Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Conference Recap, Suzlon Targets Europe

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.

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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 whe...