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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.

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: 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.

That’s why the Uptime podcast recommends PES Wind Magazine. PES Wind offers a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to [00:27:00] wind, PES Wind has the high quality content you need. Don’t miss out.

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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Vestas Shares Jump 20%, UK Blocks Ming Yang Factory

Vestas doubles second quarter profit and adds €4.7 billion in market value overnight. Plus EnBW finishes He Dreiht after a V236 blade break, the UK blocks Ming Yang’s Scottish factory, and India rules turbines are movable goods.

The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

The Uptime Wind Energy podcast, brought to you by StrikeTape. Protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit StrikeTape.com. And now, your hosts

Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, and I’m here with Rosemary Barnes, Matthew Stead, and Yolanda Padron. And three out of the four of us will be in Melbourne Australia talking to a number of operators and interested parties about WOMA 2027. Matthew, where will we be the couple of days we’re in Melbourne?

Matthew Stead: So, um, first of all, we’ve got the Pullman, uh, East Melbourne, which is, uh, where the venue will be for, for 2027. Um, so that’ll be our home base. Um, we’ve got around about eight meetings planned already. So what we’re doing is we’re talking to the operators and a few other industry, um, players about [00:01:00] what we need to talk about, how we’re gonna move the industry forward in Australia.

Uh, so it’s gonna be jam-packed, but there’s a little bit of time left on the Friday afternoon if there’s any late-minute, um, people that wanna get in contact and catch up with us, um, for next Thursday, Friday, or actually Friday. Uh, so yeah, it’s gonna be a, a jam-packed time. I think we’re gonna be tired, too many coffees, and talking to all the key, all the key operators, uh, about what they wanna hear about and how we can move the, the industry forward.

Allen Hall: And if someone wants to put an input into the WOMA panel about what will be discussed at WOMA 2027, Matthew, how would they do that? How do they get ahold of you?

Matthew Stead: Well, we have a wonderful website, and that’s got all the details you could ever want. Um, you can also register on the website, so please register.

Otherwise, um, I’m sure we’re gonna be a sellout this year for sure. So woma2027.com.

Rosemary Barnes: I just wanna add that when people talk to [00:02:00] me about the event, they always say how they love that the topics are so relevant, and the reason why that they’re so relevant is because we make sure to go around to operators and find out what are the issues that they’re really dealing with.

So anybody that’s thinking of attending, even if you can’t, you know, meet us up, meet up with us in Melbourne, get in touch and tell us what are the, yeah, what are the topics that you’re struggling with that you’re not, um, you’re having trouble finding enough information, having trouble finding the people that can help you.

And y- yeah, like we take all of that information, and that’s how we come up with our agenda each year. And yeah, I mean, for us, that’s the, the main thing is that this has to be really relevant, up-to-date information for the industry, and we need your help to make sure it stays that way. I

Matthew Stead: mean, that’s what we’ve done the last two years, so this is– we’re just repeating the formula, um, listening to the operators and getting the good topics and the good speakers.

Allen Hall: Well, Vestas has had a good quarter. Uh, the, for the last couple of years, honestly, s- [00:03:00] Vestas has been really thin on margins. There was questions about it continuing on. Rising costs mostly, uh, supply chains, especially during COVID, were bad. Uh, and, uh, but for the most part, the shareholders stayed attached.

Well, that story is changing rapidly. The world’s largest turbine maker posted second quarter operating profits of $400- €46 million, more than double what the analysts had expected, and it’s raised its full-year margin guidance alongside half-year results for the first time in a decade. The shares climbed about 20% in Copenhagen, adding roughly €4.7 billion of market value in a single session.

Now, the chief executive, uh, Henrik Andersen, ha- put it plainly to, uh, uh, in a couple of news sources that something much bigger is happening and Vestas is gonna be the, the leader in wind. That’s how I read it, that everybody [00:04:00]at Vestas was super happy with the, the change in direction and things were moving up steadily.

But a 20% jump in a day is remarkable. You don’t see that in large industrial businesses like wind energy. Matthew, this has real implications on what happens next for Vestas because success like this usually means more orders.

Matthew Stead: Yeah, I wonder what’s going on under the hood there. Um, I mean, Vestas is a quality company, although, although can I just do a quick segue?

How many turbines were installed in Denmark in the last, uh, two years? Like last year and the year before?

Allen Hall: I don’t know. How many?

Matthew Stead: I believe it was eight turbines installed onshore in Denmark last year, and the year before it was 12. So, you know, maybe, maybe Vestas needs to focus on their own backyard a little bit as well.

Allen Hall: I’m not sure there’s a lot of opportunity there. Yeah, onshore.

Matthew Stead: How can you ever be full? I mean, there’s always, um, [00:05:00] uh, you know, um, you know, resiting or, um, you know, upgrades and-

Rosemary Barnes: You know what? Allen and I are probably gonna get some time in Jutland, uh, later this year, um, and that area and the old wind turbines there was actually the inspiration for my whole YouTube channel.

It just, ’cause there’s, you know, there’s turbines there from, the earliest one is, um, from the ’70s and still going. I think it’s one and a half megawatts, actually huge for, for that time. Um, and it was like community made, um, at Tvind. But anyway, I’m interested to revisit the site and have a look and see are these, you know, all these old turbines still there.

It’s only, like six years since I went through and did the experience but for the most part, they don’t seem to be yet pulling down the, the small old ones and putting up big ones. There’s a lot of, a lot of them are community owned. Um, and yeah, I mean, Danish people love wind turbines, but there’s only so many that you can have onshore.

Like, people are happy to live near them by, you know, the standards of people in other countries, but you don’t want [00:06:00] one in your literal backyard. I think that there is, there, there is a, a limit to how many more onshore wind turbines that you can get in that area and offshore expansion is the more likely way to go.

Um, and also I think it’s, it’s, it’s good to recognize that if you have a domestic only or a domestic first strategy, that will only get you so far and then you have to expand, and I think Denmark did that really well. I think Germany a little bit less. I think that Enercon were a bit surprised, um, by their strategy.

It, uh, they had a real hard time anyway when they had to transition away from mostly Germany to getting overseas. And obviously, like if you look at China, they have most of their installations are in China. They are trying so hard to get outside of China because it’s not, like even a market as big as China, it’s got decades to go before it will be full.

Um, you can still recognize that that’s not your, like long-term strategy for growth has to involve expansion, I think.

Allen Hall: I think Vestas, regardless of what happens in Denmark, is making a play for the United States. That seems to be [00:07:00] where a significant effort is happening at the moment and on offshore. Their– Vestas seems very excited about the offshore opportunities.

Of course, there’s a ton of wind turbines gonna be installed in the UK and, and all around Northern Europe. Offshore, the opportunities to buy turbines, there’s only a couple that you could get today. Uh, uh, the GE Vernova offerings I, I don’t think are gonna fit the mold, and I don’t know if GE’s even actively selling.

So their competitor realistically is Siemens Gamesa, which does seem like the smaller player at the minute versus Vestas, which is heavily pushing the V236 and will fill order books like crazy, I think, uh, just based upon the, the history they’ve had and everybody knowing who they are. So Also on the move in Australia, right?

Vestas is huge in Australia right now.

Rosemary Barnes: I think it’s really good that their, um, yeah, finances, uh, are [00:08:00] looking a bit better ’cause it’s been funny. Like, I tried early on in my wind career to invest in, you know, wind turbine manufacturers knowing that there would be immense growth, and I was right. There, there was immense growth.

Not that that was so hard to figure out that there would be, but it did not lead to any kind of, um, return on, on anything, you know. Like, that did not keep pace with the just general market. Um, so I, I stopped trying to, stopped trying to invest to that. But it has been really, really hard for the companies to, you know, raise money or y- you know, do any of the things that they need to do because they’ve always, like, they’re growing, growing, growing, but finances has been so tight that it has been a real constraint on the amount of engineering that they could do, and I really hope that Vestas are gonna take this opportunity that they’ve got compared to, you know, a lot of the other manufacturers.

Vestas do have really strong, um, innovation and, yeah, engineering capabilities for doing– you know, developing new technologies and improving them, and I really hope that they’re taking this opportunity to build that up. There are a lot [00:09:00] of very good engineers with a lot of experience in the industry in that area that are working in other fields at the moment because, you know, there’s been a lot of contraction in Denmark.

So I don’t know, it seems like a really good time to hire back some of that really in-depth knowledge and, yeah, get a- get ahead of, you know, some of the future quality problems. We’re going through such a hard time at the moment from the fast development that happened in the 20-teens when there wasn’t a whole lot of money around.

We’re dealing with quality problems now, so, you know, maybe we can get ahead and not have the next round of them if we can invest in just a lot more, uh, engineering capacity.

Allen Hall: When you have success like Vestas has, usually the upper level management and some of the executive team starts getting pilfered, that they’ll get offers to repeat that success at another company, and it sounds like that process has started already.

There’s a couple of executives that have recently departing or are in the midst of departing from Vestas. [00:10:00] I would see that continuing f- at least for the next six months, uh, because everybody wants to repeat that, right? If you can get a 20% increase in your valuation overnight, uh, I can, I can list a number of companies, regardless of industry, that would love to participate.

Even in a 5% increase, that would be remarkable. So, um, Vestas is gonna have a hard time holding onto this. That’s just the nature of the business where things are successful, people will wander. And Rosemary, I, I think they’re– And Yolanda In, in my book, Vestas should sort of s-stand down and just make quality products.

I’m not sure you sh-should tinker too much at the time being and just make the good stuff better. That seems like a way to really increase profits.

Yolanda Padron: Yeah, I mean, solving a lot of the issues that– And, and that’s not just a Vestas exclusive thing, right? All of these OEMs have some sort of issue that maybe– I know Rosie’s touched a lot on, on it, where [00:11:00] you build this version A and then version B solves one of the small little issues, but now it creates another little problem, and then you have version C, and then everything just kinda has its own niche little issue, um, that really expands over time.

So if they could solidify what they already have in, in a, in a model that, that would help them just even keep a lot of their customers, I think that’d be great, and it would help, certainly help them, um, not continuously, like, rotate around the customers, ’cause it almost feels like, at least in the States, right, you, you get GE to be really, really strong and have a huge market share, and then GE starts focusing more on gas turbines, so then they all go onto Vestas, and then they all go onto Ontara now.

Um, and then just, you know, just kind of everybody starts cycling through them because they just kind of want something that’s better quality than what they’re getting in the long haul.

Matthew Stead: Allen, you, you talked about you think there’s something big under the hood. I think you, you [00:12:00] thought that maybe Vestas was angling towards something or being quite bullish.

Do you think that they might take over GE Vernova?

Allen Hall: I don’t think they’re gonna grab Vernova, and I don’t think Vernova is for sale at the minute, but I wonder if Siemens Gamesa is, or Nordex. I mean, Nordex has done terrific the last couple of quarters and is making inroads in places that I didn’t think possible three, four years ago.

Uh, the European marketplace is be- becoming really unique in that sense that there’s a lot of money being put out. But is there a sole perfect solution for Europe? Not at the minute, ’cause you got two competitors there, and then China trying to, to work its way in. Will the Europeans come together and form something more united, even if it’s just a partnership, a loose partnership, versus letting China on the shores?

We’ll see. 64 of the largest machines that Vestas has builds are standing off the German coast, but one blade is missing a [00:13:00] piece. We’ll talk about that when we come back.

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Allen Hall: Well, Germany’s largest offshore wind farm is now fully installed, and EnBW confirmed this, uh, past week that all 64 of the Vestas V236 15-megawatt turbines are s- standing at the He Dreiht wind farm about 85 kilometers northwest of Borkum. Uh, 960 megawatts, [00:14:00] 2.4 billion euros invested. Man, these offshore projects are expensive to get installed.

Uh, so it’s power for roughly 1.1 million households, and there’s no state subsidy behind any of it. And so this is a little bit of a u- unique situation. Uh, th- well, the one footnote about the wind farm is they had a V236 blade break and fall into the North Sea, and they had fished it out and I think I passed along s- pictures that I saw online of, uh, one of the police boats pulling the shear web out of the water I don’t know what to think anymore about some of these offshore blade issues.

Obviously, Vestas is very conscientious about it and will be doing RCAs and engineering reviews and all the above to go identify what the problem is. But it does just lead to a little bit of a pause of do– what is going on for some of these offshore [00:15:00] wind blade installations or, or whatever’s causing these blades to break?

Do we have a good handle on it? Yolanda, is– are we following up on all the design details so that we can prevent these things in the future?

Yolanda Padron: I mean, I’d, I’d hope you’d be following up on the design, right? Like, and, um, but I think there is still a little bit of a disconnect from, from what we’ve seen, and again, not just Vestas exclusive, um, between the people who are designing and the people who are manufacturing, the people who are in operations, right?

So, uh- The, from what we’ve heard, uh, this could have potentially been a, um, partially because of a transportation issue, which is what happens a lot in onshore. It’s a lot more common than we would like it to be. Um, and so that even goes beyond what would go on in the design studio and what would go on in the manufacturing and what would [00:16:00] go on even just for the people that are running the site, right?

So, so some sort of, um, in between, uh, EPC error. Um, but yeah, I just think that, like in a lot of industries, there should be a lot more communication between all of these teams on the lower level, so that way a lot of these problems can, can be avoided.

Allen Hall: I’m wondering if it’s actually an issue on the, the testing side.

And, uh, the one question that just popped up, and we saw from the ORE Catapult, uh, survey that’s being conducted at the moment, and if you haven’t participated in that, you just visit ORE Catapult and answer some of the survey questions. But torsion on a blade, which is very difficult to test for, and it really isn’t tested for today, but does happen during the move and the transportation of these big offshore blades.

Is it one area that we need to do a little more work in or maybe spend some more time focusing on it to see what is happening as blades are [00:17:00]moved?

Rosemary Barnes: The thing about te- torsion is that it is much more significant as blades get longer. I can’t, I can’t remember the equation off the top of my head, which is, um, bothering me.

But I think it scales with, like, the fourth power or something of, of length. And so whilst it was always a bit of a problem, it’s much more of a problem as it gets, as blades get bigger. I mean, they’ve never, like, fully tested a blade, and there was always a lot of reliance on, hey, y- you know, like we’ve tested certain things that is possible to test in a test facility on the ground.

But they also rely on their decades of experience of how blades actually behave in the field. But, you know, remember, that’s a real lagging, lagging indicator because y- you know, their decades of experience is mostly with lots smaller blades. Now, blades are really different because they’re longer and different effects are, are taking over.

It’s not just, uh, torsion, but it’s also the laminates get much thicker, and then y- you know, you, you have issues with the way that they’re curing, [00:18:00] and there’s a lot more just space for, um, defects to be present in a really thick laminate All of those things add up. Oh, yeah, then add in addition, like new materials, carbon fiber is new, and then new ways of producing it, you know, pultrusions, um, all kinds of different materials like balsa’s being replaced with foams and, um, like, you know, 10 times that number of what sounds like a small innovation, but all of these things have the potential for damage and don’t have a really long track record in the field to be able to kind of calibrate.

We do need to remember that, like, when you do something new, things are gonna break, uh, sometimes, they’re gonna fail sometimes. If they don’t, then you’re definitely being too conservative, and your product is costing more than it should, and nobody wants more expensive wind energy, right?

Matthew Stead: Rosie, Rosie, I, I know you’re doing some, some excellent work on, um, industry studies around erosion and temperature and so forth.

Um, I just wanted to let a little secret out of the bag that, um, in the future there will also be some [00:19:00] other studies on torsion and blade twist and blade dynamics. So, um, just a few things are in, in train at the moment, which I can’t share, share, but, uh, watch this space around better understanding blade twist.

Allen Hall: The Hydride wind farm runs on European turbines, but the next one might not. Two governments with two very different answers on who gets to build Europe’s wind fleet.

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Well, two countries and two decisions, one question. In Scotland, the UK government blocked plans for the Chinese manufacturer Mingyang to build a turbine factory, uh, near Inverness on national security grounds. 1.5 billion pounds of investment, up to about 1,500 jobs. And First Minister John Swinney has asked the new prime minister to reconsider.

And the UK energy secretary minister called that request irresponsible. Meanwhile, up in Denmark, Vattenfall has just won two offshore wind farms and will not say whether it will buy European turbines. Danish suppliers are not taking that quietly. So [00:21:00] the Scotland question about the Mingyang factory is at least being discussed again with the new prime minister in the UK.

It does seem like there’s a lot to do and get the government formed and make all this stuff happen. But I don’t see a Burnham administration changing the outcome for Mingyang, but I could be wrong. At the, the same time, Vestas is pushing for a more Eurocentric focus and to really keep out the Chinese.

Uh, something has to give here pretty soon.

Matthew Stead: I actually think Mingyang should, um, set up a factory in Scotland. I, I mean, what’s wrong with that? I mean, uh, why is that a security issue?

Rosemary Barnes: Set up the factory and put the, like, whatever you’re worried about, put protections in place for it, require it to be a local joint venture or whatever.

You know, we’ve seen the blueprint in many of what used to be, you know, less rich countries. That’s how they, you know, got a head start on some of these technologies. It’s not like, I don’t think that China [00:22:00] has a head start on wind, wind turbine technology, but they certainly have different ways of doing things that, um, yeah, we could, we could learn from.

But I think across the board, wind turbines, batteries, solar panels, whatever, let them set up factories, put the rules in place that mean that your country benefits from it and you’re getting the, you know, the information transfer.

Yolanda Padron: Do you think that’ll, like, impulse a lot of these more established European companies to maybe start fixing some of the issues that they’ve known about for, for a while, um, particularly regarding the blades and everything that we’ve talked about earlier?

Like, there’s enough competition there, so maybe they need to start looking a little bit more deeply into their problems.

Allen Hall: Do we think that Chinese operations have been out front, forward, honest, I’ll even use, about their blade issues?

Rosemary Barnes: No, but this is a good way to find out, isn’t it?

Allen Hall: Governments decide who is allowed to build a turbine after a discussion on Scotland.

Uh, but, but [00:23:00] occasionally, a court decides what a turbine legally is. India has just settled that question, and the reasoning should be of interest to anybody who ships machines across a border right after this. As wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial and let’s face it, difficult. That’s why the Uptime Podcast recommends PES Wind Magazine.

PES Wind offers a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high-quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit peswind.com today. A tax fight in India has produced a definition every turbine supplier should read.

Is a wind turbine bolted to a concrete foundation movable goods, or is it immovable property? State tax authorities argued immovable, which would have [00:24:00] taxed erection and commissioning contracts at 18% instead of 5%. The Andhra Pradesh, uh, High Court disagreed, and on the 12th of August, the Supreme Court declined to interfere.

The reasoning rests on something this whole industry takes for granted. A turbine can be taken down, moved, and put back up. So a turbine is a movable object, and it has less taxation. Bonus. So this is a really interesting discussion that’s happening in India because it’s probably symptomatic of things we’re seeing elsewhere across the world about taxation for wind turbines, right?

That, um, if there’s a way to tax a wind turbine, we’re gonna try to do it. This is a unique way, uh, that happens in India where depending on if it’s permanent or movable, the tax rates are different. I, I guess that would apply to a lot of components inside a wind turbine too, Matthew, don’t you? Like the, the generator, the, the big heavy things, [00:25:00] gearbox, generator, blades, rotors, tower sections, would be taxed at a, a lesser rate.

Matthew Stead: I agree with the court case that it’s all movable and, uh, you can actually buy turbines on the secondhand market, can’t you? I mean, if I wanted to buy, yeah, whatever, whatever, I could buy one and, and put it up in my backyard if I had a bigger backyard. Um, so yeah, I vote for movable. I vote for lower taxes.

Yolanda Padron: The way that it would work a lot of times in the US is, I mean, it’s, you pay, the company itself pays a lot less than they would’ve over time, right? Just by pure, the, the regular kind of tax laws. Um, but the community, there’d be just direct donations to the community, so then they’d get, uh, like money would actually come into the community where the turbines were being built instead of just distributed around the state, which I mean, in a state as big as Texas, it gets, um, but easier for that c- um, that county to get a lot more, uh, funding than they would typically get if it was [00:26:00] through a big enough area.

Um, but yeah, no, I agr- I completely agree with you guys that, that this should be a movable good. I mean, how many times have we seen, uh, even just a blade, um, that it looks like it’s, uh, just a, a failed blade that they have to go in and replace, and then they take it out, fix it, and then just bring it back to the same site or take it to another site across the country.

And, and to that point, like if you were to h- judge it as something that’s immovable, would then any blade replacement just not be taxed? Because then it’s, you’re moving that one component and two, but it’s essentially the same turbine. Like, I don’t know how that all would make sense.

Allen Hall: I think the Uptime Supreme Court agrees with the Indian Supreme Court that wind turbines are movable, and that’s good.

Well, that wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. [00:27:00] Reach out to us on LinkedIn. And if you found value in today’s conversation, please leave us a review. It really helps other wind energy professionals discover the show.

And don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. For Rosa, Yolanda, and Matthew, I’m Allen Hall. We’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.

Vestas Shares Jump 20%, UK Blocks Ming Yang Factory

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Vermont and Florida: A Key Difference

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Can’t swear that the story here is authentic, but it sure rings true.

Vermont is a somewhat quirky state, but it protects its citizens very well. FWIW, this is where I want MY tax dollars going too.

Florida is a deeply red state that, true to form, wants as much ignorance as it can possibly produce. Educated people aren’t voting for people like Ron Desantis.

Vermont and Florida: A Key Difference

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Renewable Energy

Republicans: Will This Work?

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The GOP is asking American voters to believe that “radical left Democrat extremists” are leading the country into socialism/communism. They’re hoping that this fear will outweigh the electorate’s understanding of the damage that Trump, with help of congressional Republicans, is inflicting on this nation in the form of the war in Iran, destroyed relations with allies, inflation, shoddy education, environmental collapse, and threats to Social Security and Medicare.

As we all know, the rate at which a lie becomes accepted as true is a function of the frequency that it is repeated.  And God knows, we see this crap about communism every time we turn around.

But this looks like an unwinnable battle.  Virtually no one wants to abandon free enterprise.  Moreover, Trump’s abysmal polling numbers reflect the fact that is largely despised as a criminal–the most corrupt figure in U.S. history.

How would you like to be campaigning to retired baby boomers on the platform that we cannot afford Social Security any longer, because we’ve siphoned off huge amounts of money, like our president’s “vanity war,” with only further downside in sight, that is costing $1 billion a day?

Republicans: Will This Work?

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