The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

Mona Doss from Wildlife Acoustics discusses how wind operators can address bat conservation and regulatory risks with their SMART System. Their technology uses acoustically triggered curtailment to protect bats while maximizing wind energy production. 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. Allen Hall: let’s get started with the challenge facing Wind operators today. the Tricolored bat is in serious trouble and it’s creating regulatory risks for the wind industry. Can you walk us through what’s happening and why this matters for wind operators?  Mona Doss: It matters because last fall, the US Fish and Wildlife introduced some, voluntary wooded guidelines for the tri-colored bat. this, particular bat species population has, declined and is, primarily being affected by two factors. one being, something called, white nose that’s affecting many back. Species across, north America. But the other is for some reason the tricolor bats. And [00:01:00] we’re still looking at a lot of bat researchers, and I’ll leave that to the bat biologist to address more specifically. but they are, being affected very much by, wood turbine mortality. So it’s gonna be a balance between trying to address back conservation as well as the needs for energy production, which we all want from a, wind farm.  Allen Hall: And the white nose fungus is a really deadly disease for the tricolor bats. I, I’ve seen numbers upwards of 90%, mortality rate, when that fungus, affects them. And that fungus is pretty much exists where they live. it’s something hard to, stop.  Mona Doss: Yeah, there’s been a lot of great research by, various universities and VE Conservation International here in North America, trying to understand the nature of the fungus. And, how there might be possibilities to, treat, bats that are exposed to that fungus. All of that at this point is still very experimental. but that fungus has wa out many, [00:02:00] bat ber macular of various species. You might have had bat ber macular that had tens of thousands of bats that are literally just down to a few dozen. Joel Saxum: That’s extreme. That’s, that’s like wiping out entire populations, entire ecosystems.  Mona Doss: It’s very extreme. so there’s been a lot of monitoring for the progress of this fungus. It was first founded in New York a few years ago. It’s been slowly migrating, towards the west. so you’ve got the fungus affecting the bats and you’ve got, the demand for more clean energy, with wind farms that are also contributing to bat mortality. And these poor bat species are suffering from both sides at the moment.  Allen Hall: It’s very serious. Mona, what are the consequences for wind operators who don’t proactively address this sort of dual threat to the. White nose syndrome, wind turbines, and fungus. obviously they’re gonna be asking wind turbine operators to do something. What does that look like?  Mona Doss: Yeah. right now, [00:03:00] when the, wind farm operators are going in front of environmental regulators to, get their permitting all approved, there’s a negotiation that’s occurring between balancing the bat species protect protection based on maybe pre-construction, present servings for bats. And the need for energy production. But as more and more bat species get listed as their populations are declining and they become species of concern, you’re gonna have an increase in, what’s called blanket curtailment. so that typically is looking at a site and, requiring the operator to pause turbine operation during certain times of the year under certain wind conditions, regardless of whether or not there’s actually a bat present in that location. Allen Hall: So they’re setting up time blocks where you have to slow down the turbines or stop the turbines, basically.  Mona Doss: Exactly.  Allen Hall: Where is this happening right now? What part of the us?  Mona Doss: Yeah. a lot of it is occurring in the Midwest, where there are several already species at risk. [00:04:00] the Indiana bat, the Northern Longyear bat, several species have a requirement for pausing turbine operation at those wind farms. depending on the locations and weather. Those species were identified as being potentially in the area during the pre-construction surveys.  Joel Saxum: So we’ve seen some of these, like blanket, like I like the term blanket curtailments in the eu, right? For different, avian species, different bat species. And you’re starting to see a lot of solutions pop up over there, but mainly they’re driven by regulation, right? So the difference here in the states, I guess is, Usually regulation for birds or bats doesn’t pop up unless they cross state lines. Then it becomes a federal issue, and then the feds will regulate something like that’s like the, the Federal Migratory Bird Act. They weren’t, really monitored or not monitored, regulated at a federal level until, oh, these are crossing state lines. It’s a federal thing. so the US Fish and Wildlife [00:05:00] Service, they’ve put some, guidance. Do we see? And guidance and there’s like violations, civil penalties, ESA violations. Do we see actual more regulation coming down the pipeline for this?  Mona Doss: I suspect that there will, currently, for instance, with the tricolored BAT is considered voluntary guidance. but more and more species are getting listed. So you mentioned the eu. In the eu, eu all bat species are protected. but even in North America, outside of the US and Canada, Ontario has proposed. New, guidance for bat species. At risk. That right now has a option, two options. One option is the common approach, which means you’re doing glyco, curtail up to seven meters per second during certain times of the year. Or the alternative would be approaches similar to, like acoustics produces, which is something called acoustically trigger curtailment. And with a TC we are primarily, [00:06:00] integrating with the wind fire systems. And when we detect a bat that meets certain activity levels or criteria, we communicate with that wind farm and say, Hey, bats are here. Let’s let you know that. And then the wind farm can feather those blades and pause operation. Allen Hall: So the US Fish and Wildlife has issued that guidance. It’s voluntary at the minute, but it may turn into, something you have to do here shortly. And in that guidance, there are three different approaches to dealing with this bad issue. Really different, scenarios honestly. But wildlife acoustics has developed the smart system, which addresses all of this. Walk us through how the smart system fits into this regulatory framework.  Mona Doss: Yeah, sure. under that voluntary guidelines, there is. Is a scenario of blanket curtailment. one of the options. The second option is an algorithmic curtailment and [00:07:00] US fish and Wildlife has 10 words trying to describe what, algorithmic curtailment is. But it’s basically looking at, historical acoustic data, bad activity on a wind farm, creating models to predict when turbines should be paused to minimize that mortality. And the third being, what we’re calling acoustically trigger curtailment. So basically, we have technology that is, constantly listening for bats. Bats are vocalizing in the ultrasonic range beyond the range of human hearing. we’re the primary manufacturer of bat detectors worldwide. This is our specialty, and we’re listening for those bats so that as they’re approaching the wind farm, we can signal to the, wind turbine systems that the bat is present and they can then. Pause or feather their blades to slowly pause operational turbines until we can then lower a flag and say, guess what? It’s been [00:08:00] 10 minutes, the bats are now gone. Kick up your gears and start all over again.  Joel Saxum: That seems like a much better approach than a blanket curtailment, especially because, we’re looking in the United States at these a hundred, 120 turbine wind farms. If you have to shut that whole wind farm down at one time as a blanket curtailment for a few hours a day or a few, like I would assume it’s at dusk or something of that sort. That’s a lot of revenue loss as well. So if you can shut down just portions of the wind farm where the bats have been detected, that’s a big change in operations. that’s a big revenue change too.  Mona Doss: It’s a big revenue change. In a case study, in a turbine in, England, we found that if you implemented a blanket cur talent regime, you were pausing operation when bats were even present. comparing a. Blanket curtailment approach to an acoustically triggered curtailment approach at that particular turbine. we found that from an energy production [00:09:00] perspective, you had 10 times less pausing of the turbine with acoustically triggered curtailment as opposed to blanket curtailment. And that translates to dollar dollars and more energy production with a minimized, impact on bat mortality.  Allen Hall: Okay, that’s interesting. So you’re listening for the. Bat noise. Are you listening on every turbine or are you trying to echo locate bats? Like bats? Are echo locating themselves? Are you using basically a bat like system to detect bats? What, how does this work from a system standpoint?  Mona Doss: it certainly could go on every turbine, but it doesn’t have to. A lot of wind farms, especially the larger wind farms, are already configured in zone. So if you deploy these bat detectors at the turbines that are on the leading front of where a bat biologist thinks, the bats are typically gonna migrate through with the current topology on that site, then we would te detect with that [00:10:00] in those leading turbines and then communicating with the wind systems turbine systems, they can pause operation for those, for that zone until the bats have flown through. We’re all in the clear, there’s no more bats. And then just start it.  Allen Hall: So there’s a little bit of bat biology going on here to know where the bats are likely to be. Like, where are they sleeping when they exit, where are they likely headed to, and is it through the wind farm? And if so, then there’s a focused effort on that portion of the wind farm. For a curtailment for certain turbines. Is that the thought process to the smart system?  Mona Doss: You got it, Alan.  Allen Hall: Wow. Okay. That is really interesting because I, a lot of systems that we have seen and we’ve talked to a, lot of, obviously, nature protection systems, birds, mostly the way they tend to work is that they. Try to blanket the whole wind farm that they don’t really get into the flight patterns of [00:11:00] the birds too much. It is, Hey, are wind farms in a geographic area where there would be birds in your case bats. But th this is a totally different approach. It is a more focused approach to a. Really a complicated problem. Mona Doss: It’s definitely a collaboration between the bat biologists that are familiar with the site and the bat species in the area, the wind farm operator in terms of trying to meet their economics and demands for wind energy as well as the local regulatories and what their requirements might be for bat protection in that region. Allen Hall: Do the wind operators have a bat biologist on staff or on call to help with this,  Mona Doss: some of the, larger operators? Ab, absolutely. Do they have bat biologists on staff? Others will, contract out to, many of the leading, environmental consultants that have whole teams of bat biologists that are familiar with bat behavior and bat flight patterns outta site. Allen Hall: So wildlife acoustics works with the bat biologist. Doesn’t really [00:12:00] matter who, but you’re gonna be working with someone who knows the local terrain, the local back population, their flight patterns. Is there some research that needs to happen ahead of time? From the bat biologist standpoint before you start putting in a smart system to know all these details? Mona Doss: Yeah, I would recommend the collection of bat call acoustic data in advance of any kind of system like we’re talking about, to go live primarily because you wanna reduce the false positives and false negatives. These turbines can do little ultrasonic squeaky systems, que squeaky sounds that, you don’t want us saying, Hey, there’s a bat, and really it’s just a squeak from the turbine. So collect data in advance, fine tune all the alarms that needs to be done by a bat biologist. Familiar with bats at the site,  Joel Saxum: but you guys as wildlife acoustics. Is that kit that you create as well? Do you have the electronics, if someone’s wants to consult to do these things, is that a service that you provide? The, like that, pre-data collection?  Mona Doss: So we are a [00:13:00] manufacturer primarily. we certainly want partners globally that have become more and more familiar with our, solution. but you don’t have to be a wildlife acoustics equipment expert, to implement a, smart curtailment implementation with acoustically triggered curtailment. You simply have to, be a BA biologist, frankly. And then on the backside of things, be able to communicate with the operational staff at the wind farm so that they understand how the system would integrate.  Joel Saxum: So that, that leads me to an important point here. I want, and I’m gonna put my, I’m a wind operator hat on, right? So how does, what does life look like for me? So say this thing is implemented on my site. one of the big things that always pops up now is cybersecurity, right? So is it connected to the turbines or is it just connected back to the remote operation center and then they’re notified to shut things down? Or is it automated? How does that all work?  Mona Doss: Yeah, so we really just raise a flag. So a flag goes up saying we’ve detected a bat. It’s a bat that maybe meets certain bat calls, parameters that might [00:14:00] indicate a kind of species, because in Europe, again, all bats are protected. But in the United States, for instance, we’re only looking at particular certain species of bets at the moment with wind farms and it’s met a certain activity threshold. So we’re simply raising the flag that criteria has been met. It’s still independently up to the wind farm systems to decide maybe waste on wind speed, temperature, time of year as to whether or not to actually implement the curtailment re regime.  Joel Saxum: So I would say if I was an, if I was an operator, I’d have, I’d be in my, a road operation center and I’d have a matrix in front of me that says, today is September 21st. or no, sorry. What’s the, just go with today, August 28th. Today is August 28th, and this is the wind speed. I’m getting an alert that this bat is here, at this time I don’t have to shut down, or I do, then I will command my turbines to feather out and, stop. Or not. and then when the, your system tells me, Hey, all clear for the [00:15:00] last X amount of time. Cool. Boom. Spin ’em back up and we’re up and running again. so that being said, does this, the system has, its, does it has its own power and data communications or does that have to hook up somewhere on site?  Mona Doss: Yeah, it really depends on the individual operator and what they want for that site. some operators will allow our systems to be behind their firewall and fully integrated. Some operators don’t want that. and so it. On a different network, independent, but a way to still communicate with the turbine, systems as necessary.  Allen Hall: And so obviously you’re gonna run into some pushback from wind turbine operators because anytime you wanna put a system onto the wind turbine, just like Joel was speaking to, it’s cybersecurity, how do I do this? It’s, always too much, right? there’s, they have a lot on their plate, honestly, so they, tend not to want to do things, but. It is a smart decision. I think at some point the wind operators are going to do it. I think the issue at the moment is how do they get some [00:16:00] information and get started and learn about it. So for advice, for those wind turbine operators that are still on the fence about implementing some sort of acoustic curtailment technology, what advice do you give them?  Mona Doss: Absolutely. I would suggest to, contact well at acoustics if they’re specifically interested in acoustically sugar curtailment. But certainly these wind farm operators had to have worked with bat biologists as part of their permitting process. So those, teens might be already familiar with the bats and the landscape. Talk with ’em about the various options that are out there to get ahead of the curve before regulatory changes occur. Allen Hall: Joel, we’ve gotta get a bat biologist on because this sounds really fascinating. There’s a lot happening in the bat world. Usually we’re in the bird world, but in the bat world we haven’t had that much knowledge. This is great. if for Mona, for our listeners that wanted to, find out more about wildlife, acoustics and the smart system. Where do they go?  Mona Doss: wildlife acoustics.com. And we’ve got a, under our products, there is [00:17:00] a, page dedicated to smart.  Allen Hall: And if they wanna find you, where do they find you?  Mona Doss: Ah, I’m on LinkedIn, so reach out for me. Mona Doss with Wildlife Acoustics. And, my email, mona wildlife acoustics.com.  Allen Hall: Moa, it has been great to have you on the podcast. I learned a ton, I did a lot of research before we started this podcast. Very interesting area, and we need to stay in touch because as things progress with, the bats in the United States. And in Europe and around the world, we, want to stay abreast of what the latest technology is. So Mona, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Mona Doss: Thank you, Alan. Thanks Joe. Appreciate the time.

Allen and Joel discuss the aggressive actions by the Trump administration against offshore wind projects. They also consider the broader implications for the wind industry, exploring onshore impacts, geopolitical maneuvers, and strategies for companies to adapt and prepare for future challenges. Register for the next SkySpecs webinar! 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 Saxum, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes.  Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, and I’m here with Joel Saxum, who’s up in Wisconsin. Joel, you’ve had some really cold weather up there the last couple of days. It’s still September. Doesn’t really make sense, Alan. I dunno. It’s, it’s  Joel Saxum: September, well, beginning of September and this morning when I let the dog out at 5:20 AM whatever time she decided to wake me up, it was 36 degrees here. That’s way too cold. Um, I knew, I, I, I went up here to escape a little bit of heat from in Texas, but I did not look to Frost advisories and like sweatshirts and vests and boots. Um, but that’s what’s happening. Yeah. Even, uh. Even a [00:01:00] few red leaves floating around on the lawn up here. So, uh, yeah, winter or fall is coming. That means, you know what fall coming means is blade season for repairs in the northern hemispheres slowing down or shutting down shortly. So we’re gonna get to hear what happened. Maybe a postmortem, hopefully on the, the blade repair season in North America.  Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s been busy from what I could tell. And plus there’s a lot of construction going on. New insights. There’s, uh, all kinds of turbines being planted right now. We’re gonna be working through the end of the year easily, if the weather will support it. Very active time at the moment. And speaking of active time, this is our second take of this podcast, uh, just because so much has happened since we recorded last evening. Uh, Joel and I thought we ought to take another try or attempt at this. Try to give you the, the most updated information. Not to say it’s not gonna change over the next couple of hours after we finish this podcast, but, uh, the Trump administration [00:02:00] has launched its most aggressive attack on America’s offshore wind industry. Uh, the federal government is now working to withdraw permits for New England Wind one and two off the coast of Massachusetts. These projects are valued at roughly $14.6 billion by Bloomberg, NEF, and we power more than 900,000 homes. Uh, but the, the issue really is why are they being shut down? Nobody really knows. Uh, and there’s a lot of conjecture about it. And Joel, you and I were just talking before we recorded here. It may have something to do with Denmark.  Joel Saxum: Yeah, I think you wanna believe that. Smoother minds will prevail that, uh, logic and pragmatism is a part of government. But what it really seems is there’s, there’s favoritism and there’s egos and there’s feelings driving some of these, these decisions. Right? Today we just heard or [00:03:00] just read that the, the Danish government is in California signing a policy agreement for collaboration with Gavin Newsom and the, the administration out there. We’ve, and, and this is like on, this is on top of, uh, Trump’s rhetoric around, or the Trump administration’s rhetoric around we would like Greenland. And this day, Danish fight and all these different things happen in between the two organizations or the two countries there. So it’s just kind of like posturing and, and we’re back and forth and Sted is the big Danish company, right? So now Sted is feeling a little bit of. Pain from the Trump administration. So the people who are close to Orid, IE, the Danish government come back and poke the bear on the side a little bit more. Um, so it just seems like there’s a lot of, a lot of egos and things going on, and, and that’s why it’s hard to make sense out of, right? So like, why is this happening? There’s no real reasons that we’re being told as the general public, right? Like there’s this [00:04:00] veiled kind of, oh, there might be a national security thing here. Why we would cancel these projects. But at the end of the day, like this is kind, it’s unprecedented. I mean, there’s billions and billions of dollars sunk into these projects. And what’s the recourse, like if they get canceled? That or Ted and or their partners are just. Out. Like, how can you cancel a project in an offshore, uh, capacity that’s 80% complete? Doesn’t make sense,  Allen Hall: right? So Revolution wind was shut down a, a week or two ago at this point, and uh, that happened immediately after Denmark, the prime Minister of Denmark and the delegation from Denmark met with Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, and then. Boom. Revolution wind is shut down. And now New England Wind one and two, which is an avan grid project, are in the same boat. So basically, uh, it triggered a series of events, or at least it appears that way at the moment. It appears to have triggered a number of events. And this also includes, uh, [00:05:00] withdrawing about $679 million in federal funding from. 12 infrastructure projects that are supporting offshore wind development. The single largest loss is Humboldt Bay, offshore wind in Northern California. Again, another Gavin Newsom thing, which is gonna lose $427 million in federal support, and in Norfolk, Virginia, the Fairwinds landing facility. Uh, supporting Dominion’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project lost, uh, $39 million. Uh, so now the administration has threatened or blocked about eight gigawatts of offshore wind capacity, which is a tremendous number of homes that we would’ve powered. This is starting to get to a little bit, uh. Unsettling. So the, the news out of the New York Times last night as we’re recording this, said I think six administration departments have been asked to go find ways [00:06:00] to threaten or stop offshore wind That’s been headed up by President Trump’s chief of staff. So it’s all the way to the top, Joel. It just feels like this is personal for some reason, and I don’t know how it got to this level. But it is becoming a little more irrational, uh, than it was maybe even six weeks ago. And I know Phil was really upset about it six weeks ago. And I genuinely agree. Like some of the comments coming outta the administration are on. I, I would, I would say they were bonkers, maybe is the right term, just being polite, but unfounded maybe is a really good term. Uh, and, and now it’s like really escalated.  Joel Saxum: I think that the general public, and so there’s a way, a couple ways to look at it. In my mind, I’m looking, is the hydrocarbon lobby this strong? Right? I know they’re strong, right? I’m in X oil and gas guy. I lived in Houston, energy, capital world, all these things and was a part of that, [00:07:00] uh, infrastructure for a long time. So I know the things that they can get done if they want to get done. Are they strong enough to turn the tides of an entire, basically like. Western Hemisphere’s energy production. ’cause that’s what it’s looking like, right? Like the changes that they’re so extreme here have waterfall and cascading effects to all of the other economies around us. You’re seeing investment possibly pouring into Canada offshore wind there. So that’s changing their economy. Changing our economy. Um, you’ll, you’ll see these things that. They’re not just going to affect here in the us they’re that these moves will affect globally. And you’ve, you’ve seen it, um, being pushed over to like these trade groups, going to from the us, going to the uk, going to Europe, you know, stop building wind, stop building wind. You need LNG. So you can hear this undertone of hydrocarbon industry, LNG, oil and gas drill, baby drill, getting pushed. Is that. Is that lobby so strong that they’ve changed this? I don’t know if that’s the case. I know that’s part of [00:08:00] it, but it does feel like it’s this ego thing, right? Because you have this engagement of every, every, like you said, all of these different departments within the federal government, they’re being told, do this, do this, do this. And again, I I want to say this to the, the general public. If you don’t know these things, like, so transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, he’s the head of basically the federal DOT. The federal DOT is in charge of ports, so whenever you would go onto a port facility, you need what’s called a TWIC card transportation Worker identification card, and that’s a background check on you to make sure that you’re okay with the national interests to enter these facilities. Those ports are exactly where we will be operating offshore wind out of. They’re the same places where we bring in goods and services from other countries and do trade deals and all these different things. It’s the working part of our um, economy. For the maritime side of it, right? So because the federal government has control of these, they can do what they want at these port facilities, regardless of [00:09:00] state wants. So that’s where you see. You have already heard in the news President Trump and Gavin Newsom, man, not the best of friends, right? So it’s California and and federal thing not going so well. So what is, what, what does the administration do then? Direct the transportation secretary to go pull funding from the ports in California. That will directly affect the local economies, the jobs that offshore wind build out and up. Some of these projects that are already ongoing, they’ve already done things like there’s already, there’s already shovels moving dirt on some of those sites. So. You see this power that they have and that, that they’re moving and grooving to, to be able to basically put a stranglehold on offshore wind in the United States. It’s, it is I the term you used Alan Unnerving. I know a couple months ago when some of this stuff started to roll out, we were like, ah, nothing’s really gonna happen. You know, stay the course. Everything’s cool, but it’s starting to get. Some big time things happening, right? There’s gonna be some lawsuits flying around here.[00:10:00] Allen Hall: Well, yeah. And today, lawsuits really started flying. We figured at some 0.1 of the developers was gonna file a lawsuit or the states were going to file a lawsuit. And all of the above has just happened. So Rhode Island in Connecticut, uh, and project. Developer Orid for and Sky borne renewables are going to challenge the Trump administration’s halt of the Revolution Wind Project. Now there’s a lot going on behind the scenes, so you’re just hearing dribs and drabs at this point. But basically the, the lawsuit says there’s process violations. Now those sound arcane, like, oh, it’s a process violation. No big deal. Well, it is a big deal because there’s so much money behind it, and it affects so many, so many jobs. There’s thousands of jobs, and in this particular case, uh, with Revolution Wind and with Empire Wind, the rationale for why they shut those projects off was not [00:11:00] defined. And, and. The press went to go find the exact reason, uh, that a Freedom of Information Act and got the document, but everything was redacted on the Empire Wind side, so they couldn’t even tell. And my guess is that Orid is still waiting to hear the real issue. Like is there a, a, a legal issue that was a rationale for BOEM to shut off Revolution wind? And I think the answer is probably no. It’s more like it’s a national interest. Problem. We have defense problems with these wind turbines being in the water. That is usually not enough to trigger a stoppage. So unless somebody pushes back, the Trump administration can continue to do this. I, my guess is that the, the States knowing that, and a lot of those people have worked in Washington, DC and they all have. Good attorneys, particularly up in the northeast’s. A lot of attorneys in the Northeast are easily gonna [00:12:00] file, uh, some sort of lawsuit, getting the administration to stop. Now, Joel, I think the question is, what happens next? Will the administration stop and try to negotiate some deal, or will it just get more combative? We’re both, sorry. Just start throwing rocks at each other. You’ve,  Joel Saxum: you’ve pinpointed the two things, right? And. One problem I see there is if a deal isn’t struck, this is Trump 1 0 1, the art of the deal, right? This is what he is been doing to other countries, you know, come in strong arm and then go, oh, you don’t like that. Uh, let’s negotiate something. Maybe we get something that we want. You’re like, come in with a high price, even though you know you want this one and you can settle for that. That’s probably what’s going to happen. Now, if, and, and that’s in my opinion, right? But if that doesn’t, the trouble here is that we’re now tied up in a legal process. Legal processes can drag and drag and drag and drag forever, right? So you drag this out long enough where the pain gets to be so heavy [00:13:00]that eventually people have to cut their losses and or, you know, eat, eat some of the costs here or something has to happen and in a negative way. The trouble with that is either, either of these outcomes, to be honest with you, what we have done is made investing in the United States risky. By having a situation where you can’t, as an outside investor, you can’t count on things, right? It would just be like if you were, if you were gonna buy a new car and all of a sudden the, you’ve got, you were basically taking ownership of the car and then they changed the terms of the loan or told you you couldn’t drive it, you know, only but Tuesday nights or something of that sort like this, I, I don’t want that anymore. You know, I’m not gonna invest in that. Um, so. There isn’t a really, I guess, in my opinion, what’s happening here. I’m hoping for the best. Right? But the what looks like the writing on the wall is like, it’s just not a good outcome. Um, for offshore wind in the United States,  Allen Hall: I think the, [00:14:00] the banter that’s going back and forth is the Keystone XL Pipeline was shut down and just outta the blue l and g porch roll shut down, like immediately, boom, there’s an order. Everything stops. So now it’s retribution. It’s it’s payback time. We’re going to flex the other way and watch what we can do with our pen and our phone. Like, okay. Both sides need to stop this nonsense because 330 million Americans are caught in the middle and cutting electricity. Off in some sense. I mean, reducing the supply of electricity, which is what is about to happen, uh, is gonna be a huge problem. And I, I don’t know if anybody is paying attention to the political ramifications to this every, not that I trust analysts, honestly, I do a lot of the homework myself, but analysts are predicting that electricity prices are going to bump up and not in small amounts. It’ll be very noticeable. It’s one thing about [00:15:00]Americans. They know what the price of gas is, they know what the price of electricity is, uh, and they know the price of eggs and milking, right? Those are bread or the, or the key consumer items. If any of those start to fluctuate on any. Grand scale more than a couple percentage points, there’s hell to pay as a politician. And I’m just curious as to what Congress is thinking right now. Like, how long is this gonna go on before there’s retribution, payback from my constituents? Do I lose my seat? Maybe they’re willing to do that, but I, it doesn’t seem like anybody’s, uh, upset about it, right. Yet.  Joel Saxum: You’ve already seen posturing on that exact topic, though you’ve already seen. Ke senior level, uh, people in the administration say, oh, prices are gonna go up and we’re gonna get blamed for it even though it was the last administration’s fault. That makes no, that makes you see that. Like that’s what’s happening right now. But that doesn’t make sense. Because when you look at, it’s this, these are simple, [00:16:00] simple economics. This is economics 1 0 1, supply and demand, right? You’re cutting. Supply and demand is increasing. We know this one to 3%. I think last year the number was 2.5%, which was like a, which is a record since. Decades. Right. And that’s only gonna get more and more extreme as we start to build, uh, more of these AI data centers things that we as the consumers of the electricity are also the consumers of the AI data centers we’re driving that demand ourselves. So like basically with we’re standing and, and digging dirt and then throwing it on our own sheet. Is what’s happening. And there is a mechanism to lift us out of this more generation on the grid, and that’s being canceled at the same time that we’re also shutting down coal plants and stuff. So we’re, we’re, we’re trying to decarbonize, we’re making moves away from this, but there’s just this, this simple equations, this is not PhD level stuff. I can [00:17:00] do this in a bar napkin for you. Like we’re not, we’re, we’re not in a good place as far as energy generation goes. Um, and. The demand is so high that I think when we were talking about Phil last, and I just completely agree with him, uh, you’re gonna start to see more behind the grid projects popping up because the people with the deep pockets need this generation, need power generation, and they’re not gonna be stopped by some organization that has, you know, FERC or a NERC or someone like that, that they have to answer to. They want, if the business case makes sense to power these data centers. They’re gonna make power and they’re gonna make it happen. They’re just not gonna deal with the, the garbage going on. Politically. That’s, that’s my take. Now, you can’t do that in offshore wind, because that’s your federal government waters. It’d be the same thing as if you were. Trying to do that on BLM, federal lands and the on onshore, you’re not gonna be able to do that, but if you can do it on private land, that’s gonna happen.  Allen Hall: Well, we come back from the break. I wanna talk about the onshore piece of this, because [00:18:00] I think the next phase of the Trump administration’s movements again to. Against wind involve onshore. 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, setting 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. Joel, last night we were talking about the impacts of the Trump administration’s move against offshore wind, but it also seems like there’s been action [00:19:00]taking. Uh, for onshore wind, including proximity to railroads, proximity to infrastructure, the Eagles  Joel Saxum: Migratory Bird Act.  Allen Hall: Yeah, the Migratory Bird Act. And there’s others. I mean, I, I’m sure the administration is scouring the rule books and law books looking for other things to poke at. One of the things that has been discussed, uh, at least in the press in several different areas, is permits. For private land where wind or solar will be installed, what permits does the Fed have to issue for those projects? Joel Saxum: Well, it all depends on what the interconnect is, right? So if I wanna put a wind turbine on the top of my house, I have to abide by FAA rules, right? So that, that’d have to be under 500 feet, ’cause 500 feet’s the limit there. Um. May, depending on my jurisdiction, right? If there’s rules in place, which here, there isn’t, but of course, like [00:20:00] in Texas and Iowa and places, there is, uh, setbacks from property lines, right? In Texas, they tried to just pass a law that was 3000 foot setbacks to to wind turbines from a property line, which essentially makes you have to have like 6,000. 50 foot wide and piece of property to put one turbine in the middle, uh, which is ridiculous to have a piece of property over a mile across, uh, that didn’t pass either way. But there’s certain rules of those types. Now, if you want to be behind the grid, you don’t have to ab, you don’t have to abide by all of the NERC rulings, the FERC rulings, the, you know, whatever your operator is, the miso, the ercot, the pjm. You don’t have to abide by that stuff if you’re behind the grid. You just have to abide by a much simpler set of rules. Um, however, as this starts to take place, I could see some lawsuits popping up in certain jurisdictions about that as well. Um, and it’s those, it’s those, those lawsuits that are [00:21:00] like, uh, they’re really kind of complicated. It’s the, your, your messing up the value of my property because I have to look at your turbine. Then the counter suing party comes back and says, well, this is. Eminent domain because it’s good for public use for the data center that it’s powering and these kind of things. That becomes a long, drawn out legal battle. I think it’ll be  Allen Hall: many years. And if the Trump administration defers and all that and says, oh, we agree with the plaintiff in the case, sure. Right. And which which can happen. Right. And this is what’s happening. An offshore wind at the minute that, uh, any legal case brought against offshore wind, uh, against the federal government that the Trump administration saying, we surrender. You’re right. Sure. We’ll pull the permits to satisfy this lawsuit. Joel Saxum: The trouble here, like right from the wind industry, IE us, our constituents, our friends, our colleagues, everybody around us. Why, what’s happening here? What, you know, like the Empire Wind thing that got [00:22:00] pulled, got reinstated without changes,  Allen Hall: no changes to the outcome of that project. Right. And there’s no layout changes. There’s no cabling changes. At least from what we have seen, we haven’t seen any changes at all. Yeah. So what’s the  Joel Saxum: deal? Right? Like what’s, it’s just like, again, it’s this, it’s a, it’s a negotiation tool. It’s something, there’s something going on there that just doesn’t. It doesn’t make sense.  Allen Hall: It doesn’t extrude maximum pain when you have jack up vessels and several hundred people out on the water. That’s a time where it hurts the most when you’re almost done, not permitted in making power, but just before then is the time of most pain because all the money has been pouring out and now you’re just adding fuel to the fire. Every day the jack up vessel sits there.  Joel Saxum: Well, I think there is a, there’s a nationalist play here too, because we discussed this a couple years ago, even, I think it was when, um, uh, when the New York fight happened, and then again when the California or the West Coast auctions happened, none of the companies that [00:23:00] won those auctions were US based companies because US based companies don’t have experience in developing offshore wind. So they. Had to be a minority partner or something of that sort. So I think that that could be a part of the play too. Like, okay, we, we, we alluded to this possibility of, you know, the administration pulling one over on Denmark because of Ted. Uh, but now the one company that has a, uh, that is, uh, US owned, which is Dominion Energy, that has coastal Virginia offshore wind. They’re under a microscope now. Oh, I would say so. Yeah. I almost guarantee it. I would say in the next few weeks they’ll have something pop. Well, we’re gonna hear something pop up about that wind farm where they’re pulling a permit or reviewing something or whatever, but they’re gonna, cause the administration’s gonna cause pain to them as  Allen Hall: well. So what are we doing on onshore, Joel, and what are the companies that are involved in onshore wind? Of which there’s 75 ish thousand turbines in the US at the moment [00:24:00] and a lot of wind farms being built. Honestly, there are big, huge EPCs that are putting turbines up right now that have hundreds of millions of dollars invested in cranes and people and infrastructure and tools and all that. And then you get down to the, the small companies like Weather Guard, honestly, you know, we’re probably as small as you can get in wind, quite honestly. Uh, and then there’s, you know, there’s everybody in the middle. Uh. ISPs, there’s all the technology companies, there’s all the tax advisors, all of the multiple levels of people, engineering companies that are all involved in win from beginning to end. What are they gonna be doing? What is the plan of attack there? How do you address this kind of threat to the industry?  Joel Saxum: If you follow what the analysts say again, if you trust the analyst companies, if you trust these consultants that are saying they’re, they’re looking in crystal balls and predicting the future.[00:25:00] What you see is a massive, we’re talking wind now, not all renewables. You see a massive slowdown in greenfield development in 28. We know that there’s gonna be a, a push. It’s big time right now. We’ve been on sites in the last month, right? Um, that they, it’s blowing and going. We got cranes everywhere. We got people everywhere. EPCs are scrambling to get stuff done. Um, so that the industry’s moving fast, moving forward in an efficient and safe manner to get as many of these projects built as they can before these, uh, you know. Cliffs show up in front of us. So, but we, either way, we have this window where the EPC contractors, the, these feed study engineering companies, the environmental review companies, all of the people that are associated with Greenfield are gonna be super, super, super busy. My advice to them would be, parlay all the profit you make right now, all the margin you’re scraping right now into o and M services, because you just don’t know. You [00:26:00] can’t. See the future of what it’s gonna look like beyond 27 into 28, 29, 30, 31, 3, 2, I would expect, uh, in my heart of hearts that we’re back up and running and building greenfield development shortly after this administration. However, I can’t, nobody can guarantee that. So I would par if I was involved in as an EPC, as a TFA type, small ISP, that does the technical field advising for construction. I would use all of the might you have right now and all of the cash reserves you’re building to open up another silo, revenue silo of your business to do operations and maintenance, uh, because that will continue, right? We’ve got 75,000 in change turbines in the ground, um, and by the end of the next year and a half, two years, that number will probably be 76, 70 7,000, maybe 78 if we’re lucky. Um, so those services are still gonna be needed. [00:27:00] I think that in the next year, because leading up to that, you’re going to see some market consolidation. I believe that we’ll start to see some more m and a activity in wind, um, pushing from the big guys down. You’re gonna see the larger groups that are multifaceted already or are looking to be more multifaceted, grabbing the specialists, smaller companies. Grabbing blade company with 30 techs, that kind of stuff, right? Or those kind of things are gonna, they’re gonna be up for sale. We’re gonna see some of that happening for sure. Um, you, we’ve already seen some of the operators start to size down their development groups. Um, repowers being accomplished project on the project management side by people who aren’t necessarily CapEx, project management type people, because these companies don’t wanna bring those new resources on. They’re just like, you know what? We’ve got some repowers to get done. Let’s just get it done with the staff we have. Or hire a consultant to come in and help us with this because we don’t want to build, we don’t wanna [00:28:00] bolster and build this division of repowering and construction if we don’t know what the future looks like. Um. This is more I’m, you know, speaking onshore here, right? Offshore wise, some people will, unfortunately, some people are gonna lose their jobs. We’ve seen that happen already. We’ve seen some, some massive amounts of layoffs in the offshore world. So it’s not awesome. But there is gonna be some long-term projects and some long-term things that will stay in place and those people will stay around. Um, but either way, I would say onshore wise. Offshore gear up, and this is a global thing for me, but gear up for o and m As the fleet grows, it’s still gonna be ma  Allen Hall: need to be maintained. It’s important words of wisdom there. I think everybody needs to be looking at their books at the minute, understanding how their business is operating. Where they can get a little bit leaner over the next few months and keep your ear to the ground. Uh, don’t assume all this is gonna get [00:29:00] washed under the rug and it’s all gonna go away in a couple months. I don’t think that’s gonna happen. It’s gonna be at least another 18 months of fun times like we’ve just had of, with the last six months, uh, where who knows what’s gonna happen. But you’re right, Joel, I think the opportunity in. Uh, sites that are not connected to the grid, that are, you know, powering AI data centers all over the place. I think you’re gonna see activity there. Solar, wind, batteries, all the above. That’s cheap, quick to install and does the job or, or what’s gonna happen. And that may change your business, may change your outlook, but I, I think you need to be watching for that closely. And then, like Joel said, expanding your horizons. Figure out where there’s other opportunities. We did  Joel Saxum: have,  Allen Hall: uh,  Joel Saxum: how share this with our listeners. I had a, uh, a large operator reach out to me just this week and [00:30:00] say, Hey, I know at Uptime, you know, we’ve, we’ve talked with you guys before. We know you have a large network of people and you know, some of the innovative solutions that are out there. Some of the new technologies, some of the new even software solutions. We are in the process of basically doing a deep dive into what is out there in the wind world, what can help us save some money off, make our operations more efficient, uh, guarantee or increase uptime, like all of these little things, right? Like the products, like the strike tapes of the world or, um, you know, we’ve been doing these webinars as Sky Spec, some of the software solutions they have. Um, that can, you know, monitor things, keep things healthier, uh, optimize your o and m strategy. And this was a company that was like, we have an initiative as a group, as an engineering team. We need to go out to the market, find all of these solutions so that we can make our operations look better. As we go, and I think that that’s just the first of those phone calls we’re gonna get. [00:31:00] I think that, uh, that’s gonna become quite the trend here in the next year.  Allen Hall: Yeah, we’re connected. And I think maybe you don’t think a podcast is really connected to the underbelly of an industry, but we know where the technology exists because we’ve talked to them. They may not even been on the show. Uh, but we have talked to them. Usually it’s hard for a good technology company to miss the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. And Joel, you’re right, it has happened a couple of times, but I think it’s gonna happen more often. And it’s a, we’ve been offering that honestly, if you need to know where the technology is or where others have taken advantage of a technology. Call us. We’d be glad to share that information with you. Give us your problem statement. Yeah. We’re trying to promote the industry. This is the whole reason this podcast exists, is to get the industry to connect to itself. It’s a global industry. There’s a lot of cool things happening all over the world. We’re trying to [00:32:00] highlight them and bring them out because they’re hard to find. Quite honestly, Joel, you and I talk about this all the time, some of the coolest technologies. Don’t have the best website. So they don’t, you can’t find them on LinkedIn and it’s hard to search for them, and they don’t really show up in chat, GPT. But once you’re on the podcast, they’re searchable. And now you can take a deep look and go, oh, there’s a couple of companies doing what I was looking for, and let me call ’em and let me talk to the person I saw on the podcast. That’s the way it’s done. And so if you talk to operators that have used the podcast properly, that’s what they do. They’re connecting up and getting those answers faster. And getting to the right people in those companies immediately instead of trying to connect, connect, connect, spend months at this or taking hours minutes to do it. It’s a smart move. You’ve got questions about  Joel Saxum: anything? Uh, Joel, do saxon@wglightning.com Always happy to respond or shoot me a message on LinkedIn. Um, ’cause a, a quick connection to something may ease a lot of pain. Um, and like [00:33:00] Alan said, this is, this, this, this is. This is why we do the podcast. We are, we’re fans of wind energy. We wanted to succeed, uh, and we are, uh, collectively. At least in the US under fire right now. So whatever we can do to help each other out, um, we’re here for  Allen Hall: that. Wraps another episode outta the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. Thanks for joining us as we explore the latest in wind energy technology and industry insights. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn and don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you found value in today’s conversation, please. Leave us a review. It really helps other wind energy professionals discover the [00:34:00] show.

Arkansas is set to welcome $12 billion in new data centers that will require significant electricity, while recent legislation has made it nearly impossible to develop new wind farms. The state will have to rely on importing power and building natural gas plants, leading to higher costs for ratepayers. 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: Let me tell you a little story about wind energy in the state of Arkansas. But first, let me pick you a picture of the natural state. Arkansas sits right in the heart of America. This is the land that gave us President Bill Clinton and the retail giant Walmart. It’s the home to the rugged Ozark mountains and the fertile Mississippi River Delta, where folks still wave from the front porches. And Sunday dinner means the whole family surround the table. Arkansas has always been a place where old traditions meet new opportunities. Rice fields stretch across the eastern flatlands. Timber companies harvest the dense forest. The Buffalo River runs wild and free. And now. Wind energy companies are eyeing those wide open spaces and [00:01:00] mountain ridges. But here’s where our story gets interesting. The natural state is about to welcome $12 billion in new data centers. That’s Google building a $10 billion facility in West Memphis, just across the river from where Elvis lived. Two more billion dollars centers go up in Little Rock and Conway near the center of the state. These data centers will demand massive amounts of electricity. How much Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corporation says they’ve got requests for 4,000 megawatts of new load. That’s more power than the entire system has built in 80 years. And the data center companies want it in just three or four years. And here’s an interesting turn of events. Arkansas just made it nearly impossible to build wind farms that could power these data centers cheaply. And cleanly. Senate Bill 4 37 passed by just one vote in the Arkansas [00:02:00] Senate 18 4 14 against, they called it the Arkansas Wind Energy Development Act, but don’t let the name fool you. This 20 page regulatory monster is designed to kill wind development. The bail requires wind turbines to be set back three and a half times their height from property lines. That’s up to a quarter mile it. Bans turbines within one mile of schools, hospitals, churches, and city limits. It demands extensive environmental studies and public hearings. Wind companies warned this would kill future development. Wire, Hauser the Timber Giant with 1.2 million acres in Arkansas said the rule would limit their ability to host wind projects to zero acres. Zero. Representative Jack Leman, a Republican from Jonesboro, Arkansas, summed it up on the house floor, quote, if wind is a bad idea, it will fail on its own. It’s not our job to kill an [00:03:00] industry, unquote, but they killed it anyway. Six Arkansas counties have already banned wind development. Carroll County, Boone, Madison, Newton Crawford, and Criton Counties have all said no to commercial wind projects. The current projects get a pass. The Crossover Wind Project in Cross County and the Nimbus Project in Carroll County. Were already under development by April 9th of this year, so they’re exempt from the new rules. Crossover wind will be Arkansas’s first operational wind farm, 135 megawatts, 32 turbines enough to power 50,000 homes. It’s going online next summer in the flat farmland of Eastern Arkansas. Nimbus is more controversial. 180 megawatts. Plan for the Ozark Mountains in Carroll County near the state line with Missouri and not far from Walmart headquarters. 46 turbines up to 600 feet tall. The locals are furious. They post it on Facebook tracking every wind turbine component [00:04:00] truck that rolls through their mountains. Carol Rogers lives on Bradshaw Mountain near the Nmba site. She’s been fighting the project since 2023. She says, Arkansas ranks in the top 10 states for lightning strikes, quote. So will you put a 698 foot tall structure on top of a 2000 foot tall ridge line? It could be a recipe for disaster. Rogers hopes that federal wildlife enforcement might stop the project. Nimbus supplied to the Fish and Wildlife Service for permits to protect golden eagles and endangered bats during construction and operation. But the permit process is uncertain under the Trump administration. The project is building without final federal approval. Quote. Maybe it can be more of an enforcement action, unquote. Rogers told reporters, I hope it happens unquote. Meanwhile, Arkansas lawmakers tried to pass Senate Bill 3 0 7, the generating Arkansas Jobs Act. This would’ve allowed utilities to build power plants faster and charge rate payers while construction was [00:05:00] underway. The goal attract energy hungry industries like data centers. But even that failed. The bill died by one vote in the Senate 17 4 11 against one short a passage. So Arkansas has made it nearly impossible to build wind farms. They can’t even pass a bill to build other power plants faster, but they welcome $12 billion in data centers that will need massive amounts of electricity. The utilities are obviously scrambling Energy. Arkansas is planting new natural gas plants near Hot Springs and elsewhere. Arkansas Electric Cooperative is building a gas plant in Texas to import power back to Arkansas. Both utilities co-own two major coal plants that must retire within five years. The White Bluff plant in Redfield and the Independence plant in Newark, they’re being forced to shut down by federal court order. Now, here’s what nobody’s telling the Arkansas voter, the state had nearly two [00:06:00]gigawatts of wind projects under development before the crackdown. That’s enough to power over a million homes. All that potential clean energy banned by politicians who then welcome data centers that’ll burn through electricity. And the irony gets thicker. Arkansas sits within the Mid-Continent independent system operator grid miso. That’s a strategic advantage for wind development. The state has excellent wind resources. The Department of Energy estimates Arkansas has 9,200 megawatts of potential wind capacity. But instead of harnessing that wind, Arkansas will import expensive electricity from other states or burn more natural gas and coal rate. Payers will foot the bill. Google says they’ll cover the full energy costs for their West Memphis data center, but that’s just their share the massive infrastructure upgrades to handle all that power that gets spread across everyone’s electricity bills. Arkansas Senator Ron Caldwell, the [00:07:00] Republican who represents Cross County, sees what’s happening. He praised the Crossover Wind Project. He said most landowners who wanted a turbine got one. The environmental impact is small. Quote, I’m not trying to talk anyone into bringing them into their counties, quote called Old said quote, but as far as we’re concerned in Cross County, we’re looking forward to having those facilities there and the revenue that comes from it, unquote. That’s the choice. Arkansas faces revenue from wind farms and cheap clean electricity, or expensive imported power to feed the data center. Boom, the data centers are coming. Whether Arkansas builds wind farms or not, Google doesn’t care where their electricity comes from. As long as the lights stay on, but Arkansas rate payers should care because they’re about to pay the price for politicians who banned one of the cheapest forms of a new electricity generation, just as demand explodes. The natural state is about to learn an expensive lesson in energy policy.

Nicholas Gaudern, CTO of Denmark-based Power Curve, discusses how advanced blade scanning, aerodynamic upgrades, and the AeroVista tool are transforming wind turbine performance analysis. PowerCurve helps operators use real data to maximize AEP and make smarter decisions about blade maintenance and upgrades. 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: Nicholas, welcome back to the podcast. Hi. Thanks Allen. Good to see you again. There’s a lot going on in wind right now. Obviously the elections that happy the United States are changing the way that a lot of US based operators are thinking about their turbines and, and particularly their blades. I’ve noticed over the last, even just couple of weeks that. Operators and the engineers are paying more attention to what they’re actually getting on site. Nicholas Gaudern: Yes. Allen Hall: Instead of, uh, the sort of the full service agreement where, hey, they’re under warranty for two years, I don’t really need to do anything for a little while approach. That’s changing into, I want to know what arrives on site, what am I getting and what problems are there with these particular blades that I may not know about because they’re new to me. Even though these blades, there may be thousands of these blades out in service. Mm-hmm. Me, my company doesn’t know. Yep. How they operate. How they perform, particularly at this, this new site, I’m Repowering or, [00:01:00] or building new. That is a complete shift. From where it was a year ago, two years ago, five years ago. Yeah. And I think the biggest performance piece that people are looking at is aerodynamics, and I’m trying to understand how these blades perform, how they move. Yes. What kind of loads there are, what kind I expect over the next year or two. And I think they’re just becoming now aware of maybe I need to have a game plan. Nicholas Gaudern: Mm-hmm. Allen Hall: And I, and that’s where power curve comes in, is like in the sense of have a king plan. Understand what these plates are all about. Yeah, yeah. And try to characterize ’em early rather than later. Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, exactly. I think there’s been an increased focus on, on data and for operators, as you say, to understand more what they’re getting and not necessarily relying on just what they’re told. So, uh, I think a nice case study of that is last year we were helping a customer to build a, a digital twin. Uh, of one of their turbine models that they, that they purchased. So what that involved [00:02:00] is, uh, going to site, doing a laser scan of a blade, understanding geometry, helping them to build up some aerodynamic and structural models of that blade. So then that customer was going to build an AEL model themselves of that turbine so that they could run load calculations. They could look at, uh, site specific, uh, changes that could be relevant to that turbine’s configuration or how they operated it. And this isn’t really something that you saw a lot of, uh, a few years ago, but I think it’s great that operators, particularly when they have a larger engineering capacity, are starting to get into that game. Uh, and it’s tough because it’s a lot of what the OEMs do, it’s their kind of specialist knowledge, but there’s a lot of smart people out there. Uh, there’s a lot of companies you can work with to help gather that data and build these products up. Allen Hall: The OEMs right now are. Lowering the number of engineers. Nicholas Gaudern: Mm-hmm. Allen Hall: Staff reductions. Yeah. Uh, so getting a hold of somebody on the engineering staff, particularly with aerodynamics, can be quite hard. Yes. And in fact, I’ve talked to [00:03:00] some smaller operators that can’t get access to those people at all. Nicholas Gaudern: No, no. We, we get told that a lot that, um, there’s, there’s customers calling OEMs and they, yeah. They can’t, they can’t speak to anyone who really understands that the issues that they’re facing. But free now we, we have contact with a lot of OEMs. I would say that we have more aerodynamicists and power curve than some OEMs have now. Oh, that’s true. And that’s quite, that’s true. Surprising. You know. Um, so it does mean that I think from a customer support perspective, it is harder for the OEMs to take on some of those really detailed or nuanced questions that an operator may have. Allen Hall: Right. Operators are getting smarter. Nicholas Gaudern: Yep. Allen Hall: And asking more pointed questions, not generic questions anymore. Uh, we’ve had, uh, junker on the podcast and I, when I ran into her last summer, she was basically saying that like you, you’re talking to operators now that are getting smarter about what they’re doing. Yes. They’re asking more pointed questions. The OEMs can’t respond. So now what do you do? Yeah, that’s, that’s the Global Blade Group. Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, exactly. Allen Hall: [00:04:00] Perspective, right? Where everybody’s starting to pool the resources together. I think that’s an Nicholas Gaudern: absolutely great initiative. I mean, it’s something that’s been going along in various forms for a few years now, but um, now big it has joined Stack rt. It’s kind of been relaunched in, in this new form that you were discussing with us. So, um, we are really excited to be part of that, I think kind of the way, uh. Our role sits within the group. We’re still working on, on the details, but we’re definitely gonna be part of that group in helping to, to share knowledge. So the aim is that we will help, uh, educate basically to, to raise discussion points, to, to lead forums with operators about how they can understand their aerodynamics better, how they can ask more relevant questions of the OEM. So I think that’s what a lot this is about, just asking the right questions. I think sometimes operators can feel a little bit, uh, blind. Uh, as to the best way to navigate a problem, but by knowledge sharing within the Blades group with other forums, um, I think that’s gonna make that a lot easier for everyone. Allen Hall: And you’ve been tapped as [00:05:00] the lead of the aerodynamics group within the Global Blade Nicholas Gaudern: Group? Yes. Yep, yep, that’s, that’s correct. Um, we haven’t had a, a kickoff yet as such, but that will hopefully happen in the next couple of months. But yeah, the idea is that power curve will kind of. Lead that knowledge sharing around the aerodynamic subject. Allen Hall: Yes. So if you haven’t joined the Global Blade Group, it’s free. Yep. If you work for an operator, you can just join it and you should. So get somebody on your staff to sign up to get ahold of Burger and get going with that, because then you can tap into all the resources that they have. Them being, uh, the most recent one is the leading edge protection campaign that was just summarized, uh, a couple of weeks ago. So that data set is out there and you want to have access to that. Mm-hmm. But I think more importantly, as the group goes forward now and has been emboldened again, the aerodynamic piece is the missing link for most operators. Yeah, it is. Nicholas Gaudern: And it’s, it’s often an area that is, um, hasn’t had as much attention historically. Uh, there’s just not so many engineers out there with that background. You know, it’s, um, [00:06:00] I wouldn’t say it’s any more or less hard than lots of other of the complex subjects within a wind turbine. There’s just, there’s fewer people, uh, who, who know the same, uh, level of, um, stuff. Allen Hall: Yeah. And there’re being, those resources are being, uh, taxed quite heavily at the minute, uh, with all the activity it happen in the OEMs. Now, as operators, uh, start to receive newer blades and you see. OEMs obviously moving to bigger turbines and to specific models, so there’s actually fewer varieties of blades than there were a couple years ago, but there’s still quite a number of blades out there. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So you, you’re going to get generally a more generic blade type at your specific wind site? Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, quite possibly. Allen Hall: Yeah. I, I think especially ge renova is, is gonna be driving down to a, a limited set of blades and a limited set of turbines. So they’re gonna be trying to apply that turbine. More globally than they have in the past, instead of tailoring a specific set of blades vest is, it’s gonna do something very similar, I think. Mm-hmm. Uh, and in that mode, [00:07:00] if you’re an operator and you’re receiving these blades, you don’t really understand what’s about to happen unless you do your homework ahead of time. And I think that’s where the opportunity lies today to do something really inexpensive and smart up front. To understand what’s likely to happen. Yeah. Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, exactly. And I think that all starts with, um, as we talked about, gathering good data, whether that be a laser scan or detailed photographs or measurements or NDT, uh, putting some sensors in the blade, some CMS equipment. I think all of that stuff to help really build up that knowledge base early. To help start planning for future o and m, uh, operations? Yeah, Allen Hall: so the simple one as blades come on site is to do a laser scan. Nicholas Gaudern: Mm. Yep. And that takes how long? A few hours. And, and it’s much easier on the ground than it is a tower as well. And then you can use that full kinds of things. Yes. It’s very useful to do aerodynamic studies on. But then, uh, other stuff that might not seem so [00:08:00] exciting, but is super important. How do you move blades around a, uh, handling yard if you have a CAD model that’s much easier to plan? How do you, uh, look at a new stacking frame or a, a lifting device that you might need to purchase? Well, it all comes back to having that initial data. And I think what we see, uh, at Power Curve is there’s a huge variety of aerodynamic upgrades that are shipped with blades. And even though, um. Two customers might buy the same blade. They might not necessarily have the same upgrade pack on from the, uh, from the OEM. So really understanding what’s in your fleet from the start. Where are those VGs? Where are the serrations, where are the spoilers? That’s critical going forward to understand how to manage those blades. And we talk to a lot of operators, uh, about VGs and other upgrades. It’s, uh, surprising to us how few know what is on their blades. They just don’t know. They don’t have that information. They just arrive. Yeah. So, so what happens if some of those add-ons need replacing? What happens if you are missing [00:09:00] potential? Well, you don’t have a good data set to go back to, to really understand the problem. So yeah, we’d really encourage that from the get go to, to document that. Allen Hall: The, the discussion I’ve seen at operators about trying to get a blade model out of the OEM goes like this, Hey, OEM, uh. I would like to have the blade model so I can do some analysis and we can operate this thing once it comes off warranty, obviously. And the OM says no. Nicholas Gaudern: Hmm. Allen Hall: All right. Well, can I scan it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, you own the blade at the end of the day. I own the blade so I I can scan it all day. Yeah. But they will not give you the model, but you can scan it. And scanning’s not expensive. I get it. If they sent you the model, it’d be less expensive. Yeah. But that’s not going to happen. And you can’t even contractually get it because it’s ip. Yeah. Even though you can go scan the same blade. Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. Allen Hall: It doesn’t make any sense why you’re not scanning the blade at this point. It’s so easy. Five years ago. Yes. Difficult Nicholas Gaudern: today. Simple. Yeah. The scanning process [00:10:00] itself, I think where the real, uh, complexity comes in is then how do you convert that scan? Into a usable CAD model. I think that’s where the, the experience and um, and the skill of a, a good CAD engineer is really important. So within, uh, power curve, we’ve been drawing blades for years and years and years now. So 30, 40 different blades we’ve scan, we’ve drawn, we’ve analyzed, and um, even the best laser scan may still have a few question marks around how you should interpret the data. So I’d encourage you that if you are going to go down that path. Then, then call someone who’s done it a few times before and, and understand what’s going on. Allen Hall: And then getting the details about the aerodynamic upgrades. I’ll call them quote unquote upgrades because sometimes I wonder if there are upgrades or not. Yeah. Uh, especially VGs getting those identified. It’s exactly where they are on the blade matters. Trailing ulcerations, the kind of trailing ulceration you have, the sizes of them because they all vary in size [00:11:00] as you go up and down the blade, knowing where those are exactly out on the blade. And to me, when I see a variety of blade, a variety of blades made the same blade model, same blade revision. Yep. But you start looking at ’em and you see those manufacturing tolerances move around quite a bit. It makes sense not to scan just one blade, but I’m probably gonna scan a variety of blades once they come outside. Yeah. Maybe they, Nicholas Gaudern: maybe the OEM changes the philosophy about what they wanna do and I think with add-ons, um, there is a lot of, um, design philosophy involved. With aerodynamics, as with lots of other disciplines, there’s a few ways you can skin the cat, right? There’s different ways that you can have a very similar effect with different products or different configurations, and I think you see that with aerodynamic upgrades quite clearly. So from some manufacturers we see, they’ll ship blades with bgs almost from root to tip. From from the get go. You’ll see some OEMs that just have them in the route. You’ll have some that have none at all, and that that is still quite surprising, I think, because. Vortex [00:12:00] generators, particularly down in the root region of a blade to me, are, are kind of obvious now they’re proven. Uh, there’s a big stall zone in the root of the blade. A VG array will help reduce that level of stall. Now you still have to engineer that solution. So perhaps one of the reason we don’t see all blades with them is the OEM didn’t have the capacity to engineer that solution because they didn’t have enough aerodynamics. Or they were too busy working on the next blade or whatever. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t benefit from those products being there. So this is why it’s important to, to understand what you’re getting and to ask the questions, well, why, why doesn’t the root of my blade have VGs on? Have you done a calculation that shows that they didn’t work? Uh, and if you didn’t, well maybe, maybe you could, or maybe you could talk to someone else. Um, Allen Hall: yeah, because you do see the offerings today. And the two obvious ones we see mostly in the states, particularly with VGs and add-ons, is Siemens VGs and trailing inspirations are everywhere. Yeah, all [00:13:00] over those blades. Nicholas Gaudern: I think Siemens have been for a long time now, uh, very keen on add-ons. And I like that philosophy personally. I, I think there’s, there’s a school of thought that says if you put an add-on on a blade, you’ve kind of, you’ve kind of failed. You know, you should have addressed in the design that problem, and therefore you don’t need to put an add-on on, but I would make an argument that there are so many things that an add-on product can do that are incredibly hard to achieve in a molded, uh, product. So even if you think you could include everything in the mold, maybe the cost or the complexity of doing that. Is much harder than just sticking something on afterwards. So I, I don’t think there should be any discussion around it being like a bandaid or a cheat or a fix, or there should be an integrated part of a design process. A VG will give you more stall margin. So if you design with VGs, maybe you can design your blade, uh, twist distribution a little bit differently. Uh, if you integrate serrations into your design [00:14:00] process, maybe you can change the type of error fo you use or the tip speed ratio that you run at, because the serrations can help reduce the noise. So if you’re considering all of that from the get go, there’s a lot of power in these devices that are, as I say, are very difficult to achieve in just, uh, out of the mold product. Um, I, I think a lot of operators Allen Hall: don’t realize how much impact those little plastic devices. Yeah. Can have on, on power production and which is revenue. Yes. Straight revenue. That’s all that it is. Exactly. And they sort of discount them on some level because they made out of plastic. I don’t know why that is. It’s the, all the engineering and the literally thousands of hours of engineering and being in the wind tunnel, which is super expensive. Yes. To go figure these things out because you can’t calculate them with excel. No, it’s, it’s way more complicated of a problem than that. You need, Nicholas Gaudern: you need some higher fidelity tools. And again, I think that’s why there’s been, uh, differing levels of uptake among the OEMs, among different operators because it does require some, [00:15:00] some hard calculations to be done. Maybe some full rotor CFD calculations, but that is all within the grass. Of what you can do quite economically today. You know, huge increases in computing, power cloud computing services. You can do this stuff Allen Hall: Well. That’s the thing that I bring up to the operators quite often is I said, you use Chap GPT, right? Yeah. Yeah. And they go, well, yeah, yeah. Well, you realize the amount of compute power that exists behind those, that amount of compute that’s being built today is also gonna do CFD. Yes. Is also gonna do all those complicated aerodynamic problems and solution sets. That we weren’t really able to do 10 years ago will be instantaneous to us in a couple of months. Yeah, Nicholas Gaudern: I mean, we work with a, a cloud computing, uh, service, uh, at North. So they’re, they’ve been our cloud computing provider for, for a number of years now to run CFD on. They’re just building some new data centers now in Denmark, and I believe they said one of them had a rate of power of 250 megawatts. Allen Hall: Right. [00:16:00] Yeah. They’re having Nicholas Gaudern: to build, imagine the, imagine the computing power behind 250 megawatts. Right? Allen Hall: Because as GE Renova has mentioned in a couple of their more recent public, uh, notices, is that gas turbines are a big business for GE Renova for data centers. Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. Allen Hall: And how much data center can you build in a year? Well, evidently about 20 gigawatts worth. Yeah. Quite a lot. Yeah. That’s a lot of compute power. Way more than the planet has ever had before. Yeah. Nicholas Gaudern: So I think there’s, there’s some, I mean. The work we do, we think we’re quite innovative. We think we’re kind of, uh, leading the way in, in some fields, but we have to be very careful to, to stay on the train because very soon, uh, the computing power that’s gonna be available. Might blow some of the stuff we are doing now out of the water. Sure will. So we, you know, we need to keep our eye on this fidelity. Yeah. The Fidelity’s gonna go Allen Hall: way up, but the engineering that goes behind it still has to be there because garbage N equals garbage out. Exactly. You, you have to have people with Nicholas Gaudern: the experience and the knowledge and the fundamentals because [00:17:00] even with things like vortex generators, there’s so many different ways you can use them. And I think the two, the two biggest ways, uh, you know, going back to that comment about Blaze being shipped with VGs from root to tip. If you have VGs in the root, they’re fundamentally addressing stall from thick aerofoils. If they’re towards the tip, it’s more about robustness of the power curve, so helping the turbine deal with sub, uh, standard surface conditions, whether that be dirt, bugs, ice, fungus, erosion, whatever. So even though you may be able to compute all this stuff, some of these fundamental nuggets of knowledge about how these add-ons should work or could work. It’s critical to help set up the problem. And, um, that’s, that’s where we come in hopefully. Allen Hall: Well, let’s talk leading edge for a minute, just because there’s been a lot of data. The Global Blade Group has published some five year study from a variety of operators that are trying different kinds of coatings and solutions. One of the things that I get asked weirdly enough is how much can I [00:18:00] possibly lose in a EP due to leading edge? And the numbers that are thrown at me are crazy. Yes, people will tell me they’re losing 10%. There is no way you’re losing 10%. And Nicholas Gaudern: that’s, that’s because they’re not using an engineering driven approach. Right. So we’ve, we’ve talked about data capture and, and sensible engineering. It applies to everything. And I think leading edge erosion is an example of something that just has too many reckons involved. Well, you can actually work it out. Um, you can go to a wind tunnel, you can do CFD simulation, you can do our elastic simulations, and you can come up with a much more, uh, engineering driven and consistent, uh, loss number. So something that we’ve been working on for a long time now in power covers. How do you understand those losses? And, uh, a year or two ago, we launched our ERA Vista tool, and that is. Uh, designed to take data from the field that real data we’ve been talking about, and combine it with the best engineering knowledge we can [00:19:00] to come up with that loss number. So, uh, a real blade model taken from a real laser scan, CFD simulation, scarda data, coupled into a, uh, a model of a turbine in, uh, in a blade element momentum form. That is how the turbine would’ve been designed in the first place. So kinda this consistent tool chain. And what we find with leading a ros after analyzing a couple of thousand turbines now with a vista is losses one and a half, 2%. Something in that that’s, that’s a bit more realistic as a loss number. Those are still significant numbers, but that’s, you should be worried about that number should. You don’t need to have it at 10% to be worried. No 1% on a big turbine is plenty enough to worry about. Right. Especially when you have a hundred of them. Yeah. So, so we don’t need the scaremongering, you just need that consistency and that, um, and that focus on what, what is actually happening and, and can I justify it? So Allen Hall: this goes back to a discussion you and I had a, a couple of months ago [00:20:00] about the spreadsheet that’s being shared around that was created at a university that supposedly. Tells us what the, the a EP loss is in an Excel like form. Yeah. That is being used so incorrectly right now. Nicholas Gaudern: Uh, and it is like any tool, if you, if you use it in a smart way, then maybe you can get a sense of answer. But trying to do something consistently and to see any kind of real difference between turbine models will be. Very challenging. Yes. Um, so what I like about some of these simple tools is it can help put you in a ballpark, right? That stops us having these silly conversations about 10% losses or 0% losses. You know, it helps to kind of narrow the band, but if you then want to really understand, uh, what the answer is, much, much closer to reality. Then you have to have the blade data. Yes. Because every blade is different. Every turbine model is different. [00:21:00] You can’t have that generic setup if you want to have that, that subtlety so you can actually spend your money wisely. Allen Hall: That’s the problem is that that tool’s being used sort of globally across a farm and everybody that’s involved on the engineering side and particularly on the finance side of the operators realizes I’m probably not gonna fix all of these. Yeah. Turbines. A hundred turbine farm, very common in the United States. 200, 300 plus. Now I need to know what turbines I need to go after based on real data. If I have a hundred turbine farm, I really want to pick out the 20 turbines that I’m gonna go put. Leaning as protection on. Yeah. I need to know that, but only when I really know it is to run it through Arab Vista. And then it does give me the Yeah. The top 20 Nicholas Gaudern: EE Exactly. And that, and that’s exactly what it’s designed to do, to take, to give confident analysis that you can then base business decisions on. Yeah. Um, because there’s a lot of operators out there who would love to optimize how [00:22:00] they’re spending their, their own m budget. And this tool will allow them to do that. Right. And I, Allen Hall: I just, I’m starting to see more adoptions at Vista because that accounting Nicholas Gaudern: Yep. Is starting to take place and then you can start planning for the future as well. Right. So, so let’s say you have five years worth of inspection data that you can run through the system. You can then see how the AP loss has progressed over five years. Yes. Where’s it going in the future? Uh, maybe I’m finding that my turbines from one OEM are performing way worse than turbines from another OEM. Sure, and that’s just useful information. Allen Hall: Well, even on the a EP loss from existing leading edge protection systems, some of the more draggy lossy, uh, leading edge protection systems. Are still being applied today. So as those systems fail, the amount of drag, a lawsuit that is created when the system eventually wear out is way more than just leaving the, the turbine alone, honestly. Yeah. So it’s not, you [00:23:00] need to think of it as a, a, a larger problem. You Nicholas Gaudern: have, you have to take that system level approach for sure. Right? You need to think Allen Hall: about, yes. Okay. Then my blade has say it’s 1% right now I’m gonna put this coating on, but the coating’s gonna last three years roughly generally. What happens at year three? Well, I’m gonna have a 3% loss break. Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. May maybe the l break in some, in some cases might make the situation worse. Right. So, you know, it’s about just choosing the right, the right tool for the problem, isn’t it? It is. When should I put, uh, protection on? When should I not, when should I clean a blade? When should I not? When should I apply VGs? When should I not? But unless you have the data coming in and you have that, uh, setup that we’ve been talking about earlier in the, in the discussion here, that’s really hard to do. It is. So it’s, Allen Hall: it’s really hard to do. And even the discussion about leading edge protection, the, the, the issue I have with a lot of them is that they do leave a significant lip Yeah. Right. In a croker area. Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. Allen Hall: Some of [00:24:00] the providers of those systems are, are like, well, it doesn’t really make that much difference. And they don’t have any aerodynamic data. And I’ve talked to a person that doesn’t know that much about aerodynamics obviously. ’cause there’s only a few handful of people mm-hmm In wind that know that much, but. I think, okay, yes, you’re gonna recover the 1% a EP loss that the blade roughness did have, but you’re not really recovering all that. No, not necessarily necessarily what a vista will help also tell you, it helps, it Nicholas Gaudern: helps make a good decision around that, Allen Hall: right? So you may have a, a preferred LEP solution, but if it really doesn’t change your a EP, then what are we doing? Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, exactly. And perhaps the structural implications weren’t that big on that turbine. Right. So, so yeah, again, having that balance of the structural risk, the aerodynamic risk, I think, um, as you start gathering more and more inspection data as operators are having now that kind of risk, a score based approach where you’re bringing together structural risk, aerodynamic risk, financial risk, um, [00:25:00] and bringing all those things together, that’s, that’s where the money lies. Allen Hall: The industry is getting smarter. About the way they spend money, which once interest rates went up and they know filter tower on the program. Every episode talks about interest rates and what effect it as. Yes, it does have an effect, but on an engineering group it has a really significant effect because you need to have a better model. You need to have a better approach. You just don’t throw money at these problems anymore. You need to have an ROI based solution. That’s where Aero Vista comes in. That’s a real solution that’s been validated and has proven itself, and it’s gonna get you to the proper solution, the most cost efficient solution, the fastest way. I haven’t seen a product out there, and I’ve been around quite a bit. I haven’t seen another product that even approaches that. No, no, Nicholas Gaudern: I’m, I’m, Allen Hall: I’m glad to Nicholas Gaudern: hear Allen Hall: that one. And it’s not gonna be on the spreadsheet, so if you’re working on a spreadsheet today, stop, pick up the phone, get on the internet. [00:26:00] Look up power curve. They’re based in Denmark, but they’re worldwide. You guys are everywhere right now and start talking about cost effective solutions. Yes. Start looking at how to spend your money more wisely. Nicholas Gaudern: Exactly. Exactly. Allen Hall: Now’s the time to do that. How do people get ahold of you, Nicholas? How do I get people get ahold of power crew. Nicholas Gaudern: So they can check at our website. That’s, that’s power curve. Uh, dk, we have all our contact details on there. You can look up myself, uh, on LinkedIn. Also our CEO, Neil’s Business Development. Emil, we’re all on LinkedIn. You can reach out there through the website. Yeah, we’d love to talk to you. Allen Hall: Absolutely. So this year is the year to get your a EP figured out and to get all your add-ons figured out and to get your LEP approach, uh, aligned with the cost. And I, I think this is the time that Power Curve will be in the lead of this. And hopefully your phone starts ringing a little bit more because we, we’d love to help them do [00:27:00] that. Absolutely. Because I do, I think there’s so much opportunity for operators to save money Yes. And, and to have more production. Yep. Which is what we need. We need the industry, particularly the United States, need to be able to prove itself more than ever. Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. Just use, use the data, use the expertise that’s out there and Uh, absolutely. And uh, yeah, give us a call. Nicholas, thanks for being back on the podcast. It’s been great. Thanks, Allen.

The crew discusses the Trump administration’s stoppage of Revolution Wind and US Wind, despite billions already invested. They analyze the Commerce Department’s Section 232 national security investigation into wind energy and new tariffs on steel and aluminum. State governors are responding differently to federal pressure, with Connecticut negotiating while Maryland pushes back against the coordinated assault on offshore wind projects. 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: Well, welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. Rosemary Barnes is in Australia. Joel Saxo is in the great north of America of land we call Wisconsin. And Phil Totaro is in lovely California, and as we’ve been talking off air before the show started. There’s a lot of news this week. We are not going to get to all of it in this episode. There is no chance of that. But I wanted to start off first with what’s happening off the coast of Connecticut with Revolution Wind and Ted and the stoppage there, and also the more recent news about US Wind, which is a project off the coast of, of [00:01:00]Maryland and uh, the administration. A couple of days ago decided that, uh, they’re gonna pull the permits from US Wind. And, and that has created quite a, a firestorm within the states because if you think about revolution wind, that was gonna power like 350,000 homes up in Connecticut and Rhode Island and US Wind, which was nearly as far down the line, was also gonna power a great number of homes off the coast of Maryland. Now both of those have stopped. Uh, and as I pointed out in a recent Substack article and on and also on LinkedIn, and I think everybody has seen this, that pay attention to what the governors had done. ’cause this is the same thing that happened to Empire Wind and Ecuador a couple of months ago. Where, uh, empire Wind got shut down. The governor of New York went to the administration and said, Hey, what’s, what gives they negotiated an out, which is that New York was gonna allow more gas capacity and gas lines [00:02:00] into the state. That same thing is, I think is happening in Connecticut and the governor of Connecticut is, uh, has vowed to work with the administration to. Get revolution back up and running. In fact, there was a interview today, we’re recording on a Wednesday where he was on television basically saying that, that there’s, uh, the art of the deal still exists. You can’t cancel a deal after the art of the deal has been signed. Which that’s a good point. Right. Uh. Connecticut is trying to negotiate this, and they have been talking to the state of New York, Maryland has taken a different approach and Maryland’s governors, Westmore is saying, quote, canceling a project set to bring in $1 billion in investment, create thousands of good paying jobs in manufacturing and generate more Maryland made electrical supply is utterly shortsighted. All right, so Maryland’s taking a different approach and is, is sort of punching back hard instead of going to the negotiation table. [00:03:00] Is there more to this than what we can see outwardly? Or is there a lot more, uh, to it in terms of what the administration is trying to do? Or is this all about expanding the role of gas in Democrat LED states? I  Joel Saxum: think you’re on it there, Alan. I think it’s not even Democrat led states. It’s globally because it’s the same rhetoric that the administration pushed to the eu. Hey, tariffs, tariffs, tariffs, or you’re gonna accept our LNG. Um, and it was a part of the promises made on the campaign trails as well. And, and I, this is tough, difficult for the Uptime podcast here for me at least, because we try to stay away from political stuff on the show. We want to talk about innovation and technology and what’s moving forward, but this is such a. A paramount issue within the industry right now. We have to talk about it, but I, I, I’m with you. Like, I think it’s, it’s, it’s just furthering the, the hydrocarbon agenda there. Uh, drill, baby drill, these kind of things. Except for it’s, it, it [00:04:00] ignores some basic economic principles. It’s difficult. Is the US drilling more now than it was six weeks ago, Joel? I doubt it. You know what? As we read this, I don’t know, Phil, let me get your opinion here, but as we read this, I’m gonna look at the rig counts and see what they look like right now in the States. Phil Totaro: Yeah. I would concur that this is mostly about wanting to, um. Promote gas. They’re, they’re trying very hard to come up with these clever ways of, of hiding or obfuscating why they’re really doing it. Um, in that they’re, they’re doing this under the guise of it being a national security concern, but. That doesn’t actually really exist. Um, you know, as I’ve pointed out, everybody involved, all the contractors involved are either US European or one, you know, Australian headquartered company. Um, it’s been suggested that maybe this is because of, uh, the Coast Guard has, you know, some, some issues with [00:05:00] being able to, uh, conduct their operations that frankly doesn’t. Well, pardon the pun, I guess, but that doesn’t hold water. It’s also been suggested that this was potentially, uh, due to cybersecurity issues, which even if that’s true, the reality of that is that’s an operational issue and has nothing to do with the construction of a project. This time, they’re putting more of the onus on, um, you know, BOEM and the Department of the Interior. Uh, to say, oh, well there’s a national security concern. By the way. We can’t tell you what it is, but it’s very serious. So, you know, it’s just a way for them to avoid transparency and, and avoid accountability. That  Allen Hall: same issue happened, Phil, with EOR and Empire Wind. I think it was Politico or the Hill. Went after the order that shut down Empire Wind to see what the details were. And basically they got a [00:06:00] page of redacted text or they couldn’t discern anything. 27 pages of redacted text. What is the point of that? Like if, if you’re gonna be so bold to do it, then just write down why you’re doing it. And I don’t know why they would redact it unless Ecuador asked for it. I mean, there’s only, there’s, there’s two ways to. Have redaction happen. It’s, it’s pri it, it’s private information. It’s commercial information. They don’t want it out. Ecuador could say, I don’t want you to share that information. The other side is the more nefarious of the two is the federal government is unwilling to tell you why they shut the project off, which is not what is supposed to happen. There’s supposed to be some, a little bit of visibility of why they’re making the decisions or not so much why they made a decision. What went into the decision? Like what were the, the, the pieces of information that let them, uh, make the final de decision to shut off Empire Wind for a couple of weeks? Phil Totaro: And think about it this way as well, if, if we [00:07:00] don’t have, I mean, regardless of anybody’s personal politics or, you know, a dislike for a particular form of technology or, or power generation, you know, the reality is. Y the government of the day has to be able to provide citizens and, you know, corporations that operate in that, that country with guarantees. You know, this is why I got so fired up about the whole Empire Wind thing in the first place was because you, you, these guys have spent billions of dollars on leases that they now are being precluded from being able to go build. Nobody’s offered to give them their money back on the lease. They’re just saying, oh, well that permit that you got issued, that we spent either seven years or 10 years, or however many years it was, and however many, you know, compromises had to be made and how many decisions had to be taken. Uh, you know, at the end of the day, the government has to be able to provide people with certainty. And if you don’t do that, [00:08:00] then we don’t have a functioning government anymore. That’s scary because then the government’s out for its own interests and not the interests of the people and who is gonna end up paying the price for all this us as, as electricity consumers. We’re gonna now end up in a scenario where you’re gonna get brownouts and rolling blackouts and, you know, within a few years, yeah, maybe they negotiate these deals to, to do gas. You know, off take or whatever. And, and Connecticut’s gotta put up with that, and Maryland’s gotta put up with that. But they need power. And there’s power, literally right there. The project revolution was 80% complete corn to sted. The power’s right there just take it and they need it  Joel Saxum: now. They, they don’t need it. Five, six years down the line, when we were finally able to get some thermal generation plants built and some transmission built out, they need it now. And that’s, that’s there. So like even Alan, like you say, is it, or like you asked, what’s the rig count? What does it look like for [00:09:00] production? Okay. Production right now, to be honest with you, doesn’t matter that much. Where are you gonna send it? Like when you’re, when you’re talking about LNG, you talk about Alan, you and I read this report the other day, um, about they, they measure it in billions of cubic feet is how they, like, this is how much we use to empower generation in the United States. So right now, if we look at the LNG rig count in the states. It’s sitting at 122 as of a couple days ago, 122 rigs drilling gas wells and it was 103 at at inauguration. So we’re up 19 rigs, big drop in oil rigs and a small spike in gas rigs in the field. But at the end of the day, where are you gonna send all this? Production.  Allen Hall: Well, you’re gonna send it to Europe. Right? That was the agreement between the European Union and the administration was just to send a bunch of gas over there, or for, or forget you to commit to buying what? Uh, $750 [00:10:00] billion worth of, uh, l and g and other energy products over three years, $250 billion a year. That’s where they hope to send it. But you, you go back to, can they even burn it? They can’t. There’s no way they could burn it tomorrow. So the, the whole. Equation. It doesn’t equate the left hand side and the right hand side. Don’t match. Don’t let blade damage catch you off guard. Theologic Ping sensors detect issues before they become expensive, time consuming problems from ice buildup and lightning strikes to pitch misalignment and internal blade cracks. Theologic Ping has you covered The cutting edge sensors are easy to install, giving you the power to stop damage before it’s too late. Visit eLog ping.com and take control of your turbine’s health today.  Phil Totaro: What’s the Australian perspective here? Like how are people around the world perceiving this scenario? Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, uh, it’s actually interesting, um, ’cause you know, [00:11:00] obviously I pay a lot of attention to what’s going on in Wind Energy and the US specifically. ’cause, you know, you guys and other podcasts I listen to. But even in conversations that I’m having with people who don’t work in wind or even don’t work in energy. Uh, they’re aware of, of what’s happened and just a bit shocked, I think. Um, I talked to a couple of business owners and they’re just imagining what would happen if my business, you know, was halfway through a huge project and then it just got canceled for, um, maybe non-transparent reasons or at least something that you could never have predicted, and it would obviously. Kill any of small or medium sized businesses that had something like this happen to them. So it just feels a bit, um, a bit chilling and makes you just think how you can think that you’ve done everything right, but nothing is certain in business. And Black Swan can always come, come at you,  Allen Hall: you know who’s on your side, Phil, about, uh, getting reimbursed for these projects if they get canceled.[00:12:00] Is the Secretary of the Interior, Doug Bergham because he was screaming bloody murder when the XL Pipeline was canceled in North Dakota when he was governor. He said that if there’s an executive order or legislation that kills a project where you’ve already invested hundreds of millions of dollars, then they need to reimburse you for that project. When they do that. And now he’s on the opposite. He actually has the ability to do that, and he is sticking it to wind and solar and everybody else, and it’s like, oh, you know, you put a bunch of money in. Well, tough luck.  Rosemary Barnes: But did that happen for Keystone? What, what? What was the evangel outcome of that? They, they did get reimbursed or not? Phil Totaro: No. The government never gives money back. When has that ever happened in the history of the universe? But the, here’s the real scary thing, and this is actually why, you know, I, I’m saying like, who’s gonna reimburse them? Nobody’s gonna do that, but I don’t want them to get reimbursed because here’s what happens if they do. Right now, these guys, even though they’re not being allowed [00:13:00] to construct, they still own leases. If the interior department. Pulls back those leases and gives the money back. They can release that to oil and gas companies, even if they don’t go do anything. And then that those sites that were intended for wind are no longer available. They can sign a 99 year lease and then we’re screwed. And, and that was actually my big concern with them terminating all the other lease auctions. Um, you know, the ones in Maine, Oregon, Washington, you know, north, South Carolina, et cetera. The Gulf, uh, that’s the real issue here is if, if they decide, oh, well, we’re not gonna allocate those areas for offshore wind, we’re gonna give leases to, you know, for a, a dollar an acre or whatever, to, to oil and gas companies out there. You know, that’s gonna screw the industry even more because we’re never gonna be able to build anything.  Joel Saxum: Has anybody checked in with any of the companies that are off the coast over by you, Phil? [00:14:00] Oh, you right. Because there’s four or five lease zones off the, off the West coast. Now we knew those were gonna be long-term developments floating and all this stuff, but what’s going on at the boardrooms of those companies? Do we know anybody that’s a fly the wall there? Because it would be interesting to see what they’re doing. Are they just fi, are they fire sailing employees? ’cause they’re like, oh, what are we gonna do here? Like, are we just gonna sit and burn money?  Phil Totaro: No. Uh, those, all those projects, especially the ones out here in California, they were all long-term prospects anyway. We were not even gonna start construction during the rest of, of the president’s term. So it, it wasn’t really gonna be that much of an issue to not get issued a, a federal permit. Um, we’ve got. The state level permitting that needs to happen for the transmission infrastructure that hasn’t even started really yet. Um, they’re still having studies and conversations about it. Uh, so the project development companies, um, there’s really only one that got kind of screwed by this. And it was a, a small company that [00:15:00] was doing a floating demonstration project off the coast of Vandenberg where they are sending up all these, um. You know, Elon missiles or whatever, uh, that project was supposed to have started construction and in a couple of years, uh, and hook into the electrical infrastructure in Lompoc, where the, um, BEWA project is, uh, a wind farm. Um, uh, Strauss Wind Farm, the, that is unlikely to move forward. Um, but that was being done under kind of a special permit anyway. It wasn’t actually in federal waters, it was state, uh, but they were also still dependent on, you know, different, um, approvals, uh, given the proximity to the, the, um, space.  Joel Saxum: Space at the same time that we, that these offshore wind projects that are. Uh, it’s like that book how you, uh, Rosemary the guy, you know how big things get done, these mega capital projects, right? The other one that was not [00:16:00] under construction yet but had gone through 10, 15 years of permitting and is a massive blow to, I’m not even saying renewable energy. It’s a massive blow to the energy grid in the United States Is the grain belt express. That that just got the, all the federal funding pulled from it. It was, and it was big time that that federal loan was like a four and a half billion dollars guarantee or something like that.  Allen Hall: Right.  Joel Saxum: Why? What is the point of that?  Phil Totaro: They’re gonna move forward with private funding, but they’re also, I believe in energy is still contemplating a legal challenge to that because once. The, and this is actually was according to the guy who’s heading the, the doe’s loan office, once the DOE issues, that loan guarantee, they can’t pull it back. It’s, they’re, they’re not supposed to be allowed to be able to pull it back. So that’s gonna, that. Probably end up in litigation. But the problem, see, this is the, the real thing, you know, and I was even being interviewed by somebody and, and they were asking, well, what do the states do? What kinda leverage do they have? [00:17:00] And the reality is they can, you know, make all these legal challenges and then negotiate gas deals and all that other crap. But even if they, they. Proceed with a legal challenge. Nothing’s getting built right now. Nothing’s getting done at a point in time when we need the power. And even if the state wins, they’re gonna win the legal battle like two or three years from now when it doesn’t matter anymore anyway. And new administration’s gonna come in, presumably whatever administration comes in, Republican or Democrat, they’re gonna be more favorable than this administration regardless. Um, because by that point in time, they’re gonna see the picture that, you know. Gas and nuclear and whatever else isn’t getting the job done. You need renewables. So we’re gonna have to, you know, soften the, soften the deal  Joel Saxum: a little bit. Well, we’re, we’re legislating ourselves into a energy hole, right? And it doesn’t make sense and go backwards and just cancel off the idea that it’s renewables or traditional power gen. Energy generation sources and energy [00:18:00] generation, the ability to move electrons across the grid, and we’re just cutting the lines and just like, no, we don’t need that. We don’t need that as, as looking and going, like at the same breath, we’re gonna be an AI data center powerhouse, and we we’re gonna do, this is gonna be the new thing. And it’s like, you need power for all that.  Allen Hall: Why you, you have two things going on simultaneously, Joel. You have the demand for power from AI data centers, and then on top of it you have. Wider fluctuations in energy usage. So base load is the opposite of what you want there. Uh, you can’t sustain it, right? So if you put more coal generation, more gas generation on the grid, and Elon or Zuckerberg decides to turn on and off their AI data center, it’s gonna cause massive problems. The way the grid is established today, you have to install battery. And a lot of it to support those kind of loads. And going back to your earlier [00:19:00] point, if no administration is willing to do that, then there will obviously be problems on the grid. And when the average consumer has a brown out or blackout and multiples of them, they will lose elections. It will be over very quickly because, uh, it doesn’t take long,  Phil Totaro: not for nothing. How do you think Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor of California? That’s literally what happened under Gray Davis. We had, we had brownouts and blackouts and people got so upset about it. They literally did a recall election, got the existing governor out, and Arne got in kindergarten. Cop the Terminator. Kindergarten cop out of every movie that he’s ever been in. That’s the one you’re gonna, yeah, I just  Allen Hall: watched it  Phil Totaro: the other day. 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. [00:20:00] Onyx 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. So there’s an old saying in Washington when you want to kill something, you just don’t shoot it once. You gotta shoot it multiple times. And this week. The administration proved that by launching a coordinated two front assault on America’s wind energy industry, uh, by combining national security fears with protectionist trade policies. So it started about a week or two ago. With the Commerce Department, which initiated Section 2 32 [00:21:00] investigation, Phil, which means that there’s national security risks involved in wind. And, uh, I, I don’t know who was after us, but somehow they’re controlling the wind turbines with their minds. And, uh, that was the first thing. So section 2 32, that can impose a lot of, um, restraints on particular items that are coming into the United States. And the second one. One is the Commerce department, uh, published a list, uh, making 400 and what about 407 categories of imported products? Uh, 50% more expensive with a tariff. And in that list is a. Raw steel and raw aluminum, which a lot of wind turbines have those, those two materials. Uh, there was a big push by some of the steel producers and aluminum producers in the United States for those terrorists to be applied and they, they won, right? So now you have a section 2 32 investigation, national security, and you have tariffs [00:22:00] on the raw materials that pretty much make up a good bit of wind turbines. Where do we go from here? Because to me, we’ve had the department of interior attacking wind, department of Commerce attacking wind, department of transportation attacking wind with the the trains crashing trains bit. Uh, so pretty much every department wants to chime in and show that they are anti win. So, uh, they can be on, I don’t know, some news channel I suppose, but is this smart? Is this, because in in my head, when one administration does this, the next administration boomerangs it back even harder. And if one thing we’ve learned over the last 20 plus years in politics is that the other side must outdo the previous administration, this is not gonna go well. Joel Saxum: It’s a pendulum, and the pendulum just is getting more and more power and it’s going a little further and further and further. We need [00:23:00]that pendulum to set to. To settle down, but it shows that it paints the pic picture of the political world in the United States where it used to be, eh, you know, it used to be 15% extreme on either side, 15%, extreme on either side, and 70% where you could have a conversation in the middle. Now it’s like. 20% that you can have a conversation in the middle and 40% on either side that are so extreme you can’t get anything done or have a conversation.  Allen Hall: But also, Joel, don’t you think because of the population in the United States has grown significantly over the last a hundred years, it gets harder to make the pendulum move. So even if you’re the federal government, if you want to really try to take out something, you have to work hard at it because there’s so. Many people and so much activity economically in the United States, it’s hard to move the needle, so they have to take extreme measures to try to move the needle. I don’t think it’s, I don’t  Joel Saxum: think it’s as much, this is a very broad topic, but I don’t think it’s as much population growth. I think it’s the last 20 years in access to communications and access to information. I think we’re in a different, we’re in a such a different place [00:24:00] now with social media and the availability of, not even social media, it’s cancel social media. That’s a huge thing, but like how I can easily get news in my phone, just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Just fed into me.  Allen Hall: Yeah. How is TikTok still alive?  Joel Saxum: Yeah, but I mean, fed, I mean, I got a little thing in my corner, my computer that pops up and tells me news. I got thing in my phone that pops up to tell me news. I got the TV pop up. Tell me news. It’s, it’s, there’s so many, so much access to information that it’s starts to easy to start. Everybody’s starting to develop opinions, and then it’s like, oh, it feeds this algorithm. So if you have an opinion, you start clicking on things, it starts to drive you further down that path and further down that line. So people become a bit more extreme than they were in the past, whereas you didn’t have algorithm based news input before and it was just like what was on the tv? Uh, it was the A, B, C or whatever the hell, Fox News, whatever it was just on the TV at 6:00 PM or 9:00 PM So. You have the, the, the way our society, the way our, and this is a, this is a dig a little bit, but the way our society is moving towards this capitalistic way of wanting to make money, why are [00:25:00]algorithms there in social media and news? Well, they’re there to drive people to ads. We’re to make money and do things. So the, like, the, like capitalism is poisoning itself in some of these things. And why the pendulum’s swinging so far? It’s all the same thing in Australia, honestly. Yeah. It’s just, but it’s the same, it’s the same thing  Phil Totaro: globally. But to go back to the, the whole tariff question, the, the reality of this is that it, it, it drives up cost. And what people don’t seem to understand about tariffs, a lot of people think, oh, we’re applying tariffs on some foreign country or foreign company. We pay the tariffs people, we pay them because even if we’re put applying a tariff on a foreign company or country, they raise their price by the amount of the tariff because they can’t just absorb that cost. Even when the administration and the White House was trying to tell companies like Walmart, oh, you’re going eat the cost of that tariff. No, they’re not. You know, Apple’s not gonna eat the cost of that tariff. Walmart’s not going to eat the cost of tariffs. The prices are gonna go [00:26:00] up, we’re gonna pay for it, and that means that tariffs end up being a tax. So my supposedly fiscally conservative government is now suggesting that I pay even more than what I already do to, you know, ensure that they can, you know, continue to demolish the industry that I make money off of. I mean, this is, this is not good times  Allen Hall: if they weren’t $37 trillion in debt. This may not be happening. This is the rationale behind all of it is that, well, the US is in huge federal debt, so we’re gonna make some money. And if you’ve watched the discussion over the last couple of days about how much money the terrorists are gonna bring in in 2025, the number banty about is like a trillion dollars. Yeah. Okay. Let’s say it’s a trillion dollars. Uh, what is the effect on the economy? Back to Phil’s point, you take a trillion dollars and put it into the federal government that didn’t have before. Does that make everybody better off? [00:27:00] Good question. Uh. We’re gonna find, you know what, what’s gonna happen? We’re gonna find out. We have no idea what’s gonna happen. ’cause we haven’t been down this road before, not like this. Uh, here  Phil Totaro: is a positive thing. So while all this is happening, there are people that have been proactive and we’ve spoken a little bit about it on the show in the past few months, that have safe harbored turbines or they’ve already got, you know, projects under development and repowering projects that they’re already working on. There’s gonna be at least a short term boom here, uh, where, you know, even though it’s, it’s kind of hysterical to me because for the last nine quarters in a row, wind and solar have actually combined in net capacity additions that outpace, you know, natural gas or coal or anything else. And that’s gonna actually continue for the next like year and a half. And everybody’s gonna sit there and scratch the heads because they don’t understand how the momentum of all these, you know, the project development process [00:28:00] works. And, you know, so a year from now we’re gonna be having the conversation where, you know, wind and solar are still like number one in capacity additions, you know, for, for the second quarter of 2026. And everybody’s gonna be like, didn’t we kill wind and solar? What happened? And, and they’re not gonna get it. Um. You know, so the reality is we’ve, we’ve got at least a, a something positive to look forward to where repowering is gonna still happen. Some, you know, greenfield project development still happening. People who are proactive to take advantage of safe harbors under the old IRS rules are gonna still be able to build PPA prices are going up, which actually helps companies offset the, the lost production tax credit revenue, and that, you know, with a high enough. PPA that they could renegotiate. They may be able to repower, afford to repower even without the production tax credit. Uh, so, you know, there is some, some hope and some optimism and, you know, let’s see how this  Allen Hall: goes. [00:29:00] It’s gonna be a fight. Bring it. It’s better that we fight it out now because it, it’s could be the laster off for LNG for a while. And coal. I mean this, this will be the death blow to coal really will be in the us, not elsewhere, but in the US it will be. Phil Totaro: And talking about Joel’s pendulum concept, it’s like what? If, if it’s Democrats that go into a majority in Congress in 2029 and or come into the White House in 2029, the pendulum’s gonna swing pretty hard in the opposite direction of where we are right now. And a lot of these, you know, I mean, tariffs are gonna go away. These mandates to buy LNG are gonna go away, uh, before they’ve even had a chance to really gain enough momentum. And we’re still gonna be at a point where wind and solar are cheaper than anything else to build as they already are today. And they have been for the last eight years. Uh, so. [00:30:00] Let’s, let’s get on with it. Allen Hall: That wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. Thanks for joining us as we explore the latest in wind energy technology and industry insights and nonsense politics. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn and don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. 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 Podcast.

The Trump Administration begins a Section 232 investigation to block foreign-owned wind in the US. Meanwhile, China continues to pull ahead. 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, Allen Hall, shares the renewable industry news you may have missed. Allen Hall 2025: You know what’s happening to offshore wind in America? Ørsted stock down 87%. Revolution wind halted at 80% completion, $679 million in funding canceled across trial projects. But here’s what the industry press isn’t telling you. On August 13th, while everyone was watching Ørsted Stock collapsed, the Commerce Department quietly launched something else. A Section 2 32, national Security Investigation of Wind Turbine Imports Section 2 32. The same Trade law President Trump used to slap tariffs on steel and aluminum in his first term. The investigation list, 12 criteria for protecting America’s wind turbine supply. [00:01:00] Domestic production capacity in port, concentration risks, foreign government subsidies, supply chain security, reading those criteria. You think Washington finally gets it? You think they’re building a fortress around American wind manufacturing. But the opposite is true. Chinese wind turbine manufacturers now hold the top four global spots. Goldwind Envision Min Yang Windy, they control 60% of the global market prices 20% lower than Western competitors. Yet in America, these Chinese turbines have virtually zero market share zero. The Section 2 32 investigation isn’t aimed. At China, it’s aimed at Europe. Siemens ESA dominates US offshore wind Vestas leads onshore in the quote unquote foreign threat. The Commerce Department is investigating it’s Danish and German companies building American wind farms. Meanwhile, 7,000 miles away. China [00:02:00] installed 86 gigawatts of wind in 2024 more than the entire US has built in the last decade combined. Germany just canceled their Skara project’s. Chinese turbine order after national security warnings. But those same ING Yang turbines, they’re spinning right now off the coast of Italy, the only Chinese offshore wind farm in all of Europe. Irony runs deeper while Trump halts European built wind farms citing national security China. Races they had with their everything everywhere, all at once. Energy strategy, building new before discarding the old, as president Xi puts it, China’s new energy law prioritizes renewable development while keeping coal as a backup. America’s new policy, discard the new, go back to the old. European manufacturers are hemorrhaging money. Siemens GAA posted massive losses. Investors practicing quote unquote commercial [00:03:00] discipline. Industry. Speak for, we can’t compete with Chinese prices Today. Orid faces a $9.4 billion rights issue, half funded by Danish taxpayers . But here’s what makes this story remarkable. The section 2 32 investigation could actually help Chinese manufacturers. If tariffs hit European turbines, Chinese companies already 20% cheaper, become the only viable alternative, except Trump won’t let them in the United States either. So what’s the real strategy? Simple. It’s kill offshore wind entirely. Make it so expensive, so uncertain that investors flee. The national Security investigation isn’t about protecting American wind manufacturing. It’s about protecting American fossil fuels. Transportation, secretary Duffy called Wind Projects Fantasy while redirecting funds to real infrastructure translation ports for oil and gas, not [00:04:00] wind turbines. The Commerce Department’s 12 criteria reads like a textbook on supply chain security, but they’re being weaponized to eliminate supply chains entirely, and China understands this. While America argues about wind power, China builds it 75% of global offshore wind installations this year. The section 2 32 investigation will conclude sometime next year. It will recommend tariffs on European wind equipment to protect American manufacturing, but there is no offshore wind manufacturing to protect. That’s not an oversight. That’s the point.

Howard Penrose, President of Motordoc LLC, returns to discuss the complexities of modern electrical grids. The conversation covers the inaccuracies surrounding the Iberian Peninsula blackout, the intricate functions of voltage and frequency control, and systemic issues in grid management. Penrose explains how renewable energy sources like wind and solar, alongside energy storage, play crucial roles in stabilizing the grid. 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. Howard, welcome back to the show. How are you doing? It’s been a bit, a lot has happened since we last spoke. I, I wanna speak about the Iberian Peninsula problem and the blackout that happened in April. Because there’s been a number of inaccuracies about that situation, and you’re actively involved in the groups that look into these situations and try to understand what the root cause was. That the, the, the Iberian situation is a little complicated. The CNN knowledge, the Fox News knowledge is that solar was the cause of a problem. Yeah, that is far from the truth. You wanna explain kind of [00:01:00] what this, how it progressed over time? It started around noontime Spain and they had a couple of wobbles there. You want to kick it off?  Howard Penrose: Yeah. First, first my comment is, I like how journalists become experts in, in literally everything, um, from 30 seconds to 30 seconds, right. Basically. The problem had been going on for a little while and, and the grided there had been operating much like it had been for a little while. And, uh, you know, for years actually, uh, even with the application of alternative energy, we’ll, we’ll call it alternative energy for this, um, you know, so that we don’t bring in that political end of calling it one thing or the other. Alternative energy is what we called it in the 1990s. So, um, in any case. Uh, they had a number of issues with voltage control, meaning large loads would suddenly drop off and then the voltage would float up [00:02:00] and then, uh, and then they would have to do something to bring it under control. They’re at 50 hertz, so their voltage is 400 kv. That’s their primary grid voltage. They have an alarm trip voltage, meaning an emergency trip voltage, where they strip the line at 435 kv. So, um, what happened now, the final event happened in 27 seconds, but leading up to that, they had an event where they had voltage float up. And they were bringing that under control. And then down in the southern part of Spain, and we don’t have anything set up like this here in the states, luckily they had all, uh, a whole group of, um, solar uh, plants as well as a gas turbine plant feeding a single distribution transformer. And the, uh, auto taps on that failed on the low voltage side on step up. So it basically dropped out. So, uh, something like, I, I’m trying to remember off the top of my, my head, [00:03:00] but it was either 300 or 800 megawatts just offline now. It was a lightly loaded day in Spain ’cause it was a beautiful day outside. Uh, so that makes matters worse. It makes it unstable and really easy for voltage to flow up where people start to think that that, uh, alternative energy was a fault was because we were at 40%. Of the power supply was solar as the morning progressed, so it had climbed up to about that there was a good percentage of wind. Um, but they had a nuclear power power plant online and several others providing synchronous protection for any type of inertia. They lost one of those plants. The voltage floated up, uh, to um, about 415 to 420 kv. Yeah. Then there was a whole bunch of control issues. So the operators started switching lines. There was a connection to France. They, they started seeing some oscillations because they were [00:04:00] oscillating against, uh, Europe. And, um, so they switched lines and that caused the voltage to float up again. And they had no, no, none of the equipment. Whether it was solar, wind, or even the synchronous power was set to do, uh, var control, meaning set to do voltage control to bring the voltage back down. It was all set up for frequency control, meaning that they wanted to control against it, not the, not the alternative energy. Those were set so that they did a straight, what’s called power factor, so they were set to just put out. Exactly what they were supposed to put out. They were not there, they were not set to correct anything, even though they could have been. And, um, so, uh, at, at about 420, uh, thousand volts, other plants started tripping offline. And as it went up further, even the nuclear plant tripped offline. And then France dropped [00:05:00] offline at about the same time, all across the 27 second period.  Allen Hall: Right. Okay. So this is a unique problem and I think the Iberian Peninsula really raises this issue on a number of levels for the general consumer out in the world. The grid is actually pretty complicated, but there’s really two things you really want to control there. Voltage, you have to control frequency, you have to control. If you control those two. Pretty much everything else will work the way it’s intended. If either one of those gets outta whack, there’s safety protocols that go into place to protect the equipment, but there’s also other piece of equipment that are trying to bring it into regulation. When the regulation doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to, yes, you can get the voltage outta whack. You can get the frequency to go outta spec, and then clunk, clunk, clunk. Everything starts to disconnect. Like what happened in Spain. My first question about that is it’s a complicated system and there’s a lot of pieces [00:06:00] connected to it. Who is checking in the US or in Europe or anywhere else who’s checking that? Those control settings are in the right place. They were actually set per the requirements. Spain was talking about in some of their publications that there, the settings weren’t set right. They were, we were, they were not properly set per code. Who’s checking that?  Howard Penrose: So, so grid code here is set by FIR and nerc. And it sounds like a curse word, a set of curse words, but FERC is the federal side. NERC is actually private. Um, so they set, they set the rules for safety, for power, gener, you, you name it. So, um, and they set the code. Now as an operator, you’re supposed to be, you know, the power generation side. They still even here, have to do things to meet code. Okay. Is there anybody checking it? No. Uh, the, it’s a site responsibility. Each area, um, goes out and they [00:07:00] forecast expectations. Um, and then, and then of course, within that expectation, you have a lot of companies and cities municipal that will all bid on how much energy they’re gonna consume, right? Uh, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So, so everybody agrees to it. And then, and then, um, the operators have to determine the reliability. And the availability of energy based upon certain conditions within that grit. Like what, what plants are gonna be, uh, in maintenance and everything else. And, and that’s important because the actual generation companies can’t talk to each other. They’re not allowed. Okay. Otherwise, it could be considered collusion. So our own laws fight against us.  Allen Hall: The Iberian situation leads into some discussions. What happens in America, because we’re in America and there have been a number of brownouts blackouts, uh, ERCOT has have a couple of situations where they’ve had sort of regional [00:08:00] disconnects of, or larger scale, like a cascading. Effect, uh, due to, um, control systems that are not happy with one another. So one system knocks out another and then it, everybody goes into safe mode and there’s just this sort of cascading, disconnected that happens. Those events are a little scary to me, just with a, it feels like we’re not talking to one another, and what you’re saying is we’re intentionally not talking to one another because we can’t. It talk one power producer to another power producer.  Howard Penrose: That’s what the operator’s for. So the, the grid operator is there to take all that information in. Most of it’s run via software. What’s been interesting is, say Ercot, because of the event that happened in 2021. What, uh, happened was everybody went back and looked at it and said, how can we fix it? It turns out that alternative energy was the way to stiffen the power system. So, um, they’ve now made adjustments to how the, [00:09:00] to, to take more advantage of the capabilities of wind and solar that they didn’t have before, as well as all the new storage systems, uh, including, you know, course battery, which is the, the big buzzword now. Right? Bess? Um. So battery storage in order to stiffen up the system. A year ago, there was a 16% possibility of a blackout throughout Oliver Ercot. This year it was 1%, even though we have a higher demand this year, and it had nothing to do with traditional systems that had to do with wind, solar, and energy storage, big discussion data centers, right? As a matter of fact. We already decided at this meeting, we’re not gonna talk about wind and wind storage, wind, uh, solar and energy storage. Next year, PPES, now it’s gonna be power Engineering Society, by the way, the ones who actually do that stuff, right? Uh, it’s gonna be all about data centers because a data center is the most [00:10:00] dangerous thing on the grid. So remember I mentioned, uh, you know, but somewhere between 300 and 800 megawatts dropped offline and it caused an entire country to lose power. You have to remember, these things are 500 megawatt to 1.5 gigawatts, which is by the way, more than a DeLorean and a data center doesn’t, if it trips, it doesn’t just gradually come down. It means you lose 500 to 1.5. Um, yep. Like that. Gone.  Allen Hall: Well, I, I think as a, most people are casual users of the electricity grid. They don’t realize how much is planning is done ahead of time. So there are 24 hour forecast and actually year long forecast. You’re looking a year ahead in some cases of what the energy requirements are going to be. The, the daily forecast for tomorrow are, are the big ones. So you need to know how many generators to have ready and who’s actually gonna be there and they gotta commit, and all these different things have to happen. [00:11:00] That is a really critical feature of the grid. You would think that most, I think most people would assume that there’s just a bunch of coal fire generation. There’s a number of, uh, gas plants that are up and running. They’re always spending 24 hours a day, and then maybe a little bit of wind, a little bit of solars thrown in there. But for the vast majority of it, that is not the case at all. Like, it’s complicated and, and the, as you have mentioned. It’s planned. It’s, it’s, it’s planned to some crazy detail and putting something on the, on the system that is megawatt size, okay? Not so bad. Gigawatt size is a problem. Is a problem ’cause that system is not designed to handle that. And yet we’re, we’re going into this in the next year or two or in kind of now honestly, where we’re putting, gonna put these big data center loads on this old system, which is looking 24 hours ahead. But as you pointed out, data centers can be on, data centers can be off the grid. Can’t [00:12:00] manage that unless there’s something else that can react as fast as the data center does though, there’s only two things that I, well, three. Solar, wind and battery are the only things that can react at that electronic speed of which a AI data center is operating at. Howard Penrose: Yep. They have electronic controls.  Allen Hall: Right. A, a gas fire turbine can’t do that.  Howard Penrose: Yeah. You have to counter the electronics with electronics and we actually need to have enough of it to counter what’ll happen, you know, like data centers are supposed to be able to island. Meaning island means they get cut off from the grid and they can run on their own. And, and usually that means they have generation behind the meter, which for those who are watching, you don’t know what that means. That means that you know you have a meter at, say your house, right? So you, that’s what, that’s what the utility looks at to decide how much you’re gonna pay. If you have a generator at your house that is behind that meter, you pay for the fuel for that. And [00:13:00] if you’re really lucky, you’ve negotiated something so you can put power back through your meter and reduce the amount of power you pay. Right. So the, that meter is the deciding point. It’s a point of common connection between, you know, the grid or that, in this case we’re talking about the local distribution part of the grid versus the grid, which is all those gigantic power lines that are going everywhere that can get as high as. I think we’re at 750 kilovolts now, uh, for some of them. And we’re talking about going to over a million to reduce the copper, the amount of copper needed, so, uh, or whatever material we’re gonna use at that voltage.  Allen Hall: So the way that ai, Dana setters are, uh, adding to the system in terms of load, the only way to counter that from a gas turbine standpoint or a coal standpoint, or even a nuclear standpoint for that matter, is you have to have. These systems running 24 7 [00:14:00] just in case Elon decides to turn on the switch, you would have to be burning gas pretty much all the time. ’cause to get that rotating mass in those gas turbines to be able to do that, that is crazy expensive to do. That’s why we deregulated the 1990s. Exactly. So the, the issue gets down to, if we’re gonna have grid stability, you actually need. Wind, solar and batteries to respond to those instantaneous changes that occur on a system that’s has gigawatt loads plugged into it randomly. And, and second. By the time, if you wanted to make a, a gas turbine world, like it sounds like the administration does at the minute. Those gas tournaments are burning fuel all the time. Expensive fuel all the time. Your electricity rates to do that. If you have an AI dentist sitter in your area, you’re gonna be paying through the nose to keep that thing running just because, just so that Elon or [00:15:00] Mark Zuckerberg can do their thing. Actually,  Howard Penrose: it’s worse than that if you have a data center in your operating area. Okay. Which means a lot of states, right? Water and wastewater for the entire nation takes up less than 2% of the energy consumption. Electrical energy consumption, okay? Electric power, just to give you an idea. So flushing your toilet, drinking your water, getting your water bottle, you know, that kind of thing. All of that stuff, all of that energy is 2%. We are right now at over 8%. For, for data centers by 2030, we’re supposed to be at 15%. By 2040, we’re supposed to be at 25% of all electricity produced. The utilities, all of the grid scale and everything else, the fastest they’ve ever had to build anything other than some of the initial stuff is 2% a year, two to 5% a year. Okay. Is what they’re used to adding to the grid. Adding power generation. In order to meet the demand, [00:16:00] they have to double present conditions every other year. That’s 50 to a hundred percent growth per year, which nobody globally has ever done. We don’t have the materials, we don’t have the equipment, we don’t have the people, so we don’t have the skillset anymore. What does an  Allen Hall: efficient grid look like going forward? Howard? And with the constraints. With the constraints, that there’s gonna be limitations on the growth of transmission with the constraint that the current administration is, I’ll say anti wind, anti-solar, or they’re not just level playing field, they’re like actively trying to damage it. What does the grid look like then?  Howard Penrose: That’s the big challenge. Nobody’s quite aware how we’re going to do it. Um. That’s, that’s all of the conversation now. What does it look like? And the direction [00:17:00] has been changed from a political standpoint so much. It’s like, it’s like going to a company and saying, we’re going to change the direction of the company to 180 degrees. We’re, we’re no longer gonna build cars anymore. We’re now gonna build, um, stuffed animals.  Allen Hall: I, I think in the electrical, uh, power industry forever. Uh, and I’ve been around a lot of engineers that were involved in the early phases of that, and I used to work next to one of the places where GE built Transformers forever. So there’s every day around power people. It was a scientific, technical effort driven to provide society a better living. That’s where. All the focus was on the engineering and the technical community and the scientific community. That’s where they were going. They, they made money at it. Yes, they did. If they produce a good product, they would make money at it. But if you look at [00:18:00] the rigor in which the engineering was produced, it’s a very high standard, very high standard IEE articles written in the 1920s and thirties, even in the seventies and the eighties, and through the nineties, I’d say pretty much. Solid stuff. Not a lot of crazy stuff, not a lot of politics. Hard. You just wouldn’t see it. You can, I’ve read thousands of papers in my lifetime you wouldn’t see it. I have seen a more recent shift because politics is electrical distribution at the minute. It’s somehow, it, it’s morphed into this other thing, which is, uh, I would say more like oil and gas was in the 1960s and seventies and, and earlier too, where it was a lot of politicians and a lot of money changing hands. The electrical generation world was not, never really in that, at that level. And it feels like we’re being, uh, uh, uh, we’re taking on, uh, methods and policies and behaviors of other industries, and that’s not gonna be healthy for [00:19:00] that electricity grid.  Howard Penrose: No, no. I, I, the, the stuff that has to happen is big, scary, long-term stuff. Um, and, and it’s bl and, and solutions are being developed. And, and don’t get me wrong, not everything is, is horribly bad when, when they do what they’re doing, uh, we’ve seen some great innovations coming out, but they’re not going anywhere because as soon as they come out, we change direction. You know, we we’re trying to do something that takes decades based upon the political wins, which are every other week. You know, think, think about a topic that happened two weeks ago and are they talking about it now? No. And, and it’s just like the power generation stuff. Uh, as soon as they need a distraction again, then you’ll hear something from either side, you know, oh, we need to get rid of this. We need to add, you know, we need to, you know, so the war is, is, you know, politicians and people [00:20:00]without the background to make these decisions when politics decides to get involved. In infrastructure to the, to, to the micromanaging detail. That’s the problem is they’re micromanaging and, uh, I, I blame 2020 for that. I really do. ’cause uh, prior to 2020 I’ve been calling on the hill ’cause I was the region for energy rep. So it’s a 10 Midwestern states in 1993 through 1995, I, I, I was part of the discussion related to deregulation. I was not a fan of it for electrical power because we had nowhere to store anything. So it was like we need to, we need time to deal with how it’s going to occur because a large power generation we have is not designed to do what we’re about to make it do, which is turn off, turn off, vary and load. Used to have a big generator, and then you had what was called spinning reserve. And the spinning reserve [00:21:00] was there so that when you needed sudden power or you needed to absorb something, all of the bumps and grinds that we’re trying to deal with now was sitting there and you were, you were just burning through fuel just to keep the thing turning. It wasn’t actually doing anything other than turning and, um, you know, we survived it. But it ended up with what we warned about in 1994 for IEE, which was the. Blackout in the northeast in 2003, that was directly related. It was predicted that that would happen because we couldn’t get the relays and controls in place to, to deal with it. So, um, now we’re heading down the path and it’s a much more serious issue. The, the demand growth is growing extremely fast. Um, we were trying to hold back demand in the 1990s during all of this through the Energy Policy Act in 92 and dealing with, um, demand side management [00:22:00] was the big word. Remember we were trying to do more energy efficiency, reduce demand so that we could use the power we had. Now we’re saying you don’t wanna do the exact opposite. Use more and more power, um, use it efficiently, but use more and more of it. And, and that’s, that’s the big challenge.  Allen Hall: Howard, it’s been a pleasure to have you back on the podcast. I really enjoy these discussions about the grid, uh, and about keeping, uh, renewables up and running and all the things that motor dock and you are up to. And, uh, if you haven’t followed Howard’s LinkedIn page, you need to do that. Howard Penrose. Also Howard, how do they get ahold of Motor Doc? How do they get a you Via the web?  Howard Penrose: Um, motor doc.com. That’s M-O-T-O-R-D-O c.com. Uh, or LinkedIn. Uh, you know, we, we watch both. Um, I, we’ve added a lot of people recently, so, um, [00:23:00] uh, so yeah, it’s easier to get ahold of myself or my people now. So, um, that’s, that’s basically it. That’s probably the easiest way to do it.  Allen Hall: And if you want to see Howard Rant on YouTube, how do you see that? Where, how do, how do you find you on YouTube?  Howard Penrose: Oh, just look up Motor Doc on YouTube. Um, uh, you’ll see something having to do with Sasquatch, I’m sure. So, but, uh, yeah, yeah. I, I, I don’t go by my own name on, on the internet. I go by, uh, usually motor dock. Which is a nickname I got in the Navy, by the way. It’s from a, from the, the captain of an aircraft carrier when I ran his motor repair shop. So, um, yeah, it’s, uh, it’s been a lot of fun again.  Allen Hall: Yes. And your, your video series, uh, caffeine and Chaos, there’s a ca, chaos and caffeine are brilliant. Howard Penrose: The chaos and caffeine end. Yes. You’re going to hear about. The coffee I’m drinking. ’cause we, I actually have people now set. [00:24:00] I just got somebody ship me a set of coffee up from Guatemala. So that’s what we’ll be doing tomorrow. Um, and uh, you know, we, we, you know, I started with the veteran coffee and stuff like that, so of course. But, um. So we’ll talk about that for, and then I’ll spend, I try to keep it down to 10 minutes, but knowing me, I like to talk. So sometimes I’ll hit 30 minutes, but I try to keep it at a conversational level on stuff that’s going on. So the, the next one I’ll do will probably be the sixth one, and that’s gonna be me kind of ranting about, um, you know, what we were just talking about. I did do one on the Iberian Peninsula. It’s a little more. Um, you know, general public level stuff. So, um, you know, the, that it wasn’t this and here’s how and here’s why, and here’s what the timeline looks like, type thing. Uh, which I did, I think along with, um, um, [00:25:00] aerial resupply coffee. Which was, uh, was good stuff. Don’t mean to sell him on here, but he, he’s a lot of fun to follow on, on, uh, on LinkedIn as well. Well, thanks Howard so  Allen Hall: much. We enjoy  Howard Penrose: having you and we will talk to you soon. Absolutely. Thank you very much.

The crew discusses the Federal Department of Transportation’s concerns over wind turbines interfering with railroads, the USDA’s stance on renewable energy projects on farmland, new treasury rules for wind and solar projects, and highlight the Sunflower Wind Farm in Kansas for its community impact and operational success. 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. Hold on tight. I told my producer before we started, this is gonna be a. Bumpy rise. So for all our listeners, hold on. Uh, it’s a lot of news in the wind and solar world at the minute. Phil Tarro is in California. Joel Saxon is back from Australia in Austin, Texas, and first up is the Federal Department of Transportation. Complaining about how close wind turbines could be to railroads and create an interference, and it’d be a safety crisis. Uh, federal transportation officials and a new scientific research report, [00:01:00] Joel, are sounding an urgent alarm about wind turbines being. Too close to railroad tracks and a comprehensive study from California’s Tehachapi Pass Wind Farm confirms, quote unquote confirms that wind farms can severely interfere with critical radio communications used by trains. Now, uh, what they don’t want you to do is to read the report. That’s what they don’t want you to do. And, uh, as a group of engineers, we’re going to read the report and see what it says. And what it says is that they have a safety system on trains because they used to run into each other quite often. And what they’ve done is they have a overriding system that’s run by radio communication that if a train goes too fast and some of these more frequented train tracks or in. High density population bases like Chicago or Baltimore, one of these places that they can actually slow the train down or stop the train in some cases, what it sounds like if they’re [00:02:00] on a collision course, and that becomes important on commuter rails. And, um, if they have toxic chemicals on trains, that they don’t want them to have accidents. So they put the system in. And the system is based on Joel. The world’s oldest communication form.  Joel Saxum: It’s VHF radio, right? So to those of you that don’t know what VHF radio is, it’s basically like, uh, close to the frequencies you’d use as a walkie-talkie as a kid. Um hmm. Right. Uh, or a CB radio. Right. We’re, we’re quite a ways past that now. Uh, so wifi, cell modems, satellite communications are all regular things within basically any other industry. Uh, of course, but this one, yeah, we’re still using VHF technology that we used. I, that’s been around for a long time for radio communication back from World War ii. Or before that? Oh yeah.  Allen Hall: Right around World War ii. How far do those, uh, walkie-talkie radios typically  Joel Saxum: work? Well, it depends if you, I guess if it depends if you buy ’em from Walmart or if you buy ’em a, [00:03:00] a, a professional one. But, uh, depending on what watt radio is in ’em, I mean mile two miles maybe.  Allen Hall: Exactly. And that’s how this train system works. So every. Couple of miles, they have a repeater to transmit the signal up and down the train tracks. Well, it became really important because, you know, these wind turbines are interfering with this train signal and may have a collision. So what they did is they commenced the study to go look at if there’s interference, uh, bouncing off the wind turbines, and if you read the report, they talk about wind turbine blades, possibly spinning and creating this interference pattern. And particularly if the wind turbine blades are made outta metal, it could be this big problem. Well. No wind turbine blade is made outta metal today. And you know, the chances that the wind turbine blades line up in a particular orientation to cross interference is practically  Joel Saxum: dang near zero. You know, there’s something else we didn’t think about here. We were kind of talking about this before we talking about metal blades and turbines. Of course, that’s not a thing. Uh, but they did this study in Tehachapi. If you’ve, of course a ton of our listeners have been to Tehachapi. It’s [00:04:00]like the wind mecca in the United States, right? Those are all lattice towers. Lattice towers have. A different effect on radio signals than the Monopile towers that we’re used to that are most everywhere else in the, in the wind industry. But La Latt, lattice Towers can definitely do, do something to radio signal.  Allen Hall: So my first thought was to reach out to Joel when I read the report and say, Joel, there must be railroad tracks near wind turbines existing already. Joel Saxum: How many Joel? Yeah. So we, we went and found some data online of uh, basically we know where the turbines are. We, US wind turbine database. Um, and then found the some shape files of where the railroad tracks are in the United States and duplicated their study to put like a buffer on the tracks that one, 1.2 miles took a look at it. And there is about 6,500 turbines in the United States that are within a mile or 1.2 miles of a railroad track. That makes sense, right? These wind farms are, you know, along highways, [00:05:00] uh, a lot of ’em. Um. And railroad tracks follow highways. They’re kind of co-located, right? So of the 75,000 and change there’s about 6,500. So eight and a half, 9% of turbines in the United States are within a mile or two or a mile, 1.1 or 1.2 miles of, of a railroad track.  Allen Hall: Well, evidently it’s a concern now, so we have to do something about it now. My first question was, well, this system must work in cities. That’s what it’s there for. There must be buildings and roads and bridges and draw bridges and other things in the way of this signal. And sure enough, I was right. They, they do have buildings in the way, and you know what they do? They put a repeater in. You put a repeater in, just like a cell phone repeater to make the signal, uh, strength much higher to avoid the interference problem. And it works. So the DOT’s running around right now, and the head of the DOT Sean Duffy is, is exclaiming that, uh, wind turbines are the downfall of the [00:06:00] railroad community and they’re gonna push back wind turbines, uh, from railroad tracks. So Joel, you better prepare for how many turbines to be moved back. 6,000 6,500. Yeah.  Phil Totaro: So have we gone into crazy land? A couple of things. First of all, Tehachapi never had metal blades. The, even the oldest turbines there, if they had, uh, any kind of blades other than fiberglass, they were wood. Um, and I don’t think Tehachapi had wooden blades, uh, out there for like 40 years. The funny thing about all this is that it’s, uh, you know, stuff like this, it’s probably not gonna be that much of an issue because, as Joel just mentioned, if you’re only talking about 8% of the, you know, installed base in the United States, well guess what? There’s 92% of the installed base that doesn’t have this problem to deal with. So that’s, you know. I’d take 92% over 8% any day. And, and, and look, the, the government actually, even though they [00:07:00] may kind of sound stupid at, at times or even try to deliberately portray themselves as stupid at times, um, they, they actually do get it. Uh, I know a lot of people are going to, you know, find it funny that I would say something like that. But if you look, and, and the reason I can say this is if you actually look at what they did with like these IRS tax rules, um, you know. What they’re actually doing is facilitating manufacturing in the United States. So my point of all this is while they’re out there saying, you know, wind turbines are evil, in reality, the industry is actually going to thrive for the next, you know, 18 months or so, we’re, we’re still gonna have problems. And, and they’re absolutely pouring gas on a fire. Needs to actually be put out rather than have gas poured on it. But the, you know, their rhetoric is one thing and their actual actions are another.  Allen Hall: Are you worried about unexpected blade root failures and the high cost of repairs? Meet Eco Pitch by [00:08:00] Onyx Insight, the standard in blade root monitoring. Onyx 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 Pitch for peace of mind. Contact Onyx Insight today. To schedule your demo of Eco Pitch and experience the future of blade monitoring. Well, along Phil’s line of thought, the agriculture department will no longer support solar and wind projects on productive farmland. According to the agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, the move targets what officials call the destruction of prime agricultural soil. For green new deals, subsidized solar panels. Now the emphasis here at first is on solar panels. But wait, there’s more. [00:09:00] USDA previously provided over $2 billion for renewable projects through its Rural Energy for America program. Now a 2024 study found that wind and solar projects affected. Only 424,000 acres, which is less than 0.05% of the total farmland in America. And Joel, you’ve been driving through Iowa more recently. There’s a lot of agricultural land there and a lot of corn fields. Well, there’s wind turbines taking up, up a lot of space in  Joel Saxum: those farms. No, uh uh the, the first thing I think that we need to touch here though is like this green New Deal thing. That was never passed. That’s not real. The green New Deal never happened. So there’s your first misnomer. Second one, eh? Yeah. Well you, I mean, you’ve seen anybody that’s seen a wind farm. It’s the, you have a road that’s, uh, 16 feet wide or so for a good road base and a 25 foot wide pad, [00:10:00] maybe 40, 50 foot wide pad, depending on the base of the turbine. You know, it just doesn’t take up that much space. But I think that, uh, for me. In this, the capital markets will prevail. If the federal program doesn’t wanna support people, uh, you know, by giving, like, by subsidizing them to build solar panels on their land, fine. If it makes more sense for that landowner to grow, to grow corn or to harvest electrons, they’re gonna do what’s best for them to make money. So that’s, and you’re gonna continue to see it. Um, so sorry, but that’s going to happen. Um, I mean, we’re fans of Wind, right? The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, but it is a perfect dual use, uh, process, right? You’re, you’re, how many farmers are benefiting from this is amazing, the stories that they have. You can talk to any of these guys and gals that own these farms and hear how much this is like creating revenue and creating, uh, money and uh, changing their whole family. Right? But the same thing now you’re starting to [00:11:00] see more and more agri Voltaics, if you haven’t looked into that, where it’s a dual use, uh, uh, utility scale, uh, solar, and that’s freaking awesome. I’ve seen a couple of these farms where they’re planting soybeans or like sod farming and stuff underneath the solar panels. Uh, so that’s gonna become, uh, use as well. So, I mean, I understand the attack. We know what’s going on. Again, like Phil said, at the federal level, this, this administration, kind of from all angles, it’s filtering down, trying to attack, uh, renewable energy in general. I think that the capital markets will prevail. Allen Hall: Don’t you wonder how much agricultural land has been taken over by super Walmarts over the years, or Yeah. Or  Joel Saxum: subdivisions. Uh, yeah. Like, so if you, if you’re, if you’re. I, I don’t wanna say this wrong. If you’re an octogenarian, if you’re an, if you’re a little bit of a, an older listener of the podcast and maybe you’ve been through Houston in the past, drive through when you drove through Houston, and even in the, in the nineties, the [00:12:00] places now where there’s 10, 15, 20 miles of just homes, those were rice patties. That was all, that was all agriculture, right? And, and it was productive agriculture, really good agriculture. Um, and now it’s just houses. So you can’t like to pinpoint who’s doing what and all these different things. Like, it’s just kind of ridiculous to me.  Phil Totaro: Here’s the other impact of what they’re doing. There were about $1.6 billion worth of applications pending for, from farmers that wanted to install wind and solar on their property. And these are typically smaller, you know, turbines. This isn’t necessarily for utility scale ’cause this program is separate from anything that we do. Uh, at the utility scale level, this is basically a farmer wants to, as Joel said, put an Agri Voltaic system in there. Their farm or have a small wind turbine installed in their farm. That’s like a 30 or 50 kilowatt size [00:13:00] thing. That’s what this program is intended for. Now, there are projects that actually already occurred that the farmers paid for out of pocket that they were hoping to get reimbursed for by the government and with the government cutting off the funding to this program. These people, farmers, hardworking American farmers, are now out of pocket for these wind and solar systems, uh, where they thought they were gonna have the support of the government to, uh, you know, to come in and, and reimburse them, at least partially for having this system on their farm. So now if we’re talking about subsidies  Joel Saxum: taught in and agriculture for energy production. There is 89 million acres, give or take of corn planted in the United States. 27, 20 7 million of them, so almost a third were subsidized and used directly for ethanol production.[00:14:00] So, so, so now you’re, now you have. You’re, you’re playing. So it’s a weird, uh, like dichotomy there, right? Because of course the, the administration here wants to further the hydrocarbon industry, you know, American energy drill, baby drill, all this stuff. So pushback and renewables. Let’s get gas going. How do they handle this one? How do they handle the, the, the third of the co, the ethanol problem and the fact that it’s junk fuel? Anyways, I won’t even put it in my truck. So the way they handle it is  Allen Hall: Iowa is the first round of caucuses for the presidential election, and they don’t touch it. For years and years and years between elections, they’ll poo poo ethanol and other states. But as soon as they arrive in Iowa, it’s the greatest thing ever. So they’re not gonna stop it. And, and, but these kind of projects where they’re sticking it to the farmer is just not cool. Come on, what are we doing? And back to Phil’s point, you’re just hurting a little f. Small family [00:15:00] farm or maybe even the large family farm, that’s who you’re hurting. You’re not hurting the wind and solar industry, but you feel like they have to say something. Each of the departments has to say something to get. Uh, in the good light of the Trump administration, which is just starting to get ridiculous, don’t let blade damage catch you off guard. OGs, ping sensors detect issues before they become expensive, time consuming problems from ice buildup and lightning strikes to pitch misalignment and internal blade cracks. OGs Ping has you covered The cutting edge sensors are easy to install, giving you the power to stop damage before it’s too late. Visit eLog ping.com and take control of your turbine’s health. Today we’ve been anxiously awaiting the treasury rules regarding the 5% rule for starting of construction for wind and solar projects and what was gonna be modified and. Phil’s, uh, thought was a couple of weeks ago that they were kind of gonna merge the two concepts [00:16:00] of the 5% rule and beginning construction and kind of merge ’em together. But the, something came out that was completely different, and it basically is that in order to qualify for tax credits under this new piece of legislation, uh, the develops need to show physical work of a significant nature has begun. So, in a sense. It’s sort of a lower threshold to start. Phil, can you give us some of the details of what’s about to happen with this new treasury requirement?  Phil Totaro: Yes, so the good news for anybody that’s already signed a Safe Harbor deal is that other than this requirement that you have to demonstrate some physical construction and, and I’ll get to exactly what they mean by that, uh, in a minute, but under the existing Safe Harbor rules, you’re still okay. Um, the only caveat to it is you can’t start construction. Then stop it and then start it up again. [00:17:00] Anybody that hasn’t already signed a deal with Safe Harbor. Do it now. If you can try to at least get it done before the 2nd of September if you can. If you can’t, then you have to be able to start construction by July 4th of next year. And again, as long as you start construction by July 4th of next year and you continue to construct, you’ll be fine. Uh, as long as you and then commission by the end of 2027. If you can’t, if you can’t have your, your safe harbor in place. Now, what is this start of construction? The physical construction requirement mean? There’s basically one of two ways you can qualify, and this is where it kind of gets interesting. The work can actually be on site or offsite, but at the end of the day, I mean this actually opens up the door to a lot of a US manufacturing. Which is a good thing, and b, it’s actually a lot more tame than what everybody [00:18:00] feared. So I, I’m just  Joel Saxum: thinking about this out loud as a strategy thing. So we were just, uh, we, by we, I mean the weather guard team, I wasn’t there, uh, but the weather guard team was just on site on a, on a new construction site where they were like, we’ve got piles of cranes, piles of people we’re gonna build this thing in a couple months. And it was like. Whoa. Like, I can’t believe you’re gonna build that that fast. That’s crazy. But in my mind, I go to this, as long as you have continuous activity going on, maybe you start to spread those crews a little bit thin and those assets, those construction assets a little bit thin and spread ’em around to different sites. If of course, all the other things in place, the permits are in place, you’re in the queue, you got the interconnection, all this stuff. But if you’re a large company and you’re trying to develop a lot of sites, but you still wanna qualify right now, you might be like. Put your Gantt charts out to December 30th, 26. That might be the, the time, or is it end of 27 or  Phil Totaro: end of 26,  Joel Saxum: Phil.  Phil Totaro: So they have to commission, if they [00:19:00] don’t already have safe harbor, then they have to start construction by July 4th next year and finish by December 31st, 2027. For anybody that’s safe harbored already, they can, they still have to start construction, um, within the four year window. And there’s no, uh, they, they have to finish within that four year window. But once they start construction, they have to continuously construct. As long as you start  Joel Saxum: construction by the fourth of next year, you have 18 months from that date to finish your wind farm. So it doesn’t actually make it smart if you’re not safe Harbor yes. If you’re not safe harbor. Okay. So if you’re not safe harbor, if you’re getting all new kit now, so then it doesn’t make, it almost would make sense to kind of like. Drag your feet on the project. Yeah, but, but get more, but get multiple ones built.  Allen Hall: Remember that existing build outs are going like crazy because the [00:20:00] demand for electricity is so high. So wind turbine farms are being put up at tremendous speed. The the little four year window we just created, which I think came from Chuck Grassley from Iowa, Phil, I think there was a lot of pressure put on the treasury by that Senator.  Phil Totaro: Oh yeah, that was, that was in the previous IRS rules. Yeah. Because of him. Allen Hall: Yeah, absolutely. So there was a lot of negotiation behind the scenes, and he had withdrawn some treasury nominations or held up treasury nominations and told the Trump administration they were not gonna get a hearing until these IR Rs and treasury rules had come out in basically giving more time. And, and, and they did. They did. They totally did. But Joel, back to your point, I think there’s enough buildout going on existing that this may make it a little less chaotic than it was because everybody is putting in wind, everybody’s putting in solar. All this AI data center drive is driving demand [00:21:00] for wind and solar, and you can only build so fast. But as I learned from being on site a couple of weeks ago. Boy, the the speed at which these large EPC contractors are out there, putting turbines in the ground is amazing. Amazing. They have such talented crews out there. That’s all they do. Move from place to place to place. Putting turbines in, getting the, all the infrastructure done. I mean, when we walked up on site, my producer and I walked up on site to this wind farm. They had transformers in the parking lot, right? So they were just getting started. But the a number of people on site to try to get these projects done ’cause they’re gonna move to the next one. This project was gonna end around Thanksgiving, middle of November in the States, and then we’re going to the next project. That’s amazing. That is really amazing. On the build out. Three months. Yeah, three months. Three months. Boom. And they had just been on a project, which was another huge project they had just come off of massive project. [00:22:00]So now you have, back to sort of Phil’s point, you have these super talented, focused teams that are putting in terms who know what they’re doing. They can go fast. And,  Phil Totaro: and keep in mind that it, this is kind of the challenge we, we face as an industry in a lot of other countries. We’ve got a lot of talent here that knows how to build fast. The same size project in Australia would take easily a. Three to four times the the time, like it would take nine to 12 months to build, you know, a 400 megawatt project versus how fast we can, we can execute here in the us. And the funny thing about that is they have such high demand. In a place like Australia for talent, that they’re gonna have to soften up their, their immigration rules to allow people that have requisite experience from the US or Europe to come down there and help them. Joel, that  Allen Hall: one site we went to, uh, where they’re building turbines out, one turbine up and running a day.[00:23:00] I asked, well, that seems like a pretty good clip. And some of the workers there said, oh no, that’s not as fast as we could do it. I’ve, we’ve done more than that before.  Phil Totaro: That’s actually offshore pace. They can do one offshore turbine a day, and that’s slow.  Joel Saxum: To me, it was like this, this, this farm was like, you know, between 90 and a hundred towers and they’re gonna build it in three months. And, and, and that’s like, and you and, and in this area, like you can get weather. Like you’re, you’re, they’re going to get snow on this site. Like it’s gonna happen. Um, and it’s possible that it comes and it, and it blows. I mean, we’re wind country, right? So when you get, you have the possibility of a storm coming in and blowing six foot snow drifts across all the roads and stuff, like, and you still think that you’re gonna be able to do that and they’re confident. That’s, that’s crazy to me. Joel, talk about the pay. That these workers were getting on this win site. Yeah. So this, that’s an interesting, uh, kind of thing that’s hap that’s rolled down from the IRA bill here right now too, because of course Alan and I, Phil Rosemary, [00:24:00] we’re connected all over the industry. We hear, hear from a lot of different people. But I’ve had this conversation with a couple of, uh, big ISPs. Um. Yeah, some of them being in like the Blade World and the maintenance world and these kind of things, and they’re like, yeah, they’re, well, I got some guys, or TFAs, the technical field advisors, uh, for these construction sites. Yeah, we’ve got some guys up there, but man, it’s crazy what we have to, like, what we’re billing out. So the ISPs billing the operators or the, the EPC contractors, billing the operators, some of them are billing 180 to $200 an hour for each person on site. Because of these other IRA, the white sheet wages. And some of those places are like, I, I understand that. Like I, my early, early, my first big boy job was in Chicago and we had to do things with the unions and all this different stuff. And I remember seeing the wage rates for some of these guys that were just standing there leaning on shovels all day. And it just drove me crazy. Um, so I understand how that works there, but my thought was usually always like when you get out in the middle of nowhere, like that stuff kind of goes away, but not, so it’s [00:25:00] not the case anymore. Some of these guys are making, I mean, out there just like, Hey, I’m a, I’m a laborer. I’m a technician. I’m just kind of helping out here, and they’re making 60, 70, 80 bucks an hour. I mean, the paychecks that these guys are taking home is  Phil Totaro: nuts. Yeah. The the good news about that is that even though a lot of that rate is actually insurance. They’re, the people are still actually getting paid at a pretty good clip. ’cause in the, in years gone by, you send somebody out into the field, they were getting paid like 30, 35 bucks an hour while they were billing out at 180 bucks an hour. And the overwhelming majority of that was going to, you know, insurance policy and, and underwriting. Now more of that, even though you’re still paying that kind of a rate, more of it’s actually going to the workers. So it’s gotten a little bit better.  Joel Saxum: Yeah. What I’ve heard from these guys is these, the, uh, the, there’s a fight for who gets to go to the white sheet jobs anymore. Like the, the technicians are like, no, no, no. I’m [00:26:00] staying here. I’m not going on vacation. Like, oh, we gotta cycle you out on the rotation. They’re like, no, no, no, no, no. I don’t wanna go home. I’m staying here. But it’s a problem. So like the, one of the issues that the oil field has had, and a, and Alan, you and I took a trip out to Abilene, um, last year. Talked to some training facilities and some other people out there and they said, you know, we have an issue here because we can’t recruit very well out in this side of Texas because the oil field grabs all these people. ’cause the oil field is willing to pay them more than the wind world will will. But now you’re starting to see that tide flip a little bit. And Phil, the  Allen Hall: IRA bill, that part of it. Didn’t change. I, at least the reading I had was that payout feature for the workers on site. The prevailing wage feature remained, that didn’t get eliminated recently. So with all the build out going on and that prevailing wage requirement, technicians could be making some pretty nice money.  Phil Totaro: That’s correct. It will go away though at the end [00:27:00] of 2027 when the PTC is actually phased out. So keep that in mind,  Joel Saxum: right? You, you got some time? No. I wanna flag this though. This is me saying this to all of our technician friends, listening from an ex oil field guy. Do not go buy in Corvette. Do not go buy a new one ton Denali pickup. Do not do that. Don’t, don’t do that. Take this extra money. Put put your seven, $7,000 in your IRA that you, that you may or may not have. Make sure you do that first. But invest some of this money. Stick it away. Don’t go buy fast cars and big trucks because the oil field guys have done that and gals have done that forever and it doesn’t end well. You could pitch your kids through college  Allen Hall: with some of the money they’re gonna make and good for them. Do it, do it, do it. Go get that you got, you have a little over a year, year and a half or so to make some money. Go do it.  Phil Totaro: There’s one last word of caution I have about all this. If you’re not safe [00:28:00] harbor. You better start construction fast because one of the things that’s been happening in the US. Is, we’ve got moratoriums that have been put in place in a lot of different places around the us. There are 44 states that have more than 450 moratoriums now, and if somebody puts a moratorium in place and prevents you from doing. Your physical construction, it doesn’t matter if you’re doing onsite, offsite, whatever, they can put a moratorium in place that basically prevents you from collecting your tax credits. So start constructing as fast as you can and if you’re an EPC contractor, staff up the Wind  Joel Saxum: Farm of the week This week, uh, comes from one of our friends in the industry. So, uh, we had, uh, jewel Williams, uh, we recorded with her the other day. She’s a fantastic engineering manager. From Ted onshore us and she said, can, can I, can I do a shout out to some of my team? Uh, of course that’s, that’s what the [00:29:00] Wind Farm of the Week is about. It’s about, uh, shining the spotlight on people in the field. So the Wind Farm of the week this week is the Sunflower Wind Farm. Uh, that is Ted’s on one of Ted’s onshore, uh, wind farms in Kansas. So it’s in Marion County, Kansas. Uh, it was their first onshore wind project, uh, in the state, of course, onshore Kansas. Yes, it must be. Uh, but it is made of 89 ge 2.8, 1 27 meter rotor turbines. That’s 200 megawatts for the whole wind farm. It’s commissioned in, it was commissioned in 2023. Uh, produces enough clean energy to power over 96,000 homes annually, and is expected to contribute over 28 million in property, property tax revenue to Marion County over its lifetime. Um, so a lot of lease payments to the locals, uh, supporting community initiatives including education, environmental conservation programs, which is, I mean, that’s a hallmark of, or they do that everywhere they go with their wind farms. Um, but this week, the, the special recognition and we’re, we’re getting kind of a shout out from Jewel here. Sunflower Winds receiving special [00:30:00]recognition from Sted for its deep community engagement, positive local impact, and the exceptional performance and dedication of the onsite GE team. So Tommy Gage, Jace Sherwood, and the team out there making sure that the turbines are spinning at, uh, sunflower wind in Kansas. Kudos to you guys. So all of these aspects have contributed to being a operating, a well-oiled machine, achieving high availability and smooth operation. So the Sunflower Wind Farm from Osted, as brought to us by Jewel Williams is the Wind Farm of the week. That wraps  Allen Hall: up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. Thanks for joining us as we explore the latest in wind energy technology and industry insights. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn and don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. 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 next [00:31:00] time. On the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

Allen discusses the halting of Revolution Wind by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). The order comes as part of a larger political motion to stop renewable energy in the US. 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, Allen Hall, shares the renewable industry news you may have missed. Allen Hall 2025: There’s a man from North Dakota who knows something about pipelines. His name is Doug Bergham, and last Friday, August 22nd, as Secretary of the Interior, he pulled the plug on another big energy project. Bergham ordered a halt to revolution wind. That’s an offshore wind farm being built by Osted. 80% complete. 45 wind turbines already spinning in the ocean off the coast of Rhode Island Friday, they stop spinning. Revolution Wind was set to power 350,000 homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut. But Ham’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said the project needed more Review. [00:01:00] Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee had called Revolution Wind Quote, essential to advancing the state’s 100% renewable energy standard by 2033. Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont said The project was quote, a key part of our clean energy strategy to provide families, quote, clean, reliable, and affordable power unquote. Both governors celebrated when revolution wind got federal approval. Now their project sits frozen in the water. Earlier this month, Bergham also canceled a massive wind project in Idaho. His interior department has vowed a comprehensive review of all wind projects. A review that could halt wind development on all federal land. Now here’s what you need to know about Doug Bergham when President Biden canceled the Keystone XL Pipeline back in 2021. Bergham. Was furious. [00:02:00] He said revoking the permit was wrong for the country. Said it would have chilling effect on private sector investment in much needed infrastructure projects, unquote. Bergen said, when the federal government stops projects under construction, it hurts working families and discourages future investments. Bergham has always been clear about protecting investors. At a political conference speech in 2023, he laid out his principle quote, if you put capital into a project that’s related to fossil fuels, or a project related to critical minerals and mining, if somebody comes along in the future, administration with an executive order, if they want to wipe out what you’ve invested in. They’ve got to write you a check to pay for your lost capital. That was Bergen’s rule. If government stops your fossil fuel project, well, government pays you back. That Keystone XL Pipeline would’ve carried [00:03:00] 830,000 barrels of oil daily through Bergen’s home. And Bergham is not alone in his disdain for Wind Energy. Energy Secretary Chris Wright calls wind and solar, unreliable and worthless commerce. Secretary Howard Lunik launched a national security investigation into wind turbine imports Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy Once Wind turbines kept at least 1.2 miles from highways. EPA administrator Lee Den is weakening regulations that support renewables. It’s a coordinated government assault on one of America’s cheapest forms of electricity. Earlier this year, Bergham also stopped Empire Wind off New York’s Coast, $5 billion worth of construction, 30% complete. At the time. He said the Biden administration rushed the approval. But here’s the curious part. [00:04:00] Bergham let Empire Wind restart after New York. Governor Kath Hoel made a deal. She agreed to allow new natural gas pipelines in her state. Suddenly that offshore wind project was acceptable. Again, the financial damage was real though Ecuador. The Norwegian company building Empire Wind reported a $995 million impairment because of regulatory uncertainty in America. Now Bergham has made his position crystal clear. He signed an official secretary’s order calling wind and solar projects gargantuan, unreliable, intermittent energy projects that are environmentally damaging. Good grief. Now, here’s something interesting about Doug Bergham. He’s never worked in the energy industry. He’s never led an energy company, never worked in energy markets. [00:05:00]Bergham made his fortune in software. He built great plain software, sold it to Microsoft for $1.1 billion. Worked at Microsoft for six years, then became a real estate developer and venture capitalist. His energy experience eight years as governor of a coal state. A state was 780,000 people. Only three states have fewer people than North Dakota, Wyoming, Vermont, and Alaska. Get this software entrepreneur from one of America’s least populous states is now making energy policy for 330 million Americans. Bergham views the nation’s 500 million acres of public lands as he calls a financial quote balance sheet for drilling and mining. Bergham says nuclear power can produce 33 megawatts per acre. Offshore wind produces 0.006 megawatts per acre. That makes nuclear [00:06:00] 5,500 times more efficient than wind. Yeah, sure. . Bergam acts like the entirety of the United States has the population density of Manhattan. America’s 2.27 billion acres is mostly open space. You see, Bergham comes from North Dakota. Coal country. His state burns coal to make electricity. He once signed legislation to help the coal industry and said, there are some people in this country who would like to regulate this industry out of business. I think that’s wrongheaded, but here’s the numbers. Bergham doesn’t mention coal costs. 69 to $71 per megawatt hour to generate power. Onshore wind costs as low as $27 per megawatt hour. Solar power runs as low as $29 per megawatt hour. Both are much cheaper than coal. Now, Bergham says, stopping wind projects will give Americans reliable energy and lower utility costs. But the [00:07:00] numbers tell a different story. Wind and solar are the cheapest forms of electricity in America today. So here’s a man who fought fiercely when a pipeline carrying fossil fuels was canceled. Called it wrong for America, said it would hurt working families with higher energy prices. But when it comes to wind projects, that would actually lower electricity costs, Bergham wants to shut it down. Bergham is a billionaire. His electricity bill doesn’t affect his lifestyle, but his decisions will affect yours.

Allen, Phil, and Rosemary continue the discussion from Tuesday’s episode, diving into renewables opposition and TPI’s financial situation. 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. Allen Hall: So what we’re talking to energy, everything is difficult, so we wind and solar can be difficult to make money in. But some of the discussion about moving back to coal or, or moving back to older sources of electricity generation, their money losers too.  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, probably even more efficient money losers. And on a larger scale, you know, at least wind and solar, you could lose, lose money a little bit at a time and you don’t lose money on the operation. Um, you know, it’s, it’s all in the, the, the capital cost. Whereas coal can lose money ev every single, every single day that the plane operates. So I [00:01:00]guess that that’s, uh, yeah, that’s true. It’s not as, not as bad as that.  Allen Hall: So is there a industry fix or is there a hope for the future? Right now, I don’t see it. Rosemary Barnes: I was reading this book for a little while and I stopped reading ’cause I, um, it had some good ideas, but it wasn’t like totally rigorous in its, um, exploration of all the ideas. I think it’s called The Price is Wrong, or something like that. And it’s about how like, it’s not possible to have a renewables industry that isn’t subsidized by the government. And, um, there’s some, I I, I think that there’s some truth to that, but I would replace. That there’s, it’s impossible to have a renewables industry if that’s not subsidized. Rather say it’s impossible to have an electricity system that’s not subsidized in some way by the government. Um, and yeah, I mean, just rec recognize that and maybe we don’t need to to fight that, but, um, it, it is always turns like so tribal that everyone’s arguing over who’s got the more subsidies or who’s. More dependent on subsidies. Um, yeah, it’d be easier [00:02:00] if we could all, you know, get on the same page about climate change and just acknowledge what we needed to do. But, you know, if, if wind and solar power never came along and we didn’t care about climate change, then we’d still be subsidizing, uh, yeah, like coal and, and gas and, uh, all the transmission and, uh, I don’t know, infrastructure. You need to transport those fossil fuels around. Like, you know, we’d, we’d still be subsidizing because people still need electricity and still get upset if it’s, um, you know. So expensive that you are stuck, you know, choosing whether you want to eat this week or heat your home this week. So,  Allen Hall: well, is it because electricity was late to the game? The railroads sort of blew through the United States and everywhere else in the world because it was easy.  It missed Australia, but yeah, would would’ve been nice.  Allen Hall: But here, here in America, the railroads pretty much owned most of America very quickly. Uh, and got it done before there was any real. Feedback like they would be today, as soon as you wanna put a transmission tower in somebody’s farm field.[00:03:00] Huge, huge uproar. States are involved, senators are involved. The government’s all over it. There’s committee meetings. Everything gets really slowed down versus 1860s. It just happened.  Rosemary Barnes: But I think the difference as well, like it’s not like transmission didn’t have these obstacles the first time around, right? When cities or towns were getting electricity for the first time because there were transmission lines going to them, then it was more obvious what the need was. Whereas now people, they’re like, I already have electricity. And um, you know, they don’t, they don’t wanna be disturbed further when the. Yeah, the case isn’t as obvious to them for what the benefit will be to them. Allen Hall: Is it such that the general public doesn’t realize that their survival depends upon electricity? On some measure, we were just driving and Claire and I, our producer, were just driving through a certain part of the Midwest and we were noticing there were no houses, and then it became obvious, well, there’s [00:04:00] no power. To this part of the country. There are no transmission lines. There are roads, but there are no transmission lines until you get to a railroad track. And then there are power lines running alongside the railroad tracks, so the railroad and electricity go together. And whenever those two sort of meet, there is a little town, but outside of that zero, that happens on a bigger scale, if you don’t have electricity to power your industry, your cities, your communities. You’re really in a world of hurt competing against the rest of the world. When do we realize that? Isn’t that why China is going so fast, so hard to electrify? Because it brings civilization, advanced civilization? India’s trying to do the same thing. It seems like in some aspects we just go, well, I don’t need it. You do need it. Your kids need it, your grandkids need it.  Rosemary Barnes: But there’s a different, um, argument you’re trying to make because, I mean, I [00:05:00] doubt that there’s many towns in the US that aren’t connected to the electricity grid. There’s at least there’s some, there’s, there’s quite a few in Australia, but, um, you know, with microgrids and, and stuff like that. So maybe that’s a, a bit of a special case. Um, but what you’re talking about in most. Yeah. Places like Australia and the US you’re not talking about getting electricity to places for the first time, which is what they are doing in, um, in China and in India when they’re rolling out, um, new renewables infrastructure, um, you know, like big transmission lines to connect up. Good. Uh, yeah. Both those countries have, um, high voltage DC. Uh, long, long connections that are, yeah, electrifying parts of the country that haven’t, um, been connected to the grid before. So they’re more, the, the people there are gonna be more like people were a hundred years ago when they were getting connected for the first time in America, or, um, Australia or, or wherever. Um, their, you know, [00:06:00] the, the benefit to them is obvious. I do think that it’s like with most new technologies where you gotta find the niches where people, like, it’s a, it’s a real solution for them. That’s the first place to roll it out. And people who aren’t really suffering don’t see as much need to change until the technology gets like, so much better. Allen Hall: Who are the proponents, the loud vocal proponents to bring more electricity to New York City or to Los Angeles or to Houston? I don’t hear them though those voices aren’t nearly as loud as the voices that are saying, we don’t need wind, we don’t need solar. We’re totally fine the way that we are. What am there? There is a, a very quiet opposition or proponents of electricity, I would say, uh, versus the opposition, which are very vocal about. We don’t need wind and solar. I think they totally do. I don’t understand where they’re even coming from in terms of big picture  Rosemary Barnes: in the big [00:07:00] cities, you kind of maybe hit from two ends because there’s this one kind of, um, one group of people who are climate concerned. Um, and so they do want renewable energy. However, they think that the solution is that you just need to use less electricity. And so, uh, I think there’s like a really large proportion of city populations of people who. Who are cared about climate change that think that you can solve it by, um, consuming less. All the things that are left over are, you know, like little incremental things that don’t add up to anything. Like what we’re gonna need to have everyone move to electric vehicles and have everyone move off the gas network and onto heat pumps for heating. Um, you know, there’s so many huge chunks of load that need to be added in order to. Decarbonize and I don’t think that, I think that, yeah, like the half of the general population, like non-expert population, that should be on the side of the energy transition. I don’t think they realize that. We’ve been really, really conditioned to believe [00:08:00] that if it’s not, you know, if it’s not hurting, it’s not working. So like it’s like you have to. You have to suffer as a condition for a solution to be plausible. So I think that, yeah, there, um, there’s a lot of, a lot of people that are really obsessed with individual action and how we’ve just gotta convince people that they should, you know, do all those little things. Um, and I’m not sure they’re aware of just, yeah. Extent of the problem. I  Allen Hall: think you’re right about that. And been listening to a couple of podcasts while working that are still focused on the climate action slant, I’ll call it, to drive, uh, people to do something about their electricity or the coal factory or whatever they got going that. But that argument is just a losing argument today in the climate we’re in. [00:09:00] You’re not competing against, uh, someone who’s gonna have a discussion with you about climate. You’re competing about someone who is trying to have an economic argument, a strength argument versus a weakness argument. Uh, so the. You’re talking on the sidelines about climate. When your world economies are colliding, it just seems like the language needs to shift a little bit to focus in on what is gonna move people to some sort of consensus.  Phil Totaro: This, this also goes back to my whole thing with, you know, industry trade associations or lobby groups, because they are very much focused on politics and making everything into a political argument as opposed to leveraging the people that actually have the economic focused argument and data to be able to support [00:10:00] the position. And it, it’s, we’re just not hearing from the right people. That have the right knowledge and information and, and it’s not just exclusive to the us this, you know, has happened in Europe. Um, I’m sure it, you know, Rosie can speak to how the degree to which this has happened in Australia as well. But the, the reality is you, you, the people with the real. Knowledge and information that people actually need to be able to meaningfully change their argument and change habits, and change behavior and thought patterns. They get drowned out by the people who shout the loudest or who are politically connected.  Allen Hall: Sure. But that’s been true for time immemorial. What, what I think is happening at the minute is if everybody wants to talk about power is electricity is power. Basically, it’s what we’re saying. Electricity is economic power. Then you want as much electricity as you could possibly generate. Are you gonna spend [00:11:00] twice as much to do it or are you gonna do it as cost efficiently as you can? Wind and solar are gonna be those two answers. Plus battery being the third. That’s gonna be the lowest cost way to do it. If you’re trying to grow your economic power relative to all your economic neighbors, that’s the way to do it. So why are we having a discussion about. We’re gonna go back to coal in the United States and we just drove through coal country a couple days ago. Why are we having a discussion about going back to coal? ’cause it’s so expensive. Why would we do that?  Rosemary Barnes: It’s really weird. ’cause I mean, renewables didn’t kill coal in the US right? It was gas. Gas killed coal.  Allen Hall: Yeah. Oh yeah. Gas killed coal for sure. Well, coal killed coal because you don’t wanna live next to a coal generation plant. You really don’t. Especially 30, 40 years ago, you totally didn’t before the emission equipment was installed. Not nice. Does that make sense? Like we’re, we’re just not pushing if, if, if the, everybody’s [00:12:00] talking power. Let’s talk power. Let’s talk cheap power. Let’s go,  Rosemary Barnes: let’s buy TPI. Come on Rosemary, let’s go. I’ve got about $2 50 spare at the moment. So if you think that when it kinda gets to the point where that Yeah, that can give me a, a stake then happy to, to jump in, Allen Hall: what kind of management, Rosemary, would you put into a TPI? Would you put in a engineering focused management team, or are you putting in a development team? Are you putting in just a pure, raw, old school manufacturing sort of management and system? What does that type of business require?  Rosemary Barnes: I think that there’s a real tension that makes that like an unanswerable question and why it’s the whole industry is struggling and not just one or two companies based on their decisions because. You need in the long term, you need a good product. It means you need a good engineering team to design it and, um, you know, maintain a whole lot of, uh, institutional knowledge in, in [00:13:00] house. Um, and to be able to maintain, you know, deal with warranty claims and make sure that you don’t have more in the future. But that’s super expensive. And the reality of today is that the cost, like the, what you can charge for a wind turbine blade is just, it’s, it’s too low to support that the kind of engineering that it actually needs. And so, um, yeah, that’s why, that’s why no one, no one can make the equation work, you know, to have the product sufficient and to make enough money to stay in business. I, I don’t know, I kind of, and the way I’ve seen it, probably like the last. Nearly decade that I’ve been saying this is I, I just feel like a bunch of companies are going to go bankrupt, um, over not being able to, you know, whoever has the first, you know, huge warranty claim that they, they just can’t support and they go bankrupt. Few of them happen and probably people will start, um, you know, some Chinese companies will kind of rush in to fill the void as well, but at the end of the day, you’re still gonna end up, um, you know, like having to move through this [00:14:00] and, and. Pay for the engineering. You, you just like in 20 years time, you can’t be anywhere else. Um, unless we just didn’t have a whole lot of wind energy growth.  Allen Hall: Let’s talk about wind energy growth for a minute. With the shift, uh, in terms of production tax credits going away in the United States and wind has to stand on its own two feet discussion that’s happening at the moment. When you remove those. Production tax credits and investment tax credits. Wind is still cheaper. Solar is still cheaper than pretty much any other, well, no, it is cheaper than any other, uh, power Source does that Then when they do that comparison, when you start to say, oh, well I’m gonna put a, a gas fired system in five years from now, I’m gonna pay a fortune for it because everybody wants to do that, versus just buying some wind turbines and solar panels and getting the same result. Does that allow wind and solar then to raise prices where? They can become more [00:15:00] profitable, more stable over time.  Rosemary Barnes: I, I actually think no, because there’s too, there’s so many companies that are so used to, you know, just slashing costs so much. I just think there’s just too many, there’s too many companies. Allen Hall: Too many companies in it.  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. And, um, some. Uh, can go for at least a period of time making a loss on every product they sell. But, you know, there’s so many companies, and especially if you include China in, in that, they’re just, uh, I don’t know. It’s, it’s just not, um, viable to me to see how, like, which company is gonna be the one that starts charging more. Um,  Allen Hall: are you able to have an independent blade company anymore, or do you need to be attached to an OEM?  Rosemary Barnes: I don’t see why that it, you know, the reason why that there were. Independent blade companies to start with was, was ’cause people wanted to have more, a more secure supply chain so that, you know, if something happened with one of the, the factories and they’ve still got another option to fulfill all the orders that they’ve got for a certain [00:16:00] platform. And I don’t see that changing, um, you know, the fundamental reason for it. So, um, yeah, I, I, I, I don’t think anything’s changed there.  Phil Totaro: This also goes back to the argument of, does an industry. Flourish when it’s vertically integrated, or does an industry flourish when you’ve got all these separate little companies? Allen Hall: It’s more distributed.  Phil Totaro: Exactly. Uh, a distributed model for supply chain, and right now we’re in. That phase of an industry growth where if you wanna be profitable, vertical integration’s, pretty much the way to go. Um, it’s also why it’s slightly confounding. Why ge? Bought LM in the first place because they, you know, brought them in because they wanted Yeah. To vertically integrate it. But then they said, oh, but you’re, you’re gonna keep selling blades to everybody else and [00:17:00] then we’re gonna go use TPI and maybe some other companies to, you know, source blade designs and, and blades for specific. Makes and models of turbines. So why would you, why would you vertically integrate a, a capability like Blade Manufacturing and then not fully leverage it? Rosemary Barnes: You know what, at the time that they were purchasing LM and I was working there, no one could understand it. And we kind of came to the conclusion, well, we’re engineers, not business people. So, you know, um, presumably. Presumably makes sense to, uh, a team of MBAs from ge. But now I, I kind of think that it, it, it did, it wasn’t that we didn’t understand, it’s that it didn’t really make sense the, the way that they did it, at, at least, um. Yeah. I, I, I don’t think that they, I think that the team at the time really did intend to keep LM doing basically what it did, and they didn’t quite realize how much OEMs wouldn’t really like it. Um, like they didn’t like the vibe, even though, [00:18:00] like I can tell you, it really, really, things didn’t change so much at LM in the first few years, but, um, to an external OEMs. Perspective now they’re buying blades from their competitor. So it doesn’t really feel like as much diversification as it feels like giving away all of your trade secrets to a, a competitor. So I think that they underestimated how much that that vibe would, um, would exist.  Allen Hall: What was the GE drive to change management and change culture at lm At other acquisitions that I’ve been around with ge. Instantaneously. The old company is over, the new company is here, management changes, structure changes. They’re relatively quick at doing it, and then you’re part of the larger GE almost immediately. At lm, it never seemed to kick in that way. Even though they were selling blades to other companies besides obviously ge, but that hadn’t changed GE at other facilities, they would [00:19:00] still just take it over and call it ge, change the name on the building, and boom, it is now a GE facility and run with it. Why did they not do that at lm? And was it more of a just cultural difference or was it a financially driven. Decision, I would  Phil Totaro: suggest it was cultural. You think it’s cultural? I, I think so, to be honest, because they, they, with the Danish management, I don’t think they wanted to. Uh, you know, immediately make a significant amount of changes because they knew that LM would lose customers if they immediately kind of vertically integrated LM as now a GE company. I, I think they wanted to maintain that brand identity. And so more than a financial thing, I think it was a cultural thing and a brand thing to start with. But I think that [00:20:00] ultimately ended up being potentially the wrong thing. Either they could have bought and owned it and operated it as a separate, you know, uh, literally separate, you know, just an owned entity of GE Renova. But it maintained the brand and, and the, you know, operational philosophy forever. But they, they. Owned it, and then it was like, well, we’re gonna integrate it. We’re not gonna integrate it. They started exchanging all this ip, you know, all the GE Renova Blade technology IP got assigned to LM and then got assigned back to GE Renova. I mean, they, yeah, I, they, so I don’t think they, they really manage that well.  Allen Hall: Yeah. I mean, it’s hard to know, right? It’s, you can’t predict that. But I’m now curious, Rosemary, because I’ve. Listen to you describe LM quite a bit, and now I know a lot more about Danish culture and Danish companies than five years ago. Clearly, [00:21:00] if GE had come in and had been, we’re clearinghouse, we’re gonna vertically integrate this company into the greater ge. The employees revolted, would they have lost the critical staff that they needed to run the place?  Rosemary Barnes: I don’t think so. Um, where are they? Where are they gonna go?  Allen Hall: No. Well then there’s vest, there’s other, at the time there were a lot of places to go. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. And I mean, people were moving, moving around. But you know, it’s, you’re talking about hundreds of engineers all at once in, um, the town Coaling that most of LM engineers work in is, um. 60,000 or something. In that area. In that area. Um, so yeah, uh, it’s not end Danish. People hate to move house,  Allen Hall: but it’s an American company coming into Denmark. There’s that label that goes along with it. Besides the culture aspects, just having the moniker, the big meatball on the [00:22:00] side of the building would mean something. To Denmark.  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Yeah. But I, I don’t think that they would’ve seen, um, a sudden rush. I think that they would’ve seen a little bit higher than normal at attrition. That’s, that’s my gut feeling. Okay. ’cause I just  Allen Hall: feel like in some aspects, GE did try to. Set things up in certain ways to make it run in a certain fashion. In other ways they didn’t, they just left it alone.  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, no, I think that they took over with one idea and then their GE management changed and had a different idea because it doesn’t make any sense that they, they came in, um, this huge company of 300,000 plus global employees bought a company of about 10, 15,000 at the time. Um, and then for all of the stuff where it was duplicated between, I mean, except for some, some corporate stuff, I’m sure that some corporate stuff got, you know, LMS version of it got slashed and, um, GE took [00:23:00] over. But for, for the bulk of the stuff that mattered to the company, um, it was the Tony Company whose. Team stayed. And the GE one left, like there wasn’t a GE Blade team anymore after they bought lm. That was, they now worked for lm. Um, and, you know, across, across the board for everything. Technical, technical, um, that’s how it was. And then they, five years later, they’re like, actually no. Now we’re gonna get rid of the LM team and have the GE one. I mean, why would you do that? To get rid of the. Small amount of in-house expertise you had, uh, um, one day and then a few years later just flip and like, no, we’re going back to our, like, they didn’t, didn’t retain you. You can’t just slash uh, get rid of a team and then five years later be like, okay, now the team starts up again. Like, everyone wasn’t just like there hibernating waiting for, um, g to tell them that they could work for them again. So it obviously you would never go into that without your long being, your long-term plan. So that’s why I’m [00:24:00]pretty sure that they changed their mind.  Allen Hall: You could do that. If TPI exists without TPI, I don’t think they make the moves with LM like they’ve done  Rosemary Barnes: because they’ve got the backup. Allen Hall: Yes. And now that TPI is on the rocks now I wonder if they’re rethinking the lm.  Rosemary Barnes: I mean, gee, I’ll buy T-P-I-T-P-I and uh, re rinse and repeat.  Allen Hall: Well, I don’t think they’re gonna, I you may, they, they may be forced into doing it just to keep the production line going. That happens quite a bit in business where you’re. Buy your suppliers to keep the supply chain going. But the lm, it felt like for probably a year now, that GE was going to try to sell LM off in pieces or whatever they were gonna do. Does that stop, does GE think No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I don’t wanna do that because I want, I need a factory in North Dakota that makes blades. I need, I need blade factories. I own blade factories. I don’t wanna lose blade factories, I don’t wanna sell ’em off right now because I’m concerned about my other supplier, [00:25:00] TPI, not being here in a year,  Rosemary Barnes: but it’s too late. They’ve already, LM has like one or two factories left. I mean, some of them are GE factories, but some of them have been just closed or um, sold to competitors. So. Um, it’s, it’s too, it’s too late for that. That’s why I, I, I, um, yeah. Like I said, you know, when the sale happened, we all assumed that these, you know, you learn something in an MBA and that gives you kind of an insight into how, how to manage these things because like, it obviously is not it, like to the average worker on the floor, it doesn’t make any sense how that you can close something and then realize it was a bad idea and then just open it again. Like it doesn’t, it’s obvious that it can’t work like that. But that’s just what we see continuing to happen. So I’m questioning if an MBA is even makes you the smartest person in the company.  Phil Totaro: So here’s a message to all of our listeners. By the way, if you’re, particularly if you’re an engineer, if somebody’s making a business move and they can’t explain it to you in a way that you as an [00:26:00] engineer understand it, like Rosie just explained, then they are making a really bad business decision and you need to get. Outta that ship.