The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

This week we discuss New York's delayed/canceled offshore wind contracts and the effects on future electricity demands, new port facilities for wind manufacturing, and a US-based initiative to paint turbine blades black to reduce bird collisions. Joel Saxum, Rosemary Barnes, Phil Totaro and Allen Hall bring you the latest in wind energy news, technology, and science! 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! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: So I got this really cool swag. So if you're listening, you really can't see my new swag. Got this Drive Smart sweatshirt from my favorite race car driver, Kyle Weatherman. And in fact, Rosemary, if you go to the drivesmartwarranty.com website, you will see the Uptime logo on the race car that we were on this past year in Texas. So this is going to be an exciting year for Kyle Weatherman and for Uptime and Drive Smart Warranty. Because we're expecting great things this season. Rosemary, want me to, I could, I can get one of these cool sweatshirts and send it your way if you'd like. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I'll never, turn down a freebie like that. Allen Hall: The only problem with this sweatshirt, it's not really a problem, is it has a Chevy logo, and I've never driven a Chevy. Now I feel obligated that I have to drive a Chevy. Joel, you, are you driving a Chevy right now? Joel Saxum: GMC, same thing, same pot of money. Allen Hall: There's someone on the uptime crew, because Phil is driving a scooter. a very complicated scooter, nonetheless. Philip Totaro: I used to, drive a truck, thank you very much, had a nice Dodge for 11 years, so I was part of the family. Rosemary Barnes: We've got a Subaru. Allen Hall: It's a very Australian car. There you go. We're expecting great things this year from, Kyle Weatherman and the DGM crew and from Drive Smart Warranty, so check it out, drivesmartwarranty.com. European energy companies Equinor and BP have terminated their agreement to sell power from the proposed Empire Wind II offshore wind farm. To New York State, the company cited rising inflation, higher borrowing costs, and supply chain issues as the reasons for canceling the contract. As Phil, New York recently launched a new offshore wind procurement to allow developers to exit these old contracts and to re offer projects at higher prices. And that's supposed to conclude sometime in February. However, in this particular case, BP and Equinor also cancelled the substation build. So there seems like they've committed a little further down the line than just saying, hey, we're going to rebid. They've actually stopped production on a vital component of that wind farm. This is in, in light of, obviously, Ørsted pulling out of the two projects. In New Jersey, so there seems to be a trend going on here. Equinor also had the problem, you and I were corresponding via, Slack or whatever it was the other day, and I, commented that Equinor has been pressured by the state quite a couple of times for a variety of different reasons. One more recently is the New York state canceled the on shoring of one of their cables, and which was a last minute dig at, Equinor, I felt. Does this all seem to align? Equinor is getting the cold shoulder from New York State, and will they go back and try to rebid this? Philip Totaro: I believe they will. First of all, this, probably wasn't surprising that they were going to pull out after, Empire Wind 1, Phase 1, and,

Allen, Joel, Phil and Rosemary discuss the renewable energy landscape in Australia, maintenance challenges at the Hywind floating wind farm, and whether U.S. universities can provide value researching offshore wind designs versus leaving it to industry. Plus--Rosemary will be at Everything Electric Australia! Use code EEROSIE for 20% off your ticket! 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! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: All right, Rosemary, you got some important news for the world to hear. You're going to be at... Rosemary Barnes: Everything Electric Australia, which is in Sydney from February 9th to 11th. And I'm presenting four sessions on the Friday, and then I'll be hanging out there on the Saturday as well to go around. They've got every single electric car that is available or will be soon available in Australia. Plus everything, associated with electrification of the home and everything like that. So yeah, it was a really big, cool event last year, and it's set to be much bigger and much cooler this year. And listeners can get a 20 percent discount off tickets if they use my code, which is EEROSIE, so that's E for elephant. For those of you that have trouble understanding my Australian vowels, but I guess it will be Australians who want to use the code, so not that big a deal. That's EEROSIE. Allen Hall: And how many people are going to attend this event, Rosemary, roughly? Rosemary Barnes: I'm pretty sure it was like 10 last year, and I'm told that it's much bigger this year. Allen Hall: Wow. So you better get your tickets now. If you want to attend that event, you better get on it right away. And use Rosemary's code, EEROSIE we get a 20 percent discount. That's fantastic. Denmark has a new king as queen. Margrethe II has abdicated after 52 years on the throne. King Frederick the 10th, formally took over recently in a ceremony at the palace, which Joel and I were at not long ago. Margrethe is the first Danish monarch to voluntarily give up the throne in nearly 900 years. And Joel and I were standing next to Frederick recently at the Copenhagen Wind Europe event a couple of months ago. So we were close to royalty. Joel Saxum: We didn't even know it either. These guys were pushing us away a little bit. What's going on with these guys? Looked like a bunch of dudes from a Mission Impossible movie. And then we looked behind him and there he was. Now King Frederick the 10th. At the time he was the royal, what is it, Crown Prince? Was it Crown Prince Frederick? Allen Hall: So Frederick is married to, now Queen, Mary, who is from Australia. And Rosemary, I think she's actually from sort of Tasmania, slash Australia. And I was just wondering if there's a connection here. Is she like a second cousin to you, or is there some sort of in, insight we could have into the monarchy in Denmark? Are we gonna have A new wind turbine facility in Australia. Rosemary Barnes: You've really gone for the soft spot for any Tasmanian because that is the joke that in Tasmania, everyone is related to each other in possibly not the nicest way and people don't mean it as a compliment when they say that. Yeah, so it is highly possible to be honest. It's highly possible that we're you're related somehow. But not that I know of. And in fact, when I lived in Denmark, I never was introduced to princess, then princess Mary, which I thought was ridiculous.

This week, Allen and Joel talk to Jonathan Zalar of IWTG Consulting about the complicated RCA process. With 20+ years of experience, Zalar details OEM investigations like analyzing turbine data, assessing damage on-site, and convening engineering teams to determine causes. By understanding the inner workings of the OEM process, operators can get their turbines back up and running faster with less of a struggle. Website: https://www.iwtgconsulting.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonzalar/ 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! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. Our guest is Jonathan Zalar managing partner of IWTG Consulting, and IWTG is based in South Carolina. In the United States, Jonathan has a long career in the wind industry, working for 22 years with GE 13 years with GE Vernova specifically, Jonathan has a wealth of knowledge from both his work in the field and in the engineering offices. He's a mechanical engineering major and also holds an MBA. So I put you in a very select class, Jonathan, which we're going to tap on here. Jonathan, welcome to the program. Jonathan Zalar: Thanks for having me. I appreciate you guys taking the time. Allen Hall: There's not a lot of engineers that go after their MBA and then stick to engineering. They tend to go to MBA and they go into the business world and have a nice comfy office and you took the other route. Jonathan Zalar: Yeah, I went right into my MBA after my undergrad. Guess I want to stay in college a little longer. Joel Saxum: Yeah, that doesn't make you a bad person, okay? I wish I was still there. Allen Hall: Jonathan, you have a really a wealth of knowledge here on what happens in the field because you're out there doing it and interacting with the engineering groups that were doing the design work and support work at their offices. And one of the issues that Joel and I get wrapped into a lot is RCA's. And people ask us about this all the time. And we were just at an insurance symposium a week or two ago, Joel and I were, and everybody has a different perspective of what actually happens and what an OEM does behind the scenes, because there's a lot of things that happen behind the curtain that unless you really are on the inside, you just don't know. But there's a lot of good positive things that an OEM is doing during an RCA. So I just like to walk through what happens during an RCA. If you had a blade issue out in the field and you call the OEM, what typically, what typical things happen there? And maybe you can just walk us through what that process is. Jonathan Zalar: When something like that happens, it's like a major event and GE and other OEMs have protocols in place, first of all, to ensure safety, right? Is everybody okay? And then, then it's like, all right, now it's time to put your CSI hat on and go investigate. Joel Saxum: Horatio Zalar, is that what it is? Jonathan Zalar: While this is all happening, while you're working with the customer, it'd be like, hey, can we come here? We're going to send, these experts out there to go look at whatever it is, a blade, for example. The teams are also looking at the data because when a, event happens, there's data collected on the turbine. There's engineers looking at that data, trying to understand,

In this episode, Allen and Joel speak with ABB's Daniel Gerber, Senior VP, Global Product Group Manager Wind, System Drives and WindESCo's Founder and CEO Mo Dua about their companies' new partnership. They are combining ABB's capabilities in wind turbine electrical systems with WindESCo's optimization software platforms. This collaboration aims to help wind farm operators monitor the health of electrical components to reduce downtime and maximize energy production. Plus, we discuss pilot projects planned for 2024 to demonstrate the value of jointly leveraging ABB's converter expertise and WindESCo's analytics. Reach out to Windesco and ABB! 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! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome back to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I am Allen Hall and I'm here with Joel Saxum, and we have some really interesting guests today. We have Daniel Gerber, Senior Vice President, Global Product Group Manager, Wind System Drive from ABB, and he's based in Zurich, Switzerland. And also Mo Dua from WindESCo. Mo is the founder and CEO of WindESCo, which is based in Massachusetts, my, my state. And the reason we're talking here today is because there has been a minority stake in WindESCo from ABB. And when this news release popped out a couple of months ago now, I thought, man, this is a great alignment. Finally, the wind industry is doing something on the electrical side that is interesting, because everything we hear is on the mechanical side. It's all about blades, leading edge erosion, how the gearboxes are breaking, how everything's leaking oil. But the, a lot of the improvements that are going to happen in wind energy and in the production side are going to happen because the electrical control system and the converters and everything downstream are working properly and doing what they should. And this is where WindESCo and ABB come in together. So Daniel and Mo, welcome to the program. Daniel Gerber: Hello, welcome, and thanks for having me. Thank you. Allen Hall: So would you like to just describe what brought the two of you together and how that relationship started and what the plan is for the combined effort. Daniel Gerber: We at ABB, we have a strong commitment in decarbonizing the power generation. And therefore the wind business for us is a strong part of our strategy. Our customers are asking us, what can we do actually to improve the situation, to get more out of our equipment, more out of our turbines. How can we make them as available as possible? And we at ABB, we have 17, 000 converters in the field, more than 21, 000 generators in the field operating. So we have a couple of years of good experience. And what we try to do is to find a partner, which can basically help us to bring a 360 degrees view on this. And we found with WindESCo, a partner, which has a credible offering into the market. And basically allows us to not just see the electrical part, but as well have the mechanical parts together. And therefore we found that WindESCo is one of our preferred partner in this collaboration. Mo Dua: Yeah. Thank you, Daniel. From my perspective, WindESCo has been a company that's been hyper focused on addressing the challenges in the wind sector. And as you guys know, there's a lot of challenges in the sector, a lot of moving parts right in the sector also. So We have ourselves been looking to expand beyond just performance optimization into as...

Muehlhan Wind Service acquires a controlling interest in Portugal's Endiprev to create a global front runner in wind installation and maintenance services. Energy Capital Partners raises over $4.4 billion for its latest fund focused on power generation, renewables, and decarbonization infrastructure. FiberLine Composites is moving all production from Denmark to India over competition from Chinese manufacturers, while also working on domesticating some production in the U.S. to take advantage of tax credits. 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! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I'm here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum, and this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by your friends at IntelStor. If you want market intelligence that generates revenue, then book a demonstration of IntelStor at IntelStor. com. Danish company Muehlhan Wind Service has acquired a controlling interest in Endiprev, a Portugal based company specializing in commissioning and electrical work for the wind industry. This acquisition aims to create a global front runner in wind installation and maintenance services. Endiprev will continue to operate under its existing brand with current executive management team remaining in place. Muehlhan has expanded significantly over the past seven years and has acquired several companies in the last 18 months. And Phil, this seems to be the trend in any sort of repair, maintenance company is to acquire, acquire, acquire. Philip Totaro: At this point, yes, Allen. And it's interesting because we've talked over the past, six to 12 months about Any number of different deals where companies have either kind of merged together an EPC contracting capability with maintenance services or maintenance providers getting together in some cases, maintenance providers acquiring supply chain, smaller, tier three or four supply chain companies as well. So, I mean, this is, it's starting to get serious. We've talked on the show before about, the increased need for maintenance services, quality of maintenance services, et cetera. And this puts Muehlhan and, and Endiprev in in a really great position globally. Joel Saxum: Yeah. So if you aren't familiar with kind of what this business model looks like as it expands is Endiprev being a basically front end commissioning services company, they do a lot of build outs. They do electrical work of these things. Muehlhan has been Classically a more of a maintenance company. So now what you do is you come in on the front end of a project, you help build it or you build it as the EPC is the front runner there. And then when that project switches over to commissioning, which normally you would walk away. Now you just back your other players in there and you've already got built in work for the maintenance and operation side of things. So it's a great tie up and you're going to start to see a lot more of these as well. Allen Hall: Energy Capital Partners, an investor in power transition, electrification, and decarbonization infrastructure assets, has raised over 4. 4 billion for its fifth flagship equity strategy, ECP5, or better called Fund 5. The fund exceeds its initial target by 10 percent and also raised an additional 2. 3 billion in co investment capital. Fund 5 will continue Energy Capital Partners i...