The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

Allen reports live from ACP OM&S in Orlando, where the crew discusses high attendance costs, a pay-to-play model that shuts out newcomers, and how the event compares to WOMA. Plus, Vestas CEO Henrik Anderson says he’ll leave Denmark if proposed wealth taxes go through, sparking a debate on executive pay and Danish culture.

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[00:00:00] The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by Strike Tape, protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit strike tape.com And now your hosts.

Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host Allen Hall, and I’m here with Yolanda Padron, Rosemary Barnes and Matthew Stead. I am at ACP OM&S in Orlando. Home of Mickey Mouse and we’ve had, uh, this is our second day at OM and S and this is the conference where all the operators and the maintenance and the ISPs and all the new technologies show up to, to discuss their products and try to get some work for the summertime.

Uh, so there’s a, a good number of vendors here. Solars here, not as much best as I would as expected, and obviously a lot to do with wind. [00:01:00] Uh, I know we’ve been talking internally on Slack and amongst one another. This is one of the, the most expensive conferences I have ever attended. It’s about $2,200 to attend just to get yourself into the door.

Rosemary Barnes: And that’s US dollars too. 

Matthew Stead: Real dollars. 

Allen Hall: Green backs. 

Rosemary Barnes: That’s like three and a half times what our event cost. What warmer cost. If you do the conversion 

Allen Hall: yes. 

Rosemary Barnes: And you get access to what? An exhibition and all of a whole bunch, a variety of amazing, informative, technical topics included with that ticket price, right? 

Allen Hall: No.

You get access to the exhibition, they will feed you some, uh, enchiladas and some, uh, free beer, but all the technical talks are extra. You have to pay. Uh, a couple hundred dollars 

Rosemary Barnes: enchiladas and beer are a must have that everyone obviously wants, but talking about wind energy, totally optional. Nobody. Now, obviously not everybody is gonna wanna talk about wind energy, [00:02:00] so that’s, that’s an extra ticket that you need for that one.

Allen Hall: Well, in order to go to the, I would call them technical talks, you have to pay for those. They have an A space in the middle of the convention where they’re doing what they call powered cast. Which are kind of modeled on podcasts, uh, that are sort of a produced thing where they have a panel up there.

It’s similar what to where you’d done in Melbourne with Woma, but not with real technical people. The more polishing people. That’s what I saw. I don’t know a lot of the names and I’m pretty used to, to recognizing names of wind and it looks like to be a lot more policy people not. Blade experts or people like that.

Rosemary Barnes: I’m a little bit confused because it’s very different to, you know, I love to complain about the Australian wind energy events, but this sounds very different to the way that it’s run here. Like usually at the exhibitions, the exhibitors pay like a bunch of money to be there, and what they want is people to come see it.

So [00:03:00] usually here the exhibition is. Free to attend because you are there to be advertised to, you know, like it’s not some like amazing, valuable thing to you. It’s super valuable to the exhibitors. That’s why they have to pay, you know, $10,000 plus to, to be there. Right, but you are saying that they’re, they’re charging the, the attendees are, they’re giving the exhibition space away for free then?

Allen Hall: No, the exhibition space costs a tremendous amount of money for a little tiny space. I’m actually in our slot, we share. A slot because the prices are so high, we’re sharing it with AC 8 83 who we love and with C and C onsite, who also we love. So it’s a good combination ’cause we like one another. We’re fun to hang out with, but it’s probably a nine by nine space.

Uh, and then you have to pay for carpet and all the furniture that happens inside of that space, you can easily spend. $10,000 on a salon. 

Matthew Stead: Question for you, Allen. So, um, how [00:04:00] does, how does the industry foster, you know, new, new technology, new companies, you know, growth of the industry, new ideas, so, you know, how does this event, um, foster those sorts of things?

Allen Hall: It doesn’t because it’s really, it’s pay to play as Rosemary has pointed out a number of times and is frustrated by. In order to get heard, you have to pay to one, have a booth, or if you want to get up on stage, it costs money. It’s, it’s not a small amount, by the way. So, uh, if you’re a new company, you got a great idea.

You even have traction. Say you’re TRL seven plus and you want to connect with operators, it’s hard to do that here. Uh, the operators tend to be a little gun shy and, and they’re. Off on the side. I, I know some of them obviously, ’cause I, I know who they are, but it isn’t like, uh, the operators are walking around necessarily talking to all the exhibitors.

That’s not how this [00:05:00] works. What generally is happening is the operators are talking, uh, to people that are selling products in these conference rooms on the side. So those things are completely off the show floor. It’s not the best situation. Like, I gotta admit, I’ve been to a lot of other conferences like in aerospace.

Those tend to be a little more free flowing. 

Rosemary Barnes: It’s interesting ’cause it’s like, obviously you go to the events because everybody goes to the event and I’m sure you’ve had some great conversations. Um, however, you don’t need to go inside. Like when you go to one of these huge events, you’re trapped inside a windowless room for all day, every day for several days in a row.

Like, why does it need, why does it need to be there if they’re discourage, actively discouraging people from going to any presentations? Why couldn’t you just grab a bunch of friends, you know, put on an open invite, Hey, we’re all gonna the beach this week. Let’s go talk wind energy at the beach. Like, I, I don’t understand why we need to subject ourselves to this sort of, this sort of event.

Like I [00:06:00] just, it it’s gotten out outta control, don’t you think? 

Allen Hall: It has. I would never talk wind energy while I’m at the beach. I go, that’s probably one place where I’m not talking wind energy, but there are other nice places you could be. To talk about what’s happening in the industry and, and that’s one of the frustrating pieces about this is, although I love a lot of the people that are here, it’s not a great place to share new ideas or to learn something new.

It’s, it’s mostly a, a meet and greet and catch up a reunion in a sense. Of, Hey, we’re the survivors. That’s it. Part of it is that feel right. 

Rosemary Barnes: It’s pretty hard though if you are not like, you know, everybody you need to talk to. And I started doing the same thing, like at the um, one, one of the recent events or one of the events last year in, in Australia.

I was so fed up with it the year before. I’m like, I’m not giving them any money this year. I was at least allowed to go to the exhibition for free at that event. So, you know, at least that’s something, but I mean, I barely even did that. Anyway. What I did was I set up at a cafe near to the event and just, I just [00:07:00]scheduled meetings like back to back for two days.

Um, everyone just came to the cafe. But that’s ’cause I know everybody, right? Like, it’s like someone that’s new to the industry can get nothing out of these events. Now it seems like it’s just, it’s so, it’s so sad. Like where, how, how are you going? Like, you know, people brand new to the industry. You used to be able to go to an event and just be like, okay, I’m gonna just have information overload for two or three days, meet a bunch of great people and I’ll come away feeling like I’m part of this industry.

I just can’t imagine. That happening at the event that you are describing, that someone would, would show up and, you know, come away knowing a lot more about the industry and with, with a bunch of useful connections. Am I right? 

Allen Hall: Uh, I think you’re right. There’s were a couple of people that I ran into that were new to the industry, trying to start a service provider or repair business, generally speaking that, or a drone business that we’re trying to get into the, the industry and we’re reaching out and talking to people and.

The thing about [00:08:00] wind is when you actually get ahold of somebody, they will help you. It’s, it’s very, uh, open. What do you do? What are you trying to do? Wherever you talk, who you talk to, here’s some names that will happen, but it is daunting because there’s a lot of people here. You don’t know anybody, and there’s no way to really introduce them.

I think that one of the things that, uh, American C Clean powered. Did, uh, that I noticed was they had like a first timers reunion space, so, or a meeting space so that it had some beach balls and a little Tahiti hut or whatever those tiki hut or whatever that was where you could kind of hang out because you knew.

But I’m not sure that’s the best way to do that. I think, you know, American clean power could do a much better job of knowing who’s first time and connecting them. If the industry’s gonna grow, you need to be taking in new people and new ideas. To it. The only way you’re gonna be able to do that is if you actively make it happen.

Matthew Stead: Did you learn anything new [00:09:00] so far? 

Allen Hall: Not new. Uh, I, because we’re doing the podcast and we’re recorded several episodes in the last two days, I was able to ask specific questions like, what are you working on? What’s new? What’s coming out? And that’s the way to get to those answers. But if you’re walking the exhibit four, you would not see a lot of new technology and.

Three years ago, I think four years ago, especially like during COVID, there was some pretty cool technology out on the show floor, uh, but not so much Today, the industry’s matured and, and it’s a tough industry to, to survive in. So what you generally see is companies that have been around 3, 4, 5 years that have made it, that are profitable, that are making good and income, and are providing a service and have sustained businesses, that’s what’s here today.

Yolanda Padron: I think that a CP, the intent behind events like the one you’re, and Allen and the one we’ve, the ones we’ve all been to are, the intent is great, but the [00:10:00] execution isn’t super great. Not just from the the point of view of people coming in from new to the industry and wanting to start an ISP or something, but just from the owner operator.

Point of view, you know, you’re, if you have to pay to go to specific talks or to go to technical talks that you don’t really know how much they’ll benefit you until basically the end of it. Once you see the information that’s gone into it and the practicality of everything that they, they’re talking about, and then when you’re walking in the showroom like four, like it’s a little bit daunting sometimes.

There’s hundreds of companies. Sitting around in kind of like a maze, right? And it’s not always like, oh, you need lightning protection. Like that’s that area. Or you need better locks for your o and m buildings or for your towers or something. It’s that section like you’re just walking around everywhere.

And then just. It kind of turns [00:11:00] into, like sometimes it can turn into just a game of like, if you’re going with a lot of colleagues, like a kind of a drinking day or a day to just see who can collect more freebies. Like I remember one year we had a group chat of like, oh, like every time you saw something cool that was like a, a merchandise thing, like you would put it in the group chat, like E 46 has this.

And then we would all go and get it and it was. I don’t think that’s the intent behind what, what we wanted to do. It really wasn’t what we saw at oma if we’re being completely honest. 

Matthew Stead: What I’m hearing is that there’s a really strong need in the US for another event. Is that, is that what I’m hearing? 

Allen Hall: I think there needs to be a real technical event run by people who are technical experts.

I think that’s it because there are a lot of new solutions out there, but you’re not gonna find them at OMX. That’s just not the place. Now, I’m sure a CP would dispute that and that’s fine. They [00:12:00] have their own opinion. But I think having attended this for several years and a CP and a number of other, uh, conferences in wins, there’s a small subset that are sharing solutions.

It’s small and maybe there is need for one in America. It’s hard saying, Matthew, I. I think that maybe there’s is a time and place for it. I’m not sure America’s ready for it in, in a broader scope, but maybe something small. Maybe that’s the way to start off, is to do something small. Bring in the people we know and love from around the world have, go back to Rosemary’s point.

Maybe we do something by the, by the pool or by the ocean. Maybe we do talk wind energy for, for an afternoon. 

Rosemary Barnes: I understand why you can’t, um, have an event at. A resort. And it was suggested actually to me a couple of times, like people when we were organizing Wilma, why is this in Melbourne? Why isn’t this in the Maldives?

Or you know, some, something like that. And the [00:13:00] one of the reasons like for us, ’cause in our Melbourne event it’s a, you know, it’s a very low cost event. We don’t make any money from it. It’s small. At least half of wind energy People in Australia are living in Melbourne, so it’s very, you know, easy for them to go to that it doesn’t, it doesn’t cost much or take much time.

So that was that reason. But I think that, you know, more broadly, like say we did a global event and we put it in the, in the malice or in Fiji or Hawaii or whatever, like, people aren’t gonna get that approved from their managers, right? So even though you know, you’ve spent, I don’t know how much the technical sessions were, but by the time that you’ve gotten to a CP, if you had to.

Even, you know, fly there in Australian hotel for a few nights, like it’s gonna be, you know, four grand or something. You can get to a nice location, probably an all-inclusive resort for a week, somewhere nice for similar money. Like you would spend more time having quality conversations and it would be, you know, nice and enjoyable, but [00:14:00] your manager is never gonna approve that.

So I think that’s the challenge. To find somewhere that’s like nice and conducive to being relaxed and open, but that doesn’t sound like. So obviously a junket that no one will get approval to go to it. That’s the, that’s the challenge. 

Matthew Stead: Um, just this week we got the feedback from the WMA conference. So we got, um, some of the results from the survey and I think, uh, probably the key thing to me was that we achieved 4.6 out of five, um, star rating.

Um, everyone gave it a four or a five. And we know people that give things four out of five actually mean five. So I think we did really well. So, uh, and the feedback was also, um, you know, the technical content, but people want more, more and more, uh, technical content and, and the interaction with people.

Rosemary Barnes: That’s a really, a really key thing to get feedback on if there are. Experts or categories of information that you would like to see covered that haven’t been, because I think, like we talk a lot about how, what the [00:15:00]problems are with a pay to play kind of model where speakers pay and get up and give a sales pitch and you know, there’s a lot of problems with that.

But then when it’s the other way around and you know, we’re choosing speakers that we know are good, then you fall into the risk of having it become cliquey where it’s just, you know, like all our friends over and over again. It’s uh, like hard for us to both vet the quality and bring in people that we don’t know.

So that’s where the outside feedback is gonna make that a lot better. Um, and it takes a long time, you know, you do, ’cause you, you do need to get to know a speaker before you can decide whether they’re gonna get up in the acne. You don’t sell at you for half an hour when they were supposed to, you know, do something informative.

So, would love to hear that feedback. 

Matthew Stead: I think the proof is in the pudding because, uh, at for woma, no one said that they were unlikely to attend. 

Allen Hall: Oh, I, I would hate to see what the numbers are gonna be for OMS this year. Uh, ’cause you know, you know why I say that? Because a lot of people that have exhibited in the past do not have a booth this year, and they’re walking [00:16:00] around the show.

And to me that’s an alarm signal. They should have a booth. They have good things to talk about. They’re a successful company. They’re doing great things to win, but they feel like this is just too much. It’s too much. Eventually you reach too much. I think we’re there. 

Rosemary Barnes: I think it’s been a really good, like, uh, a big event with an exhibition can be a real money maker.

And for, you know, like, uh, assuming that SAP uses this. The money that they make from this event to deliver services for the American Wind Industry. Uh, I mean, you, you know, you can probably argue about how well or not they do that. I don’t have an opinion ’cause I’m not in America. But, you know, like, I, I’m not saying that that’s not the, um, a, a noble goal and a good thing to, for the business to be doing.

However, I think that it, that you can overshoot and, you know, so you can make a, a bunch of money for a few years. You know, you’ve got a good reputation for your event. You’ve got everybody comes to it. You can charge squillions to exhibitors. You can charge squillions more to speakers. You can even start charging people to watch the speakers who have [00:17:00] paid to be there.

Probably, I don’t, I don’t actually know in this case, my assumption. Um, but at some point. Like you’ve cottoned on that, hey, it’s not actually worth paying extra for the, um, you know, to go watch the speakers. And the last one of these, you know, similar Australian events I was at, I was like, Hey, it’s not actually worth me paying to go into there because I can get all the benefits by just being near to it, like then.

Once you don’t have heaps and heaps of people moving through, then exhibitors don’t wanna pay $10,000 to be there. Um, and so like, it’s just, it’s not sustainable to run the event like that. And that’s what I don’t think that, um, a lot of these event organization companies, especially the ones that aren’t run by an industry body, um, the ones that are just run by a company who exist to make money off events.

You know, like they’re not, I don’t think that they’re planning these events to be sustainable in the long term and to improve the industry. 

Matthew Stead: Can I ask, um, a question for Yolanda and Allen. Um, so assuming this money for a CP [00:18:00] ends up as lobbying money, do you think lobbying at the moment actually helps?

Allen Hall: Here’s the feeling about it on the floor, and I haven’t talked to everybody here clearly. But the significant percentage I had talked to thinks that the policy efforts have not borne fruit, and that in some aspects, uh, they have increased the tension. Whether they’ve intentionally have done that or not, I don’t know.

But I think the feeling on the floor here, the last two days has been the industry is in a quote unquote downturn or a pause, and they’re waiting till 2028 to see what happens. That’s not the answer I wanted to hear. And also at the state level, I think, uh, the amount of policy changes that are happening are not pro wind, pro solar or pro best, except maybe in a couple of states.

So, uh, you feel like although [00:19:00] American clean power is on a national level, you will also like them to be at a state level, helping move some things forward and stop some of the prohibitions that are happening, or to get some of the permits issued. That’s one of the things that popped up today, talking to someone in the know as that permits are hard to get hold of in some states.

Well, American Clean Power is supposed to be helping with that. I’m not sure that they are, at least if they are, you can’t see anything visible happening. From the outside, which is a shame. That’s really a shame. So, you know where we go from here? I, I, I’m kind of in Rosemary’s camp. I had no idea. Uh, next year gonna be really interesting.

I, I don’t know what the numbers of attendees are. Uh, I’m guessing a couple thousand people are here. I’m guessing, let’s just say it’s 2000 people. I may be off plus or minus. Well, not on the negative side. It’s more than a thousand people here, but it’s not 10,000. That’s for sure. 

Yolanda Padron: I think that, uh, someone at Woma summed it up really [00:20:00] well when they said that, um, we need to shift the conversation from this is the right thing to do to this, is this, we should make this to be cost effective and it should be the obvious decision to make.

Right? Just from a financial standpoint. Uh, and I think, I think that’s right from my, uh. Personal interactions with a lot of people in dc I think that lobbying really helps regardless of the political party that one is affiliated to. Um, just, just the way that sometimes our, our system seems to. I not, not to say that anything’s negative, I think it’s, I mean, it’s just the, the way things pan out, uh, oftentimes in the [00:21:00] us.

Um, yeah, I mean, I’ve, I’ve heard from. From both sides. 

Allen Hall: Well, to Yolanda’s point, I would say we don’t belong to American clean power because one, it’s expensive and as a small business, does it make sense as the changing policy that helps me? The answer to that historically has been no. It doesn’t mean it’s not gonna happen in the future.

I think a lot of. Companies of our size are saying the same thing. There are some that have been here a lot longer that have knew a CP before it was a CP when it was a, a slightly different organization and they’ve continued on on, on some level just I think because they’re familiar with it. But I think the newcomers are having a heart attack.

And I would consider me to be a newcomer that we’ve been in wind since about 2012 or 2013, so we’ve been in it quite a while at this point. But there’s some old guard here. The new. The new players though, I think are struggling. I think there’s very few new companies that are flashy. Like we saw in San Antonio a [00:22:00] couple of years ago at American Clean Power.

We’re like, wow, there are some boosts here. And man, there’s some firepower happening and some really good marketing and some new products and new ideas. That’s not. That’s not here. Not, not this year.

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Denmark has long been the home of the wind industry, but now our proposed new wealth taxes threatening to push one of its most prominent executives out the door. And Henrik Anderson, chief executive officer of Vestas says he will leave Denmark rather than pay the new tax, even if it costs him tens of millions of Broner and exit fees.

Uh, Anderson earned 32 million Kroger last year, and estimates he pays an effective tax rate of 60% already. He argues Denmark already leads Europe in income taxation and adding a wealth tax crosses the line and he, if he goes, he warns senior leadership could follow. Now, that’s a pretty bold statement for someone who was seen as one of the leadership.

Uh, a group of Denmark on the industrial side. Of course, 

Rosemary Barnes: I’d argue it’s also culturally, [00:24:00] culturally not a super Danish thing to, to say at least publicly. Um, yeah, I dunno how many Danish listeners we’ve got, but one thing that I learned when I lived there, they’ve got this thing called yte Long. I think it comes from an, an old book, like fictional book, but it does pretty.

Well, Danish people say it pretty accurately describes Danish culture. I’ve just, uh, looked it up. But, um, so it’s Y Y’s law and that has 10, there’s 10 rules in Y’s law and they are, one, you’re not to think that you are anything special. Two, you’re not to think you are as good as we are. Three, you’re not to think you are smarter than we are, or you’re not to imagine yourself better than we are.

You know, it can, it continues down like that. But I just wonder like, is the Danish wind industry, have they flown too close to the sun? Have they become too thought themselves too special? Is this an example of where Denmark Danish people would say, you know [00:25:00] what? Who do you think you are when dentistry, you think that you’re better than us?

You think you’re smarter than us? Do you think that you don’t deserve to contribute to society? Because that is one of the biggest cultural differences that I found in in Denmark, was that people genuinely think that they have the um, responsibility when they’re doing well to make sure that everybody else in society is doing well.

This is an interesting cultural moment for Denmark, is all I would try to say that this to me, I’m very interested to see how Danish people respond to this idea that. We’re gonna, we’re gonna leave now because we don’t wanna share our, uh, wealth with the Danish, with Danish society as a whole 

Allen Hall: 32 million kroners, that’s actually extremely low and in the United States.

Uh, there are thousands of companies, much smaller than Vestas, where the CEO is making a lot more than that, and to give half of that, more than [00:26:00] half of that away, so the CEO is taking home a million and US dollars, like 1,000,002, that’s not a tremendous amount of money. I for the responsibility which are on that person’s shoulders.

I could see being a little upset about that. And obviously he travels in circles in which he meets a lot of people that are making a lot more money come to America, stop at a, I don’t know, there’s a lot of places, machine shops that’ll make more money than that. Uh, so I think there’s a right to be upset about it.

You know, the, everything that’s happening in Denmark at the moment, I’m trying to. I feel like Denmark is getting it together. And then these things happen and I start to worry again. Uh, there’s, there’s so many things that have happened in the United States. They’re pushing against Denmark, and I feel, I’m always apologizing to my people I know in Denmark and like, this is another one.

Like, oh, geez, yeah, we, you know, vest can move to America. Oh, no, no, no, no. I want buses to be where it is. Stay [00:27:00] there. But I think there’s opportunities for investors to move and you kind of get the feeling that they’re leaving Denmark slowly. Have you noticed that recently? 

Rosemary Barnes: Maybe. I mean, uh, all of those Danish wind energy companies used to manufacture in Denmark and barely, there’s barely any Danish manufacturing now.

So I mean, to a certain extent this is, you know, started a long time ago, but I also think that the, what you described at the tax of the CEO income and the income not being high, it’s not just, uh. Top 1% kind of issue. That’s something that I, I definitely felt it when I worked there, but I think that like, would your average Danish person wish that CEOs were paid more like Americans and that Danish society became more like American with a huge wealth inequality?

I, I’m gonna go out in a limb and say. 90% plus of Danish people would absolutely abhor the idea of that happening there. And they will be very firmly on side of you should be, um, CEOs should not be [00:28:00] making that much money and people that are making a lot of money should be paying a lot of tax to support the rest of society at just, I, I, I’m.

Pretty sure that he is like a really core cultural value. 

Matthew Stead: I think he is good at, I mean, things don’t change unless things change. And, um, uh, I think it’s good for him to be pushing and, you know, making this a, a public discussion and a public topic. I mean, if he hadn’t have come out talking about this problem, we wouldn’t have been talking about it.

So, uh, I think yeah. Good on him for raising it and for being brave. I mean, you, like you say, Rosie, um, is not traditional cultural. Values in, in, in Denmark, but, you know, good on him for, for pushing the, pushing the, the, the barrow. 

Allen Hall: It’s, it’s hard, right? I think Vestas works in a global community and they see all different kinds of cultures and all kinds of economic systems, and they operate in all of ’em.

And, uh, the CEO of Vestus were in the United States and they have a large manufacturing presence in the United States. Let’s face it. [00:29:00] Uh, easily making 10 million in the United States, maybe more easy. And I don’t think they’re paying him nearly enough for the work that he has done and things that he has accomplished.

You have to admit, the CEO of Vestus has really put a lot of time and effort into that company and has improved it in ways that are somehow, uh, never discussed, but are, in my opinion, immeasurable. So for the long-term health of that company, they are seen as the preeminent wind turbine manufactured today.

That’s hard to do. That wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn and don’t forget to subscribe to you. Never miss an episode. And if you found value in today’s this conversation for.

Please leave us a review. It really helps other wind energy professionals discover the show for Rosie, Yolanda and Matthew. I’m Allen Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy [00:30:00] Podcast.

Allen covers a substation failure that has left Scotland’s 882 MW Moray West farm half-offline since November, GE Vernova’s new Italy contract and Milan factory investment, Iberdrola’s sixth Australian acquisition of 2026, and Flender India’s new gearbox test rig near Chennai.

Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

The wind industry had quite a week.

Let us start in Scotland, off the rugged north-east coast, where something has gone quietly wrong. Ocean Winds and Ignitis built Moray West, an eight hundred and eighty-two megawatt offshore wind farm — one of the largest in Scotland. But one of its two offshore substations has been offline since November. Half the farm’s capacity … gone dark. And there is more. The project missed a contractual milestone last September under an off-take agreement. That triggered an event of default under its project lending agreements. The lenders and the sponsors have agreed to a short-term waiver. Discussions are described as constructive. Commercial operations, originally expected last year, are now targeted for sometime in 2026. Eight hundred and eighty-two megawatts … waiting.

Now, let us travel south to Italy. GE Vernova has won a contract to supply seventeen onshore turbines to IVPC Group’s Fortore wind farm in the Benevento region of southern Italy. The project tops one hundred megawatts. Turbine deliveries begin in twenty twenty-seven. GE Vernova is also investing thirty million dollars to expand its Sesto San Giovanni plant outside Milan. That investment boosts production of transformer bushings, the insulating components that keep high-voltage equipment running. About fifty new jobs are coming to that facility. And GE Vernova’s two-piece blade design for its six-point-one megawatt turbines is already drawing attention as developers scramble to crack Italy’s notoriously complex logistics and permitting hurdles. Italy is a market in motion.

Now, to the other side of the world. Iberdrola has completed the acquisition of the Ararat wind farm in Victoria, Australia. Two hundred and forty-two megawatts. Operational since twenty seventeen. This is Iberdrola’s sixth transaction of twenty twenty-six alone, and it marks the Spanish giant’s first owned generation asset in Victoria, Australia’s second most populous state. Iberdrola now operates in five Australian states with more than twenty-five hundred megawatts of installed capacity. Victoria has set a target of ninety-five percent renewable energy by twenty thirty-five. Iberdrola intends to help get it there.

And finally, from Chennai, India, comes a story about getting ready for what is coming. Flender India has just inaugurated its largest and most advanced gearbox test rig for wind turbines at its Walajabad facility near Chennai. The project began in January of twenty twenty-five at Flender’s Voerde site in Germany. From start to finish, thirteen months. Final assembly, three months. This is a collaboration between Flender’s operations in Germany, China, and India. CEO Andreas Evertz called it a testament to their global commitment to driving renewable energy solutions worldwide. India’s wind market is growing fast, and Flender is making sure it can test every gearbox that growth demands.

So, let us step back and look at the picture. A Scottish offshore wind farm sits half-dark while its owners negotiate with lenders. GE Vernova plants its flag in southern Italy and invests thirty million dollars in an Italian factory. Iberdrola expands to a sixth Australian transaction in a single year. And Flender India builds the biggest gearbox test rig on the subcontinent. And that is the state of the wind industry for the ninth of March, twenty twenty-six. Join us for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast tomorrow

Peter Giddings of the Offshore Wind Growth Partnership joins to discuss the UK’s industrial growth plan for offshore wind, the five priority supply chain areas being targeted, and how OWGP helps businesses scale from small suppliers into globally competitive manufacturers.

Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering Tomorrow.

Allen Hall: Peter, welcome to the program. 

Peter Giddings: Thanks for having me out. 

Allen Hall: The UK right now is just a global leader in offshore wind, which I think a, a lot of us in the United States don’t even realize that, but the UK is a. Giant leader in offshore wind. Uh, but we keep hearing about the supply chain constraints that are threatening some of the timelines here.

What are some of the fundamental problems that the UK offshore wind supply chain has today? 

Peter Giddings: We are in a great situation for supply chain, but the 2000 companies, some of them with 25 years experience. At the scale where we can deliver the four gigawatts a year for the next five years that we need to hit our 2030 deployment targets and to keep that deployment rolling.

So we are [00:01:00] brilliant at the UK of planning, developing and deploying wind farms. We have a really strong maintenance base. We do some great supply chain work, and IWGP Offshore Wind Growth Partnership has helped those businesses grow, but we don’t have as much capacity as we would like. For the major items.

So we have a great set of facilities making blades. We have good facilities, uh, great facilities in JDR making cables, but we don’t capture as much of the manufacturing value of our deployment as we would like. That means we create fewer jobs, we create less economic benefit, and those developers are exposed to more supply chain risk.

Specifically, we want to build globally competitive supply chain capacity. We, we we’re, we’re not a charity. We are building businesses that can win contracts. They are attractive to the procurement teams and they’re sustainable, they grow, right? Competitive capacity is what we’re after. Um, and that’s, that’s really what [00:02:00] we’re after.

Allen Hall: And if the UK doesn’t really address these problems now, what does that look like for the supply chain? Because you’re talking about moving from roughly 16. Gigawatts in the water to approximately 50 gigawatts, 45, 50 gigawatts by 2030 and beyond. So that’s, you know, it’s roughly a tripling of the amount of capacity in the water supply chain becomes then really critical to that and in order to feed that.

But what happens here, if the supply chain has not grown locally, 

Peter Giddings: it’s a missed opportunity. I mean, the businesses that are here today would be an incremental growth. And that’s not bad. That’s an okay outcome. But if your deployment is a huge opportunity and you get an okay outcome, that’s not acceptable.

That’s not a way to run an industry, right? We have this massive opportunity in front of us. There’s a huge amount that we could do that the UK is great at that the opportunity is to stretch [00:03:00] and help communities all around the coast have. Hundreds, thousands of jobs that are there. They’re stable, they’re good quality, and they are prosperous.

It’s a real community initiative. Those towns, which are probably seeing a decline in oil and gas revenue or are strapped to tourism or kind of don’t have an industry, those towns, those people as humans are gonna have a much better future. There’s a, actually a really nice exemplar, um, it’s not. The biggest component, but Cable protection Systems is something that the UK is already globally renowned for.

If you open up a tender pack, if you’re allowed to in other markets kind of anywhere, and you look to the CPS package, you would more than likely see a couple of, if not all four of CRP techmark, sub C and Balmoral, right? They, they serve the UK market real well, but they are globally renowned. [00:04:00]That’s, that’s one example.

We are looking to do that for the priority sections of the industrial growth plan. You know, we’re going to pick and are picking the areas of the supply chain where we think the UK can be genuinely competitive and we have something to offer. A developer is not gonna choose a substandard product that’s a bit more expensive, but we can build up supply chains that offer fantastic products.

Cable protection systems, and we can capture big market share there. Develop a product that can be exported, or if it’s a bit too far to ship, develop a business which can open up a new base. You know, so we, we get that, um, combination of local demand being served. And when I say local, I mean like the North Sea in Baltic and that global opportunity.

So it’s, but it’s not gonna be everything. You know, people might. I might get a little bit heat for this, but [00:05:00] if you spread the jam too thin, it doesn’t taste very good. You haven’t committed to win a few things rather than come second and third everywhere. We have to choose what we win at. 

Allen Hall: Let’s get into the industrial growth plan, ’cause I wanna understand that a little bit better and how OWGP.

Fits in that as the delivery body. Right? So you have this industrial growth plan, OWGP is, is sort of administering it and, and taking action on it. How does this system work and, and why is it different than other attempts at supply chain development? 

Peter Giddings: Uh, a couple of years ago, 2023, um, most of the major institutional stakeholders came together and said, oh, that we see this big opportunity coming.

We want to make sure that the UK benefits from having all that deployment. So if you’ve got a bunch of demand and you [00:06:00] don’t have much supply, you don’t have as much supply as you want, that’s an obvious gap to fill. And the Crown of State, the Crown of State Scotland, the departments from government, the Offshore Wind Industry Council, a consortium of developers in the uk, uh, came together.

Um. And funded a piece of work that allowed, um, a team to bring in lots of industry input. Look at what the big opportunities were in the market. So where is there substantial value? Where is there substantial demand? And match that up to where does the UK have capability and where could we grow a competitive advantage?

So. What prizes are worth winning? What prizes can we win? And we’ve matched those up and there’s kind of five priority areas that we’ve selected. Um, it’s kind of the first things we’re gonna go after. Um, [00:07:00] they’re, they’re quite broad, those five. It’s advanced turbine technologies, deep water foundations, cable and electrical systems, uh, smart environmental services, and, uh, smart operations and maintenance.

If you kind of open those boxes up, there are some very specific supply chains that are prioritized. So I’ll take the one that, uh, is the first one that we’re looking at. Advanced turbine technology. Uh, we talked just before we started recording, um, that the UK has real strength in blades. Blades is a big opportunity.

We have a really well established composite industry. We have a great facility up in Hull. We have an r and d base and an onshore, um, factory on the isle of White with Vestas. And I think the thing we don’t really say is we have chief engineer for blades of Vestas in the UK structures lead. The r and d team is 140 strong down on the island [00:08:00] and we have a really productive facility in Hull.

Um. That is putting product out, has been making, um, recyclable blades, is making the one 15. We have depth, so it’s a good opportunity. We have strength, we have a massive innovation ecosystem, so that’s a really obvious win. And we’ve been through the rest of the supply chain taking cables, good capacity, excellent experience from oil and gas, and so that’s a priority area.

Okay. Going through those supply chains, finding big opportunities that the UK has, the ability to win contracts in, and then mapping out what do you need to do to make that capacity happen? How much capacity, at what cost, with what performance? And that’s, that’s kind of the OWGP role is owning that plan, bringing input from industry, [00:09:00] bringing input from experts.

Turning the ambition of we want to have the ability to supply 50% of UK demand and export into a tangible plan of, cool, these businesses need this investment by this time to stand up a facility so they’re ready. It’s not just a blade factory. Right. That’s, um, that’s important. It’s the 20 businesses that sell product, that sell services into that.

We talk about pyramids, right? You’ve got one facility at the top and a big wide base with lots of people who are employed in that big wide base. And I think, you know, it’s natural. Everybody looks to the top of the mountain. We’re looking to build the whole thing, and that’s a really powerful reason for industries to stay for the long term.

So I think tracking back to your [00:10:00] question. What’s our role? We own that plan. We bring together the expertise and convert it into a set of measurable steps really. And that kind of second part is coordinate. Everybody needs to be playing the same game, aiming at the same targets. And that’s a really important part.

Allen Hall: Well, I think for a lot of people outside the UK, it’s hard to envision the amount of industry that exists. In the UK you’re about 70 million people, so you’re roughly maybe a quarter of the population size of the United States roughly. But you’re, you, you have internal industries there and other areas that have that supply chain growth.

So you’ve watched it in aerospace, which is one I’m familiar with, but in other industries, you, automobiles and a number of other areas, uh, you have that supply chain. So you know how to, the UK knows how to do that, but, but that hasn’t really necessarily happened in offshore wind, which I think is where the [00:11:00] opportunity is because I think watching.

Being around this industry for as long as I have. One of the key elements is that, uh, the, the smaller businesses are sort of tier twos or tier threes that make the tier ones possible are kind of forgotten about. But the UK historically has looked at tier two and tier three as being the fundamentals to a successful product delivery and, and a, a global marketplace.

Is, is that where the initial focus is? Because just listening to. And going to your website, uh, which I encourage everybody to do, you see where there’s smart decisions being made to create that base and what does that look like? And when you’re trying to attack that base on offshore wind, obviously cables and turbine technology, anything to do basically with being in the water, which the UK is great at.

Do you see that being a relatively quick exercise because the UK has done it before in other industries? Or [00:12:00] is this problem just a little bit different because of the scale of it? 

Peter Giddings: It’s really similar to, uh, the way supply chain’s been supported in aerospace, for example. Um, the Airbus has a deep supply chain in the UK and has a very strong voice into government.

Their supply chain is supported. They’ve built that base. Um, and so from the outcome, that’s gonna be pretty similar? I think so. We, we have a template. I’ve worked in aerospace, many colleagues, um, that we’re, we’re calling on have, um, I guess the difference is, uh, maturity of industry. So the developers are very mature businesses.

They’re global. They have been big for time. They know how to do supply chain development from oil and gas, where you build enormous unicorns. Exactly. Once, [00:13:00] then move on. You know, an oil and gas project is, is a one time deal. It’s tremendous, but you don’t have to make a hundred of them and it’s slightly different.

So you end up with a, a single point, and if you are. Experience and your, um, relationship with government sits with developers that can create some really, um, it, it takes time to build up your supply chain so that they have the same experience of running, um, large development programs. They have the stability as businesses to kind of build through.

It’s really important to remember that turbine OEMs and the tier ones haven’t had 30 years of stable business modeling wind. Because 30 years ago, wind wasn’t really a big industry, right? They have had plenty of success scaling their business, and we’re just entering the phase now where you can, um, pretty credibly say that wind is [00:14:00] a global business with a long-term future.

And it needs to find the right way for those OEMs, those big tier one manufacturing businesses to support their business in the long term. That is, I would say quite new. Um, hopefully I don’t get pilled for saying that, but Airbus, spin Airbus for 2, 3, 4 generations. Right. So they know their game. Same with roles, same with, you know, Nissan and Toyota.

It’s, it’s gonna take a little minute for the manufacturing part of the wind industry to settle and learn what works. We think OWGP and our partners, GB Energy, crown State, we think. We have a good starter for 10. You know, it’s modeled off what we’ve done in other industries. It provides stability, provides capital and a plan.

I think that’s a really good mix. Um, [00:15:00] and I think it’ll just take a bit of time to mature those relationships and get everybody comfortable. Um, the developers have been really supportive. The OWGP money comes from. A developer contribution. So they are playing their part. Absolutely they are. We need to find the right way for manufacturing businesses to scale and then start pumping in innovations into that capacity so it stays competitive.

You know, it’s a build capacity that’s competitive today. Feed it with innovation so it stays competitive and gets better and better and better. 

Allen Hall: How far off the technology chain do you want them to be before you consider them to be part of the supply chain 

Peter Giddings: today? Uh, 21st of January, 2026. There is good money for people that are within about a year of getting their technology to market.

So that’s the, the approximate. Um, you’ll notice I dodge TRLI don’t think it’s super helpful. Um, time to market is, uh, is, is [00:16:00] really a good indicator. Yeah. Alan’s, give me the thumbs up of someone that’s done a TRL assessment or two. Um, we, we are looking for businesses that are commercially. Viable. They have relationships with customers.

Um, they’re trading the earliest currently, and it’s currently, um, is like a year, maybe two years to market at the outside and up, um, we’re working with. And so that’s not just OWGP, that’s across the funding streams that are available. Um, and there are many we are working with and hopeful in the next week or two to have, um.

A positive result from the UK government on earlier stage innovation funding so that we can align the early stage innovation at the problems that really count for making businesses competitive. You know, to be super clear, that’s not gonna be OWGP Cash. Our hope is that it’s OWGP derived questions [00:17:00] delivered by the innovation institute’s offshore renewable energy catapult, the high value manufacturing catapults.

Academia, innovative businesses. Those guys do the innovation and we work together with them and with industry to really find the questions that count and we can focus our attention on commercializing that and scaling up the things that are commercial. 

Allen Hall: Peter, walk us through how a UK supply chain company actually engages with OWGP.

Uh, what does that. Uh, look like. And what are the, sort of the different options to, to engage with OWGP? 

Peter Giddings: So I, I think the first thing to say is you, you don’t have to be UK today. We would love to attract businesses from overseas. Um, you can start a UK entity quite quickly. The first people, first place people tend to engage is in our, um, business, uh, support services.

So we help, uh, businesses orientate themselves commercially. Understand how the contracting works, understand who [00:18:00] their, their pot potential customers are. Um, and that’s, yeah, it’s on our website. It’s Business Transformation Services, the West Program, wind Expert Services. There’s a t in there, there’s something else.

Um, but that’s really the entry point for businesses that need to orientate themselves in the UK market. And we, and that. Intensity and the, the depth of the commercial support kind of ramps up through base and up to sig sharing in growth. Um, and you’ll also see us in the next year or two, um, take a, a more proactive approach to supporting businesses commercially.

Um, I’m actually down with a, a fantastic business in the blade supply chain, um, composite integration in Saltash, helping them build a strategic, um, business plan. So a little more than just going, oh, this is where you get your contract. Actually helping them model what a future bigger business would look like and what they will need to do to, to reach it.

You know, commercial support is growing for us. I think it could be really important, right? It’s [00:19:00] new for us, so, you know, we’ll learn. But the first point of call, go to the website, get in touch with the team, um, and often people choose that commercial support, the business transformation. We also run grant funding.

Um, we have innovation calls. Um, we have a whole range of different calls going from innovation up to development into Dev X. So manufacturing, um, facility support program, they’re all grant. You can choose to pay them back. You do need to be UK entity, but you need to be quite close to market that one to two year zone with commercial traction.

Um, and again, information is available. There is a team of people. Who are really great at taking those triaging, figuring out what’s right for you, what’s not, and if it’s not something from us, we do and we are delighted to pass you on to other people. You know, if you talk to us, we will make sure you find a home.[00:20:00]

I think that’s really important to say. 

Allen Hall: I think that’s very critical and one of the more difficult. Periods for, uh, it’s a smaller company to become bigger and be part of this massive supply chain, is that sort of 1 million pound, the 5 million pound kind of business, which has a technology which has proven itself and is delivering something or very close to delivering something.

That transition is incredibly hard and getting some help there and some advice even would make the transition so much shorter and more efficient than what it typically is. That’s what OWGP does. So it’s not just the money. Obviously money helps everything generally. It’s the context, it’s the advice, it’s the knowledge that, uh, OWGP brings to the table that helps you grow your technology, your small business, into that mid-tier business and takes that mid-tier business into that gigantic world leader business.

Those are the things that are, [00:21:00] are so hard to quantify, to put some, uh, some people in place. Boy, OWGP can really ramp up and has, the UK in general has done this many, many times. So I, I, I just encourage everybody who’s listening to this podcast to think about OWGP as a contact point and reach out. And Peter, how can they do that?

What are the first steps to contact OWGP? 

Peter Giddings: It’s always best to come in through our website. So my contact details will be in the, um, in the show notes, but you, you can look at the different programs there are contact US buttons all over it. Um, it also gives you sight of the industrial growth plan, um, and the priority areas.

We are trying where we can to focus our efforts on those priority areas, and we would absolutely be delighted to hear from businesses active in the IGB priorities. Um, if you are, if you are not in one of those, you’re not excluded, come talk to us and we, we are supporting ambitious [00:22:00] businesses. We’re just focusing most of our efforts on the ones that are aligned to priority.

We’re, we’re on your team. We would like to hear from you. Um, yeah, do, do start with the website. Hit one of the contact buttons you’ll come into to one of the team and we will connect you in. Um, I think that’s probably the, the best way 

Allen Hall: and the website is ow gp.org.uk. Very easy to get to. You can just Google it and it’ll come right up.

There’s a ton of information on that website. Peter, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I really appreciate this. Learned a lot and very excited for what the UK is about to do. 

Peter Giddings: I’m looking forward to talking to you again.

Allen, Rosemary, Yolanda, and Matthew discuss highlights from Blades USA including the carbon blade debate. Plus TPI Composites’ bankruptcy sale hits major obstacles as partners dispute over $100M in claims. And Europe’s offshore and onshore wind developers clash over state aid, with WindEurope’s new CEO urging unity.

Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

[00:00:00] The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by Strike Tape, protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit strike tape.com. And now your hosts. 

Allen Hall 2025: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host Alan Hall, and I’m here with Yolanda Padron, Rosemary Barnes and Matthew Stead.

Yolanda and Matthew have just wrapped up a couple of days at the Blade USA forum in Austin, Texas. Maybe we should start there. Thoughts on the forum this year? Things that were highlights? 

Matthew Stead: Yeah. Lightning Root de bond. One positive was that, um, there are a couple of startups there, so, you know, kudos to them for, you know, making the investment.

There was a. There was a startup around, you know, data analytics and, you know, bringing machine learning in. And then there was also another startup looking at recycling. [00:01:00] Um, really trying to get that, that food chain through of, um, you know, grinding and then turning into some sort of valuable product. Um, yeah.

However, I think someone also from EPRI said that, you know, at the moment, you know, the recycling path is, you know, eight times more expensive than the, um, the landfill path. There was a lot of carbon discussion actually. So, and, um, yeah, a lot of discussion about repairs, a lot of discussion about testing, uh, a lot of discussion about, you know, how maybe a carbon blade can last 40 years.

Um, so a lot of discussion about lifetime extensions around carbon. Um, but, but, but, but, you know, really, really hard to repair. 

Allen Hall 2025: That goes back to the comments Rosemary and Morton Hanberg made about carbon blades. Should we be making. Carbon blades are not. And I think Morton’s opinion, and maybe Rosemary’s, I don’t wanna speak for her, was carbon blades are okay, but they are really difficult to repair.

Almost impossible to repair. And is it [00:02:00] worth even building them? 

Rosemary Barnes: I think if you consider the blade in isolation, then it probably is adding more headaches than it’s worth. But carbon fiber is a bit of an enabler for improvements across the whole system of a, a wind turbine. ’cause when you take, like you can take a lot of weight out of a blade by using carbon fiber.

I mean, it’s never been cheaper to make a blade with carbon fiber than an equivalent blade with glass. You do, you buy the more expensive carbon fiber blade because it’s lighter, a like, a lot lighter, and then you can take, um, weight. It, it reduces the requirements for basically every other component in the wind turbine, but especially stuff like the pitch bearings.

Um, so you solve a lot of other problems, but you create blade problems. So. I think if you ask some of the only works on maintaining blades, then you’re gonna be like, why would you make a carbon fiber blade? It is so much headache. Um, but that’s not the reason why they were ever made in the first place.

[00:03:00] So you’d need to talk to, you know, somebody on, uh, I dunno, front end engineering. Someone from the sales team about why it is that they are going with a more expensive carbon fiber blade. Even acknowledging that they probably underestimate how many problems there are with o and m with, uh, carbon fiber blades.

But even so, like they’re already aware that there are trade offs. Um, and yeah, there’s non blade reasons for, for taking, taking that pain. 

Allen Hall 2025: Are there other fibers that could be substituted besides carbon? There, I, I know fiberglass. A, a good, relatively strong fiber and carbon obviously is much stronger. But are there things in the middle that could be substituted that are non-conductive?

Rosemary Barnes: Uh, y yeah, there are, but carbon fibers, it’s not just strong. It’s really stiff. And that’s what its benefit is. Um, like there’s Kevlar but it’s not very stiff. So you would, we would make a really heavy blade if you used Kevlar. It would be probably bulletproof though. So I guess that would be a plus. I, I haven’t looked into it recently, but nothing is [00:04:00] at the, um, like got the performance specs and the cost specs that you would need to, um, make it replace carbon fiber.

Matthew Stead: So one thing that I picked up I thought was pretty, uh, interesting was that by having a stronger, you know, carbon protrusion, you know, the, you know, the backbone of the blade, um, it took a little bit of pressure off the skin. And so therefore, um, you know, the life, life of the blade, um, and the ability to keep running it ’cause the skin is not so critical.

Those seem to be a real, a real plus as well. 

Rosemary Barnes: I don’t know, people talk about this in like absolutes, but everything is just a con continuum, right? Like you can make an all glass blade that would last a thousand years if you really wanted to. You just, you know, you just have to make it very, very strong.

’cause it’s, you know, it’s all based on fatigue lifetime. And the smaller that your, um, strain on every component in the blade is, then the less, um, the less fatigue damage is gonna accumulate. Making it a little bit stiffer will actually increase the lifetime by [00:05:00] a a lot. I think the main benefit to protrusions is just that you avoid all of the um, or you avoid a lot of the possibilities for manufacturing defects.

It’s easy to control the manufacture ’cause carbon fiber, like much more so than glass fiber. It’s so, um, it’s so dependent on the fibers being perfectly straight. If you have a little wrinkle, like a little wrinkle is bad in glass fiber, but it’s like really bad in carbon fiber. So protrusions mean that you won’t get wrinkles.

Uh, and you can, you know, control the manufacturing process a lot better, but they are barely repairable, right? So that’s the trade off. You can do some small repairs, but you’re not gonna be just. Um, if you’ve got a, a, a full thickness crack or something, it’s, you know, it’s gonna be game over. You’re not gonna be building that up again.

Allen Hall 2025: Delamination and bottomline failures and blades are difficult problems to [00:06:00] detect early. These hidden issues can cost you millions in repairs and lost energy production. C-I-C-N-D-T are specialists to detect these critical flaws before they become expensive burdens. Their non-destructive test technology penetrates deep to blade materials to find voids and cracks.

Traditional inspections, completely. Miss C-I-C-N-D-T Maps. Every critical defect delivers actionable reports and provides support to get your blades. Back in service, so visit cic ndt.com because catching blade problems early 

Yolanda Padron: will save you millions. 

Allen Hall 2025: Well keep going on the, the subject of blades. Imagine if you were selling your house and you told the bank you owe nothing on it.

Then the bank shows up with a bill for over a hundred million dollars. That is essentially what’s happening right now in the TPI composites bankruptcy. Uh, the wind blade manufacturer canceled its [00:07:00] February 17th asset auction after only one bidder came forward. A firm called ECP five LLC, which is, uh, part of Energy Capital Partners, which is based in New Jersey.

Uh, but before TPI. Can hand over the keys. It has to settle up with its business partners. TPI told the court many of those partners were owed little or nothing. Uh, the partners check their books. Strongly disagree. Now, the judge has a mountain of competing claims to sort through before the sale can close.

And everyone, I mean, the, the claims are big. Uh, there are several large names listed, and if you go through the filings, uh, Siemens C Mesa is probably the largest one, and it, it claims TPI owes about 84 million plus an unpaid inspection, repair, and replacement costs. Plus under 22 million [00:08:00]under apparent guarantee.

Others include Aurora Energy Services stating it is owned about $5 million, uh, for post-bankruptcy services, plus 38,000, uh, for before the filing of bankruptcy. The landlord up in Iowa for the TPI facility there is objecting because they’re owed some rent. Some other ones include, uh. Oracle, uh, which is, uh, has a lot of software licenses that TPI currently has, and they’re saying those licenses will not swap over to the new owner.

So there, this is a series of these filings going on at the minute, and they’re pushing back the closing of the, uh, sale hearing until March 9th. So they got about another two weeks as we record right now. This is a big deal and, and although I have seen almost nothing about it in the press. Because it’s hard.

One, it’s hard to find, and two, it’s really [00:09:00] difficult to sort through. Uh, but it is a major milestone for TPI that they’re gonna be able to sell the, or at least transfer ownership to, uh, energy capital partners. And the none of the buyers investors had bought part of the facilities. But GE Renova or Siemens cesa, for that matter, are not involved, at least at the top level.

Which is really to, in my opinion, odd. I thought GE Renova would’ve been involved, at least at some level. They have been supporting TPI through this process. But in terms of going forward, doesn’t look like too much is going on with Renova or Siemens Ga Mesa in, in terms of the operations of these facilities.

Thoughts. 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I agree. It’s strange that they wouldn’t have taken that opportunity and that makes me wonder what I don’t know that, you know, ’cause obviously it’s not a strange decision to the people who have made it so. They’ve got more information, a lot more information than us. So what is it that made it unappealing to them?

That’s, um, that’s my question. [00:10:00]

Yolanda Padron: What did TP, I think was gonna happen with all of that money that they owe everyone? 

Allen Hall 2025: Well, it’s a bankruptcy hearing. Obviously they like to wipe that debt free and so would Energy Capital partners. They don’t wanna pay the a hundred million plus of whatever, uh, the court would ict, but.

You just like to get the assets. If you can do it, that’s your cheapest option if you’re Energy Capital partners. But do you see Energy Capital Partners running the facilities? There’s a lot of organization within TPI that manages those facilities and controls the operation. From the quality side engineering side, there’s, there’s a lot of pieces to TPI here.

Do you think they’re just gonna pick it up and run, run the company as it stands today? Or, or, 

Rosemary Barnes: oh my goodness. I would be so nervous to, um, buy blades, uh, from them in that situation. I mean, we’ve seen so many examples in the last few years of decisions being made by senior management that have really compromised the quality at the end of the day.

Like in theory, yes, the factory, you know, all the processes are in place to do things. Um, to do things [00:11:00] right, but you know, as soon as they get the next new project, which they’re doing constantly, right? It’s not like they just make a blade and they just make it over and over again. They make many different kinds of blades.

There’s decisions to be made and you’re trying to get the price right and the quality right. And then, you know, given that we know that TPI was not profitable the way they were doing it before, they’re gonna have to spend less money. Then somebody who isn’t from the industry is making those calls about where to save it.

It just seems like totally implausible to me. 

Matthew Stead: Can I just add though, you know, TPI was mentioned multiple times at, um, at Blades, USA, and so, you know, a lot of people are relying on them or have relied on them and so forth. And so maybe this is a strategy about supporting the industry into the future. Like I think Alan, you, you said that they’re involved in, um, this investment business has other wind assets, so maybe it’s just like.

Securing supply chain and, which I mean, that’s a pretty logical approach, isn’t it? 

Allen Hall 2025: Oh, it would be. Uh, they’re about 50% owners of Ted’s US onshore fleet and a number. There are [00:12:00] other projects they’re involved in a number of renewable projects. Uh, so it would make sense for them to try to keep the supply chain going.

But the largest purchaser of GB GE turbines that I know of is NextEra. So you would think NextEra would want to step into the mix too and at least in all the court filings, I haven’t seen much from NextEra or nothing from them at all. It if Osted US is wanting to keep their supply chain and Energy Capital partners wanted to keep the supply chain going, that would make a lot of sense to me.

However, I just don’t know if they have the infrastructure to manage it. As Rosemary has described on numerous occasions running LM wind power is not easy. There’s just a lot of moving pieces, supply chain problems. You’ve got people problems, you have quality problems, you have repair problems, warranty issues.

It’s a lot to that business. It isn’t like you’re stamping out widgets. You, you have a responsibility to that product after it goes out into [00:13:00] service. So if you have problems out in service, you’re, you’re kind of on the hook for all those warranty claims. It’s complicated. 

Rosemary Barnes: You make it sound like I was running lm 

Yolanda Padron: Rosie runs the world.

Rosemary Barnes: I just wanna make it clear I was not running lm 

Allen Hall 2025: Not yet. Rosie. There’s still time. 

Rosemary Barnes: I was ru running one very tiny, tiny corner of it. 

Yolanda Padron: I’d almost be curious ’cause like since ECP is so much into risk management and just, just in general, they have so many things that they are like part owners in, but they don’t necessarily manage the day to day hands on.

Uh. I’d almost be curious to see if maybe they take a page out of Rosie’s book and try to make one thing. Well, 

Matthew Stead: mm, that’d be novel, wouldn’t it? 

Rosemary Barnes: It has actually been tried before. Um, you know, it’s, it’s uh, not something that has escaped the notice of blade engineers, uh, that if you make one thing, you can do it right.

And wind turbine blades are a pretty similar there. No, you know, like great [00:14:00] differentiator between. How well performing the blades are from one company to another. I know at, at least at lm, they did have a blade that they designed, and their plan was to sell just heaps and heaps of those to multiple different manufacturers and just no one wanted it.

Um, so it just quietly died. Um, so yeah, the, the concept is good. I think it’s. A little bit harder to pull off than you would hope. There are also some Chinese companies that are kind of selling just parts, generic parts. And so if you wanted to make your own wind turbine, um, company, if you wanted to be a wind energy o and m Yolanda, you could just buy an assortment of parts from Chinese manufacturers and put a.

Yolanda Wind energy sticker on it and um, and, and, and you could be an an OEM. So it is, it, it, it is possible. I haven’t seen any of these out in the wild. Um, I have [00:15:00] heard of, you know, people considering it for, you know, certain aspects of certain types of projects. So it kind of exists in a way. 

Matthew Stead: But the financial aspect, I mean, that’s accounting 1 0 1, I mean.

You gotta know your assets and to owe people a hundred million dollars, that’s absolutely shocking. Really? 

Allen Hall 2025: They owed a lot more than that before the bankruptcy. It is a lot of money. 

Matthew Stead: How do you miss that? 

Allen Hall 2025: Well, I don’t think they missed it. I just think the warranty claims and some of the repair that was going on and the, the, it sounded like price discounting was happening to some of the OEMs just caught up to ’em.

But at the end of the day, I, I, I guess the question is. Does TPI as an entity remain? Obviously the Vestas portion will, because Vestas is gonna make them Vestas factories in a sense, and, uh, integrate as part of their overall operations. But Renova is not, Siemens is not interested in doing it, at least as we speak.

No one’s [00:16:00] making any noise over at Nordex. It, it does leave these assets questionable as to what the real value is. We haven’t heard how much, uh, ECP has paid for them yet. The Vestas factories that were purchased, I think the, the two TPI factories in Mexico, I think Vestas paid about $10 million for each factory, which is a really inexpensive price to pay for new factories because Vestus had talked about at one point a year or two ago, about standing up a new factory saying it would cost him roughly a half a billion dollars to do.

So buying a, that same asset for $10 million is a discount, a deep, deep discount, which maybe Vestas figures, Hey, it’s 20 million bucks, plus they got the India operations. Uh, it’s not that much money. If it all goes sour, it’s not that much money and we’re okay. Whereas Ver Nova decided to not to participate in that.

As wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it difficult. That’s why [00:17:00] 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 p ps wind.com. Today, over in Denmark, a fight has been brewing between offshore and onshore wind developers and. Sted once State Aid brought back for offshore wind auctions, onshore developers say that would tilt the playing field against them. Well, some have even walked out on their own trade group, uh, over it.

Now the new CEO of Wind Europe, Tina Van Stratton, uh, is stepping in the middle of that discussion with a simple message. We need both. Don’t let offshore and onshore wind divide us. Nearly 90% of Europe’s installed wind capacity sits currently on land, and [00:18:00] she says that is not going to change anytime soon.

Uh, so there, there is a big dispute about this right there. There does seem to be a, a amount of money being poured into offshore wind and requests of governments to support offshore wind at the same time. Onshore wind, which has been the primary growth market for wind in Europe, is getting the cold shoulder.

In a sense. How does this play out everyone? Is there a, a good solution to it or is the need for offshore wind so great that, that they have to ignore onshore wind development for a couple of years? 

Matthew Stead: I think we should just all be friends. So, I mean, really. Yeah, we need both and, um, I mean for the diversity and, you know, uh, I’ll leave all the technical topics to Rosie, but, um, um, really I think we need both.

I mean, so what, it’d be crazy to, to drop the onshore, onshore industry. 

Yolanda Padron: Yeah. I mean, it makes sense that, or said, especially Orid Europe doesn’t have any onshore anymore. Right. So it’s just [00:19:00]offshore. It would make sense that they really wanna push for help for themselves. And it’s, it’s great. It, it’s, it’s great to help, but I, I agree with Matt.

Allen Hall 2025: Well, the Northern Europe and Scandinavian countries are talking about 100 gigawatts in the water by what, 2050? Something of that sort. So that’s a lot of energy in the water. In order to do that, you have to devote a number of resources to it, which. Will mean onshore wind is not gonna get the support it probably deserves, even though it has a proven track record.

Rosemary Barnes: I just think it, it’s really interesting because I guess wind is, um, a very Europe. LED industry. Um, and so yeah, in Europe, e everything big and exciting is in offshore and the volume is in offshore. Um, I feel like that’s kind of filtered through to other regions though, because I mean, in Australia we don’t even have any offshore wind yet.

We are probably getting some, but you go to any wind energy event, it’s gonna be. [00:20:00] More than 50% offshore wind and sometimes like 90% offshore wind, um, focused, which is, I think crazy when onshore is, is exists and has plenty of problems that need to be solved, and we need to be building more, a lot faster. I, I do actually wish that.

If we could spend as much of the, you know, like some of the effort and the political effort that’s going into paving the way for offshore wind, I think would be much better spent on solving the problems. Um, the obstacles stopping us from rolling out onshore wind faster. Because we’re not on track in Australia to meet our renewable energy targets if we can’t get that under control.

And then in the US yes you have some offshore wind, but it is not a growth industry at the moment or it’s not very appealing at the moment, at least. Right. So, and I dunno how much you talk about it there, but I do hear a lot of, like a whole lot of talk about offshore compared to how important it is for regions outside of Europe.

Yolanda Padron: I think it’s important too to [00:21:00] note that. When you have a lot of offshore wind in your fleet, like you can sometimes test out products onshore that maybe they’re, of course not the exact same conditions, but you can test out products to a degree onshore. And I’ve seen, you know, owner operators that have to go across continents just to test that product because it’s cheaper to do that onshore than to do it offshore in your home site, in your backyard.

So I mean that that would really benefit from an RD standpoint. It would really benefit everyone. If 

Allen Hall 2025: they gave it up attention 

Yolanda Padron: to onshore. 

Rosemary Barnes: When I was at lm, one of my, well my key team member who was an electrical engineer, he had, um, done a bunch of work for a system that was only implemented on an offshore wind farm.

And it sucked up so much time when stuff started going wrong with that, like even small things. And he was the only one [00:22:00] that could do it. You know, you go out, if you’ve got a five minute job to do, to get, you know, like turn something off and on again off. Reconnect something that’s a whole day of work, right?

Like you, and, and not like a normal day, but like a 12 hour day, you’re gonna go out in the morning, they, you know, they go around in a boat or whatever and drop people off and they don’t come get you when you’re done 10 minutes later, you know, they come get you at the end of the day when they’re picking everyone up again.

So, um, it, it was, it was incredibly challenging. I mean, for him personally and the team. Um, and I always recommend to, or, you know, sometimes I’m advising, um, companies that have offshore wind, um, technologies. And I’m always advising anything that you can test on shore, do it and get creative about it as well.

’cause you might think that you can’t, you certainly can’t get all the way there without testing in your real operating environment. But any problem that could happen onshore that you, um, learn about when it’s onshore is gonna cost you probably like, you know, one 10th as much [00:23:00] to fix. Um. So, and, and the time as well.

So, yeah, I, I think that you’re right that we should be actually considering onshore as an opportunity for, um, improving offshore technology as well. 

Allen Hall 2025: Can we talk about, uh, data centers for a minute? Just off the top of mind, I’ve been listening to a number of podcasts over the last month or two talking about powering AI data centers and how much coal or natural gas.

It’s gonna be needed to provide the stable, reliable power that these data centers supposedly need. In the meantime, there’s like this industry being built, uh, and you see the, the purchases of gas turbines going out to like, what, 2032? I think it’s what Renova is talking about now is when you could actually get in line for a gas turbine.

Other manufacturers or gas turbines are basically saying the same thing in the meantime. [00:24:00] Elon Musk and SpaceX are talking about putting AI data centers up in space where you don’t have any regulatory issues. You don’t have to burn coal or natural gas or any of these things. So the, the ground-based AI data centers appear to be locked into making these really expensive buildings and assets and putting generation and transmission and, and this infrastructure together, which will cost them.

Hundreds of millions at a minimum, likely tens of billions of dollars to do, and that’s just in the United States. Meanwhile, SpaceX is really on a pathway of doing this up in the sky for probably a fraction of the cost. Is there a break point here? Because it does seem like the, the natural gas, coal, oil, petroleum industry and the on ground build, the building, people are ignoring that.

SpaceX has a [00:25:00] capability of doing this, and if Musk decides to do it, and SpaceX decides to do it, that all those gas turbine orders, all that infrastructure, all the gas pipeline, all the drilling that would have to happen would just go immediately. Poof. Gone. 

Rosemary Barnes: I don’t know about immediately because I mean, we’re not at the point yet where you can just launch a data center into space.

So there is a bit of a, a, a transition period. Um, I. I also think that it’s overblown that, you know, I think you might have even fallen into the trap also, where you’re like, oh, when data centers need more energy, so therefore it has to be coal or gas or nuclear. 

Allen Hall 2025: Nope, I agree with you. 

Rosemary Barnes: Those things aren’t quick to build either.

If you truly wanted to do it quickly, you’d be putting in, um, you know, heaps of solar panels and batteries and, and you know, wind turbines where that made sense. But that said, I, I do agree that, uh, like I, I don’t think space-based data centers is farfetched at all. I, I guess the biggest [00:26:00] challenges, uh, are, um, the cooling and heating requirements space has very large temperature fluctuations.

So I guess you’re gonna need to design that carefully. I don’t think it’s insurmountable. Um, and then the next thing is a cost of launch, which I’m sure you’re about to tell me how. Dramatically the cost of launch is dropping. Um, you know, like, it, it’s got, it’s got a very good learning curve. The space launches, which is basically, you know, SpaceX is probably the main reason why that is just dropping and dropping and dropping.

So I don’t think that it’s unrealistic at all. I don’t know the timeframe. You would know more, Alan, you work in, um, aerospace. I just. You know, um, follow it for general interest. 

Matthew Stead: I reckon it’s stupid. He’s really stupid on a number of grounds. So first of all, you know, why do that when. You just, I can’t see how it can ever be more cost effective and you know, [00:27:00] I, you know, you should really, should be putting that effort into things like, you know, better healthcare and so forth.

I mean, what a waste of resources. But why? I mean, why, why? 

Allen Hall 2025: Because it’s a lot less expensive and it’s faster. 

Matthew Stead: You’d do it in the ocean before that, wouldn’t you? 

Rosemary Barnes: No, but the ocean still has, like how do you power it? You, you get the 24 7 solar power in space. That’s what you. That’s what you get, um, which you can’t get on Earth 

Matthew Stead: or you put it next to a wind farm and you, you, and you make the load go up and down depending on the wind.

I mean, seriously, there’s so many other ways of doing it. You put it next to a wind and solar. 

Rosemary Barnes: I agree with you, Matt, that I think that the, the bulk of the solutions with data centers is gonna come from one demand not being what people think it is today. Like the numbers that get reported are just like the.

Absolute best, best, best case scenario and then multiplied by three or four times because they’re looking at different options for locating each of the data centers they plan to make. So I think I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up with 10% of what people think that we’re gonna get. [00:28:00] Now, the first thing, secondly, people assume that it needs to be 24 7.

Just, you know, like a hundred percent reliable power, and that’s. That’s simply, yeah, it’s not, not everything needs to be just, um, you know, done at, at the exact time that it’s requested. There’s heaps of things that can be shifted and uh, when the price differential is there, then people are naturally going to choose that.

And in fact, there are already some companies offering different levels of reliability depend, you know, for different prices. And companies can choose which of their processes can be put on hold. Like a lot of the training stuff, you’re happy don’t. Need 99.999% reliability, you’re probably happy with 90% reliability.

And so, you know, if it costs a whole lot less than you will, I, I agree with you, Matt, that that’s gonna take most of it. But I do still think that for the, like, super reliable, um, data centers, I, I bet that we see at least one. And even if it’s just because Elon Musk is the type to push something through, um, you know, [00:29:00] first and.

Wait for the market to catch up later. Uh, maybe that will be the reason, but I, I honestly think it’s more than 50% likely that we see a data center in space in the next, in the next decade, 

Matthew Stead: it would make more sense to like drill a hole to the center of the earth and get the, the hot well cutting rock 

Rosemary Barnes: and or there’s also plenty of geothermal.

You did thermal projects as well. 

Matthew Stead: Yeah, it’s just ridiculous. 

Rosemary Barnes: I think that we’ve had our first hot take from Matthew, so I don’t know some sort of sound effect to be added here. Claire. Uh, yeah,

Allen Hall 2025: 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 give us a review.

It really helps other wind energy professionals discover the show. For Rosa, Yolanda and [00:30:00] Matthew, I’m Alan Hall, and we’ll see you next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

Allen covers Nova Scotia’s ambitious 60 GW Wind West offshore plan and the standoff between Ottawa and developers over who invests first. Plus a scaled-back English onshore project faces local opposition, Blue Elephant Energy triples its German wind portfolio, Adani prepares to build India’s longest onshore blade, and Rivian signs a wind PPA to power its Illinois factory.

Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

There is something happening in the wind business right now. Something big … and something small.

Let us start with big.

In Nova Scotia … Premier Tim Houston has a dream. He calls it Wind West. Sixty gigawatts of offshore wind turbines. A transmission line to move that power across Canada and into the United States. The price tag … sixty billion dollars. Forty billion for the turbines. Twenty billion for the cables.

But Ottawa says … not so fast. Federal Energy Minister Tim Hodgson told reporters the Major Projects Office needs to see private industry commit first. No private partners … no national interest designation.

And here is the catch. The developers want to see transmission infrastructure before they invest. Ottawa wants to see developers before it invests. Everybody is waiting for everybody else.

Still … Houston is not worried. He says the response from developers has been … through the roof. French firm Q Energy has already applied to pre-qualify. And Natural Resources Canada just put up nearly five million dollars for a feasibility study.

Houston says the wind is there. It blows … a lot. The only question is where the power goes.

Now … across the Atlantic.

In England … a developer is learning that sometimes bigger is not better. Calderdale Energy Park wanted to build sixty-five turbines on Walshaw Moor near Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire. That would have made it the largest onshore wind farm in England. Last April they cut it to forty-one. Now … thirty-four. That would match the current largest site at Keadby in Lincolnshire.

Campaigners say it will still damage the peat bogs and threaten ground-nesting birds. A local parish council survey found ninety-three percent of residents opposed. The developer says it could power a quarter million homes. That application goes to the Planning Inspectorate in November.

Meanwhile … in Hamburg, Germany …

Blue Elephant Energy is doing some shopping. The company just acquired a three hundred eighty-one megawatt wind portfolio from Wind-Projekt. That is thirty-seven operating wind farms in northern Germany. Two hundred sixty megawatts already feeding the grid. Another forty-six megawatts under construction … coming online this year. And seventy-five more megawatts in the pipeline for twenty twenty-seven.

This deal will triple their German wind capacity … from one hundred seventy-three to five hundred thirty-three megawatts. It still needs approval from the German Federal Cartel Office.

Now … to India.

The Adani Group is about to build the longest onshore wind turbine blade in the country. Ninety-one-point-two meters. That is the length of a football field. Those blades will create a rotor diameter of one hundred eighty-five meters. Each rotation sweeps an area larger than three football fields combined.

The factory is at Mundra in the state of Gujarat. Current capacity … two-point-two-five gigawatts per year. They plan to double that to five … and eventually reach ten. India added six-point-three gigawatts of wind last year alone. That was an eighty-five percent jump over the year before.

And finally … back home in the American heartland.

Rivian … the electric vehicle maker … just signed a power purchase agreement with Apex Clean Energy. Fifty megawatts from the proposed Goose Creek wind farm in Piatt County, Illinois. That wind farm sits within an hour of Rivian’s flagship plant in Normal, Illinois. With this deal … Rivian could power up to seventy-five percent of its factory with carbon-free energy. An electric truck company … powered by wind.

So let us step back.

Nova Scotia dreams of sixty gigawatts off its coast. An English moor fights over thirty-four turbines. A German company triples its wind portfolio overnight. India builds blades as long as football fields. And an American truck maker turns to the prairie wind to build its future.

From the North Atlantic to the plains of Illinois … from the moors of Yorkshire to the coast of Gujarat … the wind keeps blowing. And people … keep building.

And that is the state of the wind industry for the first of March twenty twenty-six.

Join us for the Uptime Wind Energy podcast tomorrow.