The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

The Uptime hosts review GE Vernova’s Q2 financials, noting strong gas turbine orders and delays in onshore wind. They discuss PTC impacts on future turbine orders and Iberdrola’s €5 billion share sale for power grid expansions. An update on Vineyard Wind highlights ongoing blade issues and legal complexities. The wind farm of the week is the Nobles Two Wind Farm in Minnesota. 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 host. Alan Hall, Joel Saxon, Phil Ro, and Rosemary Barnes.  Allen Hall: Welcome back to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m Alan Hall from the Queen City, Charlotte, North Carolina, and I got Phil Totaro in Santa Barbara, Cali, and Joel is back in the Lone Star state of Texas near Austin. And. Uh, Q2 results came out from GE Renova. In fact, they had a little webinar this morning to discuss it. Uh, a lot of different aspects to ge. Renova, as we all know, nuclear sort of high voltage, little tiny bit transmission, but, uh, wind of course gas turbines. So they are definitely setting the course for [00:01:00] a gas turbine world. And Phil, how, how far out are orders for their gas turbine products?  Phil Totaro: The last I heard talking to somebody from GE who said it was 2031 at this point, um, although things can be accelerated depending on if you’re willing to pay a bit of a premium, they can, uh, you know, move you up in the queue, so to speak. Um, but it’s, uh, you know, it’s a pretty, uh, far off thing. Um, and unfortunately. You know, it looks like GE hasn’t announced a lot of new orders for onshore wind, but nobody has in the United States. Everybody was waiting in Q1 and Q2 to see what the outcome of the production tax credit, uh, changes were gonna be. Now that we have definitive, you know, legislation on that. Um, it’s going to actually trigger a lot of safe harbor orders, uh, assuming that companies can actually deliver turbines. [00:02:00] Um, because in order to safe harbor, you actually have to physically receive and store, um, something equivalent to 5% of the CapEx cost of the project. So that has to happen now before. Uh, July, 2026. And because of that, uh, I think you’re actually gonna see a lot of companies that had been holding off on placing their turbine supply orders. Uh, all of those are gonna start getting announced in Q3 and Q4, so it’s gonna be like a monster quarter. Uh, that’s gonna more than make up for any shortcomings from, uh, from this past quarter. Joel Saxum: This is a, I’m, I’m dreaming here. Uh, could you see that this thing is, this legislation, the way it sits right now, all of a sudden all these orders come in and people are buying turbines to safe harbor them. And it’s just making that, that renewable industry economy just churn for a year. And then it comes down to it. And like that is taking notice of by the administration, taking notice of like, Hey, actually there is demand for this renewable [00:03:00] energy. There is a ton of jobs happening here. There’s all kinds of people trucking, there’s all kinds of people delivering. And then like, maybe we should relax and change these things because this, they’re still moving forward. Could you see that changing?  Phil Totaro: That is unlikely. But they’re definitely, I mean, we know how politics works, and this isn’t exclusive to any, you know, the current administration or any administration. They’re gonna take credit for the fact that the industry’s gonna be on a tear between now and July of next year. One, because they changed, um, when the PTC phase out starts. But here’s the, here’s the real trick, Joel, and that’s something that everybody’s missed. There, the, the current rules, even though there’s an executive order to revise the rules for, uh, what constitutes the qualification for startup construction, the current rules that have been in place since 2013 still exist right now. So there’s this huge gap in a window where if you safe harbor today. [00:04:00]Before the rules are changed, you can still, you still have four years from the time you safe harbor to actually, um, utilizing those turbines on the project that you safe harbor ’em forged. And keep in mind as well, when the IRS rules change, they’re not, it’s not a light switch, doesn’t happen immediately. They make. Recommended changes that then become final, that’s likely to happen at the end of the year. So there’s a huge window now, and that’s goes back to my earlier comment, why everybody’s been waiting on announcing their turbine orders, but there’s gonna be a huge deluge of, of orders that are gonna happen between now and the end of this calendar year. So, so Phil, let go,  Joel Saxum: go back to your, with GE or conversation between you and Alan about GE having. The equivalent of a lightning lane like you would at Disney pay a couple dollars extra and you get to go to the front of the line. Um, will there be a lightning lane from these OEMs because there’s only so much capacity, right? Will there be a lightning lane from the OEMs to get things in the next year? [00:05:00] Wind turbines.  Phil Totaro: Yeah. ’cause again, it, it’s a good question. The problem again is it’s just whatever is already in order books, I, it’s, it’s gonna be a big challenge. And, and this is actually why it’s like a really good op opportunity for companies like Nordex to be honest. Um, because you know, if, if Vestus and GE have full order books and you can’t. Get them to deliver you turbines fast enough where you’re gonna be able to qualify for, you know, safe harbor, uh, and qualify for PTC. Whatever these changes are gonna end up being, um, you know, by July of next year, everybody’s gonna be racing to deliver something. At that point or, and, and I mean, keep in mind that when they change these, these PTC qualification rules at the IRS, what they’re likely to do is combine the safe harbor requirement with the physical construction requirement so that you have to be [00:06:00] doing both. Because right now it’s an either or. They’re probably gonna make that an and and that’s gonna be the biggest change  Allen Hall: in Spanish energy, giant iro. Has announced, hold on tight. A 5 billion euro share sale, which, uh, the largest in Europe this year to fund massive expansion in its power grid networks, particularly in two places the United States and the United Kingdom. And the company will focus on transmission and distribution infrastructure. With regulated assets, uh, which are expected to more than triple. Uh, so their growth is going to be big, but they have to fundraise a little bit. And Phil is a little more, it’s happening behind the scenes, right? So ebaa, although they’re issuing, uh, more shares to raise about $5 billion, and it looks like there’s a discount on those shares, so you can, um, what it looked like to me, make a couple of percentage points if you bought these shares.[00:07:00] They’re still looking at selling some assets to fundraise some more because it looks like Berroa is going big time in transmission.  Phil Totaro: Yes, so it was publicly reported today as we record that they’ve hired a bank to look at, uh, up to $4 billion, or I’m sorry, 4 billion euros worth of asset sales in Mexico. Um, one because the Mexican market is kind of going nowhere fast, even with the, uh, the change in their, uh, political leadership. Um, but second. You know, as you mentioned, Alan, they, they wanna be able to take this money, uh, from, you know, asset sales from capital raise and plow it into transmission assets, which, you know, they’ve basically. Pivoted their attitude. It’s not that they’re going to necessarily stop doing, um, you know, renewables project build out, but they definitely want to be a bigger player in the [00:08:00] transmission space because regardless of whatever power generation gets put on the grid, it’s gonna have to have more grid, uh, to accommodate the, the increasing demand that we see globally. Is that the safest bet in renewables, the transmission? Well, uh, yes, except if you’re grain belt express. Ouch.  Allen Hall: But if you know you’re gonna put on some sort of electric generation, be it gas, be it nuclear, be it solar, be it wind, whatever, it’s still gonna be electricity and they’re gonna still need to be able to deliver it. That would make transmission the linchpin to all of it. That’s what we’ve been saying on the podcast for what, the last  Phil Totaro: two years? A hundred percent. I mean. That’s, that’s always been the case. And, and you know, I’ve even said this, I, I believe Rosemary said it about, uh, Australia as well. What we’ve seen in terms of capacity build out in renewable energy is that we build where there’s existing transmission and there’s also been kind of relatively [00:09:00] high sustained winds. So for those familiar with it, it’s like IEC class one kind of wind sites. A lot of that. You know, those were the turbines that we deployed, you know, 20, 25, 30 years ago. Uh, you know, back in, I wanna say around 2011, we shifted down into Class two wind. So something like, you know, eight or so meters per second. Now we’re at class three or Class S wind, where it’s maybe six and a half to seven meters per second. And now we’re starting to repower the, the project sites that have class one winds. When you build new transmission, it opens up more wind regime or you know, more space for solar or whatever, but it. New build out of transmission necessarily unlocks more capacity additions in all wind regimes and in all wind classes. Uh, so the more transmission can get built, the more opportunity there is for. You know, wind and solar, but any [00:10:00] form of power generation really. Well,  Joel Saxum: it makes absolute sense for an eroll, right? Because they’re into all kinds of stuff. They’re into battery storage, solar, wind. So basically they’re, they’re, they’re hedging their operational assets by building this transmission. And we know we need it. Uh, and, and it’s not just the US and UK that needs this, this transmission buildup. The global grid needs to be optimized in a better way. Now one of the big ones like, okay, I’m sitting down here in Texas, right? So I watch a lot stuff. Um, there is a bunch of power lines in Texas, in West Texas that can come back to Dallas, back to San Antonio, back through Austin, to Houston, and it’s called Crez. They call it cre. The crez line, CREZ. What it, what it stands for is competitive renewable energy zone. So basically it’s a 765 kilovolt line or line that go out west to gather all of that wind resource and bring it to the cities. Ercot did that a while ago. Um, and maybe Phil, you know, the year [00:11:00] they did it, I don’t remember what it was, but other states, other, other areas, other countries should look at that as an op, as a, as a. Framework, and I think Uber Patrol sees that as like, this is the next thing we need to do this to be able to expand everything else. With the addition of these AI data centers, we’ve had guests on talking about different loads and spikes and these kind of things that we need to be able to manage better in the grid. And if we don’t, we’re gonna start hurting ourselves. So, uh, I think this is a great move by able draw.  Allen Hall: Are you worried about unexpected blade root failures and the high cost of repairs? Meet eco pitch by Onyx Insight. The standard in blade root monitoring. Onyx state-of-the-art sensor tracks blade root movement in real 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 [00:12:00] of mind. Contact Onyx Insight today to schedule your demo of Eco Pitch and experience the future of blade monitoring. Well, an update from the new Bedford L newspaper in Massachusetts on the status of vineyard wind. It’s pretty hard to get any information outta ge. Renova and Ebert patrol on vineyard wind at the moment. And rightfully so, they’re trying to keep their head down and get this project done. It is America’s first commercial scale offshore wind farm, and it’s making some progress now. Uh, 17 turbines are connected to the grid up from four, just a couple of months ago, and it’s gonna be and finished about a 800 megawatt project and. They’re still having a little bit of trouble it looks like, uh, in terms of getting turbines planted and some of the satellite imagery and the reporting that was done here by Anastasia Lenin in, in the new Bedford [00:13:00] Light is interesting because, uh, although there’s what about 40 turbines in the water at the minute? Joel, is it roughly half of them still need blades replaced?  Joel Saxum: Yeah, well I think some of that is conjecture. We’re not a hundred percent sure. The only people that know this is, you know, GE and the contractors on site, to be honest with you. Right. We, we know that there’s some that need to be done and they are taking them and then bringing ’em all the way over to France, fixing them there, and then bringing ’em back, which is a crazy concept. But hey, that’s what happens when you have the Jones Act. I’m sorry, we did that to ourselves. Um, so we do know that that’s still an ongoing project. We also know some people that have been around that project. Uh, so GEs doing, in my opinion, ge iss doing the right thing here by getting these things built, fixed, done in the factory, uh, done in, you know, quality controlled facilities, uh, rather than hanging them and try to fix things up tower. Because to be honest with you, that happens in the wind industry quite often. Um, on [00:14:00] onshore construction projects, not offshore construction projects. You’ll see blades come to site, get dropped off, have an issue, and they just basically do an engineering assessment and say, is this this? You’re gonna hurt this thing if we hang it right now? No. So they’re like, all right, keep it moving. Get that crane, get them hung up. So then you have blade crews come afterwards, after the project is ready to go, and they’re up internally and externally fixing blades on ropes or in baskets or whatever like that. Of course, that’s inefficient and it’s not the best quality control for a repair. But that’s how you keep construction timelines moving. So it’s a. A common practice in the wind industry,  Allen Hall: it looks like. Uh, GE Renovo has brought in a second jack up vessel also to expedite some of this work, uh, wind pace, which is a jack up vessel from Denmark, from what it looks like is now on site. I, I guess they’re trying to finish this project, right? They would like to be done in 2025. I do think it’s gonna run over into 2026 a little bit. I mean, that’s what the current outlet outlook is because they, uh, extended [00:15:00] a lease at the New Bedford Marine Commerce terminal through June of 2026. So there must be a little bit of work going on. Uh, but that’s gotta cost you even over hundreds of thousands of dollars to do that. Joel Saxum: That’s hundreds of thousands of dollars a day. A jack, a jack with a crane on it to expedite blade work is big dollars. Your hundreds of thousands of dollars a day. That’s why everything we say offshore, this is an old oil and gas thing. If it goes offshore, add a zero on the end of it because that’s what, that’s how it works. Um, Alan, let me ask you this one, are they working year round on these sites? Because I know some of our, our North Atlantic friends and offshore wind, they shut down for parts of the winter. They don’t do construction in the winter.  Allen Hall: I don’t think they’ll shut down. I think they worked a good bit of time over last winter. I don’t think it was completely shut down. It couldn’t have been. The only thing they were waiting for was really to get the blades back where they could get going again. And obviously they had a lot of work to do to, to [00:16:00] suss out what the problem was and figure out a way to get the blades updated properly. Uh, that amount of money equals what Joel just, just say. Starting today, it’s, we’re in the middle of July. Say it’s gonna run to early 2026, say February, 2026. How much money are we talking about then? How many millions of dollars?  Joel Saxum: Uh, I’m gonna go with 220 extra days. That vessel is more than likely. Now that vessel does not come by itself. Usually that vessel’s gonna come with a its own feeder, barge, crew, and all that good stuff, right? So 30 to 35 million extra. Just for that vessel. Now, you, we haven’t taken into consideration the cost of shipping all those blades back to France and fixing ’em and coming back across, I’m just talking about on onsite construction costs. Allen Hall: Well, if you look at the QT results from GE Renovo on the wind side, they’re predicting EBITDA losses, uh, summer in the 200 [00:17:00] to $400 million range. And I, I have to wonder if a good bit of that is offshore, but I know we’ve been talking about this quite a bit internally. It may not be all offshore. And that’s Phil’s point. Phil was saying that, that the offshore business may not be losing as much as we think we, there could be a considerable amount of losses onshore at the minute. Of course we don’t  Joel Saxum: know this because we’re not deep into this project. Right. But there may be some GE shared costs, some e shared cost, you know, so like the vineyard wind may be taking some of that on GE may be taking some of that on. And this is the big and. There may be an insurance policy, it’s insurance policy that’s taking on some of that. And, and if there isn’t taking on right now, guarantee you there’s a court battle going on somewhere to see who is gonna pay for it. So like, I don’t, I don’t know if GEs taking the full hit for that stuff or, and or if GE did, then they more than likely have a construction policy somewhere that may be handling some of the costs.[00:18:00] I’m not a hundred percent sure. Right.  Allen Hall: Can we, the reason they’re delayed. Primarily is because of the blade issues.  Joel Saxum: Are the blade issues. So this is where what you start digging down, doing RCA, all this stuff, is the blade issues negligent or the blade issues horse majeure,  Allen Hall: it’s contract  Joel Saxum: language.  Allen Hall: How are you going to define the failure or the problem that happened in the blades? I don’t wanna use the word failure, but the problems they have with the blade. How would you classify them?  Joel Saxum: Exactly. And then you have bi too, so like, and an insurance policy may be picking up. You may be paying for the property damage. Maybe the insurance policy is paying for the business interruption where you were supposed to be done. Whatever drop dead date was 800 megawatts of production should, should be rolling at some point in time. And, and there, there was a date to that and a business interruption cost, construction insurance policy. And if it overruns and it can be pointed back to things they couldn’t control, insurance will pick that, those that up. But they have to be able to point at something [00:19:00] classified as something they couldn’t control. In the contract link, and I don’t know exactly what that contract looks like.  Allen Hall: Me either, but you know, they must be discussing it internally. They have to.  Joel Saxum: Oh, there’s, oh, there’s, there’s, there is hundreds of lawyers spooled up on this thing. And Gary, and they have been since last summer when this happened.  Allen Hall: Does that explain some of the, uh, framing of the blade issue and. Not hearing a lot about the factory up in gas bay and all of that is the consequences on the backside are worse than, could be, worse than just the quality problems they had in Gas Bay. Joel Saxum: Think about the, like a, any kind of legal happening, right? The first thing the lawyers like, don’t talk to anybody, don’t tell anybody this, that, you know, don’t you know you ran over your neighbor’s dog. Don’t talk to him. Like that’s the first thing, like, we need to control this. You know what I mean? Um. So absolutely. When people are like, why aren’t you sharing this? [00:20:00] Why aren’t you this? It’s because they’re posturing for hundreds of millions of dollars of lawsuits and insurance claims possibly, and you don’t know which way it’s gonna go. So immediately, the legal teams from ge, like you said, a long time ago, they probably swooped in like hawks on these places and were like, zipper, zipper, zipper gag order. Stop talking. Don’t say anything. And that’s, to be honest with you, that’s, that’s, that’s what they have to do. That’s. That’s, that’s business and, and in the United States specifically being an extremely litigious society. That’s just the reality of doing business here.  Allen Hall: 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 in internal blade cracks. OG 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.[00:21:00] Well, it, it gets to my subsequent question because I thought we were gonna go down this avenue. Canadian law, American law, French law, there’s a lot of legal systems involved in this, I would assume. My guess is that they didn’t sign a contract. Well, maybe they did. Maybe they signed a contract that was based on Massachusetts court law and that’s what they ended up doing because it’s a Massachusetts project. I doubt it though. You see what I’m saying? All, all, all the legal aspects about why are we sending blades over to France to get repaired instead of up back up to Canada. There’s a lot of moving pieces here that never really made sense, and maybe it all is derived from, uh, the litigation standpoint. Like we just. Need to find a way to do one to do this right. I think GE Renova gotta give him some credit, flooded the place with engineers to figure out what was happening, and then started to get in front of it. And this goes back to the, [00:22:00] we haven’t talked about on the podcast, but GE Renova sounded like a $10 million agreement with the city of Nantucket about the problem they have with the broken blade, right? So GE is trying to settle this thing as quickly as they can, but. It has to be. It is a, my guess is, is a global court case on some level. ’cause Ebore is involved. G Renova, Canada, France,  Joel Saxum: I gotta say Yes, absolutely. Because things, because contracts cross, right? So like you and I sign a contract together when you and I sign a contract together for whatever it’s, you know, like. We’re gonna eat cheese sandwiches every Tuesday at 10, whatever we say this, this contract is written by the laws of the state of Texas, or the laws of the state of Delaware where something’s incorporated, or the laws of North Carolina where you live, whatever. We dictate that. However, if you have a GE turbine supply agreement, a vineyard wind, which has an roa and.[00:23:00] Ted, you have, so you have a Danish company. You have a Spanish company. They’ve created a jv. That JV may or may sit in the United States, or The Bahamas, who knows, right? Delaware would be a good choice. So you have those entities with things all over the place, and then you’ve got an insurance policy that more than likely is written out of London. So you end up in all these, these and, and those contracts. So that con that that insurance policy may be written between them and the Delaware entity of of vineyard wind. Great. But now that thing references someone else in a turbine supply agreement and that contract is written between this country and that country. So we’re gonna fight it out in these court laws. All of a sudden gets really freaking cloudy and you end up with, I don’t know, lawyers from, you ever see the TV show seats? Oh  Allen Hall: yeah.  Joel Saxum: You end up with those guys, those $2,000 an hour people hanging around, you know, that’s what’s, [00:24:00] that’s  Allen Hall 2025: what’s happening. I’m sure. Go back to, to my sort of original question about this. It looks like GE Vernova is trying to one, wrap this project up. They’ve brought another jack-up vessel in to try to, my guess is reduce the business interruption costs. But two is just looking to finish this project, and I wonder if they’re just negotiating this behind the scenes to just clear the deck when the last turbine goes in and they flip on the power. GE Vernova from an installation standpoint and a contractual standpoint just considers it done. They’re gonna settle up with everybody. At the end and there’s not gonna be any lawsuits. I wonder if that’s happening right now. ’cause it does feel like Vernova is a little flush with cash right now and wants to finish this. Joel Saxum: I bet. Yes.  And  there’s the concept in general, people say throwing in good money after bad. I mean technically you’re doing that if you are GE here. But at the end of the day, like you don’t wanna drag this thing out. You wanna get it done and, you’re reducing [00:25:00] your risk exposure. Just get this thing done. Hit it off the books. We’ve said we’re not gonna do offshore, we’re not taking extra orders and stuff right now. However, we’re gonna build an 18 gigawatt machine up in Norway. But there’s a strategic thing that we’ve listened to Scott Straza, talk about for a while and vi Abate talk about for a while about where ge it was wind businesses going. And you can see that they’re executing on that by trying to get this thing done and off the books operationally so they can move forward. ’cause it is. I mean, it’s gotta be a drag. I would imagine you see another a hundred to 200 layoffs as soon as this thing’s done at ge.  Allen Hall: Oh, on the offshore side? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. They just want to be, want to be out. Yeah, because onshore business is not bad. They’re, they’re, they’re trying to do a couple of things simultaneously, which is always hard for a big company to do. On offshore wind, they’re trying to get out of it. But Joel, you’re right, they’re linked this turbine in doorway. Okay, sure. Unsure wise, [00:26:00] you know, the orders are coming in and the, if they’re having any issues, it’s outside the United States generally. They’re having some trouble selling some onshore turbines overseas, which I get. And they’re also trying to improve the performance of the existing onshore fleet, which, so you hear a lot of. Talk about that in the industry that you’re each trying to improve the operations of the turbines. Great. That just goes back to they’re trying to right the ship and make this thing profitable because you’re trying to be profitable at the end of 2024. We’re now, we’re in mid 2025. We haven’t quite gotten that yet. We’re a couple hundred million dollars short. But if the offshore, which is vineyard wind, if vineyard wind was wrapped up, I think they would be in decent shape. Not great shape, but decent shape.  Joel Saxum: So, like you said, they’re, they’re trying to right the ship in the seal. Now you and I have both been doing some GE wind farms in the last few weeks and talked with some people there and you know, a lot of ’em are on FSA and, and when GE originally rolled out [00:27:00] this hub and spoke model here in the states, you’re a, you’re a technician, you’re here, but you might service these, I don’t know, two to 10 wind farms within two hours of your house or however it works that everybody was up in arms. What, what the hell is going on here? I can’t, this technician here, this technician here. That’s been about a year and a half, two years.  Allen Hall: Yeah. 18 months-ish. Right. Maybe, maybe two years. Yeah. And what I,  Joel Saxum: what I felt the, the, the feeling in the field, now this is intrinsic, this is anecdotal, right? Is that that’s settled down a bit and the people. The people are like, Hey, I normally have these same four technicians all the time. ’cause I think the operators, they complained enough where they’re like, stop sending me a new guy every day. So they got the same, the same teams, right? The same 1, 2, 3, depending on the size of the, the farm. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 guys, you know? And then, okay, if quarterly or yearly maintenance pops up, you might see a couple extra two or three coming in or an OR or an ISP that’s contracted by GE to come in to help [00:28:00] with yearly and quarterly maintenances and those kind of things. But for the most part. People know the turbines. I mean, it comes as simple as this. Like these sites are a pain in the butt to get around on. That’s where like we use the dispatch app whenever we’re out, right? Because it’s like I need to find ’em a way to this turbine. Thanks. Thanks. So I can map my way there.  Allen Hall: Shout out dispatch.  Joel Saxum: Yeah, thanks Alex and Reed and team. Um, but either way, just that simple thing of having new technicians all the time that they can’t get around site, that cuts your efficiency down. That cuts. Now, if you’re not efficient, getting to the turbine. You’re not gonna be efficient in fixing it, right? You’re gonna have more downtime. And then in, and the big thing here is liquidated damages. Like you gotta make sure those turbines are up and running. So I see, I, I feel and see that in the field, GE is doing a little bit better. Um, also to to note, right? We we’re always on wind farms, a lot of times on wind farms with these two x machines or the late version. One X is the one, six is the one eights, those kind of things. Now they’ve had some soak time in the field. So [00:29:00] they have the people know more about them. The troubleshooting is a little bit more  Allen Hall: sussed out. I’ve lost track of the generation of the blaze that are out there. 6, 7, 8.  Joel Saxum: Yeah, we’re on like generation nine, the two, blah, blah, blah. But either way, the machines themselves have been installed since the 56 9 and the, and the 62 2 2 Xs and been in the field shirt man, six, seven years now. But like. You’ve, you’ve got people that know how to fix these things by now in ge, as long as you don’t have turnover, the maintenance should be getting better. The service should be, the uptime should be increasing. That’s, that’s the goal. Um, you know, they do have some, I don’t wanna say serial issues, but most of them have been sorted through. So  Allen Hall: the big problem, I think for GE as they try to. Get the machine running again, o obviously, uh, there’s a discussion about small modular reactors within GE and maybe having a deal up in, was it in Canada today?[00:30:00] And there’s money rolling in on some of the other divisions, and rightly so. A lot of the staff that was at GE was to say, say three, four years ago is gone. And we’ve run into those really some really great former GE people. At the operations side all over that know, uh, where, uh, the problems lie in those turbines. And I, I, I always wonder when we run into a GE person that worked at GE Turnover for a while, and that was on the other side of the fence, that is gotta be a big pain point for GE Renova because those engineers are smart enough to know, and there’s a network of them. It’s not just a couple, a handful. There’s. Hundreds that are all connected to one another that can talk to one another now and can say, Hey, we need to get this fixed. We need to raise this issue. We need to raise that issue. We need to get this resolved. That’s gotta be sort of a burden on. I, I think the [00:31:00] renova onshore business that they didn’t really anticipate that there’s so many smart people who had insight into what was happening behind the seeds that are now able to push the right buttons. They know how to push the buttons, and they know how the internal workings, uh, of GE renova operate. I, I, I think they got another 12 months of trying to suss out that, that business, don’t you? I think it is gonna be 2026 before they’re clean, profitable, making some money.  Joel Saxum: Yeah, I’ll, I’ll give the, let’s talk about that one for a second. All these fantastic engineers and asset manager type people that are in the market now, some of them have landed as, some of them have done their own independent consultant things. Some have landed at ISPs, but some have landed at, they’ve landed at operators and they become, I’m now the GE specialist here at this, at this place. The advantage that those peoples had, so, so I would say, say this to an operator. Hire one of them. Hire one of them [00:32:00] because the advantage that they have that we don’t say I’m, and by we, I’m pointing at myself, but I mean Alan, myself, like the weather guard team, anybody who’s in an aftermarket type company, uh, or an ISP even. We don’t have the advantage of knowing the org chart and who to contact and where to push this button and what, what, uh, what finger to pull on and, and where we can find the person that we need to talk to about this solution. We don’t have that. So we are constantly asking people like, Hey, do you, do you know someone here so we can Yes. And those connections we made. Those people know the people. They know the persons that sat, that sat in their team. Oh, this guy was the, uh, he was the gearbox guru. This guy knew all the, he was the charge of the generators. He, this guy was the blade person, and he, he actually was the blade person for this specific blade model, blah, blah, blah, blah. Call him like, it’s, it’s amazing to have that network. So I think that, yeah, it’s a, um, what would you call it, like a sleeping dragon or something like that? Not necessarily a sleeping dragon, but like, they let loose this like this. [00:33:00]These teams and now the teams are coalescing on the outside going like, oh, we know how to fix this. Allen Hall: Right? If you listened to people who have left Siemens cesa or Vestus, a lot of them, because they’re in Northern Europe, end up in oil and gas. Weirdly enough, at least the ones that I know ended up in oil and gas, they don’t necessarily stay in the wind industry. They’re like, that was fun. I learned a lot, and now I’m moving on to some other. Job outside of wind in the us that’s not necessarily the case. They don’t do that. They tend to stay in when a significant portion of them, so the, the vestas in the semen ESAs of the world don’t really have that problem. Ge Ver Nova does, I think it’s a unique situation to them. It’s gonna be a. Uh, it’s, it’s when you start thinking about the scope of the problem and when they announced their Q2 results, I, I thought, oh, they’re trying to clean things up. That’s great. And they’re trying to finish vineyard wind. Awesome. Good on them. But it may go on a little longer [00:34:00] than we think because there’s so many smart people out there who know how Renova operates. The Wind Farm of  Joel Saxum: the week this week is the Nobles two Wind Farm up in Minnesota. And the reason we’re focusing on Minnesota this week is ’cause I want to talk a little bit about their clean electricity and renewable portfolio standards, because they’re one of the first ones to really start changing these things besides, uh, California. So in early 2 20 23, the in Minnesota House require all electric utilities to achieve a hundred percent carbon free electricity by 2040 as a, as a law. Their interim targets are 80% by 20, 30, 60% for non-public utilities, but public utilities, 80% and 90% by 2035, and then a hundred percent by 2040. So these carbon free sources include wind, solar, hydroelectric, biomass, nuclear, which has been in the news lately, and clean hydrogen. And so there’s, there’s some nuanced rules and things around that. But the renewable portfolio standard says they gotta be moving [00:35:00] towards renewables. So that brings us to our wind. Yeah. Our wind farm of the week. Uh, the, the Nobles Two Wind Farm and this is in Wilmont, uh, in southwest Minnesota. It’s approximately, uh, 15 miles north of Worthington. If you’re from that area, you know that area. Worthington’s a big farm community. Uh, it’s a 250 megawatt wind farm, uh, powered by 74 Vest is turbines. The V 1 36, which we are familiar with. They can started construction in August of 2019, and the construction contractor on this one was Mortenson. Uh, this Noble’s two Power is owned by an, uh, a joint venture that has 10 Nasca and elite and Bright Canyon energy. So we know the elite team. They’re up there in Duluth, Minnesota, 10 Nasca, of course, big operator, uh, and uh, big maintenance company. They do a lot of that stuff. There is a 20 year PPA on this project with Minnesota Power. One of the other things I wanted to focus on, so what that that [00:36:00] legislation did in Minnesota is it said, we’re gonna do this. It’s gonna be development based. We got a lot of things to do, but just this one project bought brought over $15 million in contracts awarded to local businesses. That is the, that’s the crux of, so how we get things done here in America and the rural communities. Worthington being a farm community, right? We’ve. You pass some legislation that makes sense, and then you bring $15 million worth of local contracts just during construction. That doesn’t count the, the 15 local employees for permanent staff, um, that are gonna be hired there. The $1 million in county tax revenue every year, the $15,000 to the communities, the every year, the $30,000 donations to the local first responders, and all of the amazing things that these renewable energy developments do. So, uh, for that, the Tenasia team there with, uh, elite and Bright Canyon Energy, year Nobles two wind [00:37:00] charm. Up there in Minnesota is the wind charm of the week.  Allen Hall: And that’s gonna do it for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy podcast. Thanks for joining us, and we’ll see you here. Same time, same place. For the Uptime Winner Energy podcast next week.

Allen discusses NextEra Energy’s growth potential amid the new tax bill, Equinor’s financial setback in US offshore wind projects, and Statkraft’s strategic shift due to falling electricity prices. Additional highlights include Wisconsin’s approval of its first long-duration energy storage project, Jupiter Bach’s facility expansion in Florida, and record electricity prices in the US power auction. 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! US Renewable Energy Leader NextEra Energy says Trump’s new tax bill will help the company grow despite concerns about renewable energy credits. The Florida energy giant told investors it can protect most of its wind and solar projects from losing tax credits under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. NextEra President John Ketchum says the company is already building so many projects that it can lock in tax benefits through twenty twenty nine. Ketchum believes smaller energy companies will struggle to meet the new deadline of July fourth twenty twenty six. That will likely mean less competition and more business for NextEra. Of course, Wall Street analysts are skeptical. Analysts from Jefferies wrote there is a clear long-term challenge ahead for the company. NextEra has signed contracts for three point two gigawatts of new projects since April. And the company is also exploring nuclear energy and small modular reactors. Norwegian energy company Equinor is taking a nearly one billion dollar loss on its US offshore wind projects. The company reported a nine hundred fifty five million dollar impairment in the second quarter. Most of that money is linked to the Empire Wind project off New York and a marine terminal in Brooklyn. Equinor says regulatory changes in the United States have reduced future profits and increased costs for offshore wind projects. Despite the financial hit, Equinor says it is moving forward with Empire Wind One. The company also completed financing for two offshore wind projects in Poland. The company says it remains committed to growing its renewable energy business. Wisconsin regulators have approved the first long-duration energy storage project of its kind in the United States. Alliant Energy will build the Columbia Energy Storage Project using a new carbon dioxide battery system designed by Energy Dome. The project will provide enough electricity to power eighteen thousand Wisconsin homes for ten hours on a single charge. Raja Sundararajan from Alliant Energy says the project will strengthen the power grid and help meet growing energy needs. The Energy Dome system works by converting carbon dioxide gas into compressed liquid for storage. When electricity is needed, the liquid turns back to gas and powers a turbine. Currently Energy Dome has a system running in Italy. Construction in Wisconsin will begin in twenty twenty six and the project should be completed by the end of twenty twenty seven. The storage system is part of Alliant Energy’s long-term plan to expand power generation with a balanced mix of energy sources. Norwegian energy company Statkraft took a three billion dollar hit on its wind power projects due to falling electricity prices. The company reported strong power generation in the second quarter but said lower prices in northern Norway and Sweden hurt profits. Statkraft President Birgitte Ringstad Vartdal says the company is refocusing its strategy after a period of high energy prices following the Russian war in Ukraine. The company is streamlining operations and focusing on fewer technologies and markets. Statkraft has stopped new development of green hydrogen projects and most offshore wind activities. The changes will include job cuts as the company aims to reduce costs by two point nine billion dollars annually by twenty twenty seven. Statkraft plans to invest sixteen to twenty billion dollars per year in hydropower upgrades in Norway and new onshore wind projects in Norway and Sweden. And Jupiter Bach is investing more than four million dollars to expand its wind turbine manufacturing facility. Jupiter Bach is spending funds on a twenty thousand square foot expansion of its manufacturing plant. The new facility will include production systems designed to reduce waste and improve efficiency. The company is also adding point-of-use warehousing to organize materials more effectively. Jupiter Bach has built more than seventy thousand wind turbines worldwide. The company says the expansion will help set industry standards for lowering wind power costs. Originally scheduled to open a few months ago it appears the new facility is set to open at the end of the month — congrats to everyone at Jupiter Bach. Electricity prices in the biggest US power auction jumped twenty two percent to record highs as demand continues to outstrip supply. The PJM Interconnection auction cleared at three hundred twenty nine dollars and seventeen cents per megawatt day. That is the highest price ever recorded in the auction. PJM operates the largest power grid in North America, covering thirteen states and the District of Columbia. The network includes one in five Americans and Virginia’s data center alley. The surge in electricity demand is driven by big tech companies building data centers. This has created a supply shortage that is driving up prices. Power company stocks rose on the news. Talen Energy shares jumped more than nine percent. Constellation Energy rose over five percent. The auction results will affect electricity bills starting next summer. PJM says home and business bills will rise one point five to five percent. Environmental groups criticized the results, saying PJM has failed to quickly connect new renewable energy sources like wind and solar power. That’s this week’s top stories. Stay tuned to the uptime wind energy podcast tomorrow.

Allen and Joel give the latest update on lightning blade damage. They discuss the results of a lightning damage assessment on 900+ GE Vernova turbines. Read the LM Wind Power Lightning Diverter Rain Erosion test results. Learn more about StrikeTape. 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! [00:00:00] Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I have Joel Saxum along with me. And I’m Allen Hall, and we work for Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and we have not talked about the lightning issues that are happening across the United States at the moment. Also, a good bit of Europe is seeing a number of really catastrophic lightning strikes, and even in South America. So everywhere you look right now, you see a lot of lightning damage, right?  Joel Saxum: Yeah, Allen, I would say this, this spring, early summer, as opposed to years past, we’ve been getting more and more and more calls, and I think it’s a combination of things. I think it’s a, it’s a combination of, I mean, we’ve had some extreme weather, right? There’s a pretty, it was a [00:01:00] pretty, been a pretty wicked lightning season here in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and the center of the United States. But we’re also hearing that same thing from India from. Mexico from Brazil, from the Mediterranean, we’re hearing it all over the place. So that’s happening. But then there’s also some awareness, right? There’s people that are, you know, in the wind industry as a whole, a lot of, a lot of operators have sat back and relied on their FSAs to handle things. And, and as these costs escalate and they’re looking at lightning damages, oh, this is carved out of your FSA or, uh, some insurance companies backing away from insuring them lightning. You’re starting to see more and more operators and financial asset operators coming to the table saying, Hey, we have a lighting problem. What can we do to solve it? And that’s why our phone’s ringing.  Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s been nonstop for the last couple of months and, and I would say that some of the damage I’ve even seen on LinkedIn is shocking. Uh, even today, looking at images from Japan, a blade trailing [00:02:00] edges is split wide open. It’s expensive. And the operators you talk to when you. Talk to a large operator who says it has a couple hundred turbines. They’re spending millions of dollars a year just to keep those turbines running from all the lightning damage and the engineering staffs and all the crane work and everything else managing the ISPs. It is a huge, massive burden on the  Joel Saxum: industry. I’d like to go back to what you said about seeing it on LinkedIn. So, uh, I, I just, this is a shout out to all the amazing wind turbine blade technicians out there and engineers that are supporting them and getting these things done in the field, because we have seen some crazy damages on LinkedIn and it seems to be the ones that, uh, technicians are really proud of fixing, right? Like, look at this 10 layer repair, three meters this way, this kind of crack, these kind of things because they’re all difficult to repair and they’re very expensive. Repair some of these things. Uh. Teams of 2, 3, 4 people are on them [00:03:00]for two weeks, three weeks, four weeks. Right. And the cost of all those things starts to add up. And we’re, when we’re talking about repairs, of course you have the repair team, you have the repair materials and the downtime associated weather and all those things, but, but you haven’t, in the grand scheme of things, contemplated what is the business interruption cost here as well, because that turbine’s down. And if it’s down for a, uh, two, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, and you know, you’re in high wind season, that’s a lot of production. So the, the reason that we’re starting to, I believe, uh, see a lot of, uh, a lot of phone calls, lot of support, a lot of things we’re doing is because these costs are escalating it. And the number that I, I was looking at, uh, just this week is so far in 2025 weather guard with our StrikeTape product. Has either installed on or is fending kit out or scheduled to be installed on 19 Wind Farms?  Allen Hall: That’s a tremendous number. Actually, [00:04:00] Joel and I have lost track. Honestly, I have lost track because there’s so many phone calls coming in. I know we have more today even looking to get some blades protected and. The reason is I think people are starting to realize, particularly the engineering staffs and all the accounting functions and those site managers, asset managers that are looking at the yearly cost of managing these turbines, and that lightning number is just big. If we’re getting into the situation right now because of the I-R-A bill changes and the one big beautiful bill, uh, eliminating a lot of the production tax credit incentives for repowering, uh, you, you start to pay attention to those expenditures that you probably have paid for in the past. Now’s the time to eliminate them and keep that money into the revenue chain. It is gonna be a different world in about two years. And as we’re into that transition, what we’re seeing is a lot of operators now reaching out and starting to make a [00:05:00] connection with Weather Guard Lightning Tech to start the process. Like how do we improve our blades? We have some old Siemens turbines, we have GE turbines, we have a lot of one point fives, a lot of two X machines, which are almost everywhere in the United States at the minute. How do we protect those turbines? How do we make them better? How do I stop paying ISPs hundreds of thousands of dollars for repairs because I need that revenue to make my business profitable at the end of the year? Yeah, I mean, we, we’ve talked about it in the past.  Joel Saxum: It’s the, the, the, the PPTC suspenders as I’ve called them, I suppose, is you’re, you know, in the past we’ve been supported by it. It, it’s, it’s allowed for a buffer of revenue to come in that, uh, you know, you can dip into, you can use as your operational. Cash. And when we talk lightning damages, a lot of times that is unknown, right? It’s something that you may budget for, you may not get any, you may end up spending a million dollars on this one wind farm because the erratic nature of lightning. But if you can reduce that to an, a known level or to a very much lower [00:06:00] level, you’re, you’re sitting pretty, right? So what, and, and I wanna go back to what you said, Alan. A lot of semen stuff. A lot of GE stuff, uh, that’s what we see a lot of, um, and. We’ve done a lot of studies. We have a ton of data on the one X and two x GE machines, uh, as well as the Siemens. I mean, since take the Siemens and the GAA products, we’ve been working with Siemens here at Weather Guard and putting StrikeTape to protect their turbine blades around the world since 2013. So we have a long track record of it. We know how to do those. We have, you know, standard products that go on them. Um, and all it takes is a phone call. Just get ahold of us and we can walk you through. Physics of what’s happening, lightning damage to, to your specific turbines, why it’s happening, how you can fix it. And then our big thing here at Weather Guard, of course, is supporting you through that process. We don’t wanna sell you a product, we wanna be your partner in fixing lightning damages. Now maybe we could talk about that a Alan A. Little bit. Let’s talk about, uh, here, [00:07:00] a little bit about what’s  Allen Hall: going on with some of these LPS systems. Boy, the LPS systems that are coming out of the factory over the last, ooh, 3, 4, 5 years, even 10 years ago. Really basic, they’re essentially a, a lightning rod. So it’s a, a metal receptor somewhere around the tip on the pressure and the suction side, and then there’s a cable that runs through the center of the blade down into the hub area. Then it gets grounded down into the tower and to to earth eventually. But it’s basically a spinning lightning rod and the concept is. Relatively simple, right? It’s, it’s like protecting a building. You put lightning rods on a building and hopefully the, the lightning hits those lightning rods and everything is okay. But the problem with wind turbines, particularly as they get taller, is the physics get to be a little bit different and. What has happened as Blaze have gone from roughly 30, 40 meters into the 50 plus meters, and now much larger than that, even offshore, a hundred plus meters [00:08:00] is that tip speeds are high. The tip heights are much higher than they used to be. And the amount of lightning that they’re seeing, uh, is changing because some of the lightning strikes are actually originating at the turbines. You’re seeing more we call upward lightning. So the number of lightning strikes that a turbine will take will be dependent upon how tall that turbine is. So instead of seeing maybe one strike a year, a lot of the turbines in the United States are seeing somewhere in the 5, 6, 7 range, depending upon where you’re at per year. Now you think about at over a 10, 20 year time span, that’s a number of lightning strikes. Now, they’re all not, may not be the big massive lightning strikes. It may be what I term baby lightning strikes. But at the, it still, the number of lightning strikes that you take increases your chance of having blade damage. And these basic LPS systems were never designed for that. So they, they’ve taken the knowledge that they had at 30 meter [00:09:00] blades and they’re applying it to 60 meter blades. Realizing that, oh, maybe it doesn’t work, that we thought it would, that the laboratory testing that we did as part of the IEC compliance is not valid. As the blades get longer, that’s a reality that the operators are finding out the hard way, so the OEMs know it because they’re getting the phone calls clearly. But the operators are the ones having to go out and spend all the time and the money, generally speaking, at least in the US, to go out and fix all this stuff. Part particularly it’s if it’s outta warranty, and that’s where the cost structure comes in, that a lot of operators account for a certain amount of lightning damage to happen, and the IEC spec would allow that. However, that number is much higher. And so instead of being a couple of percentage points a year that you’re gonna go off and spend in terms of lightning repair, it’s five times that, 10 times that the numbers are big. Joel. And I  Joel Saxum: think that’s an important concept to, to say here, let’s spin you back to when you said LPS systems are designed on [00:10:00] incumbent knowledge from old systems. That’s true. That’s what’s happening. If you look at, look at a GE blade, look at a 37 meter, 40 meter blades, the 62 2 meter blades are basically the same thing. Just like, uh, you know, shift, stretch, print. Right. And that’s kind of what they are. And, and now. We’ve themed data from those cooking in the field. Cooking, I don’t wanna use that term, sorry, pun. Pun, not intended, but, but pun intended, I guess in some cases. But we’ve seen soak time on these blades in the field and in various environments, right? So a lot of the stuff that we get, because it’s really bad, is the Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Indiana. Um, you know, up through the middle of the United States ’cause the lightning is bad here. Another one that’s a hot spot for us is India. India has really bad lightning, kind of the same, same setup, but we have now seen years of data, the 62 2 and the 56 9, which is essentially the same blade, just a [00:11:00] couple meters longer. They’ve been in, out in the field since 2019 ish. In, in, in a large way from 20 20, 20 21. So we’ve got a lot of these that are out of warranty. Where the operators are really looking at them and they’re starting to collect a lot of data. And, and that’s the important thing here. And that’s why I wanna go back, like to design the IEC standard and all these things, and, and that that way of testing things is you can pass an IEC test as a certification in a laboratory, but putting these things into the field in a large scale is a different story. And what we’ve seen over the last few years is a lot of data on these, uh, data from. Here’s your damage reports from your drone inspection. Okay? Now we have years of data of, of lightning damages in these spec for these specific wind farms. We couple that with lightning data from, uh, you know, it might be a remote lightning detection service. Ideally there’s lightning detection sensors on that. That’s why when we put StrikeTape in the field, we put the eLog ping lightning fleet [00:12:00] sensors on everything we put out because we want to know exactly what’s happening in the field. But we have this damage data. Have this lightning data. So we’re starting to develop a really big history, a complete history that we can draw from statistically of what these turbines are actually doing in the field. And we’re seeing a completely different story than what is told in the IEC spec.  Allen Hall: Oh yeah. The numbers don’t line up. And when you talk to operators about it, they’re expecting them to, the numbers line up to the IEC spec, because that’s what historically happened with 1.5 G machines. Like, yeah. You know? It works pretty well. But when they moved to the two x machines and larger, what they found is something dramatically different. And we’ve done a, uh, looked over a couple years of lightning damage in the middle of the United States, down Texas and Oklahoma, and we looked at eight wind farms specifically to see what the lightning damage rates were on ge. Essentially some one x longer blades, 50 [00:13:00] meter ish blades up to the 62 2. Meter blades and we looked at a sample, what of over 900 turbines, right Joel?  Joel Saxum: Yeah, it was 900 turbines. Uh, we reviewed over 415 damages and, and with that was over 6,000 lightning pulses. So we looked at lightning events, lightning pulses, the total amount of turbines in varied geographies around kind of what we call lightning alley. And we came up with some, some very interesting results and, and I’m gonna also throw this one in there. The reason we did this was we wanted to see what’s really happening in the field to all of these turbines and then compare it to a wind farm that, from commissioning data on the ground, was, had an additional LPS protection with StrikeTape installed on it from day one before the blades are even slow and the results are, uh, they’re pretty shocking. Um, what we saw. Is rates of damage. When we say rates of damage, that is lightning strikes to [00:14:00] damages on the blades and we’re gonna, and we also caveated that with a cat three and above. So we don’t care as much about the ones and twos. Those can, the blades can run, not a big deal, but cat three and above, which is going to be the ones that need to be repaired. What we saw was a 14 to 34% damage rate. So that means strikes. To damages. If you average that out, it was right above 20% across those HA wind farms. So we saw basically one in five strikes causing a damage of cat three to five or above. Uh, to that, those GE turbines in Texas and Oklahoma in our study, those 900 turbines  Allen Hall: and that is equal to dollars. So one in five lightning strikes causing damage. Pretty much every year you’re fixing blades. It’s a question of how many blades could fix and how expensive is the repair. Some of these repairs have been cat four cat fives, where they have not [00:15:00] been able to repair them. Tips blown off, you know, the split trailing edges, that kind of thing where it just gets expensive to even do the repair. And then your, your costs are going from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands to millions, depending upon. The severity and whether they need to buy one blade or black or buy three. It just changes the dynamic greatly. And the thing that we were trying to learn with all the study work that we were doing is we did install StrikeTape on a farm in the middle of all these other farms, basically all the same turbine, to see if there would be a, a market difference in the damage rate. And Joel, we saw huge improvements by putting StrikeTape on these. GE Vern Nova turbines. Yeah,  Joel Saxum: so those, those turbines that we said there, that had that just above 20% damage rate, that was the average. That one wind farm that we installed StrikeTape on was just less than 4%. So five times less damage on that one wind farm that [00:16:00] had StrikeTape on it as compared to all the other ones around it. Now that’s basically an 80% reduction, right? So that 80% number. You can roll that over to your o and m costs, right? So if you spent a $500,000 on lightning repairs this year, you could expect to only spend a hundred thousand dollars next year if you had Strike Jabon. And, and, and I wanna also say this, this isn’t our first case study, right? This is not our first study of data. We have multiple from all over the world. We’ve got some that we’ve done in the Mediterranean, we’ve done some in Japan. Very, very bad. Lightning over there. Um, and multiple ones in the US ongoing. Right now we’re continuing to collect this data to show, and we have seen a lot of wind farms with a hundred percent reduction in lightning damages. We’ve got two of them going on right now in the states, and I was just looking at yesterday that have like, one of them has 15 turbines that we put StrikeTape on and some iLogic ping lightning sensors. They have received 34 strikes over those 15 turbines and zero [00:17:00] damages from those. It’s, that’s the kind of results we wanna see. Allen Hall: And through this study, Joel, one of the things we were able to do, because we had the drone images and all the data, is we could see where the lightning damage was occurring. Because lightning damage around the tip, like you’re talking about, can be cat one, cat two. A lot of times it’s cosmetic in at some level. Uh, you can’t get threes, fours, and out at the tip, but generally they’re not too bad. When you start taking strike damage further down the blade, when we’re talking about five meters in 10 meters in, those tend to be more structural, which require more time and more money to repair. And what we were finding in our study is that a lot of the ge, ve, nova blade damage is happening like 10 plus meters from the tip. It was remarkable ’cause I didn’t think it was happening at that level, but the number of. Of lightning damages that were Cat three, you know, plus down the blade was what, somewhere around [00:18:00] 25% of the damaging strikes were down there. That’s remarkable.  Joel Saxum: Yeah, and it goes completely against what the IEC standard says it should be. Right. The IEC standard says basically about above 70% of lightning damages should be in the last two meters of the plate, so right near the tip. Not the case, right? We saw a lot of them 10 meters plus that 25% level. And to put this into kind of engineering context, right? Structurally in these designs, say when we’re talking the GE designs right here, that down conductor runs right along the shear web voop, right? It’s gets attached right to it down the blade. So when you’re 10 meters plus down from the tip and you, that lightning has to connect somewhere and it’s always gonna connect to that down conductor. If it strikes it through the trailing edge, you’re gonna hit the down conductor, but it’s gonna burn a little bit on the shear web. If it strikes it through the leading edge, it’s got to go through the shear web to get to the down conductor. So no matter what, when you’re 10 [00:19:00] meters down, you’re basically a Cat four or cat five, like you kind of skip Cat three right away. Because you’re into a structural zone. It’s a structural loading element, and it has a lightning damage either through it or adjacent to it. So that’s got to be fixed now, because what happens to those as well is you lose the structural integrity. That thing runs for another week, another two weeks, another three weeks, and it gets weaker, weaker, weaker. You get a weird wind load, snaps that blade tip and that blade comes around, hits the tower, it can take the tower down. We’ve, we’ve seen that. We’ve heard of that multiple times. So we want to avoid those kind of things, but that’s a, that was a big realization of this study is there’s actually a lot more damage happening down the blade. But this also goes into, gave us a really good understanding of why this is happening. After we track some of the strength of the lightning strikes and what is actually going on with the physics of this LPS system, and maybe Alan, you could share that a little bit of why we’re getting strikes further down the blade.  Allen Hall: Yeah, the basic [00:20:00] LPS system is not really attractive to lightning. I mean, it is somewhat attractive to lightning, but looking at data from our friends over at OGs Ping who have all the lightning sensors and we have lightning sensors installed all over the place at the moment, trying to track these, this lightning damage. And what we found is that the lightning strikes that are getting by the LPS system that are doing that damage down the blade are baby lightning strikes. They’re roughly 15 kamps 1315 kamps. So the, the vast majority of damaging strikes are not these 200 kilo amp off the IEC chart kind of strikes. What they are, are the littler strikes that still contain a significant amount of energy that are getting by the LPS system. Seeing that down conductor, putting your hole in a blade, pumping some current in there, and creating this big repair, particularly if it goes through the sheer web. So the, the strikes that we’re trying to protect against. From the IEC standpoint, when you’re out in the laboratory and you see the pictures coming from the OEM and they’re, [00:21:00] they got this lightning strike thing going on, they’re looking at big lightning strikes. That’s what they’re out there testing. What they should be testing for is the ability to capture these little lightning strikes that are doing the vast majority of the damage, particularly, uh, on like these GE for over blades. It’s, it’s amazing when you start to correlate the data, like, why did it, the lightning strike happened five meters down, 10 meters down, well. Because little lightning strikes these little low amplitude lightning strikes don’t have the, the strength that triggers the LPS system, right? So they don’t really trip the LPS system to work. And that’s where a StrikeTape comes in. Our product from Weather Guard, lightning Tech, is that. You need to turn the LPS system on sooner. That’s basically what you need to do. You need to have the LPS system start to reach out to these lower level lightning strikes and capture them and redirect them down to the receptor system and the LPS system as it was designed. The only way to do that is to make those LPS systems more attractive, which is exactly what StrikeTape does. So when you see StrikeTape [00:22:00] out in the field, what you’ll see is that we’re putting StrikeTape near the existing receptors, and it’s not a lot of product that’s on the blades. It’s for actually very little in comparison to the length of the blades, but it changes dramatically the LPS performance. So instead of having these 20% damage rates, we’re down a single digits, low single digits in terms of damage rates. That’s what you want to see, and that’s how you’re gonna save yourself hundreds or thousands of dollars a year. If you’re in some of these rougher lightning locations like Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, even up in Wisconsin, Minnesota, you can save yourself a ton of money just by putting some simple devices onto your turbine that don’t modify the turbine. The thing about StrikeTape is it’s on the outside of the blade. It doesn’t change the blade structure. It goes on in a couple of minutes. It’s easy to install. It’s been installed lower all over the world.  Joel Saxum: Th this is where I like to go to the, the, the next steps. What are the action items, right? So if you’re, if you are [00:23:00] interested in looking at how can we protect ourselves further, how can we lower o and m costs? Unexpected costs, uh, at our site, get ahold of us. Um, of course, my name Joel, do Saxum, SAXU m@wglightning.com or Allen allen.Hall@wglightning.com. And the, what we like to do is every site’s a little different, right? So we like to walk through things to understand what damages you’re taking. Because it could be different depending on topography, the layout of your wind farm, your specific environment. Sometimes it’s, uh, a little bit different on lightning damages if you’re in a, in tilled fields or if you’re in cattle pasture or if you’re up on a mountain or those kind of things. Change how lightning reacts with your wind farm. We’ve seen a ton of wind farms, so we know these things. Uh, get ahold of us. So we like to identify the potential sites and we’ll look at your turbines. We, we do a little RFI. Give us some data, give us some background. If you’ve got lightning data. If you’ve got inspection data with your damages, great. Uh, you know where the turbine locations are so we can, we can [00:24:00] locate which turbines are your higher risk ones in your wind farms. We’ll look at what the installation method is. Um, you know, we go as far as training the technicians onsite or virtually to make sure that they do the, the thing properly, get the installation done. Because when the installation’s done properly, as everybody knows, it’s probably listening to this podcast. Uh, a product on blade is only as good as its installation. So we’ve simplified that, uh, to the next level, uh, to make sure that this thing goes well in the field and can last the 20 years, uh, left of the lifetime year blades. So, and I wanna reiterate this from, from a couple minutes ago on the podcast, weather Guard Lightning Tech. We, we want to be your partner in solving your lightning problems. We’re not here to sell you a product walk away. So we are going to train the technicians. We are going to support you. We’re gonna have regular check-ins, we’re gonna look through your inspections with you, give you some advice on lightning damages, what’s actually happening in the field. We’re gonna put some sensors out there on the turbines that help you in your o and m, uh, processes and operations to know [00:25:00] when you’ve been struck. Which turbines have been struck? Optimize your time in the shield, um, and put our money where our mouth is. Right? We know StrikeTape works. It’s, it’s, we, we sell in the aerospace industry too. Boeing, Airbus Embryo, Gulf Stream, you name it. They use our same products. Uh, we are protecting over, we’re right around 20,000 blades around the world right now. Um, so we know that we can, we can help operators and, and, uh, we’re here to, we’re here to support.  Allen Hall: And you, you should accept no substitutions. So more recently, uh, GE has clearly been watching our success in the field and new GE blades, particularly 62 twos that are coming outta the field. And some of the two piece blades that are happening for the Sierra and also Cyprus, uh, they, they are including a lightning diverter, very similar to weather guards. And you’ll see that now you, they’ll, you’re seeing, uh, ge renova engineers add their lightning diverter to improve the LPS system [00:26:00] on their blades, as I assume, because of the customer feedback that they’ve been getting the problem. And if you’re receiving those blades and you’re doing a lot of repowers in the next year, I think it’ll happen in the United States. It’ll be a lot of it is that. Those devices that LM has created, it’s an LM derived, uh, product don’t last very long in some rough conditions. So the leading edge erosion is a problem, and rain erosion is a problem for those LM GE Renova Lightning diverters. And we we’re starting to get the complaints coming in. Uh, operators say, I have StrikeTape on my turbines. No, you don’t. You have a an LM GE Renova product. That doesn’t have a great service history and you probably wanna put something on that’s gonna last the lifetime of the Blades, which is gonna be a StrikeTape product. That’s the difference. So we run into operatives once in a while and they’ll say, oh, how do I know this is gonna work? Well, how [00:27:00] do you know StrikeTapes gonna work? Well, we can prove it ’cause we have a ton of case studies we can just provide to you. You can also talk to our existing customer base. They love to talk about the success of StrikeTape because they’re saving hundreds of thousands of dollars. But let’s go look at what GE Renova is doing at the minute. And GE Renova is essentially trying to copy us in, in what we’re doing and how we do it. I would say, and you gotta be careful here, is that you’ll see that a lot of the GE Renova installation is the, their lightning inverter goes with the airflow, which is great, I guess, because they need to protect it from rain erosion. So they need to put it with the airflow to minimize rain erosion. Uh, and we’ve done rain erosion and testing on those products. We, Joel will just put it up on the website, our rain erosion test of the lm uh, wind power lightning diverters. But lightning is usually coming from the sky, which means that a lightning diverter or StrikeTape product needs to be kind of pointed upwards to work effectively. And LM won’t do that. Uh, GE Renova won’t do that. [00:28:00] So what you’re gonna see is a lot of, uh, with the airflow, lightning diverters around the receptors, it’s gonna be somewhat effective. Not great. So it looks like it’s added lightning protection, but in effect, it’s just minimal improvement. If you really want to attack this lightning problem, you need to direct a lightning diverter like, uh, StrikeTape towards the sky and try to intercept these lightning strikes that are damaging your blades. So it’s, it’s simple as that. And if you haven’t worked with weather guard in the past, we’re really easy to deal with. Right. So we we’re experts in lightning protection. We’ve been doing it a long time. We understand. The problems you’re having and we can make it easy. That’s the whole point. So if, if you have lightning damage, choosing StrikeTape is the right solution. Quick to install, easy to implement, proven track record. We’re gonna give you an eLog ping lightning detection system to put on each tower that you put StrikeTape on so you can [00:29:00] monitor it, you can see the money you’re saving. It’s that simple.  Joel Saxum: So if you made it to this point in our, in the podcast, you’re clearly, uh, needing some lightning protection support, reach out to us, right? So www.weatherguardwind.com is our website. On the website we have contact forms. You can go through that, or like I said earlier in the episode, Joel dot Saxon, SAXU m@wglightning.com. I’ve always got that email in my hand. So that’s a great way to get ahold of us. The other one, uh, if you wanna get ahold of us right now on that website is a chat function lower bottom right corner. We’re monitoring it all the time, so we are, we’re always ready for a conversation. Like Alan said, we’re easy to get ahold of, we’re easy to deal with. So now you have no excuses to, uh, get some upgraded lightning protection  Allen Hall: support for your fleet. Yeah, just reach out to weather guard wind.com or just get ahold of Joel and I, we’re on LinkedIn also. We’re easy to, easy to find out in the world. And thanks for listening, right? We appreciate everybody that’s participated with the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. We put this [00:30:00] podcast together to disseminate great information about what’s happening in wind, and we just thought we had to take a few moments to talk about what we actually do for a day job, which is lightning protection for wind turbines all around the world. So thank you for listening. We’ll see you here next week on The Up. With Energy Podcast Spotlight.

The Uptime hosts examine Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s federal oversight mandate, the administration’s plan to replace Idaho’s cancelled Lava Ridge Wind Farm with six nuclear reactors, and critique a recent wind conference in Australia. The discussion also covers French utility EDF’s plan to sell 50% of its North American wind portfolio to raise 2 billion euros for nuclear upgrades in France. Sign up for the next SkySpecs webinar! Register for  UK Offshore Wind Supply Chain Spotlight 2025! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Allen Hall: [00:00:00] Mark your calendars December 11th at the Royal Highland Center in Edinburgh, because you’ll want to be at the UK offshore wind supply chain Spotlight 2025. This isn’t just another conference. It’s where the UK’s offshore wind supply chain comes together. Co-hosted by ORE Catapult and the Offshore Wind Growth Partnership. Spotlight 2025 is where developers connect with suppliers and where the next breakthrough in offshore wind technology gets its moment to shine. So whether you’re looking to forge new partnerships, secure critical investments, or simply stay ahead of the curve in this rapidly evolving sector, you’ll need to register for this event. Remember December 11th in Edinburg for Spotlight 2025. Just Google. Edinburgh Supply Chain Spotlight 2025. You can register today. You’re listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, brought to you by bill turbines.com. Learn train and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. [00:01:00] Visit build turbines.com today. Now here’s your hosts, Alan Hall, Joel Saxon, Phil Tartaro, and Rosemary Barnes.  Allen Hall: Well, greetings from Charlotte, North Carolina to the Queen City. I’m Alan Hall and I’m here with Phil Tartaro from the Golden State of California. And Joel Saxon is at an undisclosed location in a secure bunker, so that’s not gonna leak out where he is. And Rosemary is enjoying the winter months in beautiful Australia. And we have some interesting topics this week, but I wanna lead off with Rosemary. Went to another WIN conference, WIN plus conference in Australia. Rosemary.  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, actually I, I feel petty, um, dissing this conference now because this is the one that Alan, you and I did a whole episode on how bad this conference was last year and, um. That’s what caused us to feel like we needed to organize our own wind energy conference. Uh, that covered some technical topics, but you’re walking around the conference, like, why is there so much hydrogen stuff at a wind energy conference? And I’m like, okay, well maybe that’s like what they perceive that, you know, most of the [00:02:00] new projects in Australia, all the big ones say that they’re associated with hydrogen. So maybe that’s it. And then I started seeing a lot of, um, carbon capture things and, you know, like eels and all sorts of, all sorts of things related to. CO2. Um, so that confused me. Um, and then I saw that it was also a carbon capture conference too. So yeah, the exhibition was, was not, not too bad. I had definitely had lots of good conversations with people. Um, some interesting things like, um, the drone, uh, yeah, drone inspections, a few new capabilities coming up. There were a couple of people with good drones, um, that can. Test the resistance of an LPS and say that they can do a whole turbine in an hour and a half. So, um, that’s, that’s pretty good. There was also some cool NDT, uh, non-destructive testing stuff and a really small portable ultrasound machine, and they wouldn’t give me a price, but it seemed like maybe, um, a wind farm could own one and use it to [00:03:00] sometimes check repairs. I know I’ve heard some operators in Australia have been saying how. Um, they are a bit confused about whether their repairs are good or not because they do see the same blades coming in for repair over and over again. And I haven’t actually, um, seen, seen the data to know is this the exact same location or is it somewhere else? But you know, if you’re having a problem like that, then in investing in a small ultrasound machine and the expertise to use it. ’cause it’s definitely not something where just any random off the street can, can interpret. The results. But this particular machine, and I haven’t looked into it, I just had the chat at the booth yesterday. They say that it can work on quite curved surfaces, which, um, usually it, it will struggle. So if that’s true then that could be quite handy. But yeah. Um, I didn’t go to any of the presentations ’cause I was so, I dunno, I’m gonna say disgusted. I was actually disgusted by it last year. Not just like disappointed or not interested. It was like a stronger emotion than that because it’s just like, you know, they get all these people here. Kind of promise that you’re gonna learn [00:04:00]something about, about wind energy. But instead they just put people on stage who, uh, either one, they work for a company who has sponsored the event. If you sponsor the event, then it comes with a certain number of speaker slots attached to it. Um, or two that they, you just explicitly pay for the presentation and I can’t remember, but I think it’s around about 10,000 US dollars. So this year I saw just a few of the, there’s some smaller stages in the exhibition area. Um, I saw some like weird ones on hydrogen where they’re still talking like it’s, I don’t know, 2018 and no one’s really sure what hydrogen can or can’t do. What else? Oh yeah. And the other thing, um, I did pass this hilarious, um. Hilarious little scene where they had a backdrop that said Women in net zero future, um, like written on the background, not like projected on there, written there. And then, um, you know, panel after panel was, uh, yeah, full of, full of men. This particular photo took is extra funny ’cause it just looks like five versions of the exact same guy. It’s, it’s like, you know, [00:05:00] say same age, same haircut, same race. It is just like, is this just, yeah. So that is a handy tip for organizers that if you’re gonna, you know, write women on your background, maybe think about how many women that you have speaking worth going. Um, and uh, again, it, you know, reignites. My, uh, passion for putting together an event where you actually, you know, talk about the technical issues and, um, you know, present information that people can learn from. Um, yeah. You know, um, companies with products can learn about what the problems that operators are facing and operators can learn about solutions that exist. So that’s, um, yeah, we we’re working at the moment on that for next conference. I think that’s, uh, also the goal of what’s, um, we’ve got Wind Summit coming up in Houston in a few months, so there are good events out there.  Allen Hall: Don’t let blade damage catch you off guard. OGs, ping sensors detect issues before they become expensive, time consuming problems.[00:06:00] From ice buildup and lightning strikes to pitch misalignment in 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 og ping.com and take control of your turbine’s health today. Uh, the White House has issued a new order requiring interior Secretary Doug Bergham to personally approve all wind and solar energy projects on federal lands and waters. And. Uh, this enhanced oversight covers everything from leases to right of ways to construction plans and operational approvals across literally millions of acres of federal property. And the interior Department is saying that it aims to end preferential treatment for what it calls unreliable subsidy, dependent wind and solar energy. And my first thought of this is like, all right, fine. Do it. Let’s see how long this lasts, [00:07:00] because I don’t think the administration can produce the amount of energy that it needs to produce in the short amount of time they’re gonna be around. Without wind and solar, they’re gonna have to let some of these projects through, or there’s going to be big time power constraints. Right. Phil?  Phil Totaro: The bigger issue is offshore as, as pertains the Department of the Interior for onshore wind. I mean certainly solar, but for onshore wind. We only have out of the 55 gigawatts or so that’s either, um, already been approved for construction and has started construction. Uh, is in the interconnection queue or hasn’t been fully approved and permitted yet? Um, I think it’s like less than six gigawatts that’s even on or touching any kind of federal land or requiring any kind of federal permit, which would fall under this jurisdiction. So, and most, like I said, most of the stuff’s already been approved, so there’s not much that it’s going to impact onshore wind. Solar will be [00:08:00] more. Modestly impacted, um, just because for utility scale projects, they sometimes use federal land. Um, but for the most part, we, we don’t really get out there and, and touch that, where this has obviously the, the biggest implication is what we’ve already seen since January, which is offshore wind. Um, but that’s not really a big. Change. Although what’s interesting to me is we’ll see, you know, with this whole push for accountability, um, you know, we’ll see if they’re willing to stand behind their, uh, you know, approvals and assessments the same way they’re challenging ones issued by previous administrations. Joel Saxum: I mean, ’cause at the end of the day, there’s not, there isn’t much for wind on federal land. Anyways, I’m speaking just for wind, right. On, on onshore and not much for solar either. Now we know that there’s some good wind resource and some good solar resource on federal lands, but they just haven’t been tapped yet. It’s mostly all on private land, and I think part of that reason is as well, federal lands at a large scale in the [00:09:00] United States are also where there’s no population.  Phil Totaro: Yeah. And no transmission. So what, what are we worried about? What’s the point? Yeah, there’s no,  Allen Hall: the one place where there was a wind farm that got shut down by the current administration was in Idaho, right? So the Lava Ridge Wind Farm, which would’ve been in Southern. Idaho got shut down in early January, and this has led to some interesting developments because the administration wants to put nuclear on the same site, so saw tooth energy and development plans to build. 462 megawatt nuclear power plants total. So it would be actually 6 77 megawatt new scale plants is what they’re talking about. New scale is a South Korean company and it would be, I guess they call those small modular reactors, 77 megawatts. Uh, and the goal is here is where there would’ve been a wind farm [00:10:00] is to put in these nuclear reactors Now. They also are claiming that they’re gonna shorten the timeline down from like five years to two because they’re gonna run out of time, right? So the administrations are gonna run outta time. So they gotta get these projects in fast. But the South Koreans and New Scale is saying, we don’t know much about this. We haven’t committed to this project at all. I’m just curious how this is gonna work out if, if I’m a neighbor to, uh, these wind farms and there are wind farms around this area, right? Joel? In southern Idaho, there are quite a  Joel Saxum: few. There’s that, there’s a horseshoe. If you look at like the US wind turbine database, they’ll see this kind of horseshoe in the southern part of, and it’s around the mountain ranges where the wind flows through the valley. Allen Hall: Yeah, that, that would make a lot of sense. Right. So instead of me having a wind farm there, there now would have six modular reactors in their backyard. I’m wondering what you think the politics of that would be locally would, that would be accepted as like, Hey, let’s do this nuclear reactor. Let’s put six of ’em down instead of these wind farms. [00:11:00] Think that’s gonna play well in Idaho.  Phil Totaro: If you look at what the objections were to the leverage wind farm that LS power was proposing, they centered around the fact that it was going to, uh, disrupt, uh, a lot of the relics there from, um, some of the internment camps. Um, and, you know, some of the, the history preservation that, that, you know, goes on in that area. So. The, the reality is I can’t imagine how they’re not gonna have the same objections. Plus, are people there who are already kind of in this NIMBY mood, really gonna be in the mood for having a, a nuclear plant nearby as opposed to something that doesn’t radiate well, that’s, that, that, that’s  Joel Saxum: a key point too. You live in, uh, Idaho. You live in that corner of the world, Wyoming, Idaho, Northern Utah, Eastern Washington, Oregon, you’re there because you love the outdoors for the most part, right? Like people, those people love their [00:12:00] natural resources to cool This reactor, you’re on the Snake River. The Snake River is one of the, you’re on, that’s one of the most storied fishing rivers in the all of the American West. Snake River runs into the Tetons. Like it is absolutely stunning that that whole river basin is so. I got to think that if you think you’re gonna speed this up from five years to two years, that means you’re gonna circumvent all kinds of permitting and, you know, public feedback issues and stuff. Like it’s, you’re, you’re nuts if you think you’re gonna do that. Allen Hall: Didn’t Evil Knievel jump, snake River? Wasn’t that the river that he hopped over?  Phil Totaro: I think he hit the Grand Canyon. That’s a Colorado River. He did the Grand Canyon for sure, but I thought he also did the Rio Grande. I don’t remember if he did the Stink River.  Allen Hall: Well, if E Knievel could do it then uh, evidently the current administration could do something just as bold. Right. We’ll see. I think there’s a lot of work to do there as wind energy professionals staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it difficult. That’s why the Uptime [00:13:00] podcast recommends PES Wind Magazine. PES Wind offers a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit ps wind.com today. French utility. EDF is considering bringing in capital to its North American and Brazilian and renewable businesses. Uh uh, obviously there’s uh, a need for cash flow with EDF and they’re thinking they may sell up to 50% of those businesses, and it comes at a time when EDF has some offshore losses, but they’re also seeking some fundraising to. Clean up some nuclear projects that are happening in France. There’s a lot of aging nuclear reactors that need to be upgraded, and EDF would be the one to go do that. So they’re trying to raise some cash that that opens up the possibility of some new players coming into the [00:14:00] Brazilian market and the American market. Who are likely buyers into EDF?  Phil Totaro: Well, they, they’ve actually got, uh, in North America alone, uh, between the US and Canada, about six gigawatts just in wind. Four gigawatts of it is already, you know, co-owned by a number of different funds, including, um, Masar, the Canadian Pension Plan, investment Board, and Enbridge, um, Alliant Energy, uh, PGGM, infrastructure Fund, et cetera. Um, Allianz, uh, BlackRock. So the, the point here is that out of what they, they currently own outright, um, it’s about two gigawatts of wind. Um, they’ve got, you know, average PPA on, on that. Uh, capacity is about $63, uh, a megawatt hour, although some of that’s on a merchant market, and it looks like the total net [00:15:00] profit to plan to end of asset life per megawatt for that two gigawatts worth of capacity is about $1.9 million. So that’s really good. That beats the market average. Um, and so the, what they have as far as their existing portfolio is, is, I’d say fairly attractive. They’re asking, uh, or seeking something like 2 billion euros, which I think is about 2.2 billion us, um, at this point. So, you know, uh, I think they’ll, they shouldn’t be at a loss to find buyers for this, because keep in mind as well, most of their project capacity, um, is also old enough to be able to still claim production tax credits. Um, so. Uh, it’s gonna throw repowering into question for some of these assets that come up between 2027 and 2029, but, um, that’ll, that’ll probably get dealt with in the future.  Joel Saxum: Do you think that there’s a play here to say like, Hey, we own this 50% or x percent with this person, this person this. Is there a partial [00:16:00]sale to a bunch of people? Is there just like kind of piecemeal like, oh, we’re 50% with you. Why don’t you take the whole thing and we’ll still maintain it for you? Why don’t you take the whole one of this one? Why don’t you take the whole, would they do that or they  Phil Totaro: wanna looking to sell it in bulk? I think they would probably. I, I don’t think it necessarily matters. Joel. That’s a good question though. Um. Because they’ve already got, you know, projects where they’re, they’ve already been diluted, um, by other owners coming in. But, uh, my impression is that they wouldn’t necessarily sell a hundred percent of the projects where they have some stake, um, just because of various, you know, reasons they wanna maintain ties with. You know, this market, um, particularly in the US and you know, where they’ve got, you know, more than four gigawatts installed here, it’s 1.5 up in Canada and uh, I think it’s about 600 or so megawatts down Brazil. So, you know, they, they wanna be able to maintain what they have, um, but they still want to be able to, [00:17:00] um, you know, bring in additional. Um, capital providers or, or co-owners to some of the capacity they haven’t already sold. Um, it’s also likely that some of the existing owners may opt out and, you know, wanna sell off a, a chunk of what they, they own. So there’s opportunities for further dilution, um, in that sense as well. But, uh, you know, they’ve, they’ve got plenty to left to sell to be able to, you know, get the 2 billion euros that they wanna get so they can go fund whatever they feel like funding in, in Europe. That’s gonna do it for this  Allen Hall: week’s Uptime Wind Energy podcast. Thanks for listening, everyone, and we’ll see you here same time. Same channel for the Uptime Win Energy Podcast next [00:18:00] week.

Alan Hall discusses Jupiter Bach’s halted expansion, New York’s offshore wind project delays, BP’s exit from the US wind market, Maryland’s permit defense, and a major clean energy deal in the UK and Germany. 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! A major wind turbine supplier in Pensacola, Florida is scaling back expansion plans. Jupiter Bach, a Denmark-based company, is pausing hiring after passage of President Trump’s energy bill. The company makes nacelle covers and other components for wind turbines. Plant manager Sean Guidry says the company had planned to grow its local workforce from two hundred forty to more than three hundred twenty employees next year. Now he says they see a more flat year. The policy shift comes after President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill into law earlier this month. The legislation significantly shortens the eligibility window for wind and solar tax credits. Projects must now break ground by twenty twenty-six and enter service by twenty twenty-seven to receive full tax benefits. Previously, those credits were locked in through twenty thirty-two. Guidry says his company had planned an additional one point two million dollars of investments in their Pensacola plant this year. Now those investments are in question. The company supplies components directly to GE Vernova, whose nearby plant assembles complete nacelles for wind energy projects across the country. Guidry urges policymakers to view wind energy as key to U.S. manufacturing and energy independence. He warns that without reliable federal support, the United States could lose ground to China in fast-growing industries that depend on abundant, low-cost electricity. New York State has put the brakes on a major offshore wind project. The New York State Public Service Commission terminated its offshore wind transmission planning process. The commission cited stalled federal permitting as the reason. This halts plans to deliver up to eight gigawatts of offshore wind power into New York City by twenty thirty-three. Commission Chair Rory M. Christian says the uncertainty coming out of Washington forced the state to act. He says quote, “This is not the end. We’ll move forward once the federal government resumes permitting.” The commission cited recent federal actions halting new offshore wind leasing and permitting. Officials say those actions make short-term project execution unfeasible. Existing projects like South Fork Wind, Empire Wind and Sunrise Wind are unaffected and continue to move forward. The commission says it will apply lessons from this process to future planning. It’s focusing on affordability, reliability and risk reduction. British oil giant BP is getting out of the wind business in America. The company announced Friday it’s selling its entire U.S. onshore wind operation to LS Power. The sale includes wind farms spread across seven states with a combined capacity of one point seven gigawatts. BP did not disclose the sale price. But previous estimates valued the wind business at as much as two billion dollars. The sale is part of BP’s twenty billion dollar divestment program announced in February. The company is streamlining its business and pivoting back toward fossil fuels to boost returns to shareholders. William Lin, BP’s executive vice-president for gas and low-carbon energy, says green energy still has a role to play in the company’s portfolio. But he says BP is no longer the best owner to take the wind business forward. The move comes as BP seeks to refocus on its core oil and gas operations. The company’s share price has fallen more than ten percent over the past twelve months. After the transaction closes, BP Wind Energy will become part of LS Power’s subsidiary Clearlight Energy. That will increase the LS Power’s energy group’s operating fleet to about four point three gigawatts. Maryland is fighting back against federal regulators over an offshore wind permit. The Maryland Department of the Environment defended the permit it issued to US Wind for a project off Ocean City. The state rejected a challenge from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Maryland Secretary of the Environment Serena McIlwain says the state will not reissue the permit as the EPA requested. She says the state made no mistake that needed correcting. The EPA had argued that Maryland identified the wrong process for citizens to file appeals of the air pollution permit. EPA administrator Amy Van Blarcom-Lackey says any appeals should be filed with the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board. But Maryland argues its permit should be appealed through state courts in Worcester County. The deadline for state court challenges has already passed. McIlwain says long-settled procedure dictates that state-issued permits are appealed under state law, not federal law. The US Wind project is planned about ten miles from Ocean City’s shoreline. When complete, it will include one hundred twenty-one wind turbines and could generate 2.2GW of energy. There’s positive news from the offshore wind industry today. Clean energy companies Masdar and Iberdrola have announced a five point two billion euro deal in the United Kingdom. The two companies will split ownership of the East Anglia THREE offshore wind farm fifty-fifty. When complete, the project will produce one point four gigawatts of power. That’s enough electricity to power one point three million British homes. The companies also announced that their Baltic Eagle wind farm in Germany is now fully operational. That four hundred seventy-six megawatt project will supply around four hundred seventy-five thousand households with renewable energy. Masdar Chairman Sultan Al Jaber says offshore wind will play a crucial role in the global energy transformation. He says projects like these have never been more critical due to growing demand from artificial intelligence and emerging markets. The East Anglia THREE project is expected to come online in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty-six. It will be one of the world’s two largest offshore wind farms. The deal is part of a fifteen billion euro strategic partnership between the two companies. They plan to accelerate clean energy deployment across the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States. That’s the week’s top news stories. Join us tomorrow for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

Mads Arild Vedøy and Anders Nash explore the Utsira Nord project and Norway’s bid to lead in floating offshore wind technology. They discuss the strategic transition from oil and gas, the unique tender process, and the global implications of a successful execution. Learn more about the Utsira Nord bidding process! 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 2025: Mads and Anders, welcome to the program.  Anders Nash: Thank you. Thanks Allen, for having us. And, uh, it’s a show we listen to a lot. So a pleasure to be with you today.  Allen Hall 2025: Well, we, we have a really interesting subject here, and I want to pick. Both your brains a about the, some of the complexities of floating wind in Norway. And, uh, we know that the floating offshore wind industry is still relatively new and it’s actually at a critical juncture. And even though we have proven that technology works at scale, it’s, we, we don’t have large development yet. And that is where Norway is stepping in and changing that equation quite radically. Uh. Let’s just back up a minute. The project’s called OSU Nord, and [00:01:00] if you haven’t been paying attention, you’ve been missing a lot because, uh, floating wind is gonna be the way of the future. But ultimately, what is the fundamental problem that OSU Nord is trying to solve?  Mads Arild Vedøy: So, of course, uh, node has been kind of on the verge. I, I would say, since the, the, since, at least since 2020, but also even before that with, uh, EOR, uh, launching their, uh, high wind, uh, demo turbine, right? The first world’s first floating wind turbine. And Norway really kind of saw itself as a front runner in, in floating wind. Um, fast forward to 2020. The then government opened these areas for offshore wind in Norway with, um, with uja, nor as one of the bigger floating one, right, one and a half gigawatt of floating wind. And what Norway kind of wants to do is to take a position within this market.[00:02:00] It and, and more kind of this industrial perspective rather than for the energy production. Right? Because Norway has, uh, we are self-sufficient for now at least. Uh, but with the electrification going on. We will soon run enough that as well. But, but for now, and the predictions going on to, to 2030, we are Okay. Looking a bit further. It should be, well, the, the surplus is gonna diminish or, or at least be far less than we have. So, yeah. That, that’s the, I guess the problem we are trying to solve is, is more the transition from being an. Oil and gas community to, um, also secure the industry for the next phase of energy production, right? And not only only gas, but also electricity. With Norway, then being this maritime nation and, and seeing ourselves as, as, uh, one of the leaders in, in, [00:03:00] in offshore installations, we, we see that we can take a position as a leading developer of, uh, of floating wind as well.  Joel Saxum: I think it’s very interesting, right? That we, you, we come along this, this train, right? Because like you said, Norway is, you’re rife with renewable energies. You guys have a lot of hydro, you’re, you’re, you’re good there. And the PPA prices for that reason are fairly low. Um, comparatively so you, but you have this industrial, marine, industrial complex that a lot of places don’t have. Allen and I have talked about on the podcast many times in the US we have a lot of coastline. The really only marine industrial complex we have is in the Gulf of Mexico, to be honest with you. Right. Otherwise, it’s just kind of port cities and stuff like that. So you guys have, and, and we, we talked about this a little bit off air. You know, my, my, my past in the oil and gas offshore world, it was like, we need to solve something, bring in the Norwegians because we know they’re gonna get it done. We know they’re gonna do it. Right. So there’s a lot of [00:04:00] technology companies that already exist. For sub sea things up there, you have like, you know, one of the biggest ones, if you’re offshore, anywhere, you know about Kongsberg, they’re there, right? So that they create all kinds of amazing instrumentation and tools for, for the marine environment. So you guys have that, that pedigree, that know-how. So I think it’s really cool that you take, the idea is to take that, that in industrial complex and turn it into something that can really turn the economy on for the future. Right. As you guys start to, like you said, like you start to pivot away from oil and gas. You have this skill sets, you have all of these amazing workers and technicians and professionals there that can do things that other places may not have. So it puts you guys in the, kind of the driver’s seat for something like offshore floating wind. I think it’s really interesting.  Anders Nash: Obviously I’m, I’m sitting in Copenhagen. I’m not in, uh, in, in Norway with mass, but, uh. I was fortunate enough to work on some of the, um, the offshore bids, uh, during my time with RW with eor, for example, and it’s, it’s pronounced, it’s very clear those strengths that you speak about in [00:05:00]Norway. Those opportunities, they have that deep rooted ONG knowhow, very unique, um, in to some extent potentially an easy transition, something they can capitalize on in the in, in the wind sector as well. Curiously, we’ve seen recently NVE in Norway trying to push the government in the direction of fixed bottom offshore wind. But clearly the government sees that their opportunity there deviates from the, should we say, tried and proven technology and can they leverage their know-how in that ONG sector, whether it’s through platforms, whatever else it is, it’s all there. I suppose the key question, mark, Allen and Joel, uh, and Mass and I reflect on this a lot. Is Norway gonna be a nation of exporters of that knowledge? Will it be developed elsewhere or are they actually, do they have the appetite to develop that in their backyard as well? And that’s, that’s the sort of juncture that we sit at now.  Allen Hall 2025: Yeah. Because it really comes down to if [00:06:00] Sarah Norty isn’t completed, and if there’s not enough participation in the, uh, system that’s been set up. And we’ll talk about that in a moment. The industry on, on the floating side is really gonna be in trouble. Uh, we need that leadership and the technology and the knowledge, as Joel has pointed out of, uh, of all the nor Norwegian offshore expertise to go ahead and do a floating project of that. It was relatively complicated. It, these floating projects are not easy, particularly way up north. Uh, this is a big problem, right? And if, if, if nobody can pull this off, then pretty much the rest of the world. We’ll just follow suit, right?  Mads Arild Vedøy: Yes. But, but I mean, there, there’s also a competition here, right? We, we see all of, so we see France, we see uk, we see everyone’s trying to take this position as the leading country for, well develop being the first making large scale commercial, uh, floating wind farm. So, um, [00:07:00] it, it, it’s just a, as much, uh, uh, an industrial endeavor. For, for, for Norway and for the, for the rest of the countries. But we, we also already see, um, Norwegian competencies, right? We see Norwegian ships, we, we and, and, um, anchor handlers and everything all over the world. Also in, in offshore wind projects. So this is, well, depending on what kind of industry you’re looking at, of course, but, uh, except for the yards and so on, the, the industry is already, already moving in that direction. And what this UJA North can do is just kind of strengthening that, um, that effort we see. I, I would say,  Anders Nash: I think, and there’s a curious thing there isn’t there, mass, because there’s, there’s two elements to this. The first is, as Allen had touched upon a moment ago. Um, is it about, uh, Norway leveraging this in their own backyard? Um, is it something that we just develop [00:08:00] elsewhere? The danger, the juncture that we’re at now we’re seeing is with, with the UK floating projects, with what’s going on in France with what’s going on in Japan. Does Norway now just start sending that knowledge elsewhere? Or is it something that they can actually develop locally and keep that local knowhow? And I think. Allen alluded to it a moment ago. This is a key juncture. Um, when we come back from our Nordic summer holidays, uh, we should hopefully start to see some bidders in the mix. Um, but it’s really crunch time. And the Norwegian government, I think they recognize that. So, um, let’s see where we land.  Joel Saxum: Let’s put it in sports context, right? We’ll try, try to do this. We can be going go and be coaches on, on a soccer team or, you know, a soccer team anywhere and help out. However, we have an awesome practice pitch right out our back door. Why don’t we practice there as well and refine these things and then take it around the world. Because at the end of the day, 70% ish of the continental shelf of Norway is too deep for fixed bottom floating. And it’s difficult too, right? [00:09:00] You’re, it’s very rocky. There’s a lot of the complexities in o and m complexities, um, around that Norwegian coast. So if, and that’s kind of, I think where Allen was going before is if you can, if you can get it there, you have the practice field there to get it right. This project, this u Nord is, it’s, it’s a shining light right now. The people are focused on it, right? As we’ve seen tenders moving around the world, there’s a lot of people focused on this one, um, in the wind world. And if they can get this one moving, get it nailed. I think that the export of floating wind technology, because your entire value chain is bought into it, can go a big way from from Norway going forward to the world.  Allen Hall 2025: I think we ought to talk about what this tender framework looks like because it’s different than things that I have seen, particularly in the United States for offshore. Norway is taking a really different approach to it. Uh, Andres, maybe you can walk us through what this process looks like because it’s a two stage process.  Anders Nash: Happy to do so. Allen and I think [00:10:00] in part what’s intriguing about this is this, uh, the three 500 megawatt sites, but ultimately with only one. Winner of the overall subsidy and that that’s a real game changer. So I think what Mass and I have typically seen through, should we call it the boom years, uh, for lack of a better term in the offshore sector, was companies trying to execute what we called optionality. So we’d have our boardrooms behind us saying, okay, um, let’s have a look at these sites, uh, particularly in an auction that looks resembles something like a a two-step auction. We’re familiar with from, from the UK and elsewhere. Give us some optionality in that. Where this deviates substantially, I think is the new, should we call it macro outlook, uh, in the global economy. Um, those companies are reticent, I think, to make those kind of, uh, those kind of bets. Um, and I think with the, uh, the one subsidy winner in this model, um, the stakes are very high. So the question is, do we see people go in. [00:11:00] With a slightly more aggressive attitude as they have in the past, or are people playing the safe game? And some of the announcements that we’ve seen, um, in the industry of late, perhaps lean a little bit to the latter. Um, what I would say, uh, added to the mix is of course, Norway did have a fixed bottom auction not long ago, um, that did have bidders. Um, which perhaps, uh, was, was, was to the boon of, um, of, of the Norwegian government. I think this is, this is an intriguing thing. And, and you had mentioned, uh, what’s at stake in terms of subsidy. I mean, one might still argue. Does it really go far enough? Look at some of the, uh, the megawatt hour prices that went forward in the uk. It’s still a nascent technology, as you’d alluded to before. Um, the L-C-E-L-C-O-E needs to be driven down substantially as a long maturation journey. Um, and I think a lot of the sector players know that. So Mass has got his finger on the pulse locally. He’s talking to these people in [00:12:00] hallways. Let’s see who’s ready to act. Joel Saxum: I think, I think something really important that I like to see in this, uh, the tender framework is the scoring. A lot of the scoring is focused on like cost, realism, the ability to execute, and it’s more pragmatic. It’s like, okay, let’s put something real down here. Do you have the port facilities? Are you gonna be able to do this rather than. Aspirational visions. I like to see things that are down to brass tacks. Okay, how are you gonna do this? Do you have the vessels? Do you have the manpower? Do you have the, the a HT knowledge to be able to mow these things off? How are we gonna do this? And I think that that’s, that’s a also, again, a very Norwegian point of view, and I like that. Anders Nash: I would also say, um, so we have a, we have an industry, uh, term, which is speculative bids. They’re trying to kill off those speculative bids. Those have undermined the sector as a whole. Substantially. Um, with that said and done, all the things you just mentioned are fantastic aspirations to have, but the reality of the situation, I’ll revert to my [00:13:00] term earlier, this is a nascent technology. Um, there is not a plug and play, uh, WTG out there that, um, they can just drop and, and get to work. So, um. It’s the right way to go about things. Pragmatism, as you said. Um, and the move away from very highly qualitative criteria, which was in place, uh, in the last, uh, failed round or the stopped round is now taken off the table. So I think that’s positive and I’d agree with there, there, Joel clamped down on the speculative bids. My main concern is the macro. Situation and the nascency of, of the sector. So those are things that we, the Norwegian government has to recognize and tackle as well.  Mads Arild Vedøy: What you kind of alluded to here is for, you mentioned briefly, is that there was a failed round, right? So U Nod was actually announced first in, in 2023, and then we saw a delay, delay and then the government said, well, we’ll get back to you. Right? Um. When they came back, now [00:14:00] they had just tightened all the screws and, and kind of made this framework even tighter than it was because it, well, when we were looking at it, uh, when we were in, in RWE, we, this wasn’t the easiest way forward, but, but at least, um. Um, it was easier than it is now because now you have these, uh, uh, qua qualification, um, requirements, right? With, with, you have to have at least 20% of every stage of your development in, of a wind farm. So development, construction, and operation. And that wind farm needs to have been more than 200 megawatts and has been, uh, and. Become online no later than, or no earlier than 2015. So I mean, that also kind of shrinks down the participants that kid could actually bid here.  Anders Nash: I totally agree, mass. If you look at the, the [00:15:00] basic criteria, cost level and realism, which you alluded to there, Joel. Innovation and technological development, but less speculative than it used to be. And the key I think here is, is the ex execution capability, uh, which Mass had alluded to. So that sort of takes the speculative bidders out of the game. Um, proven projects in operation really slims the field. So I think I hear where you’re going with your next question, Joel and Allen. Um, I’ll throw that back over to you guys and let mass field that one. Allen Hall 2025: Well, how many. Potential bidders are there. If they have to have 200 megawatts of offshore winds already deployed, what does that list look like?  Mads Arild Vedøy: Well, it, it, it’s, it’s become shorter, right? And, and it, it kind of, uh, just, just after the, the announcement, it kind of grew shorter by the hour we watched it dwindle through the press, right? So, so now I think, well the, the, at least the, what the media and everyone’s saying is that we are [00:16:00] potentially looking at the, the three players that it’s expected to bid. None has confirmed, but of course, uh, three, uh, three might. Um, but also the, this kind of strict requirements has also made somewhat of a turmoil or also the, because the smaller operators. Doesn’t of, of course, doesn’t like this. Right. Or, or the one that has, has this, uh, business model of, of developing and, and building, but not operating.  Joel Saxum: Yep. Flipping. Yeah.  Mads Arild Vedøy: Yeah. So that is, I mean, is do they have less of an experience compared to an investor who has been in all the phases? Um, I would say no, but, but I mean, so, so you get these questions about who really qualifies is, is it the right qualifications? Joel Saxum: Is there space for a consortium in there? Like, like if there is one of these smaller players that’s kind of like [00:17:00] aggressive and they wanna really get something done, but they don’t necessarily have the track record, they go and grab an RWE or someone of that sort. To say like, Hey, we, we really want to do this, but we’ve got, we, we brought big brother in to, to be our, uh, our facilitator. Anders Nash: But that’s as much as bringing down the risk profile on these projects. Right. So, um, I, I think what we’re gonna see, I would like to think one of the, the maturation journeys we see through this sort of. Challenge that the sector’s facing at the moment is a proliferation of consortia that can carry these sort of projects. And I think it, and it’s necessary in terms of capital, it’s necessary to drive down risk. It’s necessary to leverage each other’s know-how. I think we’re gonna see that more and more. But going back to something, uh, Joel and Allen mentioned a moment ago, uh, I think Mass and I, from our, uh, experience on, on the Norwegian markets, um, has shown that. You might not hear too many, too many murmurings from individual players. [00:18:00] But what you do see in Norway is highly active, uh, industry organizations. And I would expect if there’s an element of pushback, whether it’s related to the subsidy, whether it’s related to the criteria, it will usually be channeled through those groups because none of the critical, particularly Norwegian players. Want to be seen giving direct pushback. So I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more announcements coming from those angles.  Mads Arild Vedøy: At the same time, man, we, we saw the same thing with SN two, right? We, we saw more and more players saying, well, no thanks, not this time. Right? Um, and, and ended up with a very few number of, of, uh, of bidders. Anders Nash: I’ve had much the same experience in. Norway I felt through our regulatory teams as we had in Denmark. So the, the public side of the equation does tend to be relatively open to dialogue. It doesn’t necessarily move the needle sufficiently, but we are, um, we are in, involved in [00:19:00] markets where that dialogue is relatively open. We’re getting to a late stage in Norway. Um, but, but there is somebody on the other side of the table willing to discuss and, and let’s see where that takes us.  Joel Saxum: So there is an inherent risk here, right? We’ve talked with some other people that are developing some offshore floating platform, and there’s this, there’s a risk, but there is an appetite in certain ways, right? Like I said, one of the leading insurance companies that, and the, and the insurers are the ones who are gonna, are gonna underwrite the whole thing. That’s a Norwegian based company. They want to be the head of, or the, you know, that, that lead, that lead boat, uh, pun intended, I guess, uh, for offshore floating wind insurance. So you have that appetite there. How, what are they, what do this does the, okay, we have the subsidy that’s gonna be in place. What other mechanisms are they putting in place to possibly reduce the risk so that Norway can jump ahead of the line and prove there might, in this sector,  Mads Arild Vedøy: it’s, it’s the subsidy that, that’s kind of, it is the, the tool that the, the government uses to drive this. And of [00:20:00] course favorable politics and so on, right? But, but apart from that, we really don’t see This is so, so the floating wind endeavor for Norway is gonna be developed as close to a market condition as, as as possible. Realizing that for a few years now, or for the first project, there will be a need for, for state support in, in some way or the other, but. Um, the government will not step in and kind of do a, um, a direct market intervention. That’s not the, what they want to do. That, that’s also a problem when it comes kind of, because now it’s a, it’s, it’s a labor government. They are very, uh, very positive to, to floating wind. Offshore wind kind of driving this, the conservative opposition is somewhat more. Reluctant to take that, uh, position. They are [00:21:00] pointing to market conditions and, and saying, well, if it can’t pay for itself, why should we pay for it? Right.  Anders Nash: All sounds very familiar in the Norwegian context.  Mads Arild Vedøy: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so, so, so it it’s kind of, that doesn’t mean that when or if they come to power, they will not su give the, the state support because. Well in, I think they will because I see this, uh, industrial effort that we need to take sooner or later.  Anders Nash: So I think Ma Mass has alluded to a few of the challenges there actually. So, um, again, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll go back to that point. Appetite. Where does the Norwegian government’s appetite, how far can that take us? Because they need to play a very prominent role if this is to succeed. Energy prices in Norway are extremely low, so the potential fee, PPA market question marks, um, you asked about risk mitigation. I think, um, great with if the insurance companies are on this, but project finance now, [00:22:00] we’re, we’re in a whole different ball game than we were three years ago. Um, so can, can any companies come on this on an equity basis, the project finances? So it’s, it’s a challenging market and again, I would say. The Norwegian government, they’re in the hot seat. Can they deliver? Can they carry this over the line? That’s very much about if they want it in their own backyard or if they expect, export that knowledge. And, um, it’s, uh, it’s an exciting time.  Allen Hall 2025: What does the winner of this process do differently than the companies that don’t win this process? What does that look like? What are they probably gonna do that makes them the winning bid? So  Anders Nash: if I’d, if I’d been looking at this again, uh. In the rear view mirror some time ago, I would be looking at companies that have a specific strategic interest there. So, um, are they looking to future market opportunities in the near area? Are they looking to tie up certain supply, supply chain and knowledge upsides, uh, by being a first mover? Um, again, the, the sort of moves in the [00:23:00]markets, uh, the macroeconomic situation probably pushes back against that a little bit. Um, I think mass and I probably going back some months would’ve said you’d very much be looking at the Norwegian players here. This should be in their interest to push forward on this, but they’ve been some of the most vocal about coming out and casting a bit of doubt on it. So again, um, I think the macroeconomic situation is slowly improving. That’s gonna be a big player. Does it come too soon? Um, but again, we have seen in recent auctions there’s still an appetite for some strategic interest. Which players might come forward there and surprise us, or are they just gonna look at leveraging, uh, progress from the uk, from France and other markets  Mads Arild Vedøy: and that kind of strategic view. Right. That’s, that’s, uh, also very interesting to look at because you see, so who are the, who are the expected say, right? So it’s Equin and, and V and it’s EDF, deep [00:24:00] wind, offshore at least, right? So. Eor having led the, the, uh, the floating wind market now for, uh, almost two decades volume stepping in on, on, um, green Volt. You’ve got EDF right? With, uh, the, the projects in France. So it seems like these big players taking the, uh, strategic position or wanting to keep that strategic position. I would expect them to be there. But we also see the likes of Japanese companies, right? With, with Sai we see Tapco, we see kind of everyone kind of looking what to learn from the Norwegian, uh, process here because, uh, we talked about, um, so each known is kind of walk. Unfortunately it’s not gonna be the first anymore without, like we [00:25:00]here in Norway hope for We see the French projects. Yeah, so see the French projects, we see UK projects and so on, but is maybe the stepping stone projects you need for alternative waters right at around 200 meters. Depth it. It kind of doubles what we see for the other other projects. And then moving to, uh, west Coast, the US or, or, or, uh, Japan. Right. Uh, it, it becomes really deep. So I think that is also kind of, uh, uh, makes this attractive for a lot of, uh, operators or developers, uh, taking that strategic view of it.  Anders Nash: I think that’s an interesting one as well. That’s an interesting one there, mass. And it could be, I mean, are we gonna see, as we’ve seen in. Some, some other markets local to me, where large Japanese investors have come in and invested directly in renewable energy projects. I mean, we’re talking big, big money. Are they gonna step [00:26:00] in and take a, a vested interest in this? Um, are we gonna see, um, some of the o and g um, discussions going on in the background that we might not be anticipating? I think, uh, it had either been, uh. Joel or Allen, or even Phil who’d alluded to it in a past podcast, is there something going on in the background? It just seems to defy rationale that that’s not already happening. Um, so could there be moves going on in the background that help to elevate this and then the Norwegian government, they’re not in any shortage of, of strategizing. Where do they take it? So there could be a, there could be a joker in the hand somewhere there.  Allen Hall 2025: Exactly. Which of the companies we’ve talked about, maybe a a, a company we haven’t mentioned yet, has the. Best access to capital to pull off a project like this and then pull off subsequent projects? I would say eor. Anders Nash: Yeah, I, yeah, I would say so. And, and I think it’s companies that have been able to leverage their, their work in o and g, um, that is kind of paying the renewables business at the moment. So how, [00:27:00] on the flip side, a lot of those big players we, we see have divested or showed less appetite for renewables of late due to the, the boom in the ONG sector. Um, I would say some of the big developers, not necessarily ONG, some of the bigger developers we know they’re looking for more bankable projects. So again, they may be reticence, throw a huge amount of capital, uh, into projects along these lines. So I think going back to what Mass said, it might be one of the more expected players. Uh, it might be someone leaning on their ONG, um, finance. But again, all of that’s highly speculative. And, and this is one of those auctions I look at. As a bid manager, and I’d say, uh, this is a tough one to call.  Joel Saxum: Why I, why I would say EOR is you see a lot of the oil and gas majors divesting from offshore wind, bp, shell, repsol. You’ve seen that happen. However, what we just saw, what, six months ago, Allen Eor stuck 10% of cash into stead. [00:28:00] Anders Nash: We know it well here in Copenhagen. We know it well.  Joel Saxum: They still have that taste in their mouth for like, you know. And eor and EOR there, EOR as a company, mirrors the Norwegian transition goals.  Anders Nash: But I challenge that. I’d challenge that, Joel, because I would say, um, so I would challenge that and say, great EOR is bought into it. And I’ve, I’ve had the pleasure of working with eor, great company to work together with great people, fantastic knowhow there. Thoroughly enjoyed my time working together with them. I would say that acquisition, what it tells me is that they are more keen to invest in mature. Or developed opportunities. So if you look at certain auctions coming up and how much, uh, operational capacity you need to have, they might be excluded from things that suddenly they’re in the game with by virtue of being with ur. Still on the flip side, there might not be the same appetite for development because. What you do see in a lot of these players is saying, okay, we’ll take a sit back and watch attitude say, might be the case in, in [00:29:00] floating. We’ll take a sit back and watch, and then we’ll buy in because we’re, you know, capital heavy at a later stage. So I’m speculating. It was great for Ursula, it was great for Denmark, it’s great for eor, but what their motives are, no one really knows. Joel Saxum: I can, I can, I can completely see that.  Mads Arild Vedøy: Yep. They invest in right big player in in bottom fix. Uh, they have the, the projects in the US and so on and so on. The floating projects, they’re really chasing on their own, it seems, and it, it, it’s more kind of bringing that, uh, legacy from the high wind demo and high wind Scotland, high wind temple, right? Just bringing that forward building on that knowhow that, that, that legacy. Um, but also people are telling me they are not. They don’t need to use the, the high wind concept. They’re looking at different types of floater as well. Right. So just using that knowledge u leveraging that and, and, and moving [00:30:00] from, um, yeah, as I said, high wind Scotland to, to high wind pump and the, the cost reduction. There was, was it 36% or something like that. So, so I mean, yeah. Seeing that progress, it, it’s really good.  Joel Saxum: We can, we can sit and. Have conjecture until we’re blue in the face here, what we need to do is get this thing going and then once it’s, once someone wins this thing, the three or four of the four of us get back on and talk about it, then I think that’s a good plan. Anders Nash: No, absolutely, Joel, and I think, you know, if, if we want to look at the, the upsides here, I mean, you’re talking about a technology with capacity factors that are unheard of. I mean, even offshore wind, people are out there talking about, we’re talking. 40% plus, you know, exceptional sites and now we’re talking about something that’s over 60. Okay. The cost. The cost curve has to come down substantially. We we’re talking for our good friends in the NIMBY world, not in my backyard. Well, this is a long way off your backyard, and I doubt anyone’s out at 800 meters of depth. Right. Except for the  Mads Arild Vedøy: people living on [00:31:00] Uzi.  Anders Nash: But from what people say they, they’ll, they’re some of the more open people to having something in their backyard in any case. Um, but then, then there’s sort of, again, there’s the longer term strategic opportunities that some of those deep water markets, and as you said, um. The opportunity there is massive. I mean, fixed is well established, but the good sites in a lot of countries actually, there’s something to dry up a little bit. Um, and you’re looking at substantial markets. You’re looking at, uh, markets in the far East that have deep water, very close to China, but are a little bit. Dubious about whether they want to dip into that market. So great opportunities there. So floating. It is the future. It will come. It’s about driving the cost down. It’s about making it competitive. The macroeconomic climate is against it right now. Um, but I think we’re in little doubt about where that’s going longer term.  Allen Hall 2025: So the next big stage for Nord is in September when, uh, all the bids will be reviewed and. The, the process really starts then, which is gonna [00:32:00] be an exciting time. In order to follow this process, one of the things everybody should do is listening to the podcast is go download the document that Mads and Andres put together. Mads, how do you go find that document that talks about naura nor and, and the, and the process that Norway has set up?  Mads Arild Vedøy: Well, it is quite easy, I would say. So go to, uh, this website of my, my advisory, uh, called MA vdo, so M-A-V-E-D-O-Y dot nano. There, there’s a, there’s a link to, to the, um, to the report. It, it’s no 2025, so should be quite easy to find. It’s a great report. Yeah. And of course we, as, as we, um, have posted on, on, on LinkedIn as well, we, we are not tied to anyone, so we, we, but we really like this project and, and, and. Was thinking to myself or I was thinking to myself, uh, I know something about this that I want to share. And, and then, [00:33:00] uh, I reached out to, to Annas, uh, and, uh, another colleague of ours, uh, Nikolai, uh, knik of, to, to say, well, could we make something together to, to share what we know, what we have learned, how we see this, and. Hopefully it’s for, uh, someone can use it, right? If it’s a developer, if it’s a supplier, anyone. And, and we just, uh, at least where we, where when we made that was kind of, let’s share what we know. Let’s make this project as good as we can do. Let’s contribute, uh, in our way. Because, uh, it’s, it’s not always about making money, it’s also about doing things you love. So, um, yeah,  Anders Nash: as Asmas said, the, the element of impartiality is key in this. So for the first time, we saw an opportunity that we could go into a market that we were passionate about, a technology that we were passionate about, um, something that, that, that is coming, uh, not too far down line in the future. And [00:34:00] how could we chip into that from our own perspectives and from experience. Um. Again, together with our colleague Nikolai, who also brings a vast amount of, uh, substation and cabling experience. Um, I think we had a pretty thorough package. Um, and if I go back to, to having sat all of us within large developers, uh, we covered things from a number of angles, so I. Um, we’re fortunate enough to have discussions with some of the big developers still in hallways here, where they’re going. They hold their cards close to their chest. Um, but I think probably this report would reflect a lot of their take on things as well.  Allen Hall 2025: This has been a great discussion and I need everybody who’s listening to the podcast to go download this report about sewer Nord. It’s going to be one of the big projects to, to watch going forward. And you can do that by going to the website and I’m gonna go to spell it out. It’s M-A-V-E-D-O y.no Norway and download it. There’s free, and the framework is great. The discussion is great in the document. It’s very simple to understand, even for an [00:35:00] electrical engineer like me. But it also lays out the sort of the pathway that this process will take and. Gives you an idea of like who’s gonna participate, which is fascinating. So, unders eds, thank you so much for being on the podcast. We’re gonna have to have you back in September, October when everything settles out to see who’s participating. It’ll be really interesting to see. That’s  Anders Nash: the deal. That’s the deal. And, uh, perhaps, uh, from my side mess, before we, we sign off, I could just throw in a little, uh, a little sign off from my side. Um, so to sort of. Break the tension a little bit because we’ve got some exciting times coming up and people sweating behind the scenes, developing bids. But, um. Question for you. Why did the floating wind turbine bring a suitcase to the conference?  Mads Arild Vedøy: Hmm.  Anders Nash: Because it knew it wasn’t going anywhere fast. But when it does, it’s taking the whole energy transition with it.  Allen Hall 2025: Alright, well, well, Matt and Andres, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I love having you on. It’s been a great discussion.  Mads Arild Vedøy: Thank you for having  Anders Nash: us. Thanks so much, gentlemen, and look forward to hearing more podcasts over the uh, the summer period. Thanks a [00:36:00] lot.

Register for the SkySpecs webinar! The crew discusses the resignation of Wind Europe CEO Giles Dickson and his impact on the organization. They examine a new executive order from the White House targeting ‘unreliable’ wind and solar energy sources, analyzing its potential effects on tax credits and the renewable energy market. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now here’s your hosts, Alan Hall, Joel Saxon, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes.  Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Winner d podcast. I’m Alan Hall in the Queen City, Charlotte, North Carolina. I got filter the tower out in California and Joel Saxon is in wet Austin, Texas. It rained again today. The storm waters have been severe, like a hundred year flood Situations in Texas have been very dangerous and a lot of people have been injured down there. yeah, our condolences go out to everybody affected down in Texas and there’s supposed to be some more severe. Rainstorms in the East coast of the United States. So hold on tight. there’s a lot of news going on [00:01:00] this week around the world. the one that sticks out first and I wanna bring this to the attention of everybody that, if you haven’t heard yet, is, wind Europe. CEO Giles Dixon has announced he’s stepping down after 10 years as leading WIN Europe. And I was stunned when this happened. And obviously, I. Don’t have any influence in when Europe being an American. I just watch from the outside and I, from what I’ve seen and attended the conferences over in Europe, everything from what I’ve seen under his tutelage has been great. And the promotional materials and all the information that when Europe provides, has been outstanding. so Giles is going to go back to teaching. He’s gonna go back into the schoolhouse. but it, seems like it’s a shock to everybody at, Wind Europe, at least that’s the outward appearance. Board chair Henrik Anderson, who is the head of Vestus Praise Dixon’s, tremendous contribution, noting [00:02:00] that he will leave Wind Europe stronger than he when he arrived. And that’s clearly the case. Phil, do you have any insight as to what’s going on behind the scenes over in Wind Europe and with Giles?  Phil Totaro: I do not, but I can also speak from personal experience, having met him, I wanna say back in 2018 or probably 2017. and I can certainly attest to the, the work that they’ve done. As you might be able to see, I’ve got two, things sitting here behind me that are awards from, the Wind Europe and, predecessor to, that, we’ve, done a lot of work over in Europe and it’s been facilitated by, the Wind Europe, events that they do as well as the publications that they’ve put out. certainly my thanks go out to, to him and, [00:03:00] wish him well on his, future endeavors.  Joel Saxum: I would say from an American standpoint, been to wind Europe now, man, I don’t know how many times, half a dozen times or something like that. They do a really good job over there. And this is from, the leadership comes from the top of just circling the wagons, right? Bringing everybody out to the show, getting more voices involved, giving, getting executive leaders from a lot of these large operators, giving them the space to talk and putting them, in an area where their voices are listened to. So like when, the last time I was at Wind Europe, I think it was in, bill Bao. so I went, walked into Bill Bau, and when you walked into the conference center, there was big banners hanging of all of the key speakers and what their messages were with pictures of their faces, six feet tall, hanging in all the hallways. And I thought, what a great way to get visibility to the industry, right? Because if anybody walks in here, because of course at those shows you get, impartial news [00:04:00] agencies and other things going. You see that stuff right in the, European realm. I’m like, I recognize the face of the CEO of RWE and, these things like they pop up. They’re, good at getting in the face of the, public and getting their message across. And I would like to see us do more of those things here. under giles’s tutelage there, fantastic job. he said he’s gonna step back and go to teaching and give back to his local community where he’s from, and I think that’s fantastic. it’s a, a career shift. He’s given a lot to the wind industry. and moving on. So now, we have those Giles in Pierre walk and talk videos that they put out every, so often, they’re gonna have to find someone else to walk and talk with.  Allen Hall: That’s gonna be hard to do. Those win flicks are really well done. They’re great promotion for the industry in, Europe. I, there’s very little that I’ve seen that even really compares to them the amount of knowledge you’re gonna get in about four and a [00:05:00] half minutes about what is actually happening on the ground in Europe. You just don’t find it anywhere like that. The, they are really good tuned to all the inner workings of the eu, the individual countries, all the manufacturers. They have the pulse of that industry and it’s, gonna be a lot to live up to wherever they nominate to be. The next CEO win Europe. It. It has a high bar. A very high bar. 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. OG 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. Over in the United States, the White House has issued an executive order targeting, what has been described as [00:06:00] quote unquote unreliable wind and solar energy sources, which is a matter of strong debate. The executive order titled, ending Market Distorting Subsidies for Unreliable Foreign Controlled Energy Sources. Does that make an acronym, guys? I don’t think it does. The order directs the Treasury Department to strictly enforce termination of clean energy tax credits already included in the recently passed budget reconciliation bill. the feeling on the street is this was done to placate some of the. Congress, people that wanted more action against wind and solar, mostly from petroleum, based states, and that they didn’t feel like they got enough in the legislation, so they wanted to reinforce it. I, don’t think this has any real effect, but in in the larger scheme, but the one area which can. Be adjusted with or played with is the [00:07:00] timing of when projects have to go in and what the percentage of projects has to be done to qualify for the tax credits. And Phil, you want to provide some insights into what can happen with the qualification aspect.  Phil Totaro: Yeah, so let’s start with understanding what got approved in the bill. Any project that starts construction after July 4th, 2026 will no longer be eligible for a production tax credit. Going back to Alan’s comment about this executive order, the intent. There is to direct the Treasury Department, which oversees obviously the IRS, which has a final say in what the qualification criteria are for getting the, Companies who wanna claim the production tax credit, you have to submit an application to be able to do that. they are being directed under this executive [00:08:00] order to reexamine whether or not there needs to be changes. That would be I. Basically considered anti renewable. So anything that can take, money off the table for wind and solar is, what they’re trying to accomplish with this. And what they can do, that’s outside the scope of the bill is they can. Have, the threshold for what constitutes start of construction raised such that, let’s call it about 15.3 gigawatts out of the 30 gigawatts that’s already, into the, construction and permitting queue. There’s about 15 gigawatts of that is at jeopardy if we can’t. if they raise these thresholds and if we can’t get started on construction with all that by, July 4th, 2026.  Joel Saxum: Phil, I got a question for you ’cause I wanna clarify this. We know that solar PV [00:09:00] onshore wind almost exclusively, and I think it is exclusively, will harvest PTCs over the lifetime instead of the 30% ITC credit for CapEx, however. Offshore wind usually goes for ITC. And so I wanna clarify this also pertains to ITC as well. That’s, under, under the same rule set as the PTC. Yes. and ITC if you don’t know, is investment tax credits versus production tax credits. So you, that’s a onetime, wham. on, I think 30% of the CapEx of a project. And that’s why you see it in offshore wind because it’s so dang expensive for offshore wind. But this, so the same set of rules is gonna hit both of those, right?  Phil Totaro: Yes. And, regardless of the executive order, Joel, the, it, the changes in the law that they just made in the tax and budget bill, they passed these changes in the law, actually potentially preclude. The Mar Wind project in Maryland and the New England one and two [00:10:00] projects, in, Massachusetts, Connecticut, et cetera. that general vicinity where, multiple states are gonna be off taking power, those projects may not be able to get their construction finance in place and. Meet the start of construction threshold, by the time that they need to be able to, in order to claim the, tax credit. So they could be, these projects are potentially in jeopardy now of not being able to claim that ITC, because of these, the change in the law passed by Congress and the con in combination with. The executive order that is likely to, increase the threshold for what constitutes startup construction on a project. Joel Saxum: Could you see someone with a bold strategy saying, you know what, because PTCs may run out, we’re gonna take the 30% ITC bam right now on an onshore wind project. A big one. Could you see that?  Phil Totaro: Potentially, yes. Particularly if it’s [00:11:00] gonna, it’s the down to the number crunchers at that point. And if somebody says, you know what? That makes a lot more sense than getting a reduction. look, we’ve, Intel store’s done this analysis. We released a research note about this. It’s gonna reduce, this. Change in the law is gonna reduce what? the revenue that asset owners for wind in the USA get by about $16 billion. Now, keep in mind that ever since they started this production tax credit back in the early nineties, it’s paid out about $66.3 billion to date. And is $16 billion really saving us a whole lot, especially when you consider that we’ve got increasing demand, a five year backlog on gas. Nuclear that can’t be built. And we talked last week about, the situation with, trying to sell people liquified natural gas. where exactly are we gonna get our electricity from? Because you’re all about to face brownouts in [00:12:00] about, a year and a half here. So if it’s not coming from wind and solar, I, don’t know where it’s coming from. Allen Hall: The offshore projects on the east coast will have to be finished. They’ll just go back to the states and renegotiate the contracts for the offtake pricing.  Phil Totaro: If they can.  Allen Hall: I, think there’s always opportunity in tax law for things to get a little funky if you haven’t noticed that. the IRS can do all kinds of crazy things on its own, and obviously, things get tagged onto additional bills. There’s all kinds of bills going through Congress and nobody knows exactly what’s going on at midnight when they pass. So it wouldn’t shock me if some of these projects get a little bit of coverage by the states and the senators in particular that backdoor it to protect them. Because otherwise what’s gonna happen is Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, maybe all the way down towards Virginia, New Jersey, are going to have to raise the prices to get those projects in.[00:13:00] They’re still gonna happen. I, just don’t see them not happening. Back to your point, Phil, what are they gonna do for power? If they don’t have any other opportunities. Can I shift gears a little  Joel Saxum: bit here? The I’m, what I wanna understand now is, okay, bill, big beautiful Bill has passed, executive order, signed, enforcing it, whatever. Today is July 9th that we’re recording. What does July 10th look like for the next two years? For all of our friends in the wind industry that are ISPs. That are specialists that are, technical field advisors for construction and crane companies and bolting companies and all this stuff. What does the next two years look like for them? Because in my mind it means hammer down pedal to the metal. People are gonna be scrambling to get support to build their projects out. So everybody that’s in ISP is gonna be busy as hell for the next few years. At the same time, if I’m an operator, I’m thinking I’ve got a, an odd fiscal cliff. Coming and I need to [00:14:00] make sure that my turbines are running tip top shape while I’m still harvesting PTCs. Before that date, because when that date comes, I gotta be o and m efficient. I gotta be spend efficient, these things have to be running well. I need to get ’em up to snuff, tear that apart. Does that make sense?  Phil Totaro: Oh, it, makes perfect sense. So right now what everybody, particularly anybody that built a project that. They wouldn’t be able to repower prior to the end of this PTC cliff in 2027. What they’re looking to do is exactly what you just mentioned, Joel. They have to get operational efficiency improved and they have to hunt for the best possible PPA that they can get. now the good news is that. the market average right now for PPAs is about 55, just under $56 a megawatt hour, but if that drops, it’s gonna throw folks like that. And they’re 65, or, I’m sorry, 62.115 [00:15:00] gigawatts worth of projects in that time period I mentioned 2019 to 2023 that are not gonna be able to do a PTC driven repowering. So they’re gonna have to improve. Performance they’re gonna have to life extend, and they’re gonna have to go find, a better, whether it’s a corporate offtake or something, a high PPA, that’s gonna help them sustain their profitability. Allen Hall: The data I’ve seen more recently about what electricity prices are going to be in a year or two shows them up almost 10%, or sometimes more than 10%. So they’re gonna have to climb the, money’s gonna come from somewhere because. Back to Phil’s original point, if you don’t develop it, you’re gonna have problems with power supply. you’re gonna have brownouts and restrictions and all the things you’ve been trying to avoid for the last 20 years, it’s going to come about. So I think the offtake companies and all the corporations involved in this that are pulling massive amounts of power off the grid are going [00:16:00] to have to encourage these projects to go forward. They’re going to have to renegotiate PPAs. the, sites are gonna get built. I think there may be more opportunity for a little bit more money for wind and particularly solar just because. Gas isn’t gonna fill it, no one else is gonna fill it. The prices are gonna go up, and I think you could ask for a higher PPA price and get it because there’s nobody else that can provide the power. Joel Saxum: I think we should benchmark this, right? Like a couple a month ago or so, the three of us, or more than that, we talked about what our, local power prices were and we’re in completely different markets. Alan, you’re on the east coast. Phil, you’re on the West coast. I’m down in Austin. In the Ercot market, I think the Ercot market will adjust quicker. Simply because it’s, unregulated, right? It can, it’ll move. It’ll move. It’ll move now. So I think we should do that. let’s once a month collect that data again, just to see what it looks like over the next few years and check the trend. Because I think, like you said, [00:17:00] it’s gotta come from somewhere at the end of the day, who’s paying the bills, the consumer, And that’s the frustrating thing about, to me, just the frustrating thing about what’s going on with this bill is. Is the consumer’s gonna end up paying and a lot of times the consumers in these deep red states, that’s where wind is. It doesn’t make sense to me, but I don’t make all the decisions.  Allen Hall: just play it out in your head. If GE is making the, gas turbines that are gonna provide electricity, just say GE is a focal point, probably is. Are they gonna increase production 50% over the next year, two years, five years, 10 years? They can’t do it. It’s impossible. It’s impossible. Exactly right. So although the current administration is going to downplay wind and solar. It’s a physics problem. You can’t do it. This is not a Pol politics problem. This is a physics  Joel Saxum: problem.  Phil Totaro: But he, so here’s the good news though. Going, back to Joel’s point, if you work [00:18:00] at an ISP, if you own a company that owns cranes, you are gonna be in demand. full employment for everybody. And here’s the other thing, a lot of these companies that have been overlooked as far as, kind of asset management, platforms and digital services, our friends over at Sky Specs, as, being one example. they are gonna be also very in demand because the companies, the asset owners that said, oh, I can get by without, digital solutions. You’re not gonna be able to, when you need to be able to optimize your performance to hold out until 2029. Because if, your project starts dropping off precipitously, you don’t have a PTC that you can leverage to repower your project anymore. And who knows what actually happens in 2029. Hopefully we get something back in place that, like Alan mentioned, and Joel mentioned, a week or two [00:19:00] ago where oil and gas already have permanent subsidies. we can argue about whether or not. subsidies for renewables are a good or a bad thing and all that, but wind energy alone in the United States is a $500 billion plus industry, and we’re talking about, again, $66 billion paid out over 30 plus years, and $16 billion in the immediate term to help support an industry that creates, more than half a trillion dollars worth of value. In the United States jobs, tax, revenue, et cetera. let’s hope everybody gets the message and, starts playing it smart from here on out.  Allen Hall: As Wind energy professionals staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it difficult. That’s why the Uptime podcast recommends PES Wind Magazine. PES Wind offers a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future.[00:20:00] Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit PES wind.com today. In this quarter’s, PES Wind Magazine, which you can Google PES Wind and it’ll take you right there. You can download your own copy. There’s a really good article from Safe Lifting Europe, bv and some of their sustainable practices. And if you’ve seen some of the work that they do, they provide. All the green colored equipment, the lifting equipment, and they’ve shifted from, a traditional ownership model where you buy the harness or the lifting piece to a rental service, which is a totally different model because most of the time that I’ve been around heavy lift, we ended up buying all the pieces, but renting this makes a lot more sense. But there’s a lot to that when that happens. And it is, a. Truly a different approach to what has been a very, [00:21:00] wanna call a, very state industry where it hasn’t moved around too much. you lift things, you check, make sure the everything is the, same. But the, problem has been, is that. It’s pay to play and it’s hard to get into that industry if you wanna buy the equipment. And so safe lifting Europe is, has a different model and it’s about time. Joel, I, know you’ve been around some heavy lift equipment yourself. This is, this, doesn’t happen very much. I have not seen hardly any of this in the United States ’cause these guys are based in the Netherlands. Joel Saxum: So again, I, and I dial back to this offshore oil and gas. Offshore oil and gas is such a specialized industry with, when you’re lifting something, you may be using a piece that looks like you’re lifting something in a yard, but you’re actually using that in 3000 feet of water. so there’s all this specialized equipment all the time, and if you’re an operator or an IIRM consultant or whoever else that’s doing this work, it’s so cost prohibitive, capital [00:22:00]intensive to get into these things and it reduces the amount of players in the market. That’s the trouble it, concentrates ’em, right? You get to these certain projects and Only Cype can take it on because they’re the only ones that can afford to buy the kit. What this does is it opens up the market to money. More people, right? Because then that offshore oil and gas world, this is a model they use all the time. There’s companies dedicated to this expensive kit, like there’s a company called Unique Group that we used to use all the time, and they have water weights for testing and this, and the good thing about them, and it was electric, it was electronics and all kinds of stuff. When you got the kit, it was tested, calibrated, certified, ready to roll, beautiful in a crate. You know what I mean? So it showed us like, Hey, we need this piece. And it showed up on site and it was ready to run, and it was all done by a third party. You pay the day rate on it. Once you’re done, you ship it back. Now, from a contract standpoint, that’s awesome because you just charge cost plus whatever percentage you put on it to your client. It’s a pass through cost, you’ve dealt with it. Project gets done. That’s awesome. I think that’s, it opens up again, it [00:23:00] opens up the market. You can use mult, more vessels, more companies, good on them. And they’ve done a, this is a, this is something you and I really Alan, is this clever marketing. Clever marketing, clever branding. There’s companies that do this well, and this is good, right? Because it’s rental kit that all looks the same. So no matter what vessel it’s on, you’re gonna see this, specific color of green right down here in Texas. Whenever I see a red, f two 50 go by, I go, oh, that’s Weatherford. You know them, you know those guys right away, right? The Weatherford guys with the red jumpsuits and the red bumpers on the truck and stuff. you always see that. Or, like, in the offshore world, deme, blind green, Deme, you can see a deme vessel from miles away and you go, that’s that. That’s them. That’s them. This will catch on. I like their, what they’ve done. Kudos to whoever thought of that as a branding initiative. I think this is only good things for the entire market, having a player like this that’s, specializing in that lifting kit.  Allen Hall: Yeah, great [00:24:00] article and you need to go check it out. You can download this article at PS Wind. Just visit, your Google engine type in PS Wind. It’ll take you right there. Download it. There’s a ton of great articles in this quarter’s edition. and good on to safe Lifting Europe, bv. A lot of discussion about companies being, sold at the minute, and Joel and I have heard. Quite a number of stories over the last probably month or so, but a ES corporation is, stock has gone up and down quite recently because the impression is, that they are for sale and they’re a Virginia based, renewable power company. And it sounds like they’ve had takeover interest from, investors, including Brookfield Asset Management, BlackRock of course, and Global Infrastructure Partners. Now, a ES has a unique client base. They are really tied into the [00:25:00] data centers and ai centers, which from which are the big names, and Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, if you named the three. Those are the three. but it has more recently, as has seen their stock fall since about 2022. So it’s down quite a bit. However, the future will look bright. This would be the perfect time to pick up a ES at probably a, what would be considered a reasonable price. But the dollar numbers, the market cap on a ES is pretty big at the moment. Joel? Yeah, I think what, what did, we see today? Like 40  Joel Saxum: billion. 40 billion. So there’s been a couple of big. Acquisitions in the last year, right? There was the, GIP bought that company, New Mexico, can’t remember the name of it, that one. And then the Constellation bought Calpine for 16 billion. So that was another big one that just happened. of course we know BP is for sale. We should see an announcement on that at any [00:26:00] time. We don’t know who or what that price is. but that’s gonna happen for bps, US onshore assets. So there is some big things moving and grooving. I could see, like I, I think off air I was talking BlackRock. GIP is a big one. Brookfield, I know Phil, you had some opinions on Brookfield, but, if a ES. They’ve got some stuff in, in the states. They’ve got a lot of stuff in the Latin American countries, south America as well, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, they got some cool wind farms. If they’re doing some due diligence and you need someone to go, the uptime crew can go to Hawaii for the one you got out there, we’ll definitely take a peek at that for you or whoever the prospective buyer is. but yeah, we, have friends over there. We know some of the engineers at a ES. of course, when these acquisitions happen, for the most part, it doesn’t change much. they just have a different t-shirt to wear and a different email signature. there’s some good people over there. but yeah. Phil, what are your thoughts on who a prospective buyer for this a [00:27:00] ES thing could be?  Phil Totaro: Yeah, besides the two companies that have been named, you could have Masar also potentially kicking the tires if they wanted to expand their footprint. but I think Brookfield is probably the best fit. besides some of the operational synergies that they already have with projects they’ve got, it fits Brookfield’s, as you mentioned, Joel, they’ve got assets in, Peru, Chile, and, I wanna say some transmission related assets as well in, in Brazil. that probably fit Brookfield’s portfolio a little bit better than anybody else, but I wouldn’t put it out of the realm of possibility that. somebody dives in and, tries to gobble them up because they’ve built a pretty good portfolio, and a healthy one as well. This  Joel Saxum: week’s Wind Farm of the week is the Wheat Ridge Hybrid Energy Project. Why this one popped up on the Wind Farm of the Week is looking [00:28:00] forward to what’s going on in politically in the states right now, thinking about operational efficiencies and how do we squeeze as much more out of a project as we can. And the interesting thing about this is the first project in the United States that combines the three most common renewable energy kind assets. You have wind on site, you have solar on site, and you have battery storage on site. Now, the advantage to that, of course, is it’s pretty simple. it’s combines the BOP costs. So you have the same transmission, lines. the same o and m crews and that kind of stuff all in one spot. So it makes more sense. You’re double dipping on these, capital costs from the beginning. so a little bit about the wind farm. It’s up in Oregon, marrow County, near Lexington. It’s about 300 megawatts of wind. There’s a, there’s 120 GE turbines up there. Have 2.3 and 2.5 megawatt units. There’s also a 50 megawatt, solar [00:29:00]array. And there’s a 30 megawatt, 120 megawatt hour lithium ion battery storage system. So together there’s 350 megawatts of production plus that nice smoothing, side of the batteries with a little bit of, there’s about four hours with the storage there. so you can power efficiently a hundred thousand homes off of this one project from one spot. it was jointly built by Portland General Electric and NextEra. So NextEra’s got their hands in a lot of stuff. They got their hands in this one. and it was the first of its kind. It’s a util utility scale facility with wind, solar, and storage all on one site. and because of that, you’re, balancing, the storage or the storage balances that grid variability and delivers power even when, you know the sun, wind aren’t optimal. I personally would love to see a ton more projects like this. it, and it has a lot of those same numbers we see on a lot of the Wind Farm of the week, or, anything. It, 300 jobs created, 10 [00:30:00] full-time staff, millions of dollars in tax benefits. so really cool project. And as we go into the next phase of the energy transition, would love to see more projects done like this, or even retrofitted like this would be pretty cool. so the Wheatridge Hybrid Energy Project up in Oregon,  Allen Hall: you’re the Wind Farm of the week. And that’s gonna do it for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. Thanks for joining us. Stay tuned. There’s a lot happening in wind. Don’t get discouraged. It’s all gonna be okay, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

Allen discusses the strain on America’s largest power grid due to data center demand, Taiwan’s $3 billion wind farm project, the potential sale of Allete and new data center regulations in Ohio. 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! America’s largest power grid is under serious strain. Data centers and AI chatbots are using electricity faster than new power plants can be built. PJM Interconnection covers thirteen states from Illinois to Tennessee and Virginia to New Jersey. The company serves sixty seven million customers. This summer, electricity bills could jump more than twenty percent in some areas. The region has the most data centers in the world. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is threatening to pull his state out of the grid entirely. Recently, PJM’s CEO has announced he’s leaving and PJM Board members have been voted out. PJM spokesman Jeffrey Shields says the problem is simple economics. “Prices will remain high as long as demand growth is outstripping supply. Right now, we need every megawatt we can get.” The grid lost more than five point six gigawatts in the last decade. Old power plants shut down faster than new ones come online. Meanwhile, data center demand keeps growing. By twenty thirty, PJM expects thirty two gigawatts of increased demand. Almost all of that will come from data centers. Ørsted has secured three billion dollars in financing for a major wind farm project in Taiwan. The Greater Changhua Two project will supply clean energy to over one million households once it’s fully operational. The wind farm sits thirty to thirty seven miles off Taiwan’s coast. Taiwan wants twenty percent of its electricity to come from renewable sources by twenty twenty five. This project is a critical step toward that goal. Ørsted plans to sell part of its ownership stake after the project is completed. This strategy lets the company recycle money into new projects while keeping operational control. Allete is one step closer to being sold. The Minnesota Department of Commerce has withdrawn its opposition to the six point two billion dollar deal. Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Global Infrastructure Partners want to buy the company. Allete runs Minnesota Power and Superior Water, Light and Power of Wisconsin. The sale still needs approval from the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission. That’s the last hurdle before the deal can close. The new owners have agreed to several customer protections. They’ll freeze rates for one year and reduce the company’s allowed profit margin. They’ve also promised fifty million dollars in additional clean energy investments. AEP Ohio has won approval for new rules that protect customers from data center costs. The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio approved the plan on July ninth. Large data centers will now have to pay for at least eighty five percent of the electricity they sign up for, even if they use less. AEP Ohio President Marc Reitter says the rules align data center demand with infrastructure costs. “This infrastructure will support Ohio’s growing tech sector and help secure America’s data storage facilities here in the U.S.” The requirements will last twelve years, including a four year ramp up period. Data center owners must also prove they’re financially able to meet their obligations. RWE has extended CEO Markus Krebber’s contract until twenty thirty one. The early extension adds another five years to his current agreement. Krebber has led the German energy company since twenty twenty one. He joined the company in twenty twelve and became an Executive Board member in twenty sixteen. The Supervisory Board praised his leadership during the energy crisis and his work positioning the company for future growth. That’s this week’s top news stories, join us tomorrow for the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.

Jon Zalar, founder of IWTG Consulting, discusses the challenges of wind turbine maintenance, emphasizing the rise in turbine failures and the importance of root cause analysis (RCA). Proactive maintenance, proper documentation, and expert consultation will help to mitigate issues and ensure turbine efficiency. 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 2025: Jon, welcome to the program.  Jonathan Zalar: Thanks for having me,  Allen Hall 2025: Jon. Let’s start with the reality facing wind farmer operators today. What’s the core problem when it comes to turbine failures?  Jonathan Zalar: There’s been a larger number than they probably experienced like five years ago. I think, um, you know, the volume of turbines out there and some of the bigger issues that, you know, people are seeing in the last two to three years has made owning a wind farm a little more challenging than before. Um, you know, between blade issues, bolted joint issues, shoes, and. Overall, like o operations, right? It’s been tougher to keep these turbines up and running, you know, manpower’s an issue, getting people out there to go fix stuff. It’s, [00:01:00] it’s been tough for a lot of people I’ve talked to.  Joel Saxum: Do you think this is a, a partial result of like, um, okay, so what we’re, you know, on the podcast in the last few years, we’ve always been talking about, oh, there’s all kinds of models coming out and there’s this, this manufacturer can put out this many different variations and all these things, and now. Now we’re getting to the age where that family, that group of turbines that, I guess it’s kind, I’m looking at it like a class, right? That class of, that, those years of turbines are now getting to the stage where they’re out of warranty and they’re coming into, some people are taking, you know, ISPs taking, um, maintenance of them or an owner operator taking maintenance over from the OEM. And all of a sudden now there’s these issues popping up and different things that we’re, we’re kind of in this. Um, like a swamp of problems with a lot of different models. So, uh, yeah, like you said, we’ve we’re, we talked a little bit off air here about RCAs and how to fix things and looking at serial defects and stuff, but it’s just like, it seems like every other week [00:02:00] someone calls Alan Ryan’s like, Hey, have you heard about this thing with this model? And it’s like, man,  Jonathan Zalar: another one. I think it’s a combination of two things. One. Like I talked about the last time we had podcasts, there was a, you know, a pretty big push to increase rotor size, come out with new models for, for every, for all the os, right? They’re competing against each other. Coming out with a new model every 18 months. And you can ask Phil, but I believe mostly the OEMs are sold out. If you go back five, six years, where. A huge expansion in the amount of wind turbines that have been placed. Right. So I think you combine those cheap factors and now, yeah, the owners have a lot on their plate, a lot more than they’re  Allen Hall 2025: probably used to. And my question all is this, the complexity of the turbines. So every new model that comes out, what I’m seeing is more instrumentation, more sensors, more stuff, more variability, even in where the components originate from.  Jonathan Zalar: Right? Yeah. [00:03:00] I mean, to increase, to be able to meet that increased demand the OEMs had to get, you know, a lot of different suppliers for bearings for, you know, maybe two or three different places to make blades, right? Um, and you’re right about the complexity, right? So like these rowers are getting bigger. They were trying to keep as many components the same. So you need better sensing, better controls to, you know, keep those loads where they work.  Allen Hall 2025: And a lot of times, uh, when operators have problems, they don’t actually realize. What to do or realize that maybe there’s a serial defect and how to address it and how to suss that out. Now the, the big question is, is like what’s at stake if the operators don’t implement some sort of proper root cause analysis? Uh, what does that sort of downward spiral look like? Because we have seen operators that do that, that, that don’t try to identify key issues with their turbines. I  Jonathan Zalar: mean, at the end of the day, it costs money, right? So if the quicker you figure out an [00:04:00] issue and if it’s a solution for an issue, the quicker you’re gonna solve that problem for your site or your fleet. Um. Also like making sure you’re communicating with the OEM about your failures so that they can add them to their RCA if they’re working on one, for example. The more data they have, it’s gonna help them come up with a more effective solution.  Joel Saxum: I think you’re, you’ve gotta, how to put this? You have to have a specific engineering mindset. So of course we’re dealing with engineers all day long. We’re all engineers. We enjoy the engineering mindset. So it’s easy for us to quantify ROI and value add from an RCA, right? So, hey, we’re gonna bring in an expert, or we’re gonna bring in a consultant, or whether it’s a, you know, a big one, A DNV, a UL type, or it’s a Jon Zalar, it’s gonna cost us a little bit of money, right? It’s gonna cost us. 5, 10, 20, 30 grand, what, whatever that is. But to us, that ROI is easy to quantify, oh, we had [00:05:00] this issue on this turbine. We’re gonna spend 20 grand figuring out why, what, how, and how we fix it in the future. Well now we can avoid that blade failure. Next time we can avoid, you know, a de deductible on an insurance case, $250,000. So boom, we, if we save one of those, we paid for the whole RCA. It’s easy for us to do that in that engineering mindset, but to get, sometimes to get. You know, an asset manager who may not have that engineering mindset, they’re just looking at, um, dollars and cents. They’re like, yeah, do we wanna spend this money? And, and I, I think that that’s a, uh, uh, a mindset, a, an action, an operation that, you know, us as evangelists for engineering in the industry need to help because we can help it in a large scale, right? Like if we, if we solve these problems through RCAs. Then we can avoid ’em in the future and it’s better LCOE for the entire fleet. That’s the goal,  Jonathan Zalar: right? Like even if you identify an issue and you have the ability to figure out how many [00:06:00] turbines are affected and like we use a Blade Blade issue, right? If you only catch the CAT five, that’s a much more expensive repair than a cat two or three. So if you work with somebody to identify, hey, this lat or you know, this list of turbines have a better chance of having this problem, let’s inspect it a little more, for example. Or let’s proactively add some strength in one area that we know we’re seeing issues that could save a lot of money in the long run. ’cause blade repairs are expensive. They take time, weather out. It just adds up.  Allen Hall 2025: And what I see when Joel and I have been around a lot of, uh, wind turbines in the Midwest, is that the asset managers. Get a lot of complaints from the neighbors and the landowners. So if they have a blade break or they have some sort of bearing that’s going bad, that’s making a lot of noise. It’s a constant set of phone calls from the surrounding landowners about this problem. So even in the simple things. That can be [00:07:00] fixed, turn into big problems because of all the associated people that are around it. I mean, Joel, you’ve, you’ve seen some of these cases where, like a bearing’s squeaking, okay. And the neighbor complains, or a blade breaks and the, and the owner calls up and say, Hey, why is this blade in my front yard? Which has happened? And those are real life situations that, that. You know, re requires somebody with knowledge to catch them before they turn into that neighborhood problem. Yeah. That’s  Joel Saxum: the intrinsic side of, of the return on investment, right? Like, you can’t measure that, but it’s valuable. And, and I, and we get, this concept comes up a lot to us because we’ve been doing a lot of work in Australia lately, and Australia has a different approach to their neighbors and how they work within things. And it’s very, very, very hands-on. Where in the states sometimes you see like, oh, well, they’re a non-participating landowner, so we just kinda, you know, move on. And then you see the Facebook posts that are like, these turbines take a thousand gallons of [00:08:00] oil a year and they never run. You know? And if we can, as an industry, if we can avoid those things by getting on top of stuff with RCA, we can, we can get ahead of the game, right? We can change the perception of, of renewables as we move forward. Um, which is, I mean, it’s a difficult battle, but that’s, as engineers, we can, we can help that fight. So I think that this is an important thing. That’s why we’re talking to you, Joe.  Jonathan Zalar: Yeah, I agree. I mean the, the video of the guy who was asking why it wasn’t turning, ’cause there was no wind. I’ll never forget that one.  Allen Hall 2025: So how do we break this cycle of reactive maintenance and repeated failures? What should we be doing?  Jonathan Zalar: Continuing that relationship with the OEM, making sure you’re having those monthly quarterly calls, sharing information back to them and making sure that you’re getting the updated information from them. Because, you know, all the major OEMs have like information letters they provide when there’s an a known issue and they give recommendations of what to do to fix it. And just making sure that you’re plugged in, especially the smaller owners that you’re plugged into the oem, just make sure you get that [00:09:00] information. You know, some could be a parameter setting or a increase inspection or, or a safety concern as well. Just keeping that relationship I think is important.  Joel Saxum: So, Jon, so continue on that, that thread at what, at what point does. Because not everybody is able to keep that relationship really good. And sometimes OEMs don’t wanna share a little bit, at what point does an operator say, I’m taking on an RCA myself. I’m going to get a consultant in here. Or we’re gonna take it on in our internal team. what, how do you make that call?  Jonathan Zalar: It’s looking at their relationship and if it’s not there, and that does happen. There’s breakups in the industry, if you will, and. You see three or four of the same failures at a, 50 wind turbine park. it should be a little bit of a yellow flag. I wouldn’t say red yet, but one turbine fell over. That’s a red flag, and that’s when if you’re not getting what you need and you don’t know what to do about it, that’s when you call somebody else out because. [00:10:00] The next one’s gonna be just as expensive, and there could have been a way to make it either cheaper or not happen. Allen Hall 2025: let’s, get down to specifics now, because I think a lot of problems in the United States are related to bolts at the minute, and I, this may be a worldwide problem, that there seems to be blade bolts and pitch bearing bolts that are. Have cracked or are failing in some unique ways. And I’ve seen more recently where operators are just replacing them. Like they, they don’t think about it in a larger context of maybe there’s a problem here. Maybe I need to be flagging these things. And they don’t bring in an expert like you, Jon, to come in and do an RCA To suss this out, you want, can you give us just a little bit of background on what’s happening on the, blade bolt and pitch bearing bolt problem? Jonathan Zalar: It is multiple OEMs are having. I think three or four different failure modes that I’ve heard so far between root inserts, just the bullet joint itself, and then potentially just some initial torquing issues. Um, I know from my experience there have [00:11:00] been update updates to the bold, the bolt torque. Specifications. And back to my comment about the relationships, like if you’re not getting that information, then you might not know. You should have went back and retort all these bolts and now you have a couple fail. Fail. Right? And then also what you do about it, when you have one that comes out, do you replace just the one or do you replace four to the left and four to the right? So d different solutions I have seen from different OEMs about what to do when you do have one particular bolt fail. Um, you know, there’s definitely some potential supplier concerns. ’cause like I said, there’s been so many turbines with so many bolts, like you’re gonna have some manufacturing issues. You can’t get over that With the volume of bolts that are out there. Joel Saxum: Do you think the technology innovations in bolting and tensioning tools right now are gonna help or hinder. Bolting problem.  Jonathan Zalar: I think they’re gonna help. Um, you know, [00:12:00]torquing, big bolts have been a problem in multiple industries. Even when I worked in locomotives, you know, getting high torque to come out with the right size tool to be able to get in there, to go, to go put the locomotive back on the frame. Right. It is a very hard job. And you had mean you looking at 92 bolts on one axis, then you got tower bolts. I mean, it’s a very, very boring job, I’m assuming for the people that have to do that. All the time and having tools that make it easier, have a, have a less chance of not hitting that torque value, setting something wrong, not putting the tool in properly at an angle, for example. I, I think the more, at least what I’ve been seeing recently, the more money and effort people are putting into, like making bolted joints. Is gonna be worth it.  Joel Saxum: Well, and I think this is why, like this is the importance of an RCA, right? Because at that level of, say, new construction or repowers, people are just pointing fingers like, oh, the technicians did this wrong, or whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah. Or you get an RCA specialist to come in and can do, you know, the [00:13:00]eight eight DRCA or if they throw an RCA and figure this thing out properly and be able to point to, well, actually there’s a. A metallurgical defect in these bolts and you know, it’s a supplier issue or, or maybe it does the RC may point, Hey, these guys were at the bar the night before they torked this one or something. You  Jonathan Zalar: know? Or, or could be like crew a just happens to not pay attention or, or had or had the wrong information. They had the old bolted joint, this tribal knowledge.  Joel Saxum: Exactly. And speaking about the problem there, like if we’re down the line, say now out of warranty, and we’re looking at a bolted connection issue. It may point to once you’ve stretched those bolts a certain amount, if you’re re torquing or changing torque specs or something along the way that’s done, like that’s cash, like that doesn’t, it doesn’t work like that called yield.  Jonathan Zalar: Yes.  Allen Hall 2025: Well, especially composites though, when you start talking about these bushings that are in the blades. You pull them, they’re, they don’t recover. They just get damaged. It’s not like some metal and it can stretch. You don’t really stretch [00:14:00] composites. You break composites.  Jonathan Zalar: Right. Once it loose is once it’s loose, it is adherence, it’s done right. You have to go do something, get it back. And I know there’s some technologies out there trying to fix some of these inserts, but yeah, like once you do that damage. It doesn’t heal itself.  Allen Hall 2025: Right. And I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding about that right now in the field because it, they’re not talking to engineers. They feel like, well, we’ll just cinch it back up and it’ll be okay. No, that joint is done. It’s done. You need to have somebody come in and look at it and give you some really good advice. Joel Saxum: So to get to that level, Jon, you need to go through an investigation process. Can you give us some of the like, tips and tricks for the investigation process that like, that you know of, that you, that have helped you in the past? Data quality is very important,  Jonathan Zalar: like making sure, you know, like what turbine, which bolts, how many bolts, when did it happen, when were they last touched? Like documentation is not always the best in the field. There’s a lot of handwritten stuff I [00:15:00] know that, you know. Companies are getting much better with electronic documentation, but that didn’t always exist in the beginning, like four or five years ago, surprisingly. Um, and then also like having the expectations where an RCA doesn’t take a month. If someone, if someone calls you up and says, I need an RCA in a month, they don’t want RCA, that’s it. They’re not that fast. You really need to look at what’s going on, collect the data, put a hypothesis together, and. Validate or invalidate it and repeat if needed. And then you have corrective action. And that takes time. That takes a commitment from the customer as well as you know, whoever they’re working with.  Allen Hall 2025: And that corrective action is the real key. But it’s hard to get to the corrective action if you don’t know what the root cause is. I see a lot of corrective actioning happening out in the field. Like they assume they know what’s happened, but not the details. And you’re right, Jon, it’s gonna take more than a couple of days. To suss this out because there’s too [00:16:00] many variables and there’s not a lot of information, particularly when you show up on site. A lot of operators haven’t kept the real detailed records that you would need to be able to point it in in an afternoon. Like, yes, this is it. Right?  Jonathan Zalar: Unless it’s a known issue that you’re not aware of and somebody else tells you, oh, yeah. G has his tail go do this, whatever this is. Right.  Allen Hall 2025: And how does that play out between the different OEMs at the minute? Are they basically providing the same level of information about, uh, known problems? I have very little experience with like, um, I don’t know. Intercon for example, I haven’t seen a lot of Intercon service bulletins. I’ve seen Seaga Mesas and GEs Iveta. They’re pretty on top of it, but there’s other turbines that are out there, Solan. Well, how does that work?  Jonathan Zalar: That’s a very good question. ’cause I’m not seeing very many from Intercon or Solan either. And I believe they have some bigger companies that are responsible for them now. Um, [00:17:00] it’d be interesting to see. What kind of level that a turbine, that old without, you know, their OEM’s gone. Right. Someone else bought ’em out at some point.  Allen Hall 2025: Well, it’s like the Mitsubishi 1000 A’s, which is a really good example because a lot of the Mitsubishi 1000 A’s, and there are a number of them still in the states are, are being repowered at the minute. So they’re gonna have another 20 years of lifetime. But I, you know, Mitsubishi probably doesn’t really provide a lot of service on those. What do you do? If you have an issue on a Mitsubishi or an old Suland machine or even an old GAA machine, where are you going to get help? I  Jonathan Zalar: mean, you, you really need to go to like an independent engineer that has that kind of experience, you know, hopefully with that particular turbine model. But if not, you know, people who do follow known RCA processes, we will be able to like work through issues like that.  Allen Hall 2025: Is there a network of RCA people in the industry? I know you. Because you’re the [00:18:00] best. So, I mean, I’m talking to you all the time, Jon. I’ve seen this problem of the turbine tell me what’s going on. But is there a, a general network of people that are just out there focused on solving these problems?  Jonathan Zalar: I don’t think the market’s huge in that right now. I mean, yes, there’s some independent people like myself, and then you have your DNB Leidos, those type of companies that that will do RCAs. But I don’t think they have dedicated RCA teams. I think. The OEMs are the ones with the dedicated OEMs and then a handful of people like me.  Allen Hall 2025: So let’s, let’s walk through that for a minute, because one of the questions that pops up when someone’s trying to solve a problem is like, why not bring in a big organization like the one you just mentioned to, to do the RCA? Like we, we, we’ve hired, uh, the three letter acronym to come in and do the RCR, the two letter acronym to come in and do the RCA. There’s a downside to that. I think I, I’m not always sure that the, the competency is there based [00:19:00] upon the, just what I see for the level of person that’s been assigned to that. When they have so many RCAs and requests coming into the door, can they. Manage it at a level that you as the customer would be happy with.  Jonathan Zalar: I don’t deal with it too much, but you’re right, it, it will depend on the person you get Right. When you’re using one of the bigger one. Right. And you know, I’m sure some customers have the opposite, like, oh, I got the best guide or girl I could get for this. Right.  Allen Hall 2025: Have you seen the varying in quality there, Joel? Like if you just call out the big name and pick up the phone and call the name. You don’t always know what you’re getting  Joel Saxum: there. We know, we know some really good people in the industry that has specific problems, but the trouble is, is scaling engineering expertise is tough. Right. So like if you have a, you have a Jon Zalar on the phone, you get an awesome engineer that knows how to do RCAs, but you only get Jon Zalar, right? You, you, you can’t expand that. A million things like Jon Zalar can’t take out 58 RCAs this week because he’s Jon Zalar. Whereas, whereas I think that some of the [00:20:00] bigger houses, you get the strength of having a, uh, the larger team behind some of them where they can kind of spread some work out. Or you may have an expert in fracture mechanics that he can look at this and somewhat so you have that with the larger teams, which I think is an advantage and you get some varying opinions in the room and you can really sort down to certain things. But at the end of the day it, it, it’s exactly that. It’s an engineering expertise shortage  Jonathan Zalar: off. You know, it’s also nice when they have a good network. Of people that they’ve worked with in the past to bounce ideas off of. Because like if you’re the only one doing RCA all on your own, you’re gonna second guess yourself a lot. But like having somebody who does have. A lot of contacts and colleagues in the industry. I think that’s very helpful.  Allen Hall 2025: Well, a new avenue for root cause analysis is looking at the service providers. I’ve noticed that, uh, you know, it’s one thing if a product comes to an OEM, you, you kind of know what you’re dealing with there. But when a company’s out there, uh, independent service provider or maybe some out there on a contract is [00:21:00] doing work on your turbine. Now RCAs are looking into those service providers. Jon, are you involved with some of those discussions?  Jonathan Zalar: It’s, you know, not just the service provider, it’s even like who’s doing the work. Are they actually doing what they say they’re doing? Um, are they following the OEMs maintenance schedule correctly? Um, you know, especially some of the owners that farm out the whole operations to somebody else. Double checking their work, I think is important just to make sure, I mean, you, even if you have total control and people, but just having a second set of eyes doing some quality checks. I, I, I don’t think that enough of that’s being done in the industry at this point. I think there’s opportunity to get  Joel Saxum: better. The bird dog concept, right? The bird like oil and gas is bird dogs everywhere in the onshore, offshore. Anything you do, they gotta, they got a client rep who is rolling around making [00:22:00] sure things are done right. And I think we need that in wind too. And it’s not any different if you look at the same thing. Remote operations people are like, oh, wind farms are all over the place. Like, have you looked at any other In industry, it’s the same thing.  Jonathan Zalar: It it, it’s harder. There’s more of them and they don’t move, like, you know, like a locomotive or automobile, right. Where they come to the shop and you can overlook, see what somebody did. But yeah, like spending that money and effort on. Quality, I think could go a long way. And one of the ways would be the bird dog method that you suggested.  Allen Hall 2025: Yeah, I do think some of the issues we’re seeing in the field are related to particular groups that have touched the turbines, and maybe they just don’t have the latest and greatest information from the OE em, or maybe they’re just winging it, but either case, uh, the sampling there needs to happen and it really gets down to knowing what’s happening with your turbine. And then when it doesn’t seem right. Getting an expert on site to take a look and make sure that your turbine is operating like you think it should and [00:23:00]it should be producing like it should, because if anything, we know right now production is key. We need those turbines up and running. Jon, you know, a lot of people call us and ask us, how do I get ahold of Za LR? Do you have an email for Jon? How do people get ahold of you? I send ’em to your website, i wtg consulting.com. But they, you know, they want your mobile number, which I try to avoid giving them, but how do they, how do they reach you?  Jonathan Zalar: Um, the website, it’s got a form there. Um, they can also email me at Jay zr@iwtgconsulting.com. Allen Hall 2025: Well, you can see Jon on LinkedIn. It has a lot of good posts on LinkedIn and you’ll see him. Around the country and the world at different symposiums and discussions about wind turbine operations. Uh, and you can always feel free to talk to Jon Jon’s easy to talk to. So Jon, so thank you so much for being on the podcast. We love having you. Thanks for having me, guys. I appreciate it. It was [00:24:00] fun.

This week we discuss the Danish government’s permit extensions for two offshore wind farms, the U.S. Senate’s new renewable energy bill, the Belgian government’s halted wind farm tender, and the complexities of laying seabed cables for wind farms. 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 2025: Well welcome back to Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I have Rosemary Barnes down in Canberra Australia. Phil’s in California, and evidently he lives next door to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and I, I had no idea, Phil, like you’re that close to royalty.  Phil Totaro: I’m not. You’re  Allen Hall 2025: making that up. Joel’s up in Wisconsin somewhere in the northern wilds of Wisconsin. Next to a cheese factory, and here I sit in Charlotte, North Carolina. If we’ve been paying attention or if you’ve been paying attention to the news over the last, uh, 48 hours in America has been complete chaos as we are recording this and the US Senate has [00:01:00] passed a bill regarding renewable energy and it’s back to the house. Supposedly this is all gonna get signed off by the 4th of July. So we’re recording it. Today is July 2nd. Um. So by the time you hear this, something may or may not have happened, and we’re trying to keep abreast of the latest, but I think there’s some other news going on around the world. And, uh, one of the stories we found interesting was the Danish Offshore, uh, agency Energy Agency has approved permit extensions for two of Denmark’s oldest offshore wind farms, which marks a major milestone for. Wind energy longevity. The middle Gruden and Newstead offshore wind farms have received permission to operate for an additional 25 years and 10 years respectively. That is massive extension. Uh, the middle Gruden facility, which is built in 2001, has about 20 turbines and about 40 megawatts of capacity, and it’s owned by a community cooperative. [00:02:00] And the Danes being on top of all these things, uh, allowed the extension after doing an engineering analysis showing that the infrastructure has more life. This is unusual. Is this just a artifact of early designs being overly conservative? And these wind farms can practically live forever? I think so. I, uh,  Joel Saxum: I like it. Alright. I wish that all these wind turbines are built this way because it’s then you can get more longevity of, I think now of course when everybody has a repower now or tries to extend life, they’re trying to really do it. So they’re trying to, if we’re gonna put money, we’ll try to, you know, up the kilowatt, we’ll try to up the capacity, well then the foundations don’t hold and these kind of things. So it’s kind of like if you look at, um. I’m up here in northern Wisconsin, not too far from my house. There’s a bridge that was built by the CCC, uh, the civilian Conservation Corps in like the, um, at the Great Depression. So like in the 1930s, late, [00:03:00] late 1920s. And that bridge is fine. Like it’s golden. It’s still good, right? But it was overbuilt, super built to be heavy duty construction. And there’s another bridge just down the road from that same one over the same river that was done in the seventies that needs a complete replacement. Because it was done, it was done with like, you know, di different design functions, not as robust. And, and it’s kind of like, oh, some of this first generation of older stuff is overbuilt, is toughly built. It’s the same thing. We talk about shorter blades, like a, you know, a V 47 or a GE one X, like those blades just last and, but you don’t see it as much anymore. So I, I, I’m happy to see this. I think it’s cool, uh, to see these things getting basically refurbished and. Gonna have a life extension.  Allen Hall 2025: I don’t even know what the refurbishment process or the extension process looks like. Rosemary on something that is that old that’s made out of fiberglass and resin. How do you even evaluate something like that?  Rosemary Barnes: Well, what they [00:04:00] do is they, um, if, if you wanna do it properly, then you go back to the original, um, blade design files, um, and you basically, you rerun it, you can, and so you get a different result for two reasons. Or two possible reasons. One could be that it didn’t see as hard of a life as what they designed for. So, um, you know, you can rerun with the actual loads that it saw if you have those available. And then the second thing is that, you know, these wind farms came on around the turn of the millennium, right? Um, and so we’ve learned a lot, especially about, um, um, like how strong materials actually are. There are still gonna be some, some, you know, defects in some blades. That will see them fail before others. So you, you know, the blades are getting older. I would expect they will see more, more failures, but, um, there’s a lot better ways that you can monitor that sort of thing. Now, you don’t just have to wait for a, a blade to break in half and fly off. Um, anymore. You can, uh, you know, install monitoring [00:05:00] stuff and, uh. Inspect them more frequently. You know, drone inspections are so much faster than, uh, if you would’ve had to get up on ropes and have a look at every, you know, square centimeter of blade surface. So I think that there’s just, you know, that so many technologies have come so far since these, um, blades were designed, that there is a lot of scope to keep them going, if that makes sense. You know, a lot of times a turbine that was installed 25 years ago is gonna be tiny compared to today. So a lot of times people might not want to, um, they might wanna. You put in new, new, bigger turbines instead.  Joel Saxum: Do you see, because, okay, so we talked about blades here for a second, right? But we have all kinds of rotating mechanical equipment, foundations, bolting all this. Do you see in my mind, in my mind, for something this old and wanting to extend that one, I see a massive NDT campaign. I see checking bond lines on blades, looking at some metallurgical things, looking at some connection points offshore, looking at the foundations. I mean, of course you’re gonna do some seabed stuff, but that’s usually done in maintenance too. That’s a weird one there, because. [00:06:00] When you talk about maintenance, inspection, repair, and maintenance campaigns for offshore wind farms, there’s things that you don’t do onshore that you do complete offshore regularly, like scour inspections and some of the characterization site surveys, that stuff goes on regularly. So that’s not something that you need to, oh, we gotta take this big campaign on. Should have regular every year bi-yearly data on that. So that’s cool, but I would see a big NNDT campaign in my mind. Um. I dunno. Maybe that’s Jeremy Hanks question.  Allen Hall 2025: Well, is this useful data that would help the industry just to know how these are performing? Rosemary Barnes: I think it would be quite specific to the individual components. ’cause you, you know, if the wind farm had an initial life of what, 25 years, um, everything would’ve been designed to last 25 years. You don’t like, good engineering isn’t just making something as strong as you can because it’s gonna be much more expensive than it needed to be. And what’s the point in having a. I don’t know, a tower that lasts for a a thousand years, but the blades only last for 30 years. There’s no, there’s no [00:07:00] point. Right. So, um, it would just be a matter of how, how excessively conservative the designers were in each case. It won’t be exactly the same for all of them. I’m sure they’ll be exchanging many components probably. Um. Some components will just be preemptively, like we know that most of these are gonna fail, so we’re gonna do a site-wide, um, campaign to replace, you know, all these bearings or all these, you know, whatever component and then some other ones. It would be a matter of yeah, like waiting and seeing when they fail. And I think that you’re right, Joel, that I. There’s so many good NDT technologies around now. Um, and, you know, predictive maintenance can, there’s a lot of sensors you can put in that will give you an early warning sign that things, you know, bearings don’t have a lot of life left in them or, or something like that. And so then you can get really smart about your campaigns to, you know, keep it going.  Allen Hall 2025: Don’t let blade damage catch you off guard. eLog Ping sensors detect issues before they become expensive. Time consuming [00:08:00] problems from ice buildup and lightning strikes to pitch misalignment in internal blade cracks. OG 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. Belgium’s Federal government has unexpectedly halted the long plan tender for the Princess Elizabeth Offshore wind zone. Just two months before bids were scheduled and the two gigawatt auction was set to launch in November, 2025. After four years of prep work and industry groups are calling the decision a violation of the coalition agreements and warn. It undermines investment certainty in Belgian offshore wind development. Now, the, the Belgian government is saying that there’s a concern about the onshore grid readiness, uh, although there’s some dispute about that and that all they needed to do was wait a couple of months and it would’ve been fine. [00:09:00] What I’m wondering is there’s a lot of, uh, cancel projects happening. Over in Europe and the UK and this Belgium one, which has been going on for quite a while and has been sort of a point of pride for the last couple of years, all of a sudden seems to be on hold. What is driving that?  Phil Totaro: Well, it’s, I mean, my, my best understanding of this is that they, there’s kind of a discussion as to what the function of these energy islands is gonna be and how much they’re really needing to invest in it. How much, uh. Are these going to be capable of serving as both service hubs and um, HVDC, uh, kind of collection points. So there’s a camp in Europe that wants to do a significant amount to build out near term, uh, to be able to, you know, have the [00:10:00] capacity that we all talk about, both onshore and offshore. You know, if we have more transmission capacity, then we can add more. Um. You know, renewable energy, power generation, capacity whenever we want, uh, and, and need it to be able to meet demand. Um, but they’re, I think, concerned at this point because of, you know, persistent high interest rates and inflation and things like that, which, you know, are gonna basically explode the project budget. So they wanna try to break it up into smaller phases that can be built in a more economically feasible way. Allen Hall 2025: If the European Union has fines for not meeting commitments, they would get fined if they don’t. Get this project moving  Phil Totaro: theoretically, although that’s also always just a kind of an open thing. They, they can, you know, the, the current law says we’re gonna fine you, but if everyone kind of mutually agrees to forego the fine, then it’s just [00:11:00] kicking the can down the road. Allen Hall 2025: Did you all see the wind Europe, uh, video today discussing the 20 30, 20 40, 20 50, uh, reaching. Essentially zero emissions are going back to 1990 emissions. And what is all involved with that? We’re mostly talking about heavy industry that is going to use a lot of electricity, it’s gonna switch off of gas, move to electricity, and it’s gonna take a little while to do that. But it didn’t seem like there was any hesitation, at least from wind Europe, that it wasn’t going to happen. Obviously they’re a advocate for wind energy, uh, but it did. Seem in contrast to what we’ve been hearing in the United States. So it does seem like things are happening, at least at the top level politically in Europe, whereas in the United States, there seem to be somewhat on hold. Why? I don’t think that’s an energy thing. I think  Joel Saxum: it’s a cultural  Allen Hall 2025: thing.  Joel Saxum: And if you look, if you look into [00:12:00] the E EU in general, they have more of a propensity to do things that are better for the whole and the group. Whereas in the US it’s more. Capitalism based, how can we make as much money as we can? And capitalism based right now, natural gas is still cheap. If you can get a plant, if you can get electricity that way, you can get it. Whereas the EU will take more of a stance of doing things better for the long run. That’s my take on it.  Phil Totaro: They’ve been, you know, for the last three years, trying to put policies and mechanisms in place to be able to. Have more domestic generation, um, for electricity and energy in general. Um, so, uh, this is part of why they’re trying to, um, you know, all motivate themselves collectively to move forward. But you’ve still got. Debates in some of the EU member countries like Germany right now with their offshore policy making, uh, France with onshore wind is still having an ongoing debate that’s holding up about $350 billion [00:13:00] worth of investment. Uh, so. You know, it’s everybody’s moving as quickly as they can, but I think what’s also happening is everybody’s starting to recognize that, you know, if companies like RWE are pulling out of investing in the US at the moment, I. There’s money to be had and, you know, RW eor, um, you know, other companies that had originally intended to go build, you know, particularly offshore, but also some onshore and solar, uh, in the us if, if some of that money’s gonna be freed up, they wanna be able to capture it. Allen Hall 2025: In the latest issue of PES Wind, which you can find online, just search for PES Wind using your Google engine. Uh, there’s a number of great articles and you, you need to go there and you need to download. This quarter’s, uh, magazine and, and Joel, there’s a, a really interesting article from, uh, go Be consultants about Seabeds and the cabling that happens on the seabeds and [00:14:00] all the difficulty of putting cables on the sea floor. You always think I do as an electrical engineer. I’m like, it’s a cable. Just drop it on the sea floor and maybe put a couple of rocks on it to keep it from floating away. And you should be good. But it’s  Joel Saxum: a lot more difficult than that. There’s multiple phases of it too, right? So you have to do complete CED site characterization. So you have to understand what the surface layout is. But then, okay, that surface layout, what is it composed of? Because some of this cable’s gonna sink into the silt, into the mud. Is there rocks down there? Is there rocks underneath the silt that when you lay it down, it could, could cut it? Is there currents where it’s gonna move it around? Is that a problem? When people think, ah, it’s cable, they’ll just lay it on the sea floor. It’s not. It’s not simple. Um, and you with, I’m just, we’re just talking about site characterization. We haven’t talked about the actual operation of laying it or even loading it onshore and loading it offshore, because even at that level, a lot of damage to cables happens just during the manufacturing and loadout process. Because it is so [00:15:00] difficult, uh, specialized vessels, specialized technicians, and people doing it, you pull on it too hard, it breaks, you push on it too hard, it breaks, you let it bend too much. It’s junk. It’s very, very, very difficult to lay cables correctly. And if you remember Alan, I think it was man, 2021, there was a, like a $1 billion, like a nine figure. Insurance case about cable lay in the North Sea on the big wind farm.  Allen Hall 2025: Well, the article does say that 75% of cable problems are manmade phishing. Anchors and as we had seen was, was it late last year, a couple of anchor drops where their anchors were drug on purpose. There’s gonna be a lot more concern about that now and how those, uh, power cables are covered or buried. I, I guess pretty much, uh, wasn’t the EU pushing to bury all the cables, particularly around the uk?  Joel Saxum: Yeah, there’s, there’s, I mean, there’s. It’s difficult in the UK too because there’s trenching [00:16:00] machines, right? So you have trenching machines that can trench things really easily into silt mud and that on those kind of loose sediments. However, if you’ve ever been in some of these landing spots, like say like the Scottish Coast, like it’s all rock, right? So now you have a landing problem. You know, so you can, you can bury, you can cover with concrete mattresses, you can do rock bags, you can do all kinds of great stuff. You can also bury it a couple meters down with a trenching machine. But then there’s the approaches and the, the current offshore that will unbury them and things. It’s very difficult to get it correct.  Allen Hall 2025: Yeah, it it, you need to go check out this article, but it, it lays out all the issues with protecting cables and you can see this and PES win to just go on to Google and look up ps win.com and read the article. Very good and, and nice job by Goby by the way, uh, I didn’t know some of the things I’ve, I’ve learned a lot from Joel over the last year or two as he explains this to me very slowly. But this article was full of great details. As Wind Energy professionals staying informed is crucial, [00:17:00] and let’s face it difficult. That’s why the Uptime podcast recommends PES Wind Magazine. PES Wind offers a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit PS wind.com today. So as we discussed at the beginning of the show, the US Senate has introduced legislation that could provide some, uh, support to the wind industry. So when the latest. Big Bill, what are we calling it? Joel? Big beautiful Bill. Uh, there’s a new provision which basically says if you get roughly 5% of the project cost, uh, started with in the ground or done some work, then the project qualifies for production tax credits that will create, I think, a demand for turbines to be delivered [00:18:00] soon. And, uh, the, the folks at Sid Bank put out an article, it was late last week or over the weekend that basically said, Hey, Vestus may get a lot of orders from this, uh, because they, they’ll have a lot of demand to get projects in the ground in the United States. Does that make sense? You think Vestas is gonna be the big winner there? Well, Sid Bank is a vest, is a Danish  Joel Saxum: bank, so that makes, that makes sense. But they have the pulse, they’re there. I I, I don’t know if Vestas is a big winner. I think that there’s gonna be, if this is by 2027, you gotta have a certain amount of thing done. No matter what part of the value chain that you show in the United States for new, new development construction, you’re gonna be busy. Till 2027 if this, if this thing passes everything the way it should, because simply it’s, it’s like the old oil and gas leases where, uh, if we’re doing work, we still get to extend the lease. So they go, come and park a dozer on your property and all of a sudden your lease gets extended. Definitely. It’s the same concept, right? If you go out there and you gotta, [00:19:00] if it’s gonna spend 5% of the project, well, let’s go build roads and pads, um, and, you know, deliver a turbine or two. And now we’ve paid for 5% and now that stuff may. Sit there for a little while, while they catch back up. And I think that you’re gonna have an accelerated timeline of things getting done here in the next few years. Uh, if this passes in its current form, um, I, I would expect the house to change some of these things, but. I’m not a part of the House of Representatives, so,  Allen Hall 2025: well, they’re gonna have to come to agreement pretty quick. And I’m curious as to where this all ends up. I listening to all the discussions over the weekend and reading a number of articles and trying to figure out like, what’s this deal? Just broaden the scope here for a moment. What’s the deal with all the tariff talks? What’s the deal with all the l and g petroleum push in America? What is happening with the national debt, which is a big discussion in the United States at the [00:20:00] minute, and the Federal deficit, which is what, 34 $5 trillion, where the GDP of the US is about 27 20 $8 trillion. So the, the debt’s bigger than the national GDP. There does seem to be be a play going on in, I was listening to a podcast this morning from oil and gas. I tried to keep track of these things and they were just really upset with what happened in the Senate. Oh my gosh. We haven’t penalized solar and wind enough. We need to put more taxation on them to, and it was crazy. It sounded crazy. The oil and gas folks that are pro oil and gas, yeah, they’re gonna do what they’re gonna do. But it does seem like there is a maybe some method to this madness in terms of. What is the United States trying to accomplish here with all the oil and gas talk? Because it does seem like the tariff talks turn into why are you not buying American LNG? [00:21:00] That’s where it seems to be headed. Do you see that quite often, like the national debt and is the the way to get the economy rolling where there’s more revenue coming into the federal government is to just pump, pump, pump. This is the Joel. This is also the discussion about Alaska opening up all the. Uh, oil and gas exploration in Alaska, all of a sudden you have to have a customer for this product. And how are they gonna do that? Unless they’re gonna force it through tariff. The tariff talks and all the economic exchanges are gonna happen over the next, supposedly the next couple of weeks. Joel Saxum: There’s a lot of, like, there’s some facts and numbers here too. Like, uh, the last one I saw was since we started putting. Heavier tariffs, uh, on trading partners. That $121 billion in tariff revenues rolled into the states in the last two, four months. So that’s, that’s, that’s one number. Um, the gas thing is the idea that we can turn it on right now and we can make money on it. Right [00:22:00] now, I understand that, uh, there’s a big project in Alaska being pitched to get LNG off the North slope because right now only crude pumps off the North Slope. Um, so there’s a big LNG project in the works to get to build a new basically taps line, which is like a, it’ll be a $10 billion project to build a pipeline again across Alaska these days. Um, and, but another thing that I think that people don’t realize, and this is the, the I’m, you know, I’m an ex oil and gas cot. I still play in that world every once in a while, but when, when people start to fight about the. The tariffs back and forth. We haven’t penalized this and the subsidies and these kind of things. It’s really quite silly to me because what we really need right now is an all of the above energy strategy. We need as much as, as much as we can that’ll help us fuel the ai, AI, arms, race, data center race, all of these things. We need power and, and when you talk subsidies and people get mad about PTC credits or the IRA credits, they fail to realize sometimes, and I’m not saying they as a person, just people in general [00:23:00] like. Drilling for oil and gas has been subsidized in the United States since 1913, right? The, the intangible drilling costs deduction for drilling companies. Like we’ve been doing this same thing. That’s the, that is the equivalent of an ITC credit. You’re gonna investment, you’re gonna, you’re gonna, you’re gonna invest to get power, or you’re gonna invest to get hydrocarbons. We’re gonna give you a tax break on it. Same thing. Um, so these, you know, you’ve had clean coal tax credits for the last 20 years. We, these things are. Out there, right? Modified accelerated cost recovery systems, the macros tax, that’s been since 1986. And that’s for any advanced gas play like, uh, that actually subsidizes fracking. So these, the, the, the idea that you have different parts of the, basically energy supply chain attacking each other is. It’s silly to me.  Allen Hall 2025: I think it goes beyond that too, Joel, because the US uh, trade talks with the UK and with Australia, it sounds like, uh, the [00:24:00] US administration is telling, uh, countries that could be LNG offtake. I. Countries to stop building wind. Why are you building wind? Have you, have you seen those articles, Joel? Like why is the US telling the uk, why are you building wind? You should stop building wind. Well, the reason you would want them to stop building wind is so they can buy l and g. That’s why you would do that. So they become dependent. Dependent on us. Exactly. So you can sell this product because otherwise you don’t have a marketplace for it. So if. If the goal is to raise cash United States relatively quickly by pumping LNG and oil and whatever else, something you can export, that’s why you’d have to do it. And you need to bring more money into the country than goes out Selling petroleum is a way to do that. You have to cut off all the renewables. You can’t have Australia run on solar if you wanna sell ‘ Joel Saxum: em some l and g. It’s a power play, right? Because I’ll take some words from my, my buddy Kevin Doffing over at Project Vanguard. Energy Independence is national security, [00:25:00] right? So if we, if we start talking to the UK, to Australia and say, oh, don’t do wind, just buy gas from us. Well, if they did that, then they become dependent on us for their energy needs and therefore their national security needs. I, if I was there, my BI was there, I’d say, get outta my office. I don’t wanna talk to  Allen Hall 2025: you. That’s the higher level discussion, which I don’t hear in the press at all. I mean, ’cause they’re not thinking at that level. They’re all arguing about what Elon Musk says, and we’re missing the bigger picture that I think the United States is really pushing LNG really pushing petroleum to try to bring more revenue to the United States to help the economy in the United States. And it’s a quick bandage on what’s been happening over the last 15, 20 years. That’s where it’s headed and that all the trade discussions that are happening seem to be revolving around oil. ’cause that’s the fastest way you’re gonna be able to generate revenue from the United States perspective. Because you can turn it on like that. You can turn it on. Right. So the drill, baby drill mantra, that’s been. [00:26:00]talked about for the last really two years, it’s gonna come into action. But the problem with that approach is that China’s gonna build more solar panels. China’s gonna build more wind turbines. The Europeans are gonna build more wind turbines, and they’re gonna use a lot more solar panels, and there may not be a market for that petroleum product. So the administration of the United States has to, has to cut that off.  Joel Saxum: I’m going down a rabbit hole here. Spin up the US petroleum production capabilities, which you, we already have. We can do, we got drill, drill and rigs sitting by it’s turn taps on. Like you can make it move, but you’re gonna make it move based on price. What is the thing that makes the price? What is the thing that makes the price go up if, if people aren’t buying or if  Allen Hall 2025: even if they are, I think what’s we’re gonna find out over the next probably six weeks, I think what’s gonna happen in some of these trade negotiations that that’s gonna be a pivotable element. Of the discussions is gonna be the purchase of petroleum from the United [00:27:00] States. That’s why I think a lot of these negotiations have been so drawn out because the thing that a, that the administration wants to sell today is a product that Australia and a lot of countries don’t need, but they’re still going to buy some of it. I, I guarantee you, Australia can get cheaper l and g from Qatar than they can can gain from us. Exactly. Isn’t that how you’re going to tell if that is the American play? If a country like Australia who should not be buying LNG from the United States starts buying LNG from the United States, that I think is the instantaneous tell that that is where the US is trying to go to help offset all the deficit and everything else that’s going on. I don’t. I’m not in agreement with the plague, as I think that’s a play you could have made in 1980. I don’t think you can do it in 2025. I think it’s gonna be a much [00:28:00] harder to do because countries are more electrically independent than ever before.  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I mean, this, Australia’s got similar decisions to make and I’ve been beating my head against the wall for 20 years. I’m like, you can’t just force the rest of the world to keep on buying our coal, that the energy transition is happening, or at least it will happen or not based on. Things that are well beyond our control. So, you know, for us to dig our heels in and be like, no, coal’s amazing forever. Like, that’s great. If you’re only using your own coal, you can make that decision. But when most of the value of Australian coal is by, you know, comes from selling it, uh, to other countries, that’s, you know, they, we can’t force them to keep on buying it. Um, I think Australia is, uh, may maybe does understand that now. Um, I, I don’t see as much, um. Yeah, burying the head in the sand kind of business as usual is even a possibility. I don’t see that so much anymore, but yeah, I do feel like this latest, um, yeah, play from the US is [00:29:00] maybe a bit like, like you said, from the, it’s from the 1980s. It’s,  Allen Hall 2025: it’s part of is happening, which it helps explain it. I think the problem I, I have is no one’s explaining what’s happening. So when you see these moves, you’re like, why? Why are we talking to the UK about l and g? Why are we talking to other countries about l and g? Why are we telling them not to put wind in? Why are we trying to crush wind in the United States? Why are the oil and gas folks in the United States so insistent that we tear down the existing wind farms? I don’t disagree with  Phil Totaro: what you’re saying about a lot of this, the, the. But this goes back to what I keep saying and everybody thinks that I’m some kind of China apologist because of it. And it’s like the whole reason that they’re able to gain prominence is exactly because of the fact that they’re going out there, they are filling the void, that the US is left with foreign aid, they’re going out there and filling the void that we’re leaving by, you know, trying to.[00:30:00] The harder of a time we give all these other foreign countries, the more they’re gonna look to whatever alternative seems more viable. And if we keep running around, pissing everybody off, then they’re just gonna stop and, and start doing something that is more independent from us than it ever has been before. Which ties back to what you just said about, uh, you know, every, if you look at everybody’s energy independence, it is increasing. Because they’re doing more to deploy, whether it’s renewable energy technologies or just more domestic consumption of, of resources, there is less and less of an energy trade imbalance than there ever has been in the history of the world. And that’s only gonna continue. And at the end of the day, you’re, eh. You know, everybody’s going to have energy and electricity, self-sufficiency and independence, and if we don’t continue to do what we have done [00:31:00] as, as a country, then China is gonna dominate the, the, the world. So. You know, this is why I keep saying it’s a choice. Like their government makes a choice to support their industry because they see this as the wave of the future, and they’ve made a choice. We are making a different choice, and I think it’s the wrong one.  Allen Hall 2025: I think this is only like for gonna last for a year or two. Like it. The economics will not play out in the way that the United States wants it. Well, that’s gonna do for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. Uh. Prince Harry and and Phil are gonna have a good time over the 4th of July, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.