Weather Guard Lightning Tech
Enel vs. The Osage Nation: An Explanation w/ Doug Sandridge
A lawsuit has been unfolding between the Osage Nation and Enel since 2010, potentially ending with Enel dismantling their 150 MW wind farm. What can wind developers learn from this? How can they avoid these situations moving forward? Expert Doug Sandridge explains the intricacies of Native land rights in the US and why understanding those rights is crucial to expanding the wind industry. Follow Doug on Substack, Linkedin or reach out via email doug@fulcrumef.com.
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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 diving into a complex and significant issue at the intersection of renewable energy development and Native American rights. Our guest is Doug Sandridge, a veteran of the energy industry with over 40 years of experience.
Doug is currently the senior vice president at Fulcrum Energy Capital Funds, overseeing land operations and strategy for this private equity firm that invests in energy assets across North America. He’s also an adjunct instructor for the executive MBA and energy program at the University of Oklahoma.
And I’ve only heard good things about that, Doug. Today, Doug will be sharing his insights on the ongoing dispute between the Osage Nation and Enel Green Energy regarding the Osage Wind Project. And this project, which consists of 84 wind turbines, has become the center of a long legal battle that touches on critical issues of tribal mineral rights.
and the development of wind energy on Native American lands. Doug, with his extensive background in land management, regulatory compliance, and stakeholder relations, is uniquely positioned to help us understand the complexities of this case and its potential for implications for the future of wind energy development.
Welcome to Uptime.
Doug Sandridge: Man, it’s a great pleasure to be here. And I don’t think I’ve ever had a better introduction. Wow, can I? Thank you so much. That’s great.
Joel Saxum: You can play that one the next time you start a new class at the University of Oklahoma. Where you walk in, turn the lights down a little bit, and play the clip.
Doug Sandridge: Excellent.
Allen Hall: So thanks for being here. And you and I have been corresponding for quite a while now. About what is happening in Oklahoma and for those outside of the United States, Oklahoma is right smack dab in the middle of the continental United States. And it has a unique history. It’s different than pretty much any other state in the U.
S. Because of its history with Native American tribes. And this has led to some unique situations, which now, it now is in the middle of. And Doug, I want to walk through just the basics of what happened on the O. C. A. When project here, and maybe you could just introduce that background and how we got to where we are today.
Doug Sandridge: Absolutely. And I just want to start by saying whatever we say here today, I don’t want it to be reflected as some sort of black eye or. A a bad image for wind in general, this is just an isolated, unique situation, a unique case, and we should not paint the wind industry or the renewable industry with a broad brush thinking that this is how things are done.
We just happen to have a unfortunate situation taking place in Osage County, Oklahoma. Osage tribe is located primarily in a county in northeastern Oklahoma near Tulsa called Osage County and that’s their tribal reservation. They actually bought that reservation from the Cherokee tribe.
The Osage were originally located in the Missouri, Ohio Valley area of Missouri and then were relocated to southeastern Kansas. For And then white western European encroachment kept pushing on them, and the federal government decided that they wanted that land that was the Osage reservation in southeastern Kansas, they wanted that for white settlers.
And so they, federal government actually purchased that reservation from the Osage, and with the money that they had from that sale they purchased their own reservation in what is now Oklahoma. At the time, Oklahoma was not a state, it was called the Indian Territory, and it was called the Indian Territory because that was in a real crass way, where the U.
S. had been pushing so many tribes. From the southeastern United States, from central United States, even from the northern United States, they were pushing them all into this small area called Oklahoma, or called Indian Territory, which is now Oklahoma. Cherokee Nation had a huge reservation, and they sold one some land to the Osage, and that Osage became Os, what is current day Osage County, and that that became the permanent reservation for the Osage tribe.
So that’s how we got to where we are. And the Osage tribe, when they when they bought the land, they were still considered a sovereign nation by the United States. And so they had their own rules, their own laws, and they governed themselves in that county in Oklahoma, in Osage County. But as the U. S.
was trying to assimilate the Native Americans or first Americans, into the greater United States culture. They were trying to get tribes to give up their tribal sovereignty for citizenship. And so what happened is they basically went to the tribe and said, We will make you U. S. citizens if you’ll do X, Y, and Z.
And what they ended up doing is, as they say, allotted, they gave all the land in Osage County was allotted to all of the members of the tribe at that time. So the surface of the land, all of the surface, was divided equally or fairly equally among all the tribal members. And so they all own that land.
They could do with it whatever they want. They could live on it. They could sell it. They could farm it, ranch it. And as it happens, a lot of the surface has over the last hundred years. has gone out of the tribe. The tribe no, tribal members no longer own a lot of the surface. A lot of the surface is owned by farmers and ranchers and white people and not basically non Osage.
I don’t know what the percentage is. I’m guessing probably at least 80 or 90 percent of the surface in Osage County is actually owned by non Osage. But a lot, a lot of the county is still governed. You still run by owned by and operated by and the communities are Osage there still but they own the surface.
But the critical point is at the time of allotment, the Osage tribe negotiated with the federal government and basically the government agreed that the Osage tribe as a whole would keep all of the minerals. And they would hold those minerals in trust for all of the Osage tribal members. The individual tribal members owned the surface.
This person owned this section, somebody else owned something else. But the minerals underlying that each of the entire county was retained by the tribe. And the tribe had the right to, to lease it for oil and gas, lease it for mining, for whatever purposes. And you can’t do any business related to the minerals in Osage County without dealing with the Osage tribe.
Doug, can I ask you a question
Joel Saxum: about this then? Because when we talked a little bit in a pre interview process, just walking through this thing, that was, like, like you said, they watch the other tribes do certain things. But there’s a certain, there’s four or five other tribes in the area, and they’re Ownership of their lands or their tribal rights to the surface or subsurface is different than what the Osage negotiated with the Osage have.
Can you explain the difference there?
Doug Sandridge: Yes. And there, there are very multiple differences. For instance, the the so called wild tribes, which are the tribes of Western Oklahoma that were the Apache, the Comanche, the Kiowa the Arapaho, those tribes. At the time, it was believed that they had not been exposed to Western law and Western customs enough to deal in their own real property.
And in order to protect them from being swindled by, Westerners by Western Europeans the entire process of leasing from them was maintained by the federal government, so the Bureau of Indian Affairs. So even today, I believe. If you want to lease anything, even if someone, even if an Indian or a Native American owns those rights individually, they are not permitted to lease them because they’re still governed by the process of the Bureau of Indian Affairs monitoring managing their affairs for them.
And so then, but in any event, all of the different tribes have different rules that are there that are assessed to their, but the unique the Osage have a unique situation. And I. I said in my Substack article, I studied Indian law a long time ago at University of Oklahoma, and the general takeaway from it was you had three types of law in Oklahoma.
You had the law of the civilized tribes, which was the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, the Creek, and the Seminole Indians. Those tribes were tribes that had been affected by and been around Western civilization for a lot longer because they were on the East Coast. And so they had become, these are not my words, but in the words of the government, it had become more civilized and so those so called, not my words of legal words of art, those so called civilized tribes were moved to Oklahoma, but they had different rights than the wild tribes and the wild tribes had different rights.
So you had three types of law, the law of the civilized tribes, the law of the wild tribes. And then the law of the Osage, which was different than everyone else. They were unique.
Allen Hall: Very interesting because the complexities of Oklahoma are not the complexities of the adjoining states.
And I think this is where Enel had problems. So In about 2010, Enel leased about 8, 400 acres in Osage County from the land owners. So that would have been mostly outside Osage Nation people, for the most part, right?
Doug Sandridge: I understand that the majority of them were non Osage, but there were two, I believe, two tribal members who owned lands.
That did agree to lease, but generally the Osage as a, the tribe and most of the members of the tribe were against the wind turbine
Joel Saxum: project. The important thing here is
Allen Hall: they leased the surface. That’s right. Just to give some context here, Osage Nation has mineral rights about 1. 5 million acres. So 8, 400 out of 1.
5 million. It’s a small piece of a larger set of metal, right? So it’s not that big of a piece of land in contrast. However, and as you pointed out, the Osage nation went to court to stop the Enel project back in 2011. And They lost that initial suit, correct? It went for a couple of years, but they lost.
Doug Sandridge: Yeah, so what happened is, let’s just be honest, I wasn’t clear until I started interviewing members of the tribe and I, a few weeks ago, interviewed one of the former assistant chiefs of the tribe. I wasn’t certain of this, but what apparently, I think it’s a fairly accurate statement to say the tribe as a whole, the official tribe and most of the tribal members, were not interested in having wind development in their county.
And, they just they have a deep love of the land. They had a deep love of the vistas. They really just didn’t want wind development. And so I think it’s fair to say that was what they, that’s how they felt. So before Enel even began constructing the project the tribe did file a lawsuit in federal court asking the federal court to stop them from building the wind farm.
And the federal court said, look I understand your concerns and it totally legitimate. And I know there’s a lot of people who don’t want to see wind turbines, but from a legal standpoint, we have no basis to stop development of this wind farm. And they have valid leases. They have valid permits from the county authorities.
To build a wind farm. And so the federal court denied their request and returned it with a, we’re not going to, we’re not going to injunct them from building it.
Joel Saxum: So we’re in this timeframe here of 2010, they started now the wind farm that exists today, there’s a hundred or sorry, there’s 84.
84 turbines is 150 megawatt farm. It’s a bunch of GE, like 1. 7 or whatever out there, but those did not get commissioned until 2015.
Doug Sandridge: That’s correct. So they sued him in 2010 or 2011. And the court said, no, we can’t stop the construction. They have legitimate legal rights to be there. They’ve got the permits, they’ve got the leases.
And so then Enel started building the wind farm, I believe in 2013, approximately. And then it came on, I think it came on in 2014.
Allen Hall: 2014 is the critical year in all this, because at this point, the Osage noticed that, and when Enel was putting the foundations in, they were, and this territory is rocky, if you haven’t been to this county, it’s rocky, so Enel’s digging into the ground, and bringing up rocks.
And then setting them aside to put the foundation in, but in this transaction of moving the rocks, they decided to then crush the rocks and use them in the turbine installation. That’s essentially what happened. And that one move started a chain of legal proceedings. That’s correct.
Doug Sandridge: And so let’s be clear the United States is almost unique.
Most countries in the world. Private citizens and private organizations cannot own minerals. The only private mineral ownership in the world is primarily in the United States to some degree in Canada. I understand there’s a very few places in England and a few places in Australia where there’s some very old legacy mineral ownership by some old people, nobility, but basically the U S and Canada is where you have private ownership of minerals.
So a lot of people around the country, around the world have no idea that several, that minerals can be severed from the surface in this way and that there’s private
Allen Hall: ownership. That would make sense. Now the Osage noticed that, Hey, Enel is crushing the rock. Those rocks are ours. Those are not Enel’s rocks.
Doug Sandridge: That’s right. So let me throw another concept out here to understand though. If you. Allen Hall goes and buys a piece of property, and he buys a piece of land, just the surface, he doesn’t buy any minerals. And he wants to build a house, or a Kroger grocery store, or something like that. He has the right to use the subsurface a reasonable amount of the subsurface.
So you want to build a house and you want to build a basement, or you need to put a foundation down, or if you’re going to build a footer for a Kroger grocery store. So the fact that you own the surface does not mean that you don’t have the right to use a certain amount of the subsurface. You have the right to use a reasonable amount of the subsurface.
necessary for the full enjoyment of the surface. So that’s the rule, no matter where you are in the U. S., you can use subsurface. What you can’t do is use the subsurface minerals for commercial purposes. Enel starts digging these huge holes in the ground, and they have the right to do that. Even though they only own the surface, they have the right to use the subsurface to build these wind turbines.
They dig the holes, they put in steel for reinforcement, they fill it with concrete, They have the right to do all of that. There is nothing wrong with that. What they don’t have the right to do is to take the rock out of the hole, take it to a refiner, crush it, process it, refine it, sort it, and then use it for commercial purposes because that constitutes mining.
And so in this particular case, they were taking the rock and using it in a way described by the law as mining. They were mining rock. That was owned by the Osage tribe and they were mining it without a permit or the right or a license from the tribe. Now one important point is, I’d heard some people previously indicate the tribe is greedy.
They should have brought this to the attention of Enel earlier. They’re just trying to, extort them out of some money. The reality is, Immediately following the first excavation, as soon as the tribe saw that they were excavating this rock, putting it on trucks, taking it, refining it, processing it, and making it commercial quality, immediately, literally within the first few weeks, they notified Enel that what they were doing was illegal.
This isn’t something they came and did 10 years later or 3 years later, they did it immediately. And so Enel basically made their first mistake by saying, Sorry, we don’t recognize your authority. We don’t believe you. We’re going to keep mining it regardless. And so the tribe then went to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and said, Look, this is what’s happening to us.
We’re being taken advantage of. No one’s taking us seriously. Can you please intervene? And so the Bureau of Indian Affairs researched the matter themselves, came to the same conclusion that they, Enel had no right, they, Enel had the right to dig the foundations. They had the right to construct them, but they didn’t have the right to make commercial use of the rock that they excavated.
They sent a letter to Enel and told them to cease and desist. And Enel said, No they just ignored it. They went on. They ignored not only the tribe, but now they’ve ignored the Department of the Interior and the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs. And so this is big mistake.
Allen Hall: I think this adds some complexity to it.
If it was a generic landowner anywhere else in the United States that was arguing about mineral rights, I could see any developer questioning that and probably getting it settled in court. In this case, the unique piece is that the Osage now have the federal government behind them with infinite resources to fight on their behalf, which is what happened.
So it’s not the Osage nation going to court to fight this. The federal government goes to court and goes after Enel.
Doug Sandridge: Yeah. So they, first of all they notified him by letter. Enel ignored it. Now, this is also important because it shows intent. Enel, I can’t speak for what Enel was doing, why they were doing it, I can only speculate.
But I have had multiple sources, including the former vice chief of the tribe, assistant chief of the tribe, and also multiple local reporters tell me that as soon as they got this letter, they started they ramped up their operations to 24 hour operations. This shows bad faith, because what they now see, they see that they’re getting challenged on this, And instead of stopping and doing the right thing and trying to make it right and trying to negotiate and try and settle, trying to do the right thing, they bring out the light plants and start constructing 24 hours a day to speed up the construction.
Presumably, I don’t know what Enel’s purpose for doing that was, but a lot of people believe they sped it up because they felt like, If we can just get this built, then nobody’s going to make us tear it down. And so that, that was the second mistake they made by doubling down and working 24 hours a day to accelerate completion of the project.
So then the federal government sued them again the first time when they were sued by the tribe, but then the federal government sued them. And originally the court ruled against the tribe. Originally said that they didn’t do anything wrong, but they persisted and the eventually the courts determined from the fact situation that Enel had in fact been illegally mining this rock.
And the irony of this is that Enel at any time could have continued to construct this wind turbine, this wind farm, they could have continued to do it legally without using that rock. And they would not be in any trouble at all. They might owe a few hundred dollars for the rock they use, but they, at any point during the time, if they made the right decision and heeded the court and heeded the tribe and heeded the Bureau of Indian Affairs and heeded the department of the interior at any time, they just finished the wind farm using legal methods, the wind farm would be fine, but instead they kept snubbing their nose at all of those agencies, government agencies, and the federal courts.
Allen Hall: Yeah, and obviously Enel’s a big corporation, right? So who in the organization was involved in that decision, that’s really hard to tell. But as a corporation, the whole corporation is held accountable for that. So it turns out to be a much more significant than they first probably thought.
But it all comes down to, and this is where the court case went, the definition of mining. That we think of mining like, Hey, we’re digging down there looking for gold, oil, anything really to get under the surface and to have a commercial purpose. The mere fact that they crushed the rock is defined as mining and used it for commercial purpose.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. So I think that there’s a, Doug, you touched on this earlier, but The definition of that separation between surface rights and mineral rights and not being known to a lot of people outside of the United States, to be honest with you, a lot of people in the United States don’t even know about that.
Like I’m from Northern Wisconsin. That’s not a thing up there, right? There’s not like people, if you say, Oh, do you own the mineral rights and the surface rights? They’re like, what are you talking about? This is my land. It’s not a, it doesn’t exist that way now. In a legal standpoint, it does exist, but people don’t recognize it.
People don’t see it so Enel again, being an Italian company and a lot of the operations being the way Enel works internally, a lot of the operations or the majority of decisions and operational decisions get made in Italy, right? Even the people that work, I’ve spoke with a lot of people that have worked for Enel in the United States, even at, Hey, do we repair this blade or not?
They make a decision and then they go, oh, we gotta get it stamped by. Italy. So we’ve got to go, we’ve got to go back there. So most of these decisions are not being made, large decisions are not being made on United States soil. They’re being made over there. So you can, I’m not making any kind of excuses here.
I’m just trying to put some context to it, right? You can see that there’s a, there’s like a, there’s a disconnect in, like you said, when they were like, we don’t value your rights or we’re not saying this because they don’t, they didn’t understand it. I think if they were to or maybe you can help us understand, consulting land men or lawyers within the, within Oklahoma that are familiar with the specific laws there.
Doug Sandridge: I think you’re right. And I have had other people in the renewal industry tell me that the companies that have the hardest time dealing with these issues are the foreign companies because it is so foreign to them, but, and so I don’t know what went on in the decision making process and now, and so we’re not going to speculate, They had a lot of really high dollar, high powered attorneys working on this over the last 10 years.
The attorneys they’ve had working on this are not your run of the mill 200 an hour attorneys. These are high powered attorneys, and so they’re either getting bad advice from these attorneys, or, I suspect, and again, we don’t know, I suspect they’re getting good advice from these attorneys, and Enel is choosing not to follow it.
We just don’t know. Yes, I think it is partly because they’re foreign countries and they don’t understand the complexities of U. S. land. But the end result is,
Joel Saxum: or the end fact is, you are doing business in the United States. You are doing business in Oklahoma, and in this case in Osage County, and you have to abide by those rules.
So you better make sure that you do. And at the end of the day, What has happened here is they’ve been ordered to remove these turbines. They’ve been ordered to basically tear this wind farm down at an estimated cost of, oh, north of 300 million. Yeah, that’s And these are, so they’re built in 2015, if we’re just looking at normal wind energy practices.
They’re 8 years, 9 years old right now. They’re probably ripe for a repower coming up. None of that really matters anymore because they’re all going to get taken down.
Doug Sandridge: Yep, they are still producing. I was, I drove through there a couple of weeks ago. I was driving from Oklahoma back to Denver where I live, and I just took a little detour, and they are still going strong, and I think this is a cautionary tale.
I don’t, this is a cautionary tale for wind and solar developers across the country, but I do want to make sure, this does not set a precedent. We’re not about to tear down all the wind farms in the United States. This is a very unique situation. This is not a precedent is going to be applied to a lot of other places.
And this is a problem that could be easily overcome. First of all, there are a lot of people, there are a lot of places where you’re building wind farms, where you don’t need to use any of the mineral estate. And I talked to several developers. They all told me if we’re going to use the rock that we’re excavating, we have a mineral permit before we even break ground.
So the normal practice in this industry. Is to do the right thing. Most people are doing the right thing. This is an isolated case. And unfortunately there’s a The truth is they would not have been asked to tear down this wind farm were it not for their arrogance and their continued fighting of this for ten years.
The judges basically said that. The judges essentially said The reason we’re having you tear it down is not because you mined the rock, we’re having you tear it down because we’ve told you over and over again for 10 years that this is illegal and you’ve continued to defy the federal court and the federal government.
Allen Hall: Doug, there are two pieces to that though and fought this for 10 years, the financial aspects, at least according to news reports, if Enel were to remove that wind farm, it would cost them about 300 million to do that. The value of the rock that they could have just brought in instead of using the rock they excavated is only about 70, 000.
So if they just brought in rock, it would have cost them about 70, 000 and all this would never have happened. So they got this 300 million issue sitting in front of them. On top of that, the Osage and the federal government on behalf of the Osage, It’s seeking damages of about 37 million, which is actually a lot less than what they started at.
It does seem likely there’s going to be penalties applied damages applied here because of this long history of not following the court’s instructions at times. So it is a huge financial impact to do this and time impact. And Joel, you’ll know typically wind turbine farms are repowered every 10 years.
So we’re into this 10 year repower situation at the minute, is there now a negotiation that happens between the Osage and Enel that goes, hey, we’re going to repower this thing, we’re going to take the turbines out, but we could keep them there and let’s negotiate this? Are they back to the negotiation because of that 10 year time,
Doug Sandridge: time span?
Personally, I don’t see that happening because the tribe has never wanted this to begin with. And you just have to get into the mindset of the Native Americans, First Americans, the Osage. They look at the world differently. And they really, this is their sacred land. And they feel like they’ve been violated.
The bald eagle is sacred to the tribe. And so Enel is gonna go get, take permits from the U. S. Fish and Wildlife to allow them to kill a certain number of bald eagles. So I think this fundamentally for the tribe, there is, I don’t think there’s any way that, this is just my sense of it. I don’t speak for the tribe in any way, but from all the people I’ve talked to, I don’t think there’s any chance that they’re going to negotiate.
They want these wind turbines gone. They want their wind turbines gone. their vistas in their sacred lands back and not scarred by this.
Joel Saxum: If you follow the history of the, any native American tribe in the country, let alone the Osage are a specific case because they have been wronged many times in the past by people from outside of the tribe.
So they’re, they have historically had some, people, Pressing on them pushing on them and doing things to them that aren’t fair to them And so they’re I would agree with you doug. I have no idea but I would say that Negotiation here is probably off the table for them.
One thing i’d like to touch on though, too So in the industry, like you said best practices what’s actually really happening on the ground in a normal case There’s a lot of really intelligent and experienced professionals like yourself You That are what we would call in like the oil and gas world, land men land men and land women.
So those people are they’re a special mix of contract, almost like a contract lawyer, real estate agent, negotiator, arbitrator Business development person, sales person, all in one, but with technical prowess. So when you run into any kind of permitting agency or environmental agency that is, hired or contracted by a developer or even on the developer’s direct team, these people do exist.
They’re very specialized. I know Doug, you have a Massive storied history of your experience in the oil and gas world Those people can come directly from that oil and gas side As well and help with the renewables because they know it very well. We’ve been doing oil and gas permitting land Negotiations for a hundred years.
So this isn’t something that’s new but it’s new in the respect of renewable energies
Doug Sandridge: It is new for renewable and let me just give you a little perspective about what we do So let’s say we want to go drill an oil and gas We say we have a place that we want to go drill. And so they send that me out as a landman to buy a lease.
I buy the right to drill that well. So I have to go out to that land, the piece of land. I have to say, okay, we’re going to drill the well here. Who owns this land? And I need to make a deal with the surface owner and the mineral owner. Cause I have to make a deal with the mineral owner and the surface owner could be the same, but if they’re not, the mineral owner owns the right to the oil.
The surface owner controls where I put my drilling rig to put it out there. So I have to go make those negotiations and determine who owns it. But what I don’t, what I don’t do is walk out there and see the little farmhouse sitting there and walk up to the farmhouse and say, Hey, knock on the door and say, Hey, we want to lease this.
And the old lady says, okay, how much are you going to pay me? And I pay her. That’s not how you do it. Because the problem is you have to know with certainty who owns that land just because she owns the farmhouse. She doesn’t necessarily own it. She might be renting it. It might be her brother’s, it might be that she owns it, but so do her other seven siblings, so you have to determine that.
So we go to a lot of trouble to figure out who the true owners of that property are to make sure that we’re buying the, because what we don’t want to do is buy it from the old lady at the farmhouse, drill a 10 million dollar well, and then find out that she didn’t have the right to lease it to you. She was just renting the property.
She presents a rent check to somebody else. So it’s very important in our industry that we identify the correct ownership right up front. And what I do see happening with some, not all, but there are some unsophisticated people in the renewal industry who are just getting in, do not understand the immense importance of understanding you’re building your wind farm or your solar farm on a piece of property that you own the rights to do because you don’t want to build it and then have to tear it out later.
And that’s what’s happening to Enel. It is important to get good land and legal advice wherever you are. And it’s different in every state. Literally the surface rights, the mineral rights are different in every state. And even in like in Oklahoma, they’re different even within the different counties.
So you have to have some local knowledge of what’s going
Joel Saxum: on. We can add some add a little bit of complexity that from my oil and gas past so people listening can understand It’s not just the subsurface That has rights. It can also be stratified layers. There can be different owners depending on depth.
So there can be someone who owns the first 500 feet, the next 5, 000 feet, and then you can get into different layers of ownership. So title research and these kinds of background things that you must do. I’ve been a part of projects where you’ve had a team of 10, 12, 15 people in courthouses for a year doing research before you even get started on the ground.
So there’s a lot of things going on behind the scenes for all kinds of development projects that people just don’t see.
Doug Sandridge: Yeah, I’ve seen places in South Texas, I personally have worked on a project where there have been 25 to 28 different stratas with different owners. So, it can’t happen, but we’re getting off the subject here.
The reality is that from a wind farm developers, they need to take seriously the land issues. They need to be sure they understand who owns it. And we just got to make sure somebody pointed out the other day. We’ve been doing this in the oil and gas business for 140 years. So we’ve developed a lot of experience doing this and the people that are getting into renewables.
Some of them are just now learning these lessons, but they can be hard lessons. And so let’s engage properly with the community. Another big problem with Enel was, is that they were basically not engaging with the local community. And I think wherever you’re working, whether it’s wind, solar, oil, you have to be good citizens.
You have to have a social license to operate and you have to operate in good faith with your community. with the people in your, in the neighborhood where you’re working.
Allen Hall: Doug, it’s been really good to have you on the podcast. I know we’ve talked a number of times, particularly about this issue and some others, so we need to get you back on the podcast, but if someone wanted to get a hold of you and pick your brain about land matters, how would they do that?
Doug Sandridge: Really the best thing is to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I’m most active on LinkedIn. You can also, I’ll, you can provide them my email address. I don’t mind people emailing me directly, linkedIn or email. I also write this. The article that you guys read was on my sub stack. So it’s called energy ruminations on sub stack.
And I write about all things energy, not just oil and gas or wind. But I write about all subjects related to energy. So subscribe to my sub stack. And I don’t write prolifically. I have a full time job like you guys do. So I write when I can. But sub stack LinkedIn or send my email is fine.
Allen Hall: Doug, thank you so much for being on the podcast.
It’s been a great discussion.
Doug Sandridge: You guys have been brilliant. Keep up the great work. I listen to you every week. Let’s stay in touch.
https://weatherguardwind.com/enel-vs-the-osage-nation-an-explanation-w-doug-sandridge/
Renewable Energy
Trump’s Destruction of Renewable Energy Benefits His Support Base, and That’s All that Matters
The death sentence that Trump has imposed on renewable energy in America is good for two groups: a) Big Oil and b) the MAGA crowd that rejects science and wants nothing more than to own the libs, aka “libtards.”
The unforeseen problem for the common American is that solar and wind are by far the least expensive sources of energy, so that the ratepayers in the U.S. are soon going to be shucking out huge amounts of extra cash each month.
Of course, this doesn’t account for the increases in the effects of climate change that, though they are devastating our planet, won’t be affecting the folks in Oklahoma too badly for the next few years while Trump does his best to profit by turning our Earth into a wasteland.
Trump’s Destruction of Renewable Energy Benefits His Support Base, and That’s All that Matters
Weather Guard Lightning Tech
WOMA 2026 Recap Live from Melbourne
Allen, Rosemary, and Yolanda, joined by Morten Handberg from Wind Power LAB, recap WOMA 2026 live from Melbourne. The crew discusses leading edge erosion challenges unique to Australia, the frustration operators face getting data from full service agreements, and the push for better documentation during project handovers. Plus the birds and bats management debate, why several operators said they’d choose smaller glass fiber blades over bigger carbon fiber ones, and what topics WOMA 2027 should tackle next year.
Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
[00:00:00] The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by Strike Tape protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit strike tape.com and now your hosts. Welcome to the Uptime Winner Energy podcast. I’m your host, Alan Hall. I’m here with Yolanda Pone, Rosemary Barnes, and the Blade Whisperer, Morton Hamburg.
And we’re all in Melbourne at the Pullman on the park. We just finished up Woma 2026. Massive event. Over 200 people, two days, and a ton of knowledge. Rosemary, what did you think? Yeah, I mean it was a, a really good event. It was really nice ’cause we had event organization, um, taken care of by an external company this time.
So that saved us some headaches, I think. Um. But yeah, it was, it was really good. It was different than last year, and I think next year will be different again because yeah, we don’t need to talk about the same topics every single year. But, um, yeah, I got really great [00:01:00] feedback. So that’s shows we’re doing something right?
Yeah, a lot of the, the sessions were based upon feedback from Australian industry and, uh, so we did AI rotating bits, the, the drive train blades. Uh, we had a. Master class on lightning to start off. Uh, a number of discussions about BOP and electrical, BOP. All those were really good. Mm-hmm. Uh, the, the content was there, the expertise was there.
We had worldwide representation. Morton, you, you talked about blades a good bit and what the Danish and Worldwide experience was. You know, talked about the American experience on Blades. That opened up a lot of discussions because I’m never really sure where Australia is in the, uh, operations side, because a lot of it is full service agreements still.
But it does seem like from last year to this year. There’s more onboarding of the technical expertise internally at the operators. Martin, [00:02:00] you saw, uh, a good bit of it. This is your first time mm-hmm. At this conference. What were your impressions of the, the content and the approach, which is a little bit different than any other conference?
I see an industry that really wants to learn, uh, Australia, they really want to learn how to do this. Uh, and they’re willing to listen to us, uh, whether you live in Australia, in the US or in Europe. You know, they want to lean on our experiences, but they wanna, you know, they want to take it out to their wind farms and they ga then gain their own knowledge with it, which I think is really amicable.
You know, something that, you know, we should actually try and think about how we can copy that in Europe and the US. Because they, they are, they’re listening to us and they’re taking in our input, and then they try and go out. They go out and then they, they try and implement it. Um, so I think really that is something, uh, I’ve learned, you know, and, and really, um, yeah, really impressed by, from this conference.
Yeah. Yolanda, you were on several panels over the, the two days. What were your impressions of the conference and what were your thoughts [00:03:00] on the Australia marketplace? I think the conference itself is very refreshing or I think we all feel that way being on the, on the circuit sometimes going on a lot of different conferences.
It was really sweet to see everybody be very collaborative, as Morton was saying. Um, and it was, it was just really great about everybody. Yes, they were really willing to listen to us, but they were also really willing to share with each other, which is nice. Uh, I did hear about a few trials that we’re doing in other places.
From other people, just kind of, everybody wants to learn from each other and everybody wants to, to make sure they’re in as best a spot as they can. Yeah, and the, the, probably the noisiest part of the conferences were at the coffees and the lunch. Uh, the, the collaboration was really good. A lot of noise in the hallways.
Uh, just people getting together and then talking about problems, talking about solutions, trying to connect up with someone they may have seen [00:04:00]somewhere else in the part of the world that they were here. It’s a different kind of conference. And Rosemary, I know when, uh, you came up to with a suggestion like, Hey.
If there’s not gonna be any sales talks, we’re not gonna sit and watch a 30 minute presentation about what you do. We’re gonna talk about solutions. That did play a a different dynamic because. It allowed people to ingest at their own rate and, and not just sit through another presentation. Yeah. It was made it more engaging, I think.
Yeah, and I mean, anyway, the approach that I take for sales for my company that I think works best is not to do the hard sell. It’s to talk about smart things. Um, and if you are talking about describing a problem or a solution that somebody in the audience has that problem or solution, then they’re gonna seek you out afterwards.
And so. There’s plenty of sales happening in an event like this, but you’re just not like, you know, subjecting people to sales. It’s more presenting them with the information that they need. And then I, I think also the size of the conference really [00:05:00] helps ’cause yeah, about 200 people. Any, everybody is here for the same technical kind.
Content. So it’s like if you just randomly start talking to somebody while you’re waiting for a coffee or whatever, you have gonna have heaps to talk about with them, with ev every single other person there. And so I think that that’s why, yeah, there was so much talking happening and you know, we had social events, um, the first two evenings and so.
Mo like I was surprised actually. So many people stayed. Most people, maybe everybody stayed for those events and so just so much talking and yeah, we did try to have quite long breaks, um, and quite a lot of them and, you know, good enough food and coffee to keep people here. And I think that that’s as important as, you know, just sitting and listening.
Well, that was part of the trouble, some of the conference that you and I have been at, it’s just like six hours of sitting down listening to sort of a droning mm-hmm. Presenter trying to sell you something. Here we were. It was back and forth. A lot more panel talk with experts from around the world and then.[00:06:00]
Break because you just can’t absorb all that without having a little bit of a brain rest, some coffee and just trying to get to the next session. I, I think that made it, uh, a, a, a more of a takeaway than I would say a lot of other conferences are, where there’s spender booze, and. Brochures and samples being handed out and all that.
We didn’t have any of that. No vendor booze, no, uh, upfront sales going on and even into the workshop. So there was specific, uh, topics provided by people that. Provide services mostly, uh, speaking about what they do, but more on a case study, uh, side. And Rosie, you and I sat in on one that was about, uh, birds and bats, birds and bats in Australia.
That one was really good. Yeah, that was great. I learned, I learned a lot. Your mind was blown, but Totally. Yeah. It is crazy how much, how much you have to manage, um, bird and wildlife deaths related to wind farms in Australia. Like compared to, I mean, ’cause you see. Dead birds all the time, right? Cars hit [00:07:00] birds, birds hit buildings, power lines kill birds, and no one cares about those birds.
But if a bird is injured near a wind farm, then you know, everybody has to stop. We have to make sure that you can do a positive id. If you’re not sure, send it away for a DNA analysis. Keep the bird in a freezer for a year and make sure that it’s logged by the, you know, appropriate people. It’s, it’s really a lot.
And I mean, on the one hand, like I’m a real bird lover, so I am, I’m glad that birds are being taken seriously, but on the other hand, I. I think that it is maybe a little bit over the top, like I don’t see extra birds being saved because of that level of, of watching throughout the entire life of the wind farm.
It feels more like something for the pre-study and the first couple of years of operation, and then you can chill after that if everything’s under control. But I, I guess it’s quite a political issue because people do. Do worry about, about beds and bats? Mm-hmm. Yeah, I thought the output of that was more technology, a little or a little more technology.
Not a lot of technology in today’s world [00:08:00] because we could definitely monitor for where birds are and where bats are and, uh, you know. Slow down the turbines or whatever we’re gonna do. Yeah. And they are doing that in, in sites where there is a problem. But, um, yeah, the sites we’re talking about with that monitoring, that’s not sites that have a big, big problem at sites that are just Yeah, a few, a few birds dying every year.
Um, yeah. So it’s interesting. And some of the blade issues in Australia, or a little unique, I thought, uh, the leading edge erosion. Being a big one. Uh, I’ve seen a lot of leading edge erosion over the last couple of weeks from Australia. It is Texas Times two in some cases. And, uh, the discussion that was had about leading edge erosion, we had ETT junker from Stack Raft and, and video form all the way from Sweden, uh, talking to us live, which was really nice actually.
Uh, the, the amount of knowledge that the Global Blade group. Brought to the discussion and just [00:09:00] opening up some eyes about what matters in leading edge erosion. It’s not so much the leading edge erosion in terms of a EP, although there is some a EP loss. It’s more about structural damage and if you let the structure go too far.
And Martin, you’ve seen a lot of this, and I think we had a discussion about this on the podcast of, Hey, pay attention to the structural damage. Yeah, that’s where, that’s where your money is. I mean, if you go, if you get into structural damage, then your repair costs and your downtime will multiply. That is just a known fact.
So it’s really about keeping it, uh, coding related because then you can, you can, you can move really fast. You can get it the blade up to speed and you won’t have the same problems. You won’t have to spend so much time rebuilding the blade. So that’s really what you need to get to. I do think that one of the things that might stand out in Australia that we’re going to learn about.
Is the effect of hail, because we talked a lot about it in Europe, that, you know, what is the effect of, of hail on leading edge erosion? We’ve never really been able to nail it down, but down here I heard from an, [00:10:00] from an operator that they, they, uh, referenced mangoes this year in terms of hail size. It was, it was, it was incredible.
So if you think about that hitting a leading edge, then, uh, well maybe we don’t really need to, we don’t really get to the point where, so coding related, maybe we will be structural from the beginning, but. Then at least it can be less a structural. Um, but that also means that we need to think differently in terms of leading edge, uh, protection and what kinds of solutions that are there.
Maybe some of the traditional ones we have in Europe, maybe they just don’t work, want, they, they won’t work in some part of Australia. Australia is so big, so we can’t just say. Northern Territory is the same as as, uh, uh, um, yeah. Victoria or uh, or Queensland. Or Queensland or West Australia. I think that what we’re probably going to learn is that there will be different solutions fitting different parts of Australia, and that will be one of the key challenges.
Um, yeah. And Blades in Australia sometimes do. Arrive without leading edge protection from the OEMs. [00:11:00] Yeah, I’m sure some of the sites that I’ve been reviewing recently that the, the asset manager swears it’s got leading edge protection and even I saw some blades on the ground and. I don’t, I don’t see any leading edge protection.
I can’t feel any leading edge protection. Like maybe it’s a magical one that’s, you know, invisible and, um, yeah, it doesn’t even feel different, but I suspect that some people are getting blades that should have been protected that aren’t. Um, so why? Yeah, it’s interesting. I think before we, we rule it out.
Then there are some coatings that really look like the original coating. Mm. So we, we, I know that for some of the European base that what they come out of a factory, you can’t really see the difference, but they’re multilayer coating, uh, on the blades. What you can do is that you can check your, uh, your rotor certificate sometimes will be there.
You can check your, uh, your blade sheet, uh, that you get from manufacturer. If you get it. Um, if you get it, then it will, it will be there. But, um, yeah, I, I mean, it can be difficult to say, to see from the outset and there’s no [00:12:00]documentation then. Yeah, I mean. If I can’t see any leading edge erosion protection, and I don’t know if it’s there or not, I don’t think I will go so far and then start installing something on something that is essentially a new blade.
I would probably still put it into operation because most LEP products that can be installed up tower. So I don’t think that that necessarily is, is something we should, shouldn’t still start doing just because we suspect there isn’t the LEP. But one thing that I think is gonna be really good is, um, you know, after the sessions and you know, I’ve been talking a lot.
With my clients about, um, leading edge erosion. People are now aware that it’s coming. I think the most important thing is to plan for it. It’s not right to get to the point where you’ve got half a dozen blades with, you know, just the full leading edge, just fully missing holes through your laminate, and then your rest of your blades have all got laminate damage.
That’s not the time to start thinking about it because one, it’s a lot more expensive for each repair than it would’ve been, but also. No one’s got the budget to, to get through all of that in one season. So I do really [00:13:00] like that, you know, some of the sites that have been operating for five years or so are starting to see pitting.
They can start to plan that into their budget now and have a strategy for how they’re going to approach it. Um, yeah. And hopefully avoid getting over to the point where they’ve missing just the full leading edge of some of their blades. Yeah. But to Morton’s earlier point, I think it’s also important for people to stop the damage once it happens too.
If, if it’s something that. You get a site or for what, whatever reason, half of your site does look like terrible and there’s holes in the blade and stuff. You need to, you need to patch it up in some sort of way and not just wait for the perfect product to come along to, to help you with that. Some of the hot topics this week were the handover.
From, uh, development into production and the lack of documentation during the transfer. Uh, the discussion from Tilt was that you need to make sure it is all there, uh, because once you sign off. You probably can’t go back and get it. And [00:14:00] some of the frustration around that and the, the amount of data flow from the full service provider to the operator seemed to be a, a really hot topic.
And, and, uh, we did a little, uh, surveyed a about that. Just the amount of, um, I don’t know how to describe it. I mean, it was bordering on anger maybe is a way. Describe it. Uh, that they feel that operators feel like they don’t have enough insight to run the turbines and the operations as well as they can, and that they should have more insight into what they have operating and why it is not operat.
A certain way or where did the blades come from? Are there issues with those blades? Just the transparency WA was lacking. And we had Dan Meyer, who is from the States, he’s from Colorado, he was an xge person talking about contracts, uh, the turbine supply agreement and what should be in there, the full service [00:15:00] agreement, what should be in there.
Those are very interesting. I thought a lot of, uh, operators are very attentive to that, just to give themselves an advantage of what you can. Put on paper to help yourself out and what you should think about. And if you have a existing wind farm from a certain OEM and you’re gonna buy another wind farm from ’em, you ought to be taking the lessons learned.
And I, I thought that was a, a very important discussion. The second one was on repairs. And what you see from the field, and I know Yolanda’s been looking at a lot of repairs. Well, all of you have been looking at repairs in Australia. What’s your feeling on sort of the repairs and the quality of repairs and the amount of data that comes along with it?
Are we at a place that we should be, or do we need a little more detail as to what’s happening out there? It’s one of the big challenges with the full service agreements is that, you know, if everything’s running smoothly, then repairs are getting done, but the information isn’t. Usually getting passed on.
And so it’s seems fine and it seems like really good actually. Probably if you’re an [00:16:00] asset manager and everything’s just being repaired without you ever knowing about it, perfect. But then at some point when something does happen, you’ve got no history and especially like even before handover. You need to know all of the repairs that have happened for, you know, for or exchanges for any components because you know, you’re worried about, um, serial defects, for example.
You need every single one. ’cause the threshold is quite high to, you know, ever reach a serial defect. So you wanna know if there were five before there was a handover. Include that in your population. Um, yeah, so that’s probably the biggest problem with repairs is that they’re just not being. Um, the reports aren’t being handed over.
You know, one of the things that Jeremy Hanks from C-I-C-N-D-T, and he’s an NDT expert and has, has seen about everything was saying, is that you really need to understand what’s happening deep inside the blade, particularly for inserts or, uh, at the root, uh, even up in, with some, some Cory interactions happening or splicing that It’s hard to [00:17:00] see that hard to just take a drone inspection and go, okay, I know what’s happening.
You need a little more technology in there at times, especially if you have a serial defect. Why do you have a serial defect? Do you need to be, uh, uh, scanning the, the blade a little more deeply, which hasn’t really happened too much in Australia, and I think there’s some issues I’ve seen where it may come into use.
Yeah, I think it, it, it’ll be coming soon. I know some people are bringing stuff in. I’ve got emails sitting in my inbox I need to chase up, but I’m, I’m really going to, to get more into that. Yeah. And John Zalar brought up a very similar, uh, note during his presentation. Go visit your turbines. Yeah, several people said that.
Um, actually Liz said that too. Love it. And, um, let’s this, yeah, you just gotta go have a look. Oh, Barend, I think said bar said it too. Go on site. Have a look at the lunchroom. If the lunch room’s tidy, then you know, win turbine’s gonna be tidy too. And I don’t know about that ’cause I’ve seen some tidy lunchroom that were associated with some, you know, uh, less well performing assets, but it’s, you know, it’s [00:18:00] a good start.
What are we gonna hope for in 2027? What should we. Be talking about it. What do you think we’ll be talking about a year from now? Well, a few people, quite a few people mentioned to me that they were here, they’re new in the industry, and they heard this was the event to go to. Um, and so I, I was always asking them was it okay?
’cause we pitch it quite technical and I definitely don’t wanna reduce. How technical it is. One thing I thought of was maybe we start with a two to five minute introduction, maybe prerecorded about the, the topic, just to know, like for example, um, we had some sessions on rotating equipment. Um, I’m a Blades person.
I don’t know that much about rotating equipment, so maybe, you know, we just explain this is where the pitch bearings are. They do this and you know, there’s the main bearing and it, you know, it does this and just a few minutes like that to orient people. Think that could be good. Last, uh, this year we did a, a masterclass on lightning, a half day masterclass.
Maybe we change that topic every year. Maybe next year it’s blade design, [00:19:00] certification, manufacturing. Um, and then, you know, the next year, whatever, open to suggestions. I mean, in general, we’re open to suggestions, right? Like people write in and, and tell us what you’d wanna see. Um, absolutely. I think we could focus more on technologies might be an, an area like.
It’s a bit, it’s a bit hard ’cause it gets salesy, but Yeah. I think one thing that could actually be interesting and that, uh, there was one guy came up with an older turbine on the LPS system. Mm. Where he wanted to look for a solution and some of the wind farms are getting older and it’s older technology.
So maybe having some, uh, uh, some sessions on that. Because the older turbines, they are vastly different from what we, what we see in the majority with wind farms today. But the maintenance of those are just as important. And if you do that correctly, they’re much easier to lifetime extent than it will likely be for some of the nuance.
But, you know, let. Knock on wood. Um, but, but I think that’s something that could be really interesting and really relevant for the industry and something [00:20:00] that we don’t talk enough about. Yeah. Yeah, that’s true because I, I’m working on a lot of old wind turbines now, and that has been, um, quite a challenge for me because they’re design and built in a way that’s quite different to when, you know, I was poking, designing and building, uh, wind turbine components.
So that’s a good one. Other people mentioned end of life. Mm-hmm. Not just like end of life, like the life is over, but how do you decide when the life end of life is going to be? ’cause you know, like you have a planned life and then you might like to extend, but then you discover you’ve got a serial issue.
Are you gonna fix it? Or you know, how are you gonna fix it? Those are all very interesting questions that, um, can occur. And then also, yeah, what to do with the. The stuff at the end of the Wind Farm lifetime, we could make a half day around those kinds of sessions. I think recycling could actually be good to, to also touch upon and, and I think, yeah, Australia is more on the front of that because of, of your high focus on, on nature and sustainability.
So looking at, well, what do we do with these blades? Or what do we do with the towers of foundation once, uh, [00:21:00] once we do need to decommission them, you know, what is, what are we going to do in Australia about that? Or what is Australia going to do about that? But, you know, what can we bring to the, to the table that that can help drive that discussion?
I think maybe too, helping people sort of templates for their formats on, on how to successfully shadow, monitor, maybe showing them a bit mute, more of, uh. Like cases and stuff, so to get them going a bit more. ’cause we heard a lot of people too say, oh, we’re, we’re teetering on whether we should self operate or whether we continue our FSA, but we, we we’re kind of, we don’t know what we’re doing.
Yeah. In, in not those words. Right. But just providing a bit more of a guidance too. On that side, we say shadow monitoring and I think we all know what it means. If you’ve seen it done, if you haven’t seen it done before. It seems daunting. Mm-hmm. What do you mean shadow monitoring? You mean you got a crack into the SCADA system?
Does that mean I’ve gotta, uh, put CMS out there? Do I do, do I have to be out [00:22:00] on site all the time? The answer that is no to all of those. But there are some fundamental things you do need to do to get to the shadow monitoring that feels good. And the easy one is if there’s drone inspections happening because your FSA, you find out who’s doing the drone inspections and you pay ’em for a second set of drone inspections, just so you have a validation of it, you can see it.
Those are really inexpensive ways to shadow monitor. Uh, but I, I do think we say a lot of terms like that in Australia because we’ve seen it done elsewhere that. Doesn’t really translate. And I, if I, I’m always kind of looking at Rosemary, like, does it, this make sense? What I’m saying makes sense, Rosemary, because it’s hard to tell because so many operators are in sort of a building mode.
I, I see it as. When I talked to them a few years ago, they’re completely FSA, they had really small staffs. Now the staffs are growing much larger, which makes me feel like they’re gonna transition out an FSA. Do we need to provide a little more, uh, insight into how that is done deeper. [00:23:00] Like, these are the tools you, you will need.
This is the kind of people you need to have on staff. This is how you’re gonna organize it, and this is the re these are the resources that you should go after. Mm. Does that make a little si more sense? Yeah. That might be a good. Uh, idea for getting somebody who’s, you know, working for a company that is shadow monitoring overseas and bring them in and they can talk through what that, what that means exactly.
And that goes back to the discussion we were having earlier today by having operators talk about how they’re running their operations. Mm. And I know the last year we tried to have everybody do that and, and they were standoffish. I get it. Because you don’t want to disclose things that your company doesn’t want out in public.
And year two, it felt like there’s a little more. Openness about that. Yeah, there was a few people were quite open about, um, yeah, talking about challenges and some successes as well. I think we’ll have more successes next year ’cause we’ve got more, more things going on. But yeah, definitely would encourage any operators to think about what’s a you A case study that you could give about?
Yeah, it could just be a problem that’s unsolved and I bet you’ll find people that wanna help you [00:24:00] solve that problem. Or it could be something that you struggled with and then you’re doing a better job and Yeah, I mean the. Some operators think that they’re in competition with each other and some think that they’re not really, and the answer is somewhere, somewhere in the middle.
There are, you know, some at least small amounts of competition. But, you know, I just, I just really think that. We’re fighting against each other, trying to win within the wind industry. Then, you know, in 10, 20 years time, especially in Australia, there won’t be any new wind. It’ll just be wind and solar everywhere and, and the energy transition stalled because everyone knows that’s not gonna get us all the way to, you know, a hundred percent renewables.
So, um, I do think that we need to, first of all, fight for wind energy to improve. The status quo is not good enough to take us through the next 20 years. So we do need to collaborate to get better. And then, yeah, I don’t know, once we’re, once we’re one, wind has won, then we can go back to fighting amongst ourselves, I guess.
Is Australia that [00:25:00] laboratory? Yeah, I think I, I say it all the time. I think Australia is the perfect place because I, I do think we’re a little bit more naturally collaborative. For some reason, I don’t know why, it’s not really like a, a cultural thing, but seems to be the case in Australian wind. Um, and also our, our problems are harder than, uh, than what’s being faced elsewhere.
I mean, America has some specific problems right now that are, you know, worse, but in general, operating environment is very harsh Here. We’re so spread out. Everything is so expensive. Cranes are so expensive. Repairs are so expensive. Spares spare. Yeah, spares are crazy expensive. You know, I look every now and then and do reports for people about, you know, what, what’s the average cost for and times for repairs and you know, you get an American values and it’s like, okay, well at a minimum times by five Australia and you know, so.
It, there’s a lot more bang for buck. And the other thing is we just do not have enough, um, enough people, enough. Uh, we’ve got some really smart people. We need a lot more [00:26:00] people that are as smart as that. And you can’t just get that immediately. Like there has been a lot of good transfer over from related industries.
A lot of people that spoke so that, you know, they used to work for thermal power plants and, um, railway, a guy that spoke to a guy had come in from railway. Um. That’s, that’s really good. But it will take some years to get them up to speed. And so in the meantime, we just need to use technology as much as we can to be able to, you know, make the people that good people that we do have, you know, make them go a lot further, um, increase what they can do.
’cause yeah, I don’t think there’s a single, um, asset owner where they couldn’t, you know, double the number of asset managers they had and, you know, ev everyone could use twice as many I think. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. I think something that we really focused on this year is kind of removing the stones that are in people’s path or like helping at least like to, to say like, don’t trip over there.
Don’t trip over here. And I think part of that, like, like you mentioned, is that. [00:27:00] The, the collaborative manner that everyone seemed to have and just, I think 50% of our time that we were in those rooms was just people asking questions to experts, to anybody they really wanted to. Um, and it, it just, everybody getting the same answers, which is really just a really different way to, to do things, I think.
But more than, I mean, we, we we’re still. We’re still struggling with quality in Australia. That’s still a major issue on, on a lot of the components. So until we have that solved, we don’t really know how much of an influence the other factors they really have because it just overshadows everything. And yes, it will be accelerated by extreme weather conditions, but.
What will, how will it work if, if the components are actually fit, uh, fit for purpose in the sense that we don’t have wrinkles in the laminates, that we don’t have, uh, bond lines that are detaching. Mm-hmm. Maybe some of it is because of, uh, mango size hails hitting the blades. Maybe it’s because of extreme temperatures.
Maybe it’s [00:28:00] because of, uh, uh, yeah. At extreme topography, you know, creating, uh, wind conditions that the blades are not designed for. We don’t really know that. We don’t really know for sure. Uh, we just assume, um, Australia has some problems with, not problems, but some challenges with remoteness. We don’t, with, uh, with getting new, new spares that much is absolutely true.
We can’t do anything about that. We just have to, uh, find a way to, to mitigate that. Mm-hmm. But I think we should really be focused on getting quality, uh, getting the quality in, in order. You know, one thing that’s interesting about that, um, so yeah, Australia should be focused more on quality than anybody else, but in, in, in the industry, yeah.
Uh, entire world should be more focused on quality, but also Australia. Yeah. But Australia, probably more than anyone considering how hard it is to, you know, make up for poor quality here. Um. At the same time, Australia for some reason, loves to be the first one with a new technology, loves to have the biggest [00:29:00] turbine.
Um, and the, the latest thing and the newest thing, and I thought it was interesting. I mean, this was operations and maintenance, um, conference, so not really talking about new designs and manufacturing too much, but at least three or four people said, uh. Uh, I would be using less carbon fiber in blades. I would not be, not be going bigger and bigger and bigger.
If I was buying turbines for a new wind farm, I would have, you know, small glass blades and just more of them. So I think that that was really interesting to hear. So many people say it, and I wasn’t even one of them, even though, you know, I would definitely. Say that. I mean, you know, in terms of business, I guess it’s really good to get a lot of, a lot of big blades, but, um, because they just, people, I don’t think people understand that, that bigger blades just have dramatically more quality problems than the smaller ones.
Um, were really kind of exceeded the sweet spot for the current manufacturing methods and materials. I don’t know if you would agree, but it’s, it’s. Possible, but [00:30:00] it’s, it, you know, it’s not like a blade that’s twice as long, doesn’t have twice as many defects. It probably has a hundred times as many defects.
It’s just, uh, it’s really, really challenging to make those big blades, high quality, and no one is doing it all that well right now. I would, however, I got an interesting hypothetical and they’re. Congrats to her for, for putting out that out. But there was an operator that said to me at the conference, so what would you choose hypothetically?
A 70 meter glass fiber blade or a 50 meter carbon fiber blade, so a blade with carbon fiber reinforcement. And I did have to think quite a while about it because there was, it was she say, longer blades, more problems, but carbon blade. Also a lot of new problems. So, so what is it? So I, I ended up saying, well, glass fiber, I would probably go for a longer glass fiber blade, even though it will have some, some different challenges.
It’s easier to repair. Yeah, that’s true. So we can overcome some of the challenges that are, we can also repair carbon. We have done it in air, air, uh, aeronautics for many, many years. But wind is a different beast because we don’t have, uh, [00:31:00] perfect laboratory conditions to repair in. So that would just be a, a really extreme challenge.
So that’s, that’s why I, I would have gone for carbon if, for glass fiber, if, if I, if I could in that hypothe hypothetical. Also makes more energy, the 70 meter compared to it’s a win-win situation.
Well, it’s great to see all of you. Australia. I thought it was a really good conference. And thanks to all our sponsors, uh, til being the primary sponsor for this conference. Uh, we are starting to ramp up for 2027. Hopefully all of you can attend next year. And, uh, Rosie, it’s good to see you in person. Oh, it’s, uh, it’s, it’s exciting when we are actually on the same continent.
Uh, it doesn’t happen very often. And Morton, it’s great to see you too, Yolanda. I see you every day pretty much. So she’s part of our team, so I, it’s great to see you out. This is actually the first time, me and Rosie, we have seen each other. We’ve, we’ve known each other for years. Yeah. Yeah. The first time we actually, uh, been, been, yeah.
Within, uh, yeah. [00:32:00] Same room. Yep. And same continent. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s been awesome. And also it’s my first time meeting Yolanda in person too. So yeah, that’s our first time. And same. So thanks so much for everybody that attended, uh, woma 2026. We’ll see you at Woma 2027 and uh, check us out next week for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.
I looked through a few of the many thousands of responses to the question above on social media and have concluded:
If you ask uneducated people who know essentially nothing about global warming, you’ll find that nothing can stop it, because it’s been going on since the origin of the planet. Others say that God controls the planet’s temperature.
If you ask climate scientists who work in laboratories around the globe who have been studying this subject for decades, you’ll find that there are two key answers: a) decarbonization of our transportation and energy sectors and b) halting the destruction of our rain forests.
As always, we have a choice to make: ignorance or science.
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