The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

We talk with Ben Ackers, CEO of PelaStar, a company revolutionizing the industry with their tension leg platform design. PelaStar's innovative technology provides stability for large wind turbines in deep water conditions, paving the way for cost-effective and efficient floating wind farms at scale. Visit https://pelastar.com/ for more info! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. With the increasing demand for clean energy, offshore wind has become a crucial component in the global energy mix. However, many of the world's best wind resources are located in deep waters where traditional fixed bottom foundations are not feasible. And this is where PelaStar comes in. PelaStar is changing the floating offshore wind industry with their 10 leg platform design, which provides stability for large wind turbines in deep water conditions. Our guest today is Ben Ackers Chief Executive Officer at PelaStar. Ben brings a wealth of experience in the maritime industry to lead PelaStar's efforts in making floating offshore wind a reality on a large scale. Ben, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. There's a lot to talk about because with the recent auctions or the outlines of some offshore wind sites off the coast of Maine, and then obviously off the coast of California, floating wind is going to be huge in the United States, and it's already becoming something of an item over in Europe. You at PelaStar have been trying to answer some of the problems that we have with floating offshore wind and maybe you can just give us a little bit of background on PelaStar and what you're working on right now. Ben Ackers: Absolutely. First of all, PelaStar is, as you said, a tension leg platform which sets it apart from a lot of the platform technologies that you'll see that have been deployed in demonstration and pilot projects. We're really the next generation of technology that the industry needs to bring down the cost of energy for utility scale floating wind farms. We started developing PelaStar around 2009. The idea comes out of our parent company, Glosten, which is a naval architecture, marine engineering consulting firm headquartered in Seattle. We've been around for over 65 years. And as our engineers were looking at the challenge of how do we put turbines offshore? We evaluated the different archetypes of the time. Semi submersible spars. And ultimately landed on tension leg platform is what we thought would be the best way to bring down the price of energy in the long run by developing platforms that have the lowest mass and the least amount of motion to drive down capex and operating costs. Joel Saxum: So a quick question then there, we'll dive right into it is you highlighted what you believe the Or what in, it's physics, right? But what the tension leg platform has advantages over some of the other technologies that are out there, because like we, we talked about a little bit off air there's a lot of options and ideas and demonstrators and stuff, but nobody has really taken that the front runner, the pole position in the race for what's going to be built at scale in offshore floating. So that's The tension leg platform idea. What are the advantages of it over some of the others? Ben Ackers: Principally,

We discuss the new document from Vestas titled "This is Not a Wind Farm", which criticizes the U.S. approach to offshore wind development and proposes solutions. Allen, Joel and Phil analyze Vestas' suggestions and debate whether states will implement any of the proposed changes. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall. I'm here with Joel Saxum and Phil Totaro, and we are discussing the new document from Vestas called This is Not a Wind Farm. And if you've gone to Vestas website and looked at the U. S. offshore wind tab, you can find this document. And you may want to follow along during this podcast because we want to dive into the details here. And remember that Vestas released this document during IPF. Basically the offshore wind energy symposium conference that happens in the United States this year down in New Orleans. And we felt like this document summarized some of the things that we have been feeling and seeing, but this is as proposed solutions. Now we may not agree on all those proposed solutions as we're going to discuss. But, at least they're putting out, they're putting their stake in the ground. They're saying these are the things that need to be done to move the U. S. into offshore wind quickly. Let me give a little bit of background here, and I'll list the items that Vestas has a problem with, or where the issues are. The key problem areas are, and remember that there's almost up to 50 gigawatts of offshore leases that are going to be proposed in the next couple of years. So in, from Vestas point of view, there's a lot of real estate for, and for turbines to be put into the water. So this is the perfect time to get these US projects moving. Now they list four to five. I broke them into five. Problem areas, and I want to go through the real quickly here. Number one, offshore bidders proposing projects are based on immature technology. So what Vestas is saying is that the turbines that are still on paper are being proposed for projects. Two there's a lack of focus on the supply chain readiness to ensure the timely project delivery. And generally what Vestas is talking about here is that if they choose a 20 megawatt turbine, all the supply chain has to be able to deliver a 20 megawatt turbine versus a 15 megawatt turbine in their case. State and local content mandates are leading to recent project cancellations along the East Coast. Four, long lead times between offtake awards and project execution. Is leading to speculative bidding behavior, which increases cost uncertainty in the supply chain. And number five, as I've outlined it, there's limited or no indexation adjustments within PPA. So once you lock in a PPA, you're stuck with it forever, regardless of interest rates, so there's no interest rate adjustment if interest rates goes up or down for that matter now. All right, guys. So here we go. This is where I think it's going to get a little contentious. There are four Vestas solutions here. Number one, prioritize the award of off take contracts to bidders that have selected turbine technology that is mature, tested, and commercially available to ensure on time project delivery and industry scalability. Now, Phil, this is oriented towards turbines that do not have type certification yet. I assume we would have been talking about the GE 18 megawatt,

Allen, Joel and Phil discuss GE's decision to stop at 15.5MW for offshore turbines, the impact of cancelled New York offshore wind projects, challenges for Siemens Gamesa's rumored 21MW turbine, and Colorado attracting wind manufacturing jobs. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Joel, we're getting close to American Clean Power up in Minneapolis. What are the warmer destinations in the states in May? Joel Saxum: Actually, the weather doesn't look like it's going to be too bad. It's going to be, it's going to be what sounds like I've been talking to some of my friends that they're, what you would expect is a traditional spring in Minnesota. Not snow, not 80 degrees. It looks like 65. So it'll be nice where you can wear a blazer and do your things and not sweat too much. Allen Hall: Is that a promise, Joel, or a wish? Joel Saxum: Weather in the Midwest, it's a wish. Bring flip flops and winter boots. Allen Hall: And Weather Guard will be with AC 883 at ACP. And so if you want to come talk to us, stop by, you'll see us wandering around the halls and making all kinds of noise and reporting, recording podcasts. If you have a company that's involved in wind energy and you want to be on the podcast, that's a good time to talk to us. Our podcast numbers have exploded. So there's a lot of listeners at the moment. And if you want to get your company out in the industry, heard of all around the world. We're a good way to do it. We're absolutely free. And we'd love to talk to you. The other thing that's happening which is I think going to create an earthquake up in Minnesota is that Phil is actually going to go to ACP. You can't believe the amount of leverage it took to get him out of sunny California and go to Minnesota in May. We worked on it for weeks. Joel Saxum: He'll be there though. Smiling. Philip Totaro: This is actually something I'm pretty excited and interested about this time though, because I've never had so much so many potential, partners and customers show up to an event before and so many existing ones as well, there's a lot of people that I'm going to have. It almost feels like we're back to before the pandemic, which is when I was, a lot more enthusiastic about going to these these events and trade shows. There was a lot more payback, frankly when you participated and that diminished a lot. For obvious reasons with the pandemic and whatnot, we weren't getting together in person. But it feels like they're starting hopefully to create an environment that is conducive to the industry flourishing and actually transacting some business. And so that's what's attracting me to, to participate in this thing. I hope that continues and, I'm happy at this point to dip my toe back in the water of participation. Joel Saxum: So if you're in Minnesota, be prepared for a hundred percent increase of people that grew up next to Rick James. Allen Hall: All right, over in New York State the offshore industry has been really hit, and this is due to the state's third solicitation, what they call a third round for offshore wind, and they aim to add four gigawatts offshore. Everybody goes back in time and remembers they had all the sort of the cancellations happened and they re bid everything at the end of last year. That got approved, there were three projects approved, Attentive Wind, Community Offshore Wind, and Excelsior Wind.

New Jersey has created the New Jersey Green Bank to support the state's clean energy projects. Hellenic Cables Americas has been allocated a $58 million tax credit for its planned cable factory in Baltimore, Maryland. Vestas decides not to lower prices in order to turn a profit. Masdar is planning a possible entry into the Chinese renewable energy market. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech. And I'm here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum. And this is your NewsFlash. NewsFlash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you want market intelligence that generates revenue, then book a demonstration of IntelStor at IntelStor. com. The New Jersey Economic Development Authority Board has created the New Jersey Green Bank to support the state's clean energy transition. The Green Bank will use various financial tools such as debt and credit enhancements to invest and attract private capital for New Jersey's clean energy sector. The bank will focus on projects, technologies, and companies that support the state's climate goals. Particularly in areas like zero emission transportation, building decarbonization and resiliency, and clean energy generation and storage like wind energy. Phil, this is unique for the United States where a separate state has created a bank to fund renewable projects. Philip Totaro: Yeah, this is really interesting and compelling that other states have tried employing other forms of investment vehicles to try and park money into project development, but this is a pretty unique thing where they're going to specifically focus on clean energy. And, do it with it sounds like the help of federal funding that they've been able to obtain. This is going to be great for offshore wind and battery storage technology, I think, deployed throughout the state of New Jersey. All in all I think this is a win. Joel Saxum: Yeah, I like the in the press conference here, they state each investment made by the NJGB must demonstrate benefits for New Jersey. Great, it's their state, it's their money. But, this is the part I like. It must be new, rather than refinance and reduce greenhouse combustion greenhouse gas emissions or other pollutants. So it has to have, measurable effect for helping the climate out. And it must be new, so it's putting new things out there. And I know like New Jersey right now is actually pretty heavy on doing quite a few solar installations as well. A lot of good things coming there. I would like to see other states put this into place. Allen Hall: Helena Cable Americas, a subsidiary of Synergy Holdings. has been allocated a 58 million tax credit for its planned cable factory in, of all places, Baltimore, Maryland. The company intends to build a 300 FID, that will manufacture subsea and underground cables for offshore wind and power grid applications. Helena Cable America successfully applied to the Department of Energy and received an allocation letter from the IRS granting its request for a qualifying advanced energy project transferable tax credit, or as we call it IRA 48C. Now Phil, the IRA 48C, we haven't experienced a lot of that yet. Helena Cable's is one of the early entries there. What do you think so far? Philip Totaro: So this is great.

Allen Hall discusses the growing issue of blade wrinkles with Morten Handberg, blade expert at Wind Power LAB. They delve into the causes, consequences, and challenges of identifying and repairing these minute deformities that can significantly reduce blade life. Visit https://windpowerlab.com/! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, and if you have been following the news lately, there are several ongoing campaigns by blade manufacturers to deal with wrinkles in their blades. Even though these wrinkles are minute in appearance, these fabric deformities can create weaknesses that reduce blade life. And as you have seen all over the news, these wrinkles are also expensive to remove and repair. Our guest is Morton Handberg, Chief Blade Specialist and Partner at Wind Power Lab, which is a blade consulting company located in Copenhagen, Denmark. If you haven't heard Morten on our podcast previously, Morten is our resident blade whisperer. In our episode today, we'll be discussing how wrinkles are created, how they produce stresses, and why they are difficult to eliminate during manufacturing. Morten, welcome to the program. Morten Handberg: Hi Allen, Allen Hall: it's nice to be back again. If we can catch up a little bit, you and I talked to each other about Blade Wrinkles several weeks ago now, and that topic has just gotten progressively hotter and hotter. I thought, now's the time. To get it out there about what's happening with wrinkles and why we should care. Now, and at the same time, you sent me some pictures and it would just scare the heck out of me because I thought these wrinkles were relatively small coming from an aerospace background. Wrinkles don't tend to be big. In aerospace products, but the wrinkles you showed me are large. And I'm trying to understand like what is the real threat here? Let's just start there. What's the real threat. If a wrinkle is in a side of a blade, what does it matter? Morten Handberg: So it really matters depending on the location of the wrinkle. So is it in the structural spark cap or in a heavy node, part of the bait, let's say the root or the transition zone. Then even small wrinkles can actually turn into very large cracks. And it doesn't really matter what the size is. It's more, if it's in an area that allows it to grow into a crack, because as soon as it does that, it will just continue growing at a pace defined by the loading conditions, it can ultimately turn to a blade failure. Obviously, the larger and more aggressive, the cracking the wrinkles, meaning how how steep the angles are of the wrinkles. So if this is the shape it matters that the wrinkles is shaped like this or like this. Then how much stress it requires for it to develop, because it's all about the, how much reduction that it creates to the to the underlying blade structure. If you have changes in the UD laminate and it starts to fold, it means that the strength of the UD laminate is reduced. And then it's just about a matter of time before it then turns into a structural crack. Allen Hall: And the defect doesn't just apply to the plies where the wrinkle is, it applies, it puts additional stress on the plies that are around it? Is that the loading problem? Morten Handberg: Yeah, because, if you remove the loading capacity of one area,

We interview with Cory Mittleider of Malloy Wind, a company specializing in providing bearing solutions for wind turbine applications. Cory shares insights into common pitch bearing failure modes, how Malloy Wind analyzes failed bearings to develop improved designs, and the importance of factors like grease and manufacturing processes in bearing longevity. Visit https://www.malloywind.com/ for more info! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, and I'm here with my co host, Joel Saxum. If you were an owner, operator, or technician in wind, you have come across pitch bearing problems. And those pitch bearing problems can get really hard to detect early. But once you see them, they're expensive to repair. So Joel and I thought it was time to bring on an expert. In bearings to the podcast. So our guest today is Cory Mittleider of Malloy Wind. And Cory has an extensive background in wind bearings. Now, Malloy, if you're not familiar, is based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, which is in the middle of the United States. And Malloy Wind specializes in providing solutions for wind turbine. applications. So they're a total wind focus organization. They offer a variety of services, including upgrading gearbox bearings, blade bearings, main shaft bearings, pitch motor renewals, and generator bearings. Cory, welcome to the program. Cory Mittleider: Hey guys, thanks for having me. Allen Hall: So there's so many questions about pitch bearings and just having been down in San Diego at the ACP OMNS one of the complaints is, Oh, I got a huge bearing replacement program going on this summer. And my first thought was of you were thinking, wow, you guys must be really busy because Bearings are probably after lightning, it's lightning and then bearings were one and two of the problems for wind turbines at the moment. Cory Mittleider: Yeah, it's been it's been a busy couple of years. There's certainly standout platforms that are having their own platform specific failure modes that we're discovering as we work with operators. Joel Saxum: Yeah we talked a little bit off air about some of that thing. Okay, so we're in lightning space. We know if someone calls and says, I have this turbine with these blades, you go, Ooh, you got problems. So I know that it's the same thing in the Bering world, generators, like you know the ones that are going to happen. So when you guys initially talk with someone, What are some of the points that you asked them right away? Okay. They've called, what are we looking at? Cory Mittleider: Sure. Sure. So to your point, it's a lot of platform specific. We know platform X has this history of problems. Platform Y has a different set of history and platform Z is a pretty stable, pretty robust platform, for example. So we start to, to investigate, is it one of those platforms that we already know has some issues that we either maybe have something developed for, or are currently working on. We talk about how soon are they experiencing their first failures or how are they detecting them? And most importantly, I think is how long do they plan to run the site? Are they two thirds of the way through the life of the site? Then, we probably propose a different solution to them than we do to some of the worst case scenarios where they're having failures in the three year ...

Joel and Allen discuss their Texas and Oklahoma wind farm tour, finding tight budgets and lack of technicians are causing operators major struggles. Then the team discusses whether Inflation Reduction Act incentives are effectively driving more clean electricity generation or creating misaligned incentives for hydrogen over expanding wind power. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Philip Totaro: Joel wants to do a billboard. In Texas to advertise Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and StrikeTape. That's a pretty good idea, but I got a better one. What if you did a TV ad, or like a, an ad you could post up on LinkedIn, but recreate the episode from the Twilight Zone, Terror at 20, 000 Feet, but instead of there being like a little monster on the airplane wing that William Shatner is all scared of, how about it's just like lightning strikes that get, diverted by strike tape and then, but you recreate the ethos. And then nothing happens. Allen Hall: It could be good. William Shatner is still alive. He's like 92. Yeah, he, I'm sure we could sign him up Philip Totaro: to do that. I'm telling you. This is actually, this is why I had the idea because his production company contacted me about six or seven years ago and they wanted me to do an infomercial with him. And it was actually fairly reasonable price. So we should talk off air and look into this. That's a thing. Why didn't you do Joel Saxum: that? If we could get William Shatner to do a strike dig commercial. Come on. Phil, how much was it? Was it four figures? Three figures? Three figures, that's what I'm talking about. We spent a lot on barbecue this week. We're trying to recover. Allen Hall: Joel and I have been down in Oklahoma and Texas going to a variety of wind farms and meeting with the O& M folks, the site supervisors, just to see what's top of mind there. Really great discussions. Some of the best discussions about Wind energy I've had in the last couple of years because everybody's so frank about it and Joel maybe you can give top of mind what some of your insights were. What are we chopped liver? Joel Saxum: No. Just so we're clear, the conversation with you guys are great as well. We're, I don't know. I'm not discounting those. Yeah, no, but you're not running a wind farm, Phil. Not yet. So if you take this whole thing as a loop it into one big ball. So Allen and I did this tour. Allen is still on the tour. I'm back at home. But. We talk with these, you walk in the door at an O& M building, you're in Texas and Oklahoma, they welcome us in. If the door is open, someone's there, come on in, let's chat. And people are willing to, I think part of it is, some of the wind farms we visited, they're in the middle of nowhere, so they're not getting a whole lot of visitors. So when they see some people in general, they're like, oh this is cool, people. But of course, we're out there, we are visiting wind farms we know have lightning troubles, WeatherGuard, lightning tech, strike tape product, we can help with that. But the, one of the overreaching goals is just to go out there and talk with people. We want to see what's going on in the industry. What are they, what are the problems are running into daily from technicians to. Today we heard about bats and then we, pitch bearings and blade issues and only so much budget to do so many repairs. And we've, some wind farms,

Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners announced the acquisition of a 1.3 gigawatt onshore wind portfolio in New York called Liberty Renewables. Spanish renewable energy firm Acciona Energia decided to restructure its business in Brazil after reviewing their portfolio, citing challenges with project profitability. Wind turbine manufacturer Nordex is reducing its production in Brazil in response to low demand for contracts in the Brazilian marketplace. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech. And I'm here with the founder and CEO of InstelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commecrcial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum. And this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at InstelStor. If you want market intelligence that generates revenue, then book a demonstration of InstelStor at InstelStor. com. Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners has announced the acquisition of a 1. 3 gigawatt portfolio of onshore wind projects in New York called Liberty Renewables. CFP has made this acquisition through its CIV fund, where it is targeting a final close of 12 billion euros. Liberty has recently submitted its application to New York's Office of Renewable Energy, citing for its first project, Hoffman Falls Wynn, where construction is due to start there in 2026. The building work on other projects in the 1. 3 gigawatt portfolio are due to start somewhere between 2027 and 2020. 30. Phil, why is Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners going for onshore wind in the United States? Philip Totaro: It's a great question. And in particular, this Liberty Renewables portfolio it's interesting because the New York Independent System Operator, certainly within the state of New York, they need, additional power. Anybody that's got a pipeline of projects in New York is probably in good stead. But their power prices in NISO have actually been fairly robust. And so I think, when Usually projects in New York don't have a fixed price power offtake contract, except for the offshore, obviously. And even then there's an escalator in there. But yeah, most of the projects in the NYSO market are, on a pretty healthy merchant power offtake. So it's actually a great deal. And they're looking at potentially with this their fifth fund here, they're looking at a total potential of, I think they said something around 22 billion euros. So on top of what they've already got committed, this is, something that can help them extend more investments into some markets where there are small portfolios, a development assets like this, that they can start grabbing. Joel Saxum: Yeah. And just so everybody knows, this is not a bunch of in the ground projects operating these. This is a development pipeline. So these are, permitted and or not permitted, but, active projects that are in the development phase where C. I. P. will come in, finish the development and of course, a secure financing to make these things happen. So right now, Nothing in the ground, but soon to come. Allen Hall: Spanish renewable energy firm, Acciona Energia has decided to restructure its business in Brazil. After they have reviewed their portfolio, the company has decided that the Latin Americans largest economy was adapting to current conditions in the domestic market, and this has implications worldwide, Phil. Brazil is going to be a renewable energy powerhouse.

In this episode, Glenn Aiken and Eelko May from LiftWerx share how their pioneering, crane-less wind turbine repair solutions are transforming the industry with cost-effective, eco-friendly, and efficient approaches to major component exchanges and offshore wind maintenance. Visit https://liftwerx.com/ for more! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. Today, we're joined by Glenn Aiken, president and co founder at LiftWerx, and Elke May, managing director at LiftWerx. Based in Canada, LiftWerx is leading the way in developing craneless wind turbine repair systems. As many of Turbine repairs have traditionally depended upon large cranes that are difficult to transport and are vulnerable to wind delays. And this is where LiftWork comes in because they are disrupting the status quo. They have pioneered ingenious smaller lifting solutions that are cost effective, efficient, and eco friendly. Glenn and Eelko welcome to the program. Thanks, Al. Yeah, thanks very much, Al. So as we all know doing major component exchanges is a difficult task. And, or doing a rotor removing the rotor, those kinds of things usually involves massive cranes. And in the United States, and even in Europe times getting a hold of a crane big enough to do the job is one expensive and two, usually there's a narrow window when you can actually get access to that crane. This is where LiftWerx comes in and I really want to hear about, it's really a couple of different things you're working on. Obviously the gen hook and the rotor hook, but now you're into offshore. So I think that's a cool offering because there's going to be a, not a lot of work offshore in the United States coming up in which is going to need help. So I want to hear about what you guys are seeing out in the world and how LiftWerx fills that void. Glen Aitken: If I look back 10 years. Because I've been working in wind energy for around 20 years we've seen a massive rapid growth in the size and weight of wind turbine components we've also seen just a huge volume of wind turbines installed over the last decade and quite frankly, crane requirements have also, You're you know, increase just to meet the demand. Both, both the, demands in height and weight, but also just the volume demand. Um, myself I came out of the heavy crane industry. I worked there since the early 90s. And, Really started to see customers were in a lot of pain over, over crane costs and also crane logistics. And so we, we tried to come up with a solution that would solve a lot of that pain. And what we're seeing now is that there's a huge transition going on especially in North America at the moment where we're seeing that probably 50 percent now of major component replacements are being done with uptower cranes as compared to traditional cranes. Joel Saxum: It makes absolute sense, right? So you guys have developed this technology based on seeing the struggles of asset owners and other, ISPs and stuff in the world, because, hey, we've got to swap this one component out. We've got a crane, over here, it may cost you 50 or 75. I've seen insurance cases where it's a hundred thousand dollars to mobilize a crane, right? And that's just to get it there. And once you get it there, then it's day rate after day rate.

Thorbjørn Rasmussen and Michael Drachmann Haag of Polytech discuss the company's new onshore leading edge protection (LEP) product, designed to be more flexible and easier to install than their previous offshore version. Get an inside look at the technical details and customer-focused approach behind Polytech's latest wind industry innovation. Visit https://www.polytech.com/ for more! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Joel Saxum: Okay, guys, we're recording here. We're live right now at blades USA 24. We're sitting in the area where there's some coffee and some conversations, ISPs, asset owners, some blade design engineers, and of course, a lot of solution providers. I'm here with Polytech came over from Denmark on a world tour. You're heading back to Denmark. You're going to OMS in San Diego, so we'll be over there. Okay. So I've got Thorbjørn Rasmussen, chief commercial officer over at Polytech and also Michael Drakmann Haag. I got it, right? Yeah. Perfect. Perfect. So chief technical officer. So we have two of the great minds from the Polytech team here right now. Polytech, while they do a lot of different solutions they have some lightning protection things, they sell to OEMs, sell to asset owners, all the above, out of Denmark. They're really known for the L shells. L shells is a product that if you're dealing in wind turbine maintenance at all, you know that the leading edge is a problem and the L shells were developed for offshore use originally, correct? And they have been installed some onshore turbines, some high erosion areas, or even people that are like, you know what? I think this is the solution. I don't have to touch my leading edges for 10, 15, 20 years. I'm putting the big stuff in. So you guys have been behind the scenes, behind the curtain, working on another kind of version of that, but adjusted specifically for onshore. Yes, tell us about that. Michael Drachmann Haag: Yeah, so we've taken all of the great learnings that we've had on the yellow onshore, offshore products, and then we've taken and built. On those innovations. And then we designed a product that then is easier to install comes at a lower price point as well. And really sets aside from the more, you could say more complicated stuff that you get out in the industry. But while still having the the great performance and also then we don't need the material to cure at site, which we often see with coatings and other products. So I think we really try to say that. All of the good things we have from the offshore, we build in that, that into an offshore product. And yeah. Joel Saxum: So I would say, as you thought, so driving this market, primary market research, as we call it, of course, in the commercial world, did you have asset owners come to you and say, hey, this is great, but we'd like this? Thorbjørn Rasmussen: Absolutely. We have been cooperating a lot with the ISP out there, getting feedback for installation method and and what was actually difficult or less easy for the, let's say the premium version. And then asset owners is when they, Take the decision very shortly sometimes they want to run a campaign So it should be easy accessible and so forth and all that feedback has gone back to Michael and the department and try to make sure that was incorporated in the solution And we can elaborate more on this one. Joel Saxum: Yeah. Yeah,

A 107-meter mold at the LM factory in Sherbrooke, France has been damaged and LM in Denmark faces significant layoffs. Researchers at TU Delft develop noise-reducing "Muteskin" technology. The U.S wind industry suffers from shortage of skilled welders. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Alright, Joel, so we seem to have eaten our weight in barbecue in the last three days. Joel Saxum: Yes. Allen Hall: That is a literal fact. Joel Saxum: Now should I tell you the perfect barbecue plate order? If you're in Texas and you're getting barbecued, this is what you want. You want a two meat plate, you want brisket, you want a jalapeno cheese sausage, you want fried okra, and some mac and cheese. That's it. Allen Hall: We were sitting with some Danish folks last night and trying to explain what okra was or is. And then I thought, I betcha Rosemary doesn't know what okra is either. Have you had okra before, Rosemary? Rosemary Barnes: Oh, we have it. Yeah, I haven't eaten it a lot, but you can, yeah, it's in the supermarkets, usually. Yeah. Allen Hall: Does it have a taste? Can you describe what the taste of okra is for those who have been uninitiated? Rosemary Barnes: It's not something that I eat often. I've tasted it, but I I don't even really remember. I know that it gets if you don't do it well, it gets slimy. That's its biggest crime. It has to be well cooked, otherwise it's a slimy mess. Allen Hall: Now. So we went to our restaurant and Joel and I didn't say anything to our waitress. It was a nice restaurant. It was a barbecue restaurant, of course. We're in Texas. But the waitress came up and immediately associated Joel with Texas, even though he's from Wisconsin and then associated me with being an outsider. Now, I was born in Nebraska. I'm a lot closer to Texas than Joel, but I was seen as being an East Coast person. Immediately, I thought, oh my gosh, I think the Massachusetts is starting to show on me. Joel Saxum: It's the glasses. I think. Allen Hall: Is it the glasses? You think that makes me look Danish? Rosemary Barnes: Don't you have glasses too, Joel? I'm looking at you both. Joel Saxum: Allen's looks way too smart. That's what it is. Or they can smell the east coast on you. I don't know what it was, but she knew right away. She's like, where are you from? Northerner. Yankee. Allen Hall: Rosemary has been jet setting all over the world, and, which is awesome, but When she's gone, then we have all these questions. We just hold, hold until she comes back. And meanwhile everything had happened at LM at the same time, and Rosemary wasn't even around to, to ask what's going on. But let's talk about the most important one first right now, which is that in Sherbrooke, France, the LM factory 107 meter mold was broken somehow. And it's really thrown a kink into the works over at Sherbrooke, because There's not that many mulches like you can pull out a spare mold and start making blades Do you have you heard what actually happened in Sherberg? Did they? How do they damage this mold? And how would you damage a mold? Maybe importantly is like, how could you damage a mold like this? Rosemary Barnes: Oh, there's all sorts of ways that you can damage a mold. Obviously you can drop something heavy on it or drive something into it or that they do eventually wear out though. It doesn't sound like that.

Ørsted forms long-term charter with Cadeler for a new wind turbine installation vessel, Quinnbrook Infrastructure Partners successfully closes of its $600 million Quinnbrook Valley of Fire Fund, and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board consolidates its offshore wind holdings into its dedicated global offshore wind platform, Reventus Power. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I'm here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum. And this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you want market intelligence that generates revenue, then book a demonstration of IntelStor at IntelStor. com. Offshore wind developer, Ørsted, has signed a long term charter with Cadeler for a new A class wind turbine installation in Vessel, the hybrid vessel can transport and install both turbine foundations and the turbines themselves and has a capacity for six double XL monopile foundations or seven complete 15 megawatt turbine setups per trip. The partnership extends Ørsted and Cadeler's collaboration as the offshore wind industry scales up to meet ambitious targets. Now, Phil offshore developers and ship developers make a lot of sense here just because of the lack of ships and the, all the pressure to try to lock in ship time. Philip Totaro: Yeah, absolutely. And given some of the past experience Ørsted's had with lack of vessel availability, it was part of what they claimed was the rationale for pulling out of some of the projects in the U. S. as well. Was lack of vessel availability. So this gives them something dedicated and assumes that they're obviously also going to have a big pipeline of projects to be able to go justify, spending, I'm conservatively thinking about 225 million on an installation vessel of that size. So, this is it's a great deal and it helps certainly provides certainty for Kettler as well who, Also, I just got through their merger last year with Anetti. So this, it's I think this is a great thing that that both companies are going to be able to benefit from. And it certainly brings Ørsted some certainty on a vessel capable of deploying, what is currently the latest generation of Western developed technology. Joel Saxum: So Cadeler has four existing vessels and six next gen new builds on order, right? That makes them the world's largest wind turbine installation vessel operator. And what this does by Ørsted saying, we will put a charter on one of them from 27 to 2030. So that's a four year long charter. You see this in the SOV market as well, but a lot of times the SOV market, they're a little bit more extended because they're going to say we own this wind farm. We're going to be operating it for the next 10, 15 years. Sometimes you see SOV contracts like that for 10, 15 years. I've seen them through a couple of years ago. I saw some through 2038. That we're on contract, right? So that's enough money or promise for a company like Cadeler to build something, right? SVACT has done a bunch of things in that sort. Ørsted coming, of course, off the tail end of a lot of the installation projects that they've done. Struggling, scrambling to find these vessels, saying, you know what, no, we're just going to sign an agreement. We want one, we're going to have it for four years,

Allen and Joel speak with Jatin Sharma from NARDAC, an insurance broker specializing in complex renewable projects. As a boutique firm, NARDAC aims to bridge knowledge gaps between insurance capital providers and renewable companies to facilitate optimal coverage terms amidst the market's rapid evolution and emerging risks. Visit https://nardac.com/ for more! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, and I'm here with my co host, Joel Saxum. Our guest today is Jatin Sharma, a managing partner at NARDAC. NARDAC is an independent wholesale broker, which navigates the relationship between insurance carriers and retail brokers. And as the turbulent as the insurance market is at the moment, NARDAC may be your key to getting there. Success weathering the insurance storm. NARNAC is a specialist for large, complex projects that includes a focus on renewable energy. Whether you're an original equipment manufacturer, a developer building a wind farm, or an asset owner, NARNAC helps the industry understand the risks. Jatin, welcome to the program. Jatin Sharma: Thanks for having me. Joel Saxum: So Allen and I of course in the lightning world and wind and with the podcast and the networks that we have, we talk to people about failures and fires and gearboxes and all these different things. Do you see the like macro changes, right? So I say this because I've talked with people in the insurance world or in the, on the risk world on the IPP side that say, yeah, our premium is going up on this site. Or our deductibles are starting to increase here for this reason. And to me, it seems like that's more of a, like a micro okay, that's specific to this project, this technology, this site, mostly it's this site but with better communication strategies in a more I would say a more integrated insurance market. Do you see the premiums or the deductibles starting to change? And let's just, it's for ease of use. Let's focus on like the U S onshore market. Jatin Sharma: If we did like a. a three to five year time horizon with today versus, three to five years ago. I'd say that we've probably seen an increase of about 40 percent on the price paid per megawatt for wind operators in the US. And that, that would be my kind of average number, across a portfolio and that's on a risk adjusted basis. And you might say, wow, 40%, that's a lot. That's pretty material. What does that do to your OPEX? What does that do to valuations? I think it's important to put it in context that insurance is directly linked to the cost of capital. So in the same way that, five years ago, if you told me you had a million dollars and you're going to put it in the bank account, you probably got to get a quarter percent interest, maybe half a percent, on lowest risk opportunity. Now you go and put it in, maybe you can get 5. 5%. In the same way, insurance will have turned around and said if five years ago, for every 100 you were giving me, and I was giving you back 55 to 65 in claims, payments, let's say loose numbers here, that is no longer an acceptable return, I want to be giving you, I want to be getting 150 and I want to, not give back more than 50 to 75. Fives. In that sort of ratio and it's the law of large numbers. So there are many sites that have zero claims and every now and again,

Allen and Joel talk to Laurent Zimmerli, Vice President of Customer Experience at Voliro. Voliro is a Swiss company that creates drones and robotics to transform the industrial inspection and maintenance processes. Their flagship "Voliro T" drone is designed for stable and controlled contact with surfaces, enabling efficient inspection of wind turbines including non-destructive testing and lightning protection system testing. Visit https://voliro.com/ for more! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. Today, we have the pleasure of speaking with Laurent Zimmerli, Vice President of Customer Experience at Voliro. And Voliro is a pioneering Swiss company applying drones and robotics to transform inspection and maintenance processes. Founded in 2016 out of ETH Zurich's Autonomous Systems Lab, Voliro has quickly become a leader in industrial inspections and non destructive. Testing their flagship offering is the Voliro T drone known for its stability and reliability in confined spaces. Thanks to its omni directional control. We're all welcome to the program. Laurent Zimmerli: Thanks Allen. Thanks for having me. It's great to be on the show today. Joel Saxum: We had this conversation. Okay. We're fresh off of OMS and blades and people talking. Lightning protection has been. Huge. Everybody's talking about it. Lightning protectionist. Weather Guard lightning tech, that's what we do, right? We're talking StrikeTape to people all the time. The first thing we ask them is, when was the last time you got your lightning protection systems tested? And a lot of times we get this glassy eyed look. Do we do that? They look at someone else and pull their phone out Do we do that? This is, this, and this is one of the reasons we want to talk to you. We want to touch on Voliro and all of the offerings you guys offer, because I know you're working on NDT things. You're working on a lot of cool stuff, because you've solved a base root problem. So let's jump into that. The base root problem of flying drones and being in contact with surfaces. Laurent Zimmerli: Yeah, that's exactly, that's actually how it started back in 2016 at ETH Zurich as a research project. So we definitely didn't think about testing lightning protection systems of wind turn turbines back then, because it was mainly about what you just explained. It was how can we create a drone that can establish contact in a stable and controlled way with a surface or an object? If you're looking at a, like a conventional multi copter drone, whenever it moves sideways or forwards or backwards, the whole drone tilts in the direction of the movement. That's basically how it works. The, like the back prop spin, spin harder and then it tilts and then it moves, which completely, which is the perfect way of moving. That's how a helicopter works as well, right? Now, if you're in motion it's not a problem in terms of stability because you're in motion. However. If you want to push against the surface, or if you want to apply force against an object, the vehicle will not move. And if it tilts, it becomes unstable. And at some point, if you push too hard, it just basically falls over. Joel Saxum: It'll flip over. Laurent Zimmerli: Yeah, yeah. So basically the question back then is,

A collaborative approach is being taken by Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts to procure offshore wind projects in the region. Dan-Bunkering is providing a solution to challenges posed by the Jones Act. And GE Vernova is cutting tons of employees at LM Wind Power. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: All right, Joel, I have instructions from above that I am to mention the Uptime Tech News newsletter. So I am mentioning it right now. If you have not subscribed to Uptime Tech News it contains all the stories and all the research that we've done and we're talking about on the podcast. If you wanna read more in depth about those stories, we're gonna give you all those links and details there. Plus we include all the weekly stock updates and the whole thing is free. So if you go to weatherguardwind.com and subscribe there, or you can click the link in the show notes, you can belong to Uptime Tech News, our wonderful newsletter. Joel, now my conscience is clear. Joel: You can sleep well tonight knowing that you did your part to spread the uptime tickets. So here's the other thing too, guys, is if you subscribe to that newsletter, when you get into it, all of the companies that we mentioned, Hey, what about this new solution here? These guys are doing this thing. That's cool. Are these ladies over here designing this or blah, blah, blah. Like all of those companies. Are hyperlinked right in there. So you can go find them real quick. If you want to research basically what we're talking about. Allen Hall: Because it does give you a focus for the week on what to be looking at, what's moving, what's trending without you having to go search the internet. And I am a recipient of other newsletters. I get it. We created our own because there was just, there was a lot of fluff and a lot of these newsletters and things that didn't matter to us as a business and to, I think the larger industry. Particularly in North America. And so we felt Hey, let's just do it ourselves. Let's just make it free. And we're doing the work anyway. So we'll just open up to all our listeners for free. So go to weatherguardwind. com sign up for Uptime Tech News. Click in the show notes below, sign up for that thing. And that will make everybody on my team very happy. Up along the East coast, there has been four developers submitting bids for a total of a little over six gigawatts of offshore wind. Along the sort of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, offshore area. The bidders were Avangrid Ørsted, South Coast Wind Energy, and Vineyard Offshore. Back in late last year Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts had signed a MOU to collaborate together on offshore wind procurement, because they were all doing it separately and competing against one another, and they all had slightly different wording and contracts, and it made all the bidders confused and upset about it. So they decided to combine them. Finally, the Massachusetts is looking for about 3. 6 gigawatts, Rhode Island about 1. 2, and Connecticut is headed for about 2 gigawatts. So Massachusetts received bids from Avangrid, South Coast Wind Energy, and Vineyard Offshore. And the final decisions on project will be decided in August, which seems like an eternity, everybody. Rhode Island will evaluate proposals from all four bidders with a decision expected in about three months. Makes a little more sense.

General Electric splits into GE Vernova, GE Aerospace, and GE Healthcare, Macquarie Asset Management's Corio Generation invests $50 billion in offshore wind, Mingyang plans a turbine manufacturing facility in Scotland, Avangrid's offshore wind project is approved by the U.S. Interior Department. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I'm here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum. And this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. And if you want market intelligence that generates revenue, then book a demonstration of IntelStor at IntelStor.com. Macquarie Asset Management, through its fully owned offshore wind unit, Corio Generation, is making a fantastic investment. 50 billion investment in offshore wind over the next seven years. Corio generation, along with partners like TotalEnergies plans to invest in markets, including New York, New Jersey, Scotland, England, Taiwan, and Ireland. Phil, they've hit all the hotspots for offshore wind, but putting 50 billion into that marketplace is massive. Philip Totaro: Yeah. And keep in mind that, we're talking about a market that is likely to be several trillion dollars over the next five to seven years. They're certainly doing their part but also keep in mind that Corio has only really existed, obviously backed by Macquarie Group, but has only really existed for about the past year. I think they just celebrated their one year anniversary very recently. They've come quite far in a short period of time with the deployment of the capital that they've got and the markets that they're looking at are absolutely, the places You want to be, now that the U S has gotten through most of its nonsense and we're getting back on track this is a good market to be in Taiwan's relatively stable. There's a few kind of concerning signals out of there. But for the most part, that's going to still continue to grow and then England and Ireland are absolutely growth markets with a huge pipeline of projects in both those countries. Joel Saxum: 50 billion over the next seven years is their plan. Right now, and correct me if I'm wrong, Phil, but a gigawatt offshore wind farm, fixed bottom, costs between 3 and 5 billion to build, probably about 4 billion. Does that sound about right? Philip Totaro: CapEx costs on an offshore fixed bottom is probably somewhere between 2. 5 and 3 million per megawatt. You can, But yeah, your typical sized project at this point, if it's around a gigawatt in size you're talking about, 3 billion. Joel Saxum: Okay, so we're looking at 15 gigawatts of generation that they could get installed with that 50 billion or something around that. That's huge. That's that will help some countries in some areas hit some generation goals for offshore wind, definitely. And another one to mention here as well, we mentioned on the podcast the other day, but Onyx Insight recently purchased by Macri as a whole. They're also bringing in advanced analytics and tools to the Wind farms that they're installing. Allen Hall: The Scottish Offshore Wind Energy Council added seven new projects, including a Mingyang facility, to the Stage 2 Strategic Investment Model list, which aligns supply chain with developers plans for the ScotWind leasing round.

LM Wind Power announced the closure of their blade production factory in Turkey that employed 700 people. In Denmark, LM Wind Power appears to be cutting highly-qualified engineering and support staff. This news comes just days after their parent company, GE Vernova, became a stand-alone company. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech. And I'm here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro. And this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you want intelligence that generates revenue, then book a demonstration of IntelStor at IntelStor. com. A lot of news coming out of LM Wind Power. today. This is Friday, April 5th. All news reports indicate that the facility in Turkey is being closed and has been closed for a couple of days, evidently. And there is a massive shift happening, layoffs, at least 700 in Turkey. It sounds like up to a couple hundred, mostly focused in Denmark at the moment. Phil, what is happening behind the scenes here? Philip Totaro: There's quite a bit. Obviously what G. E. Vernova has said publicly about this and LM for that matter, is that they want to focus on profitability. And simply put, they just didn't seem to have enough order book to justify continuing the factory in Turkey. Now we've talked before on the show about the fact that Turkey has one thing going for it as a market, which is not just the domestic demand that they've got which is reasonable, although not entirely robust but they have a favorable currency trade against the U. S. dollar, which means that if you're using Turkey as an export market, it's theoretically is a great place. TPI's there. There are a few other companies that have manufacturing facilities there. But the issue for LM is they weren't for the blade lines that they have in Turkey. They weren't getting enough orders for those blade lines that they have set up. And so I guess for them, it makes more sense to consolidate into their production facilities in Spain and Denmark. As well as what they have currently in, in North America. And India and China for that matter. Allen Hall: Several months ago, LM Wind Power was headed a direction of essentially separating Europe from the Americas, and running it as two separate businesses. And now this happens. Now there's some significant layoffs happening in Denmark. You still think they're headed in that direction, trying to grab separate marketplaces and maybe react differently to those changing economics? Philip Totaro: Yes, there, nothing seems to have changed based on, some of the internal memos and things like that, that have leaked out the where they suggested that they're going to be doing this reorg. But the reality is that again with the focus on profitability I believe that it makes sense for them to to do something that's regionally segregated. Depending on how they want to proceed with the business moving forward, whether it's divesting factories or acquiring factories, there, there's any number of things they could do that is theoretically made easier by regionally grouping assets together. Allen Hall: The people that are being laid off in Denmark, from what I can tell at the moment seem focused in engineering, maybe support engineering too, high level. paid long term employees that they're are laying off.

Rocky, a cloud-based software developed by Wind Power LAB is helping to standardize the analysis of rain erosion test data for wind turbine coatings. By precisely annotating damage progression in test photos, Rocky eliminates human variability in interpreting results and generating accurate velocity vs. impact (V-N) curves. This innovative tool promises to improve coating durability predictions, reduce operational costs, and accelerate rain erosion solutions for the wind industry. Visit https://windpowerlab.com/ for more info! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm Allen Hall, and I'm in San Diego, warm San Diego with at ACP OM&S and I'm here with Anders Røpke, who is this founding partner and CEO of Wind Power LAB based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Welcome to the show. Anders Røpke: Thank for the invitation. Allen Hall: So we're gonna have a really technical discussion, but a really timely discussion. Yeah, about rain erosion and rain erosion testing. I was just over in Denmark, went to DTU, saw the Leading Edge Erosion Conference. Fascinated, great speakers, a lot of great data. One of the main discussion points was when you run a rain erosion test on a particular coating for a wind turbine, there's a lot of variability. And the holy grail is to get what they call a V N curve for a coating. That's the velocity versus the number of impacts. You should be able to draw roughly a straight line. Okay. When I was over at Copenhagen, and watching all this go on, there's a lot of slides up about V in curves where the V in curve was up and down. The tilt of it was all over the place. When they had done testing at different rain erosion facilities, or had tested in the same erosion facility on the same kind of sample. Getting what they thought was a different result. Now, that seems to be driven by in part, the human element. Exactly. Everything about that test is pretty well controlled and the people at R&D test systems, which designed those rain erosion rigs have made a really nice machine. Let's just be honest. It's a really good machine. But as when PowerLab is determining, the issue is looking at the photos of the damage and then saying, Oh, here's where damage starts. And this is how it propagates. That's a human element problem that's added to this very technical decision making. We're making errors there. And that's where Wind Power LAB comes in. And at Wind Power LAB, you guys are blade experts, right? Anders Røpke: We are blade experts. So we are actually coming from the field observation side, if you like. So we see the products when they fail. Sorry to bring the bad news, but we see leading edge erosion out there still, even though we have big LEP campaigns. Yeah. And one thing is the application, it's a hard environment to turn out offshore, for instance. But we also see coatings fail earlier than anticipated. And the long term effect is a lot of unnecessary cost for these wind farm owners. Because then they're looking into yet one more LEP campaign. Through the end of, before the end of life of this wind farm. That's extremely expensive. Onshore, but it's maybe 20 times more expensive offshore. It is. So if we should fix this. We should. We should. Then why don't we try to test our products a little bit better? And that's where the Leading Edge Erosion Symposium you visited. ...

Joel gives an update from Wind Energy Europe in Bilbao. Developers like Invenergy are building renewable projects and transferring ownership to utilities after completion - what is the advantage? Are wind turbines creating microclimates which could positively impact crop yields? Plus, an article in PES Wind magazine highlights RTSYS's offshore wildlife protection system using AI to accurately detect sea life. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.comPES Wind - https://pes.eu.com/wind/ Philip Totaro: I was a toy tester for Fisher Price. When I was young, because they're in my hometown outside of Buffalo. And I helped the team in that invented the pocket rocker, which was the kids version of the Sony Walkman, which is very popular back in the eighties. Allen Hall: Wait a minute. Is this the one when it had a little microphone on it that you could record things with? Is this what I, I remember this. Don't I? That was really popular. That's good. That's actually a retro item that's coming back into favor. People are looking for those things. But so why you, Phil? Why were you chosen out of thousands of children? Philip Totaro: Companies headquartered in my hometown of East Aurora, New York. And my mother was taking a sabbatical from teaching when, I was very young. So I was like four or five years old. And was in the business of selling kids dolls and toys and stuff like that, although not necessarily directly affiliated with Fisher Price, but she must have just gotten to know somebody over there. And I want to believe that this wasn't just like a cheap daycare thing that she could just drop me off at Fisher Price and they would let me play with toys and she didn't have to deal with me. But So I, I got to play with, all kinds of the, they used to have a thing called Constructs I used to love that they, I got to play with all the cool Fisher Price toys before, anybody in the world ever got to see them but the Pocket Rocker was the one that, because of the popularity of the Sony Walkman back in the 80s, Fisher Price wanted to have the kids version of the Sony Walkman. And they, had me, I remember being like five year old sitting in this boardroom and it was enormous. It was like literally if you've seen like Putin's conference table, it was like that, that long with, with chairs and stuff. Joel Saxum: You funded your mother's retirement at the same time. You didn't know you were actually getting paid. She was taking your checks. Philip Totaro: I don't know of how much anybody got compensated for any of that. To be honest, free daycare. That's what it was. I hope we, yeah, I know. I hope it was more than just free daycare, but I haven't seen any royalties from any of that. Allen Hall: This is before, child safety came into favor on children's toys, where they took out all the small pieces and all the red items and all the lead that came out of toys. Yeah, that was the good old days. Is it just that one item, Phil? Philip Totaro: That's the one that was commercially popular. I'm sure I gave them product feedback on, cause we, they used to put you in these little rooms where they had, a double sided mirror, although you didn't know it was, you're a five year old, you don't know that it's a double sided mirror, but it's a little creepy cause you're sitting there just like playing with toys and people are watching you play with toys. And it's what is he doing now?

Nordex invests $1.1B in Turkey's wind industry, Singapore plans to invest $3.7B in clean energy transition, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners invests $1.9B in offshore wind farm in the Philippines. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I'm here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum, and this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you want market intelligence that generates revenue, then book a demonstration of IntelStor at intelstor.com. Spanish German Nordex Group plans investing a little over a billion dollars in Turkey in 2024. Turkey is seen as a major wind market due to its young population on short potential and strong supply chains. Turkey is taking the lead in the wind supply chain as an uptick. Alternative to Asia. So this is a sweet spot for Turkey at the moment, Phil, where they do have a strong workforce. They do have a lot of internal capabilities and Nordex is picking up on that. Philip Totaro: Exactly. And to the extent that they've already established themselves as a kind of a wind manufacturing hub you've got Enercon there, you've got Nordex already there, LM. And a couple other smaller players. But you also have subcomponent suppliers there. ASCA is there as a material supplier for blades. So there's a significant amount of opportunity. This investment represents largely project development activities is my understanding, but there will also be some factory expansion potential there as well as they look to expand Turkey as an export hub for for components and not just used in the domestic market, but also elsewhere throughout Europe. Joel Saxum: To double down on talking about Nordex here, it was Wind Europe Bilbao last week, Nordex, it was, that, that show was the return of the OEMs. So you saw GE Vernova, Siemens Gamesa, Nordex, Enercon, everybody having their big booths again. To focus on this, Nordex had a, Fantastic, large booth, huge presence putting some of their new models out there. They're really pushing that Delta 4000 platform. So you can see that the Nordex group is spending a lot of money to expand their footprint and could be capitalizing a little bit of that Siemens Gamesa absence from the market in that 4X, 5X area as well. Allen Hall: Singapore is setting up a 3. 7 billion future energy fund and investing in clean energy tech and infrastructure. Singapore aims to move quickly on its infrastructure and invest in clean energy security as part of its goal to reach net zero by 2050. Currently, 95 percent of electricity is produced from natural gas in Singapore. So there is now a plan to import low carbon power from its neighbors, which will require Obviously, investments in submarine cables and the grid, Phil, with that kind of money being invested in Singapore, that's going to bring a lot of clean tech to that area. Philip Totaro: Absolutely. And they already have a lot of offshore wind capability that's headquartered in Singapore, a lot of, vessel owners and operators, et cetera. So there's an experience base there. To up to a point but it's also interesting because, this is a big city state I would say country, but this is a city state led initiative on decarbonization. And so that's that's an important thing is again,