Exciting wind energy updates this week! Rosemary's away, but GE Vernova is tackling quality issues and refocusing its workforce for onshore projects. Short-term pain, long-term gains? Rhode Island rejects Orsted/Eversource PPA pricing for Revolution Wind 2 - project fate uncertain! Brace for a 9% electricity price hike in New York this August - can offshore wind from Maine save the day? Cost increases halt Vattenfall's British Norfolk Boreas offshore project, raising concerns for others. Will Bill Gates and Richard Branson backed Fervo Energy make geothermal less-expensive? Joel gives a class in drilling holes and making energy. Don't miss our wind farm of the week - Flat Ridge 1!
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Uptime 176
Allen Hall: Joel RELA the insurance adjusters based in the uk. Just put out that nice little summary of all the types of damages that wind turbines suffer. It was quite, Fascinating to read through that I didn't realize, you know, gearboxes and some of the other issues are so massive right now.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, man. It's, it's really eye-opening to read that report.
Martin Dobson, their technical director over there at RELA puts up, he's, they're, they're always putting out great stuff, but the, the really, really interesting one, if you haven't looked at it, it's on the Wind Power Lab, LinkedIn channel but the lightning damages, right? I mean, we're always talking about lightning.
So weather guard, lightning tech, of course, lightning. Company and Allen, the, the expertise that you bring to that space. When you read through this, this little article that they put out, this little presentation, you see how many damages are related to Lightning? It's, it's it'll blow your mind.
Allen Hall: It's a hundred million dollars.
I would just quickly add it up back to the envelope is a hundred million dollars. Like, that's a lot of insurance adjustment to be done. And it, a lot of it's preventable. It's, it's crazy. I know. We, we get requests all the time at Weather Guard here to. Upgrade the Lightning Protection Systems and most wind turbines we can upgrade relatively inexpensively and quickly.
So these, this a hundred million dollars of, of insurance money being spread around should be cut in half easily at this point. And, you know, you, you and I, Joel. We have conversations all the time about how we can inform the industry on what can be done, and we finally decided to put together a webinar.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, absolutely. So here, coming up in, in August you guys can dial on, we'll of course share it here on the podcast platform and. Through all of our other email platforms as well. But we're gonna have Morton Hamburg, the chief Blade Specialist from Wind Power Lab, and of course, Alan Hall here.
We're talking about lightning. So Alan will bring the, bring the physics side and all of his knowledge and, and Morton share the blade side. And we're gonna have put a webinar together, some live q and a and be able to engage directly with the Audience. Yeah.
Allen Hall: So keep your eyes open for that.
Morton is gonna add a tremendous amount. So if, if you're not sure what kind of damage you're seeing on your blade, or why are you seeing some weird things happen in your blade, Morton will know, and it's a great opportunity to, to, to pick Morton's brains or to pick my brain about lightning. And it's all gonna be on LinkedIn.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. And, and to be honest with you, more importantly, to the listeners out there, we're gonna talk about why, how, what the damages are, what,