The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

Allen, Joel, and Yolanda discuss the North Sea Summit where nine European countries committed to 100 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity and the massive economic impact that comes with it. They also break down the federal court ruling that allows Vineyard Wind to resume construction with a tight 45-day window before installation vessels leave. Plus GE Vernova’s Q4 results show $600 million in wind losses and Wind Power Lab CEO Lene Helstern raises concerns about blade quality across the industry.

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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, Rosemary Barnes, Joel Saxum, and Yolanda Padron. 

Speaker 2: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Alln Hall. I’m here with Yolanda Padron and Joel Saxum.

Rosemary Barnes is snorkeling at the Greek Barrier Reef this week, uh, big news out of Northern Europe. Uh, the Northeast Summit, which happened in Hamburg, uh, about a week or so ago, nine European countries are. Making a huge commitment for offshore wind. So it’s the, the countries involved are Britain, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Iceland, question Mark Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and Norway.

That together they want to develop [00:01:00] 100 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity in shared waters. Uh, that’s enough to power about. 85 million households and the PAC comes as Europe is trying to wean itself from natural gas from where they had it previously and the United States. Uh, so they, they would become electricity in independent.

Uh, and this is one way to do it. Two big happy, uh, companies. At the moment, Vattenfall who develops s lot offshore and Siemens gaa of course, are really excited by the news. If you run the numbers and you, you, you have a hundred gigawatts out in the water and you’re using 20 megawatt turbines, then you’re talking about 5,000 turbines in the water total.

That is a huge offshore wind order, and I, I think this would be great news for. Obviously Vestas and [00:02:00] Siemens cesa. Uh, the, the question is there’s a lot of political maneuvering that is happening. It looks like Belgium, uh, as a country is not super active and offshore and is rethinking it and trying to figure out where they want to go.

But I think the big names will stay, right? France and Germany, all in on offshore. Denmark will be Britain already is. So the question really is at the moment then. Can Siemens get back into the win game and start making money because they have projected themselves to be very profitable coming this year, into this year.

This may be the, the stepping stone, Joel. 

Joel Saxum: Well, I think that, yeah, we talked about last week their 21 megawatt, or 21 and a half megawatt. I believe it is. Big new flagship going to be ready to roll, uh, with the big auctions happening like AR seven in the uk. Uh, and you know, that’s eight gigawatts, 8.4 gigawatts there.

People are gonna be, the, the order book’s gonna start to fill up, like [00:03:00]Siemens is, this is a possibility of a big turnaround. And to put some of these numbers in perspective, um, a hundred gigawatts of offshore wind. So what does that really mean? Right? Um, what it means is if you, if you take the, if you take two of the industrial big industrial powerhouses that are a part of this pact, the UK and Germany combine their total demand.

That’s a hundred gigawatt. That’s what they, that’s what their demand is basically on a, you know, today. Right? So that’s gonna continue to grow, right? As, uh, we electrify a lot of things. And the indus, you know, the, the next, the Industrial Revolution 4.0 or whatever we’re calling it now is happening. Um, that’s, that’s a possibility, right?

So this a hundred gigawatts of offshore wind. Is gonna drive jobs all up all over Europe. Right. This isn’t just a jobs at the port in Rotterdam or wherever it may be. Right? This is, this is manufacturing jobs, supply chain jobs, the same stuff we’ve been talking about on the podcast for a while here with [00:04:00] what the UK is doing with OWGP and the, or e Catapult and all the kind of the monies that the, the, the Crown and, and other, uh, private entities are putting in there.

They’re starting to really, they’re, or this a hundred gigawatts is really gonna look like building out that local supply chain. Jobs, all these different things. ’cause Alan, like you, you mentioned off air. If you look at a hundred gigawatts of offshore wind, that’s $200 billion or was to put it in Euros, 175 billion euros, 170 billion euros, just in turbine orders.

Right. That doesn’t mean, or that doesn’t cover ships, lodging, food, like, you know, everything around the ports like tools, PPE, all of the stuff that’s needed by this industry. I mean, there’s a, there’s a trillion dollar impact here. 

Speaker 2: Oh, it’s close. Yeah. It’s at least 500 billion, I would say. And Yolanda, from the asset management side, have we seen anything of this scale to manage?

It does seem like there’d be a lot of [00:05:00] turbines in the water. A whole bunch of moving pieces, ships, turbines, cables, transformers, substations, going different directions. How, what kind of infrastructure is that going to take? 

Yolanda Padron: You know, a lot of the teams that are there, they’re used to doing this on a grand scale, but globally, right?

And so having this be all at once in the UK is definitely gonna be interesting. It’ll be a good opportunity for everybody to take all of the lessons learned to, to just try to make sure that they don’t come across any issues that they might have seen in the past, in other sites, in other countries. They just bring everything back home to their countries and then just make sure that everything’s fine.

Um, from like development, construction, and, and operations. 

Joel Saxum: I was thinking about that. Just thinking about development, construction, operations, right? So some of [00:06:00] these sites we’re thinking about like how, you know, that, that, that map of offshore wind in, in the Northern Atlantic, right? So if this is gonna go and we’re talking about the countries involved here, Norway, Germany, Denmark, France, Belgium, you’re gonna have it all over.

So into the Baltic Sea. Around Denmark, into the Norwegian waters, uk, Ireland all the way over, and Iceland is there. I don’t think there’s gonna be any development there. I think maybe they’re just there as a, as cheerleaders. Um, offtake, possibly, yes. Some cables running over there. But you’re going to need to repurpose some of the existing infrastructure, or you’re not, not, you’re going to need to, you’re going to get the opportunity to, and this hasn’t happened in offshore wind yet, right?

So. Basically repowering offshore wind, and you’re going to be able to look at, you know, you’re not doing, um, greenfield geotechnical work and greenfield, um, sub c mapping. Like, some of those things are done right, or most of those things are done. So there, I know there’s a lot of, like, there’s a, there’s two and [00:07:00] three and six and seven megawatt turbines all over the North Atlantic, so we’re gonna be able to pop some of those up.

Put some 15 and 20 megawatt machines in place there. I mean, of course you’re not gonna be able to reuse the same mono piles, but when it comes to Yolanda, like you said, the lessons learned, Hey, the vessel plans for this area are done. The how, how, how we change crews out here, the CTVs and now and SOVs into port and that stuff, that those learnings are done.

How do we maintain export cables and inter array cables with the geotechnic here, you’re not in a green field, you’re in a brown field. That, that, that work. A lot of those lessons learned. They’re done, right? You’ve, you’ve stumbled through them, you’ve made those mistakes. You’ve had to learn on the fly and go ahead here.

But when you go to the next phase of Repowering, an offshore wind farm, the the Dev X cost is gonna go way down, in my opinion. Now, someone, someone may fight back on that and say, well, we have to go do some demolition or something of that sort. I’m not sure, but [00:08:00]

Yolanda Padron: yeah. But I think, you know. We like to complain sometimes in the US about how some of the studies just aren’t catered toward us, right?

And so we’ve seen it a lot and it’s a lot of the studies that are made are just made in Europe where, where this is all taking place. So it’s gonna be really, really interesting to see such a massive growth where everything’s being developed and where the studies are localized from where. You have this very niche area and they can, they’ve studied it.

They know exactly what’s going on there. And to your point, they’ve seen a lot of, they’ve minimized the risk, like the environmental risks as much as they could. Right. And so it’s, it’s going to be really, really interesting to have them 

Joel Saxum: ensuring and financing these projects should be way easier 

Speaker 2: when Europe is saying that the industry has pledged to cut costs by 30% between.

20, 25 and 2040. So you would think that the turbine [00:09:00] costs and the installation costs would have to be really cost conscious on the supply chain and, uh, taking lessons learned from the previous generations of offshore wind. I think that makes sense. 30% is still a lot, and I, I think the, the feeling I’m getting from this is, Hey, we’re making a hundred gigawatt commitment to this industry.

You have to work really hard to deliver a efficient product, get the cost down so it’s not costing as much as, you know. Could do if we, if we did it today, and we’re kind of in from an offshore standpoint over in Europe, what a generation are we in, in terms of turbines three? Are we going into four? A lot of lessons learned.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. The, the new Siemens one’s probably generation four. Yeah. I would say generation four in the new, because you went from like the two and three megawatt machines. Like there’s like Vesta three megawatts all over the place, and then you went into the directive [00:10:00] machines. You got into that seven and eight megawatt class, and then you got into the, where we’re at now, the 15, the 12 and 15 megawatt units, the Docker bank style stuff, and then I would say generation four is the, yeah, the Siemens 21 and a half machine.

Um, that’s a good way to look at it. Alan four we’re on the fourth generation of offshore wind and, and so it’s Generation one is about ready to start being cycled. There’s some, and some of these are easier, they’re nearer to shore. We’ll see what, uh, who starts to take those projects on. ’cause that’s gonna be an undertaking too.

Question on the 30%, uh, wind Europe says industry has pledged to cut cost by 30% by 20. Is that. LCOE or is it devex costs or is it operational costs or did they, were they specific on it or they just kinda like cut cutting costs? 

Speaker 2: My recollection when that first came about, which was six months ago, maybe a little longer, it was LCOE, [00:11:00] right?

So they’re, they’re trying to drive down the, uh, dollars per, or euros per megawatt hour output, but that the capital costs, if the governments can help with the capital costs. On the interest rates, just posting bonds and keeping that down, keeping the interest rates low for these projects by funding them somehow or financing them, that will help a tremendous amount.

’cause if. Interest rates remain high. I know Europe is much lower than it is in the United States at the minute, but if they interest rates start to creep up, these projects will not happen. They’re marginal 

Joel Saxum: because you have your central in, in, in Europe, you have your central bank interest rates, but even like the f the, the Indi Individual nation states will subsidize that.

Right? Like if you go to buy a house in Denmark right now, you pay like 1.2%. Interest 

Speaker 2: compared to what, six and a half right now in the states? Yeah, it’s low. 

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Speaker 2: as we all know.

On December 22nd, the federal government issued a stop work order. On all offshore winds that included vineyard wind up off the coast of Massachusetts, that’s a 62 turbine, $4.5 billion wind farm. Uh, that’s being powered by some GE turbines. Uh, the government [00:13:00] has, uh, cited national security concerns, but vineyard went to court and Federal Judge Brian Murphy rolled the, the administration failed to adequately explain or justify the decision to shut it down.

Uh, the judge issued a stay, which it is allowing Vineyard went to immediately resume work on the project now. They’re close to being finished at a vineyard. There are 44 turbines that are up and running right now and creating power and delivering power on shore. There are 17 that are partially installed.

Uh, when the stop order came. The biggest issue at the moment, if they can’t get rolling again, there are 10 towers with Noels on them, what they call hammerheads. That don’t have blades. And, uh, the vineyard wind. Last week as we were recording this, said you really don’t want hammerheads out in the water because they become a risk.

They’re not assembled, completed [00:14:00] items. So lightning strikes and other things could happen, and you really don’t want them to be that way. You want to finish those turbines, so now they have an opportunity to do it. The window’s gonna be short. And Yolanda listening to some GE discussions, they were announcing their Q4 results from last year.

The ships are available till about the end of March, and then the ships are gonna finally go away and go work on another project. So they have about 45 days to get these turbines done. I guess my question is, can they get it done work-wise? And I, I, I guess the, the issue is they gotta get the turbines running and if they do maintenance on it, that’s gonna be okay.

So I’m wondering what they do with blade sets. Do they have a, a set of blades that are, maybe they pass QC but they would like them to be better? Do they install ’em just to get a turbine operational even temporarily to get this project quote unquote completed so they can get paid? 

Yolanda Padron: Yeah. If, if the risk is low, low [00:15:00] enough, it, it should be.

I mean a little bit tight, but what, what else can you do? Right? I mean, the vessel, like you might have a shot of getting the vessel back eventually, or being able to get something in so you can do some of the blade repairs. And the blade repairs of tower would require a different vessel than like bringing in a whole blade, right?

And so just. You have a very limited time scope to be able to do everything. So I don’t know that I would risk just not being able to pull this off altogether and just risk the, you know, the rest of the tower by not having a complete, you know, LPS and everything on there just because not everything’s a hundred percent perfect.

Joel Saxum: There’s a weird mix in technical and commercial risk here, right? Because. Technically, we have these hammerheads out there, right? There’s a million things that can happen with those. Like I, I’ve [00:16:00] personally done RCAs where, um, you have a hammerhead on this was onshore, right? But they, they will get, um, what’s called, uh, Viv, uh, vortex induced vibration.

So when they don’t have the full components out there, wind will go by and they’ll start to shake these things. I’ve seen it where they shook them so much because they’re not designed to be up there like that. They shook them so much that like the bolts started loosening and concrete started cracking in the foundations and like it destroyed the cable systems inside the tower ’cause they sat there and vibrated so violently.

So like that kind of stuff is a possibility if you don’t have the right, you know. Viv protection on and those kind of things, let alone lightning risk and some other things. So you have this technical risk of them sitting out there like that. But you also have the commercial risk, right? Because the, the banks, the financiers, the insurance companies, there’s the construction policies and there’s, there’s, you gotta hit these certain timelines or it’s just like if you’re building a house, right?

You’re building a house, you have to go by the loan that the bank gives you in, you know, in micro [00:17:00] terms to kind of think about that. That’s the same thing that happens with this project, except for this project’s four and a half billion dollars and probably has. It’s 6, 8, 10 banks involved in it. Right? So you have a lot of, there’s a lot of commercial risk.

If you don’t, if you don’t move forward when you have the opportunity to, they won’t, they’ll frown on that. Right? But then you have to balance the technical side. So, so looking at the project as a whole, you’ve got 62 turbines, 44 or fully operational. So that leaves us with 18 that are not. Of those 18, you said Alan?

10 needed blades. 

Speaker 2: 10 need blades, and one still needs to be erected. 

Joel Saxum: Okay, so what’s the other seven? 

Speaker 2: They’re partially installed, so they, they haven’t completed the turbine, so everything’s put together, but they haven’t powered them up yet. 

Joel Saxum: I was told that. Basically with the kit that they have out of vineyard wind, that they can do one turbine a day blades.

Speaker 2: That would be, yeah, that would make sense to me. 

Joel Saxum: But, but you also have to, you have 45 days of vessel time left. You said they’re gonna leave in March, but you also gotta think it’s fricking winter in. The, [00:18:00] in the Atlantic 

Speaker 2: they are using jackass. However, there’s big snow storms and, and low uh, pressure storms that are rolling through just that area.

’cause they, they’ve kind of come to the Midwest and then shoot up the east coast. That’s where you see New York City with a lot of snow. Boston had a lot of snow just recently. They’re supposed to get another storm like that. And then once it hits Boston, it kind of hits the water, which is where vineyard is.

So turbulent water for sure. Super cold this time of year out there, 

Joel Saxum: but wind, you can’t sling blades in, in probably more than what, six meters per second’s? Probably your cutoff. 

Speaker 2: Yeah. This is not the best time of year to be putting blade sets up offshore us. 

Joel Saxum: Technically, if you had blue skies, yeah, this thing can get done and we can move.

But with weather risk added in you, you’ve got, there’s some wild cards there. 

Speaker 2: I It’s gonna be close. 

Joel Saxum: Yeah. If we looked at the, the weather, it looks like even, I think this coming weekend now we’re recording in January here, and [00:19:00] this weekend’s, first week in February coming, there’s supposed to be another storm rolling up through there too.

Speaker 2: It was pretty typical having lived in Massachusetts almost 25 years. It will be stormy until April. So we’re talking about the time span of which GE and Vineyard want to be done. That’s a rough period for snow. And as historically, uh, that timeframe is also when nor’easters happened, where the storms just sit there and cyclone off the shore around vineyard and then dump the snow back on land.

Those storms are really violent and there’s no way they’re gonna be hanging. Anything out in the water, so I think it’s gonna be close. They’re gonna have to hope for good weather. Don’t let blade damage catch you off guard. OGs, ping sensors detect issues before they become expensive, time consuming problems from ice buildup and lightning strikes to pitch misalignment and internal blade cracks.

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In the fourth quarter of 2025, wind revenue fell 24% to $2.37 billion. Uh, driven primarily by offshore wind struggles, vineyard, wind, uh. The company recorded approximately $600 million in win losses for the full year up from earlier expectations of about $400 million. That’s what I remember from last summer.

Uh, the, the culprit was. All vineyard wind, they gotta get this project done. And with this work stoppages, it just keeps dragging it on and on and on. And I know GE has really wanted to wrap that up as [00:21:00] fast as they can. Uh, CEO Scott Straza has said the company delivered strong financial results, which they clearly have because they’re gas turbine business is taking orders out to roughly 2035, and I think the number on the back order was gonna be somewhere in the realm of 150 billion.

Dollars, which is an astronomical number for back orders. And because they had the back orders that far out, they’re raising prices which improves margins, which makes everybody on the stock market happy. You would think, Joel? Except after the, the Q4 results today, GE Renovo stock is really flat, 

Joel Saxum: which is an odd thing, right?

I talk about it all the time. Um, I’m always thinking they’re gonna drop and they go up and they go up and they go up. But today was just kind of like a, I don’t know how to take it. Yeah. And I don’t know if it’s a, a broader sentiment across what the market was doing today because there was some other tech earnings and things of that sort, but it’s always something to watch, right?

So. Uh, there, [00:22:00] there’s some interesting stuff going on on in the GE world, but one thing I want to touch on here, we’re talking like vineyard wind caused them this, these delays right there is a, a, a larger call to understand why there was these delays and because it’s causing. Havoc across the industry.

Right. But even the, like, a lot of like, uh, conservative lawmakers, like there were some senators and stuff coming out saying like, we need more transparency to understand these 90 day halts because of what it’s doing to the industry, right? Because to date there hasn’t been really any explanation and the judges have been just kind of throwing ’em out.

Um, but you can see what it’s done here to ge. Recording $600 million in win losses. I mean, and that is mostly all vineyard wind, right? But there’s a little bit of Dogger bank stuff in there. I would imagine 

Speaker 2: a tiny bit. Really? ’cause Dogger has been a lot less stressful to ge. 

Joel Saxum: But it is, yeah. The, the uncertainty of the market.

And that’s why we kind of said a little bit, I said a little bit ago, like when this thing is done, when Vineyard [00:23:00] Point is like, and when you can put the final nail in the coffin of construction on that, it is gonna be agh sigh of relief over at GEs offices For sure. 

Speaker 2: Our friend Alina, Hal Stern appeared in Energy Watch this week and she’s spent a long time in the wind industry.

She’s been in it 25 years, and, uh, she commented that she’s seeing some troubling things. Uh, she’s also the new CEO of Wind Power Lab over in Denmark, and they’re a consultancy firm on wind turbines and particularly blades. Uh, Lena says that she’s watched some. Really significant manufacturing errors in operational defects and wind turbine blades become more frequent.

And in 2025 alone, Windpower lab analyzed and provided repair recommendations for over 700 blades globally. And I assume, or Blade Whisperer Morton Hamburg was involved in a number of those. Uh, the problem she says is that the market eagerly, uh, [00:24:00] demanded cheap turbines, which is true. And, uh. Everything had to be done faster and with lower costs, and you end up with a product that reflects that.

Uh, we’ve had Lena on a podcast a couple of times, super smart. Uh, she’s great to talk to, get offline and understand what’s happening behind the scenes. And, uh, in some of these conference rooms between asset managers, operators, and OEMs, those are sometimes tough. Discussions, but I, I think Lena’s pointing out something that I, the industry has been trying to deal with and she’s raising it up sort of to a higher level because she has that weight to do that.

We have some issues with blades that we need to figure out pretty quickly. And Yolanda, you ran, uh, a large, uh, operator in the United States. We’re dealing with more than a thousand turbines. How locked in is Lena, uh, to [00:25:00]some of these issues? And are they purely driven just by the push to lower the cost of the blades or was it more of a speed issue that they making a longer blades in the same amount of time?

Where’s that balance and, and what are we going to do about it going forward as we continue to make larger turbines? 

Yolanda Padron: She’s great with, with her point, and I think it’s. A little bit about the, or equally about the OEMs maybe not being aware of these issues as much, or not having the, the bandwidth to take care of these issues with limited staff and just a lot of the people who are charge of developing and constructing these projects at a very short amount of time, or at least with having to wear so many hats that they.

Don’t necessarily have the, the bandwidth to do a deep dive on what the potential risks could be in [00:26:00] operations. And so I think the way I’ve, I’ve seen it, I’ve experienced it. It’s almost like everybody’s running a marathon. Their shoe laces untied, so they trip and then they just kind of keep on running ’cause you’re behind, ’cause you tripped.

And so it just keeps on, it’s, it’s, it’s a vicious cycle. Um. But, uh, we’ve also seen just, just in our time together and everything, that there’s a lot of people that are noticing this and that are taking the time to just pause, you know, tie those releases and just talk to each other a little bit more of, Hey, I’m the one engineer doing this for so many turbines.

You have these turbines too. Are you seeing this issue? Yes. No. Are, how are you tackling it? How have you tackled it in the past? How can we work together to, to use the data we have? Right? That, I mean, if you’re not going to get a really great answer from your OEMs or if you’re not going to get a lot of [00:27:00] easily available answers just from the dataset that you’re seeing from your turbine, it’s really easy now to to reach out to other people within the industry and to be able to talk it over, which I think is something that Lena.

Is definitely encouraging here. 

Joel Saxum: Yeah. Yeah. It’s, I mean, she, she makes a statement about owners needing to be technically mature, ensure you have inspections, get your TSAs right. So these are, again, it’s lessons learned. It’s sharing knowledge within the market because at the end of the day, this is a new, not a new reality.

This is the reality we’re living in. Right. It’s not new. Um, but, but we’re getting better at it. I think that’s the, the important thing here, right? From a, from a. If we take a, the collective group of operators in the world and say like, you know, where were you two, three years ago and where are you today? I think we’re in a much better place, and that’s from knowledge sharing and, and understanding these issues.

And, you know, we’re, we’re at the behest of, uh, good, fast, cheap pick. [00:28:00] Right. And so that’s got us where we are today. But now we’re, we’re starting to get best practices, lessons learned, fix things for the next go around. And you’re seeing efforts at the OEM level as well to, uh, and some, some of these consultants coming out, um, to, to try to fix some of these manufacturing issues.

You know, Alan, you and I have talked with DFS composites with Gulf Wind Technology. Like there, there’s things here that we could possibly fix. You’re starting to see operators do. Internal inspections to the blades on the ground before they fly them. That’s huge. Right? That’s been the Wind Power lab has been talking about that since 2021.

Right. But the message is finally getting out to the industry of this is what you should be doing as a best practice to, you know, de-risk. ’cause that’s the whole thing. You de-risk, de-risk, de-risk. Uh, so I think. Lena’s spot on, right? We know that this, these things are happening. We’re working with the OEMs to do them, but it takes them a technically mature operator.

And if you’re, if you don’t have the staff to be technically mature, go grab a consultant, [00:29:00] go grab someone that is to help you out. I think that’s a, that’s an important, uh, thing to take from this as well. Those people are out there, those groups are out there, so go and go in, enlist that to make sure you’re de-risking this thing, because at the end of the day, if we’re de-risking turbines.

It’s better for the whole industry. 

Speaker 2: Yeah. You want to grab somebody that has seen a lot of blades, not a sole consultant on a particular turbine mine. You’re talking about at this point in the development of the wind industry, you’re talking about wind power labs, sky specs kind of companies that have seen thousands of turbines and have a broad reach where they’ve done things globally, just not in Scandinavia or the US or Australia or somewhere else.

They’ve, they’ve seen problems worldwide. Those people exist, and I, I don’t think we as an industry use them as much as we could, but it would get to the solutions faster because having seen so many global [00:30:00] issues with the St turbine, the solution set does vary depending on where you are. But it’s been proven out already.

So even though you as an asset manager. May have never heard of this technique to make your performance better. You make your blades last longer. It’s probably been done at this point, unless it’s a brand new turbine. So a lot of the two x machines and three X machines, and now we’re talking about six X machines.

There’s answers out there, but you’re gonna have to reach out to somebody who has a global reach. We’ve grown too big to do it small anymore, 

Yolanda Padron: which really should be a relief to. All of the asset managers and operations people and everything out there, right? Like. You don’t have to use your turbines as Guinea pigs anymore.

You don’t have to struggle with this. 

Speaker 2: That wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, and 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. [00:31:00] 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, Yolanda and Joel. I am Alan Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

Allen covers four US offshore wind projects winning injunctions to resume construction, including major updates from Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia project. Plus Ming Yang’s proposed UK manufacturing facility faces security review delays, Seaway 7 lands the Gennaker contract in Germany, and Taiwan’s Fengmiao project hits a milestone.

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!

Happy Monday everyone!

Four offshore wind projects have secured preliminary injunctions blocking the Trump administration’s stop-work order.

Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind.

Avangrid’s Vineyard Wind 1.

Equinor’s Empire Wind.

And Ørsted’s Revolution Wind.

All four argued they were at critical stages of construction.

The courts agreed.

Work has resumed.

A fifth project… Ørsted’s Sunrise Wind… has a hearing scheduled for today.

Now… within days of getting back to work… milestones are being reached.

Dominion Energy reported seventy-one percent completion on Coastal Virginia.

The first turbine… installed in January.

The Charybdis… America’s only U.S.-flagged wind turbine installation vessel… is finally at work. Fifty-four towers, thirty nacelles, and twenty-six blade sets now staged at Portsmouth Marine Terminal. The third offshore substation has arrived.

But here is where the numbers tell the real story.

The month-long delay fighting the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management?

Two hundred twenty-eight million dollars.

New tariffs?

Another five hundred eighty million.

The project budget now stands at eleven-point-five billion dollars.

Nine-point-three billion already invested by end of 2025.

Dominion and partner Stonepeak are sharing the cost.

Dominion insists offshore wind remains the fastest and most economical way to deliver nearly three gigawatts to Virginia’s grid.

A grid that powers military installations… naval shipbuilding… and America’s growing AI and cyber capabilities.

First power expected this quarter.

Full completion… now pushed to early 2027.

Up in New England… Vineyard Wind 1 also resumed work.

The sixty-second and final turbine tower shipped from New Bedford this week.

Ten blade sets remain at the staging site.

The installation vessel is scheduled to depart by end of March.

The turbines are going up.

But eight hundred eight million dollars in delays and tariffs…

That is a price the entire industry is watching.

═══ Scotland Waits on Ming Yang Decision ═══

In Scotland… a decision that could reshape European supply chains… hangs in the balance.

Chinese manufacturer Ming Yang wants to build the UK’s largest wind turbine manufacturing facility.

The site… Ardersier… near Inverness. The investment… one-point-five billion pounds.

The jobs… fifteen hundred.

Trade Minister Chris Bryant says the government must weigh security.

Critical national infrastructure must be safe and secure.

Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney is losing patience.

He told reporters this week the decision has taken too long.

He called it pivotal to Scotland’s renewable energy potential…

and a crucial component of the nation’s just transition.

Meanwhile… Prime Minister Keir Starmer met with President Xi Jinping in Beijing this week.

He spoke of building a more sophisticated relationship between the two nations.

Whisky tariffs… halved to five percent.

Wind turbine factories?

Still under review.

Bryant says they want a steady, eyes-wide-open relationship with China.

Drive up trade where possible.

Challenge where necessary.

But no flip-flopping.

For now… Scotland waits.

And so does the UK supply chain.

═══ Seaway 7 Lands Gennaker Contract ═══

In the German Baltic Sea… a major contract award.

Seaway 7, part of the Subsea 7 Group, will transport and install sixty-three monopiles and transition pieces for the Gennaker offshore wind farm.

The contract value… one hundred fifty to three hundred million dollars.

Subsea 7 calls it substantial.

The client is Skyborn Renewables… a portfolio company of BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners.

Nine hundred seventy-six megawatts of capacity.

Sixty-three Siemens Gamesa turbines.

Four terawatt-hours of annual generation.

Enough to power roughly one million German homes.

Seaway 7’s work begins next year.

═══ Taiwan’s Fengmiao Hits Milestone ═══

In Taiwan… Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners completed the first batch of jacket foundations for the Fengmiao offshore wind farm.

Five hundred megawatts.

On schedule for late 2027 completion.

Offshore installation begins later this year.

The jackets were built by Century Wind Power… a local Taiwanese supplier.

CIP called it a sign of strong execution capabilities and proof they can deliver large-scale, complex energy projects.

But they are not stopping there.

Fengmiao 2… six hundred megawatts… is already in development.

Taiwan is aiming for a major boost in large-scale renewable energy by 2030.

And that is the state of the wind industry for February 2, 2026

Join us tomorrow for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

Allen visits the Faskally Safety Leadership Centre with Mark Patterson, Director of Safety, Health, and Environment at SSE, and Dermot Kerrigan, Director and Co-Founder of Active Training Team. They discuss how SSE has put over 9,000 employees and 2,000 contract partners through ATT’s innovative training program, which uses actors and realistic scenarios to create lasting behavioral change across the entire workforce chain, from executives to technicians. Reach out to SSE and ATT to learn more!

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: Mark and Turnt. Welcome to the show. Thank you. 

Mark Patterson: Thank you. 

Allen Hall: We’re in Scotland, present Scotland and per Scotland, which is a place most people probably haven’t ventured to in the United States, but it is quite lovely, although chilly and rainy. It’s Scotland. We’re in December. Uh, and we’re here to take a look at the SSE Training Center.

And the remarkable things that active training team is doing here, because we had seen this in Boston in a smaller format, uh, about a year ago almost now. 

Dermot Kerrigan: Just Yeah, 

Allen Hall: yeah. Six months 

Dermot Kerrigan: ago. 

Allen Hall: Yeah. Yeah. It hasn’t been that long ago. Uh, but IC was on me to say, you gotta come over. You gotta come over. You gotta see the, the whole, uh, environment where we put you into the police room and some of the things we wanna talk about, uh, because it, [00:01:00] it does play different.

And you’re right, it does play different. It is very impactful. And it, and maybe we should start off first of Mark, you’re the head of basically health and safety and environment for SSE here in Perth. This is a remarkable facility. It is unlike anything I have seen in the States by far. And SSE has made the commitment to do this sort of training for.

Everybody in your employment and outside of your employment, even contractors. 

Mark Patterson: We have been looking at some quite basic things in safety as everybody does. And there’s a fundamental thing we want to do is get everybody home safe. And uh, it’s easier said than done because you’ve gotta get it right for every single task, every single day.

And that’s a massive challenge. And we have like 15,000. 15,000 people in SSE, we probably work with about 50,000 contract [00:02:00] partners and we’re heavily dependent, uh, on get our contract partners to get our activities done. And they’re crucial. 

Speaker: Mm-hmm. 

Mark Patterson: And in that it’s one community and we need to make sure everybody there gets home safe.

And that’s what drove us to think about adding more rules isn’t gonna do it. Um, you need to give people that sense of a feeling, uh, when a really serious sense of cars and then equip them with tools to, to deal with it. So. We’ve all probably seen training that gives that sense of doom and dread when something goes badly wrong, but actually that needs to be.

Coupled with something which is quite powerful, is what are the tools that help people have the conversations that gets everybody home safe. So kind of trying to do two things. 

Allen Hall: Well, SSC is involved in a number of large projects. You have three offshore wind farms, about a more than a thousand turbines right now.

Wind turbines onshore, offshore, and those offshore projects are not easy. There’s a lot of complexity to them. 

Mark Patterson: Absolutely. So look, I I think [00:03:00] that’s, that’s something that. You’ve gotta partner with the right people. If you wanna be successful, you need to make it easy for people to do the right thing. Yeah, as best you possibly can.

You need to partner with the right people, and you need to get people that you need to have a sense that you need to keep checking that as you’re growing your business. The chinks in your armor don’t grow too. But fundamentally there’s something else, which is a sense of community. When people come together to, to do a task, there is a sense of community and people work, put a lot of discretionary effort into to get, uh, big projects done.

And in that, um, it’s a sense of community and you wanna make sure everybody there gets home safe to their friends and family. ’cause if we’re all being honest about it, you know, SSE is a brilliant company. What we do is absolutely worth doing. I love SC. But I love my family a fair amount more. And if you bought into that, you probably bought into the strategy that we’re trying to adopt in terms of safety.

Uh, it’s really simple messaging. Um, 

Allen Hall: yeah. That, that is very clear. Yeah. And it should be [00:04:00]well communicated outside of SSEI hope because it is a tremendous, uh, value to SSE to do that. And I’m sure the employees appreciate it because you have a culture of safety. What. Trigger that. How long ago was that trigger?

Is this, this is not something you thought up yesterday for sure. 

Mark Patterson: No, look, this, the, the, what we’ve done in the immersive training center, um, really reinforces a lot of things that we’ve had in place for a while, and it, it takes it to the, the next level. So we’ve been working probably more than 10 years, but, uh, certainly the.

Seven years we’ve been talking very much about our safety family, that’s the community and SSE with our contract partners and what we need to do. And part of that is really clear language about getting people home safe. Uh, a sense that you’ve, everybody in it that works with us has a safety license. And that license is, if it’s not safe, we don’t do it.

It’s not a rural based thing. It’s how we roll. It’s part of the culture. We’d, we, uh, have a culture where, and certainly trying to instill for everybody a culture. Where [00:05:00] they’ve got that license. If, if they think something’s not right, we’ll stop the job and get it right. And even if they’re wrong, we’ll still listen to them because ultimately we need to work our way through, right?

So we’ve been, we’ve thought hard about the language we wanted to use to reinforce that. So the importance of plan, scan and adapt. So planning our work well, thinking through what we need to do. Not just stopping there though, keeping scanning for what could go wrong. That sense that you can’t remember everything.

So you need to have immediate corrective actions and that immediate sort of see it, sort of report it. If you see something that isn’t right, do something about it. And that sense of community caring for the community that you work with. And those are the essence of our, our language on safety and the immersive training.

Uh, is not trying to shove that language down everybody’s throats again, particularly our contract partners, but it’s, it’s helping people see some really clear things. One is if a [00:06:00] really serious incident occurs at what, what it feels like here. And I’ve spent a lot of time in various industries and people are different when they’ve been on a site or involved when there’s been a really serious incident and you need to do something to.

Get that sense of a feeling of what it feels like and actually make people feel slightly uncomfortable in the process. ’cause that’s part of it, 

Allen Hall: right? Yes. 

Mark Patterson: Because you know, 

Allen Hall: you remember that. 

Mark Patterson: You remember that. Yeah. We’ve had, you know, we’ve had people say, well, I felt very uncomfortable in that bit of the training.

It was okay. But was, I felt very uncomfortable. And you know, we’ve talked about that a lot. 

Allen Hall: Yeah. 

Mark Patterson: We know you kinda should because if there’s something wrong with you, if you don’t feel uncomfortable about that. But what’s super powerful on the guys in at TT do brilliantly. Is have facilitators that allow you to have that conversation and understand what do you need to do differently?

How do you influence somebody who’s more senior? How do you, how do you bring people with you so that they’re gonna [00:07:00] do what you want ’em to do after you’ve left the building? And. Just pointing the finger at people and shouting at them. Never does that. Right? Uh, rarely does that. You’ve gotta get that sense of how do you get people to have a common belief?

And, 

Allen Hall: and I think that’s important in the way that SSE addresses that, is that you’re not just addressing technicians, it’s the whole chain. It’s everybody is involved in this action. And you can break the link anywhere in there. I wanna get through the description of why that. Process went through ATTs head to go.

We need to broaden the scope a little bit. We need to think about the full chain from the lowest entry worker just getting started to the career senior executive. Why chain them all together? Why put them in the same room together? Yeah. Why do you do that? 

Dermot Kerrigan: Well, behavioral safety or behavioral base safety kind of got a bad rep because it was all about.

If we could just [00:08:00] make those guys at the front line behave themselves, 

Allen Hall: then everything’s fine, 

Dermot Kerrigan: then everything’s fine. 

Allen Hall: Yes. 

Dermot Kerrigan: But actually that’s kind of a, the wrong way of thinking. It didn’t work. I, I think, 

Allen Hall: yeah, it didn’t work. 

Dermot Kerrigan: What the mess, the central message we’re trying to get across is that actually operational safety is not just the business of operational people.

It’s everybody’s business. 

Allen Hall: Right. 

Dermot Kerrigan: You know? Um, and. Yeah, everybody has a role to p play in that, you know? Right. So site based teams, back office support functions, everybody has a role to play. And, you know, there’s a strand in, in this scenario where, uh, an incident takes place because people haven’t been issued with the right piece of equipment.

Which is a lifting cage. 

Allen Hall: Yes. 

Dermot Kerrigan: And there’s a whole story about that, which goes through a procurement decision made somewhere where somebody hit a computer and a computer said no because they’d asked for too many lifting cages when they, somebody could have said, you’ve asked for five lifting cages, it’s takes you over the procurement cap.

Would four do it? [00:09:00] Yes, that would be fine. That would be fine. Yeah. As it is, they come to a crucial piece of operation. This incr this, you know, this crucial piece of kit simply isn’t there. So in order to hit the deadline and try and make people happy, two ordinary guys, two technicians, put two and two together, make five, and, and one of them gets killed, you know?

Yeah. So it’s, we’re, we’re trying to show that, that this isn’t just operational people. It’s everybody’s business. 

Mark Patterson: Well, that’s why we worked with you in this, because, um, we saw. Why you got it in terms of that chain? Um, so in, in the scenario, it’s very clear there’s a senior exec talking to the client and actually as SSE.

We’re sometimes that client, we’ve got big principal contractors that are doing our big construction activities. We’ve got a lot in renewables and onshore and offshore wind obviously, but, and the transmission business and in thermal, so, uh, and distribution. So I’ll list all our businesses and including customer’s business, but we’ve got some big project activities where we’re the client sometime we’re the principal contractor [00:10:00] ourselves.

And we need to recognize that in each chain, each link in that chain, there’s a risk that we say the wrong thing, put the wrong pressure on. And I think what’s really helpful is we have in the center that sort of philosophy here that we get everybody in together mixed up. Probably at least half of our board have done this.

Our executive team have all done this. Um, people are committed to it at that level, and they’re here like everybody else sitting, waiting for this thing to start. Not being quite sure what they’re gonna go through in the day. Um, and it’s actually really important you’ve got a chief exec sitting with somebody who’s, um, a scaffolder.

That’s really important. ’cause the scaffolder is probably the more likely person to get hurt rather than chief exec. So actually everybody seeing what it’s like and the pressures that are under at each level is really important. 

Allen Hall: SSC is such a good example for the industry. I watched you from outside in America for a long time and you just watch the things that happened.

[00:11:00] Here you go. Wow. Okay. SSC is organized. They know what they’re doing, they understand what the project is, they’re going about it. Mm-hmm. Nothing is perfect, but I, I think when we watch from the United States, we see, oh, there’s order to it. There’s a reason they’re doing these things. They’re, they’re measuring what is happening.

And I think that’s one of the things about at t is the results. Have been remarkable, not just here, but in several different sites, because a TT touches a lot of massive infrastructure projects in the uk and the success rate has been tremendous. Remember? You wanna just briefly talk about that? 

Dermot Kerrigan: Yeah. But we, we run a number of centers.

We also run mobile programs, which you got from having seen us in the States. Um, but the first, uh, center that we, we, we opened was, was called. Epic, which stood for Employers Project Induction Center, and that was the Thames Tideway Tunnel Project, which is now more or less finished. It’s completed. And that was a 10 year project, 5 billion pounds.

Allen Hall: Wow. 

Dermot Kerrigan: Um, [00:12:00] and you know, unfortunately the fact is on, on that kind of project, you would normally expect to hurt a number of people, sometimes fatally. That would be the expectation. 

Allen Hall: Right. It’s a complicated 

Dermot Kerrigan: project, statistic underground. So, you know, we, and, and of course Tide, we are very, very. Very pleased that, uh, in that 10 year span, they didn’t even have one, uh, serious life-changing injury, uh, let alone a fatality.

Um, so you know that that’s, and I’m I’m not saying that what ATTs work, uh, what we do is, is, is, is directly responsible for that, but certainly Epic, they would say Tideway was the cornerstone for the safety practices, very good safety practices that they, they put out. Uh, on that project, again, as a cultural piece to do with great facilities, great leadership on the part of the, of the, of the executive teams, et cetera, and stability.

It was the same ex executive team throughout that whole project, which is quite unusual. 

Allen Hall: No. 

Dermot Kerrigan: Yeah. [00:13:00] Um, so yeah, it, it, it seems to work, you know, uh, always in safety that the, the, the, the tricky thing is trying to prove something works because it hasn’t happened. You know? 

Allen Hall: Right, right. Uh, prove the negative.

Dermot Kerrigan: Yeah. Um, 

Allen Hall: but in safety, that’s what you want to have happen. You, you do know, not want an outcome. 

Dermot Kerrigan: No, absolutely not. 

Allen Hall: No reports, nothing. 

Dermot Kerrigan: No. So, you know, you have to give credit to, to organizations. Organizations like SSE. Oh, absolutely. And projects like Tideway and Sted, uh, on their horn projects. Who, who have gone down this, frankly, very left field, uh, route.

We we’re, you know, it is only in the last 10 years that we’ve been doing this kind of thing, and it hasn’t, I mean, you know, Tideway certainly is now showing some results. Sure. But, you know, it’s, it’s, it, it wasn’t by any means a proven way of, of, of dealing with safety. So 

Mark Patterson: I don’t think you could ever prove it.

Dermot Kerrigan: No. 

Mark Patterson: And actually there’s, there’s something [00:14:00]fundamentally of. It, it kind of puts a stamp on the culture that you want, either you talked about the projects in SSE, we’ve, we’ve done it for all of our operational activities, so we’ve had about 9,000 people through it for SSE and so far about 2000 contract partners.

Um, we’re absolutely shifting our focus now. We’ve got probably 80% of our operational teams have been through this in each one of our businesses, and, uh, we. We probably are kind of closing the gaps at the moment, so I was in Ireland with. I here guys last week, um, doing a, a mobile session because logistically it was kind of hard to come to Perth or to one of the other centers, but we’re, we’re gradually getting up to that 80%, uh, for SSE colleagues and our focus is shifting a bit more to contract partners and making sure they get through.

And look, they are super positive about this. Some of them have done that themselves and worked with a TT in the past, so they’re. Really keen to, to use the center that we have [00:15:00] here in Perth, uh, for their activities. So when, when they’re working with us, we kind of work together to, to make that happen. Um, but they can book that separately with you guys.

Yeah. Uh, in, in the, uh, Fastly Center too. 

Allen Hall: I think we should describe the room that we’re in right now and why this was built. This is one of three different scenes that, that each of the. Students will go through to put some realism to the scenario and the scenario, uh, a worker gets killed. This is that worker’s home?

Dermot Kerrigan: Yeah. So each of the spaces that we have here that, that they denote antecedents or consequences, and this is very much consequences. Um, so the, the, the participants will be shown in here, uh, as they go around the center, uh, and there’s a scene that takes place where they meet the grown up daughter of the young fella who’s been right, who’s been, who’s been tragically killed.

Uh, and she basically asks him, uh, asks [00:16:00] them what happened. And kind of crucially this as a subtext, why didn’t you do something about it? 

Allen Hall: Mm-hmm. 

Dermot Kerrigan: Because you were there, 

Allen Hall: you saw it, why it was played out in front of you. You saw, you 

Dermot Kerrigan: saw what happened. You saw this guy who was obviously fast asleep in the canteen.

He was exhausted. Probably not fit for work. Um, and yet being instructed to go back out there and finish the job, um, with all the tragic consequences that happen, 

Allen Hall: right? 

Dermot Kerrigan: But it’s important to say, as Mark says, that. It’s not all doom and gloom. The first part of the day is all about showing them consequences.

Allen Hall: Sure. It’s 

Dermot Kerrigan: saying it’s a, 

Allen Hall: it’s a Greek tragedy 

Dermot Kerrigan: in 

Allen Hall: some 

Dermot Kerrigan: ways, but then saying this doesn’t have to happen. If you just very subtly influence other people’s behavior, it’s 

Allen Hall: slight 

Dermot Kerrigan: by thinking about how you behave and sure adapting your behavior accordingly, you can completely change the outcome. Uh, so long as I can figure out where you are coming from and where that behavior is coming from, I might be able to influence it, 

Allen Hall: right.

Dermot Kerrigan: And if I can, then I can stop that [00:17:00] hap from happening. And sure enough, at the end of the day, um, the last scene is that the, the, the daughter that we see in here growing up and then going back into this tragic, uh, ending, uh. She’s with her dad, then it turned out he was the one behind the camera all along.

So he’s 45 years old, she’s just passed the driving test and nobody got her 21 years ago. You know, 

Mark Patterson: I think there, there is, there’s a journey that you’ve gotta take people through to get to believe that. And kind of part of that journey is as, as we look around this room, um, no matter who it is, and we’ve talked to a lot of people, they’ll be looking at things in this room and think, well, yeah, I’ve got a cup like that.

And yes. Yeah. When my kids were, we, we had. That play toy for the kids. Yes. So there is something that immediately hooks people and children hook 

Allen Hall: people. 

Mark Patterson: Absolutely. And 

Allen Hall: yes, 

Mark Patterson: they get to see that and understand that this is, this is, this is, could be a real thing. And also in the work site, uh, view, there’s kind of a work site, there’s a kind of a boardroom type thing [00:18:00] and you can actually see, yeah, that’s what it kind of feels like.

The work sites a little bit. You know, there’s scuffs in the, on the line, on the floor because that’s what happens in work sites and there’s a sense of realism for all of this, uh, is really important. 

Allen Hall: The realism is all the way down to the outfits that everybody’s worn, so they’re not clean safety gear.

It’s. Dirty, worn safety gear, which is what it should be. ’cause if you’re working, that’s what it should look like. And it feels immediately real that the, the whole stage is set in a, in the canteen, I’ll call it, I don’t know, what do you call the welfare area? Yeah. Okay. 

Dermot Kerrigan: Yeah. 

Allen Hall: Okay. Uh, wanna use the right language here.

But, uh, in the states we call it a, a break room. Uh, so you’re sitting in the break room just minding your own business and boom. An actor walks in, in full safety gear, uh, speaking Scottish very quickly, foreign American. But it’s real. 

Mark Patterson: I think 

Allen Hall: it feels real because you, you, I’ve been in those situations, I’ve seen that that break the, 

Mark Patterson: the language is real and, uh, [00:19:00] perhaps not all, uh, completely podcast suitable.

Um, but when you look at it, the feedback we’ve got from, from people who are closer to the tools and at all levels, in fact is, yeah. This feels real. It’s a credible scenario and uh, you get people who. I do not want to be in a safety training for an entire day. Um, and they’re saying arms folded at the start of the day and within a very short period of time, they are absolutely watching what the heck’s going on here.

Yes. To understand what’s happening, what’s going on. I don’t understand. And actually it’s exactly as you say, those subtle things that you, not just giving people that experience, but the subtle things you can nudge people on to. There’s some great examples of how do you nudge people, how do you give feedback?

And we had some real examples where people have come back to us and said even things to do with their home life. We were down in London one day, um, and I was sitting in on the training and one of the guys said, God, you’ve just taught me something about how I can give feedback to people in a really impactful [00:20:00] way.

So you, so you explain the behavior you see, which is just the truth of what the behavior is. This is what I saw you do, this is what happened, but actually the impact that that has. How that individual feels about it. And the example that they used was, it was something to do with their son and how their son was behaving and interacting.

And he said, do you know what? I’ve struggled to get my son to toe the line to, to look after his mom in the right way. I’m gonna stop on the way home and I’m gonna have a conversation with him. And I think if I. Keep yourself cool and calm and go through those steps. I think I can have a completely different conversation.

And that was a great example. Nothing to do with work, but it made a big difference to that guy. But all those work conversations where you could just subtly change your tone. Wind yourself back, stay cool and calm and do something slightly different. And I think that those, those things absolutely make a difference, 

Allen Hall: which is hard to do in the moment.

I think that’s what the a TT training does make you think of the re the first reaction, [00:21:00] which is the impulsive reaction. We gotta get this job done. This has gotta be done. Now I don’t have the right safety gear. We’ll, we’ll just do it anyway to, alright, slow. Just take a breather for a second. Think about what the consequences of this is.

And is it worth it at the end of the day? Is it worth it? And I think that’s the, the reaction you want to draw out of people. But it’s hard to do that in a video presentation or 

Dermot Kerrigan: Yeah. 

Allen Hall: Those things just 

Dermot Kerrigan: don’t need to practice. 

Allen Hall: Yeah. It doesn’t stick in your brain. 

Dermot Kerrigan: You need to give it a go And to see, right.

To see how to see it happen. And, and the actors are very good. They’re good if they, you know. What, whatever you give them, they will react to. 

Mark Patterson: They do. That’s one of the really powerful things. You’ve got the incident itself, then you’ve got the UNP of what happened, and then you’ve got specific, uh, tools and techniques and what’s really good is.

Even people who are not wildly enthusiastic at the start of the day of getting, being interactive in, in, in a session, they do throw themselves into it ’cause they recognize they’ve been through [00:22:00] something. It’s a common sense of community in the room. 

Dermot Kerrigan: Right. 

Mark Patterson: And they have a bit of fun with it. And it is fun.

Yeah. You know, people say they enjoy the day. Um, they, they, they recognize that it’s challenged them a little bit and they kinda like that, but they also get the opportunity to test themselves. And that testing is really important in terms of, sure. Well, how do you challenge somebody you don’t know and you just walking past and you see something?

How do you have that conversation in a way that just gets to that adult To adult communication? Yeah. And actually gets the results that you need. And being high handed about it and saying, well, those are the rules, or, I’m really important, just do it. That doesn’t give us a sustained improvement. 

Dermot Kerrigan: PE people are frightened of failure, you know?

Sure. They’re frightened of getting things wrong, so give ’em a space where they, where actually just fall flat in your face. Come back up again and try again. You know, give it a go. And, because no one’s, this is a safe space, you know, unlike in the real world, 

Allen Hall: right? 

Dermot Kerrigan: This is as near to the real world as you want to get.

It’s pretty real. It’s safe, you know, uh, it’s that Samuel Beckett thing, you know, fail again, [00:23:00] fail better, 

Allen Hall: right? 

Mark Patterson: But there’s, there’s a really good thing actually because people, when they practice that they realize. Yeah, it’s not straightforward going up and having a conversation with somebody about something they’re doing that could be done better.

And actually that helps in a way because it probably makes people a little bit more generous when somebody challenges them on how they’re approaching something. Even if somebody challenges you in a bit of a cat handed way, um, then you can just probably take a breath and think this. This, this guy’s probably just trying to have a conversation with me, 

Allen Hall: right.

Mark Patterson: So that I get home to my family. 

Allen Hall: Right. 

Mark Patterson: It’s hard to get annoyed when you get that mindset. Mindset 

Allen Hall: someone’s looking after you just a little bit. Yeah. It does feel nice. 

Mark Patterson: And, and even if they’re not doing it in the best way, you need to be generous with it. So there’s, there’s good learnings actually from both sides of the, the, the interaction.

Allen Hall: So what’s next for SSE and at t? You’ve put so many people through this project in, in the program and it has. Drawn great results. 

Mark Patterson: Yeah. 

Allen Hall: [00:24:00] How do you, what do you think of next? 

Mark Patterson: So what’s next? Yeah, I guess, uh, probably the best is next to come. Next to come. We, I think there’s a lot more that we can do with this.

So part of what we’ve done here is establish with a big community of people, a common sense of what we’re doing. And I think we’ve got an opportunity to continue with that. We’ve got, um, fortunate to be in a position where we’ve got a good level of growth in the business. 

Allen Hall: Yes, 

Mark Patterson: we do. Um, there’s a lot going on and so there’s always a flow of new people into an organization, and if people, you know, the theory of this stuff better than I do, would say that you need to maintain a, a sense of community that’s kind of more than 80%.

If you want a certain group of people to act in a certain way, you need about 80% of the people plus to act in that way, and then it’ll sustain. But if it starts. To drift so that only 20% of people are acting a certain way, then that is gonna ex extinguish that elements of the culture. So we need to keep topping up our Sure, okay.

Our, our [00:25:00] immersive training with people, and we’re also then thinking about the contract partners that we have and also leaving a bit of a legacy. For the communities in Scotland, because we’ve got a center that we’re gonna be using a little bit less because we’ve fortunate to get the bulk of our people in SSE through, uh, we’re working with contract partners.

They probably want to use it for. For their own purposes and also other community groups. So we’ve had all kinds of people from all these different companies here. We’ve had the Scottish first Minister here, we’ve had loads of people who’ve been really quite interested to see what we’re doing. And as a result of that, they’ve started to, uh, to, to step their way through doing something different themselves.

So, 

Allen Hall: so that may change the, the future of at t also. And in terms of the slight approach, the scenarios they’re in. The culture changes, right? Yeah. Everybody changes. You don’t wanna be stuck in time. 

Dermot Kerrigan: No, absolutely. 

Allen Hall: That’s one thing at t is not, 

Dermot Kerrigan: no, it’s not 

Allen Hall: stuck in time. 

Dermot Kerrigan: But, uh, I mean, you know, we first started out with the centers, uh, accommodating project.

Yeah. So this would [00:26:00] be an induction space. You might have guys who were gonna work on a project for two weeks, other guys who were gonna work on it for six months. They wanted to put them through the same experience. Mm. So that when they weren’t on site. That they could say, refer back to the, the, the, the induction and say, well, why ask me to do that?

You know, we, we, we both have that experience, so I’m gonna challenge you and you’re gonna accept challenge, et cetera. So it was always gonna be a short, sharp shock. But actually, if you’re working with an organization, you don’t necessarily have to take that approach. You could put people through a little bit of, of, of, of the training, give ’em a chance to practice, give ’em a chance to reflect, and then go on to the next stage.

Um. So it, it becomes more of a, a journey rather than a single hard, a single event experience. Yeah. You don’t learn to drive in a day really, do you? You know, you have to, well, I do transfer it to your right brain and practice, you know? 

Allen Hall: Right. The more times you see an experience that the more it’s memorable and especially with the, the training on how to work with others.[00:27:00]

A refresh of that is always good. 

Dermot Kerrigan: Yeah. 

Allen Hall: Pressure changes people and I think it’s always time to reflect and go back to what the culture is of SSE That’s important. So this, this has been fantastic and I, I have to. Thank SSC and a TT for allowing us to be here today. It was quite the journey to get here, but it’s been really enlightening.

Uh, and I, I think we’ve been an advocate of a TT and the training techniques that SSC uses. For well over a year. And everybody we run into, and in organizations, particularly in win, we say, you, you gotta call a TT, you gotta reach out because they’re doing things right. They’re gonna change your safety culture, they’re gonna change the way you work as an organization.

That takes time. That message takes time. But I do think they need to be reaching out and dermo. How do they do that? How do, how do they reach att? 

Dermot Kerrigan: Uh, they contact me or they contact att. So info at Active Trading Team, us. 

Allen Hall: Us. [00:28:00] There you go. 

Dermot Kerrigan: or.co uk. There you go. If you’re on the other side of the pond. Yeah.

Allen Hall: Yes. And Mark, because you just established such a successful safety program, I’m sure people want to reach out and ask, and hopefully a lot of our US and Australian and Canadian to listen to this podcast. We’ll reach out and, and talk to you about how, what you have set up here, how do they get ahold of you?

Mark Patterson: I’ll give you a link that you can access in the podcast, if that. Great. And uh, look. The, the risk of putting yourself out there and talking about this sort of thing is you sometimes give the impression you’ve got everything sorted and we certainly don’t in SSE. And if the second you think you’ve got everything nailed in terms of safety in your approach, then, then you don’t.

Um, so we’ve got a lot left to do. Um, but I think this particular thing has made a difference to our colleagues and, and contract partners and just getting them home safe. 

Allen Hall: Yes. Yes, so thank you. Just both of you. Mark Dermott, thank you so much for being on the podcast. We appreciate both [00:29:00] of you and yeah, I’d love to attend this again, this is.

Excellent, excellent training. Thanks, Alan. Thanks.

Allen, Joel, and Yolanda discuss Siemens Energy’s decision to keep their wind business despite pressure from hedge funds, with the CEO projecting profitability by 2026. They cover the company’s 21 megawatt offshore turbine now in testing and why it could be a game changer. Plus, Danish startup Quali Drone demonstrates thermal imaging of spinning blades at an offshore wind farm, and Alliant Energy moves forward with a 270 MW wind project in Wisconsin using next-generation Nordex 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!

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, Alan Hall, Rosemary Barnes, Joel Saxon, and Yolanda Padron. Welcome to the 

Allen Hall: Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Alan Hall. I’m here with Yolanda Padron and Joel Saxon.

Rosemary Burns is climbing the Himalayas this week, and our top story is Semen’s Energy is rejecting the sail of their wind business, which is a very interesting take because obviously Siemens CESA has struggled. Recently due to some quality issues a couple of years ago, and, and back in 2024 to 25, that fiscal year, they lost a little over 1 billion euros.

But the CEO of Siemens energy says they’re gonna stick with the business and that they’re getting a lot of pressure, obviously, from hedge funds to do something with that business to, to raise the [00:01:00] valuations of Siemens energy. But, uh, the CEO is saying, uh, that. They’re not gonna spin it off and that would not solve any of the problems.

And they’re, they’re going to, uh, remain with the technology, uh, for the time being. And they think right now that Siemens Gomesa will be profitable in 2026. That’s an interesting take, uh, Joel, because we haven’t seen a lot of sales onshore or offshore from Siemens lately. 

Joel Saxum: I think they’re crazy to lose. I don’t wanna put this in US dollars ’cause it resonates with my mind more, but 1.36 billion euros is probably what, 1.8 million or 1.8.

Billion dollars. 

Allen Hall: Yeah. It’s, it’s about that. Yeah. 

Joel Saxum: Yeah. So, so it’s compounding issues. We see this with a lot of the OEMs and blade manufacturers and stuff, right? They, they didn’t do any sales of their four x five x platform for like a year while they’re trying to reset the issues they had there. And now we know that they’re in the midst of some blade issues where they’re swapping blades at certain wind farms and those kind of things.[00:02:00]

But when they went to basically say, Hey, we’re back in the market, restarting, uh, sales. Yolanda, have you heard from any of your blade network of people buying those turbines? 

Yolanda Padron: No, and I think, I mean, we’ve seen with other OEMs when they try to go back into getting more sales, they focus a lot on making their current customers happy, and I’m not sure that I’ve seen that with the, this group.

So it’s, it’s just a little bit of lose lose on both sides. 

Joel Saxum: Yeah. And if you’re, if you’re trying to, if you’re having to go back and basically patch up relationships to make them happy. Uh, that four x five x was quite the flop, uh, I would say, uh, with the issues that it had. So, um, there’s, that’d be a lot of, a lot of, a lot of nice dinners and a lot of hand kissing and, and all kinds of stuff to make those relationships back to what they were.

Allen Hall: But at the time, Joel, that turbine fit a specific set of the marketplace, they had basically complete control of that when the four x five [00:03:00] x. Was an option and and early on it did seem to have pretty wide adoption. They were making good progress and then the quality issues popped up. What have we seen since and more recently in terms of.

The way that, uh, Siemens Ga Mesa has restructured their business. What have we heard? 

Joel Saxum: Well, they, they leaned more and pointed more towards offshore, right? They wanted to be healthy in, they had offshore realm and make sales there. Um, and that portion, because it was a completely different turbine model, that portion went, went along well, but in the meantime, right, they fit that four x five x and when I say four x five x, of course, I mean four megawatt, five megawatt slot, right?

And if you look at, uh, the models that are out there for the onshore side of things. That, that’s kind of how they all fit. There was like, you know, GE was in that two x and, and, uh, uh, you know, mid two X range investors had the two point ohs, and there’s more turbine models coming into that space. And in the US when you go above basically 500 foot [00:04:00] above ground level, right?

So if your elevation is a thousand, once you hit 1500 for tip height on a turbine, you get into the next category of FAA, uh, airplane problems. So if you’re going to put in a. If you were gonna put in a four x or five x machine and you’re gonna have to deal with those problems anyways, why not put a five and a half, a six, a 6.8, which we’ve been seeing, right?

So the GE Cypress at 6.8, um, we’re hearing of um, not necessarily the United States, but envision putting in some seven, uh, plus megawatt machines out there on shore. So I think that people are making the leap past. Two x three x, and they’re saying like, oh, we could do a four x or five x, but if we’re gonna do that, why don’t we just put a six x in?

Allen Hall: Well, Siemens has set itself apart now with a 21 megawatt, uh, offshore turbine, which is in trials at the moment. That could be a real game changer, particularly because the amount of offshore wind that’ll happen around Europe. Does that then if you’re looking at the [00:05:00] order book for Siemens, when you saw a 21 Mega Hut turbine, that’s a lot of euros per turbine.

Somebody’s projecting within Siemens, uh, that they’re gonna break even in 2026. I think the way that they do that, it has to be some really nice offshore sales. Isn’t that the pathway? 

Joel Saxum: Yeah. You look at the megawatt class and what happened there, right? So what was it two years ago? Vestas? Chief said, we are not building anything past the 15 megawatt right now.

So they have their, their V 2 36 15 megawatt dark drive model that they’re selling into the market, that they’re kind of like, this is the cap, like we’re working on this one now we’re gonna get this right. Which to be honest with you, that’s an approach that I like. Um, and then you have the ge So in this market, right, the, the big megawatt offshore ones for the Western OEMs, you have the GE 15 megawatt, Hayley IX, and GE.

ISS not selling more of those right now. So you have Vestas sitting at 15, GE at 15, but not doing anymore. [00:06:00] And GE was looking at developing an 18, but they have recently said we are not doing the 18 anymore. So now from western OEMs, the only big dog offshore turbine there is, is a 21. And again, if you were now that now this is working out opposite inverse in their favor, if you were going to put a 15 in, it’s not that much of a stretch engineering wise to put a 21 in right When it comes to.

The geotechnical investigations and how we need to make the foundations and the shipping and the this and the, that, 15 to 21, not that big of a deal, but 21 makes you that much, uh, more attractive, uh, offshore. 

Allen Hall: Sure if fewer cables, fewer mono piles, everything gets a little bit simpler. Maybe that’s where Siemens sees the future.

That would, to me, is the only slot where Siemens can really gain ground quickly. Onshore is still gonna be a battle. It always is. Offshore is a little more, uh, difficult space, obviously, just because it’s really [00:07:00] Chinese turbines offshore, big Chinese turbines, 25 plus megawatt is what we’re talking about coming outta China or something.

European, 21 megawatt from Siemens. 

Joel Saxum: Do the math right? That, uh, if, if you have, if you have won an offshore auction and you need to backfill into a megawatts or gigawatts of. Of demand for every three turbines that you would build at 15 or every four turbines you build at 15, you only need three at 21.

Right? And you’re still a little bit above capacity. So the big, one of the big cost drivers we know offshore is cables. You hit it on the head when you’re like, cables, cables, cables, inter array cables are freaking expensive. They’re not only expensive to build and lay, they’re expensive to ensure, they’re expensive to maintain.

There’s a lot of things here, so. When you talk about saving costs offshore, if you look at any of those cool models in the startup companies that are optimizing layouts and all these great things, a lot of [00:08:00] them are focusing on reducing cables because that’s a big, huge cost saver. Um, I, I think that’s, I mean, if I was building one and, and had the option right now, that’s where I would stare at offshore.

Allen Hall: Does anybody know when that Siemens 21 megawatt machine, which is being evaluated at a test site right now, when that will wrap up testing, is it gonna be in the next couple of months? 

Joel Saxum: I think it’s at Estro. 

Allen Hall: Yeah, it is, but I don’t remember when it was started. It was sometime during the fall of last year, so it’s probably been operational three, four months at this point.

Something like that. 

Joel Saxum: If you trust Google, it says full commercial availability towards the end, uh, of 28. 

Allen Hall: 28. Do you think that the, uh, that Siemens internally is trying to push that to the left on the schedule, bringing from 2028 back into maybe early 27? Remember, AR seven, uh, for the uk the auction round?[00:09:00]

Just happened, and that’s 8.4 gigawatts of offshore wind. You think Siemens is gonna make a big push to get into that, uh, into the water there for, for that auction, which is mostly RWE. 

Joel Saxum: Yeah, so the prototype’s been installed for, since April 2nd, 2025. So it’s only been in there in the, and it’s only been flying for eight months.

Um, but yeah, I mean, RWE being a big German company, Siemens, ESA being a big German company. Uh, of course you would think they would want to go to the hometown and and get it out there, but will it be ready? I don’t know. I don’t know. I, I personally don’t know. And there’s probably people that are listening right now that do have this information.

If this turbine model has been specked in any of the pre-feed documentation or preferred turbine suppliers, I, I don’t know. Um, of course we, I’m sure someone does. It’s listening. Uh, reach out, shoot us at LinkedIn or something like that. Let us know, but. Uh, yeah, I mean, uh, [00:10:00] Yolanda, so, so from a Blades perspective, of course you’re our local, one of our local blade experts here.

It’s difficult to work, it’s gonna be difficult to work on these blades. It’s a 276 meter rotor, right? So it’s 135 meter blade. Is it worth it to go to that and install less of them than work on something a little bit smaller? 

Yolanda Padron: I think it’s a, it’s a personal preference. I like the idea of having something that’s been done.

So if it’s something that I know or something that I, I know someone who’s worked with them, so there’s at least a colleague or something that I, I know that if there’s something off happening with the blade, I can talk to someone about it. Right? We can validate data with each other because love the OEMs, but they’re very, it’s very typical that they’ll say that anything is, you know.

Anything is, is not a serial defect and anything is force majeure and wow, this is the first time I’m seeing this in your [00:11:00] blade. Uh, so if it’s a new technology versus old technology, I’d rather have the old one just so I, I at least know what I’m dealing with. Uh, so I guess that answers the question as far as like these new experimental lights, right?

As far as. Whether I would rather have less blades to deal with. Yes, I’d rather have less bilities to, to deal with it. They were all, you know, known technologies and one was just larger than the other one. 

Joel Saxum: Maybe it boils down to a CapEx question, right? So dollar per megawatt. What’s gonna be the cost of these things be?

Because we know right now could, yeah, kudos to Siemens CESA for actually putting this turbine out at atrial, or, I can’t remember if it’s Australia or if it’s Keyside somewhere. We know that the test blades are serial number 0 0 0 1 and zero two. Right. And we also know that when there’s a prototype blade being built, all of the, well, not all, but you know, the majority of the engineers that [00:12:00] have designed it are more than likely gonna be at the factory.

Like there’s gonna be heavy control on QA, QEC, like that. Those blades are gonna be built probably the best that you can build them to the design spec, right? They’re not big time serial production, yada, yada, yada. When this thing sits and cooks for a year, two years, and depending on what kind of blade issues we may see out of it, that comes with a caveat, right?

And that caveat being that that is basically prototype blade production and it has a lot of QC QA QC methodologies to it. And when we get to the point where now we’re taking that and going to serial blade production. That brings in some difficulties, or not difficulties, but like different qa, qc methodologies, um, and control over the end product.

So I like to see that they’re get letting this thing cook. I know GE did that with their, their new quote unquote workhorse, 6.8 cypress or whatever it is. That’s fantastic. Um, but knowing that these are prototype [00:13:00] machines, when we get into serial production. It kind of rears its head, right? You don’t know what issues might pop up.

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Allen Hall: While conventional blade inspections requires shutting down the turbine. And that costs money. Danish Startup, Qualy Drone has demonstrated a different approach [00:14:00] at the.

Ruan to Wind Farm in Danish waters. Working with RDBE, stack Craft Total Energies and DTU. The company flew a drone equipped with thermal cameras and artificial intelligence to inspect blades while they were still spinning. Uh, this is a pretty revolutionary concept being put into action right now ’cause I think everybody has talked about.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could keep the turbines running and, and get blade inspections done? Well, it looks like quality drone has done it. Uh, the system identifies surface defects and potential internal damage in real time and without any fiscal contact, of course, and without interrupting power generations.

So as the technology is described, the drone just sits there. Steady as the blades rotate around. Uh, the technology comes from the Aquatic GO Project, uh, funded by Denmark’s, EUDP program. RDBE has [00:15:00] confirmed plans to expand use of the technology and quality. Drone says it has commercial solutions ready for the market.

Now we have all have questions about this. I think Joel, the first time I heard about this was probably a year and a half ago, two years ago in Amsterdam at one of the Blade conferences. And I said at the time, no way, but they, they do have a, a lot of data that’s available online. I, I’ve downloaded it and it’s being the engineer and looked at some of the videos and images they have produced.

They from what is available and what I saw, there’s a couple of turbines at DTU, some smaller turbines. Have you ever been to Rust, Gilda and been to DTU? They have a couple of turbines on site, so what it looked like they were using one of these smaller turbines, megawatt or maybe smaller turbine. Uh, to do this, uh, trial on, but they had thermal movie images and standard, you know, video images from a drone.

They were using [00:16:00] DGI and Maverick drones. Uh, pretty standard stuff, but I think the key comes in and the artificial intelligence bit. As you sit there and watch these blades go around, you gotta figure out where you are and what blades you’re looking at and try to splice these images together that I guess, conceptually would work.

But there’s a lot of. Hurdles here still, right? 

Joel Saxum: Yeah. You have to go, go back from data analysis and data capture and all this stuff just to the basics of the sensor technology. You immediately will run into some sensor problems. Sensor problems being, if you’re trying to capture an image or video with RGB as a turbine is moving.

There’s just like you, you want to have bright light, a huge sensor to be able to capture things with super fast shutter speed. And you need a global shutter versus a rolling shutter to avoid some more of that motion blur. So there’s like, you start stepping up big time in the cost of the sensors and you have to have a really good RGB camera.

And then you go to thermal. So now thermal to have to capture good [00:17:00]quality thermal images of a wind turbine blade, you need backwards conditions than that. You need cloudy day. You don’t want to have shine sheen bright sunlight because you’re changing the heat signature of the blade. You are getting, uh, reflectance, reflectance messes with thermal imagery, imaging sensors.

So the ideal conditions are if you can get out there first thing in the morning when the sun is just coming up, but the sun’s kind of covered by clouds, um, that’s where you want to be. But then you say you take a pic or image and you do this of the front side of the blade, and then you go down to the backside.

Now you have different conditions because there’s, it’s been. Shaded there, but the reason that you need to have the turbine in motion to have thermal data make sense is you need the friction, right? So you need a crack to sit there and kind of vibrate amongst itself and create a localized heat signature.

Otherwise, the thermal [00:18:00] imagery doesn’t. Give you what you want unless you’re under the perfect conditions. Or you might be able to see, you know, like balsa core versus foam core versus a different resin layup and those kind of things that absorb heat at different rates. So you, you, you really need some specialist specialist knowledge to be able to assess this data as well.

Allen Hall: Well, Yolanda, from the asset management side, how much money would you generate by keeping the turbines running versus turning them off for a standard? Drone inspection. What does that cost look like for a, an American wind farm, a hundred turbines, something like that. What is that costing in terms of power?

Yolanda Padron: I mean, these turbines are small, right? So it’s not a lot to just turn it off for a second and, and be able to inspect it, right? Especially if you’re getting high quality images. I think my issues, a lot of this, this sounds like a really great project. It’s just. A lot of the current drone [00:19:00] inspections, you have them go through an AI filter, but you still, to be able to get a good quality analysis, you have to get a person to go through it.

Right. And I think there’s a lot more people in the industry, and correct me if I’m wrong, that have been trained and can look through an external drone inspection and just look at the images and say, okay, this is what this is Then. People who are trained to look at the thermal imaging pictures and say, okay, this is a crack, or this is, you know, you have lightning damage or this broke right there.

Uh, so you’d have to get a lot more specialized people to be able to do that. You can’t just, I mean, I wouldn’t trust AI right now to to be the sole. Thing going through that data. So you also have to get some sort of drone inspection, external drone inspection to be able to, [00:20:00] to quantify what exactly is real and what’s not.

And then, you know, Joel, you alluded to it earlier, but you don’t have high quality images right now. Right? Because you have to do the thermal sensing. So if you’re. If you’re, if you don’t have the high quality images that you need to be able to go back, if, if, if you have an issue to send a team or to talk to your OE em or something, you, you’re missing out on a lot of information, so, so I think maybe it would be a good, right now as it stands, it would be a good, it, it’d be complimentary to doing the external drone inspections.

I don’t think that they could fully replace them. Now. 

Joel Saxum: Yeah, I think like going to your AI comment like that makes absolute sense because I mean, we’ve been doing external drone inspections for what, since 2016 and Yeah. And, and implementing AI and think about the data sets that, that [00:21:00] AI is trained on and it still makes mistakes regularly and it doesn’t matter, you know, like what provider you use.

All of those things need a human in the loop. So think about the, the what exists for the data set of thermal imagery of blades. There isn’t one. And then you still have to have the therm, the human in the loop. And when we talk to like our, our buddy Jeremy Hanks over at C-I-C-N-D-T, when you start getting into NDT specialists, because that’s what this is, is a form of NDT thermal is when you start getting into specialist, specialist, specialist, specialist, they become more expensive, more specialized.

It’s harder to do. Like, I just don’t think, and if you do the math on this, it’s like. They did this project for two years and spent 2 million US dollars per year for like 4 million US dollars total. I don’t think that’s the best use of $4 million right now. Wind, 

Allen Hall: it’s a drop in the bucket. I think in terms of what the spend is over in Europe to make technologies better.

Offshore wind is the first thought because it is expensive to turn off a 15 or 20 megawatt turbine. You don’t want to do that [00:22:00] and be, because there’s fewer turbines when you turn one off, it does matter all of a sudden in, in terms of the grid, uh, stability, you would think so you, you just a loss of revenue too.

You don’t want to shut that thing down. But I go, I go back. To what I remember from a year and a half ago, two years ago, about the thermal imaging and, and seeing some things early on. Yeah, it can kind of see inside the blade, which is interesting to me. The one thing I thought was really more valuable was you could actually see turbulence on the blade.

You can get a sense of how the blade is performing because you can in certain, uh, aspect angles and certain temp, certain temperature ranges. You can see where friction builds up via turbulence, and you can see where you have problems on the blade. But I, I, I think as we were learning about. Blade problems, aerodynamic problems, your losses are going to be in the realm of a percent, maybe 2%.

So do you even care at that point? It, it must just come down then to being able to [00:23:00] keep a 15 megawatt turbine running. Okay, great. Uh, but I still think they’re gonna have some issues with the technology. But back to your point, Joel, the camera has to be either super, uh, sensitive. With high shutter speeds and the, and the right kind of light, because the tiff speeds are so high on a tiff speed on an offshore turbine, what a V 2 36 is like 103 meters per second.

That’s about two hundred and twenty two hundred thirty miles per hour. You’re talking about a race car and trying to capture that requires a lot of camera power. I’m interested about what Quality Drone is doing. I went to that website. There’s not a lot of information there yet. Hopefully there will be a lot more because if the technology proves out, if they can actually pull this off where the turbines are running.

Uh, I don’t know if to stop ’em. I think they have a lot of customers [00:24:00]offshore immediately, but also onshore. Yeah, onshore. I think it’s, it’s doable 

Joel Saxum: just because you can. I’m gonna play devil’s advocate on this one because on the commercial side, because it took forever for us to even get. Like it took 3, 4, 5, 6 years for us to get to the point where you’re having a hundred percent coverage of autonomous drones.

And that was only because they only need to shut a turbine down for 20 minutes now. Right. The speed’s up way up. Yeah. And, and now we’re, we’re trying to get internals and a lot of people won’t even do internals. I’ve been to turbines where the hatches haven’t been open on the blades since installation, and they’re 13 years, 14 years old.

Right. So trying to get people just to do freaking internals is difficult. And then if they do, they’re like, ah, 10% of the fleet. You know, you have very rare, or you know, a or an identified serial of defect where people actually do internal inspections regularly. Um, and then, so, and, and if you talk about advanced inspection techniques, advanced inspection techniques are great for specific problems.

That’s the only thing they’re being [00:25:00] accepted for right now. Like NDT on route bushing pullouts, right? They, that’s the only way that you can really get into those and understand them. So specific specialty inspection techniques are being used in certain ways, but it’s very, very, very limited. Um, and talk to anybody that does NDT around the wind industry and they’ll tell you that.

So this to me, being a, another kind of niche inspection technology that I don’t know if it’s has the quality that it is need to. To dismount the incumbent, I guess is what I’m trying to say.

Allen Hall: Delamination and bond 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 before they become a. Expensive burdens. Their non-destructive test technology penetrates deep to blade materials to find voids and cracks.

Traditional inspections [00:26:00] 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 you millions.

After five years of development, Alliant Energy is ready to build one of Wisconsin’s largest wind farms. The Columbia Wind Project in Columbia County would put more than 40 turbines across rural farmland generating about 270 megawatts of power for about 100,000 homes. The price tag is roughly $730 million for the project.

The more than 300 landowners have signed lease agreements already, and the company says these are next generation turbines. We’re not sure which ones yet, we’re gonna talk about that, that are taller and larger than older models. Uh, they’ll have to be, [00:27:00] uh, Alliant estimates the project will save customers about $450 million over the 35 years by avoiding volatile fuel costs and.

We’ll generate more than $100 million in local tax revenue. Now, Joel, I think everybody in Europe, when I talk to them ask me the the same thing. Is there anything happening onshore in the US for wind? And the answer is yes all the time. Onshore wind may not be as prolific as it was a a year or two ago, but there’s still a lot of new projects, big projects going to happen here.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. If you’ve been following the news here with Alliant Energy, and Alliant operates in that kind of Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, that upper. Part of the Midwest, if you have watched a or listened to Alliant in the news lately, they recently signed a letter of intent for one gigawatt worth of turbines from Nordex.[00:28:00]

And, uh, before the episode here, we’re doing a little digging to try to figure out what they’re gonna do with this wind farm. And if you start doing some math, you see 277 megawatts, only 40 turbines. Well, that means that they’ve gotta be big, right? We’re looking at six plus megawatt turbines here, and I did a little bit deeper digging, um, in the Wisconsin Public Service Commission’s paperwork.

Uh, the docket for this wind farm explicitly says they will be nordex turbines. So to me, that speaks to an N 1 63 possibly going up. Um, and that goes along too. Earlier in the episode we talked about should you use larger turbines and less of them. I think that that’s a way to appease local landowners.

That’s my opinion. I don’t know if that’s the, you know, landman style sales tactic they used publicly, but to only put 40 wind turbines out. Whereas in the past, a 280 megawatt wind farm would’ve been a hundred hundred, [00:29:00]20, 140 turbine farm. I think that’s a lot easier to swallow as a, as a, as a local public.

Right. But to what you said, Alan. Yeah, absolutely. When farms are going forward, this one’s gonna be in central Wisconsin, not too far from Wisconsin Dells, if you know where that is and, uh, you know, the, the math works out. Alliant is, uh, a hell of a developer. They’ve been doing a lot of big things for a lot of long, long time, and, uh, they’re moving into Wisconsin here on this one.

Allen Hall: What are gonna be some of the challenges, Yolanda being up in Wisconsin because it does get really cold and others. Icing systems that need to be a applied to these blades because of the cold and the snow. As Joel mentioned, there’s always like 4, 5, 6 meters of snow in Wisconsin during January, February.

That’s not an easy environment for a blade or or turbine to operate in. 

Yolanda Padron: I think they definitely will. Um, I’m. Not as well versed as Rosie as [00:30:00] in the Canadian and colder region icing practices. But I mean, something that’s great for, for people in Wisconsin is, is Canada who has a lot of wind resources and they, I mean, a lot of the things have been tried, tested, and true, right?

So it’s not like it’s a, it’s a novel technology in a novel place necessarily because. On the cold side, you have things that have been a lot worse, really close, and you have on the warm side, I mean just in Texas, everything’s a lot warmer than there. Um, I think something that’s really exciting for the landowners and the just in general there.

I know sometimes there’s agreements that have, you know, you get a percentage of the earnings depending on like how many. Megawatts are generated on your land or something. So that will be so great for that community to be able [00:31:00] to, I mean, you have bigger turbines on your land, so you have probably a lot more money coming into the community than just to, to alliance.

So that’s, that’s a really exciting thing to hear. 

Allen Hall: 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 discussion, please leave us a review.

It really helps other wind energy professionals discover the show For Rosie, Yolanda and Joel, I’m Allen Hall and we’ll see you next time on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

Allen covers Equinor’s Hywind Tampen floating wind farm achieving an impressive 51.6% capacity factor in 2025. Plus nine nations commit to 100 GW of offshore wind at the North Sea Summit, Dominion Energy installs its first turbine tower off Virginia, Hawaii renews the Kaheawa Wind Farm lease for 25 years, and India improves its repowering policies.

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!

There’s a remarkable sight in the North Sea right now. Eleven wind turbines, each one floating on water like enormous ships, generating electricity in some of the roughest seas on Earth.

Norwegian oil giant Equinor operates the Hywind Tampen floating wind farm, and the results from twenty twenty-five are nothing short of extraordinary. These floating giants achieved a capacity factor of fifty-one point six percent throughout the entire year. That means they produced power more than half the time, every single day, despite ocean storms and harsh conditions.

The numbers tell the story. Four hundred twelve gigawatt hours of electricity, enough to power seventeen thousand homes. And perhaps most importantly, the wind farm reduced carbon emissions by more than two hundred thousand tons from nearby oil and gas fields.

Production manager Arild Lithun said he was especially pleased that they achieved these results without any damage or incidents. Not a single one.

But Norway’s success is just one chapter in a much larger story unfolding across the North Sea.

Last week, nine countries gathered in Hamburg, Germany for the North Sea Summit. Belgium, Denmark, France, Britain, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and their host Germany came together with a shared purpose. They committed to building one hundred gigawatts of collaborative offshore wind projects and pledged to protect their energy infrastructure from sabotage by sharing security data and conducting stress tests on wind turbine components.

Andrew Mitchell, Britain’s ambassador to Germany, explained why this matters now more than ever. Recent geopolitical events, particularly Russia’s weaponization of energy supplies during the Ukraine invasion, have sharpened rather than weakened the case for offshore wind. He said expanding offshore wind enhances long-term security while reducing exposure to volatile global fossil fuel markets.

Mitchell added something that resonates across the entire industry. The more offshore wind capacity these countries build, the more often clean power sets wholesale electricity prices instead of natural gas. The result is lower bills, greater security, and long-term economic stability.

Now let’s cross the Atlantic to Virginia Beach, where Dominion Energy reached a major milestone last week. They installed the first turbine tower at their massive offshore wind farm. It’s the first of one hundred seventy-six turbines that will stand twenty-seven miles off the Virginia coast.

The eleven point two billion dollar project is already seventy percent complete and will generate two hundred ten million dollars in annual economic output.

Meanwhile, halfway across the Pacific Ocean, Hawaii is doubling down on wind energy. The state just renewed the lease for the Kaheawa Wind Farm on Maui for another twenty-five years. Those twenty turbines have been generating electricity for two decades, powering seventeen thousand island homes each year. The new lease requires the operator to pay three hundred thousand dollars annually or three point five percent of gross revenue, whichever is higher. And here’s something smart: the state is requiring a thirty-three million dollar bond to ensure taxpayers never get stuck with the bill for removing those turbines when they’re finally decommissioned.

Even India is accelerating its wind energy development. The Indian Wind Power Association welcomed major amendments to Tamil Nadu’s Repowering Policy last week. The Indian Wind Power Association thanked the government for addressing critical industry concerns. The changes make it significantly easier and cheaper to replace aging turbines with modern, more efficient ones.

So from floating turbines in the North Sea to coastal giants off Virginia, from island power in Hawaii to policy improvements in India, the wind energy revolution is gaining momentum around the world.

And that’s the state of the wind industry for the 26th of January 2026.

Join us tomorrow for the Uptime Wind Industry Podcast.