Turbulence in the Wind Industry: PPA Renegotiations, Turbine Collapse, and Lidar Advancements

In Allen's part of the USA, an escaped emu that was on the loose! We then discuss an investigation into a wind turbine collapse at the Akmene wind farm in Lithuania, which was caused by a malfunctioning sensor that provided incorrect data to the turbine controller. The root cause analysis took several months, and the wind farm was shut down until the issue was resolved. Shifting to policy news, the podcast analyzes the UK's latest CfD auction round which awarded 1.5GW of onshore wind capacity across 24 projects in Scotland and Wales. Offshore wind was absent from this round due to limited funding availability and inflation concerns. In the US, Equinor and BP are seeking to renegotiate offshore wind PPAs for their Empire Wind and Beacon Wind projects off Massachusetts unless they can achieve a 6-8% rate of return. On the technology front, we discuss a PES Wind Magazine article from Vaisala about how lidar systems can measure turbulence intensity to improve wind farm performance. Mounting lidar systems on turbine nacelles provides hub-height data to anticipate incoming wind conditions. To close, we cover news that EDF Renewables will repower Africa's oldest wind farm in Morocco, doubling its capacity to 100MW with new Siemens Gamesa turbines. 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!  PES Wind - www.peswind.comPardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: All right, Rosemary, in my neighborhood of Massachusetts, there was an escaped emu and it was on the loose for two weeks in the neighborhoods and they finally, they finally captured this thing. It was roaming around scaring local residents. And in fact, the, the local animal control officer said, Hey, be careful because emus are dangerous. But they did capture the emu. He would have been left behind by a former owner who moved out of state. And just left the emu behind and the new owners of the property were willing to help cooperate to kind of capture the emu. So the emu will have a new home with a local species expert and I assume that local species expert is in Australia. So you're getting another emu, Rosemary. Because Massachusetts is not the right place for those things. Rosemary Barnes: Oh, all right. That, that hurt, that hurt my ears as an Australian. Can we just clear one thing up? It's emu, emu. It's not an emu, it's an emu. You, you Americans, you know, like you don't get to take an Australian animal and give it your own, your own name. Just respect, respect the emu. Allen Hall: Well, you're getting a new friend in Australia. I'm going to send that emu right back. Enefit Green along with GE have been looking at an incident or accident that happened at the Akmene wind farm in Lithuania back in May. And they've been conducting a series of evaluations over the last couple of months, where they finally have come to a conclusion and, looked at the findings and determined that this wind turbine fell over and it's, it's about a, I think it's a five megawatt machine fill up in Lithuania. And there was 14 wind turbines total that the root cause analysis revealed that a malfunctioning sensor provided incorrect data to the turbine controller, resulting in excessive stress on the tower structure and the subsequent collapse of the turbine. So that sounds like, to me, everybody, a single point failure in some GE turbines, and they didn't turn it back on until, actually, this week, until they got it all figured out.