The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

The crew discusses the White House missing its offshore wind appeal deadline, France’s 12 GW tender with restrictions on Chinese permanent magnets, and WOMA 2027 planning.

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The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by Strike Tape, protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit strike tape.com. And now your hosts.

Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen. I’m here with Rosemary Barnes, who is in Australia, and our newest guest is Nikki Briggs, who is the new CCO of Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Welcome to the show, Nikki. 

Nikki Briggs: Thank you. Nice to, nice to be here. 

Allen Hall: So there’s the full docket, and Nikki’s gonna get indoctrinated today to the podcast, and she’s gonna be holding on tight because we have a really, uh, very controversial podcast.

I think once Rosemary gets in here and starts talking about. Offshore wind. And I wanna lead off this week ’cause it is a big deal, although not many people are talking about it, that, uh, the White House missed a deadline to file an [00:01:00] appeal against all the offshore wind farms in the United States. And the feeling was, is that there was gonna be an appeal and they’re gonna push to slow down those projects or cancel those projects.

And obviously, uh, one of the purchasers of one of the sites decided to sell it back to the US for about a. Billion US dollars, but the administration missed a key deadline for appeals, uh, which may indicate that they have other things to do besides fight offshore wind Now. The question really remains is, is this going to continue on that nothing is going to happen.

Uh, hopefully all the wind projects that are being built at the moment will complete and we’ll be providing power to all the onshore locations, particularly up and down along the East coast. But, uh, there’s still a long way to go here. Rosemary, I know there’s been a lot of concern about what’s happened in the United States on offshore [00:02:00] wind for several months now.

You think this is gonna be just a change of direction because there’s other things happening in the world. 

Rosemary Barnes: To me, it just sounded like too hard to, unlikely to actually succeed and kind of keeps on drawing attention back to the issue. So better to just kind of let it quietly fade away and not talk about it anymore.

Allen Hall: And there is a financial emphasis for those companies that have these wind farms because if they can get their projects done. They get paid sooner. They can produce power, obviously they’re gonna get paid sooner. So there is a big incentive to push, push, push, push. And a lot of the projects are delivering power right now.

And I think the, the biggest one, which is uh, dominion Energy’s Project of Coastal Virginia, offshore Wind is doing that. So. All these wind projects that are kinder in a way I think are going to finish, which is gonna be a, a big relief to a lot of the states. 

Rosemary Barnes: I don’t wanna talk about us, um, politics because I am not living there.

But don’t you have midterms coming up and potential [00:03:00] for the situation to dramatically change? Like, my understanding is that the expectation is that there will be. More, um, democratic involvement in, in decision making after the midterms. And so surely, you know, like if they don’t, if they’re not acting now, then things are likely to be easier from here on out.

Is that, is that a correct interpretation of what’s going on over there? 

Allen Hall: Not correct. And Nikki, you can jump in here too. Congress can change and does every two years there’s elections in the US and so the full House of Representatives is voted in or out. So all 435 members of the House of Representatives have an election, but about a third of the Senate has an election.

So the Senate doesn’t change as dramatically as the House does, but, uh, for everything that’s been codified into law, which happened a year and a half ago, uh, the executive branch can kind of do what they [00:04:00] want there. So there will be very little that Congress can do. Once a law is a pass and the executive branch can continue on, 

Rosemary Barnes: it’s two year terms for your house of reps.

Allen Hall: Yeah. It’s two years terms. Yeah. 

Rosemary Barnes: That’s not very long. That’s not very good job security. 

Allen Hall: It was never meant to be 

Rosemary Barnes: in school. About a thousand years ago, I learned that, um, the Australian government is, is, is largely based on a combination of um, UK and. US government basically. But I think it’s a lot closer to the us.

Um, and yeah, we have, I, I think we have not, we haven’t got fixed terms, but it’s usually about every three years and yeah, you lose a few, a few months, but we don’t, we don’t do the big song and dance about it that you do with all of the, um, pre-selection and all that stuff. We don’t do that. So our, our system is a lot quicker.

Um, so yeah, I just wonder like how, how do you actually govern when you have to spend half of your time worried about, um, getting in and then you can only make plans for basically one year [00:05:00] ahead or two years ahead, like at the absolute maximum. 

Allen Hall: That’s the problem with House of Representative is you nailed it right on the head, which is they’re constantly fundraising and trying to get to the next election.

Two years is a short amount of time anymore. They didn’t used to do it like that, where the last six months, maybe a year were campaign time, but pretty much once they get an election over, which happens in November, they’re already campaigning for the next one. So it does lead to a lot of chaos where things don’t happen in the House of Representatives like.

They used to maybe 20, 25 years ago. It’s changed dramatically and I don’t think Australia has that same issue weirdly enough. Although I would say you’re becoming more like the US in a lot of ways. That’s not one of them. 

Rosemary Barnes: We’ve got some, there’s some things in place, like one of the advantages of basing our system on other countries as we could take.

Take the bits that worked and see what, what we could already see what didn’t really work and um, you know, try to, try to take it, um, try to take care of that, ensure that it couldn’t happen. [00:06:00] So 

Allen Hall: the offshore wind piece in America rolls into other offshore wind, uh, across Europe in that, uh, although US is reconsidering offshore wind in some sense.

Europe is not. In fact, uh, France is getting very active. So you remember the France has been trying to launch, uh, offshore wind tenders for about two years. So you keep hearing France is gonna go to offshore wind, and then it didn’t really happen. Well, that political gridlock is, uh, over really how to pay for the renewables, uh, and how they’re gonna try to finance this thing.

Meanwhile, uh, France has, uh. Less than what? Two gigawatts of offshore wind operating against a, a national target of about 15 gigawatts by 2035. Uh, so there’s a lot of catching up to do the 12. They just had a 12 gigawatt package. They announced where, uh, they, they’re [00:07:00] attempting to really catch up all at once, uh, but buried inside of this tender.

Is a supply chain rule, which is very unique. So coming outta Scotland and all the things that happen with Ming Yang in Scotland, France is doing something very similar. France is limiting the percentage or the quantity of permanent magnets that can come from China. So France is saying, Hey, they don’t wanna get locked into an offshore, offshore wind supply chain that involves China specifically for, but they’re probably the most important ingredient, which is.

Permanent magnets. The Netherlands is moving ahead also and has offered two one gigawatt offshore wind farms, and it’ll be permitting those pretty quickly. So all of a sudden, the offshore wind effort for some of the countries that have been quiet in Netherlands in particular, and then France, all of a sudden probably ’cause of what’s happening in the.

The straight in the Middle East have decided to speed up their offshore wind [00:08:00] projects. Is this gonna be the right move? Do you think they’re gonna stick with this process of, of completing these projects or is this a spur of the moment decision that they’re gonna change their minds later on in the next year or two once things calm down to the Middle East?

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I mean, if it is a, a knee jerk response to the. Specific right now problem and doesn’t seem very well advised because it’s gonna be years before they actually see any electricity entering their grid. I mean, France is a bit different to other European countries ’cause they’ve got so much nuclear and in general, uh, I think with the exception of like the year before last, they had that summer where it was really hot.

They had heat waves and they had to shut down a lot of. Nuclear power plants because the cooling water was too hot. They, they couldn’t, they couldn’t put it back into the river. And, um, yeah, uh, river levels were too low in some cases. So in, in that year, they did have to import energy. Um, but in general, their energy exporters.

So I don’t, I, I would be surprised if this [00:09:00] was in direct response to, you know, that I don’t think they have an electricity crisis right now. Um, and, uh, yeah, I think it’s probably more of a long-term plan. 

Allen Hall: Are they gonna force the OEMs to build product in country? GE already has an offshore wind blade factory in France.

And, uh, they can get a lot of components in Europe for sure. You could actually dictate what percentage of the wind turbine is built in France and what is built in Europe and what’s gonna be left to be imported in from China. You think this is where everybody is headed? 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I mean, I think it is. Smart move to make sure that you don’t have one single country locking down any critical part of your supply chain.

So I’ll agree with that. I haven’t seen the exact wording, but it’s not like it’s just banned that anything comes from China. I mean, that would be a good way to make sure that you didn’t ever get a timely, uh, a project completed in time. Um. So, you know, that makes sense. But, you know, if no one [00:10:00] project can use a hundred percent Chinese magnets or I, I don’t know the wording, maybe they’re allowed to buy, um, the rare Earth materials from China and then turn them into magnets locally.

I don’t, I don’t know what the wording is, but, um, it is going to require that, you know, some new manufacturers start up and I just wonder what kind of support they’re gonna provide for that and what kind of guarantees, because it’s not, um. So straightforward to just start up a new manufacturing facility for something that has never been made in that, in that area before.

Um, you know, there’s a lot of risk and hard to get financing. They’re gonna want to have some, um, guarantees from the government or some support to, you know, make sure that the risk benefit is worth it. 

Allen Hall: I think that’s probably the most important part of this, is the business aspect. You can’t spool up a 20 year business.

In a year that’s hard to do and you’re not gonna do it if the supply chain can willy-nilly switch to an external supply chain to China, for example. So if you do set up [00:11:00] something complicated in France, I would almost bet that they would have to pass something in law and lock it in before you see a lot of investment happening that way.

Similar things happen in the UK really is uh, with all the offshore wind growth and wanting to build turbines in the country. They’re gonna have to put some barriers in to keep the Chinese out, which they’re obviously doing 

Rosemary Barnes: or provide direct support. They don’t necessarily need to make it a law. I think like the way we would do it in Australia is that the government would either co-invest or they would, you know, underride a loan or um, you know, guarantee revenue or something, something like that, to make all the pieces fall into place.

I don’t think, um, law is the only way to do it. 

Allen Hall: France obviously is gonna be able to choose from a couple of wind OEMs. Where do you think they’ll go is It’s pretty much right now, I guess it’s Siemens and Vestas for sure. I’m not even sure GE is offering a offshore wind turbine at the moment. Does France [00:12:00] have a Siemens or Vestas stake at the minute?

Rosemary Barnes: Not that I know of, but what’s happening to the um, Bel Factory? The GE Blade Factory? That was. They were making blades for hall aids, which is the troubled platform that kind of turned them off. Offshore wind altogether. Um, yeah, I don’t, I don’t know what’s happened to that one. 

Allen Hall: Remember that GE sold the LM factory, what up in Poland and Vestas ended up buying that?

I wonder if something similar happened here. 

Rosemary Barnes: Uh, yeah. I dunno. I need to, we should have, we should have looked it up before we started recording. 

Allen Hall: The thing about this podcast is that we start putting the puzzle pieces together. Before the, the pieces are out on the table. And when you see the way that GE has really slowed down offshore, obviously they talked about it a number of times that they don’t like the offshore business and would like to finish vineyard wind and all the commitments they have and then pause until they can make sure they’re gonna make money on offshore wind.

Vestas is going crazy and has made a lot of sales, [00:13:00] and I know Siemens is trying to get back into that offshore market. So you really have two players. If you are not gonna choose a Chinese turbine, you see image and you have Vestas. But onshoring, that work is an obvious, uh, French move, I think just like it was in the uk.

Rosemary Barnes: I mean, assuming that they are not gonna be choosing, uh, Chinese manufacturers, given that they’re trying to move away from that, um, yeah. Complete dominance, but I mean, why couldn’t Ming Yang or someone supply turbines but just, you know, get their, their magnets from a local supplier instead? I mean, it’s very common that, you know, like European manufacturers, if they wanna sell in India, then they have to have a certain local, um, you know, amount of local manufacturing.

So. Why wouldn’t a, a Chinese company do the same thing? So, yeah, I don’t think they’ve only got two choices, but. Those will be the obvious ones. 

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Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit PES wind.com today. So Rosemary, after the successful WMA 2026 event in Melbourne, in which I know I mispronounced, but you’re just gonna have to let it go. There’s been a a ton of inquiries about WMA 2027 and I.

I’m thinking, man, we just finished moment 2026. You ready for 2027? The answer is yes, we need to go. 

Rosemary Barnes: I think it’s because the, um, certain other Australian wind energy events are spamming everyone’s inboxes with like multiple emails a day, months out. It’s got everyone thinking, gee, this conference is super annoying.

Thought about that [00:15:00] non annoying conference that I went to. 

Nikki Briggs: Yeah. Well I’m not pestering people, but if anybody wants to, you know, get signed up to be a sponsor for WMA 2027, reach out to me because, you know, we’re that not annoying conference. So, um, we gotta have good sponsors. And 

Rosemary Barnes: that is true. That is one thing about, about Wilmar is we keep it really cheap for attendees, but it is still a high quality conference.

And the main way that we’re able to do that is because we have really good sponsors that. Um, yeah, they, they provide money obviously, to pay for, uh, a large chunk of the event, but they also don’t expect to be allowed to get up and sell at people. Um, yeah, I, I don’t even know how we managed to get such great sponsors that are, you know, happy with that trade off, but I guess that, yeah, they’ve figured out that it isn’t actually that beneficial to get up and give a sales pitch to people who.

Receptive to it. It is much better to just get up and talk about all the things that you know, and then the people who have problems that can be solved by what you [00:16:00] do will naturally get in touch with you. I mean. I think it works better. That’s, that’s my entire sales sales approach. And I guess everybody at the, at the conference, that’s what, yeah, that’s what we’re relying on.

I think it’s a better way 

Nikki Briggs: and we’re here to help and save you money. 

Allen Hall: Yeah. And the Woma 2027 website is up. Just Google. It’s, and we’re looking for sponsors, although a number of sponsors, pretty much everybody from 26 who wants to be back into twenties. 27. So we’ll be, uh, reaching out to all of you and making sure that happens.

But the conference is probably gonna get bigger in 2027 just because of the demand. So we’ll be looking for a, a couple of more key sponsors. We want you to get involved as soon as possible. You should do that by, in the us. You can do that by getting a hold of, of Nikki. It’s Nikki, N-I-K-K-I dot Briggs, B-R-I-G-G [email protected].

Or you can just go to Nikki’s LinkedIn page and send her an InMail and, uh, get ahold of her that way or [00:17:00] connect with her on LinkedIn and she’d be glad to help you. Now, Rosemary, I know one of the things we talked about was, uh, some of the expansion of topics for 2027. There was a lot of feedback and we are paying close attention.

And thanks to everybody who sent us feedback on the conference, uh, the number of five star reviews are really high, and I, I’m, I’m still a little shocked and um, maybe embarrassed by like, wow. Uh, that’s awesome. But we wanna expand on some of the topics for next year, and we’re talking about doing a blade masterclass and that which would involve rosemary.

Maybe some others talking about some of the blade issues that exist around the world. And Rosemary, what are you thinking about? 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, describing how the process works. ’cause that’s the, that’s probably one of the main things, or the main value that I bring to Australia is the time that I spent working at a, um, um.

Wind turbine blade manufacturer, and you know, how does the design process work? What kind of testing do they do? What [00:18:00] does certification mean? Um, all those sorts of things. Uh, they, you might think, oh, I don’t really care about that ’cause I just use the blade once I’ve got it. But anytime you run into a problem, you do need to kind of know how all that stuff works, basically.

So, um, yeah, we’ll give a, a masterclass on that topic and so you can come and get. You know, a bit of an understanding about how that works. Ask whatever questions that you’ve got that relate to your specific problems, but then, you know, even if you don’t have a problem now in the future when something comes up, you’ll have that knowledge to fall back on.

And it just really helps to be able to know when something’s not right, um, when something wasn’t done right. Um, yeah, I mean there are always at some point an argument about, you know, who’s gonna pay. So it is really helpful to know if things have been done the way that they said that they would be. The way they should be.

Um, yeah, but I’m also. I’m really keen to hear about what to include in the main conference. ’cause you know, it can’t be the same every year. Um, I’m super focused on, on blades and I, I think we, I [00:19:00] mean, blades is the biggest, the biggest topic in wind turbine o and m, so it makes sense that we would be focused on that and we’re, we will, but I have less of, um, yeah, in depth knowledge about what non blade issues people are really struggling with at the moment.

So definitely be keen to hear from. Viewers about, um, sorry, I’ll say that again. Definitely be keen to hear about potential attendees about what topics they would wanna see covered to make sure that, yeah, it’s interesting and fresh every year. 

Allen Hall: Can I circle back on the masterclass a little bit because I had my own little, little mini masterclass this past week looking at the IE specification for wind turbine blades, and I don’t know what prompted me to read that document.

I thought it was gonna be a lot thicker than it was, and I was shocked at the lack of detail that on the requirement side, I always think the blade people must have millions of requirements to go [00:20:00] do. And it’s gonna be very technical and a lot of check boxes there, but turns out maybe not as many as I thought there would be.

Rosemary Barnes: Oh yeah. That’s interesting that you’re, you’re surprised. Um. I mean, I haven’t worked with it closely since when I was doing my PhD, uh, the PhD was on, there was a, yeah, design of a family, family of wind turbine blades. And so, you know, I was looking at the standard to see what, um, load cases that you had to consider, you know, like the 50 year extreme gust is one of the big ones.

And then, you know, various operational loads and that sort of thing. Um, it’s never gonna cover absolutely everything. But I, yeah. What, what, what issues do you see that are, are missing from it? 

Allen Hall: Well, when, when I look at the airplane world and we qualify an airplane with the Federal Authority, whoever that could be, it could be Yasa in Europe, could be the FAA in the United States, there’s a pages, there are books of requirements and [00:21:00] guidance materials and details of things you must do to show that the airplane is.

Safe to go fly. I figured the wind turbine world would’ve adapted that to some level to have very specific requirements on design margins and, and maybe they’re there as an electrical engineer. I can’t suss all that out, but I can usually tell how rigorous the requirements are by the weight of the document.

Usually those documents make a lot of noise when you drop ’em on the desk. This was, uh, a very soft whimper. I thought, well, okay, maybe there’s a lot here I’m missing. I’m sure that I am. I’m an electrical guy. I’m gonna admit it. Right now, I don’t understand all the structural things, but on the airplane side, I know that the airplanes have a lot to do and the requirements are crazy hard, but maybe there’s a lot more tolerance in wind.

Rosemary Barnes: They do include safety margins, and there is, uh. A lot more, a lot more tolerance in wind as [00:22:00] there should be because people aren’t flying and wind turbines. You know, like if there was somebody like physically seated inside every blade 24 7, then I think that you would see that the, the standard would be, would be tightened up because you know, like every tightening of the standard is going to result in an increase in cost.

So I mean, the biggest difference that I. I I see between, um, arrow and wind, aside from the, the safety issue is the maintenance. There is annual maintenance and they are maintained more than that. They’re, they’re constantly doing stuff, but like if it’s possible to design it to last for 20 or 30 years without needing maintenance, and that’s the way that you want it to be.

In general, blades are not supposed to be maintained until there’s a problem. Um, you know, it’s not like. Places where you know that you’re gonna be replacing grease or, um, you know, anything, anything like that that’s built for accessibility. The blades are certainly, certainly not. So yeah, I mean, [00:23:00]you’re definitely not maintaining in the same way as you are with, um, aerospace or Yeah, just aviation.

Allen Hall: Howard Pinrose has the, for motor dock, has the Chaos and Caffeine podcast. Which is on YouTube and I watch that. Typically Saturday morning, I think that’s when it comes out. It’s on the weekend. And his last, uh, podcast was about the studies about general maintenance. Back to Rosemary, your point that performing general maintenance, regardless of how much there is, is less costly than trying to fix it on the fly.

And that if you devote. Sufficient resources to keeping the equipment maintained in the, in the way it was intended to. You’re gonna have significantly less problems. Uh, and lower costs, but it’s surprising. Wind doesn’t do that 

Rosemary Barnes: well, but I mean, the difference is that wind is designed to not be maintained.

So it’s, it’s not easier engineering, or not [00:24:00] engineering. It’s not like lazy. It’s actually the opposite. It’s actually really hard to design something that won’t need to be maintained for 30 years. I mean, think about another machine that is not supposed to be looked at for 30 years and you know, that will go through the stress that a wind turbine blade does.

But you know, if you think of. Yeah, anything that’s inside your blade, like think about, um, the lightning cable in a blade. Um, you know, like the, if it, if it breaks, you have to cut open the blade to get into it. And, um, most of the length of the blade, that would be, that would be what you would do. It’s huge, huge, huge repair.

Um, so, you know, you design it so that that will very rarely happen in theory, you know, if everything’s working well, maybe the lightning cable is a bad example because, um, the lightning protection system is. Almost certainly the, the least well-functioning part of a, a wind turbine, I’d say. But you know, like you think about in every other part of the blade structure, you know, you design it so that it will last for 30 years easily.

Um, and then [00:25:00] it’s only when several things go wrong that you would end up having to go in and do that. Um, that maintenance. 

Allen Hall: This should be kind of a woma topic actually, because is it even conceivable that you could have minimal maintenance on such a. Heavy industrial piece of equipment for 30 years versus every other machine in human operation that can’t do that.

What other machine, I’m sure somebody will write in about that. And if you, if you know what, a machine will operate for 30 years with no maintenance, please send us a note because I don’t know what that is. 

Rosemary Barnes: No, I, I think Brent turbines are really, are really special and I think that it is, uh, like commonly misunderstood that, um, you know.

Not maintaining for 30 years is, you know, somehow not in engineering correctly or making the engineering easier, but it’s the opposite. You’re making the engineering harder. The same with manufacturing of, um, the blades specifically or anything made out of composite materials. Like the tolerances are huge, but the fact is that that makes the engineering harder, not easier because it has to work at [00:26:00] any, you know, if the web is here or if it’s a hundred millimeters this way, it’s still has to work exactly the same for the exact same amount of time.

So to make it low cost and reliable for that amount of time with that little maintenance is a huge job. Um, and you know, one world record that I know that wind turbines have is that the blades are the largest, like single piece component of any human made structure. There is nothing, there’s nothing bigger than, um, a wind turbine blade.

Like a bridge is made of multiple different members and a airplane. Has, you know, two, two wings that don’t even, even the span of most airplanes isn’t, um, both wings together isn’t the same as the longest wind turbine blades. Like, there’s not, there’s no one big single component that’s bigger than a wind turbine blade.

Not to mention the strain. Um, they bend a lot that they, they really, they really bend a lot. That’s a very. Difficult operating environment. They do millions of, of fatigue cycles in their [00:27:00] lifetime. Uh, it’s just like, you know, they’re, they’re breaking records all over the place. It’s a, it’s a super cool thing to mark on as an engineer, to be honest.

Allen Hall: Okay. So at Walmart 2026, I know that was one of the discussions that popped up, uh, on the panel, was what should we expect for a lifetime? Or sort of a less re a reduced level of maintenance on a wind turbine. And the answer was maybe a year. And I thought that was a very Australian way of answering that question.

It’s, it’s a real answer. I think, uh, the people that operate wind turbines know that that probably is true. You got about a year and then you gotta get on it. But financial investors don’t necessarily have that opinion about it. They think you just turn it on, let it run 30 years and collect all this money and.

What we’re learning is it’s, it’s a complicated problem. And Rosemary, I think you’re 100% right. All the variables that happen during the manufacturing and the design of a wind turbine have to incorporate safety features that keep that operating for 30 years. That’s really hard to do, [00:28:00] and you’d have no way to really verify it once you shove it out the door, especially the first thousand you make.

It’s almost an impossible task. 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I mean there obviously there is heaps of maintenance that needs to be done to, to wind turbines, even if it is incredibly low maintenance compared to other kinds of machines. And if you are skipping that kind of maintenance or doing it incorrectly, then that is definitely a very um, Australia relevant issue.

You know, everyone’s on these full service agreements. Sometimes not for the full lifetime of the the turbine. So you can imagine if you’re kind of like half-assing your maintenance for the, those first 10 years, then you’re just sending a, you know, time bomb to the next person to take over that contract.

So. That’s a real challenge, but I’d see it with blades where it’s like, oh, they’re just quietly fixing, um, damages. They get the same damage over and over again and they just quietly fix it and not say anything and, or, you know, not really raise it like maybe you’re technically getting the reports, but it’s never flagged that, you know, Hey, this is a serial issue and no one’s ever investigating.

What’s the [00:29:00] real root cause of this? It might be that, you know, they’re fixing it well enough to last to the end of the FSA period. And then, yeah. Oh hey. Turns out your whole fleet has a serial issue that you need to take care of now with, without the backing of the manufacturer, which, um, you know, obviously makes it about 10 times harder.

Allen Hall: And that’s why you want to go to Wilma 2027 because we’re gonna to talk about that issue in a. About 20 others during the two day event. At least that’s what it’s scheduled for right now. Maybe it’ll go to a third day. Rosemary, maybe we need to add a third day because of all the topics 

Rosemary Barnes: we need to move to a beach location.

If we’re gonna start going for multiple days, 

Allen Hall: Rosemary wants to have it in Fiji or was it Tahiti? What was the other place you were saying you would like to go to? 

Rosemary Barnes: Tahiti would be fine. Um, Maldives is what I was saying, but yeah, I will accept that. It’s not that. Logical to run Australia. Um, win o and m event offshore.

Allen Hall: We wanna send a congratulations to Yolanda and [00:30:00]Manuel as they have gotten married down in Mexico, uh, with all friends and family, several hundred attendees as I have learned. So congratulations to those two. And Yolanda will be back on the podcast. In the next week or two, that wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love for to hear from you, just reach out to us on LinkedIn and don’t forget to subscribe. So if you never miss an episode. And if you found value in today’s conversation, please leave us a review. It helps other wind energy professionals discover the show.

For Rosie and Nikki, I’m Allen Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy [00:31:00] Podcast.

Allen covers EEW American Offshore Structures’ Chapter 11 filing, Vineyard Wind suing GE Vernova for $545 million, Europe’s exit from Korea, and wind project wins in Australia and Canada.

Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

There is a story unfolding across this industry right now. It is a story of two worlds. One world is closing its doors. The other is throwing them wide open.

Let us start in New Jersey. EEW American Offshore Structures filed for Chapter Eleven bankruptcy on April eighth. This was the first monopile manufacturing facility ever built in the United States. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy announced a two hundred fifty million dollar investment in the Paulsboro Marine Terminal back in twenty twenty. It was called the largest industrial offshore wind investment in the country at the time. At full buildout… five hundred thousand square feet of production space. More than one hundred monopiles per year. Five hundred workers. They even built the first American-made monopile… for Orsted’s Ocean Wind project. It weighed three million pounds. It measured three hundred feet long.

Then Orsted canceled Ocean Wind One and Two. Then Shell pulled out of Atlantic Shores. Without contracted work… workers disassembled and recycled finished monopiles for scrap. Federal policy shifts removed the pipeline of future projects. A landlord eviction filing followed. And then… Chapter Eleven. That is a two hundred fifty million dollar facility… with nowhere left to go.

Now stay with us. Because just offshore… another American offshore wind story is fighting for its life. Vineyard Wind… the sixty-two turbine project fifteen miles south of Martha’s Vineyard… filed suit in Massachusetts against GE Renewables. GE Vernova says Vineyard Wind owes it three hundred million dollars for work already performed… and it wants to walk away at the end of April. Vineyard Wind says not so fast.

The developer says GE still owes five hundred forty-five million dollars for what it calls inexcusably poor performance after a catastrophic turbine blade collapse in July of twenty twenty-four. Fiberglass blade fragments washed onto Nantucket beaches during peak tourist season. Sixty-eight of seventy-two blades had to be removed and replaced. That set the project back nearly two years. Construction did reach completion in March… making Vineyard Wind the first offshore project to finish under the current administration. But now the only contractor capable of completing the remaining work… wants out. A court hearing was scheduled for Thursday.

And now… look eastward. Something similar is playing out in Korea. European offshore wind companies are exiting the Korean market one by one. Corio Generation, a British firm owned by Macquarie, disbanded its Korean unit and pulled out of joint projects in Busan and Ulsan. Germany’s RWE quit offshore wind projects in Taean and Sinan counties. Vestas postponed its turbine factory in Mokpo… indefinitely. Equinor began reducing its Korean workforce. Shell exited the Korean offshore market entirely in twenty twenty-four.

These companies point to worsening global profitability… and Korean government policies they say favor domestic companies over firms with greater experience. Korea had a target of three gigawatts of offshore wind by twenty thirty. That goal is now in serious doubt.

But here is where the story turns. Not every market is closing its door. Eight thousand miles from New Jersey… in the Sunshine State of Queensland, Australia… the final forty-one turbines just arrived at the Wambo wind project. Cubico Sustainable Investments and Stanwell are building a five hundred six megawatt project on the Darling Downs. Stage One… two hundred fifty-two megawatts… already feeding the Queensland grid. Stage Two deliveries are now complete. Commissioning and full operations are on track for the end of twenty twenty-six.

And up in Ontario, Canada… the province just approved fourteen new wind and solar projects totaling more than thirteen hundred megawatts. The average price… eight point eight cents per kilowatt hour. Compare that to twenty-one point four cents for some proposed nuclear projects… and more than thirty-two cents for certain new reactor designs. Contracts run for twenty years, with all projects online before twenty thirty.

So let us step back. In New Jersey… the first American monopile factory files for bankruptcy. Off Massachusetts… a completed offshore wind farm fights to keep its contractor. In Korea… European developers pack their bags. But in Australia… turbines arrive on schedule. And in Canada… wind power undercuts nuclear at the meter.

The wind energy industry is not in retreat. It is choosing its battlegrounds. And where the conditions are right… the blades are turning.

And now you know… the rest of the story.

That is the state of the wind industry for the 13th of April, twenty twenty-six. Join us for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast tomorrow.

Dr. Liz Beavis, Asset Manager at Tilt Renewables, joins to discuss O&M contracts, balance of plant, and lessons from Australia’s biggest and oldest wind farms. Contact Liz on LinkedIn or by email.

Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering tomorrow.

Allen Hall: Liz, welcome to the program. Thanks, 

Liz Beavis: Alan. I feel I’m a long time listener. First time caller, so it’s exciting. 

Allen Hall: You are a long time listener and thanks for doing that. Uh, and Liz, I just find you to be a wealth of knowledge and, uh, we met on a couple occasions since I’ve been in Australia and it’s just, uh, a fun to connect here because I think a lot of the things that are happening in Australia need to be spread around the world.

A lot of, uh, good o and m practices happening in Australia, uh, from hard lessons learned. So that’s what I want to dive into today. And then the first one is, I don’t think many people realize this, that you went. From commissioning, Australia’s largest wind farm, Cooper’s gap to managing seven [00:01:00] of the 10 oldest operational wind farms in the country.

So you got some of the biggest, newest to some of the oldest assets. Uh. Uh, my question is like, when you started that, did you just kind of assume like wind, wind farms or wind farms or wind turbines or wind turbines and you could just basically own and end them the same, or do, or did it just occur to you immediately like, I need to take a different plan of attack here?

Liz Beavis: I think I, I knew nothing about wind farms when I turned up at Cooper’s Gap, so, so yeah, I got my, well, okay, we’ll go right back to the start. So I was working at a thermal power station and I was just thinking. There’s no future in coal. How do I get into renewables? And then a wind farm got built like 50 kilometers from my house.

I can, I can see it in the horizon. Um, and I thought, oh, they’re not gonna need a chemical engineer there, but I wonder if they need a site manager or something. And then the site manager role came up, I applied for it. So the services site manager. So, [00:02:00] um. That was July, 2020. That’s when I first started listening to the podcast.

’cause I thought I better find out something about this industry before I do my job interview. And so I’ve been listening ever since. But, um, yeah, so I don’t know. I was just lucky to get that role. And I turned up and, um, I think it was the end of September, 2020 first time I’d ever set foot on a wind farm ’cause of COVID and everything.

I didn’t, I didn’t go there for the interview. My manager was in Thailand. I just turned up. And, um, so they, they’d finished construc, they’d built all the towers where they hadn’t finished commissioning. And so we’re still working out of construction, dongas, you know, temporary buildings and um, and there was hundreds of people on site and it was just the absolute chaos of.

Constructing a two hundred, a hundred and twenty three turbines. You know, like there’s just people everywhere. And I thought, wow, I’ve just gotta figure out what I’m supposed to be doing here. There were a few technicians. I found out how many technicians I supposed to have. Just started recruiting, started figuring out what I was supposed to be doing there, and I just [00:03:00] learned so much.

In the two years we took over the new r and m building. We had failed gear, boxes, generators, transformers, overhead line, underground line, pretty much. Anything that could fail failed, and I got to see what we needed to do. Um, but through all of that, I was also thinking, oh, how do I manage this wind farm better?

I don’t know anything about wind farms, and I’m reaching out to the other GE sites, but the, the next biggest site was 75 turbines, and all of the rest of them are 30 and 40. So they’re saying to me, oh, you just get a team to go around. And I’m thinking. Well, that’s six weeks of work. You know, like, like everything is so much bigger on a bigger wind farm.

And then I’d reach out to the, the American sites. That had big wind farms, but their contracts were so different, and I didn’t understand at first, I started to realize, well, their contracts are completely different and their focus is different, and so they’re not facing the same issues that I’m facing.

Um, and then, you know, even speaking to a wind farm in [00:04:00] Sweden that was a similar size, but they, you know, they. They have to think about climate and what work they can do in winter. So I started to, as you said, you start to think, well actually everyone farms very different. And it’s, um, you know, you can learn from others, but you really need to understand how your conditions are affecting what you can and can’t do.

Um, and then, so then I got the job at Wally Power Services with as a portfolio manager for the renewables, um, fleet There. And yeah, a whole lot of really old turbines. And it was just so interesting to see that contrast between the new turbines and the old ones and um, and also being a independent service provider, what we could do and what the technicians.

So many clever technicians out there on wind farms, just figuring stuff out and, and fixing things that if you tried to do that within the OEM, you get really hamstring Engineers say, oh no, you can’t. You can’t do that. You can’t fiddle with that. Whereas once you’re released from that, for better or worse, [00:05:00] the technicians are just off sorting things out.

So that was really interesting to see that contrast. And now I’m with, um, tilt Renewables. So I’m the asset manager for Cooper’s Gap and Silverton Wind Farms. So I’m, I’m now seeing from the owner’s point of view how we actually manage these contracts with the OEMs and with ISPs and how we, how can we do r and m better?

Matthew Stead: And from the, um, from the ISP, um, experience, um, compared to your experience now, what are some of the biggest differences that you’ve observed between the old, the other sites and the, and the new site? 

Liz Beavis: Yeah, I think it, it’s really just that you’re on your own. Um, so you’re relying on good technicians. To figure things out, you can, you need a parts and service agreement with the OEM, um, so you can reach out to them and ask for support, but they’re, you are the lowest priority.

So yeah, you don’t always get information, [00:06:00] so you just gotta be set up to figure things out. But then that does give you the freedom to make changes and to, to fix the things that you’re saying, whereas. Often the OEMs are so, uh, stuck with that mindset of, oh, we, we don’t want people to know we’ve got a serial defect.

So we’ll just keep kind of patching things up and hopefully, hopefully no other sites find out about this. You know, instead of just saying, Hey, we know this is an issue, here’s a good way of fixing it. ’cause just all I understand, all of the liability that throws, that, that flows from that, uh, you know. You can’t handle it.

Allen Hall: Does that change your perspective, knowing all those things? Do you have a, just a unique background in so many ways where you’ve seen, uh, pretty much all sides of wind operations. How do you think about that now? How are you, are you are addressing contracts differently or are you thinking about the way you staff differently just from your experience?[00:07:00]

How does that play into it? 

Liz Beavis: Yeah, so definitely from a owner’s point of view. I understand what the limitations are of the OEMs and the ISPs, and so I know, I know what I can push them to do and what I can’t push them to do. And even though you’ve got the contract in front of you and you know it, it says you’re gonna do this, there’s certain things where you, you know, that you need to let it slide because it’s just not reasonable to push it.

You just, you just know that they can’t achieve things. Um. But then also going into new r and m contracts, you kind of know what’s critical, what to ask for, what, you know, what, what we need to make sure that we’re getting right from the start. 

Allen Hall: How do you sort that out? Because I’ve heard, uh, I’ve talked to many operators.

that are doing O&M and they look at the contract much like you, and then they, they look at the contract and go, okay, here’s are the things I can probably get. Here’s the things I can’t get. How did you come to that determination is just because you’ve been so close at all this time? Because I think a [00:08:00] lot of people in wind that are new look at that contract, as the rule of law and you’re gonna get everything in there.

But I think the more experienced people realize it’s more of a negotiation or starting point, even 

Liz Beavis: particularly, uh, like Comparing construction to O&M I say, construction’s the. sprint and O&M’s the marathon, and you’re in a relationship with this O&M provider for 10, 15, 25, 30 years, depending on your contract terms.

So you can’t go in at year three and just have a big fight with each other And you know you, need to, You need to be able to work together. So it’s understanding what the value drivers are on both sides and, um. And focusing on that. So, you know, for us as the owner, we, we just want generation.

So even though availability is what’s in the contract, really what we want is generation. So if we can figure things out together to get the maximum generation, and maybe that helps the O&M [00:09:00] provider save some costs because, they’re not just doing what’s in the contract, but they’re doing what actually helps us get generation.

That’s, that’s kind of the. That’s how we work. And then the contracts there. If, everything falls apart, you’ve got a legal document underpinning where you can say, hold on, you were supposed to do this. This is the damages we can claim. And this is where we can go with it.

But you’re not just enforcing every, clause. Because some of it’s been written so long ago, it’s not even relevant. 

Allen Hall: Does that lead you down the path of shadow monitoring then? 

Liz Beavis: My view is I would rather have, I would rather be at a point where I have a relationship with the OEM where we can agree that there’s no point me spending money that they’ve already spent and that.

That we get access to their data. Even if I pay half of what I would spend on shadow monitoring as an additional fee to the OM provider, so they get some revenue and they provide me with the data, I think that’s a better outcome for both parties than to [00:10:00] feel like I’m there looking over their shoulder monitoring what they’re doing.

So, I mean, it depends on what your relationship is, but our, our preference would be. That we’re working together and that we’re both benefiting from something rather than spending more money than we need to on doing something twice. 

Matthew Stead: Maybe a question, Liz, in terms of your, you know, former, you know, thermal, uh, background, what, what sort of lessons learned or, or things did you sort of bring across from that, that previous um, experience?

You know, although six years ago, 

Liz Beavis: I think that the first thing was safety. There was, um. There’s a big difference and, and particularly coming into a construction site, that’s, it’s always a challenge because there’s just this time crunch and cost crunch and, and it’s all just, we need to just jump in and get everything done.

We can’t stop and make sure we’re doing this safely or properly. Um, so getting my [00:11:00] team to stop thinking like that. We are here, we’re doing o and m. We’re here for the long term. If we’re gonna do it, we’re gonna do it properly. If we need to wait a couple of days to have the right tooling, that’s what we’re gonna do.

And just kind of slow everyone down and then, and get the right procedures and the equipment and, and everything. Uh, so we did that. Um, and then. I think the other thing I’ve probably just brought across is understanding of the market. So I was quite involved, um, with thermal generation and, um, market and bidding and um, and I think if you come into Wind Farm o and m, you’re kind of separated from that because you are just there to maintain the turbines and you, you don’t care what the market’s doing, but your owner cares what the market’s doing.

So being able to, to think about, well, what. What does my owner actually need? Um, and, and do that, you know, support that as well. Then you, you’re better at [00:12:00] delivering the o and m, 

Allen Hall: right? Because it does add a little bit of perspective to it. I see a lot of operations and maintenance where availability is a thing, but it’s not like the top priority.

It’s, it’s odd how they think about it. At the end of the day, you’re producing power, and I know Tilt Renewable, having been to your offices there. Is focused on availability. You’re selling power to the grid. You need to be looking at what the prices are. You’re actually monitoring that. There’s, it’s a complicated enterprise.

It’s much more complex than I think, uh, you would think of a old power company, uh, particularly in the states where everything just kind of runs and it’s, it just happens in Australia. It’s a lot more freewheeling, I would say, and there’s more emphasis on. Making sure the assets are running, that they’re available and they are producing power.

That must change the way you think about managing the assets and particularly. You, you, there will be problems, right? There’s always problems. Are you, are you trying to then categorize [00:13:00] problems and trying to assess when you’re gonna take turbines out? Or you’re just saying, Hey, we just can’t fix this thing until next year.

There must be some sort of organization going on there. How do you think about that in terms of keeping your availability so high? 

Liz Beavis: That’s one thing that I had to change my mindset. From thermal to wind because there’s a lot of work you can do on a thermal power station while it’s running. Whereas anything, anything you wanna fix on a wind turbine, you’re taking it down.

And then on a thermal power station, you have a six or eight week outage where everything’s shut down, 200 people turn up, everything gets fixed. And then you run it back up again and then you hope that it doesn’t come back down. Yeah. Whereas the wind turbine, it’s like, it’s, the way I see it is just if it’s running, it’s running.

You don’t go and stop it for any reason. You know, so it’s you, you only, you’re going there to do reactive work. When it stops and you’re going to do proactive annual maintenance work every 12 months, [00:14:00] and it’s really about getting the scope of your annual maintenance, right, so that you’re addressing everything.

And you know, the goal is like, this is what was drilled into me with GE was the goal is you go to that turbine once a year or twice a year if it has a semi-annual. Maintenance requirement, but that’s, that’s what you’re trying to achieve. So you’re trying to get the reliability to a point where you only need to go there when it breaks, and Oh, so you only need to go there for the annual maintenance and it shouldn’t be breaking down in between.

Unfortunately, that’s. Very difficult to achieve. I think. I think what it was interesting to see the older turbines, um, have a lot more engineering, uh, margin in them. Everything sort of does perform better. 

Allen Hall: Well, that’s what I wanted to ask you because I do think there’s a difference between a slightly older turbine, even a turbine that was manufactured 20 years ago versus today.

It does seem like there’s a lot more knowledge about those turbines. Maybe it’s just, uh, tribal knowledge. Over time you’re gonna learn more about them, but there, there is a huge knowledge [00:15:00] gap. Between on a new turbine, you just, you just don’t know what you don’t know. How are you trying to address that?

Are, are you getting involved in RCAs or are you, are you trying to be proactive monitoring scada, the, it’s just a lot of your plate here. How do you try to manage all that and what’s your process there? 

Liz Beavis: So the way the contract is structured, that’s all the OEM’s responsibility. Uh, but what, what we’re trying to do is say, well, we’ve got a lot of expertise in our asset management team.

Involve us. Like, we’d like to help. We can ask the questions, we can tell you what we’ve seen on other sites. We can, you know, we, we can actually help with this. Um, it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s kind of awkward that, um. There’s no requirement in the RM phase for them to provide us with an RCA under this contract. So, you know, there’s some, there’s some contracts where they may have to, but, um, yeah, [00:16:00] I think that’s an oversight because we’re kind of guessing or we’re, we’re getting given.

Part of the information, but we don’t necessarily have the whole story. And I think the advantage that the OEM has is that they’ve got hundreds of thousands of turbines out there and they, they’re monitoring all of them. They, they should be able to figure out what’s going on a lot easier than I can. I’m looking at two sites and saying, oh, hey, is, is that an issue?

Or is, you know, they’ve got all that data. And, and that was the challenge with an RSP is that you, you’re only looking at a limited. Subset of sites, you’re not necessarily being able to put everything together, but I’m not sure that we all get the value of that knowledge, whether, whether they’re actually crunching the data or whether they’re keeping it to themselves because they don’t want us to know about serial issues.

Um, but yeah, I, I feel like the OEMs could be leveraging that more. 

Allen Hall: Are you able to bridge that gap sometimes with the [00:17:00]OEMs? I do feel like the OEMs have. Pretty good. Uh, at a minimum. I mean, I think a lot of times they’re really good on the back offices, on the engineering side of the technical expertise and the subject matter experts do exist there, and they are pretty quick to get to the root cause of a problem.

But are you able to get to those back offices, to those engineering experts and to talk to them? Have you found a way to do that, that that kind of works for, for both sides of that, of that business? 

Liz Beavis: Something I found really helpful is, um. We’ve joined some international groups. There’s a few groups around that say the O2 O, they’ve, they were O2 O wind, they’re now O2 O renewables and also epr, um, electric Power Research Institute.

So we’ve joined them. We are sharing sort of general, um, breakdown information and issues. Um. Within those groups. And so then we are hearing from, you know, there’s a wind farm in Scotland that says, oh yeah, we’ve got the same [00:18:00] component. We are seeing this issue. And then I say, oh, well I better go check if we’ve got that problem.

And then, you know, so, so we’re, we’re kind of owner to owner learning things, so that’s quite helpful. 

Allen Hall: So you’re leveraging the other, uh, operators of the same turbines or, or really something similar to what you’re operating globally? That’s a, that’s a smart move and a lot of operators do not do that. I mean, and maybe in the States there’s a couple of, of organizations in the states, EPRI being one of them.

O2 O is, I think, uh, definitely popular in Europe. They’re both very effective. So in instead of having to rely on the OM all the time, you’re basically word of mouth with other operators saying, I have this problem. Does anybody else have this problem? Have you solved it? Or maybe what the OEM has said, maybe the OEM has has told another operator what the answer is.

Uh, is that the way you’re kind of thinking about attacking that problem? 

Liz Beavis: Yes, but we’re not sharing any confidential information [00:19:00]through those forums. 

Allen Hall: Never gonna do that. However, it does, I mean, if you get some heads nodding in those discussions, like an oh two, oh, uh, uh, meeting or even an EPRI meeting, uh, or e-cig in the United States.

Basically doing something very similar. A lot of times I don’t think operators use them, the, maybe the way that they should, they, they, they turn into kind of complaint sessions instead of solutions, uh, that could be shared. Are you finding that you’re able to get to some solutions through those organizations?

Liz Beavis: I probably found out more about failure modes and things to look out for. Necessarily then solutions. But yeah, it, it’s definitely, it’s definitely been valuable. 

Matthew Stead: Um, and Liz, we went for a bit of a drive around your site. Once 

Liz Beavis: I be how many days, Matt? You’re like, oh, come up for a day. And then I said, you’re gonna need to come for longer.

Matthew Stead: The one day turned into three days. It was a wonderful time. Um, um, however, I think a part of our conversation was about. All the extra balance [00:20:00] of plant. And, um, I know you’ve got a few te uh, pet topics around balance of plant, including, um, toilet facilities. So maybe you could, uh, share your thoughts on, you know, the, the forgotten part of the, the site.

Liz Beavis: Okay. Well, I can talk about toilets. Um, I think, I think we got away with. Um, small wind farms with just an o and m building and, um, technicians could drive back to the toilet pretty easily. Now. Cooper’s Gap Wind Farm is um, uh, 123 turbines. The furthest turbine is an hour’s drive. No one’s driving, you know.

Back from the turbine and then to the r and m building and then back to their work site. So, um, we need to, we need to consider that in the design phase, but also I’ve just been talking about it every opportunity ’cause um, people just aren’t aware and that we need to think about what facilities we’re providing to our technicians.

And particularly in Australia, we’ve got a big [00:21:00] energy transition we’re trying to deliver and we’re not gonna get the workforce. If people think that wind farms aren’t nice places to work, so I, I think it’s really important. So I’ve, um, I have purchased a demountable containerized toilet facility that’s gonna go out into one of our furthest corners of the wind farm.

Um, so I’m gonna establish that and then look at where else we need to put them. And that was, um, $50,000 Australian delivered. So it’s really. A small cost considering everything else we spend on that one farm. Um, just to provide suitable facilities for our workforce. So, uh, I’m encouraging people to think about that and I’ve had some good conversations since I brought it up at wma, so it’s been good.

Matthew Stead: Yeah, it also struck me several, um, several challenges were a much bigger issue than you may have thought them to be at the start. 

Liz Beavis: I think what I found interesting is, uh, o over all the different wind farms is, um, it’s [00:22:00] really difficult to predict what the civil cost is gonna be. You, you can have some wind farms that are just dead flat and have very minimal civil costs, but as soon as you build a wind farm.

On a ridge, you know, ridge line and you’ve got lots of bridges and steep roads and drainage issues. Yeah. And then depending on the erod ability of the soil and the rainfall, suddenly you’re out there grading pretty regularly. Um, I have now learned way too much about civil engineering, and it’s not my area of interest, but, um, I think there’s, there’s better decisions that can be made during construction and.

Design stage of the wind farm. There’s, you know, there’s some roads, uh, I’ve driven around as a civil contractor at one of my sites and, um, he was involved during construction and he’s also a landholder and he said, well, I told them to put the road over there where it would’ve been sort of gentle slope up the hill, but they wanted to just build a shorter road.

So they [00:23:00] just put a straight up the hill and then they had to bring, um, extra machines in to tow all the components up the hill. ’cause they made it too steep. But that’s then what they’ve left us. For RM to maintain, you know, so that it’s just bad decisions and, and I think it’s, yeah, it gets very fraught during construction.

And then, um, you know, towards the end you’re just trying to get the project finished and you’re trying to get handover and you’re just worried about the turbines, you know, like what’s happening with these generators. And all of that becomes a focus. And meanwhile, the, the civil work hasn’t been finished to the standard and the drains haven’t been built to the drawing.

And, and that’s just. The last thing on anyone’s list. ’cause we’re trying to get the turbines right. Um, but yeah, it’s, it’s a cost that you then wear for the rest of the project, so it’s worth thinking about. Um, and in Australia we’ve also, it’s quite common for the electrical balancer plant to be maintained by the OEM.

Um, and we’re starting to find it’s not really their area of [00:24:00] expertise. They’re not really set up for it. You know, there’s sort of a question mark whether that’s. The best approach or whether, uh, as an owner, we are better to split that out and look after it ourselves, but then that complicates availability guarantees.

And who’s responsible for the underground cable? Yes. And there’s, there’s a lot to think about. 

Allen Hall: I was gonna ask you about that because that is an important difference, uh, in Australia where the BOP seems to be, uh, more, or the responsibility of the operator than the OEM, and that must be at least somewhat Australian specific because of the nature of the country and the difficulties that are involved there, but.

Does that mean that as you, as the operator need to be bringing on people that know, uh, substation, architecture, underground cables, transformers, pads, uh, roads, all that, is that something that you just have decided that it makes more sense to do and we can probably do it [00:25:00] better, uh, as a, to make availability better and make the site more accessible?

Is that, is that the thought process that went into that? 

Liz Beavis: I think the driver was, um. The lenders. So, so finance, um, they, and that’s, that’s why that there was a real trend for the fully wrapped contract. So a, a 25 year fully wrapped contract and, and the finance world is de-risked, you know, it’s magically de-risked because, because you’ve locked it in and it’s all just gonna get done.

And it’s, and now I think everyone’s realizing, well, it’s not actually DeRoot. Like there’s, there’s a lot. That we need to manage and, and now we’ve lost control over it. And actually maybe we’d like to pull that back, but it, it’s, it’s site specific. You know what you. What makes sense to, to give to the o and m contractor versus separating it out and managing it 

Allen Hall: Well then let’s talk about the two wind farms you are involved with day to day, Silverton [00:26:00] and Cooper’s Gap, and now they are not next door to one another.

Silverton’s in New South Wales, far west. Right. And then, uh, Cooper’s Gap is up in Queensland, way up north Counter by Brisbane. Uh, those are what, 500,000 miles apart from one another. They’re a long ways away. 

Liz Beavis: Yeah, I haven’t looked at how far they’re, but um, so I live near Cooper’s Gap, so everyone in Melbourne’s quite pleased with that because it’s a pain for them to get here.

’cause it, I, it’s a three hours, I’m three hours drive from Brisbane. That’s not even North Queensland. That’s, I’m still in Southeast Queensland. Really. 

Allen Hall: Right. True. Yeah. 

Liz Beavis: So then for me to get to Broken Hill, I have to drive to Brisbane and then fly to Sydney or fly to Adelaide and then fly into Broken Hill.

So it’s two flies. So we did have, we’ve got another asset manager who was very involved with Silverton, uh, for a long time, and she lives in Sydney. And so I. When I came in, because I lived near Cooper’s Gap, obviously I took Cooper’s Gap and then it made sense for me to also have Silverton because it’s another [00:27:00] GE three X site.

So that’s why I’ve got those two. Yeah. Uh, even though it’s not my closest site, so I go out to Silverton about four times a year. Um. I make sure I spend a week there and I drive around and look at everything, and I go up tower and I spend time with the team and I, I do feel like I don’t have as much control over that site as Cooper’s Gap.

I’m here most days and I’m, and I’m in the pre-start and I see where all the teams are going, and I go and talk to them. Yeah, so I, I get a lot more information and I think as an asset manager, it’s really important to be on site and to be up tower and to be talking to everyone. Um, so when I do go to Silverton, I make sure I go there for a long time, or I see some owners will just pop in for the day, or they, they’ll sort of come in at 10 o’clock in the morning and, and then leave.

So they don’t even see preset. You can’t really get a feel for what’s going on in site if you’re not. Um, so I would like to be at Silverton more often, but [00:28:00] I just don’t like the 12 hours of traveling it takes me to get there. Um, but um, we have, so teams is amazing, right? Like what we can do remotely now.

Um, I have a fortnightly call with the site manager and we go through what turbines are on and what’s off and what’s he working on and what issues. And, um, so I do get a lot of information. Um, not being on site and, and all the systems that we have access to, I’m constantly spying on them. They all know that.

But also I’m there to help. Like, I’ll, I’ll read the fault code and go, what does this fault code mean? That sounds really bad. And they’re like, oh yeah, we better go check that. So, um, yeah, we we’re working together. Um. And it’s really just, yeah, they know that we’re, we just wanna try and get the availability up.

We don’t wanna be charging them damages all the time. We, it, it doesn’t really cover our costs. So it’s better for all of us that we just improve the availability and it doesn’t matter who’s doing it, we just need to figure it out. [00:29:00]

Allen Hall: Well, Liz, you’re a busy person and in your off time you co-founded an organization called Power Up Queensland and you mentor female engineers.

Uh, and you have done that for a while throughout your career. What’s your message to women that are considering entering the wind energy sector? 

Liz Beavis: Oh, we need more women in wind. Onsite, not just in the, in the head office. And, um, I’m fixing the toilet situation, so I’ve got it under control. Um, yeah, it’s, it’s really sad when I sort of look around at preset and there’s, I’m, I’m the only woman in the room usually.

Um, but yeah, I, like, I go up tower and, um. I think it’s, it’s a lot of fun if you’re, if you’re someone that likes heights and doing something a bit more physical. And I think also the, um, for the, from the trade point of view, you get to work across mechanical and electrical. So if you’re not, uh, you know, if you’re interested in sort of working across your trade instead [00:30:00] of just a purely being a mechanic or an electrician, I think it’s a really interesting, um, uh, workplace to be in.

You get. And, and there’s lots of civil work to do and, um. And then as an asset manager, you know, you can, you can come into that from a, from a mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, or mechanical engineer. There’s, there’s lots of civil work to do, but even in our team, we’ve got people from finance and accounting backgrounds and, um, trade backgrounds.

So it’s, it’s, um, something that you can come. From a broad range of, um, disciplines. Um, and I just, I love being out and about this morning before I came on the call, I had to go out and put some signs out for a biosecurity issue. So, so I like, that’s the kind of thing, like I, I’m not stuck in the office. I just go for a drive and put some signs on the gate and yeah.

So it’s, you’re not stuck in the office. I think it’s, it’s really. It’s, it’s a really awesome job. [00:31:00] So I encourage, yeah, people that want, don’t wanna be in the office and actually be outdoors and involved and doing some physical stuff. It’s a good job. 

Allen Hall: Well, Liz, you’re a wealth of knowledge and uh, it’s always great to see you in Australia and thanks for coming to the Woma event.

If people wanna reach out to you and connect about o and m issues or entering the wind industry, how can they do that? 

Liz Beavis: Um, so I’m on LinkedIn. Maybe I can just put my email in the show notes because I get, I get a lot of LinkedIn connection requests and I sort of don’t know who’s who. 

Allen Hall: We’ll definitely put your email in the show notes, and I know we’ve had a lot of discussions of, of getting you on this podcast.

I’ve been really looking forward to this discussion, and this has been great. We need to have you on more often. So, Liz, the invitation is. Thank you so much for joining us on this podcast and yeah, we’ll see you soon. 

Liz Beavis: Thanks [00:32:00] El.

Vestas hasn’t shared SCADA data after a South Korea turbine collapse, citing an expired warranty. Plus workers at Nordex in Iowa are concerned about tariffs.

Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

Transcript

The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by StrikeTape, protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit strikeTape.com. And now your hosts. Allen Hall Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m Allen Hall and I’m here with Rosemary Barnes. And Fergus is here. Hi. Welcome to our top story. This week is a wind turbine collapse that happened in South Korea at the Changpo Wind Power Complex in Yeongdeok, and the turbine lost a blade. There’s some video here that was recorded when the turbine collapsed, so it happened a couple of months ago, and investigators have been trying to determine the cause of that failure. They’re having a little bit of difficulty because they would like to access the SCADA system of that turbine because that would have a lot of more information about [00:01:00] how the tower was operating at that particular moment. And they’re having trouble in that it is a Vestas turbine and Vestas has not released the SCADA data and it’s citing an expired warranty. Now, Rosemary, this leads to a lot of problems because obviously there’s a ton of sensors in wind turbines today, and they can help determine causes of failures pretty rapidly. But without it, you’re just really looking at video in this particular collapse. Rosemary Barnes It’s amazing that you can look at video. The video is far more useful than the SCADA data is, probably. Um, yeah, it’s, well, I’ve never actually, like, I’ve worked on a lot of RCAs and I’ve never actually got to see video footage of the incident, so that’s actually really cool that they’ve got this dash cam footage. Looking at it now, you can, um, see the lower, probably two thirds of the turbine tower, so you can see the blades coming past. I wish the video would start just like 10 seconds earlier. [00:02:00] Um, because maybe you can see a bit of wobble in the tower. You can see that one of the blades is already missing a tip, or the tip kind of flies off anyway, so maybe it was bent. So definitely looks to me like the root cause was that there was a blade failure. The, um, part of the blade broke off, caused a rotor imbalance, which then meant that one of the blades hit the tower and then it’s really easy for a tower to buckle once it’s got some damage in it. So that, that in itself, like, that’s not an uncommon scenario. Um, and yeah, for sure, like you would ask for the SCADA data, but, uh, I don’t think it’s accurate that they’re saying. There must have been a faulty sensor or something because when there’s a rotor imbalance, it should stop, um, stop the turbine. But I do know from experience, it does not always stop the turbine quickly enough to stop this happening. So, um, I’m not, I’m not sure that the SCADA data would tell you anything [00:03:00] groundbreaking. However, I think it is very interesting Vestas are very publicly not sharing because it’s out of warranty because to me, access to the SCADA data is a key part of being able to operate your turbine safely. And you don’t sell a turbine — like you might sell a turbine with a two year warranty, sure, but that doesn’t mean that you are selling a turbine that can only be operated safely for two years. That’s just like absolutely insane and contrary to — at least a lot of the world’s laws, there’s laws around, you know, how safely you can operate equipment, and especially energy generation assets have specific laws about that. You have to be able to operate them safely and yeah, from what we can see here, like you can’t get access to the SCADA data. So in, in this case, I don’t know if there was a problem with the turbine controller that contributed to this problem. I, I mean, I’m, I’m always a bit surprised that a turbine can shake itself apart and it’s not, you know, there isn’t a sensor in there that can stop it in time to stop the collapse because if you take just the population of turbines that have collapsed, which is, you know, [00:04:00] very, very few from considering the whole global population, but looking at those ones that have collapsed, it’s pretty common way that it happens is from, um, part of a blade falling off and then a rotor imbalance causing the tower to, um, start wobbling and the blades to hit the tower. Allen Hall So would it be in the control laws, Rosemary, where the shutdown would happen in terms of detecting vibration or motion? Maybe swing of the tower? Would that would then drive a safety circuit? Rosemary Barnes At a certain, at a certain level? Um, ’cause all of those, like the rotor does get in a bit of imbalance. The tower does accelerate in, you know, four and a half side to side, that all happens and can happen like quite, quite a lot as well. Like if you’re inside a wind turbine and when they stop it, um, then it makes like a very noticeable shudder right as that stops. And if you do an emergency stop, um, hopefully not while, you know, hopefully you’re not inside the tower when it goes from full, um, operation [00:05:00] to stopping as soon as, as quickly as possible. But that does make a big, um, jump. So, you know, like it’s not shutting down every time that there’s some kind of imbalance or, um, tower acceleration. But yeah, it just, the thing is, it’s, you just, they’re big and heavy, right? And there’s just so much inertia in the system that things can’t happen that fast. Like even if the control system can respond really quickly, it doesn’t mean that it can respond — like it can actually physically stop things before it’s had, you know, even one rotation to hit the tower, um, can be enough. What’s really interesting is that it could be a control system problem, right? That would — that they have now learned. There’s some faulty logic they need to replace it across the wind farm. But Vestas is saying, we’re not gonna tell you if that’s the case or not, because you can’t access this data. And I think that that is really interesting because like I’m constantly frustrated by how little, um, cooperation you can get for root cause analysis and like you can [00:06:00] understand it, no one wants to share their data, but it is in theory covered by laws, at least in, uh, Australian states. You, you know, that you, you’re required to provide information to operate the assets safely for its lifetime. And I, it just, to me is really highlighting that that’s not the case. It’s, it’s not an unusual situation, is kind of what I’m saying. Um, it’s very common that they don’t wanna cooperate, and I’m surprised that they’re happy to say that so, so publicly. Allen Hall Well, the threshold needs to be set somewhere when investigators are looking into an accident like this. I always think you try to help the investigators as much as you can. In the airplane world when there’s an accident, that’s one of the first things that happens is they go pull all the data from the aircraft and then go search through it and see what happened. In the wind turbine world, that’s not necessarily the case, but there is a lot of data at all the OEMs, and it’s not necessarily locked into the turbine. It’s usually remote access, so it would be very easy to give access to [00:07:00] investigators. So it’s, it’s curious to me as to why there’s any hesitation at all if the Korean investigators wanna see the data, just give it to ’em. Rosemary Barnes Yeah. Especially because like from just the brief look that I’ve had, it doesn’t look like it’s gonna turn out that there’s some problem with the turbine controller. If Vestas aren’t to blame, it would be much easier for them to just privately release the data under an NDA and say, look, hey, it’s nothing. It’s not here. But I will say that, um, in the RCAs that I’ve worked on, safety regulators can compel data from the owner and the operator, but it’s not so clear that they have the right to get data from the manufacturer. When you’ve got full service agreements, you can get that because the manufacturer is the operator. But in this case, if Vestas had nothing to do with the operation, then like, I don’t know what the laws are in South Korea, but it is possible at least that they don’t have any right to compel Vestas for the data. Um, for the data. And I think that [00:08:00] is wrong. And, um, this, you know, will hopefully highlight to people, safety regulators around the world — hey, you know, do we need to be changing this regulation a little bit to make sure that when you sell a wind turbine, or you know, any, anything else, any other big bit of industrial equipment, when you sell it, you have to — you have to provide enough information for the life of the wind turbine to operate it safely. Doesn’t mean you need to give away all your trade secrets, but it needs to be safe. And part of that is when you have a catastrophic failure, you do need to make sure that this is not gonna repeat itself across the whole wind farm or across, you know, every turbine of this type in the world. That’s why you do a root cause analysis after the fact. Like you’re not saving this turbine. It’s in like absolute pieces on the ground, right? Like the most value you’ll ever get out of this turbine again is probably recycling the steel. Um, that’ll be the most value. So you don’t do the root cause analysis for the lost asset. You do it to make sure that you understand what’s happened and you are [00:09:00] able to, um, know ahead of time if this is a risk for future assets. Um, and you can’t, yeah, you cannot do that if you don’t have all the data. So, yeah. Very interesting. Allen Hall Like we talked about at the WOMA conference a few months ago, access to SCADA data is paramount for a lot of operators. And, uh, when contracts are assigned, a lot of times that is not lined into the contract — that I will have full access to the SCADA data — and it can be, which I think a lot of operators don’t even consider. So that’s a negotiated item for most contracts and most wind turbine purchases. Especially in Europe now with the new data laws in Europe. I think all the OEMs have to provide that data regardless if there’s an accident or not. You just have — yeah, I think they have to give full access. The means of doing it, I think it’s being implemented this year. Well, it sounds like talking to operators they are just getting some of that data, but once that door opens in Europe, do you think the rest of the world will probably follow? Rosemary Barnes Yeah, I mean, it’s one thing, like they don’t want you reverse engineering their [00:10:00] IP. That’s, that’s basically it. All their trade secrets. Allen Hall Could you do that? I mean, that, that, that’s always the, the, the real issue, right? So I hear that quite a bit from OEMs. We don’t want you to reverse engineer the turbine, but can you do that from the SCADA data? That seems like an impossible task. Rosemary Barnes I also don’t think that anybody is doing anything that tricky, that it’s really gonna be worth the, the effort, you know. And it’s one thing, like it’s annoying — you can’t access the control system. Um, so you can’t make improvements, you know, like you could get a bit more yield out of your wind farm if you can start doing things like wake steering or, you know, changing the speed of operation to, um, you know, depending on environmental conditions, and those, like you, you can improve your operations a bit from that. And so it’s been annoying that you, you can’t actually do those cool projects because you can’t get into the control system. And you know, there exist companies that will come in and take a, a, you know, 10-year-old wind turbine, rip out the control system, put in a new [00:11:00] one, and people go through that whole painful, expensive process just so that they can get control over operation and the data. And that’s, that’s annoying. And, you know, maybe getting an extra, you know, I don’t know, two or 3% AEP out of your wind farm is a big deal. But, um, you know, that’s on the one hand. But on the other hand, when it comes to being able to safely operate your asset, it just shouldn’t be any question. You know? And I don’t know why a manufacturer would be really digging their heels in on this because like I do see, and I hope that this is the kind of incident that makes safety regulators go, hey, you know, this isn’t, this isn’t cool. This is not okay, that we don’t have the information we need to make sure that these turbines are safe across the rest of the, um, the country, you know. Like an overzealous safety regulator could easily be like, oh, okay, well we don’t have a root cause, we can’t rule out that there’s not a fleet-wide problem — all of these Vestas turbines across, um, South [00:12:00] Korea have to shut down now. You know, like that, that is a potential outcome that could happen. That would be terrible for Vestas. Um, so I just don’t understand why they don’t just give the data. — SPONSOR: PES WIND MAGAZINE — Allen Hall As wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial — and let’s face it, difficult. That’s why the Uptime Podcast recommends PES Wind Magazine. PES Wind offers a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit PESwind.com today. Allen Hall Well, a wind turbine factory in West Branch, Iowa just reopened after sitting idle for 12 years and already its workers are worried about tariffs. Nordex restarted the facility in July of last year to manufacture nacelles and drivetrains for the American and Canadian markets. [00:13:00] Orders are strong for this Nordex facility. Alliant Energy awarded Nordex contracts for up to 190 turbines — that’s pretty good — representing over 1,060 megawatts of capacity, the largest single award in the company’s 25-year history in American operations. Uh, but the concerns at the Nordex facility at the moment have to do with tariffs, where a lot of the components that are coming into the factory are running into hefty tariffs, which makes the margins really tough for Nordex to operate that plant. Uh, so the tax advantages of having a facility in the United States are really being offset by some of these extra taxes that are being levied on wind turbine components. Uh, this is not the only facility in Iowa that must be thinking hard about this. The TPI facility in Iowa that is going through the bankruptcy hearings at the moment. [00:14:00] There’s an offer from a company to buy that facility, or acquire that facility, and a couple of the TPI facilities down in Mexico. As it stands, GE is backing the Iowa plant in case those initial purchases of those factories fall through — GE would like to have the Iowa factory, most likely for tax purposes, because some of the projects probably depend upon the tax advantages of building particularly blades and large components like nacelles in the US. So Iowa is a real key here. The restart and some of the increased operations in the United States are indicative of how things are going, I think, globally in the wind energy world, where factories have been closed or they’ve been considering closing a number of factories in Europe and trying to find key places to manufacture components where maybe the tariffs are lower or the operational costs are lower, or [00:15:00] labor costs are lower. Uh, we’re seeing a real big shuffle at the moment. Do you think that this is gonna settle up very quickly? ‘Cause it does seem like there is a migration to the UK because of the amount of money being spent in the United Kingdom, and a migration out of Northern Europe, and probably a migration out of America over time. Rosemary Barnes I mean, it’s interesting how much governments are playing a role. You know, government policies are playing a role in where manufacturing is happening. Um, I think it’s not even like you would’ve said until really recently that you put factories where labor is cheap. And, you know, for the really big components, you want to get roughly close to where the final project is, or at least close to a port so that you can get on a ship and, you know, ’cause um, overland transport is an issue. Um, but now I don’t even think that the labor is the main factor anymore, and maybe even [00:16:00] the geographical location in the world is not even the biggest issue now. It’s about, you know, where are the favorable conditions, and whether that’s because, you know, because of tariffs. And so I do think that we see in the UK the biggest thing that they have — it’s certainly not cheap labor, right? Um, it is, it’s pretty well located for a lot of projects. Um, the UK government has got a good, um, plan for, you know, a decade or more into the future. Right. You know, they’ve also executed on some of those, so we know that it’s not all just talk, and they’ve got some pretty good certainty about these projects and how the economics are going to work out. Allen Hall The UK is a good example of, of maybe a process that’s going well at the moment, but the long-term prospects I think is where everybody gets a little bit nervous. This thing that happened in America like two years ago where everybody was really excited about creating new factories — and then we get down the line a little bit and now we’re not happy to have factories. It really depends upon how [00:17:00] dedicated the government is and how many, uh, barriers they put in to prevent the money from going away. Right? When you lock in long-term funding where it doesn’t put the projects at risk, then it’s great, but if it can be wiped away by the next administration or just the passage of a single bill, then it just makes it really risky. Rosemary Barnes I think I just wanted to make the point that, you know, labor is expensive in the UK, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t have manufacturing, even, you know, like wind turbine blades at least are a very labor intensive thing to manufacture compared to most things these days. Um, but even then it’s not the most important thing anymore. So, you know, um, any country has the ability to put in place the ingredients that would be needed to get, uh, manufacturing of wind turbines in their own country. Um, so, you know, it’s a choice to a large extent, but people are scared to commit long term. You know, the manufacturers are scared to [00:18:00] commit a factory. Countries are scared to commit to a pipeline ’cause they don’t wanna be, you know, interfering in the market. But it’s just, it’s a big lumpy market that just makes it hard for people to want to invest and commit. And so, you know, if you want that manufacturing in your country, then you can, you can get it if you give confidence. Allen Hall At what point do you make decisions about manufacturing for wind turbines or even solar panels in your country with what’s happening in the Middle East? Does that really change the dynamic quite a bit, where the incremental cost delta of making it in-country is totally worth it with the knowledge that you’ll be free of all, uh, connections to the Middle East and the turmoil that does seem to happen there every couple of years. Rosemary Barnes It’s not like a direct enough link that it’s gonna make people make that decision overnight. We’re not buying our wind turbines from the Middle East currently, right? So, you know, existing turbine supply chain. So I think [00:19:00] it could definitely make you wanna turn up the pace at which you buy wind turbines and install them. And if you’ve got, you know, um, bigger pipelines, then it nudges you more and more towards local manufacturing. I guess that people are nervous in general of relying on other supply chains, um, or supply chains from overseas, but it’s a huge difference between, you know, relying on liquid fuels, which are, you know, arriving every day and you need them to continue arriving every day. And if one strait gets closed and that’s a 20% decline in the, you know, volume that can be moved around — you know, try and take 20% of, um, demand out of the system — and that’s obviously huge. But if you had the same thing, if it was wind turbine blades being transported through the strait, then, um, you know, it’d be no new wind farms [00:20:00] this year. It wouldn’t be that all of your existing wind turbines have to be turned off — like they keep on running. It’s just that the future doesn’t grow as fast as you would like it to. So I think it’s just like a much slower timeframe for shocks if you are relying on, um, wind turbines and solar panels, even if they’re made overseas. I still think that it is worth considering, like for security, like if you got into a big long war, and especially with, um, China because they’re the ones that make most of, uh, solar panels and batteries — at least, not wind turbines, although they are a major manufacturer, they’re not the majority for projects outside of China. Most countries are investing in some, you know, local capability to make things, you know, like Australia is investing in capacity to make solar panels, even though we know that we’ll never make them as cheap as China. The US also has done a lot to encourage local manufacturing of solar panels. Um, everybody is [00:21:00] trying to make batteries. Um, so yeah, I think we are doing that. I heard on a podcast, I think it was the Energy Transition Show, reference to, you know, every country does their study about what is net zero gonna cost. Um, and whatever the study was done in the UK, the amount that the energy transition was gonna cost — net zero by 2050, what is the cost to the economy — um, and it was, I can’t remember the number, some amount of trillions. They pointed out that that is the same as one crisis. Like what we’re going through now costs about that same amount of money. Um, you know, one fuel crisis. So it’s like if you can save yourself from one crisis, um, yeah, if you can insulate yourself from one crisis, it’s paid for itself. Do we really think that in the next 24 years — and it’s not just over 24 years, it’s, you know, it’s forever after that — do you think that there’s only gonna be one? No way. There’s gonna be lots. So I’m hopeful that, [00:22:00] um, this crisis is gonna get people thinking, hey, we can insure against this sort of thing by electrifying, um, that, you know, we’ve had oil shocks before. We’ll have them again in the future. I mean, in Australia, like, I’ve heard international commentary saying things like, you know, Australia will be a winner out of this because we’re such a big exporter of LNG. But in reality in Australia, there are petrol stations that don’t have any diesel — um, like, you know, lots of them. So people with diesel cars are driving around and around and around to, um, you know, find somewhere where they can buy fuel. And in a just delicious piece of irony, like back two or three elections ago, um, the conservative party was having this point of difference with the more progressive party — the Labor party — that, you know, they wanted to promote EVs, and the coalition said they’re gonna ruin your weekend. They’re gonna end, they’re gonna end the [00:23:00] weekend, I think was the saying, because yeah, like EVs, you can’t go camping or whatever with an EV. And now we’ve got the Easter long weekend and people are legitimately saying I can’t find fuel to drive to my plans for the Easter weekend. So now it’s diesel specifically — you know, fossil fuel cars in general — that are ending the weekend. You know, people have had their weekend ended by, um, not having an EV this time around. So I think that it should really reframe people’s thinking, refocus us. Allen Hall But isn’t that what eventually happens — is that the realism hits, and so no matter what your ideology is or your thought process, you still have to deal with what’s happening on the ground at any particular moment. And this is not the first time these events have happened, they’re not gonna be the last time that they’ve happened. Your best mode of operation is to decouple from these events as much as [00:24:00] you can. Where I think the UK is headed. Obviously Norway has, in a sense, decoupled itself because of the amount of electric vehicles that it has and the natural resources that it has. Honestly, every country — every major country — if they can decouple, is going to try to decouple. Just to stop, uh, because it has seemed like in the United States, well, since the 1970s, it’s just been this rocky road. And the discussion — at least you hear discussions here now more recently about what are we doing? We just keep doing the same thing and we end up with these trillion dollar spends to create some new future, and the future never really shifts all that much. Should we be involving ourselves in this? In terms of energy production, I think you see more of a push for more independent energy production and decoupling, which I think Australia’s headed to and could do. The UK is [00:25:00] trying to do it, and other countries are trying to do it. If you have enough of an economy to do it, when energy is one of those things, I think you just can’t not do it — you would need to be involved in solar and wind. You need to be involved in batteries and you need to be involved in LNG if you can do it, you need to be involved in nuclear if you can pull it off. All of the above is gonna be the answer for a lot of countries to get out of the strait. Rosemary Barnes I think the US is a bit different though, because, um, unlike many countries, you could become more energy secure or entirely energy secure without electrifying. I think that you, you have enough of the various different kinds of, um, fossil fuels that you could. Uh, and I’m sure that will be the response as well in the, at least immediate future in the US. Whereas other countries who don’t have that option, we’re forced to move into the future. And I think that, you know, is better for us in the long term. Allen Hall Well, this is the thing about Australia — and we pointed out at WOMA — [00:26:00] is Australia is leading the world in a lot of ways, and electrification is one of them. So the rest of the world is watching what happens in the way that Australia goes about it. A lot of wind, even more solar, and some batteries — and how that plays out’s gonna affect where the rest of the world goes. That wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn. Don’t forget to subscribe, so you never miss an episode. And if you have found value in today’s conversation, please leave us a review. It really helps other wind energy professionals discover the show. So for Rosie — Yolanda and Matthew are on holiday — I’m Allen Hall and we’ll see you here next time on the Uptime Wind Energy [00:27:00] Podcast.

 

Allen covers Quebec’s record wind project, Madawaska’s financial close, Nova Scotia’s first direct-to-consumer wind sales, PEI’s retiring wind farm, and Aikido’s floating offshore AI data center.

Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

Transcript

Good Monday everyone.

Canada is building.

On the last day of March… the province of Quebec broke ground on the largest wind energy project in Canadian history.

It is called Des Neiges… French for “of the snows.”

One hundred and fourteen turbines. Two hundred meters tall each. Seven megawatts apiece.

When the first two phases are complete… those turbines will power one hundred and forty thousand homes.

The partners are Boralex, Énergir, and Hydro-Quebec. The investment: three billion dollars.

Quebec Premier Francois Legault said it plainly at a recent ceremony: “There is a global race right now to dramatically increase electricity production.”

He is not wrong.

Also in Quebec… the Madawaska Wind Energy Project just reached financial close. EDF Renewables and Hydro-Quebec are behind that one. Two hundred and seventy-four megawatts. Forty-five turbines. Financed under Green Loan Principles. Expected to power more than forty-four thousand homes.

Now… across the Gulf of Saint Lawrence… Nova Scotia is launching the Mersey River Wind project. One hundred and forty-eight-point-five megawatts. Thirty-three turbines.

And here is where it gets interesting. For the first time… consumers in the province will be able to buy electricity directly from a wind farm. Not from the utility. From the source. A company called Renewall Energy is already signing contracts with homeowners… businesses… even the city of Halifax.

And then there is Prince Edward Island. That province is saying goodbye to its very first wind farm.

North Cape began in two thousand and one. Sixteen turbines. Each rated at just point-six-six megawatts. The province’s newest turbines? Four-point-two megawatts each. The P.E.I. Energy Corporation is seeking bids for an environmental impact assessment… the first step toward replacement.

Twenty-five years ago… North Cape was a pioneer. Today… it is showing its age. That is how progress works.

But let us end on this.

Out in California… a company called Aikido Technologies has unveiled a floating wind platform… that also serves as an AI data center. The platform pairs an eighteen-megawatt turbine with onboard computing power… cooled by the surrounding ocean. A prototype is being built in Norway. Commercial launch: the United Kingdom… twenty twenty-eight.

The CEO put it simply: “Before we go off-world… we should go offshore.”

So… from Quebec to Nova Scotia to Prince Edward Island… Canada is building its energy future at full speed. And somewhere out on the open ocean… someone is building the next chapter altogether.

And that is the state of the wind industry for the 6th of April 2026.

Join us tomorrow for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.