Published

3 years ago

April 15, 2024

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Ørsted Secures Long-Term Vessel Charter, Quinnbrook’s Solar Fund Closes, and CPPIB Consolidates Offshore Wind Holdings

Ørsted forms long-term charter with Cadeler for a new wind turbine installation vessel, Quinnbrook Infrastructure Partners successfully closes of its $600 million Quinnbrook Valley of Fire Fund, and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board consolidates its offshore wind holdings into its dedicated global offshore wind platform, Reventus Power.

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Pardalote Consulting – https://www.pardaloteconsulting.com
Weather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.com
Intelstor – https://www.intelstor.com

Allen Hall: I’m Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I’m here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum. And this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you want market intelligence that generates revenue, then book a demonstration of IntelStor at IntelStor. com.

Offshore wind developer, Ørsted, has signed a long term charter with Cadeler for a new A class wind turbine installation in Vessel, the hybrid vessel can transport and install both turbine foundations and the turbines themselves and has a capacity for six double XL monopile foundations or seven complete 15 megawatt turbine setups per trip.

The partnership extends Ørsted and Cadeler’s collaboration as the offshore wind industry scales up to meet ambitious targets. Now, Phil offshore developers and ship developers make a lot of sense here just because of the lack of ships and the, all the pressure to try to lock in ship time.

Philip Totaro: Yeah, absolutely.

And given some of the past experience Ørsted’s had with lack of vessel availability, it was part of what they claimed was the rationale for pulling out of some of the projects in the U. S. as well. Was lack of vessel availability. So this gives them something dedicated and assumes that they’re obviously also going to have a big pipeline of projects to be able to go justify, spending, I’m conservatively thinking about 225 million on an installation vessel of that size.

So, this is it’s a great deal and it helps certainly provides certainty for Kettler as well who, Also, I just got through their merger last year with Anetti. So this, it’s I think this is a great thing that that both companies are going to be able to benefit from.

And it certainly brings Ørsted some certainty on a vessel capable of deploying, what is currently the latest generation of Western developed technology.

Joel Saxum: So Cadeler has four existing vessels and six next gen new builds on order, right? That makes them the world’s largest wind turbine installation vessel operator.

And what this does by Ørsted saying, we will put a charter on one of them from 27 to 2030. So that’s a four year long charter. You see this in the SOV market as well, but a lot of times the SOV market, they’re a little bit more extended because they’re going to say we own this wind farm. We’re going to be operating it for the next 10, 15 years.

Sometimes you see SOV contracts like that for 10, 15 years. I’ve seen them through a couple of years ago. I saw some through 2038. That we’re on contract, right? So that’s enough money or promise for a company like Cadeler to build something, right? SVACT has done a bunch of things in that sort. Ørsted coming, of course, off the tail end of a lot of the installation projects that they’ve done.

Struggling, scrambling to find these vessels, saying, you know what, no, we’re just going to sign an agreement. We want one, we’re going to have it for four years, and we’re going to utilize it for four years.

Allen Hall: Good move. Quinnbrook Infrastructure Partners has successfully closed its 600 million U. S. dollar Quinnbrook Valley of Fire Fund.

The fund is led by Blackstone Strategic Partners and Ares Management Infrastructure Secondaries Funds. The portfolio includes the Gemini project, one of the largest operational solar and storage projects in the U. S. and the Valley of Fire portfolio, consisting of seven projects with a total PV capacity of over 2.

65 gigawatts and a potential for 1. 5 gigawatt of battery storage across Nevada, Colorado, And Arizona. So Phil, as we have seen large wind deployments across multiple states at this point. We’re seeing the same sort of thing happen in solar and battery storage to balance the grid, right?

Philip Totaro: Yeah, and this comes at a time when you know, FERC and some of the national labs in the U. S. have just released an updated report about the interconnection queues, where wind, solar, and especially solar and storage are taking up But the majority, the overwhelming majority of these queues, so there’s a huge amount of need for capital deployment on solar and storage, but also hybrid projects where you’ve got wind, solar and storage, potentially all being built together and in a single project site in a single interconnection, which is going to help.

Kind of expedite more grid stability and power offtake. All in all, I think this ends up being a good thing for Quinnbrook.

Joel Saxum: I’m talking Ares management infrastructure here. These are the part of the group that’s leading this fund. They bought Apex Clean Energy.

So you can see more and more of the same style of things like we’ve been talking about with Blackrock with Larry Fink talking about deploying capital into these infrastructure projects. You’re seeing a lot of these bigger funds scooping up investment, scooping up development, scooping up active assets in the renewable energy space.

I think Ares is actually has 11 billion invested in a four and a half or 45 gigawatts of generation and transmission capacity. So the big money is moving into these spaces.

Allen Hall: Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is consolidating its existing direct and indirect offshore wind holdings into its UK based portfolio company, Reventus Power.

Now, Reventus Power will become CPP’s investments dedicated global offshore wind platform, with teams in the UK, Germany, Poland, and Portugal forming a group of approximately 50 offshore wind specialists. www. reventus. com CPP investments current exposure to offshore wind exceeds about 1 billion Canadian dollars.

So Phil, we’re seeing this a lot with investment groups where they’re starting to staff up and create an organization to support the investments they’re in. What makes this Canada Pension Plan unique?

Philip Totaro: Keep in mind as well that they’ve actually got a significant amount of asset ownership also in onshore wind in Brazil and this new venture is also looking at offshore wind projects in places like Australia where they’ve got an application in a consortium.

mainstream renewables AGL and direct infrastructure. Yeah, this is I think a great thing that they’re doing where, CPP investments can really start leveraging a lot of the, they’re, I think the number one or number two pension in all of Canada.

The other one, I think, being the Ontario teachers pension. This is a big deal and they’ve got a lot of capital to deploy and they like renewables and I think they’re going to keep scaling in this way.

Joel Saxum: I think the interesting thing here that I want to touch on is something that is a trend that Allen and I have been talking about quite regularly, but the sentence here in the press release of forming a group of approximately 50 offshore wind specialists.

What we’re seeing in the industry is there used to be, or there still is, a lot of financial asset owners. That are, we’re the financial we provide the capital, we buy the projects, you develop the projects, you run them, blah, blah, blah. But what we’re seeing is these investment groups to protect their investments are actually bringing on specialists and engineers to watch over their assets in a, a more active manner than they have in the past.

Simply because. Performance of the assets when you’re just hands off, hasn’t been as prime as they want them to be. So more and more of these financial asset owners are employing engineers and staffing up.

https://weatherguardwind.com/orsted-quinnbrook-solar-fund-cppibs-offshore/

Renewable Energy

As Europe Shuns Chinese Turbines and Components, Who Will Fill the Gap?

Published

15 hours ago

November 9, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

As Europe Shuns Chinese Turbines and Components, Who Will Fill the Gap?

While most of Europe has spent most of this year itemizing reasons it cannot, should not, and will not use Chinese wind turbines or components, accusations and arm-twisting tactics have garnered most of the attention.

But we invite you to consider a future – maybe just five, or ten years from now?- in which those same countries and companies are eagerly awaiting orders from wind turbine manufacturing facilities in… India.
What?!
You know that the country has a lot of installed wind.

You may think – and many in the industry would agree – that India’s blade manufacturers are a few revs behind blade-makers elsewhere in the world. But the country is newly committed to manufacturing and it’s busy installing more – provided that it’s made in India, with Indian technology, by Indian workers.
Of course, similar domestic-focused policy currents are running through European countries – where wind OEMs are almost inarguably a decade ahead of Indian manufacturers. But there’s an important reason why we say, “watch India” in wind turbine manufacturing.

It’s because you might learn something.

If you follow The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, you probably heard this discussion a few weeks ago. It wasn’t the headline story – we try to highlight as many major news items and trends that we can, and follow up as credible information becomes available. India’s quiet moves to strengthen its own renewable energy industries didn’t grab the headlines. But it comprised a good bit of our panelists’ discussion.

With India’s expanding manufacturing capacity, and Suzlon’s strategic offerings for the European market (Blue Sky), there are reasons for European developers to take a closer look at Indian manufacturers.

If Europe continues to squelch deals with Chinese manufacturers due to data security issues, India is a relatively obvious candidate to fill the void, for several reasons:

The country has depth and breadth in R&D: India (Suzlon, specifically) has a track record of involvement and relationships across the continent, as it operates research and development centers in Germany, the Netherlands, and Denmark.
Indian service providers have reach: Inox and Adoni Wind operate multiple wind turbine manufacturing plants and wind farms throughout several Indian states, and Apraava Energy has been commissioning wind projects, working with multiple OEMs, for more than 16 years.
The country’s energy sector has size: Tata Power is estimated to be worth about US$16 billion and employs 22,000 people.

And major manufacturers from other countries have had a strong presence in the country for years:

GE Vernova has turbine blade and nacelle manufacturing operations and multiple tech/R&D centers in India;
Vestas has a R&D technology center in Chennai; and
China’s SANY Wind has had assembly facilities in India since 2017, and in 2024, it signed a licensing agreement with JSW allowing SANY to manufacture blades and generators for JSW – enabling JSW Neo Energy to produce wind turbine generators and major components in-country.

So while there is hard data suggesting that India is already a global hub for wind turbines, sometimes the real strength comes from soft skills. Like sharing information.

We’ve noticed that Indian manufactures aren’t stingy with information. They share what they learn in the field and on the shop floor, so that the whole industry can move faster to solve problems. That bodes well for the industry overall, and particularly well for companies who figure out how to solve problems that some manufacturers aren’t even ready to admit to having.

We’ll be watching India with a great deal of interest in the coming months. Subscribe to The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast and follow along with us.

We’re not financial analysts. We’re engineers who watch the wind industry very closely. This is what we’ve noticed, and we thought it was worth sharing.

Where do you think you’ll be looking for solutions, components, and service providers in the next few years or the next decade? Tell us what you think. We’d love to hear from you.

As Europe Shuns Chinese Turbines and Components, Who Will Fill the Gap?

Renewable Energy

When You Write for Idiots, You Can Get Away with Anything

Published

18 hours ago

November 9, 2026

Alice Rush

To the author of the meme here:

“Either” refers to two choices; “any” refers to three or more.

More importantly, it’s amazing how shamelessly the ultra-right wing exaggerates. The left side of the Democratic party would like to see the United States look like social democracies in places like Scandinavia. Having government programs that benefit the common person, e.g., Social Security, public schools, emergency relief, libraries, environmental responsibility, etc., does not equate to Stalinism.

When You Write for Idiots, You Can Get Away with Anything

Renewable Energy

Are Muslims “Dangerous?”

Published

20 hours ago

November 9, 2026

Alice Rush

Some of my old prep school chums from the Class of 1973 convene via Zoom approximately every six weeks for a 90-minute discussion of current events, science, and anything else that sounds interesting.

Our professions range from medicine, law, finance, and business management. All from highly ranked colleges. Over 50% hold doctorate degrees.

Here’s something I find fascinating about the group: it includes one right-wing conservative. I don’t mean a Reaganite; I mean a Trump supporter. This guy is incapable of any thought that doesn’t come directly from Nexsmax.

It’s almost eerie how closely he toes the line of the far-right. Yesterday he echoed the Newsmax talking point and told the group that all Muslims holding public office are “very dangerous” and should be removed.

Now, the rest of us are sitting there, dumbfounded at this idea, unwilling waste our breath on this racist and utterly preposterous concept.

All this raises the question: How are our political viewpoints formed? How much of this is genetics? Epigenetics? Early childhood experiences? How do take a boy from among the best environments and turn him into someone who struggles to understand the most basic principles on which our country was founded?

https://www.2greenenergy.com/2026/11/09/principles-country-was-founded/