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IntelStor Report Reveals Insights on Australia’s Wind Energy Growth

Leveraging new research, this News Flash episode dives into the Australian wind energy market, with insights from IntelStor on capacity, future growth, turbine tech, and factors impacting profitability like PPAs and maintenance costs. IntelStor provides valuable data and analysis on renewable energy markets, including this latest report on Australia.

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!

Pardalote Consulting – https://www.pardaloteconsulting.com
Weather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.com
IntelStor – https://www.intelstor.com

Allen Hall: I’m Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech. And I’m here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum. And this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you need actionable information about renewable projects or technologies, check out IntelStor at IntelStor.com.

Well, Phil, IntelStor put out a really interesting report about our friends in Australia and the wind energy down there. A lot of moving pieces at the moment. 12 gigawatts already installed wind. What’s the future look like? What’s happening? What turbines are working down in Australia?

Philip Totaro: Well, thanks, Allen.

First of all, I appreciate the opportunity to come on and talk about this exclusively. The Australian market’s an interesting one because they’ve now got 12. 2 gigawatts operational as of the end of 2023. They’ve got another 4. 4 gigawatts under construction right now, which is absolutely explosive growth from the typical annual capacity additions they’ve seen.

Even last year they only added something like 800 megawatts. But they’ve also got 8 gigawatts of onshore wind that’s consented and hasn’t started construction yet, and another 90 gigawatts that is early to mid stage proposed, where a lot of this is tied to additional intrastate transmission lines being built, or even the transmission line they’re talking about building from Australia to Indonesia, and so they’ve got a ton of ambition and a ton of proposed projects.

If a bunch of that capacity does get green lit, that does mean new factories in Australia because they’re gonna have more than enough capacity to be able to, Sustain a dedicated factory, certainly for companies like Vestas and maybe even GE.

Allen Hall: So the vast majority of the wind energy at the moment is in Victoria, which is down south by Melbourne, right? So they have like a third of the total install capacity. What do we know from that area? What have we learned? Where is Victoria headed? Because it seems like the rest of Australia is still playing a little bit of catch up.

Philip Totaro: Victoria’s got the highest installed capacity because they also have the highest demand and the highest concentration of population and load centers. So that explains a lot about both wind and solar being so popular there. They don’t have quite a lot of intrastate transmission built, so whatever is being built in terms of power generation, wind, solar, et cetera, in Victoria is for the most part being consumed in Victoria and so that’s going to be a challenge longer term for them to look at how they’re kind of Integrating their overall electric grid throughout the whole country, and whether or not they’re going to have intrastate market balancing mechanisms facilitated by intrastate transmission.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, if you look at some of the analysis that some experts have done on the country as far as queue lines and where load centers are, and where it looks like the installations are going to go for siting purposes. hotspot around Perth on the far west side, and then you have Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, all up kind of that west coast in the south.

And where those load centers are. But of course what we know about Australia, the center of Australia is basically void of people. So there’s not a whole lot of sighting going on in the middle there. But there is also, interestingly enough very good wind resource in the center of the country where there isn’t anybody.

So if they get some more transmission built there, that could be interesting. But again, we get back to the fact of I think there’s 25, 26 million people in Australia, , give or take 10 percent or something, they don’t need that much energy, they could be a net energy exporter if they get some things moving as well.

Allen Hall: But the PPA prices vary by state, right, that there’s, Victoria has some of the lowest PPA prices because of the installed capacity, while some of the other outer regions have relatively high PPA prices, even compared to the United States is that going to neutralize, Phil, are they going to level out over time if they do build these interconnectors, or is it A function of just that particular economy.

Philip Totaro: No, that’s a great question because they would harmonize the price a little more state to state if they built more transmission, but for right now, you’ve got New South Wales, Queensland and even Western Australia with average prices for wind projects above, you know, 80 a megawatt hour Australian, which is, let’s say it’s 55 to 57 U. S. Per megawatt hour. That’s towards the kind of higher, slightly higher than average in terms of the global average we saw for PPA prices in 2023. But PPA prices have been climbing globally. And so, I’d say that’s right in line. Victoria is kind of a special case.

Even South Australia they’ve got kind of PPA prices in the middle, they’re around 51 a megawatt hour Australian, which is something like 35 to 38 US. But Victoria is down at 34 a megawatt hour, which is about 22 to 24 a megawatt hour US. And they’ve even got one project, MacArthur Project, which averaged last year 14 US.

14.72 US per megawatt hour. So, they’re getting down into like the Southwest power pool kind of prices that we see here in the United States. For some of these projects in Victoria, and it’s drastically changing the payback timeframe for a lot of those projects that are based in Victoria.

Normally with a more than, 20 a megawatt hour US PPA, your payback window is within the time frame of the project. You may have a project that’s 20 or 25 years, you’ll pay back in, 20 years. In this case, that MacArthur project, the low PPA has exploded the time frame for payback.

It’s now more than 60 years. Before they’re going to fully pay off the capital that was invested in that project. So, the low PPA prices are a concern. As we talked about, yes, the intrastate transmission and market balancing would help stabilize that. If they were able to pipe some of this excess capacity.

That they’re generating in Victoria elsewhere throughout the country. But until that happens you’re probably going to want to go build projects in Western Australia where there’s ample land, ample resources, Joel just said, and probably better prices.

Joel Saxum: Are these lower prices due to, I mean, Australia has.

some of the highest adoption rates of rooftop solar at the residential level as well. Is that due to that?

Philip Totaro: In part, yes. If everybody in the world put rooftop solar on their roof, then, we pretty much wouldn’t need, like, conventional power generation. But we’d have a much different grid and much different way of balancing the grid.

With generation versus demand. So in Australia, yes, because of this distributed generation and the amount of microgrid applications they have, it’s definitely had an impact on prices, but it’s not quite as pronounced as that it’s just overall kind of saturation of the market in a place like Victoria, for instance, where you’ve got an ample supply of solar, you’ve got conventional power generation sources, they’re still also producing. So if you have a year where it’s very good wind, but you don’t have a lot of offtake and demand, you’re necessarily going to start depressing the price and curtailing a lot.

Allen Hall: So the profitability of each of the operators in Australia varies quite a bit.

One of the top producing and one of the wealthiest is squadron energy. They’re in the top five revenue per megawatt hour. That makes a lot of sense, I think, because of the growth that they’re planning to do over the next couple of years, where they’re going to push heavy into wind and to solar.

Are there some other top producers there that are going to continue to expand in Australia?

Philip Totaro: AGL, which is their biggest utility, is also in that top five at least for wind energy asset ownership. We are still completing the analysis for solar, but AGL’s up there.

Interestingly, some of the top owners, in terms of profitability in Australia are actually financially focused companies like the construction building union. CBUs. They’re in there. The Dutch investment fund capital and synergy, which is a utility and energy trading company as well.

They’re one of the top owners of wind energy. And so the profitability question and we’ve talked about this a little bit on the show before. But this kind of comes down to a combination of two things. One is, if you have an exceptionally high PPA, so like we talked about in Queensland, New South Wales, and Western Australia, your project’s probably doing fine, your profitability’s probably way up.

But, if you own projects in places like Victoria where the prices came way down in 2023, then your profitability’s also gonna be directly impacted by that. So, a high PPA necessarily makes up for a project where you’ve got a low capacity factor because you can have a 20 percent capacity factor and an 50 or 60 a megawatt hour PPA and still make money and still be profitable where you need to focus on product quality, availability, performance, et cetera, is when you don’t have high PPA.

So if you’re in Victoria. You have to make sure that you’re doing your maintenance, that your project is operating at peak performance, because you need as high a possible capacity factor to make up for the low PPA.

Allen Hall: It looks like, based on the IntelStor data, that the maintenance costs are about 6 on average per megawatt hour, which are I think pretty typical of the industry.

That’s a good sign for Australia. The other piece that is interesting from the IntelStor data is really the types of turbines that the Australians are choosing to install because of the capacity factor, because of the wind situation and because of the reliability. And they have, they’re competing with solar that, as Joel pointed out, there’s a lot of rooftop solar there.

What turbines are the Australian operators choosing to install and where does that go over the next year or two? What turbines are going to be leading the way?

Philip Totaro: The majority of what’s being installed now are really on the four megawatt plus range. The most popular units have been the Vestas V150, the Vestas V162 6 and 6.

2 megawatt. That’s going to continue to be a very popular turbine, and again, Vestas is tied into some of these huge projects like the Asian Renewable Energy Hub project. Which is something on the order of about 17 gigawatts of capacity. So they’ll definitely build a factory for that six megawatt platform in Australia.

If they get the green light on, on projects like that. Nordex is also been very successful with sales on the N163 platform. And GE has been deploying the, I guess you could at this point call it kind of legacy 3 megawatt, 3. 6 megawatt 130 and 137, as well as the new Cypress platform, which is the 4. 8 to 5. 3, 158. So that’s the bigger turbines, because they’ve got more open space in Australia, the bigger turbines have been favored. And let’s not also forget Goldwind, who actually has a pretty decent chunk of capacity installed in Australia. Their, four, five, and six megawatt turbines are also going to be part of that conversation.

As far as the maintenance cost goes, It is actually fairly comparable to the price that you see in the United States. The big difference with Australia is in the U. S. we see a much faster rate of drop off in performance, so you’ll see turbines that have kind of a historical average AEP, and then because of asset degradation over time, all these types of Typical component wear and things like that.

You’ll see a degradation of performance of more than 10 percent from that historical average. Once you see that, it’s typically not recovered. And so you see the cost per megawatt hour being produced increasing. In Australia there’s a doubling from like a brand new project, which is around like 5 a megawatt hour in maintenance cost.

It doubles, but only after about 25 years. In the U. S., that starts off at about the same, it’s about 5 a megawatt hour U. S., and it doubles, but it doubles in only 20 years. So we’re running the turbines in the U. S. a lot harder than what they’re being run in the Australian market. The reason for that being that in the U. S. we’re largely production tax credit driven, and so we’re deliberately trying to run the turbines harder in the first ten years of operation. In Australia, they put the thing up, they do their maintenance, and they just let them run. And they haven’t actually had a ton of repowering in that market yet, because most of the turbines installed aren’t quite 20 years old yet.

But there’s a decent chunk of capacity that’s getting ready to be repowered and that’ll be interesting.

Allen Hall: Phil, this data is really fascinating. Thanks for the update on Australia. And if anyone is interested in the Australian market or energy markets around the world, you can visit IntelStor at intelstor.com and learn more.

IntelStor Report Reveals Insights on Australia’s Wind Energy Growth

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How Is U.S. Insanity Affecting Tourism?

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It’s probably a bit too soon to have useable statistics on this subject, but it’s certainly not too early to apply some common sense.

There are at two factors at play here:

1) America is broadly regarded as a rogue country.  Do you want to visit North Korea? Do Canadians want to spend money in a country that wants to annex them?

2) America is now understood to be unsafe.  Do you want to visit Palestine? Ukraine? Iran?

How Is U.S. Insanity Affecting Tourism?

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Commercial Solar Solutions: Real Case Studies by Cyanergy

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Instead of reacting to the next power bill shock, many Australian businesses are starting to think forward.

Every day, more and more Australian companies are asking a simple question we all seek an answer to: How can we reduce energy costs without compromising performance?

Well, for many, the answer lies in commercial solar power, and Cyanergy is one of the Australian companies helping businesses take that step with confidence.

With hands-on experience delivering commercial solar solutions across a wide range of industries, from farms and sporting clubs to breweries and large manufacturing facilities, Cyanergy’s real-world projects demonstrate how tailored solar systems can transform energy usage and significantly reduce operating expenses.

In this blog, we’ll explore what commercial solar power is, why it matters today, and how Cyanergy’s real-world case studies illuminate the path to a cleaner, more profitable energy future, both financially and environmentally

Let’s get into it!

What Are Commercial Solar Solutions? |Why does this matter?

Solar solutions for commercial applications are photovoltaic (PV) systems designed to meet the energy needs of businesses, large facilities, and organizations. This system often consumes much more power than residential households.

Commercial solar systems typically include:

  • Solar PV panels that capture sunlight and convert it to electricity
  • Inverters and electrical integration are used to convert DC to usable AC power
  • Monitoring and performance systems are installed to track energy generation
  • Optional battery storage to support energy autonomy and peak demand management

Unlike residential solar, commercial systems are scaled to handle larger loads and are often optimized for financial return, corporate sustainability goals, and energy independence.

Why Australian Businesses Are Turning to Solar Now?

Throughout the world, many companies are adopting solar power for several compelling reasons. It is already proven
that solar can:

  1. Reduce Operational Costs
  2. Electricity prices are volatile and often increasing worldwide. Incorporating a solar panel helps businesses lock
    in
    energy cost savings by
    producing electricity on-site rather than relying exclusively on grid power.

  3. Strong Financial Returns
  4. Commercial solar systems can pay back their investment in just a few years, far shorter than the 25 to 30 years
    the
    panels last. This ultimately means, after that, you are left with decades of essentially free electricity.

  5. Sustainability and Brand Value
  6. Customers, employees, and stakeholders increasingly value organizations that visibly commit to environmental
    responsibility.

  7. Energy Security
  8. Generating power locally reduces reliance on external sources and grid outages, a huge advantage for businesses
    with
    continuous operations.

    This mix of economic, environmental, and operational benefits makes commercial solar a smart choice for
    forward-looking organizations and commercial
    property
    owners
    .

4 Proven Solutions Through Real Case Studies by Cyanergy

To understand how these benefits play out in real situations, let’s dive into several commercial solar projects executed by Cyanergy. These case studies show diverse applications of solar power and tangible outcomes for different kinds of businesses.

1. Kew Golf Club (VIC): Sporting Facility Goes Solar

At a local golf club that relied on consistent electricity for lighting, clubhouse operations, and course facilities, Cyanergy installed an 88 kW commercial solar system to reduce costs.

Key Results

  • Payback period: around 63 months (5 years)
  • Annual savings: $26,165, a 50% drop in electricity costs
  • Energy generated per year: 141 MWh

This project demonstrates that not only industrial property but also community-oriented facilities can benefit greatly from solar power.

Beyond cost savings, the golf club also reinforced its commitment to sustainability, attracting eco-conscious members and reducing its carbon footprint.

Why This Matters?

Solar is not limited to manufacturing or heavy industry. In Australia, many Sports clubs, community centres, and similar facilities often have high energy use during peak daylight hours, which can be supported by solar.

2. Sparacino Farms: Where Agriculture Meets Solar Innovation!

Whether for irrigation, cooling, processing, or storage, agricultural operations have faced rising energy costs for a long time.

Similarly, Sparacino Farm was suffering from high electricity costs. For this family-run farm, Cyanergy implemented a 99.76 kW solar system that revolutionised their energy expenses.

Project Highlights

  • Electricity cost dropped: from $48,000 to $12,000 per year
  • Monthly savings: roughly $3,000
  • Payback period: 30 months (2.5 years)
  • Annual clean energy production: 87 MWh

This dramatic turnaround showcases how rural and agricultural businesses can achieve some of the fastest returns on solar investments.

In environments where a roof, sunlight, or a shed space is available, solar becomes both a strategic and practical choice.

The Sparacino farms example proves that solar isn’t just an environmental sustainability, it’s a core business decision that can significantly improve margins.

3. Philter Brewing: Crafting Sustainability

Sustainability often aligns naturally with brand identity, and for Philter Brewing, this was a perfect match.

With the help of Cyanergy, the brand installed an 86 kW system to slash power costs and support green operations.

Project Impact

  • Annual energy generated: 99 MWh
  • Annual savings: $29,130, cutting electricity costs from $81,900 to $52,770
  • Payback period: 45 months (3.75 years)

The brewery not only reduced operating expenses but also strengthened its reputation as an environmentally conscious brand, a powerful differentiator in a competitive market.

4. Uniplas Mouldings International: Heavy Industry Solar Success

In one of Cyanergy’s most impactful case studies, a large industrial manufacturer significantly transformed its energy profile with solar. And that’s Uniplas Mouldings International!

Project Features

  • Total installed solar: 490 kW, executed in staged phases
  • Timeline: Stage 1 (200 kW) completed in just 4 weeks
  • Subsidy optimisation: Accessed three sets of government incentives
  • Payback period: as short as 37 months
  • Annual generation: 752 MWh
  • Energy cost savings: Lowered from $647,000 to $456,000 per year

Big industrial energy users can unlock dramatic operational savings with solar, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars a year while achieving rapid ROI that justifies investment sooner, without delay.

Beyond Case Studies: Cyanergy’s Approach to Commercial Solar

Across all these projects, Cyanergy’s methodology shares some common themes that contribute to success:

1. Customized System Design

We all know that no two energy profiles are identical, whether it’s a golf club or a manufacturing plant.

At Cyanergy, we design systems tailored to the business’s actual energy usage, site orientation, and financial goals. So you don’t have to worry about adding a solar solution.

2. Financial Optimization

From government incentives to financial investment planning, Cyanergy helps businesses structure their solar projects to reduce upfront costs and improve payback timelines.

3. End-to-End After-Sale Support

Proper solar implementation requires more than panels; it requires site assessment, design, installation coordination, monitoring, and performance guarantee.

At Cyanergy, we support clients at every step, from early energy audits to post-installation support.

4. Monitoring and Reporting

Tracking system performance and energy generation ensures ongoing optimization and confidence in the investment.

Our real-time monitoring tools empower business owners to understand exactly how solar contributes to their bottom line.

The Transformative Role of Solar in Business Strategy

The benefits of commercial solar extend far beyond the energy generated or the energy cost that’s reduced. Overall, solar is a strategic business asset that impacts:

Profitability: Lower operating costs mean more available working capital, whether for reinvestment, dividends, or growth initiatives.

Resilience: Energy independence provides a hedge against market volatility in electricity pricing.

Sustainability Credentials: Solar investments signal that your organization is serious about environmental stewardship, which is crucial to investors, customers, and regulators alike.

Employee and Community Engagement: A company that commits to clean energy signals a long-term vision, strengthening morale and community trust.

Takeaway Thoughts

Cyanergy’s real case studies show how businesses from farms to breweries to industrial giants have harnessed solar to cut costs, stabilize operations, and enhance sustainability.

Whether your organization is exploring its first solar project or looking to scale existing efforts, the data is clear: smart solar investment delivers measurable ROI and long-term value.

As energy dynamics continue to evolve, solar power will become increasingly relevant, and companies that act now will secure economic and environmental advantages for years to come.

So, it’s time for you to take the next move! For more information, contact us today and win a free solar quote!

Your Solution Is Just a Click Away

The post Commercial Solar Solutions: Real Case Studies by Cyanergy appeared first on Cyanergy.

https://cyanergy.com.au/blog/commercial-solar-solutions-real-case-studies-by-cyanergy/

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Inside ATT and SSE’s Faskally Safety Leadership Centre

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Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Inside ATT and SSE’s Faskally Safety Leadership Centre

Allen visits the Faskally Safety Leadership Centre with Mark Patterson, Director of Safety, Health, and Environment at SSE, and Dermot Kerrigan, Director and Co-Founder of Active Training Team. They discuss how SSE has put over 9,000 employees and 2,000 contract partners through ATT’s innovative training program, which uses actors and realistic scenarios to create lasting behavioral change across the entire workforce chain, from executives to technicians. Reach out to SSE and ATT to learn more!

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!

Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering tomorrow.

Allen Hall: Mark and Turnt. Welcome to the show. Thank you.

Mark Patterson: Thank you.

Allen Hall: We’re in Scotland, present Scotland and per Scotland, which is a place most people probably haven’t ventured to in the United States, but it is quite lovely, although chilly and rainy. It’s Scotland. We’re in December. Uh, and we’re here to take a look at the SSE Training Center.

And the remarkable things that active training team is doing here, because we had seen this in Boston in a smaller format, uh, about a year ago almost now.

Dermot Kerrigan: Just Yeah,

Allen Hall: yeah. Six months

Dermot Kerrigan: ago.

Allen Hall: Yeah. Yeah. It hasn’t been that long ago. Uh, but IC was on me to say, you gotta come over. You gotta come over. You gotta see the, the whole, uh, environment where we put you into the police room and some of the things we wanna talk about, uh, because it, [00:01:00] it does play different.

And you’re right, it does play different. It is very impactful. And it, and maybe we should start off first of Mark, you’re the head of basically health and safety and environment for SSE here in Perth. This is a remarkable facility. It is unlike anything I have seen in the States by far. And SSE has made the commitment to do this sort of training for.

Everybody in your employment and outside of your employment, even contractors.

Mark Patterson: We have been looking at some quite basic things in safety as everybody does. And there’s a fundamental thing we want to do is get everybody home safe. And uh, it’s easier said than done because you’ve gotta get it right for every single task, every single day.

And that’s a massive challenge. And we have like 15,000. 15,000 people in SSE, we probably work with about 50,000 contract [00:02:00] partners and we’re heavily dependent, uh, on get our contract partners to get our activities done. And they’re crucial.

Speaker: Mm-hmm.

Mark Patterson: And in that it’s one community and we need to make sure everybody there gets home safe.

And that’s what drove us to think about adding more rules isn’t gonna do it. Um, you need to give people that sense of a feeling, uh, when a really serious sense of cars and then equip them with tools to, to deal with it. So. We’ve all probably seen training that gives that sense of doom and dread when something goes badly wrong, but actually that needs to be.

Coupled with something which is quite powerful, is what are the tools that help people have the conversations that gets everybody home safe. So kind of trying to do two things.

Allen Hall: Well, SSC is involved in a number of large projects. You have three offshore wind farms, about a more than a thousand turbines right now.

Wind turbines onshore, offshore, and those offshore projects are not easy. There’s a lot of complexity to them.

Mark Patterson: Absolutely. So look, I I think [00:03:00] that’s, that’s something that. You’ve gotta partner with the right people. If you wanna be successful, you need to make it easy for people to do the right thing. Yeah, as best you possibly can.

You need to partner with the right people, and you need to get people that you need to have a sense that you need to keep checking that as you’re growing your business. The chinks in your armor don’t grow too. But fundamentally there’s something else, which is a sense of community. When people come together to, to do a task, there is a sense of community and people work, put a lot of discretionary effort into to get, uh, big projects done.

And in that, um, it’s a sense of community and you wanna make sure everybody there gets home safe to their friends and family. ’cause if we’re all being honest about it, you know, SSE is a brilliant company. What we do is absolutely worth doing. I love SC. But I love my family a fair amount more. And if you bought into that, you probably bought into the strategy that we’re trying to adopt in terms of safety.

Uh, it’s really simple messaging. Um,

Allen Hall: yeah. That, that is very clear. Yeah. And it should be [00:04:00]well communicated outside of SSEI hope because it is a tremendous, uh, value to SSE to do that. And I’m sure the employees appreciate it because you have a culture of safety. What. Trigger that. How long ago was that trigger?

Is this, this is not something you thought up yesterday for sure.

Mark Patterson: No, look, this, the, the, what we’ve done in the immersive training center, um, really reinforces a lot of things that we’ve had in place for a while, and it, it takes it to the, the next level. So we’ve been working probably more than 10 years, but, uh, certainly the.

Seven years we’ve been talking very much about our safety family, that’s the community and SSE with our contract partners and what we need to do. And part of that is really clear language about getting people home safe. Uh, a sense that you’ve, everybody in it that works with us has a safety license. And that license is, if it’s not safe, we don’t do it.

It’s not a rural based thing. It’s how we roll. It’s part of the culture. We’d, we, uh, have a culture where, and certainly trying to instill for everybody a culture. Where [00:05:00] they’ve got that license. If, if they think something’s not right, we’ll stop the job and get it right. And even if they’re wrong, we’ll still listen to them because ultimately we need to work our way through, right?

So we’ve been, we’ve thought hard about the language we wanted to use to reinforce that. So the importance of plan, scan and adapt. So planning our work well, thinking through what we need to do. Not just stopping there though, keeping scanning for what could go wrong. That sense that you can’t remember everything.

So you need to have immediate corrective actions and that immediate sort of see it, sort of report it. If you see something that isn’t right, do something about it. And that sense of community caring for the community that you work with. And those are the essence of our, our language on safety and the immersive training.

Uh, is not trying to shove that language down everybody’s throats again, particularly our contract partners, but it’s, it’s helping people see some really clear things. One is if a [00:06:00] really serious incident occurs at what, what it feels like here. And I’ve spent a lot of time in various industries and people are different when they’ve been on a site or involved when there’s been a really serious incident and you need to do something to.

Get that sense of a feeling of what it feels like and actually make people feel slightly uncomfortable in the process. ’cause that’s part of it,

Allen Hall: right? Yes.

Mark Patterson: Because you know,

Allen Hall: you remember that.

Mark Patterson: You remember that. Yeah. We’ve had, you know, we’ve had people say, well, I felt very uncomfortable in that bit of the training.

It was okay. But was, I felt very uncomfortable. And you know, we’ve talked about that a lot.

Allen Hall: Yeah.

Mark Patterson: We know you kinda should because if there’s something wrong with you, if you don’t feel uncomfortable about that. But what’s super powerful on the guys in at TT do brilliantly. Is have facilitators that allow you to have that conversation and understand what do you need to do differently?

How do you influence somebody who’s more senior? How do you, how do you bring people with you so that they’re gonna [00:07:00] do what you want ’em to do after you’ve left the building? And. Just pointing the finger at people and shouting at them. Never does that. Right? Uh, rarely does that. You’ve gotta get that sense of how do you get people to have a common belief?

And,

Allen Hall: and I think that’s important in the way that SSE addresses that, is that you’re not just addressing technicians, it’s the whole chain. It’s everybody is involved in this action. And you can break the link anywhere in there. I wanna get through the description of why that. Process went through ATTs head to go.

We need to broaden the scope a little bit. We need to think about the full chain from the lowest entry worker just getting started to the career senior executive. Why chain them all together? Why put them in the same room together? Yeah. Why do you do that?

Dermot Kerrigan: Well, behavioral safety or behavioral base safety kind of got a bad rep because it was all about.

If we could just [00:08:00] make those guys at the front line behave themselves,

Allen Hall: then everything’s fine,

Dermot Kerrigan: then everything’s fine.

Allen Hall: Yes.

Dermot Kerrigan: But actually that’s kind of a, the wrong way of thinking. It didn’t work. I, I think,

Allen Hall: yeah, it didn’t work.

Dermot Kerrigan: What the mess, the central message we’re trying to get across is that actually operational safety is not just the business of operational people.

It’s everybody’s business.

Allen Hall: Right.

Dermot Kerrigan: You know? Um, and. Yeah, everybody has a role to p play in that, you know? Right. So site based teams, back office support functions, everybody has a role to play. And, you know, there’s a strand in, in this scenario where, uh, an incident takes place because people haven’t been issued with the right piece of equipment.

Which is a lifting cage.

Allen Hall: Yes.

Dermot Kerrigan: And there’s a whole story about that, which goes through a procurement decision made somewhere where somebody hit a computer and a computer said no because they’d asked for too many lifting cages when they, somebody could have said, you’ve asked for five lifting cages, it’s takes you over the procurement cap.

Would four do it? [00:09:00] Yes, that would be fine. That would be fine. Yeah. As it is, they come to a crucial piece of operation. This incr this, you know, this crucial piece of kit simply isn’t there. So in order to hit the deadline and try and make people happy, two ordinary guys, two technicians, put two and two together, make five, and, and one of them gets killed, you know?

Yeah. So it’s, we’re, we’re trying to show that, that this isn’t just operational people. It’s everybody’s business.

Mark Patterson: Well, that’s why we worked with you in this, because, um, we saw. Why you got it in terms of that chain? Um, so in, in the scenario, it’s very clear there’s a senior exec talking to the client and actually as SSE.

We’re sometimes that client, we’ve got big principal contractors that are doing our big construction activities. We’ve got a lot in renewables and onshore and offshore wind obviously, but, and the transmission business and in thermal, so, uh, and distribution. So I’ll list all our businesses and including customer’s business, but we’ve got some big project activities where we’re the client sometime we’re the principal contractor [00:10:00] ourselves.

And we need to recognize that in each chain, each link in that chain, there’s a risk that we say the wrong thing, put the wrong pressure on. And I think what’s really helpful is we have in the center that sort of philosophy here that we get everybody in together mixed up. Probably at least half of our board have done this.

Our executive team have all done this. Um, people are committed to it at that level, and they’re here like everybody else sitting, waiting for this thing to start. Not being quite sure what they’re gonna go through in the day. Um, and it’s actually really important you’ve got a chief exec sitting with somebody who’s, um, a scaffolder.

That’s really important. ’cause the scaffolder is probably the more likely person to get hurt rather than chief exec. So actually everybody seeing what it’s like and the pressures that are under at each level is really important.

Allen Hall: SSC is such a good example for the industry. I watched you from outside in America for a long time and you just watch the things that happened.

[00:11:00] Here you go. Wow. Okay. SSC is organized. They know what they’re doing, they understand what the project is, they’re going about it. Mm-hmm. Nothing is perfect, but I, I think when we watch from the United States, we see, oh, there’s order to it. There’s a reason they’re doing these things. They’re, they’re measuring what is happening.

And I think that’s one of the things about at t is the results. Have been remarkable, not just here, but in several different sites, because a TT touches a lot of massive infrastructure projects in the uk and the success rate has been tremendous. Remember? You wanna just briefly talk about that?

Dermot Kerrigan: Yeah. But we, we run a number of centers.

We also run mobile programs, which you got from having seen us in the States. Um, but the first, uh, center that we, we, we opened was, was called. Epic, which stood for Employers Project Induction Center, and that was the Thames Tideway Tunnel Project, which is now more or less finished. It’s completed. And that was a 10 year project, 5 billion pounds.

Allen Hall: Wow.

Dermot Kerrigan: Um, [00:12:00] and you know, unfortunately the fact is on, on that kind of project, you would normally expect to hurt a number of people, sometimes fatally. That would be the expectation.

Allen Hall: Right. It’s a complicated

Dermot Kerrigan: project, statistic underground. So, you know, we, and, and of course Tide, we are very, very. Very pleased that, uh, in that 10 year span, they didn’t even have one, uh, serious life-changing injury, uh, let alone a fatality.

Um, so you know that that’s, and I’m I’m not saying that what ATTs work, uh, what we do is, is, is, is directly responsible for that, but certainly Epic, they would say Tideway was the cornerstone for the safety practices, very good safety practices that they, they put out. Uh, on that project, again, as a cultural piece to do with great facilities, great leadership on the part of the, of the, of the executive teams, et cetera, and stability.

It was the same ex executive team throughout that whole project, which is quite unusual.

Allen Hall: No.

Dermot Kerrigan: Yeah. [00:13:00] Um, so yeah, it, it, it seems to work, you know, uh, always in safety that the, the, the, the tricky thing is trying to prove something works because it hasn’t happened. You know?

Allen Hall: Right, right. Uh, prove the negative.

Dermot Kerrigan: Yeah. Um,

Allen Hall: but in safety, that’s what you want to have happen. You, you do know, not want an outcome.

Dermot Kerrigan: No, absolutely not.

Allen Hall: No reports, nothing.

Dermot Kerrigan: No. So, you know, you have to give credit to, to organizations. Organizations like SSE. Oh, absolutely. And projects like Tideway and Sted, uh, on their horn projects. Who, who have gone down this, frankly, very left field, uh, route.

We we’re, you know, it is only in the last 10 years that we’ve been doing this kind of thing, and it hasn’t, I mean, you know, Tideway certainly is now showing some results. Sure. But, you know, it’s, it’s, it, it wasn’t by any means a proven way of, of, of dealing with safety. So

Mark Patterson: I don’t think you could ever prove it.

Dermot Kerrigan: No.

Mark Patterson: And actually there’s, there’s something [00:14:00]fundamentally of. It, it kind of puts a stamp on the culture that you want, either you talked about the projects in SSE, we’ve, we’ve done it for all of our operational activities, so we’ve had about 9,000 people through it for SSE and so far about 2000 contract partners.

Um, we’re absolutely shifting our focus now. We’ve got probably 80% of our operational teams have been through this in each one of our businesses, and, uh, we. We probably are kind of closing the gaps at the moment, so I was in Ireland with. I here guys last week, um, doing a, a mobile session because logistically it was kind of hard to come to Perth or to one of the other centers, but we’re, we’re gradually getting up to that 80%, uh, for SSE colleagues and our focus is shifting a bit more to contract partners and making sure they get through.

And look, they are super positive about this. Some of them have done that themselves and worked with a TT in the past, so they’re. Really keen to, to use the center that we have [00:15:00] here in Perth, uh, for their activities. So when, when they’re working with us, we kind of work together to, to make that happen. Um, but they can book that separately with you guys.

Yeah. Uh, in, in the, uh, Fastly Center too.

Allen Hall: I think we should describe the room that we’re in right now and why this was built. This is one of three different scenes that, that each of the. Students will go through to put some realism to the scenario and the scenario, uh, a worker gets killed. This is that worker’s home?

Dermot Kerrigan: Yeah. So each of the spaces that we have here that, that they denote antecedents or consequences, and this is very much consequences. Um, so the, the, the participants will be shown in here, uh, as they go around the center, uh, and there’s a scene that takes place where they meet the grown up daughter of the young fella who’s been right, who’s been, who’s been tragically killed.

Uh, and she basically asks him, uh, asks [00:16:00] them what happened. And kind of crucially this as a subtext, why didn’t you do something about it?

Allen Hall: Mm-hmm.

Dermot Kerrigan: Because you were there,

Allen Hall: you saw it, why it was played out in front of you. You saw, you

Dermot Kerrigan: saw what happened. You saw this guy who was obviously fast asleep in the canteen.

He was exhausted. Probably not fit for work. Um, and yet being instructed to go back out there and finish the job, um, with all the tragic consequences that happen,

Allen Hall: right?

Dermot Kerrigan: But it’s important to say, as Mark says, that. It’s not all doom and gloom. The first part of the day is all about showing them consequences.

Allen Hall: Sure. It’s

Dermot Kerrigan: saying it’s a,

Allen Hall: it’s a Greek tragedy

Dermot Kerrigan: in

Allen Hall: some

Dermot Kerrigan: ways, but then saying this doesn’t have to happen. If you just very subtly influence other people’s behavior, it’s

Allen Hall: slight

Dermot Kerrigan: by thinking about how you behave and sure adapting your behavior accordingly, you can completely change the outcome. Uh, so long as I can figure out where you are coming from and where that behavior is coming from, I might be able to influence it,

Allen Hall: right.

Dermot Kerrigan: And if I can, then I can stop that [00:17:00] hap from happening. And sure enough, at the end of the day, um, the last scene is that the, the, the daughter that we see in here growing up and then going back into this tragic, uh, ending, uh. She’s with her dad, then it turned out he was the one behind the camera all along.

So he’s 45 years old, she’s just passed the driving test and nobody got her 21 years ago. You know,

Mark Patterson: I think there, there is, there’s a journey that you’ve gotta take people through to get to believe that. And kind of part of that journey is as, as we look around this room, um, no matter who it is, and we’ve talked to a lot of people, they’ll be looking at things in this room and think, well, yeah, I’ve got a cup like that.

And yes. Yeah. When my kids were, we, we had. That play toy for the kids. Yes. So there is something that immediately hooks people and children hook

Allen Hall: people.

Mark Patterson: Absolutely. And

Allen Hall: yes,

Mark Patterson: they get to see that and understand that this is, this is, this is, could be a real thing. And also in the work site, uh, view, there’s kind of a work site, there’s a kind of a boardroom type thing [00:18:00] and you can actually see, yeah, that’s what it kind of feels like.

The work sites a little bit. You know, there’s scuffs in the, on the line, on the floor because that’s what happens in work sites and there’s a sense of realism for all of this, uh, is really important.

Allen Hall: The realism is all the way down to the outfits that everybody’s worn, so they’re not clean safety gear.

It’s. Dirty, worn safety gear, which is what it should be. ’cause if you’re working, that’s what it should look like. And it feels immediately real that the, the whole stage is set in a, in the canteen, I’ll call it, I don’t know, what do you call the welfare area? Yeah. Okay.

Dermot Kerrigan: Yeah.

Allen Hall: Okay. Uh, wanna use the right language here.

But, uh, in the states we call it a, a break room. Uh, so you’re sitting in the break room just minding your own business and boom. An actor walks in, in full safety gear, uh, speaking Scottish very quickly, foreign American. But it’s real.

Mark Patterson: I think

Allen Hall: it feels real because you, you, I’ve been in those situations, I’ve seen that that break the,

Mark Patterson: the language is real and, uh, [00:19:00] perhaps not all, uh, completely podcast suitable.

Um, but when you look at it, the feedback we’ve got from, from people who are closer to the tools and at all levels, in fact is, yeah. This feels real. It’s a credible scenario and uh, you get people who. I do not want to be in a safety training for an entire day. Um, and they’re saying arms folded at the start of the day and within a very short period of time, they are absolutely watching what the heck’s going on here.

Yes. To understand what’s happening, what’s going on. I don’t understand. And actually it’s exactly as you say, those subtle things that you, not just giving people that experience, but the subtle things you can nudge people on to. There’s some great examples of how do you nudge people, how do you give feedback?

And we had some real examples where people have come back to us and said even things to do with their home life. We were down in London one day, um, and I was sitting in on the training and one of the guys said, God, you’ve just taught me something about how I can give feedback to people in a really impactful [00:20:00] way.

So you, so you explain the behavior you see, which is just the truth of what the behavior is. This is what I saw you do, this is what happened, but actually the impact that that has. How that individual feels about it. And the example that they used was, it was something to do with their son and how their son was behaving and interacting.

And he said, do you know what? I’ve struggled to get my son to toe the line to, to look after his mom in the right way. I’m gonna stop on the way home and I’m gonna have a conversation with him. And I think if I. Keep yourself cool and calm and go through those steps. I think I can have a completely different conversation.

And that was a great example. Nothing to do with work, but it made a big difference to that guy. But all those work conversations where you could just subtly change your tone. Wind yourself back, stay cool and calm and do something slightly different. And I think that those, those things absolutely make a difference,

Allen Hall: which is hard to do in the moment.

I think that’s what the a TT training does make you think of the re the first reaction, [00:21:00] which is the impulsive reaction. We gotta get this job done. This has gotta be done. Now I don’t have the right safety gear. We’ll, we’ll just do it anyway to, alright, slow. Just take a breather for a second. Think about what the consequences of this is.

And is it worth it at the end of the day? Is it worth it? And I think that’s the, the reaction you want to draw out of people. But it’s hard to do that in a video presentation or

Dermot Kerrigan: Yeah.

Allen Hall: Those things just

Dermot Kerrigan: don’t need to practice.

Allen Hall: Yeah. It doesn’t stick in your brain.

Dermot Kerrigan: You need to give it a go And to see, right.

To see how to see it happen. And, and the actors are very good. They’re good if they, you know. What, whatever you give them, they will react to.

Mark Patterson: They do. That’s one of the really powerful things. You’ve got the incident itself, then you’ve got the UNP of what happened, and then you’ve got specific, uh, tools and techniques and what’s really good is.

Even people who are not wildly enthusiastic at the start of the day of getting, being interactive in, in, in a session, they do throw themselves into it ’cause they recognize they’ve been through [00:22:00] something. It’s a common sense of community in the room.

Dermot Kerrigan: Right.

Mark Patterson: And they have a bit of fun with it. And it is fun.

Yeah. You know, people say they enjoy the day. Um, they, they, they recognize that it’s challenged them a little bit and they kinda like that, but they also get the opportunity to test themselves. And that testing is really important in terms of, sure. Well, how do you challenge somebody you don’t know and you just walking past and you see something?

How do you have that conversation in a way that just gets to that adult To adult communication? Yeah. And actually gets the results that you need. And being high handed about it and saying, well, those are the rules, or, I’m really important, just do it. That doesn’t give us a sustained improvement.

Dermot Kerrigan: PE people are frightened of failure, you know?

Sure. They’re frightened of getting things wrong, so give ’em a space where they, where actually just fall flat in your face. Come back up again and try again. You know, give it a go. And, because no one’s, this is a safe space, you know, unlike in the real world,

Allen Hall: right?

Dermot Kerrigan: This is as near to the real world as you want to get.

It’s pretty real. It’s safe, you know, uh, it’s that Samuel Beckett thing, you know, fail again, [00:23:00] fail better,

Allen Hall: right?

Mark Patterson: But there’s, there’s a really good thing actually because people, when they practice that they realize. Yeah, it’s not straightforward going up and having a conversation with somebody about something they’re doing that could be done better.

And actually that helps in a way because it probably makes people a little bit more generous when somebody challenges them on how they’re approaching something. Even if somebody challenges you in a bit of a cat handed way, um, then you can just probably take a breath and think this. This, this guy’s probably just trying to have a conversation with me,

Allen Hall: right.

Mark Patterson: So that I get home to my family.

Allen Hall: Right.

Mark Patterson: It’s hard to get annoyed when you get that mindset. Mindset

Allen Hall: someone’s looking after you just a little bit. Yeah. It does feel nice.

Mark Patterson: And, and even if they’re not doing it in the best way, you need to be generous with it. So there’s, there’s good learnings actually from both sides of the, the, the interaction.

Allen Hall: So what’s next for SSE and at t? You’ve put so many people through this project in, in the program and it has. Drawn great results.

Mark Patterson: Yeah.

Allen Hall: [00:24:00] How do you, what do you think of next?

Mark Patterson: So what’s next? Yeah, I guess, uh, probably the best is next to come. Next to come. We, I think there’s a lot more that we can do with this.

So part of what we’ve done here is establish with a big community of people, a common sense of what we’re doing. And I think we’ve got an opportunity to continue with that. We’ve got, um, fortunate to be in a position where we’ve got a good level of growth in the business.

Allen Hall: Yes,

Mark Patterson: we do. Um, there’s a lot going on and so there’s always a flow of new people into an organization, and if people, you know, the theory of this stuff better than I do, would say that you need to maintain a, a sense of community that’s kind of more than 80%.

If you want a certain group of people to act in a certain way, you need about 80% of the people plus to act in that way, and then it’ll sustain. But if it starts. To drift so that only 20% of people are acting a certain way, then that is gonna ex extinguish that elements of the culture. So we need to keep topping up our Sure, okay.

Our, our [00:25:00] immersive training with people, and we’re also then thinking about the contract partners that we have and also leaving a bit of a legacy. For the communities in Scotland, because we’ve got a center that we’re gonna be using a little bit less because we’ve fortunate to get the bulk of our people in SSE through, uh, we’re working with contract partners.

They probably want to use it for. For their own purposes and also other community groups. So we’ve had all kinds of people from all these different companies here. We’ve had the Scottish first Minister here, we’ve had loads of people who’ve been really quite interested to see what we’re doing. And as a result of that, they’ve started to, uh, to, to step their way through doing something different themselves.

So,

Allen Hall: so that may change the, the future of at t also. And in terms of the slight approach, the scenarios they’re in. The culture changes, right? Yeah. Everybody changes. You don’t wanna be stuck in time.

Dermot Kerrigan: No, absolutely.

Allen Hall: That’s one thing at t is not,

Dermot Kerrigan: no, it’s not

Allen Hall: stuck in time.

Dermot Kerrigan: But, uh, I mean, you know, we first started out with the centers, uh, accommodating project.

Yeah. So this would [00:26:00] be an induction space. You might have guys who were gonna work on a project for two weeks, other guys who were gonna work on it for six months. They wanted to put them through the same experience. Mm. So that when they weren’t on site. That they could say, refer back to the, the, the, the induction and say, well, why ask me to do that?

You know, we, we, we both have that experience, so I’m gonna challenge you and you’re gonna accept challenge, et cetera. So it was always gonna be a short, sharp shock. But actually, if you’re working with an organization, you don’t necessarily have to take that approach. You could put people through a little bit of, of, of, of the training, give ’em a chance to practice, give ’em a chance to reflect, and then go on to the next stage.

Um. So it, it becomes more of a, a journey rather than a single hard, a single event experience. Yeah. You don’t learn to drive in a day really, do you? You know, you have to, well, I do transfer it to your right brain and practice, you know?

Allen Hall: Right. The more times you see an experience that the more it’s memorable and especially with the, the training on how to work with others.[00:27:00]

A refresh of that is always good.

Dermot Kerrigan: Yeah.

Allen Hall: Pressure changes people and I think it’s always time to reflect and go back to what the culture is of SSE That’s important. So this, this has been fantastic and I, I have to. Thank SSC and a TT for allowing us to be here today. It was quite the journey to get here, but it’s been really enlightening.

Uh, and I, I think we’ve been an advocate of a TT and the training techniques that SSC uses. For well over a year. And everybody we run into, and in organizations, particularly in win, we say, you, you gotta call a TT, you gotta reach out because they’re doing things right. They’re gonna change your safety culture, they’re gonna change the way you work as an organization.

That takes time. That message takes time. But I do think they need to be reaching out and dermo. How do they do that? How do, how do they reach att?

Dermot Kerrigan: Uh, they contact me or they contact att. So info at Active Trading Team, us.

Allen Hall: Us. [00:28:00] There you go.

Dermot Kerrigan: or.co uk. There you go. If you’re on the other side of the pond. Yeah.

Allen Hall: Yes. And Mark, because you just established such a successful safety program, I’m sure people want to reach out and ask, and hopefully a lot of our US and Australian and Canadian to listen to this podcast. We’ll reach out and, and talk to you about how, what you have set up here, how do they get ahold of you?

Mark Patterson: I’ll give you a link that you can access in the podcast, if that. Great. And uh, look. The, the risk of putting yourself out there and talking about this sort of thing is you sometimes give the impression you’ve got everything sorted and we certainly don’t in SSE. And if the second you think you’ve got everything nailed in terms of safety in your approach, then, then you don’t.

Um, so we’ve got a lot left to do. Um, but I think this particular thing has made a difference to our colleagues and, and contract partners and just getting them home safe.

Allen Hall: Yes. Yes, so thank you. Just both of you. Mark Dermott, thank you so much for being on the podcast. We appreciate both [00:29:00] of you and yeah, I’d love to attend this again, this is.

Excellent, excellent training. Thanks, Alan. Thanks.

Inside ATT and SSE’s Faskally Safety Leadership Centre

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