Weather Guard Lightning Tech
Prometheus Wind’s Industry Growth w/ Will Friedl
Allen and Joel catch up with Will Friedl, CEO and co-founder of Prometheus Wind, based in Colorado. The company has been growing rapidly in the industry, conducting maintenance, blade repairs and more. Will discusses his experience as a business owner in the wind industry and the lessons he has learned along the way. To learn more, visit https://www.prometheuswind.com/ or call 1 (800) 487-4460.
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Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, along with Joel Saxum. We’re here with Will Friedl, who is the CEO of Prometheus Wind. And if you’re not familiar with Prometheus, they’re based in Colorado and they do a ton of turbine work from blade repair to foundation.
Torque and tensioning, pretty much anything to do with wind turbines they’re involved with. And Will is a graduate of the Air Force Academy and is a veteran, and this is their third year in operation. And we wanted to touch base with Will. Because when we get an update of all the things that have happened, and there’s been some tremendous growth at Prometheus Wind, so Will, welcome to the program.
Will Friedl: Hey, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it, sir.
Allen Hall: Let’s start off with I think the most exciting development, on top of everything else that’s happened, is the training center. You’ve now built out a training center. Yes, sir. Can you tell us about it?
Will Friedl: Yes, sir. Yeah. I think there’s a fundamental difference between companies that, are hiring for talent and then going out there and doing work.
And of course we’re a bootstrap company that’s what we had to do for the first two years of our operation. But it was quickly apparent. It’s Hey, we need to get a training center so we can upskill our guys so they can grow, they can earn more money. But also so that we can check people coming through the door to make sure that they have the skills that they need.
And so that was a big initiative, a huge lift this winter time, during the. Quote unquote off season we built out a a small training center here in Greeley, Colorado about two hours away from where I live. And and we’ve had great success with it. So we’ve had, we’ve run all of our guys through that.
Everyone who’s new goes through that training center. We get, we able to do a thorough evaluation of their skill sets, put them on the correct, educational track, and when they graduate, they they get the appropriate skill level identification and the qualifications that they need.
That we provide. So it’s been a huge success. It’s not something that, immediately, you flip the switch and it comes online. There’s growth to it. You learn how to train, you learn how to change your curriculum to be more effective. But overall just right out the door, we’ve seen a lot of success with it.
Seen a lot of extra buy in from guys who are appreciative of being up skilled. We’ve seen better retention. We’ve seen, higher quality and more, a better production rate of guys in the field. So it’s been a, it’s been a huge blessing for us.
Joel Saxum: Will, I know you and I were catching up at ACP and earlier than that in the year, I think O& M as well, over in San Diego with your team, we were talking about the build out of the training center and what it looks like for you guys in the future and what that was going to do for your program.
And it sounds like, it’s been a success, right? Like better quality in the field, better buying, you’re able to impart your company culture, which I know is really important to you guys. From the early stages before people hit, yeah, before people get out to the field, they’ve already got that base of this is who Prometheus is.
This is how we operate. This is what goes on in our company. And I know that this is this is your third year in business. Like you said, so you went year one, year two, and talking off air, you’ve two X your business every year. So congratulations on that as a bootstrap business. That’s tough to do.
Will Friedl: Yeah. Thanks. Appreciate that, man.
Allen Hall: With the training center and the organization in which you run and being a former military veteran through the Air Force Academy and organizing all kinds of activities that which you can’t describe to me, I’m sure it does seem like one of the things you notice about Prometheus is you’re very well organized, like you have, Systems in place to make sure that the customer gets what they’ve asked for.
And the technicians are doing what they’re supposed to, and the technicians have the proper tools and that, and getting every, that organizational piece is really important to Prometheus, which you don’t always see in all the ISPs, especially at your size and at year three, a lot of times you just don’t see that kind of organization.
How, what does that air force training bring into Prometheus? What do you think it brings to the aspect of Prometheus?
Will Friedl: Yeah, that’s a great question. I really appreciate you asking. Working in the air force, the military is, unquestionably the biggest bureaucratic organization in the world.
As part of the U S government, the biggest the most systemized entity that you’ve ever seen. And so when you learn to work through that system, you really learn, all the different process controls that are in place to produce certain results, in, in the military environment is one of extreme risk, and so you have to manage this risk and it’s also one of extreme chaos, there’s always things popping up.
And so you have to be able to manage and communicate through those issues that pop up. And what’s been really cool about us is that, my background isn’t in wind and it took me a long time to learn the technical aspects of the business, through and through. And I’m always learning more, you can always talk to an engineer, you always find out how much you don’t know.
But but what’s interesting is that, what the strength that I do bring in and I was, is the vision of okay, this is how a good organization works and works every single time. And as we’ve gone through the process, we’ve had these, we’ve had mistakes and we’ve had, things that are suboptimal, additional expenses here and there.
And what we found is that what’s made us really resilient is our ability to say, okay, Hey, this doesn’t work. We need to change it. And then have the exact. Yeah. Know exactly what lever we need to pull to change that outcome, and, maybe next time it’s a little bit closer, but it’s not always there, but once you figure out what we need to do, we’ve been really good at taking the same systems that I’ve been working with for over a decade in the military and applying them into the company and saying, okay, Hey, this is how this is going to run.
And if we, in the future, we need to change it, this is the process for changing it. And that’s made us really adaptable. We, you talk to a lot of small companies and they’ll say, I’m super adaptable because I, and they have that attitude because they can change what they’re doing in the moment.
But what I think is really important in order to be able to scale and do that well, is that not just change what you’re doing in the moment, but also almost immediately implement a system that will allow you to shut your brain off to that side and every single time it goes that way now that doesn’t always happen, right?
And there’s always errors and you’re always adjusting it. But at least we, like I’m, my team now is very familiar with, okay, Hey, this changed. Okay. I need to update this, this procedure, I need to update this process. I need to inform this person and then boom, we make that change and then we just roll in a slightly different direction.
It’s a little bit more on target. So I think that’s been the thing that’s allowed us to grow and to learn from our lessons and do such a ineffective job and basically de risk our operations. It’s interesting, for blade repair, we had a kickoff meeting yesterday and the client was, very experienced very experienced program manager for blade repair.
They’d been doing this for years and years. And we showed up and, most clients, they show up and they’re like, okay, let’s, what do we need to do? And we have a procedure that we do that leads leads them through the step by step conversation so that we cover all the bases, and they showed up with their stuff and we went through that and then we’re like, okay here’s our stuff what about this? What about this? What about this? And, and we had just, we had taken lessons learned and implemented it immediately into that, in that process.
And you could just see that they were just like, we’ve been doing this for a long time. We’ve never really seen this kind of thing. Like this is very, it just sets that precedent, and we still have to go out to out there and execute well. But in the military we say like a good plan makes a good execution.
So I think we’re starting off. on the right foot and we’re starting off the right foot because we did this very methodically.
Joel Saxum: So with that one in mind, like that client experience you had just this week, right? You are a part of the advanced and veterans advanced energy project.
And I know that we’ve talked about this in the past. We had Kevin doffing on, we talked to some other people about it. Give us an update on what’s going on with that program, because I know Allen and I, we’re not intimately involved with it. So we know about it on, in, on that surface level but what are you, what’s your involvement with those guys this year?
Will Friedl: The Veteran Advanced Energy Project basically takes veterans from across the industry and tries to upskill them and allow them to get exposure to different parts of the industry. And the way they do that is they create a fellowship of a handful of people who come together and we have monthly meetings and go over, leadership developments updates to the industry.
And we talk about our different sectors of the industry. So there’s a lot of already. Just built into that system. There’s a lot of cross pollination that happens. And then also every veteran who’s a part of it has to write a policy proposal paper. And so you work with people that are way smarter than you.
I have a lot more research background. And they just know a lot of things that, you know, that I, for one, don’t know, and so working with them, they help you to write this policy paper and, you interview multiple people and you get an idea. The idea is that you get a depth of knowledge into a sector of the industry that, that is totally outside your scope.
And you come out of that fellowship, not only do you have good friends, you’ve got a network across the industry. But also, you’ve got this depth of knowledge in an area that you would not know otherwise. And so my focus is currently, and I’m not done with my policy paper.
So I’ve got lots of research to do, you can imagine I’m busy doing other things, at the same time but my, my research is in, the economics of the wind industry and how that’s, how that money is currently flowing and and whatnot, because, the industry is like a river, and there are certain rivers that are slower and certain rivers that go backwards, and I’m trying to get an understanding of what that river’s and so yeah, that’s. That’s the update for where I am with that process.
Allen Hall: I think that’s good because you have that veterans network, you have a broader view of what’s happening in the United States in terms of renewable energy and wind.
What are you seeing with Prometheus wind? What things have you noticed over the last 12 months?
Joel Saxum: Yeah. So the industry is from the, from a perspective of a small, yeah, small business owner, ISP, what, how does what’s going on in the wind industry affect you right now? How that affects me is basically
Will Friedl: The more the more development that goes into this industry, we have a little bit on the construction side, but we do mainly maintenance services.
And the currently established let’s see market share is just the amount of wind turbines that are out there. So the more wind turbines that get. That get added, the larger the market share. And generally speaking, if you keep the same percentage of the market share, that means that things look good in the future, and then, the converse is also true. So I’m really plugged into that because I think it’s really important to understand, Hey, what is, what’s coming in the future? How big is this market going to be? Is it going to grow? Is it going to decrease? What are some of the threats to that?
And then, how do I respond to that? I just, because I think it’s important for everybody who’s in a leadership position in this industry to really understand that and to understand the implications to help drive, their policies and their future predictions. So that’s how I I’m looking at it.
And I see the trickle down effect. The difficulty is, when you talk about what have I seen in the, in, in Prometheus wind we’re, we started real small. So we’re getting bigger and bigger. And so I, it’s hard for me to see that because I haven’t reached a normalized state.
Once we reach a normalized state, then we can see those fluctuations a little bit more. Right now we’re just like, exploding in certain, like we’re really seeing a lot of success in what we’re doing and we don’t, it’s hard to say, Hey, this is coming from the market or, Hey, we’ve just been around long enough to have our name out there.
And now we know what we’re doing so we can have better sales conversations or expanding our market value. So yeah, so that’s how I’d answer both of those questions.
Allen Hall: Are you getting more phone calls reaching out to you now, instead of you having to knock on doors, has that flipped a little bit?
Will Friedl: It has, Still nothing beats knocking on doors, right? You just have to, you have to find the right person at the right time. And and have your values align your opportunities line. But what’s, what we’ve noticed is that, as we’ve gotten into these larger companies through pyramids, what’s cool is And I tell people all the time, wind industry is interesting because it’s not like a level steady state industry, right?
There’s this huge expansion of work that happens in the summer. And site managers, they don’t staff for that to cover that. They, have, they have for instance, blade repair or inspections, anything that’s outside the norm, they’ll have that built into their budget.
And so once you come in and you do a good job. It’s I need to fill this, I have this gap in my capabilities. I need to fill it with somebody. And once, once you come in and do that, good job, there’s. There’s very little that’s going to happen to keep you from coming back to that site.
You know what I mean? Or at least them, keep them from requesting that you come back to that site. And that’s what we’ve seen essentially is once we capture it, we hold, and once we cap, we capture and hold, I guess it’s a little bit like warfare but yeah that’s what we’ve that’s what we’ve seen.
And still need a lot of, still need a lot of outreach, but generally speaking, once we’ve done a certain scope of annualized scope of work, we get that phone call ringing. Every single time.
Joel Saxum: And then once you’re, I know you’re in with a couple of larger operators and I know if you work at one wind farm for them and you get a rave review there, of course, that, that operator is going to say, Hey, go to this wind farm.
We need you at this one. Now we need you at that one. Now I need you at that one. So yeah, that expansion. But that speaks to the quality, right? So it speaks to this quality and the service that Prometheus offers.
Will Friedl: It is. It’s been awesome. I don’t want to say Hey we jumped in and we did everything perfectly from day one.
You know what I mean? That’s not the, that’s not the story that we have. And that’s not what I’m trying to highlight. We’ve made mistakes like everybody else, but we’ve had this. Constant drive to to improve and improve and to identify where are we failing?
Where do we need to get better? And I would say that we’ve done that very well. And so we’re what you’re left with is a very consistent product that has a lot of quality. That’s not just happenstance. We didn’t just jump into the right, to the right role and systemize that.
Now we started off with a couple of assumptions that were wrong. We changed those around and we got through maturity, we got to something that’s, and I would say consistently excellent.
Joel Saxum: What would you say? What would be the lesson if you could go back and give three years ago, will a piece of knowledge?
What would it be?
Will Friedl: This is not inspiring. This is not inspiring. This is going to be like first off, things are going to be okay. And that’s what there’s so many times when there was just so like the burden of stress was, I can’t even tell you I went through a program in the Air Force where there’s 90 percent washout rate and that program, is a very difficult program.
But it’s only, it’s only 20 weeks long. And every day for the last 10 days, Two to three years, with the exception of a couple of months ago, once we started picking up steam this season has felt like I was a day in that program. It was that stressful. And like I’ll go back and I go back and do my job and it’s so everything’s so easy.
It’s so straightforward. You had a military, it’s Oh, you just need to know this procedure. You need to know who to communicate that the problem solving infrastructure and the problems that you face are their problems are like, they’re filtered. There’s a filter before they hit you.
And then once they hit you, it’s okay, you’re getting trained for those problems that are going to hit you. Here there’s no filter and there’s no system. And then it’s been it’s been a lot. And basically I think a good amount of encouragement. The other thing I would tell me is it’s focused on sales because you’re not going to know, you don’t know what your assumptions are until you, put them to the test and and then and focus on growing in a slower, this year, last year, I think we grew too fast and we had some issues and we pared our teams down.
And then we kept going from there. And this year we’ve been very deliberate on how fast we grow and maintaining. Okay. Hey, if I’m going to bring a team on, I need to make sure that they have this qualification. I know exactly what I need to train them on and I’m going to, I’m growing them one at a time.
And so that by the time, I’ve got as many teams that I need they’re all good and I don’t have to, I don’t have to be fielding calls all day long just to keep them operational.
Allen Hall: Yeah. What are your growth areas now? Where do you see your business expanding?
Will Friedl: The spring is the growth time, right?
That’s where, I would say the winter time, we purposely were training setting up the training center. So that was like hair on fire all through that, trying to get it ready by spring. And then and then the springtime you’re sitting on all these clears. And so you’re trying to make sure it’s working to go.
And so that’s hair on fire time. And so my next thing is, we’ve grown to a certain amount and, being on these calls, that call that I mentioned, what’s cool about it is that I wasn’t the one running that call, that was, that, that was my project manager. That was my operations guy.
They were the ones running that call. And and so it’s like a, so my next thing is to, okay, sweet. We’ve gotten to a certain size. We might still build, Add a couple of teams here and there, as projects pick up throughout the summer. But I think the next stage is to, okay, let’s sit, let’s wait, let’s see what happens.
Maybe I can take a vacation, de stress a little bit. And and then we can identify where to go from there. So I would say the Air Force, they got this thing called the OODA loop, the Orient, it’s for fighter pilots. But part of that is, okay, Once you understand the situation, just orient yourself to, to what’s going on and then decide to go from there.
So we’ve gone through the hair on fire stage backstage. Let’s do some orientation and decide, very methodically what we’re going to do next.
Joel Saxum: Will, you guys are, of course, we know, doing blade work. What are your other scopes that you’re taking on this summer?
Will Friedl: Yeah, great question. We do a lot of inspections too.
We’re really good at bore scope inspections and a warranty that kind of thing, tower walk downs. We’re getting staffed on some construction sites to do some basically some inspections for the customer to make sure that, the turbines that are built or the turbines that were purchased, and and that’s not always the case and and to a great expense sometimes, and we’re on sites doing that we’re doing end of warranty we do a lot of into warranty, especially in Q4, as you can imagine.
And and then we just, we do maintenance support as well. So we’ve had crews several crews out doing full maintenance schedules for turbines and and then whatever else is needed. Sometimes it’s for a contention gig. Sometimes it’s the full scope. Sometimes it’s Hey, we’re here.
We just had these bearings go out. We need some or we need some inspections on these bearings, we need re grease. A lot of different things. It’s amazing. These things these. These machines are so technical. And so there’s so many different failure modes. There’s so many different maintenance procedures.
There’s so many different things that can happen where you’re just like, Hey, I don’t have, I don’t have a guy on my crew who’s got the bandwidth and the specialty to do this. I need to call somebody. And that’s what we feel. We feel calls like that. And we sometimes we can, sometimes we can’t do it, but most of the time we can.
Joel Saxum: And I know, cause a lot of the operators, like especially site supervisors, once they have a team on site that they like, they’re just feeding them work because they’d like to keep them there. That cause that’s, the technician shortages are regular, right? So if they leave that. A site supervisor may be like, I don’t know what I’m going to get these guys back.
So while they’re here, I’m going to try to get as much work out of them as I possibly can. So that’s when you have scope creep or scope changes and those kinds of things. But it sounds like you guys have got a pretty good system for dealing with those as they come up.
Will Friedl: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We I it could, it comes down to just the systems that we have, not only for training our people, but also for managing our people.
So when things change we’ve got, you’ve got a way to figure out, okay Hey, how do we address this? How do we how do we walk away so that, or how do we, make sure that the customer understands, Hey, we’re making this a priority. We’re going to get this problem solved. And we’ll figure out what we need to do to make that happen.
And and, all along that process, you talk, you just took the nail on the head. Things are constantly changing, right? Hey, you’ll be out there and there’ll be like, We’ll get some bad Boar Scope results, and I’ll be like, okay, Hey we actually want to, increase the number of Boar Scopes that you’re doing on site or whatever it is, or, Hey, we need you to give us a little bit more analysis on this.
Can have an engineer look at this? And as we go through that process, it’s constantly changing. And so because it’s dynamic, it requires a lot of good communication, right? And so that’s where, our communication systems and how we come into play, we’re usually in front of those things.
So we’re asking the questions and And my brother has this great saying just a little bit of background. When I started the business, I started with two, two brothers who have a lot of wind industry experience. But he’s always starting their cat.
He’s like, yeah, we just got to kill those cats. He’s he’s got to ask those questions, kill those cats and move on.
Allen Hall: Since you brought up bearings and you guys are looking at bearings, there appears to be a significant issue with bearings in the United States at the moment.
What are you guys saying?
Will Friedl: We are seeing those issues. I had that’s the first thing. And we’re finding those issues. We don’t do, I do want to say we don’t do major component exchange at this year. And that’s something that we’re looking to add. We were originally looking at it this year.
We’re probably going to add it next year. Again, very methodical steps forward. We’re not, swapping those things out all the time, but when we do the inspections for them we’re seeing a lot of issues, a lot of breakdowns for it now. It sounds like it’s a good business at the moment though.
It should be. It really is. It really is. I think sites, they appreciate when, when you can consistently show up on the right, with the right equipment, with the right people, who have a professional attitude, who communicate well through the project, where you get your results and your inspection results in a timely manner, that’s in a professional, like easy to read format.
And just the process is smooth and it happens without them having to make phone calls or ping things. And the questions are coming from the vendor instead of them going to the vendor. I think that experience is something that a lot of sites appreciate. And and yeah and being able to do that we’ve had a lot of really good business.
Allen Hall: This has been a really good update of all the things that are happening at Prometheus wind and really excited for you. It sounds like the growth is in action at the moment. So if you have. Wind farm and you need some maintenance inspections or end of warranty campaigns being conducted.
You needed to reach out to Prometheus Wind. How do they do that? How do they reach you?
Will Friedl: You can go to our website, www.prometheuswind.com, and Prometheus is P-R-O-M-E-T-H-E-U-S. Everybody messes that up. Or you can reach us by phone. Our phone number is 1 800 487 4460.
Allen Hall: It’s great to have you back on the program and great to see all of all the success.
Will Friedl: Hey, thank you so much. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you guys. It’s always awesome to listen to you guys and to be able to come on and talk every once in a while. So thanks so much.
https://weatherguardwind.com/prometheus-wind-industry-growth/
Normally, “nihilism” means the belief that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value. Trump was elected by mean-spirited idiots, but they could hardly be called “nihilists.” For example, they believe very strongly in white supremacy, the dismantling of the federal government, saving people from the lethality of vaccinations, etc.
Now, there is a secondary meaning to the word, i.e., those who reject established social systems. In this sense, I suppose they are indeed nihilists, in that they reject lawfulness, honesty, human rights, truth, science, tolerance, and compassion.
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Vestas Shares Jump 20%, UK Blocks Ming Yang Factory
Vestas doubles second quarter profit and adds €4.7 billion in market value overnight. Plus EnBW finishes He Dreiht after a V236 blade break, the UK blocks Ming Yang’s Scottish factory, and India rules turbines are movable goods.
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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
Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, and I’m here with Rosemary Barnes, Matthew Stead, and Yolanda Padron. And three out of the four of us will be in Melbourne Australia talking to a number of operators and interested parties about WOMA 2027. Matthew, where will we be the couple of days we’re in Melbourne?
Matthew Stead: So, um, first of all, we’ve got the Pullman, uh, East Melbourne, which is, uh, where the venue will be for, for 2027. Um, so that’ll be our home base. Um, we’ve got around about eight meetings planned already. So what we’re doing is we’re talking to the operators and a few other industry, um, players about [00:01:00] what we need to talk about, how we’re gonna move the industry forward in Australia.
Uh, so it’s gonna be jam-packed, but there’s a little bit of time left on the Friday afternoon if there’s any late-minute, um, people that wanna get in contact and catch up with us, um, for next Thursday, Friday, or actually Friday. Uh, so yeah, it’s gonna be a, a jam-packed time. I think we’re gonna be tired, too many coffees, and talking to all the key, all the key operators, uh, about what they wanna hear about and how we can move the, the industry forward.
Allen Hall: And if someone wants to put an input into the WOMA panel about what will be discussed at WOMA 2027, Matthew, how would they do that? How do they get ahold of you?
Matthew Stead: Well, we have a wonderful website, and that’s got all the details you could ever want. Um, you can also register on the website, so please register.
Otherwise, um, I’m sure we’re gonna be a sellout this year for sure. So woma2027.com.
Rosemary Barnes: I just wanna add that when people talk to [00:02:00] me about the event, they always say how they love that the topics are so relevant, and the reason why that they’re so relevant is because we make sure to go around to operators and find out what are the issues that they’re really dealing with.
So anybody that’s thinking of attending, even if you can’t, you know, meet us up, meet up with us in Melbourne, get in touch and tell us what are the, yeah, what are the topics that you’re struggling with that you’re not, um, you’re having trouble finding enough information, having trouble finding the people that can help you.
And y- yeah, like we take all of that information, and that’s how we come up with our agenda each year. And yeah, I mean, for us, that’s the, the main thing is that this has to be really relevant, up-to-date information for the industry, and we need your help to make sure it stays that way. I
Matthew Stead: mean, that’s what we’ve done the last two years, so this is– we’re just repeating the formula, um, listening to the operators and getting the good topics and the good speakers.
Allen Hall: Well, Vestas has had a good quarter. Uh, the, for the last couple of years, honestly, s- [00:03:00] Vestas has been really thin on margins. There was questions about it continuing on. Rising costs mostly, uh, supply chains, especially during COVID, were bad. Uh, and, uh, but for the most part, the shareholders stayed attached.
Well, that story is changing rapidly. The world’s largest turbine maker posted second quarter operating profits of $400- €46 million, more than double what the analysts had expected, and it’s raised its full-year margin guidance alongside half-year results for the first time in a decade. The shares climbed about 20% in Copenhagen, adding roughly €4.7 billion of market value in a single session.
Now, the chief executive, uh, Henrik Andersen, ha- put it plainly to, uh, uh, in a couple of news sources that something much bigger is happening and Vestas is gonna be the, the leader in wind. That’s how I read it, that everybody [00:04:00]at Vestas was super happy with the, the change in direction and things were moving up steadily.
But a 20% jump in a day is remarkable. You don’t see that in large industrial businesses like wind energy. Matthew, this has real implications on what happens next for Vestas because success like this usually means more orders.
Matthew Stead: Yeah, I wonder what’s going on under the hood there. Um, I mean, Vestas is a quality company, although, although can I just do a quick segue?
How many turbines were installed in Denmark in the last, uh, two years? Like last year and the year before?
Allen Hall: I don’t know. How many?
Matthew Stead: I believe it was eight turbines installed onshore in Denmark last year, and the year before it was 12. So, you know, maybe, maybe Vestas needs to focus on their own backyard a little bit as well.
Allen Hall: I’m not sure there’s a lot of opportunity there. Yeah, onshore.
Matthew Stead: How can you ever be full? I mean, there’s always, um, [00:05:00] uh, you know, um, you know, resiting or, um, you know, upgrades and-
Rosemary Barnes: You know what? Allen and I are probably gonna get some time in Jutland, uh, later this year, um, and that area and the old wind turbines there was actually the inspiration for my whole YouTube channel.
It just, ’cause there’s, you know, there’s turbines there from, the earliest one is, um, from the ’70s and still going. I think it’s one and a half megawatts, actually huge for, for that time. Um, and it was like community made, um, at Tvind. But anyway, I’m interested to revisit the site and have a look and see are these, you know, all these old turbines still there.
It’s only, like six years since I went through and did the experience but for the most part, they don’t seem to be yet pulling down the, the small old ones and putting up big ones. There’s a lot of, a lot of them are community owned. Um, and yeah, I mean, Danish people love wind turbines, but there’s only so many that you can have onshore.
Like, people are happy to live near them by, you know, the standards of people in other countries, but you don’t want [00:06:00] one in your literal backyard. I think that there is, there, there is a, a limit to how many more onshore wind turbines that you can get in that area and offshore expansion is the more likely way to go.
Um, and also I think it’s, it’s, it’s good to recognize that if you have a domestic only or a domestic first strategy, that will only get you so far and then you have to expand, and I think Denmark did that really well. I think Germany a little bit less. I think that Enercon were a bit surprised, um, by their strategy.
It, uh, they had a real hard time anyway when they had to transition away from mostly Germany to getting overseas. And obviously, like if you look at China, they have most of their installations are in China. They are trying so hard to get outside of China because it’s not, like even a market as big as China, it’s got decades to go before it will be full.
Um, you can still recognize that that’s not your, like long-term strategy for growth has to involve expansion, I think.
Allen Hall: I think Vestas, regardless of what happens in Denmark, is making a play for the United States. That seems to be [00:07:00] where a significant effort is happening at the moment and on offshore. Their– Vestas seems very excited about the offshore opportunities.
Of course, there’s a ton of wind turbines gonna be installed in the UK and, and all around Northern Europe. Offshore, the opportunities to buy turbines, there’s only a couple that you could get today. Uh, uh, the GE Vernova offerings I, I don’t think are gonna fit the mold, and I don’t know if GE’s even actively selling.
So their competitor realistically is Siemens Gamesa, which does seem like the smaller player at the minute versus Vestas, which is heavily pushing the V236 and will fill order books like crazy, I think, uh, just based upon the, the history they’ve had and everybody knowing who they are. So Also on the move in Australia, right?
Vestas is huge in Australia right now.
Rosemary Barnes: I think it’s really good that their, um, yeah, finances, uh, are [00:08:00] looking a bit better ’cause it’s been funny. Like, I tried early on in my wind career to invest in, you know, wind turbine manufacturers knowing that there would be immense growth, and I was right. There, there was immense growth.
Not that that was so hard to figure out that there would be, but it did not lead to any kind of, um, return on, on anything, you know. Like, that did not keep pace with the just general market. Um, so I, I stopped trying to, stopped trying to invest to that. But it has been really, really hard for the companies to, you know, raise money or y- you know, do any of the things that they need to do because they’ve always, like, they’re growing, growing, growing, but finances has been so tight that it has been a real constraint on the amount of engineering that they could do, and I really hope that Vestas are gonna take this opportunity that they’ve got compared to, you know, a lot of the other manufacturers.
Vestas do have really strong, um, innovation and, yeah, engineering capabilities for doing– you know, developing new technologies and improving them, and I really hope that they’re taking this opportunity to build that up. There are a lot [00:09:00] of very good engineers with a lot of experience in the industry in that area that are working in other fields at the moment because, you know, there’s been a lot of contraction in Denmark.
So I don’t know, it seems like a really good time to hire back some of that really in-depth knowledge and, yeah, get a- get ahead of, you know, some of the future quality problems. We’re going through such a hard time at the moment from the fast development that happened in the 20-teens when there wasn’t a whole lot of money around.
We’re dealing with quality problems now, so, you know, maybe we can get ahead and not have the next round of them if we can invest in just a lot more, uh, engineering capacity.
Allen Hall: When you have success like Vestas has, usually the upper level management and some of the executive team starts getting pilfered, that they’ll get offers to repeat that success at another company, and it sounds like that process has started already.
There’s a couple of executives that have recently departing or are in the midst of departing from Vestas. [00:10:00] I would see that continuing f- at least for the next six months, uh, because everybody wants to repeat that, right? If you can get a 20% increase in your valuation overnight, uh, I can, I can list a number of companies, regardless of industry, that would love to participate.
Even in a 5% increase, that would be remarkable. So, um, Vestas is gonna have a hard time holding onto this. That’s just the nature of the business where things are successful, people will wander. And Rosemary, I, I think they’re– And Yolanda In, in my book, Vestas should sort of s-stand down and just make quality products.
I’m not sure you sh-should tinker too much at the time being and just make the good stuff better. That seems like a way to really increase profits.
Yolanda Padron: Yeah, I mean, solving a lot of the issues that– And, and that’s not just a Vestas exclusive thing, right? All of these OEMs have some sort of issue that maybe– I know Rosie’s touched a lot on, on it, where [00:11:00] you build this version A and then version B solves one of the small little issues, but now it creates another little problem, and then you have version C, and then everything just kinda has its own niche little issue, um, that really expands over time.
So if they could solidify what they already have in, in a, in a model that, that would help them just even keep a lot of their customers, I think that’d be great, and it would help, certainly help them, um, not continuously, like, rotate around the customers, ’cause it almost feels like, at least in the States, right, you, you get GE to be really, really strong and have a huge market share, and then GE starts focusing more on gas turbines, so then they all go onto Vestas, and then they all go onto Ontara now.
Um, and then just, you know, just kind of everybody starts cycling through them because they just kind of want something that’s better quality than what they’re getting in the long haul.
Matthew Stead: Allen, you, you talked about you think there’s something big under the hood. I think you, you [00:12:00] thought that maybe Vestas was angling towards something or being quite bullish.
Do you think that they might take over GE Vernova?
Allen Hall: I don’t think they’re gonna grab Vernova, and I don’t think Vernova is for sale at the minute, but I wonder if Siemens Gamesa is, or Nordex. I mean, Nordex has done terrific the last couple of quarters and is making inroads in places that I didn’t think possible three, four years ago.
Uh, the European marketplace is be- becoming really unique in that sense that there’s a lot of money being put out. But is there a sole perfect solution for Europe? Not at the minute, ’cause you got two competitors there, and then China trying to, to work its way in. Will the Europeans come together and form something more united, even if it’s just a partnership, a loose partnership, versus letting China on the shores?
We’ll see. 64 of the largest machines that Vestas has builds are standing off the German coast, but one blade is missing a [00:13:00] piece. We’ll talk about that when we come back.
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Allen Hall: Well, Germany’s largest offshore wind farm is now fully installed, and EnBW confirmed this, uh, past week that all 64 of the Vestas V236 15-megawatt turbines are s- standing at the He Dreiht wind farm about 85 kilometers northwest of Borkum. Uh, 960 megawatts, [00:14:00] 2.4 billion euros invested. Man, these offshore projects are expensive to get installed.
Uh, so it’s power for roughly 1.1 million households, and there’s no state subsidy behind any of it. And so this is a little bit of a u- unique situation. Uh, th- well, the one footnote about the wind farm is they had a V236 blade break and fall into the North Sea, and they had fished it out and I think I passed along s- pictures that I saw online of, uh, one of the police boats pulling the shear web out of the water I don’t know what to think anymore about some of these offshore blade issues.
Obviously, Vestas is very conscientious about it and will be doing RCAs and engineering reviews and all the above to go identify what the problem is. But it does just lead to a little bit of a pause of do– what is going on for some of these offshore [00:15:00] wind blade installations or, or whatever’s causing these blades to break?
Do we have a good handle on it? Yolanda, is– are we following up on all the design details so that we can prevent these things in the future?
Yolanda Padron: I mean, I’d, I’d hope you’d be following up on the design, right? Like, and, um, but I think there is still a little bit of a disconnect from, from what we’ve seen, and again, not just Vestas exclusive, um, between the people who are designing and the people who are manufacturing, the people who are in operations, right?
So, uh- The, from what we’ve heard, uh, this could have potentially been a, um, partially because of a transportation issue, which is what happens a lot in onshore. It’s a lot more common than we would like it to be. Um, and so that even goes beyond what would go on in the design studio and what would go on in the manufacturing and what would [00:16:00] go on even just for the people that are running the site, right?
So, so some sort of, um, in between, uh, EPC error. Um, but yeah, I just think that, like in a lot of industries, there should be a lot more communication between all of these teams on the lower level, so that way a lot of these problems can, can be avoided.
Allen Hall: I’m wondering if it’s actually an issue on the, the testing side.
And, uh, the one question that just popped up, and we saw from the ORE Catapult, uh, survey that’s being conducted at the moment, and if you haven’t participated in that, you just visit ORE Catapult and answer some of the survey questions. But torsion on a blade, which is very difficult to test for, and it really isn’t tested for today, but does happen during the move and the transportation of these big offshore blades.
Is it one area that we need to do a little more work in or maybe spend some more time focusing on it to see what is happening as blades are [00:17:00]moved?
Rosemary Barnes: The thing about te- torsion is that it is much more significant as blades get longer. I can’t, I can’t remember the equation off the top of my head, which is, um, bothering me.
But I think it scales with, like, the fourth power or something of, of length. And so whilst it was always a bit of a problem, it’s much more of a problem as it gets, as blades get bigger. I mean, they’ve never, like, fully tested a blade, and there was always a lot of reliance on, hey, y- you know, like we’ve tested certain things that is possible to test in a test facility on the ground.
But they also rely on their decades of experience of how blades actually behave in the field. But, you know, remember, that’s a real lagging, lagging indicator because y- you know, their decades of experience is mostly with lots smaller blades. Now, blades are really different because they’re longer and different effects are, are taking over.
It’s not just, uh, torsion, but it’s also the laminates get much thicker, and then y- you know, you, you have issues with the way that they’re curing, [00:18:00] and there’s a lot more just space for, um, defects to be present in a really thick laminate All of those things add up. Oh, yeah, then add in addition, like new materials, carbon fiber is new, and then new ways of producing it, you know, pultrusions, um, all kinds of different materials like balsa’s being replaced with foams and, um, like, you know, 10 times that number of what sounds like a small innovation, but all of these things have the potential for damage and don’t have a really long track record in the field to be able to kind of calibrate.
We do need to remember that, like, when you do something new, things are gonna break, uh, sometimes, they’re gonna fail sometimes. If they don’t, then you’re definitely being too conservative, and your product is costing more than it should, and nobody wants more expensive wind energy, right?
Matthew Stead: Rosie, Rosie, I, I know you’re doing some, some excellent work on, um, industry studies around erosion and temperature and so forth.
Um, I just wanted to let a little secret out of the bag that, um, in the future there will also be some [00:19:00] other studies on torsion and blade twist and blade dynamics. So, um, just a few things are in, in train at the moment, which I can’t share, share, but, uh, watch this space around better understanding blade twist.
Allen Hall: The Hydride wind farm runs on European turbines, but the next one might not. Two governments with two very different answers on who gets to build Europe’s wind fleet.
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Well, two countries and two decisions, one question. In Scotland, the UK government blocked plans for the Chinese manufacturer Mingyang to build a turbine factory, uh, near Inverness on national security grounds. 1.5 billion pounds of investment, up to about 1,500 jobs. And First Minister John Swinney has asked the new prime minister to reconsider.
And the UK energy secretary minister called that request irresponsible. Meanwhile, up in Denmark, Vattenfall has just won two offshore wind farms and will not say whether it will buy European turbines. Danish suppliers are not taking that quietly. So [00:21:00] the Scotland question about the Mingyang factory is at least being discussed again with the new prime minister in the UK.
It does seem like there’s a lot to do and get the government formed and make all this stuff happen. But I don’t see a Burnham administration changing the outcome for Mingyang, but I could be wrong. At the, the same time, Vestas is pushing for a more Eurocentric focus and to really keep out the Chinese.
Uh, something has to give here pretty soon.
Matthew Stead: I actually think Mingyang should, um, set up a factory in Scotland. I, I mean, what’s wrong with that? I mean, uh, why is that a security issue?
Rosemary Barnes: Set up the factory and put the, like, whatever you’re worried about, put protections in place for it, require it to be a local joint venture or whatever.
You know, we’ve seen the blueprint in many of what used to be, you know, less rich countries. That’s how they, you know, got a head start on some of these technologies. It’s not like, I don’t think that China [00:22:00] has a head start on wind, wind turbine technology, but they certainly have different ways of doing things that, um, yeah, we could, we could learn from.
But I think across the board, wind turbines, batteries, solar panels, whatever, let them set up factories, put the rules in place that mean that your country benefits from it and you’re getting the, you know, the information transfer.
Yolanda Padron: Do you think that’ll, like, impulse a lot of these more established European companies to maybe start fixing some of the issues that they’ve known about for, for a while, um, particularly regarding the blades and everything that we’ve talked about earlier?
Like, there’s enough competition there, so maybe they need to start looking a little bit more deeply into their problems.
Allen Hall: Do we think that Chinese operations have been out front, forward, honest, I’ll even use, about their blade issues?
Rosemary Barnes: No, but this is a good way to find out, isn’t it?
Allen Hall: Governments decide who is allowed to build a turbine after a discussion on Scotland.
Uh, but, but [00:23:00] occasionally, a court decides what a turbine legally is. India has just settled that question, and the reasoning should be of interest to anybody who ships machines across a border right after this. As wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial and let’s face it, difficult. That’s why the Uptime Podcast recommends PES Wind Magazine.
PES Wind offers a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high-quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit peswind.com today. A tax fight in India has produced a definition every turbine supplier should read.
Is a wind turbine bolted to a concrete foundation movable goods, or is it immovable property? State tax authorities argued immovable, which would have [00:24:00] taxed erection and commissioning contracts at 18% instead of 5%. The Andhra Pradesh, uh, High Court disagreed, and on the 12th of August, the Supreme Court declined to interfere.
The reasoning rests on something this whole industry takes for granted. A turbine can be taken down, moved, and put back up. So a turbine is a movable object, and it has less taxation. Bonus. So this is a really interesting discussion that’s happening in India because it’s probably symptomatic of things we’re seeing elsewhere across the world about taxation for wind turbines, right?
That, um, if there’s a way to tax a wind turbine, we’re gonna try to do it. This is a unique way, uh, that happens in India where depending on if it’s permanent or movable, the tax rates are different. I, I guess that would apply to a lot of components inside a wind turbine too, Matthew, don’t you? Like the, the generator, the, the big heavy things, [00:25:00] gearbox, generator, blades, rotors, tower sections, would be taxed at a, a lesser rate.
Matthew Stead: I agree with the court case that it’s all movable and, uh, you can actually buy turbines on the secondhand market, can’t you? I mean, if I wanted to buy, yeah, whatever, whatever, I could buy one and, and put it up in my backyard if I had a bigger backyard. Um, so yeah, I vote for movable. I vote for lower taxes.
Yolanda Padron: The way that it would work a lot of times in the US is, I mean, it’s, you pay, the company itself pays a lot less than they would’ve over time, right? Just by pure, the, the regular kind of tax laws. Um, but the community, there’d be just direct donations to the community, so then they’d get, uh, like money would actually come into the community where the turbines were being built instead of just distributed around the state, which I mean, in a state as big as Texas, it gets, um, but easier for that c- um, that county to get a lot more, uh, funding than they would typically get if it was [00:26:00] through a big enough area.
Um, but yeah, no, I agr- I completely agree with you guys that, that this should be a movable good. I mean, how many times have we seen, uh, even just a blade, um, that it looks like it’s, uh, just a, a failed blade that they have to go in and replace, and then they take it out, fix it, and then just bring it back to the same site or take it to another site across the country.
And, and to that point, like if you were to h- judge it as something that’s immovable, would then any blade replacement just not be taxed? Because then it’s, you’re moving that one component and two, but it’s essentially the same turbine. Like, I don’t know how that all would make sense.
Allen Hall: I think the Uptime Supreme Court agrees with the Indian Supreme Court that wind turbines are movable, and that’s good.
Well, 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. [00:27:00] 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 Rosa, Yolanda, and Matthew, I’m Allen Hall. We’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.
Can’t swear that the story here is authentic, but it sure rings true.
Vermont is a somewhat quirky state, but it protects its citizens very well. FWIW, this is where I want MY tax dollars going too.
Florida is a deeply red state that, true to form, wants as much ignorance as it can possibly produce. Educated people aren’t voting for people like Ron Desantis.
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