US Offshore Wind Struggles, Lawsuit on Osage Land Continues
Legal battles in Oklahoma continue between the Osage Nation and Enel. Equinor faces offshore wind project hurdles amidst U.S. offshore wind regulatory issues. Plus a rebranding announcement from Deutsche Windtechnik to DWT and a new study painting wind blades red to prevent bird strikes.
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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: There’s more news out of Oklahoma. The state of Oklahoma has.
Entered the legal ballot between the wind developer in EL and the Osage nation. It, we all recall on the podcast probably a year ago where the Osage Nation had won a lawsuit with the help of the federal government to take down a big wind farm in north central Oklahoma. The state of Oklahoma has filed an amicus brief opposing the immediate removal of the 84 turbines in Osage County.
Now, this is a big deal [00:01:00] because pretty much the last I saw, which is a while ago, the order was that they needed to take down all the turbines and reclaim the land, basically put it back to where it was before the turbines were placed in it. Now the state of Oklahoma is stepping into the mix and they’re citing a couple of things.
They’re saying that the state of Oklahoma has an interest in property laws and protecting tax revenue. However, Osage doesn’t fit into Oklahoma laws. It’s not their territory. And meanwhile, the Osage tribe is saying, Hey, this is over and we have mineral rights, and these turbines need to come down.
So this is a kind of a weird spot because Anelle’s in the middle of this, now that the state’s gotten involved against the federal government, is there a missing link here? Is, this is certain more to this story because it does seem like some wheels are turning at the moment. I think,
Joel Saxum: Phil Allen.[00:02:00]
You guys are very smart, right? But I think we need someone smarter than us to decode this whole thing as far as like maybe a lawyer that can get in there, because Alan, you hit it on the head, Osage tribe and Osage tribe lands do not actually fall under Oklahoma law. They have their own sets of laws, so you have a federal ruling saying that something must happen within, of course, the outlines of the state of Oklahoma, but within the greater outlines of the United States.
But now the state wants to be able to go against the federal ruling to have their own rights recounted for while this, the Oage tribe is saying no, like we’ve already passed and I think the total bill that NL is gonna was supposed to get stamped, it was like $300 million, which is crazy ’cause it doesn’t cost $300 million to remediate 84 turbines.
However. This isn’t necessarily a wind turbine take down exercise. This is a mining reclamation exercise after you take the wind turbines down. That’s why it costs so much. [00:03:00] So there’s a lot of money on the table for nl and now you have the Oklahoma Solicitor General Jerry Gary Gaskins stepping in and saying Hey, we’re also getting some kind of tax revenues to the state and things like that from the wind farm.
But I wouldn’t think that would go to the state in this case. I would think it would go to the Osage tribe. So I don’t understand the state’s. The state’s position in this.
Phil Totaro: But Phil, do you have any insights on that? Unfortunately, I do not. But what’s interesting about it is that you had, the federal government stepped into this whole thing because they.
Felt like the tribe wasn’t being adequately represented basically, or if they were representing themselves or they had, attorneys representing them. The federal government stepped in because of the nature of the case and how the high profile would’ve been to, to say that yes, the tribe actually has these these mineral rights on what is effectively there.
They’re a chunk [00:04:00] of the United States as you’re saying, it’s, they’re physically located within the confines of Oklahoma, but they are their own little thing, so I. Yeah I, unfortunately I don’t, and you’re right, we probably need somebody smarter than any of us to figure out what is really going on with this other than obviously the state.
Whatever money the state gets from any kind of tax revenue, they don’t want to ever see it go away. So it can be a nickel and they’ll still chase after you for it.
Joel Saxum: But here’s the other thing and Alan, I wanna get your 2 cents on what my thought is here. This is my theory, my working theory. NL has a removal order on hold pending their appeals to the federal court.
I think that as soon as 10 years and one day from commissioning date comes up, this whole thing’s gonna get dropped. And they’re gonna, they’re gonna take this wind farm down.
Allen Hall: That’s what I was wondering. Is it a repowering play that once they get to the end of the PPA life or the PTC life. Does this thing not matter [00:05:00] anymore and they’re just trying to delay it and maybe the state of Oklahoma is helping anelle with that.
It is odd. When did this farm go in, Joel? It went in 20 16,
Joel Saxum: 17. It started in 2013, but it wasn’t. Commissioning until 2015. But that was the initial, that was the initial thing. So PTC does a start until commission day. So that’s, it’s it’s this year, like it’s 10 years is up this year sometime.
So what is the play here? It’s push off until PTC revenues are pulled. And then once PTC revenues are pulled, dcom, you know what I, Joel, I like that theory. I’m gonna
Phil Totaro: go with that.
Joel Saxum: I think that’s what it is. Because they’re not gonna let ’em repower it. I can guarantee you that’s not gonna happen.
Phil Totaro: I think it’s, it makes sense to me that they would just be trying to stretch it out because what else is the play here?
Because if, ’cause again, if the state’s taking some kind of tax revenue, it’s probably tax off the sale of the power, which probably goes to the utility, which has nothing to do with the Osage nation, which make would make even more sense. And then. Because of the production tax credit, [00:06:00] they get to take extra tax revenue off the power sales.
So that’s probably a reason why the state would wanna step in and try to, stretch this thing out until the end of that PTC period. I gotta tell you, this is the, this is armchair
Joel Saxum: math and I’m saying PTC credits are like 26 bucks. A megawatt hour, 26 bucks, a megawatt hour, 84 turbines at 1.79 megawatts, which is what these are.
Is 150.4 megawatts, I’m gonna give them a 40% capacity factor, which is being a little bit generous. That equates to $1.126 million per month in PTC credits. So you extend this thing for six months, that’s 7 million, seven and a half million dollars in L’S pocket. If they can stretch this thing for seven months just of PTC credits, it’ll help pay for the decommissioning.
Allen Hall: Because that’s where it’s headed. Yeah. And the federal court system is not [00:07:00] something to play around with, so you gotta tread lightly here because if the federal court feels like this is just being a delay tactic to increase revenue, that will come with penalties, typically, that $7 million will go right back.
You go right into the Osage nations. Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting developing. Gotta keep track of it now because it’s moved into a really unique phase beyond what I thought was possible. I didn’t think the state of Oklahoma’s gonna wade into this, but here we are Deutsche Wind Technique, which if you don’t know Deutche wind technique, where have you been?
They have announced a strategic rebranding. To DWT, which is what everybody calls Deutsche Wind Technique in the states. It’s DWT. We never used Deutsche Wind Technique and it’s going to take effect in what, five different places? United States, Poland, which is odd, but, okay. France, I get United Kingdom obvious in Taiwan.[00:08:00]
And the company employs about 2,400 people at the minute, and they service about 8,000 wind turbines across 10 countries. So this is trying to address the whole pronunciation, spelling of Deutsche Wind. And, but at least in this states, because our spelling’s atrocious, let’s just admit it. But they’re gonna keep the dornell wind technique the same and not changing it in Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Belgium.
Which again makes sense. That’s why Poland is in that weird offset one. Yeah.
Joel Saxum: But why just do it, just change it to DWT across the board? Maybe. Yeah. You can leave Deutsche Wind Technique in their summer, but Brandon has DWT across the board. It’ll be
Allen Hall: easier. Oh, you think so? The swag is gonna be great.
The DWT swag is perfect, right? The three letter acronym that fits right on a hat. Come on,
Joel Saxum: by the way. DWT if you guys are looking to send swag anywhere, we can give you all of our addresses. We will take it and wear it on the shelf. I got no problem with that, right? I think this is [00:09:00] great, right? Deutsche Wind Technique, technique.
Technique, doche, like wherever you go, right? You hear someone say it differently. Yeah, I think it’s gonna be it’s good for the brand. Even the, I hope they change their emails. Please, if someone’s listening, change your email aliases to just DDWT instead of having to type that off. But yeah, good move.
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Visit og ping.com and take control of your turbine’s health today. Sted today as we record announced the discontinuation of its 2,400 megawatt horn C four offshore wind farm in the uk. And despite securing the CFD last September, the [00:10:00] project has fallen victim to escalating prices and financial pressure.
It raises some interesting and important questions about the future of offshore wind in the UK because there’s just a lot of CFDs that are happening there, and they’re, the UK is really dependent upon the projects going to completion. Let’s talk about from the OR standpoint for a minute. So this is gonna be a financial impact.
It’s gonna hit them for about $500 million in Q2 of this year because of write downs and. All the equipment that was being built for this project, and there was another, about a hundred million US dollars on capitalized construction. That’s gonna be in an impairment. Now I think stead is totally fine with that because at the same time they announced the horn C four discontinuation and the company released its Q1 financial results.
So it’s the good with the not so good. But, stead is doing pretty well, right? So the EBITDA went up about 18% versus [00:11:00] Q1 in 2024. Now, there’s a lot of companies that would dream to have those kind of numbers, and obviously, last year was not a great year because of some of the right downs that they had to go take.
But there’s, they’re going to, it’s what they’re at 10 gigawatts of installed offshore wind capacity at the moment. That’s crazy. That’s an amazing amount. And the total installed capacity for renewables is at 18 and a half gigawatts. That’s amazing. So although some of these projects don’t have the financial numbers that Osted would wish to continue with them, it does seem like Ted itself is doing fairly well.
If you look at some of the details on the CFDs in the uk. And Phil, correct me if I’m wrong here, it does look like the price is going to jump quite substantially. It was in the 65 pounds per megawatt hour that’s gonna be heading [00:12:00] up to north of 90 pounds per megawatt hour and some of the CFDs. So it makes sense if Ted can just hold and they still have rights to the plot.
Maybe they can restructure the CFD to get into the 95, maybe a hundred. Maybe even more because it’s based on like 2015 numbers, right? The, all these are based on a years ago now you’re really talking about maybe 120 pounds per megawatt hour, which is an incredible. Number to get as a producer of power offshore?
Phil Totaro: Yes. At the moment, those are, that’s how the CFD system is structured. They’re looking at making some changes. We’re probably not gonna have time to go into what all the details of ’em are, but effectively they’re going into a scenario where they’re gonna have sealed bids but. The, which they already do today.
But the Energy Secretary in the UK is actually gonna be able to look at sealed bids anonymously. So what the [00:13:00] independent power producers in the uk of which ORs, Ted’s one of ’em, what they all want is to be able to have. A hundred percent of their power generation guaranteed and basically underwritten by this CFD structure.
All of these little things that at a government will try to put in place to protect consumers are things that can also create a significant amount of risk and uncertainty for businesses and the independent power producers in particular. So it’s just a balancing act that, that everybody has to go through.
And for a company like Sted to pull the. Plug on active development for the ho C phase four at this point. It would seem to make a lot of sense that they think they can get a better deal later. All of these factors are gonna come together to suggest a positive outcome for a company like Sted with with this kind of a decision.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, that’s what I’m saying is 2.4 gigawatts is a lot. What does that do to, and I would guess I was assuming that was, they were Siemens turbines, but [00:14:00] what does that do to the, that’s a hateful bottom line hit for any OEM Duple four gigawatts, even at your big turbines.
That’s 175 turbines ish, something like that.
Phil Totaro: Yes. 2.4 gigawatts is a significant chunk bigger, so if it is actually vestus but it’s a big chunk for either Siemens or Vestus to have to put on hold. Because keep in mind, again, when. Somebody signs a turbine supply contract, they’ll give an OE emm a deposit of maybe five to 10% of the total contract value.
You don’t get paid if you’re the OE em, you don’t get paid until commissioning. The fact that commissioning can be delayed is obviously quite problematic to anybody’s bottom line. Absolutely. Joel you’re spot on.
Allen Hall: My understanding was for horn C four, there are termination fees involved.
And that my read on it was that, that there were going to be payments made to close out the projects for now, which I [00:15:00] as immediately assume was Siemens. Mea could be wrong, but it’ll show up in the quarterly reports here in the next couple of months. Phil? You’ll see it.
Phil Totaro: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Okay. So we’ll know who the turbine provider was and 2.4 gigawatts worth of turbines.
You’ll, that’s a bump in somebody’s pocketbook.
Joel Saxum: What do we always say? 10 million. A megawatt. We know that it’s a little bit higher for offshore 1.1. So you’re talking two and a half billion to 3 billion. $3 billion.
Phil Totaro: Oh, that’s, yeah, it’s two. 2 million a megawatt for offshore, Joel.
Joel Saxum: Okay, so fi 5 billion.
Yeah, so $5 billion, 10% is 500 million, which it says here, the decision will impact Q2 2025 earnings by up to 506 million, including write downs of offshore transmission assets and contract cancellation fees. So it’s in
Allen Hall: there somewhere. Hard to hide that in the quarterly report.
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Allen Hall: EOR has announced it may pursue legal actions against the Trump administration over the order to halt work at its empire win one project off the coast of New York. The company described the directive as quote unquote unlawful and quote unquote.
Unprecedented as developers across the us continue to raise to get their projects done. Now this is a unique situation, of course, just because it has focused attention on one WIN site while others are quickly trying to get to completion. Vineyard Wind one, coastal Virginia offshore wind, or continuing on and.
Ecuador. It just isn’t a weird spot and a lawsuit doesn’t really make sense [00:17:00] here. Everybody. I say don’t think that’s the right approach. There is existing regulatory ways to appeal this. They’re gonna have to go through that process first and can’t necessarily bypass it. You could do things in parallel in terms of a lawsuit, but you’re gonna have to play by the federal rules at the moment, and that’ll be an appeals process through multiple.
Governmental agencies, I think, but nothing’s gonna happen, Phil, this summer, right? I think Ecuador’s in trouble in terms of deployment. They will not be able to do any work when the weather is good, which is right now. Try to get the production tax credits and all that up and running, it’s just gonna delay it no
Phil Totaro: matter what.
Yeah. And this is what kind of confounds me about this is the, look at the end of the day, this is ultimately a power play kind of a thing. And it comes down to, alright, if you’re gonna still respect the US Federal government and comply with orders that they give you, [00:18:00] then.
They took the right decision to stop construction. However, it seems like they took that decision a little too hastily without talking to their lawyers first, because why would you stop construction and then talk to your lawyers and then go with the lawsuit saying, we don’t think this was a fair and lawful decision to, to order us to stop.
You what they should have done if you ask me. Is just keep building because as you both just said, you’ve got a scenario where you’ve got. Climatic conditions in the summer that are gonna allow for construction to continue and flourish. And, why not just take advantage of this and then if there’s a fine to be paid for defying government order, just pay it later.
And because you’re gonna be. Screwed if you do, or it’s screwed if you don’t. So if it’s me, I’m just gonna keep building and like Charlton Heston used to say they can [00:19:00] come take my wind farm outta my cold dead hand. I’m paraphrasing him, so it’s like, what? Like what?
What’s the alternative now? ’cause now like Alan, you’re saying they’re stuck in court. Like how does that do anything good for anybody? It’s wasting time in resources of eor. It’s wasting time in resources of the government when there’s gonna be, whether it’s a legal appeal or a regulatory appeal, there’s gonna be an appeal anyway and.
I it just seems like EOR just absolutely did not respond the right way to this at all. If you ask me,
Joel Saxum: Einor is a global company, of course, but they’re a Norwegian company and they’re playing in an American realm where the culture change. If you ask Norwegians, they listen to no matter what the authorities say.
They don’t fight back. You don’t see a whole lot of protests going on in Stockholm, or, sorry, not Stockholm. That’s Sweden, my bad. Oslo. Yeah. Greta Gre. Greta Thunberg. Sorry. Yeah. So nor the Norwegians, it’s a cultural thing. They [00:20:00] get an order. They just they’re gonna, they’re usually gonna.
Comply with it. Also congratulations and I think the first Charlton Heston reference on the podcast over five years. Maybe the last hopefully.
Phil Totaro: But here’s the here’s the thing though, that, that may be the case, Joel, but what I actually think it was about is I. Obviously Ecuador also does a lot of oil and gas business, globally and in the US that’s their bread and butter.
That’s what they don’t really wanna jeopardize. This whole foray into offshore wind is all very well and good and it might give them some revenue, but it’s you know what, like 3% of their total revenue for the entire, EOR Corporation is like wind or renewables related in general versus.
The 97 or whatever percent it is. I’m just making those numbers up. But it’s probably in that kind of a ballpark. It, it might also be because it’s like, it’s a project in New York, near where, obviously Trump’s got some interest vested interests. It’s a foreign company.
As opposed to, a US based entity. There’s [00:21:00] probably, any number of reasons that are behind why this is really happening. But, again, at the end of the day, how a company chooses to respond to it is going to have a massive financial impact on them one, one way or another.
Joel Saxum: Here’s your last reason. EOR is the top five producer in the Gulf of Mexico. 120,000 barrels a day. They’re putting out, they don’t wanna jeopardize that, so they’re not gonna piss anybody off at the federal level to jeopardize 120,000 barrels a day and a hundred leases in the Gulf.
Allen Hall: The part that’s confusing is to me, is that there’s a long track record of questions about the environmental impact studies that were done, and that’s all public record.
You, you can see that on the bone site. You can walk through the. Transactions that happened and the reports that were issued between Noah and Boem. And I think this comes down to six turbines. I really do, and maybe I’m wrong, but I did a little bit of research into it and it looks like that’s the holdup is there’s six [00:22:00] turbines on the western edge of empire in one that are in a sensitive area on the seabed and.
If those six turbines had been moved or could be readjusted somewhere else, this may go away. However, the really no place to put those six turbines and nyserda needs all the power and they’re gonna need those six turbines to meet the offtake. So Ecuador’s kind of stuck on that level, but you would think that the attorneys and the people reviewing that paperwork over the last three fourish years would’ve flagged it.
Hey, we’re gonna be at risk here. We need to be prepared for it. Something bad to happen.
Joel Saxum: Alan, are those, is that the kind of situation though, where it’s it’s not just a change order to change it, like you have to resubmit everything once you change the plan?
Allen Hall: Obviously they would, right?
But there’s no place to put those six turbines. If you look at where they are at right now and where the prevail league winds are the farm is set up to pick up as much wind as they can, and moving those six turbines in the front of the farm in the clean air [00:23:00] are a problem.
Joel Saxum: So they need a couple, couple more megawatts across the whole wind farm.
On each turbine.
Phil Totaro: It’s basically there’s, if you moved the turbines, there’s shipping lanes that you’re running into and fishing that would be more impacted versus where the turbines were eventually, as they are right now they’ve been cited, anytime you do a project development, whether it’s offshore, onshore, solar, wind, batteries, I don’t care.
You’re always on the lookout for some little, a critter running around that, that you don’t want to step on their environment and or, you’re looking at the fishermen offshore. You don’t want to impede their ability to be able to go and fish and at the end of the day, everything, what I’m getting at is everything’s compromises.
You can’t violate, you can’t violate the law. They knew all this and there were compromises made. But the issue, the permit was issued,
Allen Hall: right? But the federal law requires Noah and to do certain things, and it requires BM to do other things. But the B, [00:24:00] if you look at the list of things that BM was responsible for is the environment.
Phil Totaro: But nobody’s other than Trump’s administration, nobody’s saying that they didn’t do their job. That’s the whole point. They’re using that as a nitpicky little excuse to go back and open up a can of worms that was already decided upon.
Allen Hall: That’s not what the federal record shows, Phil.
The federal record is very clear about Noah being super concerned about and providing a list of 37 items that needed to be addressed before Boeing should be afforded, and Bowen addressed. Almost
Phil Totaro: none of them. Everybody’s else is being reviewed. Nobody’s gotten a letter saying Stop construction, but everybody else is having their permits re-reviewed.
And my point is, there’s probably legitimate, according to what you’re suggesting, there’s legitimate reasons to go stop every single one of these projects. That’s exactly what the government’s trying to do.
Allen Hall: I’ve looked at other ones. They see. If you look at vineyard wind, you could look at the time that they went back and did the environmental review.
It took ’em a long time to do that. Now, from what I can tell mean vineyard’s an easy one, right? Vineyard’s an easy target [00:25:00] today because of all the problems they had with the turbines themselves. However, looking on the environmental side that they went through a lot of effort to clear the deck of all the questions and did all the work.
Empire did also. But Noah had concerns about a particular part of that plot. In fact they, the b reduced the size of the area by 1700 acres to remove some of the environmentally sensitive area, which they thought was going to be enough. It isn’t like Boem sat there and said, oh, Noah, we don’t care.
That’s not what happened. Bowen made an adjustment, but Noah persisted as they are obligated to do. By federal law.
Phil Totaro: So they wrote the letter. But the point is that you could do that with every pro. You can do that with any project. It might not be to the same degree. I get that. But you could nitpick any single project at every single project.
Allen Hall: When they write down the code of federal regulations that are potentially in [00:26:00] violation of that is not just willy-nilly that is. You
Phil Totaro: pointing out where there may be deficiencies and maybe every other project doesn’t have 37 things, they’ve only got 15. But again, a decision was taken to say that we understand that those 37 things or those 15 things, or those three things are that one thing is important, but we’re going to say, you know what?
We’re making an exception and we’re issuing the permit regardless of what those concerns are. A decision was taken and it was, when you issue a permit, there’s certainty, and when you take that certainty away, it drives away money, it drives away investment
Allen Hall: as wind energy professionals Staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it difficult.
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Visit PES wind.com today. Finally, somebody at Vestus is taking the lead about painting these turban blades a different color. As much as we’ve seen about painting a turban blade black. Meyer always says, did anybody talk to a structural person? Because painting a blade black is not good for the structure ’cause it makes it hot, which is the right approach.
But Vestus is partnering with ACO vent to test blades that are painted red, which I evidently Vestus looked at this and said, okay, we can live with red in terms of the temperature rise and the effects on the blade performance. This makes a lot of sense. Now. They are gonna be putting it on just a couple of blades at the Hollands Coast West Project and just to test it out to see if it actually works, because Rosemary birds can see color.
[00:28:00] So black and white may make sense, but painting it a less intensive color. It could have the same effect, right?
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. It could. And it is a little bit less dark than black, so probably will heat up less. Yeah. ’cause that’s the issue is that if you have one blade, a different color, that it’s, the blades will heat up differently and the stiffness of the blade is related to the temperature.
So if they’re all different temperatures, then they’re gonna be different stiffnesses, and then you’re gonna get. Wobbling happening in your rotor as the the different blades pass yeah. Makes sense. I’m not sure how they arrived at this particular configuration. And have you seen, is it just, is it still one hole blade red or is it every tip red?
Joel Saxum: I think it’s one whole blade, one blade red, the rest of ’em, the other two, white or gray, whatever you call it.
Rosemary Barnes: I don’t even know if anybody’s even tested. All three blades the same color.
Joel Saxum: I’ve seen ’em all red
Rosemary Barnes: for birding purposes.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. I wanna dispel a rumor or [00:29:00] confirm, or not a rumor, sorry, a dispel a wives tale or confirm a wives tale.
This is a question for you, Alan Red, and I’m talking about red and black. So black of course gonna get hot change, temperature, whatever. But when I talk to blade technicians and you’re talking about marking things out on a blade, and if you ever looked at a blade, you see everything in red and blue pen.
They don’t use black pens because the thought process is black pens contain carbon and that’s attractive to lightning. Is that true?
Allen Hall: Pencils? Yes. Ink, pens, no. Like sharpies. Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: But if we wanna relate this back to the bird thing yeah. And I don’t know if we gave any background, but it’s because there was some trials done in, it was Norway, I think recently.
Not recently. Years ago. I think the initial study was done by a. A bird scientist or some kind of ecologist about whether if you paint one blade on each road of black, then that trial found that in that area that the number of bird collisions was reduced. It was a small trial. It was in only one area.
I [00:30:00] talked to the researcher who did that project, and he was really careful to say that. This is not something that you can just roll out everywhere and assume it will work everywhere. And in fact, there’s a high chance that in some locations it would actually cause harm to the bird population in question.
He did say it’s not it’s not a silver bullet kind of thing. And that’s what, like with the reporting of it, similar to the issue with black markers and lightning, it’s just not that hard. It’s, it, or the general vibe of the reporting was, it’s not so hard, let’s just do it. Like what’s the problem?
And then, what I said when we talked about that story before was, actually there are some issues for why you wouldn’t do that. In terms of, some of the like, logistics of matching sets of blades coming outta the factory. So you’d have to paint them later. And then black gets hot and the stiffness changes.
So now we’ve arrived at a trial of, I think it’s seven turbines vests. Turbines are gonna have one red blade each. And I believe that color was chosen because they didn’t think that the [00:31:00] temperature difference would be so bad between the. Between the blades that you would see a structural different leading to instabilities.
So we’ll see how it goes.
Joel Saxum: What if we painted one like a, like the Twilight Zone thing?
That’s gonna do it for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy podcast. And thanks for listening. Please give us a five star rating on your podcast platform and subscribe in the show notes below to Uptime Tech News, or our weekly newsletter, which is on Substack.
And I just published an article about Empire Wind One, so you gotta go there and check it out, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.
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Green Eagle’s ARSOS Automates Wind Farm Operations
Alejandro Cabrera Muñoz, CEO and founder of Green Eagle Solutions, discusses their ARSOS platform and how it helps wind farm operators manage technical complexities, market volatility, and regulatory changes by automating turbine issue responses for increased productivity and revenue.
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Wind Farm operators face mounting challenges from managing thousands of diverse turbines to navigating the energy markets and constant regulatory changes. This week we speak with Alejandro Cabrera Munoz, CEO, and founder of Green Eagle Solutions. Green Eagle’s ARSOS platform gives control rooms immediate responses to turbine issues, which dramatically increases productivity and captures more revenue from their turbines.
Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow.
Allen Hall: Alejandro, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Allen. Thank you for having me here today.
Allen Hall: so Green Eagle Solutions is in a unique space of the renewable energy marketplace, and you saw a problem several years ago, particularly in the control rooms of [00:01:00] wind operators. What is that problem that you identified?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Allen, I think it, it’s, It’s a challenge that, most of our customers, which are generally large operators, are facing today. But it’s a challenge that have been, growing, in the past years. So first of all, it’s, it goes along with the penetration of renewables in the industry, right?
So we have, due to all these many years of aggregating new wind farms and solar plants, We are seeing how the complexity, the technical complexity of operating and supervising these assets is growing exponentially, right? So we now have customers with thousands of wind turbines that have, different models, different versions of, controllers, And also different healthcare issues that they have to take care of. So the technical complexity is a fair, the first [00:02:00] factor that, it’s has to be tackled from a control room, And, makes, operations quite, challenging. Along with this, we have market volatility. So in the recent years especially, we are seeing how, Negative pricing and optional markets are now affecting operations in a daily, basis. Basically in every 15 minutes you dunno if you’re gonna produce or not. Up until recently it was as simple as if you had wind resource, you would produce energy from wind farms. If you had solar, you produce energy from solar plants.
It’s not like that anymore. So the market is quite, volatile. that adds a lot of complexity from the commercial point of view of, Of the assets. And the last, factor that is actually becoming, an increasing challenge for everyone is the regulatory changes. So basically due to the penetration of renewable energies, what we see is that all governments, all grid operators and our market operators are constantly issuing [00:03:00] new adapt, new regulatory changes, that everyone has to adapt to no matter what.
it doesn’t matter if you have an all wind farm or a newer wind farm. Or you prepared or not, like everyone has to be adapted to, to the new regulatory, changes. the three things are actually affecting, our customers and we are trying to solve all these issues, the way, the, best way that we can, right?
So most of our customers, we just have a control room full of people. they will do their best effort to accommodate these challenges. The reality is that we have to. Deal with, people, procedures, and, systems, and we, if we don’t put these three things in place, it’s impossible to cope up. With the complexity that we are dealing with, and that’s where we come in.
Joel Saxum: I think you painted the picture of a really good problem that’s not just like local to the eu, local to India, local to South America, whatever. it’s a global issue, right? You have the, massive build out of different kinds of [00:04:00] technologies that need to be managed in different ways that, bring their own issues, their own delivery to the grid, those kind of things.
and then you, and as Green Eagle has, painted the picture like, Hey, we saw these issues. This is where we come in, this is where we step in. So in that, what kind of inefficiencies are you seeing in the traditional wind farm operations versus what you guys are bringing to the table now?
Speaker 3: So just to give a few examples, and I think I, I can be quite, precise on this. let’s say that a wind turbine gets some fault because of, high temperature on the gearbox, and it’s a. It’s an automated response from the manufacturer that the ban is gonna stop for safety measures, right?
So in many cases. This is solved from the control room point. from the control room by waiting for an operator to just, follow a procedure, right? So this procedure takes a lot of time. Why? Because you are not only paying attention to one winter turbine band, you may have 2000 winter turbines, right?
[00:05:00] So you have to first identify, which is a model of winter turbine band that is affected by this issue. Then you have to go through the manual, then you have to check what are the parameters, and the whole process takes minimum half an hour if you wanna do it properly. The problem is when you have other issues like high wind speed, right?
So normally when you have high wind resource, which is basically when you can produce more energy, is when your assets suffer the most. And so they’re more prone to errors, they’re more prone to go get on fault. So if you take a look at these times, the country room, response time is actually gonna go up in hours, right?
So this one of the one simple example is a end-to-end full haling procedure that takes between. 20 minutes, two hours, depending on how you have a structure, your systems, people, and procedures, right? So this is the first thing that we can tackle. Like just as an example with our software, we can automate the whole process end to end.
That means that this problem is never gonna be dealt with. From an operator, This is gonna be [00:06:00] automated. This is an, this is never gonna become an issue for an operator ever again.
Allen Hall: Yeah. And I think this lends itself to software obviously, that there’s, if you look at these control rooms, if you, or especially if you looked 3, 4, 5 years ago.
It’s pretty chaotic in there. And if you are on the market for electricity and the price is fluctuating and you have turbines popping on and off, you have a crisis and it’s very hard to sort that out and to get the turbines up and running if you need them to be, to produce power so you can make money.
’cause ultimately we’re trying to maximize the revenue to our company. And that cannot be a human response. We’re too slow. Humans are too slow to respond to all this. And because we’d have to know every nuance to every turbine or solar farm makes the problem immensely impossible. So that’s where you have developed a piece of software called.
ARSOS and it’s a system approach to a very complicated problem. So you want to explain what ARSOS does
Speaker 3: [00:07:00] effectively, what, what ARSOS does is to provide immediate response to whatever issue you have already a procedure to deal with, right? So let’s take into account the, previous example that, that we were using, in this case.
And, there are hundreds of different cases where a wind turbine is gonna stop. Every wind turbine is gonna, can have potentially hundreds of different. Scenarios where it’s gonna go on fault and require human attention or attention from remote. So the first thing that we can, provide is, immediate response time.
I think all the investment funds, IPPs or utilities, can now rely on a system instead of, relying on people. They can rely on a system that is gonna do effectively. The first phase actually is gonna do exactly the same. With immediate response time, this is what our source is all about. according to our experience, we have identified if you, could take 100% of the issues or incidents that can impact, the availability of the assets.
We have identified that at least [00:08:00] 80% of those incidents can be managed autonomously. Among that 80%, almost 75% of them can be resolved autonomously, and the other 20%. It can be just dispatched to, technicians on site so they can actually go on the turbine and fix the issue on site. So this, this is, this is our goal.
We can multiply by five the operational capacity of our customers. but along with that comes many other benefits. So the, main one, we already tackling that, right? So immediate response time with that comes, increase of productivity because we don’t need operators to be doing repetitive tasks anymore, so they can actually do other.
Added value activities, but immediate response also provide with an increase of availability, which also translate into an increase of production and again, translate into additional revenue. So effectively what we’re doing is to transform a traditionally thought of, center of cost, like the, it is a [00:09:00] control room.
We can optimize the control room to a point where it’s no longer a center of cost. Actually an opportunity to turn that into a center of revenue. We can actually improve the operations. We can actually capture more revenue from our assets. But we can only do that through automation.
Joel Saxum: So when you’re talking with operators, okay, so I’m, right now I’m imagining Alejandro on a sales call and you’re talking with them and you have, you may have in that room, some energy traders.
You may have some of the operators from the ROC, you may have. an engineer in charge of it, an asset manager, someone of that sort, and you start talking through the problems that you guys can solve. Which ones make the light bulb go on the most? Is it the revenue? Is it like, Hey, we can actually pull more revenue outta here, or is it, Hey, operators of the control room, we’re going to ease your life.
Which, which of these are the breaking points that make people go, yes, we want to use Green Eagle?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that’s a great question, Joel, and unfortunately it’s not that simple to answer. I wish I had the, right answer to that. [00:10:00] But the reality is that every type of customer has different, interest.
and I’m gonna give you a few examples. if you’re a trader, what you’re gonna value is the capabilities to participate in advanced, optional markets, right? Especially in Spain, we are the most used, technology to participate in secondary markets and c services, restoration reserves and so on.
So we enable our customers, the traders in this case, to participate in all these markets with zero efforts so they can focus on trading. But all the infrastructure, all the communications, all the actual management of curtailments is done automatically. So they can just focus on trading. but that’s what they, see, right?
If we were talking to an IP for instance, ISPs are generally, focused on or driven by, service level agreement based on availability, right? So if they say, if they, if their commitment is 97% of availability, they’re [00:11:00] gonna try to reach that, right? So that driven by the availability. but that’s it. they’re not necessarily capturing more if the availability goes higher than 97% or if the site is being operated better, or if the site is being actually producing more.
Sometimes they’re not incentivized by that. This is why, the reason, this is the reason why we are not normally focused on large utilities and large operators because, effectively, large utilities and IPPs, they, if they’re large enough, they’re gonna have everything in house. So they’re gonna see the benefits at all levels.
They’re gonna increase the productivity, and they’re gonna improve their operational model as a whole. So that’s why, we are targeting, these larger operators.
Allen Hall: I know a lot of the different operators have their own models of how to respond to particular alarms. Everybody does it differently depending upon a lot of it’s where you are in the world, where your wind turbines are and how your wind turbines respond to certain conditions.
So they’ve [00:12:00] developed these sort of procedures themselves. Are they able to integrate their existing procedures into the ARSOS platform where. Basically they’re taking the human outta the loop, but just automating it, making it simpler for the control room to run these turbines.
Speaker 3: That’s a great question, Allen.
of course, yes. and this is something that, we’ve been, seeing from day one. at the beginning when we thought, let’s, automate all these processes and all these procedures, I, we thought that we were gonna find like a common ground of how to deal with this model of turbines. However, what we see is a complete different way to.
To operate a fleet. And it depends on both commercial, and operational strategies. for instance, a utility that is gonna keep their assets for 20 years, they’re gonna have be paying attention of what is the most effective way to operate, taking care of the healthcare, of the assets. So it’s gonna be more conservative, it’s gonna be more long-term thinking.[00:13:00]
on the contrary, if, let’s say that you have a portfolio that you’re gonna sell in two years. That may drive, you to a more aggressive protocol. So you may want to, hire the higher the availability, increase the production, even if that comes at a cost of, a little bit more fatigue on the winter turbines.
So it all depends on how, what you wanna get for your fleet. what’s important is that we allow, we provide the technology. We don’t tell our customers how to operate. Actually, they have. They have more knowledge than us, to be honest. They know their assets, they know how they behave, and if you ask them, they know exactly that Tar van, three out of 2000 in this wind farm has this issue, and the other one that has a different issue, they already know that stuff.
So we’re not gonna tell them how to operate their fleet, but we allow them to do whatever they think is best for turbine. By turbine, I mean with our software, you can actually define different protocols and assign each protocol to one turbine. That means that, for instance, [00:14:00] if you, change the, the gearbox of one tarn out of 2000, right?
Normally you, what you would like to do is that the next day everyone is paying attention to the tarn in case something happens, right? but you have 2000, so that’s actually not very realistic. So in that case, what you do is that you configure out protocol that is designed for that specific model of turbine, and that takes into account that the gearbox was replaced recently.
So if there’s an alert, on a fault related to a gearbox. Then the response is gonna be taking that, it’s gonna take that into account. So obviously this kind of things can only be done if you’re based on, automation. Otherwise you just, have to rely on a few notebooks that you have in your control room and that they’re static.
They never change. they’re the same for 20 years and they never evolve.
Allen Hall: Yeah, they’re the same for every turbine. And that’s just a approach that we need to give up, that we need to move on as an industry to be more efficient in what we do. So how. [00:15:00] Does an operator, and I know you’re working with a lot of large operators and have a lot of turbines under your systems.
How does the RSOs implementation take place? What does that look like?
Speaker 3: All right, so it depends on the, I would say on the digital maturity of our customers. So it depends. Some of them already have a very strong network. Secure network. They have a, let’s, say, one of our customers in the, us, right?
So they already have a NERC department in place. basically what, first we need to understand what, they have already in place and how we can fit into that, solution in this, in the most, let’s say most, most demanding scenario. We are, gonna deploy your software on premises. So it depends on whatever they have already in place with the, we deploy your software, we provide them with the installers.
We provide them with the procedures and they are autonomous to, to install it. Obviously with our support, from remote [00:16:00] in, in other cases, in the other extreme, we have customers that don’t have a large portfolio. They don’t have these large IT and nerc. Department, in place. So in for smaller portfolios, we can actually connect from our cloud.
Our cloud, we make sure that it’s cyber security. We have all the certification in place. and this is the solution that we have. So we have, our cloud is connected to an onsite, piece of software that we install on, the edge, and they’re connecting securely. And that’s how we do it. in terms of architecture, I think it’s important, to get deeper into.
Why we are, proposing a, we are also establishing a different, way to do things because it also has to do with the architecture itself. if you take into account, the NERC rules in the US but also any cybersecurity policy, it is basically gonna go against any kind of [00:17:00] optimization, in the operations, right?
Because when you have so many issues, as we mentioned before. The tendency is gonna be to, okay, so this let’s centralize everything into one place where I can actually manage everything, efficiently, right? So one place centralize. I can control everything from this place. I have a control room here. I.
That’s it. Now that goes totally against cyber security policies, philosophy, right? Which they would like to have everything isolated from each other. So you have to actually go to the site and push the button right there. Now we have a, I would say the best solution, that covers this, both worlds, right?
So we have a solution that allows you to centralize the configuration. Distribute the autonomous control. That means that instead of relying on a centralized control room where the operators are pushing the button, so in the control room, you actually don’t push the buttons. You have the control room to supervise and to define the protocols itself.
Then these protocols are. Sign to each turbines, [00:18:00] the right protocols, but then the control is actually done autonomously on site. So even if your control room gets disconnected from the sites, from the network, you lose connectivity to your control room. You cannot access for whatever reason to your control room, you can be certain that your sites are still being operated in the same way.
If you could access your control room. So this is actually compliance with the cyber security policies at the same time that is allow, is providing you with what you were looking for to begin with, which is efficiency in operations.
Allen Hall: When an operator installs the RSO system, what are the typical things that they’ll see immediately?
is it just easier to operate the turbines, it just requires less staff? Are they producing more revenue? What are those success stories look like?
Speaker 3: Yeah, success stories look like this. Just like any automation attempt at the beginning, everyone is suffering from a little bit of, control, fism, right?
So it is okay, am I losing control of this? So we already have a system to deal with this. So what we do, basically, we install [00:19:00] our software in parallel to your control room. it works as a shadow mode, in a simulation mode. So basically what it does is to say, if this was active, what would it do?
Automatically versus what actually, what, are my operators actually doing? So we can actually compare for a few weeks or a few months, the performance of the automation versus the performance of the, current room. So normally when we propose this, customers, I will say in the mindset, it’s okay to test this for two, three months and then.
Go ahead and say, okay, let’s activate it. I no longer want to do this manually. It’s a waste of time and resources, right? The reality is that as soon as we put it in place and they see how it works, how it re respond immediately instead of. The delay that comes from operators, it takes, I would say, no more than two weeks until they’re already ready to put it, in production mode.
Allen Hall: When they see the lost revenue, [00:20:00] they would immediately turn it on and start making some more money.
Speaker 3: It takes between two weeks, no more than a month for sure.
Joel Saxum: I hear water cooler conversations. That would be like the ro the robot beats you guys again, you
Speaker 3: know. automation has a very interesting effect.
It’s that. I would say it’s a vicious cycle. So once you see something working autonomously, the brain works in a very interesting way. It’s you never want to do that manually again. It’s am I doing it? It doesn’t, it does not make any sense anymore. so it triggers, whole, efforts to just more of it, right?
More of it. It’s okay, if we’re doing a. POC with 10 sites, but you have 30 sites. You want it in the 30 sites as soon as possible. If you’re doing it to automate a few cases, but you know that you can actually automate more cases. You wanna do it as soon as possible as well. So it triggers, once you start this process, there’s no way back.
it triggers this vicious cycle where you are constantly thinking, okay, what’s the next thing [00:21:00] that if possible, I don’t wanna do it again. It’s very exciting.
Joel Saxum: I’m thinking about when I used to write reports in Excel and I learned, I finally learned how to do a macro in Excel, and then I was like, why I’m never writing another basic one of these reports again.
I could just push a button and it does it all. and it’s life changing, right? So once you get onto that, there’s just, there’s, people that are wired that way too, right? I used to have a, mentor that was wired. How can we do this better, faster, more efficiently? And it, he was trying to put that into everything we did.
Once he figured out a little way to do here, a little way to do here was, how can we make this better? so you guys have been working, really hard to get this system out through the Green Eagle ASO solution out in the marketplace. Based on the success you’re seeing, what does it look like for the future?
What’s the next step?
Speaker 3: So I think that the, in the future what we see, at least what we are aiming for is that every wind farm should have a system like ours. I don’t really care if it’s ours or not, but it should work that way. as a, [00:22:00] from a technical point of view, it’s it doesn’t make any sense that not all wind farms are running with a system like ours.
So that’s the way we see it. Like it’s, Getting momentum. I think it took a while for us to, take off and to get large customers to use our software, but now that large customers are using it, and the system is more than validated. We already have this running in over 10,000 wind turbine vans.
So I think it’s more than proven that it works and that we are solving a problem that no longer exists anymore. This is how we see it, the wind industry in the next, three to five years. All of the wind farms should come with this, and essentially we’re trying to make it come with a software like ours from day one.
So even if they’re already still connected to the manufacturer. It only, this can only benefit in the long run, right? but starting from day one. So this is what we are working on and how to get there as soon as possible we can encourage our customers to, [00:23:00] to start using this automation. To enable them to take back control of their assets to their operations, to not rely on someone else to do your, the operations of your site.
if you wanna get out of the manufacturer and work with an ISP, you can also make sure that the response time from their control room is also gonna be immediate with the software. So as soon as you have it, you’re gonna see the returns. And actually, we also work with our customers to. To prove the increase of revenue that they experience.
And we, the benefits of automation also is that you can measure the impact, right? So we generally work with our customers. We can measure the impact in their operations and we normally capture like a third of what they are gonna receive. So it’s like a no brainer to use our software. And for that reason, we believe that three to five years from now, every wind farm is gonna be running autonomously.
Allen Hall: Wow. That would be amazing. And the Green Eagle Solutions website, if you haven’t [00:24:00] visited it, you need to, it’s green eagle solutions.com. There’s a. Great information on that site. If you want to dive in deep or just take a cursory look, that’s the place to start. Alejandro, if they want to connect with you to learn more about ARSOS and what it does, how would they do that?
Speaker 3: the most, straightforward way to write an email to sales@greeneaglesolutions.com.
Allen Hall: That’s a good place to start. And you can also find Alejandro, LinkedIn also. Alejandro, thank you so much for being with us today. Tremendous product, very interesting technology. I. Thank you so much for having me today.
https://weatherguardwind.com/green-eagle-arsos/
Renewable Energy
American Draws the Line
At left, Bill Madden checks in from Boise, Idaho.
And he makes an excellent point; until recently, Idaho loved Trump.
This is all terrific news. It’s nice to know that, at a certain point, American draws the line against hatred and stupidity.
Renewable Energy
Transmission Major Topic at Georgia Power Hearing
Shortly after Memorial Day, the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) convened to hear testimony from parties asking for improvements in Georgia Power’s Integrated Resource Plan (IRP): the utility’s ten-year infrastructure plan for deciding what gets built, where electricity will flow, and who will pay for it. Multiple parties recommended improving system reliability and reducing costs through more comprehensive analysis of regional needs for transmission lines.
However, Commissioners and the utility were reluctant to move away from a traditional approach that relies heavily on Georgia Power building in-state power plants to meet the state’s growing energy needs. Like much of the Southeast, Georgia is experiencing new weather patterns, population growth, and the addition of major new individual electric loads on the system. These trends require a wide range of actions, including new and expanded transmission lines, in order to maintain reliable electric service. Georgia Power’s ten-year plan includes billions of dollars of new in-state transmission lines to connect both new power plants and major new industries to the grid.
The need for more energy will drive new transmission investments for Georgia Power, regardless of whether the utility chooses to build new power plants or increase connectivity to neighboring utilities. The status quo of Georgia Power’s closed transmission planning risks inefficient decisions showing up in your electric bill.
Improved Stakeholder Engagement, Role of Multi-Value Strategic Transmission
During the hearing, outside experts promoted the Carolinas Transmission Planning Collaborative as a successful model for stakeholder engagement that Georgia Power and its parent company, Southern, should follow when planning transmission locally through the Integrated Transmission System (ITS). Stakeholder meetings of the Carolinas Transmission Planning Collaborative, called the Transmission Advisory Group or TAG, are open to any individual or organization that signs up in advance.
In contrast, Georgia’s ITS process all occurs between Georgia utilities behind closed doors. And while stakeholders can attend a separate southeast regional meeting (Southeast Regional Transmission Planning, often called “SERTP”) hosted by Southern with other utilities to discuss regional transmission planning across multiple companies, it merely conducts a limited number of studies and does not have direct input into Georgia Power’s local plans.
Additionally, Georgia Power’s process prioritizes using local transmission lines within a utility’s service area to maintain system reliability. While “keeping the lights on” is the paramount goal of utility operations, this approach ignores a wide array of other effects that the size and location of transmission lines have on the grid. These effects include which power plants are used the most often, the opportunity to use cheaper generation for the system, improved power flows during hours of high-electric demand, and the availability of assistance from neighboring utility systems if a local power plant fails.
All of these additional factors are evaluated in a more robust transmission process called “Multi-Value Strategic Transmission” (MVST). In 2023, Duke added an MVST process to the Carolinas Transmission Planning Collaborative, in response to direction from the North Carolina Utilities Commission. Duke acknowledged the value of MVST in their filing to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. “To be positioned to reliably address the many dynamic demands facing the transmission grid, including not just the generation transition, but greater electrification, increased electric vehicle adoption, and new economic development, including from prospective customers with significant energy demands to power data centers or manufacturing hubs, Duke Energy needs to evolve its planning process from siloed planning for reliability, economics, and public policy.” Duke’s first round of the MVST process is expected to conclude by the end of 2025.
Grid Strategies recently examined the value of building three regional lines across the Southeast using MVST. They found that if SERTP built three new regional transmission lines instead of local projects, the average residential customer would save $4.47 per year. That’s about half of what customers are paying for Georgia Power’s Vogtle Unit 4, which added about $8.95 to the average customer’s bill. For system planning, if the Georgia Public Service Commission ordered Southern Company and Georgia Power to consider regional transmission lines as least regret projects with multiple benefits, these savings to ratepayers would only increase.
Interregional Transfer Capability enhances Georgia’s grid when it is constrained
Despite indications that a more public process and more comprehensive analysis could save customers billions of dollars, some members of the Georgia Public Service Commission were concerned that reliance on neighboring systems would undermine reliability. Georgia’s state law for integrated resource planning, however, lists power purchases from neighboring states as one of six possible sources of supply of power. During Winter Storm Elliott, Georgia Power was able to keep the lights on only because of emergency purchases from Florida Power and Light to Southern. Without Florida’s support, Georgia Power would have seen outages.
Congress also has tackled the issue of transmission lines needed for interregional coordination during severe weather. A Congressionally-mandated November 2024 Interregional Transfer Capability Study found that current transfer capability between Southeastern utilities is insufficient during extreme weather. Additional reporting by Grid Strategies concluded that rising load growth will put additional strain on a local utilities’ generation, further increasing the need for transfer capability not only between southeastern utilities, but also with utilities in other regions, allowing a utility to receive power from a region not experiencing high demand at the same time.
During the IRP hearing, Georgia Power cited recent blackouts in Louisiana as an example of why transmission planning should remain a local, utility-by-utility process rather than be regionally coordinated. Louisiana is part of a regional transmission organization named MISO that stretches from the Gulf to Canada. But, in the words of New Orleans City Councilman JP Morrell, the lead regulator of the power company Entergy in the city of New Orleans, “If we had better transmission, we could have flowed power from other parts of the state and other parts of this nation to keep power on.” In this case, MISO had proposed improved transmission ties into southern Louisiana but state regulators didn’t approve the cost. When a nuclear power plant went down, transmission was inadequate to transfer power from elsewhere in the region.
Improved Engagement enhances Transparency and “Right-Sizing” the Investment
As we outlined in our previous article, Georgia Power has the opportunity to improve its transmission planning by following our recommendations, which include:
- Clearly marking which transmission projects support which electricity needs
- Waiting to approve new transmission projects until the associated load growth has reached key interconnection and construction milestones
- Planning for batteries and solar based on their real-world support of the grid
These recommendations would be further enhanced by Georgia Power adopting open engagement with stakeholders and looking at a broad array of benefits when upgrading the grid. Beginning these processes now for both local and regional transmission planning will save Georgia ratepayers money, support growing demand for electricity, and keep the lights on.
The post Transmission Major Topic at Georgia Power Hearing appeared first on SACE | Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
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