Weather Guard Lightning Tech
EOLOGIX-PING Lightning Sensors Join SkySpecs Horizon
Allen and Joel are joined by Matthew Stead, Chief Product Officer and Co-founder of EOLIGIX-PING, at the SkySpecs Customer Forum 2025. They discuss the biggest takeaways from the forum, new developments at EOLOGIX-PING, and the upcoming Wind Energy O&M Australia event.
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Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering Tomorrow.
Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Alan Hall, and I’m with Joel Saxon. And we are in Ann Arbor, Michigan with Matthew Stead, chief Product Officer. And co-founder of eLog Ping and he is traveled all the way from Australia to be here in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We are at the Skys Specs customer Forum 2025.
We’ve been spending the last couple of days with most of the operators in the United States, uh, learning about what issues they are having and how they’re using Skys specs to reduce their overall operational costs. Boy, Matthew, it, it is been a really interesting couple of days hearing where customers are struggling and where they are trying to attack lost revenue.
Matthew Stead: Yeah, I think it’s [00:01:00] been amazing. I’m so pleased to be here. And, you know, it was great to get the invitation, uh, from Skyspace. I, I think, um, really the things that I’ve been hearing is the data and pulling data together, uh, to getting those insights as to what’s going wrong and then, and then fixing it and getting the money back.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. Yeah. The, the big thing here, we’re talking about the one big beautiful build, and it’s followed on the industry.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Joel Saxum: Right. So the, the theme of the event is prevent, perform, or prevent, prevent, predict, perform, I’m gonna get it wrong again.
Allen Hall: There’s three Ps,
Joel Saxum: three very important ps. But what we’re looking at is, is how, how can digitalization, how can the next generation of op intelligent asset management change the way we do things?
Because you can’t do things reactively like we were in the past anymore.
Matthew Stead: Yeah,
Joel Saxum: right. Even when budgets were tight before they’re gonna get even tighter. We’re gonna, and we’re gonna have to make sure that these assets are running. And that’s where like your smarter, smarter, smarter, smarter, right? Yeah.
Your solutions come into play. The Skys specs team. The, the, the conversations in the sessions. The [00:02:00] conversations around the sessions, the conversations over a beer.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. Yeah.
Joel Saxum: They have all been about the same concepts, right? About how can we do this better, more efficiently. And one of the reasons I really like events.
Like this is, like you said, Allen, you have all these operators. Yeah. You have all of these engine. It’s a, it’s a room full of 50 engineers that probably control man, 60 to 70% of the
Allen Hall: Oh yeah.
Matthew Stead: The US
Joel Saxum: fleet. In the US fleet. Right. So you have so much knowledge, so much sharing, and it’s an open forum. You have people p piping up, Hey, we use this strategy.
Hey, we do this. I heard some really cool things this week.
Matthew Stead: Yeah, I, I, at breakfast this morning, I was sitting to two guys, one from Canada, one from the US and they were talking about Repowering. One guy’s got GE turbines. He didn’t know that he could put a vestas in a cell on a G turbine.
Joel Saxum: Yeah.
Matthew Stead: And so these guys have exchanged details.
Ban.
Joel Saxum: Yeah.
Matthew Stead: That was beautiful to watch together.
Allen Hall: Well, yeah, we’ve, Joel and I have been hosting a number of panels, uh, during the Sky Specs event. If [00:03:00] those have been eyeopening, uh, I hosted one earlier yesterday and it, uh, the panelists, I don’t get too deep about who the panelists were because a lot of this is obviously.
It’s just be kept in house. But some of the approaches, uh, to the one big beautiful bill act mm-hmm. Were unique. The insights there that a lot of operators were planning for since last year.
Joel Saxum: Mm-hmm.
Allen Hall: Mm-hmm. And that they felt like this where we are today was likely to happen and they were making adjustments way back in October, November of last year.
So the repowering issues that we talk about a lot, and you hear smaller operators really struggling with bigger operators. Already had a plan of attack.
Joel Saxum: Safe harbor. Safe harbor. Safe harbor. Yeah. I’ve heard that word a lot. Right. And that was a, it was a plan from some of those, those, those big operators, uh, their senior leadership that shared some of their strategy, which I was surprised they did.
It was fantastic. But, um, if you haven’t been safe harboring, uh, or in, in contact with some good tax lawyers to understand the fall of these things and what it means to your [00:04:00] operation, do that now. Mm-hmm. Um, because you have, we have this cliff coming July 4th next year, and then at the end of the year after that.
Allen Hall: Yeah. So the, the amount of planet assets is going to, uh, go down and I think everybody in the industry has been. Talking about that. You see a lot of news reports about the number of wind turbines that will likely, uh, be repowered is gonna drop down. However, uh, a lot of operators have 10 year plans and those plans have not really changed all that much.
They, they weren’t super aggressive. They knew that during the Biden administration, this was just an extension mm-hmm. Of the Obama administration, but eventually it was going to end. Mm-hmm. That’s say they were preparing for the end anyway. And you hear that in their operational strategy.
Joel Saxum: Mm-hmm.
Allen Hall: You hear about how they’re trying to reduce their overall spend every year.
They’re trying to reduce their o and m budgets by a percent or two, even though the fleet’s getting bigger.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. An interesting conversation I had this morning was right around that was we’re, it was, this was not the same operator you and I talked to, but a different one saying that, Hey, we’re good through 28, 29.
Now [00:05:00] what happens with the next administration changes things. But then another person at the table, this was breakfast again, um, said, uh. That being said, what does the job market look like for engineers? My take on it was engineering staffs are being changed. However, if you’re an SME, that’s where, that’s where it lies.
And this person at the table was like, that’s awesome to hear, because my new boss just asked me to be the SME for blades in our company. It’s like
Matthew Stead: burn
Joel Saxum: chase it. Yes. The bonus that raised today. Yeah,
Matthew Stead: I, I, two things struck me. One was the, first of all that actually having the bill. Is clarity. I mean it’s actually good.
So I mean, that struck me as a real positive that actually there can be
Joel Saxum: getting outta the gray area.
Matthew Stead: There is some optimism there. And the other thing I heard, um, many people were talking about, not necessarily repowering, they were talking about. Whole of life, you know, o and m strategies, right? And then if Repowering happens.
So that was a bit of a, a lesson learned for me.
Allen Hall: Well, because a lot of operators that are in the United States have [00:06:00] a European branch, or they were, or European base, or they came
Matthew Stead: from
Allen Hall: there, right? So, and that’s a just completely different model than what we’ve been talking about in the United States and what has been offered in the United States.
But that stra, that European strategy has. Transferred over. And so it’s always
Matthew Stead: been,
Allen Hall: yeah. And the plans are there now. Yeah. And, and because they started several months ago, practically a year ago now. Mm-hmm. They have some sanity looking forward. Mm-hmm. They’re not panicking. And I was expecting to hear a little more cautiousness, a little more panic.
No. Mm-hmm. Not really.
Joel Saxum: It’s the same conversation that we’ve been having on the podcast for, for, since the follow out of this thing back in July of. This is going to change operational strategies, but being here we’re only what, three months removed from that?
Allen Hall: Mm-hmm.
Joel Saxum: And it seems like the strategies are already there.
Allen Hall: It was,
Joel Saxum: right. They’re already like, yeah, we’re we’re moving. Yeah. They’re big companies,
Allen Hall: right? Shore is different. Yeah. I think, I think offshore is where they got a little broadsided.
Joel Saxum: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Onshore not so much. And because [00:07:00] every operator pretty much has. Some level of solar, some level of battery. They just see, all right, if, if wind’s gonna get pummeled for a few months, we’re gonna put in a bunch of solar and we’re the plans, were already in place to do it anyway.
So we’re gonna do the solars, we’re gonna do the batteries, we’re gonna make the grid more resilient regardless of what happens to wind, which is great. I, in my opinion, some of the discussions happening in Skys specs this week, were the grid’s gonna get more resilient. We’re gonna handle the AI data power increase, and here’s how we’re gonna do it.
Joel Saxum: I heard this morning in another major operator, five to one solar farms to wind farms.
Matthew Stead: Yeah, yeah. That they’re
Joel Saxum: installing.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. More and more it’s wind, solar, battery, and in the same sentence.
Allen Hall: Yeah. And, and solar has always been falling way behind. And wind. Wind is way out in front of solar. And now solar’s finally catching up.
And it needed to be that way. This is what’s happening in Australia. You have to have a balance. You can’t have all solar, no wind. All wind and no solar, you have to have both. Plus a little bit of battery.
Matthew Stead: Definitely. In Australia, solar has [00:08:00] been above wind for a while,
Allen Hall: right? Yeah. Yeah. Right. And you’re now, you’re now it’s, it’s swinging the other way.
Right? There’s a lot of wind development going on
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Allen Hall: In Australia and a lot of battery going on in Australia. So that balance is needed. And, uh, as we go forward, I think especially when we learn more about what happened, uh, in the Iberian Peninsula over the past spring, we’re gonna realize more solar, more wind to balance it out.
Then we’re also gonna need more battery to level it out. Yeah. Inia stability is gonna be tremendous. Way better than it was 10 years ago.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Allen Hall: And that’s unique. Now, one of the things that was announced today was the partnership between OGs Ping and Skys spec. So Matthew, would you like to. Talk to that.
Matthew Stead: Yeah, I mean, sky Skys specs have a great name in the industry and you know, I think the missing piece for them has been sensors, um, and lightning sensors. You know, the event Lightning sensor that we offer is perfect into their business model. So it ties in with the, you know, there’s an event, there’s an inspection, then there can be some actions you can get dealt with really [00:09:00] super quickly.
You know, maybe strike. Struck tape as well, necessary, of course. Um, but yeah, I’m super pleased this one’s been a little bit of, um, in the making. But yeah, super pleased that, um, sky Spec’s announced that this morning.
Allen Hall: Well, and Joel and I look at Sky Spec’s, drone images and internal inspections all the time.
Bring in regards to lightning. And every time I see a listing of damages on a wind farm, probably 30 to 60%. Depends on where you are. Of the damages are from Lightning. So it makes sense for Sky Specs to give everybody an alert if, if lightning is that important to the operational performance. Knowing you’ve been struck is the first thing.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Allen Hall: You should know.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. And was, you know, the, wasn’t the, the email from Intel store last week with, you know, lightning damage up there near the top.
Joel Saxum: Yeah.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Joel Saxum: Well, and, and the way Skys spec runs their operation as far as their. Very graduated on workflows and this is how this mm-hmm. This is how this plan works.
This is how this plan works. When they debuted it this morning, uh, it [00:10:00] was very clear to this is how it’s gonna work. Here’s how the workflow is lightning, bang, bang, bang. And then it was documentation. If you’re an under F, SA for your OE em, yeah. It was documentation. If you have an insurance claim and or their tech enabled insights, Hey, here’s what the damage looks like.
Do you need a repair? And then repair vendor management. Yeah. And the whole thing fits together. At the same time conversations about if there’s, if you’re in a heavy prone lightning area, now we have more and more data, accurate data to make decisions on. It’s up to, you need a strike tape or something of that sort?
Yeah,
Allen Hall: yeah, absolutely. Because the problem you see today is when they have lightning damage, they have to do an RC. A RCA takes anywhere between, say, at a minimum four weeks to. 20 weeks to get produced in that RCA process of trying to figure out when the lightning strike occurred, how big was it, all these other details.
And if you knew immediately that a lightning strike had occurred and you had done the inspection in according to Sky Specs mm-hmm. You would have all that data and you’d be, you would be able to have an RCA done in seven days.
Joel Saxum: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Which is [00:11:00] brilliant because that’s where you go back to the insurance or the FSA agreement and go.
Alright, we need to get something done.
Matthew Stead: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I was talking to an insurer and their biggest bug bear was actually the time taken to resolve the matter.
Joel Saxum: Yes.
Matthew Stead: Because they’re paying for a daily whatever. Yes.
Joel Saxum: A business interruption.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. Regularly. Nine grand a day, 12 grand a day,
Joel Saxum: which is regularly in the insurance world.
Three to one cost of property damage.
Matthew Stead: Exactly. So they’d be super keen to get this resolved quickly. No, no arguments.
Allen Hall: Get the, get the repair made. If it has to be made, get the turbine back operating. Start producing. So the business interruption. Yeah. Payments stop.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. If you’re a skys specs customer and you’re already getting inspections done regularly, so depending on your model, you might be doing ’em quarterly.
You have other headaches if that’s going on. Um, but uh, you have an big
Matthew Stead: bond.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, sorry. But you have a health record, right? So you know what the status of that turbine was. Then there’s a strike at a certain time. You go back to the last inspection, there was no damage. New inspection, there is damage. Okay, now we have a reality.
We know what the strike was. We know where the damage is. Here’s a PDF boom. That’s [00:12:00] proof.
Allen Hall: Mm-hmm. And there’s so much happening at eLog Ping at the moment. And we’re a lightning base ’cause we’re a lightning company, so we’re looking usually at the tip. But eLog Ping has been doing a lot of work at the root of the blade more recently because of the root bushing issue and some of the ways that we need to monitor that.
You usually, basically an existing device, uh, that has been primarily used for icing detection because it has, but it has this magic IME inside of it. Exactly. So it can detect. Blade motion that is now being applied for root bushing. Debos
Matthew Stead: Exactly.
Allen Hall: Which is a, a really smart move.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. I think it was probably about six months ago, one of the largest operators in the US um, was asked, what, what is one of their biggest problems?
And it was Route Debo. And so we sort of shifted our focus a bit. And since then we’ve been monitoring. Yeah, exactly. Like you say, our on blade, you know, eye sensor, um, was repurposed to measure vibration, what the blades are doing. And so we’ve got [00:13:00] some really cool stuff going on there. Um, and so we’ve also repurposed that for measuring root, deb bond, um, and actually.
Yesterday I received this, the best plot ever. A big beautiful plot. One,
Joel Saxum: one big, beautiful plot.
Matthew Stead: Um, showing the results so we can measure, um, root de bond. So yeah, we’re now looking for a bit of a wait list for customers, um, that wanna take up this service ’cause we know it’s a pain.
Joel Saxum: What does deployment look like?
Matthew Stead: Um, sensor on the front. Sensor on the back from the hub. On the outside.
Joel Saxum: Okay, so stood on the blade at the root, right?
Matthew Stead: Yeah. At the root, yeah. Okay. So you climb out, get on top of the hub, slap it on the front, the back, each blade and a comms box.
Joel Saxum: That’s it. Comms box goes in then to sell?
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Joel Saxum: Wireless. Just power and Yeah.
Communicates itself.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Joel Saxum: Beautiful.
Matthew Stead: Easy. Easy. Well, that’s easy. Okay.
Joel Saxum: I said that’s at half a day a tower.
Allen Hall: Yeah. Oh, with that? Yeah. I
Matthew Stead: could do it.[00:14:00]
Allen Hall: Yeah. Well, I think that because the root bushing issue hasn’t been solved the, at the OEM level. Yeah. And because of there’s so many state harbor blades, and Joel, you pointed out like there’s just a couple years of safe harbor blades out there. That ru bushing issue has been sitting in the field for the last two years, and now we’re gonna deploy these blades because we’re in a rush to do it.
The root bushing issue, if, you know what model number is susceptible to it, you could actually install the OGs pink system on the ground.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. Uh, yeah. It would take
Allen Hall: 10 minutes to do it.
Matthew Stead: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Um, and I think probably the big thing that we’ve been sort of realizing is that the, the whole industry is cost constrained.
And so what we’ve been trying to do is look at, well, what is a business case? And so there’s no point in developing a product unless there’s. A really clear return. So we really tried to optimize the cost of our system time for installation so that the customers [00:15:00] absolutely get a return on investment.
Allen Hall: Well, and the, the cost of any installation for a product is one third of the cost of the product. Two third, the cost of installation typically. Yeah.
Matthew Stead: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Allen Hall: Exactly right. So doing it on the ground’s gonna save you two thirds of the cost typically. Yeah. And that’s where it should be done.
Joel Saxum: Well, I think that’s something that we, we, Alan, you and I.
On a podcast or off the podcast harp on all the time for everybody in wind. Yeah. It’s an industry thing, but a clear business case.
Matthew Stead: Mm.
Joel Saxum: Thank you.
Matthew Stead: Be smart.
Joel Saxum: Thank you.
Matthew Stead: Be smart. Be smart. Can I just do a little segue? Yeah. Um, this is another one of my favorite topics. Um, so we’ve sort of released a, like a technology enabled service, um, function now, which is actually using our hardware to delve into problems.
Um, and the first customer we had on that was Blade Twist. So we instrumented a long-ish blade. I can’t say how long. A hundred meters greater than a hundred meters around.
Allen Hall: Okay.
Matthew Stead: Um, [00:16:00] around, um, and we instrumented at the root, uh, 50%, 70%. Mm-hmm. And we’re able to measure the blade. The blade twisting in operation.
Allen Hall: Okay.
Matthew Stead: And the how much is twisting and how much is twisting can be compared against the design. And there’s a whole lot of standards around this topic, which, um, I think is an industry issue coming up.
Allen Hall: It’s very difficult to, to test.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. Portion. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s not even in the standard necessarily.
Not right
Allen Hall: now, no.
Matthew Stead: The
Joel Saxum: EMS are sort
Matthew Stead: of doing it. Yeah. So this is one of my favorite projects
Joel Saxum: and there’s a lot
Matthew Stead: of late twist,
Joel Saxum: there’s a lot of engineers that will say. This twists, this doesn’t field people saying it actually. Like what’s the Siemens model that does the active pitch?
Matthew Stead: Yeah. Yeah.
Joel Saxum: That they say it doesn’t actually have torsion on it, but some people say in the field it does.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Yes.
Matthew Stead: So it’s all about the life. It’s all about the life, I mean, right. Yeah. Really, if you, you want 20, 30, whatever years you need to know, you gotta be careful.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. At the end of the day, is
Matthew Stead: it behaving?
Joel Saxum: Yeah. So that was, that’s an interesting conversation we talked about earlier. I think it was yesterday, of digital [00:17:00] twins with composites.
Because comp, the tough thing with that is a composite’s always changing.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Joel Saxum: Right. So there’s always a fatigue life and there’s the strength of it and the amount of twist and those, those things are gonna change throughout its life. So to, to develop a digital twin is very difficult.
Allen Hall: Yeah.
Joel Saxum: Right. So you can sense things.
Yes. And that’s what you guys are doing. Yeah.
Allen Hall: Yeah, yeah.
Joel Saxum: But developing a actual digital twin that you can, you know, a hundred percent rely on, is difficult.
Allen Hall: And I think the torsion question changes based upon where you are in the world. And northern colder climates. I think the torsion issue is a little bit different than you get closer to the equator and it’s warmer.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. The turbulence and Yeah. Yeah.
Allen Hall: And throw in turbulence.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Right. So not, it’s not a one size fits all solution there. You need to understand what’s happening on your site. In particular in regards to torsion and a number of other things, vibrational modes
Matthew Stead: and,
Allen Hall: and root bushing’s, the same thing. I think some of the root bushing issues that I’m hearing about are where it’s a little bit hot, warmer.
Matthew Stead: [00:18:00] Mm-hmm.
Allen Hall: Right. Where we were seeing some issues there because of the temperature and maybe humidity, but So you can’t always take the data from Denmark and apply it worldwide. Yeah. You can’t apply that necessarily to Australia. You need to put some sensors on it and monitor it, even if you’re monitoring on a sampling basis.
On a tur you don’t have any experience on, at least you know
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Allen Hall: What is likely to happen and then you can do some prediction.
Joel Saxum: Mm-hmm.
Allen Hall: Have a little bit of a model of what five years out looks like.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. You and I walked through a case one time with, uh, with a guest on the podcast about the same exact turbine model, like serial numbers that were real close to each other.
Yeah. Deployed in Sweden and deployed in Thailand.
Matthew Stead: Ah, cool.
Joel Saxum: And the ones in Thailand had way more of the same serial issue. And the ones in Sweden had like one. Wow. The ones in Thailand had like a hundred.
Matthew Stead: Interesting,
Joel Saxum: but they’re, they equated it to heat and humidity in the effecting the maintenance layup.
Matthew Stead: It’s a lot. We don’t know.
Joel Saxum: Yeah,
Allen Hall: there’s a lot We don’t know because,
Joel Saxum: because that we don’t need sensors for
Allen Hall: Exactly. We, the sensor part has been the missing link of saving operators millions of dollars a [00:19:00] year. We are literally talking about those numbers. A lot of the big savings have already happened.
Now we’re looking f when I say big savings. Operators are pretty smart about cutting $10 million out of a budget because that’s what they do for a living. You got a lot of smart people in the room trying to do that. Now we’re looking for million dollar grabs as as many places as we can. Sensors are gonna be that million dollar grab.
Mm-hmm.
Joel Saxum: Well, I think the sensor thing, and, and this is a, a macro comment about blade sensing technology, when I first got into the wind industry full time, 2019. If there was you guys were around. Yeah, right. There was blade sensing products around and IOT products for Blades around, but it was like every, even up 21, 22, 23, you had panels that sessions going like, yeah, we know there’s stuff out there.
All these operators saying, hmm eh. But it really seems in the last year, and with the one big beautiful bill here that people are actually listening. They’re seeing the technology, they’re deploying it more. Um, I mean, you guys are, you’ve got 2000 systems out in the field.
Matthew Stead: Two and a half,
Joel Saxum: two and a half thousand systems of different, all different products.
[00:20:00] Yeah, yeah, yeah. For different solutions and. You’re seeing more people say, seeing the value in it, adopting it. Mm-hmm. Looking at doing things more intelligently. That to me is very promising.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. And I think, um, also at this, um, event, we announced some of the results of the study that we did now with you guys as well around the nearly 3000, uh, lightning events.
We’ve, we’ve been measuring over the last 12 years. Uh, 12 months, sorry. In 12 years. 12 months. 12 years. Feels like lot of good data in 12 years. Like 12 years.
Joel Saxum: Yeah.
Matthew Stead: Um, and so we’ve got some really good data about, um, this ties into the risk factor, you know? Mm-hmm. Which, which turbines are being struck more, which ones need to be, you know, more attention and so.
You know, 3000 strikes. Um, so I think, you know, in the next 12 months, we’ll get 6,000 when we get more units out. So data, data, data feeding back into reducing risk.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. So data reducing risk through like showing realities.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Joel Saxum: Right. So, um, to anybody listening here, if you, you’re interested in what the latest we’ve seen in ground truthing lightning strike data to lightning location services to what’s [00:21:00] actually happening in the field.
Get ahold of us. Get ahold of a myself, Matthew. We’ll hop on a call, walk you through what this data looks like. It’s eye-opening.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. Upward strikes.
Joel Saxum: Upward strikes.
Allen Hall: Yeah. Upward strikes are, were really prevalent this year in the United States. Yeah. We’ve been tracking it pretty closely. And uh, Matthew, I think you threw a number out like 20%.
Matthew Stead: Yeah,
Allen Hall: definitely. Of wind turbine strikes or upward strikes.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. Or more. I mean, that’s, or more that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s for the full 12 months.
Allen Hall: Right.
Matthew Stead: So when you look at winter.
Allen Hall: Oh, it goes up by, yeah, yeah. Substantially. Yeah. Yeah. So it varies by season. All this is leading to an event that’s gonna happen in February in Melbourne, Australia.
So we’ve been working hard behind the scenes on Wind Energy O and M Australia, 2026. Last year we had about 180 people, 200 people, uh, 72. Yeah. So it, it was a big size crowd. We, we, we had to close the door at point. We
Matthew Stead: plan for 80. [00:22:00]
Allen Hall: Yeah. Yeah. We plan for half of that and to double it. And, and this year the response has been fantastic.
Everybody’s starting to register already. What is the website right now? Just so I don’t forget it.
Matthew Stead: Uh, wind. Sorry, WMA 2020 six.com.
Allen Hall: WOMA, 2020 six.com. Com. You can go and register there if you’re interested, interested in being a presenter, uh, or being on a panel. You, you can also, yeah, put in your information there.
It is gonna be for
Joel Saxum: or sponsor.
Allen Hall: Or a sponsor, right? So looking
Joel Saxum: for a
Allen Hall: couple of sponsors. We have a lot of sponsors. If you had a lot of sponsors already sign up and, and commit, especially a number from last year. Signed up again this year because it’s a transfer of knowledge. You’re bringing people together that are experts in their field to talk to other experts about how they’re running their assets.
That is what you need. If you’re an operator, you want to put your engineers in that room and you’re in asset managers in that room to get to the best configuration. The best setup for Turbine [00:23:00] in Australia, turbines in America. Turbines in Brazil.
Intro: Mm-hmm.
Allen Hall: That’s where everybody’s gonna be coming together in Melbourne in February.
Is a lot better weather than anything in the United States for sure. Unless you’re in Miami, maybe. But Melbourne is a beautiful city. It’s easy to get around in. It’s an easy airport in and out of flights all the time. It is a simple place to get to, even though it is a long distance from the United States.
It’s easy. Yeah, that’s one of the things I enjoyed the most was pleasant weather. Great restaurants, a lot of. Really, really good presentations and panels. Mm-hmm. And I walked out with a lot more knowledge than when I walked out.
Matthew Stead: Mm-hmm. Uh, I think Joel’s, uh, line was by engineers for engineers.
Allen Hall: Mm.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. So I think that helped a lot.
And I think the other thing that this is very clearly a not-for-profit event and it, so it is really about the knowledge and knowledge sharing rather than Yeah. Salesy stuff.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. It, at that event, it’s much like the conversations we were talking about at [00:24:00] the beginning of this, this, uh, little episode that’s happening here right now.
Where we are is it’s engineers talking to engineers, people that don’t know each other. Oh, you work for this operator? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let’s exchange information because you can help me.
Allen Hall: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Joel Saxum: That, that, at that conference last year, it was basically all of the major operators that probably 90 to 95% of the install capacity of wind were represented there.
Plus the, the limited amount of ISPs that started to grow that market started to change a little bit. Mm-hmm. We took some feedback from the event last year and adjusted it this year to be a little bit, we’re gonna do some round tables that are based on case studies, real things that happened, real value, this is how much money was saved, this is how much time was saved, this is how the solution was implemented.
Uh, again, like we said, going in there and walking away with something that’s tangible. Yeah. That you can bring back to your operation and say, Hey, I learned this. We should try this.
Allen Hall: Yeah, that’s gonna be the, the great thing about it. And we’re only a couple months away, so if you’re interested in going to Wind Energy o and m [00:25:00] Australia 2026, you need to get to the website WMA, and register WMA 2020 six.com.
Matthew, it’s so great to connect. We, we rarely are in the same place at the same time. We’re always in different continents.
Joel Saxum: That’s because this guy travels too much.
Allen Hall: Yeah. And Matthew’s actually heading to Japan here. Tomorrow.
Joel Saxum: Yes.
Allen Hall: Uh, to do some installations in Japan, because eLog is exploded worldwide.
There’s, there’s so many deployments going on simultaneously. It’s, it’s really hard to keep up with. Every time I talk to you, I’m going to a different place. You’re putting more sensors on, like, wow, that’s pretty good.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Allen Hall: It’s about time. Right. Good to go
Matthew Stead: on side.
Allen Hall: The industry is moving towards more knowledge.
Yeah. And that’s great. So Matthew, thank you so much for, for being here. If anybody needs to get a hold of you, Matthew, how do they do that?
Matthew Stead: Uh, through my LinkedIn profile. Might be the easiest. Um, Matthew said. Yeah. OGs Ping. Go for it. Alright, great. Thank you, Matthew. Thanks, Alan. Thanks Joel. Good to be [00:26:00] here.
https://weatherguardwind.com/eologix-ping-skyspecs/
Weather Guard Lightning Tech
What Operators Want to Hear at WOMA 2027
Two days of operator meetings in Melbourne shape the WOMA 2027 agenda, from performance upgrades and cable faults to foundations and bolts.
The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall. I’m here with Matthew Stead and Rosemary Barnes. And Rosemary, where are we?
Rosemary Barnes: We’re in Melbourne, and we have been visiting future attendees and sponsors and people interested in, in the event to see what topics that we should be talking about.
What are the hot topics of the moment?
Allen Hall: Which is a very interesting two days, Matthew, in that, uh, we h- did meet with a number of operators based in Australia, but, uh, they’re also very worldly. They have talked to companies all over about operations and, and maintenance, and there are some really eye-opening topics- Mm
that will be- Mm … at WOMA 2027 this year.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. The thing that was interesting for me was [00:01:00]that actually the topics have changed each year. So, um, they’re evolving and the industry’s continuing to, to do better, and so that, that was really interesting. Performance upgrades was probably one of the big areas of, of new interest, I think.
I think we heard with the pressure on pricing, uh, the market and so forth, you know, that, that 1% or 2% now is becoming more important. Um, so I think, uh, upgrades will definitely feature quite a lot. Um, balance of plant was also a big topic. Um, you just can’t ig- ignore the, um, transmission, you can’t ignore the transformers, you can’t ignore, uh, condensers and all these sorts of things, so yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Cables.
Matthew Stead: Cables.
Rosemary Barnes: Terminations. Terminations of cables. Specifically raised several times.
Allen Hall: Yep. Yeah. It’s all about being more efficient, uh, getting more production, and then with the PPA prices, uh, that are changing-
Matthew Stead: Mm …
Allen Hall: rapidly, uh, everybody is paying more attention to the bottom line.
Matthew Stead: Mm, mm.
Allen Hall: Absolutely. There, there’s less cash running around, uh, chasing new development.
It’s [00:02:00] more of a focus on making sure your, at least your existing assets are performing as, as well as they can be- Mm … which then opens up the, uh, Pandora’s box of opportunity. Mm. Because there are 1%’s all around a wind turbine. More specifically, uh, all the drive train issues, the blade issues, the generator issues, and even going into the substation.
Mm. I, I was really shocked on BOP e- the, the one topic that came up, uh, yesterday and today was buried cables. Mm. Like-
Matthew Stead: Faults …
Allen Hall: faults.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Junctions. Finding- Yeah … finding faults and what to do about them. Yeah. Yeah. But I think in addition to just wanting more revenue, I think people have, are getting more sophisticated about what actually matters and then the finances.
You know, everyone’s focused so much on availability, and now people- Mm … are like, okay, yeah, like once you’re at a certain level of availability, gets harder and harder to get more. And actually, you know, not all availability is equal. Is good. It, it [00:03:00] depends. Yeah. Yeah, like you wanna, um, you wanna focus on how much you’re generating at the times when electricity prices are high specifically, which usually means during lower wind speed periods.
Yeah. Which is actually good because that matches really well with what is actually possible. It’s, it’s hard to get more power out of the turbine if it’s at, you know, its rated power, then you’re not g- More efficiency is not gonna get you any more, um, power output, whereas lower in the power curve- Mm … um, when wind speeds are lower, there’s less electricity in the grid and so prices are higher.
And so- Mm … yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s why people are really asking to know more about what efficiency upgrades are possible, better ways to operate, scheduled maintenance, um, all those sorts of things. Mm. So that will be really interesting.
Matthew Stead: Raising the bar on sophistication. Um, but also life extension
Allen Hall: Yes, a lot of discussion about life extension
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, end of life and life extension End of life Yeah, um-
Matthew Stead: Foundations, structures Which is
Allen Hall: tied to PPA.
Mm. A lot of that [00:04:00] discussion I, at least I looked at it as, uh, if I had a PPA and I can continue with that PPA with an existing turbine, I want to do that. Mm,
Matthew Stead: mm,
Allen Hall: mm. But how do I do that and how do I know that that existing turbine can last another five years? It seemed to go in five-year blocks, like can we get to another five years and then another and then, then another.
Wow.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Once you get to 20, 20, 25 years, I think people like, uh, they, you know- It’s getting a little- Their original agreement might have been for 20, then they kind of just assume that there will be another five, and then after that they’re- Yeah … kind of reassessing cyclically and yeah, I know that people make plans for, you know, what components are replaceable, what would they have to get in, and I think that sometimes, uh, people doing those plans aren’t as familiar with the, you know, actual technical issues that are being faced.
Like, is a blade a replaceable component? It may be early on in the life it sort of is, not easily, but you know, like a 25-year-old wind turbine, you know, good luck trying to order 10 new blades because you’ve got a, you know, an issue that’s-
Allen Hall: Oh, well you, you need to read the news. Did you [00:05:00] see the news today about, uh, the, the wooden wind turbine blades as a replacement for aged blades?
That, that’s happening- … in real time, Rosa.
Rosemary Barnes: Okay. I know they- Yeah. Yep, yep. Okay. Okay. So that, that’s, that’s good. Making carbon new blade. E- even so, I don’t think that they’re- Okay. … gonna be, like, super-duper cheap, so you’re still gonna wanna be, um, doing a trade-off between y- you know, like, what kind of repairs.
You might be able to change the way you’re operating to reduce loads. Um, you might be able to monitor to make sure that your blades are safe. You know, if you know that there’s an issue, um, you just wanna get some advanced warning before blades start falling off your, your tower. Mm. You know, and then you can push it further.
Yeah. Whereas if you’ve got no information, then you have to be conservative and shut it down. Yeah. So yeah, I think there’s a whole lot that can be g- can be done there in that area.
Matthew Stead: There was a point that came up today, which I think was close to your heart, on, you know, if you’re going to be going for 1% or 2% or 0.5% AEP improvement, how do you actually measure that and how do you set up a proper experiment?
So-
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah …
Matthew Stead: I, I, I love that topic. [00:06:00]
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. No, it’s one that I, um, yeah, I deal with m- my clients I, I’m often… It’s one of the things that Pablo really loves to do, is to organize trials of that nature of new technologies and see if they work. But, um, yeah, asset managers are usually very, uh, focused on fast results.
You know, they’ve got a, a big problem and they want a solution now, so they wanna just roll out the new technology over an entire wind farm. But if you do that, then it’s almost impossible. Unless you get, like, a huge benefit, like, uh, 10% gains or, you know, like reduce your failures by 50% or more, it’s really hard to actually- Mm
pick that out if you just replace everything. Mm. Whereas if you do a really, really good, um, trial plan- Systematic. Yeah … and you match pairs very well so that you have, you know, a control for each turbine and there’s- so many variables in a wind farm. It’s not, it’s not as easy as just, like, randomly choosing 50% to do and not do.
Mm. Mm. Mm. Like, you have to, you know, put some work into the trial design, and then, you know, like, do your statistical calculations ahead of time to know how long it’s gonna take you to get s- statistical [00:07:00]significance. So then you don’t just have a gut feeling about- Yep … how something went. You’ve actually got numbers, and then you can take those numbers to, you know, other wind farms that you’ve got- Yeah
and, and know what’s going on much better.
Matthew Stead: Worst study is an inconclusive study.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. Definitely.
Allen Hall: Well, that comes back to the data analysis- Mm … which a lot of operators mentioned, and how much data there is and what to do with it, and it did seem like a couple of operators have chosen some AI tools, varying degrees, all the way down from Microsoft Copilot to something much more complicated.
Uh, but I think there’s, uh, getting that d- to the last 1, 2, 3%, you’re going to need those tools- Absolutely … because what do you choose? Do you choose a blade? Do you choose a gearbox? Do you choose a generator? Do you go to the substation to get that percentage point or two Without having some really powerful tools- Mm.
you may be wasting your time [00:08:00] and money.
Matthew Stead: Mm.
Allen Hall: Which is a, a, a very interesting, uh, aspect to wind energy because it’s such an industrial business that, uh, we haven’t used heavy computational tools, uh, un- until really now.
Matthew Stead: Mm.
Allen Hall: And maybe Australia’s at the forefront because of the PPA and negative pricing is that that will, uh, actually lead an industry.
Because I haven’t seen a lot of that being used globally. Mm. So this is the first time an operator- Mm … that I’ve talked to has said, “We’re using it.”
Matthew Stead: Yeah. It’s quite a different discussion, um, I think, you know, this year compared to previous years in that I think in the past it was getting to know what’s possible, but now it’s like real case studies are coming through.
And a few of the people had some really good examples that we can talk about at the conference as to how they’ve actually been helped and how they did this and what the outcome was. I think, yeah, that would be really great content on that.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I think it’s gonna be a good mix of people who have used third party tools and have experience with it, people that are doing it in-house and can share- Mm
some of the kinds of results- Mm … that, that you can get just from analyzing your own- Mm … [00:09:00] SCADA data. Um, people talking about how they get the data that they want. Mm. ‘Cause it’s not always so easy. You would think that, you know, you own a wind turbine, you have a right to have all of the data that comes through it, but it’s not.
Um, even if you do technically have a right, it’s, uh, it, it’s harder to actually get it than you might think. Mm. So yeah, sharing all, all those kinds of things. But I think also, like just as important as talking about the successes is talking about the, the gaps that– people still feel lots of gaps. Like, okay, we’ve got all the data, we’re collecting it.
We know that there’s so much potential here- Mm … but we don’t really- Mm … know what we can do, or it’s hard for us to, you know- Mm … make headway in this particular pain point. And that is really useful for companies that are developing tools to know what are the, the problems. Mm. Because then they can e- you know, they’re well placed to fix them.
Allen Hall: Mm. Which leads to the discussion we had with the operators and, uh, some of the suppliers for WOMA 2027. There’s a lot of interest. And as we’re sitting in the conference rooms, I’m thinking, we may not have enough room to [00:10:00] seat everybody. Uh, the WOMA 2027 website is up and running, and you can register now.
So just go to woma2027.com and get started there. At the same point, we’ve had a lot of contact with, uh, pretty much everybody that wants to sponsor the event, and there’s only a limited number of ways to sponsor. So if you’re interested in doing that, you, you need to go to woma2027.com and look at those, uh, part- particular packages and see what- Mm
fits your, your business. Uh- Going back to some of the, the comments we were just discussing downstairs about what we heard at 2026, like, which is only a couple of months ago, right? It’s back in February this year. Uh, there’s, they’re still discussing what happened at WOMA 2026- Mm. Which was very fascinating- Mm
because I think Rosemary, you and I have been to conferences that I have not thought an iota … about what happened at those conferences. Just nothing interesting does occur. There’s no new, new information, there’s [00:11:00] no new science, there’s no new operator approaches.
Rosemary Barnes: Mm.
Allen Hall: But we’re gonna see a number of those- Yeah.
Mm … come next March.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Well, I think it’s partly because I don’t know what other conference organizers do, but, you know, we’ve had a exhausting few days here. You’ve come all the way from America, obviously, and, and Claire as well, also come over, our producer. Um, so, y- you know, like, we’re working really hard to make sure that the topics…
Like, it’s not an accident that the topics are ones that people are talking about later, because we come here to make sure that we get the right topics. And it’s not just these meetings as well. People get in touch, and- Mm … anybody watching, listening, who has, you know, something that they wanna talk about, then definitely, you know, send us a message, and yeah, we’re working on the agenda.
We’ll, we’ll have a draft agenda in the next couple of weeks based on what we’ve learned here, but then we’ve got the hard job of it’s not just that you have a really interesting topic, you need to have a really great speaker- Yeah … or several really great speakers, usually covering several different aspects of the problem.
You know, maybe it’s, uh, yeah, an asset [00:12:00] owner, an OEM, and some, some technology provider, you know, all together giving different, um, yeah, perspectives. That’s, I think, what makes a really great session. Mm. So yeah, we need the ideas for the sessions, and we also need the ideas for great speakers.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Right.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. I think we’ve, we’ve already matched a few of those dots, so- Yeah … I, we’ve heard people asking for certain topics they wanna hear about, and then we’ve heard other operators saying, “Well, this is what we could talk about.” So I think we’ve already-
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, yeah … got some great
Matthew Stead: progress.
Rosemary Barnes: It was, it was interesting ’cause we, we built up a list of, you know-
Matthew Stead: Yeah
Rosemary Barnes: frequently raised topics, and then you’d say it to the next person that you went to- Mm … and they’re like, “Oh, that’s not a problem for us because we’ve done X, Y, Z.” And you’re like, “Okay. Well, excellent. You can, you can present the solutions that we know that other people- Yeah. Yes … are, are looking for.” Yeah.
So it has been… Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s definitely worthwhile coming, as, as tiring as it is. Yeah. Um, definitely worthwhile, and we’ll get a much better agenda for the- Yeah … for the effort.
Matthew Stead: And I think, I mean, it has been tiring. Um, but what, what made it for me was one of the operators said that [00:13:00] this is the only conference they will go to So I think, I think we’re doing the right thing.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Yeah. I, I think so. I understand too, like, you know, all of us, we kind of are forced to go to events because that’s where our, our clients and customers are, and so you need to see them. And yeah, like I’ve even gone to the extent of some events where I don’t particularly like the event, but I know everyone’s going.
Mm. I just go and sit near the event for a couple of days and meet people at a cafe. So yeah, like we can’t get away from it. But if you’re an asset manager or, um, yeah, somebody in that kind of type of work, like you’ve got better things to do than listen to sales pitches aggressively thrown at you that aren’t relevant- Yeah
to what you’re doing. So, um, yeah. Like I, I definitely love to hear that kind of feedback- Yeah … and wanna make sure that we get it every, every year. Like that’s- It’s, it’s
Matthew Stead: encouraging.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah … yeah, that’s, that’s the point of the conference, so.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah.
Matthew Stead: The other big topic was we would really love more OEM involvement.
Um-
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Everybody wants more- … a lot of the operators- … OEM involvement- Yeah … all of the asset owners.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Like we want to [00:14:00] hear from OEMs more, have them there. Um, so yeah, we’re, we’ll be trying to To get those sorted
Allen Hall: Well, WOMA is a global conference, although it’s Australia-based and there’s a, a number of Australian operators.
There are Danish, Americans, uh, plenty of Europeans. Uh, we’re gonna see some from Southeast Asia, I think, this year. Mm-hmm. And, and Japan hopefully will come. Uh, because it’s a, it’s a global conference, there’s global knowledge- Mm … and wind is such a big industry. You may not have the solution in the United States, it may be sitting in Australia, and we need to exchange those ideas.
Mm. And that, that’s the point. So w- we are continuing to look for those world experts as we have received all the inputs of these are all the topics we wanna go hear about. Great. Now it’s on us three to go find some of those world experts and, and try to get them to Melbourne. Yeah. And I, I think that’s a great opportunity.
So if we do call you and ask you to participate in WOMA [00:15:00] 2027, please take it seriously because- Mm … you will be bombarded with great questions- Mm … and contacts and information. Uh, it’s an event you won’t wanna miss. Yeah. And- But I would- … there’s opportunity there.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I’d say we’re, we’re prioritizing OEMs, um, to, to get more participation, ideally to speak, but at least to be there.
And we have heard from multiple asset owners in Australia that they want, they, they want to know what are some of the upgrades that they can do- Yeah … that you’re offering. They wanna know what’s coming next in terms of technology. They wanna know what are some of the non-Western options. So, you know, like it would be great to get some Chinese wind turbine, um, manufacturers as well.
Like, they want all this information. They don’t want a slick sales brochure pitch that doesn’t give them any technical information. So we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to get, you know, some technical people to speak on, yeah, what are the upgrades you offer and how does it work- Mm-hmm … and show us a case study that demonstrates the improvements.
Um, ’cause that [00:16:00] sometimes is really hard to get out of- Mm … out of OEMs. You know, that, “We’ve got this thing, it’s so amazing, you should get it.” Okay, well, what’s the business case for it? “Oh, well, we don’t have any numbers. Just trust us.”
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Um, it’s so common to get a pitch like that. So yeah, any, any OEM that has any- anything like that, either for the next generation of wind turbines or for upgrading the current fleet, yeah, if you’re willing to bring the data, then people, they are desperate to hear this information.
Allen Hall: Mm.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. That came up so many times.
Rosemary Barnes: Mm.
Allen Hall: So what were the other, uh, topics that we’re… I’m just not thinking off the top of my head. I know foundations came up quite a bit- Foundations, yeah … which was an odd one, I think, because we haven’t seen that a lot in Australia. Yeah. But this year, foundations, foundations, foundations.
Basically, the health of foundations. Yeah.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. I think really there was a lifting of the maturity. Um, I think the topics were sort of showing that, you know, Maslow’s hierarchy and moving into the more of optimization rather than making do, and I think life extension around the foundations was a, a really good example of that.
Allen Hall: And bolts.
Matthew Stead: Bolts? Yeah, bolts.
Allen Hall: [00:17:00] Everybody said bolts. Bolts.
Matthew Stead: Bolts.
Allen Hall: You think the world’s simplest device, we’ve been making bolts for nearly 1,000 years or at least a couple hundred. But it does- And, you know- … come up quite often … cable, cable
Matthew Stead: terminations, again, some really
Rosemary Barnes: basic- Yeah, that, really specific ones that were raised multiple times.
Yeah. Um, yeah, which, which is great- Yeah … ’cause it gives us a good direction to go. But I do love how it changes so much every year- Yeah … ’cause it makes me feel like, okay, yeah, like we’re actually, you know, it’s worthwhile, um, putting on another event. Mm. Um, not just recording one event and then just, you know, like replaying that every year or something.
Re-educating.
Allen Hall: Yeah. Well, I, I think there’s a learning exercise that has happened over the past two years where people now are knowledgeable about those things we talked about- Mm … two years ago. Uh, was it, was it even two years ago? It was a year and a half ago when we first started this, so we’re, we’re not that deep into it.
Although our third conference will be next March, uh, you just see more energy, more industry knowledge in some of the references that I heard, uh, in terms of other companies and the approaches they’re taking clearly came from WOMA.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Mm.
Matthew Stead: Yeah,
Allen Hall: yeah. Which is, which is [00:18:00] fascinating. Yeah. That’s
Rosemary Barnes: good. I mean, we want- It, it is
Allen Hall: sticking
Rosemary Barnes: we want tech conferences to get better, right? That was the- No … the reason why we, uh, we started this conference was ’cause we didn’t think that it was sufficient, what we had available. So, you know, it’s not a bad thing if other conferences, um, get better. Yeah. Yeah. We should also mention that blades were, were raised a fair bit.
We talked so much about blades in the previous years, and we will be talking about blades a lot again, including we’ve got a master class on the Friday. Uh, it’s… Yeah, we’ll go back to some of the basics about how the composite materials work and how a blade is designed and certified and manufactured, and, um- Lightning.
Y- yeah, yeah, a little, a little bit about lightning. Um, I don’t wanna cover it too much because we did the master class on lightning- Right … last year. Mm. Um, yeah. And yeah, some of the common damage methods anyway. And of course- Mm … yeah, lightning is probably the most- … common, or I guess leading edge erosion is the most, and then lightning would be the most expensive.
Um, yeah, so we’ll be, we’ll be covering all that and just try and raise the knowledge level a little bit, um, for [00:19:00] everybody to… It’s a very complicated kind of, uh, yeah, component.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah.
Matthew Stead: And workshops. So each year we’ve run sort of workshops or roundtables or whatever, so we’re still thinking about the format for them, but, um, thinking about how we’ll reintroduce them again this year.
You know, specific topics, specific questions, specific answers.
Rosemary Barnes: Mm.
Allen Hall: And the three of us will be in Hamburg in a couple of weeks at Wind Energy Hamburg, so if you see us and you’re interested in coming to Australia, that’s the place to grab us and- Yep … and shake us and say, “I wanna go to Australia. How do I do it?”
Rosemary Barnes: Mm.
Allen Hall: Uh, yeah. Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Especially if you’ve got a, a t- technology that addresses some of those specific issues that we’ve mentioned- Mm … then, um, yeah, just know ahead of time that Australia needs, needs more information and more, um, solutions available to them. So, yeah. And
Matthew Stead: that reminds me, we had a really discussion a- around safety and, you know, reasonable and [00:20:00] practicable, and discussion around all the lessons learned about how…
or what is best practice on a site, what is best practice about how to manage risks and-
Rosemary Barnes: Mm.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. Yeah. I know you, you, you enjoyed that one.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And we’re not talking about, like, safety the- Ear muffs or hats. The, um, rou- Yeah, the routine safety that if you- The goggles, yeah … yeah, trip over and graze your knee, then you need to let the site supervisor know.
You, you know, it’s not that stuff, ’cause sites have that under control. That’s a given, yeah. Or at least the ability to get that under control. We’re talking about the bigger- Yeah … bigger things, you know. Like, uh, is there a issue that is causing blades to fall off turbines every now and then? Is there an issue that, uh, can lead to, you know, a fire?
I, I think everyone, like- Yeah … a big fear of everybody’s. There’s never been, um, in Australia at least, there’s never been a wind turbine fire that has caused a bush fire, but it is a possibility, and it would be so bad for the industry. So, you know, it’s those things- Mm … that could be just terrible, preventing those before they happen.
Mm. So that’s the kind of safety that we’re gonna mainly focus on. Mm. Although, you know, we’re not gonna [00:21:00] turn down questions on, um, some of the smaller stuff as well.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Mm.
Matthew Stead: And we even thought about getting some lawyers-
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah …
Matthew Stead: you missed out on this discussion, Rosie. Okay.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah.
Matthew Stead: So
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Lawyers, this is news to me.
Well, I mean, are we talking contracts or, um-
Matthew Stead: No, no … no … it’s really operations. I mean- Right … the environmental, um, issues- Oh yeah … the operational issues. Mm. You know, there’s, there’s a few things in there that the lawyers can add.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I mean- … I’ve, I constantly find myself having to interpret, you know, legal, um, legal text and also anticipate, you know, it’s one thing about what’s the right engineering, but then there is also the legal interpretation of it- Yeah
uh, as well, you know, in terms of contract law, but then also in, in terms of safety. Yeah. Um, yeah. Was this certification done correctly? You know- Yeah … that’s got some legal aspect to it. So yeah, that- Yeah … makes sense to me. Insurance is another one where I would say- Yeah, actually that came up … you know, like some, some people might think that that doesn’t sound interesting, but yeah, in- insurance is the other-
Matthew Stead: Mm
Rosemary Barnes: aspect that you [00:22:00] just can’t, um, you can’t get away from it. Like, you can’t just think that you’re, you’re doing your engineering without bothering about Mm … yeah, like finance and law and, um, and insurance. Those are things that- Mm … you spend a lot of time thinking about.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. Mm. And I guess we would also love to hear, you know, about potential speakers, but we’d also love to hear any other topics that people are attending and want to know about as well.
Rosemary Barnes: Mm-hmm.
Allen Hall: Absolutely. And if you haven’t registered for WOMA 2027, which will be March 3rd through 5th at the Pullman in East Melbourne, right? East Melbourne, yeah. They just redefined it. It’s Pullman in East Melbourne. Uh, go ahead and go to woma2027.com and register now. Uh, Matthew and Rosemary, it’s great to see you in person again, and we’ll see you in a couple of weeks, uh, hopefully in, in Germany.
Rosemary Barnes: Mm.
Allen Hall: Very [00:23:00] exciting.
The substance of the meme here is correct; Florida public schools require comprehensive K-12 instruction on the history and dangers of communism, following a series of legislative moves and curriculum standards. The updated “History of Communism” curriculum is rolling out for the 2026–2027 school year, mandating that students learn about the “brutal realities” and (the catastrophic) global impact of communist regimes.
When I was a schoolboy in the 1960s and early 1970s, we came to learn that all efforts to establish a viable communist nation had failed, but our teachers were not shackled as to what they could teach and how they could teach it. As a result, we came to a variety of helpful viewpoints, and these are what I offered my own kids as they were growing up, e.g.,
- “Men are not angels,” as my sixth-grade social studies teacher explained. Those who do not need to work in order to survive can simply goof off.
- Yet idleness is averse to most people’s psychological needs to be an active and productive person, and member of society.
- Power corrupts, and absolutely power corrupts absolutely. Democracy prevents the accumulation of a pathological amount of power on the part of any one leader. (This was assumed to be true until Donald Trump’s second term.)
- If Lenin (a butcher) hadn’t had Trotsky (a compassionate intellectual) assassinated, the entirety of the USSR would have turned out completely differently.
- If the U.S. hadn’t, through its embargoes, made it impossible for Cuba to offer its people a decent quality of life, their revolution may have succeeded and brought forth a new way of thinking.
- There are examples of smaller scale societies in which the ideals of communism work out very nicely, e.g., the Israeli kibbutz.
- We read and discussed at length a book called “Social Ideals and Ideal Societies” in which these concepts were analyzed fairly and in great depth.
Now, will the typical American schoolchild turn out better if he’s cut off from thinking critically about all this and forced to accept the mantra that “communism = evil?” The typical Florida Republican would say the answer is an obvious yes, but most intelligent people would dispute that.
Producing educated people who can think for themselves is an idea quite opposed to the ongoing control of a population.
To the author of the meme here, I say: It’s safe to say that most folks in Trump’s MAGA base are stupid, though one needs more than a low IQ to fit into this segment.
In particular, we mustn’t omit mean-spiritedness. People who are kind, compassionate, decent and tolerant of others are grossly unqualified to be rank-and-file Trumpers.
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