BaxEnergy’s Software Solutions: Unifying Renewable Assets
We talk to CEO Simone Massaro about how BaxEnergy is revolutionizing renewable energy management. Their groundbreaking software solutions that are making clean energy more efficient and accessible. And the company’s recent acquisition by Yokogawa Electric Corporation will open doors for making their solutions better and more widespread.
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Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, joined by my co host, Joel Saxum. Today, we’re honored to have with us Dr. Simone Massaro CEO of BaxEnergy. And BaxEnergy has established itself as a leading provider of software solutions for the renewable energy sector. Industry.
Since its founding in 2010, the company has been at the forefront of developing cutting edge asset performance and renewable energy management systems under Dr. Massaro’s leadership, BaxEnergy has gained recognition for its innovative approach to optimizing renewable energy assets, including wind farms and their solution helps energy companies monitor, analyze and enhance The performance of the renewable installations, ultimately making clean energy more efficient and accessible.
And in a significant development this year, BaxEnergy was acquired by Yokogawa Electric Corporation, a global leader in the industrial automation and control industry. This strategic move is set to bolster BaxEnergy’s position in the renewable energy market and open doors to new technologies and markets.
And that’s what I want to talk about today. Dr. Massaro is here today to share his insights on BaxEnergy’s journey. They’re groundbreaking work in renewable energy management and the exciting future ahead following the Yokogawa acquisition. Simone, welcome to the show. It’s great to be here. Thank you. Was that an adequate introduction?
Because you guys are doing so much at BaxEnergy. It is amazing the capabilities you’re providing to the renewable industry.
Simone Massaro: Yeah, I mean, BaxEnergy is essentially a software solution provider. And is focused on doing one thing and one thing only, which is making renewable energy more affordable for everyone.
And the way that we do that is by making the power plants more efficient. BaxEnergy is creating and delivering the software solution that is taking control of the renewable energy power plants, and is actually making them more efficient. In other words it’s taking all the aspects of the power plants that are difficult to handle the dark side of the renewable energy and is transforming it into something more efficient.
Our history as commenced about 10 years ago with the development of a solution, which was optimizing wind farms. And was focused on wind energy. And then from that, we evolved into solar energy, hydroelectrical energy, geothermal energy. And nowadays we’re working a lot with hydrogen, which is a little bit of the forefront of energy storage.
Not many people realize how difficult it is to work with renewable energy because renewable energy are by nature uncontrollable. The reason is that the source of the energy itself, the sun or the wind. They are at their source. They are uncontrollable. They are not depending on the will of the man.
So we we wanted to have energy on demand, but in reality, the sun is shining and the wind is blowing on a completely different schedule. So our focus is to make sure that it is possible to create a balance on the network by controlling this uncontrollable part of of nature. And we do that by mixing all the energy together.
Allen Hall: It’s been an amazing progression, because if you think about the complexity of the energy system we have today, and where we are going, and where we have been 10 years ago, right? The, the, the issue, the early issues, and still exist today. You have a lot of energy companies that have different assets that are manufactured at different times by different manufacturers, wind and solar in particular, the big two, integrating that into a useful system.
has been very difficult for, for operators to achieve. I think you’ve really bridged that gap now in, in terms of software. And that had to be a big hill to climb to do that. You want to explain how you accomplished that and how you kind of working that in software?
Simone Massaro: Yeah. So that’s that you, you make a very good point over there.
So, when the new energy we’re representing. A very small percentage of the global energy production. They were not creating a problem, but as the amount of renewable energy has grown to reach 10%, 20%, 30% in some countries, even 50% or more of the energy being produced, this is also increasing the fluctuation on the grid.
So the grid that we had before. Which was designed for big monolithic power plants was not sufficient to handle the fluctuation and the distribution of this renewable energy power plant. So, new technologies had to be invented to put this under control, not just the monitoring, but also the capability to shut down the power plants when when a wind farm was producing too much or when a solar power plant was producing too much to avoid fluctuation.
On on the grid. So the software somewhat evolved with these challenges. At the very beginning, we were focusing on gathering the data from the power plants. And the key focus really from the utilities was just to visualize this data. Later on the challenge came because Each of these power plant is, is typically produced by a different manufacturer.
Now, you have not only different technology clearly a wind turbine works in a very different way than the solar inverter and the hydroelectric power plant or geothermal power plant. But each of these power plant may actually be manufactured by a different OEM, by a different vendor, by a different original equipment manufacturer.
And each of this vendor is actually creating its own way to exchange data and its own way to control the power plant. It’s like having a different fleet of vehicles. So you can think of wind, solar and hydro making a relationship with the transportation. You can think of them as airplanes, cars.
And maybe trains and ships, essentially they’re all moving people from one place to the other, but they’re doing that in very different ways. And when you think of even just one of these categories, like cars, you don’t have a car, you have maybe 20, 30 different type of, of, of cars. You have utility vehicles, you have trucks, you have, very different size, very different objective, but also made up from different vendors.
So that, that’s the same thing that you have a renewable energy. And imagine now that you want a system to control all of these all of these equipments, all of these machines from one single place, that’s what the utility need. Because effectively, utilities are not buying just wind or just solar or just hydro.
They’re buying all of these technologies. They’re building all of them. And they’re not doing it with one vendor only. They’re doing it whichever offers the best price on the market. And as we started to work with utilities, we realized that That sometime utilities were having not, not one system, not two, not three, sometime 15, 20 different systems in order to monitor their power plants.
Because each of these power plant was coming with a different system. Each wind farm was equipped with his own monitoring and control system. Each solar power plant had his own power plant control system. So surely enough, if you have so many systems, you also need a lot of operators that they have to be trained to operate these different, these very different power plants coming from very different manufacturers.
So that challenges no one had solved before us. So early 2010, we came out with the first system. Which was unifying the monitoring and the control of different renewable energy sources all under one roof, regardless of the energy type, the technology type, the manufacturer, the vendor of that power plant, regardless of the communication protocol.
Regardless, even of things like unit of measurements, imagine a wind turbine produced in the U. S. will measure the wind speed in feet per second and one produced in Europe will measure it in meters per second. So you know, these, these, these utilities, these owners of the power plants, as the number of power plants was growing, they really needed to have that unified platform.
So that was the first challenge. That we addressed.
Allen Hall: You’ve grown as the industry has grown in terms of capability. Your first hurdle was trying to communicate everything to communicate with one another. So many different vendors, so many different technologies. It must’ve taken you an immense amount of time to even get that to work.
Just to get the data. Just to get the data, right. And to make sure that it works. Properly, but then to take that knowledge and then explode it into making sure the grid is more stable. That’s amazing.
Simone Massaro: Yeah. And surely enough it’s taken a lot of of people actually have the calculation of that.
So to do the, the data collection, the, the capability that we have today is to interconnect every single vendor that exists in the market. Every single winter turbine buying and inverter manufacturer. That produces inverted today in the world. Do we have a protocol for that? So it took us exactly 165 men years to produce this, which we call the universal data engine, and we did that over time in the course of three and a half years.
But you know, it was a very intense challenge. Once this challenge was resolved, anything else after that, it’s, it’s simple.
Allen Hall: Yeah. After 165 man years, I suppose so, but that’s a huge amount of knowledge that’s into your software platform today, which I think then makes you really powerful and make, this is the big issue.
The United States and Europe and even Australia has this issue more recently of grid reliability combined with when, when to use energy storage, how to apply that to a complex grid. Texas has this problem right now, Joel.
Joel Saxum: It’s what we talk about all the time in like the next evolution of grids in general to this smart grid version.
There’s an integration of hardware and software there, but you guys, software wise, you’re out in front of the game. You’re probably at some level waiting for the hardware that’s out in the field to catch up to what you can offer.
Simone Massaro: Yeah, to a certain extent, yes. So, in reality, what we have developed is an intelligent brain that is composed of two parts.
It is a central part that runs inside the core system of the utility, the owner of the power plants. And that’s the central brain that is orchestrating everything. And then there are smaller brains, smaller pieces of software that are running inside the power plants. So the two of them are communicating in a very secure way, in a very trusted way, has to be super secure because you’re not just reading the data, you’re actually exposing the capability of controlling the power plant.
And the, of course you have to synchronize from a central location, all these plants, you have to have communication is not avoidable, but it has to be super secure. Because if it is not. And any curve can actually enter into the power plant that could accidentally or on purpose shut down the power plant could create a damage, could create a ripple effect, which will lead to a larger scale blackout, such as some that have occurred in the United States years ago.
That’s also the reason why today this is a market in which a lot of very stringent regulation exists. Now, each country is creating its own regulation. In the U. S., you have the NERC Cybersecurity Standards for Power Plant. And in Europe, you have some others. And, as you go in Asia, you have some more.
So, because we started very early on and we wanted to work worldwide, we adapted our software to all of the cybersecurity standards that exist worldwide. So, companies and nations worldwide started to utilize our technology. And, today, we You know, we brought ourself to have, more than a single digit of the entire world energy generation.
In fact, we are approximating 3. 5 percent of the total renewable energy in the world currently being monitored by our software. Now it appears like a small amount where I can assure you being an independent vendor, it’s One of the largest in the market.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, that’s great. So that leads us to the Yokogawa merger the acquisition there So you guys now you’ve you’ve selected of basically a partner to join up with to grow the solution How is that going to work for you guys?
Simone Massaro: Yeah, so that’s if you if you look at the world the control of renewable energy is Is a an objective for for everyone. So the world is polarizing You And in three, maybe maximum five conglomerates of technological providers that are able to solve this challenge, and we’re one of them.
So what we thought was the best way for us was to create an industrial partnership. So we started to look around the four industries that were interested in this technology and sure enough, we found out the most in the industry that is interested the most in. In renewable energy are these heavy heavy industries that are consuming large amount of of energy.
Think about the aluminum foil foiling industries or think about all of the industries in which you are producing a large amount of metals or, or you have to cool down, refrigerate. You have to. Create larger scale productions that consume large amount of energies and all of these industries, they’re all looking for.
How do we decarbonize our operations? How do we reduce our cost? How do we get away from utilizing oil and gas and burning them in order to generate our energy to to do this? And Yokogawa is actually a technology provider that is offering DCS solutions and distributed control systems to this industry.
So it’s already present in all of the heavy industries, in all of the oil and gas industries, in all of the heavy machinery, heavy equipment, heavy metal. Water clarification plant, anything that really consumes an enormous amount of energy. And they were looking for a solution to help their customer decarbonize.
So we basically found the perfect match and we created a bond through an acquisition. So Yokogawa acquired 100 percent stakes of BaxEnergy, a little more than two months ago. And the goal of this acquisition is to create a new scale operations. From one side, Yokogawa will distribute our technology to renewable energy providers, independent power plant suppliers.
worldwide. From the other side, we will supply them the technology that they need to decarbonize the heavy
Allen Hall: industries. Well, that’s truly amazing because I think that is a perfect match of capabilities and industry and connecting the two together to broaden out this technology and get it to all corners of the world.
Because it is going to be, as you have pointed out, a renewable future. And in order to have a reliable grid, you need to control these assets properly. And this is the beauty of BaxEnergy, I think, is how well you orchestrate all these different technologies together. for efficient use and BaxEnergy is going to be leading that way.
How do future customers of yours find you? Where do they find you on the web?
Simone Massaro: Yeah, so they, they can find us in two ways on the BaxEnergy website, which is BaxEnergy. com very easy. Or they can actually look us over to the Yokogawa website. There is www. BaxEnergy. com. Right now one way to reach us we are entering several markets participating into all the most important trade shows and conferences on renewable energy.
And we find out that there is a great way to meet people, to speak with with the owners of the power plants and the, the, the operation and maintenance teams that have to run the power plants. And from these conversations. We’re driving our our growth to, to be even more precise on this point.
I’m going to be for a minute. What I tell every, every day to my engineers, to my software developers, to everyone else, don’t worry about the revenues. There are people that are taking care of it. Don’t worry about that. Just worry about making the best product possible for our customers. And then all the rest.
will flow by itself. And that’s really what has happened. We’re focused only on making the best possible product. And that’s why, the sales have been growing and, we got to the interest of all of these utilities and now all of these industrial partners. When you do something good, when your interest is aligned with the interest of your customer, then everything else is easy.
And I will go one step ahead, because in this case, our interest is aligned with the interest of the world. Because our, our motto is really making renewable energy more affordable to make a greener world for everyone. That’s really our goal. It’s solutions for a greener world. And even you guys that are listening to webcast right now, even if you’re not utilizing this solution, you will benefit from our technology indirectly.
Allen Hall: That is so true. And congratulations to BaxEnergy and Yokogawa. This is a great matchup. And Simone, I really appreciate you coming on to the podcast. It’s been really informative. I’ve learned a ton. And let’s stay in touch because. Backsynergy is growing and it’s going to be growing in leaps and bounds, and it’s been a pleasure.
Simone Massaro: Thank you so much. It’s been my pleasure. Thank you to everyone that is listening, and have a good day, everyone.
https://weatherguardwind.com/baxenergys-software-solutions-unifying-renewable-assets/
Renewable Energy
Do Social Democracies Commit Genocide on Their People?
Re: the meme here that a reader sent me, I’m not sure this is fair.
What social democrats are proposing exactly what most of the governments of Western Europe, and many other countries around the globe offer their citizens.
I don’t read too much about genocide in Denmark. Are they killing each other with pastries?
Renewable Energy
German Wind Turbine? Let’s Do Some Math
The turbine presented here has blades that are 0.5 meters in length, and that the average home requires 1.2 KW.
When we plug this into this wind power calculator, we learn that we’ll need an average wind speed of 37 mph.
Since the average wind speed in Germany is 11 mph and power is proportionate to the cube of the wind speed, the average German will need 38 of these to power his house.
Renewable Energy
What Operators Want to Hear at WOMA 2027
Weather Guard Lightning Tech

What Operators Want to Hear at WOMA 2027
Two days of operator meetings in Melbourne shape the WOMA 2027 agenda, from performance upgrades and cable faults to foundations and bolts.
The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall. I’m here with Matthew Stead and Rosemary Barnes. And Rosemary, where are we?
Rosemary Barnes: We’re in Melbourne, and we have been visiting future attendees and sponsors and people interested in, in the event to see what topics that we should be talking about.
What are the hot topics of the moment?
Allen Hall: Which is a very interesting two days, Matthew, in that, uh, we h- did meet with a number of operators based in Australia, but, uh, they’re also very worldly. They have talked to companies all over about operations and, and maintenance, and there are some really eye-opening topics- Mm
that will be- Mm … at WOMA 2027 this year.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. The thing that was interesting for me was [00:01:00]that actually the topics have changed each year. So, um, they’re evolving and the industry’s continuing to, to do better, and so that, that was really interesting. Performance upgrades was probably one of the big areas of, of new interest, I think.
I think we heard with the pressure on pricing, uh, the market and so forth, you know, that, that 1% or 2% now is becoming more important. Um, so I think, uh, upgrades will definitely feature quite a lot. Um, balance of plant was also a big topic. Um, you just can’t ig- ignore the, um, transmission, you can’t ignore the transformers, you can’t ignore, uh, condensers and all these sorts of things, so yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Cables.
Matthew Stead: Cables.
Rosemary Barnes: Terminations. Terminations of cables. Specifically raised several times.
Allen Hall: Yep. Yeah. It’s all about being more efficient, uh, getting more production, and then with the PPA prices, uh, that are changing-
Matthew Stead: Mm …
Allen Hall: rapidly, uh, everybody is paying more attention to the bottom line.
Matthew Stead: Mm, mm.
Allen Hall: Absolutely. There, there’s less cash running around, uh, chasing new development.
It’s [00:02:00] more of a focus on making sure your, at least your existing assets are performing as, as well as they can be- Mm … which then opens up the, uh, Pandora’s box of opportunity. Mm. Because there are 1%’s all around a wind turbine. More specifically, uh, all the drive train issues, the blade issues, the generator issues, and even going into the substation.
Mm. I, I was really shocked on BOP e- the, the one topic that came up, uh, yesterday and today was buried cables. Mm. Like-
Matthew Stead: Faults …
Allen Hall: faults.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Junctions. Finding- Yeah … finding faults and what to do about them. Yeah. Yeah. But I think in addition to just wanting more revenue, I think people have, are getting more sophisticated about what actually matters and then the finances.
You know, everyone’s focused so much on availability, and now people- Mm … are like, okay, yeah, like once you’re at a certain level of availability, gets harder and harder to get more. And actually, you know, not all availability is equal. Is good. It, it [00:03:00] depends. Yeah. Yeah, like you wanna, um, you wanna focus on how much you’re generating at the times when electricity prices are high specifically, which usually means during lower wind speed periods.
Yeah. Which is actually good because that matches really well with what is actually possible. It’s, it’s hard to get more power out of the turbine if it’s at, you know, its rated power, then you’re not g- More efficiency is not gonna get you any more, um, power output, whereas lower in the power curve- Mm … um, when wind speeds are lower, there’s less electricity in the grid and so prices are higher.
And so- Mm … yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s why people are really asking to know more about what efficiency upgrades are possible, better ways to operate, scheduled maintenance, um, all those sorts of things. Mm. So that will be really interesting.
Matthew Stead: Raising the bar on sophistication. Um, but also life extension
Allen Hall: Yes, a lot of discussion about life extension
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, end of life and life extension End of life Yeah, um-
Matthew Stead: Foundations, structures Which is
Allen Hall: tied to PPA.
Mm. A lot of that [00:04:00] discussion I, at least I looked at it as, uh, if I had a PPA and I can continue with that PPA with an existing turbine, I want to do that. Mm,
Matthew Stead: mm,
Allen Hall: mm. But how do I do that and how do I know that that existing turbine can last another five years? It seemed to go in five-year blocks, like can we get to another five years and then another and then, then another.
Wow.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Once you get to 20, 20, 25 years, I think people like, uh, they, you know- It’s getting a little- Their original agreement might have been for 20, then they kind of just assume that there will be another five, and then after that they’re- Yeah … kind of reassessing cyclically and yeah, I know that people make plans for, you know, what components are replaceable, what would they have to get in, and I think that sometimes, uh, people doing those plans aren’t as familiar with the, you know, actual technical issues that are being faced.
Like, is a blade a replaceable component? It may be early on in the life it sort of is, not easily, but you know, like a 25-year-old wind turbine, you know, good luck trying to order 10 new blades because you’ve got a, you know, an issue that’s-
Allen Hall: Oh, well you, you need to read the news. Did you [00:05:00] see the news today about, uh, the, the wooden wind turbine blades as a replacement for aged blades?
That, that’s happening- … in real time, Rosa.
Rosemary Barnes: Okay. I know they- Yeah. Yep, yep. Okay. Okay. So that, that’s, that’s good. Making carbon new blade. E- even so, I don’t think that they’re- Okay. … gonna be, like, super-duper cheap, so you’re still gonna wanna be, um, doing a trade-off between y- you know, like, what kind of repairs.
You might be able to change the way you’re operating to reduce loads. Um, you might be able to monitor to make sure that your blades are safe. You know, if you know that there’s an issue, um, you just wanna get some advanced warning before blades start falling off your, your tower. Mm. You know, and then you can push it further.
Yeah. Whereas if you’ve got no information, then you have to be conservative and shut it down. Yeah. So yeah, I think there’s a whole lot that can be g- can be done there in that area.
Matthew Stead: There was a point that came up today, which I think was close to your heart, on, you know, if you’re going to be going for 1% or 2% or 0.5% AEP improvement, how do you actually measure that and how do you set up a proper experiment?
So-
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah …
Matthew Stead: I, I, I love that topic. [00:06:00]
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. No, it’s one that I, um, yeah, I deal with m- my clients I, I’m often… It’s one of the things that Pablo really loves to do, is to organize trials of that nature of new technologies and see if they work. But, um, yeah, asset managers are usually very, uh, focused on fast results.
You know, they’ve got a, a big problem and they want a solution now, so they wanna just roll out the new technology over an entire wind farm. But if you do that, then it’s almost impossible. Unless you get, like, a huge benefit, like, uh, 10% gains or, you know, like reduce your failures by 50% or more, it’s really hard to actually- Mm
pick that out if you just replace everything. Mm. Whereas if you do a really, really good, um, trial plan- Systematic. Yeah … and you match pairs very well so that you have, you know, a control for each turbine and there’s- so many variables in a wind farm. It’s not, it’s not as easy as just, like, randomly choosing 50% to do and not do.
Mm. Mm. Mm. Like, you have to, you know, put some work into the trial design, and then, you know, like, do your statistical calculations ahead of time to know how long it’s gonna take you to get s- statistical [00:07:00]significance. So then you don’t just have a gut feeling about- Yep … how something went. You’ve actually got numbers, and then you can take those numbers to, you know, other wind farms that you’ve got- Yeah
and, and know what’s going on much better.
Matthew Stead: Worst study is an inconclusive study.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. Definitely.
Allen Hall: Well, that comes back to the data analysis- Mm … which a lot of operators mentioned, and how much data there is and what to do with it, and it did seem like a couple of operators have chosen some AI tools, varying degrees, all the way down from Microsoft Copilot to something much more complicated.
Uh, but I think there’s, uh, getting that d- to the last 1, 2, 3%, you’re going to need those tools- Absolutely … because what do you choose? Do you choose a blade? Do you choose a gearbox? Do you choose a generator? Do you go to the substation to get that percentage point or two Without having some really powerful tools- Mm.
you may be wasting your time [00:08:00] and money.
Matthew Stead: Mm.
Allen Hall: Which is a, a, a very interesting, uh, aspect to wind energy because it’s such an industrial business that, uh, we haven’t used heavy computational tools, uh, un- until really now.
Matthew Stead: Mm.
Allen Hall: And maybe Australia’s at the forefront because of the PPA and negative pricing is that that will, uh, actually lead an industry.
Because I haven’t seen a lot of that being used globally. Mm. So this is the first time an operator- Mm … that I’ve talked to has said, “We’re using it.”
Matthew Stead: Yeah. It’s quite a different discussion, um, I think, you know, this year compared to previous years in that I think in the past it was getting to know what’s possible, but now it’s like real case studies are coming through.
And a few of the people had some really good examples that we can talk about at the conference as to how they’ve actually been helped and how they did this and what the outcome was. I think, yeah, that would be really great content on that.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I think it’s gonna be a good mix of people who have used third party tools and have experience with it, people that are doing it in-house and can share- Mm
some of the kinds of results- Mm … that, that you can get just from analyzing your own- Mm … [00:09:00] SCADA data. Um, people talking about how they get the data that they want. Mm. ‘Cause it’s not always so easy. You would think that, you know, you own a wind turbine, you have a right to have all of the data that comes through it, but it’s not.
Um, even if you do technically have a right, it’s, uh, it, it’s harder to actually get it than you might think. Mm. So yeah, sharing all, all those kinds of things. But I think also, like just as important as talking about the successes is talking about the, the gaps that– people still feel lots of gaps. Like, okay, we’ve got all the data, we’re collecting it.
We know that there’s so much potential here- Mm … but we don’t really- Mm … know what we can do, or it’s hard for us to, you know- Mm … make headway in this particular pain point. And that is really useful for companies that are developing tools to know what are the, the problems. Mm. Because then they can e- you know, they’re well placed to fix them.
Allen Hall: Mm. Which leads to the discussion we had with the operators and, uh, some of the suppliers for WOMA 2027. There’s a lot of interest. And as we’re sitting in the conference rooms, I’m thinking, we may not have enough room to [00:10:00] seat everybody. Uh, the WOMA 2027 website is up and running, and you can register now.
So just go to woma2027.com and get started there. At the same point, we’ve had a lot of contact with, uh, pretty much everybody that wants to sponsor the event, and there’s only a limited number of ways to sponsor. So if you’re interested in doing that, you, you need to go to woma2027.com and look at those, uh, part- particular packages and see what- Mm
fits your, your business. Uh- Going back to some of the, the comments we were just discussing downstairs about what we heard at 2026, like, which is only a couple of months ago, right? It’s back in February this year. Uh, there’s, they’re still discussing what happened at WOMA 2026- Mm. Which was very fascinating- Mm
because I think Rosemary, you and I have been to conferences that I have not thought an iota … about what happened at those conferences. Just nothing interesting does occur. There’s no new, new information, there’s [00:11:00] no new science, there’s no new operator approaches.
Rosemary Barnes: Mm.
Allen Hall: But we’re gonna see a number of those- Yeah.
Mm … come next March.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Well, I think it’s partly because I don’t know what other conference organizers do, but, you know, we’ve had a exhausting few days here. You’ve come all the way from America, obviously, and, and Claire as well, also come over, our producer. Um, so, y- you know, like, we’re working really hard to make sure that the topics…
Like, it’s not an accident that the topics are ones that people are talking about later, because we come here to make sure that we get the right topics. And it’s not just these meetings as well. People get in touch, and- Mm … anybody watching, listening, who has, you know, something that they wanna talk about, then definitely, you know, send us a message, and yeah, we’re working on the agenda.
We’ll, we’ll have a draft agenda in the next couple of weeks based on what we’ve learned here, but then we’ve got the hard job of it’s not just that you have a really interesting topic, you need to have a really great speaker- Yeah … or several really great speakers, usually covering several different aspects of the problem.
You know, maybe it’s, uh, yeah, an asset [00:12:00] owner, an OEM, and some, some technology provider, you know, all together giving different, um, yeah, perspectives. That’s, I think, what makes a really great session. Mm. So yeah, we need the ideas for the sessions, and we also need the ideas for great speakers.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Right.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. I think we’ve, we’ve already matched a few of those dots, so- Yeah … I, we’ve heard people asking for certain topics they wanna hear about, and then we’ve heard other operators saying, “Well, this is what we could talk about.” So I think we’ve already-
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, yeah … got some great
Matthew Stead: progress.
Rosemary Barnes: It was, it was interesting ’cause we, we built up a list of, you know-
Matthew Stead: Yeah
Rosemary Barnes: frequently raised topics, and then you’d say it to the next person that you went to- Mm … and they’re like, “Oh, that’s not a problem for us because we’ve done X, Y, Z.” And you’re like, “Okay. Well, excellent. You can, you can present the solutions that we know that other people- Yeah. Yes … are, are looking for.” Yeah.
So it has been… Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s definitely worthwhile coming, as, as tiring as it is. Yeah. Um, definitely worthwhile, and we’ll get a much better agenda for the- Yeah … for the effort.
Matthew Stead: And I think, I mean, it has been tiring. Um, but what, what made it for me was one of the operators said that [00:13:00] this is the only conference they will go to So I think, I think we’re doing the right thing.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Yeah. I, I think so. I understand too, like, you know, all of us, we kind of are forced to go to events because that’s where our, our clients and customers are, and so you need to see them. And yeah, like I’ve even gone to the extent of some events where I don’t particularly like the event, but I know everyone’s going.
Mm. I just go and sit near the event for a couple of days and meet people at a cafe. So yeah, like we can’t get away from it. But if you’re an asset manager or, um, yeah, somebody in that kind of type of work, like you’ve got better things to do than listen to sales pitches aggressively thrown at you that aren’t relevant- Yeah
to what you’re doing. So, um, yeah. Like I, I definitely love to hear that kind of feedback- Yeah … and wanna make sure that we get it every, every year. Like that’s- It’s, it’s
Matthew Stead: encouraging.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah … yeah, that’s, that’s the point of the conference, so.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah.
Matthew Stead: The other big topic was we would really love more OEM involvement.
Um-
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Everybody wants more- … a lot of the operators- … OEM involvement- Yeah … all of the asset owners.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Like we want to [00:14:00] hear from OEMs more, have them there. Um, so yeah, we’re, we’ll be trying to To get those sorted
Allen Hall: Well, WOMA is a global conference, although it’s Australia-based and there’s a, a number of Australian operators.
There are Danish, Americans, uh, plenty of Europeans. Uh, we’re gonna see some from Southeast Asia, I think, this year. Mm-hmm. And, and Japan hopefully will come. Uh, because it’s a, it’s a global conference, there’s global knowledge- Mm … and wind is such a big industry. You may not have the solution in the United States, it may be sitting in Australia, and we need to exchange those ideas.
Mm. And that, that’s the point. So w- we are continuing to look for those world experts as we have received all the inputs of these are all the topics we wanna go hear about. Great. Now it’s on us three to go find some of those world experts and, and try to get them to Melbourne. Yeah. And I, I think that’s a great opportunity.
So if we do call you and ask you to participate in WOMA [00:15:00] 2027, please take it seriously because- Mm … you will be bombarded with great questions- Mm … and contacts and information. Uh, it’s an event you won’t wanna miss. Yeah. And- But I would- … there’s opportunity there.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I’d say we’re, we’re prioritizing OEMs, um, to, to get more participation, ideally to speak, but at least to be there.
And we have heard from multiple asset owners in Australia that they want, they, they want to know what are some of the upgrades that they can do- Yeah … that you’re offering. They wanna know what’s coming next in terms of technology. They wanna know what are some of the non-Western options. So, you know, like it would be great to get some Chinese wind turbine, um, manufacturers as well.
Like, they want all this information. They don’t want a slick sales brochure pitch that doesn’t give them any technical information. So we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to get, you know, some technical people to speak on, yeah, what are the upgrades you offer and how does it work- Mm-hmm … and show us a case study that demonstrates the improvements.
Um, ’cause that [00:16:00] sometimes is really hard to get out of- Mm … out of OEMs. You know, that, “We’ve got this thing, it’s so amazing, you should get it.” Okay, well, what’s the business case for it? “Oh, well, we don’t have any numbers. Just trust us.”
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Um, it’s so common to get a pitch like that. So yeah, any, any OEM that has any- anything like that, either for the next generation of wind turbines or for upgrading the current fleet, yeah, if you’re willing to bring the data, then people, they are desperate to hear this information.
Allen Hall: Mm.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. That came up so many times.
Rosemary Barnes: Mm.
Allen Hall: So what were the other, uh, topics that we’re… I’m just not thinking off the top of my head. I know foundations came up quite a bit- Foundations, yeah … which was an odd one, I think, because we haven’t seen that a lot in Australia. Yeah. But this year, foundations, foundations, foundations.
Basically, the health of foundations. Yeah.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. I think really there was a lifting of the maturity. Um, I think the topics were sort of showing that, you know, Maslow’s hierarchy and moving into the more of optimization rather than making do, and I think life extension around the foundations was a, a really good example of that.
Allen Hall: And bolts.
Matthew Stead: Bolts? Yeah, bolts.
Allen Hall: [00:17:00] Everybody said bolts. Bolts.
Matthew Stead: Bolts.
Allen Hall: You think the world’s simplest device, we’ve been making bolts for nearly 1,000 years or at least a couple hundred. But it does- And, you know- … come up quite often … cable, cable
Matthew Stead: terminations, again, some really
Rosemary Barnes: basic- Yeah, that, really specific ones that were raised multiple times.
Yeah. Um, yeah, which, which is great- Yeah … ’cause it gives us a good direction to go. But I do love how it changes so much every year- Yeah … ’cause it makes me feel like, okay, yeah, like we’re actually, you know, it’s worthwhile, um, putting on another event. Mm. Um, not just recording one event and then just, you know, like replaying that every year or something.
Re-educating.
Allen Hall: Yeah. Well, I, I think there’s a learning exercise that has happened over the past two years where people now are knowledgeable about those things we talked about- Mm … two years ago. Uh, was it, was it even two years ago? It was a year and a half ago when we first started this, so we’re, we’re not that deep into it.
Although our third conference will be next March, uh, you just see more energy, more industry knowledge in some of the references that I heard, uh, in terms of other companies and the approaches they’re taking clearly came from WOMA.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Mm.
Matthew Stead: Yeah,
Allen Hall: yeah. Which is, which is [00:18:00] fascinating. Yeah. That’s
Rosemary Barnes: good. I mean, we want- It, it is
Allen Hall: sticking
Rosemary Barnes: we want tech conferences to get better, right? That was the- No … the reason why we, uh, we started this conference was ’cause we didn’t think that it was sufficient, what we had available. So, you know, it’s not a bad thing if other conferences, um, get better. Yeah. Yeah. We should also mention that blades were, were raised a fair bit.
We talked so much about blades in the previous years, and we will be talking about blades a lot again, including we’ve got a master class on the Friday. Uh, it’s… Yeah, we’ll go back to some of the basics about how the composite materials work and how a blade is designed and certified and manufactured, and, um- Lightning.
Y- yeah, yeah, a little, a little bit about lightning. Um, I don’t wanna cover it too much because we did the master class on lightning- Right … last year. Mm. Um, yeah. And yeah, some of the common damage methods anyway. And of course- Mm … yeah, lightning is probably the most- … common, or I guess leading edge erosion is the most, and then lightning would be the most expensive.
Um, yeah, so we’ll be, we’ll be covering all that and just try and raise the knowledge level a little bit, um, for [00:19:00] everybody to… It’s a very complicated kind of, uh, yeah, component.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah.
Matthew Stead: And workshops. So each year we’ve run sort of workshops or roundtables or whatever, so we’re still thinking about the format for them, but, um, thinking about how we’ll reintroduce them again this year.
You know, specific topics, specific questions, specific answers.
Rosemary Barnes: Mm.
Allen Hall: And the three of us will be in Hamburg in a couple of weeks at Wind Energy Hamburg, so if you see us and you’re interested in coming to Australia, that’s the place to grab us and- Yep … and shake us and say, “I wanna go to Australia. How do I do it?”
Rosemary Barnes: Mm.
Allen Hall: Uh, yeah. Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Especially if you’ve got a, a t- technology that addresses some of those specific issues that we’ve mentioned- Mm … then, um, yeah, just know ahead of time that Australia needs, needs more information and more, um, solutions available to them. So, yeah. And
Matthew Stead: that reminds me, we had a really discussion a- around safety and, you know, reasonable and [00:20:00] practicable, and discussion around all the lessons learned about how…
or what is best practice on a site, what is best practice about how to manage risks and-
Rosemary Barnes: Mm.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. Yeah. I know you, you, you enjoyed that one.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And we’re not talking about, like, safety the- Ear muffs or hats. The, um, rou- Yeah, the routine safety that if you- The goggles, yeah … yeah, trip over and graze your knee, then you need to let the site supervisor know.
You, you know, it’s not that stuff, ’cause sites have that under control. That’s a given, yeah. Or at least the ability to get that under control. We’re talking about the bigger- Yeah … bigger things, you know. Like, uh, is there a issue that is causing blades to fall off turbines every now and then? Is there an issue that, uh, can lead to, you know, a fire?
I, I think everyone, like- Yeah … a big fear of everybody’s. There’s never been, um, in Australia at least, there’s never been a wind turbine fire that has caused a bush fire, but it is a possibility, and it would be so bad for the industry. So, you know, it’s those things- Mm … that could be just terrible, preventing those before they happen.
Mm. So that’s the kind of safety that we’re gonna mainly focus on. Mm. Although, you know, we’re not gonna [00:21:00] turn down questions on, um, some of the smaller stuff as well.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Mm.
Matthew Stead: And we even thought about getting some lawyers-
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah …
Matthew Stead: you missed out on this discussion, Rosie. Okay.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah.
Matthew Stead: So
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Lawyers, this is news to me.
Well, I mean, are we talking contracts or, um-
Matthew Stead: No, no … no … it’s really operations. I mean- Right … the environmental, um, issues- Oh yeah … the operational issues. Mm. You know, there’s, there’s a few things in there that the lawyers can add.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I mean- … I’ve, I constantly find myself having to interpret, you know, legal, um, legal text and also anticipate, you know, it’s one thing about what’s the right engineering, but then there is also the legal interpretation of it- Yeah
uh, as well, you know, in terms of contract law, but then also in, in terms of safety. Yeah. Um, yeah. Was this certification done correctly? You know- Yeah … that’s got some legal aspect to it. So yeah, that- Yeah … makes sense to me. Insurance is another one where I would say- Yeah, actually that came up … you know, like some, some people might think that that doesn’t sound interesting, but yeah, in- insurance is the other-
Matthew Stead: Mm
Rosemary Barnes: aspect that you [00:22:00] just can’t, um, you can’t get away from it. Like, you can’t just think that you’re, you’re doing your engineering without bothering about Mm … yeah, like finance and law and, um, and insurance. Those are things that- Mm … you spend a lot of time thinking about.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. Mm. And I guess we would also love to hear, you know, about potential speakers, but we’d also love to hear any other topics that people are attending and want to know about as well.
Rosemary Barnes: Mm-hmm.
Allen Hall: Absolutely. And if you haven’t registered for WOMA 2027, which will be March 3rd through 5th at the Pullman in East Melbourne, right? East Melbourne, yeah. They just redefined it. It’s Pullman in East Melbourne. Uh, go ahead and go to woma2027.com and register now. Uh, Matthew and Rosemary, it’s great to see you in person again, and we’ll see you in a couple of weeks, uh, hopefully in, in Germany.
Rosemary Barnes: Mm.
Allen Hall: Very [00:23:00] exciting.
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