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RWE Suspends US Offshore Work, Spanish Power Blackout
This week we discuss a $5 million investment in a wind worker training center in Australia, challenges faced by RWE’s US offshore wind projects due to recent policy changes, and the recent power blackout in Spain. Plus an article from PES Wind Magazine about cybersecurity in wind energy.
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!
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, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes.
Allen Hall: Down in Victoria, Australia. They’re investing about 5 million Australian dollars to establish a wind worker training center, which is focused on developing technical skills for both onshore and offshore wind energy roles.
And the initiative is looking to create a skill workforce pipeline for all the wind projects that are happening down in Australia. This is a really unique. Program, uh, Rosemary, just because Victoria is looking to have about 67,000 workers in energy by 2040 and they think they need about 4,000, [00:01:00] uh, people to work construction for onshore wind at about 2,500 data for offshore wind.
That’s a sizable number of people, but Victoria is headed towards 95% renewable generation by 2035. So you’re gonna need to build a workforce pretty quickly. $5 million for a training center is a good first start. Is it enough though?
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I mean, they need to have a first step I guess. I mean, not that it’s the first step, there’s already a lot of, a lot of workers in the state.
Um, but I mean, for sure Victorian needs more, needs more service technicians and yeah, a bunch of other, other workers. I mean there’s also still a lot of new wind farms being built, so there’s that as well. It’s also not just Victoria, you know, all around. Um, there was quite a lot of going on in Queensland, although the future plans have, I think been, um.
Uh, toned down a lot because the government changed. Um, south Australia also has, uh, still got, oh, it’s got a lot of wind, already got a lot of plans to build [00:02:00] more. Um, and yeah, there’s new renewable energy zones that are, you know, hopefully coming on, maybe even offshore wind starting in the next five years or so.
So yeah, if you want to, you know, suddenly expand your industry, then you do need to think a few years ahead. Um, otherwise you’re gonna end up. With a big, a big crunch. Everyone wanting to build a project at the same time. And also, you know, a lot of wind farms. Uh. Getting past that first, you know, like the first few years where not too much maintenance is needed.
Um, there’s a lot more things that can go wrong in the, you know, middle to end of a wind farm’s life. And we’re seeing a lot of that, especially in Victoria where they had most of the early wind farms in Australia. So I definitely think it’s timely and uh, hopefully this one’s successful. And, uh, yeah, we’ve got an election coming up.
Probably will have already happened by the time this episode’s released. We’ve got a federal election. There has not been a whole lot of talk about renewable energy actually. Um, and especially the jobs that are created by Renewal Energy, especially wind, you know, like it’s a, it’s a [00:03:00] downside of the technology that it needs maintenance, but it’s a real upside in terms of that, you know, a lot of maintenance means a lot of maintenance jobs, and these are good jobs.
I hope that, yeah, by the time we have our next election, people can, um, be talking a bit more about what we need to really turbocharge the, um, rollout of renewables in Australia. This will be a good
Joel Saxum: first step. I think there’s a couple interesting things about, interesting things about that is right before we went down to Wind Australia, we were talking to a lot of people involved in that industry and uh, I did talk with an ISP that was a part of this.
They were, uh, advising, kind of like partnering with the university that’s putting this thing together because they noticed a, a gap, right? And one of the gaps when we talking, like again, talking with some of the people down there was. Uh, they want a workforce, right? They want people in there, so, but you need people to transition over from other jobs or come in because it’s hard to have, because of local content laws, and correct me if I’m wrong here, Rosemary, you can’t really, or [00:04:00] it’s a lot easier to use local talent than it is to bring other people in.
You can’t really just rely on a, a migrant workforce or, you know, you can’t bring people in from Europe every year to do all the maintenance. You really kind of need to have that local talent.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I mean, I don’t think that Australia has particularly strong, um, we don’t have many local content laws at all.
Um, but then in terms of. Labor. Yeah. Like most countries, you just, not just anybody can come in and just start working in Australia, you need permission. And, um, you know, there’s caps on the, the number of visas of that kind that are allowed. Definitely. Um, there are people coming over from Europe constantly to work here.
It’s a long, it’s a long way. Um, I don’t think that it’s so much about the laws in Australia being unusual as it is just that sheer number of people that are needed and the logistics of actually getting. Enough people to make a meaningful difference. Um, coming over from Europe, I, I mean, think about it.
Would you want to go [00:05:00] somewhere, um, for three months away from, you know, your family and, uh, friends and act activities, anything like that? Definitely in the longer term, much better too. Um, yeah, develop, develop the workforce. And I mean, as much as, you know, I, I love that the, um, wages are high in, in the industry because, you know, I’m in the industry and I enjoy that.
But, uh, if we have a lot more workers, like enough workers, then the prices will start to go down a bit more. And like the cost of labor, I. Is a big thing in, um, you know, how much wind farms are spending, are maintaining, uh, operating and maintaining their wind farms is, you know, like it’s a lot more than it is in other countries.
And I think that a lot of that is because of the high cost of labor here for, for that specific type of role. But I mean, that also does mean that right now, like if you get in early, that’s a, a really, really great industry to move into because you’re probably going to. More, it’s very satisfying work as well.
You, you know, like it’s, it’s really good to, you know, there’s a wind tur, a wind turbine, [00:06:00] it was offline because, you know, something was wrong and hey, I helped fix it. And now it’s online generating clean electricity. That’s, I find that incredibly satisfying to be part of that. It’s really, you know, tangible things.
So I’m hopeful that, um, yeah, more training centers like this that we will start to see the workforce expand, uh, quite quickly.
Allen Hall: If you haven’t opened the recent edition of PES Win, you need to do that. You can visit ps win.com and download the uh, the. Electronic version of the magazine or you can put in a request, again a paper copy and you will want to get that paper copy ’cause it is an elegant magazine full of information.
So this quarter there’s an article from Cyber G and Joel and I have been talking about cybersecurity to a lot of operators all over the world. It is a huge topic right now and uh, in that article it does go on to say like, 1% of the win assets have. Adequate cybersecurity protection. And Joel, there are days that question [00:07:00] that’s even 1% on some of the farms we’ve been around.
And the SCADA systems are the open door, uh, that needs to be closed. There’s a lot going on in Europe, much more in Europe than there is in the United States. The European Union has that network and information system directive two, NIST two. You hear people say, NIST two, I need a NIST two. Uh, that requires that they have reports, cybersecurity incidents.
Have some transparency on what’s happening. They actually can deal with it. Uh, this cyber energy article is good and another alarm to the industry, like, Hey, in times when things get a little slow. We gotta clean up and, and take care of the, of some of these entry points into these turbines and these wind
Joel Saxum: farms.
Well, I think that you like, like anything, you follow the money, right? And if you watch the insurance markets, you’re starting to see cyber, cyber attack, cyber security insurance being a new product that’s coming into almost all of these brokers. So that’s the thing that’s happening. It’s a known issue.
Right. I [00:08:00] wanna highlight one of the projects that’s being done here in the United States is there is a bank of turbines. If you have a product or a solution that you want to test for cybersecurity, and they’re testing SCADA systems, it’s in involved with one of the, uh, national labs. Very cool project.
Just get a hold of Alan and I, we can give you some details on that. Um, but yeah, I mean, as cybersecurity goes, you’re seeing Europe, they’re on the, you know, there. There’s a, there’s a conflict happening right out their back door. So this may hit a little bit closer to home to them, but we’ve had things hit our, our grid as well here in the states in the last few years.
So, um, if you haven’t addressed some of these things, I think it’s, it’s, it’s high time that people do and cyber energy, it can help you out. They have a product called
Allen Hall: Sentry, C-E-N-T-R-Y. Get it Century instead of an assets at c. So it’s, it’s a, it’s a protection platform. It’s pretty slick, right? It’s a real time monitor of the wind assets and it’s providing the protection that a lot of wind operators need.
So if you are interested in cybersecurity and, [00:09:00] uh, pretty much every operator around the world should be at this point, you, you wanna look at cyber energy as website and check them out, or just go visit. Uh, PES win.com. Read the article and find out all the details.
Joel Saxum: As busy wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it difficult.
That’s why the Uptime podcast recommends PES WIN Magazine. I. 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 ps wind.com today.
Allen Hall: Well, Spain had a large power blackout, including Portugal and, and parts of France for a little while, and Spain’s grid operator is denying that the situation was caused by the dependences on solar power mostly. And most of Spain was shut down for several hours, like north of 12 [00:10:00] hours.
This is, uh, sort of a problem for renewable because if you go online on LinkedIn, or if you, you go on Twitter, one of those social media sites you see a lot about, oh, renewable energy causes problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So let’s just go to some of the details. We do know at this point, at the grid, at that moment was, uh, operating it at about 50% solar.
And about 10% wind and about another 15% for nuclear and gas. Uh, and they right now, they think there were maybe two separate incidences in southwestern Spain at substations that created the incident. Now. It looks like it was a frequency variation was the cause of the shutdown. I saw some things on LinkedIn.
Of course, your source for all news lately is that the, the frequency varied and you can actually measure that up in Lafayette, which is a [00:11:00] long ways from Spain. So that frequency variation when it occurs in one place does transmit all over the grid in Europe. And frequency variation is a huge problem because that the system is designed.
For one frequency, 50 hertz, and all the equipment is designed particularly for that. So as you vary off of that, the loss is increased. You can have a lot of bad things happen. So there are safety mechanisms in place to disconnect if the frequency or vari frequency variation is to. Big and it looks like it was.
Um, and as Rosemary has pointed out in some of your videos, the way you fix that is you have synchronous condensers on the grid, which are, rosemary me, can describe what a synchronous condenser is
Rosemary Barnes: to take back a step. What traditional. Electricity grid with a lot of thermal generation, uh, in it. What, what it behaves like is, you know, these traditional thermal generators are really big and really heavy and they’re spinning.
They’ve got a lot of inertia, right? It is actually really [00:12:00] physically hard to slow them down or speed them up suddenly. So it kind of acts as a natural. Um, damper on the system. When the frequency gets out of whack, then all of this spitting mass just naturally helps to, um, keep it stable. So if you have a lot less of that, you can either, uh, because you don’t have a lot of thermal generators online, then you can either replace it with.
More spinning mass, which is what a synchronous condenser is. It’s basically like a generator, but, um, instead of spinning it up by burning something and you know, making steam to spin it, you spin it using electricity instead. So it’s still a big spinning mass and you can put a few of those in. It’s certainly not the case that you can’t have a high renewables, um, penetration system.
That, uh, doesn’t have sufficient inertia. I understand that they had about 80% renewables, uh, in the grid at the time that of the disturbance. That is not an abnormally high amount. Like it’s definitely far from record breaking. Um, there [00:13:00] was a, yeah, um, some, something weird happening with frequency oscillations and I don’t know why.
You know, obviously the Spanish grid deals with frequency variations all the time and has a mechanism to, um. You know, address that. I don’t know the specifics of that or why it didn’t go right, but that would be one factor. Another thing was that there was a lot of solar power that, um, suddenly tripped off shortly before the blackout.
So that would be another destabilizing event, but again, it’s not unique to, um, to renewables. Um, and then there was another thing that happened early on was that the. An interconnection between Spain and France, um, which I believe was, uh, at least a couple of gigawatts. I’m not sure exactly the size, but in, in the gigawatts range that tripped off.
And then that makes it harder if Spain say, Spain has to all of a sudden act as an island, or Spain and Portugal have to act as an island. Um, so, you know, it’s hard to say that was a cause or [00:14:00] effect. Um, and then after a few of those things had happened, then generators in Spain started tripping and going off, and so there was just no, um.
There was nothing there to con control the system. So obviously, you know, like they did have, yeah, like maybe up to 20% of their generation was from these big spinning, um, masses, which should be enough to keep things stable. But if they start tripping off, then they’re not providing any kind of service anymore.
So, um, you know, it, it also might be that there were some, um, settings that, you know, were not as robust as, um, they, they should have been.
Allen Hall: But in that grid, it’s really hard to model those kind of failures. I think that’s what the problem is because Texas has had something very similar. It’s actually had it multiple times if you pay attention.
They’ve had sort of, uh, a cascading series of events that pull off mostly solar. Then take down adjacent, uh, substations. And when you have so many [00:15:00] different technologies all on the same grid and you’re not sure exactly how they respond to every situation, it’s impossible to model one because the detail there would be incredible.
Two, you’re just trying to make sure everything’s playing happy all the time. And I, I, this, this is, I don’t think this is unique. I think it, the scale of it is pretty big, but Joel, when they had the ice storm down to Texas in 2022, Yuri? 21. 21, okay. So in the, the amount of Texas that was offline, which was a huge amount of Texas plus it was offline for like three days.
As they tried to figure out what was happening,
Joel Saxum: that was an extreme, like the RCA points to extreme weather event, right? Where that was a bunch of natural gas plants that, like valves froze up. They weren’t winter ice correctly, things like that. But you’re exactly correct. Like one, when things started cascading, they just started cascading big time, right?
And this went click, click, click. We, you know, we need Alan, we need Joe Shahan from [00:16:00] podge to, to, to, to, to do
Allen Hall: this. Yeah. I, yeah, he’s. He’s gonna tell you it’s complicated. That’s gonna be his response because it is, it’s really complicated.
Phil Totaro: It is. But you wanna also know what happened. I, after they had that blackout that Rosie talked about in South Australia, what did they do?
They put in energy storage. So you wanna actually fix the problem. I, if you’re not gonna see the, because the thing that we’re all talking about right now is if you’re not gonna modernize the grid to handle all those different. Types of generators being on the same thing, connected at the same time, and responding in whatever ways they’re gonna respond.
You wanna know how you, you immediately, and you know, at least somewhat cost effectively, address the situation in the shortest timeframe possible is just by putting. Grid connected storage on there that absorbs or deploys depending on what you need, um, you know, what the grid needs. And, you know, I mean, that’s, that’s the way that you can handle both short term, [00:17:00] um, you know, frequency fluctuations.
And anyway, the short answer is you wanna fix this quick, put storage on the grid. There you go.
Joel Saxum: And that’s what we’re doing. Yeah. There’s constantly records being set by, by energy storage.
Phil Totaro: The longer term fix is to modernize the grid, to accommodate all these other, you know, things. Uh, what that basically what everybody talks about.
Oh, what does modernize the grid means? It means that you need better. Energy management software and the right kind of hardware to be able to provide that kind of frequency response and balancing. So again, unless you’re going to spend the money to modernize the grid, which is necessarily gonna be more expensive than just deploying energy storage, deploying energy storage is gonna get you the quickest way of, you know, precluding.
Massive grid fluctuations and potentially blackouts from happening.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I would’ve like to say though that the, um, Spanish grid hasn’t, hasn’t modernized [00:18:00] before that. I have seen the, you know, the eventual root cause analysis and, you know, there’ll be probably more information coming out in a few days and then in a few weeks, but it will probably be a year before the, you know, with the South Australia, it was it.
I think it was most of a year before, like the full list of, you know, every single thing that had to happen at the same time in order to cause the, the blackouts before that. It’s like really well known. Um, it takes, takes a lot. So it, yeah. Obviously something has gone wrong and I don’t think we know yet whether.
It was predominantly about how much renewables were in the grid because Spain frequently has a lot of renewables in the grid and, you know, has not had this problem before. So it was more, it was definitely more than just that. Um, but yeah, it will take a while for us to know, um, you know, people who are usually, you know, communicators that are similar to me in terms of.
Wanting more renewables in the system. I do see a lot of them. Their take was to immediately say, well, obviously this was nothing to do with renewables, because essentially renewables are perfect and nothing can [00:19:00] ever go wrong. That’s not the right, that’s not the right take. That’s not the path to having, you know, a hundred percent clean electricity grid to pretend that there’s no problems.
You know, when something. Goes wrong. You learn what you can from it and to do anything else is just absolutely crazy. So I, I think it’s definitely frustrating that every time a crisis like this happens, renewables get blamed and that kind of like sticks in people’s minds ’cause it’s the first thing that they hear.
And you know, like years later, lots of people still think the South Australian blackout was caused by wind energy, which I guess literally it was if you include like the energy of the wind blowing over power lines. But you know, like it’s, it’s equally wrong to say that it had nothing to do with renewables.
At this point, we don’t know, and certainly many of the weird things that happened before the blackout were related to a lot of renewables, and you need to. You need to learn from that. Otherwise, we will never get a a hundred percent clean electricity grid.
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All right. Uh, RDB has suspended work on its US offshore wind projects In response to recent policy changes by the administration and the CEOR to B and announced the decision a ahead of the company’s annual meeting, which was just held recently. And this has caused a little bit of a ripple effect. So from what we can tell right now, and Phil’s going to give us all the details, there are three separate places that I had where Rwb is involved up in New York, down in Louisiana.
They got that plot down in Louisiana, and then obviously in California. But there may be some sites in North Carolina also, or off the coast of North
Phil Totaro: Carolina based on what. Has been [00:21:00] made public, uh, RWE themselves has said that they’ve sunk more than 1.1 billion into development cost and lease payments for the areas that they either own or co-own or, uh, what have you.
So that’s, that’s a lot of money to have put up already. Uh, to basically not have confidence in being able to move forward. Now, if we go back and review what the government said, it’s number one, they’re not doing any more lease auctions on anything that hasn’t already been done. Okay? So that’s one thing that doesn’t impact R-W-R-W-E at this point, other than, you know, they were also interested in doing projects in Maine, et cetera, et cetera.
But that’s not why they’re pulling out. What’s happened more recently is the inconsistency of the application or lack thereof of tariffs and the, uh, the note from Boem, uh, to EOR and, you know, regarding Empire [00:22:00] Wind, in which Boem is basically saying we are gonna reevaluate every single permit, uh, that’s ever been issued.
You know, regardless, I guess regardless of who’s done it. Um. Because there were actually some leases that took place and some permits that were issued during Trump’s first term. Uh, it wasn’t all just, you know, Biden administration trying to rush everything through and get it in under the wire. You know, some of these projects have been, you know, in the, the lease auction and permitting phase for.
You know, almost a decade. And, and in the case of Empire Wind, it was something like 14 years, uh, when they first started considering, um, you know, that, that, uh, lease area. So what RW is upset about is the fact that it’s just, it’s, it’s the inconsistency and the uncertainty around policy that has caused.
Them as project developers and the financiers who we’re gonna be backing them to [00:23:00] say, you know what, we’re gonna take a step back because it doesn’t look like you’re gonna be able to build this project very quickly or conveniently like you want to. And there’s also uncertainty about the power off. Take agreements.
Um. You know, if the government’s also gonna have some kind of say around, um, you know, the, the transmission infrastructure as well. So besides the, the projects, which is what everybody tends to focus on, the electrical infrastructure is also something that, you know, boem and technically the federal government, since these projects are in our, our outer continental shelf, it’s federal water, um, they have jurisdiction over some of the permitting that that goes along with.
Uh, the transmission infrastructure. And so if you can’t build a project and you’re not guaranteed to have power off, take, uh, you know, what else can you do, but hit the pause button.
Joel Saxum: Well,
Phil Totaro: I think
Joel Saxum: at the, at the end of the day, Phil, it’s just like, uh, uh, you say it often is political versus technical, right?
Because [00:24:00] that the technical argument is sound. Uh, it’s been sound for offshore wind. Uh, but politically we are, we run into a bunch of problems and the, those problems extend and extend and extend. Right now we’re talking about job creation. That was a big thing. That’s one of the, one of the big deals with the IRA bill, bringing all these things into, into the United States, like say, uh, uh, this week, uh, one of the, the articles that we have, PRIs PRIs me and cancels a, um, blade or blade, uh, cable factory for offshore wind.
So that’s, that’s a $200 million investment with how many jobs that that thing could have been. Those are good, good high paying jobs as well. Right.
Phil Totaro: But this is also part of a, a wider issue that we’ve talked about before, which is you never really had US based companies that were all that committed to the offshore wind market to begin with.
Now you’re introducing uncertainty and the people who were coming over here were the Europeans and some Asians, but. You know, mostly [00:25:00] the Europeans that wanted to, to actually plow money into the us. Now they’re, you know, going back to the, the genesis of this, which was RWE pulling up stakes. I don’t think the, they’re, they may be, you know, one of the first companies, but they’re probably not gonna be the last.
Um, and you know, you’re gonna. I mean, you can antagonize offshore wind all you like, but you’re, you’re going to find your wallets up to $75 billion lighter, um, based on doing that because, you know, in addition to the project CapEx that doesn’t get spent, as Joel just said, it’s jobs and factories that don’t get built.
That’s also tax revenue. It’s r and d investment. Um, and you know, it, it’s, it’s. Everybody, basically, everybody loses. Um, so. You know, it’s in instead of this, as I said kind of before the show, we were all kind of anticipating that, you know, the current administration was probably [00:26:00] gonna not be too friendly to offshore wind and that it would be maybe like a, a five year window of, of a downturn in the market, or at least a, a nominal leveling off of the market.
Now you’re talking about this is, has the potential to set us back 10 years because getting all these European. Investors and project developers back into the US is gonna require a heck of a lot of convincing.
Allen Hall: That’s gonna do it for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy podcast. Thanks for listening, and give us a five star rating when you can press a little button, make sure it says five stars, or don’t be a mean person.
You know what I’m saying? Five stars is good. And also check out Uptime Tech News, our substack newsletter and that thing has exploded everybody. Uh, so if you want weekly or sometimes daily content about wind energy or other, uh, random facts, you can check out. Uptime Tech News are Substack newsletter. And we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy [00:27:00]Podcast.
https://weatherguardwind.com/rwe-us-offshore-spanish-blackout/
Weather Guard Lightning Tech
What Operators Want to Hear at WOMA 2027
Two days of operator meetings in Melbourne shape the WOMA 2027 agenda, from performance upgrades and cable faults to foundations and bolts.
The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall. I’m here with Matthew Stead and Rosemary Barnes. And Rosemary, where are we?
Rosemary Barnes: We’re in Melbourne, and we have been visiting future attendees and sponsors and people interested in, in the event to see what topics that we should be talking about.
What are the hot topics of the moment?
Allen Hall: Which is a very interesting two days, Matthew, in that, uh, we h- did meet with a number of operators based in Australia, but, uh, they’re also very worldly. They have talked to companies all over about operations and, and maintenance, and there are some really eye-opening topics- Mm
that will be- Mm … at WOMA 2027 this year.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. The thing that was interesting for me was [00:01:00]that actually the topics have changed each year. So, um, they’re evolving and the industry’s continuing to, to do better, and so that, that was really interesting. Performance upgrades was probably one of the big areas of, of new interest, I think.
I think we heard with the pressure on pricing, uh, the market and so forth, you know, that, that 1% or 2% now is becoming more important. Um, so I think, uh, upgrades will definitely feature quite a lot. Um, balance of plant was also a big topic. Um, you just can’t ig- ignore the, um, transmission, you can’t ignore the transformers, you can’t ignore, uh, condensers and all these sorts of things, so yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Cables.
Matthew Stead: Cables.
Rosemary Barnes: Terminations. Terminations of cables. Specifically raised several times.
Allen Hall: Yep. Yeah. It’s all about being more efficient, uh, getting more production, and then with the PPA prices, uh, that are changing-
Matthew Stead: Mm …
Allen Hall: rapidly, uh, everybody is paying more attention to the bottom line.
Matthew Stead: Mm, mm.
Allen Hall: Absolutely. There, there’s less cash running around, uh, chasing new development.
It’s [00:02:00] more of a focus on making sure your, at least your existing assets are performing as, as well as they can be- Mm … which then opens up the, uh, Pandora’s box of opportunity. Mm. Because there are 1%’s all around a wind turbine. More specifically, uh, all the drive train issues, the blade issues, the generator issues, and even going into the substation.
Mm. I, I was really shocked on BOP e- the, the one topic that came up, uh, yesterday and today was buried cables. Mm. Like-
Matthew Stead: Faults …
Allen Hall: faults.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Junctions. Finding- Yeah … finding faults and what to do about them. Yeah. Yeah. But I think in addition to just wanting more revenue, I think people have, are getting more sophisticated about what actually matters and then the finances.
You know, everyone’s focused so much on availability, and now people- Mm … are like, okay, yeah, like once you’re at a certain level of availability, gets harder and harder to get more. And actually, you know, not all availability is equal. Is good. It, it [00:03:00] depends. Yeah. Yeah, like you wanna, um, you wanna focus on how much you’re generating at the times when electricity prices are high specifically, which usually means during lower wind speed periods.
Yeah. Which is actually good because that matches really well with what is actually possible. It’s, it’s hard to get more power out of the turbine if it’s at, you know, its rated power, then you’re not g- More efficiency is not gonna get you any more, um, power output, whereas lower in the power curve- Mm … um, when wind speeds are lower, there’s less electricity in the grid and so prices are higher.
And so- Mm … yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s why people are really asking to know more about what efficiency upgrades are possible, better ways to operate, scheduled maintenance, um, all those sorts of things. Mm. So that will be really interesting.
Matthew Stead: Raising the bar on sophistication. Um, but also life extension
Allen Hall: Yes, a lot of discussion about life extension
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, end of life and life extension End of life Yeah, um-
Matthew Stead: Foundations, structures Which is
Allen Hall: tied to PPA.
Mm. A lot of that [00:04:00] discussion I, at least I looked at it as, uh, if I had a PPA and I can continue with that PPA with an existing turbine, I want to do that. Mm,
Matthew Stead: mm,
Allen Hall: mm. But how do I do that and how do I know that that existing turbine can last another five years? It seemed to go in five-year blocks, like can we get to another five years and then another and then, then another.
Wow.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Once you get to 20, 20, 25 years, I think people like, uh, they, you know- It’s getting a little- Their original agreement might have been for 20, then they kind of just assume that there will be another five, and then after that they’re- Yeah … kind of reassessing cyclically and yeah, I know that people make plans for, you know, what components are replaceable, what would they have to get in, and I think that sometimes, uh, people doing those plans aren’t as familiar with the, you know, actual technical issues that are being faced.
Like, is a blade a replaceable component? It may be early on in the life it sort of is, not easily, but you know, like a 25-year-old wind turbine, you know, good luck trying to order 10 new blades because you’ve got a, you know, an issue that’s-
Allen Hall: Oh, well you, you need to read the news. Did you [00:05:00] see the news today about, uh, the, the wooden wind turbine blades as a replacement for aged blades?
That, that’s happening- … in real time, Rosa.
Rosemary Barnes: Okay. I know they- Yeah. Yep, yep. Okay. Okay. So that, that’s, that’s good. Making carbon new blade. E- even so, I don’t think that they’re- Okay. … gonna be, like, super-duper cheap, so you’re still gonna wanna be, um, doing a trade-off between y- you know, like, what kind of repairs.
You might be able to change the way you’re operating to reduce loads. Um, you might be able to monitor to make sure that your blades are safe. You know, if you know that there’s an issue, um, you just wanna get some advanced warning before blades start falling off your, your tower. Mm. You know, and then you can push it further.
Yeah. Whereas if you’ve got no information, then you have to be conservative and shut it down. Yeah. So yeah, I think there’s a whole lot that can be g- can be done there in that area.
Matthew Stead: There was a point that came up today, which I think was close to your heart, on, you know, if you’re going to be going for 1% or 2% or 0.5% AEP improvement, how do you actually measure that and how do you set up a proper experiment?
So-
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah …
Matthew Stead: I, I, I love that topic. [00:06:00]
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. No, it’s one that I, um, yeah, I deal with m- my clients I, I’m often… It’s one of the things that Pablo really loves to do, is to organize trials of that nature of new technologies and see if they work. But, um, yeah, asset managers are usually very, uh, focused on fast results.
You know, they’ve got a, a big problem and they want a solution now, so they wanna just roll out the new technology over an entire wind farm. But if you do that, then it’s almost impossible. Unless you get, like, a huge benefit, like, uh, 10% gains or, you know, like reduce your failures by 50% or more, it’s really hard to actually- Mm
pick that out if you just replace everything. Mm. Whereas if you do a really, really good, um, trial plan- Systematic. Yeah … and you match pairs very well so that you have, you know, a control for each turbine and there’s- so many variables in a wind farm. It’s not, it’s not as easy as just, like, randomly choosing 50% to do and not do.
Mm. Mm. Mm. Like, you have to, you know, put some work into the trial design, and then, you know, like, do your statistical calculations ahead of time to know how long it’s gonna take you to get s- statistical [00:07:00]significance. So then you don’t just have a gut feeling about- Yep … how something went. You’ve actually got numbers, and then you can take those numbers to, you know, other wind farms that you’ve got- Yeah
and, and know what’s going on much better.
Matthew Stead: Worst study is an inconclusive study.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. Definitely.
Allen Hall: Well, that comes back to the data analysis- Mm … which a lot of operators mentioned, and how much data there is and what to do with it, and it did seem like a couple of operators have chosen some AI tools, varying degrees, all the way down from Microsoft Copilot to something much more complicated.
Uh, but I think there’s, uh, getting that d- to the last 1, 2, 3%, you’re going to need those tools- Absolutely … because what do you choose? Do you choose a blade? Do you choose a gearbox? Do you choose a generator? Do you go to the substation to get that percentage point or two Without having some really powerful tools- Mm.
you may be wasting your time [00:08:00] and money.
Matthew Stead: Mm.
Allen Hall: Which is a, a, a very interesting, uh, aspect to wind energy because it’s such an industrial business that, uh, we haven’t used heavy computational tools, uh, un- until really now.
Matthew Stead: Mm.
Allen Hall: And maybe Australia’s at the forefront because of the PPA and negative pricing is that that will, uh, actually lead an industry.
Because I haven’t seen a lot of that being used globally. Mm. So this is the first time an operator- Mm … that I’ve talked to has said, “We’re using it.”
Matthew Stead: Yeah. It’s quite a different discussion, um, I think, you know, this year compared to previous years in that I think in the past it was getting to know what’s possible, but now it’s like real case studies are coming through.
And a few of the people had some really good examples that we can talk about at the conference as to how they’ve actually been helped and how they did this and what the outcome was. I think, yeah, that would be really great content on that.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I think it’s gonna be a good mix of people who have used third party tools and have experience with it, people that are doing it in-house and can share- Mm
some of the kinds of results- Mm … that, that you can get just from analyzing your own- Mm … [00:09:00] SCADA data. Um, people talking about how they get the data that they want. Mm. ‘Cause it’s not always so easy. You would think that, you know, you own a wind turbine, you have a right to have all of the data that comes through it, but it’s not.
Um, even if you do technically have a right, it’s, uh, it, it’s harder to actually get it than you might think. Mm. So yeah, sharing all, all those kinds of things. But I think also, like just as important as talking about the successes is talking about the, the gaps that– people still feel lots of gaps. Like, okay, we’ve got all the data, we’re collecting it.
We know that there’s so much potential here- Mm … but we don’t really- Mm … know what we can do, or it’s hard for us to, you know- Mm … make headway in this particular pain point. And that is really useful for companies that are developing tools to know what are the, the problems. Mm. Because then they can e- you know, they’re well placed to fix them.
Allen Hall: Mm. Which leads to the discussion we had with the operators and, uh, some of the suppliers for WOMA 2027. There’s a lot of interest. And as we’re sitting in the conference rooms, I’m thinking, we may not have enough room to [00:10:00] seat everybody. Uh, the WOMA 2027 website is up and running, and you can register now.
So just go to woma2027.com and get started there. At the same point, we’ve had a lot of contact with, uh, pretty much everybody that wants to sponsor the event, and there’s only a limited number of ways to sponsor. So if you’re interested in doing that, you, you need to go to woma2027.com and look at those, uh, part- particular packages and see what- Mm
fits your, your business. Uh- Going back to some of the, the comments we were just discussing downstairs about what we heard at 2026, like, which is only a couple of months ago, right? It’s back in February this year. Uh, there’s, they’re still discussing what happened at WOMA 2026- Mm. Which was very fascinating- Mm
because I think Rosemary, you and I have been to conferences that I have not thought an iota … about what happened at those conferences. Just nothing interesting does occur. There’s no new, new information, there’s [00:11:00] no new science, there’s no new operator approaches.
Rosemary Barnes: Mm.
Allen Hall: But we’re gonna see a number of those- Yeah.
Mm … come next March.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Well, I think it’s partly because I don’t know what other conference organizers do, but, you know, we’ve had a exhausting few days here. You’ve come all the way from America, obviously, and, and Claire as well, also come over, our producer. Um, so, y- you know, like, we’re working really hard to make sure that the topics…
Like, it’s not an accident that the topics are ones that people are talking about later, because we come here to make sure that we get the right topics. And it’s not just these meetings as well. People get in touch, and- Mm … anybody watching, listening, who has, you know, something that they wanna talk about, then definitely, you know, send us a message, and yeah, we’re working on the agenda.
We’ll, we’ll have a draft agenda in the next couple of weeks based on what we’ve learned here, but then we’ve got the hard job of it’s not just that you have a really interesting topic, you need to have a really great speaker- Yeah … or several really great speakers, usually covering several different aspects of the problem.
You know, maybe it’s, uh, yeah, an asset [00:12:00] owner, an OEM, and some, some technology provider, you know, all together giving different, um, yeah, perspectives. That’s, I think, what makes a really great session. Mm. So yeah, we need the ideas for the sessions, and we also need the ideas for great speakers.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Right.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. I think we’ve, we’ve already matched a few of those dots, so- Yeah … I, we’ve heard people asking for certain topics they wanna hear about, and then we’ve heard other operators saying, “Well, this is what we could talk about.” So I think we’ve already-
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, yeah … got some great
Matthew Stead: progress.
Rosemary Barnes: It was, it was interesting ’cause we, we built up a list of, you know-
Matthew Stead: Yeah
Rosemary Barnes: frequently raised topics, and then you’d say it to the next person that you went to- Mm … and they’re like, “Oh, that’s not a problem for us because we’ve done X, Y, Z.” And you’re like, “Okay. Well, excellent. You can, you can present the solutions that we know that other people- Yeah. Yes … are, are looking for.” Yeah.
So it has been… Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s definitely worthwhile coming, as, as tiring as it is. Yeah. Um, definitely worthwhile, and we’ll get a much better agenda for the- Yeah … for the effort.
Matthew Stead: And I think, I mean, it has been tiring. Um, but what, what made it for me was one of the operators said that [00:13:00] this is the only conference they will go to So I think, I think we’re doing the right thing.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Yeah. I, I think so. I understand too, like, you know, all of us, we kind of are forced to go to events because that’s where our, our clients and customers are, and so you need to see them. And yeah, like I’ve even gone to the extent of some events where I don’t particularly like the event, but I know everyone’s going.
Mm. I just go and sit near the event for a couple of days and meet people at a cafe. So yeah, like we can’t get away from it. But if you’re an asset manager or, um, yeah, somebody in that kind of type of work, like you’ve got better things to do than listen to sales pitches aggressively thrown at you that aren’t relevant- Yeah
to what you’re doing. So, um, yeah. Like I, I definitely love to hear that kind of feedback- Yeah … and wanna make sure that we get it every, every year. Like that’s- It’s, it’s
Matthew Stead: encouraging.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah … yeah, that’s, that’s the point of the conference, so.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah.
Matthew Stead: The other big topic was we would really love more OEM involvement.
Um-
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Everybody wants more- … a lot of the operators- … OEM involvement- Yeah … all of the asset owners.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Like we want to [00:14:00] hear from OEMs more, have them there. Um, so yeah, we’re, we’ll be trying to To get those sorted
Allen Hall: Well, WOMA is a global conference, although it’s Australia-based and there’s a, a number of Australian operators.
There are Danish, Americans, uh, plenty of Europeans. Uh, we’re gonna see some from Southeast Asia, I think, this year. Mm-hmm. And, and Japan hopefully will come. Uh, because it’s a, it’s a global conference, there’s global knowledge- Mm … and wind is such a big industry. You may not have the solution in the United States, it may be sitting in Australia, and we need to exchange those ideas.
Mm. And that, that’s the point. So w- we are continuing to look for those world experts as we have received all the inputs of these are all the topics we wanna go hear about. Great. Now it’s on us three to go find some of those world experts and, and try to get them to Melbourne. Yeah. And I, I think that’s a great opportunity.
So if we do call you and ask you to participate in WOMA [00:15:00] 2027, please take it seriously because- Mm … you will be bombarded with great questions- Mm … and contacts and information. Uh, it’s an event you won’t wanna miss. Yeah. And- But I would- … there’s opportunity there.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I’d say we’re, we’re prioritizing OEMs, um, to, to get more participation, ideally to speak, but at least to be there.
And we have heard from multiple asset owners in Australia that they want, they, they want to know what are some of the upgrades that they can do- Yeah … that you’re offering. They wanna know what’s coming next in terms of technology. They wanna know what are some of the non-Western options. So, you know, like it would be great to get some Chinese wind turbine, um, manufacturers as well.
Like, they want all this information. They don’t want a slick sales brochure pitch that doesn’t give them any technical information. So we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to get, you know, some technical people to speak on, yeah, what are the upgrades you offer and how does it work- Mm-hmm … and show us a case study that demonstrates the improvements.
Um, ’cause that [00:16:00] sometimes is really hard to get out of- Mm … out of OEMs. You know, that, “We’ve got this thing, it’s so amazing, you should get it.” Okay, well, what’s the business case for it? “Oh, well, we don’t have any numbers. Just trust us.”
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Um, it’s so common to get a pitch like that. So yeah, any, any OEM that has any- anything like that, either for the next generation of wind turbines or for upgrading the current fleet, yeah, if you’re willing to bring the data, then people, they are desperate to hear this information.
Allen Hall: Mm.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. That came up so many times.
Rosemary Barnes: Mm.
Allen Hall: So what were the other, uh, topics that we’re… I’m just not thinking off the top of my head. I know foundations came up quite a bit- Foundations, yeah … which was an odd one, I think, because we haven’t seen that a lot in Australia. Yeah. But this year, foundations, foundations, foundations.
Basically, the health of foundations. Yeah.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. I think really there was a lifting of the maturity. Um, I think the topics were sort of showing that, you know, Maslow’s hierarchy and moving into the more of optimization rather than making do, and I think life extension around the foundations was a, a really good example of that.
Allen Hall: And bolts.
Matthew Stead: Bolts? Yeah, bolts.
Allen Hall: [00:17:00] Everybody said bolts. Bolts.
Matthew Stead: Bolts.
Allen Hall: You think the world’s simplest device, we’ve been making bolts for nearly 1,000 years or at least a couple hundred. But it does- And, you know- … come up quite often … cable, cable
Matthew Stead: terminations, again, some really
Rosemary Barnes: basic- Yeah, that, really specific ones that were raised multiple times.
Yeah. Um, yeah, which, which is great- Yeah … ’cause it gives us a good direction to go. But I do love how it changes so much every year- Yeah … ’cause it makes me feel like, okay, yeah, like we’re actually, you know, it’s worthwhile, um, putting on another event. Mm. Um, not just recording one event and then just, you know, like replaying that every year or something.
Re-educating.
Allen Hall: Yeah. Well, I, I think there’s a learning exercise that has happened over the past two years where people now are knowledgeable about those things we talked about- Mm … two years ago. Uh, was it, was it even two years ago? It was a year and a half ago when we first started this, so we’re, we’re not that deep into it.
Although our third conference will be next March, uh, you just see more energy, more industry knowledge in some of the references that I heard, uh, in terms of other companies and the approaches they’re taking clearly came from WOMA.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Mm.
Matthew Stead: Yeah,
Allen Hall: yeah. Which is, which is [00:18:00] fascinating. Yeah. That’s
Rosemary Barnes: good. I mean, we want- It, it is
Allen Hall: sticking
Rosemary Barnes: we want tech conferences to get better, right? That was the- No … the reason why we, uh, we started this conference was ’cause we didn’t think that it was sufficient, what we had available. So, you know, it’s not a bad thing if other conferences, um, get better. Yeah. Yeah. We should also mention that blades were, were raised a fair bit.
We talked so much about blades in the previous years, and we will be talking about blades a lot again, including we’ve got a master class on the Friday. Uh, it’s… Yeah, we’ll go back to some of the basics about how the composite materials work and how a blade is designed and certified and manufactured, and, um- Lightning.
Y- yeah, yeah, a little, a little bit about lightning. Um, I don’t wanna cover it too much because we did the master class on lightning- Right … last year. Mm. Um, yeah. And yeah, some of the common damage methods anyway. And of course- Mm … yeah, lightning is probably the most- … common, or I guess leading edge erosion is the most, and then lightning would be the most expensive.
Um, yeah, so we’ll be, we’ll be covering all that and just try and raise the knowledge level a little bit, um, for [00:19:00] everybody to… It’s a very complicated kind of, uh, yeah, component.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah.
Matthew Stead: And workshops. So each year we’ve run sort of workshops or roundtables or whatever, so we’re still thinking about the format for them, but, um, thinking about how we’ll reintroduce them again this year.
You know, specific topics, specific questions, specific answers.
Rosemary Barnes: Mm.
Allen Hall: And the three of us will be in Hamburg in a couple of weeks at Wind Energy Hamburg, so if you see us and you’re interested in coming to Australia, that’s the place to grab us and- Yep … and shake us and say, “I wanna go to Australia. How do I do it?”
Rosemary Barnes: Mm.
Allen Hall: Uh, yeah. Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Especially if you’ve got a, a t- technology that addresses some of those specific issues that we’ve mentioned- Mm … then, um, yeah, just know ahead of time that Australia needs, needs more information and more, um, solutions available to them. So, yeah. And
Matthew Stead: that reminds me, we had a really discussion a- around safety and, you know, reasonable and [00:20:00] practicable, and discussion around all the lessons learned about how…
or what is best practice on a site, what is best practice about how to manage risks and-
Rosemary Barnes: Mm.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. Yeah. I know you, you, you enjoyed that one.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And we’re not talking about, like, safety the- Ear muffs or hats. The, um, rou- Yeah, the routine safety that if you- The goggles, yeah … yeah, trip over and graze your knee, then you need to let the site supervisor know.
You, you know, it’s not that stuff, ’cause sites have that under control. That’s a given, yeah. Or at least the ability to get that under control. We’re talking about the bigger- Yeah … bigger things, you know. Like, uh, is there a issue that is causing blades to fall off turbines every now and then? Is there an issue that, uh, can lead to, you know, a fire?
I, I think everyone, like- Yeah … a big fear of everybody’s. There’s never been, um, in Australia at least, there’s never been a wind turbine fire that has caused a bush fire, but it is a possibility, and it would be so bad for the industry. So, you know, it’s those things- Mm … that could be just terrible, preventing those before they happen.
Mm. So that’s the kind of safety that we’re gonna mainly focus on. Mm. Although, you know, we’re not gonna [00:21:00] turn down questions on, um, some of the smaller stuff as well.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Mm.
Matthew Stead: And we even thought about getting some lawyers-
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah …
Matthew Stead: you missed out on this discussion, Rosie. Okay.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah.
Matthew Stead: So
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Lawyers, this is news to me.
Well, I mean, are we talking contracts or, um-
Matthew Stead: No, no … no … it’s really operations. I mean- Right … the environmental, um, issues- Oh yeah … the operational issues. Mm. You know, there’s, there’s a few things in there that the lawyers can add.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I mean- … I’ve, I constantly find myself having to interpret, you know, legal, um, legal text and also anticipate, you know, it’s one thing about what’s the right engineering, but then there is also the legal interpretation of it- Yeah
uh, as well, you know, in terms of contract law, but then also in, in terms of safety. Yeah. Um, yeah. Was this certification done correctly? You know- Yeah … that’s got some legal aspect to it. So yeah, that- Yeah … makes sense to me. Insurance is another one where I would say- Yeah, actually that came up … you know, like some, some people might think that that doesn’t sound interesting, but yeah, in- insurance is the other-
Matthew Stead: Mm
Rosemary Barnes: aspect that you [00:22:00] just can’t, um, you can’t get away from it. Like, you can’t just think that you’re, you’re doing your engineering without bothering about Mm … yeah, like finance and law and, um, and insurance. Those are things that- Mm … you spend a lot of time thinking about.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. Mm. And I guess we would also love to hear, you know, about potential speakers, but we’d also love to hear any other topics that people are attending and want to know about as well.
Rosemary Barnes: Mm-hmm.
Allen Hall: Absolutely. And if you haven’t registered for WOMA 2027, which will be March 3rd through 5th at the Pullman in East Melbourne, right? East Melbourne, yeah. They just redefined it. It’s Pullman in East Melbourne. Uh, go ahead and go to woma2027.com and register now. Uh, Matthew and Rosemary, it’s great to see you in person again, and we’ll see you in a couple of weeks, uh, hopefully in, in Germany.
Rosemary Barnes: Mm.
Allen Hall: Very [00:23:00] exciting.
The substance of the meme here is correct; Florida public schools require comprehensive K-12 instruction on the history and dangers of communism, following a series of legislative moves and curriculum standards. The updated “History of Communism” curriculum is rolling out for the 2026–2027 school year, mandating that students learn about the “brutal realities” and (the catastrophic) global impact of communist regimes.
When I was a schoolboy in the 1960s and early 1970s, we came to learn that all efforts to establish a viable communist nation had failed, but our teachers were not shackled as to what they could teach and how they could teach it. As a result, we came to a variety of helpful viewpoints, and these are what I offered my own kids as they were growing up, e.g.,
- “Men are not angels,” as my sixth-grade social studies teacher explained. Those who do not need to work in order to survive can simply goof off.
- Yet idleness is averse to most people’s psychological needs to be an active and productive person, and member of society.
- Power corrupts, and absolutely power corrupts absolutely. Democracy prevents the accumulation of a pathological amount of power on the part of any one leader. (This was assumed to be true until Donald Trump’s second term.)
- If Lenin (a butcher) hadn’t had Trotsky (a compassionate intellectual) assassinated, the entirety of the USSR would have turned out completely differently.
- If the U.S. hadn’t, through its embargoes, made it impossible for Cuba to offer its people a decent quality of life, their revolution may have succeeded and brought forth a new way of thinking.
- There are examples of smaller scale societies in which the ideals of communism work out very nicely, e.g., the Israeli kibbutz.
- We read and discussed at length a book called “Social Ideals and Ideal Societies” in which these concepts were analyzed fairly and in great depth.
Now, will the typical American schoolchild turn out better if he’s cut off from thinking critically about all this and forced to accept the mantra that “communism = evil?” The typical Florida Republican would say the answer is an obvious yes, but most intelligent people would dispute that.
Producing educated people who can think for themselves is an idea quite opposed to the ongoing control of a population.
To the author of the meme here, I say: It’s safe to say that most folks in Trump’s MAGA base are stupid, though one needs more than a low IQ to fit into this segment.
In particular, we mustn’t omit mean-spiritedness. People who are kind, compassionate, decent and tolerant of others are grossly unqualified to be rank-and-file Trumpers.
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