Published

2 years ago

February 28, 2025

Alice Rush

The other day, I ran into a young couple with an infant, who live in a rural part of the U.S. I happened to overhear the father saying that the quality of public education where they live is “terrible,” and that they’re thinking about home schooling. And so, as if it were any of my business, I asked him by what metric the schools in his area are, in fact, terrible.

He responded, “LGBTQ,” by which I’m sure he meant indoctrination into the idea that non-traditional sexuality is OK. He went on to qualify: “Now, that’s public schools. Private schools can at least be held accountable.”

Now, at this point I had my answer, and I had the good sense simply to thank him and politely cut the conversation off, but a few thoughts remained on my mind:

• Your kid isn’t walking and talking at this point. It seems that you’re trying to solve a problem that doesn’t actually exist.

• Let’s say that seven years from now he’ll be in third grade. How much interest do you think he’s going to have in learning about homosexuality at that point? How much interest do you think his teacher will have in introducing topics that are irrelevant and confusing in young students’ lives, like sex education?

• Do you seriously believe that discussion on this topic “grooms” kids to become gay? How did you become straight? When your blood serum testosterone hit a certain level, perhaps when you were 12 years old, you took on a sexual identity, quite independent of something you had seen on TV or in a movie.

• Are you suggesting that public school teachers have more latitude and less accountability as to how and what they teach than instructors in private institutions?

• If they have the financial means, parents can put their kids through private schools, and yes, those schools have distinctly different approaches to politics, religion, philosophy, and the overall approach to educational. If you want your kid to learn that the world is 6000 years old because the bible tells us so, you’ll need a deeply religious school, one that explicitly rejects science, to fulfill that task. In general, however, private education tends to be more liberal in terms of teaching techniques and subject matter than our vanilla public schools whose curricula is the joint work of thousands of bureaucrats.

Friends say I have too much time on my hands. Perhaps they’re right.

When Parents Say that Public Education Is Terrible, What Do They Mean?

Renewable Energy

Hitting the Tipping Point

Published

23 hours ago

September 8, 2026

Alice Rush

Have we hit the tipping point on climate change? For example, has the melting permafrost in the Arctic released so much methane that a runaway feedback loop has been established?

As suggested at left, an analogous question could be asked about the level corruption in the U.S. government.

Hitting the Tipping Point

Renewable Energy

Nordex Outsells Vestas, GE Vernova Rebuilds Wind Team

Published

1 day ago

September 8, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Nordex Outsells Vestas, GE Vernova Rebuilds Wind Team

Nordex closes in on Vestas in onshore orders, GE Vernova rebuilds its wind team, Nexxis buys BladeBug, and wooden blades draw doubts.

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!

Nordex Outsells Vestas, GE Vernova Rebuilds Wind Team

Renewable Energy

Siemens Gamesa Builds Hornsea Blades, NEMS Invests in Perth

Published

2 days ago

September 7, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Siemens Gamesa Builds Hornsea Blades, NEMS Invests in Perth

Siemens Gamesa starts Hornsea 3 blade production in Hull, Germany approves an Offshore Wind Act amendment, and Nexxis buys BladeBUG.

Episode Transcript

Uptime News Flash
September 7, 2026
Happy Monday, everyone. Well, let’s talk about the biggest wind farm on earth. It doesn’t exist yet, but its blades are being built right now. Over in Hull, England, Siemens Gamesa just started making blades for Ørsted’s Hornsea 3 offshore wind farm. That’s two point nine gigawatts, one hundred and ninety-seven turbines. Each blade is longer than a football pitch. Fourteen hundred workers build blades in that factory, turning raw materials into finished product. When complete, Hornsea 3 will power more than three million British homes. It’s the single largest offshore wind farm in the world.
And if we slide over to Germany for a moment, the German cabinet just approved an amendment to the Offshore Wind Act, the WindSeeG. It’s headed to the Bundestag next. The goal? New rules by January first, twenty twenty-seven. But the Offshore Wind Energy Foundation says the draft does not go far enough. Sixteen gigawatts of awarded projects are still waiting on final investment decisions. Sixteen — that’s quite a few. The foundation wants a new way for developers to hand back sites they can’t build, so those sites can be re-tendered quickly under conditions that actually work. Sort of a use-it-or-lose-it approach. That’s the idea.
We’ll head a little further east to India. India ranks fourth in the world for installed wind power, but probably not for long. A government official said this week that India will overtake Germany and become the world’s third-largest wind energy nation by twenty thirty — one hundred seven gigawatts of installed capacity. India added a record six gigawatts last year alone, shattering their previous record of a little over four gigawatts. And twenty-eight more gigawatts are under construction right now. Impressive.
Let’s head down to Western Australia, because a company called National Electric Motor Services, NEMS for short, is building a one million dollar facility in Perth to test and repair wind turbine generators. Right now, Australian wind farm operators ship their broken generators overseas for repairs, and that takes months. NEMS is the only authorized service center for ELIN Motoren in all of Western Australia. This is the fifth project funded through Australia’s Wind Energy Manufacturing Co-investment program. Local repair, faster turnaround, and homegrown capability — that’s all good.
And staying in Australia, Perth-based Nexxis Technology just bought a British robotics company, BladeBUG. BladeBUG is a robot that uses suction cups to crawl across wind turbine blades. Nexxis already has a robot called Magneto that uses electromagnetic adhesion to climb steel structures. If you put the two together, you can inspect almost any surface on a turbine, or about anything else. Add AI and machine vision, and you have robots that can see what human eyes might miss, from places human hands shouldn’t have to reach. It’s safer, faster, and it’s going to be a lot smarter.
One more story before we finish today. Siemens Gamesa has now installed more than 300 recyclable blades in six countries. The secret is a new resin. Unlike conventional resins, this one lets you separate the blade components at end of life, so you can separate the fabric from the resin. Cool stuff. Jonas Pagh Jensen, head of sustainability at Siemens Gamesa, says the technology is ready for full-scale use. And Siemens Gamesa has already installed 36 GreenerTower units — steel towers with 63% lower carbon emissions. So although sustainability may have faded from the headlines, it’s still in tender documents, and it’s showing up more than ever. In Denmark, the Netherlands, and France, buyers are all asking about recyclability and decarbonization before they award contracts.
So what should you be watching this week? Recyclability is no longer a nice-to-have — it’s a must-have, and it’s showing up in tender scoring. If your blades can’t be recycled at end of life, you may not win the contract to begin with. And a lot of supply chains are going local. Australia doesn’t want to ship generators overseas anymore. India is building its own turbine factories. The countries buying wind power want it built at home. For professionals in the wind industry, the competitive edge is shifting — it’s not just who can build the best turbine, it’s who can build it locally, recycle it fully, and inspect it without putting a person in a harness.