The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

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.

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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, 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.

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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.

Allen and Joel are joined by Mathieu Cōté from CanREA to preview the upcoming Operators Summit in Toronto. With many Canadian wind projects reaching 17-20 years old, the industry faces critical decisions about extending, repowering, or decommissioning assets. Register now!

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: Matt, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me. Well, the theme of this Year’s Operator Summit is coming of age and. There’s a lot of things happening in the renewable side up in Canada. What does that mean for Canadian renewable energy operators right now? 

Mathieu Cōté: Well, we came up with coming of age because, um, the fleet in Canada is in a bit of a different space than it is in the States where, uh, right now we’ve got a lot of projects that are on the cusp of coming to their end of initial lifetime.

Right. They’re in that. 17 to 20 year range. There’s some that are a little bit past, and so you, as an operator, you gotta be asking yourself, is this the time to extend this project? What do I have to do [00:01:00] if I need to extend? Um, or am I repowering, am I taking things down, putting them up? And I mean, there’s a lot of different variables there.

Sometimes it’s just a re topping, sometimes it’s everything down to ground level and go again. Or it’s, maybe it’s a decommissioning and those decisions are on the cusp of being made in the operation space in Canada. So that’s, that’s a super important part of it. But the other side of it, and the reason we liked, uh, coming of age is from the industry perspective itself.

We are no longer the new kid on the block, right? We are now a reliable, uh, professional industry that can deliver power when you need it. Uh, so that’s what we’re trying to, to convey with this coming of age. And, and we’ve got some really good speakers who are gonna talk about that, uh, from. The grid operator’s perspective saying, why is it that renewables are one of the first things they reach for now when they realize they need more power?

Joel Saxum: I think it’s an interesting space and I think to, to [00:02:00]comment more deeply on that, right? That you guys are in that, you 

Mathieu Cōté: know, 

Joel Saxum: 2005, six you started installing a 

Mathieu Cōté: lot of the, a lot of wind assets. There was a curve of, as it as every year you get more and more. Trickle and then becomes a flood quite quickly.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. And, and, and you know, from, from the operation standpoint, we deal with some of the wind farms in Canada. We love working with, uh, the operators up there because they do exude that professionalism. They’re on top of their game. They know they’ve gotta maintain these things. Whereas in the states, we’ve been a little bit nascent sometimes and, oh, we got PTC coming so we don’t have to do these certain things.

Little bit more cowboy. Yeah. Yeah. And up in Canada, they’re, they’re, they’ve been doing the right things for a long time. Um, and I think it’s a good, good model to follow, but you’re a hundred percent correct. We’re coming to that time when it’s like decision time to be made here. And I think we, in our, in our uh, kind of off air chat, you had mentioned that, you know, repower in Canada is.

Pretty early stages. I 

Mathieu Cōté: only know about 

Joel Saxum: one, 

Mathieu Cōté: to [00:03:00] be honest, and I try and keep track of these things, 

Joel Saxum: but that’s coming down the pipeline, 

Mathieu Cōté: right? So there’s gonna be more and more of these happening. And I mean, there are a lot of operators that have one foot on either side of the border, so some people have some operational experience on what steps you need to take, but it’s also from the regulatory side, like what is your grid operator gonna insist on?

So on and so on. But, uh, so we’ve got some panels to talk about things like, one of my favorites is, uh, how much life is left in your machine? And that’s sort of a deeper dive from an engineering standpoint. Like what math do the engineers do to assess, is this foundation good to go for another 10 years?

Is this tower gonna stand up to whatever? Should we replace the blades and all those components? We, we’ve got a foundation expert, uh, someone who does. Digital twin sort of things as well as, um, a panelist from, uh, Nordex, so the OEM sort of perspective as well, and how they assess how much [00:04:00] life is left in a machine.

So like that’s the sort of panels that we’re trying to put together that we’re pretty excited about. 

Joel Saxum: Well, I think that’s a good one too, because I know Alan and I we’re talking around the industry globally. A lot of it is around CMS. And when we say CMS, we’re not just talking drive train anymore, we’re talking everything you can in the turbine, right?

So the, the concept of remaining useful life, r ul, that always comes up, where are we at with this, right? Because from a global perspective in Europe, they have, you know, in Spanish wind farms are all, a lot of ’em are at that 25 year mark. What are we doing here? So you guys are bringing that conversation to the Canadian market at this operator summit in Toronto here in February.

It’s, it’s timely, right? Because it’s February and everybody’s getting ready for spring, so you got a little bit of time to come to the conference. 

Mathieu Cōté: Well, and that’s one of the things that we actually used to do is show in April and we’ve moved it back after hearing feedback from our, from our audience that April’s almost too late, right?

Like, if you’re doing your assessments for your [00:05:00] blades, it where? Where’s your manpower coming up? Coming from in the summertime? Those contracts are already signed. By the time you hit April, February, you’ve still got time. Your RFP might be out so you can meet all the proponents on site at once. It, it just makes a lot more sense for us to do it in February.

Allen Hall: Well, there’s a wide range of technology in Canada in regards to wind to energy. That adds to the complexity where a lot of turbines, unlike the United States, are maybe even sub one megawatt, and with new turbines coming online, they’re gonna be in the five, six, maybe even seven megawatt range. That’s a huge dispersed.

Industry to try to maintain massive range. Yeah. Right. And I, and, and I think one of the dilemmas about that is trying to find people who understand that tho all those different kinds of machines and the intricacies of each one of them and how to operate them more efficiently, which is where Canada is.

Quite honestly. The, the thing [00:06:00] about that and the challenge for Canada Head, and this is why the conference is so important, is. If there’s someone in Canada that has the answer, as Joel and I have talked to a number of Canadian operators, you may not know them. I know it’s a smaller marketplace in general, but unless you’re talking to one another, you probably, uh, don’t realize there’s, there’s help within Canada.

And these conferences really highlight that quite a bit. Wanna talk about some of the, sort of the interactions you guys create at the conference? 

Mathieu Cōté: Yeah. Oh, well, it’s one of the things that can RIA tries to do is play that connector role, right? Like, we don’t know everything, but like you say, we know someone who knows something and we can put you in touch with all.

I know a guy who knows a guy. Um, but we’re, we’re always able to, to, to connect those dots. And I mean, we, we do a lot of, uh. Things like working groups and uh, regional meetings. And, uh, we’ve even got, uh, different summits for different things. Getting a little bit outside of operations, but like we [00:07:00] have an Atlantic operators group that gathers together and has a chat just sometimes, usually there’s a focus topic, but then we have, oh, how do you guys deal with the storm that came through?

Or that sort of thing, or what, what do you do for if you need a new blade or has anyone got a good vendor for this thing or that thing? Those sorts of things always happen in the margins. And I mean, the ops summit is the, the best one of those because it’s the entire Canadian industry that gets together.

We’ve got folks from bc, we’ve got folks from Atlantic Canada, there’s gonna be people from Quebec, and there’s vendors from all those places as well. Right? So. It’s covering all your bases and it’s the one place that you can talk to everybody and meet everybody in like a 48 hour period. 

Joel Saxum: Well, I think that if, you know, just doing a little bit of deep dive into the agenda and the program here, that’s one of the things that you guys are focusing on.

Targeted networking. So morning breakfasts, evening receptions, there, you know, structured and informal, uh, opportunities to actually connect with the o and m [00:08:00] community. Um, one of them that you had mentioned was kind of, um. Hands-on demonstrations and, and for me, when, when I see these things, ’cause I’ve seen them kind of slightly not, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody do it perfectly well.

I’m excited to see what you guys do. But you get, you get a group of people standing around, like you get people kind of standing around. Rubbing elbows going, like, what do you think about that? What is, does this, is this gonna work? And, and those to me are great, great conversations for networking and kind of figuring things out together.

The collaboration part. 

Mathieu Cōté: Absolutely. Uh, well on those two points, the, the networking has always been a huge part of this show, and we’ve always built into the program. Okay. There’s some stuff on stage, but then there’s a break. And I mean, you can wander around the showroom floor and you can, but you can talk to the other people.

And, uh, that’s a big part of this. That’s an important part of this. And then on the, the demonstrations and so on, we used to have what we called, uh, elevator pitches, uh, where, and we’ve done it various different ways where people get five minutes, one slide, you’re on [00:09:00] stage, you say your piece, you give us your elevator pitch, and then you get off and someone else gets up and talks.

And we found that, that, and the feedback we got was that that was good because that condensed all of the salesy parts and kept it away from the panels. ’cause the panels, we want them to be informative, not. Selling you something. We want you to learn something. But the sales pitch is, there is some sense of like someone’s trying to sell you a thing.

But we’re evolving that a little bit this year where we’re going towards demonstrations. So on the showroom floor, there will be someone who will have a tangible thing, whether it’s here’s the new fireproof coat that we’ve come up with, or here’s how this, uh, sling works, or here’s this piece of kit that fits on your machine that catches bolts when they break, or whatever it is.

Here’s how it actually works, and they’ve got it in their hands and they can play with the go until it, uh, really, like you say, gets that light bulb moment that gets you to see how it works. And you can see that ROI [00:10:00] right away going, oh, okay. That if it catches the bolts when they break, then it doesn’t rattle around.

And then I’ve gotta spend X amount less time fixing, missed out. Or the other thing, like it’s, it, it’s a, it’s a better way of doing it is, uh, what we feel. And like you say, then you get. Being on the showroom floor, it’s in amongst the booths. So people who are on the showroom floor can just sort of look over their shoulder, see that, okay, I really gotta go check out that guy.

Joel Saxum: I like the idea of the format and there’s a couple other things like lessons learned track we talked about a little bit too. But one of the things for me for trade shows is when Alan and I went to ETC in Calgary a few years ago, two years ago I think. Yep. You actually had the. The conversations, the panel conversations, the discussions, the knowledge sharing happening on the showroom floor.

I don’t like going to a conference where I have to go in, like I’m talking with some people, but, oh, I gotta run across this thing across over here, a mile away into some back room to listen to someone talk about something. I like, I like being where the information is [00:11:00] happening and sharing, and I can stand off to the side and listen a bit and, and still engage.

Um, and you guys are doing some more of that too through the lessons learned track. Um, can you explain that a little bit to us? 

Mathieu Cōté: Well, we’ve always had, uh, like a, some split in concurrent sessions and so on. But to your point of not running off to the other end, we’re in a pretty intimate space where we’ve got like a room for lunch and the plenaries, we’ve got a room for the exhibit hall, and then right next to it is any of the, uh, off to the side stuff.

It’s all within a one minute walk of, of itself, which is much better. So we’ve got the concurrent, uh, sessions and. This year we split them instead of into two. We split ’em into three though that then we’ve got one for specific to wind. We’ve got one specific to solar and storage. ’cause we are renewable energy, not just wind.

And then we’ve got one, uh, that’s a bit of a grab bag and it’s a bit of a different format. So instead of your traditional three [00:12:00] panelists plus a moderator, everyone’s got a slide, everyone’s gotta talk, blah, blah, blah. This thing, it, it’s much more focused. You’ve got one person who’s got a real important thing to say, whether it’s, here’s, uh, lessons learned on how our hub fell off and here’s what we learned from it.

Here’s our root cause analysis, or here’s, uh, a much better way of doing, uh, our health and safety program has worked much better for us. Here’s what we gain from it, or whatever happens to be. And then one moderator to ask them some questions, pick apart. So this part, how to, uh, and get a bit of a, a flow there.

So, and it’s much shorter. Instead of an hour long, it’s only a half hour. So then you don’t have to sit through two people. You don’t care about to listen to the one person that you do is the intent of these, uh, lessons learned? I, 

Joel Saxum: I do really like the concept simply because when I go to an event or like, um, putting something together, I want people to be able to go.

Learn something, take it back to their respective [00:13:00] organization, be able to implement it tomorrow. And it sounds like you guys are really moving towards that with the lessons learned, the collaboration and the knowledge sharing. 

Mathieu Cōté: That’s, that’s the intent. And that, and that’s really what it is, is I, I’m, I think I’m a smart guy, but I don’t have all the answers.

So we’re really trying to shine a light on the people who do, and like, here’s a thing that the industry as a whole should learn about. And give them some time to talk about it. And like you say, then you’ll get some of those conversations in the margins and in in between going, yeah, this guy had this thing to say.

We get that sort of dialogue going. That’s, that’s the intent. It’s all about, uh, discussions and learning from each other. 

Joel Saxum: To me, it sounds like even, um, for lack of a, maybe a trip to get some poutine and maybe an American, American should go out there and listen to some of the stuff you guys have to say as well.

Mathieu Cōté: Honestly, it’s, it’s worth it for, uh, Americans to come by and we do have a significant number, proportion of the, the audience comes from the states as well. Because like you say, it’s, it’s worth it and it’s good information and it’s a good [00:14:00] portion of the thing. And it’s really not that far. And I mean, um, not to put it lightly, we do tend to lean a little heavier on some of the more, uh, Canadian elements like weather.

Like we do have a panel this year, um, on the solar side, solar operations and adverse conditions. And that one, um. Because that one came from, uh, I know a guy at, uh, natural Resources Canada, who was part of a working group at the International Energy Agency in their photovoltaic power systems group, where they came up with, uh, a report on operations in all kinds of adverse conditions around the world.

So he’s gonna present that report and we’ll have a panel discussion. The other panelists there, we’ve got, um. Ben Power, the CEO of ves, who is the number one installer of solar in the Yukon, right next to Alaska. So they know a lot about adverse conditions and then, uh, polar racking, they’ve got a lot of experience, uh, with that sort of thing too.

And they’ve got some data that they’re gonna bring to the [00:15:00] panel as well. So it should be a really good discussion about how do we deal with bad things happening in solar specifically. 

Allen Hall: Well, sure. Uh, Canada’s been running assets a lot longer than we have been in the States. In fact, to Joel’s earlier point, we’re repairing.

Disassembling putting new stuff up all the time. Canada has been more focused on keeping existing equipment running in some crazy, harsh conditions. The US is moving that way. You wanna know about ice? We could tell you about ice. Exactly. Like how many times has the US run into trouble with icing on wind turbines and we should have been talking to, or her neighbors through the north, but in a lot of cases, yeah.

The I, I find that the time I went. I learned a whole bunch about Canadian operations, how to think about some of these problems differently. That was the beauty of a attending a Kria event, and I know there’s gonna be a lot of people attending this event. Who is it for in general? Obviously [00:16:00] it’s for operators, but is there some value here for like asset managers?

Some of the engineers, some of the service providers, 

Mathieu Cōté: yeah. That our, our core market, if you want, is your site managers and your technical people, but engineers, 100%, they will learn something. Your asset managers will definitely have some value in it, whether it’s learning about the technology or learning about, uh, the, the latest things coming out or even just.

Best practices from other folks, right? We’ve also got, uh, more and more we’re getting people from the insurance industry getting involved because some of these, uh, lessons learned and so on, is really valuable to them. And we’re even running, um, if, if people are in insurance, we have a special meeting for insurance.

The, the day before where we’ll be having a, a dialogue between the insurance industry and the operators and like, here’s how we deal with this. This is why the prices are that. And, uh, talk about that risk transfer type stuff. There are the odd developer who comes out. Um, but it’s more for the, [00:17:00] like, once it’s in the ground, the technical people, uh, the tooling manufacturers, the service providers, the, all, all of those folks.

Joel Saxum: What about ISPs? Oh, a hundred percent. We know quite a few ISPs up in Canada. Every one of them that I’ve talked to is coming. So ev I’ve had the conversations and like I, you know, we’re, we’re doing some other things in February as well around here, and I was, Hey, what are you guys? Oh, we’re all going to the Candry Ops summit.

We’re going to the Candry Ops summit, so to Toronto and February. Um, bring your warm jacket. I suppose it could be cold. Yeah, the, the ISPs will be there in, in full force. And so I think that. To me, it’s like the, the, the cousin to the A-C-P-O-M-S. We like OMS in the states because that’s where the real discussions happen around operations and maintenance.

Mathieu Cōté: The technical stuff happens. Yeah. And it, I like to say it’s the, the, the younger cousin, if you will, and the maple syrup cousin. 

Allen Hall: Well, I do think though, that when we’re at, uh, o, M and S Joel, that [00:18:00] those discussions are a little bit different than what I see up at Kria. Like Kria is a. Community OMS is, yeah, we, we all know one another and maybe it’s just there’s this, a bigger event or more people, but it, I don’t feel the sort of connection I do when I’m at Kria.

Like I know the people, I understand what’s going on at Kria. That’s what makes it fun that I get to see people that I, I know once in a while, but at the same time there is a huge, massive amount of. Sharing 

Mathieu Cōté: that community that you speak to, that that’s really what we’re trying to, to gather in. And there’s a difference of scale too.

I mean, uh, the OMS is like 3000 people and we’re three to 400. So there, there’s a difference there. But that sort of intimacy leads to a fair bit more of that sharing that you’re talking about and like that Oh yeah, there’s that guy. Oh, there’s Derek from Capstone, or there’s Dan from EDF or there, you know, and then you.

You run into them and then you, you catch [00:19:00] up on all the latest and, um, what’s going on, how are things going? And so on and so on. And there’s time for all of that in the, in the two day show that we have. 

Joel Saxum: Well, I think collaboration in a smaller, like the right size group is, is much easier and flows better.

Right? Once you get to that thousand two, three, 4,000, it’s like, yeah, you’re there, you’re seeing the people, but like it’s just not the same. 

Mathieu Cōté: Et c is somewhere around 3000 people and it, it, it’s got that heft. It’s a different audience as well. Right? The o and m crowd isn’t there as much. It’s not quite as technical, so it it, it’s a speaking to a different group of people.

Allen Hall: Well, Canada is on a growth spurt for renewables. There’s a lot of wind energy 

Mathieu Cōté: headed up towards Quebec. There are procurement’s open right now in Quebec, Nova Scotia, new Brunswick. Uh, Ontario, BC and Manitoba 

Joel Saxum: Plus, what was it? Fi what was it? Five offshore lease areas off of Nova Scotia. 

Mathieu Cōté: Yeah, they’re looking at up to five gigawatts offshore in Nova Scotia.

We don’t have [00:20:00] any yet in Nova in, uh, offshore. And there’s some, they need to figure out what the offtake is and where the transmission goes. Uh, but there’s a lot of people working in the background on MA putting that together. So it’s growing. Oh, a hundred percent. It’s growing and across the board, right.

And the. Wind or solar or storage or all three. And that, that a lot of the, the procurements these days are starting to move in a direction of, uh, sort of a technology agnostic where they say, we need megawatts. We don’t care how you make them. We just want electricity. Well, electricity, uh, but also electricity capacity.

So in the one case we figure wind and solar will do quite well, and in the other we’ll figure the battery storage will do quite well. So no matter what and in the timelines that they’re asking for, we’re looking at if you want it in the next five years, it’s probably gonna be wind and solar because anything else is gonna be a seven plus year timeline to get into the ground.

So [00:21:00] there, there’s a lot. There’s a lot coming. 

Allen Hall: Well, up to 20% of the energy, electricity in Canada nationally is gonna be generated by renewables in less than 10 years. 

Mathieu Cōté: Canada’s split up a lot, remember like, and Quebec is already at 90 plus with their hydro and bc same thing. 

Joel Saxum: And I, and I think that that’s something to be, to be shared as well here is from an o and m standpoint.

The, the varied geographies of Canada and how spread apart it is, there’s specialized knowledge up there to, to, to, you know, till the cow come home. So it’s a great place to go and learn. I would encourage people, hey, if you’re, if you’re in anywhere around Michigan, the Great Lakes Toronto’s a three hour drive.

Go there, do the conference and learn something, 

Mathieu Cōté: and hey, we’re right next to the airport. It’s quick flight. Almost anywhere from North America, right? So Toronto’s easy to get in and 

Allen Hall: out of, and this is gonna be a great event. The Can Operators Summit. It’s February 11th and 12th at the Delta Hotel by [00:22:00] Marriott, Toronto, right at the airport.

So you, you can’t miss it. It’s easy to get in, easy to get out. You’re gonna have a great time. Matt, how do they connect and register for this event? 

Mathieu Cōté: We have a registration link that I’m sure we’ll put somewhere. Um, or come to our website, kenia.ca? 

Allen Hall: Yeah, just Google Can Operator Summit. That’s what I did.

And that takes you right to the registration. Get signed up there. It’s inexpensive in Toronto is a really cool city. February 11th and 12th. At the Delta Hotels by Marriott, right at the airport. The Canary Operator Summer is going to be a lot of fun. Matt, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Really enjoyed having you. Well, thanks for having [00:23:00] me.

Allen, Joel, Rosemary, and Yolanda cover major offshore wind developments on both sides of the Atlantic. In the US, Ørsted’s Revolution Wind won a court victory allowing construction to resume after the Trump administration’s suspension. Meanwhile, the UK awarded contracts for 8.4 gigawatts of new offshore capacity in the largest auction in European history, with RWE securing nearly 7 gigawatts. Plus Canada’s Nova Scotia announces ambitious 40 gigawatt offshore wind plans, and the crew discusses the ongoing Denmark-Greenland tensions with the US administration.

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 Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m Allen Hall, along with Yolanda, Joel and Rosie.

Boy, a lot of action in the US courts. And as you know, for weeks, American offshore wind has been holding its breath and a lot of people’s jobs are at stake right now. The Trump administration suspended, uh, five major projects on December 22nd, and still they’re still citing national security concerns.

Billions of dollars are really in balance here. Construction vessels for most of these. Sites are just doing nothing at the minute, but the courts are stepping in and Sted won a [00:01:00] key victory when the federal judge allowed its revolution wind project off the coast of Rhode Island to resume construction immediately.

So everybody’s excited there and it does sound like Osted is trying to finish that project as fast as they can. And Ecuador and Dominion Energy, which are two of the other bigger projects, are fighting similar battles. Ecuador is supposed to hear in the next couple of days as we’re recording. Uh, but the message is pretty clear from developers.

They have invested too much to walk away, and if they get an opportunity to wrap these projects up quickly. They are going to do it now. Joel, before the show, we were talking about vineyard wind and vineyard. Wind was on hold, and I think it, it may not even be on hold right now, I have to go back and look.

But when they were put on hold, uh, the question was, the turbines that were operating, were they able to continue operating? And the answer initially I thought was no. But it was yes, the, the turbines that were [00:02:00] producing power. We’re allowed to continue to produce powers. What was in the balance were the remaining turbines that were still being installed or, uh, being upgraded.

So there’s, there’s a lot going on right now, but it does seem like, and back to your earlier point, Joel, before we start talking and maybe you can discuss this, we, there is an offshore wind farm called Block Island really closely all these other wind farms, and it’s been there for four or five years at this point.

No one’s said anything about that wind farm. 

Speaker: I think it’s been there, to be honest with you, since like 2016 or 17. It’s been there a long time. Is it that old? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So when we were talk, when we’ve been talking through and it gets lost in the shuffle and it shouldn’t, because that’s really the first offshore wind farm in the United States.

We keep talking about all these big, you know, utility scale massive things, but that is a utility scale wind farm as well. There’s fi, correct me if I’m wrong, Yolanda, is it five turbos or six? It’s five. Their decent sized turbines are sitting on jackets. They’re just, uh, they’re, they’re only a couple miles offshore.

They’re not way offshore. But throughout all of these issues that we’ve had, um, with [00:03:00] these injunctions and stopping construction and stopping this and reviewing permits and all these things, block Island has just been spinning, producing power, uh, for the locals there off the coast of Rhode Island. So we.

What were our, the question was is, okay, all these other wind farms that are partially constructed, have they been spinning? Are they producing power? And my mind goes to this, um, as a risk reduction effort. I wonder if, uh, the cable, if the cable lay timelines were what they were. Right. So would you now, I guess as a risk reduction effort, and this seems really silly to have to think about this.

If you have your offshore substation, was the, was the main export cable connected to some of these like revolution wind where they have the injunction right now? Was that export cable connected and were the inter array cables regularly connected to turbines and them coming online? Do, do, do, do, do. Like, it wasn’t like a COD, we turned the switch and we had to wait for all 62 turbines.

Right. So to our [00:04:00] knowledge and, and, uh, please reach out to any of us on LinkedIn or an email or whatever to our knowledge. The turbines that are in production have still have been spinning. It’s the construction activities that have been stopped, but now. Hey, revolution wind is 90% complete and they’re back out and running, uh, on construction activities as of today.

Speaker 2: It was in the last 48 hours. So this, this is a good sign because I think as the other wind farms go through the courts, they’re gonna essentially run through this, this same judge I that. Tends to happen because they have done all the research already. So you, you likely get the same outcome for all the other wind farms, although they have to go through the process.

You can’t do like a class action, at least that’s doesn’t appear to be in play at the minute. Uh, they’re all gonna have to go through this little bit of a process. But what the judge is saying essentially is the concern from the Department of War, and then the Department of Interior is. [00:05:00] Make believe. I, I don’t wanna frame it.

It’s not framed that way, the way it’s written. There’s a lot more legalistic terms about it. But it basically, they’re saying they tried to stop it before they didn’t get the result they wanted. The Trump administration didn’t get the result they wanted. So the Trump administration ramped it up by saying it was something that was classified in, in part of the Department of War.

The judge isn’t buying it. So the, the, the early action. I think what we initially talked about this, everybody, I think the early feeling was they’re trying to stop it, but the fact that they’re trying to stop it just because, and just start pulling permits is not gonna stand outta the court. And when they want to come back and do it again, they’re not likely to win.

If they would. Kept their ammunition dry and just from the beginning said it’s something classified as something defense related that Trump administration probably would’ve had a better shot at this. But now it just seems like everything’s just gonna lead down the pathway where all these projects get finished.

Speaker: Yeah, I think that specific judge probably was listening to the [00:06:00] Uptime podcast last week for his research. Um, listen to, to our opinions that we talked about here, saying that this is kind of all bs. It’s not gonna fly. Uh, but what we’re sitting at here is like Revolution Wind was, had the injunction against it.

Uh, empire Wind had an injunction again, but they were awaiting a similar ruling. So hopefully that’s actually supposed to go down today. That’s Wednesday. Uh, this is, so we’re recording this on Wednesday. Um, and then Dominion is, has, is suing as well, and their, uh, hearing is on Friday. In two, two days from now.

And I would expect, I mean, it’s the same, same judge, same piece of papers, like it’s going to be the same result. Some numbers to throw at this thing. Now, just so the listeners know the impact of this, uh, dominion for the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project, they say that their pause in construction is costing them $5 million a day, and that is.

That’s a pretty round number. It’s a conservative number to be honest with you. For officer operations, how many vessels and how much stuff is out there? That makes sense. Yep. [00:07:00] 5 million. So $5 million a day. And that’s one of the wind farms. Uh, coastal, Virginia Wind Farm is an $11 billion project. With, uh, it’s like 176 turbines.

I think something to that, like it’s, it’s got enough power, it’s gonna have enough production out there to power up, like, uh, like 650,000 homes when it’s done. So there’s five projects suspended right now. I’m continuing with the numbers. Um, well, five, there’s four now. Revolution’s back running, right? So five and there’s four.

Uh, four still stopped. And of those five is 28. Billion dollars in combined capital at risk, right? So you can understand why some of these companies are worried, right? They’re this is, this is not peanuts. Um, so you saw a little bump in like Ted stock in the markets when this, this, uh, revolution wind, uh, injunction was stopped.

Uh, but. You also see that, uh, Moody’s is a credit [00:08:00] rating. They’ve lowered ORs, Ted’s um, rating from stable to negative, given that political risk. 

Speaker 2: Well, if you haven’t been paying attention, wind energy O and m Australia 2026 is happening relatively soon. It’s gonna be February 17th and 18th. It’s gonna be at the Pullman Hotel downtown Melbourne.

And we are all looking forward to it. The, the roster and the agenda is, is nearly assembled at this point. Uh, we have a, a couple of last minute speakers, but uh, I’m looking at the agenda and like, wow, if you work in o and m or even are around wind turbines, this is the place to be in February. From my 

Speaker: seat.

It’s pretty, it’s, it’s, it’s shaping up for pretty fun. My phone has just been inundated with text message and WhatsApp of when are you traveling? What are your dates looking forward to, and I wanna say this right, Rosie. Looking forward to Melvin. Did I get it? Did I do it okay. 

Speaker 3: You know how to say it. 

Speaker: So, so we’re, we’re really looking forward to, we’ve got a bunch of people traveling from around the [00:09:00] world, uh, to come and share their collective knowledge, uh, and learn from the Australians about how they’re doing things, what the, what the risks are, what the problems are, uh, really looking forward to the environment down there, like we had last year was very.

Collaborative, the conversations are flowing. Um, so we’re looking forward to it, uh, in a big way from our seats. Over here, 

Speaker 2: we are announcing a lightning workshop, and that workshop will be answering all your lightning questions in regards to your turbines Now. Typically when we do this, it’s about $10,000 per seat, and this will be free as part of WMA 2026.

We’re gonna talk about some of the lightning physics, what’s actually happening in the field versus what the OEMs are saying and what the IEC specification indicates. And the big one is force majeure. A lot of operators are paying for damages that are well within the IEC specification, and we’ll explain.[00:10:00]

What that is all about and what you can do to save yourself literally millions of dollars. But that is only possible if you go to Woma 2020 six.com and register today because we’re running outta seats. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. But this is a great opportunity to get your lightning questions answered.

And Rosemary promised me that we’re gonna talk about Vestus turbines. Siemens turbines. GE Renova turbines. Nordex turbines. So if you have Nordex turbines, Sulan turbines, bring the turbine. Type, we’ll talk about it. We’ll get your questions answered, and the goal is that everybody at at Wilma 2026 is gonna go home and save themselves millions of dollars in 26 and millions of dollars in 27 and all the years after, because this Lightning workshop is going to take care of those really frustrating lightning questions that just don’t get answered.

We’re gonna do it right there. Sign up today. 

Speaker 3: [00:11:00] You know what, I’m really looking forward to that session and especially ’cause I’ve got a couple of new staff or new-ish staff at, it’s a great way to get them up to speed on lightning. And I think that actually like the majority of people, even if you are struggling with lightning problems every day, I bet that there is a whole bunch that you could learn about the underlying physics of lightning.

And there’s not so many places to find that in the world. I have looked, um, for my staff training, where is the course that I can send them to, to understand all about lightning? I know when I started atm, I had a, an intro session, one-on-one with the, you know, chief Lightning guy there. That’s not so easy to come by, and this is the opportunity where you can get that and better because it’s information about every, every OEM and a bit of a better understanding about how it works so that you can, you know, one of the things that I find working with Lightning is a lot of force MA mature claims.

And then, um, the OEMs, they try and bamboozle you with this like scientific sounding talk. If you understand better, then you’ll be able to do better in those discussions. [00:12:00] So I would highly recommend attending if you can swing the Monday as well. 

Speaker: If you wanna attend now and you’re coming to the events.

Reach out to, you can reach out to me directly because what we want to do now is collect, uh, as much information as possible about the specific turbine types of the, that the people in the room are gonna be responsible for. So we can tailor those messages, um, to help you out directly. So feel free to reach out to me, joel.saxo, SAXU [email protected] and uh, we’ll be squared away and ready to roll on Monday.

I think that’s Monday the 16th. 

Speaker 2: So while American offshore wind fights for survival in the courts, British offshore wind just had its biggest day ever. The United Kingdom awarded contracts for 8.4 gigawatts. That’s right. 8.4 gigawatts of new offshore wind capacity, the largest auction in European history.

Holy smokes guys. The price came in at about 91 pounds per megawatt hour, and that’s 2024 pounds. [00:13:00] Uh, and that’s roughly 40% cheaper than building a new. Gas plant Energy Secretary Ed Milliband called it a monumental step towards the country’s 2030 clean power goals and that it is, uh, critics say that prices are still higher than previous auctions, and one that the government faces challenges connecting all this new capacity to the grid, and they do, uh, transmission is a limiting factor here, but in terms of where the UK is headed.

Putting in gigawatts of offshore wind is going to disconnect them from a lot of need on the gas supply and other energy sources. It’s a massive auction round. This was way above what I remember being, uh. Talked about when we were in Scotland just a couple of weeks ago, Joel. 

Speaker: Yeah, that’s what I was gonna say.

You know, when we were, when we were up with the, or E Catapult event, and we talked to a lot of the different organizations of their OWGP and um, you know, the course, the or e Catapult folks and, and, and a [00:14:00] few others, they were really excited about AR seven. They were like, oh, we’re, we’re so excited. It’s gonna come down, it’s gonna be great.

I didn’t expect these kind of numbers to come out of this thing. Right? ’cause we know that, um, they’ve got about, uh, the UK currently has about. 16 and a half or so gigawatts of offshore wind capacity, um, with, you know, they got a bunch under construction, it’s like 11 under construction, but their goal is to have 43 gigawatts by 2030.

So, 

Speaker 2: man. 

Speaker: Yeah. And, and when 2030, put this into Conte Con context now. This is one of our first podcasts of the new year. That’s only four years away. Right. It’s soon. And, and to, to be able to do that. So you’re saying they got 16, they go some round numbers. They got 16 now. Pro producing 11 in the pipe, 11 being constructed.

So get that to 27. That’s another 16 gigawatts of wind. They want, they that are not under construction today that they want to have completed in the next four years. That is a monumental effort now. We know that there’s some grid grid complications and connection [00:15:00] requirements and things that will slow that down, but just thinking about remove the grid idea, just thinking about the amount of effort to get those kind of large capital projects done in that short of timeline.

Kudos to the UK ’cause they’re unlocking a lot of, um, a lot of private investment, a lot of effort to get these things, but they’re literally doing the inverse of what we’re doing in the United States right now. 

Speaker 2: There would be about a total of 550, 615 ish megawatt turbines in the water. That does seem doable though.

The big question is who’s gonna be providing those turbines? That’s a. Massive order. Whoever the salesperson is involved in that transaction is gonna be very happy. Well, the interesting thing here 

Speaker: too is the global context of assets to be able to deliver this. We just got done talking about the troubles at these wind farms in the United States.

As soon as these. Wind farms are finished. There’s not more of them coming to construction phase shortly, right? So all of these assets, all these jack up vessels, these installation vessels, these specialized cable lay vessels, they [00:16:00]can, they can fuel up and freaking head right across, back across the Atlantic and start working on these things.

If the pre all of the engineering and, and the turbine deliveries are ready to roll the vessels, uh, ’cause that you, that, you know, two years ago that was a problem. We were all. Forecasting. Oh, we have this forecasted problem of a shortage of vessels and assets to be able to do installs. And now with the US kind of, basically, once we’re done with the wind farms, we’re working on offshore, now we’re shutting it down.

It frees those back up, right? So the vessels will be there, be ready to roll. You’ll have people coming off of construction projects that know what’s going on, right? That, that know how to, to work these things. So the, the people, the vessels that will be ready to roll it is just, can we get the cables, the mono piles, the turbines and the cells, the blades, all done in time, uh, to make this happen And, and.

I know I’m rambling now, but after leaving that or e Catapult event and talking to some of the people, um, that are supporting those [00:17:00] funds over there, uh, being injected from the, uh, the government, I think that they’ve got 

Speaker 2: the, the money flowing over there to get it done too. The big winner in the auction round was RWE and they.

Almost seven gigawatts. So that was a larger share of the 8.4 gigawatts. RWE obviously has a relationship with Vestus. Is that where this is gonna go? They’re gonna be, uh, installing vestus turbines. And where were those tur turbines? As I was informed by Scottish gentlemen, I won’t name names. Uh, will those turbines be built in the uk?

Speaker 3: It’s a lot. It’s a, it’s one of the biggest challenges with, um, the supply chain for wind energy is that it just is so lumpy. So, you know, you get, um, uh. You get huge eight gigawatts all at once and then you have years of, you know, just not much. Not much, not much going on. I mean, for sure they’re not gonna be just building [00:18:00] eight gigawatts worth of, um, wind turbines in the UK in the next couple of years because they would also have to build the capacity to manufacture that and, and then would wanna be building cocks every couple of years for, you know, the next 10 or 20 years.

So, yeah, of course they’re gonna be manufacturing. At facilities around the world and, and transporting them. But, um, yeah, I just, I don’t know. It’s one of the things that I just. Constantly shake my head about is like, how come, especially when projects are government supported, when plans are government supported, why, why can’t we do a better job of smoothing things out so that you can have, you know, for example, local manufacturing because everyone knows that they’ve got a secure pipeline.

It’s just when the government’s involved, it should be possible. 

Speaker 2: At least the UK has been putting forth some. Pretty big numbers to support a local supply chain. When we were over in Scotland, they announced 300 million pounds, and that was just one of several. That’s gonna happen over the next year. There will be a [00:19:00] near a billion pounds be put into the supply chain, which will make a dramatic difference.

But I think you’re right. Also, it’s, they’re gonna ramp up and then they, it’s gonna ramp down. They have to find a way to feed the global marketplace at some point, be because the technology and the people are there. It’s a question of. How do you sustain it for a 20, 30 year period? That’s a different question.

Speaker 3: I do agree that the UK is doing a better job than probably anybody else. Um, it it’s just that they, the way that they have chosen to organize these auctions and the government support and the planning just means that they have that, that this is the perfect conditions to, you know. Make a smooth rollout and you know, take care of all this.

And so I just a bit frustrated that they’re not doing more. But you are right that they’re doing the best probably 

Speaker 4: once all of these are in service though, aren’t there quite a bit of aftermarket products that are available in the UK 

Speaker: on the service then? I think there’s more. 

Speaker 4: Which, I mean, that’s good. A good part of it, right?

Speaker: If we’re talking Vestas, so, so let’s just round this [00:20:00] up too. If we’re talking vest’s production for blades in Europe, you have two facilities in Denmark that build V 2 36 blades. You have one facility in Italy that builds V 2 36 blades, Taiwan, but they build them for the APAC market. Of course. Um, Poland had a, has one on hold right now, V 2 36 as well.

Well, they just bought that factory from LM up in Poland also. That’s, but I think that’s for onshore term, onshore blades. Oh, yes, sure. And then Scotland has, they have the proposed facility in, in Laith. That there, that’s kind of on hold as well. So if that one’s proposed, I’m sure, hey, if we get a big order, they’ll spin that up quick because they’ll get, I am, I would imagine someone o you know, one of the, one of the funds to spool up a little bit of money, boom, boom, boom.

’cause they’re turning into local jobs. Local supply 

Speaker 2: chain does this then create the condition where a lot of wind turbines, like when we were in Scotland, a lot of those wind turbines are. Gonna reach 20 years old, maybe a little bit older here over the next five years where they will [00:21:00] need to be repowered upgraded, whatever’s gonna happen there.

If you had internal manufacturing. In country that would, you’d think lower the price to go do that. That will be a big effort just like it is in Spain right now. 

Speaker: The trouble there though too, is if you’re using local content in, in the uk, the labor prices are so much 

Speaker 2: higher. I’m gonna go back to Rosie’s point about sort of the way energy is sold worldwide.

UK has high energy prices, mostly because they are buying energy from other countries and it’s expensive to get it in country. So yes, they can have higher labor prices and still be lower cost compared to the alternatives. It, it’s not the same equation in the US versus uk. It’s, it’s totally different economics, but.

If they get enough power generation, which I think the UK will, they’re gonna offload that and they’re already doing it now. So you can send power to France, send power up [00:22:00] north. There’s ways to sell that extra power and help pay for the system you built. That would make a a lot of sense. It’s very similar to what the Saudis have done for.

Dang near 80 years, which is fill tankers full of oil and sell it. This is a little bit different that we’re just sending electrons through the water to adjacent European countries. It does seem like a plan. I hope they’re sending ’em through a cable in the water and not just into the water. Well, here’s the thing that was concerning early on.

They’re gonna turn it into hydrogen and put it on a ship and send it over to France. Like that didn’t make any sense at all. Uh. Cable’s on the way to do it. Right. 

Speaker: And actually, Alan, you and I did have a conversation with someone not too long ago about that triage market and how the project where they put that, that that trans, that HVDC cable next to the tunnel it, and it made and it like paid for itself in a year or something.

Was that like, that they didn’t wanna really tell us like, yeah, it paid for itself in a year. Like it was a, the ROI was like on a, like a $500 million [00:23:00]project or something. That’s crazy. Um, but yeah, that’s the same. That’s, that is, I would say part of the big push in the uk there is, uh, then they can triage that power and send it, send it back across.

Um, like I think Nord Link is the, the cable between Peterhead and Norway, right? So you have, you have a triage market going across to the Scandinavian countries. You have the triage market going to mainland eu. Um, and in when they have big time wind, they’re gonna be able to do it. So when you have an RWE.

Looking at seven gigawatts of, uh, possibility that they just, uh, just procured. Game on. I love it. I think it’s gonna be cool. I’m, I’m happy to see it blow 

Speaker 2: up. Canada is getting serious about offshore wind and international developers are paying attention. Q Energy, France and its South Korean partner. Hawa Ocean have submitted applications to develop wind projects off Nova Scotia’s Coast.

The province has big ambitions. Premier, Tim Houston wants to license enough. Offshore [00:24:00] wind to produce 40 gigawatts of power far more than Nova Scotia would ever need. Uh, the extra electricity could supply more than a quarter of Canada’s total demand. If all goes according to plan, the first turbines could be spinning by 2035.

Now, Joel. Yeah, some of this power will go to Canada, but there’s a huge market in the United States also for this power and the capacity factor up in Nova Scotia offshore is really good. Yeah. It’s uh, it 

Speaker: is simply, it’s stellar, right? Uh, that whole No, Nova Scotia, new Brunswick, Newfoundland, that whole e even Maritimes of Canada.

The wind, the wind never stops blowing, right? Like I, I go up there every once in a while ’cause my wife is from up there and, uh, it’s miserable sometimes even in the middle of summer. Um, so the, the wind resource is fantastic. The, it, it is a boom or will be a boom for the Canadian market, right? There’re always [00:25:00] that maritime community, they’re always looking for, for, uh, new jobs.

New jobs, new jobs. And this is gonna bring them to them. Um, one thing I wanna flag here is when I know this, when this announcement came out. And I reached out to Tim Houston’s office to try to get him on the podcast, and I haven’t gotten a response yet. Nova Scotia. So if someone that’s listening can get ahold of Tim Houston, we’d love to talk to him about the plans for Nova Scotia.

Um, but, but we see that just like we see over overseas, the triage market of we’re making power, we can sell it. You know, we balance out the prices, we can sell it to other places. From our seats here we’ve been talking about. The electricity demand on the east coast of the United States for, for years and how it is just climbing, climbing, climbing, especially AI data centers.

Virginia is a hub of this, right? They need power and we’re shooting ourselves in the foot, foot for offshore wind, plus also canceling pipelines and like there’s no extra generation going on there except for some solar plants where you can squeeze ’em in down in the Carolinas and whatnot. [00:26:00] There is a massive play here for the Canadians to be able to HVD see some power down to us.

Speaker 2: The offshore conditions off the coast of Nova Scotia are pretty rough, and the capacity factor being so high makes me think of some of the Brazilian wind farms where the capacity factor is over 50%. It’s amazing down there, but one of the outcomes of that has been early turbine problems. And I’m wondering if the Nova Scotia market is going to demand a different kind of turbine that is specifically built for those conditions.

It’s cold, really cold. It’s really windy. There’s a lot of moisture in the air, right? So the salt is gonna be bad. Uh, and then the sea life too, right? There’s a lot of, uh, sea life off the coast of the Nova Scotia, which everybody’s gonna be concerned about. Obviously, as this gets rolling. How do we think about this?

And who’s gonna be the manufacturer of turbines for Canada? Is it gonna be Nordics? Well, 

Speaker: let’s start from the ground up there. So from the or ground up, it’s, how about sea [00:27:00] floor up? Let’s start from there. There is a lot of really, really, if you’ve ever worked in the offshore world, the o offshore, maritime Canadian universities that focus on the, on offshore construction, they produce some of the best engineers for those markets, right?

So if you go down to Houston, Texas where there’s offshore oil and gas companies and engineering companies everywhere, you run into Canadians from the Maritimes all over the place ’cause they’re really good at what they do. Um, they are developing or they have developed offshore oil and gas platforms.

Off of the coast of Newfoundland and up, up in that area. And there’s some crazy stuff you have to compete with, right? So you have icebergs up there. There’s no icebergs in the North Atlantic that like, you know, horn seats, internet cruising through horn C3 with icebergs. So they’ve, they’ve engineered and created foundations and things that can deal with that, those situations up there.

But you also have to remember that you’re in the Canadian Shield, which is, um, the Canadian Shield is a geotechnical formation, right? So it’s very rocky. Um, and it’s not [00:28:00] like, uh, the other places where we’re putting fixed bottom wind in where you just pound the piles into the sand. That’s not how it’s going to go, uh, up in Canada there.

So there’s some different engineering that’s going to have to take place for the foundations, but like you said, Alan Turbine specific. It blows up there. Right. And we have seen onshore, even in the United States, when you get to areas that have high capacity burning out main bearings, burning out generators prematurely because the capacity factor is so high and those turbines are just churning.

Um, I, I don’t know if any of the offshore wind turbine manufacturers are adjusting any designs specifically for any markets. I, I just don’t know that. Um, but they may run into some. Some tough stuff up there, right? You might run into some, some overspeeding main bearings and some maintenance issues, specifically in the wintertime ’cause it is nasty up there.

Speaker 2: Well, if you have 40 gigawatts of capacity, you have several thousand turbines, you wanna make sure really [00:29:00] sure that the blade design is right, that the gearbox is right if you have a gearbox, and that everything is essentially over-designed, heated. You can have deicing systems on it, I would assume that would be something you would be thinking about.

You do the same thing for the monopoles. The whole assembly’s gotta be, have a, just a different thought process than a turbine. You would stick off the coast of Germany. Still rough conditions at times, but not like Nova Scotia. 

Speaker: One, one other thing there to think about too that we haven’t dealt with, um.

In such extreme levels is the, the off the coast of No. Nova Scotia is the Bay of Fundee. If you know anything about the Bay of Fundee, it is the highest tide swings in the world. So the tide swings at certain times of the year, can be upwards of 10 meters in a 12 hour period in this area of, of the ocean.

And that comes with it. Different time, different types of, um, one of the difficult things for tide swings is it creates subsid currents. [00:30:00] Subsid currents are, are really, really, really bad, nasty. Against rocks and for any kind of cable lay activities and longevity of cable lay scour protection around turbines and stuff like that.

So that’s another thing that subsea that we really haven’t spoke about. 

Speaker 3: You know, I knew when you say Bay Bay of funding, I’m like, I know that I have heard that place before and it’s when I was researching for. Tidal power videos for Tidal Stream. It’s like the best place to, to generate electricity from.

Yeah, from Tidal Stream. So I guess if you are gonna be whacking wind turbines in there anyway, maybe you can share some infrastructure and Yeah. Eca a little bit, a little bit more from your, your project. 

Speaker 2: 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. Just reach out to us on LinkedIn and don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

And if you found value in today’s conversation, please leave us a review. It really helps other wind energy professionals discover the show For Rosie, Yolanda and Joel, I’m Alan Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime [00:36:00] Wind Energy Podcast.

Allen covers court victories allowing Empire Wind and Revolution Wind construction to resume, while Vineyard Wind joins the legal fight. In the UK, EnBW walks away from Mona and Morgan with a $1.4B write-off, even as KKR and RWE announce a $15B partnership for Norfolk Vanguard. Plus Ørsted’s leaked “Project Dragon” reveals the offshore giant is considering Chinese turbines, and Fortescue breaks ground on Australia’s Nullagine Wind Project using Nabrawind’s self-erecting tower technology.

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!

Last week I told you about Equinor’s ultimatum. Resume construction by January sixteenth… or cancel Empire Wind forever. Well… the courts have spoken.

Last Thursday, Judge Carl Nichols issued his ruling. Empire Wind can resume construction. The harm from stopping, he said, outweighs the government’s concerns. One day earlier, Ørsted won the same relief for Revolution Wind. And now Vineyard Wind has joined the fight in Massachusetts. Three projects. Three courtrooms. Two victories and one victory yet to come.

Meanwhile in Britain… a different kind of drama. German utility EnBW announced Thursday it is walking away from two major UK projects. Mona and Morgan. Three gigawatts of potential capacity. The cost of leaving? One point four billion dollars in write-offs. Eight hundred forty million pounds already paid… gone. Rising costs. Lower electricity prices. Higher interest rates. Their partner, Jera Nex BP, says they still see good pathways forward. But EnBW has had enough.

Yet in the very same week… Investment giant KKR and German utility RWE announced a fifteen billion dollar partnership. Norfolk Vanguard East and West. Three gigawatts. One hundred eighty-four turbines. Power for three million British homes. Big winners and losers. In the same market. In the same week.

Danish media outlet Berlingske obtained a confidential report from Ørsted’s procurement department. The world’s largest offshore wind developer… is exploring whether to buy turbines from China. They call it Project Dragon. The plan covers twenty-twenty-six through twenty-twenty-eight. CEO Rasmus Errboe told reporters they continuously evaluate all technologies and suppliers. Quality. Technical capabilities. Commercial conditions. He did not deny the report. For years, European developers have resisted Chinese turbines. Fear of losing their industry to China… just like they lost solar manufacturing a decade ago. But Ørsted is under pressure.

In Australia, Fortescue has broken ground on its first wind project in the Pilbara. The Nullagine Wind Project. One hundred thirty-three megawatts. Seventeen turbines. But here is what makes it special. Nabrawind’s self-erecting tower technology. Hub height of one hundred eighty-eight meters. A new global benchmark for onshore wind. No giant cranes required. Fortescue plans two to three gigawatts of renewable energy across the Pilbara by twenty-thirty. Wind. Solar. Batteries. To power their mining trucks. Their drills. Their processing plants.

Last week we talked about Equinor’s deadline. About Ørsted losing one and a half million euros every single day. About billions in limbo. This week… the courts stepped in. Empire Wind resumes. Revolution Wind continues. Vineyard Wind fights on. All while the North Sea quietly crossed a milestone. One hundred one operational wind farms. Thirty gigawatts of clean power. More than any body of water on Earth. Some companies are walking away. Others are doubling down with fifteen billion dollar bets. The wind industry is evolving very quickly.

And that’s the state of the wind industry for the 19th of January 2026. Join us tomorrow for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.