Published

1 year ago

May 6, 2025

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

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/

Renewable Energy

Blade Breaks at He Dreiht, Suzlon Posts Record Quarter

Published

8 hours ago

August 4, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Blade Breaks at He Dreiht, Suzlon Posts Record Quarter

A V236 blade fails during construction at He Dreiht. Plus a 53 GW US wind forecast, Suzlon’s record quarter, and what turbine noise really measures.

Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter 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 YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

The Uptime Wind Energy podcast, brought to you by StrikeTape. Protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit striketape.com. And now your hosts

Allen Hall: Welcome to the “Uptime Wind Energy” podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, and I’m here with Matthew Stead, Yolanda Padron, and Rosemary Barnes. And to lead off this week, s- there’s been some trouble in the North Sea. On July 22nd, a blade failed on one of the turbines at EnBW’s 960-megawatt He Dreiht offshore wind farm.

Uh, EnBW spokesperson said there were no injuries, thank goodness, and that the authorities were notified immediately, which is generally the case in Europe. They’re very safety conscious, of course. But the machine was a Vestas V236, which is a– that 15-megawatt offshore turbine that Vestas is offering. And He Dreiht is where the platform [00:01:00] has made its debut.

So Vestas and EnBW are working together on an investigation, an RCA, a- along, uh, looking at the environmental impact because parts of the blade landed in the water. And the, the images I saw online were like a sheer web that was being pulled in onto a ship, so big pieces of blade. Uh, there’s gonna be 64 of these turbines going into that wind farm, but this is probably a little bit of a weird thing because it does seem like that the wind farm is under construction when the blade broke, which is not the first time this has happened, right?

That we’ve seen blade breaks at, uh, Vineyard Wind and at Dogger Bank on the GE side. Is this just a construction issue, Yolanda, you think? Or is it some sort of, uh, vibration that’s happening during construction that’s putting extra stress on the blades?

Yolanda Padron: We were talking about it a little bit offline and how it might be a loading [00:02:00] issue because it’s not, uh, it’s not in the optimal operating, uh, conditions, right?

Uh, but this is– It’s– I don’t like that it’s becoming a trend more than an anomaly from what we’ve seen on this podcast. Uh, Matt, I know you work a lot in solutions, right? What, what would you recommend people start doing?

Matthew Stead: Yeah. I think, um, more and more there’s ways of just checking out, you know, pre-construction, um, you know, some of the vibration modes, some of the unusual, um, wind loading when it’s in standstill, you know, different yaw angles and so forth.

So there, there’s more and more ways of, um, checking out what the blade is doing when it’s in those unusual, um, sort of pre-con, pre-operation phases. So, um, you know, for instance, um, we do know that there is some sort of sometimes edgewise or flatwise vibration, which, um, you know, maybe is not normal, um, and maybe could be, be [00:03:00] thought about in a bit more detail.

Um, certainly I know there are some research organizations which are looking into this and also, you know, things like blade twists. Um, so what is actually happening in terms of the, um, the twisting of the blade along, along its axis.

Allen Hall: I think the last time this happened, I remember going back and looking at patents about how to protect the blades during this construction phase.

So you wanna prevent the blade from generating lift from sideways winds pretty much. So the designs that I saw were like putting like a, a netting across the blade to disrupt the airflow so that it wouldn’t generate lift. But I haven’t really seen that implemented. Maybe it is being implemented, but these loads are a little odd, right?

I, I, I’m wondering if there’s any IEC certification test that looks into them, uh, just because it’s, it’s happened a couple of times now, more than a handful.

Matthew Stead: We, we saw, um, we saw that picture of some blades on the ground. [00:04:00] You remember they were in storage. Um, there was a, a strong wind that came across them when they were in storage, and there was some, some flutter and, you know, some, some damage it caused, uh, even when they were on the ground.

Um, yeah, I think just thinking out loud, you know how on some, you know, wind stacks and, or, you know, turbine stacks and, um, you know, poles, you know, exhaust stacks. Sorry, that’s the word I’m looking for. Exhaust stacks. They have the, the spiral around it. You know, it’s for around vortex shedding. So maybe it’s an opportunity for, for Rosie to jump in here and, uh, and comment.

But, um, maybe we can put like vortex, uh, spiral vortex, um, you know, dissipators on the, on the blades before they’re fully commissioned.

Rosemary Barnes: So it’s cer- certainly not a, a matter of the design just being a little bit wrong, right? That would mean that it would last for a, for a while and then And then break. But it, it also, it could be several things.

It could [00:05:00] have been a manufacturing defect, a bad one. It could have been transport damage. Tho- those are two other things. It could have been, yeah, you know, like a, a new design feature or material that performed massively differently under real loads than what it did, um, you know, in their computer models and in their coupon tests and in their, um, static tests, fatigue tests that they did.

It could be any of those things. Sometimes you do see problems where technically you’re not supposed to leave the rotor locked out for any period of time because it is not designed for the off, off-axis weird loads that you can get when the blade is oriented in a suboptimal way compared to the wind.

And there have been instances where it’s like technically, you know, that was in the instruction manual, however, nobody ever followed it, and it’s only under extreme circumstances where that actually is severe enough to break it. There, there can be instances like that [00:06:00] where I would say that it- it’s pretty difficult/impossible to actually design s- for safety during any conceivable series of events during installation.

The way that you would do it would be to make sure that the blade can handle any wind load and, you know, up to the maximum gust at any, at any time in any position. But having, you know, done a little bit of work, um, on blade design in my past, it is massive. That is just a massive, massive load that is y- it will never see in its lifetime.

You would have such heavy, expensive blades if you actually designed it like that. Um, and so yeah, the That, that would be probably the most charitable reason for a failure where nobody really did their job wrong. It’s just kind of like some bad luck that happens every now and then.

Allen Hall: Well, it does seem like there’s a trend there between Dogger Bank, Vineyard Wind, [00:07:00] some of the things we’ve seen in China.

During the construction phase, those turbines are very vulnerable and the, the blades can break. Aren’t there extra precautions that could be put in place? Like, you, you could obviously do weather forecasting, and I know that that’s done, but it does seem like it’s, uh, such a consequential problem to have a blade break on a turbine in the North Sea, near Germany.

Like, that, that’s just bad PR. Even if you have all the engineering precautions in the world there, you would still maybe play it a little bit safer so this wouldn’t happen?

Rosemary Barnes: It’s really hard. Like I said, if you want to design it so that a blade won’t break under these, like, really unusual set of operating conditions that happen during construction, not during– Like, during operation it has to be able to handle whatever is thrown at it, like, no doubt.

Um, everybody agrees on that, including, you know, certification bodies. But during installation, yeah, if you want your blade to be able to handle anything that [00:08:00] that area can throw at it, even, you know, one in 50, one in 100 year storm that comes up unexpectedly, I personally think I haven’t done the optimization.

I wouldn’t be surprised if people had. In fact, I would be surprised if they hadn’t. But I bet that it will cost more to design every blade to withstand that than it would to lose the occasional one, you know, one out of What is it? Like one out of 500 blades or something this happens to, one out of 1,000?

I, I, I don’t know, maybe even less, less than that. Um, you know, so it’s, I don’t know how much these blades cost new, but, you know, say a few hundred thousand. Uh, it’s just, it’s gonna be it, it’ll be more cost-effective to lose the odd one every now and then. And like you say, it’s bad PR, but, um, I don’t know.

Is it that, like- It- … things, things happen, things break sometimes. Um, yeah, I don’t know. Is the PR that bad? I’m not sure.

Matthew Stead: So [00:09:00] I, I’ve got a question and, um, you know, on LinkedIn, you know, you see whenever there’s a, um, whenever there’s a failure on L- um, e- everyone posts about it.

Rosemary Barnes: Condition monitoring would’ve stopped this.

If there had only been condition monitoring that, that turbine, then they wouldn’t have had a blade break during construction. That’s why I’m so hesitant to, to, you know, make any calls now ’cause I don’t wanna sound like one of those

Allen Hall: LinkedIn losers. LinkedIn loser.

Rosemary Barnes: I learned that the last, um, root cause analysis, like, you know, catastrophic blade failure, um, the last one that I, uh, yeah, got approached to work on, I was told y- you know, like half a dozen different companies have approached us after they saw this in the news.

So people are ambulance chasing. I’m like, “Oh my goodness, should I, should I be ambulance chasing? Is this a new, a new thing that I should be doing?”

Allen Hall: Let’s take a quick break and when we come back, a fresh forecast says the United States is building more wind than anyone expected As wind energy professionals, staying [00:10:00] informed is crucial, and let’s face it, difficult.

That’s why the Uptime podcast recommends PES Wind magazine. PES Wind offers a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high-quality content you need. Don’t miss out.

Visit peswind.com today. Well, here’s a number that runs against the mood of the industry. Wood Mackenzie now expects the United States wind industry to add more than 53 gigawatts of capacity by 2030. That is a 5% increase over the previous quarter’s five-year forecast, and the reason is really straightforward.

Shovels are in the ground. Developers pushed to start construction ahead of the July safe harbor deadline, and firm turbine orders reached 1.1 gigawatts, five times the level of a year earlier. So demand is holding up too, [00:11:00] led by a 1.9 gigawatt deal between Google and Xcel Energy. So the One Big Beautiful Bill, or OB3 as I’ve heard it called more recently, is driving wind energy installations up for the time being.

This is somewhat of a positive measure. Does it demonstrate in, in sort of uncertain terms that wind is still a choice for a lot of energy developers?

Yolanda Padron: I mean, we’ve still seen a lot of wind developers continue on, right? And just maybe put something further back down the timeline than they initially would for, for a new project.

Uh, but I, I don’t know. I kind of equate this to, like, you know when there’s, like, a massive sale or something on a, at a store where it’s like, “Everything must go”? And I feel like everybody was just kind of leaning towards that in the short term, and then there’s probably gonna be a lull, [00:12:00] and then just go back to, things will probably just go back to normal, I think.

Matthew Stead: My, my take is that if I had a spare few billion dollars, um, and I was in the energy market I would be building wind solar and battery. And so I would see it continuing

Allen Hall: The existing Department of War review, this is that are not being completed, so it’s holding up a number of projects. That’s gonna eventually hit the courts.

I know it’s in the courts right now. I’m– At least that seems to be some of the news about it, and my guess is based on previous history in the courts is that they’re gonna force the Department of War to either finish the analyses and make some sort of proclamation or to allow them all to pass through.

Uh, just put a stay on the, in the Department of War. I’m not sure how that works because I’ve never heard of that happening in the past, but w- you know, we’re in new times [00:13:00] obviously. But if they, if the courts were able to tell the Department of War to stand down and let the developers go, that would be very interesting.

I think you may see some more activity in wind and that was, you know, off the table just a couple of weeks ago. Is, is that the feeling? I, I know that there’s also some larger discussions. I was listening to this discussion from an MIT analysis about how wind is gonna suffer because solar is so cool and battery is the hot thing.

But in reality, good luck, right? I think you have to have all of the above scenario to get your projects done. If you can’t rely on gas turbines, you better be looking for every possible electricity-generating piece of equipment you can get your hands on right now.

Yolanda Padron: Do you guys think it’s gonna be one of those things where the US kind of turns away from its traditional cowboy-like way of approaching wind [00:14:00] turbines?

Or at least like blades, you know? Because there’s gonna– there seems to be a lot more I, I don’t know if a lot more restrictions, but a lot more implementation of those restrictions on the operation of wind turbines, um, just like from bird monitoring and just a lot of issues that you might see on a wind site that maybe people didn’t care too much to look at before.

Allen Hall: Well, the argument that MIT was making was operating wind turbines is harder than running a solar farm, which generically is true early on. I think that’s probably true. But from what I see from solar farms and hear from operators, solar farms are not easy either. They have their own problems like fire, hail, uh, yeah, bad inverters, electrical problems, animals eating the wires.

Like, everything comes with this set of issues that it has to work through. But wind’s been going a little bit longer. I feel [00:15:00] like there’s an infrastructure there that solar is just now developing, and the history from large solar developments like in, in Spain has not been great over time. And Australia’s sort of a little bit of a different case, Rosemary, where most of the solar in Australia is put on top of people’s roofs.

But is there a real advantage to solar and battery over wind?

Rosemary Barnes: I think yes. I think it’s, it, like, it’s not The scale is, yeah, there, it, there is maintenance and management to be done on a solar farm, but it’s not like on a wind farm, uh, in my opinion.

Allen Hall: Why? Why do you say that?

Rosemary Barnes: So when I talk with asset managers for solar farms, their number one challenge, at least in Australia, is, is grass, managing the grass.

And in fact, there were some solar farms in Victoria that got shut down briefly by the safety regulator because the grass levels were not s- not safe in terms of, you know, being a fire hazard. You know, like basically it’s mowing the grass, and it’s once a year driving some drones around that are doing [00:16:00]thermal imaging and seeing if there’s any faults there, and then replacing them.

So there’s stuff to do, but it’s not like as much stuff as there is in a wind farm. I’ve always thought that it’s wrong to have wind and solar competing against each other, and it’ll be, you know, like one renewable generation to rule them all. I think it’s definitely true that solar is cheaper and simpler than wind energy.

It had a big disadvantage up until recently because it turns out that the sun sets every single night. I’m not sure if you guys were all aware of that, but, um, yeah, people, people have gotten in touch with me on LinkedIn comments to let me know that that’s true, that the sun sets every night, and sometimes it’s not windy.

Are these two… You know, mind absolutely blown from the, um, YouTube commenters.

Matthew Stead: LinkedIn losers. Yeah.

Rosemary Barnes: Not so much LinkedIn losers, like YouTube, YouTube, um, I don’t know, Y- YouTube enthusiasts. But then batteries came along and started getting cheap enough that you can quite easily cover, you know, at least the evening peak with, um, by adding [00:17:00] batteries to a solar farm.

So I think that that together has reduced how much wind energy we need by a bit. But what it hasn’t touched is, um, the times when there isn’t solar available. So wind can step in for that, wind can step in for cloudy weeks and, you know, that’s somewhere like Australia, which is, you know, the most favorable place for solar plus batteries.

But then when you head to somewhere more northern, somewhere with a more severe winter, less sun, uh, and more, you know, demand for heating, et cetera, then y- you know, you just can’t do without wind. It’s, it’s, it’s doing a different thing than what solar is. So I do think that it’s wrong to think solar or wind.

We have to be better than solar. Um, we need to be better for sure. We being wind energy. Wind energy does need to be better, but not because it’s in a competition with solar, but because it’s in a competition with, you know, fossil fuels and y- just being able to [00:18:00] do the transition, energy transition at all.

Allen Hall: We’ll be right back after a short break, and when we return, a turbine maker having a very good year, and it may not be one that you would guess

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Well, not [00:19:00] every wind turbine maker is having a hard year. Suzlon Energy has posted its highest ever first quarter deliveries, 506 megawatts of wind turbine generators. Revenue for the first quarter of the fiscal year came in at 3– 38.19 billion rupees, or roughly $398 million. That is up 22 and a half percent from a year ago.

506 megawatts delivered in a single first quarter says the machines are not just being ordered, they are going up. So there’s a, a big demand in India. India is trying to get into a lot of solar and wind and some battery storage to improve the electricity grid there. S-Suzlon is gonna be a, a winner in that race.

At least there’s just a handful of companies that can really participate because of the way that India has structured the market there. But the Suzlon stock dropped, uh, a couple of percentage points on this news as the net profit was a little tighter than analysts would have [00:20:00] preferred, so there was a lot of profit-taking earlier in the day.

But the long-term forecasts have to be very positive for Suzlon, right? It, it’s just been a long-term player in India and elsewhere even, United States being one of those places, um, Australia being another Is it a positive sign that they’re just seeing more orders, more deliveries, that eventually the profit margin will jump up and that Suzlon will be extremely profitable, kinda like Vestas is now?

Matthew Stead: Yeah, I mean, they’re a, you know, great, great company. They’ve got great product. Um, they’ve got a great market in India. You know, India is growing. Um, I think they’ll continue to improve. I, I would’ve thought it’d be a great stock.

Allen Hall: It’s, it does seem to be a little bit of a rough ride just because there’s now a lot of competitors within India, Adani being one of them.

There’s o- other wind turbine manufacturers in India. Uh, not a lot of European participation. And was it GE Vernova is essentially out. [00:21:00] Is that right, Rosemary? GE Vernova is out of India altogether at the moment.

Matthew Stead: And Siemens Gamesa as well?

Allen Hall: Oh, that would be Omtera. I’m not sure if Omtera is in India at the minute.

Yeah.

Matthew Stead: Thanks for the reminder.

Allen Hall: Do you think it’s gonna be a little bit of a rough ride? I think that’s my take on it. And even though the demand will be there and the, the government is making a huge push for it, it, it… Nothing is easy in wind is when you’re trying to scale up because it’s such a huge industry.

Everything’s big. Everything’s expensive. You’re trying to expand your capacity. It doesn’t go smooth, and you’re gonna spend more than you would’ve spent because you gotta get new people in, and you need more equipment, you need more tooling. Everything gets more expensive as you’re doing it. I would expect the profits to drop down a little bit as you’re growing.

That’s normal.

Matthew Stead: I disagree. I, I think, you know, that they know what they’re doing. They’ve been doing it for a long time. You know, the market is growing, uh, but, you know, they’ve done it before. So I, you know, apart from their little wobble a while ago, um, I, I think it’s, it’s optimistic for [00:22:00] Suzlon.

Allen Hall: The growth of Suzlon and all the Indian wind turbine manufacturers internally allow them to, uh, do much more work outside of India.

Do you think that will help their order book, just because they’re successful in India and have that baseline of a marketplace that they can reach out to other parts of the world?

Matthew Stead: Yeah, I think that one’s– That’s gonna be harder , ’cause there’s a whole lot more competition.

Allen Hall: Right. That’s the real question.

How are they gonna compete against the Chinese in, in places where they don’t have a foothold yet?

Matthew Stead: Yeah, I mean, that one’s tricky. And, you know, I think, you know, while Suzlon has done well in Australia, they haven’t necessarily maintained their, their lead in Australia. So yeah, outside of India, it’s probably a different story.

Allen Hall: Isn’t Europe the next marketplace just because it won’t be banned like China has essentially been with- within Europe, the greater Europe? That Suzlon would be that one place, that one company that would be allowed in to, to make some onshore turbines?

Matthew Stead: I think we spoke about that probably about two months ago, and that was definitely in the news that, you know, Suzlon were looking at expanding into, into [00:23:00] Europe and, uh, exactly making the most of that.

Um, yeah. So that, maybe that’s their, their golden, um, export market.

Allen Hall: Well, a project in Queensland just got cut in half, and for two reasons at once. Alinta Energy has dropped the southern portion of its Mount Challenger wind farm in the Whitsunday Hinterlands. Six months of LiDAR monitoring showed that the wind resource at Kelsey Creek was not as strong enough to really to support the turbines, and the company also heard from residents opposed to turbines in that area, and a local action group gathered more than 6,000 signatures.

And for developers, it’s, it’s really a case study in wind data and the community arriving at the same result. But we’ve seen a lot of action up in Queensland more recently. Uh, I’m not sure what’s driving all the opposition to wind turbines, but I’ve seen news stories about it in the United States. [00:24:00] It’s great to have Matthew here because he’s an acoustician.

Uh, some of the discussion in the community, uh, event that I saw was just discussing 40 decibels of wind turbine noise, and which didn’t sound like a lot. And when I looked it up online, 40 decibels was like a library, which I think is being fairly quiet.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Imagine if something got built near your property that was so noisy it was as bad as being inside a library or having a refrigerator in your home.

Easy to see how your life could be ruined.

Allen Hall: Matthew, what’s the, what’s the amount of noise from a, a road going by? Like a truck going by on a road, what is, roughly what is that?

Matthew Stead: I mean, that can quite easily get well above 60, 70, um, sometimes 80. I mean, the analogy, um, that I like to use is that each turbine has the sound emission which is similar to a truck.

[00:25:00] You know, a reasonable sized truck. Okay? So each– imagine each turbine is a truck. Um, but those trucks are a kilometer away. So, you know, the noise level decays in a logarithmic way. Um, and so by the time you’re a kilometer away, the noise from that truck is quite low. An individual turbine is gonna be way, way, way, way, way less than 40 But, you know, there’s more than one turbine, so you need to add them up and it’s n- it’s not a, it’s not a, you know, 20 plus 20 equals 40.

It’s a logarithmic addition. There are many, many, many people that live on busy roads with not 100 trucks, but thousands of trucks. So, you know, the noise exposure from a road can be way, way, way more than from a, you know, a wind farm.

Rosemary Barnes: That’s one of the things that strikes me when I have a, a look at, um, yeah, like Twitter comments for this particular post and everyone’s like, “Oh my God, that’s so terrible, 40 decibels.”

Like, yeah, I can see [00:26:00] why you’re ruining– that’s ruining your life. And yeah, I, um, I, you know, said that sarcastically at the start, but there’s, there’s plenty of, you know, hundreds of people that are, um, you know, thinking along the same lines, but the majority of them are like, “It should be legislated. You know, there should be rules around this.

They can just do whatever they want.” But, uh, the, it is legislated, right? Like, we all accept that wind turbines make noise. It is legislated. You can measure it, right? And so if you h- uh, have a property and you think it’s too noisy for the wind turbines two or three kilometers away, there’s something you can do, right, Matt?

Can you maybe tell us what is the process that, that happens when somebody thinks that a wind farm is too noisy?

Matthew Stead: So a few things. So, um, normally at a house, um, where you’re, say you’re a kilometer away, normally the ambient environment can be louder than the wind farm. The first challenge is to actually measure the noise from the wind farm and not from the ambient environment.

So what that means is that normally, um, measurements are taken around a wind [00:27:00] farm before the wind farm’s even built, and so that way we actually know, well, how much is the ambient noise. Um, and you know, the ambient noise is probably above 40 for a good proportion of the time. So th- that’s the first thing.

You need to understand what the noise environment is like before the wind farm. And then, um, using highly sensitive, highly calibrated, um, sound level meters, which can be, you know, 0.1 decibel accuracy, um, you can then monitor the sound before and after And then compare the two. But what happens is, um, as I said, it’s normally very difficult to separate out the sound from the wind turbine from the general environment.

So then what, um, there are different methods then to, um, either measure in like, um, halfway. So if you measure halfway between the wind turbine and the house, then you can start to separate out the wind turbine noise from the general environment and then do a, you know, propagation or a [00:28:00] prediction or extrapolation of what it’d be at the house.

Um, the other way of doing it is actually measuring at the turbines. So you can measure the individual turbine sound and compare that to what was expected, um, and then sort of validate, um, the initial, you know, source levels. You know, is it really a truck or is it, um, quieter or, or louder than a truck?

Rosemary Barnes: And if they do, it, it– I mean, I’m sure on occasion that people do get it wrong in terms of the noise.

They are able to do stuff about that. That’s partly what the, um, serrations on a blade are, are there to make a, um, a blade quieter. And you can also just do something as simple as turning down the turbine when, um, wind conditions are such that you know that it’s gonna be particularly noisy. No one wants to do that because you get less power output, but certainly you can do something about it if it turns out to violate the conditions of the, um, y- you know, the noise that they promised it when the turbine was, when the wind farm was developed.

Matthew Stead: Yeah. And, um, you know, in the past, it’s [00:29:00]improved a lot, but in the past there were some unusual sounds that came from some turbines, which came from like the gearboxes and, you know, you know, the drivetrain and so forth. Um, but, you know, those things are– they’re, they’re mechanical machines as we spoke about, you know, and they can be addressed, and they can be dealt with through, through design and good engineering, and also, also fixed, you know, retrospectively as well.

And like you say, Rosie, um, if there’s too– if there’s more aerodynamic noise than expected, um, there are serrations and, and lower noise add-ons that can be added. Um, but also many of the turbines also have noise modes, uh, so it can be slightly derated y- with, with certain sectors of wind, um, wind direction and wind speeds to, you know, reduce the noise further.

It is an absolute science. It’s really well understood. It’s, it’s measurable. I mean, there is some uncertainty in the measurements, but it’s, it’s, yeah, there is a lot of knowledge about this topic.

Allen Hall: Well, I just had a math question. If they want to reduce the decibels by like three [00:30:00] dB, what kind of power reduction are we talking about?

Is it like a 5% decrease or 50% decrease in power output to achieve that three dB reduction in noise

Matthew Stead: Yeah. Uh, I don’t have the maths in front of me, but it would depend on the power curve and the actual make model, but I, I… It’s not, it’s not half the power. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, um, less tweaks to the power output than, than that much.

Allen Hall: So i- it’s not a massive number. It’s, it’s a reduction of course, but it’s not, you’re not losing a, a ton of revenue.

Matthew Stead: No, no. I mean, obviously it depends, but yeah, it’s not necessarily a ton of revenue loss.

Rosemary Barnes: But I think it’s a real shame, ’cause like when I look at, you know, social media posts where, um, people are up- upset about noise, like they are clearly not aware that there is a very mundane process to go through.

Like, you know, it is not… You don’t, you don’t have to get so worked up. If you’ve got noise at your house and, um, you know, it’s upsetting you, [00:31:00]there is a very established process that you can go through and it can be, it can be fixed. And I know from, you know, the asset managers that I, I work with, um, that are some of my friends, like I, I know that they want to help you.

They do not want people living around the wind farm to hate the wind farm. So y- you need to get in touch and let them know, and, and I… They’re gonna be able to fix your problem. If it’s, if it’s detectable y- you know, with the methods that Matt said, then they are gonna be able to, um, fix it. I know that sometimes people say that they can hear noise, and you just cannot find any evidence of it, and therefore you cannot, there is nothing you can do to that wind farm operation to be able to solve that problem.

So I’m not saying in every case if you think you’ve got a problem they’re gonna be able to solve it, but if they can pick it up with a, what is it called? A noise meter? A decibel meter? Yeah, whatever that doodad’s called. If they can pick it up on that, then they can, they can fix the problem for you. And yeah, it’s just, uh, it, it upsets me that, you know, people are really, are really getting worked up [00:32:00] about this issue, but there’s a, a process to go through.

Matt’s holding it now for everyone just listening in. It’s like the size of, I don’t know, a liter of milk. It’s just not it’s not, not a complicated thing.

Matthew Stead: I think one of the big challenges that we’ve had is that there’s been a lot of negativity around noise, and then people get sensitized. And so, um, the, you know, what I’ve, um, what I, what I’ve heard many times is, um, the sensitivity to noise can be communicated Um, so, you know, like Rosie, if I tell you you’re gonna be really annoyed by this thing, this thing is coming, you’re not gonna like it, you’re gonna hate it, and then you’re sensitized to it, and then you’ll tend to have more of a, you know, a, a response

Rosemary Barnes: If we’d gone on a nationwide campaign to, you know, visit every house that’s within 600 meters of a y- you know, of a road and, um, you know, given impassioned speeches to them about [00:33:00] how it would ruin their life, then yeah, it is easy to see how we would be so fixated on it that our lives would really be ruined.

Allen Hall: Meanwhile, the Australian band AC/DC came to Charlotte the other day to a sold-out concert at the huge football stadium, and I guarantee you that concert was way above the noise level of a wind farm.

Rosemary Barnes: I hope so. Imagine if imagine if a, a bunch of whingers in the audience are like, “Excuse me, I’ve got my little noise measuring doodad and it’s over 40 decibels.”

Allen Hall: Well, that wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast, and thank God for that. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn, and if you found some value in today’s conversation, please leave us a review. It really helps other wind energy professionals discover the show.

And don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And so for Rosie, Yolanda, and Matthew, I’m Allen Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy [00:34:00] podcast.