Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Thanksgiving Special: A Reflection on 2023

In this Thanksgiving edition, we reflect on the past year in wind energy. We're thankful for positive trends like capital changing hands, companies addressing the technician shortage, and growth of our podcast! The Uptime team sincerely appreciates the partnerships, experts, and audience feedback that have made this podcast possible. As we look ahead to next year, we invite you to continue engaging and let us know what topics you want us to cover. And most importantly, we're thankful that we can keep having insightful discussions about the wind industry! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to this special Uptime edition during Thanksgiving week. And Phil, Joel, and I, are going to reminisce about the past nine months and what's been happening for 10 months, 11 months, however long it's been. I guess we've been looking at it 11 months, going to what's been happening in wind. I think there's been a number of changes over the last six weeks that will have implications over the next couple of years. And. I know, Phil, we've been all going back and forth about where offshore wind is headed. I want to kick off first by looking back on onshore wind and let's say something positive here about what has been happening on onshore wind because there has been really good things happening. Philip Totaro: We're poised at this point of the year, we're poised to see, a, potentially a new installation record, in the United States this year, still to be determined whether or not, they're going to get there by the end of December. But, I think the certainty that has been provided by this extension of the production tax credit through the, Inflation Reduction Act has helped. The investment tax credit as well, and I think it's provided, a lot of people, even though they haven't released the full IRS guidance and everything yet. I think it's provided a lot of people some certainty. I think you're gonna see floodgates open when they do finally release this IRS guidance, but based on what everybody's anticipating, There's been, a lot of, companies getting back to business. if you remember this time last year, we were talking about how GE was going to shut down the factory and, everybody was financially insolvent. And, it was just terrible. And, now, things are actually on an upward trajectory. So I think you know, it's an industry getting back to business and, there's talk of new factories in the United States. The super secret Danish project in Colorado, economic, advisory council or whatever, announced. that their, LM was basically a contender for, for a factory potentially there. Yeah, I'm, optimistic about, onshore wind. I'm actually, surprisingly, I'm actually optimistic about offshore wind, because I think we've now, at this point, suffered through the last five months of nonsense, and, we actually have, something good on, on the horizon. Joel Saxum: There's a couple of... trends that I want to touch on if we're just talking about trends and things that have happened in the last year. One of them has been the large sums of capital changing hands. A lot of Duke Energy with their big sale of assets and you saw some Algonquin and Liberty Power and some of these other ones. And I think it was Con Ed got bought up and a lot of money being changed hands. And the reason that money's changing hands is because companies are basically divesting from older assets,