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Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Thanksgiving Special: A Reflection on 2023

In this Thanksgiving edition, we reflect on the past year in wind energy. We’re thankful for positive trends like capital changing hands, companies addressing the technician shortage, and growth of our podcast! The Uptime team sincerely appreciates the partnerships, experts, and audience feedback that have made this podcast possible. As we look ahead to next year, we invite you to continue engaging and let us know what topics you want us to cover. And most importantly, we’re thankful that we can keep having insightful discussions about the wind industry!

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!

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

Allen Hall: Welcome to this special Uptime edition during Thanksgiving week. And Phil, Joel, and I, are going to reminisce about the past nine months and what’s been happening for 10 months, 11 months, however long it’s been. I guess we’ve been looking at it 11 months, going to what’s been happening in wind.

I think there’s been a number of changes over the last six weeks that will have implications over the next couple of years. And. I know, Phil, we’ve been all going back and forth about where offshore wind is headed. I want to kick off first by looking back on onshore wind and let’s say something positive here about what has been happening on onshore wind because there has been really good things happening.

Philip Totaro: We’re poised at this point of the year, we’re poised to see, a, potentially a new installation record, in the United States this year, still to be determined whether or not, they’re going to get there by the end of December. But, I think the certainty that has been provided by this extension of the production tax credit through the, Inflation Reduction Act has helped.

The investment tax credit as well, and I think it’s provided, a lot of people, even though they haven’t released the full IRS guidance and everything yet. I think it’s provided a lot of people some certainty. I think you’re gonna see floodgates open when they do finally release this IRS guidance, but based on what everybody’s anticipating, There’s been, a lot of, companies getting back to business.

if you remember this time last year, we were talking about how GE was going to shut down the factory and, everybody was financially insolvent. And, it was just terrible. And, now, things are actually on an upward trajectory. So I think you know, it’s an industry getting back to business and, there’s talk of new factories in the United States.

The super secret Danish project in Colorado, economic, advisory council or whatever, announced. that their, LM was basically a contender for, for a factory potentially there. Yeah, I’m, optimistic about, onshore wind. I’m actually, surprisingly, I’m actually optimistic about offshore wind, because I think we’ve now, at this point, suffered through the last five months of nonsense, and, we actually have, something good on, on the horizon.

Joel Saxum: There’s a couple of… trends that I want to touch on if we’re just talking about trends and things that have happened in the last year. One of them has been the large sums of capital changing hands. A lot of Duke Energy with their big sale of assets and you saw some Algonquin and Liberty Power and some of these other ones.

And I think it was Con Ed got bought up and a lot of money being changed hands. And the reason that money’s changing hands is because companies are basically divesting from older assets, selling them the older. They have a good track record. They’re moving there. They’re, grooving and taking that capital and using it for reinvestment.

So whether it’s building solar or building renewables, looking at some hydrogen projects, there’s a lot of moving and grooving going on a lot of, corporate mergers and acquisitions with these, producing assets. And that capital is being basically reused in the market to build more wind farms and, more renewable generation.

So that’s a trend I think is positive and I’m happy to see that happen. Another one that I’d like to just touch on is we talk about it a lot. The tech problem in the United States and I’m very happy to hear the last few weeks. I know Allen and I have been talking with quite a few ISPs.

And without being prompted for it, a lot of them are talking about what they are doing to try to help solve the tech problem. So while everybody will say, yes, we have one, we have a tech problem. And of course, as, a company, people want to hire the, the, trained and the, the experienced people, the experienced, wind technicians or solar technicians or whoever that may be out there.

But there’s a lot of companies that realize that’s a problem, that we can’t just cannibalize each company back and forth, and we need to add some, new, basically, powder to the mix, right? We need to be training more people, have that, military transition idea to get more, some, of our, servicemen and women once they leave active duty, into the workforce. So a lot of companies that we’ve been talking to on the side and are like, little innovation pieces and stuff like that on Thursday episodes have been talking about what they are all individually doing to try to solve that technician problem.

So it’s nice to hear.

Allen Hall: And sticking with the onshore theme for a minute, our business, Weather Guard Lightning Tech is a small business. And we talk to a lot of other small businesses in wind, mostly outside the United States, couple in some in Canada, right? Our friends up north. And I think in general, one of the things I think has been positive and thankful for is a lot of those businesses have made it through the year that early on the beginning of this year, the first quarter of this year was a little rough for many of them, and they seem to have weathered the storm.

Now, we lost some of the good ones, right? We lost Rope Robotics, which was a little rougher. Pretty sad, actually, but everybody seems to be getting back on their feet, thank goodness, but some of the other players that were teetering seem to have weathered it, and there’s a lot of good technology out there, right?

We saw the merger of Ping and eologix, that was a good sign for the marketplace. We saw, Aerones really go after it this year and, has been doing really some fantastic work on robot designs. Those are all small businesses. Maybe Aerones wouldn’t consider a small business anymore because they’ve grown so much, but there’s still a lot of small ISPs out there, and I think that they’re getting their act together and have weathered the worst part of it.

I agree with Phil. There’s some good upside news that is going to happen. I think once the taxes have all been figured out in the United States, you’re going to see more repowering happening. You’re going to see more new development, particularly in the Midwest. Maybe in places like where Joel is up in Wisconsin, that would be nice to see.

And we’re going to see some transmission build out. So the small companies that really depend on the infrastructure of Onshore Wind to, grow and to develop, are, following, right? So they’re benefiting from some of the things that are happening. And it’s not just United States.

I know we’re all based in the United States, but I see the same thing in Europe too. There’s good stuff happening in Europe at the moment. There’s good things happening in Brazil. Our friends at Arthwind have done a tremendous job over the last 12 months and are growing substantially. And those are really great things to see.

So I always look at the health of an industry by looking at who the small players are that live sort of month to see how they’re doing. Gives you a better sign of where the industry is headed. And I think there’s a good science for that. The remainder of 23 and looking into 24. So let’s talk about some things we’re thankful for, and we can go around the room and highlight them.

I’ll lead off. I am really thankful for some of the partnerships we developed over the last 9, 10, 11 months. We have traveled. all over Europe, it seems like. And we’ve been all over the United States. We were in Canada recently. We’re going to be heading back to Europe by the end of the year.

And, we have met so many great people in wind and we built a lot of great relationships, through those connections and expanded our, our sphere of, what countries we’re touching and, where we have some, be able to give some advice. We’re a lightning protection company and our, thoughts are in demand because lightning is a big problem in the world.

And, I’m really thankful if some of those people have been willing to open the doors to us and welcome us in because we’re Americans. We’re outsiders. We know it, We do not fit the Danish norm in a lot of sense. But yeah, no, we’ve been really appreciative of that.

And I do think the other thing too. We’ve, in terms of, the podcast and what things have happened here, we’ve had so many good guests on. And I know we do take some time, we take time out of their schedule to sit down with us and to talk about what’s happening in their world and to give us some insight and a lot of things you hear obviously on the podcast, but some things that happened behind the scenes that we learned a little bit what’s happening in the world that maybe the world hasn’t, doesn’t have a view on directly.

We’ve, I’m really thankful for that because it really is an education for me is. Being relatively new to this industry, I’ve been in it about 10 years, there’s things I’m learning all the time, the nuances, and Phil’s been really good and giving me insight. Joel, you’ve given me a tremendous amount of insight. Rosemary, just bonks me on the back of the head once in a while and says, Hey, this is how it works.

Those are really interesting and good experience. they’re painful at the time when, it happens. But, I do think, we as a company and, hopefully our listeners have learned a lot over the last a couple of months. I will say, uh, one thing about the people who have come into the podcast, man, they are brings us a wealth of knowledge.

It is people contact us. It’s, and Joel, we’ve been to a lot of trade shows and people come up to us, Joel? And they’ll say when they want to take selfies, which is a little weird. I’m not used to that still, maybe, Joel is. But the thing they’ll say is you guys changed my life. I’m like, whoa, we’re not here to change anybody’s life.

That’s not what this podcast is about. But a lot of, young engineers have changed their pathway into wind and renewable industry because we have offered them a view into what is happening at the sort of the lower levels there. These are what the companies are doing. This is where the industry is headed.

They, it’s really hard to get that information. I think if we can be a conduit for that’s great. I’m not responsible for your decision to enter renewable energy. That’s on, yourself. cause we know how hard it can be. Joel?

Joel Saxum: Absolutely. I’m going to say a piggyback on that as well, Allen.

We talk about having guests on. Not only do we have these kind of conversations with our team here with Phil and Rosemary, Allen and I, Claire, of course, in the background that you can’t see usually, we have amazing conversations off air. With the get with our guests, the, amount of things that are the shared and the opinions and the thoughts.

And when you can just sit around like a couple of people sitting around a table, just, BS. And the amount of knowledge that’s shared. And some of the things like Allen said, you hear on the program come right from, I would recount, like, when we were in Canada, we were sitting around a booth.

Just randomly having a conversation with, some really smart developers and engineers within the space. And they brought a new thought to my eye. We, I was talking about technicians, oh, we don’t have enough capacity to train wind energy technicians. We don’t have enough capacity. There’s not enough community colleges getting people in and this, and then, and the gentleman that was sitting with us said, I would like to see more people that have a broader sense of training, like maybe they’re trained like a millwright, or they’re, they have an electrical background, or they have, they can weld, something like that. That skill gets them in the door, but that skill then doesn’t pigeonhole them into being a wind turbine technician the rest of their life.

So you’ve now, you now have a person that’s a little bit more rounded, that has a little bit more training, and if they want to move on from the wind industry to do something else, they have built a set of skills around what they can do to jump into a different industry and stuff. And it’s man, that’s a good way to look at the, technician problem that we have, is we just need to grab people from a broader. A broader background with broader sets of skills, pair them together, and then we’re not so specifically horse blinded into we need wind turbine technicians. We just need good mechanically inclined people.

Allen Hall: And that discussion really came out of some of the talk we’ve been having on the podcast. And even, Joel, when you gave the description of how you should employ technicians year round, Uh, that was a really good episode.

I, thought that was fantastic. And we’ve heard a lot of comments back from that, and that’s a good place to be, right? I’m really thankful for the comments you received back on that, and how that approach could work. there could be some improvements on it, and The industry is actually talking about that, and that, those ideas get bounced around and they don’t just die, right?

Because we do need some of those things. And I think the wind industry in particular, unlike some of the other industries that I’m familiar with, is very open to change and is very open to making itself better.

Joel Saxum: It’s a young industry. It’s not super mature. Yeah.

Allen Hall: And Phil and I both work in a mature industry.

We both work in aerospace for a while. I still do. it’s a very mature industry and it’s not really open to ideas because things work and they don’t wanna change it. But in wind there’s still a lot to happen here.

Philip Totaro: And I’ll tell you what, Allen looking forward into 2024. I see a lot of potential innovation in things like material science and still more work to be done on kind of data science application, if you will.

So leveraging information, SCADA data, CMS data, et cetera, to actually improve performance. Not everybody’s drinking that Kool Aid, so to speak, yet. and I think it’s starting to happen, though, that companies are starting to get the picture, Hey, you know what? Our operations and maintenance cost doesn’t have to be as high as it is.

Not only is there benchmarking data out there now, And, we’ve seen prices tend to increase and a lot of it’s being driven by OEMs getting very expensive long term service contracts to try and make up for some lost margin. But in reality, the independent service providers that are out there, I’m thankful for them. Because they have actually provided a service where they’re taking over assets that might be 10, 15, whatever years old. And, normally especially in the United States, and it’s part of it’s because of the production tax credit, any piece of industrial equipment, as it ages, you’re going to see a drop off in its performance.

It’s just inevitable that things wear out. But independent service providers oftentimes get involved on projects where they prevent the thing from seeing a more precipitous drop. The asset might, without the ISP being involved, if you went to a self perform and maybe the asset owner or operator doesn’t really have the resources or even care to invest in maintaining that asset, you’re going to see a precipitous drop off in performance.

Particularly after 10 years, again, a lot of that’s driven by production tax credit. But, we’re in a position now where independent service providers have taken over a lot of projects and helped sustain the, asset. And helped sustain the profitability of a lot of those assets by ensuring that, the thing keeps, the turbines keep spinning and the thing keeps producing revenue for the asset owner, even absent the production tax credit after the first 10 years of the life.

if you’re not going to repower, you need to talk to somebody competent and there’s plenty of folks out there who are, but you need to talk to somebody competent about. How to get involved in helping to, maintain your spare parts inventory. How to actually service the turbines, they’ve got experience in, the manufacturer says that you’ve got to do this, that, and the other once a year.

Well, based on experience, maybe we need to inspect, every six months or even more frequently for certain makes and models of products. This is that kind of knowledge base and experience base that a lot of companies have that they’re able to be to bring to the table, but they’ve got to be engaged.

One thing that the wind industry is, in addition to being young and, open to change, etc. We’re also very cost verse, unfortunately. And it’s because at the end of the day, you and I, as. electricity consumers don’t want to really pay more than what we already do. But it’s also a quality thing, you it’s you get what you pay for and just a little bit of investment in, whether it’s an ISP or whatever, any kind of maintenance is better than no maintenance. So you’ve got to make intelligent choices. And I think there’s plenty of good people out there that then that can help.

Allen Hall: Joel, I think, a lot has happened over the, even the last two months, right? You’ve taken a new position with us, which we are super thankful for. And, we have seen a market increase in sales and productivity on our side, just by having you join the company.

So we’re super thankful about that. And, we are, if everybody doesn’t know, I know we seem like a big conglomerate, but we’re just a handful of people, doing a lot of hard work day and night. And this podcast is one of those outlets where we get to talk about, show the ins and outs of that business and the ins and outs of the industry, right?

And I would say that, having Joel involved with us has been a real bonus for us. Having Phil join the podcast on a more regular basis has been a really good bonus because he is so insightful in all the things at Intelstor. And even though Rosemary is not here, at the moment, we like having Rosemary here.

She provides a lot of great engineering insight and opinion. Very opinionated, which I like. And she, but she’s super knowledgeable, right? And she keeps up on all the stuff that I don’t have the time to keep up on. Some of these crazy wind projects that are happening, or some of the solar things, or electrolyzers. And the hydrogen, and the green hydrogen, and blue hydrogen. Yeah, I think between the… and having Claire as our producer, why, that’s just a miracle, quite honestly. Between the five of us, we’ve been able to pull off this podcast. And I will say, Joel, and we have seen a rapid increase in the number of YouTube subscribers, we’re up to 275, 000 subscribers on YouTube for this crazy little podcast, and we’ve crossed 200,000 downloads on the audio platforms. The number of people listening every week has really gone up a lot since we hit the, the winds, conference tour this summer. Man, it’s just been explosive levels of growth. And really, I’m one person, I can’t do all this stuff. What makes this podcast interesting, in my opinion, is a variety of voices.

Everybody comes in with a certain expertise. But is willing to mix it up and to go at it about the subjects that matter. And that’s what makes us different. We’re not talking about policy. And Phil, we’re not talking about policy every week. I just don’t care what’s happening at some conference.

Where they’re all flying in on the Gulfstreams. That’s not my thing.

Philip Totaro: Allen, just ask me about the Jones Act, though. then I’ll really go off on it.

Allen Hall: So the, but the thing is, that we are able to talk about, hopefully, more sort of ground level issues. What is impacting technicians and engineers and operators and…

The OEMs and, talk about what is happening in the industry, not what’s happening at the government level. And hopefully that’s where the podcast will remain, over the next year. I’m expecting to see more growth and we’re going to be traveling a lot. Our, Joel, we’re going to so many places over the next couple of months.

it’s going to be astounding. I’m not going to be home for probably two or three months out of the year.

Joel Saxum: We’ll be talking about all that stuff on LinkedIn too. So if you’re wondering where we’re going to be or anything like that, or if you’re, you know what, if you’re, if you listen to the podcast and Hey, we’re going to go to Amsterdam and you think there’s something cool there that we should check out, drop us a note on LinkedIn, send us an email.

We put our contact information all over everything we do, so LinkedIn, the Weatherguard Lightning Tech website, which is weatherguardwind. com. We’re, contact us through there, uptime@wglightning.com. We’re always looking for feedback, from all these, from anybody that listens, hey, you guys said something wrong here. You said something right here. Phil is the best dressed on the show, whatever it may be. Send us some feedback, tell us what we’re doing well, tell us what we’re doing bad, or things that we should include, and chat about, that, that are, topics that the industry cares about. Topics that technicians care about. We want to, we do this podcast, not so much to, to be out there, but to provide a service for the industry, really.

Allen Hall: Yeah, we don’t like listening to our own voices. We want to hear your voice, through us. That’s what we want to do. and. to, to some discussion out there because it does move the industry forward. And we know that a lot of the companies we’ve had on the podcast have had a lot of feedback, that they’ve, brought in some new customers.

They’ve connected with people they haven’t been connected to before. That is the goal of the podcast. We don’t sell anything on this podcast. I guess we kind of market our Weather Guard products, but …

Joel Saxum: We gotta eat.

Allen Hall: Yeah, we gotta eat a little bit, right? Food is still important, but we’re, doing it as a service to the community.

And maybe at some point we, will start to advertise. Maybe we’ll get big enough we’re, you know that’ll happen, but that’s not today. And I do think, our, reach out into the world has been substantial. And I want to mention one more that comes to top of mind, PES Wind Magazine.

All right. So everybody at PES Wind has been kind enough to let us write an article for their quarterly magazine and to get that out into the world. So we have been doing that every quarter. And it’s been actually a tremendous amount of work goes into those, articles. PES Wind, I appreciate everything they’ve done for us over the last several months.

Hopefully we’ve garnered them some more eyeballs to the magazine. And we’ve, introduced a lot of people to some subjects in lightning they may not have heard of before, and they may be… Got a little bit out of it, right? But I will say, working with PES Wind, they are phenomenal to work with.

I’ve worked with other magazines in the past and it’s not been as smooth or as well done. And that crew worked really hard to produce that magazine. And I know if you’ve read it, you realize the effort that goes into it. So I do want to say a shout out to them and appreciate the partnership we’ve had with them over the last several months. It’s, I think it’s been tremendous.

Joel Saxum: So we’re nearing the end of the special Thanksgiving, US Thanksgiving. That’s maybe why Rosemary isn’t here. but this, end of the special episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. And again, we want to thank all of the listeners and the YouTube watchers and the, the people that are commenting on the LinkedIn posts. And, all the engagement from, those out there that we’re making the podcast for that you guys are listening, and sharing the feedback.

So thanks again, guys. We’ll be another year until we do an episode like this and, we hope you’re still listening at that point.

Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Thanksgiving Special: A Reflection on 2023

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Renewable Energy

Republican Platform Fraught with Credibility Challenges

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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.

Republican Platform Fraught with Credibility Challenges

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Renewable Energy

India Locks Down Turbine Data, Danish Wind Jobs Dip

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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.

India Locks Down Turbine Data, Danish Wind Jobs Dip

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About Two-Thirds of Americans Will Never Call the Lake North of New York “Lake America”

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At what point did 30% of the U.S. electorate become so tuned into a criminal sociopath’s wanting to rename places in the Western Hemisphere in an effort towards his own self-aggrandizement?

The only interesting question that remains is what if any trajectory does this nation have to recover some level of dignity once Trump is removed from the presidency.

Some say it will take generations.  No one knows for certain.

About Two-Thirds of Americans Will Never Call the Lake North of New York “Lake America”

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