Weather Guard Lightning Tech

North Sea Summit, Vineyard Wind Back to Work
Allen, Joel, and Yolanda discuss the North Sea Summit where nine European countries committed to 100 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity and the massive economic impact that comes with it. They also break down the federal court ruling that allows Vineyard Wind to resume construction with a tight 45-day window before installation vessels leave. Plus GE Vernova’s Q4 results show $600 million in wind losses and Wind Power Lab CEO Lene Helstern raises concerns about blade quality across the industry.
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The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by Strike Tape, protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit strike tape.com. And now your hosts, Allen Hall, Rosemary Barnes, Joel Saxum, and Yolanda Padron.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Alln Hall. I’m here with Yolanda Padron and Joel Saxum.
Rosemary Barnes is snorkeling at the Greek Barrier Reef this week, uh, big news out of Northern Europe. Uh, the Northeast Summit, which happened in Hamburg, uh, about a week or so ago, nine European countries are. Making a huge commitment for offshore wind. So it’s the, the countries involved are Britain, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Iceland, question Mark Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and Norway.
That together they want to develop [00:01:00] 100 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity in shared waters. Uh, that’s enough to power about. 85 million households and the PAC comes as Europe is trying to wean itself from natural gas from where they had it previously and the United States. Uh, so they, they would become electricity in independent.
Uh, and this is one way to do it. Two big happy, uh, companies. At the moment, Vattenfall who develops s lot offshore and Siemens gaa of course, are really excited by the news. If you run the numbers and you, you, you have a hundred gigawatts out in the water and you’re using 20 megawatt turbines, then you’re talking about 5,000 turbines in the water total.
That is a huge offshore wind order, and I, I think this would be great news for. Obviously Vestas and [00:02:00] Siemens cesa. Uh, the, the question is there’s a lot of political maneuvering that is happening. It looks like Belgium, uh, as a country is not super active and offshore and is rethinking it and trying to figure out where they want to go.
But I think the big names will stay, right? France and Germany, all in on offshore. Denmark will be Britain already is. So the question really is at the moment then. Can Siemens get back into the win game and start making money because they have projected themselves to be very profitable coming this year, into this year.
This may be the, the stepping stone, Joel.
Joel Saxum: Well, I think that, yeah, we talked about last week their 21 megawatt, or 21 and a half megawatt. I believe it is. Big new flagship going to be ready to roll, uh, with the big auctions happening like AR seven in the uk. Uh, and you know, that’s eight gigawatts, 8.4 gigawatts there.
People are gonna be, the, the order book’s gonna start to fill up, like [00:03:00]Siemens is, this is a possibility of a big turnaround. And to put some of these numbers in perspective, um, a hundred gigawatts of offshore wind. So what does that really mean? Right? Um, what it means is if you, if you take the, if you take two of the industrial big industrial powerhouses that are a part of this pact, the UK and Germany combine their total demand.
That’s a hundred gigawatt. That’s what they, that’s what their demand is basically on a, you know, today. Right? So that’s gonna continue to grow, right? As, uh, we electrify a lot of things. And the indus, you know, the, the next, the Industrial Revolution 4.0 or whatever we’re calling it now is happening. Um, that’s, that’s a possibility, right?
So this a hundred gigawatts of offshore wind. Is gonna drive jobs all up all over Europe. Right. This isn’t just a jobs at the port in Rotterdam or wherever it may be. Right? This is, this is manufacturing jobs, supply chain jobs, the same stuff we’ve been talking about on the podcast for a while here with [00:04:00] what the UK is doing with OWGP and the, or e Catapult and all the kind of the monies that the, the, the Crown and, and other, uh, private entities are putting in there.
They’re starting to really, they’re, or this a hundred gigawatts is really gonna look like building out that local supply chain. Jobs, all these different things. ’cause Alan, like you, you mentioned off air. If you look at a hundred gigawatts of offshore wind, that’s $200 billion or was to put it in Euros, 175 billion euros, 170 billion euros, just in turbine orders.
Right. That doesn’t mean, or that doesn’t cover ships, lodging, food, like, you know, everything around the ports like tools, PPE, all of the stuff that’s needed by this industry. I mean, there’s a, there’s a trillion dollar impact here.
Speaker 2: Oh, it’s close. Yeah. It’s at least 500 billion, I would say. And Yolanda, from the asset management side, have we seen anything of this scale to manage?
It does seem like there’d be a lot of [00:05:00] turbines in the water. A whole bunch of moving pieces, ships, turbines, cables, transformers, substations, going different directions. How, what kind of infrastructure is that going to take?
Yolanda Padron: You know, a lot of the teams that are there, they’re used to doing this on a grand scale, but globally, right?
And so having this be all at once in the UK is definitely gonna be interesting. It’ll be a good opportunity for everybody to take all of the lessons learned to, to just try to make sure that they don’t come across any issues that they might have seen in the past, in other sites, in other countries. They just bring everything back home to their countries and then just make sure that everything’s fine.
Um, from like development, construction, and, and operations.
Joel Saxum: I was thinking about that. Just thinking about development, construction, operations, right? So some of [00:06:00] these sites we’re thinking about like how, you know, that, that, that map of offshore wind in, in the Northern Atlantic, right? So if this is gonna go and we’re talking about the countries involved here, Norway, Germany, Denmark, France, Belgium, you’re gonna have it all over.
So into the Baltic Sea. Around Denmark, into the Norwegian waters, uk, Ireland all the way over, and Iceland is there. I don’t think there’s gonna be any development there. I think maybe they’re just there as a, as cheerleaders. Um, offtake, possibly, yes. Some cables running over there. But you’re going to need to repurpose some of the existing infrastructure, or you’re not, not, you’re going to need to, you’re going to get the opportunity to, and this hasn’t happened in offshore wind yet, right?
So. Basically repowering offshore wind, and you’re going to be able to look at, you know, you’re not doing, um, greenfield geotechnical work and greenfield, um, sub c mapping. Like, some of those things are done right, or most of those things are done. So there, I know there’s a lot of, like, there’s a, there’s two and [00:07:00] three and six and seven megawatt turbines all over the North Atlantic, so we’re gonna be able to pop some of those up.
Put some 15 and 20 megawatt machines in place there. I mean, of course you’re not gonna be able to reuse the same mono piles, but when it comes to Yolanda, like you said, the lessons learned, Hey, the vessel plans for this area are done. The how, how, how we change crews out here, the CTVs and now and SOVs into port and that stuff, that those learnings are done.
How do we maintain export cables and inter array cables with the geotechnic here, you’re not in a green field, you’re in a brown field. That, that, that work. A lot of those lessons learned. They’re done, right? You’ve, you’ve stumbled through them, you’ve made those mistakes. You’ve had to learn on the fly and go ahead here.
But when you go to the next phase of Repowering, an offshore wind farm, the the Dev X cost is gonna go way down, in my opinion. Now, someone, someone may fight back on that and say, well, we have to go do some demolition or something of that sort. I’m not sure, but [00:08:00]
Yolanda Padron: yeah. But I think, you know. We like to complain sometimes in the US about how some of the studies just aren’t catered toward us, right?
And so we’ve seen it a lot and it’s a lot of the studies that are made are just made in Europe where, where this is all taking place. So it’s gonna be really, really interesting to see such a massive growth where everything’s being developed and where the studies are localized from where. You have this very niche area and they can, they’ve studied it.
They know exactly what’s going on there. And to your point, they’ve seen a lot of, they’ve minimized the risk, like the environmental risks as much as they could. Right. And so it’s, it’s going to be really, really interesting to have them
Joel Saxum: ensuring and financing these projects should be way easier
Speaker 2: when Europe is saying that the industry has pledged to cut costs by 30% between.
20, 25 and 2040. So you would think that the turbine [00:09:00] costs and the installation costs would have to be really cost conscious on the supply chain and, uh, taking lessons learned from the previous generations of offshore wind. I think that makes sense. 30% is still a lot, and I, I think the, the feeling I’m getting from this is, Hey, we’re making a hundred gigawatt commitment to this industry.
You have to work really hard to deliver a efficient product, get the cost down so it’s not costing as much as, you know. Could do if we, if we did it today, and we’re kind of in from an offshore standpoint over in Europe, what a generation are we in, in terms of turbines three? Are we going into four? A lot of lessons learned.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. The, the new Siemens one’s probably generation four. Yeah. I would say generation four in the new, because you went from like the two and three megawatt machines. Like there’s like Vesta three megawatts all over the place, and then you went into the directive [00:10:00] machines. You got into that seven and eight megawatt class, and then you got into the, where we’re at now, the 15, the 12 and 15 megawatt units, the Docker bank style stuff, and then I would say generation four is the, yeah, the Siemens 21 and a half machine.
Um, that’s a good way to look at it. Alan four we’re on the fourth generation of offshore wind and, and so it’s Generation one is about ready to start being cycled. There’s some, and some of these are easier, they’re nearer to shore. We’ll see what, uh, who starts to take those projects on. ’cause that’s gonna be an undertaking too.
Question on the 30%, uh, wind Europe says industry has pledged to cut cost by 30% by 20. Is that. LCOE or is it devex costs or is it operational costs or did they, were they specific on it or they just kinda like cut cutting costs?
Speaker 2: My recollection when that first came about, which was six months ago, maybe a little longer, it was LCOE, [00:11:00] right?
So they’re, they’re trying to drive down the, uh, dollars per, or euros per megawatt hour output, but that the capital costs, if the governments can help with the capital costs. On the interest rates, just posting bonds and keeping that down, keeping the interest rates low for these projects by funding them somehow or financing them, that will help a tremendous amount.
’cause if. Interest rates remain high. I know Europe is much lower than it is in the United States at the minute, but if they interest rates start to creep up, these projects will not happen. They’re marginal
Joel Saxum: because you have your central in, in, in Europe, you have your central bank interest rates, but even like the f the, the Indi Individual nation states will subsidize that.
Right? Like if you go to buy a house in Denmark right now, you pay like 1.2%. Interest
Speaker 2: compared to what, six and a half right now in the states? Yeah, it’s low.
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Speaker 2: as we all know.
On December 22nd, the federal government issued a stop work order. On all offshore winds that included vineyard wind up off the coast of Massachusetts, that’s a 62 turbine, $4.5 billion wind farm. Uh, that’s being powered by some GE turbines. Uh, the government [00:13:00] has, uh, cited national security concerns, but vineyard went to court and Federal Judge Brian Murphy rolled the, the administration failed to adequately explain or justify the decision to shut it down.
Uh, the judge issued a stay, which it is allowing Vineyard went to immediately resume work on the project now. They’re close to being finished at a vineyard. There are 44 turbines that are up and running right now and creating power and delivering power on shore. There are 17 that are partially installed.
Uh, when the stop order came. The biggest issue at the moment, if they can’t get rolling again, there are 10 towers with Noels on them, what they call hammerheads. That don’t have blades. And, uh, the vineyard wind. Last week as we were recording this, said you really don’t want hammerheads out in the water because they become a risk.
They’re not assembled, completed [00:14:00] items. So lightning strikes and other things could happen, and you really don’t want them to be that way. You want to finish those turbines, so now they have an opportunity to do it. The window’s gonna be short. And Yolanda listening to some GE discussions, they were announcing their Q4 results from last year.
The ships are available till about the end of March, and then the ships are gonna finally go away and go work on another project. So they have about 45 days to get these turbines done. I guess my question is, can they get it done work-wise? And I, I, I guess the, the issue is they gotta get the turbines running and if they do maintenance on it, that’s gonna be okay.
So I’m wondering what they do with blade sets. Do they have a, a set of blades that are, maybe they pass QC but they would like them to be better? Do they install ’em just to get a turbine operational even temporarily to get this project quote unquote completed so they can get paid?
Yolanda Padron: Yeah. If, if the risk is low, low [00:15:00] enough, it, it should be.
I mean a little bit tight, but what, what else can you do? Right? I mean, the vessel, like you might have a shot of getting the vessel back eventually, or being able to get something in so you can do some of the blade repairs. And the blade repairs of tower would require a different vessel than like bringing in a whole blade, right?
And so just. You have a very limited time scope to be able to do everything. So I don’t know that I would risk just not being able to pull this off altogether and just risk the, you know, the rest of the tower by not having a complete, you know, LPS and everything on there just because not everything’s a hundred percent perfect.
Joel Saxum: There’s a weird mix in technical and commercial risk here, right? Because. Technically, we have these hammerheads out there, right? There’s a million things that can happen with those. Like I, I’ve [00:16:00] personally done RCAs where, um, you have a hammerhead on this was onshore, right? But they, they will get, um, what’s called, uh, Viv, uh, vortex induced vibration.
So when they don’t have the full components out there, wind will go by and they’ll start to shake these things. I’ve seen it where they shook them so much because they’re not designed to be up there like that. They shook them so much that like the bolts started loosening and concrete started cracking in the foundations and like it destroyed the cable systems inside the tower ’cause they sat there and vibrated so violently.
So like that kind of stuff is a possibility if you don’t have the right, you know. Viv protection on and those kind of things, let alone lightning risk and some other things. So you have this technical risk of them sitting out there like that. But you also have the commercial risk, right? Because the, the banks, the financiers, the insurance companies, there’s the construction policies and there’s, there’s, you gotta hit these certain timelines or it’s just like if you’re building a house, right?
You’re building a house, you have to go by the loan that the bank gives you in, you know, in micro [00:17:00] terms to kind of think about that. That’s the same thing that happens with this project, except for this project’s four and a half billion dollars and probably has. It’s 6, 8, 10 banks involved in it. Right? So you have a lot of, there’s a lot of commercial risk.
If you don’t, if you don’t move forward when you have the opportunity to, they won’t, they’ll frown on that. Right? But then you have to balance the technical side. So, so looking at the project as a whole, you’ve got 62 turbines, 44 or fully operational. So that leaves us with 18 that are not. Of those 18, you said Alan?
10 needed blades.
Speaker 2: 10 need blades, and one still needs to be erected.
Joel Saxum: Okay, so what’s the other seven?
Speaker 2: They’re partially installed, so they, they haven’t completed the turbine, so everything’s put together, but they haven’t powered them up yet.
Joel Saxum: I was told that. Basically with the kit that they have out of vineyard wind, that they can do one turbine a day blades.
Speaker 2: That would be, yeah, that would make sense to me.
Joel Saxum: But, but you also have to, you have 45 days of vessel time left. You said they’re gonna leave in March, but you also gotta think it’s fricking winter in. The, [00:18:00] in the Atlantic
Speaker 2: they are using jackass. However, there’s big snow storms and, and low uh, pressure storms that are rolling through just that area.
’cause they, they’ve kind of come to the Midwest and then shoot up the east coast. That’s where you see New York City with a lot of snow. Boston had a lot of snow just recently. They’re supposed to get another storm like that. And then once it hits Boston, it kind of hits the water, which is where vineyard is.
So turbulent water for sure. Super cold this time of year out there,
Joel Saxum: but wind, you can’t sling blades in, in probably more than what, six meters per second’s? Probably your cutoff.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This is not the best time of year to be putting blade sets up offshore us.
Joel Saxum: Technically, if you had blue skies, yeah, this thing can get done and we can move.
But with weather risk added in you, you’ve got, there’s some wild cards there.
Speaker 2: I It’s gonna be close.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. If we looked at the, the weather, it looks like even, I think this coming weekend now we’re recording in January here, and [00:19:00] this weekend’s, first week in February coming, there’s supposed to be another storm rolling up through there too.
Speaker 2: It was pretty typical having lived in Massachusetts almost 25 years. It will be stormy until April. So we’re talking about the time span of which GE and Vineyard want to be done. That’s a rough period for snow. And as historically, uh, that timeframe is also when nor’easters happened, where the storms just sit there and cyclone off the shore around vineyard and then dump the snow back on land.
Those storms are really violent and there’s no way they’re gonna be hanging. Anything out in the water, so I think it’s gonna be close. They’re gonna have to hope for good weather. 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.
OGs Ping has you covered The cutting edge sensors are easy to install, giving you [00:20:00] the power to stop damage before it’s too late. Visit eLog ping.com and take control of your turbine’s health today. So while GE Ver Nova celebrated strong results in its Q4 report, in both its energy and electrification business, the company’s wind division told a different story.
In the fourth quarter of 2025, wind revenue fell 24% to $2.37 billion. Uh, driven primarily by offshore wind struggles, vineyard, wind, uh. The company recorded approximately $600 million in win losses for the full year up from earlier expectations of about $400 million. That’s what I remember from last summer.
Uh, the, the culprit was. All vineyard wind, they gotta get this project done. And with this work stoppages, it just keeps dragging it on and on and on. And I know GE has really wanted to wrap that up as [00:21:00] fast as they can. Uh, CEO Scott Straza has said the company delivered strong financial results, which they clearly have because they’re gas turbine business is taking orders out to roughly 2035, and I think the number on the back order was gonna be somewhere in the realm of 150 billion.
Dollars, which is an astronomical number for back orders. And because they had the back orders that far out, they’re raising prices which improves margins, which makes everybody on the stock market happy. You would think, Joel? Except after the, the Q4 results today, GE Renovo stock is really flat,
Joel Saxum: which is an odd thing, right?
I talk about it all the time. Um, I’m always thinking they’re gonna drop and they go up and they go up and they go up. But today was just kind of like a, I don’t know how to take it. Yeah. And I don’t know if it’s a, a broader sentiment across what the market was doing today because there was some other tech earnings and things of that sort, but it’s always something to watch, right?
So. Uh, there, [00:22:00] there’s some interesting stuff going on on in the GE world, but one thing I want to touch on here, we’re talking like vineyard wind caused them this, these delays right there is a, a, a larger call to understand why there was these delays and because it’s causing. Havoc across the industry.
Right. But even the, like, a lot of like, uh, conservative lawmakers, like there were some senators and stuff coming out saying like, we need more transparency to understand these 90 day halts because of what it’s doing to the industry, right? Because to date there hasn’t been really any explanation and the judges have been just kind of throwing ’em out.
Um, but you can see what it’s done here to ge. Recording $600 million in win losses. I mean, and that is mostly all vineyard wind, right? But there’s a little bit of Dogger bank stuff in there. I would imagine
Speaker 2: a tiny bit. Really? ’cause Dogger has been a lot less stressful to ge.
Joel Saxum: But it is, yeah. The, the uncertainty of the market.
And that’s why we kind of said a little bit, I said a little bit ago, like when this thing is done, when Vineyard [00:23:00] Point is like, and when you can put the final nail in the coffin of construction on that, it is gonna be agh sigh of relief over at GEs offices For sure.
Speaker 2: Our friend Alina, Hal Stern appeared in Energy Watch this week and she’s spent a long time in the wind industry.
She’s been in it 25 years, and, uh, she commented that she’s seeing some troubling things. Uh, she’s also the new CEO of Wind Power Lab over in Denmark, and they’re a consultancy firm on wind turbines and particularly blades. Uh, Lena says that she’s watched some. Really significant manufacturing errors in operational defects and wind turbine blades become more frequent.
And in 2025 alone, Windpower lab analyzed and provided repair recommendations for over 700 blades globally. And I assume, or Blade Whisperer Morton Hamburg was involved in a number of those. Uh, the problem she says is that the market eagerly, uh, [00:24:00] demanded cheap turbines, which is true. And, uh. Everything had to be done faster and with lower costs, and you end up with a product that reflects that.
Uh, we’ve had Lena on a podcast a couple of times, super smart. Uh, she’s great to talk to, get offline and understand what’s happening behind the scenes. And, uh, in some of these conference rooms between asset managers, operators, and OEMs, those are sometimes tough. Discussions, but I, I think Lena’s pointing out something that I, the industry has been trying to deal with and she’s raising it up sort of to a higher level because she has that weight to do that.
We have some issues with blades that we need to figure out pretty quickly. And Yolanda, you ran, uh, a large, uh, operator in the United States. We’re dealing with more than a thousand turbines. How locked in is Lena, uh, to [00:25:00]some of these issues? And are they purely driven just by the push to lower the cost of the blades or was it more of a speed issue that they making a longer blades in the same amount of time?
Where’s that balance and, and what are we going to do about it going forward as we continue to make larger turbines?
Yolanda Padron: She’s great with, with her point, and I think it’s. A little bit about the, or equally about the OEMs maybe not being aware of these issues as much, or not having the, the bandwidth to take care of these issues with limited staff and just a lot of the people who are charge of developing and constructing these projects at a very short amount of time, or at least with having to wear so many hats that they.
Don’t necessarily have the, the bandwidth to do a deep dive on what the potential risks could be in [00:26:00] operations. And so I think the way I’ve, I’ve seen it, I’ve experienced it. It’s almost like everybody’s running a marathon. Their shoe laces untied, so they trip and then they just kind of keep on running ’cause you’re behind, ’cause you tripped.
And so it just keeps on, it’s, it’s, it’s a vicious cycle. Um. But, uh, we’ve also seen just, just in our time together and everything, that there’s a lot of people that are noticing this and that are taking the time to just pause, you know, tie those releases and just talk to each other a little bit more of, Hey, I’m the one engineer doing this for so many turbines.
You have these turbines too. Are you seeing this issue? Yes. No. Are, how are you tackling it? How have you tackled it in the past? How can we work together to, to use the data we have? Right? That, I mean, if you’re not going to get a really great answer from your OEMs or if you’re not going to get a lot of [00:27:00] easily available answers just from the dataset that you’re seeing from your turbine, it’s really easy now to to reach out to other people within the industry and to be able to talk it over, which I think is something that Lena.
Is definitely encouraging here.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. Yeah. It’s, I mean, she, she makes a statement about owners needing to be technically mature, ensure you have inspections, get your TSAs right. So these are, again, it’s lessons learned. It’s sharing knowledge within the market because at the end of the day, this is a new, not a new reality.
This is the reality we’re living in. Right. It’s not new. Um, but, but we’re getting better at it. I think that’s the, the important thing here, right? From a, from a. If we take a, the collective group of operators in the world and say like, you know, where were you two, three years ago and where are you today? I think we’re in a much better place, and that’s from knowledge sharing and, and understanding these issues.
And, you know, we’re, we’re at the behest of, uh, good, fast, cheap pick. [00:28:00] Right. And so that’s got us where we are today. But now we’re, we’re starting to get best practices, lessons learned, fix things for the next go around. And you’re seeing efforts at the OEM level as well to, uh, and some, some of these consultants coming out, um, to, to try to fix some of these manufacturing issues.
You know, Alan, you and I have talked with DFS composites with Gulf Wind Technology. Like there, there’s things here that we could possibly fix. You’re starting to see operators do. Internal inspections to the blades on the ground before they fly them. That’s huge. Right? That’s been the Wind Power lab has been talking about that since 2021.
Right. But the message is finally getting out to the industry of this is what you should be doing as a best practice to, you know, de-risk. ’cause that’s the whole thing. You de-risk, de-risk, de-risk. Uh, so I think. Lena’s spot on, right? We know that this, these things are happening. We’re working with the OEMs to do them, but it takes them a technically mature operator.
And if you’re, if you don’t have the staff to be technically mature, go grab a consultant, [00:29:00] go grab someone that is to help you out. I think that’s a, that’s an important, uh, thing to take from this as well. Those people are out there, those groups are out there, so go and go in, enlist that to make sure you’re de-risking this thing, because at the end of the day, if we’re de-risking turbines.
It’s better for the whole industry.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You want to grab somebody that has seen a lot of blades, not a sole consultant on a particular turbine mine. You’re talking about at this point in the development of the wind industry, you’re talking about wind power labs, sky specs kind of companies that have seen thousands of turbines and have a broad reach where they’ve done things globally, just not in Scandinavia or the US or Australia or somewhere else.
They’ve, they’ve seen problems worldwide. Those people exist, and I, I don’t think we as an industry use them as much as we could, but it would get to the solutions faster because having seen so many global [00:30:00] issues with the St turbine, the solution set does vary depending on where you are. But it’s been proven out already.
So even though you as an asset manager. May have never heard of this technique to make your performance better. You make your blades last longer. It’s probably been done at this point, unless it’s a brand new turbine. So a lot of the two x machines and three X machines, and now we’re talking about six X machines.
There’s answers out there, but you’re gonna have to reach out to somebody who has a global reach. We’ve grown too big to do it small anymore,
Yolanda Padron: which really should be a relief to. All of the asset managers and operations people and everything out there, right? Like. You don’t have to use your turbines as Guinea pigs anymore.
You don’t have to struggle with this.
Speaker 2: That wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, and if today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn and don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. [00:31:00] And if you found value in today’s conversation, please leave us a review.
It really helps other wind energy professionals discover the show for Rosie, Yolanda and Joel. I am Alan Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.
Renewable Energy
India Locks Down Turbine Data, Danish Wind Jobs Dip
Weather Guard Lightning Tech

India Locks Down Turbine Data, Danish Wind Jobs Dip
India now requires turbine data, control centers, and R&D to sit inside its borders. Plus a study on reverse flow loads in parked blades, Envision’s spare parts push across Southeast Asia, and Danish wind employment falling to 32,700.
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Rosemary Barnes: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m your host, Rosemary Barnes, and I’m filling in for Allen today here with Jolanda Pedron. All right, onto our first story. India is drawing a line around its wind data. The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has ordered every turbine maker on the approved list of models and manufacturers to report where its data actually lives.
Data centers inside India, servers inside India, research centers inside India, and no real-time data leaving the country. The order went out last week with status reports due by month-end. And while the government tightens the rules on data, the hardware keeps moving in. Flender has just opened another generator plant in Chennai [00:01:00] Yolanda, I think this is gonna have a large impact on the number of companies who are, you know, there’s a lot of companies around today developing, like, smarts for wind turbines.
There’s a lot of scope to operate turbines better, to improve power output, reduce maintenance costs, et cetera, and y- a lot of companies are taking advantage of that. Even Patlow has some projects going on in that sort of area. What do you think about the impact this will be? Is India planning to develop their entire own ecosystem for that aspect of the industry?
I
Yolanda Padron: mean, it looks like it, right? Which is really, I mean, kind of groundbreaking. I know that we talked a couple weeks ago about Europe sort of being a little bit scared of bringing in, um, different manufacturers from Asia, um, and just the, the idea of cybersecurity being something really prevalent and really important to all of these people.
So just if India starts siloing everything and that works, maybe that’ll translate to Europe.
Rosemary Barnes: Do you think that it, it can work? Has India [00:02:00] got the expertise in place already to, to make this work, or is this gonna be a real, like, handbrake on their, their wind industry continuing to develop as fast as it has been?
Yolanda Padron: I mean, I’m really curious to see it because I don’t know if they’ll bring in a lot more experts to be able to, to do that.
Rosemary Barnes: I know the Indian, um, operating environment is quite different to other locations. I mean, it’s, it’s similar in a way to Australia in its dissimilarity, if that makes sense. I, I think there’s a lot of really India-specific problems, so of course Indian companies are gonna be best placed to take advantage of that.
But what we’ve seen so far is a lot of, uh, companies from Europe or America coming in to y- you know, like tweak the way that they attack similar problems in other markets. They’re, you know, moving in to understand India better and take advantage of that. Now, of course, like not every smart operating method or aerodynamic improvement, they don’t all need [00:03:00] real-time data, and probably most of them don’t actually.
So I think it’s not gonna like s- snip off this entire kind of improvement. But it is really interesting. It’s quite, like it is quite severe, the restrictions, and I haven’t heard of any other market, um, that is doing that. I, I don’t know, do you think it’s warranted or is it maybe like overly paranoid? I know when I heard that in, um, in Europe they’re not allowing Chinese manufacturers of inverters, for example, and I just felt like, “Ugh, is that a bit over the top?”
I’m not sure. Um, yeah, what’s your opinion, Yolanda?
Yolanda Padron: I think it, it might be a little bit over the top. We live in such a globalized world that the idea of one country just siloing completely is, is a little bit strange to me. But- I guess if, if that’s, they have a, a reason for concern, then I guess it might make sense.
But to your earlier point, like, I don’t know if the cost of doing this [00:04:00]would also come into play
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I think that there’s always a, a, a trade-off. It’s like when you have any kind of l- local content rule, which is similar in a way because it forces, um, yeah, it, it forces your own ecosystem to develop, and that’s, that’s great.
Like, it is a missed opportunity if you just have, you know, like a huge new industry and you just import it all, then that i- is a lost opportunity for your own economy. But I mean, in the past, India has had pretty strong local content rules, and they do have a bunch of wind energy manufacturing, um, within the country.
They are a country known for really great engineering, so it’s for sure not beyond them to, you know, step up. So yeah, I guess time will tell if this is a smart move from that point of view. I don’t think it’s actually the motivation behind this rule. I think it’s more of a, like, a cybersecurity, um, kind of perspective where you don’t want, you know, overseas companies having the ability to shut down your energy system, for example.
Um, [00:05:00] so yeah, but it, it has the potential to have that other effect of, you know, like boosting the local industry or alternatively just slowing down the whole industry because they can’t get anything done. I guess that’s always that balance that you need to, need to look at when you’re looking at local content.
So India is deciding who gets to control the data inside a turbine. Our next story is about something inside that same turbine nobody controls yet, the air moving across a blade that isn’t turning. A parked turbine might look like the safest thing on the site. Blades are locked, the rotor’s still, nothing turning, nothing generating.
But a new study says that stillness is not safety. When the rotor is locked and the wind shifts, air can strike the trailing edge first and travel backwards across the blade. That is reverse flow, and in reverse flow, the models this industry uses to predict blade loads start to fall apart. Field data cited in the study suggests blades on turbines above 15 megawatts can go aerodynamically [00:06:00]unstable at winds as low as eight meters per second.
That is nowhere near a storm. So this is actually already definitely a known issue, and I know that modern wind turbines don’t usually park with locked rotors, right, Yolanda?
Yolanda Padron: Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: We, we saw that a locked rotor during installation was one of the causes of the Vineyard Wind fiasco, right? Where broken blade pieces washed up on the beach.
So definitely something that’s known about.
Yolanda Padron: And it’s something that even onshore you have a, you have your system so that it tracks sort of where the wind is coming from. So even if it’s stopped, it won’t just be stopped at a specific angle, particularly in case the, the winds shift.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, and I’ve seen examples of blades failing when, um, there was a storm and there was power lost, so they weren’t able to yaw or pitch a turbine, and that also can cause…
Like, any time that- Wind is going in a different direction than what the turbine desi- was designed for, you’ll get unpredictable stuff happening and often, [00:07:00] like, really bad loads. Like the harshest, um, conditions, loading conditions that a wind turbine blade has to withstand is not in operation. It’s if you’ve got just wind hitting like a bluff body, they call it, where a gust of wind just hits flat on the blade and tries to bend it.
Like that is way, way stronger loading than, um, than anything it would see operationally. If you’re looking at, you know, like a really severe storm, like a one in 50 year kind of, um, wind speeds, and then if you have flow going on weird angles where it’s creating lift, then you can ratchet up those loads even more.
So for sure a known issue. This study, it, it singled out turbines above 15 megawatts, which are huge. That’s a, you know, like a big offshore wind turbine. But I don’t think it’s limited to that. Like what would you think, Yolanda? Is this, is this like purely a big blades thing, or is this something that actually all wind turbines need to take into account?
Yolanda Padron: Oh, this is definitely something that all wind turbines need to take into account. It’s something that we’ve seen a lot in the [00:08:00] US as well, um, onshore and s- wind f- uh, smaller wind farms and wind farms that have, you know, 200 plus, um, wind turbines on them, uh, the, the 1X or 2X turbines. Uh, this is also ver- a, a reason that it’s really important, right, to check your systems constantly, and I know that a lot of the, the owner/operators do that, um, in their regular maintenance checks.
Um, but it’s, it’s, it’s an issue that, uh, if you don’t have the correct systems in place or if you just remotely reset things, uh, because you see an error that maybe you thought, “Oh, that, that must be just a glitch,” uh, then you start having issues like this that can cause catastrophic failures, not just on the blade but on the turbine itself if, if the blade ends up hitting the turbine, um, it, it ends up hitting the, the tower itself.
Uh, and then [00:09:00] a similar issue, um, that can happen too is when you don’t have the correct systems in place for, for an emergency, and so the turbine can just overspin, and that also causes a lot of blade failures, uh, both onshore and, and offshore as well. But I think onshore it’s, it’s just the, the wind farms are so big that it’s It’s easy or, or easier to miss, like, one or two turbines, um, when you’re doing those checks.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. And I think another issue with keeping the rotors locked out, and one of the big reasons why they moved to pinwheeling as the, you know, um, turbine off kind of configuration, was with the, the bearings, right? Like, it’s not good for the bearings to be totally stationary. Um, so I think that it’s better to, yeah, pinwheel.
It’s lower loads on the bearings.
Yolanda Padron: Something, um, similar to this as well, right, and, and I think Wind Power posted about it the [00:10:00] other day, um, about just, oh, it’s really common for, for sites to, to think of, of a financial solution to, to negative pricing being just fully stopping turbines that might not be producing at positive pricing.
Um, and then, uh, that can also cause a lot of loading issues because you’re, you’re having a, a turbine at, at full capacity, and then it just stops.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, that’s true. The braking loads are, are one of the more extreme loads that turbines have to withstand also. I mean, hopefully if they’re curtailing, um, voluntarily, uh, they’re not doing an emergency brake kind of level.
I hope that they’re being a bit more gentle on their turbines, but yeah, for sure, like, the easiest thing for a turbine to do is just operate normally its whole lifetime. That’s exactly what it was designed to do, and anything that deviates from that can reduce the t- life of the turbine, complicate things.
So machines keep getting bigger, and the physics keep [00:11:00] getting harder. Meanwhile, the map keeps getting wider. Next, a Chinese manufacturer planting both turbines and spare parts across Southeast Asia. Stay with us
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Rosemary Barnes: China’s turbine makers are no longer just shipping machines. They are building the network that keeps those machines running. Envision Energy has secured its largest wind project in Vietnam, 200 megawatts with REE Energy, 25 [00:12:00] turbines, grid connection targeted for October 2027. It is also the company’s largest overseas nearshore project to date.
And Batangas, Philippines, Envision has opened a distribution center holding major components and spare parts close to the projects that need them. Turbines first, then the parts network. Yelena, I’m just wondering if spare parts was a big headache for you when you worked in asset management, and do you think that this plan of, that Envision has is gonna be a successful one for Vietnam?
Yolanda Padron: I think spare parts, having spare parts on site or near a site is always a good strategy. I know that sometimes it can get the, the accounting itself can get a little bit difficult because for at least, you know, in the US for tax purposes, you can’t really sell something from one project to another, so you, you have to be a little bit careful, um, as far as when you hold a part or you’re sending one part that might fit in multiple sites and where you’re technically buying that [00:13:00] from.
Uh, but I think the spare parts that they’re having here I, I think it’s a, it’s a really good idea, right? Because oftentimes you might have a, a big, um, there might be a big queue for a particular component that fails years after, uh, it was produced, and then you– I mean, if you need it now and there’s a big queue now, then you need to wait until it can get to site, until it can be produced, until it’s your turn in line.
Uh, and so just having those components on site or really close to the site I think is a really good idea.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, it’s really challenging. Like it’s, it, it’s easy to imagine how you could organize a spare parts network or, you know, just l- literally a bunch of warehouses holding spare parts for the kind of, you know, like one-off failures that happen routinely throughout a wind turbine’s life.
But when you start to see a serial issue or if there’s just, you know, like statistically every now and then [00:14:00] you’ll get clusters of failures even if it’s not a serial issue, that’s when it starts to get really hard. So I know in Australia, and I’m sure it’s the case elsewhere, you kind of got to pair your spare parts inventory with the capability to repair and refurbish as well.
Because sometimes it’s like, you know, you might do, like speaking of blades, which is my specialty, you might have a bill of, you know, maybe even a million dollars to do a really big repair on a blade, but that’s better than spending probably, honestly, the similar amount of money on a brand-new blade, but then that comes with a six-month or a 12-month, um, wait time.
You know, like obviously you’re gonna save overall if you can get that turbine up faster. And we also see a lot of, um, in-country capabilities to refurbish, you know, all of the drivetrain components and, and everything like that, and I think that that is such an important complement. Like your spare parts strategy should never just be about having them physically sitting there, ’cause if you were [00:15:00] to have enough to cover any situation, then, you know, most of your components would go unused over the, the lifetime of the wind farm.
And it’s not like they’re just swap in, swap out for any different wind turbine, right? Like they are usually quite turbine specific.
Yolanda Padron: I completely agree with the idea, especially with blades and how trif- tricky some of the new blades and their, their repair processes can be. It’s really important to have a plan and not necessarily just, “Okay, now I’m gonna throw this one out and bring in a new one, and always hold a new one,” because that’s really expensive.
Um, and it’s also really, really important to, uh, that doesn’t matter what particular part it is, that whatever storage facility you’re using, that you’re, you make sure that the environmental factors impacting the spare parts are taken care of, right? So, um, I know I’ve seen spare parts for a battery site or spare parts for a solar site, uh, that just kind of end up degrading even more than the parts that were in [00:16:00] operations because no one was really looking at them.
They were just outside in the elements, and then you just wasted millions and millions of dollars for really nothing. Um, something that you need to take to the landfill eventually or report.
Rosemary Barnes: Hopefully recycle it if it’s electronic waste.
Yolanda Padron: I completely agree that to, to be able to, to have any sort of replacement strategy, you, or any sort of spare parts strategy, you need to make sure that, that the replacement strategy is there and that the refurbishment strategy is there.
If there’s anything that you can recycle in-house and use in-house, that’s a lot better than just landfilling anything or sending anything to be recycled elsewhere where it just piles and piles and piles up.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I think also it’s reassuring if you’re buying wind turbines from maybe a, a less well-known manufacturer or less well-known in your country, I think it is reassuring to have a, like just a stack of spare parts on site, because that will give you the confidence that if [00:17:00] and when things start to go wrong, you know, a few years into the wind farm’s operation, you are gonna have that capability.
‘Cause I think it is, like it’s a big leap to move away from the really, really well-known, uh, manufacturers into some of the less well-known ones and have the confidence that y- you know, you wouldn’t have any- anyone to ask what they’re like for service, uh, for example, and you might also not have confidence that they’re even gonna exist in, you know, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years’ time.
So having the parts on site can give you that confidence. Although, as you say, if those parts aren’t actually functional when you go to use them, that can be worse than not having them in the first place because you thought that you were okay and then you find yourself scrambling. That’s not ideal at all.
Yolanda Padron: Yeah, I completely agree. I did hear about someone who, um, had a, a blade that they They thought they, they didn’t really have the capabilities in-house to, to restore it, and so they sent it to be recycled, [00:18:00] and then later it was sold to them by their OEM, um, on site. And so I think that also speaks to the…
And, and it was just because someone noticed the serial number was exactly the same and kind of noticed. It was, it was really honestly kind of a funny, funny thing in retrospect. But, uh, and it, it just speaks to the idea of you really need to understand if you’re holding spare parts and, and just in general, even if you don’t wanna hold spare parts.
Um, the idea of being able to refurbish or have a plan to be able to refurbish the, the materials that you have on site is really, really, really important because it can save you so much money. I mean, the, I mean, the, for that case, just the, the transportation costs of hauling the blade off, of paying someone to recycle it, of paying for a new blade, um, and everything just to kind of be bamboozled in that way where you could’ve just repaired it on site is, is It’s almost a no-brainer, yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: I gotta say, that’s like a real recycling win, right? Like, you can’t get [00:19:00] better than, than that. Uh, you know, you had a blade, you recycle it into a blade. It’s, you know, performing exactly the same function, better than shredding it and hiding it in a, you know, a footpath, a sidewalk, or something like that.
Stay with China a moment longer, because the product strategy tells you as much as the project map. Mingyang Smart Energy has unveiled the Tianchi MCD 5 MW turbine at its factory in Guizhou. It’s the first machine in the company’s new medium-speed compact drive platform, a semi-direct drive that Mingyang says cuts component count by 60%.
And it is built for sites nobody used to bother with: mountains, plateaus, places where the wind averages four and a half meters per second. Now, Yolanda, 5 MW is pretty big for an onshore turbine in locations. It sounds like, you know, these locations, aside from the, like, less than ideal wind resource, also sounds like places where it’s actually, you know, transport might be a bit of a constraint.
I wonder what their strategy [00:20:00] is gonna be to get those large components and installation equipment in.
Yolanda Padron: Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s not gonna be the first site, I think, that we’ve seen that where they have to develop some sort of game-changing vessel or crane or something to be able to, to get things, uh, to the site.
Uh, my, my first thought honestly was just kind of like, “Oh goodness, that might be a lightning nightmare depending on, on where they’re located.”
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, that’s true. Like we’ve seen in Japan, they have all their turbines on the ridges where the wind speeds are great, at least. Um, but they have been just absolutely destroyed by lightning, like really, really dealing with extreme situations.
I think also, like these are low wind speed sites. Like what, what did they say? Four and a half meters per second average wind speeds? I mean, that’s like half what you would consider a good, a good site, right? And we know that the power in wind, it goes, like it increases with the cube of wind [00:21:00] speed. So, um, you know, like if you double the wind speed, you get eight times as much power.
So it’s like all of the challenges associated with a high wind speed site in the mountains or, you know, somewhere tricky to get to you know, at least you’ve got eight times the power to make up for the effort of maintaining it. Uh, just it seems like, like a lot of effort to get to a low wind speed site, right?
I think these turbines, the cut-in wind speed is gonna be two and a half meters per second, so you know, again, like you can reduce your, yeah, like the, the wind speed a- again by another factor of eight. It’s almost nothing at that wind speed. It really, yeah, I don’t know that you can make up for a low wind speed site by having a really low cut-in wind speed, right?
Like, you’re still gonna end up with low power across the board.
Yolanda Padron: Yeah, and it’s, it’s strange too, I mean, we said it’s, it’s a mountainous region, right? And so, and the transportation [00:22:00] in itself, I mean, we talked about the idea of bringing them in is gonna be difficult. But I know that a lot of times we see a lot of blades that have issues down the line because of the transportation issues and because of the way that maybe they, they didn’t use the lifting points right, and there might be a lot more transportation issues or damages from transportation on the site if they come in and it’s a completely different terrain that they’re used to.
Uh, and teams have to build in a completely different terrain to- that- than they’re used to, then that might also cause problems down the line. Not to mention the idea that I know sometimes in sites where there’s already roads, uh, it, it, because of the position of the turbines, because of the, the way that things are, are mapped out in development and construction, sometimes it’s a, a hassle for operations to, to get the correct cranes or trucks or everything in there to do any sort of maintenance.
Uh, so [00:23:00] I can’t imagine in a place where it’s just really, really difficult to get to in general.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, and especially over the lifetime, you know, maintenance i- is gonna be such a challenge. So I think that it sounds like they’re aware of that because their emphasis with this new platform, dropping the component count by 60%, that’s a claim from Ming Yang that I haven’t seen the details of.
It seems highly implausible but, um, yeah, I would wanna look into that a bit more to believe it. But they also say that their new bearings and gearbox features lift reliability by 10%, so yeah, I think that that is going to make their job a little bit easier, but yeah, I don’t know if it’s enough that would make me wanna invest in a wind farm with a, what was the number?
Four and a half meters per second average wind speed. Seems marginal at best. So new machines for marginal sites built in China and priced to compete. Now let’s move [00:24:00] to Denmark, where the employment numbers show what that competition feels like from the other side. Back in a moment.
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Rosemary Barnes: Numbers out of Denmark tell two stories at once. Green Power Denmark counted [00:25:00] just under 110,000 full-time jobs across the Danish energy sector in 2025. That is up 1,526 positions or 1.4%, slightly ahead of Danish employment overall. That is the good news. Inside the wind sector, employment fell to 32,700, a drop of roughly 500.
Green Power Denmark blames international competition and unfavorable market conditions. Its chief economist calls the dip normal You know what, Yolanda? I think that if Denmark’s labor market is weak in the wind industry, there are many countries outside of Denmark that would wanna snap up that talent.
I know that my own company, Pardalote, is included in those numbers of people that would really like to have Danish talent. I’m trying to s- hire someone currently that’s got wind turbine blade expertise, and I tell you what, that is not easy to do in Australia. So I would say if there are any Danes listening or watching who fancy a move to Australia, then please do get in touch [00:26:00]if you have some excellent wind turbine blade experience.
Yolanda Padron: You guys would have a lovely, lovely boss. I’ve- I just gotta say that. The learnings that you have in Denmark and just the, the, the school- not just from the schooling, the, the onsite, I mean, it- it’s just historically Denmark’s been really, really great in, in wind. And there’s just so many bright minds, um, that d- I mean, if, if they can’t find a j- a job in Denmark, then I, I agree that there’s a lot of places in wind that if they’re, they’re okay with moving, they’ll, they’ll find a, a good spot that’ll receive them really happily.
Rosemary Barnes: I know it is a bit of a, like, a cultural blocker. Danes more than other nationalities that I know are, are really, um, I don’t wanna say attached, it makes it sound like not quite the word I’m looking for, but they, they do really appreciate the region that they’re from and, you know, family is so important to Danes, so not the easiest thing [00:27:00] to just say, “Just move to the other side of the world.”
But you know, I did it. It, it can be done and, uh, yeah, Australia is, has got very nice weather, especially at the moment. It’s, um, it’s gonna be… It’s been, like, in the high teens Celsius all this week, and this is, I’m in Canberra in still winter and, uh, yeah, like, on the weekend it’s gonna be 20 degrees. It’s, you know, normally 15 degrees is a really great one-off day in winter.
It was my birthday this week and in Denmark there is a, a saying or a, you know, a belief that if you have good weather on your birthday, then that means that you must have been really good all year. And the weather was just, like, unprecedentedly good for my birthday, um, yeah, for a winter day. So obviously I was very, very good this year.
Yolanda Padron: You’re a great person, and happy belated birthday.
Rosemary Barnes: Thank you. But it is something that I say every time we get another story about another Danish wind energy company that’s, you know, doing layoffs and, you know, I’m honestly surprised that it’s [00:28:00] only 500 fallen in wind energy. If you look at, like, even just the job losses at LM Wind Power alone, um, I think that it would be about that many, right?
And so there are obviously some other companies um, growing to absorb some of the job losses, ’cause for sure we’ve covered more than 500 job losses just on the show. But I know I always feel really sad, um, not just for the people involved who y- you know, probably love wind energy and wanted to work in that field, but I feel sad that, you know, this was such a strength for Denmark, their, their wind industry, that they had been, you know, developing this expertise since the ’70s, honestly.
Uh, really, really world leading and, uh, of course, like, globalization means that you can’t, like, stay siloed forever, and Denmark obviously also took advantage of that globalization to, you know, export. Wind industry was a huge export market for Denmark, and still is. Um, but I do, I, I just feel really bad at the companies that are losing, um, all of that, you know, institutional [00:29:00]knowledge and the really, really deep specialist knowledge.
It’s, um, yeah. Uh, and they’ll go on to, you know, bring new skills to other industries, but it just makes me sad. As a wind energy lover and, um, you know, somebody who has a lot of friends that work in wind industry in Denmark, I do feel, feel sad. And there are some of my old colleagues who are amazing, like, literally the best engineer that I ever worked with, an electrical engineer, it, it was not easy for him to find a new job in wind.
I’m actually not sure if he’s working in that industry now. And plenty of other, like, really, really talented engineers that have gone on to other, um, yeah, other different kinds of industries, and it just makes me a little bit sad.
Yolanda Padron: Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of people too that are com- And I agree, it’s sad.
It’s really sad. But I, there are a lot of people too, some friends that, uh, just, you know, started doing consulting on their own, and it’s, it’s good to see that they’re still in wind, you know? Because they’re, they, they’re so smart and they have so much knowledge of so many years in the industry that they bring to the table, um, [00:30:00] that, I mean, it, it might even work out better for them, right?
Because maybe now they’re not just wor- focusing on Denmark itself, and now they get to, to expand and do what they evidently love to do, uh, the, for clients around the world, which is really exciting.
Rosemary Barnes: Well, that wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast, and my first as the primary host of the show, so let me know if you think I did a terrible job in the comments.
Comments boost engagement, make me look better. So 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 don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode.
For Yolanda, and Matthew and Allen Hall in their absence, I’m Rosemary Barnes, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy [00:31:00] podcast.
Renewable Energy
About Two-Thirds of Americans Will Never Call the Lake North of New York “Lake America”
At what point did 30% of the U.S. electorate become so tuned into a criminal sociopath’s wanting to rename places in the Western Hemisphere in an effort towards his own self-aggrandizement?
The only interesting question that remains is what if any trajectory does this nation have to recover some level of dignity once Trump is removed from the presidency.
Some say it will take generations. No one knows for certain.
About Two-Thirds of Americans Will Never Call the Lake North of New York “Lake America”
Renewable Energy
Nothing Endures But Change
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” — Heraclitus
One of humankind’s greatest thoughts is tied up in this quote from the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. It’s right up there with “I think therefore I am,” and “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
But where the last of the three are indisputable, what up with this “persistence of change” stuff?
It’s true that the aspects of people and things change. The walls of the Grand Canyon are constantly shifting, but no sensible person thinks it’s a different place than it was millions of years ago.
Most of the cells in my body die and are replaced in a matter of a few months, and my attitudes and beliefs change day by day. But my beloved kindergarten teacher, Alice Adams, will exist in my memories until the day I die.
What Heraclitus left of us is intellectually stimulating, but it doesn’t affect how we function as human beings.
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