Published

11 months ago

January 2, 2025

Alice Rush

From mysterious white etching cracks to cutting-edge material innovations, Malloy Wind‘s expert Cory Mittleider reveals the complex world of gearbox bearing failures that plague wind turbines. Learn why traditional monitoring may not be enough and what operators need to know about the latest solutions to keep their gearboxes running reliably. Read the EPRI article Cory references: https://restservice.epri.com/publicdownload/000000003002021422/0/Product

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Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow.

Allen Hall: Welcome back to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight, where we tackle the technical challenges and innovations in wind energy. I’m your host, Allen Hall, joined by my co host, Joel Saxum.

We’re excited to welcome back one of our most popular guests, Cory Mittleider from Malloy Wind. In his previous appearance, Cory shared his expertise on main bearing failures. And many of you reached out asking for a deep dive into gearbox bearings. Today, Cory returns to do exactly that. As Malloy’s business unit manager, he and his team have diagnosed and solved countless gearbox bearing issues across different turbine platforms.

Having spent over 15 years in power transmission, Cory has become a specialist in understanding why these critical components fail and, more importantly, how to prevent those failures through better bearing selection and maintenance practices. Cory, welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight.

Thanks for having me again. All right, so we’ve got a lot of requests to hear about gearbox, bearing, and what the issues are with those bearings. Gearboxes is something I know a little bit about. But you’re the expert. I hear a lot of complaining from the field. What is happening to gearbox bearings at the minute?

Cory Mittleider: Sure. Gearbox bearings has been an interesting one for me. So when I started in wind in 2011, it was generator bearings and gearbox bearings is where I started learning about this stuff. A lot of the generator stuff was electrical fluting damage. That’s pretty well figured out how to avoid that.

The gearbox one was a little more complex than that. And I don’t know if you’ve heard of. NREL’s Drivetrain Reliability Conference that’s happened for the last 12 plus years now. That’s a recurring topic for the last every single year, right? Is gearbox bearing failures. A lot of the conversation that started back in the day and is still going on is around what they call white etching cracking or white etching failures.

And back, in say, 11 and 12, A lot of the conversation was around was around that. It was around, the oils in the gearboxes. It was around coatings and bearing types and how they could affect the bearing itself to improve the life. And, specifically when it comes to gearbox bearings That was really hard back in the, the service providers and the operators themselves weren’t used to having to replace gearbox bearings.

They maybe weren’t even planning on having to replace gearbox bearings, right? But they started to see these problems. They started to get their head around the scope and how to identify them early and started to dig into it. There’s been a lot of investigations from bearing manufacturers, from third parties, from operators.

into those failures for over a decade now.

Allen Hall: I remember looking into some of the early gearbox issues and you’re talking about some of the failures I am actually familiar with. Those had a lot to do with just sort of basic fundamentals of like lubrication and loading, which were not obvious at the time.

Have we overcome some of those sort of basic bearing issues, or do they still exist out in the field?

Cory Mittleider: I started going to this drivetrain reliability conference in 2015. So I was a couple years later than the initials. But some of the earliest things I remember was slip occurring, right?

From typically I think the scenario that was presented on was high speed low load scenario. Yep. Such as bringing a turbine online, and I remember a chart very vividly from NREL’s outfitting of the high speed bearings on their test 1 5, right? The rollers should be rolling at 400 RPM, but their only roll, or the cajun roller assembly should have been going 400 RPM.

But it was only going 100 RPM meaning there was a ton of slip, a differential speed between the rollers and the inner ring raceway surface. There was some, oils that got fingers pointed at them for essentially being readily available to, to release hydrogen ions. And as we look back at wet etching cracking and the information that’s been collected over the years and investigated I think most people agree that hydrogen embrittlement is a big factor in that, um, there’s certainly components of material cleanliness that are involved in that conversation as well.

It’s a lot of investigation there. And to answer your question, is it still happening? I’ve got this report from an organization called EPRI. I found it on their website. It’s called Wind Turbine Gearbox Reliability Assessment. And they have listed what is it, seven points that lead to most of the gearbox related issues.

related failures and I’ll just read them off. It’s high contract stresses leading to pitting and spalling, bearing race slippage, macro pitting due to skidding and bearing slippage, wear due to inadequate lubrication, race cracking due to white etching formation, low quality materials and material defects or inclusions.

and improper bearing design leading to non uniform stresses or loads. And this was published December of 2021, right? So this is a couple years old, but it’s pretty, pretty recent from an accumulation of data, having time to digest and put out a report. This is pretty recent. And when I look at some other things in here that are really interesting 42 percent of gearbox related downtime is from high speed and intermediate bearings.

The other 58 percent is gearing related or maybe some of the other stages, but 42 percent are from high speed and intermediate bearings from those failure modes that I described. So the takeaway in my mind, as much as that’s something to be aware of and watch out for if it’s high speed and intermediate bearings, those often are replaced up tower.

So you can do that scopal work up tower. Another thing that’s also in the report they’re talking about that uptower scope of work costs somewhere between 15, 000 and 70, 000, right? So you can guess the sooner you catch that, you’re monitoring your CMS, you’re looking for inner ring defects or cracked inner ring or whatever, maybe sometimes outer rings falling as well.

If you can catch that sooner, get that replaced sooner, there’s less debris generated, there’s less additional ancillary components that need to be replaced or serviced. And that keeps it closer to that 15, 000 Scope of work,

Joel Saxum: of course, right? Let me ask you a question about that then. So to find that early enough, we’re usually always talking CMS, right?

And we know there’s a CMS usually from the factory. If it’s a Vesta, whatever they, if they’re doing an FSA, they’re monitoring that from afar. But there is aftermarket CMS for drivetrain monitoring that, like Onyx Insight comes to mind and there’s a couple of other brands out there, of course, would you recommend?

Cause this is a conversation we just had not too long ago with a bunch of people about blades and other reliability things. Would you recommend someone to shadow monitor a like a drivetrain CMS, even though they’re maybe they’re. Full service, agreement already has one. Do you think that’s smart?

Do you think that’s a good spend on money?

Cory Mittleider: Unfortunately what I’ve heard is it seems like no matter the application, gearbox, blade bearings, anything I’ve heard quite a few operators say that when they got to the end of warranty period or end of service agreement periods, they didn’t know what happened.

They didn’t know if X component had been replaced at all, or if it had been replaced five times. I guess I would certainly encourage operators to do everything they can to understand their own equipment. Is that making sure they get the reports from the people that are currently hired to service that?

Maybe it’s as simple as that. Maybe those are behind the wall, and they don’t get access to those. And there probably is some merit in understanding or maybe even say, shadow monitoring or double checking some things on their own to understand their asset. Ultimately it’s their asset.

And They’d be best off to know what’s going on with it. Yeah.

Joel Saxum: So let me ask you another question. With all of the, and this is monitoring inspection related. So to, to catch problems early. So CMS is one tool, right? Another tool is like an Uptower Borescope inspection. Of course, to me, end of warranty is an absolute must to have a third party come in and look at the, do a bore scope inspections, end of warranty.

Is there any other times that you recommend that, or do you recommend that to do every year like we do blade inspections, or what does that look like for you?

Cory Mittleider: The nice thing about gearbox bearings, especially in these high speed and intermediate positions that we’re talking about. The tried and true CMS tools really do a good job, is my understanding.

You can see those, the signatures are well developed they’re high speed enough to stand out. It’s not like main bearings where it’s tougher because it’s such a low speed, right? They blend into the floor on low speeds like that. So my understanding of what most operators do is they watch the CMS, they’ll look at other clues, they’ll look at temperature sometimes they have the the oil particle counting stuff to compliment that as well which the more ways you can monitor your equipment, the better, right?

So that makes sense. And usually what I understand is they’ll see some alarms, whether it’s any of that, or maybe the technician reporting noise, right? Those happen from time to time too. And then they’ll call in that bore scope. They’ll call in that physical inspection. The signature says it’s an inner ring on the high speed, but let’s look around.

It’s just double check and see if we’re, here. There’s a little more to it than just trust in that. Let’s get some eyes on it and figure it out, establish the scope of work. You might see some more stuff to be prepared for when you call in that crew to do a high speed

Joel Saxum: a high speed job. I remember talking to some people over in Denmark and they had an uptower kit that was like, they carried it up tower in a Pelican case.

And when they popped it open, it was a whole set of testing gear for testing oils. oils and lubes and greases and different things up tower where they could just take a small sample out of what was existing there and tell you the particulate levels and tell you if it’s been overheated or burnt up or what kind of life is left in it.

Does that service, have you heard of that service existing in the states? I’m

Cory Mittleider: not familiar with the, called the mobile oil lab type of thing. But it probably has some merit in spot checking. I think one of the things that’s been learned in the last decade, as we talked about WEC failures and gearbox.

Gearbox maintenance, essentially. I think there’s been a better job at paying attention at stuff like that. So I think there’s been an improvement, not just in the bearing technology and how they service it, but just staying on top of things, taking them seriously and doing it preventatively.

Allen Hall: From the design standpoint, Cory, the white edge cracking seems like something that could be designed out, but there maybe was a misunderstanding of how the lubrication, specific lubrication work with specific bearing sets and the loading that was there causing that slipping to occur.

And then which doesn’t seem obvious at first, but when you start thinking about it, like slippage is bad, it creates stress points in these bearings and then. Basically cracks them until they fail catastrophically. Are there more constraints on what the lubrication is and how often it needs to be checked if it becomes a critical piece to the success of a bearing?

Cory Mittleider: Oh we’ve had some conversations about lubrication on different bearing applications and ultimately confidence in lubrication is critical. To Perry Life. Absolutely. Debris can’t, minimize that water, minimize that presence of lubrication. The thing that makes wind turbines so difficult though is the environment and the variable load, right?

When we live in our industrial side of the business, you’ve got a processing plant, a production facility. A lot of times that gearbox, for example, is under more or less constant load. It’s probably in a building. That’s moderately environmentally controlled. Neither of which you have in a wind turbine, right?

You’ve got gusts. You’ve got, South Dakota, January last year, it was negative, 19 degrees, negative 44 wind chill. Now the turbines have a low limit cutoff, right? But even that’s pretty low, right? So you’ve got that and then we’ll get up to 110. And that’s the South Dakota environment.

You’ve got dry environments, you’ve got wet environments. There’s a lot of things that make it tough to have one thing work all the time, right? With that oil having to work for high speed bearings, low speed bearings. Ball bearings, roller type bearings, all inside one gearbox.

Allen Hall: I remember not long ago where additives were the thing.

There was a lot of sales of additives being sold. put into gearboxes to improve the lifetime of the gearbox. But it turns out from what I remember that some of those additives were actually causing some of the failures because it was not working the way that it in theory should have worked.

Cory Mittleider: Yeah, I think some of the early additive packages were pointed at as being more readily available to shed the hydrogen.

And generally, from a hydrogen embrittlement point of view for those that aren’t familiar essentially, you’re stripping off because you have the slipping and this kind of localized high pressure. It can generate localized high heat. It can essentially strip a hydrogen ion off of the chain of this additive, for example, and then coincidentally, when you take the two surfaces, a roller and a raceway, that’s that, that if lubrication isn’t present, separating them and they touch, the asperities touch and rub, that’ll create a negatively charged surface.

So you don’t have your positively charged hydrogen ion right next to your scar, your fresh surface that’s negatively charged. And then it attaches. And when that hydrogen ion attaches there, it weakens the bonds within that’s that steel structure, that alloy structure, and then your same stress cycles that Barry is built to last with it not being as strong, those bonds will break down sooner and sooner.

And essentially you end up with iron sand under the surface, these little pockets of copper. You know what I like to call iron sand under the surface. Now you have this discontinuity of material and it doesn’t carry the load and then it cracks and that’s A really short description of what leads to the white etching cracking phenomenon that’s been seen.

There’s some talk about even potentially electricity playing a contribution in the gearbox. Now an operator was telling me that about that maybe about a month ago. And then those hydrogen ions there’s also some observations that I’ve been seeing that they may want to collect, essentially.

near the impurities, near the inclusions within a steel alloy too, right? No steel is perfectly clean. There’s always something going on in there. Manufacturers do everything they can to minimize that and make them a rounded type instead of sharp edge type. But those are some of the factors that are currently still being talked about when it comes to WEC.

So to battle that, is there a specific oil that you recommend as being a bearing expert? We don’t deal a ton with the lubrication itself. Dealing with the bearings working with the manufacturers, we can tell you what characteristics we want the oil to have our viscosity at temperature, things like that.

But there’s a lot going on there. And I guess put it this way, I’m not well versed enough in oils. We could talk to the engineers at the bearing manufacturers to get some of those lists, but what we found in the last several years, specifically against this list of seven bullet points from this EPRI report, for example, is we’ve seen, we’re, like I said, this started in 2011 ish.

When I started to get involved. So your regular bearing that most items ship with, whether it’s your electric motor on your vacuum cleaner at home, the ball bearings in your wheel hub of your car, or wind turbines. They’re through hardened steel alloy. No coatings, no nothing on them typically.

That’s entry level. and they’re designed for raceway fatigue. And just like the other bearing applications we’ve talked about, all these things aren’t raceway raceway rolling contact fatigue. These are the other things that happen, right? So as the WEC thing started to come to life, one of the first responses from bearing manufacturers, from turbine OEMs, from gearbox OEMs was black oxide.

You guys are familiar with black oxide, I think, right? We even talked about it on our talked about main bearings a bit and Allen, I think it was you that brought up we call it a coating, but I don’t like that word as it pertains to black oxide specifically because it’s converted material, right?

It’s not applied afterwards. That’s what I would call a coating. Black oxide is actually converted material. steel alloy. The surface, again, that’s about two, three microns thick, really thin layer. And it’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s oxide. It’s oxidized steel, right? So it does have some benefits.

It essentially makes the the, surface of the raceways and the rollers fuzzier improving oil adhesion, trying to build up that, that oil layer, increasing your lambda to avoid the smearing, to avoid that contact, to avoid the the asperities touching leading to that scar, that negatively charged surface.

It can only do so much.

Allen Hall: But that’s so true though, because we, when we think of bearings, we think of everything being really smooth and rolling so easily. But when you talk about lubrication you need to have a surface to attach to, to provide that little thin layer of oil so that it does operate for a long period of time and removing that surface is going to be catastrophic in a lot of cases.

Cory Mittleider: And you’re right, you look at a ball bearing on your table, on your bench or something it looks, and they’re polished, they look incredibly smooth. But just like anything, you put it under a microscope and you start to see little peaks and valleys. I call them asperities, right? The roller has those asperities, the raceways have those asperities and it’s something that different bearing manufacturers control in different ways.

It’s something, it’s each manufacturer’s secret sauce on how they do those things a little bit, right? They put as Different effort into different places. But the whole goal with bearings and lubrication is to make sure those asperities don’t touch.

Allen Hall: Exactly. It’s much like a cylinder wall in a, in an engine.

When you watch them build an engine on these high end engines, everything’s so smooth and looks so great. Except for that cylinder wall, which they intentionally brush so that oil remains in that cylinder to lubricate that piston as it goes up and down. The same thing happens in a bearing. Just at a smaller level, it’s not as gross as scratching, but there is a surface there to hold oil properly and lubricant properly.

Losing that surface is really a delicate matter. I think people don’t understand that’s where the magic is. It’s right at that surface level because that white edge cracking was a result of slippage due to lubrication and the surfaces of the mating surfaces not being quite right. Boom.

Now we got a huge problem. And Cory, I think you’re right. A lot of the wind turbine world is so different than most bearing applications. You’re really putting a lot of stress on that. Are there more updated bearings that can handle the tough environment like South Dakota?

Cory Mittleider: Yeah. So something that progressed as the white etching cracking conversation progressed, and this isn’t unique to wind.

When you look at any bearing manufacturer has a catalog of different, uh, materials, heat treatments, coatings, things like that, that they can apply depending on the application. And one of the first upgrades often used for bearings in demanding applications is case carburizing, right? So instead of using a higher carbon content alloy, and through hardening it, Where it’s the same hardness throughout the cross section of the ring.

You use a low carbon alloy base material. And then you put it in a atmosphere with a high carbon atmosphere. You heat treat it for a period of time and you have a shell. Almost imagine cutting an M& M in half, right? You have a harder shell and a little bit of a kind of springy shock absorber type core.

Like a golf ball, yeah, so there’s that, and that’s, like I say, that’s pretty well known. That’s in a lot of different industries, a lot of different applications where our case hardened bearings are the next upgrade often. Something that in my experience going back to 2012, 2013 is there’s actually different versions of case hardening though.

So case carburized is the one that, that typically people are familiar with. It’s the. The standard case hardened version but one that we’ve had a lot of success with specifically in the last 10, 11, almost 12 years now is one that’s case carbon nitrided. So in addition to the carbon in the atmosphere being deposited in the part there’s also nitrogen that’s ends up getting added to the part.

And. Also, the, even the steel alloy is different. So now that’d be probably more what I’d call a medium carbon alloy steel. So it’s not the low carbon alloy steel. It’s not the high carbon alloy steel. It’s a little bit in the middle. Specifically there’s one manufacturer that we’ve worked with a lot on this and that’s NSK and they, what they call it is super tough.

They have a whole family of different materials, different alloys and heat treatments. And this is the one that’s found, we found to work really well in wind. Gearbox bearing applications and one of my my earliest example with a success story on the super tough bearings was actually the Getz.

I’m sure you’re familiar with the Getz gearbox. It had a little bit of a reputation for chewing up and spitting out planet bearings. The first one that I remember was I think it was late 2012. I got installed up tower in March of 2013 after the site was online for about three and a half, four years.

It had already failed a set of planet bearings, and that gets Gearbox. But they were able to do an uptower repair to replace that. And after doing that, the site, we talked about different monitoring methods. I don’t think that site had CMS on their Gearboxes. And never mind, planets are a little trickier because you can’t directly touch them right with the probe through the housing.

They’re floating around. One of the things that they did is they checked the filters. On a six month basis. Just look for some metal particles. That’s how they found it the first time. That’s how they probably find it again. So last update I got from them before they did some other work on the turbine, was that seven years later, so 2020 that when they looked at the Berry Raceways, they still looked brand new.

They still looked great. And the gets with its reputation was one that really stood out to me as successful. Now, between that seven year window we’ve sent a lot more to the field. We’ve done a lot more follow up and other things too, but that’s probably the longest and maybe biggest wow. Realization when it comes to the benefits of different materials, alloys, and heat treatments.

The other thing about bearing technology, ISO dictates that they have to have certain level of cleanliness and minimize particle size and count and type in the alloy. But again, that’s another thing that’s secret sauce on a per manufacturer basis per bearing manufacturer.

And what I’ve learned that NSK does in particular is they just publicized this maybe a year and a half ago now. They do what they call micro UT. So they’re essentially using a an in house developed ultrasonic testing on the bar stock. before the ring is even formed. So that allows them not to look at a sample and cut off a sample, polish it, put it under the microscope and say the sample was good.

So we qualify the whole bar or the sample was bad. So we scrapped the whole bar. They’re able to do that as a non destructive. type of test. So even if there is theoretically a bad spot in a bar, they can cut out this spot of the bar and then continue to keep using the rest as they make the forging.

So that’s another area that as we continue to have deeper and deeper conversations with operators right now that level of design intent and manufacturing diligence is really starting to be observed just now, in my opinion It was important the whole time. We’re just getting to that level.

We’re getting caught up to all the tiny little pieces, the less visible pieces, that can be impactful.

Allen Hall: Now, this is why we need you on the podcast, Cory, because you can explain all of this great bearing issue and resolutions to us, non bearing people. And I know we went across a lot of non bearing people out in the field that just need a little bit of advice.

And if you do need advice, you need to go to Molloy Wind. And check out their website. And Cory, how do they do that?

Cory Mittleider: Yeah, our our website’s at molloywind. com. One of the places that I like to point people is there is a I think it’s called resources tab with some tech articles that we’ve written largely around bearings there’s some gearbox bearing stuff main bearing, blade bearing stuff on there usually around what we’ve seen for failures in different applications.

And then when it comes to the gearbox bearing topic, there’s a couple pages with even the typical gearbox bearing configurations for high speed and intermediate. I have some pictures of on there showing how some use tapers and cylindricals, some use ball bearings and cylindricals in those high speed and intermediate positions.

Because they’re not all done the same. They’re not all implemented the same. Um, and then there’s also some pages as it comes to Gearbox Berries outlining the the, call them the coatings and conversion coatings materials information as well, black oxide and super tough, for example there’s some information there showing that.

Allen Hall: Yeah, so check out malloywind.com or you can reach out to Cory via LinkedIn. Cory, thank you so much for being with us again. I learned a tremendous amount. I’m almost, 10 percent of what your knowledge is. Boy the bearing information is so useful in the field. I really appreciate this.

Cory Mittleider: Yeah, thanks for your time.

https://weatherguardwind.com/malloy-wind-gearbox-bearing/

Renewable Energy

Small, Vertical-Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs)

Published

9 hours ago

December 4, 2025

Alice Rush

In preparation for my first book, “Renewable Energy – Facts and Fantasies,” I interviewed Ray Lane, then managing partner of Kleiner Perkins, one of the world’s great venture capital firms, who told me about his stance with his prospects, “You build the first one. I’ll invest in the next 20. Then we’ll take the thing public and use that cash to build the next 5000.”

I’m 99+% sure that the “first one” of these will never be built, i,e., installing these VAWTs at the base of functioning wind farms. The concept is asinine, as it defies the laws of fluid dynamics.

Small, Vertical-Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs)

Renewable Energy

WindQuest Advisors on Managing TSA & FSA Negotiations

Published

23 hours ago

December 4, 2025

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

WindQuest Advisors on Managing TSA & FSA Negotiations

Allen and Joel sit down with Dan Fesenmeyer of Windquest Advisors to discuss turbine supply agreement fundamentals, negotiation leverage, and how tariff uncertainty is reshaping contract terms. Dan also explains why operators should maximize warranty claims before service agreements take over.

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

Allen Hall: Dan, welcome to the program. Great to be here. Thanks for having me, guys. Well, we’ve been looking forward to this for several weeks now because. We’re trying to learn some of the ins and outs of turbine supply agreements, FSAs, because everybody’s talking about them now. Uh, and there’s a lot of assets being exchanged.

A lot of turbine farms up for sale. A lot of acquisitions on the other side, on the investment side coming in and. As engineers, we don’t deal a lot with TSAs. It’s just not something that we typically see until, unless there’s a huge problem and then we sort of get involved a little bit. I wanna understand, first off, and you have a a ton of experience doing this, that’s why we [00:01:00] love having you.

What are some of the fundamentals of turbine supply agreements? Like what? What is their function? How do they operate? Because I think a lot of engineers and technicians don’t understand the basic fundamentals of these TSAs.

Dan Fesenmeyer: The TSA is a turbine supply agreement and it’s for the purchase and delivery of the wind turbines for your wind farm.

Um, typically they are negotiated maybe over a 12 ish month period and typically they’re signed at least 12 months before you need, or you want your deliveries for the wind turbines.

Joel Saxum: We talk with people all over the world. Um, you know, GE Americas is different than GE in Spain and GE in Australia and Nordics here, and everybody’s a little bit different.

Um, but what we, we regularly see, and this is always an odd thing to me, is you talked about like negotiating. It starts 12 months ahead of time stuff, but we see that [00:02:00] the agreements a lot of times are very boilerplate. They’re very much like we’re trying to structure this in a certain way, and at the end of the day, well, as from an operator standpoint, from the the person buying them, we would like this and we would like this and we would like this, but at the end of the day, they don’t really seem to get that much negotiation in ’em.

It’s kind of like, this is what the agreement you’re gonna take and this is how we sell them. That’s it. Is, is that your experience? I mean, you’re at GE for a long time, one of the leading OEMs, but is that what you’re seeing now or is there a little bit more flexibility or kind of what’s your take on that?

Dan Fesenmeyer: I think generally it depends, and of course the, the OEMs in the, and I’ll focus more on the us, they’ll start with their standard template and it’s up to the purchaser, uh, to develop what they want as their wishlist and start negotiations and do their, let’s say, markup. So, uh, and then there’s a bit of leverage involved.

If you’re buying two units, it’s hard to get a lot of interest. [00:03:00] If you’re buying 200 units, then you have a lot more leverage, uh, to negotiate terms and conditions in those agreements. I was with GE for 12 years on the sales and commercial side and now doing advisory services for four years. Uh, some of these negotiations can go for a long time and can get very, very red.

Others can go pretty quick. It really depends on what your priorities are. How hard you want to push for what you need.

Allen Hall: So how much detail goes into a TSA then are, are they getting very prescriptive, the operators coming with a, a list of things they would like to see? Or is it more negotiating on the price side and the delivery time and the specifics of the turbine?

Dan Fesenmeyer: Generally speaking, you start kind of with the proposal stage and. First thing I always tell people is, let’s understand what you have in your proposal. Let’s understand, you know, what are the delivery [00:04:00] rates and times and does that fit with your project? Does the price work with respect to your PPA, what does it say about tariffs?

That’s a huge one right now. Where is the risk going to land? What’s in, what’s out? Um. Is the price firm or is there indexation, whether it’s tied to commodities or different currencies. So in my view, there’s some pre-negotiations or at least really understanding what the offer is before you start getting into red lines and, and generally it’s good to sit down with the purchasing team and then ultimately with the OEM and walk through that proposal.

Make sure you have everything you need. Make sure you understand what’s included, what’s not. Scope of supply is also a big one. Um, less in less in terms of the turbine itself, but more about the options, like does it have the control features you need for Ercot, for example. Uh, does it have leading [00:05:00]edge protection on your blades?

Does it have low noise trailing edge? Do we even need lo low noise trailing edges? Uh, you know, those

Joel Saxum: sorts

Dan Fesenmeyer: of things.

Joel Saxum: Do you see the more of the red lining in the commercial phase or like the technical phase? Because, and why I ask this question is when we talk, ’cause we’re regularly in the o and m world, right?

Talking with engineers and asset managers, how do you manage your assets? And they really complain a lot that a lot of their input in that, that feedback loop from operations doesn’t make it to the developers when they’re signing TSAs. Um, so that’s a big complaint of theirs. And so my question is like, kind of like.

All right. Are there wishes being heard or is it more general on the technical side and more focused on the commercial

Dan Fesenmeyer: side? Where do you see that it comes down to making sure that your negotiation team has all the different voices and constituents at the table? Uh, my approach and our, our team’s approach is you have the legal piece, a technical piece, and we’re in between.

We’re [00:06:00] the commercial piece. So when you’re talking TSAs, we’re talking price delivery terms. Determination, warranty, you know, kind of the, the big ticket items, liquidated damages, contract caps, all those big ticket commercial items. When you move over to the operations agreement, which generally gets negotiated at the same time or immediately after, I recommend doing them at the same time because you have more leverage and you wanna make sure terms go from TSA.

They look the same in the. Services agreement. And that’s where it’s really important to have your operations people involved. Right? And, and we all learn by mistakes. So people that have operated assets for a long time, they always have their list of five or 10 things that they want in their o and m agreement.

And, um, from a process standpoint, before we get into red lines, we usually do kind of a high [00:07:00] level walkthrough of here’s what we think is important. Um. For the TSA and for the SMA or the operations and maintenance agreement, let’s get on the same page as a team on what’s important, what’s our priority, and what do we want to see as the outcome.

Allen Hall: And the weird thing right now is the tariffs in the United States that they are a hundred percent, 200%, then they’re 10%. They are bouncing. Like a pinball or a pong ping pong ball at the moment. How are you writing in adjustments for tariffs right now? Because some of the components may enter the country when there’s a tariff or the park the same park enter a week later and not be under that tariff.

How does that even get written into a contract right now?

Dan Fesenmeyer: Well, that’s a fluid, it’s a fluid environment with terrorists obviously, and. It seems, and I’ll speak mostly from the two large OEMs in the US market. Um, [00:08:00] basically what you’re seeing is you have a proposal and tariffs, it includes a tariff adder based on tariffs as in as they were in effect in August.

And each one may have a different date. And this is fairly recent, right? So as of August, here’s what the dates, you know, here’s a tariff table with the different countries and the amounts. Here’s what it translates into a dollar amount. And it’ll also say, well, what we’re going to do is when, uh, these units ship, or they’re delivered X works, that’s when we come back and say, here’s what the tariffs are now.

And that difference is on the developer or the purchaser typically.

Allen Hall: So at the end of the day. The OEM is not going to eat all the tariffs. They’re gonna pass that on. It’s just basically a price increase at the end. So the, are the, are the buyers of turbines then [00:09:00] really conscious of where components are coming from to try to minimize those tariffs?

Dan Fesenmeyer: That’s

Allen Hall: difficult.

Dan Fesenmeyer: I mean, I would say that’s the starting point of the negotiation. Um, I’ve seen things go different ways depending on, you know, if an off, if a developer can pass through their tariffs to the, on their PPA. They can handle more. If they can’t, then they may come back and say, you know what, we can only handle this much tariff risk or amount in our, in our PPA.

The rest we need to figure out a way to share between the OEM or maybe and the developer. Uh, so let’s not assume, you know, not one, one size doesn’t fit all.

Joel Saxum: The scary thing there is it sound, it sounds like you’re, like, as a developer when you’re signing a TSA, you’re almost signing a pro forma invoice.

Right. That that could, that could go up 25% depending on the, the mood on, in Capitol Hill that day, which is, it’s a scary thought and I, I would think in my mind, hard to really get to [00:10:00] FID with that hanging over your head.

Dan Fesenmeyer: Yeah. It it’s a tough situation right now for sure. Yeah. And, and we haven’t really seen what section 2 32, which is another round of potential tariffs out there, and I think that’s what.

At least in the last month or two. People are comfortable with what tariffs are currently, but there’s this risk of section 2 32, uh, and who’s going to take that risk

Allen Hall: moving forward? Because the 2 32 risk is, is not set in stone as when it will apply yet or if it even

Dan Fesenmeyer: will happen and the amount, right. So three ifs, three big ifs there, Alan.

Allen Hall: Yeah. And I, maybe that’s designed on purpose to be that way because it does seem. A little bit of chaos in the system will slow down wind and solar development. That’s one way you do. We just have a, a tariff. It’s sort of a tariff that just hangs out there forever. And you, are there ways to avoid that? Is it just getting the contract in [00:11:00] place ahead of time that you can avoid like the 2 32 thing or is it just luck of the draw right now?

It’s always

Dan Fesenmeyer: up to the situation and what your project delivery. Is looking at what your PPA, what can go in, what can go out. Um, it’s tough to avoid because the OEMs certainly don’t want to take that risk. And, uh, and I don’t blame them. Uh, and separately you were asking about, well, gee, do you start worrying about where your components are sourced from?

Of course you are. However, you’re going to see that in the price and in the tariff table. Uh, typically. I would say from that may impact your, your, uh, sort of which, which OEM or which manufacturer you go with, depending on where their supply chain is. Although frankly, a lot of components come from China.

Plain and simple,

Allen Hall: right?

Dan Fesenmeyer: Same place. If you are [00:12:00] subject to these tariffs, then you want to be more on a, you know, what I would say a fleet wide basis. So, uh, meaning. Blades can come from two places. We don’t want to have, you know, an OEM select place number one because it’s subject to tariff and we have to pay for it.

You want it more on a fleet basis, so you’re not, so the OEM’s not necessarily picking and choosing who gets covered or who has to pay for a tariff or not.

Joel Saxum: And I wonder that, going back to your first statement there, like if you have the power, the leverage, if you can influence that, right? Like.

Immediately. My mind goes to, of course, like one of the big operators that has like 10, 12, 15,000 turbines and deals exclusively with ge. They probably have a lot of, they might have the, the stroke to be able to say, no, we want our components to come from here. We want our blades to come from TPI Mexico, or whatever it may be, because we don’t want to make sure they’re coming from overseas.

And, and, and if that happens in, in [00:13:00] the, let’s take like the market as a whole, the macro environment. If you’re not that big player. You kind of get the shaft, like you, you would get the leftovers basically.

Dan Fesenmeyer: You could, and that makes for a very interesting discussion when you’re negotiating the contract and, and figuring out something that could work for both.

It also gets tricky with, you know, there could be maybe three different gearbox suppliers, right? And some of those. So this is when things really get, you know, peeling back an onion level. It’s difficult and I’ll be nice to the OEMs. It’s very tough for them to say, oh, we’re only a source these gearbox, because they avoid the tariffs.

Right? That’s why I get more to this fleet cost basis, which I think is a fair way for both sides to, to handle the the issue.

Allen Hall: What’s a turbine backlog right now? If I sign a TSA today, what’s the earliest I would see a turbine? Delivered.

Dan Fesenmeyer: You know, I, I really don’t know the answer to that. I would say [00:14:00] generally speaking, it would be 12 months is generally the response you would get.

Uh, in terms of if I sign today, we get delivery in 12 months,

Allen Hall: anywhere less than two years, I think is a really short turnaround period. Because if you’re going for a, uh, gas turbine, you know, something that GE or Siemens would provide, Mitsubishi would provide. You’re talking about. Five or six years out before we ever see that turbine on site.

But wind turbines are a year, maybe two years out. That seems like a no brainer for a lot of operators.

Dan Fesenmeyer: I would say a year to two is safe. Um, my experience has been things, things really get serious 12 months out. It’s hard to get something quicker. Um, that suppliers would like to sign something two years in advance, but somewhere in between the 12 months and 24 months is generally what you can expect.

Now, I haven’t seen and been close to a lot of recent turbine supply [00:15:00]deals and, and with delivery, so I, I, I can’t quote me on any of this. And obviously different safe harbor, PTC, windows are going to be more and more important. 20 eights preferred over 29. 29 will be preferred over 30. Um, and how quick can you act and how quick can you get in line?

Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s gonna make a big difference. There’s gonna be a rush to the end. Wouldn’t you think? There’s must be operators putting in orders just because of the end of the IRA bill to try to get some production tax credits or any tax credits out of it.

Dan Fesenmeyer: Absolutely. And you know. June of 2028 is a hell of a lot better than fall of 2028 if you want a COD in 2 28.

Right. And then you just work backwards from there. Yeah. And that’s, that’s, we’ve seen that in the past as well, uh, with, with the different PTC cliffs that we’ve [00:16:00] seen.

Allen Hall: Let’s talk service agreements for a moment when after you have a TSA signed and. The next thing on the list usually is a service agreement, and there are some OEMs that are really hard pushing their service agreements.

25, 30, 35 years. Joel, I think 35 is the longest one I have seen. That’s a long time.

Joel Saxum: Mostly in the Nordics though. We’ve seen like see like, uh, there are Vestas in the Nordic countries. We’ve seen some 35 year ones, but that’s, to me, that’s. That’s crazy. That’s, that’s a marriage. 35 years. The crazy thing is, is some of them are with mo models that we know have issues.

Right? That’s the one that’s always crazy to me when I watch and, and so then maybe this is a service, maybe this is a com a question is in a service level agreement, like I, I, I know people that are installing specific turbines that we’ve been staring at for five, six years that we know have problems now.

They’ve addressed a lot of the problems and different components, bearings and drive, train and [00:17:00] blades and all these different things. Um, but as an, as an operator, you’d think that you have, okay, I have my turbine supply agreement, so there’s some warranty stuff in there that’s protecting me. There is definitely some serial defect clauses that are protecting me.

Now I have a service level agreement or a service agreement that we’re signing that should protect me for from some more things. So I’m reducing my risk a little more. I also have insurance and stuff in built into this whole thing. But when, when you start crossing that gap between. These three, four different types of contracts, how do people ensure that when they get to that service level contract, that’s kind of in my mind, the last level of protection from the OEM.

How do they make sure they don’t end up in a, uh, a really weird Swiss cheese moment where something fell through the cracks, serial defects, or something like that? You know?

Dan Fesenmeyer: Yeah. It, it comes down to, I, I think it’s good to negotiate both at the same time. Um, it sometimes that’s not practical. It’s good.

And [00:18:00] part of it is the, the simple, once your TSA is signed, you, you don’t have that leverage over that seller to negotiate terms in the services agreement, right? Because you’ve already signed a t to supply agreement. Uh, the other piece I think is really important is making sure the defect language, for example, and the warranty language in the TSA.

Pretty much gets pulled over into the service agreement, so we don’t have different definitions of what a defect is or a failed part, uh, that’s important from an execution standpoint. My view has always been in the TSA, do as much on a warranty claim as you possibly can at that end of the warranty term.

The caps and the coverages. And the warranty is much higher than under the services agreement. Services agreement [00:19:00] will end up, you know, warranty or extended warranty brackets, right? ’cause that’s not what it is. It becomes unscheduled maintenance or unplanned maintenance. So you do have that coverage, but then you’re subject to, potentially subject to CAPS or mews, annual or per event.

Um. Maybe the standard of a defect is different. Again, that’s why it’s important to keep defect in the TSAs the same as an SMA, and do your warranty claim first. Get as much fixed under the warranty before you get into that service contract.

Joel Saxum: So with Windquest, do you go, do you regularly engage at that as farms are coming up to that warranty period?

Do you help people with that process as well? As far as end of warranty claims? Contract review and those things before they get into that next phase, you know, at the end of that two year or three years.

Dan Fesenmeyer: Yeah. We try to be soup to nuts, meaning we’re there from the proposal to helping [00:20:00] negotiate and close the supply agreement and the services agreement.

Then once you move into the services agreement or into the operation period, we can help out with, uh, filing warranty claims. Right. Do we, do you have a serial defect, for example, or. That, that’s usually a big one. Do you have something that gets to that level to at least start that process with an root cause analysis?

Um, that’s, that’s obviously big ones, so we help with warranty claims and then if things aren’t getting fixed on time or if you’re in a service agreement and you’re unhappy, we try to step in and help out with, uh, that process as well.

Joel Saxum: In taking on those projects, what is your most common component that you deal with for seald?

Defects,

Dan Fesenmeyer: gearboxes seem to always be a problem. Um, more recently, blade issues, um, main bearing issues. Uh, those are [00:21:00] some of the bigger ones. And then, yeah, and we can be main bearings. Also. Pitch bearings often an issue as well.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, no, nothing surprising there. I think if you, if you listen to the podcast at all, you’ve heard us talk about all of those components.

Fairly regularly. We’re not, we’re not to lightening the world on firing new information on that one.

Allen Hall: Do a lot of operators and developers miss out on that end of warranty period? It does sound like when we talk to them like they know it’s coming, but they haven’t necessarily prepared to have the data and the information ready to go till they can file anything with the OEM it.

It’s like they haven’t, they know it’s approaching, right? It’s just, it’s just like, um, you know, tax day is coming, you know, April 15th, you’re gonna write a check for to somebody, but you’re not gonna start thinking about it until April 14th. And that’s the wrong approach. And are you getting more because things are getting tighter?

Are you getting more requests to look at that and to help? Operators and developers engage that part of their agreements. I think it’s an

Dan Fesenmeyer: [00:22:00] oppor opportunity area for owner operators. I think in the past, a lot of folks have just thought, oh, well, you know, the, the, the service agreement kicks in and it’ll be covered under unscheduled or unplanned maintenance, which is true.

But, uh, again, response time might be slower. You might be subject to caps, or in the very least, an overall contract level. Cap or limitation, let’s say. Uh, so I, I do think it’s an opportunity area. And then similarly, when you’re negotiating these upfront to put in language that, well, I don’t wanna say too much, but you wanna make sure, Hey, if I, if I file a claim during warranty and you don’t fix it, that doesn’t count against, let’s say your unplanned cap or unplanned maintenance.

Joel Saxum: That’s a good point. I was actually, Alan, this is, I was surprised the other day. You and I were on a call with someone and they had mentioned that they were coming up on end of warranty and they were just kinda like, eh, [00:23:00] we’ve got a service agreement, so like we’re not gonna do anything about it. And I was like, really?

Like that day? Like, yeah, that deadline’s passed, or it’s like too close. It wasn’t even passed. It was like, it’s coming up and a month or two. And they’re like, yeah, it’s too close. We’re not gonna do anything about it. We’ll just kind of deal with it as it comes. And I was thinking, man, that’s a weird way to.

To manage a, you know, a wind farm that’s worth 300 million bucks.

Dan Fesenmeyer: And then the other thing is sometimes, uh, the dates are based on individual turbine CDs. So your farm may have a December 31 COD, but some of the units may have an October, uh, date. Yeah, we heard a weird one the other day that was

Joel Saxum: like the entire wind farm warranty period started when the first turbine in the wind farm was COD.

And so there was some turbines that had only been running for a year and a half and they were at the end of warranty already. Someone didn’t do their due diligence on that contract. They should have called Dan Meyer.

Dan Fesenmeyer: And thing is, I come back is when you know red lines are full of things that people learned [00:24:00] by something going wrong or by something they missed.

And that’s a great example of, oh yeah, we missed that when we signed this contract.

Joel Saxum: That’s one of the reasons why Alan and I, a lot, a lot of people we talk to, it’s like consult the SMEs in the space, right? You’re, you may be at tasked with being a do it all person and you may be really good at that, but someone that deals in these contracts every day and has 20 years of experience in it, that’s the person you talk to.

Just like you may be able to figure out some things, enlight. Call Allen. The guy’s been doing lightning his whole career as a subject matter expert, or call a, you know, a on our team and the podcast team is the blade expert or like some of the people we have on our network. Like if you’re going to dive into this thing, like just consult, even if it’s a, a small part of a contract, give someone a day to look through your contract real quick just to make sure that you’re not missing anything.

’cause the insights from SMEs are. Priceless. Really.

Dan Fesenmeyer: I couldn’t agree more. And that’s kind of how I got the idea of starting Windquest advisors to begin with. [00:25:00] Um, I used to sit across the table with very smart people, but GE would con, you know, we would negotiate a hundred contracts a year. The purchaser made one or two.

And again, this isn’t, you know, to beat up the manufacturers, right? They do a good job. They, they really work with their, their customers to. Find solutions that work for both. So this is not a beat up the OEM, uh, from my perspective, but having another set of eyes and experience can help a lot.

Allen Hall: I think it’s really important that anybody listening to this podcast understand how much risk they’re taking on and that they do need help, and that’s what Windquest Advisors is all about.

And getting ahold of Dan. Dan, how do people get ahold of you? www.win advisors.com. If you need to get it to Dan or reach out to win advisors, check out LinkedIn, go to the website, learn more about it. Give Dan a phone call because I think [00:26:00] you’re missing out probably on millions of dollars of opportunity that probably didn’t even know existed.

Uh, so it’s, it’s a good contact and a good resource. And Dan, thank you so much for being on the podcast. We appreciate having you and. We’d like to have you back again.

Dan Fesenmeyer: Well, I’d love to come back and talk about, maybe we can talk more about Lightning. That’s a

Joel Saxum: couple of episodes.

Dan Fesenmeyer: I like watching your podcast.

I always find them. Informative and also casual. It’s like you can sit and listen to a discussion and, and pick up a few things, so please continue doing what you’re doing well, thanks Dan.

Allen Hall: Thanks Dan.

https://weatherguardwind.com/windquest-advisors-tsa/

Renewable Energy

Disturb the World Around You

Published

3 days ago

December 2, 2025

Alice Rush

The website A Word a Day features “A Thought for Today,” normally from a notable author born on this date.

Here’s one from writer Ann Patchett (pictured), born 2 Dec 1963: The question is whether or not you choose to disturb the world around you, or if you choose to let it go on as if you had never arrived.

Patchett uses the word “disturb” in the sense of interfering with the normal arrangement or functioning of something. And Lord knows there are plenty of things in the world around us that need to be disturbed.

To take the two most obvious examples:

If left to proceed in a business-as-usual manner, we’ll soon live on a planet that is greatly compromised in its ability to support life, and

We Americans will live in an authoritarian state.