Flash Forward is a show about possible (and not so possible) future scenarios. What would the warranty on a sex robot look like? How would diplomacy work if we couldn’t lie? Could there ever be a fecal transplant black market? (Complicated, it wouldn’t, and yes, respectively, in case you’re curious.) Hosted and produced by award winning science journalist Rose Eveleth, each episode combines audio drama and journalism to go deep on potential tomorrows, and uncovers what those futures might re ...
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Allen Hall, Rosemary Barnes, Joel Saxum & Phil Totaro, Allen Hall, Rosemary Barnes, Joel Saxum, and Phil Totaro에서 제공하는 콘텐츠입니다. 에피소드, 그래픽, 팟캐스트 설명을 포함한 모든 팟캐스트 콘텐츠는 Allen Hall, Rosemary Barnes, Joel Saxum & Phil Totaro, Allen Hall, Rosemary Barnes, Joel Saxum, and Phil Totaro 또는 해당 팟캐스트 플랫폼 파트너가 직접 업로드하고 제공합니다. 누군가가 귀하의 허락 없이 귀하의 저작물을 사용하고 있다고 생각되는 경우 여기에 설명된 절차를 따르실 수 있습니다 https://ko.player.fm/legal.
The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast와 비슷한 콘텐츠
DNA science. Artificial intelligence. Smartphones and 3D printers. Science and technology have transformed the world we live in. But how did we get here? It wasn’t by accident. Well, sometimes it was. It was also the result of hard work, teamwork, and competition. And incredibly surprising moments. Hosted by bestselling author Steven Johnson (“How We Got To Now”), American Innovations uses immersive scenes to tell the stories of the scientists, engineers, and ordinary people behind the great ...
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We humans could have a bright future ahead of us that lasts billions of years. But we have to survive the next 200 years first. Join Josh Clark of Stuff You Should Know for a 10-episode deep dive that explores the future of humanity and finds dangers we have never encountered before lurking just ahead. And if we humans are alone in the universe, if we don't survive intelligent life dies out with us too.
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A myriad of AI, science, and technology experts explore the real challenges and enormous opportunities facing entrepreneurs who are building the future of health. Raising Health, a podcast by a16z Bio + Health and hosted by Kris Tatiossian and Olivia Webb, dives deep into the heart of biotechnology and healthcare innovation. Join veteran company builders, operators, and investors Vijay Pande, Julie Yoo, Vineeta Agarwala, and Jorge Conde, along with distinguished guests like Mark Cuban, Greg ...
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Come dive into one of the curiously delightful conversations overheard at National Geographic’s headquarters, as we follow explorers, photographers, and scientists to the edges of our big, weird, beautiful world. Hosted by Peter Gwin and Amy Briggs.
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Facts, jokes, and more from the Internet’s leading comedy website, Cracked.com. Fill your week and your brain with hilarious, mind-blowing revelations that’ll make you the most interesting person in every room you’re in.
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Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wynn Grant is a different kind of nature show about the human drama of saving animals. From a paleoanthropologist who hunts fossils in conflict zones to someone who helped save an endangered species while in prison, in season four we will hear from real-life heroes and nature advocates with widely different expertise and life experiences that led them to be champions for the natural world. Wildlife biologist and host Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant has been studying wild animals i ...
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Whether the topic is popcorn or particle physics, you can count on BrainStuff to explore -- and explain -- the everyday science in the world around us.
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Unseeable forces control human behavior and shape our ideas, beliefs, and assumptions. Invisibilia—Latin for invisible things—fuses narrative storytelling with science that will make you see your own life differently.
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Big tech is transforming every aspect of our world. But how, and at what cost? This season of Land of the Giants – The Disney Dilemma – focuses on Disney’s ability to weather the ups and downs of the business cycle and changing tastes and explores what has kept it successful for over 100 years. The entertainment giant has leveraged nostalgia and its intellectual property to build a beloved brand, but after an acquisition spree that included Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 20th Century Fox, can it sus ...
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The Big Pitch with Jimmy Carr
It’s the very first episode of The Big Pitch with Jimmy Carr and our first guest is Phil Wang! And Phil’s subgenre is…This Place is Evil. We’re talking psychological torture, we’re talking gory death scenes, we’re talking Lorraine Kelly?! The Big Pitch with Jimmy Carr is a brand new comedy podcast where each week a different celebrity guest pitches an idea for a film based on one of the SUPER niche sub-genres on Netflix. From ‘Steamy Crime Movies from the 1970s’ to ‘Australian Dysfunctional Family Comedies Starring A Strong Female Lead’, our celebrity guests will pitch their wacky plot, their dream cast, the marketing stunts, and everything in between. By the end of every episode, Jimmy Carr, Comedian by night / “Netflix Executive” by day, will decide whether the pitch is greenlit or condemned to development hell! Listen on all podcast platforms and watch on the Netflix Is A Joke YouTube Channel . The Big Pitch is a co-production by Netflix and BBC Studios Audio. Jimmy Carr is an award-winning stand-up comedian and writer, touring his brand-new show JIMMY CARR: LAUGHS FUNNY throughout the USA from May to November this year, as well as across the UK and Europe, before hitting Australia and New Zealand in early 2026. All info and tickets for the tour are available at JIMMYCARR.COM Production Coordinator: Becky Carewe-Jeffries Production Manager: Mabel Finnegan-Wright Editor: Stuart Reid Producer: Pete Strauss Executive Producer: Richard Morris Executive Producers for Netflix: Kathryn Huyghue, Erica Brady, and David Markowitz Set Design: Helen Coyston Studios: Tower Bridge Studios Make Up: Samantha Coughlan Cameras: Daniel Spencer Sound: Charlie Emery Branding: Tim Lane Photography: James Hole…
LiftOff Uptower Crane Success and TPI Composites Growth Plans
Manage episode 453365915 series 2912702
Allen Hall, Rosemary Barnes, Joel Saxum & Phil Totaro, Allen Hall, Rosemary Barnes, Joel Saxum, and Phil Totaro에서 제공하는 콘텐츠입니다. 에피소드, 그래픽, 팟캐스트 설명을 포함한 모든 팟캐스트 콘텐츠는 Allen Hall, Rosemary Barnes, Joel Saxum & Phil Totaro, Allen Hall, Rosemary Barnes, Joel Saxum, and Phil Totaro 또는 해당 팟캐스트 플랫폼 파트너가 직접 업로드하고 제공합니다. 누군가가 귀하의 허락 없이 귀하의 저작물을 사용하고 있다고 생각되는 경우 여기에 설명된 절차를 따르실 수 있습니다 https://ko.player.fm/legal.
We hope you had a good Thanksgiving break! Allen and Phil dive into offshore news with Netherlands-based LiftOff and their uptower crane system. Recent successful MCE projects bode well for Liftoff in 2025. Plus, TPI Composites announced their Q3 results. Turkey's inflation pressure and a shift to more American-based manufacturing is tamping the near-term growth. Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.comJoin us at The Wind Energy O&M Australia Conference - https://www.windaustralia.comLiftOff - https://liftoff-mce.com Allen Hall: Phil, I hope you had a good Thanksgiving and a lot of turkey. I did. Thank you. I hope you did too. I did. And one thing that goes with all the tryptophan and that turkey is caffeine, so you can fight off the tryptophan and watch your favorite football team lose. And during this time, Duncan's been working, which is a big coffee producer in the United States is trying to break world records. And so they hooked up with Nick DiGiovanni to break the Guinness World Record for the largest ice latte. And that ice latte was in an 11 foot high Dunkin Cup with ice milk and espresso. That's what a latte is, right? And it turns out that the Guinness World Records confirmed that it was 276 gallons in that cup. And the question is, what did they do with all that latte? That's a lot of latte. Hopefully everybody drank Phil Totaro: that. You'd hate to think they would waste it. Allen Hall: According to Duncan, they served it To 300 employees at the corporate office in Massachusetts. Now, if you do the math on that's roughly a gallon of latte per employee. Phil Totaro: That's a lot. I know some people that do drink a lot of coffee. I don't I guess I'm naturally a brilliant, but like some people need that much, I don't know. Holy cow, that's Allen Hall: a lot of coffee. This could be a lot of sleepless nights in Massachusetts from all the Dunkin employees. And productivity's gotta go way up. The latest P. E. S. Win Magazine has a number of great articles in it, and if you haven't PESWin. com and you can download it for free and read all the articles in it. And one of the more interesting articles that I thought was in this one is an article from Liftoff. And we've had Elko May from Liftoff on the podcast previously. And Liftoff is an offshoot of a podcast. arm of Liftworks, which is, Liftworks does onshore wind, heavy lift, and crane work, using a unique process to do that. And Liftoff is doing all the offshore work for Liftworks, and Liftoff is based in the Netherlands with Elco, and it has done a number of, a couple of amazing things this over the last couple of months, really. They've done some crane technology work on fixed bottom offshore winds, where instead of using jackup vessels to do maintenance, they've got the system now to work, where they can handle up to 9. 5 megawatt capacity turbines without using jackup vessels. So they're using standard containers. on flat barges that are moved around via tugs. Now, Phil, this makes a ton of sense to me because the expensive part, as we always say on Offshore Wind, is not really the turbine, it's the jackup vessels and all the specialized ships you need to go do this work, and liftoff is eliminating a lot of that and simplifying MCE for some of these tournaments. Phil Totaro: Yeah. And what strikes me about this is actually something slightly unrelated, which is Cattler just came out with their quarterly report saying that the demand for their services is huge right now. So maybe Liftoff helps alleviate some of that burden much to the chagrin maybe of Cattler. But it's great. They can take, a technology that was developed for onshore and deploy it offshore. In, in that, you don't always have the same obviously weather and site conditions. But the way in which the, this liftoff system works is using this kind of ...
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459 에피소드
공유Manage episode 453365915 series 2912702
Allen Hall, Rosemary Barnes, Joel Saxum & Phil Totaro, Allen Hall, Rosemary Barnes, Joel Saxum, and Phil Totaro에서 제공하는 콘텐츠입니다. 에피소드, 그래픽, 팟캐스트 설명을 포함한 모든 팟캐스트 콘텐츠는 Allen Hall, Rosemary Barnes, Joel Saxum & Phil Totaro, Allen Hall, Rosemary Barnes, Joel Saxum, and Phil Totaro 또는 해당 팟캐스트 플랫폼 파트너가 직접 업로드하고 제공합니다. 누군가가 귀하의 허락 없이 귀하의 저작물을 사용하고 있다고 생각되는 경우 여기에 설명된 절차를 따르실 수 있습니다 https://ko.player.fm/legal.
We hope you had a good Thanksgiving break! Allen and Phil dive into offshore news with Netherlands-based LiftOff and their uptower crane system. Recent successful MCE projects bode well for Liftoff in 2025. Plus, TPI Composites announced their Q3 results. Turkey's inflation pressure and a shift to more American-based manufacturing is tamping the near-term growth. Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.comJoin us at The Wind Energy O&M Australia Conference - https://www.windaustralia.comLiftOff - https://liftoff-mce.com Allen Hall: Phil, I hope you had a good Thanksgiving and a lot of turkey. I did. Thank you. I hope you did too. I did. And one thing that goes with all the tryptophan and that turkey is caffeine, so you can fight off the tryptophan and watch your favorite football team lose. And during this time, Duncan's been working, which is a big coffee producer in the United States is trying to break world records. And so they hooked up with Nick DiGiovanni to break the Guinness World Record for the largest ice latte. And that ice latte was in an 11 foot high Dunkin Cup with ice milk and espresso. That's what a latte is, right? And it turns out that the Guinness World Records confirmed that it was 276 gallons in that cup. And the question is, what did they do with all that latte? That's a lot of latte. Hopefully everybody drank Phil Totaro: that. You'd hate to think they would waste it. Allen Hall: According to Duncan, they served it To 300 employees at the corporate office in Massachusetts. Now, if you do the math on that's roughly a gallon of latte per employee. Phil Totaro: That's a lot. I know some people that do drink a lot of coffee. I don't I guess I'm naturally a brilliant, but like some people need that much, I don't know. Holy cow, that's Allen Hall: a lot of coffee. This could be a lot of sleepless nights in Massachusetts from all the Dunkin employees. And productivity's gotta go way up. The latest P. E. S. Win Magazine has a number of great articles in it, and if you haven't PESWin. com and you can download it for free and read all the articles in it. And one of the more interesting articles that I thought was in this one is an article from Liftoff. And we've had Elko May from Liftoff on the podcast previously. And Liftoff is an offshoot of a podcast. arm of Liftworks, which is, Liftworks does onshore wind, heavy lift, and crane work, using a unique process to do that. And Liftoff is doing all the offshore work for Liftworks, and Liftoff is based in the Netherlands with Elco, and it has done a number of, a couple of amazing things this over the last couple of months, really. They've done some crane technology work on fixed bottom offshore winds, where instead of using jackup vessels to do maintenance, they've got the system now to work, where they can handle up to 9. 5 megawatt capacity turbines without using jackup vessels. So they're using standard containers. on flat barges that are moved around via tugs. Now, Phil, this makes a ton of sense to me because the expensive part, as we always say on Offshore Wind, is not really the turbine, it's the jackup vessels and all the specialized ships you need to go do this work, and liftoff is eliminating a lot of that and simplifying MCE for some of these tournaments. Phil Totaro: Yeah. And what strikes me about this is actually something slightly unrelated, which is Cattler just came out with their quarterly report saying that the demand for their services is huge right now. So maybe Liftoff helps alleviate some of that burden much to the chagrin maybe of Cattler. But it's great. They can take, a technology that was developed for onshore and deploy it offshore. In, in that, you don't always have the same obviously weather and site conditions. But the way in which the, this liftoff system works is using this kind of ...
…
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459 에피소드
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The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast
Carlos Oliveira, CEO of Fibersail , discusses their advanced fiber optic technology for early detection of wind turbine blade damage, reducing downtime and optimizing maintenance for wind farm operators. 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: Wind turbine blade failures cost the industry billions annually. Today we’re talking with Fibersail, CEO, Carlos Oliveira About their innovative fiber optic technology that detects early blade damage before catastrophic failures occur. Learn how their shape sensing system is helping wind farm operators reduce downtime and optimize maintenance. Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow. Carlos, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me here. Allen Hall: This is gonna be a fascinating discussion. when I was over at Wind Europe, the activity around your booth was really good. a lot of interested people wanting to learn more about the technology and how to protect their blades and be able to determine early if they have blade problems. And I think everybody on the [00:01:00] podcast knows that blades are a huge issue financially. And we just don’t have enough information about how they are moving structurally or what kind of structural issues they’re having. How big do you think this problem is, Carlos? Speaker 3: I agree with you. So we have quite a busy Wind Europe event. we were really full all the, time. and I think that, the problem is really, getting out, right? It’s every year, more than. Five, $6 billion are being spent in non-planned repairs activities. and this is impacting a lot to the bottom line of the industry. what we knew at fiber cell 3, 4, 5 years ago, that the problem was really big Honda blades. Now it’s mainstream knowledge. big companies are putting billions of euros, in, recognizing losses because of this issue. And more and more customers are coming to us. it’s [00:02:00] really a big issue and we believe that, it can really put in danger the wind industry as a whole. Allen Hall: Yeah. And even if you buy a new turbine today, there is very little information that comes from the blades themselves. A lot of it is coming from the SCADA system, and that’s, those SCADA systems are not designed to detect this sort of. Issues that Fibersail can detect. Correct? Speaker 3: Yeah. And I think it’s we are building bigger and bigger blades, using old technology, right? It does not work. you have a mixture for a big explosion happening, and that’s exactly what we are seeing. If in the past, the turbines, they were showing problems after 5, 6, 7, 8 years of operation. Today we have customers that come to us. with big problems in blades after one, two years of operation, some of them still during the warranty period. So it’s really becoming a big issue and that’s where our shape sensing technology kicks in because we have advanced sensing technology. For the most [00:03:00] advanced, turbines out there and the new ones, it’s really good interior, but the reality is a different story. Allen Hall: how soon should you install a system onto a blade, particularly a new blade? Should it go in at the factory or, immediately after in the warranty period, or a lot of operators that we have seen, like to install them at year five or six of operation, which seems. Late to us. Speaker 3: I tend to agree, we would prefer to have it installed, at the manufacturing. we know it’s not, straightforward. and what we’re doing, and this is let’s say our go-to market strategy, we are working with end customers, the owner operators of the turbines. the ones that have the hurdle, they have the problem to solve. And we are working with, many of them. We are deploying, we are doing a retrofit installation. And that data then can be used to convince CEMS to integrate this technology. Of course, that’s our end goal. we understand it’ll take, a bit of time, [00:04:00] transparency, the level of transparency we bring with our, chef sensing technology. sometimes, people try to avoid it, at the beginning, but we want really to use the data from the field and the value that we deliver to our customers. To push this into the product. So hopefully the next place that, the customers are buying from the OEMs will have, fiber cell technology, inside it. Joel Saxum: Let me ask you a little bit of a question about that, how it fits into the marketplace. ’cause we’re gonna get into the amazing technology that you guys have. But I just wanna understand, because when we talk to operators a lot of times we’re like, Hey, I’d love to implement this solution, but hey, I can’t do this until end of warranty. Or it’s, I’m under full service agreement for the next five or 10 years, or whatever that may be. And the OE EMM doesn’t wanna allow me to put this CMS on or this aftermarket product or these things. and contractually those things can be, those contracts can be pretty tight where you can’t even put stuff on that’s even air gapped. How have you [00:05:00] guys dealt with, that, or have you ran into those, hurdles yet? Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely. We, have, so we, there are different kinds of customers. Of course. If there is no contract, trying to block anything like this, we can, we have an easy entry. And we have some customers like that. others, they really fall into what you said, some of them even during the warranty, period. we, at Five Cell, we are our position here, we are a solutions provider and we position ourselves as a solutions provider for the industry, not necessarily for one or the other side of the industry. So we don’t want to be used. As a source of information for one side of the industry to try to attack the other side. We really see that the industry has an issue and, we want to provide transparency to avoid costs and to make wind, competitive, source of energy. and so in those, [00:06:00] situations, usually we try to do a cooperation with three parties. So fiber cell gen customer, and the OEM, if possible. So we always try to invite them. To the table if possible. because, we, have cases where actually, the contract is blocking the entry of, sensing technology like ours, but the customer is losing above the cap of compensation from the O end. So they are losing lost production. So the problem is really big. So there needs to be a, found a solution. At the same time, the OEM is losing money because they are paying the compensation okay, till the cap. But they are paying a lot of money and they’ll need to pay this for 20 plus years. So we position ourselves as a solution provider on both hands. Of course, it’s not easy, but as I usually said here with the team, if it was easy, it was already done. So we are in the. let’s Allen Hall: talk about the technology just for a [00:07:00] moment. It’s obviously Fibersail. The technology is in the name, it’s fiber, but I, wanna understand a little bit about how are you using the fiber, how it’s installed, where does it go? What is the, electronics or the electrical boxes that are connected to it? What does the system look like? Speaker 3: as I said, fiber, it’s easy. The sail part I can do here a connection, right? Fi fiber cells started measuring the shape of the sail of the sailboat. and now what we’re doing is applying the technology to a different cell, right? A blade is a rooted cell and what we are doing is really to get the added level of information of how that sale is behaving, in real time. And so what, we build actually is our shean technology. That’s the unique approach. We built a fiber optics beam that we glue inside the plate. We go from the root till where we can install in the retrofit. Of course, when we do the integration in the product, in the end, we can go all the way to the [00:08:00]tip. But that’s a possibility for a later stage. and basically we encapsulate all the fiber optics, all the. technology that does require, more, detailed level of expertise from the people in the field. We encapsulate everything into a system and then we hand over the system, to a normal field technician that can simply glue our sensor to the blade, plug the power, and then we are on, Allen Hall: we are working. Wow. Okay. And how many pieces of fiber would typically go in a blade? Is it a, bundle of fibers in one specific area, or is it. Spread out across the blade structure. Speaker 3: We have, two products today. We are working onto the next two. they are still, not at commercial level, but basically we have, our shade sensor. That’s our, core technology. But we also have, for example, in our product line, the standard load sensors. It’ll be incredible to know that more and more customers also need this kind of data. [00:09:00] even basic load sensing data is not available for the end customer and we can provide it. and so the setup really depends on what the customer wants. So if the customer just wants, very limited information, for example, we can provide a system with the load sensors in it. If the customer wants, for example, early damage detection, we put our shape sensor in it and we actually had on top. Hotspot sensor to do really the early damage detection. So it really depends on what the customer needs, what we do, we call it internally, tailored made, but at scale it’s that we adjust and we make a system using all the resources we have in our product line, to offer the customer solution that works and then it works for that turbine type for that customer. to, give you an example, we are working in a package that will be really working on early damage detection for a [00:10:00] specific turbine type in the field that has huge damage is huge. And then we have a system that works for the entire fleet of that, turbine five. Joel Saxum: So I, one of the things I want to just, just touch on there and you, briefly mentioned it in its implementation, right? we wanna, I’ll raise a hand. I’ll put my operator hat on. I wanna retrofit the system in the field. Okay. Because that’s gonna be a lot of what it is. It’s gonna be less right now, of course, factory installs and more after the fact. So if they’re gonna put it in, you guys have packaged this thing so it’s easy for technicians to install. So you said like basically it comes in, they’ll be in different, like a beam of sorts, and then it’s clean and go inside the blade, clean, epoxy, stick it down and plug it in. More or less it’s, Speaker 3: not as easy what we did. And we can do the, installation ourselves. And usually we are doing the installation of ourselves for, the initial qualification projects we do with customers.[00:11:00] let’s say you want to test our technology. Let’s install in five or 10 turbines. We can do it ourselves. And then we go to the hundreds after mine that you have with that model. And then we usually go to a, a service company, actually the ones that do the, service of those turbines in the field. And for that, we do, a training session. And so we train those teams to do these election for us. but we can do this because we put all the complexity farts on our side. All the fiber optics connected far with our side. And then it’s a robust system. It’s out there. You can put your feet on top of it, you can try to destroy it, it’ll not get destroyed so easily. and then you send it to blade, blade technicians and they can do the installation themselves, following, of course, our protocol. And we do the quality assurance on our science. Allen Hall: Carlos, once the system is installed, what are we looking at as a data stream? Is there a data stream that goes to the cloud? Does Fibersail [00:12:00] analyze that data or is it data that the operator can analyze? What does that interface look like? Speaker 3: We have all the, data flow prepared from the sensor itself, sending the data through 4G, 5G, starlink, you name it to the cloud. And then we have even a, dashboard solution for the customer. Anywhere in this process, we can say that we don’t go all the way. For example, we have customers that they don’t want our dashboards because they do have dashboards. And actually what they want is that we feed our results into their dashboard so we can adjust those parts to what are the needs of the customer. but we can do the full sweep in terms of the, data flow. Joel Saxum: Okay? So this is an important thing too, ’cause we’re talking about implementation here. we’ve heard this from many operators. We hear from other CMS companies. cybersecurity’s a big issue, right? Because people wanna make sure that. no nefarious activity could happen within the wind turbine or anything like that. So how are you guys handling cybersecurity? Yeah, Speaker 3: we take it very [00:13:00] seriously. Of course, all these communication protocols, they are to the highest standards using the industry, so we take them very seriously. And, in some cases, also mostly with the manufacturers, we actually do a edge solution, meaning we collect everything on the turbine and we don’t use any cloud access any. Any connection outside of it. So we use it, we store it there, and then we communicate directly even to, the data, the data lakes. Of the customer if need be. So we have this, these two levels of, of, options, let’s say Allen Hall: o Okay, that makes a lot of sense. And then the interface is working with a large operator. Obviously they have their own dashboard set up and they’re watching the turbines in the structure. So there’s an API then that takes your data and pumps it into there. Specific system? Is that how that works? Speaker 3: I’m not, the technology officer here, but, [00:14:00] to, give you an overview of that, it’s like we don’t offer the cu the customers, the raw data from our sensors. We offer them already the outputs, the value, and then we can, stream them to their own dashboard for, we have customers that, for example, they tell us I don’t have time to go through a dashboard and look into beautiful graphs and data. What I want is to receive an email. If you spot a problem or a potential damage, that’s propagating. I want to receive an email to go and look into that. And then our dashboard is actually an email or two emails that it receives when our system detect something is off. Joel Saxum: I think that, to be honest with you, that’s more and more of the direction that the industry is going and it’s driven by the feedback from the market. So, kudos to that. Doing your, primary market research there, because these, engineers and site supervisors and asset managers, they have so much going on that at the end of the day, they just basically wanna be told what to do. They don’t wanna analyze the data, they just wanna see that [00:15:00] you’ve installed the solution. It’s doing, its smarts. You guys are analyzing the data yourselves and or, admit, of course, probably using some algorithms and whatnot. and they just get that email. They just get that notification, go look at this turbine, or Hey, you’ve got this propagating, check this out. That’s the way things need to be done. E Exactly. And, if Speaker 3: you think about what we see is that you, have a handful of people taking care of, gigawatts of turbines out there. Then all of them have issues, but some of them, they need to be referred this week. Some of them they can wait a couple of months to do it. Today, you don’t know how to do it. So what you do, you send teams all the way every month to check every single turbine. And what you believe at cyber sale is that to start, you don’t have the manpower to do it. And then it’s not smart to do it like that. So the more complex turbines, they will get a warning from fiber cell, and that’s the ones you need to pay attention to. Because the other ones, they do have problems, but it’s not a damage that [00:16:00] will, hit you. next week. It’ll continue to propagate and you can optimize the way you manage your fleet. Allen Hall: that’s a real interesting point. So Fibersail data stream, which is really accurate, can then predict the damage curve in a sense or how damage will progress based upon your intimate knowledge of that structure and when it is actually happening. That’s really valuable. Speaker 3: Yeah. And, do we do it in a, different way from the industry? if you have other technologies like, vibration, sensors, meters and other stuff, what do we have that’s unique? Is that we, get the shape of the blade in real time. and so we look into the variations of the chain, but also we look into the model analysis of that structure, The frequency of that structure. And so we do a kind of a double validation. If the cha the shape changes and the frequency also changes. We have two variables to check that the problem is [00:17:00] really there. and I don’t see any other technology out there doing this type of validation to avoid false positives. So it’s, like we have much more confidence in the result head to our providing to the customer. Allen Hall: So the different vibration modes that’ll happen on a blade, they do slightly alter over time as the blades age. Is there a significant variation there, even between blade to blade, meaning the same factory? Are you seeing variations in the sort of the overall performance, the way that the blade operates or, moves, based upon just the variations in manufacturing? Speaker 3: definitely, yes. let’s say the blades are all the same when they leave the factory. That’s only theory. That’s why you only have a numerical bottle to try and simulate that. The reality is that they are all different from the factory, from the manufacturing tolerances. And then just think about one, two, or three years of operation, a repair, a new patch of fiber, and then you have a Frankenstein [00:18:00] turbine in your hands that you don’t know what’s doing. And, that’s the reality we have today. So all the numerical models, everything you have, they are really far off to give you the, precise, knowledge about that. Joel Saxum: I think the industry would really love to see a white paper or report of some sort of, here’s what Fibersail was able to sensate basically a virgin blade and then this is what it looks like after this repair and that repair. ’cause like scarf, big scarf repairs, they’re designed to not create structural load hotspots. But I, mean there’s no way to get that perfect. So I would love to see, because I know there’s been a couple of DTU masters projects about this, but it’s all been. FEA stuff. It’s all modeled. It’s not actually sensed, and it would be really interesting to see if you guys could do that. Speaker 3: what, I can tell you is that we have, a bunch of, projects out there. We are collecting data as we speak. some of them, I’ll say actually a very promising one, in the next couple of weeks, really targeting, damage [00:19:00]detection, early damage detection, and damage propagation. but, it’s, I said nothing, is valued as the data from the field. we are collecting the data. We are working on that. Actually, we did some publications that we wrote. So what I can tell is that stay tuned because we’ll be launching some called stuff in the next month. Allen Hall: So where’s the EIS at the moment? Is it onshore wind? Is it offshore wind? I could see the value on offshore wind in particular because the, loss of. Like a 15 megawatt turbine is a, big driver. It’s a huge money issue. Where are you seeing the most activity for your Speaker 3: systems? we are starting onshore. It’s always an easy, an easier entry, let’s say. And also the volume. The volume is there. much higher volume and a lot of problems. we are doing this, this summer, the first offshore installation in the Netherlands. and all the indications we have is that we have no issue going [00:20:00] offshore. it’s just a matter of planning the installation, doing that, and then the return on investment will be even greater. But again, we are working to have that, business case proven with real data, in the next couple of months. let’s see if you can, get it right to put the data. On the table. So what is the feedback from your customers today? What are they saying? we have different kinds of customers that said, some customers just want basic data. Others, they want really the eye end system that you can offer also. So we serve all of them, because our, systems are building a modular approach, so you can add layers of complexity as you need, basically. but I think the most interesting feedback we got, Because he’s using everything we have in our port product line is that he tried every other technology in the fields and none of them can help them.[00:21:00] And then he said, but what you have is something different. I really want to see if you can help me because I, don’t dunno what to do. And that’s, a great feedback for us. I said we like the, tough stuff. Easy stuff. Everyone can do it. we are focusing on the really hard stuff because. After we, we solve the hard stuff, we can also do the easy stuff. it’s like after we detect the damage, we can do a increase, we can do whatever you want. It’s not, it’s a no brainer for us after we can, do the early damage detection. Allen Hall: So the system is, sounds fascinating and I do think there’s a place for this today, and we don’t know much about these larger blades and we’re trying to learn as quickly as we can, but. One of the things that Joel and I talk about all the time is just a lack of data. If you don’t have any data, you, it’s hard to do ENG engineering and it makes it hard for the next generation to blaze to be better. So Fibersail is gonna change that [00:22:00] dynamic quite a bit. I. And if you want to talk to Fibersail or reach out to Fibersail, Carlos, how do they get ahold of you? Where do they go? Speaker 3: we are quite active in the industry, events. that’s, a good start. But, our webpage is always there with, you can contact us directly, and we’ll follow up on that via shared, or follow us on LinkedIn. We are also sharing there some insights of what we do. come and talk with us. We will love to, to try and, help you on that. Allen Hall: And the website is Fibersail.com, F-I-B-E-R-S-A-I l.com. Great information on the website, Carlos. it’s, full of good information. So if you’re trying to quickly learn what Fibersail does, just check out the website and yes, the LinkedIn page that you have is really good also. So a ton of information for everybody to go check out and learn from. Carlos, thank you so much for being on the program. Really enjoyed the discussion. Thank [00:23:00] you for having me.…
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The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast
This week we discuss Australia’s recent cancellation of wind projects due to political changes and community opposition, the complexities of grid interconnects, and the need for strategic renewable energy planning. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News , our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech . Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook , YouTube , Twitter , Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web . And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here . Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now here’s your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes. Well, welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I am Allen Hall and I’m here with Rosemary Barnes, who’s fresh from. Sweden, she just traveled all around the world to record this episode. Uh, Phil Totaro is out in California and Joel Saxum is up in the cold north of Wisconsin. And we, we’ve been just discussing off air. All the craziness has been happening in the wind industry. And I, I have to admit, you know, I thought last week was. Insane. Well, we just, uh, put it on steroids. So not only are we canceling a lot of projects in the United States currently, we’re all, we’re starting to be cancel [00:01:00] them on Australia and over in Queensland. The Queensland Deputy Premier, uh, has used his ministerial powers to refuse planning approval for the moonlight range when Farm Near Rock Hampton. Now I, and I’m sure I murdered that name Rosemary, so please forgive me, but it was gonna have 88 turbines in about 450 megawatts of capacity, enough to power about a quarter million homes in Australia and tied with, it’s about 300 construction jobs and 10 permanent positions to make that wind farm go. But there’s was like a two month public consultation period that happened. And during that consultation period, about 80 per 90% of the local residents, and when I say local residents are about 150 local residents, uh, replied back and were concerned about some of the, the known people that are gonna be there because it’s gonna like double the population, right. And 300 construction workers in a, an area of 140 people, 150 people. Uh, and based on [00:02:00] that boom, perhaps the, the project was canceled. What is happening in Queensland that we need to understand that projects just kinda get wiped away like that with 140 people, 150 people chiding in. Rosemary Barnes: So what’s happened is that the Queensland government, the Queensland State Government, it was labor for quite a while and they had, uh, renewables targets and net zero targets and stuff like that. And then, um, the government changed last year, so now there’s a, a liberal government, which means conservative in Australia. They’re in power and they wanted to change their planning regulations. But what is a bit weird is that they wanna do it retroactively. So they’ve changed the rules in April, and now they’re going through projects that have already been approved to see if they meet the new rules rather than the rules at the time that they were approved. But the weirdest thing is that I’m pretty sure that this specific wind farm that they revoked, they were the ones to approve it shortly after [00:03:00] they came into government. They approved this wind farm and then they changed the rules a few months later, and then they did a new round of community consultation. Um. And they say that 85% of local residents were, um, you know, in favor of reassessing. The issue is that now we’re at this stage of the energy transition where, you know, we’re up over 40% renewables across Australia. Um, that’s primarily wind and solar. We’re getting to the point now where we kind of, you can’t just add things as they’re convenient and easy. You have to get a bit more strategic. Think about the whole energy system. I was looking forward to that coming online because it will make the whole system more robust and less, um, yeah, less fluctuations. You know, it would really even things out quite a lot to have, um, a lot of that Queensland wind in the mix. So it will be a, a real shame and a, a problem for, uh, the whole of the Australian East Coast Grid. If Queensland opts out of any more wind energy. Speaker 4: But once [00:04:00] they approve these plans, it sort of, you have to think about the grid as an entity and unplugging some capacity. There does have consequences further down the transmission line in this case. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, but each, each state has responsibility if they’re interconnected, but each space, each state has responsibility that they are gonna be okay regardless of what, they can’t control what the other states do. So. Every, um, every state has to make sure that they are okay on their own, and they are, they are planning for that, you know. Um, so yeah, like Victoria’s got, got a lot of plans for, for batteries and interconnectors and stuff, and, uh. I mean, new South Wales is building renewable energy zones. Everyone’s got their own plans moving ahead. It would’ve, it would’ve made the whole job easier. But you know, like any interconnector, um, or yeah, interconnection between two, two grids, you can’t, like, you kind of, you plan for it, but you can’t, you have to also plan for the scenario where that interconnection goes down or you, you know, [00:05:00]um, whatever reason you might not get the energy that you plan on from the other states. So. It is a tricky, tricky aspect I think of planning. Joel Saxum: Mir. Lemme ask you a question, and this is popping into my head right now because it’s basically political games between parties and these kind of things. And normally we don’t talk politics on the show and we try to stay away from that. And I’m going to, I’m gonna skirt it. But a couple months ago I, when I was uh, down, I was invited to testify the Texas Senate and I was uh, always amazed. The lack of technical knowledge in the room, right? There’s these people setting their chain. They’re, they’re putting bills forward, they’re putting things, doing things that really affect the general populace, but their knowledge base is coming from like their chief of staff and their chief of staff is a political science major, and that person is just googling whatever. They want to see in the bill, so they’re putting things out that just didn’t make sense. Right. When it comes to Australian [00:06:00] politics, is it the same kind of stuff? Is it more of just like these political arguments versus the technical ones, or how do they get information into these decisions? Because this decision to me just seems like. It seems like it’s not based in, in scientific fact or scientific method around anything. It’s just like, oh, we don’t like these things. Let’s get rid of ’em. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I don’t think it’s trying to be based. They’re not, they’re not even the, yeah, the government is not trying to say that it’s based on any kind of science or anything they’re saying that it, you know, they’re mostly citing things that community consultation. Um, so you know, it’s more about people’s feelings, which is, you know, a valid, a valid thing. I was listening to a podcast about Texas, actually, I’m halfway through it still, um, about what’s going on there with, um, some of their proposals to, you know, require everybody to have a hundred percent firming for each individual project. And I do think that Texas is trying really hard to, uh, you know, like, um, to, to, you know, they’ve got, you’ve got a pretty flexible system and allow, you know, [00:07:00] um, uh. And allow companies to make their own decisions about how, you know, what kind of energy sources they’re gonna have and how they’re gonna make money and let the market take care of it to a certain extent. And it’s really similar to the Australian electricity market as well. They’re, um, they are, they do share a common basis and some of the same people worked on the, um, market design of both of them. But I feel like Texas is trying as hard as possible to intervene to make sure that none of the, you can get none of the benefits and all of the disadvantages of a system like that. So. That is a bit interesting, Speaker 4: but at some point, Rosemary, and maybe we’ll talk about this after the break, maybe that’s the thing to do, is to talk about this after the break. It takes so long to get projects approved because of the interconnect that this engineers have to go back and look, make sure if this is going to work, how do they connect this energy source into the grid? How do they make it work in the United States? And I want, I want want to get over the break here. I want to talk to Phil about this. We spent all this time doing the engineering work and then all of a sudden, poof, it’s gone. What [00:08:00] is the point of doing all the engineering work? Engineering? If at a moment’s notice you can yank this project, Speaker 9: don’t let blade damage catch you off guard. eLog ping sensors detect issues before they become expensive to consuming problems from ice buildup and lightning strikes to vibrations and internal cracks. EOGs Ping has you covered. Their cutting edge sensors are easy to install, giving you the power to easily stop damage before it’s too late. Visit eLog ping.com and take control of your turbine’s health. Today, Speaker 4: Phil, explain what is happening on the interconnect and why it takes so long to get projects approved and all the in supposedly because of engineering, it takes a long time to understand what effect of adding a 500 megawatts will do to a grid. Then instantaneously you just delete a project. Doesn’t that really affect all the work that the engineering [00:09:00] just completed and spent all that time doing? It’s not, you just can’t plug 500 megawatts into a grid willy-nilly. You have to. You have to plan for it, but to delete a project does, Phil Totaro: has like cascading problems. Right. I think you also just kind of answered your own question regarding what’s the challenge here. It’s, you know, if you wanna add five megawatts to a grid, that’s a lot easier to integrate because the, the grid can probably handle it. It was a little bit over designed. But when you start talking about adding or subtracting 500 megawatts plus at a time, and you know, there are terawatts worth of solar projects that have been proposed. Obviously they’re all not, not gonna get built. Um, but, uh, when you, when you’ve got that volume in. The interconnection queue. Every single one of those has to be independently studied. And then every single one of those, you know, the, how each one goes together and, and the impact of one on the other and the whole [00:10:00] system that all needs to, to go together. Originally, the way that things were being, um, permitted for interconnection was that, um, if you had like utility PPA in place, they would kind of put you to the front of the queue. Um. And nowadays what they’re doing is it’s kind of first come, first serve. So when they’re trying to figure out all the, you know, impacts on, on the grid from adding whatever the capacity is that you’re proposing, they have to take that into consideration in relation to everything else that’s been proposed and everything else that’s already on the grid and, and operating Speaker 4: well. I’m just wondering what the effect of an IRA. Bill change is going to be right. So the, you have an IRA bill, it’s been around for a couple of years. You had a lot of applications to put, uh, uh, power sources onto the grid. Some of them have gotten approved. Or close to approval. So you have this expected pipeline of capacity being added to the grid. [00:11:00] And then if the IRA bill changes in the way it’s currently proposed, where you have six months or 5% or no, 60 days after the passage, you have to have 5% of the total investment re in the ground, so to speak. Bent. Yeah. Spent, uh, otherwise it doesn’t count. Right? So then you, you’re pulling the plug on some projects, I think. Doesn’t that just completely just wipe out all the planning that has happened in terms of the interconnect over the last couple of years that it, it really throws a kink in the works, right? I, I, I’m thinking about this correctly. It’s playing around. I’m the electrical engineer on the panel, I think, am I the only one that’s an electrical engineer? Okay. So when you add capacity, it’s not easy. Because you’re adding reactive power. You got real power and reactive power, right? So you got transmission line. When you start adding transmission line, you have this sort of, you have this inductive thing that’s [00:12:00] happening and you gotta balance it. Although it doesn’t work, you have. Big problems ’cause you’re not really moving electrons, you’re moving tic and electric fields around, right? So you kinda got these waves going. It’s electromagnetics, it’s the electrons are not, are just rattling back and forth in the wire to create these waves. That’s what’s providing power to the world at the minute. If we can’t do that efficiently, if we don’t plant it out, then you have problems. You have unevenness and the grid doesn’t like unevenness. One of the reasons maybe Spain disconnected from the grid was because of the unevenness. The frequency changes, the loads disconnecting bad stuff happens, and then they don’t have power for 10 hours or whatever the amount of time was. That’s a huge freaking problem. I don’t think anybody has really thought this through. I, I’m okay if you want to pull the plug and all the $26 a megawatt hour. Okay, sure. But doing it at 60 days is too [00:13:00] freaking soon you’re gonna create problems. Well, going back to the Australia problem and the now the American problem, you have to increase the amount of electricity on the grid period. There is a certain growth rate, I think 3%, two to 3% is generally acknowledged as that growth rate. I don’t know what it’s exactly in Australia, but it’s gonna be somewhere close to that. If that’s the case, you cannot be altering. You can’t go from 3% to 1%. You’re gonna have problems three or four years from now. Rosemary Barnes: Even if it’s 0%, you’re still gonna have problems because the thing is, in Australia, at least, you, our coal power plants are really old and they, uh, borderline economic to run even an old power plant that’s already paid, you know, it’s paid back all of the um, you know, capital expenditure. They’re borderline to run, right? So they’re all announced closures. They’re, as they get closer to their end of life, they’re getting less and [00:14:00] less reliable. And, you know, it’s one thing if, uh, you know, it’s not windy for a little while and wind power turns down. That’s something that everyone’s planned for. With coal power plant when that, you know, that’s a, a gigawatt all in one go when that goes off the grid, that is, um, challenging, um, planned for, but you know, it, it’s a bigger deal. You start to see a few of those happen at the same time and your electricity system suddenly falls apart. So yeah, even if you want to just have, maintain zero growth if you still want electricity into the future. You have to plan. And the planning today does involve replacing the existing coal plants with renewables. If you wanna place it with, replace it with something in something else, something instead, then you need to do that along a long way ahead of time. It takes longer to build a coal power plant than it does to build a wind farm. Um, and. Who’s gonna pay for it, you know, then there’s nobody interested, no, no private company is interested in building new thermal, uh, power plants in Australia because they’re not economics. So it’s not, you can’t just simply say, we want [00:15:00] things to stay exactly the same. They can’t. Your coal, coal power plants are dying. You know, you have to replace them. You can’t just pretend that you don’t need to replace them with anything, because that’s just not based on reality. Speaker 4: Yes. And so the argument that’s being made at the moment, and going back to Rosemary’s point about the coal plants, ’cause that discussion is happening in the United States, now all of a sudden we’re talking about coal again, is that there’s just a certain amount of load. Always on the grid. The coal plant just provides all that power that the grid, uh, demand doesn’t vary up and down all day, which it totally does, right? So coal plants and gas, fire plants in general don’t nuclear. I’ll throw into that, into the mix. Don’t like going up and down, right? They like to be constant, but the usage is not constant. Is anybody talking about this? I don’t get it. I mean, the duck curve is real. Rosemary Barnes: I’m, I’m talking about it. We’re talking about it. You know, people talk about it, but I’m not sure. I’m not sure everybody gets it. Like, last time I was at Queensland, I, I was [00:16:00] up there, you know, um, going, uh, to one of the big, big wind farms that, that are there. It’s already there, already running. And I was there at seven o’clock in the morning. Uh, I was just driving on to site and the turbines had been running. Then all of a sudden it’s like the whole wind farm slows down to a stop at seven in the morning. The sun is barely up, you know, so there’s a small amount of, of solo’s, heaps of rooftops, solar in Queensland because there’s just so much sun. It just really makes money and it takes like three years to pay back for your system. Um, so what’s caused that? It’s because no one’s using much electricity at that time of day. Coal can’t turn down beyond a certain level. The rooftop solar also, you can’t stop households from using their own electricity that they’re generating. So there’s just coal power. Plants are supplying more electricity than the grid needs, and so everything else shuts down. But the prices then, then they’re negative. That means the coal power plants are paying to generate electricity. It’s not, you know, they, they don’t get it for free. Sometimes they’re paying, you know, negative hundreds [00:17:00] of dollars an hour, um, a megawatt hour just to generate through the middle of the day so that for a couple of hours in the evening, they can make, you know, a few hundred dollars a megawatt hour, two. Generate, but now there’s heaps of batteries coming into the grid and they’re going to reduce that evening price spike. So it’s, it’s just like things are gonna change even faster over the next couple of years. Phil Totaro: And that was actually the one big pillar of Labor’s proposal for renewable energy was, yeah, we’re gonna do transmission. Yeah, we’re gonna do more generation, but we need to have, especially consumer based battery storage systems. With some type of maybe subsidy or some other type of regime that facilitates the adoption of that technology because we, you know, the, in Australia, we need that to be able to take some of that power to, to basically eliminate that duck curve. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Well, the Queensland government has just canceled all of the bomb hydro projects in the state as well. So, you know, they just like, they’re just nothing. You know Joel Saxum: why? Rosemary Barnes: Because they just don’t want [00:18:00] anything, anything, uh, any of these green projects, they don’t want any. Negative, uh, you know, negative effects from a new infrastructure project, unless it’s from, um, fossil fuels. That’s okay. You can have a new coal mine or a new, new, uh, you know, expand gas infrastructure, but just don’t, don’t do it for clean energy reasons. Speaker 4: But those devices are not meant to handle flexible loads. Coal is not meant to handle a flexible load. So what are you doing if you, if you know you have a certain amount of fix? Sure. Inflexible, we’ll call it. And you have a lot of flexibility because that’s the way. The grid is developing at the moment. You have this flexible demand that you need to meet with something that you can turn on and off. So when they see wind farms being turned off, that’s a good thing. The reason they’re doing that is because the grid needs that. You have to turn those things off. Otherwise you have grid collapse. You will damage the grid for crazy [00:19:00] reasons by leaving too much. Too much power on it, feeding it and not enough pulling it off. Rosemary Barnes: And the coal power plants, they, they have to pay a lot of money for the fact that they’re not flexible in that way. But you know, what I think is, is really gonna help, um, is so, I mean the Queensland government, I, I don’t know if they had any incentives for household batteries. Not, not that I’ve heard of, but the federal government has announced a 30% rebate. But I think that what’s really going to change things is because, so rooftop solar has changed the way that the average person thinks about energy in Australia. Because once you’ve got rooftop on, yeah, solar panels on your roof, and one in three Australian households do already. Then, you know, you’ve got a real economic incentive to use electricity when the sun is shining, right? It’s, um, the, you feed in tariff that you get for giving it to the electricity grid is not anything close to what you pay to bring electricity in. So, e everybody is naturally kind of incentivized when you get household batteries. Then it’s going to just really boost the extent to which households can shift their demand around. ’cause at the moment, like [00:20:00] if you’re at work all day. You can’t choose to do your, you know, um, I don’t know, dry your clothes in the middle of the day. Um, and if you would hang ’em out probably on the line anyway, if you did. But you know, there’s only so much that you can shift your loads around if you are out of the house during the day when it’s sunny. But if you’ve got a battery, then all of a sudden households are gonna be trying really hard to make sure that they are only. You know, relying on, they’re as energy self-sufficient as they can be. I’m not talking about going off grid, but I’m talking about, you know, using mostly self-consumption. Um, and I think that that is really gonna change how much, uh, you know, a non-friendly to renewables government can really bamboozle people because they will get this understanding you, you know, of, of what it means and um, and to what extent you can shift things around To what extent solar plus batteries. Can, uh, you know, supply the bulk of, um, bulk of power, which in a state like Queensland is, you know, especially true. So I think the discourse should change over the next few years [00:21:00] Speaker 4: as wind energy professionals staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it difficult. That’s why the Uptime podcast recommends PES Wind Magazine. PES Wind offers a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit ps win.com today. The grid stability is economic stability. That’s exactly what it is. And I, I’m not an analogy person as an engineer. I don’t like using analogies, but I’ll use this analogy ’cause I think it applies to the United States and it kind of clears this up. When the US started putting train tracks down, where are all the cities at? They’re on the train tracks. That’s where they are. When the US started to put highways in, where did all the cities develop? Along the highways when the, I, I, when, when the [00:22:00]Eisenhower administration went to this kinda the super highway thing, right? So Interstate 95 and 10 and all those, where did all the industry and people move right to the super highways is exactly where they are. If you are not on the electricity grid, if you wanna isolate yourself from the grid, you are isolating yourself and your future generations from economic success. Growth, you just are. So you wanna be on that grid. You need to be near that grid. If you want your children and your children’s children to have a life, they gotta be near that damn grid. And if you do, if you make a grid that’s unstable, like this happened in Spain and other places, it’s not just Spain. I mean, Spain’s the most recent case. When the grid becomes unstable, you become economically unstable. America cannot have an unstable grid. Australia cannot have an unstable grid. Canada cannot have an unstable grid. Brazil cannot have an [00:23:00] unstable grid, and for for some freaking reason, we don’t seem to understand that when politicians get involved in this, and Joel pointed this out, when you start unplugging unplugging projects and saying, we’re gonna fill this with some other sort of power sub source, that you are screwing with the economic viability of your community. That is what you are doing. Rosemary Barnes: The average person, uh, that doesn’t understand the electricity system well to it sounds more reasonable. That a really constant out, out load, you know, base load generator is more reliable. We all know it’s not, it’s not true. Um, however, it’s just, it’s a simpler message and that’s why I say that as batteries come into households with rooftop solar. Then they’re gonna understand how reliable, um, variables plus, uh, batteries can, can be Speaker 4: rosemary. I think the average person will never understand that, which is why the politicians are not talking to that. What, and Joel, correct me if I’m wrong here, but the latest I’ve, I’ve heard of the United [00:24:00] States and it’s a little bit of a different argument. I think Rosemary’s right on the technical side. Don’t get me wrong. She’s totally right on the technical side. On the politics side, here’s what, here’s what I hear in the United States at the minute. Well, those wind turbines are ugly. What the hell does that have to do with the grid? Security? Nothing. Coal plants are freaking ugly. They are ugly. No one wants to live next to a coal plant. That’s why we’re closing them down because they are awful to live next to. Joel Saxum: Yeah. It’s, it’s a mo it’s a, it’s a, it’s a politically driven, but it’s emotional versus technical, emotional, political, whatever you want to call it. You hear a lot of influence from all these things, you know? Here’s the opposite side of that. I think wind turbines are fricking beautiful. I think they look like works of art on the horizon. They’re cool as hell. Some of the, Alan, think about this. How many times you and I have literally pulled over on the side of the highway to take pictures at sunset together? Like we’re on a date. Speaker 4: We’re not on a date Joel Saxum: officially, by the way. We’re not, yeah. Yeah. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. To me, they’re beautiful. I think they’re amazing. They’re awesome, right? So then it’s [00:25:00] just this emotional thought. You like them or you don’t this, it’s the nimbyism thing. It’s the Nantucket don’t wanna see it off the coast. But they don’t realize that their energy future, their economic future is hanging in the balance of what they don’t like to look at. Phil Totaro: If you go to any. Midwestern county meeting where they have, you know, a community session talking about a new renewable project they wanna build. That is precisely what ends up happening anyway, because the, all the arguments that people come in with are whatever they’ve Googled on the internet, and we used to have experts there, either from the project developer. And, and they still send their own people. But see, the problem is the, the community’s like, oh, well of course you’re gonna say nice things about the project you wanna build. But what we also used to have were people from awe that had a network of grassroots folks that could go out and provide independent support during those kinds of meetings. We lost that grassroots when they pulled [00:26:00] out and sent everybody into Washington because that’s where they think policy gets made. And it, but it’s not. Making the right kind of policy because you need to be able to change people’s minds in the local communities. And the lack of grassroots is what’s killing the industry at this point, and nobody’s investing in that anymore. Rosemary Barnes: Pol, let’s be honest, have politicians ever understood how the electricity grid works like in the, you know, the electronics kind of way? No, your average person under doesn’t understand that. So we’ve, you know, engineers, electrical engineers, power system engineers have got on with the job of keeping the grid reliable despite a lot of challenges for, you know, over a hundred years now. And if we would let them get on with it, then they would continue to do that. But now electricity is political because of, um, you know, climate change. And so that’s why we, you have all these problems where people want to, you know, mess with the way that engineers have always have always done things. So. Speaker 4: Sun Zia, the largest wind energy and solar project in America at the moment is being built [00:27:00] right as we speak. It’s about three gigawatts. Alright? So plugging in three gigawatts anywhere is a big deal. No matter how big your grid is. Three gigawatts is a lot of power. It’s run into legal problems again, and maybe they’re all justified. But if you take three gigawatts that are planned, co plan capacity. That all of a sudden disappears, could disappear, or could be delayed by a couple of years. That’s a big deal. And I, I think all the electrical engineers in the world would say, uhoh, we got a problem here that we need to get fixed. And I think that is gonna be more common now than it has been previously because of the size of the projects. The projects are getting massive. Instead of putting in 50 megawatts or putting in 500, instead of 500, they’re putting in five gigawatts. Rosemary Barnes: But is that so different to, you know, like you’ve had, you know, gigawatts or multiple gigawatts of nuclear power that turns out to take 20 years to build instead of 10? You know, and that’s the same sort of thought of challenge. You, you, you, you [00:28:00] gotta, you gotta, in your planning people are ob Yeah. People are obviously aware that things can get delayed, uh, or whatever. So I don’t know if it’s a, a brand new, unique challenge. It’s a, a challenge for sure, but I’m not sure that it’s unprecedented. Joel Saxum: I think the trouble, the trouble that what you say unprecedented. I’m, I’m, I, I, I disagree with you because when I hear, like, I’m sitting in the Ercot market, right? And I watch what the Ercot like. 2, 5, 10, 20 year plans are great. Looks like we’re gonna be fine. They, they were the ones who put in the crest lines, which are the, the big transmission lines that go west in the state to grab all the renewables and bring ’em to Dallas and bring ’em to San Antonio and bring ’em all great. But they’re being undermined right now by the politic politics. And the politics are literally quoting the, the DC politics and saying like, we’re, and they’re standing up against renewables and it’s like. Okay. Whatever your political ideal ideology is, is [00:29:00] do you, but when you’re looking at stopping growth, stopping energy generation of the only sources that are deployable fast enough, you can only build solar and wind and batteries fast enough to keep up with the de growth and demand. Right Now, you can’t get, we’ve said this before in the podcast. You can’t, I can’t go to GE and order a thermal generation. I can order a natural gas plank and, and get it next year. I’m not gonna get it until like 20 30, 20 32 thought if I’m lucky. And by 2032, the demand in the erco market is gonna be over two and a half times what it is right now. So you better start building wind and solar. So if you’re passing legislation that’s undermining the ability to do that, we’re screwed. Like, I’m gonna go, I’ll come, go get solar panels and batteries for the house because you’re gonna have to have, Speaker 4: do states start to take over. Where the federal government is stepping away. You can’t, if you cross state lines, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. In terms of, in terms of development, Joel, I’m not, I’m not saying in, in, you know, providing, [00:30:00] basically what I’m thinking is if it’s a $31, a megawatt hour production tax credit, and the federal government pulls it, which is the problem, they pull it, they, they bring it back, they pull it again. Okay. If, if I wanna have some stability, and if I’m in Kansas and the electricity is being generated in Kansas by wind and solar and a bunch of other things, same thing about Iowa. I don’t want that nonsense going on. I want them to know that the power is gonna be there when I need it, because my economic viability is relying upon that. It depends on that to happen. So do I take the production tax credits and build it into my. State somehow, either in terms of. Rate increases or subsidies from the state Phil Totaro: government. The only way that they can pay for that kind of a subsidy at a state level is to raise prices or taxes or, yeah. Or taxes. But probably raising rates, uh, is the easier way to make that [00:31:00] happen. ’cause changing the tax code means more state level, you know, provisions need to be put in place. It’s just easier to jack up the, the, the utility price. So that’s, that’s likely the outcome if they go that direction. The reason why the industry’s pushed for federal, um, you know, tax subsidies in the first place is that it. It provides a bigger, more economically viable pool to pull from for, for those subsidies as opposed to leaving it up to the states where states are then gonna get into competition with one another. Where one’s, you know, Kansas is gonna make their subsidy, you know, 32 bucks and then you know, somebody, Oklahoma’s gonna make theirs like 35 and then, you know, which, which sounds good. I mean, it sounds like, okay, capitalism, yay, capitalism. But that’s gonna end up, but that’s also gonna end up having the, the same effect that you were talking about before, Alan, because [00:32:00] somebody that was proposing a project, even if it’s like, let’s say it’s somewhere in the Southwest Power Pool. Even if you were proposing a project to be built to connect to one node y, you know, based on. The, the inconsistency of the state subsidies, you may pull your project from one node and now wanna stick it into another node because you’re getting a higher subsidy over here. That’s why a federal subsidy is actually better, um, because it provides more consistency to the entire industry, regardless of where you’re building the project. Speaker 4: But it’s a brave new world right now. Phil. There has not been consistency at the federal government level. It has been very, if anything, inconsistent, consistently inconsistent. So it’s gonna be consistently inconsistent. Then the states are gonna take over or the utilities are gonna take over and make it consistent. Joel Saxum: So let, lemme give you a rundown of states and, and I’m just saying for money to be able to possibly do their own PTC. These are the states in 2024 that ran at a budget surplus, Texas, [00:33:00] Florida. And now it gets weird. Oregon, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, South Dakota, Wyoming, Nevada, Wyoming, big wind state, of course, Texas, big wind state. There’s a couple of big wind states in here. The rest of ’em, solar, of course, you can put anywhere. Uh, Oregon’s a big, Oregon’s, a pretty decent sized wind state as well. Uh, but I, I think you could see that. I, but I think you would, to what you’re saying, Phil, I, I under completely understand federal’s better. However, if they’re not gonna do it and the states start doing it, great, but I think you would see some lawsuits instantly because people would be like, and it’s because the power pools don’t follow state lines. Ercot is the only one that is within one state. No lawsuits there. But if you’re in S Southwest, you’re in Meso, you’re in the PJM, you’re anywhere else where that stuff can cross the the electrons. Technically you can cross state lines. Then you’re gonna run up a lawsuit. It’ll get stopped up instantly. Speaker 4: I could see ways of structure would, would [00:34:00] work where everybody would be happy. Joel Saxum: It’s about time. It would make com, it would man, it would make, it would make investment in states competitive. Think about that. If you’re sitting here in South Dakota and Minnesota and Minnesota’s offering you $30 megawatt hour, all of those jobs are gonna Minnesota. You know, all those jobs are gonna Minnesota, all that construction’s going over there, all that spend is going over, all that economic growth is going over there. That’s Speaker 4: as easy as it is. That’s exactly right. That is the railroad of the 2020s. It’s exactly what it is. And if you’re not willing to hop on that train, man, you’re gonna pay a price. And it’s not gonna be a five year penalty, it’s gonna be a hundred year penalty. That’s what we’re talking about right now. So. Get on this electricity train, but thank you for listening to this podcast. Hey, there’s everybody’s frustrated at the minute we’re all trying to figure out ways to make the electricity grid more reliable, more consistent, and, uh, better than it is today. So thanks for listening. This is EP Time Win Energy podcast for Phil [00:35:00] Ro Joel Saxon, and now The Missing Rosemary Barnes. We’ll see you next week.…
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The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast
In this episode of Uptime News, Allen covers leadership changes at Eneco, historic renewable energy deals in Poland, strong support for wind energy in Ireland, and a surge in American clean energy investment. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News , our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech . Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook , YouTube , Twitter , Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web . And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here . Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us ! Welcome to Uptime News. Flash Industry News Lightning fast. Your host, Allen Hall, shares the renewable industry news you may have missed. Allen Hall: Leading off the week, there’s a leadership change at a major European energy company. As Templeman is stepping down as CEO of Dutch Energy firm, Eneco on August 1st. Templeman is leaving to become the new chief executive of lighting company, signify in September. Eneco says Kees Jan Rameau will serve as interim CEO starting July 4th. The company’s board has already started searching for a permanent replacement. Templeman joined an Eneco as CEO in July of 2020. The supervisory board chair Mel Kroon says Templeman led the successful launch of the company’s one planet plan before Eneco. Templeman held senior positions at Shell across [00:01:00] Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Over in Poland, energy companies have closed one of the largest renewable energy deals in European history. Norwegian firm, Equinor, and Polish company, Polenergia, have secured 6 billion euros in financing for two offshore wind projects. That’s about $6.8 billion. The companies say it’s the largest project finance deal in Poland’s energy history. The Baltic two and Baltic three Wind Farms will feature 100 turbines with a combined capacity of 1.4 gigawatts. Polenergia, CEO Adam Purwin says they have secured financing from around 30 institutions. He says The company’s obtained exceptionally favorable terms despite challenging market conditions, construction has already begun. Onshore marine operations will start next year. The wind farms should begin full commercial operation in 2028, and they’ll provide power to more than 2 million [00:02:00] Polish households. And Irish citizens are showing strong support for wind energy development. A new national survey by Wind Energy Ireland found 80% of the public supports wind energy development, 62% back having a wind farm in the local area. The survey found people support wind energy because it offers more affordable electricity and reduces carbon emissions. Energy independence was also a key motivator. CEO. Noel Cunniffe says, Irish people know wind power is the leading solution to rising energy costs and climate change. He says, wind power is already helping reduce electricity prices and create jobs. 75% of those surveys support offshore wind energy. 82% recognize its role in securing Ireland’s energy supply. Research shows Ireland’s offshore wind farms could generate 38 billion euros for the Irish economy by 2050. And American clean energy investment continues to surge. The American [00:03:00] Clean Power Association says developers installed 7.4 gigawatts of new solar, wind and storage capacity in the first quarter. That represents $10 billion in domestic investment. The trade group says it was the second strongest start to a year on record. Battery storage achieved record first quarter installations surpassing 30 gigawatts of total capacity nationwide. The development pipeline grew 12% to reach 184 gigawatts. That represents $328 billion in potential project investment. CEO. Jason Grumet says, clean power is shovel-ready at scale. He says the industry has a technology. Investment capital and workforce needed. Grumet warns that the greatest threat to reliable energy is an unreliable political system. That’s this week’s top. News stories. Stay tuned for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast tomorrow.…
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The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast
Joseph Chacon, CEO of Padge LLC, discusses the impact of electrical harmonics on wind turbines and solar systems, providing insights into causes, consequences, and effective solutions for improving power quality. 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: Joe, welcome to the show. Joseph Chacon: Thank you. I appreciate it. Allen Hall: Well, I’m glad we connected, uh, through Jon Zalar, I believe, and we don’t talk electrical power creation or what that. Kind of power we’re creating and what the effect of that power is on systems downstream very often, uh, the Uptime podcast, because there’s so many wind turbine issues, is mostly focused on mechanical problems. But we’re finding that more and more problems may have an electrical origin. We wanted to get an expert in here that would be you to come help us on harmonics because there are requirements about harmonics. Joseph Chacon: There are, uh, IEEE five 19 governs [00:01:00] the requirements for harmonics. At the point of common coupling. Allen Hall: That’s correct. And your prior experiences with ge, which is now GE Renova down in South Carolina, that’s correct. But you were involved, maybe give a brief description of the things you’re working on because when electrical people talk, um, kind of gets lost in translation. You were knee deep, maybe waist deep, maybe eyeballs deep and electrical Joseph Chacon: power at GE Renova? No, not, not knee deep, not weight deep, waist deep. I was baptized, completely immersed all the way in. I came shortly after the Enron acquisition. Um, I was one of the electrical engineering managers at the time. We had, uh, I think two or three at the time. Um, this was pretty early on. Uh, I got out of that because, uh, I’m, I like management, but I, I like electrical engineering, so I wanted to go back to being an individual contributor. Um, so I’ve touched just about [00:02:00] every electrical thing you can think of in a wind turbine. And also in solar Joel Saxum: as well. You know, a little bit of a sidebar here ’cause I want, we want to definitely get into this deep technical conversation, but Joe, you touched on something that happens to people, right? You’re a really good engineer, you’ve run a team, you’ve solved some problems. So now you get promoted to management, but you don’t get to engineer as much anymore. So you get, like, you get, you start being leadership and like doing all these things, how to manage people, how to run a team, this, that, and that’s great. We need that. The industry, every industry globally, we need to be able to do those things. But for engineers that have engineer at heart, and I’m, I’m also looking at you, Alan Hall. Uh, they, they wanna be able to engineer, right? They wanna be able to do stuff to make a difference to, to, to get hands on with a problem. So, so you, so you’ve done that though, right? That that’s you, you are now, uh, Josh Shahan is, uh, pad LLC and Joseph Chacon: pod is short for Padre, which is what my kids and grandchildren call me. They just shortened it from Padre to podge. ’cause saying two [00:03:00]syllables was too much and I liked it. Joel Saxum: Yeah, I like that. Okay, so, so, so like we said, uh, you, you, you guys, you’re getting deep into harmonics and other issues. You get called in by Solar Farms to solve problems and, and this is the thing Alan and I were kind of talking about off air a little bit is. W we have a bit of a culture like in wind right now of electrical problem, swap, swap apart, swap apart in, swap apart out. But nobody’s looking at the, the root cause of why or why did this thing fail, and how can we, you know. Make this more robust for the future. And that doesn’t just stop at components in the turbine. It’s, it’s BOP, you know, and this is, like you said, also solar and, and other industrial facilities as well. But that’s what you tackle, right? Joseph Chacon: Yeah. And you know, you mentioned John Zellar, uh, great, great root cause analysis guy. Uh, does fishbone, uh, ad modeling, things like that, um, what’s your observation that you’re seeing? I think is correct. People ignore. [00:04:00] One of the fundamental root causes for a lot of issues, um, not just in renewable energy, but anywhere you have, uh, large amounts of nonlinear loading, uh, these days. That’s primarily coming from data centers. Um, with the advent of the diode six pulse front end, uh, variable frequency drive, uh, IGBTs, any type of switching device. It’s only getting worse. It will never get better because we are putting more and more non-linear loads on the utility and fewer and fewer linear loads. Even our lighting today, we don’t use incandescent anymore. It’s all either LED, well, we used to do fluorescent, but LED is a horrific offender for harmonics. So, and I hate to pick on that technology because. They all really are. Um, so a solar inverter, a wind turbine converter, uh, a UPS, any type of [00:05:00]device is going to introduce more harmonic content into the grid. So you got the issue where the device itself has harmonic content, couple to a grid that’s getting more and more harmonic content already on it. So the situation is definitely getting more and more exacerbated. Allen Hall: So some of those harmonics have really significant consequences. Uh, if you go to podge LLC on YouTube, you can watch some of the discussion there and walk through the equations about what harmonics can do to equipment on generators. Up in the the wind turbines, you can actually damage some of the Y connections on those, uh, defi generators. It can causes all kinds of problems. And I know one of the issues that’s, and it’s being sussed out right now, so we’re talking about it live as it’s happening, is, uh, they’re seeing transients come from the line back up to, to the turbine and are causing problems to the electronics. Straight harmonics. And the same thing coming [00:06:00] out of some of the turbines is the harmonics can be strong. And in one of your videos you talked about what kind of damage you can do with a transformer if you have harmonics that are significant enough. It’s, it’s surprising. How you can shorten the life of a transformer Joseph Chacon: correct, or any magnetic circuit, uh, generators, motors, transformers, anything that’s going to take, uh, electrical conversions to magnetic conversions and back or vice versa, any type of thing like that. Uh, they cause extreme dielectric stress and extreme temperature changes. Um, and both of ’em are damaging. To devices like transformers, motors, generators, et cetera. Allen Hall: Yeah, because transformers and all that sort of magnetic equipment is designed to work around a core frequency. Typically 50 hertz or 60 hertz, depending on where in the world you are. When you put other frequency components on that equipment, it’s not designed to do that. So that turns into a lot of heat a lot of times, [00:07:00] and then you over temp or shorten a lifetime of. Transformers on the pads and up tower in some cases that don’t. If you have a failure like that, uh, at a wind farm, I saw it most recently, uh, a couple of weeks ago, where they’re replacing transformers, like, wow, it’s only been there a year or two. That shouldn’t happen. There are other, so those kind of failures, unless you’re paying attention, are just gonna repeat, right? Because replacing a. Pad transformer with another pad, transformer doesn’t remove the source of the problem. It just puts in another fuse in the circuit. Joseph Chacon: Correct. And you know, let’s say you put it in, in pick a year, January of 2015, and your harmonic content from utility can change over time. So many times it’s worth just taking a look at it. Um, in one of the videos you talked about. I promoted a [00:08:00] Fluke 1777 power quality analyzer tool that I use, and I rent that tool out to people that are wanting to do a study. Uh, and that’s an economical way to do a study. Um, the technician or engineer or whoever puts that in does not necessarily need to know a lot about harmonics to set that up. Uh, you’re going to be putting in either three or four cts, depending upon whether you’re a four wire or a three wire system. Then connections to your bus for voltage, and then you turn the fluke on and you verify that your currents are going in the right direction. So in Phase A current, it’s phase A voltage, and you start a session and then you mail it back to me and I’ll give you the report. Um, and it does a lot more than just harmonics. Uh, and I basically, I run an IEEE five 19 report. It does sags swells, it does super harmonics. It does intra harmonics. Super harmonics [00:09:00] are harmonics that are higher than 50, um, 50 times the fundamental. So that’s 50 times 60, uh, for 60 hertz people, or 50 times 50 for 50 hertz people. And you, you mentioned Alan, that Transformers motors are designed for a certain frequency. Um, if you take a motor or a transformer and look at it, it’s gonna tell you the frequency. Sometimes it’s dual rate at 50 or 60. Um, but the engineer that designed that transformer motor is gonna take certain things into account related to the magnetic side to make sure that it’s able to operate for that broad frequency range. Low frequencies are quite bad. In fact, as you get towards dc DC you can’t use magnetic circuits as a rule. I mean, there’s ways to make DC motors and things like that. And then as you get to tire frequencies, um. Then like 400 hertz is a common in aviation, you know, it’s specifically designed for that frequency. So when you introduce [00:10:00] even small amounts, it could wreak havoc Joel Saxum: over time. So a question for you, just I we talking, IEE here. I. Do you get into, this is like a, as a, as a podge LLC thing. Do you get into more of these studies at the development stage, or is it once they are deployed and having problems, when do they call? Joe, Joseph Chacon: you know that, that’s a very, very good question, Joel. Um, I do both. Uh, so if you, there’s a fixed installation. I could come in and put up the Fluke 1777 and conduct that study for that person or the company, or they could do it themselves and just, uh, FedEx or UPS me back the equipment and I could interpret the data. If you’re doing a new installation, I use a software called Easy Power. There’s others, uh, SKM, etap. Um, you know, if you ask me what type of phone I use, I’ll tell you I got an Android. Why do I have an Android? Because that’s what I’m comfortable with. That’s what I use. I’m not [00:11:00] opposed to Apple or anything like that. Why do I use Easy Power? Because that’s what I use. I mean, it’s, you get comfortable with what you use. Um, 20 years ago I used SKM. But easy power. And there’s a video on that YouTube series I mentioned about how to use easy power to do IEEE five 19 harmonic studies before you even put it in. Um, so that can be done as wealth. I. And I can model it with easy power after the fact too. Uh, but Fluke makes it so easy. It’s just hook up 6, 7, 8, 9 leads, whatever, click record, come back a few hours later and populates the report. Then when you want to talk about the fix, then I might have to use Easy Power to help with. Do you want a, so there’s lots of fixes and, and I hope we get to talking about some of the fixes here in a minute. Joel Saxum: That, that’s what I wanted to dive into next. ’cause I’m thinking, okay, earlier we talked, uh, RCA, how these, you know, what’s happening here And my mind immediately [00:12:00] goes to, and, and everybody that’s listening here knows I’m not an electrical engineer. Uh, like, not nothing nuts whatsoever. You know, like I, I, I put uh, KC lights on a truck once and almost burnt it down. So that’s not my, that’s not my thing, but in my mind, I, this goes through this, this unstable grid with a lot of frequency. So I go like, okay, is it a grid macro problem? Like, do we need to have more flywheel type technology on the grid to even these things out? And I’m thinking about like, I’m in Texas here, right? So there’s all kinds of renewables, all kinds of, you know, up, down, up, down, up, down. We talk about duck curves and we can look at a graph. Yeah, that’s the entire grid. But when you talk about at the wind farm or solar farm level, there’s so much differing load. And now we’re adding batteries and we’re adding data centers and all that stuff. So there’s, there’s multiple. Entry points, I think, to solve this. And one of ’em is, is like, is is Joe Shahan standing in front of Ercot and telling them how to fix their problems at a macro level. But what we, but I think what we wanna dive into here is there’s also filters and other [00:13:00] fixes from, you know, the abbs and the Siemens and the Schneiders of the world that can fix things at a local level. So what are some of these problems that you see and then fixes that you prescribe to solve those problems? Joseph Chacon: I must clarify, it’s not a utility problem unless the utility is using massive amounts of renewable energy. Um, with that said, though, uh, whoever makes the wind turbine or whatever the asset is, you’re gonna be required for the point of interconnect to do that IEEE five 19 study. Um, what causes the problem is on the load side. Because you have the most classic case of this is a six pulse, uh, rectifier on the front end of a variable frequency drive. Um, before the advent of that, people would just put across the line starters or across the line contactors to turn on [00:14:00] a motor. And a motor is a very linear device. The only issue you might have with that are dips and swells. Uh, or mostly dips for that matter. But when you put a variable frequency drive on there, which is a wonderful, wonderful device, it gives you absolute control over that motor, and you wanna put it in all day, every day. But when you put it in, you’re gonna wanna put a line reactor in front of it. And if your VFD is here and your motor is so many feet away from your VFD, you’re gonna wanna put in different types of things as well. And those could be DVDT filters. Our sway filters ultimately. And I mean, sometimes you can just do a basic choke, but you’re gonna usually look at A-D-V-D-T filter or a sway filter between those two devices. So those are what you’re gonna do at the source for where you are creating your harmonic content that gets reflected back up onto the utility. So those are very simple things to do that [00:15:00] in my opinion, are no-brainers. And also use shielded cabling. Um. I, I preach this a lot between your VFD and your motor use shielded cabling. Um, now let’s talk about if you’ve got all this in place and you still have massive amounts of harmonic content, what do you do? I’m in love with the active harmonic filter. This is the best thing since sliced bread. And I don’t wanna oversell it because, uh, uh, my wife says, you talk about it so much that you make me think you’re overselling it and I don’t want it. That’s not what I’m trying to do here. But there’s tons of people, uh, companies that make an active harmonic filter and that has the capability at the point of common coupling of completely neutralizing your harmonic content. And this is the part that I like the most. Power factor correction. So power factor is, uh, just basically a ratio of, uh, [00:16:00] real power and reactive power. Um, you want it to be as close to unity as possible, and that’s what the utility likes. So another side effect of excessive harmonic content is also lower power factor, um, when you accurately measure it. So an active harmonic filter. Um, it’s kinda like, I forget which law. I think it’s Newton’s third law for every force, there’s an equal and opposite force to go with it. So if I just push that there, I’m not pushing back on it. Right? So if you have a, let’s say you have, I don’t know, 500 hertz of harmonic content that’s constantly being injected. An active harmonic filter will come in and basically do that. It’ll also do it for other frequencies all at the same time, completely counseling them out. It really is a, a wonderful, wonderful device. And you don’t have to put it in series with anything. You put it in shunt and that means you could get close to [00:17:00] your point of common coupling. So on. So a point of common coupling. It, you could be def you could define it anywhere, but if you were gonna put this in, uh, let’s say at a a, a solar plant. You could put this in at the output of the central inverter, or if you got a string of series, um, a series of string inverters, you could put it at the switchboard there as well. Um, and it’ll neutralize the harmonic content that’s there and even downstream as you get further and further away from ect Harmonic filter. Your THDV, that’s total harmonic distortion, voltage, and a little bit of THDI, total harmonic distortion. Current goes down as well, but at the point of common coupling, you are putting the cadis on that and squashing it. It’s a pretty cool device and I. I don’t sell them, but I help specify them. Joel Saxum: So it’s like, it’s the, it’s the ultimate [00:18:00] noise canceling headphone for BOP. Joseph Chacon: Yes. Perfect. That’s exactly the best analogy. I love that. Joel Saxum: So you go on Amazon, you buy a set of BS seven fifties, and you put ’em over the cable. Right. Then it’s good. Joseph Chacon: Very, Joel Saxum: very Joseph Chacon: similar technology. Yes. I, I love the analogy. I love the analogy. Allen Hall: Yeah. But it’s magic because 20 years ago you really couldn’t do that. Or if you wanted to, it was super expensive and. If the prices come down, they’re still expensive, but you’re trying to eliminate a more complex problem that you didn’t necessarily create, right? So a lot of these harmonics. Or coming out of equipment that probably did not really meet the spec to begin with, and you’re just trying to find an ultimate solution that gets the plant running again. And that’s the key here. It’s gonna save you a tremendous amount of time and effort if you can use active suppression instead of trying to fix the a hundred inverters that are creating this problem. And, Joel Saxum: and that’s Allen Hall: the one Joel Saxum: thing I want to touch on there, like, if, if, if this isn’t solved or if this is an issue and [00:19:00] you don’t use a certain fix. Failures, the what are the components that will Joseph Chacon: fail any and everything. I, I was, uh, gosh, I did a presentation of harmonics a couple of days ago, and I used the Bugs Bunny analogy of the gremlin in the airplane. Uh, so in the 1940s during World War ii, many of the pilots would say, we have gremlins in our system. Um. Gremlins are kind of like harmonics. They just show up in all types of different places, even even on mechanical devices, uh, related to bearings and other things. Um, they, it just shows power supplies can start going, motor bearings can start falling. All types of things can start failing. So Allen Hall: let’s talk about that. There are a number of main bearings that are failing in wind turbines today that look like they have electrical discharge damage. And the, everybody who’s designing these systems, these wind turbines is pretty smart, right? There’s, there’s a lot of engineering that goes into a [00:20:00] wind turbine, but when you have undesirable harmonics, regardless of where they come from, can be from a SU piece of supplied equipment that those harmonics can show up on. Mechanical devices like bearings, you can actually pick up harmonics physically from discharge, you’ll see discharges to bearings and. Uh, drive shafts all the things you wouldn’t expect. But here’s the one thing I wanted to talk to you about, Joe. Can you, can you kinda physically see like, oh, that’s an electrical discharge, or, oh, that’s a mechanical failure. Are there differences between those two when it comes to mechanical failures from harmonics? Joseph Chacon: In cases like that, that’s where you wanna pull, pull in a holistic RCA approach. Uh, kinda like the gentleman John we’ve been talking about before. Um, John is a great systems engineer and he would help isolate electrical, mechanical, environmental, things like that, uh, and look at the contributing factors [00:21:00] that come in to producing all of those things. The answer is yes, it could. Um, but not every time. And it takes, uh, a certain amount of surgical precision to diagnose the root causes or combination of root causes. Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s one of those Sherlock Holmes, uh, quotes, right? Once you’ve eliminated the impossible, everything else is. Possible. What is that? What is that saying guys? It’s probable, there you go. Right It where you’ve, on the mechanical side, it seems like we’ve eliminated a lot of mechanical probabilities of, it could be something in manufacturing, it should be something in tempering, it should be something in coatings. And now we’re going down that rabbit hole of, I wonder if this is electrical discharge. I wonder if the brushes are working. Do we need to install brushes? Do we need to add more grounding? In the towers to get rid of some of these or provide another path for the harmonics to go through. It’s a complex problem. But Joe, if they’re not bringing someone like you into help look at this problem, they’re not gonna solve it just by [00:22:00] Joseph Chacon: eyeballing it. Right? Right. And then finally, the most important consideration of all of this is, is economics. Um, and fin finance. Um, sometimes living with the devil, you know, is better. Then the angel, you don’t know. And uh, you notice I switched that up. Yeah. Everything has to have an ROI in a business case, and you can come in and solve this and probabilistically reduce all failures to six seven Sigma. Um, but at what cost? Um, so what I try to do is help customers really dig into it electrically. And if, and if you got mechanical devices that are failing, then you’re gonna wanna look at it holistically. Um. In, in the case of solar and things like that, you know, you don’t have a lot of moving parts. Wind turbine’s a little bit more complicated. Um, but at a facility, um, where you have motors and drives and things like that, um, it, it doesn’t always have [00:23:00] to be electrical or mechanical. Um, I, I became a thermal engineer over the, over the last few years, not because I liked thermodynamics. Because I had to keep my electronics cool and it was a discipline that I had to, to really get familiar with. Um, the things related to bearings and other stuff like that. I’ve known some phenomenal bearing people, loads people through the years. That stuff I don’t understand. When you bring in a good system engineer and you’re able to holistically parse it out, uh, that, that would be the way to go on those things. Joel Saxum: Absolutely. I like part of this conversation here, Joe, is that, um, okay, so this is, this resonates with Alan and I because we are talking with lightning protection people every day, right? Like, Hey, I have this issue, have this issue. There’s a specific fix or, or a, a prescribed fix for a lot of different things that can happen. But it all needs to be based in a business case. If the business case doesn’t make sense. Or you can’t present a decent business [00:24:00] case to someone, you might as well just get off the phone. I, and, and I think that the wind industry really needs that, uh, renewables industry in general, but the wind industry really needs that if we’re trying to ’cause the goal, one of the goals of the, the uptime podcast here is to lower the, the LCOE if we can help make wind turbine or wind energy more competitive across the globe. Beautiful. So the, the fact that you’re approaching business as business case forward, I really like to hear that. Joseph Chacon: That’s good feedback. I like that. Allen Hall: So Joe, I know we could go on all day and if you let me, I will. Uh, so we’re, we’re gonna have to invite you back because I think as Joel and I learn more about some of these harmonic problems that exist in turbines and, and also. On the line, uh, we want to talk to you about possible solutions, what you can do about it, how to address it, even how to suss it out, diagnose it Joseph Chacon: related to, to lightning. Uh, I’m sure all the time you’re constantly looking at, did the utility cause this, did the device cause this, or did lightning cause [00:25:00] this? So bringing that harmonic aspect in and utility power, quality in general. Harmonics is just a subset of the overall power quality. Um. It, it definitely does help differentiate things from something happened electrically. What was it? You know, that, that, that level of knowledge I think goes a long way. Allen Hall: Yeah, it sure does. So Joe, how do people get a hold of you if they need to do a harmonic analysis or just take a, a kind of a holistic look at what’s happening electrically in their turbines or in their solar facilities? My Joseph Chacon: email is pretty easy. It’s josephchacon@padge.org. Um, my website is padge.org as well. Um, I encourage people to check out the YouTube videos because that’s to demystify harmonics a lot and, uh, educate people. Uh, my goal is if people and technicians and engineers are educated. It helps them become better for [00:26:00] their companies. And, uh, you know, I do like making a buck, but more than that, I like seeing people succeed. And, um, I have a lot of people in various industries, uh, not just renewables. Um, I wanna give them the tools to be able to do what’s best for their companies. And that’s what. Helps me sleep good at night is is doing that in education. Allen Hall: So check out Joe’s website, it’s spelled padge.org and you can also check out Joe’s YouTube channel. Same thing, Padge LLC. Just put into YouTube and it’ll come up. You can watch some of those videos on harmonics. Very interesting stuff, Joe. Appreciate you actually putting that up on the internet. Uh, it’s gonna help a lot of people. So Joe, thank you so much for being with us today. And yeah, we’ll talk soon. Thank you, Allen. Thank you, Joel.…
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The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast
Lene Hellstern, Director of Engineering at PEAK Wind , discusses the complexities of onshore wind siting, the advantages of using LIDAR technology, and strategic considerations for turbine selection. 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: We’re back with Lene Hellstern, the Director of Engineering at PEAK Wind, and we’re talking about onshore wind siting, which is a really critical issue that a lot of operators have difficulties with. And I’ve seen it in the United States and it’s not good. And I’m wondering from your perspective, what are some of the problems, Lene? Well first, welcome back to the podcast. Lene Hellstern: Thank you. And thanks for having me repeat experience last time, so I hope so. I thought I’ll pop in again. Allen Hall: Well, it’s good to have you back and thanks Lene Hellstern: for coming to Copenhagen. Allen Hall: Yeah, well we love Copenhagen. It’s great. Uh, I just wish it was a little bit warmer. Yeah, the sun is terrific. Yeah. When you’re in it, well, at Lene Hellstern: least I fixed that. Right. Yes. It’s not raining. It’s not raining. Yes. Allen Hall: We, we quite enjoyed it. Uh, but I’m trying to get an understanding of what the underlying issues are with onshore wind siding and why some of the operators have difficulty later on. Let’s just start with the sighting [00:01:00] itself. Yeah. Is usually, we’ll see a wind mast out on site for several months, maybe a year, maybe two years. To try to get some wind data. We would Lene Hellstern: really like that. Yeah. Okay. But, uh, the preferable measurements are lidars. Allen Hall: Oh, lidars. Yeah. I have not seen a lot of lidars in use. Lene Hellstern: No. You, you need to get some more. Allen Hall: Why? Lene Hellstern: Um, because they reach higher. Allen Hall: Okay. Lene Hellstern: Um, and you can, uh, you can, you can move them around. Right. And the hassle of installing a Met Mass that’s a hundred meters tall, is, uh, is it a problem? Quite, uh. Quite it, it cost a lot more. Yes. Um, and, and the lidars, they, they just, they’re better and they measure higher. And you can, you can have one sort of mother lidar and then you can move the other around and you can cover your wind resources and site suitability much better on the site. So I would definitely recommend Allen Hall: lidars. Okay. How the lidars use a [00:02:00] good bit of power to make them run, correct? Yes. So you need a decent power source? Yes. Lene Hellstern: You do? Yes. Allen Hall: Okay. Yeah. I, is that one of the difficulties why they don’t use a lidar? Is it just in a lot of remote areas, they don’t have the power source to run it? Lene Hellstern: It could be, or it could be the, the lack of knowledge. Right. Traditionally we have used med masks, yes. Allen Hall: Forever. Lene Hellstern: Uh, so, so it could be, and then there are also some, um, uh, some issues with uncertainties because the lidar is the, the standards are not up to date. I would say that’s the political way correct way of saying it. So. Eh, the standard actually introduces more uncertainty on the lidar that’s really not necessary to, due to a calibration with a me mast. Um, so that there’s some, there’s some things that needs to improve in that area Allen Hall: because a lidar should be a lot more accurate than a met mast. Lene Hellstern: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. But, but the, the downside of the lidar, so that, that is not often we see that, is if you don’t have enough particles in the air, you have [00:03:00] an issue because then you are, you’re simply not gonna be able to measure. The, the, uh, velocity of the particles because they’re not there. And then you have a low availability on your measurements. But, you know, most places there’s, there’s a quite a lot of dust. There’s pollution. Um, so there, there are things in the air that we don’t see, but the lighter sea and then you can make the measurements. Allen Hall: And as the hub heights have gotten taller, it gets a lot more difficult to get a met mass up that high. So the lidars go can measure winds. How high up in the air? How many meters? I Lene Hellstern: think at least 250 meters. Wow. And, and you want, you want to, you know, traditionally you would only measure at hop height, but you wanna measure at the, the, the rotor surface, right? So you wanna measure at tip height, and you wanna measure at lower top tip and lower tip to, to see what, for instance, what’s the wind share across your, uh, rotor disc. Um, which Allen Hall: you cannot really do with a met mast at all. You can’t do that. You have no [00:04:00] wind share knowledge. From that instrument? Sort of, yeah, Lene Hellstern: you can, because you can make, you always, you, you have a met mass that’s at least at hop height, and then you have, uh, anemometers and wind veins and I don’t know what on all the way down. Um, and you can with, without that equipment, you can, you can measure on the lower part of the rotor, but not the upper part. So, so you, you do get some possibilities to measure wind share, but not as good as, um, for instance, a lidar. Yeah. Allen Hall: So how many lidars would you typically need on a 100 turbine site? Lene Hellstern: Well, that depends. Allen Hall: Okay. Lene Hellstern: Because you have a, if you have complex terrain, Allen Hall: right? Lene Hellstern: Yeah. You may want a lot. Right. That’s what I Allen Hall: was wondering if the more hills and valleys, the, the more lidars you will need, or more samples you’ll need, or maybe the longer duration you’ll need. Yes. Lene Hellstern: Yeah. And you, you would wanna, you know, it’s always the best to measure it. I think it’s [00:05:00] ideally five years. Nobody does that five years. Nobody. No, no. But you should at least have two, right? Allen Hall: Yes. Lene Hellstern: Uh, and then you should do a proper long term correlation. Um, so, so that’s, and how does Allen Hall: that, how does that accomplish Right now, let’s just say we have a met mass. What I typically see is, has been a met mast out in the middle of the United States where the winds are pretty good. Speaker 3: Yeah. Allen Hall: And they have data. They have some data. Yeah. So typically I’ve seen them out there a year, maybe two years, and then. The, but the sites are massive. Yeah. They’re, they’re square miles. Yeah. Dozens of square miles. So it’s big. Speaker 3: Yeah. I Allen Hall: dunno whether it’s in kilometers, but a lot of square kilometers. So then they are trying to interpret interpretate that data that they have from the Met Mass on top of that. I think they’re looking a little bit forward in terms of who, what other wind farms may be surrounding us in the next several years. Yeah. Lene Hellstern: And that’s, that’s one of the challenges we have because there’s a lot that. Uh, you, there’s a lot of guessing. Allen Hall: Yes. Lene Hellstern: Um, and so if [00:06:00] you are planning a wind farm, you wanna know what goes on in the area. You wanna map out the already existing turbines, uh, and what, what hop height, what rotor size, because you wanna be able to model them in your calculations. Allen Hall: That was really good. Get to my question about how difficult this process is and how you try to address it. In the United States, we turn over wind turbines every 10 years, so there’s a repowering happening and. Almost always, the rotor size gets substantially bigger. 20 to 30 to 50% bigger. Right. So there’s fewer turbines, same location. Yeah. And the turbines are roughly in the same spots, but they’re just bigger rotor diameters. How do you then prepare for that? Do you use the old data or is the old data even applicable? If I’m really dramatically increasing the rotor size, do I need to be doing more? LIDAR measurements before I make that repower, or how do I even cite that? Right. Lene Hellstern: Uh, you can, if you have some good SCADA data from your turbines, you can do some [00:07:00] modeling. And many of the sites actually have a met mast. They do a lot Yeah. As a reference, right? Yes. Right. But that will be on it, it will have sectors where there’s a lot of weight from the existing. Allen Hall: Okay. Lene Hellstern: So, and so I would, I would, I would try, I would filter your SCADA data from your site and see if, can I, can I use this? I’ll take a look at the mid mass state and see, can I use this? If not, I’ll start a me mass campaign. Now the problem is if you’re reusing the spots now, well first of all, that’s a little bit difficult reusing because your foundation is dimension to an old generation turbine. Uh, let’s say take someone a hundred, a hundred, uh, meter rotor, right? Right. But now you’re going up in size. Um, so that means everything gets heavier and bigger, right? So your foundation may not be suitable. The old foundation, normally they’re over dimension. So you can, you can extend life or you could repower on them, but you would want a bigger turbine. [00:08:00] So you don’t necessarily want to use the opposition, right? And then you would wanna know what is in the pipe. You know, when can I get my, when can I start digging? Right? When can I start installing? Uh, what is in the pipeline at that point from the OEMs? Because sometimes it actually takes five years from, you start planning until you, you, you start digging. And in that time, if you, you, if you space with today’s models, you are gonna have two shorter distance between the turbines because the new turbines on the market that you would wanna buy has increased significantly. Um, Allen Hall: and that’s a real problem. Yeah. Like that, this, this. Between the, the siting time, the met mass, the LIDAR data, getting enough data and having to make the decision about a turbine relatively early because the production lines are not operating at full capacity right now. Yeah. It’s hard to get a turbine. So you are 3, 4, 5 years out. Yeah. How do you plan for that on an onshore site? Lene Hellstern: Well, [00:09:00] you, you gotta guess a rotor and guess a, a turbine site. Okay. Right, right. So, but Allen Hall: do, do the engineering staffs that a lot of operators have that inside knowledge because it seems like smaller operators, I’m, I’m not the urals of the world, have power and they can see inside the factories and they have a really good connection and they develop that connection over a long, many, many years. Speaker 3: Yeah. Allen Hall: Where newer operators usually do not have that sort of insight. So where do they go to get help? Lene Hellstern: Well, well, they could go to, right? We could help them a little bit, but. You can also look, if you look at the evolution of the turbines, you can, and I, I’m, I’m hoping we are at a little bit of a pause here in the, in, in the growing size. So we, we can refine the turbine, we can refine our manufacturing facilities. We, we get better at service and installation. But you can pretty much, you know, guess the rotor. Uh, I’ve, I’ve done that a lot in, in this job and my previous job, because you [00:10:00] look at, if you look at when the. When did what? Come on the market and from what, OEM. Right. And then you, you know, there’s, there’s other topics you need to look into for, for instance, site suitability. Right? Right. What are, what are the conditions on the site? Um, are you a, we, we categorize in different classes. I, e, c, 1, 2, 3, um, or turbulence classes. A, B, C. And then there’s the, the class I like the least that is the Class S. Which is special. And then you never know what it is before you start digging in all the paper. Um, but, but you, that’s sort of the first things you need to find out. What class are you? And then there’s a small in that because, um, you may think you are a, a class two or have a class two side, but then it turns out that your air density is unbelievably low. So sometimes you can actually squeeze in a class three. Turbine on a class two [00:11:00] side and get that much more production. Allen Hall: Do a lot of operators know that? Lene Hellstern: No. Allen Hall: I wondered. Okay. Yeah. Well Lene Hellstern: maybe the, it’s not so much the operators. It’s the developers. Developers. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That has to, to, to dig a little bit more into the lovely engineering science around turbines and. And, and then do more site suitability because you can actually improve your, the value of your project quite significantly. Allen Hall: That’s what I wonder if, if you spend a good extra amount of time maybe spending a little more money to get LIDAR measurements Yeah. And to do them for a slightly longer period of time, does that have a return on investment? Lene Hellstern: You get, you get less uncertainty. Right. And then I think some of the issues or some of the mistakes that the developers do, they. They do a wind, they do a, a production estimate, but that is not the same as a site suitability or uh, [00:12:00] you know, also, some people also think if I do a wind resource assessment, then I’m covered. No, because that is the input to the site suitability. Now you also need to do the site suitability. So you know, I would start out doing a wind resource assessment, right? Then I would do a site suitability and then you do your production calculator. Allen Hall: And how long does that process take, generally? Lene Hellstern: Oh, that’s always a cue. So it could take, uh, it depends on who you use for this, right? But it could take four to to eight weeks. Allen Hall: Okay. That’s not horrible. No, Lene Hellstern: no, no. Allen Hall: Alright, so it, it is relatively efficient compared to other things that happen in wind. Lene Hellstern: Yeah. If you are have a complex site, it can take longer because you need to run a lot more calculations due to, uh, the comp complexity of the terrain, right? Mm-hmm. You can have issues with inflow, angles, uh, ware, wind share, uh, [00:13:00] all the lovely technical things. Yeah. Allen Hall: Well, and because we’ve developed so many sites to date, all the best wind sites have turbines in them mostly right now, and. We’re, we’re starting to get along the fringes of that good wind area. Yeah. And in some cases, does that change the way you do the analysis and do the approach? Lene Hellstern: Yes, but, um, some of us have done that for a long time because it’s not good enough to have good wind if you don’t have good grid. Um, so, so for me, a good wind side, you know, we, I, I spoke with someone yesterday about. The best, uh, uh, wind resource in Sweden. Um, but, but if that area doesn’t have a good grid, then you know it, I can’t harvest the wind. Right. Right. Um, and it’s the same in, in the US right? You, you have some grid issues. Um, so we have a lot of Allen Hall: grid issues. Yeah. Lene Hellstern: And if you don’t, everything is [00:14:00] combined. Everything works closely together, right. Uh, the technical, the commercial and the finance. So if, if, if that is not. Well, um, covered in a, in a, or, uh, investigated in a project, you don’t have a good project. Um, is Allen Hall: the grid the limiting factor in a lot of onsite onshore sites? Lene Hellstern: I think the world is becoming more and more electrical, which it is, which I think it’s good. Mm-hmm. And I don’t think that they, we can point at any government that was super duper on, um, expanding the grid. Um, no. I know there are issues in Texas. There are also issues in Denmark where I’m from. There are, yes, there’s issues in Europe. So, um, we, we need, we need massive in investments from the government to build out this grid. It’s, it’s not, um, enough to say we want clean energy and then do nothing. Right. Well Allen Hall: this is where, where, where the ons onsite versus the onshore versus the offshore comes in. Yeah. [00:15:00] Is the grid. Speaker 3: Yeah. Allen Hall: So in the US and other places, uh, there’s been. A, a lot of concern about offshore wind, but offshore wind, you can get to a grid relatively easily. Yes, usually. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s less bureaucracy to lay cable in the ocean than it is to run transmission lines over land. Speaker 3: Yeah. Allen Hall: So is this starting to flip a little bit because of the onshore limitations in the grid that we’re seeing more offshore, just because it’s easier. Lene Hellstern: Well in Europe, but I would not say that in the us Right. But, uh, but, um, um, it, it, it is easier, but it’s also much more complex to put up these, uh, offshore projects. They are in development for many, many years compared to onshore. Allen Hall: Right. Lene Hellstern: So, so onshore is a little bit of a, depending on country you are in, if it’s overpopulated right? It’s, it’s difficult, but it’s, it’s a much more of a quick fix, uh, [00:16:00] onshore. For, uh, lack of energy. Right, right. But, but it just requires it, yes, it requires the grid and yes, it requires that you don’t do it in a popula populated area. We don’t want to do that. Right, right. We want, we want the open fields, um, where we’re not disturbing anyone. True. Yeah. Allen Hall: True. But we also want infinite electricity. Absolutely. So you have to weigh those two off. Lene Hellstern: I, but I think the turbines are beautiful. So I would, I would love to be able to see one from my house, but I can’t. Yeah. Allen Hall: We have actually quite a few we can see from our, from our house. Yeah. Yeah. And no one complains. No. They complained for the first few weeks after they were installed and after that it’s been completely quiet. Yeah. But, Lene Hellstern: but I do understand if you place turbines too close to a house Right. Sure. That, how that can be disturbing. Sure. Um, I, I totally understand that. Yeah. Allen Hall: Can we talk about AI data centers and independent grids and how that’s factoring [00:17:00] into some of the decisions about where to place wind sites? Because it does seem like in a lot of places in the world, these AI data centers are going to go in. Yeah. And they’re making decisions about using natural gas to power the turbines or using wind and solar and a little bit of battery to, to run these centers. Yeah, but that doesn’t necessarily. Wire a connection to the grid. Does that make it easier in a sense that you don’t necessarily have to have a grid connection, you could put something out in a remote area that it still had good wind and still has good solar with a little bit of battery? And are you starting to hear more action that way, or interest in that? Lene Hellstern: I’ve, I’ve seen that there’s been, uh, quite some centers that has, uh, made, uh, PPA agreements with, with wind turbine owners. But they are normally not super close, uh, uh, located to the wind farm. Okay? And I would also say that I would find it a little bit difficult, [00:18:00] uh, if they were remote, because you need a, you need a constant power source and, and the wind doesn’t blow all the time, right? No. So you need, you need a lot of, uh, combination mechanisms, right? You do to make sure everything runs stable. Allen Hall: But you may not have neighbors in that case because you could select a site that’s a little bit further away from. Society in a sense. Yeah. Where the, the wind siding may be a little more complicated though because we, we probably haven’t looked in those areas because it’s not connected to the grid. So you may not have historical wind data doesn’t make the problem just bigger. So I do think in the United States you see like Amazon and Meta and Google talking about using wind and solar to power some of these data centers. Yeah. Lene Hellstern: And, and they are, and I know that there are, uh, agreements that has been signed. But I, I am, I don’t think they are close, uh, you know, in close proximity necessarily. Allen Hall: Okay. Lene Hellstern: But of course the, the, the electricity needs to be to be transported in the grid. Right. [00:19:00] And it’s not like it’s a microgrid around the data center. Allen Hall: I think you may see more microgrids. Lene Hellstern: Okay. Well that could be interesting. Well, that’s what Allen Hall: I’m wondering because there may be more microgrids that won’t even be microgrids because the amount of power that they’re gonna use, they’re gonna be decent sized grids. Speaker 3: Yeah. Allen Hall: That. Th that becomes even a more difficult engineering challenge. Lene Hellstern: Well, I think it’s gonna be too expensive. Allen Hall: You think so? Yeah. Compared to natural gas or just because No, just, Lene Hellstern: uh, buying, doing a PPA with a wind farm that may be a hundred kilometers away. Yeah. Right. Allen Hall: Okay. Um, well that’s interesting. Yeah. Lene Hellstern: I think the whole, um, uh, burying the cables in the, you know, the whole installation, uh, is, is simply, it’s simply to, uh, it’s complicated cap. Is too high. Allen Hall: Okay. Lene Hellstern: It’s, it’s much more affordable just to buy a PPA. Allen Hall: Yeah. It may be. Yeah. Lene Hellstern: Yeah. Allen Hall: Okay. Well this is, this is fascinating. Can I pick your brain or bother you just a little bit longer? Lene Hellstern: Yeah, [00:20:00] yeah, sure. Okay. Allen Hall: So Lene Hellstern: it depends on the time. Yeah. Allen Hall: We got 20 minutes. Good. Can I steal 10? Lene Hellstern: Yes, sure. Allen Hall: Okay. Lene Hellstern: This is not my core area, just so you know. Allen Hall: No, no, no. I wanna, I wanna get, I wanna get back into Yeah. The, the meat here, which is turbine selection. Speaker 3: Yeah. Allen Hall: I have my LIDAR data. Mm-hmm. I have my MET Tower data. I have say I have two years. I am really the best wind resource knowledge operator developer that you’re gonna meet. Speaker 3: Yeah. Allen Hall: Great. Super. What do I do next in terms of picking a turbine? How do I even do that? And how does that process look like if I’m talking to OEMs about something that’s still three years from being developed? Lene Hellstern: Well, you need to start, you, you need to have your planning, uh, your permits in order. Allen Hall: Sure. Lene Hellstern: So depending on what country you are in some operate, what you need to apply for the [00:21:00] specific location of the turbines more, it’s more a box. Uh, so it’s, you say, I am, I wanna apply for 300 megawatt, 500. Uh, please. In, in this area. Um, so then you start looking at your site, suitability, uh, what, what boundaries am I working within? What is my average wind speed in different, these different heights? Uh, what’s more, how do I get levelized cost of energy as low as possible? Because some people still sit and look at the net capacity factor, but those days are over, right? They are, Allen Hall: yes. Lene Hellstern: Yeah. So when, when all alarms should go up, if they say. Good lift capacity factor. Yeah. Super. What’s your live life cost of energy there? Um, so, so then you, now you start, you have a good idea on what kind of a turbine class should I look at? Then you start looking at who is, do you wanna do self service? Do you wanna have a full service agreement? Allen Hall: Exactly. That’s what Im really wondering how that works then, because if I [00:22:00] know the basics of the wind site, do I just. Put a proposal together and slide it to Vestus and slide it to ge, or is there still more I need to do before I start talking to them? Lene Hellstern: You need, you need to ask you yourself and your organization. Okay. Or PEAK. Yeah, but, but we would ask you as well, what is your o and m strategy, right? Do you wanna do self perform? Do you want a full service agreement? What, what’s, how risky do you wanna make it? Is that Allen Hall: a deciding factor in determining what turbine you want to purchase? Yeah. Lene Hellstern: Because then you may not need D-O-E-D-O-E-M to have a service organization close to your site. Right? Let’s say, okay, so Allen Hall: let’s say you choose vestus because they have a, they want to sell you a full service agreement, generally sPEAKing. Yeah. Where a, a GE typically doesn’t care or not so involved in that. Lene Hellstern: Okay. But then, but you wanna know, do they have a service organization close to right. Right, right. Or are they gonna re uh, are they, do they need to build it? Right? Is this a new [00:23:00] platform? Do they not have any experience with this platform, the people in this area? Because then you, you know, that’s always, so it’s teething issues, right? Allen Hall: Sure. Lene Hellstern: Yeah. So, Allen Hall: so how does that play into your decision making then? Lene Hellstern: Well, you know, if you have a, if you have, let’s say, four volumes in this area, Speaker 3: right? Lene Hellstern: Yeah. And then you had, you, you look at what, what do they, what turbines do they offer? What service agreements can you get? What availability, you know, how does the contracts, you wanna benchmark the TSAs and the SMAs? Yes. Um, and to see what kind of, who’s the best player here? There’s a lot of pieces to the puzzle. Well, Allen Hall: that, that’s exactly what I wanted to get to was, I’m trying to understand how deep you’re going in this. So you’re actually looking to see if they have a service site nearby? Yes. And what the service people have been exposed to in terms of turbine type. Yeah. And also you’re going a little bit deeper to see how successful they have been. Maybe you, you’ve called the sites Lene Hellstern: around if I have that information. Yes. Yeah. [00:24:00] Okay. Allen Hall: Yeah. So you’re making a lot of decisions not based upon necessarily what the OEM is offering as a product, but you’re also looking at what does the next 10, 20, maybe even 30 years looks like. Lene Hellstern: Yeah. And then you wanna know what, you know, what, what turbines, what pipeline is there, and then you wanna do the tender. Right, Allen Hall: right. Lene Hellstern: Let’s say now you’re down to three because the fourth one, that, that was a no-go. Right? So now you have, that’s why I always, I say four turbines per site. You need to pick, pick four different OEMs. Now you’re down to three. Right? And then you, you, you, you, you issue a tender and you, you get the proposals in. Okay? And then you, you start negotiating and you do your tech, your technical due diligence, right? To sort of dig a little bit deeper and understand the OEMs right. Also give them a chance to say. Hey, this was an issue before, but we fixed this problem and you can see it documented. Oh, you go, yeah, but you’re still, you’re not there. So I need to account for that. So then you have a dialogue with them, and then, [00:25:00]then you have, you, you then the third one is too high and now you have or can’t deliver, or you know, Allen Hall: doesn’t have a production schedule that meets your deeds. Lene Hellstern: Yeah. Yes, exactly. And now you’re down to two, and then may the best one win. Right. Allen Hall: Okay. So you’re talking about. Several months of gyration. Yes. Meeting with the OEMs or OEMs coming to you even to give their pitch. Meanwhile, you’re evaluating their technical expertise about their turbine, and you’re questioning how the previous generation of those turbines have performed looking forward to say, have you fixed the the existing problems? And what does the next generation look like? Yeah. Lene Hellstern: Oh, well, what did they look into? Developing a new Allen Hall: platform. Lene Hellstern: Okay. Right. Allen Hall: So are you thinking about risk in terms of new technology? I’ll, I’ll throw the easy one at you two piece blades. Lene Hellstern: No, thank you. Allen Hall: Okay. That’s a, that’s a good response. Yeah. Because I think a lot of, there was just a lot of unknowns about that. Speaker 3: Yeah. Allen Hall: Yeah. And then now that we have some service history, yeah. We may wanna rethink that. Yeah. Are there other types of [00:26:00] technologies that would lend themselves to requiring further review? Lene Hellstern: Yeah, but there’s, I, what I’m hoping is that, that maybe we can pause a little bit on the sizing thing in the. Right. And then refine the components a little bit more and then, and be more innovative, um, instead in the components. In the components, yeah. And, and improve the manufacturing quality installation service. Right? Because, um, sometimes what I see in the industry is not, it’s an old component, but actually it’s the people that’s the issue, right? Mm-hmm. We don’t, we are not, we are not trained, you know, we don’t have the technicians trained really in a. We don’t have the people in the manufacturing trained well enough, and so, so we make mistakes. So, and Allen Hall: are you looking for OEMs that are doing more reflective activity at the moment that they’re basically causing new designs? And then we always do that, that when we Lene Hellstern: always look at, when we do technical diligence, how is the training [00:27:00] in the, in the manufacturing, you know, what kind of programs do the different people need to go through? How do you get to a seniority? How do they train them? How do they test them? How many years does it take, right? Because you can’t do things in five minutes. Allen Hall: Right? Lene Hellstern: What’s the turnover at a manufacturing plant? Allen Hall: See? But this is why you would choose PEAK wind to help you do that process. Because I don’t think a lot of developers, and especially in the United States where we see a lot of it, I see a lot of it developers are about putting turbines in the ground. Yeah. And then selling that farm to the next owner, right? Yeah. So those long-term agreements don’t really play into a lot of this, and from what I’ve seen, but I think in Europe it’s a lot different. Lene Hellstern: Yeah. No, but we also have, you know, there are different concepts. There is a built to sell. Allen Hall: Yes. Right? Yeah. Lene Hellstern: That’s, then you, you, they, they tend not to, uh, be so focused on the technology. Right, right, right. And then there’s the people that built to keep, right, right. And you could, if you can see, they, that was their intention. And then they [00:28:00] ended up having to divest anyway. Then, you know, that they, they, they probably did, did a little bit more work on the technology side. Which Allen Hall: one’s more successful? Build to sell or build to keep Lene Hellstern: build, to keep Allen Hall: built, to keep has better power production, more revenue, Lene Hellstern: less uh, downtime. Allen Hall: Less downtime. Yeah. Because they’ve done their work upfront and many Lene Hellstern: of them Yes. Have have done it. Yeah. Allen Hall: Mm-hmm. Lene Hellstern: So, but, but developers can still do, uh, build to sell. Sure. But then they need someone with the technol technological glasses to come in and help. Allen Hall: Sure, sure. But that’s where PEAK wind comes in, because. You carry those people on your staff, you, your PEAK wind’s full of experts. Lene Hellstern: We would love to, yes. Allen Hall: So that you can immediately tap the group of experts about the different aspects of this new development. Yeah. From training to warranties to technology to just generally how an OEM performs and Yeah, but it’s Lene Hellstern: also, it’s the technology [00:29:00] commercial finance, right? Bingo, finance. Yeah. They go, they go together. Right, right. It’s not a. Enough to have a brilliant gearbox that can last a hundred years if you only need it for 35. Right. That’s true. And you paid a fortune. Right. That true. That’s just not a good business case. Allen Hall: Right. And there are turbine manufacturers that have that model that do do that still. Yeah. Yeah. This is fascinating and I, I appreciate your time. Every time we talk, I just get more in depth of what is happening and, and where we can get better as an industry. Yeah. And that’s what PEAK wind is all about. Yes, Lene Hellstern: but we are really good already. We just need to get, we are good. Better. Yeah. Yeah. Allen Hall: We do need to get better. And we do, I think we do need to take a pause. Lene Hellstern: Yeah. Allen Hall: So how do people get a hold of PEAK wind and to tap your expertise and attack, to bring in the expertise of your team? Lene Hellstern: Well, we have a, a webpage, uh, where you can contact us through, or, uh, LinkedIn. I am on LinkedIn, so feel free to send me a, a message. Um. [00:30:00] So, and reach out to us and we would love to help. We also have a, we have offices in Boston and uh, uh, Texas. Uh, we also have Oh, around the world. Yeah. Canada. So Taipei, yes. Yes. Re and Allen Hall: congratulations. I think you just won a, was it in Taiwan? Uh, an offshore site Yes. That you’re gonna be operating or managing Meow. Lene Hellstern: Yeah. Allen Hall: Yes. Congratulations on that. Thank you. That’s very exciting. That’s Lene Hellstern: my lovely C in asset management. Yeah. Allen Hall: Very nice. Yes. So Lene, thank you so much for being back on the podcast and we have to have you back on again ’cause there’s so much to talk about and win. And it’s great to talk to someone who has been around and has seen it and has done it. Uh, it’s, thank you for having, it’s such a tremendous learning experience. Lene Hellstern: It was a pleasure. Thanks.…
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The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast
Allen, Phil, and Joel cover the low turnout at American Clean Power in Phoenix, the US House’s budget bill affecting renewable energy incentives, security concerns over Chinese equipment, and a patent infringement lawsuit filed by 3S Lift. 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. Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes. Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m Allen Hall, and I’m joined today by Phil Totaro and Joel Saxum. Rosemary Barnes is over in Sweden, and Rosemary’s gonna miss out on a very active week in renewable energy, at least in the United States. we should probably start with American clean power, which as we are recording, just finished the day. It was in Phoenix, Arizona. Things I’ve seen online, Joel, were that they were expecting around 10,000 people to attend that event, but watching LinkedIn, and I did not attend it this year, unfortunately, or fortunately, is my daughter’s graduation. So [00:01:00] I wanted to be there. I. But it looked like the hallways were pretty empty, which was a little shocking. Joel Saxum: Yeah. So Allen, I wanna preface what you said there by, changing, a CP was in Phoenix too. A CP was in 106 degrees Phoenix today. it was a little bit toasty walking around in the suit jacket, but, of course, everybody, had theirs on. but no, you’re, a hundred percent correct. I was there all week, of course, weather guard brand there, talking lightning with everybody and, strike tape. And we had the uptime wind energy banner. We talked to a ton of podcast fans, which was really cool. so the hallways were, Tuesday morning was great. Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday, Thursday. It just got slimmer and slimmer. and, there was some kind of logistical things there too. This trade show was oddly on two different floors that were separated by four escalator sets. I think like it was a, maze to get up to the other thing. Yeah, it was, pretty wild, in that respect. [00:02:00] And you saw some of the same players that you always see at these trade shows, right? But there was quite a few new ones walking around, doing a little, tour day, exhibit, exhibition floor. A lot of different new companies, that I wasn’t used to seeing, in the solar space. some software, some, a lot of little AI software things that you’ve been hearing about as well. battery storage, quite a few battery storage companies and that battery storage supply chain starting to spread out. You had some battery safety companies and stuff like that, which was great to see. I know I talked to some of our insurance friends and they were bouncing around talking with all the battery storage people and the solar people and that kind of stuff. but yeah, it wasn’t very heavy, heavily wind as it has been in the past we’re, which we’re, usually used to. another factor. to walk the show floor was $1,600. [00:03:00] So that’s, that, deters quite a people. And when, we had talked before we go to the show, of course we wanna connect with our clients, connect with colleagues, connect with old friends, and you start sending out these emails and there wasn’t a whole lot of asset owners and operators coming as they, as we usually see, and it showed on the show floor. I didn’t talk to that many asset owners and asset operators as we usually do. I’m talking probably. A quarter of the traffic that we’re used to from those people. Allen Hall: I Is that just because the, operators are trying to pull back on the travel budgets or was it more about just the state of the industry at the minute or were, because of the time of year and where it was the people that wanna travel to Phoenix, what. What was the feeling there? Joel Saxum: I think it was a bit of all the above. OOMS, the ac, other a CP event, the operations and maintenance, which is, where a lot of our, focus is on the commercial side. That was a good event. That was a well attended event, Nashville this year. A [00:04:00] lot, quite a few asset owners and operators there. So I think that, they used their budget on that one a little bit more this year than this. of course you’re in Phoenix, which is an odd place. it’s. Button up against Memorial Weekend, which is graduations, right Allen? so, it’s a, it’s not an awesome time of the year to be putting something like this on, in my opinion at least. Phil Totaro: At least we’re going to do it in Houston next year, when it’s gonna be in June and even hotter. Joel Saxum: Yeah, it’s first week of June next year for a CP in Yeah, in Houston. But in Houston, if you think about it this way too, there’s quite a few wind companies there. There’s ISPs there. There is operators there. Dallas isn’t far down the road that’s got a bunch of ISPs and operators. Same thing with Austin, R-W-E-E-D-P-R-E-D-F, or stead. There’s a bunch of players over in that area, so I, would expect that one next year to be more well attended because travel budgets, you can hop into car and drive [00:05:00] over there. Allen Hall: you were in Phoenix. The US house passed a budget bill. that was, Approved this morning as we’re recording, that would effectively end the clean energy production, tax credits, and the quote unquote boom in the United States that were spurred on by the IRA bill. And the, for the most part, there’s, still a lot of discussion about this, so none of this is hard fact yet, and it has to go to the Senate. So there’s gonna be changes made and some bartering back and forth. but some key things here, the production tax credit gets shortened if you don’t have projects started, roughly 60 days after the enactment of this bill. You’re not gonna account for anything. So you gotta hurry up and start digging. it, it eliminates a, big piece, which is the tax transfer. So when you get these. Production tax credits, you could sell them and [00:06:00] all the tax credits could be transferred and you could re get that cash upfront. the bill changes all that. So you would have to get a tax equity partner upfront, which generally is a bank, and that can be hard to go do in today’s world. So it’s making it much harder for renewable projects to be developed if this bill were to be signed by the president, which. Who knows where it’s gonna be a couple of weeks from now. Now, Phil, how big is the tax transferability piece of that? Because the discussion in the renewable crowd is that’s probably the most important piece. Phil Totaro: It, it is, setting aside the fact that this is gonna obviously have a big impact on. Greenfield project development, the, complete removal of any tax transferability, for PTC credits is a bit problematic in that not [00:07:00]everybody was taking advantage of it because it was a relatively new thing and enacted through the, inflation reduction Act in the first place. So it’s only been in place for three years at this point. Now, on the flip side of it. For anybody involved in operations and maintenance. This is probably a good thing. but again, setting aside the repowering question for now, and I’m again, as we record, there’s no final language to this bill and this law. it hasn’t been signed in into law yet, so there’s, all we can do is speculate on it. And assuming that they’re gonna change the, immediate, as Allen said this, 60 day, window to start digging for your project, assuming they’re going to kill that bit of it, which is likely, because that’s just too fast of a ramp down. what it’s good for, what this bill is potentially good for, despite the fact that we [00:08:00] might be losing a production tax credit and investment tax credits. It will spur more companies to try and accelerate their plans for repowering and or life extension. Allen Hall: I wanna pause here. Take a quick break ’cause I want to come back. I wanna talk about how much power production the US needs to add every year and what the breakdown is and what it’s likely to be and why changing these. Production tax credits and all the existing IRA bill matters in the growth of the power network in the United States. Don’t let blade damage catch you off. Guard the logics ping sensors to take issues before they become expensive, time consuming problems. 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 OGs ping.com [00:09:00] and take control of your turbine’s health today. All right, we’re back and I have been doing a, good bit of research prior to this. IRA bill change that’s likely to happen to see what. The power requirements are for the United States and what generally has been the growth because remember during a recent conversation with Rosemary, we were talking about the growth of AI and how is that gonna affect the amount of power usage and Rosemary’s opinion was, is that gonna affect it that much? I’m still not sure about that based on the research I’m doing, but just to give you some numbers here, the US needs to add about 33 gigawatts of production every single year over the next 10 years. just to stay even with the growth of technology and electricity usage plus, as older facilities get turned off, you gotta bring new ones on, right? that creates a, little bit of a complex [00:10:00] situation. So for the next 10 years, if you look at 20, forget about 20, 25 for a minute, let’s look at 2026 to 2035, right? The expected. Percentages of what the, what will be added will be about 40 to 45% will be solar. So you’re thinking about 120 to 150 gigawatts of solar. That’s a tremendous amount of solar power being that would have to be added to the grid just to stay even. So you’re talking about 12 to 15 gigawatts per year. Wind will be about six, roughly gigawatts a year natural gas. Combined cycle will be about six gigawatts a year. Nuclear will be about one and a half to maybe two, and then battery storage, which is gonna even out the duck curve, is gonna be around maybe five or six gigawatts. Changing the IRA bill and changing the incentives here is really gonna affect the ability of the United States to keep up with the electricity demand and the [00:11:00] ramp down of old generation sites. You’re starting to see a little bit of noise from, Silicon Valley and other places in the United States, is this smart? I understand what the, house is trying to do and trying to lower the deficit. I got it. I’m not sure this is gonna help with that. Joel Saxum: I’ll give you some. this is direct feedback here from the last week talking to the majority of the, and I’m gonna say with renewables industry from ACP talking to ISPs. Major big ISPs, some of the, like the big, 3, 4, 5 in the country. They multiple people telling me every meeting they walked into. Hey, do you guys do also do solar? Do you also do solar maintenance? You also do solar operations? ’cause people are shifting that way. And if you look at what the installed capacity has been, the growth in the last few years, you’ve seen solar start to take off at a steeper hockey stick than wind because it’s quick. And that’s the thing about this, right? So if we, if, the demand is growing as fast as we see it growing, the [00:12:00] only things you can put in the ground fast are solar, wind, and batteries. You can’t put. Gas and fast. You can’t put new, if we try to put a nuclear plant in right now, anywhere in the country, it’s gonna be 2035 before we get first power out of it anyways. Or 2034, whatever it may be. But it’s, down the line like this. That’s not gonna happen. So if you’re going to introduce legislation to curtail or to just really stomp on the ability for greenfield renewables. It’s the only thing we can build fast enough to keep up with demand. So we’re gonna end up with rolling brownouts, get your generators. Phil Totaro: And keep in mind that the small modular reactor that GE Renova is developing, that has been proposed for the TVA site in Tennessee that’s only just getting started and is, not likely to come online very soon. You’ve got a four year backlog of gas turbines at GE Renova. and I, they actually, I didn’t read [00:13:00] it this morning by the way. so I don’t know if they actually extended that backlog, when they reported their numbers, but, you’ve got a similar situation with, with Siemens as well, with their gas turbines. at least a three year backlog. And so where are you getting the power from? presumably those, the, all these gas turbines are gonna be, put in place for, projects that have already been approved and consented. But again, you’re not addressing that immediate concern of demand growth with the. the immediacy of, being able to deploy something like solar, wind, or batteries that’s going to address that demand growth quicker than what you’re gonna get out of any other form of power generation. Joel Saxum: So here’s an interesting, thought process, right? We have these interconnection queues with renewables stacked up in ’em 10 miles [00:14:00]long, right? And all of a sudden if they’re gonna lose the capability of putting PTCs, if they haven’t, if they don’t have shovel ready, like in the oil and gas world, some of these contracts used to be written like, you go park a bulldozer on this land and it extends your lease and extends your, like that was the way that some of these were written. I don’t know if wind is that way or if you’ve gotta have components on site or you gotta be digging dirt or something. I don’t know how the contracts work to, to secure those PTCs. However, if we get to the point where we have a few years of desert for PTCs, what I would expect then is the next step is when we get these. These, greenfield developments pushed into the interconnect, and they’re gonna connect them anyways, then the power prices to the consumer are gonna double, or they’re gonna at least have to go up enough to cover what PTC was, which is basically in most of the United States, you’re gonna, your power price is gonna double. correct me if I’m wrong, I mean, Allen, what do you think about that? Does that make sense? Allen Hall: I don’t know if it’s gonna double, but it’s gonna go up 15, 20% I think easily, because they’re going to have to add the generation [00:15:00]capacity regardless if there’s tax credit or not. In order to keep from the brownouts from happening, they will have to add generation. In order to do that, you have to pay for it, in order to do incentivize, and basically incentivize companies to start putting generation up there that they’re gonna have to pay them. Extra more than they are right now to go out there and develop or they won’t, or they just won’t do it. So that’s gonna be in a real bind. And then the demand’s gonna get greater than the supply. And then the prices are obviously gonna go Joel Saxum: up. Like we’re up against, we’re, against physics here. Like you can’t, you just can’t change some of these things. You can say drill, baby drill. We want to be the, biggest gas and oil producer or whatever. That’s great, but we don’t have the, turbines to burn the stuff to make power out of it. So Cool. And gas is gonna be cheap for your car, great. But it’s not gonna go into the power grid because we don’t have the stations to, to transform it into electric electrons. Allen Hall: No, we don’t and we won’t. [00:16:00] Which I think the, when the Senate gets this bill, that’s gonna be a lot of discussion about that because senators think are like. Cats, they’re all just going each in their own independent direction. The house, you can, gather them together and get them all to vote as a block, which obviously has happened over the last, I don’t know, 20 years or so. But the Senate kind of moves around a good bit. So one senator can change everything or a couple of, a handful of senators, two or three actually can change everything here. It’s not good for the growth of, the power industry in the United States. And I wonder if, the desire to reduce deficits is, not going to have a good effect on the growth of the economy of the United States. It’s a very weird development. It seems like things were done at the last second, To me, just reading the news, like nothing, Oh my gosh. We [00:17:00] gotta get rid of the production tax credit. Oh my gosh. The deficit is overwhelming. We gotta kill all the solar and wind. How do those things go together? I don’t know. but hey, you want higher electricity prices? You’re gonna get it. And it’s inevitable. It’s inevitable. We just moved from Massachusetts and North Carolina, Massachusetts. Electricity rates are practically double hole almost of what they are in North Carolina. There you go. And we live next to a nuclear power generation station just down the street. yeah, Joel Saxum: I Allen Hall: get it. Joel Saxum: So Allen, so just so we’re clear, watch for extra fingers and stuff. ’cause when they start to sprout, you might wanna move again. Allen Hall: I have to say the nuclear facility is near us. Has had, has been run really well. It is one, it is a pride and joy of the area actually. Joel Saxum: As busy wind energy professionals staying informed is crucial and let’s face it. Difficult. That’s why the Uptime podcast recommends PES WIN Magazine. PES Wind offers a [00:18:00] 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. Allen Hall: Joe, do you remember about, oh, maybe two, three weeks ago, maybe a month ago now, where, there was concern about. Chinese manufactured equipment, having the capability of being shut off remotely or controlled remotely from China. And one of the executives, one of the Chinese manufacturers said, Hey, check our equipment. There’s nothing there. somebody did, the US Department of Energy did. Yeah. And so still have some European countries actually. So there’s been a lot of investigation about this and it turns out, and this is early days because there’s not a lot of detail, that there has been found to be undisclosed communication devices and some of these inverters [00:19:00] that are used in solar panels and wind turbines, and it has caused a. Bunch of problems because obviously there’s, China and Europe and the United States are not necessarily friend with one another and there’s a surveillance aspect. And the concern has always been that if, China can flip a switch and shut off the European grid or shut off the United States grid, that’s a huge national security problem. And if they did find communication devices in inverters, there have to be some circuitry there, there some components there that shouldn’t be there. Wow. Just, wow. And I don’t even know where they go next, Phil, Phil Totaro: where are, what do you do next? So let’s, take a step back and make sure we all understand what we’re talking about here. in. Some of the energy storage devices and in the converters themselves, what they’ve done in the battery management systems for energy storage and the [00:20:00] inverters for solar and batteries and a little bit of wind. They found basically cellular modems. So you’ve got this situation where they can. Make a demand of their domestic companies to say, hey, let’s, use this remote capability to, turn something off. As you said, the, national security implication of that alone is enough to get people thinking, alright, maybe we shouldn’t be, so dependent on a Chinese supply chain. And what it means now from a practical standpoint is that if we. The Europeans start mandating that every single one of these things gets inspected during customs inspections to ensure that there’s no, listening device or spying device, or cellular modem or whatever else that’s not supposed to be there if anything’s in there that shouldn’t, okay? Even if we make the Chinese. Pay [00:21:00] the cost of doing those inspections, we’ll do the inspections, but we, basically, it’s in addition to tariffs that we’re already surcharging them with, there’s gonna be another surcharge for inspections. Now it’s just eroded the entire cost benefit of sourcing anything from China. Joel Saxum: To me, this is surprising that it’s taken this long to figure some of this out, to find this out to, to discover this because. At the end of the day, if anything’s being transmitted, it’s rf, right? That’s pretty easy to scan for. Like you can buy an RF scanner on Amazon. that’s not a big deal. And, to the level of security that we deal with. So when, Allen and I are talking to any operator in the States anymore about when we’re putting strike tape on, right? We’re, if we’re fixing their lightning problems, we’re also monitoring with it. And it’s I simple IOT devices to monitor for lightning strikes. Great, right? That everybody’s happy, but then the engineers always go, oh, we gotta go through the cybersecurity stuff. Fine. we’re armed to the teeth with all the information to [00:22:00] make sure that this, passes muster IOT wise. So we don’t have an issue with it, but some of the questionnaires that we see come out of these operators pages upon pages of cybersecurity questions. So how is it that some of these major components have snuck by. at this time, and we haven’t heard of this yet, like why is it something that’s just popping up now? That to me is surprising specifically with the level of, gigawatts or level of components installed in the United States. we’re talking, what are we up to now? 75 in change thousand turbines. Yeah. And I don’t know, I can’t count how many solar panels and inverters are out there in the tens of Phil Totaro: thousands. Allen Hall: Yeah, Joel, it’s a really good point. What is the United States and Europe gonna do? Are they gonna go back through and figure out what. Inverters have these Joel Saxum: man, I don’t. So, if the, but that’s the other thing too, right? If the RF isn’t actively, if the RF isn’t actively transmitting, how are you gonna do this? This isn’t impossible. This is a damn near impossible needle in a ha needle, in a needle stack Allen Hall: [00:23:00] like thing, right? There’s ways, there are ways to do it, to make it think. It needs to come alive and start talking. And my guess is that’s how they’re going to figure out where these devices are, is to try to turn ’em on and see if they’ll talk. But wow. Can you imagine the. Pain in the rear that’s gonna be involved in ripping out all these inverters and replacing them with some European, or God forbid, American made product because there’s not a lot of American made inverters. It’s mostly like A BB, right? It’s gonna be over in Europe. Phil Totaro: And to be clear, it’s not that they’re bad, Allen, it’s that they’re expensive, Allen Hall: they make high quality inverters. It’s just that if, you think about if you’re an A bbb, let’s use A, B, B as an example. If you’re A, B, and you know that there’s gonna be. Man, 25,000 inverters are gonna think, be polled in the next six months. You can’t ramp up production fast enough to fill that order, even though you would love to. And every salesperson who works for A, B would love to have that commission check, but you just can’t do it. So what do [00:24:00] you do? Do you have to shut down the field one by one? I guess you gotta go Joel Saxum: just start going through things. Allen Hall: if you’re an inverter technician. Joel Saxum: Great job. Here’s a business model for an ISP start advertising that you can scan for these things. Figure out how, oh Allen Hall: man, what a mess. And speaking of messes, when, you guys, when Joel was in Phoenix, Phil, you were in Phoenix too for a little bit, Phil Totaro: Yes, I was, and I, was able to get into the show floor, but I did not see what you’re about to talk about. Allen Hall: Wow, you missed a good one because wind turbine equipment manufacturer three s. Americas filed a patent infringement suit against, Cooper New Energy in Arizona Federal court. and the lawsuit alleges that Cooper’s free climber lifter product infringes on three S’s patent for, traction machine and lifting equipment technology, and [00:25:00] it really centers around that. Cooper was at clean power showing the device. That looks very similar to the Climb Auto System. From what I can tell in the, lawsuit, paperwork that was filed. it looks really similar. And three s Lift said, Hey, there’s a patent infringement going on here. We are going to shut you down while you are at clean power. Wow. That’s major. They must have known, had an indication that, Cooper was gonna be at clean Power, but. Phil Totaro: Wow. So let me, help dissect this a little because what happens with situations like this is you may have a Chinese company that’s copied something from another company, and even though there may be patents in China as well, I. When they go into a more litigious market like the United States or the uk, or even elsewhere in, in Europe, or Brazil for that [00:26:00]matter, you’re, likely to face a lot more scrutiny. The way this worked out is on, on or before, the show opened on Monday, Cooper imports this supposedly infringing technology. They, as they’re doing their booth setup and all that, somebody from three s Lyft is also doing their booth setup, and they just walk over and take some pictures. And by Tuesday morning, so the show started on Monday. By Tuesday morning, they had this complaint filed in the federal district court in Arizona. So three s Lyft is not screwing around. And the, point I’m trying to make with that is twofold. One, they’re trying to get ahead of. Cooper coming into the US market and undercutting them on the sales of, auto climb and, climb assist systems. And second, it underscores why you need to, not to put it [00:27:00] sounding too much like a commercial, but it’s why you need to work with a company like ours that does IP risk certification. This is exactly what we can prevent. Joel Saxum: When you look at the, it’s a full on lawsuit filed in one day. This wasn’t done in one day. Three s knew this was coming and they waited until clean power and went Gotcha. That, that, that, was, that’s what happened. And it was a, to be honest with you, whether they get an injunction or not, this wave, this big red flag that’s gonna stop people from buying from that company. Whether, the, whether legally they, they get forced to or not. if you’re operator X, Y, Z, you’re gonna buy a three S lift instead. Sorry. That’s what’s gonna happen. Allen Hall: you should buy a three s lift because those things are awesome. It’s a good product. Yeah. Technicians love those things. Yeah. Phil Totaro: why, do you think somebody wants to copy it? Exactly. Allen Hall: That one’s hard to copy. ’cause they have so much technology built into those, climb auto systems. I. [00:28:00] Yeah, this, was, obviously Cooper’s gonna say they didn’t infringe and it needs to get adjudicated, and I’m sure that it will because it’s N three S’s. It’s three S’s right? To go do it. So they’re going to go do it and they’re gonna try to get an injunction. And I’m surprised I haven’t seen more of it. And as, as we are discussing here, the, role of, Chinese manufacturers, it’s a touchy subject, right? There’s a lot going on in that space at the moment. And this week has been in, my opinion, one of the busiest wind energy weeks of all time. At least the United States. Hopefully things are calmer in Europe than they are in the United States right now. It has been. I, can’t keep up with it anymore. it’s really every in the morning, in the afternoon, I’m checking the news. There’s always something else that’s happened. my gosh, how do you even manage this if you’re, running an operator right now, [00:29:00] or an ISP or even some of the investment companies that are involved in solar and wind. Whoa. This week has just reset everything. Joel Saxum: I gotta tell you some more. I’ll touch on a CP again, to me, to be honest with you, it sounded like a lot of people. Tried to almost put their heads in the sand about what was going on, IRA. It’s like they didn’t want to hear it, they didn’t want to hear that bad news. They didn’t want to like, people were like, oh man, to this morning. did you hear about that? Yeah. And then people didn’t wanna talk about it. and on the other side, I was looking at some people when, when the, the stop work order got lifted for Empire Wind? I was. Osted stock jumped 20%. Vesta stock jumped like 14%. And then you get this bill this morning and all of a sudden boom. And it’s oh, if you’re, an investor looking at renewable energy companies, holy volatility, So the whole industry is just reeling. Phil Totaro: Yeah. Joel Saxum: That’s not Allen Hall: specific to wind. True. But there American clean power aspect [00:30:00] to this. And it doesn’t feel good right now. I think a lot of operators are upset about what happened with the IRA bill and then what’s happening now and has there been leadership in Washington DC to provide guidance because the, words I have seen in the last 48 hours, don’t move the needle. You need to be moving the needle. And I’m not sure what the lobbying is at the moment, but it doesn’t feel like it’s having any impact at all, which makes. Everybody involved with American clean power, take pause, and I’m sure there’s a lot of loud phone calls at the minute. that’s enough for this week because I pretty much can’t take anymore. I don’t wanna, it’s just depressing enough at the moment. It’s gonna get better. It’s gonna get better. We’re gonna figure this thing out. Maybe. Maybe it’s a paradigm shift. Maybe it’s a temporary blip. It’s hard to tell right now. I think [00:31:00] we’re it’s too early to get a sense of where this is headed, but. Keep listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. We’re going to bring you the latest news and we’re going to suss through it so you don’t have to. So we’ll be here next week, hopefully with some better news. I’m Allen Hall. I’m here with Joel Saxon and Phil Dero. We’ll see you next week.…
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The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast
South Korea’s Jeonnam 1 Wind Farm enters commercial operation, Norway launches its first floating wind tender, Denmark announces 3 GW of offshore wind possibility, and The Netherlands delays tendering for two wind sites. 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: Leading off the week, Norway has launched the first part of its long awaited, inaugural floating wind tender, offering subsidies to the winners. Bidders will be awarded rights to develop commercial projects of up to 500 megawatts in capacity at the Utsira Nord site off the country’s southwest coast. The winners will have two years to mature the projects before competing in an auction for subsidies in 2028 to 2029 to be provided as a direct grant. Norway’s Energy Minister said Utsira Nord is an important first step in the development of commercial floating offshore wind development on the Norwegian continental shelf. Norway has agreed to cap subsidies for Utsira Nord at 35 billion Norwegian crowns equal to about [00:01:00] $3.7 billion. Over in Denmark, Denmark has announced the launch of offshore wind tenders with a capacity of three gigawatts, enough to power approximately 3 million homes. According to the Danish Energy Ministry, the tenders set to open in autumn of this year, we’ll cover two areas in the North Sea. One in the water separating Denmark and Sweden. The initiative comes with the potential subsidy of up to 55.2 billion Danish crowns equal to about $8.32 billion over a span of 20 years. Last year, Denmark halted its ongoing offshore wind tenders to reevaluate its subsidy model after failing to attract any bids and what was supposed to be its largest offshore wind auction. The Danish Energy Ministry clarified that bid prices and electricity price developments will dictate whether further subsidies are necessary or if the state might even generate revenue from the projects. And in the Netherlands, the Dutch government has [00:02:00] delayed tendering for two offshore wind sites. Uh, companies were scheduled to compete for three permits in October this year for construction and operation of new wind farms in the North Sea. However, two of the sites will now be tendered later, just one site. Nederwiek 1-A has been designated for the next offshore wind tunnel with the capacity of about one gigawatt. For the Nederwiek 1 Wind Farm, the tender criteria have been adjusted to improve the business case for offshore wind. The Ministry of Climate and Green Growth said it is taking these measures to make the upcoming tender round more attractive and to allow the construction of offshore wind farms to proceed at a realistic pace. The Nederwiek 1-A wind farm will supply about three and a 5% of Dutch electricity consumption once completed. And in South Korea, south Korea’s, Jeonnam 1 Wind Farm has officially entered commercial operation. The 96 megawatt project is owned by a joint venture between Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and SK Innovations [00:03:00] ENS, the installation of 10 Siemens ga MEA 10 megawatt Direct Drive turbines was completed in December of last year. Commissioning followed earlier this year. Copenhagen Offshore Partners, the exclusive offshore wind development partner to CIP Co-LED project development activities for Jeonnam 1 on behalf of the project owners. This project Mercks the first large scale offshore wind project in Korea led by the private sector. That’s this week’s top. News stories. Stay tuned for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast tomorrow.…
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The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast
Avient and Tight Line Composites have developed a carbon pultrusion technology without the need for peel ply. This method improves bond strength by 8%, cuts waste, reduces labor costs, and simplifies manufacturing. 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: Andrew and Brad, welcome to the show. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Well, we’re gonna start off by talking about carbon protrusions, because that’s the focus of your technology, title IX composites, and there’s been some recent advancements that are really fascinating, but I, I kind of wanna go back a minute because carbon pull protrusions are the future, even though we’re still making some fiberglass blades that’ll have a limited lifespan. We’re gonna be moving to carbon protrusions because the strength and the weight. And the cost, simplicity of it, uh, just makes carbon protrusions the future. And Tightline Composites has been key in that mold of making these, uh, carbon planks and getting ’em out to industry. I. But one of the big problems with any sort of carbon plank product is it [00:01:00] usually has a peel ply. And Andrew, you wanna talk about what that peel ply does and why it’s used and why we need it. Andrew Davis: You really need that surface energy created by removing the peel ply to, to get an effective bond as you’re building your spark cap. And so for years, this has just been considered a necessary evil. Uh, in terms of creating, creating that effective bond. And, and that’s, that’s the world we’ve lived in for the last 10 years. Allen Hall: And a peel ply for those who are not deep into the composite industry. Peel, ply is a removable. Ply a fabric that’s that’s applied over the carbon on the outside and it’s kind of thicker and it has, uh, this kind of rough and surface. So when you build the protrusion, you got these two layers of this peel ply on either side, and it travels with the product. So as, uh, tight line sends out product, these, these peel plys go with it. [00:02:00] And ideally when they get to the factory, the, the people on the floor. Pull this peel play off and it’s not fun to peel off one and two, it’s kind of invisible. So you can forget that it’s there and install it in ablaze. And Joel, you have seen that in the field. You’ve seen protrusions where they have the ply still attached. Joel Saxum: Yeah, it’s, it’s like, um, Alan, we saw one of the other day too, where it was like there was still a coating on a down conductor, right? So like, if you. If you try to embed this product, the, the idea behind peel and the peel ply is you peel the peel ply, and now you have a prepped surface that can be chemically and mechanically bonded to easier or in, in, in, in a much better way, as designed. So if you forget to pull that off, now you have a structural element inside the PLA or inside of whatever you may be building in composites. That doesn’t have the ability to bond properly to that protrusion, to that carbon plank or to that glass plank. Uh, and if that’s the case, you lose, I can’t [00:03:00] put a number to it. Right. But you lose an immense Andrew Davis: amount of structural strength. And Joel, just to underline your point, we’ve heard from customers who will remain nameless that it is, it, it happens that, that this will get caught on scan. Uh, when the blade is completely done, and then the entire blade has to be scrapped. There’s no, there’s no fixing it. Allen Hall: Yeah. That, that, that gets expensive. Real quick, you’re talking about a hundred thousand dollars blades for onshore. Forget about offshore for a minute. An offshore blade, multi times, is that three or four? Uh, so the, the, the, the engineering is right. The protrusion is the right answer and carbon is the right answer for blades, but it’s really comes down to getting. The peel ply and what, what do you wanna deal with that? ’cause the other part of the peel ply is you just create this waste cycle that peel ply gets just tossed into the garbage. It’s not a recyclable thing, it’s one use and it’s done. So the, in the carbon protrusion world, if we can remove that peel ply, that is huge, [00:04:00]gigantic. However, it is been really hard to do that because there hasn’t been any technology to remove it, and we’ve been using it. Forever in aerospace and wind, and that’s where Brad comes in. And Brad’s company has developed a way to eliminate the Peel ply, which is a huge cost savings and a labor savings and a, you know, a downstream savings. Brad, you wanna under describe the, what you’re bringing to Tightline and, and how this technology works. Brad Schmidt: So we do protrusion within Aviant as well, and we’ve developed this over the last four or five years and have been using it internally. For our own glass profiles, um, in, in various markets, including wind. Um, but essentially, yes, have eliminated the need for these glass protrusions to, uh, you know, require peel, ply or alternatively sanding or some sort of grinding process prior to, um, adhesion. So the, it is, it is actually in the chemistry of the [00:05:00] resin system. It’s not a surface treatment and it is throughout the part. Um, so if you cut the, you know, through apart that same adhesion, uh, you know, or bond strength will be realized throughout the, the Matrix. It’s not just on the surface. Um, so again, we’ve been using this in-house for a number of years. We’ve known the Tightline team for some time, and we approach them. Late last year, uh, about six months ago, let’s say. And um, obviously there was a lot of interest in tightline. There was a lot of skepticism at first in that, uh, this would even work, but they were willing to give it a try. So we sent them a small batch of resin with this, call it an additive in it. They ran some trials and then we tested in our lab, uh, did the lap shear testing on a traditional, uh, carbon plank with peel ply. And then a protruded plank without peel ply. With this new chemistry, we saw on average about an 8% [00:06:00] improved improvement in bond strength in the, with the chemistry versus the traditional peel ply, and a much tighter standard deviation in that bond strength. Joel Saxum: So let me, let me, let me get this straight. So you not only have removed waste, removed the cost of those, the procuring of the PO ply materials. Increase the ability for manufacturing processes to be correct and at the same time have improved the strength of the bond. That’s right. Brad Schmidt: Yeah. I mean, um, and seems too good to be true, right? And we’re trying to find out where this doesn’t work, but, but we haven’t, yeah, we have not been able to poke holes in it yet. Um, and then on the mechanical property side, uh, they’ve actually seen a slight improvement. Um, and in theory now without Peel ply, you can add a bit more carbon. Where the PO ply would’ve previously taken up space in the dye. Right. Um, and the additive is, is at a very low concentration, so it’s had no detrimental effects on any of the mechanical. Properties. Allen Hall: That is amazing. So [00:07:00] obviously the first question that any composite engineer is gonna ask is, well, it, it’s a resin change, right? So I gotta requalify the material. But it’s not really a resin change are you’re still using the same resin system. Correct. So it is, it is it. Is it a magic powder or a chemical treatment to the existing resin system? And I, you know, composite engineers are always weary of change, right? If they have something they, that they know, they tested, it’s been through all the processes and all the approvals, and now you wanna make a change. So the, the always the answer is no, which is crazy because if, if you’re improving it and you can show it and you have the data to back it up, and Ian’s gonna do that. You can use the same resin system, just add a little bit of technology to it to remove peel ply, and, and that’s the approach. So it’s not a, um, it’s not a wholesale change in the resin system or the strength of the system. It is in the, the surface energy piece. That technology is pretty transferrable, right? I mean, [00:08:00] pretty much anybody with an existing resin system can use this technology, right? Brad Schmidt: Yeah, absolutely. So we developed this originally in a vinyl Lester system. We’ve since proven it out in, um, developed it in polyester as well as epoxy, which is used in the, uh, the carbon poulation process for the planks. Um. So it’s absolutely transferrable. Like I said, it’s at a very low concentration, so it is the same base resin system just with our, uh, you know, magic powder as you referred to. And I think Joel Saxum: I ask you a, a, a question that’s a little bit. Um, so we were talking about carbon protrusions and other kind of protrusion, cla protrusions and different vinyl es the things that you’ve done in the pultrusion space. This is fantastic. However, let me ask you another question. If this is mixed with a resin system, where else can it be used? Can it be used in repairs? Could it be used in, I know like one of the things that happens in wind right now, Alan and I talked too about it regularly, is these root bushing pullout things and there’s a couple companies working on Gulf wind [00:09:00] technology. We foresee there’s some people working on fixes for these. Could this be added to whatever resin systems they’re using and increase? And I’m thinking about that 8% strength in bond number. Can that be used as a repair methodology too? Yeah, without a doubt. Brad Schmidt: Um, and actually I say 8% that’s in the epoxy system. In our vinyl ester and polyester, we see upwards of 10 to almost 15% in a lot of cases. So yes, for repair, and I think where it gets more exciting is, um, in blade infusion. Uh, and, and there’s, we are working through some infusion trials right now. We’ve only applied this to protrusion thus far, but in theory, there’s no reason this also doesn’t work in an infusion process. Um, and not just for wind, I think about the marine industry too, where you’re infusing a boat haul and then going back and standing the entire inside of a hu before any adhesion. So, uh, yeah, we’re really excited about the potential here. Um, this is a trade secret, so we’ve been very selective with, you know, who we partner with and we’ve [00:10:00] known the tight line team for a number of years, and there’s a high degree of trust there. And, um, but, but yes, to answer your question, repair. Infusion, you know, we, we wanna eliminate any secondary prep, peel, ply, grinding, et cetera, prior to, uh, bonding. Allen Hall: And Andrew, that’s gonna be great for Tightline. If you have an improved adhesion system with less stuff and less waste downstream, that’s a major advantage for Tightline. Andrew Davis: It’s amazing. And, and I, I, you know, I don’t wanna say that we were skeptical, but, uh, the, the results were surprising and amazing in a, in a very happy way. And, um. I, you know, I, I think you hit the nail on the head, Joel, with the, you know, waste is obviously a big thing from a cost standpoint, from an environmental footprint standpoint. There’s obviously labor cost improvements here. When you think about what one of these factories looks like, the, the peel ply is largely removed and automated process by a [00:11:00] machine that might at the same time also be chaing or whatever. Um. That’s not a hundred percent foolproof. And so you’ll have bits of peel ply that, that get stuck in there. The machine will get gummed up and the peel ply will go everywhere. Those machines need to be maintained. You know, there’s, when you sort of add it up, there’s rework that’s caused by problems that are caused by peel, ply, and, and, and in extreme cases, scrap, um, you know, all that adds up to labor and, um. I and, and quality, right? When you, when you sort of think about the scrap things, um, environmental e eventually you won’t need to. We, we talked to a customer who said, man, we just bought a bunch of machines to fuel ply. Like, why couldn’t you have told me this last month? Right? Um, but you know, you won’t have to buy those machines. Um. I, you know, there’s some little subtle things like the nylon six six, that’s [00:12:00] the material that Peel ply is made out of. Um, there’s a couple things about that. It, it’s cut for each profile. There’s a fair bit of waste on our end of, oh, well we’re done with this profile. We now we need different one and this doesn’t fit. Or We’re, we’re moving to different lengths and so these lengths don’t work anymore. We, we, on our end, throw out a fair bit of peel, ply as well. Really the historically, the only cost-effective source of Peel ply has been China. And so there’s a little bit of, you know, in the crazy world that we live in today, you know, geopolitical tariffs, all that kind of trade issues that come into play that, of course there’s peel ply in the United States for, for example, the aerospace industry. But that’s a. Exponentially different price point. Um, so you know, all of this, when you sort of put this into the stew, it, it’s, it’s lower cost, higher quality, better manufacturability. And, and [00:13:00] for us that’s, that’s such a big deal because I, I mean, we’re the blast man standing in the independent carbon fiber plank protrusion game. Everyone else who protrudes outside of China. Is a carbon fiber manufacturer, and we think, we continue to believe that there’s some value in, in, in that independence. But, um, it, and from, from our standpoint, we need to show, we need to show value to the OEM and everyone, everyone knows the, the financial pressures that the OEMs are under. Um, in our corner of the universe, an enormous amount of carbon fiber supply has come online in China. That’s being protruded in China. And you know, that’s a very, that’s for the carbon blades, to your point, that being the future, that’s 40% of the cost of some of these blades. And so if you, if you’re in cost reduction mode, where are you gonna look? [00:14:00] Well, this is by far the biggest single cost point in a blade. China looks pretty tempting. And, um, from a conversion cost, turning that fiber into plank, we are absolutely competitive with anywhere in the world because there’s just not much labor cost in it. Um, and in what we do, um, however, you know, we’re kind of in the game of TA taking all of the non-China fiber and turning it into, you know, we. We, we continue to believe that that OEMs will not go 100% all in on a China supply chain, and they’re gonna need someone to produce that plank. You know, that’s, that’s great. But we still, we still have to be at a competitive point from a total value standpoint. And I think that’s what the partnership with Avian, why that’s amazing is because all these things that. We’re talking about really add up to, you know, value for [00:15:00] the OEM, the lowering cost increase in quality. Those are. You know, there’s, there’s plenty of, been plenty of quality issues that, you know, add up to cost. Uh, and, um, and I think we hit both of those hot button issues with this. So I we’re really excited. Joel Saxum: I think this is a really timely discussion. Um, Andrew, Alan, Brad, we’re sitting here talking about this because last night Alan and I had a conversation about innovation in wind in the United States, and there’s a certain OEM, uh, rhymes with, uh, shmi. Uh, that, that gave $50 million to MIT for wind based or for renewables based research. Right. So we were thinking about what could we do with $50 million? Where does this money in research and US based wind innovation that can be actioned now? Right? That can be something that’s not. Pie in the sky, 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years into future research. While that stuff is good, we know that we need things that can change the way the [00:16:00] wind industry works today. And that is lowering costs, making things more efficient, making things better, which is what this is. So it’s really, it’s ah. I’m excited about this conversation and you can kind of hear it, my voice right now, just simply because we’re seeing innovation happen in the United States with US-based companies that can change, uh, the competitiveness of US-based product in the wind market, but also lift that whole wind market, right? Like this is something that can change the way things are done, that can make more us more competitive in the way we, uh, build blades and make them, and, you know. Ideally, right? We have a better, better product in the field, less RCAs for, for, uh, liberated blades and such in the field. Um, so I guess my, my next question for you guys is you’ve been, you, you, you have this partnership, avian developing the technology. Tight line, putting it out into the field or putting it, you know, in front of clients in the field. What have you [00:17:00] received from feedback, from your, you know, basically market entry process? Like, have you been talking with blade manufacturers or OEMs and what are they saying back to you guys about the product? Andrew Davis: I would Joel Saxum: say Andrew Davis: I, you know, it’s impossible to, these guys live the world of peel ply every day. It’s impossible to, to, to, to not. Uh, simultaneously be really excited to know more, but also really skeptical. Right? And, uh, so, uh, we had some, Brad and I, and, and our colleagues had some great meetings at JEC. Um, we’ve had some follow up since then. We’ve got samples in the hands of, uh, a number of customers. They’re gonna go through the same testing that we’ve gone through, and I, you know, our. Our point of view on this, ultimately it’s, it’s the, the OEM’s decision. But is that you, you look at what this spark cap without peel [00:18:00] ply looks like, and you look at what the spark cap with, you know, made with peel ply looks like. And I, I think you’re gonna see certainly not a worst part, but you know, probably a little bit better part. Um, and, and. Way easier to manufacture, um, you know, with lower total cost, better value. And I, you know, that’s, um, you know, I, I think, you know, that leads to a, this is a like, for like drop in kind of replacement and, um. But, but that’s their call. And, and they’ll go through that testing and, um, and so that, that’s the phase we’re in now. Um, but I I, it, it, it was fun. I mean, you know, these meetings, if, if you’re in our position and you have these meetings with OEMs, it’s it, we’re talking about price and competitiveness and.[00:19:00] This kind of stuff and to be able to talk about something that really sort of adds, adds a lot of value as something new and innovative was, I, it, it was a real personal highlight, I think, for everyone in the room. Allen Hall: So let me hit you with the three F’s form, fit and function. Every engineer when they make a change like this, wants to know if any of those have changed. Is there any change to the form, fit or function because you, the peel ply has been removed. I guess you can add a little bit more carbon to it, make it stronger. To cover up the difference. Andrew Davis: It’s super small, but yes, you, you, if you, if you want the same properties in a slightly smaller form, that, that’s obviously what, what you’d get if you just use the same mold. Um, if, if you want something with slightly higher properties, a little beefier, um, fill up that mold that you know and, and. Uh, that, that’s doable too. Right? So I, it’s really, uh, I, I think it’s [00:20:00] gonna be their call, but I assume they’re gonna want something that’s. More or less the same thing. Allen Hall: So then what are the next steps here are, are we going to be going through a, a certification like with DNV? Is that where the OEMs are headed to, to get a, a stamp on it for the product? Or is it OEM by OEM or even operator by operator? I know operators would be really interested in this technology. Andrew Davis: I think it’s gonna be OEM by OEM. Um, and I think I, I, I, I, I, I think it will depend on their particular view of how. How much of a drop in is this right? And, um, uh, but the, the testing, the standard testing that, you know, we’re all able to do, um, I, I think will give them enough to go on to say, Hey, you know, there may be some other confirm confirming things we want to do, but wow, this is a, this is a big difference. Joel Saxum: I see it in that build to spec market. I. [00:21:00] The built to print. Yes. Then you have to go through the OEM and all these things and that’s, that’s fantastic. But that built to spec market where every one of these blade manufacturers is looking for that little leg up to make them more profitable, better margins, better product, those guys are gonna jump on this thing. I would imagine. So I Brad Schmidt: think one other thing, you know, I didn’t mention earlier, but has come up is shelf life. Um, and we have done testing on, uh, glass protrusions, like I said, that we’ve been making for years with this technology. And, and after 12 months, there’s no fall off in properties and adhesive properties. We’re working toward 24 months. But, uh, we don’t expect any change. Andrew Davis: I, I think on the, on the finer points, uh, you know, just to emphasize another point Brad made earlier is there’s, there’s way less variability. In the, um, you know, with Peel ply, you there, there’s a lot of variability when you rip that peel, ply off.[00:22:00] Um, this, this really cuts it down by or order of magnitude. Allen Hall: Well, that’s the trouble now is that we’ve reduced the margins that you’ve talked to blade designers, the margins that come down considerably, and they’re really relying upon that carbon to do majority of the work. So improving that adhesion into the blade itself. Gets rid of some of those margin concerns. Now you have a consistency, which is where everybody’s driving to right now. All the blade manufacturers are really trying to get the process honed in so that blades are repeatable. Time after time. This is where Tightline comes in and Ian’s technology to make this easier on blade manufacturers. Now, if you’re a blade manufacturer, you need to get a hold of Tightline and Andrew that I guess they’ll be calling you. How did they do that? And even operators for that sense. How do operators get ahold of you to find out about the technology? Andrew Davis: I, you, you can find us at, at tightline composites.com and, uh, call, call our office in St. Louis, Missouri. We’re, uh, you know, right, right in the middle of the country, uh, doing business with our, our [00:23:00] fellow domestic partner here. And, uh, it’s, um, uh, I. You know, we, we, we would love to have those conversations. Um, and I think, you know, to, to, to toot Brad sworn a little bit that I, you know, we are over the moon about this opportunity at Tightline, but I, I, our heads spin when you think about all the other applications that you could apply this to. I mean, we we’re a little bit of a one trick pony at our, at, at tight. We’re very, we’re very focused. Um, but, uh. Boy, um, you know, infusion, uh, in wind and, and everything else is, is. Unbelievable. Allen Hall: Yeah. Brad, is your phone ringing off the hook and how do people get ahold of you? Andrew Davis: I Brad Schmidt: silenced it for the podcast, so not yet, but Allen Hall: good move. Brad Schmidt: Um, yeah, I mean, so avian.com Avian is a, you know, material science innovation company, global, global company, uh, headquartered near [00:24:00] Cleveland, Ohio. The, uh, our protrusion business called Glass Forms is in Birmingham, Alabama. Um, but you can navigate to our composites division, um, you know, at, within the website. I’m also on LinkedIn and so, uh, connect to a lot of people through LinkedIn. But, uh, we’d love to talk about whether it’s, you know, protrusions aside from the carbon plank. We do, you know, and have pretty extensive pultrusion capability there in Alabama, or if it’s the resin chemistry itself and how it could be applied to other processes. We’re, uh. Looking forward to having those conversations. Allen Hall: Wow. This has been a tremendous discussion. I’ve learned a lot and protrusions are definitely the future. We just need to make them simpler, less labor intensive, and we need to move forward. So this is exciting. And Brad and Andrew, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. Thank you for having us. Thank you. It’s [00:25:00] fun.…
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The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast
Blade Repair Academy in Tennessee offers comprehensive blade repair training programs for technicians. Alfred Crabtree, Founder and CEO, and Sheryl Weinstein from SkySpecs highlight the importance of technician competency, hands-on experience, and standardization in the wind industry. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News , our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech . Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook , YouTube , Twitter , Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web . And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here . Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Allen Hall: Alfred and Sheryl, welcome to the program. Sheryl Weinstein: Thanks. Allen Hall: So we’re in Dunlap, Tennessee, not too far from Nashville, uh, and also close to. Chattanooga Chattanooga, and we’re in the Smoky Mountains ish region. We’re Alfred Crabtree: no, we’re, we’re, you could consider it Appalachia for sure. Sure. Okay. Uh, we’re on the, in the valley called the Seche Valley, uh, which splits the Cumberland Plateau. So we’re, we’re in a valley and we have hills a thousand feet above us here. Yeah. Either way. It’s beautiful. Joel Saxum: Yeah. It’s a great drive in here. Alfred Crabtree: Yeah. It’s a unique place. Yeah. Allen Hall: And we’re at Blade Repair Academy, which, uh, if you’re not familiar with Blade Repair Academy, you should be. Uh, because a lot of the good training that happens in the United States actually happens to play repair, repair Care blade, repair academy. Uh, yeah, it’s been a long week at uh, OMS this week and we got the introduction today. This is the first time we’ve been on site. That’s right. And, uh, we wanted to see all the cool things that are happening [00:01:00] here. And it really comes down to technician training competency. Working with blades, working with tools, knowing what you’re doing up tower when you’re on the blade, which is hard to train. It’s really hard to train, and both you and Cheryl have a ton of experience being up on blades and repairing blades and scarfing and doing all the critical features that have to happen to make blades work today. It’s a tough training regimen. There’s a lot to it and a lot of subtleties that don’t always get transferred over from teachers to students unless you have. Done it for a number of years. You wanna kind of just walk through the philosophy of Blade Repair Academy? Alfred Crabtree: Yes. The, uh, you’ve, you’ve outlined quite well some of the issues. The environment where we work is very hard to take a ti the time to put somebody through a training regimen. We’re so constrained by weather windows and then. You know, even if the weather’s nice, lightning can come, wind [00:02:00] speeds can cut off your workday. So production, production, production is what’s important. And Cheryl and I both come from the rope access method. And in the rope access method, 95% of the time you’re up there alone. And if you’re up there and you’re producing, you’ve got your blinders on. Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Alfred Crabtree: And you’re not ready to share with somebody else what to do. Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Alfred Crabtree: With the basket or platform, you can have two even three people up on Blade, but it still has all these constraints of get the job done, get the job done. There’s a lot of stress up there. And having the bandwidth to take on new information or to challenge some preconceived notions or try, that’s not the place to do it. So knowing that. Blade Repair Academy is built so that we have an environment that simulates all of the up tower stuff without being up tower. And you’re gonna have the time you need to invest in your learning without consequences. Right. So it’s a very much a [00:03:00] about creating the right environment to uptake the new information. And we have found a lot of help from. Manufacturers and suppliers in the industry to sponsor us because obviously it behooves them to have their materials in the hands of trainees. So we’re also able to help companies come up with, uh, new solutions, try new products. Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Alfred Crabtree: New, uh, you know, what’s the best practice. For this, if you’re up on Blade and you have a way of top coating and you get a new product and your way of top coating doesn’t suit that product, well chuck it down. I’ll never touch it again. Yeah. Because I did not perform well here we can, we can give you training. We have, of course, been trained by the suppliers about what’s the best product to use, what’s the best way to go about things, and then, and then we can disseminate it. So that’s the fundamental reason why the space is. Is [00:04:00] what it is. Joel Saxum: Yeah. And I think that that’s, that’s a good segue to be honest with you, right here, right behind these doors you have a classroom. That’s right. Right. So in this facility, all composed in one, we have a classroom here we have your additive and subtractive. I liked how you said that to us when you’re giving us the tour. Uh, but we’ve got a, a grinding booth basically over here and we’ve got, um, a layup area here where you can teach. 16 people at a time. Alfred Crabtree: That’s right. Yeah. That would be max Joel Saxum: for sure. Alfred Crabtree: Yeah. Sheryl Weinstein: And in a vertical surface, so, ’cause all the stuff that you’re doing in the field, right, is always in a vertical surface. Mm-hmm. So there’s a, there is a big difference between working where gravity is sort of against you, especially with larger laminations and things like that. So being able to do your training and simulate the same, a similar way that you would work in the field is pretty critical, I would think. Allen Hall: And actually working on. Actual repairs. Simulated repairs, yeah. Mm-hmm. Now, don’t explain how you created them, because I know secret sauce. It’s a secret sauce. Yes. But I did look at the blade [00:05:00] damage. It, it looks exactly like a lightly strike. Yeah. Which a predominant amount of repairs are about, unless there’s, you know, serial defects, as Cheryl has pointed out numerous times, but. Being able to repair something that’s quasi real is critical because we’ve been to other places and the repairs are, well, I’ll take a hammer and I’ll hit this and, okay, sure you got a DA, you gotta repair that. But that’s not real. And getting, getting the people to use the tools in the right way, vertically Speaker 2: mm-hmm. Allen Hall: Is the key. Because although the, the, the article, the test sample isn’t moving around like you are up on a blade, it’s still difficult. And unless you have the proper techniques and the approaches, yeah, it’s gonna be dang near impossible. We explain some of the blade repairs that Joel and I have seen more recently is like. It’s a little rough and it shouldn’t have to be so rough because it is a skill that you have to learn and acquire over time. But you have to know the fundamentals. That’s what Blade Repair Academy is here to teach you those [00:06:00] fundamentals. Like, yes, it’s gonna take time, but if you work it this way, at least you’re gonna be successful. Alfred Crabtree: Yeah. And if you’re managing a team of employees who are doing this, it, it would be great to have the insight of what your teams. Strengths and weaknesses are, yeah, you can figure out how to deploy people, but also how to, you know, maybe fix some of those problems. Mm-hmm. Our panels that you brought up are standardized. Everyone looks exactly the same. It’s the exact same makeup, and we standardize the damage. So when somebody has to repair damage here, the core removal size is the same on everyone. That way when we’re comparing the reports, you can actually have a apples to apples comparison of the, the trainees. Outcome. Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Alfred Crabtree: And now you, you know, in, in the model that you talked about where people will go to a, you know, their junkyard of blades and they’ll find spots on blades to put their eight guys on. Those eight people are not gonna be doing the same repair. And even if they are collecting data, what are you [00:07:00] comparing? It’s not Joel Saxum: apples to apples. Yeah. It’s not. Alfred Crabtree: So we really tried to start from the beginning, fresh with a whole new idea of how to approach this. Mm-hmm. By not being attached to an ISP, we don’t have to deal with. Oh, here, use all our leftovers. Yeah. Yeah. That’s your training budget. Yeah. Yeah. And oh yeah. We, you know, we’re an, we’re a owner operator, so yeah. Go work on that blade in the grass. Mm-hmm. That those limit what precious time we have available to train. Yeah. So this thing from the ground up is about. Making as much advance in the skillset and understanding that technician in the, in the week that they’re here. Joel Saxum: I think that was a really cool thing we touched on as well. Your, your team here as well, Cheryl. Thanks for traveling up to, to hang out with us. Offer some insights too. But you guys, because you’ve been in the people that have developed a curriculum yourself, Cheryl, your, some of your team sitting over here, uh, and, and people around the industry that have helped out with the place, you have the ability of like, okay, we have. Eight brand new technicians. Let’s make [00:08:00] sure we walk through how to measure from the trailing edge to the blade center up, mark this thing out, these kind of things all the way to some stuff that I didn’t really think about that much. Like I’ve used an angle grinder before, right? But I’ve never looked at five different ones and decided which one would be the best for my hands. Thinking about it up on the blade, how you’d handle it with your fingers, these kind of things like, I was like, man, that’s, those are real insights that you’re not gonna get to learn. Like why put someone up to let them have a whole season or a whole summer, two summers figuring out how to hold a grinder? Well, when they can learn from someone that’s been doing it for years and years and years and can teach them these things. So from advanced or from very beginners learning fundamentals to advanced training, you guys have gotta cover here. Alfred Crabtree: There’s something here to glean for everybody, and even if you are a well experienced technician, maybe what you’re gonna get most is learning how to talk the language of the new techs and the new hires who are getting the. Introductory course training. You know, our, our el our basic course is called support. It’s 40 hours [00:09:00] and it’s really about making, uh, an employee who can support a lead. And then if that person follows up with the lead training in a whatever interval of time of their choice, which is kind of another benefit here, we can train you any week of the year. That is where we start to really get this, we call it the retention vortex. Right where we layer up technician training and somebody who’s had level two now gets a level one with them. Now there’s some synergies. Now they’re getting some really efficiencies. A commonality of language, a commonality of process, you know, eliminating variables. Uh, and that’s how you’re gonna have to build new net capacity and build new teams Allen Hall: and that common language. Is really unique, but that comes from your experience in the field, mostly at rope partner, where you both really got your teeth in this industry. Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Allen Hall: But communicating to one another correctly so you can pass along to the next crew or even explain what you did to the engineer, the. Properly [00:10:00] there is. There is a culture to it. There is a language to it, and you just don’t pick that up. By going from wind turbine to wind turbine. You pick it up in training from someone who knows how to do it. It’s really critical. Sheryl Weinstein: It’s pretty critical to have baseline training. I think it is also very important to follow it up with field experience and skills building because every blade model is different. Every repair is different. You’re always gonna encounter something that deviates from that like standard approach to your repair. You have to kind of know how to problem solve, and that kind of only comes with the field experience, but having a more standardized training to start with, it’s something that industry doesn’t really have and is really needed. I think across the board it also helps, you know. Owner operators or even OEMs kind of track their ISPs and understand what level of text do you have, what experience do they have and how, how does that differ across their different [00:11:00] levels? If we have one ISP training one way over here and another one training another way over here, and they have different sets of certifications. It’s really hard to keep that all together and evaluate it as an owner operator or an OEM, you know, using a vendor. So I think having a place like Blade Academy that’s agnostic and separate from like, you know, the actual ISP really helps to standardize that a bit more. Allen Hall: Yeah, because the key is we’re getting to, well, we’re gonna cross a hundred thousand turbines in the United States pretty quickly. Yep. Joel Saxum: Before 2030, or probably rated about 2030. Allen Hall: Right. That’s. Soon. Mm-hmm. How are we gonna manage that? And there’s a lot of new people coming into the industry, obviously. How are we gonna train ’em up properly? How are we gonna communicate to one another? And there’s just so much movement in the industry. I. It makes it hard, I think, because weirdly enough, I think ISPs develop their own little culture about how to deal with things, and then they hop to the next company and it’s a different language. Exactly. And that needs to go away. Yeah. There’s a, Alfred Crabtree: there’s a branch of business that’s [00:12:00] OEM centric and there’s a branch of business that’s asset owner. Yeah. Post warranty. And those are really two different things. And, and there’s a veil of secrecy between one and the other. Yeah. And we kind of feel here at Blade Repair Academy that we’re like this polyglot that can talk to everybody because we don’t have, we’re not an ip You’re not competing, we’re not an O You’re not competing. Yeah, we’re not competing. But we, we, you know, we have the, we wanna provide this data as a clearinghouse. You know, we talk about certification in the non standards. Well, the way we deal with it is we’ll give you a certificate. And it’s got our brand on it. But you know, what does that mean? Yeah. What? That And $4 will get you a Starbucks the way we do it, maybe not even then. Right? The way, the way we, not four bucks Sheryl Weinstein: for Starbucks, maybe 10 Alfred Crabtree: and a half hour wait in the line. But the way you know, what we do is we provide you with a deliverable. We knew, we knew that. Okay. Our certification is, you know, ether. Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Alfred Crabtree: But [00:13:00] this report. That everybody who comes through here generates that you can compare. Now you’re gonna have to go to work and study these reports when you get ’em as a deliverable. Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Alfred Crabtree: As a, you know, an employer, but we we’re giving you what you need. Mm-hmm. To make some decisions about what do I have to work on, what else do we need to improve upon? Allen Hall: Yeah. Not everybody’s built for this job, but you wanna be able to suss that out. Earlier rather than later. Yeah. Right. I mean, there’s other things to do with wind turbines that don’t evolve blade repair. And if they don’t necessarily have the skillset or the comprehension to do some of these more complex things, maybe blade repair is not it. Right. But rather know that now. Yeah. Right. And the Blade Repair Academy is a place to do that because there’s a standard there, right? Mm-hmm. And I, I, as Joel has pointed out, yeah, there’s a lot of erratic training that goes on. Mm-hmm. You can’t compare student A to student Z. Blade repair academy. You can. Alfred Crabtree: We can. Mm-hmm. Right. Allen Hall: And if, if I’m an ISP, I want that. Sure. I want you to tell me [00:14:00] who’s on top and who’s kind of the middle so I can make decisions about where to deploy ’em and who and who to put ’em with. Joel Saxum: Yeah. ’cause at the end of the day, every ISP, uh, every ISP that’s trying to grow and scale effectively is trying to do that at the end of the year, right? Yeah. They’re looking through, they’re grading their technicians, finding out who’s the next lead, who’s this, who’s that? But this is a great way to do that, sort them through in a controlled setting. I mean, we sat in, in your training facility in the actual classroom here, and you walked us through some of the online, the online training platform that you have built. Some of the things the students have to do before they get here, and then kind of how you walk ’em through things, and it’s impressive. It’s good stuff, right? So when you have that combined with the both sides of blade repair, subtractive, additive, right? You get to get this, this holistic view of what that blade technician can do. Yeah. Right? And that’s, that’s one of the things you guys offer here, which I think is fantastic. Alfred Crabtree: Yeah. And we’re trying to constantly improve, you know, we’re talking with OEMs about dissemination of operating procedures or work instructions, share with us [00:15:00] work instructions. We’ll build analogs. That we can train to. Mm-hmm. And we can test off of it. We can verify skill sets. You know, we have a lot of serial flaw campaigns out there that are critical. And do we wanna unleash anybody on it or do we want to know that those people can do it? I think everybody wants to know that they can do it, whether they’re the. Technician themselves, or the person writing the checks. Speaker 2: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Alfred Crabtree: Everywhere in that loop wants to Now not everybody wants to pay for it. Yeah. But we all need it. Speaker 2: Yeah. Alfred Crabtree: And so somewhere along the line, you’re paying for it in the forms of our favorite acronym, COPQ. That’s Joel Saxum: right. Cost support, quality. You know, speaking about the idea of serial defects or known problems in the industry and how to prepare people for those, how do you prepare people for those? Well, they gotta get the experience by just. Grinding away Top coat and getting into him. I walked in here and I looked at this blade sample we have here, and I was looking at it and I go, it looks like a 48.7 C Oh yeah. Buddy walks over you like our 48.7 C I’m like, [00:16:00] man, you guys did a good job on, you know, like, so, so I made a lot of money on 48.7, you know, so to walk in here and see these different tickets that you guys have built, you know, carbon plank and different things with carbon spars and hey, we’re gonna do a carbon spa repair. We have this boom, now we can work on it. Mm-hmm. You know, and we’ll Alfred Crabtree: work with you to solve your problem in a really quick, efficient manner. Mm-hmm. You know, I think one of the things that we have is operational readiness. Most people who are training in-house flip their hat around for a couple weeks and train composites. Mm-hmm. In a limited capacity in the warehouse or at the dock at the truck during January. During January, whatever. And then they flip their hat back on and they go deal with it. And I think the hiring situation is so tough. Like working at Height, you probably need to make sure somebody can tolerate working at height. Yeah. Before you invest in composite training, I mean. You have so many things you have to juggle in your particular situation. When do I put money in this person? We get that. [00:17:00] And so we’re open all the weeks of the year. So we can do this at any time. Of course, everyone wants it in the end of first quarter. Mm-hmm. You know, right before the season starts. So we have a, you know, you have to, you gotta schedule with us, but we can really do this anytime. And so you don’t have to one and done and live with it. Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Alfred Crabtree: You know, it. You can fit the training into your hiring schema wherever you feel fit, and you can hire people. And if there are stars, bring them in for their secondary, they’re execute their lead training whenever you want. You know, so you can, we can be very flexible and in the advanced stages we will make what you need, you know, obviously has to make business sense for us, but we’ll make blades to replicate the problems you’re facing. Sheryl Weinstein: And I think in terms of like what you were saying when you’re working on, you knows whether we wanna call them recurring issues or serial defects. A lot of it is awareness, right? It’s awareness [00:18:00] of understanding the blade structure, at least at a basic level. It’s awareness of understanding what you’re looking at. It’s, you know, we’re only gonna better inform the industry and the OEM if our technicians have a level of awareness to sort of bring up things that they see as they’re doing repairs. So if they notice that, for example, the, the fibers are misaligned, right? That could indicate that that was a wrinkle, and them having that level of communication or documentation will only help then inform the OEM. Like, is this the reason behind that problem? And so I think like. You know, with Alfred and, and the curriculum here at Blade Academy, them kind of, you know, setting a standard for how, how you know, the structure of the blade, the different types of blades you may see, whether they have carbon fiber in them, or you know, fiberglass, UD spars. Where those things are located, [00:19:00] what to be aware of as you’re removing damaged material. It’s really critical to the overall quality and just the awareness of the tech on the blade and that feedback loop that we’re lacking so much in this industry. Alfred Crabtree: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, and we have our boilerplate products that come from, you know, like, uh, Cheryl was my mentor at RP and wrote partner, and she taught me a lot and a lot of the. The, the way we do things here comes from the rope, a rope access paradigm, which, you know, actually is backward compatible because if with rope access, you’re doing things alone. Speaker 2: Yeah. Alfred Crabtree: So if we’ve have ways and, and processes that allow that to happen alone, then when you’re on a basket or a platform with an extra person, you can only benefit Yeah. That much easier. Yeah. Um, it’s where we come from, you Joel Saxum: know, and, and that’s a good point, right? Like when we’re sitting here, rip Blade Repair Academy. Alfred, you’re here. Cheryll, you’re joining us today. These are two X blade technicians that have been on all kinds of blades. They have been up and down on ropes. So it’s training by [00:20:00] trainers who have been the technicians that’s important. Who have seen the problems. Yeah, yeah. You know, who have lived, have lived that road life. We talked, you’re joking about living in hotels, right? Mm-hmm. Like that have done, gone through that, right? So you’re learning from people that aren’t just like, oh, I hate the idea of going to a university and learning HR or something, whatever, from someone who’s never done it in the real world. Yeah. You know, uh, the trainers here have done it in the real world, um, and it shows. Alfred Crabtree: Thanks, man. And you know, the other thing too is our tagline is practical and contemporary. And the thing is, I’m no longer contemporary. Like I left the field years ago. I rely on folks like Cheryl, who’s still in the, in the Blade Services game over there at Skys Specs. She’s on, she’s got a full subscription to the cereal floss that are out there. Joel Saxum: Yeah. Probably the best one in the industry, to be honest with you. Alfred Crabtree: Well, you know. Uh, I think so. I don’t know anything about serial flaw, but it’s, it’s input from the rest of the industry that’s gonna allow this to continue. Otherwise, we’re gonna be, you know, [00:21:00] a 10-year-old standard that isn’t relevant anymore and that’s not what we want to do. So, outreach like Cheryl and I are talking about, Hey, what is it in your product line that should be in our product line? And I want to talk to OEMs and, uh. Owner operators, you know, what is it? What are your pain points? What in your fleet is needing attention? And of course, we’re gonna do all this with the business case, right? Mm-hmm. Like we wanna take LEP products and place them head to head and give a two day clinic or seminar to stakeholders, to purchasers. You know, we wanna give our, our two, our five day course condensed into two days. Where people who are stakeholders who are making decisions about where to place technicians, they should get out here and gr and grind a little bit and get a little empathy for their position. Hard work. The hard work of the Sheryl Weinstein: hard work that it is. Yeah. And then kind of understand Alfred Crabtree: from another side where the [00:22:00] communication breakdown is. ’cause it’s, it’s not all the texts, right? Mm-hmm. You know, they have a, you gotta understand how heavily loaded they are, you know, when they’re in the field. Mm-hmm. Um, so we’re, we’re at the place now where we’re really looking to do some outreach and talk to, uh, regulatory bodies that are starting to come up with standards, right? Like the IEC group met and pro produce a draft standard and they’re gonna work on the repair standard. And that’s a, a little bit of a ways away, but I can’t sit around and wait for, for standards to come to me. So we got this thing started. If you build it, they will come. You guys came, you know, Cheryl came and, um. We we’re really proud of where we’re at, but at the same time, it’s like, okay guys, the rest of the industry, now we’re here. Now you need to know, now you need to take advantage of us. Mm-hmm. And help tell us what you need. So I think the Sheryl Weinstein: LEP thing is a really good call out because I do see a lot of customers questioning what do I choose? How do I know [00:23:00] what to choose? Absolutely. Should my vendor be telling me what to choose? And that’s what happens in many cases, is that the ISP just kind of tells the owner operator. This is what you should use. Well, why, and, and what, you know, how have we ever really sized up like one against the other? Like in any true, I don’t know, study? No. And a lot of the, a lot of the like. Those different types of LEP, the, the companies that you know have these, they don’t have a lot of good documentation on showing like how their products stand up. I mean, it’s kind of, it’s more theory based than anything. I mean, they put ’em through rain erosion tests and whatever, but. It’s, I feel like that’s a tough space. It’s also a very, like, um, a very tough scope of work to have high quality at. So more training around it is necessary. You know, repair companies don’t wanna use their high skilled repair techs for the LEP because they need them for the more complex repairs [00:24:00] yet. The LEP is so susceptible to quality issues, and if you’re gonna pay an extreme amount of money to, you know, put the LEP to fix your erosion, put the LEP on blades, hope for a performance improvement, and then it fails in a year. I. That’s no help to anybody. So these different products, they also come with different price points. Like, can we really value the shell over the coating? I, I just find that this is a tough space. And so doing something like that and doing more training around LEPI think is probably pretty important. Yes. You know, unless the robots are gonna take it over and then, well, even then, I think it’s the only app. Allen Hall: The application, that’s the variable there. And not having people trained up for that particular LEP product is a huge problem because it’s super risky. You’re risking all that money and time and having to do it all over again and removing LEP that has been improperly applied. It’s a nightmare. [00:25:00] Nightmare. Total nightmare. You don’t want that to happen. And I’ve seen sites where that’s happened, getting technicians. Trained properly for the right material and doing that here up in Tennessee is, is the right approach. It’s risk reduction, which is what the industry is in right now. Risk reduction. Alfred Crabtree: Yeah. Yeah, we, we’ve beliefs. That’s a great way to put it. You know, if you hire somebody. We were talking earlier how there are like two models. One is like the New York Yankees, where you’re going to be buying all the expensive free agents. You can poaching people from other, you know, trying to get experienced talent. You’re paying a premium for them, but you aren’t gonna know until halfway through that season how that person is performing. Yeah. You know, that is a lot of. That was, that is a lot of variability that you could control. Mm-hmm. And in a seasonal business, those weeks are really multiplied by two or three. Right. In terms of like the impact on your revenue and your opportunity to make money. It’s risk reduction, like Alan was saying. Yeah. It’s Allen Hall: all risk, right? Yeah. And the, [00:26:00] the way that the industry is moving and the pace at which is moving right now, risk reduction starts to move to the top five years ago. We do a lot of risky things because we’re making money. Interest rates are low and, but today we cannot afford to do that. And if you watch the industry change right now, it is gonna be more focused than ever in having proper technicians on site that they complete the job that they were intended to do. Precisely, accurately, and once, not twice. Once. Yeah. And that is gonna be the marker of the, whether this industry grows or not. Mm-hmm. And that’s why Blade Repair Academy is needed so much. Now, Alfred, how do you interface with the ISPs, OEMs, and the operators in terms of getting people out here? How do they, how do they push that button and say, Alfred, I’m gonna send you 40 technicians next week. How does that, how does that go? I don’t quite have that down Alfred Crabtree: yet. But, uh, you know, it, we talked earlier, it’s a small world. You know, blade repair is small. There [00:27:00] we mentioned if you, there’s a hundred people in the industry you need to know and then you’ve covered it. Um, our, I think we’ve been, we’ve been kind of riding this new wave of like, oh, who’s this new kid on the block? And, and we can kind of be quiet and still are mysterious. And I pop up at a conference and host a round table or whatever. Uh, so far. It’s mainly been our personal network, which is large enough in this gig to, to get people in. ISPs are much more likely to do it small is ISPs are much more likely to do it. Owner operators, they’re trying to build their training centers. They have a little different, that’s a different model though. It’s a different model. Um, they’re, they’re tougher to get. So primarily it’s been ISPs. We have definitely a, a, a curriculum for new hires, right? We call it support, but we’re [00:28:00] reluctant to go sell that to the street or to the public. Like, Hey, enter the industry here, because we don’t quite yet have that, you know, guarantee that people will recognize our certificate and. Use it to hire people. I don’t quite have that system in place. However, I have so much interest from the Department of Labor to support us in creating an occupation. They want us to build apprenticeship programs. We need corporate sponsor, we need a big employer or to to buy in, and then we can create an apprenticeship program. Then we can find public money for people to get some support to get into a new, a new industry. So, well, they Allen Hall: need to come out here. They need to come out to Dunlap. And visit the facilities, talk with you, understand what the philosophy is, see it up close. There’s a lot of them have been to other places. Sure. And see what the differences are here. And, and that’s gonna be the decision maker. They’re gonna see what the product walking out the door is and [00:29:00] go into the classroom and, and get the grinder, right? Yes. Get, get your hands dirty a little bit. Yeah. And realize, yes, this is what I was looking for to begin with. I just couldn’t find it. And I found it here in Tennessee. Alfred Crabtree: Yeah, I, I think you’re right. And, and we, we are slowly, you know, bringing people in that we know, like the reason why y’all are here and some other folks have visited us this week is because o and m was in Nashville. And I was like, come on, come on. We’re only two hours away. We’ll buy you lunch. Come on. Pretty place. Yeah. You have to see this place to understand it because we are sort of, you know, outsiders, right? I mean, we’re, we’re from the, the industry, but we’re not. We’re not a spinoff of any company. We’re not a division of an ISP. We’re totally organic and unique in a, in a part of the world that doesn’t have any wind. So, yeah. Uh, but once you get here, you get it. The economics make sense. You know, we couldn’t do what we’ve done anywhere else as cheaply as we’ve done, which means we feel like we’re super value rich for what you’re paying and for the amount of time that you’re spending [00:30:00] here. Allen Hall: Oh, 100%. Uh. Let’s give the ISPs, the OEMs and the operators, uh, where to go. What’s the website? Where can they find you on LinkedIn? Alfred Crabtree: We’re at blade repair academy.com. Uh, we’re located in Dunlap, Tennessee. We’re on Blade Repair Academy at LinkedIn. I’m Alfred Crabtree. You can find me there. Uh. Allen Hall: Yeah, that’s where you need to go because that’s how the process starts. If you want to have high level technicians that really know how to work on composites and are working with real materials on simulated, but. Pretty realistic damage. Yeah. Weirdly realistic. Yeah. Secret sauce. And to get some sort of validation and to kind of get graded. Mm-hmm. And so you have a, a, a sense of how they’re doing. You’re going to have to go to Blade Repair Academy. You need to get out to Tennessee and you better check it out because I, Alfred, I gotta be honest, this place is gonna get crazy busy [00:31:00] and I’m gonna have. ISPs calling me saying, can you get a hold of Alfred and get me inside? Can you get me in? No, I can’t because it’s Alfred’s deal and Alfred’s gonna run this thing. We’re very approachable and, but very approachable. Keep calling, he’ll answer and take care of you, but it’s gonna get busy because the philosophy here is the right one. Thanks. So congratulations for putting this together and thank you for the invite. Uh, it is been a pleasure to see it. It’s uh, it, it’s great to know that you are around and you’re helping the industry. Alfred Crabtree: Thank you. We appreciate it and you guys are a great clarion for the industry. A great voice. So, uh, those words, uh, right in the fields. And I wanna thank Cheryl too for coming out. I haven’t seen her for a while. It’s funny ’cause today I, on my phone, you know, five years ago today, she and I were here before this business existed as rope partner employees working on r and d week doing infusions. So, uh, Sheryl Weinstein: the space has transformed. It’s amazing. Yeah. You guys have done a, a [00:32:00] really great job. Like I, yeah, I think you’re definitely pushing the industry into a, like a new realm. Bringing something that, that it really needs, you know, that we don’t have at the moment or that we didn’t have. Alfred Crabtree: Yeah, well hopefully, uh, it improves everybody’s quality of product and the bottom line. ’cause uh, you know, that’s what we’ll do. We’ll affect your bottom line for sure. Allen Hall: So Sheryl and Alfred, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Thanks guys. Right, Sheryl Weinstein: thank you.…
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The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast
1 Vestas Buys LM Wind Power Factory, Increased Data Center Demand 31:20
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나중에 재생 나중에 재생 리스트 좋아요 좋아요This week we discuss uncertainty surrounding the IRA bill, GEV Wind Power’s acquisition by Certek, and the sale of an LM Wind Power factory to Vestas. Plus Blackstone is in talks to acquire TXNM Energy, pointing to increase data center demand. Register for the next SkySpecs webinar ! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News , our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech . Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook , YouTube , Twitter , Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web . And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here . Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now here’s your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes. Allen Hall: Well, welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, Joel and Rosemary. It’s been an exciting week. A lot going on in a, in America in regards to what’s gonna happen with the IRA bill. Nobody knows the, it’s like, uh, as tense, as tense can be. You, you don’t even really see a lot of articles about it at the moment. Everybody’s just in, in kind of hold mode, like, hold your breath and hope something bad doesn’t happen. Joel Saxum: I think the interesting thing there is when something like this pops up, you would tend to see a lot of LinkedIn opinions and you’re not. I think a lot of, a lot of people are kind of moved. They’re kind of, [00:01:00] nobody’s really saying too much. We’re kind of waiting to see, Allen Hall: yeah, waiting for that spicy take. Usually from Rosemary, but she hasn’t written that article yet. It must be coming. Rosemary. Rosemary Barnes: Well, I haven’t been writing a lot of anything on LinkedIn recently. Um, yeah, a bit, I’m bit busy. I got, I got really sick of, uh, LinkedIn as well when I, I over posted for a few months and. I got over it. Started, started to hate it when people would, would write a comment on my post. Yeah. And I’m like, just stop talking to me. Go away. And I’m like, yeah, you were the one who made this post. So you That was my, that was my sign to, um, yeah, to, to move away for a little while. Yeah. But it’s also, uh, I mean, you know, like I, it’s not a topic that I am an expert in. ’cause obviously I’m, you know, I don’t live there, so I’m not, yeah. I have. I have heard a few podcasts talking about it. Um, there’s that one. Um, uh, do you guys listen to that podcast? That’s, it’s like [00:02:00] the original Energy gang crew, but none of them are on the Energy Gang anymore. Now they’ve got their own new podcast. It’s like Dig Ashore. And, um, the other two, sorry, I don’t, I don’t remember their, their names. Joel Saxum: They just started Allen Hall: that one. Rosemary Barnes: It’s called, maybe it’s called Open Circuit. Allen Hall: Oh, maybe I have, yes, I know what you’re talking about. Rosemary Barnes: It, it’s really good. It’s very, uh, it’s too American Central for me to listen to every episode, but for, you know, Americans then, I’m sure that that’s, uh, that’s good. Um, they, they speculate a fair bit about it. Um, and also the, um, podcast that has Jesse Jenkins on it, which is called Shift Key, um, they talk about it a bit as well. So I have, I have heard a fair few takes on it, but, um. Yeah, I don’t know. I’m, I’m waiting to see, to, to be honest, as a non-American, I’ve just written off American Wind Power for the next few years and, uh, you know, just like, wait, wait, wait a little while to like, uh, get started again. But it, you know, it doesn’t affect me so much. I don’t, I, I don’t have [00:03:00]projects in America. Um, so I. Not affected day to day, Joel Saxum: a and a half a dozen part load leads that I was in a hand, but now I’m not gonna Rosemary Barnes: do. You know what though? I, it is actually incredibly challenging for me too because, um, Australians and probably every non-American, like I, my business insurance will not cover me in the us They just absolutely not. There is not, it is not possible for me to get insurance. To do projects in the us Um, and it would only be possible if I actually started an American company. That would be the only way to do it. So, um, that is a big disincentive for me to expand into America. Um, just ’cause your legal system is very, very different to the rest of the world and um, yeah, insurance companies won’t take that risk so. That’s why that, that’s why I’m not expending to America. But you know, the rest of the world is a big place. So, Allen Hall: well, if you don’t spend all your time on LinkedIn, then maybe you can then join us on the webinar. We have an up on Wednesday, May 28th at 11:00 AM East Coast, US and it’s about lightning damage and lightning [00:04:00] strikes and it’s one of another, one of the monthly Sky Specs webinars with uh, PES Wind and the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. We have some really interesting guests. In this one, Matthew Stead from eLog Ping and Matt Segal from EDF. So if you know Matt Segal, uh, he knows his way around blades and blade repair and he has a really solid approaches on how to deal with the damage, that’s gonna be a great discussion. So if you have lightning damage and pretty much every operator that I’ve talked to has some lightning damage at the moment, uh, you’re gonna want to attend that. Webinars free. So it’s Wednesday, May 28th, 11:00 AM. East Coast and you just sign up in the show notes below. Really simple Joel Saxum: as busy wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it difficult. That’s why the Uptime podcast recommends PES Wind Magazine. I. PES Wind offers a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert [00:05:00] 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. Allen Hall: So the big news of the week, well there’s actually a couple, uh, big news articles this week. Uh, GEV, wind Power, which is a large repair company. Based in the uk, but they have a lot of their business in the United States. Uh, was acquired by a company called CEC and Joel just doing some research on cec. It looks like a holding company. That’s what it seems like to me. It’s owned by David Harrison, who is based in the uk and it just looks like they’re gonna continue to, uh, try to grow GEV, but it also includes Wind Power Lab from Denmark and rig com. Joel Saxum: From Australia. Yeah, they group their ctec. Um, I know that GEV Wind Power is, um, they, they have huge plans for growth, right? They’ve got the office in Dallas office in [00:06:00] Poland, the Wind Power Lab office in Copenhagen. Rig com office, I believe is in Melbourne, down in Australia, down by Rosemary. And then they have of course the big office for the UK and Hull and that’s for offshore and onshore. Uh, but they’ve also just not opened another office up in Canada. So big, big expansion plans for GE v windpower. This CEC capital injection, uh, is gonna help for sure, right? They’ve got a, they’ve got a existing our infrastructure, uh, for the GEV WINDPOWER group. Uh, and they’re gonna keep ’em all in place and they’re just gonna con continue to grow. So, uh, look to see some more things coming out of the, uh, GEV group. Put this injection to cash. Allen Hall: Yeah, because GEV, when Power Lab and Rcom were part of the Bridges Fund, which was owned by Hojo Joel Saxum: Well Bridge, so Bridges was a technically a think minority shareholder in the GEV group. Uh, but that was Goldman Sachs money, uh, bridges was right. So now, now we’re going, CTEC is Macquarie money, so [00:07:00] Australian money. Being injected in. Well, Allen Hall: that does make a little bit of sense though. Australia is gonna be a huge renewable powerhouse. It already is. So it makes sense that a Australian money would be involved in this because, uh, yeah, there’s gonna be a lot more wind turbines in solar activity in Australia. It’s gonna pick up pretty well, so might as well grab a company early while you can and, and continue to grow it. The other thing that that happened today was LM wind power. Selling a factory up in Poland to Vestus. Now, we’ve all talked internally about what is happening at LM Wind Power because they’ve had a a number of staff reductions over the last year or so, and then they had the blade problem up in Canada. It does seem like a lot of the design activities are moving towards the United States from GEs point of view. [00:08:00] That leaves a lot of LM factories with that are making blades for somebody else. Rosemary, when you were there, uh, LM did make blades for almost everybody for quite a while. It looks like they still do, but now they’re selling off the non GE factories. Is that the plan? Rosemary Barnes: I, I don’t know what the plan is. Uh, um, yeah, not inside anymore, so I don’t have any insider info, but, uh, I did spend. Quite a lot of time actually at that factory in Glen. And it’s definitely one of my favorite, favorite wind turbine blade manufacturing facilities that I ever visited. Um, they get a lot, they get a lot done there. That is like what I could say. The team there is amazing. They, the amount of stuff they can get through in, you know, one shift is like. Double what it is in some other factories. So I think, you know, from, from that perspective, without knowing what best has paid for it, I think it’s a, um, a good call if they get to keep the personnel. Um, so yeah, [00:09:00] it, um, good for Besters. I was actually looking at some information recently, something unrelated, but I, I came across some, um, research reports. Actually. There were academic papers and it had, um, they had gone through all Vista’s recent, um. Like, uh, all of their annual reports and also all the other listed companies. So there’s, you know, there’s a few listed wind, turbine blade manufacturer, wind turbine manufacturers, um, where they will give, you know, a breakdown, public information, a breakdown of how their money is spent in profits and that sort of thing. Um, and they had this little chart that showed how much, um, the different manufacturers that they looked at, how much they were spending on their staff, and how much they were spending on research and development. Vest, uh, staff were paid far more than the other, um, manufacturers that were on there. Joel Saxum: That’s geopolitical though, right? Like Siemens, Siemens Committee said a lot of employees in Spain, they just, they’re cheaper employees, a cheaper labor force than it is in Denmark or Germany. Rosemary Barnes: But also, so that, but also, [00:10:00] um, investors spent way more on research and development than, than the others. And that’s like, I have gotten that impression, you know, ’cause like a lot of what I do with my YouTube channel is. Looking at new, new kinds of things that people are doing. And time after time, it was vest that had investigated this interesting thing. You know, like vesters are the one that have the, um, have tried a multi rotor design out and like actually to the point of making a prototype and, um, installing it. Vesters are the ones that have done the in cable stayed, um, tower and, yeah, like again, put it up the, you know, like over and over again. There were these things where they maybe didn’t even believe that there was an imminent commercial case for this technology, but they were doing it to, to learn and just improve their general knowledge and to also. Um, be ahead of the curve when things changed enough to make this new technology maybe make sense now they would have the information they needed to move, move fast on that. Well, that’s my, my take on why that makes sense to them. So, yeah, I, I, I do, I am starting to get the impression, and I’ve never worked at [00:11:00] Vestas or even, I never even did a blade project for Vestas while I was working at lm, but that’s definitely the impression that I’m getting, that the, you know, they’re kind of retaining more of the essence of the original. Danish wind turbine companies, then the others have more become globalized, Americanized or yeah, like, um, Spain fight or you know, like what, whatever. From all the mergers that have happened, um, the culture has been diluted, but, but festers, I still, still see pushing the envelope. I mean, they haven’t always been profitable, so, um, you know, is the strategy right or not? But then, you know, every western manufacturer and every. Every, every wind turbine manufacturer, no matter where they are in the world, including China, um, have had periods of unprofitability. That’s for sure. So, yeah. Um, I, I just think it’s interesting that they’re taking a real different approach. Joel Saxum: Well, that’s what I was gonna say, uh, kind of rosemary before you jumped, said it’s cultural thing, right? Like, they’re vestas, they’re Denmark, they’re the, the, you know, I guess you can, you could have this argument [00:12:00] between the Danish and the Dutch about who wind power kind of. First, there’s a cultural thing there too, right? Like you have DTU right there, you have the university at our, I wanna say it, right, orus. Uh, but you have, you have all of these different facilities there that are also lending to that research, right? There’s a lot of grant money that gets funneled through DTU. And if you look at those projects with those couple of universities there in Denmark, you see a lot of times Vesta is tanked. On those projects. There may be some other, um, third party companies or a lot of it being sponsored by the university, but you see Vestas in a lot of those. So I think it’s a, I’d like you said, I think it’s a cultural thing that the Danish still haven’t be, that still haven’t, that it’s a good thing that they’re doing what they’re doing. I, in my opinion, but that they haven’t become. This larger global fired thing, right? Where they’re still kind of sticking to their roots? Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I mean, I like it as an engineer and I will say that a lot of, um, my best ex colleagues from LM have ended up at Vestas. Um, so, you know, I think that they are, they do, they do [00:13:00] attract, you know, like people who like to work on really interesting problems. But I also have been around long enough to know that, um. The most interesting engineering problems are not always the most business savvy things to be working on. So that’s why I don’t wanna comment about it, you know, as a business strategy or, you know, suggest that, you know, investors are definitely going to, you know, remain dominant in the future. Um, because a lot of the times the, you know, like over engineering is a thing and, uh, you can’t be competitive if you have you, you know, like a good, good engineering is really about. Doing the minimum that you, that you need to make the product that succeeds in the, in the market. Uh, doing any more than that is very satisfying to an engineer, but, um, it is not the, not usually the smartest thing to do for, you know, making a profitable business. So Allen Hall: good engineering is knowing when to stop. Which is the hardest part of engineering. ’cause you never wanna stop. You need to stop and make some money. Yeah. [00:14:00] Don’t let blade damage catch you off guard. OGs. Ping sensors detect issues before they become expensive. Time consuming problems from ice buildup and lightning strikes to pitch misalignment and internal blade cracks. OGs Ping has you covered The cutting edge sensors are easy to install, giving you the power to stop damage before it’s too late. Visit eLog ping.com and take control of your turbine’s health today. So private equity, giant Blackstone’s infrastructure arm is reportedly and talks to acquire TX and M Energy, which is Texas and New Mexico. And so utility companies serving about 800,000 homes and businesses across the New Mexico, Texas area. Uh, the discussions are still fluid. There’s not a lot of details. However, it does seem like this is a play by Blackstone to maybe set up some data centers and to get. In line to get a data center set up is really hard to do right now because you have to talk to an existing operator and [00:15:00]get them to get approvals and there’s paperwork and there’s applications. Once you buy, uh, a large energy producer, you can kind of control that a little bit and there’s reasons to do it because Texas and New Mexico, there’s a lot of real estate there. Renewables are really easy to install. It makes this acquisition. Much more desirable, I think just because of where it is now. TX and M was going to be acquired a couple months ago, Joel, by Avan Grid, except that got stopped by the administration. Uh, that was about a year ago, right? Where that deal got canceled for. Was it competitive reasons or was it because it was. Avant grid, which is not a US entity is, is that what the deal was? I don’t remember Joel Saxum: exactly why it got canceled. I just know that it was a regulatory approval thing. It wasn’t a, it wasn’t a due diligence problem or anything like that. It was just regulatory approval, [00:16:00] but. When I, when I read this article, I thought immediately, have you guys ever, have you guys ever seen the movie Inception? No. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, you gotta say Inception. What’s wrong with you, Alan? Oh my God. Joel Saxum: In the movie Inception, they, they have an issue where they’re like, we need to convince the pilot of the plane to do this, and we need to convince the stewardesses to do this, and we need to convince the, the, this person to do this. And they have a really rich fellow with them. And they’re like, how are we going to get past these problems? And he’s like, I’ll just buy the airline. So in the movie, the guy just buys the airline and then he gets to do whatever he wants with the airplane and, and how they do their inception tricks, whatever. That’s exactly what I thought about when I saw Blackstone do this, right? We wanna get these data centers on, we wanna do this, we wanna do this. It’s like, man, this is gonna be, this is gonna be difficult. We’re gonna have to convince all these people. We’re gonna have to do this regulatory approvals and get in line and queues. It’s like, what if we just buy the power company? Okay. Just do that and you can do whatever you want like that. That [00:17:00] makes sense. I think it’s a genius thing and I think it, I’m surprised that it’s taken this long to do it and there hasn’t been some other larger players that have tried it. So I just just saw a thing yesterday, a chart that said there’s over 5,300 data centers in the United States right now. It’s like 5,386 or something, which is Corey way, way larger than I thought it was. And we’re, and if you look at a global scale, we’re way in front of the next person. And I don’t remember exactly what it was, but everybody you talk to in the energy world is going, Hey, more data centers, more data centers, more data centers. And it is, it’s, it’s, I listened to a podcast theater. They’re talking about wait until you see the next six months. What’s gonna happen with data centers? As, as you see, Google searches declining for chat GT requests. It’s gonna be all data centers. Allen Hall: So EPRI is saying 48% of utilities nationwide are now receiving data center requests exceeding one gigawatt with almost half facing requests that exceed [00:18:00] 50% of the system peak demand. Wow. That’s a lot of energy to be requesting. Joel Saxum: So last summer, peak demand in Ercot, and I’m gonna talk Texas right now, right? ’cause this is where a lot of these data centers are going. ’cause Ercot is gonna, the Wild West. T’S peak demand last summer was 87 gigawatts at one point in time. They have it projected by, I think it was like 2031. That peak demand is gonna be 213 gigawatts. And Allen Hall: is that based on population or is that based on data center growth, Joel Saxum: data center growth. That’s only five years away, six years away, and you’re talking almost triple the demand. Allen Hall: Can, can we veer off just slightly on this discussion, which is the existing talk about the IRA bill and how they wanna change it. So it’s gonna be harder for renewable companies to apply for the tax credits and production tax credits and all these little nuances that add up to something much more massive. They’re, [00:19:00] if the administration does that. And Congress passes it and whatever else happens, okay, fine. But in this data center demand, you cannot get enough gas turbines built to support that. You can’t order one Joel Saxum: and receive it before 2030. Right. So what are we talking about? You have to put solar and wind on the grid right now. ’cause it’s the only energy generating facility that’s, that’s that’s timely enough to get to meet demand. Right. Allen Hall: Those, we just do not have the infrastructure right now in the United States or elsewhere. Like a Siemens who makes a lot of gas turbines, can’t supply the demand. That’s about to happen. So the demand is gonna get so dang high. You’re gonna, you’re gonna go from 20 29, 20 30, uh, order book to 2035 order book probably in the next six months, the way it sounds. What are they Joel Saxum: gonna do? Could you see a player that doesn’t, that knows turbines but doesn’t [00:20:00] do gas fired turbines coming in? I don’t know who all the players are, right? I know GE sells ’em. I know a couple others, but like, like a steam, like a Rolls Royce is Rolls Royce sell gas turbine power plant turbines. They know. They know turbine technology couldn’t. Why? If you were them, wouldn’t you look at this demand and go. We should start building these things. Allen Hall: Joel, to build a gas turbine is really difficult. It’s like building a jet engine. On steroids, it’s, and to make it something that’s really reliable, it is not easy. That’s why it takes so long to build these things. It’s not just a startup. Well, yeah, what are you gonna do? Build a second factory next door to the one you have and spend a billion dollars to set this thing up. But you’re not gonna be able to make the first turbine for at least five or six years. That makes zero sense, because all of a sudden if the data center, uh, compute goes away, like some software engineer figures out how to do this a lot with less power, basically a lot less power to do it. Then poof, all their order book disappears and all that money they spend on a [00:21:00] factory disappears and no one’s willing to take that risk. So who’s steps in the middle of this besides wind and solar and some batteries? Wind and solar betters right to, that’s the fastest way to get power onto the grid, even if it’s disconnected from the main grid, right? Even if you go geothermal, Joel Saxum: you still need turbines. You still need turbines. Turbines are not quick to make. And you can’t build a nuclear plant in about 10 Allen Hall: years. No. So what are we, Rosemary? What are we doing? And here’s my thought this morning. I woke up this morning like, this is a huge problem. What are we gonna do? My first thought was like, well, everybody’s gonna go to Australia because the power is plentiful and it’s only a data cable to America. That’s what’ll happen. Rosemary? Rosemary Barnes: Uh, I don’t, I don’t think data centers, I think data centers is primarily a US problem, and then there’ll be a few, and not even like, it’s, it’s localized within the US as well. People aren’t just like, people think with this, you know, data center growth that it’s like. Everyone’s gonna worry about it. But you need data [00:22:00] centers, um, near where the, you know, the tech companies, the AI companies are, because they don’t, you know, they can’t be located on the other side of the world from where their data center is, if they’re gonna be, you know, running all these, um, these learning models. And then you need them near population centers as well for, um, you know, so that they have them, them close by. I think the biggest thing with data centers that’s gonna be different to what everybody’s panicking about is that it is not gonna be the, um, the, the demand people are predicting is not going to come, come true to anything. Like the extent, extent that what has been predicted. I think it will grow and it will grow a lot, but I, I, you know, like the growth that people are predicted is, um. Well, IM implausible for a start to actually achieve it. But I think also, like if you look back through history, I mean, you know, people always predict, you know, that you get a big amount of growth early on and people don’t really know what the, you know, the size of the exponent is. And so when they project out into the future, you can get things wildly wrong and we have a history of you, you know, look back through the predicted energy use of all sorts of new [00:23:00] technologies over the, um, decades or, you know, centuries. Then you’ll see predictions that were just crazy in hindsight. We’re really early in the AI thing, so algorithms are gonna be refined. Um, chip designs are gonna be refined. Even, you know, like everything else around data center’s gonna be refined. Maybe quantum computing is gonna make a difference in a few years. You know, like maybe something that hasn’t been invented yet. You know, like five years ago people didn’t think AI would be doing what it is today. There’ll be some other technology in five years that’s doing something that we couldn’t foresee. Um, so I, you know, I think that it’s more likely that the. Unexpected technology developments are on the side of bringing down the amount of power. Allen Hall: Yeah. But the way that tends to go in industry is once you’re on a pathway, there’s very little that’s gonna deter you off that pathway. So even if there are significant improvements, you’ll see the main path still be followed. And that’s gonna be the trouble with these AI data centers, is that they’re gonna [00:24:00] project out, they’re gonna get their. Mindset about doing it a certain way, and they’re gonna go, and if you talk about saving 10% here or there, they’re like, if it’s gonna take 10 more weeks to get that done, we’re not gonna do it. We’re gonna continue down this pathway. Rosemary Barnes: No, but they’re doing it all the time. They heard about a, a data center, it was designed and, um, you know, planned for a certain amount of compute, and then the chip designs improved and they totally changed it. And so now it, you know, it’s the same power, but it, um, processes much more. And we’re gonna. We’re gonna say a lot. A lot of that I think. Allen Hall: I think the chat GPT usage and the AI usage is relatively low, and I know US engineers like to use those services because we like the new tech and we want to be involving our fingers in it and see what it’s all about. I think the vast majority of humanity really hasn’t touched it yet. When they do, it’s gonna go Joel Saxum: crazy. Did you see that Google’s alphabet stock? When they, they just released a, they did, it was an earnings report, but they released the end. This is the first time that their number of search engine [00:25:00] entries, whatever requests. Dropped and it’s because, because, and their stock dropped by 10% that day that happened. Yeah. Like that’s, and and, and like you said, we, people that are in the know are using, I use it all day long. Right. My, uh, my partner uses it all day long, but the general populace hasn’t gotten into it yet. But once they do, it’s. It’s so much better than Google, so much better than Google. Like you don’t have to know how to Google things anymore. You could just like ask a question that you’re talking to a person and it just gives you the answer, Allen Hall: right? It is much more, uh, interactive, human, interactive, uh, interface than what Google ever was, and you still have to have little tricks to get Google to give you the right answer at times. This is much more intuitive and if you think about your phone and how you try to Google things on your phone, it’s that interface is terrible. Absolutely terrible. It’s been terrible for five plus years. This AI interface, all of them, perplexity is the one that [00:26:00] I like at the minute, is really simple. It’s like asking somebody a question, like asking a librarian in the old days, where can I find this information? Tell me what’s going on. Poof. There it is. And it provides justification, rationale behind it, all those kind of things you like to have as an engineer. But I do think the growth of this, if it is as powerful as it is today, the growth is gonna be phenomenal. And the power usage is gonna be nuts, Rosemary Barnes: but I’m not sure that you are, um, aware of how much growth is baked into the forecast currently. I’ve just brought up, um, an article that Michael Lere wrote on Bloomberg, NEF, um, about ai. And it, it’s interesting there because he goes through the economics of it, um, and he draws on some, uh. Questions that a guy David Kahn made, um, from Sequoia Capital that he says, David Kahn says that to justify the capital expenditures applied by NVIDIA’s [00:27:00] near term revenue pipeline, they would need to generate annual revenue from AI services of 200 billion. And then, um, with their new updated NVIDIA sales forecast storing it, it’s been updated to 600 billion. Um, and that is, uh, yeah, like half of the aggregate revenue of Amazon, Microsoft Meta and Google Parent Alpha. So if you assume 600 billions will be, um, uh, it’ll be the world’s 100 million wealthiest people, then that’s $6,000 a year. Um, and then, you know, like, obviously you can go a bit further down, but it, it’s um, like not impossible, but it’s also, that is a massive amount of growth that is already. Factored into the, that pipeline. So I think, I just think it’s more evidence that that is a, like a, that is a pretty optimistic take on, you know, immense growth and that it’s far more likely we’re gonna see less, less growth than that. I still think we’re gonna see crazy growth, but. I think that the, [00:28:00] that the, the current pipeline that the, you know, current investments, if you, um, sorry, not investments, but the current plans for, for growth of companies like nvidia, they don’t just factor in incredible growth. It’s like incredible squared, incredible cubed growth that’s factored into their pipeline and it is gonna. Scale, scale back again that I, I don’t think anyone can know, but that’s, that’s, I really think that that’s the most likely thing to happen. Allen Hall: Building chips and building power plants are two wildly different things in terms of the time it takes to do it. Building a gigawatt of energy production takes time. Building another chip is just clunk. There’s another one. It doesn’t take that much time. So I think the ability to create the chips is gonna far exceed the ability to power them. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, and that’s why you see like that project I talked about where they um, you know, the chip capability changed so much in between when they started the project and by the time they went to actually put the chips inside the building. Um. You still see the power [00:29:00] stayed the same, but just the compute in increased. Um, so yeah, I think you’re right. Joel Saxum: I still think that the, the good play is investing in a cable lay vessel. I’m telling you the the, the s the SF uptime cable lay vessel. Allen Hall: This is my wild conspiracy theory at the moment, is that Elon with his satellite network, SpaceX and starlink and all that, allows you to put an AI center anywhere on the planet that it is cheap to power it. Joel Saxum: A handful of geostationary satellites. Is and And if you devote them to one data center or to a family of data centers, somewhere that has to be cheaper than laying cables across the OS. Ocean. Allen Hall: Yes, that’s what I’m saying. Elon’s gonna buy the center of Australia, lay out solar panels. Too hot. It’s gotta go somewhere cold. I’m talking Joel Saxum: Canada Green. Greenland. Greenland, Allen Hall: [00:30:00] Greenland. Greenland. There you go. There’s a perfect conspiracy case right there, Joel. You hit all the triggers at one time. Well, well, we’re, we’re not gonna solve this this week. Uh, but it is an important issue and it is coming up a lot. And I know that it is not gonna stop the discussion. It is ramping up and there’s a lot of energy being spent trying to figure out, can we even solve this problem? What’s happening with the IRA bill or the potential changes to the IRA bill can aggravate this and make it a lot harder. Uh, be prepared. Very interesting times. Joel Rosemary. Another great episode Rosemary Barnes: and un unsupervised today. I often wonder if these ones where we don’t have producer Claire here, um, you know, reigning us in, do we lose subscribers on these episodes or are people, you know, like really attracted to our tell it like it is, uh, kind of rambling, rambling style on these ones. Allen Hall: Stay tuned and we’ll see you all here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy [00:31:00] Podcast.…
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The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast
This week Allen discusses the European Investment Bank's major wind farm investment in Romania, the financial performance of German energy giant RWE, and the potential cancellation of Equinor's Empire Wind Project due to regulatory challenges. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Welcome to Uptime News. Flash Industry News Lightning fast. Your host, Allen Hall, shares the renewable industry news you may have missed. Allen Hall: Okay, starting off the week over in Romania, the European investment bank is investing 30 million euros in a major wind farm project in Romania. The poster two project located near the Black Sea, will have a capacity of up to 400 megawatts. That's enough to supply over 1.4 million Romanian households for an entire year. The EIB is partnering with Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners on the project with the total investment expected to be in excess of 500 million Euros. Construction is due to start later this year and it will bolster the European Union's push for climate neutrality by mid-century. German energy Giant RWE, reported an adjusted EBITDA of 1.3 billion euros [00:01:00] for the first three months of 2025. Adjusted net income amounted to 0.5 billion euros as expected earnings were below the level of the same quarter last year. This decline was primarily attributable to normalization of income in the flexible generation segment and a weaker start to the year in the trading business. The commissioning of new offshore wind farms, solar plants, and battery storage facilities had a positive impact on the company's performance. RWE commissioned 600 megawatts of new generation capacity in the first quarter alone. The company, currently has new plants with a combined capacity of 11.2 gigawatts under construction. Michael Mueller, chief financial officer of RWE, stated that they were reaffirming their full year earnings forecast after a solid start to the year. He noted, that the company is making great progress in expanding its portfolio in a value accretive manner. Construction projects remain on schedule [00:02:00] and on budget. Over in Norway, Equinor is warning it may cancel its Empire Wind Project off New York's coast. Following a Trump administration stop work order, the company is spending $50 million weekly to keep the project afloat while awaiting resolution. Molly Morris, president of Equinor's US renewable energy arm, describe the situation as unsustainable. The Interior Department led by Secretary Doug Bergham ordered Equinor to halt construction on April 17th. The order cited information suggesting the Biden administration may have approved the project without a thorough environmental analysis. The stop work order stemmed from a report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. However, Equinor says it has not seen the report and is not aware of the specific concerns raised. The project represents a significant investment for Equinor. The company has already invested $2.7 billion in the [00:03:00] Empire Wind Facility. Currently, 11 vessels with 100 workers remain on board, sitting on the water, waiting for an order to resume work. That's this week's top. New stories. Stay tuned tomorrow for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.…
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The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast
Will Howell discusses Armor Edge's thermoformed polycarbonate leading edge protection for wind turbine blades. Their solution helps to mitigate erosion, enhance aerodynamic performance, and extend blade life. Allen Hall: Will welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. So Joel and I have heard about Armor Edge for a couple, couple of years. Yeah. You're based in Scotland. Yeah. And we haven't seen you much in the United States and I haven't physically touched it. And of course we're sort of tangible. We gotta play with the the product. So this is the first time now we're here. Gotten to see the product. Yeah. Yeah. You wanna describe really what this product is for a leading edge protection? Will Howell: Yeah, absolutely. So we are different to other LEPs out there on the market. And really that was the whole point of our design evolution, was to try to overcome some of the traditional downfalls of some of the other LEDs that have been prevalent on blades. So. Um, yeah, we've been around since, um, well about eight, eight years now. And we've been out in the market installed since 2020. So we're, as you mentioned, Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland is a kind of a base. So our first installs were all offshore, north North Sea, so offshore, Denmark, offshore [00:01:00] Germany. Very harsh, harsh environments. But we wanted to, to design an an LEP that was, um, really. Overcoming some of the traditional pitfalls. So for us, that is the ease of installation, the longevity of the material, and also the a EP benefits that we, that we see. Um, as you see for the sample we have in front of us here today, it's uh, only a small piece that we take to show just to, to, to show our clients and customers. Um, but typically the shields are 850 mil mil long. Uh, they're made of a, a custom thermoformed, um, polycarbonate, a SA blend. We get the material formed into sheets, and then we drape that sheet over custom design molds that are tailored for the specific blade types. And that's how we get this perfect fit on every different blade that we're, that we're, um, that we have out, out there. So let's talk about the installation. Yeah. Joel Saxum: Because that's [00:02:00] a, that's a really important one for me because on the podcast we always wanna talk about what problems we're, what problems we're solving. Sure. What problems you guys are helping the industry with. And one of the biggest ones with LAP, and it doesn't matter what the product really is, if it's tapes, if it's coatings, if if it's installed wrong, it's not gonna last. Yep. Yep. That's, that's the thing. So what have you guys done with this to help the technicians in the field to make it easier to make it. Last I want you to put on the line. Will Howell: Yeah. I mean, I guess there's a lot of technology in terms of the performance of the, of the product. Um, both the adhesive and the material itself. But predominantly this was designed for rope access in the North Sea, so it had to be a product that the guys were. Able to handle up on, up on rope. Um, it wasn't gonna be affected by climatic conditions as much, um, and would really lead to a faster, but also therefore, a higher quality installation because of the way that it's put on, it's not so much of a artisanal process that some of these other LEPs seem to [00:03:00] suffer from. We want to. Train our technicians to deliver a high quality installation, but really you don't have to be a master LEP installer to get our, to get our kit on, our kit on Blade. And that's the feedback we've been getting from the technicians is that they find it, uh, easy to handle, easy to apply process, uh, in the field. Joel Saxum: What does Blade Prep look like before you put it on? Will Howell: Well, another unique. Facet of the system is because the shields themselves are custom formed from a a semi-rigid material. The leading edge of the shields themselves doesn't confor...…
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The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast
1 Blade Failure Alert: How ONYX Prevents Million-Dollar Disasters 31:07
31:07 나중에 재생 나중에 재생 리스트 좋아요 좋아요31:07
나중에 재생 나중에 재생 리스트 좋아요 좋아요ONYX Insight's ecoPITCH system prevents catastrophic wind turbine blade failures caused by pitch bearing issues. Forrest French and Martin McLarnon reveal how continuous monitoring and early detection can save wind farms millions. Contact Martin McLarnon: martin.mclarnon@onyxinsight.com 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: ONYX Insight's ecoPITCH monitoring system has become crucial for wind farm operators facing blade root insert failures. These failures start invisibly but can end catastrophically with blades detaching completely. This week we speak with Forrest French Senior Project Engineer, and Martin McLarnon, sales Director for North America at ONYX Insight. Their ecoPITCH system detects dangerous movements before visible signs appear as Forest notes in the interview. By the time you can get a feeler gauge measurement, it's probably too late. So join us to discover how data-driven monitoring is helping operators make smarter maintenance decisions preventing million dollar disasters and keeping turbines spinning safely. Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy's brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Martin and Forest. Welcome to the [00:01:00] show. Hello. How's it going? Thanks for letting us. Yeah, we're really interested to, to talk to you today just because there's so many blade root issues from pitch bearings and blade bushings or inserts as they're called sometimes, and a number of other issues. And when we talk to operators, what they tell us is, oh, we, you use ecoPITCH. And they love that system. But I want to, I wanna back up first and talk about what are some of the operators experiencing out there in the field And ecoPITCH system was originally developed to look at pitch bearing problems and forests. What are some of those pitch bearing problems you're seeing out in the field today? Forrest French: Yeah, so it, it, it's a funny story. It was originally developed for pitch bearing, uh, applications. Um, the industry as a whole started experiencing this root insert issue, so we were able to, we were kind of in a perfect position, right? It was, it was a, it was a [00:02:00] really serendipitous thing that we, we had just developed this product and we could easily pivot. To measure both the pitch bearing and this root insert issue. Uh, the, the pitch bearing issues are admittedly the, the more difficult, uh, issue, right? To measure. Um, there's, there's some, some great opportunities for value and there's also some really good challenges to come along with that. Um, pitch bearings, uh, they, they don't rotate quickly. Right. Uh, when, when we talk about typical CMS typical vibration monitoring, you're looking at a very, very fast rotating, uh, shaft or bearing, et cetera, and you're able to pick up on those frequencies as they revolve. You don't get that with a pitch bearing. It's a very slow moving, uh, slewing bearing. Um, so picking up. Noise through vibration can be very difficult, uh, because again, you don't get that frequency of that [00:03:00] rotation, so you're left with nothing but uh, a bunch of noise. Right. And you're hoping that that noise floor is low enough that you might capture a bit of crunching of cage material or anything like that? Right. The alternative in what, in what we use ecoPITCH for is it's very simple. We, we point a an inductive displacement sensor right at the pitch bearing itself. Typically the inner ring, depending on the type of turbine. And what we're looking for is any kind of slop or displace...…
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The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast
1 US Offshore Wind Struggles, Lawsuit on Osage Land Continues 33:59
33:59 나중에 재생 나중에 재생 리스트 좋아요 좋아요33:59
나중에 재생 나중에 재생 리스트 좋아요 좋아요Legal battles in Oklahoma continue between the Osage Nation and Enel. Equinor faces offshore wind project hurdles amidst U.S. offshore wind regulatory issues. Plus a rebranding announcement from Deutsche Windtechnik to DWT and a new study painting wind blades red to prevent bird strikes. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now here's your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes. Allen Hall: There's more news out of Oklahoma. The state of Oklahoma has. Entered the legal ballot between the wind developer in EL and the Osage nation. It, we all recall on the podcast probably a year ago where the Osage Nation had won a lawsuit with the help of the federal government to take down a big wind farm in north central Oklahoma. The state of Oklahoma has filed an amicus brief opposing the immediate removal of the 84 turbines in Osage County. Now, this is a big deal [00:01:00] because pretty much the last I saw, which is a while ago, the order was that they needed to take down all the turbines and reclaim the land, basically put it back to where it was before the turbines were placed in it. Now the state of Oklahoma is stepping into the mix and they're citing a couple of things. They're saying that the state of Oklahoma has an interest in property laws and protecting tax revenue. However, Osage doesn't fit into Oklahoma laws. It's not their territory. And meanwhile, the Osage tribe is saying, Hey, this is over and we have mineral rights, and these turbines need to come down. So this is a kind of a weird spot because Anelle's in the middle of this, now that the state's gotten involved against the federal government, is there a missing link here? Is, this is certain more to this story because it does seem like some wheels are turning at the moment. I think, Joel Saxum: Phil Allen.[00:02:00] You guys are very smart, right? But I think we need someone smarter than us to decode this whole thing as far as like maybe a lawyer that can get in there, because Alan, you hit it on the head, Osage tribe and Osage tribe lands do not actually fall under Oklahoma law. They have their own sets of laws, so you have a federal ruling saying that something must happen within, of course, the outlines of the state of Oklahoma, but within the greater outlines of the United States. But now the state wants to be able to go against the federal ruling to have their own rights recounted for while this, the Oage tribe is saying no, like we've already passed and I think the total bill that NL is gonna was supposed to get stamped, it was like $300 million, which is crazy 'cause it doesn't cost $300 million to remediate 84 turbines. However. This isn't necessarily a wind turbine take down exercise. This is a mining reclamation exercise after you take the wind turbines down. That's why it costs so much. [00:03:00] So there's a lot of money on the table for nl and now you have the Oklahoma Solicitor General Jerry Gary Gaskins stepping in and saying Hey, we're also getting some kind of tax revenues to the state and things like that from the wind farm. But I wouldn't think that would go to the state in this case. I would think it would go to the Osage tribe. So I don't understand the state's. The state's position in this. Phil Totaro: But Phil, do you have any insights on that? Unfortunately, I do not. But what's interesting about it is that you had,…
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The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast
This episode covers India's ambitious plans to double its wind energy capacity by 2030, the UK's expansion of offshore wind farms, and the US states' legal challenge against President Trump's executive order halting wind energy development. 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: Starting the week off in India, India's wind energy sector is investing heavily in capacity and workforce development to double its current 50 gigawatt capacity by 2030. The Indian Wind Turbine Manufacturers Association says they're focusing on technology innovations while advancing the Make in India mission to achieve this ambitious target. The country already has 18 gigawatts of annual manufacturing capacity for turbines and components. Companies like LAN and zf Windpower produce critical parts locally. Positioning India as a potential global export hub. Renewable sector hiring is expected to grow by 19% this year in India with most workers being young [00:01:00] Indians between 26 and 35 years old. Over in the uk the UK's Crown estate has approved expansion of high density wind farms on existing seabed leases to support the country's energy transition. Seven projects will increase capacity by 4.7 gigawatts helping Britain towards its target of 50 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. Up from the current 15 gigawatts projects include RWE's Ramon two and SSE's and Equinor's Dogger Bank D. The Crown Estate's Marine director Gus Jasper says, this capacity increase program will provide up to 4 million homes with clean energy and decrease the UK's reliance on internationally sourced fossil fuels. Britain is already the world's second largest offshore wind market after China, though inflation and supply chain issues have challenged the sector recently. Over in the United States, a coalition of 17 states and Washington [00:02:00]DC has filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump's executive order halting wind energy development. The order signed on his first day in office, pauses, approvals, permits, and loans for all wind projects, both offshore and onshore. New York Attorney General Letitia James leading the coalition argues the directive threatens thousands of good paying jobs and billions in investment while delaying the transition away from fossil fuels. The administration recently ordered Norwegian company Ecuador to halt construction on Empire Wind, one near Long Island, despite the project being 30% complete after a seven year permitting process. Wind currently provides about 10% of US electricity, making it the nation's largest renewable energy source. The states argued Trump's order contradicts years of bipartisan support for wind energy and his own declaration of quote, a national energy emergency unquote calling for expanded domestic energy production.[00:03:00] The administration has also suspended funding for floating offshore wind research in Maine and revoked permits for a project in New Jersey. Internationally, other nations are accelerating wind investments with the UK and Canada's Nova Scotia recently announcing major offshore expansion plans. That's this week's top News stories. Tune in tomorrow for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.…
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