Published

3 years ago

October 12, 2023

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Repurposing Retired Turbine Blades with REGEN Fiber

Wind turbine blades are getting a fresh new life thanks to REGEN Fiber’s innovative recycling process! Their mechanical process turns old blades into top-notch construction materials. REGEN’s can turn any blade into strong, clean fiber that passes all the tests. With wind farms desperate for sustainable solutions, this Iowa-based startup is gearing up to start recycling blades at scale. Their new facilities will give old blades a new purpose in buildings, roads and more as the wind industry upgrades to bigger and better turbines. Out with the old, in with the recycled – REGEN Fiber is spearheading a recycling revolution for the wind sector.

Check out REGEN Fiber

Contact Jeff Woods! jwoods@regenfiber.com

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

Allen Hall: I’m Allen Hall and I’m here with my good friend Joel Saxum and on this special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast, we have a really interesting topic. As of 2020, there were over 720,000 tons of blade material around the world that needed to be disposed of or recycled. With more wind farms being built every year, this number will continue to grow.

Landfilling the blades is problematic. Their large size makes transportation and burial difficult and expensive. So finding an effective way to recycle the blades is becoming an urgent priority for the wind industry. Companies and researchers are currently exploring how to design future turbine blades for easier recycling, but wind farm operators need better recycling and disposal options for existing old blades, some promising recycling methods are being developed. And we are speaking with 1 of the companies investing in new recycling methods, REGEN Fiber. Our guest today is Jeff Woods, director of business development at Travero and Travero is the parent company of REGEN Fiber. Jeff, Welcome to the podcast.

Jeff Woods: Thank you.

Allen Hall: Obviously, we know we have a lot of problems with old blades and in the United States. It does create a lot of publicity of pictures, of blades being buried and more recently in Iowa where you are and also down in Texas.

There’s been some disposal issues where blades have been sitting out for a long time and haven’t been recycled like they were supposed to be. And this is creating quite the clamor for wind turbine OEMs and operators.

Jeff Woods: It is. It’s a problem that I think when the industry got rolling

decades ago, there was a lot of passion about getting a renewable energy resource literally up in the air and running to produce electricity in the region here, particularly in the central Midwest, where we’ve got more wind tunnels and you can shake a stick at quite literally and, for a long period of time, there really wasn’t a lot of problems.

Yeah, a few blades were getting damaged through lightning or storms or hail or whatnot. But boy, in the last I’ll Five, seven, 10 years as some of these farms have approached, the 20 year mark in particular, which is generally accepted as a benchmark time for the lifespan for some of the original blades that are out there.

They’re coming down they’re stressed, they’ve been damaged. They need to be replaced. You’ve got the inflation reduction act now which is compelling even more ferns to absolutely amp up on steroids. What the future of wind energy production in the United States looks like. So you have a lot of companies that are talking about going in and repowering existing turbines, knocking existing turbines down entirely and replacing them with much bigger much more efficient units.

And that’s all great, but if you’re in this part of the world you’re quite aware of piles of blades stack up in certain parts of Texas certain parts of Iowa Nebraska, Wyoming, a lot of blades that have been landfilled. You said 720, 000 tons of material out there that needs to be processed.

There’s obviously over 70, 000 towers in the United States today and more coming. And I just don’t thank the industry or society in general today for a wind energy source that is other otherwise sustainable and circular wants to know that these are being buried in landfills whether it’s in whole or in part.

And right now the current incumbent recycling solution is to have them used as a co combustion product with coal in cement processing in kilns around the Midwest. And I think it’s certainly better than landfilling, but I think there’s people now questioning, is that really a sustainable use. Yeah it’s better than coal, but is that longterm what we need to do with blades? I think that’s compelled a lot of firms to look at what can we do with the wind blade when it comes down out of the sky. And we’re certainly one of those firms. And since we’re here in Iowa and ultimately our parent company is Alliant Energy, the third largest regulated wind producer in the United States.

So it’s something that corporately that we have very much on our mind down the road. For what’s. What are we going to do with these blades when they come down? And it’s an active discussion topic with anybody you talk to that’s in the industry today.

Allen Hall: And I think because you’re located in Iowa, the pressure is really on for your local area.

We were looking at the stats for 2022 and 100 percent of energy delivered by MidAmerican, which is your energy provider in Iowa, was 100 percent renewable. So it tells you how much renewable energy is being generated in Iowa, and it’s typically somewhere at least 60 percent of that is wind. That’s amazing amount of wind energy, and we have driven through Iowa, and I’m from Nebraska originally, so I’m in Iowa occasionally.

It’s remarkable how the landscape has changed in terms of wind energy that it has become a really valuable resource for Iowa. But it also has to have the end of life approach, what happens at end of life, because you’re, with the IRA bill, and we were just down in Texas, where a lot of repowering is happening, there are blades all over the place.

And you, I think it has really become an imperative for companies like you have, Regen you’re bringing new ideas to the forefront here and trying to do something different besides burning the blades and I want, can you walk through what your solution is and what your regens approaches to recycling turbine blades?

Jeff Woods: Yeah, sure. And I’ll start with how this all got it’s origins, if you will .We’re partners with a firm in Des Moines, Iowa folks that come from the fiber industry that also have a materials handling background. And, as they drove around Iowa and saw all these blades and started reading the newspapers about what are we going to do with these things other than put them in a landfill or burn them with their background they thought there, there might be means to do this in a different fashion.

And there are certainly people looking at other types of processes and having some success. Those generally involve heat and chemicals, thermal reactions, and all kinds of fancy terms. Our approach is, maybe a little more Iowa right? It’s a little more simple. I use the analogy of sometimes the best things start out with a couple of guys in the garage and that’s how this started.

And then really when we met them, how can we scale this up to a point where you’re dealing with an entire blade or an entire tower coming to you in a short period of time and reprocessing it, which gets into a whole litany of other issues that the industry faces. And I would contend will be other

issues down the road, which is how are you transporting these efficiently? Are we want to make sure we’re not transporting these blades halfway across the country. Cause that’s going to be the next carbon footprint reduction thing that the industry needs to be aware of is you can’t take blades from Eastern Oregon to west of the Mississippi river or close to it.

That, that is very expensive. And It’s it just uses a lot of carbon, right? So our solution is largely, it’s entirely really mechanical. It brings together the best of some of the industries that we see out here some stuff from grain processing, some stuff from traditional recycling.

And it’s a lot of rinse and repeat. And I can’t get into too many deals. We have a patent pending on it, but it’s really, our desire is to, you talk to the folks that own the wind farms, are there major contractors that are doing the work? And it’s interesting because the industry from my perspective has a lot of different people that like to do things different ways.

Some firms like to control each piece individually. I’ll work with the contractor on getting it to the ground and I’ll work with the person doing what I call the field work and I’ll work with you separately As the recycler, if you will. To other folks that are like, just take care of my problem.

I don’t want to deal with it. I just want a sustainable solution that I can tell that I’ve got a certificate of recycling or certificate of otherwise beneficial destruction, I’ll call it. We’re really willing to work with anybody in a different way, the different way they want. We’ve met a lot of people in this space at some of the events that we’ve been to.

I think there’s a lot of very qualified and capable people out there that can do everything from the field work to the shredding the niche gets into the recycling solutions a little bit and that’s where we

stand.

Allen Hall: I bet. I think we first met your company down in, at New Orleans at ACP.

Jeff Woods: We did.

Allen Hall: Yeah. There was nobody else that was talking recycling at that convention, which was very odd because it’s such an important part of the life cycle of renewable energy. It just seemed like we would run into more companies like yours and we didn’t. So that’s why we’re talking to you. But, when we had that first discussion, I was really trying to understand what you do what is the magic here?

And I think you broke it down really well at the time, which is you’re not bringing the blaze to your facility to get machined up. They’re coming to you in football size pieces.

Is that right?

Jeff Woods: Generally speaking, if you talk football and less that’s in the sweet spot, that’s in that four to six inch chunk range and down.

Cause when the folks in the field are doing the work there, the blades land there when they show up. And they’ve got two weeks to get it off the job site. Cut it into sections and those sections traditionally get transported someplace and then shred or a firm brings in a mobile shredder and does field shredding.

So what we’re really dealing with is the chunks we’ve ran things through our pilot facility. Some of the pieces were, three inches wide and two foot long down to fibers. And somewhere in between is really our sweet spot, but we can introduce those to what we’re building here in Cedar Rapids of Fairfax, Iowa, actually, our main line operation, which will be our biggest production facility.

We can feed that feedstock into the front end of the system and a few minutes later on the back end of the processing line outcomes, we have the ability to actually make different sized products. So if you think about what’s going into it, it’s the composites and the fibers. It’s the balsa wood.

It’s the foam, there’s some residual metals in there from lightning wire and other things. We have magnets that are in the system, right? And as we do our slough, it’s, we have the ability to separate out certain sizes at certain parts in the line. And then do some finishing, if you will, of the product at the end that gets it into different states.

We have the ability to turn it into certain sizes of fibers. We’ve tested with various people fibers that are what I’m going to call pencil like, that almost compete as a mini rebar, if you will and could actually be used in those types of applications. If you think about…

Road construction, highway construction some of it might be that type of product all the way down to the powders and any process that like ours where you do, you’ve naturally got what we refer to as fines, right? A percentage of material that is down, or if it gets a little off spec, it makes sense just to grind it into a powder.

And that has applications flowable fill sub bases for roads, things of that nature. We’re very pleased with all, any scale of the process that we’ve done so far we’ve gotten very similar results. And the testing on those various results has all been the same to meet, certain accreditations by labs that have to say, your product meets and performs at these certain industry accepted specifications for the ends used that we’re targeting.

But it’s pretty, it’s it’s a long process. We do a lot of different things to it in the middle of it. But so far, knock on wood without the use of heat and chemicals We’re able to get the end products from the blade into products that are desired by certain markets.

Joel Saxum: A couple of questions, and basically boiling back. One thing was, I like the idea of, it’s almost, your processes are almost agricultural so I like the concept of Occam’s razor, if you’ve ever heard of that, being basically like, a lot of times, the simplest solution is the answer. So instead of involving pyrolysis and heat and all the energy that takes or some complicated chemical formulas and then, all of the struggles that those can come with as far as, pollution or anything like that or, getting rid of them in certain ways.

You’ve boiled it down to something I like. I like the term very Iowa like. It’s very mechanical. We have some processes here. One of the, one of the questions then would be. The first one, and this is just one for my own interest. How many different products have you guys produced to date?

Different solutions, different kind of, like you said, roadbed, I’m sticking to that one because that’s what I said the other day, I said roadbed materials is great but yeah, so how many different solutions are

you guys putting out?

Jeff Woods: Yeah, maybe not five different solutions, but five different products that have applications in different things, if that makes sense.

So products that can be used as flowable fill. Perhaps with some additives, something of a fly ash replacement, it has certain pozzolanic capabilities and then we’ve had interest from both molding compound companies, and I think if you talk, frankly, if you talk to other people in the space that are in the business of recycling wind turbine blades, you’re going to hear some, but it’s not like we’re doing anything revolutionary in terms of end markets because other people are going after bolt molding and sheet molding compound companies.

And then just a lot of people that just want to know, can we put that in, can we use that and make it an additive and siding for houses, trims for houses, could it be used in other types of applications? I think the thing with us, you talked about some of the folks that have tried this early on and, maybe struggled is.

I think we’re a little less obsessed with trying to come up with an actual end product, as opposed to a product that people can use in their applications. Part of what we’re trying to do is stay in our lane and be a recycler that makes a reliable product with a good life cycle assessment score that can displace carbon in certain applications, like the concrete industry.

That’s a big differentiator between us is I’m not trying to turn it, return it to virgin fiber, if that makes sense.

Joel Saxum: And so that’s the question that we came up with, right? Was when we talked on the podcast the other day about this, the issues that are going on in the market right now, that if you’re reading the news about wind industry, you know what we’re talking about.

But it was Rosemary brought this up and it was very smart. Concept is. Okay, say we’re talking structural concrete. Now, structural concrete has to be pressure tested, mag tested, all these different tests to make sure that it gets to a certain strength. Now, and we all, we can all understand that as engineers and armchair engineers, wherever you are, you want to make sure that your product that you’re putting out is good.

Now, if it’s structural concrete, say in the base of wind, Wind Tower Foundations, it has to have certain PSI, certain strengths, certain flexibilities even. How do we make sure that the products that you guys are producing, because as we know, inside the blade, like you said earlier, foam, balsa wood, resins mats, all these different components, how do we make sure that when that gets ground up or gets put into certain things, that when if it was the product was to go to concrete, you don’t end up with Foam in the concrete or, how does the end product users know that the product that they’re getting from you is of high enough quality?

Will pass those standards where labs are testing it to make sure. How do you guys do

that?

Jeff Woods: So I’d say that really two answers to that. One is through our material separation capabilities where the foams and the balsas really get pulverized down into the soil stabilization type materials. And then through our process, we have a good means of getting what I’m going to just broadly refer to as good, clean fiber.

That I think you probably saw examples of it in New Orleans, Allen where we had bowls of the various hydroponics that we were there. And when people run their hands through the, we’ll soon have a video on our website where people can go in and see. And I’ve, I’m actually distributing some powders that are going into a cement truck in my hands.

And it’s amazing how clean it is. To that point, we have then tested those clean fibers and mixes thereof in accredited labs to meet certain ASTM standards and passed with really outstanding performance. Some of the quirks of our product are that it actually helps the absorption of other materials.

It’s good stuff. And then ultimately what what an end user, wants to know on the end use application at the wind industry. Is what are your processes around that? Are you going to be ISO certified? Are you going to have all, and ISO certification comes with, you have to be in production for a little while and have certain plans and all that, but certainly in our purview and our pre work is all about being ISO certified from a quality perspective and using good consistent feedstocks.

Which, this material is generally as we move forward, some of this stuff has sat around Iowa for a long period of time, but it stays, it’s shelf life is really good, albeit there’s a few trees growing out of some of it in certain locations that gotta be cleaned up at some point.

Joel Saxum: Some rattlesnake eggs, and maybe a rabbit or two.

Jeff Woods: They’ve made a Jeff Woods mascot, it’s a critter running around a blade pile in a place I won’t mention, but it’s a little furrier than I am, I know that. But yeah, it’s just… Doing things right and being open and transparent with your customers about what they want, our solutions are, and working with them together.

Joel Saxum: The commercial question I want to ask is, as this problem of recycling wind turbine blades has become more mainstream, more and more mainstream, you’re starting to see, because I’m always active on LinkedIn people pop up, company pop, company X, company Y, company Z, hey, we recycle blades, hey, we recycle blades, will you guys take Recycled blades from these others, say, we would almost call them subcontractors, right?

Because there’s people that’ll go out, someone will contract them to, to remove their blades and recycle them. They may not have their own recycling process, but they’re really good at getting the blades down, getting them cut up, figure out the logistics, and maybe getting them to you guys. Do you

guys do that?

Jeff Woods: Yeah, so we’re agnostic as to where the blade comes from. We’ve, I think to date, we’ve received blades from probably, and keep in mind, we’re not up and running yet we’re gonna have one facility operational around the end of the year, the main facility in Cedar Rapids here second quarter ish next year but in terms of where the blades are, we’ve got people calling us from coast to coast, quite literally It’s amazing to me, particularly since the Inflation Reduction Act came out, how many people are suddenly in the space of I grind blades.

I process blades. Sometimes it feels like anybody that’s ever ran a wood chipper thinks they’re in the blade recycling business. But you know what, that’s their space for them to figure out and their headaches. Whether it’s some of the major blade manufacturers, or some of the big engineering firms, or contractors that have been engaged to take down the blades, to mom and pops, if you will, that call us saying, I’ve got three blades coming from here.

Is this something that you would be interested in taking? We talk to everybody, we just to know what type of blade we’re dealing with for planning purposes more than anything.

Allen Hall: I want to ask a question that actually Rosemary asked during our podcast, which was, there’s a variety of different kinds of resin materials that are being used on blades and different manufacturers have different kind of approaches to things, so obviously the blades are slightly different.

Does that affect your end product at all of if they’re using a specific epoxy or polyurethane or whatever else is being used today, does that really matter in your process?

Jeff Woods: It has not. We have tested a RAM material from every blade manufacturer that I can think of all of whom have their own, McDonald’s secret sauce, so to speak, and how they do things.

And it just hasn’t mattered in terms of how it works and are running it through the actual operation. And nor has it mattered in terms of the testing results for the end product.

Allen Hall: That’s amazing. So your end customers then are they local to you for the product? There’s got to be a line of people at your doorstep ready to take the material because it does improve their existing products.

Especially for road bases and things like that, even concrete, right? It makes it stronger. Provides a lot of benefits. What is your in customer who are, who generally are they? Are they local? Are they national? Where are they coming from?

Jeff Woods: They’re all of the above. Keep in mind that a lot of the national firms that are in a concrete or asphalt industries, they might own 50 plants around the United States or 50 different companies around the United States or operations all over the United States of North America.

They are, I would say, literally could be anywhere. That said we do have a strong regional emphasis. I’m not going to exclude anybody and if they’re a thousand miles from here, they want all the material and the commercial terms are agreeable to all parties. That’s fine by Jeff. But certainly we want to A.

We’re an Iowa company trying to solve a problem that’s big in Iowa. So we do talk to a lot of Iowa companies about our solutions. And isn’t it a great message if, we could, we’re all doing this for each other and helping out ourselves. But there are certainly, if you look at the and I’m going to broadly label it as the concrete industry sometimes, and to an extent the aggregates industry and what they’re Scrutiny has been, as a contributor to global warming, they’re very interested in knowing that this solution is out there where, and these folks use massive amounts of reinforcing fibers in, whether it’s roadways, whether it’s, whether concrete or asphalt, whether it’s precast concrete, there’s just, to the pavers in your yard, right?

These folks use lots and lots of fiber and we’re just a fraction of it, right? We’re never going to displace virgin fiber under any scale, but I think that for a portion of their usage, we offer them a very compelling ESG message and carbon reduction footprint score. And most of those firms have significant goals to be reduced carbon or be carbon neutral by 2030.

So our timing is right by that. So strong interest from the industry. But consistent messaging also that it’s great you’ve got to meet performance scores to Joel’s points that are parallel with existing products cause they, they can’t be responsible for putting our material and I’m just going to a warehouse floor.

And then the owner calls up two years later, and guess what? I got cracks in the warehouse floor, right? The products got to perform and they compete every day against firms of all different types, shapes, and sizes. And some of them have more interest in compelling ESG messages than others.

We can’t be What I’m going to say we have to be cost neutral. The other third thing that, and this is going to sound a little bit funny but many of these companies are companies that have heard similar pitches before whether it’s from wind turbine blades, maybe at different levels. In other words, I want to give you chunks of this stuff, just throw it in a roadway, right?

Or I want to, I’ve given you fiber sources from other materials. That didn’t pan out. So there is a sense of, and there have been other people in the market that have tried it with other products. So we talked to people about putting our materials in fiber boards and things like that. There is a sense of this is all great.

We need to know you’re real, right? Because some of the things we talked about early on, Allen people are, that is very fresh and raw in certain people’s. Brains that sales pitches can be sales pitches. We need to know that you’re real, right? And legit.

Allen Hall: Does the state of Iowa play into this at all in terms of the state government, even local governments?

And are you seeing similar, anybody from a government standpoint say, Hey, REGEN this is really cool. What you’re doing in Iowa. Why don’t you come over to Wisconsin or where Joel is or come Oklahoma, Texas, obviously it seems like there’s a market for you and it would benefit the state that maybe the state regulators or even the legislature would be interested in bringing you down.

Jeff Woods: Yeah, the state of Iowa, certainly the agencies that we’ve talked to about it, and it’s really known that all of them are excited about our solution. Our outreach to other states, we’re really kicking in an earnest, through associations, so we’ll… We’ll start to get awareness out there, particularly as we look to take this to other locations.

So we’re not transporting those blades all over North America. I would say as much as the States, the wind industry is driving where they would like to see facilities, right? And it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to pull up any heat map on where our wind turbines in North America and say, where would these facilities make sense?

So I’m not disclosing any trade secrets there. And I would say that some of the potential end users that we’ve talked to that have become familiar with us through events like a world of concrete, or we’re going to the concrete expo next week, a huge event asphalt events that they say, man, we’d like to have that close to us because a lot of these firms went to sourcing fibers from overseas and felt some of the disruption in the supply chain that came right after COVID and the volatility and a supply of material.

And cost associated with it. So it’s, there’s a little bit of that reshoring aspect in there. So yeah, a lot of positive momentum for it. We just need to finish the job.

Allen Hall: And I know our listeners are going to be interested in picking this up, especially a lot of operators, right? So the operators in the United States are all looking for, like you’ve mentioned, they’re looking for recycling solutions, because if they’re not

already in the middle of a repower. They are planning repowers for the next five to 10 years, right? That takes, things take time and they need to be putting people like you in place as part of their repowering solution, right there to get the blades recycled and to use it for something beneficial to society and not just necessarily burn them like is currently happening.

So this is a really interesting approach. And I, as soon as your patent gets issued, I want to read it. I want to understand what goes on. And maybe if I’m on Iowa, maybe you can give me a little sneak peek through the factory.

Jeff Woods: We’ll walk you through the factory tomorrow. You’ll just be blindfolded.

Allen Hall: It’d make it a little difficult.

We really appreciate having you on the podcast.

How do people reach out to you and connect with you at REGEN?

Jeff Woods: So they can they can call me (319) 786-3698. Old guys like me still answer the phone once in a while. Or they can email at jwoods @regenfiber.com.

Allen Hall: And the website is regenfiber. com.

Thanks for being on the podcast and we love to have you back. So I’m serious, when you guys open the doors to outside eyes, we’ll be interested in taking a tour.

Jeff Woods: You’re more than welcome.

Repurposing Retired Turbine Blades with REGEN Fiber

Renewable Energy

Making the World an even More Disgusting Place

Published

10 hours ago

May 19, 2026

Alice Rush

I recently met an attorney who told me that is specialty is traffic. “Really!” I replied. “That sounds interesting. Could you give me an example of what you do, and for whom?”

He explained that people who get hefty citations hire him to get their cases dismissed, or have their fines greatly reduced. He summarized this as follows, “I take money away from local governments, and keep bad drivers on the road.”

Holy crap, I was thinking. Not everyone is a Mahatma Gandhi or MLK, but should anyone fashion a career out of making the world a more dangerous and degraded place than it already is?

I’ll grant that this is an extreme example. But consider that there are millions of people working in industries like fossil fuels, tobacco, sodas, and building war machines. Then we have our elected officials whose job it is destroy public education and environmental health, while others work on gerrymandering so as to keep themselves in office and dismantle our democracy.

Sure, the attorney described above has a disgusting profession, but he’s not alone.

Making the World an Even More Disgusting Place

Renewable Energy

A Nation of Idiots and Its Race to the Bottom

Published

12 hours ago

May 19, 2026

Alice Rush

The appeal to America’s most stupid people is heating up, and the meme here is a great example.

First, let’s realize that the percentage of Muslims in the U.S. is somewhere between 1.1% and 1.3%, compared to Christianity at 67%.

Then, try to image any process by which our local, state, and federal laws, conforming as they all must to the U.S. Constitution could be replaced by Sharia law, which calls for the amputation of thieves’ hands, lashing as punishment of consuming alcohol, and the stoning to death of adulteresses.

https://www.2greenenergy.com/2026/05/19/nation-of-idiots/

Renewable Energy

Conference Recap, Suzlon Targets Europe

Published

22 hours ago

May 19, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Conference Recap, Suzlon Targets Europe

Matthew Stead recaps WindEurope Madrid and Blades Europe Edinburgh. Plus Suzlon unveils its Blue Sky platform for Europe, Muehlhan consolidates six specialist firms, and Mingyang keeps hunting for a European home.

Speaker: [00:00:00] 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 2025: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, and I’m here with Matthew Stead, who is back in Australia, but not at home.

He’s up in Queensland. Or actually, not even on– in Queensland, technically. He’s on an island off the coast of Queensland. Where are you at, Matthew?

Matthew Stead: Uh, Moreton Island. It’s, uh, like a resort island off, uh, off of Brisbane, so beautiful outside.

Allen Hall 2025: Well, you need a little bit of resort time because you’ve been to two conferences, and you spent a good bit of time in Austria after that.

So you were at WindEurope in Madrid, and then following that, you went right over to Scotland for Blades Europe. So I wanna hear your thoughts. We’ll start with, uh, WindEurope and what was going on at that conference. It did sound like there was a pretty [00:01:00] good attendance, and some people that I have talked to about it really en-enjoyed being in Madrid.

It’s just

Matthew Stead: a bigger city. Um, first time I’d ever been to Madrid, and, uh, yeah, the show was amazing, actually. I was, I was a bit blown away by, uh, I think the OEMs were back out in force. You know, so like the Vestas, Siemens were, um, really– and Nordexes and so forth were really back out in force, so that was really good to see.

Um, the, some of the larger operators had really, really strong presence as well. So you could see that, you know, Iberdrola, Res, um, those sorts of companies were, um, really, you know, putting a big effort in and meeting their customers and, um, really showing, uh, the world who they were. So that was really, um, you know, really good to see.

There were so many people seriously. Um, the queues for food at lunch were, were, um, one of the major problems. Um, so, um, yeah, it was really a lot of people, so that was really exciting. Um, and I mean, for me, I was [00:02:00]trying to catch up with, with partners and friends and, yeah, it was, it was jam, jam-packed just meeting people in the industry.

Um, probably a few other things. So s- you know, SkySpecs and Aerones had a really strong, um, presence there. So, um, SkySpecs and Aerones were, were doing really well. Um, maybe one of the, um, surprises for me, and I know this has been a topic on a few other previous episodes, was there was a lot of interest in bird and bat detection.

I, I, I think there had to be, like, five companies that were, were– had really big setups, and it was a really, really big topic around cameras and so forth. So, um, that was a, a big topic. And, um, then there, there was a really, really strong, you know, supply chain, you know, from, from vessels to cables to, you know, repairs.

Allen Hall 2025: What was the ratio of offshore companies to onshore companies? I’m always curious.

Matthew Stead: You’re looking through the, the list. Um- I would, I’m only guessing it [00:03:00] was probably about 40% had an offshore focus of some kind. So it was definitely a strong offshore focus. Um, obviously, you know, a lot of onshore, offshore combined companies.

But yeah, definitely the word offshore kept on popping up a lot.

Allen Hall 2025: Because Spain is mostly onshore. Like, um, like 99% onshore, right? I think it’s a couple of small projects going offshore. Does it look like the onshore business is gonna pick up, uh, just in terms of the activity on the floor in Madrid?

Matthew Stead: Uh, yeah.

Um, I, I think, you know, like I said, you know, those big operators like the REZAs and the Iberdrolas and, and the OEMs, I, I think it’s just a given that, um, you know, things are buoyant. Um, well, they appear to be definitely very buoyant. Uh, I think we’ve heard, you know, some of the positive, um, financial news from a few of the OEMs recently.

So yeah, yeah, it seems like o- onshore is, is maturing further, further, further. And so you went straight

Allen Hall 2025: from Madrid, right, to [00:04:00] Edinburgh, Scotland. That was a change in weather, I would assume. Uh, probably about a 20 degree Celsius difference. 25 down to 15, yes. Whoa. Okay. Yeah, that’s a good bit. Uh, but the Edinburgh conference, that’s the first time that Blades Europe has been to Edinburgh.

I, at least I don’t remember them being there before. That tends to be a more technical conference than Wind Europe. Uh, the, the Blades conference is obviously focused on blades, and all the relevant experts in Europe do tend to show up there. What were some of the hot topics at Blades Europe this year?

Matthew Stead: Yeah, I think it was, um, an interesting conference. Um, I, I’d been to Blades USA, so I was able to contrast, um, Blades USA a little bit. I think probably the differences here were, yeah, there was definitely some strong, strong, uh, experts there, like you say. Um, you know, Birgit, um, our friend was, was in attendance and a few of her colleagues from Statkraft.

Um, I think, and or, uh, actually ORE Catapult, the, the [00:05:00] UK research, um, offshore renewable energy research, um, they did some great presentations. I really, um, they really shared some really good insights. So, um, ORE Catapult were talking about life extension and, um, you know, looking at the, the fatigue on blades and, uh, how they’re, how they’re going to perform and life extension.

So some great stuff from ORE Catapult there. Probably another key topic that came up was around, uh, sort of related to life extension, but also recycling. The, there was a really good session on the new IEC standard. Um, um, to, you know, full disclosure, I was actually on the panel. So I, I thought it was a great panel.

But, um, the new IEC standard for blade operations and maintenance, um, is really well a-advanced now in its development. Um, very strong risk focus, you know. So depending on the risk then drives your, your blade O&M program. [00:06:00] Um, so that was a, a great talk as well. Uh, and then maybe finally, um, something close to my heart, um, I think the, the, you know, the maturity of CMS companies.

There actually, there were five blade CMS companies there, which is probably the biggest turnout I’ve seen around blade CMS, um, ever. And so it was good to see that sort of, um, interest and growth, um, and the need for, for blade CMS. Uh, and, um, obviously the last one, lightning. So lightning always an issue.

Lots of discussions around lightning, um, you know, through Greece and a few of the, the, the Balkan go- Balkan states. On the blade recycling front, there’s a

Allen Hall 2025: company in Scotland called ReBlade that is involved in some of the recycling efforts. Did they give a presentation of, of what they’re up to at the moment?

Matthew Stead: Uh, yes, I think they did. Um, they’re talking about setting up a, a site in a, a [00:07:00] couple of sites, and I think Inverness was the, the location where they’re, where they’re setting up a site. The, um, the port is supportive, so they’re working through those, those, those challenges. You know, getting a site, getting transport and access to the blades.

Um, working out when, when the, when the blades will come to them. You know, the storage of blades. Um, the, the end, end uses for those blades. Getting all that supply chain, um, lined up was, you know, yeah, it was, that was quite thorough and quite, um, yeah, inspiring.

Allen Hall 2025: And on the CMS side, what are operators trying to monitor?

‘Cause usually have something in mind that they’re going after.

Matthew Stead: For better or for worse, there’s still some serial, um, failure modes. Um, and so the industry is looking at very particular, you know, challenges that, um, certain make and model have. Um, so root insert failures was definitely one of those, um, one of those topics.

Um, and that was actually one of the, the, the [00:08:00] roundtable discussions at, uh, Blades Europe. Some other, um, monitoring around, you know, lightning and- lightning damage and what’s happening with the LPS. That was also, uh, another big topic for, for monitoring. And then a few other sort of general, more, more general, um, you know, natural frequencies of blades and seeing if the natural frequencies are changing, indicating a change in stiffness, which relates to potential damage.

So yeah, there was– it was quite a mix of the types of, um, CMS that was discussed.

Allen Hall 2025: Has the digital twin finally died? Anybody talk about that?

Matthew Stead: There’s actually a current call-out for a new research project in Europe around digital twins. So, um, yeah, one of the larger, one of the larger operators is, is putting, pulling together a team to talk about digital twins, so-

Allen Hall 2025: I, I think this is one of the more difficult things to do, but just because you’re dealing with a variety of blades and blade factories and unique issues that pop up that are…[00:09:00]

You, you really can’t model until after they happen. And after they happen, everybody knows about them anyway. So what’s the point of the digital twin if you can’t detect things early? It, it, it is a great concept, but hard to implement.

Matthew Stead: Yeah. And why? Why would you do it? I mean, you, you’re only gonna do it if there’s a benefit, and what is the benefit?

So, but I think, uh, actually at Blades Europe, digital twins was not really a topic. And maybe one thing I forgot to say is that the, um, Wind Power Lab did a, a good, um, presentation on carbon blades as well, so.

Allen Hall 2025: The, the carbon blades are, is a very good discussion, just because the trend has been lately to scrap blades and bring new ones on site.

And the carbon can be difficult to repair, or it takes a long time to repair, and you just don’t have the manpower or woman power to go out and fix it. So the, the fastest option is to build a new blade. But it does leave a lot of blade waste, which is where the industry is not going. Uh, recyclable blades, which is [00:10:00] in process at the moment, will make that easier, but you just don’t wanna be recycling blades.

You like to be able to repair them. Composites are repairable. And it’s, it is so odd that they, they wanna continue on that pathway, but we’ll see. We’ll see. You don’t really learn the lesson until you do it.

Matthew Stead: Um, however, you know, the, the presentation on carbon blades was, um, you know, highlighted a lot of the challenges, but also highlighted some of the positives and the, you know, how they do help.

Um, and so there was a lot of support for carbon blades, but there’s a lot of unknowns and, um, and there was a lot of discussion around how do you even test if the LPS is working. Uh, it’s just impossible. So, you know, traditional methods on carbon blades, yeah, it just don’t work. So, um, but there was a lot of support that the carbon does bring benefit.

But yeah, I agree with you. There’s a lot of challenges there.

Allen Hall 2025: That’s one of the things we learned years ago back in the late ’80s, early ’90s when we, at least in, in the [00:11:00] States, started building a number of carbon fiber aircraft. And the repair situation and dealing with repairs in, in remote locations became difficult.

And you’ve learned how much training it took to keep an industry running, and you’re starting from zero for a lot of places that all he had worked on was aluminum. It, it’s a completely different world. You’re, you’re training tens of thousands of technicians around the world. You weren’t planning to go do that, and now you are.

So it just, it adds to the cost.

Matthew Stead: It also ties into the OEM, um, you know, providing, you know, details on how to repair those blades because they’re not, they’re not just a standard item, so-

Allen Hall 2025: No, you, you don’t wanna be grinding into a protrusion if you can avoid it. It- you’re just never gonna get it back into that original form because protrusions are in some part magic.

And taking a grinder to them is not gonna… It’s breaking the magic. All the magic will be leaving that protrusion when you do that. Yeah, very [00:12:00]difficult. Delamination and bond line failures in blades are difficult problems to detect early. These hidden issues can cost you millions in repairs and lost energy production.

CIC NDT are specialists to detect these critical flaws before they become expensive burdens. Their nondestructive test technology penetrates deep into blade materials to find voids and cracks traditional inspections completely miss. CIC NDT maps every critical defect, delivers actionable reports, and provides support to get your blades back in service.

So visit cicndt.com because catching blade problems early will save you millions.

Well, as we know, the wind industry has long been dominated by a handful of European and American turbine makers, uh, particularly in the, quote-unquote, “West.” Uh, but that landscape may be [00:13:00] shifting. Suzlon, the Indian turbine giant that nearly collapsed under about a $1.5 billion of debt just a few years ago, is back.

The company has unveiled a new turbine platform aimed squarely at Europe, and says it will build its first factory on the continent if it wins enough orders. Vice Chairman Girish Tanti, uh, delivered the announcement at the WindEurope conference in Madrid, where Matthew was Signaling that Suzlon believes its time has come.

And since you were there, Matthew, did you hear any news on the floor, any discussion on the show floor about Suzlon entering Europe?

Matthew Stead: Well, actually, yes. So, um, um, there was actually a good, uh, contingent of Suzlon people at, uh, Blades Europe. So, uh, they attended, uh, Wind Europe and then Blades Europe. Um, and I, you know, I was able to have a bit of discussion with them.

I think, I think, uh, they were quite optimistic about, um, [00:14:00] you know, moving back or moving into, into Europe in terms of manufacturing. Um, however, there was an element of skepticism. Am I allowed to say that? So they, uh, were, they were not completely, um, convinced that it’s gonna happen, but, uh, they were certainly excited by that.

It was definitely a, a clear possibility, but not a given.

Allen Hall 2025: Well, they have a, a new platform called the Blue Sky platform, um, which will have, I think, two turbines here, a 5 megawatt and a 6.3 megawatt, which is squarely aimed at Europe and also the United States, for that matter. And building a factory, though, doesn’t make a lot of sense if the cost driver for a factory in Europe is the European employees, which it tends to be when you hear the discussions about the cost structure, it’s about the employees.

I’m not sure why Suzlon would make blades or nacelles in Europe unless they could avoid tariffs or taxation, because India is a very [00:15:00] cost, uh, driven, uh, manufacturing facilities writing country. So why would you wanna go build another expensive factory, probably in the realm of a couple hundred million pounds, uh, if you’re gonna go do it?

It probably doesn’t make any sense to do that as well as just selling turbines into Europe. It seems like the easier path.

Matthew Stead: Yeah. And then you’ve got all the, like, the quality control challenges and, you know, you get the cultural challenges. So yeah, to be honest, I don’t qu- I don’t quite understand the logic behind that either.

Um, maybe there’s, there’s some things that we don’t know about behind the scenes in terms of tariffs and other, other incentives that we don’t know about.

Allen Hall 2025: Would you see operators taking, uh, a Suzlon presentation and maybe even writing plans for developing with Suzlon turbines in the next couple of years?

Is that a, a feeling that Europeans would, would do that, or is Vestas mainly and Siemens Gamesa so strong in Europe that it doesn’t make any sense unless [00:16:00] you’re in sort of the periphery countries of Europe?

Matthew Stead: I mean, my first exposure to a wind turbine was a Suzlon turbine in Australia, and there are many, many, many Suzlon turbines in Australia.

And they’re all, they’re all still working. They’re all still reliable. So I mean, from a reputation and reliability and, um Yeah, history point of view, I can’t see why not. I mean, you know, uh, the operators will see that, you know, they’ve proven themselves. They’re not new kids on the block. Um, and so why wouldn’t an operator think about it?

Allen Hall 2025: Well,

Matthew Stead: in

Allen Hall 2025: this quarter’s PES Wind magazine, which you can download for free at peswind.com, there is a nice article from Muelhen Wind Services, and that is a growing company. A lot going on there. Our friends at AC883 just joined Muelhen a f- few months ago, and is being part of that conglomerate. And, and we know that obviously building wind farm used to mean [00:17:00]consulting with dozens of contractors, and this is where Mue- Muelhen has really s- stepped into the breach here.

So from blade repair at one company and heavy lift cranes at another company, all that had to be managed separately. You’re calling s- different companies all the time. And watching asset managers and site supervisors do this, uh, it is a thankless job. Well, Muelhen’s trying to change that a little bit, uh, and they’re saying that that model no longer works, and I totally agree with them.

It’s insane. Uh, but so Muelhen has consolidated six specialist firms under its one brand, and covering everything from port pre-assembly to long-term operations and maintenance across Europe, the US and Canada, uh, and Asia-Pacific. Its CEO, Søren Hoffer, uh, puts it plainly, “The next phase of wind will not be won by turbine size alone.

It will be decided by the supply chain’s ability to execute.” Boy, [00:18:00]couldn’t say truer words. Uh, I’ve worked with Muelhen or my company, Weather Guard Lightning Tech, has worked with Muelhen on a couple of projects over the years, and we’ve always had, uh, great service from them, and we have talked to a number of operators that love them, that love using Muelhen.

So it’s not a surprise that they’re trying to grow and expand and make life easier for the operators.

Matthew Stead: Sounds like a brilliant move, really. I mean, you know, pulling all these sort of things together is, is a real challenge, isn’t it? I mean, coordinating all these subcontractors, um, getting to turn up at the right time, and yeah, I mean, it just sounds like a brilliant move, and I think that we need more, more, more efficient service companies to service the growing fleet.

So the more they can get organized, the better.

Allen Hall 2025: Yeah, the scale matters here, and the expertise matters. As we’ve have a couple hundred thousand turbines that are [00:19:00] operating in the, quote-unquote, “West,” it does make sense to have a larger player that has seen most of those turbines and has some experience with them.

It’s always the scary scenario when you’re working with a new company. Have they been on this turbine before? Do they know what they’re doing? Do they know- Lockout tagout. Even simple things like that come to the forefront. And the, the trouble is on some of these smaller companies that are in that business is that, uh, you just don’t get the level of service, you don’t get the level of response, you don’t have the horsepower if something were to, to go wrong on site.

They don’t have the cash to, to bring in a second crane or another crew to get this job done. It, it does become scale at some point. And, uh, for a long time in the wind industry, particularly United States, it, it has been a lot of, quote-unquote, “mom-and-pop operations,” and those are slowly getting acquired by the likes of Muehlhan.

I, I, I think this is inevitable at some point. Uh, from the asset owner’s, uh, desktop watching this go on, [00:20:00] how do you see, you know, a large operator interfacing with Muehlhan? Are they gonna do just one-stop shopping at this point? They’re, they’re not gonna have three or four different companies to work with, that they’re just gonna lock into, uh, Muehlhan?

‘Cause, uh, that’s what I see.

Matthew Stead: Yeah. I, I think, you know, from the, the WOMA Conference in, in Melbourne, we saw a bit of a, bit of a shift towards, um, outsourcing, at least in Australia Pacific region. And I mean, if, if you’re gonna outsource, um, you’re, you’re probably gonna join up with a, a Muehlhan, um, equivalent.

So, you know, that way it just takes some of the risk out of, out of it, so it, it sort of makes sense. Um, the other observation I’ve heard is that, you know, because of the seasonality of blade repairs, it’s really hard to keep hold of, um, blade techs. And so if you’re a global company, you’ve got at least some opportunity of using the ses- seasonality and keeping hold of the good techs and, um, you know, so, you know, you know, summer in, in North, North, uh, America, and then, you know, summer in [00:21:00] Australia.

So it, it, it allows these company, allows these companies to keep hold of their good people.

Allen Hall 2025: Yeah. And that, that’s always been the yearly problem, right? That you have a, a crew of a couple good crews in the summertime, and you come back the next summer and it’s a whole different group of people and yeah, that, that, that’s trouble for the industry.

Well, a- and it’s good. It’s fi- it’s finally good to see this happening, and I know, uh, we’ve talked about it internally here at Weather Guard of who to work with and who to partner with. We like working with companies that have scale, and I think we’re finally there. So it’s really interesting to see this article from Johan in PES Wind.

So if you, if you haven’t read the article, you should go visit peswind.com and take a look. There’s a lot of great content in this quarter’s issue, and y- you don’t wanna miss it. So go to peswind.com today. As wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it, difficult. That’s why the Uptime podcast recommends PES Wind magazine.

PES Wind offers [00:22:00] 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. So when, when the energy prices spike like they’re happening right now, uh, the Iran war being one of the main drivers, and obviously gasoline prices have jumped quite a bit, here’s what happens.

The China’s clean energy sector goes to work, and they’re racing to make connections and make sales. As electricity prices jump up, gas prices jump up, everybody wants to try to find a cheaper way to provide energy to their countries or locales. Uh, China’s there to offer it. So it’s solar panels, batteries, EVs, and even wind turbines are, are looking for homes out of China.

Uh, for European wind professionals, [00:23:00] the most important part comes from Mingyang, right? So they were unable to get a production facility in Scotland, but they haven’t given up yet. They are still searching for a home somewhere in Europe. And as of today, I don’t think they’ve found it. They’re s- I think they’re still looking for some country to host them.

But how long is that gonna go on, Matthew? I, I think with the domination of Vestas and Siemens Gamesa in Europe and Suzlon trying to make an entry, will Mingyang and other Chinese manufacturers eventually find a home?

Matthew Stead: It’s interesting. I think, uh, if you look at the airline industry, you’ve always had premium providers, and you’ve always had low-end providers, and I think there’s always a place for all of them.

And so I re- I reckon they’ll find, I think they’ll find their place in, in the market and just, you know, it might just take a while. But they’ve got the strength, haven’t they? They’ve got the product. They’ve got the strength. So it’s just a matter [00:24:00] of time.

Allen Hall 2025: Yeah. I, I, I d- I do think eventually it will happen.

But Vestas and, and Siemens Gamesa have done a pretty good job of controlling it, and wind Europe, honestly. Wind Europe has not been a proponent of a Chinese manufacturer in Europe, so that generally will help slow down any business plans they would have But at the same time, there’s a lot of opportunities around the world that’s not necessarily in Europe, right?

South America has strong ties with China. They’re– And Chinese companies are, are starting production in China. There’s a lot th- things happening there. You’re gonna see that in Africa and other places. So it doesn’t necessarily have to happen in Europe, which is, I think Europeans and Americans think, “Well, we can’t have China in those locales.”

Fine. But it isn’t like China doesn’t have other opportunities to, to sell turbines or solar panels or batteries. There are plenty places on the planet where

Matthew Stead: people that

Allen Hall 2025: need

Matthew Stead: lower cost energy, and they’re gonna find them. Um, I did attend a, a panel [00:25:00] discussion on Türkiye, um, and the growth, and there was a lot of growth in Türkiye around onshore and offshore.

And so maybe Mingyang, that might be a, a place, um, for them to, to start, you know, on the doorstep of, of Europe. The stepping stone, so to speak. Stepping country.

Allen Hall 2025: Is there risk in that, uh, uh, if, uh, uh, Mingyang decided to put a plant in Türkiye? Is, does that come with some political aspect? Because I, I, I don’t remember.

Türkiye t-tends to play, uh, uh, k- kind of like Switzerland in, in terms of working with different, uh, political systems over time. Yeah.

Matthew Stead: I, I’ve had a bit more to do with a few, a few, um, sort of organizations in Türkiye recently and, um, you know, it’s highly professional, highly, you know, logical, and so I, I can’t see why it’d be a challenge.

So I think, yeah, that stepping stone into Europe might be a, a logical way to go. Well, maybe

Allen Hall 2025: we’ll see that in the next [00:26:00] couple of months. I don’t know. There’s gonna be a lot to happen there. There’s so much money being spent in Europe on renewables, wind, solar, battery, all the above, that there’s plenty of opportunity, and every company that has a product that’s gonna be trying to sell it in Europe right now.

It’s a smart move. Absolutely.

Matthew Stead: I think the other thing that we’ll probably be talking about a little bit more is EV trucks or, you know, electric trucks.

Allen Hall 2025: You think so?

Matthew Stead: I reckon we’ll be talking more and more about electric trucks.

Allen Hall 2025: Does Europe even have a, a le- a real true EV tractor-trailer, large truck?

What do they call… I guess they call it a lorry.

Matthew Stead: I don’t think yet. But that’s why I’m saying I think this is a topic that’s gonna raise itself. Um, I’ve, I’ve seen some numbers recently which says that it’s a bit of a no-brainer to go from diesel to, um, to battery now.

Allen Hall 2025: So is Tesla gonna be the, the winner there just because of their, I don’t even what they call it, the Tesla truck?

Is that what they call that now?

Matthew Stead: Not the Cybertruck, the, the truck truck.

Allen Hall 2025: Electric semi-truck. There you go. [00:27:00] Thank you, producer Claire.

Matthew Stead: I think you’ve gotta watch, you know, you’ve gotta watch BYD and a few of the other, the other, um, other companies.

Allen Hall 2025: Do they have something as large as what, uh, Tesla is offering today?

Because Tesla is offering a true semi or tractor-trailer

Matthew Stead: I, I, I must admit I’m not a, a huge expert on the topic, but I’m sure Rosemary is.

Allen Hall 2025: She drives the big rigs? Is that what she’s doing?

Matthew Stead: But I think we– Yeah, I think, I think it’s an in-interesting thing to watch because, um, certainly fuel prices in Australia are definitely pushing, um, this idea of, um, electric trucks.

Allen Hall 2025: Yeah, diesel prices are really high in the States. I- if they’re high in the States, I can’t even imagine what they are in Europe or Australia. They must be through the roof. So if you have a diesel vehicle, although they run forever and are pretty efficient, the price of fuel is insane right now.

Matthew Stead: And, you know, if you, if you take that a step further into mining, so Twiggy Forest, um, and Fortescue, you know, switching to [00:28:00] electric, uh, trucks and electric mining, yeah, it makes sense.

Allen Hall 2025: Does the math work out on that? Uh, obviously Fortescue is taking, uh, really a pretty significant risk in that they’re developing their own electricity generation sites via wind and solar and battery, the whole thing, and they’re converting some of their larger vehicles to electric. Does that hold a big risk, or is this just a financial no-brainer, particularly when diesel prices are so high?

Matthew Stead: Yeah, I think it’s a financial no-brainer. Uh, and that’s why partly I think we’ll be talking about trucks because, you know, once the finances make sense, um, there’ll be a faster transition. And I think, you know, Fortescue is not a silly company.

Allen Hall 2025: Fortescue is willing to dabble, right? So they’re willing to, to see where the technology is and spend a little bit of money and possibly it works out, right?

I think there’s– you have to take a little bit of risk if you’re in that business because you are spending so much money on fuel. [00:29:00] You can spend a couple million dollars playing in different areas to pick an eventual winner. Obviously, they’re gonna– Well, it’s not obvious at the moment, but it, it seems obvious to us being on the electricity side.

Electricity is gonna be the answer. Renewable energy is gonna be the easy way to do it, the lowest cost way to do it. There you go. Go do it. Well, American Clean Power’s event, uh, which is in Houston this year, will be happening June 1st through the 4th at the convention center downtown in Houston. It’s gonna be warm, everybody, so if you’re traveling from a cooler country like Denmark to Houston, bring something cool to wear.

It will be warm in June. It, it– Houston is just a very warm place, and it’s quite humid, so it’ll, it’ll be a, a unique environment. However, it does sound like there’s gonna be a, a, an– A number of interesting companies and a lot of people that are attending that event this year, and one of them is gonna be Matthew and EOLOGIX-PING with Weather Guard Lightning Tech will [00:30:00] both be down at the event in a booth and seeing everybody and, and, and meeting a whole bunch of, of, uh, new people that are getting into the industry, which is, to me, is always the fun part.

Like, we just meet so many really fun people. Uh, and Matthew, you know, we had a discussion internally about that, like, uh, our, our new, uh, chief commercial officer, Nikki Briggs, has been commenting. We’ve been talking to so many operators around the world, and after every, uh, little meeting briefing that we have, we do a post-briefing, and she goes, “They were so nice.”

And I s- yes, Nikki, the wind industry people are fantastic to work with. Like, they’re all focused on doing something positive, and they’re trying to, to do it the best that they can. And there’s a lot of constraints to it, and they’re making a number of hard decisions. But when we all come together at American Clean Power here in the States, hey, we can kinda commiserate and [00:31:00] talk about what’s happening and catch up.

And I feel like we need a little bit of catch-up time in this industry, particularly here in the United States.

Matthew Stead: Yeah. Yeah. I, I think, um, I, I definitely agree. And I, I found, you know, previously I used to work in the construction industry and work with engineers and, you know, transport, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And actually, I found that the renewable industry, there’s a lot of really open people, really happy to have a discussion, um, not the big egos, so I completely agree. And, um, I’m thinking back, um, I first met people in the wind industry in, you know, around 2012, 2013, and, you know, I still know a number of those people and really appreciate catching up with them.

Um, so actually, Berend van der Pol was probably one of the first, and, uh, Birgit Junker was, um, maybe one of the second, so yeah. And I’m definitely looking forward to ACP.

Allen Hall 2025: If you’re, if you’re down in Houston at American Clean Power, definitely stop by a- and say hi to everybody from [00:32:00]EOLOGIX-PING and Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and hey, learn about all the things that are going on because both companies have new products that’ll, were gonna be announced at the site.

Uh, we’re already getting inundated with requests on the Weather Guard side. It’s insane. We’re telling people, like, “Slow down, slow down, slow down. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll talk to you about it when we get to Houston.” But, uh, expect a very attentive audience this year, which is exciting. That wraps up another episode of “The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.”

If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas- We’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn, and don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you found value in today’s conversation, please leave us a review. It helps other wind energy professionals follow the show. For Matthew, I’m Allen Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy [00:33:00] Podcast.