Søren Kellenberger, CEO of CNC Onsite, joins to discuss uptower yaw gear repairs, flat tower flanges, and replacing 1,000 blade root bushings across 26 turbines.

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Allen Hall 2025: Soren, welcome back to the podcast. 

Søren Kellenberger: Thank you, Allen, and, uh, nice doing it, uh, face-to-face- Yes, it's great ... and not as a team, uh, call. Right. That's 

Allen Hall 2025: true. Yeah. You've been doing a good bit of traveling, and you're the new head of CNC Onsite. 

Søren Kellenberger: I am, yes. 

Allen Hall 2025: So congratulations on that. 

Søren Kellenberger: Thank you very much. 

Allen Hall 2025: And all the exciting new things that CNC Onsite [00:01:00] is doing, plus all the things you have developed and are now out in the field implementing, the, the list goes on and on and on.

I'm alwa- every time I talk to you, "Oh, we got a new-" Yeah ... "machine to do something uptower." So it's all uptower, which is the, the beauty of CNC Onsite. You're thinking about the operator and the cost to pull the blades off and do lifting the cell off and all those things. If we can do it uptower, we can save 30, 40, 50% of the cost of a repair.

Søren Kellenberger: Yeah. 

Allen Hall 2025: That's where CNC Onsite is just really killing it. You guys are doing great. Thank 

Søren Kellenberger: you. Of course, we like what we do, but, uh, thank you. 

Allen Hall 2025: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, it's good, it's good. And, and so w- let's talk about the things that I know about, and we'll start there, and then we'll go to all the new things you're doing.

So the one that I see a lot of operators asking about is yaw tooth. Yeah. 

Søren Kellenberger: Uh, 

Allen Hall 2025: deformations, broken teeth on the yaw gear. That's a big problem. And when I talk to [00:02:00] technicians, and I have them texting me about this, like, "Oh, well, I just weld on the gear back on, weld the tooth back on." That's a short-term solution.

That's not gonna be long-term. The long-term solution is the CNC Onsite. Can you explain what you do to permanently fix these yaw gear problems? 

Søren Kellenberger: Yeah. So what we do is actually we start by getting information about the, uh, original yaw ring, so the dimension of the teeth, and we get some load data. And, uh, then we start designing a replacement segment.

Uh, so what we ac- the process is actually that we bring a CNC controlled machine uptower, mount it on the yaw ring, and then we mill away that worn area, uh, creating a small pocket. And then those, uh, segments that we have designed, they are prefabricated. We bring them up and mount them in, in that, uh, pocket and bring the- The yaw ring back to where it's, you can say, original design, uh, [00:03:00] that way.

Yeah 

Allen Hall 2025: It's better than the original design, 'cause you're actually putting in better teeth than the, the manufacturer did originally. 

Søren Kellenberger: True. Yeah, yeah. 

Allen Hall 2025: So that happens, so you're, you're machining out those old teeth, broken teeth, putting the new set of teeth in th- and that all bolts in, and that's it. That's it.

But the, the difficulty is getting the machinery uptower to do that. That's where a lot of your, your technology comes from, is getting this very accurate, uh, well-defined machine uptower and doing very controlled grinding and milling. Yes. So can you explain what that system looks like? If I'm gonna grind off those yaw, broken yaw teeth, how big is that kit?

Søren Kellenberger: It... Obviously, it depends a little bit on the turbine size. Sure, okay. Yeah. So, uh, it, so the, the newer five, six, uh, 10 megawatt turbines have larger teeth, so yeah, there you need a, a larger machine. 

Allen Hall 2025: Okay. 

Søren Kellenberger: But let's say for, uh, Vestas three megawatt, the, the [00:04:00] complete machine weighs about 250 kilos. That's it? So yeah.

So it, it comes up in smaller components. We just use, uh, the, the internal crane in, in the nacelle, and, uh, then we can lift the components to the yaw ring, assemble the machine, and then we are basically good to go. So it take, takes less than a day to get everything up and, uh, get set and be ready to, to machine.

Allen Hall 2025: So if you wanna fix a yaw gear problem, how long does it take from start to finish to get that done? 

Søren Kellenberger: It typically, it takes one day to get everything up and get ready, and then per six teeth, which is a typical segment, it takes about a day to machine that. Okay. So, uh, let's say you have, uh, somewhere between 10 and 15 teeth, it's, uh, two to three segments.

So we do that in a week. Um- 

Allen Hall 2025: Wow ... and- 'Cause the alternative is call a crane, have them lifting the cell off. 

Søren Kellenberger: Yeah. 

Allen Hall 2025: Take the yaw gear off, put a yaw gear on, if you can find a yaw gear. Yes. Put the nacelle back on. [00:05:00] Well, and I guess obviously the rotors are coming down too, so- Yeah. You're talking about- Yes

hundreds of thousands of dollars in downtime. Yeah. It's a big ordeal. The CNC Onsite method is so much easier. 

Søren Kellenberger: We will just put our equipment in the back of our truck- ... and then, uh, we'll, we are ready to mobilize in a few days. So yeah, we can significantly, uh, bring down the downtime and, and as you said, the crane cost is of course extremely high.

And then you can add all the project management. You know, con- do I actually have my access roads, uh, still available? Right. Is the crane pad intact? And all of that stuff you need to organize. You can just forget about that and, uh- And 

Allen Hall 2025: get it done ... 

Søren Kellenberger: get it done. Yeah. 

Allen Hall 2025: Yeah. There's, there's a lot of owners, we, everybody knows who the machines are that have the, the, the yaw tooth problem.

Søren Kellenberger: Yeah. 

Allen Hall 2025: So if you're one of those owner operators, you better get ahold of CNC Onsite. Now, flanges on tower sections. It's become a, a really critical issue. You hear a lot of, of [00:06:00] operators, OEMs talking about, "I'm putting together these tower sections and those flanges don't really meet up quite right." 

Søren Kellenberger: Yep.

Allen Hall 2025: "I'm creating uneven torque patterns, bolt pat- my bolt tightening is not quite right." 

Søren Kellenberger: Yeah. 

Allen Hall 2025: And it never really seats right, so you have this mechanical, built-in mechanical problem. CNC Onsite is now fixing that so those flanges are actually really flat. Really flat, yes. 'Cause that's what you need. 

Søren Kellenberger: Yeah.

Allen Hall 2025: Yeah. They're highly loaded. 

Søren Kellenberger: If, if you want, uh... If you want your joints to be, uh, basically maintenance free, uh, we can, uh, achieve that with machining the flanges. And then, of course, you need to be in control with your bolt tightening process. Sure. But if you do those two things, you can have maintenance free bolted connections, and there's so much money to be saved in the operations.

Um, and of course, when you have these bolts that end up fatiguing, some of them don't get caught in time and you end up ha- having a catastrophic failure on the turbine. Uh- We've [00:07:00] seen that ... because you have that zipper effect. Once a bolt starts breaking, the neighboring ones take that extra load and it accelerates really quickly.

Uh, yeah. Sure does. 

Allen Hall 2025: Yeah. It's a very serious situation, but it starts with this very simple solution which is just make the flange flat. 

Søren Kellenberger: Yeah. But I think it's some... a part of the issue is that those buying the towers aren't necessarily responsible for the operational cost of maintaining that bolted connection.

So they might save a little bit of money when they buy the tower sections with rougher tolerances, but you will spend the money 10 times in the operations. Uh, and, and that's, I think that's where some of the operations, uh, re- the, the, those responsible for operational costs should, uh, get a little bit more CapEx spend, uh- Oh, sure.

Yeah. And, and then, uh, actually save a lot of money and, and reduce risk. Uh, it's a huge, huge risk 

Allen Hall 2025: It's, it's one of those lessons learned. You [00:08:00] don't know that they should be flat. You shouldn't know... You don't know your flanges should be flat until you experience the problems, and then you want all your flanges flat from here on out.

Søren Kellenberger: Yeah. 

Allen Hall 2025: But there's only one way to do that really, and that's to call CNC Onsite to come in and to make them flat. 

Søren Kellenberger: Yeah. 

Allen Hall 2025: Because it's a difficult thing to do. You really need to have the machining prowess and the tight tolerances that CNC Onsite's gonna deliver in a tool that can actually be adapted to that tower ring and make those surfaces flat.

It's complicated. Exactly. 

Søren Kellenberger: It is. Uh, but that is what we do every day, so, uh- Yes, I've noticed ... yeah, so 

Allen Hall 2025: so- You take on those challenges 

Søren Kellenberger: So we are optimizing our machines to be not only fit for one-offs, but actually to go into a manufacturing, uh, process. So we have op- optimized our machines a lot with, uh, automatic alignment and, uh, stuff like that to, to really make that process, uh, easier.

Because it has been considered that when you had t

Rosemary reports back on her visit to multiple Chinese renewable energy companies, Vineyard Wind activates a $69.50/MWh PPA with Massachusetts utilities, and Bronze Age jewelry halts a German wind project.

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

[00:00:00] The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by Strike Tape protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit strike tape.com and now your hosts.

Allen Hall 2025: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall. I'm here with Yolanda Padron in Austin, Texas, who is back from the massive wedding event. Everybody's super happy about that, and Rosemary Barnes had her own adventures. She just got back from China and Rosemary. You visited a a lot of different places inside of China.

Saw some cool factories. What all happened? 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, it was really cool. I went over for an influencer event. So if you are maybe, you know, in the middle of your career, not, not particularly attractive or anything you might have thought influencer was ruled out for you as a career. No one, no one needs engineering influencers in their [00:01:00] forties.

It's incorrect. It turns out that's, that's where, that's where I, I found myself. It was pretty cool. I, I did get the red carpet rolled out for me. Many gifts. I had to buy a second bag to bring home the gifts, and when I say I had to buy a second bag, I had to mention. Oh, I have so many gifts, I'm gonna need another bag.

And then there was a new bag presented to me about half an hour later. But, so yeah, what did I do? I got to, um, as I was over there for a Sun Grow event. Huge, huge event. They, um, it's for, it's for their staff a lot, but it's also, they also bring over partners. They also bring over international experts to talk about topics that are relevant to them.

Yeah. They gave everybody factory tours in, um, yeah, in, in shifts. Um, I got to see a module assembly factory, so where they take cells, which are like, I don't know, the size of a small cereal box, um, and assemble them into a whole module. Then the warehouse, warehouse was [00:02:00] gigantic. It, um, was, yeah, 1.8 gigawatt hours worth of cells that couldn't hold in that one building.

They're totally obsessed with fire safety there in everything related to batterie, like in the design of the product, but also in, in the warehouse. And they do, yeah, fire drills all the, all the time. Some of them quite big and impressive. Um, I saw inverter manufacturing facility that was really cool.

Heaps of robots. Sw incredibly fast. Saw a test facility. 

Allen Hall 2025: So was most of the manufacturing, robotics, or humans? 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. So at the factory it was like anything that needed to be done really fast or with really good quality was done by robots. So they had, um, you know, pick and place machines putting in. Um, you know, components in the circuit board, like just insane, insane rate.

I'm sure it's quite, quite normal, but, um, just very fast. Everything lined up in a row. Most of their quality control is done by robots. Um, so it does well it's done by ai, I should say. [00:03:00] Taking photos of, of things and then, um, AI's interpreting that. Repairs, I think were done by humans. There were humans doing, um, like custom components as well.

Like not every product is exactly the same. So the custom stuff was done by humans. 

Allen H: So that's the Sun Grove facility, right? You, but you went to a couple of different places within China? 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I went to another, a factory, a solar panel, a factory, um, from Longie. That was really cool too. I got to see a bit more probably of the, um, interesting, interesting stuff there, like, uh, a bit more.

Um, yeah, I don't, I dunno, processes that aren't, aren't so obvious. Not just assembly, but um, you know, like printing on, um, bus bars and, you know, all of the different connections and yeah, it was a bit, a bit more to it in what I saw. Um, so that was, but it, it's the same, you know, as humans are only involved when it's a little bit out of the.

Norm or, um, where they're doing repairs, actual actually re [00:04:00]repairing. You know, the robots or the AI is identifying which components don't meet the standard and then they'll go somewhere where a human will come and, um, fix them. 

Allen H: Being the engineer there. Did you notice where the robots are made? Was everything made in China that was inside the factory or were they bringing in outside?

Technology. 

Rosemary Barnes: I didn't think to look for that, but I would assume that it was Chinese made, also 

Allen H: all built in country 

Rosemary Barnes: 20 years ago that wouldn't have been the case, but I think that China has had a long, a long time to, to learn that. Again, it's not like, it's not, it's not rocket science. These are, these are pick and place machines, you know, like I remember working on a project very early in my career, so.

Literally 20 years ago, um, I was working with pick and place machines. It's the same, it's the same thing. Um, some of them are bigger 'cause they're, you know, hauling whole, um, battery packs around. It's just the, um, the way that it's set up, but then also the scale that they can achieve. You just, you can't make things that cheap if you don't have the [00:05:00] scale to utilize everything.

A hundred percent. Like I said, wind turbine towers is a really good example. 'cause anyone, any steel fabricating 

Allen H: shop 

Rosemary Barnes: could make a wind turbine tower. Right? They, they could, they could do that. You know, the Chinese, um, wind turbine tower factories have the exact right machine. They don't have a welder that they also use for welding bits of bridges or whatever.

Uh, they have the one that does the exact kind of world that they need, um, for the tower. They, you know, they do that precisely. Robotically, uh, exactly the same. And, you know, a, a tower section comes on, they weld it, it moves off to the next thing, and then a new one comes on. They're not trying to move things around to then do another weld in the same machine.

You know, like they're, um, but the exact right. Super expensive machine for the job costs a whole bunch to set up a factory. And then you need to be making multiple towers every single day out of that factory to be able to recoup on your cost. And so that is [00:06:00] the. The, um, bar that is just incredibly hard slash impossible for, um, other countries to clear.

Allen H: Can I ask you about that? Because I was watching a YouTube video about Tesla early on Tesla, where they wanted to bring in a lot of robotics to make vehicles and that they felt like that was the wrong thing to do. In fact, they, they, they kinda locked robots in and realized that this is not the right way to do it.

We need to change the whole process. It was a big deal to kind of pull those. Specialized piece of equipment, robots out and to put something else in its place in that they learned, you know, the first time, instead of deciding on a process, putting it in place and then trying to turn it on, see if it works, was to sort of gradually do it.

But don't bolt anything down. Don't lock it in place such that it doesn't feel like it's permanent. So you engineer can think about removing it if it's not working. But it sounds like this is sort of the opposite approach of. A highly specialized [00:07:00] machine set in place permanently to produce. Infinite amounts of this particular product, does that then restrict future changes and what they can make or, I, I, how do they see that?

Did, did you talk about that? Because I think that's one of an interesting approaches. 

Rosemary Barnes: I didn't actually get as much chances I would've liked to speak to engineers. Um, I was talking mostly to salespeople and installers. Um, so they know a lot, but I couldn't, um, like in the factory tours, I was asking questions.

Um. That kind of question and, and they could answer all, all that. Um, but outside of that, and I couldn't record in the factory obviously. Um, but I did, I did take notes, but what I would say is that they would have a separate facility where they would be working out the details of new products and new manufacturing processes and testing them out thoroughly before they went and, you know, um, installed everything correctly.

But what I do hear is that, you know, especially with solar power. Maybe to [00:08:00] batteries to a lesser extent. You, you know, you like, you have these kind of waves of technology. Um, so you know, like everyone's making whatever certain type of solar cell and then five years later, um, there's a new more efficient configuration and everybody's making that.

And I know that there are a lot of factories that kind of get scrapped. Um, and the way that China's set up their, like, you know, their economy around all this sort of thing is set up is that it's not that, like every company doesn't succeed. Right. They SGO was a big exception because they've been going since 1997, I think it was.

It was started by a professor quid his job and hired a room across the, across the road from his old university and, you know, built his first inverter and, um, you know, 'cause he, he could see that. Uh, the grid was gonna have to change to incorporate all of the solar power that was coming, which to be honest, in 1997, that was like pretty, pretty farsighted.

...

Allen covers CIP's €1.44 billion buyout of Ørsted's European onshore wind, the new Perigus Energy name, and Vestas paying €506 million for its stake in the firm.

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

In Denmark, there is an old expression. "What goes around comes around." The founders of Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners — known in the industry simply as CIP — know exactly what that means.

Back in 2012, four executives were fired from DONG Energy, the Danish energy giant that would later rebrand itself as Ørsted. Their offense? Their paychecks were considered too large. So large that DONG Energy's own CEO was forced out as well. Four men shown the door were. A year later, a woman joined them from that same company. The Danish press had a name for these five. They called them "the golden birds."

With six billion Danish krone from the pension fund PensionDanmark, they launched what is now one of the world's largest clean energy fund managers.

In 2020, turbine maker Vestas purchased a 25 percent stake in CIP. The deal included a performance-based earn-out arrangement. This week, the books revealed the size of that windfall.

The five partners have now collected a combined 1.8 billion Danish krone — roughly 240 million euros. Vestas expects to make one final payment of 71 million euros this year. Including interest, Vestas will have paid 506 million euros for its stake in CIP. Not a bad return for a group of people who were shown the door.

And. This week, CIP completed its acquisition of Ørsted's European onshore wind business for 1.44 billion euros. They renamed it Perigus Energy. The new company holds 826 megawatts of wind and solar capacity, operating in Ireland, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Spain.

Let that circle close. The executives fired from DONG Energy — the company that became Ørsted — just bought Ørsted's business.

Meanwhile, CIP's annual report for 2025 tells the story of a company in transition. Profit for the year came in at 561 million Danish krone, down from 683 million the year before. The employee count fell by nearly a fifth, to 441 people. And yet, their CI Five fund closed this year at 12.3 billion euros — the largest greenfield renewable infrastructure fund ever raised. Looking ahead, CIP expects profit of 600 to 800 million Danish krone in 2026 as new fund closings take shape.

So the picture this week is this. The men and women once considered overpaid, at a company that no longer carries the same name, have built the world's largest greenfield renewable energy fund. And they now own a piece of the legacy that fired them.

The golden birds are still flying.

And that is the wind energy news for the fourth of May, 2026. Join us for more on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

Nick Martocci, founder of Technical Training Academy in Las Vegas, joins to discuss expanding from wind technician training to other energy technologies and career pathways for veterans in energy.

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

Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy's brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering tomorrow.

Allen Hall: Nick, welcome back to the program. We're Tower Trading Academy. Now your technical trading Academy since we last spoke and we last spoke at OM and S in Nashville. Yep. Now we're here in Orlando. A lot's changed over the last year. 

Nick Martocci: We went through a lot of growth and changes, if you will, to the point where, because I added the program from just wind turbine technician to battery energy storage technician as well.

And obviously like always I've got something brewing behind the green curtain. Right, right. Uh, we're, we're always doing something and adding and changing training. And what we really did is get to a place where we're getting really technical with some of the things that we're doing. And what I did want to [00:01:00] do is rebrand, go through all of the, you know, uh, marketing and pieces again, and try to change things.

And so I tried to find what was the most simplistic, easy pivot, but also kept us out in the people's eye. Yeah. And we went to Technical Training Academy. So we really didn't have to do a whole heavy rebrand. We didn't have to change a lot, but those that are already working with us, it was just letting them know, Hey, we are still Legally Tower Training Academy.

Even the Department of Labor recognizes that, uh, we just have a DBA in place and the DBA doing business as, uh, allows us to now really open that up as far as what are we capable of doing when it comes to. Deliverables for, you know, people in energy and those types of security places. 

Allen Hall: Well, I've been watching your shorts.

I, they're on YouTube or on LinkedIn. They're really good. The little clips about what you [00:02:00] guys are up to, they're excellent. And the, what I follow, because I, I met you several times, it was just kind of cool to follow the progression there. The state of Nevada has recognized you. There's a lot of, uh, congratulatory, uh, events that are happening and like, all right, Hey, Nick's making this thing happen because it's so hard to be in that training business.

Mm-hmm. To get to where you have brought that whole company. Two is all right. This, this is a, this is a good spot. 

Nick Martocci: Yeah. Uh, you're 

Allen Hall: making some progress 

Nick Martocci: there. We had Susie Lee's office last year help us announce the Battery Energy Storage Program, so there was a congressional recognition there as well. Uh, we've also been working with other local politicians and things of that nature to be able to showcase some of the things that not just TTA is doing, but veterans and energy.

Because of my partnership with Project Vanguard, I am a state, uh, representative [00:03:00] for Project Vanguard in the state of Nevada. So it's another piece of also being able to showcase, hey, this is not just what TTA is doing, but what are veterans doing in energy? And I want to be able to not only highlight, you know, obviously TTA, but those pieces as well.

And whatever you state, you know, the veteran pieces, obviously legislators will listen, if that makes sense. That when you start saying, Hey, a veteran is speaking legislation. We'll quiet down for a second to see, hey, what is this rumble that you guys are creating? And they start to see what we're doing and they wanna be a part of that.

Allen Hall: Well, I think that's wonderful. And all the effort and time that you put towards veterans and veteran efforts. Mm-hmm. Thank you so much for doing that. You're a veteran, you're a helicopter pilot, you served Yep. Uh, for a number of years. That's a difficult job. I, you know, obviously the US is involved in some activity at the moment, but.

You know, shout out to all the veterans out there, [00:04:00] obviously. And, and there's a lot of 'em in renewable energy right now. 

Nick Martocci: Well, I mean, not just renewables, but energy, period. 'cause I, I speak to a lot of veterans throughout my downtime, if you'll say I have that. And you know, the, there's people that are PMs, program project managers, there are folks that are doing logistics, warehouse hr, and seeing that movement migration.

Of transitioning individuals from active duty, even some folks that are in my program that are in the guard and now getting into a position where, hey, you know, I'm a technician. I'm in energy. Whether they're a wind turbine tech, they're in battery, solar, hydro, what have you. Uh, there are quite a number of veterans in the energy market and industry.

Allen Hall: So if you're a veteran right now or just exiting, uh, the military. I, I think a lot of opportunity is there. They may not [00:05:00] realize. Mm-hmm. Uh, so getting trained up is a lot easier than it used to be. I remember years ago, I think I, we knew people that came outta the military and, and they were just sort of tossed out the door and had to go find things for themselves.

There's a lot more resources now I would Right. I it feel like than there were even a couple of years ago. And it's people like you that are kind of bridging that gap for the military to, to get people onboard, to get people trained, to get 'em out in. And doing work in the civilian world, that's huge. 

Nick Martocci: Yeah.

There's so many leadership traits and skills that veterans already bring to the table. It's a matter of taking some of those skills that maybe they, you know, worked in motor T and uh, and the motor pools, and they were turning wrenches and fixing, you know, Humvees and other, you know, mechanical vehicles, or they were.

Um, A and p, so airframe and power plant for, uh, aviation and things of that nature. Sure. So now they understand these different types of systems. Already it's a matter of, oh, how, [00:06:00] how do I transition this over to wind? How do I transition this over to solar? How do I transition this to battery and such? And then be able to pick that up?

It, it, it makes it easier for them because of the familiarity, if you will. To be able to say, Hey, this is very similar to that. All I gotta do is change this information here and now I'm good to go. 

Allen Hall: Right. And Project Vanguard's helping with that a a great deal. 

Nick Martocci: Oh yeah. You talked about Project Vanguard, if you don't know what that is, so Project Vanguard is an initiative to help veterans get into renewable energy careers, utilizing the network that we already have because.

Um, America's energy is our security as well, and so who better to help take care of the nation's security of energy than veterans who have already been doing it. And so being able to help individuals, like I said, not always be a technician. Maybe they wanna be able to get into, uh, program or project management.

Maybe they want to get into hr. And by utilizing the [00:07:00] vast network that Project Vanguard has, it, it gives them that ease of entrance and access that maybe they didn't have before. 

Allen Hall: Well, that's the key. Finding out where those opportunities lie, and it's hard to do that on your own. Right. Reaching out for some help is the right answer, I think all the time.

And every, especially now, uh, there's a lot of, uh, military focused companies that, like technical training Academy that are bridging that gap and, and absolutely. That's fantastic. Now, the amount of training you're doing on site is impressive and you're, you're growing. You're into Best now, and you're into more, more and more training, doing some OSHA training.

So there's a lot of resources available and the website's been updated. Right. And I think a lot of people are, go to the website, just Google it. You can get there. But the offerings are getting more expansive. The, the technical details are getting deeper into the aspects of all parts of the industry, 

Nick Martocci: right?

We've worked with, uh, a few entities, uh, to name Drop Ner [00:08:00] and um, destructible. They've donated quite a bit of different pieces for our training programs, for blades, for brake systems and things of that nature. For us to be able to take our program to that next level and actually put what technicians are going to be putting their hands on in our training places rather than something as simple as a, uh, like an theory plate piece and actually putting something that a manufacturer is building for these entities.

And saying, Hey, here, this is the exact same thing you're gonna see, uh, they donated a, a unit that goes to a GE one X, but you know, if you go out to a four X, it's gonna be the same thing, just a little bigger. 

Allen Hall: Bigger. Right, 

Nick Martocci: right. And, and so it, it makes it so that it goes from serious hands-on theory to, oh, I've seen something just like this, but it was a little smaller.

This is just bigger. I get it. Same thing. And so with destructible being able to make those donations for blades and other pieces. Uh, we're putting together a LPS program, lightning [00:09:00] Protection Systems. Oh, 

Allen Hall: good. 

Nick Martocci: And so that's something That's awesome. Yeah, it's something that, it's a 

Allen Hall: lightning protection company.

That's fantastic. 

...

US wind PPA prices climb to $79.40/MWh as the IRA sunsets. Plus GE Vernova ordered to stay at Vineyard Wind, lessons from Spain's blackout, and data centers straining the US grid.

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

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

Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall here with Nikki Briggs, who is in North Carolina this week, and Yolanda Padron who is back from the exciting wedding and weekend in Mexico. Welcome back, Yolanda. 

Yolanda Padron: Thank you. Excited to be here, 

Allen Hall: uh, this week there's a, there's a lot going on and we're gonna touch upon some of it.

Uh, Rosemary is over in China this week and Matthew is actually at Wind Europe in Madrid. And so this is gonna be an American focused episode mostly, but it's gonna have global implications. One of the key items is PPA prices in the United States and with the on sunsetting of the [00:01:00] IRA Bills, uh, tax credits, and the whole infrastructure there with the one big beautiful bill when it crushed the IRA bill.

PPA Prices needed to come up well. That's happening, right? So developers, uh, can't live without some money to compensate for the roughly 26, 26 7 20 $7 in PPA prices that were compensated by the tax credits. But, uh, when purchase price agreements have hit the highest level since they begin tracking it at Wood Mac.

The average wind PPA now stands at $79 and 40 cents per megawatt hour up 24% from just one year ago now, Yolanda, you and I were talking before we started recording today about how low some of those PPA prices were two years ago, three years ago. Some of them were almost single digits. 

Yolanda Padron: Yeah, yeah. Some of them were pretty low.

I [00:02:00] remember 16, $19 EPA prices and then a couple years ago we were looking at those and thinking, oh no, I can't believe we, we kept those prices and they're so low and everything's changed so much, and the prices grown so much, and that was two years ago and now it's, it's, it's, it's almost four times as much as, as what we had originally thought, which is.

Not super great for those older projects, 

Allen Hall: obviously, uh, when they, if they do repower, the extent they're gonna have to renegotiate the PPAs. Right. The, the landscape has changed quite a bit. So the, the question really is now are they gonna be able to renegotiate new PPAs when the existing PPA hopefully ends?

You can't, you can't run turbines for free and will they repower. Or will they just try to extend the lifetime? I think it's a lot of operators trying to figure that out right now. And that's in light of installations. So Whim Mac also says that US wind installations are [00:03:00] on track to nearly double in 2026, uh, building towards 48 gigawatts of new capacity through 2030, which all makes sense, right?

That the, the. Uh, everybody's trying to get all their assets in the ground so they, they qualify for the, the tax credits. So there's a big push. So 2026 and 2027 are gonna be pretty busy years. Uh, but the, the negotiations are still going on and we're talking to operators. Nikki and I have been talking to operators this past week or the last couple of weeks, honestly.

There is all kinds of negotiations going on for turbines right now and who can get turbines? Can they get 'em in time? Can they get 'em planted fast enough? Nikki, it is causing a lot of operators to spend a great deal of time doing planning that they otherwise wouldn't have been working on two years ago.

Nikki Briggs: Definitely. I mean, it seems kind of weird to me because it's like a weird spot. It's like, um, you know, we want more power and we need to do all these projects, [00:04:00] but then. The permitting process is just like a brick wall or something, you know? Um, like it just takes them so much more to get through, um, and get it moving.

Allen Hall: Well, I, I think if you have an existing site, you're gonna repower it. I mean, that's probably the easiest thing to do if, if you can pull it off. The, the question is how big of a turbine are you gonna purchase? A lot of those turbines that are gonna get repowered are probably 1.5. To two megawatt machines.

They're going to move up to five or six megawatt machines, generally speaking. So they're reducing the amount of turbines that are gonna be on site. But the, the amount of power that's delivered usually is about the same, maybe a little bit more. Which, which, which strives the, which drives the, the equation of, Hey, what's everybody gonna do in the next couple of years with the data centers.

Having listened to the GE Renova financial report for Q1 that just came out as we're earlier today. GE is trying to sell gas turbines like there's no tomorrow. However, the weird thing about it was that they were [00:05:00] very nervous about locking in firm orders that a lot of the deposits they had for like 2029 or moving into 2030.

So they had a, a discussion about GE Renova building gas turbines. They could do about 20 gigawatts a year, but they had like a 10 gigawatt hole. In 20 29, 20 30 of orders because the data centers are realizing, like to get a contractor to put a hole in the ground so you can put a data center in is taking more time than they thought.

It's not Silicon Valley where you can just type some software. And Yolanda, you're kind of in the middle of this right now, being in Austin, Texas. Is the, the drive for data centers and the drive for power, what it was six months ago, is that landscape changed? Has everybody come back to reality? Like building physical projects takes time.

Yolanda Padron: I think people are starting to get, get back to reality from the little bit that, that I've been, that. I privy to, uh, I do think that you mentioned the GE renova and [00:06:00] just kind of all the changes and everything. And I know in the past we've talked about, um, the fact that, you know, a lot of blade manufacturers have changed hands for wind and a lot of things are uncertain in general.

Um, I think right now with the boom of people trying to repower and doing everything as quickly as possible and as safely as possible, it's really important that everybody should. Try to get as much documentation on everything as possible, not just to, to protect yourselves, right? I mean, if there's some sort of, I mean, you're, you're, you're checking that the foundation on your turbine is perfect still, um, doing all the civil engineering studies that you need to do and making sure that, that everything's fine, um, for, for the long term, right?

If you're not, you're not planning on repowering again in five years. Um. But just to track everything. There's so much movement right now and so much uncertainty that at the very least, so you know, what you're dealing with, if and when you have an issue, [00:07:00] you know, five years down the line, like, oh, this is what happened and this is why, this is who I need to talk to, or this is how I'm going to solve this.

Or, you know, it's not a new problem. Um, because it's just, there's just so many, so many factors changing. All at once that it's, it's a little bit, it's a little bit daunting for everyone in this space. I don't know if you guys feel the same way. 

Nikki Briggs: I have a separate question, um, which is, you know about these PPA pricing, if it's going up, it continues to go up.

Is the old adage about like green energy is the, is is the cheapest? Is that like out of the wind now? I mean, that's not even. You can't even apply that. 

Allen Hall: No, I think renewable energy, solar and wind are the lowest cost, fastest way to get power onto the grid. The, the, the question is, uh, will state and federal governments prohibit it?

Because if you're talking about the gas turbines, [00:08:00] which is not cheap, and you're talking maybe the earliest is 20 30, 20 32. Uh, as when you be able to, to get something scale there. What else did there that you're gonna build? Nuclear. Nuclear GE iss. Talking about nuclear small modular reactors again today.

And they got a project going up in Canada, it sounded like that's not vast either. So if you're talking about speed and deployment, solar's quick, right? You can just put 'em up and you can get wind turbines up pretty fast too. But anything that's uh, gas turbine or god forbid, we start burning oil again to make electricity.

Uh, I, I just don't see it. This has implications obviously over in Europe too, right? So Wind Europe is this week, and it's in Madrid, of course. And the Vesta, CEO, Henrik Anderson's, uh, told the audience over in Europe that, uh, hey, there's a lot of choices to be made [00:09:00] here the next couple of years, and it's more important now than ever, uh, to.

Think about renewables with the problems in the ous, straight of ous, sending prices higher. Does Europe want to be connected to a petroleum future? I think Europe has been struggling with that since obviously the Ukraine war started. So the, the problems in Iran are just gonna double down on that. The EU Energy Commissioner, uh, Dan Jorgenson, uh, called it out.

Earlier this week and said it's, this is not an energy crisis, it's a fossil fuel crisis. So if we don't have to rely on fossil fuel so much, then the energy crisis will hopefully come down in Europe. Uh, but one of the weird things about what's happening and where

Allen covers WindEurope Madrid, the ten-point Call to Action, Vestas CEO Andersen's mission impossible warning, Siemens Gamesa's narrowing losses, and CNC Onsite's deals in Asia.

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

Good Monday, everyone.

This past week... some big things happened in Madrid.

Fifteen thousand wind energy people from every corner of the world walked into the same room.

They came to talk. They came to listen. They came to ask for help.

And they came to warn.

The WindEurope Annual Event opened on Tuesday, the twenty-first of April, with six hundred twenty exhibitors and four hundred speakers across three days.

Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez gave the opening address.

Fourteen national ministers stood on the stages, alongside European Commission Executive Vice President Teresa Ribera and European Commissioner for Energy Dan Jorgensen.

And the message coming out of Madrid... was a single piece of paper.

They called it the Madrid Call to Action.

Ten points. Ten things European governments need to do... right now.

Fast-track permitting, and treat wind as overriding public interest. Award at least eighty percent of wind auction bids... no more artificial scarcity. Repower aging wind farms and triple their output with fewer turbines. Multiply EU grid funding by five. Zero VAT on heat pumps and electric vehicles. And permanently cut taxes on electricity... because homegrown power should be the cheapest power.

The framing was simple.

From crisis... to confidence... in a decade.

But while the speeches were polite... the panels were not.

On Thursday afternoon, Vestas chief executive Henrik Andersen took the microphone, and he did not mince words.

Andersen called it mission impossible.

He told politicians to stop submitting wish lists for new auctions. He pointed at Denmark's recent failed offshore auction... an auction that no developer would even bid on. And he pointed at countries trying to build a three-dimensional CSRD into the next tender.

Then he delivered the line that quieted the room.

If we don't get this under control... we'll be sitting here in five years... begging to keep the lights on.

Now... while the warnings were echoing through Madrid... something quieter was happening on a balance sheet in Munich.

Siemens Energy released preliminary second-quarter results on Wednesday, and then raised their full-year outlook.

Group orders for the quarter came in at seventeen point seven billion euros... up almost thirty percent year on year.

Net income for the full year is now expected to be around four billion euros, with Grid Technologies orders alone up forty-one percent.

And the wind unit... Siemens Gamesa... their losses narrowed to forty-four million euros.

A year ago, that number was two hundred forty-nine million.

Still in the red. Still operating at a margin of negative one point seven percent. But the trend is clear.

The Spanish wind unit is closing in on break-even.

After years of crisis... after billions of euros in impairments... Siemens Gamesa is healing.

Now back to Madrid.

Because last Thursday, WindEurope published a different kind of paper.

Not about money. Not about megawatts. About sabotage.

Across Europe's seas, energy infrastructure has become a target. Cables, substations, offshore platforms... spread across thousands of square kilometers of open ocean... difficult to protect.

WindEurope Chief Executive Tinne Van Der Straeten said it plainly.

The physical security of Europe's wind turbines must be treated as an integral part of energy security... not as an afterthought.

The policy paper calls for civilian protection, not military. Risk-based and proportionate, with clear cost allocation between government and industry.

Wind farms now generate twenty percent of Europe's electricity, and the North Sea countries have pledged three hundred gigawatts of offshore wind by twenty fifty.

That is a lot of critical infrastructure... sitting in the open ocean.

But here is where Madrid got uncomfortable.

Vestas' senior vice president stood on a panel Wednesday afternoon and offered a reality check.

The EU has set a goal of twenty-two gigawatts of new wind installation every year through twenty thirty.

What is the reality?

The EU installed fifteen gigawatts in twenty twenty-five. Sixteen the year before.

There is a gap... between political will, goals, and promises... and the reality we see in the market.

The Madrid Call to Action wants to close that gap.

The paper exists. The politicians have been told. Now... we wait.

And while the speeches were happening in Madrid... a small Danish company was quietly opening doors in Asia.

CNC Onsite... a wind sector subsupplier... signed two deals this month.

One with Dutch firm WE4CE for Thai customer Cewa Plus, a deal that opens twelve Asian countries.

The technology? A specialized machine that drills out the steel bushings holding a wind turbine blade to the hub, so they can be replaced without scrapping the blade.

Repair on site. Save the blade. Extend its life.

The second deal... a CNC milling machine sold into Japan for offshore monopile and foundation work.

CEO Soren Kellenberger says the combined opportunity could deliver up to fifty million Danish kroner in revenue... roughly six point seven million euros.

Not big numbers. Not yet.

But while everyone in Madrid was talking about politicians... CNC Onsite was signing contracts in Bangkok and Tokyo.

The number of wind turbines reaching the age where their blades need replacing... Kellenberger calls it... huge.

So let us step back.

In Madrid, fifteen thousand people gathered. A ten-point plan was published. A CEO warned of mission impossible. A trade association said the offshore turbines need physical protection from sabotage.

In Munich, a balance sheet showed the wind business is healing... slowly, quietly, quarter by quarter.

And in Bangkok, a Danish technician was teaching a Thai partner how to drill out a steel bushing.

Six stories. One week.

The wind industry showed up... asked for what it needed... and put the numbers on the table.

The financial proof is starting to come. The political follow-through... we wait.

And that is the state of the wind industry for the 27th of April... 2026.

Join us for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast tomorrow.

Nicholas Gaudern from PowerCurve joins to discuss SilentEdge serrations with up to 5 dB noise reduction, Dragon Scale VGs for AEP recovery, and their approach to products that actually perform in the field. Contact PowerCurve on LinkedIn for more information.

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

Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy's brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering tomorrow.

Allen Hall: Nicholas, welcome back to the show. 

Nicholas Gaudern: Thanks, Allen. Always a pleasure. 

Allen Hall: Well, there's a lot of new products coming outta PowerCurve. And PowerCurve is the aerodynamic leader in add-ons and making your turbines perform at higher efficiency with less loss. Uh, so basically taking that standard OEM blade and making it work the way it was intended to work.

Nicholas Gaudern: Yes. We 

Allen Hall: like to 

Nicholas Gaudern: think so. Yeah. 

Allen Hall: And there's a, there's a lot of new technology that you've been working on in the lab that you haven't been able to explore to the, introduce to the world, so to speak. Yeah. And we've seen some of it from the inside of, you know, you're working behind the scenes or working really hard to get this done, but now that technology has been released to the world, and we're gonna introduce it today, some new trailing edge.

[00:01:00] Components. Yeah. That really, really reduce the noise. But they, they look a little bit odd. Yes. There's a lot of ADON dams going on with 

Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. 

Allen Hall: With these. So what, what do you call these new trailing edge parts? 

Nicholas Gaudern: So, so what you have in your hand here? This is the Silence edge, uh, serration. So this is our new trailing Edge Serration products.

Now, most people, when they think of training restorations, they are thinking of triangles. 

Allen Hall: Exactly. 

Nicholas Gaudern: These Dino tails. Dino Tails, that's the Siemens, Siemens name for them. Pretty, pretty standard. You see 'em on a lot of turbines now. Sure. And they work, you know, they do do a job. They do a job. They reduce noise.

But like with lots of things in, in aerodynamics, there's lots of different ways that you can solve a problem and some are better than others. So we've worked for a long, long time in the wind tunnel, uh, in the CFD simulations, and we've come up with this pretty unique shape. We think, 

Allen Hall: well, the, the, the shape is unique and if you, if you look at it, there's actually different heights to the, the triangle, so to speak.

To mix the air from the pressure and the [00:02:00] suction side to reduce the, the level of noise coming off the blade 

Nicholas Gaudern: e Exactly. So we have, uh, we have an asymmetry to the part. We have these different tooth lengths. We have, uh, a lot of changes in thickness going on across the part. So it may be a little bit difficult to see on the camera, but these are quite sculpted 3D components.

They're not, they're not flat stock white triangles. No, no. There's a lot of thickness detail going on here. We've paid a lot of attention to the edges. We've paid a lot of attention to these gaps between the teeth as well. So all of this is about trying to figure out what is the best way to reduce noise.

And something that not a lot of people will, will admit, but it's true, is that as an industry we don't really understand the fundamentals of how serrations work. 

Allen Hall: It's a complicated 

Nicholas Gaudern: problem. It's a really complicated thing. Problem, yeah. Yes. So trying to simulate it in CFD is an absolute nightmare. The, the mesh sizes required, the physics models required are really, really difficult.

So what we found is that you're probably better off spending [00:03:00] most of your time and money in the wind tunnel. Yes. So, so we go to DTU, they have this wonderful, uh, air acoustic wind tunnel, the pool of core tunnel. It's one the best tunnels in the industry for doing this kind of work. It 

Allen Hall: is 

Nicholas Gaudern: because you can measure acoustics and aerodynamics at the same time.

So this allows us to do a lot of very cost effective iteration for this kind of design work. So we know what's important. You know, we've, we've studied all the different parameters of serrations lengths, aspect ratios, angles, thicknesses, all this kind of stuff. And it's about bringing them together into a, into a coherent product.

So this is, this is a result of a lot of design of experiments, a lot of iteration, and combining wind tunnel and CFD to kind of get the best of both of those tools. So, 

Allen Hall: so what's the. Noise reduction compared to those standard triangular trailing aerations. Yeah. 

Nicholas Gaudern: So there's lots of different ways of, of thinking about noise reduction, but I think probably the most useful is the O-A-S-P-L.

So this is the overall sound pressure level. Right. Is kind of what [00:04:00]typically you'll be measuring in an IEC test. 

Allen Hall: Right. 

Nicholas Gaudern: And that's measured in decibels, but a way to decibels because it's important that we're waiting to what the human ear can actually hear. Right. Perceive. Exactly. So that's the numbers we report.

For the field test we've recently completed with Silent Edge, we're seeing up to five decibels of O-A-S-P-L noise reduction. 

Allen Hall: Okay. So what's that mean in terms of what I hear on the ground? 

Nicholas Gaudern: So that is an absolutely huge reduction. It's multiple times of reduction because you know, decibels on a log scale, 

Allen Hall: right?

Nicholas Gaudern: So five DB is is enormous. It's 

Allen Hall: a lot. Yeah. 

Nicholas Gaudern: And what's really interesting is that if you have a turbine that's running in a noise mode, just one decibel reduction. Of power, sound, sound, power level might be three or 4% P loss. I mean, that, that's, that's huge. Think about that loss. So if you need to reduce noise by five decibels to get within a regulation, imagine how much a EP you have to throw away by basically turning down the [00:05:00] turbine to do that.

Allen Hall: That's right. 

Nicholas Gaudern: So that's really what the, the business case for these kind of products is. It means you can escape noise modes because as soon as you use a noise mode. You are throwing away energy. 

Allen Hall: You're throwing well you're throwing away profits. 

Nicholas Gaudern: Exactly. 

Allen Hall: So you're just losing money to reduce the noise.

Now you can operate at peak. 

Nicholas Gaudern: Yep. 

Allen Hall: Power output without the creating the noise where you have that risk. Right. So, and particularly in a lot of countries now, there are noise regulations. Yes. And they are very well monitored. 

Nicholas Gaudern: Yep. 

Allen Hall: We're seeing it more and more where, uh, government agencies are coming out and checking.

Yes. 'cause they have a complaint and so you get a complaint. Oh, that's fine. Or someone can complain. Yeah. You know, you need to be making your numbers. 

Nicholas Gaudern: Yep. And, and the industry needs to be good neighbors, you know? It 

Allen Hall: certainly does. 

Nicholas Gaudern: Uh, we have to make sure that people are, you know, approving and comfortable with having wind turbines in their backyard.

Sure. And noise is a big part of that. 

Allen Hall: It is. 

Nicholas Gaudern: So yeah. Ap sure. That's really important. Being a good [00:06:00] neighbor also important. 

Allen Hall: Right. 

Nicholas Gaudern: Meeting the regulations. Obviously you have to meet the regulations. So this product, um, has been through a really long development cycle, and we're now putting the final touches to the, to the tooling.

So this is available now. 

Allen Hall: Oh, wow. 

Nicholas Gaudern: Okay. Great. Um, and we're hoping that in the next uh, few months we'll be getting even more turbines equipped out in the field with, with the technology. 

Allen Hall: So, oh, sure. There's a, you think about the number of turbines that are in service, hundreds of thousands total worldwide.

A lot of them have no noise reduction at all. 

Nicholas Gaudern: No. No. 

Allen Hall: And they have a lot of complaints from the neighbors. 

Nicholas Gaudern: Exactly. 

Allen Hall: Trying to expand wind into new areas, uh, is hard because the, the experience of the previous Yes. Neighbor 

Nicholas Gaudern: Yep. 

Allen Hall: Grows into future neighbors. So fixing the turbines you have out in sight today helps you get the next site.

I know we don't always think about that, but that's exactly how it works. Yeah, of course. Uh, we need to be conscientious of the people of the turbines we have in service right now. So that we can continue to grow wind [00:07:00] globally and more regulations on noise are gonna come unless we start taking care of the problem ourselves.

Nicholas Gaudern: Yep. And another really important thing with Serrations is that you have to design them so that they don't impact the loads on the rest of the turbine. 

Allen Hall: Right. And people forget about that. 

Nicholas Gaudern: Yes. 

Allen Hall: Can you just, can't just throw up any device up there. And think, well, my blade's gonna be happy with it. It may not be happy with that device.

Nicholas Gaudern: You have to really carefully understand what the existing blade aerodynamic signature is. 

Allen Hall: Sure. 

...

Vineyard Wind sues GE Renewables to block a walkout over $300M in withheld payments and defective blades. Plus Ørsted posts a $262M quarterly loss and shakes up its board.

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

Uptime316

Matthew Stead: [00:00:00] The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by Strike Tape, protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit strike tape.com And now your hosts.

Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host Allen Hall, and I'm here with Matthew Stead and Rosemary Barnes who are in Australia. Before we get too far into this episode, I would like to mention that the UK US relationship has been very tense recently, as you have seen in the, in the news articles and on television.

But there was one good news piece that just happened, which is the band Oasis just got inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. So that is trying to mend those relationships, bring the UK and US back together. In at least a musical sense. So I know Rosemary was watching that closely as the votes were counted.

But, [00:01:00] uh, everybody in the UK is super thrilled about it as they should be. And all us Oasis fans can't wait for the induction ceremony. In fact, we're planning to go to Cleveland. They'll go watch it if we can. We shall see now onto more important information this week. Vineyard, wind and GE are not getting along.

And if you have been paying attention for the last two years, you would've noticed that there's been a couple of tense moments. Well, uh, that wind project is a little bit up in the air because vineyard wind has filed suit against GE renewables to stop the turbine maker from walking away after GE sent a termination notice.

Over a $300 million ish, uh, disagreement in unpaid bills. At the center of this dispute are defective blades, of course, that, uh, broke off in 2024 and caused a number of problems, uh, for GE and vineyard Wind is particularly a delay in the [00:02:00] project and ge having to fix pull blades off of turbines that were already installed and I think they ended up sending those back to France.

Reading the lawsuit, it seems like GE did not repair those blades. They replaced those blades because, uh, they may not have been able to repair them or maybe is the amount of time it's gonna take to repair them. You can repair almost anything made out of. Composite. Uh, but this is a big problem because, uh, if GE does walk away and they're talking about walking away from this project at the end of April, vineyard, wind believes that the turbines are not ready to be operated, and they don't have a way to operate those turbines.

They don't have the knowledge or the people because the people belong to GE that need to make some of these turbines operate. Even there's even some question about if all the turbines are operating at the required [00:03:00]handover requirements. This is unique because I don't think I've ever seen a wind turbine manufacturer leave before a wind site is finished.

It must have happened before, but. It does put both sides in quite a pinch. Right. 

Rosemary Barnes: Can I just jump, jump back to, to something that you said, um, that you can repair almost anything when it comes to composites? I would say that that doesn't necessarily apply if your design was insufficient in the first place.

And I mean the design for manufacturing in this case, I think that the, like computer model design worked fine, but obviously it was not as easy to manufacture or as possible to manufacture. With the correct quality as what they expected. It can't have been so simple to just, just repair. That's, um, that's what I want to say.

Like it, it's obvious to me that if it was possible to repair, that would've been much easier than what they've ended up with, which I think is pretty foreseeable. Or most [00:04:00] engineers would probably have foreseen that if you, you know, put blades out there that, um, don't meet your. Standard, um, quality control acceptance criteria that, you know, the consequence of that would be that it would be more likely to fail.

So yeah, I think you can repair nearly anything on a standard blade that is possible to make correctly. But if you've got big quality problems, then it's not, it's, it's not easy and it's possibly not possible to, you know, just get, um, just get onto that in repair. 

Matthew Stead: I, I think you're both right. Because it all comes down to economics.

So I think Alan's statement, you know, things can be repaired. It just comes back to economics, doesn't it? 

Rosemary Barnes: U usually, yes. And like for your average, like if you've got a wind farm and you've got a blade with a big, a big repair, or you know, like a big defect right on the main laminate, that's gonna require, you know, like a huge repair, taking the blade down and keeping it down for, you know, like three months while you rebuild like 20 meters [00:05:00] of laminate.

Yes, that would be technically possible, but you wouldn't because it would be so expensive. So us usually, like in 99% of cases, that would be it. That it's not actually impossible to repair. It's just very hard. But, you know, in these really huge blades and, you know, um, bearing in mind that I don't, I don't know the specific quality problems that they face, but, you know, just from my knowledge of composites, you can say what the challenging areas would be, but you know, a really big blade is gonna have a really thick laminate and, um, composites don't like to have really thick laminates.

When they cure, it's usually an, an exothermic reaction, puts off heat, you know, like the temperature is changing and um, it works fine for thin laminates, but when it's really thick you can get hot spots and cold spots and maybe it's hard to get the resin to go all the way through evenly. But you know, imagine if you've got a really thick laminate and there's a chunk of it that just didn't get any resin in it.

How are you gonna repair that? Like, I wouldn't say impossible. I'm sure if the fate of the human race depended on it, then you would, you would make it work. But it's [00:06:00] certainly very close to impossible. 

Matthew Stead: Economically, it does not make sense. 

Rosemary Barnes: You would probably have to make a few inventions. Along the way to be able to make it work as well.

I think, 

Allen Hall: I think I should read part of, and I don't like reading these lawsuits, but this is informative in a sense that it provides some relative background as to what Vineyard Wind is thinking in some of the contract details that are involved here. So in June 4th, 2021, this is directly from the lawsuit, uh, vineyard Wind entered into A TSA with GE renewables in which.

GE Renewables agreed to design, manufacture supply, install commission, and test the wind turbine generators for the vineyard wind project at a contract price of more than $1.3 billion. There you go. On the same day as an integral part of the commercial agreement, the parties entered into an SMA, uh, by which GE renewables agreed to maintain and service that wind turbine [00:07:00]generators for the first five years.

Of operations of the project and guarantee that all wind turbine generators will operate at a 97% of production availability. Uh, this guarantee is central, is a central component of the commercial viability of the Vineyard Wind Project. So I would say so, right. Uh, at present, all of the wind turbine generators on the project have been installed.

However, the wind turbine generators are not yet fully operational and are. Able to reduce power at only levels well below those intended under the contracts fundamental to the project's commitment to Massachusetts to achieve full commercial operation. The project requires repair, commissioning, and maintenance of GE renewables, 62 proprietary wind turbine generators, and their component parts work that only GE renewables knows how to perform.

So it sounds like Vineyard Wind has a five-year contract that GE ISS gonna operate these [00:08:00] turbines, and if they leave in a couple of weeks, vineyard wind really doesn't have a backup plan. They may have. Were planning on a plan five years down the road where they could operate 'em, but to operate those turbines immediately when they haven't, at least as.

Indicated here may not be fully commissioned to providing the right amount of availability. That's a huge problem for Vineyard. Huge. 

Rosemary Barnes: It's interesting to me that they've decided to withhold some money that I think everyone agrees that they owe that money to ge. But then there's a dispute because Vineyard when says that GE owes them money for some other stuff That sounds like GE disputes.

Um, it's like if you have a problem. With your landlord, they always tell you, don't, don't withhold rent, because then they can, you know, that's, that's their out of the contract. Right? So it seems weird, like it's a relatively small amount compared to what vineyard wind is risking. So. It seems to me like, are they, is this a mistake from them?

Are they giving ge an out from this contract that's gonna be [00:09:00] really hard for them to meet? It might be that GE knows what it would cost to entirely fix the wind farm and have it producing the way that it should. But, you know, let's say in a worst case scenario, that means remaking every single blade in the um, in the wind farm.

At the, at the French factory, you know, like that could be your,...

Allen covers Ørsted's first turbine install at Sunrise Wind, Cadeler's fleet expansion, the Pentagon's 7.5 GW onshore backlog, and the UK's £154B onshore wind opportunity.

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

Happy Monday, everyone.

While headlines this week captured courtrooms and bankruptcy filings and permitting backlogs, out on the open water and deep inside factory order books, the wind turbines kept getting built.

Let us start off the coast of New York. Friday morning, April seventeenth, Ørsted installed the first wind turbine generator at Sunrise Wind — a 924-megawatt project, 84 turbines when complete. This is the same Sunrise Wind that was shut down just four months ago. The same Sunrise Wind that won a preliminary injunction in February. The same Sunrise Wind the Trump Administration chose not to appeal. And now the first turbine stands above the water. Cadeler's wind turbine installation vessel Wind Scylla is doing the work. She just finished the same job at Revolution Wind. Ørsted says first power flows to New York later this year. Commercial operation the second half of 2027. Six hundred thousand homes on the grid.

Now follow us across the Atlantic. In the Polish Baltic Sea, another Cadeler vessel just began her maiden campaign. Her name: Wind Mover. Delivered last November from Hanwha Ocean in Korea, ahead of schedule. This new M-class installation vessel now sits at the 1.2-gigawatt Baltic Power offshore wind farm, installing Vestas V236 turbines — 15 megawatts apiece. Wind Mover's sister vessel, Wind Osprey, is moving to the United Kingdom to start work at East Anglia Three. Cadeler has doubled its fleet in twelve months. By mid-2027, twelve vessels — the largest offshore wind installation fleet in the industry.

While turbines go up on the eastern side of the Atlantic, on the western side a different kind of wait is setting in. Bloomberg reported last week that the Pentagon is sitting on a backlog of at least 30 proposed American wind farms — 7.5 gigawatts of onshore capacity. Paperwork stalled. The issue is Section 10-32, the Defense Department's review to ensure turbines do not interfere with military radar or aviation. Jason Grumet, head of the American Clean Power Association, calls it direct obstruction. His group sent a letter to the Pentagon earlier this month. The deadline for a response was April eighth. That deadline came and went. Seven point five gigawatts, waiting.

Now turn to the United Kingdom, where the direction could not be more different. A new report commissioned by Renewable UK and written by consultants at Everoze says expanding Britain's onshore wind supply chain between now and 2050 could add £56 billion in economic value. That is on top of another £98 billion already expected — a total of £154 billion. UK onshore capacity is set to grow from 16 gigawatts today to more than 50 gigawatts by 2050. Seventy percent of lifecycle spend already stays in the UK. The report points to blades, towers, nacelles, drivetrains, and electrical gear for substations as the highest-value opportunities.

So let us step back. One turbine above the water off Long Island. A new vessel installing 15-megawatt machines in the Polish Baltic. Seven point five gigawatts of American onshore wind held up in Washington. And £56 billion staked on British onshore.

The policy fights are loud. The legal fights are louder. But this past week, the turbines went up.

That is the state of the wind industry for the 20th of April, 2026.

Join us for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast tomorrow.

Nicole Johnson Murphy, CEO of ECO TLP, and Gordon Jackson join to discuss concrete floating wind foundations, production-line construction, and markets from Hawaii to Japan.

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

Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy's brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow.

Allen Hall: Offshore wind obviously is a big deal right now. There's a lot of, countries looking at it and investigating it, doing it, but not really at scale yet. And this is where ECO TLP comes in and. Nicole, let's just start there with a background. What problem were you trying to solve when you started ECO TLP?

Nicole Johnson-Murphy: Yeah, so, we were designing for, a site off of Hawaii in 2011, for the HECO RFP. And so we were designing for 300 meter water depth from the beginning. so we were always trying to find a way to work with the ports, with the vessel, with the infrastructure that was existing off Hawaii. And with, and that worked with Jones Act vessels.

So we were always trying to meet that [00:01:00] requirement with, and meet the cost, try to, we saw there were much tighter margins in offshore wind than in oil and gas, for example, at that water depth. So we're trying to find something that was cost effective. 

Allen Hall: Next question, obviously is what makes those deep water foundations so difficult?

Gordon Jackson: It's the water depth, primarily, you need to put foundations down in, extremely deep water. and they're gonna be pretty flexible. so you're trying to control the amount of motion that you get at the surface through your, your deep water, facility. it's really.

Really that challenge, and, the weight of components through the water depth, likes of chain would be completely impossible. in 300 meters of water. you need to use something that's a little bit lighter. Yeah, to mow you to the, to the seabed.

Allen Hall: [00:02:00] Because it does seem a little odd just not to make the foundations taller, basically.

More steel drive it down in, we know that process, we understand that process. It works offshore, near shore in a, lot of locations. But once you get to what depth as it becomes financially or engineering wise, impossible. 

Gordon Jackson: For offshore wind, fixed, structures in, maybe a hundred meters of water are gonna be.

Economic. they'll be costly compared to what's been done now because, of all the extra structure you need for the, for the deeper water. But, I think you'll see, a crossover between fixed and floating, around the, 70 to a hundred meter water mark.

that's sort the range.

Allen Hall: And that leads to the next question, which is. It's all financial, right? At some point, the numbers [00:03:00] don't work. If the cost of foundations don't come down, especially in fixed bottom offshore or floating offshore, we lose a lot of offshore wind resource. Nicole can you gimme a scale at what we're missing if we don't get to a more economical solution for floating offshore?

Nicole Johnson-Murphy: So we've estimated for our market for, a very deep water market. So we now actually have a solution that goes across all water depths. So we're starting with, this, gravity based structure now with, and, Gordon's team has been really involved in that, development. And then now we can take that same slip form, concrete cylinder.

Format and take it across all the water depths. so we basically can hit every water depth now for a very low cost. It's a very simple, just, local, regionally designed and built, system. We, crowdsource the labor and the inputs. and so we [00:04:00] try to, and we also try to give the procurement team of our clients their, an ability to do their job and, be able to bid out aspects of our design, across.

Different vendors. So you always wanna give, in construction, you always wanna give, the procurement team a job to do so they can actually get that price, keep that price down on the installation. 

Allen Hall: Yeah, that's a unique look that ECO TLP is putting to this problem. Which is moving away from steel, which is expensive obviously, and it's difficult to transport at times to a more localized solution, which is concrete.

And thinking about the problem a little bit differently, does that open up a number of doors then in terms of the countries that can get involved in, floating or near shore, wind projects, but just because you're driving the cost down? 

Nicole Johnson-Murphy: Absolutely. And I'll let Gordon speak to that.. He's worked. His whole career in offshore concrete.

But I think it's, I think it's a, great, it's the only way we would do it. We actually have shipyards in our companies, our partners own [00:05:00] shipyards, and we, just would never probably ex try to create this many units across the world and scale and steel. We'd only do concrete. 

Gordon Jackson: Yeah. My first concrete project broke the mold of how you do, construction of concrete offshore structures.

it was entirely built within a dry dock and, After we'd gone on and delivered that project, that was in the late eighties. I spent the next 10 years, working on projects all around the world, looking at doing the same sort of thing in different countries. because you only needed, 10, 12 meters of water, at the shore and you could, build a structure and get it out there in the water.

It really opened up the market for offshore concrete structures that, that, first project that we did. 

Allen Hall: So using that first project as leverage and knowledge of how to do these things, how much advantage [00:06:00] does concrete give you over steel?

Gordon Jackson: It's difficult to say because it bends country to country. And, quite often you're competing against, steel built in some, very low cost fabrication countries. so if you're in a high cost, high labor cost country, I worked in Australia, and the labor cost there was extremely high. So concrete wasn't particularly cheap, but the overall solutions that we came up with, were cheap.

Allen Hall: So does that involve basically like slip forms or how are you, thinking about that problem? Because it's a huge engineering task and you only learn. By doing it on some level because all great plans, always run into trouble as soon as you try to implement them. So you took all that previous knowledge and then applied it to this problem, and now you have, basically [00:07:00]trimmed or, slimmed, the design down into, you have a, very economical model, even in more uneconomical economies because of labor laws and cost of labor and access and those kind of things.

What does that look like now? And what's your thought process on, Hey, this is what it's gonna look like? Can we get, quayside how do we do this and how do we keep this thing simple?

Gordon Jackson: The key thing is we're looking at, a production line approach, which has been, it's tried and tested for, for marine, concrete construction, construction of quay walls and and the we're using exactly that same system.

We've just been tried and tested to create a production line of, ECO TLP units or ECO GBS units where we're building, onshore and where we're going from station to station, doing a task at each station. [00:08:00] So it's exactly like a production line, that you're be familiar with and, you load out the completed structure onto a barge, and then you.

Submerge that barge and your structure floats off and that's, the real key to getting the, the economy from the concrete basis. 

Nicole Johnson-Murphy: Yeah, and I'll say that the OpEX is really something we focus a lot on because it's not just what you're doing on the CapEx and the development and the port, it's actually that 30 year lifetime maintenance.

And this is a, when you, we fully submerge our floater, which is basically inert in the ocean. It's, very eco-friendly with the ocean. There's no paint, there's no, maintenance on the floater over the lifespan. You're, monitoring those, the moorings and the, weight of any marine, buildup on those moorings and things like that.

But generally it's a very low maintenance solution and it's very heavy and a comfortable car [00:09:00] ride for the turbine. It really has slow motions. it's, almost like a, a high skyscraper in the water. you're just the top of that skyscraper is moving a little bit. But you're, you're really giving it that comfortable, slow ride over its lifetime.

It's not hitting a lot of turbulence, like a different type of floater. 

Allen Hall: Yeah. It is a different concept, really, right? That you have this mass at the bottom and you have this mass at the top, which is the, cell on the wind turbine. And if you can design it just right, everything dampens becomes stable.

Even in turbulent water. How long did it take you to figure out that aspect of the design? Because it does seem like a lot of projects hit a, an end point right there because the motion of the turbine is not good for the lifetime of the turbine. 

Nicole Johnson-Murphy: We, look at it as a, kind of hybrid spar, TLP so, the original design came from my late father who was, who had designed Ekofisk for Phillips [00:10:00] petroleum in the early.

Late sixties, And, so he'd come from oil and gas and he'd come from that concrete, construction background. And, he is very comfortable with it. And I think, Gordon, that's part of why I like working with Gordon 'cause Gordon has that same, long-term view on, these construction principles.

And I think that,...