Weather Guard Lightning Tech

SkySpecs Customer Forum Recap with Josh Goryl

Allen and Joel speak with SkySpec’s Chief Revenue Officer, Josh Goryl, at the SkySpecs Customer Forum. With record attendance, the forum emphasized industry collaboration, data amalgamation, and the application of AI for optimizing wind and solar renewable energy assets. SkySpecs announced their expansion into the solar industry, leveraging their established wind solutions to streamline data management and operational strategies across renewable energy sectors.

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!

Allen Hall: [00:00:00] I’m Alan Hall, host of the Uptime Winner Energy podcast, and I’m here with Joel Saxon and Josh Gar, chief Revenue Officer with Sky Spec, and Josh brought us out this week to participate in the Skys Pick Customer Forum 2025, which as it turns out, has been the largest attendance this year.

Joel Saxum: Yeah,

Allen Hall: it’s grown every single year. Yeah. It’s a room full of people, all experts in blades all here to learn about the next generation of skys specs, blades and

Joel Saxum: CMS predict CMS predict analysis and that’s why it’s growing so much. Right. How, what kind of percentage of the capacity in the states do you think is represented here?

Allen Hall: We, we should have ran the number, I should have came prepared for this, but, um, I mean, I would say. 75%. Yeah. 80%. Okay. Yeah, that’s, you’re talking all the, all the big operators are, are here. Yep. I think, uh, 21 total organizations represented over 40 experts, blades, drivetrain, few senior management as well, and asset management [00:01:00] engineering.

So it’s an awesome, awesome group. We keep, uh, ev It’s tough though. Every year we have to step it up a bit, so we’re kind of, I think we’re outgrowing the space that we’re at here and excited for. Yeah, we’re bursting at the seams. Uh, last year Joel and I were invited to come and it’s the first time that we had been here and I thought, wow, this is a pretty full room.

And this year, like, okay, she’s back. We’re we’re, we are sitting next to the door right now because everybody is trying to learn what Sky Specs offers, what. Power do I have on my desktop right now, but also what is coming and there’s a lot of new product releases happening that were announced just this morning.

Yeah, and I think the cool thing too, that’s it’s not often you’re able to get this many experts from operators together in one room, and even more so ones that cut across drive, train, CMS, all main components and. It can be tough to kind of keep everyone engaged ’cause everyone’s a domain expert in different, different areas.

But the conversations have been been incredible and I think even within [00:02:00] organizations as, as, as well. And so we’re trying to learn how do we help our customers come together more and, and collaborate across. And even just having these discussions that want to discuss pulled out of is fantastic. Just some of that collaboration between even people that are, that are at the same company, they don’t see each other as much.

Joel Saxum: There, there’s some cultural things playing out here that are funny to me because if you’re in wind and you’ve bounced around, if you’re an ISP or you’re at an operator, you know, some of the players and kind of how they act, how they keep their, their, their poker hands close to their chest and stuff. So you see some people sitting at a table and you see, and I noticed this yesterday, like the psychological look of things sails, right?

Mm-hmm. So I’m kind of looking at people listening and stuff and, and the, the one of the persons from an operator that usually does play things close to their hands mm-hmm. Was just kind of sitting there listening. Everyone’s like, what’s your opinion? What’s your opinion? He was like, uh, what’s yours? But, but that being said, the, the collaboration here has been fantastic.

Uh, uh, we were talking with Matt Stead earlier and he was saying mm-hmm. He, uh, was a part of a conversation where someone from Canada, someone from the us they shared some [00:03:00] information and they were like, that’s a amazing, thank you. Let’s swap cards. Different operators, you know, sharing things. Uh, we sat in a couple of the breakout sessions and the breakout sessions.

Yes, we had a presentation. Yes, we were walking through solutions and problems, but they, they devolved into amazing conversations where everybody in the room just kinda like turned to each other and were like, what do you think? How could we use this? Could you use that? Does this make sense? Um, and it’s, and it’s, it’s engineers.

It’s all engineers. Oh yeah. They’re geared to solve the problems and that’s what’s happening.

Allen Hall: Yeah. And, and I think at a macro level, right? Like it’s, it’s a lot of the same themes that, that everyone’s seeing. We’re, we’re talking about the, the same things. And a lot of it is how do we continue to do. More with less as these fleets grow mm-hmm.

There’s different issues that pop up every, every year and just having a tier. To your point, even even last year, last night I was talking to somebody and after the conference they stayed in touch with each other for four months and were talking weekly mm-hmm. On just different, uh, tools and tricks that they [00:04:00] were using to be more, more efficient.

Nothing. Confidential to their, their own organization, but more so how are they more efficient with the tools that they’re, that they’re using. So that’s where a lot of the value is if there’s only so many blade engineers and CMS engineers in the industry. And so it’s important that there’s opportunities for them to learn from each other and they’re, they’re not really competing with one another.

Once a turbines or the solar panels are deployed now, it’s about operational efficiency. And delivering that power. So every operator is maximizing the revenue and you really can’t do that today without Sky specs. You need to have blade data, you need to have CMS data, you need to have, uh, power curve information.

Mm-hmm. Like how your turbines are performing before you can even make sense. So the engineers. To me are finally accessing tools on a almost universally, that they didn’t have five years ago. Yeah. That are empowering them way beyond what they ever thought would be possible.

Joel Saxum: You can’t optimize, uh, an industrial fleet on a spreadsheet.

No. You can [00:05:00] maybe maintain some things and look at some part numbers and figures, a couple things out model wise. Right. But, and I know some good people that are really good with spreadsheets. Yep. But you need, you need tools. You need to, uh, be able to amalgamate your data. You need to be able to look at, I mean, this is one of the big things we’re talking about here.

Um, predict, prevent, perform. Yep. Or did I do it backwards? I’ve gotten it wrong all week. Prevent, predict. Perform. Perform. There you go. There you go. So, so, but looking at this saying, okay, so we have a foundation, we need inspections, we need these things, right? That is the foundation of the data. We have to have collections, whether it’s, uh, inspections, scada data, CMS data, whatever that may be.

Yes. Okay. Now it’s amalgamated into a platform. Now we can see this stuff. Mm-hmm. Now we can start running predictive analytics. We can start visualizing things. Yesterday you and I said, and, and. On the performance monitoring breakout session, and the data that was in that thing was just like, what about this?

You could use this data for that. You could use it for that. This is a great idea here. Now, this morning we talked, or we listened to, uh, Alan Larson from your team say, we’re gonna marry that [00:06:00] performance data with CMS data. Yep. And we’re gonna be able to look at, here’s your performance drop. Here’s what your CMS data is saying, and get real insights out of it.

And it sounds. To me, like I don’t know any other solution that’s never been done in the industry before.

Allen Hall: No, and and I think to your earlier point, it starts with that baseline and that health record and to be able to see, we’ve all been in the industry for some time now, and the level of maturity, even just year over year, we finally start to see it.

Right. And so another thing they brought up this morning was even just. Uh, preventative inspection programs. Years ago, it was, you know, maybe we’ll do 25, 30% of the fleet each year. And then after four or five years, we inspected everything. Well, it’s, it’s not that simple, right? There’s different makes and models, different risk tolerances.

Mm-hmm. And the arrangements with third parties is, is different. So, um, it’s, it’s kind of that intake valve and having all that data in, in one place. And, uh, fortunately we’re seeing most of the operators have taken big, big leaps over the course of the [00:07:00] last couple years to have all that data in, in one place.

And then from there it’s like, okay, how do I start to see trends. Across main components and optimize the repair windows. And now it’s about the fine tuning. And I think we’re getting there as, as an industry. And that’s why we, that’s one of the things we talked about. We’re excited about jumping into the solar and battery battery storage space.

’cause our customers said, Hey, a lot of these problems that we saw in wind and what you guys solved in blades and drivetrain, solar’s been in hypergrowth mode. We’ve done a lot of inspections, but data’s everywhere. Help us solve that problem.

Joel Saxum: Let’s pause there for a second. That’s a huge announcement.

Let’s do that announcement here.

Allen Hall: Yeah. So here, that’s what we announced now this morning, so we’ll, we’ll definitely have, have, uh, have, have more information very, very soon, soon on. Um, things have been moving, moving fast over the course of the last, last few months, but the reason why we’re, we’re diving into it is because, um, really we’ve al always been about following our customers and [00:08:00] helping them solve their, their biggest problems.

And we’re starting to hear, uh, that they want to bring the playbook. From wind, from wind o and m into, into solar. Um, again, earlier we were talking about how SCADA teams are not just looking at wind data. Mm-hmm. It’s across all their generating assets. And having one place for all that data is, is very, very important.

And I think where we can help our customers is getting all that data into one place and going from. Data capture to work order in whatever system that you have. It could be an ERP system, it could be, it could be in horizon, but there absolutely is a, is a need in that, in that space and we think we can really help out.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. Listening to the, uh, new, new Sky spec, C-C-E-C-T-O this morning, Ben Toan, he was talking about some of the architecture moves that you guys are making in the background to be able to make that, I don’t want, I don’t wanna simplify it, this, this far, but the copy paste of the wind playbook. Two Solar makes, it makes it easier for the future of if expanding [00:09:00]into other silos, doing more things, uh, making that platform.

One login. We can manage all of our assets and um, and do it the same way. Right. So as you guys have expanded in the last few years with. Inspections, tech enabled insights from the, the, the SMEs that are here, um, into the, using the digitalization tools and the qa qc process. We talked a bunch about that and, and your repair vendor management yesterday.

Yep. But being able to take all of those things that you guys have perfected and built over the years and wind. And boom, immediately be able to deploy that into solar. That’s gonna be a game changer for some people.

Allen Hall: Yeah, we’re, we’re super excited about it. And, and that’s what, so Ben Tor, who’s our, our new Chief Technology Officer is, talks a lot about a, a common data model and being able to, as we, as we start to scale.

It’s not just about a, a blade or a drivetrain gearbox, it’s, it’s about more, more than that. And being able to put in the solar data, whether it’s the panels, inverters, combiner boxes, and that ex expands further, right? And the battery storage and [00:10:00] other power generating assets. And I think that’s where we can, we can really help out.

So it’s kind of taking a step back a bit and thinking about, okay, how do we think about that model holistically, mm-hmm. Across renewable, uh, renewable assets. So excited for it. But again, don’t wanna get too far out over our skis here. So the first, first step is, is solar and, and working in partnership with our, with our customers on that.

And I think it’s big because a lot of the engineers we’ve been working with for the last several years that have been primarily wind focused, blade focused. Yeah. When you talk to them today. They’ll say, oh yeah, and I have a solar site that I’m now responsible for. Mm-hmm. And so they’re trying to learn the solar aspects pretty quickly, but staying in the same platform is huge because it reduces the cycle, learning cycle Yeah.

By quite a bit.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. I, we, and this is a, a, we’re gonna make a, well, let’s make a side announcement. Yeah. We just added another team member to the weather guard team. I hear you. You’ll hear more about that here in the next, in the coming weeks. But, uh, she came from a team that managed wind solar. And [00:11:00] battery storage with the same engineering group.

Right. And I think that that, like you said, is becoming onshore and offshore. Mm-hmm. It is becoming more and more common. Right. So you’re seeing that be engineering resource. We always talk about the shortage of technicians. Mm-hmm. But there’s a shortage of engineers and it’s shrinking in a lot of pools.

Yep. Right. There’s a lot of people who, one big beautiful deal thing, trying to cut budgets, changing operating models. So engineers are being asked to do more. The more with less thing, right? Yep. They’re being asked to do more with less. Well, how do you do that? You don’t do that by using spreadsheets. You do it by using a, a common tool set with the architecture that works together in something, you know, and one place that you can manage all these things.

Allen Hall: Oh, yeah. It’s the only way to do it. And as we go forward over the next year, what I’m really interested in is what new concepts, ideas, platform updates. They get implemented by the operators because you, you always come out every year. Mm-hmm. We talk to Sky Specs and we, we see all the new things that happen and then we wait for the, the feedback and then we get to the customer [00:12:00] forum.

You see what they just used over the last year, they’re gonna be more hungry for more data than ever before. Mm-hmm. Even though they may be a little bit on a reduced staff. So that puts a big onus and burden onto Skys specs to not just provide data. Well, here’s all the drone images. No, we need to be able to give you insights as to what is happening and what I should be doing about it.

That’s the benefit of being with Skys specs. Yeah. I, I think, I think that’s huge. Right. And definitely there’s always a, a call to move faster and faster. Yeah. Because there’s, there’s a lot of challenges. A year ago, we were sitting in this room and we talked a lot about internal inspections, and we were on a journey.

Ingesting that third party ingest, uh, data, but customers are like, Hey, it’d be really great if you had a robot for that too. Yeah. So, and now it’s sitting right out here’s sitting out there and our robots are very busy. So, yeah. Um, it’s, it’s, it’s stuff like that where it’s, it’s continuing to get that feedback.

We get it at forums like, like this. Right. And, um, for us too, especially as we get into those other spaces like doing. An [00:13:00] external drone inspection of a blade is just one piece of the puzzle, right? There’s a lot of other data streams that are critically important, and even it’s especially important in solar when there’s different data capture methods.

And again, our big focus is gonna be on that JE ingestion. Mm-hmm. And getting all that data into, into one place. Um, maybe in some cases we’ll do the data capture, but customers are sitting on a ton of data already. Right. And so it’s helping them digitize it, get it into that common data model, and then connect it to their work order system.

That is key. And there’s a lot of automation and rules that kind of go in to trigger the optimization. And that’s where I think we’re, we’re good at. And some of our customers have seen that success and wind and that value case. And that’s what it’s about for, for, for solar. So it’s an exciting, exciting time.

I’m gonna put you on,

on

Joel Saxum: the hook here. Okay.

Allen Hall: All right. So

Joel Saxum: our producer Claire, make a short outta this. We’re gonna put it on LinkedIn. Okay. This morning we heard and we saw a slide and some promises that said, expect transparency from skys specs. [00:14:00] So we’re here talking about all kinds of awesome developments.

Yep. A lot of things happening. Probably the most active product roadmap I think that I’ve seen at Skys specs. Mm-hmm. In since I’ve been around wind. Right. So. Expect more information. Q4, Q1, 26. Things rolling out. Um, you know, the, the, the jump into solar, some more CMS things, some the financial asset modeling.

Expect to hear more about that.

Josh Goryl: Mm-hmm.

Joel Saxum: Um, a repair vendor management, possibly moving into other components than just blades. Like there’s going to be a lot of announcements and the transparency promise, we got it this morning. Yep. We’re recording it now.

Allen Hall: Yeah, yeah. Well, you, you got it here, but I will say I have to leave some, uh, some stuff for the audience so they come, set out calls and do all that.

But yeah, to your, to your point, we’re super thrilled for what’s, what’s, what’s ahead. Um, so Alan, Alan Larson, who leads, leads product here, he had a, he a great presentation on some of the things that we’re gonna, we’re gonna be doing and you, we hit [00:15:00] on a lot of them. So solar. We have a, we have a POC now, uh, working with, with customers all already.

So we’ll see more of that in in 2026. Uh, thrilled to continue to work closer and closer with you guys at, at Weather Guard and a logic ping. And on the lightning stuff we’re going deeper and deeper into a lot of these lightning work workflows. It’s a big problem, right? Big, big problem, right? You, you guys know more than more than anyone.

And so bringing all that data into the horizon platform is, is, is, is key. So we’re, we’re, we’re thrilled about that. And then I think what’s also important is that we continue to do and improve what we’re good at. So even on the, the inspection side, I think there’s a lot that we can do in collaboration with customers to optimize those workflows.

So there’s a lot less kind of human in the loop, uh, because we have to continue to, to scale. And, um, we have amazing SMEs in this, in this industry, and it’s helping empower them to do, to do more. There is a [00:16:00] lot more inspection data than anyone could have ever imagined at this, at this point. And as an industry and as a company, we’ve gotten very good at, uh, moving faster, but it’s continuing to, to optimize and use AI and different tools.

Tools like that. Yeah. And I wanna talk about the AI. This, uh, improvements that have been made over the last year. There was a presentation yesterday talking about how to use AI to suss out images to make sure you’re getting what you’re paying for mm-hmm. On repairs. That was a monumental task, just listening to the engineering discussion of what it took to do that analysis.

How much AI comes in in 20, late 20, 25 into 26. Is that where the industry is headed? Because. Of the mass, massive amounts of data from every turbine. The images are so much better than they were three years ago, and they’re just, we’re taking more pictures. We’re doing it quarterly. Mm-hmm. So a yearly, or we’re not doing a third of the farm, we’re doing the whole farm year and the repair reports.

That was the big thing. Yeah. And the repair reports u the PDFs for ai. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So the, the, the data stream comes in and it’s, it’s huge. Are [00:17:00] you then thinking more AI over the next couple years, just so we can get that condensed data set down? No question. And in all areas we have to, and I think every organization is thinking about their Ai, AI strategy.

And, and for us it’s, it’s kind of going back to first principles and thinking on a workflow level. Right, and so there was a use case yesterday where we were talking about okay, reviewing images a lot more efficiently from the field. There’s thousands of PDF reports from rep from repair reports that our customers are trying to digitize.

How do we use AI to to do that? So we see those improvement. It feels like every couple weeks there’s something new that helps our team. And we’re trying to put more of those tools in the hands of our, our customer, but customers. But that is, um, one of the key pillars of our, of our strategy because we know we need it.

We know our customers need it, and how do we do that to together? So. What I will say, it’s not just AI that spits out the, an the right answer every single time. Right. Right. We, we always have, have, have work to [00:18:00] do, but we kind of think about it on a, on a workflow level and, and, um, how does it help us and everything we do every, every day.

Joel Saxum: Hmm. And the addition of Ben Torquing to the team is, is gonna spur that along. We, we heard from him this morning, man. That guy’s got it going on.

Allen Hall: Oh yeah, Ben, Ben, Ben has been fantastic. So Ben, uh, has been with us for about two months now. He’s our new Chief tech technology officer, and he is an AI background, uh, enterprise architecture background.

So that’s one of the other areas too, even outside of e uh, AI is being able to integrate to other third party platforms. We deal with utilities and IPPs. There’s a lot of big systems and being able to do that in a flexible way. That’s, that’s quick. Um, and, and works best for, for both sides. We know it’s not realistic that every single person every day is working in horizon.

Um, but it’s getting all that engineering and asset management data into the, into the right hands and doing that through some of these third party connections. So another area [00:19:00] where we’re gonna continue to, to level up and, and grow as an organization. So if you’re an asset manager and you are not using Skys specs, I don’t even know who that would be today.

But if you’re an engineer, you’re not actively on the Horizon platform and or if you’re on the Horizon platform and you wanna learn all the things that you missed this week. Yeah. How do they get ahold of you, Josh, to get the update? Yeah, I would say, um, I’m definitely gonna, I’ll leave my kind of contact information behind.

You can contact me directly. Always our sales teams. We have a sales@skysspecsdot.com, that goes to all of our account account executives and our technical sales manager. So depending on the, the area of need, we’d be happy to kinda set up, even if it’s just a discovery call and, um, with no agenda to kind of help and assess.

What you have, have going on, and I’m sure there’s areas where we can, we can help and yeah, if you have solar assets, you better be calling Skys picks now and getting that turned on. That’s right. Yeah. We’re, we’re super, super excited. And I think too, like we’re, we’re in it to, to learn and we know everyone has a different [00:20:00] operating strategy and may think about, uh, the world a little bit differently.

And so it’s important that we, we kind of take a step back and, and learn from you all. So we’ve kind of always taken that, taken that approach. And we can move fast too. Josh, you love having you on the podcast and love being at the customer forums. They’re very, yeah. Thanks for the invite. Uh, yeah, they’re eye-opening every single time and, uh, we get to talk to so many people.

So, Josh, thank you so much for inviting us and, and thanks so much for being on the podcast. No, the thing I’ll say too is, I, I can’t thank the two of you and, and Claire enough and just kind of the, the level of support and engagement and you guys have really helped level up our forum the last couple years.

So it means a, means a ton.

Joel Saxum: Thanks. Appreciate it.

https://weatherguardwind.com/skyspecs-customer-forum/

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Ørsted Restructuring, Nordex Cold-Climate Turbine

Allen and Rosemary discuss the upcoming Wind O&M Australia 2026 conference, Ørsted’s major restructuring announcement, and the BirdVision bird collision avoidance system. They also explore Nordex’s new cold-climate turbine for Canada and the ongoing challenges of blade icing protection systems.

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

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

Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Alan Hall from the Queen City, Charlotte, North Carolina.

And Rosemary Barnes is here from Australia. And Rosemary, Joel and I just got back from the Sky Specs customer Form 2025 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and we had a really good time, man. Most of the install base in America. For Wind was up at Sky Specs and interesting discussions. Just a lot going on. Obviously, we’re all talking about the changes in legislation we’re talking about.

Uh, all the moving [00:01:00] targets everybody’s trying to reorganize. There’s been a number of, uh, shifts from wind into solar that’s happening right now in the United States. And lowering operational costs, that’s the big one. Getting blades under control, uh, getting gear boxes under control, understanding where some of the risks are.

It was a very good. Conference, uh, they do it once a year. It was a full room, uh, and really good people, people we, we don’t see all year. You maybe see once a year, maybe see at another trade show. It was nice to spend a couple of days, uh, talking wind turbine o and m. Very similar, much to what we’re gonna do in Australia in February.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I wish I could have been there, uh, maybe next year.

Allen Hall: Well, we, we met with Matthew Stead. He was there. He had traveled all the way from Australia. And one of the things we did tell everybody were at the SKYSPACE conference was come to Australia February 16th and 17th in Melbourne, and you need to start [00:02:00] registering now.

You can go to Woma. 2020 six.com. WMA 2020 six.com and register for that event. Or if you want to, uh, present, you need to put your information into the website and get that rolling. Uh, it, it’s gonna, it’s getting close to being sold out, so you need to do that now before you lose your spot. We’ve increased the size of the conference from, it was about 170 odd people last year, and it’s gonna be up to 250, but even.

By increasing the, the amount of seats we’re still gonna be full.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. It’s a hard, it’s a hard cutoff this time as well. Last time we kind of expanded as, uh, we got more registrations in, but we don’t have that option this year, and yet that, uh, agenda is definitely starting to get worked out. So now is the time to get in touch.

If you, one, want to speak or two, have a, a topic that you think that we should talk about, like one of the big things that we wanna achieve with this event. Is matching people with [00:03:00] problems to people who have solutions and especially, you know, people who are developing solutions. So, you know, it might be that there is no solution available yet, but we still wanna hear about the problems ’cause there’s a lot of smart people that know all about developing wind, wind turbine technologies.

So that’s the place to. Get those sorts of, um, yeah. That kind of information sharing, flowing and get people thinking creatively.

Allen Hall: Yeah. And I don’t wanna make all the announcements here, but a number of world experts are going to travel to Melbourne to talk about wind energy. So if you, if you haven’t heard of a solution before and, and there’s a lot of problems with wind turbines, right?

There’s little nuance. Difficult problems that we’re all trying to solve. And you, you may not have an expert in Australia, you may not have an expert in United States. They may be over in Denmark or Germany, or France. Uh, pretty much everybody around the world is gonna be in Australia in February to talk about how to make our wind turbines operate better.

That’s why it’s gonna be good. It’s just the world’s gonna be there. [00:04:00]

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. It’s one of the other other reasons why we wanted to make this event is it’s exhausting. Going to all of the technical events around the world is really hard, especially for Australians. You know, you can’t go anywhere basically without getting on a 15 to 30 hour flight to, to get there.

So, um, we’re bringing some, some key people over. Um, yeah. And we can talk about. There’s more in depth later on, but there’s some, some good topics that I think Australian wind farm owners and operators really can learn from some of the solutions that are happening elsewhere. And we have also got some unique Australian only problems that, um, I think that, you know, these, uh, companies will be interested to help solve.

Allen Hall: And there’s a lot of unique Australian solutions to wind turbine operations that the world needs to hear too. So it’s a both way conversation because Australians have a really intuitively, uh, solving problems kind of get down to first principles and, and suss [00:05:00] out how to get their turbines up and running again.

And, and sometimes if, if you spend time in Samoan m buildings, sometimes they overthink these problems and Australians are really good at solving them. So. It’s good to hear both sides and that’s how we do it.

Rosemary Barnes: I’m really enjoying this, technical subset of the Australian wind community. I do find people are very much kind of solution oriented and less, I’ve always been a bit bamboozled by how secretive and isolated wind turbine companies want to be.

And I don’t feel like that’s the vibe. Like we don’t have obviously any Australian OEMs and so all of the operators are. fairly, or most of them are fairly free in the way that they’re talking about problems and solutions that they’ve found and also willing to try things out. So it is a really good place to run trials for new technologies.

’cause you’ll usually find a really huge wind farm that, is able to, try it out. And Get some data on how it’s working, [00:06:00]

Allen Hall: and it’s definitely some of the world’s harshest environment for wind turbines. So if you have a great new leading edge product, you probably ought to take it to Australia and actually check it out because, as Rosemary pointed out a number of times, the UV in Australia is really strong, the dust and debris is really strong and the winds are strong.

So you have all the ingredients to, really aggressive leading edge erosion. Plus the lightning from our area of expertise. The lightning is amazing in Australia and not amazing in a good way. There’s a lot of lightning. To wind turbines And it can be destructive in Australia, where you may not see that up in Denmark.

So you can really learn a lot from watching what the Australians have done.

Rosemary Barnes: I, I am involved in, in a couple of trials ongoing at the moment for a few Australia specific problems. Um, par loads, also starting to do some r and d into, uh, figuring out more about what the problems are and solutions to them.

So yeah, I think that it’s a really exciting time [00:07:00] to be part of the Australian wind industry.

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Choose Eco Pitch for peace of mind. Contact Onyx Insight today to schedule your demo of Eco Pitch and experience the future of blade monitoring. Well, the announcement today was when Giant or is having a major organizational restructuring that will eliminate [00:08:00] approximately 2000 positions by the end of 2027.

Now. CEO Rasmus Abo uh, described the move as necessary to create a more efficient and competitive organization as the company prepares to bid on some new offshore wind projects across Europe. Note that they didn’t mention America in that, that. Ted is gonna be mostly focused on Europe. That makes a lot of sense.

Honestly. Uh, the restructuring reflects Ted’s strategic focus on offshore wind and European markets with plans to finalize large construction projects in coming years while. Building a more fiscally robust company than the current workforce of about 8,000 employees globally will be downsized through natural attrition, redundancies, and outsourcing with the organization, ultimately ending up at about 6,000 people and rosemary in the United States, there’s been a number of announced layoffs, or we’re seeing that on LinkedIn.

This is a [00:09:00] big deal for the organization because Ted needs to get, its. Financials settled. Uh, if you listen to some other discussions about this, there’s a lot of talk. I mean, it’s, in my opinion, a little bit of crazy talk about, uh, Ecuador and Orton into some sort of merger, which I just don’t think is ever going to happen.

But if Ted’s gonna move from less development, which is what it sounds like to more just operational performance, they’re gonna need fewer people.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, it’s a bit, a bit sad, um, and. I can definitely understand the reason for the move away from the US and away from development. I mean, they may not even want to, like how much, how much cash reserve would you need to try again with, you know, some big offshore projects when they’ve been hit so bad with the, um, the US ones.

So it’s probably, you know, as much out of necessity as it [00:10:00] is, uh, kind of a strategic pivot. And yeah, uh, definitely less staff is probably also needed considering that, you know, there’re big projects that they probably were planning towards, um, over the last few years. You know, they’re not happening anymore.

So it’s a bit, yeah, it’s always a bit sad when there’s a lot of layoffs in one of the big. Uh, big wind industry companies because you know that you’re gonna lose a lot of people with a lot of specialized experience that the industry needs, you know, that you’re gonna lose them to other industries now.

Allen Hall: Yeah, and what I’ve noticed so far is a lot of the stead employees have ended up at competitors, quote unquote competitors. There’s a lot of talented people there, and the industry knows that. And so as soon as they see an available person, um, it looks to be a lot of phone calls being made to try to get an interview set up, and that’s the right move.

Uh, horse did is full of talent [00:11:00] and if those people become available, they should be pulled into other organizations because they don’t offer so much. They have. A unique insight into the world of offshore wind and even onshore wind and experience with a variety of wind turbine manufacturers and all the behind the scenes and operations and maintenance.

It does seem like, uh, at least the people I’ve dealt with at TED or Top Quality, it’s sad that this is happening, but at the same time, it may open up more opportunities for future wind development because you have so many talented people that are gonna be moving on to another organization that may have the cash flow to.

To push the boundaries a little bit more.

Rosemary Barnes: But you know what? There uh, is definitely a need for more, um, wind turbine expertise, technical, especially in Australia. People are really starting to realize, I know a lot of companies are trying to hire wind turbine experts and they find it really hard, uh, because, you know, we don’t have any OEMs in Australia, so no one has kind of gone through.

That, [00:12:00] uh, entry into the career. So, you know, maybe some of these, um, ex uh, employees, maybe they need to come down to Melbourne and, you know, meet some, meet some people at Wind Energy o and m 2026.

Allen Hall: Yeah. Yeah. We, we’d love to have ’em, that’s for sure. Well, and this quarter’s PES WIN magazine, there’s a number of great articles I want to.

Point out one Rosemary that I’ve been reading through from Bird Vision and we’ve had a number of discussions about. Collision avoidance with birds and bats, and we’ve had some people on the podcast on the spotlights talking about it. So there’s a lot of technology that exists to solve this problem of just trying to avoid interactions with wildlife.

Well, bird vision is one of those, and the article in the PES wind goes to point out, uh, it uses several cameras wrapped around the base of the tower, so it’s not. Super high up the [00:13:00] tower. Uh, but it’s a 360 camera system and it is really effective. In the article, they say they’re 100% detection rates within 200 meters.

That’s pretty good. Uh, and they’re trying to avoid the larger birds, right, uh, from keeping them away from the rotors. So what they’re doing is using that. Bird vision system to shut down the turbine and let the birds fly through and then start ’em back up again, which is better than a blanket shutdown, which is so expensive to not be operating turbines.

And rosemary, you’ve looked at a number of these systems over the years. They’re becoming more prevalent than they ever have, even five years ago, even though we really did care, we just didn’t have the technology to go attack the problem.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, they worked, they worked well. Actually. I just googled bird vision when turbine and, uh, the video that I made on that come up in the top of the results.

So that’s always nice to see that my SEO is, uh, working effectively. [00:14:00]Um, but when I was researching that video, I looked into a, a few different systems, um, and LY was the one that I, I talked to a guy who was, um, managing a wind farm in Tasmania and they had a problem ’cause there was an endangered bird. Um, I think it was the Tasmanian Wedgetail Eagle.

Um, and it. Was getting it, it, it was, it was there in the area. And so they had to do something about that to be able to get permission to operate that wind farm. And so they put the identified system in and they, um, had less bird bird deaths after that than before the wind farm was built. So, um, they have yeah, eliminated the, the problem, um, and not that much curtailment.

So they were, yeah, that guy was really happy with it. Um, there’s a few other systems around that that identify. One uses AI and vision and they, they actually don’t put a camera on every single turbine. They have just them scattered [00:15:00] around the wind farm in particular places. Um, how does this, this system in PS, wind, how does that one work?

Is there a, a camera on every single turbine?

Allen Hall: It doesn’t talk about that. Obviously this is being used over in Europe to start off with. So in Germany in particular, so there doesn’t tend to be large farms in Germany. My guess is it’s gonna be on every, uh, turbine tower. But if you have a bird issue. You really want to protect the birds, so putting on, on every tower may be the right solution for you or every other tower.

It, I guess it really depends upon, uh, how scattered your turbines are. Joel and I have talked to a number of operators in the United States about using these systems, and they, they, they try to minimize the spend, but in reality. They, what they’re really doing is they’re trying to minimize any interaction with the birds.

So they’re super cautious. Super cautious and airing on the, on the side of more protection instead of less.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I mean, these, these things, the technology works. You don’t have [00:16:00] to shred birds. I mean, the birds and wind turbine thing. It, it’s an, it’s. Blown out of proportion, definitely. But it’s also partially about the way that old wind turbines were.

So, you know, when they built some of the early wind farms, especially, there’s one particular one in California, I can’t remember the name. They put turbines all along a ridge. And then that happened to be a really important, um, migration path for one particular raptor. I can’t remember the name of the bird anymore.

Sorry. Um, and it was just terribly, it was terribly cited. And you need to, you know, when you’re doing a site assessment, you do need to make sure that there aren’t endangered birds that are traveling through the area where you wanna put wind turbines. So that’s the first line of defense. Um, and then secondly, uh, you know, once a, a wind farm is operating, or you know, if you’ve got this occasional risk, but you still wanna put a wind farm there, then that’s the time to implement these technologies.

But there’s some other things that have changed as well with wind turbines. ’cause like early ones, remember they had those lattice towers and birds [00:17:00] used to nest on those or or perch on them, and then they would take off right into the blades and, you know, that was bad. So now with wind turbines are, you know, just a, a steel cylinder isn’t nowhere to roost on one of those.

You’ve eliminated that. I know I was, when I was researching the video that I did on birds, even without any of these fancy systems that are detecting birds and stopping turbines, even without that, the number of bird deaths per turbine has massively reduced. ’cause modern wind turbines are just not as, um, able to kill birds as the old ones were.

So there’s heaps of different layers and you choose the system or the combination of things that make sense for the site that you’re at. Basically at the end of the day, there’s no excuse for wind turbines killing any, you know, significant number of birds and definitely not endangered ones. Um, and in general they, they don’t anymore.

So it’s because of technology is like this?

Allen Hall: Yeah, absolutely. And [00:18:00] this is not the only great article on PES Wind. You need to go download a copy@pswin.com. Read it. Uh, there’s so many good technology items in the magazine and just thoughts about the industry, how to operate turbines, how to be more efficient offshore, onshore, both, uh, it’s a good read, so go to ps wind.com and read it today.

As Wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it difficult. That’s why the Uptime podcast recommends PES Wind Magazine. PES Wind offers a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high quality content you need.

Don’t miss out. Visit PES wind.com today. Nordex has launched. Its N 1 75. Six x wind turbines, or the six megawatt turbine specifically for the Canadian market. Uh, and it features an, [00:19:00] an advanced anti-icing technology for extreme cold performance. And unlike Australia, Canada gets really, really cold. Uh, so having turbines way up north like that.

Is an issue. You need an anti-icing system if you want to really produce on the days that you need the power. Uh, the turbine uses, uh, the proven Delta 4,000 platform for which Nordex has sold over 40 gigawatts globally. Uh, but it has been adapted for temperatures as low as minus. 30 degrees Celsius.

Rosemary, you’ve ever been in minus 30 degrees Celsius?

Rosemary Barnes: I sure have. And in fact, I’ve probably climbed a wind turbine mine at approximately minus 30 degrees Celsius because, uh, that’s what my, that’s what my job was when I worked at lm. I was leading the, um, de-icing team. Uh, yeah. So. Super familiar with that, but it’s not actually like it, it’s, I, to me, the coldest temperature is around zero degrees [00:20:00] because there’s moisture in the air, right?

Um, so you feel a lot more cold at zero plus or minus two degrees talking Celsius, um, compared to minus 30. It’s always very crisp, clear days when it’s that. That cold. And yeah, when I was working in, um, in Denmark, I would go up to Sweden to work on the, you know, the prototype blades with the, um, deicing systems installed.

And it would be like a lovely holiday going from Denmark, which is probably, yeah, zero degrees, two degrees and drizzling. You go over to Sweden and minus 20, save minus 30, sometimes bright blue, sky, crisp, clean, amazing air. Um, it was always like a little, a little winter holiday for me to go up there. You still, you know, like feel the sun on your face, even at minus 20 degrees, it still still feels good.

Minus 30 is pretty extreme. You don’t, you don’t wanna stay out for long in that. But, you know, it’s actually the same for icing where the hardest icing conditions, [00:21:00] uh, also around zero degrees is when you get the most ice forming because there’s a lot more moisture in the air at minus 30. There really isn’t moisture in the air that’s going to stick onto a blade and freeze and build up.

So, um, yeah, it’s the icing events that you need to watch out for are those ones that happen just around freezing and you can still get icing at the lower temperatures, but the most common and the biggest chunks of ice that build up, it’s definitely at the, um, warmer temperatures

Allen Hall: up in Canada. The wind speeds are not phenomenal.

They tend to be in the low to mid range as we would typically conceive of them. Is there more ice buildup in those because, and let me ask this question. I’m trying to understand this. I’ve asked this to somebody else and didn’t really get an answer, so let me ask the icing expert. If I have a larger rotor diameter for these low wind speed conditions, does that make the anti-icing system more complex because the blades are moving slower, that it may have time to accumulate more ice, or [00:22:00] is higher rotational speed more attractive to ice?

It builds ice faster and is harder to deal with.

Rosemary Barnes: It should be equivalent. If the tip speed is the same in both scenarios, which it probably is roughly, then, you know, that’s what the, um, the ice cares about. The, the tip speed and the amount of moisture in the air. So pretty similar, but there’s a few things that would make it harder for a longer blade compared to a shorter one.

Um, first one is a longer blade is going to more often touch the clouds. And then the second one is just simply that you’ve got more surface area that you have to heat in order to get rid of the ice. And so that’s a real challenge because it’s like megawatts of power. It’s just like an absurd amount of power that you would need to put in there, and you, you cannot get that much power into the blade.

You What the designers do is they target the, um, the part of the blade, like at the tip. It’s moving faster. It’s also more important aerodynamically. So ideally you would want more power going there. To go back to your original question about [00:23:00] Canada, it does have incredibly severe icing conditions and I saw, um, you know, some of the wind farms I worked with.

Had other wind farms in the area that was experiencing like 10%, even 20% a EP loss over a year from icing if, if you don’t have any, um, icing system in place. And so you can imagine that with that kinds of losses, especially the first wind farms that didn’t know to expect that it was a surprise to them that they were losing that much.

Just imagine how desperate they are and that’s why they are happy to put up with putting a huge amount of power into melting off this ice for one thing, but also like a de-icing system on a blade. It’s a a very complex system that you’re adding to a wind turbine. And to be honest, they don’t operate as smoothly as, um, the rest of the turbine.

The technology is not. As the same mature, at the same mature level. So it is like quite a lot of faf [00:24:00] to, to have to deal with, um, heated blades in a wind farm. And it is only in sites where they’re experiencing like at least 5% a EP loss from icing that you would bother to, to put one of these systems in place.

Allen Hall: Well, it has become a challenge when wind energy becomes a predominant. Source of electricity, particularly in coal locations, that it may not be a power loss situation as much as you need to have turbines running to provide power out into the grid. So are you willing to sacrifice those losses just to keep the grid functioning?

Is that where we’re at right now on, on some of these larger deployments where you’re seeing gigawatts of, of wind in cold locations?

Rosemary Barnes: But I think before you get to that grid wide concern, it just on a farm by farm basis, the economics don’t make sense. If you lose, you know, you ask anybody that’s ever put together a business case for a new wind farm.

Okay? Like, so you got your business case, you got 10%, 20% [00:25:00] fat in there that you can, um, just, you know, um, sacrifice because you’ve got icing worse than you thought. It’s a real issue. Actually. Another, another, um, problem with the whole issue of wind turbines and cold climates is that people do icing site assessments, but there’s kind of a bit of a, a conflict.

The developers want to have it show on that they’re gonna have very low icing because that’s what the banks wanna see. Or, um, yeah, banks wanna see that too. Provide finance or any investor wants to see that there’s not gonna be a big icing loss. You do frequently see people, they got an icing assessment done.

It said that they were going to have three, 4% a EP loss. They said, okay, it’s not worth putting a de-icing system in. And their, um, investors agreed, but then actually it’s six, seven, 8% loss once the film farm is up and running. And by then, you know, it’s one thing, one annoying thing to have to put de-icing, anti-icing in.

In the factory and maintain it. It [00:26:00] is a totally different kettle of fish to try and retrofit something later. And there are systems available, but they don’t work nearly as well as something that’s installed in the factory. So yeah, as, um, as big a headache, as, as it is, if you are in a kind of a borderline situation, like you really, really want to try and get an accurate icing assessment, not just one that tells your bank what they want to hear.

Allen Hall: With all the knowledge and research that’s going on in icing and attending winter wind up in Sweden, which, which is a fantastic conference, are we getting smarter? Are we getting smarter about icing protection and knowing how to utilize the power that’s available to better anti-ice de ice blades?

Rosemary Barnes: Um, I’m not sure, and I haven’t been to winter wind or talk too much about de-icing for at least five, maybe six years now.

So. Presumably things have moved on since when I was last. Really looking into it. Some things can’t change, like [00:27:00] just the amount of power that you would need to keep a blade ice free. That’s just physics. That’s never gonna change. Um, but you know, there were some technologies that people were trying to develop that didn’t work very well, um, back then.

Like, um, passive coatings that just won’t, you know, kind of like a hydrophobic coating, but ice phobic instead, so the ice just won’t stick to it. Um, I never saw one that. Worked in the Icephobic way and was also durable enough that it could, you know, stay on a blade season after season. There’s even some wild things like, um, microwave, uh, de-icing.

You know, you have like a, you know, a microwave station on the ground and it, you know, beams, uh, heat at a, a turbine blade. That’s, you know, like something like that would be possible as well. Um, yeah, so I think I. The bulk of the industry is just refining the solutions that they have to make them more effective and more, um, reliable, less needing, less maintenance, especially.

Um, and then there’s always [00:28:00] gonna be people, um, trying to just totally, you know, smash the old the old way and come up with something new. So, you know, at some point someone will break through with something like that and that will that, yeah, that will be really great when we, we don’t have to actually heat the blades themselves.

Allen Hall: We gotta get you up to Sweden for winter wind. That would be a good update for you and, and the industry to learn. Everything that’s happening there.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, no, I would like to go again. And also, uh, one of my Swedish friends, um, someone that I used to climb turbines with back when I did a lot of de-icing work on Swedish wind farms, she said that I can come film a video about what, you know, a day in the life of a wind turbine tech.

So I, uh, no, nobody will ever let me film any of the work that I do. So, um, yeah, that would make a great video. So I, I am keen to get back to Sweden in winter time.

Allen Hall: That wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast and thanks for joining us. We appreciate all the feedback and support we receive from the wind industry.

If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d [00:29:00] love to hear from you. Just reach out to us on LinkedIn and please don’t forget to describe so you never miss an episode. And on behalf of Rosemary and the uptime team, I’m Alan Hall and we’ll catch you here next week on the Uptime Winded interview podcast.

https://weatherguardwind.com/orsted-nordex-cold-climate/

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