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Danish Wind Power Academy’s Turbine-Specific Training
Alex Øbell Nielsen, CEO of Danish Wind Power Academy, discusses their customized, on-site, hands-on training programs for wind turbine technicians. The academy’s comprehensive approach improves wind farm efficiency and technician retention through targeted assessments and real-world problem-solving.
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Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering tomorrow.
Allen Hall: Alex, welcome to the show.
Alex Øbell Nielsen: Thank you. Good to be on the show.
Allen Hall: You’ve been in wind about 20 years, and, uh, when we had talked a couple of weeks ago now, uh, you were highlighting some of the challenges that exist in wind energy, especially on the training side. What are those challenges? What do you see as, uh, Danish Wind Power Academy as challenges out in the world
Alex Øbell Nielsen: from a training provider perspective?
Uh, of course, uh, the. The, the great demand for technicians, not only now, but also in the future, and not having a formal training, if you like, for wind turbine technicians. Um, we see that as a challenge. Uh, but of course it’s also an opportunity for us as a training provider. [00:01:00] Um, but, um, I mean, as you mentioned, Danish Wind Power Academy has delivered training for more than 20 years.
Uh, we do so globally, um, headquartered in Denmark, but, um. Before I, you know, deep dive into all our, our trainings, uh, as an example, we deliver troubleshooting training. Uh, a lot of customers are asking for that, but we quickly learned that many of the participants didn’t have the skillset to enter or join a troubleshooting training.
So what we begun doing two and a half years ago is to assess, uh, technicians before they actually go on one of our trainings to make sure that they have the right skillset. From that, then we’ve learned, uh, assessing more than I think 1500, maybe two, uh, yeah, more than 1500 technicians. Now that we see two or or more challenges.
One is hydraulics. They always score low on hydraulics and the others and controls where they also score low. So those are some of the challenges we see and we do [00:02:00] these assessments globally
Joel Saxum: and I think that’s an important point there globally, right? Because Danish Wind Power Academy of course, like when you think wind, you think the Danes, right?
The Danes know what they’re doing, right? Uh, we’re, we’re over here on uh, wind sites in the US all the time and they’re like, yeah, some Danish guy was here last week fixing this. Like that happens all the time. But I, I, I wanna focus on that a little bit, saying like, we talk about, okay. The, the, the, the podcast here, of course, we’re based in the states.
You can hear it by our voices, but we cover things globally, right? So we cover from the eu what’s going on offshore, onshore, India, Australia, apac, down in Brazil, Mexico, you name it. We’re, we’re covering it. We’re talking to people. The, the tech, the global technician problem in wind. Is not localized. It is everywhere.
It doesn’t matter what locale you’re in, where there’s wind turbines, there is a shortage of qualified, trained, and good people. And I think, um, kudos to you guys for, you know, exporting your knowledge around the world. But that’s something to focus on here, is that this [00:03:00] is a global issue and you guys are working to solve that.
Alex Øbell Nielsen: We try to at least, but, but as you said, it is global and we have done these assessments, uh, globally in 2024. We delivered training in more than 19 countries. Uh, the assessments we’ve done for technicians that work both in North North America, uh, Europe and, and, and the APAC region. Uh, so, so we do get, uh, you know, uh, assessments from around the world, uh, covering all these technicians and yeah, repeating myself, hydraulics and controls are big challenges for sure.
Joel Saxum: What’s the, what’s the best region? Who’s got the best text?
Alex Øbell Nielsen: Yeah, it, I’m not gonna go into that. What I can say though is that, uh, I mean, just briefly the assessment, it’s one hour. We ask 40 questions, uh, and, uh, whoever participates has a link where they, they can spend this one hour. We asked 40 questions within hydraulics, controls, mechanics, and electrics.
Uh, and, and based on this, uh, we do see some patterns, uh, also on we ask how many years of, uh, industry [00:04:00] experience do these participants have? And, and funnily enough, or maybe not, uh, but those, uh, with more than 15 years experience score the lowest. So, and there could be a wide range of, uh, reasons for that, but they score the lowest.
Uh, usually we see the technicians that have between two and four years experience. They score the best. So, so we, we, we can see, and I’m sure we can deep dive into the regions, but I don’t have those numbers in front of me, so, um, maybe not, but what I can say is it’s the same challenge. It doesn’t matter North America, Europe, far east.
Hydraulics and controls.
Allen Hall: So what are some of the real world consequences when, uh, wind farm operators don’t invest in training for their people?
Alex Øbell Nielsen: I’m sure there are multiple, but at least from our point of view, what we want to do is help asset owners improve performance of their turbines, of their wind farms, and we believe you can do so by training.
And we have data to back that up, that between. Point four and one [00:05:00]point per, uh, 2%, uh, uh, performance increase you can expect from following training. And, and what we do is that we, um, we look at performance data before we enter training. We provide training over X amount of time. Uh, and then of course we look at performance data from the wind farms following the training, and we can see a drop in again, let’s say it’s hydraulics or any other.
Areas that we’ve focused on, and then we can see an increase in performance. So I think as an asset owner, you want performance out of your turbines, out of your assets, and, and if you do not train your technicians, if they don’t have the right skills, um, yeah, then you, then you potentially will lack performance and.
I also think there’s a lot of talk about troubleshooting being a good troubleshooter, which is great, but in our point of view, maintenance is where you need to excel. If you’re good at maintaining your turbines, if you’re good at maintaining your assets, then you will require less troubleshooting, of course.
[00:06:00] So maintenance is very much where we would like to focus. So if you’re good at that. You have less spare parts consumptions. You spend less downtime if you have, uh, malfunctions or what whatnot and whatnot on your turbine, and then you increase performance away.
Joel Saxum: I think that’s something that Alan and I both, we talk about regularly and we can get on board with, and we want to talk to the uptime listeners and the uptime family uptime network about this back your business up with a good business case.
And that’s what Danish Wind Power Academy has done here, right? They’ve taken the performance data, looked at training, and then showed the increase, boom, business case built. Uh, I love to hear that and I know a Alan does too. ’cause we, we harp on people about that all the time.
Allen Hall: Well, there’s an performance improvement aspect, right?
That you can get the turbines operating, uh, more efficiently and have more uptime. There’s also, I think what I see a lot of times in the United States is you don’t see the, uh, ohs and the cost of the U lows. A hydraulic lines are [00:07:00] leaking down all over the place onto the tower, right? So now you gotta clean up, you gotta do the same thing for like, uh, some pitch motors or hydraulic pitch motors where there’s just hydraulic fluid down the blade.
Uh, and some of the more. Catastrophic ones. If you can get more uptime, yes, but there’s also stopping some of the more expensive downtime events that occur because of maintenance issues.
Alex Øbell Nielsen: Exactly.
Allen Hall: From a training standpoint, then you’re going deep into how turbines operate and there is that quiz or test that you provide to potential trainees before you get into the the details of training.
I am not sure that we have seen a lot of that in the United States at all. Uh, like if you have basic, fundamental skills, you know how to repair cars, you’ve, you’ve welded before, you’ve played around in hydraulics in a previous job. That usually is the qualifications to get started in the United States, but that doesn’t really trend out too well as you [00:08:00] get further down the line because wind turbines 10 years ago, pretty standard.
You can move between turbines. I think today when we’re talking about. Six and seven megawatts being the platforms. Those turbine are a lot more complicated than 10 years ago. And the challenges that brings to technicians and maybe wanna explain. How much more a technician needs to know now than even maybe even five years ago.
Alex Øbell Nielsen: Yeah, uh, for sure. And yes, the, the machines are getting bigger and they’re definitely getting more complicated as well. Um, I have a commercial background, so I can’t go into, uh, specific details, but what I can tell you is that the course curriculum that we develop over time is getting. Uh, just by the number of pages they need to go through.
Um, on the latest, uh, eight megawatt turbine that we’ve developed training for is an offshore turbine. They need to go through, uh, just over 400 pages in one week. So if they don’t have the fundamentals to [00:09:00] go into that training, then uh, then, uh, yeah, then, then they fall behind. Right? And we don’t want that.
Joel Saxum: You’re gonna struggle.
Alex Øbell Nielsen: But we know these technicians, right? They are used to working outside, uh, up in the l you know, outdoors. And for him, for them to sit in a classroom for, for a full week can be a challenge of course. So we as a training provider also invest a lot of. Time and money and, uh, in, in our trainers, putting them through Train the Trainer program so they can actually share this knowledge and knowhow that they have.
And, and we try to, for all our trainings, have more than 50%, uh, in the training as as active teaching methods. So where the delegates or the participants. Are taking part of the training so we’re not just using PowerPoint slides and whatnot. Um, we spend a lot of time and focus on that because just for, you know, having an engagement from the participants, but also for learning retention.
We know that if they are part of the training, then they will remember and then they can actually start using these, [00:10:00] uh, the, the learning when they go back and work on these turbines.
Joel Saxum: I think too much industrial training, and this is wind, you name it, whatever. Is delivered by PowerPoint. It’s delivered by stuff that bores people sit in a classroom for eight hours and that’s, I mean, regardless of who’s sitting in there.
Like, if you’re not, if that’s not your normal job to digest this stuff, like it, it doesn’t soak in, it doesn’t take like, it’s kind of, eh, you check the box. Yeah. You might have that certificate, you might have that training. I mean, I, I’ve learned from people, I’ve seen this happen. I saw this happen last summer.
Someone who went to lotto training for a week. And on left there on Friday on a plane, showed up on site on Monday and couldn’t lotto the turbine like that. What’s the point? Right? And that what it was is they sat in the classroom for how many days in a row learning this theory, uh, and not actually activating it.
That, and that that’s a problem. Right. And I, but I think that, so, so, but Danish Wind Power Academy, you guys focusing on, hey, as a use case, right. Alan and Joel, uh, wind Farm Company, we have just bought a [00:11:00] Siemens G Mesa, G nine x site. Hey, Danish Wind Power Academy. Can you send someone here and get these, these guys up to speed on everything that you know about the G nine X platform?
Is that, is that, is that the calls you get?
Alex Øbell Nielsen: Yeah, it is for sure. Um, we are very, um, uh, we have outlined a pathway that we use, uh, and where we start with the assessment and get an understanding of, of the, of the skills and, and, and lack of skills or lack of competencies from the technicians. And from that, we can build an individual training plan for each of them.
So depending on how you want to put your team together, uh, and then, uh, following this pathway, I mean the, the, the beginning of it is, is generic. It’s theory where we either come to you and sit in a meeting room or in a classroom or actually use one of our studios. I’m standing in one of our studios now.
But then when once we pass that and the technicians have the fundamentals in place, that they have passed the assessment there. Then we deep dive into specific turbines, and that could be very specific turbines from GE or [00:12:00]Siemen esa or vistas, uh, and, and a wide range of other turbines. And, and we can do so because we have a good collaboration with asset owners, of course, that, that own these turbines.
Um, and, and our trainers on average have 17 years experience from the industry. So not only are they various skills, I mean, they’ve done this for many years, um, but again. Coming back to our own Train the Trainer program where we teach them how to teach, uh, basic skills as using whiteboards or overhead, uh, what do you call ’em, flip over charts and whatnot.
And also having their participants being engaged and spent, you know, more than 50% in the training being active. Um, so, so yes, if you have a specific GE turbine, we can come train your technician and. We’re not biased either, so we tell it as we see it
Allen Hall: in the training program, it does seem like there’s a little bit of feedback of what’s happening in the field and some of the issues that are occurring on particular [00:13:00] turbines do get incorporated into your training because it’s gonna be a routine issue for technicians to, to manage that.
I, I don’t see that in a lot of training programs. They’re very specific. They’re coming. Coming right from the book from GE or Vestas, like This is how you operate the turbine. Anything that’s outside of that isn’t covered. But the vast majority of the time that I’ve seen, they’re dealing with the outside of the textbook problems.
How do you incorporate that into your training? Is that just because you have so many people with a lot of experience in the field that are coming back and are really tied to industry? Is that the differentiator? Maybe. And maybe,
Alex Øbell Nielsen: I, I, I, I think I thank you for the question and, and it, the way we, we approach training is that, um, if you are looking for maintenance or let’s say troubleshooting on a specific turbine, then we would ask our customer for the performance data.
Over the past 12 months. Then we look at the 10 most common faults and issues they have on these turbines. And that varies from, of course, turbine, from turbine, but also wind farm and so on. And then we incorporate that, those [00:14:00] faults and issues into the training. And when we deliver maintenance training or troubleshooting, then we come to you, we come to our client, uh, day one, and day two is usually in a classroom.
And then day two or three and four is in the turbine itself. So not only are we working with the faults and issues that they. They work on a daily basis on this wind farm, but we actually train them on them as well, so they improve performance of these assets
Allen Hall: with the training happening on site. Then they’re actually debugging or learning hands on onto their particular turbines, which I think is remarkable because a lot of times, as Joel’s pointed out, a lot of this training happens.
Maybe I Schenectady, where there’s not a lot of turbines, honestly, or onsite for some of the OEMs where they’re not near a turbine. Danish Wind Power Academy has flipped this model where you are on site training the folks on site with their own turbines, with their own problems. That has gotta have a [00:15:00] remarkable return on investment,
Alex Øbell Nielsen: and it shows, as I said before, between 0.4 and 1 performance increase. We see that on these wind farms. and, the training we’re delivering is not compliant, so our customers come to us because they see value in what we deliver and this approach. is, definitely maybe a different approach. We don’t see many out there doing the, same, and we don’t have training centers.
we have offices and studios like this where we can do some online training if needed. But other than that, we always come to our customers, again, just repeating myself, but using their nacelles their turbines, where we also deliver part of the training. we believe that hands-on approach is much better for learning retention. and, we’ve done it for more than 20 years now, and, have a profitable business, so we know it’s working. Of course.
Joel Saxum: Alex, I’ve gotta ask you a question about value here. and because this is what’s coming into my, head, is [00:16:00] the value that you guys can provide for clients in training, training on site.
Like, to me, that’s, I’d pay for that all day. Boom. Done. However you guys are training for 20 years understanding the serial problems that may not be in the notebook, in the maintenance manual from the OEM and all these different things. You, you, I think you rest on the capability of having a ton of really smart troubleshooters maintenance people as your trainers.
Do you ever get people that call and say, Hey, we’ve got this problem out here. Can you help us solve the problem?
Alex Øbell Nielsen: Yeah, we do that and we do, we get those questions. Um, and, and we stick to the business of training. So, so if, if you are looking at the installation, quality inspection or in the warranty, uh, that all is also training that we provide.
So, so, so we want to be the, the, the training provider. So, but again, if you have bought X amount of turbines, they’re coming out of warranty. How can you [00:17:00] challenge the OEM, uh, on, on what they are telling you? If you do not have that expertise in house, we can, we also have trainings to, to, to, to mitigate that challenge for these asset owners.
So again, if you’re coming, if you’re looking, you know, at an end warranty. Or if it’s the before that with installation, we also have trading programs to, to cover those areas as well. So we, we put our customers in a much, you know, better position to ask the OEM, the right questions and to make sure that they hand over the turbines in the best possible condition to them.
Of course.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. You’re, you’re enabling success at that, at that level. Right. So. Like you answered my question there is instead of sending out, for lack of a better term, sending out mercenaries to figure out problems, you’re sending them out to team, to team up with the actual operator or the asset owner, the whoever that may be.
Maybe it’s an ISP, I don’t know.
Alex Øbell Nielsen: We teach a utility company or an asset owner on how to do it yourself. Right. That’s, that’s the method we prefer. I mean, again, our, our trainers with this, uh, long [00:18:00] experience could do the work, but that’s not why we are here. We are here to train. Our customers so they can do the work themselves.
Allen Hall: So who are your typical clients and when do they tend to call you in the lifetime of their wind farm?
Alex Øbell Nielsen: I would say 80% of our clients are asset owners. So the big utility companies, those that are out of a service agreement within OEM, there is usually, that’s where we provide most of our business. So if you are looking at a brand new offshore turbine on the US East Coast.
That’s not us. We usually come in after they’re out of these service agreements. So, um, so, so those are typically our customers. Um, we do work with ISPs, um, um, but often they tend to stick to the training matrix they get from an OEM. But we do see some variations in the us, uh, with EPCs and ISPs where we get more work there than we do in Europe.
And I think it’s the nature of business in the us. Uh, but I would say roughly 80% is with asset owners, has
Allen Hall: a change in the IRA bill. Increase the [00:19:00] number of phone calls that you’re getting just because the repowering may be limited. So if a wind farm that’s five years old that they’re planning to take to 10, and then repower now has to live to 20 to 25 years old.
Is that changing the marketplace for the, for training like yours?
Alex Øbell Nielsen: We haven’t seen that impact yet. Uh, there may be, uh, an impact on our business, but we, we expect not to. We are still a small company, so for us it’s still a big world out there. So, so we see opportunities in that. And if it’s in, in Repowering or any other projects, I mean, we definitely see some opportunities there.
These turbines are, you know, they, they will operate for 20, maybe 30 years. Uh, and, and they continue to want to get the most out of these assets. And, and, uh, I’m certain we can, uh, help our customers and improve that. Not only, you know, asset performance, but also another subject that we didn’t really cover is retention of your technicians.
Uh, we see a lot of movement from technicians moving from maybe one ISP to another, but we truly believe that if you, if you invest in your. [00:20:00]Technicians, they get better at what they do. They get a greater job satisfaction. I mean, then, then we see that they want to stay as well. Of course. So, so that’s another, uh, you know, I mean, that goes for me as well.
I continuously want to learn and be better at what I do. And if my company is investing me, great. I mean, I, I want to give back on that, of course. But, uh, but for now, we don’t see an impact on the IRA for us.
Joel Saxum: Well, one of, one of the things I think we’ll we’re gonna start to see here in the US because of this, is you’re going to see, there’s a, there’s an ISP boom right now, right?
Like if you’re an ISP and you’re established, like you’re, you’ve got requests coming in the door left and right, and we’ve heard this across the market just ’cause of what’s happening. Um, so you’re going to see, like I know right now there’s multiple competitive RFPs out in the US world for ISPs to come and run wind farms.
So if I’m doing that, if I am again, Joel, Joel and Alan Wind, ISP, and I’m in a competitive [00:21:00] RFP for a couple of wind farms for an operator, and I know what technology’s on those, of course I do. I’m gonna include this in my bid. I’m gonna say, Hey, if we, if we’re awarded this bid, we’re bringing DWPA in here, we’re training up our guys and we’re gonna come in there day one with some of the best knowledge in the industry to make sure that this thing is running at a high, at peak performance.
Uh, because when you do have technicians shifting around and new, because it’s always gonna be new people, right? That happens even at the OEMs, the new, new people going from Wind Farm to wind farm. If you can go in there and say, here’s, here’s our competitive edge. This is our value add to you guys. I’m bringing in some of the best to train our people up.
I would be doing that and, and, and the same, at the same course. If I’m an O operator in the United States and I’m starting to take over from some of the OEM FSAs and I’m looking at this timeline going, you know what? PTCs are running out. Uh, I need to make sure that I’m running at peak performance on this wind farm.
[00:22:00] What are some levers I can pull? Um, Alan and I’ve talked about this for the last two months, right? Since this stuff’s been shaken out in the states. Well, he, there’s certain things, there’s hardware you can add to your blades. There’s CMS things you can do here. There’s digitization strategies. However, a foundational thing is make sure the guys and the ladies in the field know what the hell they’re doing to make sure these things are running right.
So to me that is, um, you know. That would be a, a lever I would pull, I would be calling it the Danish Wind Power Academy.
Alex Øbell Nielsen: And, and we are working with ISPs and asset owners where we provide training to both their crews. And we know they have won business with asset owners because they, because they’ve done training with us because.
I believe it’s because they’ve done it with us, of course, but they actually went to the asset owner, the utility, and said, we know our technicians don’t have the right skillset. We have a system with Danish Wind Power Academy. We are putting them on a training pathway, uh, with Danish Wind Power Academy on this specific turbine that we want to.
Service and [00:23:00] maintain on your behalf. And that was one of the reasons why they won the bid. So if they are moving in that direction, that is definitely something we, uh, we can help ISPs with. And as you mentioned before, with asset owners, when they’re stepping out, if they want to operate on their own and not on operate under a service agreement within an OEM.
We also have the right tools to help them with the end of warranty and also training their technicians so they have the right skillset to maintain these turbines. I’m really impressed by this
Allen Hall: because this doesn’t really exist all that often in terms of training. If you have to get specific training on a turbine, you’re essentially calling the OEM and begging to have that happen.
And we don’t have time to do that. They’re not in the business of doing that globally at the scale that is needed at the minute. And, and that’s where the Danish Wind Power Academy comes in.
Joel Saxum: If you’re, if you’re calling the OEM for support, the problem they, they’re gonna run into there is they, they don’t have enough bandwidth to even train their own people, let alone bring others in and get them up to [00:24:00]speed.
And, and at the end of the day. The, the things that Danish Wind Power Academy has uncovered about specific models through experience, through field trials, through, you know, time soaking in, in, out, in production. The OEM isn’t gonna give you that. They’re not gonna, they’re not gonna lift the bonnet on the problems that they know are serial problems with these machines.
Which, like we, we hear about, we know about like after a while, people, but you guys are the aggregate of that, right? So you’re aggregating this specific model X, y, Z from X 1, 2, 3, OEM, from around the world. All the knowledge that you’ve gained there, boom. Now it’s in a package to deliver to.
Alex Øbell Nielsen: Exactly. Exactly.
And also, I mean, from previous meetings in, in Japan, it could have been anywhere speaking with the utility or an asset owner. Um, they wanted to go in and, and self perform on their assets. Uh, but the OEM would not teach them how to troubleshoot. And the challenge they then had was that the lender would ask them questions on, but if you can’t troubleshoot your own turbines.[00:25:00]
I, I, I, you are putting us in a difficult position as lender. Right. So then they had an opportunity to work with us and they, they had a, they had a, a means to overcome that challenge. Of course. What countries have you trained in, Alex? So again, far east, uh, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, uh, quite a bit. Um, New Zealand.
Um, we’ve been to Sri Lanka of all places. We didn’t see that coming. Um, of course, uh, most of the countries in Europe, uh, north America, and then we also get requests from South America. Again, we are a fairly small company, so, so we focus our efforts on, on, on Europe, north America, and Far East. I mean, we are headquartered in Denmark, but we do have offices in Italy and Portugal.
We are also in Atlanta and the us So that’s from where we sort of cover, uh, cover, you know, a big world of, of wind turbines.
Allen Hall: If you’re an experienced trainer, how do you reach out to the Danage Wind Power Academy?
Alex Øbell Nielsen: Go on our website. But again, I mean, um, the, [00:26:00]the network is pretty big. I mean, of course our, our trainers come from the industry, right?
And they’ve done it for many years, so they know a lot of people in the industry. And, and I think it takes a, a special mindset to, to step out of this, uh, technician role where you are a troubleshooter or a commissioner and you’re very good at what you do. But I think the guys and girls we have as trainers, they really enjoy standing in front of a classroom and, and sharing their knowledge and, and, and, and, and having a good conversation with the participants and then, you know, come back to them.
I mean, uh, a lot of our clients have the, the same trainer coming back, you know, with three or six months in between and they pick up that conversation and I know they really enjoy that. So, so if you like to. Teach or be a teacher and share your knowledge, uh, we’re a good place to be and you will have to like to travel as well.
So, but I think most of the guys and girls in the industry, I mean, they’re traveling as it is anyways.
Allen Hall: And if you’re an operator anywhere around the world and you want to train up your group of technicians and local [00:27:00] experts. How do they get ahold of Danish Wind Power Academy? How do they find you? Danish wpa.com.
Alex Øbell Nielsen: That’s our website.
Allen Hall: Thanks Alex for being on the podcast. And if you wanna reach out to the Danish Wind Power Academy, go to the website, danish wpa.com, or you can find them on LinkedIn. Just look up Danish Wind Power Academy. Alex, thank you so much for being on the program.
Alex Øbell Nielsen: Love having you on. Thank you for inviting me and, uh, I’m happy to share about what we do and, and, and thanks a lot.
https://weatherguardwind.com/danish-wind-power-academy/
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Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, and I’m here with Rosemary Barnes, who is recovering from a very serious illness, Matthew Stead, who has been healthy pretty much all the Australian winter, and Yolanda Padron in sunny, hot Austin, Texas. Welcome, Rosemary
Rosemary Barnes: Thank you. I am recovering from man flu, and I say man flu because it’s just a cold, but I’m complaining a lot about it.
Allen Hall: there’s gonna be a new name for Siemens Gamesa. So it was Siemens and then Gamesa’s a separate company. They merged. Siemens Energy, uh, broke off from Siemens AG. So [00:01:00] that’s a very well-known name, Siemens. It’s– Everybody knows Siemens at this point around the world.
And the, the one family had, as a company, had s- label on everything, right? So it’s, uh, Werner von Siemens started it 150 years ago. It’s been a long time since Siemens was started, but it’s everywhere. It’s on turbines, transformers, and power plants around the world, and now they’re changing their name, right?
So when Siemens Energy broke off from Siemens AG, they, they had a limited time they could use that name, so they have rebranding themselves or are about to rebrand themselves, and I wanna pronounce this right, Omterra. O-M-T-E-R-R-A. Now, we did a little research on this, and I think it’s Latin for all of the world.
It’s kind of a conjoined, uh, set of words, Latin words, kind of a, a schmear in a sense. So, uh, so the company that, you [00:02:00] know, that spun off in w- roughly 2020, if I remember this right, Matthew, does that sound right? It was roughly 2020 when Siemens Energy was established on its own. Uh, they’re gonna be changing their name to Omterra.
So instead of seeing, seeing Siemens Gamesa publications or Siemens Gamesa wind turbines, I guess they’re gonna have this new name, Omterra. What do we all think?
Matthew Stead: I think it’s great. I think, and if you go back to, you know, GE Vernova, um, I, I thought Vernova was a bit weird for a while, but now it just rolls off the tongue and easy. It just makes so much sense. Um, so I’m, I’m, I’m for it. I, I like it. I’ve already… You know, can already say it. It took a lot longer to say Vernova than it’s taking to say
Terra.
Rosemary Barnes: I think that it– But it’s not Vernova, it’s GE Vernova, right? So everyone knows what it is. Whereas my understanding is it’s not Siemens Omtera, it’s just Omtera, which makes it sound like a new budget kind of [00:03:00] brandless, history-less, uh, company. So that’s… Yeah, I’m no
branding expert, but I think that, uh, like they, they must have not been able to use the word Siemens at all, um, because otherwise you surely would, because it has a very…
Outside of, you know, their blade issues and bearing issues of a couple of years ago, they do have a, like a solid engineering reputation across many fields, so you wouldn’t probably intentionally divorce yourself entirely from that. So, um, yeah, I, I think it will take some getting used to for me
Matthew Stead: but everyone remembers. I mean, it’s not like– The people in the wind industry know their heritage, they know their history, so I don’t think it matters. I mean, you know, you know, they, they purchase the Senvion, you know, technologies or, you know, licenses in Europe. You know, y- y- you don’t forget these things, so I don’t think it matters.
I think it’s just a, it’s a color, it’s a, it’s a label
Yolanda Padron: I think it’ll be fine. I just think that there will be a little [00:04:00] bit of confusion down the line as with everything, right? Like I’ve, I’ve been on the side of conversations where I have to explain like Siemens versus like SGRE on paper and it’s like, oh, it’s– this is why th- there was that paper trail, uh, because people would think it was an absolutely different thing.
Um, so I, I can totally see those conversations coming, coming to play in the future where someone thinks that Ontier is a completely different entity that maybe they changed OEMs or something, um, for a site. But nothing a little history lesson won’t fix, I guess.
Matthew Stead: You just want people talking about you
Rosemary Barnes: Name change every year
Allen Hall: Change your name every year. Well, that’s, that’s one way to approach it. I w- always wonder what the boardroom looks like and sounds like when this discussion is going on, because Siemens, Siemens Energy is a big company, and there had to be outsourcing of this to probably several marketing firms, mostly [00:05:00] in Germany, I’m guessing.
And they came back with a bunch of pitches, and eventually they picked one. But boardrooms are probably not the place to pick a name. And I always think like, “Oh, you just had such a opportunity to do something really cool or really impressive.”
Allen Hall: Well, we’ll see how it goes with Omterra. The, it’s gonna be, I’m sure, a huge marketing effort, and you’ll probably see commercials for it during the Super Bowl.
Developers are [00:06:00] eyeing Britain’s next big renewables auction and have been waiting to learn the rules and most importantly, the price. Well, this week the UK government delivered both. It confirmed a package of changes to the CFD scheme ahead of allocation round eight, aimed at simplifying the process and keeping good projects from being tripped up by some paperwork.
So AR7 was super successful, and they’re hopefully gonna have a, a great allocation round eight. Uh, unchanged from last round, here are some pieces to it. AR7 brought in 15 gigawatts of, of new capacity, uh, well below the ceilings, and the government is betting that that’s stability from AR7’s gonna exist for AR8, so they’re keeping the pricing limits the same.
And let me give you some of the numbers here. So everything’s in 2024 prices, just so we have a baseline here. It, 113 pounds per megawatt hour [00:07:00] for fixed bottom offshore wind, 271 pounds for floating offshore wind. That’s, uh, pounds per megawatt. And then 92 pounds per megawatt for onshore wind, and s- 75 pounds per megawatt for solar. So 271 pounds per megawatt hour in 2044 dollars is, you know, you’re probably talking, what, 290 pounds per megawatt hour. That’s a really good strike price or ceiling to allow, uh, some more floating wind into the UK waters
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Well, the UK have this newly signed agreement with Japan, right, to, to progress development of that technology. I feel like I, I haven’t looked up any numbers to back this up, but I feel like the gap between fixed bottom and floating is narrowing. It’s barely more than double now, which, um, yeah, I think is not that bad considering how little development there has been for floating offshore wind compared to fixed bottom.
So [00:08:00] yeah, I think that it is an interesting technology to develop. I, I know with the, um, auction rounds and ’cause it’s a government thing, it’s easy to think, “Oh, why are you spending any money on anything other than the cheapest one?” Because y- you know, like, it, it feels weird that the government would play, you know, when they’re purchasing power for their grid, that they would do any more than trying to just get, you know, bulk power at the cheapest price possible whilst ensuring, you know, reliability.
Um, but in the previous or the previous, the one– last one or the one before that, they had quite a few tidal projects announced that certainly, you know, an expensive and not mature technology. But I think that you can’t say the same thing about floating offshore wind. I think that it is on a, like a good, a good development trajectory, and there are certainly places on Earth where floating offshore is one of the most appealing technologies.
You know, if you think of through to 2030s, 2040s, there’s plenty of places where, um, you know, slightly higher [00:09:00] price paid for floating offshore wind will still be worth it because they have so few other options available. So it makes sense as an industry to in- invest in capabilities there.
Matthew Stead: think it’s a really interesting method. It seems to be really successful, the contract for di-difference approach. So, um, I’m, I’m surprised that it’s not adopted more widely, um, in other locations,
Rosemary Barnes: it is around a bit.
I would like to see it, like, in, in Australia, we are, we are developing some new wind projects, but not as fast as we need to, to, you know, hit our upcoming targets. And I think, like, while the government is doing some things to help move or help incentivize developers, it’s not working that well, and maybe CFD would be a, you know, a bit of a better way to, like, just actually guarantee that these projects are gonna go ahead.
Allen Hall: Australia has a shipping problem. there’s been a concern at state-owned transport hubs are becoming less supportive of [00:10:00] wind energy projects with ACEN Renewables saying that they will now have to truck a large transformer from a wind project or for a wind project in northern New South Wales from the Port of Adelaide.
That’s not necessarily close. And h- they also said that the Port of Brisbane has refused to accept passage of some big transformers for a solar farm. also there’s some, uh, something about blades not being able to be accepted in certain ports. Like some of the, uh, Australian state-managed or state-owned ports are not accepting renewables.
Rosemary Barnes: I think
also that blades in Queensland can only be transported to site like one per day with a full police escort or something. It’s wild to
me ’cause, you know, like I lived in, in Denmark for so long and there were blades going up and down just the normal highway every single day, multiple like, uh, and three– they would go in sets of threes for obvious reasons.
Um, yeah, but the, the, the [00:11:00] Queensland government changed like a, a year ago or, or so, and it changed to a very anti-renewables government and they just threw all of the state’s renewable plans in the bin,
Allen Hall: such a recent change that when they, at least the news articles I’ve seen about it, I’ve only seen a handful, that they have, um, like last year some big transformers, like really difficult to move items have come through those ports and they’re just not letting them through now. How does that work?
If you have a, a, a legal right to build a wind farm or a solar farm or, or substation or whatever’s going on there, how do they reconcile not allowing those components to come through a port? In what world does that make sense?
Matthew Stead: I mean, most of the ports are– yeah, most of the ports are privatized, so it’s up to the individual commercial entity that’s running the port, I would, I would imagine. So it’s beyond the control of the government, would be my first guess.
Yolanda Padron: it seems like it’s an, a federal sort of thing that would give permits.
Matthew Stead: No, I mean, I’ve done a bit of work in the Port of Melbourne and, [00:12:00] um, it’s facilitated by the government, uh, state government, not federal, and but the ports are largely privatized.
Rosemary Barnes: I just pulled up an article and it says that it’s state-owned transport hubs are becoming
less supportive of wind energy projects. Um, yeah, and that’s the reason for why they’ll have to get that transformer in northern New South Wales, so very close to Queensland. They have to go from Adelaide, where you live, Matt, all the way through South Australia, maybe Victoria, New South Wales, and then, yeah, up to nearly the border.
Allen Hall: Is that just a temporary blip that the next election cycle it’ll revert back or is this something that’s more long term?
Rosemary Barnes: uh, it’s not obvious that it’s gonna flip straight back, that’s for sure
Allen Hall: [00:13:00] for years, the race in wind has run mostly in one direction: bigger and bigger blades, bigger towers, bigger machines.
And now a chief engineer f- at one of China’s largest turbine makers says it’s time to pump the brakes. Bo Juul Petersen, uh, Goldwind’s chief engineer in Denmark, argues that scaling turbines up no longer makes economic sense. So it’s not an engineering question, it’s an economic question. His reasoning rests on a simple rule of geometry, the square cube r- law, which says that as a turbine grows, its materials and costs climb faster than the rotor area that earns the revenue.
Past a certain point, he says, bigger simply costs more than it makes. Have we crossed that threshold yet? Is 20 megawatts that, [00:14:00] uh, pivot point where it doesn’t make any more sense to make a larger turbine?
Matthew Stead: didn’t we have problems when we went from three to six?
Allen Hall: One to two.
Matthew Stead: I, I, I think, uh, I think it’s good that someone’s actually coming out and saying this
Yolanda Padron: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Rosie’s on the podcast.
Rosemary Barnes: yeah, ex-excuse me, this is one of my topics of obsession that I constantly carry on about. I made a whole, a whole video about it with, um, equations to back up my opinions about scaling, um, and a very nifty tug of war metaphor between economic factors that favor big wind turbines and economic fav- factors that favor small ones.
And I think that we’re always a little bit ahead of, of what the right, the right balance is between those. So, you know, the benefits from having bigger turbines are that, um, you have fewer electrical connections, for offshore especially, that means less subsea cables and, um, yeah, just like much faster Faster construction of all that, you [00:15:00] know, less, uh, substructures and less, less of everything to install, less of everything to maintain as well.
You know, it doesn’t take so much longer to get up and do your annual maintenance checks of a big turbine compared to a small one. Like, it takes longer, but not, not that much longer. Um, but then all of the structural factors favor smaller turbines over bigger ones. blades especially, as they get longer, you get so many more problems in O&M, but they don’t show up on the developer’s spreadsheet, you know. The spreadsheet that you’re using to decide, um, your f- your final investment decision, it, it doesn’t, it doesn’t know that you’re gonna have a whole bunch of blade issues.
It doesn’t wanna know and so I think that that’s one factor that has pushed us past the economic point of where wind turbine size should be. And I think the other thing is prestige. I know that when I worked at LM, you know, we had the longest blade in the world.
It was 88 meters, was our first, um, world record that we set while I was working there. They’d had many before that. We had– They [00:16:00] had a, like, one-to-one scale printout of it that they took to WindEurope or WindHamburg, um, that everyone stood in front of, and then they lost it to somebody, and then they got it back again with the blade for the Halieade-X.
And we all know how well that went to, you know, have the world’s longest blade. Y- you know, it wasn’t so easy to make it, turned out. It’s very easy to announce and not so easy to make, um, with reliable quality. And now we’ve got all these Chinese companies, especially MingYang, is constantly announcing the world’s biggest something.
Um, don’t sell so many of them, but it’s not the point, isn’t to sell them, it’s to have the prestige of making the world’s biggest something.
Allen Hall: Yeah, what would be the technology breakthrough that would allow it to be more stable at a 20 or 25 megawatt? Because right now I’m, I’m seeing 1% improvement here and there, not 5%, 10%.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I mean, 1% improvement will eventually add up to what, what you need. Maybe it’s in
20 years’ time, not 10 years’ time. But y- you know, like you can imagine anything. maybe [00:17:00] they start somehow, like aero and automotive manufacturing technologies get cheap enough that we can start making wind turbine blades with all prepregs instead of y- you know, um, you know, dry fabric and infusion.
For example, maybe 3D printing gets cheap enough that you can make your whole, whole blade from an additive process. Like a- anything like that. But it can also be other things like maybe the cost of subsea cables in- increases like a whole lot, and then if, you know, like things on one side getting more expensive can make it more worthwhile to save hard problems somewhere else. So that’s why I say it’s like a, it’s a, a ve- it’s a multivariable optimization problem that changes every time you have a…
Like for every project to project from year to year, it’s always gonna be slightly different. So I don’t think it’s wise to definitively say 20 megawatts is the threshold that we should never cross. Like I, I don’t agree with that.
Allen Hall: It’s one of those arguments, I think, about [00:18:00] any sort of technology about where the endpoint is. There’s too many variables to predict it. I always point to aviation in which older airplanes will hang around and hang around and hang around until the fuel price goes up enough where it doesn’t make sense to operate them.
So they will fly an airplane un-until they can no longer structurally do it. But if the price of oil shoots up and the price of aviation fuel bumps up, those airplanes get parked, and then they’re buying the new airplane with a more efficient engine. It’s a similar thing, I think. There’s just– You can’t tell where the technology’s gonna go or what the economic impacts of any part of that business will force you to do something different.
So it’s gonna be higher than 20 megawatts, guarantee you that.
Yolanda Padron: Well, it’s one of those things too, right? Where if we’re repeating the, the same blade type and we’re getting smarter about operating that same blade type, then the economic cost goes down, [00:19:00] right? Like, eventually. ‘Cause then you’re not just experimenting on every new thing or having to take all of the, the funding into tr- specializing techs or getting very specialized techs onto your site and finding a new– kind of the wheel every so often. [00:20:00] So speaking of larger wind turbines, evidently we’ve been doing this all wrong, that we’ve had the calculations for the, uh, Betz limit has been off, and, uh, a group of MIT engineers, I guess, uh, have, have made a breakthrough.
Allen Hall: So basically every wind turbine that is spinning today is based on some fundamentals, uh, math, empirical data in, in some level, but on formulas that have led us to design the wind turbines and that core formula called the momentum theory. And if you hear blade designers who hang around blade designers, which I don’t necessarily recommend, but if you do hang around blade designers, they, they’ll say the momentum theory, momentum theory, like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got it.”
It, it, the– MIT is saying it breaks down exactly at the operating point where modern turbines try to live. Um, so for a century the fix [00:21:00] was a patchwork of corrections and useful, but with no real theory behind them. Now, a team at MIT said it has rebuilt the math from first principles, creating what they call a unified momentum model. It even nudges at the famous Betz limit, the century-old ceiling on how much energy a rotor can capture, and it bumps it up by a few percentage points, and that would be the first uptick to the Betz limit in over 100 years. All right, Rosemary, as our official Betz limit expert, does this make any sense?
Have the MIT folk something new?
Rosemary Barnes: a wind turbine blade, its aerodynamics are just the same aerodynamics as what keeps an airplane in the sky, right? It’s, it’s all the… It’s just an airfoil. It’s just facing a wind speed, um, you know, a local wind speed. It’s complicated by the fact that [00:22:00] a wind turbine blade is also rotating, so the wind speed is different along the whole span, and that’s, uh– and so is the flow angle, and that’s why blades are twisted and tapered.
Um, but you know, essentially when you wanna figure out how much energy, uh, a wind turbine is gonna generate or you wanna design the blade so that it optimizes that amount, you’re just slicing it up into a whole bunch of little bits of 2D flow, exactly the same as an, an airplane. So if it doesn’t work for wind turbines, then it shouldn’t work for airplanes either.
So that’s one fundamental thing. And also at Betz limit, it’s not like it’s not driving design. It’s more like if you, if your design exceeds the Betz limit for a, um, a horizontal axis wind turbine, then you– it’s like a sanity check that you’ve done something wrong. Uh, that’s, that’s what I would say you would mostly use it for.
Um, but what I don’t understand, and maybe Alan, presumably you did read the, read the research or at least the press [00:23:00] release. Are they arguing that y- um, like the tips of a wind turbine blade are rotating, are moving fast enough that it’s approaching transonic flow? ‘
Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s a rental number thing.
Rosemary Barnes: there’s different types of aerodynamic equations depending on how fast the, airfoil’s moving.
And my understanding is transonic is like 0.8 Mach, um, 0.8, which is 274 meters a second, which is more than double what, um, the fastest tip speeds are currently. So I would think that you’re not quite approaching that yet. They’re– It’s not like a cutoff that, you know, all of a sudden at that exact, exact speed the air behaves totally differently.
But, um, y- yeah, like it seems far enough away that it’s not that relevant. But is that what they’re getting
at or, or is it something different?
Allen Hall: I like doing sanity checks when I read things from MIT. So what blade [00:24:00] manufacturers and/or wind turbine OEM has designed a set of blades and go, “Oh my gosh, we’re getting more energy than what we calculated,” and not thought to themselves, “Huh, maybe we should look into that”? It’s, it’s, it’s hilarious almost that all the engineers working in wind for 100 years wouldn’t have stumbled across this, where the turbine produces more power than the Betz limit would say it would.
Y-
Rosemary Barnes: yeah, as many people have commented on, you know, any one of my YouTube videos about wind turbine aerodynamics, if they would just put more blades in there, then, you know, less wind would just fly through without ever being, um, y- without ever hitting a blade.
So, you know, like obviously wind turbine, uh, blade aerodynamics people are stupid because if they weren’t, then they would see that you just put more blades in and you get more, twice as many blades, twice as much energy and w- What about three times as many blades? Three times as much energy.
And I [00:25:00] didn’t even go to MIT and that’s just, you know, like just
brilliant
Allen Hall: Obvious
Rosemary Barnes: off the top of my head here.
Allen Hall: it’s sort of ludicrous, honestly, and I see these things in wind occasionally. I see it more often in other areas, particularly aerospace, where, where you just have to go, “What are we spending time on?
Really? We’re working on this? On a fraction of a percentage point that we may have a slight error in?” Like, it does not matter. What are you gonna do with that?
Rosemary Barnes: there’s two issues. One is that the person writing up the press release is not the person that did the research, and they will always blow it up to be much more groundbreaking than the engineers who actually worked on it probably think it is.
So, the, like, I think you have to, like, reserve your criticism of the work and try and criticize the press release. And then the second error that I commonly see is that people don’t have an un- good understanding of a status quo. So they think that they have smashed the status quo, but really it’s more to do with them not understanding the status quo than it is through [00:26:00] some legitimate, like, massive im- improvement.
So it could well be that this is all very good and correct work, just with limited practical implication. That would be my most expected, um, from this.
Allen Hall: Rosemary, how many times a month do you get queries about wind turbine improvements that are just physically impossible?
Rosemary Barnes: Oh, I mean, if I read all of the comments on my YouTube channel, then probably quite, quite frequently. But, um, yeah, the most common one is just people thinking you can just add more blades and get a proportional increase in, um, in energy, you won’t get more power from adding more blades if that’s the only thing that you do, because in a well-designed wind turbine, which modern ones are, every, e- every air molecule that goes through the rotor disc is gonna interact with the, um, with, with a blade.
That’s how it’s, it’s designed. The blades are moving really fast, and so every molecule doesn’t get hit, but, you know, every, every molecule is affected and has some energy extracted from it. Um, then the other thing is people [00:27:00]who think if you reduce drag, like if you can come up with a lower drag airfoil or a higher lift airfoil, then you think, they think that that relates to more energy proportionally.
So they’re like, “Oh, this airfoil has twice as much lift, so it’s gonna be twice as much power.” It’s like, actually, you know, wind turbine designers are aware of the full range of, you know, airfoils that are available, including high lift ones, and they’re not using it because, you know, the same reason the airplane wings aren’t just, you know, like the highest, highest lift airfoil.
Y- you know, it’s more of a lift to drag ratio type thing, and that’s true for wind turbine blades as well, but also there’s structural considerations probably more so in a wind turbine blade than there are in, um, in airplane wings. So, you know, there’s some sacrifices made for that. Um, yeah, but those are the two, two main families of, of mistakes that I’d say people make.
Allen Hall: So
Rosemary Barnes: Matt
Allen Hall: up to his hand up for
to MIT media representatives
Matthew Stead: uh,
I had a couple of sort of quick and simple points. The first of all, uh, I’m actually a graduate of [00:28:00] MIT. I’ve graduated from, uh, from a course at MIT. Um, so that’s the first thing. Um, not in engineering. Um, the next one is like, so what? I mean, we can’t even reliably measure, um, you know, AEP the other one is all models are wrong.
Yolanda Padron: But not just wind
Matthew Stead: the world is not perfect. All models are wrong, so trying to improve something that’s wrong, you know, might help a little bit, but does it really matter?
Rosemary Barnes: But it is also the job of academics to improve these models. So there’s nothing wrong with MIT spending a lot of energy to, um, you know, improve on an incorrect model with another incorrect model. Uh, if it’s more useful, that’s great, and even if it’s not, like isn’t that the job of
Matthew Stead: yeah.
Matthew Stead: you should add to where it has the most impact on humanity. You should actually put the effort into areas that have a greater impact on pushing the boundary. You know, pushing small boundaries does not help the world
Allen Hall: Matthew is an MIT graduate, [00:29:00] the one thing that Matthew brings to the table is real-world experience. And that if you shelter yourself inside a laboratory at MIT, and I understand why you would do that, because I’m sure it’s a very pleasant place to work, and there’s a lot of benefits to that.
However, the way that MIT used to work back in the day, and not everything was roses then, but oh, okay, y- that people had industry experience. They had a knowledge of what was going on on the ground, and they were engineers, and they realized that formulas and reality don’t always align. And maybe we lost that somewhere in the ’80s and, or ’90s, but it does continue to be a problem, where back to Matthew’s point, if you’re going to use that amount of brain energy, put it to something that can help the world.
This isn’t necessarily helping the world That wraps up another episode of the Uptime: Wind Energy podcast. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, and I’m sure that it will, we’d love to hear from [00:30:00] you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn, and don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode.
So for Yolonda, Rosemary, and Matthew, I’m Allen Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime: Wind Energy podcast.
If any of us had been asked before Trump’s arrival on the political scene how we would feel if the United States government descended into abject corruption, became the disgrace of the civilized world, and wanted our opinion on the incarceration of an American president, we would have dismissed it with a laugh.
Now that it has actually happened, we say that removing Trump from office and sending him to prison is the very best outcome possible.
That’s why 70% of Americans and close to 100% of others in the developed world will rejoice the moment that Trump is no longer a figure in world events.
Have you ever wondered why our bodies are in a particular shape, or why they have any shape at all, rather than resembling a bag of jelly?
I just the man met who, working in a research lab in Finland, discovered the “extracellular matrix,” a collection of proteins and carbohydrates to which all healthy cells must bind in order to stay alive, which provides the body’s structure.
This has relevance to cancer research, because those cells do not have to adhere to the matrix, which is why they move around inside the body, and ultimately metastasize, landing somewhere and divide rapidly.
I asked him if he is religious, i.e., if thought God created the extracellular matrix. He immediately replied no.
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