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US Offshore Wind Offensive & Industry Impact

Allen and Joel discuss the aggressive actions by the Trump administration against offshore wind projects. They also consider the broader implications for the wind industry, exploring onshore impacts, geopolitical maneuvers, and strategies for companies to adapt and prepare for future challenges. Register for the next SkySpecs webinar!

Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now here’s your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes.

Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, and I’m here with Joel Saxum, who’s up in Wisconsin.

Joel, you’ve had some really cold weather up there the last couple of days. It’s still September. Doesn’t really make sense, Alan. I dunno. It’s, it’s

Joel Saxum: September, well, beginning of September and this morning when I let the dog out at 5:20 AM whatever time she decided to wake me up, it was 36 degrees here.

That’s way too cold. Um, I knew, I, I, I went up here to escape a little bit of heat from in Texas, but I did not look to Frost advisories and like sweatshirts and vests and boots. Um, but that’s what’s happening. Yeah. Even, uh. Even a [00:01:00] few red leaves floating around on the lawn up here. So, uh, yeah, winter or fall is coming.

That means, you know what fall coming means is blade season for repairs in the northern hemispheres slowing down or shutting down shortly. So we’re gonna get to hear what happened. Maybe a postmortem, hopefully on the, the blade repair season in North America.

Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s been busy from what I could tell.

And plus there’s a lot of construction going on. New insights. There’s, uh, all kinds of turbines being planted right now. We’re gonna be working through the end of the year easily, if the weather will support it. Very active time at the moment. And speaking of active time, this is our second take of this podcast, uh, just because so much has happened since we recorded last evening.

Uh, Joel and I thought we ought to take another try or attempt at this. Try to give you the, the most updated information. Not to say it’s not gonna change over the next couple of hours after we finish this podcast, but, uh, the Trump administration [00:02:00] has launched its most aggressive attack on America’s offshore wind industry.

Uh, the federal government is now working to withdraw permits for New England Wind one and two off the coast of Massachusetts. These projects are valued at roughly $14.6 billion by Bloomberg, NEF, and we power more than 900,000 homes. Uh, but the, the issue really is why are they being shut down? Nobody really knows.

Uh, and there’s a lot of conjecture about it. And Joel, you and I were just talking before we recorded here. It may have something to do with Denmark.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, I think you wanna believe that. Smoother minds will prevail that, uh, logic and pragmatism is a part of government. But what it really seems is there’s, there’s favoritism and there’s egos and there’s feelings driving some of these, these decisions.

Right? Today we just heard or [00:03:00] just read that the, the Danish government is in California signing a policy agreement for collaboration with Gavin Newsom and the, the administration out there. We’ve, and, and this is like on, this is on top of, uh, Trump’s rhetoric around, or the Trump administration’s rhetoric around we would like Greenland.

And this day, Danish fight and all these different things happen in between the two organizations or the two countries there. So it’s just kind of like posturing and, and we’re back and forth and Sted is the big Danish company, right? So now Sted is feeling a little bit of. Pain from the Trump administration.

So the people who are close to Orid, IE, the Danish government come back and poke the bear on the side a little bit more. Um, so it just seems like there’s a lot of, a lot of egos and things going on, and, and that’s why it’s hard to make sense out of, right? So like, why is this happening? There’s no real reasons that we’re being told as the general public, right?

Like there’s this [00:04:00] veiled kind of, oh, there might be a national security thing here. Why we would cancel these projects. But at the end of the day, like this is kind, it’s unprecedented. I mean, there’s billions and billions of dollars sunk into these projects. And what’s the recourse, like if they get canceled?

That or Ted and or their partners are just. Out. Like, how can you cancel a project in an offshore, uh, capacity that’s 80% complete? Doesn’t make sense,

Allen Hall: right? So Revolution wind was shut down a, a week or two ago at this point, and uh, that happened immediately after Denmark, the prime Minister of Denmark and the delegation from Denmark met with Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, and then.

Boom. Revolution wind is shut down. And now New England Wind one and two, which is an avan grid project, are in the same boat. So basically, uh, it triggered a series of events, or at least it appears that way at the moment. It appears to have triggered a number of events. And this also includes, uh, [00:05:00] withdrawing about $679 million in federal funding from.

12 infrastructure projects that are supporting offshore wind development. The single largest loss is Humboldt Bay, offshore wind in Northern California. Again, another Gavin Newsom thing, which is gonna lose $427 million in federal support, and in Norfolk, Virginia, the Fairwinds landing facility. Uh, supporting Dominion’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project lost, uh, $39 million.

Uh, so now the administration has threatened or blocked about eight gigawatts of offshore wind capacity, which is a tremendous number of homes that we would’ve powered. This is starting to get to a little bit, uh. Unsettling. So the, the news out of the New York Times last night as we’re recording this, said I think six administration departments have been asked to go find ways [00:06:00] to threaten or stop offshore wind That’s been headed up by President Trump’s chief of staff.

So it’s all the way to the top, Joel. It just feels like this is personal for some reason, and I don’t know how it got to this level. But it is becoming a little more irrational, uh, than it was maybe even six weeks ago. And I know Phil was really upset about it six weeks ago. And I genuinely agree. Like some of the comments coming outta the administration are on.

I, I would, I would say they were bonkers, maybe is the right term, just being polite, but unfounded maybe is a really good term. Uh, and, and now it’s like really escalated.

Joel Saxum: I think that the general public, and so there’s a way, a couple ways to look at it. In my mind, I’m looking, is the hydrocarbon lobby this strong?

Right? I know they’re strong, right? I’m in X oil and gas guy. I lived in Houston, energy, capital world, all these things and was a part of that, [00:07:00] uh, infrastructure for a long time. So I know the things that they can get done if they want to get done. Are they strong enough to turn the tides of an entire, basically like.

Western Hemisphere’s energy production. ’cause that’s what it’s looking like, right? Like the changes that they’re so extreme here have waterfall and cascading effects to all of the other economies around us. You’re seeing investment possibly pouring into Canada offshore wind there. So that’s changing their economy.

Changing our economy. Um, you’ll, you’ll see these things that. They’re not just going to affect here in the us they’re that these moves will affect globally. And you’ve, you’ve seen it, um, being pushed over to like these trade groups, going to from the us, going to the uk, going to Europe, you know, stop building wind, stop building wind.

You need LNG. So you can hear this undertone of hydrocarbon industry, LNG, oil and gas drill, baby drill, getting pushed. Is that. Is that lobby so strong that they’ve changed this? I don’t know if that’s the case. I know that’s part of [00:08:00] it, but it does feel like it’s this ego thing, right? Because you have this engagement of every, every, like you said, all of these different departments within the federal government, they’re being told, do this, do this, do this.

And again, I I want to say this to the, the general public. If you don’t know these things, like, so transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, he’s the head of basically the federal DOT. The federal DOT is in charge of ports, so whenever you would go onto a port facility, you need what’s called a TWIC card transportation Worker identification card, and that’s a background check on you to make sure that you’re okay with the national interests to enter these facilities.

Those ports are exactly where we will be operating offshore wind out of. They’re the same places where we bring in goods and services from other countries and do trade deals and all these different things. It’s the working part of our um, economy. For the maritime side of it, right? So because the federal government has control of these, they can do what they want at these port facilities, regardless of [00:09:00] state wants.

So that’s where you see. You have already heard in the news President Trump and Gavin Newsom, man, not the best of friends, right? So it’s California and and federal thing not going so well. So what is, what, what does the administration do then? Direct the transportation secretary to go pull funding from the ports in California.

That will directly affect the local economies, the jobs that offshore wind build out and up. Some of these projects that are already ongoing, they’ve already done things like there’s already, there’s already shovels moving dirt on some of those sites. So. You see this power that they have and that, that they’re moving and grooving to, to be able to basically put a stranglehold on offshore wind in the United States.

It’s, it is I the term you used Alan Unnerving. I know a couple months ago when some of this stuff started to roll out, we were like, ah, nothing’s really gonna happen. You know, stay the course. Everything’s cool, but it’s starting to get. Some big time things happening, right? There’s gonna be some lawsuits flying around here.[00:10:00]

Allen Hall: Well, yeah. And today, lawsuits really started flying. We figured at some 0.1 of the developers was gonna file a lawsuit or the states were going to file a lawsuit. And all of the above has just happened. So Rhode Island in Connecticut, uh, and project. Developer Orid for and Sky borne renewables are going to challenge the Trump administration’s halt of the Revolution Wind Project.

Now there’s a lot going on behind the scenes, so you’re just hearing dribs and drabs at this point. But basically the, the lawsuit says there’s process violations. Now those sound arcane, like, oh, it’s a process violation. No big deal. Well, it is a big deal because there’s so much money behind it, and it affects so many, so many jobs.

There’s thousands of jobs, and in this particular case, uh, with Revolution Wind and with Empire Wind, the rationale for why they shut those projects off was not [00:11:00] defined. And, and. The press went to go find the exact reason, uh, that a Freedom of Information Act and got the document, but everything was redacted on the Empire Wind side, so they couldn’t even tell.

And my guess is that Orid is still waiting to hear the real issue. Like is there a, a, a legal issue that was a rationale for BOEM to shut off Revolution wind? And I think the answer is probably no. It’s more like it’s a national interest. Problem. We have defense problems with these wind turbines being in the water.

That is usually not enough to trigger a stoppage. So unless somebody pushes back, the Trump administration can continue to do this. I, my guess is that the, the States knowing that, and a lot of those people have worked in Washington, DC and they all have. Good attorneys, particularly up in the northeast’s.

A lot of attorneys in the Northeast are easily gonna [00:12:00] file, uh, some sort of lawsuit, getting the administration to stop. Now, Joel, I think the question is, what happens next? Will the administration stop and try to negotiate some deal, or will it just get more combative? We’re both, sorry. Just start throwing rocks at each other.

You’ve,

Joel Saxum: you’ve pinpointed the two things, right? And. One problem I see there is if a deal isn’t struck, this is Trump 1 0 1, the art of the deal, right? This is what he is been doing to other countries, you know, come in strong arm and then go, oh, you don’t like that. Uh, let’s negotiate something. Maybe we get something that we want.

You’re like, come in with a high price, even though you know you want this one and you can settle for that. That’s probably what’s going to happen. Now, if, and, and that’s in my opinion, right? But if that doesn’t, the trouble here is that we’re now tied up in a legal process. Legal processes can drag and drag and drag and drag forever, right?

So you drag this out long enough where the pain gets to be so heavy [00:13:00]that eventually people have to cut their losses and or, you know, eat, eat some of the costs here or something has to happen and in a negative way. The trouble with that is either, either of these outcomes, to be honest with you, what we have done is made investing in the United States risky.

By having a situation where you can’t, as an outside investor, you can’t count on things, right? It would just be like if you were, if you were gonna buy a new car and all of a sudden the, you’ve got, you were basically taking ownership of the car and then they changed the terms of the loan or told you you couldn’t drive it, you know, only but Tuesday nights or something of that sort like this, I, I don’t want that anymore.

You know, I’m not gonna invest in that. Um, so. There isn’t a really, I guess, in my opinion, what’s happening here. I’m hoping for the best. Right? But the what looks like the writing on the wall is like, it’s just not a good outcome. Um, for offshore wind in the United States,

Allen Hall: I think the, [00:14:00] the banter that’s going back and forth is the Keystone XL Pipeline was shut down and just outta the blue l and g porch roll shut down, like immediately, boom, there’s an order.

Everything stops. So now it’s retribution. It’s it’s payback time. We’re going to flex the other way and watch what we can do with our pen and our phone. Like, okay. Both sides need to stop this nonsense because 330 million Americans are caught in the middle and cutting electricity. Off in some sense. I mean, reducing the supply of electricity, which is what is about to happen, uh, is gonna be a huge problem.

And I, I don’t know if anybody is paying attention to the political ramifications to this every, not that I trust analysts, honestly, I do a lot of the homework myself, but analysts are predicting that electricity prices are going to bump up and not in small amounts. It’ll be very noticeable. It’s one thing about [00:15:00]Americans.

They know what the price of gas is, they know what the price of electricity is, uh, and they know the price of eggs and milking, right? Those are bread or the, or the key consumer items. If any of those start to fluctuate on any. Grand scale more than a couple percentage points, there’s hell to pay as a politician.

And I’m just curious as to what Congress is thinking right now. Like, how long is this gonna go on before there’s retribution, payback from my constituents? Do I lose my seat? Maybe they’re willing to do that, but I, it doesn’t seem like anybody’s, uh, upset about it, right. Yet.

Joel Saxum: You’ve already seen posturing on that exact topic, though you’ve already seen.

Ke senior level, uh, people in the administration say, oh, prices are gonna go up and we’re gonna get blamed for it even though it was the last administration’s fault. That makes no, that makes you see that. Like that’s what’s happening right now. But that doesn’t make sense. Because when you look at, it’s this, these are simple, [00:16:00] simple economics.

This is economics 1 0 1, supply and demand, right? You’re cutting. Supply and demand is increasing. We know this one to 3%. I think last year the number was 2.5%, which was like a, which is a record since. Decades. Right. And that’s only gonna get more and more extreme as we start to build, uh, more of these AI data centers things that we as the consumers of the electricity are also the consumers of the AI data centers we’re driving that demand ourselves.

So like basically with we’re standing and, and digging dirt and then throwing it on our own sheet. Is what’s happening. And there is a mechanism to lift us out of this more generation on the grid, and that’s being canceled at the same time that we’re also shutting down coal plants and stuff. So we’re, we’re, we’re trying to decarbonize, we’re making moves away from this, but there’s just this, this simple equations, this is not PhD level stuff.

I can [00:17:00] do this in a bar napkin for you. Like we’re not, we’re, we’re not in a good place as far as energy generation goes. Um, and. The demand is so high that I think when we were talking about Phil last, and I just completely agree with him, uh, you’re gonna start to see more behind the grid projects popping up because the people with the deep pockets need this generation, need power generation, and they’re not gonna be stopped by some organization that has, you know, FERC or a NERC or someone like that, that they have to answer to.

They want, if the business case makes sense to power these data centers. They’re gonna make power and they’re gonna make it happen. They’re just not gonna deal with the, the garbage going on. Politically. That’s, that’s my take. Now, you can’t do that in offshore wind, because that’s your federal government waters.

It’d be the same thing as if you were. Trying to do that on BLM, federal lands and the on onshore, you’re not gonna be able to do that, but if you can do it on private land, that’s gonna happen.

Allen Hall: Well, we come back from the break. I wanna talk about the onshore piece of this, because [00:18:00] I think the next phase of the Trump administration’s movements again to.

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Joel, last night we were talking about the impacts of the Trump administration’s move against offshore wind, but it also seems like there’s been action [00:19:00]taking. Uh, for onshore wind, including proximity to railroads, proximity to infrastructure, the Eagles

Joel Saxum: Migratory Bird Act.

Allen Hall: Yeah, the Migratory Bird Act. And there’s others.

I mean, I, I’m sure the administration is scouring the rule books and law books looking for other things to poke at. One of the things that has been discussed, uh, at least in the press in several different areas, is permits. For private land where wind or solar will be installed, what permits does the Fed have to issue for those projects?

Joel Saxum: Well, it all depends on what the interconnect is, right? So if I wanna put a wind turbine on the top of my house, I have to abide by FAA rules, right? So that, that’d have to be under 500 feet, ’cause 500 feet’s the limit there. Um. May, depending on my jurisdiction, right? If there’s rules in place, which here, there isn’t, but of course, like [00:20:00] in Texas and Iowa and places, there is, uh, setbacks from property lines, right?

In Texas, they tried to just pass a law that was 3000 foot setbacks to to wind turbines from a property line, which essentially makes you have to have like 6,000. 50 foot wide and piece of property to put one turbine in the middle, uh, which is ridiculous to have a piece of property over a mile across, uh, that didn’t pass either way.

But there’s certain rules of those types. Now, if you want to be behind the grid, you don’t have to ab, you don’t have to abide by all of the NERC rulings, the FERC rulings, the, you know, whatever your operator is, the miso, the ercot, the pjm. You don’t have to abide by that stuff if you’re behind the grid.

You just have to abide by a much simpler set of rules. Um, however, as this starts to take place, I could see some lawsuits popping up in certain jurisdictions about that as well. Um, and it’s those, it’s those, those lawsuits that are [00:21:00] like, uh, they’re really kind of complicated. It’s the, your, your messing up the value of my property because I have to look at your turbine.

Then the counter suing party comes back and says, well, this is. Eminent domain because it’s good for public use for the data center that it’s powering and these kind of things. That becomes a long, drawn out legal battle. I think it’ll be

Allen Hall: many years. And if the Trump administration defers and all that and says, oh, we agree with the plaintiff in the case, sure.

Right. And which which can happen. Right. And this is what’s happening. An offshore wind at the minute that, uh, any legal case brought against offshore wind, uh, against the federal government that the Trump administration saying, we surrender. You’re right. Sure. We’ll pull the permits to satisfy this lawsuit.

Joel Saxum: The trouble here, like right from the wind industry, IE us, our constituents, our friends, our colleagues, everybody around us. Why, what’s happening here? What, you know, like the Empire Wind thing that got [00:22:00] pulled, got reinstated without changes,

Allen Hall: no changes to the outcome of that project. Right. And there’s no layout changes.

There’s no cabling changes. At least from what we have seen, we haven’t seen any changes at all. Yeah. So what’s the

Joel Saxum: deal? Right? Like what’s, it’s just like, again, it’s this, it’s a, it’s a negotiation tool. It’s something, there’s something going on there that just doesn’t. It doesn’t make sense.

Allen Hall: It doesn’t extrude maximum pain when you have jack up vessels and several hundred people out on the water.

That’s a time where it hurts the most when you’re almost done, not permitted in making power, but just before then is the time of most pain because all the money has been pouring out and now you’re just adding fuel to the fire. Every day the jack up vessel sits there.

Joel Saxum: Well, I think there is a, there’s a nationalist play here too, because we discussed this a couple years ago, even, I think it was when, um, uh, when the New York fight happened, and then again when the California or the West Coast auctions happened, none of the companies that [00:23:00] won those auctions were US based companies because US based companies don’t have experience in developing offshore wind.

So they. Had to be a minority partner or something of that sort. So I think that that could be a part of the play too. Like, okay, we, we, we alluded to this possibility of, you know, the administration pulling one over on Denmark because of Ted. Uh, but now the one company that has a, uh, that is, uh, US owned, which is Dominion Energy, that has coastal Virginia offshore wind.

They’re under a microscope now. Oh, I would say so. Yeah. I almost guarantee it. I would say in the next few weeks they’ll have something pop. Well, we’re gonna hear something pop up about that wind farm where they’re pulling a permit or reviewing something or whatever, but they’re gonna, cause the administration’s gonna cause pain to them as

Allen Hall: well.

So what are we doing on onshore, Joel, and what are the companies that are involved in onshore wind? Of which there’s 75 ish thousand turbines in the US at the moment [00:24:00] and a lot of wind farms being built. Honestly, there are big, huge EPCs that are putting turbines up right now that have hundreds of millions of dollars invested in cranes and people and infrastructure and tools and all that.

And then you get down to the, the small companies like Weather Guard, honestly, you know, we’re probably as small as you can get in wind, quite honestly. Uh, and then there’s, you know, there’s everybody in the middle. Uh. ISPs, there’s all the technology companies, there’s all the tax advisors, all of the multiple levels of people, engineering companies that are all involved in win from beginning to end.

What are they gonna be doing? What is the plan of attack there? How do you address this kind of threat to the industry?

Joel Saxum: If you follow what the analysts say again, if you trust the analyst companies, if you trust these consultants that are saying they’re, they’re looking in crystal balls and predicting the future.[00:25:00]

What you see is a massive, we’re talking wind now, not all renewables. You see a massive slowdown in greenfield development in 28. We know that there’s gonna be a, a push. It’s big time right now. We’ve been on sites in the last month, right? Um, that they, it’s blowing and going. We got cranes everywhere. We got people everywhere.

EPCs are scrambling to get stuff done. Um, so that the industry’s moving fast, moving forward in an efficient and safe manner to get as many of these projects built as they can before these, uh, you know. Cliffs show up in front of us. So, but we, either way, we have this window where the EPC contractors, the, these feed study engineering companies, the environmental review companies, all of the people that are associated with Greenfield are gonna be super, super, super busy.

My advice to them would be, parlay all the profit you make right now, all the margin you’re scraping right now into o and M services, because you just don’t know. You [00:26:00] can’t. See the future of what it’s gonna look like beyond 27 into 28, 29, 30, 31, 3, 2, I would expect, uh, in my heart of hearts that we’re back up and running and building greenfield development shortly after this administration.

However, I can’t, nobody can guarantee that. So I would par if I was involved in as an EPC, as a TFA type, small ISP, that does the technical field advising for construction. I would use all of the might you have right now and all of the cash reserves you’re building to open up another silo, revenue silo of your business to do operations and maintenance, uh, because that will continue, right?

We’ve got 75,000 in change turbines in the ground, um, and by the end of the next year and a half, two years, that number will probably be 76, 70 7,000, maybe 78 if we’re lucky. Um, so those services are still gonna be needed. [00:27:00] I think that in the next year, because leading up to that, you’re going to see some market consolidation.

I believe that we’ll start to see some more m and a activity in wind, um, pushing from the big guys down. You’re gonna see the larger groups that are multifaceted already or are looking to be more multifaceted, grabbing the specialists, smaller companies. Grabbing blade company with 30 techs, that kind of stuff, right?

Or those kind of things are gonna, they’re gonna be up for sale. We’re gonna see some of that happening for sure. Um, you, we’ve already seen some of the operators start to size down their development groups. Um, repowers being accomplished project on the project management side by people who aren’t necessarily CapEx, project management type people, because these companies don’t wanna bring those new resources on.

They’re just like, you know what? We’ve got some repowers to get done. Let’s just get it done with the staff we have. Or hire a consultant to come in and help us with this because we don’t want to build, we don’t wanna [00:28:00] bolster and build this division of repowering and construction if we don’t know what the future looks like.

Um. This is more I’m, you know, speaking onshore here, right? Offshore wise, some people will, unfortunately, some people are gonna lose their jobs. We’ve seen that happen already. We’ve seen some, some massive amounts of layoffs in the offshore world. So it’s not awesome. But there is gonna be some long-term projects and some long-term things that will stay in place and those people will stay around.

Um, but either way, I would say onshore wise. Offshore gear up, and this is a global thing for me, but gear up for o and m As the fleet grows, it’s still gonna be ma

Allen Hall: need to be maintained. It’s important words of wisdom there. I think everybody needs to be looking at their books at the minute, understanding how their business is operating.

Where they can get a little bit leaner over the next few months and keep your ear to the ground. Uh, don’t assume all this is gonna get [00:29:00] washed under the rug and it’s all gonna go away in a couple months. I don’t think that’s gonna happen. It’s gonna be at least another 18 months of fun times like we’ve just had of, with the last six months, uh, where who knows what’s gonna happen.

But you’re right, Joel, I think the opportunity in. Uh, sites that are not connected to the grid, that are, you know, powering AI data centers all over the place. I think you’re gonna see activity there. Solar, wind, batteries, all the above. That’s cheap, quick to install and does the job or, or what’s gonna happen.

And that may change your business, may change your outlook, but I, I think you need to be watching for that closely. And then, like Joel said, expanding your horizons. Figure out where there’s other opportunities. We did

Joel Saxum: have,

Allen Hall: uh,

Joel Saxum: how share this with our listeners. I had a, uh, a large operator reach out to me just this week and [00:30:00] say, Hey, I know at Uptime, you know, we’ve, we’ve talked with you guys before.

We know you have a large network of people and you know, some of the innovative solutions that are out there. Some of the new technologies, some of the new even software solutions. We are in the process of basically doing a deep dive into what is out there in the wind world, what can help us save some money off, make our operations more efficient, uh, guarantee or increase uptime, like all of these little things, right?

Like the products, like the strike tapes of the world or, um, you know, we’ve been doing these webinars as Sky Spec, some of the software solutions they have. Um, that can, you know, monitor things, keep things healthier, uh, optimize your o and m strategy. And this was a company that was like, we have an initiative as a group, as an engineering team.

We need to go out to the market, find all of these solutions so that we can make our operations look better. As we go, and I think that that’s just the first of those phone calls we’re gonna get. [00:31:00] I think that, uh, that’s gonna become quite the trend here in the next year.

Allen Hall: Yeah, we’re connected. And I think maybe you don’t think a podcast is really connected to the underbelly of an industry, but we know where the technology exists because we’ve talked to them.

They may not even been on the show. Uh, but we have talked to them. Usually it’s hard for a good technology company to miss the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. And Joel, you’re right, it has happened a couple of times, but I think it’s gonna happen more often. And it’s a, we’ve been offering that honestly, if you need to know where the technology is or where others have taken advantage of a technology.

Call us. We’d be glad to share that information with you. Give us your problem statement. Yeah. We’re trying to promote the industry. This is the whole reason this podcast exists, is to get the industry to connect to itself. It’s a global industry. There’s a lot of cool things happening all over the world.

We’re trying to [00:32:00] highlight them and bring them out because they’re hard to find. Quite honestly, Joel, you and I talk about this all the time, some of the coolest technologies. Don’t have the best website. So they don’t, you can’t find them on LinkedIn and it’s hard to search for them, and they don’t really show up in chat, GPT.

But once you’re on the podcast, they’re searchable. And now you can take a deep look and go, oh, there’s a couple of companies doing what I was looking for, and let me call ’em and let me talk to the person I saw on the podcast. That’s the way it’s done. And so if you talk to operators that have used the podcast properly, that’s what they do.

They’re connecting up and getting those answers faster. And getting to the right people in those companies immediately instead of trying to connect, connect, connect, spend months at this or taking hours minutes to do it. It’s a smart move. You’ve got questions about

Joel Saxum: anything? Uh, Joel, do saxon@wglightning.com Always happy to respond or shoot me a message on LinkedIn.

Um, ’cause a, a quick connection to something may ease a lot of pain. Um, and like [00:33:00] Alan said, this is, this, this, this is. This is why we do the podcast. We are, we’re fans of wind energy. We wanted to succeed, uh, and we are, uh, collectively. At least in the US under fire right now. So whatever we can do to help each other out, um, we’re here for

Allen Hall: that.

Wraps another episode outta the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. Thanks for joining us as we explore the latest in wind energy technology and industry insights. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn and don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

And if you found value in today’s conversation, please. Leave us a review. It really helps other wind energy professionals discover the [00:34:00] show.

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Pardalote Studies Australian Blade Erosion and Heat Fatigue

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Pardalote Studies Australian Blade Erosion and Heat Fatigue

Rosemary Barnes, CEO and founder of Pardalote Consulting, joins to discuss their new grant-funded study of blade erosion and heat fatigue in Australia.

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 YouTubeLinkedin 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!

Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow

Allen Hall 2025: Well, Rosemary, welcome back to the show.

Rosemary Barnes: Thanks, Allen. Great to be here. For, it’s been a while since we did one of these one-on-one episodes, like a, yeah, a proper, proper guest. 

Allen Hall 2025: Well, this is kind of a celebratory episode because your company, Pardalote Consulting, has been awarded, uh, some funding from the Australian Capital Territory’s government for the Energy Innovation Fund.

Rosemary Barnes: It’s a really good program that the ACT government has to try and get energy innovation In the state. It’s not a state actually, it’s technically a territory. Little more than just Canberra, the city. Uh, but there are actually quite a few, like, really interesting energy-related companies here, partly ’cause of the, the fund I think helps, but also just tracing back like, [00:01:00] uh, y- you know, in the 20-teens, Australia had a really conservative government that hated renewable energy, and the ACT government had a commitment at that time to 100%, um, 100% renewable electricity for the, the government.

And that was one of the only programs that was resulting in a lot of, um, you know, clean energy projects being built, and one of the conditions that they put on that, uh, for people that would win PPAs with the ACT was that you had to have your headquarters in Canberra. So we’ve actually got quite a few, quite a few really cool, innovative companies out of here.

Um, like Neoen’s headquarters here. Windlab, uh, yeah, was, was founded here and still has a lot of people here. Pardalote obviously, and you know, a few other companies as well. So despite it being a small city of like, I don’t know, maybe it’s up to 400,000 or something people by now, um, yeah, there is actually quite a lot going on here for energy.

Allen Hall 2025: And the Energy Innovation Fund is funded by the wind and solar operators in the area, and your particular [00:02:00] effort has really global consequences. You’re focusing on two areas involving how wind turbines survive Australia, but more, uh, of relevance is to just really tough conditions which exist not just in Australia but around the world.

What two areas are you going to focus on?

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. So the two focus areas are leading edge erosion and high temperature fatigue, which we can probably get into the definitions of those in a minute. But basically my, um– what led me to wanna have a project like this was that when I moved back to Australia in 2021, I– and I started working in O&M, uh, I noticed that the wind turbines that I would look at, the blades that I would look at here behaved really differently to the ones that I worked with overseas.

You know, es- especially with leading edge erosion, like often I would be doing a condition assessment of a, you know, a new wind farm. Um, might only have been operating for, you know, two years. That’s a pretty common time for people to get in and do a condition assessment [00:03:00] because their warranty period is about to end and they wanna, you know, make sure that everything is okay.

Um, and I would just notice that often, like 90, 100% of blades would already have bad erosion after just a couple of years, which is super-duper fast. And then there are some tools available to check, um, like what kind of erosion are you likely to experience on your site. Like is it a higher severity erosion site or a, a low severity one?

Um, and you basically, you know, the status quo globally is to just look at the annual rainfall, um, and the tip speed. And if you’ve got, you know, high for both of those, that’s a bad erosion site. And if you’ve got low for both of those, it’s a, a low erosion site. But when I plotted out the wind farms that I knew had really bad erosion problems onto, you know, a chart with those two axes, I just saw a random distribution of dots.

You know? Like, this was not– uh, this had no predictive value for Australian wind farms. And so that led me to believe that, okay, um, you know, things are a bit [00:04:00] different here. Makes sense, you know, most of the knowledge that we have about how wind turbines operate, it’s been developed and validated mostly in Northern Europe.

You know? Like it’s, it’s Denmark and the surrounding countries that had, like, the bulk of the early wind energy. First few decades of knowledge were, you know, were mostly there. Of course, there were some other, um, places that had wind turbines, but, you know, most of the The OEMs have been operating for decades, came from Denmark.

And I know when I lived in Denmark, the rain there is very different to the rain in Australia. So in Denmark, it’s basically always raining, right? Like, it’s just… Like, even if it’s not raining, you’re still gonna get wet when you go outside ’cause it’s just, like, the air has this just amazing ability to just hold onto moisture.

Um, but it’s very, very gentle. But, you know, over an entire year of most days having gentle rain, that adds up to a lot. Whereas in Australia, and especially if you go, like, north to Queensland, it rarely rains. It’s mostly just dry, and when it [00:05:00] does rain, it’s like a tap turns on, and I, I swear you will get bruised from the rain droplets hitting your skin.

You know, they just have so much energy in them. So I think that that i- you know, when you look at just the overall rainfall, you really hide something important about how erosion, um, can progress. Then, um, there’s other places in Australia that have very different characteristics. Again, they don’t have that kind of really intense rain but, you know, some of those sites are also having really bad erosion.

And so it just occurred to me, I did a lot of research, you know, into what’s going on and, you know, the academics are studying erosion a whole lot, and they’ve got, you know, a lot of standardized tests and, you know, products are developed according to these standardized tests. But the standardized tests don’t actually resemble reality, and especially they don’t resemble reality in Australia.

And so my client started asking me, “Okay, you know, the products that we have are, are terrible. We have to replace them every couple of years. It’s, um, causing big problems with also [00:06:00] the amount of energy that you’re losing.” One of the types of, um, leading-edge erosion or leading-edge problems that we have in Australia is that the, the coatings tend to peel off and make these, like, big flakes which will just massively disrupt the airflow, can cause y- you know, at least a few percent AEP loss, and maybe up to five.

And even worse than the AEP loss is the revenue loss because it affects it most at, you know, lower wind speeds. Um, you get a bigger hit than at rated wind speeds. So there’s a variety of problems going on with leading edges in Australia, which mean that I, I basically… My clients would ask, “What product should we put on to prevent having to, you know, constantly replace this?”

‘Cause it costs, like- you know, 30, $40,000 per turbine to replace the protection, not to mention, you know, one or two days of downtime. It’s expensive, and I basically, I didn’t have a good answer for them. What, what product should they put on? I don’t know. No, we, we don’t know. One, we don’t know what the [00:07:00] specific, um, characteristics are that are…

what the specific local environment, local conditions are that are accelerating leading-edge erosion, one. And two, all of the products tend to be tested around this, you know, there’s this protocol that academics have come up with, and they’ve kind of like assumed that this is representative of how things behave in the field, and it’s– I don’t think it’s particularly true anyway, but it’s especially not true in Australia.

There are a few companies that are testing to different standards. Um, definitely applaud them. But without knowing wha- what are the conditions truly like in Australia, uh, it’s really hard to advise, like, what kind of tests should you be demanding from a product you’re considering to be sure that you’re gonna put it on and not gonna be replacing it again in two years.

Allen Hall 2025: Because that’s really the trouble in Australia is when you get offered products They have been tested generally in somewhere in Europe and maybe in the United States, and then when they go to [00:08:00] Australia, it’s really unknown as to how those products will do, which is a huge risk for the Australian wind market as to what to choose, how to choose, is it– what’s real in terms of test data.

So now you’re gonna go out and do what? Are you gonna put sensors out by the wind farms? Are you gonna try to do more of a statistical summary of the actual environment around wind farms using existing data? What’s the approach here?

Rosemary Barnes: It’s all of the above, but the part that is supported by the grant is that we’re gonna have enough money to be able to buy some scientific-grade sensors and put them on, um, a sample of Australian wind farms.

So we’re gonna be looking at a lot more characteristics about the rain than simply is it raining now, you know, how many millimeters per hour. We’re also gonna be investigating, you know, every kind of characteristic of, of that, um, of that rain, um, including, yeah, like the, the energy that’s in it, for example.

A, a bunch of stuff. I won’t get into every single [00:09:00] parameter. Um, and you know, other things as well, like measuring UV, solar radiation, um, particles, because, you know, in Australia we have a lot of dirt roads, which I know is very common in wind farms around the world, but Australian dirt roa- roads are always dry and dusty, like 99% of the time, so that’s one of the things that y- you know, maybe that’s causing a difference.

Um, so basically putting sensors all over a bunch of wind turbines and then monitoring the erosion, um, a combination of some real-time monitoring and also looking at inspection, um, drone inspection images annually. We also have a- an option where we’ll just be using SCADA data and inspection images, so that’s like a lower cost version where we can combine that with the findings from the scientific-grade instrumented turbines to build up a picture of what types of conditions lead to accelerated erosion.[00:10:00]

Allen Hall 2025: So the SCADA data will, will have some information inside of it, you think, that, uh, will correlate to the weather outside?

Rosemary Barnes: It has some Additionally, we can look up, um, you know, just the weather data, like how many millimeters fell during which 15-minute interval throughout the day, what was the temperature.

SCADA will tell us also what the temperature was, um, what the speed of the turbine was, so you can calculate the tip speed, ’cause that’s an important thing. Um, yeah, so it’s, it’s two, it’s two tiers of data collection. The scientific grade sensors, as you can imagine, are, are really expensive and y- you know, the, the grant project has contributed a, a lot of funding, um, but it’s not enough to put those, yeah, put a little mini lab on top of every turbine across Australia, obviously.

So that we’re using s- doing selectively, and then we can increase the number of wind farms that are included in the study by just doing this, um, cheaper version of the SCADA [00:11:00] plus, uh, weather data that’s available.

Allen Hall 2025: So what are some of the risks on the temperature side for all the high-temperature regions of Australia that have wind turbines?

Clearly it’s generally warmer in Australia than it is in, in Scandinavia and Northern Europe. What kind of temperatures are we talking about on the ground?

Rosemary Barnes: Uh, well, temperatures here can get pretty close to 50 degrees. Um, and if you’ve ever been inside a wind turbine blade on a, even a mildly hot day, you’ll know that the temperature inside a wind turbine, and especially inside the blade, is much hotter than what it is, uh, what the ambient temperature is.

So this project is one– I’ve actually been talking about this project for, yeah, like over 10 years now. Ever since I started, I moved to Denmark, started working for a wind turbine manufacturer, I had done– I had just finished doing my PhD on composite materials, structural design, and analysis. So, um, yeah, very, very familiar with, [00:12:00] you know, how composite materials work and, in particular, the effect that temperature has on them.

I mean, like most materials, when composites get warmer, they get softer, and that is really important for a w- a wind turbine blade. You know, if it gets, um, less stiff, then you’re gonna get a lot more strain, and that is going to affect your fatigue behavior. Y- you know, fatigue is just the application of a little bit of, a small amount of strain.

It’s not gonna cause damage, but when you apply it millions, tens of millions of times, like you do in a, o- over a wind turbine’s operate, um, operating lifetime, then that builds up. And, you know, wind turbine blades are a very fatigue-driven design. Um, it’s one of the most important things to consider when you’re designing a wind turbine blade.

And so when I got to Denmark and I learned how materials are qualified and how the qualification is treated in the certification process, I just realized it’s not particularly conservative, and also that some of the assumptions that are made that [00:13:00] wo- again, they worked really well in more moderate climates where wind turbines have had most of their developmental history.

You know, it’s not such a big deal there if you test at room temperature. Your wind turbine blade is spending most of its operating lifetime at room temperature or below. It’s, it’s rarely, you know, above 30 degrees in Denmark and most of Northern Europe and, you know, also a lot of, um, a lot of America, not, not all of it But, um, in Australia it has just extended periods above that temperature and even exceeding the temperature where, you know, wind turbines have an operating limit and after that they will shut down.

But the operating limits are based on ambient temperature. It’s not based on what’s the temperature in the laminate, which is what really matters for blade lifetime. So anyway, I’ve been obsessed, like honestly obsessed about this issue for 10 years. Talked about it with anybody who would listen . But then when I started working in O&M in [00:14:00] Australia and I started seeing some wind farms with an abnormal number of cracks early…

again, early in their lifetime, you know, I think one of the wind farms I was looking at was maybe three years old or four at the time. I think it was three actually, and had a lot of cracks, and I looked at a few years in a row and it was more and more cracks every year and I’m like, “Oof, this really looks like end of life fatigue behavior.”

A- actually it’s not, y- you know, there’s this concept of a bathtub curve where, um, when you’re looking at failures in components, in, in anything, not just in, um, wind turbine blades, but you know, like you’d start– it’s called a bathtub because, you know, when it starts operating, you’ll get quite a lot of failures.

Anything big, any manufacturing defects or anything are gonna cause failures quite fast, and that kind of drops off over time as all of those, uh, get addressed. And then you have, you know, the bulk of your operating life, it’s like pretty low level, pretty, pretty constant for a long time and then as you get towards the end of the [00:15:00] life, you start to see failure rates rise up again.

That’s your fatigue failures, your end of life fatigue failures. And so when I saw the same types of cracks more and more each year, I’m like, “This looks like, you know, the foot end of the bathtub, not the head end.” And, uh, it made me worried and I’ve now seen that across a few wind farms in Australia at, um, hotter places.

There’s a few blade types that are more prone to it than others, but at this point it’s still a suspicion that that’s what’s going on. I mean, a suspicion backed by a lot of, a lot of theory and knowledge of how the certification process works. But this project now we’ve got some funding to actually go put some sensors onto wind turbines, actually learn what the temperatures are in the blades throughout the whole laminate, um, not just the, you know, on the outside surface or not just the ambient temperature, but actually, you know, develop a temperature gradient across the whole, um, the whole laminate in the blade shell.

Um, and [00:16:00] then we’re going to be doing a bunch of modeling basically to look at what is the effect of these different temperatures that blades are really seeing and how much would we expect to… that to decrease a lifetime. And then we should also be able to say, you know, if you have this issue in your wind farm, you might be able to change your operation a little bit and extend your lifetime a lot.

Because this one, it’s real– like, in contrast to leading edge erosion, leading edge erosion is just, it’s, you know, every wind turbine has it to a certain extent, and it, it’s always there, but it’s a relatively minor cost to fix it. You know, like it sounds like a lot, like 30, $40,000 per wind turbine, but, um, you know, compared to if you’ve got to replace every blade across your fleet because they’re all, you know, at the end of their life after five years, you know, that’s obviously shocking.

And, you know, that’s a bad example, but even in a y- you know, like a less extreme example, maybe [00:17:00] after 15 years you have to do a, you know, a f- a fleet-wide campaign to strengthen blades or something. It’s, you know, m- many millions of dollars for that, and so it c- could make sense to be able to learn, okay, what, what hours of operation should we be avoiding?

Additionally, because when it’s super-duper hot in Australia, usually you’ve got heaps of solar power and the electricity price is not that high. So I, I think that there– and I don’t, obviously, before we’ve done the project, I don’t know what the threshold is. But in both cases, we will be aiming to improve the knowledge of how you can operate to avoid these periods of accelerated damage.

Allen Hall 2025: Do you think you’re seeing more fatigue-like damage due to the blades operating when it’s hot or not operating when it’s hot, with maybe less airflow around the blade and maybe less cooling going on is just a temperature soak At rest? [00:18:00]

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. It’s interesting because the temperature is higher if it’s not rotating, um, because you get a whole lot of, um, convective heat, heat transfer when the turbine is operating.

So your temperatures are not gonna get as hot when operating as when they’re standing still. However, if it’s standing still, they’re only very lightly loaded. Like, yes, they’re gonna get, um, blown by, by gusts and, um, have a little bit of bending, but it’s, it’s very, very small compared to, uh, if it is y- you know, operational loads.

Uh, assuming that you’re not in the middle of a s- a storm. But yeah, a storm probably doesn’t come with 50 degrees temperatures.

Allen Hall 2025: And what part of the blade is susceptible to these higher temperatures? Is it the resin? Is it the fiberglass or carbon fiber? Or is it the, the glue, the bond joints? What part are you focused on?

Rosemary Barnes: The resin is the main part that I’m focused on. It gl- it could be an issue for glue too, actually. I haven’t even looked into what the, um, yeah, temperature assumptions are with, with glue, with [00:19:00] bond lines. But the failures that I’m seeing in the field are not, are not bond line issues. It’s, it’s, um, a laminate problem.

Allen Hall 2025: What about balsa and foam inside of the blade? Are they affected by the temperatures or are they pretty temperature stable?

Rosemary Barnes: I don’t think they’re affected at these kinds of temperatures, no. They, they don’t really do much actually. The, the core materials, like it, it is very important that they’re, that they’re there, but their job is really to keep the fiberglass separated from its- itself to make it stiffer.

So, um, yeah, that’s, that’s unlikely to be a, a major source of problems.

Allen Hall 2025: So this study is gonna work over about three years, and you have a number of wind farms that are participating. Are you looking for more wind farms to participate in Australia?

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I mean, we can, um, have as many as, as people want to join.

We’ve got quite a good selection so far. Definitely can always welcome more. A, a bit limited in how many can get the really, um, good sensor [00:20:00]package, because the grant funding is a, you know, a certain amount, and that’s paying the bulk of those sensors. So, um, those spots are limited. So if anybody wants to really zone in on what is specifically causing erosion on their site, you know, if you know that you have got leading edge protection that is not good enough and you have to replace it soon, but you don’t know what to replace it with, then, you know, that would be the kind of wind farm that might want to consider, yeah, joining this and, um, you know, getting these sensors on their, um…

We’re putting them on top of the nacelles, most of them. Um, yeah, so that would be a good match then. Um, and then, yeah, for the ones that are doing the SCADA data and, um, weather data- There’s not such a, a hard limit on how many we can have join like that. So yeah, we can have more, more like that.

Allen Hall 2025: In the temperature fatigue effort, i- is that still looking for participants or are there particular wind turbine types or manufacturers that you’re [00:21:00] looking for to participate?

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I think, um, I, I mean yes, we can have more of those. That’s a simpler, a, a simpler issue as well. The sensors are not so expensive and, um, it’s, yeah, it’s a, it’s a simpler project to join that one. We only need, you know, a couple of turbines per site, so it won’t be such a, uh, an involved process to get everything up on into the turbines.

And in terms of who might like to join that, I would say anybody that is in a really hot area where, you know, where they see a lot of days over 30 degrees, and if they see any days, you know, getting into the high 40s, then I would say that that’s worthwhile. Or even I have seen this issue in some milder sites, um, yeah, depending on the, on the blade type as well.

It is more common with polyester resins. They have a, a lower op- uh, maximum operating temperature than epoxy resins. But then also just anybody that has noticed just, hey, [00:22:00] we’ve got a lot of cracks, and it seems like we’re getting more and more cracks every year, which to be honest, can be hard to keep track of if you’re…

If you’ve got a full service agreement, uh, you know, an OEM managing your wind farm The early signs of this are gonna be category one and category two cracks. They’re not in exactly the same location. It’s, you know, it’s a tricky one. Normally, if you’re looking at a serial issue, then you’re going to have, uh, well, you know, your ideal pattern for a serial issue is the exact same thing happening over and over again.

And so it is harder to pull this out. It also really would be very rare for it to be happening in the first two years or three years, whatever your serial defect liability period is. So it’s quite hard. But, um, another group of wind farms that might like to consider it is if you know that in, you know, a certain number of years you have to renegotiate your service agreement or, you know, it ends and you might have to take over yourself, then this’ll be a really good way for you to [00:23:00] understand, you know, have I got a ticking time bomb here?

Um, because it’s not something that you’re gonna be aware of if you haven’t been, you know, doing some really, really in-depth shadow, shadow monitoring of your blades, you know, running your own inspections and looking at every single damage, not just category three, four, five, but lower ones. So yeah, I mean, there’s a, a wide variety of people that, that could be interested in joining.

Allen Hall 2025: Are you expecting a number of manufacturers that make leading-edge protection or involved in resin creation, some– there’s a number of resin companies and a variety of resins that are used globally, sort of interchangeably at times. Are you expecting some of those companies to participate in this effort just to learn about the Australian environment?

Rosemary Barnes: I think it would be a good opportunity to test out some products and see how they behave in the Australian context. I think that that would be a really good selling point, but I, I have to say that most of the companies doing that sort of thing that wanna enter Australia, they don’t [00:24:00] really consider…

Like, from the perspective of wind farm owners in Australia, if you can’t show us wind farms in Australia where this has worked and, you know, show us a before or after, you know, the old LEP lasted Two years and our LEP is going on four years now with no damage. It, you know, unless you’ve got a before and after like that, you can tell us however many turbines that you’ve got installed around the world, but, um, we don’t consider it validated, y- you know?

It’s not validated for Australian conditions yet. And I do have this same discussion over and over again with, you know, not just leading edge protection, but all kinds of, um, you know, manufacturers of whatever doodads that you put on to improve a, a wind turbine. It’s so different to Australia. Things break so fast.

And I’m talking everything, you know, like vortex generators fall off and, um, yeah, like, uh, you know, bits of lightning protection systems fall off, seals just [00:25:00] crumble and disintegrate. Um, and it, you know, we’re very wary of, of new products. So I, I do– I mean, I’m thinking of it more from my client’s point of view than from the product manufacturer’s point of view.

But one thing that I wanna get out of this pro- project is to be able to answer one of the most common questions that I get is, which is, what leading edge protection should I be putting on my turbine? And for now, I don’t know. I, I know a range of products that don’t work in Australia, and not much more than that.

So, um, yeah. And it’s also, you know, Australia’s a very varied place with lots of different kinds of climate too. So it’s not gonna be like, you know, the product that works in Queensland is the same one that’s gonna work in Tasmania, which is the same one that’s gonna work in Western Australia. You know, um, so it, this project is gonna really pull out what are the site specific issues you’ve got at your site and what kinds of, um, you know, tests would we need to see a product um, perform in order to know that this [00:26:00] is gonna last on your site.

Allen Hall 2025: W- what is the outcome of this project or these two projects? Are they gonna be reports or, uh, a, a continual monitoring system that’s designed for the Australian environment? How do you see this going?

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, so one part of it is, um, developing a way to identify periods of accelerated damage and to know not to operate during that time.

So we call it protective operation. Uh, so that would, uh, help you if, yeah, you’re trying to extend the life of something or increase the amount of time before you have to repair, then y- you know, that would be useful to have that knowledge. And it will be as simple as just an alert saying, “Hey, accelerated damage conditions.

Consider, you know, if you wanna keep on operating.” And, you know, if the price of electricity is super high at that time, they may want to push through, and if it’s low, they probably won’t want to. So that’s one thing. Um, especially, you know, as wind turbines get to their, near the end of their life. I’ve got some clients whose wind farms only have, you know, [00:27:00] maybe five years operation left.

They just simply don’t wanna repair their leading edge protection again. They just, they, they don’t wanna do that. So they would be happy to, you know, reduce operation a bit and have their turbine limp through to the end of the period. Y- you know, you want everything to wear out at once. You don’t want brand-new leading edge protection on a turbine that’s going to come down in a couple of years.

Um, so, you know, that’s, that’s one part of it. And then the other thing is, you know, turbines earlier in their lifetime, how can we optimize the maintenance schedule with leading edge erosion? Um, so, you know, like it’s a lot cheaper to, uh, replace the LEP if you get– catch it early, but then you don’t wanna be catching it too early and replacing it, you know, constantly when you, you don’t need to.

So, um, yeah, it, this, having this knowledge will enable a site-by-site operations and maintenance strategy with respect to leading edge protection. We also have some sites who are having trouble. They’ve got a full service agreement, and the OEM is [00:28:00] responsible for, um, doing the leading edge erosion repairs and protection replacement, but the owner is on the hook for paying for it.

At the other end, we’ve got people with full service agreements where technically the, um, manufacturer is supposed to be doing the leading edge protection and paying for it, but they argue about what, when does it need to be done. Because, you know, um, the operator might think if there’s no structural risk, then we don’t need to be replacing it.

And in the meantime, you’ve got turbines spinning around for years and years and years with, you know, these huge flakes of leading edge protection s- you know, causing the flow at the tip of the turbine to, to detach and to stall, and horrible aerodynamics, huge losses in power generation and revenue. And they’re having a big fight about, you know, is this necessary to do or not?

And then, you know, they’re just gonna put the exact same product on again ’cause the [00:29:00] OEMs are re- all really, really wedded to their own particular brand. It’s like, “Well, last time we had this product and it was factory applied, it lasted one year before it s- it was worse than, you know, if it wasn’t there at all.

Uh, we don’t really want you to put that one on again.” And so, you know, having the information that they need to be able to, you know, really bring data to these discussions and, you know, makes a, yeah, data not drama. That’s a, a good approach I think, um, for any kind of negotiation and especially in the case of leading edge erosion.

And then for the high temperature fatigue part of the problem, aside from, you know, just wanting to know are your blades aging, should you be looking at remediation action or changing the operation, the other really big key thing is, uh, you might need to have a fight with y- your OEM about if this turbine has been designed and operated correctly.

And so then having the data from this, um, project is going to give you the information that you need to come into that [00:30:00] argument with, again, the data not the drama. Um, and to, you know, in- increase your chances of succeeding in that kind of really tricky negotiation.

Allen Hall 2025: So if you’re an OEM or a manufacturer of equipment, an ISP, an operator, pretty much all aspects of wind operations, you probably ought to be getting a hold of Pardalote Consulting and Rosemary to talk about the opportunity to participate in this study.

How do people get ahold of you to, to do that?

Rosemary Barnes: People can go to our website, pardaloteconsulting.com, and get in touch via the contact form there, or you can, uh, look me up on LinkedIn, Rosemary Barnes. That’s probably the easiest, fastest way to get ahold of me personally.

Allen Hall 2025: Well, Rosemary, congratulations on the Energy Innovation Fund Awards and the new three-year effort.

If you are interested in participating with Pardalote Consulting and working with Rosemary and her team [00:31:00] in Australia, reach out to her on LinkedIn and get that process started, because this report and the data from all this analysis that’ll happen over the next couple of years will be important to the wind industry.

So you need to spend some time and get ahold of Rosemary and get this process started now. So Rosemary, congratulations. Uh, thanks for being back on the podcast, and looking forward to, uh, the next couple of years. It sh- should be exciting.

Rosemary Barnes: Thanks so much, Allen.

Pardalote Studies Australian Blade Erosion and Heat Fatigue

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Renewable Energy

Artificial Stupidity?

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We all understand that there are ultra-conservatives living all around us, but does anyone truly believe that our schoolteachers are ruining our society by teaching children the truth about U.S. and world history? Science? Current events?

Slavery and Jim Crow laws were bad.  Fascism is bad.  Our scientists are telling us that CO2 emissions are causing world temperatures to rise, destroying our planet’s capacity to support life.

Whom do these concepts upset?

Artificial Stupidity?

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Renewable Energy

No Such Thing as a “Dumb Question”

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There is nothing dumb about the question posed at left.  Democracies fail, falling into “banana republics” constantly.  The rate at which democracies become tyrannies is so great that some of them never make the news. Can you tell me anything about the governments of Eritrea or Chad?

What makes the situation in the United States is, yes, that it’s happening here in the United States, the very last place anyone would have suspected it.

You might have thought that Americans wouldn’t have voted for their nation to become Russia or North Korea.

You would have been wrong.

No Such Thing as a “Dumb Question”

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