Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Ørsted Restructuring, Nordex Cold-Climate Turbine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To push the boundaries a little bit more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is there a, a camera on every single turbine?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So it’s because of technology is like this?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It builds ice faster and is harder to deal with.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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