Published

4 months ago

October 28, 2025

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

GE Vernova Q3 Results, Offshore Wind Struggles Worldwide

Allen, Rosemary, and Yolanda discuss the IEA’s 27% cut to offshore wind forecasts, GE’s wind financials, and Ming Yang’s revolutionary 50MW dual-rotor turbine. Register for the next SkySpecs Webinar!

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!

You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now here’s your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxon, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes.

Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wintery Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall in the Queen city of Charlotte, North Carolina.

Rosemary’s in Australia on her way to Sydney and Yolanda Padrone is here on site at a wind farm in Texas and there has been a, a number of news articles this week. Joel’s over actually in Copenhagen enjoying, uh, the sites and sounds of that great city, the International Energy Agency slash its five year offshore wind growth forecast by.

Are you ready for this? 27% citing policy shifts, obviously in the United States and [00:01:00] project cancellations across Europe and Asia. The big one in Asia is the Japan’s Mitsubishi pulling out a couple of projects there when costs, um, more than doubled according to them. And Denmark is changing from, uh, negative bidding auctions in favor of contracts for different, so there has been a, a big pullback in offshore wind.

It’s not zero, you know, it’s not going to zero at any time. I think there’s just a lot of projects that appear to be reassessing the interest rate environments, the ability to get turbines, the cost of ships, everything. And rosemary in Australia, it does seem like there’s been a little bit of a pullback there too for offshore wind.

Uh,

Rosemary Barnes: yeah. I mean it’s, it’s hard ’cause we’re still like in such a, just a nascent part of the. Industry. It’s still really far from clear whether we need or are going to get any offshore wind at all. Victoria has some pretty solid commitments to it. The government [00:02:00] does so. That’s probably as close as, um, anything to being certain that we’ll get some offshore wind.

But, um, probably we’ve all learned, America has shown us that a political com commitment is not as, you know, a government commitment is not as locked in as what we probably would’ve thought it would mean, um, a few years ago. So, yeah, we’ll see. I think Australia is struggling like the rest of the world.

We’re struggling a bit just in general with getting projects to, um, FID and. You know, getting construction actually underway and offshore wind is just like, you know, the same problems but on steroids. So it’s no surprise that you’d be seeing more challenges there. There’s been a few projects that have, um, been canceled or paused, but you know, they weren’t at the point where there were definitely going ahead.

So it’s, you know, like there’s a huge pipeline that makes almost no sense for how many projects there are in planning. Obviously some of them are going to [00:03:00] not go ahead, probably most of them. Um, and yeah, so we’ll, we’ll probably see many more cancellations and I think we’ll see at least a few offshore wind farms and probably those early examples are gonna dictate a bit how easy it is for other people to follow, or how much anyone even wants to follow.

Allen Hall: Well, is it gonna become a case where. Certain countries are, uh, focused on certain energy sources like France and Nuclear, and the UK will be offshore wind, onshore wind, and solar. Germany sort of a mix of everything, coal for a long time and they’ve gone away from nuclear there. But it does seem like every country has its own specialty and is that where we’re headed, that we’re just gonna see the best solution for each particular part of the world?

Rosemary Barnes: It’s really hard to get very decarbonized grids if you specialize too much. Like there. There really isn’t a technology that can just do everything, um, on its own. So, you [00:04:00] know, solar power is very, very cheap, but the sun sets at night. So obviously you’re gonna, at the very least, need some batteries to get you through the evenings if you’re relying mostly on solar power and then wind energy, obviously it’s not windy every day, even in really windy places like Denmark in the uk it’s still, you know, there are wind lulls, so you’re not gonna be able to rely solely on that nuclear power, just kind of chugs along at a fairly, um, you know, constant output.

If you turn it up and down too much, then you’re gonna end up, you need to like overbuild a lot. If you try and size your, your new, your electricity system just based on nuclear meeting, peak load, that’s a whole lot of reactor that’s gonna be not doing much most of the time, aside from the technical complications with being able to turn up and down.

And then even, you know, some of the traditional fossil fuels don’t do a very good job at responding flexibly. Coal power has, you know, similar issues to nuclear and it’s probably even harder to turn up and down. Um, [00:05:00] and then I guess gas is gas Peakers could, you could probably do everything with gas peakers if you want it.

They can turn on and off very quickly. But, uh, the. Gas picker plants are not very efficient. So there’s very high fuel costs and not to mention the, um, climate impact of just burning gas all the time and all of the, um, upstream emissions that come from a gas system. So I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to specialize too much, but of course, every country has technologies that they’re familiar with and comfortable with.

It’s never gonna be the sensible engineering decision to just go all in on one technology.

Allen Hall: Will batteries be the connector? For most of these technologies, and I bring this up because there’s been a lot of more recent discussions about data centers and Yolanda hop in here too because, uh, you work for an operator that was involved with batteries.

But the more, and I’ve been following this relatively closely the last month in doing more and more research in it, but like the, the [00:06:00] Colossus two that Elon’s building in Tennessee, there’s a big part of that distribution. From generation to delivery to the AI data center is a massive amount of batteries because of the up down nature of that load that they need a buffer.

Well, we see more batteries be deployed because of the AI data centers. And is that, can that be leveraged the other way to help balance out a grid that does have a lot of solar? It does have a lot of wind because the data centers are gonna be generically spread around. Countries.

Yolanda Padron: Yeah. Uh, yeah, I think it’s, it, the data centers should definitely, I, I mean, it does look like everything’s trending, right?

To have them, um, include batteries as part of their, of their scope to be able to balance everything out. I know we’re seeing, especially in the us like a lot of the, um, the behind the meter [00:07:00] projects coming online and taking advantage of the, the wind and solar, but. For those rolls where we might not get the perfect generation that they need to be able to exist.

Right. Like the batteries will definitely, uh, be that bridge, uh, to fill the gap there.

Allen Hall: Yeah. And even in the Colossus case where they have gas turbine generation and they’ve taken over an old power plant that was across the river in um, Mississippi, they’re still putting massive batteries in rosemary.

Because the data centers are, I think the consumption has always been that data centers are gonna be this kind of constant power input and that the computers are all gonna be working at maximum all the time. But what they’re finding is that it is not because they’re being trained at their moving up and down from like 10% of capacity to a hundred percent.

So the grid’s not made for that?

Rosemary Barnes: No. I mean, uh, the, the grid’s [00:08:00] not, I mean, when did the, was the grid. Designed or was it even designed, you know, like a hundred years ago and we kind of just, um, patched, patched it together as we needed to. It’s not like there, there wasn’t some yeah, like type of load that the grid was designed for.

People have always just made do with what they had available and then adapted to the characteristics of that. I mean, I don’t know, do you have off peak water heaters in the US because in Australia we have like, you can get a separate, a separate. Signal coming to your house that will turn on and off, uh, your electric water heater in off peak times.

And in the past, like traditionally, that was always overnight and it was specifically done. Like we specifically put all of this infrastructure in place to do that because there needed to be something to use the electricity that coal power plants were generating overnight. So, you know, like it was, um, you, you take what you can get as far as electricity generation and then you, you use it in the most effective way that you can come up with.

Allen Hall: Let me understand that for a minute because I’ve never heard of [00:09:00] this before, and I, I, we, you and I have been talking about energy for 20 odd years at this point, but, so they would turn on your water heater in your home to act as a load for the coal fired electricity plant.

Rosemary Barnes: You have a separate circuit that has off pa loads on it, which is usually just a hot water heater.

And then you can get, um, at. Different tariff from your electricity provider. There’s the regular and then the off peak timing. ’cause this is before anyone had any smart meters and you actually like, you know, the dumb old meters, they knew how many kilowatt hours you had used in a quarter, you know, but they didn’t know hourly.

Um, so this was a way that you could give a cheaper rate for people to heat their hot water. Overnight when there wasn’t enough natural load to be able to use up all of what the coal power plants needed to keep on putting out. ’cause you can only turn them down to a certain base load. Makes sense to use resources efficiently, like of course it does.

Um, that’s why it’s, I just find it really [00:10:00] weird how, um, like really. Emotionally upset, but people get really, get their feelings hurt by the idea that the energy transition might mean that you would change your behavior based on, um, you know, like what the, uh, electricity generation happened to be like that day, but it’s always been done.

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GE Re Nova’s Wind Business’ Engineering. Somewhat of a comeback and a third quarter. Results came out today as we record and revealed, uh, EBITDA losses narrowing to just $61 million from 317 million a year ago. An improvement of over 1000 basis points, which means 10%. Uh, the turnaround strategy, from what I could tell, is starting to work.

The wind services for onshore wind is up by 50. 3%, uh, in offsetting some equipment, uh, payments. And then the CEO Scott Straza emphasized that the company’s focused on profitability over volume with better pricing and reduced offshore contract losses, driving the improvement. They’re still waiting for a payment, it sounds like, from one of the cancellations.

Of around $500 million. So that’s still hanging out there. I wonder who that is. Uh, [00:12:00] but, uh, the, the booked orders this quarter are slightly down for wind. In general, GE thinks, Renova thinks they’re gonna close out Dogger bank and vineyard wind in 2026, which is sort of what we’ve been talking about on the podcast.

It’d be hard to finish both of those this year. So this is sort of a positive sign in, in, in terms of the larger GE with all the electrification and grid, uh, and gas turbines that GE is selling. There’s a huge upside there. Although the market was not particularly happy with this announcement today, I think it dropped a couple of percentage points.

Although since becoming a separate company, they’re up like 300%. It’s crazy. So if you invested on that opening day, which was like what, back in April a couple of months ago, you have done extremely well and I, is there hope for the onshore wind market for GE in the us or is it mostly [00:13:00] going to be. Yolanda, is it gonna be overseas?

Is that where GE needs to go right now because of the slowdown in us,

Yolanda Padron: I think until things for when stabilize a bit more in the US it’ll have to be outside of the us Right. Like their, like you mentioned, their current model relies a lot on having, I mean working a lot more on repairs and everything than actually building new sites.

Um, and I think. We’ve talked about wind in the US maybe ramping down a little bit while everything stabilizes a bit more for that. Yeah, I think it, it makes sense for GE to, to look elsewhere for now.

Allen Hall: Is there a stabilization of the marketplace coming? I know a lot of the talking heads and the, the banking units and if you listen to podcasts, financial podcasts, they’re saying, well this is really good for wind and solar to go through this little period of, uh, becoming more efficient.

And I [00:14:00] think. Uh, the prices of wind turbines have dropped pretty well and solar have dropped a lot. The, the industry is very efficient at the moment. It really has more to do with financing, from what I can tell.

Rosemary Barnes: Wind energy, is it cheaper in the US than it was like two years ago, three years ago, five years ago?

Allen Hall: Yeah. So because you’re generally putting up fewer turbines ’cause the turbines get larger and that they’re more efficient. Right. Um, the. They’re designed more specifically for the winds in a particular area, like low wind and middle wind conditions. I think overall they have been more efficient and as you know, having worked at LM every penny counts.

Rosemary Barnes: Maybe I have the opposite beauty to you. I’m having a, a bit of a, I don’t know, slump in my optimism. I’m, in general, I’m a naturally pessimistic person and um, it’s one of the reasons. That I work in, the energy transition is because I actually feel much more optimistic about progress the more that I, I [00:15:00] know about it.

But at the moment, wind energy, I, I, I’m pretty sure it is not accurate to say wind energy is cheaper, getting cheaper in Australia. It’s costing more. To put turbines in in Australia than it used to. And then I’m also super cynical about, you know, the efficiency savings and cost savings, especially of big companies like ge because what I see is them, they, uh, you know, have a bunch of quality problems from, you know, the work that they were doing in the late 20 teens, um, maybe, yeah, early 2020s.

Bunch of quality problems. So then that costs money. ’cause you know, you’ve got warranties to pay out on and um, things to fix and sales that get canceled. And it seems to me like their solution to that. Their money saving is we’ll just fire most if not all of the engineers. So that’s really good way to save money this year, but it’s not very good way to make sure that you don’t have more warranty problems next year and the year after.

Not a good way to make sure that you’re [00:16:00] able to. Uh, you know, come up with solutions to problems in a timely manner. It’s kind of like, is this the beginning of the end? Because once they’re gone, how do you get them back? I mean, maybe in one or two years time, it’s gonna be an amazing time to be a blade engineer because, um, you know, everyone will be, will be desperate, desperate for, for you.

But it’s, um, uh, I, I, I don’t, I, I can’t get on board with the, you know, the efficiency gains that like, that we’re seeing at the OEMs at the moment.

Allen Hall: I know you’re just a wee kindergartner when the year 2000 was around, but if you think about 20 years ago, there was, at least in the United States, no one was thinking about wind and really few people were thinking about solar and maybe unless you lived in California.

But today, solar is everywhere. You can drive down the street and see solar in most places, and wind is in a lot of parts of the United States and the world at the same time. So. The amount of growth in the industry in the last 20 years has been truly [00:17:00] remarkable. And to say it’s gonna go through some cycle, I think is normal.

Every industry goes through booms and busts.

Rosemary Barnes: I think in the past it was more of a manufacturer by manufacturer basis, so you know, vest would have some quality problems and then they would, you know, get it back under control and a few years later they’re fine Again. LM had quality problems and then got it back under control.

And you, like I said, it kind of cycled through. But now, like who is not having blade problems at the moment? Nobody. I honestly, I don’t. I, I don’t think there’s anybody not having, having problems at the moment. Um, and yet people are laying off more engineers than they’re hiring, that’s for sure. By, like, by a significant margin.

What I think that the industry needed was to do a better job of selling the same platform over and over and over again, so that it got really well known, and then moving up to the next one. After sufficient testing of new [00:18:00] features, then, you know, move up to a new platform and sell a lot of that. Use less engineering by having less design.

Yeah, less designs that you are trying to support at the same time, less new designs that you’re trying to develop. That’s the way to reduce the cost you’re spending on engineering, not to continue to have, you know, millions of different designs and features and constant, constant growth for the sake of growth.

Um, maybe that’s a segue into the next topic. Um, but you know, like you can’t do that without a whole lot of engineering. So it is like, you know, you, you choose, either you have heaps of engineering and heaps of innovation, or you kind of just, um, settle down and do one thing really well, and then you can have less engineering

Allen Hall: 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 a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues [00:19:00] 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 PS wind.com today while the contrast couldn’t be starker while Western manufacturers struggle, as Rosemary has pointed out. China’s been Yang. Spart Energy Group is preparing the world’s most powerful wind turbine, a two-headed 50 megawatt giant that. Dwarfs anything that’s currently operating, uh, production supposedly begins next year at a facility in Guangdong Province.

Uh, Ming Yang plans off of this tournament at below $1,400 per kilowatt. So remember we’re talking about Rosemary and the price per kilowatt is going down where the Ming Yang is truly really trying to drive it down. If, if you look at the. Numbers in comparison to European manufacturers, that’s a pretty low number.

Even in comparison to existing Chinese manufacturers. That number is still like a 20% [00:20:00] discount.

Rosemary Barnes: Is that the price that you would get it for a project in Europe? So with, um, you know, IAC certification ’cause I know that they work to a different certification standard in, in China and that it costs a bit more to, um, have it, you know, designed to pass the.

The is a stunt that everybody else uses.

Allen Hall: Exactly. So the question is, and going back to the engineering thing, it’s a two-headed turbine. So it’s got that V platform, it’s an offshore floating turbine of course. And it’s got that V connection and it’s got two heads, two uh, the cells, and two massive rotors on it.

That has to have a lot of engineering behind it. I hope it does. They haven’t built one.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, it’s, uh, so they’ve done, they’ve done some parts of it before. I mean, they’ll make like a really, a really huge offshore turbine, but it’s not like there are. Hundreds or thousands of 25 megawatt turbines out there in the ocean.

There are not hundreds or thousands [00:21:00] of floating wind turbines of any kind in the ocean, and there are not hundreds or thousands of, um, multi rotors of that, you know, v design that they’ve done. So it’s three, it’s three really big hard things or combined in one. Um, and yeah, it’s a big. A big step before they probably, they probably don’t know the, all of the, the risks and failure modes of any of those three individual things.

And now they’re gonna combine them and get new, new problems from combining things together. So. It will be for sure. A lot will be learn from this. Um, I, it seems like too big of a step to be like, yeah, you’re gonna be able to order one of these and have a gigawatt wind farm with these put in and, you know, 2028.

That’s not within this realm of reality. But as a learning exercise, I mean, that’s what China does really, really well. They don’t plan to the extent that, um, [00:22:00] Western companies do. They don’t. Get every I dotted and t crossed before they will actually execute on a project. And you can definitely learn way more that way, but with much bigger risks

Allen Hall: in terms of certification and standards.

For a turbine that is non-standard, how many years would it take to create just the specifications and the test process to validate it? I, I think we’re talking about a minimum of. Five years of all the committee meetings, you’d have to have to even get close to having something where like A DNV could put a stamp on it, right?

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I mean, there’s a whole bunch of potential failure modes that don’t exist in the turbines that we have today and the standards that we have today. I mean, the standards haven’t even kept up with just regular, like garden variety, one turbine on a stick, three blades, you know, all of that. There’s heaps of, heaps of common failure types that aren’t really covered [00:23:00] by the standard, so.

Um, yeah. I mean, when you get up to, to two turbines and I think that they counter rotate is, is that right? That they’re going opposite direction? I think you need that so that you don’t get funky tower dynamics happening. Um, however, uh, there are still going to be weird things happening with the aerodynamics.

Like di dynamic flow stuff is gonna cause weird things and that causes fatigue is the, you know, the main problem that you get from. Just, you know, just small. It might be, yeah, even just small loads that you didn’t expect in places that you didn’t expect them. Um, and fatigue damage can happen very quickly if it’s a, you know, if it’s a really big, big load.

But if it’s a, just a small but larger than expected load somewhere, it can take two years, five years, 10 years. Um, but then you get fleet wide failure. Um, and so it’s, it isn’t something that it’s very easy to, uh, test for at a scale. You know, with a scale model. So, [00:24:00] you know, in that sense it probably is the right thing to do to build a full sized one as soon as possible and, and learn those things.

You know, it makes me feel uncomfortable because wind turbines are things that people have to climb up in there to install them. People have to climb up in there to maintain them like a lot in the early days, especially with a new system. And so the fact that it could, you know. Fall apart. Risks are reduced if you make sure no one’s climbing it when winds are high.

’cause that’s usually when you’ll see failure. But it’s, it’s still higher than I would feel comfortable with. I wouldn’t like to be climbing inside, um, this turbine ever. Um, but yeah, it, it is. I can’t deny that that is probably the fastest way to, you know, progress technology.

Allen Hall: Alright, Yolanda, if, uh, Rosie’s offshore wind company decides to buy these 50 megawatt wind turbines as an asset manager and thinking about how, [00:25:00] how you would operate these turbines, what would be your top complaints right now?

Or top worries?

Yolanda Padron: Rosie mentioned earlier, right, that it would be in a perfect world. All of this innovation would be driven by engineering. Right? And being able to test these things over and over and over again, and being able to see exactly what problems we’re facing and how we can solve them for the most part.

Right. And just kind of all going up together in getting these, you wouldn’t really know. And we go back to that risk issue, right? You wouldn’t really know. What you’re buying at this point? Me personally, of course it was. If it was Rosie, I’d trust her with my life. So yeah, if Rosie’s doing it, yeah. But anybody else, you know, we won’t, we don’t know what they’re testing.

I mean, you, no one wants to be the Guinea pig,

Allen Hall: right? Well, someone will have to be, if they plan on selling it, someone will have to be the Guinea [00:26:00] pig. But it’s probably an operator in China, or maybe Mi Yang itself will have to deploy them. But. At some point, just listening to the, to the news in Europe, there’s a lot of push to bring in Chinese turbines that don’t have a lot of.

History or verifiable history, doesn’t it just raise the asset risk? I would say, whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down everybody. The finance group, slow down.

Rosemary Barnes: You don’t see a lot of them in, um, Europe or you know, outside of the, um, outside of China yet. And. I mean, I wouldn’t consider it de-risk just because you’d seen a demo turbine turbine in China.

I wouldn’t consider it de-risk because you saw a whole wind farm of these in China, because they do do separate designs for separate, um, geographies. Uh, you know, they, like I said, with the certification, they, they change the design to be able to. To pass that. And, you know, even if you are making it safer, if you’re, you know, adding material, it doesn’t, it doesn’t always mean that it’s becoming more reliable.

Like you have to, you know, the track record [00:27:00] needs to be for the turbine that you’re actually buying, not something that they’ve assured you is very similar.

Allen Hall: That wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. Thanks for joining us as we explore the latest in wind energy technology and industry insights.

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 if you never miss an episode 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 we’ll catch you here.

Next week on the Uptime Window G Podcast.

https://weatherguardwind.com/ge-vernova-offshore-wind/

Renewable Energy

In the U.S., We Live Among Experts

Published

14 hours ago

March 3, 2026

Alice Rush

One might think that being surrounded by experts would be eutopia, but it’s not everything it’s cracked up to be.

At left is an expression of what life in the United States has become over the last decade, which differs greatly from the experiences of those in the rest of the world.

Trump supporters have, at various times, been experts in macroeconomics, epidemiology, and above all, climate science.

In the U.S., We Live Among Experts

Renewable Energy

Making Judgements about California

Published

14 hours ago

March 3, 2026

Alice Rush

As I’m sure the idiot/liar who wrote this meme knows, California’s economy is by far the largest in the country, and, if it were a country unto itself, it would be the 4th largest in the world.

We have quality education, and we make money growing out of our ears.

There’s something to be said for great schools and colleges that crank out affluent, innovative people who kick ass in IT, agriculture, entertainment, and all the rest.

Making Judgements about California

Renewable Energy

TPI Sale Delayed By $100M Claims, WindEurope Calls for Unity

Published

14 hours ago

March 3, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

TPI Sale Delayed By $100M Claims, WindEurope Calls for Unity

Allen, Rosemary, Yolanda, and Matthew discuss highlights from Blades USA including the carbon blade debate. Plus TPI Composites’ bankruptcy sale hits major obstacles as partners dispute over $100M in claims. And Europe’s offshore and onshore wind developers clash over state aid, with WindEurope’s new CEO urging unity.

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

[00:00:00] The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by Strike Tape, protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit strike tape.com. And now your hosts.

Allen Hall 2025: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host Alan Hall, and I’m here with Yolanda Padron, Rosemary Barnes and Matthew Stead.

Yolanda and Matthew have just wrapped up a couple of days at the Blade USA forum in Austin, Texas. Maybe we should start there. Thoughts on the forum this year? Things that were highlights?

Matthew Stead: Yeah. Lightning Root de bond. One positive was that, um, there are a couple of startups there, so, you know, kudos to them for, you know, making the investment.

There was a. There was a startup around, you know, data analytics and, you know, bringing machine learning in. And then there was also another startup looking at recycling. [00:01:00] Um, really trying to get that, that food chain through of, um, you know, grinding and then turning into some sort of valuable product. Um, yeah.

However, I think someone also from EPRI said that, you know, at the moment, you know, the recycling path is, you know, eight times more expensive than the, um, the landfill path. There was a lot of carbon discussion actually. So, and, um, yeah, a lot of discussion about repairs, a lot of discussion about testing, uh, a lot of discussion about, you know, how maybe a carbon blade can last 40 years.

Um, so a lot of discussion about lifetime extensions around carbon. Um, but, but, but, but, you know, really, really hard to repair.

Allen Hall 2025: That goes back to the comments Rosemary and Morton Hanberg made about carbon blades. Should we be making. Carbon blades are not. And I think Morton’s opinion, and maybe Rosemary’s, I don’t wanna speak for her, was carbon blades are okay, but they are really difficult to repair.

Almost impossible to repair. And is it [00:02:00] worth even building them?

Rosemary Barnes: I think if you consider the blade in isolation, then it probably is adding more headaches than it’s worth. But carbon fiber is a bit of an enabler for improvements across the whole system of a, a wind turbine. ’cause when you take, like you can take a lot of weight out of a blade by using carbon fiber.

I mean, it’s never been cheaper to make a blade with carbon fiber than an equivalent blade with glass. You do, you buy the more expensive carbon fiber blade because it’s lighter, a like, a lot lighter, and then you can take, um, weight. It, it reduces the requirements for basically every other component in the wind turbine, but especially stuff like the pitch bearings.

Um, so you solve a lot of other problems, but you create blade problems. So. I think if you ask some of the only works on maintaining blades, then you’re gonna be like, why would you make a carbon fiber blade? It is so much headache. Um, but that’s not the reason why they were ever made in the first place.

[00:03:00] So you’d need to talk to, you know, somebody on, uh, I dunno, front end engineering. Someone from the sales team about why it is that they are going with a more expensive carbon fiber blade. Even acknowledging that they probably underestimate how many problems there are with o and m with, uh, carbon fiber blades.

But even so, like they’re already aware that there are trade offs. Um, and yeah, there’s non blade reasons for, for taking, taking that pain.

Allen Hall 2025: Are there other fibers that could be substituted besides carbon? There, I, I know fiberglass. A, a good, relatively strong fiber and carbon obviously is much stronger. But are there things in the middle that could be substituted that are non-conductive?

Rosemary Barnes: Uh, y yeah, there are, but carbon fibers, it’s not just strong. It’s really stiff. And that’s what its benefit is. Um, like there’s Kevlar but it’s not very stiff. So you would, we would make a really heavy blade if you used Kevlar. It would be probably bulletproof though. So I guess that would be a plus. I, I haven’t looked into it recently, but nothing is [00:04:00] at the, um, like got the performance specs and the cost specs that you would need to, um, make it replace carbon fiber.

Matthew Stead: So one thing that I picked up I thought was pretty, uh, interesting was that by having a stronger, you know, carbon protrusion, you know, the, you know, the backbone of the blade, um, it took a little bit of pressure off the skin. And so therefore, um, you know, the life, life of the blade, um, and the ability to keep running it ’cause the skin is not so critical.

Those seem to be a real, a real plus as well.

Rosemary Barnes: I don’t know, people talk about this in like absolutes, but everything is just a con continuum, right? Like you can make an all glass blade that would last a thousand years if you really wanted to. You just, you know, you just have to make it very, very strong.

’cause it’s, you know, it’s all based on fatigue lifetime. And the smaller that your, um, strain on every component in the blade is, then the less, um, the less fatigue damage is gonna accumulate. Making it a little bit stiffer will actually increase the lifetime by [00:05:00] a a lot. I think the main benefit to protrusions is just that you avoid all of the um, or you avoid a lot of the possibilities for manufacturing defects.

It’s easy to control the manufacture ’cause carbon fiber, like much more so than glass fiber. It’s so, um, it’s so dependent on the fibers being perfectly straight. If you have a little wrinkle, like a little wrinkle is bad in glass fiber, but it’s like really bad in carbon fiber. So protrusions mean that you won’t get wrinkles.

Uh, and you can, you know, control the manufacturing process a lot better, but they are barely repairable, right? So that’s the trade off. You can do some small repairs, but you’re not gonna be just. Um, if you’ve got a, a, a full thickness crack or something, it’s, you know, it’s gonna be game over. You’re not gonna be building that up again.

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Yolanda Padron: will save you millions.

Allen Hall 2025: Well keep going on the, the subject of blades. Imagine if you were selling your house and you told the bank you owe nothing on it.

Then the bank shows up with a bill for over a hundred million dollars. That is essentially what’s happening right now in the TPI composites bankruptcy. Uh, the wind blade manufacturer canceled its [00:07:00] February 17th asset auction after only one bidder came forward. A firm called ECP five LLC, which is, uh, part of Energy Capital Partners, which is based in New Jersey.

Uh, but before TPI. Can hand over the keys. It has to settle up with its business partners. TPI told the court many of those partners were owed little or nothing. Uh, the partners check their books. Strongly disagree. Now, the judge has a mountain of competing claims to sort through before the sale can close.

And everyone, I mean, the, the claims are big. Uh, there are several large names listed, and if you go through the filings, uh, Siemens C Mesa is probably the largest one, and it, it claims TPI owes about 84 million plus an unpaid inspection, repair, and replacement costs. Plus under 22 million [00:08:00]under apparent guarantee.

Others include Aurora Energy Services stating it is owned about $5 million, uh, for post-bankruptcy services, plus 38,000, uh, for before the filing of bankruptcy. The landlord up in Iowa for the TPI facility there is objecting because they’re owed some rent. Some other ones include, uh. Oracle, uh, which is, uh, has a lot of software licenses that TPI currently has, and they’re saying those licenses will not swap over to the new owner.

So there, this is a series of these filings going on at the minute, and they’re pushing back the closing of the, uh, sale hearing until March 9th. So they got about another two weeks as we record right now. This is a big deal and, and although I have seen almost nothing about it in the press. Because it’s hard.

One, it’s hard to find, and two, it’s really [00:09:00] difficult to sort through. Uh, but it is a major milestone for TPI that they’re gonna be able to sell the, or at least transfer ownership to, uh, energy capital partners. And the none of the buyers investors had bought part of the facilities. But GE Renova or Siemens cesa, for that matter, are not involved, at least at the top level.

Which is really to, in my opinion, odd. I thought GE Renova would’ve been involved, at least at some level. They have been supporting TPI through this process. But in terms of going forward, doesn’t look like too much is going on with Renova or Siemens Ga Mesa in, in terms of the operations of these facilities.

Thoughts.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I agree. It’s strange that they wouldn’t have taken that opportunity and that makes me wonder what I don’t know that, you know, ’cause obviously it’s not a strange decision to the people who have made it so. They’ve got more information, a lot more information than us. So what is it that made it unappealing to them?

That’s, um, that’s my question. [00:10:00]

Yolanda Padron: What did TP, I think was gonna happen with all of that money that they owe everyone?

Allen Hall 2025: Well, it’s a bankruptcy hearing. Obviously they like to wipe that debt free and so would Energy Capital partners. They don’t wanna pay the a hundred million plus of whatever, uh, the court would ict, but.

You just like to get the assets. If you can do it, that’s your cheapest option if you’re Energy Capital partners. But do you see Energy Capital Partners running the facilities? There’s a lot of organization within TPI that manages those facilities and controls the operation. From the quality side engineering side, there’s, there’s a lot of pieces to TPI here.

Do you think they’re just gonna pick it up and run, run the company as it stands today? Or, or,

Rosemary Barnes: oh my goodness. I would be so nervous to, um, buy blades, uh, from them in that situation. I mean, we’ve seen so many examples in the last few years of decisions being made by senior management that have really compromised the quality at the end of the day.

Like in theory, yes, the factory, you know, all the processes are in place to do things. Um, to do things [00:11:00] right, but you know, as soon as they get the next new project, which they’re doing constantly, right? It’s not like they just make a blade and they just make it over and over again. They make many different kinds of blades.

There’s decisions to be made and you’re trying to get the price right and the quality right. And then, you know, given that we know that TPI was not profitable the way they were doing it before, they’re gonna have to spend less money. Then somebody who isn’t from the industry is making those calls about where to save it.

It just seems like totally implausible to me.

Matthew Stead: Can I just add though, you know, TPI was mentioned multiple times at, um, at Blades, USA, and so, you know, a lot of people are relying on them or have relied on them and so forth. And so maybe this is a strategy about supporting the industry into the future. Like I think Alan, you, you said that they’re involved in, um, this investment business has other wind assets, so maybe it’s just like.

Securing supply chain and, which I mean, that’s a pretty logical approach, isn’t it?

Allen Hall 2025: Oh, it would be. Uh, they’re about 50% owners of Ted’s US onshore fleet and a number. There are [00:12:00] other projects they’re involved in a number of renewable projects. Uh, so it would make sense for them to try to keep the supply chain going.

But the largest purchaser of GB GE turbines that I know of is NextEra. So you would think NextEra would want to step into the mix too and at least in all the court filings, I haven’t seen much from NextEra or nothing from them at all. It if Osted US is wanting to keep their supply chain and Energy Capital partners wanted to keep the supply chain going, that would make a lot of sense to me.

However, I just don’t know if they have the infrastructure to manage it. As Rosemary has described on numerous occasions running LM wind power is not easy. There’s just a lot of moving pieces, supply chain problems. You’ve got people problems, you have quality problems, you have repair problems, warranty issues.

It’s a lot to that business. It isn’t like you’re stamping out widgets. You, you have a responsibility to that product after it goes out into [00:13:00] service. So if you have problems out in service, you’re, you’re kind of on the hook for all those warranty claims. It’s complicated.

Rosemary Barnes: You make it sound like I was running lm

Yolanda Padron: Rosie runs the world.

Rosemary Barnes: I just wanna make it clear I was not running lm

Allen Hall 2025: Not yet. Rosie. There’s still time.

Rosemary Barnes: I was ru running one very tiny, tiny corner of it.

Yolanda Padron: I’d almost be curious ’cause like since ECP is so much into risk management and just, just in general, they have so many things that they are like part owners in, but they don’t necessarily manage the day to day hands on.

Uh. I’d almost be curious to see if maybe they take a page out of Rosie’s book and try to make one thing. Well,

Matthew Stead: mm, that’d be novel, wouldn’t it?

Rosemary Barnes: It has actually been tried before. Um, you know, it’s, it’s uh, not something that has escaped the notice of blade engineers, uh, that if you make one thing, you can do it right.

And wind turbine blades are a pretty similar there. No, you know, like great [00:14:00] differentiator between. How well performing the blades are from one company to another. I know at, at least at lm, they did have a blade that they designed, and their plan was to sell just heaps and heaps of those to multiple different manufacturers and just no one wanted it.

Um, so it just quietly died. Um, so yeah, the, the concept is good. I think it’s. A little bit harder to pull off than you would hope. There are also some Chinese companies that are kind of selling just parts, generic parts. And so if you wanted to make your own wind turbine, um, company, if you wanted to be a wind energy o and m Yolanda, you could just buy an assortment of parts from Chinese manufacturers and put a.

Yolanda Wind energy sticker on it and um, and, and, and you could be an an OEM. So it is, it, it, it is possible. I haven’t seen any of these out in the wild. Um, I have [00:15:00] heard of, you know, people considering it for, you know, certain aspects of certain types of projects. So it kind of exists in a way.

Matthew Stead: But the financial aspect, I mean, that’s accounting 1 0 1, I mean.

You gotta know your assets and to owe people a hundred million dollars, that’s absolutely shocking. Really?

Allen Hall 2025: They owed a lot more than that before the bankruptcy. It is a lot of money.

Matthew Stead: How do you miss that?

Allen Hall 2025: Well, I don’t think they missed it. I just think the warranty claims and some of the repair that was going on and the, the, it sounded like price discounting was happening to some of the OEMs just caught up to ’em.

But at the end of the day, I, I, I guess the question is. Does TPI as an entity remain? Obviously the Vestas portion will, because Vestas is gonna make them Vestas factories in a sense, and, uh, integrate as part of their overall operations. But Renova is not, Siemens is not interested in doing it, at least as we speak.

No one’s [00:16:00] making any noise over at Nordex. It, it does leave these assets questionable as to what the real value is. We haven’t heard how much, uh, ECP has paid for them yet. The Vestas factories that were purchased, I think the, the two TPI factories in Mexico, I think Vestas paid about $10 million for each factory, which is a really inexpensive price to pay for new factories because Vestus had talked about at one point a year or two ago, about standing up a new factory saying it would cost him roughly a half a billion dollars to do.

So buying a, that same asset for $10 million is a discount, a deep, deep discount, which maybe Vestas figures, Hey, it’s 20 million bucks, plus they got the India operations. Uh, it’s not that much money. If it all goes sour, it’s not that much money and we’re okay. Whereas Ver Nova decided to not to participate in that.

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Don’t miss out. Visit p ps wind.com. Today, over in Denmark, a fight has been brewing between offshore and onshore wind developers and. Sted once State Aid brought back for offshore wind auctions, onshore developers say that would tilt the playing field against them. Well, some have even walked out on their own trade group, uh, over it.

Now the new CEO of Wind Europe, Tina Van Stratton, uh, is stepping in the middle of that discussion with a simple message. We need both. Don’t let offshore and onshore wind divide us. Nearly 90% of Europe’s installed wind capacity sits currently on land, and [00:18:00] she says that is not going to change anytime soon.

Uh, so there, there is a big dispute about this right there. There does seem to be a, a amount of money being poured into offshore wind and requests of governments to support offshore wind at the same time. Onshore wind, which has been the primary growth market for wind in Europe, is getting the cold shoulder.

In a sense. How does this play out everyone? Is there a, a good solution to it or is the need for offshore wind so great that, that they have to ignore onshore wind development for a couple of years?

Matthew Stead: I think we should just all be friends. So, I mean, really. Yeah, we need both and, um, I mean for the diversity and, you know, uh, I’ll leave all the technical topics to Rosie, but, um, um, really I think we need both.

I mean, so what, it’d be crazy to, to drop the onshore, onshore industry.

Yolanda Padron: Yeah. I mean, it makes sense that, or said, especially Orid Europe doesn’t have any onshore anymore. Right. So it’s just [00:19:00]offshore. It would make sense that they really wanna push for help for themselves. And it’s, it’s great. It, it’s, it’s great to help, but I, I agree with Matt.

Allen Hall 2025: Well, the Northern Europe and Scandinavian countries are talking about 100 gigawatts in the water by what, 2050? Something of that sort. So that’s a lot of energy in the water. In order to do that, you have to devote a number of resources to it, which. Will mean onshore wind is not gonna get the support it probably deserves, even though it has a proven track record.

Rosemary Barnes: I just think it, it’s really interesting because I guess wind is, um, a very Europe. LED industry. Um, and so yeah, in Europe, e everything big and exciting is in offshore and the volume is in offshore. Um, I feel like that’s kind of filtered through to other regions though, because I mean, in Australia we don’t even have any offshore wind yet.

We are probably getting some, but you go to any wind energy event, it’s gonna be. [00:20:00] More than 50% offshore wind and sometimes like 90% offshore wind, um, focused, which is, I think crazy when onshore is, is exists and has plenty of problems that need to be solved, and we need to be building more, a lot faster. I, I do actually wish that.

If we could spend as much of the, you know, like some of the effort and the political effort that’s going into paving the way for offshore wind, I think would be much better spent on solving the problems. Um, the obstacles stopping us from rolling out onshore wind faster. Because we’re not on track in Australia to meet our renewable energy targets if we can’t get that under control.

And then in the US yes you have some offshore wind, but it is not a growth industry at the moment or it’s not very appealing at the moment, at least. Right. So, and I dunno how much you talk about it there, but I do hear a lot of, like a whole lot of talk about offshore compared to how important it is for regions outside of Europe.

Yolanda Padron: I think it’s important too to [00:21:00] note that. When you have a lot of offshore wind in your fleet, like you can sometimes test out products onshore that maybe they’re, of course not the exact same conditions, but you can test out products to a degree onshore. And I’ve seen, you know, owner operators that have to go across continents just to test that product because it’s cheaper to do that onshore than to do it offshore in your home site, in your backyard.

So I mean that that would really benefit from an RD standpoint. It would really benefit everyone. If

Allen Hall 2025: they gave it up attention

Yolanda Padron: to onshore.

Rosemary Barnes: When I was at lm, one of my, well my key team member who was an electrical engineer, he had, um, done a bunch of work for a system that was only implemented on an offshore wind farm.

And it sucked up so much time when stuff started going wrong with that, like even small things. And he was the only one [00:22:00] that could do it. You know, you go out, if you’ve got a five minute job to do, to get, you know, like turn something off and on again off. Reconnect something that’s a whole day of work, right?

Like you, and, and not like a normal day, but like a 12 hour day, you’re gonna go out in the morning, they, you know, they go around in a boat or whatever and drop people off and they don’t come get you when you’re done 10 minutes later, you know, they come get you at the end of the day when they’re picking everyone up again.

So, um, it, it was, it was incredibly challenging. I mean, for him personally and the team. Um, and I always recommend to, or, you know, sometimes I’m advising, um, companies that have offshore wind, um, technologies. And I’m always advising anything that you can test on shore, do it and get creative about it as well.

’cause you might think that you can’t, you certainly can’t get all the way there without testing in your real operating environment. But any problem that could happen onshore that you, um, learn about when it’s onshore is gonna cost you probably like, you know, one 10th as much [00:23:00] to fix. Um. So, and, and the time as well.

So, yeah, I, I think that you’re right that we should be actually considering onshore as an opportunity for, um, improving offshore technology as well.

Allen Hall 2025: Can we talk about, uh, data centers for a minute? Just off the top of mind, I’ve been listening to a number of podcasts over the last month or two talking about powering AI data centers and how much coal or natural gas.

It’s gonna be needed to provide the stable, reliable power that these data centers supposedly need. In the meantime, there’s like this industry being built, uh, and you see the, the purchases of gas turbines going out to like, what, 2032? I think it’s what Renova is talking about now is when you could actually get in line for a gas turbine.

Other manufacturers or gas turbines are basically saying the same thing in the meantime. [00:24:00] Elon Musk and SpaceX are talking about putting AI data centers up in space where you don’t have any regulatory issues. You don’t have to burn coal or natural gas or any of these things. So the, the ground-based AI data centers appear to be locked into making these really expensive buildings and assets and putting generation and transmission and, and this infrastructure together, which will cost them.

Hundreds of millions at a minimum, likely tens of billions of dollars to do, and that’s just in the United States. Meanwhile, SpaceX is really on a pathway of doing this up in the sky for probably a fraction of the cost. Is there a break point here? Because it does seem like the, the natural gas, coal, oil, petroleum industry and the on ground build, the building, people are ignoring that.

SpaceX has a [00:25:00] capability of doing this, and if Musk decides to do it, and SpaceX decides to do it, that all those gas turbine orders, all that infrastructure, all the gas pipeline, all the drilling that would have to happen would just go immediately. Poof. Gone.

Rosemary Barnes: I don’t know about immediately because I mean, we’re not at the point yet where you can just launch a data center into space.

So there is a bit of a, a, a transition period. Um, I. I also think that it’s overblown that, you know, I think you might have even fallen into the trap also, where you’re like, oh, when data centers need more energy, so therefore it has to be coal or gas or nuclear.

Allen Hall 2025: Nope, I agree with you.

Rosemary Barnes: Those things aren’t quick to build either.

If you truly wanted to do it quickly, you’d be putting in, um, you know, heaps of solar panels and batteries and, and you know, wind turbines where that made sense. But that said, I, I do agree that, uh, like I, I don’t think space-based data centers is farfetched at all. I, I guess the biggest [00:26:00] challenges, uh, are, um, the cooling and heating requirements space has very large temperature fluctuations.

So I guess you’re gonna need to design that carefully. I don’t think it’s insurmountable. Um, and then the next thing is a cost of launch, which I’m sure you’re about to tell me how. Dramatically the cost of launch is dropping. Um, you know, like, it, it’s got, it’s got a very good learning curve. The space launches, which is basically, you know, SpaceX is probably the main reason why that is just dropping and dropping and dropping.

So I don’t think that it’s unrealistic at all. I don’t know the timeframe. You would know more, Alan, you work in, um, aerospace. I just. You know, um, follow it for general interest.

Matthew Stead: I reckon it’s stupid. He’s really stupid on a number of grounds. So first of all, you know, why do that when. You just, I can’t see how it can ever be more cost effective and you know, [00:27:00] I, you know, you should really, should be putting that effort into things like, you know, better healthcare and so forth.

I mean, what a waste of resources. But why? I mean, why, why?

Allen Hall 2025: Because it’s a lot less expensive and it’s faster.

Matthew Stead: You’d do it in the ocean before that, wouldn’t you?

Rosemary Barnes: No, but the ocean still has, like how do you power it? You, you get the 24 7 solar power in space. That’s what you. That’s what you get, um, which you can’t get on Earth

Matthew Stead: or you put it next to a wind farm and you, you, and you make the load go up and down depending on the wind.

I mean, seriously, there’s so many other ways of doing it. You put it next to a wind and solar.

Rosemary Barnes: I agree with you, Matt, that I think that the, the bulk of the solutions with data centers is gonna come from one demand not being what people think it is today. Like the numbers that get reported are just like the.

Absolute best, best, best case scenario and then multiplied by three or four times because they’re looking at different options for locating each of the data centers they plan to make. So I think I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up with 10% of what people think that we’re gonna get. [00:28:00] Now, the first thing, secondly, people assume that it needs to be 24 7.

Just, you know, like a hundred percent reliable power, and that’s. That’s simply, yeah, it’s not, not everything needs to be just, um, you know, done at, at the exact time that it’s requested. There’s heaps of things that can be shifted and uh, when the price differential is there, then people are naturally going to choose that.

And in fact, there are already some companies offering different levels of reliability depend, you know, for different prices. And companies can choose which of their processes can be put on hold. Like a lot of the training stuff, you’re happy don’t. Need 99.999% reliability, you’re probably happy with 90% reliability.

And so, you know, if it costs a whole lot less than you will, I, I agree with you, Matt, that that’s gonna take most of it. But I do still think that for the, like, super reliable, um, data centers, I, I bet that we see at least one. And even if it’s just because Elon Musk is the type to push something through, um, you know, [00:29:00] first and.

Wait for the market to catch up later. Uh, maybe that will be the reason, but I, I honestly think it’s more than 50% likely that we see a data center in space in the next, in the next decade,

Matthew Stead: it would make more sense to like drill a hole to the center of the earth and get the, the hot well cutting rock

Rosemary Barnes: and or there’s also plenty of geothermal.

You did thermal projects as well.

Matthew Stead: Yeah, it’s just ridiculous.

Rosemary Barnes: I think that we’ve had our first hot take from Matthew, so I don’t know some sort of sound effect to be added here. Claire. Uh, yeah,

Allen Hall 2025: 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. Just 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 give us a review.

It really helps other wind energy professionals discover the show. For Rosa, Yolanda and [00:30:00] Matthew, I’m Alan Hall, and we’ll see you next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.