The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

Allen Hall and Joel Saxum talk with Cory Mittleider from Malloy Wind about the complex world of wind turbine main bearings. Cory breaks down why traditional bearing coatings are failing in newer turbine models and explores how electrical discharge, material choices, and monitoring systems play crucial roles in solving these costly failures. Dive into the technical challenges of detecting problems in these massive, slow-moving components and learn what operators should do during warranty periods to prepare for long-term maintenance.

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Joel Saxum: Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy’s brightest innovators.

Allen Hall: This is the progress powering tomorrow. I’m your host, Allen Hall, joined by my co host, Joel Saxum. Today, we’re tackling a critical issue that’s affecting wind farm operators across the industry, main bearing failures and the evolving solutions to combat them.

Joining us is Cory Mittleider business unit manager at Malloy Wind, who brings over 15 years of hands on experience in power transmission and bearing technology. Cory has built his career at Malloy Electric where he’s become their go to expert for complex bearing challenges. His journey from technical sales support engineer to wind business unit manager has given him a unique perspective on the evolution of bearing technology and the real world challenges faced by wind farm operators.

Malloy Wind, based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, has been at the forefront of developing solutions for wind turbine bearing issues, particularly focusing on advanced materials. and designs to combat common failure modes like peeling damage and premature wear. Cory, welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight.

Thanks for having me. You are our go to guy for Anything bearing related. And as Joel and I travel around the United States this summer, we ran into a lot of people with bearing issues and now main bearing issues. And we’ve seen quite a bit in the press this summer about main bearings and coatings on main bearings and what is the right kind of main bearing to use and a lot of operators looking at different solutions at the minute, and we figured.

Cory will know. So let’s just ask Cory what his thoughts were on main bearings and try to get a sense of what can be done.

Cory Mittleider: Yeah. We’ve definitely spent a lot of time looking into main bearings, main bearing failures.

Joel Saxum: So let’s dive into this, Cory, then what is the. Just for our users or users, for our listeners can you give us the rundown basically of what the main bearing is, where it sits in the turbine and what it does?

Cory Mittleider: On the wind turbine drivetrain, you’ve got the blades and the rotor hanging out front, and then ultimately that’s connected to a shaft. Which then connects it to the gearbox and the generator. And on that shaft, that’s what we’ll call the main shaft. On that shaft, there is a really big pillow block.

And it’s got the main bearing inside. So we’ll call it the main bearing, the main shaft bearing, a couple of different nomenclatures there. But that’s what helps support that load of this very heavy drive train, but also connect it and allow the rotation to generate the power from the turbine. Some turbines do have two.

main bearings on this main shaft. And most of them installed in the U. S. have one. That’s what we’d call a three point suspension. The two main bearing ones we call four point suspension. There are some other designs some direct drives and stuff like that, but very small install, install base in the U.

S. So we’re really talking about this type of configuration where we’re talking about main bearings most of the time.

Joel Saxum: Okay. So I’ll ask you another really basic and simple question for people like myself. There’s a lot of people in the wind industry that have never been uptower and have never seen these things, so they may not know exactly what size and what kind we’re looking at, but, you’ve been in the wind industry for a while, Cory, so you’ve seen some small ones, and now we’re growing in from that one megawatt, sometimes 500 you’re in.

South Dakota. So you’ve got some Zahn Z50s and stuff out your door.

Cory Mittleider: Yeah, we’ve got some 750s out here.

Joel Saxum: So there’s, there are a lot smaller in the main bearing size, but now we’re getting all the way up to the point where we’re actually hearing of, like right now, GE is one, one 6. 1 megawatt, 158s are being installed in Wyoming.

So we’re getting to that larger size. What is the size of these things look like?

Cory Mittleider: Yeah, it’s been fun to see the trajectory on size. I remember one of the first main bearings I saw in person was a shaft size. That’s 12 inches. And coming from the industrial bearing space, where a good size bearing is 4, maybe 5 inches.

That thing was huge, right? I’m like, wow, look at that big thing. Over the last 10, 11, 12 years now we’re talking that mid two megawatt range, we’re talking 700 800 millimeter shaft sizes that’s about 30 inches. Shaft diameter. It’s really tremendous to see the size grow from another point of information, that shaft size bearing weighs in at about 2, 500lbs.

So 30 inch shaft size, 2, 500lbs, call it 50 inch on the OD about. So

Joel Saxum: putting this

Cory Mittleider: into

Joel Saxum: scale, right? Like I, I drive a three quarter ton diesel truck. That truck on the hoof weighs like 7, 700 pounds, 7, 800 pounds. So just three of these bearings weighs as much as that three quarter ton truck sitting out there in the park, in my driveway.

That’s insane, right? Just to put that into scale. The scale, but I will, in the wind industry, you get that conversation quite a bit. Like people don’t realize how big turbines are until you’ve stood underneath one. You can drive by on the highway. Drive up I 35 in Iowa and you look out and you’re like, wow, they’re cool looking.

That’s big. But then you stand on the pad underneath one and you’re like, whoa, this is a different story. Because when we talk about this, that main bearing supports a lot of weight, right? So you have blades, you have that hub sitting out there. And these blades can be 20, 30, 40, 000 pounds.

Each, right? So you’re talking, this bearing, the weight that’s hanging out over the front of it easily can surpass a hundred thousand, 150, 000 pounds that it’s supporting. So they become a massively critical element in the drivetrain. Like they’re very important to the whole mechanism. If these things start to fail, which we’ve, Alan and I have been hearing in the field, right?

Oh, we’ve got main bearing problems. We’ve got main bearing problems. This is not a trivial piece of kit to change out.

Cory Mittleider: No, and that’s a really good point. You look at the complexity of the system, the fact that to your point, this system, when you drive down the interstate a little ways away, it’s like, Oh, that’s big, but.

Once you put your hands on this stuff, you really start to appreciate just how big it is. And so one of the the mid two megawatt main shaft bearings is a 750 millimeter shaft size. This is the size of a roller from that main bearing. There’s maybe 60 of these.

Joel Saxum: So if you’re listening online, rather than watching the YouTube version of this, you can see Cory was, Cory, you can’t see, but Cory was holding up a roller bearing that is the size of, it’s a larger than even a Coke can of just, and this is just one of these elements.

Cory Mittleider: Yeah. Yeah. And there’s quite a few inside. The other interesting thing is there’s a curvature to it, so it’s not just like a Coke can, but it’s actually bulged in the middle. And, there’s a lot of different bearing types. Used just in any industry. And the thing that makes this this main shaft bearing special is it’s, they used in the design primarily, but are called double row spherical roller bearings.

And those have been around for a long time. They were invented in 1919. Very well defined from an envelope point of view. But the benefit of this bearing type is that curvature of the roller and the corresponding curvature of the raceway allows. for some deformation and it’ll accommodate what we call misalignment.

So you imagine you’ve got this a hundred plus thousand pound drive train on the up in the air, it’s 80, 90, a hundred meters in the air on top of a stick in a cornfield, right? The environment is changing constantly. Temperature, wind, weather, all this stuff. The ability of that system to move a little bit is why you pick a double row spherical type bearing.

So that allows. confidence that it will still carry the load effectively while still potentially being able to move. So that’s why the vast majority of mainshaft bearings are in fact, this double row spherical type as well.

Allen Hall: So if you have different OEMs you’ll see different manufacturers for those same bearing types, right?

That they’re not uniform. I haven’t seen. Two manufacturers of bearings produce really the same bearing. Everybody has their own particular flavor that they add to it.

Cory Mittleider: Yeah, that’s true. Every bearing manufacturer, tries to and they do a good job of setting themselves apart from one another, defining what what they think is important.

For applications for just the bearing generally. And although the envelope dimensions to your point are defined they’re ISO defined dimensions. Each manufacturer does their own things, right? Um, material differences steel alloy differences, cleanliness roller shapes, coatings as applied, right?

There are some coatings that are proprietary and some coatings that are Industry known, right? Maybe there’s their own formulation, but they fall into a category that’s similar.

Allen Hall: So when an OEM picks a main bearing, it has a general spec, from what I’ve seen. There’s a lot of mechanical features to it.

One of them tends to be lifetime, that they want to try to get a certain amount of lifetime. Out of the bearing where it happens. So all the manufacturers of these bearings come forward with their particular solution. What do those solutions look like? How do they vary between the bearing

Cory Mittleider: manufacturers?

Any OEM, they want to have multiple suppliers, right? So they want to define an envelope and make sure that they can have a supply chain to, To build all the farms that need to be built without constraints in their supply chain. As far as what it looks like in the aftermarket, right? That’s cause that’s where I live is completely in the aftermarket.

We get to look at things after they failed and investigate the fine tune differences between them.

Allen Hall: What I’m trying to understand is if I buy a particular turbine and I pick a hundred of these things. The main bearings will not be from the same manufacturer on all 100 turbans. They are choosing two or three different manufacturers to provide those main bearings.

And even though the mechanical spec and even the lifetime spec and even the coding spec may be the same, the bearing itself is different from turban to turban. Why is that? And what does it matter?

Cory Mittleider: The biggest change, depending on how much is specified to your point some designs are build to print.

I think we talked about that on the blade bearings actually, right? Where a turbine manufacturer will take the full responsibility for geometries and hardnesses and finish surface finishes and material, the whole ball of wax and others are more meet the spec, have this material meet this surface hardness and, meet this fatigue life type of thing.

So depending on the Sarah, historically it’s been the latter, right? Here’s our lifetime goals. Here’s here’s our loading. Give us something that fits and achieves the lifetime. Yeah, to your point though Materials can be used differently from different manufacturers coatings on the raceways, on the rollers.

And this is something we actually saw a while ago on gearbox bearings as well. Gearboxes had an evolution of materials and coatings. And we’re starting to see some of that with main bearings. And true in most industries is that the OEMs tend to learn from the aftermarket as well, right? Learn some of those options because ultimately they want to buy the lowest cost product that meets the needs, the design requirements.

But it’s not until you get it out in the field to understand the things that outside of just the design requirements, but the real world effects of what’s going on. And some of those things are then fed back into the OEM cycle that yes, this change is worth a little bit of a cost premium when you buy the turbine.

So that you can have long term operational confidence.

Joel Saxum: We talked with R& D test systems not too long ago about this actually, basically testing bearings and how these large size bearings are one of the most difficult components to test because they are, the failure modes are so Like it takes so much force and so much effort to get to that failure mode that to make it happen in a lab setting is almost impossible.

So they’re getting to the stage where they’re doing some like hybrid testing where it’s yes, it’s on a bench, but we’re also involving some AI and machine learning algorithms from other things to try to get to that accelerated life test. What the reality is, because earlier in the conversation here, we’re talking about A 2, 500 pound bearing and all this steel.

That’s hard. If I have this one on my chair, right? So if I’m testing the one on my chair, I just put some weight in it and spin it around a bunch. And eventually I can get it to come apart. But with a, something like that, like it would take years of testing. So what ends up happening, like you say, is they have to wait for a little bit of runtime in the field and some feedback from SMEs like yourself to say, Hey, this is the things that we should fix for the next generation of turbines.

The difficult thing here is, the OEMs are learning lessons all through, they’ve been learning it forever. So take a OEM XYZ, they’ve, they’re on, model 58 of turbines by now. Hopefully they have some things figured out and which they do, but the difficult is as we continue to scale and rotor size so quickly these bearing sizes and the designs and the loads on them are all changing very rapidly.

I guess a question here for you guys is, you’re in the field you’re getting calls from operators. Hey, I’ve got this problem. Come and dissect it and tell me what I can do next. What are some of the fixes that you guys are working on for main bearings at Malloy?

Cory Mittleider: In the past, let’s say 12 years, there’s been a couple iterations of different attempts to fix the problems in the field.

And to your point the OEMs they do a good job, I think, of the sizing of the bearings. I wouldn’t suggest that the size is necessarily wrong because their core goal is to achieve a runtime. And that, that formula, that calculation to understand, here’s the applied loads, here’s how many revolutions it’s going to accrue here’s what the fatigue life looks like, raceway rolling contact fatigue life look like is pretty straightforward.

The thing that we learned from the field and is even really hard to learn on a test bench, is what are the other things? What’s happening in the real world, right? Because even the test bench, you still need to set up your test. If you’re setting up your test for rolling contact fatigue, you’re probably going to fall right in line with the calculations.

But you need to test these other things, environmental different loading than expected. Is there some feedback from the field that it’s different than what was thought to be? Are there other conditions? As we talk about main bearings. There’s some investigation going on right now around electrical discharge happening in main bearings.

Yes. They’re not solved today, right? These problems are where we live in the aftermarket. It’s where the operators that, that are taking control and self operating their turbines have opportunity. To learn and adapt. And that’s where the OEMs are taking feedback from the aftermarket as well.

Not in the real world installed, not just test benches.

Allen Hall: So how do you know you have main bearing problems? What’s the first indication? I’d like to ask

Cory Mittleider: people that when they tell me that they have failed the main brain. So it’s interesting. Main bearings are really slow, right? We’re talking RPM on some of these as the turbines get bigger.

So your traditional vibration. Signature it’s not impossible to see with condition monitoring tools like Vibration, but it doesn’t jump out as much as high speed bearings in a gearbox or generator, for example. Another thing that we do hear reports of is temperature as another feedback loop.

Unfortunately, temperature indication, if you’re generating a lot of heat, In a failing main burn, it’s probably pretty late stage.

Allen Hall: I thought a lot of times the key was just technicians hearing some grinding noises, but you’re saying you can actually detect it way earlier. If you’re looking

Cory Mittleider: for it, you might be able to.

You’re right. I’ve heard a lot of stories of the technician said it was growling type of thing or banging. But that’s, they have to be up there for that, right? That’s that personal exposure that doesn’t happen every day, every week even. Unfortunately, we’ve also heard reports of the turbine went offline because of an alarm.

And when the technicians do go up, the rollers have fallen out of the bearing. I’ve seen some of those pictures. So they aren’t, as well monitored or easy to detect early. And to Joel’s point, there is a huge load applied to them, right? The nice thing about the high speed bearings or gen bearings although they’re moving fast and it can be monitored with vibration tools.

They have a lot smaller load. They don’t have that a hundred plus thousand, a hundred thousand plus pound rotor assembly,

Joel Saxum: right? So if you’re to monitor a main bearing, would you look for. Rather than vibration or something because you know a lot of things they’re running at 6 to 10 RPMs or so 6 to 12 maybe on a smaller one.

Would you look for deformation? Or would you look for vibration?

Cory Mittleider: I think that’s what the operators are and service companies, the the condition monitoring service companies are improving. I understand that some of the CMS tools do have some, I don’t know what the right word is, machine learning type stuff some things that are helping them learn more with more data points, which is going to be really helpful for those operators.

From my position as a bearing person, not. Living in the monitoring world there’s things that an operator can’t control. Looking at it to your point is it a platform where we know there’s an extreme failure rate? Make sure that when you’re up there for your biannual maintenance is.

That you’re looking at it. Grease sampling is another idea, right? It does have its own challenges in providing consistent results. Grease sampling, bore scoping, both tools available. They do require that personal attention though. It’s not the remote monitoring. The remote monitoring is some have figured out the clues on their turbines that trigger.

The in person visit. I think both go hand in hand as far as monitoring goes.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. Cause from the vibe, from a vibration monitoring standpoint, like high speed, it’s a lot easier to pick up. You get that higher frequency and you can sense that, but the list will slower, lower thing. One of the solutions that comes to my mind, Alan, who I’ve talked with you about this one, is that sensing 360, they have the fiber optic sensing that will go right basically around the raceway.

And if that raceway starts to deform or move at all, You’d be able to see it or pick up on it. Now you’re going to have some natural movement in it, right? But you’re looking for that difference or the anomalies. Yeah, exactly that delta between what the baseline was and then what may be happening because I think at the end of the day, That’s what we’re starting to hear in the market is everybody wants a, they want a CMS solution for everything.

If they could be remote, if they could remotely have eyes and ears in that turbine, right? The less people they have to send up tower to climb, the better off the operations are more efficient operations are.

Cory Mittleider: And they can focus on the stuff that they’re there to do. PMs and address the problems that are qualified.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, fix the problems instead of just having to

Allen Hall: go up and look for them. So I want to get to the coding issue, and the one that has been discussed the most recently is the diamond like carbon coding. I understand what that is, generally speaking, but exactly what is it and why would I want to use that coating on my main bearing?

Cory Mittleider: Sure. Yeah. So we look back at the history of main bearing failures to 10, 12 years ago where DLC started to become popular. A lot of the main bearing failures had, excessive wear in the raceway, peeling damage specifically, I would call it. And that can be caused with poor lubrication environments, right?

The wind industry. It took advice from other industries. They didn’t, this DLC technology was not necessarily invented for wind it’s technology that existed before and was used successfully in other industries for similar failure modes. So it’s a tool in the toolbox and it was launched in wind and it’s done a pretty good job on a lot of applications really, right?

Now DLC. As far as what it is, it’s it’s a coating that’s applied to the roller. And this coating is actually extremely thin, right? It’s, we’re talking 2 3 microns, 2 3 thousandths of a millimeter. It’s really thin coating. You’re not gonna, you’re not gonna see the edge and feel it. It’s very thin coating.

It’s applied after the roller is produced, right? And then it’s assembled into this mainbrain. And the idea is that it’s really hard and it’s a different material than the steel of the raceways. So the dissimilar material and the high hardness are, where it has merit in trying to prevent that peeling damage in a poor lubrication environment.

That’s what it was used for in other industries. And that’s why it was used in wind.

Joel Saxum: So if we’re going to equate this to something that the everyday person can understand, is it like a, Like in your pots and pans, like a Teflon coating. Is it cause Teflon’s what’s slippery though.

That’s different. I guess it’s not the hardness. Is it more like anodizing in a sense as

Cory Mittleider: conversion coating? I’m glad you asked that question. So we talk about coatings in gearbox bearings too. And you said exactly right, Alan. Anodizing is converting a base material. Black oxide, as we look at gearbox burns, is converting a base material.

And that’s actually where DLC is different. No, it’s actually applied afterwards. So it’s put into this environment and in a, highly controlled environment in an oven and it’s deposited onto the roller surface. So it relies on a bond strength to attach it to that roller surface. So that’s where it is different when we talk about some other coatings in wind, for example, in black oxide.

Although we use the same terminology,

Allen Hall: there’s a functional difference there. And if you’re applying a material to an existing piece of steel, which is what you’re doing, in that case, the prep you perform on the steel and the cycle you put it through to apply that coating become. really critical, generally speaking.

Is that where that coding starts to have issues is in the application processes, or is it more in terms of the operational side? We’re just applying too much load to it. Sure. So you’re absolutely

Cory Mittleider: Prep process control. Because remember, this is the size of one roller. There’s all this surface area.

It’s five inches long. It’s a three inches diameter. There’s a ton of surface area on just one roller. Okay. There’s 60 of these. And all of them have to have really good adhesion of that coding for it to stay in place. Now what you’re asking is a really good question, right? Is what’s the.

Why isn’t it working anymore? I think is maybe is maybe part of the question, right? Because it did work really well. And I would continue to argue that it still does work in some applications. But we’ve learned in the last four or five years, I would say that some applications, it doesn’t offer the same solution that it has on other applications or other platforms.

So I, As much as we have explored alternate tools I by no means want to give the impression that I believe that DLC is bad or completely inadequate. So just so we’re clear, but no we’re actually not seeing a ton of problem with I’ll say the DLC necessarily coming off.

We don’t view the DLC on the rollers. To be the root cause of the failure. We see it to be how the failure manifests. So we’re seeing artifacts of other things and to be fair, since this is relatively young, there’s still some exploring going on on what that root cause is. There’s some operators, certainly the turbine manufacturers and bearing manufacturers that are investigating some of those root causes.

Now, at the same time as we have to investigate the root cause Bearings still need to be replaced. And if the bearing that’s being taken out now had certain characteristics, whether it’s DLC coding this cage guidance method, whatever it is, those are the variables that we have to look at changing to try.

and see what works, right? And that’s where we spend our time in the aftermarket. About five years ago now, there was one application that was failing main bearings pretty young. And then over some time, DLC was applied as a typical aftermarket solution. And what we’ve learned there is That’s one of the Turbine models that just putting DLC on didn’t offer the solution that it did on some of the previous platforms.

So we’ve looked into, what else can we do? And one of the tools in our toolbox, in Win specifically, is different materials. Alloys, heat treatments, both. Those are two independent things, alloys and heat treatments, as well as process control, cleanliness, quality control and that’s where we’ve turned to develop new tools as we collaborate with our customers and our manufacturers.

Allen Hall: Let me just dive into this for a minute. Cause I’ve, this is fascinating for an electrical engineer when we start talking about metals and how things pick all these loads. So we’ve got this really thin coating. It’s secondary applied. It is. As it’s been described to me, flaking off, and that gets into the grease, and then you have this basically diamond hard coating in the grease, which then just runs everywhere and starts to attack the bearing surface itself, and then it just cascades into bigger problems.

But we don’t really understand what drives that failure at the moment. We’re still trying to understand look at what the variables are. I know the one that I hear the most is, Electrical currents or lightning currents passing through the bearings. Now, electrical currents would make a lot of sense to me because that coding is non conductive.

Dam light coatings tend to be non conductive ish. And if you start pushing current through it or breaking that coding down electrically. I’ve seen it on airplane parts. It doesn’t go well for that coating, but there’s probably 50 other reasons why this coating could go bad.

Cory Mittleider: Yeah. Yeah. You’re, and you’re exactly right.

You’re you presented a couple of the pieces on some of the working theories that I’ve been a part of as well. Any bearing, no, no bearings like electricity. Let’s be honest, right? We learned this 15 years ago in the generator. We see in the gearbox in certain cases, we think that’s in the main bearing.

We’re probably not terribly surprised to see that may play a factor. Now to your point one of the things that we have seen and I know is being explored is if the DLC is damaged not even saying that it were to be inadequate in the first place, but just say it got damaged.

from some hard particle debris or environmental or whatever. Now maybe if there is electricity, it’s now even more concentrated in this spot. This is one of the conversations that we’ve been having. So does that lead to some of the domino effect? Where more of it is coming off. And is it where, is it flaking?

There may be some nomenclature disagreement depending on who you’re talking about but you’re also, you also bring up a really good point. Regardless, if it is coming off from damage, electrical, any reason whatsoever, if it’s coming off, you now have what is, remember the point was it’s high hardness.

Now you have this high hardness debris. in your grease and it can accelerate the wear when in fact it was supposed to reduce the wear rate.

Allen Hall: That just really makes me wonder what the solution has been over the last couple of months. I’ve heard differing opinions about it. Some of the operators are installing essentially the same bearing back into those turbines or choosing the other manufacturer for those bearings in the same turbine.

And occasionally you hear them talking about putting what I call bonding straps, electrical straps around to tie all the equipment in the cell together electrically to reduce the amount of impact it would have on the main bearings just as a bandage. I don’t know if there’s any, I have not seen any hard data on any of this, but it feels like there’s been a lot of ideas being thrown against the wall at the minute.

But we’re still trying to understand what the core issue is. Is that where you feel we

Cory Mittleider: are at? Yeah, I would agree. I’ve heard a lot of the same, and I’m going to tell you as a Bering guy, whatever you can do to stop electricity going through the Bering. Yeah, do that. Give it a desirable path. Don’t let it go through this undesirable path, right?

Let’s eliminate variables like that. That’s a great idea. But yeah there’s been a lot of talk about that. There’s minor differences between bearing manufacturers, which you hit on earlier, that maybe this bearing manufacturer had a little bit lower failure rates.

We have a better chance. Using that bearing manufacturer. And that’s what I alluded to earlier. Right now, we have a choice of, wait for people to test this, which could be a year, it could be three years or install a bearing in your turbine and run it. And that’s largely where we’re living right now is we know we have history on certain things.

We’ve learned quite well on certain things. This is what we feel we can do from a bearing technology point of view, but continue, we’re encouraging the operators to continue to explore this because if they need to work on grounding if that’s lightning, if that’s static, is it a induced current from other electrical systems in the turbine?

Keep exploring. Don’t think for a second that you’re going to put something in, walk away, and never come back.

Joel Saxum: Keep exploring. Cory, a question about you on this exploration part, and basically, because WeatherGuard here, we’re in the same boat, right? We’re always trying to get as much data as we can to put together to, because answers are driven from data, right?

We can have anecdotal thoughts about what’s happening, but as soon as we start to, Really build a track record of a certain L, like for us, it’s a certain LPS system versus a, geography and environment operates in these kinds of things. We can start to get some really good insights of what’s happening in the field.

Are you guys, so at Malloy, do you guys keep like a database of, these are the ones that we see that are good. This is what’s the failure modes we see.

Cory Mittleider: So on a per platform basis our team has a pretty good knowledge of this platform, fails from this method failure mode rather. Early failure life might be X years, average failure life might be this, we hear some scuttlebutt about if there’s acknowledged technical issues, publications from an OEM type of thing which Alan alluded to earlier, of course. So from an app a turbine model point of view. We have a pretty good idea. And I like what you said, Joel. One thing that we like to encourage operators to do as we talk to them and we’re launching new solutions is validation.

Validation is the most important part of this evolution. And you put in a new bearing, generator, gearbox, blade, main, all of it. Or all the other problems that operators are trying to solve. Whatever you install for a fix, it’s always based around really good ideas. And we generally agree on the scientific idea on why we think it should work, but you got to go validate, right?

And that’s not a light task. I get it, right? There’s a time commitment. There’s a labor commitment. There’s just plain a desk time commitment to trending that data, understanding that data. But that’s how. Those operators are going to be able to come out of that successful and there’s it is a hard task, admittedly and some are really dedicated to doing it and it shows that they do really well.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, I think that the, it’s a heavy lift, but as an industry, No matter what you’re dealing with, whether it’s bearings, lightning, blade problems, gearbox issues, whatever it may be. If we’re not doing that as a collective team, then we’re not moving the industry forward.

Cory Mittleider: And that’s where our role is.

I feel at Malloy, is working with multiple operators. Across multiple platforms and accumulating this knowledge across 12 plus years now on these failure modes on the different applications. And one of the things I touched on it already is we’ve had a lot of success for 15 years on gearbox bearing failures.

And. The way that those were solved were not actually with a coating applied to the rollers. It was actually applied a lot of the solutions that we have developed are based on material changes, right? So that’s alloys, that’s process cleanliness that, Does some manufacturers have higher standards than just what ISO sets out for manufacturing standards and heat treatments to boot, and a combination of all those things are important.

So when we looked at this main bearing problem, for example five years ago, although coatings on the roller was widely accepted in the industry, we wanted to look at some other solutions. And how can we inject some of these other tools. Because even at the time, this first one we looked at five years ago.

It looked a little different than the historical main bearing failures. So we said we should treat it differently, right? So we took this different material and different heat treatment that was very successful in, in, WEC problems and debris initiated issues in gearbox, high speeds, planetaries, intermediate bearings and said, what we’re seeing, this might be a really good fit for main bearings as well.

Allen Hall: If I’m a operator with a warranty and I’m trying to figure this out and I know generally that I probably have this issue, what should I be doing right now in the warranty period? So when I come off warranty, I have some sort of track record.

Cory Mittleider: Yeah, that’s a great question. Cause you don’t have too much control probably in that warranty period.

Other people are in control. Now, as I understand it, you have access. to go get what you want. So I think getting informed both on your situation because unfortunately we have heard that a warranty ends and operators have no idea what the history was. Failure rate, the failure mode, whether it was replaced at all or once or twice.

So Collection of information on your fleet is probably a really good piece. Reach out, give us a call, talk to us about what our experience has been. Being prepared to make that decision, I think is the other side of that coin, right? Not just waiting until warranty’s up.

Now we gotta, now we gotta go explore the options. Adjusting, anybody would do that but reiterating the importance of being prepared. All right, we can talk about what’s available, what our experiences are and ultimately we’re always learning more from the next operator that’s talking to us as well.

So I view our role as a bit aggregating in the operator’s experiences, the service provider’s experiences to inform how we’re, Launching new barracks to solve those problems.

Allen Hall: Can Malloy help develop that plan? Just because you have all that deep knowledge of other operators. Is that something that you can assist an operator with?

Is here’s the plan you should be taking. This is the ones that have had success.

Cory Mittleider: Ultimately we would probably give some recommendations. Look for this. Look at your bore scopes. This is what it, this is what you can look for from what the picture would look like maybe some response.

I can’t say we’ve developed comprehensive step by step plans by any means, but a good conversation on what to watch for I think is the first step in developing that plan.

Allen Hall: I think a lot of operators are in that boat at the minute. They don’t know what to look for and they don’t have any plan to attack it.

They’ve seen the cranes on site. They’ve seen some main bearings being replaced. under warranty, they don’t have all the details, and yet, in a year or so, they’re probably going to own all those assets, and how do they start tracking it now? If you’re out there, you better get a hold of Cory at Malloy Win, because that’s where the answers lie.

Cory, this has been a fascinating discussion. I love Talking Bearings with you because you’re just so deep into it. I love that it’s almost like a mystery. It always has to be solved. It’s a complicated problem. It’s probably one of the most complicated problems in WIND at the moment. And if someone wants to reach out to you, how do they connect with you?

Cory Mittleider: I’m active on LinkedIn. My, my phone numbers is on the website, but it’s 605 357 1076. Don’t hesitate to call and ask about any bearings. I like talking about bearings with everyone. We have our say general inbox, which is [email protected]. That’s a good entry point as well, because it’s not just me.

And I got to emphasize that, we’ve got folks in the field that are out collecting some of this information as it happens. Basically learning more about it every single day, we’ve got an inside team of product champions that really know those applications down to the detail that I work with we all work together, obviously on a daily basis.

So there’s several of us. That depending on your, the operator’s situation today, what they know, what they don’t know, that could help guide for, what is the next step? Is it main bearings? Is it what your bore scopes look like? Is it gearbox bearing? Can we start with a nameplate picture to understand what that application is exactly to support you in that way?

Allen Hall: Everybody out there listening go to malloywind.com. And look at all the information they have there. They have terrific online resources about main bearings, gearbox bearings, pitch bearings, it’s all there. All the failure modes are shown on there. They have great color photos and a description of what has happened to them.

Tremendous resource. Cory, thank you so much for being on the podcast and we’re going to have you back again because there’s so many Gearbox problems. I want to get to gearbox bearings next on my list. So we got to invite you back.

Cory Mittleider: Yeah, absolutely I’d love to talk about gearbox bearings, there’s definitely a lot of activity around blade bearing and main bearing failure, but it doesn’t mean the gearbox bearings have gone away, right?

There’s still some of the existing fleet out there that can be addressed and there’s always new stuff to learn there as well. So yeah, I’d love to. Thanks for having me.

This week on Uptime Power-Up we discuss Vestas’ offshore blade repair method, Siemens Gamesa’s way of optimizing power production for floating turbines, and a fun way for kid’s to collect their Halloween candy.

ign 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.com
Weather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.com
Intelstor – https://www.intelstor.com
Wind Energy O&M Australia Conference – https://www.windaustralia.com

Allen Hall: Welcome to Power Up, the Uptime Podcast focused on the new hot off the press technology that can change the world. Follow along with me, Allen Hall, and IntelStor’s Phil Totaro, as we discuss the weird, the wild, and the game changing ideas that will charge your energy future.

All right, our first idea is from our friends at Vestas, and it is a a relatively sophisticated system for handling wind turned blades during maintenance, particularly offshore. And if you think about how you try to manipulate a blade offshore to do repair work on it, it’s not, it’s not easy to do that on the deck of a ship.

So the, the concept is you take a crane, get the blade off the turbine, you move it down to the deck of the ship and it sits in these cradles. And they move it from the support cradles to a third device, which allows the blade to rotate. And they could slide it into a shelter that’s built up on deck so you can actually repair the blade without getting wet or, or too hot or too cold, probably, probably too cold in most cases which is a really difficult task to do and Vestas, Phil, has, has come up with a really unique idea on how to manage this.

Philip Totaro: Yeah, this, this one is very Interesting, because we have comparable systems to this onshore, but it’s obviously a lot harder to implement offshore. So, for instance, having the tent, it’s going to sound like the stupidest thing ever, just like having a tent around the blade to be able to, protect the, the area that you’re scarfing out or whatever, if you’re doing that kind of a repair.

That’s, that’s important. That’s an important consideration. And while it’s obviously possible to do that today offshore the fact that you would have to use the crane to, place and pick or use the, um, the fixtures that are attached to the crane to rotate the blade and then lower it into the cradle.

That can be complicated and time consuming and expensive to do with the on board crane on the vessel. So, the fact that you can lower it into this rotating, we’ll call it a rotating, cradle. Or fixture and the fact that, they’ve, they’ve got this capability to be able to put up the, the, tarp or tent to be able to protect the blade to, to do the repairs, it’s, it’s really helpful and, and gives you potentially improved quality in, in the repairs pretty much at the same level that you would get from doing it onshore.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, I like the idea here that we’re basically taking a concept that we know if you’ve seen major blade repairs on the ground, a lot of times a temporary tent is put up so that you can work in the wind, rain, snow, cold, whatever it may be. Doing the same thing here offshore. Important for operations and maintenance for the future as we have to start doing some, larger and larger repairs to these blades.

But a big important part of this is if anybody that’s been involved in lifting operations, you want to minimize the amount of times that you actually touch these blades. When you talk about installing them offshore, you build them in the factory, you move them from the factory to the yard, then you move them from the yard to maybe Keyside.

If the factory’s close to the, to the water, then it goes from keyside, another crane puts it on the boat, and then the vessel might, might be a barge, and then the barge goes out to the working rig, and then they have to pick it up. And every time you pick a blade with a crane or slings or other kind of fixtures.

You have a risk for damaging it. So being able to drop it on deck and move it and manipulate it however you need to, to do repairs without having to re pick, re pick, re pick, especially in a Marine environment is super important. So I like this idea. I think it’ll, you’ll see it in the future, but in specialized cases.

Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s a great idea. Our next is up from Siemens, Gamesa. And this one has to do what they call ride through, right? So the equipment on a wind turbine has to handle the grid voltage fluctuations. In order to do that, a lot of the equipment that is on a wind turbine has to be over designed, have special capabilities to handle grid voltage fluctuations.

And that leads to additional costs and complexity into the equipment. Well, the Siemens idea is to take a transformer, basically a variable transformer, an auxiliary transformer, and have a quote unquote electronic tap, and a transformer converts electricity from one form into another, simply said. It can raise or lower the voltage, same thing with current.

So they’re using semiconductors. So you’ve got a primary and a secondary and a transformer. You can adjust the amount of turns in a primary or a secondary using semiconductors as a switch. So in a voltage fluctuation case, all the auxiliary equipment in the turbine won’t see it because this auxiliary transformer with these semiconductors are going to stabilize the voltage within two AC cycles.

Which is really quick, and that allows you to use much simpler, lower cost equipment in the turbine field. This idea makes infinite sense to me. Depending on what the cost is for this auxiliary transformer with all these semiconductor switches, it could be a lot less expensive.

Philip Totaro: Yeah, and I think the impetus behind this was for larger onshore turbines.

Particularly in markets where you’ve got a need to provide, well, a lot of fluctuation in, in grid voltage and frequency, but also where you may have to be able to provide ancillary services quickly. And so this technology will come in really handy with that, and I, I, it’s funny because every week these, these patents publish and, and we’re reading them at Intel Store to, to extract whatever technology intelligence we can get out of them or just catalog the, the, 60, 000 plus patents that I think we’ve cataloged over the last 14 years now.

There are ones like this that actually stand out a little bit because it, it’s not the most revolutionary patent or technology in the world, but it’s something that’s actually going to potentially impact cost and improve function. of a wind turbine. And so we, we like ideas like this and we want to see more ideas like this.

Joel Saxum: Allen and I talked with R& D test systems regularly and they have shared with us some of the testing mechanisms that they have to basically introduce grid problems backwards into turbines, into generators, into control systems and all this, to make sure that they work. So this is a system that Gets you that certification that gets you to that level.

Then it can handle that. But in like, like Phil said, a more cost effective way. And one of the things I want to focus on here is the speed of which it happens. So when it talks about two AC cycles, okay, if we’re in the United States, usually an AC you’re cycling, it’s, or your power’s at 60 Hertz. So that means two of those 60 Hertz.

So at one 30th of a second, this thing can find the issue. Correct that issue. Or if you’re in the European Union and it’s you’re at 50 hertz, then it’s in 1 25th of a second. That’s how fast these things will operate to make sure that that grid interruption, that grid voltage problem or current problem doesn’t make it back up into the turbine to actually damage something.

So pretty impressive there. And doing it in a way that saves costs. That’s the kind of stuff that we need within the wind industry to make us more competitive, or to make it more competitive versus other forms of energy generation.

Allen Hall: Our last fun idea. Or our last idea of the week is a fun idea regarding Halloween and a Halloween candy container.

And if you’ve just had the kids arrive to your house, usually they have some sort of bag or a bucket that they want you to throw some candy into. Well, this is a novel idea because this is sort of a hands free containment device that is worn on the child’s back. So it’s like a, a clear backpack. But on top of that, there’s a chute that comes from the backpack forward with like a little character with an open end, like a I don’t know, a monkey with his mouth open or an elephant with his mouth open.

So you actually throw the candy into this little animal mouth and it deposits back in the backpack. So the kid is hands free. I don’t know why the kid would have to be hands free to do this, but the concept is, well, they’re carrying a flashlight, they may be holding someone else’s hand. It’s a safety feature device.

Ed, Phil, it’s also fun for the people that get to throw candy at this kid and try to hit the target, I’d

Philip Totaro: assume. Well, hopefully they’re not just chuck chucking it at them, but I don’t think that’s almost as happy.

Allen Hall: It’s all those little tiny ones, not those big full candy bars that you give out, Phil.

Philip Totaro: Are you a full size candy bar household, Phil? Yes, absolutely. If if we’re doing it, we’re not we’re not miniature or anything. I mean, I’m not from Texas, but every, everything is bigger there, and, and, as it should be. I think this

Joel Saxum: thing would work perfect for, I like the idea for berry picking. I do that whenever I’m home up in Wisconsin in the summertime, I’ll bit raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, and if I had this backpack on, it’d just boop, boop.

That would keep me from eating them the whole time out of a bucket.

This episode covers Vestas’s manufacturing growth in Italy and Siemens Gamesa’s quarterly results showing both gains and ongoing challenges. The hosts explore how the U.S. election results could reshape renewable energy markets, with discussions ranging from grid infrastructure to natural gas expansion. And an in-depth look at quality control concerns at GE Vernova’s LM Wind Power blade manufacturing facility in Canada, where allegations of falsified quality control data have emerged.

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.com
Weather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.com
Intelstor – https://www.intelstor.com
Wind Energy O&M Australia Conference – https://www.windaustralia.com

Allen Hall: An endangered sea turtle that was found about a year ago, some 5, 000 miles from its native waters, has been released back into the Gulf of Mexico, according to the Houston Zoo. The sea turtle was found off the coast of, guess where? The Netherlands, after becoming entangled in the net of a commercial fishing boat.

The zoo said the turtle apparently was carried by currents until it was found, and the U. S. National Fish and Wildlife Service secured the turtle’s return. Guys, there’s a really interesting bit. Some fishermen somewhere realized that this turtle didn’t belong off the coast of the Netherlands and decided to return it.

Of all things. They took it to the Rotterdam Zoo the Rotterdam Zoo where it was nursed back the health. And then had a, must have a first class flight back to Houston where it was put back in the Gulf of Mexico. But this little turtle went a long ways. 5, 000 miles is quite a ride, right?

Joel Saxum: I can’t imagine it was doing very well in the cold water up there either.

Cause right now, even now the Gulf of Mexico is 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Yeah, he, the

Allen Hall: turtle at some point had to know it wasn’t in the Bahamas anymore, right? It’s not gonna swim back from there.

Rosemary Barnes: I saw a story recently about a king penguin that that swam from Antarctica to Australia to Perth.

It was it’s not that far, I think it was like 3, 000 kilometers or maybe a little bit more, but similar thing of yeah. Animal just, just the kind of point in the direction and then just keep going until they reach land. It’s some decent persistence.

Allen Hall: Isn’t it crazy when you think about how animals have moved around the planet?

And then you, that’s impossible. And then Rosemary says there’s a penguin that’s got about 1, 500 miles, just taking a light swim.

Joel Saxum: That’s crazy. There’s a book about this called Super Navigators, and it’s really fascinating, actually, to be honest with you.

Allen Hall: This turtle is back home in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, which is a great story, right?

Gulf of Mexico for the winter. Welcome to the

Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, and I’ll be joined by my Uptime co host after these news headlines. Thanks A major expansion of wind turbine manufacturing is underway in Toronto, Italy as Vestas begins production of its V236 15MW offshore wind blades. The facility will produce 115. 5 meter blades capable of powering 20, 000 European households each year.

The expansion, supported by EU recovery funds, will create 1, 300 new jobs in the region. The Port of Toronto has granted Vestas a nine year concession to use its logistics platform, establishing the port as a strategic hub for wind energy component manufacturing and distribution. This development marks a significant step in expanding Europe’s wind energy supply chain.

Siemens Gamesa reported a mixed fourth quarter performance with revenue growing significantly to 3. 1 billion. billion euros, up 19 percent compared to the same period last year, driven largely by increased offshore wind business activity. However, the division continued to face challenges, posting a negative profit of 472 million euros for the quarter.

While this represents an improvement from last year’s 670 million euro loss, the results still reflect ongoing project margin pressures due to quality issues and increased product costs. Orders were moderately down to 4. 1 billion euros compared to 4. 2 billion euros in the previous year. The company’s order backlog increased to 38 billion euros, supported by a major North Sea order worth 2.

9 billion euros. Looking ahead to fiscal 2025, Siemens Comansa expects revenue growth to decline between 5 and 9 percent as it continues working towards achieving break even performance by fiscal year 2026. Scottish Power Renewables has finalized a 1 billion pound agreement with SMOs CESA to supply 64 wind turbines for its East Anglia two offshore wind farm.

The project located off England’s East Coast has a capacity of nearly one gigawatt and will use SG 14 SG 36 DD turbines with a 236 meter rotor diameter. The 115 meter blaze will be produced at Siemens GI Mesa’s whole facility. which has grown to employ 1, 300 people following the addition of 600 new staff in the past year.

The 4 billion pound wind farm is expected to generate enough clean energy to power nearly 1 million homes. GE Vernova, the world’s third largest wind turbine manufacturer, will continue its pause on seeking new offshore wind turbine orders while awaiting improved market conditions. The company currently has a 3 billion backlog that will take two years to complete.

CEO Scott Straszak cited supply chain strains and rising interest rates as key challenges. The company’s offshore wind turbine unit has not added to its order backlog for almost three years, instead focusing on executing existing projects. GE plans to standardize its turbines to improve quality and reduce costs, though it announced potential cuts of 900 jobs in its offshore wind unit this September.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has completed its final environmental impact statement for the proposed 2. 4 gigawatt south coast wind project. The development includes 147 wind turbines and five offshore substations with eight offshore export cables, potentially making landfall in Brighton Point or Falmouth, Massachusetts.

The lease area covers 127,000 acres, situated 26 nautical miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, and 20 nautical miles south of Nantucket. That’s this week’s top. News stories. After the break, I’ll be joined by my co-host, the Chief Commercial Officer of Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Joel Saxum the founder and CEO of Pardalote Consulting, Rosie Barnes.

And the founder and CEO of InterStor, Phil Totaro.

Unlock your wind farm’s best performance at Wind Energy O& M Australia, February 11th to 12th in sunny Melbourne. Join industry leaders as they share practical solutions for maintenance, OEM relations, and asset management. Discover strategies to cut costs, keep your assets running smoothly, and drive long term success in today’s competitive market.

Register today and explore sponsorships at www. windaustralia. com. All

Allen Hall: So preparations are underway for Wind Energy O& M Australia in Melbourne on February 11th if you haven’t visited windaustralia. com, you’re missing out because the registrations are active. A lot of people have registered already and the sponsors are rolling in.

Joel Saxum: So as we’ve been putting this together, we’ve had a lot of reach outs.

We’ve been reaching out on LinkedIn. We’ve been reaching out an email to people down in Australia and around the globe. And we’ve had quite a few people reach back out to us saying they want to be involved. So we’ve got a couple of panelists line or some great panelists lined up. We’ve got a few that we’re in the pipeline right now to be sponsors, and they’re going to bring some crazy, innovative ideas, some things that are happening around the wind world where they’re actually, they’re helping operators in a big way.

But we can’t say who they are quite yet, but stay tuned for that.

Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s going to be a great event. Rosie’s going to be there. At least she promised to be there. Bill’s going to be there. Joel’s going to be there. And I guess I’m coming too. So it should be a good time. All the uptime crews will be there.

And if you’re interested. In sponsoring or attending, you need to visit windaustralia. com. Rosie, in the U. S. we had an election. You may not have heard about it, but,

Rosemary Barnes: Did you?

Allen Hall: Yeah, we did.

Rosemary Barnes: Anyone I know involved?

Allen Hall: Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have competed and at least at the latest count it looks like Trump will be president come January 20th.

Now, this has sent the renewable energy world all aflutter. There’s a lot of concern about it because during the election campaign, for offshore wind, Trump promised to shut down all the permitting for, or put a suspension on all the permitting for offshore wind. I don’t even sure that is really possible without having some valid reason, Joel.

I’m not sure that can happen, but there’s a lot of people that are concerned about it, and you’ve seen a number of LinkedIn articles saying the world is ending, and I’m not sure that’s the case.

Rosemary Barnes: I, I don’t see it from an outside perspective. I can’t see that it’s going to be disastrous for, Energy transition in general.

However, Trump really dislikes wind specifically. And I think that wind was already probably not looked after as much as all other energy transition technologies from the IRA. That’s my belief anyway. So I do think it could be bad for wind. It’s definitely not a tailwind for wind energy, right?

It’s Yeah. How much of a headwind remains to be seen. But I don’t want to get into the, it’s immensely comforting to me that I am not a U S citizen and I don’t really need to care that personally about it. Like I don’t need to get personal about it. Of course I care a whole lot about the energy transition cause that’s a global thing.

But other than that, I can avoid getting too invested. But yeah, and some of the personality involves, personalities involved. I’m, like thoroughly sick of seeing what they have to say. But that said Elon Musk, love him or hate him. And it’s probably, fewer people outside of the US who love him these days.

I still would find it really hard to believe that he would be keen in scrapping all kind of, energy transition incentives obviously electric cars, that’s still a big part of why he is the, I think he’s the wealthiest person in the world, right? And a lot of that’s to do with Tesla.

Tesla stock has gone up heaps, like 60 percent or something in the last month. That’s a part of it. And I also, as crazy as he’s gotten on yeah, any range of topics that he talks about these days, I haven’t actually heard him say anything crazy about the energy transition.

I haven’t heard him talk about it at all for a long time, but the last time that he was publicly saying stuff about energy. In the, after the Twitter takeover and, the foray into all sorts of other topics that I disagree with his opinions on. He was still saying stuff that was sensible to my ear about energy.

So I am cautiously, optimistic that his presence will actually, moderate the kind of damage that Trump might be inclined to, to do about that. So yeah, we’ll see. And there’s a lot of big unpredictable personalities involved. So I wouldn’t like to get too rational about my predictions and think that, that it’s possible to have any certainty, but I’m not totally despondent about, I would struggle to believe that it’s going to be catastrophic for the global climate.

Joel Saxum: I think there’s a couple of things to think about that for wind energy professionals or energy transition, anybody involved in it can sit back and be a little bit more comfortable. These are my thoughts. One of them is one of the things that Donald Trump ran on was deregulation and fixing some permitting problems.

If you do this, those things for oil and gas, say on the, dealing with public land or lease areas or any of these sorts of things and in interstate cross boundary pipelines and that kind of stuff, those are the same kind of regulation, the same kind of regulatory bodies that regulate wind and or solar and or batteries.

So if we’re deregulating that side of things, it actually might make regulations easier and permitting processes quicker for wind. So that’s one thing. Another one, if you look back just at history, 2016 to 2020, Donald Trump was president once already. And during that era, we had a boom in wind energy development.

And most of that was driven. This was pre IRA bill, of course, right? But most of that was driven because capital was cheaper at that point in time. The cost of capital was not as high as it is. Now, or has been for the last few years. And so if we see that same kind of economic trend as what happened in 2016 to 2020, based on policies, I think that you could actually see development at, at least on the onshore level, spike, I think you could see it go up because cost of capital, if the economy is doing better, the global economy is doing better, the cost of capital is cheaper.

And that makes it easier for developers to buy into things and make it happen. And that’s just a couple of thoughts.

Allen Hall: But there’s really nothing that a president can do inside of a state anyway.

Joel Saxum: Federal waters. That’s what we, that’s one of the things he ran on as well was, I’m going to do this and leave it to the States.

I’m going to do this and leave it to the States. That’s actually the way the constitution is designed in the United States. It’s power to the States. The federal government’s just there to support. And over the years, the federal government has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger. That’s another thing Rosemary, as Elon Musk has said we’re going to reduce some of the waste in the government and try to.

Make it not so big. So I don’t think that, everybody doom and gloom about wind energy in because of the selection. I actually I’m cautiously optimistic to see what happens January 20th. And for the first a hundred days and over the four year course year to see what happens, because I don’t think it will be as.

Bad as is made out to be today.

Philip Totaro: If you want to talk about how cost of capital is impacted, we also have to talk about interest rates. And when we talk about interest rates, you got to look back historically at periods when interest rates were unseasonably high and what happens during the times when interest rates are being reduced as a frame of reference for where we are right now, by the way, when you have historically high interest rates and they start, being reduced, there’s almost inevitably a period of recession where we are inevitably in 2025 going to have a recession.

How deep it is and how intense it is it’s, it’s inevitable that this is going to happen. So keep that in mind. Now, the consequence of it is when we’re in a recession, interest rates get reduced to Almost zero or significantly reduced down to the point where you don’t have those kind of barriers to projects anymore.

So from the interest rate perspective, yes, interest rates are going to come down. We’re going to have to deal with this recession that is, as I said, is inevitable 2025. Hopefully it’s a mild one. Hopefully it’s a short one. And again, this frankly was going to happen regardless of who won the election and whatever the Federal Reserve was going to do and what level of influence the executive branch has over, the, this independent Federal Reserve Board.

So that’s the first and probably the most important aspect of this. The second thing that. What we need to look at is what can a president do with an executive order? The reality is, can offshore wind be blocked? Not as much as people think. What an executive order could do is slow down the Department of Interior, and specifically from issuing any approvals for projects that aren’t already either environmentally approved or commercially approved for operation.

Allen Hall: And Rosemary, executive order is one thing, but if you look at the GE Vernova statement and now today the Siemens Energy released its quarterly prospectus, the drill baby drill is something that they’ve already planned for. Natural gas turbines. are big money. G. E. Vranova’s stock has gone up 17 percent this week.

There’s gonna be a huge push into natural gas, and the closing of a lot of coal fired electricity factories. And the reason they’re giving is AI, that in order to power all these data centers and to make AI magic, They’re going to need a lot of power and because they don’t have the renewables where they wanted to, and nuclear is not really an option in the States so much, in fact, they shut it down.

It’s all natural gas. Does that make any sense?

Rosemary Barnes: I know that the projections for, future electricity usage in the United States, 4 percent of the increase is associated with data centers. I’m pretty sure I’m remembering that correctly, maybe it was 4 or 5%. It’s very, it’s a nice convenient thing.

If you have an incentive to say that there’s going to be increased electricity demand, then that’s a nice reason to attach to it. I know that in their planning most utilities around the world, and I’m pretty sure that a lot, maybe all of them in the UK. US are the same. The way that you make a return is by making an investment and then you’re allowed to, and a guaranteed rate of return on that.

So they always want to invest in more electricity generation. And even though electricity demand has been very flat for, I don’t know, what, like 20 years or a long time anyway in the US and most developed countries, they have been looking back at their projections for the future.

They’re always predicting that it will increase. It’s, it’s been flattened out. It’s about to increase massively. That’s what they’ve been saying. So take it with a grain of salt.

Allen Hall: Hang on, Rosemary. I don’t think you take it with a grain of salt here because Hitachi, which is the largest manufacturer of high voltage transformers has like a four year backlog.

There’s a lot of electrical infrastructure that is happening. So that feeds into your consensus.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, so the whole point of the, the energy transition, we’re transitioning to electrification of a lot of things that used to be, served by burning gas or by burning petrol slash gasoline.

So there is going to be a lot more electricity used as we transition. So I think we’re all expecting that to happen. It, it’s starting to ramp up now we’re in the early days of it. I don’t think we see a huge difference in the amount of electricity generation that we need yet, but we’re all expecting it right.

So whether it’s because of. Data centers. No, it’s not. It’s not because of data centers. That’s one of 20 other factors of the same or more of an impact. Yes, we will need more electricity.

Allen Hall: Let me ask you this. If we’re going to put more natural gas turbines onto the grid, To produce electricity, we’re going to need more grid.

If there’s more grid, does that allow us to have more renewables that plugs into that grid? Because if one thing is going to happen, they need to, and the drill baby drill does happen, they’re going to have to hang transmission line and have switchgear to take that electricity to where they need it. And once that happens, doesn’t that open up the possibility to more renewables popping online?

Solar and wind.

Rosemary Barnes: Allen, you’ve got the talking point wrong. If you’re playing the role of gas industry booster, everyone knows you only need transmission for renewable energy and that nuclear or or fossil fuels don’t need any transmission because, everyone’s got like a rooftop nuclear power plant or a rooftop gas turbine.

And That’s how it works. So yeah jokes aside, yes, more transmission. But the other thing is that like gas, a gas power plant is super fast to build. And it’s of the kind of project that utilities everywhere are very used to doing. That’s another thing with the planning.

If you say. Okay, we’ve had flat demand for ages. And now it’s all of a sudden about to increase massively demand. We need to put a gas turbine in because it’s the only thing we can do fast enough. That is another little bit of, I think like a forward projection that just like they’re working backwards from, We’ll have a gas power plant because it’s the easiest thing to do and we can, get a return on our investment.

But it’s, like it’s unlikely to come on as fast as they’re saying. And with a little bit more time, you could plan a cheaper system if you would, yeah, build out more transmission and more renewables. And, Maybe there will be some new gas peakers, like I’m personally not opposed to gas supporting the energy transition while we wait for batteries to get cheap enough that they can, completely eliminate the need for gas peakers, which they are, by the way, already like strongly making inroads into that in California and also Texas.

I would say it’s a short term horizon that the, rush on gas turbines would be for rather than a long term one.

Joel Saxum: Rosemary, what is, maybe you know this, I think of anybody you’d probably know this on the panel here, what’s the average size of a gas, like a natural gas powered power plant?

Four to five hundred megawatts. Okay, so you’re the size so one gas plant is the size of A large wind farm. You’re talking 100, 150 tower wind farm is the size of one gas plant. Ish.

Rosemary Barnes: Ish. I think it’s a wrong comparison though. It’s like batteries. Batteries is the right comparison. Like how, because batteries are also super quick to put in.

The world’s first big, like grid scale battery. Was in South Australia, and again, it’s, Elon Musk. They got it up in three months. Three, three months from when the contract was signed. Maybe about six months from when they first started talking about it. Like that’s fast.

Joel Saxum: He’s not normal. They also built like the gigafactories. They said they’re gonna take five years to build the first gigafactory. And they did it in 18 months. So that’s an Elon Capital Projects thing.

Rosemary Barnes: But still, when you look at, when you look at construction timelines for big batteries, we’re talking a year, maybe two years for a big project.

We’re not talking like nine years for a nuclear power plant, like it’s, it is very different. So they’re also fast and as prices are still dropping and people are starting to see how profitable they are in when you combine batteries with. A lot of solar power, then you can get most of the year you can get really cost effective, flexible energy system, electricity system.

I think we’ll see more of that.

Joel Saxum: I know, Allen, when you and I are driving around West Texas earlier this year, we saw a lot of, Pseudo co located renewables and batteries, renewables, batteries, and data centers. And the data center thing is not going to slow down, right? Like we just saw this other one and Allen, you mentioned it briefly, but there was Three Mile Island was going to be unmothballed.

And another plant was supposed to be converted over to being used for data centers. And they were going to take these nuclear power plants and use them for data centers. And that got squashed by FERC. So the companies that were associated with that, I think it was Constellation, their stock dropped like 15 percent overnight when that happened.

Allen Hall: That’ll change though, don’t you think, Joel? I think that those nuclear power plants will get fired back up again with a new administration. I think that’s going to be high on the priority list. Unless there’s some safety issue that Is preventing it, but that wasn’t even in the discussion point, I don’t think.

Joel Saxum: If you look at nuclear doctrine for energy, one of the big reasons behind not making it large scale, at least coming out of the United States, was to not share nuclear technology around the world. Oh hell, North Korea has it now.

Allen Hall: Every Iran has it. It’s everywhere.

Joel Saxum: It’s everywhere now. Why not?

What’s the why are we holding back?

Allen Hall: It’s gonna be well, I assume Rosemary They will televise the inauguration into Australia’s to make sure everybody sees it and I know you’ll be Attune to that. I’ll have to get the VCR ready so you can record it. This is going to be like at two in the morning for you, I’m sure.

Philip Totaro: She’ll be watching the Australian Open Tennis on Nine Gem.

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Allen Hall: If you’ve been following the news very closely in Northern Canada there’s been some reports of. Quality control problems at the Vernova LM wind power blade manufacturing facility, and as reported in one of the Gaspé newspapers, there was an internal investigation revealing employees were allegedly directed to falsify quality control data.

And that made blade data was reportedly associated with poorly made blades. The plant management had a point system that encouraged skipping verification steps. This is all alleged, of course, still. And those are some of the 107 meter blades that are at vineyard wind at the moment that are struggling.

and GE is trying to take corrective actions for that. It apparently a senior employee at GE Vernova went up to the gas bay plant and told everybody what had gone on. This is a big deal. There’s been a lot of allegations, and I have read so little about this, but I’ve heard it from so many places over the last 12 months, that there has been some doctoring of quality data.

Particularly the Canada plant is the one that I hear the most about and which becomes just horribly bad for Vernova and LM as, that’s, it sounds like from what I can tell, and the. The events, if you lay them out on a timeline, pretty much as GE upper management figured out this was going on, heads were rolling and rightly it looks like GE lawyers came in and started to suss out what was happening, but the damage is already done. Now, as a group of us, I can imagine each one of us is thinking, this is insane. What are we doing as an industry when this is going on? And Part of it may just be just the pressure.

And there was pressure to push out blades. There was part, a lot of pressure to get blades delivered on time, particularly offshore, which GE really hasn’t done. Been taking orders for years for now. They just want to be done with it. There’s a lot of internal pressure here, but this is definitely not the right way to go about it.

Do you see, is there more of this? Is this wider spread than just this one place? What are we all hearing?

Joel Saxum: Yeah, let’s hope not. I know one thing I did see was an article today that stated that head of GE Vernova still says sales for offshore wind are on ice. They’re not even pursuing them. So they’re not even going after them.

They’ve shut that thing down. And Allen, what you alluded to earlier, you and I watching through LinkedIn and stuff, they’re head of offshore. Was it June or July? Yeah, and is now

Philip Totaro: retired. And they replaced the executive team at LM previously, so they’re, because as it’s, as the allegations go, the LM executives were, and again, whoever directed them to if it was self directed or, Encouraged by whomever we still don’t know, but the report is that they put in a quote unquote points system and we’re tracking whether people were, getting things done in a timely fashion, potentially at the expense of quality.

And that’s not an environment that is, it’s obviously unhealthy from a corporate standpoint, but it’s also a really bad look for the industry. At a point in time when, the people at, in and around, The vineyard wind project are already apoplectic about, a one blade having a failure and leaving, some shards of fiberglass in the water.

The fact that it may have been, induced deliberately by, executive order that’s extremely concerning.

Allen Hall: But isn’t that a part of the problem when we have the headquarters of a blade manufacturer so far away from the manufacturing facilities? Unless you have a really tight control of what’s going on day to day, craziness I’ve seen it, I’ve worked in aerospace forever, I’ve seen the manufacturing facilities, that seems really indicative of that situation where the management is isolated away.

This is a case about Boeing that the Boeing headquarters is in Chicago, not in the Seattle area where they’re making airplanes. That’s a huge problem because the oversight is thousands of miles away from the actual working activity. If it’s something where your job depends upon a quality product coming out the door, typically you like to be somewhere near that.

Wind is hard because you’re making blades all over the place. It’s a global business.

Joel Saxum: I think an important thing here is Rosemary on the panel here because she’s the only one of us that have spent time in a manufacturing facility for blades because there’s a million things in my, I’ve walked through the processes before, right?

So there’s visual inspections, there’s certain times that, molds are able to be open, molds have to be closed on time, resins that have to set up in a certain way, glues that have to be, so we don’t know what. These falsified documents and I want to stress allegedly falsified. We don’t know this.

This is a newspaper and some people in the industry talking. So what are some of these things, Rosemary, that do, in your mind, where could this have gone wrong? What could have happened here?

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, Guthrie is the first wind turbine blade factory that I ever set foot on. I spent two weeks there.

As soon as I started working at LM Wind Power, all the engineers in LM do a week usually of training in a factory to learn all of the different processes. It’s really important when you’re. Looking for a company that you know, you’re designing, but it has to be manufactured. It’s really important that, the realities of that, the part that I think that you would be able to to swap data out more, most easily.

And what would make the most difference would be some of the scans. They do a bunch of non destructive testing on certain aspects of the blade. And the images that are taken are usually saved and you can look back at them afterwards. Some of the defects that I’ve worked on they’ve gone back to say, okay let’s see if we can find something in the scan that we missed, because, there’s a lot of images generated from one blade.

And some of the analysis is being done with AI and maybe there’s something missing. So that would be my guess what would be the easiest part of it, the whole thing to falsify. But I’m, my mind is blown that someone would do that because it’s one thing to fudge things that aren’t important to save time.

But it’s another thing, like when you know that this quality stuff matters. Yeah, like it’s definitely levels. Several levels beyond the worst thing that I ever saw working in a factory. And I am really disheartened by the fact that it has happened in our industry and happened to my previous employer.

And it happened at a factory that, I worked and knew people and and liked them. So yeah, just overall dis, disappointing is, times 10.

Joel Saxum: So Allen, you’re, yourself being like an engineering manager in the past. Is this look like a cultural issue or does this point to a person or an administration that directed things?

And how do you fix it? Do you go wipe that factory clean or what does it look like?

Allen Hall: Yeah. When this has happened in situations, I’ve been near. Goes on as the lawyers come in, because there’s a legal consequence to this, and the company can be brought to criminal court by the, in this case, Canada, or Quebec even there are going to be some consequences here more than likely.

And the company hate that.

Rosemary Barnes: It’s a small town, right? It’s a big employer in that region. And it was a big deal when that factory got started, it was actually by a guy who was a local and had gone away and then saying, okay, we should be able to have a factory in my hometown. And he he made it happen.

And it was really important for the area because traditionally it’s a lot of seasonal work there. And this was an employer that operated year round. Yeah. It’s not going to be easy to just fire. the, all the workers and start again because you won’t have, you won’t have that pool of potential labor there.

Management, yes but otherwise they’re gonna be shutting down the factory if they have to fire everybody.

Allen Hall: I think they’re bringing in workers. Some of the news reports that have appeared over the last six months or so say that that facility was bringing workers from outside the country on, what, six month work permits because they didn’t have enough people to support it.

Yeah.

Joel Saxum: 179 days. See you later.

Allen Hall: So that could lead to it, in my opinion, if you’re a transient worker in a factory and you’re being told to push something out the door, it leads to those conditions. Of wrong decisions being made.

Rosemary Barnes: If you’ve got no future there anyway, then.

Allen Hall: Exactly. I get I’m only going to be here for an 80, 180 days.

I need to make money and go back to my home country. I’m going to do what they tell me to do. And that’s where I say that the headquarters, some of the leadership of the company have to be kicking the tires all the time. That is just one of the things you have to do. You have to be constantly checking up further down the chain.

And it’s so hard. When you are literally thousands of miles away, Gaspé is not near Quebec, right? It’s how many hours of a drive is it once you get to Quebec to land?

Rosemary Barnes: Like 10 or something, 10 or 12. It’s a long drive.

Joel Saxum: I’m going to put it, I’m going to put a different hat on, and I’m going to put on the hat of a developer, right?

We know, okay, that GE has stopped selling offshore wind turbines right now. However, I’m going to look at the situation that happened in that factory and I’m going to try to see if that same situation, migrant workers, like you said, the engineering headquarters removed from the factory. I’m going to see if that same situation is happening at where I may be getting my blades from.

And I’m going to have a better microscope. On the factory where I’m getting my stuff.

Rosemary Barnes: Hold on. We can’t blame the migrant workers when this was management that were signing off on this. It would have clearly contributed, but management wasn’t there on, six month visas and then they just left the company.

I hope, if they were, that’s a pretty, pretty obvious weak point, but I’ll be, yeah, pretty certain that’s not how it worked. They have to be fired, obviously, all those managers. And, yeah, consider But

Joel Saxum: I want to look at it this way. If I’m looking at the exact same situation in another place where I’m getting product from, I’m going to look into it a lot harder.

That’s me.

Philip Totaro: But Joel, let’s take that conversation one step further. Rosemary just made mention of something about how long it took to perfect the design and manufacturing process for that blade in the first place. Look at what the Chinese are doing. They’re building blades that are literally twice the length of the one that GE has, and it’s GE.

They’ve got, what, 180 year history and pedigree of building products and all that. These Chinese companies are now trying to go out there and build a 300 meter rotor. On a 25 megawatt wind turbine. How is that even going to happen?

Allen Hall: I don’t know. I just want it fixed. I want this process to stop whatever caused that situation.

If it is what it has been alleged to stop. And from what I can tell, GE. Bonova came in and just cleaned house. That’s what it looks like to stop it immediately. And that may be part of the reason why they’re not looking to get back into offshore wind also, is that they have so much to undo that they need time to undo it.

Philip Totaro: Potentially, but they’re also withholding sales because they’re not getting, they’re asking for a price increase to accommodate, a, Inflation, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. And they’re not getting those, that price increase. So their management has also said, we’re not taking the risk on margin anymore, particularly when, if you uncover a situation like this and it introduces a potentially huge financial liability to the company, you can’t be doing that on thin margins.

You have to be doing it where you’ve got cash in the bank.

Allen Hall: The oil and gas companies do.

Joel Saxum: You got to operate on an 80 percent margins for 30 years, and then you can have the cash.

Allen Hall: That’s going to do it for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. Thanks for listening. Please give us a five star rating on your podcast platform and subscribe in this notice below to Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter, and check out Rosie’s YouTube channel, Engineering with Rosie, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

This week on News Flash, Vattenfall invests 5 billion euros in Germany through 2028, Octopus Energy has surpassed two billion dollars in offshore wind investments, and the Asian Development Bank has secured groundbreaking sovereign guarantees for climate finance.

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!

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Welcome to Uptime News Flash. Industry news lightning fast. Your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, and Phil Totaro discuss the latest deals, mergers, and alliances that will shape the future of wind power. News Flash is brought to you by IntelStor. For market intelligence that generates revenue, visit www. intelstor com.

Allen Hall: First up, Swedish utility Vattenfall is investing 5 billion euros in Germany through 2028, showing major commitment after selling their Berlin heating business. The company plans to build 500 megawatts of solar parks and 300 megawatts of large batteries annually. Two major offshore wind parks, the Nordelake 1 and 2, will add 1.

6 gigawatts of wind capacity. And they’re also investing 500 million euros in EV charging infrastructure. Wow, Phil, Vattenfall’s going a little crazy in Germany at the moment. This is a big investment.

Philip Totaro: Well, and it’s coming at a kind of an interesting time because, there’s been some, uh, hard to say whether it’s mild or moderate disarray in the German government at this point particularly in terms of the level of support that is, is gonna be provided long term to, to renewables.

But Vattenfall at least understands and appreciates the fact that, they’ve got a pipeline that, that’s pretty big besides the Nordlicht 1 and 2 projects. I think they’ve got an additional 1. 5 gigawatts of onshore wind and or solar and, and battery pipeline That they have in, in Germany.

So, they’re, they’re really swinging for the fences here and committing a rather large amount of capital at 5 billion Euro. So that’s it, it’s, again, it, it could be challenging short term timeframe, but long term they’re positioning themselves to be, as big of a player in, in Germany as they, they are in some of the other markets outside of, of Sweden.

Where they operate.

Joel Saxum: I think a big part of this five billion euros as well as that Nordlicht one and two for 1. 6 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity, because that’s just a lot of money to build that big of wind farms offshore. But when you look onshore in Germany, it’s a bit harder to develop wind.

You have permitting issues and those kind of things, but the tracks of land, it’s not like we’re here in the United States where we can put 100, 150 turbines out. The tracks of land are smaller, The setback limits are a lot bigger. They have different rules, right? It’s a little operations and maintenance is a bit more difficult, more expensive because you have, it’s like you have to test your lightning protection systems every two years.

You, you have to have multiple ice detection systems. If you’re within a certain setback of a road, there’s, there’s all kinds of little nuances in Germany there. But Vattenfall clearly sees the the advantages of doing some business there. And I know that Germany as a whole. Like you said, Phil, they’re in a little bit of a turmoil right now, but they need it.

So good on them.

Allen Hall: In our second story, Octopus Energy has surpassed two billion dollars in offshore wind investments in just two years. They now hold stakes in six offshore wind farms across three European countries. The portfolio includes Hornsea One, one of the world’s largest wind farms, plus projects in the Netherlands and Germany.

And the company has launched an innovative fan club tariff, giving locals discounted rates when it’s windy outside. So Octopus is a really unique company, Phil. They’re doing innovative things, but they’re also investing heavily in offshore wind.

Philip Totaro: Yeah, and, and this is actually kind of fantastic because they’re doing this, I mean, as a, an investment group parent company to this, octopus energy utility that they, they run.

But they’re, I’ll refrain from using the tentacles joke because I think I’ve already talked about how their tentacles are everywhere. So, they, the, The reality, though, is that with this business model where they’re inviting in kind of smaller investors or offering this, quote unquote fan club tariff they’re, they’re working on a lot of unique ways in which they can get community engagement where the community can clearly see the benefit that they get out of the investments that that are going into this, or if the tariffs are fixed or are being raised, at least the community sees what they’re getting out of it.

And I think that’s become increasingly important throughout Europe, the UK especially, but the rest of Europe as well, where octopus energy is, is predominantly investing in, in offshore wind. So, again, good on them for, for what they’re doing. And we, we hope to be able to see more of it.

Joel Saxum: I’d like to talk about something that is completely related to octopus energy and what they’re doing just for a second, but it’s not wind related. What octopus energy has Has done in the last few years is since jumping onto the market. This company is not old. They’re fairly new, only a couple of years old and the amount of capital that they’ve attracted and what they’ve done is a brand to bring people along for the journey of renewable energies.

For, like the fan club and kind of all, if you go on their websites, you see, it’s just a bit more friendly of an energy company. It seems like it’s easier to get on board with. I think they’ve done a fantastic job of branding themselves and bringing that forth for renewable energy generation.

And I’d like to see more companies do this because they don’t seem like this staunch kind of hard up energy company. It seems like something that you’re just dealing with your friends and you’re, you’re getting on board with the energy transition. So I really like what they’ve done.

Allen Hall: And we need more of that in the, in the States at the moment.

And over in Asia, the Asian Development Bank has secured groundbreaking sovereign guarantees for climate finance. The U. S. will guarantee 1 billion in Japan, 600 million of existing loans. That’s great. Creative structure will increase ADB’s climate lending to 7. 2 billion. Their first project uses 90 million to create sustainable aviation fuel in Pakistan, converting cooking oil to jet fuel.

Wow. The Asian Development Bank is pretty busy, Phil. This is one of the things that sort of Europe is doing, but you’re starting to see it in other places.

Philip Totaro: Yeah. And for those that aren’t familiar, the Asian Development Bank has made rather substantial investments already in wind, solar, and battery storage projects in Southeast Asia basically covering almost the entire Asia Pacific region outside of China.

So they’re developing things in the Philippines, in Thailand all over the place, even, even, frankly, investing a little bit in some of the projects in Australia as well. So they’re, they’re making important strides here with the investments they’ve already made and the fact that they’ve been able to raise this much additional capital and get these kind of sovereign wealth commitments.

To, to offer an additional 7. 2 billion. That’s, that’s extremely important and impressive.

Joel Saxum: I’m super happy to see these projects moving forward. Sustainable aviation fuel. We know the aviation industry uses a lot of, hydrocarbons in what they do. And these kind of things with this capital being deployed.

However, I’m not a huge fan of the U. S. underwriting a billion dollars of it when we could be doing these projects on our own shore.

Allen and Joel sit down with Jonathan Cole, CEO of Corio Generation and Chairman of the Global Wind Energy Council, for an illuminating discussion on the future of offshore wind energy. Cole shares invaluable insights on navigating regulatory challenges across multiple markets, building sustainable supply chains, and securing project financing. He also emphasizes the critical role of community engagement through what he calls “social license” in developing successful offshore wind projects.

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.com
Weather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.com
Intelstor – https://www.intelstor.com
Wind Energy O&M Australia Conference – https://www.windaustralia.com

Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow.

Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, joined by my co host, Joel Saxum. Today, we’re honored to have with us Jonathan Cole, a visionary leader in the global offshore wind industry. and a key figure driving the transition to sustainable energy. Jonathan is the CEO of Corio Generation, a global offshore wind powerhouse, launched in April of 2022.

As a portfolio manager of Macquarie Asset Management operating independently, Corio has quickly established itself as a major player in the renewable energy sector. Under Jonathan’s leadership, Corio has amassed one of the world’s largest offshore wind development portfolios, boasting over 30 gigawatts of projects in various stages of development across Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Americas.

Jonathan’s influence extends far beyond his role at Corio. He currently serves as the chairman of the Global Wind Energy Council, GWEC. and his industry expertise has been recognized through numerous leadership positions. These include chairing the Global Offshore Wind Health and Safety Organization, the UK’s Offshore Wind Program Board, and the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapults Industry Advisory Group.

He has also been a board member of Renewable UK and a member of the UK’s Offshore Wind Industry Council. Before joining Corio, Jonathan played a pivotal role in shaping the offshore wind landscape at eBird DLA from 2010 to 2021, he spearheaded the creation and growth of Ebert Della’s offshore wind business, transforming it into a market leader with approximately 14 billion Euros invested a project pipeline exceeding 30 gigawatts, and a team of 800 professionals spanning four continents and 11 countries.

Jonathan’s a very busy person and we appreciate his time. Jonathan, welcome to the program. Great to be here with you. You’ve been a busy person. I’ve been watching your LinkedIn account in all the countries and continents you’ve been on over the last couple of months. You’re busy in offshore wind and you were just in New York for the climate week.

What was some of the outcome from those sessions that you attended?

Jonathan Cole: Yeah, it’s a busy time for offshore wind and busy time for me, particularly. And I was in New York last week really with two hats on. One was with my Corio CEO hat on because we’ve got a big project out there in New York Attentive Energy.

So I was spending some time with the team out there and hearing all the great work they’re doing. But also I’m the chair of the Global Wind Energy Council, so I was out there with that hat on, helping on the advocacy piece more generally. So it was a really interesting week. I think New York Climate Week is a really important date in the calendar, the climate calendar, because it serves as a bit of a precursor for the COP events later in the year and quite often is quite important in setting the agenda for that.

So we were out there with the G Wake and the Global Renewables Alliance talking about some of the big topics. That need to be tackled if we’re going to convert into reality the tripling up of renewables that was a part of the last COP 28 treaty, talking about some of the things that need to be done to make that happen.

So that was a really interesting and positive week, I have to say.

Joel Saxum: Jonathan, if I was to ask what are the top two, maybe, just to keep it simple, the top two things that as the GWF chairman, of course, and at Climate Week, what are the top two challenges that are facing offshore wind at a global scale right now?

Jonathan Cole: If you don’t mind, Joel, I’m going to give you a top three, right? Yeah, perfect. There’s three big things that are necessary to happen in order to get the tripling up of renewables on track. So one is on the regulatory side, and that is about putting in place some regulatory enablers. Principally around speeding up the permitting process.

So all these great projects that, that, developers like Corio and others want to build can get through that process as quickly as possible, but also on the regulatory side, speeding up the build out of the transmission system, the grid system, so that when the projects are ready. The system is ready to take the power.

So that’s the first part of it. The second part of it is around supply chain and trade. And I think we all recognize that there is a huge challenge in tripling up because there’s a huge amount of capacity needing to be built in the supply chain, but also that’s a huge opportunity. One of the most exciting opportunities, actually, that we face is the ability to breathe life and economic activity back into these coastal communities and post industrial towns where offshore wind farms are located, but that doesn’t happen by accident.

It needs coordinated action. It needs industrial planning, and it needs a sensible approach to things like trade policy. And the third thing is finance. This Now, finance in the more mature markets and the OECD markets is probably less of an issue, although the cost of capital going up has really had an impact and we need to do what we can to de risk and try to take that cost of capital back down.

But when you think of finance in the non OECD countries and the emerging, markets, developing economies, Finance is one of the single biggest barriers to the energy transition, because access to capital at reasonable terms and reasonable rates is hugely significant. Those developing markets could be paying 4, 5, 6 percent more for capital than in the developed markets, and that makes the energy transition so much more expensive for them.

So the three big things, getting the regulations right, and I think there’s a political will to do that. We know who to do that. Getting the supply chain built up. There’s definitely a political will to create the jobs, but we just need to get the right mechanisms in place to do it. And the finance, getting the finance in place, and in particular thinking about de risking for the mature markets.

and getting concessional finance and, other finance in place for the emerging markets.

Allen Hall: Can I touch upon the regulatory aspect for a minute? Because I think you have such a difficult problem ahead of you. You have projects in the US, UK, South Korea, Ireland, Australia, Taiwan, Brazil. Each one of those has a regulatory framework that is different from the others.

In the United States, I think the issue has been more recently, not the federal government, they seem very attuned to developing offshore projects. It seems to be getting it into the states and then into the localities and transmission being one of those issues. How are you starting to navigate some of those state and local issues, particularly in the U.

S.? where they seem to arise haphazardly at times.

Jonathan Cole: Yeah I think that development of these types of infrastructure projects is very much a local game. You have to really understand the local regulatory framework and the stakeholder landscape to go about it in the right way. And you have to recognize that these are quite long development cycles.

They’re complicated projects. It takes a long time to assess the potential and engage the potentially affected or interested parties so that you can find solutions. So you need to be in it for the long term, and you need to understand the landscape that you’re playing into. And then at that point, it’s really just about being very present and very engaging and very transparent and very open.

So the US market is a complex market because You’ve got permitting at multiple layers. So you’ve got the federal permits, the BOEM are managing as a one stop shop, which is great for the federal point of view, but then you’ve got state and even, local and municipal permits that you need to get placed.

So there’s a lot of intervention there and a lot of need to be constantly sharing and talking and engaging in a positive way, listening to people. adjusting your plans, where you can to try and accommodate those people. Educating a lot of cases about, the positive impacts and trying to dispel maybe some of the myths that you hear.

And just generally trying to show people that what we’re doing is a force for good. We’re here to do something good. From a planetary perspective in terms of climate change, but even a local perspective in terms of energy security and local tax areas and job creation and all that stuff. So I think it’s about knowing the landscape and being there every day, working hard, being very transparent and open with people.

Allen Hall: I have to applaud Corio because I’ve been following all the work that’s happening in New Jersey and how active Corio is in the community to try to bring local suppliers to connect with the schools, to connect with the neighborhoods. There’s a lot of a ground game that’s going on right now. And you seem willing to put people there and to staff those efforts well ahead of putting foundations in the water.

That is, I think, a slightly unique approach that we’ve seen some operators Put engineering offices in and obviously they need to go do that But I think you’re right in the United States getting past that regulatory hurdle happens by the states and localities getting used to you being there and Contributing

Joel Saxum: to the local economy.

It’s very that’s a very specific thing in the United States for sure Allen we were just talking last night about the difference between what’s happening in the And some of the East Coast towns, as opposed to Wind, as opposed to the Midwest so people lump the United States into one, but it’s really different locally, even from, New England down to Virginia, it’s completely different.

Culture and people and ideas, but with choreo and your broader experience with GWEC, really, Jonathan is you’re, because you guys are in, and you’re playing in all kinds of different markets, each one of those has its own like hyper local kind of culture that you need to engage with, to get your messages across properly and everybody needs that differently.

How do you guys tackle that? Is it local people in every area or how does that work? Yeah.

Jonathan Cole: Yeah, that’s it. I think you have to get the right balance. The way I often phrase this is in offshore wind, in order to be competitive in the market, you need to have a global outlook. But in order to be in the market in the first place, you need to be local and you need to be responsive locally to what’s going on there.

And one thing I think we’ve managed to do quite well in Corio, and I guess it’s because we’re a, a relatively agile player, we’re relatively young. A, the type of company we are means that we’re able to get local quite quickly. So if you look in each of the countries where we’re operating, we have very strong local teams in each of those markets who are very well plugged in to the, the policymaking and the regulatory and the stakeholder landscape, so in Korea, in Taiwan, where we were one of the early movers, the market makers.

So we’re there able, I think, to do that, and I think it’s really important. The phrase that we use, and a lot of people in our industry use, is social license. If you’re building infrastructure projects that’s going to be in communities for generations, you need to get the social license to be there.

You need to show them that you’re doing this with them and for them, not to them and in spite of them. And I think that’s a really important mantra for us is, working with communities to sell the benefits. Um, and be seen as a long term part of the community. That’s what infrastructure, good infrastructure is all about, is it enables economic activity and other activity to flourish if you do it properly.

Joel Saxum: I’ve been in the global oil and gas industry, onshore, offshore, global wind, onshore and offshore, large capital projects. I have never heard that term, social license, and I love it. I think it’s a, I think it’s a great way to go about things.

Allen Hall: Let’s back up a little bit, and I want to talk about supply chain because that seems to be a huge driver.

In offshore wind at the moment, and Jonathan, I’ve watched some YouTube videos, you’re talking about supply chain, what makes sense in terms of supply chain? Is everything local? Is it a worldwide effort? And how do you manage the cost if it if you try to force everything local? Those are some unique insights.

You want to explain sort of your thoughts on that? What’s a supply chain should look like when you’re developing large offshore projects?

Jonathan Cole: Sure. So I think that the first thing really to see, and this is not me trying to then give a known answer, but There is no single answer to that question. There is no right answer because it very much depends on market by market, area by area, but I think what is important is that when you are developing your supply chain or industrial policy around something like offshore wind, that you align that with your energy policy and you do it in a very rational way.

I think there’s three layers to this. There’s localization. There’s regionalization and there’s globalization right now. Localization is basically where you try to bring things that make sense to be done locally, into the local area, and you create economic activity and jobs. Now, there are certain things that can always be done locally, like a lot of the o and m and the services that rely on proximity to the asset, and those are good long term well paid jobs, by the way.

Quite often unionized, paid jobs as well. But, depending on your economy, depending on, your labor force, it may be that there’s other things that make a lot of sense to do locally, some of the fabrication and manufacturing, or it may be that actually those things don’t fit very well in your local economy.

And there are a lot of big western economies that are quite high wage economies where it doesn’t really make sense to try and do, heavily manualized industrial processes In their economies, because you’re not going to do it as efficiently as it can be done elsewhere. So I think what you need to do is drive, strive for a localization policy that actually makes sense for your own economy.

Then when you talk about regionalization, I think there what you’re actually looking at is if you’re in a market where the scale of your own market isn’t big enough to stimulate the level of supply chain investment that’s needed, What you need to start doing is looking outside of your own local market at a more regional solution, aggregating that demand, and then creating a supply chain solution on a regional basis.

Now, if you’re talking about the northeast of the U. S., probably the scale is up there. Overall to create a pretty healthy supply chain offering. But if you go individual state by state, not every state in its own right has that scale. And so aggregating and looking at it on a regional basis makes sense.

If you go into maybe Southeast Asia, it becomes even more of an issue. Because for those types of countries to get, to attract the investment they need, they’re going to have to do it probably on a more regional basis. And then you’ve got globalization, which is basically those aspects of the supply chain where in order to create resilience, in order to create, you know, efficiencies and economies of scale, You want to be able to source them globally and they’re, relatively mobile components, all the rest of it.

And those things you should leave on that basis. And that’s how you create a more resilient, healthy supply chain. So I think that’s the way that I look at it, the way that Corio looks at it. It’s also, I think, very well aligned with how GWEC looks at, these things, localization, regionalization, globalization.

Understand the pros and cons of each, understand what works best for your market, your area, your region, and then design an industrial policy that plays to that and is well aligned with your energy policy, and try not to have the two disconnected. Does that make sense? It makes sense to me. I talk about this a lot.

Allen Hall: Makes total sense. So just bringing that down a notch, you have to deal with large manufacturers of equipment and the timing of some of your projects is a couple years out. So you have a little bit of flexibility working with OEMs from cables to substations to the wind turbines themselves. How are you approaching this over the next couple of years?

Looking at sort of global forecasts for inflation and pricing and the OEMs and trying to get a slot into. Manufacturing a turbine, even. There’s a lot of moving pieces, getting a ship located and scheduled in. How are you trying to manage that in this sort of uneven economic times?

Jonathan Cole: I think the best way to do it is to do it in a very transparent way, along with those key suppliers.

Sharing openly your own plans, what you’re likely to need, when and where you’re likely to need it. And, having them share back their own capacities and capability to supply, and, that’s a good starting place, because then you’ve got a decent, they’ve got a decent view of how the market looks for them, and if there’s capacity investments needed, then, they get the visibility they need to make that investment case.

Equally, we get a view of where, our, how our project planning fits in. And whether we need to adjust that project planning or, the timing for when we need to start making big decisions and securing slots in the supply chain. So I think it has to be done in a very iterative, but quite open, transparent basis.

And then we have quite a good team internally who are, a procurement team, who are very engaging in the market and quite well known in the market with these key suppliers, as well as, good engineering teams and other teams who are good at, I think, predicting What we need, how the market’s looking in terms of its ability to supply the things that may influence that price and trying to, make good sensible assumptions about that so that we keep developing our projects with business cases that are, fairly robust and resilient and, less prone to shock.

Joel Saxum: I think that, what I’m hearing here is the same thing that we hear from a lot of angles within the wind sector, and it’s just transparency and collaboration, right? Not everybody should have to commission a 50, 000 study from some consulting firm to find out who’s building a wind farm, right? It would be nice if everybody was open about, these are our plans, this is our future.

But what you’re saying to me here is, when we talk local, regional, global and the goals of all of these countries, right? When we talk about COP get togethers, and how all of these countries are coming forward and saying, we’re gonna do this by 2030. We’re gonna do this by 2050. And these great things for the energy transition, what I hear is global opportunity for this supply chain, right?

So whether it is building components, supporting the people that build the components, because these things trickle all the way down, right? And when you get to the port fac, even into building out port facilities and there there’s jobs made from the global wind industry all the way from, you think about the people building the turbines down to the people.

Build it, having the restaurants that are next to the port, right? There’s so much opportunity here that the wind sector is bringing to the world, especially Jonathan, like you had said, some of these, these maybe depressed economies or other places that at once were, Allen and I were in Louisiana the other day, and we were at this port facility that used to employ 26, 000 people.

Now there’s a hundred there. But there’s wind coming in and they’re bringing more jobs and expanding these areas that were once thriving back to their, their past legacy, which is great, right? The wind industry has the capability to do that. So with the supply chain, I see that big opportunity coming.

However, as we’ve been through permitting and regulatory, we talked a little bit about the supply chain. The really big thing here the elephant in the room for a lot of people is finance. We’ve talked about, we talk about it on the podcast quite often about, what inflation has done and higher interest rates and paused projects and the cost of capital.

What do you see as the environment right now and then looking into the future for the ability to finance these large projects?

Jonathan Cole: Overall, the liquidity And the desire to provide finance into the projects is probably where it needs to be. But I think that what we’re not helping ourselves, I think, by imposing a bit too much risk and unpredictability and delay in the processes, but, so take, for example, we talk about permitting, right?

And we say permitting needs to be shortened. Why does that matter? The permitting phase of a project is the phase where the financing costs the most. ’cause it’s the most at risk, right? And what you and it tends to therefore be funded by equity, not by debt. And they are so therefore, the capacity of the development community to keep going and going the industry.

is enhanced significantly if you can shorten those development processes and allow that equity to be released again into other projects and get the projects into the next phase where it’s mostly funded by date. We tend a lot to impose on projects all these additional things that need to be done that put, additional risks into the projects where the more you can simplify a project and its revenue stream, the lower.

The cost of capital becomes, and so you can take a lot of risk. So there’s a lot of things that we can do, I think, just by simplifying the regulatory framework to, to improve the terms of financing and to move us through the cycles quicker and therefore create a lot more liquidity. So that’s how I see it.

Allen Hall: Let me drop the OEM back into the discussion here in terms of stability. The GE’s and Vestas of the world decided that megawatts is off the table. They’re going to stop at 15 megawatts. That put a lot of uncertainty into your planning. And in the United States, it made some of the states a little nervous because it changes some of the plans and whatnot.

What effect does that have on you on planning when the OEMs say, Hey, 15 megawatts is where we’re staying. Or do you go down the pathway of someone like Siemens and that’s it? Call him out, specifically who’s attempting a 20 megawatt generator? How does that play out and how frustrating is that when you’re trying to develop a project and you can’t even define the basic turbine premise.

Jonathan Cole: Yeah I think when you’re building infrastructure what’s more important is the timing and sequence of these events than the actual events themselves. A decision to stick at 15 or go to 18 in its own right is not a bad decision as long as it’s made at the right time in the cycle of the project and it’s planned in.

And when you are planning the size of the project and the shape of the project and designing all the other plant and equipment around the project, and you’re setting the tariff for the project, if those things are all taken into consideration, then that’s perfectly fine. We, we can work with that.

It’s where things change. an inopportune moment that it starts to become more problematic. There’s a perfectly good argument that says that sticking at the same level of turbine size for longer is a healthy thing because it’s good for the balance sheet of OEMs. It allows them to recover some of those investment costs, but also gives you more time to drive, industrialization and, economies of scale and learning curve benefits into the process.

And as an industry, we’ve always been really proud of how rapidly we’ve upscaled the technology and rapidly we brought down the cost. But, probably it wasn’t the most industrially efficient thing to do because we were all the time then having to retool and rebuild the infrastructure and the ports and the vessels and all the rest of it.

I don’t think turbine size in its own right is a good or bad. I think it’s, it just depends again on the timing of it and, how you then react to that and plan with that.

Joel Saxum: I think what that, what we’re like, what you’re getting at is the same thing that we’re, we talk about quite often as well as if we can like, Stopping at 15 megawatts is not bad.

It allows us, it allows the supply chain to stabilize is what it really does, right? So when people, the general public doesn’t, hasn’t seen a lot of the operations, but simple things like how you even put a blade onto a ship. All of those mounts and chairs and brackets retooled every time that you change the size of a blade or anything of this sort.

So staying at a certain level to be honest with you, it might make it easier and make the supply chain more, like I say, more stable, but some give some longevity and the ability for people, like you said to balance out their balance sheets for lack of a better term over the long time for their, of the R and D that they had to put into these things to, to make it happen.

Jonathan Cole: And it is absolutely essential that we do that, because for the energy transition to work, you need a sustainable supply chain. And the economics have to make sense. I think someone said, you can’t get green outcomes with red numbers. I heard that. I think it’s totally true. At the day, this is a 10 trillion investment program to to achieve the energy transition.

And that has to be done in a profitable, sustainable way. Not excessively but it has to be profitable enough to make people want to stay in. So I totally agree with that. I think, having been in this industry for a long time, you. I would say that we are a little bit the product of our regulatory environment, and that for a long time in offshore wind, we were basically told, you’re ticking so many of the boxes that we need tech for, but you’re too expensive.

You’ve got to get the price down. And our whole mantra, was driving the price down and a big part of that was driving the technology up as well as driving cost of capital down. And so we, we chase through a lot of technology cycles, maybe a bit too quickly as we try to do that. I think nowadays we need a more mature long term outlook, which is to see that this energy transition is not about discovering the cheapest price of electricity.

It’s about abating climate change. It’s about creating, clean air and water. It’s about Investment in infrastructure, it’s about energy security, it’s about energy price stability, it’s about job creation and skills and community benefits. All of that has a value. I, and that value deserves to be somehow priced in.

So I think, if we get to a point where from a regulatory expectation perspective, we can stick at a price that we’re happy with and we don’t need to keep constantly chasing price reductions, then I think we can then get to a point where we can industrialize and standardize the supply chain more and get much better.

Overall outcomes for everyone, but that’s a mindset shift that we’re moving closer to in a lot of markets, but we’re not there yet because a lot of people still think that this has to be cheaper than the alternative as well as better for all those other reasons I mentioned.

Allen Hall: That’s a good segue to the long term prospects here for offshore wind.

You’re deeply involved in it worldwide. What do you see?

Jonathan Cole: I really believe that the long term prospects for offshore wind are extremely positive. I absolutely believe that the energy transition has to take place. It’s essential that we get to a net zero world for the health of our planet, completely and utterly there.

And I really believe that the only way we can do that in the time frame we need is to go down the road of an aggressive policy of electrification and decarbonisation. So we electrify as much of the economy as we possibly can. And then we produce that electricity by the wayside. Low carbon sources. And when you look at it that way, you then say what are the technologies available to you to deliver in the time frame?

And they are the renewable technologies. And so solar, onshore wind, offshore wind, geothermal, they all have a big role to play in the energy mix of the future. And offshore wind is offering a complementarity to those other renewables technologies. Because it doesn’t have the day by day or seasonal variability.

It gives you big scale. In the case of the North East of the U. S. it’s giving you massive scale really close to the demand centers. Without causing problems on the onshore transmission network. So the fundamentals are so obvious that, I think the future is, has got to be bright. I do think we’re going through a difficult phase right now because of inflation and cost of capital increases and supply chain fragility.

But if we can hold on there and we can get the support we need from regulators and policy makers, we get through this and then offshore wind is going to be a huge part. of the energy mix. More or less every country with a coastline is going to be using that coastline to produce clean, abundant, affordable, reliable electricity in the future.

I’ve got no doubt about that.

Joel Saxum: In the last four years or so, we’ve had globally a kind of a tumultuous economic times, right? Where it was, we watched every, no matter what market you’re watching, it’s, it was up and down and up and down for, Quite a while there, but what we need through, and this is an opinion, but what we need through times like that.

And what we see going forward for offshore wind is we need a steady hand on the tiller. We need that good leadership to point all of us in the right direction to, to gather these supply chain companies, to make sure that we’re dealing with the proper regulatory agencies to get the permitting in place and those kinds of things.

From us, Jonathan, appreciate what you’re doing at Corio and greater in the board positions you have. And what GWEC is doing at the same time. Jonathan,

Allen Hall: I want to thank you for your time today. I know you’re a busy person. I know you’re going to be all over the world. And your frequent flower miles must be astounding.

And I want to thank you for your time. And if someone wants to learn about Choreo Generation, how would they do that?

Jonathan Cole: If they want to hear more, they can find us on social channels, like LinkedIn, and they can get access to all the company details from there. They’ll also be able to keep up with my travel schedule as you mentioned, but they’ll see a lot of good information about all the things we’re doing and the countries we’re doing it and the stuff we’re doing, not just in the projects and shows.

But the people that we’re trying to bring along with us on this really important journey.

Allen Hall: Yeah. Everybody should check out coriogeneration.com for all the great things that Corio is up to and to find out where their projects are. Jonathan, thank you so much for being on the podcast. We appreciate you having you on the show.

I really enjoyed it. Thank you very much to both of you.

This week on Uptime Power-Up, a method from Vestas for modifying control of a wind turbine using load probability, a blade tip swap-out for Cypress turbines from GE, and a wind turbine tower with solar panels installed.

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Allen Hall: Welcome to Power Up, the Uptime podcast focused on the new, hot off the press technology that can change the world. Follow along with me, Alan Hall, and idasaur’s Phil Totaro, as we discuss the weird, the wild, and the game changing ideas that will charge your energy future.

Well, our first idea is from Vestas, and it is an idea where they’re monitoring the Turbine tower loads for natural vibration frequency, and you say, well, why would you want to do that? Well, of course, as things change on a wind turbine, maybe something goes wrong. Those frequencies of vibration are going to change, and the system will detect those and say, hey, something is wrong.

Here’s probably what it is, which is a smart way of detecting failure modes in the turbine fill. But the other thing it could do, is push the turbine harder if it’s not being driven hard enough and creating enough power.

Philip Totaro: Yeah, and this is actually really fascinating because, again, this might not sound like the world’s most revolutionary, innovation, but it’s a practical solution to a challenge that is faced out there in the field when you’re operating a wind farm.

And specifically, in addition to just monitoring the, the tower loads and vibration over time, they have the option to monitor the max extreme load in relation to the original design load limit and readjust that max extreme load value over time as there’s an evolution of the, the.

Mechanical performance of, of the turbine. And that to me is, is really clever way of approaching this challenge of having additional safety factor. Or as we see in the United States where turbines get run a lot harder. Than they were potentially designed for. Sometimes because companies are trying to maximize their production tax, credit revenue.

This is a way for a company like Vestus to keep an eye on whether or not they’re exceeding a. Safety criteria, or by how much are you exceeding a safety criteria of, the design load limit versus the max extreme load limit, which will necessarily change over time. As components wear and, and as the tower sees certain load cases on it.

So I, I like this one a lot. I think, again, this is a really practical and clever thing. It might not be, or sound like the world’s most revolutionary. Invention ever, but I, I like stuff like this. This is a really great one.

Joel Saxum: I think it’s a functional way of ensuring the safety and operation of the turbine.

Right. The, the ability to adjust and to understand what kind of loads are being sensed and of course, When we talk about load changes in turbines, it’s every component is completely different, right? The loads in the blades and fatigue loads over time and what can be and can’t be exerted on them. To, to look, like a 20 year old blade is a lot different than a one year old blade and a 20 year old piece of drivetrain is a lot different than a 20, a one year old piece of drivetrain.

So adjusting those load limits by calculation and understanding as the turbine ages and operations change. It’s something that should actually absolutely be done. So I’m, I’m with Phil. I think this is a good one.

Allen Hall: Our next idea is from G. E. in Spain. And G. E. is noted for their two piece blades.

Well, the, the issue with the two piece blade is you want to replace the tip, you have to physically bend it. Get a crane up there and remove the tip. Well, this patent allows the blade tip to be lifted and just, and drop with a cable running through the center of the blade. So it’s sort of a unique way of dropping in a damaged blade tip and putting a new blade tip on.

It has a sort of a coupling mechanism to carry the loads. But Phil, this is a really slick idea. If you’re going to do a two piece blade, the reason you do that, so you can swap out the tip. You need a way to do without involving a crane.

Philip Totaro: Yeah, and, and look, single blade swap outs, an idea that’s been around for like 12 or 13 years or so and has been commercially tested and is commercially used by a few service companies and, and even EPC contractors when they’re doing an initial blade install, they, if they don’t happen to have a crane, they might be able to do the installation of a third blade by using uh, either a turbine based crane or a ground based crane with a winch system that allows you to hook up this harness that’ll, that’ll suck the blade up into the onto the hub.

Now, this invention is for swapping out the tip, which is kind of an interesting use case on a GE Cypress blade, wherein if they happen to have either, let’s say, lightning damage, or some other kind of tip related issue they can literally debolt the I don’t know that they successfully explained how that happens, by the way.

How you get down into the blade deep enough to be able to, unbind the, the joint in there to be able to, to get the tip off. But once you’ve, once you’ve unbinded Unbolted this this tip, doing a quote unquote, single blade swap out with just the tip portion is is certainly a unique approach.

So, assuming that they can resolve some of these other operational challenges and like how you actually, implement this and from a practical standpoint, I think this is, this is interesting. But like we’ve talked about on, Power Up and the Uptime Winnergy podcast before, not everybody’s using a two piece blade and not everybody’s going to use a two piece blade.

So whether or not this patented innovation gets used, universally, we’ll, we’ll have to see.

Joel Saxum: I like anything that can be done without a crane in the wind industry. Without a traditional crane, right? You have the lift draw, the lift works, those guys doing certain things, but something that can be done maintenance wise that traditionally would have taken a crane that you can’t, or that you don’t have to?

Fantastic idea, right? The two piece blades are built for a couple reasons. The main one being logistics and transportation. But the second one is, is that idea that Phil has talked, that talked a little bit about, about the idea behind operations and maintenance of, hey, tip’s got bad leading edge erosion or a bad lightning damage or something, boom, just swap the tip out.

It makes sense from a practical standpoint, however, have we seen it actually happen in the field? Not yet, to my knowledge if anybody has done these things. Please get a hold of us so we can learn a little bit more about it. But yeah, there’s some challenges there because you’re gonna have to probably either use a lift truck to get people up to the joint to remove the they put a seal around it and some other things and, but once, once you get past that, the ability to swap that tip out without a crane is, could be, could be game changing for these

Allen Hall: two piece plates.

Our last idea is a solar powered wind turbine tower, and it’s from Heliotech over in Germany. And the patent idea goes like this. I have this long tower that sits pretty high above the ground. If I can cover that in flexible solar panels, I can generate some electricity. That can go along with the wind power being generated.

So the, the, really the concept is focused on the flexible design. So it doesn’t have a lot of air resistance and cause the tower to rock around this fill though, doesn’t seem like you’d make enough power to be worth it.

Philip Totaro: Well, okay. Let’s start by giving some context to this. I will agree with that statement, but I’ll come back to why in a minute.

So, Heliotech is a company that makes these kind of flexible roll up, almost like you’re rolling up or rolling out a piece of carpet these, these kind of solar panels that are really designed for industrial purposes Specifically on the top of, your warehouse building or other industrial spaces.

They’re meant to serve as a an alternative to a rack mount system a rooftop rack mount system. Whereby you can just physically attach these solar panels, these flexible solar panels to whatever roof surface you want. surface you happen to have. Now, that said, why do I not think this is a great idea for wind turbine tower?

Well, first of all, they are literally the ninth company to propose this type of invention, this generic type of invention of mounting, some kind of solar panel, flexible or otherwise, on Either the tower, the nacelle, or there have been patents by people talking about literally co covering the blades with solar panels.

Sounds like a good idea but the other issue with doing this is that you don’t really You know, it’s, it’s an efficiency thing, right? We, the reason we don’t put a lot of wind turbines in the state of Florida is because it’s not windy enough. And the reason that you wouldn’t necessarily put these solar panels all over the, the tower is, like Alan mentioned, you’re not really getting enough power out of it.

The only thing you’d be able to do with this is maybe power your, your pumps, your motors and your fans cooling fans for, some of your electrical systems. It wouldn’t allow you to black start the turbine by just using the solar power and it wouldn’t necessarily provide you with unless you had some kind of storage system, it wouldn’t necessarily provide you with like backup pitch system power during a Volvo to drive through or something like that.

So I, I just, I, it’s, it’s one of those things like, and, and look, companies like Asiona have done like actual experiments out in Spain with this, not the heliotech system, but they, they had their own partner company come out and put wrap a tower and solar panels. And it’s just not something we see every day because it’s just not, it’s not LCOE efficient, it’s not cost efficient, and it’s not technically efficient in terms of the capacity factor you get out of, out of these panels, so it’s, it sounds like a great idea, but I think the technology and the concept itself, not worth it.

And I think getting a patent on this at this point, when again, nine other companies before this have, have already gotten a patent or an application filed. This, this has been proposed. It’s been done. It’s not great. I’d, I’d say let’s move on.

Joel Saxum: I’d like to start by saying I think that every surface that we have available in areas that it makes sense should have solar panels on them.

I’m down here in Texas and all of the parking garages at every one of these airports that have massive, massive coverings on them to keep the sun off your vehicles that cover acres should have solar panels on them. We have a lot of buildings, I’m in Texas again. There’s no rooftop solar here, and I believe that, why not?

Why wouldn’t we have rooftop solar? So let’s do that. However, it has to be balanced economically, like Phil said. Operations and maintenance wise, like, it’s a pain in the butt to maintain stuff on a tower like this. If you have them, 80 meters up. Otherwise, the other side of the coin is, is solar panels lose efficiency when they’re hot.

And if you’re putting these on a tower, you’re putting them on a steel tower, and if they’re getting sunlight on the steel tower, that steel tower is hot, you’re gonna lose efficiency in the panels anyways. So while this may not be the best use of technology like these flexible solar panels, I do want to say I believe we should put putting solar panels everywhere else that we can.

This week, Allen Hall and Joel Saxum explore Suzlon Energy’s record-breaking quarter, featuring a 5.1 GW order book and 96% earnings increase. They detail plans for the Wind Energy O&M Australia conference in Melbourne, aimed at sharing global technical expertise. Allen and Joel discuss the game-changing discovery of America’s largest lithium deposit in Arkansas, and spotlight Michigan’s Isabella Wind Farm project, which powers major automotive companies while generating substantial community benefits.

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.com
Weather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.com
Intelstor – https://www.intelstor.com
Wind Energy O&M Australia Conference – https://www.windaustralia.com

Allen Hall: Well, Joel, we just don’t seem to have the luck of some people, I’m telling you. Because a gentleman down in North Carolina found a 20 bill laying on the ground outside of a gas station and used it to buy, of all things, a scratch off lottery ticket. And that ticket was worth one million dollars.

Joel Saxum: You know, Allen, sometimes they say, you gotta play to win.

And if someone, if some, by some luck of chance, you get 20 and it’s not, you’re playing with the house’s money, then. I think that, uh, maybe we need to just keep our heads on the ground a little bit more.

Allen Hall: He had the opportunity to buy all kinds of lottery tickets. I don’t know if you go into a gas station in North Carolina, there’s several kinds there.

He couldn’t find the one that he wanted. So he ended up buying just one that seemed okay. And that was the winning one. So if he had chosen the ticket that they had, the ticket that he wanted, he wouldn’t be a million dollars richer. Now, the real funny thing about this is they asked this gentleman, well, what are you going to do with all that money?

And it says, we are going to head straight to Golden Corral and eat everything they’ve got. So he’s gonna spend like 40 bucks worth of it? It’s hard to spend a million dollars at Golden Corral. But, however, I, it did force me to take a look at the dessert menu. Cause that’s one thing about Golden Corral is that they have a lot of desserts.

It’s like, it’s a big dessert bar thing. And If you, I will read some of these to you and go, wow, okay, this is not bad, right? Chocolate dip marshmallow skewers. Come on. I’m out on that. No way. So they have cakes and pies. They always have cakes and pies. All right. All right. Right? Pumpkin pie, peanut butter pie.

The Sweet Home Carolina cake, which is popular. Uh, carrot cake. Are you a carrot cake fan? I am, but it has to have good frosting. It’s gotta be a cream cheese frosting. Otherwise, I’m out. Carrot cake is an acquired taste. I think it’s an American taste, weirdly enough. Now, do you want it with walnuts? No walnuts.

No nuts. I want it clean and clear. And I have had one with a little bit of ginger in it that was

Joel Saxum: really good.

Allen Hall: Oh, the ginger is terrific in carrot cake. I have to admit, I’m a recent convert on that one because I thought, there’s no reason to put ginger into a cake. What are we doing? But it is quite good.

So this, this gentleman is going to be a golden corral quite a while. I wonder what the calorie intake is going to be in his life for the next couple of years.

Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Halladay, and I’ll be joined by my Uptime co hosts after these news headlines. Vattenfall has expanded its landfill ban to include more wind turbine components beyond blades. The Swedish developer will now prohibit landfilling of permanent magnets, nacelle canopies, and nose cones from its wind farms.

The company aims to achieve 100 percent recycling of these components by 2030, with a particular focus on recovering the rare earth elements from permanent magnets. This latest initiative builds upon Vattenfall’s 2021 blade recycling commitment and is already being integrated into current wind farm decommissioning contracts.

The strategy underscores the company’s dedication to reducing dependency on newly mined materials while decreasing environmental and social impacts associated with Rare Earth Mining. In Texas, RWE’s Champion Wind Farm will power Rivian’s DC fast charging Adventure network through a new 15 year purchase power agreement.

The 127 megawatt facility is undergoing repowering with 41 upgraded Siemens Gamesa turbines and six new 3. 1 megawatt units. Once completed by mid 2025, the wind farm will generate enough electricity to power nearly one billion miles of renewable driving annually. The project demonstrates innovative circular economy practices with decommissioned turbine blades being repurposed through regen fiber for use in construction materials.

These recycled fibers will be incorporated into concrete To enhance strength and durability, extending infrastructure lifespan. Belgium is advancing the world’s first artificial energy island with a 650 million euro green loan from the European Investment Bank. The Princess Elizabeth Island, to be constructed 45 kilometers offshore, will channel 3.

5 gigawatts of wind power, enough for over 3 million households. The project scheduled for completion between 2024 and 2027 will feature both high voltage DC and AC infrastructure. Foundation caissons are already under construction in the Netherlands. Additional funding includes 100 million euros through the European Recovery and Resilience Facility.

GE Vernova has launched an online store for wind turbine components in Latin America, featuring over 30, 000 items. The digital marketplace aims to reduce turbine downtime during maintenance and repairs across the region, where GE currently operates more than 3, 400 onshore wind turbines. The platform follows successful implementation in the United States and Europe, allowing wind farm owners to purchase spare parts and essential items in a single transaction.

And Fred Olsen of 1848’s Floating Wind Foundation, Brunel, has received DNV Basic Design certification. The semi submersible steel foundation features a modular design with two forward leaning towers, and a single point mooring system. The design is specifically engineered for the North Sea conditions and aims to utilize existing global fabrication capacity.

The Foundation’s weather veining function enables a passive ballast system that continuously optimizes its position relative to wind thrust force. The certification validates comprehensive design methodologies for primary steel design, secondary steel mooring, manufacturing, assembly. Integration, logistics, transportation, and installation protocols.

That’s this week’s top news stories. After the break, I’ll be joined by my co host, the chief commercial officer of WeatherGuard Lightning Tech, Joel Saxom.

Lightning is an act of God, but lightning damage is not. Actually, it’s very predictable and very preventable. Strike Tape is a lightning protection system upgrade for wind turbines made by WeatherGuard.

It dramatically improves the effectiveness of the factory LPS, so you can stop worrying about lightning damage. Visit weatherguardwind. com to learn more, read a case study, and schedule a call today.

Allen Hall: Well, Joel, we have been to a number of conferences, including SkySpecs annual forum. And there’s so much O& M activity at the moment, all over the world, it’s insane.

Yeah,

Joel Saxum: and you know, the problem is, is getting the right people in the right room to talk about it. Like you said, the Sky Specs Forum, to be honest with you, okay, it’s a private event, it’s like invite only, right? But that’s one of the best events I’ve been to, uh, from a knowledge sharing standpoint, in the wind industry ever.

And to me, the reason being is, is you have all the people that are dealing with the same problems that have their own solutions that have figured things out in lessons learned and best practices to make their wind farms more profitable to solve problems in the field. Uh, so everybody together in one room and kind of breakout sessions about specific things.

We, we were there, we did one about lightning, right? And we had a room in there, small room, not like we weren’t speaking to 2000 people, right? We’re speaking to 20 and everybody kind of broke, broke down and broke some barriers down because we’re all. Engineers in there talking about technical stuff. So I think that that’s, there’s a huge amount of value to that.

And that’s why we got to the point where we said, you know what, let’s do this wind O& M Australia thing, because a lack of technical conferences, uh, in that part of the world, uh, it just kind of means that there’s nobody really talking about the things that matter day to day in the wind world, right? How do you run these turbines?

What do you do to make them more profitable? How do you solve this problem? Um, and a lot of that knowledge exists. It just needs to be shared.

Allen Hall: Yeah. And there’s not a lot of infrastructure in Australia at the moment, even though there are a significant number of turbines, there’s no blade factories there.

There’s no nacelle factories there. Everything that they’re doing in Australia is imported. So the expertise doesn’t necessarily lie in country, unlike Europe and the United States where there’s. People that have worked in factories and what we find a lot of the people that are working on the O& M side in the United States have worked at an LM or a Siemens Gameso or a GE.

So they have that inside knowledge of how these turbines work and then they’re applying that knowledge to an operator and that is a unique case evidently for Australia. Probably Rosemary is one of the few people that actually has inside plant experience that she can apply over to the wind farms in Australia.

Which is pretty amazing. Really curious because it’s, it must be a struggle, right? Yeah, for sure. And I

Joel Saxum: mean, a lot of that struggle comes at, um, the term, you know, within economies of scale. So the Australian wind market sits around nine to 10, 000 megawatts installed right now with another three in development, which is sizable, right?

However, there’s operators like in the United States that have much more than that, just one operator, right? You’re talking about the next eras of the world, the EDFs of the world over here, so many, we’ve got 75, 000 turbines in the ground. So there’s just lessons that come with seeing lots of problems.

You got a lot of turbines in the ground, you’re going to deal with a lot of problems, so you’ve got to figure out how to manage them. And here, you know, Uptime, the Uptime podcast, our network is, is very broad reaching. Uh, so I mean, between you and I, Allen, how many times a week do we get just a call from someone or a comment from someone like, this is a problem I have, how do I fix it?

And we’re able to kind of, Hey, you know what, bearings talk to this person. Torque and tensioning. There’s a cool new technology over here. Do this. Uh, oh, LEP. What’s the latest LEP product? How do I install it? What’s the most efficient way? Oh, you talk to these people. So, since we know that stuff, or we have access to that network, why not share it?

That’s, I guess, the way we’re looking at it. And because we have compadres in our network, You know, uh, Rosemary, of course, at Parleau Consulting, uh, Matthew Stead down there, he’s in Adelaide, uh, at Eologics Ping, that have been friends for a long time, and they see this kind of gap in the market down in Australia of, of some of this knowledge, um, let’s, let’s deliver it to them.

Allen Hall: Right. And it does seem like there are a couple of universal problems, uh, that exist in Australia. Leading edge erosion being one of the bigger ones that I’m sure, the environment there is tough, right? It’s not, it’s not Denmark, that’s for sure. And, and then lightning was the other one and a couple of others.

I think, uh, uh, bearings is obviously a problem worldwide at the minute, knowledge about blades and what the internal structure is and how blades are being addressed as part of an FSA. Those, those problems are, are huge and some of the technology that exists over in Europe and in the United States, um, has done at least a fairly decent job of trying to solve some of those problems.

Australians are very, uh, intuitive and self sufficient, no doubt. But it’s always good to hear from others about how they’re trying to tackle some of these problems.

Joel Saxum: You know, you touched on one point there, the FSA, the OEM controlled wind farm. And that’s, uh, of course, a contract and a use case all over the world from Brazil to America, Sweden, Germany, you name it, that thing is everywhere.

Um, and it makes sense at some point, especially if you’re a financial investor, um, but what we’re seeing is, is as this industry evolves, the OEM relationship with the service contracts is taking a different feel onto it, where some of these operators are wanting to. Um, you know, at the Sky Specs event, we talked about shadow monitoring.

Shadow monitoring to me is great. Uh, that, you know, that the idea that yet while you may have an FSA, you might want to put your own CMS on there. You might want to do your own inspection so that you can understand what’s going on with the assets you own. But then that takes in, there’s, there’s intricacies of that, right?

Because every one of these full service agreements has certain contract language of what data the operator or the owner of the assets is entitled to. And what kind of access they have to the wind farm. And that rolls into much different, um, areas as well as, okay, when, when something goes wrong, what, what price am I on the hook for?

What does that market even look like? And those are the, some of the things that we want to share with the mark, the Australian market at this, uh, technical conference we’re putting on as well as how do you, how do you navigate those intricacies? Because. It’s not easy. And, um, you know, it, it, to be honest with you, it’s not easy for either side of that ball, because in Australia, whether you’re a Festus, a Suzlon, Goldwyn, GE, whoever you are, that’s that OEM down there.

They have a limited access to a supply chain as well, because at the end of the day, Australia is an island and they don’t create the products there on site. So there’s, there’s some things that we would love to share about lessons learned around those things from, um, other parts of the world that we think can help, um, get some of these wind farms into a more profitable status.

Allen Hall: Yeah. And if you’re interested in attending the Wind Energy O& M Australia event, it will be held on February 11th and 12th in Melbourne, Australia. Uh, you can go visit the website, windaustralia. com, and on that site, there’s a number of pages. One of them is about general registration, if you want to attend it, uh, there’s another piece if you want to speak there, and I, we’ve talked to a number of people from Australia that would be great speakers at this event and get those signups in.

And then if you would like to sponsor, uh, it would be a great opportunity for your company to highlight the work that you do in Australia or outside of Australia, even. And bring that knowledge to everybody in Australia. And so far, Joel, our conversations with, uh, Australian operators and ISPs has been remarkable.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. Everybody that we talked to about the conference and what we want to bring to the, to the country there, they’re like, Oh, this is going to be amazing because all the other conferences, mostly in Australia, are focused on permit, finance, regulatory policy, all of those great things that make wind energy move forward and the energy transition happen.

However, Uh, one of the comments we got was, yeah, those conferences are great. And then you see the couple of engineers standing in the corner talking to themselves, well, we’d like to give a platform and a forum for those engineers to be able to share with them amongst each other and get these, these, some of these problems that they’re dealing with solved.

But like you said, Allen, um, even from, uh, us, our European counterparts, our friends in the States, like, yes, this would be, This will be something we would love to get involved with. We’ve got quite a few experts that want to come speak. Um, stay tuned to, you know, our, our LinkedIn pages and, uh, windaustralia.

com website, because we’ll be announcing some of the sponsors and some of the attendees and, and, uh, kind of keep you up to date on what’s going on with that conference.

Allen Hall: Yeah, so just check out windaustralia. com. 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. Well, Indian wind turbine manufacturer Suzlan Energy has reported a really strong second quarter with a record breaking order book of 5.

1 gigawatts, Joel. That is really good. Net earnings increased 96 percent year over year to 23 million U. S. dollars and revenue reached about 250 million U. S. dollars up significantly from the 168 million dollars the previous year. And in fact, they delivered 256 megawatts of turbines up 94 percent from year prior.

And they have secured India’s largest wind energy order. of a little over one gigawatt from NTPC Green Energy Limited. Now, that is impressive. All these numbers are amazing, and I was watching some of the sort of television coverage in India, uh, about this. It’s remarkable the turnaround at Suzlon and the growing Indian wind market is amazing.

Thank you. Substantial. Suzlon has taken advantage of it.

Joel Saxum: I think that’s the big key there, right? Uh, Suzlon is, that’s homegrown, right? That’s like, uh, if you’re in Detroit and you’re driving a GM or a Ford, that’s what you’re doing. Uh, India’s wind market, that’s the, that’s the home player. Of course you have Adani, that’s kind of, they’re trying to start up and some other things.

But Suzlon, that’s the home team, right? And as India’s growth just keeps building and building and building, if you Pay attention to the news over there, or if you talk to, if you do any work, we have some friends that do a little bit of work over there as well. Besides, I mean, Weather Guard on the, on the Strike Tape side, they have a lot of lightning in India.

So we get a lot of contact from over there. Um, you constantly are hearing about growth, growth, growth, growth, growth. And it’s reflected here, right? Of course, in these numbers that they’re doing. But if you watch news about Suiclon. I mean, Allen, how many, how many new turbines have we seen that they’ve, or new models that they’ve debuted just in the last year, like type certificates for like three different turbines, I think?

Allen Hall: Right. Yeah. So the largest right now is like a three megawatt turbine, the S 144, I believe. And that turbine is big, right? And I think it really fits the Indian market. I’m not sure if they’re going to get to six megawatt kind of turbines. I know Adani’s talking about that, but. Suzlan seems to take a more, uh, reasonable approach on growth because as we see in the United States, going too fast is a problem.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, for sure. And one thing that you see over, uh, that Suzlan does in India, that’s interesting, um, that I’m, I’m not quite sure, and I don’t know around the engineering reasons behind this. Why we don’t see it in the States or anywhere else to be, for that matter, is they do these hybrid towers. And I think the, I mean, of course, one of the reasons is, is they’re trying to get up higher into the, uh, off the ground, uh, AGL wise to get into, uh, though, you know, some nice wind, uh, resource, of course, but you see the bottom being a lattice tower and then the top being, um, uh, you know, just a mono steel tower.

Uh, so that’s an interesting thing that you see in the Indian market that you don’t see in other places, but. I think that part of that’s driven by wind resource as well. However, it’s the same type of, like you said, three megawatt turbines, but you’re seeing, man, I think we saw one the other day. That was 140 meter tower height.

That’s interesting.

Allen Hall: Yeah. The tower height keeps getting higher because the winds at ground level in India don’t tend to be great and it’s a sort of a low wind area, however. The resource is still there a little bit higher up like it is in most places and, uh, the Indian marketplace demands higher towers.

I think that all makes sense. You know, it comes down to a cost structure and, and trying to get deployment in India, which I think is constrained much like the rest of the world for interconnects. But the amount of order book that Cezanne is taking right now is astonishing. When you look at other OEMs at the minute, Western, what I call Western OEMs, They’re not doing as well, necessarily, as what

Joel Saxum: Adani,

Allen Hall: Adani and Susslund are

Joel Saxum: doing.

So, so let’s think about this. Uh, we have watched news in Europe about the pushback against Chinese market coming in. We’ve seen the Chinese market come into Brazil. We’re sitting in the U. S., staring down GE and Vestas as really the only two big suppliers. Nordex is, is here, of course. Siemens Gamesa is here, but Siemens hasn’t sold a turbine in a while, and for whatever reason, people kind of push back on Nordex.

Could you see Suzlon taking some of this success and pushing it around the world?

Allen Hall: Oh, yeah. I think there’s an opportunity for Suzlon to start entering the U. S. market, the Australian market. It must be something they’re thinking about. Um, because it’s relatively close and it’s all imported into Australia.

So why not? Why not? Yeah. Right. Yeah. It would be an easy sale there. I think it just, it comes down to what can they manage efficiently. I think that’s one thing about Suzlon is that several years ago, one of the problems that they had historically was management control over all the assets that they have.

That seems to have changed. They look like they’re a lot more focused now than they were 10 years ago.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, if you are familiar in the U. S. market, you saw, you know, 12, 15 years ago, some Suzlon S 88s and S 64s being installed. They’re still, they’re still standing. Uh, the, they may not look super pretty, but they’ll operate.

Um, so one of the reasons that they pulled out of the market is a little bit back then. And people had, some people had a bad taste was just the support, right? So it’s like, what can you focus on? What can you get done? So having the OEM support in country was tough. However, Like you said, um, they focused and grown and maybe there’s a change on the horizon for Suzlon, um, moving outside of India’s borders.

Allen Hall: Well, the stock price has risen over a hundred percent year on year. So the markets are indicating that Suzlon has a huge growth potential because the Western OEMs do not show that sort of growth. In fact, they’ve shown the opposite of that. And even the operators, if you look at operators, Western operators are not showing that kind of growth.

So there is an opportunity here. And I guess this is where. Uh, when you start looking at, uh, Chinese OEMs and Western OEMs, who’s in the middle here? Well, there’s really kind of two, Brazil and India. Those are the places that can slide in and play on both, both sides of that fence. This is going to be fascinating over the next couple of months, because I do think with the amount of cash influx that’s coming into Suzon, that they have an opportunity to do something unique.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, I mean, cause we talked about, uh, Nordex quite a bit. Then you also have the Enercons of the world, right? But that’s our, that’s our Mercedes turbine that usually is just developed in Europe or Canada. Uh, but there’s other players out there. You’ve got Suzlan. Okay. You have Senvian, who’s making a push as of late in the news.

You see Adani who is looking at, uh, you know, they’ve developed some of their own turbines. Uh, down in Brazil, you have WEG or WEG as some people call them. Um, and that’s outside of these, uh, the Chinese manufacturers that every week, I feel like I see a new name for one over there. You have Dongfang and Mingyang and, um, you know, Chinese Electric Corporation, a lot of different things.

So, um, interesting that when you see the news and people are pushing back on the, uh, the Chinese side, trying to move into places, nobody says anything about pushing back on. The other players that could be coming. Um, so, you know, it’ll be interesting to see how the market develops.

Allen Hall: How does Suzlon’s O& M business look over the next couple of months?

Uh, just because GE and Siemens have pulled out essentially out of India. That must mean there is an opportunity on the operation and maintenance side for Suzlon too.

Joel Saxum: Like put together a team to bid on the multi, like to bid on the Siemens Gamesa service business when they pulled out and then kind of expand into more of that multi brand service.

I think they did. I don’t know who won that thing or if it even has gone through yet, but I know Siemens was selling their service department and I think Suzlon was bidding on it. That would be smart, right? Because. Um, then, then they expand their presence in there. They’re again, the local, the local home team, another win and a bit of expansion.

Um, but from an operations and maintenance standpoint, even just take the Indian market. They have a lot of other complications that are pretty extreme there that we don’t see in other places, right? Like one of the things, Allen, again, you and I reviewing blades and blade images for strike tape installations to protect against lightning damage.

We see a lot, like the dirtiest blades in the world, but the reason being is, is they actually burn some of their crops off over there. And it’s a dusty environment. So when we look at these blades, we see a lot of leading edge erosion and a lot of propensity for leading edge erosion building because of all the particulate in the air.

So the maintenance market over there just for leading edge is huge.

Allen Hall: Well, is there an offshore market? That is worth going after in India, or is it mostly going to be an onshore game? Because Cislan is, looks like it’s focused on onshore at the minute.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, they’ve, the government, and I don’t know the name of the agency, but they’ve put out some, like, preliminary tenders along the, I think, southwest coast?

Um, for offshore, I don’t know if it’s a huge play right now, to be honest with you, because there is so much good onshore, um, wind resource. Where we see a lot of the turbines, of course, is in the northwest corner. Um, that’s where there’s that crazy 30 gigawatt development that’s supposed to be going on.

in one spot and then along, uh, behind like the first hill, basically I call it, as you come on from the coast, there’s tons of just flat agricultural plain land where it’s filled with turbines. But there’s a lot of, India’s a big country, right? There’s a lot of, a lot of, a lot of ground. So, um, like you said, transmission, I think is an issue there for sure.

Um, if they can get that grid interconnected, I think growing onshore is probably a lot easier. However, the government there is not wanting to miss out on what could be an offshore push as well. I mean, that brings jobs. It brings, uh, economic influx, uh, among other things, um, and they have strong good winds there.

Allen Hall: I will say just our presence on the Uptime Wind Energy podcast, one of the most active areas we hear from is India, that there is a huge interest in wind energy and the expansion of wind energy. In India, and on top of that, a lot of, uh, people trying to enter the industry because it, it is growing, right?

It is, uh, if being a wind technician is a, probably a pretty good job like it is in most places. So you see a lot of, a lot of activity. Obviously, there’s more interest in India on what the technology is in wind than there is even in the United States, uh, of which there, there’s quite a good bit of interest.

So it is a fascinating market. And, and I know from the Strike Tape standpoint and WeatherGuard. We’re busy in India and there’s a lot of lightning damage. And as, as the wind turbine market expands, you’re going to be pushing more and more into lightning prone areas. Hey, good time to reach out and contact Joel here and get some strike tape on your turbines.

Because boy, oh boy, you don’t want downtime in India. That’s not going to be profitable.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. We can tell you from experience as well. Um, doing business with locals. is definitely the way to go down there. Um, so we have some connections. If you’re looking to get something done in India, give us a call and we’ll connect you up.

Uh, whether it’s lightning protection or leading edge protection, repairs and whatnot, inspections, we’ve got you covered.

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Book soon to secure your spot and experience a difference in blade access, speed, and efficiency. Visit bladeplatforms. com and get started today. There was landmark research done in the United States. Uh, in the last couple of years and they have found through a lot of investigation, America’s largest lithium deposit in the Arkansas smack over formation.

Now smack over is a very, kind of a funny word for, for a lithium formation, but, uh, the discovery, which was published in Science Advances, uh, really could totally reshape the United States position in the global battery supply chain and electric vehicle manufacturing. Uh, this deposit, which it’s, I think is huge.

It ranges somewhere between five and 19 million tons of lithium and represents upwards of a hundred percent of the total, total current US lithium. Resource, uh, that estimates. So they basically doubled the amount of lithium that they thought they had available in the States and which then dramatically lowers the cost of lithium.

Because if you bring it in from Australia or someplace like that, it gets expensive because of the transportation costs. So this is fascinating because Joel, one of the things that always bothers me in renewable energy is we have to have access to specific minerals. Yes. And so we get very fixated on where those minerals exist today and say, well, we must get it from generally China.

So let’s just work on the China movement of materials and try to negotiate or navigate agreements there. In the meantime, it does look like there’s a lot of research going on in the continental U. S. to find some of these minerals, lithium, probably being one of the most prevalent materials on Earth, actually, probably close to salt, it’s got to be close to it.

It is generally everywhere, but in enough density that it makes sense to go ahead and try to mine it. Everything about U. S. battery production and electric vehicle production, right?

Joel Saxum: Yeah, I agree. I think the, um, one of the things that, um, as Americans, we’re really lucky in natural resources. The way that this country, you know, over eons and eons of years, was developed and, you know, whatever happens on geotechnically.

We have A ton of oil and gas. We have a ton of good resources, uh, mineral wise. And now we see this all of a sudden, boom, I saw the map too, Allen. I was looking at the Smackover Foundation. I love the name of it. Um, but it is, it goes all the way from, um, East Texas down dang near into Florida. And when I see that region from an, from a technical and economic standpoint, some of that is some pretty tough area to get through.

I’ve worked in, um, Mississippi, Northern Mississippi. I’ve worked in. In Nifield in Northern Louisiana, in Eastern Texas, some of that’s, it’s some pretty unforgiving territory. However, it’s also a great opportunity economically for those communities. Because all of those places could use jobs, right? There’s an, and what this could bring now there’s, it’s going to be very controversial because if you look at anything that you see on the internet about lithium mining, it’s like, oh, these big pools and brining and all these crazy things, and you’re ruining the environment to make electrical cars and yada, yada, yada.

I think that because we’re seeing an influx, uh, or not an influx, because we’re seeing this discovery of lithium there, I think that this could drive advancements in lithium mining and, uh, lithium production and refining because the, the current methods are, they are a little bit archaic. Um, they’re just fairly, fairly basic.

And I think that we can do better there. Uh, but the fact that there’s enough lithium here, because I mean, I’ve talked to people that are, uh, one of my friends on Houston represents a group that is bringing a lithium battery manufacturing facility to Houston. Which is great for that economy and that market.

However, at this point in time, they’re bringing all their lithium in from overseas. Well, if now they could just ship it down from, you know, the smack over foundation to Houston. Well, that changes a lot of stuff. And what we’re seeing now with the energy mix on the grid, and it’s not just a United States things, it’s everywhere.

Um, we want to solve this duck curve problem where we have solar during the day, wind resource at night, wind cools off during the day, and you need to balance that load. Well, the answer to doing that is batteries. And if we can get some of these, um, this lithium that we’ve found here now locally that’s a resource for us into battery technology.

Well, then we can really start pushing on the energy transition, and it can be homegrown, and that’s huge. And I wonder if there’s other deposits like this. Don’t you? Yeah, for sure. I mean, have you ever, have you ever flew, what was the last time you flew? Okay, so, uh, one of our team members, engineers on the strike team, or on the weather guard team here, lives out in San Diego.

So when you fly out to see Adam, how many times have you looked out the window when you go over Nevada and Utah, and you see this massive expanse of area? That’s full of rare earth minerals. Like the mining that goes on in Nevada that people don’t know about is crazy. When you look out the window and you’re like, wow, it’s beautiful.

It almost looks like Mars in some places when you’re looking. And then all of a sudden you see like. A development, you know, like what is this development? Well, that’s mostly all rare earth minerals or some kind of mining that’s happening out there. I guarantee that the other big lithium deposit in the United States that we know about right now that we’re actively mining is in Northern Nevada, I think.

Allen Hall: Yes. Oh yeah. Yeah. That’s where Tesla is. Right. And when they’ve got a battery factory there, it’s amazing. And just North of there too, kind of push up towards what’s the Oregon border. There’s a lot of useful materials sitting right there. Which is not heavily populated. That’s a pretty empty space if you’ve ever been up that way.

So the amount of material you can get from those places that hasn’t really been developed is shocking at times. Like, we don’t know what we have in the ground in a lot of places. We know where the oil is, for the most part. But, minerals, not so much, because unless it was, well, unless it was coal. Yeah, we know where all the coal veins are across the U.

S.

Joel Saxum: Coal veins are co located with methane gas and oil and gas, natural gas. But, you know, like, I even, I remember listening to a, um, a podcast with Elon Musk on it a couple months ago, and he was talking about a massive lithium deposit beneath the Salton Sea in Southern California.

Allen Hall: Oh, really? Okay.

Joel Saxum: Well, that would make sense actually.

Yeah, absolutely. So, and, and, and that was where I think you mentioned it before. He mentioned the fact that, uh, when people are saying, oh, we’re running on a lithium or lithium prices are changing, well, actually lithium is one of the most common materials. It’s just in the ground. It’s just, where do you find it in concentrations that make, you know, economic sense to, to mine?

Uh, so having find, finding some of these areas that is making economic sense to mine or could make economic sense to mine. If we can, if we can turn that around as a, as a, you know, a burgeoning sector of the U S energy transition economy, uh, that could be huge for us. And you can put a lot of, there’s a lot of experienced miners that, uh, as coal plants shut down, need jobs.

So, um, some of these areas could, could boom.

Allen Hall: It is always amazing to me that. We panic without doing any of the work ahead of time, and maybe it’s just a new cycle we’re in at the moment, but when we need special minerals, we always say it’s always somewhere else, and we just haven’t really done our homework, and it is fascinating to watch.

You know, the one thing about all of this is that you start to worry about the energy future, what renewable energy is going to look like, how expensive is it going to be? That’s the real killer, is the cost. Thank you very much. If all of a sudden those materials are under your feet, life just got a lot easier.

Joel Saxum: So for our wind farm of the week, this week we are taking a trip up to the big mitten, uh, IE to the locals, the state of Michigan. So Isabella one n two, uh, we’re gonna loop, limp them. Loop. We’re, we’re gonna loop them together as one wind farm, uh, built by Apex. Uh, it was sold to DTE, which is a big energy company up in Michigan in 2021.

It’s 383 megawatts, uh, powered by 136 GE. 2. 8 megawatt, 127 meter rotor machines. Uh, they push energy into the commercial and industrial space, uh, as well as onto DTE’s, uh, renewable programs. But some of their customers include Ford, General Motors, and the University of Michigan, which you would expect being you’re up in Michigan, some car companies and some universities.

Uh, cool thing here is, um, there was a lot of grassroots effort. Uh, I really liked it. I was reading a bunch of articles about these wind farms when they were being built and how the, the community came together and they, they took, uh, proponents and opponents of the wind farms out to other wind farms to show them what they were like.

They did tours, um, when they were trying to build this thing. And what that resulted in was, um, over 600 Isabella County landowners signing leases, um, with them. So a lot of money thrown around. Uh, generate the Isabella wind facilities will generate approximately 30 million in tax revenue for the local communities.

And 100 million in landowner payments over the lifetime of the projects at 350 jobs and up to 20 local long term operations and maintenance jobs. And that’s a big one because those are, um, you know, central Michigan, those are some good paying, um, jobs that will keep that community running for a little while.

So the power from this thing powers about 86, 000 homes. Um, and from it, they have done a lot of good up there. They’ve taken some money that the counties have made and they, they built a new jail. Um, they’ve also, uh, got, um, some revenues and wins to pay off some school debt and some other things that they built.

So, uh, some wind farm development up in central Michigan doing good for the community. Uh, Isabella 1 and 2 from DTE.

Allen Hall: You’re the wind farm of the week. That’s going to do it for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy podcast. Thanks for listening. And please give us the five star rating on your podcast platform and subscribe in the show notes below to Uptime Tech News, our weekly substack newsletter.

And check out Rosie’s YouTube channel, Engineering with Rosie. And we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.

This week on News Flash, Allen, Joel and Phil discuss DOF Group’s acquisition of Maersk Supply Service, TotalEnergies’ growth in the renewables market, and Brookfield’s acquisition of minority stake in four offshore wind farms owned by Ørsted.

Welcome to Uptime News Flash. Industry news lightning fast. Your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, and Phil Totaro discuss the latest deals, mergers, and alliances that will shape the future of wind power. News Flash is brought to you by IntelStor. For market intelligence that generates revenue, visit www.intelstor.com.

Allen Hall: Joel, Norwegian offshore supply vessel company Dof Group has completed the acquisition of Denmark based Maersk Supply Service, which will be renamed Dof Denmark. The deal expands Dof’s fleet to 78 modern offshore and subsea vessels, including 65 owned vessels, with the addition of Maersk Supply Service’s 22 vessels.

The combined company now has a workforce of more than 5, 000 employees and will continue offering integrated offshore services for both oil and gas and the growing offshore wind market. So you’re seeing big players here, Joel, in offshore wind support. This is one of them.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. From my past in offshore oil and gas, DOF is, they’re in on every contract, right?

They’re a big company. They do things well and they do it right. Norwegians in the offshore world, you’re always, you always look at them like the cream of the crop. Whenever they show up on site, they’re expensive. And there’s some specialists sometimes. But they are, they’re always getting things done correctly.

That’s why people value them no matter where you are in the world. And DoF is a country, or a company, that values them. Full of all Norwegians. So, them grabbing Maersk, of course. The Norway Denmark connection of cousins or depending on which side you’re talking to. Little brother, big brother. It’s a, it’s an easy tie up.

Maersk, of course. A fantastic company with a lot of assets running all over the world. But also looking to you never know what they’re going to do with this capital. Diversify a little bit try some other things. So Dof grabbing Maersk makes absolute sense to me. And if it was one company that would be buying some big chunks of Maersk assets as in Maersk supply service, Dof would be the one.

Allen Hall: Total Energies has reported significant growth in its renewable energy operations for Q3 of 2024 with total power production reaching 29. 7 terawatt hours. Up 17 percent year over year. The company’s renewable power production increased by 45 percent to 19. 6 terawatt hours with net power generation capacity up 36 percent to 21.

6 gigawatts. Total energies reached a gross renewable capacity of 24. 2 gigawatts with solar dominating at 15. 6 gigawatts followed by onshore wind. At 5. 9 gigawatts. Phil, Total Energy is just becoming a huge player in renewables and the growth in the Q3 is amazing.

Philip Totaro: Yeah, and what’s really fascinating is that with all the other oil and gas companies pulling away and pulling back from Investments in renewables totals remained committed to it and has always been one of the bigger, oil and gas and utility companies in Europe besides maybe, stack craft event fall to, well, you could say Orsted maybe but, they, they’ve remained committed to a renewables portfolio and have, based on their presence in the utility business around the world even in, as far foreign places as, as some of the Asia Pacific islands they’ve, they’ve had and own and operate renewable assets for, for more than a decade, going on, 15, almost 20 years at this point.

So it’s, it’s good to see that they’re. Not only committed, but they’re actually seeing results because one of the reasons why a lot of these other oil and gas companies pulled out is because they were rationalizing that, hey, we can get better financial returns through oil and gas investments. Totaro’s making a go of it with renewables and actually turning a profit on renewables, so that’s great.

Joel Saxum: I think Total did a really smart move when they started the Total E Ren group a few years back. And it was like, we’re going to go into renewables, we’re going to do it with, or in a portion, we’re going to do it with this Total E Ren group. And what you saw develop was, of course, they watched it, they played with it, and they made sure they got it right.

And then Total Energies went back and just grabbed the whole thing, absorbed it as part of Total Energies back in, I think it was mid 2023 ish. So over, a year ago, year and a half ago. So, kind of a good strategy there that I’d like to see some more people play out with you’re able to manage risk that way, throw some capital over here, take a look at how it goes, see if it works, and then if it works well, as they did execute on Total E Ren, well, boom, grab it absorb it as part of the the parent company, and move forward, so now you see the, they’re yielding those fruits from that little farming experiment.

Allen Hall: Brookfield has signed an agreement to acquire 12. 5 percent minority stake in four UK offshore wind farms owned by Orsted, marking their first investment in UK offshore wind. The transaction, valued at 1. 7 1, Hornsea 2, Walney Extension and Burbo Bank Extension projects, with a combined capacity of 3. 5 gigawatts.

Orsted will retain a 37 percent ownership interest and continue to oversee maintenance and operation of the wind power plants. Now, Phil, Orsted has been making a number of transactions lately. It looks like this one is there to improve their performance. Their pocketbook a little bit.

Philip Totaro: Yeah, certainly, because they, given some of the pullback from markets like the U.

S. and some of the losses that they took and impairments they took from those projects, I think raising a bit of capital was necessary. Obviously, they got. An equity stake in the company from Econore a few weeks back. And with this investment by Brookfield, it’s, it’s interesting because these four assets, you would normally have attracted any kind of Typical kind of financial investor through an asset rotation, so it’s, it’s not uncommon to, to sell off a minority stake in, in these assets, but the timing of it is, is noteworthy, so as we just talked about, capital raise and, and cash in the pocket, that’s good, but the fact that it’s Brookfield who has made a concerted effort to entrenched themselves in the UK onshore wind market and a little bit in, in the solar world.

That’s sending a strong signal that they are prepared to start opening their pocketbook as well for stakes in other projects potentially in the UK or elsewhere throughout throughout Europe where they haven’t actually had a presence yet. So Brookfield’s not done, a ton of investments in, German or Dutch or, or Belgian or Danish offshore wind at this point.

So this could be, the beginning of that process.

Joel Saxum: When you think about Brookfield, the, over the last five to 10 years, they haven’t quietly become a player. They’ve very loudly become a large player. And I think it’s great to see that amount of capital being placed into the market and used for good, right?

They did the Deriva big acquisition the other year among others. And when you look at the, kind of the flag flying here, Horn C1, Bank, those are big time wind farms over in the North Atlantic on Oersted’s portfolio. So. Brookfield making some moves. Great to see that happening and the capital being reinvested.

And it’ll help Orsted, right? Orsted needs a little bit of that black ink on the, on the sheet. So, kudos to the deal and I’d like to see more of it.

In this episode, Peter Winther, Key Account Manager at R&D Test Systems, discusses the construction of the world’s most powerful main bearing test facility at the Lindø Offshore Renewable Center in Denmark. Winther provides fascinating insights into the engineering challenges and scale of this groundbreaking 25-megawatt facility, including details about its massive concrete foundation and the specialized testing capabilities designed to simulate decades of wear in just months.

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!

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Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering Tomorrow.

Allen Hall: Today we’re joined by Peter Winther, Key Account Manager at R& D Test Systems, a company that’s revolutionizing how we test wind turbine components. R& D Test Systems is currently building the world’s most powerful main bearing test facility at the Lindo Offshore Renewable Center in Denmark. They have already delivered the largest halt test bench for nacelle testing at the same location and now these facilities are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in wind turbine testing with capabilities up to 25 megawatts.

Peter brings extensive experience in large scale test system development and has been instrumental in multiple groundbreaking projects at LORC. Peter, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. All right, so you’re building a 25 megawatt main bearing test system. Facility. That’s big.

That’s very big. So just give it a sense of scale. How big is a 25 megawatt bearing?

Peter Winther: The bearing itself, I would guess the inside diameter is more than four meters in a typical bearing constellation. The test bench on the other high, on the other side is also relatively big to be able to break that bearing or bearings, depending on what you’re testing.

The test bench itself pretty big. First of all, features a pretty decent size concrete block or foundation at the bottom, which is roundabout 35 meters long. It took 30 hours to cast the whole thing. It was a one continuous process. We had 280 trucks coming in and they were coming in every six minutes.

And so we basically took all, I think, concrete production from Fyn, which is the island where Ålensø or the test bench is being realized. And then we had back off plants in case the plant went down because if you start casting, you can’t stop, you need to go ahead. You can’t have a cold joint.

Yeah. Yeah. So that’s the foundation itself. An essential thing when you make a foundation like this is also to make sure it cools in the right manner. You can’t just cast it and then go away and then come back in an hour or a week and then all is fine because then you risk not having.

The right material properties throughout the foundation. So we had a more than one megawatt cooling system, making sure that the cross-sectional temperatures throughout different cross sec cross-sections and the foundation was right and not too much of a difference, so we didn’t get cracks and creeping and unwanted properties at the end because you, you can’t really get rid of it.

Allen Hall: When you take this project on, how many engineering challenges are there? Obviously building the. Concrete Foundation by itself is a massive undertaking. How many, how do you break this down and how many big hurdles are there? We’re

Peter Winther: in the lucky position that it’s not, you can say, the first time we’re building a big test rig.

It’s the first time we’re building one that should break a 25 megawatt wind turbine main bearing arrangement. So that’s a first. We have some conceptual building blocks, which we of course relied upon, but it’s, the biggest we’ve ever made. So there’s always challenges. And it’s especially challenging when we need to break something very fast that is at the limit of what is possible to manufacture at this point in time.

There’s a reason why they’re challenged with making 15 or 25 megawatt turbines or whatever they’re saying they can manufacture now. It’s because the, you need also the technology to make bearings sufficiently big enough machining. that you can machine the whole thing. And we need To break something that is intended for 20, 25 years of operation, we need to try to break that in 6 to 12 months.

So it’s a bit of an engineering undertaking to figure out, okay, how do we make our test bench capable of doing that 24 7, also for 20 years.

Allen Hall: I’m curious because you’ve already built a 25 megawatt HALT, Highly Accelerated Lifecycle Testing. At the LORC. And that’s there. So what was the need for a separate facility for the main bearing?

What about main bearings makes the requirements a little bit different?

Peter Winther: You can say in some areas the the 25 megawatt halt, It’s used for validation testing, so that is actually for testing the entire drivetrain, meaning the DUT is an abbreviation we use, device under testing in this case it’s the nacelle.

And for the 25 megawatt HALT test bench, we have already commissioned and there’s an operation over there. It’s also Test the gearbox and the generator which mean we need to be able to apply a pretty significant amount of torque. Also, you wanna stress test the gearbox. Ergo you want to have a lot of torque for the main bearing for the main bearing test bench.

That is not the case. You only have to overcome the friction in the bearings because they don’t see the torque. The torque goes through the main shaft to the gearbox at the back end, in case of a geared solution, and if not, then it’s directly to the generator, but that’s where, why the bearings are there.

So it is actually, It’s overdoing it to test main bearings on the 25 megawatt Holt, because then you pay for a huge direct drive motor in this case, which you don’t need

Allen Hall: in the test. That makes total sense. Okay. And the issues that the industry is having with main bearings is pretty evident and onshore right now there’s a lot of issues in the United States at the moment.

But when we get offshore, that becomes even more critical as 25 megawatt turbines going to repair that gets increasingly difficult. So this is a really key piece of equipment. For offshore wind, isn’t this probably the linchpin to success out on the ocean? It’s at

Peter Winther: least very difficult to change if something goes wrong.

Let’s put it like, everything is difficult to change offshore, but the main bearing arrangement, everything is attached to that in some way, more or less. It’s the connection between the rotating part and the tower. To some extent, so you need to take off a lot of stuff if you are to change the main bearing arrangement or the main bearings.

So yeah, there’s a lot of challenges there and I guess what is evident and what they see is, it is extremely important to test the bearings under the right conditions. What they actually experience in one, in the real life, to get as close to that as possible, which is also what has been the focus.

Focus on this test benches is the main bearing units. We don’t test main bearing standalone, just a bearing, and then turn it around and try to bend it because it is very important, the housing around it, how the load is distributed in the bearings. What is it exposed to in the real life? You need to get as close to that as possible.

So that has also been one of the things. Focuses for this main bearing test bench is it’s main bearing unit. It’s main bearing systems We need to test.

Joel Saxum: Is it actually easier for the main bearing to support the load while it’s spinning? Or when it’s static, the actual hub.

Peter Winther: It is when it’s spinning. And I guess that’s because you, if you have the large load, when it’s static, you risk that the oil is not properly distributed in the bearings and so on.

So ideally, if you have the big loads, I’m pretty sure that the bearings would prefer to rotate. So in

Joel Saxum: this case, okay, now we’re talking testing them. How do you. Okay, so when we talk to this a little bit off air, you explain to us like the test rig and what the hydraulic rams look like to put pressure on it in different ways.

Do you do rotating testing and static testing with this thing for an accelerated lifetime test, or how does that work?

Peter Winther: At the end of the day, it’s of course up to the customer. They’re the experts in how to test their bearings. But on the other hand, we are also trying not to limit them and what they can test.

So it is also something we’ve been discussing with them, what their needs are in this area also. But. Ultimately, we also use bearings so we have the same challenges and the same limitations. All, some of our bearings, at least for the turbines that’s going on right now, our bearings are still somewhat bigger.

We cannot at least we also put in some constraints and say, okay, if you want to do static testing, then it might not be full load or it might not be full load for several days or whatever, as again, we need to make sure that The large equipment doesn’t break but again, we also need to enable the customer to, to take their tests or their designs to the limit.

Joel Saxum: But that’s, that’s an R& D specialty, right? That’s what you guys do. You link up with whoever needs the test benches, whoever needs the testing mechanisms, and you say Okay, let’s get yours, your specific design criteria and what you guys want to do. And we’re going to engineer this thing bespoke to you, but that throws in a bunch of other challenges for you guys as well, because now we’re talking about testing four meter diameter main bearings, but you have a rotating rig yourself.

So you have to have a bearing that’s bigger and stronger than that.

Peter Winther: Yes, that is always a challenge. And as you said Joel we start, it’s also above my head here, the winning concept. So it’s not like we come with a given product or a given solution that fits all testing needs.

We usually start together with a customer, with a blank piece of paper and then figure out, okay, you have a given test needs or an idea at least. And then we figure out it along the way and then we find the winning concept. When we start with. different concepts. Of course, we have a track record and we have proofs, different concepts that use different concepts.

And there are some of them we’ve used several times because they’re suitable for scaling up. And then We mature that along with the customer and make it sure it’s capable of fulfilling the customer’s requirements. But it is a challenge that we need to break the largest bearings that are being manufactured while still using

Allen Hall: bearings in our rake.

Where do you draw the line at Peter? They come in and say, I need a 25 megawatt bearing test center. And you say,

Peter Winther: it’s the, at the end of the day, it’s the customer wallet, the customer’s wallet that draws the line.

Allen Hall: Good reason.

Peter Winther: We could make it bigger if needed, but again it’s also how big are they going to get and how much do we need to future prove?

And so we usually don’t draw a line. We always try to find solutions. The same with the 25 megawatt Holtz test bench we talked about previously. At that point in time, we couldn’t get a solution. Get our hands on a direct drive motor of that size. So we had to design and engineer and manufacture it ourself because that was the need for the given test bench.

So we don’t say okay, you want to go above 25. Keep us out of it. It is usually also a financial decision. We also had bigger on the table but bigger is more expensive. So it’s always also refers back to yeah, the investment on the business case and

Allen Hall: how much of a 25 megawatt main bearing test rig.

is designed by R& D test systems that is unique to that test bench. 95,

Peter Winther: 99 percent of the control system is based on common industry you could say control, hardware, software stuff, the foundation, one of a kind the main shaft, we, one of a kind the bearings actually also. Order of one of a kind.

The housing is of course also one of a kind. The hydraulic cylinders, they’re made to spec. So it’s not something we’re taking from a serial production. It’s made to us and it’s made to what we need for this one. As some of the biggest hydraulic actuators in the bench, they can, each of them apply more than 1000 ton.

Wow.

Allen Hall: That requires a team of engineers. What does that staff look like? The project team

Peter Winther: peak was We are in manufacturing phase. We are having things manufactured and also soon delivered outside. So we are actually On the other side of the peak where all the engineering was carried out. But I guess 30, 40 engineers working on them.

That seems like not enough. It is actually.

Allen Hall: Yeah. So because you’ve done it before you have it honed. And so there, there are multiple phases to this. And as a project person, how does that work? Like the customer picks up the phone, calls you and says, I need a 25 megawatt main bearing test facility. And someone takes that phone call.

How does it, what happens from there?

Peter Winther: Usually they’re not that specific, but they send out a request at least. We have some testing needs. If we can start with let’s say we start with a feasibility study and figure out together with the customer what do we, what do they need? And What sort of concept is the winning concept and so on.

So if they call, depending on which number they call and so on, but they would probably start with me as I’m a sales representative, a key account manager, so I would be in that process as well. And then taking it all the way to telling the customer what the thing actually costs. You can say part of that journey is also there is always at the beginning, everything is need to have.

That’s it. But when you put a price tag on what the different requirements cost, some of them become nice to have. That’s also some of the journey we have with them together. For this one, for example there was one particular load case which had some pretty aggressive dynamics. And Dynamics, when we have hydraulics, we need a pretty big HPU, so that one load case implied the HPU had to be tripled compared to all the other load cases.

So all of a sudden, that given requirement became a nice to have because they could just bend three times as long, that was okay with them so lowering the frequency. And then. At some point, then we get to the point where, okay, they have the requirements, we have the solution and we’re satisfied, they’re satisfied with the solution.

In this case, it was a joint three party venture. Because we are the test bench realizer. Our customer is Log, which is a commercial test center. And their customer on the other side, that’s Sheffler. From Germany. So it was you can say a bit odd because it was, the requirements were actually coming from Schaeffler through Locke, but to us, but we were all working together on it to find, okay, now this design fulfills the requirements and this is then the cost of it, how we go ahead and we were, and then.

Internally in R& D, we hand it over to operations. That’s what we call it which realizes it. So they take it from purchase order and then all the way to hand over to the customer.

Allen Hall: So there’s two questions there. How long did it take to iron out the specifications with everybody at the table? How many months was that?

And then once you decide to build it. How long does it take to actually, to complete a project?

Peter Winther: So from, you can say we start to, it’s going to be completed. Building is around about 24 months. The process leading up to that. So the sales process was, also, I would say delayed. It was quite long and it was influenced by some probably some geopolitical situation going on in some part of Europe where, yeah, something happened at some point which changed priorities at the customer.

So it took Actually years I would say. Because one thing is settling on the requirements. Another thing is also it’s a big investment. So committing to that, that, that takes some time. Is it quicker to build than it is to specify then? Not at all. I don’t, when, once we got, there was a big pause.

So that’s, that shouldn’t be part of that. So once we got into the specification phase, it was a, it was a pretty intense months. But really good cooperation between the three of us.

Allen Hall: And RD is going to open the facility. in 2025. 2025. Yes. So how soon before it then becomes commissioned and ready to take that first main bearing, is it ready to go day one there?

Peter Winther: That’s the intention. Yes. The expectation. So right now, process wise we’ve left site, we’ve made the foundation and now we’ve stepped back a little bit. And now the building is being erected around it. It’s easier to make the big concrete block first and then build the building around it.

So they’re making the floor as we speak, they might finish that already. And then they’ll build the walls around it and then come start next year. It’s the intention. We’ll come back in and start installing auxiliaries and the test load unit and.

Joel Saxum: You know you’re making a big piece of kit when the building has to be built around it.

Allen Hall: So obviously R& D Test Systems is the leader in big test equipment and building these test benches. There’s, you do impressive work. How much is on your plate at the minute? You have this 25 megawatt facility going in. Are there other things already in the pipeline to, that you haven’t even announced yet?

That, that. You’re working on. How busy are you right

Peter Winther: now? We’re busy realizing the projects we have. And, unfortunately, I’m not allowed to tell too much about the pipeline, but we definitely have some interesting stuff going on. That’s for sure.

Allen Hall: That’s the beauty of R& D test systems. If you need somebody to build a piece of test equipment for big machines, you And do it right.

I would imagine there’s only one place to go and that’s R& D test systems. And you’re going to have to get ahold of Peter because Peter is their salesperson.

Peter Winther: Give me a call. I’m not the only one, but I can promise our sales organization, our sales team will take good care of you. If you have that particular need, we’ll love to help you solve it.

How do they reach you? How do they contact you? We have our webpage on rdas. dk where there’s a contact information where they can reach us.

Allen Hall: Yeah. And Peter’s available on LinkedIn. So if you get desperate and you need to have a 25 megawatt main bearing test facility built in your backyard or 30,

you just reach out to Peter, he’s ready to take your phone call. And I, every time R& D test systems comes on the podcast, I’m always impressed because You’re doing such amazing things and it’s such a benefit to the industry and congratulations on that. Come on. I know how hard that is to do and I know how successful these test benches have been.

That’s truly amazing. So Peter, thank you for being on the podcast. It’s been wonderful to have you.

Peter Winther: We’re just a small piece of the puzzle and we’re just helping, trying to help this green transition and yeah, having wind succeed because it’s awesome.

This week on Power-Up, we discuss Siemens Gamesa’s method for stabilizing wind turbine blades by installing closeout plates. Then Vestas and ZF’s idea to replace the metal torque tube in the gearbox with a plastic piece, protecting from current. And finally, an Enercon patent for painting blades in an ombre pattern to lessen visual disturbances.

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!

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Allen Hall: Welcome to Power Up, the uptime podcast focused on the new, hot off the press technology that can change the world. Follow along with me, Allen Hall, and IntelStor’s Phil Totaro, as we discuss the weird, the wild, and the game changing ideas that will charge your energy future.

All right guys, our first idea is what’s turbine blades, and it’s an idea from Siemens Gamesa, and it In patent form, as they describe it here, it’s what they call a novel approach to stabilizing wind turbine blades without the need for traditional trailing edge beam designs. But what they’re really doing is they’re installing closeout plates on the, between the aft spar and the trailing edge.

So, This idea is pretty much making a wind turbine blade look a lot like an airplane wing, Phil.

Philip Totaro: Yeah, especially like an older style airplane wing. So those that aren’t familiar with the closeout plate, it’s like a rib design that has this, vertical element at different longitudinal locations throughout the Kind of the, the max cord section and in inner portion with the exception of like the, the immediate root section of the blade.

But it’s, it’s interesting to me, besides just the, the general concept here, the timing of this was fascinating to me because they filed for this patent back in April of 2024. And the patent has now published in October and the question Is, is this a potential fix to a problem?

Is this what’s this really doing?

Allen Hall: Well, it’s stopping torsion is what it’s doing, Phil. It’s preventing the blade from twisting too much, which makes me think of a couple of blades that I’m familiar with that have torsion problems. Joel?

Joel Saxum: Well, if you look at the image here, so I’ve crawled around in quite a few blades doing RCA’s and failures, and you’re always looking for failure modes, so you start getting into a different mindset of when you’re crawling around in them.

But In multiple blades that I’ve been in, there’s an, what looks like an extra shear web in the, in some of like the max cord region and stuff like that, just to make sure that you keep that part of the shell supported and then that structure rigid there. And in this design, they’re removing that extra shear web and putting these closeout plates in there.

And it is exactly like you guys say, the design looks like an airplane wing with a bunch of ribs in it. And to me, in my mind I’m, I’m not a, trained structural engineer, but from engineering principles and just kind of physics and forces and a little bit of knowledge there, this to me looks like it could solve some, some pretty big issues.

However, in maintenance, that makes things a little bit more difficult because maintenance and construction, because it’s harder to place these things in construction, of course, and to get them right. We already sometimes have a hard enough time placing shear webs and getting those right. Now you’re adding perpendicular components and multiple of them.

So that makes that a little bit more difficult. And then, you’re checking more glue, glue lines and bond lines and these kinds of things. But then, of course, what we’ve seen in the last two to four years and wind and the explosion of internal inspections. The only way you’re going to do an internal inspection on one of these blades is, from a structured standpoint, is with like an Elios drone or something like that, if they can fit through the holes in the closeout panels.

But you’re not going to do it with a crawler anymore. So there’s some like manufacturing things, some trade offs with O& M. However, to me, it looks like if you could get this right, you might end up with some more structurally rigid blades. That could, could alleviate some of these cracking and, and blade failure issues we have.

Allen Hall: Our next idea is from Zedaph Windpower and Vestas Wind. And it has to do with gearboxes and preventing electrical Currents, stray electrical currents from damaging the gearboxes, the drivetrain, and causing havoc and warranty claims and all kinds of other things. As you, as you pass through a gearbox, there’s usually a tube that sits in the middle of this where you can put hydraulics or electrical signals or whatever you want through them.

However, when you put a piece of metal in this, in this drivetrain, it provides a pathway for stray currents to flow and thereby causing Damage to the gears and the bearings. And this idea from ZF Investus, takes that tube and makes it out of plastic. Seems like a really simple change, Phil.

Philip Totaro: It is, but what’s interesting about it is a couple of things.

First, not only that, that kind of physical interpretation of this idea to just have a, a portion of what would otherwise be a, a metallic but non structural component just changed over to plastic, it might seem like a really simple, stupid idea. But I gotta be honest, like, a lot of times, those are the things that A, are gonna help you with maintenance or otherwise solve a problem that’s being caused by the fact that you were using the metal in the first place.

The other aspect of this is the fact that, because this is a joint, patent application between ZF and Vestas. This is potentially technology that’s already being used on the large onshore machines. We’re talking about the V162, V172 kind of product families or the large offshore machines like the V236 and, and above.

So, the fact that we know that there’s a commercial tie in between ZF and Vestas on those those gearboxes means that we hope to be able to see this kind of technology used in real life applications soon.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, Allen and I being part of the lightning world, and of course, Allen being an electrical engineer, we hear about a lot of problems within turbines with stray voltage, whether it’s static buildup or stray voltage coming from the turbine itself, and disregard the idea of even lightning moving around.

They can wreak havoc on electronics. They can throw alarms that you don’t want to see. They can ruin coatings. They can do all kinds of things. So Vestas and ZF looking at, Fixing this problem. Maybe it’s something that they’ve learned and lesson learned from or something that they’re foreseeing good on them.

And it’s good to see innovations like this making their way into the market.

Allen Hall: All right. Our next patent idea is on a rotor blade and, and painting the rotor blade, different colors to reduce the visual impact. Now this is really fascinating. So the concept goes like this. You, you take, you paint a part near the hub, a lighter color.

color. And then as you move out towards the tip, you paint that a darker color, like the color of the sky. So it’s blue or maybe even the color of the ground, green or brown to, to match the landscape. So when the rotor is spinning, this color gradation creates an optical illusion that makes the overall rotor diameter appear about 10 to 20 percent smaller than its actual size.

Now, the only thing I can compare this to, Phil, is when you walk into a home and they have Two differently painted colored walls and the shape of the room changes. It’s an optical illusion of sorts. It sounds like that’s what they’re headed for in this painting scheme for wind turbine blades.

Philip Totaro: It is. And this, so for those that aren’t familiar, this is a patent from Enercon.

This was originally filed in Germany in October 20th, 1999. So we’re certainly talking about what is now an expired patent. So if other companies wanted to be able to use this technology, they could. What’s interesting about this and the other Enercon patent about, they, they literally patented painting the wind turbine tower different shades of green, and you may have seen this if you’ve seen, some of the wind farms in Germany or Austria or elsewhere in, in Europe where they’ve actually implemented this technology it was part of being a social acceptance of wind turbines.

And that’s, that’s originally what the, the concept was behind it. Why they patented it is something I still kind of question to this day. And the reason we’re talking about something that’s an expired patent in the first place is, we, we have the luxury to be able to, look back and say over the last, 20 plus years has this really been a competitive differentiator for a company like Enercon selling their wind turbines?

I’d have to say no. So the, the question of whether or not you want to spend, and, and companies will do this, they’ll spend upwards of 400, 000 on a single patent over the lifetime of the patent for all the countries that you could potentially go file your patent in. We’re talking about, major international markets where you’re going to sell wind turbines.

That’s the U S throughout the EU jurisdictions like Brazil, Japan, China, Australia, et cetera. Canada, that, other major markets where you’re, you’re gonna sell your wind turbines, you’re gonna spend 400 grand over the lifetime of the patent to get a patent. So, was this 400 grand well spent?

I’d probably have to say maybe not because while it may have helped in a handful of cases with social acceptance, I, it hasn’t really served as a significant competitive differentiator for for this company.

Joel Saxum: I would say if they got this, if it took cost of 400 grand and they got to install one more turbine from it, it was worth it.

However, I have never seen one that’s painted like this and I don’t believe anybody I know has ever seen one painted like this. So I don’t think it’s like exactly like you say, Phil, it caught on or it made any value. The interesting thing in this patent, I’m looking at a section of it and I’m going to read it right from the patent so you can all listen.

That it says it goes sentence, sentence, sentence. That is to be achieved in particular in respect of installations with large rotor diameters. And in parentheses, large rotor diameters in 2000 or 99 when this thing was filed was larger than 40

Philip Totaro: meters. Well, considering the fact that we now have the, the Chinese have literally just last week at their China wind power event just proposed a 25 megawatt offshore wind turbine with a 304 meter rotor.

So, I think we’re, we’re beyond the need for painting the tips.