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Eversource Quits Offshore Wind, Delays at Dogger Bank, Wind Innovators Honored

This week’s episode covers Eversource exiting offshore wind, delays at Dogger Bank wind farm, honorees of the Queen Elizabeth engineering prize, and the return of Wind Farm of the Week featuring Kay Wind farm. Allen and Joel also look forward to attending ACP OMS in San Diego!

Allen Hall: Joel, I think being in the podcast business is a lot easier than being in the AM radio business, clearly because down in Jasper, Alabama the station was alarmed by some guys taking care of the grounds. They had come out to, to mow and weed whack and whatever they’re going to do. And. At the tower site.

And when they got there, there was no tower. The tower was gone. I was left with a bunch of cables on the ground. And so the tower evidently was stolen. And the station manager at down there in Alabama doesn’t have any leads. They can’t figure out where this, all the equipment went to. And it wasn’t like it was a little tiny.

20 foot tower. It’s like a 200 foot tower. So talking about taking down a really big structure and somehow dragging it off into the woods and never to be found again. So there’s a, that’s a big problem. If the people are starting to steal your radio tower, you got

Joel Saxum: issues.

I just can’t see what anybody would do with it.

You’re not going to cut it up and sell it for scrap. Like every If this is national news now, every scrapyard is going to know. First off, look, so what are you going to do with it is one, if, and if you reinstall it eh, we’re going to install it so we can get TV from fricking Germany.

I don’t know. But if you’re going to reinstall it, someone’s going to see it. They’re going to be like, there’s the 200 foot tower. So I don’t know, unless it’s just a really extravagant prank that someone’s pulling, I’m not sure what you’re going to do with this tower. But kudos to the people that pulled it down.

I don’t know how you did that overnight.

Allen Hall: They don’t have any insurance coverage, because who would steal a tower, right? So now the station’s in trouble because the FCC which license all the radio stations in the United States has pulled their license. So they had an FM station and an AM station, the AM station got stolen.

The FM station evidently is still operational, but the FCC told them to turn it off. So now they’re stuck. They gotta go buy a new tower. Those things are not cheap, by the way, so that’s a big problem. And it just reminds me when you and I were been down in Oklahoma and Texas. That a lot of wind turbines now, thank goodness, are well locked up because there’s a lot of vandals out there and some of these wind turbines are located in remote places that we make sure that all those things are closed and secure like we hope that they are because there’s a lot of crazy stuff going on right now.

Joel Saxum: So one last question, Allen, at what point in time do we just get rid of AM radio?

Allen Hall: As soon as podcasts take over the world, that’s when, or when you can listen to it on a podcast on AM radio, that’s when you can do it.

Joel Saxum: That’s our next frontier, back to AM.

Allen Hall: Back to AM, amen.

Well, Joel, Eversource is pulling out of the offshore wind business here in the United States. Now, Eversource is a large electricity provider on the East Coast. They operate New England’s largest energy system with about 4. 4 million electric natural gas and wind Water customers in sort of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and up in New Hampshire, so they cover Hartford, Connecticut and Boston, Massachusetts, two big metro areas because they published their financials for 2023 and they had booked a 1.

9 billion dollar impairment. For its offshore wind investments for last year, and evidently, as part of that, they decided to sell their 50 percent stake in South Fork Wind and Revolution Wind projects to global infrastructure partners. Now, in return for selling those, you’re going to receive about 1. 1 billion in cash.

But that’s not going to close until like middle of this year. And it sounds like there’s a little bit of contingencies in place, just in case some costs overruns happened that how they’re going to split those up. But essentially Eversource is getting out of the offshore wind business. This is a big deal because now global infrastructure partners, which just got acquired by BlackRock, right?

That there’s a lot of financial transactions happening at the moment.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. The interesting thing here, and you and I talked about it off air, if you’re in the wind industry or in the, these, some of these players, Orsted, Iberdrola, NextEra, some of these larger ones, but when people said Eversource originally, like Eversource is going to do offshore wind.

Who the hell is Eversource? If you don’t live in the northeast part of the United States, you don’t know who they are. If you live up there, like you do, you understand they’re a big utility, they do a lot of things they are part of the infrastructure up there that supports that whole New England coast.

But interestingly enough, like Eversource has, they never had any business being an offshore wind. They don’t know anything about it. They’ve never done anything with it. And so my thought, and again, we talked about this off where my opinion was, cool for them to be involved in it. I think the state legislatures, of course, want their local people to be involved and be a stakeholder with what’s going on in that offshore wind play.

But they, in my opinion, they shouldn’t have put that much money into it. They shouldn’t have been a 50 percent holder with Orsted. They got a good partner, Orsted, of course, great partner. They know offshore wind. They’re the originators. They’ve been doing it for a long time. So they did good there, but it’s too risky.

It’s too much out there, in my opinion. Again, take it for whatever you want, but the change over here going to global infrastructure partners. Now, global infrastructure partners, like you said part of BlackRock. Now, BlackRock through, I think there was a large value there, 12 Billion or something of that sort.

Yeah, it was a big number. Yeah. Yeah. And so the Larry Fink, of course, the CEO of BlackRock is saying, hey, that infrastructure investments are the future of some of these large large investments. So people knowing that energy is going to be the people with the big, deep pockets, knowing that energy infrastructure and infrastructure in general is going to be something that we’re going to have to bet on in the future.

Now they’re taking this spot. So they’re sliding in on the opposite side of Orsted. Eversource is moving out. Look to see a lot more of these things start to happen with big money, deep pockets is the way I see it. And

Allen Hall: Eversource is also discussing the sale of its water distribution business as to make up some of the deficit here.

So this has been a painful exercise for Eversource. And as we have seen from other electricity utilities in the United States they’re trying to cover their losses, and it makes you wonder what’s going to happen going forward. Are you going to see utilities step into these offshore projects? Or are they going to leave them to the European companies that can manage them, or in this case, Canadian companies that may be able to manage them?

Joel Saxum: Yeah, I know we talk about this regularly too, right? It’s frustrating that there isn’t more American involvement in offshore wind. You see all these big offshore wind, every company besides basically Dominion is From overseas. They’re from Europe. They’re somewhere that’s not here, and I know that frustrates people.

It frustrates me, right? I want to see these things happen, but you also have to understand that from an offshore marine environment infrastructure, that’s not something that we normally do in the U. S. The existing offshore infrastructure in the U. S., which a lot of people don’t know that much about, is mostly all Gulf of Mexico offshore oil and gas.

So there’s platforms down there. There’s those things as well. Those are a completely different. How would you say it? They’re a completely different engineering task, right? Most of those are one offs. A lot of them are there’s some in shallow water with jacket foundations, but it’s like you’re building one.

You build that jacket. It’s massively custom. It’s all custom built. It’s floated out there suction piled in. Wells are drilled. Things work. And then there’s the deep water stuff, right? There’s things in the Gulf of Mexico that are out in three, four thousand feet of water pumping oil. So we have some of that infrastructure, but not like offshore wind.

It’s a completely different animal. So while it is frustrating to not see American companies involved we need that expertise from the people that have done it. I think I would like to see some people tagging along, but I’d like to see them at five and 10 percent and have a couple of people sitting within the company to learn and grow.

But taking a 50 percent stake that was a risky risky gig from the beginning.

Allen Hall: Yeah, I’m not sure, it’s all happened pre inflation, right? That’s what happened, and at the time, I’m sure all the economics made sense, but the economy has changed so much in the last couple of years, it’s hard to really blame them.

It was like a one in a hundred year event, really. It’s tough, and I think the utilities, they have to try to find a way to fight them or to bring themselves out of this hole. But I think I don’t think a lot of U. S. utilities are not going to get. Knee deep into these projects from here on out, and they’re going to be the 5 or 10 percent range just to cover their downside.

Makes sense.

Joel Saxum: Even, Global infrastructure partners, like I said, in this deal there is some caveats to make sure that, the economy doesn’t start doing crazy stuff again, or they have the ability to make a

Allen Hall: move.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has been holding some public meetings to discuss some offshore sites off the coast of essentially New Jersey.

And they ran into some opposition from fishermen and who are arguing against putting some wind turbines where the, some of their fishing grounds are, and it really has to do with the cables. I don’t think they’re too concerned about where the turbines are placed so much as like, where are the cables, because a lot of fishing.

involves trolling the bottom of the ocean to capture the sea life they’re trying to go get. Now, this has caused a lot of issues for BOEM because when they had sighted these projects, they didn’t think they’re going to receive a lot of feedback on the fishing. Locations that they, or they didn’t think the objections would be as vocal as they are, but as we have seen in the press more recently, there’s still a lot of effort to push back on, on the East Coast, at least on these fishing areas.

And I’ve seen some more recently on the West Coast, Oregon, California, same sort of thing. It does seem like the BOEM is slowing down on its project development and locating these sites. Based on feedback and maybe getting a little more input from local businesses like fishermen to make sure their site is in the right place.

Again, there’s going to be a big push to try to put some sites out in the water, Joel. Are these going to take longer? And if they do take longer to get cited out, is it going to be less price paid for them because of the potential downside?

Joel Saxum: I think if you roll it back to the beginning of an idea here, the idea is that we’re using the ocean for a new purpose.

Change is hard. Change is difficult. Change You have to involve a lot of people to make sure you do it right. So right now, we’re talking about stakeholder management. Basically, everybody wants to use these pieces of ocean for something, right? We want to use them for offshore wind. We want to use them for navigation.

We want to use them for fishing. So you have to figure out how to work together. And whenever you have a community, such as the fishermen have basically had the run of this area forever. They haven’t had to deal with anybody out there using it in a heavily commercial activity, right? So they’ve been able to do what they want, right?

And now you’re going to add in another stakeholder out there, where, it may impact the fisherman’s abilities, or so they’re putting forth. It will impact their ability to You know, make their catcher or do their things because there’s going to be exclusion zones. You can’t go dragging, you can’t go dragging net right next to a platform or something like that.

Like you get caught up. That wouldn’t be good. Other than that, you have to think about the subsea infrastructure, right? So sometimes. Depending on where you are in the world or what the regulations are, if you’re going to have an export cable coming from a wind farm to shore, sometimes it’s buried, sometimes it’s trenched in.

They have a trenching machine. They’re pretty cool. They look like tanks. They basically go on the bottom and they drive on tracks on the bottom of the ocean floor and they have water jets and they create a channel and bury the cable. But also with those, you have rock dumps that may go on top of them, mattresses, there’s all kinds of different things depending on the geotechnics of the subsea at that point.

But either way, that once was a nice, smooth, clean ocean floor with nothing on it that the bottom trawlers were able to just basically drag with nets. Now they can’t do that anymore. There’s gonna be definitely issues there with, involving more stakeholders. I can completely understand why they’re a bit up in arms.

It messes up their it’d be like if someone came to you, Allen and said, you can’t be, you can’t be a lightning engineer anymore. You have to figure out a way to be a, I don’t know, electrical engineer or a mechanical engineer or something. You know what I mean? You like, they’re taking away. Yeah.

Taking away your livelihood is what they’re doing. Understandably up in arms. I get it. But for the greater, I can say this easily sitting in my chair, right? I’m not, this doesn’t affect me as much, but for the greater good, there needs to be some give and take if we want to have offshore wind in this green energy transition.

Allen Hall: I don’t think the fishermen had a lot to worry about at the moment because it’s not going to. Be a lot of action in their area.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. Not the way it’s going right now. Yeah. There, there’s also takes where say in areas, I know that they’ve done some there’s a website that has some really cool subsea footage of block Island and the fishing and love wildlife around those platforms.

So if you had a fishing area and then all of a sudden there’s a bunch of structure in it, if you’re a fisherman, fish go to structure, bait, fish go to structure. So maybe the fishing grounds were here. And now all those fish migrate right into that wind farm to hide out a little bit, and then it makes your fishing not as good, too.

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Allen Hall: Over in the UK, the Dogger Bank Offshore Wind Farm project is behind schedule and by a lot. So there, there’s three phases to Dogger Bank. We’re talking about Dogger Bank A, really, which is the first phase here.

Developer SSE has warned that operations may not commence. Until 2025, and they were really scheduled to begin the end of this year and it’s all due to availability issues, supply chain delays weather, of course, and then access to ships, what it sounds like. So only 7 of the 95 Halley 8X 13 megawatt turbines have been installed.

Since the first turbine came online late last year the 3. 6 gigawatt docker bank project, when it’s all complete, will be the world’s largest offshore wind farm because it has three phases, each of 1. 2 gigawatts, and that, that’s a massive wind farm. Joel, it does seem like they’re really going to run into trouble here with ships just because if they get delayed, the ships have someplace else to be.

This project will drag on and I don’t know if there’s a really a way to deal with it at the moment besides hope for better weather.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, you want to hope for better weather and I guess it’s when you’re talking operations, whether it’s construction or I don’t know, you’re going to go to a site and paint someone’s house.

It doesn’t really matter. Usually the first section of that goes slower, right? You’re everybody’s, the crew’s kind of melding, meshing, getting together and you’re understanding logistics and things, how they work and hook up faster. So it’s completely understandable that you’d have a slow start to a project that happens a lot.

That’s always something. Project managers in construction are like, how can we alleviate this, these headaches at the beginning? However, only 7 of those 95 turbines installed since December start. It’s mid February now? It’s been, 10 12 weeks? That’s not good. That’s really slow. And it’s mostly chalked up to weather, right?

North Sea, wintertime, Dogger Bank, it’s not, that’s nasty. So you can understand that now, the problems that you’re running into right now, of course. Vessels are on contract, that’s how it works. You get a set amount of days, you pay for those days. You may have some squeeze room for overrun, but a lot of times, if you have a vessel from, Boscalis, Someone, if you have that vessel until June 1st, you might be able to get it until June 15th, but after June 15th, company XYZ is going to be screaming for it because they paid a contract for it to be over there.

There is a little bit of the term is coopetition, if you’ve ever heard of that. It’s when to partner with your competition of these conversations that are going to be happening in the background for sure at the vessel. The vessel companies are licking their chops.

Either way, they’re getting paid. They’re loving it. But we do know that there’s a lot of wind farms being installed all over the North Sea. We’ve got some coming here in the States. We got there’s all over the world. Taiwan screaming for ships are building some new ones in the APAC region right now.

The problem you have here with some of these, if you’re like, Hey, we’ll move another one in, we’ll move another one out, this, the fittings and the structures and how each vessel handles each type of, say, monopile or transition piece, or the rigging for the crane, or the measurement systems for the verticality of the monopile when it’s being driven, or the specific ROV intervention tools that need to be used subsea to hook things up.

Those are usually specific to one RFP, to one wind farm, to one construction site. The same thing in oil and gas. If you’re going to develop a subsea oil field, you spec out every single bit of what’s on each vessel. The tools, the instruments, the kit, the, all the, everything that interacts with anything that goes off subsea has to be custom built.

And so you can’t really just if you’re on a Seaway 7 vessel installing these things. You can’t really just switch over to a Deme vessel the next day when they move out. It doesn’t work like that. It’s not like switching out a Chevy truck and a Ford truck to go to a wind site on shore. It doesn’t, that’s not how it goes.

I guess the way, what we have to hope is the we get some really good weather for the teams out at Dogger Bank and they start ginning. They start grooving, moving and grooving and getting some things installed. Otherwise there will be some delays. It is what it is.

Allen Hall: When this podcast releases, Joel, we will be in sunny San Diego at ACP OMS and there’s looks like it’s going to be a pretty big crowd there just checking on LinkedIn.

I know everybody’s getting ready for the 2024 repair season. There’s a lot of activity and 2023 was a pretty high damage year from what I could tell. And I expect also Blades, which is happening while this podcast releases down in Austin, Texas, is going to be widely attended, and it seems to be gaining traction even over in Europe, when I was just over in Europe, and people from there were going to be attending Blades, so it’s going to be a lot of activity.

It’s conference season at the moment.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, it’s starting up here in the States, for sure. I’m in Austin right now. Right now, it’s What day is it today? It’s Wednesday. It’s Valentine’s Day. I’ve been talking all week, last week, about, clients, friends, colleagues people to meet up with talk blade problems, talk lightning problems for the next few weeks, so my schedule is crazy.

Plus, I’m, it starts Sunday night, people flying in, I’ll go grab a couple friends from the airport have some blade conversations for Monday and Tuesday, of course. BladesUSA is a great event a lot of good engineers there, a lot of good topics. And you’re involving the engineers and the stakeholders at the operator level, at the, at, the people who own the wind farms.

And then also a lot of the blade repair companies are there, and some of the, retrofit companies and stuff are in town for that. So it’s a lot of the correct grab of stakeholders around blades are there. And then that Wednesday morning, I’ve had a couple of jokes, a couple conversations the last few days, those planes that are leaving Austin, heading to San Diego, they’re going to be a captive audience.

It’s going to be all people coming, two and a half, three hour flight everybody coming from Blades going to the operations, maintenance and safety conference. Annoying that they’re in the same week, to be honest with you, but they were smart enough to put one on Monday, Tuesday, and I say they because it’s ACP and Wind Power Monthly or Haymarket or whatever, and they’re two separate organizations, but Blades is Monday, Tuesday, and we have OMS is Wednesday afternoon, Thursday, Friday I know we have booths at both of them, so we’re going to be taking a lot of meetings, talking to a lot of people, doing a lot of podcast recording, which is always great.

But OMS, yeah, it’s, that’s always a good one to kick off the season, we’re in February here. Most people have their tenders lined out. And if they don’t, or if they need a little bit of backfill with some capacity for some blade teams or, uptower teams, gearbox teams they’re going to sort it out here shortly.

So it’s a good time to be good, but good time to be out in the market, talking with people. OMS is always nice in San Diego there, but we did hear there might be some rain. So pack a rain jacket.

Allen Hall: It looks like it’s going to rain. We’re going to have recordings with a number of companies that are going to be at OMS.

And if, obviously, if you want to talk to us about being on the podcast, that’s a good place to connect with us right on the OMS floor. One of the things I’m noticing this year too, Joel, is that there’s just a lot more of the operators getting involved in the blade repair. And that full service agreements are not as favorable as they once were.

So the activity on the engineering side seems to be much more active and maybe that’s just coming out of the inflationary period and everybody’s getting going. The comedy is picking up a little bit, but it does seem to me the amount of engineering that’s going on the blade side is at a peak. I haven’t seen it this active in a couple of years.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, I think the other side of it is in the United States, of course, our fleet is starting to mature, right? We had a lot of installations that, GE 1 5s went crazy in 2011, 12, 13, all this stuff. They’re now coming 10 years, so if you had an FSA that was 10 year they’re starting to, Hey, are they going to renew the FSA or take it on themselves?

The data points to You might be better off taking your operations on yourself or having an ISP help you out. So a lot of that activity for sure, Allen.

Allen Hall: And Booking a independent service provider may be hard at this point.

Joel Saxum: You’re a little late. You’re late in the year.

Allen Hall: Yeah. And also technicians that are looking for positions this summer that’s a good place to be, right?

If you’re out in San Diego, definitely stop by and drop off a resume or if you’re at Blades, drop off a resume. Get involved. I’ve seen a lot more technician activity and people reaching out, like, where can I find a position for the year? There’s a lot of job sites, everybody. Get on LinkedIn and connect up with those companies via LinkedIn.

Get on their websites, go to their career pages, look there because there’s a lot of opportunities at the moment and it’s one of the fastest growing jobs in America, being a wind turbine technician. Get going because it’s going to be a good season.

Joel Saxum: I’ve been involved in quite a few different industries and trade shows and whatnot, and I don’t think there’s one that I’ve been around that’s quite like OMS.

OMS, of course, Operations Maintenance Safety, so it’s very much focused on the operations in the field. And to be honest with you, if you’re looking to be a blade tech or an uptower tech and you haven’t inked what your contract is going to be like or working for a specific company this year, It’s It might be worth hopping on a plane to San Diego and walking that floor and handing out your resumes at that show because there’s going to be a lot of people there.

A little bit different this year, usually it’s at Coronado, right down on the beach. And the actual exhibition, it’s not that good, to be honest with you. American Clean Power, I’ll say that. When you had it in the tents out on the lawn, not the best, but this year it is in a hotel in a center with an actual exhibition floor.

There’s going to be over 100 people exhibiting. So a lot of things in the wind and stream movement at OMS for sure.

Allen Hall: All right, British engineer, Andrew Garrad, and Danish citizen, Henrik Stiesdal, were announced as the 2024 winners of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering for their pioneering work, advancing wind turbine design and deployment, the over 40 careers for both of those gentlemen the laureates made critical innovations now used in most modern high capacity wind turbines, including some of the world’s largest wind turbines.

Their groundbreaking work has enabled widespread adoption of wind power around the world. And Her Royal Highness Princess Anne attended the ceremony at London’s Science Museum, which had to be cool. Come on, Joel. That’s cool. And praised the role of engineering in society. And it, so if you’re not familiar with the Queen Elizabeth Prize, it’s there to promote excellence and visionaries in engineering, inspiring young people to consider it as a career.

So this is a really, Fascinating prize. I like it. It’s like the Nobel Peace Prize for engineering sort of thing. Yeah. And it does come with some cash award, right?

Joel Saxum: Yeah. It’s a 1 million pound. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s big time. Unlike the Nobel Peace Prize, which is basically money off of dynamite.

I hope this money comes out of the royal family’s pockets because they can stand to lose a little bit. Either way I think that anybody in the wind industry, if you don’t know who Andrew Garrard or Henrik Stiesdal are, please Google them the next time you get a chance and you’ll see historic websites devoted to the things that they have done.

There’s so much information about their what for the modern day wind turbine, 450, 000 of them in the world right now. Plus, offshore, onshore, these two guys were a huge part of everything that you see today. So if you’re a technician, if you’re a developer, if you’re anybody in the wind industry, you owe it to these two these two men that are, we’ll call them like a royalty, wind royalty maybe that have come out and done all these things.

So take a peek at it, do yourself a favor next time you’re sitting around on the couch or something. Pull your phone out and Google their names and you’ll see some really cool stuff. And congrats to the two of them. And and thank you for the work that you put in in your engineering minds to get us to the point we’re at right now.

Allen Hall: They have to be amazed at the rapid deployment of wind that we’re now talking about 20 megawatt machines when they first started their kilowatt machines, it, there has been a rapid growth in that industry. I do timing is everything. And so if right time, right place part of it, that’s true, but getting engineering, was key early on and if you do look at some of the early inventions in wind, you’re like, Ooh, pretty sketchy, but we’ve gotten through that period. And it, there is a, I do think these prizes help raise awareness about the careers you can have in engineering. And the, if you’re a high school graduate or going into college, it’s such a tough time to try to figure out what you want to go do.

Engineering is one of those tough trails, and it’s nice that you can see some hardworking engineers be rewarded for their efforts because yeah, engineering’s not easy, right? And a lot of people are involved in a lot of these wind projects that you never hear of, but they should be commended also.

Joel Saxum: There’s, in the United States, we talk about the fact that there’s not a DTU.

There’s not a TU Delft. We don’t have a university dedicated to wind. And at the university level, it’s there is actually reports out lately that I’ve read, sad for me that says that engineering as a major is starting to decline in the United States. A lot more people taking, I don’t want to say this.

I don’t want to make anybody angry, but a lot more people taking a little bit easier paths through university to get degrees. Engineering is one of the toughest things that you can really do there. But you can see that engineering in general shapes our society. If you look around you, everything that you touch, feel every day is designed by someone.

That is an engineer. I know the majority of big things that happen are designed by engineers. They’re the ones that make progress. So we need more of them out there. So we haven’t had a Windfarm of the Week in quite a while, but we want to get back into that of course. So the Wind Farm of the Week this week is Kay Wind.

Southern Power owns Kay Wind. It’s in Kay County, Oklahoma. The 299 megawatt facility with 130 Siemens 2. 3 80 meter tall towers. The facility was built with a 400 million construction loan. And the project was delivered back in 2015. So power gets sold into Kansas and also Oklahoma under 20 year PPAs.

The thing I want to touch about this wind farm, if you Google it, you’ll find out that in 2017, the team at Kay Wind was recognized for its exceptional achievement in operations and management at the Wind O& M Conference in Dallas. So the project team won the Wind Farm Team or Technician of the Year Award back in 2017 and they beat out over 100 entries.

So this is at that point in time, Apex was a part of it as well but the Southern Power Apex team there at Kay Wind, Doing a lot of fantastic things with a bunch of turbines that were built in the United States, right? They were built at the Siemens facility in Hutchinson, Kansas, and the blades were made in or the nacelles were and the blades were produced at the Fort Madison, Iowa.

Kay Wind, you are the wind farm of the week.

Allen Hall: That’s going to do it for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. Thanks for listening, and please give us a 5 star rating on your podcast platform and subscribe in the show notes below to Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s YouTube channel, Engineering with Rosie, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

Eversource Quits Offshore Wind, Delays at Dogger Bank, Wind Innovators Honored

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India Locks Down Turbine Data, Danish Wind Jobs Dip

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India Locks Down Turbine Data, Danish Wind Jobs Dip

India now requires turbine data, control centers, and R&D to sit inside its borders. Plus a study on reverse flow loads in parked blades, Envision’s spare parts push across Southeast Asia, and Danish wind employment falling to 32,700.

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!

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

Rosemary Barnes: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m your host, Rosemary Barnes, and I’m filling in for Allen today here with Jolanda Pedron. All right, onto our first story. India is drawing a line around its wind data. The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has ordered every turbine maker on the approved list of models and manufacturers to report where its data actually lives.

Data centers inside India, servers inside India, research centers inside India, and no real-time data leaving the country. The order went out last week with status reports due by month-end. And while the government tightens the rules on data, the hardware keeps moving in. Flender has just opened another generator plant in Chennai [00:01:00] Yolanda, I think this is gonna have a large impact on the number of companies who are, you know, there’s a lot of companies around today developing, like, smarts for wind turbines.

There’s a lot of scope to operate turbines better, to improve power output, reduce maintenance costs, et cetera, and y- a lot of companies are taking advantage of that. Even Patlow has some projects going on in that sort of area. What do you think about the impact this will be? Is India planning to develop their entire own ecosystem for that aspect of the industry?

I

Yolanda Padron: mean, it looks like it, right? Which is really, I mean, kind of groundbreaking. I know that we talked a couple weeks ago about Europe sort of being a little bit scared of bringing in, um, different manufacturers from Asia, um, and just the, the idea of cybersecurity being something really prevalent and really important to all of these people.

So just if India starts siloing everything and that works, maybe that’ll translate to Europe.

Rosemary Barnes: Do you think that it, it can work? Has India [00:02:00] got the expertise in place already to, to make this work, or is this gonna be a real, like, handbrake on their, their wind industry continuing to develop as fast as it has been?

Yolanda Padron: I mean, I’m really curious to see it because I don’t know if they’ll bring in a lot more experts to be able to, to do that.

Rosemary Barnes: I know the Indian, um, operating environment is quite different to other locations. I mean, it’s, it’s similar in a way to Australia in its dissimilarity, if that makes sense. I, I think there’s a lot of really India-specific problems, so of course Indian companies are gonna be best placed to take advantage of that.

But what we’ve seen so far is a lot of, uh, companies from Europe or America coming in to y- you know, like tweak the way that they attack similar problems in other markets. They’re, you know, moving in to understand India better and take advantage of that. Now, of course, like not every smart operating method or aerodynamic improvement, they don’t all need [00:03:00] real-time data, and probably most of them don’t actually.

So I think it’s not gonna like s- snip off this entire kind of improvement. But it is really interesting. It’s quite, like it is quite severe, the restrictions, and I haven’t heard of any other market, um, that is doing that. I, I don’t know, do you think it’s warranted or is it maybe like overly paranoid? I know when I heard that in, um, in Europe they’re not allowing Chinese manufacturers of inverters, for example, and I just felt like, “Ugh, is that a bit over the top?”

I’m not sure. Um, yeah, what’s your opinion, Yolanda?

Yolanda Padron: I think it, it might be a little bit over the top. We live in such a globalized world that the idea of one country just siloing completely is, is a little bit strange to me. But- I guess if, if that’s, they have a, a reason for concern, then I guess it might make sense.

But to your earlier point, like, I don’t know if the cost of doing this [00:04:00]would also come into play

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I think that there’s always a, a, a trade-off. It’s like when you have any kind of l- local content rule, which is similar in a way because it forces, um, yeah, it, it forces your own ecosystem to develop, and that’s, that’s great.

Like, it is a missed opportunity if you just have, you know, like a huge new industry and you just import it all, then that i- is a lost opportunity for your own economy. But I mean, in the past, India has had pretty strong local content rules, and they do have a bunch of wind energy manufacturing, um, within the country.

They are a country known for really great engineering, so it’s for sure not beyond them to, you know, step up. So yeah, I guess time will tell if this is a smart move from that point of view. I don’t think it’s actually the motivation behind this rule. I think it’s more of a, like, a cybersecurity, um, kind of perspective where you don’t want, you know, overseas companies having the ability to shut down your energy system, for example.

Um, [00:05:00] so yeah, but it, it has the potential to have that other effect of, you know, like boosting the local industry or alternatively just slowing down the whole industry because they can’t get anything done. I guess that’s always that balance that you need to, need to look at when you’re looking at local content.

So India is deciding who gets to control the data inside a turbine. Our next story is about something inside that same turbine nobody controls yet, the air moving across a blade that isn’t turning. A parked turbine might look like the safest thing on the site. Blades are locked, the rotor’s still, nothing turning, nothing generating.

But a new study says that stillness is not safety. When the rotor is locked and the wind shifts, air can strike the trailing edge first and travel backwards across the blade. That is reverse flow, and in reverse flow, the models this industry uses to predict blade loads start to fall apart. Field data cited in the study suggests blades on turbines above 15 megawatts can go aerodynamically [00:06:00]unstable at winds as low as eight meters per second.

That is nowhere near a storm. So this is actually already definitely a known issue, and I know that modern wind turbines don’t usually park with locked rotors, right, Yolanda?

Yolanda Padron: Yeah.

Rosemary Barnes: We, we saw that a locked rotor during installation was one of the causes of the Vineyard Wind fiasco, right? Where broken blade pieces washed up on the beach.

So definitely something that’s known about.

Yolanda Padron: And it’s something that even onshore you have a, you have your system so that it tracks sort of where the wind is coming from. So even if it’s stopped, it won’t just be stopped at a specific angle, particularly in case the, the winds shift.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, and I’ve seen examples of blades failing when, um, there was a storm and there was power lost, so they weren’t able to yaw or pitch a turbine, and that also can cause…

Like, any time that- Wind is going in a different direction than what the turbine desi- was designed for, you’ll get unpredictable stuff happening and often, [00:07:00] like, really bad loads. Like the harshest, um, conditions, loading conditions that a wind turbine blade has to withstand is not in operation. It’s if you’ve got just wind hitting like a bluff body, they call it, where a gust of wind just hits flat on the blade and tries to bend it.

Like that is way, way stronger loading than, um, than anything it would see operationally. If you’re looking at, you know, like a really severe storm, like a one in 50 year kind of, um, wind speeds, and then if you have flow going on weird angles where it’s creating lift, then you can ratchet up those loads even more.

So for sure a known issue. This study, it, it singled out turbines above 15 megawatts, which are huge. That’s a, you know, like a big offshore wind turbine. But I don’t think it’s limited to that. Like what would you think, Yolanda? Is this, is this like purely a big blades thing, or is this something that actually all wind turbines need to take into account?

Yolanda Padron: Oh, this is definitely something that all wind turbines need to take into account. It’s something that we’ve seen a lot in the [00:08:00] US as well, um, onshore and s- wind f- uh, smaller wind farms and wind farms that have, you know, 200 plus, um, wind turbines on them, uh, the, the 1X or 2X turbines. Uh, this is also ver- a, a reason that it’s really important, right, to check your systems constantly, and I know that a lot of the, the owner/operators do that, um, in their regular maintenance checks.

Um, but it’s, it’s, it’s an issue that, uh, if you don’t have the correct systems in place or if you just remotely reset things, uh, because you see an error that maybe you thought, “Oh, that, that must be just a glitch,” uh, then you start having issues like this that can cause catastrophic failures, not just on the blade but on the turbine itself if, if the blade ends up hitting the turbine, um, it, it ends up hitting the, the tower itself.

Uh, and then [00:09:00] a similar issue, um, that can happen too is when you don’t have the correct systems in place for, for an emergency, and so the turbine can just overspin, and that also causes a lot of blade failures, uh, both onshore and, and offshore as well. But I think onshore it’s, it’s just the, the wind farms are so big that it’s It’s easy or, or easier to miss, like, one or two turbines, um, when you’re doing those checks.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. And I think another issue with keeping the rotors locked out, and one of the big reasons why they moved to pinwheeling as the, you know, um, turbine off kind of configuration, was with the, the bearings, right? Like, it’s not good for the bearings to be totally stationary. Um, so I think that it’s better to, yeah, pinwheel.

It’s lower loads on the bearings.

Yolanda Padron: Something, um, similar to this as well, right, and, and I think Wind Power posted about it the [00:10:00] other day, um, about just, oh, it’s really common for, for sites to, to think of, of a financial solution to, to negative pricing being just fully stopping turbines that might not be producing at positive pricing.

Um, and then, uh, that can also cause a lot of loading issues because you’re, you’re having a, a turbine at, at full capacity, and then it just stops.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, that’s true. The braking loads are, are one of the more extreme loads that turbines have to withstand also. I mean, hopefully if they’re curtailing, um, voluntarily, uh, they’re not doing an emergency brake kind of level.

I hope that they’re being a bit more gentle on their turbines, but yeah, for sure, like, the easiest thing for a turbine to do is just operate normally its whole lifetime. That’s exactly what it was designed to do, and anything that deviates from that can reduce the t- life of the turbine, complicate things.

So machines keep getting bigger, and the physics keep [00:11:00] getting harder. Meanwhile, the map keeps getting wider. Next, a Chinese manufacturer planting both turbines and spare parts across Southeast Asia. Stay with us

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Rosemary Barnes: China’s turbine makers are no longer just shipping machines. They are building the network that keeps those machines running. Envision Energy has secured its largest wind project in Vietnam, 200 megawatts with REE Energy, 25 [00:12:00] turbines, grid connection targeted for October 2027. It is also the company’s largest overseas nearshore project to date.

And Batangas, Philippines, Envision has opened a distribution center holding major components and spare parts close to the projects that need them. Turbines first, then the parts network. Yelena, I’m just wondering if spare parts was a big headache for you when you worked in asset management, and do you think that this plan of, that Envision has is gonna be a successful one for Vietnam?

Yolanda Padron: I think spare parts, having spare parts on site or near a site is always a good strategy. I know that sometimes it can get the, the accounting itself can get a little bit difficult because for at least, you know, in the US for tax purposes, you can’t really sell something from one project to another, so you, you have to be a little bit careful, um, as far as when you hold a part or you’re sending one part that might fit in multiple sites and where you’re technically buying that [00:13:00] from.

Uh, but I think the spare parts that they’re having here I, I think it’s a, it’s a really good idea, right? Because oftentimes you might have a, a big, um, there might be a big queue for a particular component that fails years after, uh, it was produced, and then you– I mean, if you need it now and there’s a big queue now, then you need to wait until it can get to site, until it can be produced, until it’s your turn in line.

Uh, and so just having those components on site or really close to the site I think is a really good idea.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, it’s really challenging. Like it’s, it, it’s easy to imagine how you could organize a spare parts network or, you know, just l- literally a bunch of warehouses holding spare parts for the kind of, you know, like one-off failures that happen routinely throughout a wind turbine’s life.

But when you start to see a serial issue or if there’s just, you know, like statistically every now and then [00:14:00] you’ll get clusters of failures even if it’s not a serial issue, that’s when it starts to get really hard. So I know in Australia, and I’m sure it’s the case elsewhere, you kind of got to pair your spare parts inventory with the capability to repair and refurbish as well.

Because sometimes it’s like, you know, you might do, like speaking of blades, which is my specialty, you might have a bill of, you know, maybe even a million dollars to do a really big repair on a blade, but that’s better than spending probably, honestly, the similar amount of money on a brand-new blade, but then that comes with a six-month or a 12-month, um, wait time.

You know, like obviously you’re gonna save overall if you can get that turbine up faster. And we also see a lot of, um, in-country capabilities to refurbish, you know, all of the drivetrain components and, and everything like that, and I think that that is such an important complement. Like your spare parts strategy should never just be about having them physically sitting there, ’cause if you were [00:15:00] to have enough to cover any situation, then, you know, most of your components would go unused over the, the lifetime of the wind farm.

And it’s not like they’re just swap in, swap out for any different wind turbine, right? Like they are usually quite turbine specific.

Yolanda Padron: I completely agree with the idea, especially with blades and how trif- tricky some of the new blades and their, their repair processes can be. It’s really important to have a plan and not necessarily just, “Okay, now I’m gonna throw this one out and bring in a new one, and always hold a new one,” because that’s really expensive.

Um, and it’s also really, really important to, uh, that doesn’t matter what particular part it is, that whatever storage facility you’re using, that you’re, you make sure that the environmental factors impacting the spare parts are taken care of, right? So, um, I know I’ve seen spare parts for a battery site or spare parts for a solar site, uh, that just kind of end up degrading even more than the parts that were in [00:16:00] operations because no one was really looking at them.

They were just outside in the elements, and then you just wasted millions and millions of dollars for really nothing. Um, something that you need to take to the landfill eventually or report.

Rosemary Barnes: Hopefully recycle it if it’s electronic waste.

Yolanda Padron: I completely agree that to, to be able to, to have any sort of replacement strategy, you, or any sort of spare parts strategy, you need to make sure that, that the replacement strategy is there and that the refurbishment strategy is there.

If there’s anything that you can recycle in-house and use in-house, that’s a lot better than just landfilling anything or sending anything to be recycled elsewhere where it just piles and piles and piles up.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I think also it’s reassuring if you’re buying wind turbines from maybe a, a less well-known manufacturer or less well-known in your country, I think it is reassuring to have a, like just a stack of spare parts on site, because that will give you the confidence that if [00:17:00] and when things start to go wrong, you know, a few years into the wind farm’s operation, you are gonna have that capability.

‘Cause I think it is, like it’s a big leap to move away from the really, really well-known, uh, manufacturers into some of the less well-known ones and have the confidence that y- you know, you wouldn’t have any- anyone to ask what they’re like for service, uh, for example, and you might also not have confidence that they’re even gonna exist in, you know, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years’ time.

So having the parts on site can give you that confidence. Although, as you say, if those parts aren’t actually functional when you go to use them, that can be worse than not having them in the first place because you thought that you were okay and then you find yourself scrambling. That’s not ideal at all.

Yolanda Padron: Yeah, I completely agree. I did hear about someone who, um, had a, a blade that they They thought they, they didn’t really have the capabilities in-house to, to restore it, and so they sent it to be recycled, [00:18:00] and then later it was sold to them by their OEM, um, on site. And so I think that also speaks to the…

And, and it was just because someone noticed the serial number was exactly the same and kind of noticed. It was, it was really honestly kind of a funny, funny thing in retrospect. But, uh, and it, it just speaks to the idea of you really need to understand if you’re holding spare parts and, and just in general, even if you don’t wanna hold spare parts.

Um, the idea of being able to refurbish or have a plan to be able to refurbish the, the materials that you have on site is really, really, really important because it can save you so much money. I mean, the, I mean, the, for that case, just the, the transportation costs of hauling the blade off, of paying someone to recycle it, of paying for a new blade, um, and everything just to kind of be bamboozled in that way where you could’ve just repaired it on site is, is It’s almost a no-brainer, yeah.

Rosemary Barnes: I gotta say, that’s like a real recycling win, right? Like, you can’t get [00:19:00] better than, than that. Uh, you know, you had a blade, you recycle it into a blade. It’s, you know, performing exactly the same function, better than shredding it and hiding it in a, you know, a footpath, a sidewalk, or something like that.

Stay with China a moment longer, because the product strategy tells you as much as the project map. Mingyang Smart Energy has unveiled the Tianchi MCD 5 MW turbine at its factory in Guizhou. It’s the first machine in the company’s new medium-speed compact drive platform, a semi-direct drive that Mingyang says cuts component count by 60%.

And it is built for sites nobody used to bother with: mountains, plateaus, places where the wind averages four and a half meters per second. Now, Yolanda, 5 MW is pretty big for an onshore turbine in locations. It sounds like, you know, these locations, aside from the, like, less than ideal wind resource, also sounds like places where it’s actually, you know, transport might be a bit of a constraint.

I wonder what their strategy [00:20:00] is gonna be to get those large components and installation equipment in.

Yolanda Padron: Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s not gonna be the first site, I think, that we’ve seen that where they have to develop some sort of game-changing vessel or crane or something to be able to, to get things, uh, to the site.

Uh, my, my first thought honestly was just kind of like, “Oh goodness, that might be a lightning nightmare depending on, on where they’re located.”

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, that’s true. Like we’ve seen in Japan, they have all their turbines on the ridges where the wind speeds are great, at least. Um, but they have been just absolutely destroyed by lightning, like really, really dealing with extreme situations.

I think also, like these are low wind speed sites. Like what, what did they say? Four and a half meters per second average wind speeds? I mean, that’s like half what you would consider a good, a good site, right? And we know that the power in wind, it goes, like it increases with the cube of wind [00:21:00] speed. So, um, you know, like if you double the wind speed, you get eight times as much power.

So it’s like all of the challenges associated with a high wind speed site in the mountains or, you know, somewhere tricky to get to you know, at least you’ve got eight times the power to make up for the effort of maintaining it. Uh, just it seems like, like a lot of effort to get to a low wind speed site, right?

I think these turbines, the cut-in wind speed is gonna be two and a half meters per second, so you know, again, like you can reduce your, yeah, like the, the wind speed a- again by another factor of eight. It’s almost nothing at that wind speed. It really, yeah, I don’t know that you can make up for a low wind speed site by having a really low cut-in wind speed, right?

Like, you’re still gonna end up with low power across the board.

Yolanda Padron: Yeah, and it’s, it’s strange too, I mean, we said it’s, it’s a mountainous region, right? And so, and the transportation [00:22:00] in itself, I mean, we talked about the idea of bringing them in is gonna be difficult. But I know that a lot of times we see a lot of blades that have issues down the line because of the transportation issues and because of the way that maybe they, they didn’t use the lifting points right, and there might be a lot more transportation issues or damages from transportation on the site if they come in and it’s a completely different terrain that they’re used to.

Uh, and teams have to build in a completely different terrain to- that- than they’re used to, then that might also cause problems down the line. Not to mention the idea that I know sometimes in sites where there’s already roads, uh, it, it, because of the position of the turbines, because of the, the way that things are, are mapped out in development and construction, sometimes it’s a, a hassle for operations to, to get the correct cranes or trucks or everything in there to do any sort of maintenance.

Uh, so [00:23:00] I can’t imagine in a place where it’s just really, really difficult to get to in general.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, and especially over the lifetime, you know, maintenance i- is gonna be such a challenge. So I think that it sounds like they’re aware of that because their emphasis with this new platform, dropping the component count by 60%, that’s a claim from Ming Yang that I haven’t seen the details of.

It seems highly implausible but, um, yeah, I would wanna look into that a bit more to believe it. But they also say that their new bearings and gearbox features lift reliability by 10%, so yeah, I think that that is going to make their job a little bit easier, but yeah, I don’t know if it’s enough that would make me wanna invest in a wind farm with a, what was the number?

Four and a half meters per second average wind speed. Seems marginal at best. So new machines for marginal sites built in China and priced to compete. Now let’s move [00:24:00] to Denmark, where the employment numbers show what that competition feels like from the other side. Back in a moment.

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Rosemary Barnes: Numbers out of Denmark tell two stories at once. Green Power Denmark counted [00:25:00] just under 110,000 full-time jobs across the Danish energy sector in 2025. That is up 1,526 positions or 1.4%, slightly ahead of Danish employment overall. That is the good news. Inside the wind sector, employment fell to 32,700, a drop of roughly 500.

Green Power Denmark blames international competition and unfavorable market conditions. Its chief economist calls the dip normal You know what, Yolanda? I think that if Denmark’s labor market is weak in the wind industry, there are many countries outside of Denmark that would wanna snap up that talent.

I know that my own company, Pardalote, is included in those numbers of people that would really like to have Danish talent. I’m trying to s- hire someone currently that’s got wind turbine blade expertise, and I tell you what, that is not easy to do in Australia. So I would say if there are any Danes listening or watching who fancy a move to Australia, then please do get in touch [00:26:00]if you have some excellent wind turbine blade experience.

Yolanda Padron: You guys would have a lovely, lovely boss. I’ve- I just gotta say that. The learnings that you have in Denmark and just the, the, the school- not just from the schooling, the, the onsite, I mean, it- it’s just historically Denmark’s been really, really great in, in wind. And there’s just so many bright minds, um, that d- I mean, if, if they can’t find a j- a job in Denmark, then I, I agree that there’s a lot of places in wind that if they’re, they’re okay with moving, they’ll, they’ll find a, a good spot that’ll receive them really happily.

Rosemary Barnes: I know it is a bit of a, like, a cultural blocker. Danes more than other nationalities that I know are, are really, um, I don’t wanna say attached, it makes it sound like not quite the word I’m looking for, but they, they do really appreciate the region that they’re from and, you know, family is so important to Danes, so not the easiest thing [00:27:00] to just say, “Just move to the other side of the world.”

But you know, I did it. It, it can be done and, uh, yeah, Australia is, has got very nice weather, especially at the moment. It’s, um, it’s gonna be… It’s been, like, in the high teens Celsius all this week, and this is, I’m in Canberra in still winter and, uh, yeah, like, on the weekend it’s gonna be 20 degrees. It’s, you know, normally 15 degrees is a really great one-off day in winter.

It was my birthday this week and in Denmark there is a, a saying or a, you know, a belief that if you have good weather on your birthday, then that means that you must have been really good all year. And the weather was just, like, unprecedentedly good for my birthday, um, yeah, for a winter day. So obviously I was very, very good this year.

Yolanda Padron: You’re a great person, and happy belated birthday.

Rosemary Barnes: Thank you. But it is something that I say every time we get another story about another Danish wind energy company that’s, you know, doing layoffs and, you know, I’m honestly surprised that it’s [00:28:00] only 500 fallen in wind energy. If you look at, like, even just the job losses at LM Wind Power alone, um, I think that it would be about that many, right?

And so there are obviously some other companies um, growing to absorb some of the job losses, ’cause for sure we’ve covered more than 500 job losses just on the show. But I know I always feel really sad, um, not just for the people involved who y- you know, probably love wind energy and wanted to work in that field, but I feel sad that, you know, this was such a strength for Denmark, their, their wind industry, that they had been, you know, developing this expertise since the ’70s, honestly.

Uh, really, really world leading and, uh, of course, like, globalization means that you can’t, like, stay siloed forever, and Denmark obviously also took advantage of that globalization to, you know, export. Wind industry was a huge export market for Denmark, and still is. Um, but I do, I, I just feel really bad at the companies that are losing, um, all of that, you know, institutional [00:29:00]knowledge and the really, really deep specialist knowledge.

It’s, um, yeah. Uh, and they’ll go on to, you know, bring new skills to other industries, but it just makes me sad. As a wind energy lover and, um, you know, somebody who has a lot of friends that work in wind industry in Denmark, I do feel, feel sad. And there are some of my old colleagues who are amazing, like, literally the best engineer that I ever worked with, an electrical engineer, it, it was not easy for him to find a new job in wind.

I’m actually not sure if he’s working in that industry now. And plenty of other, like, really, really talented engineers that have gone on to other, um, yeah, other different kinds of industries, and it just makes me a little bit sad.

Yolanda Padron: Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of people too that are com- And I agree, it’s sad.

It’s really sad. But I, there are a lot of people too, some friends that, uh, just, you know, started doing consulting on their own, and it’s, it’s good to see that they’re still in wind, you know? Because they’re, they, they’re so smart and they have so much knowledge of so many years in the industry that they bring to the table, um, [00:30:00] that, I mean, it, it might even work out better for them, right?

Because maybe now they’re not just wor- focusing on Denmark itself, and now they get to, to expand and do what they evidently love to do, uh, the, for clients around the world, which is really exciting.

Rosemary Barnes: Well, that wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast, and my first as the primary host of the show, so let me know if you think I did a terrible job in the comments.

Comments boost engagement, make me look better. So if today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn, and if you found value in today’s conversation, please leave us a review. It really helps other wind energy professionals discover the show. And don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

For Yolanda, and Matthew and Allen Hall in their absence, I’m Rosemary Barnes, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy [00:31:00] podcast.

India Locks Down Turbine Data, Danish Wind Jobs Dip

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Renewable Energy

About Two-Thirds of Americans Will Never Call the Lake North of New York “Lake America”

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At what point did 30% of the U.S. electorate become so tuned into a criminal sociopath’s wanting to rename places in the Western Hemisphere in an effort towards his own self-aggrandizement?

The only interesting question that remains is what if any trajectory does this nation have to recover some level of dignity once Trump is removed from the presidency.

Some say it will take generations.  No one knows for certain.

About Two-Thirds of Americans Will Never Call the Lake North of New York “Lake America”

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Nothing Endures But Change

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“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” — Heraclitus

One of humankind’s greatest thoughts is tied up in this quote from the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus.  It’s right up there with “I think therefore I am,” and “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

But where the last of the three are indisputable, what up with this “persistence of change” stuff?

It’s true that the aspects of people and things change.  The walls of the Grand Canyon are constantly shifting, but no sensible person thinks it’s a different place than it was millions of years ago.

Most of the cells in my body die and are replaced in a matter of a few months, and my attitudes and beliefs change day by day.  But my beloved kindergarten teacher, Alice Adams, will exist in my memories until the day I die.

What Heraclitus left of us is intellectually stimulating, but it doesn’t affect how we function as human beings.

Nothing Endures But Change

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