The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

Allen, Joel, and Yolanda share their annual Thanksgiving reflections on a year of major changes in wind energy. They discuss industry collaboration, the offshore wind reset, and upcoming changes in 2026. Thanks to all of our listeners from the Uptime team! 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! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering Tomorrow. Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Alan Hall in the Queen city of Charlotte, North Carolina. Joel Saxon’s up in Wisconsin, and Yolanda Padron is down in Texas, and this is our yearly Thanksgiving edition. Thanks for joining us and, and on this episode we always like to look back at the year and, uh, say all we’re thankful for. We’ve had a number of podcast guests on more than 50, I think total by the time we get to conferences and, uh, all the different places we’ve been over the past year. Joel, it does seem like it’s been a really interesting year. We’ve been able to watch. The changes in the wind industry this year via the eyes of [00:01:00]others. Joel Saxum: Yeah. One of the things that’s really interesting to me when we have guests on is that we have them from a variety of parts of the wind industry sector. So we have ISPs, you know, people running things out in the field, making stuff happen. We’ve got high level, you know, like we have this, some CEOs on from different, uh, people that are really innovative and trying to get floating winged out there. They have like on, we had choreo generation on, so we, so we have all different spectrums of left, right center, Europe, well us, you name it. Uh, new innovative technology. PhD smart people, uh, doing things. Um, also, it’s just a, it’s just a gamut, right? So we get to learn from everybody who has a different kind of view on what’s  Allen Hall: happening. Yolanda, you’ve been in the midst of all this and have gone through a big transition joining us at Weather Guard, lightning Tech, and we’re very thankful for that, for sure. But over the last year, you’ve seen a lot of changes too, ’cause you’ve been in the seat of a blade engineer and a [00:02:00] large operator. What do you think?  Yolanda Padron: Uh, something I am really thankful for this year is, and I think a lot of owner operators are, is just knowing what’s coming up. So there was a lot of chaos in the beginning before the big beautiful bill where everyone theorized on a lot of items. Um, and, and you were just kind of stuck in the middle of the court not really knowing which direction to go in, but. Now we’re all thankful for, for what? It’s brought for the fact that everyone seems to be contributing a lot more, and at least we all know what direction we’re heading in or what the, what the rules are, the of the game are, so we can move accordingly.  Joel Saxum: Yeah. I got some clarity. Right. I think that, but that happened as well, like when we had the IRA bill come in. Three, four years ago, it was the same thing. It was like, well, this bill’s here, and then you read through it. I mean, this was a little bit opposite, right? ’cause it was like, oh, these are all [00:03:00] great things. Right? Um, but there wasn’t clarity on it for like, what, six months until they finalized some of the. Longer on some of the, some of the tax bills and what it would actually mean for the industry and those kind of things. So yeah, sorting this stuff out and what you’ve seen, you’re a hundred percent correct, Yolanda, like all the people we talked to around the industry. Again, specifically in the US because this affects the us but I guess, let me ca caveat that it does affect the global supply chain, not, you know what I mean? Because it’s, it’s not just the, the US that it affects because of the consumption here. So, but what we have heard and seen from people is clarity, right? And we’re seeing a lot of people starting to shift strategy a little bit. Right now, especially we’re in budgeting season for next year, shifting strategy a little bit to actually get in front of, uh, I know like specifically blades, some people are boosting their blades, budgets, um, to get in front of the damages because now we have a, a new reality of how we need to operate our wind farms. The offshore  Allen Hall: shift in the United States has really had a [00:04:00] dramatic impact. On the rest of the world. That was, uh, a little unexpected in the sense that the ramifications of it were broader, uh, just because of so much money going into offshore projects. As soon as they get pulled or canceled, you’ve have billions of dollars on the table at that point. It really affects or seen it. Ecuador seen it. Anybody involved in offshore wind has been deeply affected. Siemens has seen it. GE has clearly seen it. Uh, that has. In my opinion, probably been the, the biggest impact. Not so much the big beautiful bill thing, but the, uh, ongoing effort to pull permits or to put stoppages on, on offshore wind has really done the industry some harm. And honestly, Joel, I’m not sure that’s over. I think there’s still probably another year of the chaos there. Uh, whether that will get settled in the courts or where it’s gonna get settled at. I, I still don’t know. [00:05:00] But you’ve seen a big shift in the industry over in Europe too. You see some changes in offshore wind. It’s not just the US that’s looking at it differently. Yeah. Globally. I think offshore wind  Joel Saxum: right now is in a reset mode where we, we went, go, go, go, go, go get as much in the water as we can for a while. And this is, I’m, I’m talking globally. Um. And then, and now we’re learning some lessons, right? So there’s some commercial lessons. There’s a lot of technical lessons that we’re learning about how this industry works, right? The interesting part of that, the, the on or the offshore wind play here in the States. Here’s some numbers for it, right? So. It onshore wind. In the states, there’s about 160 gigawatts, plus or minus of, uh, deployed production out running, running, gunning, working, spinning all day long. Um, and if you look at the offshore wind play in planned or under development, there’s 66 gigawatts of offshore wind, like it’s sitting there, right? And of that 66, about 12 of them are permitted. Like [00:06:00] are ready to go, but we’re still only at a couple hundred megawatts in the water actually producing. Right. And, and I do want, say, this is what I wanna say. This is, I, I think that we’re taking a reset, we’re learning some things, but from, from my network, I’m seeing, I got a, a whole stack of pictures yesterday from, um, coastal offshore, Virginia Wind. They’ve, and they looked promising. They looked great. It was like a, it was a marshaling facility. There was nelle stacked up, there was transition pieces ready to go. Like, so the industry is still moving forward. It’s just we’re we need to reset our feet, um, and, and then take a couple steps forward instead of those, the couple steps back,  Allen Hall: uh, and the industry itself, and then the employees have been dramatically reduced. So there’s been a lot of people who we’ve known over the past year, they’ve been impacted by this. That are working in different positions, look or in different industries right now, uh, waiting for the wind industry to kind of settle itself [00:07:00] out to, to figure out what the next steps are That has been. Horrible, in my opinion. Uh, uh because you’re losing so much talent, obviously. And when you, when you talk to the people in the wind industry, there’s like, oh, there’s a little bit of fat and we can always cut the fat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we’re, we’re down to the bone. We’re cutting muscle right now. We’re into some bones, some structure. That is not what I anticipated to happen. But you do see the management of these companies being. Uh, very aggressive at the minute. Siemens is very aggressive. Vestas is very aggressive about their product line and, and getting availability way up. GE has made huge changes, pretty much closing LM wind power, uh, and uh, some things happening in South Carolina that we probably people don’t know about yet, but there’s so much happening behind these scenes that’s negative and we have to acknowledge it. It’s not great. I worry about everybody that has been [00:08:00] laid off or is, is knows their job is gonna go away at the end of the year. I struggle with it all the time and I, I think a lot in the wind industry do. But there’s not a lot to do about it besides say, Hey, uh, we’ve gone through this a couple of times. Wind has never been bountiful for 50 years. It’s bountiful for about 10, then it’s down for about five and it comes back for 10. It’s that ebb and flow, but you just hate to be involved with that. It’s particularly engineering ’cause this industry needs engineering right  Joel Saxum: now. All of us on this podcast here have been affected by ups and downs in the industry at some point in time in our life, in in major ways. I guess one of the positive things I have seen that from an operator standpoint, and not as much at the latter half of this year, but at the beginning half of this year is when some of these OEMs were making cuts. There was a lot of people that landed at operators and asset owners that were huge assets to them. They walked in the door with. Reams of knowledge about how, [00:09:00] you know, how a ge turbine works or how the back office process of this works and they’re able to help these operators. So some of that is good. Um, you get some people sp

Allen, Joel, Rosemary, and Yolanda discuss Modvion’s €39M grant for wooden wind turbine towers, leading to a discussion about funding vs. engineering readiness in the wind industry. Plus they highlight Veolia’s blade recycling advances in PES Wind Magazine. And the Weather Guard team announces they’ll be in Edinburgh for the ORE Catapult Offshore Wind Supply Chain Spotlight! Register for Wind Energy O&M Australia 2026!Learn more about CICNDT! 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! Allen Hall: A portion of the Weather Guard team. We’re headed to Scotland for the ORE Catapult Offshore Wind Supply Chain Spotlight, which is gonna happen on December 11th in Edinburgh. We’re gonna attend that and it’s gonna be a, a number of great offshore companies there. We’re hoping to interview a couple of them while we’re there. But Joel, this is a real opportunity, uh, for offshore companies in the UK to showcase what they can do and they can get on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.  Joel Saxum: Of course. So we’re flying over the sixth and seventh there over the weekend. And we will be, uh, in Edinburgh, uh, on the eighth. So Monday morning through Thursday. Thursday and Thursday is the or E Catapult event. And yeah, we’re excited to see some of the companies that are gonna be there, interview some of them, get the, the picture, uh, of the uk um, supply chain, right? Because I think it’s a really cool event that they’re doing. I’d love to see other countries do that. I’d love to see the US do that. Um. Just say like, Hey, this is, these are the companies, the up and [00:01:00] comers and the, the people that are changing the game and, and kinda give them a platform to speak on. So we’re excited to do that. It’s gonna be a one day event. Um, love to see some people join us, but the other side of that thing is we’re gonna be over in Scotland. So we’re, well, we’ve got a couple meetings in Glasgow, a couple meetings in Borough. So if you are around the area, um, of course we’re linking up people on the uptime network, but, uh. If you’re around the area and you want to, you wanna chat anything wind, or maybe you got lightning protection problems, get ahold of us. ’cause we’ll be over there and, uh, happy to drop in and uh, share coffee with you.  Allen Hall: It’s just part of Weather Guards and the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast outreach to the world. So we’re gonna be in Scotland for an entire week. We’re heading down to Melbourne, Australia for probably a couple of weeks while we’re down that way. And we will be somewhere near you over the next year probably. It’s a really good, uh, free service that we provide, is we want to highlight those businesses and those new technology ideas that need a little bit of exposure to grow. And that’s what the Uptime podcast is here to do. So join us [00:02:00] and if you want to reach out to us, you can reach us via LinkedIn, Allen Hall, Joel Saxon. We’ll respond to you and hopefully we can meet you in  Speaker 3: Edinburgh. You’re 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, Alan Hall, Joel Saxon, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes. Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Alan Hall in the Queen city of Charlotte, North Carolina. Soon, the home of Maersk North America, I think we’re going to find out. And also the new Home of Scout, if you haven’t seen the little, what was formerly a MC little vehicle that’s gonna be made, well engineered in Charlotte and then built in South Carolina. So we’re looking forward to that. And with me as Yolanda Pone in Texas. Joel Saxons up in the great state of Wisconsin and Rosemary [00:03:00] Barnes is back in Australia. And there’s plenty of things to talk about this week, and I, I think our pre-recording discussion has centered on wooden wind turbines. And if everybody’s been following, um, mod Vion, they have received a 39.1 million Euro grant and they are making of all things. Wooden wind towers. So, uh, up in Sweden, there’s plenty of wood to make towers out of, out of it. And it’s a laminated process. And if, if you’ve looked online, I encourage everybody to go look online. It’s kind of an interesting technology they have where they’re layering wood together to build these towers sections. And so instead of using steel or other materials, concrete, you can make them outta wood. Uh, so the European Union is backing this, and as Joel has pointed out. This is not the only money they have received to develop this technology.  Joel Saxum: Yeah. Back in 2020, they received a six [00:04:00] and a half million euro. Grant as well. And then they had some investment money come in, um, and it was in Swedish Knox. Okay. Or of course they’re in Sweden, so Makes sense. But that was a, a convertible note around 11, 12 million, uh, euros as well. So when you add this 39 million Euro grant on, you’re looking at about 55, 50 7 million euros in funding over the last five or six years for this company. Allen Hall: How does the European Union decide where to invest? These innovation funds at,  Rosemary Barnes: you know, it’s interesting ’cause I visited MO when I was in Sweden a few months ago. I actually have a video, uh, about to come out hopefully next week. Um, about, yeah, I got a tour of their factory and, uh, interviewed one of their engineers who’s been with them like the whole time. Um, and I visited them just a few days after I visited C 12. I made a video about that as well. That’s a floating vertical axis wind turbine. C 12, just like four days after I visited them, they, um, received the [00:05:00] news that they had been awarded a similarly sized European grant. So, yeah, in the tens of millions, I can’t remember the exact number. And I was thinking, what would I do if I got, you know, 40 million euros, which is like nearly 80 million, I think Australian dollars. Like I could really come up with something major and develop it in that time. It’s not, they haven’t been given the money to come up with the right solution, right? They’ve been given the money for the solution that they already have. And I think that it’s really interesting that these European grants, it’s set up like that where they’re supporting, uh, assume that they’ve got a certain technology readiness level that you have to be at before that they will support you. And that kind of means that you’re locked in to a solution by the time that you’re at that point, right? Rewards only that kind of model where you have a charismatic person with a vision that they just pursue to the end. It does not reward getting the smart people who could find solutions to the real problems. It [00:06:00] doesn’t reward that because you, no one’s getting heaps of money, like $10 million early on to be like, here’s a problem, now find a solution and we’re going to. Fund that through the 10 things that you try that don’t end up working, no one is funding that, right? So all of that has to be done on the basis of your own pockets or the ability of your charisma to convince other people to support it. And I just think that it’s probably like. Not the right way to spend your, you know, if you’ve got like $500 million to spend to get the next big thing in wind energy, you shouldn’t be picking a bunch of companies that are tier L five. You should be getting the smartest people and giving them money to found a company and um, yeah, come up with solutions that way.  Joel Saxum: Is it wooden? Wind turbine tower worth it.  Rosemary Barnes: And ev everyone will have to have to watch my video. ’cause I asked, I asked quite in depth questions ’cause I went into it very, very skeptical thinking that this was a su sustainability play. And I’ve got two issues with that. Like, first of all, wind turbine tower is [00:07:00] not that unsustainable. I mean, wind turbines on average are paying back the energy that it took to make them in, you know, six months or so. But what was interesting is, you know, wood is a, a composite material, right? It’s got the, um. Fibers, cellulose fibers in a malignant matrix. It’s, it’s, it’s a composite material, just like fiberglass is. Why don’t we make fiberglass towers? I mean, it’s partly ’cause of the cost and it’s partly ’cause joining them is quite tricky as well. Um, and yeah, those are probably the, the main two things, but I’ve actually done a bit of work into it. If you could make a fiberglass tower, you could go. Way, way taller than you can with, with a steel tower, with, you know, transport constraints and whatever. So the wooden tower actually has a lot of the advantages that you would find if you had, were able to make a fiberglass tower. So they are expecting to be able to go taller, um, with, you know, they’re as constrained by transport because, you know, the fibers are all running this way. It’s fine to cut it, um, like longitudinally, um, slice it into pieces and join the all site. Doesn’t, um, [00:08:00] reduce the, the. The strength really. So there from that point of view, there’s something to it. If you can go taller, make it easier to go taller with towers, then that’s a real problem that needs a solution. There are other solutions. There’s like NARA Lift, you know the one just got bought by Ford Spanish company where they build a turbine on like a tiny tower and then slot pieces in underneath it to come up. That’s another great solution. Um, people are also looking at 3D printing concrete towers and thing, things like that. So it’s

Allen covers positive developments like EDF’s 261 MW Serra das Almas wind farm in Brazil, Ørsted’s offshore progress in the US, and Shell’s hydrogen deal in Germany. Then the troubling stories: a Nordex technical manager caught mining cryptocurrency inside turbines, and the discovery of asbestos in Goldwind turbine brake pads across multiple Australian wind farms. 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! The wind industry is having quite a week. Some stories are blowing in the right direction. Others… well… you’ll see. Let’s start with the good news. In Brazil… EDF power solutions just powered up the Serra das Almas wind farm. Two hundred sixty-one megawatts. Fifty-eight Danish Vestas turbines spinning in Bahia state. Six hundred thousand homes… now running on wind. Up in the United States… Ørsted is making waves with two offshore wind projects. Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind. Cable installation is underway. Offshore substations are being commissioned. By next year… more than sixteen hundred megawatts will be flowing into Connecticut… Rhode Island… and New York. Over in Germany… Shell is turning wind into hydrogen. They’ve signed a five-year power deal with Nordsee One. Starting in two thousand twenty-seven… offshore wind will feed a one hundred megawatt electrolyzer. Clean electricity making clean fuel. To power everything from trucks to chemical plants. But now… the other stories. In the Netherlands… a technical manager at Nordex wind farms thought he’d found the perfect side hustle. He had the keys. He had the access. He had giant wind turbines spinning out free electricity twenty-four hours a day. And he had a plan. Between August and November of two thousand twenty-two… the man installed three cryptocurrency mining rigs at the Gieterveen wind farm. He plugged them straight into a Nordex router. Inside a substation. Then he drove to Waardpolder. Another wind farm. He climbed inside the turbines. And he hid two Helium network nodes. Connected them to Nordex’s internal network. Month after month… while the turbines spun… his crypto wallet grew. Nobody noticed. Why would they? He was the technical manager. He belonged there. But then… Nordex got hit with something much worse. A ransomware attack. The Conti cybercrime crew. The company was scrambling. Investigating their networks. Looking for breaches. That’s when they found his mining rigs. The courts heard the case earlier this month. The prosecutor was not amused. This wasn’t just theft. This was a man who’d been trusted with critical infrastructure. Giant turbines. Automated systems. Industrial networks. The prosecutor wanted two hundred forty hours of community service. But the judges saw something else. A first-time offender. A man suffering from depression and burnout. Someone who admitted everything. They cut the sentence in half. One hundred twenty hours. Plus four thousand one hundred fifty-five euros in damages. About forty-four hundred dollars. And if he doesn’t pay? Fifty-one days in custody. If he doesn’t complete his community service? Sixty days in jail. The court made one thing crystal clear. He’d shown no concern for the potential disruption to the turbines. No concern for the company’s trust. No concern… that he was running a side business… inside critical infrastructure. But here’s the story that’s really stopped the industry cold. In Tasmania… at the Cattle Hill wind farm… inspectors made a disturbing discovery. Asbestos. In the brake pads. Inside the turbine tower lifts. Now… Tasmania is just the beginning. The turbines were built by Goldwind… And Goldwind supplies turbines to wind farms all across Australia. New South Wales. Victoria. Queensland. WorkSafe Victoria and SafeWork NSW confirmed Friday… asbestos has been found at multiple wind farm sites. White Rock. Gullen Range. Biala. Clarke Creek. Moorabool. Stockyard Hill. The brake pads were imported into Australia. Importing asbestos has been illegal there… since two thousand three. Beijing Energy International says the risk is extremely low. Access to affected turbines is restricted. They’re working with regulators. Testing is underway. But here’s what everyone’s thinking… Last week… asbestos was found in colored sand products from China. Schools shut down. Childcare centers closed. In the Australian Capital Territory. Queensland. South Australia. Now it’s wind turbines. So the wind industry had quite a week. Clean power spinning up in Brazil. Offshore cables going down in America. Hydrogen flowing in Germany. Cryptocurrency crimes in the Netherlands. And asbestos… hiding inside turbines… from China. And that’s the wind industry news for the 24th of November 2025. Join us tomorrow for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

Allen and Joel sit down with Michael McQueenie, Head of Sales for SkySpecs in Europe at the SkySpecs Customer Forum. They discuss the booming European wind energy market, SkySpecs’ role in asset management, and their expansion into solar farm operations. 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! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering Tomorrow. Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight. I have Joel Saxum with me. I’m Allen Hall, the host, and we are here with Michael McQueenie head of sales for SkySpecs over in Europe. Michael, welcome to the show.  Michael McQueenie: Thanks for having me.  Allen Hall: We are at SkySpecs customer Form 2025 and it has been a blowout event, so many operators from all over learning and exchanging information about how they operate their assets. We wanted to have you on today because you’re our reference to Europe and what is happening with SkySpecs in Europe. America and Europe are on different pathways at the moment. What is that status right now in Europe? What are people calling you for today?  Michael McQueenie: the, European market is really booming. we get calls from customers to support [00:01:00] with internal inspections, external inspections as we always have for, nearly a decade now. We are seeing a lot more, discussions around the, enablement services that we can offer. how did, how do we bring a blade engineer and how do we bring a CMS engineer into support and give us, give us more of an insight on the data that we have or, or the data that Skys fix are producing. things are evolving. and, it’s a buoyant offshore industry at the moment.  Allen Hall: yeah, there’s like thousands of turbines going up right now. it used to be when you thought of. Deployment. Unlike Germany, for example, it’d be three turbines on the hillside.  Michael McQueenie: Yeah.  Allen Hall: Now we’re talking about in the uk have hundreds of turbines hitting the water. Michael McQueenie: Yeah.  Allen Hall: And that’s change of scale has driven a lot of operators realize I need expertise in blades, I need expertise in CMS. I need an expert in gearbox, but I don’t necessarily need them full time.  Michael McQueenie: Yeah.  Allen Hall: Skys spec. Can you help me?  Michael McQueenie: the projects [00:02:00] are, they’re fewer projects, but they’re, the scale of these projects are massive. the scale of the turbine scale of the projects and the impact the projects can have on, the country, as a whole is, is massive. So yeah, it’s, it is a. It’s a, it is a great time to be in Europe and to see the growth. it’s been, coming for a long time. I’ve worked with consultancies who are looking at feasibility studies, in offshore, and onshore. But the, the growth has been. Just, it’s just around the corner. And I do feel like now with some of these big projects that they’re installing, and yeah, just given the size of the turbines, it’s it’s massive.  Joel Saxum: one of the things I want to, I think there’s an important context here is that we’re talking, we’re sitting in Ann Arbor, right? we’re in the us You’re over in Europe. I worked for a Danish company for a while and it was always like this seven hour delay. Kinda can I get the in, can I get the support? Can they get the support? Can we work? How do we work back and forth? Sometimes it was cool because you’d send an email at two o’clock and when you woke up in the morning [00:03:00] it was done. That was awesome. But also there was these delays. Now this is the interesting thing here is, and Skys facts. This morning we listened to Cheryl. always a great presentation. Yeah. the head of the TEI blade stuff here. She was delivering some insights, but with her was Thomas. Thomas is in Europe. And you have CMS experts in Europe. You have the local talent that’s over there that can work with these operators on their timelines, on their regular day stuff. They’re not waiting as, and what I’m trying to get to is, is SkySpecs is not a Ann Arbor company. Skyspace is a global company in a big way. And so this, so thinking like, oh, this is an American company, w. Will we use someone that’s more local no. No. Skyspace is a local European company as well.  Michael McQueenie: Yeah, and we’ve got the SMEs over there. it’s not just Cheryl, who’s a fantastic en engineer. Having your at your, disposal, Thomas is phenomenal. customers are seeing real value in integrating him into their team, being the SME [00:04:00] for them, as you, as we said before. Being able to turn ’em off, on and off as required. Don’t, you’ve not got that the FTE cost right. to bring in an SME that, that needs to, support you with a, with an individual component of your, asset. Yeah. Blades are a huge problem. The industry’s seeing that as they’re getting bigger, the problems are getting bigger. but yeah, having, a local presence in Europe is, massive. my inbox is full from, all the US. Inquiries and issues, during the night, just like you’re saying. Yeah. And I wake up to dozens of emails with, requirements on inbox and my to-do list is full. But the, but the reality is yeah, we’re, grown in Europe. we are. Our real solid presence in Europe and we’ve, seen massive growth this year.  Joel Saxum: I think it, it’s part of the value chain there. Touching on the Thomas and Cheryl. Right. So in SkySpecs over this week, we’ve been talking more and more about the, how you guys like to specifically work within a workflow. And that workflow being we have [00:05:00]inspections, we’re in the platform now we’re in horizon, bam. And we can enable the tech enabled services, which is those SMEs which you have inside. The company and then rolling that forward to the repair vendor management, which is happening in a big way in the States. Yesterday I saw a number, $13 million in repairs managed by the Sky Spec team. That’s huge. And, that same capability. And we’re just talking blazes right now, like we haven’t even touched on CMS performance monitoring, financial asset monitoring. That same concept is, is replica replicate in the EU as well.  Michael McQueenie: No, it absolutely is, Our customers have got problems, we can help them with the problems. Thomas is, as you said, we work in workflows and Thomas is, is looking to support customers with how they, touch their data as few times as they possibly can. How do we get from A to B and how does a customer understand what their problems are and how they fix the problems? And sometimes an [00:06:00]SME is the, way to fix that. Thomas has provide, provided huge value to our customers. The design of workflows in Horizon is the, essence. It exists just to try and get from A to B and, and try and drive insights and then next steps. And I think that’s the important part, being, this is the action to  Joel Saxum: get  Michael McQueenie: to the, we’ve got the data, we understand what the data’s telling us. here’s an insight, but actually what is the follow up? And, Thomas is designing that follow up for our customers and providing the support.  Allen Hall: and just a little bit comparison between the United States and Europe, when we still talk to anybody in the United States about a turbine. Almost always, it’s a two megawatt, one and a half megawatt turbine, right? Occasionally a four. Sometimes someone says  Joel Saxum: yesterday like, oh, that’s a three megawatt  Allen Hall: turbine. Whoa, what’s big? And in Europe, three megawatts was like years ago, particularly offshore that, everything’s 6, 8, 10.  Michael McQueenie: Yeah.  Allen Hall: Plus  Michael McQueenie: 3.6 was the common [00:07:00] turbine. Five, eight.  Allen Hall: Yeah.  Michael McQueenie: Years ago, that was, what everyone was working on. And, they’re a very reliable turbine. It’s, there was a reason why there were so many of them installed at that time. but nowadays, we’re helping OEMs with 50 megawatt turbines.  Allen Hall: and I think that’s the, thing that we just don’t see in the states is a turbine that’s 15 megawatts is down for a day. Is so much more expensive and particularly offshore and the expenses go astronomical compared to onshore. Yeah, and Michael, I always see your position of you’re there to save. Millions of pounds or millions, of euros all the time because a shutdown there is huge.  Joel Saxum: Yeah.  Allen Hall: And because the grids are changing so much in Europe where they’re becoming more solar and wind dependent and coal is going to change away. And  Joel Saxum: triage.  Allen Hall: Yeah. The triage bit, is that the SkySpecs is in that position to really help a lot our operators out. You’re [00:08:00] providing the insights and the guidance and the knowledge that. An operator probably doesn’t have, because they don’t have the staff to go do it. It’s a And can you enlighten us like what that is because we just don’t see a lot of that here. Michael McQueenie: Yeah. I think there’s a good reason you don’t see that this was, we are just providing data to some of these, transactions. Whether it’s a due diligence, inspection, or an end of warranty. We are just providing the insights for the customers to. Make their own decisions. Um, so it’s not a SkySpecs decision. We are just providing insights to, to allow them to make a, smart, educated, data-driven decision.  Joel Saxum: I think that’s important, concept too. ’cause like here, the Skys spec user form, of course, we’re in the States, so we’ve been talking and I think there’s only two or three people here from. Yeah. From overseas. So we’ve been talking a lot about the

The crew discusses LM Wind Power’s dramatic layoff of 60% of remaining Danish staff, dropping from 90 to just 31 workers. What does this mean for thousands of wind farms with LM blades? Is government intervention possible? Who might acquire the struggling blade manufacturer? Plus, a preview of the Wind Energy O&M Australia 2026 conference in Melbourne this February. Learn more about CICNDT!Register for ORE Catapult’s UK Offshore Wind Supply Chain Spotlight! 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!  If you haven’t downloaded your latest edition of PES Wind Magazine, now’s the time issue four for 2025. It’s the last issue for 2025 is out and I just received mine in the Royal Mail. I had a brief time to review some of the articles inside of this issue. Tremendous content, uh, for the end of the year. Uh, you wanna sit down and take a good long read. There’s plenty of articles that affect what you’re doing in your wind business, so it’s been a few moments. Go to peswind.com Download your free copy and read it today. You’re 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, Alan Hall, Joel Saxon, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes. Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy [00:01:00]Podcast. I’m your host, Alan Hall in the Queen city of Charlotte, North Carolina. I’ve got Yolanda Padron in Texas. Joel Saxon up in Wisconsin and Rosemary Barnes down under in Australia, and it has been a, a really odd Newsweek. There is a slow down happening in wind. Latest news from Ella Wind Power is they’re gonna lay off about 60% of their staff in Denmark. They’ve only have about 90 employees there at the moment. Which is a dramatic reduction of what that company once was. Uh, so they’re planning to lay off about 59 of the 90 workers that are still there. Uh, the Danish media is reporting. There’s a lot of Danish media reporting on this at the moment. Uh, there’s a letter that was put out by Ellen Windpower and it discusses that customers have canceled orders and are moving, uh, their blade production to internal factories. And I, I assume. That’s a [00:02:00] GE slash Siemens effort that is happening, uh, that’s affecting lm and customers are willing to pay prices that make it possible to run the LM business profitably. Uh, the company has also abandoned all efforts on large blades because I, I assume just because they don’t see a future in it for the time being now, everybody is wondering. How GE Renova is involved in this because they still do own LM wind power. It does seem like there’s two pieces to LM at the minute. One that serves GE Renova and then the another portion of the company that’s just serving outside customers. Uh, so far, if, if you look at what GE Renova paid for the company and what revenue has been brought in, GE Renova has lost about 8.3 billion croner, which is a little over a billion dollars since buying the company in 2017. So it’s never really been. Hugely profitable over that time. And remember a few months ago, maybe a month ago now, or two months ago, the CEO of LM [00:03:00] Windpower left the company. Uh, and I now everyone, I’m not sure what the future is for LM Windpower, uh, because it’s, it has really dramatically shrunk. It’s down to what, like 3000 total employees? I think they were up at one point to a little over when Rosie was there, about 14,000 employees. What has happened? Maybe Rosemary, you should start since you were working there at one point.  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I dunno. It always makes me really sad and there’s still a few people that I used to work with that were there when I went to Denmark in May and caught up with a bunch of, um, my old colleagues and most of them had moved on because a lot of firing had already happened by that point. But there were still a few there, but the mood was pretty despondent and I think that they guessed that this was coming. But I just find it really hard to see how with the number, just the pure number of people that are left there. I, I find it really hard to see how they can even support what they’ve still [00:04:00] got in the field. Um. Let alone like obviously they cut way back on manufacturing. Okay. Cut Way back on developing new products. Okay. But you still do need some capabilities to work through warranty claims and um, you know, and any kind of serial issues. Yeah, I would be worried about things like, um, you know, from time to time you need a new, a new blade or a new set of blades produced. Maybe a lot of them, you know, if you discover an issue, there’s a serial defect that doesn’t, um, become obvious until 10 years into the turbine’s lifetime. You might need to replace a whole bunch of blades and are you gonna be able to, like, what’s, what is gonna happen to this huge number of assets that are out there with LM blades on there? Uh, I, yeah, I, I would really like to see some announcements about what they’re keeping, you know, what functionality they’re planning to keep and what they’re planning to excise.  Joel Saxum: But I mean, at the end of the day, if it’s, if [00:05:00] the business is not profitable to run that they have no. Legal standing to have to stay open? Rosemary Barnes: No, no, of course not. We all know that there, there’s, you know, especially like you go through California, there’s all sorts of coast turbines there that nobody knows how to maintain them anymore. Right. And, um, yeah, and, and around there was one in, um, in Texas as well with some weird kind of gearbox. I can’t remember what exactly, but yeah, like the company went bankrupt, no one knew what to do with them, so they just, you know, like fell into disrepair and couldn’t be used anymore. ’cause if you can’t. Operate them safely, then you can’t let no one, the government is not gonna let you just, you know, just. Try your luck, operate them until rotors start flying off. You know, like that’s not really how it works. So yeah, I do think that like you, you can’t just stay silent about, um, what you expect to happen because you know, like maybe I have just done some, a bit of catastrophizing and, you know, finding worst case scenarios, but that is where your mind naturally goes. And the absence of information about what you can expect, [00:06:00] then that’s what. People are naturally gonna do what I’ve just done and just think through, oh, you know, what, what could this mean for me? It might be really bad. So, um, yeah, it is a little bit, a little bit interesting.  Allen Hall: Delamination and bottom line, failures and blades are difficult problems to detect early. These hidden issues can cost you millions in repairs and lost energy production. C-I-C-N-D-T are specialists to detect these critical flaws before they become expensive burdens. Their non-destructive test technology penetrates deep to blade materials to find voids and cracks. Traditional inspections, completely. Miss C-I-C-N-D-T Maps. Every critical defect delivers actionable reports and provides support to get your blades. Back in service, so visit cic ndt.com because catching blade problems early will save you millions. Yolanda, what are asset managers [00:07:00] thinking about the LM changes as they proceed with orders and think about managing their LM Blade fleet over the next couple of years, knowing that LM is getting much smaller Quicker? Yolanda Padron: Yeah, and this all comes at a time when. A lot of projects are reaching the end of the full service agreements that they had with some of these OEMs, right? So you already know that your risk profile is increasing. You already know. I mean, like Rosie, you said worst case scenario, you have a few years left before you don’t know what to do with some of the issues that are being presented. Uh, because you don’t count with that first line of support that you typically would in this industry. It’s really important to be able to get a good mix of the technical and the commercial. Right? We’ve all seen it, and of course, we’re all a little bit biased because we’re all engineers, right? So we, to us it makes a lot of sense to go over the engineering route. But the pendulum swung, swung so [00:08:00] far towards the commercial for Ella, the ge, that it just, it. They were always thinking about, or it seemed from an outsider’s point of view, right, that they were always thinking about, how can I get the easiest dollar today without really thinking about, okay, five 10 steps in the future, what’s going to happen to my business model? Like, will this be sustainable? It did Just, I don’t know, it seems to me like just letting go of so many engineers and just going, I know Rosie, you mentioned a couple of podcasts ago about how they just kept on going from like Gen A to Gen B, to Gen C, D, and then it just, without really solving any problems initially. Like, it, it, it was just. It’s difficult for me to think that nobody in those leadership positions thought about what was gonna happen in the [00:09:00]future.  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I think it was about day-to-day survival. ’cause I was definitely there like saying, you know, there’s too many, um, technical problems that Yeah. When I was saying that a hundred, a hundred of versions of me were all saying that, a lot of us were saying it. Just in the cafeteria amongst ourselves. And a lot of us, uh, you know, a bit more outspoken Danish people don’t really believe a lot in a strict hierarchy. So certainly people were saying it to directors and VPs and CEOs, but, um, yeah, it was, u

Terra-Gen’s 238.5 MW project in Texas is now fully operational and the Philippines just awarded approvals for more than 10 GWs of renewables. Plus Nordex and Siemens Gamesa are optimistic about their future. 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! There’s news from the wind industry this week. And for once… the headlines tell a story of growth. Down in Hidalgo County, Texas… something worth celebrating happened this week. Terra-Gen commissioned the Monte Cristo ONE Windpower Project. Two hundred thirty-eight-point-five megawatts. Fully operational. The wind facility will generate more than 850 gigawatt-hours of clean electricity every year. Enough to power roughly 81,000 homes. And the power? Already sold. Long-term purchase agreements with two corporate customers. Construction created about 280 jobs at peak activity. More than 490,000 work hours. Not one lost-time incident. They upgraded 11 miles of state roads. Twenty-five miles of county roads. Over its lifetime… the project will deliver more than 100 million dollars to the local community. Property taxes. Landowner payments. Other economic contributions. “It is an honor,” said John O’Connor, Chief Financial Officer for Terra-Gen, “to celebrate the hard work and dedication of the hundreds of men and women who made the commissioning of the Monte Cristo wind project possible.” Meanwhile… halfway around the world in the Philippines… the government just awarded approvals for more than 10 gigawatts of renewable power. That’s ten-point-two gigawatts, to be exact. One hundred twenty-three winning bidders. Solar. Storage. And wind. Onshore wind alone claimed two-point-five gigawatts of that capacity. Twenty-one projects. All set to deliver power by 2029. The Philippines is targeting 50 percent renewable generation by 2040. And they’re not waiting around. The “overwhelming response,” said the department of energy, “reflects the growing confidence of investors.” Back in Europe… in Germany… Nordex is making moves. The turbine manufacturer just secured orders for 123 megawatts from Denkerwulf. Twenty-five onshore wind turbines. Installation begins in 2027. Commissioning in 2028. And Nordex shares? They’re climbing. Hit a multi-year high this week. Trading at 28 euros and 2 cents. Denkerwulf’S orders for Nordex in 2025 now total nearly 144 megawatts. And last week… Mingyang signed a contract with ORE Catapult… a state-owned British test center. They’re going to test main bearings for Mingyangs offshore 18.5MW turbines in the United Kingdom. “A major milestone,” said Mingyang’S chief technology officer for Europe, Marc Sala. “A decisive breakthrough for our local operations.” Mingyang has big plans for Britain. One-point-five billion pounds in investments. Half for factories. Half for the offshore wind supply chain. Now… over at Siemens Gamesa… things are looking up. The wind business has been struggling. Over four fiscal years… losses totaled eight-point-six billion euros. But Chief Executive Officer Christian Bruch confirmed this week… they’re still targeting profitability by 2027. Break-even by 2026. Revenue for full-year 2025 rose 5 percent to ten-point-three-seven-five billion euros. Losses improved slightly. “The journey towards profitability is going to take time,” said Chief Financial Officer Maria Ferraro. “But I think the team is doing a great job.” They expect a positive fourth quarter in 2026. So there you have it. The wind industry is pushing forward. Two hundred thirty-eight-point-five megawatts commissioned in Texas. One hundred twenty-three projects approved in the Philippines. One hundred twenty-three megawatts ordered in Germany. Eighteen-point-five megawatt turbines heading to Britain for testing. And Siemens Gamesa … now seeing light at the end of the tunnel. The numbers tell the story. Things are beginning to stabilize – and there’s hope for the future. That’s the state of the wind industry on the 17th of November 2025. Join us tomorrow for the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.

Morten Handberg, Principal Consultant at Wind Power LAB, joins the show to discuss the many variables within wind turbine blades that operators may not be aware of. From design to materials and operation, understanding your blades is crucial to making informed decisions in the field. 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! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress Powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Morten, welcome back to the program.  Morten Handberg: Thank you so much, Allen. It’s fantastic to be back. It’s, uh, I really, really happy to be back on the show to discuss blades with you guys.  Allen Hall: So you’re a resident blade whisperer, and we wanted to talk about the differences between types of blades even within the same manufacturer, because I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding if I buy a specific OEM turbine that I’m getting the same design all the time, or even just the same basic materials are that are used. That’s not the case anymore.  Morten Handberg: No, I mean, there’s always been variations. Uh, so the B 90 is a very good example because initially was, was released with, uh, with the, with the glass fiber spark cap. [00:01:00] But at later iterations it was, then they then switched it to carbon fiber for, for, for larger, for larger turbines, for higher rated power. But it, it, but it sort of gave that you were not a hundred percent sure. When you initially looked at it, was this actually a ca a glass fiber, uh, beam or a carbon fiber was only when you started to learn the integral, you know, what, what to read in, in the naming convention that you could understand it. But it caused a little confusion about, you know, I’m looking at glass fiber blade or, or a carbon fiber blade. So it’s been there for a while, but we’re seeing it more and more pronounced with, um. Uh, OEMs changing to signs, uh, or OEMs merging together, but keeping their integral design for, for, for various purposes. And then for the, for the, for the people, not in, uh, not in the loop or not looking behind the curtain. They don’t, you don’t know, know, know the difference. So I think it’s really important that we, that we sort of highlight some of those things to make it easier for people to, to, to know, to know this. Allen Hall: There was a generational change. [00:02:00] Uh, even in the 1.5 megawatt class. There were some blades that were fiberglass and then they, there was a trend to move to carbon fiber to make them lighter, but then the designers got better and started putting fiberglass in, where now you have 70 meter blades that are fiberglass worth 35 meter blades, may have had carbon. Yeah, it’s hard to keep up with it.  Morten Handberg: You know, it’s really difficult to know. I mean, for, for, for the longer blades, it’s becoming more and more pronounced that they will be, uh, there will be carbon fiber reinforced. But a good, uh, example of where it doesn’t really apply is actually with, uh, with Siemens cesa. Because if you look at Siemens, Cade said, you know, it’s, it’s Siemens, uh, the original OEM Siemens at the original OEM Cade that merged. Quite a few years back, but you know, we still see the very sharp, uh, difference between the two different designs because whenever you install a Siemens Esso turbine offshore, it’s the Siemens integral blade, it will. And, and they kept that, [00:03:00] uh, and that blade is produced in one cast, it’s called the Integral Blade because that’s their inherited design. And there are no adhesive bond blinds in that. Uh, so all laminated is consolidated. It’s all cast in one go, and then whatever kings and small, uh, defects there, then repaired on factory before they ship offshore. These are pure glass fiber plate that has not changed at all. So that’s sort of the, uh, how do you say, uh, the one that, that, uh, that is outside the norm that we see today. But the Gaza part of it, they, they’ve kept for onshore purposes, they kept their design using, uh, adhered shells or adhered bond lines. So they would have two, uh, share webs and then two shells, uh, that are then, that are then, then, uh, glued together, uh, at the bond lines, on the share, on the trading edge, and on the leading edge. With carbon re, re reinforcement. Um, so that is a massive different design within one [00:04:00] OEM and often when people say, well, we have a problem with the Siemens commes blade, which one? Uh, so then it’s very, very important to understand, you know, what blade type, you know, what, what, what turbine model it is because then we can pretty easily drive it, or even for just know the wind farm because. If it’s offshore, we pretty much, you know, we can, we, we know already. We just need to know the what, what, what size of turbine is, and derive what blade type it is. Onshore becomes a bit more pro problematic because then you need to know, you know, at what, when was it erected, because then, you know, it can be both, but. If you don’t know, then it will just be presented as a Siemens cesa. So it’s really important to keep, uh, in check, uh, when, when, when, when, when looking at that. So that’s a, so that’s a very important distinction that, that we need, need to understand when the child, when determining blade damages,  Allen Hall: right, because the type of damage, the integral blade would suffer really completely different than the sort of the ESA bonded design. I was looking at blades in Oklahoma recently that were integral from like a two megawatt machine, and it, it [00:05:00] looks completely different when you walk up to that blade. You can tell that it’s cast in one piece. It’s very interesting to see, but that makes it, I think the, the thing about those blades is that it’s a little more manufacturing cost to, to make ’em that way, but. They are, uh, tend to be a little more rugged out in service, right?  Morten Handberg: Well, they’re, they’re definitely heavier because of the, the manufacturing process that they go through. Um, they’re more robust. We, I think we can, we can, we can see that from a track record, uh, in general. Um, but they’re, but the trade off is that they are a lot, they’re heavier. So that means that the, that the components that are used in the Drivetrain Tower Foundation, they’re equally heavier. So you pay the price in the, uh, in the cost of the turbine. But, uh, overall on the, on the mainland side, we do see less, at least some structural damages and if something really bad happens, so, uh, the trailing edge more often, not it’s kept to the, to the tip or on that part of the trailing edge. So, so, uh, so [00:06:00] the, the, the blade structure keeps together better, um, because of this consolidation of the laminates. Allen Hall: Right, and the, the traditional ESA design, I’ll call it, has been a bonded design for a long time. The issue with bond lines is there is no peel ply stoppage, so there’s no fasteners in it, in case it starts to come apart, it’ll continue to peel, and that’s what we typically call a banana peel when it really goes bad. The blade splits in two. Once it starts, it really doesn’t have a way to stop. And I think that’s why inspection is so important on those bonded blades. Right?  Morten Handberg: Yeah. Actually, 1, 1, 1 1, 1, 1 small thing. Uh, peel ply is actually something that’s used in laminate production to, uh, to you apply it when you’re casting, you laminate typically for repair. Then when you peel it off. The surface is fresh and clean, and then you can, you can continue working it, adding more, more mobilely or, or new coating. So it removes some, uh, lamination or some grinding process that will otherwise be needed, has no structural purpose in it, [00:07:00] uh, just to kill that myth of, but you’re right. Uh, when you have an adhere blade for any, for any manufacturer, for any purpose. If you have a, uh, if you have a deep bonding that starts, then it can, it can, depending on the location, it can grow really fast because you don’t have the same consolidation. You do have some bike layers that would add over, but it doesn’t have the same integral strength that you would see with the, uh, with the consolidated laminate. Allen Hall: So that’s a big difference. And if you’re looking at blades, and if you haven’t. Looked inside of a hub and looked inside the blade. You, you may not even know. And I think that does happen to a lot of engineers that they, because they, they’re dealing with a thousand blades a lot of times the blade engineers, it’s crazy what they’re asked to go do. You just can’t know all the details all the time. But just knowing these top level things can really help you suss out like where to start. And, and, and even on the inspection res regimes would on an integral blade type design, are you doing different kinds of inspections than you would do on a standard kind of. Mesa bonded up design?  Morten Handberg: I would [00:08:00] say not actually. I mean, you would still, you would still do, uh, you, you’ll still do internal inspections because, um, you can still have defect developing. They would be, uh, slower, uh, growing in general, um, compared to a, uh, to a more thin skin laminate, uh, type blade. But, but the inspection methodology is, is more, less the same. You would do an external inspection to check for lighting damages wearing of, uh, coating. So erosion. Any kind of structural damage in developing over the shell, uh, surfaces. And internally, you would check the bond lines, uh, because even though they’re consolidated, there is still, uh

The crew discusses Equinor’s significant investment in Ørsted, while Ørsted denies plans to merge. They also cover Jupiter Bach’s new plant in Colorado and the upcoming Wind Operation and Maintenance Australia 2026 event. Register for ORE Catapult’s UK Offshore Wind Supply Chain Spotlight!Learn more about Composite Inspection and Consulting! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now, here’s your hosts. Allen Hall, Joel Saxon, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes.  Allen Hall: Welcome back to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall in the queen city of Charlotte, North Carolina. I have Rosemary Barnes in Australia who has, uh, been doing a little bit of travel. Joel is back in Austin, Texas. Man, I feel like everybody’s been traveling a lot and so is Yolanda. The Yolanda has been on the road quite a bit and we have a really interesting week in wind energy. Particularly over in Denmark and Norway, and if you’ve been following the news there, uh, as we all know, Ecuador had a pretty big investment into Sted several months ago where they put in about two and a half [00:01:00] billion dollars to buy 10% of Sted to help write the ship a little bit, and then. A c basically last month, right Joel? It was about last month where they, they spent about a billion dollars for the right rights issue, uh, to keep that stock moving, right, and or, and need more cash. And that’s how they raised it. That’s a total investment, about three and a half billion dollars. That’s a lot of money for anybody to be spending at this moment, and Ecuador is thinking this is a pretty good bet. That’s great and they wanna work closer with Ted. And the talk is that Ecuador wants a boar seat with Ted Joel. Is there any chance that is going to happen?  Joel Saxum: Well, it was, it’s interesting that they brought that up as well, right? Because the initial buy-in, you know, back I think six, nine months ago or whatever it was, they specifically said in their press release, we are not trying to get a board seat. We don’t want to have [00:02:00] control over this, yada, yada, yada. But then when the rights issue came out, and I think it was the, the TED stock dropped like 30% or something that day. Um, they threw more cash in, they got a little bit more power. But it’s like anything, right? Once, once you’ve got, uh, quite a bit of money invested and you have a, have pretty heavy percentage of us of whatever that investment may be, it can be. Half ownership in a car, I don’t care. You want to have a little bit more say about what happens with your money and what the results can be based on strategic decisions. And if you’ve, you know, been watching Ted’s decisions. Now they’ve been at the, the whim of government policies and stuff for the last few years, but they’ve also mistepped a little bit on a couple of them. Uh, so you can see EOR wanting to get in there to protect their investment a little bit. The, in the funny thing to me here, and, um, Rosie, you spent a ton of time up in Denmark, is the, the, the back and forth between the Norwegians and the Danes about, oh, you’re, you’re just our [00:03:00] little brother. You’re our, oh, you’re our distant cousin, da da da da. How they were kind of all at one point in time, a lot, you know, a lot closer. There was what was called the, um, the calmer Union, I think it was. And that was the Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, all under one king. This was a long time ago, but, so there’s that area of the world’s kind of all been playing together and, and if you know a little bit of the history too, all of that money that Norway has, so all the money that Einor has is Danish ex Danish land money. So the Danes gave away their rights to the North Sea, to the Norwegians for whatever reason, and that’s where all the oil was that made the Norwegians rich. That is the EOR pile of cash.  Rosemary Barnes: People talk about that frequently, like really frequently. In Denmark. I probably would’ve had a conversation like, I don’t know, at least once a month, maybe once a week about that topic. I remember one that sticks out in my mind. Um, I always said that Norwegian, like, I love the Norwegian [00:04:00] accent. It sounds like Danish, but they’re, they’re laughing. And I remember saying that to my boss one time, my Danish boss, and he says, yeah, they are laughing, they’re laughing all the way to the bank because they’ve got our oil. And, and every Danish person has a huge chip on their shoulder about it. Um, it, it was like the oil, the oil reservoirs weren’t well known when they did the divide up of who would get, you know, which bits of the ocean. It was mostly about fish. Um, and yeah, so they divided it where they divided it, everyone was happy with it at the time, and then not so long afterwards found out there was just heaps and heaps of, uh, oil under there. And yeah, Norway got quite rich off it. But you know what? I think that, um, Denmark hasn’t done so bad out of it because it kind of forced them to go all in on wind energy in a way that other, like other countries kind of, it’s like during the oil shock of, was it the 1970s? You know, everyone. Looked into wind energy a lot, but as soon as the price went down again, then they were just like, oh, don’t worry about wind energy. But [00:05:00] Denmark just, you know, kept on keeping on and they did have, you know, a few decades of just total world dominance in wind energy. Um, and it also kind of, you know, filtered through to other bits of the economy. It’s, it’s really nice kind of. Smart industry manufacturing. They, they really did train up a whole generation or so of, um, engineers that are, you know, really industrious and innovative and you see them in all sorts of other industries now. So I, I don’t think that Denmark should have a ship on their shoulder about it. I think that, you know, they should consider that they got some, some good out of it as well.  Joel Saxum: I, I completely agree. The, the last funny I’ll throw in there is, if you don’t know this, Ted used to be known as Dong Energy, which is Danish oil and natural gas. So they used to be an and not, that’s not too long ago. That’s only like 10, 12 years ago.  Rosemary Barnes: No, and I think it’s the only example of, um, any fossil fuel company that has flipped, like fully flipped to [00:06:00] renewables. I don’t think there’s another example. Um, maybe, you know, someone can email us and, and tell me I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure they’re the only ones. And so that’s why, like, I, I really like, I’m always going for them, you know, like I’m always cheering them, cheering them on. I want them to succeed because I want that to be something that can happen, you know, so much better if, um, oil and gas companies spend their energy transitioning to renewables and succeeding compared to if they spent their energy trying to, you know, um, stymie the renewable energy transition. So yeah, I, I think good for them.  Allen Hall: Ted is saying no chance of any sort of merger with Ecuador. In fact, there’s CFOs, total analysts, there are no merger plans, and the CEO of Ted is also basically saying we’re focused on our own plan. We, we we’re going to go ahead and get the company righted and we don’t really need a lot of Ecuador involvement. That’s gonna come to a head pretty soon though, if Orec [00:07:00] can’t get their stock back up. Like Joel has pointed out, the, the pressure from Ecuador will slightly diminish over time. And if Oreg can get really rolling, which analysts are saying now is somewhere in the 2030 region before they become, uh, self-sufficient in a, in a sense that, uh, until such time, EOR probably is gonna keep knocking on that door. It does lead to the question, and I think Rosemary, you brought it up, oh, probably six months ago or more, that Ecuador is starting to pull back from its renewables business and starting to focus a little more on the oil and gas side, but they have renewable sort of requirements that they’re going after are goals. And that stead could fulfill those goals, is that still likely to be the situation where EOR is gonna be in oil and gas and Orsa is gonna be in renewables and between the two of them, they satisfy, uh, both sides, Denmark [00:08:00] and Norway’s economic interest?  Rosemary Barnes: I, I think it’s very, very hard actually for, um, a company that’s used still oil and gas projects to move on to renewables. I mean, they’re not. That similar, you might like, you might think it’s one kind of energy, um, moving to another kind of energy. But I think that that totally misunderstands how the, the business, the actual business works, what kinds of, um, projects they do, how risky they are, how much return they require, and the only reason. Companies would do that as if they were kind of forced to.  Joel Saxum: That’s the ESG thing. Yeah.  Rosemary Barnes: Well, it’s not only ESG though, because I mean, eor they are kind of running out like, you know, started off with, um, stuff in Norway or in Norway’s waters. Right. And they’ve, to a certain extent, run out of good projects. I mean, that always happens with, um, with fossil fuels that, you know, the good sites get, um, uh, depleted and you have to find new sites that, that always happens. Um, aside from [00:09:00] public pressure. Legal pressure in some cases to not do this kind of extraction anymore. Like they are the, it is possible

Vestas continues to make headwinds in the US, despite the current administration’s disdain for wind energy. 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! Vestas is making headway in America. Despite a president who has a dim view of their product. Despite the administration halting offshore wind projects across the country. Despite tariffs climbing over one hundred percent. Vestas delivered more than sixty percent MORE to America in the third quarter of this year. Vestas delivered ONSHORE wind turbines. One point four gigawatts [GIG-uh-wahts]. Enough to power more than four hundred thousand homes. Every third turbine they delivered worldwide went to the US – that Danish wind turbine manufacturer – has a chief executive named HENRIK ANDERSEN. VESTAS Chief Executive HENRIK ANDERSEN.Andersen said something remarkable recently: “We are pleased with what we see.” Now you might wonder how. How does a wind company GROW when the White House opposes wind turbines? How do orders INCREASE when the administration halts offshore wind development? How does business boom when tariffs make everything more expensive? Here’s what VESTAS figured out two decades ago. They built blade factories in Colorado. Nacelle factories too. More than twelve hundred American companies are in their supply chain. Creating jobs. Creating trust. Creating roots too deep to pull up. And here’s the thing about electricity in America today: The demand is so HIGH – from factories, from those hungry data centers powering artificial intelligence – that customers will buy power REGARDLESS of tariffs. As Andersen puts it: “Electricity is in such high demand that orders will actually be fulfilled.” Some customers ARE waiting for clarity on those tariffs. VESTAS admits it would have gotten even MORE orders without them. And yes, offshore wind orders? Zero. Not a single megawatt in the third quarter. The administration saw to that. Despite everything – the politics, the tariffs, the offshore freeze – wind remains the most cost-effective electricity source available. ONSHORE wind. Seven to nine percent annual growth expected through twenty thirty. And VESTAS? They’re so confident they just announced a one hundred fifty million EURO share buyback program. That’s money they’re returning to shareholders. You don’t do that unless you believe in what’s coming next. Twenty-five hundred megawatts ordered for the Americas in just one quarter. The US and Germany – driving their order book right now. Now Andersen won’t predict WHEN all those waiting customers will place their orders. “It’s simply too difficult to predict,” he says. But he adds this: “We take the orders we can get” And there’s something else worth knowing. Those rising electricity prices everyone’s feeling? In parts of America, wholesale power costs jumped as much as two hundred sixty-seven percent in just five years. Baltimore. Los Angeles. Minneapolis. Cities far from data centers paying more because the grid serves everyone. VESTAS is betting that when power bills climb, wind becomes MORE attractive. Not less. The cheapest electron wins. And right now, even WITH tariffs, wind is delivering the most affordable power in America. So while Washington halts offshore projects and debates tariffs, this Danish company just keeps building ONSHORE. Keeps hiring. Keeps delivering. One point four gigawatts at a time. The administration froze offshore wind. But VESTAS found another way.

The CDC is investigating offshore wind farms and Virginia Wind has paused blade installations, while the rest of the world installs and benefits from offshore wind. 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! There’s trouble brewing off America’s Atlantic coast. But it’s not coming from beneath the waves. A few weeks ago, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JUNIOR issued unusual marching orders. He directed the CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL to investigate offshore wind farms. The reason? Alleged threats to whales and fishing businesses. The investigation would focus on electromagnetic frequencies from undersea cables. Wind proponents say these frequencies are harmless. But KENNEDY had his concerns. KENNEDY met personally with National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health director JOHN HOWARD. He provided a list of specific experts to contact. The mission: complete the investigation within two months. Now, you might wonder why a health secretary would suddenly become concerned about wind turbines. KENNEDY, once a prominent environmental lawyer, fought for years against a wind project off the coast of MASSACHUSETTS. That project just happened to be near the Kenendy family’s compound. During the twenty twenty-four presidential campaign, he called offshore wind quote “a catastrophe.” If you haven’t heard, the US administration has halted billions of dollars worth of offshore wind projects.  But here’s what the administration didn’t mention. Wildlife veterinarian JENNIFER BLOODGOOD performs whale necropsies for NEW YORK STATE and CORNELL WILDLIFE HEALTH LAB. In her experience, about half the humpback whales in good enough condition to examine show signs of vessel strikes or human interaction. The minke whales? They’re dying from a common infection called brucella [brew-SELL-uh]. “There is currently no evidence that wind energy is influencing whale strandings,” BLOODGOOD reports. Three active mortality events are happening for whales in the Atlantic. But these events involve clusters of deaths that experts consider unusual for reasons that have nothing to do with turbines. The scientific consensus is clear: no evidence links wind farms to whale deaths. BLOODGOOD has even examined dolphin ear bones under microscopes and CT scans, looking for trauma from surveying sound waves. She found nothing. “When a whale strands, there’s a huge effort that goes into responding and figuring out why it died,” she explains. “Many people’s job is to go out and figure out what’s happening.” While AMERICA retreats from offshore wind, CHINA is doubling down. The nation aims to add at least one hundred twenty gigawatts of new wind power capacity annually from twenty twenty-six to twenty thirty. That’s more than twice AMERICA’s goal from twenty twenty. CHINA’s total installed wind power capacity targets one point three terawatts by twenty thirty and at least two terawatts by twenty thirty-five. At DOMINION ENERGY’s Virginia wind project, there’s a different kind of delay. The CHARYBDIS [kuh-RIB-dis], a massive twenty-three-thousand-ton ship that took five years and seven hundred million dollars to build, sits at the PORTSMOUTH MARINE TERMINAL. It can’t begin installing turbine blades yet. Quality assurance items need addressing. The one hundred seventy-six turbine project off the coast of VIRGINIA BEACH would power six hundred sixty thousand homes. Its cost has risen to eleven point two billion dollars, up from nine point eight billion, partly due to tariffs. So while AMERICA investigates phantom threats, the CHARYBDIS waits at the dock. CHINA races ahead with ambitious targets. And whales continue dying from boat strikes and fishing gear entanglement, just as they have for decades. The US administration canceled funding for two programs that used aerial surveys and underwater listening devices to track whale populations. The very programs that could definitively show what’s really happening to these magnificent creatures.

Allen and Joel are joined by Matthew Stead, Chief Product Officer and Co-founder of EOLIGIX-PING, at the SkySpecs Customer Forum 2025. They discuss the biggest takeaways from the forum, new developments at EOLOGIX-PING, and the upcoming Wind Energy O&M Australia event. 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! Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering Tomorrow. Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Alan Hall, and I’m with Joel Saxon. And we are in Ann Arbor, Michigan with Matthew Stead, chief Product Officer. And co-founder of eLog Ping and he is traveled all the way from Australia to be here in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We are at the Skys Specs customer Forum 2025. We’ve been spending the last couple of days with most of the operators in the United States, uh, learning about what issues they are having and how they’re using Skys specs to reduce their overall operational costs. Boy, Matthew, it, it is been a really interesting couple of days hearing where customers are struggling and where they are trying to attack lost revenue. Matthew Stead: Yeah, I think it’s [00:01:00] been amazing. I’m so pleased to be here. And, you know, it was great to get the invitation, uh, from Skyspace. I, I think, um, really the things that I’ve been hearing is the data and pulling data together, uh, to getting those insights as to what’s going wrong and then, and then fixing it and getting the money back. Joel Saxum: Yeah. Yeah. The, the big thing here, we’re talking about the one big beautiful build, and it’s followed on the industry.  Matthew Stead: Yeah.  Joel Saxum: Right. So the, the theme of the event is prevent, perform, or prevent, prevent, predict, perform, I’m gonna get it wrong again.  Allen Hall: There’s three Ps,  Joel Saxum: three very important ps. But what we’re looking at is, is how, how can digitalization, how can the next generation of op intelligent asset management change the way we do things? Because you can’t do things reactively like we were in the past anymore.  Matthew Stead: Yeah,  Joel Saxum: right. Even when budgets were tight before they’re gonna get even tighter. We’re gonna, and we’re gonna have to make sure that these assets are running. And that’s where like your smarter, smarter, smarter, smarter, right? Yeah. Your solutions come into play. The Skys specs team. The, the, the conversations in the sessions. The [00:02:00] conversations around the sessions, the conversations over a beer.  Matthew Stead: Yeah. Yeah.  Joel Saxum: They have all been about the same concepts, right? About how can we do this better, more efficiently. And one of the reasons I really like events. Like this is, like you said, Allen, you have all these operators. Yeah. You have all of these engine. It’s a, it’s a room full of 50 engineers that probably control man, 60 to 70% of the  Allen Hall: Oh yeah.  Matthew Stead: The US  Joel Saxum: fleet. In the US fleet. Right. So you have so much knowledge, so much sharing, and it’s an open forum. You have people p piping up, Hey, we use this strategy. Hey, we do this. I heard some really cool things this week.  Matthew Stead: Yeah, I, I, at breakfast this morning, I was sitting to two guys, one from Canada, one from the US and they were talking about Repowering. One guy’s got GE turbines. He didn’t know that he could put a vestas in a cell on a G turbine.  Joel Saxum: Yeah.  Matthew Stead: And so these guys have exchanged details. Ban.  Joel Saxum: Yeah.  Matthew Stead: That was beautiful to watch together.  Allen Hall: Well, yeah, we’ve, Joel and I have been hosting a number of panels, uh, during the Sky Specs event. If [00:03:00] those have been eyeopening, uh, I hosted one earlier yesterday and it, uh, the panelists, I don’t get too deep about who the panelists were because a lot of this is obviously. It’s just be kept in house. But some of the approaches, uh, to the one big beautiful bill act mm-hmm. Were unique. The insights there that a lot of operators were planning for since last year.  Joel Saxum: Mm-hmm.  Allen Hall: Mm-hmm. And that they felt like this where we are today was likely to happen and they were making adjustments way back in October, November of last year. So the repowering issues that we talk about a lot, and you hear smaller operators really struggling with bigger operators. Already had a plan of attack.  Joel Saxum: Safe harbor. Safe harbor. Safe harbor. Yeah. I’ve heard that word a lot. Right. And that was a, it was a plan from some of those, those, those big operators, uh, their senior leadership that shared some of their strategy, which I was surprised they did. It was fantastic. But, um, if you haven’t been safe harboring, uh, or in, in contact with some good tax lawyers to understand the fall of these things and what it means to your [00:04:00] operation, do that now. Mm-hmm. Um, because you have, we have this cliff coming July 4th next year, and then at the end of the year after that. Allen Hall: Yeah. So the, the amount of planet assets is going to, uh, go down and I think everybody in the industry has been. Talking about that. You see a lot of news reports about the number of wind turbines that will likely, uh, be repowered is gonna drop down. However, uh, a lot of operators have 10 year plans and those plans have not really changed all that much. They, they weren’t super aggressive. They knew that during the Biden administration, this was just an extension mm-hmm. Of the Obama administration, but eventually it was going to end. Mm-hmm. That’s say they were preparing for the end anyway. And you hear that in their operational strategy.  Joel Saxum: Mm-hmm.  Allen Hall: You hear about how they’re trying to reduce their overall spend every year. They’re trying to reduce their o and m budgets by a percent or two, even though the fleet’s getting bigger.  Joel Saxum: Yeah. An interesting conversation I had this morning was right around that was we’re, it was, this was not the same operator you and I talked to, but a different one saying that, Hey, we’re good through 28, 29. Now [00:05:00] what happens with the next administration changes things. But then another person at the table, this was breakfast again, um, said, uh. That being said, what does the job market look like for engineers? My take on it was engineering staffs are being changed. However, if you’re an SME, that’s where, that’s where it lies. And this person at the table was like, that’s awesome to hear, because my new boss just asked me to be the SME for blades in our company. It’s like  Matthew Stead: burn  Joel Saxum: chase it. Yes. The bonus that raised today. Yeah,  Matthew Stead: I, I, two things struck me. One was the, first of all that actually having the bill. Is clarity. I mean it’s actually good. So I mean, that struck me as a real positive that actually there can be  Joel Saxum: getting outta the gray area.  Matthew Stead: There is some optimism there. And the other thing I heard, um, many people were talking about, not necessarily repowering, they were talking about. Whole of life, you know, o and m strategies, right? And then if Repowering happens. So that was a bit of a, a lesson learned for me.  Allen Hall: Well, because a lot of operators that are in the United States have [00:06:00] a European branch, or they were, or European base, or they came  Matthew Stead: from  Allen Hall: there, right? So, and that’s a just completely different model than what we’ve been talking about in the United States and what has been offered in the United States. But that stra, that European strategy has. Transferred over. And so it’s always  Matthew Stead: been,  Allen Hall: yeah. And the plans are there now. Yeah. And, and because they started several months ago, practically a year ago now. Mm-hmm. They have some sanity looking forward. Mm-hmm. They’re not panicking. And I was expecting to hear a little more cautiousness, a little more panic. No. Mm-hmm. Not really.  Joel Saxum: It’s the same conversation that we’ve been having on the podcast for, for, since the follow out of this thing back in July of. This is going to change operational strategies, but being here we’re only what, three months removed from that?  Allen Hall: Mm-hmm.  Joel Saxum: And it seems like the strategies are already there. Allen Hall: It was,  Joel Saxum: right. They’re already like, yeah, we’re we’re moving. Yeah. They’re big companies,  Allen Hall: right? Shore is different. Yeah. I think, I think offshore is where they got a little broadsided.  Joel Saxum: Yeah.  Allen Hall: Onshore not so much. And because [00:07:00] every operator pretty much has. Some level of solar, some level of battery. They just see, all right, if, if wind’s gonna get pummeled for a few months, we’re gonna put in a bunch of solar and we’re the plans, were already in place to do it anyway. So we’re gonna do the solars, we’re gonna do the batteries, we’re gonna make the grid more resilient regardless of what happens to wind, which is great. I, in my opinion, some of the discussions happening in Skys specs this week, were the grid’s gonna get more resilient. We’re gonna handle the AI data power increase, and here’s how we’re gonna do it. Joel Saxum: I heard this morning in another major operator, five to one solar farms to wind farms.  Matthew Stead: Yeah, yeah. That they’re  Joel Saxum: installing.  Matthew Stead: Yeah. More and more it’s wind, solar, battery, and in the same sentence.  Allen Hall: Yeah. And, and solar has always been falling way behind. And w

Allen and Yolanda discuss operational shifts driven by the IRA bill, focusing on the importance of long-term operational strategies, collaboration, and advanced monitoring solutions. 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! Intro: [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 Saxon, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes.  Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall in the Queen city of Charlotte, North Carolina, and I have. Yolanda Padron in Austin, Texas, and Yolanda has been out at a site in West Texas last several days working out some strike tape installations because the, the blade season of Texas is so long and the repair season is so long. Everybody’s really making work and, and maybe even spending a little more money than they thought they were gonna spend this year. Just to get their turbines righted because it is for us at Weather Guard, it’s still lightning season. There are a lot of storms and the amount [00:01:00] of rain in West Texas is crazy. Flooded roads, uh, on highways still days after rainstorms. That tells you that the amount of rain. It has been a little bit of an unusual year on the, on the wind production side because of the weather. Right?  Yolanda Padron: Yeah. It’s, it’s been high production for, for a lot of the, that area. It’s definitely, it’s, you start getting all of those drone inspections in and everything. Sometimes I think it’s, it’s worked out pretty great for some of the operators that maybe didn’t have a lot of, uh, planning capabilities in the past. So then they’re able to come in and actually. Books, some teams to do work even, even though the traditional blade season has passed.  Allen Hall: Oh yeah. Is there gonna be a traditional blade season from here on out? And I think this is where a lot of operators are rethinking, uh, the changes to the IRA bill and the one big beautiful bill aspects is, you know, with the, with the production tax credits sort of waning and, and [00:02:00] wrapping up. They are going to be putting more emphasis on o and m. And in fact, when we were at Skys specs forums, and I keep bringing this up ’cause it’s such a monumental thing that we were at in Ann Arbor a couple weeks ago. The emphasis has moved from definitely from development to more of operations. But the, the level of complexity there has changed. Even talking to operators today, and you and I talked to what, 3, 4, 5 different operators in one day. CMS is huge. You, you’re seeing a, just a complete flip on CMS. Everybody’s willing to try something, which is unique, right?  Yolanda Padron: Yeah. I think nobody loves being a Guinea pig, right? Nobody likes staying behind either. And especially now that you really do need to make sure these blades don’t just last you 10 years before you can repower. They, the team seem to really be focusing a lot more on long-term solutions rather than short term solutions. So it be that, you know, installing Light Lightning diverters be [00:03:00] that installing even just a, a long-term leading edge protection solution instead of a short-term one teams, she seemed to be really looking into. What the overall opex impact is going to be in the very long term for as long as they can keep the site on, as long as they can keep the permits in, instead of having it be something where you can keep the cost low, low, low, low, low, and then you get another investment and you can repower, and then just keep the cost low, low, low, low, and barely keep the site running. Allen Hall: We were one of the sites that had probably one of the highest production in, in terms of this particular operator’s fleet, and, and you could actually see that when you were there. But it does come with a consequence, right? Is that when you run turbines as much as you can possibly maintain them, there is some wear and tear that will happen because of the rougher environments that they’re in. So in order to get that increased capacity factor. You’re gonna have some issues you need to be thinking a little bit broader on. And right now, just because we’ve talked to so many [00:04:00] operators recently, I, I, what are you hearing for like the top three? What are, what are the top three things that operators are doing right now or going after and what should they be doing? Yolanda Padron: I think something that the operator operators seem to be looking into right now. Mainly what are the main issues that’s going on at my site, you know, and how can I quantify them? How can I make sure that whatever impact they have, I can get rid of it now or as soon as possible. Um, they’re really looking into like what the ROI of a specific solution is. Um, it like the short-term ROI of a specific solution and the long-term ROI, I think. We were talking about this the other day, right? And having how sometimes you, the pendulum swings a little more towards the financial right. And sometimes the pendulum swings a little bit more towards the engineering. And I think right now we’re, it seems like we’re being caught in a, in a very strange place where [00:05:00] a lot of the, the engineering emphasis that maybe wasn’t there as much in the past is starting to, to ramp up a little, because you, you need to have that. Information to be able to back up your, your financial, uh, decisions. Allen Hall: Yeah. The, the business case is being made more and more by engineering and maybe engineering, just getting smarter about it for the longest time. Engineers in wind, in my opinion. Just watch it get from the outside. Would say, technically we need to fix these blades, or technically we need to go after these gear boxes. Or technically we need to look at these aspects of the generators or inverters, whatever the, whatever the case may be for a particular site. Transformers, yeah, it’s another one. But all of them were more of a technical thing like, yeah, we’re not really getting our maximum out of this piece of equipment and here’s how we make it better. And the asset managers would really look at that a little. Sideways and say, well, okay, all that’s great technically, but what does it mean to me dollar wise? Now, it seems [00:06:00] like there’s a a lot more asset managers listening to engineering and engineering, translating technical speak into dollars. And I see the pendulum really swinging it back where the asset manager, which do still control the purse strings and rightly so, ’cause engineers are not the best place for that. However, do, do you, don’t you see that kind of shift to engineering having to look at the numbers and are starting to get the numbers from a variety of sources because they have more data to put together a business case and say, yes, if I spend a hundred thousand here, I’m gonna keep a million later. That’s a pretty good business case.  Yolanda Padron: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, we mentioned that there’s been a lot of layoffs everywhere. We’ve had a lot of cutting of engineering teams, so you have these people. Who have to really maximize the resources that they have and the time that they invest in specific issues. Right? So if I have a hundred million dollars issue here and a [00:07:00] $5 million solution here, and then I have a. $1 million issue here with a $1 million solution over here, I’m going to start focusing on that $5 million solution.  Allen Hall: Yeah. Because it really comes down to production at the end of the day. Uh, I know we don’t like to think of it that way, but tournaments need to run. They need to run as long as they can and be as efficient as they can. So you’re right. I think you think we’re seeing a huge shift in, in that aspect. Here’s, here’s what I see in terms of. Where everybody is putting emphasis and we could tell, ’cause we do talk to the people who sell products in these areas. Leading edge erosion, a lot of leading edge erosion salespeople going around the United States at the minute, I assume worldwide and offering their solutions and, and right now, Yolanda, I mean you see all this, what are your top two or three leading edge solutions that you’re hearing about?  Yolanda Padron: I think the top solutions I’m hearing of onshore are the L Polytech [00:08:00] tape or role, uh, the Armor Edge, uh, and Han Tech Technos, the Pan on Solutions. Allen Hall: Yeah, the Pan on Solutions seems to be the incumbent in, in ec uh, having more distribution this year through soccer More. Making great strides there. Uh, the, the shells, uh, are always, especially offshore, but onshore, they’re, they’re tending to get a little more traction than they have. And then the LI, I’ve run into a number of operators this year that were putting on the L from Polytech Tape, which is sort of a. Onshore solution, uh, to erosion A lot of times in the states where there’s dirt and debris around farms where it can be a little bit rough. Those three, all of those, so far I’ve heard, I’ve heard really good things from  Yolanda Padron: no, I’ve, I’ve heard things as, I’ve heard great things as well about those. I’ve seen great things in the field. It, I’ve [00:09:00] seen, uh. People within the field really leaning towards one or the other depending on what exactly is in their farm. So a lot of these wind farms have have crop dusting right around there because. Of where it’s built, right? So you have very strong, toxic, toxic chemicals like going into your blades and hitting them

Alex Fournier, General Manager at Enerteck Wind Services, returns to the spotlight to discuss the company’s growth from specialized blade repair into a full-service wind maintenance provider. Fournier shares how Enerteck is positioning itself to support Quebec’s ambitious wind expansion plans while navigating the unique challenges of Canada’s shortened repair seasons. 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! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Alex, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much guys for having me. It sounds like we had a busy blade season with Enerteck up in Canada. It’s just a different environment up there. What kind of, uh, repairs have you been working on this year?  Alex Fournier: Uh, really busy. Been some, uh, doing some transfer crack, open window and lighting damage, VGs, installation, polytech, erosion, uh, all that kind of stuff from road access on platform. Um, so we been pretty busy. Yeah. What parts of Canada are you focused on right now? Uh, at the beginning of the season we trying to focus on Quebec ’cause the temperature is getting colder faster. Um, so usually we start with Quebec and then we’re making our way up west. So right now our blade season is pretty much done in Quebec, [00:01:00] so now we’re focusing in Ontario. Uh, Ontario have way better, uh, temperature right now in Quebec. It might be around 15 to 20 degrees up north. Versus in Ontario that right now it’s around 22, 25 degrees Celsius.  Joel Saxum: Celsius being the big thing there. Right. For our, for our US listeners, it’s 25 degrees is really cold to us, but very nice to you. Yeah. Thanks. It’s pretty cold.  Allen Hall: Yeah. I think for a lot of listeners, they don’t realize how short the blade repair season is in Canada. How many days do you really have it? It depends where you are, right? There’s some  Alex Fournier: site that, there’s still some snow in May. Um, but, uh, if, if, if we’re in a. Nice area. It can be from, uh, April, may to September, October, November. You’re really pushing it. I think if, if you want to do, uh, blade work in November and que back, you need to have like a 360 platform with the heater and uh, and closed platform. Which we don’t have yet,  Joel Saxum: but yet, [00:02:00] yet is an interesting concept there. You say we don’t have that platform yet, but that kind of points to the eTech. Uh, I mean, of course. Congratulations. A new, new role over there I think, clue us in on that. What is the new role?  Alex Fournier: So it’s general manager, so right now I’m taking care of the whole company, which is either composite or maintenance. Um, I’m doing boat. Um, so if you have any requests either on composite or maintenance and Quebec or candidate, just let me know. But yeah, when I first started I was, uh, director of composite operation and then, uh. Climbing at the ladder to turn on Azure. Now  Joel Saxum: what it makes sense is eTech is, uh, expanding, you know, strategically expanding services. Right? So you guys, uh, of course when we were talking with you and you joined the team there, you had a composite. So we, they just, this is your first big blade season. Sounds like it’s gone very well. Um, but the eTech is a company does a lot more than that. You off air, you’re clueing us in on some of the really cool things you guys are doing. Some, some stuff we’ve never actually really dealt with or heard too much of and wind, [00:03:00] but, um. Yeah, share some of the new things and, uh, areas you guys are expanding into.  Alex Fournier: Yeah, for sure. Well, one of the big thing is Rob access. Um, coming from a Rob access background and as a level three, I really wanted to, uh, break that in, which can help us too with composite, but it can help us with other, uh, maintenance and a turbine like tire cleaning, uh, deck, both removal, all this stuff that you can access in the ladder, we can access by rope. So. That was a big thing for us. Uh, also we’re doing now touring, tensioning, um, constriction as well. Uh, in Quebec there’s a lot of constriction sites coming up. Um, so we got our constriction license with inner deck so we can participate to construction. So. Composite is a big thing, but also everything related to maintenance. Uh, we can do it as well and we’re about to do it.  Allen Hall: What is a construction environment in Canada? We’ve been most recently seeing a lot of good news from Canada regarding [00:04:00] offshore wind, and that is maybe a big push of putting gigawatts out off the coast of Nova Scotia. But what’s happening onshore in Canada, Quebec right now is pretty busy,  Alex Fournier: um, from last year to this year and ongoing year. Um, there’s seven new sites coming up. Um, so we’re pretty busy. Um, and also the, the views of Quebec is to have 10,000, uh, megawatt by 2035. Hydro Quebec is signing big contracts, um, by operating and developing their own site too. Um, they just announced a site, I think it’s a thousand or 2000 megawatt that they wanna build, um, around, uh, second area that, that, that is up north. So with all that, uh, I think Quebec’s gonna be really busy in the next, uh, couple years,  Allen Hall: and Antech is helping those new construction projects. How, because, but so many different phases from scooping the dirt, pouring the concrete. Uh, getting the towers up, getting the cells on, getting the [00:05:00]blades installed, all the pre-inspection, post inspection things that have to happen. And then all the, uh, ohs that they see as they’re putting the towers together. Where are, are you guys focused? At our  Alex Fournier: side, we’re focusing on, uh, more quality control, more or less. Um, and pre-inspection and deliveries. Um, so when pieces come to site, inspect them. If there’s something wrong with them, we will let engineering know and, uh, they can do some action about it. Um, receiving tool, uh, component blade, you know, uh, sometimes they get a little bit messy on the train or the boat, so we’re there to inspect them and repair them. If, if there’s something. Um, air quality control is a big thing, Joel.  Allen Hall: That’s what we’ve been talking about for years. It sounds like Alex is actually doing it. That’s fantastic. How much work is that on a new site right now? What are you seeing as, uh, blades are offloaded from the trains or the trucks? I mean,  Alex Fournier: it’s, uh, it’s not all the time that the blade get banged up, but when it does, we’re at least we’re [00:06:00] there to, uh, repair it. But normally it’s, it’s pretty slow. Um. It doesn’t happen too often, but when it happen, at least they have the manpower to, to repair it. And as of quality control, I mean, uh, in Quebec there’s the union too that is taking care of building the sites. Um, so we’re just there to help the union, uh, making sure that everything is, is made right.  Joel Saxum: I think that’s a good strategic initiative though, because you hear about, or, or Alan, like you said, our conversation we’ve been having, we should be inspecting these things properly when they arrive at site, da, da dah. We, we talk about this and, and people will say, oh, we do that. Oh. Um, but for many times, like in the States, what I’ve seen is, is the person doing the receiving inspection is like what their training is. They’re trained to take the straps off, and that’s about it. And then they’re like, yeah, there’s a big white thing here. Check, like, um, you know, to have an, to have an actual, uh, trained technician, trained subject matter expert, doing those qa QC inspections when they, [00:07:00] when those components arrive on site, is huge. And if I’m an operator, I’m, I want that, that’s what I want. I don’t want. Uh, a warm body telling me that it arrived. Yeah, I know that. Um, but to have some, and then having the capabilities of it’s say, say it’s an Enerteck person, right? And they, and they’ve been around the, they’ve been around blades. They may be a blade repair technician, uh, accepting the blades at site and they go, we can fix this. This is how we can do this. And then you have that continuity there, um, to make sure that these things are done right. They’ve been accepted. They’re good to go up tower, so you’re not. Uh, having delays in trying to mobilize a repair crew or, that’s a big thing. I know because sometimes people just don’t want to, they’re like, we’re not gonna repair this one because we need to get this thing hung so we’re not gonna deal with it. You run into that stuff,  Alex Fournier: it’s not too bad. ’cause since we have experts that know what they’re doing, we can tell people like, look, you shall not, let’s say crane that blade like this, he should already repair it. Normally, like people, you know, they’re not that, uh, outta wrench that they will say, oh, let’s just do it anyway. Um. [00:08:00] So it’s, it’s not too bad, but definitely having someone that know what they’re doing, it’s definitely a, an advantage there.  Allen Hall: One of the things we’ve been talking about also recently, and it seems to be a, a bigger and bigger issue, is, uh, icing systems or de-icing systems. And I’m really curious where Canada is heading in that realm. Are new turbines arriving on site in Quebec? It seems like they would have to have anti-icing systems. What kind of systems are they? Getting, what are they thinking about? How are they planning ahead for some of the winters? Hey, Quebec, at  Alex Fournier: least it’s the power utility company. I drew Quebec that said yo

Allen, Rosemary, and Yolanda discuss the IEA’s 27% cut to offshore wind forecasts, GE’s wind financials, and Ming Yang’s revolutionary 50MW dual-rotor turbine. Register for the next SkySpecs Webinar! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now here’s your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxon, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes.  Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wintery Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall in the Queen city of Charlotte, North Carolina. Rosemary’s in Australia on her way to Sydney and Yolanda Padrone is here on site at a wind farm in Texas and there has been a, a number of news articles this week. Joel’s over actually in Copenhagen enjoying, uh, the sites and sounds of that great city, the International Energy Agency slash its five year offshore wind growth forecast by. Are you ready for this? 27% citing policy shifts, obviously in the United States and [00:01:00] project cancellations across Europe and Asia. The big one in Asia is the Japan’s Mitsubishi pulling out a couple of projects there when costs, um, more than doubled according to them. And Denmark is changing from, uh, negative bidding auctions in favor of contracts for different, so there has been a, a big pullback in offshore wind. It’s not zero, you know, it’s not going to zero at any time. I think there’s just a lot of projects that appear to be reassessing the interest rate environments, the ability to get turbines, the cost of ships, everything. And rosemary in Australia, it does seem like there’s been a little bit of a pullback there too for offshore wind. Uh,  Rosemary Barnes: yeah. I mean it’s, it’s hard ’cause we’re still like in such a, just a nascent part of the. Industry. It’s still really far from clear whether we need or are going to get any offshore wind at all. Victoria has some pretty solid commitments to it. The government [00:02:00] does so. That’s probably as close as, um, anything to being certain that we’ll get some offshore wind. But, um, probably we’ve all learned, America has shown us that a political com commitment is not as, you know, a government commitment is not as locked in as what we probably would’ve thought it would mean, um, a few years ago. So, yeah, we’ll see. I think Australia is struggling like the rest of the world. We’re struggling a bit just in general with getting projects to, um, FID and. You know, getting construction actually underway and offshore wind is just like, you know, the same problems but on steroids. So it’s no surprise that you’d be seeing more challenges there. There’s been a few projects that have, um, been canceled or paused, but you know, they weren’t at the point where there were definitely going ahead. So it’s, you know, like there’s a huge pipeline that makes almost no sense for how many projects there are in planning. Obviously some of them are going to [00:03:00] not go ahead, probably most of them. Um, and yeah, so we’ll, we’ll probably see many more cancellations and I think we’ll see at least a few offshore wind farms and probably those early examples are gonna dictate a bit how easy it is for other people to follow, or how much anyone even wants to follow. Allen Hall: Well, is it gonna become a case where. Certain countries are, uh, focused on certain energy sources like France and Nuclear, and the UK will be offshore wind, onshore wind, and solar. Germany sort of a mix of everything, coal for a long time and they’ve gone away from nuclear there. But it does seem like every country has its own specialty and is that where we’re headed, that we’re just gonna see the best solution for each particular part of the world? Rosemary Barnes: It’s really hard to get very decarbonized grids if you specialize too much. Like there. There really isn’t a technology that can just do everything, um, on its own. So, you [00:04:00] know, solar power is very, very cheap, but the sun sets at night. So obviously you’re gonna, at the very least, need some batteries to get you through the evenings if you’re relying mostly on solar power and then wind energy, obviously it’s not windy every day, even in really windy places like Denmark in the uk it’s still, you know, there are wind lulls, so you’re not gonna be able to rely solely on that nuclear power, just kind of chugs along at a fairly, um, you know, constant output. If you turn it up and down too much, then you’re gonna end up, you need to like overbuild a lot. If you try and size your, your new, your electricity system just based on nuclear meeting, peak load, that’s a whole lot of reactor that’s gonna be not doing much most of the time, aside from the technical complications with being able to turn up and down. And then even, you know, some of the traditional fossil fuels don’t do a very good job at responding flexibly. Coal power has, you know, similar issues to nuclear and it’s probably even harder to turn up and down. Um, [00:05:00] and then I guess gas is gas Peakers could, you could probably do everything with gas peakers if you want it. They can turn on and off very quickly. But, uh, the. Gas picker plants are not very efficient. So there’s very high fuel costs and not to mention the, um, climate impact of just burning gas all the time and all of the, um, upstream emissions that come from a gas system. So I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to specialize too much, but of course, every country has technologies that they’re familiar with and comfortable with. It’s never gonna be the sensible engineering decision to just go all in on one technology.  Allen Hall: Will batteries be the connector? For most of these technologies, and I bring this up because there’s been a lot of more recent discussions about data centers and Yolanda hop in here too because, uh, you work for an operator that was involved with batteries. But the more, and I’ve been following this relatively closely the last month in doing more and more research in it, but like the, the [00:06:00] Colossus two that Elon’s building in Tennessee, there’s a big part of that distribution. From generation to delivery to the AI data center is a massive amount of batteries because of the up down nature of that load that they need a buffer. Well, we see more batteries be deployed because of the AI data centers. And is that, can that be leveraged the other way to help balance out a grid that does have a lot of solar? It does have a lot of wind because the data centers are gonna be generically spread around. Countries.  Yolanda Padron: Yeah. Uh, yeah, I think it’s, it, the data centers should definitely, I, I mean, it does look like everything’s trending, right? To have them, um, include batteries as part of their, of their scope to be able to balance everything out. I know we’re seeing, especially in the us like a lot of the, um, the behind the meter [00:07:00] projects coming online and taking advantage of the, the wind and solar, but. For those rolls where we might not get the perfect generation that they need to be able to exist. Right. Like the batteries will definitely, uh, be that bridge, uh, to fill the gap there.  Allen Hall: Yeah. And even in the Colossus case where they have gas turbine generation and they’ve taken over an old power plant that was across the river in um, Mississippi, they’re still putting massive batteries in rosemary. Because the data centers are, I think the consumption has always been that data centers are gonna be this kind of constant power input and that the computers are all gonna be working at maximum all the time. But what they’re finding is that it is not because they’re being trained at their moving up and down from like 10% of capacity to a hundred percent. So the grid’s not made for that?  Rosemary Barnes: No. I mean, uh, the, the grid’s [00:08:00] not, I mean, when did the, was the grid. Designed or was it even designed, you know, like a hundred years ago and we kind of just, um, patched, patched it together as we needed to. It’s not like there, there wasn’t some yeah, like type of load that the grid was designed for. People have always just made do with what they had available and then adapted to the characteristics of that. I mean, I don’t know, do you have off peak water heaters in the US because in Australia we have like, you can get a separate, a separate. Signal coming to your house that will turn on and off, uh, your electric water heater in off peak times. And in the past, like traditionally, that was always overnight and it was specifically done. Like we specifically put all of this infrastructure in place to do that because there needed to be something to use the electricity that coal power plants were generating overnight. So, you know, like it was, um, you, you take what you can get as far as electricity generation and then you, you use it in the most effective way that you can come up with. Allen Hall: Let me understand that for a minute because I’ve never heard of [00:09:00] this before, and I, I, we, you and I have been talking about energy for 20 odd years at this point, but, so they would turn on your water heater in your home to act as a load for the coal fired electricity plant.  Rosemary Barnes: You have a separate circuit that has off pa loads on it, which is usually just a hot water heater. And then you can get, um, at. Different tariff from your electricity provider. There’s the regular and then the off peak timing. ’cause this is before anyone had any smart meters and you

This episode covers three major wind power milestones: Germany hitting 51 GW of wind output with negative electricity prices, France launching its first floating offshore wind farm without subsidies, and Australia’s Goyder South becoming South Australia’s largest wind farm at 412 MW. 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! Welcome to Uptime News. Flash Industry News Lightning fast. Your host, Alan Hall, shares the renewable industry news you may have missed. Allen Hall 2025: There is news today from three continents about wind power in Germany. Last Friday, the wind began to blow storm Benjamins swed across the northern regions. Wind turbines spun faster and faster. By mid-morning wind output hit 51 gigawatts. That’s right. 51 gigawatts the highest. Since early last year, wind and solar together met nearly all of Germany’s electricity needs, and then something happened that would have seemed impossible. 20 years ago, the price of electricity went negative. Minus seven euros and 15 cents per megawatt hour. Too much wind, too much power, not enough demand. Meanwhile, off the coast of Southern [00:01:00] France, dignitaries gathered for a celebration. The Provenance Grand Large floating offshore wind farm. 25 megawatts. Three Siemens Gamesa turbines mounted on floating platforms. France’s first floating offshore wind project. a real milestone, but here is what caught everyone’s attention. No government subsidies. EDF, Enbridge and CPP investments. Finance the entire project themselves. Self-finance, offshore wind in France. Halfway around the world in South Australia, Neoen inaugurated Goyder South. 412 megawatts, 75 turbines, the largest wind farm in the state, the largest in Neoen portfolio. It will generate 1.5 TERAWATT hours annually. That’s a 20% increase in South Australia’s total wind generation.[00:02:00] The state is racing towards 100% net renewables by 2027. Goyder South created 400 construction jobs, 12 permanent positions, over 100 million Australian dollars in local economic impact. Three different stories, three different continents, Europe, Asia Pacific, all celebrating wind power. But there is something else connecting these projects. Something the general public does not see something only industry professionals understand. 20 years ago, wind energy was expensive, subsidized, and uncertain . Critics called it a fantasy that would never compete with coal or natural gas. Today, Germany has so much wind power that prices go negative. France builds offshore wind farms without government money. Australia bets its entire energy future on renewables, and here is the number that tells the real [00:03:00] story. In 2005, global wind power capacity was 59 gigawatts. Today it exceeds 1000 gigawatts the cost per megawatt hour. It has dropped about 85%. Wind power went from the most expensive electricity source to one of the cheapest in about two decades faster than pretty much anyone had predicted, cheaper than anyone had really forecasted. the critics said it could not be done, and the skeptics said it would never compete. The doubters said it was decades away, and they were pretty much all wrong. Today France celebrates its first commercial scale floating offshore wind farm. And Germany’s grid operator manages negative prices as routine Australia plans to run an entire state on renewable energy. Within about two years, the impossible became inevitable, and you, the wind energy professionals listening to this, you [00:04:00] made it happen. Engineers, technicians, project managers, turbine designers, grid operators. Every one of you helped prove the skeptics wrong. 20 years ago, you were building a dream. Today you are powering the world.

Eric van Genuchten, COO and Co-founder of Sensing360, explains how fiber optic technology is changing gearbox monitoring by catching failures that standard vibration sensors miss. The company’s system uses light-based sensors mounted directly onto planetary gearboxes to measure tiny steel deformations and load changes, providing early warning for the 10% of catastrophic failures current monitoring can’t detect. 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! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering. Tomorrow I am here with Eric van Genuchten. Uh, so Eric is the COO and Co-founder of Sensing 360. Um, and they are bringing optics, um, to monitoring for gearbox, other rotational equipment. Uh, we’re gonna talk a little bit about what that means for the wind industry today, implementation retrofits, uh, from the factory, all kinds of good stuff. So, Eric, can you give us a little bit of a, of your background? What’s, what makes you an expert in the space?  Eric van Genuchten: Uh, that’s a good question. So basically my background is. Uh, I studied physics when I was much younger than I’m now, so, uh, I’m not gonna disclose when, but, uh, I’ve been working since roughly 20 years and I have a background in SKF in the [00:01:00] bearing, uh, uh, manufacturing space. And basically I’ve been working within SKF as condition monitoring, uh, solution developer. So I’ve been in condition monitoring for almost 15 years now. And from SKF, where we developed, uh, condition monitoring systems for all kind of applications, but also wind of course, we went towards, um, load sensing of barrens to be very specific to help our large customers. And for that we used, uh, fiber sensing. And, uh, eight years ago, seven and a half years ago, uh, I started with two colleagues. I started sensing 360. Which is the 360 is of course the rotation, but we are using five optical sand or optics, uh, for rotating equipment, mainly bearings, large bearings, gear boxes. And uh, we have been focusing a lot on wind, uh, the last five years, uh, mainly on the planetary gearbox because that’s a challenging part from the rotating, uh, [00:02:00] system to monitor. So that’s where we, uh, think we can add some value.  Joel Saxum: So I know like, uh, I, I wanna share this with the users too. Our listeners here too, because I came across your technology man, three, four or five years ago or something, uh, over in Europe. I, I think it was, we were in Copenhagen, wind, Europe and Copenhagen. Um, and I remember seeing you guys in like the startup space and I walked over and you had like, basically what looked to be, um, a stainless steel bearing race on the, on the table. With your sensor package on it and a live readout. And I looked at it and I went to pick it up and I was like, this is interesting. And when I picked it up, just my hand on it, I looked at the screen and I could see all the deflections happening on the screen from just me grabbing this. And I mean, it was, I mean, you remember what the product thing there was? It was probably four millimeters thick of stainless steel. Like that’s not, I’m not squishing that thing with my hand, but you could see it. Eric van Genuchten: Yeah, no, a lot of people checked if we had a camera around it to see if they were mimicking the move. But basically, [00:03:00] if you ring about it, it’s, it’s this, this product still, we still have it, it’s still operational. And this is the, the, the type of bearing a small, relatively small one for, for let’s say, um, wind. But it’s, uh, 22 kilotons of bearing and you can still see the pinching of your arms. So, uh, indeed. And that’s basically what we do. We, we, we integrate our sensors in steel and make, uh, I don’t say stupid steel smart, or if you put it around, we made rotating equipment smarter if you rephrase it vaguely, basically. Joel Saxum: I like that. I like that. So, um, you know, in the wind industry, if you’re, if you talk about the past, the past was. Uh, when blades were shorter, of course now everybody’s worried about blades, blades, blades. That’s what we hear all the time. But when blades were shorter and more robust, the problem was gear boxes. It was, what are we doing about this rotating equipment? We’re having failures. This is a, this is a regular thing. Um, we’ve gotten a little bit past that, um, with. Better bearing [00:04:00] technology, more iterations of gear boxes, different things of this sort. But there’s still issues out there. Um, and, but this is your mission statement, right? So can you describe the problem of basically what you guys see in the field and what you’re trying to solve?  Eric van Genuchten: Yeah, so the problem in the field where we see gearbox specific and also what has been accomplished with several OEMs, because we, we like to work with customers because that basically brings the real problems outside is, is still. And it’s, it’s valid for all slowly rotating equipment, but it’s still, uh, if it’s slowly rotating, there’s a lot, a lot of energy to do the classical, more classical vibration monitoring. So you have a challenge to predict failures, and that’s what we are still, uh, focusing on eliminating failure. So let’s say in a bare main bearing, they get 99% of the failures by vibration monitoring. In the high speed shop bearing, they get the same amount, but in the. Gear In the gearbox, they get 90%, so there’s still 10% of fillers they cannot detect. And [00:05:00] planetary gearbox fillers are pretty catastrophic. They are, let’s say, huge replacements, cranes downtime. So, um, yeah, we, we want to predict it better. And secondly, um. Like all rotating parts basically. Do you translate the rotation to It’s the fixed world and it’s, it’s as we say, I used to say the bearing is not, the victim is not the cause, but the victim of a failure. Um, it is, you can derive almost all your running conditions from that single point of, uh, measurement. So operation conditions, misbalance unbalance where, so you can make predictions about, this is my. Yeah, statement prediction about this is the drive line. And of course, as you mentioned, a wind turbine is not only a drive line, the weakest link kind of defines the total life, but the drive line is an essential part of it. Uh, so it’s still a complex system to monitor. It currents [00:06:00] current vibration monitoring, and we, we add basically load and strain sensing towards it. Therefore we do better predictions.  Joel Saxum: Yeah, because I mean, the answer here is, or the, the, what we’re trying to arrive at is we want to have early prediction of what would be a failure, right? Because we want the up tower repair. We want the 20, 30, 40, $50,000 repair versus the. 300,000, $400,000 repair where you’re replacing gear boxes or planetary or all kinds of things of that sort. Um, so the tech, the technology that you guys have, of course you’re using fiber optics, which we can, you can arrive at, uh, a much more finite measurement. Can you explain how that works? I guess let’s take the first, the, the, the first side of it. Let’s explain how it works, if it’s integrated, say from an OEM standpoint. Yeah.  Eric van Genuchten: So  Joel Saxum: if it’s  Eric van Genuchten: integrated from an OE EM standpoint, and we’re working with two. Two of them, and there’s not that many. So basically when you integrate it, you put it directly on the outside of the, the ring gear, so the freely accessible site, uh, [00:07:00] uh, part of the system, and it’s directly put on the outside. And as you mentioned, you can integrate more very sensitive sensors. And due to the fact that you have more sensors and that they’re so sensitive, you can distinguish between temperature, uh, loading, uh, misbalance, so you have more information than just one. Basic string gauge. Uh, so we integrated on the outside. Then basically when the planets are rolling, so you have the planets and you have the sun, the planets are rotating. It presses basically the steel way. And we measure that. And that measurement can be done, integrated at the OEM. And then, uh, you get a, a smart gearbox basically, which measures, uh, torque and load sharing and used for prediction, even as you mentioned. To prevent the, the, the, the small opt tower repairs or to actually to prevent the big non-op tower repairs, but do the small opt towers, repairs, and even winning time if you have to replace it anyways, the whole logistics saves a lot of money and time if you know it six months upfront instead of two [00:08:00] weeks. Joel Saxum: So speaking of OEMs though, right, because of course weather guard here, we’re an aftermarket product company and we speak with OEMs about integrating from the factory level and, and those kind of things quite regularly, uh, as well as operators, right? You’re starting to see operators put aftermarket solutions that they’ve deemed to be good in their turbine supply agreements are in their turbine RFPs. Hey, hey. OEMs, we want this. Um, you guys are working directly with OEMs. That’s a tough thing to do. Congrats on that. Right? Um, so what are they using it for? What I mean, of course we know sensing, right? But if it’s, it’s an advanced thing. It’s not on every turbine. Why, why your system? Why, why are they using it? Eric van Genuchten: The main reasons, the two main reasons to use it maybe have to make three reasons to use it, is the. The main reason is that there’s now a trend towards journal bearings. They’re cheaper, they’re essentially longer life. So in th

Register for the next SkySpecs Webinar! Allen, Joel, Rosemary, joined by Yolanda Padron, discuss RWE’s pilot project using drones to transport equipment uptower. Plus Mingyang has announced plans to invest $2B into a UK offshore wind manufacturing center. And Renvo’ article in PES Wind Magazine highlights the needs for a convenient spare parts marketplace in the wind industry. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now here’s your hosts, Alan Hall, Joel Saxon, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes. Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Alan Hall in the Queen city of Charlotte, North Carolina. And I. Have everybody else on the podcast is in the same state. Rosemary is in Texas, in Houston, Texas. Joel’s in Austin, Texas, and our newest employee, Yolanda Barone, is in Austin, Texas. Yolanda, welcome to the podcast. You’re, uh, just joined us a couple of days ago and we’re super excited to have you. There’s been a lot going on in the wind business. Uh, Rosemary’s actually over here for a conference and Joel’s been helping [00:01:00] out at that conference. Just so everybody knows, Yolanda’s gonna be our blade expert at Weather Guard helping us with a, a number of issues that operators have around the world, uh, for things that Rosie can’t take care of. Call in Yolanda. So leading off this week, an interesting story from RWE and a big press release about it. Joel, uh, RDB has achieved a breakthrough in offshore wind logistics. By successfully testing cargo drones at its German wind farms, and, uh, the first time in German offshore airspace. Both long range autonomous drones and short distant cargo drones have been used in daily wind farm operations. Uh, the pilot project demonstrated how different drone types can deliver spare parts, tools, and supplies to turbines. Uh, they were able to move up. About 10 kilograms, which is like roughly 25 pounds over about 40 kilometers. [00:02:00] That’s a pretty good rate. Uh, this is unique though to Europe because I think in the United States we’re not even allowed to do this, right? Um, you can, it just depends on getting special permits. So it’s called a bv, LOS or BV loss, uh, beyond visual line of sight. Uh, so you can get, if you have specific, uh, software packages and you’re not over a major city and certain things, you can get those kind of, um, certificates from the FAA, but they’re not easy. Uh, the, the cool thing about this is, I mean, let’s just put our technician hat on for a second. Even an onshore wind farm. I’m up tower and I go, oh, Alan and Rosemary and Yolanda and I are up tower and, and I go, who brought up the 10 millimeter socket? And none of us did. Now we have to draw short straws to see you, has to climb all the way down and get the 10 millimeter and come all the way back up. Whereas with a drone, you could just fly up, land on the nelle and you have your tool, but it also means that you don’t have to [00:03:00] bring everything that you might conceivably need with you up there. So like when you are climbing towers every day, you’ve, you’re taking so much junk with you every time you go up, every time you go down and. Like it sounds easy. Oh, they’ve got elevators in there. And that’s true. You don’t have to like put it in a backpack and climb up a ladder with it. Um, in towers that have a lift, but it’s still, once you get to the top of the lift, you still have to climb up a ladder to get into the nasal. And then if you’ve gotta get out into the hub. And so you are still like picking up huge bags of stuff and um, yeah. Hauling them above your head. Always definitely exceeding the limit that you’ve just done your special training to promise that you’ll never lift more than 20 kilos. Um, you, yeah, it’s just like, it’s crazy the amount of stuff that you go schlep around with you because you don’t wanna have to go back down if you forget something. So this means you can take up your toolkit for what you’re expected to need. Of course, you’ve got a lot of bulky safety [00:04:00] equipment that you have to take up ’cause you don’t know when you’re gonna need that. Um, but yeah, it’s gonna massively reduce the amount of stuff that you need to take up. Rosa, you bring up a lot of good points. Right? And that’s just the, the daily active operations. And we’re, and we’re, I’m just thinking right now with Onshore Wind Farm, now go offshore and it’s, it’s boat landings into transition pieces. The, the amount of HSE risk just to transfer onto, uh, a tower or off of a tower to get components. It’s that much more complicated. It’s that much more HSE risk. So. This makes absolute sense and these technologies have been kind of floating around for a while. Um, and one of the big things was, you know, of course it’s just the basics of drone stuff. So it’s can we safely lift this much, can we get the permits to lift this much? Because like the CAA over in the EU there, they had a limit for a long time as well of, I think it was. 25 kilograms or something like that for like the whole drone setup couldn’t, it, couldn’t exceed that. Um, so you have to get certain permits [00:05:00] to do all these different things, but then it was, how do we safely precision land and take off and deliver the stuff? So new advancements in, um, LOC localization, so like slam technologies, um, simultaneous location and mapping. So not just relying on GPS, but actually sensing what’s around you, whether it has, you know, a QR type. April, April tag codes that the drone camera follows and then kind of maps itself onto. Or if it’s has that, uh, the ability to see the blades and make sure it doesn’t run into them autonomously. So the, the drone world has matured enough where this technology is like something that’s pretty normal now. You can see these things, drones, landing autonomously on boats that are driving by themselves and on the back of cars. Like it’s pretty cool stuff. Uh, but it was only gonna be so long until it made its way into industrial uses. And this is a great one. You’re reducing risk, you’re reducing time, uh, saving money, all of the, you’re, you’re literally ticking [00:06:00] every box for operations. That makes this cool. I, I really like this. Uh, kudos to R to B for, for making this happen. Well, Yolanda, they should be doing this onshore too, right? Because a lot of o and m buildings are not necessarily close to the wind farm. How many wind farms in Texas have we driven? Ooh. Five, 10 miles just to get to the turbine. Man, it would be a lot easier just to have a drone, wouldn’t it? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it, it would save the team so much time and just so much effort. Like Rosie was saying, to climb those turbines. The way we’re doing it now is with electric truck, right? Isn’t that, uh, RWE was doing a lot of the Ford, what’s the Ford Electric pickup truck, Joel? Wasn’t that RWE or was that Orad? That was Vestas. The Ford Lightning, we could just buy a bunch of cyber trucks and they could drive themselves out to the site, I suppose, if they can last through all the potholes on these sites. That’s another thing you have to think about is technician time and the wear and tear on vehicles and stuff. If you at these o and m buildings, if you could, yeah, grab that piece of kit and, oh, I’m at, I’m at, uh, [00:07:00] tower, you know, WTG 17, but also the drone delivers you, your, your nuts and bolts or your package or whatever your name may or your lunch maybe. That would be a good one too. Cup of coffee. What do I feel like the majority use of this drone technology will be for lunch? Hot lunch to the top of the tower. Come on. I’m sure I’ve told this story before, but I think it was New Brunswick when I climbed there, everybody had this specific electric crockpot that they would bring up with them and they would plug it in first thing, like as soon as they got up to the um, miss Cell, they would plug in their crockpot and then they would have a hot lunch. And I had something that I had bought from the seven 11 ’cause that’s all there was in town. It was, it was miserable every single day. Here’s a question for you. I’m gonna ask this one. Maybe we should ask Alex Forer from Enertech this one. But, um, so as a, as a, um, a, a young worker in northern Wisconsin, I learned how to warm up my lunch and or breakfast on the intake manifold of a log [00:08:00] skidder by wrapping it in tinfoil and putting it into a certain puff spot in the motor. Is there a thing in the tower up tower in the Nelle that gets hot enough? If you had a tinfoil wrapped, say a panini or something, that you could actually warm it up up there. The gearbox is warm. If it was running overnight, if the turbine was running overnight, you can sit some somewhere on the drive train. It’s all pretty warm. That was my hot tip. When I, um, uh, when I was commissioning, uh, some turbines in Sweden, uh, the client demanded that I was, that we had an engineer there. Of the whole every day for the commissioning period of several months. So me and an electrical engineer traded off. He had actual work to do, but I was just there to satisfy the client. So I just brought my laptop on and sat on the. Sat on the gearbox and um, I did get to see the Northern lights on some of those trips, so, you know, maybe it was worth it. Are you worried about unexpected blade root failures and the high cost of repairs? Meet eco Pitch by Onyx Insight. The standard

Solar and wind power are outpacing coal for the first time globally. However, the US faces challenges in meeting clean energy goals due to material shortages, a lack of skilled workers, and political roadblocks. 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! Something remarkable happened this year. For the first time in history, renewable energy generated more power than coal worldwide. Solar grew thirty-one percent in just six months. Wind and solar together outpaced electricity demand. China built more clean energy in half a year than the rest of the world combined. India’s renewable growth beat demand. Their fossil fuel use dropped. Why? Simple economics. Wind and solar are now the cheapest sources of electricity. But here in America, we have a problem. Johns Hopkins researchers just discovered we’ll fall thirty-four percent short of our clean energy goals by twenty fifty. Not because renewables cost too much. Because we don’t have the materials to build them. Nickel. Silicon. Rare earth elements with names like neodymium and dysprosium. China controls ninety percent of the processing. And last week, they announced export controls. Meanwhile, in Britain… They’re creating four hundred thousand clean energy jobs by twenty thirty. Plumbers. Electricians. Welders. Building wind farms. Installing solar panels. Running smart grids. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband put it simply: “Where are the good jobs of the future going to come from? This is the answer.” The Sizewell C nuclear plant alone needs ten thousand workers. But here’s the rub – they need to triple their welders, double their plumbers. The workers don’t exist yet. Down in North Carolina… Duke Energy just announced a new plan. They’re delaying wind projects. Extending coal plants. Not because coal is cheaper – it isn’t. But because artificial intelligence and data centers are driving electricity demand eight times faster than expected. Glen Snider from Duke says they need reliability while demand surges. The irony? Duke’s moving away from the cheapest new sources of power – wind and solar – just when they need the most electricity. They’re choosing to extend expensive coal plants that cost more to run. Australia sees opportunity… Treasurer Jim Chalmers is in New York meeting with Blackstone and Wall Street. Australia has lithium, manganese, rare earths. They claim they can deliver the world’s lowest-cost renewable electricity by twenty fifty. “Australia has exactly what the world needs, when the world needs it,” Chalmers says. Think about this… The technology works. Solar and wind are cheaper than coal. Batteries can store the power. Countries using these technologies are seeing their energy costs drop. But America faces three bottlenecks: First, we don’t control the materials. Second, we don’t have the skilled workers. Third, states like North Carolina are choosing reliability over cost savings. President Trump calls renewables “a joke.” But JP Morgan says something different. They say America will have to use renewable energy whether we like it or not. Nuclear takes too long to build. Fossil fuels cost too much. The numbers tell the story… Britain: Four hundred thousand new jobs. America: Seven hundred thirty gigawatts short of materials. North Carolina: Eight times the demand growth. Global renewables: Cheaper than coal for the first time. We’re watching the free market work. The cheapest energy is winning worldwide. Except in places where politics and supply chains get in the way. The future of energy isn’t about saving anything. It’s about economics. And right now, the economics are clear. The cheapest power comes from the sun and wind.

Allen and Joel speak with SkySpec’s Chief Revenue Officer, Josh Goryl, at the SkySpecs Customer Forum. With record attendance, the forum emphasized industry collaboration, data amalgamation, and the application of AI for optimizing wind and solar renewable energy assets. SkySpecs announced their expansion into the solar industry, leveraging their established wind solutions to streamline data management and operational strategies across renewable energy sectors. 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! Allen Hall: [00:00:00] I’m Alan Hall, host of the Uptime Winner Energy podcast, and I’m here with Joel Saxon and Josh Gar, chief Revenue Officer with Sky Spec, and Josh brought us out this week to participate in the Skys Pick Customer Forum 2025, which as it turns out, has been the largest attendance this year. Joel Saxum: Yeah,  Allen Hall: it’s grown every single year. Yeah. It’s a room full of people, all experts in blades all here to learn about the next generation of skys specs, blades and  Joel Saxum: CMS predict CMS predict analysis and that’s why it’s growing so much. Right. How, what kind of percentage of the capacity in the states do you think is represented here? Allen Hall: We, we should have ran the number, I should have came prepared for this, but, um, I mean, I would say. 75%. Yeah. 80%. Okay. Yeah, that’s, you’re talking all the, all the big operators are, are here. Yep. I think, uh, 21 total organizations represented over 40 experts, blades, drivetrain, few senior management as well, and asset management [00:01:00] engineering. So it’s an awesome, awesome group. We keep, uh, ev It’s tough though. Every year we have to step it up a bit, so we’re kind of, I think we’re outgrowing the space that we’re at here and excited for. Yeah, we’re bursting at the seams. Uh, last year Joel and I were invited to come and it’s the first time that we had been here and I thought, wow, this is a pretty full room. And this year, like, okay, she’s back. We’re we’re, we are sitting next to the door right now because everybody is trying to learn what Sky Specs offers, what. Power do I have on my desktop right now, but also what is coming and there’s a lot of new product releases happening that were announced just this morning. Yeah, and I think the cool thing too, that’s it’s not often you’re able to get this many experts from operators together in one room, and even more so ones that cut across drive, train, CMS, all main components and. It can be tough to kind of keep everyone engaged ’cause everyone’s a domain expert in different, different areas. But the conversations have been been incredible and I think even within [00:02:00] organizations as, as, as well. And so we’re trying to learn how do we help our customers come together more and, and collaborate across. And even just having these discussions that want to discuss pulled out of is fantastic. Just some of that collaboration between even people that are, that are at the same company, they don’t see each other as much. Joel Saxum: There, there’s some cultural things playing out here that are funny to me because if you’re in wind and you’ve bounced around, if you’re an ISP or you’re at an operator, you know, some of the players and kind of how they act, how they keep their, their, their poker hands close to their chest and stuff. So you see some people sitting at a table and you see, and I noticed this yesterday, like the psychological look of things sails, right? Mm-hmm. So I’m kind of looking at people listening and stuff and, and the, the one of the persons from an operator that usually does play things close to their hands mm-hmm. Was just kind of sitting there listening. Everyone’s like, what’s your opinion? What’s your opinion? He was like, uh, what’s yours? But, but that being said, the, the collaboration here has been fantastic. Uh, uh, we were talking with Matt Stead earlier and he was saying mm-hmm. He, uh, was a part of a conversation where someone from Canada, someone from the us they shared some [00:03:00] information and they were like, that’s a amazing, thank you. Let’s swap cards. Different operators, you know, sharing things. Uh, we sat in a couple of the breakout sessions and the breakout sessions. Yes, we had a presentation. Yes, we were walking through solutions and problems, but they, they devolved into amazing conversations where everybody in the room just kinda like turned to each other and were like, what do you think? How could we use this? Could you use that? Does this make sense? Um, and it’s, and it’s, it’s engineers. It’s all engineers. Oh yeah. They’re geared to solve the problems and that’s what’s happening.  Allen Hall: Yeah. And, and I think at a macro level, right? Like it’s, it’s a lot of the same themes that, that everyone’s seeing. We’re, we’re talking about the, the same things. And a lot of it is how do we continue to do. More with less as these fleets grow mm-hmm. There’s different issues that pop up every, every year and just having a tier. To your point, even even last year, last night I was talking to somebody and after the conference they stayed in touch with each other for four months and were talking weekly mm-hmm. On just different, uh, tools and tricks that they [00:04:00] were using to be more, more efficient. Nothing. Confidential to their, their own organization, but more so how are they more efficient with the tools that they’re, that they’re using. So that’s where a lot of the value is if there’s only so many blade engineers and CMS engineers in the industry. And so it’s important that there’s opportunities for them to learn from each other and they’re, they’re not really competing with one another. Once a turbines or the solar panels are deployed now, it’s about operational efficiency. And delivering that power. So every operator is maximizing the revenue and you really can’t do that today without Sky specs. You need to have blade data, you need to have CMS data, you need to have, uh, power curve information. Mm-hmm. Like how your turbines are performing before you can even make sense. So the engineers. To me are finally accessing tools on a almost universally, that they didn’t have five years ago. Yeah. That are empowering them way beyond what they ever thought would be possible.  Joel Saxum: You can’t optimize, uh, an industrial fleet on a spreadsheet. No. You can [00:05:00] maybe maintain some things and look at some part numbers and figures, a couple things out model wise. Right. But, and I know some good people that are really good with spreadsheets. Yep. But you need, you need tools. You need to, uh, be able to amalgamate your data. You need to be able to look at, I mean, this is one of the big things we’re talking about here. Um, predict, prevent, perform. Yep. Or did I do it backwards? I’ve gotten it wrong all week. Prevent, predict. Perform. Perform. There you go. There you go. So, so, but looking at this saying, okay, so we have a foundation, we need inspections, we need these things, right? That is the foundation of the data. We have to have collections, whether it’s, uh, inspections, scada data, CMS data, whatever that may be. Yes. Okay. Now it’s amalgamated into a platform. Now we can see this stuff. Mm-hmm. Now we can start running predictive analytics. We can start visualizing things. Yesterday you and I said, and, and. On the performance monitoring breakout session, and the data that was in that thing was just like, what about this? You could use this data for that. You could use it for that. This is a great idea here. Now, this morning we talked, or we listened to, uh, Alan Larson from your team say, we’re gonna marry that [00:06:00] performance data with CMS data. Yep. And we’re gonna be able to look at, here’s your performance drop. Here’s what your CMS data is saying, and get real insights out of it. And it sounds. To me, like I don’t know any other solution that’s never been done in the industry before.  Allen Hall: No, and and I think to your earlier point, it starts with that baseline and that health record and to be able to see, we’ve all been in the industry for some time now, and the level of maturity, even just year over year, we finally start to see it. Right. And so another thing they brought up this morning was even just. Uh, preventative inspection programs. Years ago, it was, you know, maybe we’ll do 25, 30% of the fleet each year. And then after four or five years, we inspected everything. Well, it’s, it’s not that simple, right? There’s different makes and models, different risk tolerances. Mm-hmm. And the arrangements with third parties is, is different. So, um, it’s, it’s kind of that intake valve and having all that data in, in one place. And, uh, fortunately we’re seeing most of the operators have taken big, big leaps over the course of the [00:07:00] last couple years to have all that data in, in one place. And then from there it’s like, okay, how do I start to see trends. Across main components and optimize the repair windows. And now it’s about the fine tuning. And I think we’re getting there as, as an industry. And that’s why we, that’s one of the things we talked about. We’re excited about jumping into the solar and battery battery storage space. ’cause our customers said, Hey, a lot of these problems that we saw in wind and what you guys solved in blades and drivetrain, solar’s been in hypergrowth mode. We’ve done a lot of inspections, but data’s everywhere. Help us solve that problem.  Joel Saxum: Let’s pause there for a second. That’s a huge announcement. Let’s do that announcement here.  Al

Allen and Rosemary discuss the upcoming Wind O&M Australia 2026 conference, Ørsted’s major restructuring announcement, and the BirdVision bird collision avoidance system. They also explore Nordex’s new cold-climate turbine for Canada and the ongoing challenges of blade icing protection systems. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now, here’s your hosts. Alan Hall, Joel Saxon, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes.  Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Alan Hall from the Queen City, Charlotte, North Carolina. And Rosemary Barnes is here from Australia. And Rosemary, Joel and I just got back from the Sky Specs customer Form 2025 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and we had a really good time, man. Most of the install base in America. For Wind was up at Sky Specs and interesting discussions. Just a lot going on. Obviously, we’re all talking about the changes in legislation we’re talking about. Uh, all the moving [00:01:00] targets everybody’s trying to reorganize. There’s been a number of, uh, shifts from wind into solar that’s happening right now in the United States. And lowering operational costs, that’s the big one. Getting blades under control, uh, getting gear boxes under control, understanding where some of the risks are. It was a very good. Conference, uh, they do it once a year. It was a full room, uh, and really good people, people we, we don’t see all year. You maybe see once a year, maybe see at another trade show. It was nice to spend a couple of days, uh, talking wind turbine o and m. Very similar, much to what we’re gonna do in Australia in February. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I wish I could have been there, uh, maybe next year.  Allen Hall: Well, we, we met with Matthew Stead. He was there. He had traveled all the way from Australia. And one of the things we did tell everybody were at the SKYSPACE conference was come to Australia February 16th and 17th in Melbourne, and you need to start [00:02:00] registering now. You can go to Woma. 2020 six.com. WMA 2020 six.com and register for that event. Or if you want to, uh, present, you need to put your information into the website and get that rolling. Uh, it, it’s gonna, it’s getting close to being sold out, so you need to do that now before you lose your spot. We’ve increased the size of the conference from, it was about 170 odd people last year, and it’s gonna be up to 250, but even. By increasing the, the amount of seats we’re still gonna be full.  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. It’s a hard, it’s a hard cutoff this time as well. Last time we kind of expanded as, uh, we got more registrations in, but we don’t have that option this year, and yet that, uh, agenda is definitely starting to get worked out. So now is the time to get in touch. If you, one, want to speak or two, have a, a topic that you think that we should talk about, like one of the big things that we wanna achieve with this event. Is matching people with [00:03:00] problems to people who have solutions and especially, you know, people who are developing solutions. So, you know, it might be that there is no solution available yet, but we still wanna hear about the problems ’cause there’s a lot of smart people that know all about developing wind, wind turbine technologies. So that’s the place to. Get those sorts of, um, yeah. That kind of information sharing, flowing and get people thinking creatively.  Allen Hall: Yeah. And I don’t wanna make all the announcements here, but a number of world experts are going to travel to Melbourne to talk about wind energy. So if you, if you haven’t heard of a solution before and, and there’s a lot of problems with wind turbines, right? There’s little nuance. Difficult problems that we’re all trying to solve. And you, you may not have an expert in Australia, you may not have an expert in United States. They may be over in Denmark or Germany, or France. Uh, pretty much everybody around the world is gonna be in Australia in February to talk about how to make our wind turbines operate better. That’s why it’s gonna be good. It’s just the world’s gonna be there. [00:04:00] Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. It’s one of the other other reasons why we wanted to make this event is it’s exhausting. Going to all of the technical events around the world is really hard, especially for Australians. You know, you can’t go anywhere basically without getting on a 15 to 30 hour flight to, to get there. So, um, we’re bringing some, some key people over. Um, yeah. And we can talk about. There’s more in depth later on, but there’s some, some good topics that I think Australian wind farm owners and operators really can learn from some of the solutions that are happening elsewhere. And we have also got some unique Australian only problems that, um, I think that, you know, these, uh, companies will be interested to help solve. Allen Hall: And there’s a lot of unique Australian solutions to wind turbine operations that the world needs to hear too. So it’s a both way conversation because Australians have a really intuitively, uh, solving problems kind of get down to first principles and, and suss [00:05:00] out how to get their turbines up and running again. And, and sometimes if, if you spend time in Samoan m buildings, sometimes they overthink these problems and Australians are really good at solving them. So. It’s good to hear both sides and that’s how we do it.  Rosemary Barnes: I’m really enjoying this, technical subset of the Australian wind community. I do find people are very much kind of solution oriented and less, I’ve always been a bit bamboozled by how secretive and isolated wind turbine companies want to be. And I don’t feel like that’s the vibe. Like we don’t have obviously any Australian OEMs and so all of the operators are. fairly, or most of them are fairly free in the way that they’re talking about problems and solutions that they’ve found and also willing to try things out. So it is a really good place to run trials for new technologies. ’cause you’ll usually find a really huge wind farm that, is able to, try it out. And Get some data on how it’s working, [00:06:00] Allen Hall: and it’s definitely some of the world’s harshest environment for wind turbines. So if you have a great new leading edge product, you probably ought to take it to Australia and actually check it out because, as Rosemary pointed out a number of times, the UV in Australia is really strong, the dust and debris is really strong and the winds are strong. So you have all the ingredients to, really aggressive leading edge erosion. Plus the lightning from our area of expertise. The lightning is amazing in Australia and not amazing in a good way. There’s a lot of lightning. To wind turbines And it can be destructive in Australia, where you may not see that up in Denmark. So you can really learn a lot from watching what the Australians have done.  Rosemary Barnes: I, I am involved in, in a couple of trials ongoing at the moment for a few Australia specific problems. Um, par loads, also starting to do some r and d into, uh, figuring out more about what the problems are and solutions to them. So yeah, I think that it’s a really exciting time [00:07:00] to be part of the Australian wind industry.  Allen Hall: So you need to register now. Go to WOMA 2020 six.com. And get involved. Are you worried about unexpected blade root failures and the high cost of repairs? Meet eco Pitch by Onyx Insight. The standard in blade root monitoring. Onyx iss state-of-the-art sensor tracks blade root movement in real time, delivering continuous data to keep your wind farm running smoothly and efficiently. With eco pitch, you can catch problems early. Saving hundreds of thousands of dollars. Field tested on over 3000 blades. It’s proven reliability at your fingertips. Choose Eco Pitch for peace of mind. Contact Onyx Insight today to schedule your demo of Eco Pitch and experience the future of blade monitoring. Well, the announcement today was when Giant or is having a major organizational restructuring that will eliminate [00:08:00] approximately 2000 positions by the end of 2027. Now. CEO Rasmus Abo uh, described the move as necessary to create a more efficient and competitive organization as the company prepares to bid on some new offshore wind projects across Europe. Note that they didn’t mention America in that, that. Ted is gonna be mostly focused on Europe. That makes a lot of sense. Honestly. Uh, the restructuring reflects Ted’s strategic focus on offshore wind and European markets with plans to finalize large construction projects in coming years while. Building a more fiscally robust company than the current workforce of about 8,000 employees globally will be downsized through natural attrition, redundancies, and outsourcing with the organization, ultimately ending up at about 6,000 people and rosemary in the United States, there’s been a number of announced layoffs, or we’re seeing that on LinkedIn. This is a [00:09:00] big deal for the organization because Ted needs to get, its. Financials settled. Uh, if you listen to some other discussions about this, there’s a lot of talk. I mean, it’s, in my opinion, a little bit of crazy talk about, uh, Ecuador and Orton into some sort of merger, which I just don’t think is ever going to happen. But if Ted’s gonna move from less development, which is what it sounds like to more just operational performance, they’re gonna n