Published

2 years ago

February 14, 2024

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Wind Tech Winter Survival Guide: Safety in Freezing Temps

This week we spoke to Alex Fournier, a field operations manager who works on wind turbines in frigid temperatures, about the safety precautions and practices technicians need when doing turbine maintenance and repairs in extreme cold. Recommendations such as heated gear, taking breaks to warm up, and using procedures to mitigate risks like icefalls are only a few ways that techs could keep safe in winter temperatures. Visit https://www.fabricair.com/ice-protection-systems/

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Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. In this episode, we explore the unique hazards faced by wind turbine technicians working to keep the turbine spinning during extreme cold weather events. As renewable energy expands, more wind farms are located in remote areas with harsh winter conditions, placing technicians at risk of frostbite, hypothermia, and injury.

Joining us to discuss cold weather safety is Alex Fournier, field operations manager at Borealis Wind, which is a division of FabricAir now. Alex is based in Quebec, Canada, and has been working in the wind industry for seven years. Alex will share his insights on the precautions technicians should take when performing maintenance and repairs in cold climates.

Alex, welcome to the program.

Alex Fournier: Thank you guys for having me today.

Allen Hall: So it’s been really cold in Canada and the United States. There’s been we’re expecting a snowstorm tonight. So we’re battening down the hatches. But as the wind turbines must keep running. And I was recently down in Texas when a cold front was coming on.

Coming through there and the technicians were really concerned about it because it’s something that doesn’t happen very often They’re not really prepared for the cold weather to stay any length of time And I thought Alex does this all the time. He lives in this kind of environment That’s my day today and with Borealis, Borealis obviously creates the de icing systems for wind turbine blades And so Alex is up and down on wind turbines all the time putting systems in and keeping blades Turning, I thought this is a good opportunity to talk about wind turbine safety and cold weather conditions and some of the things that you do and your technicians you work with to keep yourself safe in this cold weather conditions.

Because I’ll have to tell you one of the coldest times I was ever in was in Montreal, very near to you, actually.

Alex Fournier: Yeah the thing with Montreal is, oh, it’s an island, so it’s a circle of water. And so it’s really humid. So when you’re in the city, you can feel the humidity go through your clothes.

It’s so yeah, you don’t go in Montreal when it’s minus 30.

Allen Hall: No, and you better bring a hat and gloves because I thought I could make about a hundred yard run to the building I was working at from my car and I got about halfway there and I thought, I’m going to have hypothermia. I am not going to make it.

Alex Fournier: Oh yeah, no, it’s not not temperature you want to play around with.

Allen Hall: Yeah. Some of the gear that’s used up in Canada, and I’ve seen some pictures of technicians up in Canada, getting ready to go work on wind turbines. I think it’s really important that we all highlight what are those things are and the safety gear you guys take.

Cause I think the other thing about Canada is the location of the wind farms can be very remote. You’re out there by yourself.

Alex Fournier: Yeah, exactly. So most of the wind farm in Quebec they’re really isolated from the road or the cities. Some other some other province and Canada, the wind farm are closer to towns, but in Quebec, it’s really isolated.

So normally when you go to the turbine, you need to be prepared, and what I’ve seen recently, so props to Milwaukee, they started doing some heated clothes. So they do heated pants, heated coat, yeah, heated toque, heated glove, heated socks, heated boots even. So I think that’s really one of the key and we see it more and more technicians starting to equip themselves with it.

And we also see company that start buying that stuff to their technician, cause they don’t want to stop the work, even though the temperatures are really cold, right?

Joel Saxum: I’ll go give it one for the the rest of our listeners that may not know it. Okay. Cause I have my better half is Canadian. I’ve spent some time in Canada as well, but a toque.

It’s actually a warm winter hat. That’s what we would call like a be a beanie. Just so when you say two, I wanna make sure everybody knows what it is, but but the Milwaukee clothes, the one thing they’ve done it’s fantastic. So they can use the little drill batteries, actually like the little 12, 12 amp or 12 volt ones, and you plug it in, has a little pocket in the side.

The other cool thing they have is, and I don’t know about all of them, but some of them, like the jackets actually have a 12 volt plugin, so you can plug it into the truck while you’re in the truck and it will heat the jacket up. And then you unplug it, run out, do your work. You can get back in, plug it back in.

It’s like wearing a warm blanket. They’re pretty awesome.

Alex Fournier: Exactly. So I will say like an essential for a technician that work in the winter will be heated clothes or at least a good coverall. Me, I always wear coverall nice winter coverall. And also if they can eat something warm, so even a soup or even crock pot, they sell like a little pot that you can eat and warm up your food that will help you go through the day.

Joel Saxum: Not, this isn’t wind turbine specific, but I spent a lot of time up on the north slope of Alaska in the wintertime, and which is, it’s Arctic, right? The big thing up there, and of course, where wind turbines are, whether they’re in Quebec or Saskatchewan or North Dakota or Frickin Sweden or wherever else it is in the Arctic temperatures, we’re in wind.

It’s going to be windy. So all of those things, you want to protect yourself, right? So one of the, one of the concepts we always drilled home to people was, okay, there’s ambient temperature and then there’s the wind chill. Yeah, the wind chill. Yeah. And so ambient temperature, which is like the regular, Hey, it’s 20 below.

That affects everything material. So whether it’s a metal, or a car door, or ice, or whatever, that affects that. However, windchill only affects things that are living, that are organic. The wind has an effect on your hand, but does not have necessarily an effect on your hammer. So you want to make sure that everything that you have exposed to the wind is covered up in these windy areas.

If you’re out in the farm fields in Alberta, and you’re working wind turbines in the wintertime, Man, that wind is going to be blowing. So sometimes you want to wear face covering, make sure no, no skin, nothing down here under your eyes or anything like that is exposed because that’s when you can get frostbite real quick.

Alex Fournier: Oh yeah. And you have no choice. You’re going to work for, let’s say 10 to 12 hours of that turbine. You want to be warm. If you’re cold, what’s going to affect the cold really going to affect you because it’s going to affect you mentally too. And it’s going to exhaust you. Your body will become exhausted because it’s trying to warm up itself.

And also it can affect you mentally, because while you’re doing the work, you just want to be done because you’re cold, so that can be an effect of, working in cold weather is that it will affect also your job performance.

Joel Saxum: Do they regularly put out okay, here’s the windchill chart.

And when the temperatures are this much, this is when you must take warm up periods to warm up. And do they have policies for all that?

Alex Fournier: Yeah, so normally, especially in Quebec, I was on a site maybe two years ago, and I got to the site and it was minus 37 Celsius. So we got to the site, we assess the situation.

We’re like, Oh, it’s really cold outside. We’re really exposed to frostbite. And even it’s not going to make your day go easy. So do you actually have a charge, a chart and it’s maybe like you do 30 minutes of work and then you do 30 minutes of warm up. But normally when temperature are that cold, you’re going to wait until it drops under the 30 to start working again.

Joel Saxum: Another thing I was thinking, I’m thinking about here. So this was something that happened to us up in Alaska a lot. Certain tools that you use when you can use them inside or when it’s warm you can use just fine But when it’s cold you can’t like the one that always stuck up my mind was like zip ties, okay in a turbine You know There’s zip ties zipping wires together making you making sure everything looks neat and fancy if it’s 30 below a standard plastic zip Type just breaks like the tab just breaks off.

You don’t get to use it They make polar ones that have the little metal tab on them. And sometimes even those So it changes the way you do things.

Alex Fournier: I have a funny story. I was doing rope access in Montreal in my old days, and we had to install a banner on the crane just to promote like a project they were working on and it was during the winter.

So I was like, yeah, we’re just going to use zip tie, we’re going to zip tie it to the crane. And it will be perfect. So then we spend two hours with zip tying the big sign. And then we get to the ground and we look up and the sign is all off. We remove, cause it was so cold as zip tie snap in the wind.

So we looked at it and we’re like, okay, we went to Home Depot and we buy elastic and we put it back with elastic. But yeah we learned from that. Yeah.

Allen Hall: So what are some of the things you guys take on your truck? And I know a lot of times when you’re up that far north, you tend to plug your vehicles in to keep them warm, keep the oil warm so you can start them.

Alex Fournier: So some sites in Quebec, mostly they don’t plow the road. So the, they need to access with machinery. So some sites they will use snow cats some sites they will use side by side. So normally we use all that kind of stuff, but the essential really, I would say will be like coffee, warm clothes.

Charger for all your stuff. Cause even your phone up there, will die really quick. So you need the method of communication, either for your radio or your phone. We need, sometimes we need chain for the wheel. Because you can get stuck in the snow, right? So not only you deal, so people think that we’re usually dealing with ice, which is true, like we’re dealing with a lot of ice when we’re outside, but we’re also dealing with the cold weather, the snow and the wind, so you need to be prepared for all that kind of stuff.

Joel Saxum: Do they try to give you some kind of backup communications, right? If you’re normally on site, you have like a VHF radio in the vehicle and a cell phone and this just in case something happens.

Alex Fournier: Normally the radios, they’re charged every day. At the day, we charge our radio.

And we normally have three or four, depending on how many members we have in our team. So for all four radio to die at the same time, I think you need to stop the day there and go home. But yeah, normally we have enough communication, method to be able to talk to site especially with the phone or the radio.

Allen Hall: And for boots, what are you guys doing for boots? And to, are you doing like the yak tracks to add to boots so you get a little more grip when it does turn icy?

Alex Fournier: I know some sites they require ice not ice, but ice like a spike. So I was working on some site in the States and it was required to have some spike on your boots to be on site.

Just cause even at the OM yard, you can just slip and fall, so even the people in the office were wearing spike boots that I like, it’s the Geos or Neos boots. So it’s like a overboots so that will keep your feet warm because you’re not actually touching the surface of the you’re not touching the ground, you’re in your Neos, so the Neos touch the ground and keep your feet warm.

Or just a good winter boots. We’ll do the work.

Joel Saxum: Big old boot that, there’s a difference to that. People don’t think about because if you have an experience that you just don’t know, but when you’re standing on the cold metal stairs, grates or anything of the, of a turbine.

Your feet will get colder way faster than they will just standing on snow.

Alex Fournier: Yeah, exactly. And like I was saying, two years ago, I was in Minnesota working in the States and I was working with a lot of people from Texas in January. So they got sent to site and they didn’t really know, what to expect.

So me, I checked the weather before I came down there. So I was like, Oh, wow. It’s pretty close to Canada, so I bought, good boots, fiberglass toe. Because if you wear metal toe, it’s going to freeze up right away. So I bought good fiberglass toes, toe boots. I bought a big coat and I got there and I was ready, but I seen all these Texas people coming in with their stilto boots.

And the first minute they were outside, they were like, my feet are frozen. And I was like, yeah, it’s because you got still cap.

Joel Saxum: Here. I’ll give you, I’ll give you a South to North one. So while I was working on a project in Nenana, Alaska, one time outside of Fairbanks. And it was really remote.

This is an oil and gas thing. So every morning you woke up, you got in a helicopter, you flew over the mountain an hour, and you got dropped out in there, and we surveyed all day. And then they were drilling shot holes behind us for seismic exploration. And the drilling company, drillers for that kind of stuff are really hard to come by.

That is a very specific skill. And so they brought this drilling company out of Louisiana. To the middle of Alaska in February, and they showed up on site and they had, because they’re used to drilling in water, so they always wear like waiters and stuff. So these guys showed up, they were wearing waiters and like hooded sweatshirts and it was 40 below Fahrenheit.

The first day we couldn’t fly because it was 40 below is the cutoff for the collectives of the helicopter. To be able to be too cold to fly. So the first day we couldn’t fly. And all these guys, their eyes were this big. They just showed up from Louisiana what are we doing here? And they had to put them all in a bus and go to Fairbanks and buy them all.

Art, the Arctic Carhartt gear, right? Bibs and jackets and goggles, full face masks, all this stuff, because they were not prepared whatsoever.

Alex Fournier: So that’s what we ended up doing with the Texas people. We did the stop work, reassess, and we went to the store and we bought all the bibs and the big coat for them to be able to work.

It’s not some, it’s not something that someone will know if they don’t experience it, so it’s let’s say the wind farm in Texas that get, ice storm and then they’re stuck, their operation are all stuck because they don’t know what to do. It’s just they just don’t know, it’s not their fault, they just don’t experience it.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, there’s another thing that’s really important in the wintertime that I was taught from a young age, but grew up in northern Wisconsin, right? Same thing. Is layering. So layering it, cause if you go I’m gonna throw on as much clothes as I can to stay warm and you don’t walk around and you start sweating and all this stuff, then you get cold like that.

Then you’re done. If you start sweating, you’re screwed. So you wanna make sure that you got a good thin base layer and just kinda build that stuff up. It’s to, to mount, to be able to manage the heat within your body. Cause then you can take things off, take stuff on, whatever like that.

So if you don’t manage that heat and you get sweaty you’re in a world of hurt.

Alex Fournier: Exactly. And that’s an issue that we face in the wind industry. Cause that ladder, you still need to climb it. It’s not because it’s winter that you don’t climb the ladder. So when you get to climb the ladder, you need to remove some layers.

So when you climb, you’re not. Too warm. So when you get on top, you’re a little bit cold, but then you start layering back up. Exactly. So you don’t want to sweat while you climb because then you’re screwed.

Joel Saxum: Yep. Let me ask you this. Did you ever be up in a nacelle and it’s actually nice that the turbine is running because it creates a little bit of heat up there?

Alex Fournier: Yep. But normally when I go there, turbines are down. So I’m cold.

Joel Saxum: You’re not climbing during a snowstorm unless the turbine’s off.

Alex Fournier: Yeah, exactly. Because it’s actually like a rule in Quebec Don’t mark me on my word on that, but I think it’s actually a ruling in Quebec that tower, you cannot stop a tower in the winter if it doesn’t need to be stopped.

Cause that’s in the winter that we have the most wind production, like the wind is stronger in the winter, so they don’t want to stop tower if they’re not stopped. So normally when we go in towers, they’re pretty cold.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, cause they want to maintain the grid. That’s when you guys need the most power too is in the middle of winter.

Alex Fournier: Yeah, exactly. There’s some turbine model that they have heaters inside. We’re lucky enough that some of our clients have. Heaters and their turbines. So when we get up there, even if the turbine is stopped, we can start the heater and it’s Cancun in the cell. But we also have clients that don’t have any heating system.

And when we get up there, it’s just freezing cold.

Allen Hall: Are you allowed to take some heaters up there with you if they don’t have a heating system?

Alex Fournier: Yes, we do. But it’s going to be like a conventional house heater. So even if you put it like in the blade, it will make a little difference. We do it because when we eat, we like to be warm.

But even like putting that in the blade, it won’t change anything. I’m lucky enough because we work with the icing system, hot air de icing system, so we can start the system.

Joel Saxum: You just turn the Borealis system on, turn the heater on. Pull, yeah, pull the FabricAir thing off and let the heater just blow on you for a little bit.

Alex Fournier: Yeah, that’s how I eat my lunch, but no For real, when we, normally when we go in there we can start the system before, so when we go in the blade, it’s a little bit warmer. It doesn’t stay warm for hours, but it still give us a little push.

Joel Saxum: Let me ask you this one, this was a trick that we used to use.

So you take your Sammy Maker, Your nice sandwich at home or whatever the night before for your lunch or your soup or whatnot, but that sandwich you’d wrap in tinfoil. So when you got uptower.

Alex Fournier: Put it on the gearbox.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, put it on the gearbox, warm your sandwich up. Does that happen in the wind world?

Alex Fournier: Yeah, we still do that, yeah. We we actually bought the grill cheese maker last year. Heh. It seems stupid, but we bought a grill cheese maker and we just grill her sandwich and and the dinner lunchtime. So that make it more fun.

Joel Saxum: I learned that trick actually, when I was like 19 years old, I was working on a road crew in Chicago, Illinois and what they would do.

Is they would take, was it they’re pouring asphalt, right? So they take your sandwich and say, Hey, wrap that thing in five layers of tinfoil tomorrow. And they take a five gallon bucket and they put us a shovel full of asphalt in there and then put everybody’s sandwich and put another shovel on top.

Wait like 15 minutes, then take the asphalt out, unwrap your sandwiches and they’re all cooked.

Alex Fournier: That’s a good idea.

Joel Saxum: So let me ask a question about something turbine specific. Is there anything that you’ve seen in a turbine, whether it’s a. I don’t know, a cabinet latch or a climb assist or something that are like, man, it’s cold out.

Now we got to worry about this thing, right? Because it was, yeah, I’m thinking about mechanics wise, it was always like, when it got that cold where I’ve been, you don’t want to be cranking on, metal parts and stuff because they get brittle when it

gets that cold.

Alex Fournier: The 1 thing I can think about, it’s the 3s lift.

I know on the nuts, it’s right. If you work. Between these temperature that are low temperature, you need to work the lift before you use it. So make a couple of run and then you can use it just to warm it up. But obviously everything that is battery powered, your drill will, will give up after a couple of minutes.

Your climb assist can even give up after a couple of minutes. So everything really that have a battery, no good in the winter. If you use a lamp, bring extra battery with you because it won’t live forever. But yeah, everything that is mechanical, it’s more work in the winter, just because also you need to think about yourself, you all layer it up, so you’re just your movement are way harder than if it was summer.

Joel Saxum: So the whole crew though, all the technicians that got the spare batteries in their, in And inside their jacket and stuff, trying to keep them good.

We work with we work with Sikaflex and our method to warm it up is we put it in our bibs and we just carry it all day until we need to use it.

Allen Hall: Oh, wow. I wondered about adhesives because yeah, it’s so cold. I just don’t want to, don’t want to move.

Alex Fournier: Yeah, it’s crazy. I will say all. Everything that is fiberglass work, I would say take a break in the winter. Unless you really need to do it. I know some company they’re innovating right now. I seen Acura and they did a post on LinkedIn maybe two weeks ago.

And they’re using the SkyFlix platform with the heaters and the lamp and it’s all cover up, so they’re able to still do composite work in the winter. So a couple of company like this, they’re really innovating and trying to bring services all year round, which is exceptional.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, that when we were, when we would run with any kind of adhesives or anything like that, it was like when you’re driving to site, it’s always, they’re up on the dash rate where the defroster is getting heat right on them. You get out, grab, stick them inside, and away you go.

Allen Hall: And wintertime, the days are short, right?

So when your time, especially when you’re up north where you are, and some of those wind farms, the days are really short. Do you have to be cautious about, hey, it’s getting dark outside, we got to get out of here? Are there rules about that? About being where it’s really cold, plus it’s being dark, and the temperature does drop some when the sun goes down, even on those northern latitudes.

Is there more things you have to worry about once the sun goes down?

Alex Fournier: Yeah, my personal advice is if you work in the winter, don’t try to push it just because, it’s cold, you’re tired, it get dark fast, yeah, normally you still try to go down when the sun go down, if that makes sense.

But I don’t think there’s actually a ruling, but yeah, when the sun goes down, you need to go down too, because it will get even colder too.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, and for people who don’t realize that or have been in the South, basically working on turbines, or even the South, really, to be honest with you, all the way up to the Dakotas and whatnot.

If you’re up in Quebec or northern Quebec, especially your day, your sunlight, good sunlight of the day can only be 9 to 3. Like you’re down to a 6 hours of sunlight.

Alex Fournier: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you really need to be cautious too. And if I can tell a story too, we were in Quebec I think a year ago and it was in the morning.

And so we opened the snow cat and it starts snowing and we’re like, oh, it’s going to snow today, but we didn’t expect much snow. And then it was the end of the day around 8, 9, so it’s already dark. Then we get out and all our tracks are completely cover up. So we didn’t even we didn’t even know the road anymore, and it’s all like big ditch.

Joel Saxum: How to get back to the O&M building.

Alex Fournier: Yeah, so we had a guy outside just walking, trying to find like the deep spot. And yeah, we were with the snowcat. It was crazy, be cautious of the snow too, because when it starts snowing, you never know what’s going to happen. And it can be a couple of centimeters, but it can be two feet too.

Allen Hall: Yeah, how do you deal with that though? It does seem like the snowstorms come randomly at times. Do you carry GPS with you in some way? I guess your phone has GPS, but does it even work that far? Away from cell towers.

Alex Fournier: The good idea will have been to look at the weather channel before the start of the day, when you need to get some stuff done, that’s not the first thing you’re going to think about, you mostly think about work first in my case, so no, but yeah, having, let’s say like a good, a good part of the day, a plan of the day, assess all the risk in the morning.

And then you can do your work and, work in consequences. That will really be the key.

Allen Hall: Just to summarize, make sure you have extra gear, make sure of extra food. Don’t get wet and prepare for when it gets really cold. Yeah. And mind your batteries.

Alex Fournier: But there’s some of our client, the innovative solution to, like I said, we work with snow cat.

So that, that can pretty much get you anywhere you need to go. And they also have ice trailer. What is an ice trailer? It’s something you attach either on a truck or at a snowcat, and when you bring it to the tower, there’s actually like a platform that’s deploying so that will protect you from the ice falling too.

Oh, I didn’t, never heard of that. Yeah, so that, that helps the technicians to to work safe and even mitigate the ice risk. And even now, they created some trucks with platform on it that will protect you from the ice as well.

Joel Saxum: Okay, this is a, we’re going to talk about a risk that is specific to wind turbines, right?

You guys, Borealis, you’re in the icing space, like your friends, Ice Tech, that are up there as well, in that icing space, knowing when that’s going on. And getting, the blades getting covered with ice. We, I’ve been on insurance cases where they say, hey the turbine was spinning, a chunk of ice came off that was the size of the hood of a truck.

The next blade came, hit it, did a bunch of damage. Now we’re talking about the blades. But you guys are people standing under the turbines. How do you handle that risk?

Alex Fournier: Yeah, so first of all, I should say, get a de icing system, a Borealis Wind IPS system. But all joke aside, there’s mitigation. First of all, it’s to have a good procedure in place.

I think just with having a good procedure, all to work with ice risk is the key of it because often people, they’re a little bit hesitant, to work with ice because everyone know it’s a risk, right? Everyone across the industry know that ice is a risk. So when you tell it a technician to go work on a tower, that’s I stopped it.

They might be hesitant, but if you have a good procedure in place that explain all the risk and all to mitigate them. That would be the first step, having a good procedure, that would be the first step, just to eliminate all the hesitation from technician and really have a clear idea of what it is.

And the second step will be to get some medication tool. Like I said, a snow cat with an ice trailer that’s really helpful, because now, that you have the procedure and then you’re on top of that. You have, risk mitigation, you have material to mitigate it. That will really be the key to be able to work with the eyes is to get prepared, have the tooling and the procedure to prepare yourself to, to work with the eyes.

And on top of that, if you can have the icing system, obviously that will work too.

Allen Hall: That’s a really serious problem to deal with though. It does seem the icefalls could instantaneously kill you, leave you stranded, or leave you stranded out there, seriously hurt.

Alex Fournier: Yeah, it’s, you don’t want to play around with that, and, there’s certain situation, if you see that it’s super sunny outside, and you see the ice shed, obviously don’t go there.

It’s the first step, and no one will be, no one will be mad because you do a stuff work that’s, you don’t play around with safety. There’s still some way to be able to work even though there’s ice, even if you don’t have a snowcat or ice trailer, if you follow a good procedure, there’s some case that it’s going to be minus four with a big sun shining, obviously some pieces of ice will shed, because it will melt.

But if it’s minus 20 outside, not sunny, and you’re able to yaw the tower away from the door. At temperature around minus 20, minus 15, the ice doesn’t shed. It’s pretty, stuck on the blade. You can do you can do break tests. People do that though. They will spin the rotor, do a brake test, see if the ice shed normally if the ice doesn’t shed, the temperature is super low, and you can yaw away from the tower and the wind is in the, another direction, then I will say it’s safe to access the turbine but yeah, in some cases, it’s just Not workable if you don’t have the good tool.

Allen Hall: I’ve learned a tremendous amount here, Alex. I had no idea of all the techniques and pieces of equipment you take to, to keep yourself safe while working on wind turbines when it’s cold outside, this is fascinating to hear.

Alex Fournier: But like I said, us, we’re used to it cause we’re from, we’re from Nordic province and it’s, we need to deal with it day to day.

So it will be a shame if every day we will not be able to work because of the ice. So people with good idea came in and, that’s how we’re able to work and innovate the industry.

Allen Hall: So if I’m down in Texas and I’m in the middle of an ice storm and I want to get ahold of you, Alex, how do I get some advice from you about how to work in cold climates?

Where do I go?

Alex Fournier: Really I suggest that every, service company or, energy provider to really dig into it and just make clear procedure for all their worker. That will be the best bet I can give them. Cause like I said, with a clear procedure, you educate your worker too, and you ensure that they’re safe to work.

Allen Hall: If you’re on the web, you might as well check out Borealis Wind. Because they have a really cool deicing system.

Alex Fournier: borealiswind.com. We can, so scrap all the podcasts, just go on the website and use our solution and you will be set.

Allen Hall: Alex, thanks for appearing on the program. We love hearing all this good stuff and we’ll see you at some of the trade shows this month.

Alex Fournier: So myself, Alexander, will be in Quebec at the IQPR conferences to talk about deicing. My buddy, Wade Coulis, our sales manager will be at Blades USA and me and him will be at, in San Diego next week at the OMS safety summit. And Daniel Roper will be at Winter Wind and we will be in Minneapolis for the ACP trade show also.

Allen Hall: Yeah, that’s great. Alex, so much for being on the program.

Alex Fournier: Thank you guys for having me and I wish you all a good day.

Wind Tech Winter Survival Guide: Safety in Freezing Temps

Renewable Energy

Poverty in the United States

Published

2 days ago

January 20, 2026

Alice Rush

There is no doubt that poverty, ignorance, intolerance, and support of criminal tyrants are deeply interconnected. It’s a shame that nothing can be done to help these people.

Poverty in the United States

Renewable Energy

Choosing the Right Commercial Solar System Size for Business

Published

2 days ago

January 20, 2026

Alice Rush

Undoubtedly, installing a commercial solar system in 2026 is one of the smartest long-term decisions any Australian business can make.

The underlying reason is pretty straightforward!

With electricity prices rising and sustainability becoming increasingly important, solar offers both financial savings and reputational benefits.

But one of the biggest questions business owners face early on is this:

What size solar system do we actually need?

Go too small, and you won’t see the savings you were hoping for. Go too big, and you risk overcapitalising or exporting excess energy at low feed-in rates.

Therefore, the right answer sits somewhere in the middle, and finding it requires more than just a guess.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the three key steps that determine the right commercial solar system size for your business:

Load analysis
Roof or site assessment
System design considerations

So let’s break down how to help you make a confident decision.

In this blog post:

Step 1: Understanding Your Business Energy Load

This is where it all starts: before panels, inverters, or roof space are even discussed, the most important piece of the puzzle is your energy usage, not just how much you use, but when you use it.

Most businesses start by looking at their electricity bill and focusing on the total kilowatt-hours (kWh) used per month or year.

While that number matters, it’s only part of the story. Look beyond the total kWh because, for solar, the timing of your energy use is critical.

Consider an office, manufacturing facility, medical centre, or retail business that uses most of its electricity between 9 am and 4 pm; it is far more “solar-friendly” than one that uses most of its power overnight, such as cold storage or 24/7 operations.

Daytime vs After-Hours Usage

Before installing solar in your commercial property, ask yourself these:

Are your main operations running during daylight hours?
Do heavy machines, HVAC systems, or production lines operate while the sun is up?
Does usage drop significantly after business hours?

The more energy you use during the day, the more of your business solar power you’ll consume directly, which is where the biggest savings are.

However, in some cases, exporting excess energy back to the grid is beneficial, but feed-in tariffs are usually much lower than what you pay for electricity. For greater financial outcomes, it’s better to install battery storage.

Interval Data: A Standard Method

In Australia, for a proper load analysis, solar professionals typically review interval data, typically 15 or 30 minute usage from your electricity retailer.

This data shows your:

Daily load patterns
Peak demand times
Seasonal variations like summer vs winter

This level of detail allows system sizing to be tailored specifically to your business, rather than depending on rough averages.

Step 2: Roof and Site Assessment – What Can Your Building Actually Handle?

Once energy usage is understood, the next question becomes: where will the system go?

Thinking the same? Here’s your answer!

For most commercial systems, the roof is the obvious choice, but not all roofs are equal in size.

Available Roof Space

Solar panels take up space, and commercial systems can require significant space. The rough estimation says:

100kW system is needed for a roof of 500–600 square metres
200kW system is needed for a roof of 1,000–1,200 square metres

However, usable space is often less than the total roof area. Factors that reduce usable space include:

HVAC units
Skylights
Roof access paths
Setback requirements
Fire safety regulations

Roof Orientation and Tilt

In Australia, north-facing panels generally produce the most energy, but east- and west-facing systems can still perform very well, especially for businesses with high daytime energy requirements.

Also, flat roofs are common on commercial buildings and offer flexibility, as panels can be tilted and oriented at any time using mounting frames.

Structural Integrity

One overlooked factor is whether the roof can physically support the system.

Commercial solar systems add weight, and while it’s usually well within limits, older buildings or lightweight structures may need a structural engineer’s approval.

Therefore, it’s far better to identify this early than be surprised later in the project.

Ground-Mounted and Carport Options

If your roof space is limited, don’t stress out, there are alternative ways, such as:

Ground-mounted solar systems
Solar carports over parking areas

Even these options can increase the system’s potential size but come with higher costs and planning considerations.

Step 3: Matching System Size to Business Needs

A common problem or misconception about solar panels is that bigger is always better. In reality, the best-sized system is one that aligns closely with your energy profile and business goals.

Self-Consumption

Do you know that the highest financial return comes from using solar energy directly on-site?

This is why many commercial systems are designed to offset 60-80% of daytime energy use, rather than 100% of total annual consumption.

Oversizing a system may result in:

Excess exports at low feed-in tariffs
Longer payback periods
Underutilised capital

A perfectly designed system balances generation with actual energy demand.

Future-Proofing

Above all these, it’s also important to think ahead. Therefore, businesses should consider:

Planned expansion
Electric vehicle fleets
New machinery or equipment
Electrification of gas processes

Sometimes installing a slightly larger system, or choosing inverters that support future expansion, makes sense. The goal is to give scalability to your system, not blind oversizing.

Demand Charges and Peak Loads

Many Australian businesses pay demand charges based on their highest usage intervals.

While solar can help reduce daytime demand, it won’t always eliminate peaks, especially if they occur early morning or late afternoon.

In some cases, system design may focus on shaving peaks rather than just maximising total generation.

Which Components Make a Great Commercial Solar System?

A great commercial solar system comes down to a few essential components working together in sync.

Together, these ensure maximum energy output, safety, and return on investment. So, here’s a list:

Solar panels: High-efficiency, durable, long warranties
Inverters: Reliable DC-to-AC conversion and system control
Mounting & racking: Strong, site-specific structural support
Monitoring: Real-time performance tracking and alerts
Safety & protection: Grounding, rapid shutdown, surge and fault protection
Engineering & design: Proper system layout, permitting, and grid compliance

Operations & maintenance: Ongoing inspections to ensure long-term performance

Commercial Solar Batteries: Should They Affect System Size?

In Australia the battery storage is becoming more common, but it’s not always necessary upfront.

For many businesses, only solar panel systems offer the best return on investment. However, batteries tend to make more sense when:

Evening or overnight usage is high
Demand charges are significant
Backup power is critical
Time-of-use tariffs are extreme

Nowadays, most businesses choose to design a battery-ready solar system, allowing storage to be added later as prices in the Australian energy market decline.

Which System is Best for You? The Decision Behind the Panels

Now you might be wondering which solar system best fits your life.

We know every home needs a different solar story. So, beyond the numbers, choosing the right commercial solar system size is about confidence.

Panel Type Options

Monocrystalline solar Panels: These panels have the highest efficiency and are ideal when the roof or land space is limited.
Polycrystalline Solar Panels: They are also a strong choice for Australian businesses seeking a lower upfront cost and are satisfied with slightly reduced efficiency.
Bifacial Solar Panels: They are super-efficient as they generate power from both sides. They are best suited for ground-mounted systems or highly reflective surfaces.

Selecting the right panel type helps ensure your commercial solar system delivers maximum performance and long-term value, so choose wisely.

However, in large-scale commercial properties, business owners often have many concerns. For instance:

Making the wrong investment.
Disrupting operations during commercial solar installation.
Dealing with complex approvals.
Understanding long-term performance.

Keep in mind that a good, accredited solar partner doesn’t just sell you panels; they explain the “why” behind the system size, show realistic projections, and design around how your business actually operates.

Work with Cyanergy| Your Reputable Solar Installer

Well, in the end note, if you are still looking for the right commercial solar system size, honestly, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer.

Every Australian business is different. Whether a warehouse in Victoria, a winery in Queensland, or a medical centre in New South Wales will all have very different solar needs, even if their electricity bills look similar.

Choosing the right commercial solar system size ultimately comes down to understanding your energy usage, making proper use of roof space, and designing a system that fits your business for the long term.

When those pieces align, solar stops being a guessing game and becomes what it should be.

It’s a smart, reliable investment that works quietly in the background while your business gets on with what it does best.

For more informative content and to schedule a proper energy audit, contact Cyanergy today!

Our solar experts will answer all your questions, making the energy transition process hassle-free and faster.

Your Solution Is Just a Click Away

The post Choosing the Right Commercial Solar System Size for Business appeared first on Cyanergy.

Choosing the Right Commercial Solar System Size for Business

Renewable Energy

UK Awards 8.4 GW Offshore, US Allows Offshore Construction

Published

2 days ago

January 20, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

UK Awards 8.4 GW Offshore, US Allows Offshore Construction

Allen, Joel, Rosemary, and Yolanda cover major offshore wind developments on both sides of the Atlantic. In the US, Ørsted’s Revolution Wind won a court victory allowing construction to resume after the Trump administration’s suspension. Meanwhile, the UK awarded contracts for 8.4 gigawatts of new offshore capacity in the largest auction in European history, with RWE securing nearly 7 gigawatts. Plus Canada’s Nova Scotia announces ambitious 40 gigawatt offshore wind plans, and the crew discusses the ongoing Denmark-Greenland tensions with the US administration.

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!

The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by Strike Tape, protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit strike tape.com. And now your hosts, Alan Hall, Rosemary Barnes, Joel Saxon and Yolanda Padron. Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m Allen Hall, along with Yolanda, Joel and Rosie.

Boy, a lot of action in the US courts. And as you know, for weeks, American offshore wind has been holding its breath and a lot of people’s jobs are at stake right now. The Trump administration suspended, uh, five major projects on December 22nd, and still they’re still citing national security concerns.

Billions of dollars are really in balance here. Construction vessels for most of these. Sites are just doing nothing at the minute, but the courts are stepping in and Sted won a [00:01:00] key victory when the federal judge allowed its revolution wind project off the coast of Rhode Island to resume construction immediately.

So everybody’s excited there and it does sound like Osted is trying to finish that project as fast as they can. And Ecuador and Dominion Energy, which are two of the other bigger projects, are fighting similar battles. Ecuador is supposed to hear in the next couple of days as we’re recording. Uh, but the message is pretty clear from developers.

They have invested too much to walk away, and if they get an opportunity to wrap these projects up quickly. They are going to do it now. Joel, before the show, we were talking about vineyard wind and vineyard. Wind was on hold, and I think it, it may not even be on hold right now, I have to go back and look.

But when they were put on hold, uh, the question was, the turbines that were operating, were they able to continue operating? And the answer initially I thought was no. But it was yes, the, the turbines that were [00:02:00] producing power. We’re allowed to continue to produce powers. What was in the balance were the remaining turbines that were still being installed or, uh, being upgraded.

So there’s, there’s a lot going on right now, but it does seem like, and back to your earlier point, Joel, before we start talking and maybe you can discuss this, we, there is an offshore wind farm called Block Island really closely all these other wind farms, and it’s been there for four or five years at this point.

No one’s said anything about that wind farm.

Speaker: I think it’s been there, to be honest with you, since like 2016 or 17. It’s been there a long time. Is it that old? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So when we were talk, when we’ve been talking through and it gets lost in the shuffle and it shouldn’t, because that’s really the first offshore wind farm in the United States.

We keep talking about all these big, you know, utility scale massive things, but that is a utility scale wind farm as well. There’s fi, correct me if I’m wrong, Yolanda, is it five turbos or six? It’s five. Their decent sized turbines are sitting on jackets. They’re just, uh, they’re, they’re only a couple miles offshore.

They’re not way offshore. But throughout all of these issues that we’ve had, um, with [00:03:00] these injunctions and stopping construction and stopping this and reviewing permits and all these things, block Island has just been spinning, producing power, uh, for the locals there off the coast of Rhode Island. So we.

What were our, the question was is, okay, all these other wind farms that are partially constructed, have they been spinning? Are they producing power? And my mind goes to this, um, as a risk reduction effort. I wonder if, uh, the cable, if the cable lay timelines were what they were. Right. So would you now, I guess as a risk reduction effort, and this seems really silly to have to think about this.

If you have your offshore substation, was the, was the main export cable connected to some of these like revolution wind where they have the injunction right now? Was that export cable connected and were the inter array cables regularly connected to turbines and them coming online? Do, do, do, do, do. Like, it wasn’t like a COD, we turned the switch and we had to wait for all 62 turbines.

Right. So to our [00:04:00] knowledge and, and, uh, please reach out to any of us on LinkedIn or an email or whatever to our knowledge. The turbines that are in production have still have been spinning. It’s the construction activities that have been stopped, but now. Hey, revolution wind is 90% complete and they’re back out and running, uh, on construction activities as of today.

Speaker 2: It was in the last 48 hours. So this, this is a good sign because I think as the other wind farms go through the courts, they’re gonna essentially run through this, this same judge I that. Tends to happen because they have done all the research already. So you, you likely get the same outcome for all the other wind farms, although they have to go through the process.

You can’t do like a class action, at least that’s doesn’t appear to be in play at the minute. Uh, they’re all gonna have to go through this little bit of a process. But what the judge is saying essentially is the concern from the Department of War, and then the Department of Interior is. [00:05:00] Make believe. I, I don’t wanna frame it.

It’s not framed that way, the way it’s written. There’s a lot more legalistic terms about it. But it basically, they’re saying they tried to stop it before they didn’t get the result they wanted. The Trump administration didn’t get the result they wanted. So the Trump administration ramped it up by saying it was something that was classified in, in part of the Department of War.

The judge isn’t buying it. So the, the, the early action. I think what we initially talked about this, everybody, I think the early feeling was they’re trying to stop it, but the fact that they’re trying to stop it just because, and just start pulling permits is not gonna stand outta the court. And when they want to come back and do it again, they’re not likely to win.

If they would. Kept their ammunition dry and just from the beginning said it’s something classified as something defense related that Trump administration probably would’ve had a better shot at this. But now it just seems like everything’s just gonna lead down the pathway where all these projects get finished.

Speaker: Yeah, I think that specific judge probably was listening to the [00:06:00] Uptime podcast last week for his research. Um, listen to, to our opinions that we talked about here, saying that this is kind of all bs. It’s not gonna fly. Uh, but what we’re sitting at here is like Revolution Wind was, had the injunction against it.

Uh, empire Wind had an injunction again, but they were awaiting a similar ruling. So hopefully that’s actually supposed to go down today. That’s Wednesday. Uh, this is, so we’re recording this on Wednesday. Um, and then Dominion is, has, is suing as well, and their, uh, hearing is on Friday. In two, two days from now.

And I would expect, I mean, it’s the same, same judge, same piece of papers, like it’s going to be the same result. Some numbers to throw at this thing. Now, just so the listeners know the impact of this, uh, dominion for the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project, they say that their pause in construction is costing them $5 million a day, and that is.

That’s a pretty round number. It’s a conservative number to be honest with you. For officer operations, how many vessels and how much stuff is out there? That makes sense. Yep. [00:07:00] 5 million. So $5 million a day. And that’s one of the wind farms. Uh, coastal, Virginia Wind Farm is an $11 billion project. With, uh, it’s like 176 turbines.

I think something to that, like it’s, it’s got enough power, it’s gonna have enough production out there to power up, like, uh, like 650,000 homes when it’s done. So there’s five projects suspended right now. I’m continuing with the numbers. Um, well, five, there’s four now. Revolution’s back running, right? So five and there’s four.

Uh, four still stopped. And of those five is 28. Billion dollars in combined capital at risk, right? So you can understand why some of these companies are worried, right? They’re this is, this is not peanuts. Um, so you saw a little bump in like Ted stock in the markets when this, this, uh, revolution wind, uh, injunction was stopped.

Uh, but. You also see that, uh, Moody’s is a credit [00:08:00] rating. They’ve lowered ORs, Ted’s um, rating from stable to negative, given that political risk.

Speaker 2: Well, if you haven’t been paying attention, wind energy O and m Australia 2026 is happening relatively soon. It’s gonna be February 17th and 18th. It’s gonna be at the Pullman Hotel downtown Melbourne.

And we are all looking forward to it. The, the roster and the agenda is, is nearly assembled at this point. Uh, we have a, a couple of last minute speakers, but uh, I’m looking at the agenda and like, wow, if you work in o and m or even are around wind turbines, this is the place to be in February. From my

Speaker: seat.

It’s pretty, it’s, it’s, it’s shaping up for pretty fun. My phone has just been inundated with text message and WhatsApp of when are you traveling? What are your dates looking forward to, and I wanna say this right, Rosie. Looking forward to Melvin. Did I get it? Did I do it okay.

Speaker 3: You know how to say it.

Speaker: So, so we’re, we’re really looking forward to, we’ve got a bunch of people traveling from around the [00:09:00] world, uh, to come and share their collective knowledge, uh, and learn from the Australians about how they’re doing things, what the, what the risks are, what the problems are, uh, really looking forward to the environment down there, like we had last year was very.

Collaborative, the conversations are flowing. Um, so we’re looking forward to it, uh, in a big way from our seats. Over here,

Speaker 2: we are announcing a lightning workshop, and that workshop will be answering all your lightning questions in regards to your turbines Now. Typically when we do this, it’s about $10,000 per seat, and this will be free as part of WMA 2026.

We’re gonna talk about some of the lightning physics, what’s actually happening in the field versus what the OEMs are saying and what the IEC specification indicates. And the big one is force majeure. A lot of operators are paying for damages that are well within the IEC specification, and we’ll explain.[00:10:00]

What that is all about and what you can do to save yourself literally millions of dollars. But that is only possible if you go to Woma 2020 six.com and register today because we’re running outta seats. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. But this is a great opportunity to get your lightning questions answered.

And Rosemary promised me that we’re gonna talk about Vestus turbines. Siemens turbines. GE Renova turbines. Nordex turbines. So if you have Nordex turbines, Sulan turbines, bring the turbine. Type, we’ll talk about it. We’ll get your questions answered, and the goal is that everybody at at Wilma 2026 is gonna go home and save themselves millions of dollars in 26 and millions of dollars in 27 and all the years after, because this Lightning workshop is going to take care of those really frustrating lightning questions that just don’t get answered.

We’re gonna do it right there. Sign up today.

Speaker 3: [00:11:00] You know what, I’m really looking forward to that session and especially ’cause I’ve got a couple of new staff or new-ish staff at, it’s a great way to get them up to speed on lightning. And I think that actually like the majority of people, even if you are struggling with lightning problems every day, I bet that there is a whole bunch that you could learn about the underlying physics of lightning.

And there’s not so many places to find that in the world. I have looked, um, for my staff training, where is the course that I can send them to, to understand all about lightning? I know when I started atm, I had a, an intro session, one-on-one with the, you know, chief Lightning guy there. That’s not so easy to come by, and this is the opportunity where you can get that and better because it’s information about every, every OEM and a bit of a better understanding about how it works so that you can, you know, one of the things that I find working with Lightning is a lot of force MA mature claims.

And then, um, the OEMs, they try and bamboozle you with this like scientific sounding talk. If you understand better, then you’ll be able to do better in those discussions. [00:12:00] So I would highly recommend attending if you can swing the Monday as well.

Speaker: If you wanna attend now and you’re coming to the events.

Reach out to, you can reach out to me directly because what we want to do now is collect, uh, as much information as possible about the specific turbine types of the, that the people in the room are gonna be responsible for. So we can tailor those messages, um, to help you out directly. So feel free to reach out to me, joel.saxo, SAXU m@wglightning.com and uh, we’ll be squared away and ready to roll on Monday.

I think that’s Monday the 16th.

Speaker 2: So while American offshore wind fights for survival in the courts, British offshore wind just had its biggest day ever. The United Kingdom awarded contracts for 8.4 gigawatts. That’s right. 8.4 gigawatts of new offshore wind capacity, the largest auction in European history.

Holy smokes guys. The price came in at about 91 pounds per megawatt hour, and that’s 2024 pounds. [00:13:00] Uh, and that’s roughly 40% cheaper than building a new. Gas plant Energy Secretary Ed Milliband called it a monumental step towards the country’s 2030 clean power goals and that it is, uh, critics say that prices are still higher than previous auctions, and one that the government faces challenges connecting all this new capacity to the grid, and they do, uh, transmission is a limiting factor here, but in terms of where the UK is headed.

Putting in gigawatts of offshore wind is going to disconnect them from a lot of need on the gas supply and other energy sources. It’s a massive auction round. This was way above what I remember being, uh. Talked about when we were in Scotland just a couple of weeks ago, Joel.

Speaker: Yeah, that’s what I was gonna say.

You know, when we were, when we were up with the, or E Catapult event, and we talked to a lot of the different organizations of their OWGP and um, you know, the course, the or e Catapult folks and, and, and a [00:14:00] few others, they were really excited about AR seven. They were like, oh, we’re, we’re so excited. It’s gonna come down, it’s gonna be great.

I didn’t expect these kind of numbers to come out of this thing. Right? ’cause we know that, um, they’ve got about, uh, the UK currently has about. 16 and a half or so gigawatts of offshore wind capacity, um, with, you know, they got a bunch under construction, it’s like 11 under construction, but their goal is to have 43 gigawatts by 2030.

So,

Speaker 2: man.

Speaker: Yeah. And, and when 2030, put this into Conte Con context now. This is one of our first podcasts of the new year. That’s only four years away. Right. It’s soon. And, and to, to be able to do that. So you’re saying they got 16, they go some round numbers. They got 16 now. Pro producing 11 in the pipe, 11 being constructed.

So get that to 27. That’s another 16 gigawatts of wind. They want, they that are not under construction today that they want to have completed in the next four years. That is a monumental effort now. We know that there’s some grid grid complications and connection [00:15:00] requirements and things that will slow that down, but just thinking about remove the grid idea, just thinking about the amount of effort to get those kind of large capital projects done in that short of timeline.

Kudos to the UK ’cause they’re unlocking a lot of, um, a lot of private investment, a lot of effort to get these things, but they’re literally doing the inverse of what we’re doing in the United States right now.

Speaker 2: There would be about a total of 550, 615 ish megawatt turbines in the water. That does seem doable though.

The big question is who’s gonna be providing those turbines? That’s a. Massive order. Whoever the salesperson is involved in that transaction is gonna be very happy. Well, the interesting thing here

Speaker: too is the global context of assets to be able to deliver this. We just got done talking about the troubles at these wind farms in the United States.

As soon as these. Wind farms are finished. There’s not more of them coming to construction phase shortly, right? So all of these assets, all these jack up vessels, these installation vessels, these specialized cable lay vessels, they [00:16:00]can, they can fuel up and freaking head right across, back across the Atlantic and start working on these things.

If the pre all of the engineering and, and the turbine deliveries are ready to roll the vessels, uh, ’cause that you, that, you know, two years ago that was a problem. We were all. Forecasting. Oh, we have this forecasted problem of a shortage of vessels and assets to be able to do installs. And now with the US kind of, basically, once we’re done with the wind farms, we’re working on offshore, now we’re shutting it down.

It frees those back up, right? So the vessels will be there, be ready to roll. You’ll have people coming off of construction projects that know what’s going on, right? That, that know how to, to work these things. So the, the people, the vessels that will be ready to roll it is just, can we get the cables, the mono piles, the turbines and the cells, the blades, all done in time, uh, to make this happen And, and.

I know I’m rambling now, but after leaving that or e Catapult event and talking to some of the people, um, that are supporting those [00:17:00] funds over there, uh, being injected from the, uh, the government, I think that they’ve got

Speaker 2: the, the money flowing over there to get it done too. The big winner in the auction round was RWE and they.

Almost seven gigawatts. So that was a larger share of the 8.4 gigawatts. RWE obviously has a relationship with Vestus. Is that where this is gonna go? They’re gonna be, uh, installing vestus turbines. And where were those tur turbines? As I was informed by Scottish gentlemen, I won’t name names. Uh, will those turbines be built in the uk?

Speaker 3: It’s a lot. It’s a, it’s one of the biggest challenges with, um, the supply chain for wind energy is that it just is so lumpy. So, you know, you get, um, uh. You get huge eight gigawatts all at once and then you have years of, you know, just not much. Not much, not much going on. I mean, for sure they’re not gonna be just building [00:18:00] eight gigawatts worth of, um, wind turbines in the UK in the next couple of years because they would also have to build the capacity to manufacture that and, and then would wanna be building cocks every couple of years for, you know, the next 10 or 20 years.

So, yeah, of course they’re gonna be manufacturing. At facilities around the world and, and transporting them. But, um, yeah, I just, I don’t know. It’s one of the things that I just. Constantly shake my head about is like, how come, especially when projects are government supported, when plans are government supported, why, why can’t we do a better job of smoothing things out so that you can have, you know, for example, local manufacturing because everyone knows that they’ve got a secure pipeline.

It’s just when the government’s involved, it should be possible.

Speaker 2: At least the UK has been putting forth some. Pretty big numbers to support a local supply chain. When we were over in Scotland, they announced 300 million pounds, and that was just one of several. That’s gonna happen over the next year. There will be a [00:19:00] near a billion pounds be put into the supply chain, which will make a dramatic difference.

But I think you’re right. Also, it’s, they’re gonna ramp up and then they, it’s gonna ramp down. They have to find a way to feed the global marketplace at some point, be because the technology and the people are there. It’s a question of. How do you sustain it for a 20, 30 year period? That’s a different question.

Speaker 3: I do agree that the UK is doing a better job than probably anybody else. Um, it it’s just that they, the way that they have chosen to organize these auctions and the government support and the planning just means that they have that, that this is the perfect conditions to, you know. Make a smooth rollout and you know, take care of all this.

And so I just a bit frustrated that they’re not doing more. But you are right that they’re doing the best probably

Speaker 4: once all of these are in service though, aren’t there quite a bit of aftermarket products that are available in the UK

Speaker: on the service then? I think there’s more.

Speaker 4: Which, I mean, that’s good. A good part of it, right?

Speaker: If we’re talking Vestas, so, so let’s just round this [00:20:00] up too. If we’re talking vest’s production for blades in Europe, you have two facilities in Denmark that build V 2 36 blades. You have one facility in Italy that builds V 2 36 blades, Taiwan, but they build them for the APAC market. Of course. Um, Poland had a, has one on hold right now, V 2 36 as well.

Well, they just bought that factory from LM up in Poland also. That’s, but I think that’s for onshore term, onshore blades. Oh, yes, sure. And then Scotland has, they have the proposed facility in, in Laith. That there, that’s kind of on hold as well. So if that one’s proposed, I’m sure, hey, if we get a big order, they’ll spin that up quick because they’ll get, I am, I would imagine someone o you know, one of the, one of the funds to spool up a little bit of money, boom, boom, boom.

’cause they’re turning into local jobs. Local supply

Speaker 2: chain does this then create the condition where a lot of wind turbines, like when we were in Scotland, a lot of those wind turbines are. Gonna reach 20 years old, maybe a little bit older here over the next five years where they will [00:21:00] need to be repowered upgraded, whatever’s gonna happen there.

If you had internal manufacturing. In country that would, you’d think lower the price to go do that. That will be a big effort just like it is in Spain right now.

Speaker: The trouble there though too, is if you’re using local content in, in the uk, the labor prices are so much

Speaker 2: higher. I’m gonna go back to Rosie’s point about sort of the way energy is sold worldwide.

UK has high energy prices, mostly because they are buying energy from other countries and it’s expensive to get it in country. So yes, they can have higher labor prices and still be lower cost compared to the alternatives. It, it’s not the same equation in the US versus uk. It’s, it’s totally different economics, but.

If they get enough power generation, which I think the UK will, they’re gonna offload that and they’re already doing it now. So you can send power to France, send power up [00:22:00] north. There’s ways to sell that extra power and help pay for the system you built. That would make a a lot of sense. It’s very similar to what the Saudis have done for.

Dang near 80 years, which is fill tankers full of oil and sell it. This is a little bit different that we’re just sending electrons through the water to adjacent European countries. It does seem like a plan. I hope they’re sending ’em through a cable in the water and not just into the water. Well, here’s the thing that was concerning early on.

They’re gonna turn it into hydrogen and put it on a ship and send it over to France. Like that didn’t make any sense at all. Uh. Cable’s on the way to do it. Right.

Speaker: And actually, Alan, you and I did have a conversation with someone not too long ago about that triage market and how the project where they put that, that that trans, that HVDC cable next to the tunnel it, and it made and it like paid for itself in a year or something.

Was that like, that they didn’t wanna really tell us like, yeah, it paid for itself in a year. Like it was a, the ROI was like on a, like a $500 million [00:23:00]project or something. That’s crazy. Um, but yeah, that’s the same. That’s, that is, I would say part of the big push in the uk there is, uh, then they can triage that power and send it, send it back across.

Um, like I think Nord Link is the, the cable between Peterhead and Norway, right? So you have, you have a triage market going across to the Scandinavian countries. You have the triage market going to mainland eu. Um, and in when they have big time wind, they’re gonna be able to do it. So when you have an RWE.

Looking at seven gigawatts of, uh, possibility that they just, uh, just procured. Game on. I love it. I think it’s gonna be cool. I’m, I’m happy to see it blow

Speaker 2: up. Canada is getting serious about offshore wind and international developers are paying attention. Q Energy, France and its South Korean partner. Hawa Ocean have submitted applications to develop wind projects off Nova Scotia’s Coast.

The province has big ambitions. Premier, Tim Houston wants to license enough. Offshore [00:24:00] wind to produce 40 gigawatts of power far more than Nova Scotia would ever need. Uh, the extra electricity could supply more than a quarter of Canada’s total demand. If all goes according to plan, the first turbines could be spinning by 2035.

Now, Joel. Yeah, some of this power will go to Canada, but there’s a huge market in the United States also for this power and the capacity factor up in Nova Scotia offshore is really good. Yeah. It’s uh, it

Speaker: is simply, it’s stellar, right? Uh, that whole No, Nova Scotia, new Brunswick, Newfoundland, that whole e even Maritimes of Canada.

The wind, the wind never stops blowing, right? Like I, I go up there every once in a while ’cause my wife is from up there and, uh, it’s miserable sometimes even in the middle of summer. Um, so the, the wind resource is fantastic. The, it, it is a boom or will be a boom for the Canadian market, right? There’re always [00:25:00] that maritime community, they’re always looking for, for, uh, new jobs.

New jobs, new jobs. And this is gonna bring them to them. Um, one thing I wanna flag here is when I know this, when this announcement came out. And I reached out to Tim Houston’s office to try to get him on the podcast, and I haven’t gotten a response yet. Nova Scotia. So if someone that’s listening can get ahold of Tim Houston, we’d love to talk to him about the plans for Nova Scotia.

Um, but, but we see that just like we see over overseas, the triage market of we’re making power, we can sell it. You know, we balance out the prices, we can sell it to other places. From our seats here we’ve been talking about. The electricity demand on the east coast of the United States for, for years and how it is just climbing, climbing, climbing, especially AI data centers.

Virginia is a hub of this, right? They need power and we’re shooting ourselves in the foot, foot for offshore wind, plus also canceling pipelines and like there’s no extra generation going on there except for some solar plants where you can squeeze ’em in down in the Carolinas and whatnot. [00:26:00] There is a massive play here for the Canadians to be able to HVD see some power down to us.

Speaker 2: The offshore conditions off the coast of Nova Scotia are pretty rough, and the capacity factor being so high makes me think of some of the Brazilian wind farms where the capacity factor is over 50%. It’s amazing down there, but one of the outcomes of that has been early turbine problems. And I’m wondering if the Nova Scotia market is going to demand a different kind of turbine that is specifically built for those conditions.

It’s cold, really cold. It’s really windy. There’s a lot of moisture in the air, right? So the salt is gonna be bad. Uh, and then the sea life too, right? There’s a lot of, uh, sea life off the coast of the Nova Scotia, which everybody’s gonna be concerned about. Obviously, as this gets rolling. How do we think about this?

And who’s gonna be the manufacturer of turbines for Canada? Is it gonna be Nordics? Well,

Speaker: let’s start from the ground up there. So from the or ground up, it’s, how about sea [00:27:00] floor up? Let’s start from there. There is a lot of really, really, if you’ve ever worked in the offshore world, the o offshore, maritime Canadian universities that focus on the, on offshore construction, they produce some of the best engineers for those markets, right?

So if you go down to Houston, Texas where there’s offshore oil and gas companies and engineering companies everywhere, you run into Canadians from the Maritimes all over the place ’cause they’re really good at what they do. Um, they are developing or they have developed offshore oil and gas platforms.

Off of the coast of Newfoundland and up, up in that area. And there’s some crazy stuff you have to compete with, right? So you have icebergs up there. There’s no icebergs in the North Atlantic that like, you know, horn seats, internet cruising through horn C3 with icebergs. So they’ve, they’ve engineered and created foundations and things that can deal with that, those situations up there.

But you also have to remember that you’re in the Canadian Shield, which is, um, the Canadian Shield is a geotechnical formation, right? So it’s very rocky. Um, and it’s not [00:28:00] like, uh, the other places where we’re putting fixed bottom wind in where you just pound the piles into the sand. That’s not how it’s going to go, uh, up in Canada there.

So there’s some different engineering that’s going to have to take place for the foundations, but like you said, Alan Turbine specific. It blows up there. Right. And we have seen onshore, even in the United States, when you get to areas that have high capacity burning out main bearings, burning out generators prematurely because the capacity factor is so high and those turbines are just churning.

Um, I, I don’t know if any of the offshore wind turbine manufacturers are adjusting any designs specifically for any markets. I, I just don’t know that. Um, but they may run into some. Some tough stuff up there, right? You might run into some, some overspeeding main bearings and some maintenance issues, specifically in the wintertime ’cause it is nasty up there.

Speaker 2: Well, if you have 40 gigawatts of capacity, you have several thousand turbines, you wanna make sure really [00:29:00] sure that the blade design is right, that the gearbox is right if you have a gearbox, and that everything is essentially over-designed, heated. You can have deicing systems on it, I would assume that would be something you would be thinking about.

You do the same thing for the monopoles. The whole assembly’s gotta be, have a, just a different thought process than a turbine. You would stick off the coast of Germany. Still rough conditions at times, but not like Nova Scotia.

Speaker: One, one other thing there to think about too that we haven’t dealt with, um.

In such extreme levels is the, the off the coast of No. Nova Scotia is the Bay of Fundee. If you know anything about the Bay of Fundee, it is the highest tide swings in the world. So the tide swings at certain times of the year, can be upwards of 10 meters in a 12 hour period in this area of, of the ocean.

And that comes with it. Different time, different types of, um, one of the difficult things for tide swings is it creates subsid currents. [00:30:00] Subsid currents are, are really, really, really bad, nasty. Against rocks and for any kind of cable lay activities and longevity of cable lay scour protection around turbines and stuff like that.

So that’s another thing that subsea that we really haven’t spoke about.

Speaker 3: You know, I knew when you say Bay Bay of funding, I’m like, I know that I have heard that place before and it’s when I was researching for. Tidal power videos for Tidal Stream. It’s like the best place to, to generate electricity from.

Yeah, from Tidal Stream. So I guess if you are gonna be whacking wind turbines in there anyway, maybe you can share some infrastructure and Yeah. Eca a little bit, a little bit more from your, your project.

Speaker 2: 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. Just 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 For Rosie, Yolanda and Joel, I’m Alan Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime [00:36:00] Wind Energy Podcast.