Published

9 months ago

September 17, 2025

Alice Rush

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.

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 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.

OGs Ping has you covered The cutting edge sensors are easy to install, giving you the power to stop damage before it’s too late. Visit eLog ping.com and take control of your turbine’s health. Today we’ve been anxiously awaiting the treasury rules regarding the 5% rule for starting of construction for wind and solar projects and what was gonna be modified and.

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

Court Saves Wind Safe Harbor, Norway Pauses Utsira Nord

Published

11 hours ago

June 16, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Court Saves Wind Safe Harbor, Norway Pauses Utsira Nord

A federal court restores the 5% safe harbor for wind tax credits, Norway’s parliament pauses the 35 billion krone Utsira Nord floating wind program, and the crew digs into Australia’s battery boom and the looming blade technician shortage.

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!

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Matthew Stead: [00:00:00] 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 this edition of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m Allen Hall here with Matthew Stead, Rosemary Barnes, and Yolanda Padron. And our week starts off in the courtroom. And if you’ve been watching the news lately, there’s a pretty substantial IRS case involving large-scale wind and solar having to do with the, uh, production tax credit and, uh, investment tax credit at the same time on the safe harbor, 5% safe harbor rule.

Uh, a federal judge handed the wind industry and solar industry a pretty substantial legal win that could reshape how the [00:01:00] projects qualify for tax credits. So a judge up in, uh, the District of Columbia vacated IRS Notice 2025-42. So if you remember that, uh, from a- about a year or so ago, uh, f- it found that the, that notice was arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act.

The notice, which was issued following a July 2025 executive order, had eliminated the 5% safe harbor for wind projects, uh, a provision developers have relied on since about 2013 to establish construction start dates without breaking ground. The court found the IRS failed to justify removing it, ignored industry comments, which I had read, and I agree with that, and gave no reason for treating wind differently f- than other clean energy technologies.

So That his executive order came down and said, “Hey, we don’t like wind. [00:02:00] IRS, write a rule and make it hard for wind to get installed in the United States.” And so they dutifully did it, but a court is throwing it out. This has some pretty significant implications because if you hadn’t broken ground before this ruling, I think the– what was happening was be- if you hadn’t broken ground by July 4th, your project wouldn’t qualify for some tax credits.

But now, if you have 5% safe harbor, you still are in the game, at least for now. Now, Wanda, that’s gonna make a big difference to asset managers and developers, won’t it?

Yolanda Padron: Yeah, it’s really exciting. I think it opens up the, the playing field for, for some of these projects that might be a little bit behind schedule.

Um, of course, a lot of teams had to change their plans and their pipeline when, um, you know, the big, beautiful bill passed and, I mean, it’s– of course, it adds a little bit of additional volatility, right, to, to wind and, and solar in the US, but it’s exciting to see at least things for, [00:03:00] for those of us that are in the wind and solar side, the, it’s a little, little bit of, of hope there.

Allen Hall: And Matthew, uh, even in terms of opening up o-o-operations and, uh, getting contracts signed, this should make a big difference in sort of opening the floodgates a little bit. Although there is a short timeframe. We’re, we’re recording on, what, what is today? June 10th. So you have, in theory, less than 30 days before the July 4th deadline, but hopefully this stays.

You think there’s a chance this just gets completely, uh, wiped out, the executive order and the IRS notice and- It’s back to what we remember for the, for the last, ooh, 12, 13 years?

Matthew Stead: Uh, yeah. I’m, I’m, I’m hopeful, and I, I agree with Yolanda. I think you, you said it really well. Um, I think this is a, a glimmer of hope in, um, a sometimes gloomy, um, environment.

So I think that’s great. In terms of going back to where it was, um, I mean, I guess my observation has been that, [00:04:00] you know, things in the US were a bit, um, distorted. You know, distorted through the, the PTC, um, and the whole repowering thing after 10 years is quite a distortion. So I think, um, you’re not necessarily going back to the good old days, um, might be the way, what will happen.

Allen Hall: I think there is a lot of people actively trying to dig holes at the moment, and I, I’m sure they’re gonna continue to do that. Yolanda, do you th- you think anybody’s gonna stop and kinda say, “Oh, we have the 5% rule. We’re, we’re good”? Do you think, or you think they’re gonna still go ahead and really start construction and then just keep things continually moving on site?

Yolanda Padron: I don’t think they, they can really stop, right? Because you, you don’t know if, if anything strange happens. A lot of people didn’t think the, a lot of the provisions in the big beautiful bill were gonna, were gonna see the light of day, and they did. Um, but it does, I really hope it brings at least a little bit of breathing room for some people.

I know it’s, it must be… I mean, I have some friends in development, and they’re, they’re q- a little [00:05:00] bit stressed right now just with everything going on. Um, so, so I really hope for them at least they, you know, if, if they’re a little bit behind schedule, then it, it’ll be, it’ll still be fine.

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Norway’s Storting has voted to pause the 35 billion Norwegian krone support program for floating offshore wind at Utsira Nord. The Conservative Party secured a parliamentary majority for the external quality assurance review, a socioeconomic analysis, and a technology development assessment, all before the Storting will authorize any commitments.

Equinor and Vårgrønn, along with EDF and Deepwind Offshore, each hold allocated 500-megawatt areas and were preparing to compete for that subsidy. Equinor says the project will continue for now. I think everybody is saying that at the moment. But, uh, Equinor cannot rule out consequences as framework uncertainty compounds in the already challenging nature of floating offshore wind development.

So Utsira Nord is a massive project. So it’s, it’s about three and a half billion US dollars [00:07:00] to go do this. We had Mads Furuseth and Anders Naslund about a year or so ago, maybe a little bit longer, talking about the project and how big it was and how important it was that Norway did this for floating offshore wind.

But with this, uh, recent change in the parliament of Norway, it does seem like they’re slowly going to try to kill it by putting in a number of, uh, reviews, which is how bureaucracies tend to kill things. Is put it under six, seven, eight reviews, different committees. They all take time to get together.

They have to put out a report. It could be two, three years from now. At that point, the world has completely changed, and everybody’s moved on. Does that seem like the outcome here at the moment?

Matthew Stead: Yes.

Allen Hall: In my mind, there’s really two big areas for floating offshore, which UK, right? That there, there’s some massive projects there, Green Volt being one of them, and then there was Sue & Nord.

So between the two, I feel like the, the UK one was going to [00:08:00] happen. The question whether the world was gonna move towards floating offshore wind was gonna happen up in Norway. If Norway decided to do it and could get it developed, and it has the capability to do it because, because they have that skill set, uh, right there in Norway.

If they could do it in Norway, everybody in the world would learn from it and figure out how to do it. Does this really set back floating offshore wind globally?

Matthew Stead: Yeah. I mean, going back to what I said before, and I, I’ll defer to Rosie on this as well, but, um, when I was at, at Blades Europe, um, one of the, one of my long-term contacts, um, y- was in floating wind, um, and had, um, left the industry.

He basically said i- in his view that the offshore wind industry was slowly, um, in decline or slowly dying. Um, so I’m just wondering if this is just evolution of viability of offshore wind.

Rosemary Barnes: Is offshore wind in decline? I think if you look globally, it’s, it’s not in decline. I, I haven’t looked in, in depth at the figures just based on what, you know, [00:09:00] headlines I’ve seen and podcasts I’ve heard, but I think that globally it’s still on the rise.

It’s just that- It’s only in Europe that things are really moving with speed, right? Like, people were expecting heaps of growth in the US and now no- nobody expects that. Floating offshore wind, it’s… I th- I still think it’s too early to say. There are plenty of countries that don’t have any good energy options besides, um, floating offshore wind, like Japan.

What their energy transition looks like is gonna depend a lot on their culture and what people think, ’cause, like, if you go through, like, the engineering solutions that Japan could have, the ones that make the most sense from an engineering point of view are not popular at all, are not politically viable.

Like, Japan could easily have a subsea cable connecting it with, um, with China, for example, or Korea, but I don’t think anybody, anybody thinks that that will ever happen because, you know, politically it’s, it’s very far from being possible. What else could they have? Geothermal. They’ve got heaps of [00:10:00]geothermal resources, like really good traditional geothermal resources, but my understanding is that it’s super unpopular because their onsen, um, community doesn’t want it.

Uh, my understanding is that they’re worried that if you put geothermal, um, if you exploit geothermal resources, then the onsens will not be hot anymore, and again, my limited research understanding is that it’s not true. It’s different resources. The two aren’t connected in any way. Um, and yeah, there’s actually a community geothermal, um, facility near Fukushima.

I’m trying really hard to get over there, but I’m, I’ve got a roadblock at the moment because, uh, n- no one there speaks English, so I need to find somebody to, to come with me and, you know, I’ll have one, one day to try and get there on the fast train and back to Tokyo in, in a single day. So it’s, it’s a bit of a stretch, but I’m gonna try.

But anyway, so yeah, what have we… We’ve ruled out, like, subsea cables, ruled out geothermal. Floating wind is good.

Allen Hall: Well, speaking of Fukushima, [00:11:00] there’s been a more recent push in Japan to start up some of the nuclear facilities. So after the tsunami, was that 2012, 2014 when that happened? It was a while ago.

Uh, when the tsunami happened and h- had that, uh, nuclear accident, they, they s- shut down all the nuclear facilities in Japan, but it does seem like they’re trying to restart some of them And, and maybe it’s just the demand for energy and, and they’re trying to weigh that off with offshore wind or floating offshore wind.

At what point, you know, which one do you choose? It has to be driven by cost and availability.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. And so Fukushima, I just looked it up, it was 2011. Um, and yeah, so I mean, I think it is very fair that they had a reaction to that and they wanted to put the handbrake on nuclear at that time, or they did more than put the handbrake on, they did like a handbrake turn.

Allen Hall: They shut it down.

Rosemary Barnes: So, and it, you know, it’s gradually ramping up. I think that their target for nuclear now is to, to regain, um, 20% of their electricity from [00:12:00] nuclear by 2040, something like that. It was 30% prior to that incident. Um, so that will be part of it, but it’s not, um, it’s not all of it. And then even if you think of, uh, okay, so forget climate change, just, you know, we want, Japan just wants energy and they don’t care about climate change, you know, ’cause that, that, that could be true.

What are their ch- choices for that? They import a whole bunch of… They, they import nearly all their energy. Everything that’s not nuclear basically is, is imported. Um, coal, but a lot of LNG, and, you know, that is not exactly an appealing prospect at the moment either. It’s not secure. Prices are very volatile.

We’ve had, like, two fossil fuel shocks in the last, what, like four years or something like that, and how many more, how many more are we g- are we going to have? You know, like energy security is important, totally separate from climate change issues. So I don’t think we need to rely on Japan, like, you know, [00:13:00] steadfastly staying the course because their, their existing o- opportunities are not, are not great for fossil fuels either.

Allen Hall: I don’t know what country’s gonna stay the course right now, really. Maybe the UK?

Rosemary Barnes: Oh, I think it’s- Countries that have other reasons for going to renewables are the ones that are gonna stay the, stay the course. Um, and there are plenty of examples of countries where it just, it is by far the easiest, cheapest, fastest option to get more electricity.

Um, you know, like all of Africa, for example, is, is facing that as a, uh, a better development path than trying to build big, um, fossil fuel power plants. But even that, you know, like in India, they’re making a huge transition, Pakistan, not to mention Australia, where now batteries are having more of an impact on electricity prices than gas is.

So our electricity prices now finally are dropping, um, this year for the first time because of how many batteries have come on and are now, you [00:14:00]know… Like they’ve just flattened. The evening price peak used to be on average about, like, I think $400 or something dollars a megawatt hour, and now it’s like 100.

In one year we had that, we had that change, yeah, just from the amount of batteries that have come on in the last year or two.

Allen Hall: Why does that make such a big difference in the price of electricity, the battery aspect?

Rosemary Barnes: Because, so the way that Australia… Australia’s electricity market is pretty similar to Texas, so if you understand that, then you can probably understand Australia’s.

But, you know, at any five-minute interval, people, like, they know how much demand there’s going to be, and then people are bidding in how much they would supply electricity for in that five minutes, in real time as well. It’s not like day ahead or anything like that in Australia. The, like, last one they need is what everybody gets paid.

So, like, solar power is gonna bid in at, like, you know, practically zero, um, or maybe negative prices actually if they’ve got power purchase agreements in place. And then, you know, wind a little bit more, and then coal, uh, you know, a, a bit [00:15:00] more than that, and then gas, the open cycle gas turbines, the peakers, they’re very expensive.

They’re bidding in at 400, $400 a megawatt hour. If there’s enough batteries that that gas doesn’t need to bid in, then all of a sudden we don’t have the gas price that everybody has to pay. We have the battery price that everyone has to pay, and that is very, very cheap and will become cheaper as there’s more of them in the, in the system.

So it’s like a threshold event. You, you know, um, even if you’re using only a tiny bit of gas, if you need any gas at all, even like, you know, one megawatt of gas, everybody gets paid the gas price. If you just get a little bit more battery in and you don’t need it anymore, bam, the price just falls. So that’s what we…

We’ve passed that threshold now.

Allen Hall: Isn’t that where the UK is trying to get, is to get past that threshold where renewables are that last addition to the grid and kick off peaker plants and some expensive other- fuel sources. That’s I, I [00:16:00] think where everybody’s gone because they have the same system where the, the last one in is what sets the price for everybody.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. The UK’s a little bit different because one, they’re connected to Europe, and two, they’ve got nuclear, so they do have that kind of base load.

Allen Hall: Let’s go down the rabbit hole just for a second. So if the peaker plants don’t come on, that means that the battery electricity supplying the grid is pretty low in price.

It seems like they are losing money on their investment in the battery That they were hoping the price would be higher. Because if the peaker plants are still going on, that would be a $400 price and they’re gonna come in at, like, 350, so that would make sense. It, it helps pay off the battery investment.

But if they’re dropping the price down from 400 to 100, it would seem like the battery investment may not be a, a wise decision.

Rosemary Barnes: For sure they’re making less money, but it was– they were making crazy profits for the first little, the first few, few years of, you know, grid-scale batteries. And even [00:17:00] home batteries, people were making a l- a lot of money off that, and it was crazy.

Like, I’m on some, um, some Reddit subreddits about, uh, you know, people with home batteries and-

Allen Hall: Slash battery?

Rosemary Barnes: Matt probably is too. Matt’s a Beta G enthusiast, so I’m sure that he is just as excited as me. But anyway, so on one of these subreddits, you know, people used to talk about, “Oh, I made 100 bucks last night,” um, or, or whatever, you know, just a household.

And now all the posts are complaining about there’s been no price spikes all year. You know, I thought that I was gonna make heaps of money off my battery, but people are really change- changing how they think of it. And now it’s like… And l- like I want– used to want to do this. I don’t have solar panels yet ’cause we need a new roof, and I’ve been waiting a few years to, one, live in a house that I own, and then two, get a freaking new roof.

Um, and I thought I’m gonna just, like, cover it in solar panels, get a huge battery, and I’m gonna be an energy trader in my free time and make heaps of money, and now that is [00:18:00] not the strategy anymore. The strategy is to just reduce your bills to the m- the minimum that you can. Um, that’s basically, that’s basically it.

So you are right that some of this arbitrage is, um, the opportunity’s over, and that it will be less, um, exciting for, uh, opportunity for people to put more, more batteries in.

Matthew Stead: Just to add to that, through the middle of the day quite often there’s, uh, negative pricing. So if you’ve got a battery, you’re being paid to charge through the middle of the day.

So that actually takes away some of the pain from having a lower, a lower price, um, during the peak.

Rosemary Barnes: But the thing about negative prices is that you need coal power plants for them to be… Like, the only reason we have such pervasive negative prices is not because solar plants have PPAs that are, you know, make it worthwhile for them to generate even when the price is slightly negative.

The real thing is that coal power plants don’t want to turn down below, I don’t know, yeah, like 20, 30% during the middle of the day. They have to be on if they want to make money in the evening, and that means that they bid in at, like, [00:19:00] negative 50, um, so that people– so that they can stay running. And that’s where the bulk of our negative prices come from.

As coal power plants close, those negative prices will go away. Um, and when they close, we should get some better evening price spikes again. So, you know, like nothing ever stays the same for long, which is why it is such a fascinating hobby to have, being interested in the electricity market, because it’s never the same from one year to another.

You’ll never understand it, ’cause it’s never, it never stays the same long enough to really get your head around it.

Allen Hall: You need other hobbies. You really do.

Matthew Stead: A friend of mine works in trading, and, uh, he said, “As long as there’s volatility, there will be progress.” So much like what Rosie was saying is the more volatile it is, the more opportunity there is for people to come in, um, and change it.

Allen Hall: I just don’t know how the battery thing plays out once that threshold is reached. When you have more batteries on the system and you knock down the price that [00:20:00] much, I think battery sales, industrial batteries really slow down because they’re all looking for that quick ROI And they’re not gonna get it.

Rosemary Barnes: You have to wait for all of the coal to close before you would find out what’s the right amount of batteries to have in the, in the grid.

Allen Hall: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That, I totally agree there, yeah.

Yolanda Padron: You’d still get, like in extreme weather events and stuff, you’d still get a big price spike, right, for all these batteries.

Allen Hall: Back to Matt’s point, more volatility.

Rosemary Barnes: If you want the market to respond, you need to give enough incentive to invest in assets so you’ll have enough when it’s needed. And because it’s really infrequent, then it has to be a super high price to, um, bring on enough investment. And will this system… The system has worked absolutely, you know, pretty well in Aus- Australia at least.

Will it continue into the future with more variable prices and renewables? I, I don’t know, and the government is starting to do some things like, uh, you know, like a lot of [00:21:00] electricity markets have, um, not just energy markets but also capacity markets where you will pay a battery or a gas plant something to be on standby basically, um, so that if there is, um, if there’s a shortfall then they, then they have to respond.

So in Western Australia they have that, but across the east of Australia th- they currently do not, do not have that. It’s energy only.

Allen Hall: Really? How do you not have capacity payments?

Rosemary Barnes: The majority of their profits are made in just a few hours a year when there are those price spikes, so that’s, that’s h- part of their business case.

Allen Hall: I mean, there, there is arbitrage happening on the electricity grid. That’s not the best place to be arbitraging things because you will have players that won’t provide electricity just to drive up the price.

Rosemary Barnes: Uh, and it happens in Australia too, but, um, you know, because batteries are such a distributed resource, it, it will become harder and harder to do that when, you know, the, um, the ownership of these batteries is, you know, households as well as, um, yeah, as well as [00:22:00] big companies.

Matthew Stead: So offshore wind, I was talking to an OEM a, a little while ago and, uh, talking about blade repairs for offshore wind, you know, floating, floating wind. Um, so specifically floating wind. The OEM was extremely concerned about floating wind, um, because it makes it very, very, very hard to change blades. So the story was that if you’ve got an offshore floating platform, you’re basically gonna have to tow the wind turbine back to port to change a, a blade.

Rosemary Barnes: They see that as a, as a pro, not a con though. Yeah. That, that’s because it’s very hard to… Like, it’s not only floating offshore wind where it’s very hard to remove a, a blade out at sea, like fixed bottom offshore wind, that’s incredibly expensive to remove a blade. So floating is like, well, you can just tow it back to shore and then you can do it all in the port.

I, I, you’re looking skeptical, Matt, and I’m also skeptical about how it actually plays out. I know that, um, what was it? The, [00:23:00] the one- An EOL project off the coast of Scotland. I can’t remember what it’s called now. Like what, the first big one, the big wind farm, a floating offshore wind farm

Allen Hall: HiWind Scotland

Rosemary Barnes: They had a, a problem.

I don’t know if it was a serial issue or also, like it’s the first big wind farm, and there might have been like some operating condition they weren’t aware of that caused some problems. They had to tow back everything to port, and they stayed there for months and months. So like maybe, maybe close to a year or over a year, I’m not sure.

It was a really long time. And so, um, yeah. But then, you know, like what’s the alternative? If that had happened out at sea, it would’ve been more expensive. If, it still would’ve been shut down, not doing anything, and you would’ve had like helicopters out there every single day bringing teams and, um, you know, huge vessels with cranes and yeah.

So like it’s, maintenance at sea is never good.

Allen Hall: But the whole point of the HiWind project was to get some of these problems figured out, and one of them was just towing it back to port and [00:24:00] doing major repairs or component exchanges make sense. I think it’s a, it’s a lesson well learned, and we’ve moved on.

I guess the question is, does offshore, floating offshore in particular, have much of a future if Norway’s not willing to do it?

Matthew Stead: I think it’s a good comparison with, um, data centers in space.

Rosemary Barnes: You know where else they’re planning to put data centers? Not just space and offshore, also like, um, underwater ones, like on the deep ocean floor, um, on the moon somewhat.

Like there’s an actual company that is apparently developing a, a data center on the moon

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Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high-quality content you need. Don’t [00:25:00] miss out. Visit peswind.com today. Well, in this quarter’s PES Wind magazine, there are a number of great articles, and if you haven’t downloaded your copy, you should do that at peswind.com. There’s a good article from Global Blade Services USA, and it’s talking about the technician problem and how it’s not gonna, it solve itself, obviously.

But Global Blade Service is putting some numbers to it. And Rosemary, this is really directed at you. Blades represent roughly 20% of the total, total turbine capital cost and are the leading driver of unplanned downtime.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, 40% of O&M.

Allen Hall: Right, and 75% of all blade repairs are already handled outside OEM warranty.

That number seems really high, but maybe after the warranty expires?

Rosemary Barnes: Do you say 30% of, of repairs are repaired under warranty? That’s, uh, unexpectedly high from my point of view. [00:26:00] But, you know, how would I know? No one’s getting in touch with me if, you know, they’ve got a problem with their blades and it just got fixed under warranty.

Then they’re not paying a consultant to come sort it out. I only, I’m, I’m only there when the warranty is nearly up or it’s already over.

Allen Hall: So they, they’re saying that the, the ratio’s even gonna grow more towards out of warranty repairs. But the problem is having technicians. And the deeper problem is developing all those technicians in time as that need grows.

Uh, reaching full structural repair competency takes a rope access technician eight to 10 years. A basket technician is five to seven, and a factory technician is four to five years, meaning the workforce, uh, the industry needs for the next decade has to start training now. I, I think we’re seeing this in full force.

I- the issue is keeping good people in the industry as it fluctuates up and [00:27:00] down all the time and is very seasonal. Because there are really good rope technicians out there who know what they are doing, and it does take a, a minimum of three years to be competent. And then to be that lead person, it takes four or five solid.

And to be, uh, the, the relied-upon person, especially for some of the more complicated repairs, it’s gonna be six, seven, eight years before you’re there. It’s just an exposure thing. Are we in a technician crisis?

Rosemary Barnes: Crisis is maybe a little bit inflammatory, but, uh, we’re in a technician challenge

Matthew Stead: But it’s a pretty, it’s a pretty basic topic, Allen, isn’t it?

Like, um, you know, there’s more and more wind turbines, there have to be more and more technicians. It takes time to train. So, you know, it’s, it’s just, it’s pretty much basic maths and, um, you know, it’s like te- you know, tradies to build houses. Um, you know, unless you’ve got the tradies, you can’t build houses in a cheap way.

Yolanda Padron: Part of the issue is that, you know, say there’s [00:28:00] 10 technicians that are available in the area, right? Then you … maybe they work under two different companies, and then one company goes bankrupt, so then they all work with the same company. Another company pops up, or someone gets kicked off site from the OEM side, and then a month later they’re back with the third party.

And then it’s just really difficult to keep track of kind of who’s still there and who’s not, because some people have the certifications and maybe they’re not really, really great at what they do, or other people have a lot of training and a lot of experience, and it’s just difficult to track exactly, you know, where they are now.

I know that the, the strategy here oftentimes is you’ll find one person that you like and you kind of follow him around, or follow them around whatever company they’re, they’re with at the moment, and then just use that company.

Matthew Stead: The other point I was going to make is that there’s also the seasonality, isn’t there?

So you know, if you’ve got a great, a great technician, when it’s cold, they can’t earn cash from [00:29:00] repairing blades.

Rosemary Barnes: Aren’t they hired as, like, seasonal workers in America and they just don’t get paid for part of the year? That’s not how it’s done here. I mean, I guess we don’t have the climate where you have to, like, totally shut down, so they’re not, like, sitting around getting paid for nothing.

But, like, that’s a really unim- unappealing feature of the of the, um, field, isn’t it? If you’re deciding what you wanna, what kinda job you wanna do, you want one where you can get paid for 12 months out of the year, not just, I don’t know, like eight or whatever it is.

Matthew Stead: I know there’s been a lot of discussion between, like, Australian US repair companies of, like, shipping technicians down here during the Northern Hemisphere winter and vice versa, and it gives, you know, chance of exploring the world.

But, you know, if you’ve got kids and family, you’re not gonna necessarily wanna do that either.

Rosemary Barnes: It’s such a tiring job, though. I don’t… Like, there’s, um, I think it’s fine if people do it for, like, a hard 10 years and then, um, yeah, move on to… Because you obviously learn a lot as a technician, so y- you know, like, there’s a lot of office jobs that you would be really good at [00:30:00] because you had that physical experience.

But yeah, like, I, I do think that there’s heaps of young people that are traveling the world being wind turbine technicians.

Yolanda Padron: At least in Texas, I know a lot of rural areas where they don’t necessarily have a lot of opportunities to get higher education, and so going to be a technician is a good route for them to then go into a larger part of the industry, um, to, to kinda get a head start there.

Um, and they get a lot of really valuable skills, and oftentimes, like you said, Rosie, they’ll, they’ll get picked up by, um, by the owners or the OEMs or someone, um, because of their experience there. But it, but it is quite a bit of, of hard work and, and physical, physical labor. I climbed one tower and I was sore for two weeks, so really, really not my cup of tea.

Rosemary Barnes: I’m always, like, so excited to, to be climbing towers ’cause I only do it, like, you know, sometimes no times in a year, sometimes twice a year. Um, yeah, so, like, I’m really excited to go climb, and it’s really cool the first day, and then the second day it’s like, “Oh, this harness is [00:31:00] so heavy. Am I really putting this on again?

Oh my God.” Yeah, so it’s, uh, it’s ob- obviously you get used to it if you, um, if you do climb a lot. The last, uh, last site that I was at, a lot of the technicians were just climbing the ladders so that they wouldn’t have to, you know, go to the gym afterwards. So there’s a lift there, but they use the ladder because then they get their cardio for the day.

So, you know, they’ve obviously got some surplus energy.

Allen Hall: I think it is kind of a myth outside the US, uh, uh, seasonal workers, uh, at least in Europe, I haven’t seen a lot of seasonal workers. It doesn’t mean they don’t exist, of course. But in the United States, there’s a lot of seasonal workers from construction and all kinds of other industries.

People figure it out And it, it’s a lot more common than I think y- being an engineer you think it is, but there are a lot of seasonal workers. So being a, a wind technician is not a bad job.

Rosemary Barnes: I guess they’re just getting [00:32:00] paid extra for the time that they’re working and they just know they’re used to budgeting to cover the few months off.

Allen Hall: They have a winter job. They’ll, they have employment. They already have it lined up where when it gets cold outside, they have someplace else to go. Back into construction for a few months. They’re maybe driving a truck or doing other things that, that bring in income. They have it pretty well figured out.

When– At least the technicians I’ve talked to seem to have a, a plan about it, and they’re not sitting by the television for six months. That’s not what’s happening. It, that there’s a lot of employment opportunities here in the States, and so they, they’re pretty nimble. So if you haven’t read this article or a number of our other great articles in PES Wind, you should go to peswind.com right now and download a copy today.

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. Reach out to us on LinkedIn, and don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. [00:33:00] For Yolanda, Rosemary, and Matthew, I’m Allen Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.

Court Saves Wind Safe Harbor, Norway Pauses Utsira Nord

Renewable Energy

Why Is Trump Still Here?

Published

20 hours ago

June 15, 2026

Alice Rush

I challenge anyone to watch this short video and explain how Trump still has enough standing with the American people to remain president.

This is just so embarrassing.

Rich Americans aren’t happy that their country is a laughingstock around the world, but their fortunes are multiplying, so what’s the big deal? How does personal integrity come into play when there is so much money at stake?

The MAGA crowd, i.e., uneducated white people, believe Trump when he says that he has brought back respect for the United States.