Weather Guard Lightning Tech
Wind Impacts Railroad Safety? And Other False Flags
The crew discusses the Federal Department of Transportation’s concerns over wind turbines interfering with railroads, the USDA’s stance on renewable energy projects on farmland, new treasury rules for wind and solar projects, and highlight the Sunflower Wind Farm in Kansas for its community impact and operational success.
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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 Saxon, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes.
Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.
Hold on tight. I told my producer before we started, this is gonna be a. Bumpy rise. So for all our listeners, hold on. Uh, it’s a lot of news in the wind and solar world at the minute. Phil Tarro is in California. Joel Saxon is back from Australia in Austin, Texas, and first up is the Federal Department of Transportation.
Complaining about how close wind turbines could be to railroads and create an interference, and it’d be a safety crisis. Uh, federal transportation officials and a new scientific research report, [00:01:00] Joel, are sounding an urgent alarm about wind turbines being. Too close to railroad tracks and a comprehensive study from California’s Tehachapi Pass Wind Farm confirms, quote unquote confirms that wind farms can severely interfere with critical radio communications used by trains.
Now, uh, what they don’t want you to do is to read the report. That’s what they don’t want you to do. And, uh, as a group of engineers, we’re going to read the report and see what it says. And what it says is that they have a safety system on trains because they used to run into each other quite often. And what they’ve done is they have a overriding system that’s run by radio communication that if a train goes too fast and some of these more frequented train tracks or in.
High density population bases like Chicago or Baltimore, one of these places that they can actually slow the train down or stop the train in some cases, what it sounds like if they’re [00:02:00] on a collision course, and that becomes important on commuter rails. And, um, if they have toxic chemicals on trains, that they don’t want them to have accidents.
So they put the system in. And the system is based on Joel. The world’s oldest communication form.
Joel Saxum: It’s VHF radio, right? So to those of you that don’t know what VHF radio is, it’s basically like, uh, close to the frequencies you’d use as a walkie-talkie as a kid. Um hmm. Right. Uh, or a CB radio. Right. We’re, we’re quite a ways past that now.
Uh, so wifi, cell modems, satellite communications are all regular things within basically any other industry. Uh, of course, but this one, yeah, we’re still using VHF technology that we used. I, that’s been around for a long time for radio communication back from World War ii. Or before that? Oh yeah.
Allen Hall: Right around World War ii.
How far do those, uh, walkie-talkie radios typically
Joel Saxum: work? Well, it depends if you, I guess if it depends if you buy ’em from Walmart or if you buy ’em a, [00:03:00] a, a professional one. But, uh, depending on what watt radio is in ’em, I mean mile two miles maybe.
Allen Hall: Exactly. And that’s how this train system works. So every.
Couple of miles, they have a repeater to transmit the signal up and down the train tracks. Well, it became really important because, you know, these wind turbines are interfering with this train signal and may have a collision. So what they did is they commenced the study to go look at if there’s interference, uh, bouncing off the wind turbines, and if you read the report, they talk about wind turbine blades, possibly spinning and creating this interference pattern.
And particularly if the wind turbine blades are made outta metal, it could be this big problem. Well. No wind turbine blade is made outta metal today. And you know, the chances that the wind turbine blades line up in a particular orientation to cross interference is practically
Joel Saxum: dang near zero. You know, there’s something else we didn’t think about here.
We were kind of talking about this before we talking about metal blades and turbines. Of course, that’s not a thing. Uh, but they did this study in Tehachapi. If you’ve, of course a ton of our listeners have been to Tehachapi. It’s [00:04:00]like the wind mecca in the United States, right? Those are all lattice towers.
Lattice towers have. A different effect on radio signals than the Monopile towers that we’re used to that are most everywhere else in the, in the wind industry. But La Latt, lattice Towers can definitely do, do something to radio signal.
Allen Hall: So my first thought was to reach out to Joel when I read the report and say, Joel, there must be railroad tracks near wind turbines existing already.
Joel Saxum: How many Joel? Yeah. So we, we went and found some data online of uh, basically we know where the turbines are. We, US wind turbine database. Um, and then found the some shape files of where the railroad tracks are in the United States and duplicated their study to put like a buffer on the tracks that one, 1.2 miles took a look at it.
And there is about 6,500 turbines in the United States that are within a mile or 1.2 miles of a railroad track. That makes sense, right? These wind farms are, you know, along highways, [00:05:00] uh, a lot of ’em. Um. And railroad tracks follow highways. They’re kind of co-located, right? So of the 75,000 and change there’s about 6,500.
So eight and a half, 9% of turbines in the United States are within a mile or two or a mile, 1.1 or 1.2 miles of, of a railroad track.
Allen Hall: Well, evidently it’s a concern now, so we have to do something about it now. My first question was, well, this system must work in cities. That’s what it’s there for. There must be buildings and roads and bridges and draw bridges and other things in the way of this signal.
And sure enough, I was right. They, they do have buildings in the way, and you know what they do? They put a repeater in. You put a repeater in, just like a cell phone repeater to make the signal, uh, strength much higher to avoid the interference problem. And it works. So the DOT’s running around right now, and the head of the DOT Sean Duffy is, is exclaiming that, uh, wind turbines are the downfall of the [00:06:00] railroad community and they’re gonna push back wind turbines, uh, from railroad tracks.
So Joel, you better prepare for how many turbines to be moved back. 6,000 6,500. Yeah.
Phil Totaro: So have we gone into crazy land? A couple of things. First of all, Tehachapi never had metal blades. The, even the oldest turbines there, if they had, uh, any kind of blades other than fiberglass, they were wood. Um, and I don’t think Tehachapi had wooden blades, uh, out there for like 40 years.
The funny thing about all this is that it’s, uh, you know, stuff like this, it’s probably not gonna be that much of an issue because, as Joel just mentioned, if you’re only talking about 8% of the, you know, installed base in the United States, well guess what? There’s 92% of the installed base that doesn’t have this problem to deal with.
So that’s, you know. I’d take 92% over 8% any day. And, and, and look, the, the government actually, even though they [00:07:00] may kind of sound stupid at, at times or even try to deliberately portray themselves as stupid at times, um, they, they actually do get it. Uh, I know a lot of people are going to, you know, find it funny that I would say something like that.
But if you look, and, and the reason I can say this is if you actually look at what they did with like these IRS tax rules, um, you know. What they’re actually doing is facilitating manufacturing in the United States. So my point of all this is while they’re out there saying, you know, wind turbines are evil, in reality, the industry is actually going to thrive for the next, you know, 18 months or so, we’re, we’re still gonna have problems.
And, and they’re absolutely pouring gas on a fire. Needs to actually be put out rather than have gas poured on it. But the, you know, their rhetoric is one thing and their actual actions are another.
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Choose Pitch for peace of mind. Contact Onyx Insight today. To schedule your demo of Eco Pitch and experience the future of blade monitoring. Well, along Phil’s line of thought, the agriculture department will no longer support solar and wind projects on productive farmland. According to the agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, the move targets what officials call the destruction of prime agricultural soil.
For green new deals, subsidized solar panels. Now the emphasis here at first is on solar panels. But wait, there’s more. [00:09:00] USDA previously provided over $2 billion for renewable projects through its Rural Energy for America program. Now a 2024 study found that wind and solar projects affected. Only 424,000 acres, which is less than 0.05% of the total farmland in America.
And Joel, you’ve been driving through Iowa more recently. There’s a lot of agricultural land there and a lot of corn fields. Well, there’s wind turbines taking up, up a lot of space in
Joel Saxum: those farms. No, uh uh the, the first thing I think that we need to touch here though is like this green New Deal thing.
That was never passed. That’s not real. The green New Deal never happened. So there’s your first misnomer. Second one, eh? Yeah. Well you, I mean, you’ve seen anybody that’s seen a wind farm. It’s the, you have a road that’s, uh, 16 feet wide or so for a good road base and a 25 foot wide pad, [00:10:00] maybe 40, 50 foot wide pad, depending on the base of the turbine.
You know, it just doesn’t take up that much space. But I think that, uh, for me. In this, the capital markets will prevail. If the federal program doesn’t wanna support people, uh, you know, by giving, like, by subsidizing them to build solar panels on their land, fine. If it makes more sense for that landowner to grow, to grow corn or to harvest electrons, they’re gonna do what’s best for them to make money.
So that’s, and you’re gonna continue to see it. Um, so sorry, but that’s going to happen. Um, I mean, we’re fans of Wind, right? The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, but it is a perfect dual use, uh, process, right? You’re, you’re, how many farmers are benefiting from this is amazing, the stories that they have. You can talk to any of these guys and gals that own these farms and hear how much this is like creating revenue and creating, uh, money and uh, changing their whole family.
Right? But the same thing now you’re starting to [00:11:00] see more and more agri Voltaics, if you haven’t looked into that, where it’s a dual use, uh, uh, utility scale, uh, solar, and that’s freaking awesome. I’ve seen a couple of these farms where they’re planting soybeans or like sod farming and stuff underneath the solar panels.
Uh, so that’s gonna become, uh, use as well. So, I mean, I understand the attack. We know what’s going on. Again, like Phil said, at the federal level, this, this administration, kind of from all angles, it’s filtering down, trying to attack, uh, renewable energy in general. I think that the capital markets will prevail.
Allen Hall: Don’t you wonder how much agricultural land has been taken over by super Walmarts over the years, or Yeah. Or
Joel Saxum: subdivisions. Uh, yeah. Like, so if you, if you’re, if you’re. I, I don’t wanna say this wrong. If you’re an octogenarian, if you’re an, if you’re a little bit of a, an older listener of the podcast and maybe you’ve been through Houston in the past, drive through when you drove through Houston, and even in the, in the nineties, the [00:12:00] places now where there’s 10, 15, 20 miles of just homes, those were rice patties.
That was all, that was all agriculture, right? And, and it was productive agriculture, really good agriculture. Um, and now it’s just houses. So you can’t like to pinpoint who’s doing what and all these different things. Like, it’s just kind of ridiculous to me.
Phil Totaro: Here’s the other impact of what they’re doing.
There were about $1.6 billion worth of applications pending for, from farmers that wanted to install wind and solar on their property. And these are typically smaller, you know, turbines. This isn’t necessarily for utility scale ’cause this program is separate from anything that we do. Uh, at the utility scale level, this is basically a farmer wants to, as Joel said, put an Agri Voltaic system in there.
Their farm or have a small wind turbine installed in their farm. That’s like a 30 or 50 kilowatt size [00:13:00] thing. That’s what this program is intended for. Now, there are projects that actually already occurred that the farmers paid for out of pocket that they were hoping to get reimbursed for by the government and with the government cutting off the funding to this program.
These people, farmers, hardworking American farmers, are now out of pocket for these wind and solar systems, uh, where they thought they were gonna have the support of the government to, uh, you know, to come in and, and reimburse them, at least partially for having this system on their farm. So now if we’re talking about subsidies
Joel Saxum: taught in and agriculture for energy production.
There is 89 million acres, give or take of corn planted in the United States. 27, 20 7 million of them, so almost a third were subsidized and used directly for ethanol production.[00:14:00]
So, so, so now you’re, now you have. You’re, you’re playing. So it’s a weird, uh, like dichotomy there, right? Because of course the, the administration here wants to further the hydrocarbon industry, you know, American energy drill, baby drill, all this stuff. So pushback and renewables. Let’s get gas going. How do they handle this one?
How do they handle the, the, the third of the co, the ethanol problem and the fact that it’s junk fuel? Anyways, I won’t even put it in my truck. So the way they handle it is
Allen Hall: Iowa is the first round of caucuses for the presidential election, and they don’t touch it. For years and years and years between elections, they’ll poo poo ethanol and other states.
But as soon as they arrive in Iowa, it’s the greatest thing ever. So they’re not gonna stop it. And, and, but these kind of projects where they’re sticking it to the farmer is just not cool. Come on, what are we doing? And back to Phil’s point, you’re just hurting a little f. Small family [00:15:00] farm or maybe even the large family farm, that’s who you’re hurting.
You’re not hurting the wind and solar industry, but you feel like they have to say something. Each of the departments has to say something to get. Uh, in the good light of the Trump administration, which is just starting to get ridiculous, don’t let blade damage catch you off guard. OGs, ping sensors detect issues before they become expensive, time consuming problems from ice buildup and lightning strikes to pitch misalignment and internal blade cracks.
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Phil’s, uh, thought was a couple of weeks ago that they were kind of gonna merge the two concepts [00:16:00] of the 5% rule and beginning construction and kind of merge ’em together. But the, something came out that was completely different, and it basically is that in order to qualify for tax credits under this new piece of legislation, uh, the develops need to show physical work of a significant nature has begun.
So, in a sense. It’s sort of a lower threshold to start. Phil, can you give us some of the details of what’s about to happen with this new treasury requirement?
Phil Totaro: Yes, so the good news for anybody that’s already signed a Safe Harbor deal is that other than this requirement that you have to demonstrate some physical construction and, and I’ll get to exactly what they mean by that, uh, in a minute, but under the existing Safe Harbor rules, you’re still okay.
Um, the only caveat to it is you can’t start construction. Then stop it and then start it up again. [00:17:00] Anybody that hasn’t already signed a deal with Safe Harbor. Do it now. If you can try to at least get it done before the 2nd of September if you can. If you can’t, then you have to be able to start construction by July 4th of next year.
And again, as long as you start construction by July 4th of next year and you continue to construct, you’ll be fine. Uh, as long as you and then commission by the end of 2027. If you can’t, if you can’t have your, your safe harbor in place. Now, what is this start of construction? The physical construction requirement mean?
There’s basically one of two ways you can qualify, and this is where it kind of gets interesting. The work can actually be on site or offsite, but at the end of the day, I mean this actually opens up the door to a lot of a US manufacturing. Which is a good thing, and b, it’s actually a lot more tame than what everybody [00:18:00] feared.
So I, I’m just
Joel Saxum: thinking about this out loud as a strategy thing. So we were just, uh, we, by we, I mean the weather guard team, I wasn’t there, uh, but the weather guard team was just on site on a, on a new construction site where they were like, we’ve got piles of cranes, piles of people we’re gonna build this thing in a couple months.
And it was like. Whoa. Like, I can’t believe you’re gonna build that that fast. That’s crazy. But in my mind, I go to this, as long as you have continuous activity going on, maybe you start to spread those crews a little bit thin and those assets, those construction assets a little bit thin and spread ’em around to different sites.
If of course, all the other things in place, the permits are in place, you’re in the queue, you got the interconnection, all this stuff. But if you’re a large company and you’re trying to develop a lot of sites, but you still wanna qualify right now, you might be like. Put your Gantt charts out to December 30th, 26.
That might be the, the time, or is it end of 27 or
Phil Totaro: end of 26,
Joel Saxum: Phil.
Phil Totaro: So they have to commission, if they [00:19:00] don’t already have safe harbor, then they have to start construction by July 4th next year and finish by December 31st, 2027. For anybody that’s safe harbored already, they can, they still have to start construction, um, within the four year window.
And there’s no, uh, they, they have to finish within that four year window. But once they start construction, they have to continuously construct. As long as you start
Joel Saxum: construction by the fourth of next year, you have 18 months from that date to finish your wind farm. So it doesn’t actually make it smart if you’re not safe Harbor yes.
If you’re not safe harbor. Okay. So if you’re not safe harbor, if you’re getting all new kit now, so then it doesn’t make, it almost would make sense to kind of like. Drag your feet on the project. Yeah, but, but get more, but get multiple ones built.
Allen Hall: Remember that existing build outs are going like crazy because the [00:20:00] demand for electricity is so high.
So wind turbine farms are being put up at tremendous speed. The the little four year window we just created, which I think came from Chuck Grassley from Iowa, Phil, I think there was a lot of pressure put on the treasury by that Senator.
Phil Totaro: Oh yeah, that was, that was in the previous IRS rules. Yeah. Because of him.
Allen Hall: Yeah, absolutely. So there was a lot of negotiation behind the scenes, and he had withdrawn some treasury nominations or held up treasury nominations and told the Trump administration they were not gonna get a hearing until these IR Rs and treasury rules had come out in basically giving more time. And, and, and they did.
They did. They totally did. But Joel, back to your point, I think there’s enough buildout going on existing that this may make it a little less chaotic than it was because everybody is putting in wind, everybody’s putting in solar. All this AI data center drive is driving demand [00:21:00] for wind and solar, and you can only build so fast.
But as I learned from being on site a couple of weeks ago. Boy, the the speed at which these large EPC contractors are out there, putting turbines in the ground is amazing. Amazing. They have such talented crews out there. That’s all they do. Move from place to place to place. Putting turbines in, getting the, all the infrastructure done.
I mean, when we walked up on site, my producer and I walked up on site to this wind farm. They had transformers in the parking lot, right? So they were just getting started. But the a number of people on site to try to get these projects done ’cause they’re gonna move to the next one. This project was gonna end around Thanksgiving, middle of November in the States, and then we’re going to the next project.
That’s amazing. That is really amazing. On the build out. Three months. Yeah, three months. Three months. Boom. And they had just been on a project, which was another huge project they had just come off of massive project. [00:22:00]So now you have, back to sort of Phil’s point, you have these super talented, focused teams that are putting in terms who know what they’re doing.
They can go fast. And,
Phil Totaro: and keep in mind that it, this is kind of the challenge we, we face as an industry in a lot of other countries. We’ve got a lot of talent here that knows how to build fast. The same size project in Australia would take easily a. Three to four times the the time, like it would take nine to 12 months to build, you know, a 400 megawatt project versus how fast we can, we can execute here in the us.
And the funny thing about that is they have such high demand. In a place like Australia for talent, that they’re gonna have to soften up their, their immigration rules to allow people that have requisite experience from the US or Europe to come down there and help them. Joel, that
Allen Hall: one site we went to, uh, where they’re building turbines out, one turbine up and running a day.[00:23:00]
I asked, well, that seems like a pretty good clip. And some of the workers there said, oh no, that’s not as fast as we could do it. I’ve, we’ve done more than that before.
Phil Totaro: That’s actually offshore pace. They can do one offshore turbine a day, and that’s slow.
Joel Saxum: To me, it was like this, this, this farm was like, you know, between 90 and a hundred towers and they’re gonna build it in three months.
And, and, and that’s like, and you and, and in this area, like you can get weather. Like you’re, you’re, they’re going to get snow on this site. Like it’s gonna happen. Um, and it’s possible that it comes and it, and it blows. I mean, we’re wind country, right? So when you get, you have the possibility of a storm coming in and blowing six foot snow drifts across all the roads and stuff, like, and you still think that you’re gonna be able to do that and they’re confident.
That’s, that’s crazy to me. Joel, talk about the pay. That these workers were getting on this win site. Yeah. So this, that’s an interesting, uh, kind of thing that’s hap that’s rolled down from the IRA bill here right now too, because of course Alan and I, Phil Rosemary, [00:24:00] we’re connected all over the industry.
We hear, hear from a lot of different people. But I’ve had this conversation with a couple of, uh, big ISPs. Um. Yeah, some of them being in like the Blade World and the maintenance world and these kind of things, and they’re like, yeah, they’re, well, I got some guys, or TFAs, the technical field advisors, uh, for these construction sites.
Yeah, we’ve got some guys up there, but man, it’s crazy what we have to, like, what we’re billing out. So the ISPs billing the operators or the, the EPC contractors, billing the operators, some of them are billing 180 to $200 an hour for each person on site. Because of these other IRA, the white sheet wages.
And some of those places are like, I, I understand that. Like I, my early, early, my first big boy job was in Chicago and we had to do things with the unions and all this different stuff. And I remember seeing the wage rates for some of these guys that were just standing there leaning on shovels all day.
And it just drove me crazy. Um, so I understand how that works there, but my thought was usually always like when you get out in the middle of nowhere, like that stuff kind of goes away, but not, so it’s [00:25:00] not the case anymore. Some of these guys are making, I mean, out there just like, Hey, I’m a, I’m a laborer.
I’m a technician. I’m just kind of helping out here, and they’re making 60, 70, 80 bucks an hour. I mean, the paychecks that these guys are taking home is
Phil Totaro: nuts. Yeah. The the good news about that is that even though a lot of that rate is actually insurance. They’re, the people are still actually getting paid at a pretty good clip.
’cause in the, in years gone by, you send somebody out into the field, they were getting paid like 30, 35 bucks an hour while they were billing out at 180 bucks an hour. And the overwhelming majority of that was going to, you know, insurance policy and, and underwriting. Now more of that, even though you’re still paying that kind of a rate, more of it’s actually going to the workers.
So it’s gotten a little bit better.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. What I’ve heard from these guys is these, the, uh, the, there’s a fight for who gets to go to the white sheet jobs anymore. Like the, the technicians are like, no, no, no. I’m [00:26:00] staying here. I’m not going on vacation. Like, oh, we gotta cycle you out on the rotation. They’re like, no, no, no, no, no.
I don’t wanna go home. I’m staying here. But it’s a problem. So like the, one of the issues that the oil field has had, and a, and Alan, you and I took a trip out to Abilene, um, last year. Talked to some training facilities and some other people out there and they said, you know, we have an issue here because we can’t recruit very well out in this side of Texas because the oil field grabs all these people.
’cause the oil field is willing to pay them more than the wind world will will. But now you’re starting to see that tide flip a little bit. And Phil, the
Allen Hall: IRA bill, that part of it. Didn’t change. I, at least the reading I had was that payout feature for the workers on site. The prevailing wage feature remained, that didn’t get eliminated recently.
So with all the build out going on and that prevailing wage requirement, technicians could be making some pretty nice money.
Phil Totaro: That’s correct. It will go away though at the end [00:27:00] of 2027 when the PTC is actually phased out. So keep that in mind,
Joel Saxum: right? You, you got some time? No. I wanna flag this though. This is me saying this to all of our technician friends, listening from an ex oil field guy.
Do not go buy in Corvette. Do not go buy a new one ton Denali pickup. Do not do that. Don’t, don’t do that. Take this extra money. Put put your seven, $7,000 in your IRA that you, that you may or may not have. Make sure you do that first. But invest some of this money. Stick it away. Don’t go buy fast cars and big trucks because the oil field guys have done that and gals have done that forever and it doesn’t end well.
You could pitch your kids through college
Allen Hall: with some of the money they’re gonna make and good for them. Do it, do it, do it. Go get that you got, you have a little over a year, year and a half or so to make some money. Go do it.
Phil Totaro: There’s one last word of caution I have about all this. If you’re not safe [00:28:00] harbor.
You better start construction fast because one of the things that’s been happening in the US. Is, we’ve got moratoriums that have been put in place in a lot of different places around the us. There are 44 states that have more than 450 moratoriums now, and if somebody puts a moratorium in place and prevents you from doing.
Your physical construction, it doesn’t matter if you’re doing onsite, offsite, whatever, they can put a moratorium in place that basically prevents you from collecting your tax credits. So start constructing as fast as you can and if you’re an EPC contractor, staff up the Wind
Joel Saxum: Farm of the week This week, uh, comes from one of our friends in the industry.
So, uh, we had, uh, jewel Williams, uh, we recorded with her the other day. She’s a fantastic engineering manager. From Ted onshore us and she said, can, can I, can I do a shout out to some of my team? Uh, of course that’s, that’s what the [00:29:00] Wind Farm of the Week is about. It’s about, uh, shining the spotlight on people in the field.
So the Wind Farm of the week this week is the Sunflower Wind Farm. Uh, that is Ted’s on one of Ted’s onshore, uh, wind farms in Kansas. So it’s in Marion County, Kansas. Uh, it was their first onshore wind project, uh, in the state, of course, onshore Kansas. Yes, it must be. Uh, but it is made of 89 ge 2.8, 1 27 meter rotor turbines.
That’s 200 megawatts for the whole wind farm. It’s commissioned in, it was commissioned in 2023. Uh, produces enough clean energy to power over 96,000 homes annually, and is expected to contribute over 28 million in property, property tax revenue to Marion County over its lifetime. Um, so a lot of lease payments to the locals, uh, supporting community initiatives including education, environmental conservation programs, which is, I mean, that’s a hallmark of, or they do that everywhere they go with their wind farms.
Um, but this week, the, the special recognition and we’re, we’re getting kind of a shout out from Jewel here. Sunflower Winds receiving special [00:30:00]recognition from Sted for its deep community engagement, positive local impact, and the exceptional performance and dedication of the onsite GE team. So Tommy Gage, Jace Sherwood, and the team out there making sure that the turbines are spinning at, uh, sunflower wind in Kansas.
Kudos to you guys. So all of these aspects have contributed to being a operating, a well-oiled machine, achieving high availability and smooth operation. So the Sunflower Wind Farm from Osted, as brought to us by Jewel Williams is the Wind Farm of the week. That wraps
Allen Hall: up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.
Thanks for joining us as we explore the latest in wind energy technology and industry insights. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn and don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you found value in today’s conversation.
Please leave us a review. It really helps other wind energy professionals discover the show and we’ll catch you next [00:31:00] time. On the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.
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Renewable Energy
Trump’s Destruction of Renewable Energy Benefits His Support Base, and That’s All that Matters
The death sentence that Trump has imposed on renewable energy in America is good for two groups: a) Big Oil and b) the MAGA crowd that rejects science and wants nothing more than to own the libs, aka “libtards.”
The unforeseen problem for the common American is that solar and wind are by far the least expensive sources of energy, so that the ratepayers in the U.S. are soon going to be shucking out huge amounts of extra cash each month.
Of course, this doesn’t account for the increases in the effects of climate change that, though they are devastating our planet, won’t be affecting the folks in Oklahoma too badly for the next few years while Trump does his best to profit by turning our Earth into a wasteland.
Trump’s Destruction of Renewable Energy Benefits His Support Base, and That’s All that Matters
Weather Guard Lightning Tech
WOMA 2026 Recap Live from Melbourne
Allen, Rosemary, and Yolanda, joined by Morten Handberg from Wind Power LAB, recap WOMA 2026 live from Melbourne. The crew discusses leading edge erosion challenges unique to Australia, the frustration operators face getting data from full service agreements, and the push for better documentation during project handovers. Plus the birds and bats management debate, why several operators said they’d choose smaller glass fiber blades over bigger carbon fiber ones, and what topics WOMA 2027 should tackle next year.
Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
[00:00:00] The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by Strike Tape protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit strike tape.com and now your hosts. Welcome to the Uptime Winner Energy podcast. I’m your host, Alan Hall. I’m here with Yolanda Pone, Rosemary Barnes, and the Blade Whisperer, Morton Hamburg.
And we’re all in Melbourne at the Pullman on the park. We just finished up Woma 2026. Massive event. Over 200 people, two days, and a ton of knowledge. Rosemary, what did you think? Yeah, I mean it was a, a really good event. It was really nice ’cause we had event organization, um, taken care of by an external company this time.
So that saved us some headaches, I think. Um. But yeah, it was, it was really good. It was different than last year, and I think next year will be different again because yeah, we don’t need to talk about the same topics every single year. But, um, yeah, I got really great [00:01:00] feedback. So that’s shows we’re doing something right?
Yeah, a lot of the, the sessions were based upon feedback from Australian industry and, uh, so we did AI rotating bits, the, the drive train blades. Uh, we had a. Master class on lightning to start off. Uh, a number of discussions about BOP and electrical, BOP. All those were really good. Mm-hmm. Uh, the, the content was there, the expertise was there.
We had worldwide representation. Morton, you, you talked about blades a good bit and what the Danish and Worldwide experience was. You know, talked about the American experience on Blades. That opened up a lot of discussions because I’m never really sure where Australia is in the, uh, operations side, because a lot of it is full service agreements still.
But it does seem like from last year to this year. There’s more onboarding of the technical expertise internally at the operators. Martin, [00:02:00] you saw, uh, a good bit of it. This is your first time mm-hmm. At this conference. What were your impressions of the, the content and the approach, which is a little bit different than any other conference?
I see an industry that really wants to learn, uh, Australia, they really want to learn how to do this. Uh, and they’re willing to listen to us, uh, whether you live in Australia, in the US or in Europe. You know, they want to lean on our experiences, but they wanna, you know, they want to take it out to their wind farms and they ga then gain their own knowledge with it, which I think is really amicable.
You know, something that, you know, we should actually try and think about how we can copy that in Europe and the US. Because they, they are, they’re listening to us and they’re taking in our input, and then they try and go out. They go out and then they, they try and implement it. Um, so I think really that is something, uh, I’ve learned, you know, and, and really, um, yeah, really impressed by, from this conference.
Yeah. Yolanda, you were on several panels over the, the two days. What were your impressions of the conference and what were your thoughts [00:03:00] on the Australia marketplace? I think the conference itself is very refreshing or I think we all feel that way being on the, on the circuit sometimes going on a lot of different conferences.
It was really sweet to see everybody be very collaborative, as Morton was saying. Um, and it was, it was just really great about everybody. Yes, they were really willing to listen to us, but they were also really willing to share with each other, which is nice. Uh, I did hear about a few trials that we’re doing in other places.
From other people, just kind of, everybody wants to learn from each other and everybody wants to, to make sure they’re in as best a spot as they can. Yeah, and the, the, probably the noisiest part of the conferences were at the coffees and the lunch. Uh, the, the collaboration was really good. A lot of noise in the hallways.
Uh, just people getting together and then talking about problems, talking about solutions, trying to connect up with someone they may have seen [00:04:00]somewhere else in the part of the world that they were here. It’s a different kind of conference. And Rosemary, I know when, uh, you came up to with a suggestion like, Hey.
If there’s not gonna be any sales talks, we’re not gonna sit and watch a 30 minute presentation about what you do. We’re gonna talk about solutions. That did play a a different dynamic because. It allowed people to ingest at their own rate and, and not just sit through another presentation. Yeah. It was made it more engaging, I think.
Yeah, and I mean, anyway, the approach that I take for sales for my company that I think works best is not to do the hard sell. It’s to talk about smart things. Um, and if you are talking about describing a problem or a solution that somebody in the audience has that problem or solution, then they’re gonna seek you out afterwards.
And so. There’s plenty of sales happening in an event like this, but you’re just not like, you know, subjecting people to sales. It’s more presenting them with the information that they need. And then I, I think also the size of the conference really [00:05:00] helps ’cause yeah, about 200 people. Any, everybody is here for the same technical kind.
Content. So it’s like if you just randomly start talking to somebody while you’re waiting for a coffee or whatever, you have gonna have heaps to talk about with them, with ev every single other person there. And so I think that that’s why, yeah, there was so much talking happening and you know, we had social events, um, the first two evenings and so.
Mo like I was surprised actually. So many people stayed. Most people, maybe everybody stayed for those events and so just so much talking and yeah, we did try to have quite long breaks, um, and quite a lot of them and, you know, good enough food and coffee to keep people here. And I think that that’s as important as, you know, just sitting and listening.
Well, that was part of the trouble, some of the conference that you and I have been at, it’s just like six hours of sitting down listening to sort of a droning mm-hmm. Presenter trying to sell you something. Here we were. It was back and forth. A lot more panel talk with experts from around the world and then.[00:06:00]
Break because you just can’t absorb all that without having a little bit of a brain rest, some coffee and just trying to get to the next session. I, I think that made it, uh, a, a, a more of a takeaway than I would say a lot of other conferences are, where there’s spender booze, and. Brochures and samples being handed out and all that.
We didn’t have any of that. No vendor booze, no, uh, upfront sales going on and even into the workshop. So there was specific, uh, topics provided by people that. Provide services mostly, uh, speaking about what they do, but more on a case study, uh, side. And Rosie, you and I sat in on one that was about, uh, birds and bats, birds and bats in Australia.
That one was really good. Yeah, that was great. I learned, I learned a lot. Your mind was blown, but Totally. Yeah. It is crazy how much, how much you have to manage, um, bird and wildlife deaths related to wind farms in Australia. Like compared to, I mean, ’cause you see. Dead birds all the time, right? Cars hit [00:07:00] birds, birds hit buildings, power lines kill birds, and no one cares about those birds.
But if a bird is injured near a wind farm, then you know, everybody has to stop. We have to make sure that you can do a positive id. If you’re not sure, send it away for a DNA analysis. Keep the bird in a freezer for a year and make sure that it’s logged by the, you know, appropriate people. It’s, it’s really a lot.
And I mean, on the one hand, like I’m a real bird lover, so I am, I’m glad that birds are being taken seriously, but on the other hand, I. I think that it is maybe a little bit over the top, like I don’t see extra birds being saved because of that level of, of watching throughout the entire life of the wind farm.
It feels more like something for the pre-study and the first couple of years of operation, and then you can chill after that if everything’s under control. But I, I guess it’s quite a political issue because people do. Do worry about, about beds and bats? Mm-hmm. Yeah, I thought the output of that was more technology, a little or a little more technology.
Not a lot of technology in today’s world [00:08:00] because we could definitely monitor for where birds are and where bats are and, uh, you know. Slow down the turbines or whatever we’re gonna do. Yeah. And they are doing that in, in sites where there is a problem. But, um, yeah, the sites we’re talking about with that monitoring, that’s not sites that have a big, big problem at sites that are just Yeah, a few, a few birds dying every year.
Um, yeah. So it’s interesting. And some of the blade issues in Australia, or a little unique, I thought, uh, the leading edge erosion. Being a big one. Uh, I’ve seen a lot of leading edge erosion over the last couple of weeks from Australia. It is Texas Times two in some cases. And, uh, the discussion that was had about leading edge erosion, we had ETT junker from Stack Raft and, and video form all the way from Sweden, uh, talking to us live, which was really nice actually.
Uh, the, the amount of knowledge that the Global Blade group. Brought to the discussion and just [00:09:00] opening up some eyes about what matters in leading edge erosion. It’s not so much the leading edge erosion in terms of a EP, although there is some a EP loss. It’s more about structural damage and if you let the structure go too far.
And Martin, you’ve seen a lot of this, and I think we had a discussion about this on the podcast of, Hey, pay attention to the structural damage. Yeah, that’s where, that’s where your money is. I mean, if you go, if you get into structural damage, then your repair costs and your downtime will multiply. That is just a known fact.
So it’s really about keeping it, uh, coding related because then you can, you can, you can move really fast. You can get it the blade up to speed and you won’t have the same problems. You won’t have to spend so much time rebuilding the blade. So that’s really what you need to get to. I do think that one of the things that might stand out in Australia that we’re going to learn about.
Is the effect of hail, because we talked a lot about it in Europe, that, you know, what is the effect of, of hail on leading edge erosion? We’ve never really been able to nail it down, but down here I heard from an, [00:10:00] from an operator that they, they, uh, referenced mangoes this year in terms of hail size. It was, it was, it was incredible.
So if you think about that hitting a leading edge, then, uh, well maybe we don’t really need to, we don’t really get to the point where, so coding related, maybe we will be structural from the beginning, but. Then at least it can be less a structural. Um, but that also means that we need to think differently in terms of leading edge, uh, protection and what kinds of solutions that are there.
Maybe some of the traditional ones we have in Europe, maybe they just don’t work, want, they, they won’t work in some part of Australia. Australia is so big, so we can’t just say. Northern Territory is the same as as, uh, uh, um, yeah. Victoria or uh, or Queensland. Or Queensland or West Australia. I think that what we’re probably going to learn is that there will be different solutions fitting different parts of Australia, and that will be one of the key challenges.
Um, yeah. And Blades in Australia sometimes do. Arrive without leading edge protection from the OEMs. [00:11:00] Yeah, I’m sure some of the sites that I’ve been reviewing recently that the, the asset manager swears it’s got leading edge protection and even I saw some blades on the ground and. I don’t, I don’t see any leading edge protection.
I can’t feel any leading edge protection. Like maybe it’s a magical one that’s, you know, invisible and, um, yeah, it doesn’t even feel different, but I suspect that some people are getting blades that should have been protected that aren’t. Um, so why? Yeah, it’s interesting. I think before we, we rule it out.
Then there are some coatings that really look like the original coating. Mm. So we, we, I know that for some of the European base that what they come out of a factory, you can’t really see the difference, but they’re multilayer coating, uh, on the blades. What you can do is that you can check your, uh, your rotor certificate sometimes will be there.
You can check your, uh, your blade sheet, uh, that you get from manufacturer. If you get it. Um, if you get it, then it will, it will be there. But, um, yeah, I, I mean, it can be difficult to say, to see from the outset and there’s no [00:12:00]documentation then. Yeah, I mean. If I can’t see any leading edge erosion protection, and I don’t know if it’s there or not, I don’t think I will go so far and then start installing something on something that is essentially a new blade.
I would probably still put it into operation because most LEP products that can be installed up tower. So I don’t think that that necessarily is, is something we should, shouldn’t still start doing just because we suspect there isn’t the LEP. But one thing that I think is gonna be really good is, um, you know, after the sessions and you know, I’ve been talking a lot.
With my clients about, um, leading edge erosion. People are now aware that it’s coming. I think the most important thing is to plan for it. It’s not right to get to the point where you’ve got half a dozen blades with, you know, just the full leading edge, just fully missing holes through your laminate, and then your rest of your blades have all got laminate damage.
That’s not the time to start thinking about it because one, it’s a lot more expensive for each repair than it would’ve been, but also. No one’s got the budget to, to get through all of that in one season. So I do really [00:13:00] like that, you know, some of the sites that have been operating for five years or so are starting to see pitting.
They can start to plan that into their budget now and have a strategy for how they’re going to approach it. Um, yeah. And hopefully avoid getting over to the point where they’ve missing just the full leading edge of some of their blades. Yeah. But to Morton’s earlier point, I think it’s also important for people to stop the damage once it happens too.
If, if it’s something that. You get a site or for what, whatever reason, half of your site does look like terrible and there’s holes in the blade and stuff. You need to, you need to patch it up in some sort of way and not just wait for the perfect product to come along to, to help you with that. Some of the hot topics this week were the handover.
From, uh, development into production and the lack of documentation during the transfer. Uh, the discussion from Tilt was that you need to make sure it is all there, uh, because once you sign off. You probably can’t go back and get it. And [00:14:00] some of the frustration around that and the, the amount of data flow from the full service provider to the operator seemed to be a, a really hot topic.
And, and, uh, we did a little, uh, surveyed a about that. Just the amount of, um, I don’t know how to describe it. I mean, it was bordering on anger maybe is a way. Describe it. Uh, that they feel that operators feel like they don’t have enough insight to run the turbines and the operations as well as they can, and that they should have more insight into what they have operating and why it is not operat.
A certain way or where did the blades come from? Are there issues with those blades? Just the transparency WA was lacking. And we had Dan Meyer, who is from the States, he’s from Colorado, he was an xge person talking about contracts, uh, the turbine supply agreement and what should be in there, the full service [00:15:00] agreement, what should be in there.
Those are very interesting. I thought a lot of, uh, operators are very attentive to that, just to give themselves an advantage of what you can. Put on paper to help yourself out and what you should think about. And if you have a existing wind farm from a certain OEM and you’re gonna buy another wind farm from ’em, you ought to be taking the lessons learned.
And I, I thought that was a, a very important discussion. The second one was on repairs. And what you see from the field, and I know Yolanda’s been looking at a lot of repairs. Well, all of you have been looking at repairs in Australia. What’s your feeling on sort of the repairs and the quality of repairs and the amount of data that comes along with it?
Are we at a place that we should be, or do we need a little more detail as to what’s happening out there? It’s one of the big challenges with the full service agreements is that, you know, if everything’s running smoothly, then repairs are getting done, but the information isn’t. Usually getting passed on.
And so it’s seems fine and it seems like really good actually. Probably if you’re an [00:16:00] asset manager and everything’s just being repaired without you ever knowing about it, perfect. But then at some point when something does happen, you’ve got no history and especially like even before handover. You need to know all of the repairs that have happened for, you know, for or exchanges for any components because you know, you’re worried about, um, serial defects, for example.
You need every single one. ’cause the threshold is quite high to, you know, ever reach a serial defect. So you wanna know if there were five before there was a handover. Include that in your population. Um, yeah, so that’s probably the biggest problem with repairs is that they’re just not being. Um, the reports aren’t being handed over.
You know, one of the things that Jeremy Hanks from C-I-C-N-D-T, and he’s an NDT expert and has, has seen about everything was saying, is that you really need to understand what’s happening deep inside the blade, particularly for inserts or, uh, at the root, uh, even up in, with some, some Cory interactions happening or splicing that It’s hard to [00:17:00] see that hard to just take a drone inspection and go, okay, I know what’s happening.
You need a little more technology in there at times, especially if you have a serial defect. Why do you have a serial defect? Do you need to be, uh, uh, scanning the, the blade a little more deeply, which hasn’t really happened too much in Australia, and I think there’s some issues I’ve seen where it may come into use.
Yeah, I think it, it, it’ll be coming soon. I know some people are bringing stuff in. I’ve got emails sitting in my inbox I need to chase up, but I’m, I’m really going to, to get more into that. Yeah. And John Zalar brought up a very similar, uh, note during his presentation. Go visit your turbines. Yeah, several people said that.
Um, actually Liz said that too. Love it. And, um, let’s this, yeah, you just gotta go have a look. Oh, Barend, I think said bar said it too. Go on site. Have a look at the lunchroom. If the lunch room’s tidy, then you know, win turbine’s gonna be tidy too. And I don’t know about that ’cause I’ve seen some tidy lunchroom that were associated with some, you know, uh, less well performing assets, but it’s, you know, it’s [00:18:00] a good start.
What are we gonna hope for in 2027? What should we. Be talking about it. What do you think we’ll be talking about a year from now? Well, a few people, quite a few people mentioned to me that they were here, they’re new in the industry, and they heard this was the event to go to. Um, and so I, I was always asking them was it okay?
’cause we pitch it quite technical and I definitely don’t wanna reduce. How technical it is. One thing I thought of was maybe we start with a two to five minute introduction, maybe prerecorded about the, the topic, just to know, like for example, um, we had some sessions on rotating equipment. Um, I’m a Blades person.
I don’t know that much about rotating equipment, so maybe, you know, we just explain this is where the pitch bearings are. They do this and you know, there’s the main bearing and it, you know, it does this and just a few minutes like that to orient people. Think that could be good. Last, uh, this year we did a, a masterclass on lightning, a half day masterclass.
Maybe we change that topic every year. Maybe next year it’s blade design, [00:19:00] certification, manufacturing. Um, and then, you know, the next year, whatever, open to suggestions. I mean, in general, we’re open to suggestions, right? Like people write in and, and tell us what you’d wanna see. Um, absolutely. I think we could focus more on technologies might be an, an area like.
It’s a bit, it’s a bit hard ’cause it gets salesy, but Yeah. I think one thing that could actually be interesting and that, uh, there was one guy came up with an older turbine on the LPS system. Mm. Where he wanted to look for a solution and some of the wind farms are getting older and it’s older technology.
So maybe having some, uh, uh, some sessions on that. Because the older turbines, they are vastly different from what we, what we see in the majority with wind farms today. But the maintenance of those are just as important. And if you do that correctly, they’re much easier to lifetime extent than it will likely be for some of the nuance.
But, you know, let. Knock on wood. Um, but, but I think that’s something that could be really interesting and really relevant for the industry and something [00:20:00] that we don’t talk enough about. Yeah. Yeah, that’s true because I, I’m working on a lot of old wind turbines now, and that has been, um, quite a challenge for me because they’re design and built in a way that’s quite different to when, you know, I was poking, designing and building, uh, wind turbine components.
So that’s a good one. Other people mentioned end of life. Mm-hmm. Not just like end of life, like the life is over, but how do you decide when the life end of life is going to be? ’cause you know, like you have a planned life and then you might like to extend, but then you discover you’ve got a serial issue.
Are you gonna fix it? Or you know, how are you gonna fix it? Those are all very interesting questions that, um, can occur. And then also, yeah, what to do with the. The stuff at the end of the Wind Farm lifetime, we could make a half day around those kinds of sessions. I think recycling could actually be good to, to also touch upon and, and I think, yeah, Australia is more on the front of that because of, of your high focus on, on nature and sustainability.
So looking at, well, what do we do with these blades? Or what do we do with the towers of foundation once, uh, [00:21:00] once we do need to decommission them, you know, what is, what are we going to do in Australia about that? Or what is Australia going to do about that? But, you know, what can we bring to the, to the table that that can help drive that discussion?
I think maybe too, helping people sort of templates for their formats on, on how to successfully shadow, monitor, maybe showing them a bit mute, more of, uh. Like cases and stuff, so to get them going a bit more. ’cause we heard a lot of people too say, oh, we’re, we’re teetering on whether we should self operate or whether we continue our FSA, but we, we we’re kind of, we don’t know what we’re doing.
Yeah. In, in not those words. Right. But just providing a bit more of a guidance too. On that side, we say shadow monitoring and I think we all know what it means. If you’ve seen it done, if you haven’t seen it done before. It seems daunting. Mm-hmm. What do you mean shadow monitoring? You mean you got a crack into the SCADA system?
Does that mean I’ve gotta, uh, put CMS out there? Do I do, do I have to be out [00:22:00] on site all the time? The answer that is no to all of those. But there are some fundamental things you do need to do to get to the shadow monitoring that feels good. And the easy one is if there’s drone inspections happening because your FSA, you find out who’s doing the drone inspections and you pay ’em for a second set of drone inspections, just so you have a validation of it, you can see it.
Those are really inexpensive ways to shadow monitor. Uh, but I, I do think we say a lot of terms like that in Australia because we’ve seen it done elsewhere that. Doesn’t really translate. And I, if I, I’m always kind of looking at Rosemary, like, does it, this make sense? What I’m saying makes sense, Rosemary, because it’s hard to tell because so many operators are in sort of a building mode.
I, I see it as. When I talked to them a few years ago, they’re completely FSA, they had really small staffs. Now the staffs are growing much larger, which makes me feel like they’re gonna transition out an FSA. Do we need to provide a little more, uh, insight into how that is done deeper. [00:23:00] Like, these are the tools you, you will need.
This is the kind of people you need to have on staff. This is how you’re gonna organize it, and this is the re these are the resources that you should go after. Mm. Does that make a little si more sense? Yeah. That might be a good. Uh, idea for getting somebody who’s, you know, working for a company that is shadow monitoring overseas and bring them in and they can talk through what that, what that means exactly.
And that goes back to the discussion we were having earlier today by having operators talk about how they’re running their operations. Mm. And I know the last year we tried to have everybody do that and, and they were standoffish. I get it. Because you don’t want to disclose things that your company doesn’t want out in public.
And year two, it felt like there’s a little more. Openness about that. Yeah, there was a few people were quite open about, um, yeah, talking about challenges and some successes as well. I think we’ll have more successes next year ’cause we’ve got more, more things going on. But yeah, definitely would encourage any operators to think about what’s a you A case study that you could give about?
Yeah, it could just be a problem that’s unsolved and I bet you’ll find people that wanna help you [00:24:00] solve that problem. Or it could be something that you struggled with and then you’re doing a better job and Yeah, I mean the. Some operators think that they’re in competition with each other and some think that they’re not really, and the answer is somewhere, somewhere in the middle.
There are, you know, some at least small amounts of competition. But, you know, I just, I just really think that. We’re fighting against each other, trying to win within the wind industry. Then, you know, in 10, 20 years time, especially in Australia, there won’t be any new wind. It’ll just be wind and solar everywhere and, and the energy transition stalled because everyone knows that’s not gonna get us all the way to, you know, a hundred percent renewables.
So, um, I do think that we need to, first of all, fight for wind energy to improve. The status quo is not good enough to take us through the next 20 years. So we do need to collaborate to get better. And then, yeah, I don’t know, once we’re, once we’re one, wind has won, then we can go back to fighting amongst ourselves, I guess.
Is Australia that [00:25:00] laboratory? Yeah, I think I, I say it all the time. I think Australia is the perfect place because I, I do think we’re a little bit more naturally collaborative. For some reason, I don’t know why, it’s not really like a, a cultural thing, but seems to be the case in Australian wind. Um, and also our, our problems are harder than, uh, than what’s being faced elsewhere.
I mean, America has some specific problems right now that are, you know, worse, but in general, operating environment is very harsh Here. We’re so spread out. Everything is so expensive. Cranes are so expensive. Repairs are so expensive. Spares spare. Yeah, spares are crazy expensive. You know, I look every now and then and do reports for people about, you know, what, what’s the average cost for and times for repairs and you know, you get an American values and it’s like, okay, well at a minimum times by five Australia and you know, so.
It, there’s a lot more bang for buck. And the other thing is we just do not have enough, um, enough people, enough. Uh, we’ve got some really smart people. We need a lot more [00:26:00] people that are as smart as that. And you can’t just get that immediately. Like there has been a lot of good transfer over from related industries.
A lot of people that spoke so that, you know, they used to work for thermal power plants and, um, railway, a guy that spoke to a guy had come in from railway. Um. That’s, that’s really good. But it will take some years to get them up to speed. And so in the meantime, we just need to use technology as much as we can to be able to, you know, make the people that good people that we do have, you know, make them go a lot further, um, increase what they can do.
’cause yeah, I don’t think there’s a single, um, asset owner where they couldn’t, you know, double the number of asset managers they had and, you know, ev everyone could use twice as many I think. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. I think something that we really focused on this year is kind of removing the stones that are in people’s path or like helping at least like to, to say like, don’t trip over there.
Don’t trip over here. And I think part of that, like, like you mentioned, is that. [00:27:00] The, the collaborative manner that everyone seemed to have and just, I think 50% of our time that we were in those rooms was just people asking questions to experts, to anybody they really wanted to. Um, and it, it just, everybody getting the same answers, which is really just a really different way to, to do things, I think.
But more than, I mean, we, we we’re still. We’re still struggling with quality in Australia. That’s still a major issue on, on a lot of the components. So until we have that solved, we don’t really know how much of an influence the other factors they really have because it just overshadows everything. And yes, it will be accelerated by extreme weather conditions, but.
What will, how will it work if, if the components are actually fit, uh, fit for purpose in the sense that we don’t have wrinkles in the laminates, that we don’t have, uh, bond lines that are detaching. Mm-hmm. Maybe some of it is because of, uh, mango size hails hitting the blades. Maybe it’s because of extreme temperatures.
Maybe it’s [00:28:00] because of, uh, uh, yeah. At extreme topography, you know, creating, uh, wind conditions that the blades are not designed for. We don’t really know that. We don’t really know for sure. Uh, we just assume, um, Australia has some problems with, not problems, but some challenges with remoteness. We don’t, with, uh, with getting new, new spares that much is absolutely true.
We can’t do anything about that. We just have to, uh, find a way to, to mitigate that. Mm-hmm. But I think we should really be focused on getting quality, uh, getting the quality in, in order. You know, one thing that’s interesting about that, um, so yeah, Australia should be focused more on quality than anybody else, but in, in, in the industry, yeah.
Uh, entire world should be more focused on quality, but also Australia. Yeah. But Australia, probably more than anyone considering how hard it is to, you know, make up for poor quality here. Um. At the same time, Australia for some reason, loves to be the first one with a new technology, loves to have the biggest [00:29:00] turbine.
Um, and the, the latest thing and the newest thing, and I thought it was interesting. I mean, this was operations and maintenance, um, conference, so not really talking about new designs and manufacturing too much, but at least three or four people said, uh. Uh, I would be using less carbon fiber in blades. I would not be, not be going bigger and bigger and bigger.
If I was buying turbines for a new wind farm, I would have, you know, small glass blades and just more of them. So I think that that was really interesting to hear. So many people say it, and I wasn’t even one of them, even though, you know, I would definitely. Say that. I mean, you know, in terms of business, I guess it’s really good to get a lot of, a lot of big blades, but, um, because they just, people, I don’t think people understand that, that bigger blades just have dramatically more quality problems than the smaller ones.
Um, were really kind of exceeded the sweet spot for the current manufacturing methods and materials. I don’t know if you would agree, but it’s, it’s. Possible, but [00:30:00] it’s, it, you know, it’s not like a blade that’s twice as long, doesn’t have twice as many defects. It probably has a hundred times as many defects.
It’s just, uh, it’s really, really challenging to make those big blades, high quality, and no one is doing it all that well right now. I would, however, I got an interesting hypothetical and they’re. Congrats to her for, for putting out that out. But there was an operator that said to me at the conference, so what would you choose hypothetically?
A 70 meter glass fiber blade or a 50 meter carbon fiber blade, so a blade with carbon fiber reinforcement. And I did have to think quite a while about it because there was, it was she say, longer blades, more problems, but carbon blade. Also a lot of new problems. So, so what is it? So I, I ended up saying, well, glass fiber, I would probably go for a longer glass fiber blade, even though it will have some, some different challenges.
It’s easier to repair. Yeah, that’s true. So we can overcome some of the challenges that are, we can also repair carbon. We have done it in air, air, uh, aeronautics for many, many years. But wind is a different beast because we don’t have, uh, [00:31:00] perfect laboratory conditions to repair in. So that would just be a, a really extreme challenge.
So that’s, that’s why I, I would have gone for carbon if, for glass fiber, if, if I, if I could in that hypothe hypothetical. Also makes more energy, the 70 meter compared to it’s a win-win situation.
Well, it’s great to see all of you. Australia. I thought it was a really good conference. And thanks to all our sponsors, uh, til being the primary sponsor for this conference. Uh, we are starting to ramp up for 2027. Hopefully all of you can attend next year. And, uh, Rosie, it’s good to see you in person. Oh, it’s, uh, it’s, it’s exciting when we are actually on the same continent.
Uh, it doesn’t happen very often. And Morton, it’s great to see you too, Yolanda. I see you every day pretty much. So she’s part of our team, so I, it’s great to see you out. This is actually the first time, me and Rosie, we have seen each other. We’ve, we’ve known each other for years. Yeah. Yeah. The first time we actually, uh, been, been, yeah.
Within, uh, yeah. [00:32:00] Same room. Yep. And same continent. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s been awesome. And also it’s my first time meeting Yolanda in person too. So yeah, that’s our first time. And same. So thanks so much for everybody that attended, uh, woma 2026. We’ll see you at Woma 2027 and uh, check us out next week for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.
I looked through a few of the many thousands of responses to the question above on social media and have concluded:
If you ask uneducated people who know essentially nothing about global warming, you’ll find that nothing can stop it, because it’s been going on since the origin of the planet. Others say that God controls the planet’s temperature.
If you ask climate scientists who work in laboratories around the globe who have been studying this subject for decades, you’ll find that there are two key answers: a) decarbonization of our transportation and energy sectors and b) halting the destruction of our rain forests.
As always, we have a choice to make: ignorance or science.
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