Published

1 year ago

July 15, 2025

Alice Rush

Register for the SkySpecs webinar! The crew discusses the resignation of Wind Europe CEO Giles Dickson and his impact on the organization. They examine a new executive order from the White House targeting ‘unreliable’ wind and solar energy sources, analyzing its potential effects on tax credits and the renewable energy market.

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 Winner d podcast. I’m Alan Hall in the Queen City, Charlotte, North Carolina.

I got filter the tower out in California and Joel Saxon is in wet Austin, Texas. It rained again today. The storm waters have been severe, like a hundred year flood Situations in Texas have been very dangerous and a lot of people have been injured down there. yeah, our condolences go out to everybody affected down in Texas and there’s supposed to be some more severe.

Rainstorms in the East coast of the United States. So hold on tight. there’s a lot of news going on [00:01:00] this week around the world. the one that sticks out first and I wanna bring this to the attention of everybody that, if you haven’t heard yet, is, wind Europe. CEO Giles Dixon has announced he’s stepping down after 10 years as leading WIN Europe.

And I was stunned when this happened. And obviously, I. Don’t have any influence in when Europe being an American. I just watch from the outside and I, from what I’ve seen and attended the conferences over in Europe, everything from what I’ve seen under his tutelage has been great. And the promotional materials and all the information that when Europe provides, has been outstanding.

so Giles is going to go back to teaching. He’s gonna go back into the schoolhouse. but it, seems like it’s a shock to everybody at, Wind Europe, at least that’s the outward appearance. Board chair Henrik Anderson, who is the head of Vestus Praise Dixon’s, tremendous contribution, noting [00:02:00] that he will leave Wind Europe stronger than he when he arrived.

And that’s clearly the case. Phil, do you have any insight as to what’s going on behind the scenes over in Wind Europe and with Giles?

Phil Totaro: I do not, but I can also speak from personal experience, having met him, I wanna say back in 2018 or probably 2017. and I can certainly attest to the, the work that they’ve done.

As you might be able to see, I’ve got two, things sitting here behind me that are awards from, the Wind Europe and, predecessor to, that, we’ve, done a lot of work over in Europe and it’s been facilitated by, the Wind Europe, events that they do as well as the publications that they’ve put out.

certainly my thanks go out to, to him and, [00:03:00] wish him well on his, future endeavors.

Joel Saxum: I would say from an American standpoint, been to wind Europe now, man, I don’t know how many times, half a dozen times or something like that. They do a really good job over there. And this is from, the leadership comes from the top of just circling the wagons, right?

Bringing everybody out to the show, getting more voices involved, giving, getting executive leaders from a lot of these large operators, giving them the space to talk and putting them, in an area where their voices are listened to. So like when, the last time I was at Wind Europe, I think it was in, bill Bao.

so I went, walked into Bill Bau, and when you walked into the conference center, there was big banners hanging of all of the key speakers and what their messages were with pictures of their faces, six feet tall, hanging in all the hallways. And I thought, what a great way to get visibility to the industry, right?

Because if anybody walks in here, because of course at those shows you get, impartial news [00:04:00] agencies and other things going. You see that stuff right in the, European realm. I’m like, I recognize the face of the CEO of RWE and, these things like they pop up. They’re, good at getting in the face of the, public and getting their message across.

And I would like to see us do more of those things here. under giles’s tutelage there, fantastic job. he said he’s gonna step back and go to teaching and give back to his local community where he’s from, and I think that’s fantastic. it’s a, a career shift.

He’s given a lot to the wind industry. and moving on. So now, we have those Giles in Pierre walk and talk videos that they put out every, so often, they’re gonna have to find someone else to walk and talk with.

Allen Hall: That’s gonna be hard to do. Those win flicks are really well done. They’re great promotion for the industry in, Europe.

I, there’s very little that I’ve seen that even really compares to them the amount of knowledge you’re gonna get in about four and a [00:05:00] half minutes about what is actually happening on the ground in Europe. You just don’t find it anywhere like that. The, they are really good tuned to all the inner workings of the eu, the individual countries, all the manufacturers.

They have the pulse of that industry and it’s, gonna be a lot to live up to wherever they nominate to be. The next CEO win Europe. It. It has a high bar. A very high bar. Don’t let blade damage catch you off guard. OGs. Ping sensors detect issues before they become expensive. Time consuming problems from ice buildup and lightning strikes to pitch misalignment and internal blade cracks.

OG Ping has you covered. The cutting edge sensors are easy to install, giving you the power to stop damage before it’s too late. Visit eLog ping.com and take control of your turbine’s health today. Over in the United States, the White House has issued an executive order targeting, what has been described as [00:06:00] quote unquote unreliable wind and solar energy sources, which is a matter of strong debate.

The executive order titled, ending Market Distorting Subsidies for Unreliable Foreign Controlled Energy Sources. Does that make an acronym, guys? I don’t think it does. The order directs the Treasury Department to strictly enforce termination of clean energy tax credits already included in the recently passed budget reconciliation bill.

the feeling on the street is this was done to placate some of the. Congress, people that wanted more action against wind and solar, mostly from petroleum, based states, and that they didn’t feel like they got enough in the legislation, so they wanted to reinforce it. I, don’t think this has any real effect, but in in the larger scheme, but the one area which can.

Be adjusted with or played with is the [00:07:00] timing of when projects have to go in and what the percentage of projects has to be done to qualify for the tax credits. And Phil, you want to provide some insights into what can happen with the qualification aspect.

Phil Totaro: Yeah, so let’s start with understanding what got approved in the bill.

Any project that starts construction after July 4th, 2026 will no longer be eligible for a production tax credit. Going back to Alan’s comment about this executive order, the intent. There is to direct the Treasury Department, which oversees obviously the IRS, which has a final say in what the qualification criteria are for getting the, Companies who wanna claim the production tax credit, you have to submit an application to be able to do that. they are being directed under this executive [00:08:00] order to reexamine whether or not there needs to be changes. That would be I. Basically considered anti renewable. So anything that can take, money off the table for wind and solar is, what they’re trying to accomplish with this.

And what they can do, that’s outside the scope of the bill is they can. Have, the threshold for what constitutes start of construction raised such that, let’s call it about 15.3 gigawatts out of the 30 gigawatts that’s already, into the, construction and permitting queue.

There’s about 15 gigawatts of that is at jeopardy if we can’t. if they raise these thresholds and if we can’t get started on construction with all that by, July 4th, 2026.

Joel Saxum: Phil, I got a question for you ’cause I wanna clarify this. We know that solar PV [00:09:00] onshore wind almost exclusively, and I think it is exclusively, will harvest PTCs over the lifetime instead of the 30% ITC credit for CapEx, however.

Offshore wind usually goes for ITC. And so I wanna clarify this also pertains to ITC as well. That’s, under, under the same rule set as the PTC. Yes. and ITC if you don’t know, is investment tax credits versus production tax credits. So you, that’s a onetime, wham. on, I think 30% of the CapEx of a project.

And that’s why you see it in offshore wind because it’s so dang expensive for offshore wind. But this, so the same set of rules is gonna hit both of those, right?

Phil Totaro: Yes. And, regardless of the executive order, Joel, the, it, the changes in the law that they just made in the tax and budget bill, they passed these changes in the law, actually potentially preclude.

The Mar Wind project in Maryland and the New England one and two [00:10:00] projects, in, Massachusetts, Connecticut, et cetera. that general vicinity where, multiple states are gonna be off taking power, those projects may not be able to get their construction finance in place and. Meet the start of construction threshold, by the time that they need to be able to, in order to claim the, tax credit.

So they could be, these projects are potentially in jeopardy now of not being able to claim that ITC, because of these, the change in the law passed by Congress and the con in combination with. The executive order that is likely to, increase the threshold for what constitutes startup construction on a project.

Joel Saxum: Could you see someone with a bold strategy saying, you know what, because PTCs may run out, we’re gonna take the 30% ITC bam right now on an onshore wind project. A big one. Could you see that?

Phil Totaro: Potentially, yes. Particularly if it’s [00:11:00] gonna, it’s the down to the number crunchers at that point. And if somebody says, you know what?

That makes a lot more sense than getting a reduction. look, we’ve, Intel store’s done this analysis. We released a research note about this. It’s gonna reduce, this. Change in the law is gonna reduce what? the revenue that asset owners for wind in the USA get by about $16 billion.

Now, keep in mind that ever since they started this production tax credit back in the early nineties, it’s paid out about $66.3 billion to date. And is $16 billion really saving us a whole lot, especially when you consider that we’ve got increasing demand, a five year backlog on gas. Nuclear that can’t be built.

And we talked last week about, the situation with, trying to sell people liquified natural gas. where exactly are we gonna get our electricity from? Because you’re all about to face brownouts in [00:12:00] about, a year and a half here. So if it’s not coming from wind and solar, I, don’t know where it’s coming from.

Allen Hall: The offshore projects on the east coast will have to be finished. They’ll just go back to the states and renegotiate the contracts for the offtake pricing.

Phil Totaro: If they can.

Allen Hall: I, think there’s always opportunity in tax law for things to get a little funky if you haven’t noticed that. the IRS can do all kinds of crazy things on its own, and obviously, things get tagged onto additional bills.

There’s all kinds of bills going through Congress and nobody knows exactly what’s going on at midnight when they pass. So it wouldn’t shock me if some of these projects get a little bit of coverage by the states and the senators in particular that backdoor it to protect them. Because otherwise what’s gonna happen is Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, maybe all the way down towards Virginia, New Jersey, are going to have to raise the prices to get those projects in.[00:13:00]

They’re still gonna happen. I, just don’t see them not happening. Back to your point, Phil, what are they gonna do for power? If they don’t have any other opportunities. Can I shift gears a little

Joel Saxum: bit here? The I’m, what I wanna understand now is, okay, bill, big beautiful Bill has passed, executive order, signed, enforcing it, whatever.

Today is July 9th that we’re recording. What does July 10th look like for the next two years? For all of our friends in the wind industry that are ISPs. That are specialists that are, technical field advisors for construction and crane companies and bolting companies and all this stuff. What does the next two years look like for them?

Because in my mind it means hammer down pedal to the metal. People are gonna be scrambling to get support to build their projects out. So everybody that’s in ISP is gonna be busy as hell for the next few years. At the same time, if I’m an operator, I’m thinking I’ve got a, an odd fiscal cliff. Coming and I need to [00:14:00] make sure that my turbines are running tip top shape while I’m still harvesting PTCs.

Before that date, because when that date comes, I gotta be o and m efficient. I gotta be spend efficient, these things have to be running well. I need to get ’em up to snuff, tear that apart. Does that make sense?

Phil Totaro: Oh, it, makes perfect sense. So right now what everybody, particularly anybody that built a project that.

They wouldn’t be able to repower prior to the end of this PTC cliff in 2027. What they’re looking to do is exactly what you just mentioned, Joel. They have to get operational efficiency improved and they have to hunt for the best possible PPA that they can get. now the good news is that. the market average right now for PPAs is about 55, just under $56 a megawatt hour, but if that drops, it’s gonna throw folks like that.

And they’re 65, or, I’m sorry, 62.115 [00:15:00] gigawatts worth of projects in that time period I mentioned 2019 to 2023 that are not gonna be able to do a PTC driven repowering. So they’re gonna have to improve. Performance they’re gonna have to life extend, and they’re gonna have to go find, a better, whether it’s a corporate offtake or something, a high PPA, that’s gonna help them sustain their profitability.

Allen Hall: The data I’ve seen more recently about what electricity prices are going to be in a year or two shows them up almost 10%, or sometimes more than 10%. So they’re gonna have to climb the, money’s gonna come from somewhere because. Back to Phil’s original point, if you don’t develop it, you’re gonna have problems with power supply.

you’re gonna have brownouts and restrictions and all the things you’ve been trying to avoid for the last 20 years, it’s going to come about. So I think the offtake companies and all the corporations involved in this that are pulling massive amounts of power off the grid are going [00:16:00] to have to encourage these projects to go forward.

They’re going to have to renegotiate PPAs. the, sites are gonna get built. I think there may be more opportunity for a little bit more money for wind and particularly solar just because. Gas isn’t gonna fill it, no one else is gonna fill it. The prices are gonna go up, and I think you could ask for a higher PPA price and get it because there’s nobody else that can provide the power.

Joel Saxum: I think we should benchmark this, right? Like a couple a month ago or so, the three of us, or more than that, we talked about what our, local power prices were and we’re in completely different markets. Alan, you’re on the east coast. Phil, you’re on the West coast. I’m down in Austin. In the Ercot market, I think the Ercot market will adjust quicker.

Simply because it’s, unregulated, right? It can, it’ll move. It’ll move. It’ll move now. So I think we should do that. let’s once a month collect that data again, just to see what it looks like over the next few years and check the trend. Because I think, like you said, [00:17:00] it’s gotta come from somewhere at the end of the day, who’s paying the bills, the consumer, And that’s the frustrating thing about, to me, just the frustrating thing about what’s going on with this bill is. Is the consumer’s gonna end up paying and a lot of times the consumers in these deep red states, that’s where wind is. It doesn’t make sense to me, but I don’t make all the decisions.

Allen Hall: just play it out in your head.

If GE is making the, gas turbines that are gonna provide electricity, just say GE is a focal point, probably is. Are they gonna increase production 50% over the next year, two years, five years, 10 years? They can’t do it. It’s impossible. It’s impossible. Exactly right. So although the current administration is going to downplay wind and solar.

It’s a physics problem. You can’t do it. This is not a Pol politics problem. This is a physics

Joel Saxum: problem.

Phil Totaro: But he, so here’s the good news though. Going, back to Joel’s point, if you work [00:18:00] at an ISP, if you own a company that owns cranes, you are gonna be in demand. full employment for everybody.

And here’s the other thing, a lot of these companies that have been overlooked as far as, kind of asset management, platforms and digital services, our friends over at Sky Specs, as, being one example. they are gonna be also very in demand because the companies, the asset owners that said, oh, I can get by without, digital solutions.

You’re not gonna be able to, when you need to be able to optimize your performance to hold out until 2029. Because if, your project starts dropping off precipitously, you don’t have a PTC that you can leverage to repower your project anymore. And who knows what actually happens in 2029. Hopefully we get something back in place that, like Alan mentioned, and Joel mentioned, a week or two [00:19:00] ago where oil and gas already have permanent subsidies.

we can argue about whether or not. subsidies for renewables are a good or a bad thing and all that, but wind energy alone in the United States is a $500 billion plus industry, and we’re talking about, again, $66 billion paid out over 30 plus years, and $16 billion in the immediate term to help support an industry that creates, more than half a trillion dollars worth of value.

In the United States jobs, tax, revenue, et cetera. let’s hope everybody gets the message and, starts playing it smart from here on out.

Allen Hall: As Wind energy professionals staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it difficult. That’s why the Uptime podcast recommends PES Wind Magazine. PES Wind offers a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future.[00:20:00]

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. In this quarter’s, PES Wind Magazine, which you can Google PES Wind and it’ll take you right there. You can download your own copy. There’s a really good article from Safe Lifting Europe, bv and some of their sustainable practices.

And if you’ve seen some of the work that they do, they provide. All the green colored equipment, the lifting equipment, and they’ve shifted from, a traditional ownership model where you buy the harness or the lifting piece to a rental service, which is a totally different model because most of the time that I’ve been around heavy lift, we ended up buying all the pieces, but renting this makes a lot more sense.

But there’s a lot to that when that happens. And it is, a. Truly a different approach to what has been a very, [00:21:00] wanna call a, very state industry where it hasn’t moved around too much. you lift things, you check, make sure the everything is the, same. But the, problem has been, is that.

It’s pay to play and it’s hard to get into that industry if you wanna buy the equipment. And so safe lifting Europe is, has a different model and it’s about time. Joel, I, know you’ve been around some heavy lift equipment yourself. This is, this, doesn’t happen very much. I have not seen hardly any of this in the United States ’cause these guys are based in the Netherlands.

Joel Saxum: So again, I, and I dial back to this offshore oil and gas. Offshore oil and gas is such a specialized industry with, when you’re lifting something, you may be using a piece that looks like you’re lifting something in a yard, but you’re actually using that in 3000 feet of water. so there’s all this specialized equipment all the time, and if you’re an operator or an IIRM consultant or whoever else that’s doing this work, it’s so cost prohibitive, capital [00:22:00]intensive to get into these things and it reduces the amount of players in the market.

That’s the trouble it, concentrates ’em, right? You get to these certain projects and Only Cype can take it on because they’re the only ones that can afford to buy the kit. What this does is it opens up the market to money. More people, right? Because then that offshore oil and gas world, this is a model they use all the time.

There’s companies dedicated to this expensive kit, like there’s a company called Unique Group that we used to use all the time, and they have water weights for testing and this, and the good thing about them, and it was electric, it was electronics and all kinds of stuff. When you got the kit, it was tested, calibrated, certified, ready to roll, beautiful in a crate.

You know what I mean? So it showed us like, Hey, we need this piece. And it showed up on site and it was ready to run, and it was all done by a third party. You pay the day rate on it. Once you’re done, you ship it back. Now, from a contract standpoint, that’s awesome because you just charge cost plus whatever percentage you put on it to your client.

It’s a pass through cost, you’ve dealt with it. Project gets done. That’s awesome. I think that’s, it opens up again, it [00:23:00] opens up the market. You can use mult, more vessels, more companies, good on them. And they’ve done a, this is a, this is something you and I really Alan, is this clever marketing.

Clever marketing, clever branding. There’s companies that do this well, and this is good, right? Because it’s rental kit that all looks the same. So no matter what vessel it’s on, you’re gonna see this, specific color of green right down here in Texas. Whenever I see a red, f two 50 go by, I go, oh, that’s Weatherford.

You know them, you know those guys right away, right? The Weatherford guys with the red jumpsuits and the red bumpers on the truck and stuff. you always see that. Or, like, in the offshore world, deme, blind green, Deme, you can see a deme vessel from miles away and you go, that’s that.

That’s them. That’s them. This will catch on. I like their, what they’ve done. Kudos to whoever thought of that as a branding initiative. I think this is only good things for the entire market, having a player like this that’s, specializing in that lifting kit.

Allen Hall: Yeah, great [00:24:00] article and you need to go check it out.

You can download this article at PS Wind. Just visit, your Google engine type in PS Wind. It’ll take you right there. Download it. There’s a ton of great articles in this quarter’s edition. and good on to safe Lifting Europe, bv. A lot of discussion about companies being, sold at the minute, and Joel and I have heard.

Quite a number of stories over the last probably month or so, but a ES corporation is, stock has gone up and down quite recently because the impression is, that they are for sale and they’re a Virginia based, renewable power company. And it sounds like they’ve had takeover interest from, investors, including Brookfield Asset Management, BlackRock of course, and Global Infrastructure Partners.

Now, a ES has a unique client base. They are really tied into the [00:25:00] data centers and ai centers, which from which are the big names, and Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, if you named the three. Those are the three. but it has more recently, as has seen their stock fall since about 2022. So it’s down quite a bit.

However, the future will look bright. This would be the perfect time to pick up a ES at probably a, what would be considered a reasonable price. But the dollar numbers, the market cap on a ES is pretty big at the moment. Joel? Yeah, I think what, what did, we see today? Like 40

Joel Saxum: billion. 40 billion. So there’s been a couple of big.

Acquisitions in the last year, right? There was the, GIP bought that company, New Mexico, can’t remember the name of it, that one. And then the Constellation bought Calpine for 16 billion. So that was another big one that just happened. of course we know BP is for sale. We should see an announcement on that at any [00:26:00] time.

We don’t know who or what that price is. but that’s gonna happen for bps, US onshore assets. So there is some big things moving and grooving. I could see, like I, I think off air I was talking BlackRock. GIP is a big one. Brookfield, I know Phil, you had some opinions on Brookfield, but, if a ES.

They’ve got some stuff in, in the states. They’ve got a lot of stuff in the Latin American countries, south America as well, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, they got some cool wind farms. If they’re doing some due diligence and you need someone to go, the uptime crew can go to Hawaii for the one you got out there, we’ll definitely take a peek at that for you or whoever the prospective buyer is.

but yeah, we, have friends over there. We know some of the engineers at a ES. of course, when these acquisitions happen, for the most part, it doesn’t change much. they just have a different t-shirt to wear and a different email signature. there’s some good people over there.

but yeah. Phil, what are your thoughts on who a prospective buyer for this a [00:27:00] ES thing could be?

Phil Totaro: Yeah, besides the two companies that have been named, you could have Masar also potentially kicking the tires if they wanted to expand their footprint. but I think Brookfield is probably the best fit.

besides some of the operational synergies that they already have with projects they’ve got, it fits Brookfield’s, as you mentioned, Joel, they’ve got assets in, Peru, Chile, and, I wanna say some transmission related assets as well in, in Brazil. that probably fit Brookfield’s portfolio a little bit better than anybody else, but I wouldn’t put it out of the realm of possibility that.

somebody dives in and, tries to gobble them up because they’ve built a pretty good portfolio, and a healthy one as well. This

Joel Saxum: week’s Wind Farm of the week is the Wheat Ridge Hybrid Energy Project. Why this one popped up on the Wind Farm of the Week is looking [00:28:00] forward to what’s going on in politically in the states right now, thinking about operational efficiencies and how do we squeeze as much more out of a project as we can.

And the interesting thing about this is the first project in the United States that combines the three most common renewable energy kind assets. You have wind on site, you have solar on site, and you have battery storage on site. Now, the advantage to that, of course, is it’s pretty simple. it’s combines the BOP costs.

So you have the same transmission, lines. the same o and m crews and that kind of stuff all in one spot. So it makes more sense. You’re double dipping on these, capital costs from the beginning. so a little bit about the wind farm. It’s up in Oregon, marrow County, near Lexington.

It’s about 300 megawatts of wind. There’s a, there’s 120 GE turbines up there. Have 2.3 and 2.5 megawatt units. There’s also a 50 megawatt, solar [00:29:00]array. And there’s a 30 megawatt, 120 megawatt hour lithium ion battery storage system. So together there’s 350 megawatts of production plus that nice smoothing, side of the batteries with a little bit of, there’s about four hours with the storage there.

so you can power efficiently a hundred thousand homes off of this one project from one spot. it was jointly built by Portland General Electric and NextEra. So NextEra’s got their hands in a lot of stuff. They got their hands in this one. and it was the first of its kind. It’s a util utility scale facility with wind, solar, and storage all on one site.

and because of that, you’re, balancing, the storage or the storage balances that grid variability and delivers power even when, you know the sun, wind aren’t optimal. I personally would love to see a ton more projects like this. it, and it has a lot of those same numbers we see on a lot of the Wind Farm of the week, or, anything.

It, 300 jobs created, 10 [00:30:00] full-time staff, millions of dollars in tax benefits. so really cool project. And as we go into the next phase of the energy transition, would love to see more projects done like this, or even retrofitted like this would be pretty cool. so the Wheatridge Hybrid Energy Project up in Oregon,

Allen Hall: you’re the Wind Farm of the week.

And that’s gonna do it for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. Thanks for joining us. Stay tuned. There’s a lot happening in wind. Don’t get discouraged. It’s all gonna be okay, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

https://weatherguardwind.com/ptc-legislation-aes/

Renewable Energy

GE Vernova Q2 Wind Losses, Envision AI Turbine for Fortescue

Published

7 hours ago

July 28, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

GE Vernova Q2 Wind Losses, Envision AI Turbine for Fortescue

GE Vernova posts a record quarter as gas and grid surge while wind orders drop 40%. Plus Envision grid-connects its first AI turbine for Fortescue. Visit https://woma2027.com/ to register speaking and sponsorship interest!

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

If you haven’t visited woma2027.com, you should do so right now because we are putting together all of the, uh, events at WOMA 2027, which is March 3rd through 5th in Melbourne at the Pullman, Matthew, Pullman East? Pullman East Melbourne. And it’s packed full. Our, in fact, actually, we have so many people applying to attend the event, we’re getting a little nervous on if the size of the venue is not large enough, and we, we have a lot of people already chime in wanting to be sponsors, which is great.

But I wanna talk about what you will experience at WOMA. We’ve done it for two years now, and the feedback has been great. And Yolanda, you’ve been to the one just this past February, and participated in panels and saw some of the, uh, workshops and was involved in a lot of WOMA 2026. What are you expecting in 2027, and what did you think of 2026?

Yolanda Padron: I thought [00:01:00] 2026 was great. I loved seeing everybody there. Uh, got to meet a lot of new people. It was, it was sweet. There was a lot of r- people returning from WOMA 2025, um, and a lot of new people that were told that that was the event to be at to learn about wind, which was really, really nice to hear. Uh, something that I loved, especially since we’ve been through quite a few conferences since then and before then, was just the fact that, like, you’re, you’re just talking about problems and just talking about solutions, and you’re talking about real stories, and it’s nothing that’s super, super public.

You know, like, you, you can have real conversations with real people. I know during a panel I mentioned a, a solution to an issue that I had seen that was kind of niche, and then, uh, like three minutes later, like I had had some people come up to me and we all talked about the problem that we saw and then [00:02:00]talked about their problem, and it was really similar, and obviously in a totally different continent.

And it was, it was good to, to be able to have those conversations that you usually wouldn’t have elsewhere, especially if everything’s just really, really public and just big and you’re having a lot of people sell at you, and it’s, it’s just something that we’ve really shied away from. What, what was your favorite part of it?

Matthew Stead: I, I think, um, it was really the fact that it was a a technical, useful, helpful conference rather than having some rando talking about things that they’re told to talk to you about

Allen Hall: It’s real answers from real problem solvers. And everybody’s gonna be in Melbourne on the 3rd through the 5th of March 2027.

If you’re interested in attending, you need to go to woma2027.com. If you’re interested in sponsoring, it’s also woma2027.com. There’s limited [00:03:00]sponsorship left, so if you wanna do something, you better get in quick. And if you wanna attend the event, and I suggest that you do, that you visit woma2027.com and get registered today

The Uptime Wind Energy podcast, brought to you by StrikeTape. Protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit StrikeTape.com. And now, your hosts

Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall. I’m here with Rosemary Barnes, Matthew Stead, and Yolanda Padron. It’s been a busy day as we record because GE just announced its second quarter earnings and a bunch of things about the business. They had an investor call early, early, early on the East Coast, and even earlier for those on the West Coast of the US, and it was a very good quarter for GE, but a really lopsided one.

Uh, GE Vernova reported second quarter orders of [00:04:00] $24.2 billion, up 88% with a backlog that has now climbed to $176 billion. Free cash came in at $5.1 billion. Man, $5.1 billion is a lot of cash, everybody, which is more than the company generated in all of last year. So they made more in one quarter in cash than made in all of last year, and management is raising its full year guidance, but the strength is coming from gas power and the electric grid, not from wind.

The wind segment saw orders fall 40% and revenue slip 10%, and the company still expects wind to lose about $400 million this year. Although in the investor call, they did say that the forecast for wind in Q3 and maybe even Q4 was to be essentially break even on the EBITDA scale. So that’s a, a, a good number.

It does seem like GE is being more [00:05:00] aggressive on pricing and selective on the projects they are choosing to participate with. Repowers was way down, if I remember correctly. Uh, they are not doing a lot of that at the moment. So there is a slowdown they’re seeing in wind, but they’re more than making up for it in gas turbines and electrification.

Orders for gas turbines are out to ’30, ’31, and I think they’re gonna close out all of ’30, ’31, um, book orders for gas turbines here shortly. So if you want a gas turbine, Matthew, you’re gonna have to get in line because your GE has a long list of, of clients in front of them. What does this mean for wind?

When I hear the discussion where GE is focused on gas and electrification because of the huge cash flow that comes in their door- Does that mean a good positive things for wind because they have the cash to kinda hang around wind? Or is it gonna be set aside for other [00:06:00] more profitable business segments?

Matthew Stead: mean, GE’s had a number of setbacks over the years. Um, you know, we know, we know all about them. We’ve been talking about them, you know, multiple times. But, you know, they’ve gotta just wait it out, don’t they? Um, you know, wind is not gonna go away, so they just need to wait it out, get their problems out of the way, get their cash flow in, build the order books again, just wait for things to improve.

Um, I, I think one thing I just wanna pull out, the Sands Ear, i- isn’t that a massive achievement?

Allen Hall: It is. It’s, it’s a colossal engineering achievement on its own. Forget about just delivering and manufacturing all those turbines and getting them installed. And that’s a pattern energy project, and Fairwind I think was involved with that in terms of project development, EPC items.

It’s huge. It’s gigantic. But it may be the last one we see in the United States for a while.

Matthew Stead: And but Vineyard, you know, they’ve gotta resolve that, don’t they? We’ve spoken about that before. Get that one out the way, clear out the decks and, yeah. That’ll come good.

Allen Hall: Rosemary, of our former GE [00:07:00] employees, I guess we have two of them here.

I’m one. Not of wind, but of another division. What’s your thoughts on GE Vernova at the minute?

Rosemary Barnes: These days I see them through the O&M lens. That’s how I work with them, is when my clients need support for all their wind farms and It’s just, it’s just never enough. It’s not a GE-specific thing. Uh, you know, across Australia, anybody with a full service agreement does not…

Uh, the, the company performing that agreement just gives the impression that they just do not have enough, um, uh, enough people. Y- you know? It’s just, just hands or maybe it’s budget. Uh, I guess it, it’s both at the same time. Yeah, I mean, I see some good things like their, the pace of new technologies has slowed and they’re consolidating, which was needed, but it’s just hard to imagine that it’s even gonna be enough considering how many fewer blade engineers that they’ve got now.

Like, how are they, [00:08:00] how are they going to get the, you know, the issues with the platforms that they are, uh, pushing, how are they gonna get all that under control with so many fewer engineers? And will they ever be able to, you know, go back to innovating a- again when they’ve lost so much of their, you know, institutional knowledge?

Allen Hall: Two things they did not mention during the phone call today or in any of the documents that I saw was TPI Composites and that EPC has acquired that and is now operating the factories, uh, making GE blades. And LM Wind Power was not discussed either, although LM Wind Power has been integrated into the overall financials of the company, so it’s not a standalone financial entity like it was last year.

So you can’t really r- read the tea leaves of what’s happening at LM, but nobody talked about or even asked on the investor call what was happening on the wind side. They were very interested in gas turbines and what the order rate was going to be, and GE was concerned [00:09:00] on their side, saying that they’re trying to ramp up production to make more gas turbines, but there’s limitations to how much they can do.

Rosemary Barnes: I guess that’s the s- the zeitgeist now, right? Or it’s the, I don’t know, like, it’s, it’s a sign of the times. Everyone’s obsessed with data centers, and for some reason, data centers are obsessed with gas turbines, um, even though, like, it’s not a fast solution to, uh, y- you know, to, to anything. So I don’t… You know, I’m not saying that building a, you know, a wind farm or solar farms, batteries, those are not without challenges.

But I really don’t think that the, yeah, gas turbine challenge is so much easier than the, um, yeah, than the renewables challenges. It’s a bit weird to me how everyone has just kind of latched onto, “Oh, you need new power, then it needs to be gas.” It’s just a bit weird to me.

Allen Hall: GE was predicting a peak of orders in gas turbines to happen sometime in 2026.

They, they think that the demand curve is gonna trend downward because everybody is already in [00:10:00] line essentially, and it’s five years out, so not many other people are gonna join that line to make it seven, eight years out That also indicates that sort of the d- the demand for gas turbines may be waning a little bit, or there’s just a backlog, they just can’t produce more.

Is that going to then maybe finally open up the best solar wind discussion for AI data centers?

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I wonder if it’s partly because y- you know, in a lot of cases… So people wanna build data centers, and then those data centers need power. You can’t just plug into the grid in an easy, timely manner. So then now they’ve gotta BYO their own power, and in fact, in Australia they’ve just announced a, a policy where you will have to…

You can bring your own power, and it will have to be renewable, actually, in Australia. So, um, at least that’s, at least that’s a win for, you know, generation source.

Allen Hall: Yeah. The, the AI data center discussion and gas turbines in the United States has more recently been focused [00:11:00] on, on the AI data centers that use those gas turbines, and the number of gas turbines that they’re choosing, and that they’re choosing gas turbines that fall under some sort of EPA threshold on size.

And what is happening, and which, uh, SpaceX has done and some others have done, is they go underneath that threshold on the size of the gas turbines, and then they, you know, and they daisy chain them together, right? So you, you… Instead of having one massive, I don’t know, two-megawatt generator of some sort, you have a bunch of 200 kilowatts, and you just stack them all together.

And the concern is, is that are some of these data centers violating EPA, the… If not the actual rule or the intent of the rule in terms of emissions, and it’s causing a little bit of a stink. It’s, it’s raised enough of, uh, the noise floor about it that you’re, you’re hearing it on podcasts, you’re hearing people involved in AI data ce- [00:12:00] data centers push back on it saying, “It’s all legal.

It’s all legal.” So it’s gonna come to a head pretty quickly in the United States.

Rosemary Barnes: It was some real, like, real sketchy loophole finding, right? Like, I can’t remember the exact wording, but you’re not supposed to be able to just chuck in a diesel generator or a gas turbine in without any kind of planning, right?

But they found a loophole where it’s like, okay, well, you know, it’s just like a truck except for that there’s no truck, and so it was called, like- off-road or non-road use or something. And it’s just, like, clearly not the, um, the meaning of the, of the law, right? The spirit of the law had, like, obviously been broken.

In Australia we have a saying, the pub test. It doesn’t pass the pub test. Like, if you said that to someone in a pub, then they would be like, “What the hell is that? That is not right.” They have closed the loophole. However, I think that they also kind of quietly just allowed them to keep the ones that they had or had planned or something, so [00:13:00] it’s, like, overall by far not ideal.

But I think that it’s just, like, you can, you can do that for a single site, but it’s obviously, like, the more that you do ridiculous stuff like that, that you lose the community ac- acceptance, which they barely had and definitely don’t really have anymore. Um, and secondly, yeah, like people, uh, people close the loophole and they respond.

It’s, it’s much better, and we see it with wind as well. Like, yeah, you can do things technically by the law, but if you wanna have a, you know, sustainable, uh, industry through the years, through the decades, you actually have to kind of, you know, think, “What happens if I do y- push to the furthest extent of the law, um, to get away with whatever I can?”

What’s gonna happen is regulation is gonna come down on you and you’ll lose the ability to kind of self-regulate.

Allen Hall: We’re gonna take a quick break, but when we come back we’ll meet a wind turbine that runs on artificial intelligence, Rosie.[00:14:00]

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In the red dirt of Western Australia, a mining company and a Chinese turbine maker are trying something new. Envision Energy says it has grid connected its first [00:15:00] artificial intelligence wind turbine prototype for Fortescue’s Nullagine Wind Project in Pilbara. The full project will use 17 of Envision’s EN182 turbines, each rated for 7.8 megawatts and built to handle mining sites, desert heat, and tough grid rules.

The turbines- The turbines pair a self-erecting tower from Nabler Wind with a hub standing an astonishing 188 meters tall. Behind it all sits Envision’s Energy Foundation Model software that company calls the world’s largest physical AI system. The goal is to swap diesel and gas for wind across the mine’s fleet and processing sites.

So this is an effort by Fortescue to power mining operations with electricity. It’s a pretty ex- exciting [00:16:00] project if you’re watching. The Envision artificial intelligence piece is an aspect that I didn’t know much about, and I still am trying to gather more information on, because there’s not a ton of info about what AI means in terms of a physical system.

And maybe Rosie, you know a little bit more, or Yolande, you can brief us on what this really is.

Rosemary Barnes: We just need to start with a pronunciation lesson, Allen. Sorry.

Matthew Stead: Not Pilbara, Pilbara. Pilbara.

Rosemary Barnes: I, I don’t actually… I hadn’t heard that part about AI and that it doesn’t… I, I don’t know. It’s, it’s such a buzzword that it might not mean anything, you know.

However, there’s so many cool aspects to that project that aren’t related to AI. Um, yeah, the tower height, the tower erection technology. I’m interested to hear that they have taken the heat of the environment into [00:17:00] consideration, ’cause that’s one of the, my obsessions actually, as long as I’ve been working on wind turbines, and ever since I found out how, you know, the materials qualification and certification process works, that it just doesn’t take into account the really high temperatures.

That’s one of the projects that Padlo has going on at the moment, is, um, putting sensors on some turbines to, like, look into that more. Um, yeah, because we do see in Australia a lot of sites have, you know, even within a few years, they might have 20 years of operation left, but we already see a whole lot of cracks that look suspiciously like end of, end of life fatigue cracks on them.

So yeah, we are looking into that more, and it’s very interesting to hear that Envision have taken the heat into consideration. I hope it includes the blade structure as well as just, you know, other turbine components, electronics, and that sort of thing.

Allen Hall: It does sound like they’re pairing batteries or BESS with wind turbines, where the BESS is located at the base of the turbine.

That would make sense in [00:18:00] Australia, particularly around where mines are, because it tends to be very remote, and storing electricity would make sense. The Discussions I’ve seen on YouTube deal with more on the energy trading side, that the wind turbine stores energy, of course, and it does it very efficiently into the best system, and then the AI system sits on top of that to help arbitrage the energy that’s stored in the battery to make more money.

Not a bad way of doing it, but it does lead to a ton of questions about national security, the use of AI, the, uh, and how this is all going to integrate together from a asset manager side. Yolande, I know in the United States we have a lot of restrictions about the technology that is in wind turbines and the, and the firewalls that exist there, where you, you can’t even plug into a wind turbine without having a lot of approvals.

Is AI coming in wind [00:19:00] turbines in the US and the rest of the world, or is this mostly a Western Australia event?

Yolanda Padron: We talked a little bit about a trading company a couple episodes ago, right? And that was a… It sounded like it’s, it’s coming. Um, I, when I first read the article that we’re talking about for Fortescue, I thought this was more of, like, a SCADA self-learning AI type thing, where, like It, it kind of learns from the, from itself, and then maybe it, it tells you you’re more likely to be seeing some sort of blade issue that wasn’t shown before

Rosemary Barnes: I heard, um, Andrew Forrest speak at a smart energy conference earlier this year, and he was talking about not for, um, not for wind, but for the solar and battery projects that they’ve already got there.

He called it a self-healing grid, and AI was the technology that enabled that. And so he, [00:20:00] he was saying, and I can’t remember the, the details specifically either, but when there was a, a disturbance, something that would’ve caused the, you know, without the AI, um, you know, layer looking after everything, a fault that would’ve shut the whole site down was able to self, self-heal with no interruption to supply.

Um, and that that was the kind of AI that, uh, they were talking about. I believe that the new wind farm addition to that is the same sort of thing, where they’re looking at, you know, a very complex system with… I mean, they don’t have energy prices to deal with, uh, in that case because it’s self-contained.

They’re not conne- connected to any external grid. Um, but you know, they’ve got wind, they’ve got solar, they’ve got, uh, so obviously weather conditions related to those two going on. They’ve got batteries, they’ve got, you know, yeah, the, um, availability of every single different… of probably many [00:21:00] thousands of different components in that system that, um, y- you know, you need to make sure that if there’s a failure or when there’s a failure in any one or combination of those things, that you’re always going to be able to reroute around that and kind of heal itself.

So it probably does include some of, of what you were saying, Yolanda, but I think when they say this is the biggest physical AI, like, I think that that might be a little bit of a meaningless term because y- you know, like, there’s AI… It, it could be like… I, I don’t know. It, like, what, what does that mean?

Like, if you have AI that is, um, you know, playing some role in controlling America’s electricity grids, then that would be the biggest, the biggest one, even if it was, you know, like a tiny little, playing a tiny role. I, I, I don’t know what that specifically means and… Is it bad marketing ’cause it’s just confusing and makes you assume that it’s, um, just meaningless buzzword cool [00:22:00]sounding thing

Allen Hall: It’s probably genius marketing because they attach AI to whatever the product is.

So we have AI lightning diverters at Weather Guard. EOLOGIX-PING has AI CMS, and Partload has whatever Partload does, AI-Partload. So that’s the smart move, th- uh, because it does seem to raise the value

Rosemary Barnes: But you know what? Partload is anti-AI because 90% of our work is you get, you know, drone inspections, and they use AI, and then it w- and it works really, w- it works really…

I’d never wanna make it sound like it is bad technology because, you know, the status quo before we had drones with using AI was to just not inspect your blades. So, you know, like, we’re doing much better than that now. But everything that we do is where AI was not able to do it or AI did it wrong. So y- you know, um, like I- we use AI in that everything that comes into us is AI.

Allen Hall: Well, if the same AI [00:23:00] technology that is reviewing blade images is being applied inside of a wind turbine, what do you see as a likely outcome there, Rosemary?

Rosemary Barnes: Well, it’s not, I mean, it’s not the, it’s not the same. And like I said, uh, it’s very easy for me to be like, “Oh, AI, you know, makes all these mistakes,” but it, I only see the mistakes.

I don’t see the 90%-plus of correctly categorized things. I don’t, they’re not relevant to me. Um- Uh, but I think for controlling a complex system, like it, it is… That, that’s a really great application. I mean, I think it’s like with any like super hyped up technology, it’s like really useful in a few things, and that’s what leads to the hype, and then people start to just wanna apply it everywhere.

It becomes the, you know, like when the only tool you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Like, that’s where we’re at. Like AI is this, um, is this hammer that we’ve got, and everyone wants to solve every problem with it. And I do it myself, you know. Like I hate writing LinkedIn posts, and so I’ll work with, with Claude or, um, I [00:24:00] use NotebookLM as well to, you know, I draft my LinkedIn post.

And you’re like, “Well, th- no, that sucks. Do this, do this, do this.” And then, you know, like half an hour later, you’re like, okay, I could very easily have written my own post in less time, and I could… I, I try again and again because I just, I, uh, you know, hate that kind of writing so much. But yeah, I think that like economy-wide, that’s the problem, that everyone is just trying to whack every problem with AI regardless of whether it’s the right one.

Allen Hall: Okay, so there’s gonna be products that are gonna incorporate AI or have AI somewhere hyphenated in the name of the product. What products should not be using AI right now?

Matthew Stead: Yeah, I think there’s… Uh, I wanna add to the… You know, go back a few steps. That calling this the largest, you know, physical AI device is complete rubbish really.

That’s stupid, really. It’s like, like, like what you said, Rosie. It’s like putting an AI machine on a road, and then it becomes the world’s largest AI infrastructure. I mean, that was, that was pretty stupid, um, [00:25:00] really. And that, that’s just marketing. My, my view is if you can’t explain what it does, you shouldn’t be using the word AI So in marketing, you know, you can’t just say, “Oh, it’s AI ’cause I don’t understand what it does.”

You should actually be able to explain, “This is what this product does, and this is why it does it, and we use AI to help make that occur in a smart way.” Rather than just being randomly talking about, um, AI solving all of these complex issues and not actually knowing how it’s done is rubbish.

Rosemary Barnes: To answer your question, Allen, I think AI shouldn’t be used for most creative stuff.

Like video, um, creation, everybody hates it, and companies keep on pushing it, and it sucks. And I think also it’s kind of… It, it makes people so angry, I think it’s gonna backfire if it hasn’t already for most, [00:26:00] most people that are using it. Um, yeah, so that would be one thing. And also, uh, you shouldn’t use too much AI for, like, I see it heaps on LinkedIn now, and it’s, it’s kind of…

Like, at the first time you use AI, you’re like, “Whoa, th- this is pretty, pretty good. Like, this is something, you know, like I could… That’s very similar to the stuff that I, yeah, used to post on LinkedIn or the infographics that I used to make.” But the issue is that, like, it looks that way the first time, but then once you use it a bit and you can recognize that it’s AI, then you see it everywhere and it, it turns you, really turns you off whoever’s put it out there.

And so, like, there’s so much on LinkedIn now where it’s, like, just AI-generated things. It’s… Even if, you know, like, if an expert has created it and edited it afterwards and made sure that the output is accurate, then I wouldn’t call it AI slop. But it is also, like, it’s always too [00:27:00] wordy. It’s, um, you know, it’s just like the style is just clearly e- the h- if the point is that you’re trying to express, “I’m an expert.

These are my expert opinions. I know what I’m talking about,” AI is not doing that for you. Like, you write your post or create your graphic with AI, it’s just not doing that for you. So I think that that is another example of where people shouldn’t be using AI.

Allen Hall: That wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.

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

For Rosie, Yolande, and Matthew, I’m Allen Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy [00:28:00] podcast.

GE Vernova Q2 Wind Losses, Envision AI Turbine for Fortescue

Renewable Energy

Public Education Is the Keystone to a Strong Society

Published

15 hours ago

July 27, 2026

Alice Rush

As we’re learning, declining educational standards leads to ignorance, ignorance leads to Trumpism, and Trumpism leads to us to the brink of authoritrianismthe end of democracy.