Published

2 years ago

January 15, 2025

Alice Rush

We discuss a rope management tool for wind turbine maintenance, TotalEnergies’ floating offshore wind anchor idea, and a stress relief device.

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This is Power Up, where groundbreaking wind energy ideas become your clean energy future. Here’s your hosts, Allen Hall and Phil Totaro.

Allen Hall: Well, Phil, our first patent of the week is a clever, portable device for managing industrial ropes used in wind turbine maintenance. Now, the key to this innovation is a rope driver system that combines mechanical and electrical components to safely control wind energy.

Heavy duty ropes, and we know those can be kind of a pain to deal with. This device features a rope storage container with a hardened lower portion and a flexible top portion, along with a motorized driver mechanism that can both lift and lower ropes. And I’ll think of it as a sophisticated wind system that not only moves the rope, but stores it properly, too.

Seems like a lot of good uses for this idea, Phil.

Phil Totaro: And when you consider that regardless of remote inspection technology, we still do end up dangling a lot of service techs off ropes in, in this industry. So, this is actually something that comes from seemingly independent inventors with no corporate affiliation.

And it’s, there’s a lot of patents like that that are usually just kind of crackpot things that, Is something that’s never going to be adopted by the industry. This is something I hope they can find a way to commercialize or, find somebody that is interested in licensing this or acquiring the, the patent because this is actually Besides being kind of a clever and unique idea, I think this would actually come in handy in a lot of sites, because if you have multiple techs working on a blade repair up tower you can get techs.

Crossed ropes, and it creates a safety issue. So having proper storage really does come in handy and, and enhances safety of, of uptower workers.

Allen Hall: Our next idea comes from TotalEnergies, One Tech. And it is a patent that tackles one of the biggest challenges in offshore wind, how to securely Anchor wind turbines to the seabed.

Now, the invention introduces an innovative monopile foundation design that’s specifically engineered for offshore wind turbines. And the key feature is a specialized lower end structure with inner and outer tubes connected by Wing plates, they create compartments, think of it as a hybrid between a traditional monopile and a suction bucket foundation.

Now, what makes this design special is how it handles both the vertical and horizontal forces from the turbine. And Phil, we all know trying to attach the C4 is really complicated and Totaro Energies has been out in the forefront of this for a number of years. This patent is just one of those ideas from Totaro.

Phil Totaro: Yeah, and, and, like we’ve been talking about on PowerUp over the past few weeks, the reason I wanted to, to key in on this one today was, besides being this clever combination of kind of a, as you said, either a suction bucket or a jacket type approach and a monopile which, again, you would, you would not necessarily use this everywhere, but this is something that would come in for potentially sites in France where they’re looking to deploy and other project sites around the world where Totaro is involved where you might have specific, site specific soil conditions that necessitate some kind of structural reinforcement like this. Total’s never going to go have, somebody build this for them specifically, they might contract manufacture these types of things, but in doing so they’re leveraging IP that they’ve captured and that they own and control to the benefit of being able to, potentially get a discount on these, these foundations.

Because the offset, the royalty that they receive. For licensing, the design IP offsets some of the costs that they would otherwise pay for, purchasing these, these fabricated units. So this is a really clever strategy on the part of Totaro to capture IP on this, and it’s going to be a theme.

We talk about. Over the coming weeks as well on, on PowerUp, because they’re, Total’s not the only, kind of, development company or owner operator that, that’s getting into this area.

Allen Hall: Our fun patent of the week comes from a couple, looks like maybe a married couple, and it is a patent that describes a personal sound muffler device that let users Vent their frustrations without disturbing others, and the device is essentially a foam lined muffler that fits over the mouth and includes integrated electronics to measure just how loud you are yelling.

And the first thing I think about here, Phil, is Seinfeld in the Serenity Now episode. Where they say, you’re not supposed to scream that, and this is a device which is supposed to limit the amount of noise coming out if you’re really upset, I guess,

Phil Totaro: and just scream into this tube. I mean, I, we’ve had some really goofy things on PowerUp since we started doing this, and this, this has to be on the, the end of the spectrum that I find rather absurd.

The, the sides, just the, the practical application of it. It’s just, I mean, I’m sure it’s one of these things, like if they, if they ever like really designed this and put it into like the, sharper image or a hammock or Schlemmer catalog, somebody might buy that sort of thing. But this is never really gonna.

I don’t know. I think if people need to yell, then maybe just go outside or something. I mean, save yourself the 180 that I’m sure they would try to charge you for a device like this.

Allen Hall: Yeah, as your favorite NFL team loses in the playoffs, I could see a lot of these devices being used, actually.

Phil Totaro: Well, maybe, yeah.

I mean, maybe that’s, that’s what it is. Or, it, it could also be like if you’re, if you’re at work in your office or something and, you, you get a little upset, maybe you just go shout into this thing and nobody, nobody is, is any the wiser.

Allen Hall: Well, Phil, you have seen those little quiet cubes at work centers.

Some of them have been turned into screen rooms. Or they actually can go in and scream and yell. So this device, although this device is a much simpler device, it’s been expanded now into room size instead of just mouth size.

https://weatherguardwind.com/totalenegies-anchor-rope-tool/

Renewable Energy

Judge Ends Pentagon Wind Freeze, RWE Exits US Offshore

Published

13 hours ago

August 10, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Judge Ends Pentagon Wind Freeze, RWE Exits US Offshore

Allen covers a judge lifting the Pentagon’s wind freeze, RWE’s $1.22B US offshore exit, and TotalEnergies buying Shell’s European renewables.

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!

Good Monday everyone.

You know … there is an old saying. When one door closes … another one opens. Well this week in wind energy … a whole lot of doors were swinging.

Let us start in Washington. For months … the Pentagon had quietly stopped reviewing wind energy project applications. More than a hundred and fifty onshore wind projects … stuck in limbo. The Defense Department claimed that drones in Ukraine had changed the game. Wind turbines … they said … could blind radar to incoming threats. So they hit the brakes.

But on Thursday … a federal judge said … not so fast. Judge Karin Immergut … a Trump appointee no less … issued a preliminary injunction. Resume the reviews … she ordered. Follow the law Congress wrote. The law gives the Pentagon seventy-five days for a preliminary review. As of late July … not a single one had been completed since the halt began in May. When government lawyers were asked to name one project they had reviewed … they could not name a single one. The judge told them plainly. If you want to change the rules … go ask Congress.

Now … while one arm of the government was being told to do its job … another arm was writing checks. German energy giant RWE … handed back its American offshore wind leases. New York. California. Louisiana. In return … the U.S. Department of the Interior cut RWE a check for one-point-two-two billion dollars. RWE is the fifth developer to walk away from American offshore wind under this administration. The company had spent more than a billion dollars on those leases. Years of planning. Investment. Partnership with federal agencies. But RWE said there is simply no path forward to permit these projects … for the foreseeable future.

So where does the $1.22B go? Nine hundred million dollars into Louisiana LNG. Three hundred million into natural gas turbine reservations. Fifteen gas peaking projects across the country. A company that came to America to build wind farms … is now building gas plants instead.

But here is the thing about RWE. They are not leaving the wind business. They are leaving American offshore wind. Globally … RWE operates eighteen offshore wind farms. Four more under construction. And nearly seven gigawatts secured in the United Kingdom’s latest auction. America said no. The rest of the world said … come on in.

And speaking of Europe … TotalEnergies … the French oil major … just bought Shell’s entire onshore renewables business in Europe. Four gigawatts of solar and wind. Five hundred megawatts already running or under construction in Italy and the Netherlands. Three-and-a-half gigawatts more in the pipeline across Italy … the United Kingdom … and Spain. And in the same breath … TotalEnergies sold a fifty percent stake in a one-point-two gigawatt European portfolio to KKR … for an enterprise value of one-point-eight billion euros. Build it. Sell half. Keep operating it. That is the model.

Now let us fly east … to India. GE Vernova just landed a hundred-and-sixty-three megawatt wind order from American developer Enfinity Global. Forty-three turbines. Three-point-eight megawatts each. Headed for the Fatehgarh wind farm in Rajasthan. Deliveries start late this year. And those turbines will be built at GE Vernova’s factory in Pune … which can turn out fifteen hundred megawatts a year. India is pushing for five hundred gigawatts of renewable energy.

Meanwhile … up in Denmark … a Danish wind tower maker named Welcon is raising its voice. Swedish utility Vattenfall just won two offshore wind tenders in Denmark. But when asked whether they would use European-made turbines … Vattenfall would not say.

Welcon’s chief executive Jens Risvig Pedersen said … and I quote …

“It would be completely absurd not to buy European products for the two new Danish offshore wind farms. That would simply shut down the European industry.”

The Danish trade union Dansk Metal agreed. Chinese turbines … they said … should not be financed with Danish taxpayer money. Vattenfall says it has not decided yet. But the debate is on.

And finally … a milestone that happened so quietly … nobody noticed. The world just crossed three terawatts of installed solar power. It took ten years to build the first terawatt. Less than three years for the second. And not even two more years for the third. Seventy-four countries now have at least one gigawatt of solar installed. That is up from forty-two in twenty-twenty. BloombergNEF expects nine terawatts by twenty thirty-six.

But here is the catch. Without batteries … solar hits a ceiling. Places like Australia and California already have so much solar that electricity prices go negative during the day. You heard that right. They pay people to use power. The answer is battery storage. But batteries are not able to keep up with the pace of solar.

Now … if you step back from all of this … something interesting emerges. Nobody in these stories is arguing about whether wind works. Not the judge in Oregon. Not RWE. Not even the Pentagon. The debate has moved on. The question is no longer … can you build a wind farm. The question is … who gets to decide where one goes.

Think about that. A federal judge did not rule that wind turbines are safe or good or necessary. She ruled that the government cannot ignore its own laws. The science was not on trial. The process was.

RWE did not surrender its leases because offshore wind failed. It surrendered them because one government made permitting impossible … while eighteen other wind farms in its global portfolio kept spinning.

And TotalEnergies did not buy four gigawatts of European renewables out of charity. It bought them because Shell … an oil company … decided those assets no longer fit its strategy. One oil major’s exit is another’s entrance. The assets did not lose value. They changed hands.

That is the story underneath all these headlines. Wind energy has crossed a threshold that most industries never reach. It is no longer competing on technology. It is competing on governance. The turbines work. The economics work. The engineering works. What varies … country by country … is whether the rules of the road are clear enough for capital to show up.

And capital … as we saw this week … will always find the door that is open.

That is the state of the wind industry for the 10th of August … twenty twenty-six. Join us for the Uptime Wind Energy podcast tomorrow.