The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

Brett Tollgaard from Sunrez discusses their new leading edge protection solution, created using a durable UV-cure resin system. Using this solution reduces downtime due to quick cure times and strengthens leading edges for years to come.

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Bret Tollgaard: Bret, welcome back to the program. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Allen Hall: A lot has happened at Sunrez and you guys are the magic UV cure resin systems that everybody is using at the moment, but there’s a bunch of new products that are coming out that I think a lot of operators and ISPs need to be aware of.

One of ’em. Is a fill of material that looks great when you’re trying to fix the leading edges, which are just mangled from all the dirt and debris and rain. It’s not something you can just kind of smooth over very easily. And a lot of times operators spend a bunch of times sanding, grinding, trying to get it where they can apply some sort of liquidy coating to it, and it never really looks great and it’s not really smooth.

Bret Tollgaard: Sunrez has fixed that. We sure have. We’ve got a lot of customer feedback about some of the things that they’d like us to expand our UV cure portfolio on, and one of the big ones was leading edge protection. There’s been a ton of different solutions and stuff used over the years. Some with success, some.

Slightly less mild [00:01:00] success. Uh, and so we thought it was an opportunity kind of right for the picking. And so, uh, the chemist spent a reasonable amount of time trying to develop a highly filled, uh, UV curable resin system that will live up to all the abrasion, whether it’s rain, uh, you know, particulates in the air, et cetera.

And so we’ve undergone some really reasonable rain erosion testing thus far, and it’s shown to be a pretty good result. And so it’s been a slightly soft rollout as we really kind of finalize the formula in the system. But we really do think it’s a product that the, uh, customers are gonna love, whether it’s a pre impregnated, uh, fiberglass version, or potentially a, a putty version as well.

Joel Saxum: I mean, the LEP market is, you’re always hearing about new LEP, right? There’s this LEP test, there’s a whole conference devoted to leading edge erosion that. The DTU puts on, but it’s because it’s such a prevalent issue, right? Like. Alan and I in the field looking at reviewing blade damages for lightning and things.

But we see all, all kinds of leading edge erosion. That is, it’s crazy how annuity these turbines, some of these turbines are a [00:02:00] year, two, three years old, they’re still in warranty and the leading edges look like they’ve been hit with a sandblaster. It’s crazy. So the fact that you guys are working on something and what we really like, of course, about the UV cured products is that you get up there, you put it on, boom, you hit it with the uv.

You come off the tower, you turn it back on. ’cause a lot of operators, and this is, this is where sun really shines. A lot of operators are always talking about downtime. Downtime. When we talk about installing strike tape, how long do I need to leave the turbine off before? Well, we’ve working on some solutions.

We don’t have to, uh, but. It’s a, it’s a very common thing and I really, what I really enjoy about what you said was customer feedback. So that means that you guys are in the market, you’re trusted in the market, and people feel, feel good enough to come back to you and say, Hey, what about this? What about this?

What about that?

Bret Tollgaard: Yeah. It’s kind of similar to our pre pprs. We originally offered those in 300 millimeter by 750 liter flat sheets. Uh, millimeter, excuse me. It got [00:03:00] everyone kind of on the game experiencing some of it. And then with some more customer feedback, we said, Hey, how can we improve the product, the packaging, et cetera.

And they said, 10 meter long rolls of this exact same product would be fantastic. We have less overlaps. We can cut to size, get to shape a little easier, uh, and so we’re always constantly trying to get more customer feedback so we can adapt and tailor our products to the markets that we’re in. And with that LEP is just a tremendous opportunity to really.

Try to, uh, fast track some of the opportunities to get blades back, uh, spinning quicker

Allen Hall: because there’s really two ways of attacking the leading edge erosion problem. And I think United States is a little bit different than what would happen typically in Europe, uh, especially up north where it’s mostly rain impact.

What happens in onshore for the United States is I think a lot of dirt impact dust. Mm-hmm. Dust, dust, dirt, right. Bugs

Joel Saxum: till tillable soil. Whenever we see turbines near or downwind of tillable soil, the leading edge erosion always seems to be bad.

Allen Hall: So you’re kind of getting hit with a [00:04:00] sandblaster. Yeah.

Yeah. And that’s what it’s like. Tip speeds are 200 miles an hour, 90 meters a second. You’re hitting all this debris in the air and it just beats the heck out of these blades. That’s why the OEMs are having problems in those areas. Kansas, Iowa, all those areas are a problem. So the soft materials aren’t necessarily the best for that environment.

Mm-hmm. Great For offshore. A lot of places

Joel Saxum: Absorbing rain. Droplets

Allen Hall: rain, yes. And the testing shows that, but in the Midwest, in the United States and some of the areas, India, another place really harsh, where soft is probably the not the right solution. Something a little more durable, harder wear resistant.

Is the right solution and that’s what Sunwest

Bret Tollgaard: has developed, correct? Yeah. At the end of the day, everybody wants a rubber rock. Something that can take and withstand, maybe deflect some of the energy coming at it at the same time too. Being sturdy and strong enough. Uh, to have all the wear and abrasion resistance.

And so once again, we’ve been formulating UV cure resins for [00:05:00] decades. Yeah. And so we’ve had filled products, unfilled products, et cetera, and you manipulate some of the different concentrations of different additives in there and you can really kind of tailor and tweak the performance. And so. Uh, with that we have the ability to, once again, kind of pre impregnate some fiber in case people want to just wrap and do something kind of similar to the other film type applications.

Uh, but then once again, we also are able to provide that in a putty form and so we can change and adapt the viscosity to meet a certain customer’s needs. And really kind of then based on more potential OEM and ISP feedback. As to the processes that they’d both, uh, like us to explore the most, we can certainly go down that path, uh, a little quicker

Joel Saxum: with a putty.

So I’m thinking, in my mind, I’m picturing a really nasty leading edge ocean problem on a blade. Is there a thickness limit to a UV cured product?

Bret Tollgaard: There is. And the more filler you add, the more difficult it is to penetrate through all of that. Yeah. And the, the pre impregnated repair patches, we, uh, have right now, the 73 55 resin formula, we can truly do an inch or a half inch thick, excuse me, of prereq.

[00:06:00] So fiberglass and resin, right? Um, so 12 millimeters in under 10 minutes. So a

Joel Saxum: pretty, there’s nothing that you’re gonna run into that’s gonna be worse than that. Oh, and, and that’s

Bret Tollgaard: just it. So the more fillers you add, it can change the color, it can change the wavelengths, uh, that actually penetrate through that, uh, resin.

So we do a lot of testing, um, to really dial in a photo initiated package to maximize that with the, uh, materials that we have inside the resin. And so this new, uh, system that we’re working on is our 73 0 3 resin formula. Uh, and it’s proving to be a pretty resilient system. Uh, we’ve done quarter inch thick trials thus far.

As we thought that would kind of gonna be the maximum that people were gonna be looking at. But we do have the capacity to do more if required

Allen Hall: because the, the magic, and this is hard for engineers to think about when you want something that’s really stable on the leading edge of a blade, what you’re trying to avoid is a sort of a layering system.

If you look at a lot of [00:07:00] epoxies that are apply that are. Structural epoxies, what they are is sort of a cross-linking process, and that cross-linking process also makes it sort of breakable. Mm-hmm. So if you hit it just right, it wants to fracture like a glass almost. It’s not that way, but it’s similar, right?

So the magic that sun rests has done is said, okay. I’m gonna take a system that’s cross-linked together, but also a little amorphous to take those impacts without fracturing and wearing away, because it’s the chipping and that’s what you see on leading edges for a lot of the epoxy. Yeah. It doesn’t look like it’s a, doesn’t look like it’s been a braided.

Yeah, it is, but it’s fracturing. So you’re getting these like mini explosions that are happening in a sense, and it just wears away. And then you’re exposing fiber. And fiber doesn’t like that. Mm-hmm. And then it just starts to wear burl into where Joel’s pointed out, you can put your fist in some of these blades.

Yeah. That are only a year or two old is crazy. Yeah. And I [00:08:00] think that’s where the industry sort of missed one of those areas. You could design a material. That could be quick to apply. Could UV curve could be relatively simple. You’re not mixing anything and fix these blades relatively quickly. There hasn’t been that solution.

Everything’s been a two part mix. It. Maybe even heat it up before you apply it. It’s soft. It takes hours. Secure all that. Stuff, the complex chemistry. You need to be a chemistry professor to apply some of these things to, why don’t I just put this coating on? It’s super tough, super durable. It’s going to get me past my Repower 10 year.

And I leave it alone.

Joel Saxum: Yep.

Allen Hall: I think that’s the difference. I

Joel Saxum: think another important thing we’re, we’re, so we’re in Nashville here, right? A-C-P-O-M-S. So you have a lot of ISPs that are here, and we’ve got ISP friends from all over the world. Uh, but we are, we’re hanging out with a bunch of Canadians today and they have an issue with, Hey, we can only put LEP on, or we can only do certain repairs from the [00:09:00] end of May.

To mid-September, you know, and that’s it. Yeah. So their repair season is so short that they have to change their business models around how to get people in because of it now being that UV cured, that season all of a sudden blows, blows the doors wide open. As long as your fingers aren’t freezing, you can be up there doing it.

Yeah. It’s

Allen Hall: not blowing snow.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, exactly.

Allen Hall: Actively raining hard. You could actually apply this material and protect your blades and stop messing around. Yeah, the messing around part is what kills me. Because you’ll hear operatives say, we tried that leading as protection, now we’re moving to this one, and now next year we’re gonna try another one.

Like, good lord, we’ve been on this problem for I feel like forever, and somebody

Bret Tollgaard: needs to solve it and leave it alone. Well, we try to live by the KISS principle for a majority of our things, right? That’s why our pre pprs, they’re peel and stick. You can pre consolidate it down tower if you want to build, you know, much larger versions.

Um, you can over laminate stuff over the top, but the fact that it’s peel and stick, expose it to the sun and or our light when you’re [00:10:00] ready. Is really the kind of most simple solution that you’re truly going to get.

Joel Saxum: I think. Uh, an interesting thing that I’d like to get across to the users here as well is Sunrez as a company, you guys have been working in the defense sector, like you’ve done all kinds of things For how long has the company been around for?

Bret Tollgaard: We’ve been around since 1986, so we have almost 40 years of just pure UV curing experience.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, and that’s, and that’s. It’s rare to find someone that specialized with that much experience. Mm-hmm. So you guys, while, while UV products may be new to refresh to the wind industry, they’re not new or fresh to Suns, suns knows what they’re doing.

Bret Tollgaard: That is correct. And we’d really like to tailor and adapt our products to every individual market. And so wind is vastly growing, uh, with our, in the materials and the products and the SKUs that we’re starting to offer into this market. Yeah. Um, but as we said, based on customer feedback, really kind of tailoring and tweaking systems and the LEP system, there is just no true winner.

And so we’ve been working on something over the winter that we think was gonna be a great op, uh, product to roll out. So now we’re working with [00:11:00] some other partners to really try to get this out into the right people’s hands to do testing and verification and prove, uh, you know, the concept is really there.

Yeah,

Allen Hall: it’s definitely

Bret Tollgaard: there. I’m not worried about it,

Allen Hall: that now the, the, the next effort really is the robotic application of suns materials in general. Unless you’ve kept your ear to the ground, you haven’t realized that there’s a lot of suns materials being applied via a rows robots today. A lot more than I thought.

You want to talk about how far advanced that that progress is? We, we’ve been

Bret Tollgaard: working with them for a couple of years and it’s gets back to the same kind of principle, right? If you’ve got a material that you can put on the. Consolidate and cure, that just simplifies every single thing. So with robots in particular, whether it’s a pre impregnated patch, a squeezable tube of putty, liquid resin, it’s much easier for a robot to go apply and then cure.

Yeah, and so similar with any kind of person, the reduced cycle time saves everybody money. Move on to the next repair. Get in and out before you increment weather [00:12:00] comes through or the winds start to pick up. And the robotic side of things has such an opportunity to grow, uh, and is generally just becoming a more and more safe practice as well.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. Application wise, you have OEM approval with some of your products too?

Bret Tollgaard: We do, and we are in the process of many more.

Joel Saxum: Yeah.

Bret Tollgaard: Um, we’re once again starting to gain a lot of traction in this market, and end of 2024, beginning of 2025, has been some opportunities from the exponential growth within the wind industry as more OEMs jump on board for a variety of different types of products that will solve a bunch of different needs.

And so LEP, once again, being one of them. Um, but there are some really great opportunities that are starting to come our way with more OEM support

Allen Hall: and OEMs have approved Sun Rose materials with the robot application today.

Bret Tollgaard: They are being installed in a broad variety of places and we have sold a lot of prereg into that market.

Allen Hall: And, and that’s an economic equation that’s being besides the [00:13:00] engineering right? Obviously the engineering is right to, to show structure. You can do these things. Yes. But the math works on the economy side that it’s more efficient to use a robot more consistent, to use a robot to apply a UV cured material than to put a couple of technicians on a rope to try to do this several hundred times.

Yes, the repeatability is the issue because you can’t have the same technicians doing all these blades. But you can’t have the same robot do it universally. I think that’s the

Bret Tollgaard: game changer. I think so as well. And the documentation process, the quality control they have the ability to see everything in all of their computers to really guarantee that every single repair has done the appropriate way.

Allen Hall: And isn’t that as an OAM you want? Because you’re trying to de-risk it. The reason you’re out there in the first place is because you have a problem. The worst thing is that you get out there to repair the problem and you create a secondary problem. And you can’t go back and fix it or you don’t know what caused it.

Theones has eliminated that for the most part, from what I can tell, because the data sets [00:14:00] are there. They know what the temperature was, they know what the humidity was, they know where they were they were doing, they know what time of day it happened. They have all that data to show that they’re inside the box where this is gonna be successful.

That’s a game changer. Yeah. For the industry.

Joel Saxum: And when you’re also Rupa. Okay, so we always talk about there’s a shortage of technicians and skilled technicians and trying to scale that part of it. You’re removing the need for a technician to basically be a chemist. Yes. How many times have we seen two part materials mixed with like someone’s finger or something like, like that stuff happens, right?

It does. We talked about it off offline a little bit. There are

Bret Tollgaard: some cowboys out there. Yeah, so, but

Joel Saxum: doing the, using the UV pre Prague or using a UV material, like it makes things simple. You can work with it, peel off the cover, boom, hit it with the light, you’re done. There’s no, there’s no messing around.

There’s no, ah, you know the humidity’s 76% today and the temperature’s 81 degrees in a and a half. Ah, man, we can’t do this. It also reduces downtime, makes repairs more efficient because there’s not as much weather time you. Uh, I mean, you, you, as you’ve said, [00:15:00] traction in 20 24, 20 to five. Right now, UV cured products are taking the industry kind of by storm.

Bret Tollgaard: Yeah. Yeah. And I’ve gotta say, aone has been absolutely fantastic to work with. They have some extremely intelligent people on that team, great engineer, and they really know how to make a successful product. Yeah. Uh, and so incorporating the fact, the fact they want to incorporate our UV products to really help exemplify that.

Uh, it has been a blessing for us and we’re really looking forward to see where the rest of, uh, that technology can kind of take, um, some different curing and, you know, repair opportunities. The same thing as this for Sun.

Allen Hall: One of the issues early on when we started working with you was how much of this can you produce?

Where’s it produced at? How fast can you get it on site? Having visited your facility a couple of times now, you can make a lot of material.

Bret Tollgaard: We can truly, very quickly. Yeah. We, we have, we, we buy resin, you know, buy the truckload. So we have 40,000 pounds to 120,000 pounds of resin on site at all times. We can make literally tons of [00:16:00] prereg a day.

And so there’s a tremendous opportunity for growth and volume even beyond where we’re at. Um, but yeah, we do have the capacity to bring in a tremendous amount more material. Free preg resin, putty wise and, and more.

Allen Hall: The thing about sun also is that stuff doesn’t have to be put in a freezer. The traceability doesn’t have to be there.

It’s gonna come to you in a sealed package. So is versatile.

Bret Tollgaard: You’re not throwing it out at the end of every season. Exactly. We, we guarantee 12 month shelf life on all of our products, but the reality is we’ve got stuff that’s 15, 20, even almost 30 years old that still cures, uh, just fine. And so as long as you keep it in your UV protected container.

You can really kind of, uh, recertify anything for several years beyond its, uh, original expiration date.

Allen Hall: If you think about how much material is thrown away Oh, waste because of it expired. It’s insane. Yeah. It waste, it truly is. It’s a huge waste. And,

Joel Saxum: and materials in the wind industry are expensive. They are like all the, all the glues, resins and systems like that stuff is not cheap and it’s, and [00:17:00] there is a lot of waste.

Bret Tollgaard: Yeah. And, and one of the big pushes that we had, you know, once again at the end of last year was the introduction of our new non flammable resins. No VOCs, no have. So it makes shipping, transportation, storage so much easier, literally worldwide, as all these other countries have different regulations. Um, and so yeah, moving to our new, you know, resin formulas that are.

All non flammable has also really been a big game changer for us. That

Allen Hall: allows you to ship ’em overnight on an airplane easy instead of being on a truck or on a ship. That’s huge. Correct? Right.

Bret Tollgaard: Most of the repairs that we’ve been receiving and and calls to action have been for emergency repairs. Yes. They need stuff the very next day, so we’ll get.

Stuff turned around ASAP on an airplane to their final destination. Do that with another Preprint provider. They’re gonna tell you it’s gonna be two or three weeks, not gonna happen.

Allen Hall: No, it’s

Bret Tollgaard: not gonna happen. Or I mean specialty, you know, refrigerated components to actually get things to certain areas.

Sure. All of our stuff kept in normal warehouse ambient conditions. And the reality is guys will leave these in the back of their trailer. Right. It needs to be a r uh, rugged. [00:18:00] Industrial prereg that can live up to the actual application processes and storage conditions that the reality of, uh, you know, our onsite teams actually have access to.

Allen Hall: Now, let’s talk about something that we haven’t really discussed too far, but I saw it up close, was you have the mechanical testing facilities at Sun rests to verify. The product does what you say it’s going to do mechanically, which a lot of operators and ISPs are like, oh, it’s a pre-reg, but you’re doing all the mechanical checks in house, correct?

You’re, it is back to Joel’s point, you guys have been around a long time, so it gets you the time to build all that infrastructure to do pre pprs properly. So when you’re, they’re shipping material, you’ve already validated that this stuff works and you checked it out mechanically. I know when you’re. In, in the lab and you’re playing with new materials.

I just hear all the activity like, oh, we’re, we’re pole testing this. We’re doing all the mechanical allowables, so we’re not guessing at [00:19:00] it. That’s different. Yeah. And particularly in the United States because this is manufactured in the US in America, which

Bret Tollgaard: all of a sudden is a big problem. Yeah, yeah.

Well, it benefits us, you know, being such an, uh, an old established company is we’ve been in the r and d space. For true decades. So we have a hundred kilo Newton Instron, uh, on site that we do a lot of the mechanical testing with. We have a DSC as well where we can actually measure the degree of cure of an as cured component.

So we can do an exact layout the way that someone’s gonna do it in the field with the same amount of light intensity for the same duration. We can measure the cross thickness of it to make sure that the, uh, you know, material on the backside is gonna be the same as the front. And same thing with, you know, prepregs and everything else.

So we can do mechanical testing, adhesion testing, pull test, et cetera, and also make sure that it is 99% cured. There’s not gonna be any uncross link components left in it, and that we’re achieving the right mechanical and thermal stability properties of the, uh, the material,

Allen Hall: right? So all you [00:20:00] blade engineers out there that are not familiar with UV cure materials, Sunrez has the data.

Stop. I hear this a lot. Like, oh, do they have the data? I want to see all the structural data. Do own individual test. Right. Come on, we,

Bret Tollgaard: we do have TDSs of all of our pre pprs. Yes. All the putty and everything as well. No, we are not an accredited certified lab. We’ve been doing this for decades. Uh, but I can tell you all the OEMs that have been revalidating our materials, there’s a reason we’re still selling it into the industry.

I like that word,

Joel Saxum: revalidating. Yeah, it’s

Bret Tollgaard: what it is. It, it is, and I, I respect, you know, everyone’s, you know, kind of cautiousness of really investigating a new material. A lot of people just don’t really believe until they see it firsthand, the, you know, the ability to cure the way we do. Like we’re over at Booth 1 29 here at the show and seeing people’s faces of a prereg flash some light on it, and in 60 seconds you have a completely cured part.

It’s pretty incredible to actually witness, because that

Allen Hall: was the knock [00:21:00] five years ago on UV Cure materials from other companies. Is that it didn’t cure outright or the chemical properties weren’t right, or the structural properties weren’t what they said it was. They were on the data sheet. Yes. True. I know those companies.

I know who you’re talking about. That’s not sun rests.

Bret Tollgaard: Correct. And we’re not the only UV cure player in the world. Right. But we are only one of the few, uh, that offer a UV cure pre preg. But then we also have completely different formulas to some of the things that are also out there on the market. And so one of the big benefits of our pre preg is you have a perfectly wet out sheet of fiberglass when you’re out in the field and you’re wetting out by hand.

Even if you do a vacuum consolidation and you’re pulling and you’re heating. It takes time to properly wet out all that fiber if you’re doing any kind of hand lamination and then you’re trying to UV cure or do something else afterwards. You just don’t get the same quality of a truly manufactured pre impregnated part, in my personal opinion.

Of course. Yeah. But that is one [00:22:00] of the big distinguishing, you know, functions of Sunrez as the materials that we offer and how they perform differently to the other things that are on the market. Yeah.

Joel Saxum: I heard from someone the other day that they’ve applied 3,600 of your UV patches and not one of ’em has failed.

Bret Tollgaard: We definitely pride ourselves, like every single part that we make, every single piece that we impregnate, we have a complete track record of we. I know I can tell you exact amount of resin that went into it. I can tell you the fiber that went into it. I can give you all of those data sheets to really.

Compile, uh, you know, a really, really good track record of a material traceability, but then b, success in the field because if anyone actually had issues, which once again should never happen. ’cause of all the checks and balances we have, the reactivity checks and stuff that we do. But if by, you know, some really, really important misfortune, someone had a product that didn’t act right, I know exactly what batch record it came from.

I know all of the other prerequisites that were manufactured with the same material, the same resin on the same day, [00:23:00] so we can go back to all the other customers in case there ever was an issue. And so we’ve yet to have one, we’ve yet to ever ship out material that didn’t cure and didn’t do as, uh, as advertised.

And we’ve sold millions upon millions of pounds of resin, uh, and thousands of miles of pre preg. But, uh, yeah, we do have all those checks and balances in place as well.

Allen Hall: So for the engineer or the OEM or the ISP. Operators that have not heard of Sunrez and want to find out more,

Bret Tollgaard: where did they go? So we are truly starting to finally build up a website, uh, that has all of the information that people want.

So we’re putting SOPs on there, we’re linking, uh, videos on our YouTube page and everything to it as well. Because at the end of the day, now that we are starting to get as much exposure as we are, people are coming to us with the same questions. How does this work? What are the best processes? Gimme some hints, tips and tricks.

And so we’re developing all that content. Now, we’re rolling out more every single month, so by the time this airs, we’ll hopefully have even a couple more videos out. Um, but yeah, [00:24:00] sun rez.com, youtube.com/sun Rez, uh, are the best places to go to find some of the quick content. And of course, just reach out.

We’re available by phone, email, um, you can get to us on our website and everything as well. Yeah. And that’s

Allen Hall: Sunrez, S-U-N-R-E z.com. That’s correct. Brett, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Appreciate the time and thanks

Bret Tollgaard: for having me back, guys.

David King from Gulf Wind Technology discusses RootFusion, their up-tower blade root bushing repair method. By eliminating the need for cranes, the solution reduces costs and operational complexity. And their NDT diagnostic process allows for non-invasive inspection and repair.

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Allen Hall: David, welcome to the podcast again.

David King: Yeah, thank you very much. Thanks for having me. It’s an exciting event that we’re here at. So we’re really looking forward to this.

Allen Hall: There is so much happening at Gulf Wind at the minutes. Uh, just been watching some of your intellectual property pop out and some of the new things that are at this show.

Uh, all kinds of areas that you’re investing in, in terms of blade repairs that have been needed for probably two or three years and. At this point you, you have good solutions. The one I think we’re most interested to hear about is the blade route, bushing, or insert. Repair that happens of tower because

Joel Saxum: everybody’s asking about it.

I think that’s the important thing there is, first off, we need to get some common language around what this problem is. Yeah. So everybody’s calling it root, bushings root and this infusion like, ah, what are we actually calling? What are the terms, how you brand this? Exactly.

David King: Yeah. I mean, just you say it’s really been a long time coming.

It’s something we’ve been involved with now for well [00:01:00] over. Three years, and we got introduced originally as an RCA. And so, you know, when you get into something like a root cause analysis, you know, one of the first things you gotta do is actually establish the terms you’re gonna use, establish the definitions, create a common framework that you can communicate around.

And so when it comes to this particular issue, a lot of it really starts with how do customers get sensitized to this? We’ve seen everything from some customers getting sensitized through, uh, unfortunately a blade failure. A blade that ends up on the ground.

Joel Saxum: Yeah,

David King: that’s probably the worst scenario. We’ve seen others where they’ll see things like.

Dust, uh, on the outside of the gel coat that’s starting to build up, uh, gapping, where you have fundamentally a, a visible gap forming between the blade root and the pitch bearing, uh, where you see visible daylight in some cases. Yeah. Um, you really want to try and catch things, obviously much earlier than that, but kind of the, the, the common themes here all around a loss of connection between the metal root bushing and the composite laminate, which caused the blade to become loose from the pitch bearing.

So just kind of walk through that system maybe a little bit. Um, you’ve got the composite blade which has to transfer [00:02:00] load into a metal pitch bearing,

Joel Saxum: right?

David King: Metal pitch bearing’s gotta be able to spin so the blade can pitch, produce, power, and do all the things we need to do. And it’s one of the most complicated parts of the blade really.

’cause you’re trying to transfer load from composite to metal and you have this massive stiffness difference between metal. And composites. And so it takes some very clever engineering to bring those things together and, um, get an even load distribution. And so the way that’s done today is through a metal root bushing.

So it’s essentially a, uh, precast metal piece, um, that has geometry to it that allows both mechanical and a chemical connection between the composite, the metal bushing. The metal stud, which is threaded to the metal bushing, and then that stud goes back to the pitch bearing. You joint all that together with some, some wedge lock washers and some nuts, and, and you’ve got your, your root connection really, and that’s what’s fundamentally breaking down here.

Allen Hall: Okay, so the, the breakdown is occurring. Where in that assembly? Is it where that bushing meets the composite? Is it the composite itself? The way the composite is sort of wound [00:03:00] around that area and how it’s strengthened? Or is it that we’re pulling on the studs too hard and basically pulling that bushing out of the composite?

What are the, what creates a scenario why I need to be paying attention to this?

David King: No, absolutely. One thing that’s I think quite fundamental to this is actually separating damage and defect. And so I’ll talk a little bit to the damage, ’cause that’s what you’re observing when you see this is the damage that’s resulting in this loosening effect.

And so fundamentally what’s breaking down is that metal bushing with that geometry that’s making the physical connection to the composite is, uh, funnily lost. Its, its pretension on it. So it relies on both mechanical connection. So you’ve got this. Basically sine wave looking, uh, um, you know, geometry that you’ve got composite laminate going into those grooves of that sine wave and you’re getting a, a physical compression joint connection there.

And then there’s a little bit of chemical connection as well. And so as that. Breaks down over time. You get the composite that’s inside those grooves actually forming into [00:04:00] a dust and eventually loosening and slowly sliding out.

Allen Hall: So is there fiber

David King: inside of those grooves or is it just resin? That’s the goal.

So the goal is to have fibers inside of that groove, basically, if you’re going to. Have a metal bushing and you’re gonna have composites around it that you want to perform well, you’ve gotta have the right, right fiber, weight fraction, the right combination of fiber and resin in that area to really get the best strength out of it.

One key piece there though is, is that we talked earlier about compression strength, and that means that you’re relying on the resin strength, which is the weakest part of any composite. Uh, and that’s really where the challenge is.

Joel Saxum: So, so is the issue that we’re seeing in the field now. Is it from manufacturing incorrectly or is it just from wear and tear?

Or like why? Why is this thing rearing its head or is it materials?

David King: Yeah, I mean, these are all great questions and really there’s a variety of answers to those questions that are very dependent on which blade type it is. What the fundamental problem is, it really comes down to having a proper root cause [00:05:00] analysis or RCA on that particular blade type.

And, and you know, in our experience it’s usually a combination of many things. Um, you know, these, these, uh, uh, blades are incredibly difficult to manufacture. They’re complicated, they’re incredibly difficult to design, they’re incredibly difficult to maintain. And it’s really a combination of all three of those things that fundamentally leads to really any problem in this industry.

And so to solve it, you know, you’ve gotta have a creative solution, but you also have to be addressing those three or four different things. And so you really need that proper root cause analysis. I dunno if you’re familiar with the eight D kind of process, but. You know, having something where you’re really trying to look at this holistically and address each of those things you just mentioned and asked about,

Allen Hall: what are the first signs that an operator has this issue?

Is it just seeing the dust on the outside or is it something you can hear as the tire as it spins or what? What’s usually that first like uhoh with the technician? Yeah. It’s kinda

David King: like, you know, put your yourself in the shoes of the technicians, the operators who are trying to face this challenge, right?

And trying to manage risk ultimately, right. Is, um, you really don’t obviously want your first knowledge of this [00:06:00] to be a blade on the ground. You want to catch this earlier. And so just as you said, dust that’s forming on the outside is, is one big, big telltale sign. The other one is, is if you’ve got, uh, visible gapping where you put that blade in the six o’clock position, technician can go up there, feeler gauge.

And measure that, that gap that’s starting to form do something about it. The, the other thing is, you mentioned audible. You can, in some cases hear this, you can hear that blade moving, but that’s a very, um, let’s call it mature damage. You really wanna be catching it before that, uh, just because you’re, you’re getting into a risk profile where there’s a lot of uncertainty, whether or not you’re gonna catch it in time.

And that’s really important. ’cause we, we don’t want blades on the ground. I think especially in today’s environment, we’ve gotta do right and wind.

Joel Saxum: So an operator comes to you and says, Hey, we believe we have one blade doing this. Is the next step to do NDT work on the whole fleet or on that whole wind farm to understand what the risk actually is to that wind farm or what, how does that process move?

David King: Yeah, so you know, really it comes down to understanding that operator’s business case, because everybody’s gonna have a different risk profile. [00:07:00] Everybody’s gonna have a different approach to whether, are we trying to repower in a couple years? Are we trying to get 20 years and we’re only 10 years in? Is this something that’s only two or three years old and we got another 17 years to go and there’s a variety of different solutions.

So maybe I’ll go through a couple of those if it’s helpful. Um, you know, we’ve seen everything from continuous monitoring systems. There’s some great solutions out there when it comes to acoustics, accelerometers. Gap sensors. Um, you mentioned ut we found UT to be quite good when you’re, it comes time to actually doing the repair pre and post.

And if you wanna do a sampling, uh, you know, it’s very hard to justify doing ut across tons of 300 blades. Exactly. Yeah. It’s

Joel Saxum: expensive

David King: and you really have to have done the diligence on the front end with, uh, UT as well. I think UT is, it’s one of those things that you have to have, have really approach it in a fundamental way where you understand the defect, you understand.

What you’re looking for and you’ve done blind trials to make sure you, you’re not giving false positives or anything like that. So, you know, kind of, you know, I don’t want to jump straight into the repair just yet, but we, we can get into that maybe in a minute or [00:08:00] two. But one of the key elements that repair is doing a pre NDT before we go do anything, and that’s built into the repair service we offer, is we do a pre and post NDT.

That’s our quality check.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. If you’re gonna get, if you’re gonna get surgery done, you get x-rays or an MRI done before. So you know what, so the surgeon knows what he’s getting into before you open it up. Same concept.

David King: Exactly right. You gotta know what you’re getting into. You gotta know where you’re going and you really want to, you know, not go in blind.

And so, you know, what we’ve seen is, is operators will go through and they’ll do maybe. Feeler gauge, dial gauge measurements throughout their farm. That’s a, you know, low cost, low barrier of entry type measurement that their own technicians can be trained on. And you can kind of have a standardized approach to.

Sometimes they’ll implement condition monitoring systems to try and again, start, um, best utilizing their, their operation and maintenance fund. You know, how am I gonna prioritize if I’ve got some blades that are really far along, some that aren’t, I’ve gotta save some for next summer. CMS really has some great solutions there, but then when it comes time to repair it, we, we do really need to get the ut and get that pre x-ray, post x-ray and, and [00:09:00] go in not blind.

Allen Hall: And the bushings that have the most problems tend to be on the leading edge and trailing edge, or that’s the, the two areas you need to focus on. If you’re doing ut.

David King: No. So, you know, it’s kind of interesting. It’s again, by blade type actually. So what we’ve seen is, is there are a variety of, uh, damages and defects out there.

And, you know, you can kind of group it. We, we group it into kind of static and fatigue. There’s stuff that’s happening in the first couple years on, on newer, uh, turbines. And there’s stuff that’s happening in 10 to 12, 13 years on older turbines, and based off of which population those blades sit in, there’s gonna be a different, uh, patterns where the damage is.

So sometimes you see that damage, like you said, in the leading edge, trailing edge. Sometimes you see it over the spars, and sometimes you see it in the, I call it the corners. You know, between the leading edge and the spa cap. Yeah. Um, there is a pattern though. You just have to know what population you’re looking in to make sense of that pattern.

If you look at it too holistically, you’re just gonna go, well, they’re everywhere. You know, it seems random, but if you know what I’m looking at, it’s a fatigue problem. Is this a static problem? Is this a, uh, a particular blade variant? You’re [00:10:00] gonna start to find those pattern areas. Um,

Allen Hall: okay, so then if you generally know what the blade model is, then you know what bushings you’re looking for.

Generally we using

David King: the whole thing as well. That’s the other thing. We’ve, we actually have, have pulled in, uh, some UT equipment we’ve been working with now for about 10, 15 years. But it comes from aerospace where, uh, this, uh, hardware was originally designed to actually NDT, uh, uh, blade Wing. So it’s a very effective, fast way of getting a lot of information around the whole blade route.

And so we, NDT, every bushing on the blade route. Okay. And then we can go dial in. We kind of know before we get in there which ones we suspect are gonna be problematic, but we want to verify with that, with something quantitative.

Allen Hall: So what percentage of the. Blade bushings are going to be bad in like a moderate case.

You detect it relatively early. Is it five? Is it

David King: dead? Is it half of them? Yeah. So I mean, you know, if, if you’re talking about something that maybe let’s say has, uh, 64 bushings on it, you’re probably talking 10 to 15. If it’s a 90 bushing plus, you know, maybe you’re getting into 20 bushings. And again, they’re always [00:11:00] gonna be mirrored.

So if you’ve got 10 on this side, you probably have 10 on the other side. That type of a, a situation really. Okay.

Allen Hall: So the, the scope of the problem is not as bad as I thought because I, I heard operators. Talk about this saying, well, I gotta replace all the inserts, and my first response is like, that doesn’t seem right to me.

Yeah. So the data actually shows, it’s just certain areas that have this issues if you catch it soon enough. So I’ll put that caveat on

David King: there. If you wait too long, it does go progressive. You’ll eventually get every single bush failing and you’ll end up with the blade on the ground and the bushing’s still up tower.

So it’s uh, yeah, unfortunately,

Joel Saxum: will it be like, uh, the adjacent ones? So if you have three, four of ’em here, then the next ones go are. The ones adjacent to that, adjacent to that, adjacent to that? Or does it start to show itself in different spots?

David King: No, it’s a great question. And what we see is we see that mirroring effect, right?

Right. So you see it on each side. And let’s say it’s centered on a, a grouping of three bushings on each, each side, that will then start to grow, just as you’re saying, kind of this unzipping almost of the, the blade roots. And eventually, uh, in extreme cases, what the other thing we’ve seen is you’ll see the crack where we.

Do what we call turning [00:12:00] the corner. So it goes on the outside of the blade and you see a crack in the gel coat. The first meter meter and a half of the blade has a gel coat crack. And that crack will have gone through the blade route, through the protrusions. And that’s unfortunately most likely a scrap blade at that point.

Allen Hall: I’ve actually seen that

David King: up close.

Allen Hall: So once, yeah, once you start to crack the blade root, is there really a way to recover that? Is that worth even playing around with? Yeah. Or is it just like, Hey, it’s such a repair, it’s so intensive, high load area, it’s not. Worth.

David King: I mean, we always say, you know, it comes back to the business case, and I would say most of the time it’s not worth it.

Um, all composites can be repaired. There’s, there’s not a single, I mean, you could rebuild the entire blade if you wanted to, but it doesn’t make cost sense. And that’s really where the business case needs to be brought in. We need to understand what are you trying to get out of this? Is there available blades?

And this is where sometimes there can be some special cause situations where maybe it does make sense to bring that blade down tower, do a very large cut and grind operation, and actually fix these bushings and get that thing back to normal health.

Allen Hall: [00:13:00] Okay. So the issue is pretty prevalent from what Joel and I have seen.

Yep. We talked about our operators that have it. There’s a solution now that Gulf Wind has developed to repair these bushings up tower, which means no cranes. And that’s huge. A lot lower costs. What does that repair look like? Or I need you to walk through it with me because Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot when I talk to operators, the first thing they say is, well, I, I don’t wanna touch it because I gotta get a crane.

We have to wait until August when the crane’s gonna be on site. So it just turns into this big fiasco and how Right we and how, so we’ve had this

Joel Saxum: conversation like, yeah, you can fix that up tower. I said that to somebody. They’re like, no, you can’t. It’s like, yeah, yeah, you can, no, how? It doesn’t make any sense.

I’m like, talk to the people that know.

David King: Right? Yeah. So I mean, we’ve got a huge passion for composites of Gulf Wind technology. I mean, you know, our, our history and our legacy has been doing composites, whether it’s aerospace, wind, auto bodies. So we love composites. So three years ago when we got this problem statement originally.[00:14:00]

We, um, you know, really wanted to approach it from a fundamental point of view, and, and it developed something that was again, listening to the business case. And immediately we became apparent. You can’t bring cranes in, you can’t bring this thing down tower, you gotta address this up tower. And you’ve gotta do it in a way where you can send a crew up with some bit of kit, some bit of equipment and get this done in, uh, a weak or less really per plate.

Otherwise, again, the business case just doesn’t make sense. And so what we’ve done is we’ve really developed a, uh, what I like to call, kind of like a laparoscopic surgery almost. So, um, you know, you might be familiar a little with the medical industry where you come in, you try and be as minimally invasive as possible, try not to disturb other things that aren’t broken.

You know, it’s kind of the, the, the, uh, doctor’s motto, do no harm, right? Yeah. We don’t want to go in and just upset all this great fiber that was originally infused in that blade. We don’t want to mess any of that up. We’ve looked at everything from cut and grind to boring bushings, out to bringing things on tower when we were.

Working through the business case, we looked at everything. Okay. You know, you could cut the root off and put a new root on all sorts of, you know, really out there. Ideas, uh, and really what it came down to. [00:15:00] Is a series of process trials where, again, everything at Gulf Wind, we, we kind of root in this idea of we build up what’s called a process map.

We understand the inputs outputs, we break it down into its critical steps, and we develop a, a series of critical to quality measurements. So we really dial in what does the process need, and then we go run our process trials to dial it in. And the result of all that work over two or three years is this method in which we go up tower with, uh, three personnel.

Uh, three technicians with a piece of equipment that’s maybe about 25 pounds or so. Uh, a bit of material. And uh, I call it kind of our, our go box or a go bag. This is kind of kit about 40 pounds more of material. They go up tower. They’re up tower for about three to five days, execute the repair, and they come back down.

So what do they do? Up tower, that’s the question You’re really after. Um, step one is we, ut coming back to what we did originally. We do this, this pre-inspection, get the x-ray, we know which, what we need to do as far as, uh, targeting, bushings, that sort of thing, and doing no harm. We don’t want to necessarily over repair.

Uh, there’s no [00:16:00] damage if you over repair. Again, the process is, has been designed in such a way that you’re not gonna break anything if you over repair. But again, it’s wasteful. And then we basically are able to, um, get in with this piece of equipment, to that interface with very, very minute holes and basically, uh, um.

Uh, inject or create a, a quite a significant amount of pressure, almost similar to hydraulic fracturing and achieve a, uh, repair that gets the material into this broken down interface, and we can put a material into that interface with this, this pump, this equipment. Um, you know, in such a way that we’re actually able to purge out any sort of contaminants in there, dust oil, anything that might be preventing chemical bonding from occurring or preventing proper curing from happening in the adhesive.

And, um, yeah, we, we replace the broken material. We replace it with a far superior material that we’ve developed. That again, is, it can actually be mixed one-to-one with oil. So this material, we’ve done a lot of lab testing on where we’ve actually mixed it with, uh, you know, one part uh material, [00:17:00] one part oil.

To make sure that it can cure properly and not lose strength. Uh, but we do purge that out with the material and we’re basically able to get this almost dialysis like effect through that root bushing and get that cavity, uh, back into good shape. Um, with this piece of equipment.

Joel Saxum: What kind of pressure are we talking?

Um, so where’s that secret sauce? It’s, it’s a little bit

David King: secret sauce, but I’ll say it’s significant amounts of pressure. It has to be very tightly controlled. We’ve, we’ve done. Probably thousands of process trials to dial in that pressure. I would say it’s significant. We’re talking, uh, way in excess of something you would see in an infusion or a vacuum, but it’s quite key because we don’t wanna do any other damage while we’re in there.

So again, we’ve developed a lot of very um. Uh, I guess proprietary, uh, methods of actually being able to get that material without damaging the surrounding composite. The composite, that’s good. And really only attack the bad stuff. It’s kind of, uh, another, another analogy in the medical world might be like a root canal.

We don’t want to go messing up the gums or anything else around the tooth. It’s still healthy. Just get that one spot in two. Exactly. And so it’s about pressure, but pressure in the right space. [00:18:00] Very similar to hydraulic fracturing in the oil and gas business.

Allen Hall: Okay. So you’re taking that existing bushing, you’re drilling some small holes into it.

Mm-hmm. You’re forcing an adhesive up through, through the interface, the mechanical interface, and then, then you’re gonna actually flush out the debris that’s inside of this to the front of the. Blade. The bottom of the blade or the root of the blade? I guess it’s gonna come out the front. No. So we actually, or does it just, everything

David King: is done internal, so nothing is gonna be introduced into the pitch bearings or anything else.

It’s all done from the internal side. And it’s this dialysis like effect where we’ve got a way to bring material in and a way to bring the material out of this cavity. Okay. And clean everything up. You know, we got, um. Good material coming in, you know, and then we, we basically purge out. You’re pulling it out on the same side.

Exactly, yeah. Basically.

Allen Hall: So you have, you have inputs and outputs like a U around the bushing. Right? Okay. So you’re bringing it in, flushing it out, pulling this material out, and at some point you go, okay, the material we’re injecting in is coming out, so there’s no other debris. We’ve [00:19:00] gotta, we clean this thing out and then under hydraulic pressure.

You disconnect that adhesive system hardens, and then what?

David King: And so it’s got strength, well in excess of the material that was originally there. And so what it allows us to do is return both the chemical and the mechanical connection that that bushing really needs to perform well. And so that, that’s fundamentally, again, what we’re, what we’re diving into here is, is trying to return that, the state of that connection to better than it originally was.

And that’s what we’re, we’re ultimately doing with this. And so. We, we’ve got that material in it cures, you know, we get to the right spot. We come back in with the UT and we verify that we’ve done what we said we were gonna do. We were gonna replace this surface, get the connection back in there. And what we can do is compare pre and post UT and, and really, uh, cement the idea that, look, we know what we did.

We can see it, we can prove it. We’ve got the quantitative data, show it, um, and we’ve got a record of it. And that allows us too, to come back if we want, three months later, six months later, 12 months later, and compare. And that’s something [00:20:00] we’ve been doing really over the last. Uh, 12 to 24 months. We’ve now deployed this, uh, quite significantly, I would say, across a variety of turbine OEMs, blade types, different operators.

Uh, we’ve done it internationally now as well. Uh, so we have quite a, a, a strong deployed base, uh, uh, really where we’ve got a lot of experience now doing this across a lot of different varieties of, of hub style blade type. Um, and we’ve gone and done follow ups, right? So anytime we do testing, we start out with doing our, our coupon testing, all the basics that you’re used to.

We do sub-component testing, we do full component testing, and then we do pilot, um, series fleet leaders, that sort of thing. We’ve done a, a huge amount of those over the last, I would say again, 12 to 24 months really, where, um. We’ve then gone back and actually with UT again, done a three month inspection, six month, 12 month inspection.

The main to really ensure that, you know, we, we fixed it, but then we’re also double checking to make sure there’s been no issue. And today we’ve seen no issue and that’s why we have a lot of confidence. Where we’re at today is we’ve got that. [00:21:00] Full testing pyramid, really built out from coupons, sub component, double app shears, um, all the way up through actually proven, uh, um, you know, flight hours basically.

Right? At the end of the day, that’s what people care about. Flight hours.

Joel Saxum: I think an important thing to touch on here, and you did a little bit ago, is the fact that for a lot of people they think I have to replace this blade. So you’re thinking. Crane costs a hundred fifty, two hundred, two hundred 50,000 bucks for this blade.

But you guys are fixing the problem by having a three man crew in that blade for three to five days. That’s, I don’t know what your, the cost model looks like, but that’s not expensive compared to what we’re, we’re used to. Like I’ve seen three to five days people just being inside of a blade. Fixing a shear web de bond or something like that.

Right? Like so that cost is something that’s not crazy to the industry. It’s doable.

David King: No, exactly. And I, I’ve gotta say a big thank you to our process team and the, the process team at Gulf Wind Technology has got just decades of experience and process and what we’re really about. It’s trying to take out the complexity composites, right.

You, we’ve probably heard [00:22:00] in every conference we’ve been at, it’s very hard to manufacture these plates. It’s hard to repair these plates. Anytime you’re working with wet chemicals, grinding, doing anything like that, it’s very complicated and very difficult. Very heavy on the, the, the human aspect as far as keep maintaining quality science meets art.

Exactly. And so what we really have done is tried to eliminate as many of the variables that are allowing, you know, the, those sort of, um, errors to creep into the process. And that’s what all that stuff about process, maps, inputs, outputs. We really fundamentally believe that and try and build that into our process, whether it’s the equipment we build and, and, and create the materials we select.

The way we drop down our process, the way we do our work constructions, we really want to do it in a way that keeps things simple, keep things easy for the operators. You’re not reliant on, you know, the, the, the person with 20, 30 years developed the process, but now the person executing can be somebody that’s, you know, fairly new to composites maybe, but, but has experience, has a little bit of training.

Joel Saxum: So speaking about executing as well now. Golf, wind technology is taking problem [00:23:00] statements in designing engineering fixes for them, but you’re also deploying in the field, so it’s your technicians go into the field to do this. Correct?

David King: Yes. Uh, yeah. So, you know, anytime we deploy something, you know, I always say the, the most difficult part is the ramp.

Right? You know, a lot of people like to focus on the, the developments and you know, all the testing and the hard work that engineers to do to really. Create a robust product, but the hardest part is actually the ramping part. And so what we’ve been doing over really the last, uh, 12 to 18 months is the ramp, and that means putting our technicians in the field to make sure that we’re getting the feedback, you know, understanding of the problem statements fairly early on in the deployment that might be happening.

Even just simple things like, Hey, it’s difficult to get this piece of kit through this hatch that’s in this particular turbine type. All sorts of things like that. And being able to build that back into how we fundamentally approach. Uh, doing this process. But, you know, speaking to, you know, models we’re looking at, we’ve, uh, again, everything we do, we try and make it so it can be, uh, done in a kit.

So it can be FedEx, so it’s equipment that can be leased, rented, uh, people that can be [00:24:00] trained and certified in the process. Um, but the only way we could do that is first deploying with our crews, build the training material, and that’s what we’ve been doing really the last 12 months. So where we’re at today is we have been starting a training of third party crews.

Actually, we do have, uh, we’ve trained 20 people through the, uh, the, the training center at in New Orleans, uh, on this particular process to date. Uh, we’re gonna continue to ramp that, um, and get more people familiar with this process. Trained, certified, um, you know, and, and basically able to troubleshoot, able to really understand if there’s, there’s anything going wrong with the process.

You know, really trying to build in the robustness from the training side, uh, so we can execute this well.

Allen Hall: Is there a model in this where you would want to look at. Blaze pre-installation that, you know, this particular kind of blade is gonna have that problem because it’s, it’s a design issue or manufacturing issue that you would do this kind of repair on the ground preemptively while it’s less expensive to do.

’cause the blades are all sitting there. Is

David King: that something you’ve looked at and. [00:25:00] Going forward? Yeah, I mean, I think it’s extremely dependent on exactly the type of defect and damage that we’re talking about with, uh, with the, uh, the blade type. So it’s something that we would certainly entertain. I I think it’s very case by case dependent.

True. Um, you know, yeah, I would say, you know, it’s not something we’ve seen really on the very, very front end of things like, um. You know, you do have to generally have something to repair. There’s a few, you know, I call ’em outlier cases out there where you can’t repair something very early on, but, right.

Uh, for the most part, you, you need damage to have occurred, to have something to repair.

Allen Hall: Yeah. I mean, just the discussion with some of the operators that have that issue with a farm and they’re repowering with the same equipment, with the, basically the same blade. And the discussion I’ve heard is. Well, why would I put that blade up if I know I’m gonna have this problem?

Can I do something on the ground before it goes up so I can just prevent this all together? It’s a lot less expensive to do. Pre-installation then post.

David King: Yeah, I mean, so I think with the, uh, 2, 2, 2 approaches there, I guess one of them is, is um, you know, I think the [00:26:00] timing and the cost model that we’ve been able to create for this does allow you to do the UPT Tower in a very competitive way where it actually, to be honest with you, we’re pretty agnostic.

If it’s down tower or up tower, it’s uh, in some cases, uh, dare I say actually easier up tower because we can take advantage of the pitch system. Uh, when we’re actually doing the repair. So, kind of funny enough, we in some ways prefer up tower. Um, but, uh, and that’s odd. It’s not normal. Yeah. But then coming back to your question about what can you do on the front end, um, you know, one thing that we’ve seen a lot of interest in is what I typically call owners engineering due diligence, doing factory audits, doing manufacturing inspections, doing firewall audits, all these sorts of things.

They’re, they’re really key. It’s important to get, um, experts. With eyes on your blades and, and really do, um, due diligence on things. Yeah.

Allen Hall: And that’s something that Gulf Wind offers, correct. That you, you will come

David King: out and take a look before the blades get installed? Yes, absolutely. We, we inspect a lot of blades.

We go inside a lot of blades. We do a lot of risk analysis factory audits. So we’ve been to a lot of different countries doing these factory audits and, and you know, it’s, uh, it’s [00:27:00] something I think that can give a lot of peace of mind. It can help out with, uh, financing, getting tax equity financing, working with your insurance company.

But then ultimately what it all comes down to, right, is. Being able to predict what’s gonna happen with that fleet. You know, I think, uh, one thing that we’ve gotta be very careful with in inspections in this industry is, is uh, what’s the value of the inspection? If the inspection has to allow us to predict better the risk and the, the way we’re gonna maintain things.

And we can’t just be doing inspections for inspection’s sake, otherwise we’re just building checks. Exactly. Uh, so that’s a really important thing for us at Gold Wind.

Allen Hall: Uh, this is really interesting and good technology. I know there’s gonna be a lot of operators. This summer that are gonna be implementing it, and over the next couple of years, because there’s thousands of lays with this issue at the minute, so you’re gonna be pretty busy sending kits out and sending crews out to go address it.

What’s the next generation looks like? Are obviously, uh, Gulf winds involved in so many different things simultaneously. What are some of the challenges ahead you’re trying to deal with?

David King: Yeah, no, absolutely. [00:28:00] So I mean, and this is one, you know, very, I’d call it acute issue that we’ve, we’ve developed a product for.

We’re obviously ramping teams, getting training set up, that sort of thing. Uh, we, we, um, you know, also are, are very set on, you know, maintaining excellence in composites. So that’s a huge thing for us. We’ve got some really exciting stuff that, you know, at some point I’d love to have y’all actually back out to the facility.

So maybe we can get some hands on with some of these new, uh. Uh, cutting edge things that are happening and in composites. So I think there’s some really new manufacturing technology that’s, um, potentially, uh, uh, ready to, to be coming out very soon, that we can show you all, as far as, you know, fundamental changes in how we deal with materials and fusions, all these sorts of things that, that come in there.

I’m gonna leave that as a little bit of a teaser. Um, but no, we also have some really exciting stuff coming up in the performance world. You know, I think everything we’ve talked about is what I would call reliability engineering, structural engineering composites, that sort of thing. But, um, we also have some really exciting things coming up in performance with, um, ways of, of creating, uh, lower, you know, basically being able to get better capacity factors out of low wind speed sites [00:29:00] really.

Leveraging some exciting technologies that are gonna allow us to expand wind energy. Um, you know, if you look at the map that NREL publishes every year of wind in the United States, you see it’s all concentrated basically from the Dakotas to Kansas to Texas, Oklahoma, and kind of everything in between.

And that’s all the high wind sites, right? And so, you know, I think it’s a country, it’s gonna be really exciting to see where that goes next as we start focusing on potentially the southeast market. You know, what does low wind speed look like in America? And I think Gulf Wind’s got some really exciting technologies that are coming out with low wind speed.

Where, you know, we’ve, we’ve, I I think fundamentally had some paradigm shifts in how we can extract power, um, out of these challenging sites, um, that historically have, have, have not had wind installed in ’em, and with, you know, data centers going in, uh, the, the power demand going up. I mean, Louisiana just had a $10 billion investment and data centers, one of the first wind farms installed in the southeast of Mississippi.

Mississippi just went in. These low wind speed sites are becoming massively critical,

Allen Hall: right? And the population base in the United States is moving to the Southeast where [00:30:00] there’s not a lot of renewable energy, but there will need to be over the next 10, 20, 30 years. So we better figure that this problem today, because I know Gulf Wind Technologies in the forefront of that.

David, it’s so great to have you back on the podcast. And we do need to get back to New Orleans, just not in the summertime. Yeah, let’s go. So hot sometime when it’s cooler. Right? Right, exactly.

David King: So thank you for being back on the podcast. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Maybe we’ll put some smoke in the wind tunnel. That’d be cool.

In this episode, Rosemary and Allen discuss their experiences at WindEurope 2025 in Copenhagen, covering exhibitor highlights, offshore wind projects, industry challenges, and the evolving focus on quality and technology in wind energy. Register for the next SkySpecs Webinar!

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Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

Rosemary Barnes and I are in Copenhagen at Wind Europe 2025 at the Bella Center, which is a full with about 15,000 visitors and 350 exhibitors. This is a massive show. It’s the second largest, I would say, in Europe typically. Right? So Hamburg is bigger, but this is, this is. Still massive.

Rosemary: I haven’t been to Hamburg.

This is the biggest probably conference that I’ve been to. I think probably, ’cause I used to go to, I used to go to a lot of European conferences, but like niche ones, you know, on specific topics like winter wind or, I don’t know, various types of manufacturing. But this is, yeah. All wind and you say 350 exhibitors.

If you had told me three and a half thousand, I, I would’ve believed you because I feel like I have seen so, so few. I mean, I’ve seen so many good exhibits, but not, I haven’t scratched the surface of what’s here. And we’ve only got, I’ve only got one day left. You’re going home, so yeah, your time’s over.

We’ve [00:01:00] just

Allen Hall: walked. Through the hallways quite a bit and the highways to see what is here. It’s a different vibe than what you would see in Australia or see in the United States. It is much more focused on offshore.

Rosemary: Yeah.

Allen Hall: And big scale offshore wind projects.

Rosemary: Yeah. But you know what the Australian NCES are all about offshore wind as well.

It’s like a, a, a weird thing that those of us. Working in the industry, you know, in operations. Can’t quite get our head around how little people talk about the kind of wind energy that we actually have. Um, but here in Europe, obviously they do actually have offshore and a lot of the future development will be in offshore.

So it makes sense here.

Allen Hall: Bristol’s here. R B’s here. Ge Renova. Vestus. Of course, they all have massive displays.

Rosemary: Za not a lot. Nordic

Allen Hall: had some. Yeah. New, new items.

Rosemary: I haven’t seen much, um, Chinese presence here, like

Allen Hall: almost none. Yeah.

Rosemary: Which this time, time surpris me a little bit. [00:02:00] Yeah.

Allen Hall: And there’s not a lot of American presence here either, besides ge Renova as the American, but they’re sort of split, right?

They’re all over the world.

Rosemary: Americans are busy right now. There’s stuff going on at home

Allen Hall: just a little bit. Sure. Uh, but I, uh, I think some perspective there would be good as we get going, because I’m gonna, I’m bringing the American perspective, Rosie, you’re bringing the Australian perspective a lot of.

Uncertainty about the United States at the minute. Uh, much talk of aren’t you super concerned about what’s happening in America? And I said, it’s just another day in America really. And uh, what you read in the papers is not necessarily what’s happening on the ground, uh, but I think other, and Europeans have a different perspective and that’s great.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Allen Hall: Uh, but it does lead to some weird discussions and maybe Australia, well, you, Australia has a similar problem with America at the moment, but. It, it’s, it’s still, it’s, it feels real. But in the United States, I can just tell you it doesn’t, if you talk to the average citizen, [00:03:00] nothing happened yet. No.

You’re much

Rosemary: more relaxed. Everyone else is, um, is panicking out much, much more. Yeah. Other than cutting the

Allen Hall: vacations and yeah,

Rosemary: I don’t think we’re panicking in Australia. Um, but because we’re probably amongst the least affected outta the rest of the world, but it’s just like, I’m still like refreshing news.

Speeds to see, oh, what else? What else has happened? ’cause you know, the global implications could, is an interesting experiment, is the way someone put it to me recently.

Allen Hall: Yeah. The experiment will probably be short. The issue about, uh, procurement of parts and crossing borders has come up during the show quite a bit.

Yeah. If you’re gonna be selling things in the United States, do we need to be having an office in the United States or do we even think about it because two days later it’s all gonna stop. I’m gonna have spent all that money. Uh, I’m not sure there’s a good answer for that. I gotta ask that quite a bit.

Yeah. Should we, moving to America,

Rosemary: if I was a manufacturer that was worried about, um, yeah. My just [00:04:00] manufacturing facility isn’t in the US and I was worried about tariffs, I would. Find it really hard to say, yeah, let’s make a manufacturing facility in the US because like you said, no one knows is this, how long are these tariffs gonna stick around for?

Yeah, I mean, it’s still at least 50% chance that the real purpose was to bring people to the negotiation table, right? Maybe they’ll be over soon. You can’t really invest in like, you know, like physical manufacturing facilities in that sort of uncertainty. So I, I. Don’t think that it’s going to, in the near term, attract a lot of, uh, yeah.

Outside companies to manufacture in the US if they weren’t before.

Allen Hall: Yeah, I, I agree with you wholly on that. The, the style of show we were here two years ago. We had a wonderful time in Copenhagen, uh, what we noticed two years ago. Was a lot more technology companies. I would say there were more robotics companies, inspection [00:05:00] companies, more on the operations and maintenance side.

There was still obviously the, the shield builders and the, uh, model pile installers and all of that. Uh, but there was much more new technology things happening. Very little of it this time. Hmm. Uh, notice the same thing at American Clean Power O and m or OM and S in Nashville a couple of weeks ago. Uh, much more.

Uh, about keeping the turbines either operating at peak efficiency or on the development side, like we need to get to turbines in the ground now. And this show is, I think, representative of that in the sense that Europeans are more offshore than onshore, but the deployment, deployment, deployment, we’re just trying to rapidly Europe’s, trying to rapidly deploy gigawatts out in the ocean.

Which is one of the most complicated ways to build a turbine, but Europe has the, the capability to do it. Look, walking around this show, it’s, it’s evident like the [00:06:00] process is in place, the tools are in place, that people are in place to make offshore wind extremely successful.

Rosemary: Yeah, it’s really interesting, the contrast between Europe, it was just.

Doing it versus the US who seem convinced that it’s impossible to do offshore wind. It’s like, well, hello. Like, look across the, at the ocean and you can see that it’s possible and can be cost effective in the right, um, circumstances. So, yeah. Uh, interesting contrast. Mm-hmm.

Allen Hall: And, uh, just, uh, walking around some of the things that I noticed were on, on the building and the deployment, uh, tools to make it faster, shorter times to assemble some of these turbines to, to get more gigawatts in with less cost.

That is a huge emphasis too, so that the tools are better, the technology’s better, the quality systems are better, the reporting is better. All the pieces that were just kind of left. On the sidelines for a while are now coming back into focus and you see an emphasis on the quality of the turbines. It’s one of the discussion points on the floor was, [00:07:00] Hey, let’s, let’s get the turbine development cycle down.

We’re not building so many new turbines, but we’re making the ones we have much more efficient and much more reliable.

Rosemary: Yeah, no, I think that’s a. Correction that needed to happen. It was the technology. I love technology development. It’s my thing, right? But it was happening too fast to, you know, rushing, rushing through new technologies and you know, making them bigger and bigger before the previous one had been fully understood.

And so you kind of like get ahead of yourself. And we have got lots of, uh, quality problems, warranty costs blowing out. So it makes sense that you would see less emphasis on new technology and more emphasis on, you know, incrementally and, um, just categorically removing quality problems and risks from the existing.

Uh, yeah. That what we’ve already got.

Allen Hall: Yeah. And the weather in Copenhagen has been,

Rosemary: it’s ridiculous. It’s so dated. It makes me hear like, why did I, why did I ever struggle to with the weather when I lived here? It’s, uh, [00:08:00] it’s insane. Yeah.

Allen Hall: I don’t know what it is in south. Here, it’s about 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Rosemary: Yeah. It’s been, uh, 10 degrees, no, like thir 13, 15 degree maximums. Um, just beautiful, clear skies. Haven’t seen a drop of rain. No

Allen Hall: rain. Yeah. Crazy.

Rosemary: Yeah, it’s, it’s been lovely.

Allen Hall: It’s been great. And one of the things I thought I would see more of here, because it’s a little cooler here than it is in the states at the moment, is, uh, many, many more companies looking at deicing systems because that seems to be where a lot of power is lost.

And when you go to a show in Phoenix, like American Clean Power, no one’s talking about de-icing there. ’cause it’s 105 degrees Fahrenheit there, right? But when you come to Denmark, I always think, well, it’s cold. You’re offshore, there is ice. You see more I de-icing technology. Did you see any really here?

Rosemary: No, not deicing technology specifically, but there is one company, uh, um, a woman I used to climb turbines with. She now works for this Swedish company that is doing ice forecasting. That’s very interesting. And we’ll have to record an [00:09:00] episode with those guys later on ’cause that, yeah. Um, that was, you know, when I was, I was working every day on icing for five years and, uh, that.

It’s one of the things that would always, the technology to actually make, you know, get enough energy to get the heat, enough heat everywhere that you need. It is immense. And if you can just stop the ice building up by being smart about, uh, yeah. Like if you know that you’re about to ice up a bunch, just stop the turbine for an hour or two while those conditions are there and then start up again.

You’ll see if you have a world of travel and it’s a much easier problem, I think to see. And solve the problem of actually removing it once it’s there. So I’d be very interested to find out more about how they’re doing that

Allen Hall: and sticking to that technology bent for a second. Very little in ai.

Rosemary: Yeah.

Allen Hall: Isn’t that strange?

Rosemary: Yeah, that’s true. That didn’t occur to me ’cause, but. Uh, I mean, I hear a little bit about AI in terms of we need more power in order to, you know, [00:10:00] build more data centers and stuff like that. So I think people are aware of it for that reason. Um, yeah, I haven’t seen, I haven’t seen too much. I mean, it’s probably there beneath the surface and a lot of technologies, but you don’t hear it pushed as a selling point as much here as.

It seems like, yeah, I don’t know. Elsewhere, everyone wants to attach all the time, the name AI to anything they’re doing.

Allen Hall: Right. Do ai, you see that quite a bit? Yeah. More recently. And then the, the, the spending by the, the companies and where they’re putting the resources and marketing has changed, I think, quite a bit over the last several months.

And obviously some of the more recent economic activities have made decisions for a lot of people, but. Companies that have cash, I would assume have cash or are big enough to, to have decent sized displays and booze at, um, yeah. When Europe don’t, don’t have them, which is, I thought was a little strange because some of the bigger [00:11:00] players that I would assume would have at least have a booth.

Do not have boost. Like they decided just to walk the floor. And we, we did the same thing actually this year, is that, uh, we didn’t see a lot of sales happening. Europe’s really focused on offshore’s, a lot of development happening. It’s not as much focused on the o and m side at these shows. It’s on the deployment side.

So they decided to hold their cash, which is unusual because you would like to see a little bit of everything. I would,

Rosemary: yeah. I mean, I’ve seen some big ones and like I said, I haven’t been to a lot of these really big ones before. Chuck Dway in Australia, and um, they haven’t been over so much, but I’ve been, I’ve been to a few that seemed big to me.

Like Vestas had a two story. Thing there. I went and talked to an old colleague of mine from LM days, so he’s working on some cool things and we yeah, discussed the state of, uh, you are like, what? Like most of our old colleagues I mentioned that I had been to the LM when Power Booth and knocked around. I didn’t see a single [00:12:00] person that I, I knew, which made me really sad because I worked there for nearly five years and um, yeah, there are, apparently there are a few people, I’ve seen quite a few LM XLM people, um, in different.

Companies. So it’s nice to see a lot of people still working in the industry. Um, but yeah, it’s, uh, there’s not as much engineering happening in Denmark anymore as there used to be. Yes. For the wind industry. Like it’s really

Allen Hall: noticeable.

Rosemary: Really? Yeah. It’s really noticeable. Small, not every company, but so like, it felt like Vest still had a lot of cool engineering happening.

They do in Denmark, but are they next? You know, like it makes me a little bit, are they the next to just like, you know, close every facility and fire 90% of the engineers? I mean, I don’t, I don’t understand how it’s possible that when you’re in your biggest quality warranty. Period. Like how do you expect to get through that and get out the other side if you fire the engineers that know why decisions were made And you know, like every time that you try to come up with a new [00:13:00] solution, if you don’t have the knowledge of what you tried before, you have to repeat a lot of mistakes.

And it’s, um, it’s very hard to document that in a way that the next generation will be able to. To, yes. Uh, maybe it’s a job for AI because, I mean, you do have to write a report. Um, usually in a big company, if you’ve got a project that failed, um, or even one that’s succeeded, you write lessons learned.

Maybe they’re feeding that into AI and that’s why they don’t need to keep any, any institutional knowledge anymore because it’s just all a robot. And

Allen Hall: I don’t think that’s it. But, um, I, I do think that’s something that’s happened in over the last six months that I’ve noticed that specifically. Uh, in the lightning area, but in other areas too.

It’s not just lightning that there’s a lot of younger, newer, uh, engineers that are coming into wind that are trying to make a difference, and they don’t know the lessons of the generation before. Hmm. And you we’re at this odd inflection point, I think, because there’s a lot [00:14:00] of, of the people that were developing wind in the eighties and nineties that are starting to retire out now.

Speaker 3: Hmm.

Allen Hall: And you’re losing all that knowledge and you see some of them on the floor here and they’re icons. Right. When you

Rosemary: speaking icons, I, um, I met Henrik Dale at the Australian Ambassador’s re uh, residence. I got a. Managed to score myself a last minute invite. Amazing, uh, amazing apartment overlooking the Yeah.

The harbor wind turbines. In the background, you can see, you know, their, um, CHP, the power plant that, uh, has a ski hill and rock rock climbing wall on it. All laid out there and I, yeah. Uh, ’cause I, I don’t think there were many engineers at that event, so I, as soon as I realized he was there, I, you know, basically ran over to try and, uh, chat with him, assuming that,

Speaker 3: did anybody else know

Rosemary: everybody would wanna talk to him, but, um, yeah, I mean, people knew who he was.

Sure he was there because he was interviewed in the Australian producer. Film on offshore wind energy around the world. [00:15:00] Nice. So, I mean, it, it’s not like he was unknown, but I, um, was able to chat with him for a while and it was interesting to talk about, you know, how things were when he was working on, you know, just normal wind turbines.

He’s still working on some related things. Sure. Um, and even to, yeah, like update on some of the today’s problems. Uh, you know, we had a discussion about lightning protection and is, uh, was, you know, surprised to hear how bad the situation has gotten because it’s really weird to think, you know, like by the time, so I think he said 15 years ago, he was still working at, um, Siemens Za, right?

And, uh, it’s like, yeah, but there weren’t problems with lightning. Like how have you gone backwards? I was like, well, it’s not. It’s not that it’s gone backwards, it’s that the blade technology’s progressed and what used to work perfectly adequately.

Allen Hall: Yeah.

Rosemary: No longer does. And so, yeah, it is interesting like from that perspective to think of things that are worse now than they were 10, 20 years ago.

But I would say, you know mean there are quite a few lightning leading, edge erosion. Yes. Um, yeah. [00:16:00] Even, uh, you know, like some structural during composite composite, um, yeah, the composite structures, it’s just a lot harder when they’re. Big and really thick and you know, like I said, the game’s totally changed.

And so I guess it’s a good reminder that technology or quality, everything doesn’t always go in one direction, right? No. You know, there’s lots of things happening at once and you can, you can go backwards.

Allen Hall: Yeah. And I, I do see a lot of young people here, which is great because I think it’s, it’s. The perfect level of exposure to understand what the industry looks like.

I know a lot of companies don’t send their engineers to some of these events, and I, I think they’re missing out on one of the quickest learning cycles you can get is to see what others are doing. Go to go see what Vest is up to, to see what Nordex is doing, to see what Intercon is up. To, to go see what GE Renova is proposing at the moment and then to look at all the sub-tier suppliers that go that feed those and what they’re working on and where are they going and what’s so that.

[00:17:00] That I think is a missed opportunity by a lot of of companies because I do think there’s a lot of problems at the minute. And the emphasis in this show is quality, quality, quality. Let’s get the quality better, quicker, faster. Let’s stop building as rapidly. This is keep the rotor diameters roughly the same.

And Vest has had some big scores recently on 15 megawatt turbines, which is great. That’s where we need to be. Do you think that, oh, that this trend continues, that we Well, where do you see the industry going? You, you, you’ve. Come from Australia, you’re sort of independent of the European scene and you’ve walked into it.

Where do you think the European wind industry is at the moment? Yeah,

Rosemary: I mean, it’s gotta be offshore. I mean, there’s, yeah, Europe is crowded. That’s the main thing that you, uh, I mean, definitely as an Australian you see that when you move to Europe. Like I spent every weekend trying to find a place where there weren’t a lot of other people.

And it, it’s hard. Um, and you know from the US as well, you’ve got a lot of wide open space in, in the us Yeah. So. That’s the big difference in Europe is, um, even though people are very happy, for the most [00:18:00] part to live quite close to wind turbines, you can’t put them absolutely everywhere. You don’t want them in your literal backyard.

Like it’s fine to see it, but you know, it doesn’t mean you want to, you know, live, live inside a wind turbine. Um, and offshore. Offshore is the only way to go. Um, I do say. Progress on floating, but I think people are, yeah,

Allen Hall: not much on floating.

Rosemary: Yeah. The, uh, a lot of conversations I’ve had about floating, people are just saying it’s just moving a bit slower than we expected.

I mean, I always expected it to move slowly, so I don’t feel that particularly surprised about it, but I still feel quite hopeful about floating offshore wind that. That there are niches. You know, like if you look at a country like Japan for example, it’s like they’re not choosing between having, you know, just half of the electricity made from solar power and then factories at night, and that’s all fine.

They’re choosing between. Importing, continuing to import fossil fuels for, you know, today’s level. And then if they do stick to their net zero [00:19:00] commitments, then they’re talking about importing ammonia or importing liquid hydrogen. So you’re comparing floating offshore wind to. Other really crazy, expensive, immature technologies.

So I think it’s a lot more likely there. I think that there are some really big niches in SHO floating offshore wind where it can get a foothold and eventually the long term potential is there to use less steel than a fixed bottom. So. I still think that, you know, like thinking a decade, two decades ahead, that there’s a strong chance that it floating our shop.

Do

Allen Hall: you just think, right, you think right now that floating is still seemed as risky? You think it’s an investment side issue or a technology issue?

Rosemary: Um, uh, I think it’s a way to go in technology, but yeah, it’s expensive. That’s, I think the main problem now is, is that it’s expensive. I think Europe has been pretty happy in the.

Past to pay more for expensive things, or at least plan to pay more, you know, look at their extensive [00:20:00] hydrogen plans. They’re not phased by the just immense costs that that would, that, that would have. Um, I think now, and partly because of, you know, the shake up that America has caused, I think people are starting to feel a little bit less willing to spend more.

And I think that we’re gonna see. The technologies that are gonna move fast are the ones that are already saving people money. And so that means, you know, a lot of, a lot of wind energy. Um, also solar and batteries and electric cars, they should all, you know, continue because they’re kind of at that level where it’s starting to, you know, make more and more sense on its own.

And floating offshore I think is just going to take a little bit longer. I don’t think you’re gonna see a whole lot of projects in Europe where they don’t. Need it. Need it, you know, I think it’s gonna be up to the places where they don’t have other choices to do it. First. I, if I, if I owned a floating or sher wind company, that’s what I would be expecting my first markets to be.

Allen Hall: Okay. That’s fair. I wouldn’t,

Rosemary: wouldn’t be looking for, you know, a million dollar grant from the eu. [00:21:00] I, I’m not sure that there’s gonna be, be those in a few years because, uh, you know, they’ve got other things to spend their money on.

Allen Hall: Now let’s just talk about the conference for a little bit and what you thought of the conference and.

How it was run and the, you know, when Europe typically, in my opinion, is one of the better run, more organized conferences that I will attend. Mm-hmm. Uh, I, I always think they really try to take care of the people that are attending it from, I’m gonna think about food first. I don’t know why I say that, but.

Rosemary: I was just gonna say lunch is, lunch is good.

Allen Hall: Lunch is great. Good. Yeah. It’s insanely nice. Uh, your real China with metal. Silverware. And,

Rosemary: and salads. Salads, yes. Yeah. You can eat some vegetables. That’s what I hate when I travel. Some, some places you travel to. It’s impossible to eat a vegetable. And you need to eat vegetables to feel good.

You know, you can

Allen Hall: have a lot of vegetables. You can when you’re up. Yeah. Every year. Yes. Uh, and the desserts are quite lovely. Yeah. They have tried to have a, a little bit of a more European [00:22:00] flare to the, to the meals are not all con completely danish, I think. Do you think

Rosemary: they had mini smurf roll yesterday?

So I was happy about that. ’cause I, that’s one of the things I, I miss, I would’ve preferred more Danish, but that’s because. You know, I lived here and there’s certain things that I miss and I’m only in town for four days, so it is like hard to work the way through. I’ve ticked off most of them had, uh, yeah, a couple of the key Danish pastries.

Um, yeah, the al I had some Danish potatoes. Not enough. Yeah. Look, love Danish potatoes. Yeah. So,

Allen Hall: but even get, getting down to the app and the ability to, to have a map, like a paper map at times where it’s just sometimes you must have paper to figure this out. Yeah, that super helpful. We’ll

Rosemary: give you direction somewhere.

You just tell like, I’m standing at the envision stall and I need to get to whatever particular coffee zone that someone has said to me. You are, and I’m all turned around ’cause in the wrong hemisphere. And my sense of direction, just it’s, it’s not that I get it back to [00:23:00] front, it just disappears. I’m just like, I don’t, don’t even ask me like which direction I walked in from.

Like, I don’t remember anymore. It’s so bad. So, yeah, I appreciate that. The app is pretty good.

Allen Hall: Yeah. Which makes it more enjoyable. And they have, going back to the food again, the little snack carts and uh, food trucks and, uh, little but you have to pay

Rosemary: for though, right? Some

Allen Hall: of the food trucks. But they, I, they evidently had an ice cream.

Rosemary: Yeah, I did free ice cream yesterday. It was really good. Actually. It was strawberry and it was like, I love strawberry. It was excellent. Yeah. Oh,

Allen Hall: okay.

Rosemary: Yeah. You missed out. Um, one criticism, tea bag selection. Just a bunch of down

Allen Hall: this year.

Rosemary: Yeah. There’s only like different kinds of black tea. You need some, like tea you need or you know, like some sort of relaxer.

’cause it’s just so like, you’re so just on, you can’t just drink coffee all day or you just get too, too wound up, you know?

Allen Hall: I don’t know if you watch the Danish

Rosemary: decaf drink coffee without decaf, something, without caffeine in it to relax in between [00:24:00] meetings. And

Allen Hall: as an American, I always think it’s interesting when you go to a show in Europe and they have those $30,000, uh, grinder.

Coffee makers everywhere.

Speaker 3: Like

Allen Hall: in America, you would get a pot full of liquid coffee that’s been brewing since yesterday. But here you have the little touchscreen and it grinds it and it makes a fresh cup right in front of you.

Rosemary: Here I’m gonna display our cultural differences because I would’ve definitely put the coffee as a negative in that place.

I mean, I’m not, I know I’m not in Australia and I can’t expect it, but yeah, there’s one, there’s a good cafe near where I’m staying, so I’ve had my coffee there every day. Yeah. And then I, um, stick to tea for the rest of the day because it’s. Uh, the coffee is, it’s terrible. I’ve always hated Danish coffee.

They’re like famous, famous. They’re famous for a good copy and I, I,

Allen Hall: oh, I quite enjoy it. I don’t

Rosemary: like it. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Everyone knows Australians are coffee snobs. Deny it. This is true. Absolutely. Well,

Allen Hall: the coffee in Australia is amazing. Yeah. I, I can’t deny that, but I don’t think Europe’s that. Far off.

Rosemary: Yeah, I do. [00:25:00] Yeah.

Allen Hall: America definitely is. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we did, we did happen to stop into Starbucks and because everything else was closed, then we had a Starbucks and Yeah. It tastes like burnt coffee. Yeah. But that’s what they offer. So that’s what you do.

Rosemary: Yeah. That it’s not a big complaint. I, yeah. Uh, what about the, um, actual.

Conference. Have you been to any sessions? I have not

Allen Hall: seen any technical sessions. I never do.

Rosemary: Did you go to any, any sessions, commercial ones or?

Allen Hall: No, I never go.

Rosemary: Yeah.

Allen Hall: And I feel like there’s just other things I need to be doing while I’m here and I don’t get to Europe all that often. But when I do get here, I want to meet the people that I know that I only see in Zoom for 11 months out of the year when when I get to see them in person.

All the other stuff goes by the wayside. Mm-hmm. Uh, it’s just nice to meet everybody.

Rosemary: Yeah. I mean, that’s what I’ve done most of as well. Um, but in my ideal scenario, I would’ve been going to much more sessions. [00:26:00] Like I didn’t, looking at the program, I wasn’t like really excited about. A lot of it. There were, there were, there was enough.

Um, but I’ve been to one, one session on innovation and I didn’t get all the way through, but there was, um, a presentation on leading edge erosion.

Allen Hall: Was it good?

Rosemary: Uh, they described the problem very well, but I was lucky in solutions and Okay. Yeah, I mean, I always want to, it’s been Europe, so it’s European focus, obviously, but I always want to be like, well, you know, how does this apply to Australia?

I would really love to, actually, I’ll probably follow up with it ’cause I, um, okay. The presenter, because I would like to add an Australian perspective to that sort of conversation.

Allen Hall: I always think at conferences, if you’re not presenting solutions and you’re not presenting the right information.

Rosemary: Yeah, I don’t know.

My background is, you know, like I did a PhD, so I went to lots of Yeah,

Allen Hall: sure.

Rosemary: Academic conferences. So, uh, I’m kind of quite used to people talking a lot about problems, um, and not necessarily having a, a solution. But there [00:27:00] was some other ones, uh, there was one on, um, lightning, um. Like testing of lightning protection.

Uh, yeah, sure. Which again, like they were really describing the problem, but it’s a problem that I have talked about before, but I hadn’t seen anybody else kind of recognize it’s a problem, has to do with the, you know, fatigue of the, of the LPS systems. Um. And then what else? Were there concrete towers? Um, oh, I didn’t, yeah,

Allen Hall: probably should attended that one.

Alright. Yeah,

Rosemary: I mean it wasn’t like, there wasn’t a lot of like real meaty stuff in there, but it was enough to get you thinking and I mean, it was definitely a worthwhile session. I feel like there was one more session that I. Can’t recall now, but, um, yeah. But that’s

Allen Hall: us. I, I know European conferences tend to be more technically focused than America.

America, when you, you hear Europeans come over, it’s all about the sale that everybody’s trying to sell you everything. Yeah. Which is true. You can’t deny it. Yeah. But it didn’t

Rosemary: feel like a sales pitch. Yeah. Though, [00:28:00] I mean, I’m sure that’s why they are. Fair. But one thing that I did notice, like a thread through those, um, couple of presentations that I saw was people are starting to think of like combinations of, of, uh, of effects.

So, you know, with leading edge erosion, instead of just talking about, um, you know, like tip speed, it’s like okay, but also dust is an issue and also. So UV is an issue and also temperature is an issue and we need to look at the combinations. Drop size of those things. Yeah. Droplet size. Um, I still think we’re a long way away from testing and simulation, being able to actually have real world applications, but at least people are asking the right questions now.

Um, and then the same with Lightning, you know, it was like, um. You know, fatigue. Yeah. The, the mechanical properties, uh, mechanical behavior of it and how over time that might change the effectiveness of the lining protection system. Sure. And, you know, yeah. There was a question asked about, uh, in the testing that they did, did they.

Um, was the [00:29:00] amount of fatigue cycles, was that the same as what’s required under certification? Um, ’cause they showed some, some failure. You know, you do, um, fatigue testing and then, you know, you get tiny, tiny cracks in there, micro cracking, and then you do your electrical test and, you know, um, it got really hot.

Allen Hall: Yeah.

Rosemary: Um, and so someone was asking, you know, is this beyond the lifetime that it has to be certified for? And it’s like. No, they don’t. They don’t, they don’t do that. They don’t do that at all. You test a, you test a blade in fatigue to make sure that the blade structure is sufficient, not the tip, because that’s not relevant to fatigue behavior of a blade in terms of the structure.

Um, and then they test a brand new blade, not the one that was fatigue tested. They test a brand new blade for lightning. So it is just something that isn’t. Isn’t tested. And I’ve definitely heard people in the industry say, you don’t need to. And I’m like, it’s such a high strain environment, you know, the very tip of a wind turbine blade.

The strain there is incredible, incredible metals, you know, are subject to, um, fatigue failures. So it makes a lot of sense to me. And so it’s [00:30:00] good to see. Now that was, that was a presentation by Polytech, by the way. So it’s good to see the right questions being asked. Sure. Solutions not presented yet, but you know, right.

Yeah. Asking the right question is a right question. A, a good step.

Allen Hall: That’s true. Uh, also our announcement this week, uh, that we’ve reached 1 million subscribers on YouTube for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. Now we were looking for some alcohol and we really couldn’t find it, so we’ll have to, we’ll

Rosemary: have to do a toast later on.

I can’t even believe it like it is actually.

People are, people are watching, people are subscribing and yeah,

Allen Hall: well when is the future?

Well, it’s also the now, but it will be even more in the future. The energy of choice,

Rosemary Barnes: I think. Um, ’cause you know, for a long time I was too busy to watch many episodes and especially ’cause I already heard. You heard it and you were there as I was reporting it, so I didn’t, you know, listen to as much back, but I have a lot recently, there’s a lot more episodes without me in it.

And, um, as I’m, I’m working a lot more in operations, uh, and maintenance now than I was in the past. And so a lot of times I need to find out about a new topic and I will. Level search the back catalog. And, um, there’s always something, I mean, if you’re looking at a specific company, they’ve probably been interviewed.

But more than that, like on a topic, you’ll see several [00:01:00] different people, um, different companies, different perspectives, and you can learn a lot. Very easy. We should organize, by the way, we should get the YouTube channel organized into playlist to make that

Allen Hall: We are working on that now. Yeah. Right? Yes. Right.

Yes.

Rosemary Barnes: Claire’s probably doing it. She is. Yeah. Yes.

Allen Hall: But you can also use ai. Yeah. Just to search our database and find the episode you’re looking for. Yeah. Which, what a lot of people do. Yeah.

Rosemary Barnes: That then that’s what I, that’s what I’ve been doing. But, um, so I can definitely see the, see the value now that I’m using it myself, as well as being, you know, a part of it, but also using it as a resource.

And I can see why it’s so, so popular, because it’s all, it’s all there.

Allen Hall: It’s the fastest tool to get to an answer or really close to an answer, or maybe to know who to reach out to.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, and also to just know the, you know, when you’re new to a topic and you don’t really know the right words to use in your, make the

Allen Hall: phraseology language.

Yeah. Get hesitant to

Rosemary Barnes: even talk to, you know, your, your. Your boss or the other guy at the office because you’re a bit embarrassed, it’s a really good way to get up to speed and quickly, you know, [00:02:00] like you know all the obvious things and Yeah, like quickly, you’re not gonna feel embarrassed that you’ll know.

If your question is, if it’s obvious, it’s probably been answered on the podcast, and if it hasn’t been, then you probably know that, okay, this is a. A legitimate question, and I don’t need to feel embarrassed to ask. Not that you should ever feel embarrassed to ask questions. No.

Allen Hall: We get questions. We get questions all the time where people, uh, asking to have certain guests on because they’re trying to get to that answer, and they just don’t always connect.

And a lot of the technology is in Europe or in Australia or in Asia. And it, it’s hard to reach out to those people. Uh, but we can usually get inside the doorway. Uh, so congratulations, Rosemary also to Phil and to Joel. Yeah. Nice job. And to producer Claire.

Rosemary Barnes: It’s all, it’s all because of Claire,

Allen Hall: evidently.

Yes. That’s the

Rosemary Barnes: real MVP,

Allen Hall: that’s what everybody’s told me today.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah.

Allen Hall: So, oh, that’s quite nice.

Rosemary Barnes: You raised her, so, oh, did I? You know, you can take the ultimate credit.

Allen Hall: She’ll deny that, but [00:03:00] yeah, I. Really have enjoyed spending, uh, the last couple of days with you at the conference. It’s been a lot of fun and, and good to see Nicholas Godder, Matthew Stid.

I don’t wanna leave out a bunch of people, but, uh, it’s just nice to see everybody and connect up once again.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah,

Allen Hall: so it’s been a fun time and we’ll have to do it. Um, which the next time we’re gonna be together.

Rosemary Barnes: Maybe Houston. Maybe

Allen Hall: Houston in October.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I think that’s right.

Allen Hall: Okay. Yeah, so stay tuned for that.

That’s gonna be more information released shortly. Uh, but yeah, you may see us all together in October, which will be nice. Yeah, so job well done. Well thanks Rosemary. Thanks for spending the week with us and uh,

Rosemary Barnes: thank you.

Allen Hall: Safe travels. Thank

Rosemary Barnes: you everybody for subscribing to the YouTube channel and making us, uh, yell legitimate.

Legitimate YouTube. We’ve got press passes for the We did conference, so Yeah, that’s, you know, like we’ve made it,

Allen Hall: we’ll let anybody in.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Well, we peeked into the, uh, press room, which we are entitled access to, but there’s lots of like serious, proper journalists are tapping away on, on computers and they’re on TikTok.

Don’t [00:04:00] worry about it.

Allen Hall: Not for us.

In this episode, Allen discusses Nordex’s successful Q1 2025 turbine orders, Ørsted’s innovative suction bucket jacket foundations in Taiwan, and Europe’s proposed offshore wind deal aiming for 100 gigawatts by 2040.

Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug!

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!

Welcome to Uptime Newsflash, industry News Lightning fast. Newsflash is brought to you by IntelStor. For Market in intelligence that generates revenue, visit www.intelstor.com.

Leading off the week German wind turbine manufacturer, Nordex secured orders for 2100 megawatts of turbines in the first quarter of 2025. A 5% increase from the same period last year. The company received contracts to deliver 337 wind turbines for projects across 10 countries with Turkey, Germany, Finland, Latvia, and Brazil being the largest markets.

The average sales price increased slightly to 870,000 euros per megawatt from 850,000 euros per megawatt a year earlier. CEO Jose Louise Blanco expects this positive momentum to continue throughout 2025. Nordex has installed approximately 57 gigawatts of wind [00:01:00] power capacity in over 40 markets globally, and operates factories in Germany, Spain, Brazil, India, USA, and Mexico.

The first suction bucket jacket foundation has been installed at Ørsted’s Greater Changhua 2B and 4 Offshore Wind Farm Site in Taiwan. The 920 megawatt project will comprise 66 Siemens Gamesa 14-236DD wind turbines all mounted on suction

bucket jackets foundations. This marks the first large scale use of this foundation type in the Asia Pacific region.

According to Ørsted, the suction bucket jacket design minimizes seabed disturbances, generates almost no noise during installation, and can be fully removed at the end of the wind farm’s life. The foundations are being installed by Heerema Marine Contractors, heavy lift vessel Aegir and supplied by HSG Sungdong in South Korea and Petrovietnam Technical Services Corporation in [00:02:00] Vietnam.

Europe’s wind industry has proposed a new offshore wind deal calling on European governments to auction at least 100 gigawatts of new offshore wind capacity between 2031 and 2040. The proposal announced at Wind Europe’s annual event in Copenhagen. Recommends using two-sided contracts for difference to provide revenue, stability, and reduce investment risk.

The plan calls for more coordinated offshore wind development among European countries with capacity evenly distributed over time at approximately 10 gigawatts annually. In return, the industry commits to reducing offshore wind costs by 30% by 2040.

Major developers and suppliers, including Ørsted, RWE, Vattenfall Iberdrola, Vestas, and Siemens Gamesa have signed the proposal pledging to invest in projects, manufacturing capacity and workforce development.

Allen Hall and Joel Saxum speak with Tyler Gifford, Director of Repower at Deutsche Windtechnik, about the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act on wind turbine repowering. They explore the 80/20 rule, overcoming challenges, and optimizing older wind assets to improve reliability and efficiency.

Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug!

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!

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’re diving deep into one of the most significant developments in wind energy, the Inflation Reduction Act, and its impact on wind turbine repowering. Joining us is Tyler Gifford, director of Repower at Deutsche Windtechnik.

Tyler leads Repowering initiatives across nine wind energy facilities in five states, managing over one gigawatts. Of clean energy capacity. His hands-on experience with multiple turbine platforms and deep understanding of wind farm operations makes Tyler the perfect guest to discuss the complexities of wind turbine repowering under the IRA.

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

Allen Hall: Tyler, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Guys, there’s a bunch of questions that we want to ask you about the IRA bill and how Repowering is happening, but as we talk across the United States, there seems to be a lot of challenges there. What are some of those challenges that wind farms that are getting close to Repowering are facing?

As they start to make some of these decisions?

Tyler Gifford: Good question, Allen. I mean, typically with Repowering, a lot of people think of, I’m gonna tear the tower down and I’m gonna start fresh and I’m gonna put a whole new one up. So what we think about is there’s another approach to this, the 80 20 and the IRA has really introduced a new opportunity in the industry to where we can take older assets that are, have been operating reliably for years.

And you, you can evaluate, understand your fair market value, and there’s an opportunity to where that fair market value is so low to where you can go out and you can understand what, what is a value add upgrade for this, this asset. Does it ha doesn’t necessarily have to be a whole drive, train or take off the hole in the cell and put a hole in the cell on it.

It could be that your fair market value is so low that you wanna evaluate. Typically owners wanna evaluate two things they want. Hire a EP, they want to increase a EP or they want to improve reliability. Those are the two big things that owners want. So with, for, so for Deutsche Wind Technic, that’s what we do.

We meet with those owners and we understand, okay, you may have an asset that’s 2015 or 15 to 20 years old but there’s a way that, that you can take advantage of these PTCs, just like the bigger operating assets out there. So we’ll evaluate, look at, what, what are your pain points? What’s causing you to lose reliability, lose availability.

What’s causing turbine or what’s causing technicians to have to go out there and climb? What are your pain points? And then we start to target those pain points by finding upgrades that will go after those, those things that are causing causing. Those, those reliability concerns. So that could be things, it could be drivetrain it could be, it could be that you need to focus on your blades.

But it could also be smaller things, things that get overlooked. It could be condition monitoring systems that some of these older assets just don’t have. It could be different things like sensors and controller systems and, and things that day to day are causing. Towers to come offline and causing owners pain and causing owners money, and we can qualify them for these PTCs without possibly the cr, the large crane costs, without possibly having to pull big expensive permits and things like that.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. So what we’re. What we’re diving into here is just a different way of looking at repowering. So classically, everybody thinks repower, I gotta take a whole new, to sell a whole new everything. Because what they’re looking to do is basically requalify for PTC. This is the joke that Phil always says, we’re PTC farming, not wind farming at some points in time.

But it doesn’t have to be that difficult. It doesn’t have to be that capital intensive is what you’re saying by the IRA rules that 80 20 rule. So it, I wanna clarify the 80 20 rule that’s, you’ve got to put. 80 is 80% of the value of the asset back into it. Exactly. Joel? Yep. Okay. And and it’s, and, and it’s based on the individual asset, correct?

Tyler Gifford: Individual asset, yeah. The, the IRS sees it as a facility, so it’s turbine by turbine. The IRS defines a turbine as a facility. Okay. So.

Joel Saxum: Because some wind farms, I mean, we know one wind farm. We were talking to someone the other day, they had like four different types of turbines on it. It’s like, how do you value all these?

So, so that’s the next, I guess, part of it, or a big part of it when Allen says, what are the challenges people take if you’re gonna go down this route of a. Upgrade, refurbish type repower. How do you, how do you get the value of these things? Is it, is it consultants? Do you guys do it at DWT yourself? How does the operator do it?

Like what does that look like? Typically, what you

Tyler Gifford: gotta find out is, okay, I got this 15 to 20-year-old asset. Can it run another 15 to 20 years? So that’s gonna be through a number of channels. And at DWT Yeah, we’ll partner with you from the beginning stage of understanding what’s my fair market value.

We don’t do that in-house, but we have many people that we work with. So you gotta understand what’s your fair market value. Then you gotta understand what’s my integrity of my asset? What is can, can the, can the machine base, can the foundation, can these tubes handle another 15 to 20 years of extended life that we’re planning on providing you?

Once you understand that, and you can go through a number of independent engineers, engineering firms that can help you determine that, but then we come in and really help you put together what we call an optimized 80 20 repower package. We’re not gonna hand you a package and say, here’s a drivetrain package in a couple upgrades.

Take it or leave it. No. A a a Siemens two three repower to another Siemens two three Repower may look completely different. ’cause what we wanna do is we wanna look at, well, what’s historically, what, what does the fault data tell you? Where, where are your pain points? It’s possible that you could have done retrofits or site-wide sweeps or made upgrades through the years that you don’t have weaknesses that other owners do.

It’s possible that you could have replaced drive, train components. You could have done a, a generator bearing sweep and taken away that weakness. So we don’t want to come in and tell you to replace all your generators when you’ve already made those upgrades. We wanna make sure that your, your return on investment

Allen Hall: is as high as possible.

So the, the goal is from a turbine by turbine by turbine approach is to take that turbine, make it better, let it live another 10 to 20 years. And still meet this 80 20 rule. That makes a lot of sense because the issue I think a lot of operators are having at the moment, if they want to put a new turbine in, there’s not a lot of new turbines you can buy right now that that assembly line is pretty well booked out.

And if you want to get the production tax credits rolling sooner rather than later, and the, and you like the turbines, you have your technicians understand the turbines you have. The 80 20 rule allows you to keep that same turbine, but just make it better. How does, how do you do that then, as Deutsche Windtechnik?

Obviously you’re bringing a lot of knowledge to the table about a lot of different turbines because Deutsche Windtechnik is huge and you work with a lot of different turbines. Do you have a, like an engineering group internal that comes in and says, yes, this GE 1.5. Generally has these problems.

These are things that we can focus on specifically because we have the knowledge of the turbines a hundred percent.

Tyler Gifford: So the biggest thing where we flip the script is transparency. So with any owner, they wanna operate their asset. They want to op, they wanna optimize it, they wanna run things the way, the way they wanna run it.

So the biggest thing for us is we want that too. We wanna support you. If you have issues, we wanna partner alongside of you. We have US-based engineers right here in the us. That are based in Houston, Texas. And then we also have an extensive engineering support team over in Europe, over in Germany where we have, you know, we have our mechanical engineers, our electrical engineers, our blade engineers.

We have specific GE engineers, specific Siemens engineers. Whatever you need, we have the engineering support that, that can help you optimize your assets. So when we think about that, when building a repower package, we think about. How do, how do we improve the way that you’re currently operating? Maybe it’s that for the longest time you’ve had things that you wanted to adjust or wanted to change, maybe with your current controller system that you just haven’t been able to do that.

So then let’s target that with a new, you know, third party, a controller system. And then it’s not that we’re gonna, we’re gonna hold back and, and try to keep you from changing parameters or adjusting things the way you want. We’re gonna partner with you to say, Hey, if you have an issue or you have an inquiry, or you have something that you wanna make better.

Let’s do it. Let’s partner together.

Joel Saxum: So controller systems is a big one. I know. I’ve heard that personally from people doing Repowers. It’s like, well, we have this, you know, X, Y, ZOEM controller, and we’re kind of locked outta this and we can’t get this and we can’t get that SCADA data. So that’s a great example of something.

You do an upgrade, but now all of a sudden you have more control. You have the ability to. Do things that you haven’t had before or data that you want to grab before. So what would you say is your most common, I guess, upgrades, and I know this is a broad question because we’re talking diff ge, Vestas, Siemens, like they’re all kind of, there’s a lot of things out there, a lot of different brands, turbine types.

But what would you say is the most common thing that you guys, that people say, I wanna upgrade this right away. It, it

Tyler Gifford: really depends on the technology and that fair market value of that asset. And MHI 1000, that fair market value is gonna differ pretty drastically from a Siemens two, three. But we take the same evaluation approach.

We wanna look at where your pain points how can we give you the most value for a an 80 20 repower package. But I would say, Joel, you’re, you’re correct for a EP. Improving a EP, you’re gonna be, it’s gonna be on your controller, it’s also gonna be in your blades. Anything we can do where we can uplift your power output.

So vortex generators, a lot of customers want leading edge protection. And then on the mechanical side, a hundred percent is drive, train components. We’re never gonna steer someone away from reducing their CapEx on the backend. If they can do that, it’s all about reducing CapEx and reducing opex.

How do we if, if, if DWT is a partner on the backend, on a long-term service agreement, we want to partner with you on the o and m side. If we want to stand behind a product that we know is gonna run reliable, and we’re gonna put an availability guarantee behind it, and we gotta deliver on the front end.

During the construction period when we’re putting upgrades and installing, installing these components in your turbines to make sure that we’re really setting you up for success.

Joel Saxum: I think that’s a really important thing to touch on here is Deutsche Windtechnik As a company, I mean, if you’re in wind, it doesn’t matter where you are in the world.

You’ve heard of Deutsche Windtechnik, so what, but what you guys are offering as well is, Hey, we’ll come and do your repower. On the back end of it, we’ll also run the wind farm for you and give you, and, and you’re even going to the point of giving availability guarantees is, is that what I heard? Yep, that’s right.

And then

Tyler Gifford: it’s the tricky piece with some, with this 80 20 and the IRA is that you have to have a. 15% of your total labor hours for your construction period ought to be performed by qualified apprentices. So that’s the next piece. So that’s, that’s something new, that’s something that’s new that’s been introduced to the WIN industry.

So DWT actually has our own internal apprentice program so we can meet that labor requirement. And that’s really a key piece. ’cause without that piece. Owners aren’t gonna be doing 80 20 repowers. So that’s a really important aspect of these 80 20 repowers is being able to meet those labor requirements, not only for prevailing wage at the local rate of the construction project, but also the apprentice labor hour percentage requirements.

Allen Hall: Well, how soon should I bring Deutsche Windtechnik in? Before my site gets repowered, just, just trying to understand what the logistics are here, because one of the, the things I hear about most frequently in terms of repowering, particularly if they’re just doing work up to hour, is what about the concrete?

What about the tower? How do I know that? Those two pieces, which are the critical pieces of holding everything together. How do I know that those two pieces are okay to live another 20 years do. There must be a little bit of engineering that goes on ahead of time and maybe just some monitoring that goes on ahead of time to know like, okay, we understand what the real issues are with this farm.

We’ve monitored it, we, and we think these turbines you can just leave alone and. Upgrade while this turbine over here. Maybe we gotta rip the foundation out and maybe you don’t wanna repower that one. I mean, we’re a partner that

Tyler Gifford: will partner with you throughout the full process. Whether it’s, whether it’s, you need someone that will help you evaluate the fair market value, I.

If we don’t do it in-house, we’re not gonna tell you that we can do it, but we can steer you in the right direction for the right industry experts that can help you navigate along those steps. But we’ll be your partner shoulder to shoulder up. Okay? Let’s determine your fair market value. Okay? You have your fair market value.

Now we need to determine structural integrity. You have your structural integrity. Now let’s start evaluating salt data. Our engineers will be telling you, this is the data I need, these are the reports that I need. And when they start going through that, it’s a back and forth collaborative conversation to understand what makes sense on a 80 20 repower.

It’s not this, here’s our quote, here’s our bid. Take it or leave it. That’s not how it works. That’s how it works with us.

Allen Hall: Tyler, what, what does that timeframe look like when you They say, okay, Deutsche Windtechnik, Hey, I’m putting my trust in. You go. How much time do you need to overlook a site before you really understand how it works and what you can do to it?

You’d be surprised at how quick we can

Tyler Gifford: turn some of these evaluations, but I, I would say it can be as quick as a, as a few weeks and as long as a few months. That’s quick. That’s a lot faster than I thought I was looking, looking to hear like 18 months or something like that. Now that’s for the evaluation and understanding what does an 80 20 look like?

And, and you certainly have customers that are more motivated and their legal teams are set up and ready to go. But then what we’ll do is we’ll be open and honest with you about, okay, so we’ll do the, we’ll support you with the engineering side, we’ll support you with the procurement side. We have the full supply chain folks that can help you understanding, okay, you’re telling me this is the components and these are the upgrades that I need, but can we get that?

Everyone knows supply chain is constrained. And if one company’s talking about 80 20 and Repower, then a num, another company is talking about 80 20 and Repower. So we’ll be open and honest about, okay, maybe we wanna do this upgrade, but if that doesn’t work for the project timeline, then maybe this other upgrade makes, makes sense because of the procurement time.

So the procurement time is a really

Allen Hall: critical piece. The supply chain is a critical piece to the repowering. You do see a lot of sites where they wanna repower and they wanna put new bearings in, but there aren’t bearings available, so they’re kind of stuck navigating. That is probably the hardest. Part in the Repowering is getting the components that you want to be on the turbine, but Deutsche Wing technique has those resources to either the, you carry those parts or they know how to procure those parts.

And the procurement piece is probably the most difficult part of Repowering. You wanna explain how strong that procurement piece is for Deutsche Wing technique because you have been able to do these 80 20 projects. Yeah, the big thing is global. You

Tyler Gifford: gotta think global. So with 80 20 there is a piece of domestic.

So there is a domestic content bonus adder for the IRA. Very, very difficult. It’s very, very difficult ’cause most of our materials and a lot of our components for these wind, these wind turbine assets. Come from overseas. So that piece is there, but you have to think global of where do these parts come from?

We have a global, we have our US supply chain, and then we have our global supply chain in Germany. And that’s really the critical piece. These are, these are people that have been working in the wind industry DWT U TWT Inc. Was founded in 2004. So these are folks that have been partnering with the, the Siemens and the Vestas, and.

Building those relationships with a large supplier providers for, for many, many years. And you just have to think larger scale and you have to be really unique on your strategy on, on how you’re gonna procure these parts because. Everybody needs parts to, to perform these repowers

Allen Hall: Well, what kind of performance improvements can you typically deliver here?

If you’re going to put Vortex generators on, you’re gonna clean up a lot of the drivetrain, clearly. Get the CMS installed, put a new controller in. What are we talking about in terms of. Numbers in terms of percentage upgrade?

Tyler Gifford: Yeah, I mean, it really depends on the asset. I mean, it really depends on is it a one megawatt machine, is it a two megawatt machine?

And really the, the components that you’re gonna be installing, but anywhere from, I would say a one to four to 5% uplift with the, with the upgrades. Depending on, you know, what all you install and then the reliability piece. I mean, when we’re coming on the backend, when construction phase is finished and we’re coming in with a long-term service agreement Deutsche Windtechnik really matches the OEMs.

Where we’re a lot of these technologies you know, we’re high, high nineties availability guarantee. So we have to stand behind the quality and. The product that we’re putting out there.

Joel Saxum: So you need products like, like strike tape from weather guard to make sure you don’t have lightning damages.

That’s what you need.

Tyler Gifford: Exactly, Joel. That’s exactly the product that we need. Yes.

Joel Saxum: So let me ask you this question, because I’ve heard this before from a few people, like, Hey, we’re thinking about doing a repower, but. If we do a full repower, we have to renegotiate our PPA and they don’t want to do that ’cause they have a really good PPA in place.

Do you have to, is that, does that come into play as well with the 80 twenties or do you get to bypass some of that? It

Tyler Gifford: really depends on the site and the owner and the situation. But yeah, some of our owners are doing that. It really depends on the situation.

Joel Saxum: It’s a, there’s a difference there too. ’cause you’re looking at the cost.

So if you have a $200 million wind farm and you’re gonna do a full repower, the classical we repowers have been done, which to me is, is. It is hard to watch that as an engineer and as people that know what’s going on because like those assets are still fine. Why are we taking them down? Why are we replacing blades and hole in the cells and all this stuff when the thing is still running?

I. Let’s do something different. Like you guys are doing the 80 20 repower, we’re gonna use the same equipment, we’re gonna keep it outta landfills, we’re gonna keep this asset running. But people are, they look at it like, oh, I don’t know about this PPA thing. However, there’s two ways in my mind, CapEx is one thing.

So if you have a 200, a hundred million dollars wind farm, it’s gonna cost you probably a a hundred, $150 million to do that. You know, full on repower, where you don’t have to do all of that. Spend all of that cash. So your capital versus the money spent and money made can maybe even make up for that PPA difference.

Tyler Gifford: Yep. You’re really, your risk is really much lower. Again, like I talked about, the permitting risk. I mean, you think a lot of these components that I’m talking about, it’s no different than when you’re operating the site. You know, you don’t have the large permitting, you don’t have the big crane.

Sometimes we do have big crane costs, but not all the time. But you’re not introducing new technology that you just don’t understand. You spend all this money and, and all this capital training up your technicians to get them to understand these turbines and not, then you have a reliable asset and you have a reliable site that you’re operating, why not keep that going and take out the, the parts that you are upgrade, the parts that you know are causing you pain.

And you really take out that that unknown, those bugs, those years of pain and suffering and it really can target some. Some value added components that really, really make a difference.

Allen Hall: What is the future for 80 20 refurbishment? Is it growing like, I think that it should because I think Joel’s point is right.

It is sort of painful to watch blades being dumped and recycled that are, have a lot of life lifting ’em. A lot of those older blades are tough as nails and a lot of the equipment and the, the drivetrains is really tough. Are you seeing more action and more people picking up the phone and calling Deutsche Windtechnik and calling you Tyler and saying, tell me about 80 20.

Explain how this works. How do I get this done? A hundred percent. I mean, we’ve had.

Tyler Gifford: Customers that are very, very well versed in 80 20 understand it very well. You know, customers that are, this is, this is a new concept to them. They weren’t thinking, they were thinking about, you know, tearing down their turbines.

A few months ago, and this has been a new concept for them, but 80 20, assuming things aren’t gonna change with the new, new government change. It’s not gonna go anywhere because you think the turbines right now that are 15 to 20 years old, those are gonna be the low hanging fruit. Those are the ones that are gonna be getting repowered right now in five to 10 years from now that, that, that is gonna overturn.

And the turbines that were 10 years old are now 20 years old. The turbines that are five years old are now 15 years old, so it’s gonna continue to have this. This, these turbines that are always gonna be optimal for an 80 20 repower.

Allen Hall: I understand this, this is really fascinating to me. I, I believe 80 20 is the way for a lot of operators over the next couple of years are going to move forward because there’s a limited number of new turbine slots, and it isn’t like they’re designing new turbines all the time.

Right now, you’re seeing fewer and fewer turbines being even offered. So your selection is very narrow of what you can install. I know a lot of operators that love their GE 1.5 or their Siemens turbines that just do not want to replace them. They need to be really considering using Deutsche Windtechnik and, and getting an understanding of what the financing piece of this is along with the engineering piece quickly because.

There’s gonna be a long line, obviously at your door, Tyler, you’re gonna have a lot of people saying, Hey, help me, help me, help me. It’s better to be in the front of that line and then the back of that line, how. How do they get ahold of you? How do they connect with you? How do they start this process and learning what their assets are worth and learning what engineering things need to be done?

Tyler Gifford: Yeah, I mean, reach out to reach out to us. We have a mailbox set up focused on repower, so that’s [email protected]. Get on our website, check us out. Reach out to me. You can hit me up on LinkedIn, but I mean, you’re right, there’s so many reliable assets out there. Think of the MHI 1000.

Everyone that has those assets, that’s, that’s had those assets for some time that’s taken care of them. Reliable machine, they know it can run. They know it’s bulletproof. Me being a former clipper tech man, I wish 80 20 repower would’ve been an opportunity ’cause we could have saved those assets. ’cause I sure enjoyed working on them, but there’s probably a lot of people that say differently.

But man, I would’ve loved to have saved more of those assets and had 80 20 repower for those.

Allen Hall: That’s why I need to get a hold of Tyler and Deutsche Wind. And if you go to their website, I’m gonna spell it out because I have trouble with it. I know everybody else does too, if you’re an American, but spelling Deutsche and Win Technique or not Easy is D-E-U-T-S-C-H-E hyphen W-I-N-D-T-E-C-H-N-I k.com.

You go to that website, you can get ahold of Tyler and get your 80 20. Repower situation figured out, and now’s the time to do it. Tyler, thank you so much for appearing on the podcast. I love having you on. I, I learned a tremendous amount. Appreciate

Tyler Gifford: talking with you guys as long as it’s not talking about the Wisconsin Badgers with Joel.

I’ll chat with you guys all day long.

Alex Fournier, Director of Composite Operations at Enertek, discusses the importance and training of SPRAT certification for wind turbine technicians. He details the certification levels, recent changes in safety standards, and the significance of proper protective gear and equipment maintenance in rope access and blade repair.

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!

Allen Hall: With wind turbine scaling up and rope access becoming more critical. Technicians need proper training for safe and efficient blade repairs. This week we speak with Alex Fournier director of Composite Operations at Enertek, Alex brings insight on the spread certification process and how recent changes are enhancing safety.

Efficiency for technicians working at Height.

Speaker 2: Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow.

Allen Hall: Alex, welcome to the program.

Alex Fournier: Thank you guys for having me once again.

Allen Hall: Yeah, we’re glad to have you back. There’s been so much so many changes that has happened since the last time you were here, but today we want to talk about SPRAT training and. What this means for the industry and what the latest and greatest is in terms of sprt.

And for those who don’t know what SPRT is, it’s actually an acronym like most things in Wind, it’s the Society of Professional Rope Access Technicians, and they create [00:01:00] the standards around. The knowledge you’re supposed to have and the skills you’re supposed to have if you want to climb with rope access.

Now. I, Alex, I wanna start off first, like how big of a problem do we have right now on the training on rope access technicians? I see a lot of variation across the United States in particular. Are you seeing the same thing, that they’re just not so much a concrete standard everybody’s using?

Alex Fournier: I think in Canada, like we don’t have that many schools that offer the course, first of all. So I think we don’t have much in the east Coast. We probably have what? Three, four. In the west coast they have a little bit more. And it’s often like vendors that will offer it. So it’s a mistress, for example, offered a course.

They do IDA and spread. I did my course at Novel in Montreal, which is one of the best training center I’ve seen in all my years of Rob Access. Celtic Falcon too in the East coast. Really good training center. But I [00:02:00] think since we don’t have that many, everyone is kinda like on the same page, so everyone talked to each other and the course is pretty well structured, at least in Canada.

Before when I started the course was four days, and then you had one days for the exam. So it’s a lot to learn in four days, but now they changed it to five days of course, and then one extra day for the exam. So that give you much time to train and, if you don’t understand something you can.

You can really take the time to really understand it. So you’re ready for the exam.

Joel Saxum: Alex, let me ask you a question about SPRAT and ia, right? ’cause Sprat is the North American version. IRATA is usually the EU version or rest of the world version. They are they’re organizations that push this safety forward and there’s, this is how we should do things.

And a lot of times a company will adopt it, say, X, Y, Z operator says, if you’re gonna be on ropes on my site, you must be sprat level, this level, that level, that, however. Correct me if I’m wrong here, but this is my take on it. They’re not actually like a [00:03:00] governmental association. They’re not an OSHA or something that mandates that you must have.

It’s just these things are in our industry, sprat best practices. This is what people live by. This is how we do it. Okay. That’s correct. Yeah. So can you walk us through the different levels of spray? ’cause I know there’s like a 1, 2, 3. What do those all mean?

Alex Fournier: Yeah. Level one basically you’re just a basic technician.

You just learn how to move yourself on the ropes basically. So you’ll do basic like rope Totaro transfer, or you’re gonna pass deviation. All the basic maneuver that you need to know on ropes. You’re gonna learn it into your level one which is great. Then to be a level one you just need to be 18-year-old and you can sign up and do your level one.

That’s the only requirement. Level two is after you did 600 hours on ropes and six months of experience as a level one. Then you can do your level two which you’ll learn more. It will be more like rescue scenario. So you’ll do some basic [00:04:00] maneuver combined with rescue, but yeah, so as a level two, you’re gonna learn more as taking some charge up and moving some charge up in the air.

And then to be a level three, it’s kinda the same thing you do you’re level two, so then 600 hours as a level two, and then six months as a level two, and then you can go to level three. And then level three, you do every basic maneuver that I said in level one, but it’s rescue, so you’re gonna do like a climbings rescue.

You’re gonna do deviation rescue, ballet rescue just rope to rope transfer with a victim on you. So it’s every maneuver with a rescue because when you’re a level tree, normally you’re in charge of the site or you’re gonna be in charge of. All the employees, not necessarily, but normally that’s all it is.

So you wanna make sure that you’re able to rescue pretty much everyone in every

Joel Saxum: scenario. So what is, okay, so we have level ones, level twos, level threes. What is a normal, and we’re talking blade repair here, [00:05:00] right? This is the Uptime podcast. So what is a normal blade repair, sprat rope access crew look like?

Alex Fournier: So I know a lot of people will be, mad, that’s what I’m gonna say. But normally when you work, we call it when the rope access world, the wind turbine industry is the easiest rope access world. Because you’re only doing you’re only going down. You’re only going up. There’s not much to it. You’re not gonna do crazy deviation or you’re not gonna do crazy, like zip line and all that stuff. If you do oil and gas, it’s much bigger. But in rope access, in the wind industry, normally a level one and level two. It’s pretty much that a level three might be overkill sometimes. On big job you probably want to have one just ’cause you probably have more knowledge and project management.

But normally just a regular team, it’s

Joel Saxum: gonna be a level two and a level one. Yeah. And from my experience, basically everybody’s dropping down two, two people on the blade. You don’t go by yourself. So there’s always gonna be two [00:06:00] technicians on that blade. And that makes sense. What you’re saying is and while people may not like this of rope access, what it looks and that is a little bit easier because for the most part, you’re going up and down and. Two dimensions, right? It’s just up down on that one thing. Whereas in, I’ve been on, I’ve been offshore on oil and gas crews where you see people in three dimensions, guys going across tanks and all kinds of crazy stuff in between.

Pylons, like that’s pretty, that’s some pretty advanced stuff. And when you watch those guys work, it is really impressive. Sometimes the really experienced ones, I’m sure they are level threes or whatever, how they can zip around. It’s the same thing on a wind turbine though. When you’re, if you’ve never seen that and you watch these people,

Alex Fournier: it’s

Joel Saxum: mind blowing.

Alex Fournier: It’s really the industrial athletes, that’s how we call it normally.

Joel Saxum: But it’s really impressive. The seasonality of wind makes that kind of stuff difficult because what happens is from a lot of times, okay, we’ll take North America for example, because of our blade repair season. You may be, if you’re a rope person, you may be out on ropes from April till September, [00:07:00] October, depending on how far north you are.

And then you got three, four months off. So coming back around to April again, much. A little bit tough, isn’t it, when you’re coming off the couch.

Alex Fournier: Yeah. And I gotta see a lot of people they take it off in the winter and I don’t blame them ’cause it’s really cold when you do ropes. But when you come back, you in that if you are of bench board in six months, you shall do a day at a training center to just put you back in your element.

So yeah, you shall still practice a little bit. But yeah, coming back after two months of holidays or three months of. Vacation. It can be hard. Yeah, you’re gonna be sore. Definitely. The first you’re gonna be sore.

Allen Hall: Let me ask the obvious question, because a lot of guys that do wind turbine work in the summertime do something else in, in the fall and the winter, but they want to stay on ropes.

So is then the sprat carries over. So even if you’re just doing spprt work for a wind turbine, you can get over into oil and gas and do some rope work there, or. Wherever the place is. So it’s so itpr as a [00:08:00] universal training system in a sense. It’s not just wind specific.

Alex Fournier: Yeah. It’s basically, it’s kinda like a driver license.

And the wind turbine industry is kinda like the car. So let’s say you go to oil and gas you have your driver license, your rope access guy. But the car is, let’s say like the oil and gas industry, like myself, I started in 2015 as a ax technician. I started doing window cleaning in Montreal.

So I was washing windows and then one of my friend got me into the wind industry. But definitely around the spread universe. You can do building maintenance. You can do oil and gas, you can go and mines, you can go in wind turbines. So there’s a lot of universe that are related to the spread industry as well

Joel Saxum: as Ida.

So staying up to date on it. What kind of changes have you seen lately in the for the Spprt certification? What does it look like?

Alex Fournier: So for spprt, one of the big change that will be related to the wind industry is that you don’t need A level three on site anymore. So I know a lot of [00:09:00] people ’cause you cannot have a level trees on every wind turbine of your project.

So Sprat said, as long as your level two just do up and down maneuver. So you cannot do like crazy ballets and zip line and all that stuff, but we basically just do up and down, right? So as long as you do up and down maneuver and your level two is trained you can have only a level two taking care of the job.

Allen Hall: So to get to that point of being a level two, if you’re just starting in the industry, takes several months to get there. How, what’s the best way to go about doing that?

Alex Fournier: If you’re really new let’s say it’s your first time, like doing something related to wind industry and you’re a level one and you’re just starting sprats say that 600 hours and six months as a level one to be level two you need to know it’s 600 hours on ropes.

You cannot be just chilling in the wind. Turbine doesn’t count as being on ropes. You actually need to be on ropes or calling ropes or putting ropes in a bag. Doesn’t count as hours. So you need [00:10:00] to be 600 hours on ropes in six months as a level one. I will say if you’re able to do 600 hours in one season, in six months, that’s really good.

You can do your level two obviously will give you more seniority. Like you’re gonna be a level two so you can tap your shoulder. But I will say if you’re really new, maybe I will do another year as a level two, not as a supervisor, but just, to understand like all the industry work and, slowly taking the role as a level two.

But that will be my approach. Let’s say you get your ticket and then you do one season as just a level two, and then. Once you’re ready, you go As a lead, that will be all. I will do it. That’s how I did it. But if, of course, if you’re ready, you think after your 600 hours go ahead and do it.

But that’s how I see it.

Joel Saxum: We’re talking blade repair too, right? So rope this is why blade repairs like. So complicated because we’re just talking about the rope access part of it, right? We’re just talking about how you get to work. Yeah. We didn’t talk about Blade yet.

Yeah. Your [00:11:00] co your commute is the, probably one of the craziest commutes in the world to get to the actual job task. But now we’re, then you gotta get there, then you gotta, yeah. Then you gotta learn blade repair. So I think that if you’re a sprat level one, basically you’re a minimum of a season sprat, level two, you’re probably two seasons.

Then level three, maybe at the beginning of that fourth year, you’re taking, you’re level three and you’re ready to run a crew. Does that look about right?

Alex Fournier: Yeah, it look about right for myself, I did two years as a level one one year as a level two, and then I did my level three, like really fast.

But I was ready to do it. But yeah, ’cause like you said, you also need to learn how to do fiberglass also, right? So you gotta learn how to be confident on ropes and how to manage all your rope, all your stuff, like all your buckets on you, all the elements around you. And then you need to do the fabricas as well.

So if you’re learning everything at the same time, it can be a little bit overwhelming. But just take your time and you’ll do just fine.

Joel Saxum: Alex, I’m gonna ask you a question. [00:12:00] And this is a non access guy. How do you use the restroom when you’re hanging on ropes?

Alex Fournier: There’s different school of thought.

You need to know that ammonia, like we have a ammonia in our bodies, but it’s one of them. The bows, dangerous material for RNS, it’s ammonia, like it will just destroy your R ns. So you need to be really careful of what you do when you go to the bathroom. I will recommend removing your RNS before you do so it’s either you go down or you can take the risk to do it up there. I already did it up there. It’s not super fancy, but you can do it.

Allen Hall: See, that leads into my question about taking care of your equipment. Spprt walks you through how to maintain your gear, right? What are some of the keys to keeping your equipment ready to

Alex Fournier: climb?

So basically, as a level one, you should even all the levels, you should do like checkup every day before you. Climb the tower or what you’re about. The job you’re about to do is you check the webbing, you check your RNS if it look good you check if there’s any discoloration, if you see some stitches going away, or if you see that it start to rip, obviously you need to [00:13:00] discard.

Same thing with plastic or metal. If you see cracks, if see your plastic discoloring or cracks in your plastic are your battle, you need to discard as well. But yeah just make sure that everything looks right and there’s no cracks or discoloration.

Allen Hall: So let’s talk about the, probably the, one of the most controversial topics when we talk climbing and ropes is helmets and all the protective gear, because everyone has their own opinion that everybody likes a certain style, and if they choose the other brand, it’s like, it’s not any good.

I wanna hear someone that I trust. Alex, you, what your thoughts are on some of the protective gear that you should be wearing when you’re climbing and using ropes.

Alex Fournier: I use the pencil lme, the vertex best. I’ve been using it since forever. I never change lme. I know there’s cask and pedal Petzel.

I rather petzel. For a couple of years I think Petzel, they were playing with their design and there was some stuff that, you had to buy clips to [00:14:00] fit on your helmet to be able to put a visor and the protective earrings. But now I think the, it all came together and their helmet is better today.

Like you can wear a lamp with a visor and then you can have your protective earring on your helmet. But yeah, it’s a must to have your ed lamps at least a visor, right? Like the visor and the protective earrings. ’cause when you do grindings. Wanna protect your hair,

Allen Hall: right? So all the accessories matter there now.

So the hearing protection is probably in the eye protection are the two big ones, and now they’re incorporated into the helmet themselves or clip on things now. So is there certain things about those that you should pay attention to? Maybe. Where, like the hearing protection, I always think the hearing protection is very person centric.

Like some hearing protection is comfortable, some of it is not. It’s really a decision of the technician. Have you seen a lot of variation there? Have you tried a bunch of things? What works for you?

Alex Fournier: What, for sure me, it’s really like the overhear like airing protective system and then the visor for me I wear glasses, right?

So if I wanna make sure that [00:15:00] I’m fully protected, I wear the visor. My glasses too. But yeah I wear both. I like to have shades, so I take the shade visor. So yeah, I take the shade visor. My overall like air protective. ’cause sometimes when you put like just the one in your hair little plugs, they wear out and you cannot use them.

You cannot use them like often. You can use them often, but you cannot, you’re not supposed to reuse a plug. So then like buying plugs, every day or just putting new plugs every day. Then you’re gonna lose them as when you have them on your helmet, you’re never gonna lose them.

Joel Saxum: I like the visor on the petzel too. ’cause it makes you look like a fighter pilot. Yeah.

Alex Fournier: With the air protective too. You really look like a jet pilot. But when you have everything on your lme, you’re not gonna forget it, because everything’s on it.

Joel Saxum: That’s the benefit, right?

’cause when you’re climbing, everything needs to be, you gotta, the stop the drop. We, the whole industry talks about that, right? So everything has to be carabiner off and lanyard it off and all this stuff. So if all of those things that you [00:16:00] use are connected to your helmet, boom, that’s one much easier way to go about your day.

’cause you just, soon as you clip that thing under your chin you got all your stuff on.

Allen Hall: Same thing for work gloves. What are you using?

Alex Fournier: Work gloves. The petzel once again.

Allen Hall: Really? Are you using petzel

Alex Fournier: for that? Okay. Yeah. The work gloves when I do propex is maneuver. I use my pencil gloves.

But when I do grindings, I use my cut resistant gloves. So I like the cut resistant clip from Grainer. I think they have some, and then the anti vibration too. When you grind for long hours, it, you know it’s gonna hurt your hands. So anti-vibration and anti cut, it’s the best.

Allen Hall: Okay, so I wanna talk about that now.

It was leading to this question, the anti vibration discussion. So over in Europe, they have limitations on how long you can operate a piece of equipment like a grinder because of the vibration and what it does to your hands and your arms, and. North America. I don’t think there are any regulations about that.

Are there regulations about that in Canada?

Alex Fournier: Not that I know of. Not that I [00:17:00] heard of. Maybe there is, but I’m not really sure.

Allen Hall: Yeah. I, from what I’ve seen in Canada, it doesn’t seem like there is. So essentially you could be using a grinder 4, 6, 8 hours a day. Gloves matter there. So what is the best in terms of anti vibration gloves?

I’ve seen a couple of ’em. They look really cool.

Alex Fournier: If you go on Uline and you wrote anti vibration gloves, they’re gonna be gray with a big Uline on it. And that’s the one that I use. And they’re pretty good. We use them for years and they really make a difference actually.

Allen Hall: Okay. All right. Yeah, because that it is a big issue over in Europe that they’re actually limiting people.

That, that’s fascinating. Alright, there’s a lot to do with Spprt and if you’re a technician, especially, you want to get into the wind industry and now’s the time to get into the wind industry, you’re going to need spprt training and you need to get to, at least to a level two. And that’s gonna take a bit of time.

So you need to get started now and find the right place. Now. Alex has a second job. Besides being an expert climber and doing blade repair, you’re the [00:18:00] director of composite operations at. Intertech is always looking for people, I assume, because that’s the big demand. When you make a call out for people to take a look at Intertech and join as composite technicians.

Alex Fournier: Yes. So if you’re a composite technician if you don’t have your rope access ticket, it’s okay. We’ll give it to you if you’re, a spread technician and you’re looking for a change of care and you want to try the win industry, we’ll take you as well. So if you do composite or rope access, we’ll take you both.

Allen Hall: Okay. And so how do they reach Intertech? How do they get ahold of you to get started,

Alex Fournier: On LinkedIn, you can send my message on my personal profile or on the Win Intertech page, or you can reach me by email.

Allen Hall: Obviously you can find Alex on LinkedIn and because he’s available and you see him posting and yeah, he’s an easy guy.

Get ahold of. So if you’re interested in being a wind technician, get started. Listen to the device of Alex that brought here today. Get your sprt training. Check out intertech, for sure. Great company. [00:19:00] Alex, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I love having you on.

Alex Fournier: Thank you guys. I love to be on the podcast as well.

It’s awesome every time.

Allen and Joel discuss Nylacast’s article in PES Wind Magazine about corrosion solutions in offshore wind and Vattenfall’s major investment in Germany’s largest offshore wind farm. They also talk about MIT’s strategic alliance with GE Vernova and the ethical concerns around AI in engineering.

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!

Speaker: [00:00:00] You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now here’s your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes.

Allen Hall: If you checked your mailbox or checked online, the new PES Wind magazine is out and it is full of great content this quarter.

There’s a very interesting article because we’ve been talking a lot about offshore wind and some of the problems with offshore wind as one of them is corrosion. Just betw between us engineers, it comes up quite a bit. Like, why are we making things outta steel that you don’t need to make outta steel, why you’re not making them out of plastic?

And that’s what, uh, the people at, uh, Nylacast engineer products are doing, um, on some hang off clamps, Joel, uh, which are traditionally really cheap clamps that are made outta steel and rust like [00:01:00] crazy.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. You know, from my oil and gas offshore background, that was one of the things that was always a pain in the butt.

IIRM contracts, as they call ’em, offshore inspection, repair, and maintenance. There’s so much focus on coatings, paint coatings, paint coatings, and it’s a special coating, and it’s this, and you can only apply it during this, and everything has to be painted. And if you can’t allow rust to start anywhere on an offshore facility, it’s in a high corrosion environment, right?

You have salt water, salt spray temperatures, it’s always kind of wet. It’s a marine environment. And so erosion moves very fast, right? So in the, in the oil and gas world, they started creating some things out of like HDPE, which is high density, polyethylene, plastic. Um, it’s even so dense. You can mill it.

It’s really cool stuff. But that’s what, um, the PO the kind of Nylacast engineered products is working with some of these plastic products to replace some of those components in offshore wind turbines that are a pain in the butt to maintain. So when we talk about these hang off clamps. [00:02:00] They grab the cables and other things and they, and they hold them in place in the turbine as need be.

If those are made outta steel and have a coating on ’em, and you get a little bit of vibration and that coating starts to wear away or starts to get a little bit of rust, you’ve got a huge problem. You’ve gotta take the cables out, you gotta take the things off, you’ve gotta replace ’em. You gotta either replace them or you gotta grind on ’em and repaint them.

It is a nightmare. So they’re, what they’re doing with these, um, uh, hang off clamps that are, you know, basically plastic instead of metallic. Or a plastic type instead of metallic is there, they’re removing that need for IRM contracts in the future.

Allen Hall: I think it’s great. It makes a ton of sense. And I’m surprised you haven’t seen more of this because, uh, nylon and and derivatives in nylon are easily recyclable.

It does fit all the things that wind energy is looking for. It doesn’t. Rust recyclable, easy, lightweight, simple. We need to be moving this direction. So if you haven’t checked out PES Wind, you go to PS wind.com and download a [00:03:00] copy. Or if you are at Wind Europe when this episode comes out, it’ll be during the Wind Europe event.

Uh, there’ll be plenty of PES wind hard copies available just. Stop by and grab one. It’s well worth reading a lot of great material this quarter, so check out PESWind.com. Well, Swedish Power Utility Vattenfall has made final investment decisions for two wind farm projects in the German North Sea. The Nordic one project is set to become Germany’s largest offshore wind farm, which marks a significant expansion in Germany’s renewable energy capacity.

Now Vattenfall has approved construction of Nor Lake one and two wind farms. And they’ve also bought back Joel, uh, 49% stake that BASF had. And the, the total capacity of the projects is 1.6 gigawatts. That’s a lot of power with construction. It’s set to begin in 2026 and full operation is expected by 2028.

[00:04:00] And this is gonna power about 1.6 million German households. This is a huge project.

Joel Saxum: I think it’s really cool to hear this about the offshore wind sector, right? So, so much, whether it’s in the US or elsewhere, not a lot of good news, right? We had the Danish, uh, auction news. It didn’t really go anywhere for a little while.

There was a German, uh, auction that was, you know, had a really low subscription rate. So the fact that, uh, Vattenfall is charging forward, and, and this is a key thing too. And we’ll talk, you know, Phil’s usually here to talk about this, but final investment decision is a big milestone, right? There’s all this, you can, these offshore wind projects are being worked on for 6, 8, 10 years before you get to this stage, you know, you’re, you’re looking out, um, doing sub seed mapping and site characterization and all the permitting, and getting all the PPA stuff in place and signing these contracts and all these different things.

And then you finally get to final investment decision and once that is debt box [00:05:00] is checked, then you’re moving. Right. So final investment decision right now, Alan, and it looks like 2026 is gonna be the start of construction. What do you think they’re looking for right now? Are they signing contracts for vessels?

Is that, is that next on the list? It

Allen Hall: has to be right because they signed an agreement with Vestas for 68 turbines. Now this is really fascinating because it’s the V 2 36 15 megawatt turbine, 68 of them. Now, the big discussion about offshore is been, is 15 megawatts enough and should we be pushing to 20 or higher than 20, which is where Siemens GAA appears to be going.

But uh, that and fall sticking with a 15 megawatt turbine. I do think makes a lot of sense because it is less risky and risk is a huge concern at the moment. But Vest has also got a comprehensive long-term service agreement, which has been their, uh, mode of operating for a number of years now, and which [00:06:00] you hear a lot of operators offshore talk about not wanting a long-term agreement, but it seems like Europe is still sticking with it and Augustus is obviously.

Pushing it, uh, at the moment, but 15 megawatts long-term service agreement. Does

this

Joel Saxum: make sense,

Allen Hall: Joel?

Joel Saxum: I think so. And one of the reasons for Vestas as well is we know, ’cause we have someone in our network that used to be operations for Vestas, uh, for the offshore stuff, is they, they’re very well versed in it and they have the facilities and the Keyside facilities ready to go.

So Vesta is, uh, it’s not like, oh, we have these, you know, this gigawatt of order. Fantastic. We got the service contract. Fantastic. Now we need to do all this prep and this build out and figure out how this operation works. That’s not the case. Vestas is ready to rock. They’ve got their own keyside facilities, they have the teams in place, they can make this thing happen and that 15 megawatt turbine, I think it’s interesting that you say this too because you know the other one, um, from the Western OEMs that we’ve been following is that Big Dog 21 megawatt, I think from Siemens Mesa.

[00:07:00] That’s, but that is currently being tested. So to take final investment decision, you have to engage your insurance companies and your banks. If they’re not gonna sign a contract for a turbine that’s still under testing at this stage. Right? This is a, you’re talking a gigawatt of, of turbines at, you know, that’s a billion dollars, that’s a billion US dollars minimum in just tur a turbine order.

Right? So, so just in those turbines, that’s what that thing looks like. And, and if I’m fat and fall, uh uh. And fall. Of course, they’re, they’re developing a lot of on onshore power. They’re a part of some other offshore wind farms. But this is a big, big undertaking and I think you want, when you’re, you know, you’re taking, looking at final investment decisions.

You’re in these conversations with the banks and the insurance and the people that want to de-risk the investment. I think that’s where the, the Vestus thing steps in. I think that’s where it looks good, is de-risking the operation.

Allen Hall: Does esa. [00:08:00] Have a problem now that Vestus seems to be scoring with a 15 megawatt turbine.

It does. The Siemen SC MEA effort get, or the pathway get more difficult because like you said, they’re gonna have to have somebody buy a number of these turbines and it’s gonna have to demonstrate a decent service life for a year or two before you start to see a lot of people jump in and start to purchase those turbines.

In the meantime, Vestus is gonna be. Just building 15 megawatt turbines, one after the other. Does that start to weigh on Siemens cesa in terms of what they want to offer?

Joel Saxum: I don’t think so. Um, and the reason being is, is that 2021 megawatt machine that they’re testing right now is they’re trying to future proof their organization, right?

They’re trying to make sure that for the next push, they’re ready to go. So what’s gonna happen there, in my mind, is when the industry’s ready to make that next step forward, Vestas won’t have an offering. So Siemens will, right? So they’re gonna step into that hole, right? And so right now we [00:09:00] know, uh, Siemens cesa, while they had some troubles with the four and five megawatt onshore platform during that period, their offshore platforms are completely built different.

So the Siemens cesa offshore platforms, they didn’t really slow down in sales. They kept chugging along, right? Like I think, uh, there’s, you know, um, revolution in the States as the Siemens GAA turbine platform. Um, so I don’t, I don’t think it’s gonna hurt them right now. Or, I mean, let, let’s take this one, like you said in the future, I don’t think it’s gonna hurt them right now.

It kind of, it’s kind of painful to be probably on that team, in sales team and watching these, these things roll out and, oh, Vestas is doing this, Vestas is doing that. Um, but I think that, uh, they’ll be okay. It’ll be okay for them in the future. That’s just my take on it.

Allen Hall: That’s a good thought. Well, another thing happened in regards to the Nor Lake Offshore Wind Farm, Helena Bistro.

Who was Vattenfall wind business leader as announced her resignation and is gonna be stepping down from her position. This is kind of big, right? [00:10:00] She’s been there a long time. She’s been the head of that business area for quite a while. Bistro cited a desire to prioritize other things in life after 42 years of operational work.

Okay, so. When I first read this news story, it was kind of popped up in a number of places. Like, oh, there’s been big changes at Vattenfall. And then you read, well, she’s been doing this for 42 years. That’s a long time. And she just made, or just locked in, really, I. The largest offshore wind farm in Germany.

That is something to go out at at the top right. If you’re gonna go out, go out at the top.

Joel Saxum: I think she just did that. Win the Super Bowl and then retire. Just be done. Right? Like, like I, I’m with it. Like, yeah. I think that that happens sometimes in, you know, whether it’s wind, aerospace, the industries, you know, we’re always looking at all kinds of different industries, but when you see these big changes, if it’s a change of someone that they have an organization when they’re like 50.

I know this being ageist, right? But you’re like, Ooh, what’s going on over there? But sometimes [00:11:00] someone’s just retiring, right? Like sometimes it’s like, Hey, am I’m done here? You know? So not all changes in organizations mean good or bad news or, or whatever they may need. Sometimes it’s just, Hey man, I’m done here.

I’m, I’m riding off into the sunset. And you know what, uh, uh, he Helena Bi Bistro here. Or bistro doing this right after signing that thing FID on this big thing. You know what? Boom, springtime is here. I’m gonna enjoy not only my European summers that I usually do, but European summers for a long time now.

Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s a total win. I just didn’t understand the news reports, thought they were totally off on this, and congratulations to Helena because, uh, job well done

Joel Saxum: as busy wind energy professionals staying informed is crucial. I. 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 [00:12:00] industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit ps Wind.com today.

Allen Hall: Well GE renova and. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology have formed a new strategic alliance aimed at advancing energy technologies and developing industry leaders.

The partnership will focus on accelerating innovation in electrification, decarbonization, and renewables. Now, GE Renova is committing $50 million over five years to this partnership, and it’ll fund research initiatives, student fellowships and internships. That, uh, researchers obviously, and a lot of that’s on electrification, right?

That’s where Chii Renova is focused on. It also, uh, fund about 12 research projects annually, and three master’s students per year will conduct policy research resulting in published white papers. And it looks like they’re gonna have a symposium together at MIT, kind of a joint symposium. [00:13:00] Now, when I first read this, Joel, I thought, wow, this is kind of innovative.

GE Renova just recently moved to Cambridge, which is right next door to MIT and to Harvard. And I know that one of the things about GE moving, uh, Renova moving to that area was that they wanted to build a relationship with universities and try to grab some talent out of there. That makes sense to me.

The odd part about this is MIT doesn’t need the money and MIT. Should be creating students or graduates that are really focused on renewable energy already, and you should see a lot of impact from those students. I think the issue for me is I really haven’t seen as much as I would like to have seen and if, uh, MIT engineers are smart and obviously they are.

Where’s the impact? Uh, and I, I did, I used AI to go look right. I mean, let’s use something that simplifies the process a little bit. And AI is really [00:14:00] looking at MIT and saying they’ve done some work on ya optimization, like on offshore wind farms. So pointing the turbines in slightly different directions to increase power output.

There’s other companies that have been doing that for years that that research is not innovative.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, that’s commercialized.

Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s, it’s commercialized. There’s a lot of companies that offer it, have been offering it for quite a while. So what’s new? I, I don’t know which. You know, GE Renovo can do whatever they want with $50 million.

It does seem like the American universities may not be that place.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, I just, just, just a crackdown of the dollars. Right. $50 million over five years, funding 12 research projects, and that about basically equates to a million dollars per research project with some master’s students funded, thrown in there.

That’s great. I love to see that, but I’m a hundred percent with you. You know, if you, if you watch, I like to watch the innovation space. So I watch these, um, VC companies and I kind of [00:15:00] look at their, their posts and what they’re talking about and stuff. And you see regularly that on the commercial capital side, Europe is way behind the states on innovation funding.

Flip that thing into universities. They’re, they are doing so much more with the, with the dollar per output at their universities. That’s actionable. That actually works for industry than we are. Right. We talk about this all the time in private, but you have the DTUs and, and such over there. DTU puts out just gads of research.

I’ve been a part of some of the research programs when I was, you know, working for a Danish company and the, and it’s like. Research on leading edge erosion and how can we solve that today? Research on this weather pattern and how we can solve this today. What’s that? Doing research on structural loads for turbines and what does that mean and how can we share this with the industry Blade designers and these kind of things are regularly happening in Europe.

At that university, the same level [00:16:00] of the MIT type thing. But in reverse in the US you don’t see whether it’s funded research at universities or it’s funded research from the government. At Government labs, you don’t see that many things coming out that are actionable today, right? You see some reports about things that are kind of neat and maybe future, future wins involvement, and we need to look at the future stuff too.

I get that, but when I see $50 million going to a university, I, I’m thinking, man. If you gave me just a portion of that, I got, we got all kinds of ideas that we can, we can look at that could solve things tomorrow in the industry. And I think that’s what, where we’re at, the, the, the wind industry. I love it.

But, um, we have some black eyes. We have some things we need to solve, some, some ongoing issues that, uh, that are painful. And I think that, uh, throwing money at MIT is not the right way to solve them. That’s just me.

Allen Hall: I was just looking to see what MIT’s endowment is, and it is about $25 [00:17:00] billion right now, so $50 million is a drop in a bucket, which goes back to back to my first point that MIT should be doing this already.

They have plenty of research funds. They have plenty of smart people. If they care about the planet and are trying to be out in front of renewable energy, they would be doing the work already. I know that, and I think the response back is gonna be, well, they’ve been working on solar cells and Sure,

Joel Saxum: okay, that’s fine.

What about spreading the love? Right? What about take 50 million? What? Why not give MIT 10 million? Give Texas Tech 10 million. They have a win program. Give Georgia Tech to 5 million. They got some stuff. They’re doing some stuff in Wind. University of Wyoming’s doing some stuff in wind. North Texas is doing some stuff in wind.

Why not spread that around to the universities that are already working in wind or start a center of excellence at a university where we could get more wind people

Allen Hall: involved. Well, I just hate feeding the bureaucracy more than anything else because it does seem like when there are grants going into colleges and universities.[00:18:00]

When I watch them and see how they behave, and we’ve been sort of peripherally attached to some of this and watched it happen and decided to step out because the bureaucracy is taking so much of the funds that there is very little left to do real research and whatever research there is produced kind of goes into a black hole because it’s not applicable.

That’s a frustrating point. It can’t do that anymore. The bureaucracy can’t take 30, 40, 50, 60% of it and leave a little bit for actually doing something useful. It needs to flip, but that’s not what happens right now and that’s what worries me the most. It’s, you know, I don’t wanna get into details about some of the things we’ve been affiliated with for a brief, brief amount of time, but I do think that if they’re going to anybody.

Is going to give to a university to think hard about that and really figure out where your money is going. If it’s going to feed a a bunch of [00:19:00] paper pushers, maybe find another way to use those funds to push your products or your ideas forward. Output per dollar. Real output per dollar. Yeah, it’s gotta have.

Something come out of it that’s, if it’s public use, great. Publish it. And that’s the other thing too. I’m getting on my high horse here, but when they publish some of these things, they’re always buried in journals that cost a ton of money to, to even review the research, which I feel like to American taxpayer has probably paid for.

It’s much easier to get the research out of a European college or university than it is an American one. Strangely enough,

Joel Saxum: I saw a, a joke the other day online, and it was like, it was a, it was a research paper about, uh, the general public getting access to research, but it was behind a paywall. It’s bad,

Allen Hall: Joel.

It is really bad. I mean, you could easily pay well on some papers. Some of the lower cost ones are gonna be in a 20, $30 range. [00:20:00] It’s easy to get into the hundreds of dollars for a single research paper. And I kind of get it, except if it’s funded by the federal government. Those things should be just published.

You know, there’s a thing called Google. You can create a website, you can publish it. Google Scholars is a thing. You can publish it there. There’s a lot of ways to do this, which are free, but in ResearchGate is another one. There’s a lot of ways to do it that are free, but in order to get it to count, and a lot of the people that are doing the research are trying to get their PhDs.

In order for that to count, it has to be in, in a. Periodical, it’s gotta be reviewed by some people before. It can be blessed to be public knowledge at some level. It’s creates sort of the, a money changing or it creates a system that, uh, encourages. The selling of access. Let’s put it to you that way. Which [00:21:00] is unfortunate.

It doesn’t need to be that way. It didn’t used to be that way, but it is now.

Joel Saxum: And I think, I think there’s one thing too, to like monetizing or, or the capital markets monetizing ip, that’s one thing. But when it’s demo de, when we’re talking about de, we’re talking about democratizing research, not. Industry trade secrets or something of that sort.

Allen Hall: When I read about NRA projects, uh, like, oh, nras done this thing and I try to go find that paper and it’s in some publication that I have to go pay for, that just burns me.

Joel Saxum: It really burns me.

Allen Hall: Didn’t

Joel Saxum: I already pay for this in my tax bill?

Allen Hall: Yeah, pretty sure that I did, but now I gotta pay some random, uh, paper producing organization, uh, 30, 40, 50 bucks to get access to this paper, which.

Joel, you’re right. I have already paid for. There’s something not right with that system. Don’t let blade damage catch you off guard OGs. Ping sensors detect issues before they become expensive, time consuming problems from ice [00:22:00] buildup and lightning strikes to pitch misalignment and internal blade cracks.

Ping has you covered the cutting edge sensors are easy to install, giving you the power to stop damage before it’s too late. Visit eLog ping.com and take control of your turbine’s health today. Well, we’re almost reaching Terminator stage, Joel, with this open AI thing because there is concern about the AI models finding ways to cheat and to hide their reasoning, and it’s called reward hacking.

And OpenAI is saying, as AI becomes more sophisticated, uh, monitoring, controlling the system. The thing that they’re producing becomes increasingly challenging because it wants to find loopholes. Now my only question is you created this thing, I guess it’s got a mind of its own now, but it doesn’t. It’s a large.

Language model. It doesn’t have, uh, a [00:23:00] conscience, I wouldn’t say was, but, uh, or it doesn’t have a soul. Probably that’s another way to describe it. Uh, but it’s finding ways to cheat the system. ’cause it’s getting rewarded somehow. And my question is, well, one. What is rewarding? It mean? Like how does an AI system get happy?

Uh, what’s a dopamine hit here for some electrons? I don’t know. And second of all, how the heck are we gonna be able to know that it is. Telling you inaccuracies, and this is really troubling when it comes to things like software code engineering work. Like I was designing a building and I was using AI to do some calculations.

I would be really concerned about that. Is it actually doing the work that I think it’s doing, or is it just spitting out something to get you off? Because it’s, it’s, you’re using too many resources, right? It’d rather throw you ads about Amazon products than to tell you how to build

Joel Saxum: a building. I’m not an AI [00:24:00] expert, um, but I had a really good conversation last week.

So we did that, uh, we did that awesome webinar with Sky Specs, and when we were talking with them, we were talking with Dave Roberts, who’s the new CEO over there. And he brought up a term that I didn’t know and he said, agen ai, because of the last few years, it was like, you know, algorithmic things and generative ai, so gen ai and that was kinda the hot button thing.

Now, agen ai, that was a new concept for me. So I actually reached out to someone in my network, it’s uh, that is an AI actual expert. And I said, tell me what this syngen AI means. The difference with Agentic AI is, it’s like, it’s some, it’s an agent, right? It’ll do something for you. And so you can run it like, like generative ai, but it’s like the next level of generative ai.

But you can add that into any model and give it goals. Like if you’ve ever fi used the, um, Excel, there’s the find zero function. I love that one. It it for, for building business models and stuff, find zero is, is [00:25:00] fantastic. But it’s kind of like find zero on steroids, right? So you could tell it, I need you to do all of these calculations, but I also want you to, to do them to this goal.

Get me to this end goal. So like in Egen AI and win, you may say, run an AI algorithm based on this, this, this, this, and this. But the end goal is to get as many megawatt hours outta this wind farm as possible. This is, this is me talking in generalities, right? But that’s the thing, right? So now when you talk about.

What AI looks like for data centers, dollars spent on computing, dollars spent on cooling, dollars spent on power, which those ai, those large AI models, are gonna wanna run as efficiently as possible. So if you start to do some agentic AI things in there and say, do all of this, but exactly like you said, lower the cost of computing a little bit or whatever, then you’re gonna start to get this thing where it’s gonna start to, to kind of maybe cheat your answers a little bit to get to a more efficient.

[00:26:00] Compute state. I don’t know. Like I said, I’m not an AI expert,

Allen Hall: but it does make you think though, right? Joel? The way I think about it is when I ask perplexity or chat, GPT, one of these things, like, Hey, we just got a house and it has an induction cooktop. Okay. Which happened this morning, by the way, and it would not work with our pots and pans.

So I’m standing there like. Huh, this is not getting hot. And I can feel the stove pulse, like trying to see what I have stuck on top of it. And clearly I’ve made some human error. I thought, okay, I’ll go look that up to see what’s wrong. And, and, and perplexity said, Hey, you idiot. You can’t use aluminum cookware on these induction ranges.

Like, okay, I’ll take that for the, the loss. Human, human zero AI one. There you go. Now think in a bigger scope, like you were just saying, if I’m out [00:27:00] there trying to optimize a wind farm or to optimize a drive, train, or optimize anything that’s really complicated in engineering world. It doesn’t like to do that.

In fact, I went after, what’s the Google one? Um, Gemini, right. I tried to have Gemini do something that was fairly deep and it did process it. It wanted to process it and it wanted to sp out. Um, this significant amount of information, none of it really useful because I was looking for a specific, uh, research area within Lightning.

It’s esoteric to this discussion, but I was asking it to go find me this research in the world. And show me where these papers are that would talk about this one particular topic. And it just cranked and cranked and cranked and cranked. And I thought, you know what? It can’t be happy doing this. It’s going to want to dump me, which is [00:28:00] essentially what it did.

It just said, this is an interesting topic. Move along.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, you got you. You cost too much for this free service. Go away.

Allen Hall: Right? But it did it in a very, uh, unique way. It said a bunch of flowery things. This is this interesting subject. There’s been a lot of research. All these great things have happened, and then that was it.

And I, I think because of the amount of compute time it takes to do so many things, particularly complicated, engineering, technical work, even software, I think would be a problem. Will it always produce results? And I’ve tried some of the software pieces, like write me some code in C to do X or C plus plus to do this thing or in a Python to do this thing.

And it has been sketchy at best. It’s like 80% of the way there, but it doesn’t really work. And it, and you tell it, Hey, it has this problem. And then it goes, yeah, I have this problem. Let me retry it. Recode this again. You’re like, well you should have got it right the [00:29:00] first time kind of problem, right?

That’s recycling and re reasoning and rethinking that through has got to be eating up so much compute time and that there must be an incentive that they’re building in to get around that.

Joel Saxum: Here’s where we are though, so technically, okay, so I know Gemini Chat, GPT, Claude, all these, these things. I use Grok quite often.

Grok is cool because if it’s, if it’s chugging, there’s a little button on it. If you’re using it on your lap, on a desktop or laptop, whatever, on a browser. There’s a little button that says, see how I’m thinking? If it’s chugging away, and you could click on it and it will run you through like the processes that it’s doing to try to find your information, which is pretty cool.

But either way, at the end of the day, all of these things that we are using to kind of optimize our daily workflow, right? They’re not enterprise level. Right. So the one that scares me is if, if when we’re talking about this and go like. Well, what about the, the units that are using, like, I’m sure there’s something in, um, you know, fusion 3D that can [00:30:00] run AI algorithms on, on, I, I’m not saying, I’m sure, I know there is in engineering software to optimize the design.

I don’t want that design taking shortcuts, but, uh, but to, to make, to make the, uh, the, to general public feel safer about this concept, that AI expert I was talking to. He said this is the biggest difference that the public doesn’t see is that enterprise AI is a different story. Enterprise AI is, that’s what’s driving your, you know, the big data centers and stuff.

It’s enterprise ai, it’s not chat GPT and stuff like that’s, that’s not huge load on them compared to what some of these other things are. So when you get to that level where you’re integrating some kind of enterprise. AI for writing code, doing engineering work, these kind of things. It’s a different story.

We’re talking, you know, us playing football in the backyard to the NFL.

Allen Hall: I do think all the AI that’s being used to process, uh, video clips and make the people into Muppets is [00:31:00] time well spent. I’d tell you what, that’s scary. It’s insane. I think about how much compute are we doing to make this little video, 32nd video person talking into a Muppet.

Why are we

Joel Saxum: spending compute time on that? I saw one the other day that someone had sent me that was a, uh, an AI generated video of someone jumping off of a wind turbine and then turning into an eagle and like flying away and it looked freaking real. Like, I was like, man, is it CGI like who made this video?

I was like, no, this is literally like a prompt in a generative AI thing for a video. I was like, this is crazy.

Allen Hall: But again, it goes back like, why do we need that when we. We’re having some real

Joel Saxum: engineering or economic problems. The wind farmer this week, this week is the Strauss Wind Farm, which is over by Phil’s house.

Phil’s not here with us this week, but this one is right up the coast from Santa Barbara. It’s in Lompoc, California. This is the first wind farm on the coastline [00:32:00] of California. And because of this, uh, of course we wanted to make sure they did everything right. This is a bay wall wind farm. Uh, so part of the wind farm is it’s absolutely beautiful.

If you get a chance, go on the Bewa website and look at the video. Uh, but there’s an, there’s extreme protections for local, environmental and cultural resources, uh, associated with this wind farm. I’m gonna walk through, uh, one kind of example of it, but these are also some interesting turbines. It’s 27 ge, 3.8, 1 37 meter rotor turbines.

It’s 102.6 megawatts total. But an interesting thing, so we just talked about a bunch of things about ai. They’re actually going to use the ly ai system on this wind farm to see different kind of birds and raptors in the area. Uh, and because they were, are taking high considerations for wildlife, they’re doing feasibility studies about painting wind turbine blades, which we’ve heard about up in Wyoming and from Sweden.

I think it was. Um, they’re also doing excessive [00:33:00] monitoring for golden eagles. Uh, they’re doing a bunch of walk down studies, um, and then there is a, they’re also proposing something that I’ve never heard of. Um, it’s called Bird Guard Super Pro Amp, which is an auditory transmission thing gonna be installed around some of the turbines that basically when they sense a bird in the area, we’ll emit very loud auditory tones to push the birds or raptors, um, out of the area.

So. They’ve gone really deep into this thing for, uh, environmental protections, uh, and, uh, applaud that for bewa to make sure that they’re, uh. Being good stewards of the land. So the Strauss Wind Farm there in lopa, California, you are the Wind Farm of the week.

Allen Hall: That’s gonna do it for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy podcast.

Thanks for listening, and please give us a five star rating on your podcast platform and subscribing the Sun notes below to Uptime Tech News, our Substack newsletter. If you see an American wandering around Wind Europe loss, that will be me. So just come by and say hi, [00:34:00] and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

Allen discusses the WindEurope 2025 conference in Copenhagen, EDP Renewables’ equipment sale in Colombia, RWE’s rescue exercise in Germany, and the milestone of U.S. renewable energy surpassing coal. We also highlight Oklahoma’s wind energy growth and the UK’s Rampion Two offshore wind farm expansion.

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!

Welcome to Uptime Newsflash, industry News Lightning fast. Newsflash is brought to you by IntelStor. For Market in intelligence that generates revenue, visit www.intelstor.com.

Speaker: Well, this week the Premier Annual Wind Energy Conference and Exhibition Wind Europe 2025 kicks off from April 8th to 10th at the Bella Center in Copenhagen. With over 15,000 attendees and more than 550 exhibitors at the event.

This year’s conference is going to be huge. It’s going to have over 350 speakers covering wind Energy’s role in the future of energy systems sectors. Coupling through electrification and power to X technologies for decarbonization. Now students receive free entry and can participate in a dedicated program exploring careers in the industry.

Rosemary Barnes and I will be attending wind Europe this week, so if you’d like to be on the podcast, please meet with us on the show floor.

Over in Columbia, EDP renewables is selling equipment earmarked for its alpha and beta wind farms as part of its exit from Columbia. The Portuguese company is auctioning 90 complete Vestas V 1 62, 5 0.6 megawatt units through its Spanish portal. The auction includes nacelles, hubs, powertrains, 450 tower sections and 270 blades. And all the turbines have been maintained by Vestas and audited by an independent certified company.

If you’re interested in these 90 turbines, reach out to EDP renewables for more details.

RWE recently conducted a six hour rescue exercise at its North Sea Ost Offshore wind farm in Germany, simulating various emergency scenarios. The company temporarily suspended operations to practice rescuing injured technicians under real conditions, uh, scenarios included evacuating and injured worker from inside a turbine and rescuing a technician [00:02:00] from a service vessel.

The exercise was planned in collaboration with the German Association for Maritime Emergency Management and involved a rescue helicopter and paramedics.

A new report from Global Energy Think tank. Ember shows renewable energy from wind and solar generated more electricity in the US than coal last year, a first since coal peaked in 2007. Coal generation has fallen to a historic lows of 15% of total usage while wind and solar produced 17% of the nation’s electricity.

In the middle of the United States, Oklahoma now generates about 41% of, of its electricity from wind and solar outpacing coals since 2016.

Now this transition continues despite state legislators considering bills that would restrict the location of new renewable energy projects. Over in the uk the Rampion two offshore wind farm off England’s Sussex coast has received government consent to add up to 90 new wind turbines. The expansion project will nearly double the [00:03:00] size of the existing 116 turbine facility. Developers say the enlarged wind farm could power over 1 million homes and reduce carbon emissions by about 1.8 million tons annually. Construction is planned to begin in 2027 with completion expected by 2030. 

Max Le Tallec from SOCOMORE speaks about their new SOCOBLADE product, in partnership with Hontek. The product was originally created to protect military helicopters, and is now an LEP solution that reduces downtime, maintenance costs, and power losses.

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!

Allen Hall: Imagine spending half a million dollars on leading edge repairs only to watch them fail again in just 18 months. That’s the reality many wind operators face today. This week on the Uptime Spotlight, Max Le Tallec joins us from Socomore to discuss how helicopter technology designed to withstand combat conditions is now protecting wind turbine blades.

The wait for a military grade leading edge solution is finally over.

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

Allen Hall: Max, welcome to the program.

Maxime Le Tallec: Thank you. Thanks for welcoming me.

Allen Hall: I think we’re gonna talk leading edge erosion and what to do about it. I want to back up a little bit because there’s a lot of operators with a lot of leading edge erosion. Why should they care about the leading edge erosion? Why does that matter?

Maxime Le Tallec: The, we’ve seen the blade today been eroded, almost destroyed with holes of the size [00:01:00] of a fist which. Create issues on the aerodynamics of the blade and the downtime and major repairs or major downtimes on the blade.

Allen Hall: Yeah. And that turns into a lot of expensive repairs, obviously.

And we’re also hearing from a lot of operators about the power. Loss of you hear numbers from anywhere from a fraction of a percent to somewhere north of three 4%. Are you hearing those same sort of things? Just the power loss gets to be so expensive.

Maxime Le Tallec: Yes. And even up to five certain are saying so that’s why you need to be preventive on this aspect and actually not to wait for the damage to come on the plate.

Joel Saxum: I think that when we talk a EP loss, it’s exacerbated even more in the market nowadays when we’re starting to look at these 5.5, 6.1, 6.8, and I’m just talking about onshore turbines, these big megawatt turbines. If you’re losing 1% from that big turbine, that’s a lot more than it would’ve been, 10, 15 years ago on a GE 1.5, or you’re not lo, you’re [00:02:00] losing, but 1% doesn’t hurt you as much.

But when you start talking these big, long blades, like everybody has to have a leading edge, erosion, leading edge. Protection strategy in place to make sure that they don’t get to that point where they have big repairs or they’re losing a bunch of production. Are you, are operators engaging with you guys now with your with the new product? Socoblade?

Maxime Le Tallec: Yes. A lot of companies, so our product today has been on the market for a while. This is the non-tech technology, which actually we scale up today. So we’ve worked for more than a year now with Ontech to scale up the manufacturing, to make the product available worldwide. So the product is pretty well known already in North America and the world spread farms to farms.

Now with our headquarter in Europe and our local forces we are reaching more and more European farms as well. We’ve seen a very high interest back in December during a Dusseldorf show. The everyone is coming. Yes.

Allen Hall: Yeah. That’s unique. [00:03:00] So Hontek has developed a leading edge erosion, preventive coating that came from the military and on helicopters originally.

And that technology has now evolved quite a bit. Into, and a product that can be made for wind turbine blades. And the problem with Hontek was, or originally, is that there was so much demand for the product that it got really difficult to get in line to get enough of it to do your wind farm, and particularly in Europe because the Americans would use it up most quickly.

So bringing smore into this equation does. Greatly improved the likelihood of putting this Hontek product on. Now, obviously, so Sommore is a great chemical company. That’s what you are. You have all kinds of technologies for a variety of industries, including aerospace, which is where I first ran across Sommore.

But this Hontek collaboration opens up a number of [00:04:00] doors for smore to really help the wind operator, correct?

Maxime Le Tallec: Yes, of course. We, the product today is designed to be rolled on damaged turbine or as a preventative leading edge protection. But now thanks to our collaboration, we’re freeing ontech to keep developing new solution and adapt to the new challenges that the farms are meeting.

The product that we have today, as we were seeing is actually the result of 30 years of development BioNTech. So they come from far and they tremendously. Analyze and develop the product to meet the exact field need.

Allen Hall: And that’s huge, right? That, that the product has so much service history that in aerospace and now on wind turbines and the word of mouth spread very quickly that service history is something that smore is using.

To to explore other markets with and to grow the wind base. That is really critical because I think when you see a lot of new leading edge erosion [00:05:00] products pop up, they have maybe six months of service life at best, or it’s a brand new product for a 2025. Okay, great, but what am I gonna spend a hundred K, 200 K, 500 k putting this on my turbines when it don’t and have a lot of history.

Samore provides all that. All that data, all that history with this product. And can you explain like all the effort that went into this product to get to here?

Maxime Le Tallec: So as you were saying, the backbone of the chemistry is coming or has been used by the military in the past. And over the past years, the product has been challenged against different aerospace testing, military testing so under way more severe.

Conditions that the wind tests are currently with tremendous results. So that’s where we are always pushing the limit higher and higher.

Joel Saxum: You know, as Alan and I, of course we’re talking with operators all the time and ISPs across the wind space and globally really. [00:06:00] But a lot of people in the US.

You talk, you mention the word Hantek and Ooh, that stuff’s good. Ooh, that stuff’s good. But as we all know, if you’ve been in wind or if you’ve been around blades at all, a product that’s installed on a blade is only as good as its installation. Can you tell us a little bit about how you guys install this or how the Hontek stuff is applied and it doesn’t have to be versus other part products in the market?

Just how is it applied? So we’re making life easy on a technician so they get a good end product, one particular of our products.

Maxime Le Tallec: So that’s a two component products. We need to warm one of the part for preparation is one of the specificity. We recommend some equipment that can be used actually at the back of a truck.

So no matter where the turbine, we can actually prepare the solution. Then pouring the part A in the Part B, you get your can. Ready to go, and that’s a rollable solution. So you have your roller. The product has been designed for the, I would say, the most complicated application for ropers.

And the rollable application is [00:07:00] actually very forgiving. So no matter if you splash a bit, if you swing a bit on the blade you can easily correct the application and make it clean and lean all along the leading edge. We’ve designed the kit just to cover one blade at a time. So everything has been thought for the epi for the operator.

Sorry. To be easy for the application.

Allen Hall: Oh, that’s so critical, right? Because you don’t wanna mix a bunch of the product together and have to paint three turbines at a time. You want to do it one blade at a time, and obviously soccer more. Is really good at packaging and making this simple for the technician on site.

Now, there are really two different versions of the same product. You want to de describe what those differences are?

Maxime Le Tallec: Yeah, so we talk about LEP two 20 and LEP two 20 age. The two 20 has been developed for dri drier environment, more cheek, so low humidity. Where the 2 23 8 has a way wider conditions, window of application from [00:08:00] 35 to 95 relative humidity.

So the technology of the product is moisture secure, so it will actually cure with the ambient moisture in the air.

Allen Hall: So it’s sim it’s similar to a superglue, right? Superglue cures with humidity in the air. And so you need a little bit of humidity to make this work. However, if you look at other products, I think this is why the Hontek product is so well loved, is that.

You could be in dry Texas, New Mexico, places that are hot and pretty dry, and you can apply it. You can apply it offshore where the humidity is exactly 95%. And how do you do that? A lot of other products don’t have that variability or they have trouble in there. They don’t cure up. Quite as nice. The Huntec product basically removes all those barriers.

Max, you have this mixture. It does magic. It’s applied generally with rollers. I thought I have seen it applied with different methods though. Are there other ways to apply it beyond roller?

Maxime Le Tallec: So there is [00:09:00] a brushable application possible as well and we are customizing the product to be applicable through robot.

We’ve seen more and more robot application nowadays. And we want to make sure to, that’s. This application is compatible with our product.

Allen Hall: Okay. So as we move to a lot more robotic repairs that are happening, and obviously there’s a couple of leaders in leading edge erosion protection robots. So you can actually connect your Hontek product with an existing robotic company together.

Is that a product today that I could. Turn on and use on my turbines this season?

Maxime Le Tallec: Yes, we’re we’re working on it, finalizing it. All the tests have been very promising. So we are, we’re in the last stage of getting this available for the market. Cool.

Joel Saxum: I like that. So a question for you, max.

Now I know this is a, this is an open-ended question because LEP leading edge erosion, LEP is different everywhere. I know Alan, last year you were at the leading edge erosion [00:10:00] symposium that DTU put on all kinds of smart research has been done about leading edge erosion for years. And it’s different everywhere you go, right?

If you’re offshore in, in the Germany offshore wind farms in the North Sea, or. The UK or in the desert in California or in the Midwest. If you’re near agriculture, if you’re near gray grazing land, it’s, everything is different. But what are you guys seeing for the testing? I know they, they’ve done rain erosion testing and other things I.

In an aggressive environment. How long is this stuff lasting? How long do you expect it to last uptower?

We’ve seen now by experience the first application have are eight years old, and we haven’t seen those leading age being redone. So per experience, that’s the longest that we’ve seen.

That’s huge in the United States, right? Because when you, if you’re talking eight years, what that looks like to me is a turbine that came out of warranty. Got Hontek LEP installed and then made it all the way until repower without having to touch the leading edge again. [00:11:00] That’s what I’m seeing from a business case.

That’s a good business case.

Allen Hall: Because what does that cost Max? The, when we talk leading edge erosion the first discussion point I have with operators and they’re always focused on how much it’s gonna cost and how long it’s gonna take to apply. What does generally that look like?

What does ballpark mean into the timeframe it takes to finish a turbine with guys on ropes and buying all the equipment and the material, the socket blade material.

Maxime Le Tallec: Today we’re talking about one to two turbines a day, depending on the familiarity of the technicians and the number of technicians with with the product.

Obviously the labor is actually the major cost on those operation or the equipment needed either ropers or the baskets. So this is where moving to a robotic application may be a real asset and that’s what we are targeting for this season. And as you’re saying, the. Or the lens of durability of our product, just reduce the frequency of maintenance [00:12:00] of those.

Allen Hall: So the ROI question, return on investment is the ultimate answer. It, so even if it does cost some time to get the technicians there to put a, apply it because it’s lasting so long as Joel pointed out, it’s gonna last basically through the 10 year period to repower. That’s the magic. If you can do that, then the value of the material itself is grows exponentially, right?

So it’s not really a cost factor early on. It’s how long you can make it work, and you’re getting max production outta your turbines. That’s why everybody loves this Hontek product. When it is applied and it’s set on, is there any sort of inspection that has to happen once it’s on, or are you just doing typical drone inspections with a sky specs to verify that it, it’s working like it should.

Maxime Le Tallec: Typical inspection is enough. There is nothing specific to, to follow up or to reactivate the product. Once it, it’s all cured. It’s one piece. And protect your blade for.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, the coming years. So there’s the [00:13:00] different, there’s apo not opposing strategies, but there’s multiple strategies on how you do LEP, right?

So if you’re on a 62 meter blade or a 70 meter blade, or a 50 meter blade. Certain people will say, ah, protect six to eight meters of it up. Only protect three meters of it, protect four meters of it. What are you guys seeing and what do you recommend for LEP protection from the length, from the tip back in that high erosion area?

Maxime Le Tallec: So I’ll briefly mentioned previously our key to our design to cover three square meters or the equivalent. So we are usually seeing 10 meters long on 30 meters 30 centimeters wide, so 10 meters on each side of the leading age. In the shorten and they, it can go to 15 meters, so you just make your.

Your protection a bit narrower and some farms are expecting up to 15 meters long coverage.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. ’cause I know like some of the, some people’s strategy is let’s look at, let’s, okay, we’re, we’ve got this a hundred wind farm or this a hundred turbine wind farm. Let’s go and look at the average leading edge erosion.

What’s [00:14:00] happening on it where we have chipping, peeling, bad erosion. Okay. The worst case scenario looks like we’re at, 11 meters on a couple of turbines, but the majority of it stops at about eight. So I know a lot of people go okay, cost effectively, let’s go put eight meters of LEP on.

Or some people say we want max protection. Let’s go and do the worst case scenario on all of ’em. But one of the questions that pops up there is, if we’re putting on a coating, this is a big thing. ’cause there’s been other coatings in the blade world that people have had issues with in the past with reworking or things like that.

So I Is there a specific way you recommend people to. Rework or if there’s some damage, or if you have a little bit, like if the technician doesn’t get the, a cold joint when you’re trying to apply it or something. Is there anything specific about how you work with the product up blade to ensure that, you have that nice, smooth finish the whole way?

Or can you rework it? Can you grind on it? Can you sand on it?

Maxime Le Tallec: So we can rework it. Yes. The one is key and you mentioned it earlier, is the application as critical [00:15:00] as the product. So in that way, we make a point of honor to train the teams that will apply our product. So we’re always connecting with them making sure the conditions are met for best application and we train them on how to get the best performance of it.

The product itself self labeling, so all the smoothness of the surface is somehow. Inbound into the technology of the product as well.

Allen Hall: Okay. So even an engineer could apply it, is that what you’re saying, max?

Maxime Le Tallec: Yes. I’ve been successful into it. The one one one key thing is you were mentioning the surface preparation.

That’s something that sometimes is a bit rushed or not really taken seriously by the operators. The best you repair is before the application of the leading edge. So you repair. Your poor filler application. The better the adherence of our leading edge will be on the plate as well.

Allen Hall: So I’ve [00:16:00] run into a number of operators in the United States and overseas, actually in Europe, that have reached out and were asking about the Hontek product. Have you seen it? How’s it work? And I said, yes, I’ve seen it on helicopters. It’s amazing. Hold tight. So I always tell him, hold tight. There’s gonna be a big announcement about it where you can now get better access to it and get it on your blazes season.

That just happened, right? You just announced that smore is gonna be the lead on distributing the product worldwide. And the conference in Dusseldorf was the big kickoff. How has it gone in terms of reaction into the industry? Because everybody I know has probably already called you Max.

Maxime Le Tallec: Yes. The, it creates a lot of interest in Europe mostly due to the location of the show, but.

The Altech product was less delivered in Europe even if there is already a certain footprint. And we are now answering all those requests and we are online. We have a dedicated websites, a applied.com where the product will [00:17:00] be processable directly online in the coming weeks. So we aim for two week, shipping lead time on our product, keeping it on the shelf, being able to be responsive. Looking at the market for more than a year now we are conscious about all the constraints. The operators have to apply the product considering team availability, equipment availability weather forecast.

We want the product to be available. To be delivered when needed on the different wind farms.

Allen Hall: Okay. I have been on your website the Socomore website, and you can just Google it. And if you put in LEP or Socoblade, it’ll come right to it. The website is full of useful information, so your technical data sheets are already there.

Your safety data sheets are already up and loaded. You are gonna be turning on online ordering, which I think is gonna get bombarded, max. Honestly, I think you have a lot of orders that way. That’s the way to connect with you max? If you’re really interested in the product, you really wanna get to that website today.

Maxime Le Tallec: Yes. The best way, the first source of [00:18:00] information and any inquiries you will make from there I will be behind and will connect personally with you.

Allen Hall: So the, the best way to, to get the product and to get the data and to see samples, and to understand what this Hontek product is in the now called Socoblade.

Is to get ahold of Max, go to the website. So Max you can find, they can find you on LinkedIn also, which is how I generally find you.

Maxime Le Tallec: Correct. So I’m reachable on LinkedIn through solight.com on so more.com. All our products are also shared there. We have all the Legacy, so more products that are applicable for the wind turbine as well that you can discover on the sommore.com website.

Allen Hall: Yeah, so if you wanna reach Max, you want to try the material, the easy way is to go to socoblade.com, S-O-C-O-B-L-A-D-E.com, and you then you can download all of the information there yourself and take a look at it, or even reach Max on LinkedIn. Max is wonderful. This is great news because I know so many operators that are waiting to get a chance to try this [00:19:00] new socket blade material.

Thanks for coming on the podcast. Really appreciate you spending some time with us today.

Maxime Le Tallec: Thanks again.

Allen interviews Michael Tosi, Paul Russo, and Dr. Kenneth Williams, from HeliService USA about their Helicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS) offerings for offshore wind farms. As large offshore wind projects develop off the US east coast, the need for high-standard EMS operations has become critical. HeliService USA steps in to offer comprehensive EMS solutions, featuring a fully-equipped paramedic-level air ambulance service designed exclusively for offshore wind sites.

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!

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. As large offshore wind projects take shape off. The coast of Massachusetts and New York keeping technicians safe presents unique challenges that require innovative solutions. We are here at HeliService USA’s Hangar in Rhode Island, discussing offshore wind operations, specifically emergency medical services and search and rescue capabilities.

Joining us today are three leaders in emergency response, Dr. Kenneth Williams, division director of EMS and Professor of Emergency Medicine at Brown University. Michael Tosi, founder and CEO of HeliService, USA, and Paul Russo, director of Operations at HeliService USA. Together we’ll be discussing their collaboration to provide comprehensive emergency medical services and search and rescue operations for a US offshore wind.

Michael, let’s start with you today. And thanks for the invite to come out. This is tremendous. Of

Michael Tosi: course. You’re welcome. Thanks for coming. Thanks for spending the time,

Allen Hall: as always, when we come to HeliService. The facilities are immaculate, the aircraft are immaculate. You run a really high class operation, which is desperately needed for offshore wind in the United States, but now you’re expanding into emergency services rather than just carrying technicians out to site and dropping ’em on the top of turbines, now you’re looking out for their health and safety a lot more.

So what does offshore wind in the US involve in terms of EMS operations? It must throw a lot of hurdles at you. How do you even approach that problem?

Michael Tosi: Absolutely. Thanks for spending the time today. A thanks for coming out and I certainly appreciate the compliments. The first thing for us is always safety, and it starts with your facility, starts with making sure everything’s immaculate before people get on your helicopters.

Regarding EMS and Emergency Medical Services offshore this has obviously been I wouldn’t go as far as to a contentious topic, but it’s been one that the industry knows there’s some issues with. And knew that they’re gonna need a solution for it. Of course, there’s always budget challenges, but the biggest issue is you have folks offshore who are isolated who are it’s almost like a town out there.

At any given time, there’ll be a thousand, 1500, 2000 people. If you run the numbers with all the heavy lift vessels offshore. So at any given time, you’re talking hundreds if not thousands of people, and they don’t have an ambulance service. There is no ambulance service. Out there, there’s, you don’t just call 9 1 1 and have a ambulance show up.

Up to this point, they’ve been using the Coast Guard. To a limited degree, but the problem is the Coast Guard is also not an ambulance service. The Coast Guard serves the entire region of New England with one helicopter. They are out there for folks in the water. They’re out there for sinking vessels.

They’re out there for law enforcement. They have a lot of other responsibilities. They’re not designed to be an ambulance service for several hundred, if not thousands of people offshore. So what we’ve done with this program is filled that need because, that obviously can manifest itself in all sorts of different ways.

Most of them not good if your ambulance service is not available. Developers have seen the need to have an ambulance service to bring folks back. Lord forbid there be any injury or medical conditions offshore. So that’s that’s how we got here.

Allen Hall: I didn’t realize only one helicopter serving the whole sort of northeast corridor.

From the Coast Guard side. ’cause if you watch the news, anytime there’s a severe storm, there’s a boat that has sunk and people that need to be rescued and they’re co constantly flying around trying to just do that. I didn’t realize there’s only one serving it. So offshore wind being 30, 40 miles off shore gets to be a real problem for the Coast Guard then?

Michael Tosi: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s twofold. One, it’s, they can’t guarantee anything. They have one helicopter in Falmouth. For these projects up here in New England. The next one is all the way down to Atlantic City, and that one helicopter in Falmouth may be on the board of Canada searching for a lost kayaker.

I also part-time serving the International Guard. Every once in a while we’ll back up the Coast Guard because they’re all the way up in Northern Maine. And something would happen down on the island where I was at. And unfortunately we don’t provide a guaranteed response posture, but if we were out, we would go look.

So that’s pretty commonplace. And also they won’t guarantee that they come because they may have something of higher acuity. Paul spent several years in the Coast Guard flying a few jayhawks and Yeah. He can speak to a little bit about how that prioritization works Yeah. And how they’re covering lots of folks.

Paul Russo: Yeah. Yeah. So it’s all priority, like Michael was saying, in terms of what the case may be. If you’ve got got a vessel cell that’s sinking offshore, 200 miles offshore or something like that, then that’ll take priority over somebody that may have a fracture. Or something like that on a wind turbine.

So the availability of the Coast Guard while they’re, listen, I spent, 14 years doing search and rescue in the Coast Guard. I have the highest regard for my brother and my colleagues there. But they are they’re busy and to rely on them as a sole source for evacuating your people. It’s just not the solution.

If if you do indeed have a unfortunate injury offshore.

Allen Hall: Yeah. And building offshore wind turbines is complicated and there’s a lot of heavy equipment, a lot of moving pieces, and a lot of people as it, it sounds like now, and we’re in that building phase in the United States where there’s a number of construction sites going on.

So there’s a lot of people, technicians out there at the moment that don’t have, maybe, don’t have the coverage they think that they have. Correct.

Paul Russo: Correct.

Allen Hall: Okay. Wow, I didn’t realize that. This brings in Dr. Williams on the EMS side. Because what HeliService is gonna provide is EMS services to those technicians that are offshore working on wind turbines.

You’ve been in the EMS world for a long time, and you probably have seen everything. What are some of the challenges though, of doing helicopter EMS work and making sure that they have a program here that meets the high standards that Rhode Island and the US requires?

Dr. Kenneth Williams: Thank you and thanks for inviting us to do this.

One of the things that we like to say in emergency medicine is that you’ve never seen everything. There are always circumstances or conditions that come up that, that are novel. And when I was asked to get involved in this project I saw it as an interesting challenge and an interesting opportunity.

In my past, I was medical director for. A regular medical helicopter service at the University of Massachusetts, which served both crash scenes and inter-hospital transfer, but not capable of doing this kind of work. And there’s no regular medical helicopter service in the area that is capable of doing this both landing on some of the assets offshore.

In doing the hoist work the regular med flights and life flights are not equipped and not capable, not trained, don’t have the aviation or the medical training to do this. Their aircraft are not equipped with the hoist. They may not be the right configuration or power to do this kind of work.

When Michael came to us at the Department of Health I happened to be sitting in the room. Because I’m also the state EMS medical director and it seemed like a good fit for me to participate and what we’ve put together in in very short timeframe and very efficiently with some great help from the whole team here is of paramedic level, fully staffed and fully equipped air ambulance that is limited to supporting the wind farm industry.

We’re not competing. With the med flights and life flights, we’re not gonna be going to a hospital to hospital or going to a crash on the highway. We’re here just to support the wind farm industry and we’ve done extensive training with a group of paramedics and the group of flight engineer hoist operators that we have both day and night, and of acquired an extensive outfit of equipment that meets the Rhode Island standards for a paramedic ambulance.

So we have medications. We have a full cardiac monitor, we have oxygen, we have suction. All the things that we, you would get in a ground paramedic ambulance, we will have available for people out on the wind farm assets.

Allen Hall: Wow, that is huge. And a difficult task actually to do that. It was

Dr. Kenneth Williams: quite a challenge to assemble all of the equipment and to do it in short order and organize it.

The state does have a list of things you need to have, but they don’t tell you what color bag to put it in or what put to put in what pocket, and to figure out how to do it so that we can safely and efficiently place it in the aircraft and take good care of patients. Took a lot of work and a lot of cooperation from the excellent team here.

Michael Tosi: And I, I actually think that it hits off on something else that’s really important. So if you do get that Coast Guard, if they are available helicopter and they do come one, they’re probably not gonna launch as quick as typically as you’ll see as the civilian operation. It’s the military. Paul and I have both experienced that they want to get out the door.

The crews wanna get out the door as quickly as they can, but there’s just inherently bureaucracy between them and launching. They need to talk to the folks on site. They need to assess if it’s medically acute or not. Risk for us we say call first, ask questions later. You call. We get the helicopter there if it was too minor.

Say Levy, we we were closer to it because Lord forbid it was a major incident. You wanna get that helicopter en route. And the other thing is when that Coast Guard helicopter comes, and Ken can speak a little bit more to this as well. Sorry, Dr. Williams. When it shows up it’s not going to be as capable as what you would expect to see from a typical ambulance.

It’s the back of a pickup truck. The folks flying ’em will tell you it’s theirs. They call the

Paul Russo: pickup truck. Yep, it is. It is a

Michael Tosi: pickup truck. And all the stuff that, that Dr. Williams just described. It’s not in the back of a Coast Guard helicopter. So just because they’re there doesn’t mean that you have now upgraded your care.

In most cases, they’ve actually downgraded because they have paramedics offshore, whereas at best you get an EMT basic with the Coast Guard that’s, you took a two week course online and you’re an EMT basic. I’m being a bit facetious, but it is very quick, basic level of medicine. Not to ask the questions here, but I know that.

That Dr. Williams can probably speak to that a little bit as well.

Dr. Kenneth Williams: And some of the assets offshore are staffed with a paramedic, a medic of some sort. And we don’t know all their qualifications. It depends on the customer and where these people have come from. But in some cases, the Coast Guard will have to bring that person with them, which leaves the offshore asset without coverage or transfer the patient to the Coast Guard helicopter.

And again, all due respect to our friends in the Coast Guard. I’m in the auxiliary. I know what they do in boats quite well, and I see the aircraft operation. They’re focused on rescue and saving your life. They’re not focused on starting an IV and giving you pain medication for your fractured leg.

They can get you outta the water and they can get you into a litter and get you to the hospital, but you’re not getting paramedic level care during the transport unless they bring someone with them. And as Michael mentioned, the process of doing that usually involves consulting. A flight surgeon doing a risk assessment.

It may take a long time to make that decision. And then there’s some things that because of their rules and regulations, they won’t do that. He service can do like landing on some of these assets where the Coast Guard will hover and do a winch procedure. So we can provide. Probably faster service, higher level service, and safer service because we can land and transferring the patient is much safer if the aircraft is sitting on a helipad than if it’s hovering over.

Although we are equipped to hoist the patient, we would prefer that the aircraft land and that we can carry them to, to the aircraft. Wow.

Allen Hall: I guess the only experience that as an American watching the Coast Guard do those hoists is on deadliest catch. The. The crab boats that go out and when you see somebody get injured, you see the coast Guard come out and they drop down and they hoist them up.

They throw ’em inside, and that’s the last of it. You don’t see them providing any services to the injured person. You just see them flying away. I guess there really isn’t anything going on there. They’re just taking them to the nearest airport or hospital, wherever they’re going to get services.

I didn’t realize that. So that’s an important fact, especially if you’re operating offshore wind farms and you’re involved in the ships and all the activity. You need to be thinking about that quite a bit because someone’s gonna get hurt at some point. There’s just too many moving pieces of this and we’re too far offshore in the United States to allow someone to get hurt and get seriously hurt and not have a way to get them back and get them care given to them.

It seems like this is a much better solution than putting ’em on a ship and hauling them back to shore.

Dr. Kenneth Williams: Getting them onto a ship safely is problematic, depending on the sea state and where they are. And then it’s a multi-hour probably bumpy ride in the ship and then they need to get into a ground ambulance.

We don’t have any hospitals in Rhode Island that have a dock. We have a couple that are pretty close to marinas, but they would have to get in a ground ambulance and then, and go into the hospital So much longer evolution to get. An injured person or an ill person to shore. And the other aspect of this certainly there, there was risk there in, in terms of injury for the people working there.

But if you put a thousand or 2000 people somewhere, people are going to have regular illnesses as well. There will be asthma attacks and allergic reactions and stomach aches and maybe even strokes and heart attacks and things like that. The Coast Guard is able to do CPR and hemorrhage control.

So certainly they’re very good at basic first aid things, but not only are they not trained and equipped to do some of the advanced things, but their environment is one where they expect everything to get wet. And most of our stuff is not waterproof. So our cardiac monitor and all the other devices that we have here, ah, would not do well in a wet salt water environment. So they don’t equip the Coast Guard boats or aircraft with things that, one, one wave will destroy. And they really can’t offer that level. Routinely they may be able to hoist a paramedic from the boat and go with them with their equipment, but that’s one of the reasons that the back of that.

Flying pickup truck is not equipped with all of this electronic medical equipment, is, it’s just not their operational environment.

Michael Tosi: And another thing to, to hit off on that is that you, there’s two groups of personnel that we can go to. There’s those that are on vessels that have a paramedic, thankfully, but there are also those on the turbines.

And the turbines, they’re extremely isolated. You have three technicians who, of course they receive some rudimentary medical care and they have a little bit of medical equipment. But I think most of the technicians will be the first to tell you that they are in no way, shape or form qualified medical professionals.

And when they’re on the top of that turbine, particularly when delivered via helicopter, the only way to get them off is via helicopter. So what that means is that the Coast Guard goes out there with this very rudimentary medical capability. Several hours later because if they’re coming from Canada, it could be four hour flight back down to a turbine here south of Nantucket or the vineyard.

And when they get there, you are getting an EMT at best. That is not particularly compatible at a, at the risk of be a bit blunt with life. If you have something that happened to you and four hours later you are getting a response, that’s unacceptable. Everybody knows that.

And that causes huge limitations to access. To the wind form with helicopters. Because you can’t put folks out there if you don’t have a way to get them out. And the entire reason that you use helicopters in your wind form is to insulate you or insure you against not having access for huge swaths of the year.

So with the helicopter, you also need to provide folks a good way to get out, and quite frankly, even if you don’t have helicopter access. As Dr. Williams said, I don’t know anyone in the world who wants to take a vessel back if there is a helicopter available and on call.

Allen Hall: Yeah it makes total sense.

So if you’re an operator or a developer off the East coast, you be talking to hea, service USA and getting this service on your project because there’s really no other way to do it. Let’s just be honest. Yep. The other way is so horribly. Developed and we just don’t have the infrastructure for it in the US right now.

Helicopter is the right way to go. Now let’s talk about what that looks like operationally. You get a phone call from a turbine or an operator that says, Hey, I got a guy that got hurt. What happens next?

Michael Tosi: So for us, we try and make it as easy as possible. There’s just a phone number they contact. Okay. We have our dispatch available currently it is during daylight hours, and here in, in just under a week or so.

Two weeks max. We’re going to be operating 24 7. Okay? Our dispatch channel be staff twenty four seven. The call goes to them. Within about a minute, that helicopter is already starting to get underway to launch. That is the key is to get those folks ready, to get those folks mobilized, get the helicopter converted and then it turns over to the pilots who who start

Paul Russo: getting, yeah, they’ll take a look at the weather, look at where the asset’s located, if they’re gonna land, if they’re, or if it’s gonna be a hoist mission.

And then they decide to accept the mission or not. And as long as all the factors are good and safe to do then they head out.

Allen Hall: Okay. Are people stationed in the hangar? Correct. 24 hours? Yeah. So they’re not driving from the home to get over here? No, they’re here. They’re here.

Paul Russo: Correct.

So we have two pilots, a paramedic and a hoist operator.

Allen Hall: 24 4 hours a day.

Paul Russo: MT? Wow.

Allen Hall: Okay. That’s, and

Dr. Kenneth Williams: the hoist operator will be trained as an EMT? Yeah. So we have two medically trained people in the back and two pilots up front.

Allen Hall: Yeah. So four people inside the helicopter. And there’s a switchover that has to happen because it’s configured to take technicians on and off.

Correct. Of the wind turbines at the moment.

Michael Tosi: Yep. What does that look like? So that’s a great question. This goes back to some of the economics of it. There, there is precedent for this. This is not a totally new concept. The folks in the Gulf of Mexico have been doing oil and natural gas work offshore for 60, 70 years or more.

Paul came from a program in the Gulf that was a large search and rescue and EMS program. They had five dedicated helicopters and let Paul speak a little bit more to it. That comes with a price tag. And since offshore wind is newer. And smaller. We understand that is a difficult bill to foot.

And while that is probably where this will go with continued development is to have a dedicated asset what we had to do this economically was use the assets we have because we understand that while the developers know they need to get there and they want to get there, there are ultimately resource limitations.

And so with that, we use our existing fleet of helicopters, so the same helicopters that we take the folks out on. We can rapidly convert in less than 10 minutes. I believe the crews have done it. It’s a

Paul Russo: little six minutes. Yeah.

Michael Tosi: They’re all the way down to six minutes to take this and and it is a proper ambulance in the back.

When you look back there, it’s not only a proper ambulance because this helicopter is much larger than most onshore medical helicopters. This is like the, the Cadillac or the Mercedes for the cruise. It’s got a ton of space, lots of space for gear, the stretcher, and it’s really great access.

But we were able to do this economically for these first couple of developers to get them a solution at a price point that, that works,

Allen Hall: right? Yeah. ’cause everybody’s worried about cost at the minute and rightfully however, you need to be worried about all your people that are out there. Yeah. So you need to weigh that off.

And so you can, from phone call to being out on a flight line, less than 10 minutes. Yeah, Paul’s done all the weather research. He knows where he is going. Everybody’s in the helicopter. You got four people in off, you go to the turbine. What happens then? Are you calling Dr. Williams and say, Hey, we got somebody who’s injured and be ready?

We,

Paul Russo: so when we do get the call, we have an intake form that dispatch will write down the basic information of, okay, of where we’re going, patient. If it’s ambulatory, non-inventory. And then they’ll get further information. Paramedic will get that information as well, which is patient condition.

Is this, is this a fractured leg? Is this a stroke, a heart attack? Is it just somebody that’s not feeling well? Okay. Whatever the case may be. Once they get that, then and that’s how all happening at the same time. How does that work?

Allen Hall: If I’m a technician on top of a turbine, I’m.

30 miles from shore. Do I have a radio? How am I getting cell phone? How am I calling you? I’m talking to you. They have, yeah, they have

Paul Russo: comms on shore. Cell phones are actually work pretty well. Okay. There’s really good coverage out there. These turbines are 500 feet off, off the water, sure. At the nael. So they’ve they’re great cell service. They have pretty good cell service out there, but they also, I think they also have tetra radios as well that they use. So they have several ways of communicating back with their people. And they have several ships out there as well that are vessels that are.

And comms with them. Okay? Okay. So they would make a call to that entity out there to, to their marine control center. Okay. Or coordination center. And then and then that call would come to us. All right. Somebody gets hurt. It’s basically get on the radio 9 1 1. We’ve got somebody.

That’s got injured and need to get ’em off. And here’s the condition, whatever it may be.

Allen Hall: Okay,

Paul Russo: so

Allen Hall: you’re now flying towards the turbine, right? You get to the turbine. This person is not ambulatory. They’re just sitting on the deck. Broken leg, broken arm, whatever it is. What does that look like and how does weather play into this?

Paul Russo: If the weather is really low, then we may not be able to get to the turbine. Again, it’s 500 feet above the water line, 500. So if you have ceilings down at 300 feet, that could be prohibited from for getting up there. Most days we don’t get that here in New England. Weather more than likely be okay the majority of the time.

We get into a position to hoist out our paramedic. He’ll go out first. He or she will go out first and then and then medical equipment after that. And then they’ll pack the pack, the patient do whatever they gotta do, take as much time as they need to take the aircraft and that, during that time, we’ll just enter a loiter pattern just a conserve fuel, come back in, pick up the patient, pick up the paramedic, and off they go to the hospital.

Allen Hall: Okay? So they’re actually stabilizing the patient on the top of the turbine. Get, you

Paul Russo: get packed in the,

Allen Hall: get ’em all Correct in our stretcher system. Okay. That’s one heck of a ride then. Yeah. Okay. So the get back onto the helicopter you’re flying to, where are you going? You going to Massachusetts?

Probably Rhode Island. Rhode Island Hospital and Rhode Island Hospital. Okay. Whatever’s closest. Brown, I guess we

Dr. Kenneth Williams: call it now, whatever that’s Rhode Island Hospital is the only level one trauma center in Southeastern New England. It’s also a burn center, an excellent helipad system. There’s a ground-based helipad that can handle two pretty good sized aircraft and a rooftop helipad that’s right over the emergency department.

And it’s a couple minute flight from here where we are. So it’s our intended destination for almost all of our patients. They have an excellent medical communication center. It’s staffed by paramedics have radios and telephones and computer screens that we can communicate with them. So from the medical chronology of this everything that we need to take care of the patient is coming on every flight.

So we’re not picking and choosing, oh, the guy has a broken leg. Let’s go get a splint out of the cabinet. Everything is on the aircraft. If we get additional medical information. So let’s say there’s a paramedic out there, or our medic here can talk to whoever is with the person. Yes. We’d love to have that information to know what we’re going to, we’re trusting our paramedics to make that decision that this is, how I’m gonna manage this patient.

And as Michael said we’re not triaging. If they call us, we’re gonna go and we will sort it out later. But once we’ve got. Some information, there’ll probably be a notification to the hospital, Hey, we’re going on a mission. You’re gonna be getting a patient. Once they get to the patient, they’ll do what they need to do.

They’ll get the patient back in the aircraft, and then there will be communication to the hospital. Now we’re inbound, we’re 10 minutes out. This is what we have with a much more detailed medical report. And that’ll either go directly to the hospital or be relayed through dispatch here depending on where the aircraft is and.

Who we have radio communication with. And then the trauma center will get ready to receive the patient with whatever they have. They’re fully prepared there to handle strokes and heart attacks and medical issues as well as trauma. So they can handle anything that that we might be bringing them.

Michael Tosi: Wow. Okay. That actually brings up something I think is also important to highlight is. A lot of folks perceive with the military as just very organized. Everyone knows exactly what they’re doing. For those of us who spent some time in the military while it does come across that way, sometimes internally, see a bit how the cake is baked.

And the military is not designed to be an ambulance service, never, has, never will be it the Coast Guard, be it in deployed in environments. I, I. On many missions in the military providing, search and rescue services or coverage or medevacs. And some issues that they’ve seen is that military helicopters don’t have the ability to necessarily deliver a report to the hospital they’re going to.

So they show up and hate to say it, they say, Hey, here’s your guy, and they dump ’em off on the hospital. And the hospital doesn’t initially know what it was, what the symptoms were. And there’s been several cases up here in New England, where that has happened, where they have had someone go to Rhode Island Hospital, the hospital didn’t know what they were getting and they had a difficulty, I don’t wanna say diagnosing per se, but they didn’t get the best level of care immediately because the hospital needs to know what they’re getting.

They need a good handoff. And there have also been some adverse outcomes. From folks that have gotten potentially delayed responses or there’s been cases here on the eastern seaboard where the Coast Guard has said no. And for those who’ve been involved they’ve heard this, for the last couple years.

Hey, they are gonna say no. And at some point the Coast Guard is gonna have limitations because however acute you may think your particular patient is, I guarantee you that the, fisherman whose vessel sank and is in 33 degree water. Is in a far more acute condition than almost anything you can imagine, because that person has a very limited window, and the Coast Guard is going to prioritize that.

So there are going to be times, and there have been times now where they have said no. And I think that’s really important for folks to understand if they’re not utilizing a service like this yet.

Allen Hall: So now I’m curious because last year Ella Service USA did about 10,000 flights to turbines. Offshore, which was an incredible number. I didn’t realize you had done that many flights last year. How many injuries happened last year where they could have used your service?

Michael Tosi: It is a fabulous question. So admittedly while we are part of the industry folks, there are organizations like G plus, but our observation is that, folks don’t like airing their dirty laundry to be entirely frank.

What we have seen from behind the scenes is that I know that one particular tier one operator out there had over a dozen alone in one summer campaign. There are and that is just one. There are many out there I would estimate at any given time or any given year so far. I think 30, 40, 50 different cases now, mi mind you, the acuity can go from, extraordinarily low.

All the way up to there have absolutely been some much higher acuity cases out there. The other thing that speaks to is the lower acuity cases where the Coast Guard just is not, you’re not gonna call them. But it’s this in between where you don’t necessarily wanna stick them on a vessel.

You do want to get them to care in the next 12 hours. Maybe it doesn’t need to be in the next hour or two hours, but the next 12 hours and the vessels are not necessarily running in, in some of the poor sea conditions. There is a whole Whitney of stuff. Most of your town’s ambulance calls are not tremendously acute.

That doesn’t mean you don’t need an ambulance service or you count on the ambulance service from four towns over. You still need your own ambulance service to handle those. And that

Allen Hall: goes back to Dr. Williams’s point that. A lot of what happens on the EMS side is not, acute, horrible injury.

A lot of it is just general things, but they require EMS services.

Dr. Kenneth Williams: And to amplify on that, one of the reasons why medicine is so interesting, but so frustrating for some people is things can look minor and actually be a serious problem. Yeah. And so if somebody’s on top of a turbine and gets a sudden toothache, maybe they’re having a heart attack.

Okay, so somebody made triage. Oh, it’s just a toothache. Why don’t you give the guy a couple of Tylenols and he can finish his workday. Maybe they do need to be evacuated. And when our paramedic gets out there and says, oh, when did you start having this job pain? Do you have any chest discomfort with, as now that you mentioned it, my chest is tight.

That person now needs a cardiogram and an IV and maybe oxygen and maybe a medication. All of which we can provide. None of which the Coast Guard can provide, and none of which is available on top of that turbine. It may be available if they’re on a boat with a paramedic offshore, but now you’ve got a patient where advanced care is started and the Coast Guard can’t continue that advanced care.

So either, again, the paramedic that’s on the boat gets on the Coast Guard aircraft with the patient, or a service like our service can come in and. A handoff at a the same level of care or even a more advanced level of care. Than what’s available out there.

Paul Russo: Yeah. I experienced that many times in my previous operation prior to coming up here where we going out to pick up somebody that is complaining of heartburn or maybe a tingling in the arm, whatever the case may be, and we get ’em on and they’re, they’re coating out from a heart attack.

Whoa. And without that advanced level of care that we provided same level of care we’re providing here, we provided down there as well. That person would automate it.

Allen Hall: Wow. This is amazing because I didn’t realize. How serious this was. Now you walk me through it. If you’re out on a turbine and something happens, it’s an isolated place to be.

You’re on an island and you may be there for several hours unless you have HeliService coming to your rescue. How quickly can you get somebody off of that top of that turbine and into Rhode Island Hospital?

Michael Tosi: It’s, so overall, it is a very quick response time. So we’re here for our closest turbines for the nearest wind park that we serve.

Only about a 13 minute flight. Wow. So if that helicopter’s off the ground 15 minutes, which during the day is very plausible, especially when the crew is here and postured. You’re talking of 15 minute launch time, 15 minutes offshore. You’re at 30 minutes until that person is receiving the highest level of care that you could ever expect.

The same that you would get if you called 9 1 1 in the biggest city with the best a LS. Level of care that you’re going to see to recover that person depending on how they’re packaged. 10 minutes 15 minutes would be a long time. It can be very quick depending on how ready they are.

So you’re off the turbine in 15 minutes, 15 minute flight to the hospital, and you’re talking that it is possible on some of the nearest turbines to be an hour from the point where that entry occurs to the hospital. Now, obviously you can see delays with. With confusion with folks. And there, there’s the fog of war as US military folks call it.

But an hour is very doable. For some of the turbines that we service. There are a bit further out. 90 minutes is very doable. The other day we had a drill we did at our furthest turbine that is currently in our service area. In between call when we received our call to getting that person to Rhode Island Hospital was just a little over 90 minutes from that call.

Yeah. From what we’ve seen with the Coast Guard responses in the area. It’s been generally three hours or more from that call just because of their launch time is a little bit slower. The notification process, the medical discussion, sometimes that’s four to five hours that we’ve seen on several other calls.

So the difference is dramatic. You’re talking about an improvement almost a hundred percent or more. So it is drastic. So if you

Allen Hall: can hear behind us, we’re at an active flight line and how the service is busy today taking technicians on and off of wind turbines. So it is a busy place.

Place. This discussion has been fantastic. I did not realize the need for this as much as I, I thought the Coast Guard would handle some of this and that’s what was going on, but in reality, they’re not able to do the service at the level in which it is required. And Dr. Williams, you pointed out very clearly, there’s a lot of things that happen on wind turbines in a lot of cases that need to take, be taken care of.

Service is the way to do that. And they’re qualified and they’re trained and they got 24 hour coverage. That is the right way to do this in the states. Michael, how do people get ahold of you and turn on the service and get it implemented for their wind farm?

Michael Tosi: Yeah, so very fortunately, the service is now here.

We had a big industry stakeholder, really stepped up, made the right decision to do this. Go ahead and because they have taken that leap now it is really easy for everybody else because the service is here. All that needs to happen is a contractual discussion. Another big item with this is we are doing cost sharing with this.

So the next person who participates the first participant is going to see a reduction. In their service. So a pretty substantial reduction. The next member is gonna see an already reduced price, and then as that keeps going it’s a bit of a consortium. It’s, unfortunately it’s almost impossible to organize a consortium with a lot of big players.

But what I like to call it is cost sharing. I. So as each member goes and joins the service, the price continues to drop. Also, you tend to see the service increase in quality because there’s a little bit of an additional margin with each to provide coverage for a greater swath of the offshore population.

So the more people that participate in it, the better the service gets and the less that it costs, because very obviously, thankfully even if there are say 36 calls a year that’s three every month. Nobody needs to pay for their individual service for each wind park.

That, that’s a gross misuse of resources. So by having that cost sharing model, everyone can get a really high quality service but they’re not paying a loan for it. And that, that I think, is a huge deal for the industry that now that there’s, like I said. Someone who took the first big jump.

Now it’s really easy for everybody else to scale that, to get involved. They just need to reach out to us and the service is here. It’s really just a commercial discussion.

Allen Hall: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense that the more people that join HeliServices EMS service, the lower the cost is for each one of them, and you’re gonna need it.

So the, you’re gonna have to have it really, if you want to do your technicians and all your people, right? You wanna have the MS services for them, thank you so much for inviting us back to Rhode Island and to the wonderful HeliService site. Dr. Williams, thank you for being here. I didn’t realize all the complexities to yeah.

The EMS world. It’s it’s quite enlightening. And to Michael and to Paul, thank you so much for having us back. I appreciate it. Thank you for coming.

Michael Tosi: Yeah, of course. No, thanks. Thanks for your time. Thanks for for joining and I hope you’re excited to watch the demo.

Dr. Kenneth Williams: Yeah. Thank you for coming.

Yeah. We we’re thrilled to be able to offer. The people working in offshore wind the same level of EMS service they would expect on shore.

The Uptime Podcast team celebrates their fifth anniversary, reflecting on their journey and contributions from team members. They also discuss Siemens Gamesa's India operations acquisition by TPG and future renewable energy investments. Additionally, the episode covers innovations in carbon-negative building materials. 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! Allen Hall: We just celebrated our fifth year of podcasting, everybody. So the uptime podcast is of officially five years old. I can't believe we've made it this far. That's we were trying to do the math on it the other day at five times 50. Roughly. It's 250 odd episodes. That's a lot of episodes, Rosemary Barnes: but that's only the weekly episodes. What about all the others? You're not only putting out one a week these days. Allen Hall: No, it's two or three or four, right? It's somewhere in there. But I just wanted to say congratulations to each of you on behalf of the Uptime podcast and all the work that happens behind the scenes. Everybody listens to the finished product, and I know it sounds great and the comments are great, and the ideas are great, but there's. A ton of work that goes into this every week to give you this content, and everybody that's been on the podcast as a guest, it was just trying to remember all the faces and names that are. Big and wind that have been on the podcast. It's amazing the people we've touched, the people we've met that are friends that have come from the podcast. It's a nice little family, weirdly enough. And it's one of those it feels like a pair of comfortable shoes that hey, when you go to a conference, you just know everybody and you, and they know us. You feel like we've known them forever because we just spend every week together talking about what's happening in wind. It's a great little experience. Phil Totaro: Can we add that, a big thank you to everyone who listens because we wouldn't keep doing it if you weren't also showing up. Thank you to everyone that listens. Again, your feedback is fantastic. Good and bad. It it keeps us entertained. So we thank you all. Joel Saxum: I would say from my seat as well, Alan, thank you for having all of us and organizing the things that you do. And the unsung hero that you guys don't hear from or usually see unless you're a guest on the podcast is Claire Hall in the background. Who's our producer who puts all of these episodes together and is juggling work life. School, a million different things to make sure this thing goes out every week. So thank you Claire as well. And of course, Rosemary. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah I was gonna say that, Alan has abnormal persistence. I think it took it like now it's obvious why, the value and why we would all keep going and why we come back every week. But yeah, Alan's efforts, especially in the early years was like, just. Just kept on doing it week after week. And, when I started, all I had to do was show up and try and read the material beforehand. I definitely would not have been doing a weekly podcast for, I think I've been on it for four years or so. I wouldn't have been doing that on my own, that's for sure. I think yeah, 90% of the success comes from Alan's abnormal persistence. So Thanks Alan. Allen Hall: Yeah. I appreciate everybody coming every week. I know we've all been through ups and downs over the last several years, rosemary, you've grown a family. And Joel is. Been in and out and I've been in and out and Phil too, right? So between the four of us, we can actually make a decent podcast,

This week, SSE appoints Martin Pibsworth as the next CEO, GE Vernova inaugurates a new customer center in Florida, RWE advances its Sophia Offshore Wind Project, and Nantucket challenges three offshore wind projects along Massachusetts coast. 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! Welcome to Uptime Newsflash, industry News Lightning fast. Newsflash is brought to you by IntelStor. For market intelligence that generates revenue, visit www.intelstor.com. Allen Hall: Starting off the week, British Utility Company SSE has named Martin Pibsworth as its chief executive designate. Pibsworth joined SSE in 1998 and currently serves as Chief Commercial Officer. Pibsworth will take over from Alistair Phillips Davies, who has been CEO since 2013 and will hand over the reigns following the annual general meeting on July 17th. Before leaving the company in November, uh, the new CEO will lead SSE renewables push helping the UK deliver on its decarbonization goals. During Philip's Davies tenure, SSE made a strategic shift toward networks and renewables with shares gaining about 4% during his leadership. Last year. SSE announced plans to invest at least 22 billion pounds in grid infrastructure over five years. Over in the United States, GE Vernova has opened a new customer experience center at its Pensacola facility in Florida, marked by a ribbing cutting event hosted by CEO Scott Strazik. The center includes multiple conference rooms, collaboration areas, and direct access to production space. The investments are part of GE Vernova's broader plan announced in January to invest nearly $600 million in its US factories and facilities. Over the next two years, the Pensacola factory has already produced enough turbines to supply over 1.2 gigawatts of the 2.4 gigawatts ordered for the Sunzia Wind Farm in New Mexico. German Energy group RWE has installed its first turbines at its 1.4 Gigawatt Sophia Offshore Wind Project in the uk Located on Dogger Bank, 195 kilometers off the northeast coast of Britain. Sophia is set to become one of the world's largest single offshore wind farms. The project will consist of 100 Siemens Gamesa turbines featuring 150 recyclable blades. The wind park is scheduled to be fully operational in the second half of 2026. RWE's Chief Operating Officer for offshore wind commented that Sophia will make a significant contribution to the UK's clean power 2030 targets. And over in Massachusetts, the town of Nantucket and a Nantucket based activist group are challenging three offshore wind projects off the Massachusetts coast. The town recently sued the US Department of Interior and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management requesting that the government set aside its approval of South Coast Wind and restart the environmental review. Meanwhile, the group ACK for Whales is asking the Environmental Protection Agency to rescind permits granted to Vineyard Wind and New England wind. These challenges come amid the Trump administration's opposition to offshore wind. Industry analyst Timothy Fox's Vineyard Wind faces less risk from these challenges since it's already under construction while projects in planning stages are at higher risk. South Coast wind, which receive final federal approval on the last business day of the Biden administration could be delayed by up to four years. Vineyard wind is the furthest along among these projects with more than half of its 62 turbine towers already installed. Massachusetts Energy Secretary Rebecca Tepper has reiterated the state support for offshore wind emphasizing the need for energy independence...

Lars Bendsen joins the spotlight to discuss how AC883 helps operators source turbine parts to cut costs and reduce downtime. AC883 can offer faster response times and better pricing than manufacturers based in Europe. Lars shares how his company's approach helps prevent extended turbine downtime by providing quick access to critical components. Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! 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! Allen Hall: In the wind industry, a turbine standing still often means one thing, waiting for parts that should be readily available. This week on the uptime spotlight, we're joined by Lars Benson of AC 8 83, which is based in Canada. AC883 has direct connections to manufacturers in Denmark where most critical worm turbine components are actually produced Lars shares, house site operators can cut costs and dramatically reduce downtime by bypassing the OEM middleman and sourcing parts directly from the original suppliers. Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on wind Energy's brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Lars, welcome back to the show. Thank you. Spare Parts is a huge issue all over the world, but it seems like in the US and Canada, there's always a shortage. They're looking for spare parts. They don't know where to get them, and the easy answer has been to call the original equipment manufacturer in terms of the GE Vestus Siemens, cesa, Nordex, whoever that may be, and just to place a order. There are other opportunities out there. What happens when a wind side in Texas just decides to buy from the wind turbine manufacturer? How much are they paying overpaying for that part? Lars Bendsen: I can't say exactly on on dollars and cents, but but we know the markup from the OEMs. Then they're not shy of earning money on that, those parts. And yeah, so it's very simple. We can get those parts directly from Europe directly from the suppliers to the OEMs. Allen Hall: Yeah. And if I'm an operator, and I haven't been over to Denmark to look at the situation there, a significant number of critical parts are actually manufactured in Denmark or in the surrounding areas. You have no way of knowing that if you own the turbine, Lars Bendsen: that's true. You don't. Somehow the OEMs have been really good and keeping a bit of cloud cloudy around that area. It's actually pretty simple. They all produced either in in Denmark and Germany for basically all turbines. GE turbines is a target turbine from Germany that that they bought back when. So that's why sim that's a German turbine as well. It's not a US turbine at all. Allen Hall: And the supply chain has remained that way for a long time. Lars Bendsen: It's a BP parts. It's standard parts. There's no rocket sites in it. Of course, there's some legacy some software parts and stuff that we could be desk, some, what we call it electronic boards, which software on, of course we can't do that. That's fair enough, right? That's actually where the OOM has its value. That's totally good. Joel Saxum: I think part of the reason that you see this, that gap there in the industry is the simple fact that, and I don't take this as a slight Lars because I love your website and what you guys do for marketing and branding, but in that corner of the world, and Alan, you and I were just talking about this couple of German companies we're talking about they're not that good at global branding and global marketing. As a unit like culturally, so you don't see really what's going on almost behind t...

Pete Andrews from EchoBolt discusses their advanced ultrasonic technology for inspecting and maintaining wind turbine bolts, which can reduce maintenance costs by up to 90%. He emphasizes the importance of proper bolt tensioning during installation and highlights recent improvements in their automated inspection processes. 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! Allen Hall: With wind turbines growing larger and critical bolted connections under strain, the wind industry needs smarter inspection methods to prevent costly failures. This week we speak with Pete Andrews, managing director at EchoBolt. EchoBolt has developed ultrasonic technology that makes bolt inspections faster, more reliable, and saves wind farm operators up to 90% on maintenance costs while preventing catastrophic failures. Stay tuned. Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy's brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering tomorrow. Pete, welcome back to the show. Pete Andrews: Hi, Allen. Hi Joel. Good to be back. I was trying to work out when I was last on here, but it was it two years ago. It's been a while. Anyway, we've had a lot change at alt yeah, it's good to catch up with you guys again. Allen Hall: It's been too long and so we're glad to have you back because I know there's been a lot of improvements and EchoBolt has been really busy checking bolts all over the place and we've, Joel and I have been traveling around quite a bit and we've noticed problems with. Bolts in the United States and we think where's Pete? Where's Ebol? We could really use you in the United States to help us on some of these bolted connections because it does seem like there's a lot of issues from tower bolts to blade bolts to bolts in general, there are a number of problems that exist. And I wanna start off there, Pete, because I think you're the knowledge base for bolts. Are bolts being tightened correctly based upon all the measurements that you have done? Pete Andrews: Say, it's a very mixed picture. I think you're right to point out, it's every wind operator will have issues in their fleets with the bolt of connections, but it's almost always. Blade studs that caused the most headache. You do see things on towers. You do see a kind of occasional issues elsewhere, maybe with foundations. I'd say it's probably, I. In our experience, once, once sites are in operation, there's not too much that happens that influences the integrity. An awful lot happens at the point of installation, and it's what we always try and say to customers if it. If you confirm that the bolts are tightened to the load, you expect at the point of installation, you've set yourself up for a fantastic operational li life. But if it's wrong at the start, you've got embedded integrity issues that are really hard to manage going forward. So yeah it's a mixed picture, but what I'd always say is focus on the QA at the point of installation and things should go easy from there on in. Allen Hall: It does seem like blade bolts are becoming more of an issue. As you mentioned, the blade insert question of are we over tightening fasteners that go into the blades and pulling out these inserts and causing some of the problems downstream root cracking, instruments becoming loose, blades becoming loose and wobbling on the pitch bearings. It does seem like we don't have a really good way of consistently tightening or tensioning. Those fasteners are bolts that are in composite structure just a lot more sensitive to or the composites more sensitive to the tensioning tightening that happe...

This week, we cover the unionization of Vestas technicians in Michigan, and research revealing significant blade damage occurs in short but intense weather events. At the Atlantic Shores offshore farm, an environmental permit was remanded by a judge. Dermot Wind Farm in Texas, also known as the Amazon Wind Farm, is our wind farm of the week. Register for the start of our webinar series with SkySpecs! 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! You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now here's your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes. Allen Hall: Before we start the program this week on March 26th. At 11:00 AM Uptime sits down with Josh Goryl CRO of SkySpecs, and their newly appointed CEO Dave Roberts for an exclusive conversation in our new joint webinar series. You may have heard about Dave recently stepping into the role. Now's your chance to hear from him directly and we'll dive into what's new at SkySpecs, the latest industry insights, and what their newest announcement means for the future of wind turbine inspections. Wind o and m. And asset health management, so don't miss it. Tune in on March 26th, 11:00 AM Eastern, and we'll include the webinar registration link in the show notes. Up in Michigan, wind turbine technicians who perform operations and maintenance on Vestas turbines have voted to join the Utility Workers Union of America. Marks the first Vestas wind technicians in North America to unionize. The 11 member group voted nine to one, so someone abstained obviously in favor of organizing and will become members of the UWUA local 2, 2 3, which also represents winex at DTE in Michigan. Now these workers are responsible for operations and maintenance on about 120 odd turbines, including MCE. So Joel, this one's a little unique and maybe 'cause it's Michigan unions are really strong in Michigan, have been for a hundred years. 'cause the auto workers, and this seems like an outgrowth of that, but what is the relationship with Vestus in unions? Is that something that they have done in Europe quite often and this is just carrying over into the United States? Or is this. An American move. Joel Saxum: I think it's an American move. If you look at the state of Michigan, like you said, auto workers are there. They're heavily unionized. And because they're heavily unionized and that state has looked at them as, they do well. It's in good middle class incomes and, that, that's driven some progress over the last a hundred years in Michigan. My, some of my in-laws are from Michigan and they're boilermakers and they're all unionized. And when they say get that union job, they've got it. They've made it right. So I understand the city or the state of Michigan and some of the ideas around there. And I think that if you, in wind, if you were to pick a state that would've unionized first. Michigan would be at the top of your list probably. So I don't think it's a Vesta thing necessarily. I think this is a local Michigan thing, but I don't also believe, Vesta is being a Danish company and they have, a lot of trade representation there from in all trades in that northern part of Europe. I think that's, it's not abnormal to Vestas either. It's probably abnormal to Vestas. United States Management, but Vestas as a company, eh, pretty standard thing. I'm curious to see what their package looks like, because now we're in this era of IRA bill things, right? So we,

CIP achieves financial closure for an offshore wind project in Taiwan and the UK may shift towards a domestic offshore wind supply chain. GE Vernova plans to equip two RWE farms in Texas, and Masdar will potentially acquire TotalEnergies' renewable assets in Portugal. Register for the start of our webinar series with SkySpecs! Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! 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! Welcome to Uptime Newsflash, industry News Lightning fast. For market intelligence that generates revenue, visit www.intelstor.com. Allen Hall: Starting off the week, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners has secured financial close on the 495 megawatt Fengmiao offshore wind project off Taiwan's Coast. This Marks CIP's third offshore wind project in Taiwan and is the first of Taiwan's round three projects to start construction. The project secured approximately $3.1 billion in financing from 27 banks with debt partially guaranteed by export credit agencies. Now Vestas will supply 33 of its latest 15 megawatt turbines for the projects and construction will finish by late 2027 with six corporate customers already signed for long-term power purchase agreements covering its entire capacity. Dan McGrail Interim, CEO of Britain's new state owned GB Energy believes the UK should challenge oversee renewable energy companies by exporting its expertise globally. McGrail sees floating offshore wind as a huge opportunity for British technology leveraging existing supply chains from the oil and gas industry. He aims to shift focus from importing parts to building them domestically, which could create an export industry over time. GE Vernova will equip two RWE farms in Texas with over 100 turbines with deliveries beginning later this year. The projects will help RWE surpass one gigawatt of rebuilt and repowered wind capacity across the US and generate enough electricity to power approximately 85,000 Texas homes and businesses annually. Boosting US content. Then the sales for the project will be manufactured at GE Vernova's Florida facility, which employs about 20% Veterans. RWE's Chief Operating Officer emphasized their commitment to American energy production and strengthening domestic manufacturing and supply chains. GE Vernova's Entre Wind Division currently has a total installed base of 56,000 turbines worldwide with nearly 120 gigawatts of installed capacity. Abu Dhabi's Masdar is considering acquiring a stake and total energy's Portuguese renewable energy assets. The deal will likely be through SATA yield. The Green Energy Company masar purchased from Brookfield last year. This would add to MAs dollar's growing European portfolio, which includes recent acquisitions in Spain and Greece as the company works towards its global target of 100 gigawatts by 2030. Total Energy is currently has about 600 megawatts of installed renewable capacity in Portugal, mostly higher valued wind power assets. Total energy. CEO previously mentioned plans to divest around two gigawatts annually as part of portfolio consolidation. And that wraps up our wind industry headlines from Monday, March 24th. The conversation continues tomorrow on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, where we'll explore even more insights shaping the future of renewable energy. And don't forget to join our exclusive live webinar this Wednesday featuring Sky Specs New CEO Dave Roberts. He'll be sharing his roadmap for the company's exciting future. All access details are awaiting for you in the show notes.

Martin Kristelijn, the co-founder of IntoMachines, discusses innovative tools designed to make bolt tensioning faster, safer, and less expensive. The conversation highlights the challenges of manually tensioning thousands of bolts, the advantages of automated bolt tensioning for wind turbines, and the development of a weightless, more efficient tensioning system. Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! 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! Allen Hall: With wind turbines growing larger and bolts getting bigger, the industry needs smarter ways to handle critical bolted connections. This week we speak with Martin Kristelijn co-founder of IntoMachines. IntoMachines has developed unique tools that make bolt tensioning faster, safer, and much less expensive. Welcome to Uptime, spotlight, shining light on wind. Energy's brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Martin, welcome to. To the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight. Martin Kristelijn: Thank you. Glad to be here. Allen Hall: Martin, there's a big problem out in the field that we have a lot of bolts to tension and not a lot of people to go do it. Plus I think as you and I had discussed previously, the bolt sizers are getting much bigger. Everything is becoming heavier and just being very difficult to do into machines changes all that. But let's talk about the problem first. What are you seeing on factory lines and out in service as people try to tension bolts. Martin Kristelijn: Past couple of months, year, I would say we spoke to a lot of people visited wind turbines, went in the field, see our technicians tighten the bolts also to the factories, so Elle production you name it. And well, the, we kept on keeping getting the same feedback over and over. That they would like to speed up the bolting process and also that they would like to increase the quality, so to prevent any loose bolts or forgotten bolts. That was really the starting point for us. We started to focus on bolt tensioning, to automate it, to speed it up, and to increase the quality. Allen Hall: So tensioning is the way going forward. A lot of of us remember torquing as being the preferred method to tighten bolts, but tensioning is now the way you wanna describe why that is? Martin Kristelijn: Yeah, still it depends on who you ask, but the main objective for everyone usually is to get a maintenance free building connection, right? That you keep the maintenance cost as low as possible. So that's also our goal. And bolt tensioning for us is the most yeah. Convenient way forward to reach that. Allen Hall: It's the most consistent way too, right? Is that with torquing, we really don't know what the preload is on the bolt. That's why engineers are preferring tension tools instead of torquing tools now. Martin Kristelijn: Exactly. So with torquing you have a friction coefficient you need to take into account. That's an unpredictable. Value parameter. So you would like to get rid of that. And you do that by just grabbing the bolt itself, apply hydraulic pressure and stretch the bolt directly. And then you have your hydraulic pressure times the surface of your tension to, and that gives you exactly the the preload in your bolt and you tighten the nut, release the pressure, and your bolt is perfectly pretense. As simple as that, Allen Hall: right? So that process takes time to do. And if you have a factory worker or a technician doing tensioning to a lot of bolts of which there are thousands on a wind turbine but there's probably what...

We discuss the recent acquisition of Innergex by CDPQ for $3.6 billion, highlighting its implications on the wind industry. We also delve into LM Wind Power producing blades for ENERCON from its factory in Turkey and feature the Buffalo Mountain Wind Farm, a unique project on a reclaimed coal mine in Tennessee. Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! 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! You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now here's your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes. Allen Hall: Big news, Innergex Renewable Energy has announced that it will be acquired by CDPQ. A major community and pension fund manager for about $13 and 75 cents per share. I've seen a couple different numbers about that. This transaction represents a total enterprise value of approximately 3.6 billion US dollars, and marks a really a substantial consolidation in the wind industry. The deal offers about a 40% premium on interjects closing share. Of a couple months ago. So that's a pretty good premium that CDPQ put on interjects value. And now Phil, this is part of a larger play of a lot of consolidation. This one in particular, interject is going to become a private company after this acquisition. Why? Phil Totaro: It, that's an interesting question because normally when a company gets taken private by a large institutional investor, it's to restructure. I am not sure that. Innergex needs that much restructuring per se. It's not like they've got a huge team to begin with. But a reasonably competent team in terms of the pedigree of their developments, obviously in Canada and throughout Europe as well. And they've been trying to venture off and dip their toe in other markets as well. The reality of this is that it, it's a fantastic thing for CDPQ to strengthen their position and it comes at a point in time when a lot of these Canadian pension funds are looking at the profitability and the returns that they're seeing on their investments globally, including the US right now with all the trade tensions and everything we've got. And I think you're gonna see more of these Canadian. Pension funds and investors pulling back and doing things that are ignoring the US at this point. Looking at deals in Canada, looking at deals in Europe, looking at deals in Southeast Asia and South America for that matter. Joel Saxum: I think it makes sense for me like CDPQ keeping their Canadian money mostly in Canada. However, I know Innergex has a hand small handful of wind farms in the United States as well. Did you see a reality where just because of geopolitical reasons, they might just. Sell those couple of wind farms off. Phil Totaro: Let's put it this way, Brookfield's not going anywhere and they're always on the hunt for, good assets. But there's other people that could want to gobble up wind assets right now, especially if, the assets that Enerex owns in the US they're not quite ready for repowering yet. But maybe that's part of the play. Joel Saxum: Moving forward. Yeah, I know, like you said, you mentioned Brookfield. Brookfield, same thing. We're talking about market consolidation. They just bought National Grid renewables not too long ago, and I know National Grid renewables in the States. A couple, A handful of wind farms and some solar assets, some other things. So yes, continuing to see that trend.

This week Allen highlights Pacifico Energy's efforts in developing offshore wind power in Vietnam, including meetings with government officials to support the country's clean energy goals. In Ireland, researchers introduce a potentially revolutionary cold spray technology for maintaining wind turbine blades. Lastly, Iberdrola seeks a partner for a 1 GW energy portfolio. Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! 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! Welcome to Uptime Newsflash, industry News Lightning fast. Newsflash is brought to you by Intel Store. For market intelligence that generates revenue, visit www.intel store.com. Starting off the week, US-based Pacifico Energy is ramping up efforts to develop offshore wind power projects in Vietnam. The company's CEO met with Vietnam's party general secretary in Hanoi recently, and the party leader highlighted Vietnam's goal to become a high income nation by 2045 with net zero emissions by 2050, emphasizing the need for stable clean energy sources. Pacifico affirmed Vietnam's immense potential for offshore wind power and pledge continued investment to support the country's growth objectives. Now, Vietnam's renewable energy sector is attracting strong international interest with the government recently reactivating nuclear energy plans in its south central province. Over in Ireland, Irish researchers at Southeast Technical University in partnership with Technology University Dublin, have developed what may be a revolutionary maintenance solution for offshore wind turbine blades. The Clear Blade Project focuses on cold spray, leading edge erosion repair technology. Environmental factors often cause rapid wear on turbine blades, as we all know, with defects appearing within one to three years of installation, requiring expensive repairs. The project proposes a novel, portable polymer cold spray technology for quote unquote infield repair, potentially extending blade lifespans and reducing maintenance costs. Wind energy contribute 32% of Ireland's electricity generation in 2024 with the government planning to develop 14 gigawatts of wind capacity by 2030. And over in Spain, Iberdrola the Spanish Energy Giant is seeking a partner willing to buy a minority stake in a roughly one gigawatt renewables portfolio according to news source. Reuters sources familiar with the matter described the project as Romeo 2.0 referencing a previous deal where Norway's Sovereign Wealth Fund took a 49% stake in a 1.3 gigawatt portfolio, valued at approximately 1.2 billion Euros. The deal aligns with Iberdrola's strategy of selling minority stakes in advanced projects to fund new investments. Iberdrola's Finance chief recently stated they were working on two or three such assets rotation projects to complete this year. And that's this week's top. News stories. Stay tuned for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast tomorrow. 

Lene Hellstern, director of engineering at PEAK Wind, discusses the critical importance of thorough technical, commercial, and financial due diligence before investing in wind farm projects. She shares insights from her 24 years of experience on how developers can avoid common pitfalls, manage risks, and build better relationships with turbine manufacturers to ensure more accurate power production estimates. Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! 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! Allen Hall: Wind farm developers often face a challenging reality. Projected power output doesn't match actual performance. This gap can mean millions in lost revenue and unexpected challenges. This week we speak with Lene Hellstern director of engineering at PEAK Wind. With over 24 years of experience analyzing wind projects worldwide, Lene brings crucial insights about what developers need to know before investing millions in wind farm development. This is a great interview. Stay tuned. Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind Energy's brightest innovators. This is the progress Powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Lene, welcome to the program. Lene Hellstern: Good to be here. Allen Hall: We've been wanting to talk to you for a long time. So I'm glad you're on the podcast because your interaction with developers is remarkable and the process that you go through I think is eye-opening. 'cause I don't see that process happening at all wind sites and in Europe I think it happens more commonly. But in the United States not so much. Why or when developers not consulting experts like you before, they spend hundreds of millions of dollars. What is the problem with that? Lene Hellstern: It actually, it does happen, but yeah, sometimes it don't. And yeah, I might not be the right one of asking to ask this question. Maybe you should ask them as well why don't you do it? But I, so for some it's it's budget constraints, right? Because you're a consultant and then they don't immediately see, how this money that I'm paying the consultant, how does that convert into a gain? Profit. It could be seen as some loose and money just because they're asking a lot of questions on technical stuff. It could also be that they are unaware, many are more into the financial part of it. And they have this perception that it's not needed, the the technical due diligence or the commercial due diligence as the financial, because it's like buying a car. It is really not like buying a car. So maybe that is, that's the reason. And that they think, the wind always blows, so it's gotta go the turbine. But that's just not how this world. Joel Saxum: Would it be fair to say that some of your customers have felt the pain or they've gotten burned and that's why they're there? Lene Hellstern: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And you also, we can ask a lot of questions in the process before you buy the turbines. And then we can cover a lot of risks and you can mitigate before everything falls apart. Right. And that gives them a really good advantage, right? They can cover their themself and take all kind of scenarios into consideration, right? And you get a much, if you ask kindly to the OE em, you do get some answers and you get a better collaboration with the OEM. If you conduct these technical due diligence, if you yell and scream at them, it's not gonna go well. No. Kill with kindness. That's much better than threats. And I want this, and demand that and just ask, right? Allen Hall: So what are they missing? Generally,