenue Officer, Josh Goryl, at the SkySpecs Customer Forum. With record attendance, the forum emphasized industry collaboration, data amalgamation, and the application of AI for optimizing wind and solar renewable energy assets. SkySpecs announced their expansion into the solar industry, leveraging their established wind solutions to streamline data management and operational strategies across renewable energy sectors. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Allen Hall: [00:00:00] I’m Alan Hall, host of the Uptime Winner Energy podcast, and I’m here with Joel Saxon and Josh Gar, chief Revenue Officer with Sky Spec, and Josh brought us out this week to participate in the Skys Pick Customer Forum 2025, which as it turns out, has been the largest attendance this year. Joel Saxum: Yeah,  Allen Hall: it’s grown every single year. Yeah. It’s a room full of people, all experts in blades all here to learn about the next generation of skys specs, blades and  Joel Saxum: CMS predict CMS predict analysis and that’s why it’s growing so much. Right. How, what kind of percentage of the capacity in the states do you think is represented here? Allen Hall: We, we should have ran the number, I should have came prepared for this, but, um, I mean, I would say. 75%. Yeah. 80%. Okay. Yeah, that’s, you’re talking all the, all the big operators are, are here. Yep. I think, uh, 21 total organizations represented over 40 experts, blades, drivetrain, few senior management as well, and asset management [00:01:00] engineering. So it’s an awesome, awesome group. We keep, uh, ev It’s tough though. Every year we have to step it up a bit, so we’re kind of, I think we’re outgrowing the space that we’re at here and excited for. Yeah, we’re bursting at the seams. Uh, last year Joel and I were invited to come and it’s the first time that we had been here and I thought, wow, this is a pretty full room. And this year, like, okay, she’s back. We’re we’re, we are sitting next to the door right now because everybody is trying to learn what Sky Specs offers, what. Power do I have on my desktop right now, but also what is coming and there’s a lot of new product releases happening that were announced just this morning. Yeah, and I think the cool thing too, that’s it’s not often you’re able to get this many experts from operators together in one room, and even more so ones that cut across drive, train, CMS, all main components and. It can be tough to kind of keep everyone engaged ’cause everyone’s a domain expert in different, different areas. But the conversations have been been incredible and I think even within [00:02:00] organizations as, as, as well. And so we’re trying to learn how do we help our customers come together more and, and collaborate across. And even just having these discussions that want to discuss pulled out of is fantastic. Just some of that collaboration between even people that are, that are at the same company, they don’t see each other as much. Joel Saxum: There, there’s some cultural things playing out here that are funny to me because if you’re in wind and you’ve bounced around, if you’re an ISP or you’re at an operator, you know, some of the players and kind of how they act, how they keep their, their, their poker hands close to their chest and stuff. So you see some people sitting at a table and you see, and I noticed this yesterday, like the psychological look of things sails, right? Mm-hmm. So I’m kind of looking at people listening and stuff and, and the, the one of the persons from an operator that usually does play things close to their hands mm-hmm. Was just kind of sitting there listening. Everyone’s like, what’s your opinion? What’s your opinion? He was like, uh, what’s yours? But, but that being said, the, the collaboration here has been fantastic. Uh, uh, we were talking with Matt Stead earlier and he was saying mm-hmm. He, uh, was a part of a conversation where someone from Canada, someone from the us they shared some [00:03:00] information and they were like, that’s a amazing, thank you. Let’s swap cards. Different operators, you know, sharing things. Uh, we sat in a couple of the breakout sessions and the breakout sessions. Yes, we had a presentation. Yes, we were walking through solutions and problems, but they, they devolved into amazing conversations where everybody in the room just kinda like turned to each other and were like, what do you think? How could we use this? Could you use that? Does this make sense? Um, and it’s, and it’s, it’s engineers. It’s all engineers. Oh yeah. They’re geared to solve the problems and that’s what’s happening.  Allen Hall: Yeah. And, and I think at a macro level, right? Like it’s, it’s a lot of the same themes that, that everyone’s seeing. We’re, we’re talking about the, the same things. And a lot of it is how do we continue to do. More with less as these fleets grow mm-hmm. There’s different issues that pop up every, every year and just having a tier. To your point, even even last year, last night I was talking to somebody and after the conference they stayed in touch with each other for four months and were talking weekly mm-hmm. On just different, uh, tools and tricks that they [00:04:00] were using to be more, more efficient. Nothing. Confidential to their, their own organization, but more so how are they more efficient with the tools that they’re, that they’re using. So that’s where a lot of the value is if there’s only so many blade engineers and CMS engineers in the industry. And so it’s important that there’s opportunities for them to learn from each other and they’re, they’re not really competing with one another. Once a turbines or the solar panels are deployed now, it’s about operational efficiency. And delivering that power. So every operator is maximizing the revenue and you really can’t do that today without Sky specs. You need to have blade data, you need to have CMS data, you need to have, uh, power curve information. Mm-hmm. Like how your turbines are performing before you can even make sense. So the engineers. To me are finally accessing tools on a almost universally, that they didn’t have five years ago. Yeah. That are empowering them way beyond what they ever thought would be possible.  Joel Saxum: You can’t optimize, uh, an industrial fleet on a spreadsheet. No. You can [00:05:00] maybe maintain some things and look at some part numbers and figures, a couple things out model wise. Right. But, and I know some good people that are really good with spreadsheets. Yep. But you need, you need tools. You need to, uh, be able to amalgamate your data. You need to be able to look at, I mean, this is one of the big things we’re talking about here. Um, predict, prevent, perform. Yep. Or did I do it backwards? I’ve gotten it wrong all week. Prevent, predict. Perform. Perform. There you go. There you go. So, so, but looking at this saying, okay, so we have a foundation, we need inspections, we need these things, right? That is the foundation of the data. We have to have collections, whether it’s, uh, inspections, scada data, CMS data, whatever that may be. Yes. Okay. Now it’s amalgamated into a platform. Now we can see this stuff. Mm-hmm. Now we can start running predictive analytics. We can start visualizing things. Yesterday you and I said, and, and. On the performance monitoring breakout session, and the data that was in that thing was just like, what about this? You could use this data for that. You could use it for that. This is a great idea here. Now, this morning we talked, or we listened to, uh, Alan Larson from your team say, we’re gonna marry that [00:06:00] performance data with CMS data. Yep. And we’re gonna be able to look at, here’s your performance drop. Here’s what your CMS data is saying, and get real insights out of it. And it sounds. To me, like I don’t know any other solution that’s never been done in the industry before.  Allen Hall: No, and and I think to your earlier point, it starts with that baseline and that health record and to be able to see, we’ve all been in the industry for some time now, and the level of maturity, even just year over year, we finally start to see it. Right. And so another thing they brought up this morning was even just. Uh, preventative inspection programs. Years ago, it was, you know, maybe we’ll do 25, 30% of the fleet each year. And then after four or five years, we inspected everything. Well, it’s, it’s not that simple, right? There’s different makes and models, different risk tolerances. Mm-hmm. And the arrangements with third parties is, is different. So, um, it’s, it’s kind of that intake valve and having all that data in, in one place. And, uh, fortunately we’re seeing most of the operators have taken big, big leaps over the course of the [00:07:00] last couple years to have all that data in, in one place. And then from there it’s like, okay, how do I start to see trends. Across main components and optimize the repair windows. And now it’s about the fine tuning. And I think we’re getting there as, as an industry. And that’s why we, that’s one of the things we talked about. We’re excited about jumping into the solar and battery battery storage space. ’cause our customers said, Hey, a lot of these problems that we saw in wind and what you guys solved in blades and drivetrain, solar’s been in hypergrowth mode. We’ve done a lot of inspections, but data’s everywhere. Help us solve that problem.  Joel Saxum: Let’s pause there for a second. That’s a huge announcement. Let’s do that announcement here.  Allen Hall: Yeah. So here, that’s what we announced now this morning, so we’ll, we’ll definitely have, have, uh, have, have more information very, very soon, soon on. Um, things have been moving, moving fast over the course of the last, last few months, but the reason why we’re, we’re diving into it is because, um, really we’ve al always been about following our customers and [00:08:00] helping them solve their, their biggest problems. And we’re starting to hear, uh, that they want to bring the playbook. From wind, from wind o and m into, into solar. Um, again, earlier we were talking about how SCADA teams are not just looking at wind data. Mm-hmm. It’s across all their generating assets. And having one place for all that data is, is very, very important. And I think where we can help our customers is getting all that data into one place and going from. Data capture to work order in whatever system that you have. It could be an ERP system, it could be, it could be in horizon, but there absolutely is a, is a need in that, in that space and we think we can really help out. Joel Saxum: Yeah. Listening to the, uh, new, new Sky spec, C-C-E-C-T-O this morning, Ben Toan, he was talking about some of the architecture moves that you guys are making in the background to be able to make that, I don’t want, I don’t wanna simplify it, this, this far, but the copy paste of the wind playbook. Two Solar makes, it makes it easier for the future of if expanding [00:09:00]into other silos, doing more things, uh, making that platform. One login. We can manage all of our assets and um, and do it the same way. Right. So as you guys have expanded in the last few years with. Inspections, tech enabled insights from the, the, the SMEs that are here, um, into the, using the digitalization tools and the qa qc process. We talked a bunch about that and, and your repair vendor management yesterday. Yep. But being able to take all of those things that you guys have perfected and built over the years and wind. And boom, immediately be able to deploy that into solar. That’s gonna be a game changer for some people.  Allen Hall: Yeah, we’re, we’re super excited about it. And, and that’s what, so Ben Tor, who’s our, our new Chief Technology Officer is, talks a lot about a, a common data model and being able to, as we, as we start to scale. It’s not just about a, a blade or a drivetrain gearbox, it’s, it’s about more, more than that. And being able to put in the solar data, whether it’s the panels, inverters, combiner boxes, and that ex expands further, right? And the battery storage and [00:10:00] other power generating assets. And I think that’s where we can, we can really help out. So it’s kind of taking a step back a bit and thinking about, okay, how do we think about that model holistically, mm-hmm. Across renewable, uh, renewable assets. So excited for it. But again, don’t wanna get too far out over our skis here. So the first, first step is, is solar and, and working in partnership with our, with our customers on that. And I think it’s big because a lot of the engineers we’ve been working with for the last several years that have been primarily wind focused, blade focused. Yeah. When you talk to them today. They’ll say, oh yeah, and I have a solar site that I’m now responsible for. Mm-hmm. And so they’re trying to learn the solar aspects pretty quickly, but staying in the same platform is huge because it reduces the cycle, learning cycle Yeah. By quite a bit.  Joel Saxum: Yeah. I, we, and this is a, a, we’re gonna make a, well, let’s make a side announcement. Yeah. We just added another team member to the weather guard team. I hear you. You’ll hear more about that here in the next, in the coming weeks. But, uh, she came from a team that managed wind solar. And [00:11:00] battery storage with the same engineering group. Right. And I think that that, like you said, is becoming onshore and offshore. Mm-hmm. It is becoming more and more common. Right. So you’re seeing that be engineering resource. We always talk about the shortage of technicians. Mm-hmm. But there’s a shortage of engineers and it’s shrinking in a lot of pools. Yep. Right. There’s a lot of people who, one big beautiful deal thing, trying to cut budgets, changing operating models. So engineers are being asked to do more. The more with less thing, right? Yep. They’re being asked to do more with less. Well, how do you do that? You don’t do that by using spreadsheets. You do it by using a, a common tool set with the architecture that works together in something, you know, and one place that you can manage all these things. Allen Hall: Oh, yeah. It’s the only way to do it. And as we go forward over the next year, what I’m really interested in is what new concepts, ideas, platform updates. They get implemented by the operators because you, you always come out every year. Mm-hmm. We talk to Sky Specs and we, we see all the new things that happen and then we wait for the, the feedback and then we get to the customer [00:12:00] forum. You see what they just used over the last year, they’re gonna be more hungry for more data than ever before. Mm-hmm. Even though they may be a little bit on a reduced staff. So that puts a big onus and burden onto Skys specs to not just provide data. Well, here’s all the drone images. No, we need to be able to give you insights as to what is happening and what I should be doing about it. That’s the benefit of being with Skys specs. Yeah. I, I think, I think that’s huge. Right. And definitely there’s always a, a call to move faster and faster. Yeah. Because there’s, there’s a lot of challenges. A year ago, we were sitting in this room and we talked a lot about internal inspections, and we were on a journey. Ingesting that third party ingest, uh, data, but customers are like, Hey, it’d be really great if you had a robot for that too. Yeah. So, and now it’s sitting right out here’s sitting out there and our robots are very busy. So, yeah. Um, it’s, it’s, it’s stuff like that where it’s, it’s continuing to get that feedback. We get it at forums like, like this. Right. And, um, for us too, especially as we get into those other spaces like doing. An [00:13:00] external drone inspection of a blade is just one piece of the puzzle, right? There’s a lot of other data streams that are critically important, and even it’s especially important in solar when there’s different data capture methods. And again, our big focus is gonna be on that JE ingestion. Mm-hmm. And getting all that data into, into one place. Um, maybe in some cases we’ll do the data capture, but customers are sitting on a ton of data already. Right. And so it’s helping them digitize it, get it into that common data model, and then connect it to their work order system. That is key. And there’s a lot of automation and rules that kind of go in to trigger the optimization. And that’s where I think we’re, we’re good at. And some of our customers have seen that success and wind and that value case. And that’s what it’s about for, for, for solar. So it’s an exciting, exciting time. I’m gonna put you on,  on  Joel Saxum: the hook here. Okay.  Allen Hall: All right. So  Joel Saxum: our producer Claire, make a short outta this. We’re gonna put it on LinkedIn. Okay. This morning we heard and we saw a slide and some promises that said, expect transparency from skys specs. [00:14:00] So we’re here talking about all kinds of awesome developments. Yep. A lot of things happening. Probably the most active product roadmap I think that I’ve seen at Skys specs. Mm-hmm. In since I’ve been around wind. Right. So. Expect more information. Q4, Q1, 26. Things rolling out. Um, you know, the, the, the jump into solar, some more CMS things, some the financial asset modeling. Expect to hear more about that.  Josh Goryl: Mm-hmm.  Joel Saxum: Um, a repair vendor management, possibly moving into other components than just blades. Like there’s going to be a lot of announcements and the transparency promise, we got it this morning. Yep. We’re recording it now.  Allen Hall: Yeah, yeah. Well, you, you got it here, but I will say I have to leave some, uh, some stuff for the audience so they come, set out calls and do all that. But yeah, to your, to your point, we’re super thrilled for what’s, what’s, what’s ahead. Um, so Alan, Alan Larson, who leads, leads product here, he had a, he a great presentation on some of the things that we’re gonna, we’re gonna be doing and you, we hit [00:15:00] on a lot of them. So solar. We have a, we have a POC now, uh, working with, with customers all already. So we’ll see more of that in in 2026. Uh, thrilled to continue to work closer and closer with you guys at, at Weather Guard and a logic ping. And on the lightning stuff we’re going deeper and deeper into a lot of these lightning work workflows. It’s a big problem, right? Big, big problem, right? You, you guys know more than more than anyone. And so bringing all that data into the horizon platform is, is, is, is key. So we’re, we’re, we’re thrilled about that. And then I think what’s also important is that we continue to do and improve what we’re good at. So even on the, the inspection side, I think there’s a lot that we can do in collaboration with customers to optimize those workflows. So there’s a lot less kind of human in the loop, uh, because we have to continue to, to scale. And, um, we have amazing SMEs in this, in this industry, and it’s helping empower them to do, to do more. There is a [00:16:00] lot more inspection data than anyone could have ever imagined at this, at this point. And as an industry and as a company, we’ve gotten very good at, uh, moving faster, but it’s continuing to, to optimize and use AI and different tools. Tools like that. Yeah. And I wanna talk about the AI. This, uh, improvements that have been made over the last year. There was a presentation yesterday talking about how to use AI to suss out images to make sure you’re getting what you’re paying for mm-hmm. On repairs. That was a monumental task, just listening to the engineering discussion of what it took to do that analysis. How much AI comes in in 20, late 20, 25 into 26. Is that where the industry is headed? Because. Of the mass, massive amounts of data from every turbine. The images are so much better than they were three years ago, and they’re just, we’re taking more pictures. We’re doing it quarterly. Mm-hmm. So a yearly, or we’re not doing a third of the farm, we’re doing the whole farm year and the repair reports. That was the big thing. Yeah. And the repair reports u the PDFs for ai. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So the, the, the data stream comes in and it’s, it’s huge. Are [00:17:00] you then thinking more AI over the next couple years, just so we can get that condensed data set down? No question. And in all areas we have to, and I think every organization is thinking about their Ai, AI strategy. And, and for us it’s, it’s kind of going back to first principles and thinking on a workflow level. Right, and so there was a use case yesterday where we were talking about okay, reviewing images a lot more efficiently from the field. There’s thousands of PDF reports from rep from repair reports that our customers are trying to digitize. How do we use AI to to do that? So we see those improvement. It feels like every couple weeks there’s something new that helps our team. And we’re trying to put more of those tools in the hands of our, our customer, but customers. But that is, um, one of the key pillars of our, of our strategy because we know we need it. We know our customers need it, and how do we do that to together? So. What I will say, it’s not just AI that spits out the, an the right answer every single time. Right. Right. We, we always have, have, have work to [00:18:00] do, but we kind of think about it on a, on a workflow level and, and, um, how does it help us and everything we do every, every day. Joel Saxum: Hmm. And the addition of Ben Torquing to the team is, is gonna spur that along. We, we heard from him this morning, man. That guy’s got it going on.  Allen Hall: Oh yeah, Ben, Ben, Ben has been fantastic. So Ben, uh, has been with us for about two months now. He’s our new Chief tech technology officer, and he is an AI background, uh, enterprise architecture background. So that’s one of the other areas too, even outside of e uh, AI is being able to integrate to other third party platforms. We deal with utilities and IPPs. There’s a lot of big systems and being able to do that in a flexible way. That’s, that’s quick. Um, and, and works best for, for both sides. We know it’s not realistic that every single person every day is working in horizon. Um, but it’s getting all that engineering and asset management data into the, into the right hands and doing that through some of these third party connections. So another area [00:19:00] where we’re gonna continue to, to level up and, and grow as an organization. So if you’re an asset manager and you are not using Skys specs, I don’t even know who that would be today. But if you’re an engineer, you’re not actively on the Horizon platform and or if you’re on the Horizon platform and you wanna learn all the things that you missed this week. Yeah. How do they get ahold of you, Josh, to get the update? Yeah, I would say, um, I’m definitely gonna, I’ll leave my kind of contact information behind. You can contact me directly. Always our sales teams. We have a sales@skysspecsdot.com, that goes to all of our account account executives and our technical sales manager. So depending on the, the area of need, we’d be happy to kinda set up, even if it’s just a discovery call and, um, with no agenda to kind of help and assess. What you have, have going on, and I’m sure there’s areas where we can, we can help and yeah, if you have solar assets, you better be calling Skys picks now and getting that turned on. That’s right. Yeah. We’re, we’re super, super excited. And I think too, like we’re, we’re in it to, to learn and we know everyone has a different [00:20:00] operating strategy and may think about, uh, the world a little bit differently. And so it’s important that we, we kind of take a step back and, and learn from you all. So we’ve kind of always taken that, taken that approach. And we can move fast too. Josh, you love having you on the podcast and love being at the customer forums. They’re very, yeah. Thanks for the invite. Uh, yeah, they’re eye-opening every single time and, uh, we get to talk to so many people. So, Josh, thank you so much for inviting us and, and thanks so much for being on the podcast. No, the thing I’ll say too is, I, I can’t thank the two of you and, and Claire enough and just kind of the, the level of support and engagement and you guys have really helped level up our forum the last couple years. So it means a, means a ton.  Joel Saxum: Thanks. Appreciate it.

Allen and Rosemary discuss the upcoming Wind O&M Australia 2026 conference, Ørsted’s major restructuring announcement, and the BirdVision bird collision avoidance system. They also explore Nordex’s new cold-climate turbine for Canada and the ongoing challenges of blade icing protection systems. 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! You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now, here’s your hosts. Alan Hall, Joel Saxon, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes.  Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Alan Hall from the Queen City, Charlotte, North Carolina. And Rosemary Barnes is here from Australia. And Rosemary, Joel and I just got back from the Sky Specs customer Form 2025 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and we had a really good time, man. Most of the install base in America. For Wind was up at Sky Specs and interesting discussions. Just a lot going on. Obviously, we’re all talking about the changes in legislation we’re talking about. Uh, all the moving [00:01:00] targets everybody’s trying to reorganize. There’s been a number of, uh, shifts from wind into solar that’s happening right now in the United States. And lowering operational costs, that’s the big one. Getting blades under control, uh, getting gear boxes under control, understanding where some of the risks are. It was a very good. Conference, uh, they do it once a year. It was a full room, uh, and really good people, people we, we don’t see all year. You maybe see once a year, maybe see at another trade show. It was nice to spend a couple of days, uh, talking wind turbine o and m. Very similar, much to what we’re gonna do in Australia in February. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I wish I could have been there, uh, maybe next year.  Allen Hall: Well, we, we met with Matthew Stead. He was there. He had traveled all the way from Australia. And one of the things we did tell everybody were at the SKYSPACE conference was come to Australia February 16th and 17th in Melbourne, and you need to start [00:02:00] registering now. You can go to Woma. 2020 six.com. WMA 2020 six.com and register for that event. Or if you want to, uh, present, you need to put your information into the website and get that rolling. Uh, it, it’s gonna, it’s getting close to being sold out, so you need to do that now before you lose your spot. We’ve increased the size of the conference from, it was about 170 odd people last year, and it’s gonna be up to 250, but even. By increasing the, the amount of seats we’re still gonna be full.  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. It’s a hard, it’s a hard cutoff this time as well. Last time we kind of expanded as, uh, we got more registrations in, but we don’t have that option this year, and yet that, uh, agenda is definitely starting to get worked out. So now is the time to get in touch. If you, one, want to speak or two, have a, a topic that you think that we should talk about, like one of the big things that we wanna achieve with this event. Is matching people with [00:03:00] problems to people who have solutions and especially, you know, people who are developing solutions. So, you know, it might be that there is no solution available yet, but we still wanna hear about the problems ’cause there’s a lot of smart people that know all about developing wind, wind turbine technologies. So that’s the place to. Get those sorts of, um, yeah. That kind of information sharing, flowing and get people thinking creatively.  Allen Hall: Yeah. And I don’t wanna make all the announcements here, but a number of world experts are going to travel to Melbourne to talk about wind energy. So if you, if you haven’t heard of a solution before and, and there’s a lot of problems with wind turbines, right? There’s little nuance. Difficult problems that we’re all trying to solve. And you, you may not have an expert in Australia, you may not have an expert in United States. They may be over in Denmark or Germany, or France. Uh, pretty much everybody around the world is gonna be in Australia in February to talk about how to make our wind turbines operate better. That’s why it’s gonna be good. It’s just the world’s gonna be there. [00:04:00] Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. It’s one of the other other reasons why we wanted to make this event is it’s exhausting. Going to all of the technical events around the world is really hard, especially for Australians. You know, you can’t go anywhere basically without getting on a 15 to 30 hour flight to, to get there. So, um, we’re bringing some, some key people over. Um, yeah. And we can talk about. There’s more in depth later on, but there’s some, some good topics that I think Australian wind farm owners and operators really can learn from some of the solutions that are happening elsewhere. And we have also got some unique Australian only problems that, um, I think that, you know, these, uh, companies will be interested to help solve. Allen Hall: And there’s a lot of unique Australian solutions to wind turbine operations that the world needs to hear too. So it’s a both way conversation because Australians have a really intuitively, uh, solving problems kind of get down to first principles and, and suss [00:05:00] out how to get their turbines up and running again. And, and sometimes if, if you spend time in Samoan m buildings, sometimes they overthink these problems and Australians are really good at solving them. So. It’s good to hear both sides and that’s how we do it.  Rosemary Barnes: I’m really enjoying this, technical subset of the Australian wind community. I do find people are very much kind of solution oriented and less, I’ve always been a bit bamboozled by how secretive and isolated wind turbine companies want to be. And I don’t feel like that’s the vibe. Like we don’t have obviously any Australian OEMs and so all of the operators are. fairly, or most of them are fairly free in the way that they’re talking about problems and solutions that they’ve found and also willing to try things out. So it is a really good place to run trials for new technologies. ’cause you’ll usually find a really huge wind farm that, is able to, try it out. And Get some data on how it’s working, [00:06:00] Allen Hall: and it’s definitely some of the world’s harshest environment for wind turbines. So if you have a great new leading edge product, you probably ought to take it to Australia and actually check it out because, as Rosemary pointed out a number of times, the UV in Australia is really strong, the dust and debris is really strong and the winds are strong. So you have all the ingredients to, really aggressive leading edge erosion. Plus the lightning from our area of expertise. The lightning is amazing in Australia and not amazing in a good way. There’s a lot of lightning. To wind turbines And it can be destructive in Australia, where you may not see that up in Denmark. So you can really learn a lot from watching what the Australians have done.  Rosemary Barnes: I, I am involved in, in a couple of trials ongoing at the moment for a few Australia specific problems. Um, par loads, also starting to do some r and d into, uh, figuring out more about what the problems are and solutions to them. So yeah, I think that it’s a really exciting time [00:07:00] to be part of the Australian wind industry.  Allen Hall: So you need to register now. Go to WOMA 2020 six.com. And get involved. Are you worried about unexpected blade root failures and the high cost of repairs? Meet eco Pitch by Onyx Insight. The standard in blade root monitoring. Onyx iss state-of-the-art sensor tracks blade root movement in real time, delivering continuous data to keep your wind farm running smoothly and efficiently. With eco pitch, you can catch problems early. Saving hundreds of thousands of dollars. Field tested on over 3000 blades. It’s proven reliability at your fingertips. Choose Eco Pitch for peace of mind. Contact Onyx Insight today to schedule your demo of Eco Pitch and experience the future of blade monitoring. Well, the announcement today was when Giant or is having a major organizational restructuring that will eliminate [00:08:00] approximately 2000 positions by the end of 2027. Now. CEO Rasmus Abo uh, described the move as necessary to create a more efficient and competitive organization as the company prepares to bid on some new offshore wind projects across Europe. Note that they didn’t mention America in that, that. Ted is gonna be mostly focused on Europe. That makes a lot of sense. Honestly. Uh, the restructuring reflects Ted’s strategic focus on offshore wind and European markets with plans to finalize large construction projects in coming years while. Building a more fiscally robust company than the current workforce of about 8,000 employees globally will be downsized through natural attrition, redundancies, and outsourcing with the organization, ultimately ending up at about 6,000 people and rosemary in the United States, there’s been a number of announced layoffs, or we’re seeing that on LinkedIn. This is a [00:09:00] big deal for the organization because Ted needs to get, its. Financials settled. Uh, if you listen to some other discussions about this, there’s a lot of talk. I mean, it’s, in my opinion, a little bit of crazy talk about, uh, Ecuador and Orton into some sort of merger, which I just don’t think is ever going to happen. But if Ted’s gonna move from less development, which is what it sounds like to more just operational performance, they’re gonna need fewer people.  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, it’s a bit, a bit sad, um, and. I can definitely understand the reason for the move away from the US and away from development. I mean, they may not even want to, like how much, how much cash reserve would you need to try again with, you know, some big offshore projects when they’ve been hit so bad with the, um, the US ones. So it’s probably, you know, as much out of necessity as it [00:10:00] is, uh, kind of a strategic pivot. And yeah, uh, definitely less staff is probably also needed considering that, you know, there’re big projects that they probably were planning towards, um, over the last few years. You know, they’re not happening anymore. So it’s a bit, yeah, it’s always a bit sad when there’s a lot of layoffs in one of the big. Uh, big wind industry companies because you know that you’re gonna lose a lot of people with a lot of specialized experience that the industry needs, you know, that you’re gonna lose them to other industries now. Allen Hall: Yeah, and what I’ve noticed so far is a lot of the stead employees have ended up at competitors, quote unquote competitors. There’s a lot of talented people there, and the industry knows that. And so as soon as they see an available person, um, it looks to be a lot of phone calls being made to try to get an interview set up, and that’s the right move. Uh, horse did is full of talent [00:11:00] and if those people become available, they should be pulled into other organizations because they don’t offer so much. They have. A unique insight into the world of offshore wind and even onshore wind and experience with a variety of wind turbine manufacturers and all the behind the scenes and operations and maintenance. It does seem like, uh, at least the people I’ve dealt with at TED or Top Quality, it’s sad that this is happening, but at the same time, it may open up more opportunities for future wind development because you have so many talented people that are gonna be moving on to another organization that may have the cash flow to. To push the boundaries a little bit more.  Rosemary Barnes: But you know what? There uh, is definitely a need for more, um, wind turbine expertise, technical, especially in Australia. People are really starting to realize, I know a lot of companies are trying to hire wind turbine experts and they find it really hard, uh, because, you know, we don’t have any OEMs in Australia, so no one has kind of gone through. That, [00:12:00] uh, entry into the career. So, you know, maybe some of these, um, ex uh, employees, maybe they need to come down to Melbourne and, you know, meet some, meet some people at Wind Energy o and m 2026.  Allen Hall: Yeah. Yeah. We, we’d love to have ’em, that’s for sure. Well, and this quarter’s PES WIN magazine, there’s a number of great articles I want to. Point out one Rosemary that I’ve been reading through from Bird Vision and we’ve had a number of discussions about. Collision avoidance with birds and bats, and we’ve had some people on the podcast on the spotlights talking about it. So there’s a lot of technology that exists to solve this problem of just trying to avoid interactions with wildlife. Well, bird vision is one of those, and the article in the PES wind goes to point out, uh, it uses several cameras wrapped around the base of the tower, so it’s not. Super high up the [00:13:00] tower. Uh, but it’s a 360 camera system and it is really effective. In the article, they say they’re 100% detection rates within 200 meters. That’s pretty good. Uh, and they’re trying to avoid the larger birds, right, uh, from keeping them away from the rotors. So what they’re doing is using that. Bird vision system to shut down the turbine and let the birds fly through and then start ’em back up again, which is better than a blanket shutdown, which is so expensive to not be operating turbines. And rosemary, you’ve looked at a number of these systems over the years. They’re becoming more prevalent than they ever have, even five years ago, even though we really did care, we just didn’t have the technology to go attack the problem.  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, they worked, they worked well. Actually. I just googled bird vision when turbine and, uh, the video that I made on that come up in the top of the results. So that’s always nice to see that my SEO is, uh, working effectively. [00:14:00]Um, but when I was researching that video, I looked into a, a few different systems, um, and LY was the one that I, I talked to a guy who was, um, managing a wind farm in Tasmania and they had a problem ’cause there was an endangered bird. Um, I think it was the Tasmanian Wedgetail Eagle. Um, and it. Was getting it, it, it was, it was there in the area. And so they had to do something about that to be able to get permission to operate that wind farm. And so they put the identified system in and they, um, had less bird bird deaths after that than before the wind farm was built. So, um, they have yeah, eliminated the, the problem, um, and not that much curtailment. So they were, yeah, that guy was really happy with it. Um, there’s a few other systems around that that identify. One uses AI and vision and they, they actually don’t put a camera on every single turbine. They have just them scattered [00:15:00] around the wind farm in particular places. Um, how does this, this system in PS, wind, how does that one work? Is there a, a camera on every single turbine?  Allen Hall: It doesn’t talk about that. Obviously this is being used over in Europe to start off with. So in Germany in particular, so there doesn’t tend to be large farms in Germany. My guess is it’s gonna be on every, uh, turbine tower. But if you have a bird issue. You really want to protect the birds, so putting on, on every tower may be the right solution for you or every other tower. It, I guess it really depends upon, uh, how scattered your turbines are. Joel and I have talked to a number of operators in the United States about using these systems, and they, they, they try to minimize the spend, but in reality. They, what they’re really doing is they’re trying to minimize any interaction with the birds. So they’re super cautious. Super cautious and airing on the, on the side of more protection instead of less.  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I mean, these, these things, the technology works. You don’t have [00:16:00] to shred birds. I mean, the birds and wind turbine thing. It, it’s an, it’s. Blown out of proportion, definitely. But it’s also partially about the way that old wind turbines were. So, you know, when they built some of the early wind farms, especially, there’s one particular one in California, I can’t remember the name. They put turbines all along a ridge. And then that happened to be a really important, um, migration path for one particular raptor. I can’t remember the name of the bird anymore. Sorry. Um, and it was just terribly, it was terribly cited. And you need to, you know, when you’re doing a site assessment, you do need to make sure that there aren’t endangered birds that are traveling through the area where you wanna put wind turbines. So that’s the first line of defense. Um, and then secondly, uh, you know, once a, a wind farm is operating, or you know, if you’ve got this occasional risk, but you still wanna put a wind farm there, then that’s the time to implement these technologies. But there’s some other things that have changed as well with wind turbines. ’cause like early ones, remember they had those lattice towers and birds [00:17:00] used to nest on those or or perch on them, and then they would take off right into the blades and, you know, that was bad. So now with wind turbines are, you know, just a, a steel cylinder isn’t nowhere to roost on one of those. You’ve eliminated that. I know I was, when I was researching the video that I did on birds, even without any of these fancy systems that are detecting birds and stopping turbines, even without that, the number of bird deaths per turbine has massively reduced. ’cause modern wind turbines are just not as, um, able to kill birds as the old ones were. So there’s heaps of different layers and you choose the system or the combination of things that make sense for the site that you’re at. Basically at the end of the day, there’s no excuse for wind turbines killing any, you know, significant number of birds and definitely not endangered ones. Um, and in general they, they don’t anymore. So it’s because of technology is like this?  Allen Hall: Yeah, absolutely. And [00:18:00] this is not the only great article on PES Wind. You need to go download a copy@pswin.com. Read it. Uh, there’s so many good technology items in the magazine and just thoughts about the industry, how to operate turbines, how to be more efficient offshore, onshore, both, uh, it’s a good read, so go to ps wind.com and read it today. As Wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it difficult. That’s why the Uptime podcast recommends PES Wind Magazine. PES Wind offers a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit PES wind.com today. Nordex has launched. Its N 1 75. Six x wind turbines, or the six megawatt turbine specifically for the Canadian market. Uh, and it features an, [00:19:00] an advanced anti-icing technology for extreme cold performance. And unlike Australia, Canada gets really, really cold. Uh, so having turbines way up north like that. Is an issue. You need an anti-icing system if you want to really produce on the days that you need the power. Uh, the turbine uses, uh, the proven Delta 4,000 platform for which Nordex has sold over 40 gigawatts globally. Uh, but it has been adapted for temperatures as low as minus. 30 degrees Celsius. Rosemary, you’ve ever been in minus 30 degrees Celsius?  Rosemary Barnes: I sure have. And in fact, I’ve probably climbed a wind turbine mine at approximately minus 30 degrees Celsius because, uh, that’s what my, that’s what my job was when I worked at lm. I was leading the, um, de-icing team. Uh, yeah. So. Super familiar with that, but it’s not actually like it, it’s, I, to me, the coldest temperature is around zero degrees [00:20:00] because there’s moisture in the air, right? Um, so you feel a lot more cold at zero plus or minus two degrees talking Celsius, um, compared to minus 30. It’s always very crisp, clear days when it’s that. That cold. And yeah, when I was working in, um, in Denmark, I would go up to Sweden to work on the, you know, the prototype blades with the, um, deicing systems installed. And it would be like a lovely holiday going from Denmark, which is probably, yeah, zero degrees, two degrees and drizzling. You go over to Sweden and minus 20, save minus 30, sometimes bright blue, sky, crisp, clean, amazing air. Um, it was always like a little, a little winter holiday for me to go up there. You still, you know, like feel the sun on your face, even at minus 20 degrees, it still still feels good. Minus 30 is pretty extreme. You don’t, you don’t wanna stay out for long in that. But, you know, it’s actually the same for icing where the hardest icing conditions, [00:21:00] uh, also around zero degrees is when you get the most ice forming because there’s a lot more moisture in the air at minus 30. There really isn’t moisture in the air that’s going to stick onto a blade and freeze and build up. So, um, yeah, it’s the icing events that you need to watch out for are those ones that happen just around freezing and you can still get icing at the lower temperatures, but the most common and the biggest chunks of ice that build up, it’s definitely at the, um, warmer temperatures  Allen Hall: up in Canada. The wind speeds are not phenomenal. They tend to be in the low to mid range as we would typically conceive of them. Is there more ice buildup in those because, and let me ask this question. I’m trying to understand this. I’ve asked this to somebody else and didn’t really get an answer, so let me ask the icing expert. If I have a larger rotor diameter for these low wind speed conditions, does that make the anti-icing system more complex because the blades are moving slower, that it may have time to accumulate more ice, or [00:22:00] is higher rotational speed more attractive to ice? It builds ice faster and is harder to deal with.  Rosemary Barnes: It should be equivalent. If the tip speed is the same in both scenarios, which it probably is roughly, then, you know, that’s what the, um, the ice cares about. The, the tip speed and the amount of moisture in the air. So pretty similar, but there’s a few things that would make it harder for a longer blade compared to a shorter one. Um, first one is a longer blade is going to more often touch the clouds. And then the second one is just simply that you’ve got more surface area that you have to heat in order to get rid of the ice. And so that’s a real challenge because it’s like megawatts of power. It’s just like an absurd amount of power that you would need to put in there, and you, you cannot get that much power into the blade. You What the designers do is they target the, um, the part of the blade, like at the tip. It’s moving faster. It’s also more important aerodynamically. So ideally you would want more power going there. To go back to your original question about [00:23:00] Canada, it does have incredibly severe icing conditions and I saw, um, you know, some of the wind farms I worked with. Had other wind farms in the area that was experiencing like 10%, even 20% a EP loss over a year from icing if, if you don’t have any, um, icing system in place. And so you can imagine that with that kinds of losses, especially the first wind farms that didn’t know to expect that it was a surprise to them that they were losing that much. Just imagine how desperate they are and that’s why they are happy to put up with putting a huge amount of power into melting off this ice for one thing, but also like a de-icing system on a blade. It’s a a very complex system that you’re adding to a wind turbine. And to be honest, they don’t operate as smoothly as, um, the rest of the turbine. The technology is not. As the same mature, at the same mature level. So it is like quite a lot of faf [00:24:00] to, to have to deal with, um, heated blades in a wind farm. And it is only in sites where they’re experiencing like at least 5% a EP loss from icing that you would bother to, to put one of these systems in place. Allen Hall: Well, it has become a challenge when wind energy becomes a predominant. Source of electricity, particularly in coal locations, that it may not be a power loss situation as much as you need to have turbines running to provide power out into the grid. So are you willing to sacrifice those losses just to keep the grid functioning? Is that where we’re at right now on, on some of these larger deployments where you’re seeing gigawatts of, of wind in cold locations?  Rosemary Barnes: But I think before you get to that grid wide concern, it just on a farm by farm basis, the economics don’t make sense. If you lose, you know, you ask anybody that’s ever put together a business case for a new wind farm. Okay? Like, so you got your business case, you got 10%, 20% [00:25:00] fat in there that you can, um, just, you know, um, sacrifice because you’ve got icing worse than you thought. It’s a real issue. Actually. Another, another, um, problem with the whole issue of wind turbines and cold climates is that people do icing site assessments, but there’s kind of a bit of a, a conflict. The developers want to have it show on that they’re gonna have very low icing because that’s what the banks wanna see. Or, um, yeah, banks wanna see that too. Provide finance or any investor wants to see that there’s not gonna be a big icing loss. You do frequently see people, they got an icing assessment done. It said that they were going to have three, 4% a EP loss. They said, okay, it’s not worth putting a de-icing system in. And their, um, investors agreed, but then actually it’s six, seven, 8% loss once the film farm is up and running. And by then, you know, it’s one thing, one annoying thing to have to put de-icing, anti-icing in. In the factory and maintain it. It [00:26:00] is a totally different kettle of fish to try and retrofit something later. And there are systems available, but they don’t work nearly as well as something that’s installed in the factory. So yeah, as, um, as big a headache, as, as it is, if you are in a kind of a borderline situation, like you really, really want to try and get an accurate icing assessment, not just one that tells your bank what they want to hear. Allen Hall: With all the knowledge and research that’s going on in icing and attending winter wind up in Sweden, which, which is a fantastic conference, are we getting smarter? Are we getting smarter about icing protection and knowing how to utilize the power that’s available to better anti-ice de ice blades?  Rosemary Barnes: Um, I’m not sure, and I haven’t been to winter wind or talk too much about de-icing for at least five, maybe six years now. So. Presumably things have moved on since when I was last. Really looking into it. Some things can’t change, like [00:27:00] just the amount of power that you would need to keep a blade ice free. That’s just physics. That’s never gonna change. Um, but you know, there were some technologies that people were trying to develop that didn’t work very well, um, back then. Like, um, passive coatings that just won’t, you know, kind of like a hydrophobic coating, but ice phobic instead, so the ice just won’t stick to it. Um, I never saw one that. Worked in the Icephobic way and was also durable enough that it could, you know, stay on a blade season after season. There’s even some wild things like, um, microwave, uh, de-icing. You know, you have like a, you know, a microwave station on the ground and it, you know, beams, uh, heat at a, a turbine blade. That’s, you know, like something like that would be possible as well. Um, yeah, so I think I. The bulk of the industry is just refining the solutions that they have to make them more effective and more, um, reliable, less needing, less maintenance, especially. Um, and then there’s always [00:28:00] gonna be people, um, trying to just totally, you know, smash the old the old way and come up with something new. So, you know, at some point someone will break through with something like that and that will that, yeah, that will be really great when we, we don’t have to actually heat the blades themselves. Allen Hall: We gotta get you up to Sweden for winter wind. That would be a good update for you and, and the industry to learn. Everything that’s happening there.  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, no, I would like to go again. And also, uh, one of my Swedish friends, um, someone that I used to climb turbines with back when I did a lot of de-icing work on Swedish wind farms, she said that I can come film a video about what, you know, a day in the life of a wind turbine tech. So I, uh, no, nobody will ever let me film any of the work that I do. So, um, yeah, that would make a great video. So I, I am keen to get back to Sweden in winter time.  Allen Hall: That wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast and thanks for joining us. We appreciate all the feedback and support we receive from the wind industry. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d [00:29:00] love to hear from you. Just reach out to us on LinkedIn and please don’t forget to describe so you never miss an episode. And on behalf of Rosemary and the uptime team, I’m Alan Hall and we’ll catch you here next week on the Uptime Winded interview podcast.

While European wind giants like Maersk and Ørsted face cancellations and layoffs, America’s offshore wind projects in Virginia and Massachusetts are surging ahead, proving that genuine energy demand trumps political headwinds when the physics and economics align. 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! It’s an interesting time to be in wind energy….In a shipyard in Singapore, there’s a vessel worth four hundred and seventy-five million dollars. It’s ninety-eight percent complete, built specifically to install wind turbines off the coast of New York. And it’s just floating there… abandoned. Maersk Offshore Wind walked away from the contract last week. Just cancelled it. Left Seatrium, the shipbuilder, holding a near-finished vessel with nowhere to go. The ship was supposed to build Empire Wind, but now lawyers are circling and nobody knows what happens next. This is happening at the same time Orsted, the company that pioneered offshore wind energy, announces it’s cutting two thousand jobs. That’s a quarter of their entire workforce. In Germany, Eno Energy just filed for bankruptcy, leaving two hundred and eighty workers unemployed and the state government holding thirteen million euros in loan guarantees. You might think the wind industry is collapsing. But, you’d be wrong. Very wrong. Thirty miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, workers just accomplished something remarkable. They hammered one hundred and seventy-six massive foundations into the Atlantic seabed, finishing the job in just five months… ahead of schedule… in what everyone agrees was perfect weather. And the weather along the East Cost of the US has been splendid this year. This is Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, and when it starts generating power next March, it will be America’s largest offshore wind farm. Two-point-six gigawatts of power, enough for half a million homes. But here’s what makes this story truly odd in today’s US political environment…. Republican Congresswoman Jen Kiggans from Virginia Beach stood up on the House floor last month to defend this wind farm. Not attack it… defend it. She explained that this project provides a five hundred million dollar power grid upgrade to Naval Air Station Oceana. She called it a matter of national security. House Speaker Mike Johnson from Louisiana, oil country, personally told reporters he delivered Kiggans’ message directly to the President. “We want to do right by Virginians,” he said. Think about that for a moment. In this political climate, a Republican Speaker is defending wind power. Why? Because Virginia desperately needs electricity. Data centers are consuming power at unprecedented rates, the military requires reliable energy, and this project has already created two thousand American jobs while pumping two billion dollars into the economy. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, something interesting is also developing. Chinese manufacturer Ming Yang Smart Energy just announced they’re investing two billion dollars to build a turbine factory in Scotland. They’re promising fifteen hundred jobs for Scottish workers, with production starting in twenty twenty-eight. The job creations and investment amount sounds great, but there are still many hurdles to overcome. The reliability and insurability of Ming Yang turbines is still a hot topic amongst wind energy engineers. And security concerns with Chinese turbines will surely raise eyebrows of the UK, EU and US governments. Only time will tell…. Remember that ship floating in Singapore? Here’s where the story gets interesting. Dominion has just taken delivery of Charybdis, the first American-built wind turbine installation vessel. When it finishes its work in Virginia, it will be available for other projects — like the Empire Wind project off the coast of New York. One company’s cancellation could become another’s opportunity. We shall see…. And before I forget, up in Massachusetts, without fanfare or political drama, Vineyard Wind has quietly reached fifty percent capacity. Thirty turbines are now spinning, delivering four hundred megawatts to the New England grid. Here’s what years of covering energy markets has taught me: Politics is temporary, but physics is forever. The companies struggling today made a bet that political support … and interest rates….would remain stable. The projects succeeding made a different bet entirely. They bet on need and they have flexibility. Virginia needs power. The military needs energy security. Data centers need electricity to keep the internet running. And when genuine need meets engineering capability, politics usually steps aside. That abandoned ship in Singapore won’t stay abandoned for long. Those unemployed German and Danish engineers will find new jobs. Because here’s the secret that wind energy professionals understand but politicians sometimes forget: We’re not running out of wind, we’re running out of power….and money. The move to lower cost power sources shouldn’t really be about politics anymore. It should be about pocketbook math. And the simple reality that our electricity demand is growing faster than older energy sources can supply. Ultimately the winners in this industry won’t be the ones with the best political connections or the loudest voices. They’ll be the ones who understand that when you’re building infrastructure designed to last generations, you’d better be building something the world needs and can afford for years to come.

Emily Rees and Magnus Willett from ORE Catapult discuss the upcoming UK Offshore Wind Supply Chain Spotlight in Edinburgh. The event brings together innovative companies that are establishing the UK as a global leader in offshore wind energy, from small startups to major manufacturers. 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! Emily and Magnus, welcome to the show. Hi, it’s great to be here. Thanks so much. Thanks so much for having us. You, you’re both preparing for the UK offshore wind supply chain Spotlight 2025, in which Joel and I are looking forward to attending up in Edinburgh on December 11th. Uh, and it’s an event that showcases where the UK stands in Global Offshore Wind Development. Uh, but Emily, I, I know there’s some challenges in the UK at the moment and, uh, the UK is working through those. Want to talk to some of the. Those challenges and how the spotlight is gonna help work through those. Yeah, uh, of course. So, um, I think that, you know, we as the uk like have identified quite a while ago that offshore wind was a really massive opportunity for us. You know, we’ve got a really amazing offshore wind resource, [00:01:00] um, and. So we really wanted to take advantage of it and, you know, push forward with a, with that industry. Um, the things that we’ve come up against is that, um, ability to then provide homegrown, um, supply chain, you know, actually have, uh, businesses in the uk being that, that main supply, um. In the first port of call, you know, there was the, uh, a lot of the, um, sort of components that we, we sort of have to, to build the fixed bottom offshore wind was all coming from abroad, so it’s like, right, well, how do we reap the benefits internally of this really amazing industry that we can build? And so, um, having, uh, supply chain spotlight events where we can really shine a light on the different companies internally in the UK that are actually providing services and providing, um, the supply chain for offshore wind, um, is, is super critical. And the, the catapult, um, the offshore renewable energy catapult, uh, where Magnus and I both from, um, is, you know, [00:02:00] really key into making that happen. I know when you look online at the re catapult and you see like the people that you partner with, the organizations, the, I mean OEMs, um, all of the innovative technical technology companies that are coming out there, it it, it’s, it’s so great to see. Right. And then this is me sitting in my, my American chair a and I talked about this. We talked a little bit about it off air, about the fact that wind energy in general, when you’re, when you’re talking offshore wind, onshore wind, it is a huge. Industrial and economic opportunity for all the countries that are involved in it. And simply because things like this don’t come along that often, right? Like you have the, you know, the automo, I look at it like that, like the automobile was a thing, right? Like, oh, we went from horses to this. This is a huge opportunity. It made a lot of people, a lot of money, put a lot of people to work. Wind is the same thing in my perspective, and maybe not at that grand of scale, the automobile, of course, but. You are seeing with your organization, the involvement with people like we have the, the Siemens facility in [00:03:00]Hull, and I know you guys do a little bit of work with them, uh, bringing that manufacturing onshore into the uk. But not only is it bringing manufacturing what you’re doing here with the UK offshore wind supply chain spotlight is taking. The small companies, the, the, the, the two person companies, the 10 person companies, the 50 person companies, and saying, Hey, we also have really smart people here that are doing really cool things in operations and maintenance or like, you know, helping with some cool innovation for, uh, construction or development. So there’s a lot of things happening in the uk. I mean, one of the reasons why we’re talking to you guys right now is we want to, we wanna show the rest of the world that you guys are taking advantage of this opportunity and hopefully spur more people on to do the same thing. Absolutely. Right. I’m, I’m, I think the, the key thing for us is in the UK we’re now at a point where we’re trying to maximize the supply chain opportunity and, and, um. The supply chain is a, is a big pyramid, right? You have, you do have your OEMs and your tier ones at the top, but that stretches all the way down into the university spin outs. And, [00:04:00] um, and the kind of the one two person bands and the, and Orca pull we’re, we’re here to support them as much as we are to support those larger organizations. Um, and we’ve, we have to, you know. Uh, supported likes of GE and, and, and Siemens through our, our big testing facilities and blade test facilities, drive train facilities. But we’re also testing kind of two, three person, um, organizations. New, um, dynamic cabling solutions for floating wind, right? So we span across an entire, um. An entire supply chain. And I suppose part of the Supply Chain Spotlight event that we run, um, every year is, is to, is to give all organizations an equal playing field, to present themselves, to project developers, to OEMs, to government, as to why their technology, why their business can solve some of the biggest challenges that offshore wind has in the uk. But also globally, right? Um, this is a global [00:05:00] market and the, and the uk, um, is, is is a leader in the deployment and the operations in the maintenance phase. And we have a huge amount of knowledge and we wanted to share that, uh, globally as as, as well as here in the uk. I know we have some questions and some topics we wanna get to, but I want to focus on that one point you said there, Magnus, of the the level playing field. ’cause when we were exploring this supply chain spotlight, one of the things that popped up to me was it doesn’t matter who you are, you get the same booth, whether you’re Siemens cesa, or you’re, you know, the two person band, same. Same, same style. Yeah. You, you get, everybody gets a level playing drill because everybody’s solution is needed. I like that a lot. Yeah. It, it, it, it’s one of the core principles for us every year when we sit down with our, with our events team and our supply chain acceleration teams, it’s, you know, that’s a firing principle is to make sure that everyone gets a, a fair and equal opportunity to participate. And, and Magnus, the consequences of not having a supply chain in the UK are, are really severe when you look at it because of the.[00:06:00] The amount of deployment the UK is talking about, the, the complexity of some of these projects, particularly floating offshore. There’s a lot of, uh, technology that needs to be developed and it needs to be developed very quickly, and especially on the servicing side, the o and m side. Uh, there’s a ton of knowledge sitting in the UK that can solve these problems, but it, it does feel a little odd. I, I’d have to say, as a small business owner, I know how hard that is, is to take that first leap into. Showing a product, trying to get it introduced. If you come to the spotlight and in a couple of weeks in, in, it’s in December, so it’s not that far off. When you get to an event like this, this is the opportunity you need to get started or to expand, which makes I, I think, answers so many questions about how the UK is going to move forward in offshore wind. We will work, um, through a number of different initiatives to understand, um, the challenges the industry is facing. [00:07:00] So we have a pretty good handle on, you know, what are, what are the challenges that they’re facing now, but also the challenges. What are the, what are the challenges they’re gonna face in five years time? Right? Um, commercialization of technology does take a while. Um, and so we need to understand those challenges. And so Spotlight is, is is also part of that, right? It’s that knowledge sharing that, that exchange of information between, between the, the various different elements of the supply chain and the project developers to say, this is our challenges. This is the solution we have and try and do and try and bring them together under one roof, um, and, and showcase their technology. And it’s important we get it right. You know, we, we, we, we have a, uh, an an, an ongoing energy transition. There’s an economic opportunity there. We have to try and maximize that, um, and provide as much opportunity for job creation, for IP creation. Economic development and, and, and, and, and everything and, and far and few in between. So it’s super important we get that right. And part of that is just, [00:08:00] just you shine a, shine a light on these companies. A lot of things are happening in the UK at the moment, particularly offshore wind. But there’s been several wins and, and particularly into the way that the, uh, systems, I’ll call an overall systems of offshore wind are established from, uh, geez OCS to CFD to re catapult to all the s subject matter experts that are, that are there. I wanna talk to that a little bit about, because I think a, a lot of other countries don’t realize necessarily the strength that is already in the United Kingdom. I think that the, the key thing here is that the sort of mentioned earlier that the, the, the UK has, um, been very, um, on board or at least signed up very early to this opportunity that we had to take advantage of a resource that would give us energy security in a, um, in a renew. Right. So offshore wind being that opportunity. [00:09:00] So what that meant though is that, um, a long time ago, I mean, it was 20 years ago that the, the, the rocks that you mentioned, the renewable obligation certificates were the first piece that was put in there to try and incentivize companies to. Um, purchase their electricity from renewable sources. So it’s like, right, okay, we know that we want to be starting this opportunity. Let’s, let’s, uh, put in a mechanism that’s, um, and, and incentivize that happening. But that what then evolved from that was then, um, we realized that, okay, we need to do more to really incentivize this happening. We need to put in some, um, some proper incentives to, to get developers to be really sure that they’re gonna be able to make money. Out of these quite at the time, you know, quite high, uh, high risk on big developments. Um, and that was when we had feed in tariffs or fits. Um, and then we moved into A-A-C-F-D, which is a contract for difference scheme, which essentially means that the government [00:10:00] guarantees that, that a company that’s created, that’s generating, um, renewables will get a price for their. For their electricity. But the great thing about contract, the difference and why they’re better, well, or they’re a different mechanism, let’s say, to just standard, you know, guaranteed price, which is what a feed in tariff is, is that if a company actually makes more money, if they’re, they can sell that electricity for higher, then the strike price that was agreed with the government for the contract for difference, they actually have to pay that back. So it’s almost like a, um, it’s a, it’s a. It’s much less of a, um, uh, a penalty, I suppose, just for the gov, you know, just for the, uh, an administration kind of trying to provide a, a, a revenue support. There also potentially is benefits if say there’s a, like, so for example, um, when we had incredibly high gas prices in the UK and all of the renewable energy, um, generators were actually making more money than they were anticipating, um, over 600 million. Pounds was put into the u [00:11:00] was brought, put back into the UK like, uh, system. So, yeah. Anyway, the, the contracts for difference has been, has been really beneficial in that front. But actually what it’s been done is it’s meant that we’ve driven competition to, uh, to ’cause developers actually really want to get involved. It also provides much better assurance for these big projects, which then incentivizes better margins for the developers. So make bigger turbines. Get your, you know, smarter financing, like put in place, um, operations that bring down your cost and then you can make more money and, you know, off you go. Um, and it’s really been a massive success story in bringing down the cost of offshore wind and therefore making it a actually realistic and viable. Uh. Energy, uh, and electricity, uh, generator in comparison to our, our, you know, gas, um, generating, uh, plants and things. Why do you think that other Northern European countries haven’t followed suit in the same scheme? In, in those countries there’s quite a lot [00:12:00] more, uh, sort of government mandating of like, this is the way that we are going forward. And there’s much more of a support on that front. I suppose Norway’s quite a good example of a, of a, a country where you’ve got a lot of. There’s a much higher, uh, support that’s provided from that, um, from that governmental sort of standpoint and let, it’s like, it’s like what the UK is also trying to do is it’s trying to generate competition, whereas it’s not necessarily, so I don’t get the impression that from those, the other European countries that maybe are not implementing CFDs is that they’re not necessarily so worried about the competition to drive down the cost. Whereas the UK has been very much, that’s been a real. Um, motivator for implementing the revenue support systems that we have, but they absolutely have revenue support mechanisms to make offshore wind and wind energy, you know. Work for them. It makes absolute sense because it fits with the strategy that we’re talking about here, right? [00:13:00] Like it’s, it’s, it’s, the idea is bring innovation, bring new strategy, bring competition, uh, embolden the, the country to come up with new solutions for manufacturing, for operations and maintenance, for all these different things. And that’s what you guys at the Ora Catapult are there to do. That’s your remit. We’re here to bolster this supply chain, to make these things happen. I mean, we, we, we have gone through challenges, um, in terms of, um, the CFD, you know, particularly with the inflation re increases over the past few years. But the government has listened. Um, and then they, uh, and have made some changes. And, and that includes what’s called the clean in clean industry bonus, which is, is gonna help, um. Uh, provide some funding into, um, uh, or encourage, uh, developers to support local, homegrown, um, supply chains, which are low carbon. Um, so really investing in sustainable su supply chains for the industry. Um, so I think, yeah, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve absolutely had our [00:14:00] challenges with the, with the CFD, but we’ve got a government who seem to, to be willing to listen to the industry and, and find that compromise between what’s right for the, the UK taxpayer. Um, um, and then also what’s right for, for building industry. Um, and that’s, you know, we have a number of different mechanisms at re catapult to, to support the supply chain, but also to support the project developer and, and, and the OEM to help grow that sort of, uh, sustainable clean energy supply chains that can do things like, um, and she should do a lot of the manufacturing, um, uh, for floating wind. Um. Foundations and, and, and the assembly of, of, of turbines and everything. So it’s, you know, it, we, we’ve had our challenges as well and we’re listening and we’re adapting with to, to an evolving market. I think. So what are those areas that are the focus for ORE Catapult to push forward offshore wind? What technology areas are you focused on right now? We look across the whole, uh, life cycle of, um, [00:15:00] of, of the, of the project development, uh, of our offshore wind farm. Um, a big challenge in the UK at the moment is that it, it typically takes about 14 years for. For a project to go from sort of initial leasing all the way through to kind of FID construction and, and actually, um, generating power. So, so that’s a, that’s a, a huge amount of time. So we, one of our kind of focus areas is around project pipeline or we, we call PO Project Pipeline, which is, um, environmental, uh, so data collection and trying to fast track that consenting. Process not to, to, to, uh, remove away from environmental protections which are in place, but to try and use new technologies, which can better inform our decision making in the consenting process. Um, so that’s one, um, that, that, that we focus in on. We focus in on supporting the next generation of turbines. Um, so. Uh, when I first started in the industry, uh, six, six years ago, uh, uh, or, [00:16:00] or castle, sorry, six years ago, you know, it was, it was a novel to have a sort of a, a 10 megawatt, uh, uh, turbine, right? Or, uh, and, and, and I think 12 megawatt was sort of the standard. And now you, you’re hearing 22 megawatt kind of, uh, uh, commonly referred to 20 megawatt, uh, turbines. Um, and even, and even bigger, right? So. That’s a huge challenge and that’s a huge area of supply chain development that can, that can come with that. Not just the big fancy blades and, and, and, and, and towers and the cells, but the, the ancillary technologies which go around that, um, floating wind absolutely has to be, is, is, is a key, key area for us as, as well. And that’s sort of how do you integrate new, new turbine solutions with new. New platforms and what are the challenges there? Um, but a big, big focus, um, in the UK and, and a big sort of strength that the UK is in that operations and maintenance space utilizing the data that we’re generating. And, and, and that’s something that, you [00:17:00] know, in the uk if you look at our supply chain, that’s a huge part of our USP. That’s the part that we can export. That’s the part that we have a knowledge to share with, with the rest of, um, rest of the world. Going back to the UK offshore wind supply chain Spotlight 25. So that’s gonna be in the beginning of December this year in Edinburgh. How many companies are gonna be there from the uk? Off the top of my head, I don’t quite know. And it’s usually, uh, somewhere between about, um, 80 company, 80 to a hundred companies exhibiting. Um, so those are companies who we have supported through one of our support mechanisms. Oh, man. I mean, Alan, think about that. Here in the United States, if we were to put this event on tomorrow. How many companies would you have show up that are innovative, that are doing some technology, that are doing something to support the supply chain? I mean, of course, besides, like, we have a lot of ISPs and people out here doing the, the boots on the ground work. But I mean, I, I think you can count ’em on your hands, your fingers and toes. I think we’ve got 80 or a hundred that we can even put in an event. Yeah. Well, I’ll tell you honestly, one of the things that I [00:18:00] have, I found quite, um. Inspiring. Right. When I, when I came into the, the Wind industries, I was like, I’m, I’m a relative newbie, right. You know, Magnus has been with the Catapult for six years. I’ve only been with the Catapult for a year. Um, and so it, my, I’m, I’m quite fresh faced, you know, I, I get quite excited about various, you know, opportunities in the wind space, but I was super inspired to see how many companies are pivoting from using expertise from that they’ve used in other offshore industries. Right. And they are bringing it to. To offshore wind and the applicability of it, because it feels like one of the big issues I had coming away from oil and gas and coming into offshore wind is I felt like when I was in my oil and gas services company, we didn’t talk about the things that we could provide at the offshore wind industry from a services point of view. And I honestly was absolutely like when I arrived and was like, hang on a second, there’s so many places that you can apply that expertise and that knowledge. [00:19:00] So many, and that is why the UK is doing really well, right? And it’s one of the really inspiring things that we are doing is we are going, Hey, you’ve got all of this experience and knowledge for operating for offshore in the North Sea. How about, how about just, you know, you can use it for, for offshore wind and we can benefit that industry from it. That’s not, that’s not just the uk. The US has that too. It’s not just oil and gas, right? It’s automotive. It’s aerospace. Like it, there is, there’s a lot of expertise across the UK and the number of companies that we see, so. Their, the light bulb moment that their technology could apply to offshore wind. And they ha you have a conversation with them and they go, oh, that’s great. We could provide that. And it’s, and it opens up a new door to them. Um, and that, that’s really, um, I suppose if I could put a core, core part of what we do, it’s, it’s, it’s providing that expertise. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s providing the, the knowledge and the knowhow about the [00:20:00] industry to these companies. And, um, yeah, spotlight is part of giving them that. That and that opportunity to scream about what they can do. There are so many great companies in the UK and I think they miss the opportunity to be in renewables that the expertise like Megan’s, like you were talking about, they have expertise. They’re extremely bright engineers and scientists and technology people, and even on the accounting side and the project management, there are so many experts in that field that are sitting in the UK that never thought about. If I can get an offshore wind that expands my business, I grow into this new marketplace, it gives me a little more of economic security. That’s huge. And now is the time to get into a, a spotlight or to just even to wander the floor to see what it’s about. And I think this is an easy opportunity because to go to the spotlight 2025, it’s relatively inexpensive. You’re gonna Edinburgh, it’s not hard to get to. It is a massive opportunity to [00:21:00] look around and just kind of feel out what is there for you. Absolutely right. So it’s, it’s a very, very, uh, relatively low cost, um, uh, e event to attend. Um, the companies who are there, we, we support to be there. So, um, we provide them with the ex exhibition space. Um, and, and they, they, they get to showcase their technologies as, as, as well. And, um, learn. Learn from one another, right? So they’re not just trying to speak to project developers and, and to, to government or, or, or even to us. They’re there to speak to one another and figure out how can we collaborate more together? We have complimentary technologies. Um, you know, how do we fit, how do we, how do we, how do we put that jigsaws together? And that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s a real key, um, thing there as well. And, and that’s the thing is that when we talk to, uh, UK companies, we’ve had a number on the podcast that have tremendous products. Absolutely tremendous products. They don’t realize. Maybe next door, [00:22:00] just up the road as another company is doing a complimentary piece and connecting those together I think is key. Even though the UK relatively is a small country, some, some in some ways is very kind of hard to get around and it’s hard to figure out where all these places are because a lot of these small, innovative companies are not necessarily, don’t have flashy names or great. Big websites or don’t spend a hundred thousand pounds on a booth somewhere, so it’s hard to find them. But in, in these kind of events, these, these more dedicated, focused events on technology and growth, particularly in the uk and these spotlights are fantastic of connecting companies together. This is the, this is your opportunity because a lot of other conferences are so much more expensive. They’re further away. They’re probably in Germany or in Denmark or in Spain. This is the one, this is the one to see what is really happening at the Ground Street level in the uk. And we need to get people to sign up because one of the things it’s gonna happen is [00:23:00] that you’re gonna run outta tickets for this, even though it’s in December. It’s gonna get busy as soon as everybody realizes, like, yeah, I, I need to get over there. So this event is in Edinburg, it’s UK Offshore Wind Supply Chain Spotlight 2025. It’s in Edinburgh on December 11th at the Royal Highland Center. Which, from what I can tell, looks like a beautiful facility. Is there anything else I should know before I get ready to come to that event? I mean, it’s right, be right beside the, the, the Edinburgh airport. So it’s super, super, super easy. Um, I think for me the, the, the kind of, the big plea would be from a, an international audience, from the audience, um, uh, is, uh, across, across the US is that there is innovative companie. In the uk who could maybe compliment your technology, right? So we’ve talked about the, the uk, UK to UK company collaboration and, and action. There’s, this is a global challenge, right? There’s, this is a global market. Um, we need more collaboration between, between countries, more opportunities for [00:24:00] collaboration. So if, if you have, um. Uh, audience members who want to learn more about the UK and, and are developing a technology or they have a solution or a service and they’re thinking, you know, we could be doing this, but there’s a uk, there might be a UK company there, there, there probably, there probably isn’t. There’ll probably be a spotlight as well. And Emily, you’re promising good weather in December in Edinburgh, right? Obviously there won’t be any rain. Nice and warm, sunny, balmy, almost. Yes. I think balmy is exactly the words that I would describe Edinburgh in December. It’s charming and wonderful, and you’ll get the proper Scottish, uh, gravitas that comes with the, the, the grayness and the rain. I mean, it wouldn’t be right without that experience, so you, you need to google this event to sign up. That’s the easiest way I found it. It’d just go UK offshore wind supply chain spotlight 2025 and you’ll see it. You can click in and register. It’s inexpensive. It’s in December. You know you want to go, you wanna be in [00:25:00] Edburg in December. It’s beautiful. So Emily and Magnus, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Love having you, and looking forward to the event. Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you very much.

The hosts cover some recent turbine failures, Onyx Insight’s new CEO and strategic acquisitions, research about wind turbine farmland contracts, and an article about hybrid brakes by Dellner. 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! You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now here’s your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxon, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes.  Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Alan Hall in the Queen city of Charlotte, North Carolina. Rosemary Barnes in Australia and Joel Saxon in the great state of Texas. Just before we hopped online to record this podcast, Rosemary was telling us about a number of turbine problems on LinkedIn and. Rosemary wanted to comment on them. These are some of the larger turbines. Rosemary are newer turbines. Uh, some of them onshore, some of ’em offshore  Rosemary Barnes: for the, yeah, for the most part. Um, yeah, both onshore and offshore. Some a little bit older, but the common thread is, um, [00:01:00] just like spectacular fail failures of multiple blades of one across multiple turbines of one, the one I saw most recently. Had blades smashed to pieces. It had towers that had just like fallen apart. Like it was, um, like they weren’t bolted together. Like it was just blocks stacked on top of each other and they had, you know, just an angry baby had just topped them over. That’s what it looked like. And um, I think what’s really interesting is reading the comments in those and it just, without fail every single time, the first few comments are gonna be. Um, justifying how that is just cool and normal, like either by the company itself or the turbine manufacturer itself saying, oh, you know, oh, this was just a prototype. So, you know, it doesn’t matter that it fell apart, like. Forgetting about the fact that, okay, it’s just a prototype, but it’s still an operational turbine that people would’ve been inside it to install it. They’re inside it to maintain it. You know, people are inside those things. They’re not supposed to be able to just fall apart by the time that it gets to that point.  Joel Saxum: I, I, I think I’ve seen some of these same posts, Rosemary, and one of the ones that I saw recently [00:02:00] was not even, it wasn’t new, it wasn’t prototypes. It was, it was like, there’s a picture, there’s three turbines with, or four turbines and there of the, of the dozen blades in the picture, nine of them are gone. It’s just a nelle hub with like little stubs on three turbines, and those are only like 850 kilowatt, one megawatt, 1.5 megawatt machines. They’re, they’re old. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Yeah. And so I think a typhoon went through in that particular case and I made a comment, you know, like it’s either poor turbine design or it’s really poor site assessment. In either case, it’s a failure, right? Like you don’t put wind turbines that can’t withstand a typhoon in a place that gets typhoons. Um, but you always, you always say people saying how this is actually great engineering. And I just thought this is just the classic example of that, um, that was written under this latest post, and I’ll just read it out. The pictures point to the designers of these turbines. Having done that, designing to a certain wind speed, having done that to a high degree of consistency, I note three failure types [00:03:00] in the pictures, blade snap, tower, buckling and bolt failure, pointing to all parts, having been designed to the same survival. Wind speed looks like they did their job well. And it’s just like, oh, what, you look at this, at this path of like it’s Godzilla has run through this wind farm, and you’re like, oh yeah, that looks like a job done. Well, well done guys. It’s just like, if we can’t learn anything as an industry from these kinds of things, then, you know, how can we expect to have a, a bright future for the industry? Like it? It’s one thing to fail, but if you look at a failure and say, that’s actually a success that is. Just the worst possible outcome we have. We have to be able to say what went wrong, what do we do to make sure this doesn’t happen again? You have to. You have to learn, otherwise you’re going backwards. Allen Hall: Are you worried about unexpected blade root failures and the high cost of repairs? Meet eco Pitch by Onyx Insight. The standard in blade root monitoring. Onyx state-of-the-art sensor tracks blade root movement in real [00:04:00] time, delivering continuous data to keep your wind farm running smoothly and efficiently. With Eco Pitch, you can catch problems early, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars. Field tested on over 3000 blades. It’s proven reliability at your fingertips. Choose eco Pitch for peace of mind. Contact Onyx Insight today. To schedule your demo of Eco Pitch and Experience the future of Blade Monitoring, there’s been a series of leadership transitions that is really changing the face of the wind industry. Onyx Insight. The Macquarie Capital Back Condition monitoring specialist who’ve had in the podcast, um, has appointed Alexis Grennan as this new chief executive officer Alexis Bringss dearly 20 years of experience from Joel. Schneider Electric where he most recently served as CEO of the digital grid division, and his expertise in smart grid software solutions and energy management systems positioned him to lead [00:05:00] Onyx Insights expansion beyond its current 28,000 wind turbines under monitoring across 35 countries. So obviously Onyx is a big provider of CMS systems. They are the sole provider of CMS systems on GE turbines at the minute. Onyx is making a lot of moves. They just acquired 11 I recently also. So they’re, uh, what it looks like right now. They wanna be the, the leader in CMS.  Joel Saxum: Yeah, I think it’s, if you go deeper into their history a bit. You know, the couple of CMS solutions around gearbox was really where they started then. Then they got to the eco pitch thing, and then now the blevin. And I think if you’re sitting in that boardroom, you’re thinking they want to be the center hub for IO ot, IOT being sensors out in the field. Anything that comes in, they want to be able to amalgamate it and help people out in that direction. Um, you know, a new, a new CEO that has, uh, 20 years at Schneider [00:06:00]with digital grid. That’s awesome. Right? Good hire there. I would think. Um, I, I do see this as a trend in wind. You’re seeing some more CEOs and senior leadership coming into organizations from outside of wind directly. Some of the bigger capital holders, you know, the Goldmans of the world and the Macquarie’s and that kind of things, if they have portfolio companies, you’re seeing people be placed in leadership roles that are coming from outside of wind and bringing expertise from, of course, usually energy, software, supply chain, these kind of things that we need, but some fresh blood at the leadership level. I like to see that.  Allen Hall: Well, the addition of the grid coming into Onyx, is that an expansion plan? Because there is a lot of work going on expanding the grid and monitoring the grid and making the grid carry more energy than what it was originally designed for. And I’ve listened to a number of podcasts over the last month that talks specifically to it. It, it is a definite growth area. [00:07:00] You think this could indicate a move into other areas besides just the basic wind? CMS. Solutions.  Joel Saxum: Well, let’s think about it this way. So in wind, when you have wind specific companies, you’re starting to see intenders or you have been seen intenders for the last few years, even just the most basics inspections. Okay? We’re inspecting blades. Use your RFP. Now those blades say, and blades plus BOP. So we want you to do the transmission lines. And then you’re seeing some of ’em that are BOP plus substations. So all the sub, all the way back to the edge of the wind farm where connects to the grid. Um, so companies are adjusting, like you’ve seen Skys specs adjust to that. You, you know, whether it’s partnerships or expanding things internally and other companies as well, even down to the ISPs starting to do more and more and more because they’re being asked to. This makes sense because, uh, at the end of the day, if you’re working for a subset of customers, there’s only so much budget in. Of turbine work and if you wanna expand your company and grow, you need to expand in other [00:08:00] areas. So why not just keep it going down the line of connection to the grid, inter, inter wind farm issues, those kind of things out of the wind farm. So I, I don’t know if that’s ON’S plan, but I can see that. I think that from a strategic standpoint, it makes sense. Allen Hall: Well, as Schneider is involved in all kinds of aspects of the grid worldwide, so I would assume bringing in a new CEO would open up maybe some horizons to Onyx and maybe there’s adjacent businesses that they should be in because they have a lot of technology and they’re pretty smart group. They may want to expand outwin just a tiny bit just to, to test the waters, see what they could do there. Well, going to solar seems like an obvious choice, but there could be other areas that they may want to look at, at least in the short term to see if they can add value.  Joel Saxum: Yeah. Grid infrastructure. Right. I think that that’s a, we talk about it regularly that our, our entire global grid is aging quickly. It’s aging fast, and with the changes coming [00:09:00] on board with. You know, different generation types, all the batter, different types of battery storage, and you know, like our, our conversations with Joe Chicon over at Podge about, uh, frequencies on the grid and all these different changes and load changing and AI data centers coming up and on and off and on. Um, it’s really highlighting the need for a future digital grid, uh, and upgrades to it. So Onyx is probably, you know, in the wind world that we see, they’re probably sitting pretty. In a pretty good spot as compared to most companies to be able to engage in that and bringing on someone from the digital grid side of Schneider. Smart move in my my opinion, I dunno. Rosie, what are your, what are your thoughts on that  Rosemary Barnes: in general? I think it’s really good to move people around to similar industries or a little bit different, different roles. Uh, I think that that’s a, um, a real way to drive innovation forward by bringing in different perspectives. I know that I. I found myself appearing more innovative when I lived in Denmark. You know, just purely [00:10:00] because I had seen and experienced and done things in a different, a different way, solved similar problems in a different way. Um, just, just through what I, you know, the kinds of engineers I worked with earlier in my career. It was different to the way that a lot of Danish people had been taught to approach problems. And it just, you know, when you bring in a few slightly different people, it really expands the um. Amount of options that you have on the table for solving new problems as they come up. And all of these kinds of industries are doing stuff that hasn’t been done before, right? So I think you do want to have as many different options that you, as you can come up with to, um, end up with the good solutions and you’ll get more options if you don’t choose people that are all from the exact same background. So I think in general, that, um, it’s always good to, to shake things up  Allen Hall: in this quarter’s PES Win magazine, there’s a lot of great articles that you. Need to read. And the way to do that is go to PS wind.com and download your free edition. [00:11:00] And we wanna talk about an article in the magazine this quarter, Joel, which is Hybrid Breaks Ya Breaks. Why you would use ’em, why they’re, this is a little bit different than what we typically see on like a GE machine. Uh, Siemens GAA uses these quite a bit, which are sort of a passive and an active, so they’re a break. So there’s a hydraulic cylinders and there’s some active pads that close, but there’s also some static pads and they’re using slip rings instead of a, a bearing surface to rotate the jaw. So if, if that makes sense. You to do an active system, uh, you can really put stress on your, on your ball bearings and probably flatten them over time if you keep squeezing enough. With this system, it’s a little more control, a little more precise. So you’re, I, I think the, the argument they’re making is that it, uh, simplifies the system, so there’s some complexities to it, but overall. It costs less, [00:12:00] and that’s what we should be doing in engineering, right? Trying to figure out ways that maybe just cost a bit more for a component, but less overall.  Joel Saxum: Is it a direct retrofit? Like is this a, Hey, we’ve, we’ve had, we’ve had a component fail, so we want to put a new system in. Or is it like aix, swap it out now as a CapEx cost? Or is it like during Repower, when are they putting this on?  Allen Hall: It’s from Donor Wind Solutions, uh, and they’re doing, doing it as part of OEM work, right? It, it does take a little bit of finite element analysis because of the way it loads up the, the yaw system. So you want to make sure that it doesn’t overload it if you’re gonna use it, but it’s one of those things in wind like, uh. Try to choose a simpler system on a smaller turbine. As you get larger and larger, your approach probably changes. And this is what Ner is pointing out.  Joel Saxum: I’ve noticed that actually, if you’re, if you’ve frequented any wind conferences, technology shows, exhibitions, you will know where NER is because everything on their booth is lime green.[00:13:00] Um, I love that. I think it’s a great approach, uh, which everybody knows. It’s, it’s like seeing the Dema, the Dema ships or the SVA ships in a port. You’re like, you know what? That one is right away. Uh, but del nor, but that’s what Nert does, right? They, they are. They have parts that are direct replacements. Great. This is the part we’ve made it a little bit better, but it’s a direct replacement. But they also are re-engineering things, making them better, uh, for the long haul, uh, from a operations standpoint. ’cause I’ve seen some of their pitch, they have different kind of pitch systems and stuff as well that they are, are retrofits for, for, uh, specific machines that have trouble with them. Um, but yeah, uh, this one to me, I’m not an expert on jaw brakes. Of course, that’s not my thing. Uh, but I do know that whenever you have to deal with that YA system, whether it be the gearing, the brakes, or the, you know, like the, the pucks and the GE go bad all the time. Like it’s an undertaking, uh, down to the point where people have developed UPT tower machining processes to fix, uh, issues with the YA system and whatnot. So, um, if they’re, if, if someone is putting this [00:14:00] much engineering effort into fixing a problem, it’s definitely a problem.  Allen Hall: Yeah. Even think about the problem though, you have so much weight. Up into the cell and you’re trying to pivot all the time, and the wind is trying to move into the cell whether you want it to or not. The YA system kind of takes all the abuse. So designing a system to last is really the key here. Without breaking things, I mean how many turbines have we seen where the YA gear teeth have been damaged or broken off? Because the brake system is not really de-stressing those teeth. It matters a lot. So as we get more and more efficient with wind turbines, we gonna be thinking about all the different components that go into a wind turbine and making them more efficient, making ’em last longer, making them cost less. So if you haven’t downloaded the latest PES wind. Magazine do it. You can read this article from Donor. Just visit PS wind.com. As Wind Energy Professionals, staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it difficult. That’s why the Uptime [00:15:00] podcast recommends PES Wind Magazine. PES Wind offers a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you’re an industry veteran or new. Wind, PES Wind has the high quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit PES wind.com today. Well in the US when a wind company wants to put some turbines on your farm, uh, the operator just talks to the, each farmer individually and negotiates a deal. Now a lot of those deals are very similar, but you may find from neighbor to neighbors, slight differences and farmers are getting. Smarter over time. Clearly. Uh, a professor or assistant professor up at Purdue University in Purdue is in Indiana, kind of central part of the United States, explains that landowners can be paid up to $10,000 per acre annually [00:16:00]to lease to wind energy companies. And that’s a great amount of money. We’ll take that, but, and the turbines only occupy maybe one to three acres, and so you can continue to farm your several hundred acre parcel. Uh, but. This professor notes that the farmers are starting to consider other factors than just the money, including the visual impact community relationships, which is the big one I think lately. And political beliefs about renewable energy, which jolt talks about all the time in Wisconsin. Uh. The advice from the professor is have an attorney to review the lease and to make sure that the wind operator is going to restore the land to its original condition once they stop using the turbines. And I think that makes a ton of sense. So you’re seeing a slight shift in the way that landowners are coming to agreement with some of the operators. It is about the money, a large part of it, but they’re also trying to navigate the neighborhood situation where they don’t make their neighbors upset. You can imagine a lot of them have been there for generations and they don’t [00:17:00] want to really make the neighbors mad at ’em. Uh, so you’re seeing a lot different types of leases coming about now than maybe you saw five years ago even. And that has evolved, uh, quite a bit. But the money is still good. I think most people, at least in the United States, most farmers will. Like to have that additional revenue. It just makes the farm much more profitable over time. But that same situation doesn’t exist worldwide. And Rosie, are you seeing something different in Australia? It does seem like there’s a little more spreading of the wealth in, in terms of revenue.  Rosemary Barnes: I actually listened to a good podcast episode on this recently. Uh, it was the switched on, not the Bloomberg switched on, but the renew economy switched on. Um, and they interviewed a now retired farmer who had, had one of the very early wind farms, um, in Australia, put on his farm. And I mean, his story was o overall very positive. It it, the [00:18:00] time when they started talking about it was during a very severe and prolonged drought in Australia and he had actually been trying to sell off land, um, just to keep the. You know, keep the lights on, um, and was unable to sell. Like just there’s no buyers at any price at that time. And then, so the wind farm came and he, he also mentioned how important it’s to get, um, lawyers, good lawyers advising on the contract because he mentioned that he was getting paid every year before construction as well. And that it ended up taking 10 or 14 years, I can’t remember the exact amount of time, but a long time. Between starting to talk about it and actually having the wind farm built. And if he hadn’t have had that, he said he wouldn’t have been able to make it. So, um, that was one thing. But yeah, so and so overall it was very positive for him. He was eventually able to sell his farm and, and retire, um, nicely with a profitable farm. He also mentioned that he was able to do a lot of upgrades on the farm with the money, the revenue that was coming from the wind turbines. So when we went to sell, it had all new fences and, you know, stuff like that [00:19:00] that made it very attractive and easy to sell. Um, but he also mentioned a few things that were just really bad, and he sounded really angry in that episode, um, where, uh, he, he said at that time it was like the wind developer knew everything and the farmers knew nothing, and they tried to keep it that way. Like he had a brother on a neighboring property was also in discussions about wind turbines, and they were forbidden from talking to each other. I think that that’s a lesson that’s been learned over the last 10, 20 years in Australia, is that. It’s really worth it to put a bit of effort upfront in, um, listening to what people’s concerns are and then doing something about it. Uh, I think there’s been so much emphasis on like listening and talking and listening. That’s not the important part. The important part is then understanding what the issues are and then, um, you know, removing those, those barriers. And, you know, money is a big part of that.  Joel Saxum: I spent. A eight plus years dealing with these issues in the field with landowners on, on oil and gas [00:20:00] projects, right? So there’s stages of oil and gas projects from exploration to production and all these different things, and they, and everybody gets different lease payments and, and access payments along the way. And, and if you, you know, if someone has locked up your land in the seventies, you may only be getting five bucks. And if someone has this, they’re getting more. It’s, and it, what ended up happening is, is. You need to, you need to, and we’re in the, we’re in the same space of wind because those same people, those same professionals, landmen and permit agents and stuff that worked in oil and gas work in wind and solar as well. It’s the same companies. It’s the same ideas.  Allen Hall: Yeah. Same groups.  Joel Saxum: Yeah, same groups. Um, they, they need to distinguish and make sure they’re taking care of participating landowners and non-participating landowners. And the non-participating landowners, just like we’re talking about here, they’re just as important as the participating ones because they’re the ones you’re gonna piss off. Uh, so, so you’re starting to see some payments going directly to them as well. Like if you’re within X amount of feet of a turbine, even if you’re not on your land, you are starting to get a little bit of a payment [00:21:00] in some areas, in some spots. Um, but one thing I wanna flag is, at the beginning of this, we talked about a lawyer, bringing a lawyer in and having them look at certain things. I would say this and maybe the wind industry developers are gonna hate me for this. But there’s a legal, legal concentration called, um, a, a favored Nations clause or a most favored Nations clause. If you are a part of anything of this sort, make sure any, any signing, any contract for wind, uh, non-participating. Participating. Make sure you have a clause like this in your contract because it will basically State wind Farm goes in a hundred turbines. If they’re offering you five bucks an acre and they’re offering your neighbor a thousand, you get a thousand too. It makes, it makes everybody equal in the playing field. It doesn’t give anybody, uh, you know, better terms and conditions. Once one person gets a term and condition, that’s good, everybody gets it. That has that most favored nations clause in their contract. So have a lawyer institute that if you’re gonna be a part of one of these.  Allen Hall: Yeah. The other thing that was pointed out in the [00:22:00] article was, uh, a lack of increasing payments adjusted to inflation. So some of the farmers are pushing back because inflation is relatively high. So if you got $10,000. Per acre per year in 2035, he may want to see something more like $15,000 per acre per year because of inflation. That to me makes a lot of sense, but I know a lot of leases don’t work like that. They’re just. Fixed price. It’s today’s price and it stays that way until the end of the lease. It’s just simpler to do. There’s a lot less math to do. But Joel, as you see more, uh, farmers getting advice, taking advice, do you see this evolving into a more of a standard contract where they. Do have the favored nation. They do have inflationary increases based on cost of living or some federal standard so that you’re, instead of having to negotiate every contract completely separate, you’re getting [00:23:00] something a little more universal, including helping the neighbors.  Joel Saxum: Yeah. The tough thing there is that a lot of wind. Okay, so we’re like, I’m just gonna pick the United States example. You’re in different states, you’re in different counties, you’re in different areas, right? So if you go to Minnesota and you talk to someone in Minnesota about their mineral rights, they more than likely don’t know what you’re talking about. Yeah, because that’s not a thing up there for most of Minnesota. Some of Minnesota is right, the Iron Range and whatnot, but if you talk to someone in Texas about mineral rights, that’s just as important or of more important than their actual real property surface rights. So they know and, and they have to build contracts around certain things the same way oil and gas contracts were like at oil and gas contracts at, you know, early days were easy. It was X amount per acre. That’s it. Uh, now you have people buying strata and leasing strata out of, uh, subsurface things, and you have. Payments tied to payments tied to production, right? And I haven’t seen a whole lot of wind payments tied to production. I don’t know if that exists or solar, um, [00:24:00]that that can be a, you know, a shared upside or shared downside type thing. Um, if someone’s gonna pay me $15,000 an acre, I’m just taking the cash. I don’t care what your production is ’cause that’s a great rate. So, so, um, you, you know, I think that. Using these organizations that have been doing this for a long time, that is a smart way to go if you’re an operator, uh, that know how to navigate the town halls and that know how to do these things professionally because there is actually just like you have to have a real estate license. There is a professional landman license, uh, of, to do this kind of stuff. Uh, so there’s schooling, there’s certifications, all this. Again, I’m just talking in the United States here. Um, but, uh, I don’t know if I see a across the board. Federal type contract. ’cause it’s just too many municipalities, too much, too much going on. Allen Hall: Well, we’ve been looking at a lot of wind farms the last couple of months on the lightning side and realizing, you know, how [00:25:00] dedicated the wind farm installations are to putting ’em on ridge lines, even if it’s a, a. A hundred feet higher. So that tends to spread out the wind farms. Unlike in some parts of Kansas where there isn’t a lot of variation in the, uh, in the surface in other places. We’re just looking at Oklahoma, uh, where the turbines are specifically falling ridge lines. So you’re gonna end up crossing a lot of property lines when you do that, I assume. And you and I have been on a number of sites where. We’re going from one turbine to another and we’re crossing three or four different property owners and not that far of a distance. Fences and gates. Right? The fences and gates. Bet. So even if you don’t have a turbine on your property, you may have a road on your property. And the how they navigate that. So if, if, if, if whoever’s. Taking on those contracts and negotiating on those contracts has a load of work to do. It’s going to be,  Joel Saxum: and like I like, I think I go back a little bit like it’s gonna be dependent on where you are, because a contract in Kansas is gonna look a lot different than a contract in Wyoming versus a contract in Texas just simply [00:26:00] because of local laws, access rights, these kind of things. I’d say, I mean, however, one of the, that’s one of the things that’s cool to touch on is some of these farmers and ranchers, like when I was in oil and gas stations in Wyoming, they loved when the exploration crews came ’cause they would get money for roads. And they’d be like, oh, these old two tracks. Make that into a road that can take an 18 wheeler down then, then you can have access. And they’re happy, happier than hell. This week’s Wind Farm of the Week is the Alta Complex owned by TerraGen out in California. So at one point in time, of course if you’re a part of wind lore in the United States. You know that this was the biggest wind farm in the United States at 1,550 megawatts. It was also the third largest onshore project worldwide. Now there’s been a couple of the Sun Zia projects and stuff have been a bit bigger, but this thing is massive. Uh, spreads across about 9,000 acres and holds, hosts almost 600 turbine. Uh, so it started in 2010. Multiple phases of construction, uh, ended in 2014 and financed with almost $3 billion. [00:27:00]Uh, and it’s in that Tehachapi Pass area. So, uh, it has, it actually still does have some capacity for expansion. Uh, but we wanted to share this one because, uh, just the size and scale of this thing, uh, being that it’s so big, uh, and as well. Long-term power purchase agreement signed with Southern California Edison. Uh, the output averages enough power to, to power about 450,000 homes annually, uh, which is just massive. Uh, it’s created over 3000 jobs. And I think this one, the economic story might be the, the, the, the feather in the cap, uh, is it in his injects over $1 billion into the regional economy, which is just massive. So, uh, kudos to the wind industry for making this one happen. Uh, but looking ahead, uh, it is a bigger part of that Tehachapi wind resource area when it has the expan or has expansion potential of up to 10 gigawatts. Uh, as California continues to grow out, its renewable grid. So this week’s wind farm, the Ulta Wind [00:28:00] Complex, so owned by TerraGen out there in California, the Wind Farm of the week.  Allen Hall: That wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. Thanks for joining us. We appreciate all the feedback and support we receive. From the wind industry. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Just reach out to us on LinkedIn, particularly Rosemary, and please don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. So for Joel Rosemary, I’m Alan Hall. And we will catch you next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.