The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

1. What Drivetrain Failures Reveal, w/ Oskefer Consulting

   12.11.202630 Min.Als Nächstes

   Derek Gong from Oskefer Consulting, joins to discuss drivetrain failures, OEM handoff gaps, and missed SCADA warnings. Reach out to Derek on LinkedIn. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather …

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   Derek Gong from Oskefer Consulting, joins to discuss drivetrain failures, OEM handoff gaps, and missed SCADA warnings. Reach out to Derek on LinkedIn.

   The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

2. 1,000-Turbine Study Reveals Which Parts Fail Most

   10.11.202634 Min.Als Nächstes

   A 1,000-turbine European reliability study finds pitch systems, controllers and power converters fail most often. Plus why failures climb in year nine and an offshore farm blind to lightning. The Uptime Wind …

   Shownotes

   A 1,000-turbine European reliability study finds pitch systems, controllers and power converters fail most often. Plus why failures climb in year nine and an offshore farm blind to lightning.

   The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

3. Vestas Turbine Tops 199-Meter Tower, OECD Flags China Subsidies

   09.11.20264 Min.Als Nächstes

   Allen covers a Vestas turbine on a 199-meter hub in Bavaria, Dominion’s 44 turbines up at Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, an OECD report on Chinese subsidies, and Nordex’s push to keep non-Western turbines out …

   Shownotes

   Allen covers a Vestas turbine on a 199-meter hub in Bavaria, Dominion’s 44 turbines up at Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, an OECD report on Chinese subsidies, and Nordex’s push to keep non-Western turbines out of Europe.

   The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

4. What to Know About Blade Quality, w/ Kronborg Consult

   05.11.202631 Min.Als Nächstes

   Jacob Kronborg, founder of Kronborg Consult, joins to discuss blade factory quality, carbon pultrusion repairs, serial defects, and LEP. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard …

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   Jacob Kronborg, founder of Kronborg Consult, joins to discuss blade factory quality, carbon pultrusion repairs, serial defects, and LEP.

   The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

5. Octopus Buys Golden Plains, Blade Defects, Hotel Pet Peeves

   03.11.202624 Min.Als Nächstes

   Octopus Investments buys Golden Plains stage two for over A$2 billion. Plus, the blade defects new owners miss in due diligence, internal inspections, and the hosts’ conference hotel pet peeves. The Uptime Wind …

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   Octopus Investments buys Golden Plains stage two for over A$2 billion. Plus, the blade defects new owners miss in due diligence, internal inspections, and the hosts’ conference hotel pet peeves.

   The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

6. Ming Yang Firewalls Europe, US Turbine Orders Surge

   02.11.20267 Min.Als Nächstes

   Allen covers Ming Yang’s firewall from Beijing and Octopus Energy deal, US turbine orders hitting a three-year high, and Norway’s floating wind funding. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by …

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   Allen covers Ming Yang’s firewall from Beijing and Octopus Energy deal, US turbine orders hitting a three-year high, and Norway’s floating wind funding.

   The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

7. How Startups Find Problems Worth Solving, w/ Teemu Vekkeli

   29.10.202627 Min.Als Nächstes

   Teemu Vekkeli, Principal at Vekkeli Advisory, joins to discuss VC versus bootstrapping, budget cycles, and problems worth solving. Plus why trust drives sales in Japan, what site technicians know, and why every …

   Shownotes

   Teemu Vekkeli, Principal at Vekkeli Advisory, joins to discuss VC versus bootstrapping, budget cycles, and problems worth solving. Plus why trust drives sales in Japan, what site technicians know, and why every pitch eventually has to convince the CFO.

   The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

8. Ming Yang Eyes 33 MW Turbine, Greenvolt Delays FID

   27.10.202626 Min.Als Nächstes

   Ming Yang plans a 33 MW turbine while China pulls European tech out of its wind farms. Plus white-hat hackers reach 7.8 GW in Germany, Vårgrønn eyes a Greenvolt exit, and who really owns turbine data. The …

   Shownotes

   Ming Yang plans a 33 MW turbine while China pulls European tech out of its wind farms. Plus white-hat hackers reach 7.8 GW in Germany, Vårgrønn eyes a Greenvolt exit, and who really owns turbine data.

   The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

9. Trump Delays Turbine Tariffs, Pentagon Approves Two Projects

   26.10.20266 Min.Als Nächstes

   Trump skips turbine tariffs, the Pentagon clears two wind farms, the DOJ targets Revolution Wind, and China pushes into Europe. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech …

   Shownotes

   Trump skips turbine tariffs, the Pentagon clears two wind farms, the DOJ targets Revolution Wind, and China pushes into Europe.

   The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

10. Tightline and Avient Remove Peel Ply From Carbon Planks

    22.10.202626 Min.Als Nächstes

    This week we’re revisiting our discussion with Andrew Davis of Tightline Composites and Brad Schmidt of Avient, who discuss a resin additive that eliminates peel ply on carbon planks. The Uptime Wind Energy …

    Shownotes

    This week we’re revisiting our discussion with Andrew Davis of Tightline Composites and Brad Schmidt of Avient, who discuss a resin additive that eliminates peel ply on carbon planks.

    The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

11. Nordex Q3 Orders Jump 30%, Vestas Bets on Australia

    20.10.202626 Min.Als Nächstes

    Nordex Q3 orders jump 30% and Vestas lands about a gigawatt in Australia. Plus why turbine factories skip Australia, high project costs, and whether batteries can replace coal. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is …

    Shownotes

    Nordex Q3 orders jump 30% and Vestas lands about a gigawatt in Australia. Plus why turbine factories skip Australia, high project costs, and whether batteries can replace coal. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s "Engineering with Rosie" Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Episode Transcript Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm Allen Hall, and I'm here with Matthew Stead, Yolanda Padron, and Rosemary Barnes, who is in Sydney, Australia, attending some business conferences. Rosemary?Rosemary Barnes: Right now I'm in Sydney. I was at an ARENA innovation event last night, and it was matching up startups with investors. It was a great event, actually. I got invited because I was moderating a panel. Not all startups, though some of them were. I had the head of sustainability at Qantas there, Fiona, and then Katherine from Brighte. They do a bunch of financing, mostly for distributed energy and household consumer energy products like rooftop solar and batteries. And then Jack from Neara, and they do grid simulation. It's pretty cool. If you run a network and you want to know how to best improve resilience while spending the least money, they'll model things like, okay, if this particular pole falls over, then this will happen. And you can improve resilience by just adding a guy wire to this one asset, and you're not going to take down any additional poles.Anyway, we talked about the Australian energy landscape and investing in technologies in those areas. Some of the strengths we have in Australia have a lot to do with distributed energy. We're really leading the world there, and there's heaps of opportunity for innovation and for companies to solve problems in these spaces. I also talked about some of the categories that aren't so easily decarbonized.We had Qantas there, and they're investing a lot in sustainable aviation fuel. I really enjoyed talking with Fiona before the event, because one of my problems is that I travel so much for work. I do make sure the travel I do is for the climate benefit, so I don't ultimately feel guilty about it, because it has more impact than the emissions of the flight by a long way. However, I do want to decarbonize aviation. I love to travel, and I would like to be able to continue to do that in the future.So I talked with her about that. I really want to be able to buy sustainable aviation fuel, because one, it actually does something, and two, it's an industry that needs to grow and scale, and I would like to support some of that scale-up in an appropriate way. She let me know they've got a small business scheme now where you can get in touch with them and buy it. We also discussed maybe a collaboration with Engineering with Rosie, a video about some of the projects they're investing in. So that was really cool.Later in the evening, five startups pitched to investors, and it was a really great investor-to-founder ratio in the room. For every startup there trying to get money, there were probably five investors trying to find people to give money to. It's definitely a good event to go to, and they do it annually, so it's one to keep on your calendar.Allen Hall: Did you break out your checkbook and invest in one of these companies?Rosemary Barnes: I would really love to. My investment strategy is that I invest $1,000 to $5,000 in companies. I don't do heaps of financial due diligence. I just do the technical due diligence: is this a real problem that's going to need to be solved, do I trust the engineering, does the team seem like they get it? That's as far as I go. And I invest enough money that if it goes wrong, it's not the end of the world. I have lost all of my money on a few investments, and I've made 20 or 30 times on some others, so it works. I would love to give $1,000 to $5,000 to probably three of these five companies, but that's not the kind of money they need. You'd have to add several zeros onto the end of that. I'm just waiting for my first big success so I get my $100 million in the bank, and then I'll go around funding. Or if someone's like, "I've got $100 million and I don't have any technical judgment," feel free to give that to me.Nordex Q3 OrdersAllen Hall: Well, there's a company over in Germany you probably should invest in right now, which is Nordex. Do you have any money in Nordex right now?Rosemary Barnes: I don't have any money in any wind turbine companies. I did early on, in 2010 or whatever. I was like, well, we know wind is going to grow huge, I'll invest in this. And it did grow huge. I was right about that. But no one made any money. If I was going to invest in wind, and I do, because I have a wind energy company, so I guess all of my investment is in wind, it would definitely be in small individual solutions that I thought were needed.Allen Hall: I think you're missing out, because Nordex is expanding way beyond Germany. Third quarter orders jumped 30%. Thirty percent is a magic number. That's amazing. They have about 2,800 megawatts in orders just in the third quarter. Turkey brought in more than 900 megawatts, and U.S. orders have topped about 1.3 gigawatts this year. So Nordex is really growing quickly. CEO José Luis Blanco expects the international share will keep growing, and I assume one place it will be pretty soon is Australia. And they have this new turbine they're selling down in South Africa for moderate wind speed areas. It does seem like Nordex is taking the place of maybe a Siemens Gamesa onshore, maybe a GE in certain places, and that they're actually competing against Vestas, which is hard to believe, because five years ago, if you mentioned Nordex, it would have been like, they're a small player. They have some cool technology. But boy, have they ramped up.Rosemary Barnes: Sounds like you've got an investment to make, Allen.Yolanda Padron: From conversations we have with a lot of the owner-operators in the U.S., a lot more people are looking into Nordex or purchasing from Nordex, which is really good to hear, to have a bit more diversification in wind turbines and wind turbine owners.Allen Hall: Matthew, are you putting sensors on Nordex turbines yet?Matthew Stead: Yeah, definitely, probably more from an icing point of view. So definitely in the Nordics, optimizing power production. I would agree with what you're saying, Allen. Within our team, the discussion around Nordex is, yeah, we're always talking about Nordex.Allen Hall: It's crazy how much the industry has changed. If you see a Nordex representative, they have a lot of products to offer. Obviously, when Yolanda and I are talking to operators in the U.S., Nordex comes up most times. Right now it's Vestas and Nordex as the two. GE is sort of a distant third, and I haven't heard anybody say Siemens Gamesa's name in months. Big shift.Well, that's the Nordex update. Next, Vestas CEO Henrik Andersen on why Australia now matters to Vestas.Vestas in Australia and Local ManufacturingAllen Hall: Are you overspending on lightning repairs? Most operators are, because solving lightning damage is complicated. Weather Guard Lightning Tech helps operators reduce lightning damage. Our StrikeTape lightning diverter protects over 20,000 blades worldwide. Now StrikeTape Ultra installs faster than ever. StrikeTape Ultra cures up tower in just 15 minutes, even in cold weather. Visit weatherguardwind.com to schedule a call.Europe's fleet is getting older, and someone has to keep it running. In this edition of PES Wind magazine, there's an interview with Matthieu Dessailly of MDWind. He's talking about how MDWind has changed its focus from doing a lot of installation work to major component exchanges and life extension, the things that keep turbines running for the longest time possible. He says owners must treat their turbines as industrial assets, not just financial ones. And that's true. This is a really good article, because it touches on a number of points having to do with wind turbine maintenance and how to keep your turbines running efficiently, and not treating them as something that gets tossed away, as has happened in some places. So don't do that. If you want to read this article or many of the other articles in this edition, you can go to PESwind.com and download a free copy.Australia is turning into a big market for Vestas. CEO Henrik Andersen says so himself in a LinkedIn post. He points to three Australian orders this year, adding just about a gigawatt. Andersen links the orders to Australia's push for energy independence and more stable power prices. And Vestas crews are busy in Australia right now installing turbines on two projects. So it does seem like there's been a Vestas invasion into Australia. And most of the turbines in Australia right now are Vestas, right, Matthew? That's the numbers today.Matthew Stead: Yeah, I was going to say, what's the difference? They've always been here. They've always been strong. Most of the turbines behind me are Vestas models. So as far as I'm concerned, they invaded Australia a long time ago.Allen Hall: Are they offering bigger turbines in Australia than some other places? But more importantly, are they going to build any sort of factory in Australia to build blades, nacelles, or tower sections, for that matter? Anything in regards to turbines?Matthew Stead: My guess is no. I don't think anyone has seriously considered building factories in Australia. Rosie probably knows more than I do.Rosemary Barnes: I don't disagree with that. We would love for them to do it, and it could happen. It would just need to be a conscious choice, probably involving the Australian government. Not necessarily, but that would be the easiest way. I don't see it happening. However, one of the sites I'm working on at the moment has quite old

12. Trump Targets Revolution Wind, Nordex Q3 EBITDA Doubles

    19.10.2026Als Nächstes

    Allen covers the Trump administration’s bid to reopen Revolution Wind’s permit, a bipartisan Senate permitting deal, Nordex’s doubled third-quarter profit, and GE Vernova’s new wind chief. The Uptime Wind …

    Shownotes

    Allen covers the Trump administration’s bid to reopen Revolution Wind’s permit, a bipartisan Senate permitting deal, Nordex’s doubled third-quarter profit, and GE Vernova’s new wind chief. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s "Engineering with Rosie" Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

13. How CICNDT Qualifies Inspectors for Complex Blade Scans

    15.10.202627 Min.Als Nächstes

    Jeremy Heinks, founder and CEO of CICNDT, joins to discuss the inspector shortage, Level III oversight, blade samples, drone thermal limits, and IEC updates. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by …

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    Jeremy Heinks, founder and CEO of CICNDT, joins to discuss the inspector shortage, Level III oversight, blade samples, drone thermal limits, and IEC updates. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s "Engineering with Rosie" Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Episode Transcript Allen Hall: A lot is happening in your world. And in our world, too, as lightning protection people, because we are all dealing with damage to composite structures and wind turbine blades. Over the last couple of months, there have been some really complex problems in the field. And what I am seeing, and maybe you're seeing the same thing, is that some of the technicians out there trying to scan blades are just not qualified to do some of these complicated inspections. Blades are getting very complex now, with carbon in them and all the bonding issues. Are you seeing something similar from where you sit?Jeremy Heinks: It's not just service. It's at the supplier level, and it's at the OEM level, where they're trying to do something, but it's hard to come by the right people and make sure you're following a standard of sorts. But yeah, we're seeing that there's a genuine lack of properly qualified and certified people doing the work.Allen Hall: Is that a training issue, or just because there's so much demand for that expertise?Jeremy Heinks: A little bit of everything. Wind, even though it's been around for a while, is still relatively new to a proper inspection system. So having the right training in place, not getting taken advantage of by training centers, and having training that's actually focused on what we use for day-to-day inspection of blades is one thing.The other side of it is there's a global shortage of NDT technicians. It's just like any of the other trades that are really in demand. If anybody wants to get into something and have, not an easy life at work, but a decent chance at success and making a decent amount of money, then NDT is definitely the way to go, because there are huge shortages. Aviation and space programs are booming right now, and they're all looking for technicians.Allen Hall: Yeah, I've seen a lot of requests out there, particularly from defense companies that are building complex composite structures, and the job postings for NDT personnel. And they're paying really good money right now to find those people.Jeremy Heinks: Oh, absolutely. We just got a request from one of the big names here in the US for 86 technicians. And I'm like, there's no such thing as 86 technicians out there.Allen Hall: Yeah.Jeremy Heinks: You'll get one or two here and there, but there's just not that many available at the moment.Allen Hall: Well, back in the blade world, we're kind of wrapping up the blade season this time of year, and it gets a little bit heavy as everybody realizes, oh, I have some damage I didn't see before. A lot of drone inspections are happening, which then draw you in on NDT. As an operator, what are people to do here? I hear a lot of complaints that it's really hard to find somebody who knows what they're doing. I always point them to CIC and tell them to call you and get started there. But what should they be doing, and what should they be looking for when they have complex composite problems?Jeremy Heinks: Like you say, a lot more people are bringing inspection companies in, which is great, and we need to see that. But once you've made the decision that you need NDT, you've got to make sure you're getting what you pay for and the quality of service you expect to receive.So typically there are some questions you want to ask. Do you have a Level III in the method of inspection who is going to oversee everything from education to certification and qualification? And if they have Level IIIs, how do they take care of their technicians in the field? Are they qualified and certified? Do they log their hours? They have to have this whole structure around keeping up these standards. And this is why NDT technicians and NDT inspection are so expensive compared to a regular field tech. The repair guys are expensive too. They pull a lot of money because they're highly skilled. Same thing on the NDT side. You're working with a very small group of people who have the skill set and keep up with the training and certification. So you want to make sure they have the proper Level III, and you want to make sure their technicians are properly trained and certified.You also want to know their equipment and their application, so their techniques for the inspection. Let's say you have a root inspection or a bond inspection. They need to have something to show you that says, this is our application technique for that specific inspection, if there is one. A lot of times, like with lightning strikes, there isn't really anything that's perfected. Even though we've done a lot of work on the aviation side, bringing that over to wind is a whole other animal. But that's part of the process. You do your R&D in-house. We do that here at our lab, where we get samples from the customer if we're lucky enough, or we have something from different sources, and we perfect the inspection method and the technique, and that gets written into a work instruction. That way you have something to show the customer, and they can feel comfortable with the results you're going to give them.Allen Hall: So having a plan before they get on site, which doesn't always happen.Jeremy Heinks: And it's tough, right? Because a lot of times these blades are older, or the OEM [inaudible], so you don't have samples lying around. Then you've got to figure out what this blade type is similar to, and hopefully we have samples. We have a bunch of different samples in-house that we go to for different blade types, different laminate stacks, different bond line setups, different sections. And unfortunately, with the number of blades that are failing or getting repowered, there are a lot of places you can go to get these samples nowadays. But when you're buying a brand-new blade from the manufacturer, it wouldn't hurt to see if they can make you some samples and put them in storage, just in case.Allen Hall: Right. And that world is so wrapped around the actual construction. Even if you had a set of drawings, it doesn't really help you too much. You need an actual sample to see what's happening deep inside, particularly on really thick composite parts, like root bushing issues or root inserts. Those are complex areas because you have metal, epoxies, resins, and composites. Having a section of that at least gives you a chance to see where defects lie and to bring the right tools to site, which is my big complaint. When I see technicians arrive with the wrong tools, I think, what are we doing? It almost should be standard practice in the NDT world to at least have some cross-sections.Jeremy Heinks: Right. Blades are extremely complex, even compared to the things we see in the aviation world, because you've got these really different materials coming together. In aviation, you typically have a composite structure where everything is going to be kind of the same. In a root section, you have steel bushings, and some of them have protrusions. There's a whole bunch of different material types stuck in a small area, and that makes it extremely difficult. Even bond lines and different web types, where you have PET core versus a regular foam or balsa, all those things throw off your inspection completely. We typically use ultrasound, and ultrasound will react differently to all those materials.So when you scan across the bond line, or if you're using thermal or something else, the energy is going to transfer and reflect differently with each of those materials. If you don't have a representative sample, it's really hard to know what you're getting yourself into as an inspector. And that's where the Level III support comes in.We learn a lot of stuff in the field. Unfortunately, we're reactionary. We'll go out there, they'll say, hey, start scanning, and we have to get that raw data back to our Level IIIs to look at and say, all right, this is what's going on with the sound as it penetrates the part, and these are the materials that are in there. Then we use our experience, because we've got multiple guys who have been doing this for 10, 15, 20-plus years. We know what's out there and what we've seen before, and we can make adjustments so the inspection is successful.Allen Hall: So what happens when you have three or more manufacturers of the same blade? When you show up on a site, particularly in the US, you will have that. GE is a good example: LM, TPI, and MFG. So we have three different manufacturers. Plus, LM may have different factories producing the same blade. Those blades are not identical in terms of their construction and materials. Does that mean we need a TPI cross-section, an MFG cross-section, and an LM cross-section to really understand what's happening inside?Jeremy Heinks: At the end of the day, it would be perfect to have those, because there's a lot of difference. The manufacturers' molds have different fitments, or their material suppliers are different, so you're getting different things. The internal geometry of the part will be different, not just the actual shape. And the material velocities will be different because there's a different resin supplier, a different adhesive supplier, different everything. All that stuff does make a difference, and it would be better to have those things. But unfortunately, you probably couldn't get something like that from everybody.Allen Hall: Well, that's what a Level III is there for, to sort of determine, this doesn't look quite right. Maybe it's a different resin system than we've seen before,...

14. China Barred Vestas Software, Ørsted Buys Chinese Monopiles

    13.10.202621 Min.Als Nächstes

    Vestas CEO Henrik Andersen says China barred Vestas from monitoring its own turbines. Plus Ørsted takes heat for Chinese monopiles, India’s blade design gap, and tents that beat weather delays. The Uptime Wind …

    Shownotes

    Vestas CEO Henrik Andersen says China barred Vestas from monitoring its own turbines. Plus Ørsted takes heat for Chinese monopiles, India’s blade design gap, and tents that beat weather delays. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s "Engineering with Rosie" Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Episode Transcript The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, brought to you by StrikeTape, protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit StrikeTape.com. And now, your hosts.Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm Allen Hall, here with Rosemary Barnes, Matthew Stead, and Yolanda Padron, and we're getting ready for WOMA 2027. WOMA in Australia will be in its third year, and we're going to be at the Pullman East Melbourne. It's the same location, but the name of the hotel has changed. We'll be there March 3rd through the 5th. We've heard from a number of OEMs, which is really great, but there's one in particular that hasn't registered yet, which is GE Vernova. We thought they'd be first in line. That was my bet, that GE Vernova would have been signed up and ready to go. But there's a latecomer to this party. Rosemary, how do we get GE Vernova to show up to WOMA?Rosemary Barnes: I don't know. I don't have so many links to the company as I used to, and I don't always have the best luck getting in touch with my old colleagues. I guess they're busy, because there's not so many of them left there now. We have so, so many turbines here, and our asset managers are really engaged on all of the technical issues. They really want to understand what technologies are available, both for new projects that are coming up and for operations. The operations teams are getting involved more and more in purchasing decisions. Their opinions are being asked for. The Australian wind industry is a lot different than it was five years ago. People didn't know so much, and I think they relied on the OEMs' word for what we need in Australia and what's available. Whereas now, asset owners know what we need and what kind of problems we have, and they're really looking for technical information about solutions. The companies that are at the event to provide that information are the ones people are going to feel positively about. So I would recommend getting there to everybody, not just GE, but all OEMs from any part of the world. Not just Western ones, but Chinese ones too would be really great to see.Allen Hall: And Matthew, if GE Vernova wanted to register for WOMA 2027, what would they do?Matthew Stead: They would very easily go to WOMA2027.com and register. It's that easy. That's all they have to do.Allen Hall: And we'll stop talking about it.Matthew Stead: On the agenda, there is a specific session that OEMs are attending, and the intention is that the OEMs can have a good, open discussion about what's going on in OEM land and get familiar with the audience. Then they can get questions answered right there on the floor, which is really, really important for the customers. Most all the operators in Australia and the surrounding areas will be at WOMA 2027, so it's a good opportunity to talk to your customer base.Allen Hall: That's why we're recommending all the OEMs show up this year. Hopefully GE Vernova does it.Vestas CEO on China and EuropeAllen Hall: And speaking of OEMs, Vestas is in a bit of a unique spot, because the CEO of Vestas, Henrik Andersen, had an article in Fortune magazine. And I thought, that's unusual. Why is he in Fortune magazine? Well, it's a little bit of a life story, growing up as a kid and dreaming of wind turbines. I guess that's a thing in Denmark. But he says that Europe must shed its naivety. Rosemary, five years ago, Chinese authorities barred Vestas from monitoring or running its own software on turbines in China. And now Andersen is asking why Chinese software and turbines should be welcome on Europe's grid. That's a really great question. Well, I have heard it, but I haven't seen it written down anywhere that Vestas got cut off from its own turbines. This was a couple of years ago, when China passed a number of laws about data security and was not going to let a lot of data out of China. At the same time, they put security measures in place where Chinese companies operating outside of China would have to store the data in China. This obviously creates a unique condition for companies like Vestas or Siemens Gamesa, where they're trying to sell components into China, but they can't operate them. And now China wants to come into Europe and do the reverse. Is it hypocrisy? Is it a security threat? What are we thinking, and how should the Europeans really approach this problem?Rosemary Barnes: I think it's interesting timing to announce it now. Well, it's not really interesting, it's obvious why it would be announced now, because obviously Vestas benefits if Europe decides not to allow any Chinese manufacturer data to leave the country, or to be used in the first place, like they've done, I think, with inverters and some other equipment. So that's kind of obvious. I'm assuming it's true, and I would imagine that it is, because it's a bit risky to publish something like that if it's a lie. But I think the more interesting question is, why haven't they said it for the last five years, if this has been going on that long? The only likely explanation I can think of is that five years ago, they didn't want to risk their relationship with China. They were still planning on selling a bunch of turbines within China. And by now, they realize that's totally hopeless, so they don't care about the Chinese market anymore. It doesn't matter if they piss off China. They're going after the rest of the world. So it makes sense from that point of view. But it is a big secret to have kept for five years, kept out of print, as far as I'm aware. I don't know if I'd heard that that was the case, but I've certainly had conversations with people like, do you really think China allows the reverse of this situation? So I think people assumed it was the case. Maybe there were some people that knew. But it's not been publicized in print the way that it has now.Ørsted and Chinese MonopilesAllen Hall: And Yolanda, Ørsted's getting caught in the crossfire here, because Ørsted is buying some monopiles and cables from China. The CEO of Ørsted is getting caught between the unions and the groups that are proponents of European employment, saying, hey, if we don't want Chinese turbines, why are you buying Chinese components? I think the answer has been that it's less expensive, but the Ørsted CEO is getting a lot of flak about that, at least in the press. Is that just a trade-off, like it's just cheaper to buy the components and we want to have some relations with China, which Ørsted probably does, and it's just trying to smooth everything out? Or is this going to turn into something much larger, which it does feel like is happening at the moment?Yolanda Padron: I think Ørsted's in a strange position, but it's important to remember that yes, Ørsted does obviously have Danish roots, but it's a global company. They have their assets and a lot of customers almost everywhere, and a lot of employees that they need to pay. So they need to make some money. They can't just have everything be 100% Danish if that's not going to be the most cost-effective or the most efficient solution for any components they're buying.Matthew Stead: I was just going to add that I was looking at the Chinese market in terms of monitoring wind turbines, and it was basically too hard, because our business model is to send data to the cloud, and we were not allowed to send any data out of China back to our system. We would have had to completely re-engineer everything. That was about three years ago. So I can absolutely confirm that it's very difficult to get data out of China.Allen Hall: Well, China's reach extends to a lot of places, including India. Next, a Gurit executive says Indian blade makers lean on Chinese designs, maybe a little bit too much. We'll be back in a moment.Allen Hall: Are you overspending on lightning repairs? Most operators are, because solving lightning damage is complicated. Weather Guard Lightning Tech helps operators reduce lightning damage. Our innovative StrikeTape lightning diverter protects over 20,000 blades worldwide. Now, StrikeTape Ultra installs faster than ever. StrikeTape Ultra cures up tower in just 15 minutes, even in cold weather. Visit WeatherGuardWind.com to schedule a call.India's Blade IndustryAllen Hall: Longer blades are bringing new problems, and Jesper Sloth of materials supplier Gurit says India is behind on many of the fixes. This is a pretty extensive article with Jesper giving his thoughts on what's happening in India. He's saying many Indian blades still use glass spar caps and simple lightning protection systems, and not much in terms of leading edge protection. A lot of those designs are originating from China, and Sloth is saying those designs are typically a few generations behind, which makes local improvements in Indian materials hard to qualify, and makes it hard to get blades designed to European or American standards. It may take a little while for India to stand up a truly scaled, advanced wind turbine industry. This is a little controversial, because I know India is very proud of what they've done so far, and honestly, they're way ahead of a lot of other countries in the wind business. But there are places where I think everybody around the world could use some cross-pollination on what's happening in another part of the world to advance their wind turbines. I wouldn't say India is unique in that. Would you, Matthew?Matthew Stead: Yeah, I was just wondering whether the Indian turbines hav

15. Ørsted Finishes Drone Trial, Iberdrola Exits South Korea

    12.10.20263 Min.Als Nächstes

    Allen covers Ørsted’s Hornsea 2 drone trial, the DeepWind test site, Germany’s proposed land rent cap, and Iberdrola’s Korea exit. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning …

    Shownotes

    Allen covers Ørsted’s Hornsea 2 drone trial, the DeepWind test site, Germany’s proposed land rent cap, and Iberdrola’s Korea exit. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s "Engineering with Rosie" Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Episode Transcript Good Monday everyone. Every wind farm is at least a twenty-year promise. This week ... the industry learned which risks it can engineer away ... and which ones it cannot. Start in the North Sea. A delivery just went out at Hornsea 2. No crane. No vessel at the base of the tower. No technician hauling a heavy bag up the turbine. Ørsted and Skyports just finished a four-week cargo drone trial there. The drones carried maintenance kits from the service vessel to the top of the turbine. Each kit held the tools and parts for one job. Each one weighed fifty-five to sixty-five kilograms. The kits arrived before the technicians did. When the work was done ... the drone flew them back. A new automatic hook picked up each load. Nobody had to clip it on by hand. And the turbine kept making power during the delivery. Then came the milestone. The team flew its first delivery beyond visual line of sight inside a working wind farm. About four kilometers ... run from the vessel. Britain's Civil Aviation Authority cleared the airspace. It says routine flights like this are the next goal. Ørsted's project lead says the trial confirms the plan. Drone maintenance is moving into routine operations. Stay in Britain ... where the next generation of offshore wind is getting a proving ground. The government's research agency just gave three million pounds to the European Marine Energy Centre. The money moves a project called DeepWind toward a final investment decision. DeepWind would be a national test site for floating and deepwater wind. The target is twenty thirty. The center says Europe's test sites don't offer the depths and seas that Britain's future projects will face. Testing a floater in calm water is one thing. Surviving a deepwater winter is another. Moorings, anchors and dynamic cables would all be proven at full scale. The center's operations director says the goal is simple. Make deepwater wind insurable ... and bankable. Three million pounds won't build it. It pays for two years of design, permits and planning. And the center is still asking developers and suppliers what they need the site to do. So the engineers are taking risk out. The politicians ... are putting some back in. Germany wants to cap what wind farms pay for land. Under a draft reform of its renewable energy law ... rent could not top three and a half percent of a wind farm's yearly revenue. The cap would last twenty years. It would even cover some leases already signed for projects not yet running. The first draft said two and a half percent. The states and the industry pushed it up. Germany's municipal utilities back the plan. They say it could save about thirteen billion euros in support payments by twenty forty-five. A landowner would still get about thirty-two thousand euros per turbine each year. But eighteen banks wrote the ministry an open letter. They say the cap adds uncertainty. And checking every lease for twenty years costs money. Enough money, they warn, to wipe out the savings. Germany's renewable energy federation says one cap can't fit every region. Forest owners and family farms go further. Their legal opinion says the cap may clash with Germany's constitution. And a landowner who doesn't like the deal ... can simply say no. Now to Spain ... where one of the world's biggest wind companies explained why it walked away from South Korea. Iberdrola signed a deal with GS Energy in twenty twenty-one. It never built a thing there. Iberdrola's head of international business says the problem was not the wind. It was the government. A wind farm runs for twenty years or more. But in South Korea, the terms of power contracts could change with every new administration. Iberdrola is not alone. Equinor dropped its Korean offshore projects this year. It says it will not be back. Corio Generation closed its Korean office in March. Shell left in twenty twenty-four. RWE is scaling back. They point to slow permits, weak grids and rising costs. The Iberdrola executive points to America, too. This year, the Trump administration halted several offshore wind projects. Still ... she says the door to Korea is not locked. Demand is high. And Iberdrola is watching. So what should wind professionals take from this week? First ... technical risk is getting cheaper to solve. A drone trial and a test site cost a few million. And they lower the risk for every project that follows. If you make moorings, anchors or cables ... DeepWind is asking for your input right now. The specs written in the next two years will shape that market for a decade. Second ... watch the cost of capital, not the headlines. Germany's cap saves money on paper. But when eighteen banks object in writing ... those savings can come back as a higher interest rate. And that is the state of the wind industry for the 12th of October 2026. Join us tomorrow for the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.

16. How DTU’s Rain Test Facility Predicts Erosion

    08.10.202629 Min.Als Nächstes

    Rosemary visits DTU Wind & Energy Systems in Denmark, where Nicolai Frost-Jensen Johansen explains rain erosion testing, tip speed, and LEP defects. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather …

    Shownotes

    Rosemary visits DTU Wind & Energy Systems in Denmark, where Nicolai Frost-Jensen Johansen explains rain erosion testing, tip speed, and LEP defects. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s "Engineering with Rosie" Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Episode Transcript Announcer: Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow.Rosemary Barnes: I’m here at the Technical University of Denmark, Risø campus, with Nicolai Frost-Jensen Johansen. You’re a development engineer here, working in the rain erosion test facility, right?Nicolai Frost-Jensen Johansen: Yes. Rain erosion is the main topic I work on most days. Besides that, we’re in the section for Mechanics of Damage, so we spend a lot of time on fracture mechanics as well. A lot of those meet together in the field of rain erosion.Rosemary Barnes: It’s a complicated field with lots of different facets, and I think it’s still developing fast. Our understanding is definitely not complete. I understand you’ve already done an episode with Allen about the rain erosion testing machine, but for people who haven’t seen that, maybe we could quickly explain what rain erosion is.Nicolai Frost-Jensen Johansen: Our focus here is to mimic, as well as we can in a lab setting, the process of rain erosion on turbines. For those who don’t know, as turbines rotate in a rainy environment, and in some of the more severe weather in Australia, the droplets impinge on the leading edge of the blade. Over time that builds up fractures and damages the polymers, composites, or whatever protective solution is on the edge, and it erodes or falls off.The goal is not to test on a real turbine, but to do it at lab scale. What has now become the industry standard is machines like this one, a whirling arm rain erosion tester from R&D Test Systems. I think there are about 20 of this type of machine in the world now. As you might be able to see in the background, we have a big rotor where the test specimens are mounted. We spin them underneath an artificial rain field, and as the blades spin they impact the droplets. That way we mimic, as closely as we can, the same process as on real turbines.Rosemary Barnes: So leading edge erosion wears away the surface and causes two problems. One, the aerodynamics are affected, so you get less power. And two, it will eventually eat through the laminate in the blade.Nicolai Frost-Jensen Johansen: Then you get into a structural repair.Rosemary Barnes: A structural problem, right. Both of those are bad, and you want to prevent them. You don’t want to be climbing up your wind turbine every year to replace this stuff. Ideally you would have a blade that never eroded over its entire lifetime, or at least you’d minimize the number of times you have to reapply protection.That’s why people manufacturing new leading edge protection products want to test them and see how they’ll do in the field. But if you just put a product in the field, it will take a full lifetime before you know if it lasts a full lifetime, unless it fails earlier. So they bring it here, and the goal is to accelerate that testing so you can figure out in a few days or weeks how it’s going to last.If you want to reproduce what happens in the field, tip speed on a wind turbine blade is maybe 90 to 100 meters per second. That’s about 360 kilometers an hour, like a racing car. So you spin at that speed and dump water on it, trying to deliver a lifetime’s worth of water in one go. And you’re saying 1,600 hours of rain is about what a wind turbine would see in its lifetime?Nicolai Frost-Jensen Johansen: It depends a little on the approach, because there are different ways of accelerating. In a normal tester it would take about 1,600 hours to simulate roughly 35 years of rain. It also depends on what rain climate you’re trying to simulate, because different places in the world have very different kinds of rain.Rosemary Barnes: So 1,600 hours is a little more than two months, running flat out. You’d have to get an intern in here supervising at nighttime. I guess you don’t just leave it running.Catching the Onset of DamageNicolai Frost-Jensen Johansen: For the lower speeds, we do at times run overnight. The machine runs more or less automatically for a set amount of time. If it’s a long test, that might be one hour. Then it turns off the rain field, spins down the rotor, and images all three blades. From those images we look for any onset of damage, what we term incubation. That’s a really small, local loss of material.Rosemary Barnes: So you run it for an hour, stop it, wipe off the camera lens, take a few photos, and start it back up again. Every hour you’re taking photos.Nicolai Frost-Jensen Johansen: It depends on the test, and luckily that part happens automatically. It dries out the blades, the camera takes the pictures, and it spins back up. The faster we go, the more often we take pictures. Sometimes we take a picture every five minutes just to capture the real onset. At about 160 meters per second, it’s not uncommon to see damage after the first five minutes.Rosemary Barnes: Okay.Nicolai Frost-Jensen Johansen: Ideally we want at least five images before the onset so our uncertainty doesn’t get too large. That’s one of the differences from normal fatigue testing. This has a lot of parallels with fatigue testing: we have a repeated load over time, and we draw curves from it. But in a fatigue test, you impose a predefined load or displacement on a single specimen and run it until it breaks, so you know exactly when it breaks and at what load.Our specimen is relatively long. At the tip we might be at 160 meters per second, and at the root we might be at 100. We run it for a set amount of time, stop, and observe it. So all we actually know is that it failed somewhere in the time we weren’t looking, and we know the position, which corresponds to a velocity.In an ideal world, damage starts at the tip and grows toward the root. What we more often see is that it generally happens toward the tip, but it can be somewhat random along the length of the specimen. That’s especially true of modern coatings, which are on average much better but also more unpredictable. With an old gel coat, we could get a very nice curve. Damage would start at the tip and progress toward the root. Some of the newer elastomeric systems do an order of magnitude better, but they might just randomly fail in the middle. That’s really where the tricky material science needs to come in.Rosemary Barnes: That definitely matches my experience in the field in Australia. You don’t see a little variation one year, a bit more the next, growing evenly and predictably across the whole wind farm. It’s more patchy. In one year, 90% of the wind farm might suddenly have heaps of damage, and then nothing happens for a few years after that. Do you think that’s related to imperfections in the coating material or the substrate itself?Nicolai Frost-Jensen Johansen: We’ve done various studies, and we’ve had PhDs look at examples in scanning tomography machines. Often we do find that we can correlate the damage back to defects. Leon in our section is famous for his modeling work, and a lot of it deals with defects acting as stress risers. Some materials can also be more sensitive to having those kinds of defects.There’s a lot of complexity within the topic, but if there’s one trend I’ve seen, from older gel coats and tough coats up to many of the LEPs we see now, it’s that we’ve moved toward near-pure resins. These elastomeric coatings are almost pure elastomer with very little filler. If you ever look at a cross-section of an older paint system under an electron microscope, it’s not so much paint as gravel held together with a little bit of polymer. Another way to look at it is that it’s 95% defects and 5% defect-free. Those systems will fail, and damage will grow, but it’s very predictable.Now we’re using materials with less than 5% fillers, and a lot of those fillers can be defect drivers. So we have materials that are mostly defect-free, but we struggle to get something defect-free even at a 40-centimeter specimen length. It follows that if you’re covering 40 meters at the tip of a blade with LEP, you’re not going to get it defect-free. That mirrors a lot of other things within fatigue in general.Fatigue, Damage Tolerance, and Tip SpeedRosemary Barnes: There are regular charts we use in fatigue testing. Fatigue is how materials behave under a load that’s too small to break the material in one go, but if you apply it enough times, it eventually breaks. You characterize materials by putting stress or strain on one axis…Nicolai Frost-Jensen Johansen: Stress or strain, depending on the case.Rosemary Barnes: …and then you count the number of cycles until it breaks, and you get a nice curve for the material. With rain erosion, you’re saying that on one axis you have the speed.Nicolai Frost-Jensen Johansen: Typically velocity instead, yes.Rosemary Barnes: The velocity of the blade section relative to the rain. And on the other axis, you’re counting how much water it has seen.Nicolai Frost-Jensen Johansen: You could say there are two schools of solving fatigue problems. In metals, you either add tons of dislocations so any crack growth is stopped because it grows into something else. Or you go the Rolex way and make your hairspring out of a single crystal, so there are no defects and all the atoms sit exactly where they should. I think the big challenge for wind is that we cannot make anything defect-free.Rosemary Barnes: Not at a cost.Nicolai Frost-Jensen Johansen: Not at a cost that makes sense.Rosemary Barnes: Not if you want people to choose wind over coal, gas, or whatever else....

17. What Rosie Learned in Europe’s Wind Turbine Test Labs

    06.10.202630 Min.Als Nächstes

    Rosie returns from Denmark and shares her experiences seeing DTU blade testing, a lightning lab, and a 15 MW Vestas test turbine. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning …

    Shownotes

    Rosie returns from Denmark and shares her experiences seeing DTU blade testing, a lightning lab, and a 15 MW Vestas test turbine. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s "Engineering with Rosie" Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Episode Transcript What Rosie Learned in Denmark's Blade and Lightning LabsIntro and Risø blade testingAnnouncer: The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, brought to you by StrikeTape, protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit StrikeTape.com. And now your hosts.Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm Allen Hall, and I'm here with Rosemary Barnes and Yolanda Padron. Rosemary just came back from her long trip to Germany, and a good part of it was also spent up in Denmark. Rosemary, you visited a number of wind-related companies on your travels, so give us a little update.Rosemary Barnes: I started in Copenhagen and then went over to Roskilde, mostly to see the rain erosion test facilities. But I also got a tour of the rest of the testing, mostly blade testing. There's a really interesting history to that facility. It started out as nuclear power research and had a reactor there. I didn't even realize that.Yolanda Padron: Yeah.Rosemary Barnes: And incidentally, the reason it turned into a wind facility is that they already had all of these amazing wind measurements for the site. That's super important if you've got nuclear power. If there's a meltdown, you need to be able to track where the fallout is going to go. So they knew the wind speeds in the region really well. I was told by my friendly guide that that's the reason it was seen as a really good place to get started on researching wind energy in Denmark. They could put a turbine up knowing what was going on with the wind resource there.Allen Hall: Niels Bohr worked there, right? Is that part of the history?Rosemary Barnes: He worked there. I think it was his facility. I think he set it up. I didn't plan to talk about this, and I haven't actually verified any of it. I'm just remembering what I was told weeks ago. My understanding is that he set it up to do nuclear power research. They don't do that anymore, but they do a bunch of energy work. Mostly it's wind energy, and then a bit with the grid. They're doing some interesting trials with EV charging and how that can integrate into a grid powered by variable renewables. They've got their own little microgrid going on there, and if you participate in the trial, I think you can charge your car for free. All of the businesses I visited in Denmark had rows and rows of EV chargers, though mostly not free.Allen Hall: So you went to the research labs at Risø, the structural labs there. Did you walk through where they were doing blade testing and some of the structural testing?Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. There's actually an American guy there, Derek. He was working at GE in America before that and had worked for TPI for a while, so he brought that expertise to Risø. They've got a bunch of test rigs in there for small blades. I can't remember the exact length, but maybe 20 meters.Allen Hall: Twenty. Yeah.Rosemary Barnes: Which was once a full-scale wind turbine blade, but now it's small scale. It's mostly for research, trying out various new things. They produce blades for other research facilities as well and test them, and they're trying out some new manufacturing techniques.They're also trying new testing techniques. Normally when you test a wind turbine blade, you start with a static test. You basically get some ropes and pull on the blade hard enough to represent the largest gust that blade should ever experience in its lifetime. After that, you do a fatigue test, where you flap it up and down and side to side, one after the other. That takes months. For really long blades it can take a year, because you can only flap as fast as the natural frequency of the blade. A longer blade has a slower natural frequency, so it takes longer to get through the hundreds of millions of bending cycles it sees in its lifetime.They've got new test methods where they're trying to do both directions at once. Flapwise is the direction where a gust of wind blows the blade toward the tower. Edgewise is the direction where gravity bends it back and forth as it rotates. Normally you test those one after the other. You put it in one direction and flap it for millions of cycles, then you swap it and flap it the other way for millions of cycles. But now they've got actuators that set it off so it traces out an ellipse with every flap. It's doing flapwise and edgewise at the same time, so you can get through the test faster.People also want combined loading, because in the field you've got flapwise and edgewise loads in some combination at the same time. I get the point of that. But just because it's two loads at the same time doesn't mean it represents how those two loads actually co-occur in reality. So I'm not entirely sold on it being a more realistic test. But it is good if they can do those two fatigue tests at the same time and save some months on the testing.Another thing is that they're looking at better ways to test torsional rigidity, because that's more and more important as blades get longer. I believe torsional stiffness varies with the fourth power of the blade length. When blades were very small, it wasn't remotely a problem. It was kind of like centrifugal loads in a blade. You know they're there, but they're not a big deal. If you design a blade that can withstand all the other loads, it's definitely going to be strong enough for centrifugal loads. That used to be true for torsional stiffness as well, but it's less and less true as blades get longer.It's very hard to test and hard to verify. It's also hard to model, because the torsional rigidity of a blade has a lot to do with how the adhesive and the glue joints deflect under real loads. That's probably one of the weakest parts of a finite element model. It's quite hard to accurately model those thick adhesive joints, because they're less predictable than composite structures.The challenging thing is that every time you test something in the lab, some parts of the design will be under-tested and some parts will be over-tested. In the static test, for example, you can do it as simply as putting a single clamp on the tip and pulling on that. But a real aerodynamic load is applied over the whole surface. You can apply several clamps and get a more realistic load, but every clamp stiffens that area. You're never going to get a failure exactly where the clamp is, because the clamp prevents it from buckling. So you're distorting things. If you get more accurate in one sense, you're probably getting further from accuracy in another.That was one of the threads through all of the testing I watched in Denmark: how much can you accelerate the test without getting away from reality?LEP rain erosion testing and field trialsRosemary Barnes: I do think that's something the industry struggles with. Later on, at Wind Energy Hamburg, I visited a lot of leading edge protection companies, and a lot of them had little samples showing how amazing their material was in the rain erosion tester compared to their competitor's. And it's like, yeah, but what did you test? It doesn't match reality. I hate those little comparison tests, because everybody knows there are all sorts of little things you can do to make a product fail faster. If you just apply your competitor's product badly and then test it, you can easily crush them. But what's the point in showing that? When I see companies dissing their competitors, I find it an indication that they don't have confidence in their own product. So, to go off on a tangent, that's my hot tip.Allen Hall: No, that's a good tangent.Rosemary Barnes: It's not the message you think it's sending when you show your competitor's product.Allen Hall: Well, the V-N curve, which is what you're trying to achieve with rain erosion testing, does give you some predictive capability for what a coating would do at any particular wind farm. I know you're going to throw a bunch of variables at me, but as a baseline, you have this V-N curve, which is roughly the velocity versus the number of water droplet impacts. What I haven't seen is people publishing their product's V-N curve to the engineering world. That doesn't happen, which is weird, because they spend so much money to get it. Why would you not communicate it to someone like Rosemary, who can then use it to see whether that product will work on a wind turbine somewhere in Australia? I'm really struggling with that, because people spend a lot of time in the rain erosion world trying to get those numbers.Rosemary Barnes: I feel like I've already had a rant about this on an episode.Allen Hall: I don't think so.Rosemary Barnes: Maybe it was how I got into some robust discussions, which some might have interpreted as arguments, with a company complaining that their product is fully validated, that it doesn't need any more trials, and that everyone should just purchase it for their entire wind farm all at once. And I was saying that you haven't validated it for their wind farm, so they don't know.Allen Hall: Oh, yeah.Rosemary Barnes: But okay, that cuts both ways. If you had two side-by-side wind farms and one of them had trialed it successfully, then the neighboring wind farm would likely feel like, okay, that's great, they had good success, we'll put it in. But I was getting examples like, "We tested this in Texas and it's perfect." Okay, good for Texas-adjacent wind farms. They can rejoice that this product works well there after one year, or whatever it was.But with all the testing you do in the lab, and even the testing you do on site,...

18. Why Vestas Wants Chinese Wind Turbines Off Europe’s Grid

    05.10.20263 Min.Als Nächstes

    Allen covers how Denmark, where modern wind began, is pushing back on China, as Vestas CEO Henrik Andersen argues to keep Chinese turbines off Europe's grid. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by …

    Shownotes

    Allen covers how Denmark, where modern wind began, is pushing back on China, as Vestas CEO Henrik Andersen argues to keep Chinese turbines off Europe's grid. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s "Engineering with Rosie" Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Episode Transcript Happy Monday everyone. Denmark taught the world how to build wind turbines. This week ... three Danish stories asked the same question. What happens to the country that started it all ... now that China builds most of the world's turbines? The answer begins with a man who has been doing this for thirty years. In nineteen ninety-six ... a Danish developer put up his first wind turbine. Back then, turbines were going up all over the countryside. If the numbers worked ... you built it. Today he runs Lisby Windpower. And he says developers like him are a dying breed. They are small and local ... and they build with their own money. If a project goes wrong, he takes the hit. So he has always treated his neighbors right. He remembers when those neighbors came to the turbine parties and ate red sausages on bread. Now the big multinationals have moved in. He says they can promise a local family a lot ... and be gone tomorrow. Meanwhile, onshore building in Denmark has nearly stopped. But he is not bitter. His latest project is Denmark's first commercial wind turbine battery. He says the industry is better at everything today ... even if the work is harder. While the old guard fades ... Denmark's biggest wind company is fighting a very different battle. It is run by a man who grew up in Jutland. As a boy, he would stare out his window at the turbines turning in the distance. He wanted to know how they worked. As a young man, he bought shares in the company that built them. He admits it was not much of a success in those early years. He was a banker, not an engineer. But in twenty thirteen, that same company put him on its board. Its losses were nearing one billion euros. Six years later ... he was running it. That boy at the window is Henrik Andersen. And the company he watched ... is Vestas. Today Vestas is making money again. Operating profit last quarter was four hundred forty-six million euros ... up from fifty-seven million a year earlier. But Andersen is worried about China. Last year, for the first time, the five biggest turbine suppliers in the world were all Chinese. Goldwind alone installed nearly thirty gigawatts ... twice as much as Vestas. An economist at ING says Chinese makers can undercut European prices by as much as half. He says state support is the main reason. Even so, Chinese companies supplied less than three percent of Europe's new turbines last year. Andersen wants to keep it that way. He says China once barred Vestas from running its own software on its turbines there. So he asks a simple question. Why should Chinese turbines and software be welcome on Europe's grid? He says Europe should guard its energy the same way it guards its borders. The European Commission seems to be listening. In February, it opened an investigation into Goldwind's subsidies. And then there is Ørsted. Denmark's other wind giant has warned loudly about cheap, state-backed Chinese competition. But the Danish newspaper Berlingske reports that Ørsted buys some monopiles and cables ... from China. Ørsted's chief executive says that happens only in isolated cases. He says the turbines still come from Europe. The Danish trade group Tekniq is not satisfied. The Danish government owns most of Ørsted. Tekniq says that should mean European jobs come first. A Danish China expert sees the bind. Ørsted has to compete on price today ... while it asks the European Union to fix the price gap tomorrow. So what should wind professionals take from all this? First ... China's price edge is real. And even Denmark's champions feel it. When a state-owned developer that warns about Chinese subsidies still buys Chinese monopiles ... the gap is not small. European suppliers will not win that fight on price alone. Second ... security is becoming a selling point. Andersen is not really arguing about cost. He is arguing about who controls the software inside the turbine. If you build controls, sensors or monitoring systems for wind ... where your code comes from is about to matter a lot more. Third ... proven beats bigger. Vestas stopped chasing size and started chasing repeatability. Fewer redesigns mean fewer defects. And lenders trust a track record. Time in the field is the one advantage China cannot buy with subsidies. Danish developers may be part of a dying breed. But what that generation built ... thirty years of turbines that kept on turning ... is still Denmark's best argument. And that is the state of the wind industry for the 5th of October 2026. Join us for the Uptime Wind Energy podcast tomorrow.

19. Morten Handberg Answers the Big Drone Inspection Questions

    01.10.202635 Min.Als Nächstes

    Morten Handberg answers the big questions around drone inspections, including how often to inspect, how many turbines to sample, and how much AI results should be qualified. Contact Morten on LinkedIn The …

    Shownotes

    Morten Handberg answers the big questions around drone inspections, including how often to inspect, how many turbines to sample, and how much AI results should be qualified. Contact Morten on LinkedIn The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s "Engineering with Rosie" Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Episode Transcript Speaker: [00:00:00] Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy's brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow Allen Hall: Morten, welcome back to the program. Morten Handberg: Thanks, Allen. Allen Hall: It is drone inspection season. Everybody in the Northern Hemisphere is either having drone inspections done right now or about to, before the, the winter weather hits. There are a lot of decisions to make, of course, when you're doing drone inspections, and Morten, you and I were just talking about some of the difficulties with drone inspections, particularly, and the, the highest level one is always how often and how many should we be thinking about it when we're gonna do drone inspections? How, how often should you do it, and how many turbines out of the total should you sample? Morten Handberg: Well, it really depends on what it is that, that you want to see, [00:01:00] uh, and, um, what it is that you want to achieve. I would always argue for doing annual, uh, uh, blade inspections, um, both internally and externally, because you want to know what is the overall condition of your wind farm. That's not to say that you need to inspect every single blade every single year. I don't think that necessarily adds value. Uh, if you have a service contract that covers that and gives you an annual inspection, that's great. But there might still be a benefit for you to do a, your own sets, uh, because your service contract will typically not cover internal inspections, and it will, it will limit the amount of information you have available that you can then use to understand your, uh, your wind farm condition, of your blade condition, and also what actions you need to take in terms of erosion, lightning, structural damages. So I will always go for arguing for a subset, uh, both externally and internally, and then divide it out into the wind farm, uh, because you want to have [00:02:00] a, a, a, as divided a, a pool of ins- of, uh, of, of, uh, in your subset as possible, because that give, gives you the broadest understanding about what's going on. And from there you can then decide, okay, is there something serious going on? Is there any seal defect? Are there major lightnings? Is erosion an issue? And then you can trigger more inspection, but so, so you can use it to, to, uh, argue for more value in inspections. Allen Hall: But Morten, I have a full service agreement, and my OEM is doing inspections, I think. Isn't that good enough? Morten Handberg: It's a good start, um, and it means that they are fulfilling their part of the service agreement. Um, but- How they categorize and to what detail that you can get access to really matters in terms of what value you get out of it. If you only get the report and you only get the thumbnails, then you only see a, a small piece of what is actually going on on the blade. If your OEM is doing, um, [00:03:00] you, you know, if they are, if they're doing the best job in the world and they're pristine in all of their assessments, then okay, that's good. But, um, I don't think that, y- you know, it's, uh, we, we can, we, most of us can probably agree that, that it's not always the 100, 100% that, that we, that we see from these inspections because they are, they're done in massive amounts, and that means that the quality in the reporting goes down. So, so it, it limits you in what you can actually learn from these reports, both in terms of the quality and the assessment, but also just in the amount of information that is in the report. And thereby, if you really wanna have a good understanding about what is actually my wind turbine co- my wind, uh, wind farm condition, then having your own, own data set really helps you out. Allen Hall: But Morten, usually when an OEM provides a, a set of inspections, it is just a, usually, like, just a couple of turbines. And I assume that the OEM is just telling me about the, the things that are serious. Everything else must be okay, right? Morten Handberg: Well, typically, it's everything that they show. Um, so, [00:04:00] um, at least some of the reports that we see that, you know, every single defect is, is, uh, that they have found is marked out. Um, but there is a, there can be a lot of inconsistencies in, in how things are annotated, um, both in terms of structural, in terms of erosion defects, uh, and If you wanna make a, if you wanna have a, a, a claim or you want to make a, um, an, a, make a proper repair campaign, then having the, having the right annotation and the, and the, and the correct, uh, assessment is really important for you because it's really important when you plan a repair if you know that it's this contamination or is it a crack. It's really important for your leading edge erosion campaign to know is the cause of my erosion because of rain erosion or is it because of peeling from, uh, poor adhesion or is it because of voids in, um, in my, uh, in, in, in the blade that is causing the coating to fail because that means a lot in, in terms of what solutions you [00:05:00] should, you should use to, to mitigate it. Allen Hall: Is there a, a better approach? Uh, because what I see somewhat globally at this point is that if an operator has a full service agreement and they're running, let's just say they're running 10, 15, 20 different farms and they're spread out over a large geography. So the, there isn't like you can drive between them. They're hundreds of miles apart. There's no way that the owner operator can get into that level of detail. They have to let the OEM drive that ship, so to speak, where they, they, at least the first cut is done by the OEM. Has that historically been the best method or it, does that lead to problems down the road? Because I, I think the quality and the maybe the consistency there of, of the inspections varies from year to year and who the supplier was that actually did it. Was it the [00:06:00] OEM with a DJI drone and one of their technicians doing inspection, or is it, or, or was it like a proper drone company that has high resolution, uh, inspection equipment doing that, uh, series of inspections? There just seems to be so many variables here. But me as the owner operator, there's not enough time in the day for me to go do all this myself. I have to rely on somebody to, to do the right thing. What is that mix? Like, how much do I rely upon that OEM to provide the information, the, the really, the real information? Is it 100%? Like I completely have to totally trust them? Or is it more of like a 20%, like I'm going to sample what there's, what they're telling me myself? I'm gonna... I need to do a, basically a double inspection, a re-inspection of what I was told to make sure that was true. Uh, where is that, where's that line? Morten Handberg: I think that if you are a seasoned operator, you've been running your wind farm for 10, 15 years, you've been [00:07:00] using your OEM for all that time, and they have provided good reporting for you, and you've been happy with the results, and you've been happy with the repair campaigns, then you'll probably have a re- pretty good regional management of that area, and then I would be okay with that. Um, but that is not always what we see. Um, so it's, it's fair to, to, to pressure test it and to make sure that what you're being, uh, provided is accurate. So I would say if you're, if, if your, if your wind farm is new or you're new to your relationship with your OEM, then doing a subset will give you some, uh, good understanding what is the OEM actually providing you, and are you seeing the full, full picture, and are their annotations correct? Um, if that matches one-to-one, then that means that the O&Ms go and doing a good job, which is good, and that's what we want. If not, then you know [00:08:00] that you have-- that there is a need for you to take, uh, some more control in order to keep your asset healthy, which is what we want, and to be proac- be more proactive in handling some of the, some of the issues. Because if you're not, then you could end up with severe erosion issues that are being neglected or misrepresentate-- misrepresented. You could end up with structural damages that are either, uh, blown out of proportion, that where they are-- where the, the method to, to rectify it, uh, means that you-- it's something that could be repaired is getting replaced, which means a massive amount of cost on your side. Um, could also be that a, uh, that a serious issue is getting, getting ne- neglected and then turns into something much more severe, um, afterwards. A- and again, it's about finding out where that balance is. Uh, and again, there, uh, the easy way is simply-- It's not-- The best way is not for you to do [00:09:00] a full sweep, one-to-one, 100% inspection of everything, because that will just, uh, that will just mean a lot of data that you need to de- you need to manage and control. You might not get full value out of it. That's very doubtful. But doing a smaller subset of, you know, some, you know, um, 10, 15 percentage, uh, of the wind farm will give you an understanding about where you actually are in, in, in the, in the, in the condition of your wind farm. And something I would, I would actually argue for it both within warranty, during warranty, and also afterwards. Because within warranty,...

20. Uptime’s Takeaways from Hamburg 2026

    29.09.2026Als Nächstes

    The crew discusses Hamburg takeaways, including the industry mood, bigger blade risks, and OEM announcements. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the …

    Shownotes

    The crew discusses Hamburg takeaways, including the industry mood, bigger blade risks, and OEM announcements. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s "Engineering with Rosie" Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Episode Transcript Matthew Stead: [00:00:00] Every time Rosie walked past a, a, like a, a QR code with a, a prize of Lego, she had to enter. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I'm Matthew Stead: n- I'm not quite sure, I'm not quite sure whether Rosie was actually entering her real name. Rosemary Barnes: Oh, just like 100, 100 different fake emails. Um- Matthew Stead: Yeah. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. And I also- Matthew Stead: Yeah ... Rosemary Barnes: do think I could grab one and run. I was considering it, 'cause, you know, I've been to a few of these events now. I would have entered probably 20 competitions, and I never, I never win Speaker 3: The Uptime Wind Energy podcast, brought to you by StrikeTape. Protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit striketape.com. And now your hosts Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I'm Allen Hall, and I'm here with Rosemary Barnes, Yolanda Padron, and Matthew Stead. And this has been a busy week because everybody's been, well, Matthew and Rosemary have been in Hamburg for the big Wind Energy Hamburg show. Organizers [00:01:00] there expect 43,000 people from 100 countries to attend. There's roughly 1,600 companies and booths on the show floor. Uh, this is the big show, right? Everybody knows this is the big show, and this is the one to go to. Matthew, you were with EOLOGIX-PING for the week in the booth there. How, what, how did it go? How was it? Matthew Stead: Uh, I don't think I've talked for, um, eight hours a day for three days in a row ever. So it, it, it was, it was crazy. So, um, uh, there were so many people there. I think, um, I, I ... There, there was some mixed feelings. So there was a lot of positive vibe about what's going on and how the industry is progressing and doing better. But at the same time, there were sort of negative comments about, like Germany next year, they were really expecting a, a big drop in the number of installations. So it was quite a mixed bag. Um, but I mean, personally, I loved seeing old friends. Allen Hall: And Rosemary, you were not tied to a [00:02:00] booth, so you could wander around a little bit more. What did you see and hear at the show? Rosemary Barnes: Uh, a lot. I have actually learned what a booth is for now, though, because if you don't have a booth, then you have to, like, just go from You try and meet people, and you have to navigate your way through the system, and you can't actually make appointments because you chat, you run into somebody, and then you chat to someone. And, like, you think, "Oh, I'll talk to everyone for five minutes," but you end up talking for 15 or 20 minutes. And yeah, so lots of, lots of walking. But, um, I've seen, I've seen heaps. I love these exhibitions, you know, when they've got the ... lot, a lot of them have displays. So, you know, like, there's a real, a real winch in there. I can't remember what company it was from, but it's, like, a real winch that's been in service for a long time. And you know, you can go get a sense for, uh, that scale. Real bits of rope. Um, oh, so many robots. So many robots and drones. Um, yeah. All, all kinds [00:03:00] of varieties of robots and drones, which I love. Lots of them doing very useful things. Uh, I don't know what else. About, yeah, every other stand has some, one of my ex-colleagues from LM Wind Power standing in it, in, um, a wide variety of industries. So that's kind of cool. I actually, I had some really, really great conversations with old colleagues. And, um- Allen Hall: Mm. Rosemary Barnes: Mm ... yeah, l- learn, yeah, always learn a lot from that. Um, yeah. I don't know. It's been good. Lots of free ice cream as well. Uh, yeah. Free ice cream, free coffees, good coffees. Allen Hall: What were the good handouts this year? What, what were the free giveaways that everybody was distributing? Rosemary Barnes: There's a lot of chocolates, and it's quite easy to, yeah, just grab handfuls of chocolate. Matthew Stead: A weather dice. Is there light- is there lightning today, or is it windy? Allen Hall: Who was offering that, Matthew? Matthew Stead: Uh, this is, uh, GWU. Allen Hall: All right. That's, that's a neat handout, giveaway, [00:04:00] right? Matthew Stead: Great company. Allen Hall: Were they, were they auctioning off any cars or anything that was, like, super impressive? A million dollars? Matthew Stead: Oh, I gotta tell a story. Like, every time Rosie walked past, uh, uh, like a, a QR code with a, a prize of Lego- She had to enter. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I'm Matthew Stead: not, I'm not quite sure, I'm not quite sure whether Rosie was actually entering her real name or like a, a, a fake name. Rosemary Barnes: Or just like 100, 100 different fake emails. Um- Matthew Stead: Yeah. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. And I also- Matthew Stead: Yeah ... Rosemary Barnes: every time try and convince them to just give it to me. Um, but all the LEGO is like Danish companies, and Danes are, I think, like literally the most honest people, um, most honest country on Earth. So- Matthew Stead: Yeah ... Rosemary Barnes: they never really, um, allow that. But I- ... do think I could grab one and run. I was considering it, 'cause, you know, I've been to a few of these events now. I would have entered probably 20 competitions, and I never, I never win, so. I Yolanda Padron: mean, you're fast enough. You could have beat them. Rosemary Barnes: They're limited edition sets that are not, no longer available [00:05:00] for sale or were never available for sale, so it's not like you could just say, "Oh, just go buy one, Rosie." But these sets are not, not available. There's, yeah, like lots of like little, um, offshore wind turbine and then a, like a substation. Yeah. Had like a little drone as well involved in that set. There's another, there's a Maersk has a ship with like, full of shipping containers. Um- Yeah. I, I don't know. Like, just lots of cool, cool Lego Matthew Stead: I even, even entered on Rosie's behalf Allen Hall: What was the vibe offshore, uh, versus onshore? 'Cause last time I attended, which was about four years ago now, there was a, a significant amount of offshore, uh, discussion and booths and vendors. Is the ratio growing more offshore versus onshore? Or what, what did that look like? Matthew Stead: I felt the opposite. I felt it was all onshore, but- Really? Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, yeah. I think so, and it's a real contrast. 'Cause when you go to the big wind, um, conferences in Australia now, it, it's always, like, 90%-plus offshore wind, which [00:06:00] we don't have in Australia, and I've always found it so weird. Matthew Stead: Hmm. Rosemary Barnes: And, uh, here in Europe where they do have a whole lot of offshore wind, and that's where, you know, like, most of their growth is, uh, coming in the industry for new installations- Matthew Stead: Hmm Rosemary Barnes: um, yeah, it's, it's a lot more, it's a lot more balanced. Um, it's just, like, a lot of small companies doing s- small things. I mean, it's not, like, really small. It's, you know, one small task in every single wind farm in the world. There's obviously still a huge market. But, you know, like, lots of just, like, really precision solutions to very specific problems, I guess. Yeah, there's just so much, uh, wind energy here, so many people that just, yeah, learned about a problem and came up with a, a way to solve it. Um, yeah, so it, it's, it's a really good balance. Allen Hall: Uh, while we're here, what were the new products on the show floor that you said, "Wow, that's something innovative"? Rosemary Barnes: Like, there's stuff... I learned stuff that I didn't know before, but I don't think that it's brand-new. Um, for example, I learned that you're not supposed to call a drone a robot. Um- [00:07:00] Allen Hall: Why? Rosemary Barnes: I think a drone is a class of robot. In my, in my opinion, a drone is a robot that flies. But I was told off for, um... I'm like, "Oh, do you have any other robots?" "No, we don't have any other robots. We've got drones." That's what they said. Matthew Stead: Yeah. Hmm. I learned, I learned two things, and I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say this, but anyway, I'll, I'll, I'll do it. Um, SkySpecs have a MC- MCP connector to their data For their customers. So for those AI nerds out there, that's a massive thing, I think. Rosemary Barnes: Can you explain what that is, Matt? Allen Hall: For us non-geeks. Matthew Stead: My understanding, and I'll, I'll be corrected by the audience, is that a MCP, whatever it stands for, um, is basically, uh, like an AI connector where you can query all your data that is h- hosted within- Oh ... SkySpecs. So- Rosemary Barnes: Ah ... Matthew Stead: Hey, Mr. SkySpecs- Okay ... um, which turbines have been struck by lightning, you know, have lightning damage, and how bad is it? And, [00:08:00] and then the next thing that SkySpecs has... Uh, I don't work for SkySpecs. Um, the next, the next thing that SkySpecs have is they have a more of a growth of damage over time and a predictor as to what the damage might look like next year. Um, strangely, Rosie, um, I also heard quite a few people talking about blade temperature. Um, and I know that's a sort of deep- Oh, really? ... rabbit hole. Yeah. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, that's my obsession....

21. Nordex Invests in Türkiye, Vestas Wins First V182 Order

    28.09.20263 Min.Als Nächstes

    Allen covers Nordex's Türkiye expansion, Chinese turbine makers seeking European partners, Vestas' first V182 order, and two Pennsylvania repowers. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather …

    Shownotes

    Allen covers Nordex's Türkiye expansion, Chinese turbine makers seeking European partners, Vestas' first V182 order, and two Pennsylvania repowers. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s "Engineering with Rosie" Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Episode Transcript Happy Monday, everyone. Well, in Pennsylvania this past week, two wind farms got a second life, and nobody poured a single new foundation. Now, hold that thought for a moment. This week, the wind industry kept asking one question: Where do you build? Let's start in Europe. Chinese turbine makers have a problem. They dominate solar, they dominate batteries, but in Western Europe, every major wind project still buys turbines from Vestas, Siemens or Nordex, and occasionally GE Vernova. So the Chinese are trying a new door, a joint venture. Envision and Mingyang both say they would partner with European companies to build turbines in Europe. Envision's chief product officer says they are prepared and willing. Its offshore chief hinted that talks may have already started, and they probably have. Mingyang still prefers its own factory, but Britain blocked that plan in Scotland earlier this year, so a local partner is plan B. It is the same play Chinese car makers used in Spain. Same playbook, same problem. So go south to Turkey. Nordex is not waiting for a partner there. The turbine maker put seventy million euros into Turkey this year. All of its own money, no loans and no incentives. A new factory near Izmir is building turbines now, roughly four hundred a year. Eight hundred and twenty workers today, about twelve hundred by year's end. A second factory is built and waiting for equipment. And here is the number that matters. Nordex buys one billion euros of parts from Turkish suppliers every year. Nordex says that is sixty to seventy percent of everything made for wind in Turkey. Then it ships many of those parts to other countries. Next month, Nordex will chase a big share of a fifteen hundred megawatt onshore tender. Interesting. Now east to India. Finnish composite maker Exel Composites just signed a deal with Suzlon. Exel's Indian joint venture will make carbon fiber planks for Suzlon's blade spar caps. The deal could top €100 million through March of 2029. It started small, €10 million in 2025, and back then Suzlon would not even let Exel use its name. Now it's 10 times bigger, and it's public. Every plank will come from one factory in India, close to the customer, close to the market. Smart move. Back to Europe and a turbine that is new but not too new. Vestas just booked the first order for its V182 7.2 megawatt turbine. Four machines, 29 megawatts. The Staverhult project in southern Sweden will take those turbines. The V182 sits on the EnVentus platform, and Vestas says it upgraded only what adds value for customers, nothing more. Serial production begins at the end of 2027, and there's a service deal, a 35-year-long service deal. Wow. Now to Pennsylvania, where the newest wind farms sit on old towers. Exus Renewables just finished repowering two wind farms in Cambria County, nearly 140 megawatts. There's new nacelles, new blades, new generators, but the same towers and the same foundations. The work adds 30 more years to farms that already ran nearly 20 years. Financing, about $356 million. And who's buying that power? A Fortune 500 technology company. Take your guess, right? Exus says buyers like repowered sites because they skip the long wait to connect a new project. And data centers are very hungry, and they do not want to wait in a line. So what should wind professionals take from this past week? First, local content is no longer a political favor. It is the price of entry. Nordex owns most of Turkey's wind supply chain, and the Chinese know that and want the same thing in Europe. And if you make towers, castings, or blades in Europe, expect a phone call from a Chinese company. You better decide now what your answer will be. Second, buyers are paying for certainty, not novelty. Vestas only changed what it had to. And Exus kept the steel that was already in the ground in Pennsylvania for their repower projects. You see, the fastest megawatt in America is the one that is already connected to the grid. Thousands of turbines from the early 2000s are reaching the repower age right about now, and that is really the next big market. And lastly, do the math on the service deal. The 35-year commitment is quite long, and a lot of operators are thinking about the length of their service contracts right about now. And that is the state of the wind industry for the 28th of September, 2026. Join us for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast tomorrow.

22. How Active Training Team Kept 25,000 Tideway Workers Safe

    24.09.202629 Min.Als Nächstes

    Dermot Kerrigan, Director and Co-founder at Active Training Team, joins to discuss how the immersive EPIC safety center helped London's £5 billion Thames Tideway tunnel finish with zero fatalities and zero …

    Shownotes

    Dermot Kerrigan, Director and Co-founder at Active Training Team, joins to discuss how the immersive EPIC safety center helped London's £5 billion Thames Tideway tunnel finish with zero fatalities and zero life-changing injuries. Plus similar centers built for Ørsted's Hornsea projects and SSE, and the mobile program his US team runs for wind and solar sites. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s "Engineering with Rosie" Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Episode Transcript Uptime Spotlight: Dermot Kerrigan, Director and Co-founder, Active Training Team Allen Hall: Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy's brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow. Dermot Kerrigan: Thanks very much for having me back, Allen. Allen Hall: Well, I brought you back because I want to talk about the major construction project in London that just wrapped up, which you were intimately involved with in terms of safety training through Active Training Team. That's the Thames Tideway project, a massive sewer project in London that started around 2016 and finished about a year ago, when I saw King Charles open and christen the new Tideway. And it's in operation today. Do you want to provide some background on what that project was and why it was even started? Dermot Kerrigan: Yeah, sure. We are a city now of around 9 million people, I believe. The sewage system that we have here was designed, I believe, for 2 million people back in Victorian times. And what was happening? Whenever we had a big storm, the sewers couldn't cope with all the water, so the excess poured into the River Thames, which runs through London, with huge, as you can imagine, health and environmental repercussions and risks. So it was decided that they needed to stop this by building a huge tunnel along the River Thames for 25 kilometers. Whenever this happened, rather than being poured into the Thames, it would go into this tunnel, be run downstream to the east of London, be treated, and then go back into the system. They decided to do this back in 2015, when the first spade hit the ground, and it just got commissioned. The final screws got tightened on it in March of this year, so that was an 11-year period. It employed 25,000 people over that period from various contractor companies, main works contractors and subcontractors who were tasked with building this thing. It went through a number of phases, from groundwork, literally digging holes, before they dug the big hole, which was the tunneling. There was pre-tunneling before that, and then, having done the tunnel, they actually built this thing and all the huge access shafts along the length of the river. The deepest point of the tunnel is 60 meters. It's a hell of a thing. You could drive two London double-decker buses through it at its widest point. Of course, after the tunneling phase, there was commissioning, building parkland along the length of the Thames, and landscaping, before they actually said this thing is open. That was in March of this year, and apparently 21 million tonnes of sewage have been captured by it so far. So it does seem to be doing the trick. Allen Hall: It's a massive project, and it's such a complicated project. As an engineer, I get really interested in the details of how that was going to work, because you're right, it's a Victorian-era sewer system, a massive sewer system that was built way larger than the recent tunnel, of course. But the complexity of tying a new sewer system into a roughly 150-year-old sewer system is complicated. Add the factor that you're working with water, with the Thames, and you're working with sewage, which is obviously dirty and full of contaminants. That puts a lot of risk on employees, contractors, construction workers, everybody involved in this process. So conceptually, we're going to dig a tunnel and put a couple of shafts in. I think they put about 30-odd shafts along the riverbanks to capture the effluent. But the complexity of it is crazy, to the point that, at least in my head, there was almost no chance that someone wasn't going to be seriously hurt or killed during that 10- or 11-year period. Drowning is a real possibility. Tunnel collapse is a possibility. Shafts collapsing is a possibility. You're dealing with cranes and heavy objects moving around, and steel and infrastructure. Someone's going to get seriously injured during this period. And the way construction projects work at this scale is that they have estimates, based on previous history in the UK, of how many people are going to be injured and how many people are going to be killed during the project. Two or three people were expected to be killed, and over 100 seriously injured, with life-altering injuries. That's alarming. But that explains why they called in Active Training Team and a number of others to come in and change the safety narrative. And that's where you come in, because I think the results have been astounding. First, I want you to describe what you did. What did you put in place, and why was it different at the time from other safety programs? Dermot Kerrigan: Well, I think safety up until 2015 on these big infrastructure projects was very much about systems and processes. What people weren't really taking notice of is the whole battle for hearts and minds. What this project was determined to avoid was the bare minimum that they could expect. And they were told, you're absolutely right, that the best you can hope for on a big 5 billion pound project like this over a 10- or 11-year period is to kill at least two people, with 150 serious, life-changing injuries and thousands of lost time injuries. They didn't want that. They were determined that wasn't going to happen. So they had to get a bit left field. They started looking around at other projects that had done something maybe a little bit out there, and they came across us, Active Training Team. We'd done some work with another big infrastructure project called Crossrail, which is an east-west rail line that opened some time ago, called the Elizabeth Line, that runs through London. We did this thing for them called the Target Zero Roadshow, which the contractors had to go through. It was a blend of film, live drama and facilitated discussion, where we showed an incident, the antecedents that led to it, and the consequences for all involved. It was a mobile thing. We took it from site to site, but it was pretty out there in terms of this blend of different media. So the people who ran Tideway at the time approached us and said, look, if we gave you carte blanche to do whatever you wanted, if we asked you to build this mad induction center that everybody has to go through to give them a life-changing experience before they start work on this project, to make them think, I need to do the right thing when it comes to safety, what would you do? We had this idea based on immersive theater, which is a big thing here in the UK, where you take a space, divide it into various sets, and take people on a multimedia journey where they see, in real time, if you like, the events that led up to a serious incident, the incident itself, and what happens after that. But then you give them some safety leadership tools and parachute them back into that scenario to practice those tools in real time. It's all to do with challenging and accepting challenge, and creating a culture of psychological safety where people feel absolutely able, where it's a no-brainer, to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm not happy with that. Sorry, let's reconsider. Let's plan again. And to our incredible surprise, they went for it. They spent over 1 million pounds on building this state-of-the-art facility in central London. Everybody who was going to work on that project, whether they were a contractor with a spade in their hand, a receptionist in an office, somebody in the back office, or leaders, everybody who was going to set foot on either a site or an office on the Tideway project, had to go through this one-day experience first. The idea was that everybody bought into the ethos that operational safety isn't just the responsibility of operational people. All of us have a part to play to ensure that the guys doing the hands-on work go home in one piece. Allen Hall: I think that's a remarkable difference from a lot of the training programs we have seen in the renewable energy sector. A lot of times, the safety discussions are focused on the ground-level people, the people actually doing the heavy lifts, moving the trucks around, and doing that work. But the reality is that decisions are made throughout the organization which have an impact on safety. Management has an impact on safety. Procurement has an impact on safety. Just by choosing a less expensive safety device, you could increase the safety risk. And unless we have thought through those processes, we're still going to have big-time problems with accident rates. I think this is where Active Training Team really changed the narrative a good bit. But I think you don't sell the in-person aspect of this enough. I've taken the course two times now, and both times it was so emotionally impactful that it's hard to forget. There's a difference between watching a video, or going to a movie with your wife or somebody, where there's an emotion to watching the movie and being engrossed in it for an hour or so, or even going to a stage play, which is even more person to person, with a real-life person enacting the script, versus putting yourself in the situation. That's the immersive part of the EPIC center and Active Training Team's process. When you put yourself in that role, it becomes personal. And obviously, you're an actor,...

23. GE Vernova and Vineyard Wind Settle, UK Approves Irish Sea Cables

    22.09.202627 Min.Als Nächstes

    GE Vernova and Vineyard Wind drop all claims in their $4.5 billion dispute. Plus the UK approves Irish Sea cables for Morgan and Morecambe, a GE turbine order in Japan, whale recorders in the Celtic Sea, and …

    Shownotes

    GE Vernova and Vineyard Wind drop all claims in their $4.5 billion dispute. Plus the UK approves Irish Sea cables for Morgan and Morecambe, a GE turbine order in Japan, whale recorders in the Celtic Sea, and previews of WindEnergy Hamburg.Register for the SkySpecs Customer ForumMeet with Nikki Briggs at WindEnergy Hamburg to discuss the StrikeTape Ultra LPS upgradeFind Rosie & Matthew at Booth A1-115 at WindEnergy Hamburg The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s "Engineering with Rosie" Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Episode Transcript Speaker: [00:00:00] The Uptime Wind Energy podcast, brought to you by StrikeTape. Protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit StrikeTape.com. And now your hosts Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I'm Allen Hall here with Rosemary Barnes and Jelanta Padron. And f- first off, Rosemary is in Denmark in preparation to visit Wind Energy Hamburg. Rosemary Barnes: I am. I'm in, uh, Ringkøbing, which is on the west coast of Jutland. Just, uh, took the, a train and hired a car from Copenhagen. Drove past a whole lot of wind turbines. It's very nice to be back. Allen Hall: So the Wind Energy Hamburg event is the event, in my opinion. There's really two, right? Wind Europe and Wind Energy Hamburg. Uh, Husum is a big event, but not of the scale of Wind Energy Hamburg. I think they're [00:01:00] predicting 40-ish thousand people probably are gonna come through the event. It's massive. Have you been there before, Rosemary? Rosemary Barnes: I haven't. I've only been to WindEurope once, and other than that I've been to some big composites conferences back when I was doing my PhD, but I'm kind of, like, 'cause y- when I went to WindEurope last year, that was my first big wind energy conference, and I was so overwhelmed. I walked in the door, I saw the exhibition, and within 90 seconds all the energy had drained from my body and I'm like, "I wanna go home now." But, um, so I've kind of like, I, I have just, I've spent a couple of days in, in Copenhagen and surrounds and, um, and that, that was really good. Lots of talking, lots of seeing stuff, and I'm sure we'll talk about that in a minute. Um, but now I have preemptively, like, taken myself to a quiet corner of Denmark to just, yeah, like, put my, put my head down and, uh, yeah, have some quiet activities, some n- nature. The nature is really nice over this [00:02:00] part of Denmark. There's lots of... Like, I wanna go for some long runs in sand dunes and heaths and, um, yeah, planning to drive up to Østerild where there's a big wind turbine test center. Uh, I just wanna see what's there just out of pure, pure geekiness, see what's there, 'cause y- you know, like, there's new, new stuff there, right? And there's often, like, offshore wind turbines being tested. I don't know what's there. That'll be cool to see. Um, and yeah, I'm trying to put together a video about how wind turbines are tested, so that will be part of it and, yeah, potentially a good recording location. So yeah, just a bit of quiet time, trying to rest up ahead of next week where I know that there will be just so many conversations. I love, I love talking about wind energy technology, and I love catching up with old people that I know, but I just, I'm not an extrovert. Um, yeah, at best an ambivert maybe, slightly introverted. I was actually discussing this with somebody, how, like, inappropriate it is to have such [00:03:00] sensory overload at, um, a conference that is mostly attended by engineers. It's, like, we're not known for being, you know, like, really social people. Um, and we came up with the idea that there should be, like, a what? A sensory deprivation room in there where, um, you know, you can just go in and like- Oh my Yolanda Padron: gosh, that would be Rosemary Barnes: great yeah, like, get in a, one of those tanks or a soundproof booth, uh, star- just yeah, so, like, you can just go in and reset and, um, yeah, refill your social battery. I think that that would be, yeah, that would be a real, a real winner if someone... I'm sure someone could charge a, charge money for that there. Or you sell the sponsorship for, like, a million dollars because it's just so popular and everyone's so grateful that it exists. Allen Hall: Well, Ro- Rosemary, if you want to talk to Rosemary, she's gonna be hanging around the EOLOGIX- I'm gonna be hiding ... Ping Booth. Oh. She may be hiding, but she will be somewhere near the EOLOGIX- You can find her ... Ping Booth. Yeah. Y- you just listen for the Australian accent and a bunch of, uh, German [00:04:00] accents, right? It's pretty easy to pick out in my opinion. Austrian. Oh, yeah, and Austrian too. Yeah. So there, there's, um- A, a ton of people, obviously, that we know are gonna be at Hamburg for the week. It, it starts Tuesday. I think it finishes on Friday. Uh, uh, Rosemary will be there, Matthew Stead will be there, our own Nikki Briggs from Weather Guard will be there. When you run into them, say hi. Uh, although Rosemary talks about not being so social, she's very social, so- Rosemary Barnes: That's my problem, is that I get really social and then I get exhausted, like absolutely exhausted. Allen Hall: Yeah. Yes. So, uh, uh, it'll be a fun time. I hope everybody has a good time and, and all the travels to and from are safely done. Uh, so go visit, uh, EOLOGIX-PING. Our, our friends at CNC Onsite will also be there. Uh, they have some big announcements, uh, having to do with, uh, a new place in the United States. PES Wind will be there. Uh, s- I think [00:05:00] Stefan's gonna be there, so say hi to Stefan and pick up the, the newest copy of PES Wind. There's an article by Weather Guard in PES Wind, uh, so go ahead and pick one of those up. Uh, and, uh, one of the o- items before we get too deep into the news this week, the SkySpecs Forum. So if you work with SkySpecs or if you d- even if you don't and know SkySpecs, obviously a huge, uh, drone inspection company doing CMS and vendor management and all the above They're having their SkySpecs Forum October 6th and 7th in Detroit, uh, at the MGM Grand, which is a, a magnificent place. Uh, and if you're, are involved in inspections of blades or deal with CMS or doing a lot of repairs on wind farms, you should try to get to the SkySpecs Forum. There are onl- as I understand it, there's only a couple of seats left, so y- you need to go to SkySpecs and register for that event and get yourself to Detroit. So just [00:06:00] a note, if you really want to go, and you should, you better do it quickly. Well, there's good news out of Massachusetts, which doesn't happen all that often lately. Uh, Vineyard Wind and GE Vernova has settled their fight. Now, GE Vernova had tried to quit the $4.5 billion project, and it said the developer owed it about $360 million. Well, GE Vernova has pulled back that threat, and thank goodness. It, it has dropped all its courts appeals, and both sides are dropping every claim. So everything that was happening in the court cases in Massachusetts are all gonna go away, and GE is gonna be on site to, uh, support Vineyard Wind, which, Yolanda, has to be a huge win for both sides and the state of Massachusetts, which is the recipient of a lot of that electricity. Yolanda Padron: Absolutely, and it's a win, too, for just the US offshore market in general, right? It's, it's something that's been happening for quite a bit of time. [00:07:00] Uh, we were talking about it pre-recording, that this is-- the idea of, of settling in court is really not typical for onshore or offshore. It's kind of, it's almost like a game of chicken, I feel like, and this time it just, it took a little bit longer than, than usual for them to settle on something. But happy that they settled. Um, yeah, no, this is a big, a big win for the US. Allen Hall: Yeah, the optics around it was just bad for US offshore wind. With everything else going on, to have two of the bigger parties fighting one another in court is, that just did not look good. And I, I think everybody knew at the, at the time, I think Rosemarie had said it even, that they're gonna have to settle. They're gonna have to work together. That, that's the only outcome that, that can happen here. No one is walking away from this project. That will not happen. So it's good this has finally been settled, because we gotta get moving on. I know there's, there's, contrary to what you probably hear in the press, there are some other [00:08:00] offshore wind farms that are still being constructed quietly, dutifully, and will be done roughly on time. So more to come on the US offshore side. So GE also has better news this week. They won a turbine order in Japan, and we'll have that after the break. Delamination and bondline failures in blades are difficult problems to detect early. These hidden issues can cost you millions in repairs and lost energy production. CIC-NDT are specialists to detect these critical flaws before they become expensive burdens. Their nondestructive test technology penetrates deep into blade materials to find voids and cracks traditional inspections completely miss. CIC-NDT maps every critical defect, delivers actionable reports, and provides support to get your blades back in service. So visit cicndt.com because [00:09:00] catching blade problems early will save you millions Well, GE Vernova has won an order in Japan. It'll supply seven turbines to Eurus Energy. That wind farm will be up in, in the northern part of the country. Uh, it's a small market obviously for GE Vernova, but it is a steady one and it gives a,...

24. Ørsted Finishes Revolution Wind, RWE Wins German Auction

    21.09.20264 Min.Als Nächstes

    Allen covers record bank financing for clean energy, Oracle's 1.7 GW Texas wind deal, RWE's German auction win, Denmark scrapping its turbine cap, and Revolution Wind finishing off Rhode Island. The Uptime Wind …

    Shownotes

    Allen covers record bank financing for clean energy, Oracle's 1.7 GW Texas wind deal, RWE's German auction win, Denmark scrapping its turbine cap, and Revolution Wind finishing off Rhode Island. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s "Engineering with Rosie" Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Episode Transcript September 18, 2026Happy Monday, everyone.Off the coast of Rhode Island this past week, the last turbine went up. Hold that thought. First, the banks.BloombergNEF says global banks put one-point-one-five trillion dollars behind low-carbon energy last year. A record. For every dollar banks lent to fossil fuels, they lent ninety-seven cents to clean energy. Five years ago, that ratio was seventy-nine cents. Wind project finance in Europe grew seventy-five percent in a single year. The money is moving. And here is where it lands.In Texas, Oracle just signed wind energy deals across ten projects. One-point-seven gigawatts. Partners include RWE, Engie, Clearway Energy, and Scout Clean Energy. All feeding the ERCOT grid. All powering Oracle's data center campus in Abilene. Oracle wants one hundred percent of its AI data center electricity matched with carbon-free power by twenty thirty-five. Big tech needs big power. Wind is answering.Now cross the Atlantic. RWE won one hundred and nineteen megawatts of onshore wind in Germany's latest federal auction. Two projects. The first, Juchen Three. Eighty-four megawatts on reclaimed land at the former Garzweiler coal mine in North Rhine-Westphalia. Wind turbines, on a former coal mine. The second, Seedorf in Lower Saxony. Five old turbines totaling nine megawatts, replaced by five modern machines at thirty-five. Nearly four times the power. Same number of towers. Both projects target twenty twenty-eight.And just north of Germany, Denmark just made a move. The Danish government scrapped its cap on onshore wind turbines. That cap was set in twenty eighteen: eighteen hundred and fifty turbines by twenty forty. The government's own forecast says Denmark will need thirty-three hundred. Climate Minister Samira Nawa said tearing down working turbines because of an old cap would be outrageous. But the Danish Chamber of Commerce warns: more turbines need more grid.Now, back to Rhode Island. Ørsted's Revolution Wind has installed its sixty-fifth and final turbine. Seven hundred and four megawatts. Six-point-two billion dollars. The federal government issued two stop-work orders against this project. Federal judges threw them both out. Revolution Wind kept building. It joins South Fork Wind and Vineyard Wind as the third completed large-scale offshore wind farm in the United States. During Winter Storm Fern, Vineyard Wind showed up big for New England. During the July heat wave, offshore wind kept oil-burning peakers quiet.So here is what matters. Banks are lending at near parity with fossil fuels. Big tech is signing gigawatt-scale wind deals. Turbines are going up despite political headwinds. The constraint now is the grid behind them. Denmark said it this week. Germany's offshore foundation said it last month. The next decade of wind energy growth will be won or lost on transmission and interconnection. Not turbines. Not money. Wires.And that is the state of the wind industry for the 21st of September 2026. Join us for the Uptime Wind Energy podcast tomorrow.Sources:BloombergNEF — Low-Carbon Bank Financing Tops One TrillionCanary Media — Major US Offshore Wind Farm Installs Its Last TurbineDCD — Oracle Signs 1.7GW of Wind Energy Supply Agreements in TexasRWE — RWE Secures 119 MW of Onshore Wind in Latest German AuctionEnergyWatch — Denmark Scraps Onshore Wind Turbine Cap

25. How CNC Onsite Cuts Repair Delays for US Operators

    17.09.202633 Min.Als Nächstes

    Søren Kellenberger, CEO at CNC Onsite, joins to discuss the company's new US office, uptower yaw ring repairs, and blade root insert replacement. Email [email protected] to learn more. The Uptime Wind Energy …

    Shownotes

    Søren Kellenberger, CEO at CNC Onsite, joins to discuss the company's new US office, uptower yaw ring repairs, and blade root insert replacement. Email [email protected] to learn more. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s "Engineering with Rosie" Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Episode Transcript Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy's brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Søren, welcome back to the program. Søren Kellenberger: Thank you very much, Allen. It's a pleasure. Allen Hall: Well, you have some really exciting news in the United States, because CNC Onsite has been growing tremendously. You're now worldwide, and you've established a presence in the United States. Søren Kellenberger: That's correct. We have been working in the US for quite some time, but we see that the demand is definitely there. The North American market has more than 100,000 turbines above one megawatt. So of course it's an interesting market, and we think that now is a good time for us to make that move and establish ourselves in the US. So we are really looking forward to that. Allen Hall: So you've seen a lot of growth in the company over the last couple of years as operators worldwide realize they have problems that they can't solve, and that will only be solved by precision machining, which is what CNC Onsite does. Where have you been doing work lately? I've seen things on LinkedIn from Asia, but I know you guys are pretty busy right now. Søren Kellenberger: As you started saying, we are basically working globally. So we have had technicians in Australia and Japan, and in other Asian countries as well. Our main market is still Europe, where we also started, and we are widely spread across Europe. But the US, including Canada, is becoming a very interesting and important market for us. Maybe the best way to explain it is that even though we are based in Denmark and working out of Denmark, 90% of what we do is outside of Denmark. And once you travel — whether you travel to Finland or if you travel to somewhere in the US — it doesn't make a huge difference. Our technicians are away from home and family anyway, so it's just the language that is a bit different. Allen Hall: What brings people to your business? What are they calling about today? I know the yaw ring was the number one item. That's what I remember as being, when you were getting started, the yaw ring with the teeth being broken. Is that still your number one request, or has that changed? Søren Kellenberger: It is definitely often a door opener, because everyone can relate to that. So it brings a lot of interest to the company. And then when we start talking to customers about other wear issues in the turbine, it often turns out that we start to talk about worn sliding surfaces on the yaw ring, or it can be worn out rotor lock holes, or wear and tear to generator shafts or main shafts. There's a whole lot of mechanical things that obviously get worn when you have a turbine running for so many years and hours. And then we just try to see if we can come up with smart ways to fix it uptower instead of deploying cranes and doing large disassemblies. Allen Hall: That's the real problem. I think a lot of operators realize that they have worn assemblies, but they don't really know of any way to address it, so they just live with it, or they try to accommodate as best they can. With the yaw ring teeth, the way I had seen that until I talked to you was they would get a guy with a welder up there and they'd try to weld these teeth back on. But that's really a temporary fix and it's not a long-term answer. You're doing something that is actually better than what the OEM installed to begin with, right? Søren Kellenberger: Yeah. Instead of welding — and I won't say that welding doesn't have its place, because for smaller repairs welding can be a good fix as well. We do also work with welding companies for certain smaller repairs. But imagine you are up in a very confined space, and when you have to start rebuilding a tooth by welding, the more of the tooth that is missing, the more you need. One thing is the welding, but grinding it back to shape again is also a manual process. It's obvious that the more of a tooth that is missing, the more difficult it is to get that actual shape of the tooth afterwards by grinding. So what we do is that we machine away the damaged teeth, and then we bring prefabricated segments that have the actual shape of the original tooth, so that we get very good contact between the yaw gear and the yaw ring after the repair. And I think that is probably the main reason why welding is sometimes not lasting as long as when you have to rebuild a full tooth and then manually grind it. It's very difficult to get that well-defined contact surface. So you get some peak points where you have higher loads, and that will just fatigue those repairs over time, where we have better chances of getting that very good fix. We get very accurate machining because we use CNC-controlled machining, so our repair is within a few hundredths of a millimeter. Allen Hall: Yeah, absolutely. Well, the other approach besides welding and your approach — and this is what I have seen more recently — is the whole nacelle comes off. So the rotor pops off, they lift the nacelle off with a crane, so they have to have a crane on site, and that's really expensive. And they set the nacelle down, and then they have to go in and physically remove the yaw ring, or these sections of it, and replace it. That is extremely expensive and time-consuming compared to what you're describing. What is the delta in cost, roughly? Søren Kellenberger: That is very difficult to say, because it depends how fast you can actually get a crane out. And I guess there is also, in the US, a huge spread on what the deployment cost is for a crane, how close you are to a local crane center, and what the deployment cost is. Then it also depends on your access roads. If the turbine has been out there for 5 or 10 years, maybe your access roads are unfit for the crane anymore. Your hard stand or the crane pad is not in sufficiently good condition to support your crane. So there can be a lot of extra costs that are adding up — not just the rental of the crane, but the overall cost of preparing it and the whole project management of getting that set up. Then you need your support fixtures to place on the nacelle. You need to get your plates down. So it's a lot of logistics, and just preparing the turbine for disassembly is probably about a week. And then you have all the craning and replacing and putting it back together. So if you say you could have everything ready, your turbine is down for, I would guess, two to three weeks. But in reality, the downtime before you can get a crane out there is much, much longer. And we can basically — we have repairs, spare parts, we have them in stock, so we can basically move out the day after we get the call and get your turbine up and running. Installing a segment, which repairs up to six teeth, takes about a day for us to do. Then we need a day to get up in the turbine and get ready, and a day to get back down. So what takes from several weeks to potentially months before you're up and running again, we can do in just about a week. Allen Hall: In the United States, one of the things I hear a lot of times, particularly dealing with cranes, is that procurement, when they want to buy a fix of some sort, doesn't necessarily consider the cost of the crane, the downtime, all those other factors. Obviously, the engineers on the backside are thinking about that, but when it comes to decisions for your technology, that doesn't always get into the mix. Is that a worldwide problem or an American problem? Because that feels like an American problem. Søren Kellenberger: No, it's not. I think it's a worldwide problem. I think what makes the difference is probably that the turbines are typically a bit older in Europe. So in that way, we are a few years ahead in that life cycle. Procurement and also technical organizations have maybe become a bit more used to including that thinking, where this is still a relatively new issue in the US because your fleet is newer. So I think it will change in the coming years, as it will develop naturally as it has done in Europe. But it's also sometimes the structure of the company — that you have a certain organization that takes care of the main component replacement, and then you have a part of the organization that takes care of day-to-day service. And now you don't need to replace your main component, but the work we do is on the main component, so it sort of falls in between those two areas of responsibility in the company. And that can also sometimes be challenging. Allen Hall: So it's not only that you have to get a crane to do a lot of these repairs that you can now do with CNC Onsite, right, internal to the nacelle — but there's also weather, right? I think the one thing we don't consider a lot of times, or have kind of preconceived notions about, is that the weather's, like, 30% downtime. Yes, if you're working with a crane and you're trying to lift heavy objects, there will be 30% downtime because of weather. But when you're doing the repair in the nacelle, what limitations do you have on weather? Is it a much wider window than a crane would have? Søren Kellenberger: Absolutely. We can work up to much higher wind speeds — basically the same wind speeds that you can do ordinary maintenance work within — because our machine is always mounted on the component that we are machining....

26. Ex-Ørsted Employees in Demand, CIP Orders Goldwind Turbines

    15.09.202623 Min.Als Nächstes

    CIP taps Goldwind for an Australian wind project even as Europe fights Chinese turbines. Plus, Alfanar's $100 million bet on Senvion, and where laid-off Ørsted staff are landing. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast …

    Shownotes

    CIP taps Goldwind for an Australian wind project even as Europe fights Chinese turbines. Plus, Alfanar's $100 million bet on Senvion, and where laid-off Ørsted staff are landing. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s "Engineering with Rosie" Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Episode Transcript The Uptime Wind Energy podcast, brought to you by StrikeTape — protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit StrikeTape.com. And now, your hosts.Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, and I’m here with Rosemary Barnes and Yolanda Padron. And top of the week is Rosemary’s been out and about looking at wind turbines in Australia, and I would like to hear some of the details about that, Rosemary. What did you see out in the wilderness?Rosemary Barnes: You might have to settle for generalities rather than details.Allen Hall: Okay.Rosemary Barnes: I don’t know what’s going on with Australian wind turbines at the moment, but there have been a lot of problems — a lot of lightning damage and a lot of serial defects. That’s the category I’ve been looking at recently. It’s a wide variety, looking at a lot of Australia-specific, or not even Australia-specific, but just local problems. Certain wind farms are getting the same kind of problem over and over again — some of them I’ve never seen anywhere else before. I check in with people like you and other international friends who do similar kinds of work, and some of these damages are just like — everyone’s like, “Well, what is that? I wouldn’t have even believed that was possible.” So that always keeps it really interesting. The last couple of days I’ve spent crawling around inside some blades, getting covered in fiberglass — very reminiscent of my time in the factory, when I used to just be itchy for weeks or months in a row. My hot tip for that: you’ve got to feel the sensation, but it doesn’t bother you. It’s not itching, it’s just zen — zen out, and you can handle being itchy for days in a row.Allen Hall: It’s sort of the hot sauce analogy. Hot sauce is really not burning you, but it just feels like it is, so if you can think it away, it’s just fine. Similar thing. And you’re headed to Denmark and then to Germany pretty soon, right?Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I’m so sad that you’re not going to be able to come, because I’ve got some really cool tours lined up and cool meetings.Allen Hall: Me too.Rosemary Barnes: So yeah, I’ll have more to report back. But definitely anybody who’s going to be at Hamburg — if you’re in Denmark and have something you want to show, feel free to get in touch. I don’t know what that might be. I’ve got some plans currently — it’s pretty jam-packed, itinerary so far, but looking forward. I always love going over.Allen Hall: Well, when you’re in Denmark, you should go by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, Rosie, because they have an Australian project, and the turbines are coming from China. The Gawarra Bayya site is a 408 megawatt project, and CIP has confirmed to Finnos that Goldwind will supply the machines. That lands smack in the middle of the fight between a lot of countries that would like to use Chinese suppliers and the EU Commission, which is really prohibiting it at the moment.So in a sense, we have CIP — a Danish company that’s been pretty much avoiding any sort of Chinese wind turbines in the EU — but once they come out of the EU, they’re perfectly comfortable using Chinese wind turbines in Australia. It does seem like a real contradiction there. And my first thought was, well, Scotland has raised their hand and said, “What the heck — why is it okay for this Danish company to buy Chinese wind turbines and put them in Australia if they’re so afraid of all the technology that’s inside them, and maybe the spying or whatever else the concern is?” Is this going to play out okay, do you think, Rosemary? And especially Yolanda — you’ve worked for a Danish operator. This doesn’t feel right.Rosemary Barnes: I do personally see the contradiction, because Europe is worried about China taking over Europe’s electricity grid. They don’t care what happens to Australia’s electricity grid. Australia doesn’t manufacture any of our own wind turbines, so we don’t care that much. We have so many Chinese solar panels and Chinese cars, and China is our biggest trading partner, so I think we have a lot more comfort with China and Chinese technology in Australia than Europe does. If I’m honest, I think the main reason for Europe’s discomfort is probably primarily to protect their own manufacturing industry, and I don’t disagree with that. So, controversial — is that a hot take?Allen Hall: Well, it sort of is, yeah. I mean, obviously there is a Danish wind turbine manufacturer in CIP’s backyard, so to speak, that they could have easily chosen — Vestas — and put Vestas turbines in. And Vestas is the number one turbine maker in Australia in terms of quantities of turbines. It’s the vast majority Vestas. So it would have made a lot of sense to choose Vestas here. Don’t you think that’s going to create a little bit of tension between the Vestas group and the CIP group?Rosemary Barnes: I don’t know. I don’t think so — I mean, they’re not the same company, right? They’re not sister companies or anything like that. There’s no official relationship other than that they come from the same country.Allen Hall: They’re probably next to one another.Rosemary Barnes: I think you either have a local content requirement, or you allow free competition. It’s a bit weird when you’re somewhere in the middle — officially there’s no local content, but in practice nothing else can be bought. I would rather it all just be on the table, and everyone knows where they stand from the very first days of project planning. You don’t want to get halfway through a project and realize that, even though it’s technically allowed, you’ll never get approval for this, or that the laws might change partway through. I think that’s worse than just knowing from the start that you’ve got to choose European. But in terms of the wind industry going better, I think it’s not a bad thing to see a bunch of different solutions to some of these challenges, and it would be nice if we could all learn from each other and improve.Allen Hall: Well, let me ask you a question here, Yolanda — as you used to work for a Danish operator that is considering using Chinese turbines, at least they haven’t eliminated the possibility of it — is this really just a ploy to push down prices from Vestas and Siemens Gamesa?Yolanda Padron: If it is, it wouldn’t be anything new, right? It’s something that a lot of owner-operators, whether they’re Danish or not, have seen if they can maybe get a lower price. But if they have a fairly homogenous fleet in a country, they might get a site from a different OEM just to prove to themselves, and to their OEM of choice, that they’re not the only ones out there. So this could be something that’s happening. I’m really curious — Rosie, I don’t know if you know, but a lot of times the IT department is all the same in a big company that owns a lot of assets in different countries, and sometimes they’ll try to silo it by continent or by country, or they’ll just keep the same thing everywhere. My understanding was that part of the reason some of these operators didn’t want Chinese wind turbines was because of that whole SCADA system, and everything would have to be integrated into their internal IT. Do you know if they’re siloing their Australian part of their IT department, or their Australian back end, for CIP?Rosemary Barnes: I don’t know about that, but from the sites that I’ve worked with, for the most part, the SCADA system is whoever’s operating the wind farm — that’s their thing. And who is operating this wind farm? I would have assumed it would be Goldwind, because that’s always how it works —Allen Hall: Yeah.Rosemary Barnes: — in Australia, at least. So usually it’s a matter of, if the owner wants to get into the SCADA, they get in and grab it and remove it from the system. It’s not like it’s all integrated. Yeah — it is a good point that maybe this is opening a backdoor into Europe somehow. I can see that as a European regulator, I’d be worried about that, and maybe be requiring something of CIP to ensure that that can’t happen.Allen Hall: Our next story takes us to India, where a Saudi group is writing a $100 million check. Back in a moment.As wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial, 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 industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high-quality content you need. Don’t miss out — visit peswind.com today.Well, Senvion is getting fresh capital, and a lot of it, coming from Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar Group. They’re investing $100 million into Senvion, and obviously Senvion is a huge wind turbine maker in India — Senvion originally started in Germany, and ends up in India. So the first $34 million already went out to Senvion, and the rest follows in the next couple of weeks, so there’ll be a lot of cash floating around at Senvion. Senvion builds about 1.5 gigawatts of turbine capacity a year and has roughly 16 to 17 gigawatts already deployed. The whole effort does seem like a play to expand Senvion internationally, now that India has essentially created a closed marketplace — if you’re going to put turbines into India, the technology must be developed in India, the manufacturing must be in India, the construction companies, everything else, must be India-based....

27. Orsted Wins Tax Fight, Vestas Breaks Onshore Height Record

    14.09.20267 Min.Als Nächstes

    Allen covers Vestas setting the tallest onshore turbine record in Germany, Skyborn's €3B Baltic wind financing close, Orsted's UK tax fight win, and the debate over turbines as national security assets. The …

    Shownotes

    Allen covers Vestas setting the tallest onshore turbine record in Germany, Skyborn's €3B Baltic wind financing close, Orsted's UK tax fight win, and the debate over turbines as national security assets. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s "Engineering with Rosie" Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Episode Transcript Wind Energy News Flash September 14, 2026 Happy Monday, everyone. Wind turbines... are supposed to be a threat to national security. At least... that is what some people say. But the militaries that actually operate near them? They are turning those turbines into weapons of defense. Hold that thought. First... let us go to Germany. In the little town of Winnberg... Vestas just set a record. The tallest onshore wind turbine ever built. An Enventus one-seventy-two... seven-point-two megawatts... sitting on a hub height of one hundred ninety-nine meters. That is taller than a sixty-story building. The tower is a concrete hybrid. A second turbine is planned for next year. Vestas says the height lets the machine reach stronger and steadier winds... which means more energy and more value. Simple idea. Build taller. Capture more. Now stay in Germany... but head north to the Baltic Sea. Skyborn Renewables just closed financing on the Gennaker offshore wind farm. Three billion euros. Nine hundred seventy-six megawatts. Sixty-three turbines. When it is running... Gennaker will produce three-point-eight terawatt-hours a year. Enough to power one million German homes. Sixteen commercial banks and the European Investment Bank put up the money. And Gennaker already has power purchase agreements with Uniper and Amazon. Commercial operations start in twenty twenty-eight. Now... speaking of the European Investment Bank. The EIB just signed a deal with Danske Bank out of Copenhagen. A two hundred fifty million euro guarantee. Here is why that matters. Before a wind turbine maker can build a single machine... it needs a bank guarantee for the buyer. No guarantee... no production. No turbines. No wind farm. This deal lets Danske Bank issue up to five hundred million euros in guarantees to European wind manufacturers. It is the first deal of its kind in the Nordic region under the EU's twenty twenty-three Wind Power Package. The EIB is backing all of this through a six-point-five billion euro wind program... aimed at building thirty-two gigawatts of new capacity. Now cross the English Channel. Ørsted... the Danish offshore wind giant... just won a tax fight. Back in twenty twenty... Danish tax authorities claimed six-point-six billion Danish crowns in taxes... about one billion dollars... on two British wind farms. Walney Extension in the Irish Sea. Hornsea One in the North Sea. Ørsted said those projects were built, owned, and operated by British subsidiaries. They already paid UK tax. An advisory commission under the EU Arbitration Convention just ruled in Ørsted's favor. The projects have genuine purpose in Britain. They are taxable there. Ørsted says the ruling will mean a minor adjustment in Denmark... largely offset by tax reductions in the UK. And Ørsted expects similar cases to be resolved on the same legal principles. Now head across the Atlantic. Danish service company Global Wind Service... GWS for short... just opened a business unit in Canada. GWS has been in the United States since twenty seventeen. They helped build Block Island. Vineyard Wind One. South Fork. Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind. And finally... a quiet deal in Denmark. Polytech... a Danish wind industry supplier... just bought Dansk Gummi Industri. A family-owned company. Founded in nineteen fifteen. Four generations of the same family. Brothers Peter and Christian Thomsen decided it was time to let someone else take the company forward. Dansk Gummi makes transport solutions for moving blades, towers, and nacelles. Polytech now has four hundred sixty employees. CEO Rene Balle says the deal helps Polytech expand beyond wind and into other industries. Now... back to where we started. National security and wind turbines. Defense experts across Europe say the threat is real... but manageable. Yes... spinning blades create false radar returns. But modern phased-array radar can see right through them. The Trump administration itself quietly ordered four hundred thirty-eight million dollars in phased-array radar from Collins Aerospace... a company that markets wind farm radar mitigation as a core feature. And here is the twist. Poland now requires defense sensors on every offshore wind farm. Its first Baltic project sits two hundred kilometers south of Kaliningrad... a Russian military outpost. Sweden's SAAB tested radar on Ørsted's Hornsea One wind farm in twenty twenty-one... and extended surveillance beyond the reach of ground-based systems. The UK ordered eleven of those radar units. Belgium and the Netherlands are doing the same thing. They are not treating wind farms as obstacles. They are turning them into forward surveillance platforms. As one former Danish special forces commander put it... you are changing the battlefield. But it is a change to your advantage if you use it as a tactical lever. Here is the takeaway for the week. The supply chain bottleneck is not turbines or steel. It is guarantees. The EIB-Danske Bank deal tells you where the real friction lives. Manufacturers cannot start work without bank paper. If you are an operator waiting on turbine deliveries... this is the deal that moves your timeline. And if you are still hearing that offshore wind is a security threat... the people who actually defend coastlines are building their radar networks on top of turbines. The threat narrative is not just outdated. It is backwards. And that is the state of the wind industry for the 14th of September 2026. Join us for the Uptime Wind Energy podcast tomorrow.

28. HeliService USA Brings Paramedics to Offshore Wind

    10.09.202637 Min.Als Nächstes

    Michael Tosi and Paul Russo of HeliService USA with Dr. Kenneth Williams discuss their offshore wind air ambulance service and paramedic hoist rescues. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by …

    Shownotes

    Michael Tosi and Paul Russo of HeliService USA with Dr. Kenneth Williams discuss their offshore wind air ambulance service and paramedic hoist rescues. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s "Engineering with Rosie" Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Episode Transcript 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,...

29. Nordex Outsells Vestas, GE Vernova Rebuilds Wind Team

    08.09.202629 Min.Als Nächstes

    Nordex closes in on Vestas in onshore orders, GE Vernova rebuilds its wind team, Nexxis buys BladeBug, and wooden blades draw doubts. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning …

    Shownotes

    Nordex closes in on Vestas in onshore orders, GE Vernova rebuilds its wind team, Nexxis buys BladeBug, and wooden blades draw doubts. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s "Engineering with Rosie" Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Episode Transcript The Uptime Wind Energy podcast, brought to you by StrikeTape. Protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit StrikeTape.com. And now, your hosts Allen Hall: Well, welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall. I'm here with R- Rosemary Barnes, Matthew Stead, and Yolanda Padron, and it is another crazy week in wind energy. Uh, we should start off with GE Vernova, because if you've been following your LinkedIn pages, you will see a number of new faces and even a couple of press releases. And if you do follow wind closely, you know that GE Vernova has been in a little bit of a tailspin, and that won't go on very long before they will try to right that ship. Well, here we go. Uh, GE Vernova, uh, is grabbing a bunch of talent. Claire McDonough, the chief financial officer who took [00:01:00] Rivian, the, the truck maker, through its IPO recently and led its cost-cutting push, uh, is leaving the electric vehicle maker to become the CFO of GE Vernova. So not just wind, the whole kit and caboodle, uh, gas turbines and the, all the transformer businesses. Uh, and she'll start at the beginning of 2027. She replaces, uh, the retiring Ken Parks, and it sounds like Ken is gonna stay on and help Scott Strazik as an advisor, which I'm sure he appreciates. Uh, but, uh, Claire is not the only new face there. Christie Hopkins, who spent more than 26 years at Siemens Energy and Siemens Gamesa, has joined as executive director for Wind North America New Units, leading sales across US, Canada, and Mexico. And then Gio Scialdone, who has been on the podcast many times with 3S Left, is leaving 3S Left. I'm-- That's a big hit, I'm sure. Uh, and he's coming back to GE, where he started at many, many years ago as a technician and built the wind [00:02:00] farm outside my front door when I lived in Massachusetts. He'll come back as global head of, of commercial services and a number of other, uh, repowers and a number of other things. So basically between, uh, Christie and Gio, it sounds like they're gonna cover the planet, uh, for wind energy This is a big change, everybody. Uh, our concern was, was GE gonna shut down the wind division? Yolanda, it looks like they're keeping it and reinforcing it with some really strong candidates. Yolanda Padron: If they can hopefully get everything together and, and get at least the wind side, um, back to where it once was or close to it, uh, it could be a really good win for their operations sites, right? Their operational sites who currently don't really know what the forecast is gonna be for their sites in five, 10 years if GE just goes down. Rosemary Barnes: I was actually watching... There's this new creator, I don't know who they [00:03:00] are, but some creator I've been watching Instagram reels from where they go through just, uh, you know, like, historical things, but mostly related to business or government, and one of the ones that he was talking about that I thought was interesting was about, um, when engineering companies get a non-technical CEO in for the first time, like an MBA type, and what they typically do. And I think that GE is usually, like, the just shining example of how to run businesses in that way. But the typical pattern is, and he had some examples, which I can't recall, so yeah, sorry, my, um, anecdote will be fact-free, but trust me, there are, is some data behind it. But it, it gave the example of, yeah, so the, um, y- you know, like, a traditional engineering company like Boeing might be an example, and GE Vernova would be another one. They build up their strength and dominance by investing a lot in R&D, and all of the technical staff really care about the company and are [00:04:00] all contributing to, um, you know, making sure that they continue to dominate technologically. And then if you get an MBA-type manager in, the sh- the typical pattern goes that they fire a bunch of people that were working in R&D, like reduce the R&D spend massively, reduce the wages of all the technical people. Technical people start to have less say in how the company, um, is managed. And in the short term, they get spectacular results from that, right? You know, profits go massively up if you stop investing in R&D for a few years, um, because, you know, R&D takes quite a while to, to pay off, so you're not gonna notice the pain. You're gonna see the financial benefit immediately. You're not p- notice the pain for ages. And, you know, without going into too d- in-depth analysis about the wind energy companies that are around today, I think if you look at the companies that are going well You see that there are companies that continue to prioritize, um, research and [00:05:00] development and continue to prioritize the opinions of the technical people working for them. And I personally think that GE is maybe gone just a little bit too long with the MBA-type way of running a company. Um, and that, yeah, like that's really great for a little while, but it's not a long-term strategy, and I don't know how you pull back from it. Um, I haven't seen any turnaround stories like that. But yeah, just some, some food for thought that that might be part of the reason why they're struggling. But I would say that 'cause I'm an engineer, and yeah, engineers hate to be managed by non-technical people, so. Allen Hall: I wanna get Gio's title right because he is responsible for a lot at GE Vernova on the wind side. It would be Global Head of Commercial Services and Repower at GE Vernova. So global repower, that's a huge area, and in services, as we know, is one of the profitable areas within GE Vernova Wind. Very important position, and he's an engineer [00:06:00] That's good Maybe Rosemary Barnes: that's the start of the comeback, comeback king. Allen Hall: It, it def- definitely could be. Yeah. Well, the numbers are in for the first half of 2026, and Europe is having the best wind year ever. Wind Europe reported, uh, 8.8 gigawatts of new capacity installed in the first six months, uh, up 30% from the same period last year. Germany alone put up more than 500 turbines. That's quite a few. Uh, but behind those numbers, there's another story that is unfolding, which is Nordex, the German turbine maker, is closing in on Vestas, the Danish wind tu- turbine maker, in the onshore market. Uh, in August, Nordex booked more than twice the megawatts that Vestas did. Uh, a Danske Bank analyst says Nordex has been quicker on its feet, picking up market share that left behind b- by Siemens Gamesa and GE Vernova. Uh, although [00:07:00] Vestas is still way out in front in, in terms of total gigawatts that they're gonna produce. This is an interesting shift, right? I mean, we've been li- seeing this the last, ooh, year or so, where Nordex is picking up clients that were formerly GE Vernova or are even, like, massively dedicated to GE Vernova or Siemens Gamesa. Uh, it does seem like there's an opening there, and so far, at, at least people we've talked to, uh, from the Weather Guard side, l- literally like Nordex. They like the response to problems and questions and things that maybe they hadn't seen out of other suppliers. Was this unexpected, or is this a, a sort of a natural outgrowth of where Nordex is headed? Rosemary Barnes: Is this one year of this trend, or is it, has it been growing for a few? I, Allen Hall: I think it's been growing for a couple. It's been growing Rosemary Barnes: for a few years Matthew Stead: now. Isn't it one month? Yeah. One month? Allen Hall: It's one month, but if you- ... if you beat Ves- if you beat Vestas at all and you're Nordex, think, if you look, think [00:08:00] about four or five years ago, and I've, if I said Nordex had outsold Vestas, and maybe it had happened, uh, but it would just seem implausible Rosemary Barnes: Yeah Allen Hall: that that would Rosemary Barnes: even occur No, I mean, if it's, if it's several years then, then fair enough, that's a turn. I just say that because y- you know, most of this capacity is offshore, right? And offshore projects are so lumpy. You, you know, like, when you make a sale, you make, like, a gigawatt sale. Um, and so I think it's pretty hard to take, like, a single year, or even, like, within a couple of years it could still be the same project. So, um, that's one point. And then the other point is, like, when you look at the breakdown of, uh, what did we say? Europe put in 8.8 gigawatts, and 3.4 of that was in Germany. I think European countries do tend to be a little bit, like, protective of their own companies. Or, I mean, ev- it's natural for, for everyone, you know, has some sort of preference- Mm whether it's explicit encouragement or support, or whether it's just, like, a warm, fuzzy feeling that you have for a company that's from your [00:09:00] country. I think that that possibly has something to do with it. So yeah, if I would no- if I was Nordex, I would see this as encouraging and probably not just consider it a slam dunk from here. But, you know, something to, to grow on. 'Cause I, I know traditionally German companies have had some trouble succeeding as much outside of Germany as within it. Matthew Stead: Mm. I think this is a good example of the, the last discussion we had about GE. I mean, you know, Nordex, Vestas, Siemens, Gamesa are investing in their development, investing in their technology, improving the quality. ...

30. Siemens Gamesa Builds Hornsea Blades, NEMS Invests in Perth

    07.09.20266 Min.Als Nächstes

    Siemens Gamesa starts Hornsea 3 blade production in Hull, Germany approves an Offshore Wind Act amendment, and Nexxis buys BladeBUG. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning …

    Shownotes

    Siemens Gamesa starts Hornsea 3 blade production in Hull, Germany approves an Offshore Wind Act amendment, and Nexxis buys BladeBUG. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s "Engineering with Rosie" Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Episode Transcript Uptime News FlashSeptember 7, 2026Happy Monday, everyone. Well, let's talk about the biggest wind farm on earth. It doesn't exist yet, but its blades are being built right now. Over in Hull, England, Siemens Gamesa just started making blades for Ørsted's Hornsea 3 offshore wind farm. That's two point nine gigawatts, one hundred and ninety-seven turbines. Each blade is longer than a football pitch. Fourteen hundred workers build blades in that factory, turning raw materials into finished product. When complete, Hornsea 3 will power more than three million British homes. It's the single largest offshore wind farm in the world.And if we slide over to Germany for a moment, the German cabinet just approved an amendment to the Offshore Wind Act, the WindSeeG. It's headed to the Bundestag next. The goal? New rules by January first, twenty twenty-seven. But the Offshore Wind Energy Foundation says the draft does not go far enough. Sixteen gigawatts of awarded projects are still waiting on final investment decisions. Sixteen — that's quite a few. The foundation wants a new way for developers to hand back sites they can't build, so those sites can be re-tendered quickly under conditions that actually work. Sort of a use-it-or-lose-it approach. That's the idea.We'll head a little further east to India. India ranks fourth in the world for installed wind power, but probably not for long. A government official said this week that India will overtake Germany and become the world's third-largest wind energy nation by twenty thirty — one hundred seven gigawatts of installed capacity. India added a record six gigawatts last year alone, shattering their previous record of a little over four gigawatts. And twenty-eight more gigawatts are under construction right now. Impressive.Let's head down to Western Australia, because a company called National Electric Motor Services, NEMS for short, is building a one million dollar facility in Perth to test and repair wind turbine generators. Right now, Australian wind farm operators ship their broken generators overseas for repairs, and that takes months. NEMS is the only authorized service center for ELIN Motoren in all of Western Australia. This is the fifth project funded through Australia's Wind Energy Manufacturing Co-investment program. Local repair, faster turnaround, and homegrown capability — that's all good.And staying in Australia, Perth-based Nexxis Technology just bought a British robotics company, BladeBUG. BladeBUG is a robot that uses suction cups to crawl across wind turbine blades. Nexxis already has a robot called Magneto that uses electromagnetic adhesion to climb steel structures. If you put the two together, you can inspect almost any surface on a turbine, or about anything else. Add AI and machine vision, and you have robots that can see what human eyes might miss, from places human hands shouldn't have to reach. It's safer, faster, and it's going to be a lot smarter.One more story before we finish today. Siemens Gamesa has now installed more than 300 recyclable blades in six countries. The secret is a new resin. Unlike conventional resins, this one lets you separate the blade components at end of life, so you can separate the fabric from the resin. Cool stuff. Jonas Pagh Jensen, head of sustainability at Siemens Gamesa, says the technology is ready for full-scale use. And Siemens Gamesa has already installed 36 GreenerTower units — steel towers with 63% lower carbon emissions. So although sustainability may have faded from the headlines, it's still in tender documents, and it's showing up more than ever. In Denmark, the Netherlands, and France, buyers are all asking about recyclability and decarbonization before they award contracts.So what should you be watching this week? Recyclability is no longer a nice-to-have — it's a must-have, and it's showing up in tender scoring. If your blades can't be recycled at end of life, you may not win the contract to begin with. And a lot of supply chains are going local. Australia doesn't want to ship generators overseas anymore. India is building its own turbine factories. The countries buying wind power want it built at home. For professionals in the wind industry, the competitive edge is shifting — it's not just who can build the best turbine, it's who can build it locally, recycle it fully, and inspect it without putting a person in a harness.

    Transkript

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