Joel gives an update from Wind Energy Europe in Bilbao. Developers like Invenergy are building renewable projects and transferring ownership to utilities after completion - what is the advantage? Are wind turbines creating microclimates which could positively impact crop yields? Plus, an article in PES Wind magazine highlights RTSYS's offshore wildlife protection system using AI to accurately detect sea life. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.comPES Wind - https://pes.eu.com/wind/ Philip Totaro: I was a toy tester for Fisher Price. When I was young, because they're in my hometown outside of Buffalo. And I helped the team in that invented the pocket rocker, which was the kids version of the Sony Walkman, which is very popular back in the eighties. Allen Hall: Wait a minute. Is this the one when it had a little microphone on it that you could record things with? Is this what I, I remember this. Don't I? That was really popular. That's good. That's actually a retro item that's coming back into favor. People are looking for those things. But so why you, Phil? Why were you chosen out of thousands of children? Philip Totaro: Companies headquartered in my hometown of East Aurora, New York. And my mother was taking a sabbatical from teaching when, I was very young. So I was like four or five years old. And was in the business of selling kids dolls and toys and stuff like that, although not necessarily directly affiliated with Fisher Price, but she must have just gotten to know somebody over there. And I want to believe that this wasn't just like a cheap daycare thing that she could just drop me off at Fisher Price and they would let me play with toys and she didn't have to deal with me. But So I, I got to play with, all kinds of the, they used to have a thing called Constructs I used to love that they, I got to play with all the cool Fisher Price toys before, anybody in the world ever got to see them but the Pocket Rocker was the one that, because of the popularity of the Sony Walkman back in the 80s, Fisher Price wanted to have the kids version of the Sony Walkman. And they, had me, I remember being like five year old sitting in this boardroom and it was enormous. It was like literally if you've seen like Putin's conference table, it was like that, that long with, with chairs and stuff. Joel Saxum: You funded your mother's retirement at the same time. You didn't know you were actually getting paid. She was taking your checks. Philip Totaro: I don't know of how much anybody got compensated for any of that. To be honest, free daycare. That's what it was. I hope we, yeah, I know. I hope it was more than just free daycare, but I haven't seen any royalties from any of that. Allen Hall: This is before, child safety came into favor on children's toys, where they took out all the small pieces and all the red items and all the lead that came out of toys. Yeah, that was the good old days. Is it just that one item, Phil? Philip Totaro: That's the one that was commercially popular. I'm sure I gave them product feedback on, cause we, they used to put you in these little rooms where they had, a double sided mirror, although you didn't know it was, you're a five year old, you don't know that it's a double sided mirror, but it's a little creepy cause you're sitting there just like playing with toys and people are watching you play with toys. And it's what is he doing now?

1s

Apr 02

Nordex invests $1.1B in Turkey's wind industry, Singapore plans to invest $3.7B in clean energy transition, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners invests $1.9B in offshore wind farm in the Philippines. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I'm here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum, and this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you want market intelligence that generates revenue, then book a demonstration of IntelStor at intelstor.com. Spanish German Nordex Group plans investing a little over a billion dollars in Turkey in 2024. Turkey is seen as a major wind market due to its young population on short potential and strong supply chains. Turkey is taking the lead in the wind supply chain as an uptick. Alternative to Asia. So this is a sweet spot for Turkey at the moment, Phil, where they do have a strong workforce. They do have a lot of internal capabilities and Nordex is picking up on that. Philip Totaro: Exactly. And to the extent that they've already established themselves as a kind of a wind manufacturing hub you've got Enercon there, you've got Nordex already there, LM. And a couple other smaller players. But you also have subcomponent suppliers there. ASCA is there as a material supplier for blades. So there's a significant amount of opportunity. This investment represents largely project development activities is my understanding, but there will also be some factory expansion potential there as well as they look to expand Turkey as an export hub for for components and not just used in the domestic market, but also elsewhere throughout Europe. Joel Saxum: To double down on talking about Nordex here, it was Wind Europe Bilbao last week, Nordex, it was, that, that show was the return of the OEMs. So you saw GE Vernova, Siemens Gamesa, Nordex, Enercon, everybody having their big booths again. To focus on this, Nordex had a, Fantastic, large booth, huge presence putting some of their new models out there. They're really pushing that Delta 4000 platform. So you can see that the Nordex group is spending a lot of money to expand their footprint and could be capitalizing a little bit of that Siemens Gamesa absence from the market in that 4X, 5X area as well. Allen Hall: Singapore is setting up a 3. 7 billion future energy fund and investing in clean energy tech and infrastructure. Singapore aims to move quickly on its infrastructure and invest in clean energy security as part of its goal to reach net zero by 2050. Currently, 95 percent of electricity is produced from natural gas in Singapore. So there is now a plan to import low carbon power from its neighbors, which will require Obviously, investments in submarine cables and the grid, Phil, with that kind of money being invested in Singapore, that's going to bring a lot of clean tech to that area. Philip Totaro: Absolutely. And they already have a lot of offshore wind capability that's headquartered in Singapore, a lot of, vessel owners and operators, et cetera. So there's an experience base there. To up to a point but it's also interesting because, this is a big city state I would say country, but this is a city state led initiative on decarbonization. And so that's that's an important thing is again,

8m

Apr 01

Allen Hall interviews Anders Røpke, CEO of Wind Power LAB, about their innovative software product, LASSIE. LASSIE helps wind farm operators detect and mitigate lightning damage to their turbines by analyzing global lightning data and providing alerts when turbines may be at risk. With its affordable subscription model and seamless integration, LASSIE offers a cost-effective solution for protecting wind farm assets and maintaining a prudent operational track record. Visit https://lassie.windpowerlab.com/ for more information! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, and I have a special guest today, Anders Røpke, who is the founding partner and CEO of Wind Power LAB, which is based in Copenhagen, Denmark. And Wind Power LAB is an expert on blades and things around blades, but we're here today not to talk necessarily about blades directly, but we're here to talk about lightning protection and lightning detection and what operators can do to make their Wind farm, less susceptible to big lightning damage. Yeah, that's Anders, well, welcome to the program. Anders Røpke: Thank you very much. Thank you for having me, uh, I'm sure. Allen Hall: So we're, we're in San Diego, which the weather's a lot better than Copenhagen at the moment. Uh, I was in Copenhagen a week and a half ago, two weeks ago. It was snowing, cold, miserable, and here it's nice and sunny, and there's a beach, and it's, it's not a bad place to be. So we're at, uh, ACP OM&S and talking all things, of all things, lightning. And so Windpower LAB has developed a new, it's basically a software product or an app, so to speak. It's called LASSIE. Anders Røpke: It's called LASSIE, like you know the watchdog. Yes. Because we need something or someone to take care of our wind turbines. Yes, we definitely do. And as you could tell earlier in the week here in California, you had really poor weather. Horrible weather. Thunderstorms and whatnot. And let's bring out the elephant in the room, the lightning. Lightning issues, right? And, um, with this product of ours, our offering is, you know, you can simply just go out and inspect the turbines that is in risk. Yes. And, um, how is that possible? Well, we use, it's a global solution. It's something you can just add coordinates of the turbines to the system. And by doing that, you'll get an overview of the relevant lightning strikes within the area where you have your turbines. Right. Yes. So let's say you have. In the States, wind farms are huge, 500 turbines, which one should I inspect after this, after the lightning storm? Allen Hall: Big, great question to have. Anders Røpke: So it might be in the Southeastern part of the wind farm, right? But again, why should you do it? And hopefully the turbine survived the thunderstorm because they're designed for it, but let's go check anyway. So we can pinpoint where to go and check. You get a work order list, you get all the relevant, uh, lightning data information. And then we relate this to the IEC standard and the blade type, the LPS system you have installed. Do we have any certain risk on those specific turbines you should address? That's a good insight. Allen Hall: Okay, so the LASSIE system is taking some of the global lightning network data and saying, okay, we know where the lightning strikes occur.

1s

Mar 28

AC883's Lars Bendsen chats with Allen and Joel about their LiDAR systems for turbine alignment, drone inspection services including ultrasonic blade scanning, and expansion into internal turbine inspections using drones. AC883 continues bringing new wind turbine technologies to North America and allowing wind farms to keep producing energy. Reach out to Lars! lars@ac883.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! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, and I'm here with my co host, Joel Saxum. And we brought along a friend, Lars Bendsen of AC883. We're still in San Diego, so we're a long way from Canada, where AC883 is based. Lars is always full of information about what's happening in the wind industry and what's happening on the repair side and the technology side. Because he's been involved in wind since the dawn of wind, pretty much. Lars, welcome back to the program. Thank you. So there's a whole bunch of things going on right now. We're at ACP OMS. We've been together all week. You had a ton of traffic to your booth. A lot of customers trying to sign up for repairs this season and learn about all the new technology that's going on. You want to just talk to what you're seeing? Lars Bendsen: Yeah, I'll try to do that. Thank you for having me on. We we seem to be getting busy. Yeah. There's a ton of interest for our blade program, which differs clearly from the rest of our good colleagues, the way we're approaching it. Yeah. We are building a new website because we have so many offerings now. We need to be more, we need to be more clear in our communication. Joel Saxum: Confirmed new website. We just confirmed it. Lars Bendsen: Confirmed, Yeah. And AC83, that name will remain, but it could be the set AC83 wind repair, wind whatever something. We're going to rebrand that a little bit because it can be a bit confusing. Okay. Because we have so many offering in. As an ISP part, but also as a new technology provider, which is the DNA of the company. That's how we started. Joel Saxum: Right, so let's talk blade repair real quick. You guys it's mid February right now. Usually when we start to see tenders come out from the big operators or even smaller operators, they come out in November and December if they're on the ball. Yeah. If they're on the ball because you want to get your blade repair, basically capacity ready for that next season, because there's, we all know there's a limited amount of it capacity in the Yeah. And in Canada, your season's really short, so you're like end of May to mid October. Lars Bendsen: Maybe It is mid May to worst case scenario end of October. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, people want have us out of the door and end of September if they can. Joel Saxum: Yeah. So if you, if the, so what it looks like right now, are you see, did you see a lot of tenders come through in the Canadian market? Lars Bendsen: There's a ton of ten, not, there's a ton of rough cues out there, but it seems like the decision has not really been made. Hasn't been made yet? Some have not. And a bit of a mystery to us, why it's dragging out. We know our colleagues have not gotten it either, it's not because we haven't gotten the work. Yeah. It simply hasn't been awarded. Joel Saxum: Yeah. Which is odd, because it's like, we're coming on the end of February, so there's really only You know,

21m

Mar 27

Allen, Rosemary and Phil debate whether WindRunner, a huge airplane proposed to transport wind turbine blades offshore, makes sense for the industry. Plus they discuss an article from the latest edition of PES Wind Magazine from CLS Wind about their lifting platform used to assemble wind turbines. Allen and Phil learn that Rosemary is a five-time Wheel of Fortune champion! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Do you have game shows in Australia, Rosemary? Is that a thing? Rosemary Barnes: Hey, I was a five time carryover champion on Wheel of Fortune. Allen Hall: What? Rosemary Barnes: What whoa. Rosemary, what was that? I was a five time carryover champion on Wheel of Fortune. I don't know if they, is it the same in the US when you win an episode, you get to come back the next day? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So I did that five times. I was on six, six episodes. Allen Hall: How much money did you win? Rosemary Barnes: It's not as rich as, I didn't win any cash. There's no cash in the Australian one. And it's not as rich as the U S one. I think I won like 20, 30, 000 worth of stuff. Yeah, it was pretty, pretty good as a uni student. I want to, Bed and like saucepans and a couple of lazy boy recliners, one that had massaging in a fridge, and one a houseboat cruise one how did I electric guitar what else did I want? Oh, and all sorts of stuff. So much. Allen Hall: Did this really happen, Rosemary? Rosemary Barnes: This really happened when I was at uni. Allen Hall: Why we've not seen video of this? Why is this not on YouTube? I don't understand. Rosemary Barnes: I have a VHF of it. I have been thinking that I should chase down the studio and see if I can get the recordings. So I'm sure that they're archived, but I don't know how easy it is to get your hands on it. Allen Hall: Our producer needs this video badly. We have to get this back on the internet. Come on. Really? I didn't know that. It's not in your CV. Why wasn't that in your CV? Rosemary Barnes: It used to be, it did literally used to be in my CV. Wheel of Fortune couldn't have slipped in there somewhere? It's probably not anymore, but for a very long time, it was on my CV in other. And it was one it's a good way to see if people read your CV because there's no way you're reading that and not mentioning it at the interview. And two, when people did read it, then it's a really great icebreaker, you know, cause it's just Oh, okay. Before we get started, we just have to chat about that. And then it's, you know, it's a fun little thing to talk about and you then, you know, then you're friends. And then the rest of the interview goes very nicely. Okay. That's like a hot point. Pro tip for interviews is include something like that on there that will you know, be a way to start the conversation and have everyone be relaxed before the interview. Allen Hall: Okay. I think Rosemary's been holding back. We've been burying our soul every week and Rosemary's. Keeping the Wheel of Fortune thing under wraps. Philip Totaro: Now, I mean, the only thing I could put on my CV is that I used to live next to Rick James. I mean, what the, you know, like Rosemary Barnes: Allen can put on that he's married to a real rocket scientist. So that's a good one. Allen Hall: This is true. It's sort of guilt by association there. A startup called Radia founded by MIT trained rocket scientist,

29m

Mar 26

Masdar acquires stake in Terra-Gen, RWE's stock price drops 25%, Global Wind Service signs agreement with RWE, and Maersk Supply Service partners with Edison Chouest Offshore for U.S. offshore wind farm installations. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I'm here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum. And this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you need actionable information about renewable projects or technologies, check out IntelStor at intelstor.com. Masdar has signed an agreement to acquire a 50 percent stake in Terra-Gen power holdings from Energy Capital Partners, who will exit its position. Terra-Gen operates approximately 2. 4 gigawatts of wind and solar and 5. 1 gigawatts of energy storage facilities across 32 countries. U. S. sites, mainly in California and Texas, the transaction is expected to close by the end of 2024, while Igneo infrastructure partners will retain its existing 50 percent stake in the company. So Phil, this is crazy because Mazdar is making big plays in Europe and now the United States. This is an impressive investment. Philip Totaro: Yeah. And we've talked in recent episodes about the fact that Masdar has been making moves back at COP 28, they had publicly announced they were going to spend something like a hundred billion dollars in the next, five or 10 years or something on projects. And I think it was like 42 different countries. This one's interesting because of the energy storage play. Energy storage not only has huge growth prospects in the United States, but a company that is as financially focused as Mazdar is. They want to get in on energy storage projects because it gives them the opportunity to do hedging and energy trading. This is exploding globally. And certainly, if you're in ERCOT and you've got energy storage, you are making bank right now. And California as well. There's all kinds of markets where, you know, especially if you can time shift power delivery away from negative pricing, which, again, you see sometimes in ERCOT or in CAISO. This is this is a big opportunity for them. So I like this deal. Allen Hall: New article from Reuters discussing the valuation of RWE, and if you've been following RWE lately, it has dropped 25 percent this year, its stock price has as it tries to transition to more renewable power generation. CEO Markus Krebber faces three main challenges, according to the article, depressed electricity prices due to low gas prices, falling green, Valuations due to rising interest rates and the company's legacy assets in coal. And if you, and Joel if, We, I've been watching RWE the last several weeks, even though they're making massive investments in renewable energy, they don't seem to be getting any credit for it from the stock market. Joel Saxum: Yeah, it's interesting because we talk about RWE doing big things all the time, right? They're always making some moves. I'm over here, Bilbao, they had a big sign on their side of their booth, 65 gigawatts of clean generation by 2030 is a goal. That's massive, right? That's, those are huge numbers, 65 gigawatts. So to me, when you actually, you brought this up and said, yeah, actually RWE stock price is not doing that well. That was very surprising to me.

1s

Mar 25

Allen and Joel interview Tone Søndergaard, Director of the Offshore Wind Innovation Hub. The hub's six-month accelerator program provides mentorship, industry connections, and resources to help startups scale. Tone shares insights from the first cohort's outcomes and discusses the global application process for cohort two. If you're interested in learning more, visit https://www.offshorewindnyc.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! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Alan Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxam. Starting a new business in the wind industry is particularly difficult. Uh, there are multiple challenges beyond creating a product that the industry needs or wants. Fundraising, staffing, finding an office, technology development, marketing, international sales, the list goes on. Well, there is help on the way. The Offshore Wind Innovation Hub, located in Brooklyn, New York, is a groundbreaking initiative launched by the NYU Tandon School of Engineering in collaboration with Ecuador, and supported by the New York City Economic Development Corporation. The hub's mission is to accelerate the growth of the offshore wind industry by supporting startups developing cutting edge technologies, by providing access to mentorship, industry connections, and resources to scale up. The hub aims to position New York City as a major player in the rapidly growing Offshore wind sector. Leading this ambitious initiative is Tone Sundegaard, uh, the director of the Offshore Wind Innovation Hub. With a background deeply rooted in the Danish wind industry and expensive experience fostering clean tech collaboration between Denmark and the United States, Tone brings a wealth of expertise and passion to her role in shaping the future of offshore wind innovation in New York City and beyond. Tona, welcome to the program. Tone Søndergaard: Thank you so much. Allen Hall: So there is a lot to talk about today, uh, because Hey, we know a lot of small businesses in wind that are trying to get established. We are one of them Uh, and and uh your offshore wind innovation hub Popped up on our radar screen recently, like, Oh, Hey, there's a lot going on there that we didn't know about. And let's get some, get them on the podcast to talk about all the great activities that are happening there. But I want to first step back and talk about what are some of the problems with starting a small business in wind. Tone Søndergaard: I think one of the reasons we really started this innovation hub and found that there was a need for an accelerator program and ecosystem development for the smaller businesses within offshore wind was partly twofold in a way. The first reason really being that we found that smaller businesses, especially within offshore wind, were challenged by what we call information asymmetry, and it was really difficult for many of the smaller businesses who wanted to either move into offshore wind or pivot into offshore wind from other industries to figure out Precisely what is my value proposition? Precisely when in the supply chain do I fit in? Um, and data in this industry tends to be fairly privileged and sort of like held by some of the really major corporations. Um, so that was really one of the problems that we wanted to try and solve with Innovation Hub was to try and give smaller players access to some of this infor...

19m

Mar 21

Allen Hall interviews Nicolai Johansen and Jesper Dal Hasager at DTU's brand new R&D Rain Erosion Facility for testing leading edge erosion on wind turbine blades. They discuss the unique features and capabilities that make this one of the most sophisticated erosion testing rigs in the world. Visit https://wind.dtu.dk/facilities/leading-edge-erosion-test-facility for more info! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, and I am in Roskilde, Denmark, with the folks from DTU and R&D Test Systems, because we have a brand new rain erosion facility. And I've just been attending the 5th Symposium on Leading Edge Erosion this week, and there's been a tremendous amount of new technical knowledge and test results and computational efforts going on across the world. And it's time to talk about the real issues. rubber hit the road part, which is the rain erosion testing. And I have here today, Nicolai Johansen with DTU the Risø campus, which is the wind energy and energy system. Energy systems department. Yes, we just had a magnificent tour of the facility, and there's some amazing pieces here. I didn't realize what kind of technology DTU has. It's astounding. It's quite nice. It's better than anything I've seen in the United States. You should be proud of it. It's really nice. And this is one of those new facilities that has been built by Jesper Dal Hasager, who is with R&D Test Systems. So welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Thank you. This is impressive. So I, we have talked to R&D Test Systems in the past about a lot of different things, one of them, rain erosion test facilities, that this is a kind of a standard thing that R&D Test Systems does. because there's such a big demand for it. Jesper Dal Hasager: Exactly. Allen Hall: And I haven't seen this up close, but seeing it up here now, this is amazing. This is a really nice setup. Thought out. And this setup is the most advanced one in the world at the moment. Exactly. So you want to describe what makes this the most advanced main erosion test facility? Jesper Dal Hasager: Yeah, first of all the test chamber is larger than normal. One belt. It's we normally either we deliver the system within two containers. Allen Hall: Okay. Jesper Dal Hasager: Two 20 feet containers, high cube containers. Or we can deliver it into a building so we can integrate it in a customer building Sure. Solution if they want to have a building instead of this modular. But then we have thought of a lot of these containers. It's not, that's nice to look at this container, but still a building is very expensive for It's yes. For our customer to build themselves. Sure. So we designed a middle way in this one. Where we have this steel structure that we have welded in our workshop in Hinderup and, yeah. And then we have mounted these sandwich panels with 80 millimeters insulation. Allen Hall: Yes, it's quite warm in here. Yeah, exactly. It feels good. It's because it's cold outside. Jesper Dal Hasager: Yeah, exactly. So that should both cope for the temperature and for sound dampening. Yes. Because it's a very loud machine when it's beginning to turn around. Allen Hall: That's very smart design because I think a lot of people wouldn't think about those design details of just the day to day operation.

35m

Mar 20

This week we cover GE Vernova's offshore wind backlog and plans for growth, the challenges Australia faces in streamlining wind farm approvals, a new fiber optic sensing technology for monitoring gearboxes from Sensing360, and NextEra's plans to build a renewable hydrogen-based fertilizer plant in North Dakota. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Rosemary, have you been to Dubai? And all your world travels. Rosemary Barnes: I stop off there every time that I go to Europe or half the time I go to Europe. Allen Hall: You're an adventure seeker, right? You're one of those ride the skateboard, be on the bike, go down the mountain, surfboard kind of people? Have you seen this new jet suit racing league that they've developed in Dubai? I don't know if you saw this on Instagram but they've got those, these jet packs. You see where you put one on each hand and there's one on your back? And, but they make it and fly around like Iron Man does, but they've created a racing league with this thing and it was just fascinating to watch. I thought, oh, Rosemary would be interested in that. She wouldn't be afraid of that at all. But Joel, I didn't realize there's, those things are 1500 horsepower. So I did a quick look on the Corvette website today to see what the latest Corvette engine is. Joel Saxum: 670. Allen Hall: Is it 670? It's a roughly 500. Joel Saxum: The 670 is the LT5. Come on, I got this. 670 horse, 495 foot pounds of torque. Allen Hall: So you essentially have three Corvette engines attached to your body. And that is propelling you. Ah, now we're talking. So if you watch the race, you got to watch this race because it is really interesting because everybody's really good. It's tentative, and they had two participants collide and not fall out of the sky, surprisingly. And one of the participants lost direction a little bit, and they do it over water. So when you if you're going to fall out of the sky, you're not going to get hurt. So this one racer fell into the water, and I thought, oh, there you go. It's like the perfect Rosemary sport, right? It's speed, it's danger, it's above water. It's got all the elements. This is insane. Rosemary Barnes: You're missing one element. My, my sports are all human powered and it's not. Joel Saxum: Zero fossil fuels in Rosemary sports. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I am. I am waiting for the day. I actually, I'm going to be going to Switzerland soon for a ski trip. And I usually I like to do that people powered as well. Like I hike up the hill and and ski down in the back country and cross country ski. That's my favorite things. But I would love to go heli skiing just for the, amount of extra terrain that you can cover in a day. And I did look and see, is there an electric helicopter that you can do heli skiing with in Switzerland yet? And the closest that there is a helicopter that's 50% SAF, so 50 percent sustainable aviation fuel, and then the other 50 percent they offset. But there aren't really any offsets around today that truly do. Eliminate the point of your the damage of your emissions. So I won't do it on this trip. I don't think also probably it sounds pretty expensive, but I am desperately waiting for the day when I can do electric heli skiing. Philip Totaro: Rosemary and I are going to get into electric scooter racing then, because you can recharge your electric scooter from renewable s...

41m

Mar 19

Allen Hall, Philip Totaro, and Joel Saxum dive into the potential sale of VSB Group, Hydro Rein's acquisition of a massive wind portfolio, and Iberdrola increasing its stake in Avangrid. They also analyze Macquarie Capital's purchase of wind analytics firm ONYX Insight, providing expert insights on these pivotal moves shaping the clean energy industry. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I'm here with the founder and CEO oIntelStor,r, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum. And this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you need actionable information about renewable projects or technologies, check out IntelStor at intelstor.com. Partners Group, a Swiss private equity firm, is exploring options including a potential sale for German renewable energy company VSB Group. The sale process could begin in the second quarter of VSB's valuation estimated between 3. One and two billion dollars, including debt. If the sale proceeds, VSB is expected to attract interest from infrastructure funds and utilities. The possible sale comes amid a drop in renewable asset values, although interest in the sector remains high, obviously, in the European Union and aims for about 42 percent of the block's energy in renewables by 2030. Phil, this is another sale, possible sale, in the billions of dollars. These numbers are huge. Renewable energy, although there's been a lot of pundits about renewable energy, it is still worth a lot of value. Philip Totaro: Indeed. And this is continuing to move along the same trend that we've seen recently in the industry, where you've got a lot of infrastructure funds now loading up on renewable energy asset owners, operators, developers, et cetera because they want to be able to have somebody with experience in the space. So it's certainly, a better strategy for them than, just developing greenfield projects themselves or partnering with somebody else to do that. And to be honest, a lot of the asset developers want to be able to sell off whatever chunk of a project they might still own by the time it's commissioned because they want the capital to be able to redeploy in building new greenfield projects. So you know, eventually you're going to start seeing more and more just like you do in other industries. And we've been talking about this on Newsflash. Joel's mentioned it numerous times about how. Infrastructure funds are just getting really, warmed up and excited about piling into these type of asset owners. Allen Hall: Hydro Rein, a Norwegian renewable energy company, has reached an agreement with Swedish developer IOWN Energy to acquire 80 percent stake in a 2. 4 gigawatt portfolio of wind power projects under development in Sweden and Norway. The portfolio comprises 23 projects in Sweden and two in Norway, all of which are in the early stages of development. Hydro Rein and IOWN will collaborate to advance these projects, engaging with local stakeholders and aiming to make their initial investments before 2030. Sweden and Norway active in renewables right now, a lot more than I thought they would be at this point. So they are stepping on the accelerator pedal again. Philip Totaro: Yeah, and this one's interesting because, Hydro Rein is obviously a utility company that has a lot of renewable assets alre...

10m

Mar 18

Allen and Joel speak to Michelle Bonnett from FibreGlast and Marvin Hirdler from Bergolin about their new UV-cured resin systems for repairing wind turbine blades. These UV resins allow for faster repairs in cold weather conditions when standard epoxy resins cannot cure properly. They're a game-changer for extending the wind turbine blade repair season and increasing technician productivity. Visit FibreGlast and Bergolin! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, and I'm here with my co host, Joel Saxum. We're still in San Diego at ACP OM& S, and we have run into a bunch of new technology while we've been at the show, and one of them is UV cured resin systems, because when it's cold outside, You really can't use standard epoxies and it's cold in most of America and the world right now. Yeah. So all repair businesses essentially shut down until it gets to about 50 degrees Fahrenheit which could be a while, particularly in the Northern latitudes. So we run into Marvin Hirdler with Bergolin and Bergolin has a new product in the UV space and also Michelle Bonnett with FibreGlast. And I have worked with, I've purchased some FibreGlast material, UV care material. And it's really awesome, actually for some projects that we were working on. This, I really want to just touch on the UV space because there hasn't been a lot of UV resin applications in wind. We had touched From aerospace background. We have used it there but in the wind world, we haven't, which is crazy because we our season is so short, the repair season's crazy. Sure. And you're up tower and yeah, tower and access is tough. It's really hard. But these new UV resin systems are magical. It's crazy good. And as, as a, as someone who's tried it, it's amazing. It's amazing, and I'm surprised we haven't done this years earlier, but it's, it's finally coming to market. I want to talk about this, the one I use first, which is the FibreGlast repair patch. So Michelle, maybe you can introduce yourself a little bit, but you guys, FibreGlast is based in Ohio, right? So you're a U. S. based company, and FibreGlast does all kinds of things, fiber related, resin related, you're like a resource. Michelle Bonnett: Yes. Correct. Where we've been in business for about 65 years where our website is fibreglast.com. We sell to a guy in his garage doing a small repair to a lot of large companies in the aerospace automotive. And of course wind. We Work predominantly with small quantities. We ship them very fast. If you order before two 30 Eastern time, they ship same day. So it is imperative in the wind industry to get those products out quick. We teamed up with a company called SunRes that has been an industry leader in UV for about correct me if I'm wrong, but around 30 years. And recently got GE approved UV prepreg. So it's a 300 by 700 millimeter patch. It comes in UD1000, Biax 806, and the Combi 900. It is a vinyl ester resin. That is cured UV. You can typically lay up about 10 layers. Very easy patches that you can build very quickly, get it up to the blade and apply. Joel Saxum: One of the things I want to touch on that you said there, and this is super important for the space, right? Anybody that's an ISP, blade repair, that's listing, or an asset owner, is that it is GE approved. Yes. Because I know we were at Blades USA,

21m

Mar 14

Joel Saxum spoke to Alfred Crabtree from the Blade Repair Academy at Blades USA in Austin, TX. They discussed the challenges faced by blade repair technicians, including the physically demanding nature of the job, frequent travel, and high attrition rates. Crabtree also talks about the Blade Repair Academy's mission to provide training and vetting for blade repair technicians, and initiatives to create a dedicated occupation and apprenticeship program for this field. Visit https://www.bladerepairacademy.com/home. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Joel Saxum: All right guys we're back here at Blades got Alfred Crabtree here from the Blade Repair Academy. Alfred's big mission with the Blade Repair Academy is bringing new net capacity to the wind industry, right? We need more composite technicians. We need more composite technicians, that's right. For sure. We're at Blades here. Alfred presented yesterday and this is one of my highlights from the conference, not because you're sitting next to me and I'm saying this. Thank you. But just in general because we have had like we said, a lot of Subject matter experts, a lot of the, I'm in charge of all the blades for this fleet and that fleet discussions around inspection. What should you do with your blades when they come out of the manufacturing facilities? DNV talking about certain things a lot of really good high level engineering stuff. Yes. But yesterday, Alfred brought A human element to the discussion. That's right. So I'm, I say this right here, so it's recorded and everybody knows that I've never repelled downwind. That's not my, where I've come into this sector. You have many times. So Alfred's presentation yesterday was a fantastic video in the background as he spoke over it of himself, basically getting ready to drop over the hub and to send down a blade to do some work and all of the things that go into that. While you were speaking about what's really happening with the technicians in the field. That was the diversion. That was the thing that was different than everybody else. Everybody's talking about high level engineering. This is what we do. You brought the human element. You said, this is what's going on with the techs in the field. This is how long they're away from their families. This is the life cycle of a person in the field. This is how long they last. This is how we're losing good capacity. That's right. So you're bringing different story to this environment that was built. From what I talked to a lot of other people as well very well received. Alfred Crabtree: Yeah. I've got a lot of good feedback and the human element is really integral to all these initiatives and ideas. We saw a lot of science, we saw a lot of data, which is great. And a lot of business and all of that hinges upon two hands that can execute grinds with the grinder. And so that was, the focus of my talk was to bring that back into the conversation about how we deal with these problems we're facing. Joel Saxum: So we know we have a shortage of technicians, From the general wind technician to the specific people that worry about different problems. Hey, we're talking blades here, right? We know we have that shortage. Can you talk to us a little bit about that life cycle of that person in the industry? Alfred Crabtree: Sure, sure. On average the life cycle of a blade repair technician is about five years.

23m

Mar 13

In this episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, we discuss the Philadelphia Phillies' decision to replace their dollar dog night with a two-for-one deal, the latest developments in Equinor's Empire Wind One and Ørsted's Sunrise Wind projects in New York and the efficiency of HeliService's transportation to offshore turbines. Alberta's ban on renewable power projects on prime agricultural land is slowing renewable growth in Canada while the financial struggles of Sweden's wind power industry are confounding. Avangrid is building a brand new wind and solar technician training center in Oregon to grow their technician base. Plus, Santa Rita East is our Wind Farm of the Week!. Join us as we explore these topics and more, diving into the challenges and opportunities facing the wind energy sector. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: So there's a big change in Philadelphia, guys. The Philadelphia Phillies are dropping their dollar dog night. I know, and I know you're all heartbroken by this, but they've had some recent outbursts at these games. So when you can buy a hot dog for a dollar, like hot dog is only a dollar. They tend to buy a couple extra hot dogs and start slinging them one another in the stands. Joel Saxum: That's Philadelphia. Stay out of Philadelphia sports games. Allen Hall: But they're not getting rid of it altogether. They're just getting rid of the dollar dog night. Now they're doing a two for one deal. So now the Phillies are going to make money while they sling these hot dogs at one another. And so they're trying to increase profits without really changing the outcome. I don't think. And as we get closer to baseball season and spring training is going on right now in Arizona and down in Florida there's a really odd set of changes happening this year, and this is one of them. It's Phil, you remember Disco Demolition Night in Chicago way back when with a, Try to burn all those disco records. And it went haywire. Those were the days. And for some of these marketing ideas never die, right? Philip Totaro: It was in 1978. I wasn't born yet. Allen Hall: Was Rick James, right? We neighbor at that point? Philip Totaro: Yes. Yes, he was. Joel Saxum: Those were his records. Allen Hall: Yeah. That was probably some of Rick James's records and that disco demolition night. But baseball has been notorious for having these wild promotions that end up to some sort of catastrophic outcome. But it's like. The bats, wasn't it the bats at the Mets game or the New York Yankees game? They handed out those small bats and everybody started beating each other up with them. Yeah. It's almost like the hooliganism and the quote unquote soccer matches or football matches that used to happen in the UK all the time. Philip Totaro: Oh, it still happens. Allen Hall: A little bit, but not nearly as much. But in the meantime, baseball tends to be one of the more rowdy sports. It's and Philadelphia has been one of the more energetic fan bases, I'll call it for a while. Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia used to have, the football stadium used to have a jail on the bottom of it for rowdy Eagles fans. Joel Saxum: The worst sporting event I've ever been to. A Eagles game in Philadelphia. It was horrible. People were throwing snowballs at us and like pouring beers on us and stuff. I was like, what is wrong with you people?

1s

Mar 12

Masdar acquires stake in Dogger Bank South wind farm, Statkraft invests in Norwegian renewables, Siemens Energy secures credit line to support wind turbine subsidiary. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech. And I'm here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum. And this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you need actionable information about renewable projects or technologies, check out IntelStor at intelstor.com. Masdar, an Abu Dhabi based renewable energy company, has completed its acquisition of a 49 percent stake in the 3 gigawatt Dogger Bank South offshore wind project in the UK. The project, located more than 100 kilometers off the northeastern coast of England, will be one of the world's largest offshore wind farms. Masdar and RWE signed an agreement to collaborate the 11 billion pound project at COP 28 in the UAE last December, that the two companies will work together to develop and operate the wind farm with construction potentially starting at the end of 2025. The first 800 megawatts of electricity are expected to come online in 2029 with full commissioning by the end of 2031. Now, Phil, this is becoming more routine. where the large operators like RWE are selling off a significant portion, almost 50 percent of these projects to raise revenue for the next project. Masdar, on the other hand, seems to be becoming very aggressive in the renewable space. Philip Totaro: Yes, and actually what was interesting is you mentioned that this was announced back at COP28. One of the things that we never got a chance to talk about on the show before Is the fact that Masdar at that time announced something like close to a hundred billion dollars worth of investment that they were going to be making in, multiple projects in, I, I want to say something like 21 different countries including, far flung places like Uzbekistan and wherever, but this is part of a deliberate strategy on their part to start putting more money behind renewable projects because they're seeing returns that are good enough, especially on, an RWE built and operated project. This is the sort of thing that good operators can do is they can attract capital to come in and help them, provide that mechanism to invest in new greenfield or repowering projects. So it's a great business model. And again the clever operators and the operators who have a robust and healthy portfolio projects, they are the ones that are able to attract that investment. Joel Saxum: Yeah. Masdar, it's a good move. And in my opinion, you start to see, like we've been talking a lot of this big infrastructure, big money investing in infrastructure, specifically energy infrastructure, a lot different than some of that other Middle Eastern big money spent like Saudi Arabia, buying golf leagues, building cities and things like that in the desert. But Masdar they are in, even in the United States onshore, they own parts of four different wind farms all of them in Texas. So they're spreading their money around, Globally. Allen Hall: Statkraft, the Norwegian state owned energy company, plans to invest up to 6. 3 billion in Norwegian hydro and wind power projects. The company's annual report for 2023 showed a decrease in revenue and profits compared to t...

8m

Mar 11

Allen and Joel discuss power curve testing with John Bosche, co-founder of ArcVera Renewables and member of the IEC technical committee that sets the global 61400-12-1 standard. He breaks down the nitty-gritty details and complex requirements for accurately measuring a wind turbine's all-important power performance. Visit https://www.arcvera.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! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with co host, Joel Saxum. A wind turbine's power curve is key to a revenue generating wind farm. We have not discussed power curve measurements on the podcast before, even though we do. Run across them all the time. And we thought it was due time to bring in an expert. And our guest today is John Bosch, co founder and president of ArcVera Renewables, who represents the U S and as an expert on the IEC tech committee, which maintains the IEC 61400 12 1 standard for power performance testing, John also participates on the IEC. Tech advisory group that votes on us positions regarding all standards and John has spent a long career in the wind industry. He's worked in wind since 1990 and. Back in 2001, he founded Chinook Wind up in Washington State, and Chinook merged with VBAR Greg Poulos, in 2017 to form ArcVera Renewables that everybody knows. John, welcome to the program. John Bosche: Hey, thanks, Allen. Thanks, Joel. It's good to be here with you today. Allen Hall: So we're trying to understand the power curve. So we talk about it all the time, but we've never been involved in a measurement of it. And I know when we travel around and go visit wind sites, everybody just assumes that, Oh, a power curve is this, and there's a plot and we get it from GE or Vestas, whoever we get it from. And here's this magical thing. And all our lives depend on it and that the wind turbines are producing this amount of power with that amount of wind. But how is, I would like to learn, like, how is that created and how is that validated? Because those are two things I just don't understand yet. John Bosche: The power curve in some ways really is the most important part of the power curve. It's what at ArcVera, we say the arc in arc vera is connecting the meteorology part, which is what Greg does to the the power curve, which turns that meteorology into energy. And and I, not just the power curve, but the machinery in general, so the power curve really is that important bridge of, converting the wind into. Into energy. It edits. At its heart, it's a very simple concept. At a given wind speed, there's a certain amount of power you expect and, at different, at the next higher wind speed, it's a little more power and up until you hit rated power. It's, you could say it's equivalent to the EPA mileage when you buy a car you expect it's going to get whatever 36 miles to the gallon or something. And of course then your mileage may vary and there's never a guarantee or a warranty on the mileage with the car. With wind turbines, you do get a warranty from the turbine vendor. They guarantee the power curve. But in order to enforce that guarantee, you have to actually go measure the power curve. If you don't measure it, then it's just deemed that the wind turbine meets that power curve. And if you're disappointed later down the road, five years or something.

28m

Mar 07

Nick Martocci, founder of Tower Training Academy and former Marine, joins the podcast to discuss his program that provides comprehensive wind turbine technician training with career development support and job placement assistance. With an accredited apprenticeship program approved by the Department of Labor, Tower Training Academy is well-positioned to help meet the growing demand for skilled technicians in the wind energy industry. Visit https://towertrainingacademy.com/ for more info! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, and I'm here with the Chief Commercial Officer at Weather Guard, Joel Saxum. We're in San Diego at ACP OM&S. We have a special guest, Nick Martocci of Tower Training Academy. Nick is a former Marine and he has a training facility in Las Vegas, Nevada. Which Joel and I didn't know about, and we just met you on the floor. And this sounds tremendous, because we've been trying to do more outreach to potential technicians, and give them outlets of where to go to become a technician, because every operator in the United States needs people, and they need educated people that are ready to go to work, and we're just trying to elevate. All these training facilities yours being one of them. So Nick, welcome to the podcast. Nick Martocci: Thanks for having me. Yep I know there's probably some other Marines in there Just wanted to make sure to make the correction once a Marine always a Marine. So He's a former or prior Marine. I started out in the Marine Corps and then I finished up my career in the Army National Guard as a CH 47 pilot and then as I was making that transition out of the military like a lot of veterans do, I Yeah. Was playing, Hey, what do I want to be when I grow up? A situation. Yeah. And so I tried a lot of different things. One of the things we naturally gravitate to is obviously security and Sure. Things of that nature. And when I found out, that's just not where I wanted to be I sprawled out and said, Hey, let me find something else. And when I eventually found the wind industry, I absolutely just fell in love. Fell in love with the opportunities, the welcoming and familiarity, if you will, of the military as it is. And I just absolutely fell in love. And so that's why, later on, after I did a lot of different things in the field blade repair, torque contention operations, things of that nature eventually became an instructor and built my own program for GWO, because I knew What individuals were really needing from the certification side, especially having been out in the field and then knowing what the technicians really need to be ready for. Seeing those gaps. Absolutely. And that's why for Tower Training Academy, our motto is not just ready for today, but we're prepared for tomorrow. And so I want to make sure when I built my program, that technicians that are going to be coming out of the field and out of my, or into the field out of my program, Would be ready for today and prepared for everything tomorrow because there's a lot of booming changes that are going to be going on in the wind industry. One of the comparisons I make with the wind turbine industry is very similar to the computer industry. When you buy a laptop, a few days later, it's out of date, because the technology is constantly changing.

18m

Mar 06

This week we explore drone inspection certification stirring up Europe and the spin-off of Bladerobots from Vestas. Plus U.S. vs. Australian power trends, wind farms' community impact, and the potential of AI. And, could single blade turbines solve lightning issues? Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Rosemary, I don't know if you have pancakes down in Australia, but in America, it is a big deal. And do you have Eggo's? Do you know what an Eggo is? An Eggo waffle or an Eggo pancake? Is that a thing? Go to the grocery store or the market, whatever you call it in Australia, and you get a frozen waffle or frozen pancake? Is that a thing? Rosemary Barnes: Why would you do that? What? Pancake batter takes about five seconds to throw together from stuff that you've definitely got in your pantry and fridge. Allen Hall: That's too long, Rosemary. You have not visited Rosemary Barnes: America lately. I'm gonna guess it's full of high fructose corn syrup and other such ridiculousness. Allen Hall: No. The high fructose corn syrup is poured on it in the form of syrup. See. Eggo is a big brand name in the United States for making frozen waffles. Let go of my eggo. Commercials that have been around forever and also pancakes, but for national pancake day, and this is brilliant, this is a brilliant piece of marketing, Eggo built a pancake shaped house in Tennessee to rent out for national pancake day. The Eggo House of Pancakes is decorated like a stack of pancakes down to a butter chimney. It has pancake beds, bean bags, syrup fountains, and is stocked with frozen Eggo pancakes. Now, this one single house is in Gatlinburg Tennessee, which is the pancake capital of the South, and you can book a three night stay there in March. And I'm looking into this. I'm seriously looking into this. It's part of Eggo's National Pancake Day. How about that, Rosemary? Rosemary Barnes: Is it like Shrove, is it Shrove Tuesday? Is that? Joel Saxum: No, that's what the high fructose corn syrup's for. Allen Hall: You should see this thing. It's actually quite impressive. They did a good job with it. It's like the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. You can't miss this thing. Look at Rosemary, I think she got red. Why are you turning red? Philip Totaro: I'm with her. I don't know. I don't get it. Allen Hall: It's like the Mr. Peanutmobile. It's the same sort of thing. Joel, we gotta come up with something like this for StrikeTape. Joel Saxum: We can do that. I can do that. Rosemary Barnes: They obviously do have great branding because, like pancakes cost about 20 cents worth of ingredients. There's like nothing to them. And they've managed to sell them pre made in a box. That's bizarre to me. Allen Hall: They are delicious. Joel Saxum: USA . Rosemary Barnes: Can't get on board. Sorry. No culture clash. Joel Saxum: The second chin, that's Eggo waffles. Rosemary Barnes: Now there's a commercial. Joel Saxum: I work in the wind industry. You know how I make sure the wind doesn't blow me away every morning? I eat Eggo waffles. Allen Hall: U. S. electricity generation dipped by roughly 1 percent in 2023 from its record high in 2022. So from roughly 2007 to 2023, generation was only up about 2. 3%, which seems odd based on population growth and things that are happening in the United States. So it's this report that we're seeing pop around different places about el...

1s

Mar 05

Iberdrola sells of part of its Mexican business and plans to reinvest in renewables. ENGIE North America completes tax equity financing to fund U.S. solar and wind projects. Aquila and Octopus are in talks regarding a potential merger. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I'm here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum. And this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you need actionable information about renewable projects or technologies, check out IntelStor at intelstor.com. Iberdrola closed the sale of 55 percent of its Mexican business for around 6. 2 billion to a trust led by Mexico infrastructure partners. The deal includes 13 power plants with 8. 5 gigawatt capacity that are mostly gas plants contracted to Mexico CFE utility. Iberdrola retains 15 plants in Mexico and its Renewable Energy Project pipeline to keep growing wind and solar assets there. Joel, Iberdrola is banking it right now. What's happening? Joel Saxum: I think that there's a lot of development that is going to be going on in Mexico here to watch in the future as well. The president is going to be swapped over here pretty soon. This is the things that I've been watching and hearing and listening. The new president is actually very fond of renewable energy. However, it is a, you're, you got to keep Pemex happy. You got to keep everybody happy. The oil and gas business in Mexico is very big, but there is going to be more investment there. So interesting that Iberdrola is selling those assets. I don't know if their plans are to reinvest all of that capital back in Mexico. But they are keeping their pipeline going. So I would expect to see some of that happen as well. Philip Totaro: Iberdrola has been not only banking in Mexico, but they've also been raising a lot of cash and capital in other markets. They've been heavily looking into some of the emerging markets for offshore investments. Obviously Mexico's offshore market is non existent at this point and probably isn't gonna isn't going to turn into one. However, yeah, I the Mexican market, Joel, you're right, it's been particularly bad, actually, under the current president, and everybody's just counting down the days until I, there have been study after study that's been recently released about, like, how. Renewables has been completely trashed in that market. But I think Iberdrola's move is a good one, and I think them holding onto that cash to potentially redeploy in project development in Mexico will be a good idea. Mexico's a bit of a tough market because there's, some folks in, in certain areas that don't really they didn't get a good feeling from some of the project developers that were there previously. But it is a market that does need to decarbonize quite a bit. And, is obviously going to be able to get in there and do a lot with the pipeline that they have. Allen Hall: Iberdrola reported a 10 percent increase in 2023 net profits to 4. 8 billion euros. They set a new investment record in 23 also of 11. 4 billion euros with grid and offshore wind as the main drivers. Over 5 billion euros was invested in renewables like offshore wind farms, now operating in France and the United States ROA plans a 2024 investment record of 12 billion euros,...

9m

Mar 04

Allen Hall, Nicholas Gaudern, and Rodolfo Meleiro discuss leading edge erosion at the International Symposium on Leading Edge Erosion in Denmark, focusing on the current state of the problem, solutions, testing methods, and key takeaways from the conference. PowerCurve: https://powercurve.dk/ Arthwind: https://www.linkedin.com/company/arth-wind-services&consulting/ Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. And we are in Roskilde, Denmark at the 5th International Symposium on Leading Edge Erosion and Wind Turbine Blades. And I'm here with Nicholas Gaudern of PowerCurve and Rodolfo Meleiro of Arthwind. So we have a world perspective here on leading edge erosion. We have Europe. Brazil, which is a lot of wind energy there. Thank you for being here and I'll try to cover the America as best I can. So this has been a really interesting conference. It's held at DTU which is, this is a wind energy center. So this conference has been organized and it has international flavor to it. We saw presentations from India, Denmark, obviously there were German. Yeah. Presentations, Japan, China u. S. Sandia has been here. So there's a paper from Cornell today. So there's been all sorts of people worried about leading edge erosion. And I think it's a really hot topic. And that's the reason why I came to, to see the action here, because there's. So much that we don't know. And I figured if anybody does know it's a DTU, so it's time to get over there and to find out what's going on. So this whole podcast is really to discuss what we have seen and heard and try to figure out what the state of the industry is and where it needs to go. And just first impressions, really One of my first impressions, I'll just start. One of my first impressions was we have a long way to go. Yes, that we don't know a lot. Yeah, and I wish I had been shocked so far So we're at the end of day two and day one was pretty intensive on this or the mathematical Computational side. Nicholas Gaudern: We don't know a lot. We've had a lot more materials as well today So I think it's nice that we have that really cross disciplinary approach here. So we've got materials. We've got structures. We've got data We've got metrology, meteorology, aerodynamics So it is bringing all of these expert field together which I think is really important. There's also the risk that there's a lot of noise, because obviously there's issues to be resolved in all of these different fields. And then, it may make it a little bit harder to focus on what really matters I think. Allen Hall: There's a lot of data smoothing that's happening at the minute, from what I can tell, and different approaches to data smoothing, and I'm not even sure. Everybody has settled on that. Nicholas Gaudern: No, and I think we had like a discussion at the end of the day yesterday, like a shouting across the lecture theatre kind of discussion at the end of the sessions. And I think what was clear is there is more of a consensus about the AEP losses that we're seeing, which is important. And that's really helpful because I think if you start seeing big scary numbers 15, losses, sure, those might exist in a very extreme scenario on a very particular type of turbine, but I really want to make the point here that is not the norm at all. We wouldn't have an industry if 20 percent AEP eve...

50m

Feb 29

Allen and Joel sat down with Will Friedl, CEO of Prometheus Wind, and Kevin Doffing with the Veterans Advanced Energy Project, both veterans working in wind, to discuss how military skills transfer to the renewables industry and tips for veterans and companies to connect. Check out Prometheus Wind: https://www.linkedin.com/company/prometheus-wind/ Reach out to Kevin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevindoffing/ Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, and I'm here with my co host, Joel Saxun. We're in San Diego at ACP OMS, and it's a really big show, and we've run across a number of people that we recognize this week. And I thought we ought to sit down and talk to Everyone to get them on the podcast. So we have two guests today. We have Will Friedl who is CEO of Prometheus Wind is based in Colorado. And we also have Kevin Doffing. He's with the veterans advanced energy project, which is also part of the Atlantic council, global energy center. Got it. Got it. Got it. That was one take. So welcome to the podcast. Thanks. So we're here because we're talking veterans, and getting veterans into the wind industry, which is an initiative of American Clean Power, obviously. But we feel like we need to get more veterans involved. And Will, obviously, being an Air Force veteran out of the Air Force Academy, and now running his own successful wind business He's the case study. He is exactly the case study. We wanted to highlight this because we want to make sure that everybody that is a veteran knows that there's resources out there to get into WIND. And Kevin, do you want to talk about what's out there right now and the resources that are there and what your organization does? Kevin Doffing: Sure. So our organization, the Veterans Advanced Energy Project, falls under the Atlanta Council. Which is a nonpartisan think tank based out of DC. So if you're inside the loop of DC you know what that is. It's a, one of the most respected think tanks inside of DC producing a lot of really great thought leadership that influences policy and decision making. If you're not inside the beltway, which I am not, I'm from Texas. I had no idea what that meant. So I was like, this sounds cool. You have veterans. It sounds like renewables. I think I'm in your wheelhouse. So the program was really started to build up the leadership within the industry. It was started through a gentleman named Dan Mish, who was at the time at Argonne National Labs and moved over to Invenergy. So Invenergy has been a long time core sponsor of the program, has hosted multiple summits and we host an annual fellowship bringing these leaders together like Will, who's in our current cohort. And we have an annual summit. So it's all about building up the thought leadership around veterans in this space. Joel Saxum: And I think one of the things to touch on here, if you're not familiar, you don't have any family members, friends, or anything in the military is a big fraternity, right? So if you have people that Will, I'm sure you have tons of friends from the military and contacts. Will Friedl: Yeah, absolutely. It was one of the first things that I started out in this company, I came directly from the military into the CEO position for my company. And so I had zero contacts, zero knowledge, zero anything. And it's really hard to break in.

32m

Feb 28

Recap of ACP OM&S, Siemens Energy Annual Shareholder Meeting and Siemens Gamesa's persisting 4X/5X turbine sales halt, and underperformance of Engie's Nordex turbines. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: So Joel, after the ACP OM&S event, we went to the San Diego Safari, which is this massive zoo out in the hills of California, just north of San Diego. That was really impressive. And the one thing they have there, you can't see anywhere else in the world besides Australia, is platypus. Evidently Australia does not let platypus out of the country, except somebody must have snuck one out and brought it to San Diego. Joel Saxum: I saw the thread with you and Rosemary talking on Slack. Allen Hall: Did you know that platypus are venomous? Joel Saxum: I did not know that. That makes no sense to me. Allen Hall: And I thought that's crazy, right? But Rosemary said, yes they're venomous. And you stupid Americans should know that. And I thought isn't everything in Australia venomous? Obviously, but here's the thing, right? So when you get into the platypus area it's dark like night because they're active at night. And they have this pool there and you see these platypus swimming along. And in my head, I thought platypus was like the size of a beaver or a small dog. It's about the size of a squirrel. They're tiny. Joel Saxum: Oh, I thought, I legitimately thought it was like a river otter size, like animal. Allen Hall: I know, right? And maybe it's just because of that platypus cartoon, I just assumed that they were bigger. You ever seen that platypus cartoon? But I was just really thrown off by how small they were. I thought okay. It was worth seeing. Obviously, it was worth seeing. But the coolest thing we saw was elephants. So they had a really big area for elephants and they had a lot of elephants and they had put these hay bales way up high. So the elephants had to really, I don't know why you torture an elephant like this, but they had to reach really high to, with their trunks to reach up to grab the hay. And I, was sitting there with my son Adam, and I said, how those, they can't reach that high. He said, don't worry. So the elephants actually took these blocks and stacked them to make a step to get up to, to get up to the hay. So it was like, Watching animals use tools to get to the food. Wow, that was pretty cool. Joel Saxum: You can do that at a buffet in Texas. You don't have to go all the way to San Diego or that. Allen Hall: Alright, Phil, the Siemens Energy annual shareholder meeting was today. So when this podcast comes out which will be Tuesday that shareholder meeting was held on Monday early in America time. That was fascinating to watch. I haven't seen a shareholder meeting like that in the past, but it was all virtual. So you had a panel of the Siemens executive committee and the yeah all the important players are in one spot but everybody that was chiming in was remote from their home. It looked like there's a lot of problems going on with Siemens energy at the moment and it's all focused on Siemens Gamesa, right? So the, every part of Siemens energy seems to be making money. It is really solid. It's the Siemens Gamesa. Piece that's making the shareholders really upset. The approach from Siemens Energy today was we're going to provide a leash for Siemens Gamesa to straighten things out and if they can't turn it around in t...

41m

Feb 27

Amin Ahmadi of AP Renewables discusses how their new SCADAScope system uses data analytics to enable faster wind turbine troubleshooting and reduce downtime. Check out AP Renewables at https://aprenewables.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! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with co host Joel Saxum. Our guest is Amin Ahmadi technology lead with AP Renewables is based in Ontario, Canada, our friends up north. I was first introduced to AP Renewables because of their SLPS system, which is a grounding brush upgrade kit to reduce static and lightning issues in a bunch of Gamesa turbines. So it basically gets rid of the air gap on TikTok and LinkedIn from static electricity jumping inside the turbines. They also have a new product now called SCADAScope, which provides insights and diagnostics for Gamesa and a bunch of other turbines. So we're really interested to hear what Amin has going up in Canada. Amin, welcome to the program. Amin Ahmadi: Thank you. Allen Hall: Let's, let's talk about the lightning issue that the Gamesa turbines had and the little spark gap they built into that wind turbine and what it means to the SCADA system because it did cause a lot of problems. Amin Ahmadi: Yeah we started in fact as a consulting and we started noticing a similar problem coming up, different problems having these phantom noises and I don't have a lightning background like you do, but I saw the problem from. Random unexplainable electronic faults and escape on calm losses that could only be mapped over weather events and then you go back to building codes and other things like you got a lightning system. You got a ground that thing really good. And this particular design wasn't grounded really good. So we decided to take the we decided to solve a bunch of problems through a single common design, which was a brush that installs quickly and makes a lot of problems go away. And and what we liked about it was how very quickly you get a lot of gain. The return on investment was huge on it. And to be honest, I designed a very elaborate thing. I send it to a wind farm we work with. He's this is not installable. And my partner who has a design background, not engineering, he looked at it. It's this is bad. This is bad. And he made it into, so revision two took about 15 minutes to install a revision one, which I had instead design didn't get installed in three, three hours. So that's, that was how the team came together to really make these things work and work well. And work outside the paper, which sometimes is a great place to design things. Allen Hall: Yeah. So the design, what it does is it takes electricity, static electricity, or lightning from the blade to the hub without having a big spark gap. Because every time there was a discharge, a significant discharge in the, in the cellular array next to the electronics, it upset the electronics. It upset the SCADA system. And the turbines would Alarm, right? They would alarm and sometimes shut down for no apparent reason. Amin Ahmadi: Yeah, you basically charge up the blade as a capacitor and eventually you reach the air gap and you dump that surge of current and the grounding is disturbed enough that the electronics would just fault out for some random reason. Because, 200, 000 amps is going through the ground now.

22m

Feb 22

This week's episode covers Eversource exiting offshore wind, delays at Dogger Bank wind farm, honorees of the Queen Elizabeth engineering prize, and the return of Wind Farm of the Week featuring Kay Wind farm. Allen and Joel also look forward to attending ACP OMS in San Diego! Allen Hall: Joel, I think being in the podcast business is a lot easier than being in the AM radio business, clearly because down in Jasper, Alabama the station was alarmed by some guys taking care of the grounds. They had come out to, to mow and weed whack and whatever they're going to do. And. At the tower site. And when they got there, there was no tower. The tower was gone. I was left with a bunch of cables on the ground. And so the tower evidently was stolen. And the station manager at down there in Alabama doesn't have any leads. They can't figure out where this, all the equipment went to. And it wasn't like it was a little tiny. 20 foot tower. It's like a 200 foot tower. So talking about taking down a really big structure and somehow dragging it off into the woods and never to be found again. So there's a, that's a big problem. If the people are starting to steal your radio tower, you got Joel Saxum: issues. I just can't see what anybody would do with it. You're not going to cut it up and sell it for scrap. Like every If this is national news now, every scrapyard is going to know. First off, look, so what are you going to do with it is one, if, and if you reinstall it eh, we're going to install it so we can get TV from fricking Germany. I don't know. But if you're going to reinstall it, someone's going to see it. They're going to be like, there's the 200 foot tower. So I don't know, unless it's just a really extravagant prank that someone's pulling, I'm not sure what you're going to do with this tower. But kudos to the people that pulled it down. I don't know how you did that overnight. Allen Hall: They don't have any insurance coverage, because who would steal a tower, right? So now the station's in trouble because the FCC which license all the radio stations in the United States has pulled their license. So they had an FM station and an AM station, the AM station got stolen. The FM station evidently is still operational, but the FCC told them to turn it off. So now they're stuck. They gotta go buy a new tower. Those things are not cheap, by the way, so that's a big problem. And it just reminds me when you and I were been down in Oklahoma and Texas. That a lot of wind turbines now, thank goodness, are well locked up because there's a lot of vandals out there and some of these wind turbines are located in remote places that we make sure that all those things are closed and secure like we hope that they are because there's a lot of crazy stuff going on right now. Joel Saxum: So one last question, Allen, at what point in time do we just get rid of AM radio? Allen Hall: As soon as podcasts take over the world, that's when, or when you can listen to it on a podcast on AM radio, that's when you can do it. Joel Saxum: That's our next frontier, back to AM. Allen Hall: Back to AM, amen. Well, Joel, Eversource is pulling out of the offshore wind business here in the United States. Now, Eversource is a large electricity provider on the East Coast. They operate New England's largest energy system with about 4. 4 million electric natural gas and wind Water customers in sort of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and up in New Hampshire, so they cover Hartford, Connecticut and Boston, Massachusetts, two big metro areas because they published their financials for 2023 and they had booked a 1. 9 billion dollar impairment. For its offshore wind investments for last year, and evidently, as part of that, they decided to sell their 50 percent stake in South Fork Wind and Revolution Wind projects to global infrastructure partners. Now, in return for selling those, you're going to receive about 1. 1 billion in cash.

1s

Feb 20

We discuss an offshore renewable insurance consortium launched by SCOR and Acrisure Re and EDPR's acquisition of Australian renewables firm ITPD to expand in the Asia Pacific. Plus, a look at the rising budget costs for clean energy tax credits in the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act and what it could mean for the growth of wind, solar and electric vehicles. Allen Hall: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I'm here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum. And this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you need actionable information about renewable projects or technologies, check out IntelStor at IntelStor.com. Reinsurer SCOR has launched a new offshore renewable energy insurance consortium with partner Acrisure Re. The consortium increases SCOR's total deployable capacity to over 180 million dollars. SCOR says. Its technical expertise and understanding of client needs positions it as a leader in providing insurance. To the growing offshore wind industry. So Phil, another insurance company hopping into the offshore market, there seems to be a lot of people putting their toes in the water at this point on offshore. 180 million is not a lot of money in that marketplace, but it does seem like people are testing the waters. Philip Totaro: It's an interesting thing. Certainly good to do with a partner. The challenge with offshore is obviously with the scale, like you're saying, 180 million and deployable. Capital is not going to really make that much of a dent in the overall global market, which is, well over, a trillion dollars in investment even at this point. The reality is that, insurers have seen a lot of losses onshore and offshore. It's good that you're getting, new companies involved. It's, score is increasing the scope of their. What they're able to address. The challenge is that, I think these kind of partnerships. Are going to be necessary moving forward because insurers and in particular reinsurers have had a really rough go of it. With some of the catastrophic losses that they faced, particularly in offshore over the years where, entire projects have had to have, the main shaft bearings replaced on the turbine or. You've had other kind of significant fleet wide issues in, in some cases. Overall, it's a good thing. It's a good deal. But it's a market that's getting tougher and tougher to get into. Joel Saxum: Yeah, the important thing to understand about the insurance market in any industrial capacity, specifically, we're talking about onshore, offshore wind here, is that you don't have an insurance company and that's your insurance. You may have an insurance company, the broker, whatever that runs the thing, but you may have 20, In an offshore win, you could have 20, 30 companies in here. So if SCOR comes in on a project, say there's, right now we talked earlier today about Dogger Bank A. Dogger Bank A is going to have two, two policies there. One for construction, one's when they turn into operations. There's going to be a turn off, turn on date there. That, say, we're going to go to the policy when it is in operation, that policy may be written by, who knows, I don't know, Aeon, that's the broker, but the Aeon will have 20 different, 30 different companies behind them, each one of them taking 2%, 3%, 5 percent of that risk, there may be one lead on there, and that lead on something like an offshore wind project may only be 7. 5 percent or 10 percent or 15 percent as opposed to onshore where it may sometimes be 25, 30, 40 percent because, that asset, that wind farm may be worth 100 million or 200 million where you go to an offshore wind farm, it's worth a billion. Nobody has that kind of capital. So a lot of times the lead is someone who really knows offshore stuff Njord, they put that thing out because, the big pro,

12m

Feb 19

CEO Josh Riedy explains how Thread's UNITI software platform enables intuitive data management and analysis for drone inspections at wind farms, creating integrated "electronic medical records" for turbines. Visit their website: https://thread.one/ Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. If you've been paying attention to the drone inspection business, you may have noticed some significant changes in the last couple of years. The amount of data being acquired is astounding where the industry once lacked sufficient data. Now we're overflowing with it and new ideas and businesses are trying to solve the data overload problem and bring more of a uniform approach to inspections. Be that wind turbines, transmission lines, substations. Our guest today is Josh Riedy CEO and founder of Thread, and Thread is based in North Dakota in the central part of the United States. Thread has developed some really interesting products and is really simplifying the way that we handle data. Josh, welcome to the program. Josh Riedy: Thank you, Allen. Glad to be here. Allen Hall: So we have a massive problem that the industry is going through at the moment where we want to acquire more data and that's what Thread does in their platform. And let's talk about that in a moment here, but I want to understand the scope of the problem because we, Joel and I have been around talking to operators lately. And here's one of the things they tell us, and it happened this morning, actually, on a zoom call they want to acquire more data. They want to acquire the wind farm, the turbine, the blade, but also the transmission line, all the substation. They want to gather drone images of all of it. And the problem they were having was what to do with all the data that actually happened today. Joel Saxum: Yeah. How do we manage it all? Allen Hall: Yeah. And this revolve back to our conversation about what Thread is doing to answer that call. So maybe you can describe what you're doing to answer the call of we have a lot of data. Josh Riedy: Allen and Joel. Thanks for having me again. And you touch on the heart of the problem. There is too much data and not just too much data. It's sensitive information. It is not meant to be in the public sphere, and that is a huge consideration. So the goal of Thread and our passion since 2018 has been to take that information and make it relevant to the customer, to the stakeholder that needs that information. And that's not simple, because no large organization is just one modality. There are many different groupings within a given organization that have different needs. And to get that right has been a pursuit for some time, but I do believe we are on the right track and we're able to show the world that. Allen Hall: I have really seen a shift Josh in what the engineers are asking for it was for the longest time Let's take some images of blades and then they're like wow I got this I can got some images of blades with drones This is fantastic Why am I not doing everything around this wind turbine and that means looking at the tower looking at the cell going down to the base of plant, right? So the BOP and then those large operators are like, Hey we own everything out to the substation here, folks.

23m

Feb 15

This week we spoke to Alex Fournier, a field operations manager who works on wind turbines in frigid temperatures, about the safety precautions and practices technicians need when doing turbine maintenance and repairs in extreme cold. Recommendations such as heated gear, taking breaks to warm up, and using procedures to mitigate risks like icefalls are only a few ways that techs could keep safe in winter temperatures. Visit https://www.fabricair.com/ice-protection-systems/ Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. In this episode, we explore the unique hazards faced by wind turbine technicians working to keep the turbine spinning during extreme cold weather events. As renewable energy expands, more wind farms are located in remote areas with harsh winter conditions, placing technicians at risk of frostbite, hypothermia, and injury. Joining us to discuss cold weather safety is Alex Fournier, field operations manager at Borealis Wind, which is a division of FabricAir now. Alex is based in Quebec, Canada, and has been working in the wind industry for seven years. Alex will share his insights on the precautions technicians should take when performing maintenance and repairs in cold climates. Alex, welcome to the program. Alex Fournier: Thank you guys for having me today. Allen Hall: So it's been really cold in Canada and the United States. There's been we're expecting a snowstorm tonight. So we're battening down the hatches. But as the wind turbines must keep running. And I was recently down in Texas when a cold front was coming on. Coming through there and the technicians were really concerned about it because it's something that doesn't happen very often They're not really prepared for the cold weather to stay any length of time And I thought Alex does this all the time. He lives in this kind of environment That's my day today and with Borealis, Borealis obviously creates the de icing systems for wind turbine blades And so Alex is up and down on wind turbines all the time putting systems in and keeping blades Turning, I thought this is a good opportunity to talk about wind turbine safety and cold weather conditions and some of the things that you do and your technicians you work with to keep yourself safe in this cold weather conditions. Because I'll have to tell you one of the coldest times I was ever in was in Montreal, very near to you, actually. Alex Fournier: Yeah the thing with Montreal is, oh, it's an island, so it's a circle of water. And so it's really humid. So when you're in the city, you can feel the humidity go through your clothes. It's so yeah, you don't go in Montreal when it's minus 30. Allen Hall: No, and you better bring a hat and gloves because I thought I could make about a hundred yard run to the building I was working at from my car and I got about halfway there and I thought, I'm going to have hypothermia. I am not going to make it. Alex Fournier: Oh yeah, no, it's not not temperature you want to play around with. Allen Hall: Yeah. Some of the gear that's used up in Canada, and I've seen some pictures of technicians up in Canada, getting ready to go work on wind turbines. I think it's really important that we all highlight what are those things are and the safety gear you guys take.

28m

Feb 14

This week we analyze recent news from Siemens Gamesa, Vestas, and Ørsted, including financial struggles, layoffs, and plans to regain profitability. The episode also covers offshore wind manufacturing expansion in the U.S., a fallen wind turbine rotor in Norway, and the need for better data sharing among wind farm owners and operators. Plus, if you're attending ACP O&M in San Diego, sign up for the IntelStor event! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Joel Saxum: So Allen is in Denmark at the Leading Edge Symposium DTU in Roskilde there with a lot of really smart people talking about leading edge erosion issues. What are the newest protections out there? What kind of projects going on in the world? From our side of view, how does aerodynamics leading edge roughness affect lightning? A lot of really cool things going on there. Of course, DTU is always doing great work. But that's where Allen is today. So this week I'm going to try to be my best Allen. I'm Joel Saxum, the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard Lightning Tech. And I'm here with international renewables expert, Rosemary Barnes. Plus, wind energy economics and data guru Phil Totaro from IntelStor. This is the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. So speaking about offshore wind in the United States and how the IRA bill is interacting and if it's kicking off manufacturing facilities or what's actually happening on the ground, today there was an announcement by US Forged Rings Inc. It'd be the USA's only integrated one stop shop manufacturer for offshore wind towers and steel forging. What they released today in an article was, or in a press release was, the fact that they're going to have two factories up and running on the east coast. One by 2026, one by 2027. And they're going to work together. To build these large scale steel infrastructure that we need for offshore wind in the U. S. So one of one of the factories is going to output towers. They're saying a hundred towers per year with a 35 foot diameter on them and the other factory that's going to be completing 2027. It's for forging and ring rolling, and they can do up to 40 feet in diameter. So what this will do is be able to help the U. S. market create its own transition pieces, its own, bearing races, its own caps for the towers and whatnot. But Phil, what are the larger reaching implications of this press release? Philip Totaro: It's extremely good for the offshore wind market where, a company is looking to obviously take advantage of the 45x manufacturing tax credits. What's interesting about this, though, is that in addition to this serving the offshore wind market, assuming that this factory exists, we don't actually have a lot of particularly forging capabilities in the United States for anything above, let's say, like a megawatt onshore turbine. We usually have to import a lot of that stuff from Europe. Even Asia doesn't have the, a full capability to do, enormous 6, onshore turbines. A lot of that they're actually getting from Europe as well. Surprisingly, to, to most. The fact that this, these factories will exist, and, the tower factory with, it's going to start off at 100 units a year and they said that it's going to potentially expand to 200 units a year. We'll see. Maybe some of those units will actually be dedicated to to some onshore wind turbines as well. If we can get the offshore market really going,

41m

Feb 13

Leveraging new research, this News Flash episode dives into the Australian wind energy market, with insights from IntelStor on capacity, future growth, turbine tech, and factors impacting profitability like PPAs and maintenance costs. IntelStor provides valuable data and analysis on renewable energy markets, including this latest report on Australia. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelStor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech. And I'm here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum. And this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you need actionable information about renewable projects or technologies, check out IntelStor at IntelStor.com. Well, Phil, IntelStor put out a really interesting report about our friends in Australia and the wind energy down there. A lot of moving pieces at the moment. 12 gigawatts already installed wind. What's the future look like? What's happening? What turbines are working down in Australia? Philip Totaro: Well, thanks, Allen. First of all, I appreciate the opportunity to come on and talk about this exclusively. The Australian market's an interesting one because they've now got 12. 2 gigawatts operational as of the end of 2023. They've got another 4. 4 gigawatts under construction right now, which is absolutely explosive growth from the typical annual capacity additions they've seen. Even last year they only added something like 800 megawatts. But they've also got 8 gigawatts of onshore wind that's consented and hasn't started construction yet, and another 90 gigawatts that is early to mid stage proposed, where a lot of this is tied to additional intrastate transmission lines being built, or even the transmission line they're talking about building from Australia to Indonesia, and so they've got a ton of ambition and a ton of proposed projects.  If a bunch of that capacity does get green lit, that does mean new factories in Australia because they're gonna have more than enough capacity to be able to, Sustain a dedicated factory, certainly for companies like Vestas and maybe even GE. Allen Hall: So the vast majority of the wind energy at the moment is in Victoria, which is down south by Melbourne, right? So they have like a third of the total install capacity. What do we know from that area? What have we learned? Where is Victoria headed? Because it seems like the rest of Australia is still playing a little bit of catch up. Philip Totaro: Victoria's got the highest installed capacity because they also have the highest demand and the highest concentration of population and load centers. So that explains a lot about both wind and solar being so popular there. They don't have quite a lot of intrastate transmission built, so whatever is being built in terms of power generation, wind, solar, et cetera, in Victoria is for the most part being consumed in Victoria and so that's going to be a challenge longer term for them to look at how they're kind of Integrating their overall electric grid throughout the whole country, and whether or not they're going to have intrastate market balancing mechanisms facilitated by intrastate transmission. Joel Saxum: Yeah, if you look at some of the analysis that some experts have done on the country as far as queue lines and where load centers are,

13m

Feb 12

Lightning struck wind turbines in the U.S. over 77,000 times in 2023 alone. Vaisala Xweather Insight experts detail how their advanced National Lightning Detection Network tracks each bold strike in real-time. Learn how wind farm operators tap into this data to optimize turbine safety and uptime during fierce storms. Visit their website: https://www.xweather.com/ and read the report! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. Vaisala just published his 2023 lightning report, and if you haven't seen it yet, better get online and check it out. One of the key items in that report is 77, 000 lightning strikes occurred to wind turbines in the U. S. in 2023. So we thought it'd be a pretty good topic for a podcast because we've, Joel and I have seen a lot of lightning damage across the United States and 77, 000 lightning strikes is probably one of the reasons why. And if you're not familiar with Vaisala, Vaisala is XWeather System, which is where that data comes from is in advance, whether intelligence platform provides businesses and organizations with accurate real time. Weather insights and a lot of sites that we go to, Joel and I go visit, have the XWeather system. And that system integrates data from multiple sources into a sort of a unified view and analyzes current and historical trends and generates hyper local forecasts using artificial intelligence. And as part of that XWeather system is the National Lightning Detection Network, NLDN. And we're going to use that acronym throughout this podcast. The NLDN is a network of over a hundred ground based sensors across the U. S. that detects cloud to ground and cloud to cloud lightning strikes in real time. That system is operated by VISLA, and it uses sensors to pinpoint lightning strike locations, polarity, amplitude, and other key characteristics like specific energy. And that network provides critical lightning data for early warning systems, research, and weather sensitive operations like wind turbines. With a detection efficiency over 90 percent nationally, the NLDN sets the standard for accurate real time lightning detection and mapping. Our guest today, we have two of them, Martin Murphy, Senior Scientist at Vaisala. And Martin has a degree in meteorology from Penn State and a PhD in atmospheric science from the University of Arizona. And he has worked with Vaisala and its predecessors for over 27 years. One of his focuses is on analysis and validation of lightning detection systems, and he's a co author of two patents related to lightning detection. Martin, welcome to the program. Martin Murphy: Thanks Allen Hall: And Hans. Hans is the Vaisala product manager for Xweather, and we've had Hans on the podcast before, and we see Hans at all the trade shows across the United States. So Hans, welcome back to the show. Hans Loewenheath: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Allen Hall: So guys, I want to dive in first into the NLDN. And since Martin's here, I want to understand Or explain to everybody what the system is, because we travel around the United States quite extensively, and we meet with a lot of operators, and when we say, did you check the NLDN, the National Lightning Detection Network, they kind of go, what? What is this thing? Joel Saxum: You get these glass,

35m

Feb 08

This week we discuss Enel removing turbines from Osage Nation land, Dominion's 2.6GW offshore wind farm, delays and fallout from offshore wind projects in MD, NJ and NY, the impacts of long project timelines, energy trading opportunities in Denmark, and differences in mining rights between the US and Australia. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Okay, Rosemary, over in Turkey, there was an interesting flight. So they were headed from Istanbul to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the passengers, weirdly, heard somebody in the cargo hold. Yelling for help and I thought oh my gosh. This is a horror movie scene. So the passengers Alerted the evidently the flight attendants or the stewardess is there and then they went to the cockpit and told the pilots Hey, wait, there's somebody stuck in the cargo hold and They diverted the flight and when they got on the ground, they couldn't find anybody. Rosemary Barnes: Anymore. Allen Hall: Oh, anymore which is what didn't what the stories indicate. Rosemary Barnes: Isn't that the obvious Unless someone hit a tape recorder in a loudspeaker in their bag, I would like to think that's what it was, but it doesn't really seem you can divert the flight, but that's surely only going to reduce the risk of harm to this stowaway by a tiny amount. Once you've gone up to Altitude and gone down again, the landing gears come up and gone down and then, yeah, that's horrible. Allen Hall: Yeah, if they're in the landing gear area, that's not a good place to be. Philip Totaro: If it was a stowaway, because there have been cases where baggage handlers have sometimes, unfortunately, been, like, caught in the plane. And that's happened even in the United States. It's extremely rare, thankfully, but that does happen. But to land after everybody's this is like a Twilight Zone episode, Allen. Everybody's like hearing a knock on the thing, and somebody crying for help, and then there's nobody in there? What's going on? Ghosts? Allen Hall: That is so weird. Rosemary Barnes: Was the Twilight Zone always so gruesome? I don't know. This is the way to start in a high note for the episode Allen. Allen Hall: I just thought of you when I was thinking of Rosemary when she flies. She's got to fly for 14 hours at a time. What do you do when you're over the Pacific Ocean and here's everybody knocking from the cargo hold? It's that is a horror scene. Philip Totaro: Hopefully you don't, jeez. Allen Hall: My, my first thought was hopefully it was like a cat or a pet that, sometimes cats can sound like humans and make that kind of helping noise or a bird or something, please let it be something like that. But Rosemary had to go to the human level and scare us all. So there you go. Philip Totaro: Gaslighting Rosemary again. Allen Hall: All right, Rosemary, Equinor. Has entered into an agreement with BP to independently pursue separate offshore wind projects under bids for those New York actions that are going on. BP is going to take full control of Beacon Wind off the coast of Long Island, and then Equinor is going to take Empire Wind. Which is right nearby. The deal provides both companies flexibility to pursue priorities, obviously, for their individual corporate strategies, so they broken the ties financially. This has financial impacts, though, Phil. Equinor is expected to have a write down of about 200 million,

49m

Feb 06