The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

• Morten Handberg Decodes Blade Damage Categories

  Morten Handberg, Principal Consultant at Wind Power LAB, returns to discuss blade damage categorization. From transverse cracks and leading edge erosion to carbon spar cap repairs, he explains what severity levels really mean for operators and why the industry still lacks a universal standard. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update 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 Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ 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. Morten, welcome back to the program. Thanks, Allen. It’s fantastic to be back again. Boy, we have a lot to discuss and today we’re gonna focus on categorization of damage, which is a super hot topic across the industry. What does a cat five mean? What does a category three mean? What does a category 5.9 I’ve I’ve seen that more recently. Why do these defect categories matter? Morten Handberg: Well, it matters a lot because it really tells you as, uh, either an OEM or as an operator, how should you respond to your current blade issue. So you need to have some kind of categorization about what the defect type is and what the severity is. The severity will tell you something about the repairability and [00:01:00] also something about the part of the blade that is affected. The type of the defect tells you something about what is the origin From an operational point of view, it doesn’t make as much sense in a way because you really just wanna know, can this be repaired or not? You know? And you know, what does it need to repair? That’s what you need, what you really need to focus on as an operator, whether it’s then del elimination, erosion, peeling. Uh, transverse cracks, it’ll all come down to repairs. It does matter for you because it will tell you an underlying, you know, are there reason why I’m keep seeing all these damages? So that’s why you need to know the category as well. But purely operational. You just need to know what is the severity side know, what does it take to repair it? Allen Hall: So as the operator, a lot of times they’re getting information from different service providers or even the OEM. They’re getting multiple inputs on what a damage is in terms of a category. Are we getting a lot of conflicting information about this? Because the complaint from [00:02:00] I hear from operators is the OE EMM says this is a category four. The ISP says is a category five. Who am I to believe right Morten Handberg: now? Well, there is a lot of, a bit different opinions of that. It almost becomes a religious issue question at some point, but it, it really dives down to that, you know, there is no real standardization in the wind industry. And we’ve been discussing this, uh, I wanna say decades, probably not that much, but at least for the past 11 years I’ve been, been hearing this discussion come up. Uh, so it’s, it’s something this was just been struggling with, but it also comes down to that. Each OEM have their own origin. Uh, so that also means that they have trended something from aeronautics, from ship building industry, from, you know, uh, from, from some other composite related industry, or maybe not even composite related. And that means that they are building their own, uh, their own truth about what the different defects are. There is a lot of correlation between them, but there is still a lot of, lot of tweaks [00:03:00] and definitions in between and different nomenclature. That does add a a lot of confusion. Allen Hall: Okay, Morten Handberg: so Allen Hall: that explains, I mean, because there isn’t an industry standard at the moment. There is talk of an industry standard, but it does seem like from watching from the outside, that Europe generally has one, or operators specifically have one. Uh, EPRI’s been working on one for a little while. Maybe the IEC is working on one, but there isn’t like a universal standard today. Morten Handberg: There is not a universal standard. I mean, a lot of, a lot of OEMs or service providers will, will, will claim that they have the standard, they have the definition in wind power lab. We have our own. That we have derived from the industry and in, in general. But there is not an, uh, an industry agreed standard that everyone adheres to. That much is true. You could say in Europe, a lot of owners have come together, uh, in the Blade Forum, and they have derived, there’s a standard within that. Um, uh, and with a lot of success, they’d written, the [00:04:00] Blade Hamburg I think was very helpful because it was operator driven, um, approach. Allen Hall: So there is a difference then between defects that are significant and maybe even classified as critical and other defects that may be in the same location on the blade. How are those determined? Morten Handberg: The way that I’ve always approached is that I will look at firstly what kind of blades type it is. So how is it structured? Where are the load carrying elements of the blade? That’s very important because you can’t really say on a business V 90 and a Siemens, uh, 3.6 that the defect in the same position will mean the same thing. That’s just not true because they are structured in very different ways. So you really need to look at the plate type just to start with. Then you need to look at, is it in a. In a loaded part of the blade, meaning is it over the, the load carrying part, um, uh, laminates? Is it in a, in a shell area? And you know, what is the approximate distance from the roof? Is that, that also tells you something [00:05:00] about the general loads in the area. So you know, you need to take that into consideration. Then you also need to look at how much of the blade is actually affected. Is it just surface layers? Is it just coating or is it something that goes, uh, through the entire laminate stack? And if that is on the, on the beam laminate, you’re in serious trouble. Then it will be a category five. If the beam laminate is vectored. And if you’re lucky enough that your blade is still sitting on the turbine, you should stop it, uh, to avoid a complete BA bait collapse. Uh, so, so you need, so, so that, you know, you can, that, that is very important when you’re doing defect categorizations. So that means that you need Allen Hall: internal inspections on top of external Morten Handberg: inspections. If you see something, uh, that is potentially critical, then yeah, you should do an internal inspection as well to verify whether it’s going through, um, the entire lemonade stack or not. That that’s a, that’s a good, good, good approach. Um, I would say often, you know, if you see something that is potentially critical, uh, but there is still a possibility that could be repaired. Then I might even also just send up a repair [00:06:00] team, uh, to see, you know, look from the outside how much of the area is actually affected, because that can also pretty quickly give you an indication, do we need to take this blade down or not? Sometimes you’ll just see it flat out that, okay, this crack is X meters long, it’s over sensitive area of the blade. You know, we need to remove this blade. Uh, maybe when, once it’s down we can determine whether it’s repairable or not, but. We, but it’s not something that’s going to be fixed up tower, so there’s not a lot of need for doing a lot of added, um, add added inspections to verify this, this point. Allen Hall: Let’s talk about cracks for a moment, because I’ve seen a lot of cracks over the last year on blades and some of them to me look scary because they, they are going transverse and then they take a 90 degree and start moving a different direction. Is there a, a rule of thumb about cracks that are visual on the outside of the blade? Like if it’s how, if they’re [00:07:00] closer to the root they’re more critical than they’re, if they’re happening further outers or is there not a rule of thumb? You have to understand what the design of the blade is. Morten Handberg: Well, I mean the general rule of thumb is transfers cracks is a major issue that’s really bad. That’s, uh, you know, it’s a clear sign, something. Severely structural is going on because the transverse crack does not develop or develop on its own. And more likely not once it starts, you know, then the, uh, the, the strain boundaries on the sides of the cr of the crack means that it requires very little for it to progress. So even if in a relatively low loaded area with low strain, once you have a, a transverse crack, uh, present there, then it will continue. Uh, and you mentioned that it’s good during a 90 degree. That’s just because it’s doing, it’s, it’s taking the least path of the path of least resistance, because it’ll have got caught through the entire shell. Then when it reaches the beam, the beam is healthy. It’s very stiff, very rigid laminate. So it’s easier for it to go longitudinal towards the [00:08:00] root because that’s, that, that, that’s how it can progress. That’s where it has the, uh, you know, the, the, the strain, uh, um, the, the strain high, high enough strain that it can actually, uh, develop. That that’s what it would do. So transverse cracks in general is really bad. Of course, closer to root means it’s more critical. Um, if there is a crack transverse crack, uh, very far out in the tip, I would usually say, you know, in the tip area, five, 10 meter from the tip, I would say, okay, there’s something else going on. Something non load related. Probably causes, could be a lightning strike, could be an impact damage. That changed the calculation a little bit because then, you know, it’s not a load driven issue. So that might give you some time to, you know, that you can operate with something at least. But again, I, I don’t want to make any general rules that people then didn’t go out and say, well, I did that, so, and, but my blade still broke. That’s not really how it works. You need to really, you need to, to, uh, look at cracks like that individually. You can’t make a a common rule. Allen Hall: Another [00:09:00] area, which is under discussion across the industry are surface defects and there are a variety of surface defects. We’re seeing a lot of hail damage this year. Uh, that’s getting categorized as lightning damage. And so there’s obviously a different kind of repair going on. Hail versus lightning. Are there some standards regarding surface defects? Uh, the visuals on them? Is there a guideline about Morten Handberg: it? Well, I mean, uh, some of the, uh, some of the, how do you say, omic couture, some of the, uh, some of the standards, they do provide some guideline to determine which surface kind of surface defect it is, you could say, on the operational points, as long as it’s surface related. Then the repair methodology is the same, whether it’s peeling, erosion, voids, chipping scratches, the repair is the same. So that in principle does not change anything. But in the reason why it matters is because we need to understand the [00:10:00] underlying issue. So if you have lot of peeling, for instance, it means you have a very low quoting quality, and that is something that is either post post repair related or it’s manufacturing related, depending on the blade, on the age of your blade. So that’s very important for you to know because if you have peeling somewhere, then more likely than not, you’ll also have have issues with it elsewhere because, you know, tend to, they tend to follow each other, you know, coding quality issues. So that’s a good thing to know for you as an operator that you, this is just one of many, erosion is important, but often gets miscategorized because erosion is a leading edge issue. Um, so we only see it on the, on the very edge of the leading edge. So approximately 40 millimeter band. That’s typically what we see, and it’s straight on the leading edge. So if someone’s claiming that they see lead, leading edge erosion on the, on the pressure side, shell or ide, shell, it’s miscategorizing because that’s what you, that’s not why they have to have the ring. Uh, impacts ring can still, still [00:11:00] hit the shells, but when it hits the, the, the shell areas, it will ricochet because it hits it at an angle. Leading edge gets straight on. So it gets the entire impact force and that’s why you get the erosion issue because of, of fatigue essentially. Uh, coding fatigue. So that’s very important. There is something that you know you can really utilize if you just know that simple fact that it’s always a leading edge, it’s always uniform. It, you can track that. And if you have leading edge erosion in one area, you will have it in the entire wind farm. So you don’t need to do that much inspection to determine your erosion levels, voids, pinholes. They are manufacturing driven because they are driven by either imperfections in the coating, meaning you have a sand, grain dust, or you had, uh, air inclusions underneath your coating. And they will weaken the structure. And that means that, um, rain effect or other effects causing strain on your coating will accelerate a lot faster. So they will develop and create these small, um, yeah, uh, how do you [00:12:00] say, small defined holes in your coating. So that’s why it’s important to know. But if you’re running a wind farm 15 years, 10 years down the line. Then it’s more important for you to know that it’s a surface defect and you need to fix it by doing coating repair. You don’t need to think so much about the, the underlying issue, I would say. Allen Hall: Okay. I think that’s been miscategorized a number of times. I’ve seen what I would consider to be some sort of paint adhesion issue because it’s sort of mid cord and not near the leading edge, but sometimes it just looks like there’s massive peeling going on and maybe, uh, it’s easy to assume that maybe is erosion. It’s just a weak adhesion of paint. That that’s what you’re saying? Morten Handberg: Yeah. If it’s, if it’s midspan, if it’s shell related, then it’s, it’s a, it’s a coating quality related issue. It doesn’t really have anything to do with erosion. Um, you could say erosion. We can, we can, we can, uh, we can look at in, in, in two areas. So you have the out or third of the leading edge. [00:13:00] That’s where you would have the theoretical leading edge erosion breakdown, because that’s where you have rain impact high enough that it will cause some kind of degradation, but that all of your leading edge will suffer in the same way because the tip speed of the outer four meters of your blade. Versus the re the other, you know, uh, 10, 12 meters depending on length of your blade. Sometimes it’s a lot longer, but they are getting degraded in a much different way. So the out of pew meters, they can get what’s called structural erosion. So that means that the erosion goes fast enough and it’s progressive enough that you can start to damage the laminate underneath. You won’t see that further in because the, the impact is just not that great and you will likely not see structural erosion over the lifetime, but the out a few meters, that’s important. And that’s where you need, need to focus your, that that’s where you need to pay attention on what kind of materials you add because that can save you a lot of repair, re, re repair. And, uh, down the line, how do you categorize Allen Hall: leading edge erosion? A lot of [00:14:00] times I see it, uh, from operators. Let’s say it’s, uh, category four because it’s into the fiber. But is it always a structural issue? Is there a lot of loading on the leading edges of these blades where you would have to come back with structural applies to repair it? Or is it just a aerodynamic shape and does it really depend upon who the OE Em is? Morten Handberg: Well, I mean, I’ve seen erosion category five as well, and I think it’s a mis misinterpretation. I think it’s, you know, people are trying it to raise awareness that, hey, there was a serious issue with erosion, but it’s a wrong way to use the severities. Because if we look at severity five, severity five, if you have a critical issue, your blade is about to come down if you don’t do anything. So category five means you need to stop your turbine. Maybe you can repair it, but that really depends on the, uh, on what is damaged by, on, on, on the blade. And you can determine that once you removed it and looked at it on, on, on the ground. But you need to stop. Category four is a severe structural damage. It’s not something that [00:15:00] is causing an immediate threat, but it’s something that will progress rapidly if you don’t do anything. So here you need to look at the damage itself. So how does it affect the structure and can you operate it curtailed, uh, or can you operate it, uh, or can you operate normally and repair it within a short time window? That’s what you can use because it’s something that is. Uh, that can, that can develop into an, into an imminent issue if you don’t react to it. Severity three is more for your, is more your annual maintenance schedule. So that is your, your minor structural damages and it’s your erosion issues. So that’s something that there is a severity Three, you need to look at it for next year’s budget. Severity two means that. Something that’s gradually degradating your coating on the blade, but it’s not something that means anything at this point in time. So one is your coating, is your surface damage or minor surface damage. Pinholes uh, contamination. It’s really light issue, so it’s not something you really need to consider. So. [00:16:00] Severity ones, you, you really mean that, that it’s, you don’t need to think about this anymore. You know, it’s, it’s not an issue. So erosion will fall typically within severity two to severity four. Severity four being you have a hole in your blade from erosion, basically. Uh, because you can still have structural degradation of deleting it and still being a severity three, because it does not really change your maintenance cycle in any, in any way. You don’t need to do anything immediate to fix it. Um, so that’s why I would put most of erosion defects in severity three and just say, okay, it’s something we need to plan a leading edge, a leading edge ERO repair campaign next year or the year after, depending on the severity of it. That’s why, how I, I would approach, Allen Hall: that’s good insight, because I do think a lot of operators, when they do see a hole in the leading edge, think I have to stop this turbine. But at the same token, I have seen other operators with holes. I could put my fist through. That are continuing to use those blades and they will say, it’s not structural, it’s not [00:17:00] great aerodynamically, but the, we’re still making power here. We’re still making rated power. Even with the hole and the leading edge, it’s not going to progress anymore. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a progression that we understand. That’s how they describe it. It will get worse, but it’s not gonna get catastrophic worse. Morten Handberg: I mean, if you run it long enough, at some point, something secondary will happen. Sure. But again, that’s also why we use the severity four category for erosion, where you have severe structural degradation because it does starting to mean something for the integrity of the blade. It will not mean that it’s coming down right away when you see a hole in the blade from erosion. That’s, that’s the entire purpose of it. But it does it, you use it to raise awareness that there is something you need to look at imminently or at least react to, uh, and make a plan for. You can’t just pull, you can’t just delay it until next year’s, uh, maintenance campaign. We have an active issue here, so that’s why I think severity four applies to erosion. That has penetrated all structural layers. Allen Hall: Are there some [00:18:00] blade damages that are just can’t be repaired or, or just have too much difficulty to repair them, that it’s not worth it? And how do you know? How do you understand? That blade is not repairable versus the one next to it which looks similar, which can be repaired. What goes into that assessment? Morten Handberg: So one is, is the, is the beam laminate damaged? If it is, then uh, either it comes down to a commercial decision. It’s simply not fixable and, and restoring it in, you know, restoring it back, uh, to original form ship. And there’s also the, the, uh, the, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, uh, returning element of carbon fiber, because carbon fiber adds another level of complexity repairs, because you’re so dependent on the pristine quality of the carbon for it to, to, for, to utilize the, the, uh, mechanical strength of carbon. And if you, if you don’t apply it in the right way, then you can create some high stress zones. Where, you know, the [00:19:00] cure is as bad as the disease really. So that’s why you have to be extra careful with carbon repairs. But they can be done. But it, you know, it really comes down to a commercial decision then. So in principle, unless the blade is deformed, uh, or, or, or damaged in such a way that you have to remove a large part of the s shell lemonade in a loaded area, then most things they can, in principle, be repaired. It’s just a matter of is the, is the cost of the repair. Cheaper than the cost of a new blade. And that calculation might, you know, depend on are there any, any spare blades available? Is this blade, uh, still in production? And if I don’t repair this, then I don’t have any blade for my turbine and then I can’t operate anymore. That also changed the calculus right along quite a lot, so I think. For a lot of damages. It, it’s more of a, it’s often more of a commercial decision rather than a technical, because ca glass fiber is very forgiving. You can repair a lot, even if it’s really severe. I mean, I’ve seen blade repairs that took [00:20:00] 3000 hours, but it was deemed worthwhile because you couldn’t get a, a bare blade. And in most other cases, that would’ve been been scrapped, you know, without, you know, without blinking. Um, so, so, you know, if you really want to, you could repair it. In a lot of cases, Allen Hall: how difficult is it to repair carbon protrusions, because it does seem like when they manufacture those protrusions, there’s a lot of quality control going into it. The fibers have to be in the right direction all the time, and they’re really compacted in there. They’re tight, tight block of carbon that you’re purchasing and sliding into into this blade. Are they really repairable in sections or is it you have to take out the whole length of a pultrusion and replace it? I’m, I’m trying to understand the difficulty here because there’s a lot of operators in the United States now that have some portion of their fleet is carbon spar cap, not a lot of it, but some of it. How [00:21:00] difficult is that to repair? Morten Handberg: Well, it’s difficult enough that a lot of OEMs, they will say if you have a damage to the carbon, it’s a non-repairable defect. That is to a large extent the general rule. Um, there are, there are, uh, there are ways and some of it is replacement of the protrusion. Um, other, another method is, is to do a vacuum infusion lamination. I’ve also seen some repairs with success where, uh, glass fiber is utilized instead of carbon fiber. So you reply, so you, you, um, you calculate the mechanical strength of the carbon. And then replace that with an equal amount, you know, strength wise of glass fiber. The problem is you are to a degree playing with little bit with fire because you are then changing the structure of the blade. You are increasing the thickness and thereby you are changing the stiffness. So it’s, you have to be really [00:22:00] careful, uh, it’s possible. And uh, again. All if all other options are out and you want this blade really to get up and running again because it’s your only option. Maybe it’s worthwhile to, to investigate, but it requires a lot of insight in and also a little bit of, uh, how do you say, uh, you don’t, you shouldn’t be too risk adverse if you go down that that route, but, but again, it is possible. It is technically possible. But it’s something you do for the outer, uh, outer areas of the blade where you have less loads and you’re less sensitive. Allen Hall: Can those carbon repairs be done up tower or are they always done with the rotor set or the blade drop down to ground? Morten Handberg: I know some carbon repairs have been done up tower, but in general it’s down tower also, just because if you have damage to your carbon, it means you have a severe structural issue. So you wouldn’t generally try to do it that well, I would, not in general, but, but the, the, the cases I’ve seen that, that has been downturn repairs. Yeah. Allen Hall: Do you think about the categories differently? If it includes carbon [00:23:00] as a structural element? Morten Handberg: No, because carbon is part of the load carrying laminate. If you’re to the load carrying laminate, then it becomes a four or five immediately. Um, so, uh, so I would say the same rule applies because ag again, it’s a very rough scale, but it applied, but it gives you a sense of where, you know, what is the urgency, which is what I think we in generally need. And I like the more simple model because it’s more applicable to the general industry and it’s easier for, uh, you know, it’s easier to, to implement. Um. And it is easier to understand than if you have a too too gradual, uh, scale because it’s difficult for the people who are sitting and assessing to determine if, uh, you know, what, what category it is. And it’s difficult for the people who have to read the report afterwards. And it’s also about, you know, what is the purpose? And in general, I would say, well, this, the defect categorization, the severe categorization is to determine can this be repaired or not? That’s what we use it [00:24:00] for. So that, that, that’s how we, it should be applied. Allen Hall: Is the industry going to have a universal standard? Soon. Is that possible? Or is this really gonna be country by country, region by region? How we think about blade defects and blade repairs? Morten Handberg: I think that. Given the, uh, the, how do you say, the individual interests in having their own model from the different OEMs or service providers? I think the, when they’re choosing a pope, they have an easy task ahead of them, you know, deciding that. Then we have the agreeing on an on inte standard and on plate. Allen Hall: Pope is currently an American, so that tells you something. The world has shifted. There is still hope. Maybe there is still hope because it, it is a very difficult problem and I hear a lot of conflicting opinions about it and they’re not wrong. The opinions I hear when they’re explained to me, they have a rationale as to why. They’re calling something a cat four versus a cat three. [00:25:00] It all makes sense, but when you get two engineers in the room, they’re rarely are going to agree. So I’m just thinking maybe, maybe there isn’t a, a yeah, maybe there isn’t a time where we’re all gonna come together. Morten Handberg: I think that, you know, it’s, it’s also about what are you willing to accept and what are you willing to s. You know, as an OEM, as a blade engineer, as a service provider, in order to make common agreement. Because I think if we were willing to, you know, set aside differences, um, and then agree on, okay, what is the, what, what is that, what is the, the ma the industry needs and what, what fulfills the purpose? We could agree tomorrow, but that’s not where we are, uh, at the moment. So, so I don’t see that happening anytime soon. But yes, there, there was a way to do an in to make an international standard. Um, for blades and I, I would say maybe it’s, if the IC made, made, made one, then maybe that that could, uh, that could fix it. Uh, maybe if, uh, they’re starting to become more [00:26:00]focused from governments, uh, and you know, that it wind industry becomes recognized as critical infrastructure. That then there is a requirement for international standards on what are defects, to make it easier to determine what is critical or not, so that proper reaction can be made. That will also help it. But again, as long as it’s only about late experts having to agree with each other and that’s the only then, then we’re, then we will not get to a point where we’re going to agree on, on everything. No. Allen Hall: Wow. This is a continual discussion about blade defects and categorization and Morton. I really appreciate. You’re giving us your thoughts about it because I trust you one and two, you’re on the leading edge of what the industry is thinking. So it’s very good to get you in here and explain where categorization is and, and two operators that are listening to this podcast understand you’re probably getting a lot of different opinions about categorization. You need to sit down and figure it out for yourself, or reach out to Morton who can explain what you should be thinking and how you should be [00:27:00]thinking about this problem. Morton, how do people get ahold of you to learn more? Morten Handberg: Easiest way is to reach out to me on LinkedIn. Um, I have a very active profile there. You can always write me and I’ll always write, write, write it back. You can also write to me on my company email, m me [email protected]. Um, those are the two easiest way to get, uh, get in, in, uh, get in touch me. And I would say, as an owner, what you need to know. Is it a structural issue or is a surface issue you have? And then plan your repairs from there. That is, that is the. Basic, yeah, that, that you need to have, and then forget about the others, the other side of it, you know, if it’s one defect type or another, that’s not necessarily what’s going to help you. It’s all about getting the blades repaired. And, uh, and the turbine up and running again. That should be the focus. Allen Hall: Absolutely. Morton, we love having you on the podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. It’s good to be here. See [00:28:00] you.

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• German Bird Study Finds 99% Avoid Turbines, SunZia Progress

  Allen, Joel, Rosemary, and Yolanda discuss a German study finding 99.8% of birds avoid wind turbines, challenging long-standing collision risk models. They also cover Pattern Energy’s SunZia project nearing completion as the Western Hemisphere’s largest renewable project, lightning monitoring strategies for large-scale wind farms, and offshore flange alignment technology. Register for Wind Energy O&M Australia 2026!Learn more about CICNDTDownload the latest issue of PES Wind Magazine Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update 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 Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now, here’s your host. Alan Hall, Joel Saxon, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes. Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host Alan Hall in the queen city of Charlotte, North Carolina, where a cold front is just blown through, but we’re not nearly as cold as Joel was up in Wisconsin, Joel, you had a bunch of snow, which is really the first big storm of the season. Joel Saxum: Yeah, the crazy thing here was the Wind Energy Podcast. So since that storm I, we, we got up in northern Wisconsin, 18 inches of snow, and then we drove down on last Saturday after US Thanksgiving through Iowa, there’s another 18 inches of snow in Des Moines. I talked to a more than one operator that had icing and snow issues at their wind farms all through the northern Midwest of these states. So from [00:01:00] North Dakota. All the way down to Nebraska, Northern Missouri, over into Indiana. There was a ton of turbines that were iced up and or snowed in from that storm, Allen Hall: and Rosemary was in warm Australia with other icing knowledge or de-icing knowledge while the US has been suffering. Rosemary Barnes: But you know, on the first day of summer here, a couple of days ago, it was minus one here overnight. So. Um, yeah, it’s, uh, unseasonable and then tomorrow it’ll be 35. Allen Hall: The smartest one of us all has been Yolanda, down in Austin, Texas, where it doesn’t get cold. Yolanda Padron: Never. It’s so nice. It’s raining today and that’s about it. Traffic’s going crazy. Joel Saxum: Rain is welcome for us, isn’t it though, Yolanda? Yolanda Padron: It’s sweet. It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does. Very rainy for like 24 hours. Allen Hall: We’ve been saving a story for a couple of weeks until Rosemary is back and it has to do with birds and a year long study over [00:02:00] in Germany. And as we know, one of the most persistent arguments against wind energy has been the risk to birds and permitting and operation shutdowns have been the norm, uh, based on models and predicted collision risks. Well. A new study comes, has just come out that says, what if the models are all wrong? And the new German study suggests that they may be wrong. The Federal Association of Offshore Wind Energy, known by its German acronym, BWO Commission Research to examine. Actual collision risk at a coastal wind farm in Northern Germany. The study was conducted by Biocon Consult, a German research and consulting firm, and funded by eight major offshore wind operators, including Sted, Vattenfall, RWE, and E, roa, and. Rosemary using some of the newer technology. They were able to track bird movements with radar [00:03:00] and AI and stereo vision cameras to, to watch birds move through and around, uh, some of these wind farms. And it analyzed more than 4 million bird movements and over 18 months, and they searched for collision victims and what they found was pretty striking more than 99.8% of both day migrating and night migrating birds. Avoided the turbines entirely. The study found no correlation between migration intensity and collision rates. And BD and BWO says The combination of radar and AI based cameras represents a methodological breakthrough. Uh, that can keep turbines moving even when birds are in transit. This is pretty shocking news, honestly, Rosemary, I, I haven’t seen a lot of long-term studies about bird movements where they really had a lot of technology involved to, besides binoculars, to, to look at bird movement. The [00:04:00] 99.8% of the migrating birds are going around The turbines. No, the turbines are there. That’s. Really new information. Rosemary Barnes: I think. I mean, if you never heard anything about wind turbines and birds, I don’t think you’d be shocked like that. Birds mostly fly around obstacles. That’s probably an intuitive, intuitive answer. Because we’ve had it shoved down our throat for decades now. Wind turbines are huge bird killers. It’s kind of like, it’s been repeated so often that it kind of like sinks in and becomes instinctive, even though, yeah, I do think that, um, it’s. Not that, that shocking that an animal with eyes avoids a big obstacle when it’s flying. Um, but it is really good that somebody has actually done more than just trying to look for bird deaths. You know, they’ve actually gone out, seen what can we find, and then reported that they found mostly nothing. We already knew the real risks for birds, like hundreds or thousands, even millions of times [00:05:00] more, um, deadly to birds are things like. Cats. Cars, buildings, even power lines kill more birds than, um, wind turbines do. In fact, like when you look at, um, the studies that look at wind, um, bird deaths from wind turbines, most of those are from people driving, like workers driving to site and hitting a bird with their cars. Um, you know, that’s attributed to wind energy. Not a surprise maybe for people that have been following very closely, but good to see the report. Nonetheless. Joel Saxum: I think it’s a win for like the global wind industry, to be honest with you, because like you said, there’s, there’s no, um, like real studies of this with, that’s backed up by metric data with, like I said, like the use stereo cameras. Radar based AI detection and, and some of those things, like if you talk with some ornithologists for the big OEMs and stuff, they’ve been dabbling in those things. Like I dabbled in a project without a DTU, uh, a while back and it, but it wasn’t large scale done like this. A [00:06:00] particular win this study in the United States is there’s been this battle in the United States about what birds and what, you know, raptors or these things are controlled or should have, um, controls over them by the governments for wind installations. The big one right now is US Fish and Wildlife Service, uh, controls raptors, right? So that’s your eagle’s, owls, hawks, those kind of things. So they’ll map out the nests and you can only go in certain areas, uh, or build in certain areas depending on when their mating seasons are. And they put mild buffers on some of them. It’s pretty crazy. Um, but the one rule in the United States, it’s been kind of floated out there, like, we’re gonna throw this in your face, wind industry. Is the Federal Migratory Bird Act, which is also how they regulate all like the, the hunting seasons. So it’s not, it’s the reason that the migratory birds are controlled by the federal government as opposed to state governments is because they cross state lines. And if we can [00:07:00] prove now via this study that wind farms are not affecting these migratory bird patterns or causing deaths, then it keeps the feds out of our, you know, out of the permitting process for. For birds, Rosemary Barnes: but I’m not sure this is really gonna change that much in terms of the environmental approvals that you need to do because it’s a, you know, a general, a general thing with a general, um, statistical population doesn’t look at a specific wind farm with a specific bird and you’re still need to go. You’re still going to have to need to look at that every time you’re planning an actual wind farm. That’s it’s fair. Yolanda Padron: And it’s funny sometimes how people choose what they care or don’t care about. I know living in a high rise, birds will hit the window like a few a month. And obviously they will pass away from impact and the building’s not going anywhere. Just like a turbine’s not going anywhere. And I’ve never had anybody complain to [00:08:00] me about living and condoning high rises because of how they kill the birds. And I’ve had people complain to me about wind turbines killing the birds. It’s like, well, they’re just there. Joel Saxum: If we’re, if we’re talking about energy production, the, if everybody remembers the deep water horizon oil spill 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico. That oil spill killed between 801.2 million birds. Just that one. Speaker 6: Australia’s wind farms are growing fast, but are your operations keeping up? Join us February 17th and 18th at Melbourne’s Poolman on the park for Wind energy o and M Australia 2026, where you’ll connect with the experts solving real problems in maintenance asset management. And OEM relations. Walk away with practical strategies to cut costs and boost uptime that you can use the moment you’re back on site. Register now at W om a 2020 six.com. Wind Energy o and m Australia [00:09:00] is created by wind professionals for wind professionals because this industry needs solutions, not speeches Allen Hall: well in the high desert of Central New Mexico, near a lot of what were ghost towns that were abandoned during the Great Depression. If there is a flurry of activity pattern, energy sunzi, a project is near completion after 20 years of planning and permitting. When. It’s supposed to be finished in 2026. It’ll be the largest renewable energy project in the Western hemisphere. More than 900 turbines spread across multiple counties. A 550 mile transmission line stretching to Arizona and then onward to California, and $11 billion bet that’s being made on American wind. Now, Joel, it’s a kind of a combination of two OEMs there, Vestus and ge. The pace of building has been really rapid over the last six, eight months from what I can [00:10:00] tell. Joel Saxum: Yeah. We have talked to multiple ISPs, EPC contractors. Um, of course we know some of the engineers involved in building a thing on the pattern side. Right. But this sheer size of this thing, right, it’s, it is three and a half gigawatts, right? You’re talking 900 turbines and, and so big that one OEM really couldn’t, I mean, it’s a, it’s a risk hedge, right? But couldn’t fulfill the order. So you have massive ge tur set of turbines out there. Massive set of vestas turbines out there. And I think one thing that’s not to be missed on this project as well is that transmission line, that high voltage transmission line that’s feeding this thing. Because that’s what we need, right? That was when we built, started building up big time in Texas, the cre, the crest lines that were built to bring all of that wind energy to the major cities in Texas. That was a huge part of it. And we have seen over the last six months, we have seen loans canceled, uh, permits being pulled and like troubles being in hurdles, being thrown up in the face of a lot of these transmission lines that are planned. [00:11:00] These big ones in the states. And that’s what we need for energy security in the future, is these big transmission lines to go. So we can get some of this generation to, uh, to the market, get electrons flowing into homes and into industry. But this thing here, man, um, I know we’ve been talking about Sunz, the Sunz project, uh, and all the people involved in it, in the wind industry for a, what, two, three years now? Oh, at least. Yeah. It’s been in planning and development stage for much longer than that. But the. The, the big bet. I like it. Um, bringing a lot of, um, bringing a lot of economic opportunity to New Mexico, right? A place that, uh, if you’ve driven across New Mexico lately, it needs it in a dire way. Uh, and this is how wind energy can bring a lot of, uh, economic boom to places that, uh, hadn’t had it in the past. Allen Hall: And this being the largest project to date, there’s a, I think a couple more than a pipeline that could be larger if they get moving on them. We see another project like this five years [00:12:00] from now, or we think we’re gonna scale down and stay in the gigawatt range just because of the scale and the things that Sunzi went through. Joel Saxum: We have the choke chair, Sierra Madre project up in Wyoming that’s been chugging the Anschutz Corporation’s been pushing that thing for a long time. That’s, that’s along the same size of this unit. Um, and it’s the same thing. It’s, it’s kind of hinged on, I mean, there’s permitting issues, but it’s hinged on a transmission line being built. I think that one’s like 700. 50 miles of transmission. That’s supposed to be, it’s like Wyoming all the way down to Las Vegas. That project is sitting out there. Um, it’s hard to build something of that size in, like say the wind corridor, the Texas, Oklahoma, uh, you know, all the way up to the Dakotas, just simply because of the massive amount of landowners and public agencies involved in those things. It’s a bit easier when you get out West New Mexico. Um, I could see something like this happening possibly in Nevada. At some point in time to feed that California [00:13:00] side of things, right? But they’re doing massive solar farms out there. Same kind of concept. Um, I, I think that, um, I would love to see something like this happen, but to invest that kind of capital, you’ve got to have some kind of ITC credits going for you. Um, otherwise, I mean, $11 billion is, that’s a lot of money Allen Hall: since Zia will have PTC. Which is a huge driver about the economics for the entire project. Joel Saxum: Yeah. But you’re also seeing at the same time, just because of the volatility of what’s happening in the states wind wise, uh, there was a big article out today of someone who got wind that EDF may be selling its entire Allen Hall: US onshore renewable operation or US renewable operation. That was Wood Mac that. Put that out. And I’m still not sure that’s a hundred percent reliable, but they have been 50% for sale for a while. Everybody, I think everybody knew that. Joel Saxum: Yeah. I don’t know if it’s a hundred percent reliable as well. I would agree with you there. However, there’s, it’s the [00:14:00] same thought process of European company pulling outta the United States. That’s where a lot of the renewable energy capital is, or it has been fed to a lot of that capital comes from Canada and other places too. Right. But that’s where it’s been fed through. Um, but you’re starting to see some, some. Uh, purchasing some acquisitions, a little bit of selling and buying here and there. I don’t, I don’t think that there’s, uh, massive ones on the horizon. That’s just my opinion though. Allen Hall: Well, won’t the massive ones be offshore if we ever get back to it? Joel Saxum: Yeah, you would think so, right? But I, that’s gonna take a, uh, an administration change. I mean the, the, all that stuff you’d see out in California, like when we were originally seeing the leases come out and we were like, oh, great. More offshore opportunity. Ah, but it’s California, so it’ll be kind of tough. It probably won’t be till 20 32, 20, something like that. I don’t think we’ll see possibly California offshore wind until 2040 if we’re lucky. Allen Hall: Joel, what were the two wind turbines selected for Sunz? They were both new models, right? One from Renova and then the other one from [00:15:00] Vestas, Joel Saxum: so the Vestas was 242 V, 1 63, 4 0.5 megawatts machines, and the, and the GE Renova. Just so we get, make sure I get clarity on this. 674 of its three. They were 3.6, but they’re 3.61 50 fours. Allen Hall: Okay. So both turbine types are relatively new. New to the manufacturer. CZ has two new turbines styles on the site. Joel Saxum: Yeah, we were told that when they were originally like getting delivered, that they didn’t have type certificates yet. That’s how new they were. Allen Hall: So Yolanda. As Sania starts to turn on, what are things that they need to be aware of blade wise, Yolanda Padron: besides the lightning and the dust in New Mexico? It’s probably gonna tip them. I don’t know exactly what they’re counting with as far as leading edge protection goes. Allen Hall: Pattern usually doesn’t, uh, have a full service agreement. Joel, do you remember if that was an FSA? I don’t think so. Joel Saxum: I would say [00:16:00] because those are Vestas turbines on the one that, yes, Vestas really doesn’t sell a turbine without it. Knowing internally how big patterns engineering group are, I don’t know if they can completely take on the operations of a thousand more turbine, 900 more turbines overnight. Right? So I think that there is gonna be some OE EMM involvement in these things, uh, simply to be at that scale as well. I don’t know of anywhere else with a 1 54 install a GE 1 54. So the things that I wouldn’t looking out is the. It’s the brand new type stuff, right? Like do internal inspections when they’re on the ground. You don’t know what kind of condition these things are in, what, you know, what is the, you haven’t, nobody’s seen them. Like you’re the first ones to get to get your hands on these things. Yolanda Padron: Yeah, I think they’re definitely gonna have to go with some sort of consulting or something externally as far as what exactly they’re dealing with. I know, Rosemary, you’ve touched on it a lot, right about. [00:17:00] How the changing the blade types and changing the turbines every x amount of years is really not conducive to, to being able to repeat the same results. And if you’re having that for hundreds of turbines at a new site that you’ve already had so much time and money invested in creating, it’ll, it’s, it’s a big undertaking. Rosemary Barnes: It’s really interesting because. When you have such a large wind farm be, I’m assuming one of the first wind farms may be the first to get this new turbine types, then if there’s a serial defect, it’s gonna be very obvious. ’cause with smaller wind farms, one of the problems is that, uh, the numbers are too small to definitively say whether something is, um, serial or just random bad luck. Um, but when you get. So how many wind turbines is it? Joel Saxum: Almost a thousand total. It’s [00:18:00] 674 GE turbines and 242 Vesta turbines. Rosemary Barnes: You can do statistics on that kind of a population and this area. I mean, there’s lightning there, right? Like this is not an area where you’re not gonna see lightning. You know, in know the first couple of years, like there, there will be. Hundreds of turbines damaged by lightning in the, the first couple of years I would suggest, um, or, you know, maybe not. Maybe the LPS are so, so great that that doesn’t happen. But, you know, the typical standard of LPS would mean that, you know, even if you only see, say we see 10 strikes per turbine to year and you get a 2% damage rate, that is, you know, lots of, lots of individual instances of blade damage, even if everything works as it should according to certification. And if it doesn’t, if you see a 10% damage rate or something from those strikes, then you are going to know that, you know, the, um, LPS is not performing the way that the standard says that it should. It’s not like that’s a slam dunk for, um, [00:19:00] proving that the design was not sufficient or the certification wasn’t correct. It’s always really, really tricky. My recommendation would be to make sure that you are monitoring the lightning strikes, so you know exactly which turbine is struck and when, and then go inspect them and see the damage. Ideally, you’re also gonna be measuring some of the characteristics of the lightning as well. But you do that from day one. Then if there is a problem, then you’re at least gonna have enough information within the, um, you know, the serial defect liability period to be able to do something about it. Joel Saxum: Let me ask you a question on that, on just the, that lightning monitoring piece then. So this is something that’s just, it’s of course we do this all the time, but this is boiling up in the thing. How do you, how do you monitor for lightning on 916 turbines? Probably spread, spread across. 200 square miles. Rosemary Barnes: Well, there’s, there’s heaps of different ways that you can do it. Um, so I mean, you can do remote, remote lightning detection, which is [00:20:00] not good enough. Then there are a range of different technologies that you can install in the, um, turbines. Um, the most simple and longest standing solution was a lightning cart, which is installed on the down conductor at the blade route. That will just tell you the amplitude of the biggest strike that that turbine has ever seen when it’s red. I have literally never seen a case where the lightning card definitively or even provided useful evidence one way or another when there’s a, a dispute about lightning. So then you move on to solutions that, uh, um. Measuring they use, uh, Alan, you’re the electrical engineer, but they, they use the, the principle that when there’s a large current flowing, then it also induces a magnetic field. And then you can use that to make a, a, a change and read characteristics about it. So you can tell, um, well first of all, that that turbine was definitely struck. So there are simple systems that can do that quite cheaply. The OGs ping [00:21:00] sensor, does that really cost effectively? Um, and then OG Ping. Phoenix Contact and Polytech all have a different product. Um, all have their own products that can tell you the charge, the duration, the um, polarity or the, yeah, the, the, if it’s a positive or a negative strike, um, yeah, rise time, things like that. Um, about the strike, that’s probably, probably, you don’t. Need to go to that extent. Um, I would say just knowing definitively which turbine was struck and when is gonna give you what you need to be able to establish what kind of a problem or if you have a problem and what kind of a problem it is. Joel Saxum: I think that like an important one there too is like, uh, so I know that Vest is in a lot of their FSA contracts will say if it’s struck by lightning, we have 48 or 72 hours to inspect it. Right. And when you’re talking something of this scale, 916 turbines out there, like if there’s a lightning storm, like [00:22:00]we’ve been watching, we watch a lot of lightning storms come through, uh, certain wind farms that we’re working with. And you see 20, 30, 40 turbines get struck. Now if a storm comes through the middle of this wind farm, you’re gonna have 200 turbines get struck. How in the hell do you go out without ha Like you need to have something that can narrow you down to exactly the turbines that we’re struck. That being said that next morning or over the next two days, you need to deploy like 10 people in trucks to drive around and go look at these things. That’s gonna be a massive problem. Pattern has about 3000 turbines, I think in their portfolio, and they, so they’re, they’re familiar with lightning issues and how things happen, but something at this scale when it’s just like so peaky, right? ’cause a storm isn’t through every night, so you don’t have that need to go and inspect things. But when you do. That is gonna be a massive undertaking. ’cause you gotta get people out there to literally like, at a minimum, binocular these things to make sure there isn’t any damage on ’em. And it’s gonna be, there’s gonna be storms where hundreds of turbines get hit. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, well [00:23:00] those three companies, those three products that I mentioned are aiming to get around that. I mean, it will depend how contracts are worded. I know in Australia it is not the norm to check for lightning ever. So if the contract says someone has to, you know, use human eyeballs to verify lightning damage or not, then. That’s, you know, that’s what has to happen. But all of these technologies do aim to offer a way that you wouldn’t have to inspect every single one. So Polytech is using, um, different lightning characteristics and then they’ve got an algorithm which they say will learn, um, which types of strike cause damage that could. Potentially progress to catastrophic damage. Um, and then the other one that is interesting is the eLog Ping solution because they’ve also got the, um, damage monitoring. That’s their original aim of their product, was that if there’s a damage on the blade tip, say it’s been punctured by lightning, it, it actually makes a noise. Like it makes a whistle and they listen out for that. So if you combine the [00:24:00]lightning detection and the, um, like blade. Tip structure monitoring from Ping, then you can get a good idea of which ones are damaged. Like if it’s damaged badly enough to fail, it is almost certainly gonna be making a noise that the ping can, um, detect Allen Hall: as wind energy professionals. Staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it, d. That’s why the Uptime podcast recommends PES Wind Magazine. PES Wind offers a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit PE ps win.com today and this quarter’s PES WIN Magazine. There’s a lot of great articles, and as we roll into December. You’ll have time to sit down and read them. You can download a free [email protected]. And there’s a, a really interesting article about [00:25:00] offshore, and there’s a number of articles about offshore this quarter. Well, two Dutch companies developed a solution to really one of the industry’s most persistent headaches. And when it’s flange alignment. So when you’re trying to connect the transition piece to the mono paddle out in the water, it’s not really easy to do. Uh. So PES interviewed, uh, Ontech and Dutch heavy lift consultants to explain their flange alignment system known as FAS. And it started when a turbine installation needed a safer, faster way to try to align these two pieces. So if you can think about the amount of steel we’re talking about, these are really massive pieces you’re trying to line and put bolts in, not easy to do out in the ocean. Uh, so what this new device can do is it can align the flanges in a couple of minutes. It can reshape deformed, flanges and Joel, as you know, everything offshore can get dinged warped. That’s pretty easy to do, so you don’t want that when you have a, a heavily loaded, bolted joint, like those flanges to be [00:26:00] perfectly, uh, smooth to one another and, and tight. So these two companies, Amek and Dutch heavy Lifting consultants have come up with some pretty cool technology to speed up. Installations of wind turbines. Joel Saxum: Yeah, I would say anybody who’s interested in wind, offshore wind, any of that sort, and you have a little bit of an engineering mind or an engineering, uh, quirk in your mind. As, as I think we said earlier in the episode today, engineering nerds. Um, I would encourage you to go and look at some heavy lift operations offshore, whether it is offshore wind, offshore oil and gas, offshore construction of any time or any type even pipe lay operations and stuff. Just to take, just to take in the, the sheer scale. At how, uh, at how these things are being done and how difficult that would be to manage. Think about the just tons and tons of steel and, uh, trying to put these pieces together and these different things. And then remember that these vessels are thousands of dollars, sometimes a minute for how specialized they are. Right? So a lot of money gets put into [00:27:00] how the, like when we’re putting monopiles in that these transit transition pieces get put on. A lot of money has been spent on. The ver like technology to get, make sure they’re super, super tight tolerances on the verticality of those when they’re driving the actual piles in. And then you’re doing that offshore in a nasty environment, sometimes from a jack up vessel, sometimes not from a jack vessel, sometimes from a mor or like a, you know, a pseudo mor vessel on, uh. Dynamic positioning systems, and then you’re swinging these big things with cranes and all this stuff, like, it’s just a crazy amount of engineering eng engineering and operational knowledge that goes into making this stuff happen. And if you make one little mistake, all of a sudden that piece can be useless. Right? Like I’ve been a part of, of heavy offshore lifting for oil and gas where they’ve. It’s built a piece on shore, got it out to the vessel, went to go put it off sub sea in 2000 meters of water, lowered it all the way down there and it didn’t fit like you just burned [00:28:00] hundreds and hundreds and thousands of millions of dollars in time. So this kind of technology that Anima Tech is putting out in Dutch Heavy Lift consultants. This is the key to making sure that these offshore operations go well. So kudos to these guys for solve for seeing a problem and solving a problem with a real solution. Uh, instead of just kind of like dreaming things up, making something happen here. I’d like to see it. Allen Hall: Check out that article and many more in this quarter’s. PES Wind Magazine downloaded free [email protected]. Well, Yolanda, as we know, everybody’s out with Sky Specs, uh, doing blade inspections, and so many turbines have issues this year. A lot of hail damage, a lot of lightning damage and some serial defects from what I can tell. Uh, we’re, we’re getting to that crazy season where we’re trying to get ready for next year and prioritize. This is the time to call C-I-C-N-D-T and actually take a deep hard look at some of this damage, particularly at the blade root area. We’ve seen a lot more of that where, [00:29:00] uh, there’s been failures of some blades at the root where the bolt connection is. So you’re gonna have to get some NDT done. Boy, oh boy, you better get C-I-C-N-D-T booked up or get them on the phone because they’re getting really busy. Yolanda Padron: Yeah, you definitely need to schedule something. Make sure that you know at least where you stand, right? Be because imagine going into try to fix something and just have a hammer and then close your eyes and then see what you can fix. That way, like sometimes it feels like when you’re in operations, if you don’t have the proper. The proper inspections done, which sometimes there’s, there’s not enough budget for, or appetite or knowledge, um, in some of these projects to have early on. You come in and just, you, you see the end result of failure modes and you might see something that’s really, really expensive to fix now. Or you might think of, oh, this problem happened at X, Y, Z. [00:30:00] Site, so it’ll probably happen here. That’s not necessarily the case. So getting someone like NDT to be able to come in and actually tell you this is what’s going on in your site, and these are the potential failure modes that you’re going to see based on what you’re getting and this is what will probably happen, or this is what is happening over time in your site, is a lot more indicative to be able to solve those problems faster and way. More way, in a way less expensive manner than if you were to go in and just try to fix everything reactively. You know, if you have half a bond line missing. Then later you, your blade breaks. It’s like, well, I mean, you, you could, you could have seen it, you could have prevented it. You could have saved that blade and saved yourself millions and millions of dollars and, and so much more money in downtime. Joel Saxum: Yeah. The first time I ran into Jeremy Hess and the C-A-C-N-D team was actually on an insurance project where it was Yolanda, like you said, like [00:31:00] they let it go. The, the operator and the OEM let it go way too long, and all of a sudden they had a, like wind farm wide shutdown costing them millions in production. Uh, to find these, these issues that, uh, could have been found in a different manner when you talk to the team over there. Um, why we like to recommend them from the podcast is Jeremy has an answer for everything. He’s been around the world. He’s worked in multiple industries, aerospace, race, cars, sailboats, you name it. Um, he’s been a client to almost everybody, you know, in the wind industry, all the OEMs, right? So he knows the, the issues. He has the right tool sets. To dive into them. You, you may not know, not, you don’t need to be an NDT expert to be able to have a conversation because he will coach you through, okay, here you have this problem. Alright, this is how we would look at it. This is how we would solve it. Here’s how you would monitor for it, and then this is how you would, you know, possibly fix it. Or this is what the, the solution looks like. Um, because I think that’s one of the [00:32:00] hurdles to the industry with NDT projects is people just don’t. Know what’s available, what’s out there, what they can see, what they, you know, the issues that they might be able to uncover, like you said, Yolanda. So, um, we encourage, um, anybody that says, Hey, do you know anybody in NDT? Yeah, it’s Jeremy Hanks and the C-I-C-N-D-T team. Call ’em up. They’ve got the solutions, they’ll help you out. 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. 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 and we’ll catch you next week on the Uptime Wind Energy [00:33:00] Podcast.

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• Australia Loses Offshore Project, Ecowende Moves Forward

  Allen covers Ecowende’s first monopile installation in the Netherlands, designed to be the most ecological offshore wind farm ever built. Plus Ireland’s offshore potential proves far smaller than hoped, Australia cancels its third offshore project in recent months, LiveLink Aerospace solves radar clutter in Scotland, GE Vernova secures a Romanian turbine deal, and Canadian tariffs threaten BC Hydro wind development. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update 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 Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! If you want to see the future of offshore wind… look to the Netherlands.Off the Dutch coast near IJmuiden… about fifty-threekilometers out to sea… something special is rising from the waves.They call it ECOWENDE.VAN OORD’s installation vessel BOREAS just planted the firstmonopile there on December third. Fifty-one more will follow. And whencomplete… this seven hundred sixty megawatt wind farm will become… themost ecological offshore wind project ever built.Why most ecological?The monopiles come in two sizes. Research shows taller turbines givebirds more room to fly safely between the blades. Some turbines will sportred blades… to make them even more visible to passing flocks. The seabedgets eco-friendly scour protection. And those massive VESTAS fifteen-megawatt turbines? They will sit atop foundations built by SIFand SMULDERS.Power for the Netherlands by end of twenty-twenty-six.Meanwhile… across the North Sea in Scotland…At ABERDEEN Offshore Wind Farm… LIVELINK AEROSPACE just solveda problem that has plagued the industry for years.You see… wind turbines create radar clutter. Their spinning blades confusemilitary and civilian radar systems alike. But LIVELINK’s Air IntelligenceSystem… mounted on the nacelle… eliminates that clutterwithout emitting any signals of its own.The UK’s Department for Energy Security funded the test through the onebillion pound Net Zero Innovation Portfolio.BEN KEENE of LIVELINK says the technology unlocks offshore wind’s fullpotential… while strengthening national security. Clean energy AND defense. Together.But not every nation is celebrating.IRELAND just discovered… its offshore wind dreams may be smaller thanhoped.Energy Minister DARRAGH O’BRIEN receivedconfidential maps this spring. The assessment initially found potential forforty-eight gigawatts offshore.The realistic number?Between three and eighteen gigawatts.Deep waters. Shipwrecks. Arms dumps. Undersea cables. Protectedhabitats. All these stand in the way.The Irish government had targeted five gigawatts by twenty-thirty. Theyface fines of up to twenty billion euros if they miss their climate goals.Social Democrats spokeswoman JENNIFER WHITMORE says she issurprised detailed mapping took this long.Four years from the deadline… and they are only now learning which siteswill not work.Down Under… the news is worse.AGL Energy just cancelled GIPPSLAND SKIES… a two-and-a-half gigawattoffshore wind project in Victoria, Australia.That makes three offshore wind farms scrapped in recent months offAustralia’s south coast. German company RWE abandonedits two-gigawatt KENT project in October. BLUEFLOAT ENERGY droppedGIPPSLAND DAWN in July. AGL says it will focus on onshore wind… batteries… and pumped hydroinstead.But there is bright news from Eastern Europe.GE VERNOVA just signed a deal with GREENVOLT POWER to supplyforty-two turbines for the GURBANESTI wind farm inROMANIA.Each turbine… six-point-one megawatts. Combined with another recentproject… these two farms will bring five hundred megawatts online…powering more than one hundred ten thousand Romanian homes.Turbines start arriving in twenty-twenty-six.And in British Columbia… Premier DAVID EBY has a fight on hishands.A twenty-five percent tariff on imported wind towers threatens BC HYDRO’selectricity supply.PATRICIA LIGHTBURN of the Canadian Renewable Energy Associationsays the tariff could derail projects already announced. BC HYDRO iscounting on those wind farms to close an impending power gap.Canada’s Energy Regulator expects wind to fill seventy percent ofrenewable demand growth through twenty-thirty.The tariff? Nobody saw it coming.Now… for those of you heading to Edinburgh this week…The UK Offshore Wind Supply Chain Spotlight takes place Thursday. JOEL SAXUM and I will be there… meeting with innovating companies andentrepreneurs who are building the future of this industry.If you are attending… come say hello. We’d love to hear from youAnd that is the state of the wind energy industry on December 8, 2025.Join us tomorrow for the Uptime Wind Energy Pocast.

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• WindQuest Advisors on Managing TSA & FSA Negotiations

  Allen and Joel sit down with Dan Fesenmeyer of Windquest Advisors to discuss turbine supply agreement fundamentals, negotiation leverage, and how tariff uncertainty is reshaping contract terms. Dan also explains why operators should maximize warranty claims before service agreements take over. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update 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 Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ 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: Dan, welcome to the program. Great to be here. Thanks for having me, guys. Well, we’ve been looking forward to this for several weeks now because. We’re trying to learn some of the ins and outs of turbine supply agreements, FSAs, because everybody’s talking about them now. Uh, and there’s a lot of assets being exchanged. A lot of turbine farms up for sale. A lot of acquisitions on the other side, on the investment side coming in and. As engineers, we don’t deal a lot with TSAs. It’s just not something that we typically see until, unless there’s a huge problem and then we sort of get involved a little bit. I wanna understand, first off, and you have a a ton of experience doing this, that’s why we [00:01:00] love having you. What are some of the fundamentals of turbine supply agreements? Like what? What is their function? How do they operate? Because I think a lot of engineers and technicians don’t understand the basic fundamentals of these TSAs. Dan Fesenmeyer: The TSA is a turbine supply agreement and it’s for the purchase and delivery of the wind turbines for your wind farm. Um, typically they are negotiated maybe over a 12 ish month period and typically they’re signed at least 12 months before you need, or you want your deliveries for the wind turbines. Joel Saxum: We talk with people all over the world. Um, you know, GE Americas is different than GE in Spain and GE in Australia and Nordics here, and everybody’s a little bit different. Um, but what we, we regularly see, and this is always an odd thing to me, is you talked about like negotiating. It starts 12 months ahead of time stuff, but we see that [00:02:00] the agreements a lot of times are very boilerplate. They’re very much like we’re trying to structure this in a certain way, and at the end of the day, well, as from an operator standpoint, from the the person buying them, we would like this and we would like this and we would like this, but at the end of the day, they don’t really seem to get that much negotiation in ’em. It’s kind of like, this is what the agreement you’re gonna take and this is how we sell them. That’s it. Is, is that your experience? I mean, you’re at GE for a long time, one of the leading OEMs, but is that what you’re seeing now or is there a little bit more flexibility or kind of what’s your take on that? Dan Fesenmeyer: I think generally it depends, and of course the, the OEMs in the, and I’ll focus more on the us, they’ll start with their standard template and it’s up to the purchaser, uh, to develop what they want as their wishlist and start negotiations and do their, let’s say, markup. So, uh, and then there’s a bit of leverage involved. If you’re buying two units, it’s hard to get a lot of interest. [00:03:00] If you’re buying 200 units, then you have a lot more leverage, uh, to negotiate terms and conditions in those agreements. I was with GE for 12 years on the sales and commercial side and now doing advisory services for four years. Uh, some of these negotiations can go for a long time and can get very, very red. Others can go pretty quick. It really depends on what your priorities are. How hard you want to push for what you need. Allen Hall: So how much detail goes into a TSA then are, are they getting very prescriptive, the operators coming with a, a list of things they would like to see? Or is it more negotiating on the price side and the delivery time and the specifics of the turbine? Dan Fesenmeyer: Generally speaking, you start kind of with the proposal stage and. First thing I always tell people is, let’s understand what you have in your proposal. Let’s understand, you know, what are the delivery [00:04:00] rates and times and does that fit with your project? Does the price work with respect to your PPA, what does it say about tariffs? That’s a huge one right now. Where is the risk going to land? What’s in, what’s out? Um. Is the price firm or is there indexation, whether it’s tied to commodities or different currencies. So in my view, there’s some pre-negotiations or at least really understanding what the offer is before you start getting into red lines and, and generally it’s good to sit down with the purchasing team and then ultimately with the OEM and walk through that proposal. Make sure you have everything you need. Make sure you understand what’s included, what’s not. Scope of supply is also a big one. Um, less in less in terms of the turbine itself, but more about the options, like does it have the control features you need for Ercot, for example. Uh, does it have leading [00:05:00]edge protection on your blades? Does it have low noise trailing edge? Do we even need lo low noise trailing edges? Uh, you know, those Joel Saxum: sorts Dan Fesenmeyer: of things. Joel Saxum: Do you see the more of the red lining in the commercial phase or like the technical phase? Because, and why I ask this question is when we talk, ’cause we’re regularly in the o and m world, right? Talking with engineers and asset managers, how do you manage your assets? And they really complain a lot that a lot of their input in that, that feedback loop from operations doesn’t make it to the developers when they’re signing TSAs. Um, so that’s a big complaint of theirs. And so my question is like, kind of like. All right. Are there wishes being heard or is it more general on the technical side and more focused on the commercial Dan Fesenmeyer: side? Where do you see that it comes down to making sure that your negotiation team has all the different voices and constituents at the table? Uh, my approach and our, our team’s approach is you have the legal piece, a technical piece, and we’re in between. We’re [00:06:00] the commercial piece. So when you’re talking TSAs, we’re talking price delivery terms. Determination, warranty, you know, kind of the, the big ticket items, liquidated damages, contract caps, all those big ticket commercial items. When you move over to the operations agreement, which generally gets negotiated at the same time or immediately after, I recommend doing them at the same time because you have more leverage and you wanna make sure terms go from TSA. They look the same in the. Services agreement. And that’s where it’s really important to have your operations people involved. Right? And, and we all learn by mistakes. So people that have operated assets for a long time, they always have their list of five or 10 things that they want in their o and m agreement. And, um, from a process standpoint, before we get into red lines, we usually do kind of a high [00:07:00] level walkthrough of here’s what we think is important. Um. For the TSA and for the SMA or the operations and maintenance agreement, let’s get on the same page as a team on what’s important, what’s our priority, and what do we want to see as the outcome. Allen Hall: And the weird thing right now is the tariffs in the United States that they are a hundred percent, 200%, then they’re 10%. They are bouncing. Like a pinball or a pong ping pong ball at the moment. How are you writing in adjustments for tariffs right now? Because some of the components may enter the country when there’s a tariff or the park the same park enter a week later and not be under that tariff. How does that even get written into a contract right now? Dan Fesenmeyer: Well, that’s a fluid, it’s a fluid environment with terrorists obviously, and. It seems, and I’ll speak mostly from the two large OEMs in the US market. Um, [00:08:00] basically what you’re seeing is you have a proposal and tariffs, it includes a tariff adder based on tariffs as in as they were in effect in August. And each one may have a different date. And this is fairly recent, right? So as of August, here’s what the dates, you know, here’s a tariff table with the different countries and the amounts. Here’s what it translates into a dollar amount. And it’ll also say, well, what we’re going to do is when, uh, these units ship, or they’re delivered X works, that’s when we come back and say, here’s what the tariffs are now. And that difference is on the developer or the purchaser typically. Allen Hall: So at the end of the day. The OEM is not going to eat all the tariffs. They’re gonna pass that on. It’s just basically a price increase at the end. So the, are the, are the buyers of turbines then [00:09:00] really conscious of where components are coming from to try to minimize those tariffs? Dan Fesenmeyer: That’s Allen Hall: difficult. Dan Fesenmeyer: I mean, I would say that’s the starting point of the negotiation. Um, I’ve seen things go different ways depending on, you know, if an off, if a developer can pass through their tariffs to the, on their PPA. They can handle more. If they can’t, then they may come back and say, you know what, we can only handle this much tariff risk or amount in our, in our PPA. The rest we need to figure out a way to share between the OEM or maybe and the developer. Uh, so let’s not assume, you know, not one, one size doesn’t fit all. Joel Saxum: The scary thing there is it sound, it sounds like you’re, like, as a developer when you’re signing a TSA, you’re almost signing a pro forma invoice. Right. That that could, that could go up 25% depending on the, the mood on, in Capitol Hill that day, which is, it’s a scary thought and I, I would think in my mind, hard to really get to [00:10:00] FID with that hanging over your head. Dan Fesenmeyer: Yeah. It it’s a tough situation right now for sure. Yeah. And, and we haven’t really seen what section 2 32, which is another round of potential tariffs out there, and I think that’s what. At least in the last month or two. People are comfortable with what tariffs are currently, but there’s this risk of section 2 32, uh, and who’s going to take that risk Allen Hall: moving forward? Because the 2 32 risk is, is not set in stone as when it will apply yet or if it even Dan Fesenmeyer: will happen and the amount, right. So three ifs, three big ifs there, Alan. Allen Hall: Yeah. And I, maybe that’s designed on purpose to be that way because it does seem. A little bit of chaos in the system will slow down wind and solar development. That’s one way you do. We just have a, a tariff. It’s sort of a tariff that just hangs out there forever. And you, are there ways to avoid that? Is it just getting the contract in [00:11:00] place ahead of time that you can avoid like the 2 32 thing or is it just luck of the draw right now? It’s always Dan Fesenmeyer: up to the situation and what your project delivery. Is looking at what your PPA, what can go in, what can go out. Um, it’s tough to avoid because the OEMs certainly don’t want to take that risk. And, uh, and I don’t blame them. Uh, and separately you were asking about, well, gee, do you start worrying about where your components are sourced from? Of course you are. However, you’re going to see that in the price and in the tariff table. Uh, typically. I would say from that may impact your, your, uh, sort of which, which OEM or which manufacturer you go with, depending on where their supply chain is. Although frankly, a lot of components come from China. Plain and simple, Allen Hall: right? Dan Fesenmeyer: Same place. If you are [00:12:00] subject to these tariffs, then you want to be more on a, you know, what I would say a fleet wide basis. So, uh, meaning. Blades can come from two places. We don’t want to have, you know, an OEM select place number one because it’s subject to tariff and we have to pay for it. You want it more on a fleet basis, so you’re not, so the OEM’s not necessarily picking and choosing who gets covered or who has to pay for a tariff or not. Joel Saxum: And I wonder that, going back to your first statement there, like if you have the power, the leverage, if you can influence that, right? Like. Immediately. My mind goes to, of course, like one of the big operators that has like 10, 12, 15,000 turbines and deals exclusively with ge. They probably have a lot of, they might have the, the stroke to be able to say, no, we want our components to come from here. We want our blades to come from TPI Mexico, or whatever it may be, because we don’t want to make sure they’re coming from overseas. And, and, and if that happens in, in [00:13:00] the, let’s take like the market as a whole, the macro environment. If you’re not that big player. You kind of get the shaft, like you, you would get the leftovers basically. Dan Fesenmeyer: You could, and that makes for a very interesting discussion when you’re negotiating the contract and, and figuring out something that could work for both. It also gets tricky with, you know, there could be maybe three different gearbox suppliers, right? And some of those. So this is when things really get, you know, peeling back an onion level. It’s difficult and I’ll be nice to the OEMs. It’s very tough for them to say, oh, we’re only a source these gearbox, because they avoid the tariffs. Right? That’s why I get more to this fleet cost basis, which I think is a fair way for both sides to, to handle the the issue. Allen Hall: What’s a turbine backlog right now? If I sign a TSA today, what’s the earliest I would see a turbine? Delivered. Dan Fesenmeyer: You know, I, I really don’t know the answer to that. I would say [00:14:00] generally speaking, it would be 12 months is generally the response you would get. Uh, in terms of if I sign today, we get delivery in 12 months, Allen Hall: anywhere less than two years, I think is a really short turnaround period. Because if you’re going for a, uh, gas turbine, you know, something that GE or Siemens would provide, Mitsubishi would provide. You’re talking about. Five or six years out before we ever see that turbine on site. But wind turbines are a year, maybe two years out. That seems like a no brainer for a lot of operators. Dan Fesenmeyer: I would say a year to two is safe. Um, my experience has been things, things really get serious 12 months out. It’s hard to get something quicker. Um, that suppliers would like to sign something two years in advance, but somewhere in between the 12 months and 24 months is generally what you can expect. Now, I haven’t seen and been close to a lot of recent turbine supply [00:15:00]deals and, and with delivery, so I, I, I can’t quote me on any of this. And obviously different safe harbor, PTC, windows are going to be more and more important. 20 eights preferred over 29. 29 will be preferred over 30. Um, and how quick can you act and how quick can you get in line? Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s gonna make a big difference. There’s gonna be a rush to the end. Wouldn’t you think? There’s must be operators putting in orders just because of the end of the IRA bill to try to get some production tax credits or any tax credits out of it. Dan Fesenmeyer: Absolutely. And you know. June of 2028 is a hell of a lot better than fall of 2028 if you want a COD in 2 28. Right. And then you just work backwards from there. Yeah. And that’s, that’s, we’ve seen that in the past as well, uh, with, with the different PTC cliffs that we’ve [00:16:00] seen. Allen Hall: Let’s talk service agreements for a moment when after you have a TSA signed and. The next thing on the list usually is a service agreement, and there are some OEMs that are really hard pushing their service agreements. 25, 30, 35 years. Joel, I think 35 is the longest one I have seen. That’s a long time. Joel Saxum: Mostly in the Nordics though. We’ve seen like see like, uh, there are Vestas in the Nordic countries. We’ve seen some 35 year ones, but that’s, to me, that’s. That’s crazy. That’s, that’s a marriage. 35 years. The crazy thing is, is some of them are with mo models that we know have issues. Right? That’s the one that’s always crazy to me when I watch and, and so then maybe this is a service, maybe this is a com a question is in a service level agreement, like I, I, I know people that are installing specific turbines that we’ve been staring at for five, six years that we know have problems now. They’ve addressed a lot of the problems and different components, bearings and drive, train and [00:17:00] blades and all these different things. Um, but as an, as an operator, you’d think that you have, okay, I have my turbine supply agreement, so there’s some warranty stuff in there that’s protecting me. There is definitely some serial defect clauses that are protecting me. Now I have a service level agreement or a service agreement that we’re signing that should protect me for from some more things. So I’m reducing my risk a little more. I also have insurance and stuff in built into this whole thing. But when, when you start crossing that gap between. These three, four different types of contracts, how do people ensure that when they get to that service level contract, that’s kind of in my mind, the last level of protection from the OEM. How do they make sure they don’t end up in a, uh, a really weird Swiss cheese moment where something fell through the cracks, serial defects, or something like that? You know? Dan Fesenmeyer: Yeah. It, it comes down to, I, I think it’s good to negotiate both at the same time. Um, it sometimes that’s not practical. It’s good. And [00:18:00] part of it is the, the simple, once your TSA is signed, you, you don’t have that leverage over that seller to negotiate terms in the services agreement, right? Because you’ve already signed a t to supply agreement. Uh, the other piece I think is really important is making sure the defect language, for example, and the warranty language in the TSA. Pretty much gets pulled over into the service agreement, so we don’t have different definitions of what a defect is or a failed part, uh, that’s important from an execution standpoint. My view has always been in the TSA, do as much on a warranty claim as you possibly can at that end of the warranty term. The caps and the coverages. And the warranty is much higher than under the services agreement. Services agreement [00:19:00] will end up, you know, warranty or extended warranty brackets, right? ’cause that’s not what it is. It becomes unscheduled maintenance or unplanned maintenance. So you do have that coverage, but then you’re subject to, potentially subject to CAPS or mews, annual or per event. Um. Maybe the standard of a defect is different. Again, that’s why it’s important to keep defect in the TSAs the same as an SMA, and do your warranty claim first. Get as much fixed under the warranty before you get into that service contract. Joel Saxum: So with Windquest, do you go, do you regularly engage at that as farms are coming up to that warranty period? Do you help people with that process as well? As far as end of warranty claims? Contract review and those things before they get into that next phase, you know, at the end of that two year or three years. Dan Fesenmeyer: Yeah. We try to be soup to nuts, meaning we’re there from the proposal to helping [00:20:00] negotiate and close the supply agreement and the services agreement. Then once you move into the services agreement or into the operation period, we can help out with, uh, filing warranty claims. Right. Do we, do you have a serial defect, for example, or. That, that’s usually a big one. Do you have something that gets to that level to at least start that process with an root cause analysis? Um, that’s, that’s obviously big ones, so we help with warranty claims and then if things aren’t getting fixed on time or if you’re in a service agreement and you’re unhappy, we try to step in and help out with, uh, that process as well. Joel Saxum: In taking on those projects, what is your most common component that you deal with for seald? Defects, Dan Fesenmeyer: gearboxes seem to always be a problem. Um, more recently, blade issues, um, main bearing issues. Uh, those are [00:21:00] some of the bigger ones. And then, yeah, and we can be main bearings. Also. Pitch bearings often an issue as well. Joel Saxum: Yeah, no, nothing surprising there. I think if you, if you listen to the podcast at all, you’ve heard us talk about all of those components. Fairly regularly. We’re not, we’re not to lightening the world on firing new information on that one. Allen Hall: Do a lot of operators and developers miss out on that end of warranty period? It does sound like when we talk to them like they know it’s coming, but they haven’t necessarily prepared to have the data and the information ready to go till they can file anything with the OEM it. It’s like they haven’t, they know it’s approaching, right? It’s just, it’s just like, um, you know, tax day is coming, you know, April 15th, you’re gonna write a check for to somebody, but you’re not gonna start thinking about it until April 14th. And that’s the wrong approach. And are you getting more because things are getting tighter? Are you getting more requests to look at that and to help? Operators and developers engage that part of their agreements. I think it’s an Dan Fesenmeyer: [00:22:00] oppor opportunity area for owner operators. I think in the past, a lot of folks have just thought, oh, well, you know, the, the, the service agreement kicks in and it’ll be covered under unscheduled or unplanned maintenance, which is true. But, uh, again, response time might be slower. You might be subject to caps, or in the very least, an overall contract level. Cap or limitation, let’s say. Uh, so I, I do think it’s an opportunity area. And then similarly, when you’re negotiating these upfront to put in language that, well, I don’t wanna say too much, but you wanna make sure, Hey, if I, if I file a claim during warranty and you don’t fix it, that doesn’t count against, let’s say your unplanned cap or unplanned maintenance. Joel Saxum: That’s a good point. I was actually, Alan, this is, I was surprised the other day. You and I were on a call with someone and they had mentioned that they were coming up on end of warranty and they were just kinda like, eh, [00:23:00] we’ve got a service agreement, so like we’re not gonna do anything about it. And I was like, really? Like that day? Like, yeah, that deadline’s passed, or it’s like too close. It wasn’t even passed. It was like, it’s coming up and a month or two. And they’re like, yeah, it’s too close. We’re not gonna do anything about it. We’ll just kind of deal with it as it comes. And I was thinking, man, that’s a weird way to. To manage a, you know, a wind farm that’s worth 300 million bucks. Dan Fesenmeyer: And then the other thing is sometimes, uh, the dates are based on individual turbine CDs. So your farm may have a December 31 COD, but some of the units may have an October, uh, date. Yeah, we heard a weird one the other day that was Joel Saxum: like the entire wind farm warranty period started when the first turbine in the wind farm was COD. And so there was some turbines that had only been running for a year and a half and they were at the end of warranty already. Someone didn’t do their due diligence on that contract. They should have called Dan Meyer. Dan Fesenmeyer: And thing is, I come back is when you know red lines are full of things that people learned [00:24:00] by something going wrong or by something they missed. And that’s a great example of, oh yeah, we missed that when we signed this contract. Joel Saxum: That’s one of the reasons why Alan and I, a lot, a lot of people we talk to, it’s like consult the SMEs in the space, right? You’re, you may be at tasked with being a do it all person and you may be really good at that, but someone that deals in these contracts every day and has 20 years of experience in it, that’s the person you talk to. Just like you may be able to figure out some things, enlight. Call Allen. The guy’s been doing lightning his whole career as a subject matter expert, or call a, you know, a on our team and the podcast team is the blade expert or like some of the people we have on our network. Like if you’re going to dive into this thing, like just consult, even if it’s a, a small part of a contract, give someone a day to look through your contract real quick just to make sure that you’re not missing anything. ’cause the insights from SMEs are. Priceless. Really. Dan Fesenmeyer: I couldn’t agree more. And that’s kind of how I got the idea of starting Windquest advisors to begin with. [00:25:00] Um, I used to sit across the table with very smart people, but GE would con, you know, we would negotiate a hundred contracts a year. The purchaser made one or two. And again, this isn’t, you know, to beat up the manufacturers, right? They do a good job. They, they really work with their, their customers to. Find solutions that work for both. So this is not a beat up the OEM, uh, from my perspective, but having another set of eyes and experience can help a lot. Allen Hall: I think it’s really important that anybody listening to this podcast understand how much risk they’re taking on and that they do need help, and that’s what Windquest Advisors is all about. And getting ahold of Dan. Dan, how do people get ahold of you? www.win advisors.com. If you need to get it to Dan or reach out to win advisors, check out LinkedIn, go to the website, learn more about it. Give Dan a phone call because I think [00:26:00] you’re missing out probably on millions of dollars of opportunity that probably didn’t even know existed. Uh, so it’s, it’s a good contact and a good resource. And Dan, thank you so much for being on the podcast. We appreciate having you and. We’d like to have you back again. Dan Fesenmeyer: Well, I’d love to come back and talk about, maybe we can talk more about Lightning. That’s a Joel Saxum: couple of episodes. Dan Fesenmeyer: I like watching your podcast. I always find them. Informative and also casual. It’s like you can sit and listen to a discussion and, and pick up a few things, so please continue doing what you’re doing well, thanks Dan. Allen Hall: Thanks Dan.

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• Statkraft Sells Offshore Wind, Torsional Blade Testing

  Allen and Yolanda discuss Statkraft’s workforce cuts and sale of its Swedish offshore wind projects. They also cover ORE Catapult’s partnership with Bladena to conduct torsional testing on an 88-meter blade, and the upcoming Wind Energy O&M Australia conference. Register for ORE Catapult’s Offshore Wind Supply Chain Spotlight event! Visit CICNDT to learn more! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update 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 Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now here’s your hosts, Alan Hall, Joel Saxon, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes. Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall in the Queen city of Charlotte, North Carolina. I have Yolanda Padron in of all places, Austin, Texas. We’re together to talk to this week’s news and there’s a lot going on, but before we do, I want to highlight that Joel Saxon and I will be in Edinburgh, Scotland for the re Catapult UK offshore supply chain spotlight. That’s on December 11th, which is a Thursday. We’re gonna attend that event. We’re excited to meet with everybody. Over in the UK and in Scotland. Um, a lot of people that we know and have been on the podcast over a number of years [00:01:00] are gonna be at that event. If you’re interested in attending the OE Catapult UK Offshore Supply Chain spotlight, just Google it. It’s really inexpensive to attend, and I hope to see most of you there, Yolanda. There’s some big news over in Scandinavia today, uh, as, as we’re reading these stories, uh, the Norwegian State owned Utility Stack Craft, and it’s also one of Europe’s largest renewable energy companies. As, uh, as we know, I’ve been spending a lot of money in new markets and new technologies. Uh, they are in electric vehicle charging biofuels and some offshore wind development. Off the eastern coast of Sweden. So between Finland and Sweden, they’re also involved in district heating. So Stack Craft’s a really large company with a broad scope, uh, but they’re running into a little bit of financial difficulty. And this past July, they announced some [00:02:00] workforce reductions, and those are starting to kick in. They have 168 fewer employees, uh, by the end of this third quarter. 330 more expected to leave by the end of the year when all the dive are complete. This is the worrisome part. Roughly 1000 people will longer work for the company. Now, as part of the restructuring of Stack Craft, they are going to or have sold their offshore portfolio to Zephyr Renewable. Which is another Norwegian company. So Stack Craft is the Norwegian state owned renewable energy company. Zephyr is an independent company, far as I can tell my recollection that’s the case. So they agreed to acquire the bot, the uh, offshore Sigma and Lambda North projects, which makes Zephyr the largest offshore wind developer. Sweden, not Norway, [00:03:00] in Sweden. Obviously there’s some regulatory approvals that need to happen to make this go, but it does seem like Norway still is heavily involved in Sweden. Yolanda, with all the movement in offshore wind, we’re seeing big state owned companies. Pulling themselves out of offshore wind and looks like sort of free market, capitalistic companies are going head first into offshore wind. How does that change the landscape and what should we be expecting here over the next year or two? Yolanda Padron: We, we’ve seen a large reduction in the, the workforce in offshore wind in all of these state owned companies that you mentioned. Uh, something that I think will be really interesting to see will be that different approach. Of, you know, having these companies be a bit more like traditional corporations that you see, not necessarily having them, [00:04:00] um, be so tied to whatever politically is happening in the government at the moment, or whatever is happening between governments at a time, um, and seeing exactly what value. The different aspects of a company are bringing into what that company is making into, um, what, uh, the revenue of that company is, and not just kind of what is, what is considered to be the best way forward by governments. Do you agree? Is that something that you’re sensing too? Allen Hall: The COP 30 just wrapped down in the rainforest of Brazil, and there has not been a lot of agreement news coming out of that summit. Uh, I think next year it’s gonna move to Turkey, but Australia’s involved heavily. It was supposed to be in Adelaide at one point and then it’s moved to Turkey. [00:05:00] So there doesn’t seem to be a lot of consensus globally about what should be happening for renewables, and it feels like. The state owned companies are, uh, getting heavily leveraged and losing money trying to get their footing back underneath of them, so they’re gonna have to divest of something to get back to the core of what they were doing. That’s an interesting development because I think one of the question marks regarding sort of these state owned companies was how fast were they willing to develop the technology? How much risk were they willing to take? Being backed by governments gets a little political at times, right? So they, they want to have a, a steady stream of revenue coming from these operations. And when they don’t, the politicians step in and, uh, lean on the company is a good bit. Does the move to more, uh, standalone companies that are investing sort of venture capital money and bank money taking loans? I assume most of this [00:06:00] does that. Change how the offshore industry looks at itself. One and two, what the OEMs are thinking. Because if they were going to sell to an TED or an Ecuador, or a stack raft or vattenfall, any of them, uh, you know, when you’re going to that sales discussion that they’re backed by billions and billions and billions of, of kroner or whatever the, the currency is. So you may not have to. Really be aggressive on pricing. Now you’re dealing with companies that are heavily leveraged and don’t have that banking of a government. Do you think there’s gonna be a tightening of what that marketplace looks like or more pressure to go look towards China for offshore wind turbines? Yolanda Padron: It’ll definitely get a bit more audited internally, exactly what decisions are made and and how objective teams are. I think that there’s. [00:07:00] In all of the companies that you mentioned, there’s some semblance of things that maybe happened because of what was going on politically or, or because of ties that certain governments had to each other, or certain governments had to specific corporations, um, which was a, a great way for those companies to operate at the time and what was, what made sense. But now that it’s. A third party who genuinely, you know, needs that cash flow in from that business or that part of the business, it’ll, I think you’ll definitely start seeing some, some greater efficiencies going on within Allen Hall: these teams. Well, I would hope so. If you think about the way the United States moved pre, uh, the current administration. There were a number of US based companies sort of going 50 50 on a lot of the [00:08:00] offshore development, and then they slowly started backing away. The only one that’s still really in it is Dominion, was the coastal offshore, um, coastal Virginia offshore wind project that is still progressing at a good pace. But, uh, everybody else that was involved in, and they’re not the same kind of structure as an Ecuador is. They’re not, uh, there’s kinda state-owned entities in the United States and states can’t have deficits, unlike nations can. So the US deficit obviously is massively large, but state deficits don’t really exist. So those electric companies can’t get highly leveraged where they’re gonna bleed cash. It’s just not a thing. It’s gonna happen. So I think I saw the precursors to some of this offshore turbulence happening in the United States as the. They didn’t see a lot of profit coming from the state electric companies. That seems to be flowing into Europe now pretty heavily. That started about six months [00:09:00] ago. How are they gonna structure some of these offshore projects now? Are they just gonna put them on hold and wait for interest rates to come down so that the margins go up? Is is that really the play? Is that you have the plot of land? You already have all the, the filings and the paperwork and authorization to do a project at some point, is it just now a matter of waiting where the time is? Right. Financially, Yolanda Padron: that question will be answered by each specific company and see what, what makes sense to them. I don’t think that it makes sense to stall projects that if you already have the permits in, if you already have everything in, and just to, to see when the time is right, because. Everything’s been ramping up to that moment, right? Like, uh, the water’s always already flowing. Um, but it, it’ll, it’ll definitely be interesting to see what approach, like where, where each company finds themselves. I, they’ll have to rely on [00:10:00] what information has come out in the past and maybe try to analyze it, try to see exactly where things went wrong, or try to pinpoint what. Decisions to not make. Again, knowing what they know now, but with everything already flowing and everything already in queue, it’ll have to be something that’s done sooner rather than later to not lose any of that momentum of the projects because they’re not reinventing the wheel. Allen Hall: Siemens is developing what a 20 odd megawatt, offshore turbine? 22 megawatt, if I remember right. 21, 22. Something in there. Obviously Ming Yang and some others are talking about upwards of 15 megawatts in the turbine. If you have a lot of capital at risk and not a lot of government backing in it, are you going to step down and stay in the 15 megawatt range offshore because there’s some little bit of history, or are you gonna just roll the dice? Some new technology knowing that you can get the, the dollar per megawatt [00:11:00] down. If you bought a Chinese wind turbine, put it in the water. Do you roll that? Do you roll that dice and take the risk? Or is the safer bet and maybe the financing bet gonna play out easier by using a Vestus 15 megawatt turbine or a Siemens older offshore turbine that has a track record with it. Yolanda Padron: I think initially it’ll have to be. Using what’s already been established and kind of the devil, you know? Right. I, I think it’ll, there’s a lot of companies that are coming together and, and using what’s done in the field and what operational information they have to be able to, to. Take that information and to create new studies that could be done on these new blades, on these new technologies, uh, to be able to take that next step into innovation without compromising any [00:12:00] of the, of the money, any of the aspects really like lowering your risk Allen Hall: portfolio. Yeah. ’cause the risk goes all the way down to the OEMs, right. If the developer fails and the OEM doesn’t get paid. It, it’s a. Catastrophic down the chain event that Siemens investors are looking to avoid, obviously. So they’re gonna be also looking at the financing of these companies to decide whether they’re going to sell them turbines and. The question comes up is how much are they gonna ask for a deposit before they will deliver the first turbine? It may be most of the money up front. Uh, it generally is, unless you’re a big developer. So this is gonna be an interesting, uh, turning point for the offshore wind industry. And I know in 2026 we’re gonna see a lot more news about it, and probably some names we haven’t heard of in a while. Coming back into offshore wind. Don’t miss the UK Offshore Wind Supply Chain Spotlight 2025 in Edinburg on December 11th. Over 550 delegates and 100 exhibitors will be at this game changing event. [00:13:00] Connect with decision makers, explore market ready innovations and secure the partnerships to accelerate your growth. Register now and take your place at the center of the UK’s offshore Wind future. Just visit supply chain spotlight.co.uk and register today. Well, as we all know, the offshore wind industry has sort of a problem, which is now starting to come more prevalent, which is the first generation of offshore wind turbines that prove that the technology could work at scale or getting old. We’re also developing a lot of new wind turbines, so the blade links are getting much longer. We don’t have a lot of design history on them. Decommissioning is expensive. Of course, anything offshore is expensive. What if we can make those blades last longer offshore, how would we do that? Well, that question has come up a number of times at many of the, the conferences that I have attended, and it looks like ORI Catapult, which is based in the UK and has their test center [00:14:00] in Blythe, England, is working with Blade Dina, which is a Danish engineering company that’s now owned by Res. So if you haven’t. Seeing anything from Blade Dina, you’re not paying attention. You should go to the website and check them out. Uh, they have all kinds of great little technology and I call it little technology, but innovative technology to make blades last longer. So some really cool things from the group of Blade Dina, but they’re gonna be working with re catapult to test an 88 meter blade for torsion. And I’m an electrical engineer. I’m gonna admit it up front, Yolanda. I don’t know a lot about torsional testing. I’ve seen it done a little bit on aircraft wings, but I haven’t seen it done on wind turbine blades. And my understanding, talking to a lot of blade experts like yourself is when you start to twist a blade, it’s not that easy to simulate the loads of wind loads that would happen normally on a turbine in the laboratory. Yolanda Padron: Absolutely. I think this is going to be so [00:15:00] exciting as someone in operations, traditionally in operations, uh, because I think a lot of the, the technology that we’ve seen so far and the development of a lot of these wind projects has been from teams that are very theory based. And so they’ve, they’ve seen what simulations can be done on a computer, and those are great and those are perfect, but. As everyone knows, the world is a crazy place. And so there’s so many factors that you might not even think to consider before going into operations and operating this, uh, wind farm for 10, 20 years. And so something that Blade Dina is doing is bringing a lot of that operational information and seeing, like applying that to the blade testing to be able to, to get us to. The next step of being able to innovate while knowing a little bit [00:16:00]more of what exactly you’re putting on there and not taking as big a risk. Allen Hall: Does the lack of torsional testing increase the risk? Because if you listen to, uh, a, a lot of blade structure people, one of the things that’s discussed, and Blaina has been working on this for a couple of years, I went back. Two or three years to see what some of the discussions were. They’ve been working with DTU for quite a while, but Dina has, uh, but they think that some of the aging issues are really related to torsion, not to flap wise or edgewise movement of the blade, if that’s the case, particularly on longer blades, newer blades, where they’re lighter. If that’s the case, is there momentum in the industry to create a standard on how to. Do this testing because I, I know it’s gonna be difficult. I, I can imagine all the people from Blaina that are working on it, and if you’ve met the Blaina folk, there [00:17:00] are pretty bright people and they’ve been working with DTU for a number of years. Everybody in this is super smart. But when you try to get something into an IEC standard, you try to simplify where it can be repeatable. Is this. Uh, is it even possible to get a repeatable torsion test or is it gonna be very specific to the blade type and, or it is just gonna be thousands of hours of engineering even to get to a torsion test? Yolanda Padron: I think right now it’ll be the thousands of hours of engineering that we’re seeing, which isn’t great, but hopefully soon there, there could be some sort of. A way to, to get all of these teams together and to create a bit of a more robust standard. Of course, these standards aren’t always perfect. We’ve seen that in, in other aspects such as lightning, but it at least gets you a starting point to, to be able to, to have everyone being compliance with, with a similar [00:18:00] testing parameters. Allen Hall: When I was at DTU, oh boy, it’s probably been a year and a half, maybe two years ago. Yikes. A lot has happened. We were able to look at, uh, blades that had come off the first offshore wind project off the coast of Denmark. These blades were built like a tank. They could live another 20, 30 years. I think they had been on in the water for 20 plus years. If I remember correctly. I was just dumbfounded by it, like, wow. That’s a long time for a piece of fiberglass to, to be out in such a harsh environment. And when they started to structurally test it to see how much life it had left in it, it was, this thing could last a lot longer. We could keep these blades turned a lot longer. Is that a good design philosophy though? Are should we be doing torsional testing to extend the lifetime to. 40, 50 years because I’m concerned now that the, well, the reality is you like to have everything fall apart at once. The gearbox to fail, the generator to fail, the [00:19:00] blades, to fail, the tower, to fail all of it at the same time. That’s your like ideal engineering design. And Rosemary always says the same thing, like you want everything to fall apart and the same day. 25 years out because at 25 years out, there’s probably a new turbine design that’s gonna be so much massively better. It makes sense to do it. 20 years is a long time. Does it make sense to be doing torsional testing to extend the lifetime of these blades past like the 20 year lifespan? Or is, or, or is the economics of it such like, if we can make these turbines in 50 years, we’re gonna do it regardless of what the bearings will hold. Yolanda Padron: From, from speaking to different people in the field, there’s a lot of appetite to try to extend the, the blade lifetime as long as the permits are. So if it’s a 50 year permit to try to get it to those 50 years as much as possible, so you don’t have to do a lot of that paperwork and a lot of the, if you have to do [00:20:00] anything related to the mono piles, it’s a bit of a nightmare. Uh, and just trying to, to see that, and of course. I agree that in a perfect world, everything would fail at once, but it doesn’t. Right? And so there you are seeing in the lifetime maybe you have to do a gearbox replacement here and there. And so, and having the, the blades not be the main issue or not having blades in the water and pieces as long as possible or in those 50 years, then you can also tackle some of the other long-term solutions to see if you, if you can have that wind farm. For those 50 years or if you are going to have to sort of either replace some of the turbines or, or eat up some of that time left over in the permit that you have. Allen Hall: Yeah, because I think the industry is moving that way to test gear boxes and to test bearings. RD test systems has made a number of advancements and test beds to do just that, to, [00:21:00] to test these 15, 20, 25 megawatt turbines for lifetime, which we haven’t done. As much of this probably the industry should have. It does seem like we’re trying to get all the components through some sort of life testing, whatever that is, but we haven’t really understood what life testing means, particularly with blades. Right? So the, the issue of torsion, which is popped its head up probably every six months. There’s a question about should we be testing for torsion that. Is in line with bearing testing that’s in line with gearbox testing. If we are able to do that, where we spend a little more money on the development side and the durability side, that would dramatically lower the cost of operations, right? Yolanda Padron: Absolutely. It, it’d lower the cost of operations. It would lower the ask. Now that. A lot of these companies are transition, are [00:22:00]transitioning to be a bit more privatized. It’ll lower the risk long term for, for getting some of those financial loans out, for these projects to actually take place. And, you know, you’ll, you’re having a, a site last 50 years, you’re going to go through different cycles. Different political cycles. So you won’t have that, um, you won’t have that to, to factor in too much, into, into your risk of whether, whether or not you, you have a permit today and don’t have it tomorrow. Allen Hall: It does bring the industry to a interesting, uh, crossroads if we can put a little more money into the blades to make them last 25 years. Pretty regularly like the, the, you’re almost guaranteeing it because of the technology that bleeding that’s gonna develop with Ory Catapult and you get the gearbox and you can get the generator and bearings all to do the same thing. [00:23:00] Are you willing to pay a little bit more for that turbine? Because I think in today’s world or last year’s world, the answer was no. I wanted the cheapest blade. I wanted the cheapest, uh, to sell. I could get, I wanna put ’em on a tower, I’m gonna call it done. And then at least in the United States, like repower, it’s boom, 10 years it’s gonna repower. So I don’t care about year 20. I don’t even care about year 11, honestly, that those days have are gone for a little while, at least. Do you think that there’s appetite for say, a 10% price increase? Maybe a 15% say 20. Let’s just go crazy and say it’s a 20% price increase to then know, hey, we have some lifecycle testing. We’re really confident in the durability these turbines is. There’s a trade off there somewhere there, right? Yolanda Padron: Yeah. I mean, spending 10, 20% of CapEx to it, it. Will, if you can dramatically increase [00:24:00] the, the lifetime of the blades and not just from the initial 10 years, making them 20 years like we’re talking about, but some of these blades are failing before they hit that 10 year mark because of that lack of testing, right. That we’ve seen, we’ve talked to so many people about, and it’s an unfortunate reality. But it is a reality, right? And so it is something that if you’re, you’re either losing money just from having to do a lot of repairs or replacements, or you’re losing money from all of the downtime and not having that generation until you can get those blade repairs or replacements. So in spending a little bit more upfront, I, I feel like there should be. Great appetite from a lot of these companies to, to spend that money and not have to worry about that in the long term. Allen Hall: Yeah, I think the 20 26, 27, Joel would always say it’s 2027, but let’s just say 2027. If you have an [00:25:00] opportunity to buy a really hard and vested turbine or a new ing y, twin headed dragon and turbine, whatever, they’re gonna call this thing. I think they’re gonna stick to the European turbine. I really do. I think the lifetime matters here. And having security in the testing to show that it’s gonna live that long will make all the little difference to the insurance market, to the finance market. And they’re gonna force, uh, the developers’ hands that’s coming, Yolanda Padron: you know, developing of a project. Of course, we see so many projects and operations and everything. Um, but developing a project does take years to happen. So if you’re developing a project and you think, you know, this is great because I can have this project be developed and it will take me and it’ll be alive for a really long time and it’ll be great and I’ll, I’ll be able to, to see that it’s a different, it’s a different business case too, of how much money you’re going to bring into the [00:26:00]company by generating a lot more and a lot more time and having to spend less upfront in all of the permitting. Because if instead of having to develop two projects, I can just develop one and it’ll last as long as two projects, then. Do you really have your business case made for you? Especially if it’s just a 10 to 20% increase instead of a doubling of all of the costs and effort. Speaker 4: Australia’s wind farms are growing fast, but are your operations keeping up? Join us February 17th and 18th at Melbourne’s Poolman on the park for Wind Energy o and M Australia 2026, where you’ll connect with the experts solving real problems in maintenance asset management. And OEM relations. Walk away with practical strategies to cut costs and boost uptime that you can use the moment you’re back on site. Register now at W om a 2020 six.com. Wind Energy, o and m Australia is created [00:27:00] by Wind professionals for wind professionals. Because this industry needs solutions, not speeches, Allen Hall: I know Yolanda and I are preparing to go to Woma Wind Energy, o and m Australia, 2026 in February. Everybody’s getting their tickets and their plans made. If you haven’t done that, you need to go onto the website, woma WMA 2020 six.com and register to attend the event. There’s a, there’s only 250 tickets, Yolanda, that’s not a lot. We sold out last year. I think it’s gonna be hard to get a ticket here pretty soon. You want to be there because we’re gonna be talking about everything operations and trying to make turbines in Australia last longer with less cost. And Australians are very, um, adept at making things work. I’ve seen some of their magic up close. It’s quite impressive. Uh, so I’m gonna learn a lot this year. What are you looking forward to at Wilma 26? Yolanda. [00:28:00] Yolanda Padron: I think it’s going to be so exciting to have such a, a relatively small group compared to the different conferences, but even just the fact that it’s everybody talking to each other who’s seen so many different modes of failure and so many different environments, and just everybody coming together to talk solutions or to even just establish relationships for when that problem inevitably arises without having it. Having, I mean, something that I always have so much anxiety about whenever I go to conferences is just like getting bombarded by salespeople all the time, and so this is just going to be great Asset managers, engineers, having everybody in there and having everybody talking the same language and learning from each other, which will be very valuable. At least for me. Allen Hall: It’s always sharing. That’s what I enjoy. And it’s not even necessarily during some of the presentations and the round tables and the, [00:29:00] the panels as much as when you’re having coffee out in the break area or you’re going to dinner at night, or uh, meeting before everything starts in the morning. You just get to learn so much about the wind industry and where people are struggling, where they’re succeeding, how they dealt with some of these problems. That’s the way the industry gets stronger. We can’t all remain in our little foxholes, not looking upside, afraid to poke our head up and look around a little bit. We, we have to be talking to one another and understanding how others have attacked the same problem. And I always feel like once we do that, life gets a lot easier. I don’t know why we’re make it so hard and wind other industries like to talk to one another. We seem somehow close ourselves off. And uh, the one thing I’ve learned in Melbourne last year was. Australians are willing to describe how they have fixed these problems. And I’m just like dumbfounded. Like, wow, that was brilliant. You didn’t get to to Europe and talk about what’s going on [00:30:00] there. So the exchange of information is wonderful, and I know Yolanda, you’re gonna have a great time and so are everybody listening to this podcast. Go to Woma, WOMA 2020 six.com and register. It’s not that much money, but it is a great time and a wonderful learning experience. That wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. And if today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn and don’t for, 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 and we’ll catch you on the next episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. This time next [00:31:00] week.

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