Weather Guard Lightning Tech

US Wind Installs Fall 17%, China’s Undersea Data Centers

American Clean Power’s Q1 report shows the weakest quarter since 2023, China plugs an undersea data center into offshore wind, and thermal imaging spots hidden blade damage.

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Allen Hall: 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

Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall. I’m here with Rosemary Barnes, Matthew Stead, and Yolanda Padron. And three out of the four of us, everyone except Rosie, went to Houston this past week. Matthew, you were on the floor. Yolanda, you were on the floor this week. What did you think?

Matthew Stead: I think there was a few sort of common themes that I picked up. One, the obvious one which keeps coming up every time is insurance and lightning, and insurance, and all those sort of things. probably the other point that I observed was really strong supply chain. they had everyone, all the people, e- even people, building boxes.

And [00:01:00] so they had boxes, transportation, cranes, really strong, supply chain. also really strong on the batteries, like the CATL batteries, et cetera, et cetera, and solar. I think that seems to be getting a bit more, a bit more, mature and more obvious. obviously blades, lots of people talk to us about blades, maybe ’cause we talk about blades.

But, lightning root issues, blade bolts, those sorts of things, leading edge erosion, robotic repair, et cetera, et cetera. a bit about, add-ons like PowerCurve, were fairly visible, so that was good. but there was a lot of secret meetings in rooms away from the actual event.

so that was one observation. and the other observation was perhaps not so many operators that actually [00:02:00] work on a day-to-day basis. That was my subjective impression

Rosemary Barnes: Speaking of secret meetings in rooms, what were you guys doing around the time of ACP?

Matthew Stead: So the Australian American Chamber of Commerce organized a special event, with two Australian companies to launch a new product, which monitors lightning and then transmits the results using satellite communications.

So it was very open, but invitation only, Rose.

Rosemary Barnes: I, actually, I- the comments, ’cause people are always, after our first go organizing wind O&M event in Australia, I would hear about it from people who didn’t, just chatting at, on, different wind farm sites. They didn’t know I was involved, and they’re like, “Oh, yeah, there’s a secret event now.”

And it’s we did our very best to publicize this, the most that we could. It was not intended to be secret. So yeah, I’m just wondering if, people are gonna think the same if [00:03:00] they, they missed out on, your event. But how was it re- received? Do, we need more events in the US?

Matthew Stead: Yes, absolutely.

And I, I don’t have my pin on here, but, yeah, I do have a pin from the Australian American Chamber of Commerce Texas division,

Rosemary Barnes: How was the event for you, Yolanda?

Yolanda Padron: It was good. It was good. the showroom was the, or the exhibit floor was a little bit em- more empty than I thought it would be, but it was good.

It was good to, to see people, to catch up with everybody. There were some really good chats happening everywhere. and I got … I don’t know about you guys, but I saw a lot more people not from the US that wanted to come in and understand the market better than I did other years, which was nice to see.

Matthew Stead: Was there any new technology on the floor this year? I thought there was a new robot company, but it was actually solar cleaning.

Yolanda Padron: I saw some rebranding from some companies, moving from former ties to [00:04:00] OEMs just m- moving into their own little companies and stuff. in a very interesting, PR move, a, an insurance company was raffling a motorcycle, which was really, funny for us to see.

Allen Hall: Not very safe, is it?

Yolanda Padron: Was

Rosemary Barnes: it at least an l- an electric

Yolanda Padron: motorbike?

Allen Hall: Rosemary, you’re in America.

Yolanda Padron: I don’t know very much about bikes, but it was big and scary for me. did I put my name in there? Yes. We’ll see how that turns out, but

Rosemary Barnes: I’m always trying to win Lego sets at, events and, try to sweet talk the, the stall managers or s- stall minders into “Oh, if somebody wins and they don’t show up, could I have it?”

yeah, so far unsuccessfully. Although I do have, actually you can see I’ve, I’ve got a Le- a L- Lego, in inverted commas, not Lego TM, wind turbine that we’ve just started making. So that’s a, [00:05:00] or a tower for a… that we have created. I have succeeded in getting some sort of Lego for my podcast background.

Allen Hall: Are you gonna buy the Sagrada Família Lego set that just appeared?

Rosemary Barnes: I haven’t. I’m not like the hugest Lego fan. I wouldn’t call myself an, what is it? AF- AFOL, adult fan of Lego? Is that what, There’s a, there’s an acronym. I’m not one. None of us are apparently.

Allen Hall: Oh, I don’t know. I think we’ll buy that one.

Allen, does it take 200 years to make? Probably. I think there’s around 10,000 pieces. that’s what I re- recall. It, there’s a lot of pieces. It’s built in sections. I watched had a little discussion about it. It is really complex, but we may purchase one and put it in the lobby of our shop because that cathedral is protected by strike tape, some of the ornamental features at the top.

So we’ll, probably build one, but it’ll, it will take a year

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Let’s talk about American Clean Power’s, first quarter 2026 market report. So the American Clean ...