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Wind Industry Growing Pains: Recycling, Construction, and Seals
This action-packed episode of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast tackles hot topics like the legal battle over massive piles of unrecycled turbine blades in Texas, construction snafus causing a 2-year delay for a floating wind farm in Japan, a wild new single-blade floating turbine concept inspired by 19th century toys, and ingenious new bearing seals that could solve the chronic lubrication failures plaguing wind farms. The hosts also spotlight the little-known, $700 million Top Crop Wind Farm in Illinois as the wind farm of the week. Grab your headphones and get ready for an energetic dive into the latest happenings in wind.
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Uptime 185
Allen Hall: Well, this week I learned that the word buoy is pronounced boy, and I’ve also learned a number of other Australian words, and I’m not even sure that makes any sense because Rosemary, buoy is a buoy, a boy is a boy, they’re really hard to mix up actually, but in this podcast this week, you went to spar boy, and I was totally confused, I had the dictionary out, I was just thumbing through like spar boy, I, I, I’m sorry, I don’t know what that means.
Rosemary Barnes: Allen, do you say buoyant or booyant? Buoyancy or booyancy? I think you’ll see that it’s Australians that have this one, right?
Joel Saxum: I got to agree, Rosemary. I’m sorry. I agree with you. I’m agreeing with Rosemary.
Allen Hall: Come on. I’ve lost two in a row. I lost the emu and I lost buoy. I’m pretty much out of words at this point.
Rosemary Barnes: You can, you can name whatever, whatever birds are native. To the US you feel free to name them and pronounce them how you would wish, but emus are emus. They’re ours. They’re ours. We’re claiming them.
Allen Hall: Well, see, this is, this is why, you know, it’s good to have a little bit of international flavor on the podcast because us Americans get a little too out of control and Rosemary’s here to rein us back in.
So as you will listen to this episode, that’s exactly what happens multiple times. It’s good to have Rosemary on the podcast.
So down in Sweetwater, Texas, where we were. pretty close to it last week. There, it’s been a big problem down there about the number of wind turbine blades that are just stacked in piles. And Global Fiberglass Solution was trying to recycle them. And those, some of those blades have been there since about 2017.
So they’ve been there a while. And back in roughly 2016, the IRS encouraged wind farms to replace the blades with the tax credits with new blades, right? So there’s a, there were a lot of wind turbine blades that came off the turbines and new ones went on. Well down in Texas, they’re looking for get those blades recycled and nothing has happened yet.
And it’s starting to become a little annoying. And the same sort of situations actually happened in Iowa with the same company in Iowa got really upset and. Forced GE or persuaded GE to take care of the problem in Iowa. So GE is recycling the blades in Iowa now This has led to a lawsuit That was filed this past week between GE and Global Fiberglass solutions and Phil, you want to give us the inside details of what’s going on here.
Philip Totaro: So, basically the, the back of a contract signed in 2017 and then a separate one signed in 2018. Global Fiberglass Solutions had the obligation to start recycling these blades. I think what they were going to do was to shred them and then incorporate some of the the shredded material, including the epoxy, the fiberglass, et cetera, into concrete.
To use as a, you know, a material to kind of strengthen the, the concrete and reduce the amount of rebar that, that would be necessary. So in theory, great idea. Unfortunately, I think that according to the contract, Global Fiberglass Solutions was supposed to at least haul them away and recycle them.
Although, potentially, the contract only said things about hauling them away. At which point, you know, technically, Global Fiberglass Solutions is, I guess, contending that they agreed to do that according to the letter of the contract, but in reality they weren’t necessarily recycling all of the blades that they had suggested they were going to.
So, the question is, was there a reason why they weren’t recyclable, or was something else going on, and they were just pocketing, you know, almost twenty, you know, twenty two and a half, I think, million dollars of GE’s money, and then not really living up to the obligations under the contract, so the, the civil dispute is gonna go on for a while, they just filed this That GE just filed this lawsuit in New York last week.
Heh. Unclear as to what this really means because there was some rather inflammatory language used in that that lawsuit. Where GE was basically suggesting that Global Fiberglass Solutions wasn’t really even capable of recycling anything. They just totally misled GE right from the beginning.
Allen Hall: The GE filing was really loaded with details. Like they had went and pulled presentation packs and emails and all kinds of information. So they had done some homework on global fiberglass solutions to go back and to relive what GE thought was supposed to happen. Obviously there’s been, there’s going to be a disagreement there.
But. Now that these blades are, especially in Texas, are sitting there, I’m not sure what they’re going to do, Rosemary. Is the best solution to try to recycle them? Bring in somebody to recycle them? Like, GE’s talking about doing that? Or is it just better just to bury the things and be done with them?
Rosemary Barnes: It’s such a, such an interesting question.
I mean, it depends what your goals are. I mean, if you really wanted to take those blades and turn them into other products, which I guess is what most people would think of as recycling. Then, you know, they are part of the way there. You know, one of the difficult things with recycling wind turbine blades is just the logistics of getting all the blades down from a wind farm and, you know, collecting them in one place where you can actually.
Processed them. So I guess they have gone partway along the recycling process, but I just think that this this lawsuit is so kind of emblematic of the whole debate around recycling wind turbine blades, because you You know, what does recycling mean and why are you doing it? I think that especially the second question, no one ever talks about that.
If you actually think about what you’re trying to achieve, then you can figure out what is the right thing to do with it. And a lot of those cases, it’s actually contrary to what most people might expect. So, you know, if we assume that by recycling wind turbine blades, we’re trying to minimize their greenhouse gas emissions.
Actually, you’re going to add greenhouse gas emissions to the life cycle of the wind turbine blades if you try and recycle them. The best thing that you could do is to take it off the wind turbine blade and just bury it right there at the bottom of where the wind turbine used to be. So I think in this lawsuit it was mentioned that there was supposed to be grinding them up to make pellets and then turn that into other products.
And I’ve heard you know, putting them into concrete is, is one thing and you can do that. And one of the issues with that with concrete specifically is that, you know, it’s really regulated kind of material because you use it for important structural considerations where you, you, you need to know how strong it’s going to be.
So I don’t think there is a huge, huge market for Just shoving whatever uncontrolled filler into, into concrete, even if, you know, you have had some promising lab results, you have to be able to control the composition really tightly. And one other thing that I think is a bit funny about this lawsuit is that GE has its own research programs into wind turbine blade recycling and has since maybe they didn’t have The program, you know, well and truly kicked off by 2017 when this agreement started, but certainly there are many, many blade experts working for GE who knew very well the state of the the industry and, you know, GE knows that you can’t recycle wind turbine blades in the sense that most people would imagine when you’re recycling, you can’t take the materials that are in an old wind turbine blade and do some process that turns them into a new wind turbine blade, the structural properties just degrade so much with today’s processes that that’s just not a possibility.
So I think that for them to say now, Oh my God, we thought that you were recycling them. It’s just a bit hard to believe that they thought that when their own program showed that that was not, not possible yet.
Allen Hall: Why wouldn’t they recycle, grind up those blades and add them to the concrete they’re going to pour right next door when they put new wind turbines in?
Why wouldn’t they at least do that?
Rosemary Barnes: Because it wouldn’t, it wouldn’t meet the certification standards. You have to, you know, like concrete is really, you know, really important engineering material, it’s strength and durability need to be known. If you just take a random wind turbine blade with whatever resin, whatever balsa wood, whatever, you know, just like rats or rattlesnakes that ended up in it when you, you know, you took it down and left it in a yard for a while, and then think that you’re going to use that for, you know, something as critical as a material that’s going to hold a wind turbine upright for 30 years without falling over.
I mean, it’s, that’s not going to happen.
Joel Saxum: Here’s a thought too, Allen, along that same thing, right? We’ve identified that one of the big issues here is transportation, we know that. All these, there’s a lot of other things that are going to emit more greenhouse gases. So the answer is, the material needs to be used locally.
Okay, building a wind farm down the road. Why not, why not grind it up and use it as the road base for all the roads and pads for that wind farm?
Allen Hall: Absolutely, yeah. I agree with you on that, yeah.
Joel Saxum: Those roads and pads need to be built up above the surrounding fields by a foot or two. That’s all extra dirt.
Why, why bring in all kinds of dirt? Why not put the road, the initial six inches of road base of crushed up fiberglass? Like, we know they can bury them, they’re basically inert, right? So why not use it for that? The tough thing with the whole lawsuit is that there’s a social part to it too, right? There’s a legal part, GE standing in one spot.
There’s a commercial part, GFS standing in another spot. Then there’s the, the, you know, the engineering aspect of it. And the, the actually doing the math and the metrics and looking at it quantitatively versus qualitatively. The other side of the thing is there’s a social impact of this, right? There’s a lot of people, whether you’re for wind or against wind, you’re looking at all these blades stacking up.
You’re saying, hey, this industry has a problem. This is another black eye to the industry. This sucks. We don’t want to, we don’t want to have to be continuously trying to bail ourselves out of these problems when we’re trying to promote wind energy. So the, the whole idea of this, this thing that’s going on, that it’s become a lawsuit between two players out there, it, that’s, that’s a black eye for the industry.
And they need to find a a resolution to it, right? So, in my mind, I know there’s a lot of companies out there that are starting to, you know, get more into the recycling of blade space. Like when GE did the project with Veolia, right? I know a couple of guys that have started companies that are, hey, we’ll recycle your blades.
So they’ll come, they’ll even take them off, they’ll cut them up, and they bring them to Veolia to, to get them recycled. And those guys, I actually talked to one of them about this lawsuit, they said, like, this is giving us all in the industry a bad name. I have, I’m getting vetted so hard by everybody I talk to asking questions.
That should have been asked during this thing, that he’s like, man, it’s like, it should be, these meetings should be a no brainer, and they’re, they’re difficult, they’re tough, because nobody believes that we’re actually going to recycle blades because one guy or one company kind of did the industry wrong.
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Allen Hall: The Goto Floating Wind Farm Consortium delayed the commissioning of the Goto City Offshore Wind Power Generation Project by two years, shifting its initial target date of January 2024 to January 2026. Well, you ask yourself, why did they do that?
Well the delay was prompted by the discovery of defects in the floating structures used for the project during construction. So somebody said, oops, we have something seriously wrong here. And it’s going to set us back two years. Now you know, the, the Toyota Corporation, which is involved in this and they’re in the, in the construction identify the defects and, and it’s going to resolve them, which is absolutely the right way to do it.
And I, and Phil, so when I read this article, like, yeah. They’re going to have defects. It’s something completely new you’re building. And yeah, it’s, it’s super complicated and there’s a defect and they had identified it and they’re going to go fix it, but two years is a long time. So it makes me think it’s something pretty deep into the design that they had to go fix.
And what are the ramifications for other wind projects like in the United States, where it’s really started kicking off something new because it’s so new, there’s going to be delays, right? Has to be.
Philip Totaro: Yeah, there’s, there’s a few aspects of this that are actually fairly interesting, Allen, because first off in Japan, they’ve had many, many years of experience at doing kind of floating, you know, this is a spar buoy technology.
So they, in Japan, they’ve had many years of doing demo projects with. This Sparbuoy architecture including using the basically the same Hitachi 2. 1 megawatt turbines that are supposed to go into this Goto demo project. And so it’s, it’s a bit curious that they’ve run into issues and they weren’t very specific in, in what they publicly released either.
We talked about potentially this could be weld issues, it could be any number of things, it could just be something to do with the design overall. I would think that if it’s a two year delay, there’s some kind of fundamental flaw with the overall design that perhaps wasn’t identified during the the, the demonstration projects that they’ve done, you know, over the past, I want to say, six or seven years.
Over there. So the, the impact of this project, notwithstanding, you know, the spar buoy technology is also something that could be utilized in California. It’s being utilized right now in Norway and off Scotland with the high wind projects. You know, they’re talking about utilizing this type of technology, even elsewhere in Europe, South Korea, et cetera.
So and, and many more floating projects in Japan, by the way. So. Including the, the full scale project that they have, because I think the, the entire Goto project was intended to be something like 800 megawatts or more, I want to say, if memory serves. So the, the point being, I guess there’s, there’s going to be as you said, there’s always going to be issues with developing a new product, but I’m looking at this like it’s not necessarily a new product.
If you’ve been in wind for a long time, you’ve heard about floating forever. I mean, I’ve been in wind energy for 16 years and 16 years ago, we were talking about floating wind. And, you know, it’s taking an awfully long time to get these solutions developed in the first place, which is also a bit of a head scratcher when you consider that things like tension, like platforms are already used in oil and gas.
And what I don’t quite understand is why we’ve decided to design all brand new. You know, offshore wind specific. Certainly there’s a bit of engineering work that needs to go into customizing something that has previously been used, proven in oil and gas. But why aren’t we leveraging more of this oil and gas experience, particularly leveraging tension like platforms or you know, spar buoy technology or something else that has been used for, You know, dozens and dozens of years already has engineering certification, et cetera, et cetera.
So this one’s a bit of a bit of a head scratcher.
Rosemary Barnes: It’s really weird that it’s two years. They’ve got, they’ve only got eight of these. Being spar bouys. We say boy, not buoy in Australia. So sorry, I can’t change that. So yeah, they’ve got eight of these spa boys structures to, to deal with. Three of them are already installed.
They’re going to inspect one of them for damages, but they think that it’s going to take two years. I mean, you can definitely like, whatever it is, you can make eight of them in less than two years. Right. So. To me, it says it’s not actually a problem with the way that they’ve been manufactured or a problem with the materials.
The problem is that they don’t know why. Something’s gone wrong and they don’t know why yet. That, you know, that’s the only thing that can explain a two year time frame to me. And I mean, yeah, that’s just speculation. But if it was just a bad weld, then okay, you remake those three. With good welds and make sure that the other five that haven’t been made yet are also made with good welds and then you move on.
I mean, it’s not going to take you, that’ll take you a few, a few months, maybe a year. And the rest of the project can, you know, still happen as you know, it was originally planned, but I get the impression that they don’t know what’s wrong. They’re going to have to make some sort of design change that they don’t understand yet.
And they don’t understand its impact on all the other parts of the project. So I’ve had to push everything back. That’s kind of my instinctive feel for it. But yeah, I know Joel’s worked a lot with offshore oil and gas. So maybe you can tell me what your, what your gut feel is based on the limited information that we have.
Joel Saxum: I think, Rosemary, you’re, you’re definitely on the same track my mind is, they don’t, somehow they don’t know, right, so you can do FEA modeling and all kinds of grandiose CFD stuff, but your, if your inputs in your software program don’t match reality, which is quite often is reality. Right? Then you may not be able to model something, right?
You may put it into the water and then all of a sudden the, there’s a floating moment or there’s a tipping moment that doesn’t make sense. When you’re dealing with offshore floating wind, you’re dealing with 9 degrees of freedom plus centrifugal motion and all kinds of things. So that’s a really complicated problem.
Another one here to think about is on the economic side of things and the commercial side of things. When you look at the group here, go to or go to Floating Wind Farm Consortium. It’s a lot harder to get things done when you have a group of companies working on them together with the government involved.
So, I also believe that there may be some under promise, over deliver going on here. I would expect these to be, this timeline to actually be shorter than two years. So, in a lot of the offshore like oil and gas projects that I’ve been involved in, you have like one, if you can get with a good EPC, like say a I don’t know, Technipe FMC, or a Baker, or someone like that, or a Saipem, where they’re doing everything in house, they’re doing the design, they’re doing the procurement, they’re doing the construction, they’re doing the install, those projects almost always will go faster and more efficiently than they will if you have company A, B, C, D, X, Y, Z, all doing different parts and having to work together, and I see this as Kind of because this is a you know, it’s a it’s a new thing.
It’s floating wind Japan. They got the government involved They’ve got a bunch of other kind of consortiums involved and some other people I think that that will that’s one of the things that will slow the process down But I’m gonna go right back with Rosemary said I don’t think they know what the problem is yet Because I think that they’re the possibility of modeling things that they didn’t expect is real.
Allen Hall: Hey, Uptime listeners. We know how difficult it is to keep track of the wind industry. That’s why we read PES Wind magazine. PES Wind doesn’t summarize the news. It digs into the tough issues. And PES Wind is written by the experts. So you can get the in depth info you need. Check out the wind industry’s leading trade publication.
PES Wind at PESWind. com
Touchwind is developing a floating wind turbine that It’s anchored to the seabed rather than fixed to the seabed floor. The turbine must, mass bends in low wind and then it’s drawn upright in stronger wind. So what this thing looks like, it’s a single piece blade. It’s like those toy helicopters with, on the stick.
It’s got the blade on top of the stick and you spin it between your palms and it flies in the air. Which is the impetus for the Wright brothers to get involved in flying, by the way, if you didn’t know that. So the, this touch wind is very similar to this design.
Rosemary Barnes: Cutting edge.
Allen Hall: A what?
Rosemary Barnes: It sounds cutting edge if it was the inspiration for the Wright brothers.
Allen Hall: Yeah, the father brought home a toy for Christmas. He was a preacher and he came home, I think it was for Christmas but he brought home a toy from being on the road and that was the toy. And then they got interested in flying and then the rest is history.
Rosemary Barnes: But can we just relate this back to the previous story?
So one of their points is, okay, this is a floating offshore turbine that’s anchored to the seabed rather than fixed in the ground. And Joel, please tell me if I’m crazy, but isn’t that the entire point of floating offshore, that it’s going to be anchored if it was fixed to the ground, then it wouldn’t be, floating, right? It would just be fixed, a fixed spot of offshore wind. Am I, am I crazy? Is that, is that really a selling point for a floating turbine?
Joel Saxum: For me, this one could be because I’d looked at the design of it last week, actually, or two weeks ago, I was looking at this because they had a LinkedIn article.
It makes sense to install these floating in shallow water because of how small they are. There’s how easy they are to transport. Like, like you can do, you can do there’s a vessel that’s known as an A. H. T. It’s an anchor, anchor handling tugboat. So basically it’s really powerful like a tugboat. 30, 000 horsepower type thing.
But it just has a big wide open back deck. And the back deck will have… You can put, it’s made for anchoring things, so it’ll have big chains and loops, you can have a mile of chain on this thing. But you can just put a chain in one of these, drag it behind a boat, flop the chain overboard and be done with it.
Like, there’s no monopile installation, there’s no nothing. You can put these things out in 50 meters of water, no problem. So, I think that one of the ideas behind the Touchwind product here, Is that they could make the L they can lower LCOE of offshore wind by not having to have all of the fixed bottom features, but in shallow water.
Rosemary Barnes: But does it scale? What do you think? Cause you know, they’ve got this one piece blade. So it’s basically like two, two, it’s a two blade rotor, but the two blades are joined in the middle. So you’ve just got one thing. So that sounds nice and simple. And it’s really similar to that. You’d like, there’s a lot of small wind turbines that have that design in particular in the, in the Danish West coast.
They have a lot of farms have this particular two bladed wind turbine, a Gaia wind turbine. I think the company’s gone out of business now, but… Yeah, super popular, it’s just one, one fixed blade and then the, it’s an upwind design as well. So, sorry, I mean downwind and it teeters it’s got a spring in there so that, you know, it automatically kind of, you know, like changes the angle of the rotor depending on the wind.
So that sounds a lot like what Touchwind is claiming and, you know, it’s a good, robust kind of low maintenance design for small wind. But does it, does it scale well, because, you know, it’s really cool to just have, you know, one piece, nice and rigid, less, you know, bolts to worry about, installation would be nice and fast.
But, you know, if you’re thinking about most offshore wind these days you know, if you’re getting up beyond 10 megawatts, their blades are, you know, over a hundred meters long. So if you’ve got two blades in one piece, then now you’re going to have a 250 meter long single blade. How are you going to install that?
It sounds to me like maybe this one will never, never reach those sort of sizes, which is not to say that that’s, that’s bad but you’re not going to get, you know, some of the benefits for offshore of having really big turbines is that you don’t have so many connection points and don’t have to lay so many subsea cables because, you know, you’ve just got fewer, fewer points to connect up.
So yeah, I think it’ll be a slightly different kind of application than what the main direction that we’re seeing offshore wind in these days.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, I’d have to agree with you on the, some of the engineering difficulties there. If you look at Touchwind’s website, they’re claiming in this design, a 200 meter rotor is capable of a 12.
5 megawatt machine. In with their design. And that’s 31 over 31, 000 meters squared surface area. So that’s big. Now, I completely agree with you. It does. Does it scale? Is it are you able to do this? I guess on the, on the backside of things that I need to see more of the, the commercials of it, right?
Because does it make sense to scale it to that big with the structural and the, the structural issues in the O and M issues that you could run into going to that size? Does it make sense to put? 2 to 1 out of 100 meter ones at 6 megawatts, or 3 megawatts. Cause it, there might be a, the economy of scale with this thing might plateau off at a certain level, right?
Or even come back down at a certain level because of the difficulty in manufacturing that rotor. So, I completely understand where you’re coming from, and I think that we’re onto something there. I almost think it’s easier just to put smaller ones out, but more of them for this design.
Allen Hall: I know what Phil’s thinking right now.
There’s no way you’re going to build a port and the infrastructure to do it. It’s going to cost you more to do all the, all the expenses stuff on land than it is to put that out to sea, I think. Right, Phil? I mean, we know we have port problems in the United States right now. I can’t imagine building a port big enough to handle that.
Philip Totaro: Realistically, the other issue is… Getting this thing designed, getting it certified, and then getting it done at scale implies probably about a billion dollar effort. This is a startup company in the Netherlands. They’ve recently gotten investment from Mitsui OSK in, in Japan. Which is good, but they don’t have what they need in place to be able to This is basically just gonna be a demo project for now, and eventually could turn into something.
I could see this potentially displacing what everybody thought was gonna be a big new trend, which was these kites. Which, let’s not go there right now, but, you know, it There’s a reason why the industry has kinda settled on a design, which is a three bladed upwind horizontal axis turbine on either a monopile, a jacket, or a floating foundation or pile cap, whatever.
You know, it’s bankable. There’s a lot of things that are great about this from an engineering standpoint. It’s very clever interesting design. But at the end of the day, insurance companies and banks run the industry, okay? Not the supply chain companies and not even the developers. So, you have to be able to, you know, there are so many solutions out there that fall into this bucket of very, very clever engineering work, very clever technologically.
Yes, you can make it work from an engineering standpoint if you have the right investment, but are you designing something that is bankable? Are you designing something that is insurable? I don’t see that with this. And I don’t know that there’s any scale you’re going to achieve with this. That’s going to meaningfully offset.
I mean, when you’re already talking about the profitability challenges that everybody faces, you’re not going to introduce a radical new technology into a market where we’re already trying to get. You know, the, the conventional technology to work well enough so it can turn a profit for everybody that’s involved in the value chain, from the project developers, to the supply chain companies, to the financiers.
So yeah, I Good, good luck to ’em. But I, I don’t see this being anything more than a science project.
Rosemary Barnes: There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of companies trying though, in in floating offshore. You know, I, I definitely agree with you for. for the most part that that’s probably what’s going to happen. But I do think that you know, the design that evolved to make sense for onshore wind doesn’t necessarily, it’s not necessarily the best technical solution to the floating offshore problem.
So I do think that there is you know, possibility that the best design hasn’t been arrived at yet, but I can kind of see, imagine that what you’d say to that is, you know, like the. What do they call it? The Valley of Death, or I don’t know if that’s really correctly applied here, but the commercial realities of actually getting to that You know, to that better design is so any new emerging technology and something as expensive to develop as an offshore wind turbine really faces a big handicap compared to an existing company that’s already ironed out all of the kinks in their design and just has to, you know, have the few little changes to.
You know, to figure out with floating offshore, whereas this design and all the others that are like it, like the wind catching and the C12 and I don’t know, airborne wind. There’s nothing wrong with any of those concepts and maybe, you know, if wind energy didn’t exist yet at all, that is the direction we’d be going, but they don’t just have to figure out the little quirks of floating offshore.
They have to figure out all of the quirks of just wind in general. So. It is hard to imagine any of them succeeding. As an engineer, I, you know, I love new technology and I don’t, I, you know, I want to see new technologies emerge because that’s, that’s interesting. It’s kind of boring to just, you know, Oh, we figured this out in 1990 and now we’re not going to do anything different.
Joel Saxum: The guy who was pushing this whole thing is originally developed, developed the concept in the 1970s. And now he is focusing on a full time. So that means that the guy who’s pushing this thing that was the inventor is now at least 75 years old. Nothing against old guys. I like old guys. But they might run out of, they might run out of steam sooner than you think as well.
Allen Hall: Thumbed through the new PES Wind Magazine and came across an article from a company called System Seals, and they’re based in Cleveland, Ohio. And they have developed a new kind of seal for main bearings on wind turbines, which is kind of cool, but it’s like a, It’s a, it’s a, it’s got, it’s kind of like a screw to it.
So it’s like a typical seal, but it’s got this, this winding in it sort of, so that the, the fluid gets pushed back into the, to the gearbox into the bearings. So it keeps everything on the outside dry and all the things inside lubricated like it’s supposed to. And it’s a pretty unique thing. So it’s sort of like pumps the fluid or the grease back into the container.
And it has, I guess it’s been used on like 10, 000 turbines at this point. And I, when we were down in Texas at a wind farm. Last week, one of the things you notice when you’re driving through West Texas is there’s oil and grease and stuff on the towers. It’s pretty prevalent in some cases, you think, man, the seals have gone bad.
And I just think, man, the seals are such a big problem, right? It’s such a complicated design and this. System seal Vortex seal makes a lot of sense to me. I’m surprised it’s not being used in more places, actually.
Joel Saxum: Even when you hold a seal of any type, right? Whether it’s a piston seal or a flange seal, face seal, in your hand, that’s like, you know, some, you know, it could be on a skid steer or something, any kind of little industrial equipment, that’s those, even those little seals leak pretty easily.
Now imagine making that seal have to be meters across. If you’re on your main bearing seal and like have not could not have no imperfections cannot have anything any little issues So that’s tough, right? I mean anybody that spent any time in the wind industry has driven through a wind farm that has Grease, oil, anything leaking down out of the tower, you know, from yaw motors, or from the main bearing itself, or from some kind of rotating equipment inside of that machine.
And now that is it’s a, it’s a pain, right? Especially in Texas, all the dust collects on it. It looks bad, but also when you see that, you know that that machine is, is having lubrication problems. Or at some point in time did, right? The last thing you want to do is run them dry. So a, an engineering design that…
Combats some of these issues because it basically creates a almost a analog pump that pumps the fluid backwards in instead of having it rest against the seal, right? So it’s not, they’re not a pump to actually maintain per se, but the design of it lends itself to being a helical pump, taking advantage of the centrifugal motion of the, of the bearing.
So that’s great. The, one of the biggest problems that we have in the wind industry for looking at all these leaks is the simple fact that these things are so big, so remote. And it’s tough to work on, right? So they’re, they’re running up there. The ideally, you know, everybody wants 100 percent uptime.
Well, you know, we know that that number is closer to 40, 35%. So either way, these things, these turbines are out there running 120, 100, 120, 150 days out of the year. And there’s not someone under dedicated to each one to make sure that you see every little thing going on. So a bit of a innovation here from system seals with the, the vortex plus seals is going to be welcome in the industry for sure, especially when you get to these repower projects, as we keep talking that the repower is the time to swap these things out.
Everybody’s doing main bearings when you’re doing repowers.
Allen Hall: Yeah. How does that work? Right. I, does it have to be part of the OEM equipment when you do a repower like that, is that. Or can they upgrade out in the field?
Joel Saxum: Yeah, you can upgrade in the field, but it all depends on how you do your, your repower and who’s doing your repower for you.
Right? So sometimes there is OEM repower programs. You can, if you’ve got GE turbines, you can call GE and say, we want to repower. And they’ll say, okay, one, you know, we’ll take your 1. 5, make it a 1. 6. We’ll put these blades and we’ll put these mean bearings. This will upgrade control systems, yada, yada, yada.
And you can pay for it. Or, you can design your own. If you’re an asset owner, you say, like, well, I want, you know, this Bachmann over here, and I want these main bearings, and I like these blades, and I want to change, you can do all that on your own as well. So you know, the majority of times, when you’re in the field, you’re trying to do things quickly, so.
You’ll drop the whole rotor and then you may swap the main bearing out. And at that point in time, boom, when you put the new main bearing in, change it out in the field, put that new seal in, bang, put it up.
Allen Hall: I’d be shocked if a lot of operators are not doing that on a repower. Because they’ve had so many, especially in the sort of the two megawatt and under turbines, they’ve had so many seals leak.
They’re going to want to upgrade. And you think that system seals could walk right in there and make a pretty easy sale because the proof is in the pudding, right? It’s pretty easy to find them.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, I can’t validate this for sure, but in my mind I’m thinking right now, SystemSeals is a company from Ohio, right?
You’re gonna do a repower, you wanna use American products, qualify for ITC, 30 percent tax break.
Allen Hall: EDPR operates the Top Crop Wind Farm in Northern Illinois. The site consists of 68… GE 1. 5 megawatt SLE machines at top crop one and 132 GE 1. 5 megawatt SLE machines at top crop two. The capital investment on this wind, on these wind farms is crazy.
It’s almost 700 million with over the lifetime of the project, about 33, 34 million being paid to landowners. And about 30 million going to the local governments. They created 20 permanent jobs at the site and about 250 construction jobs. And it is again, one of these massive farms that nobody hears about.
And it’s doing a lot of great things for the local community. And because it has a cool name, the top crop wind farm in Illinois is our wind farm of the week. That’s going to do it for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy podcast. Thanks for listening and please give us a five star rating on your podcast platform and subscribe and then share notes below to our lovely newsletter, Uptime Tech News.
And check out Rosemary’s YouTube channel, Engineering with Rosie, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.
Wind Industry Growing Pains: Recycling, Construction, and Seals
Big News for Australian Households!
The Albanese Government has just unveiled a landmark commitment that could make it significantly easier and cheaper for families to install home solar batteries.
If re-elected, the government plans to roll out the National Battery Booster Program, which will offer a generous rebate per kilowatt-hour (kWh) on the cost of eligible home battery systems.
This announcement is a significant leap forward in Australia’s clean energy journey, and it has the potential to benefit millions of homes already using solar – and even more who are considering the switch.
What is the National Battery Booster Program?
The National Battery Booster Program is designed to make solar batteries more accessible to everyday Australians by reducing upfront costs through a government-funded rebate.
While the exact rebate value per kWh is yet to be finalised, the intention is clear: to make it more affordable for homeowners to store the energy they generate from their solar systems and use it when it’s most needed.
This smart move aligns with Australia’s long-term climate goals and addresses rising concerns over electricity prices and energy security.
Why a Home Battery Makes Sense Now More Than Ever
Home solar batteries are “the missing link” in Australia’s solar revolution. Over 4 million Australian homes now have solar panels – but only a small percentage have a battery to store excess power for later use.
Without a battery, much of the solar power generated during the day is sent back to the grid, often for a low feed-in tariff.
Then, in the evening when households use more power, they have to buy electricity from the grid, often at higher rates—installing a home battery bridges this gap.
Here’s what a battery lets you do:
- Store solar power generated during the day
- Use that stored energy during peak usage times (usually at night)
- Reduce reliance on the grid
- Avoid high electricity prices
- Gain energy independence
How Much Do Solar Batteries Cost?
The cost of home battery systems in Australia varies, depending on the size and brand. On average:
- A small battery (around 5 kWh) can cost between $4,000 and $8,000
- Larger systems (10 kWh and above) can go up to $15,000 or more
- Most batteries come with a 10-year warranty, making them a reliable long-term investment
With the incoming rebate under the Battery Booster Program, these prices could drop significantly, putting energy storage within reach for many more Australian families.
Government Regulations and Safety Standards
Not all batteries are created equal, and not all installers are certified to work with them. That’s why this program comes with strict safety and quality guidelines:
- Only batteries that have been assessed and approved by the Clean Energy Regulator will be eligible
- Installations must be completed by licensed electricians who have undergone certified battery installation training
- This ensures that households are not only getting cost-effective energy storage but also safe and high-performing systems.
What This Means for You
If you’ve been considering upgrading your solar setup or adding a battery to your home, this is the perfect time to act.
Whether you already have solar panels or are starting fresh, the National Battery Booster Program could help you:
- Significantly reduce your energy bills
- Increase the value and sustainability of your home
- Take control of your energy use
- Protect yourself from future price hikes
How Can Cyanergy Help?
At Cyanergy, we’ve helped thousands of Australians switch to smarter, more sustainable energy systems. We offer a range of high-quality solar batteries tailored to different household sizes and budgets.
Our team of experienced energy consultants and CEC-accredited installers are here to help you:
- Choose the right battery for your home
- Navigate the rebate process when the program launches
- Ensure proper and safe installation
- Maximise your long-term energy savings
Every home is different, and the best system for you depends on your energy usage, solar capacity, and long-term goals. We consider all that and provide expert recommendations every step of the way.
Next Steps
The Battery Booster Program is set to roll out if the Albanese Government gets re-elected, so it’s wise to start preparing now.
- Want to know what kind of battery system fits your home?
- Need help understanding potential savings?
- Curious about how to qualify for the rebate?
We’ve got you covered.
Contact us for a free consultation.
Visit us at: www.cyanergy.com.au
Learn more about the program: Smart Energy Council: Battery Booster Program.
Things to Consider
All home batteries must be approved by the Clean Energy Regulator and listed on the Approved Products List.
Installation must be carried out by licensed electricians certified to work with batteries.
Talk to the Experts
Every home is different – and so is every battery solution. That’s where we come in. At Cyanergy, our energy experts can help you find the best battery system for your needs and ensure you maximise this new rebate opportunity.
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The post A New Battery Rebate Coming to Australian Households! appeared first on Cyanergy.
Weather Guard Lightning Tech
Vattenfall 1.6 GW Farm, AI Learns to “Cheat”
Allen and Joel discuss Nylacast’s article in PES Wind Magazine about corrosion solutions in offshore wind and Vattenfall’s major investment in Germany’s largest offshore wind farm. They also talk about MIT’s strategic alliance with GE Vernova and the ethical concerns around AI in engineering.
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!
Speaker: [00:00:00] You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now here’s your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes.
Allen Hall: If you checked your mailbox or checked online, the new PES Wind magazine is out and it is full of great content this quarter.
There’s a very interesting article because we’ve been talking a lot about offshore wind and some of the problems with offshore wind as one of them is corrosion. Just betw between us engineers, it comes up quite a bit. Like, why are we making things outta steel that you don’t need to make outta steel, why you’re not making them out of plastic?
And that’s what, uh, the people at, uh, Nylacast engineer products are doing, um, on some hang off clamps, Joel, uh, which are traditionally really cheap clamps that are made outta steel and rust like [00:01:00] crazy.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. You know, from my oil and gas offshore background, that was one of the things that was always a pain in the butt.
IIRM contracts, as they call ’em, offshore inspection, repair, and maintenance. There’s so much focus on coatings, paint coatings, paint coatings, and it’s a special coating, and it’s this, and you can only apply it during this, and everything has to be painted. And if you can’t allow rust to start anywhere on an offshore facility, it’s in a high corrosion environment, right?
You have salt water, salt spray temperatures, it’s always kind of wet. It’s a marine environment. And so erosion moves very fast, right? So in the, in the oil and gas world, they started creating some things out of like HDPE, which is high density, polyethylene, plastic. Um, it’s even so dense. You can mill it.
It’s really cool stuff. But that’s what, um, the PO the kind of Nylacast engineered products is working with some of these plastic products to replace some of those components in offshore wind turbines that are a pain in the butt to maintain. So when we talk about these hang off clamps. [00:02:00] They grab the cables and other things and they, and they hold them in place in the turbine as need be.
If those are made outta steel and have a coating on ’em, and you get a little bit of vibration and that coating starts to wear away or starts to get a little bit of rust, you’ve got a huge problem. You’ve gotta take the cables out, you gotta take the things off, you’ve gotta replace ’em. You gotta either replace them or you gotta grind on ’em and repaint them.
It is a nightmare. So they’re, what they’re doing with these, um, uh, hang off clamps that are, you know, basically plastic instead of metallic. Or a plastic type instead of metallic is there, they’re removing that need for IRM contracts in the future.
Allen Hall: I think it’s great. It makes a ton of sense. And I’m surprised you haven’t seen more of this because, uh, nylon and and derivatives in nylon are easily recyclable.
It does fit all the things that wind energy is looking for. It doesn’t. Rust recyclable, easy, lightweight, simple. We need to be moving this direction. So if you haven’t checked out PES Wind, you go to PS wind.com and download a [00:03:00] copy. Or if you are at Wind Europe when this episode comes out, it’ll be during the Wind Europe event.
Uh, there’ll be plenty of PES wind hard copies available just. Stop by and grab one. It’s well worth reading a lot of great material this quarter, so check out PESWind.com. Well, Swedish Power Utility Vattenfall has made final investment decisions for two wind farm projects in the German North Sea. The Nordic one project is set to become Germany’s largest offshore wind farm, which marks a significant expansion in Germany’s renewable energy capacity.
Now Vattenfall has approved construction of Nor Lake one and two wind farms. And they’ve also bought back Joel, uh, 49% stake that BASF had. And the, the total capacity of the projects is 1.6 gigawatts. That’s a lot of power with construction. It’s set to begin in 2026 and full operation is expected by 2028.
[00:04:00] And this is gonna power about 1.6 million German households. This is a huge project.
Joel Saxum: I think it’s really cool to hear this about the offshore wind sector, right? So, so much, whether it’s in the US or elsewhere, not a lot of good news, right? We had the Danish, uh, auction news. It didn’t really go anywhere for a little while.
There was a German, uh, auction that was, you know, had a really low subscription rate. So the fact that, uh, Vattenfall is charging forward, and, and this is a key thing too. And we’ll talk, you know, Phil’s usually here to talk about this, but final investment decision is a big milestone, right? There’s all this, you can, these offshore wind projects are being worked on for 6, 8, 10 years before you get to this stage, you know, you’re, you’re looking out, um, doing sub seed mapping and site characterization and all the permitting, and getting all the PPA stuff in place and signing these contracts and all these different things.
And then you finally get to final investment decision and once that is debt box [00:05:00] is checked, then you’re moving. Right. So final investment decision right now, Alan, and it looks like 2026 is gonna be the start of construction. What do you think they’re looking for right now? Are they signing contracts for vessels?
Is that, is that next on the list? It
Allen Hall: has to be right because they signed an agreement with Vestas for 68 turbines. Now this is really fascinating because it’s the V 2 36 15 megawatt turbine, 68 of them. Now, the big discussion about offshore is been, is 15 megawatts enough and should we be pushing to 20 or higher than 20, which is where Siemens GAA appears to be going.
But uh, that and fall sticking with a 15 megawatt turbine. I do think makes a lot of sense because it is less risky and risk is a huge concern at the moment. But Vest has also got a comprehensive long-term service agreement, which has been their, uh, mode of operating for a number of years now, and which [00:06:00] you hear a lot of operators offshore talk about not wanting a long-term agreement, but it seems like Europe is still sticking with it and Augustus is obviously.
Pushing it, uh, at the moment, but 15 megawatts long-term service agreement. Does
this
Joel Saxum: make sense,
Allen Hall: Joel?
Joel Saxum: I think so. And one of the reasons for Vestas as well is we know, ’cause we have someone in our network that used to be operations for Vestas, uh, for the offshore stuff, is they, they’re very well versed in it and they have the facilities and the Keyside facilities ready to go.
So Vesta is, uh, it’s not like, oh, we have these, you know, this gigawatt of order. Fantastic. We got the service contract. Fantastic. Now we need to do all this prep and this build out and figure out how this operation works. That’s not the case. Vestas is ready to rock. They’ve got their own keyside facilities, they have the teams in place, they can make this thing happen and that 15 megawatt turbine, I think it’s interesting that you say this too because you know the other one, um, from the Western OEMs that we’ve been following is that Big Dog 21 megawatt, I think from Siemens Mesa.
[00:07:00] That’s, but that is currently being tested. So to take final investment decision, you have to engage your insurance companies and your banks. If they’re not gonna sign a contract for a turbine that’s still under testing at this stage. Right? This is a, you’re talking a gigawatt of, of turbines at, you know, that’s a billion dollars, that’s a billion US dollars minimum in just tur a turbine order.
Right? So, so just in those turbines, that’s what that thing looks like. And, and if I’m fat and fall, uh uh. And fall. Of course, they’re, they’re developing a lot of on onshore power. They’re a part of some other offshore wind farms. But this is a big, big undertaking and I think you want, when you’re, you know, you’re taking, looking at final investment decisions.
You’re in these conversations with the banks and the insurance and the people that want to de-risk the investment. I think that’s where the, the Vestus thing steps in. I think that’s where it looks good, is de-risking the operation.
Allen Hall: Does esa. [00:08:00] Have a problem now that Vestus seems to be scoring with a 15 megawatt turbine.
It does. The Siemen SC MEA effort get, or the pathway get more difficult because like you said, they’re gonna have to have somebody buy a number of these turbines and it’s gonna have to demonstrate a decent service life for a year or two before you start to see a lot of people jump in and start to purchase those turbines.
In the meantime, Vestus is gonna be. Just building 15 megawatt turbines, one after the other. Does that start to weigh on Siemens cesa in terms of what they want to offer?
Joel Saxum: I don’t think so. Um, and the reason being is, is that 2021 megawatt machine that they’re testing right now is they’re trying to future proof their organization, right?
They’re trying to make sure that for the next push, they’re ready to go. So what’s gonna happen there, in my mind, is when the industry’s ready to make that next step forward, Vestas won’t have an offering. So Siemens will, right? So they’re gonna step into that hole, right? And so right now we [00:09:00] know, uh, Siemens cesa, while they had some troubles with the four and five megawatt onshore platform during that period, their offshore platforms are completely built different.
So the Siemens cesa offshore platforms, they didn’t really slow down in sales. They kept chugging along, right? Like I think, uh, there’s, you know, um, revolution in the States as the Siemens GAA turbine platform. Um, so I don’t, I don’t think it’s gonna hurt them right now. Or, I mean, let, let’s take this one, like you said in the future, I don’t think it’s gonna hurt them right now.
It kind of, it’s kind of painful to be probably on that team, in sales team and watching these, these things roll out and, oh, Vestas is doing this, Vestas is doing that. Um, but I think that, uh, they’ll be okay. It’ll be okay for them in the future. That’s just my take on it.
Allen Hall: That’s a good thought. Well, another thing happened in regards to the Nor Lake Offshore Wind Farm, Helena Bistro.
Who was Vattenfall wind business leader as announced her resignation and is gonna be stepping down from her position. This is kind of big, right? [00:10:00] She’s been there a long time. She’s been the head of that business area for quite a while. Bistro cited a desire to prioritize other things in life after 42 years of operational work.
Okay, so. When I first read this news story, it was kind of popped up in a number of places. Like, oh, there’s been big changes at Vattenfall. And then you read, well, she’s been doing this for 42 years. That’s a long time. And she just made, or just locked in, really, I. The largest offshore wind farm in Germany.
That is something to go out at at the top right. If you’re gonna go out, go out at the top.
Joel Saxum: I think she just did that. Win the Super Bowl and then retire. Just be done. Right? Like, like I, I’m with it. Like, yeah. I think that that happens sometimes in, you know, whether it’s wind, aerospace, the industries, you know, we’re always looking at all kinds of different industries, but when you see these big changes, if it’s a change of someone that they have an organization when they’re like 50.
I know this being ageist, right? But you’re like, Ooh, what’s going on over there? But sometimes [00:11:00] someone’s just retiring, right? Like sometimes it’s like, Hey, am I’m done here? You know? So not all changes in organizations mean good or bad news or, or whatever they may need. Sometimes it’s just, Hey man, I’m done here.
I’m, I’m riding off into the sunset. And you know what, uh, uh, he Helena Bi Bistro here. Or bistro doing this right after signing that thing FID on this big thing. You know what? Boom, springtime is here. I’m gonna enjoy not only my European summers that I usually do, but European summers for a long time now.
Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s a total win. I just didn’t understand the news reports, thought they were totally off on this, and congratulations to Helena because, uh, job well done
Joel Saxum: as busy wind energy professionals staying informed is crucial. I. And let’s face it difficult. That’s why the Uptime podcast recommends PES Wind Magazine.
PES Wind offers a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you’re an [00:12:00] industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit ps Wind.com today.
Allen Hall: Well GE renova and. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology have formed a new strategic alliance aimed at advancing energy technologies and developing industry leaders.
The partnership will focus on accelerating innovation in electrification, decarbonization, and renewables. Now, GE Renova is committing $50 million over five years to this partnership, and it’ll fund research initiatives, student fellowships and internships. That, uh, researchers obviously, and a lot of that’s on electrification, right?
That’s where Chii Renova is focused on. It also, uh, fund about 12 research projects annually, and three master’s students per year will conduct policy research resulting in published white papers. And it looks like they’re gonna have a symposium together at MIT, kind of a joint symposium. [00:13:00] Now, when I first read this, Joel, I thought, wow, this is kind of innovative.
GE Renova just recently moved to Cambridge, which is right next door to MIT and to Harvard. And I know that one of the things about GE moving, uh, Renova moving to that area was that they wanted to build a relationship with universities and try to grab some talent out of there. That makes sense to me.
The odd part about this is MIT doesn’t need the money and MIT. Should be creating students or graduates that are really focused on renewable energy already, and you should see a lot of impact from those students. I think the issue for me is I really haven’t seen as much as I would like to have seen and if, uh, MIT engineers are smart and obviously they are.
Where’s the impact? Uh, and I, I did, I used AI to go look right. I mean, let’s use something that simplifies the process a little bit. And AI is really [00:14:00] looking at MIT and saying they’ve done some work on ya optimization, like on offshore wind farms. So pointing the turbines in slightly different directions to increase power output.
There’s other companies that have been doing that for years that that research is not innovative.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, that’s commercialized.
Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s, it’s commercialized. There’s a lot of companies that offer it, have been offering it for quite a while. So what’s new? I, I don’t know which. You know, GE Renovo can do whatever they want with $50 million.
It does seem like the American universities may not be that place.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, I just, just, just a crackdown of the dollars. Right. $50 million over five years, funding 12 research projects, and that about basically equates to a million dollars per research project with some master’s students funded, thrown in there.
That’s great. I love to see that, but I’m a hundred percent with you. You know, if you, if you watch, I like to watch the innovation space. So I watch these, um, VC companies and I kind of [00:15:00] look at their, their posts and what they’re talking about and stuff. And you see regularly that on the commercial capital side, Europe is way behind the states on innovation funding.
Flip that thing into universities. They’re, they are doing so much more with the, with the dollar per output at their universities. That’s actionable. That actually works for industry than we are. Right. We talk about this all the time in private, but you have the DTUs and, and such over there. DTU puts out just gads of research.
I’ve been a part of some of the research programs when I was, you know, working for a Danish company and the, and it’s like. Research on leading edge erosion and how can we solve that today? Research on this weather pattern and how we can solve this today. What’s that? Doing research on structural loads for turbines and what does that mean and how can we share this with the industry Blade designers and these kind of things are regularly happening in Europe.
At that university, the same level [00:16:00] of the MIT type thing. But in reverse in the US you don’t see whether it’s funded research at universities or it’s funded research from the government. At Government labs, you don’t see that many things coming out that are actionable today, right? You see some reports about things that are kind of neat and maybe future, future wins involvement, and we need to look at the future stuff too.
I get that, but when I see $50 million going to a university, I, I’m thinking, man. If you gave me just a portion of that, I got, we got all kinds of ideas that we can, we can look at that could solve things tomorrow in the industry. And I think that’s what, where we’re at, the, the, the wind industry. I love it.
But, um, we have some black eyes. We have some things we need to solve, some, some ongoing issues that, uh, that are painful. And I think that, uh, throwing money at MIT is not the right way to solve them. That’s just me.
Allen Hall: I was just looking to see what MIT’s endowment is, and it is about $25 [00:17:00] billion right now, so $50 million is a drop in a bucket, which goes back to back to my first point that MIT should be doing this already.
They have plenty of research funds. They have plenty of smart people. If they care about the planet and are trying to be out in front of renewable energy, they would be doing the work already. I know that, and I think the response back is gonna be, well, they’ve been working on solar cells and Sure,
Joel Saxum: okay, that’s fine.
What about spreading the love? Right? What about take 50 million? What? Why not give MIT 10 million? Give Texas Tech 10 million. They have a win program. Give Georgia Tech to 5 million. They got some stuff. They’re doing some stuff in Wind. University of Wyoming’s doing some stuff in wind. North Texas is doing some stuff in wind.
Why not spread that around to the universities that are already working in wind or start a center of excellence at a university where we could get more wind people
Allen Hall: involved. Well, I just hate feeding the bureaucracy more than anything else because it does seem like when there are grants going into colleges and universities.[00:18:00]
When I watch them and see how they behave, and we’ve been sort of peripherally attached to some of this and watched it happen and decided to step out because the bureaucracy is taking so much of the funds that there is very little left to do real research and whatever research there is produced kind of goes into a black hole because it’s not applicable.
That’s a frustrating point. It can’t do that anymore. The bureaucracy can’t take 30, 40, 50, 60% of it and leave a little bit for actually doing something useful. It needs to flip, but that’s not what happens right now and that’s what worries me the most. It’s, you know, I don’t wanna get into details about some of the things we’ve been affiliated with for a brief, brief amount of time, but I do think that if they’re going to anybody.
Is going to give to a university to think hard about that and really figure out where your money is going. If it’s going to feed a a bunch of [00:19:00] paper pushers, maybe find another way to use those funds to push your products or your ideas forward. Output per dollar. Real output per dollar. Yeah, it’s gotta have.
Something come out of it that’s, if it’s public use, great. Publish it. And that’s the other thing too. I’m getting on my high horse here, but when they publish some of these things, they’re always buried in journals that cost a ton of money to, to even review the research, which I feel like to American taxpayer has probably paid for.
It’s much easier to get the research out of a European college or university than it is an American one. Strangely enough,
Joel Saxum: I saw a, a joke the other day online, and it was like, it was a, it was a research paper about, uh, the general public getting access to research, but it was behind a paywall. It’s bad,
Allen Hall: Joel.
It is really bad. I mean, you could easily pay well on some papers. Some of the lower cost ones are gonna be in a 20, $30 range. [00:20:00] It’s easy to get into the hundreds of dollars for a single research paper. And I kind of get it, except if it’s funded by the federal government. Those things should be just published.
You know, there’s a thing called Google. You can create a website, you can publish it. Google Scholars is a thing. You can publish it there. There’s a lot of ways to do this, which are free, but in ResearchGate is another one. There’s a lot of ways to do it that are free, but in order to get it to count, and a lot of the people that are doing the research are trying to get their PhDs.
In order for that to count, it has to be in, in a. Periodical, it’s gotta be reviewed by some people before. It can be blessed to be public knowledge at some level. It’s creates sort of the, a money changing or it creates a system that, uh, encourages. The selling of access. Let’s put it to you that way. Which [00:21:00] is unfortunate.
It doesn’t need to be that way. It didn’t used to be that way, but it is now.
Joel Saxum: And I think, I think there’s one thing too, to like monetizing or, or the capital markets monetizing ip, that’s one thing. But when it’s demo de, when we’re talking about de, we’re talking about democratizing research, not. Industry trade secrets or something of that sort.
Allen Hall: When I read about NRA projects, uh, like, oh, nras done this thing and I try to go find that paper and it’s in some publication that I have to go pay for, that just burns me.
Joel Saxum: It really burns me.
Allen Hall: Didn’t
Joel Saxum: I already pay for this in my tax bill?
Allen Hall: Yeah, pretty sure that I did, but now I gotta pay some random, uh, paper producing organization, uh, 30, 40, 50 bucks to get access to this paper, which.
Joel, you’re right. I have already paid for. There’s something not right with that system. Don’t let blade damage catch you off guard OGs. Ping sensors detect issues before they become expensive, time consuming problems from ice [00:22:00] buildup and lightning strikes to pitch misalignment and internal blade cracks.
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. Well, we’re almost reaching Terminator stage, Joel, with this open AI thing because there is concern about the AI models finding ways to cheat and to hide their reasoning, and it’s called reward hacking.
And OpenAI is saying, as AI becomes more sophisticated, uh, monitoring, controlling the system. The thing that they’re producing becomes increasingly challenging because it wants to find loopholes. Now my only question is you created this thing, I guess it’s got a mind of its own now, but it doesn’t. It’s a large.
Language model. It doesn’t have, uh, a [00:23:00] conscience, I wouldn’t say was, but, uh, or it doesn’t have a soul. Probably that’s another way to describe it. Uh, but it’s finding ways to cheat the system. ’cause it’s getting rewarded somehow. And my question is, well, one. What is rewarding? It mean? Like how does an AI system get happy?
Uh, what’s a dopamine hit here for some electrons? I don’t know. And second of all, how the heck are we gonna be able to know that it is. Telling you inaccuracies, and this is really troubling when it comes to things like software code engineering work. Like I was designing a building and I was using AI to do some calculations.
I would be really concerned about that. Is it actually doing the work that I think it’s doing, or is it just spitting out something to get you off? Because it’s, it’s, you’re using too many resources, right? It’d rather throw you ads about Amazon products than to tell you how to build
Joel Saxum: a building. I’m not an AI [00:24:00] expert, um, but I had a really good conversation last week.
So we did that, uh, we did that awesome webinar with Sky Specs, and when we were talking with them, we were talking with Dave Roberts, who’s the new CEO over there. And he brought up a term that I didn’t know and he said, agen ai, because of the last few years, it was like, you know, algorithmic things and generative ai, so gen ai and that was kinda the hot button thing.
Now, agen ai, that was a new concept for me. So I actually reached out to someone in my network, it’s uh, that is an AI actual expert. And I said, tell me what this syngen AI means. The difference with Agentic AI is, it’s like, it’s some, it’s an agent, right? It’ll do something for you. And so you can run it like, like generative ai, but it’s like the next level of generative ai.
But you can add that into any model and give it goals. Like if you’ve ever fi used the, um, Excel, there’s the find zero function. I love that one. It it for, for building business models and stuff, find zero is, is [00:25:00] fantastic. But it’s kind of like find zero on steroids, right? So you could tell it, I need you to do all of these calculations, but I also want you to, to do them to this goal.
Get me to this end goal. So like in Egen AI and win, you may say, run an AI algorithm based on this, this, this, this, and this. But the end goal is to get as many megawatt hours outta this wind farm as possible. This is, this is me talking in generalities, right? But that’s the thing, right? So now when you talk about.
What AI looks like for data centers, dollars spent on computing, dollars spent on cooling, dollars spent on power, which those ai, those large AI models, are gonna wanna run as efficiently as possible. So if you start to do some agentic AI things in there and say, do all of this, but exactly like you said, lower the cost of computing a little bit or whatever, then you’re gonna start to get this thing where it’s gonna start to, to kind of maybe cheat your answers a little bit to get to a more efficient.
[00:26:00] Compute state. I don’t know. Like I said, I’m not an AI expert,
Allen Hall: but it does make you think though, right? Joel? The way I think about it is when I ask perplexity or chat, GPT, one of these things, like, Hey, we just got a house and it has an induction cooktop. Okay. Which happened this morning, by the way, and it would not work with our pots and pans.
So I’m standing there like. Huh, this is not getting hot. And I can feel the stove pulse, like trying to see what I have stuck on top of it. And clearly I’ve made some human error. I thought, okay, I’ll go look that up to see what’s wrong. And, and, and perplexity said, Hey, you idiot. You can’t use aluminum cookware on these induction ranges.
Like, okay, I’ll take that for the, the loss. Human, human zero AI one. There you go. Now think in a bigger scope, like you were just saying, if I’m out [00:27:00] there trying to optimize a wind farm or to optimize a drive, train, or optimize anything that’s really complicated in engineering world. It doesn’t like to do that.
In fact, I went after, what’s the Google one? Um, Gemini, right. I tried to have Gemini do something that was fairly deep and it did process it. It wanted to process it and it wanted to sp out. Um, this significant amount of information, none of it really useful because I was looking for a specific, uh, research area within Lightning.
It’s esoteric to this discussion, but I was asking it to go find me this research in the world. And show me where these papers are that would talk about this one particular topic. And it just cranked and cranked and cranked and cranked. And I thought, you know what? It can’t be happy doing this. It’s going to want to dump me, which is [00:28:00] essentially what it did.
It just said, this is an interesting topic. Move along.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, you got you. You cost too much for this free service. Go away.
Allen Hall: Right? But it did it in a very, uh, unique way. It said a bunch of flowery things. This is this interesting subject. There’s been a lot of research. All these great things have happened, and then that was it.
And I, I think because of the amount of compute time it takes to do so many things, particularly complicated, engineering, technical work, even software, I think would be a problem. Will it always produce results? And I’ve tried some of the software pieces, like write me some code in C to do X or C plus plus to do this thing or in a Python to do this thing.
And it has been sketchy at best. It’s like 80% of the way there, but it doesn’t really work. And it, and you tell it, Hey, it has this problem. And then it goes, yeah, I have this problem. Let me retry it. Recode this again. You’re like, well you should have got it right the [00:29:00] first time kind of problem, right?
That’s recycling and re reasoning and rethinking that through has got to be eating up so much compute time and that there must be an incentive that they’re building in to get around that.
Joel Saxum: Here’s where we are though, so technically, okay, so I know Gemini Chat, GPT, Claude, all these, these things. I use Grok quite often.
Grok is cool because if it’s, if it’s chugging, there’s a little button on it. If you’re using it on your lap, on a desktop or laptop, whatever, on a browser. There’s a little button that says, see how I’m thinking? If it’s chugging away, and you could click on it and it will run you through like the processes that it’s doing to try to find your information, which is pretty cool.
But either way, at the end of the day, all of these things that we are using to kind of optimize our daily workflow, right? They’re not enterprise level. Right. So the one that scares me is if, if when we’re talking about this and go like. Well, what about the, the units that are using, like, I’m sure there’s something in, um, you know, fusion 3D that can [00:30:00] run AI algorithms on, on, I, I’m not saying, I’m sure, I know there is in engineering software to optimize the design.
I don’t want that design taking shortcuts, but, uh, but to, to make, to make the, uh, the, to general public feel safer about this concept, that AI expert I was talking to. He said this is the biggest difference that the public doesn’t see is that enterprise AI is a different story. Enterprise AI is, that’s what’s driving your, you know, the big data centers and stuff.
It’s enterprise ai, it’s not chat GPT and stuff like that’s, that’s not huge load on them compared to what some of these other things are. So when you get to that level where you’re integrating some kind of enterprise. AI for writing code, doing engineering work, these kind of things. It’s a different story.
We’re talking, you know, us playing football in the backyard to the NFL.
Allen Hall: I do think all the AI that’s being used to process, uh, video clips and make the people into Muppets is [00:31:00] time well spent. I’d tell you what, that’s scary. It’s insane. I think about how much compute are we doing to make this little video, 32nd video person talking into a Muppet.
Why are we
Joel Saxum: spending compute time on that? I saw one the other day that someone had sent me that was a, uh, an AI generated video of someone jumping off of a wind turbine and then turning into an eagle and like flying away and it looked freaking real. Like, I was like, man, is it CGI like who made this video?
I was like, no, this is literally like a prompt in a generative AI thing for a video. I was like, this is crazy.
Allen Hall: But again, it goes back like, why do we need that when we. We’re having some real
Joel Saxum: engineering or economic problems. The wind farmer this week, this week is the Strauss Wind Farm, which is over by Phil’s house.
Phil’s not here with us this week, but this one is right up the coast from Santa Barbara. It’s in Lompoc, California. This is the first wind farm on the coastline [00:32:00] of California. And because of this, uh, of course we wanted to make sure they did everything right. This is a bay wall wind farm. Uh, so part of the wind farm is it’s absolutely beautiful.
If you get a chance, go on the Bewa website and look at the video. Uh, but there’s an, there’s extreme protections for local, environmental and cultural resources, uh, associated with this wind farm. I’m gonna walk through, uh, one kind of example of it, but these are also some interesting turbines. It’s 27 ge, 3.8, 1 37 meter rotor turbines.
It’s 102.6 megawatts total. But an interesting thing, so we just talked about a bunch of things about ai. They’re actually going to use the ly ai system on this wind farm to see different kind of birds and raptors in the area. Uh, and because they were, are taking high considerations for wildlife, they’re doing feasibility studies about painting wind turbine blades, which we’ve heard about up in Wyoming and from Sweden.
I think it was. Um, they’re also doing excessive [00:33:00] monitoring for golden eagles. Uh, they’re doing a bunch of walk down studies, um, and then there is a, they’re also proposing something that I’ve never heard of. Um, it’s called Bird Guard Super Pro Amp, which is an auditory transmission thing gonna be installed around some of the turbines that basically when they sense a bird in the area, we’ll emit very loud auditory tones to push the birds or raptors, um, out of the area.
So. They’ve gone really deep into this thing for, uh, environmental protections, uh, and, uh, applaud that for bewa to make sure that they’re, uh. Being good stewards of the land. So the Strauss Wind Farm there in lopa, California, you are the Wind Farm of the week.
Allen Hall: That’s gonna do it for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy podcast.
Thanks for listening, and please give us a five star rating on your podcast platform and subscribing the Sun notes below to Uptime Tech News, our Substack newsletter. If you see an American wandering around Wind Europe loss, that will be me. So just come by and say hi, [00:34:00] and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.
https://weatherguardwind.com/vattenfall-ai-learns-cheat/
Renewable Energy
Ten months after it was issued, the latest federal rule on transmission is mostly theoretical
At a March 25 meeting convened by the Southeastern Regional Transmission Planning organization (SERTP), a large group of people met—as they do four times a year—to discuss the region’s power needs and whether the grid needs to be expanded to accommodate them.
As the meeting began, SERTP issued an increasingly common directive to those of us in attendance: We will not be discussing Order 1920, so don’t bother asking.
Some background on what this means may be important.
While most grid planning in the southeast is done by utilities within their own footprints, SERTP was created in response to a 2010 order from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) aimed at increasing the number of high-voltage power lines going across state boundaries and between utilities. These transmission lines are like highways for electricity: they may not be organically built by local communities, but they are essential to moving things at high volume.
A slow start
SERTP has never built or even planned a regional transmission line in more than a decade of its existence. Last year, FERC issued another rule, Order 1920, to address this ongoing failure of regional transmission.
SACE has previously broken down the details of Order 1920. The order requires utilities to start planning over a longer time horizon (20 years) and consider a number of potential benefits of new power lines that are left out of current analyses. (These include mitigation of extreme weather events, reduced energy loss on the lines, and a number of other virtues of having more space for power on the grid.)
As SACE has previously written, utilities in the Southeast have yet to announce any plans to comply with Order 1920 and have made several procedural moves to delay the deadline for legal compliance. The most recent and significant of these is SERTP’s request—now granted by FERC—to extend the deadline by a year, to June 2026.
Holding a meeting is not the same thing as taking action
What SERTP has been doing to prepare for Order 1920, and what it will do with the additional time it now has, is something of a mystery. According to the extension request it filed with FERC, SERTP’s efforts thus far have included “extensive working group meetings” between its member utilities (Duke, Southern Company, Dominion Energy, and others) as well as “outreach to neighboring regions.”
The output of these conversations is not known to SACE or to the public. Since Order 1920 was issued, SERTP has declined to address it in any of its stakeholder meetings, except for two:
- An “educational session” on December 6th, 2024, which broke down the requirements included in Order 1920 but provided no information about what SERTP was doing to meet them.
- A “stakeholder engagement meeting” held on January 29th of this year, in which regional nonprofit groups and other stakeholders were invited to offer feedback and suggestions on what SERTP might do to improve regional transmission. SERTP members made it clear during the course of this meeting that they were there only to listen and would not be taking questions.
It is, of course, possible that the conversations held between the utilities who run SERTP have been deep and substantive. But the extension request paperwork—which is the only information available to anyone outside of the utilities themselves—indicates that a number of critical decisions have yet to be made. Among the things these utilities have not decided are:
- whether or not new software will be needed to examine the benefits of new power lines
- who might supply that software, if needed, and for what price
- what new planning procedures might be needed to meet the new federal standards
- how those new planning procedures might be integrated with current ones
If these relatively fundamental questions remained undecided after more than six months of conversations among the member utilities, it’s fair to ask what has been decided. But stakeholders have been advised not to ask, and in any case, no answers have been given.
Holding meetings is not the same thing as listening
The community of advocates has been more than willing to offer ideas for what these processes might look like. Utilities outside the southeast, particularly those in the region known as MISO, have developed planning processes that meet many of the Order 1920 standards. We know that SERTP is aware of this because we presented it to them in some detail at the stakeholder engagement meeting.
At the March 25th meeting earlier this week, I asked SERTP when, if ever, the stakeholders might hear back about the suggestions we have already shared. They offered no promise that we would get such an explicit reply and added that future stakeholder meetings may be delayed.
In fact, holding meetings is not necessarily anything
SERTP is within its legal rights to behave this way. Its meetings occur on schedule, its papers are in order, and the entity that regulates it—FERC—has given its blessings. But fifteen years after SERTP was formed to plan regional transmission, it cannot claim sole responsibility for a single new pole in the ground.
Transmission can be arcane, but it matters. A well-planned and coordinated regional grid can be the difference between a manageable monthly bill and a shocking one; between a system that crashes in extreme weather and one that keeps people from shivering at home on Christmas Eve; and most starkly, between a livable climate and a hostile one. At some point, if we want these things, another meeting is not going to do the trick. Someone’s got to pick up a shovel and start to dig.
The post Ten months after it was issued, the latest federal rule on transmission is mostly theoretical appeared first on SACE | Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
Ten months after it was issued, the latest federal rule on transmission is mostly theoretical
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