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Uptime Podcast – Weather Guard Lightning Tech
Hosted by Allen Hall, Rosemary Barnes, Yolanda Padron & Matthew Stead · EN
The Wind Turbine LPS Retrofit
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Offshore Turbine Prices Jump, Data Centers Squeeze US Grids
6d ago00:21:49Tap to summarizeWeather Guard Lightning Tech Offshore Turbine Prices Jump, Data Centers Squeeze US Grids Rystad reports offshore turbine prices have jumped 45% since 2020, plus data centers squeeze US grids, Fortescue chases real zero by 2030, and GE Vernova battles Vineyard Wind in court. 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! 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 Rosemary Barnes, who’s been busy in Australia up in Sydney at a energy conference. Rosemary, what happened this past week? Rosemary Barnes: Oh, yeah. I’ve been up in Sydney for the Smart Energy Conference and Exhibition. It’s a big… I don’t know if it’s the biggest. I think they get about 12,000 people or something through the doors. So yeah, it’s, it’s one of the big, maybe the biggest, um, energy conference in Australia. It’s really focused on distributed energy households. So in the past, it was, like, nearly all solar, um, like rooftop solar. There used to be lots of installers that were there and, yeah, there’s heaps of solar [00:01:00] panels around in the exhibition hall. And over the last few years it’s been a mix of batteries and solar, and then now this year it was basically 99% batteries, 1% EV chargers, and almost not a solar panel to be seen. I didn’t actually spend that much time in the exhibition this year. I mostly was, um, attending sessions. Andrew Forrest from Fortescue headlined, and that was really good. I haven’t seen him speak live before. Y- you know, he, he told about all the, like, good plans that Fortescue’s doing to get to real zero by 2030. So he’s on a real rampage at the moment to try and get rid of the diesel rebate that we pay at the moment. We pay diesel users a, a, yeah, a fuel, fuel rebate. It was just cool to hear about y- you know, all of Fortescue’s plans, why they’ve got this big green grid that they’re building out in the Pilbara. Um, I really liked when he said, you know, it’s not, it’s not magic, it’s, um, it’s just, what did he say? Like, maths, physics, engineering, and [00:02:00]economics, and a bit of courageous leadership. That’s what you need to make a green, a green electricity grid. So I really like that the, you know, engineering was mentioned, was mentioned there. I did actually get the chance to ask him a question, too. Wanted to know, um, you know, like, Fortescue is, is really one of the most interesting things about the company is that they are using brand-new technologies or even not quite there yet technologies. I asked, uh, Andrew Forrest, I asked him, you know, like, how you make these bold, bold decisions, does it ever, you know, worry you that it’s not gonna work out? And I was assuming he would say, “It doesn’t worry me,” um, because, you know, he has that kind of brash, confident personality. So I, you know, my follow-up was, what, what steps do you take so that you aren’t worried by it? And he said it does worry him, and he s- stays awake every night worrying, worrying about if these technologies aren’t going to work. And that, uh, basically they try and have a really, really solid plan B that isn’t a [00:03:00] brand-new technology. So, um, you can, you know, infer from that, that if the– I mean, first of all, he said, “We don’t invest in the technology until they have demons- demonstrated with a good prototype that it’s likely to work.” Um, but I guess that, you know, assuming that they’ve ran into problems in the rollout of all of these Naberebo towers, that, um, they have a backup of some conventional towers. Speaker 2: Yeah, uh, the, the Fortescue people, when we talked to them about, pfoof, probably six months ago, maybe a little bit longer, we were helping to build a farm out in Western Australia. It was a small team, much smaller than anything you would see in the US, and it does sort of align with the Australian approach to it, is that you don’t need a massive team of people to do these projects. You just need to know what you’re doing, and that was really remarkable. So e- I’m not surprised that Fortescue is continuing on in, in different aspects. It does seem like they’re pretty bold about their engineering approach and taking on massive projects that otherwise wouldn’t be [00:04:00] done and- Rosemary Barnes: It, it’s also really cool to hear, uh, Andrew Forrest or anyone from Fortescue talk because they’re talking about things that they’ve done. You know, like we have so much when you’re at these, uh, events and, you know, everyone’s doing these inspiring talks, it’s always about, “Oh, this is the possibility for the future.” But Fortescue has actually, has actually done it. Yeah, there was a lot of, like, actual progress discussed at this conference. It wasn’t, “This is what we could do if we all joined hands and sang Kumbaya.” It wasn’t like that, you know? It’s like, this is what’s happening when the engineering is there, the economics are there, and the government isn’t standing in the way. Um, y- you know, you can make a lot of, a lot of progress. And you know what? Like now we’ve got so much distributed energy in Australia. It’s the rooftop solar that we’ve been building for, you know, 20 years by now. Um, and it’s the, the batteries especially. Like it is a- starting to have a noticeable impact on electricity prices, and co- coal and gas are both reducing in the grid. I think the last quarter of gas use in Australia was the lowest it’s [00:05:00] been since 1999. Like, um, yeah, so it’s, yeah, it’s, it, it’s dropping, you know? And so I think that that’s a really unique story for Australia is that households can actually really change the dial. Speaker 2: Well, can I ask you about that? Because the data center issue is popping up again in the United States, and one of the things about data centers is they feel like you, you’re gonna need a good amount of batteries to support if the grid hops on or turns off, that they wanna be able to support this data center, so having a buffer and batteries would make a lot of sense. However, there’s not a lot of battery storage in the US at the minute versus a place like Australia where there’s a lot of it. Doesn’t it make a lot of sense to start putting data centers in Australia? I still don’t understand Why that hasn’t been done? Because electricity prices are cheaper, the land is available, the infrastructure’s there. It’s going [00:06:00] to be, you would think, easier to build in Australia than it would be in the United States. What’s the dilemma there? Rosemary Barnes: I think certainly there are plenty of plans to build big data centers in Australia. Um, and now I’m gonna go, like, move a little bit outside my expertise, but I think that one of the issues is that at the moment, a lot of the data centers need to be quite close to where the work is happening. So I mean, you’re always gonna need data centers close to any big city where people are, are using the internet. Um, but aside from that, you know, like, the tech sector in the US is much bigger, so the people actually developing, um, you know, training, um, uh, yeah, training AI models, um, are more likely to be sitting in the US and, you know, need a large amount… Not all of their compute needs to happen nearby, but a fair chunk of it. And so I think that that is one reason why so far that’s where it is. Um, but it also doesn’t mean… I mean, there’s [00:07:00] plen...
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Pentagon Stalls 30 GW US Wind, New York Defends Sunrise
1w ago00:02:41Tap to summarizeWeather Guard Lightning Tech Pentagon Stalls 30 GW US Wind, New York Defends Sunrise 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.
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CNC Onsite Cuts Repair Costs With Uptower Machining
2w ago00:20:29Tap to summarizeWeather Guard Lightning Tech CNC Onsite Cuts Repair Costs With Uptower Machining Søren Kellenberger, CEO of CNC Onsite, joins to discuss uptower yaw gear repairs, flat tower flanges, and replacing 1,000 blade root bushings across 26 turbines. 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! Allen Hall 2025: Soren, welcome back to the podcast. Søren Kellenberger: Thank you, Allen, and, uh, nice doing it, uh, face-to-face- Yes, it’s great … and not as a team, uh, call. Right. That’s Allen Hall 2025: true. Yeah. You’ve been doing a good bit of traveling, and you’re the new head of CNC Onsite. Søren Kellenberger: I am, yes. Allen Hall 2025: So congratulations on that. Søren Kellenberger: Thank you very much. Allen Hall 2025: And all the exciting new things that CNC Onsite [00:01:00] is doing, plus all the things you have developed and are now out in the field implementing, the, the list goes on and on and on. I’m alwa- every time I talk to you, “Oh, we got a new-” Yeah … “machine to do something uptower.” So it’s all uptower, which is the, the beauty of CNC Onsite. You’re thinking about the operator and the cost to pull the blades off and do lifting the cell off and all those things. If we can do it uptower, we can save 30, 40, 50% of the cost of a repair. Søren Kellenberger: Yeah. Allen Hall 2025: That’s where CNC Onsite is just really killing it. You guys are doing great. Thank Søren Kellenberger: you. Of course, we like what we do, but, uh, thank you. Allen Hall 2025: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, it’s good, it’s good. And, and so w- let’s talk about the things that I know about, and we’ll start there, and then we’ll go to all the new things you’re doing. So the one that I see a lot of operators asking about is yaw tooth. Yeah. Søren Kellenberger: Uh, Allen Hall 2025: deformations, broken teeth on the yaw gear. That’s a big problem. And when I talk to [00:02:00] technicians, and I have them texting me about this, like, “Oh, well, I just weld on the gear back on, weld the tooth back on.” That’s a short-term solution. That’s not gonna be long-term. The long-term solution is the CNC Onsite. Can you explain what you do to permanently fix these yaw gear problems? Søren Kellenberger: Yeah. So what we do is actually we start by getting information about the, uh, original yaw ring, so the dimension of the teeth, and we get some load data. And, uh, then we start designing a replacement segment. Uh, so what we ac- the process is actually that we bring a CNC controlled machine uptower, mount it on the yaw ring, and then we mill away that worn area, uh, creating a small pocket. And then those, uh, segments that we have designed, they are prefabricated. We bring them up and mount them in, in that, uh, pocket and bring the- The yaw ring back to where it’s, you can say, original design, uh, [00:03:00] that way. Yeah Allen Hall 2025: It’s better than the original design, ’cause you’re actually putting in better teeth than the, the manufacturer did originally. Søren Kellenberger: True. Yeah, yeah. Allen Hall 2025: So that happens, so you’re, you’re machining out those old teeth, broken teeth, putting the new set of teeth in th- and that all bolts in, and that’s it. That’s it. But the, the difficulty is getting the machinery uptower to do that. That’s where a lot of your, your technology comes from, is getting this very accurate, uh, well-defined machine uptower and doing very controlled grinding and milling. Yes. So can you explain what that system looks like? If I’m gonna grind off those yaw, broken yaw teeth, how big is that kit? Søren Kellenberger: It… Obviously, it depends a little bit on the turbine size. Sure, okay. Yeah. So, uh, it, so the, the newer five, six, uh, 10 megawatt turbines have larger teeth, so yeah, there you need a, a larger machine. Allen Hall 2025: Okay. Søren Kellenberger: But let’s say for, uh, Vestas three megawatt, the, the [00:04:00] complete machine weighs about 250 kilos. That’s it? So yeah. So it, it comes up in smaller components. We just use, uh, the, the internal crane in, in the nacelle, and, uh, then we can lift the components to the yaw ring, assemble the machine, and then we are basically good to go. So it take, takes less than a day to get everything up and, uh, get set and be ready to, to machine. Allen Hall 2025: So if you wanna fix a yaw gear problem, how long does it take from start to finish to get that done? Søren Kellenberger: It typically, it takes one day to get everything up and get ready, and then per six teeth, which is a typical segment, it takes about a day to machine that. Okay. So, uh, let’s say you have, uh, somewhere between 10 and 15 teeth, it’s, uh, two to three segments. So we do that in a week. Um- Allen Hall 2025: Wow … and- ‘Cause the alternative is call a crane, have them lifting the cell off. Søren Kellenberger: Yeah. Allen Hall 2025: Take the yaw gear off, put a yaw gear on, if you can find a yaw gear. Yes. Put the nacelle back on. [00:05:00] Well, and I guess obviously the rotors are coming down too, so- Yeah. You’re talking about- Yes hundreds of thousands of dollars in downtime. Yeah. It’s a big ordeal. The CNC Onsite method is so much easier. Søren Kellenberger: We will just put our equipment in the back of our truck- … and then, uh, we’ll, we are ready to mobilize in a few days. So yeah, we can significantly, uh, bring down the downtime and, and as you said, the crane cost is of course extremely high. And then you can add all the project management. You know, con- do I actually have my access roads, uh, still available? Right. Is the crane pad intact? And all of that stuff you need to organize. You can just forget about that and, uh- And Allen Hall 2025: get it done … Søren Kellenberger: get it done. Yeah. Allen Hall 2025: Yeah. There’s, there’s a lot of owners, we, everybody knows who the machines are that have the, the, the yaw tooth problem. Søren Kellenberger: Yeah. Allen Hall 2025: So if you’re one of those owner operators, you better get ahold of CNC Onsite. Now, flanges on tower sections. It’s become a, a really critical issue. You hear a lot of, of [00:06:00] operators, OEMs talking about, “I’m putting together these tower sections and those flanges don’t really meet up quite right.” Søren Kellenberger: Yep. Allen Hall 2025: “I’m creating uneven torque pa...
Transcribe →Vineyard Wind’s $69.50 PPA, Two Offshore Lease Exits
2w ago00:33:06Tap to summarizeWeather Guard Lightning Tech Vineyard Wind’s $69.50 PPA, Two Offshore Lease Exits 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...
Transcribe →CIP Buys Ørsted EU Onshore Wind
2w ago00:01:53Tap to summarizeWeather Guard Lightning Tech CIP Buys Ørsted EU Onshore Wind Allen covers CIP’s €1.44 billion buyout of Ørsted’s European onshore wind, the new Perigus Energy name, and Vestas paying €506 million for its stake in the firm. 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! In Denmark, there is an old expression. “What goes around comes around.” The founders of Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners — known in the industry simply as CIP — know exactly what that means. Back in 2012, four executives were fired from DONG Energy, the Danish energy giant that would later rebrand itself as Ørsted. Their offense? Their paychecks were considered too large. So large that DONG Energy’s own CEO was forced out as well. Four men shown the door were. A year later, a woman joined them from that same company. The Danish press had a name for these five. They called them “the golden birds.” With six billion Danish krone from the pension fund PensionDanmark, they launched what is now one of the world’s largest clean energy fund managers. In 2020, turbine maker Vestas purchased a 25 percent stake in CIP. The deal included a performance-based earn-out arrangement. This week, the books revealed the size of that windfall. The five partners have now collected a combined 1.8 billion Danish krone — roughly 240 million euros. Vestas expects to make one final payment of 71 million euros this year. Including interest, Vestas will have paid 506 million euros for its stake in CIP. Not a bad return for a group of people who were shown the door. And. This week, CIP completed its acquisition of Ørsted’s European onshore wind business for 1.44 billion euros. They renamed it Perigus Energy. The new company holds 826 megawatts of wind and solar capacity, operating in Ireland, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Spain. Let that circle close. The executives fired from DONG Energy — the company that became Ørsted — just bought Ørsted’s business. Meanwhile, CIP’s annual report for 2025 tells the story of a company in transition. Profit for the year came in at 561 million Danish krone, down from 683 million the year before. The employee count fell by nearly a fifth, to 441 people. And yet, their CI Five fund closed this year at 12.3 billion euros — the largest greenfield renewable infrastructure fund ever raised. Looking ahead, CIP expects profit of 600 to 800 million Danish krone in 2026 as new fund closings take shape. So the picture this week is this. The men and women once considered overpaid, at a company that no longer carries the same name, have built the world’s largest greenfield renewable energy fund. And they now own a piece of the legacy that fired them. The golden birds are still flying. And that is the wind energy news for the fourth of May, 2026. Join us for more on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.
Transcribe →Technical Training Academy Expands Across Renewables
2w ago00:19:13Tap to summarizeWeather Guard Lightning Tech Technical Training Academy Expands Across Renewables 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: W...
Transcribe →Record PPA Prices, GE Tries to Exit Vineyard
3w ago00:49:38Tap to summarizeWeather Guard Lightning Tech Record PPA Prices, GE Tries to Exit Vineyard US wind PPA prices climb to $79.40/MWh as the IRA sunsets. Plus GE Vernova ordered to stay at Vineyard Wind, lessons from Spain’s blackout, and data centers straining the US grid. 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! 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: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall here with Nikki Briggs, who is in North Carolina this week, and Yolanda Padron who is back from the exciting wedding and weekend in Mexico. Welcome back, Yolanda. Yolanda Padron: Thank you. Excited to be here, Allen Hall: uh, this week there’s a, there’s a lot going on and we’re gonna touch upon some of it. Uh, Rosemary is over in China this week and Matthew is actually at Wind Europe in Madrid. And so this is gonna be an American focused episode mostly, but it’s gonna have global implications. One of the key items is PPA prices in the United States and with the on sunsetting of the [00:01:00] IRA Bills, uh, tax credits, and the whole infrastructure there with the one big beautiful bill when it crushed the IRA bill. PPA Prices needed to come up well. That’s happening, right? So developers, uh, can’t live without some money to compensate for the roughly 26, 26 7 20 $7 in PPA prices that were compensated by the tax credits. But, uh, when purchase price agreements have hit the highest level since they begin tracking it at Wood Mac. The average wind PPA now stands at $79 and 40 cents per megawatt hour up 24% from just one year ago now, Yolanda, you and I were talking before we started recording today about how low some of those PPA prices were two years ago, three years ago. Some of them were almost single digits. Yolanda Padron: Yeah, yeah. Some of them were pretty low. I [00:02:00] remember 16, $19 EPA prices and then a couple years ago we were looking at those and thinking, oh no, I can’t believe we, we kept those prices and they’re so low and everything’s changed so much, and the prices grown so much, and that was two years ago and now it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s almost four times as much as, as what we had originally thought, which is. Not super great for those older projects, Allen Hall: obviously, uh, when they, if they do repower, the extent they’re gonna have to renegotiate the PPAs. Right. The, the landscape has changed quite a bit. So the, the question really is now are they gonna be able to renegotiate new PPAs when the existing PPA hopefully ends? You can’t, you can’t run turbines for free and will they repower. Or will they just try to extend the lifetime? I think it’s a lot of operators trying to figure that out right now. And that’s in light of installations. So Whim Mac also says that US wind installations are [00:03:00] on track to nearly double in 2026, uh, building towards 48 gigawatts of new capacity through 2030, which all makes sense, right? That the, the. Uh, everybody’s trying to get all their assets in the ground so they, they qualify for the, the tax credits. So there’s a big push. So 2026 and 2027 are gonna be pretty busy years. Uh, but the, the negotiations are still going on and we’re talking to operators. Nikki and I have been talking to operators this past week or the last couple of weeks, honestly. There is all kinds of negotiations going on for turbines right now and who can get turbines? Can they get ’em in time? Can they get ’em planted fast enough? Nikki, it is causing a lot of operators to spend a great deal of time doing planning that they otherwise wouldn’t have been working on two years ago. Nikki Briggs: Definitely. I mean, it seems kind of weird to me because it’s like a weird spot. It’s like, um, you know, we want more power and we need to do all these projects, [00:04:00] but then. The permitting process is just like a brick wall or something, you know? Um, like it just takes them so much more to get through, um, and get it moving. Allen Hall: Well, I, I think if you have an existing site, you’re gonna repower it. I mean, that’s probably the easiest thing to do if, if you can pull it off. The, the question is how big of a turbine are you gonna purchase? A lot of those turbines that are gonna get repowered are probably 1.5. To two megawatt machines. They’re going to move up to five or six megawatt machines, generally speaking. So they’re reducing the amount of turbines that are gonna be on site. But the, the amount of power that’s delivered usually is about the same, maybe a little bit more. Which, which, which strives the, which drives the, the equation of, Hey, what’s everybody gonna do in the next couple of years with the data centers. Having listened to the GE Renova financial report for Q1 that just came out as we’re earlier today. GE is trying to sell gas turbines like there’s no tomorrow. However, the weird thing about it was that they were [00:05:00] very nervous about locking in firm orders that a lot of the deposits they had for like 2029 or moving into 2030. So they had a, a discussion about GE Renova building gas turbines. They could do about 20 gigawatts a year, but they had like a 10 gigawatt hole. In 20 29, 20 30 of orders because the data centers are realizing, like to get a contractor to put a hole in the ground so you can put a data center in is taking more time than they thought. It’s not Silicon Valley where you can just type some software. And Yolanda, you’re kind of in the middle of this right now, being in Austin, Texas. Is the, the drive for data centers and the drive for power, what it was six months ago, is that landscape changed? Has everybody come back to reality? Like building physical projects takes time. Yolanda Padron: I think people are starting to get, get back to reality from the little bit that, that I’ve been, that. I privy to, uh, I do think that you mentioned the GE renova and [00:06:00] just kind of all the changes and everything. And I know in the past we’ve talked about, um, the fact that, you know, a lot of blade manufacturers have changed hands for wind and a lot of things are uncertain in general. Um, I think right now with the boom of people trying to repower and doing everything as quickly as possible and as safely as possible, it’s really important that everybody should. Try to get as much documentation on everything as possible, not just to, to protect yourselves, right? I mean, if there’s some sort of, I mean, you’re, you’re, you’re checking that the foundation on your turbine is perfect still, um, doing all the civil engineering studies that you need to do and making sure that, that everything’s fine, um, for, for the long term, right? If you’re not, you’re not planning on repowering again in five years. Um. But just to track everything. There’s so much movement right now and so much uncertainty that at the very least, so you know, what you’re dealing with, if and when you have an issue, [00:07:00] you know, five years down the line, like, oh, this is what happened and this is why, this is who I need to talk to, or this is how I’m going to solve this. Or, you know, it’s not a new problem. Um, because it’s just, there’s just so many, so many factors changing. All at once that it’s, it’s a little bit, it’s a little bit daunting for everyone in this space. I don’t know if you guys feel the same way. Nikki Briggs: I have a separate question, um, which is, you know about these PPA pricing, if it’s going up, it continues to go up. Is the old adage about like green energy is the,...
Transcribe →WindEurope Demands Action, Siemens Gamesa Closes In on Break-Even
3w ago00:03:56Tap to summarizeWeather Guard Lightning Tech WindEurope Demands Action, Siemens Gamesa Closes In on Break-Even Allen covers WindEurope Madrid, the ten-point Call to Action, Vestas CEO Andersen’s mission impossible warning, Siemens Gamesa’s narrowing losses, and CNC Onsite’s deals in Asia. 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. This past week… some big things happened in Madrid. Fifteen thousand wind energy people from every corner of the world walked into the same room. They came to talk. They came to listen. They came to ask for help. And they came to warn. The WindEurope Annual Event opened on Tuesday, the twenty-first of April, with six hundred twenty exhibitors and four hundred speakers across three days. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez gave the opening address. Fourteen national ministers stood on the stages, alongside European Commission Executive Vice President Teresa Ribera and European Commissioner for Energy Dan Jorgensen. And the message coming out of Madrid… was a single piece of paper. They called it the Madrid Call to Action. Ten points. Ten things European governments need to do… right now. Fast-track permitting, and treat wind as overriding public interest. Award at least eighty percent of wind auction bids… no more artificial scarcity. Repower aging wind farms and triple their output with fewer turbines. Multiply EU grid funding by five. Zero VAT on heat pumps and electric vehicles. And permanently cut taxes on electricity… because homegrown power should be the cheapest power. The framing was simple. From crisis… to confidence… in a decade. But while the speeches were polite… the panels were not. On Thursday afternoon, Vestas chief executive Henrik Andersen took the microphone, and he did not mince words. Andersen called it mission impossible. He told politicians to stop submitting wish lists for new auctions. He pointed at Denmark’s recent failed offshore auction… an auction that no developer would even bid on. And he pointed at countries trying to build a three-dimensional CSRD into the next tender. Then he delivered the line that quieted the room. If we don’t get this under control… we’ll be sitting here in five years… begging to keep the lights on. Now… while the warnings were echoing through Madrid… something quieter was happening on a balance sheet in Munich. Siemens Energy released preliminary second-quarter results on Wednesday, and then raised their full-year outlook. Group orders for the quarter came in at seventeen point seven billion euros… up almost thirty percent year on year. Net income for the full year is now expected to be around four billion euros, with Grid Technologies orders alone up forty-one percent. And the wind unit… Siemens Gamesa… their losses narrowed to forty-four million euros. A year ago, that number was two hundred forty-nine million. Still in the red. Still operating at a margin of negative one point seven percent. But the trend is clear. The Spanish wind unit is closing in on break-even. After years of crisis… after billions of euros in impairments… Siemens Gamesa is healing. Now back to Madrid. Because last Thursday, WindEurope published a different kind of paper. Not about money. Not about megawatts. About sabotage. Across Europe’s seas, energy infrastructure has become a target. Cables, substations, offshore platforms… spread across thousands of square kilometers of open ocean… difficult to protect. WindEurope Chief Executive Tinne Van Der Straeten said it plainly. The physical security of Europe’s wind turbines must be treated as an integral part of energy security… not as an afterthought. The policy paper calls for civilian protection, not military. Risk-based and proportionate, with clear cost allocation between government and industry. Wind farms now generate twenty percent of Europe’s electricity, and the North Sea countries have pledged three hundred gigawatts of offshore wind by twenty fifty. That is a lot of critical infrastructure… sitting in the open ocean. But here is where Madrid got uncomfortable. Vestas’ senior vice president stood on a panel Wednesday afternoon and offered a reality check. The EU has set a goal of twenty-two gigawatts of new wind installation every year through twenty thirty. What is the reality? The EU installed fifteen gigawatts in twenty twenty-five. Sixteen the year before. There is a gap… between political will, goals, and promises… and the reality we see in the market. The Madrid Call to Action wants to close that gap. The paper exists. The politicians have been told. Now… we wait. And while the speeches were happening in Madrid… a small Danish company was quietly opening doors in Asia. CNC Onsite… a wind sector subsupplier… signed two deals this month. One with Dutch firm WE4CE for Thai customer Cewa Plus, a deal that opens twelve Asian countries. The technology? A specialized machine that drills out the steel bushings holding a wind turbine blade to the hub, so they can be replaced without scrapping the blade. Repair on site. Save the blade. Extend its life. The second deal… a CNC milling machine sold into Japan for offshore monopile and foundation work. CEO Soren Kellenberger says the combined opportunity could deliver up to fifty million Danish kroner in revenue… roughly six point seven million euros. Not big numbers. Not yet. But while everyone in Madrid was talking about politicians… CNC Onsite was signing contracts in Bangkok and Tokyo. The number of wind turbines reaching the age where their blades need replacing… Kellenberger calls it… huge. So let us step back. In Madrid, fifteen thousand people gathered. A ten-point plan was published. A CEO warned of mission impossible. A trade association said the offshore turbines need physical protection from sabotage. In Munich, a balance sheet showed the wind business is healing… slowly, quietly, quarter by quarter. And in Bangkok, a Danish technician was teaching a Thai partner how to drill out a steel bushing. Six stories. One week. The wind industry showed up… asked for what it needed… and put the numbers on the table. The financial proof is starting to come. The political follow-through… we wait. And that is the state of the wind industry for the 27th of April… 2026. Join us for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast tomorrow.
Transcribe →PowerCurve’s Innovative Vortex Generators and Serrations
4w ago00:27:15Tap to summarizeWeather Guard Lightning Tech PowerCurve’s Innovative Vortex Generators and Serrations Nicholas Gaudern from PowerCurve joins to discuss SilentEdge serrations with up to 5 dB noise reduction, Dragon Scale VGs for AEP recovery, and their approach to products that actually perform in the field. Contact PowerCurve on LinkedIn for more information. 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: Nicholas, welcome back to the show. Nicholas Gaudern: Thanks, Allen. Always a pleasure. Allen Hall: Well, there’s a lot of new products coming outta PowerCurve. And PowerCurve is the aerodynamic leader in add-ons and making your turbines perform at higher efficiency with less loss. Uh, so basically taking that standard OEM blade and making it work the way it was intended to work. Nicholas Gaudern: Yes. We Allen Hall: like to Nicholas Gaudern: think so. Yeah. Allen Hall: And there’s a, there’s a lot of new technology that you’ve been working on in the lab that you haven’t been able to explore to the, introduce to the world, so to speak. Yeah. And we’ve seen some of it from the inside of, you know, you’re working behind the scenes or working really hard to get this done, but now that technology has been released to the world, and we’re gonna introduce it today, some new trailing edge. [00:01:00] Components. Yeah. That really, really reduce the noise. But they, they look a little bit odd. Yes. There’s a lot of ADON dams going on with Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. Allen Hall: With these. So what, what do you call these new trailing edge parts? Nicholas Gaudern: So, so what you have in your hand here? This is the Silence edge, uh, serration. So this is our new trailing Edge Serration products. Now, most people, when they think of training restorations, they are thinking of triangles. Allen Hall: Exactly. Nicholas Gaudern: These Dino tails. Dino Tails, that’s the Siemens, Siemens name for them. Pretty, pretty standard. You see ’em on a lot of turbines now. Sure. And they work, you know, they do do a job. They do a job. They reduce noise. But like with lots of things in, in aerodynamics, there’s lots of different ways that you can solve a problem and some are better than others. So we’ve worked for a long, long time in the wind tunnel, uh, in the CFD simulations, and we’ve come up with this pretty unique shape. We think, Allen Hall: well, the, the, the shape is unique and if you, if you look at it, there’s actually different heights to the, the triangle, so to speak. To mix the air from the pressure and the [00:02:00] suction side to reduce the, the level of noise coming off the blade Nicholas Gaudern: e Exactly. So we have, uh, we have an asymmetry to the part. We have these different tooth lengths. We have, uh, a lot of changes in thickness going on across the part. So it may be a little bit difficult to see on the camera, but these are quite sculpted 3D components. They’re not, they’re not flat stock white triangles. No, no. There’s a lot of thickness detail going on here. We’ve paid a lot of attention to the edges. We’ve paid a lot of attention to these gaps between the teeth as well. So all of this is about trying to figure out what is the best way to reduce noise. And something that not a lot of people will, will admit, but it’s true, is that as an industry we don’t really understand the fundamentals of how serrations work. Allen Hall: It’s a complicated Nicholas Gaudern: problem. It’s a really complicated thing. Problem, yeah. Yes. So trying to simulate it in CFD is an absolute nightmare. The, the mesh sizes required, the physics models required are really, really difficult. So what we found is that you’re probably better off spending [00:03:00] most of your time and money in the wind tunnel. Yes. So, so we go to DTU, they have this wonderful, uh, air acoustic wind tunnel, the pool of core tunnel. It’s one the best tunnels in the industry for doing this kind of work. It Allen Hall: is Nicholas Gaudern: because you can measure acoustics and aerodynamics at the same time. So this allows us to do a lot of very cost effective iteration for this kind of design work. So we know what’s important. You know, we’ve, we’ve studied all the different parameters of serrations lengths, aspect ratios, angles, thicknesses, all this kind of stuff. And it’s about bringing them together into a, into a coherent product. So this is, this is a result of a lot of design of experiments, a lot of iteration, and combining wind tunnel and CFD to kind of get the best of both of those tools. So, Allen Hall: so what’s the. Noise reduction compared to those standard triangular trailing aerations. Yeah. Nicholas Gaudern: So there’s lots of different ways of, of thinking about noise reduction, but I think probably the most useful is the O-A-S-P-L. So this is the overall sound pressure level. Right. Is kind of what [00:04:00]typically you’ll be measuring in an IEC test. Allen Hall: Right. Nicholas Gaudern: And that’s measured in decibels, but a way to decibels because it’s important that we’re waiting to what the human ear can actually hear. Right. Perceive. Exactly. So that’s the numbers we report. For the field test we’ve recently completed with Silent Edge, we’re seeing up to five decibels of O-A-S-P-L noise reduction. Allen Hall: Okay. So what’s that mean in terms of what I hear on the ground? Nicholas Gaudern: So that is an absolutely huge reduction. It’s multiple times of reduction because you know, decibels on a log scale, Allen Hall: right? Nicholas Gaudern: So five DB is is enormous. It’s Allen Hall: a lot. Yeah. Nicholas Gaudern: And what’s really interesting is that if you have a turbine that’s running in a noise mode, just one decibel reduction. Of power, sound, sound, power level might be three or 4% P loss. I mean, that, that’s, that’s huge. Think about that loss. So if you need to reduce noise by five decibels to get within a regulation, imagine how much a EP you have to throw away by basically turning down the [00:05:00] turbine to do that. Allen Hall: That’s right. Nicholas Gaudern: So that’s really what the, the business case for these kind of products is. It means you can escape noise modes because as soon as you use a noise mode. You are throwing away energy. Allen Hall: You’re throwing well you’re throwing away profits. Nicholas Gaudern: Exactly. ...
Transcribe →Vineyard Wind Sues GE, Ørsted Overhauls Its Board
4w ago00:37:07Tap to summarizeWeather Guard Lightning Tech Vineyard Wind Sues GE, Ørsted Overhauls Its Board Vineyard Wind sues GE Renewables to block a walkout over $300M in withheld payments and defective blades. Plus Ørsted posts a $262M quarterly loss and shakes up its board. 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! Uptime316 Matthew Stead: [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: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host Allen Hall, and I’m here with Matthew Stead and Rosemary Barnes who are in Australia. Before we get too far into this episode, I would like to mention that the UK US relationship has been very tense recently, as you have seen in the, in the news articles and on television. But there was one good news piece that just happened, which is the band Oasis just got inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. So that is trying to mend those relationships, bring the UK and US back together. In at least a musical sense. So I know Rosemary was watching that closely as the votes were counted. But, [00:01:00] uh, everybody in the UK is super thrilled about it as they should be. And all us Oasis fans can’t wait for the induction ceremony. In fact, we’re planning to go to Cleveland. They’ll go watch it if we can. We shall see now onto more important information this week. Vineyard, wind and GE are not getting along. And if you have been paying attention for the last two years, you would’ve noticed that there’s been a couple of tense moments. Well, uh, that wind project is a little bit up in the air because vineyard wind has filed suit against GE renewables to stop the turbine maker from walking away after GE sent a termination notice. Over a $300 million ish, uh, disagreement in unpaid bills. At the center of this dispute are defective blades, of course, that, uh, broke off in 2024 and caused a number of problems, uh, for GE and vineyard Wind is particularly a delay in the [00:02:00] project and ge having to fix pull blades off of turbines that were already installed and I think they ended up sending those back to France. Reading the lawsuit, it seems like GE did not repair those blades. They replaced those blades because, uh, they may not have been able to repair them or maybe is the amount of time it’s gonna take to repair them. You can repair almost anything made out of. Composite. Uh, but this is a big problem because, uh, if GE does walk away and they’re talking about walking away from this project at the end of April, vineyard, wind believes that the turbines are not ready to be operated, and they don’t have a way to operate those turbines. They don’t have the knowledge or the people because the people belong to GE that need to make some of these turbines operate. Even there’s even some question about if all the turbines are operating at the required [00:03:00]handover requirements. This is unique because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a wind turbine manufacturer leave before a wind site is finished. It must have happened before, but. It does put both sides in quite a pinch. Right. Rosemary Barnes: Can I just jump, jump back to, to something that you said, um, that you can repair almost anything when it comes to composites? I would say that that doesn’t necessarily apply if your design was insufficient in the first place. And I mean the design for manufacturing in this case, I think that the, like computer model design worked fine, but obviously it was not as easy to manufacture or as possible to manufacture. With the correct quality as what they expected. It can’t have been so simple to just, just repair. That’s, um, that’s what I want to say. Like it, it’s obvious to me that if it was possible to repair, that would’ve been much easier than what they’ve ended up with, which I think is pretty foreseeable. Or most [00:04:00] engineers would probably have foreseen that if you, you know, put blades out there that, um, don’t meet your. Standard, um, quality control acceptance criteria that, you know, the consequence of that would be that it would be more likely to fail. So yeah, I think you can repair nearly anything on a standard blade that is possible to make correctly. But if you’ve got big quality problems, then it’s not, it’s, it’s not easy and it’s possibly not possible to, you know, just get, um, just get onto that in repair. Matthew Stead: I, I think you’re both right. Because it all comes down to economics. So I think Alan’s statement, you know, things can be repaired. It just comes back to economics, doesn’t it? Rosemary Barnes: U usually, yes. And like for your average, like if you’ve got a wind farm and you’ve got a blade with a big, a big repair, or you know, like a big defect right on the main laminate, that’s gonna require, you know, like a huge repair, taking the blade down and keeping it down for, you know, like three months while you rebuild like 20 meters [00:05:00] of laminate. Yes, that would be technically possible, but you wouldn’t because it would be so expensive. So us usually, like in 99% of cases, that would be it. That it’s not actually impossible to repair. It’s just very hard. But, you know, in these really huge blades and, you know, um, bearing in mind that I don’t, I don’t know the specific quality problems that they face, but, you know, just from my knowledge of composites, you can say what the challenging areas would be, but you know, a really big blade is gonna have a really thick laminate and, um, composites don’t like to have really thick laminates. When they cure, it’s usually an, an exothermic reaction, puts off heat, you know, like the temperature is changing and um, it works fine for thin laminates, but when it’s really thick you can get hot spots and cold spots and maybe it’s hard to get the resin to go all the way through evenly. But you know, imagine if you’ve got a really thick laminate and there’s a chunk of it that just didn’t get any resin in it. How are you gonna repair that? Like, I wouldn’t say impossible. I’m sure if the fate of the human race depended on it, then you would, you would make it work. But it’s [00:06:00] certainly very close to impossible. Matthew Stead: Economically, it does not make sense. Rosemary Barnes: You would probably have to make a few inventions. Along the way to be able to make it work as well. I think, Allen Hall: I think I should read part of, and I don’t like reading these lawsuits, but this is informative in a sense that it provides some relative background as to what Vineyard Wind is thinking in some of the contract details that are involved here. So in June 4th, 2021, this is directly from the lawsuit, uh, vineyard Wind entered into A TSA with GE renewables in which. GE Renewables agreed to design, manufacture supply, install commission, and test the wind turbine generators for the vineyard wind project at a contract price of more than $1.3 billion. There you go. On the same day as an integral part of the commercial agreement, the parties entered into an SMA, uh, by which GE renewables agreed to maintain and service that wind turbine [00:07:00]generators for the first five years. Of operations of the project and guarantee that all wind turbine generators will operate at a 97% of production availability. Uh, this guarantee is central, is a central component of the commercial viability of the Vineyard Wind Project. So I would say so, right. Uh, at present, all of the wind turbine generators on the project have been installed. However, the wind turbine generators are not yet fully operational and are. Able to reduce power at o...
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