Published

2 years ago

May 9, 2024

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Everpoint Services and INL Team Up on Cybersecurity Research

Candace Wood, COO of Everpoint Services, along with Michael McCarty and Megan Culler from Idaho National Lab, discuss their collaboration at Little Pringle Wind Farm to conduct cybersecurity research and testing. The episode delves into the critical importance of addressing cybersecurity vulnerabilities in wind energy infrastructure to ensure grid resiliency and energy security.

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

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Weather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.com
Intelstor – https://www.intelstor.com

Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. This podcast has an interesting story behind it. Our first guest today is Candace Wood, Chief Operating Officer at Everpoint Services, which is based in Texas. Candace purchased the Little Pringle Wind Farm at an auction.

Little Pringle Wind Farm is outside of Texas. Amarillo, Texas, and buying a wind farm at auction doesn’t happen very often. And this is where the story takes an interesting turn. Candace and Everpoint made a decision about how to use this wind farm. Everpoint connected with the Idaho National Laboratory, cybersecurity experts, to use a portion of the turbines for cybersecurity.

Research and testing. So from the Idaho National Lab is Michael McCarty, who is a cybersecurity research specialist and Megan Culler, who is a power engineer specializing in cybersecurity and resiliency, also from the Idaho National Laboratory. Megan, Michael, and Candice, welcome to the show.

Candace Wood: Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Michael McCarty: Thank you.

Allen Hall: Alright, so let’s start off with a little prequel and figure out how Candace ended up buying a wind farm. So you were at an auction Candace? Can you describe what happened where you decided to put down some money on a wind farm?

Candace Wood: Everpoint Services, we are a end of life services company for renewables.

So we primarily focus on decommissioning and demolition of wind turbines as well as solar assets. And we’d heard about this wind farm that had been abandoned since about So I was at the auction in August of 2017. Small farm, 10 units originally 2 megawatts each and heard that it was going up for auction.

The county had seized the asset to try and recover some back taxes. I tuned into the option really with the intention of finding out who was going to purchase it and then pitching our services to them. Hey, we can come in and help you cut these things down. So I’m listening to the auction and the price point is going once going twice and I’m thinking gosh, that’s Really not a lot of money.

I mean we’re talking, five figures and I thought well, let me just throw out a bid there and see what happens so I threw out a bid that was just slightly above what was about to be the winning bid and on behold I One, I bought the wind farm, so it was somewhat impulsive decision, which was both terrifying and exciting.

In the immediate aftermath, what was interesting was once we looked into it a little bit more, we discovered that the interconnection agreement at the site was still in good standing. And once I actually finally got out there to look at it, because I did purchase the site unseen, I Never actually looked at it before.

Once we got out there and looked at it, I thought, these turbines, they’re not in such terrible condition, all things considered. And so we started looking into, okay what could we do? Maybe did we want to repower it? And that led us down the path of looking for funding sources, which led us to the government a lending program within the government.

They say if you don’t want to borrow 100 million or more, we really aren’t interested. But we know these guys over at Idaho National Labs who’ve been looking for a wind farm to do some cyber security testing on. They might be interested in what you have going on there. So that was how we ended up getting linked up with Idaho National Labs.

Allen Hall: Candace, when you get to the site, you’ve taken a look at these wind turbines. They are functional still?

Candace Wood: No. Several towers had blades that were broken off. One of the first. My 1st order is a business was to actually get out there and clean up some of the blade debris that had fallen down into the landowner’s fields so that they could plant in the spring.

And no, it was not functioning, but having a background in construction and when, I, I. Climbed one of the towers and said the bolts seem to be holding together pretty well. And the towers that had the blades on them, seem to be mostly intact aside from a lot of dust.

The other primary issue was that, the copper pirates had gotten in there and cut out most of the cabling, the voltage cabling. And so that was the, that’s the main hurdle and getting the site back up and running. And so that’s what we’ve been working with on is to secure some funding so that we can actually go in rewire several of the towers, get them back up and running so that they can try and pack into them.

Joel Saxum: My mind switches to a bunch of things, right? So you stumbled upon this auction. The interconnection agreement, unbeknownst to you at the time, is still in place. Great, right? I’m thinking, man, could it be, could it be repurposed? Could it be behind the meter green hydrogen? Could it be, could we put energy back into the grid?

However, to my understanding, these are de wind turbines, right?

Candace Wood: They are a de wind, which is no longer in existence.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. And tough to, spare parts, anything’s going to have to be custom built. It’s not like you just walk, it’s not like it’s a GE one five and you call your neighbor wind farm and say Hey, do you got some breaks or you got some bearings or apparently do you have some medium voltage cabling that we can borrow?

You guys don’t have that capability. Joining up with the Idaho national labs, that is a, there’s two really cool things about that to me. So it’s someone that they needed to have a project, right? They have something that they want to do. They want to do something that will better the wind industry as a whole.

You have the assets. So it seems like it’s a a good, really good marriage of someone who needs something, someone who has something right. So when you first engage with the Idaho National Lab, how did that conversation go? Was it like, Hey, we’ve have these things. What do you guys want to do?

Or did you guys have a plan in mind? And then it switched? Or how does that process look like?

Candace Wood: And maybe Michael can elaborate more, but my understanding was they had tried to pursue this project topic At a different wind farm asset site but ran into some issues with the ownership. And as you can imagine, probably most owner operators are not too keen to have somebody come in and try and hack into their, functioning winter and so we were in a unique position where, we own the site outright.

We’re not overly concerned about running them because they’re not currently running. And so I think in our initial conversation, we both realized, hey this might actually work.

Joel Saxum: So Michael, then you guys get engaged with Everpoint. You now have these assets, these 10 turbines. that are in various states of disrepair.

We got to get them up and running and stuff. But to so immediately you guys are thinking, Hey, this is the project that we want to do, let’s go and attack it. So what is that project? What is it that you guys are working on?

Michael McCarty: So the project that we’re working on here, the Idaho national laboratory is.

We’re basically taking the wind turbines and we’re going to get them operational or, as close to operational as we can. So the blade spin and that sort of thing, maybe they’re not producing energy at 100%, but we’re going to get them operational. And then we want to assess the whole security stance the security posture of the wind turbine and see, you where and how we could poke that to cause possible physical damage.

A bit similar to the Aurora experiment. If you’re familiar with that, so we want to see basically the places that cyber can interface with the physical portions of the nacelle, the tower the inverter, if there’s an inverter, connecting back to the grid and. Then see can we actually do that?

And if we can do that, what sort of mitigations could we put in place to Stop that from happening in real life.

Joel Saxum: So can you walk us through that Aurora generator? I think it was a diesel generator test, right? Just so that the listeners know what that is.

Michael McCarty: Yeah, it’s So it’s it’s on the internet quite a bit.

I think there’s like a Wikipedia page about it. But basically they, it was a destructive test. So they wanted to see if the safety measures had been removed from some electronic component in a large diesel generator what would happen, would it smoke, would it blow up, would it catch fire?

And it pretty much did those things. So you remove the safety measures, right? From the electronic components. And so when it’s supposed to fail and fail safe, it doesn’t fail safe. It fails the worst way possible because of specifically a cyber component.

Megan Culler: If I can add, I would just say that the, with that diesel generator test, what they did was through digital means connected and disconnected it from the grid rapidly.

So that it was out of sync with the actual grid. So if you think about two things that are typically spitting together, we made the generator spend, or they made the generator spend differently, which of course is, does not make the generator components very happy. And so that’s where the actual smoking and physical damage came from.

Joel Saxum: That makes absolute sense. And this is so this is becoming more and more of something that’s very important to our society in general for grid resiliency. Energy security in general, right? So it makes sense that Idaho National Labs has a bit of a budget to explore these things. I was at an insurance conference last year and one of the big new topics was cyber insurance, right?

So it was basically pandering to wind farm owners and insurance brokers. Hey, you guys need to have these policies in place because these things can happen. They have, right? In the news, I think it was last year, Allen, correct me if I’m wrong where there was like a cyber attack and they shut down a pipe, one of the pipelines going towards the over on the east coast.

Allen Hall: Yeah, down in North Carolina.

Joel Saxum: Yeah and it like changed fuel delivery, fuel prices, all kinds of stuff. That was an, that’s one incident. If more and more of these incidents are happening, or if you have Megan, like you said, the, such, you have a hundred turbine wind farm and they start, you start cycling on these turbines on and off and on and off.

As opposed to how, the grid frequencies that they’re supposed to run at. You can damage inverters, you can do things. I know a really cheesy, simple one when you talk about damage is, if you could get into a turbine and hit the emergency stop remotely, you can do, irreparable damage to the blades just by doing that.

Megan Culler: There’ve been several notable incidents that have affected wind organizations as well. Several ransomware events against wind companies in Europe as well as an attack on satellite infrastructure in Europe. That was not targeted at wind infrastructure, but happened to take out the remote communications for 5800 Enercon wind turbines.

And because of the method of that attack it, they actually had to physically go out and replace the modems and all of those turbines, which took almost two months for them to do not a physical impact in that case. The wind turbines were still producing energy. But no remote monitoring was possible during that time.

Allen Hall: Michael, what are some of the things that you’re going to try to attack on a wind turbine in particular, and what would be the simple way to prevent them? Because right now we’re talking about DeWind wind turbines which are an older wind turbine. But the technology internal to those wind turbines hasn’t changed a lot, probably until

People started, the OEM started paying attention to cybersecurity. I know they’re going to not like me saying that, but that’s pretty much the case. What are those weak points and not to give out national security risk, but what should we be looking for here?

Michael McCarty: The weak points that we’re looking for specifically are, any sort of remote connectivity is normally part of your attack surface.

And so you want to go in and. If there’s something like basically a VPN connection, a cellular modem or some other way to connect in from remotely that’s your first point of contact with them. And then once you go in the. There’s some servers, there’s some computers connected in on the other side of the turbine.

And from there you can control the PLCs which control the, the pitch of the blades and things like that. Specifically some of the scenarios that we were looking at to cause physical damage were things like a tower strike. If the blades if you, If they’re spinning fast enough and they get caught in the wind just the right way, they can actually strike the tower.

We’re looking at that basic overheating sort of scenarios where something is just overused or used to the point to which it starts to break down, but whatever sort of safety systems or monitoring systems that are in place don’t relay that information back. Maybe we just tell a piston to just go, in and out for, over and over again, but we don’t relay that information back anywhere.

And so nobody knows it’s happening. And that piston uses 10 years of its lifetime overnight or something like that. And ultimately, we don’t really know. So we’ve got some scenarios that we’ve. We’ve laid out, but this is the experiment is to actually get down there and try and do it, because sometimes you tabletop specific scenarios, and then Turns out they’re not really that big of a deal, so you want to actually test it

Joel Saxum: One of the things that pops in my mind here is a kind of I think probably that angle Allen was going down is this Is a DeWind turbine.

So if you were to be successful or not However, this however these experiments is, roll out over these tests go people may say ah it’s cool But you did it on a DeWin turbine try to do that to a GE or a Vestas or try to do that through XYZ company’s controller or XYZ company’s security mechanisms of sorts.

Will you be testing other things From the marketplace or retrofit materials or anything like that.

Michael McCarty: Yes, absolutely. So we, one of the large parts of the experiment is we’re going to test what we can do, and then we’re going to modernize a few of the components or at least, put it like a different aggregator, different PLCs company XYZ newer components, because these are older DE wind components that have, they do have security.

I’ve looked at it already and they do have firewalls and stuff like that. But as we add newer components, we’ll see. how those newer components actually stop this attack from happening. And the idea is we’ll have multiple different topologies. So the topology where it’s your old 2017 architecture, and then a topology where it’s.

Slightly modified, slightly better, with a few things removed to make it more secure, and then we’ll have a topology where it’s completely secured 100 percent with our, our partners, our security partners, and those sorts of things implemented in the environment. And so this will be the more secure environment that.

an attacker wouldn’t be able to penetrate without setting off lots of bells and alarms. And then we’ll compare all three topologies so that wind farms can use that documentation and use that report to see if I added this, how much would it help my security posture?

Allen Hall: There’s a number of terms the United States are reaching through that 10 year Time span we’re going to be repowered.

And while they’re going through that repowering effort now’s the time to update their cybersecurity for sure. What simple things should they be doing when they’re if they’re upgrading an existing turbine or replacing it? What should they be looking for from a security a cyber security perspective?

Michael McCarty: It’s always good to have some sort of alarm system. There’s newer technologies, I hate to mention specific vendor names and that sort of thing, but there’s newer technologies out that help to take out the security that the need for security personnel and offset that to other services where basically you just install their device and they will monitor your system and let you know if something goes wrong.

So there’s not really that much of a requirement of standing up a whole the security team or, training everyone as, as far as how to secure their wind site. But some basic things are just network intrusion detection systems. So you want something on your network that will alert if anything bad happens.

Generally, even this 2017 system is pretty locked down. It’s got firewalls and stuff, but if anything goes wrong, there’s nothing to tell you. There’s nothing to tell you if somebody’s poking around. But the basics are network intrusion detection systems and host intrusion detection systems. Which the host intrusion detection systems are what runs on the actual any servers, any windows machines, any HMI is running on the wind turbine.

It has its own kind of built in. If you poke at it, it will set off an alarm. And then you have the network intrusion detection systems, where if there’s somebody new on the network, it automatically sends out an alarm. Those are some basic measures that they could add.

Allen Hall: Do we have a sense of how many networks have been intruded in the wind industry at the moment?

Let’s just say the United States, do you have a general sense of that?

Megan Culler: I can speak to a couple of specific incidents. For the most part, what we’re seeing is that wind farms are being affected and in some cases have actually been physically affected by cyberattacks, but they’re usually not the primary target or maybe not a target at all.

One example is a incident that was reported where a technician, like a traveling technician, maintenance person who worked on multiple wind farms, stayed in a hotel overnight downloaded malware onto his laptop by accident through that hotel Wi Fi went to work the next day, plugged his laptop into.

start doing maintenance on the turbines and they started shutting down one by one. I don’t know the exact details of that, but if I had to make a guess, it would be something that it was like a an operating system type of malware. And if those turbines happens to be using windows controllers or something like that, that it was an aggressive malware that spread through that and shut down the operating systems.

So something that’s targeting wind? No, but potential impact? Yes. Same thing with the denial of service attack that happened in Utah, where a known vulnerability in a Cisco firewall was exploited that caused that firewall to reboot repeatedly over a 12 hour period, and each reboot took about five minutes and so communications were lost during each one of those reboot periods.

And that network, that firewall was sitting on a network that included some wind assets and solar assets. But, I don’t want to spread fear I still don’t think that most attackers are going after wind because it’s wind yet.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, that’s why we’re doing this, right? We have the, Everpoint’s got these assets.

We’re utilizing them as a, as a, as an industry to test against this stuff so we can be resilient against stuff that may happen in the future. So that, I guess that brings me to another question, Candice, this one for you. Right now the idea with Idaho National Labs is we’re going to test a bunch of cyber security protocols, equipment.

See what could happen, but could you use or are you going to use these assets at little Pringle for anything else? Like I know we had talked a little bit about testing some other equipment out there.

Candace Wood: Yeah. We, we do actually get a lot of inquiries from folks who are interested in testing, their new, their prototype for, the blade inspections, or, X, Y, Z, we’re also starting to look into potentially adding some battery storage out there.

And then, there’s also follow on potential for also testing some grid resilience, the actual interconnection to the grid. Little Pringle is our R& D playground and I, welcome opportunities to, to do this type of testing out there because I do think it is unique.

situation that we have and it will help the industry overall as a whole. So even though our point primarily focuses on decommissioning and demolition, we are still interested in making sure that the industry is robust and moving in the right direction.

Michael McCarty: We plan on setting up this experiment as something that multiple people can use.

So your network intrusion detection, Companies your host intrusion detection companies if they want to showcase their software or their abilities This would be like a playground for them to come in and test because nothing like this exists anywhere else you know nowhere else can you go and get a real turbine and install your software and collect your data and see what’s going on.

Allen Hall: That makes infinite sense and I’m just, I was just thinking about and Joel and I were talking about conditioning monitoring systems and things that plug into the turbine as maybe being that vulnerability point so if you do have those systems. There’s a lot of companies making these systems today that do plug into SCADA.

Yeah, it would make sense to work with Idaho national labs to find out if your system is as robust as you think that it is, because it does matter, right? You’d hate to get 10, 000. systems and service and realize you have a cyber security defect that needs to be addressed. Now’s the time to deal with it.

And that’s why Idaho National Lab exists, right?

Michael McCarty: I would point out too, we’re working with several other labs this is a multi lab effort. So a lot of the data that we’re collecting from the site is the first of its kind. Like there, there isn’t really a site that has had this happen that we have data from.

So once we. cause and event, and then we collect the actual data. We could use that at other labs for training and other purposes. But we are working with NREL. We’re working with Sandia National Laboratory and in multiple projects that are stemming from this effort. And we’re of course open to any other labs if they want to run their experiments or companies that want to come in and run their experiments on our system we’re hoping it’s a research environment for them.

Allen Hall: All right. So how do we reach out to Everpoint? We’ve got to talk to Candace first because those are her turbines because she won them at an auction. Candace, how do they reach out to you to connect with you and then and connect with Get on these turbines if needed.

Candace Wood: Sure. Yeah. You can connect with me via email or our website everpointservices.

com. And there’s should be a link in there just to submit a general inquiry. That’ll come to my business partner, Tyler Goodell or myself, and we’ll Follow up and see what opportunities we can pursue.

Allen Hall: And Megan, how do they get a hold of the cybersecurity experts at the Idaho National Laboratory?

Megan Culler: You can certainly connect with us via email or LinkedIn or any one of our websites as well.

Allen Hall: Okay, we will. Put those in the show notes for sure. I know this is going to drum up a lot of interest in the United States. Obviously, cybersecurity is a big item. We look at wind turbines today as national assets.

And when you actually walk on a wind farm now, the training is not the little safety briefing you get. It’s not about putting your hard hat on and having steel toed boots. It’s also about not plugging into their network. And stop screwing around so you could introduce some malware, right? So it is really escalated in the last couple of years.

And I’m glad that the Idaho National Laboratory is involved with this in Canada. So we really thank you so much for making this possible because you’re going to make wind turbines even more resilient. It’s brilliant.

Candace Wood: Great. Thanks guys.

https://weatherguardwind.com/everpoint-services-inl-cybersecurity/

Renewable Energy

Making the World an even More Disgusting Place

Published

10 hours ago

May 19, 2026

Alice Rush

I recently met an attorney who told me that is specialty is traffic. “Really!” I replied. “That sounds interesting. Could you give me an example of what you do, and for whom?”

He explained that people who get hefty citations hire him to get their cases dismissed, or have their fines greatly reduced. He summarized this as follows, “I take money away from local governments, and keep bad drivers on the road.”

Holy crap, I was thinking. Not everyone is a Mahatma Gandhi or MLK, but should anyone fashion a career out of making the world a more dangerous and degraded place than it already is?

I’ll grant that this is an extreme example. But consider that there are millions of people working in industries like fossil fuels, tobacco, sodas, and building war machines. Then we have our elected officials whose job it is destroy public education and environmental health, while others work on gerrymandering so as to keep themselves in office and dismantle our democracy.

Sure, the attorney described above has a disgusting profession, but he’s not alone.

Making the World an Even More Disgusting Place

Renewable Energy

A Nation of Idiots and Its Race to the Bottom

Published

12 hours ago

May 19, 2026

Alice Rush

The appeal to America’s most stupid people is heating up, and the meme here is a great example.

First, let’s realize that the percentage of Muslims in the U.S. is somewhere between 1.1% and 1.3%, compared to Christianity at 67%.

Then, try to image any process by which our local, state, and federal laws, conforming as they all must to the U.S. Constitution could be replaced by Sharia law, which calls for the amputation of thieves’ hands, lashing as punishment of consuming alcohol, and the stoning to death of adulteresses.

https://www.2greenenergy.com/2026/05/19/nation-of-idiots/

Renewable Energy

Conference Recap, Suzlon Targets Europe

Published

21 hours ago

May 19, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Conference Recap, Suzlon Targets Europe

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

Speaker: [00:00:00] The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, brought to you by StrikeTape. Protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit striketape.com. And now, your hosts.

Allen Hall 2025: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, and I’m here with Matthew Stead, who is back in Australia, but not at home.

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

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

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

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

It’s just

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Matthew Stead: Uh, yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So it just, it adds to the cost.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Allen Hall 2025: Well,

Matthew Stead: in

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

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

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

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

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

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

So the more they can get organized, the better.

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

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

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

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

‘Cause, uh, that’s what I see.

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

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

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

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

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

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

PES Wind offers [00:22:00] a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high-quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit peswind.com today. So when, when the energy prices spike like they’re happening right now, uh, the Iran war being one of the main drivers, and obviously gasoline prices have jumped quite a bit, here’s what happens.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Matthew Stead: people that

Allen Hall 2025: need

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s a smart move. Absolutely.

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

Allen Hall 2025: You think so?

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

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

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

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

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

Is that what they call that now?

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

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

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

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

Because Tesla is offering a true semi or tractor-trailer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Uh, we’re already getting inundated with requests on the Weather Guard side. It’s insane. We’re telling people, like, “Slow down, slow down, slow down. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll talk to you about it when we get to Houston.” But, uh, expect a very attentive audience this year, which is exciting. That wraps up another episode of “The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.”

If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas- We’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn, and don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you found value in today’s conversation, please leave us a review. It helps other wind energy professionals follow the show. For Matthew, I’m Allen Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy [00:33:00] Podcast.