Published

2 years ago

January 25, 2024

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

An Expert’s Insight on Root Cause Analysis

This week, Allen and Joel talk to Jonathan Zalar of IWTG Consulting about the complicated RCA process. With 20+ years of experience, Zalar details OEM investigations like analyzing turbine data, assessing damage on-site, and convening engineering teams to determine causes. By understanding the inner workings of the OEM process, operators can get their turbines back up and running faster with less of a struggle.

Website: https://www.iwtgconsulting.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonzalar/

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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Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. Our guest is Jonathan Zalar managing partner of IWTG Consulting, and IWTG is based in South Carolina. In the United States, Jonathan has a long career in the wind industry, working for 22 years with GE 13 years with GE Vernova specifically, Jonathan has a wealth of knowledge from both his work in the field and in the engineering offices.

He’s a mechanical engineering major and also holds an MBA. So I put you in a very select class, Jonathan, which we’re going to tap on here. Jonathan, welcome to the program.

Jonathan Zalar: Thanks for having me. I appreciate you guys taking the time.

Allen Hall: There’s not a lot of engineers that go after their MBA and then stick to engineering.

They tend to go to MBA and they go into the business world and have a nice comfy office and you took the other route.

Jonathan Zalar: Yeah, I went right into my MBA after my undergrad. Guess I want to stay in college a little longer.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, that doesn’t make you a bad person, okay? I wish I was still there.

Allen Hall: Jonathan, you have a really a wealth of knowledge here on what happens in the field because you’re out there doing it and interacting with the engineering groups that were doing the design work and support work at their offices.

And one of the issues that Joel and I get wrapped into a lot is RCA’s. And people ask us about this all the time. And we were just at an insurance symposium a week or two ago, Joel and I were, and everybody has a different perspective of what actually happens and what an OEM does behind the scenes, because there’s a lot of things that happen behind the curtain that unless you really are on the inside, you just don’t know.

But there’s a lot of good positive things that an OEM is doing during an RCA. So I just like to walk through what happens during an RCA. If you had a blade issue out in the field and you call the OEM, what typically, what typical things happen there? And maybe you can just walk us through what that process is.

Jonathan Zalar: When something like that happens, it’s like a major event and GE and other OEMs have protocols in place, first of all, to ensure safety, right? Is everybody okay? And then, then it’s like, all right, now it’s time to put your CSI hat on and go investigate.

Joel Saxum: Horatio Zalar, is that what it is?

Jonathan Zalar: While this is all happening, while you’re working with the customer, it’d be like, hey, can we come here? We’re going to send, these experts out there to go look at whatever it is, a blade, for example. The teams are also looking at the data because when a, event happens, there’s data collected on the turbine.

There’s engineers looking at that data, trying to understand, what happened from a data perspective while you’re mobilizing people to go there and, being able to access the turbine can take weeks. Sometimes months, depending on time of year, and how the way is oriented. It does feel like it takes a long time, just to get started

sometimes.

Joel Saxum: I know just the pictures that you see online when there’s a failure, and this could, this is blades, lightning strikes, nacelle fires, whatever it may be, but a lot of times we just looked at one the other day, Allen, where it was like a it looked like spaghetti, right? The blades were ripped up and the tower was bent over itself.

And to look at that and say Oh, we’d like to go do an investigation on that. Like you said, securing the site and being safe first. Is one thing because you can’t expect to bring anybody in there until that is because it’s if a wind gust came one way, the whole thing could come down or something of that sort.

Jonathan Zalar: There is a procedures in place to go analyze the way the turbines currently situated what the wind is to go make sure something like that doesn’t happen. Yeah, safety is like the number one thing for sure.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, but and then the I guess on the outside of that is being say this is a. It doesn’t matter, OEMX Turbine, the people from OEMX will have access to data behind the scenes, usually, right?

If it’s a pretty new turbine, most of the time they’re connected somehow to the SCADA system or the controllers, so they can start their investigation even before something happens in the field, is what you’re saying.

Jonathan Zalar: They’re doing, trying to do two things. One, look at the data to understand if they have a good idea, if it’s already an issue that they’re working on.

And if not, then they’re collecting as much data as they can to, when the investigation actually starts.

Allen Hall: So is part of the issue that I’ve seen on some of these investigations is the the investigation starts too late, right? By the time they get everybody spooled up, particularly on blades, a lot of times if a blade’s been hanging, they’re damaged and the turbine’s shut down, you lose a lot of that fine detail that you have.

I think it’s, it does seem to be important that an operator contacts the OEM quickly to get something started, get the process started.

Jonathan Zalar: Especially with a blade that banana peel, for instance, like if it’s hanging out there for a week, it’s just rubbing and it’s rubbing away evidence. Basically with drones that have come into play now that helps for sure.

Because you can send a drone out there and it falls on the drone. Not a big deal. So you can do something there pretty quick, but to go get a sample, send it to a lab. That takes time, and you can lose some of the critical evidence.

Allen Hall: Yeah, Joel and I see that in lightning all the time. It rains, so it washes away evidence.

Joel Saxum: It’s like fire investigations, too, right? Fire, like I’ve talked to some fire experts before, and they’re like, The biggest thing is like, nobody touches, it has to be an unmolested because otherwise the evidence, like if someone goes in there and starts to like move, just even opens a door the wrong way, they can remove evidence that needs to be seen for that investigation to have basically to have efficacy, right?

To make sure that they have all the data and everything can be learned from it. Let’s go let’s walk through this step by step. We’ve got, we said we had something come down, whether it’s a turbine tower, gearbox failure, blade, whatever it is, or asset owner calls. The OEM, I’m sure at the same time they’re probably calling their internal risk group and getting a hold of their insurance or whatever.

But they, but what we want to concentrate on here is the OEM process. So they call their OEM, OEM makes sure, in conjunction with the asset owner, site is safe, site is secure. We’ve got, we were, we’re good to go. The OEM then starts looking, if they have access to the data, which they usually do, starts looking at data in the background to figure out their things.

Then what’s the next step?

Jonathan Zalar: The OEM will send out some of their like experts. GE had really good people that would go out, especially on blades, and they would know what to look for. They would use the drone photos too to maybe tell them where to put the blade, what orientation when they bring it down, and they’ll go out there tons of pictures, and then depending on the issue or not, they’ll probably take some samples, cut up a couple pieces, put it in a trailer, ship it to a lab.

Basically collecting as much evidence as they can as quickly as they can before, winter rain and everything else washes some of that away.

Allen Hall: The on site investigation that happens from the OEM’s perspective is, those people are experts in the technology that they’re looking at, generically, but they’re not the people that design the equipment, they’re not the people that design the blades or the gearbox or Typically, or maybe they did come out of there.

Jonathan Zalar: They may came out of that team, but they are, there are definitely more field oriented people for these type of issues, but sometimes they will bring out a designer if they need to it all depends on the case.

Allen Hall: This sounds a lot like the airplane business that I’ve been in for a long time.

When we, there’s an accident investigation, the aircraft manufacturer sends out experts. Now, those experts are knowledgeable people about the airplane product, but they’re not specific. Like they didn’t design the elevator, but they didn’t design the propeller, right? But they have a pretty good understanding of what the systems are.

So when those people are out on site photos, images, samples. Now the sample piece. What is, what’s happening with those sample pieces that they may collect? Where are those headed off to?

Jonathan Zalar: In, in GE’s case, they had to think of one or two labs, so it’ll be set to one of those, and then they’ll do microscopy on it, so cut it down to little pieces, get a high end microscope.

I’m not an expert on this, I was more of a person who looked at the results. And then as someone who’s like leading it from a engineering perspective, they’ll spend a lot of time with the person who cut the sample and whatever conclusions they have for adhesion, for example, or number of layers, stuff like that.

So they’re getting really detailed about whatever samples they collect. You need somebody very knowledgeable deciding which samples to take, and then somebody extremely knowledgeable on, how to go look at that sample. So

Joel Saxum: being in an OEM, too, you have, they’re the largest people, right?

So you’ve got access to all kinds of different engineers. So if you’re sitting there and you go, alright, here’s the specialty RCA team. We’ve got the investigation going. We’ve got some samples taken. We’re at this stage where we’re trying to figure out what’s really going on. Alright, we’ve got microscopy done.

Great. Let’s get a hold of that may be the glue expert or it may be the fiberglass expert or the carbon fiber expert and you have access to all those or you would have had access to all of those people, right? So you have, you can send an email to someone down the hallway or walk down there and say Hey, let’s look at this.

Let’s look at this. And that’s one of the advantages that the OEM has. Is it not only do you have access to data, but you have access to experts within each of those kind of … We’re going to say, maybe call them sub silos, right? Because it’s not just you’re a composites person. You’re actually that really toned down one in there.

And so you would go then to those people to get their insights on what may have happened.

Jonathan Zalar: Yeah, and there might be someone in the middle who’s more of a Blade expert of everything, right? Knows all of it, and they might say, Oh, let’s go talk to This person, because they know a little bit more about this, or they designed this part of the blade, and y’all, you go huddle up over there and guys, try to walk through what’s going on.

Joel Saxum: So does that, in an OEM case, and I know this is a very generalized statement, but does those RCA investigations, when you’re dealing with or trying to engage those individuals, do those take precedent? Or is that kind of yeah, we’ll get to that when we get to it. We’re working on a new blade design.

Jonathan Zalar: It’s like number two under safety.

Allen Hall: Wow. Way up the chain.

Joel Saxum: Okay. So now we’re at the, now we’re at the stage where we’re in, we’ve got data, we’ve got some samples, possibly we’re back in the office and we’re engaging the experts. What does that look like?

Allen Hall: Yeah. Who’s at the table there?

Jonathan Zalar: Depends on the issue, but yeah, you’re getting the people that

probably have the most knowledge in the subjects, right? The people who’ve been around long as to, or maybe even designed the blade or designed a similar blade. They’re in the room, you’re looking at data, trying to understand, hey, is this a one off or is this something we need to worry about? That’s a very key question.

And that’s kind of part of the second or third part, which is like containment. Like, how do you stop the bleeding? Is this a fleet issue or not? That’s one of the biggest questions you’re trying to answer as quick as possible.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. That’s where you get into that, that not pseudo gray area of engineering and business, right?

Because at some level you have to worry about. What could financially be impacting the rest of the larger OEM scale as well?

Jonathan Zalar: Yeah. I felt like at least at GE like that was isolated from the business part and it’s more, Hey, technical people, you go figure this out, work with the customer resolution people and y’all built They’ll help with the customer information part.

We were we were let go to go figure out what was going on.

Allen Hall: So does some part of that involve looking at all the SCADA data from the turbine? Because I would think some of the issues that are happening on blades in particular may be related to the operational aspects of the turbine.

There’s some tweaking going on.

Jonathan Zalar: There was like two sets of data. There’s like a high speed data that you can look at the time of the event. You can actually almost tell which blade did what, when, do a rotation. And I, from there, there are probably some 10 minute data points that could indicate something if you’re looking at it for a fleet issue, and then you can start cutting the deck with 10 minute data if you need to, all depends on the issue.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, off air we were talking about one thing that was cool being in an OEM is that if, of course, if you’re connected to the controllers, you guys have, you have the possibility of going hey, if this is a.

I don’t know, GE 1 5 problem. Give me all of the data for the GE 1 5s that looks like this and you had access to that data of possibly saying, give me 5, 000 turbines of data so we can start looking at something statistically.

Jonathan Zalar: Correct. Yes. And I had some very good data people on the team, very knowledgeable in turbines too, that could go take a look at 10, 000 turbines in two hours, come back with an answer.

Joel Saxum: The rest of the industry just doesn’t have that, right? That’s the thing we’re always talking about, like sharing data. I wish we had more of this. Wish we had more of that. But the OEMs are the ones that actually hold the, they hold the cards there.

Jonathan Zalar: Yeah. Especially if you’re yes, they do.

Allen Hall: But they have also the engineers that designed it, which is the key to this.

So you can have all the data in the world or you want it, but unless you have the knowledge behind what that data means, it’s pretty much pointless. It takes a long time. Oh, Jonathan can attest to this. It takes a long time to become an expert in a particular aspect of a wind turbine. That’s what Rosemary is about in our program.

Like she’s been around a long time and she’s very knowledgeable about those things that she knows about. But unless you have those people on your staff that just live and breathe that, I don’t know if they make heads or tails of what’s going on data wise. And I think that’s why the OEM, getting OEM involved is really critical here.

Joel Saxum: Jonathan, I want to ask you one more question about, this is a, it would be more of an internal thing. So at what stage, or how are they treated different if you go If you get to a split in sitting in the conference room with everybody, all the technical prowess in there, and you say, all right, guys, this looks like a one off issue, or this looks like a serial defect.

How do you treat those differently?

Jonathan Zalar: First you need to verify that. You get to the point where you’re like, hey, I think this is a one off, and how do you know? You get chief engineers involved, and a lot of people have signed off to say, hey, freak event, one off. Whatever it was, if it’s something that you’re concerned about is more widespread, then that’s when you probably bring in more people.

You’re looking at the data, potentially instrumenting turbines going to go to field inspection samples. Then that process starts taking a longer time, for sure.

Joel Saxum: I know this is a weird thing to bring up here, but I was just reading the news. This is literally yesterday, I saw in the news, SGRE laying off all of the engineers that designed the 4X and 5X.

So now in SGRE, if they’re going to continue this investigation into what’s actually happened here. All of those people are gone.

Jonathan Zalar: Yeah, I’m not sure did they lay off leadership or did they lay off design engineers.

Allen Hall: It said engineers.

Jonathan Zalar: A little too soon in my opinion, unless they know what’s wrong.

Joel Saxum: That’s that’s my same thought as well.

Allen Hall: Let’s go back, I want to go step back to the chief engineer aspect of this, because I think maybe GE’s a little bit unique in that they still have chief engineers. A lot of the engineering industry has pulled back from that over time.

But when I worked for GE years ago, chief engineers were a real key to making the operations work. Within GE, and I, this doesn’t have to be specific to GE, but I just curious here. They still have chief engineers that are responsible for a particular product line that really know the ins and outs, and that’s a very unique person to be able to do that, but there is a focal point on the engineering side, right?

Jonathan Zalar: For you mean like a 1. 5 SLE, or do you mean like a blade?

Allen Hall: A turbine model, right? Is it turbine model or is it blade model? Maybe it’s by blade.

Jonathan Zalar: There are there were, I’m not sure now, but there were chief engineers for the major component areas, but there’s also a overall like system engineering chief and like the system engineers are more responsible for the whole product.

Allen Hall: Okay. So they even have chief engineers lower down into the main components then, which is, that’s the way I would do it. Yeah. Okay. That’s the way I would do it. So that’s a, is that your really first touch point? Hey, Chief Engineer, this happened, I just, heads up, this is coming. Is that sort of your focal point if you’re out in the field and doing the RCA work?

Is that your key contact and then the Chief Engineer is grabbing the people to bring into the conference room? Is that how it flows?

Jonathan Zalar: No, it’s, it was more of the systems team was leading the effort, at least for these major issues. And then they would be reviewing that with the Chief Engineer.

And you definitely bring the person in there so they know what’s going on, especially with a big issue, like they’re going to be involved. But they’re not leading, they’re not leading the investigation, but they are approving at the end. They’re asking questions, asking to go back and go look at something else because you want to be, you want to be right.

Allen Hall: You want another set of eyes on whatever the quote unquote answer is, right? And someone who’s knowledgeable about the product on a deep level to go, yes, that makes sense to me. Okay. That’s. A good approach.

Jonathan Zalar: And the big issues, there’s more than two sets of eyes looking at it, for sure.

Allen Hall: So you’re all at the table, you fleshed out, it’s either a sort of a system wide issue or a one off.

You make that decision, and then from there, what’s the support role look like? What are you going back to the operator with? How much information is brought to them? What do they need to know to get to the next step of repairing, replacing, whatever the, what are the answer is there.

Jonathan Zalar: Like part of that safety review initially about like, how to go approach that kind of helps with the, how do you get the turbine back up and running?

What do you need to do? And there’s teams probably separate from the RCA that will like, help with the foundation analysis. Can you go put another turbine up on there? Stuff like that. The RCA is going to, the RCA team is going to stay focused on. Hey, what happened? What’s the root cause?

How do we correct this and then prevent it?

Joel Saxum: That’s more of the client success people then, right? Like the client interaction, they’ll then take load of what happens next. So if they have to deal with the asset owner, their insurance company, their consultants, or something of that sort, that’s a different team.

Jonathan Zalar: Yes, and I’m happy I was a different team because that would just slow it down even more.

Joel Saxum: So that someone there in the customer success reign takes the kind of the control of the, all of the externals per se, and then navigates that mess.

Jonathan Zalar: Multiple times, like I would be presenting to customers on like where we were, like RCA updates throughout the process.

There were definitely touch points and stuff like that, but the hey, how does it get this turbine back out there running? That wasn’t really.

Allen Hall: Okay. That’s a good, that’s a good way to run it. I’ve seen just from mostly outside the United States where it does seem to be a linear process, but nothing happens until the turbine to the RCA is done.

And then there’s a team that then figures out what the next step is. That doesn’t make any sense to me. In the United States, what you explained makes sense to me. Hey, let’s get the operations up and running again. Let’s get that done. We’ll figure out the problem on the side. It’s got a parallel effort going on instead of a linear effort.

That makes complete sense to me. So then, in that parallel effort, then, is there a lot of crosstalk between the two teams or is it? Engineering RCA. Hey, we had an engineering issue where we really need to hone in on this. The customer side is getting the customer back up and running again. So they’re productive.

But in the meantime, you’re paralleling an engineering approach. Okay.

Jonathan Zalar: Yeah, I mean, the customer, most of the customers, the bigger ones I dealt with, they have, they also have two teams. One’s I need to make power. The other one’s I need to worry about my other turbines like so there’s multiple teams pushing on multiple teams.

Joel Saxum: These bigger operators to you know in the United States in the United States if you’re dealing with those, your NextEra your EDFs, your RWEs they’ve got their own engineering teams as well.

So more than likely, they’re running a parallel process of you guys. Maybe grabbing some data from you, if if it’s available or something like that, but they’re using their own data and they’re running their own analysis to come to their own conclusions at the same time, because they’ve got to, they’ve got to safeguard themselves, right?

That’s part of doing business.

Jonathan Zalar: Yeah. And there’s, having a good relationship is also key too, because there were many times where I had to call up one of the really big customers and be like, Hey, can we go instrument a turban or can we go collect some samples? Can we go do this? And that relationship is really important, but also that speeds up the process especially if it’s not a one off.

Allen Hall: Okay, that makes sense then. Yeah, because if it’s engineering collaboration, things tend to go faster. Because it’s an understanding we’re all trying to solve a problem. Let engineers alone solve a problem, they’ll pretty much go off and do it relatively quickly. People, a bunch of insurance people or management people on top of that, it tends to slow it down.

Jonathan Zalar: Every time.

Allen Hall: Yeah, and that’s a good point. If you’re an operator, that’s one of the things to remember is look, you’re paying these people for a reason, let them go do their job, just make sure it’s moving. And that’s it right there. You want to get to the fastest answer that way, instead of trying to interject a bunch of politics into it.

Joel Saxum: If you’re an operator and you run into one of these issues and you’re not sure where to turn, call IWTG Consulting. They’ve got the expertise, Jonathan?

Jonathan Zalar: It’s a fun thing to do. You really are an investigator, right? You get to go solve a problem. It’s one of the funnier jobs I’ve had.

I really enjoy doing it.

Joel Saxum: You’re doing puzzles, but at a grand scale.

Jonathan Zalar: If you get happy when something breaks at home, I’m that type of person. I’m like, yes, something broke.

Allen Hall: So what does the end product look like after all this? Is it just a report? Is it a meeting? Is it a report and a series of meetings?

What happens at the end? When you say, we know what this is it’s this one off turbine issue. Here’s what happened. Here’s how we do to prevent it going forward. What is that? What does that closeout look like?

Jonathan Zalar: The closeout with the customer, it, it’s going to be a meeting, it’s going to be, a presentation of some sort, and sometimes it’s a report depending on who they are, but, and it’s going to be like, does it, more does everyone agree this is what it was, and nine times out of ten, by the time you’ve through everything, everyone agrees.

Allen Hall: You hear from the field that there’s complaints that the OEM and the operator just don’t agree. Really? I think politically they may not agree, but engineering wise they probably do agree. Usually the financial part they never agree on. Engineering wise though, it does seem like there’s an agreement.

Typically, right?

Jonathan Zalar: Not always day one, but usually by, midway through to the end mostly both teams have a good idea where it’s heading, right? There’s gonna be some one offs that it’s just no one knows. Like that, that will happen, but that’d be really rare. But I don’t remember many that says I know it’s this.

And someone else says, I know it’s that usually there’s enough smart people that have looked at enough data that they can convince one or the other that they’re more likely.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. And like you said, Allen, that’s on the engineering side, right? What ends up muddying the water there is when you get an insurance company and then they grab a lawyer and then there’s arbitration and there’s all this, and people are sitting there but who’s on the hook for the four million bucks and that kind of stuff, right? That’s where it gets lost sometimes.

Allen Hall: That’s good though, that the OEMs are trying to keep the engineers separate from that discussion, because you, at the end of the day It’s all about operating and producing power if you get tangled up in all the money part of it up front, it’ll never come to a solution and I’m glad that at least, GE side that they’re working the engineering solution, which makes sense that GE is an engineering company and that all makes sense to me. And this is where IWTG comes into the play, right?

That if you’re an OEM You have your team. If you’re an operator, you don’t have everybody you probably need, and especially some of those mid tier operators. Even the large operators don’t have all the experience with a particular turbine type because there’s just things you just don’t know, right?

You don’t dig deep into a system architecture as an owner of a turbine. You know how to operate it, but if there’s things, complex things happening, you may not have those details. This is where IWTG comes in, you call Jonathan up and say, Hey, how do we go debug this? What’s going on? And what, how do we, how do we flow through this to get to the right engineering answer?

Jonathan Zalar: Yeah. I think it helps just also like explaining to some of the, smaller customers of what the process is help them, support the OEM with whatever process are going through. It’s been pretty helpful with a couple of customers I’ve worked with.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, I would say one of the, one of the biggest hurdles there is navigating the whole thing, but it’s understanding who to talk to and what data that needs to happen and all these different things because that, that’s a big problem in the industry too, is like people you throw it at a site manager. That site manager is so dang busy with just the everyday stuff they have going on, they just go man, hey, I got this I’ll deal with that later, right? So if they if if an asset owner wants to actually get moving on this thing, having someone that knows what they’re doing is a good help.

Allen Hall: It’s a necessity today.

Yeah, there’s definitely a place for those experts. And in the United States, there’s not a lot of people walking around that have that sort of expertise. You have to spend your time in the trenches. And Jonathan has done that. So this is why it’s so good to talk to him because he’s been there and he’s lived through it.

Jonathan, how do people get a hold of IWTG and how do they get a hold of you directly?

Jonathan Zalar: My website’s www. iwtgconsulting. com. They can reach out to me there. I’m also on LinkedIn.

Allen Hall: And Jonathan, I really appreciate you coming on the program and we want to have you back because there are a wealth of knowledge and it’s good to get that knowledge out into the industry.

Jonathan Zalar: Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

An Expert’s Insight on Root Cause Analysis

Renewable Energy

Conference Recap, Suzlon Targets Europe

Published

14 hours ago

May 19, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Conference Recap, Suzlon Targets Europe

Matthew Stead recaps WindEurope Madrid and Blades Europe Edinburgh. Plus Suzlon unveils its Blue Sky platform for Europe, Muehlhan consolidates six specialist firms, and Mingyang keeps hunting for a European home.

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

Speaker: [00:00:00] 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, and I’m here with Matthew Stead, who is back in Australia, but not at home.

He’s up in Queensland. Or actually, not even on– in Queensland, technically. He’s on an island off the coast of Queensland. Where are you at, Matthew?

Matthew Stead: Uh, Moreton Island. It’s, uh, like a resort island off, uh, off of Brisbane, so beautiful outside.

Allen Hall 2025: Well, you need a little bit of resort time because you’ve been to two conferences, and you spent a good bit of time in Austria after that.

So you were at WindEurope in Madrid, and then following that, you went right over to Scotland for Blades Europe. So I wanna hear your thoughts. We’ll start with, uh, WindEurope and what was going on at that conference. It did sound like there was a pretty [00:01:00] good attendance, and some people that I have talked to about it really en-enjoyed being in Madrid.

It’s just

Matthew Stead: a bigger city. Um, first time I’d ever been to Madrid, and, uh, yeah, the show was amazing, actually. I was, I was a bit blown away by, uh, I think the OEMs were back out in force. You know, so like the Vestas, Siemens were, um, really– and Nordexes and so forth were really back out in force, so that was really good to see.

Um, the, some of the larger operators had really, really strong presence as well. So you could see that, you know, Iberdrola, Res, um, those sorts of companies were, um, really, you know, putting a big effort in and meeting their customers and, um, really showing, uh, the world who they were. So that was really, um, you know, really good to see.

There were so many people seriously. Um, the queues for food at lunch were, were, um, one of the major problems. Um, so, um, yeah, it was really a lot of people, so that was really exciting. Um, and I mean, for me, I was [00:02:00]trying to catch up with, with partners and friends and, yeah, it was, it was jam, jam-packed just meeting people in the industry.

Um, probably a few other things. So s- you know, SkySpecs and Aerones had a really strong, um, presence there. So, um, SkySpecs and Aerones were, were doing really well. Um, maybe one of the, um, surprises for me, and I know this has been a topic on a few other previous episodes, was there was a lot of interest in bird and bat detection.

I, I, I think there had to be, like, five companies that were, were– had really big setups, and it was a really, really big topic around cameras and so forth. So, um, that was a, a big topic. And, um, then there, there was a really, really strong, you know, supply chain, you know, from, from vessels to cables to, you know, repairs.

Allen Hall 2025: What was the ratio of offshore companies to onshore companies? I’m always curious.

Matthew Stead: You’re looking through the, the list. Um- I would, I’m only guessing it [00:03:00] was probably about 40% had an offshore focus of some kind. So it was definitely a strong offshore focus. Um, obviously, you know, a lot of onshore, offshore combined companies.

But yeah, definitely the word offshore kept on popping up a lot.

Allen Hall 2025: Because Spain is mostly onshore. Like, um, like 99% onshore, right? I think it’s a couple of small projects going offshore. Does it look like the onshore business is gonna pick up, uh, just in terms of the activity on the floor in Madrid?

Matthew Stead: Uh, yeah.

Um, I, I think, you know, like I said, you know, those big operators like the REZAs and the Iberdrolas and, and the OEMs, I, I think it’s just a given that, um, you know, things are buoyant. Um, well, they appear to be definitely very buoyant. Uh, I think we’ve heard, you know, some of the positive, um, financial news from a few of the OEMs recently.

So yeah, yeah, it seems like o- onshore is, is maturing further, further, further. And so you went straight

Allen Hall 2025: from Madrid, right, to [00:04:00] Edinburgh, Scotland. That was a change in weather, I would assume. Uh, probably about a 20 degree Celsius difference. 25 down to 15, yes. Whoa. Okay. Yeah, that’s a good bit. Uh, but the Edinburgh conference, that’s the first time that Blades Europe has been to Edinburgh.

I, at least I don’t remember them being there before. That tends to be a more technical conference than Wind Europe. Uh, the, the Blades conference is obviously focused on blades, and all the relevant experts in Europe do tend to show up there. What were some of the hot topics at Blades Europe this year?

Matthew Stead: Yeah, I think it was, um, an interesting conference. Um, I, I’d been to Blades USA, so I was able to contrast, um, Blades USA a little bit. I think probably the differences here were, yeah, there was definitely some strong, strong, uh, experts there, like you say. Um, you know, Birgit, um, our friend was, was in attendance and a few of her colleagues from Statkraft.

Um, I think, and or, uh, actually ORE Catapult, the, the [00:05:00] UK research, um, offshore renewable energy research, um, they did some great presentations. I really, um, they really shared some really good insights. So, um, ORE Catapult were talking about life extension and, um, you know, looking at the, the fatigue on blades and, uh, how they’re, how they’re going to perform and life extension.

So some great stuff from ORE Catapult there. Probably another key topic that came up was around, uh, sort of related to life extension, but also recycling. The, there was a really good session on the new IEC standard. Um, um, to, you know, full disclosure, I was actually on the panel. So I, I thought it was a great panel.

But, um, the new IEC standard for blade operations and maintenance, um, is really well a-advanced now in its development. Um, very strong risk focus, you know. So depending on the risk then drives your, your blade O&M program. [00:06:00] Um, so that was a, a great talk as well. Uh, and then maybe finally, um, something close to my heart, um, I think the, the, you know, the maturity of CMS companies.

There actually, there were five blade CMS companies there, which is probably the biggest turnout I’ve seen around blade CMS, um, ever. And so it was good to see that sort of, um, interest and growth, um, and the need for, for blade CMS. Uh, and, um, obviously the last one, lightning. So lightning always an issue.

Lots of discussions around lightning, um, you know, through Greece and a few of the, the, the Balkan go- Balkan states. On the blade recycling front, there’s a

Allen Hall 2025: company in Scotland called ReBlade that is involved in some of the recycling efforts. Did they give a presentation of, of what they’re up to at the moment?

Matthew Stead: Uh, yes, I think they did. Um, they’re talking about setting up a, a site in a, a [00:07:00] couple of sites, and I think Inverness was the, the location where they’re, where they’re setting up a site. The, um, the port is supportive, so they’re working through those, those, those challenges. You know, getting a site, getting transport and access to the blades.

Um, working out when, when the, when the blades will come to them. You know, the storage of blades. Um, the, the end, end uses for those blades. Getting all that supply chain, um, lined up was, you know, yeah, it was, that was quite thorough and quite, um, yeah, inspiring.

Allen Hall 2025: And on the CMS side, what are operators trying to monitor?

‘Cause usually have something in mind that they’re going after.

Matthew Stead: For better or for worse, there’s still some serial, um, failure modes. Um, and so the industry is looking at very particular, you know, challenges that, um, certain make and model have. Um, so root insert failures was definitely one of those, um, one of those topics.

Um, and that was actually one of the, the, the [00:08:00] roundtable discussions at, uh, Blades Europe. Some other, um, monitoring around, you know, lightning and- lightning damage and what’s happening with the LPS. That was also, uh, another big topic for, for monitoring. And then a few other sort of general, more, more general, um, you know, natural frequencies of blades and seeing if the natural frequencies are changing, indicating a change in stiffness, which relates to potential damage.

So yeah, there was– it was quite a mix of the types of, um, CMS that was discussed.

Allen Hall 2025: Has the digital twin finally died? Anybody talk about that?

Matthew Stead: There’s actually a current call-out for a new research project in Europe around digital twins. So, um, yeah, one of the larger, one of the larger operators is, is putting, pulling together a team to talk about digital twins, so-

Allen Hall 2025: I, I think this is one of the more difficult things to do, but just because you’re dealing with a variety of blades and blade factories and unique issues that pop up that are…[00:09:00]

You, you really can’t model until after they happen. And after they happen, everybody knows about them anyway. So what’s the point of the digital twin if you can’t detect things early? It, it, it is a great concept, but hard to implement.

Matthew Stead: Yeah. And why? Why would you do it? I mean, you, you’re only gonna do it if there’s a benefit, and what is the benefit?

So, but I think, uh, actually at Blades Europe, digital twins was not really a topic. And maybe one thing I forgot to say is that the, um, Wind Power Lab did a, a good, um, presentation on carbon blades as well, so.

Allen Hall 2025: The, the carbon blades are, is a very good discussion, just because the trend has been lately to scrap blades and bring new ones on site.

And the carbon can be difficult to repair, or it takes a long time to repair, and you just don’t have the manpower or woman power to go out and fix it. So the, the fastest option is to build a new blade. But it does leave a lot of blade waste, which is where the industry is not going. Uh, recyclable blades, which is [00:10:00] in process at the moment, will make that easier, but you just don’t wanna be recycling blades.

You like to be able to repair them. Composites are repairable. And it’s, it is so odd that they, they wanna continue on that pathway, but we’ll see. We’ll see. You don’t really learn the lesson until you do it.

Matthew Stead: Um, however, you know, the, the presentation on carbon blades was, um, you know, highlighted a lot of the challenges, but also highlighted some of the positives and the, you know, how they do help.

Um, and so there was a lot of support for carbon blades, but there’s a lot of unknowns and, um, and there was a lot of discussion around how do you even test if the LPS is working. Uh, it’s just impossible. So, you know, traditional methods on carbon blades, yeah, it just don’t work. So, um, but there was a lot of support that the carbon does bring benefit.

But yeah, I agree with you. There’s a lot of challenges there.

Allen Hall 2025: That’s one of the things we learned years ago back in the late ’80s, early ’90s when we, at least in, in the [00:11:00] States, started building a number of carbon fiber aircraft. And the repair situation and dealing with repairs in, in remote locations became difficult.

And you’ve learned how much training it took to keep an industry running, and you’re starting from zero for a lot of places that all he had worked on was aluminum. It, it’s a completely different world. You’re, you’re training tens of thousands of technicians around the world. You weren’t planning to go do that, and now you are.

So it just, it adds to the cost.

Matthew Stead: It also ties into the OEM, um, you know, providing, you know, details on how to repair those blades because they’re not, they’re not just a standard item, so-

Allen Hall 2025: No, you, you don’t wanna be grinding into a protrusion if you can avoid it. It- you’re just never gonna get it back into that original form because protrusions are in some part magic.

And taking a grinder to them is not gonna… It’s breaking the magic. All the magic will be leaving that protrusion when you do that. Yeah, very [00:12:00]difficult. Delamination and bond line failures in blades are difficult problems to detect early. These hidden issues can cost you millions in repairs and lost energy production.

CIC NDT are specialists to detect these critical flaws before they become expensive burdens. Their nondestructive test technology penetrates deep into blade materials to find voids and cracks traditional inspections completely miss. CIC NDT maps every critical defect, delivers actionable reports, and provides support to get your blades back in service.

So visit cicndt.com because catching blade problems early will save you millions.

Well, as we know, the wind industry has long been dominated by a handful of European and American turbine makers, uh, particularly in the, quote-unquote, “West.” Uh, but that landscape may be [00:13:00] shifting. Suzlon, the Indian turbine giant that nearly collapsed under about a $1.5 billion of debt just a few years ago, is back.

The company has unveiled a new turbine platform aimed squarely at Europe, and says it will build its first factory on the continent if it wins enough orders. Vice Chairman Girish Tanti, uh, delivered the announcement at the WindEurope conference in Madrid, where Matthew was Signaling that Suzlon believes its time has come.

And since you were there, Matthew, did you hear any news on the floor, any discussion on the show floor about Suzlon entering Europe?

Matthew Stead: Well, actually, yes. So, um, um, there was actually a good, uh, contingent of Suzlon people at, uh, Blades Europe. So, uh, they attended, uh, Wind Europe and then Blades Europe. Um, and I, you know, I was able to have a bit of discussion with them.

I think, I think, uh, they were quite optimistic about, um, [00:14:00] you know, moving back or moving into, into Europe in terms of manufacturing. Um, however, there was an element of skepticism. Am I allowed to say that? So they, uh, were, they were not completely, um, convinced that it’s gonna happen, but, uh, they were certainly excited by that.

It was definitely a, a clear possibility, but not a given.

Allen Hall 2025: Well, they have a, a new platform called the Blue Sky platform, um, which will have, I think, two turbines here, a 5 megawatt and a 6.3 megawatt, which is squarely aimed at Europe and also the United States, for that matter. And building a factory, though, doesn’t make a lot of sense if the cost driver for a factory in Europe is the European employees, which it tends to be when you hear the discussions about the cost structure, it’s about the employees.

I’m not sure why Suzlon would make blades or nacelles in Europe unless they could avoid tariffs or taxation, because India is a very [00:15:00] cost, uh, driven, uh, manufacturing facilities writing country. So why would you wanna go build another expensive factory, probably in the realm of a couple hundred million pounds, uh, if you’re gonna go do it?

It probably doesn’t make any sense to do that as well as just selling turbines into Europe. It seems like the easier path.

Matthew Stead: Yeah. And then you’ve got all the, like, the quality control challenges and, you know, you get the cultural challenges. So yeah, to be honest, I don’t qu- I don’t quite understand the logic behind that either.

Um, maybe there’s, there’s some things that we don’t know about behind the scenes in terms of tariffs and other, other incentives that we don’t know about.

Allen Hall 2025: Would you see operators taking, uh, a Suzlon presentation and maybe even writing plans for developing with Suzlon turbines in the next couple of years?

Is that a, a feeling that Europeans would, would do that, or is Vestas mainly and Siemens Gamesa so strong in Europe that it doesn’t make any sense unless [00:16:00] you’re in sort of the periphery countries of Europe?

Matthew Stead: I mean, my first exposure to a wind turbine was a Suzlon turbine in Australia, and there are many, many, many Suzlon turbines in Australia.

And they’re all, they’re all still working. They’re all still reliable. So I mean, from a reputation and reliability and, um Yeah, history point of view, I can’t see why not. I mean, you know, uh, the operators will see that, you know, they’ve proven themselves. They’re not new kids on the block. Um, and so why wouldn’t an operator think about it?

Allen Hall 2025: Well,

Matthew Stead: in

Allen Hall 2025: this quarter’s PES Wind magazine, which you can download for free at peswind.com, there is a nice article from Muelhen Wind Services, and that is a growing company. A lot going on there. Our friends at AC883 just joined Muelhen a f- few months ago, and is being part of that conglomerate. And, and we know that obviously building wind farm used to mean [00:17:00]consulting with dozens of contractors, and this is where Mue- Muelhen has really s- stepped into the breach here.

So from blade repair at one company and heavy lift cranes at another company, all that had to be managed separately. You’re calling s- different companies all the time. And watching asset managers and site supervisors do this, uh, it is a thankless job. Well, Muelhen’s trying to change that a little bit, uh, and they’re saying that that model no longer works, and I totally agree with them.

It’s insane. Uh, but so Muelhen has consolidated six specialist firms under its one brand, and covering everything from port pre-assembly to long-term operations and maintenance across Europe, the US and Canada, uh, and Asia-Pacific. Its CEO, Søren Hoffer, uh, puts it plainly, “The next phase of wind will not be won by turbine size alone.

It will be decided by the supply chain’s ability to execute.” Boy, [00:18:00]couldn’t say truer words. Uh, I’ve worked with Muelhen or my company, Weather Guard Lightning Tech, has worked with Muelhen on a couple of projects over the years, and we’ve always had, uh, great service from them, and we have talked to a number of operators that love them, that love using Muelhen.

So it’s not a surprise that they’re trying to grow and expand and make life easier for the operators.

Matthew Stead: Sounds like a brilliant move, really. I mean, you know, pulling all these sort of things together is, is a real challenge, isn’t it? I mean, coordinating all these subcontractors, um, getting to turn up at the right time, and yeah, I mean, it just sounds like a brilliant move, and I think that we need more, more, more efficient service companies to service the growing fleet.

So the more they can get organized, the better.

Allen Hall 2025: Yeah, the scale matters here, and the expertise matters. As we’ve have a couple hundred thousand turbines that are [00:19:00] operating in the, quote-unquote, “West,” it does make sense to have a larger player that has seen most of those turbines and has some experience with them.

It’s always the scary scenario when you’re working with a new company. Have they been on this turbine before? Do they know what they’re doing? Do they know- Lockout tagout. Even simple things like that come to the forefront. And the, the trouble is on some of these smaller companies that are in that business is that, uh, you just don’t get the level of service, you don’t get the level of response, you don’t have the horsepower if something were to, to go wrong on site.

They don’t have the cash to, to bring in a second crane or another crew to get this job done. It, it does become scale at some point. And, uh, for a long time in the wind industry, particularly United States, it, it has been a lot of, quote-unquote, “mom-and-pop operations,” and those are slowly getting acquired by the likes of Muehlhan.

I, I, I think this is inevitable at some point. Uh, from the asset owner’s, uh, desktop watching this go on, [00:20:00] how do you see, you know, a large operator interfacing with Muehlhan? Are they gonna do just one-stop shopping at this point? They’re, they’re not gonna have three or four different companies to work with, that they’re just gonna lock into, uh, Muehlhan?

‘Cause, uh, that’s what I see.

Matthew Stead: Yeah. I, I think, you know, from the, the WOMA Conference in, in Melbourne, we saw a bit of a, bit of a shift towards, um, outsourcing, at least in Australia Pacific region. And I mean, if, if you’re gonna outsource, um, you’re, you’re probably gonna join up with a, a Muehlhan, um, equivalent.

So, you know, that way it just takes some of the risk out of, out of it, so it, it sort of makes sense. Um, the other observation I’ve heard is that, you know, because of the seasonality of blade repairs, it’s really hard to keep hold of, um, blade techs. And so if you’re a global company, you’ve got at least some opportunity of using the ses- seasonality and keeping hold of the good techs and, um, you know, so, you know, you know, summer in, in North, North, uh, America, and then, you know, summer in [00:21:00] Australia.

So it, it, it allows these company, allows these companies to keep hold of their good people.

Allen Hall 2025: Yeah. And that, that’s always been the yearly problem, right? That you have a, a crew of a couple good crews in the summertime, and you come back the next summer and it’s a whole different group of people and yeah, that, that, that’s trouble for the industry.

Well, a- and it’s good. It’s fi- it’s finally good to see this happening, and I know, uh, we’ve talked about it internally here at Weather Guard of who to work with and who to partner with. We like working with companies that have scale, and I think we’re finally there. So it’s really interesting to see this article from Johan in PES Wind.

So if you, if you haven’t read the article, you should go visit peswind.com and take a look. There’s a lot of great content in this quarter’s issue, and y- you don’t wanna miss it. So go to peswind.com today. As wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it, difficult. That’s why the Uptime podcast recommends PES Wind magazine.

PES Wind offers [00:22:00] 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 peswind.com today. So when, when the energy prices spike like they’re happening right now, uh, the Iran war being one of the main drivers, and obviously gasoline prices have jumped quite a bit, here’s what happens.

The China’s clean energy sector goes to work, and they’re racing to make connections and make sales. As electricity prices jump up, gas prices jump up, everybody wants to try to find a cheaper way to provide energy to their countries or locales. Uh, China’s there to offer it. So it’s solar panels, batteries, EVs, and even wind turbines are, are looking for homes out of China.

Uh, for European wind professionals, [00:23:00] the most important part comes from Mingyang, right? So they were unable to get a production facility in Scotland, but they haven’t given up yet. They are still searching for a home somewhere in Europe. And as of today, I don’t think they’ve found it. They’re s- I think they’re still looking for some country to host them.

But how long is that gonna go on, Matthew? I, I think with the domination of Vestas and Siemens Gamesa in Europe and Suzlon trying to make an entry, will Mingyang and other Chinese manufacturers eventually find a home?

Matthew Stead: It’s interesting. I think, uh, if you look at the airline industry, you’ve always had premium providers, and you’ve always had low-end providers, and I think there’s always a place for all of them.

And so I re- I reckon they’ll find, I think they’ll find their place in, in the market and just, you know, it might just take a while. But they’ve got the strength, haven’t they? They’ve got the product. They’ve got the strength. So it’s just a matter [00:24:00] of time.

Allen Hall 2025: Yeah. I, I, I d- I do think eventually it will happen.

But Vestas and, and Siemens Gamesa have done a pretty good job of controlling it, and wind Europe, honestly. Wind Europe has not been a proponent of a Chinese manufacturer in Europe, so that generally will help slow down any business plans they would have But at the same time, there’s a lot of opportunities around the world that’s not necessarily in Europe, right?

South America has strong ties with China. They’re– And Chinese companies are, are starting production in China. There’s a lot th- things happening there. You’re gonna see that in Africa and other places. So it doesn’t necessarily have to happen in Europe, which is, I think Europeans and Americans think, “Well, we can’t have China in those locales.”

Fine. But it isn’t like China doesn’t have other opportunities to, to sell turbines or solar panels or batteries. There are plenty places on the planet where

Matthew Stead: people that

Allen Hall 2025: need

Matthew Stead: lower cost energy, and they’re gonna find them. Um, I did attend a, a panel [00:25:00] discussion on Türkiye, um, and the growth, and there was a lot of growth in Türkiye around onshore and offshore.

And so maybe Mingyang, that might be a, a place, um, for them to, to start, you know, on the doorstep of, of Europe. The stepping stone, so to speak. Stepping country.

Allen Hall 2025: Is there risk in that, uh, uh, if, uh, uh, Mingyang decided to put a plant in Türkiye? Is, does that come with some political aspect? Because I, I, I don’t remember.

Türkiye t-tends to play, uh, uh, k- kind of like Switzerland in, in terms of working with different, uh, political systems over time. Yeah.

Matthew Stead: I, I’ve had a bit more to do with a few, a few, um, sort of organizations in Türkiye recently and, um, you know, it’s highly professional, highly, you know, logical, and so I, I can’t see why it’d be a challenge.

So I think, yeah, that stepping stone into Europe might be a, a logical way to go. Well, maybe

Allen Hall 2025: we’ll see that in the next [00:26:00] couple of months. I don’t know. There’s gonna be a lot to happen there. There’s so much money being spent in Europe on renewables, wind, solar, battery, all the above, that there’s plenty of opportunity, and every company that has a product that’s gonna be trying to sell it in Europe right now.

It’s a smart move. Absolutely.

Matthew Stead: I think the other thing that we’ll probably be talking about a little bit more is EV trucks or, you know, electric trucks.

Allen Hall 2025: You think so?

Matthew Stead: I reckon we’ll be talking more and more about electric trucks.

Allen Hall 2025: Does Europe even have a, a le- a real true EV tractor-trailer, large truck?

What do they call… I guess they call it a lorry.

Matthew Stead: I don’t think yet. But that’s why I’m saying I think this is a topic that’s gonna raise itself. Um, I’ve, I’ve seen some numbers recently which says that it’s a bit of a no-brainer to go from diesel to, um, to battery now.

Allen Hall 2025: So is Tesla gonna be the, the winner there just because of their, I don’t even what they call it, the Tesla truck?

Is that what they call that now?

Matthew Stead: Not the Cybertruck, the, the truck truck.

Allen Hall 2025: Electric semi-truck. There you go. [00:27:00] Thank you, producer Claire.

Matthew Stead: I think you’ve gotta watch, you know, you’ve gotta watch BYD and a few of the other, the other, um, other companies.

Allen Hall 2025: Do they have something as large as what, uh, Tesla is offering today?

Because Tesla is offering a true semi or tractor-trailer

Matthew Stead: I, I, I must admit I’m not a, a huge expert on the topic, but I’m sure Rosemary is.

Allen Hall 2025: She drives the big rigs? Is that what she’s doing?

Matthew Stead: But I think we– Yeah, I think, I think it’s an in-interesting thing to watch because, um, certainly fuel prices in Australia are definitely pushing, um, this idea of, um, electric trucks.

Allen Hall 2025: Yeah, diesel prices are really high in the States. I- if they’re high in the States, I can’t even imagine what they are in Europe or Australia. They must be through the roof. So if you have a diesel vehicle, although they run forever and are pretty efficient, the price of fuel is insane right now.

Matthew Stead: And, you know, if you, if you take that a step further into mining, so Twiggy Forest, um, and Fortescue, you know, switching to [00:28:00] electric, uh, trucks and electric mining, yeah, it makes sense.

Allen Hall 2025: Does the math work out on that? Uh, obviously Fortescue is taking, uh, really a pretty significant risk in that they’re developing their own electricity generation sites via wind and solar and battery, the whole thing, and they’re converting some of their larger vehicles to electric. Does that hold a big risk, or is this just a financial no-brainer, particularly when diesel prices are so high?

Matthew Stead: Yeah, I think it’s a financial no-brainer. Uh, and that’s why partly I think we’ll be talking about trucks because, you know, once the finances make sense, um, there’ll be a faster transition. And I think, you know, Fortescue is not a silly company.

Allen Hall 2025: Fortescue is willing to dabble, right? So they’re willing to, to see where the technology is and spend a little bit of money and possibly it works out, right?

I think there’s– you have to take a little bit of risk if you’re in that business because you are spending so much money on fuel. [00:29:00] You can spend a couple million dollars playing in different areas to pick an eventual winner. Obviously, they’re gonna– Well, it’s not obvious at the moment, but it, it seems obvious to us being on the electricity side.

Electricity is gonna be the answer. Renewable energy is gonna be the easy way to do it, the lowest cost way to do it. There you go. Go do it. Well, American Clean Power’s event, uh, which is in Houston this year, will be happening June 1st through the 4th at the convention center downtown in Houston. It’s gonna be warm, everybody, so if you’re traveling from a cooler country like Denmark to Houston, bring something cool to wear.

It will be warm in June. It, it– Houston is just a very warm place, and it’s quite humid, so it’ll, it’ll be a, a unique environment. However, it does sound like there’s gonna be a, a, an– A number of interesting companies and a lot of people that are attending that event this year, and one of them is gonna be Matthew and EOLOGIX-PING with Weather Guard Lightning Tech will [00:30:00] both be down at the event in a booth and seeing everybody and, and, and meeting a whole bunch of, of, uh, new people that are getting into the industry, which is, to me, is always the fun part.

Like, we just meet so many really fun people. Uh, and Matthew, you know, we had a discussion internally about that, like, uh, our, our new, uh, chief commercial officer, Nikki Briggs, has been commenting. We’ve been talking to so many operators around the world, and after every, uh, little meeting briefing that we have, we do a post-briefing, and she goes, “They were so nice.”

And I s- yes, Nikki, the wind industry people are fantastic to work with. Like, they’re all focused on doing something positive, and they’re trying to, to do it the best that they can. And there’s a lot of constraints to it, and they’re making a number of hard decisions. But when we all come together at American Clean Power here in the States, hey, we can kinda commiserate and [00:31:00] talk about what’s happening and catch up.

And I feel like we need a little bit of catch-up time in this industry, particularly here in the United States.

Matthew Stead: Yeah. Yeah. I, I think, um, I, I definitely agree. And I, I found, you know, previously I used to work in the construction industry and work with engineers and, you know, transport, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And actually, I found that the renewable industry, there’s a lot of really open people, really happy to have a discussion, um, not the big egos, so I completely agree. And, um, I’m thinking back, um, I first met people in the wind industry in, you know, around 2012, 2013, and, you know, I still know a number of those people and really appreciate catching up with them.

Um, so actually, Berend van der Pol was probably one of the first, and, uh, Birgit Junker was, um, maybe one of the second, so yeah. And I’m definitely looking forward to ACP.

Allen Hall 2025: If you’re, if you’re down in Houston at American Clean Power, definitely stop by a- and say hi to everybody from [00:32:00]EOLOGIX-PING and Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and hey, learn about all the things that are going on because both companies have new products that’ll, were gonna be announced at the site.

Uh, we’re already getting inundated with requests on the Weather Guard side. It’s insane. We’re telling people, like, “Slow down, slow down, slow down. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll talk to you about it when we get to Houston.” But, uh, expect a very attentive audience this year, which is exciting. 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 to us on LinkedIn, and don’t forget to subscribe so 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 follow the show. For Matthew, I’m Allen Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy [00:33:00] Podcast.