Published

1 year ago

April 26, 2025

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

SkySails Power’s Innovative Airborne Wind Systems

Mark Hoppe, VP of Public Affairs & Business Development at SkySails Power, discusses their containerized airborne wind energy system. The innovative technology captures high-altitude winds with kite-based systems, producing up to 50% more yield than traditional turbines. Mark delves into the operational mechanics, deployment in remote and island nations, and future market expansion.

Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

Allen Hall: With traditional wind turbines, limited by location and high material costs, the industry needs innovative solutions for clean energy in remote areas. This week we speak with Mark Hoppe at SkySails Power. SkySails has developed a containerized airborne wind energy system that captures high altitude winds with unique kite technology producing up to 50% more yield than conventional turbines while being deployable nearly anywhere on the planet.

Stay tuned.

Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering tomorrow.

Allen Hall: Mark, welcome to the podcast.

Mark Hoppe: Yeah, thanks, man. Nice to be here.

Allen Hall: I’ve been looking to talk to you for. Ooh, going on at least two years because I saw SkySails in Hamburg at the Hamburg Wind Energy Show, and I thought, wow, this is really cool. And then, and the display was [00:01:00] good and the information was good.

I just didn’t know how much effort had gone into it at that point. And, and we’re two years further along, obviously. The SkySails technology and the problem you’re solving is really fascinating because there’s a lot of places on the planet that could use wind energy, but a standard horizontal axis wind turbine is probably the not the right approach, and diesel ends up being the winner on a lot of these places.

Mark Hoppe: That’s a problem. Definitely, definitely. So yeah, our technology solves a lot of these problems, but of course our technology is not just meant for these kind of places. So this is the entry point where we go in as, these places, they’ve faced a lot of issues when it comes to logistics, prices of the diesel because of the transport costs.

That also includes in, in the diesel prices, which then makes the diesel even, even pricier. So, and due to, they have to spend a lot, a lot of money on the diesel. Then they have the issue that they don’t have [00:02:00] the money for social development, for example. ‘Cause they have to subsidize their power prices and all this comes along.

So what we have as a solution for that problem is that we have a containerized wind power system. It’s so-called airborne wind energy system which uses the high altitude wind, which is more powerful. So we fly in heights between two and 400 meters, sometimes even higher. It depends on the width direction and everything.

And due to that we can use the higher wind and then produce 50% more yield than the typical wind turbine at the same size. So that’s crazy.

Allen Hall: Yes, that’s, that’s really good. I think the technology and the approach is innovative. So the, the solution to get rid of all the dependence on diesel and some of these electric grids that are very unreliable is to put in basically electric [00:03:00] generation through a, a kite in the sense the technology seems.

Relatively simple, but I’ve looked at this up close. There’s actually a lot of technology here because the system itself is really containerized. It’s like dropping a diesel generator on site somewhere, but except it’s a kite. Instead, you wanna explain basically how the system operates and what someone would see if they’re watching it work?

Mark Hoppe: Yeah, sure, sure, sure. So basically we, we always divide it into two subsystems more or less. So we have the ground station, which is a container. It’s a 30 feet container, so you can ship everywhere and just need one truck to to, to actually transport it somewhere. So this is really easy. And then you have the flying system. And the flying system at the ground station,

they’re connected via the start and landing mass. And the start and landing mast, so in, in the front of the start and landing mast, you have the kites. So when the start and landing mast goes up, [00:04:00] the in floating wind unfolds the kite and then the, the, the wind takes the kite upwards. And underneath the kite you have a robota, you can call it, we call it the control po.

It’s, you can compare it to a paraglide pilot more or less. And there you have an autopilot who steers to the whole system. Then what does is, I don’t know, have you, have you ever been kite surfing before?

Allen Hall: Yeah, I’ve seen it, yes.

Mark Hoppe: Yeah, so, so when you have kite surfing, you, you try to fly your kite in, in the so-called power zone, ’cause you have the wind window, so in the middle of it you have the power zone there, you have the most force and the autopilot does the same.

So it actually tries to fly inside the power zone all the time. So you have a lot of force on the, on the tether. And when the tether is unwind from the, from the winch inside the ground station, the rotational energy is converted into electricity, [00:05:00] and then you have 800 meter long tether on the drum.

And then when, when the 800 meters gone all the way out, the autopilot takes back the kite in nose dive, so it actually pitches the kite and then it falls down from the sky, and then it has, yeah, nearly no force. Then the generator X as a motor wheels in the, the tether again. And then when the autopilot is at a hundred meter, it starts all over.

So you can compare it to a yo-yo, you know.

Allen Hall: That’s a very good analogy. So the kite deploys out several hundred meters, 800 meters. Providing energy because of that pull force, turning a generator. And then in, when it reaches this extended length, it basically simplifies itself, lowers the drag, comes back in and repeats it.

So does, does that create continuous power then, or how does it handle the, the inward time in terms of. Power production? Is there a battery involved? What does that [00:06:00] look like?

Mark Hoppe: Yeah, so we always deliver our system in different configurations. So a little bit depends on this site conditions. So of course you can use it off-grid.

So what we would do then is we always deliver. So our system comes in a 30 feet container, and then you have another smaller container where you have a grid converter or a battery pack inside. And then so what we do with this solution is that we can always comply to the grid code but also of course can deliver an off grid system.

So you can either store the energy produced or use it direct or grid connect the whole system and then feed it into the grid. So that’s, that’s up to our customers on this side.

Joel Saxum: I think that one of the important things here to think about, like in the beginning of this conversation of how this thing looks, how it operates in the field, is that it [00:07:00] is modularized, right?

Like you’ve guys have taken the smart approach of putting this in a container because a lot of the places that this technology can be used can be on demand. Hey, I, in my mind, I’m thinking disaster response. I’m thinking military uses, remote microgrids. Like we have, we’ve had on the podcast before Hatch. Hatch works with a lot of First Nations up in Canada where they’re in these really remote places.

It’s hard to get infrastructure in there, but if you can bring this in on a truck, great. Right, so there’s a lot of places around the world, and I know this is, that’s just one use case, right? These remote, these Caribbean islands, like Allen was saying. Diesel generators, but they’re paying exorbitant amounts of cost for fuel.

So this thing, this and, and the fact that you can switch over to different grids right. So different her hertz ratings and voltages coming out. Really important. So where have you guys been able to deploy the system so far?

Mark Hoppe: So, so [00:08:00] far, and, and so far we have been installing systems. So we have one system in, in northern Germany, which is our research development side also.

And that one has also been grid connected now for five years. More or less and also been operating since then, but we use it for short durations in our the research development cycle. Then we have another system which has been installed Mauritius for now, also two and a half, three years, something.

Also grid connection, which has been operated all the time because of duration tests. So we actually get some figures about, okay, how last. How lasting are materials and what do we need to do to make them even last longer? So we learned a lot in the, in the past years on that.

And now we take all this into our product development cycles, and now we have another two systems [00:09:00] which are now being delivered to Taiwan. So the next installations will be in Taiwan, and then. We have some projects going on in the Philippines, Cape Words Hawaii. So all, all of these like island states and island nations, they, they, we were really active in these spaces right now.

French Polynesia is also really interesting so far remote places. And all these island states, they have a bigger issue. They have a really big issue ’cause they’re feeling the, the climate crisis first. So they need to solve it. And also, and, and also what, what we are look also looking into, which is a really interesting market, is the Caribbean.

Because there you have the same issues. You have hurricane region. So what they have to do is that they have to rebuild more or less the whole infrastructure every five to 10 years because everything has been destroyed. So they can’t even install any wind turbines because they’ve just been blown away.

And [00:10:00] in Mauritius we have proven that our system actually is feasible to withstand a typhoon many times.

Joel Saxum: Well, and these are good places to do installs too, I suppose from a business perspective. You get to go to the Caribbean, French Polynesia, like that. That sounds amazing. So one, one of the questions I’d ask you is kind of reviewing your technology here.

Do you, do you have a special kind of parachute material and a tether material that you guys use because it’s, you know, it’s long duration. In my mind, I think a parachute is, you know, down, repack put away. But this thing is gonna be out there for a long time. So throughout these great that you guys have had five year tests and it, you know, a two, three year test, have you developed those…or how have those technologies developed?

Mark Hoppe: So well, it has developed a lot and, and there’s still a lot to do. So because we still do a lot of material tests and now we extend them by far what we have done [00:11:00] before. So when you look at the materials, what we use now is for the tether we use Dyneema which is even used in, in, in shooting rests, I think.

And, and it’s like it’s. It’s, it’s better than steel. So it, it’s makes you made for a lot of force. And, and so you can think of, so we, we use a 40 millimeter tether. diameter 40 millimeter. And it, it, it withdraw. It’s, it’s made for I think six tons design load. And and yeah, so, so it withstands a lot.

Then what we use for the kites it’s actually the same kind of materials which we use in sailing, nowadays. And also what they do in development. When you look at the, the sales nowadays also, especially for the performance sail, you know, for the races, what they use there. This is these kind of materials we also [00:12:00] kind of use and also will extend because they are made to last for a lot of force, but they’re in light and all what we need.

And then for example, what we have done now, so we just bought the biggest tether bending machine in the world to actually do the tether testing and to extend all this knowledge, you know, because this is really important, you know, it’s also for the safetyness of our system because everything is built around the tether.

Well,

Allen Hall: Dyneema is the right choice there. That material has been proven over and over and over again in aerospace and in sailing. It is an extremely tough material. Yeah, and you’re only using the, a line that’s about a 10th of an inch wide diameter. That’s actually really small, but it does make sense because that’s the right choice.

Now, in terms of operational aspects one of the things I get ask about SkySails, well, how many hours a day [00:13:00] does it operate? Is it up there 24 hours a day? Is it up there five hours a day? What do you typically see in some of these installations?

Mark Hoppe: Our systems, they, so. Like looking over a year. I think it, it, it’s, it’s good to compare also the different technologies when you look at how many operational hours you have over one year.

And there you always call it full-load hours that you can have over one year. So if you have installed one megawatt then you have 5,000 full-load hours, and then you have 5,000 megawatt hours a yield per year. It’s pretty easy. So, and one year has 8,700 something hours, I think. So and our system has up to 5,000, full-load hours, depending on the size.

Allen Hall: That’s a lot.

Joel Saxum: That’s a, that’s a high capacity factor. Yeah. That’s higher than a, like a horizontal access. Yeah.

Mark Hoppe: Yeah. So if you, for example, compare a coal-fire plan t they have [00:14:00] coal power, power plant, they have ’cause of the service cycles and everything like this.

You have 4,500 full-load hours if you have a offshore winter turbine buying Europe. Depending on the site, 4,000 full-load hours. So what we do is we have offshore wind on onshore sites.

Joel Saxum: And, and what’s the output?

Mark Hoppe: Yeah, so for now now the systems is really small because also because of the sites we want to go into.

So they now have a, we call it cycle power because this is it’s not like what we know from conventional wind turbines. We, we call, we, we always talk about installed power. But we, in our industry, talk about cycle power. So what’s you have in a one power cycle? Yeah. And this is a 200 kilowatt system that we have now in the market.

Allen Hall: Okay. That’s a lot larger than I thought you were at right now. So that a 200 kilowatt sheen can help a lot of people, particularly in rural communities or whether it’s been through a hurricane. Just getting back up [00:15:00] and running is huge because the, the, the load is really simplistic. Lights, maybe cooking those kind of things, air conditioning.

Mark Hoppe: Yes. So the year would be 780 megawatt hours a year depending on the site, of course again. But that would be enough power for I think so just talking in German households. ‘Cause I have the number in my mind. So that would be something between two and 400 households. For one with one transmission..

Allen Hall: Yeah. It seems like a, the proper solution in, in a lot of cases. So what’s the deployment plan then? If you have a larger community, would you deploy two SkySails systems? Would you install a larger system? What does that look like in terms of the, the right approach and the units and to the community?

Mark Hoppe: So what can see now, so looking at our, how, how we go into the market now. So now we have this 200 kilowatt system which is actually meant for like all these [00:16:00] remote places where we have diesel hybridization with PV hybridization. All these places like remote off-grid solutions mostly and mini grids, micro grids. And then next step would be, and this what we are already have the pipeline is to develop the next bigger system.

Which is then also meant for more developed countries because you have a different load so which you can match. Then of course you match better the needs of, of these specific markets. And then also already planned is next step after that one. So first step would be now something between four and 500 kilowatt, and then the next step is already megawatt system.

And this is already planned to do. So this is already in project plans and everything.

Allen Hall: So what does a megawatt system look like in terms of the kite size? Does it expand? I, I don’t know what the math is. There is by, is it square function? How, how big does kite get versus a 200 kilowatt system to a [00:17:00] megawatt?

Mark Hoppe: Yes. So the 200 kilowatt system uses kites up to 180 square meters. Also depending on the wind distribution. So if you have a high wind site, you use a smaller kite. If you have a low wind site you use a bigger kite. So you can use the same system, but you just exchange kite, which is also really great.

When it comes to material intensity. Then if you look into the megawatt system. The kite size would probably be something between 700 square meter up to a thousand.

Joel Saxum: How do you, okay, so I’m thinking, I’m thinking in my this is my traditional mind thinking about wind, wind farm, siting and these other things.

So of course, like if you, Hey, we’re gonna build a wind farm here. You know, a year before that we put a mast tower out there. We measure the wind resource. We have a general idea of what it looks like at 10 meters above the surface and sometimes, you know, 50 or a hundred. How do you measure the [00:18:00] wind resource at 400 meters of, of height?

Like what does that look like? Because I don’t, I’ve, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a map that says, here’s the wind resource at 400 meters.

Mark Hoppe: So actually there is no, so this is why you’ve never seen one probably. Yeah, and this is a really interesting question actually, because, yeah. How do you measure the wind?

So nowadays we have what we do, we do kind of the same. So when we do project development so what we do is first, okay, our customers come to us and they, okay, we have an idea of a site which would work for us. And then what we do, we, we have, internal developed tool chain, which we use then do a small, like, like a really fast site scouting to get an idea of, okay, if this is this site actually feasible. With weather data, which we can just get from databases, everything is calculated.

Like is there a business case? Like pretty, pretty, pretty easy stuff. And then after that next step would be that we go there [00:19:00] and then we actually put a lidar on, on the site. And then we do a lidar measurement campaign. So also wind measurement campaign, but by, by using a lidar we can use we can measure the wind power up

far higher. And that’s, that’s it.

Allen Hall: All right. So this sounds really doable. I just did a quick Google search to see what the square meter area of an Airbus A380 is. It, it’s about, it’s about 850 square meters. So you’re talking about a kite that has the wingspan roughly as an Airbus A380, which is, it’s big, but doable. I mean, obviously those airplanes are flying around, so it is not particularly hard to, to make something of that size, particularly in, in a kite form. So this seems relatively straightforward. Once you cross that megawatt threshold, then your market expands dramatically. Correct?

Mark Hoppe: Yeah, it expands dramatically.

And then and, and, [00:20:00] and even for what, what, what then is the steps do is actually to put them offshore. To put them on the floor because then it expands even wider because what, what we, what we can do with this technology compared also to conventional technologies, which we have on the market nowadays.

Is that also there the floater can be much, much smaller because if you compare it to wind turbine. So the, the wind turbine has all the weight up in the sky and what does it do with the float? So the float must be really big because. Take care of the binding moments up in the ocean. And if you not have these binding moments, you don’t even need a floor, which is that big because if you look at our system, all the weight is on the ground.

So the only thing you need is actually an anchor, so it doesn’t swim away because of the kite.

Allen Hall: Alright, so let’s, let’s walk through the, the math of that for a second. So instead of putting out a 15 megawatt turbine and all the, [00:21:00] as Joel has pointed out on the podcast numerous times, the complexities of doing that, the ships, the pounding, the monopile, all the regulatory aspects.

Mark Hoppe: The material intensity.

Joel Saxum: Pure cost. Yeah.

Allen Hall: Pure cost, right? So you’re cutting out all the steel. Pretty much out of a wind turbine.

Mark Hoppe: Even the rare earth, because like if you, if you look at the wind turbines because they need to take care of the weight they need the rare earth is because otherwise the generator and, and, and the mag magnet inside for the, for the gear would be too to, to, to, would, would have too much weight, you know?

And since we don’t have that issue, we can use other materials like yeah, other materials, which is, which are not that easy, which are much more easy to get, you know. So because we don’t have the weight issue.

Allen Hall: Okay, so the cost would come way down. The simplicity would be there, the deployment would be easier. Are you seeing [00:22:00] interest in this and on offshore applications? I’m thinking Joel, I’m thinking California.

Joel Saxum: I’m thinking Gulf of Mexico. Because now, now you’ve, now you’ve solved the hurricane problem. Hurricane’s coming, wheel ’em in, shut ’em down for a second. Hurricane blows through, put ’em back up. So you remove that blade problem that we have in the Gulf of Mexico.

Mark Hoppe: That would be, that would be great. That would be a great site to actually, to, to develop such systems. And then yeah, and even though, even, even even sites like the, the coast of Japan, because in Japan you have the deep sea really deep sea coast, which means that it’s really hard to install any other wind turbines ’cause it’s deep, you know.

Allen Hall: As this technology develops over the, the next roughly year or so, you must be ramping up on the factories and the scale and to be able to produce these units. But that does seem like. There’s a lot of advantage here, particularly on the cost side. Man, even in like UAE, saudi Arabia, places like that, where there, there is wind, [00:23:00] just deploy it, boom, boom, boom.

Right? So what does that look like? Are you scaling up at the minute to, to take some of these orders because the math works out it looks like.

Mark Hoppe: Yeah, so actually we talk in the right moment. So what we do now is actually, so. We have, we have taken the step to develop the technology and we have proven the technology also by having the first, also being the first company in our industry to have a verified power curve last year.

So we, we made the proof for the technology that it actually works and produces power. And this year’s all about to go into the market. And we do this making big steps forward. So as we have a lot of customer inquiries and we’ve not done any. Any outreach from our side, so it’s all inbound.

Which is great. But now, so, so now we say now our customers are actually [00:24:00] ready to reserve their production slots. This is what we do now. So they can reserve the production slots and then we will deliver the system when they need them.

Allen Hall: So where can they see a system today? Like if, if I wanted to see a system in action, would I, would I just go to YouTube?

Would I, would I travel over to Germany? I. Where would, where I go to Mauritius, where would, where would I go to go see this live?

Mark Hoppe: So to see them live, of course it’s always good to go to Northern Germany or to Mauritius. But then of course in the near future, where you will see some flying in Taiwan.

And then we will extend to the Philippines. And then probably will be next or French, we will see, which is faster. And hopefully also Hawaii.

Allen Hall: I love Hawaii.

Joel Saxum: There we go. That’s where we want to go.

Mark Hoppe: Yeah, yeah, of course. I, I’m happy to invite you when, when you, when you’re ready to, to, to run, we take another podcast there I would say.

Allen Hall: That would be terrific.

Mark Hoppe: Yeah. We, so we actually, we are just ramping up, huh? We just ramping up this [00:25:00] whole, this whole market and, and this is really exciting to us.

Joel Saxum: Every country is different with airspace laws. Now there’s some, there’s some global stuff, general guidelines, right? But there’s every country’s different.

Like there’s these, you can’t fly a kite over 500 feet in the United States. Then you run into airspace and you have issues. How have you guys circumvented or dealt with some of those local airspace regulations?

Mark Hoppe: In our industry. There are different approaches right now. Because some of them, if you, if you compare the technologies they’re two different concepts.

So the one we use is the textile kit, and then you have other companies which uses rigid wing which, okay, we have our, why we use textile kite. We have a lot of yeah, issues why we do that and not do the other approach. But if you compare them, then the rigid wing companies, they claim that they’re kind of a drone [00:26:00] because of course they kind of look like a drone, a tether drone, more or less.

It looks like an airplane like a small airplane. But if you compare our kites with them then our kite is not an airplane.. Sorry. It, it’s not as immovable. And it so what we classify as is an obstacle.

Joel Saxum: Like a tower.

Mark Hoppe: Yeah, like a tower. Yeah. Like a structure. And then because of that we of course we need some marking, which means we now also have developed an integration concept, which comes with different kind of

yeah, safety measures. So, ’cause what we always have to take care of in, in using the airspace is that you have to take care about the safeness, of course. So all the other airspace users, they need to be aware of what you’re using as an airspace. Which means that you need marking. And the marking could [00:27:00] be that you have lighting.

It’s like a wind turbine. You have every 50 meters. You have some, some lighting on the tower flashing. And then, then, and what we use, we use kind of the same. So we have a lighting on the ground station, on the, on the mass, and then at the controlled part. And then the kite is also a white and red color.

And then what we also want to implement is a a map mark for the for the aerospace maps. For like a symbol for, for, so, so that, you know, okay, there’s an obstacle. And then you of course need some awareness campaigns to to, to make all them aware of the technology. And like, this also comes with more installations, of course.

And then for now, what we, what we try to get is a solution where we use EDDs danger zones. So like they, all the pilots are aware of, okay, there’s something, [00:28:00] but you can fly in, you can fly through. So it’s not a restricted zone, but it’s like a danger zone. So they even use these danger zones for, in Europe, they use them also in other countries for drones, for example for drone use spaces and stuff.

So yeah, that’s the way to go now.

Joel Saxum: In the States, it would be covered under a. I think right, Allen? A certificate of authorization for use, then that’s filed. Filed with the FAA, then they can go from there but.

Allen Hall: ‘Cause there are buildings that are operate, that exist, that are taller than what you’re flying at today in the world.

So you’re, you’re not the tallest object on the planet at the minute. And obviously there’s hills and mountains and things that are much taller. So I, this makes a ton of sense. So anybody who wants to find out about SkySails, you need to go to the website because there’s a ton of great information. They, yeah.

And the website is skysails-power.com. but they’re also on LinkedIn. You can see a lot of SkySails information there and their [00:29:00] YouTube channel. Yeah, YouTube is, the YouTube channel is really good. And, and check it out there. Mark, how do people get ahold of you if they want to acquire one of your systems or see a demo?

How do they do that?

Mark Hoppe: So it’s actually the easiest way would be just to visit our website and, and file us an inquiry. Or you can just send us a yeah a message on LinkedIn.

Allen Hall: Great technology. Fascinating. And the, the growth of this technology is astounding. One megawatt kites or sails does seem like a way to make more wind energy pretty slick. So check out skysails-power.com. Mark, thank you so much for being on the podcast and keep us up to date as things progress, especially if you go to Hawaii.

Mark Hoppe: Yeah, we will do that. Thank you Joel and thank you Allen

https://weatherguardwind.com/skysails-airborne-wind-system/

Renewable Energy

Dogger Bank Wake Lawsuit, EverWind Hydrogen Farm

Published

6 hours ago

July 14, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Dogger Bank Wake Lawsuit, EverWind Hydrogen Farm

Rosemary previews Pardalote’s new hands-on blade repair course. EverWind’s Ocean Lake, Canada’s largest wind project, will feed a green hydrogen and ammonia plant in Nova Scotia rather than the grid. Plus BP’s exit from an offshore project in Japan, and the wake-effect lawsuit pitting SSE, Equinor, and Vårgrønn against RWE’s Dogger Bank South.

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 StrikeTape. Protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit striketape.com. And now your hosts

Allen Hall 2025: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall. I’m here with Matthew Stead, Yolanda Padron, and Rosemary Barnes is back this week.

Rosemary, you’ve been to a number of training courses over the last couple of weeks. The first off was GWO. What was your experience at GWO training?

Rosemary1: It was the fourth or maybe even fifth time that I’ve done it. Um, I did it a few times in Denmark and then, uh, this is the second time doing it in Australia. also, this was my first time doing first aid in Australia. Last time they did GWO here, but my first aid was still valid from Europe, so I, I didn’t redo it. And it’s like so much about [00:01:00] snakes and spiders and jellyfish But a good, good rule of thumb, not 100% accurate, but good rule of thumb, if it is something from the ocean that stung you, then you put something warm on it, and if it’s something from the land that stung or bit you, then something cold on it,

Allen Hall 2025: well, how often do you usually take GWO training?

Rosemary1: You gotta do it every two years to be valid. I don’t do it every two years because, um, if you do it every two years, like within two years, then you can do the refresher course. So that’s three days instead of four However, um, because I don’t climb constantly, like often it will be six months or more in between climbs, I’ll just do it before I know that I’ve got a climb.

all the other people except for one were technicians who, you know, have been working for a while.

So they’re also doing the full course, not the refresher. So they get a little bit more practice than I do. But, um, it’s just not often enough. Y-you know, like every time I go it’s like I, I really feel the need to have the refresher, um, because I’m just not fully on top of it. ‘Cause it’s [00:02:00] not just that you need to know what to do. You need to be able to… Like if you need to use it, you’re gonna be freaking out, you know?

This is the worst thing that’s probably ever happened in your life, and now you’ve gotta remember all your training. It’s like you want it to be actually second nature to some extent. So yeah, first day is manual handling, which is v- you know, very– That one’s very easy and I would be happy to never do that again.

Like I will always remember that. Um, then you got fire, um, fire safety awareness, and that one’s just fun ’cause you just get to, um, light fires and put stuff out then first aid, which I definitely always want a refresher on.

The CPR dummies at this place, they had lights, um, and it lit up green if you were doing it right, and I haven’t used a dummy that was so advanced before, so that was quite good. I realized I wasn’t pressing hard enough. and then yeah, last two days is working at heights training, which is the most intense ’cause you got your harness on all day and, um, you know, climbing up and down and rescuing people.

this was Rite Training in Goulburn, and, um, the [00:03:00] instructor’s name was Claire. highly recommend doing that one.

Allen Hall 2025: Is that a general requirement in Australia that you have GWO before you can climb?

Rosemary1: Like, yeah, they will sometimes, um, let you climb if you are babysat by people. I would not recommend other engineers, like if you’ve never climbed a wind turbine before, like I would really not recommend that you just go up with a team and haven’t done the training because you do need to be able to use a ladder safely and, um, you can, y- you can easily, like even inside the nacelle, you could easily hurt yourself really badly if you’re used to working in an office, uh, you’re upping your danger level by, you know, like many, many, many times by going up a turbine and it’s just something that you gotta take seriously.

Allen Hall 2025: How busy are the courses in Australia? Are a lot of technicians trying to get in and get trained?

Rosemary1: No, it’s people that have a job that are getting trained. But there were heaps of techs in this course. There were maybe eight or so, which is also part of the reason why it took a really long time.

Allen Hall 2025: So [00:04:00] this week, as we record, y- you’re presenting a blade repair course for engineers and technicians. a completely new area that you’re, uh, going into in terms of offering advice and expertise that it’s really hard to find on the planet. It’s probably a, a, a busy or, or requested course, I would imagine, in Australia, where you just don’t have access to a lot of the manufacturers.

Rosemary2: it’s a, it’s a course for just for engineers or technical type people, um, but including hands-on stuff. So the way that I I forced this to come into being was just the last five years. I, um, you know, I started working a lot on wind turbine blade repairs and, um, people would ask me, you know, “Have these repairs been done right?”

And the thing is that the only repairs that I had anything to do with when I was working at LM were weirdo ones, right? [00:05:00] Where the normal, like a technician couldn’t, couldn’t handle it. It was outside of, um, yeah, their, their standard, uh, kind of repairs that they can do for whatever reason. and now in the work that we do at Part Load, it’s primarily normal repairs, and I just didn’t know exactly what technicians know. You know, how do they, how do they know whether they can repair it or not? What do they know before they go up there?

When are they calling the engineer? Um, all that sort of stuff, like the normal stuff. eventually it became less about me learning, ’cause like I said, I kind of picked up most of it. Um, but now I’ve got staff that I’m training up to be, uh, you know, composites engineers and to work with these kinds of issues. There’s a lot of repetitive tasks involved in what we do when we, like, assess the condition of a wind farm.

A lot of what we do is look main- manually looking through photos and thing- if things are classified right or not. I [00:06:00] Found this guy from Direct Wind Services, Jurij Eska. He’s a blade engineer. He’s worked in Europe and then come back to Australia, so a little bit like me. And, um, I just worked with him on a few projects and I’m like, “Oh, okay. Well, this guy, uh, he really gets it.” And I asked him, “How do you, how do you train your technicians?

What course do they do? Maybe I can do that course.” And he said, “Oh, we train them ourselves.” And so then I asked him to put this course together. So where we started off the course yesterday, that was, um, uh, an indoor session where I was talking through how are blades designed, uh, certified, tested, manufactured, um, what kinds of manufacturing defects can you see and what do they do about them in the factory?

‘Cause you know that they’re doing a lot of repairs in the factory already before you ever see a, a brand new blade. and then the next three days we’re going to be working on, um, yeah, grinding and [00:07:00] infusions and a bit of a, a bit of theory about, um, composite repairs.

Allen Hall 2025: What do you feel like are those key skill sets that engineers should know how to do, maybe not as well as a, a professional technician that does it a lot, but at least at a beginner’s level should be able to complete them before they start repairing blades on their own and giving advice about how to repair blades?

What, what are those key items?

Rosemary2: part of it is that I want them to be able to understand what is a bad damage and what’s not a bad damage cause you look a lot at images from the outside, but it’s really about what’s on the inside and how deep it goes is the real thing.

So, um, it’ll be about learning, you know, developing some judgment about, um, how bad it can be and how bad it can look on the outside. We’re not gonna be looking at so many real damages ’cause like obviously we’re just dealing with pieces that are in the, um, in the, uh, workshop and Yuri has [00:08:00] made some samples for us, um, purposely made them badly so that we’ve got some, you know, damage to find.

Allen Hall 2025: Are you addressing carbon fiber at all?

Rosemary2: Uh, I actually haven’t asked about that. I don’t think so. Carbon fiber is, um, is a real pain to work with because it’s conductive. Like, even grinding it makes a bit of a hazardous work environment. We did talk a little bit about the different materials yesterday and, um, about pultrusions. And actually, it turns out Yuri used to work somewhere where they, uh, manufactured pultrusions, and I had always, I was always under the impression that a pultrusion is, you know, like, perfectly s- perfectly straight.

That’s the point. And he’s like, “No way.” No way. There’s waviness in the pultrusions

Allen Hall 2025: And on March 3rd through 5th at WOMA 2027, Rosie, you’re gonna give part of this course as part of WOMA, right?

Rosemary2: Little, little mini course. We’ll have to decide what, what makes sense to include, ’cause it was… Yeah, I went through really a, a fair [00:09:00]bit about blades yesterday, you know, like why they are shaped the way that they are. So we had to talk about aerodynamics and, um, why they’re made of composite. So we had to talk about, you know, like composite materials, like how, how they, how they work So I don’t know if, uh, people wanna write in comments that m- we should, we should do some sort of, um, poll beforehand to see what are the topics that are most interesting to people, ’cause I think we’ll have a half day, right? So we’ll need to be, we’ll need to be focused.

Allen Hall 2025: the description of repairs and what repairs should look like could be tremendously valuable. Everybody who has seen a repair always wonders, “Was that repair done right?” And s- and if you can have some general tools to know, like, “Uh, maybe there’s something not quite right here,” or, “That looks like a solid repair,” that would be a tremendous help to the industry, p- particularly for asset managers

Rosemary2: Yeah. And you know what I think is even more useful than being able to pick out when it’s wrong is to be able to know when it’s right. You can– Y-you know, like it is so– [00:10:00] It’s such a relief. Like it takes such a mental load off you when you’re just like, “Yeah, that’s all, that’s all good. That’s normal. Okay, I know that that– I knew that that would happen, so this is not a surprise.”

‘ know, once you know you can make that judgment, you can do it very quickly and focus your attention where it should be, so you don’t need to stress for an hour over every repair. You’re just like, “Yeah. Good, good, good, good, good.” And then, “Mm, please explain why you have chosen to not, not repair this, but just put a Band-Aid over it.”

that’s the goal of this training is to get everybody, y-you know, technical people, not people who wanna ever be a blade repair technician. They’ve got their own training that covers what they need to know. But this one is just, yeah, getting people like asset managers or my employees to learn what they need to know about composites, given that they have already got a strong engineering education.

So, um, you know, they know a lot of the stuff, but just need to know the composite-specific stuff and wind turbine blade-specific stuff

I will run this course again, by the [00:11:00] way, ’cause there was a lot of people who wanted to do it I couldn’t fit in. So it’ll happen at least once. I’ll keep on running it until everybody that wants to do it has, has done it. But, um, yeah, feel free

to get in touch

Allen Hall 2025: So if you wanna attend Rosie’s short blade course at WOMA 2027, just visit woma2027.com and register today

Allen Hall 2025: [00:12:00] Well, over in Canada, they just approved a, really a wind farm big enough to power a small city, and almost none of the electricity is going to the grid, which is a very interesting aspect to some of the things that are happening in Canada at the minute.

So up in Nova Scotia, uh, they’ve conditionally approved the Ocean Lake Wind Project. This’d be the largest wind farm in the province’s history. Up to 158 turbines will rise, uh, generating as much as 1.2 gigawatts of power. But this power is not headed to households in Canada. Nearly all of it will be feeding Everwind Fuels’ green hydrogen and ammonia plant at Point Tupper, where clean electrons will become a fuel that can be shipped across the ocean to Europe. And Matthew, there’s been a lot of [00:13:00] projects like this in Europe that have stopped more recently, particularly in northern Europe and up in Scandinavia, uh, on the hydrogen side. Or at least they’ve slowed them down. Canada seems to be going into that breach maybe to fill that void. And is there a marketplace for this to occur up in Canada?

Matthew Stead: Yeah, I think it’s very interesting. Um, you know, like you say, a number of canceled projects, and in Australia there’s been numerous canceled projects. So I like, um, the analogy or use of the term hopium rather than hydrogen, um, where, um, everyone’s hoping hydrogen will be the answer. Um, although, you know, what I, what I’ve read and understood is that, um, you know, the commercials just don’t really stack up and, um, yeah. So in terms of South Australia anyway, um, there was some major, um, hydrogen, uh, development planned with, um, you know, it, it never stacked up. So, you know, it sounds like a great [00:14:00] idea, um, but I’m not sure that the commercials will ever stack up unless you’ve got that guaranteed offtake for the, for the ammonium

Allen Hall 2025: Yolanda, what kind of uphill battle is this to get this wind farm up and running knowing that it’s one customer and that commercial market is a little shaky at the minute?

Yolanda Padron: what we saw, they have a lot of ca- caveats, right? So they’ve, they need to secure the customers before they start building and before they do anything, um, behind the meter. But it’s, I mean, it’s, it’s a pretty big wind farm, and it’s pretty far up north. But I mean, we, we talked to someone in, in northern US today who was having icing issues.

So I mean, of course we know Canada is no, no stranger to that, if they do make it work, I think it’d be really, really exciting to, to have sort of one technology power another, um, instead of just what we’ve been hearing a lot of the potential data centers and, and just wind po- [00:15:00] powering data centers.

Matthew Stead: Why not data centers? You know, seriously, like you said, Yolanda. why not go something that does have commercial demand?

Yolanda Padron: we’ve talked a lot about the potential of da- data centers, right? And we’ve talked a lot about people wanting to do them. Um, but there’s also a lot of talk of potentially doing data centers up in space and a lot of talk of maybe what if we do it offshore or, you know. And so I think there’s a lot of what ifs with data centers.

Of course, there’s a lot of what if with this, but just from a technology standpoint, I think this is really intriguing to have something that’s, that’s a little bit even more out there than what we’ve heard so far

Allen Hall 2025: Is it a build it and they will come type of s- situation here that hydrogen and ammonia may be the, the first offtake, but realistically, if that doesn’t work out, they can still connect to the grid and feed Canada, feed the Northeast of the United States or something else

Matthew Stead: Also, um, like Japan has [00:16:00] also expressed strong demand for, um, ammonia, and so, you know, they- they’re on the East Coast, aren’t they? So, you know, shipping it from East Coast to Japan is not gonna be so, so easy. I stick by what I said before. It’s hopium. it’s not a plan

Allen Hall 2025: I just saw an article today talking about Airbus continuing on with a hydrogen aircraft, and I think they were gonna work with a Japanese firm to work on that together. Six months ago I thought that died, but maybe it’s still in the offering. Maybe there’s an offtake for hydrogen. B- besides the, you know, replacement for some of the, uh, more unpleasant gases that are used in steel production and in some other industry things, maybe part of this is airplane fuel.

Which ammonia is one of those offerings also, right? The, there’s been a number of efforts to turn ammonia fuel into essentially jet fuel. They configure the engines to burn ammonia, which is a possibility. It does seem remote though, [00:17:00] honestly. There doesn’t seem to be a huge pull for hydrogen, and there’s not a, a major market for ammonia at at least at the moment.

So I don’t know. It, it’s… When you’re talking about gigawatts of capacity you’re gonna build, you, you hopefully have an offtake

for it

Yolanda Padron: if they designed it for it being not connected to the grid, right, it just is kind of like a behind the meter thing, and then could they later retrofit it into there? Like, how would all that permitting and everything

Allen Hall 2025: I–

well, that’s a great question. I– There are a number of, uh, connections between the United States and Canada at the moment. guess is that when they place this wind farm, they have that alternate route lined up, just like any wind farm in here in the States, that you’ll find them real close to high-voltage transmission lines.

Generally, those are the easy ones because transmission lines cost money and take time for permitting. I’m not sure Canada has those kind of restrictions, right? But Nova Scotia is not the easiest place in the world to do heavy construction work, just the [00:18:00] nature of Nova Scotia. It will be fascinating to see how they progress with this, but it’s something to keep an eye on because a lot of other projects like this have slowed down

Matthew Stead: Do you remember when some of the OEMs were talking about, um, putting electrolyzers on their offshore wind turbines? So the, the theory, the theory was you’ve got offshore wind turbine, you don’t connect it to the grid standalone, um, and you generate hydrogen or, uh, possibly ammonia on the actual wind turbine.

And then every now and then you just decant it, you know, drive up with a boat, you know, plug in the hose, and then suck out the hydrogen or ammonia. So, um, yeah, once again, all of those have gone quiet, haven’t

they?

Allen Hall 2025: speaking of Japan, a global oil giant is walking away from the Japanese offshore wind project, uh, but the project’s not dying. BP has told its Japanese partners it intends to withdraw from a wind farm planned off Yamagata Prefecture, uh, apparently worried about [00:19:00] profitability. The 450-megawatt project sits, uh, just off the coast, and it is led by trading house Marubeni, which says it will press ahead without BP.

Kansai Electric and Tokyo Gas remain on board also. So BP’s exit follows really a, a brutal year for Japan, where Mitsubishi has, and some others, have pulled out of, uh, at least three projects so far, uh, over rising construction costs, and I think a lot of that’s tied to inflation. Uh, the ambition’s still there for, uh, for a number of companies, but it’s just getting harder and harder to do projects in Japan.

Is this just the nature of the economy in Japan at the moment, or is this more about Japanese policy on the offtake,

Matthew Stead: I, I’m not really deep into the details but, you know, it just appears to me like a blip. I mean, there, I think there’s a lot of commitment in Japan to, you know, carry [00:20:00] out their offshore developments and I, I think this is probably more just a blip, um, and a little, you know, internal corporate, you know, argument rather than a sustained issue on offtake agreements and so forth

Allen Hall 2025: Well, Yolanda, how hard is it to keep partners on a wind development in general? Are there a lot of moving pieces there until the turbines hit the water or hit the

earth?

there’s

Yolanda Padron: I think a lot of moving pieces, but not, uh, I haven’t seen a lot of changes once it’s been publicly announced and everything’s, you know, everything’s been signed and everything. Um, I do think this is really interesting. I know we’ve talked a lot about, about having, about the idea of like sometimes people think wind’s really expensive, and the way that we’re gonna make wind work is just making it cheaper for everybody and just optimizing it as much as possible, um, and, and just being, having the turbines be as resilient as possible, right?

And I think such a strong player just backing out maybe [00:21:00] will incentivize some of the people in Japan to sort of try to see how they can optimize it a little bit more. I’m really excited to see it. I don’t know. It’d be… I think it’d be a nice it

Allen Hall 2025: Isn’t the bonus to offshore wind the price stability? Although the price may be higher today than you may be happy to pay, the stability of that price is a huge leverage point when you compare it to things like oil and gas or natural gas, um, in particular, which are highly volatile, that for electricity, at least you have this fairly steady source at a fixed price that you can plan out 10 years, 20 years, 25 years, maybe even 30 years. And as batteries become more prevalent on the grid, that the math even gets better over the years. Isn’t that the bonus? And, and if [00:22:00] everybody can focus on the long-term effects to the economy is where all the action will be?

Matthew Stead: Yeah, I mean, when I first, um, started looking into wind, you know, 10 plus years ago, I, I won- wondered why. Why would you build offshore with all that expense? And then, you know, it became clear to me just around the, um, you know, the diversity, you know, the, the fact that you might get more wind at times that you don’t get onshore wind, and the fact that it’s more consistent.

Um, yeah, and, you know, so those… I- it’s really a trade-off, isn’t it? Between the capital costs and the, um, more reliable, more consistent, um, offshore wind. So I think, you know, I, I was convinced at the start, I thought it was crazy, but then obviously it’s, it’s a, it’s a… it makes sense

Yolanda Padron: Yeah, I agree. And I think, uh, depending on where you’re having your offshore wind farm, you run into things that you maybe haven’t run into before, right? I know onshore we run into a lot of things in the [00:23:00]US and Australia that we, you know, the, the turbines just maybe weren’t designed for, or there wasn’t a lot of research being done because it was being done in Europe and, and the conditions are really different.

Um, and just the same way, you know, the sea is different in different places. There’s different depths. There are diff- different things that you need to worry about. but yeah, I, I completely agree that there’s a lot more generation, um, offshore. It’s, it’s bigger turbines. Um, there can be bigger, larger costs. You know, if you need to do a blade replacement or something, it, it can get, again, really expensive really quickly. But, but it’s, it’s a trade-off for sure.

Allen Hall 2025: We’re gonna take a quick break, but when we come back, we wanna talk about a place where wind is being fought over versus projects slowing down

[00:24:00] over in the UK, there’s a big fight about offshore wind, and not just about where wind turbines will be planted, but more about how they will affect other wind turbines.

So RWE is defending the UK government’s approval of its three-gigawatt Dogger Bank South project, which won its consent order, uh, basically a month and a half ago. Uh, but the developers next door are taking that approval to court. Equinor, SSE, Vårgrön own the neighboring 3.6-gigawatt Dogger Bank wind farm, and they have filed for j-judicial review.

Their argument is technical, but the price tag is not. They say wake effects, where one wind farm steals the wind from another due to turbulence, could cut their output and cost them between €500 million and [00:25:00] €669 million over the life of their project. That’s a lot of money, Matthew. A half a million euros is not something to ignore.

It looks like this is headed to some judicial court or maybe arbitration. Wake effects, which are actually not that well understood from what I can tell at the moment, there’s a lot of discussion and argument about, uh, how real are they or, or what effect they can have on power output. Uh, there’s a lot of money at stake, and the location of some of these wind farms is pretty close to one

another

Matthew Stead: you know, we always, always talk about, you know, AEP loss and, you know, the, the challenge is actually measuring it. And, um, you know, I’ve heard different numbers, but, you know, plus or minus half a percent of AEP loss, um, appears to me from what– in discussions, you know, the, the limit of what you can actually ever measure on a good day.

Um, I just wonder, I mean, while those numbers, you know, €500, um, [00:26:00] million is a, is a big number, um, but what is that as a percentage of the overall output of that, of that facility? Um, I, I don’t know the answer, but, you know, if, if it’s, you know, half a percent, I think you’d be struggling to, um, struggling to justify that, that wake effect loss.

I mean, you know, going back to what you said, Allen, you know, there are wake effects of some sort, but it’s a question of how much. I mean, that-that’s why aircraft don’t take off, um, too closely, isn’t it? Because there’s wake effects. Um, so it’s definitely a given, definitely a given. Um, but, you know, how much of an impact it truly is.

Um, and I mean, there’s always other variables, you know, variables in the weather, you know, wind patterns, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, and how much do this– does this actually compare to those other, other variables?

Allen Hall 2025: Yolanda, how would you even mitigate wake turbulence on an adjacent wind farm? Are there ways to do that today?

Yolanda Padron: I think the, the aerodynamics, Allen, would [00:27:00] be a lot more in your court than, than in mine.

Matthew does have a really good point. I mean, what are we… With the UK wanting to ramp up offshore as much as they want to ramp up, right? They’re not going to just cancel a large project, and they need to… I mean, it’s not, uh, there’s a finite amount of space, right? So what, I mean, what, what are you, what are you gonna do?

It’s like, it’s what, like, what happens in onshore where you, you really hope maybe that you don’t get a wind farm that’s really, really close by. Um, but you might also want to plan for it. I mean, I know of sites that have le- that lease a little bit of extra land so that way no one else can lease it, or that they can, they can use that to, to travel between turbines.

Um, and it’s, I mean, it’s, it’s kind of… Isn’t it kind of just part of it, part of the trade?

Allen Hall 2025: it has to be, right, at some point. [00:28:00] The question in my mind about all this is how much wake is there? Is it directly impacting the adjacent wind farm? Is there– are there things that can be done to minimize that wake turbulence? I think the answer is yes, but as wind turbine blade designers, I haven’t seen the same level of wake reduction that we have seen more recently in aerospace.

It’s complicated to do some of these things on a wind turbine blade. You’re mass-producing. You’re making a blade a day or a blade in a day-and-a-half timeframe. Are you gonna design this really aerodynamic tip to go on to reduce the wake on a particular wind farm? Probably not, right? So it’s, it’s– is it worth doing that versus the, the cost it would be?

So it’s gonna cost 500 million euros in loss to an adjacent wind farm. Do you put that 500 million into the design effort and the molds and [00:29:00]everything else to make these blades different? Uh, it’s a tight trade-off, right? It– from the engineering side. It may be better settled in the courts, honestly. Just it may be cheaper to do it that way.

Matthew Stead: Uh, I, I was gonna go down a different avenue. I mean, obviously there’s always curtailment. There’s always curtailment due to grid congestion, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, maintenance. I mean, if they, if they just– when wind is coming from a certain direction, they could just de-rate and, uh, just not absorb as much energy, um, out of the wind when the wind is coming from that sector.

And so that would be a way of, um, not modifying the turbine, just de-rating it under a certain wind condition. I mean, the same thing occurs with noise curtailment all the time. Um, so there’s, there’s noise modes. There could be a, a wake loss mode. We should trademark that

Allen Hall 2025: Well, you know who’s gonna make money out of this no matter what? The

lawyers.

Allen Hall 2025: [00:30:00] Well, in this quarter’s PES Wind magazine, there are a number of great articles, and you can download the entire magazine and all those great articles at peswind.com. There’s a nice little article from Enerpac Tool Group, and if you’re not familiar with them, they make a, a number of tools that are handy in the wind industry.

Uh, and, you know, routine torque checks is kind of a pain, right? And the problem with a lot of those checks is that you have to haul around a heavy hydraulic pump to do it. And so if you’ve ever been to a trade show and seen some of these [00:31:00] pumps, it is a pain. And if you h- have to move around, especially on a w- wind site a lot, you really don’t wanna have a heavy pump that maybe is made for something, uh, more robust.

Uh, and you need something that’s portable. That’s what you really need, right? So the Enerpac Tool Group has really created this, uh, LU series they call. Which is a lightweight, portable, hydraulic pump, which is for intermittent work, which is what happens on most wind sites. It’s intermittent. Uh, so the product line director, Angie Wallace, uh, talks about this and says technician feedback has shaped this new tool, uh, from multiple carrying handles and an upward-facing gauge.

And that is a big thumbs up from me. When you put the gauge on the side of the tool where you can’t see it, such a problem. It’s like they’ve never used it. Well, obviously, the Enerpac has been talking to technicians, and they put the gauge where the technician can actually see it. Uh, and it’s designed to go through towers and, and tight [00:32:00] spaces.

Uh, so this is made specifically for offshore conditions. It’s ruggedized, and it’s a great tool. And a lot of times, Matthew, when you s- see the technicians about and some of the tools they carry, you’re like, man, that is not a good tool for this. That is, that is too much to be hauling around, particularly uptower.

It’s nice that we can see some tools that are designed job

Matthew Stead: I, I’m completely convinced. I, I don’t have much to say. Um, I mean, my, my day job is, um, you know, designing products and working out what products we’re going to, to work on, and, you know, the customer is the main voice you should listen to, um, at least in the first step. So always listen to the customer first, and I think from what you’ve described, customer first, and then develop the product to suit the application.

Yeah, so yeah, I’m convinced

Allen Hall 2025: Yolanda, you’ve seen Interpack on sites, haven’t you? It does seem like I run across them once in a while at some of the US

sites

Yolanda Padron: Every once [00:33:00] in a while. I do gotta say I love the idea of when, like, actual, like, boots on the ground people’s feedback is taken into consideration for, for anything really. And so this is, this just makes me really happy because I think a lot of times, like, as engineers, like, we love the idea of just, oh, I’m gonna do this really cool fancy thing, and then it’s just it- no one can use it, or a very specialized person has to be able to use it.

And so actually doing, you know, modifying a product so that it, it makes sense for the people using it, and I know we’ve, we’ve all talked about it a lot internally and, and we continue to work towards making it easier and easier on, on the people actually installing the product. Like, this is, this is really exciting.

Allen Hall 2025: So if you need a lightweight pump for tightening some bolts uptower, particularly if you’re offshore, take a look at this Enerpac line of LU lightweight series tools. It’s well worth it. And at that same time, you should check out PES Wind magazine. Just go to [00:34:00] peswind.com

That wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out directly to Rosemary, and don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. for yolonda, Matthew, and Rosemary, I’m Allen Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.

Dogger Bank Wake Lawsuit, EverWind Hydrogen Farm

Renewable Energy

Ben Carson on NEWSMAX!

Published

15 hours ago

July 13, 2026

Alice Rush

Looks like communism! is the new mantra of the GOP. It’s coming from the least intelligent of their leaders to the least intelligent of their followers.