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The Perfect Gift for Wind Industry Friends: “Where the Wind Takes You”
Allen and Joel chat with Alex Pucacco, an engineer in the wind industry, about his new book, “Where the Wind Takes You: Adventures of a Wind Turbine Engineer”. The book shares real-life stories and anecdotes from Alex’s 10+ years working as a wind turbine technician and engineer, set in the days of the “Wild West” in wind. It follows an apprentice wind tech named Aaron as he tries to get experience in the industry. Each chapter features trips to different wind farms around the world where Aaron encounters colorful characters and gets into humorous scrapes and mishaps while working on turbines. Tales of issues like missing tools, breaking down vehicles, and adventures at local hotels highlight the lifestyle of constantly traveling techs. If you’re looking for a holiday gift for your wind industry friends, this is it!
Buy the book!
Alex’s Website: https://windyproductions.com/product/where-the-wind-takes-you/
Amazon: https://a.co/d/9xiMHLN
Allen Hall: Our guest is author Alex Pucacco. Alex is based in Nottingham, England, and is an engineer by training, working in the wind industry since 2011. Alex is the author of a brand new book about being a wind turbine technician and engineer. It’s called “Where the Wind Takes You: Adventures of a Wind Turbine Engineer”.
Alex, welcome to the program.
Alex Pucacco: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
Allen Hall: So there’s very few books about being a wind turbine technician or engineer in the field. Yours is interesting because it’s based on real life experiences. And I know you’ve changed the names to protect the innocent quote unquote, innocent, right?
It’s, but it’s really based upon on some level, your interactions and working in winds, you’ve been in wind over 10 years. And you went through some of the, what I would call early times in wind, when wind started to become big. And Scotland and it looks like most, mostly Scotland early on, at least some of the book is about that.
I want to hear some of the details, like how did you get into wind? Why did you get into wind? What was some of those early experiences because there’s a that at that time it was a difficult industry to get into.
Alex Pucacco: It was and I think it still is to a degree and as I would say it’s better to be lucky than smart. I did I wouldn’t say mine is a conventional route. And I think since releasing the book a lot of people have approached me to ask desperate to get into wind, what’s the best way? So I guess in repayment for that I have I’m putting together an article at the moment to help young people get into wind because it is very competitive and difficult despite us crying out for more technicians. So yeah, I did a engineering degree at the University of Nottingham, which was completely useless.
Didn’t pick up a spanner in the entire time. Graduated into a recession ended up working for a small UK manufacturer of off grid wind turbines, the tiny ones on the back of boats. Did a bit of residential solar for a bit, and then I went to California Wind Tech, which was like a two month course they did in California, just as an introduction to electrical and hydraulic schematic reading, and then I got a real lucky break.
I applied for a salesy operations job, which was a real sort of dog’s body type role. And they gave me a chance at a wind turbine gearbox consultancy that was just starting up in wind. A load of people had left on maternity leave. We didn’t have enough people. And, we had more work than we could deal with.
So very often there’d be a shout around the office, who wants to go to Australia, America, Scotland, to do whatever job it was, main bearing inspection, portable vibration demonstration, something like that. Stick my hand up. Yeah, I’ll go. Get yourself booked. You travel. Off you go. And that was it.
You were gone for two, three weeks. And it was fantastic. I was very lucky.
Joel Saxum: So this must have been before kids and wife, right?
Alex Pucacco: Yes, this was yeah, this was very much before B. C., as they say, before children. So I’ve got two young kids now. So those days of carefree travel without permission slips, signed, sealed and delivered very much before that time.
But I think that’s true of a lot of people’s experiences within wind is that especially if they work for OEMs, where they do a lot of travel, the story of the traveling technician is a very frequent one. And how they progress into sort of working at a particular wind farm or getting two feet across where they get employed by the wind farm owner.
So it’s a fairly familiar journey, and then they progress design manager, et cetera. So as I traveled around these places, visiting different wind farm site owners, lead technicians, everybody that worked in wind all over the world, I started getting talking to them, ask about their back story and usually you could get them go in telling stories quite easily and as somebody that get bored and there’s a lot of dead time and waiting around in wind as anybody knows.
Whether it’s for a boat or, for wind or weather or parts there’s loads of waiting. So you can usually get people talking and understandably quite a lot of the subject matter within the book, where the wind takes you is about going to the toilets and those idle hours. Spent talking absolute nonsense, pranks, getting into shenanigans, crashing pool cars, everything you would expect of unsupervised men alone, a hundred meters up in the air uh, ex squaddies, obviously they’ve got a very interesting approach to work great sense of humor.
So it’s. It’s a very male orientated book, I’m sorry to say, although there are female characters in it. But because of that, a lot of the humor is very male. So it’s very good value for that. There are 11 chapters in here, which are essentially each of them is a trip to a different wind farm in a different country.
And it follows the journey of Aaron, who is a wind turbine apprentice, him trying to get his feet on the rung of the of the wind industry. As he progresses, as he his way through every scenario because he doesn’t know what he’s doing. And just him desperately trying to blag any type of competence or perceived competence.
As he figures out what it is he’s supposed to be doing. And all the colourful characters that he meets in wind turbines, completely unsupervised and alone. It’s really his journey. But a lot of the stories, whilst the places are real, the people are real, it’s all based on my experience. A lot of the stories, especially the anecdotes, are borrowed.
They’re all true, 100 percent true. And I think that’s what I really enjoy about the book is that these are all real people. And I think that some of the best feedback I’ve had from either the people who have donated stories or the people who have read it, have they said it’s very true to form.
It’s relevant. It’s a representation of their life. And they can pick out not so much the people, because as we say, we’ve anonymized everybody to protect everyone. There’s still people, some of them in very senior corporate positions now that have contributed to this book. And and they’re all here and they’re all very recognizable.
Even if they don’t know the particular person, they will know someone like them, I would guess.
Allen Hall: It’s a real life look into wind industry of that time. And I think that’s what’s fascinating about it because it’s was difficult. Everything about it was difficult. Running around in a van, a couple of guys in a van with a bunch of tools into a muddy field or icy field climbing wind turbines turning over sheep that have flipped over in the field and yikes.
Alex Pucacco: It’s I mean it’s very easy to be unprepared because the nature of wind is very changeable. Anyway, when you couple that with the facts, you’re trying to maintain a turbine where all of the paperwork you’ve got is beg, borrowed, and steeled. The tooling is modified ad hoc, it’s, you have to be incredibly adaptable at the same time squeaky clean from a health and safety perspective and it’s completely impossible.
Allen Hall: Speaking of squeaky clean, a lot of the book is about everybody being dirty. Or greasy. Covered in mud. At that time, that’s what, that’s how it was. It was a very unregulated, so to speak, industry. Things needed to get done. So it took tough people to, to get it done. And that’s the thing that stands out about the book.
Alex Pucacco: Yeah, it is the wild west. I like, there are some stories in here which go all the way back to sorts of, the engineering hippie days of the late eighties where, lattice towers, everything else. So there are, even though most of the story is based on the two megawatt platform, the sort of early to 2010 3s, this type of thing. He’s, there’s a real span in there. And despite us having the wind turbine safety rules now and, we know better and everything’s in the spotlight. We have oil and gas and some very established financial players at the scene, especially in offshore.
It’s still the Wild West, what happens up tower still stays up tower, and there’s a very, there’s a very big gap between those that finance and those that maintain and I think the stories still keep coming. I was worried, especially now the introduction of turbine toilets into sort of some of the newer machines.
That’s the end of it. There’s no more good stories to come, but good to hear that even on the Hallye platform, absolutely covered, it’s got more CCTV in that 15 megawatt turbine than the City of London. Still no toilets. So it just means that when you are going to the toilet, you put your thumbs up to everybody at Marine Coordination who’s looking at it.
So it’s we’re still not learning our lesson, still reinventing the wheel. And I think that’s part of the fun of working in wind.
Joel Saxum: There’s a major difference that you see between the the shiny, clean exterior that, that the, is portrayed in branding or marketing or in the media or whatever, and what’s really happening.
If you look at a technician’s phone and his videos and stories and things that are going on there look at this one. Look, we were installing this tower before it had, the viv protection under something and the towers up there swinging them a meter per second. There’s guys holding on up there and stuff like, so there’s a lot of things that happen behind the scenes.
And I think the book dives into those stories and gives it gives a. Almost like a picture of what’s really happening under the hood of this vehicle out in the field.
Alex Pucacco: Yes, very much. And I think I think that’s where the most fun is had, I think as well as where the, as the old saying goes, if you want a clean paycheck, you need dirty hands.
And some of my stories are just the sheer silliness of it. And this story I’m about to tell isn’t actually in the book, but it’s it’s from a Siemens 2. 3. So it’s got these lovely sort of clamshell nacelle. Open roofs where you’ve got like it, so you’ve got a complete vista either way and what a couple of technicians did was that they worked it out, they measured it up and they strung up hammocks between the top of the clamshells.
And beautiful sunny day. So stripped off to their boxers. Lunchtime, they’re ahead in service. It’s a very slow day. So they’re lying there in the sunshine, reading a book. You’re drinking their cups of tea. And then one of them gets up and he sees the other guy’s
clothes and he just launches his clothes over the side of the clamshell. So he stood up there, just in his pants. So it, as a kind of act of revenge, the guy gets out of his hammock and he throws his mate’s clothes over the side as well. So they’re both standing there with their boxes and they’re laughing, obviously they’re just boys, they’re being silly.
And so they finished the day’s work, beautiful sunshine, 25 degrees, late eighties, American money. And they think okay, put their harnesses on. So they’ve got just their pants, they’ve got their harnesses on. So it looks like they’re wearing bondage and they climb, the climb down tower. And they step out into the field and they come across this border collie and they’re like, what’s he got in his mouth? So the border collie’s got this guy’s t shirt in his mouth. And this farmer comes out of nowhere and he’s Hey there. And they, and this farmer clocks these two semi naked blokes stepping out from the tower door and he just looks at them and he just shakes his head.
And the, it’s, as you say, it’s where else could you do that?
Allen Hall: For anybody that’s worked in wind, For any length of time, being in a car or a van or a truck is just part of that lifestyle because you spend so many hours in there. And that’s a great deal about the book. There’s two places where the technicians are spend a good bit of time.
In a vehicle stuck or trying to get a wounded vehicle back to the hotel. And then the second is the hotel that how many nights you spend away from home and the different crazy places you end up spending a hotel night. And UK hotels are a lot different than American hotels. There’s a lot. They are more integrated into the fun part of life is built into the hotel.
It’s not just a sleeping space. So it’s more of a relaxation space too. You want to talk to what those experiences were and how much time you actually spend in a car. Some of the adventures in those that happen in those places.
Alex Pucacco: Yeah, sure. Inevitably a huge part of the job is travel and in your twenties is fantastic because you’re partying around the world on the company dime, which, can you really put a price on that?
But in the UK, all of our wind farms, they’re fairly remote. It’s not like Texas or Australia where you’ve got fairly hubs, if you will, and lot larger populations as well. So you’re looking, you’re thinking rural Wales, rural Scotland, and some of the places that you stay have a lot of how we say character.
So usually there’s one person in the pub that does front desk. Cooks the meals, serves the drinks, turns the beds. And you’re there for two or three weeks stinking up the
place. And if, and if there’s two or three of you or six or 10 of you on a job, you descend and take over this whole establishment, like it’s your house for the week, basically.
And especially some of the more, shall we say, testosterone, and, the more blokes you get in one space, the more ridiculous it becomes. Because you’re always pitching to the lowest common denominator. I think that’s, a lot of it is about male camaraderie. Drinking far too much on a school nights.
Yeah, that type of thing. But yeah, the travel aspect as well cultural observations as somebody that had not seen much of the world before working in wind, uh, going to Australia and observing for the first time that no, actually the wind turbines do spin in the same direction. It’s still, still a wind turbine.
Desperately trying to walk and walk whilst not being able to talk the talk. And I think that’s what Most people enjoy is that everybody was new once and this is very much somebody that was just starting in wind. And we were not just within wind at the time, but the company that was working for as well.
We were making up as we went. And I just could not imagine doing that now, especially when you consider the size of the companies that operate these wind farms absolutely huge utilities. And you’ve got a bunch of chances just walking in and just but yeah I don’t know, I’d like to think we have matured and some of that stuff which happened then wouldn’t happen now, but yeah, it still happens definitely.
Allen Hall: The other thing that stood out was the number of times you’re looking for tools, particularly sockets, that there’s always a missing socket and you find tools in the most, in the weirdest places. We want to talk about some of those situations.
Alex Pucacco: Yeah, it’s the classic meme of the lost 10 mil socket, and I think Aaron actually finds one during one of the stories, which is just goes to show how lucky he is.
But yeah, misplaced tools. The main tool of my trade was was an endoscope, which was an incredibly unreliable piece of kits because they were supposed to be designed for more. Inspecting squeaky clean off the production line, Rolls Royce jet engines. We used to stick them in all the gearboxes and main bearings all the time.
And understandably they broke quite often. So you’d be left on the other side of the world with a very expensive, but broken bit of kit. And it happened a lot.
Allen Hall: Who has to deal with all the technician silliness that’s happening out on the wind turbines themselves. The people who manage these guys must have incredible stories. And just probably just wait for the telephone to ring.
Alex Pucacco: I’ll tell you what, they have some of the hardest jobs. It makes me very thankful that I don’t work in operations and maintenance anymore because it’s like having a second family. Like you have uh, one of the stories is about a site manager in in Illinois somewhere.
He has a hundred and something plus turbines and a similar number of landowners on the cornfields. Farmers that, that own the land and therefore get a bit of a kickback from the turbines. And it talks about his relationship with his many bosses that he has, these sort of slap jawed farmers that sort of complain when his turbine’s down or it’s being maintained or something like this.
And he doesn’t really need to look at SCADA because his phone will ring and the farmer will tell him that the turbine is off. So it’s and a lot of the best site managers used to be technicians. And because of that, they know exactly what the techs are up to. They know when they’re taking the pace when they’re taking too long on changing the brushes or inspecting the filters or whatever is the task that they’ve been given.
And they are the kind of teenagers amongst toddlers really is the best way I could describe it is that they, they have to give the appearance of maturity, but really, they’re the earliest opportunity that, hats on their up tower as quickly as possible. And the best site managers always used to be technicians, but at the same time, they’ve also got to wear half wear the corporate hat and do the reporting and everything else. But, very easy to draw them into storytelling mode. And especially when I was driving around America doing quite a lot of sales and main bearing inspections and stuff, very easily, you could draw people into storytelling mode.
And I think that’s, I was quite lucky that Especially seeing how America operates window and I’m compared to the UK where we have. denser population, smaller turbines, smaller wind farms as well. And you’d be driving through a wind farm in Texas and you’d just hear this dung. But there’s nobody around to hear this wind turbine that’s got two teeth missing on the IMS.
And you’re like it doesn’t really matter because, you don’t need condition monitoring. Just drive around with the truck window open and you can see which one’s hanging. And, that’s just Texas. The whole, yeah, the earth smells of oil. There’s nobody around to hear it.
And when in an agronomic regulated market, the price of power drops to 17 a megawatt, unsurprisingly, you’ve not got gearbox, so that’s how it runs. And just to see, something that’s come from the UK, especially offshore where everything is, downtime is expensive. Boats are expensive.
Power is king. And because of that, damn the cost of everything to go to the U S where it’s just yeah, just keep it running, give it a go. Probably just needs a lick of oil, slap it. It’s good to go. It’s interesting to see how. depending on the market drivers, the turbines, the wind farms, how different countries operate.
And that’s, again, that’s another piece of insight that the book provides as well. But, uh, there, there’s pictures in here as well. Some of them based on my own photographs, others, which are borrowed really if. It’s coming up to Christmas time now, if there are if you have somebody in your family that reads Daily Telegraph and still calls them windmills, it might be a quite nice little eye opener for them.
If, they can actually talk to you about your job rather than just asking the usual sort of, uh, benign questions of feigned curiosity. So it’s fairly accessible, anybody that’s either worked as a technician or if they have a white collar job now, or if they want to reminisce about when they used to have to get their hands dirty. Or indeed, one thing I would suggest, though, don’t give it to your kid if they’re young, because it’s fairly it’s 18 plus. So a couple of people have asked me that it’s not really age appropriate, as well as the representation of how what it’s like to be a female engineer within wind as well, which is compared to other industries, I think we’re pretty awful at in terms of representation.
So that’s touched on as well. So there’s lots of themes, something for everybody. But it’s very light. It’s a very easy read and it’s hubris. So it’s not that serious.
Joel Saxum: So where can people get the book, Alex? What’s the easiest way to buy it?
Alex Pucacco: There’s two options. So the book is in aid of Mental Health Charity.
So this was written for MindUK and it’s really to support young people into help building their confidence, overcoming issues of anxiety, depression, anything really that’s going to, prevent them experiencing and enjoying life. From a mental health perspective, if you want to support mental health charities, it’s available through my websites, which is windyproductions.com
if you go to the book section it’s within there and if you are less bothered or if you want something a bit more accessible, it’s also available through Amazon as well. So “Where the Wind Takes You” is the name of the book and “Adventures of a Wind Turbine Engineer” is the subtitle. Please do buy it on there.
Leave a review if you like, and please do enjoy, give it to your friends family.
Allen Hall: So “Where the Wind Takes You” is just full of unfiltered, true to life stories about the wind industry, and it’s a great gift for the wind technician or engineer in your life. And honestly, how many times can you gift a Lego wind turbine?
This is something different for the holidays. yoU can go on Amazon, go on Alex’s website and order the book because it is a really good read and it does give a lot of great insights about the wind industry. So Alex, this has been fantastic.
The Perfect Gift for Wind Industry Friends: “Where the Wind Takes You”
Renewable Energy
Republican Platform Fraught with Credibility Challenges
The GOP can say the American economy is skyrocketing. But then there’s that nasty little piece of reality that people can’t afford groceries and are suffering financially more generally.
Or they can day that people are suffering financially, but it’s Biden’s fault. Oops. Biden left office 588 days ago.
Or they can say that the war in Iran has driven up gas prices, but that will turn immediately because we’ve won the war. Yikes. What can we say about all these bombs?
Or they can say that all the racial hatred and divisiveness is Obama’s fault. No, that’s problematic, since he’s been gone for almost 10 years.
Trump supporters may not be too sharp, but even they are having trouble accepting all this crap.
Renewable Energy
India Locks Down Turbine Data, Danish Wind Jobs Dip
Weather Guard Lightning Tech

India Locks Down Turbine Data, Danish Wind Jobs Dip
India now requires turbine data, control centers, and R&D to sit inside its borders. Plus a study on reverse flow loads in parked blades, Envision’s spare parts push across Southeast Asia, and Danish wind employment falling to 32,700.
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!
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
Rosemary Barnes: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m your host, Rosemary Barnes, and I’m filling in for Allen today here with Jolanda Pedron. All right, onto our first story. India is drawing a line around its wind data. The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has ordered every turbine maker on the approved list of models and manufacturers to report where its data actually lives.
Data centers inside India, servers inside India, research centers inside India, and no real-time data leaving the country. The order went out last week with status reports due by month-end. And while the government tightens the rules on data, the hardware keeps moving in. Flender has just opened another generator plant in Chennai [00:01:00] Yolanda, I think this is gonna have a large impact on the number of companies who are, you know, there’s a lot of companies around today developing, like, smarts for wind turbines.
There’s a lot of scope to operate turbines better, to improve power output, reduce maintenance costs, et cetera, and y- a lot of companies are taking advantage of that. Even Patlow has some projects going on in that sort of area. What do you think about the impact this will be? Is India planning to develop their entire own ecosystem for that aspect of the industry?
I
Yolanda Padron: mean, it looks like it, right? Which is really, I mean, kind of groundbreaking. I know that we talked a couple weeks ago about Europe sort of being a little bit scared of bringing in, um, different manufacturers from Asia, um, and just the, the idea of cybersecurity being something really prevalent and really important to all of these people.
So just if India starts siloing everything and that works, maybe that’ll translate to Europe.
Rosemary Barnes: Do you think that it, it can work? Has India [00:02:00] got the expertise in place already to, to make this work, or is this gonna be a real, like, handbrake on their, their wind industry continuing to develop as fast as it has been?
Yolanda Padron: I mean, I’m really curious to see it because I don’t know if they’ll bring in a lot more experts to be able to, to do that.
Rosemary Barnes: I know the Indian, um, operating environment is quite different to other locations. I mean, it’s, it’s similar in a way to Australia in its dissimilarity, if that makes sense. I, I think there’s a lot of really India-specific problems, so of course Indian companies are gonna be best placed to take advantage of that.
But what we’ve seen so far is a lot of, uh, companies from Europe or America coming in to y- you know, like tweak the way that they attack similar problems in other markets. They’re, you know, moving in to understand India better and take advantage of that. Now, of course, like not every smart operating method or aerodynamic improvement, they don’t all need [00:03:00] real-time data, and probably most of them don’t actually.
So I think it’s not gonna like s- snip off this entire kind of improvement. But it is really interesting. It’s quite, like it is quite severe, the restrictions, and I haven’t heard of any other market, um, that is doing that. I, I don’t know, do you think it’s warranted or is it maybe like overly paranoid? I know when I heard that in, um, in Europe they’re not allowing Chinese manufacturers of inverters, for example, and I just felt like, “Ugh, is that a bit over the top?”
I’m not sure. Um, yeah, what’s your opinion, Yolanda?
Yolanda Padron: I think it, it might be a little bit over the top. We live in such a globalized world that the idea of one country just siloing completely is, is a little bit strange to me. But- I guess if, if that’s, they have a, a reason for concern, then I guess it might make sense.
But to your earlier point, like, I don’t know if the cost of doing this [00:04:00]would also come into play
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I think that there’s always a, a, a trade-off. It’s like when you have any kind of l- local content rule, which is similar in a way because it forces, um, yeah, it, it forces your own ecosystem to develop, and that’s, that’s great.
Like, it is a missed opportunity if you just have, you know, like a huge new industry and you just import it all, then that i- is a lost opportunity for your own economy. But I mean, in the past, India has had pretty strong local content rules, and they do have a bunch of wind energy manufacturing, um, within the country.
They are a country known for really great engineering, so it’s for sure not beyond them to, you know, step up. So yeah, I guess time will tell if this is a smart move from that point of view. I don’t think it’s actually the motivation behind this rule. I think it’s more of a, like, a cybersecurity, um, kind of perspective where you don’t want, you know, overseas companies having the ability to shut down your energy system, for example.
Um, [00:05:00] so yeah, but it, it has the potential to have that other effect of, you know, like boosting the local industry or alternatively just slowing down the whole industry because they can’t get anything done. I guess that’s always that balance that you need to, need to look at when you’re looking at local content.
So India is deciding who gets to control the data inside a turbine. Our next story is about something inside that same turbine nobody controls yet, the air moving across a blade that isn’t turning. A parked turbine might look like the safest thing on the site. Blades are locked, the rotor’s still, nothing turning, nothing generating.
But a new study says that stillness is not safety. When the rotor is locked and the wind shifts, air can strike the trailing edge first and travel backwards across the blade. That is reverse flow, and in reverse flow, the models this industry uses to predict blade loads start to fall apart. Field data cited in the study suggests blades on turbines above 15 megawatts can go aerodynamically [00:06:00]unstable at winds as low as eight meters per second.
That is nowhere near a storm. So this is actually already definitely a known issue, and I know that modern wind turbines don’t usually park with locked rotors, right, Yolanda?
Yolanda Padron: Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: We, we saw that a locked rotor during installation was one of the causes of the Vineyard Wind fiasco, right? Where broken blade pieces washed up on the beach.
So definitely something that’s known about.
Yolanda Padron: And it’s something that even onshore you have a, you have your system so that it tracks sort of where the wind is coming from. So even if it’s stopped, it won’t just be stopped at a specific angle, particularly in case the, the winds shift.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, and I’ve seen examples of blades failing when, um, there was a storm and there was power lost, so they weren’t able to yaw or pitch a turbine, and that also can cause…
Like, any time that- Wind is going in a different direction than what the turbine desi- was designed for, you’ll get unpredictable stuff happening and often, [00:07:00] like, really bad loads. Like the harshest, um, conditions, loading conditions that a wind turbine blade has to withstand is not in operation. It’s if you’ve got just wind hitting like a bluff body, they call it, where a gust of wind just hits flat on the blade and tries to bend it.
Like that is way, way stronger loading than, um, than anything it would see operationally. If you’re looking at, you know, like a really severe storm, like a one in 50 year kind of, um, wind speeds, and then if you have flow going on weird angles where it’s creating lift, then you can ratchet up those loads even more.
So for sure a known issue. This study, it, it singled out turbines above 15 megawatts, which are huge. That’s a, you know, like a big offshore wind turbine. But I don’t think it’s limited to that. Like what would you think, Yolanda? Is this, is this like purely a big blades thing, or is this something that actually all wind turbines need to take into account?
Yolanda Padron: Oh, this is definitely something that all wind turbines need to take into account. It’s something that we’ve seen a lot in the [00:08:00] US as well, um, onshore and s- wind f- uh, smaller wind farms and wind farms that have, you know, 200 plus, um, wind turbines on them, uh, the, the 1X or 2X turbines. Uh, this is also ver- a, a reason that it’s really important, right, to check your systems constantly, and I know that a lot of the, the owner/operators do that, um, in their regular maintenance checks.
Um, but it’s, it’s, it’s an issue that, uh, if you don’t have the correct systems in place or if you just remotely reset things, uh, because you see an error that maybe you thought, “Oh, that, that must be just a glitch,” uh, then you start having issues like this that can cause catastrophic failures, not just on the blade but on the turbine itself if, if the blade ends up hitting the turbine, um, it, it ends up hitting the, the tower itself.
Uh, and then [00:09:00] a similar issue, um, that can happen too is when you don’t have the correct systems in place for, for an emergency, and so the turbine can just overspin, and that also causes a lot of blade failures, uh, both onshore and, and offshore as well. But I think onshore it’s, it’s just the, the wind farms are so big that it’s It’s easy or, or easier to miss, like, one or two turbines, um, when you’re doing those checks.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. And I think another issue with keeping the rotors locked out, and one of the big reasons why they moved to pinwheeling as the, you know, um, turbine off kind of configuration, was with the, the bearings, right? Like, it’s not good for the bearings to be totally stationary. Um, so I think that it’s better to, yeah, pinwheel.
It’s lower loads on the bearings.
Yolanda Padron: Something, um, similar to this as well, right, and, and I think Wind Power posted about it the [00:10:00] other day, um, about just, oh, it’s really common for, for sites to, to think of, of a financial solution to, to negative pricing being just fully stopping turbines that might not be producing at positive pricing.
Um, and then, uh, that can also cause a lot of loading issues because you’re, you’re having a, a turbine at, at full capacity, and then it just stops.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, that’s true. The braking loads are, are one of the more extreme loads that turbines have to withstand also. I mean, hopefully if they’re curtailing, um, voluntarily, uh, they’re not doing an emergency brake kind of level.
I hope that they’re being a bit more gentle on their turbines, but yeah, for sure, like, the easiest thing for a turbine to do is just operate normally its whole lifetime. That’s exactly what it was designed to do, and anything that deviates from that can reduce the t- life of the turbine, complicate things.
So machines keep getting bigger, and the physics keep [00:11:00] getting harder. Meanwhile, the map keeps getting wider. Next, a Chinese manufacturer planting both turbines and spare parts across Southeast Asia. Stay with us
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Rosemary Barnes: China’s turbine makers are no longer just shipping machines. They are building the network that keeps those machines running. Envision Energy has secured its largest wind project in Vietnam, 200 megawatts with REE Energy, 25 [00:12:00] turbines, grid connection targeted for October 2027. It is also the company’s largest overseas nearshore project to date.
And Batangas, Philippines, Envision has opened a distribution center holding major components and spare parts close to the projects that need them. Turbines first, then the parts network. Yelena, I’m just wondering if spare parts was a big headache for you when you worked in asset management, and do you think that this plan of, that Envision has is gonna be a successful one for Vietnam?
Yolanda Padron: I think spare parts, having spare parts on site or near a site is always a good strategy. I know that sometimes it can get the, the accounting itself can get a little bit difficult because for at least, you know, in the US for tax purposes, you can’t really sell something from one project to another, so you, you have to be a little bit careful, um, as far as when you hold a part or you’re sending one part that might fit in multiple sites and where you’re technically buying that [00:13:00] from.
Uh, but I think the spare parts that they’re having here I, I think it’s a, it’s a really good idea, right? Because oftentimes you might have a, a big, um, there might be a big queue for a particular component that fails years after, uh, it was produced, and then you– I mean, if you need it now and there’s a big queue now, then you need to wait until it can get to site, until it can be produced, until it’s your turn in line.
Uh, and so just having those components on site or really close to the site I think is a really good idea.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, it’s really challenging. Like it’s, it, it’s easy to imagine how you could organize a spare parts network or, you know, just l- literally a bunch of warehouses holding spare parts for the kind of, you know, like one-off failures that happen routinely throughout a wind turbine’s life.
But when you start to see a serial issue or if there’s just, you know, like statistically every now and then [00:14:00] you’ll get clusters of failures even if it’s not a serial issue, that’s when it starts to get really hard. So I know in Australia, and I’m sure it’s the case elsewhere, you kind of got to pair your spare parts inventory with the capability to repair and refurbish as well.
Because sometimes it’s like, you know, you might do, like speaking of blades, which is my specialty, you might have a bill of, you know, maybe even a million dollars to do a really big repair on a blade, but that’s better than spending probably, honestly, the similar amount of money on a brand-new blade, but then that comes with a six-month or a 12-month, um, wait time.
You know, like obviously you’re gonna save overall if you can get that turbine up faster. And we also see a lot of, um, in-country capabilities to refurbish, you know, all of the drivetrain components and, and everything like that, and I think that that is such an important complement. Like your spare parts strategy should never just be about having them physically sitting there, ’cause if you were [00:15:00] to have enough to cover any situation, then, you know, most of your components would go unused over the, the lifetime of the wind farm.
And it’s not like they’re just swap in, swap out for any different wind turbine, right? Like they are usually quite turbine specific.
Yolanda Padron: I completely agree with the idea, especially with blades and how trif- tricky some of the new blades and their, their repair processes can be. It’s really important to have a plan and not necessarily just, “Okay, now I’m gonna throw this one out and bring in a new one, and always hold a new one,” because that’s really expensive.
Um, and it’s also really, really important to, uh, that doesn’t matter what particular part it is, that whatever storage facility you’re using, that you’re, you make sure that the environmental factors impacting the spare parts are taken care of, right? So, um, I know I’ve seen spare parts for a battery site or spare parts for a solar site, uh, that just kind of end up degrading even more than the parts that were in [00:16:00] operations because no one was really looking at them.
They were just outside in the elements, and then you just wasted millions and millions of dollars for really nothing. Um, something that you need to take to the landfill eventually or report.
Rosemary Barnes: Hopefully recycle it if it’s electronic waste.
Yolanda Padron: I completely agree that to, to be able to, to have any sort of replacement strategy, you, or any sort of spare parts strategy, you need to make sure that, that the replacement strategy is there and that the refurbishment strategy is there.
If there’s anything that you can recycle in-house and use in-house, that’s a lot better than just landfilling anything or sending anything to be recycled elsewhere where it just piles and piles and piles up.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I think also it’s reassuring if you’re buying wind turbines from maybe a, a less well-known manufacturer or less well-known in your country, I think it is reassuring to have a, like just a stack of spare parts on site, because that will give you the confidence that if [00:17:00] and when things start to go wrong, you know, a few years into the wind farm’s operation, you are gonna have that capability.
‘Cause I think it is, like it’s a big leap to move away from the really, really well-known, uh, manufacturers into some of the less well-known ones and have the confidence that y- you know, you wouldn’t have any- anyone to ask what they’re like for service, uh, for example, and you might also not have confidence that they’re even gonna exist in, you know, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years’ time.
So having the parts on site can give you that confidence. Although, as you say, if those parts aren’t actually functional when you go to use them, that can be worse than not having them in the first place because you thought that you were okay and then you find yourself scrambling. That’s not ideal at all.
Yolanda Padron: Yeah, I completely agree. I did hear about someone who, um, had a, a blade that they They thought they, they didn’t really have the capabilities in-house to, to restore it, and so they sent it to be recycled, [00:18:00] and then later it was sold to them by their OEM, um, on site. And so I think that also speaks to the…
And, and it was just because someone noticed the serial number was exactly the same and kind of noticed. It was, it was really honestly kind of a funny, funny thing in retrospect. But, uh, and it, it just speaks to the idea of you really need to understand if you’re holding spare parts and, and just in general, even if you don’t wanna hold spare parts.
Um, the idea of being able to refurbish or have a plan to be able to refurbish the, the materials that you have on site is really, really, really important because it can save you so much money. I mean, the, I mean, the, for that case, just the, the transportation costs of hauling the blade off, of paying someone to recycle it, of paying for a new blade, um, and everything just to kind of be bamboozled in that way where you could’ve just repaired it on site is, is It’s almost a no-brainer, yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: I gotta say, that’s like a real recycling win, right? Like, you can’t get [00:19:00] better than, than that. Uh, you know, you had a blade, you recycle it into a blade. It’s, you know, performing exactly the same function, better than shredding it and hiding it in a, you know, a footpath, a sidewalk, or something like that.
Stay with China a moment longer, because the product strategy tells you as much as the project map. Mingyang Smart Energy has unveiled the Tianchi MCD 5 MW turbine at its factory in Guizhou. It’s the first machine in the company’s new medium-speed compact drive platform, a semi-direct drive that Mingyang says cuts component count by 60%.
And it is built for sites nobody used to bother with: mountains, plateaus, places where the wind averages four and a half meters per second. Now, Yolanda, 5 MW is pretty big for an onshore turbine in locations. It sounds like, you know, these locations, aside from the, like, less than ideal wind resource, also sounds like places where it’s actually, you know, transport might be a bit of a constraint.
I wonder what their strategy [00:20:00] is gonna be to get those large components and installation equipment in.
Yolanda Padron: Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s not gonna be the first site, I think, that we’ve seen that where they have to develop some sort of game-changing vessel or crane or something to be able to, to get things, uh, to the site.
Uh, my, my first thought honestly was just kind of like, “Oh goodness, that might be a lightning nightmare depending on, on where they’re located.”
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, that’s true. Like we’ve seen in Japan, they have all their turbines on the ridges where the wind speeds are great, at least. Um, but they have been just absolutely destroyed by lightning, like really, really dealing with extreme situations.
I think also, like these are low wind speed sites. Like what, what did they say? Four and a half meters per second average wind speeds? I mean, that’s like half what you would consider a good, a good site, right? And we know that the power in wind, it goes, like it increases with the cube of wind [00:21:00] speed. So, um, you know, like if you double the wind speed, you get eight times as much power.
So it’s like all of the challenges associated with a high wind speed site in the mountains or, you know, somewhere tricky to get to you know, at least you’ve got eight times the power to make up for the effort of maintaining it. Uh, just it seems like, like a lot of effort to get to a low wind speed site, right?
I think these turbines, the cut-in wind speed is gonna be two and a half meters per second, so you know, again, like you can reduce your, yeah, like the, the wind speed a- again by another factor of eight. It’s almost nothing at that wind speed. It really, yeah, I don’t know that you can make up for a low wind speed site by having a really low cut-in wind speed, right?
Like, you’re still gonna end up with low power across the board.
Yolanda Padron: Yeah, and it’s, it’s strange too, I mean, we said it’s, it’s a mountainous region, right? And so, and the transportation [00:22:00] in itself, I mean, we talked about the idea of bringing them in is gonna be difficult. But I know that a lot of times we see a lot of blades that have issues down the line because of the transportation issues and because of the way that maybe they, they didn’t use the lifting points right, and there might be a lot more transportation issues or damages from transportation on the site if they come in and it’s a completely different terrain that they’re used to.
Uh, and teams have to build in a completely different terrain to- that- than they’re used to, then that might also cause problems down the line. Not to mention the idea that I know sometimes in sites where there’s already roads, uh, it, it, because of the position of the turbines, because of the, the way that things are, are mapped out in development and construction, sometimes it’s a, a hassle for operations to, to get the correct cranes or trucks or everything in there to do any sort of maintenance.
Uh, so [00:23:00] I can’t imagine in a place where it’s just really, really difficult to get to in general.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, and especially over the lifetime, you know, maintenance i- is gonna be such a challenge. So I think that it sounds like they’re aware of that because their emphasis with this new platform, dropping the component count by 60%, that’s a claim from Ming Yang that I haven’t seen the details of.
It seems highly implausible but, um, yeah, I would wanna look into that a bit more to believe it. But they also say that their new bearings and gearbox features lift reliability by 10%, so yeah, I think that that is going to make their job a little bit easier, but yeah, I don’t know if it’s enough that would make me wanna invest in a wind farm with a, what was the number?
Four and a half meters per second average wind speed. Seems marginal at best. So new machines for marginal sites built in China and priced to compete. Now let’s move [00:24:00] to Denmark, where the employment numbers show what that competition feels like from the other side. Back in a moment.
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Rosemary Barnes: Numbers out of Denmark tell two stories at once. Green Power Denmark counted [00:25:00] just under 110,000 full-time jobs across the Danish energy sector in 2025. That is up 1,526 positions or 1.4%, slightly ahead of Danish employment overall. That is the good news. Inside the wind sector, employment fell to 32,700, a drop of roughly 500.
Green Power Denmark blames international competition and unfavorable market conditions. Its chief economist calls the dip normal You know what, Yolanda? I think that if Denmark’s labor market is weak in the wind industry, there are many countries outside of Denmark that would wanna snap up that talent.
I know that my own company, Pardalote, is included in those numbers of people that would really like to have Danish talent. I’m trying to s- hire someone currently that’s got wind turbine blade expertise, and I tell you what, that is not easy to do in Australia. So I would say if there are any Danes listening or watching who fancy a move to Australia, then please do get in touch [00:26:00]if you have some excellent wind turbine blade experience.
Yolanda Padron: You guys would have a lovely, lovely boss. I’ve- I just gotta say that. The learnings that you have in Denmark and just the, the, the school- not just from the schooling, the, the onsite, I mean, it- it’s just historically Denmark’s been really, really great in, in wind. And there’s just so many bright minds, um, that d- I mean, if, if they can’t find a j- a job in Denmark, then I, I agree that there’s a lot of places in wind that if they’re, they’re okay with moving, they’ll, they’ll find a, a good spot that’ll receive them really happily.
Rosemary Barnes: I know it is a bit of a, like, a cultural blocker. Danes more than other nationalities that I know are, are really, um, I don’t wanna say attached, it makes it sound like not quite the word I’m looking for, but they, they do really appreciate the region that they’re from and, you know, family is so important to Danes, so not the easiest thing [00:27:00] to just say, “Just move to the other side of the world.”
But you know, I did it. It, it can be done and, uh, yeah, Australia is, has got very nice weather, especially at the moment. It’s, um, it’s gonna be… It’s been, like, in the high teens Celsius all this week, and this is, I’m in Canberra in still winter and, uh, yeah, like, on the weekend it’s gonna be 20 degrees. It’s, you know, normally 15 degrees is a really great one-off day in winter.
It was my birthday this week and in Denmark there is a, a saying or a, you know, a belief that if you have good weather on your birthday, then that means that you must have been really good all year. And the weather was just, like, unprecedentedly good for my birthday, um, yeah, for a winter day. So obviously I was very, very good this year.
Yolanda Padron: You’re a great person, and happy belated birthday.
Rosemary Barnes: Thank you. But it is something that I say every time we get another story about another Danish wind energy company that’s, you know, doing layoffs and, you know, I’m honestly surprised that it’s [00:28:00] only 500 fallen in wind energy. If you look at, like, even just the job losses at LM Wind Power alone, um, I think that it would be about that many, right?
And so there are obviously some other companies um, growing to absorb some of the job losses, ’cause for sure we’ve covered more than 500 job losses just on the show. But I know I always feel really sad, um, not just for the people involved who y- you know, probably love wind energy and wanted to work in that field, but I feel sad that, you know, this was such a strength for Denmark, their, their wind industry, that they had been, you know, developing this expertise since the ’70s, honestly.
Uh, really, really world leading and, uh, of course, like, globalization means that you can’t, like, stay siloed forever, and Denmark obviously also took advantage of that globalization to, you know, export. Wind industry was a huge export market for Denmark, and still is. Um, but I do, I, I just feel really bad at the companies that are losing, um, all of that, you know, institutional [00:29:00]knowledge and the really, really deep specialist knowledge.
It’s, um, yeah. Uh, and they’ll go on to, you know, bring new skills to other industries, but it just makes me sad. As a wind energy lover and, um, you know, somebody who has a lot of friends that work in wind industry in Denmark, I do feel, feel sad. And there are some of my old colleagues who are amazing, like, literally the best engineer that I ever worked with, an electrical engineer, it, it was not easy for him to find a new job in wind.
I’m actually not sure if he’s working in that industry now. And plenty of other, like, really, really talented engineers that have gone on to other, um, yeah, other different kinds of industries, and it just makes me a little bit sad.
Yolanda Padron: Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of people too that are com- And I agree, it’s sad.
It’s really sad. But I, there are a lot of people too, some friends that, uh, just, you know, started doing consulting on their own, and it’s, it’s good to see that they’re still in wind, you know? Because they’re, they, they’re so smart and they have so much knowledge of so many years in the industry that they bring to the table, um, [00:30:00] that, I mean, it, it might even work out better for them, right?
Because maybe now they’re not just wor- focusing on Denmark itself, and now they get to, to expand and do what they evidently love to do, uh, the, for clients around the world, which is really exciting.
Rosemary Barnes: Well, that wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast, and my first as the primary host of the show, so let me know if you think I did a terrible job in the comments.
Comments boost engagement, make me look better. So 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 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.
For Yolanda, and Matthew and Allen Hall in their absence, I’m Rosemary Barnes, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy [00:31:00] podcast.
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