Published

2 years ago

August 8, 2024

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Prometheus Wind’s Industry Growth w/ Will Friedl

Allen and Joel catch up with Will Friedl, CEO and co-founder of Prometheus Wind, based in Colorado. The company has been growing rapidly in the industry, conducting maintenance, blade repairs and more. Will discusses his experience as a business owner in the wind industry and the lessons he has learned along the way. To learn more, visit https://www.prometheuswind.com/ or call 1 (800) 487-4460.

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!

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Weather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.com
Intelstor – 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 Joel Saxum. We’re here with Will Friedl, who is the CEO of Prometheus Wind. And if you’re not familiar with Prometheus, they’re based in Colorado and they do a ton of turbine work from blade repair to foundation.

Torque and tensioning, pretty much anything to do with wind turbines they’re involved with. And Will is a graduate of the Air Force Academy and is a veteran, and this is their third year in operation. And we wanted to touch base with Will. Because when we get an update of all the things that have happened, and there’s been some tremendous growth at Prometheus Wind, so Will, welcome to the program.

Will Friedl: Hey, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it, sir.

Allen Hall: Let’s start off with I think the most exciting development, on top of everything else that’s happened, is the training center. You’ve now built out a training center. Yes, sir. Can you tell us about it?

Will Friedl: Yes, sir. Yeah. I think there’s a fundamental difference between companies that, are hiring for talent and then going out there and doing work.

And of course we’re a bootstrap company that’s what we had to do for the first two years of our operation. But it was quickly apparent. It’s Hey, we need to get a training center so we can upskill our guys so they can grow, they can earn more money. But also so that we can check people coming through the door to make sure that they have the skills that they need.

And so that was a big initiative, a huge lift this winter time, during the. Quote unquote off season we built out a a small training center here in Greeley, Colorado about two hours away from where I live. And and we’ve had great success with it. So we’ve had, we’ve run all of our guys through that.

Everyone who’s new goes through that training center. We get, we able to do a thorough evaluation of their skill sets, put them on the correct, educational track, and when they graduate, they they get the appropriate skill level identification and the qualifications that they need.

That we provide. So it’s been a huge success. It’s not something that, immediately, you flip the switch and it comes online. There’s growth to it. You learn how to train, you learn how to change your curriculum to be more effective. But overall just right out the door, we’ve seen a lot of success with it.

Seen a lot of extra buy in from guys who are appreciative of being up skilled. We’ve seen better retention. We’ve seen, higher quality and more, a better production rate of guys in the field. So it’s been a, it’s been a huge blessing for us.

Joel Saxum: Will, I know you and I were catching up at ACP and earlier than that in the year, I think O& M as well, over in San Diego with your team, we were talking about the build out of the training center and what it looks like for you guys in the future and what that was going to do for your program.

And it sounds like, it’s been a success, right? Like better quality in the field, better buying, you’re able to impart your company culture, which I know is really important to you guys. From the early stages before people hit, yeah, before people get out to the field, they’ve already got that base of this is who Prometheus is.

This is how we operate. This is what goes on in our company. And I know that this is this is your third year in business. Like you said, so you went year one, year two, and talking off air, you’ve two X your business every year. So congratulations on that as a bootstrap business. That’s tough to do.

Will Friedl: Yeah. Thanks. Appreciate that, man.

Allen Hall: With the training center and the organization in which you run and being a former military veteran through the Air Force Academy and organizing all kinds of activities that which you can’t describe to me, I’m sure it does seem like one of the things you notice about Prometheus is you’re very well organized, like you have, Systems in place to make sure that the customer gets what they’ve asked for.

And the technicians are doing what they’re supposed to, and the technicians have the proper tools and that, and getting every, that organizational piece is really important to Prometheus, which you don’t always see in all the ISPs, especially at your size and at year three, a lot of times you just don’t see that kind of organization.

How, what does that air force training bring into Prometheus? What do you think it brings to the aspect of Prometheus?

Will Friedl: Yeah, that’s a great question. I really appreciate you asking. Working in the air force, the military is, unquestionably the biggest bureaucratic organization in the world.

As part of the U S government, the biggest the most systemized entity that you’ve ever seen. And so when you learn to work through that system, you really learn, all the different process controls that are in place to produce certain results, in, in the military environment is one of extreme risk, and so you have to manage this risk and it’s also one of extreme chaos, there’s always things popping up.

And so you have to be able to manage and communicate through those issues that pop up. And what’s been really cool about us is that, my background isn’t in wind and it took me a long time to learn the technical aspects of the business, through and through. And I’m always learning more, you can always talk to an engineer, you always find out how much you don’t know.

But but what’s interesting is that, what the strength that I do bring in and I was, is the vision of okay, this is how a good organization works and works every single time. And as we’ve gone through the process, we’ve had these, we’ve had mistakes and we’ve had, things that are suboptimal, additional expenses here and there.

And what we found is that what’s made us really resilient is our ability to say, okay, Hey, this doesn’t work. We need to change it. And then have the exact. Yeah. Know exactly what lever we need to pull to change that outcome, and, maybe next time it’s a little bit closer, but it’s not always there, but once you figure out what we need to do, we’ve been really good at taking the same systems that I’ve been working with for over a decade in the military and applying them into the company and saying, okay, Hey, this is how this is going to run.

And if we, in the future, we need to change it, this is the process for changing it. And that’s made us really adaptable. We, you talk to a lot of small companies and they’ll say, I’m super adaptable because I, and they have that attitude because they can change what they’re doing in the moment.

But what I think is really important in order to be able to scale and do that well, is that not just change what you’re doing in the moment, but also almost immediately implement a system that will allow you to shut your brain off to that side and every single time it goes that way now that doesn’t always happen, right?

And there’s always errors and you’re always adjusting it. But at least we, like I’m, my team now is very familiar with, okay, Hey, this changed. Okay. I need to update this, this procedure, I need to update this process. I need to inform this person and then boom, we make that change and then we just roll in a slightly different direction.

It’s a little bit more on target. So I think that’s been the thing that’s allowed us to grow and to learn from our lessons and do such a ineffective job and basically de risk our operations. It’s interesting, for blade repair, we had a kickoff meeting yesterday and the client was, very experienced very experienced program manager for blade repair.

They’d been doing this for years and years. And we showed up and, most clients, they show up and they’re like, okay, let’s, what do we need to do? And we have a procedure that we do that leads leads them through the step by step conversation so that we cover all the bases, and they showed up with their stuff and we went through that and then we’re like, okay here’s our stuff what about this? What about this? What about this? And, and we had just, we had taken lessons learned and implemented it immediately into that, in that process.

And you could just see that they were just like, we’ve been doing this for a long time. We’ve never really seen this kind of thing. Like this is very, it just sets that precedent, and we still have to go out to out there and execute well. But in the military we say like a good plan makes a good execution.

So I think we’re starting off. on the right foot and we’re starting off the right foot because we did this very methodically.

Joel Saxum: So with that one in mind, like that client experience you had just this week, right? You are a part of the advanced and veterans advanced energy project.

And I know that we’ve talked about this in the past. We had Kevin doffing on, we talked to some other people about it. Give us an update on what’s going on with that program, because I know Allen and I, we’re not intimately involved with it. So we know about it on, in, on that surface level but what are you, what’s your involvement with those guys this year?

Will Friedl: The Veteran Advanced Energy Project basically takes veterans from across the industry and tries to upskill them and allow them to get exposure to different parts of the industry. And the way they do that is they create a fellowship of a handful of people who come together and we have monthly meetings and go over, leadership developments updates to the industry.

And we talk about our different sectors of the industry. So there’s a lot of already. Just built into that system. There’s a lot of cross pollination that happens. And then also every veteran who’s a part of it has to write a policy proposal paper. And so you work with people that are way smarter than you.

I have a lot more research background. And they just know a lot of things that, you know, that I, for one, don’t know, and so working with them, they help you to write this policy paper and, you interview multiple people and you get an idea. The idea is that you get a depth of knowledge into a sector of the industry that, that is totally outside your scope.

And you come out of that fellowship, not only do you have good friends, you’ve got a network across the industry. But also, you’ve got this depth of knowledge in an area that you would not know otherwise. And so my focus is currently, and I’m not done with my policy paper.

So I’ve got lots of research to do, you can imagine I’m busy doing other things, at the same time but my, my research is in, the economics of the wind industry and how that’s, how that money is currently flowing and and whatnot, because, the industry is like a river, and there are certain rivers that are slower and certain rivers that go backwards, and I’m trying to get an understanding of what that river’s and so yeah, that’s. That’s the update for where I am with that process.

Allen Hall: I think that’s good because you have that veterans network, you have a broader view of what’s happening in the United States in terms of renewable energy and wind.

What are you seeing with Prometheus wind? What things have you noticed over the last 12 months?

Joel Saxum: Yeah. So the industry is from the, from a perspective of a small, yeah, small business owner, ISP, what, how does what’s going on in the wind industry affect you right now? How that affects me is basically

Will Friedl: The more the more development that goes into this industry, we have a little bit on the construction side, but we do mainly maintenance services.

And the currently established let’s see market share is just the amount of wind turbines that are out there. So the more wind turbines that get. That get added, the larger the market share. And generally speaking, if you keep the same percentage of the market share, that means that things look good in the future, and then, the converse is also true. So I’m really plugged into that because I think it’s really important to understand, Hey, what is, what’s coming in the future? How big is this market going to be? Is it going to grow? Is it going to decrease? What are some of the threats to that?

And then, how do I respond to that? I just, because I think it’s important for everybody who’s in a leadership position in this industry to really understand that and to understand the implications to help drive, their policies and their future predictions. So that’s how I I’m looking at it.

And I see the trickle down effect. The difficulty is, when you talk about what have I seen in the, in, in Prometheus wind we’re, we started real small. So we’re getting bigger and bigger. And so I, it’s hard for me to see that because I haven’t reached a normalized state.

Once we reach a normalized state, then we can see those fluctuations a little bit more. Right now we’re just like, exploding in certain, like we’re really seeing a lot of success in what we’re doing and we don’t, it’s hard to say, Hey, this is coming from the market or, Hey, we’ve just been around long enough to have our name out there.

And now we know what we’re doing so we can have better sales conversations or expanding our market value. So yeah, so that’s how I’d answer both of those questions.

Allen Hall: Are you getting more phone calls reaching out to you now, instead of you having to knock on doors, has that flipped a little bit?

Will Friedl: It has, Still nothing beats knocking on doors, right? You just have to, you have to find the right person at the right time. And and have your values align your opportunities line. But what’s, what we’ve noticed is that, as we’ve gotten into these larger companies through pyramids, what’s cool is And I tell people all the time, wind industry is interesting because it’s not like a level steady state industry, right?

There’s this huge expansion of work that happens in the summer. And site managers, they don’t staff for that to cover that. They, have, they have for instance, blade repair or inspections, anything that’s outside the norm, they’ll have that built into their budget.

And so once you come in and you do a good job. It’s I need to fill this, I have this gap in my capabilities. I need to fill it with somebody. And once, once you come in and do that, good job, there’s. There’s very little that’s going to happen to keep you from coming back to that site.

You know what I mean? Or at least them, keep them from requesting that you come back to that site. And that’s what we’ve seen essentially is once we capture it, we hold, and once we cap, we capture and hold, I guess it’s a little bit like warfare but yeah that’s what we’ve that’s what we’ve seen.

And still need a lot of, still need a lot of outreach, but generally speaking, once we’ve done a certain scope of annualized scope of work, we get that phone call ringing. Every single time.

Joel Saxum: And then once you’re, I know you’re in with a couple of larger operators and I know if you work at one wind farm for them and you get a rave review there, of course, that, that operator is going to say, Hey, go to this wind farm.

We need you at this one. Now we need you at that one. Now I need you at that one. So yeah, that expansion. But that speaks to the quality, right? So it speaks to this quality and the service that Prometheus offers.

Will Friedl: It is. It’s been awesome. I don’t want to say Hey we jumped in and we did everything perfectly from day one.

You know what I mean? That’s not the, that’s not the story that we have. And that’s not what I’m trying to highlight. We’ve made mistakes like everybody else, but we’ve had this. Constant drive to to improve and improve and to identify where are we failing?

Where do we need to get better? And I would say that we’ve done that very well. And so we’re what you’re left with is a very consistent product that has a lot of quality. That’s not just happenstance. We didn’t just jump into the right, to the right role and systemize that.

Now we started off with a couple of assumptions that were wrong. We changed those around and we got through maturity, we got to something that’s, and I would say consistently excellent.

Joel Saxum: What would you say? What would be the lesson if you could go back and give three years ago, will a piece of knowledge?

What would it be?

Will Friedl: This is not inspiring. This is not inspiring. This is going to be like first off, things are going to be okay. And that’s what there’s so many times when there was just so like the burden of stress was, I can’t even tell you I went through a program in the Air Force where there’s 90 percent washout rate and that program, is a very difficult program.

But it’s only, it’s only 20 weeks long. And every day for the last 10 days, Two to three years, with the exception of a couple of months ago, once we started picking up steam this season has felt like I was a day in that program. It was that stressful. And like I’ll go back and I go back and do my job and it’s so everything’s so easy.

It’s so straightforward. You had a military, it’s Oh, you just need to know this procedure. You need to know who to communicate that the problem solving infrastructure and the problems that you face are their problems are like, they’re filtered. There’s a filter before they hit you.

And then once they hit you, it’s okay, you’re getting trained for those problems that are going to hit you. Here there’s no filter and there’s no system. And then it’s been it’s been a lot. And basically I think a good amount of encouragement. The other thing I would tell me is it’s focused on sales because you’re not going to know, you don’t know what your assumptions are until you, put them to the test and and then and focus on growing in a slower, this year, last year, I think we grew too fast and we had some issues and we pared our teams down.

And then we kept going from there. And this year we’ve been very deliberate on how fast we grow and maintaining. Okay. Hey, if I’m going to bring a team on, I need to make sure that they have this qualification. I know exactly what I need to train them on and I’m going to, I’m growing them one at a time.

And so that by the time, I’ve got as many teams that I need they’re all good and I don’t have to, I don’t have to be fielding calls all day long just to keep them operational.

Allen Hall: Yeah. What are your growth areas now? Where do you see your business expanding?

Will Friedl: The spring is the growth time, right?

That’s where, I would say the winter time, we purposely were training setting up the training center. So that was like hair on fire all through that, trying to get it ready by spring. And then and then the springtime you’re sitting on all these clears. And so you’re trying to make sure it’s working to go.

And so that’s hair on fire time. And so my next thing is, we’ve grown to a certain amount and, being on these calls, that call that I mentioned, what’s cool about it is that I wasn’t the one running that call, that was, that, that was my project manager. That was my operations guy.

They were the ones running that call. And and so it’s like a, so my next thing is to, okay, sweet. We’ve gotten to a certain size. We might still build, Add a couple of teams here and there, as projects pick up throughout the summer. But I think the next stage is to, okay, let’s sit, let’s wait, let’s see what happens.

Maybe I can take a vacation, de stress a little bit. And and then we can identify where to go from there. So I would say the Air Force, they got this thing called the OODA loop, the Orient, it’s for fighter pilots. But part of that is, okay, Once you understand the situation, just orient yourself to, to what’s going on and then decide to go from there.

So we’ve gone through the hair on fire stage backstage. Let’s do some orientation and decide, very methodically what we’re going to do next.

Joel Saxum: Will, you guys are, of course, we know, doing blade work. What are your other scopes that you’re taking on this summer?

Will Friedl: Yeah, great question. We do a lot of inspections too.

We’re really good at bore scope inspections and a warranty that kind of thing, tower walk downs. We’re getting staffed on some construction sites to do some basically some inspections for the customer to make sure that, the turbines that are built or the turbines that were purchased, and and that’s not always the case and and to a great expense sometimes, and we’re on sites doing that we’re doing end of warranty we do a lot of into warranty, especially in Q4, as you can imagine.

And and then we just, we do maintenance support as well. So we’ve had crews several crews out doing full maintenance schedules for turbines and and then whatever else is needed. Sometimes it’s for a contention gig. Sometimes it’s the full scope. Sometimes it’s Hey, we’re here.

We just had these bearings go out. We need some or we need some inspections on these bearings, we need re grease. A lot of different things. It’s amazing. These things these. These machines are so technical. And so there’s so many different failure modes. There’s so many different maintenance procedures.

There’s so many different things that can happen where you’re just like, Hey, I don’t have, I don’t have a guy on my crew who’s got the bandwidth and the specialty to do this. I need to call somebody. And that’s what we feel. We feel calls like that. And we sometimes we can, sometimes we can’t do it, but most of the time we can.

Joel Saxum: And I know, cause a lot of the operators, like especially site supervisors, once they have a team on site that they like, they’re just feeding them work because they’d like to keep them there. That cause that’s, the technician shortages are regular, right? So if they leave that. A site supervisor may be like, I don’t know what I’m going to get these guys back.

So while they’re here, I’m going to try to get as much work out of them as I possibly can. So that’s when you have scope creep or scope changes and those kinds of things. But it sounds like you guys have got a pretty good system for dealing with those as they come up.

Will Friedl: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We I it could, it comes down to just the systems that we have, not only for training our people, but also for managing our people.

So when things change we’ve got, you’ve got a way to figure out, okay Hey, how do we address this? How do we how do we walk away so that, or how do we, make sure that the customer understands, Hey, we’re making this a priority. We’re going to get this problem solved. And we’ll figure out what we need to do to make that happen.

And and, all along that process, you talk, you just took the nail on the head. Things are constantly changing, right? Hey, you’ll be out there and there’ll be like, We’ll get some bad Boar Scope results, and I’ll be like, okay, Hey we actually want to, increase the number of Boar Scopes that you’re doing on site or whatever it is, or, Hey, we need you to give us a little bit more analysis on this.

Can have an engineer look at this? And as we go through that process, it’s constantly changing. And so because it’s dynamic, it requires a lot of good communication, right? And so that’s where, our communication systems and how we come into play, we’re usually in front of those things.

So we’re asking the questions and And my brother has this great saying just a little bit of background. When I started the business, I started with two, two brothers who have a lot of wind industry experience. But he’s always starting their cat.

He’s like, yeah, we just got to kill those cats. He’s he’s got to ask those questions, kill those cats and move on.

Allen Hall: Since you brought up bearings and you guys are looking at bearings, there appears to be a significant issue with bearings in the United States at the moment.

What are you guys saying?

Will Friedl: We are seeing those issues. I had that’s the first thing. And we’re finding those issues. We don’t do, I do want to say we don’t do major component exchange at this year. And that’s something that we’re looking to add. We were originally looking at it this year.

We’re probably going to add it next year. Again, very methodical steps forward. We’re not, swapping those things out all the time, but when we do the inspections for them we’re seeing a lot of issues, a lot of breakdowns for it now. It sounds like it’s a good business at the moment though.

It should be. It really is. It really is. I think sites, they appreciate when, when you can consistently show up on the right, with the right equipment, with the right people, who have a professional attitude, who communicate well through the project, where you get your results and your inspection results in a timely manner, that’s in a professional, like easy to read format.

And just the process is smooth and it happens without them having to make phone calls or ping things. And the questions are coming from the vendor instead of them going to the vendor. I think that experience is something that a lot of sites appreciate. And and yeah and being able to do that we’ve had a lot of really good business.

Allen Hall: This has been a really good update of all the things that are happening at Prometheus wind and really excited for you. It sounds like the growth is in action at the moment. So if you have. Wind farm and you need some maintenance inspections or end of warranty campaigns being conducted.

You needed to reach out to Prometheus Wind. How do they do that? How do they reach you?

Will Friedl: You can go to our website, www.prometheuswind.com, and Prometheus is P-R-O-M-E-T-H-E-U-S. Everybody messes that up. Or you can reach us by phone. Our phone number is 1 800 487 4460.

Allen Hall: It’s great to have you back on the program and great to see all of all the success.

Will Friedl: Hey, thank you so much. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you guys. It’s always awesome to listen to you guys and to be able to come on and talk every once in a while. So thanks so much.

https://weatherguardwind.com/prometheus-wind-industry-growth/

Renewable Energy

Ummm, the Vast Majority of Earth’s Citizens Want to See Trump Dead

Published

5 hours ago

April 14, 2026

Alice Rush

Eric Trump is usually depicted in the press as a moron. Is this fair? Is he really this stupid?

Is he not aware that the vast majority of the Earth’s population wants to see his father dead?

FWIW, I’m a rare exception. If Trump dies before the American people have the opportunity to see how close the U.S. came to being the next Russia, China, Turkey, North Korea, or the other 50+ authoritarian regimes on this planet, we will never be able to repudiate fascist dictatorship.

Ummm, the Vast Majority of Earth’s Citizens Want to See Trump Dead

Renewable Energy

Advanced Rail Energy Storage

Published

5 hours ago

April 14, 2026

Alice Rush

Can be done. Cost inefficient as hell. Huge energy losses.

Highly doubt Switzerland built one. They’re not morons.

Advanced Rail Energy Storage

Renewable Energy

White House Misses Appeal Deadline, France Targets Chinese Magnets

Published

7 hours ago

April 14, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

White House Misses Appeal Deadline, France Targets Chinese Magnets

The crew discusses the White House missing its offshore wind appeal deadline, France’s 12 GW tender with restrictions on Chinese permanent magnets, and WOMA 2027 planning.

Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter 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 YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by Strike Tape, protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit strike tape.com. And now your hosts.

Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen. I’m here with Rosemary Barnes, who is in Australia, and our newest guest is Nikki Briggs, who is the new CCO of Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Welcome to the show, Nikki.

Nikki Briggs: Thank you. Nice to, nice to be here.

Allen Hall: So there’s the full docket, and Nikki’s gonna get indoctrinated today to the podcast, and she’s gonna be holding on tight because we have a really, uh, very controversial podcast.

I think once Rosemary gets in here and starts talking about. Offshore wind. And I wanna lead off this week ’cause it is a big deal, although not many people are talking about it, that, uh, the White House missed a deadline to file an [00:01:00] appeal against all the offshore wind farms in the United States. And the feeling was, is that there was gonna be an appeal and they’re gonna push to slow down those projects or cancel those projects.

And obviously, uh, one of the purchasers of one of the sites decided to sell it back to the US for about a. Billion US dollars, but the administration missed a key deadline for appeals, uh, which may indicate that they have other things to do besides fight offshore wind Now. The question really remains is, is this going to continue on that nothing is going to happen.

Uh, hopefully all the wind projects that are being built at the moment will complete and we’ll be providing power to all the onshore locations, particularly up and down along the East coast. But, uh, there’s still a long way to go here. Rosemary, I know there’s been a lot of concern about what’s happened in the United States on offshore [00:02:00] wind for several months now.

You think this is gonna be just a change of direction because there’s other things happening in the world.

Rosemary Barnes: To me, it just sounded like too hard to, unlikely to actually succeed and kind of keeps on drawing attention back to the issue. So better to just kind of let it quietly fade away and not talk about it anymore.

Allen Hall: And there is a financial emphasis for those companies that have these wind farms because if they can get their projects done. They get paid sooner. They can produce power, obviously they’re gonna get paid sooner. So there is a big incentive to push, push, push, push. And a lot of the projects are delivering power right now.

And I think the, the biggest one, which is uh, dominion Energy’s Project of Coastal Virginia, offshore Wind is doing that. So. All these wind projects that are kinder in a way I think are going to finish, which is gonna be a, a big relief to a lot of the states.

Rosemary Barnes: I don’t wanna talk about us, um, politics because I am not living there.

But don’t you have midterms coming up and potential [00:03:00] for the situation to dramatically change? Like, my understanding is that the expectation is that there will be. More, um, democratic involvement in, in decision making after the midterms. And so surely, you know, like if they don’t, if they’re not acting now, then things are likely to be easier from here on out.

Is that, is that a correct interpretation of what’s going on over there?

Allen Hall: Not correct. And Nikki, you can jump in here too. Congress can change and does every two years there’s elections in the US and so the full House of Representatives is voted in or out. So all 435 members of the House of Representatives have an election, but about a third of the Senate has an election.

So the Senate doesn’t change as dramatically as the House does, but, uh, for everything that’s been codified into law, which happened a year and a half ago, uh, the executive branch can kind of do what they [00:04:00] want there. So there will be very little that Congress can do. Once a law is a pass and the executive branch can continue on,

Rosemary Barnes: it’s two year terms for your house of reps.

Allen Hall: Yeah. It’s two years terms. Yeah.

Rosemary Barnes: That’s not very long. That’s not very good job security.

Allen Hall: It was never meant to be

Rosemary Barnes: in school. About a thousand years ago, I learned that, um, the Australian government is, is, is largely based on a combination of um, UK and. US government basically. But I think it’s a lot closer to the us.

Um, and yeah, we have, I, I think we have not, we haven’t got fixed terms, but it’s usually about every three years and yeah, you lose a few, a few months, but we don’t, we don’t do the big song and dance about it that you do with all of the, um, pre-selection and all that stuff. We don’t do that. So our, our system is a lot quicker.

Um, so yeah, I just wonder like how, how do you actually govern when you have to spend half of your time worried about, um, getting in and then you can only make plans for basically one year [00:05:00] ahead or two years ahead, like at the absolute maximum.

Allen Hall: That’s the problem with House of Representative is you nailed it right on the head, which is they’re constantly fundraising and trying to get to the next election.

Two years is a short amount of time anymore. They didn’t used to do it like that, where the last six months, maybe a year were campaign time, but pretty much once they get an election over, which happens in November, they’re already campaigning for the next one. So it does lead to a lot of chaos where things don’t happen in the House of Representatives like.

They used to maybe 20, 25 years ago. It’s changed dramatically and I don’t think Australia has that same issue weirdly enough. Although I would say you’re becoming more like the US in a lot of ways. That’s not one of them.

Rosemary Barnes: We’ve got some, there’s some things in place, like one of the advantages of basing our system on other countries as we could take.

Take the bits that worked and see what, what we could already see what didn’t really work and um, you know, try to, try to take it, um, try to take care of that, ensure that it couldn’t happen. [00:06:00] So

Allen Hall: the offshore wind piece in America rolls into other offshore wind, uh, across Europe in that, uh, although US is reconsidering offshore wind in some sense.

Europe is not. In fact, uh, France is getting very active. So you remember the France has been trying to launch, uh, offshore wind tenders for about two years. So you keep hearing France is gonna go to offshore wind, and then it didn’t really happen. Well, that political gridlock is, uh, over really how to pay for the renewables, uh, and how they’re gonna try to finance this thing.

Meanwhile, uh, France has, uh. Less than what? Two gigawatts of offshore wind operating against a, a national target of about 15 gigawatts by 2035. Uh, so there’s a lot of catching up to do the 12. They just had a 12 gigawatt package. They announced where, uh, they, they’re [00:07:00] attempting to really catch up all at once, uh, but buried inside of this tender.

Is a supply chain rule, which is very unique. So coming outta Scotland and all the things that happen with Ming Yang in Scotland, France is doing something very similar. France is limiting the percentage or the quantity of permanent magnets that can come from China. So France is saying, Hey, they don’t wanna get locked into an offshore, offshore wind supply chain that involves China specifically for, but they’re probably the most important ingredient, which is.

Permanent magnets. The Netherlands is moving ahead also and has offered two one gigawatt offshore wind farms, and it’ll be permitting those pretty quickly. So all of a sudden, the offshore wind effort for some of the countries that have been quiet in Netherlands in particular, and then France, all of a sudden probably ’cause of what’s happening in the.

The straight in the Middle East have decided to speed up their offshore wind [00:08:00] projects. Is this gonna be the right move? Do you think they’re gonna stick with this process of, of completing these projects or is this a spur of the moment decision that they’re gonna change their minds later on in the next year or two once things calm down to the Middle East?

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I mean, if it is a, a knee jerk response to the. Specific right now problem and doesn’t seem very well advised because it’s gonna be years before they actually see any electricity entering their grid. I mean, France is a bit different to other European countries ’cause they’ve got so much nuclear and in general, uh, I think with the exception of like the year before last, they had that summer where it was really hot.

They had heat waves and they had to shut down a lot of. Nuclear power plants because the cooling water was too hot. They, they couldn’t, they couldn’t put it back into the river. And, um, yeah, uh, river levels were too low in some cases. So in, in that year, they did have to import energy. Um, but in general, their energy exporters.

So I don’t, I, I would be surprised if this [00:09:00] was in direct response to, you know, that I don’t think they have an electricity crisis right now. Um, and, uh, yeah, I think it’s probably more of a long-term plan.

Allen Hall: Are they gonna force the OEMs to build product in country? GE already has an offshore wind blade factory in France.

And, uh, they can get a lot of components in Europe for sure. You could actually dictate what percentage of the wind turbine is built in France and what is built in Europe and what’s gonna be left to be imported in from China. You think this is where everybody is headed?

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I mean, I think it is. Smart move to make sure that you don’t have one single country locking down any critical part of your supply chain.

So I’ll agree with that. I haven’t seen the exact wording, but it’s not like it’s just banned that anything comes from China. I mean, that would be a good way to make sure that you didn’t ever get a timely, uh, a project completed in time. Um. So, you know, that makes sense. But, you know, if no one [00:10:00] project can use a hundred percent Chinese magnets or I, I don’t know the wording, maybe they’re allowed to buy, um, the rare Earth materials from China and then turn them into magnets locally.

I don’t, I don’t know what the wording is, but, um, it is going to require that, you know, some new manufacturers start up and I just wonder what kind of support they’re gonna provide for that and what kind of guarantees, because it’s not, um. So straightforward to just start up a new manufacturing facility for something that has never been made in that, in that area before.

Um, you know, there’s a lot of risk and hard to get financing. They’re gonna want to have some, um, guarantees from the government or some support to, you know, make sure that the risk benefit is worth it.

Allen Hall: I think that’s probably the most important part of this, is the business aspect. You can’t spool up a 20 year business.

In a year that’s hard to do and you’re not gonna do it if the supply chain can willy-nilly switch to an external supply chain to China, for example. So if you do set up [00:11:00] something complicated in France, I would almost bet that they would have to pass something in law and lock it in before you see a lot of investment happening that way.

Similar things happen in the UK really is uh, with all the offshore wind growth and wanting to build turbines in the country. They’re gonna have to put some barriers in to keep the Chinese out, which they’re obviously doing

Rosemary Barnes: or provide direct support. They don’t necessarily need to make it a law. I think like the way we would do it in Australia is that the government would either co-invest or they would, you know, underride a loan or um, you know, guarantee revenue or something, something like that, to make all the pieces fall into place.

I don’t think, um, law is the only way to do it.

Allen Hall: France obviously is gonna be able to choose from a couple of wind OEMs. Where do you think they’ll go is It’s pretty much right now, I guess it’s Siemens and Vestas for sure. I’m not even sure GE is offering a offshore wind turbine at the moment. Does France [00:12:00] have a Siemens or Vestas stake at the minute?

Rosemary Barnes: Not that I know of, but what’s happening to the um, Bel Factory? The GE Blade Factory? That was. They were making blades for hall aids, which is the troubled platform that kind of turned them off. Offshore wind altogether. Um, yeah, I don’t, I don’t know what’s happened to that one.

Allen Hall: Remember that GE sold the LM factory, what up in Poland and Vestas ended up buying that?

I wonder if something similar happened here.

Rosemary Barnes: Uh, yeah. I dunno. I need to, we should have, we should have looked it up before we started recording.

Allen Hall: The thing about this podcast is that we start putting the puzzle pieces together. Before the, the pieces are out on the table. And when you see the way that GE has really slowed down offshore, obviously they talked about it a number of times that they don’t like the offshore business and would like to finish vineyard wind and all the commitments they have and then pause until they can make sure they’re gonna make money on offshore wind.

Vestas is going crazy and has made a lot of sales, [00:13:00] and I know Siemens is trying to get back into that offshore market. So you really have two players. If you are not gonna choose a Chinese turbine, you see image and you have Vestas. But onshoring, that work is an obvious, uh, French move, I think just like it was in the uk.

Rosemary Barnes: I mean, assuming that they are not gonna be choosing, uh, Chinese manufacturers, given that they’re trying to move away from that, um, yeah. Complete dominance, but I mean, why couldn’t Ming Yang or someone supply turbines but just, you know, get their, their magnets from a local supplier instead? I mean, it’s very common that, you know, like European manufacturers, if they wanna sell in India, then they have to have a certain local, um, you know, amount of local manufacturing.

So. Why wouldn’t a, a Chinese company do the same thing? So, yeah, I don’t think they’ve only got two choices, but. Those will be the obvious ones.

Allen Hall: As wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it difficult. That’s why the Uptime podcast [00:14:00] recommends PES Wind Magazine. PES Wind offers a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future.

Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit PES wind.com today. So Rosemary, after the successful WMA 2026 event in Melbourne, in which I know I mispronounced, but you’re just gonna have to let it go. There’s been a a ton of inquiries about WMA 2027 and I.

I’m thinking, man, we just finished moment 2026. You ready for 2027? The answer is yes, we need to go.

Rosemary Barnes: I think it’s because the, um, certain other Australian wind energy events are spamming everyone’s inboxes with like multiple emails a day, months out. It’s got everyone thinking, gee, this conference is super annoying.

Thought about that [00:15:00] non annoying conference that I went to.

Nikki Briggs: Yeah. Well I’m not pestering people, but if anybody wants to, you know, get signed up to be a sponsor for WMA 2027, reach out to me because, you know, we’re that not annoying conference. So, um, we gotta have good sponsors. And

Rosemary Barnes: that is true. That is one thing about, about Wilmar is we keep it really cheap for attendees, but it is still a high quality conference.

And the main way that we’re able to do that is because we have really good sponsors that. Um, yeah, they, they provide money obviously, to pay for, uh, a large chunk of the event, but they also don’t expect to be allowed to get up and sell at people. Um, yeah, I, I don’t even know how we managed to get such great sponsors that are, you know, happy with that trade off, but I guess that, yeah, they’ve figured out that it isn’t actually that beneficial to get up and give a sales pitch to people who.

Receptive to it. It is much better to just get up and talk about all the things that you know, and then the people who have problems that can be solved by what you [00:16:00] do will naturally get in touch with you. I mean. I think it works better. That’s, that’s my entire sales sales approach. And I guess everybody at the, at the conference, that’s what, yeah, that’s what we’re relying on.

I think it’s a better way

Nikki Briggs: and we’re here to help and save you money.

Allen Hall: Yeah. And the Woma 2027 website is up. Just Google. It’s, and we’re looking for sponsors, although a number of sponsors, pretty much everybody from 26 who wants to be back into twenties. 27. So we’ll be, uh, reaching out to all of you and making sure that happens.

But the conference is probably gonna get bigger in 2027 just because of the demand. So we’ll be looking for a, a couple of more key sponsors. We want you to get involved as soon as possible. You should do that by, in the us. You can do that by getting a hold of, of Nikki. It’s Nikki, N-I-K-K-I dot Briggs, B-R-I-G-G s@wglightning.com.

Or you can just go to Nikki’s LinkedIn page and send her an InMail and, uh, get ahold of her that way or [00:17:00] connect with her on LinkedIn and she’d be glad to help you. Now, Rosemary, I know one of the things we talked about was, uh, some of the expansion of topics for 2027. There was a lot of feedback and we are paying close attention.

And thanks to everybody who sent us feedback on the conference, uh, the number of five star reviews are really high, and I, I’m, I’m still a little shocked and um, maybe embarrassed by like, wow. Uh, that’s awesome. But we wanna expand on some of the topics for next year, and we’re talking about doing a blade masterclass and that which would involve rosemary.

Maybe some others talking about some of the blade issues that exist around the world. And Rosemary, what are you thinking about?

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, describing how the process works. ’cause that’s the, that’s probably one of the main things, or the main value that I bring to Australia is the time that I spent working at a, um, um.

Wind turbine blade manufacturer, and you know, how does the design process work? What kind of testing do they do? What [00:18:00] does certification mean? Um, all those sorts of things. Uh, they, you might think, oh, I don’t really care about that ’cause I just use the blade once I’ve got it. But anytime you run into a problem, you do need to kind of know how all that stuff works, basically.

So, um, yeah, we’ll give a, a masterclass on that topic and so you can come and get. You know, a bit of an understanding about how that works. Ask whatever questions that you’ve got that relate to your specific problems, but then, you know, even if you don’t have a problem now in the future when something comes up, you’ll have that knowledge to fall back on.

And it just really helps to be able to know when something’s not right, um, when something wasn’t done right. Um, yeah, I mean there are always at some point an argument about, you know, who’s gonna pay. So it is really helpful to know if things have been done the way that they said that they would be. The way they should be.

Um, yeah, but I’m also. I’m really keen to hear about what to include in the main conference. ’cause you know, it can’t be the same every year. Um, I’m super focused on, on blades and I, I think we, I [00:19:00] mean, blades is the biggest, the biggest topic in wind turbine o and m, so it makes sense that we would be focused on that and we’re, we will, but I have less of, um, yeah, in depth knowledge about what non blade issues people are really struggling with at the moment.

So definitely be keen to hear from. Viewers about, um, sorry, I’ll say that again. Definitely be keen to hear about potential attendees about what topics they would wanna see covered to make sure that, yeah, it’s interesting and fresh every year.

Allen Hall: Can I circle back on the masterclass a little bit because I had my own little, little mini masterclass this past week looking at the IE specification for wind turbine blades, and I don’t know what prompted me to read that document.

I thought it was gonna be a lot thicker than it was, and I was shocked at the lack of detail that on the requirement side, I always think the blade people must have millions of requirements to go [00:20:00] do. And it’s gonna be very technical and a lot of check boxes there, but turns out maybe not as many as I thought there would be.

Rosemary Barnes: Oh yeah. That’s interesting that you’re, you’re surprised. Um. I mean, I haven’t worked with it closely since when I was doing my PhD, uh, the PhD was on, there was a, yeah, design of a family, family of wind turbine blades. And so, you know, I was looking at the standard to see what, um, load cases that you had to consider, you know, like the 50 year extreme gust is one of the big ones.

And then, you know, various operational loads and that sort of thing. Um, it’s never gonna cover absolutely everything. But I, yeah. What, what, what issues do you see that are, are missing from it?

Allen Hall: Well, when, when I look at the airplane world and we qualify an airplane with the Federal Authority, whoever that could be, it could be Yasa in Europe, could be the FAA in the United States, there’s a pages, there are books of requirements and [00:21:00] guidance materials and details of things you must do to show that the airplane is.

Safe to go fly. I figured the wind turbine world would’ve adapted that to some level to have very specific requirements on design margins and, and maybe they’re there as an electrical engineer. I can’t suss all that out, but I can usually tell how rigorous the requirements are by the weight of the document.

Usually those documents make a lot of noise when you drop ’em on the desk. This was, uh, a very soft whimper. I thought, well, okay, maybe there’s a lot here I’m missing. I’m sure that I am. I’m an electrical guy. I’m gonna admit it. Right now, I don’t understand all the structural things, but on the airplane side, I know that the airplanes have a lot to do and the requirements are crazy hard, but maybe there’s a lot more tolerance in wind.

Rosemary Barnes: They do include safety margins, and there is, uh. A lot more, a lot more tolerance in wind as [00:22:00] there should be because people aren’t flying and wind turbines. You know, like if there was somebody like physically seated inside every blade 24 7, then I think that you would see that the, the standard would be, would be tightened up because you know, like every tightening of the standard is going to result in an increase in cost.

So I mean, the biggest difference that I. I I see between, um, arrow and wind, aside from the, the safety issue is the maintenance. There is annual maintenance and they are maintained more than that. They’re, they’re constantly doing stuff, but like if it’s possible to design it to last for 20 or 30 years without needing maintenance, and that’s the way that you want it to be.

In general, blades are not supposed to be maintained until there’s a problem. Um, you know, it’s not like. Places where you know that you’re gonna be replacing grease or, um, you know, anything, anything like that that’s built for accessibility. The blades are certainly, certainly not. So yeah, I mean, [00:23:00]you’re definitely not maintaining in the same way as you are with, um, aerospace or Yeah, just aviation.

Allen Hall: Howard Pinrose has the, for motor dock, has the Chaos and Caffeine podcast. Which is on YouTube and I watch that. Typically Saturday morning, I think that’s when it comes out. It’s on the weekend. And his last, uh, podcast was about the studies about general maintenance. Back to Rosemary, your point that performing general maintenance, regardless of how much there is, is less costly than trying to fix it on the fly.

And that if you devote. Sufficient resources to keeping the equipment maintained in the, in the way it was intended to. You’re gonna have significantly less problems. Uh, and lower costs, but it’s surprising. Wind doesn’t do that

Rosemary Barnes: well, but I mean, the difference is that wind is designed to not be maintained.

So it’s, it’s not easier engineering, or not [00:24:00] engineering. It’s not like lazy. It’s actually the opposite. It’s actually really hard to design something that won’t need to be maintained for 30 years. I mean, think about another machine that is not supposed to be looked at for 30 years and you know, that will go through the stress that a wind turbine blade does.

But you know, if you think of. Yeah, anything that’s inside your blade, like think about, um, the lightning cable in a blade. Um, you know, like the, if it, if it breaks, you have to cut open the blade to get into it. And, um, most of the length of the blade, that would be, that would be what you would do. It’s huge, huge, huge repair.

Um, so, you know, you design it so that that will very rarely happen in theory, you know, if everything’s working well, maybe the lightning cable is a bad example because, um, the lightning protection system is. Almost certainly the, the least well-functioning part of a, a wind turbine, I’d say. But you know, like you think about in every other part of the blade structure, you know, you design it so that it will last for 30 years easily.

Um, and then [00:25:00] it’s only when several things go wrong that you would end up having to go in and do that. Um, that maintenance.

Allen Hall: This should be kind of a woma topic actually, because is it even conceivable that you could have minimal maintenance on such a. Heavy industrial piece of equipment for 30 years versus every other machine in human operation that can’t do that.

What other machine, I’m sure somebody will write in about that. And if you, if you know what, a machine will operate for 30 years with no maintenance, please send us a note because I don’t know what that is.

Rosemary Barnes: No, I, I think Brent turbines are really, are really special and I think that it is, uh, like commonly misunderstood that, um, you know.

Not maintaining for 30 years is, you know, somehow not in engineering correctly or making the engineering easier, but it’s the opposite. You’re making the engineering harder. The same with manufacturing of, um, the blades specifically or anything made out of composite materials. Like the tolerances are huge, but the fact is that that makes the engineering harder, not easier because it has to work at [00:26:00] any, you know, if the web is here or if it’s a hundred millimeters this way, it’s still has to work exactly the same for the exact same amount of time.

So to make it low cost and reliable for that amount of time with that little maintenance is a huge job. Um, and you know, one world record that I know that wind turbines have is that the blades are the largest, like single piece component of any human made structure. There is nothing, there’s nothing bigger than, um, a wind turbine blade.

Like a bridge is made of multiple different members and a airplane. Has, you know, two, two wings that don’t even, even the span of most airplanes isn’t, um, both wings together isn’t the same as the longest wind turbine blades. Like, there’s not, there’s no one big single component that’s bigger than a wind turbine blade.

Not to mention the strain. Um, they bend a lot that they, they really, they really bend a lot. That’s a very. Difficult operating environment. They do millions of, of fatigue cycles in their [00:27:00] lifetime. Uh, it’s just like, you know, they’re, they’re breaking records all over the place. It’s a, it’s a super cool thing to mark on as an engineer, to be honest.

Allen Hall: Okay. So at Walmart 2026, I know that was one of the discussions that popped up, uh, on the panel, was what should we expect for a lifetime? Or sort of a less re a reduced level of maintenance on a wind turbine. And the answer was maybe a year. And I thought that was a very Australian way of answering that question.

It’s, it’s a real answer. I think, uh, the people that operate wind turbines know that that probably is true. You got about a year and then you gotta get on it. But financial investors don’t necessarily have that opinion about it. They think you just turn it on, let it run 30 years and collect all this money and.

What we’re learning is it’s, it’s a complicated problem. And Rosemary, I think you’re 100% right. All the variables that happen during the manufacturing and the design of a wind turbine have to incorporate safety features that keep that operating for 30 years. That’s really hard to do, [00:28:00] and you’d have no way to really verify it once you shove it out the door, especially the first thousand you make.

It’s almost an impossible task.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I mean there obviously there is heaps of maintenance that needs to be done to, to wind turbines, even if it is incredibly low maintenance compared to other kinds of machines. And if you are skipping that kind of maintenance or doing it incorrectly, then that is definitely a very um, Australia relevant issue.

You know, everyone’s on these full service agreements. Sometimes not for the full lifetime of the the turbine. So you can imagine if you’re kind of like half-assing your maintenance for the, those first 10 years, then you’re just sending a, you know, time bomb to the next person to take over that contract.

So. That’s a real challenge, but I’d see it with blades where it’s like, oh, they’re just quietly fixing, um, damages. They get the same damage over and over again and they just quietly fix it and not say anything and, or, you know, not really raise it like maybe you’re technically getting the reports, but it’s never flagged that, you know, Hey, this is a serial issue and no one’s ever investigating.

What’s the [00:29:00] real root cause of this? It might be that, you know, they’re fixing it well enough to last to the end of the FSA period. And then, yeah. Oh hey. Turns out your whole fleet has a serial issue that you need to take care of now with, without the backing of the manufacturer, which, um, you know, obviously makes it about 10 times harder.

Allen Hall: And that’s why you want to go to Wilma 2027 because we’re gonna to talk about that issue in a. About 20 others during the two day event. At least that’s what it’s scheduled for right now. Maybe it’ll go to a third day. Rosemary, maybe we need to add a third day because of all the topics

Rosemary Barnes: we need to move to a beach location.

If we’re gonna start going for multiple days,

Allen Hall: Rosemary wants to have it in Fiji or was it Tahiti? What was the other place you were saying you would like to go to?

Rosemary Barnes: Tahiti would be fine. Um, Maldives is what I was saying, but yeah, I will accept that. It’s not that. Logical to run Australia. Um, win o and m event offshore.

Allen Hall: We wanna send a congratulations to Yolanda and [00:30:00]Manuel as they have gotten married down in Mexico, uh, with all friends and family, several hundred attendees as I have learned. So congratulations to those two. And Yolanda will be back on the podcast. In the next week or two, that wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love for to hear from you, just reach out to us on LinkedIn and don’t forget to subscribe. So if you never miss an episode. And if you found value in today’s conversation, please leave us a review. It helps other wind energy professionals discover the show.

For Rosie and Nikki, I’m Allen Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy [00:31:00] Podcast.