Allen, Joel, and Phil discuss the growing popularity of return-to-office mandates. New York state has signed a climate change superfund act, making companies pay for pollution retroactively. And Dominion Energy's Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project should be successfully finished in 2026.

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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: Newark launches a landmark challenge to Big Energy. Dominion Energy proves offshore wind can work in America and the great return to office debate hits the wind industry. All this, plus much more. You're listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. You're listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by buildturbines.com.

Learn, train, and be a part of the clean energy revolution. Visit BuildTurbines. com today. Now here's your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes.

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Allen Hall: All right. 2025 is going to be an exciting year for the return to office. Now, a lot of companies are mandating the return to office, but the attendance hasn't been so great. The. Office attendance reached about 62 percent at pre pandemic levels, according to Betty. And it's planned to increase to almost 70%.

So there's 30 percent of society that hasn't really returned to office. Now, as we have seen on X and on With Amazon and a number of other tech companies, they are really pushing for it to get back in the office, and they've seen about an 11 percent rise in office attendance, and it is becoming mandated.

So Amazon is requiring three days and plans to reach five days during 2025. Apple requires Tuesdays and Thursdays, plus one team day in the office. And Disney's mandated four days. Minimum on site, but in the wind industry, we're haven't really seen that yet. There's a lot of offices, Joel, you and I have been to it over the last six months or so.

Which are still pretty empty.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's the nature of the work too, right? Wind is distributed, right? It's all over the place. So when you're saying, Hey, I'd love to go talk to, this team of engineers. In general, that team of engineers is spread all over the country anyways.

You may have one in Chicago and one in Houston and one in. wherever South Carolina or whatnot. So you don't it's an odd thing, but I think in the grand scheme of things, the wind industry does remote work pretty well. Just because we've always had to do it, right? You're always if you're a back office engineer, or if you're an asset manager, if you're in procurement, you've always been dealing with remote sites since wind has been a thing, so it's not something that's crazy new for us to do well.

The other side of it is, I think that this is a personal thing from business wise. I'm not 100 percent opposed to the back in office thing. I don't like the idea of mandate four or five days a week, but I think there is value that you get out of sitting face to face with team members that you just can't get over teams.

And I think that extends to a lot of things in business. Right now I talk with salespeople all the time, sales and revenue generation and client facing and it's almost like in some respects. People have forgot how to do that part of business in person. If that, does that, does that make sense?

Phil, have you seen that in your BD activities?

Phil Totaro: Yeah. The reality of it is that people would still rather shake hands than, as a way to, to close a business deal than, do it remotely. It's pretty rare to do a big deal having never met face to face including from my own company but even from my experience.

Before the pandemic, we had an office in Houston, and it was, it wasn't necessarily mandatory to come into the office all the time, but it was a good idea to get people to, to come together. Since the pandemic, I've allowed everyone to work remotely, because frankly, I work remotely too, for the last 14 or 15 years since I started the company, because prior to the pandemic, I was traveling all the time as well.

Business development reasons. And my own philosophy on it is look, you're even though all my employees are contract employees, the reality of it is they're also, on salary, they are not chained to a desk nine to five. The idea is you get your job done and you get your compensation for doing the, helping us achieve the goals and objectives as the company.

And the reality of that is that if you can work from the beach, I don't care, but if you don't get your job done, you're out. And that's, that sounds harsh, but that's just the reality of how we've done things. It's a new version of leadership.

Allen Hall: It is a new version of leadership.

And the thing about the wind industry is there's so much of the technician side, which has to be on site and has to be there every day and has to put in that 40 plus hours a week. And then when you get to the sort of the front office people, they seem to have dispersed a little bit. I don't know how that culture works internally.

I'm actually a little concerned for some of the companies because the technician side has to be a little bit upset with this. It's Hey, when I need. That engineer, I really need that person to be here. If they're not in the office, that can be a little bit difficult. I would see those conflicts really arising this year in particular.

Phil Totaro: It's possible because, but what's also interesting about it is that there's a lot of companies and you mentioned active training team in the intro, Alan, that a lot of companies are trying to leverage. More technology to enable onsite technicians to do their job more efficiently, including you could have somebody leveraging, remote inspection technology that then goes back to an office for an engineer to review it, then that, the end result of that analysis goes back out in the field to tell the technician what to do.

And so there's a whole chain that, that has to be doing their job. But again my point, is, and I take what Joel's saying here, but my point is that it doesn't really matter where they are when they perform their job function as long as they're doing it to make sure that they're not the weak link in that chain for, making sure assets perform to a, to an operationally sound level.

Allen Hall: Joel, do you think you'll see people leave? Companies this year because they're forced back in the office.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, I think the really important thing to consider here is exactly what you're saying Alan is this is a this will be Whether it's to what's supposed to be temporary or will be permanent or whatever.

This is a cultural change within a company this is a change management thing that needs to be handled very well. And if it's not handled properly some companies are using it as a tool to flush people. They're like we've got 2000 people. We're going to mandate it back to office.

And you got part of them just saying we're not coming. Okay, cool. Then you're released. All right. Now we're down to, 1800 employees that we have to pay. So it's a tactic that's being used to force people out. But I just think that if you're. So take this note, if you're a person that's in charge of this mandate or in charge of making sure this mandate goes well, whether you're in HR or whatever, make sure you have a good plan and it's been spot thro

The USDA has announced $4.37 B in funding for the Empowering Rural America program, Brookfield Asset Management has acquired a 53% stake in Neoen, and European Energy and Nova Holdings will upgrade 17 aging German wind farms.

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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: Right, first up, the U. S. Department of Agriculture has announced a 4. 37 billion dollars in funding through their Empowering Rural America program. This historic investment, the largest in rural electrification since 1936, will support clean energy development across seven states. Now the program aims 5, 000 jobs, reduce electricity costs, and cut climate pollution by about 1.

1 million tons annually. 4. 37 billion as the Biden administration exits the executive branch is a lot of money. Does this have a chance of, of existing once the new administration comes in?

Phil Totaro: Yeah, I actually think so because this, this program is done through the Department of Agriculture interestingly enough, not the Department of Energy, and the reason that they're doing it is because the co ops are actually, outside of kind of the, the organized utilities coordinating like corporate power buying. The co ops are actually one of the biggest You know, in aggregate power buyers in, in the United States, especially when you start talking about all the co ops, we're getting kind of gobbled up by Touchstone and, you know, most co ops in the United States are now organized under, you know, a parent kind of umbrella corporation.

So this is a lot of money that's going into, you know, basically subsidizing renewable energy power buying or the development of distributed power generation facilities. That are gonna be adjacent to these these rural communities that are able to take advantage of this this bunny. So, this is one where I really do hope that they don't try and cut it because this is actually, like, Putting money in the pockets of people that are doing clean energy power buying, and it's actually helping get wind and solar and storage deployed on the grid.

So I, this is actually a great program. Great for the department of agriculture to be doing it. Not sure why the department of energy wasn't previously on board with something like this.

Joel Saxum: Coming from someone who has co op power now and grew up with co op power up in Northern Wisconsin in a rural area, injection of capital into rural environments anywhere makes me smile.

So, because they usually don't see as much, right? So when a big project comes through or something gets announced like this, everybody gets a little bit happy in those areas. And so, weird to see it. Not weird, I suppose, in a lame duck situation from the federal government, but yeah, I hope this one continues to, to roll forward in these projects to get some ink behind them before January 20th.

Allen Hall: In our next story, Brookfield Asset Management has completed its acquisition of 53 percent stake in French renewable power producer Neoen SA. The deal valuing Neoen at 6. 1 billion euros will be followed by a tender offer for the remaining shares at about 39 euros each. And as part of the regulatory requirement, and there's always regulatory requirements, Neoen has divested of its Australian portfolio, including a 652 megawatts of operational assets and 2.

8 gigawatts of project pipeline Phil obviously Brookfield. Asset management is a big player in energy in general and renewable energy. Neoen move in kind of getting out of this market, being acquired. What is the outcome of this? Where is this all going?

Phil Totaro: Well, it's interesting because besides the, the divestment of their, you know, assets in Victoria, Australia, they also own obviously a substantial portfolio in France being a French company.

And Substantial Portfolio in Brazil. Ultimately, even with the divestment of their Australian portfolio, it gives Brookfield access to more markets where they didn't necessarily have a presence before. Like France and Brazil where Brookfield was kind of, you know, You know, poking around and dipping their toe in the water a little bit, but they never actually had a substantial portfolio down there.

And France is a market within Europe where Brookfield also wasn't particularly strong. It's similar to Germany. It's kind of a highly fragmented market in terms of a ton of small projects. And so, you know, the, the fact that somebody like Brookfield can come in take a chunk of portfolio and then get access to the market, learn how it's all going, and hopefully anticipate what is expected to be a repowering market in France in a few years here.

You know, if Brookfield wants to have that kind of presence in Western Europe, this is a, this is a great move for them to to kind of kickstart that.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, Brookfield, we've seen them make some big investments in some companies you know, the Deriva one here in the States, which was Duke Energy they've done some other ones around the world, but the Neoen buy in, Neoen size, just so you understand, 500 plus million dollars or million euros in revenue last year.

8. 7 gigawatts in operation or under construction of renewable energies. They're in 15 countries and they've got big targets of over 10 gigawatts for 10, for, to be in the pipeline or operating in 2025. So Brookfield buying into a big player here looking to maximize their footprint around the world.

Allen Hall: And finally, European Energy and Nova Holdings have joined forces to upgrade 17 aging German wind farms. The project will replace outdated turbines installed between 2002 and 2008 with modern, efficient equipment, tripling the current 151. 9 megawatt capacity. Once operational between 2027 and 2030, the modernized facility will generate 1, 100 gigawatt hours annually, powering 290, 000 European households.

Now, Phil. This is totally different in Germany, the repowering situation versus the United States, where in the United States of a repower, they're putting out the same amount of power onto the grid. In Germany, they're tripling it. How are they doing that?

Phil Totaro: It's basically taking down turbines that are, you know, kilowatt size or maybe, you know, up to one, one and a half megawatts and just repowering it with something that's, you know.

Six, seven, maybe close to eight megawatts. They're, they're building a rather substantial amount of new transmission in Germany to be able to do this. Keep in mind that the majority of electricity consumption, particularly industrial and corporate power offtake, is down in the southern part of Germany, which is more the industrial region and that zone.

So this partnership between European Energy and Nova Holdings is great for Germany, and it builds on what they've already done and demonstrated in Denmark and Sweden

Joel Saxum: European Energy got an investment last year, and they've been working, if you look through any of the internal news on their investment pages and portfolios, they've been raising cash, they've been making some, some funding moves.

Over the last few years and they have come from a smaller, relatively relatively small player to a much larger player, making a large impact all across the European renewable energy space. So kudos to European energy for getting in on this one as well.

From mysterious white etching cracks to cutting-edge material innovations, Malloy Wind's expert Cory Mittleider reveals the complex world of gearbox bearing failures that plague wind turbines. Learn why traditional monitoring may not be enough and what operators need to know about the latest solutions to keep their gearboxes running reliably. Read the EPRI article Cory references: https://restservice.epri.com/publicdownload/000000003002021422/0/Product

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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: Welcome back to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight, where we tackle the technical challenges and innovations in wind energy. I'm your host, Allen Hall, joined by my co host, Joel Saxum.

We're excited to welcome back one of our most popular guests, Cory Mittleider from Malloy Wind. In his previous appearance, Cory shared his expertise on main bearing failures. And many of you reached out asking for a deep dive into gearbox bearings. Today, Cory returns to do exactly that. As Malloy's business unit manager, he and his team have diagnosed and solved countless gearbox bearing issues across different turbine platforms.

Having spent over 15 years in power transmission, Cory has become a specialist in understanding why these critical components fail and, more importantly, how to prevent those failures through better bearing selection and maintenance practices. Cory, welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight.

Thanks for having me again. All right, so we've got a lot of requests to hear about gearbox, bearing, and what the issues are with those bearings. Gearboxes is something I know a little bit about. But you're the expert. I hear a lot of complaining from the field. What is happening to gearbox bearings at the minute?

Cory Mittleider: Sure. Gearbox bearings has been an interesting one for me. So when I started in wind in 2011, it was generator bearings and gearbox bearings is where I started learning about this stuff. A lot of the generator stuff was electrical fluting damage. That's pretty well figured out how to avoid that.

The gearbox one was a little more complex than that. And I don't know if you've heard of. NREL's Drivetrain Reliability Conference that's happened for the last 12 plus years now. That's a recurring topic for the last every single year, right? Is gearbox bearing failures. A lot of the conversation that started back in the day and is still going on is around what they call white etching cracking or white etching failures.

And back, in say, 11 and 12, A lot of the conversation was around was around that. It was around, the oils in the gearboxes. It was around coatings and bearing types and how they could affect the bearing itself to improve the life. And, specifically when it comes to gearbox bearings That was really hard back in the, the service providers and the operators themselves weren't used to having to replace gearbox bearings.

They maybe weren't even planning on having to replace gearbox bearings, right? But they started to see these problems. They started to get their head around the scope and how to identify them early and started to dig into it. There's been a lot of investigations from bearing manufacturers, from third parties, from operators.

into those failures for over a decade now.

Allen Hall: I remember looking into some of the early gearbox issues and you're talking about some of the failures I am actually familiar with. Those had a lot to do with just sort of basic fundamentals of like lubrication and loading, which were not obvious at the time.

Have we overcome some of those sort of basic bearing issues, or do they still exist out in the field?

Cory Mittleider: I started going to this drivetrain reliability conference in 2015. So I was a couple years later than the initials. But some of the earliest things I remember was slip occurring, right?

From typically I think the scenario that was presented on was high speed low load scenario. Yep. Such as bringing a turbine online, and I remember a chart very vividly from NREL's outfitting of the high speed bearings on their test 1 5, right? The rollers should be rolling at 400 RPM, but their only roll, or the cajun roller assembly should have been going 400 RPM.

But it was only going 100 RPM meaning there was a ton of slip, a differential speed between the rollers and the inner ring raceway surface. There was some, oils that got fingers pointed at them for essentially being readily available to, to release hydrogen ions. And as we look back at wet etching cracking and the information that's been collected over the years and investigated I think most people agree that hydrogen embrittlement is a big factor in that, um, there's certainly components of material cleanliness that are involved in that conversation as well.

It's a lot of investigation there. And to answer your question, is it still happening? I've got this report from an organization called EPRI. I found it on their website. It's called Wind Turbine Gearbox Reliability Assessment. And they have listed what is it, seven points that lead to most of the gearbox related issues.

related failures and I'll just read them off. It's high contract stresses leading to pitting and spalling, bearing race slippage, macro pitting due to skidding and bearing slippage, wear due to inadequate lubrication, race cracking due to white etching formation, low quality materials and material defects or inclusions.

and improper bearing design leading to non uniform stresses or loads. And this was published December of 2021, right? So this is a couple years old, but it's pretty, pretty recent from an accumulation of data, having time to digest and put out a report. This is pretty recent. And when I look at some other things in here that are really interesting 42 percent of gearbox related downtime is from high speed and intermediate bearings.

The other 58 percent is gearing related or maybe some of the other stages, but 42 percent are from high speed and intermediate bearings from those failure modes that I described. So the takeaway in my mind, as much as that's something to be aware of and watch out for if it's high speed and intermediate bearings, those often are replaced up tower.

So you can do that scopal work up tower. Another thing that's also in the report they're talking about that uptower scope of work costs somewhere between 15, 000 and 70, 000, right? So you can guess the sooner you catch that, you're monitoring your CMS, you're looking for inner ring defects or cracked inner ring or whatever, maybe sometimes outer rings falling as well.

If you can catch that sooner, get that replaced sooner, there's less debris generated, there's less additional ancillary components that need to be replaced or serviced. And that keeps it closer to that 15, 000 Scope of work,

Joel Saxum: of course, right? Let me ask you a question about that then. So to find that early enough, we're usually always talking CMS, right?

And we know there's a CMS usually from the factory. If it's a Vesta, whatever they, if they're doing an FSA, they're monitoring that from afar. But there is aftermarket CMS for drivetrain monitoring that, like Onyx Insight comes to mind and there's a couple of other brands out there, of course, would you recommend?

Cause this is a conversation we just had not too long ago with a bunch of people about blades and other reliability things. Would you recommend someone to shadow monitor a like a drivetrain CMS, even though they're maybe they're. Full service, agreement already has one. Do you think that's smart?

Do you think that's a good spend on money?

Cory Mittleider: Unfortunately what I've heard is it seems like no matter the application, gearbox, blade bearings, anything I've heard quite a few operators say that when they got to the end of warranty period or end of service agreement periods, they didn't know what happened.

They didn't know if X component had been replaced at all, or if it had been replaced five times. I guess I would certainly encourage operators to do everything they can to understand their own equipment. Is that making sure they get the reports from the people that are currently hired to service that?

Maybe it's as simple as that. Maybe those are behind the wall, and they don't get access to those. And there probably is some merit in understanding or maybe even say, shadow monitoring or double checking some things on their own to understand their asset. Ultimately it's their asset.

And They'd be best off to know what's going on with it. Yeah.

Joel Saxum: So let me ask you another question. With all of the, and this is monitoring inspection related. So to, to catch problems early. So CMS is one tool, right? Another tool is like an Uptower Borescope inspection. Of course, to me, end of warranty is an absolute must to have a third party come in and look at the, do a bore scope inspections, end of warranty.

Is there any other times that you recommend that, or do you recommend that to do every year like we do blade inspections, or what does that look like for you?

...

We discuss Vestas' anti-oscillation blade tool, which seems to have a dual purpose, Windspider's self-erecting tower method, and a terrifying way to disguise vaccinations for kids.

Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! Register for Wind Energy O&M Australia! https://www.windaustralia.com

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

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Phil Totaro: This is Power Up, where groundbreaking wind energy ideas become your clean energy future. Here's your hosts, Allen Hall and Phil Totaro.

Allen Hall: Well, Phil, our first idea of the week is from our friends at Vestas, and it's an anti oscillation tool for wind turbine blades. And how this patent is described, it's like a sock for your wind turbine blade with a little bit of a covering over the trailing edge serrations, and you slide this device on And it stops oscillations during deployment, when the, when the turbine may be a little more vulnerable, it's not a full operation, maybe in lockouts, where you really don't want any lift, and particularly you don't want any oscillations that could, in theory,

Phil Totaro: Yeah.

And maybe it's an idea that GE should have come up with or LM should have come up with first considering some of the issues they've had this year. But what's kind of fascinating about this though, is that this isn't necessarily a new idea from the perspective of putting a little sock on the end of your wind turbine blade to protect the tip during a lift.

Usually it's for making sure that you don't damage the serrations or whatever you've stuck on the trailing edge of the blade. In this case, Vestas and, and I'm, I'm kind of expressing my opinion or suggestion here that I think Vestas is basically trying to get an extra 20 years of life on a patented concept that, They, are potentially using on a daily basis for that construction purpose.

They found another way to describe that same technology and as an anti oscillation tool.

Allen Hall: You ever seen a device called a slap chopper, Phil? No. It slices and it dices. Oh, that thing. Yeah, I have. I have. So what they've To have done, in a sense, is they've taken the Slapchopper and got a patent for slicing, and then when that got close to expiring, they came back and said, well, it dices too, which is a separate patent, and thereby you can extend the same device for Covering two areas.

It's very unique way of patenting and very effective by the way. It's smart.

Phil Totaro: Yeah, it is. If, if you're trying to capture and protect your IP, but it also doesn't say much for the patent examiners we've ever had in this industry who can't seem to recognize that this is what companies are doing because this is not the first time this has happened.

I can recall a few examples in the past where companies had You know, had, their 20 years of patent protection on a concept and then repatented basically the same thing and said, Oh, well, it's not for cooling. It's for vibration damping, or it's not for one thing. It's for something else. So it looks like that's what's happening here.

And, I guess kudos to Vestas for trying and maybe not so many kudos to the U. S. Patent Office for allowing stuff like this to get pushed

Allen Hall: through. Roncopeel made a living doing that. If you're familiar with Ronco, it's Christmas time and every Christmas you would have another Ronco product, which slices, dices, cooked a chicken or something.

Phil Totaro: All at the same time?

Allen Hall: So our next idea is from Windspider and it's a method to basically raise a wind turbine tower with a crane. It's sort of, an erector set that builds upon itself. So It kind of hoists itself by its own petard in a way, and it lifts itself up. You can put more infrastructure behind it.

You lift it up some more, put more infrastructure behind it, and you can build a turbine tower with it. Really no large external crane. Everything happens right on the tower itself. This has applications, Phil. Particularly offshore, I think this makes a whole bunch of sense. I haven't seen it implemented though.

And this patent is new within the last couple of months. I expect this one to happen somewhere.

Phil Totaro: Yeah, this is one that if Windspider is going to be able to get enough capital together to do some kind of a prototype demonstration, they might actually catch on with doing this, particularly with larger either onshore machines or certainly offshore machines where Again, minimizing the amount of crane time is going to become important both from crane availability as well as how tall they could theoretically make the towers, because this is basically a method for self erecting a tower where you can actually put and they actually go into some detail about how you can actually install the tower based on staves or segments.

And it can be a tower of either concrete or steel construction or they could even plot this thing to on top of a a concrete base. We talked a couple of weeks ago about Max Bogle, making these hybrid towers. You could use this to then construct the, the steel tube.

portion of a hybrid tower at the top. So, it's it's a clever idea. Our

Allen Hall: fun patent of the week isn't all that fun. And if you've ever been a kid or if you have children, you realize that syringes are not your friend. And so when you go visit the doctor for your annual physical, you're always dreading that, oh, I think you're ready for another tetanus shot or you need some sort of booster shot, which seems to happen at every checkup until you're like, 18 years old.

Maybe 21. Maybe until you're 50 at this point. There always seems to be another booster shot in your medical chart. Well, this inventor, Robert Smetton decided that enough is enough. We need to make needles more friendly. So his invention is to modify the syringe barrel with an attachment that makes it look like a pleasing animal, like a happy bunny.

Or a little puppy dog. So instead of seeing a syringe Headed for your arm or maybe a lower part of your anatomy. Now you're seeing this fuzzy little bunny coming at you. So thereby permanently associating nice fuzzy animals with pain. And I cannot figure out, Phil, how this patent actually got through the process and thinking somebody was going to buy it, but here's the

Phil Totaro: thing.

People file patents all the time for stuff that never actually gets built. I hope that this was one of them, because I gotta be honest. Like this is. Probably the most terrifying thing that you could ever do to a child because now it's, it's a fuzzy bunny and it's, it's not even just like the physical pain associated with the fuzzy bunny.

It's a bunny with a needle poking out of its mouth and face. Like this is absolutely terrifying. Like I, I don't like needles in the first place. This would scare the crap out of me. So yeah, I don't, I don't like this one at all.

Allen Hall: But what if it's country specific? Like you've done in Australia, you'd have a koala bear, a little baby koala bear with a needle.

Phil Totaro: You'd have a hoop snake with a needle coming out of it. I don't know.

Allen Hall: There you go, right? It just, it just seems terrorizing, but hey, it's a patent. There's all kinds of crazy patents.

This week, we discuss Siemens Gamesa's MASSIVE 21 MW turbine prototype, Vestas and Siemens Gamesa layoffs in Europe, trade relations between the US and EU in 2025, and the proper out-of-office email etiquette.

Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! Register for Wind Energy O&M Australia! https://www.windaustralia.com

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

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Allen Hall: If you want to know why Siemens Gamesa is betting big on a 21 megawatt offshore turbine while others scale back, what Norway's 25 billion oil and gas investment means for renewables, and how manufacturing challenges are reshaping European wind energy, stick around. Plus, we've got big news about Wind Energy O& M Australia and a chance to win an exclusive Uptime Podcast mug in our first ever listener survey.

I'm Allen Hall, and this is the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

You're listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, brought to you by BuildTurbines. com. Learn, train, and be a part of the clean energy revolution. Visit buildturbines. com today. Now here's your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes.

Allen Hall: Just the season of giving, and this year we want to give you a voice in shaping Uptime's future. As we wrap up another amazing year of wind energy conversations, we're launching our first in person event. And yes, there's a special holiday surprise involved. Picture yourself sipping your morning coffee from an exclusive Uptime Podcast mug.

Which could be yours just for participating. All we need is five minutes of your time to tell us what sparks your interest and what you'd love to hear more in 2025. Whether you've been with us since day one or just caught your first episode, your thoughts matter to us. So dash over to uptimewindenergy.

com or slay down to the show notes below. And from all of us at Uptime, thank you for making this community possible. Second, wind energy professionals won't want to miss the premier O& M event in the Asia Pacific region, the Wind Energy O& M Australia conference happening February 11th and 12th in Melbourne.

And we're thrilled to have industry powerhouses like Tilt Renewables, Worley, Aerones.

Phil Totaro: And we're pleased to announce Sky Specs is actually going to be joining us as a corporate roundtable sponsor for the event.

Allen Hall: The conference tackles crucial topics that directly impact your operations, leading into erosion, lightning protection, CMS, insurance, and life extension strategies.

This is your chance to connect with the industry leaders and gain practical insights that you can implement immediately. So secure your spot now by visiting And finally, don't miss out on a game changing opportunity for your safety program. Active training team known for their innovative and immersive safety training methods.

ATT is hosting a free expo in Houston on January 24th, and this isn't your typical safety presentation by no means. ATT brings safety culture to life through dynamic hands on experiences that have transformed safety programs across the energy sector. So this is a rare chance to experience their methods first hand.

Spacers are filling up fast, so register now by emailing [email protected] or visiting activetrainingteam.us/contact.

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.

Allen Hall: There's a dynamic story in international trade relations happening at the moment where the president elect of the United States has issued a statement regarding US EU trade dynamics and through a social media post U. S. leadership has called for a European Union to address its trade deficit with the United States through increased purchases.

Of all things, American oil and gas. Now this threat comes in to light with all the tariff discussions that have been happening over the last several weeks. And the EU and the U. S. I think privately behind closed doors have been talking and trying to tap this down a little bit. But this comes in light of, Joel, that Norway is busy drilling away also, that they plan to spend about 25 billion dollars in 2025 drilling a number of holes, looking for more oil and gas, which I assume are headed right to the EU.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, absolutely. I think the thing about this that we have to understand is we're, this is a wind energy podcast, so we're into renewable energy. We want we're looking for energy transition. I think the thing that we all need to understand is that the energy transition is not going to be a flick of a switch, right?

We're oil and gas is in literally everything that you touch every day. Like the mouse, my computer, my cell phone, my coffee cup, like petroleum products are in everything. So until we find out. different source for that, those products, it's not going to go away. So with that being said, the, you also have to understand that it's going to play a huge factor on global economics because like we're talking here, EU in the U S and you have Norway, there.

So Norway being the, one of the largest natural gas producers in the world, I think they're number four behind like the U S Russia and Qatar, however you want to say it. But we saw this in the last few years, the economics and the political geopolitical strife play out in Eastern Europe with the, the conflict we're having over there.

And then we had this last Presidential campaign series over here in the United States. One of the big things that president elect Trump said was drill, baby drill. We're going to continue to push the United States on what we can do for output for natural gas and oil, which we've hit records year after year in the last few years.

So it's a way to balance the books globally, right? So if we want to if the U S wants to flex muscle this is a way to do it, definitely force, force some of our trade partners to take some oil and gas.

Allen Hall: Does this change the dynamic though in terms of renewable energy in Northern Europe or greater EU?

Joel Saxum: I don't think so as of yet. I think people will continue to push for renewable energy projects. They're just not happening quick enough, right? You can't, there's only so many goods, like spots for wind farms, say like in Germany that have been cited for their wind farms are built there, they're in operation.

So you're seeing, instead of all kinds of new field, like we have in the United States, a hundred, 120 turbine wind sites that just not being built. So you still have this gap where the thirst for natural gas for heating and power is very. It's going to continue to happen. I don't think it'll change in the near term a whole lot.

I think you still have, in my opinion, we still have 10, 20 years left of the same kind of hydrocarbon thirst that we have right now.

Allen Hall: Phil, is there going to be a big push in terms of growth in the EU to grab more oil and gas exploration while

Phil Totaro: they can? But let's keep a couple of things in mind with this conversation.

One is that the trade imbalance between the U. S. and Europe is roughly only about 200 billion. Obviously that's a lot of money, but in the grand scheme of things I don't know why. This is coming up as a topic when that's something that could, it could be closed by them buying more, liquefied natural gas from the U.

S., which is what they're obviously trying to accomplish. But I don't know why this is a big thing. And in the meantime, Europe has bigger issues with having Norway basically replacing, Norway's drilling, replacing Russian gas supply when they could also be investing equally as heavily into, repowering repowering in Spain, repowering in France, repowering in Germany.

And Portugal although that's already happening a little bit but, they're just not doing what they could be doing to take advantage of renewable energy as power source as opposed to continuing to operate on an oil and gas based infrastructure.

Allen Hall: It just seems like there's a limited amount of growth in oil and gas in Europe.

I know there's, they're trying to deal obviously with a lack of resources coming further from the east, but that won't last that long. It doesn't seem like it with all the electricity generation that's happening. Off the coast of the United Kingdom and other places. There's going to be a lot of electricity feeding Europe here shortly.

It doesn't seem like it would be the right time necessarily to put a bunch of money into oil and gas, but Equinor, being one of the players here, is doing it, in which is. Odd also because Equinor is what, the second largest stakeholder in Orsted, which is the renewable energy leader in Europe for the most part.

There is, there's a lot of dynamics happening here. Do you think that this is going to over the next couple of months as the new administration comes in, do you think this is going to tamper down or is this just going to get elevated even more and more as the discusses about trade deficits and tariffs pick up?

I think it'll ramp up. To

...

Connecticut and Massachusetts have backed out of their portions of the Vineyard Wind 2 offshore project, Avaada Group is investing $12B in renewables for Rajasthan by 2030, and Enersense is selling its onshore wind and solar project development business to Fortum.

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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: There's been a significant setback for offshore wind development from Vineyard Offshore as they announced the withdrawal of its 800 megawatt portion of the Vineyard Wind 2 project from Massachusetts contract negotiations and that decision came after Connecticut opted not to purchase its planned 400 megawatt share of the project.

This development impacts Massachusetts ambitious offshore wind goals, where despite earlier procurement of 3200 megawatts of capacity, only Vineyard Wind 1 remains active in the state's pipeline. And Phil, this is due to the combination of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island working together to draw from some of these offshore projects.

But now, Connecticut is full stop, not going to be involved in offshore wind, they said, for at least a couple of years.

Phil Totaro: Yeah, not that Connecticut has always been Wind Energy's biggest well, biggest fan, pardon the pun. Connecticut has, is basically saying that they're pulling out of this procurement because offshore wind is just too expensive, and that's entirely true. . Given what the industry has to price the PPA at to be able to pay for the project, given the the cost of money and the cost of equipment these days.

So I can see why they did it, but it does kind of screw Rhode Island and Massachusetts a little bit because, they were counting on that offtake. So the question then becomes, does Massachusetts unilaterally go and sign an agreement 2 at some point?

Is that even something that's going to be able to move forward, before January 20th, where presumably we're not going to get, four years worth of BOEM approvals on offshore wind farms? So there's a lot of uncertainty and unfortunately chaos caused by, Connecticut's decision here and, and certainly unfortunate for, for vineyard offshore wind.

Joel Saxum: I think one thing to think about here is that like you said, Phil, that there's a looming deadline that might close the door on some of these wind things or not, not slam the door, but close it a little bit more this offshore wind program that we have going on the East Coast for no matter what state you're in.

And, and the way I'm looking at some of this is, yes, the PPAs are expensive. I see that. Tech, the technology is expensive. I see that the financing is, has been a bit difficult. It should be hopefully getting easier to see that. However, If your goal is to have renewable energies and you're in the northeast part of the United States, you don't have a whole lot of options.

Your options basically are offshore wind and something else that someone dreams up for something because that's it. So if you have renewable energy goals and you're those states, rather than canceling things or doing things of this sort, I would just love to see more people at the at the table having transparent conversations.

Allen Hall: India's renewable energy sector is receiving a massive boost as Avaada Group commits to invest 12 billion U. S. dollars in Rajasthan by 2030. The ambitious plan aims to transform the northwestern state into a global renewable energy center. Energy powerhouse. Now the investment will fund several initiatives including a 1.

2 gigawatt pump storage project, green hydrogen and ammonia facilities and utility scale solar and wind power sites across four cities. Now Phil, the development of renewable energy in India is growing at a massive pace but also some old technology, coal factories, gas burning technology still exists there.

Where is the future for India?

Phil Totaro: They're actually making a fairly rapid transition to wind and solar that has been accelerating over the past few years and Avada group has a plan to get 30 gigawatts by 2030 just by themselves as a company. That's a, a lot of like countries or maybe states might have that kind of a target elsewhere in the world, but this is just one company saying, we're gonna get to 30 gigawatts by 2030 and, and in this case spend, 12 billion plus , to be able to get there, obviously the 12 billion isn't gonna pay for the whole thing, just to be clear.

It's, it's one tranche of money that they're setting aside for for this, but they already have a portfolio of something around four gigawatts worth of wind and solar and a little, a tiny bit of battery storage. But it's, it's going to be a tremendous amount of growth in India that has been talked about for more than a decade and is finally, finally coming to fruition with investments like this.

Joel Saxum: Allen and I kind of live this story every day. We're talking with a lot of wind operators in India, and you just see growth, growth, growth, new turbines, new turbines, new turbines left and right. To add to that, one of the lar or the largest renewable energy park in the world is going to be in the north of India.

West corner of India as well. It's called the Kavda Renewable Energy Park. And that thing's going to be 30 gigawatts just in itself. Now that's solar and wind combined of course. But that's, that's planned. So the plans are there. The, the money's flowing. We're seeing development. I think it's fantastic for India to fast forward their economy that way as well.

So kudos to them.

Allen Hall: Finnish energy services provider Enersense International is selling its onshore wind and solar project development business to Fortum in a strategic shift. The deal valued at 9. 5 million euros with the potential future earn out up to 74 million euros includes a 2. 6 gigawatt onshore wind generator.

Development pipeline. Now this transaction aligned with Intersense's June decision to abandon its zero emission energy producer ambitions. Phil, what's behind the Intersense decision to get out of clean energy?

Phil Totaro: Well, they're not necessarily getting out of clean energy. They're getting out of the clean energy development project development process. And considering the fact that they're mostly a financial investment vehicle as, as a company that makes sense. It's however, a bit confusing. I mean, I can see why they would partner with Fortum.

It's also a bit curious because Fortum makes somewhat dubious decisions as far as, who they partner with and their investments and whatnot. And yet it Intersense to be able to divest, the, the early stage, particularly project development and portfolio and pipeline and capabilities since it's not their core competency.

It does give them the opportunity to buy back into projects that, Fortum would build. And then if they want to be the owner and, and hire someone on to be the operator, then they can they can continue to do that. But I think again, this is about alignment with their core competency. I think that's the general sense I get from this, this deal.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, I agree with Phil. I think it's just smart business, right? If you're good at one thing, stay being good at it. Stay being that financial advisor or that financial services vehicle to get things going. We see a lot of divestment in pipelines and a lot of divestment in active assets. Doing them at certain stages just makes sense financially.

So, doing this, Enersense gets back to their core competencies, like Phil said, and Fortum gets to, further their goals. One of their goals is to develop at least 800 megawatts of shovel ready onshore wind and solar projects by the end of 2026. And with this deal closing in the first quarter of 2025, it'll help them out.

This week on Power-Up, Goldwind's coil pipe system for cooling towers, an idea from Enercon for a predictive model of power output under certain weather conditions, and an interesting alarm clock patent from the 1800s.

Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! Register for Wind Energy O&M Australia! https://www.windaustralia.com

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

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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.

Our first idea is from Goldwind. It is a concept where they have a specialized coil pipe system for liquid cooling in wind turbines, mostly offshore it appears. It is designed to handle the rotation between the nacelle and the tower. So you can think about all this coiled tube in the tower itself and the nacelle is spinning around.

So it Keeps everything organized, so it doesn't twist, bend, and kink where the fluid flow would stop. Phil, this one's a little interesting to me because I haven't seen a lot of cooling happening in towers, but obviously GoldWind wants to proceed with this idea to mostly for their offshore turbines, it looks like.

Philip Totaro: Yeah, this is designed for larger machines where they're gonna leverage either using the tower as a heatsink or some other downed tower mechanism where they can dump waste heat and theoretically minimize the size of the radiator that they have on the nacelle. And keep in mind that GoldWind, because they're using a permanent magnet generator, they have different requirements up tower for for the, the magnet cooling and stator cooling.

So what's kind of fascinating about this to me is that, you've got certainly for, for transmitting, electrical. Current and things like that. You have things like slip rings. You even have kind of hydraulic slip rings when you want to be able to move, from a, from a rotating frame of reference to a fixed frame of reference, you, you can use kind of a, a, an equivalent of a hydraulic slip ring to, to pass fluid that way.

This is literally like a twist loop the same way that we have kind of an electrical cable twist loop in the upper part of a, the tower and nacelle but it's specifically designed for liquid coolant. And so, kudos to them for kind of creativity and ingenuity. Whether or not this is going to be more efficient than a nacelle mounted radiator, I'm not.

So it'd be interesting to see some feedback or some data on that, but it's it's definitely a unique and kind of fascinating way of developing a liquid based cooling system and implementing it in a way that's going to help them. Address other considerations, design considerations, like wanting to minimize the the volume and the, the size, and frankly, the weight of an uptower radiator or a cell mounted radiator.

Allen Hall: Our next idea is from Waban Properties, and it is a concept for using weather data, in particular, more widespread weather data. coupled with performance of a wind turbine over time to create a predicted model for the power output under certain weather conditions. And this idea seems to be driven, Phil, from grid restoration or black start scenarios where they need to turn The grid on restarting the grid and they need to know what power is going to be delivered with some relative accuracy That's hard to do for wind turbines unless you have a predictive method, which is what wobbin is talking about

Philip Totaro: Yeah, so just to just to clarify for everybody to woven properties is like an ip holding subsidiary of intercom in germany, so this is the the vehicle that they use to kind of capture and and monetize their intellectual property Now, the, as for the idea itself, what's a bit interesting and unique about this is the fact that they are taking historical turbine data and park data, which that's nothing new to be able to develop some kind of forward looking forecast.

Similarly, you can look at, actual global or even local data. weather forecasting data and use that to help develop a power forecast that there's plenty of people out there doing that sort of work in, in the industry. We know a few of them on, on the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.

So, the, what's unique and interesting though about the, this Enercon invention is the fact that they're combining this both of these kind of methods for developing a A power forecast that allows you to get a narrower confidence interval by leveraging both the historical data combined with the the weather forecasting data from both individual turbines and the global forecast.

Or regionally focused data that kind of surrounds the the entire wind park that they have. So, anything that they can do to try and improve that confidence interval is a good thing. As, as many people who work in power forecasting know, this is a very clever way of approaching. This kind of a technical challenge where you want to be able to improve the, the confidence interval on your weather forecast and your power forecast.

Allen Hall: Our fun patent of the week comes from Samuel Applegate. And this is a, a, a kind of a unique alarm clock idea. Now you may have seen something similar more recently called the Slappy Clock. Which is like this rotating hand that slaps your face when you're supposed to wake up when your alarm bell goes off and you don't like waking up.

This is a much calmer system than the, than the slapping hand bit. It's like a grid of that's suspended above the sleeper and there's a bunch of strings hanging down in a grid pattern. At the end of these strings is, are corks. And when you're allowed to sleep, this cork system lifts off and doesn't bother you.

As soon as the alarm bell goes off, it sort of lowers down. So it's kind of like you're surrounded by a bunch of corks and strings, like you're being caught in a cobweb. So it's, it's trying to wake you up slowly, not to really alarm you up. However, I wonder if this idea was really ever effective because hard sleepers can sleep through anything.

This device seems like it's not going to be enough to wake up the difficult sleeper.

Philip Totaro: And I'll tell you what, Alan, this invention was actually conceived of and the patent was granted back in 1882. So, the fact that something that was that kind of unique and original more than a hundred years ago could influence, some of the, some of the IP and the technology of, of today and, and the slappy, which I do not use, by the way.

I, I actually normally wake up with the sun in the morning. It's, much more pleasant way to do things. But, for those people that might be heavier sleepers, I don't know, this could work, the slappy could work. But it depends, I guess it depends on how heavy a sleeper you are.

Allen Hall: You're never gonna beat that rooster in your window. That's the best.

In this episode, we explore Meta's shift to natural gas for AI data centers, analyze a major Mingyang offshore turbine blade failure, and discuss Shell's head of renewables moving to Ørsted'. Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug!

Experience Active Training Team's Thrive USA event in Houston January 24th! Email [email protected] to register!

Register for Wind Energy O&M Australia! https://www.windaustralia.com

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

Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com

Allen Hall: If you want to know why turbine blades are disappearing from social media and why Shell's Renewables Chief is jumping to worsted and why META is betting big on natural gas, stick around. Plus, we've got a special announcement, a chance to win an exclusive Uptime Podcast mug that even I don't have yet.

You're listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by BuildTurbines. com. Learn, train, and be a part of the clean energy revolution. Visit BuildTurbines. com today. Now here's your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes.

Allen Hall: We've got something new for uptime listeners.

We're running a quick listener survey to learn more about what you love about the show and how we can make it even better. And there is an exciting part to this. Everyone who completes and leaves an email address will be entered to win an exclusive Uptime podcast mug. Now, I do not have one of these podcast mugs, so whoever wins this, hopefully I get a second hand one or something.

Somebody can throw me a mug. But the survey will take about five minutes of your time, and your feedback is really needed to help shape the future episodes of the show. And whether you're a long time listener or have just joined us recently, we'd We want to hear from you. So I need you to go to uptimewindenergy.

com or just check the show notes to participate in the survey. So we'd appreciate if you would do that. And we have a couple other things happening. One of which is Wind Energy O& M Australia film where everybody's going to be on February 11th and 12th in Melbourne. And we have a number of sponsors that we can announce this week.

Joel Saxum: So sponsorships and the people joining us at the show will be from Tilt Renewables, Worley, Aerones and RigCom. We've got a bunch of other people signed up too. To date, we've got quite a few operators, some ISPs, some cool technology companies, and other people's that are going to be in attendance along with some speakers.

And we're going to start releasing. Some agenda points and some of the speakers and panelists and roundtables. So the goal of, one of the goals of the conference is to drive engagement with the crowd because we want everybody to leave there with insights that they can take back and actually do something to their wind farms.

We want to help. We want to help make it more profitable. We want to help make operational decisions and drive some success at the field level. So that's the goal of the show. And we hope you'll join us.

Allen Hall: Yeah. The conference is going to tackle crucial topics that directly impact operations, leading edge erosion, lightening protection, CMS, insurance, life extension strategy.

So this is your chance to connect with industry leaders and gain. Some practical experience and insights that you can implement immediately. So you need to secure your spot by visiting windaustralia. com. And down in Houston, Joel, we have Active Training Team. They're going to be giving a demonstration of their Thrive USA product, which is a safety training seminar, a live interactive.

It's the most impactful training seminar for safety I have ever been at. You want to Talk about what is all involved in the Thrive USA, Joel.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, it's a step change in training. It's experiential. I know that's a weird word, but Alan and I and Claire, our producer, went through this training in Boston a few months ago.

And we're sitting in the crowd and we're at tables with people from all kinds of different companies and levels of the company so that everybody's intermixed. And then all of a sudden, They're going through a little bit of a presentation and a few actors, real actors, like Screen Actors Guild, card carrying people come through the door and they're fighting and yelling at each other and going through the scenario.

And then all stop. There's someone that maintains the, that would be flow of the event. And they say, okay, what do you think about this? And you're getting engaged and you're thinking. And just talking about this right now, it reminded me of what happened while we were there. And I have goosebumps on my arms that are popping up because they're it's.

It hit me when we were there internally. I've never been through a training where I left in thinking like, wow, that was impactful. I am actually thinking about this. I'd like to action some of these things in my day to day life. We did breakout sessions. We talked through things. It was fantastic. So if you have the opportunity we would love to see you in Houston.

It's going to be January 24th. Down by the medical center. And if you want some details on it, of course, you can get a hold of us at the show any either Alan or I can point you in the right spot. [email protected] or feel free to reach out to Florence at the active training team. She's guiding the whole process, so [email protected] can be your contact there, and we hope to see you in January there in Houston.

Allen Hall: Yeah, we'll see you in Houston and the website for Active Training Team in the U. S. is ActiveTrainingTeam. us, so check that out.

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.

Allen Hall: In the latest PES Wind Magazine, it's Q4 of 2024. You can go online and read it yourself at peswind. com. Interesting article from DSHIP carriers, and DSHIP has designed a new carrier of blades. And it's really interesting because it's a new approach on how to move blades around offshore. And Joel, being our offshore expert, you want to explain these fun things about the D500 ship?

Joel Saxum: Yeah, I think that what we need to understand first is that we've been doing offshore wind for a long time. And we're ready for a step change. We're ready to see things turn over into new innovative techniques that are going to make things better. So when you talk shipping with anything, it's always about efficiency, fuel burn, how can we get things on offshore better and The the DSHP team has taken all of this into consideration and making a purpose built vessel just for transport, transporting wind turbine parts.

And when you say that offshore, usually that doesn't happen. A vessel is usually multi purpose because you want to make sure that you have a contract where someone can rent it out and have it on the lease for a long time and use it for multiple kinds of different things and transporting this or transporting that.

But what they've done here is made a vessel that's super efficient, that's specifically designed and built for optimum use for transporting wind turbine parts. So the hull has been optimized. The way you load things has been optimized. The way you unload things has been optimized even all the way down to how the crew gets around the vessel and what their walk times are in between areas of the vessel that they need to do their jobs.

That's crazy impressive. The other things that they've done is make sure that this thing is future proofed. And future proof means the next generation of fuels, whether we get to the point where we're using ammonia or hydrogen or some other kind of power the propulsion units in this vessel can be swapped over to what that next generation looks like.

The D Ship team in their new D 500 vessels, this is what they're calling this, they have taken some really innovative steps to making offshore wind in their part of the supply chain, More efficient and more cost effective.

Allen Hall: Yeah, it's a really interesting ship design. It's going to be built in China. But if you want to read more about this ship and all the things that DShip is up to, go to PESWind.

com, download your issue, and read it for yourself. Good stuff in there. As wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial, and let's face it, difficult. That's why the Uptime Podcast recommends PES Wind magazine. PES Wind offers a diverse range of in depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future.

Whether you're an industry

veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high quality content you need. Don't miss out. Visit peswind. com today.

Allen Hall: In a significant shift in data center power strategies, Major technology companies, energy companies are turning to, of all things, natural gas to bridge the power for these growing, power hungry artificial intelligence infrastructures, these data centers.

And Meta is probably the key one at the minute....

This week on News Flash, Grenergy is selling 23 percent of its Oasis de Atacama project for up to $962M, a consortium led by APG Asset Management NV and Australian Retirement Trust will acquire Riverstone Holdings LLC equity stake in Pattern Energy, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners has acquired a majority stake in Toqlukuti’k Wind and Hydrogen.

Register for Wind Energy O&M Australia! https://www.windaustralia.com

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

Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com

Allen Hall: Alright, first up, Grenergy is selling 23 percent of its Oasis del Atacama project. To CONT Global A KKR company for up to $962 million. The sale includes three of the seven phases of what would be the world's largest energy storage facility, compromising 451 megawatts of solar and two and a half gigawatt hours of storage capacity.

The three phases are already under construction and will generate more than 1.3 terawatt hours of energy annually. Now, Phil, why is Grinergy removing itself from some of these projects? Is it cash constriction?

Philip Totaro: This one's kind of fascinating because this isn't just a simple asset rotation.

I think this is more that they have to be able to dump some of their pipeline in order to have some cash on hand to cover operations of existing assets as well as eventually reinvest in their pipeline. But this, normally when you do an asset rotation, you either sell off a small percentage minority stake in your asset portfolio, or you take, some of your projects and sell them off.

This is a fairly large deal for a good chunk of capacity that, Contour Global is is going to have as part of their portfolio now, bolstering what KKR's doing with their backing as well. KKR wants Contour Global to start expanding more and it's put them On the hunt for, asset acquisitions like this.

So, it's a good fit, but it's an interesting move from Greenergy at this point to really start getting some more cash in the door.

Joel Saxum: Aside from the sale here, we're talking, M& A here in Newsflash. I want to focus on this Grenergy's asset rotation target. So they're looking at, they have a target for 2026 and ensures funding for a 2.

6 billion euro strategic plan. That strategic plan is to become a world leader in energy storage, which, I mean, if you've been following anything that we talk about on the podcast, in the last few years, energy storage has become a very important part

Allen Hall: A consortium led by APG Asset Management NV and Australian Retirement Trust will acquire Riverstone Holdings LLC equity stake in Pattern Energy. Now, Pattern Energy is currently developing over 25 gigawatts of renewable energy and transmission projects for nearly 10, 000 megawatts across North America, either operating or under construction.

Phil, Pattern Energy is a privately held company up to this point, but they are seeking a little bit of money to help with these projects that they have going on, Sunzea being one of them.

Philip Totaro: Yeah, absolutely. And the fact that Riverstone Holdings is selling out their stake. They were one of the founding partners along with management for Pattern.

It's a big signal for Pattern to be able to take a next step in terms of their growth plan. But also a big deal where, these two pension companies are investment and an investment fund is coming in alongside the Canadian pension plan investment board that also owns a stake along with the pattern management.

So, all of that combined means a lot more. kind of, retirement money and pension money going into, renewable project development, which whether it's been through direct investment or in this case, like this deal, the equity stake in pattern you're seeing, we've talked about.

On the show before, there's a lot more investments coming in from insurance companies, pension plan companies and those type of management companies and investment vehicles. So this is kind of furthering that through, in this case, again, an equity stake as opposed to direct investment in projects, but it's a, really good deal for Pattern, who, has continued to kind of outperform a lot of their industry peers especially when it comes to being able to raise capital.

Joel Saxum: When you talk about an Australian retirement trust getting involved in this, what I see is long term investment being excited about. wind and renewable projects, but short term we want to make money type of investments not being as interested. So you can see that like the black rocks are involved in the Canadian pension funds are involved.

These are very long term stable investments in these infrastructure projects, but the people that want to make money quick are getting out of renewables. So see that as a trend.

Allen Hall: Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners has acquired a majority stake in Toqlukuti’k Wind and Hydrogen, a large scale project in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, from ABO Energy.

The project is expected to produce competitive green hydrogen and ammonia, leveraging exceptional wind resources and existing infrastructure. Now that project will create over 4, 000 construction jobs and 400, 000 jobs.

And Phil, is this the first Green Hydrogen and Ammonia project for CIP?

Philip Totaro: It is for CIP which is kind of an interesting move. We've talked before on both the Uptime Wind Energy podcast and Newsflash here about Whether or not we need, tons and tons of hydrogen, this project has the potential to be upwards of five gigawatts of wind or other power generation that would feed into, this hydrogen and ammonia production.

Whether or not they're going to actually build it that big, we don't know yet because this is still in a fairly early stage of development, so it gives CIP a good opportunity to get in on the ground floor or something. We'll see how this goes. Canada does seem very enthusiastic about the hydrogen projects though, because they have Well, except for the locals, I guess, but Canada in general, the Canadian government certainly And the provincial governments are a lot more excited about getting some of these projects built.

So I think they will welcome CIP's acquisition and we'll see where projects like this go in the future.

Joel Saxum: Newfoundland and Labrador have some of the best wind resources in North America. So that's a thing, right? But the other side of it is the energy mix in Newfoundland and Labrador is very heavily renewables already.

There's a lot of hydro. They're flush with renewable generation. So adding these on is of course going to go secondary market, hydrogen, ammonia. But the big thing here for the locals is 4, 000 construction jobs, 400 long term operational positions. Jobs and good paying jobs are scarce in that corner of the world, so this will be a great boom for the economy up in the Maritimes in Canada.

The spotlight today is on Romotioncam, a company with an inspection method that works while blades are in motion. René Harendt, CTO at Romotioncam, and Michael Stamm, a researcher from the Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung in Germany, discuss this groundbreaking technology. Learn about innovations at the company, from a new 840 mm focal length camera to thermal imaging data, that will make inspections more helpful for operators.

Check out Michael's research at BAM! https://zenodo.org/records/14170341, https://www.bam.de/Content/EN/Projects/KI-Visir/KI-Visir.html

Register for Wind Energy O&M Australia! https://www.windaustralia.com

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

Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com

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

Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. Today we have two experts pioneering innovative wind turbine inspection methods. René Harent is the CTO of Romotioncam whose patented technology enables high res photography of operating wind turbines.

And Michael Stamm from Germany's Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing, who specializes in thermographic inspection methods for wind turbines. Together, they're combining visual and infrared imaging to revolutionize how we detect early stage blade issues. Rene and Michael, welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight.

Thank you. We have seen Romotioncam a number of times, and the technology is really good, Rene. I like it because the turbine continues to operate. As you take high quality images, the technology has evolved quite a bit from the last time I have seen it. Do you want to explain where you're at with Romotioncam today?

So

René Harendt: at the moment, we actually build up a fleet to scale up and to provide it to a bigger market. And yeah, I actually have a new prototype with A bigger focal length. So the actual system has a 500 millimeter focal length. The new system has an 840 millimeter, millimeter focal length. So that means that we can, even on higher turbines and bigger blades, because this is related to our distance to the turbines, we can provide GSDs like 0.

06 centimeter per pixel. So something up to 0. pixel.

Allen Hall: So in that kind of imaging resolution, you can detect all kinds of blade abnormalities.

René Harendt: Yes, even little hair cracks and stuff like this.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, because you're approaching what a drone can do, right? That's, even a couple of years ago, two millimeters per pixel, three millimeters per pixel is normal.

But now that one millimeter per pixel, a lot of times you'll see that in an RFP, right? When someone puts out, Hey, we're, we want inspections and they put it out to the market. One millimeter per pixel will be the standard, but you guys are offering this without actually having to stop the turbine. So your value add goes through the roof because you're keeping that production going.

René Harendt: That's true. And if you think about it with that, sometimes we add a distance of 160 meters, something like this and provide that kind of GSD. Yeah, this. Sometimes there are. That's amazing, yeah.

Allen Hall: So maybe, René, for those uninitiated, who are not familiar with Romotioncam, what are the fundamentals here?

How does this system work?

René Harendt: The easiest way is to go to our website and watch the video. I think this can explain. Everything. So go to romotioncam com and watch it here. But I'll try to explain it a little bit. So the key thing is that we're using one camera to track the whole rotor and the blades and a special tracking technology behind it, which is also patented.

Can detect the wingtips and can calculate the rotation speed and the position of the turbine and stuff like this. And then calculators and the kind of movement data for a pan tilt head. And we have the camera integrated into a pan tilt head that can follow the blade all the time. So that means even on high tip speeds, we can follow the Tip.

It's two fast cars driving next to each other. You literally can shake hands. And this is, this allows us for the camera to use low shutter speeds. And yeah, we can deal also with low light condition because we don't have to put the ISO too high and stuff like this. It's also weak. We Yeah, I can eliminate some photographic issues you would normally have if you're trying to freeze some motions.

Yeah.

Allen Hall: Now, the majority of the work you do is in Europe, but you were in the United States for a short while. Can you explain what kind of work you're doing

René Harendt: in Europe at the minute? So we are subcontractors, so we have a frame contact with RWE, so we're running out some inspections and, but we want to open the market a little bit more.

There is a plan for next year to open up an entity in the U. S. To be honest, at the moment, it's now a political situation. So we have to take a look what happened. And if it's, it's not that easy for us yet to come over to the U. S. It's not that we just saying, okay, we want to open an entity.

There's a lot of paperwork. We try to clarify now, but at the moment, the political situation is a little bit. Yeah, we don't really know. I think we have to wait. It could be more complicated, maybe more easier. Let's see what happens. Yeah, but the goal is to come to the US and open an entity there

Allen Hall: as

René Harendt: well.

Allen Hall: And the latest technology, and we talked several weeks ago now, that Romotioncam has been involved with, is on the thermal imaging side. And the first time I heard about this was a probably a year ago when we were in Amsterdam at one of the blade conferences and I was just blown away. You can take thermal imaging from a Romotioncam cam on the ground.

That's amazing. One. That's amazing. And then it was described what that camera and that technology could do. And this is where Michael comes in. Where Michael is our thermal imaging expert. And Michael, can you describe where you work at? Just to make sure I get the right label on it.

Michael Stamm: Yeah. Hi, I'm Michael.

I work at a research institute. So I'm definitely on the research side of this technology. And We are performing thermal imaging of operating wind turbines from the ground. And this is actually also where we met with Romotioncam, because it's really important to, for a proper interpretation of our thermal images, we really needed high resolution visual images.

And then we were just looking for somebody providing this simultaneously from the same point we were looking at. And then that was like the match with the RamoshiCAM. And now we just had a big measurement campaign where we tried to benchmark what is possible, where are we?

We are working on this, like BAM is working on this since, Something like seven years. And I know even when I have discussions with experts from the field, I know that even 15 years ago, people were already talking about thermal expression of rotor blades. So it's like not, really inherently new.

I just say like things develop, cameras develop, understanding develops, simulation develop. So we are, we are trying to get it where it's really useful for the industry.

Joel Saxum: Traditionally, we know in the wind turbine world, visual inspections via drone romotioncam as you guys are doing, it's fantastic.

Pairing that with Thermal. What exactly can you guys see? Are you trying to image and what, like what value are you trying to bring to the inspections?

Michael Stamm: I want to distinguish two physical phenomena, and I think it's really important to get this once clarified and then we can go to the. But there are different physical phenomenons that give you a thermal signature on your blade.

And you have to distinguish these signatures. And one of the signatures is flow, air flow. Turbulent flow has a higher heat exchange between air and blade than laminar flow. So you see the difference between laminar and turbulent flow, which for example, Helps you to characterize leading edge defects, which result in turbulent flow patterns.

That's the first point. And the second point is completely independent of the flow. It's really like the inner structure of the blade. It's like just a different thing to look into the things. The sun is rising, you see the entire blade gets warm, and wherever there is, for example, foam, balsa, air, it gets warmer faster.

Why? Because you just don't have that high heat capacity. Having a big part of CFRP of a few centimeters, it takes time to heat this up. And then, this honeycomb structure is warm already. And that's like the second physical phenomena. So you really have to distinguish. And then, definitely, You look for the application in this case, for example, with romotioncam we were really looking for this flow visualization.

Joel Saxum: And you're also can look for, and I think this is an important one, friction creates heat and, or a lack of friction can create a colder spot. And so it's more like you're looking on the blade. You're not looking for a specific temperature, right? We're not looking for, I want to see the spot. That's, 21.

2 degrees Celsius. I want to see the spots that are. 21. 2 and 21....