The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

James Timmins, VP of Engineering at Everpoint Services, joins to discuss how recycled wind turbine blades become BladeBlok, a drilling fluid additive for oil, gas, and geothermal wells. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow Allen Hall: James, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. There has been a lot of activity at EverPoint Services. So I wanna back up first because if you’re not familiar with EverPoint Services, they are a recycler f- for renewable projects.  James Timmins: So we’re a, a renewable energy service company that specializes in, um, decommissioning and remediation services for, uh, wind and solar assets. Allen Hall: So when a solar farm gets hit by hail and the panels are broken, EverPoint comes up and cleans up that mess to, to allow the repair to happen.  James Timmins: Correct, yes.  Allen Hall: And on the wind turbine side, you’re t- decommissioning wind turbines, but you’re also taking the [00:01:00] blades.  James Timmins: Yes. So it’s our responsibility to haul off the damaged, I guess, the scrap. And, um, obviously there’s a very healthy market for scrap steel that you find in the tower base- Yes … but the fiberglass is a little less straightforward when it comes to disposal and/or recycling.  Allen Hall: So typically with the fiberglass blades or any composite that’s, that’s being recycled, th- there’s really two techniques that are being implemented right now. Uh, well, really three. Let’s go over three of ’em. One of ’em is you can just bury them. They’re c- essentially construction materials, so you can bury them. Not ideal, but it has happened in the past. The second is they grind up the, the blades and use ’em in, uh, c- the cement-making process, where they’re burning some of the things that are combustible there and using it for fuel, but also the fiber can help with the cement. Does, does that sound right? Correct. And, and then the third one I’ve seen is just as a reinforcement product. [00:02:00] So it’s, uh, they chop up the fiber in different lengths, they clean it up, and you can u- use it as an additive to different products. Yes. And, and that generally has been the marketplace in the blade recycling area for- Going on 20 years now probably Yes Until now. And that’s where Everpoint has really changed the game because you’re thinking about blade recycling a completely different way.  James Timmins: Correct. So my background is oil and gas. I was a drilling engineer, uh, for major oil companies, so it was my job to plan, execute, and oversee drilling operations. So I worked kind of all over the world, and this project started as an icebreaker at a friend’s birthday. I had never met Tyler Goodell before. I- Wait,  Allen Hall: wait, wait. So you’re at a birthday party-  James Timmins: Yes …  Allen Hall: and your kids are having fun. They’re eating cake. Oh,  James Timmins: we were at a dive bar, so we- Oh, okay … yeah, watching a band, uh- … sitting over a bucket of Lone Stars and yeah.  Allen Hall: Okay. That’s the [00:03:00] best place for new ideas to occur clearly. So you’re, you’re, you’re at a birthday event, you’re hanging out, and what happens?  James Timmins: He asked me what, what I would do with tens of thousands of tons of scrap fiberglass.  Allen Hall: And you get asked that every day, or is it- No. Okay.  James Timmins: And I thought it was a weird question, and I kinda put it in the back of my mind. And about 15 minutes later I was like, “Well, I have an idea that we could, uh- Put at least some of that to work. Allen Hall: And what was that idea?  James Timmins: The idea was that we could grind it to a specific particle size distribution and use it as a fluid loss additive in oil, gas, and geothermal drilling operations.  Allen Hall: Okay. That’s a unique application.  James Timmins: Yes.  Allen Hall: So I think we need to walk into what happens when we’re drilling an oil well or any sort of well, I suppose. Uh, there’s unique things that happen that require specialty fluids or specially …  James Timmins: Uh, specialty additives you could say. Additives.  Allen Hall: Yes. [00:04:00] So- Okay. That’s a, that’s a good way to describe it. All right. So, uh, I’m drilling a well. I’m in Texas. I’m an oil tycoon. I wanna drill this well. What am I doing?  James Timmins: So you have what’s called drilling mud, which is pumped down the drill string through the bit. Um, helps cool the bit, um, power down hole tools, and sweep the cuttings out, which is the- Okay … drilled up rock.  Allen Hall: Yep.  James Timmins: So there’s a, a hydrostatic pressure that the fluid column exerts on the formation. And if that fluid column exerts more pressure than the formation can stand, it splits open like a fracture. Allen Hall: Okay.  James Timmins: In this case, an accidental fracture. Or you could have just a porous formation of, uh, low pressure. And so you have this pressure imbalance from the wellbore where the fluid wants to flow to the area of low pressure. And, uh, this mud is $300 or $400 a barrel. And if you’re- Whoa … losing 100 barrels an hour, the costs add up really quick. Can’t drill ahead. Um, it’s what’s called non-productive time. [00:05:00] So you’re spending 80 or $100,000 a day for all this equipment to be out there, and you’re not drilling ahead, so.  Allen Hall: Okay. So as the, the drill bit goes down into the formation, you’re hitting rock. You hit a crack in a rock, or you create a crack in a rock. All your drilling mud, and it’s not really mud, right? No, it’s- It’s, it’s a special compound-  James Timmins: Yes … that we call mud. Very,  Allen Hall: uh,  James Timmins: yeah, it’s drilling fluid, I guess, is the technical term. Okay . But, um- I’ve  Allen Hall: heard mud used universally.  James Timmins: It kinda looks like chocolate milk most of the time.  Allen Hall: There you go. Yeah. Okay. So it’s an expensive fluid. You’re pushing it down in, but then you get a, a crack or a formation that you run into, and all that precious fluid goes running off somewhere else. Yep. So which it doesn’t allow you to cool the bit, which basically stops all drilling.  James Timmins: Correct.  Allen Hall: Okay, that’s a big problem.  James Timmins: And in worst case scenario, the fluid column falls and the pressure on the formation falls, and then the well starts flowing and you have a well control problem, so. Allen Hall: So now you got a big problem.  James Timmins: Yep. [00:06:00] Allen Hall: All right. So now you have fluid coming back at you that you’re not ready for.  James Timmins: Correct, yeah.  Allen Hall: Okay, that seems like quite the mess.  James Timmins: Yeah, so it’s actually one of the… You know, in some parts of the world, one of the top drivers of non-productive time and cost. So it’s a, kind of a problem as old as the oil field itself, but… Allen Hall: Okay, c- ’cause at the end of the day, you would like to have a specific hole tapped at a specific location pulling-  James Timmins: Yes …  Allen Hall: hopefully petroleum products from that area or whatever you’re going for. It’s could, could be gas- Yeah … uh, off of that site, but you have to have some constraints about it, right? Right. You d- d- to control everything. Okay. So n- that sets the problem. All right. We’re gonna run to this, uh, area where we’ve, we’ve cracked the found- the, the rock or there’s porous rock and we’re pumping this, a really expensive fluid down it and we would like to stop that from happening. How does that end up involving wind turbine blade recycling? James Timmins: So we grind this material to a specific size and you mix it at a certain [00:07:00] concentration. Could be two pounds per barrel of mud or 80, uh, depending on the severity of the losses. But, um, this mixture is pumped down into the formation and this, um, kind of acts like a… Technical term is bridging. So this, these fibers from the recycled turbine blades cannot fit through all of the pore spaces. Sure. And gradually they be- begin to accumulate on the wall of the, the wellbore. So they- Okay … uh, eventually it’s kinda like a clogged sink with… You know, you get enough- So you get enough hair in the sink … chopped vegetables. Yeah. Yeah. It, it eventually will stop flowing.  Allen Hall: Oh, well, who hasn’t experienced that? So it’s, it’s… So you, you wanna put things down into this hole that prevent the fluid from running off. Recycled blades seems like a very viable option just because it’s in an inert substance, it’s pretty durable.  James Timmins: It is.  Allen Hall: It’s tough. It can handle high temperatures [00:08:00] and it now can be pumped.  James Timmins: Yes.  Allen Hall: Wow. All right. So that’s a, that’s a remarkable idea. But ideas and products, there’s usually a long distance between those two.  James Timmins: Correct, yes.  Allen Hall: So from initial concept to where you are today, walk through what you had to go do to make this into a real product.  James Timmins: Uh, so we… I basically have- was familiar with these types of products in the past, but at the level I was at, I was not getting into the granular detail-  Allen Hall: Sure James Timmins: of the qualification of the product, of the spec of the product. So, um, I kind of had to do a lot of research reading technical papers online about product development for this particular type of product. So, um, I started with a, basically in my garage, um, a geologist sieve. Okay. I got a sample of shredded fiberglass, which I think was, was like five-inch shred. So I [00:09:00] bought a blender from Target, not knowing what else to use, and I stuffed it down in, with a crescent wrench and blended it up and broke the blender and eventually got enough usable material to, uh, start testing it in a lab. And so-  Allen Hall: Oh …  James Timmins: there are third-party labs that do these kind of tests, and they’re all industry standard, um, prescribed methods, so they’re called mud checks and, uh, what’s called a pore plugging apparatus, which is like a, either a ceramic disc that’s simulates a formation and it’s porous, it’s got a certain permeability, or you have what’s called a slotted liner, which is a stainless steel plate with two-millimeter slots on it. And you put the mixture in, and you pressurize it, and if it stops it, then you know it works. So- So  Allen Hall: you’re plugging a hole- Yeah … in a laboratory,  James Timmins: basically. Exactly, and it’s under high temperature and pressure, so it’s designed to simulate kinda downhole conditions. But-  Allen Hall: [00:10:00] Wow. Yeah Okay, so- Got a  James Timmins: little into the weeds,  Allen Hall: but So you’re, no, you’re in your garage, you chop up some material, you go, “All right, let’s go check this out.” You, you get a, a- an independent laboratory to try it, and they say it works.  James Timmins: Yes.  Allen Hall: And then it’s, then you’re off to the races now because- Well, that’s what I thought … you opened Pandora’s box  James Timmins: Yeah … a  Allen Hall: little  James Timmins: bit. So I was not expecting how much, how rigorous the t- the qualification would be on the industry side as well. Right. Sure. Yeah So, um, that was kind of the starting line for, uh, product qualification, but, um, I had a very coarse particle size, thinking that would be adequate because I was not familiar with what’s actually used.  Allen Hall: What the ingredients are, yeah.  James Timmins: Right. So, um, I was kinda shopping it around to friends, and they’re like, “It’s a niche product where it is right now. It needs to be finer.” So that’s kind of been the process is, okay, it needs to be [00:11:00] this particle size D50, which is 50th percentile mean particle size, basically. And so then the question is how do we get there? And- Right … so- Grinding composites  Allen Hall: can be difficult because- It is … they’re tough, and they’re, as you have learned with the, the- The- blender experiment  James Timmins: Right … chopping them is not easy. Right. Very abrasive, uh, very high tensile strength. It’s basically designed not to be cut or not to be torn. Um-  Allen Hall: Right. That’s why we love it …  James Timmins: not to be, not to ever degrade in weather. So it has been an ongoing Kind of research project to find out what’s the best equipment for this, uh, can we do this at, you know, a reasonable cost? ‘Cause it’s not gonna be as cheap as grinding up or, you know, picking up sawdust from a sawmill or- Right … or chopping up cedar trees or whatever. So- Which  Allen Hall: are generally soft and easy to, to chop and-  James Timmins: Right. And not nearly as abrasive and so- Right … we [00:12:00] have identified, um, a process that we think is economical, and we’ve demonstrated it in, you know, kind of a small commercial run. But, uh, you know, it’s kind of going back and forth to consumers and them saying, “We want this product size,” and then me going back and forth to our partners saying, “Can we do this? Can we do a lot of it? Can we do it-”  Allen Hall: Right. The quantity’s gonna  James Timmins: be big. Right. Exactly. So, you know, talking to equipment manufacturers, they’ll all tell you that their product, their, their machine can handle this material. And they’re usually all right, but, you know- Can they  Allen Hall: handle the quantity?  James Timmins: Exactly. Without- They can do it for a month, or, you know, six months, and then it’s, well, do we have to overhaul the whole machine now ’cause this- That’s it … yeah.  Allen Hall: It’s, those composites are rough on blades.  James Timmins: Yep.  Allen Hall: So you’ve, you’ve broken through that barrier. You obviously have figured out a way to, to chop the material down or grind the material down into the right particle size. So [00:13:00] now you have a material that is, one, clean, is using existing blades right off the turbines, being ground down, and is a, a product that will be consumed by industry in large quantities. James Timmins: Yes.  Allen Hall: So all these blades that have, that were gonna be recycled anyway because of the age of the turbine now have a home-  James Timmins: Yes …  Allen Hall: in the oil and gas industry, which is sort of ironic, right? Right. The renewable industry is taking over oil and gas. At the same time, we’re supporting it in a way, but, uh, the product is called what? James Timmins: BladeBlock.  Allen Hall: BladeBlock. Okay. Great name. So BladeBlock is then, is a product that’s, it comes in a, in a bag, or is it a cylinder? Is it a truckload?  James Timmins: Comes in whatever the customer wants it to come in.  Allen Hall: Okay.  James Timmins: So 50-pound sacks, uh, super sacks, or bulk trucks.  Allen Hall: So it must have a really unique, uh, application i- in terms of, I have a big problem where I can’t use off-the-shelf expensive mud. I need to f- fill this hole relatively quickly. [00:14:00] I’m just gonna go grab some BladeBlock and solve this problem right now.  James Timmins: Yes.  Allen Hall: And, and it… So that changes the industry quite a bit. So places that you may have had trouble drilling wells in, you can now drill wells.  James Timmins: Yes.  Allen Hall: That’s remarkable. So what has been the response from the industry? James Timmins: Uh, they love it. Um- I bet … they love the idea. They, they kind of giggle at the irony of- … you know, oil and gas solving a renewable problem. Um, and-  Allen Hall: And a renewable problem solving an oil and gas problem.  James Timmins: Right. We are selling on the performance and the cost of the product, but there is also a sustainability and circular economy, you know, aspect as well that is marketable, and there’s still an appetite on both the operator side and the oil field service side for that. Allen Hall: This is not a… We’re in Texas at the moment, but this is not a Texas, Oklahoma, N- uh, New Mexico kind of problem. You’re actually fixing problems globally with BladeBlock.  James Timmins: Yes.  Allen Hall: So the product is, [00:15:00] although made in the United States, can be shipped anywhere I would assume. Yep. So, uh, y- are you getting any requests outside of the United States for it? James Timmins: We have talked to overseas partners, I guess, kind of industry leaders overseas, and there is definitely some interest. Um, we are also talking to, uh, service companies domestically headquartered who have operations internationally who have expressed interest in, uh, using it overseas. But, I mean, right now, you know, we’re close enough to the ship channel that we can ship it wherever they want it. That’s amazing.  Allen Hall: And it’s a patented product also,  James Timmins: right? Yes. So- We are in the… I guess, we’ve received our notice of allowance, and we’re in the final stages of issuance, so.  Allen Hall: So you have a, a patented, US patented, or is it, is it a world patent? Are you, you going outside the United States- Uh, we will … on patent? James Timmins: Yes.  Allen Hall: Wow. All right. So you have eventually a somewhat global patent, so to speak. That’s not how it works, but it… that’s essentially [00:16:00] what you’ll have, uh, for BladeBlock to solve problems globally. Would, would that also involve, like, offshore wells too? Yes. Do they have the same problem? So I’m thinking of Texas ’cause we’re here, but offshore of the coast of Norway where they’re drilling wells, or in the North Sea or-  James Timmins: Persian Gulf. Yeah …  Allen Hall: Persian Gulf, sure, that they can use BladeBlock to solve some of their problems- Yes … which they couldn’t have solved today.  James Timmins: Yeah.  Allen Hall: So d- have they abandoned wells because of this problem?  James Timmins: Yes. Um, especially in certain formations you have what are called vugs, which are basically just large limestone caves that have been-  Allen Hall: Limestone  James Timmins: is tough. Yeah … so you can put a whole car down there if you want- … and, uh, still not fill it in. So, um, you know, this product, it basically is practically inexhaustible from you know, it’s… We’re kind of only limited by how much we can manufacture on- How much you can  Allen Hall: process …  James Timmins: right. So, um- It’s kind of a good problem to have for us, but  Allen Hall: [00:17:00] Yes. It changes the whole dynamic of blade recycling, because the blade recycling effort up to this point has been the operator or the OEM pays the recycler to grind the blades, and then they have to find a way to source out that material. But the, basically everybody’s trying to reuse the material because it, it does have value. How do we best reuse this, right? This is what the recycling efforts are on the recyclable blade, uh, resin systems that are happening. But you’re just taking the existing blades that weren’t meant to be recycled and recycling now in a product that has a lot of value.  James Timmins: Correct, yes. So obviously the biggest challenge everyone faces is the economics of it. And you-  Allen Hall: You know how many people have been working on that problem? Literally thousands of people have been working that problem, and you guys figured it out at a birthday event.  James Timmins: Yeah, uh- … totally out of left field. Um, it, it just, it’s one of those things that sticks in the back of your head, and you think about it for 10 minutes, and you’re like, “Oh, uh, why-” But  Allen Hall: I have [00:18:00] a, I have a solution. Like, we can use it here. Yeah, which, you know, most people, that would never have occurred to.  James Timmins: Right. And it’s kind of a technical rabbit hole, like the drilling fluid is- It is … it’s, it’s, so it’s not a whole lot of people out there thinking about lost circulation material- … uh, on a daily basis. Um, but that was, you know… The problem with so many of these applications is you’re competing with, in some cases, literal dirt and sand. We pay f- five cents a pound for sand or concrete filler, fly ash, whatever, and it’s like, well, you’re never gonna process it that cheap, or you’re never gonna way to, to be able to economically process it that cheaply, so. Allen Hall: Sure, but there’s unique applications where those things don’t work.  James Timmins: Right.  Allen Hall: And you can now make an unprofitable drill hole profitable.  James Timmins: Yes.  Allen Hall: That’s a game changer. So this is remarkable, and I, I know you guys have been working on this for a couple of years, and it’s, EverPoint has always been, [00:19:00] and we’ve talked to EverPoint for a couple of years now on the podcast of, when we talk to recyclers, we don’t act- we actually have talked to a number of recyclers, but we don’t have them on the podcast because it’s, seems like the amount of material coming into their facility and the amount of material going out are not the same. Correct. They’re landfilling them or whatever’s going on, which is, it, it to me is trouble, right?  James Timmins: Right.  Allen Hall: You, your, EverPoint has always been, “We are actually gonna do what we say we’re gonna do. We’re gonna take the solar panels, we’re gonna recycle, we’re gonna…” You’ll be able to follow it. Correct, yeah. Which is one of the technologies that EverPoint brought, is you could follow your recycling product all the way from the site to where it finally ended up at. That was remarkable. That was an industry-changing, uh, idea, and I appreciate that EverPoint was doing that. Now, you’re actually turning it into a viable product called Blade Block. Game changer. Now, our podcast is probably not heard by a lot of oil and gas folk, but the, you know, the word does spread and we [00:20:00] have almost two million YouTube subscribers at this point. How do people get ahold of you to purchase BladeBlock? Do they go onto your website? Are they-  James Timmins: Yeah. I mean, LinkedIn, website.  Allen Hall: Okay. However.  James Timmins: Yeah.  Allen Hall: So- And, and what’s your website address?  James Timmins: It’s everpointservices.com.  Allen Hall: Okay. And you’re based in Texas?  James Timmins: We are. Houston.  Allen Hall: In Houston, right. So the, everybody that is interested in having improved oil and gas drilling mud, uh, can use BladeBlock now, and it’s a viable product that’s being offered, it’s patented, it’s gonna ship globally. It’s the right time and it’s the right way to recycle your blades. So if you have a, a wind turbine farm that’s being decommissioned, there’s a lot of repowering happening right now, uh, there should be a lot of, of blade material available to make BladeBlock with. So congratulations. That’s remarkable. James Timmins: Thank you so much.  Allen Hall: James, so thank you so much for being on the podcast. Of course. It was great to meet you.  James Timmins: Nice to meet you as  [00:21:00] well.

Allen covers Invenergy returning four offshore wind leases for $765 million, a Block Island study finding turbines became reefs, RES’s Smart Pilot drone inspections, RWE’s three new French wind farms, and a $12 billion Japan-UK floating wind compact. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Good Monday everyone. There is a deal being made in Washington today … and the ocean is watching. Invenergy, the largest privately held power developer in North America, has agreed to hand back four offshore wind leases to the federal government. The price tag … seven hundred sixty-five million dollars. Those leases covered waters off New York, the Gulf of Maine, and Morro Bay off central California. One of those projects … Leading Light Wind … a two-point-four gigawatt development in the New York Bight … had already been canceled last November due to economic and regulatory pressure. The remaining three lease areas represented another four-point-eight gigawatts of potential capacity. All of it … gone. In exchange, Invenergy will redirect that capital into natural gas plants in Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri … and into geothermal projects across the Western United States. This is now the eighth offshore wind lease the Trump administration has bought out. Total cost to the federal government across all eight deals … more than two-point-five billion dollars. Seven state attorneys general are already suing over an earlier buyout with another developer, arguing the administration lacks legal authority to use federal funds this way. Invenergy is already pivoting toward geothermal. Just last week, the company acquired a five thousand-acre geothermal parcel in New Mexico through a federal lease sale. That brings its total federal geothermal footprint to forty-five parcels … one hundred forty-four thousand acres … across five western states. While Invenergy’s offshore leases are being canceled … the ocean beneath those kinds of projects may be quietly thriving. Scientists have spent seven years studying the Block Island Wind Farm off the coast of Rhode Island … America’s first offshore wind installation. They tracked nearly a million marine animals across seventy-one species. What they expected to find was damage. What they found instead … was astounding. Black sea bass abandoned their old wandering patterns and began clustering around the turbine foundations to feed. Blue mussels colonized the steel pylons. Macroalgae spread across the submerged surfaces. Cod, lobster, and reef fish moved into the rock piled around the bases. The turbines became reefs. Accidental … but unmistakable. Researchers at the University of St. Andrews strapped GPS trackers to harbor seals expecting them to flee offshore wind farms. Instead … the seals swam straight lines through the turbine rows … stopping to forage at each foundation … like a delivery driver working a route. One seal traced the turbine layout so precisely that researchers said you could have mapped every foundation from that single animal’s trail alone. Researchers are finding a sobering conclusion: whether a turbine helps the ocean or hurts it depends almost entirely on how old it is … and where it stands. New foundations going in … disruptive. Old foundations with fifteen years of growth on them … something closer to a reef. The science is finally precise enough to say which is which. The seals figured it out years ago. They just went where the food was … in very straight lines. Meanwhile, on dry land … RES, the global renewable energy company, has launched a new tool called Smart Pilot that automates wind turbine blade inspections using drones. RES says it will take twenty-five percent less time. And it runs on standard DJI consumer drone hardware … no proprietary equipment required. RES currently supports approximately forty-five gigawatts of installed renewable capacity worldwide. And over in France … RWE has officially opened three new wind farms in northern France. Combined capacity: sixty-eight-point-eight megawatts. Together, they will power approximately thirty-eight thousand French households with electricity from the wind. The projects took a decade from development to inauguration. The turbines are spinning now. And over in the UK, Japan and the United Kingdom have signed an Offshore Wind Compact committing Japan to facilitate up to nine billion British pounds … roughly twelve billion dollars … in investment for five-point-nine gigawatts of floating offshore wind in British waters. Three projects underpin the deal. Ossian … three-point-six gigawatts … Green Volt … five hundred sixty megawatts … and Erebus … a one hundred megawatt demonstration project planned for the Celtic Sea. The United Kingdom called it a long-term structural measure. Not a reaction to the moment. But a bet on the future. There are many roadblocks ahead for offshore and onshore wind. That is clear. Invenergy turning over their offshore leases feels more like financial leveraging than an internal philosophy shift. At some point in the relatively near future Invenergy can probably buy back those leases at a fraction of the cost. Because wind energy — along with solar energy — is only getting cheaper. And economics eventually wins. And the worry about sea life due to offshore turbines — that worry seems misplaced. And that’s the state of the wind industry for the 22nd of June 2026. Join us tomorrow for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

A federal court restores the 5% safe harbor for wind tax credits, Norway’s parliament pauses the 35 billion krone Utsira Nord floating wind program, and the crew digs into Australia’s battery boom and the looming blade technician shortage. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Uptime324 Matthew Stead: [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 this edition of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m Allen Hall here with Matthew Stead, Rosemary Barnes, and Yolanda Padron. And our week starts off in the courtroom. And if you’ve been watching the news lately, there’s a pretty substantial IRS case involving large-scale wind and solar having to do with the, uh, production tax credit and, uh, investment tax credit at the same time on the safe harbor, 5% safe harbor rule. Uh, a federal judge handed the wind industry and solar industry a pretty substantial legal win that could reshape how the [00:01:00] projects qualify for tax credits. So a judge up in, uh, the District of Columbia vacated IRS Notice 2025-42. So if you remember that, uh, from a- about a year or so ago, uh, f- it found that the, that notice was arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act. The notice, which was issued following a July 2025 executive order, had eliminated the 5% safe harbor for wind projects, uh, a provision developers have relied on since about 2013 to establish construction start dates without breaking ground. The court found the IRS failed to justify removing it, ignored industry comments, which I had read, and I agree with that, and gave no reason for treating wind differently f- than other clean energy technologies. So That his executive order came down and said, “Hey, we don’t like wind. [00:02:00] IRS, write a rule and make it hard for wind to get installed in the United States.” And so they dutifully did it, but a court is throwing it out. This has some pretty significant implications because if you hadn’t broken ground before this ruling, I think the– what was happening was be- if you hadn’t broken ground by July 4th, your project wouldn’t qualify for some tax credits. But now, if you have 5% safe harbor, you still are in the game, at least for now. Now, Wanda, that’s gonna make a big difference to asset managers and developers, won’t it?  Yolanda Padron: Yeah, it’s really exciting. I think it opens up the, the playing field for, for some of these projects that might be a little bit behind schedule. Um, of course, a lot of teams had to change their plans and their pipeline when, um, you know, the big, beautiful bill passed and, I mean, it’s– of course, it adds a little bit of additional volatility, right, to, to wind and, and solar in the US, but it’s exciting to see at least things for, [00:03:00] for those of us that are in the wind and solar side, the, it’s a little, little bit of, of hope there. Allen Hall: And Matthew, uh, even in terms of opening up o-o-operations and, uh, getting contracts signed, this should make a big difference in sort of opening the floodgates a little bit. Although there is a short timeframe. We’re, we’re recording on, what, what is today? June 10th. So you have, in theory, less than 30 days before the July 4th deadline, but hopefully this stays. You think there’s a chance this just gets completely, uh, wiped out, the executive order and the IRS notice and- It’s back to what we remember for the, for the last, ooh, 12, 13 years?  Matthew Stead: Uh, yeah. I’m, I’m, I’m hopeful, and I, I agree with Yolanda. I think you, you said it really well. Um, I think this is a, a glimmer of hope in, um, a sometimes gloomy, um, environment. So I think that’s great. In terms of going back to where it was, um, I mean, I guess my observation has been that, [00:04:00] you know, things in the US were a bit, um, distorted. You know, distorted through the, the PTC, um, and the whole repowering thing after 10 years is quite a distortion. So I think, um, you’re not necessarily going back to the good old days, um, might be the way, what will happen. Allen Hall: I think there is a lot of people actively trying to dig holes at the moment, and I, I’m sure they’re gonna continue to do that. Yolanda, do you th- you think anybody’s gonna stop and kinda say, “Oh, we have the 5% rule. We’re, we’re good”? Do you think, or you think they’re gonna still go ahead and really start construction and then just keep things continually moving on site? Yolanda Padron: I don’t think they, they can really stop, right? Because you, you don’t know if, if anything strange happens. A lot of people didn’t think the, a lot of the provisions in the big beautiful bill were gonna, were gonna see the light of day, and they did. Um, but it does, I really hope it brings at least a little bit of breathing room for some people. I know it’s, it must be… I mean, I have some friends in development, and they’re, they’re q- a little [00:05:00] bit stressed right now just with everything going on. Um, so, so I really hope for them at least they, you know, if, if they’re a little bit behind schedule, then it, it’ll be, it’ll still be fine.  Allen Hall: 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 catching blade problems early will save you millions[00:06:00] Norway’s Storting has voted to pause the 35 billion Norwegian krone support program for floating offshore wind at Utsira Nord. The Conservative Party secured a parliamentary majority for the external quality assurance review, a socioeconomic analysis, and a technology development assessment, all before the Storting will authorize any commitments. Equinor and Vårgrønn, along with EDF and Deepwind Offshore, each hold allocated 500-megawatt areas and were preparing to compete for that subsidy. Equinor says the project will continue for now. I think everybody is saying that at the moment. But, uh, Equinor cannot rule out consequences as framework uncertainty compounds in the already challenging nature of floating offshore wind development. So Utsira Nord is a massive project. So it’s, it’s about three and a half billion US dollars [00:07:00] to go do this. We had Mads Furuseth and Anders Naslund about a year or so ago, maybe a little bit longer, talking about the project and how big it was and how important it was that Norway did this for floating offshore wind. But with this, uh, recent change in the parliament of Norway, it does seem like they’re slowly going to try to kill it by putting in a number of, uh, reviews, which is how bureaucracies tend to kill things. Is put it under six, seven, eight reviews, different committees. They all take time to get together. They have to put out a report. It could be two, three years from now. At that point, the world has completely changed, and everybody’s moved on. Does that seem like the outcome here at the moment?  Matthew Stead: Yes.  Allen Hall: In my mind, there’s really two big areas for floating offshore, which UK, right? That there, there’s some massive projects there, Green Volt being one of them, and then there was Sue & Nord. So between the two, I feel like the, the UK one was going to [00:08:00] happen. The question whether the world was gonna move towards floating offshore wind was gonna happen up in Norway. If Norway decided to do it and could get it developed, and it has the capability to do it because, because they have that skill set, uh, right there in Norway. If they could do it in Norway, everybody in the world would learn from it and figure out how to do it. Does this really set back floating offshore wind globally?  Matthew Stead: Yeah. I mean, going back to what I said before, and I, I’ll defer to Rosie on this as well, but, um, when I was at, at Blades Europe, um, one of the, one of my long-term contacts, um, y- was in floating wind, um, and had, um, left the industry. He basically said i- in his view that the offshore wind industry was slowly, um, in decline or slowly dying. Um, so I’m just wondering if this is just evolution of viability of offshore wind.  Rosemary Barnes: Is offshore wind in decline? I think if you look globally, it’s, it’s not in decline. I, I haven’t looked in, in depth at the figures just based on what, you know, [00:09:00] headlines I’ve seen and podcasts I’ve heard, but I think that globally it’s still on the rise. It’s just that- It’s only in Europe that things are really moving with speed, right? Like, people were expecting heaps of growth in the US and now no- nobody expects that. Floating offshore wind, it’s… I th- I still think it’s too early to say. There are plenty of countries that don’t have any good energy options besides, um, floating offshore wind, like Japan. What their energy transition looks like is gonna depend a lot on their culture and what people think, ’cause, like, if you go through, like, the engineering solutions that Japan could have, the ones that make the most sense from an engineering point of view are not popular at all, are not politically viable. Like, Japan could easily have a subsea cable connecting it with, um, with China, for example, or Korea, but I don’t think anybody, anybody thinks that that will ever happen because, you know, politically it’s, it’s very far from being possible. What else could they have? Geothermal. They’ve got heaps of [00:10:00]geothermal resources, like really good traditional geothermal resources, but my understanding is that it’s super unpopular because their onsen, um, community doesn’t want it. Uh, my understanding is that they’re worried that if you put geothermal, um, if you exploit geothermal resources, then the onsens will not be hot anymore, and again, my limited research understanding is that it’s not true. It’s different resources. The two aren’t connected in any way. Um, and yeah, there’s actually a community geothermal, um, facility near Fukushima. I’m trying really hard to get over there, but I’m, I’ve got a roadblock at the moment because, uh, n- no one there speaks English, so I need to find somebody to, to come with me and, you know, I’ll have one, one day to try and get there on the fast train and back to Tokyo in, in a single day. So it’s, it’s a bit of a stretch, but I’m gonna try. But anyway, so yeah, what have we… We’ve ruled out, like, subsea cables, ruled out geothermal. Floating wind is good.  Allen Hall: Well, speaking of Fukushima, [00:11:00] there’s been a more recent push in Japan to start up some of the nuclear facilities. So after the tsunami, was that 2012, 2014 when that happened? It was a while ago. Uh, when the tsunami happened and h- had that, uh, nuclear accident, they, they s- shut down all the nuclear facilities in Japan, but it does seem like they’re trying to restart some of them And, and maybe it’s just the demand for energy and, and they’re trying to weigh that off with offshore wind or floating offshore wind. At what point, you know, which one do you choose? It has to be driven by cost and availability.  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. And so Fukushima, I just looked it up, it was 2011. Um, and yeah, so I mean, I think it is very fair that they had a reaction to that and they wanted to put the handbrake on nuclear at that time, or they did more than put the handbrake on, they did like a handbrake turn. Allen Hall: They shut it down.  Rosemary Barnes: So, and it, you know, it’s gradually ramping up. I think that their target for nuclear now is to, to regain, um, 20% of their electricity from [00:12:00] nuclear by 2040, something like that. It was 30% prior to that incident. Um, so that will be part of it, but it’s not, um, it’s not all of it. And then even if you think of, uh, okay, so forget climate change, just, you know, we want, Japan just wants energy and they don’t care about climate change, you know, ’cause that, that, that could be true. What are their ch- choices for that? They import a whole bunch of… They, they import nearly all their energy. Everything that’s not nuclear basically is, is imported. Um, coal, but a lot of LNG, and, you know, that is not exactly an appealing prospect at the moment either. It’s not secure. Prices are very volatile. We’ve had, like, two fossil fuel shocks in the last, what, like four years or something like that, and how many more, how many more are we g- are we going to have? You know, like energy security is important, totally separate from climate change issues. So I don’t think we need to rely on Japan, like, you know, [00:13:00] steadfastly staying the course because their, their existing o- opportunities are not, are not great for fossil fuels either. Allen Hall: I don’t know what country’s gonna stay the course right now, really. Maybe the UK?  Rosemary Barnes: Oh, I think it’s- Countries that have other reasons for going to renewables are the ones that are gonna stay the, stay the course. Um, and there are plenty of examples of countries where it just, it is by far the easiest, cheapest, fastest option to get more electricity. Um, you know, like all of Africa, for example, is, is facing that as a, uh, a better development path than trying to build big, um, fossil fuel power plants. But even that, you know, like in India, they’re making a huge transition, Pakistan, not to mention Australia, where now batteries are having more of an impact on electricity prices than gas is. So our electricity prices now finally are dropping, um, this year for the first time because of how many batteries have come on and are now, you [00:14:00]know… Like they’ve just flattened. The evening price peak used to be on average about, like, I think $400 or something dollars a megawatt hour, and now it’s like 100. In one year we had that, we had that change, yeah, just from the amount of batteries that have come on in the last year or two.  Allen Hall: Why does that make such a big difference in the price of electricity, the battery aspect?  Rosemary Barnes: Because, so the way that Australia… Australia’s electricity market is pretty similar to Texas, so if you understand that, then you can probably understand Australia’s. But, you know, at any five-minute interval, people, like, they know how much demand there’s going to be, and then people are bidding in how much they would supply electricity for in that five minutes, in real time as well. It’s not like day ahead or anything like that in Australia. The, like, last one they need is what everybody gets paid. So, like, solar power is gonna bid in at, like, you know, practically zero, um, or maybe negative prices actually if they’ve got power purchase agreements in place. And then, you know, wind a little bit more, and then coal, uh, you know, a, a bit [00:15:00] more than that, and then gas, the open cycle gas turbines, the peakers, they’re very expensive. They’re bidding in at 400, $400 a megawatt hour. If there’s enough batteries that that gas doesn’t need to bid in, then all of a sudden we don’t have the gas price that everybody has to pay. We have the battery price that everyone has to pay, and that is very, very cheap and will become cheaper as there’s more of them in the, in the system. So it’s like a threshold event. You, you know, um, even if you’re using only a tiny bit of gas, if you need any gas at all, even like, you know, one megawatt of gas, everybody gets paid the gas price. If you just get a little bit more battery in and you don’t need it anymore, bam, the price just falls. So that’s what we… We’ve passed that threshold now.  Allen Hall: Isn’t that where the UK is trying to get, is to get past that threshold where renewables are that last addition to the grid and kick off peaker plants and some expensive other- fuel sources. That’s I, I [00:16:00] think where everybody’s gone because they have the same system where the, the last one in is what sets the price for everybody. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. The UK’s a little bit different because one, they’re connected to Europe, and two, they’ve got nuclear, so they do have that kind of base load.  Allen Hall: Let’s go down the rabbit hole just for a second. So if the peaker plants don’t come on, that means that the battery electricity supplying the grid is pretty low in price. It seems like they are losing money on their investment in the battery That they were hoping the price would be higher. Because if the peaker plants are still going on, that would be a $400 price and they’re gonna come in at, like, 350, so that would make sense. It, it helps pay off the battery investment. But if they’re dropping the price down from 400 to 100, it would seem like the battery investment may not be a, a wise decision.  Rosemary Barnes: For sure they’re making less money, but it was– they were making crazy profits for the first little, the first few, few years of, you know, grid-scale batteries. And even [00:17:00] home batteries, people were making a l- a lot of money off that, and it was crazy. Like, I’m on some, um, some Reddit subreddits about, uh, you know, people with home batteries and-  Allen Hall: Slash battery?  Rosemary Barnes: Matt probably is too. Matt’s a Beta G enthusiast, so I’m sure that he is just as excited as me. But anyway, so on one of these subreddits, you know, people used to talk about, “Oh, I made 100 bucks last night,” um, or, or whatever, you know, just a household. And now all the posts are complaining about there’s been no price spikes all year. You know, I thought that I was gonna make heaps of money off my battery, but people are really change- changing how they think of it. And now it’s like… And l- like I want– used to want to do this. I don’t have solar panels yet ’cause we need a new roof, and I’ve been waiting a few years to, one, live in a house that I own, and then two, get a freaking new roof. Um, and I thought I’m gonna just, like, cover it in solar panels, get a huge battery, and I’m gonna be an energy trader in my free time and make heaps of money, and now that is [00:18:00] not the strategy anymore. The strategy is to just reduce your bills to the m- the minimum that you can. Um, that’s basically, that’s basically it. So you are right that some of this arbitrage is, um, the opportunity’s over, and that it will be less, um, exciting for, uh, opportunity for people to put more, more batteries in.  Matthew Stead: Just to add to that, through the middle of the day quite often there’s, uh, negative pricing. So if you’ve got a battery, you’re being paid to charge through the middle of the day. So that actually takes away some of the pain from having a lower, a lower price, um, during the peak.  Rosemary Barnes: But the thing about negative prices is that you need coal power plants for them to be… Like, the only reason we have such pervasive negative prices is not because solar plants have PPAs that are, you know, make it worthwhile for them to generate even when the price is slightly negative. The real thing is that coal power plants don’t want to turn down below, I don’t know, yeah, like 20, 30% during the middle of the day. They have to be on if they want to make money in the evening, and that means that they bid in at, like, [00:19:00] negative 50, um, so that people– so that they can stay running. And that’s where the bulk of our negative prices come from. So As coal power plants close, those negative prices will go away. Um, and when they close, we should get some better evening price spikes again. So, you know, like nothing ever stays the same for long, which is why it is such a fascinating hobby to have, being interested in the electricity market, because it’s never the same from one year to another. You’ll never understand it, ’cause it’s never, it never stays the same long enough to really get your head around it.  Allen Hall: You need other hobbies. You really do.  Matthew Stead: A friend of mine works in trading, and, uh, he said, “As long as there’s volatility, there will be progress.” So much like what Rosie was saying is the more volatile it is, the more opportunity there is for people to come in, um, and change it. Allen Hall: I just don’t know how the battery thing plays out once that threshold is reached. When you have more batteries on the system and you knock down the price that [00:20:00] much, I think battery sales, industrial batteries really slow down because they’re all looking for that quick ROI And they’re not gonna get it. Rosemary Barnes: You have to wait for all of the coal to close before you would find out what’s the right amount of batteries to have in the, in the grid.  Allen Hall: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That, I totally agree there, yeah.  Yolanda Padron: You’d still get, like in extreme weather events and stuff, you’d still get a big price spike, right, for all these batteries. Allen Hall: Back to Matt’s point, more volatility.  Rosemary Barnes: If you want the market to respond, you need to give enough incentive to invest in assets so you’ll have enough when it’s needed. And because it’s really infrequent, then it has to be a super high price to, um, bring on enough investment. And will this system… The system has worked absolutely, you know, pretty well in Aus- Australia at least. Will it continue into the future with more variable prices and renewables? I, I don’t know, and the government is starting to do some things like, uh, you know, like a lot of [00:21:00] electricity markets have, um, not just energy markets but also capacity markets where you will pay a battery or a gas plant something to be on standby basically, um, so that if there is, um, if there’s a shortfall then they, then they have to respond. So in Western Australia they have that, but across the east of Australia th- they currently do not, do not have that. It’s energy only.  Allen Hall: Really? How do you not have capacity payments?  Rosemary Barnes: The majority of their profits are made in just a few hours a year when there are those price spikes, so that’s, that’s h- part of their business case. Allen Hall: I mean, there, there is arbitrage happening on the electricity grid. That’s not the best place to be arbitraging things because you will have players that won’t provide electricity just to drive up the price.  Rosemary Barnes: Uh, and it happens in Australia too, but, um, you know, because batteries are such a distributed resource, it, it will become harder and harder to do that when, you know, the, um, the ownership of these batteries is, you know, households as well as, um, yeah, as well as [00:22:00] big companies. Matthew Stead: So offshore wind, I was talking to an OEM a, a little while ago and, uh, talking about blade repairs for offshore wind, you know, floating, floating wind. Um, so specifically floating wind. The OEM was extremely concerned about floating wind, um, because it makes it very, very, very hard to change blades. So the story was that if you’ve got an offshore floating platform, you’re basically gonna have to tow the wind turbine back to port to change a, a blade. Rosemary Barnes: They see that as a, as a pro, not a con though. Yeah. That, that’s because it’s very hard to… Like, it’s not only floating offshore wind where it’s very hard to remove a, a blade out at sea, like fixed bottom offshore wind, that’s incredibly expensive to remove a blade. So floating is like, well, you can just tow it back to shore and then you can do it all in the port. I, I, you’re looking skeptical, Matt, and I’m also skeptical about how it actually plays out. I know that, um, what was it? The, [00:23:00] the one- An EOL project off the coast of Scotland. I can’t remember what it’s called now. Like what, the first big one, the big wind farm, a floating offshore wind farm  Allen Hall: HiWind Scotland  Rosemary Barnes: They had a, a problem. I don’t know if it was a serial issue or also, like it’s the first big wind farm, and there might have been like some operating condition they weren’t aware of that caused some problems. They had to tow back everything to port, and they stayed there for months and months. So like maybe, maybe close to a year or over a year, I’m not sure. It was a really long time. And so, um, yeah. But then, you know, like what’s the alternative? If that had happened out at sea, it would’ve been more expensive. If, it still would’ve been shut down, not doing anything, and you would’ve had like helicopters out there every single day bringing teams and, um, you know, huge vessels with cranes and yeah. So like it’s, maintenance at sea is never good.  Allen Hall: But the whole point of the HiWind project was to get some of these problems figured out, and one of them was just towing it back to port and [00:24:00] doing major repairs or component exchanges make sense. I think it’s a, it’s a lesson well learned, and we’ve moved on. I guess the question is, does offshore, floating offshore in particular, have much of a future if Norway’s not willing to do it?  Matthew Stead: I think it’s a good comparison with, um, data centers in space.  Rosemary Barnes: You know where else they’re planning to put data centers? Not just space and offshore, also like, um, underwater ones, like on the deep ocean floor, um, on the moon somewhat. Like there’s an actual company that is apparently developing a, a data center on the moon  Allen Hall: 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 [00:25:00] miss out. Visit peswind.com today. Well, in this quarter’s PES Wind magazine, there are a number of great articles, and if you haven’t downloaded your copy, you should do that at peswind.com. There’s a good article from Global Blade Services USA, and it’s talking about the technician problem and how it’s not gonna, it solve itself, obviously. But Global Blade Service is putting some numbers to it. And Rosemary, this is really directed at you. Blades represent roughly 20% of the total, total turbine capital cost and are the leading driver of unplanned downtime.  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, 40% of O&M.  Allen Hall: Right, and 75% of all blade repairs are already handled outside OEM warranty. That number seems really high, but maybe after the warranty expires?  Rosemary Barnes: Do you say 30% of, of repairs are repaired under warranty? That’s, uh, unexpectedly high from my point of view. [00:26:00] But, you know, how would I know? No one’s getting in touch with me if, you know, they’ve got a problem with their blades and it just got fixed under warranty. Then they’re not paying a consultant to come sort it out. I only, I’m, I’m only there when the warranty is nearly up or it’s already over.  Allen Hall: So they, they’re saying that the, the ratio’s even gonna grow more towards out of warranty repairs. But the problem is having technicians. And the deeper problem is developing all those technicians in time as that need grows. Uh, reaching full structural repair competency takes a rope access technician eight to 10 years. A basket technician is five to seven, and a factory technician is four to five years, meaning the workforce, uh, the industry needs for the next decade has to start training now. I, I think we’re seeing this in full force. I- the issue is keeping good people in the industry as it fluctuates up and [00:27:00] down all the time and is very seasonal. Because there are really good rope technicians out there who know what they are doing, and it does take a, a minimum of three years to be competent. And then to be that lead person, it takes four or five solid. And to be, uh, the, the relied-upon person, especially for some of the more complicated repairs, it’s gonna be six, seven, eight years before you’re there. It’s just an exposure thing. Are we in a technician crisis?  Rosemary Barnes: Crisis is maybe a little bit inflammatory, but, uh, we’re in a technician challenge  Matthew Stead: But it’s a pretty, it’s a pretty basic topic, Allen, isn’t it? Like, um, you know, there’s more and more wind turbines, there have to be more and more technicians. It takes time to train. So, you know, it’s, it’s just, it’s pretty much basic maths and, um, you know, it’s like te- you know, tradies to build houses. Um, you know, unless you’ve got the tradies, you can’t build houses in a cheap way. Yolanda Padron: Part of the issue is that, you know, say there’s [00:28:00] 10 technicians that are available in the area, right? Then you … maybe they work under two different companies, and then one company goes bankrupt, so then they all work with the same company. Another company pops up, or someone gets kicked off site from the OEM side, and then a month later they’re back with the third party. And then it’s just really difficult to keep track of kind of who’s still there and who’s not, because some people have the certifications and maybe they’re not really, really great at what they do, or other people have a lot of training and a lot of experience, and it’s just difficult to track exactly, you know, where they are now. I know that the, the strategy here oftentimes is you’ll find one person that you like and you kind of follow him around, or follow them around whatever company they’re, they’re with at the moment, and then just use that company.  Matthew Stead: The other point I was going to make is that there’s also the seasonality, isn’t there? So you know, if you’ve got a great, a great technician, when it’s cold, they can’t earn cash from [00:29:00] repairing blades.  Rosemary Barnes: Aren’t they hired as, like, seasonal workers in America and they just don’t get paid for part of the year? That’s not how it’s done here. I mean, I guess we don’t have the climate where you have to, like, totally shut down, so they’re not, like, sitting around getting paid for nothing. But, like, that’s a really unim- unappealing feature of the of the, um, field, isn’t it? If you’re deciding what you wanna, what kinda job you wanna do, you want one where you can get paid for 12 months out of the year, not just, I don’t know, like eight or whatever it is.  Matthew Stead: I know there’s been a lot of discussion between, like, Australian US repair companies of, like, shipping technicians down here during the Northern Hemisphere winter and vice versa, and it gives, you know, chance of exploring the world. But, you know, if you’ve got kids and family, you’re not gonna necessarily wanna do that either.  Rosemary Barnes: It’s such a tiring job, though. I don’t… Like, there’s, um, I think it’s fine if people do it for, like, a hard 10 years and then, um, yeah, move on to… Because you obviously learn a lot as a technician, so y- you know, like, there’s a lot of office jobs that you would be really good at [00:30:00] because you had that physical experience. But yeah, like, I, I do think that there’s heaps of young people that are traveling the world being wind turbine technicians.  Yolanda Padron: At least in Texas, I know a lot of rural areas where they don’t necessarily have a lot of opportunities to get higher education, and so going to be a technician is a good route for them to then go into a larger part of the industry, um, to, to kinda get a head start there. Um, and they get a lot of really valuable skills, and oftentimes, like you said, Rosie, they’ll, they’ll get picked up by, um, by the owners or the OEMs or someone, um, because of their experience there. But it, but it is quite a bit of, of hard work and, and physical, physical labor. I climbed one tower and I was sore for two weeks, so really, really not my cup of tea. Rosemary Barnes: I’m always, like, so excited to, to be climbing towers ’cause I only do it, like, you know, sometimes no times in a year, sometimes twice a year. Um, yeah, so, like, I’m really excited to go climb, and it’s really cool the first day, and then the second day it’s like, “Oh, this harness is [00:31:00] so heavy. Am I really putting this on again? Oh my God.” Yeah, so it’s, uh, it’s ob- obviously you get used to it if you, um, if you do climb a lot. The last, uh, last site that I was at, a lot of the technicians were just climbing the ladders so that they wouldn’t have to, you know, go to the gym afterwards. So there’s a lift there, but they use the ladder because then they get their cardio for the day. So, you know, they’ve obviously got some surplus energy.  Allen Hall: I think it is kind of a myth outside the US, uh, uh, seasonal workers, uh, at least in Europe, I haven’t seen a lot of seasonal workers. It doesn’t mean they don’t exist, of course. But in the United States, there’s a lot of seasonal workers from construction and all kinds of other industries. People figure it out And it, it’s a lot more common than I think y- being an engineer you think it is, but there are a lot of seasonal workers. So being a, a wind technician is not a bad job.  Rosemary Barnes: I guess they’re just getting [00:32:00] paid extra for the time that they’re working and they just know they’re used to budgeting to cover the few months off. Allen Hall: They have a winter job. They’ll, they have employment. They already have it lined up where when it gets cold outside, they have someplace else to go. Back into construction for a few months. They’re maybe driving a truck or doing other things that, that bring in income. They have it pretty well figured out. When– At least the technicians I’ve talked to seem to have a, a plan about it, and they’re not sitting by the television for six months. That’s not what’s happening. It, that there’s a lot of employment opportunities here in the States, and so they, they’re pretty nimble. So if you haven’t read this article or a number of our other great articles in PES Wind, you should go to peswind.com right now and download a copy today. That wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn, and don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. [00:33:00] For Yolanda, Rosemary, and Matthew, I’m Allen Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.

David King from Gulf Wind Technology returns to discuss serial uptower blade repairs, passive load shedding, and data-driven testing. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow Allen Hall : David, welcome back to the program.  David King: Yeah, I’m so glad to be here. A lot’s happened since the last time I was on, so, uh, this is gonna be great.  Allen Hall : It’s been about a year. Mm-hmm. And last year we were at OM&S in Nashville, and you were talking about root fusion, and this is the insert fix uptower for the blade inserts, right? So we’re having a lot of blade bolt issues, and the inserts are starting to pull out or become loose, and the blades are moving around. A lot of our operators in the States are trying to solve that problem, and they don’t wanna remove the blades and bring anything down tower. They would like to fix it uptower. That’s where your solution came in. How’s that going?  David King: Yeah, so I mean, it, it’s really been a five-year journey for us. I mean, we’ve been doing this- I remember that, yeah … for a [00:01:00] very long time. You know, it started like any process does, with a problem statement. Sure. And we’ve been working through from problem statement, you know, going through process development, going through structural development, going through pilots. Uh, we did a, a huge pilot deployments about three years ago, where those were being monitored. Um, we’re now in a position where we’re in serial deployment, and that’s what’s really exciting. You know, we’re doing about 200 blades a year, uh, of, of serial deployment. We’ve, we’ve done that now, uh, we’re going into our second year of that. Nice. So we’re extremely excited by that. That comes with its own sets of challenges as you scale up. How do you maintain quality? We even touched a little bit on a few of these things last year. Um, but yeah, we’re really excited to be doing that. Uh, we’re trying to keep it, you know, again, process-driven. How do you simplify a process that allows you to scale up appropriately, train people appropriately? A- a- and that’s what we’re really excited about this year, is being able to bring this, uh, so that we’re not, um, you know, basically supply constrained, ’cause there is a lot of demand for this, and still able to maintain a very high level of, of quality as we, [00:02:00] we scale up. Allen Hall : Yeah, and that’s the key to all sort of repairs in the wind industry. You like to do it once and be done with the life of the turbine. Now, so you’re going uptower. You’re drilling some holes up along the blade, injecting those with a resin system, curing it, basically reinforcing what is already there That all makes sense to me. Engineering-wise, that makes sense to me. But a- again, it goes back to the technicians and the training and the deployment of it. Are you starting to train technicians, bring them in, show them how to use the, use the machines and, and get them out in the field so they are ready to go? It, it… ‘Cause it seems like you’re at that threshold now. David King: No, absolutely. So we, we believe in people first, right? Yeah. People at the end of the day make things happen. And so, you know, the best ways to do that is give people the right tools to be successful, and where that comes from is training. That’s a huge part of it. We have a, a certified training program that we run. Uh, it started out as an internal program we were running. It basically has five levels to it. Uh, we’ve now extended that to, uh, enabling, uh, you know, basically [00:03:00] preferred partners to be able to take part in that training, uh, to be able to utilize modular kits, pumps and equipment, to be able to, you know, go out and meet that demand that’s out there, but do so in a way that’s, uh, controlled. Yeah. And so really that comes back to that certified training program. And really, you know, level one is about a lot of your basic safety, procedural base type, uh, you know, making sure people are competent, uh, they’re not gonna get themselves hurt. Right. They’ve got the right personality traits about focus, uh, you know, detail focus and things like that. Yeah. Uh, level two to that program is, is really about, um, basically getting people to a stage in which they can be a, uh, team member. Uh, they’re able to be on a team and contribute to that team in an effective manner, be in the field.  Allen Hall : That’s really important. A lot of-  David King: Absolutely …  Allen Hall : companies miss that aspect of being a team member instead of an individual. Yeah, you have to work with other people. Yeah. It’s, it’s critical.  David King: It’s massively important. Personalities clash. You’ve got to be able to work through that sort of thing. And so that level one to level two is really kind of taking your green horn hat off and putting, “Okay, I, I, I can be on this team and I’m, I’m a, a contributing [00:04:00] member.” And then at level three, that’s your team leads. Those are people that are leading teams. They’re leaders. They’re up and coming. They’ve got a career path, career trajectory. Level four is our mentors. That’s the people that are going out there and that are basically qualified to now actually mentor other people in the field. Allen Hall : Yeah.  David King: And then your level five is train the trainer. How do you grow more trainers so that you’re not constrained on that training factor? And that, that’s kind of how we, we typically run training.  Allen Hall : Uh, and Gulf Wind has the ability to do that. I mean, I’ve been to your facilities, they’re impressive, and that’s one of the limitations for a lot of companies. They don’t have the facilities to train people, and they don’t have the resources you do. That opens up a lot of opportunities. Obviously, you’re in the composite repair business. You have crews out fixing wind turbine blades. Some of the more complex ones is what I hear. I mean, I hear it secondarily, but I assume that’s what’s happening. What are, are the areas that you get called in on to do composite repairs?  David King: We, we really do anything that stops somebody else. Okay. So we wanna be there when there’s a problem where you’re like, “I don’t know where to go next. Uh, this is a big [00:05:00] problem. We’re unsure. Maybe there’s a new technology at play. Maybe it’s, uh, a carbon spar cap. Maybe it’s something, uh…” You know, obviously the root stuff that’s very complicated. Sure. And, uh, it’s just gonna require a little bit more engineering. It’s gonna require a little bit more rigor, and that- that’s where we say, look, we, we can, whether it means testing something, verifying something, training somebody on a process, developing a process- Yeah or just doing something complicated, that’s where we excel.  Allen Hall : Well, that- that’s what I hear from the road is, uh, Gulf Winds here and I think, “Uh-oh. You must have a really serious problem because you’re calling in the experts to do the, the difficult things.” Carbon pultrusions, carbon fabric in, in blades today is such a massive problem because it’s not, it’s not fiberglass. It’s just a lot more to deal with, and some of the loading issues we’re finding and, boy, it’s just all over the place. They need Gulf Winds Technology to, to come on site to give them a hand. Now, a- as part of the growth of the business, and you guys have been growing. Every year I, I see they’re just… it’s just a little bit bigger, a little more [00:06:00] people. I walked on LinkedIn and hiring some engineers and some people to work over the summertime. That’s all great. What’s the structure look like now? How are you trying to organize yourself as a business?  David King: Yeah, so we really break down into three different structures. We have our service division, and that’s, um, putting people out there to solve problems in the field. As simple as it gets, right? It’s like you’ve got a problem, we’ve got the right people with the right solutions, and they’re gonna go deliver, uh, a result. Um, and then we’ve got an engineering division. That’s about developing problems. It also has a lot to do with IP. You know, things like root fusion, that’s a pat- protected technology. Sure. All of our technology, we do a lot of investments in, in, you know, patent protection and IP work, and so that sits inside that engineering division. Uh, it’s how we, we have the smarts of the company kinda sat in there. Uh, it also is what allows us to really get into some of these, uh, kinda juicy problem statements that are a little bit prickly maybe. Uh, and we love getting into those and solving them. Yeah. And then the third and final thing is the composite side of things, and that’s the, the manufacturing. That’s that 30,000 square [00:07:00] foot composite manufacturing facility where we wanna be the best in vacuum infusion. We wanna be the best in prepreg, the best in pultrusions, complex assemblies, and be trying to de- uh, just deliver really high-quality composites to the industry. Allen Hall : Yeah, and you have the equipment to do a lot of testing. And I think a, a lot of operators don’t realize what you have And the knowledge that’s sitting there, when I run into operators across the country that have complicated issues, particularly if they have carbon, I mean, oh my gosh, you, you need to be calling experts here. And if they have issues they haven’t really sussed out, they don’t know, they don’t understand the engineering that went into that blade, they need to be talking to you guys about Why is this blade designed the way it is? How should I approach this? Do I need to be turning my turbines off until I figure out a solution? A lot of times there’s not a lot of resources there because the, the designs are more complex than ever. But on the, on the same hand, I would say they’re not doing a lot of testing of their own materials. [00:08:00] David King: Yeah, and there’s a huge space for that. And which is crazy. Absolutely. Yeah. It’s, it’s, uh, it’s definitely a gap. It is. And we see it as a gap that needs to be filled. Yes. And so that’s where, you know, we, we say you’ve gotta give the engineers the tools to be successful. Sure. And so what are those tools? You know, that could be anything from what does an aerodynamicist need? They might need a metrology scanner. Right. So we do 70 million plus point scans of full blades. We’ve done now a full blade scan and, uh, I think we did it in about an hour, which was a, a new record of how quickly you could get 70 million points on a blade. Wow. And then that allowed- Uptower  Allen Hall : or  David King: downtower? It was downtower. Okay. Okay. It was outside in the field, but it was downtower. Okay. It’s still impressive. So that was a little, little, little bit easier than uptower. Sure. Maybe that’s next. Um- Yeah. But, um, no, and then so what can you do with that? Well, then you can go, uh, really analyze, you know, the performance of that blade. Maybe you can go do something in a wind tunnel with it. So coming back to that toolkit- Yep … an aerodynamicist needs a wind tunnel. We have aerodynamicists, so we have a wind tunnel. Then going on to, like, a structural engineer. What does a structural engineer need? Well, they need their FE tools. They need some good first principle approaches to, to structures. But they also need test equipment. Right. They need to be [00:09:00] able to develop and characterize materials both in static and fatigue. And so we’ve made a lot of investment in those sort of test equipment, uh, so that we can, we can put numbers to things. You know, I think the wind industry needs more data. Less speculation and more data-driven decisions, and the, where that starts is really building up that test base. And we, we believe in this thing called the testing pyramid, and what it is is, like, you’ve gotta characterize the material. That’s where you’re gonna have thousands of samples. Right. That’s your tensile, double lap shear testing, all the basics. Then you do your subcomponents. Add some geometry into that, that- Add some shape. Exactly. Maybe that’s hundreds of samples. And then you’re gonna go on top of that to, like, your full component. And look, we don’t have a blade test stand yet, but- Right … that’s kind of that, that space. And then the final top of that pyramid is go do it in the field, get results- Run it … and then run that back into your design cycles. And I think the more we can do that as an industry, the more successful we’re gonna be as an industry.  Allen Hall : Yeah, and I think a lot of operators don’t think they have to participate in that, and they’re sadly mistaken. And the fact that the industry has grown as fast as it has means [00:10:00] there’s some holes in some of the engineering that maybe they didn’t consider the, the site assessment properly or they didn’t understand some of the manufacturing variability. Now you own this product, you’re gonna have to do some of the homework that maybe the OEM should have done. It’s your site. You own it. And a lot of times I think, uh, as an owner/operator, they don’t realize there’s resources. Like, okay, well maybe do some mechanical testing. Maybe the repairs I had last summer aren’t working out the way that I think. Maybe I need to look at some materials  David King: and see if- And we want you to own your data. Well, that’s exactly it, right? That’s really what it comes down to is like you wanna own the data, know your blades, know your products, whether it’s, you know… I know you’re very, uh, you know, uh, specialized in lighting, really know your stuff. Everybody’s gotta take that same approach. Know your stuff- You need to know it … or go find the experts that know it- Right … and work with them. Yeah.  Allen Hall : Well, at, at this point in the industry’s growth, you realize who’s all percolated towards the top, right? You, you, you see the companies like Goldwind that have the expertise in-house and, and have established themselves as a [00:11:00] knowledge center, as a resource for the US and globally, and there’s only a couple of those spread around the world in that- We as an industry need to be utilizing you more to help us solve problems. Because if I don’t tell Gulf Wind what’s going on, Gulf Wind can’t help come to a solution.  David King: And we find that really, like, just the more you know, you start finding all sorts of new opportunities. Yeah. ‘Cause we almost learn what you don’t know, in a way. You kind of realize that, like, there’s so much more out there. Yeah. And that’s where it gets really exciting. That’s where it’s like you can get these novel solutions, people who take creative approaches. Um, and, and I really think that’s what’s gonna take this industry forward, especially now when, you know, there are some headwinds for wind. And all that means is we’ve gotta get sharper, and we’ve gotta be, uh, more agile. And I think it’s actually almost times like this that create some of the best, uh, behaviors in an industry to, uh, take it forward into the future really.  Allen Hall : Yeah. Wind’s not gonna go anywhere, but it’s being stressed a little bit. And in those stress points, we need to take the time to reflect and to make the industry [00:12:00] stronger. But in order to do that, we need to be relying upon the sources that we have. There are global sources. There are so many resources to touch into. I think you guys are, are doing amazing things. Obviously, being down in your facility, seeing the wind tunnel, just blown away by that. Seeing the mechanical testing, seeing the, the 3D printing of air foils and all that work you’re doing, plus the ability to scan blades, do large scale studies. I remember one was on CMS at the time, thinking, “All right. Somebody’s, somebody’s actually doing the right thing. There’s a study happening so we can understand what’s happening in CMS.” Like, those things need to happen as an industry to grow.  David King: Oh, absolutely. And I know you and I were at WOMA- Yes … quite recently. Yeah. And we heard about that LEP study. Yes. And what a prime example- … of people going out there, getting real life data. Yes. And then, uh, making it accessible so that people can make smart decisions, and again, drive the cost of energy down and make wind successful. It’s, it’s amazing.  Allen Hall : It, uh- Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But the transfer of knowledge is the key, right? And you guys are involved [00:13:00] in looking at some, what LEP will do to improve a blade, but also what leading edge damage will do to erode performance. Those are some of the things that a lot of operators don’t understand. Like, is that blade being in that damaged form even affecting my AEP? It depends on the turbine, I think, a lot of times. But you better be asking the question at least. Talk to somebody who knows.  David King: Yeah. ‘Cause it, it’s really interesting. I mean, you know, I think it so much drives back to that business case for the operator, and they all have their own approaches. And, and really- Yeah you know, most people are repairing LEP when it becomes structural. That’s the- That’s right … that’s the predominant approach. And, you know, I understand that approach very… You know, I, I get it from an operator’s point of view. Um, but yeah, there’s definitely, uh, other things you could do to try and make a, a data-based business decision. Um- Sure.  Allen Hall : Sure. Now, what are some of the cool new things that Gulf Wind is working on, that you haven’t announced to the world yet, but you’d like to announce? I know you’ve been working on things. I’ve seen all the white papers being published. There’s some things- Back behind the scenes, what’s new?  David King: Yeah. I mean, so, you know, you take something like Roof [00:14:00] Fusion, right? Right. Which is a long process to develop. So we, knowing that everything that, uh, you have as an idea is gonna take almost maybe three, four, five years to actually bring to market- Sure … we’re always starting on this constant cycle of development. Right. And so the things- You know  Allen Hall : it’s gonna be five years. David King: Exactly. Yeah. And so, you know, I mean, it’s like the patents on this stuff take three, four, five years to work out. Yeah. And so it- it’s a very important part of the entire process. Yeah. But to, to answer your question, we do have some exciting things both in the aero side, uh, side of the world. Uh, we have been doing a lot of development work around, uh, basically, uh, passive load shedding, so the ability for a turbine, or actually any structure, to be able to react to the wind in a passive manner. Uh, so you don’t need any sort of mechanicals. You don’t need anything, uh, that’s going to break in the field, and the structure itself is able to actually react to the load that’s coming onto it and change its aerodynamic, uh, profile and change its load that it’s experiencing. So you get these… Uh, that’s a very interesting new technology. Yes. Uh, it’s something that we’ve been working on for about three or four years now. It’s now, uh, [00:15:00] getting demonstrated, uh, which we’re very excited about. Uh, we also have some technologies, uh, around new connection types between metal and composites. So this is, uh, something that’s, uh, probably got a lot of, um, application in aerospace, but I think it’s also gonna find its way into wind. And this is just a new way of really trying to fix some of the problematic joints that we’ve been dealing with now for the last few years, but looking forward, not looking backward. Yeah. Right. Sure. Not being retroactive. Right. But how do we do that next generation of roof pushing design, for example? And we’ve got a really exciting method for that, that, uh, is been tested now. We have test results for it, and they look extremely good. Uh, we also are making some major CapEx investments this year into- Sure … new manufacturing equipment. So we have, um, some… I, I would say some, some pretty advanced, um, automation we’re trying to bring to composite manufacturing- Okay … around pre-preg carbon fibers and things like that, which is gonna be very, very exciting I think. Uh, I hope it finds its way into the wind industry. It’ll probably start in other industries. Sure. Maybe kind of this, uh, [00:16:00] subsea, you know, and, uh, and air, uh, space first- Sure … you know, around UAVs, ROVs- Sure … that sort of thing. But I think it’s also gonna have applications in wind, and we’re really, really excited about that. Well,  Allen Hall : that’s good because it, it does seem like wind is downstream of a lot of aerospace things ’cause it does, definitely costs money to develop those, and aerospace is a place where that can happen. However- If you work out all the kinks and you solve all the manufacturing issues, it is directly applicable to wind. David King: And it’s massive volume. The beautiful thing about wind is that the volume, when you get something right and you do it right, you get to deploy technology. Yeah. Yes. You, you get to take it off the shelf- Right … and put it in the world and make it happen, which is, there’s nothing more exciting as an engineer. Allen Hall : Well, I mean, in, in terms of blade manufacturing, how many times have we talked about automating that so we have less things like wrinkles and some ply issues, overlaps, those kind of things where automation would help, but we just haven’t really refined it enough to i- implement it at a large scale in a blade factory. David King: Exactly. And it’s always usually too bespoke, you know? It is. It’s like you solve the problem for the, the 40-meter blade, and now- Right … there’s a [00:17:00] 45-meter blade, and we need all new CapEx. Right. And then it doesn’t, uh, doesn’t scale well.  Allen Hall : That doesn’t scale at all. No. Right. So that’s why they haven’t done it, is because they know the next generation of blade is coming. It’s another 10 meters longer, and that’s not gonna fit in this building, and doesn’t make sense- We’re in trouble … to buy the equipment.  David King: Yeah, exactly.  Allen Hall : Right. So it, it, it’s a- Yeah … it’s a constant evolving industry. Now, I, I had looked at your load shedding patent application or patent. Maybe it came out as a patent. David King: Yep.  Allen Hall : Mm-hmm. Okay. I wanna understand that a little bit since I’m here talking to you now. The load shedding piece was because, uh, you’re in Louisiana, that’s where hurricanes- Come up … every once in a while, if people haven’t read the papers. But the load shedding technology makes sense because now you can deploy wind turbines in places that you otherwise may not do it because of the risk of typhoons, hurricanes, even tornadoes on some level, some odd wind situations. You wanna explain what that technology is? Yeah.  David King: Really what it’s doing is it’s trying to decouple the, uh, turbine’s ability to protect itself from its requirement to maintain power and maintain [00:18:00] control. So if you have something that relies on electrical hydraulics or anything like that- Yeah … it’s gonna be extremely susceptible to failing, uh, when- Yes there’s a grid outage or when you have a battery that fails or, you know, most airplanes require, like, dual redundancy or triple- Triple … triple redundancy because of that very reason, and we just can’t afford to do that in wind. No. And so the innovation then that gets required is you have to have something that’s passive, something where the structure itself has been designed in a way where the laminate is designed in a way where it’s going to not react progressively like a linear fashion as you apply load, right? It keeps bending and bending and bending. Right, right, right. But it’s gonna have quite a sudden reaction to a very particular load case. And so that’s what we’ve been able to do is-  Allen Hall : Okay …  David King: basically construct that laminate in a way where when it, the right load is applied, in this case, that’s the, the hurricane load or the extreme load- Right we can shed that load, uh, completely by the structure simply reacting to the load, and that’s very exciting for wind. It has a lot of other applications ’cause- Sure it does … basically allowing you to hinge composites. We now can- Right … with [00:19:00] composites almost in an origami fashion, hinge them any way we want, which is really, really exciting. Nice. And we’re excited to bring that now to other areas besides just wind and, and wind will be a key one as well.  Allen Hall : Sure it will. Yeah. Wow, okay. That’s cool. I mean, that’s why I follow Gulf Wind Technology on LinkedIn to see all the cool things that are coming out because, uh, if, if you’re thinking about- What’s new, what’s next. There’s probably three or four places, honestly, in the world that I rely upon, DTE being one, Fraunhofer being another, and then Gulf Wind Technology. Like, okay, let’s… So they tram for it here. I… Let’s, let’s see what’s going on this week. That’s amazing. And I, I know that as you guys get more experience out in the field and people will start to recognize the name, it’s just only gonna grow to something even bigger. So that, that’s fantastic. I know you, you spend a lot of time making  David King: this business go. We’re de- definitely very excited about it. Yeah. But with, with growth comes, you know, a, a discipline. Right. You have to be very disciplined. Yes. And so that’s something, you know, we’ve gotta be very focused on. Yeah. That’s where things like that certified training program are important. Yes. It’s where [00:20:00] how we patent things is very important. Yes. How we, uh, you know, kind of set up company structure is very important. So I know we touched on a few of those subjects today. Yeah. But those are really just about trying to be able to maintain quality as we grow. A- and that’s really important to our customers, it’s important to us, and it’s how we maintain the brand. Allen Hall : We gotta get back down to Louisiana. I’m really curious to see what’s happening inside the buildings and see where you’re at, because, uh, I know there’s great things happening there. And I really appreciate the time. Thank you for coming over to Australia. I thought your, your talks and your, your presentation and being on panels in Australia was really insightful to a lot of Australians, because you’re just bringing a different viewpoint into that marketplace. And, and that’s what Gulf Wind does. So I, I appreciate all that effort. And, uh, yeah, we should connect up this summer. Come down and check out what’s going on.  David King: Absolutely. If you’re willing to brave the heat- Oh, no. … you are always welcome. And our aim is that every time you come to that factory, hopefully it’s like a, a whole new world. We wanna surprise you with something new, because, uh, that’s the only way we can demonstrate progress.  Allen Hall : Oh, that’s a deal.  David King: So.  Allen Hall : Okay, great. Well, thank you,  David King: Dave. Great to see [00:21:00] you. Thanks  Allen Hall : for being on the  David King: podcast. Thank you very much.

Allen covers GE Vernova ordered to stay on Vineyard Wind, TotalEnergies filing for France’s largest renewable project, Spain’s repowering grants, and Dajin’s Hong Kong stock debut. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Good Monday. Wind energy made news this week from Boston courtrooms… to the coast of Normandy … to the stock exchange floors of Hong Kong. Let us start in Massachusetts. A Boston judge has once again told GE VERNOVA it cannot walk away from VINEYARD WIND. To understand why GE VERNOVA wants out… you have to look at the money. VINEYARD WIND owes GE VERNOVA three hundred and sixty million dollars on a one-point-two-billion-dollar turbine supply contract. VINEYARD WIND is withholding that payment. GE VERNOVA says it has the contractual right to walk when it is not paid. In February, they sent VINEYARD WIND a termination notice. VINEYARD WIND sued. In April, Judge PETER KRUPP issued an injunction ordering GE to stay. GE VERNOVA came back and asked the judge to reconsider. Vernova pointed to statements from state officials and VINEYARD WIND’s own parent company describing the eight-hundred-and-six-megawatt project as essentially complete. If the project is done, GE argued, there is no harm in letting us leave. Judge KRUPP did not buy it. Here is why this matters so much to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. VINEYARD WIND is the largest offshore wind project in New England. It is owned jointly by Spain’s IBERDROLA and Denmark’s COPENHAGEN INFRASTRUCTURE PARTNERS. It began initial operations just this past February… after the developer won a separate court fight to keep federal construction permits intact. Sixty-two turbines. A four-point-five-billion-dollar investment. The anchor project for offshore wind in the entire region. The judge found that GE VERNOVA’s proprietary expertise is still needed to bring those turbines to full operational capacity. Pull GE’s more than two hundred employees and subcontractors off the job… and the project’s financing structure could collapse. Massachusetts Governor MAURA HEALEY has weighed in publicly. The state has too much riding on this project to let it unravel in court. GE VERNOVA still has its appeal of the April injunction pending. But for now… the turbines keep turning. Now let us cross the Atlantic. Off the coast of Normandy, France… TOTALENERGIES has filed for government authorization of a massive offshore wind farm called CENTRE MANCHE ENERGIES. This will be France’s largest renewable energy project… ever. One-point-five gigawatts of offshore wind. Located more than forty kilometers off the Normandy coast. Four-point-five billion euros in investment. Up to twenty-five hundred construction jobs over three years. Once running, the wind farm will generate roughly six terawatt-hours of clean electricity per year… enough to power more than one million French homes. TOTALENERGIES was awarded this project by the French government eight months ago. Filing for authorization is the next milestone on the path to construction. Meanwhile… across the Pyrenees in Spain… The Spanish government has awarded grants for eighty wind repowering projects totaling two-point-four gigawatts of capacity. With Nearly four hundred and sixty million euros in subsidies. The goal: replace older turbines with more efficient technology by twenty-thirty. The names on the award list read like a who’s who of European wind energy. IBERDROLA… STATKRAFT… EDP… ENEL GREEN POWER… NATURGY… RWE … and others. IBERDROLA alone picked up four hundred megawatts of new capacity. And this repowering wave is not just replacing old machines. Some projects are swapping out turbines that were once the industry standard… one-point-five and two-megawatt machines… for the far more powerful equipment available today. The industry is not just building forward. It is rebuilding smarter. And finally… a story from the other side of the world. A Chinese manufacturer of offshore wind foundations and towers called DAJIN HEAVY INDUSTRY made its debut on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange this past Friday. The share sale raised up to eight hundred and forty-seven million dollars. DAJIN claims a notable distinction: it says it ranked as Europe’s largest offshore wind foundation supplier by monopile sales value in the first half of twenty twenty-five. The company plans to use more than half the proceeds to expand its deep-sea wind power services… and one-fifth to build an assembly facility in Europe. As we know wind energy is continues to push forward. On every front. And that is the state of the wind industry for the eighth of June, twenty twenty-six. Join us for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

Ørsted closes its European offshore sale to CIP and weighs a $1 billion exit from the US market. Plus MingYang commissions a 20 MW offshore turbine, and ZF’s plain bearings log 36 GW with no measurable wear. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! [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 your host for today, Allen Hall, along with Matthew Stead, Rosemary Barnes, and Yolanda Padron. If you’re going to be in Houston for Clean Power 2026, mark Wednesday, June 3rd on your calendar. The Australian American Chamber of Commerce, Texas is hosting an invitation-only panel and networking reception with cocktails from 6:00 to 8:00 PM at the Houston Club, and I’ll be moderating. We’re bringing together Australian and US wind energy experts to compare notes on how two markets handle O&M, lightning risks, blade inspections, remote monitoring, and where operational gaps [00:01:00] are. The evening also marks the North American commercial launch of EOLOGIX-PING’s satellite-based lightning monitoring system, developed with Adelaide-based satellite IoT company, Myriota. So in joining me on the panel, our own Matt Stead, co-founder of EOLOGIX-PING, and Mark Norman, VP of Edge Solutions at Myriota, and Weather Guard’s Yolanda Padron. EOLOGIX-PING and Myriota have systems already deployed in Japan and Australia, and a little bit in the US here at Weather Guard, and they’re stepping into the North American market at American Clean Power with this advanced lightning monitoring product. So you’ll want to be there and see this new product introduced. It is an invitation-only event, so if you’re at Clean Power and want to be in the room, reach out to us on LinkedIn so we can get you on the list. Orsted finished selling off its European offshore wind business to Copenhagen [00:02:00]Infrastructure Partners, better known as CIP or as it’s a-affectionately called CIP. Now, Bloomberg reports the Danish company is exploring a sale of its US portfolio also, which includes a whole bunch of wind. It’s a decent amount of solar and battery storage in a deal that could bring more than about a billion dollars. Uh, the business generated more than one-fifth of Orsted’s total operating income just last year. Uh, meanwhile, uh, more than 50 US organizers are urging RWE CEO, Markus Kroeker, not to hand back over $1 billion in US offshore wind leases as part of a reported deal with the Trump administration. Uh, so the, the pattern is clear, everybody. European developers are being pushed towards the exit in the American market. The Ørsted situation’s been going on several months now. I, I think it’s pretty much common [00:03:00] knowledge, I would assume at this point. W- we’ve known for months, and I th- think a lot of people we’ve talked to have been saying Ørsted is prepping for a sale. The question is who? And the, the RWE getting rid of their offshore leases in the United States would be a little bit of a odd move. However, a billion dollars back in your bank account is probably a smart move today. So are the, the Germans and the Danish leaving America?  Yolanda Padron: Ørsted’s still keeping their offshore in the US, right?  Allen Hall: Yeah, I don’t know if they’ll be able to sell it off. They own it 100% at this point, right? All the partners have pulled out But I wonder if that’s on the auction block also. That it could be  Matthew Stead: So why? Why are they, why are they selling? I mean, there has to be a reason. I mean, do they have better use for the money elsewhere, or do they just have lost faith in the, the USA?  Allen Hall: It could be a combination of both, right? Both can be true at the same time. I do think the cash flow is an issue [00:04:00] for renewable energy companies at the minute, so if they can get some money back into the coffers and to get ready for the next big run of development, they probably should do it now. But things, especially it does seem a little bit on the slow side on the re- renewable development, except in the UK where it’s going crazy.  Do you think then that they’re looking for American people to sell it to?  Allen Hall: Or Canadian. If Ørsted sells their onshore business, uh, to CIP, it still remains in Danish hands, so it wouldn’t necessarily be a, uh, removal of the Danes from America, not, not quite. Matthew Stead: Yeah. I’m just a bit confused why, you know, why, you know, why would it, um, attract a good price at the moment? So I would’ve thought, you know, if it was me, I would’ve take the long-term view and just hang onto it.  Allen Hall: Well, the, the tax credit’s already built into those businesses, right? I, I at least that’s what I would assume, that the, the tax credits are still [00:05:00] available on a number of the Ørsted sites. They’re not that old. A lot of the wind sites are not that old, so you could gain that tax advantage. It may make sense. It may be a, a Berkshire Hathaway or somebody like that may, may jump into the mix.  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, and maybe because there’s not so much opportunity for new developments at the moment, that might be maybe it’s appealing for that reason, that there’s, yeah, not, not so many wind opportunities around, and companies want wind in their portfolios, so. Allen Hall: Or data centers like we just saw with NextEra and Dominion. The, the drive for, for data centers, uh, is pushing the, the power demand, and if you could buy wind, solar, and battery all together, most of it kind of co-located, you could put some data centers in Texas ’cause a vast majority of that Ørsted fleet is in a place where you could plant a data center right next to it. Maybe that’s, maybe that’s the thought. Uh, if they saw NextEra and Dominion join hands, maybe there’s another partnership in the mix. That would be really interesting. Maybe it’s Elon. Maybe [00:06:00] SpaceX or, uh, Tesla could just buy Ørsted’s onshore wind business. That would be a- amazing.  Matthew Stead: I thought they were going into space. Why would they be bothering with the Earth?  Allen Hall: You gotta power the rockets before you launch them, right? You get so-  Matthew Stead: gotta get some power from somewhere. Allen Hall: 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 catching blade problems early will save you millions[00:07:00] China has commissioned what is being called the world’s largest offshore wind turbine. It’s a 20-megawatt machine built by MingYang Smart Energy, installed off the coast of China in the South China Sea. The structure stands about 240 meters tall with blades around 128 meters long. That’s a pretty good-sized blade. And it’s rated to survive gusts up to 80 meters per second. But the real story is what researchers are watching after the turbine starts up. Early reports say that the rotor that is massively big will create measurable changes in local air currents and temperature distribution. At this scale, offshore wind creating a physical footprint that scientists want to measure and We have seen this effect here at Weather Guard Lightning Tech, watching storms go through the big wind farms [00:08:00] in the United States. So you can actually see storm behaviors change because of the quantity of turbines, and the turbines are getting to be high enough with the hub heights approaching 100 meters. But nothing as big as a 20 megawatt machine out on the ocean. It’s mixing the t- the, the air quite a bit, changing the temperature. Uh, is this something that climatologists are looking at, Rosemary, or, or, or watching closely, particularly with the, uh, fish life and sea life around the wind turbines?  Rosemary Barnes: I don’t know. My thing with MingYang is that they’re always, like, you only ever hear about them ’cause they’re announcing the biggest something, right? Um, that’s like the extent of it. It’s not like you hear about, oh, there’s a wind farm near you and it’s gonna have MingYang turbines in it. You never hear that. You only hear about they’ve got the biggest, and now next year they’ve got the new biggest, the biggest, the biggest, the biggest. And, uh, it’s like I know that they do actually make some, like, a lot of turbines. I think they’re in the, we mentioned last week, they’re in the top five manufacturers, um, mostly or maybe [00:09:00] pretty much entirely for the Chinese market. Um, so it’s not like I think they don’t make anything. But I do think it’s quite easy to announce the biggest something. This announcement is also like, yeah, okay, but is it real? Like it’s the, it’s a big, it’s a really big turbine. It’s going pretty high, but like offshore, um, there are, I think, onshore turbines being announced that are gonna go as high or higher because, you know, onshore, um, turbines have much taller towers than, than offshore. So I actually don’t think that it probably is a record for the tallest, like, tip that’s scraping. This is a thing that’s always happened, and sure, that’s interesting to have a look at and see if it has any local impact. It’s not like it’s, it’s not creating energy, right? It’s not gonna warm up, um, the, the planet. I mean, it’s, yeah, taking energy out of the, the air and then converting it to electricity. Um, so overall you’re gonna end up with the same amount of, of energy. But yeah, could be interesting to study, study what’s happening specifically.  Matthew Stead: I think it’s a so what question. You know, so what? I mean, I can sneeze and [00:10:00] I’d change the local environment, but who cares if I sneeze and change the local environment? You know, the, you know, the weather is inherently turbulent and, you know- There’s mixing and there’s all sorts of stuff naturally occurring. Yeah, my question is, so what?  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting in terms of, like, wakes of wind turbines and, you know, there’s, uh, people are researching that more because it’s not well enough understood, I think, for some of the really big offshore wind regions where there’s heaps of different wind farms and, you know, like, you’re gonna wanna know if you’ve got a win- an existing wind farm or you’re planning one, and then they sell, um, rights to build one immediately upstream of you, then, you know, you’re gonna wanna understand how, how all that local atmospheric stuff is, is happening exactly. Um, but yeah, like, it’s not, it’s not quite new and it’s not, yeah, like you said, it’s not unique to wind turbines. Um, so yeah, it is, like, slightly interesting, I would say. 5 out of 10 interesting.  Allen Hall: How much time should we spend on contrails? [00:11:00] Because we spent a good 20 minutes before we started this podcast talking about contrails, which is a one or maybe a negative one on the scale of should I follow this? Rosemary Barnes: How interesting is the fact that air travel is contributing to climate change? How interesting is that on a scale of one to 10?  Allen Hall: Zero.  Matthew Stead: Eight.  Allen Hall: It’s like the, it’s like the cow argument, right?  Rosemary Barnes: Allen doesn’t care about climate change. That’s okay.  Allen Hall: You asked me to put it on a ranking of where it is in importance. It’s, it’s nowhere near m- even a five.  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. So Yves said zero. Matt said eight. What about you, Yolanda? How, how interesting is the fact that air travel impacts climate change?  Yolanda Padron: I think it’s, like, a six.  Rosemary Barnes: Six. Okay. And so did you know that, um, airplanes are 2.5% of the world’s emissions, um, come from air, air travel? And did you know that I think it’s [00:12:00] 4% of the world’s warming comes from air travel? Of the warming, two-thirds of the warming that is caused by air travel or airplanes, uh, could be freight as well, it’s not to do with CO2. So some of that is, you know, like other, um, gases like NOx is a pretty potent greenhouse gas. Contrails are the biggest single component, the single biggest factor causing warming from, um, from air travel. And it’s not, it’s not necessary. You know, every airplane doesn’t create contrails in every trip. It’s, it’s a small number. Like, it’s a pretty small number of trips that are making contrails, and if we can better understand how like, what are the factors that lead to a contrail being formed or not, then we can avoid them and, you know, get rid of a, a percent or two of the world’s global warming. I think that’s just really huge.  Matthew Stead: What would you do about it, Rosie?  Rosemary Barnes: There’s a couple of solutions I know that other people are working on that sound very interesting to me. So the first is that if you change the fuel, like, [00:13:00] um, to sustainable aviation fuel, like a, a biofuel, some of those that have been tested also produce less contrails. I don’t know the exact reason why. Would be interesting to find out. That’s one thing. But secondly, um, if you can get good data about, like, very local atmospheric conditions and, you know, let the world’s airplane fleet can communicate with each other and some AI processing in real time, you can make small changes to your flight path to avoid making contrails, and yeah, you get, um, a small increase in, in f- fuel burn, I guess, from deviating from the most efficient route, but a big, big inc- um, decrease in contrails. Uh, so I think both of those are really promising solutions.  Allen Hall: It’s not that easy It isn’t like every airplane’s out there changing its altitude to keep away from creating contrails. There’s whole systems, thousands of people working at any one moment to keep airplanes up in the air. So it, it’s not something you just willy-nilly say, [00:14:00] “AI can adjust my altitude or my flight plan to deviate so I can prevent contrails.” It’s not that easy. It’s actually a huge undertaking, and it may end up burning more fuel.  Rosemary Barnes: Oh, I mean, it’s an incredibly complex system to keep airplanes up and not colliding. Um, I believe it’s not centrally planned. It’s not like you’re not logging your whole flight path any- anymore. I, I listened to a podcast about this the other day, and in the past you used to log your entire flight plan and not deviate from it, but now it, it’s done a bit on the fly. So I’m sure that there are already hundreds or thousands of factors that an aircraft computer is taking into account, um, when it’s figuring out exactly where it’s gonna go, and this would be another bit of complexity. I don’t, I don’t think it’s easy, otherwise we’d already be doing it. But I think it’s, it’s promising. And I think it’s easier than making hydrogen airplanes, for example. I think it’s easier than electrifying airplanes. And the fact of it is that even if you do [00:15:00] have sustainable aviation fuel, if it’s still making contrails, it’s still causing warming. So if you wanna actually s- solve, uh, you know, heating from flying, then you have to, you have to tackle the contrail part of the problem. It’s the biggest, it’s the biggest chunk on its own, bigger than CO2.  Matthew Stead: So did we get here by talking about possible contrails from wind turbines? Is that what we were talking about?  Rosemary Barnes: No. It was because Allen was saying before that we were gonna go off the rails, and he’s like, “Oh, you know what? In no time we’ll be talking about contrails,” like using it as an example of a tinfoil hat-wearing person. And I’m like, “Actually, that is a tinfoil hat that I do like to wear,” the contrails one. Um, not because I think the government is controlling me, uh, with with, you know, targeted hor- hormone or chemical releases via contrails, but because of the global warming potential.  Matthew Stead: Could a, a really tall wind turbine create contrails? What, what’s the physics behind that?  Allen Hall: [00:16:00] It’s just, um, water, right? So you’re just condensing water and shoving it out the back. When you’re burning hydrocarbons, it’s one of the byproducts, right? It’s like in, when, in an internal combustion engine, you see water dripping out the tailpipe. It’s this very similar kind of thing. Uh, so how much water comes out is dependent upon somewhat the fuel, as Rosie’s pointed out, so you can slightly change it, but a lot of it has to do with the temperature, altitude, pressure moisture content of the air, all those different factors play into it. So you’d have to have, in order to go look at it, you’d have to have a bunch of sensors on the airplane, which, which the aircraft may have some of them, but probably not enough to determine if they’re creating contrails besides looking out the window to see what’s coming out on the backside of the engine. Matthew Stead: A wind turbine could not create contrails. The pressure differential and the, the vapor pressure-  Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s not enough to, you’re, you’re not, you’re not changing temperatures enough, [00:17:00] right? So you, you basically have to change the dew point. That’s the way I would think about it. You have to change the dew point somehow, which I guess you could do maybe by a degree or so locally, you may be able to, to change it, and maybe you could. Um, well, we have seen tip vortices, right? So tip vortices, you have seen these contrails off the, the tips of, of, of aircraft wings.  Rosemary Barnes: But are they durable? You know, ’cause like, yeah, you see tip vortices off, yeah, off wing, wingtips, off wind turbine tips as well. But I don’t think they stay in the air after, you know, they, um, you can see them, and then they dissipate usually. Allen Hall: Yeah, it, it depends. You’ll see it when aircraft land quite a bit. Depends on what the temperature, humidity is at that particular moment, but th- those will, those will hang around a little bit  Rosemary Barnes: But I mean, certainly you can, you can, um, cause droplets to freeze from a wind turbine being there. That’s how they get iced up, is that their… Or either their water was super cooled to begin with and it just needs a, a surface to latch onto so that the crystal can, [00:18:00] um, form or also, yeah, like, I mean, in the aerodynamics there is that point between where the air goes over and under and you, um, sta- stagnation or-  Allen Hall: Stagnation point?  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. So you can, um, you, you could get some freezing there. Allen Hall: You can create cold zones.  Rosemary Barnes: I, as far as I know, all that stuff is just causing ice to build up on the blade. I don’t think that it’s, um… Yeah. And anyway, even if it did, like even if you did affect the, um, you know, have some ice particles forming in the, um, the wake then it’s just going to, or I don’t know, get hit the next time the, the, the blade goes through or, yeah, fa- fall out I would think ’cause it’s quite close to the ground  Allen Hall: but- Just to tie into what Rosemary’s saying, although I think wasting time on contrails is not worth the effort, I do think meteorologists do not do enough work on big changes that are happening to the planet in regards to, like, renewable energy is one of them, like wind turbines. I [00:19:00] haven’t seen a lot of work done about are wind turbines changing the temperature locally or not. I mean, they- I’ve seen some top level things, solar panels, but the same thing could be seen about shipping.  Rosemary Barnes: Oh, I mean shipping, shipping was, shipping was, um, cooling the planet until we, um, brought in restrictions on how much, um, sulfur emissions that you could, you could make. But can I use this to actually plug a, um, a, a pro- a collaborative project that we’re about to start where actually, uh, this is quite specific to Australia, to Queensland and Northern New South Wales. We’ve got a study, uh, collaborative study from a bunch of wind farms in that area and getting some academic researchers involved to look at how, like very detailed how lightning is in that region. And one of the questions that we’re gonna look at is what, h- how has the, um, the presence of wind farms, like when wind farms are built, how has that affected the local lightning, um, area? [00:20:00] So we’re gonna be able to answer, uh, you know, like to what extent have these wind farms caused increases in In lightning  Allen Hall: Or decreases  Rosemary Barnes: Or decreases. I’d, I, oof, yeah. I, I’d be surprised if it was decreases, and I will say, like, yeah, that area of Queensland, northern New South Wales, um, you know, they get kind of tropical storms, um, heaps and heaps of lightning, you know, hundreds hundreds of, um, strikes in a single storm sometimes, you know, and, you know, in one wind farm. But even if you think, like, uh, down in Victoria, New South Wales and Victoria, where you look at a lightning map and there should be very little lightning there, there are certain sites that are actually having huge problems with lightning, like way more strikes than you would expect based on the map, and I think that partly that’s also ’cause it just varies locally. But the other thing is, like, a l- a lot more of really damaging strikes. It is something that’s the world needs to do more of, is looking into, like, really local lightning, understanding how the wind farm is interacting with the lightning, causing lightning, how it differs from place to place. [00:21:00] I’m really hoping that, yeah, this, this one study that we’re working on now, and anyone who has a wind farm in that area, Queensland, northern New South Wales, if you wanna be involved, get in touch. The more people involved, the cheaper it is. But I think that that’s definitely something that can improve how lightning protection systems are, are designed, if we just know, like, what’s, what’s happening. ‘Cause there aren’t great links between OEMs doing the design and people in the field experiencing damage. Like, they don’t talk. Even when it’s the same company, you know, if it’s Vestas or GE that designed the turbine and is now servicing the turbines, they, they don’t necessarily talk to each other as much as, um, would be ideal.  Allen Hall: Using the EOLOGIX-PING lightning sensors, we just completed a study over a five-year period, uh, just about that subject. Rosemary Barnes: Where, where did you do that?  Allen Hall: In the States.  Rosemary Barnes: And will you be publishing the results and sending a, a letter to Vestas and GE and Siemens and whoever else and send them a letter, “Attention lightning expert”? [00:22:00] Matthew Stead: We’re probably just gonna put it on the website.  Rosemary Barnes: But is there even a, a, a conference, a, a conference for wind turbines and lightning? Con- considering it’s, like, one of the number one O&M things, like we’re-  Matthew Stead: There’s one in Melbourne next year in February.  Rosemary Barnes: I wasn’t attempting to, um, set the stage for, uh, this is why everyone has to come to our event. I mean, it, it, it’s so strange to me that there isn’t just, you know, like, a big conference every year. I mean, it could be every two years where all of the univ- like there’s heaps of people researching it, heaps of people working on designing on it, heaps of people working on operating it, repairing it when it doesn’t work, and, um-  Allen Hall: I think they’re looking at it from a very, uh, local scale And looking at a turbine taking a lightning strike and the things you can do to reduce damage or what the, the physics are locally, ’cause we don’t understand all that much about lightning, honestly. However, on a, on a larger scale, which is what the effort we’re working on right now, is that we’re looking at several states that are right in the thunderstorm alley and where [00:23:00] there’s a lot of wind turbines, thousands and thousands of wind turbines. What you see is, uh, a real change in the, in the weather patterns and in lightning, but it depends on the time of year. And having the EOLOGIX-PING lightning sensors on gives us a better sense of the number of strikes that are occurring, where they’re occurring on the wind farms. Uh, o- otherwise, all the other services that you could use wouldn’t be nearly as accurate. A lot of false positives.  Rosemary Barnes: But I wanna say, like, I think you’re so right that lightning it- it’s very local, like, and s- lightning behaves differently depending where you are. It dep- dep- behaves differently or it affects your turbine differently depending on what kind of LPS you’ve got. But the problem is that it’s not like there’s, um, you know, a catalog of LPSs and you’re like, “This one suits the lightning in Japan, and this one suits the lightning in Queensland.” It’s one– Y- if you want a GE turbine, this is the, it comes with a certain type of LPS, and the same with, with Vestas and, you know, ev- every other manufacturer. And they’ve all, I’m sure, got types of lightning that [00:24:00] they are better or worse suited to, but the information is, is certainly not out there for someone who’s choosing a turbine, and I don’t think that it’s actually properly understood by, by anyone. Because, like, who’s measuring all of the characteristics that you would need to know to design the LPS better? Almost no one. Most of the people doing that in the world are probably, yeah, on this podcast today. Um, but it’s, uh… And, and when they are being measured, is it being communicated back to every OEM so they can know? Like, of course it’s, it’s not.  Allen Hall: I’ll give you a good example because it happened over the past week or two. Looking at a wind turbine blade that had some damage to it, and the question was, was it caused by lightning? That was the question. And that’s a really good question. So I thought, “Oh, this will be easy,” because there’s gonna be a plethora of- lightning test data reports talking about testing of this particular kind of aluminum mesh on fiberglass surfaces, and [00:25:00] there really is not much. I was shocked by it. So I always think like if, if I can’t put my fingers on it readily, then what is a blade engineer or a site supervisor or someone who owns an asset’s gonna do?  Rosemary Barnes: I saw a presentation at Wind Europe last year or whenever I went, when I met with, with you both, probably both of you there, um, uh, that Polytech did where they had done some fatigue testing, um, of copper mesh and its lightning, um, protecting capabilities. And they did f- they, so they, you know, put some mesh into, um, fatigue testing, I, I think, or they, they damaged it a bit with a bit fatigue, some micro cracks and stuff. And they just did find that it heated up a lot after that. Um, you know, after it was a bit damaged, they were getting like real hot spots. And so then you’re gonna start to see laminate damage, um, in the, the area underneath that. So yeah, I, I think that more, more, like it’s a, it’s a good step that we’re now thinking [00:26:00] of, you know, protecting better than what we used to do with just, you know, one receptor in the, the tip and a cable, especially, you know, throw in carbon fiber and you, you know, make a second electrically conductive path and have flashover and stuff. It’s really great that, you know, we’ve evolved beyond that design, but it’s not finished yet. Like th- all those designs are new. There’s a lot of them out there. It sound like everyone’s like, “Oh, it’s, you know, we don’t have to worry if it’s got mesh over the whole blade.” It’s like, okay, maybe you don’t have to worry. Maybe, maybe you do. We, we kind of have to, have to keep on monitoring those for a few years and sharing the information.  Allen Hall: 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 [00:27:00] peswind.com today. In the current issue of PES Wind Magazine, there are a number of great articles. If you haven’t received your copy, you should just go to peswind.com and where you can read it and download a copy. Well, uh, this issue has an article from ZF and talking about gearboxes. And as we all know, inside every gearbox there are bearings and surfaces. Those tend to be the weak links when things break. And for decades, the industry has used roller bearings and, uh, the same kind basically you find in other machines. Uh, they work, but they do wear out. And how many times have you seen bearings, roller bearings wear out inside of gearboxes? Quite a bit. So– And they, they, they break down, they go offline. It’s, it’s a big problem. But ZF Wind Power says it has cracked the code with its hydrodynamic plain bearings. The company has already installed 36 gigawatts of gearboxes [00:28:00] using this technology, and they say field inspections show no measurable wear. Uh, the next generation, uh, which is a single film design, is heading to production in 2027. So ZF uses a different technique to keep their gearboxes running for a long time, which is, uh, it’s a simple device mechanically, but it is quite complicated in the way you have to design materials. Uh, basically plain bearings are what’s used in, in internal combustion engine around camshafts and things of that sort. But designing those and making sure you have the right materials is the trick, Matthew, and you’ve been around cars for quite a while. It’s, it’s the right approach if you can make it work, and it looks like ZF has done a really good job of making these, uh, bearing services work.  Matthew Stead: Yeah, it sounds like a, a perfect, uh, innovation. I, I heard about this the first time, I think it was a couple of years ago. And, and like you said, Allen, um, you know, cars for the [00:29:00] last 100 years or so have, have been using journal bearings. I probably need to fact check that one. It may not be 100 years yet, but definitely cars from a long time ago have been using these, um, these bearings. Um, I, I think, uh, one question is, though, around condition monitoring. You know, how do you actually monitor the condition of the, the s- the surfaces? Um, you know, with a traditional roller bearing, you can use, you know, vibration techniques. I’m not aware of as many condition monitoring techniques for, for the journal bearings. Um, perhaps, um, obviously the oil, oil particle and, you know, checking the oil quality, et cetera, et cetera. But, um, that might be where the gap might occur. But You know, if they’re lasting, if they’re not degrading, um, there’s no moving parts, um, yeah, great  Allen Hall: The issue is lubrication, right? Because you’ve got basically two well-designed flat metal surfaces that you have to provide lubrication to, and those two surfaces are moving relative to one another. The lubrication [00:30:00] matters ’cause you’re literally riding on a very, very thin layer of lubricant. So making sure the lubricant gets in there, that it’s, it’s clean, and it’s always available, uh, is the trick. That’s why in today’s world, a lot of internal combustion engines can go several hundred thousand miles in a vehicle because the lubrication systems have gotten so much better over the last 50, 60 years. And ZF is probably using something very similar, where the, the technology has gotten better and the metallurg- the metallurgy has gotten way better, and control of that. Because the, the bearing surface really matters, and there’s two pieces to it, right? You got this rotating– To simplify it, you got a rotating shaft, and then you have this bearing surface that that shaft sits on. The, the rotating shaft is gonna be made out of something relatively hard, where the bearing surface is gonna be made out of a mixture of metals that is a little bit soft. So if anything goes wrong, that bearing surface, that little race right there, uh, will wear, [00:31:00] and you can replace it. But if kept lubricated and cleaned and proper, that will run dang near forever, as ZF has proven. Matthew Stead: I think it’s the starting load. I think it’s when it’s at stationary and then starts. So I’m getting that initial lubrication. From my understanding, that’s where the, where the challenge lies. And, you know, obviously in a combustion engine in a vehicle, it’s starting and stopping all the time. So, um, but I just wonder, are the loads higher? Um, how does that occur in a, in a actual, um, gearbox on a, a turbine?  Allen Hall: Right. It’s not like a main, uh, shaft bearing, right? The– It’s, it’s in a gearbox. You have a lot of planetary gears and a lot of rotating com- pieces there But the, I think the trick is, one, understanding what’s happening load-wise, and hydrodynamic bearings can have some issues if things are twisting in weird ways. So a gearbox is probably the right place to do this technique because of it’s a [00:32:00] controlled environment necessarily.  Matthew Stead: Alignment.  Allen Hall: Yeah. So you can, you can control how the, the loads are carried internally to it, which would make it last a lot longer. S- because roller bearings and, and all of the complexities around that, uh, we’ve seen those fail so many times inside of wind turbines because it’s hard to control everything about that. Al- although they, they can be extremely durable, I would say ZF is onto something in, in terms of delivering a gearbox that can actually run longer using, uh, good engineering. That’s what it is. It’s just really good engineering. So if you haven’t seen this issue of PES Wind, you should download it today. Go to peswind.com. That wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn. And don’t forget to subscribe so you [00:33:00] never miss an episode. And if you found value in today’s conversation, please leave us a review. It really helps other wind energy professionals discover the show. So for Rosie, Yolanda, and Matthew, I’m Allen Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.

Pete Andrews from EchoBolt joins to discuss ultrasonic bolt inspection, the Bolt Wave device, and blade stud defect detection. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering tomorrow. Pete Andrews: Pete, welcome to the program. Good to be back. Yeah. See you face to face. Yeah. Yes. This is wonderful. It’s a really great event to catch it with loads of the. UK innovation that are happening in the supply chain. So it’s, yeah, really nice to be here.  Allen Hall: This is really good to meet in person because we have seen a lot of bolt issues in the us, Canada, Australia, yeah. Uh, all around the world and every time bolt problems come up, I say, have you called Pete Andrews and Echo Bolt and gotten the kit to detect bolt issues? And then who’s Pete? Give me Pete’s phone number. Okay, sure. Uh, but now that we’re here in person, a lot has changed since we first talked to you probably two years ago.[00:01:00] You’re a bootstrap company based in the UK that has global presence, and I, I think it’s a good start to explain what the technology is and why Echo Bolt matters so much in today’s world.  Pete Andrews: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, as you said, we’re a uk, um, SME, there’s a team of 13 of us based here in the uk. Yeah. But we do deliver our services internationally, but really focused on Northern Europe. Yeah. But increasingly we’ve done more in the US and North America, a little bit in Canada. Um, but our big offering really is to help wind turbine operators and owners reduce the need to routinely retire in bulks. So we have a quick and simple inspection technology that people can deploy, find out the status of their bolt connections, and then. Reti them if necessary, but the vast majority of the time we find that they’re static and absolutely fine and can be left [00:02:00] alone. So it’s a real big efficiency boost for wind operators.  Joel Saxum: Well, you’re doing things by prescription now, right? Instead of just blanket cover, we’re gonna do all of this. It’s like, let’s work on the ones that actually need to be worked on. Let’s do the, the work that we actually need to, and instead of lugging, like we’re looking at the kit right here, and I can, you can hold the case in one hand, let alone the tools in a couple of fingers. As opposed to torque tensioning tools that are this big, they weigh a hundred kilos, and those come with all of their own problems. So I know that you guys said you’re, you’re focused here. You do a lot of work, um, in the offshore wind world as well. Yeah. I mean, offshore wind is where you add a zero right? To zeros. Yeah. Everything else is that much more complicated. It costs that much more. It’s you’re transitioning people offshore to the transition pieces. Like there’s so much more HSE risk, dollar risk, all of these different spend things. So. The Echo Bolt systems, these different tools that you have being developed and utilized here first make absolute sense, but now you guys are starting to go to onshore as well.  Pete Andrews: Yeah, that’s right. So I mean, as as you said, that there’s really [00:03:00] three main benefit areas we focus on. The first one is the health and safety of technicians, right? As you said, some of the fasteners used offshore now are up to MA hundred. So a hundred millimeter diameter bolts,  Joel Saxum: four inches for our American friends. Yeah, absolutely.  Pete Andrews: And they probably weigh. 30 kilos plus per bolt. Yeah. Um, so just the physical manual handling of that sort of equipment and the tightening equipment for those bolts is a huge risk for people. If you think 150 bolts lifting or maneuvering, the tooling around on on its own can cause all the problems. So as well as the inherent risk of the hydraulic kit failing. So occasionally we see catastrophic tool failure. Is, which have really high potential severity, you know, sort of tensioner heads ejecting or crush injuries from Tor. So that is really a key focus for our customers, just to [00:04:00] keep their teams safe, but also you have to be the cost effective and the the major cost benefit we allow is that we don’t have to revisit every bolt and every turbine like you’d have to do if you were retyping. So we believe there’s something of the order of a million pounds per installed gigawatt saving. By moving from a routine REIT uh, maintenance strategy to a focused condition based inspection, you significantly reduce the amount of intervention you make and keep your turbines running more and reduce the boots on the ground on the turbine. So three real kind of, um, key. Benefits for people adopting our technology  Allen Hall: because we routinely see tower bolts being reworked or retention depending on who the manufacturer is. And I’m watching this go on. I’m like, why are [00:05:00] we doing this? It seems, or the 10% rule, we’re tighten 10% this year, and they’ll come back and see how it’s going. That’s a little insane, right, because you’re just kind of. Tensioning bolts up to see if one of them has a problem and then you just do more of them and we’re wasting so much time because echo bolts figured this out years ago. You don’t need to do that. You can tell what the tension is in a bolt ultrasonically, which was the original technology, the first gen I’ll call it, uh, that you could tell the length of the bolt. If the length of the bolt is correct within certain parameters, you know that it is tension properly. If it’s shrunk, that probably means it’s not tensioned properly. That’s a huge advantage because you can’t physically see it. And I know I’ve seen technicians go, oh, I could take a hammer and I can tell you which ones are not tensioned properly wrong. Wrong. And I think that’s where equitable comes in because you’re actually applying a a lot of science simply [00:06:00] to a complex problem because the numbers are so big. Pete Andrews: Yeah, I mean that, that, that’s been the real. Driving force between our offering is to simplify it. So ultimately we’re based on a non-destructive testing technique. It’s an ultrasonic thickness checking technique, but when from the non-destructive testing background, it’s crack detection, people have time, they can be, it’s a very precision measurement. People have to be trained in the wind industry. We’re trying to inspect. A thousand, 2000 bolts a day at scale. It’s a completely different, um, ask of the technology and the way the technology has been developed historically has required too much technician expertise, too much configuration and set up time, and hasn’t delivered on the, on the speed that’s needed to be efficient in wind. And that’s where our bolt wave [00:07:00] unit we’ve, that we’ve developed over the last. 18 months, let’s say, where all of our focus has gone to make it as slick and as easy for a client technician to pick up with minimal training. It’s through an iOS interface. Everyone understands it intuitively. Um, it’s a bit like using the camera app on your phone. You know, you’re just hitting measure, measure, measure, measure, measure 10 seconds a bolt as you move the, um, ultrasonic transducer across, and then the data gets moved. Automatically to the cloud, to our bolt platform. And customers can view it in near real time. The engineer in the office can see the inspections happened. They can see if there are any anomalous bolts, and then there can be communication there and then whether an intervention is necessary. So it’s sort of really changed the way our customers think about managing their, um. They’re bolted joints.  Joel Saxum: Well, I think these are, these are the kind of innovations that we love to see, right? Because [00:08:00] we regularly talk about a shortage of technicians, and this isn’t, I was just learning this this week too, like this is not a wind problem. This is a everywhere problem. No matter what industry you’re in. Use are short of technicians. But we’re seeing like a tool like this is developed to be able to scale that workforce as well. Right. You don’t need to be an NDT level three expert to go and do these things. ’cause there’s a very few of those people out there. Right? Right. We know the NDT people, a lot of NDT people, and that’s a hard skillset to come by. Yeah. This can be put in the hands of any technician. Yeah, a quick training course. Just, Hey, this is how you use your iPhone. You can check Instagram, right? Yeah. Okay. You can off figure. Yeah, have fun. See you at lunch. Um, but they can, they can make this happen, right? They can go do these inspections and you’re getting that, that, uh, data collected in the field. Centralized back to an SME that’s looking at it and you don’t have to put that SME in the field and try to scale their ability to go and travel and do all these things. They can be in the office making sure that the, the QA, QC is done correctly. I love it. I think that that’s the way we need to go with a lot of things. [00:09:00]Uh, and you’re making it happen.  Pete Andrews: Yeah. And it’s a real kind of. F change in mindset for us. So originally when we started Ebot, we were using third party hardware. Yeah. Which required a bit of that specialism. Yeah. A bit of care about the setup of the project, getting multiple parameters configured before you got going. And it wasn’t really something we could put in the hands of a customer.  Joel Saxum: Yeah.  Pete Andrews: Which meant Ebot scale was limited to what our own team could go and do, and regionally as well. You know, so we’re UK based. Probably 60% of our customers are uk, but now we have this Northern Europe offshore wind is obviously on our doorstep, but then increasingly we’ve done more and more in North America, so we’ve probably been to five or six sites now in North America and expect that to be a growth market because we can, we can now ship the devices over there, give some virtual training help. Uh, [00:10:00] people set themselves up and then that opens up that market, you know, so it’s been a real change in strategy for us, but has allowed us to have far more impact than we otherwise would just try to be a pure service.  Allen Hall: Well, let’s talk about the big problem in the states of a minute, which are the root bushing or inserts that are loose in some blades. When you lose that pushing, you also lose the tension on the bolt that can be measured. Is that something you’re getting involved with quite a bit now because of just trying to determine how many bolts are affected and, and where we are on the safety scale of can we run this turbine or not? Is that something that EE bolt’s been looking into? Pete Andrews: Yeah, absolutely. So I, I’d say there’s sort of two halves of what we do. There’s the, there’s the bulk wholesale monitoring of. Typically static connections to eliminate this routine retitling where it’s not needed typically, typically. But then we have these edge cases of certain [00:11:00] connections and certain platforms that have known bolt integrity problems, and we are working with clients to really, um, manage those integrity risks. Blade stud is an absolute classic, you know, sort of, I think almost every turbine OEM on some, if not all of their platforms has got. Embedded risk into their blades, pitch bearing connections. Um, so yeah, exactly as you said, our customers are using the technology for two things really. One is to ensure the bolts have been tightened to the preload that was specified or the target window. And quite often we find there is an opportunity to increase the preload and therefore increase the resistance to fatigue failure. So. You know, particularly on older sites where the bolts perhaps not in the condition they were on day one. Well, they definitely won’t be. Um, when people have gone and retti them, they haven’t got back to where they, they should be.[00:12:00] So we can prove that and increase a bit of that resilience, but then also start to look for the segments around the joint where, um, the bolt might start loosening or failures are occurring, and find areas where they can really hone in. And actively manage risk. And that sort of leads to what we’ve decided to do for the next year, particularly with Blade Stud in mind, is evolve this technology. So whilst it’s also measuring the elongation, we will do a defect scan at the same time. So you’ll monitor your blade stu, um, connection and we’re hoping that we can set the device to flag to you there and then. We believe this bulk has got a defect while you’re here, get it changed out before it fails and, and all the knock on problems, um, from there. Joel Saxum: So what you’re just pointing to there is a, is a workflow, right? So to me that is typical [00:13:00] of some of the amazing, innovative companies in the UK that I’ve run into throughout my career. And that is, you’re a group of SMEs, you know, bolted connections. That’s what you do, right? But then you’re like, hey. If there’s a tool, we could make a tool that would make our lives a bit easier, then it’s like, well, we could make the entire industry’s lives a little bit easier as well. So let’s iterate on that. And now you’re able to send these kits around the world to look at these things. Hey, you have a problem with this specific model. We can help you with this because we know the failure mode and we know how to look for it. Let’s do that for you. Also here, you’re doing bolt bulk measurements. We got that for you. But it all kind of flows back to the fact that Echo Bolt is a team. A bolted connection, SMEs that are making tools and being able to also provide consulting if need be. Yeah. Right. Um, to, to an entire industry. And I think that, um, this is my take on it, right? Wind is stop number one. I think you guys are gonna do a fantastic year, but there’s a lot of, uh, opportunity out there in bolted [00:14:00] connections as well. Allen Hall: A tremendous amount blade bolts being broken from defects in the crystalline structure. What appears to be a more. Rapidly developing issue across fleets that I’ve seen. I went to a farm this summer and the number of blade bolts that were there on the table that were broken on the conference room table was And the whiteboard office. Yeah. Yeah. This one,  Joel Saxum: this one.  Allen Hall: Your hard head is not gonna protect you from this one. It’s, it’s, it was this, um, I couldn’t imagine the amount of time they were spending hunting these things down. And of course, the only way they were finding ’em was they were broken. You like to catch ’em before they break because it becomes  Joel Saxum: a safety risk. Just not too long ago we saw an insurance case where there’s an RCA going on and it is pointing at an entire tower came down. Right. And it is pointing at a mid, mid tower section bolted connection. How often do you guys run into those problems? Or are you contacted by insurance companies or anything like that to, to take a peek at those? Pete Andrews: We haven’t done anything directly for insurance [00:15:00]companies, but we have been engaged by. Engineering consultancies that are doing RCA type activities. Okay. Um, things like at the end of defect liability periods mm-hmm. A customer has, has seen, they’ve had a lot of, uh, issues from an OEM, maybe an OE EM has offered a modification or an upgrade, assessing whether that upgrade is actually solved the problem or not. We’ve got involved in, um, but the tower. Issue specifically. It’s actually very rare we find, um, problems with tower connections, but where we do is often where they haven’t achieved good flange flatness, ah, during installation or the bolts have been, let’s say, left out in the elements for a period and lubrication has been, has deteriorated before the bolt’s been installed. So there are cases out there, but what I would say is. [00:16:00] To think about your whole life cycle, so ensure the bolt’s installed correctly and we can help with that with a QA to say, yes, this torque or tightening method has got you to the load that you want. Do some through life monitoring, but often if you install it correctly, it will it’s operational life. You will have very little concern. But then in the UK market, we’re increasingly getting involved again at the end of life, right? Life extension where life extension turbines are 20, 25 years old. How does an operator make a decision to carry on running without replacing all bots? Um, and that’s where increasingly we being asked to use the technologist just to say, actually the joint is fine. The bolts have run in a good, um, operational envelope. Run them on. Don’t replace a hundred percent of them like you might have been recommended to from your, um, yeah. Turbine supplier side. [00:17:00] Allen Hall: So Pete, if someone’s doing a repower where they’re basically putting a new one in the cell on an existing tower, they’re making a lot of assumptions about all the bolts from the ground up that they’re gonna be okay. And I know we’re talking about that. We’re in a lot of installations where. If the turbine has gone through a repowered or two. So now those bolts are 20 years old. Yeah. And trying to get ’em to  Joel Saxum: 30 35. 35  Allen Hall: 40. Yeah. I don’t know what they’re doing. By those bolted connections. Are they just like replacing the bolts? Are they hitting ’em with a hammer again? Is that the, yeah,  Pete Andrews: I mean, they might replace ’em, but you’ve got a problem with the foundation bolts. ’cause they’re obviously often anchor bolts set into concrete, so you have to reuse them and. With the projects, both in wind and in process power industry with the chimney stacks to try and ascertain whether foundation bolts that are set into concrete are still suitable for operations. So look for corrosion losses, look for [00:18:00] defects. Um, so yeah, they’re all things that need thinking about before you just make the snap decision to repower. But I think  Joel Saxum: a lot of that, uh, going back to a couple minutes ago, you were talking about at the commissioning phase, making sure that you have proper qa, QC of how these things were installed day one, and then making sure that before commissioning of a turbine, they’re checked. I think that’s really important. We’re starting to see that in the blade world now too, where we’ve been talking about it for a long time, and now when you talk to operators, they’re like, we’re getting inspections done on the blades before they’re hung. Or at the factory before they’re hung. After they’re hung. Like they want a good foundation baseline. Are you seeing that in the bolted connection world too?  Pete Andrews: Yes. Sort of. It’s just emerging for us. What we’ve found is, so most of our customers are in the operational phase ’cause they are the ones feeling the pain. Yeah. Of the routine retitling work. When they do major components, they sometimes engage us to come and say, can you check [00:19:00] before and after the blade was removed? What was it? Before we took it off from a a bolt load perspective, what is it afterwards? Can you then recheck after 500 hours When we retalk it? And what we’ve seen there often is the initial install hasn’t got them to where they needed to be and they’ve had to go and do the break in maintenance or the 500 hour REIT to get the bolts to the right load. So one of the questions that we have is whether. Some of the defects are actually being initiated very early on in that initial running in period and whether if, if actually you’d taken the time at, at the point of assembly to make sure you were correct, whether that avoids some of the knock on integrity concerns. So yeah, it’s interesting area.  Allen Hall: Well, bolts are what hold wind turbines together and you better know you have the right. Tension and [00:20:00] torque on your bolts to get to the lifetime of the wind turbine and to, and to check it once in a while. And I know there’s a lot of operators I can think of right now in the United States that are sort of doing that job somewhat. I I think they have missed out on opportunities to save a lot of money and to call it echo bolt. How do people get ahold of you? Because that’s one thing I run into all the time. Like, Hey, hey, you gotta talk to Ebol, call Ebol. How do they get ahold of you?  Pete Andrews: So the easiest ways are via our website. Which is echo bolt.com. Um, LinkedIn, you’ll find us at Echo Bolt on LinkedIn. Reach out. Our email would be info@cobolt.com. So any of those route and you’ll, uh, reach me and the team and more than happy to speak to you about any of your faulting concerns or problems. We are, uh, yeah, we’re passionate about your problems.  Allen Hall: Pete, thank you so much for being on this podcast. I, it is great to actually see you in person and see the bolt wave technology. It’s really [00:21:00] impressive. So anybody out there that needs bolt tensioning to checking tools, you need to get ahold of Pete at Echo Bolt and get started today. Thank you Pete. Thanks guys. It’s great to be here.

Allen covers Suzlon hitting 2 GW in a single Indian state, Nabrawind’s crane-free turbine install in Namibia, Antora’s South Dakota thermal battery, Australia’s $17 billion grid expansion, and Shimizu recycling old turbine blades into steel. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! GOOD MORNING. The wind industry is not just getting bigger. It is getting smarter. And today … we have the proof. Let us start in India. SUZLON GROUP just crossed a milestone. Two gigawatts of wind orders … in a single Indian state. The latest deal … sixty-five turbines at three megawatts each for a company called SUNSURE ENERGY. SUNSURE is not a utility. It is an independent power producer building round-the-clock clean energy for data centers … electric vehicles … and heavy industry. Wind paired with solar and battery storage. Power that does not stop when the sun goes down. SUZLON is already building six hundred and sixty-four megawatts of additional commercial and industrial projects in the same region. And SUNSURE … backed by PARTNERS GROUP of Switzerland … has seven gigawatts in development across India with a target of ten gigawatts by two thousand thirty. That is not government-led. That is private capital chasing wind. Now … across the ocean to Africa. A Spanish company called NABRAWIND [NAH-brah-wind] just solved a problem that has plagued remote wind farms for years. How do you install a turbine when you cannot get a crane to the site? Their answer is a system called SKYLIFT. No heavy-lift cranes. None. A self-erecting tower combined with a blade installation tool they call the BLADERUNNER. They just put up a GOLDWIND six-megawatt turbine at a wind farm in NAMIBIA. And here is the part that changes the math. Traditional crane installation needs calm air. Six to eight meters per second. Maximum. NABRAWIND’s system works in fifteen meters per second sustained … with gusts up to twenty. That site blows hard. All the time. Which is exactly why they chose it. When complete … seven turbines … two hundred and thirty gigawatt-hours a year. About six percent of NAMIBIA’s entire electricity demand. NABRAWIND was acquired by Australia’s FORTESCUE last year as part of its industrial decarbonization push. So India is stacking private-sector wind orders. Africa is installing turbines without cranes. And in SOUTH DAKOTA … they are storing the wind itself. A California startup called ANTORA ENERGY just built a five-gigawatt-hour thermal battery at an ethanol plant in BIG STONE CITY. More than two hundred solid carbon blocks. When the wind blows at night and nobody needs the power … the blocks absorb cheap electricity and heat up. When the plant needs energy … the blocks release heat or generate electricity through special cells that capture light from superheated material. Think of it as a giant toaster oven battery. Full power expected by October. The plant’s president put it simply. Nobody has got a switch for the wind. It blows when it wants to blow. Now … down under. The AUSTRALIAN government just announced the biggest single expansion of its electricity grid. Nineteen renewable energy projects. Seven-point-eight gigawatts of generation. Seven-point-nine gigawatt-hours of battery storage. Seventeen billion dollars in private investment. Nineteen thousand construction jobs. Power for four million homes. Among the largest … RWE’s [arr-vay’s] THEODORE wind farm in QUEENSLAND. One-point-one gigawatts. Up to one hundred and seventy turbines. Three billion Australian dollars. RWE … the same company building offshore wind in England and Denmark … is now building onshore in AUSTRALIA. And the AUSTRALIAN government is not stopping. They just opened the next round of tenders. Another five gigawatts. Finally … JAPAN. Major contractor SHIMIZU [shee-MEE-zoo] CORPORATION has developed a way to recycle old wind turbine blades. Not into park benches. Not into landfill. Into steel. The blades are cut and crushed into a material that goes into electric furnaces to adjust the carbon content of steel … making it harder and stronger. JAPAN expects to replace one hundred to two hundred turbines a year by the two thousand thirties. That is two to three thousand tonnes of blade waste. Annually. SHIMIZU has built about twenty percent of the wind power facilities in JAPAN. They see this technology as a way to grow their entire wind energy business. So … let us step back. India stacks two gigawatts of private-sector wind orders. Africa installs turbines in gale-force winds … without a crane. South Dakota stores surplus wind in superheated carbon blocks. Australia backs nineteen projects with seventeen billion dollars. And Japan turns old blades into stronger steel. From the factory floor to the scrap yard … from the wind farm to the furnace … the industry is solving problems at every stage of a turbine’s life. And that’s the state of the wind industry for the 25th of May 2026. Join us for the UPTIME WIND ENERGY PODCAST tomorrow.

Matthew Stead recaps WindEurope Madrid and Blades Europe Edinburgh. Plus Suzlon unveils its Blue Sky platform for Europe, Muehlhan consolidates six specialist firms, and Mingyang keeps hunting for a European home. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Speaker: [00:00:00] 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 2025: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, and I’m here with Matthew Stead, who is back in Australia, but not at home. He’s up in Queensland. Or actually, not even on– in Queensland, technically. He’s on an island off the coast of Queensland. Where are you at, Matthew?  Matthew Stead: Uh, Moreton Island. It’s, uh, like a resort island off, uh, off of Brisbane, so beautiful outside.  Allen Hall 2025: Well, you need a little bit of resort time because you’ve been to two conferences, and you spent a good bit of time in Austria after that. So you were at WindEurope in Madrid, and then following that, you went right over to Scotland for Blades Europe. So I wanna hear your thoughts. We’ll start with, uh, WindEurope and what was going on at that conference. It did sound like there was a pretty [00:01:00] good attendance, and some people that I have talked to about it really en-enjoyed being in Madrid. It’s just  Matthew Stead: a bigger city. Um, first time I’d ever been to Madrid, and, uh, yeah, the show was amazing, actually. I was, I was a bit blown away by, uh, I think the OEMs were back out in force. You know, so like the Vestas, Siemens were, um, really– and Nordexes and so forth were really back out in force, so that was really good to see. Um, the, some of the larger operators had really, really strong presence as well. So you could see that, you know, Iberdrola, Res, um, those sorts of companies were, um, really, you know, putting a big effort in and meeting their customers and, um, really showing, uh, the world who they were. So that was really, um, you know, really good to see. There were so many people seriously. Um, the queues for food at lunch were, were, um, one of the major problems. Um, so, um, yeah, it was really a lot of people, so that was really exciting. Um, and I mean, for me, I was [00:02:00]trying to catch up with, with partners and friends and, yeah, it was, it was jam, jam-packed just meeting people in the industry. Um, probably a few other things. So s- you know, SkySpecs and Aerones had a really strong, um, presence there. So, um, SkySpecs and Aerones were, were doing really well. Um, maybe one of the, um, surprises for me, and I know this has been a topic on a few other previous episodes, was there was a lot of interest in bird and bat detection. I, I, I think there had to be, like, five companies that were, were– had really big setups, and it was a really, really big topic around cameras and so forth. So, um, that was a, a big topic. And, um, then there, there was a really, really strong, you know, supply chain, you know, from, from vessels to cables to, you know, repairs. Allen Hall 2025: What was the ratio of offshore companies to onshore companies? I’m always curious.  Matthew Stead: You’re looking through the, the list. Um- I would, I’m only guessing it [00:03:00] was probably about 40% had an offshore focus of some kind. So it was definitely a strong offshore focus. Um, obviously, you know, a lot of onshore, offshore combined companies. But yeah, definitely the word offshore kept on popping up a lot.  Allen Hall 2025: Because Spain is mostly onshore. Like, um, like 99% onshore, right? I think it’s a couple of small projects going offshore. Does it look like the onshore business is gonna pick up, uh, just in terms of the activity on the floor in Madrid?  Matthew Stead: Uh, yeah. Um, I, I think, you know, like I said, you know, those big operators like the REZAs and the Iberdrolas and, and the OEMs, I, I think it’s just a given that, um, you know, things are buoyant. Um, well, they appear to be definitely very buoyant. Uh, I think we’ve heard, you know, some of the positive, um, financial news from a few of the OEMs recently. So yeah, yeah, it seems like o- onshore is, is maturing further, further, further. And so you went straight  Allen Hall 2025: from Madrid, right, to [00:04:00] Edinburgh, Scotland. That was a change in weather, I would assume. Uh, probably about a 20 degree Celsius difference. 25 down to 15, yes. Whoa. Okay. Yeah, that’s a good bit. Uh, but the Edinburgh conference, that’s the first time that Blades Europe has been to Edinburgh. I, at least I don’t remember them being there before. That tends to be a more technical conference than Wind Europe. Uh, the, the Blades conference is obviously focused on blades, and all the relevant experts in Europe do tend to show up there. What were some of the hot topics at Blades Europe this year? Matthew Stead: Yeah, I think it was, um, an interesting conference. Um, I, I’d been to Blades USA, so I was able to contrast, um, Blades USA a little bit. I think probably the differences here were, yeah, there was definitely some strong, strong, uh, experts there, like you say. Um, you know, Birgit, um, our friend was, was in attendance and a few of her colleagues from Statkraft. Um, I think, and or, uh, actually ORE Catapult, the, the [00:05:00] UK research, um, offshore renewable energy research, um, they did some great presentations. I really, um, they really shared some really good insights. So, um, ORE Catapult were talking about life extension and, um, you know, looking at the, the fatigue on blades and, uh, how they’re, how they’re going to perform and life extension. So some great stuff from ORE Catapult there. Probably another key topic that came up was around, uh, sort of related to life extension, but also recycling. The, there was a really good session on the new IEC standard. Um, um, to, you know, full disclosure, I was actually on the panel. So I, I thought it was a great panel. But, um, the new IEC standard for blade operations and maintenance, um, is really well a-advanced now in its development. Um, very strong risk focus, you know. So depending on the risk then drives your, your blade O&M program. [00:06:00] Um, so that was a, a great talk as well. Uh, and then maybe finally, um, something close to my heart, um, I think the, the, you know, the maturity of CMS companies. There actually, there were five blade CMS companies there, which is probably the biggest turnout I’ve seen around blade CMS, um, ever. And so it was good to see that sort of, um, interest and growth, um, and the need for, for blade CMS. Uh, and, um, obviously the last one, lightning. So lightning always an issue. Lots of discussions around lightning, um, you know, through Greece and a few of the, the, the Balkan go- Balkan states. On the blade recycling front, there’s a  Allen Hall 2025: company in Scotland called ReBlade that is involved in some of the recycling efforts. Did they give a presentation of, of what they’re up to at the moment? Matthew Stead: Uh, yes, I think they did. Um, they’re talking about setting up a, a site in a, a [00:07:00] couple of sites, and I think Inverness was the, the location where they’re, where they’re setting up a site. The, um, the port is supportive, so they’re working through those, those, those challenges. You know, getting a site, getting transport and access to the blades. Um, working out when, when the, when the blades will come to them. You know, the storage of blades. Um, the, the end, end uses for those blades. Getting all that supply chain, um, lined up was, you know, yeah, it was, that was quite thorough and quite, um, yeah, inspiring.  Allen Hall 2025: And on the CMS side, what are operators trying to monitor? ‘Cause usually have something in mind that they’re going after.  Matthew Stead: For better or for worse, there’s still some serial, um, failure modes. Um, and so the industry is looking at very particular, you know, challenges that, um, certain make and model have. Um, so root insert failures was definitely one of those, um, one of those topics. Um, and that was actually one of the, the, the [00:08:00] roundtable discussions at, uh, Blades Europe. Some other, um, monitoring around, you know, lightning and- lightning damage and what’s happening with the LPS. That was also, uh, another big topic for, for monitoring. And then a few other sort of general, more, more general, um, you know, natural frequencies of blades and seeing if the natural frequencies are changing, indicating a change in stiffness, which relates to potential damage. So yeah, there was– it was quite a mix of the types of, um, CMS that was discussed.  Allen Hall 2025: Has the digital twin finally died? Anybody talk about that?  Matthew Stead: There’s actually a current call-out for a new research project in Europe around digital twins. So, um, yeah, one of the larger, one of the larger operators is, is putting, pulling together a team to talk about digital twins, so-  Allen Hall 2025: I, I think this is one of the more difficult things to do, but just because you’re dealing with a variety of blades and blade factories and unique issues that pop up that are…[00:09:00] You, you really can’t model until after they happen. And after they happen, everybody knows about them anyway. So what’s the point of the digital twin if you can’t detect things early? It, it, it is a great concept, but hard to implement.  Matthew Stead: Yeah. And why? Why would you do it? I mean, you, you’re only gonna do it if there’s a benefit, and what is the benefit? So, but I think, uh, actually at Blades Europe, digital twins was not really a topic. And maybe one thing I forgot to say is that the, um, Wind Power Lab did a, a good, um, presentation on carbon blades as well, so.  Allen Hall 2025: The, the carbon blades are, is a very good discussion, just because the trend has been lately to scrap blades and bring new ones on site. And the carbon can be difficult to repair, or it takes a long time to repair, and you just don’t have the manpower or woman power to go out and fix it. So the, the fastest option is to build a new blade. But it does leave a lot of blade waste, which is where the industry is not going. Uh, recyclable blades, which is [00:10:00] in process at the moment, will make that easier, but you just don’t wanna be recycling blades. You like to be able to repair them. Composites are repairable. And it’s, it is so odd that they, they wanna continue on that pathway, but we’ll see. We’ll see. You don’t really learn the lesson until you do it.  Matthew Stead: Um, however, you know, the, the presentation on carbon blades was, um, you know, highlighted a lot of the challenges, but also highlighted some of the positives and the, you know, how they do help. Um, and so there was a lot of support for carbon blades, but there’s a lot of unknowns and, um, and there was a lot of discussion around how do you even test if the LPS is working. Uh, it’s just impossible. So, you know, traditional methods on carbon blades, yeah, it just don’t work. So, um, but there was a lot of support that the carbon does bring benefit. But yeah, I agree with you. There’s a lot of challenges there.  Allen Hall 2025: That’s one of the things we learned years ago back in the late ’80s, early ’90s when we, at least in, in the [00:11:00] States, started building a number of carbon fiber aircraft. And the repair situation and dealing with repairs in, in remote locations became difficult. And you’ve learned how much training it took to keep an industry running, and you’re starting from zero for a lot of places that all he had worked on was aluminum. It, it’s a completely different world. You’re, you’re training tens of thousands of technicians around the world. You weren’t planning to go do that, and now you are. So it just, it adds to the cost.  Matthew Stead: It also ties into the OEM, um, you know, providing, you know, details on how to repair those blades because they’re not, they’re not just a standard item, so-  Allen Hall 2025: No, you, you don’t wanna be grinding into a protrusion if you can avoid it. It- you’re just never gonna get it back into that original form because protrusions are in some part magic. And taking a grinder to them is not gonna… It’s breaking the magic. All the magic will be leaving that protrusion when you do that. Yeah, very [00:12:00]difficult. Delamination and bond line 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 catching blade problems early will save you millions. Well, as we know, the wind industry has long been dominated by a handful of European and American turbine makers, uh, particularly in the, quote-unquote, “West.” Uh, but that landscape may be [00:13:00] shifting. Suzlon, the Indian turbine giant that nearly collapsed under about a $1.5 billion of debt just a few years ago, is back. The company has unveiled a new turbine platform aimed squarely at Europe, and says it will build its first factory on the continent if it wins enough orders. Vice Chairman Girish Tanti, uh, delivered the announcement at the WindEurope conference in Madrid, where Matthew was Signaling that Suzlon believes its time has come. And since you were there, Matthew, did you hear any news on the floor, any discussion on the show floor about Suzlon entering Europe?  Matthew Stead: Well, actually, yes. So, um, um, there was actually a good, uh, contingent of Suzlon people at, uh, Blades Europe. So, uh, they attended, uh, Wind Europe and then Blades Europe. Um, and I, you know, I was able to have a bit of discussion with them. I think, I think, uh, they were quite optimistic about, um, [00:14:00] you know, moving back or moving into, into Europe in terms of manufacturing. Um, however, there was an element of skepticism. Am I allowed to say that? So they, uh, were, they were not completely, um, convinced that it’s gonna happen, but, uh, they were certainly excited by that. It was definitely a, a clear possibility, but not a given.  Allen Hall 2025: Well, they have a, a new platform called the Blue Sky platform, um, which will have, I think, two turbines here, a 5 megawatt and a 6.3 megawatt, which is squarely aimed at Europe and also the United States, for that matter. And building a factory, though, doesn’t make a lot of sense if the cost driver for a factory in Europe is the European employees, which it tends to be when you hear the discussions about the cost structure, it’s about the employees. I’m not sure why Suzlon would make blades or nacelles in Europe unless they could avoid tariffs or taxation, because India is a very [00:15:00] cost, uh, driven, uh, manufacturing facilities writing country. So why would you wanna go build another expensive factory, probably in the realm of a couple hundred million pounds, uh, if you’re gonna go do it? It probably doesn’t make any sense to do that as well as just selling turbines into Europe. It seems like the easier path.  Matthew Stead: Yeah. And then you’ve got all the, like, the quality control challenges and, you know, you get the cultural challenges. So yeah, to be honest, I don’t qu- I don’t quite understand the logic behind that either. Um, maybe there’s, there’s some things that we don’t know about behind the scenes in terms of tariffs and other, other incentives that we don’t know about.  Allen Hall 2025: Would you see operators taking, uh, a Suzlon presentation and maybe even writing plans for developing with Suzlon turbines in the next couple of years? Is that a, a feeling that Europeans would, would do that, or is Vestas mainly and Siemens Gamesa so strong in Europe that it doesn’t make any sense unless [00:16:00] you’re in sort of the periphery countries of Europe?  Matthew Stead: I mean, my first exposure to a wind turbine was a Suzlon turbine in Australia, and there are many, many, many Suzlon turbines in Australia. And they’re all, they’re all still working. They’re all still reliable. So I mean, from a reputation and reliability and, um Yeah, history point of view, I can’t see why not. I mean, you know, uh, the operators will see that, you know, they’ve proven themselves. They’re not new kids on the block. Um, and so why wouldn’t an operator think about it? Allen Hall 2025: Well,  Matthew Stead: in  Allen Hall 2025: this quarter’s PES Wind magazine, which you can download for free at peswind.com, there is a nice article from Muelhen Wind Services, and that is a growing company. A lot going on there. Our friends at AC883 just joined Muelhen a f- few months ago, and is being part of that conglomerate. And, and we know that obviously building wind farm used to mean [00:17:00]consulting with dozens of contractors, and this is where Mue- Muelhen has really s- stepped into the breach here. So from blade repair at one company and heavy lift cranes at another company, all that had to be managed separately. You’re calling s- different companies all the time. And watching asset managers and site supervisors do this, uh, it is a thankless job. Well, Muelhen’s trying to change that a little bit, uh, and they’re saying that that model no longer works, and I totally agree with them. It’s insane. Uh, but so Muelhen has consolidated six specialist firms under its one brand, and covering everything from port pre-assembly to long-term operations and maintenance across Europe, the US and Canada, uh, and Asia-Pacific. Its CEO, Søren Hoffer, uh, puts it plainly, “The next phase of wind will not be won by turbine size alone. It will be decided by the supply chain’s ability to execute.” Boy, [00:18:00]couldn’t say truer words. Uh, I’ve worked with Muelhen or my company, Weather Guard Lightning Tech, has worked with Muelhen on a couple of projects over the years, and we’ve always had, uh, great service from them, and we have talked to a number of operators that love them, that love using Muelhen. So it’s not a surprise that they’re trying to grow and expand and make life easier for the operators.  Matthew Stead: Sounds like a brilliant move, really. I mean, you know, pulling all these sort of things together is, is a real challenge, isn’t it? I mean, coordinating all these subcontractors, um, getting to turn up at the right time, and yeah, I mean, it just sounds like a brilliant move, and I think that we need more, more, more efficient service companies to service the growing fleet. So the more they can get organized, the better.  Allen Hall 2025: Yeah, the scale matters here, and the expertise matters. As we’ve have a couple hundred thousand turbines that are [00:19:00] operating in the, quote-unquote, “West,” it does make sense to have a larger player that has seen most of those turbines and has some experience with them. It’s always the scary scenario when you’re working with a new company. Have they been on this turbine before? Do they know what they’re doing? Do they know- Lockout tagout. Even simple things like that come to the forefront. And the, the trouble is on some of these smaller companies that are in that business is that, uh, you just don’t get the level of service, you don’t get the level of response, you don’t have the horsepower if something were to, to go wrong on site. They don’t have the cash to, to bring in a second crane or another crew to get this job done. It, it does become scale at some point. And, uh, for a long time in the wind industry, particularly United States, it, it has been a lot of, quote-unquote, “mom-and-pop operations,” and those are slowly getting acquired by the likes of Muehlhan. I, I, I think this is inevitable at some point. Uh, from the asset owner’s, uh, desktop watching this go on, [00:20:00] how do you see, you know, a large operator interfacing with Muehlhan? Are they gonna do just one-stop shopping at this point? They’re, they’re not gonna have three or four different companies to work with, that they’re just gonna lock into, uh, Muehlhan? ‘Cause, uh, that’s what I see.  Matthew Stead: Yeah. I, I think, you know, from the, the WOMA Conference in, in Melbourne, we saw a bit of a, bit of a shift towards, um, outsourcing, at least in Australia Pacific region. And I mean, if, if you’re gonna outsource, um, you’re, you’re probably gonna join up with a, a Muehlhan, um, equivalent. So, you know, that way it just takes some of the risk out of, out of it, so it, it sort of makes sense. Um, the other observation I’ve heard is that, you know, because of the seasonality of blade repairs, it’s really hard to keep hold of, um, blade techs. And so if you’re a global company, you’ve got at least some opportunity of using the ses- seasonality and keeping hold of the good techs and, um, you know, so, you know, you know, summer in, in North, North, uh, America, and then, you know, summer in [00:21:00] Australia. So it, it, it allows these company, allows these companies to keep hold of their good people.  Allen Hall 2025: Yeah. And that, that’s always been the yearly problem, right? That you have a, a crew of a couple good crews in the summertime, and you come back the next summer and it’s a whole different group of people and yeah, that, that, that’s trouble for the industry. Well, a- and it’s good. It’s fi- it’s finally good to see this happening, and I know, uh, we’ve talked about it internally here at Weather Guard of who to work with and who to partner with. We like working with companies that have scale, and I think we’re finally there. So it’s really interesting to see this article from Johan in PES Wind. So if you, if you haven’t read the article, you should go visit peswind.com and take a look. There’s a lot of great content in this quarter’s issue, and y- you don’t wanna miss it. So go to peswind.com today. 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 [00:22:00] 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. So when, when the energy prices spike like they’re happening right now, uh, the Iran war being one of the main drivers, and obviously gasoline prices have jumped quite a bit, here’s what happens. The China’s clean energy sector goes to work, and they’re racing to make connections and make sales. As electricity prices jump up, gas prices jump up, everybody wants to try to find a cheaper way to provide energy to their countries or locales. Uh, China’s there to offer it. So it’s solar panels, batteries, EVs, and even wind turbines are, are looking for homes out of China. Uh, for European wind professionals, [00:23:00] the most important part comes from Mingyang, right? So they were unable to get a production facility in Scotland, but they haven’t given up yet. They are still searching for a home somewhere in Europe. And as of today, I don’t think they’ve found it. They’re s- I think they’re still looking for some country to host them. But how long is that gonna go on, Matthew? I, I think with the domination of Vestas and Siemens Gamesa in Europe and Suzlon trying to make an entry, will Mingyang and other Chinese manufacturers eventually find a home?  Matthew Stead: It’s interesting. I think, uh, if you look at the airline industry, you’ve always had premium providers, and you’ve always had low-end providers, and I think there’s always a place for all of them. And so I re- I reckon they’ll find, I think they’ll find their place in, in the market and just, you know, it might just take a while. But they’ve got the strength, haven’t they? They’ve got the product. They’ve got the strength. So it’s just a matter [00:24:00] of time.  Allen Hall 2025: Yeah. I, I, I d- I do think eventually it will happen. But Vestas and, and Siemens Gamesa have done a pretty good job of controlling it, and wind Europe, honestly. Wind Europe has not been a proponent of a Chinese manufacturer in Europe, so that generally will help slow down any business plans they would have But at the same time, there’s a lot of opportunities around the world that’s not necessarily in Europe, right? South America has strong ties with China. They’re– And Chinese companies are, are starting production in China. There’s a lot th- things happening there. You’re gonna see that in Africa and other places. So it doesn’t necessarily have to happen in Europe, which is, I think Europeans and Americans think, “Well, we can’t have China in those locales.” Fine. But it isn’t like China doesn’t have other opportunities to, to sell turbines or solar panels or batteries. There are plenty places on the planet where  Matthew Stead: people that  Allen Hall 2025: need  Matthew Stead: lower cost energy, and they’re gonna find them. Um, I did attend a, a panel [00:25:00] discussion on Türkiye, um, and the growth, and there was a lot of growth in Türkiye around onshore and offshore. And so maybe Mingyang, that might be a, a place, um, for them to, to start, you know, on the doorstep of, of Europe. The stepping stone, so to speak. Stepping country.  Allen Hall 2025: Is there risk in that, uh, uh, if, uh, uh, Mingyang decided to put a plant in Türkiye? Is, does that come with some political aspect? Because I, I, I don’t remember. Türkiye t-tends to play, uh, uh, k- kind of like Switzerland in, in terms of working with different, uh, political systems over time. Yeah.  Matthew Stead: I, I’ve had a bit more to do with a few, a few, um, sort of organizations in Türkiye recently and, um, you know, it’s highly professional, highly, you know, logical, and so I, I can’t see why it’d be a challenge. So I think, yeah, that stepping stone into Europe might be a, a logical way to go. Well, maybe  Allen Hall 2025: we’ll see that in the next [00:26:00] couple of months. I don’t know. There’s gonna be a lot to happen there. There’s so much money being spent in Europe on renewables, wind, solar, battery, all the above, that there’s plenty of opportunity, and every company that has a product that’s gonna be trying to sell it in Europe right now. It’s a smart move. Absolutely.  Matthew Stead: I think the other thing that we’ll probably be talking about a little bit more is EV trucks or, you know, electric trucks.  Allen Hall 2025: You think so?  Matthew Stead: I reckon we’ll be talking more and more about electric trucks.  Allen Hall 2025: Does Europe even have a, a le- a real true EV tractor-trailer, large truck? What do they call… I guess they call it a lorry.  Matthew Stead: I don’t think yet. But that’s why I’m saying I think this is a topic that’s gonna raise itself. Um, I’ve, I’ve seen some numbers recently which says that it’s a bit of a no-brainer to go from diesel to, um, to battery now.  Allen Hall 2025: So is Tesla gonna be the, the winner there just because of their, I don’t even what they call it, the Tesla truck? Is that what they call that now?  Matthew Stead: Not the Cybertruck, the, the truck truck.  Allen Hall 2025: Electric semi-truck. There you go. [00:27:00] Thank you, producer Claire.  Matthew Stead: I think you’ve gotta watch, you know, you’ve gotta watch BYD and a few of the other, the other, um, other companies.  Allen Hall 2025: Do they have something as large as what, uh, Tesla is offering today? Because Tesla is offering a true semi or tractor-trailer  Matthew Stead: I, I, I must admit I’m not a, a huge expert on the topic, but I’m sure Rosemary is.  Allen Hall 2025: She drives the big rigs? Is that what she’s doing?  Matthew Stead: But I think we– Yeah, I think, I think it’s an in-interesting thing to watch because, um, certainly fuel prices in Australia are definitely pushing, um, this idea of, um, electric trucks. Allen Hall 2025: Yeah, diesel prices are really high in the States. I- if they’re high in the States, I can’t even imagine what they are in Europe or Australia. They must be through the roof. So if you have a diesel vehicle, although they run forever and are pretty efficient, the price of fuel is insane right now.  Matthew Stead: And, you know, if you, if you take that a step further into mining, so Twiggy Forest, um, and Fortescue, you know, switching to [00:28:00] electric, uh, trucks and electric mining, yeah, it makes sense. Allen Hall 2025: Does the math work out on that? Uh, obviously Fortescue is taking, uh, really a pretty significant risk in that they’re developing their own electricity generation sites via wind and solar and battery, the whole thing, and they’re converting some of their larger vehicles to electric. Does that hold a big risk, or is this just a financial no-brainer, particularly when diesel prices are so high? Matthew Stead: Yeah, I think it’s a financial no-brainer. Uh, and that’s why partly I think we’ll be talking about trucks because, you know, once the finances make sense, um, there’ll be a faster transition. And I think, you know, Fortescue is not a silly company.  Allen Hall 2025: Fortescue is willing to dabble, right? So they’re willing to, to see where the technology is and spend a little bit of money and possibly it works out, right? I think there’s– you have to take a little bit of risk if you’re in that business because you are spending so much money on fuel. [00:29:00] You can spend a couple million dollars playing in different areas to pick an eventual winner. Obviously, they’re gonna– Well, it’s not obvious at the moment, but it, it seems obvious to us being on the electricity side. Electricity is gonna be the answer. Renewable energy is gonna be the easy way to do it, the lowest cost way to do it. There you go. Go do it. Well, American Clean Power’s event, uh, which is in Houston this year, will be happening June 1st through the 4th at the convention center downtown in Houston. It’s gonna be warm, everybody, so if you’re traveling from a cooler country like Denmark to Houston, bring something cool to wear. It will be warm in June. It, it– Houston is just a very warm place, and it’s quite humid, so it’ll, it’ll be a, a unique environment. However, it does sound like there’s gonna be a, a, an– A number of interesting companies and a lot of people that are attending that event this year, and one of them is gonna be Matthew and EOLOGIX-PING with Weather Guard Lightning Tech will [00:30:00] both be down at the event in a booth and seeing everybody and, and, and meeting a whole bunch of, of, uh, new people that are getting into the industry, which is, to me, is always the fun part. Like, we just meet so many really fun people. Uh, and Matthew, you know, we had a discussion internally about that, like, uh, our, our new, uh, chief commercial officer, Nikki Briggs, has been commenting. We’ve been talking to so many operators around the world, and after every, uh, little meeting briefing that we have, we do a post-briefing, and she goes, “They were so nice.” And I s- yes, Nikki, the wind industry people are fantastic to work with. Like, they’re all focused on doing something positive, and they’re trying to, to do it the best that they can. And there’s a lot of constraints to it, and they’re making a number of hard decisions. But when we all come together at American Clean Power here in the States, hey, we can kinda commiserate and [00:31:00] talk about what’s happening and catch up. And I feel like we need a little bit of catch-up time in this industry, particularly here in the United States.  Matthew Stead: Yeah. Yeah. I, I think, um, I, I definitely agree. And I, I found, you know, previously I used to work in the construction industry and work with engineers and, you know, transport, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And actually, I found that the renewable industry, there’s a lot of really open people, really happy to have a discussion, um, not the big egos, so I completely agree. And, um, I’m thinking back, um, I first met people in the wind industry in, you know, around 2012, 2013, and, you know, I still know a number of those people and really appreciate catching up with them. Um, so actually, Berend van der Pol was probably one of the first, and, uh, Birgit Junker was, um, maybe one of the second, so yeah. And I’m definitely looking forward to ACP.  Allen Hall 2025: If you’re, if you’re down in Houston at American Clean Power, definitely stop by a- and say hi to everybody from [00:32:00]EOLOGIX-PING and Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and hey, learn about all the things that are going on because both companies have new products that’ll, were gonna be announced at the site. Uh, we’re already getting inundated with requests on the Weather Guard side. It’s insane. We’re telling people, like, “Slow down, slow down, slow down. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll talk to you about it when we get to Houston.” But, uh, expect a very attentive audience this year, which is exciting. That wraps up another episode of “The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.” If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas- We’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn, and don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you found value in today’s conversation, please leave us a review. It helps other wind energy professionals follow the show. For Matthew, I’m Allen Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy [00:33:00] Podcast.

Alfred Crabtree, founder of Blade Repair Academy, and Sheryl Weinstein of SkySpecs join to discuss standardized technician training and risk reduction in blade repair. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Allen Hall: Alfred and Sheryl, welcome to the program. Sheryl Weinstein: Thanks. Allen Hall: So we’re in Dunlap, Tennessee, not too far from Nashville, uh, and also close to. Chattanooga Chattanooga, and we’re in the Smoky Mountains ish region. We’re Alfred Crabtree: no, we’re, we’re, you could consider it Appalachia for sure. Sure. Okay. Uh, we’re on the, in the valley called the Seche Valley, uh, which splits the Cumberland Plateau. So we’re, we’re in a valley and we have hills a thousand feet above us here. Yeah. Either way. It’s beautiful. Joel Saxum: Yeah. It’s a great drive in here. Alfred Crabtree: Yeah. It’s a unique place. Yeah. Allen Hall: And we’re at Blade Repair Academy, which, uh, if you’re not familiar with Blade Repair Academy, you should be. Uh, because a lot of the good training that happens in the United States actually happens to play repair, repair Care blade, repair academy. Uh, yeah, it’s been a long week at uh, OMS this week and we got the introduction today. This is the first time we’ve been on site. That’s right. And, uh, we wanted to see all the cool things that are happening [00:01:00] here. And it really comes down to technician training competency. Working with blades, working with tools, knowing what you’re doing up tower when you’re on the blade, which is hard to train. It’s really hard to train, and both you and Cheryl have a ton of experience being up on blades and repairing blades and scarfing and doing all the critical features that have to happen to make blades work today. It’s a tough training regimen. There’s a lot to it and a lot of subtleties that don’t always get transferred over from teachers to students unless you have. Done it for a number of years. You wanna kind of just walk through the philosophy of Blade Repair Academy? Alfred Crabtree: Yes. The, uh, you’ve, you’ve outlined quite well some of the issues. The environment where we work is very hard to take a ti the time to put somebody through a training regimen. We’re so constrained by weather windows and then. You know, even if the weather’s nice, lightning can come, wind [00:02:00] speeds can cut off your workday. So production, production, production is what’s important. And Cheryl and I both come from the rope access method. And in the rope access method, 95% of the time you’re up there alone. And if you’re up there and you’re producing, you’ve got your blinders on. Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Alfred Crabtree: And you’re not ready to share with somebody else what to do. Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Alfred Crabtree: With the basket or platform, you can have two even three people up on Blade, but it still has all these constraints of get the job done, get the job done. There’s a lot of stress up there. And having the bandwidth to take on new information or to challenge some preconceived notions or try, that’s not the place to do it. So knowing that. Blade Repair Academy is built so that we have an environment that simulates all of the up tower stuff without being up tower. And you’re gonna have the time you need to invest in your learning without consequences. Right. So it’s a very much a [00:03:00] about creating the right environment to uptake the new information. And we have found a lot of help from. Manufacturers and suppliers in the industry to sponsor us because obviously it behooves them to have their materials in the hands of trainees. So we’re also able to help companies come up with, uh, new solutions, try new products. Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Alfred Crabtree: New, uh, you know, what’s the best practice. For this, if you’re up on Blade and you have a way of top coating and you get a new product and your way of top coating doesn’t suit that product, well chuck it down. I’ll never touch it again. Yeah. Because I did not perform well here we can, we can give you training. We have, of course, been trained by the suppliers about what’s the best product to use, what’s the best way to go about things, and then, and then we can disseminate it. So that’s the fundamental reason why the space is. Is [00:04:00] what it is. Joel Saxum: Yeah. And I think that that’s, that’s a good segue to be honest with you, right here, right behind these doors you have a classroom. That’s right. Right. So in this facility, all composed in one, we have a classroom here we have your additive and subtractive. I liked how you said that to us when you’re giving us the tour. Uh, but we’ve got a, a grinding booth basically over here and we’ve got, um, a layup area here where you can teach. 16 people at a time. Alfred Crabtree: That’s right. Yeah. That would be max Joel Saxum: for sure. Alfred Crabtree: Yeah. Sheryl Weinstein: And in a vertical surface, so, ’cause all the stuff that you’re doing in the field, right, is always in a vertical surface. Mm-hmm. So there’s a, there is a big difference between working where gravity is sort of against you, especially with larger laminations and things like that. So being able to do your training and simulate the same, a similar way that you would work in the field is pretty critical, I would think. Allen Hall: And actually working on. Actual repairs. Simulated repairs, yeah. Mm-hmm. Now, don’t explain how you created them, because I know secret sauce. It’s a secret sauce. Yes. But I did look at the blade [00:05:00] damage. It, it looks exactly like a lightly strike. Yeah. Which a predominant amount of repairs are about, unless there’s, you know, serial defects, as Cheryl has pointed out numerous times, but. Being able to repair something that’s quasi real is critical because we’ve been to other places and the repairs are, well, I’ll take a hammer and I’ll hit this and, okay, sure you got a DA, you gotta repair that. But that’s not real. And getting, getting the people to use the tools in the right way, vertically Speaker 2: mm-hmm. Allen Hall: Is the key. Because although the, the, the article, the test sample isn’t moving around like you are up on a blade, it’s still difficult. And unless you have the proper techniques and the approaches, yeah, it’s gonna be dang near impossible. We explain some of the blade repairs that Joel and I have seen more recently is like. It’s a little rough and it shouldn’t have to be so rough because it is a skill that you have to learn and acquire over time. But you have to know the fundamentals. That’s what Blade Repair Academy is here to teach you those [00:06:00] fundamentals. Like, yes, it’s gonna take time, but if you work it this way, at least you’re gonna be successful. Alfred Crabtree: Yeah. And if you’re managing a team of employees who are doing this, it, it would be great to have the insight of what your teams. Strengths and weaknesses are, yeah, you can figure out how to deploy people, but also how to, you know, maybe fix some of those problems. Mm-hmm. Our panels that you brought up are standardized. Everyone looks exactly the same. It’s the exact same makeup, and we standardize the damage. So when somebody has to repair damage here, the core removal size is the same on everyone. That way when we’re comparing the reports, you can actually have a apples to apples comparison of the, the trainees. Outcome. Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Alfred Crabtree: And now you, you know, in, in the model that you talked about where people will go to a, you know, their junkyard of blades and they’ll find spots on blades to put their eight guys on. Those eight people are not gonna be doing the same repair. And even if they are collecting data, what are you [00:07:00] comparing? It’s not Joel Saxum: apples to apples. Yeah. It’s not. Alfred Crabtree: So we really tried to start from the beginning, fresh with a whole new idea of how to approach this. Mm-hmm. By not being attached to an ISP, we don’t have to deal with. Oh, here, use all our leftovers. Yeah. Yeah. That’s your training budget. Yeah. Yeah. And oh yeah. We, you know, we’re an, we’re a owner operator, so yeah. Go work on that blade in the grass. Mm-hmm. That those limit what precious time we have available to train. Yeah. So this thing from the ground up is about. Making as much advance in the skillset and understanding that technician in the, in the week that they’re here. Joel Saxum: I think that was a really cool thing we touched on as well. Your, your team here as well, Cheryl. Thanks for traveling up to, to hang out with us. Offer some insights too. But you guys, because you’ve been in the people that have developed a curriculum yourself, Cheryl, your, some of your team sitting over here, uh, and, and people around the industry that have helped out with the place, you have the ability of like, okay, we have. Eight brand new technicians. Let’s make [00:08:00] sure we walk through how to measure from the trailing edge to the blade center up, mark this thing out, these kind of things all the way to some stuff that I didn’t really think about that much. Like I’ve used an angle grinder before, right? But I’ve never looked at five different ones and decided which one would be the best for my hands. Thinking about it up on the blade, how you’d handle it with your fingers, these kind of things like, I was like, man, that’s, those are real insights that you’re not gonna get to learn. Like why put someone up to let them have a whole season or a whole summer, two summers figuring out how to hold a grinder? Well, when they can learn from someone that’s been doing it for years and years and years and can teach them these things. So from advanced or from very beginners learning fundamentals to advanced training, you guys have gotta cover here. Alfred Crabtree: There’s something here to glean for everybody, and even if you are a well experienced technician, maybe what you’re gonna get most is learning how to talk the language of the new techs and the new hires who are getting the. Introductory course training. You know, our, our el our basic course is called support. It’s 40 hours [00:09:00] and it’s really about making, uh, an employee who can support a lead. And then if that person follows up with the lead training in a whatever interval of time of their choice, which is kind of another benefit here, we can train you any week of the year. That is where we start to really get this, we call it the retention vortex. Right where we layer up technician training and somebody who’s had level two now gets a level one with them. Now there’s some synergies. Now they’re getting some really efficiencies. A commonality of language, a commonality of process, you know, eliminating variables. Uh, and that’s how you’re gonna have to build new net capacity and build new teams Allen Hall: and that common language. Is really unique, but that comes from your experience in the field, mostly at rope partner, where you both really got your teeth in this industry. Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Allen Hall: But communicating to one another correctly so you can pass along to the next crew or even explain what you did to the engineer, the. Properly [00:10:00] there is. There is a culture to it. There is a language to it, and you just don’t pick that up. By going from wind turbine to wind turbine. You pick it up in training from someone who knows how to do it. It’s really critical. Sheryl Weinstein: It’s pretty critical to have baseline training. I think it is also very important to follow it up with field experience and skills building because every blade model is different. Every repair is different. You’re always gonna encounter something that deviates from that like standard approach to your repair. You have to kind of know how to problem solve, and that kind of only comes with the field experience, but having a more standardized training to start with, it’s something that industry doesn’t really have and is really needed. I think across the board it also helps, you know. Owner operators or even OEMs kind of track their ISPs and understand what level of text do you have, what experience do they have and how, how does that differ across their different [00:11:00] levels? If we have one ISP training one way over here and another one training another way over here, and they have different sets of certifications. It’s really hard to keep that all together and evaluate it as an owner operator or an OEM, you know, using a vendor. So I think having a place like Blade Academy that’s agnostic and separate from like, you know, the actual ISP really helps to standardize that a bit more. Allen Hall: Yeah, because the key is we’re getting to, well, we’re gonna cross a hundred thousand turbines in the United States pretty quickly. Yep. Joel Saxum: Before 2030, or probably rated about 2030. Allen Hall: Right. That’s. Soon. Mm-hmm. How are we gonna manage that? And there’s a lot of new people coming into the industry, obviously. How are we gonna train ’em up properly? How are we gonna communicate to one another? And there’s just so much movement in the industry. I. It makes it hard, I think, because weirdly enough, I think ISPs develop their own little culture about how to deal with things, and then they hop to the next company and it’s a different language. Exactly. And that needs to go away. Yeah. There’s a, Alfred Crabtree: there’s a branch of business that’s [00:12:00] OEM centric and there’s a branch of business that’s asset owner. Yeah. Post warranty. And those are really two different things. And, and there’s a veil of secrecy between one and the other. Yeah. And we kind of feel here at Blade Repair Academy that we’re like this polyglot that can talk to everybody because we don’t have, we’re not an ip You’re not competing, we’re not an O You’re not competing. Yeah, we’re not competing. But we, we, you know, we have the, we wanna provide this data as a clearinghouse. You know, we talk about certification in the non standards. Well, the way we deal with it is we’ll give you a certificate. And it’s got our brand on it. But you know, what does that mean? Yeah. What? That And $4 will get you a Starbucks the way we do it, maybe not even then. Right? The way, the way we, not four bucks Sheryl Weinstein: for Starbucks, maybe 10 Alfred Crabtree: and a half hour wait in the line. But the way you know, what we do is we provide you with a deliverable. We knew, we knew that. Okay. Our certification is, you know, ether. Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Alfred Crabtree: But [00:13:00] this report. That everybody who comes through here generates that you can compare. Now you’re gonna have to go to work and study these reports when you get ’em as a deliverable. Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Alfred Crabtree: As a, you know, an employer, but we we’re giving you what you need. Mm-hmm. To make some decisions about what do I have to work on, what else do we need to improve upon? Allen Hall: Yeah. Not everybody’s built for this job, but you wanna be able to suss that out. Earlier rather than later. Yeah. Right. I mean, there’s other things to do with wind turbines that don’t evolve blade repair. And if they don’t necessarily have the skillset or the comprehension to do some of these more complex things, maybe blade repair is not it. Right. But rather know that now. Yeah. Right. And the Blade Repair Academy is a place to do that because there’s a standard there, right? Mm-hmm. And I, I, as Joel has pointed out, yeah, there’s a lot of erratic training that goes on. Mm-hmm. You can’t compare student A to student Z. Blade repair academy. You can. Alfred Crabtree: We can. Mm-hmm. Right. Allen Hall: And if, if I’m an ISP, I want that. Sure. I want you to tell me [00:14:00] who’s on top and who’s kind of the middle so I can make decisions about where to deploy ’em and who and who to put ’em with. Joel Saxum: Yeah. ’cause at the end of the day, every ISP, uh, every ISP that’s trying to grow and scale effectively is trying to do that at the end of the year, right? Yeah. They’re looking through, they’re grading their technicians, finding out who’s the next lead, who’s this, who’s that? But this is a great way to do that, sort them through in a controlled setting. I mean, we sat in, in your training facility in the actual classroom here, and you walked us through some of the online, the online training platform that you have built. Some of the things the students have to do before they get here, and then kind of how you walk ’em through things, and it’s impressive. It’s good stuff, right? So when you have that combined with the both sides of blade repair, subtractive, additive, right? You get to get this, this holistic view of what that blade technician can do. Yeah. Right? And that’s, that’s one of the things you guys offer here, which I think is fantastic. Alfred Crabtree: Yeah. And we’re trying to constantly improve, you know, we’re talking with OEMs about dissemination of operating procedures or work instructions, share with us [00:15:00] work instructions. We’ll build analogs. That we can train to. Mm-hmm. And we can test off of it. We can verify skill sets. You know, we have a lot of serial flaw campaigns out there that are critical. And do we wanna unleash anybody on it or do we want to know that those people can do it? I think everybody wants to know that they can do it, whether they’re the. Technician themselves, or the person writing the checks. Speaker 2: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Alfred Crabtree: Everywhere in that loop wants to Now not everybody wants to pay for it. Yeah. But we all need it. Speaker 2: Yeah. Alfred Crabtree: And so somewhere along the line, you’re paying for it in the forms of our favorite acronym, COPQ. That’s Joel Saxum: right. Cost support, quality. You know, speaking about the idea of serial defects or known problems in the industry and how to prepare people for those, how do you prepare people for those? Well, they gotta get the experience by just. Grinding away Top coat and getting into him. I walked in here and I looked at this blade sample we have here, and I was looking at it and I go, it looks like a 48.7 C Oh yeah. Buddy walks over you like our 48.7 C I’m like, [00:16:00] man, you guys did a good job on, you know, like, so, so I made a lot of money on 48.7, you know, so to walk in here and see these different tickets that you guys have built, you know, carbon plank and different things with carbon spars and hey, we’re gonna do a carbon spa repair. We have this boom, now we can work on it. Mm-hmm. You know, and we’ll Alfred Crabtree: work with you to solve your problem in a really quick, efficient manner. Mm-hmm. You know, I think one of the things that we have is operational readiness. Most people who are training in-house flip their hat around for a couple weeks and train composites. Mm-hmm. In a limited capacity in the warehouse or at the dock at the truck during January. During January, whatever. And then they flip their hat back on and they go deal with it. And I think the hiring situation is so tough. Like working at Height, you probably need to make sure somebody can tolerate working at height. Yeah. Before you invest in composite training, I mean. You have so many things you have to juggle in your particular situation. When do I put money in this person? We get that. [00:17:00] And so we’re open all the weeks of the year. So we can do this at any time. Of course, everyone wants it in the end of first quarter. Mm-hmm. You know, right before the season starts. So we have a, you know, you have to, you gotta schedule with us, but we can really do this anytime. And so you don’t have to one and done and live with it. Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Alfred Crabtree: You know, it. You can fit the training into your hiring schema wherever you feel fit, and you can hire people. And if there are stars, bring them in for their secondary, they’re execute their lead training whenever you want. You know, so you can, we can be very flexible and in the advanced stages we will make what you need, you know, obviously has to make business sense for us, but we’ll make blades to replicate the problems you’re facing. Sheryl Weinstein: And I think in terms of like what you were saying when you’re working on, you knows whether we wanna call them recurring issues or serial defects. A lot of it is awareness, right? It’s awareness [00:18:00] of understanding the blade structure, at least at a basic level. It’s awareness of understanding what you’re looking at. It’s, you know, we’re only gonna better inform the industry and the OEM if our technicians have a level of awareness to sort of bring up things that they see as they’re doing repairs. So if they notice that, for example, the, the fibers are misaligned, right? That could indicate that that was a wrinkle, and them having that level of communication or documentation will only help then inform the OEM. Like, is this the reason behind that problem? And so I think like. You know, with Alfred and, and the curriculum here at Blade Academy, them kind of, you know, setting a standard for how, how you know, the structure of the blade, the different types of blades you may see, whether they have carbon fiber in them, or you know, fiberglass, UD spars. Where those things are located, [00:19:00] what to be aware of as you’re removing damaged material. It’s really critical to the overall quality and just the awareness of the tech on the blade and that feedback loop that we’re lacking so much in this industry. Alfred Crabtree: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, and we have our boilerplate products that come from, you know, like, uh, Cheryl was my mentor at RP and wrote partner, and she taught me a lot and a lot of the. The, the way we do things here comes from the rope, a rope access paradigm, which, you know, actually is backward compatible because if with rope access, you’re doing things alone. Speaker 2: Yeah. Alfred Crabtree: So if we’ve have ways and, and processes that allow that to happen alone, then when you’re on a basket or a platform with an extra person, you can only benefit Yeah. That much easier. Yeah. Um, it’s where we come from, you Joel Saxum: know, and, and that’s a good point, right? Like when we’re sitting here, rip Blade Repair Academy. Alfred, you’re here. Cheryll, you’re joining us today. These are two X blade technicians that have been on all kinds of blades. They have been up and down on ropes. So it’s training by [00:20:00] trainers who have been the technicians that’s important. Who have seen the problems. Yeah, yeah. You know, who have lived, have lived that road life. We talked, you’re joking about living in hotels, right? Mm-hmm. Like that have done, gone through that, right? So you’re learning from people that aren’t just like, oh, I hate the idea of going to a university and learning HR or something, whatever, from someone who’s never done it in the real world. Yeah. You know, uh, the trainers here have done it in the real world, um, and it shows. Alfred Crabtree: Thanks, man. And you know, the other thing too is our tagline is practical and contemporary. And the thing is, I’m no longer contemporary. Like I left the field years ago. I rely on folks like Cheryl, who’s still in the, in the Blade Services game over there at Skys Specs. She’s on, she’s got a full subscription to the cereal floss that are out there. Joel Saxum: Yeah. Probably the best one in the industry, to be honest with you. Alfred Crabtree: Well, you know. Uh, I think so. I don’t know anything about serial flaw, but it’s, it’s input from the rest of the industry that’s gonna allow this to continue. Otherwise, we’re gonna be, you know, [00:21:00] a 10-year-old standard that isn’t relevant anymore and that’s not what we want to do. So, outreach like Cheryl and I are talking about, Hey, what is it in your product line that should be in our product line? And I want to talk to OEMs and, uh. Owner operators, you know, what is it? What are your pain points? What in your fleet is needing attention? And of course, we’re gonna do all this with the business case, right? Mm-hmm. Like we wanna take LEP products and place them head to head and give a two day clinic or seminar to stakeholders, to purchasers. You know, we wanna give our, our two, our five day course condensed into two days. Where people who are stakeholders who are making decisions about where to place technicians, they should get out here and gr and grind a little bit and get a little empathy for their position. Hard work. The hard work of the Sheryl Weinstein: hard work that it is. Yeah. And then kind of understand Alfred Crabtree: from another side where the [00:22:00] communication breakdown is. ’cause it’s, it’s not all the texts, right? Mm-hmm. You know, they have a, you gotta understand how heavily loaded they are, you know, when they’re in the field. Mm-hmm. Um, so we’re, we’re at the place now where we’re really looking to do some outreach and talk to, uh, regulatory bodies that are starting to come up with standards, right? Like the IEC group met and pro produce a draft standard and they’re gonna work on the repair standard. And that’s a, a little bit of a ways away, but I can’t sit around and wait for, for standards to come to me. So we got this thing started. If you build it, they will come. You guys came, you know, Cheryl came and, um. We we’re really proud of where we’re at, but at the same time, it’s like, okay guys, the rest of the industry, now we’re here. Now you need to know, now you need to take advantage of us. Mm-hmm. And help tell us what you need. So I think the Sheryl Weinstein: LEP thing is a really good call out because I do see a lot of customers questioning what do I choose? How do I know [00:23:00] what to choose? Absolutely. Should my vendor be telling me what to choose? And that’s what happens in many cases, is that the ISP just kind of tells the owner operator. This is what you should use. Well, why, and, and what, you know, how have we ever really sized up like one against the other? Like in any true, I don’t know, study? No. And a lot of the, a lot of the like. Those different types of LEP, the, the companies that you know have these, they don’t have a lot of good documentation on showing like how their products stand up. I mean, it’s kind of, it’s more theory based than anything. I mean, they put ’em through rain erosion tests and whatever, but. It’s, I feel like that’s a tough space. It’s also a very, like, um, a very tough scope of work to have high quality at. So more training around it is necessary. You know, repair companies don’t wanna use their high skilled repair techs for the LEP because they need them for the more complex repairs [00:24:00] yet. The LEP is so susceptible to quality issues, and if you’re gonna pay an extreme amount of money to, you know, put the LEP to fix your erosion, put the LEP on blades, hope for a performance improvement, and then it fails in a year. I. That’s no help to anybody. So these different products, they also come with different price points. Like, can we really value the shell over the coating? I, I just find that this is a tough space. And so doing something like that and doing more training around LEPI think is probably pretty important. Yes. You know, unless the robots are gonna take it over and then, well, even then, I think it’s the only app. Allen Hall: The application, that’s the variable there. And not having people trained up for that particular LEP product is a huge problem because it’s super risky. You’re risking all that money and time and having to do it all over again and removing LEP that has been improperly applied. It’s a nightmare. [00:25:00] Nightmare. Total nightmare. You don’t want that to happen. And I’ve seen sites where that’s happened, getting technicians. Trained properly for the right material and doing that here up in Tennessee is, is the right approach. It’s risk reduction, which is what the industry is in right now. Risk reduction. Alfred Crabtree: Yeah. Yeah, we, we’ve beliefs. That’s a great way to put it. You know, if you hire somebody. We were talking earlier how there are like two models. One is like the New York Yankees, where you’re going to be buying all the expensive free agents. You can poaching people from other, you know, trying to get experienced talent. You’re paying a premium for them, but you aren’t gonna know until halfway through that season how that person is performing. Yeah. You know, that is a lot of. That was, that is a lot of variability that you could control. Mm-hmm. And in a seasonal business, those weeks are really multiplied by two or three. Right. In terms of like the impact on your revenue and your opportunity to make money. It’s risk reduction, like Alan was saying. Yeah. It’s Allen Hall: all risk, right? Yeah. And the, [00:26:00] the way that the industry is moving and the pace at which is moving right now, risk reduction starts to move to the top five years ago. We do a lot of risky things because we’re making money. Interest rates are low and, but today we cannot afford to do that. And if you watch the industry change right now, it is gonna be more focused than ever in having proper technicians on site that they complete the job that they were intended to do. Precisely, accurately, and once, not twice. Once. Yeah. And that is gonna be the marker of the, whether this industry grows or not. Mm-hmm. And that’s why Blade Repair Academy is needed so much. Now, Alfred, how do you interface with the ISPs, OEMs, and the operators in terms of getting people out here? How do they, how do they push that button and say, Alfred, I’m gonna send you 40 technicians next week. How does that, how does that go? I don’t quite have that down Alfred Crabtree: yet. But, uh, you know, it, we talked earlier, it’s a small world. You know, blade repair is small. There [00:27:00] we mentioned if you, there’s a hundred people in the industry you need to know and then you’ve covered it. Um, our, I think we’ve been, we’ve been kind of riding this new wave of like, oh, who’s this new kid on the block? And, and we can kind of be quiet and still are mysterious. And I pop up at a conference and host a round table or whatever. Uh, so far. It’s mainly been our personal network, which is large enough in this gig to, to get people in. ISPs are much more likely to do it small is ISPs are much more likely to do it. Owner operators, they’re trying to build their training centers. They have a little different, that’s a different model though. It’s a different model. Um, they’re, they’re tougher to get. So primarily it’s been ISPs. We have definitely a, a, a curriculum for new hires, right? We call it support, but we’re [00:28:00] reluctant to go sell that to the street or to the public. Like, Hey, enter the industry here, because we don’t quite yet have that, you know, guarantee that people will recognize our certificate and. Use it to hire people. I don’t quite have that system in place. However, I have so much interest from the Department of Labor to support us in creating an occupation. They want us to build apprenticeship programs. We need corporate sponsor, we need a big employer or to to buy in, and then we can create an apprenticeship program. Then we can find public money for people to get some support to get into a new, a new industry. So, well, they Allen Hall: need to come out here. They need to come out to Dunlap. And visit the facilities, talk with you, understand what the philosophy is, see it up close. There’s a lot of them have been to other places. Sure. And see what the differences are here. And, and that’s gonna be the decision maker. They’re gonna see what the product walking out the door is and [00:29:00] go into the classroom and, and get the grinder, right? Yes. Get, get your hands dirty a little bit. Yeah. And realize, yes, this is what I was looking for to begin with. I just couldn’t find it. And I found it here in Tennessee. Alfred Crabtree: Yeah, I, I think you’re right. And, and we, we are slowly, you know, bringing people in that we know, like the reason why y’all are here and some other folks have visited us this week is because o and m was in Nashville. And I was like, come on, come on. We’re only two hours away. We’ll buy you lunch. Come on. Pretty place. Yeah. You have to see this place to understand it because we are sort of, you know, outsiders, right? I mean, we’re, we’re from the, the industry, but we’re not. We’re not a spinoff of any company. We’re not a division of an ISP. We’re totally organic and unique in a, in a part of the world that doesn’t have any wind. So, yeah. Uh, but once you get here, you get it. The economics make sense. You know, we couldn’t do what we’ve done anywhere else as cheaply as we’ve done, which means we feel like we’re super value rich for what you’re paying and for the amount of time that you’re spending [00:30:00] here. Allen Hall: Oh, 100%. Uh. Let’s give the ISPs, the OEMs and the operators, uh, where to go. What’s the website? Where can they find you on LinkedIn? Alfred Crabtree: We’re at blade repair academy.com. Uh, we’re located in Dunlap, Tennessee. We’re on Blade Repair Academy at LinkedIn. I’m Alfred Crabtree. You can find me there. Uh. Allen Hall: Yeah, that’s where you need to go because that’s how the process starts. If you want to have high level technicians that really know how to work on composites and are working with real materials on simulated, but. Pretty realistic damage. Yeah. Weirdly realistic. Yeah. Secret sauce. And to get some sort of validation and to kind of get graded. Mm-hmm. And so you have a, a, a sense of how they’re doing. You’re going to have to go to Blade Repair Academy. You need to get out to Tennessee and you better check it out because I, Alfred, I gotta be honest, this place is gonna get crazy busy [00:31:00] and I’m gonna have. ISPs calling me saying, can you get a hold of Alfred and get me inside? Can you get me in? No, I can’t because it’s Alfred’s deal and Alfred’s gonna run this thing. We’re very approachable and, but very approachable. Keep calling, he’ll answer and take care of you, but it’s gonna get busy because the philosophy here is the right one. Thanks. So congratulations for putting this together and thank you for the invite. Uh, it is been a pleasure to see it. It’s uh, it, it’s great to know that you are around and you’re helping the industry. Alfred Crabtree: Thank you. We appreciate it and you guys are a great clarion for the industry. A great voice. So, uh, those words, uh, right in the fields. And I wanna thank Cheryl too for coming out. I haven’t seen her for a while. It’s funny ’cause today I, on my phone, you know, five years ago today, she and I were here before this business existed as rope partner employees working on r and d week doing infusions. So, uh, Sheryl Weinstein: the space has transformed. It’s amazing. Yeah. You guys have done a, a [00:32:00] really great job. Like I, yeah, I think you’re definitely pushing the industry into a, like a new realm. Bringing something that, that it really needs, you know, that we don’t have at the moment or that we didn’t have. Alfred Crabtree: Yeah, well hopefully, uh, it improves everybody’s quality of product and the bottom line. ’cause uh, you know, that’s what we’ll do. We’ll affect your bottom line for sure. Allen Hall: So Sheryl and Alfred, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Thanks guys. Right, Sheryl Weinstein: thank you.

Allen covers the Pentagon stalling 165 US wind projects on private land, New York stepping in to defend Sunrise Wind, New Mexico approving a 212 MW wind farm, Octopus Energy’s €584M European buying spree, and Europe’s tightening offshore turbine market. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Good morning, everyone. Here is a number for you. One hundred and sixty-five. That is how many onshore wind projects the Pentagon is now holding up across the United States. One hundred and sixty-five projects… on private land. Thirty gigawatts of generating capacity… frozen. The American Clean Power Association says the delays began last August. Canceled meetings. Applications no longer being processed. Then in April… letters went out. The Pentagon said it was reviewing how it evaluates the national security impact of energy projects. That review has no deadline. This is the same justification used against offshore wind… the one courts have already struck down. And the administration has already paid nearly two billion dollars in taxpayer money to buy out offshore leases… paying developers not to build. Thirty gigawatts… enough to power millions of American homes… sitting in a stack of unprocessed paperwork. But here is the thing about wind. It does not wait for permission. In a federal courtroom in Washington… New York State just stepped up to fight. Attorney General Letitia James filed a motion to intervene on behalf of Ørsted’s Sunrise Wind project. A Rhode Island nonprofit called Green Oceans sued the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management back in March… trying to overturn the project’s federal permits. New York is not having it. Sunrise Wind is a nine hundred and twenty-four megawatt project. Already under construction. Expected online next year. NYSERDA says the project carries eight hundred and seventy-five million dollars in economic benefits for the state… including nearly one hundred and seventy million dollars for the Town of Brookhaven alone. If it gets canceled… New York says those benefits vanish… tax credits expire… and replacement power would cost ratepayers far more. So the state is putting its name on the line… in open court. Meanwhile… out in New Mexico… a different kind of wind story. Ten thousand acres of state land in Torrance County just got approved for a new wind farm. Two hundred and twelve megawatts. Enough to power sixty thousand homes. It will become the second-largest wind farm on state land. And it is projected to send nearly ninety-nine million dollars to New Mexico public schools over the life of the lease. Now… across the Atlantic. Britain’s Octopus Energy just went on a shopping spree. Five hundred and eighty-four million euros… for seventeen onshore wind farms. Three hundred and twenty-one megawatts spread across France, Germany, and Poland. Ten farms in France. Four in Germany. Three in Poland. Combined… enough power for a quarter million European homes. Octopus now manages sixty-seven onshore wind farms across Europe. Zoisa North-Bond, Octopus Energy Generation’s CEO, said Europe has exceptional wind resources… but needs to move faster. Faster. There is that word again. And then there is the supply side of the equation. Rystad Energy reports that Europe’s offshore wind market is running into a structural supply constraint. With GE Vernova having paused new offshore wind orders… the Western turbine market is now essentially a two-player game. Siemens Gamesa and Vestas. Turbine selling prices are up forty to forty-five percent since twenty twenty. Manufacturing costs? Up only twenty to twenty-five percent. The OEMs are recovering their margins… and developers are absorbing the difference. That is the new reality for European offshore wind. So let us step back. In America… the federal government blocks thirty gigawatts of wind on private land. New York goes to court to protect a project already under construction. New Mexico approves a wind farm that will fund schools for a generation. In Europe… a British company spends more than half a billion euros on wind farms in three countries. And OEMs finally have the pricing power they have been chasing for years. The push… and the pull. Washington pulls back. But everywhere else… the industry pushes forward. And that’s the state of the wind industry for the 11th of May 2026. Join us for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast tomorrow.

Rosemary reports back on her visit to multiple Chinese renewable energy companies, Vineyard Wind activates a $69.50/MWh PPA with Massachusetts utilities, and Bronze Age jewelry halts a German wind project. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! [00:00:00] The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by Strike Tape protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit strike tape.com and now your hosts. Allen Hall 2025: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall. I’m here with Yolanda Padron in Austin, Texas, who is back from the massive wedding event. Everybody’s super happy about that, and Rosemary Barnes had her own adventures. She just got back from China and Rosemary. You visited a a lot of different places inside of China. Saw some cool factories. What all happened?  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, it was really cool. I went over for an influencer event. So if you are maybe, you know, in the middle of your career, not, not particularly attractive or anything you might have thought influencer was ruled out for you as a career. No one, no one needs engineering influencers in their [00:01:00] forties. It’s incorrect. It turns out that’s, that’s where, that’s where I, I found myself. It was pretty cool. I, I did get the red carpet rolled out for me. Many gifts. I had to buy a second bag to bring home the gifts, and when I say I had to buy a second bag, I had to mention. Oh, I have so many gifts, I’m gonna need another bag. And then there was a new bag presented to me about half an hour later. But, so yeah, what did I do? I got to, um, as I was over there for a Sun Grow event. Huge, huge event. They, um, it’s for, it’s for their staff a lot, but it’s also, they also bring over partners. They also bring over international experts to talk about topics that are relevant to them. Yeah. They gave everybody factory tours in, um, yeah, in, in shifts. Um, I got to see a module assembly factory, so where they take cells, which are like, I don’t know, the size of a small cereal box, um, and assemble them into a whole module. Then the warehouse, warehouse was [00:02:00] gigantic. It, um, was, yeah, 1.8 gigawatt hours worth of cells that couldn’t hold in that one building. They’re totally obsessed with fire safety there in everything related to batterie, like in the design of the product, but also in, in the warehouse. And they do, yeah, fire drills all the, all the time. Some of them quite big and impressive. Um, I saw inverter manufacturing facility that was really cool. Heaps of robots. Sw incredibly fast. Saw a test facility.  Allen Hall 2025: So was most of the manufacturing, robotics, or humans?  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. So at the factory it was like anything that needed to be done really fast or with really good quality was done by robots. So they had, um, you know, pick and place machines putting in. Um, you know, components in the circuit board, like just insane, insane rate. I’m sure it’s quite, quite normal, but, um, just very fast. Everything lined up in a row. Most of their quality control is done by robots. Um, so it does well it’s done by ai, I should say. [00:03:00] Taking photos of, of things and then, um, AI’s interpreting that. Repairs, I think were done by humans. There were humans doing, um, like custom components as well. Like not every product is exactly the same. So the custom stuff was done by humans.  Allen H: So that’s the Sun Grove facility, right? You, but you went to a couple of different places within China?  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I went to another, a factory, a solar panel, a factory, um, from Longie. That was really cool too. I got to see a bit more probably of the, um, interesting, interesting stuff there, like, uh, a bit more. Um, yeah, I don’t, I dunno, processes that aren’t, aren’t so obvious. Not just assembly, but um, you know, like printing on, um, bus bars and, you know, all of the different connections and yeah, it was a bit, a bit more to it in what I saw. Um, so that was, but it, it’s the same, you know, as humans are only involved when it’s a little bit out of the. Norm or, um, where they’re doing repairs, actual actually re [00:04:00]repairing. You know, the robots or the AI is identifying which components don’t meet the standard and then they’ll go somewhere where a human will come and, um, fix them.  Allen H: Being the engineer there. Did you notice where the robots are made? Was everything made in China that was inside the factory or were they bringing in outside? Technology.  Rosemary Barnes: I didn’t think to look for that, but I would assume that it was Chinese made, also  Allen H: all built in country  Rosemary Barnes: 20 years ago that wouldn’t have been the case, but I think that China has had a long, a long time to, to learn that. Again, it’s not like, it’s not, it’s not rocket science. These are, these are pick and place machines, you know, like I remember working on a project very early in my career, so. Literally 20 years ago, um, I was working with pick and place machines. It’s the same, it’s the same thing. Um, some of them are bigger ’cause they’re, you know, hauling whole, um, battery packs around. It’s just the, um, the way that it’s set up, but then also the scale that they can achieve. You just, you can’t make things that cheap if you don’t have the [00:05:00] scale to utilize everything. A hundred percent. Like I said, wind turbine towers is a really good example. ’cause anyone, any steel fabricating  Allen H: shop  Rosemary Barnes: could make a wind turbine tower. Right? They, they could, they could do that. You know, the Chinese, um, wind turbine tower factories have the exact right machine. They don’t have a welder that they also use for welding bits of bridges or whatever. Uh, they have the one that does the exact kind of world that they need, um, for the tower. They, you know, they do that precisely. Robotically, uh, exactly the same. And, you know, a, a tower section comes on, they weld it, it moves off to the next thing, and then a new one comes on. They’re not trying to move things around to then do another weld in the same machine. You know, like they’re, um, but the exact right. Super expensive machine for the job costs a whole bunch to set up a factory. And then you need to be making multiple towers every single day out of that factory to be able to recoup on your cost. And so that is [00:06:00] the. The, um, bar that is just incredibly hard slash impossible for, um, other countries to clear. Allen H: Can I ask you about that? Because I was watching a YouTube video about Tesla early on Tesla, where they wanted to bring in a lot of robotics to make vehicles and that they felt like that was the wrong thing to do. In fact, they, they, they kinda locked robots in and realized that this is not the right way to do it. We need to change the whole process. It was a big deal to kind of pull those. Specialized piece of equipment, robots out and to put something else in its place in that they learned, you know, the first time, instead of deciding on a process, putting it in place and then trying to turn it on, see if it works, was to sort of gradually do it. But don’t bolt anything down. Don’t lock it in place such that it doesn’t feel like it’s permanent. So you engineer can think about removing it if it’s not working. But it sounds like this is sort of the opposite approach of. A highly specialized [00:07:00] machine set in place permanently to produce. Infinite amounts of this particular product, does that then restrict future changes and what they can make or, I, I, how do they see that? Did, did you talk about that? Because I think that’s one of an interesting approaches.  Rosemary Barnes: I didn’t actually get as much chances I would’ve liked to speak to engineers. Um, I was talking mostly to salespeople and installers. Um, so they know a lot, but I couldn’t, um, like in the factory tours, I was asking questions. Um. That kind of question and, and they could answer all, all that. Um, but outside of that, and I couldn’t record in the factory obviously. Um, but I did, I did take notes, but what I would say is that they would have a separate facility where they would be working out the details of new products and new manufacturing processes and testing them out thoroughly before they went and, you know, um, installed everything correctly. But what I do hear is that, you know, especially with solar power. Maybe to [00:08:00] batteries to a lesser extent. You, you know, you like, you have these kind of waves of technology. Um, so you know, like everyone’s making whatever certain type of solar cell and then five years later, um, there’s a new more efficient configuration and everybody’s making that. And I know that there are a lot of factories that kind of get scrapped. Um, and the way that China’s set up their, like, you know, their economy around all this sort of thing is set up is that it’s not that, like every company doesn’t succeed. Right. They SGO was a big exception because they’ve been going since 1997, I think it was. It was started by a professor quid his job and hired a room across the, across the road from his old university and, you know, built his first inverter and, um, you know, ’cause he, he could see that. Uh, the grid was gonna have to change to incorporate all of the solar power that was coming, which to be honest, in 1997, that was like pretty, pretty farsighted. That was not obvious to me when I started working in solar in mid two thousands. And it was not obvious to me that this was a winner.  Allen H: Well, has sun grow evolved then quite a bit? ’cause if you’re [00:09:00] saying that they’ve minimized the cost to produce any of their products by the use of robotics, they have been through an evolutionary process. You didn’t see any of the previous generations of. Factories. You, you were just seeing the most modern factory that that’s actually producing parts today. So is that a, is that a, is that just a cost mindset that’s going on in China? Like, we’re just gonna produce the lowest cost thing as fast as we can, or is it a market penetration approach? What are, what were, were the engineers in management saying about that?  Rosemary Barnes: I think there’s a few different aspects to that, like within China. So Sun Grow is the big company with a long track record and they’re not making the cheapest product out of China. So I think that they are still trying to make the cheapest product, but they’re not thinking about it just in the purchase price. Right. They’re thinking more in terms of the long, long term. You know, they’ve been around for 30 years and probably expect to be around for another 30 years. They don’t wanna be having [00:10:00] recalls of their products and you know, like having to, um. Installers in particular are probably working with them because they know that they won’t have to go back and do rework and the support is good and all that sort of thing. So they’re spending so much money on testing and you know, just getting everything exactly right. But I don’t think that that’s the only way that China is doing it. There’s, you know, dozens, probably hundreds of companies. Um. Doing similar stuff between Yeah, like solar panels and associated stuff like inverters and, and batteries. So many companies and all of them won’t succeed. You know, sun Girls Facility in, I was in her and it’s huge, you know, it’s like a, a medium sized country town. Just their, um, their campus there, they’re not, they’re not scrapping that and moving to a new site, you know, they’re gonna be. Rejiggering and I would expect that, you know, like everything’s set up exactly the way it needs to be, but it’s not like gigantic machines.[00:11:00] It’s not like setting up a wind turbine blade factory where it’s hard if you designed it for 40 meter blades, you can’t suddenly start making 120 meter blades. Like it’s, they will be able to be sliding machines in and out as they need to. Um, so I, I, yeah, I guess that it’s some, some flexibility. But not at the cost of making the product correctly. Allen H: Did you see wind turbines while you were in China?  Rosemary Barnes: I, the only winter I saw, I actually, I saw, because I caught the train from Shanghai, I actually caught the fast train from Shanghai to, which is about, it depends which one you get between like an hour 40 or three hours if it stops everywhere. Um, and I did see a couple of wind turbines on the way there, out the window, just randomly like a wind turbine in the middle of a, a town. Um, so that was a bit, a bit interesting. But then in the plane, on the way back, the plane from Shanghai to Hong Kong, I, at the window I saw a cooling tower of some sort. So either like a, yeah, some kind of thermal [00:12:00] power plant. And then. Around all around, well, wind turbines, so onshore wind turbines. So I don’t know. Um, yeah, I, I don’t know the story behind that, but it’s also not a particularly windy area, right? Like most of the wind in China is, um, to the west where, uh, I wasn’t  Allen H: as wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it. 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 PS win.com today. So there are two stories out of the US at the minute that really paint a picture of the industry. It was just being pulled in opposite directions. The Department of Interior announced agreements to terminate two more. Offshore wind leases, uh, [00:13:00] Bluepoint wind and Golden State wind have agreed to walk away from their projects. Global Infrastructure Partners, which is part of BlackRock, will invest up to $765 million in a liquified natural gas facility instead of developing blue point wind. Ah. And Golden State Wind will recover approximately $120 million in lease fees after redirecting investment to oil and gas projects along the Gulf Coast, and both companies say they will not pursue further offshore wind development in the United States. Well, we’ll see how that plays out. Right? Meanwhile. In Massachusetts Vineyard Wind, which has been fighting with GE Renova recently has activated its long awaited power purchase agreement with three utilities. The contract set a fixed electricity price of drum roll please. [00:14:00] $69 and 50 cents per megawatt hour for the first year and a two and a half percent annual increase. Uh, state officials say the agreements will save rate payers $1.4 billion over 20 years. So $69 and 50 cents per megawatt hour is a really low PPA price for offshore wind. A lot of the New York projects that. Renegotiated we’re somewhere in the realm of 120 to $130 a megawatt hour, and there’s been a lot of discussion in Congress about the, the usefulness of offshore wind. It’s intermittent blahdi, blahdi, blah. Uh, but the, the big driver is what costs too much. In fact, it doesn’t cost too much. And because it’s consistent, particularly in the wintertime, uh, electricity prices in Massachusetts in the surrounding area are really high. ’cause of the demand and ’cause how cold it is that this offshore wind project, vineyard wind would be a huge rate saving. And [00:15:00] actually the math works out the math. Math everybody. Do you think this is, when we go back five years from now, look back at this. This vineyard wind project really makes sense for Massachusetts.  Yolanda Padron: I think it really makes sense for Massachusetts. I’m really interested to know what the asset managers are thinking on the vineyard wind side, um, and if they’re scared at all to take this on. I mean, it’s great and I’m sure they can absolutely deliver. Like generation I don’t think should be an issue. Um. I just don’t know. It’s, it sounds like they’re leaving a lot of money on the table.  Allen H: I would say so, yeah. But remember, the vineyard win was one of the early, uh, agreements made when things were, this is pre Ukraine war, pre Iran conflict on a lot of other, a lot of other things. It was pre, so I remember at the time when this was going on that. P. PA prices were higher than obviously a lot of other [00:16:00] things. Onshore solar, onshore wind, it would, offshore is always more expensive, but I don’t remember $69 popping up anywhere in any filing that I remember seeing. So even if they had said $69 five years ago, I think that would’ve still been like, wow, that’s pretty good for an offshore wind project. And now it looks fantastic for the state of Massachusetts  Yolanda Padron: because I know that there’s sometimes, and we’ve talked about this in the past, right? There are sometimes projects where, you know, you think you, you’ve got a really good price and you’re really excited about it, and then it goes into operation and then like a couple years down the road, prices increase quite a bit and it’s not the worst thing in the world. But you do just kind of think a little bit like, I wish I could. Renegotiate this or you know, just to get, to get our team a bit of a better deal or to get a bit more money in operations and everything.  Allen H: Does this play into Vineyard wind claiming $850 [00:17:00] million in dispute with GE Renova that at $69 PPA, there’s not a lot of profit at the end of this and need to get the money out of GE Renova right now, and maybe why GE Renova wants to get out of this because they realize. The conflict that is coming that they need to separate the, the themselves from this project. It’s, it’s very, as an asset manager, Yoland, as you have done this in the past, would you be concerned about the viability of the project going forward, or is all the upfront costs. Pretty much done in that operationally year to year. It’s, it’s not that big of a deal.  Yolanda Padron: As an asset manager taking this on, I’d probably have started preparation on this project a lot earlier than other of my projects like I do. I know that usually there’s, you know, we’ve talked about the different teams, right, throughout the stages of the project until it goes into operations, [00:18:00] but. And usually you don’t have a lot of time to prepare to, to make sure all of your i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed, um, by the time you take the project and operations from a commercial standpoint. But this project, I think would absolutely, like you, you would need to make sure that a lot of the, of the things that you’re, that might be issues for some of your projects like aren’t issues for this project. Just to make sure at least the first few years you can. You can avoid a lot of, a lot of turmoil that the pricing and the disputes and the technical issues are gonna cause you, because I feel like it’s just, there’s, there’s just so many things that just keep this side, just keeps on getting hit, you know? Allen H: Well, I, I guess the question is from my side, Yolanda, is obviously inflation, when this project started was pretty consistent, like one point half, 2%. It was very flat for a long time. And interest rates, if you remember when this project started, were very, very low. Almost [00:19:00] nonexistent, some interest rates. Now that’s hugely different. How does a contract get set up where a vineyard can’t raise prices? It would just seem to me like you would have to tie some of the price increase to whatever the inflation rate is for the country, maybe even locally, so that if there were a, a war in Ukraine or some conflict in the Middle East. That you, you would at least be able to, to generate some revenue out of this project because at some point it becomes untenable, right? You just can’t afford to operate it anymore. And,  Yolanda Padron: and I think, um, I, I haven’t, I obviously haven’t read the, the contracts themselves, but I know that there’s sometimes there, it’s pretty common for a PPA to have some sort of step up year by year. And it’s usually, it can be tied to, um, the CPI for. Like the, the change in CPI for the year to year. So you’re [00:20:00] absolutely like, right, like maybe, I mean, hopefully they’re, they’re not just tied to the fixed 69 bucks per megawatt hour. Um, but, but yeah, to, to your point like that, that price increase could, could really save them. Now that we’re, we’re talking the, the increase in, in inflation right now and foreseeable future,  Allen H: if you think about what electricity rates are up in the northeast. I think I was paying 30 cents a kilowatt hour, which is 300. Does that sound right? $300 a megawatt hour. Delivered at the house, something like that. Right? So  Yolanda Padron: prices in the northeast are crazy to me,  Allen H: right? They’re like double what they are in North Carolina. Yeah. Delamination and bottom line failures and blades are difficult problems to detect early. These hidden issues can cost you millions in repairs and lost energy production. C-I-C-N-D-T are specialists to detect these critical flaws [00:21:00]before they become expensive burdens. Their non-destructive test technology penetrates deep dip blade materials to find voids and cracks. Traditional inspections completely. Miss C-I-C-N-D-T Maps Every critical defect, delivers actionable reports and provides support to get your blades. Back in service, so visit cic ndt.com because catching blade problems early will save  Yolanda Padron: you millions. Allen H: Well, sometimes building a wind farm turns out more than expected construction workers at a 19 turbine wind project in lower Saxony Germany under Earth. What experts call the largest Bronze age Amber Horde ever found? The region, the very first scoop of an excavator brought up bronze and amber artifacts that stopped construction and brought archeologists back to the site. Uh, the hoard has been dated between [00:22:00] 1500 and 1300 DCE and is believed to have belonged to at least three. Status women possibly buried as a religious offering. Now as we push further and further across Germany with wind turbines and solar panels for, for that matter, uh, we’re coming across older sites, uh, older pieces of ground that haven’t been touched in a long time and we’re, we’re gonna find more and more, uh, historically significant things buried in the soil. What is the obligation? Of the constructor of this project and maybe across Europe. I, I would assume in the United States too, if we came across something that old and America’s just not that old to, to have anything of, of that kind of, um, maybe value or historically significant. What is the process here? Rosemary Barnes: I assume that they’ve gotta stop, stop work. Um, yeah, that’s my, my understanding and I don’t think, do you have [00:23:00] grand designs in America?  Allen H: I don’t know what that is. Yes.  Rosemary Barnes: So missing out by not having that chat. It’s a TV show about people who are building houses or doing, um, ambitious renovations, and it just, it follows, it follows them. You can learn a lot about project management or. The consequences if you decide that you don’t need to, project management isn’t a thing that you need to do. Um, anyway. I’m sure that in some of those ones I’ve seen they have had work stop because in their excavation they found a, um, yeah, some, some kind of relic, um, from the, from the past. So based on that very well-credentialed experience that I have, I can confidently say that they would be stopping stopping work on that site. I mean, it’s so bad, bad for the developer, I guess, but it’s cool, right? That they’re, you know, uncovering, uh, new archeology and we can learn more about, you know, people that lived thousands of years ago. Allen H: It, it does seem [00:24:00] like, obviously. Do push into places where humans have lived for thousands of years. We’re going to stumble across these things. Does that mean from a project standpoint, there’s, there’s some sort of financial consequence, like does the lower Saxony government contribute to the wind turbine fund to to pay the workers for a while? ’cause it seems like if they’re gonna do an archeological dig. That that’s gonna take months at a minimum, may, maybe not, but it usually, having watched these things go on it, it’s. It’s long.  Rosemary Barnes: But wouldn’t that be something that you’d have insurance for?  Allen H: Oh, maybe that’s it.  Rosemary Barnes: You know, it seems to me like an insurable, an insurable thing, like not so hard to, it would’ve affected plenty of other, like any project that involves excavation in Europe would come with a risk of, um, finding Yeah. An archeological find. And having work stopped, I would assume.  Allen H: Yolanda, how does that work in the United States do, is there some insurance policy towards finding [00:25:00] a. Ancient burial ground and what happens to your project?  Yolanda Padron: I don’t know. I, um, the most I’ve heard has been, it’s just talking to like the government and like the local government and making sure that you have all your permits in place and making sure, you know, you might need to, to have certain studies so you know, you might not have to get rid of the whole wind farm or remove the hole wind farm, but at least a section. Of it has to be displaced from what you originally had thought. I don’t know. I know it happens a lot in Mexico where you get a lot of changes to construction plans because you find historical artifacts or obviously not everybody does this, but like. Tales of construction workers who will like, find, they’re so jaded from finding historical artifacts that they just kind of like take and then dump them to the next plot over to not deal with it right now. Not that it’s anything ethical, uh, or done by everybody, [00:26:00] uh, but it’s, but, but it’s a common occurrence, a relatively common occurrence.  Allen H: You would think it where a lot of wind turbines are in the United States, which is mostly Texas and kind of that. Midwest, uh, wind corridor that they would’ve stumbled across something somewhere. But I did just a quick search. I really hadn’t found anything that there wasn’t like a Native American burial ground or something of that sort, which they previously knew. For the most part. It’s, so, it’s rare that, that you find something significant besides, well, maybe used some woolly mammoths tusks or something of that sort. Uh, in the Midwest, it’s, it’s, so, it’s an odd thing, but is there a. A finder’s fee? Like do does the wind company get to take some of the proceeds of, of this? Trove of jewelry.  Rosemary Barnes: I, I would be highly surprised.  Allen H: Well, how does that work then? Rosemary?  Rosemary Barnes: I’d be highly surprised if that’s the case in Europe. I bet it would happen like that in America. Allen H: Sounds like pirate bounty in a sense.  Rosemary Barnes: In, in Australia it wouldn’t be like that because [00:27:00]you, when you own land, you don’t actually. You, you own the right to do things from surface level and above, basically. I don’t know how excavation works. So you don’t generally have a a right to anything you find like that? I mean, you shouldn’t either. It’s not, it’s not yours. It’s a, it belongs to the, I don’t know, the people that, that were buried. When you then to the, the land, like, I guess. The government in some way. I mean, in Australia it’s, um, like we don’t have so many archeological fines that you would find from digging. I mean, it’s not that there’s none, but there’s not so many like that. But it is pretty common that, you know, there are special trees, um, you know, some old trees that predate, uh, white people arriving in Australia. And, um, you know, that have been used for, you know, like it might have a, a shield that’s been, um. Carved out of it. Or, uh, hunting. Hunting things, ceremonial things, baskets, canoes, canoe like things, stuff like that. They call ’em a scar [00:28:00] tree ’cause they would cut it out of a living, living tree. And you know, so when you see a tree with those scars and that’s got, um, cultural significance. There’s also, you know, just trees that were, um. That that was significant for cultural reasons and so you wouldn’t be able to cut down those trees if you were building any, doing any kind of development in Australia and a wind farm would be no different. I know that they are, there are guidelines for, if you do come across any kind of thing like that or you find any anything of cultural significance, then you have to report it and hopefully you don’t just move it onto the neighboring property. Allen H: I know one of the things about watching, um. Some crazy Canadian shows is that. Uh, you have to have a Treasure Hunter’s license in Canada. So if you’re involved in that process, like you can’t dig, you can’t shovel things, only certain people can shovel. ’cause if they were to find something of value, you. You’ll get taxed on it. So there’s just a lot of rules [00:29:00] about it. Even in Canada,  Rosemary Barnes: if I was an indigenous Australian and you know, some Europe person of European descent came and found some artifacts, uh, aboriginal. Artifacts. I would be pissed if they just took it and sold it. Like that’s just clearly inappropriate right. To, to do that. So you, I don’t think it should be a free for all. If you find artifacts of cultural significance and you just, it’s, you find its keepers that, that doesn’t sound right to me at all.  Allen H: Can we talk about King Charles II’s visit to the United States for a brief moment? Uh, he is a really good ambassador, just like, uh, the queen was forever. He’s, he does take it very seriously and the way that he interacted with the US delegation was remarkable at times in, in terms of knowing how to deal with somebody that there’s a war going on right now. So there’s a lot [00:30:00] happening in the United States that, uh, not only could it be. Uh, respecting both sides of the UK and the United States’ position in a, in a number of different areas, but at the same time being humorous, trying to build bridges. Uh, king Charles, uh, had the scotch whiskey tariffs removed just by negotiating with President Trump, and sometimes that’s what it takes. It’s a little bit of, uh. Being a good ambassador.  Allen H: Yeah. The very polished you would expect that. Right? But this is the first visit of. The king to the United States, I believe. ’cause he, he’s been obviously as a prince many, many, many times to the United States. [00:31:00]But this time as, as a, the representative of the country, the former representative or head of the country, which was unique. I think he did a really good job. And I wish he, they would’ve talked about offshore wind. Maybe he could’ve calmed down the administration on offshore wind.  Rosemary Barnes: I bet that’s one of the, the goals. I mean, that’s an industry that’s important to. So  Allen H: I wonder if that happened actually. ’cause that’s not gonna be reported in, in the news, but how the UK is going on its own way in terms of electrification and I guarantee offshore wind had to come up it. Although I have been not seen any article about it, I, I find it hard to believe that King Charles being the environmentalist that he is, and a proponent of offshore wind for a long time. Didn’t bring it up and try to mend some fences.  Rosemary Barnes: Maybe he’s playing the long game though. I mean, Trump is pretty, he’s transactional, but he also, you know, he has people that he really likes and you know, will act in their interests. So maybe it’s enough to just be [00:32:00] really liked by Trump, and then that’s the smartest way you can go about it. Allen H: Did you see the gift that King Charles presented to, uh, the US this past week? It was a be from, uh, world War II submarine, which was the British, I dunno what the British called their submarines, but it was, the name of it was Trump. So they had the bell from. The submarine when it had been commissioned and they, they gave that to the United States, or give to the president. It goes to the United States. The president doesn’t get to keep those things, but it was such a smart, it’s a great president. It’s such a smart gift, and somebody had to think about it and the king had to deliver it in a way that got rid of all the noise between the United States and the uk. Brought it back to, Hey, we have a lot in common [00:33:00] here. We shouldn’t be bickering as much as we are. And I thought that was a really smart, tactful, sensible way to try to men some fences. That was really good. That wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn. Don’t forget to subscribe, so you never miss this episode. And if you found value in today’s conversation, please leave us a review. It really helps other wind energy professionals discover the show. For Rosie and Yolanda, I’m Allen Hall and we with. See you’re here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

Nick Martocci, founder of Technical Training Academy in Las Vegas, joins to discuss expanding from wind technician training to other energy technologies and career pathways for veterans in energy. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Nick, welcome back to the program. We’re Tower Trading Academy. Now your technical trading Academy since we last spoke and we last spoke at OM and S in Nashville. Yep. Now we’re here in Orlando. A lot’s changed over the last year.  Nick Martocci: We went through a lot of growth and changes, if you will, to the point where, because I added the program from just wind turbine technician to battery energy storage technician as well. And obviously like always I’ve got something brewing behind the green curtain. Right, right. Uh, we’re, we’re always doing something and adding and changing training. And what we really did is get to a place where we’re getting really technical with some of the things that we’re doing. And what I did want to [00:01:00] do is rebrand, go through all of the, you know, uh, marketing and pieces again, and try to change things. And so I tried to find what was the most simplistic, easy pivot, but also kept us out in the people’s eye. Yeah. And we went to Technical Training Academy. So we really didn’t have to do a whole heavy rebrand. We didn’t have to change a lot, but those that are already working with us, it was just letting them know, Hey, we are still Legally Tower Training Academy. Even the Department of Labor recognizes that, uh, we just have a DBA in place and the DBA doing business as, uh, allows us to now really open that up as far as what are we capable of doing when it comes to. Deliverables for, you know, people in energy and those types of security places.  Allen Hall: Well, I’ve been watching your shorts. I, they’re on YouTube or on LinkedIn. They’re really good. The little clips about what you [00:02:00] guys are up to, they’re excellent. And the, what I follow, because I, I met you several times, it was just kind of cool to follow the progression there. The state of Nevada has recognized you. There’s a lot of, uh, congratulatory, uh, events that are happening and like, all right, Hey, Nick’s making this thing happen because it’s so hard to be in that training business. Mm-hmm. To get to where you have brought that whole company. Two is all right. This, this is a, this is a good spot.  Nick Martocci: Yeah. Uh, you’re  Allen Hall: making some progress  Nick Martocci: there. We had Susie Lee’s office last year help us announce the Battery Energy Storage Program, so there was a congressional recognition there as well. Uh, we’ve also been working with other local politicians and things of that nature to be able to showcase some of the things that not just TTA is doing, but veterans and energy. Because of my partnership with Project Vanguard, I am a state, uh, representative [00:03:00] for Project Vanguard in the state of Nevada. So it’s another piece of also being able to showcase, hey, this is not just what TTA is doing, but what are veterans doing in energy? And I want to be able to not only highlight, you know, obviously TTA, but those pieces as well. And whatever you state, you know, the veteran pieces, obviously legislators will listen, if that makes sense. That when you start saying, Hey, a veteran is speaking legislation. We’ll quiet down for a second to see, hey, what is this rumble that you guys are creating? And they start to see what we’re doing and they wanna be a part of that. Allen Hall: Well, I think that’s wonderful. And all the effort and time that you put towards veterans and veteran efforts. Mm-hmm. Thank you so much for doing that. You’re a veteran, you’re a helicopter pilot, you served Yep. Uh, for a number of years. That’s a difficult job. I, you know, obviously the US is involved in some activity at the moment, but. You know, shout out to all the veterans out there, [00:04:00] obviously. And, and there’s a lot of ’em in renewable energy right now.  Nick Martocci: Well, I mean, not just renewables, but energy, period. ’cause I, I speak to a lot of veterans throughout my downtime, if you’ll say I have that. And you know, the, there’s people that are PMs, program project managers, there are folks that are doing logistics, warehouse hr, and seeing that movement migration. Of transitioning individuals from active duty, even some folks that are in my program that are in the guard and now getting into a position where, hey, you know, I’m a technician. I’m in energy. Whether they’re a wind turbine tech, they’re in battery, solar, hydro, what have you. Uh, there are quite a number of veterans in the energy market and industry. Allen Hall: So if you’re a veteran right now or just exiting, uh, the military. I, I think a lot of opportunity is there. They may not [00:05:00] realize. Mm-hmm. Uh, so getting trained up is a lot easier than it used to be. I remember years ago, I think I, we knew people that came outta the military and, and they were just sort of tossed out the door and had to go find things for themselves. There’s a lot more resources now I would Right. I it feel like than there were even a couple of years ago. And it’s people like you that are kind of bridging that gap for the military to, to get people onboard, to get people trained, to get ’em out in. And doing work in the civilian world, that’s huge.  Nick Martocci: Yeah. There’s so many leadership traits and skills that veterans already bring to the table. It’s a matter of taking some of those skills that maybe they, you know, worked in motor T and uh, and the motor pools, and they were turning wrenches and fixing, you know, Humvees and other, you know, mechanical vehicles, or they were. Um, A and p, so airframe and power plant for, uh, aviation and things of that nature. Sure. So now they understand these different types of systems. Already it’s a matter of, oh, how, [00:06:00] how do I transition this over to wind? How do I transition this over to solar? How do I transition this to battery and such? And then be able to pick that up? It, it, it makes it easier for them because of the familiarity, if you will. To be able to say, Hey, this is very similar to that. All I gotta do is change this information here and now I’m good to go.  Allen Hall: Right. And Project Vanguard’s helping with that a a great deal.  Nick Martocci: Oh yeah. You talked about Project Vanguard, if you don’t know what that is, so Project Vanguard is an initiative to help veterans get into renewable energy careers, utilizing the network that we already have because. Um, America’s energy is our security as well, and so who better to help take care of the nation’s security of energy than veterans who have already been doing it. And so being able to help individuals, like I said, not always be a technician. Maybe they wanna be able to get into, uh, program or project management. Maybe they want to get into hr. And by utilizing the [00:07:00] vast network that Project Vanguard has, it, it gives them that ease of entrance and access that maybe they didn’t have before.  Allen Hall: Well, that’s the key. Finding out where those opportunities lie, and it’s hard to do that on your own. Right. Reaching out for some help is the right answer, I think all the time. And every, especially now, uh, there’s a lot of, uh, military focused companies that, like technical training Academy that are bridging that gap and, and absolutely. That’s fantastic. Now, the amount of training you’re doing on site is impressive and you’re, you’re growing. You’re into Best now, and you’re into more, more and more training, doing some OSHA training. So there’s a lot of resources available and the website’s been updated. Right. And I think a lot of people are, go to the website, just Google it. You can get there. But the offerings are getting more expansive. The, the technical details are getting deeper into the aspects of all parts of the industry,  Nick Martocci: right? We’ve worked with, uh, a few entities, uh, to name Drop Ner [00:08:00] and um, destructible. They’ve donated quite a bit of different pieces for our training programs, for blades, for brake systems and things of that nature. For us to be able to take our program to that next level and actually put what technicians are going to be putting their hands on in our training places rather than something as simple as a, uh, like an theory plate piece and actually putting something that a manufacturer is building for these entities. And saying, Hey, here, this is the exact same thing you’re gonna see, uh, they donated a, a unit that goes to a GE one X, but you know, if you go out to a four X, it’s gonna be the same thing, just a little bigger.  Allen Hall: Bigger. Right,  Nick Martocci: right. And, and so it, it makes it so that it goes from serious hands-on theory to, oh, I’ve seen something just like this, but it was a little smaller. This is just bigger. I get it. Same thing. And so with destructible being able to make those donations for blades and other pieces. Uh, we’re putting together a LPS program, lightning [00:09:00] Protection Systems. Oh,  Allen Hall: good.  Nick Martocci: And so that’s something That’s awesome. Yeah, it’s something that, it’s a  Allen Hall: lightning protection company. That’s fantastic.  Nick Martocci: You know, uh, there’s a lot of stuff coming down the pipe for all of those additional pieces. We, we even revamped our whole website when we did the name change back in July, and it allows people to be able to go in and see all those pieces that we’re doing. One of the things is we became a Sprat facility, so being able to do rope access, especially when it comes to those offshore technicians and things of that nature. So we’re gonna be able to. Help out the wind industry with a lot more of those pieces that they’re looking for. Uh, like I said, the rope access, they’re definitely gonna need, uh, for offshore and things of that nature. Uh, being able to do LPS training, there’s so many other pieces. I’m gonna try not to reveal that we’re working on that are in addition to just the apprenticeship program, but okay. Somebody went out to the field, I want to get a certification in. Become better SME in this piece and start putting building blocks into people’s [00:10:00]careers.  Allen Hall: Well, that’s the key, right? It it’s the industry’s grown to be more SMEs being on site.  Nick Martocci: Yep.  Allen Hall: And there you have your gearbox people, you have your electrical, diagnosing, debugging people that are out there. And I think as the industry evolves, we’re gonna have more subject matter experts on sites. Mm-hmm. Doing LPS systems, doing gear boxes, handling some of the electrical things that are happening, even in blades and blade repair. They’re becoming more of subject matter experts. ’cause you have people that, that’s what they do. They are the expert in fixing this particular kind of blade problem. And they make a great living doing that.  Nick Martocci: And uh, one of the other things that we’re doing is the complimentary training. Right. And what I mean by that is I’ve partnered with, uh, CSN  Allen Hall: Oh Good  Nick Martocci: College of Southern Nevada. Uh, I’m also partnering with some other universities and working on those pieces because I understand that technicians, as they grow in this industry, they want to be able to do other [00:11:00] things, whether that be be a pm, be an engineer. They want to be able to go and get that piece. And so if I can help refer through our partnerships. Hey, if you want to go get your construction management at CSN, we’re a preferred partner, go talk to. This individual and we can actually, rather than say, Hey, go forth and do great things, we can actually say, Hey, you need to speak to this person, and you know what? Better yet, let me do an email intro. Making it easier for the end user to actually now say, Hey, you know what? That was so much easier when you create that holistic program similar to what I’ve done, which doesn’t just say, Hey, here, you’re a technician. Bye. Um, you’re actually a part of their career. That, that’s one of the major big things that just really stuck out as far as a different difference maker from me to everybody else. I don’t just say, Hey, here you go. I, I create a program [00:12:00] with you and your career in mind. You can call back to either TTA or my other business, IFC, infinite Fidelis Consulting, and that is exactly what they do. They, it’s a nonprofit that does workforce development. That is exactly what they do, and they will help. And so through those partnerships, you now have access immediately to those resources. And I think some of the misnomers and steps that I’ve seen before me is, is exactly that of, hey, you know, we’re finished, right? We’ve taken care of your certs, we’ve taken care of your basic training. Bye-bye. And there there is no un until you see ’em in two years and you do their recertification. Then you don’t really get to interact with them. And so there’s two years of just what I call dead space. There’s just two, two years of I’ve never seen this person again. And that’s, if they come back to me, they might work for company A, B, or C. And that company might have an internal recertification program where now I’m not [00:13:00] able to still help them and they’re just on a maybe. Well, that’s where Technical Training Academy  Allen Hall: is doing something different. I, I think you’re right about. The, some of the training schools that exist today are very focused on getting technicians out on a site, and then that’s where it ends. The, the problem is those people tend to grow, especially if they’re from the military. They tend to go up and rank as they get out in the field a little bit because they do, are doing the right things and every, the, the management realizes I’ve got these people out there that know what they’re doing. I’m gonna promote them, I’m gonna make them the lead, I’m gonna make them the project manager, I’m gonna expand their role. But you have to also learn that skillset, right? And I think that’s where you’re thinking ahead and trying to help those people grow as they get more experience.  Nick Martocci: And I’m probably repeating myself from two years ago, but this is why I built it. I built it off of the similar frame of leadership style and progression piece that is familiar to us as veterans in the military. When you’re an E [00:14:00] one, you’re being groomed to be an E two. E two to be groomed to be an E three in, in the civilian world, there really is no grooming process to help you do that ladder climbing piece. And what I wanted to do was help bridge that gap,  Allen Hall: right?  Nick Martocci: And help put those support structures and pieces in place so that somebody could say, Hey, I want to do this. Who can help me? Well, you can come over to TTA or IFC and we’ll give you a hand. No problem.  Allen Hall: Well, that’s a part about TTA and I think if I was coming outta the military. I, and I wanted to get into renewables. I wouldn’t necessarily necessarily think Las Vegas. I would think Texas, Oklahoma, maybe Indiana, where there’s wind turbines and there’s solar and there’s batteries. But the reality is, is that the resources that Nevada is putting into veterans and into supporting you make your facility much more powerful than a lot of other places.  Nick Martocci: Well, and and I kind of remember this conversation we had last year about. [00:15:00] The negative connotation of a two mile square space in Las Vegas. Right. Right. And, and when people immediately think of Las Vegas, that two mile strip is what they immediately think of.  Allen Hall: Sure.  Nick Martocci: Without understanding. And they’re doing a little homework. And that’s why even, you know, tell people, Hey, come out for a tour, check this out and see where we are. Because we’re right across from Nellis Air Force Base right next to the speedway. One more exit from my, uh, my training center and you’re out of Las Vegas.  Allen Hall: A lot of people coming up in the industry just don’t think about outside that Midwest, that Texas spot. Mm-hmm. And they need to have their horizons open a little bit and realize that there are other places to get training that are high quality, that are gonna be caring about you as a person and the growth of you. Think about that when you’re applying to school, Joe. Absolutely. Just take whatever’s the closest. And head toward it.  Nick Martocci: We, we don’t play, and we’re going to treat this just like a career. That’s why [00:16:00] training at our school is a 12 hour training day. It’s not an eight hour day, it’s a 12 hour day.  Allen Hall: Right.  Nick Martocci: And that gets them acclimated to a 12 hour work day. Allen Hall: But that’s  Nick Martocci: what it’s gonna be. Exactly. So that way when you hit the field and some supervisor says, Hey, it’s gonna be a long day. We’re doing 10 hours today. Ah, part-time job. Got it. You know?  Allen Hall: Right. Right. That’s it. So I, I think there, uh, a lot of people have choices if they’re trying to get into renewables. Mm-hmm. And they need to be thinking about the choices they make. Technical training Academy should be high up on the list.  Nick Martocci: Absolutely  Allen Hall: high up on the list now, especially with veterans. I mean, that, that’s, that’s a no brainer that Do people get ahold of you? How do they contact you? Where should they start that process? Should they reach out to you on LinkedIn? Should they go to the website? What’s the best way?  Nick Martocci: Best way is really just to go to the website and, uh. O one of the misnomers I made was the Technical Training Academy, and there, there are so many in the United States, I did not realize that. But if you do Technical Training Academy Las Vegas, it narrows it down to four and [00:17:00] we’re the ones on top. And it makes it easier. And so if you do, uh, technical Training Academy in the Google Bar and just say, Hey, technical Training Academy, Las Vegas will pop up. Otherwise, on LinkedIn, you’ll find us under Technical Training Academy. Uh, Facebook and Instagram. Were still Tower Training Academy. I’m working on getting that changed over, uh, and then from there, yeah, the, I, I think that’s, oh no, we have a YouTube channel. Tower Training Academy. We’re also on YouTube. Yeah, YouTube. But as far as reaching us, go on our website. Hit enroll now. Uh, also on our website is our phone number, (725) 272-9495.  Allen Hall: There you go.  Nick Martocci: And so you can just ping that or you can even. Hit up my head of administration at admin1@towertrainingacademy.com. Allen Hall: Great. So everybody reach out, connect up with Nick, get started, figure out what your future looks like because Nick’s here to help and uh, it’s great to connect with you [00:18:00] again because year it’s something more exciting. Like, alright, this is, this is great. It’s expanding. You’re doing training, you got technicians out in the world, you’re going to the best. That’s fantastic. I’m always cooking. Congratulations because it’s hard. Your business is hard. Yep. And And that is amazing. It’s amazing.  Nick Martocci: I’ve always got something brewing behind the green curtain.  Allen Hall: Yes.  Nick Martocci: Always got something brewing back there.  Allen Hall: Thank you so much for being on the podcast.