Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners and transportation giant Crowley are joining forces to build a massive offshore wind infrastructure empire. Together they’ll dominate everything from ports to vessels to keep those ocean breeze generators spinning.

Meanwhile in Brazil, Vestas has created a dream team with drivetrain maker ZF Wind Power and service firm ABS Wind to optimize turbine maintenance. By sharing expertise, they aim to make Brazilian wind power run smoother than a bossa nova beat.

Stateside, Ohio’s homegrown wind firm One Energy just scored a $300 million mega-merger to bring wind turbines to factories across the heartland. With funding from investment firm Tortoise Ecofin, One Energy wants to make American manufacturing run on wind power.

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News Flash August 28

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 this is your News Flash. Major players in infrastructure, investment, and maritime logistics are joining forces to tap into the growing offshore wind energy market. In the, in the United States.

Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners has announced a new joint venture with maritime and logistics firm, Crowley. To provide essential services to offshore wind farm developers through the partnership, Morgan Stanley will hold a majority stake in a newly formed entity called Crowley Wind Services Holdings.

Crowley will operate the business leveraging its expertise in maritime operations and port services. And Phil, we’re seeing a lot of emphasis on the infrastructure to the infrastructure. And that’s where a lot of cash is flowing at the moment. 

Phil Totaro: It’s interesting too because we actually highlighted this as the play to make about a year and a half ago to some of our, our clients and, and other companies who wanted to invest in offshore wind, but maybe perhaps didn’t wanna invest directly in the project development.

Vessels were one area where we, we touched upon that, you know, there’s huge demand for, for vessels, so that’s a, a solid investment. But the the port infrastructure is another area where this is highly needed especially in the United States where, you know, Crowley already has a, a commercial relationship with the port up in Northern California in Humboldt to support the Northern California offshore wind projects.

And this relationship with Morgan Stanley gives them the opportunity. To have a vehicle to, to do more investments in other ports that require a significant upgrade to be able to handle the water depth for the vessels that draw to the vessels. And the you know, the, the key side manufacturing and fabrication capabilities that are, that are gonna be required.

Allen Hall: Vestas has partnered with drivetrain supplier, ZF Wind Power, and Brazilian service provider, ABS Wind. Together. They aim to improve efficiency and response times for wind farm maintenance across the region. Under the agreement ABS Wind will handle repairs and upkeep of drive, train components produced by ZF Wind Power that are used in Vestas turbines installed in Brazil.

ABS will utilize its specialized facility and expert technician space. In the northeast of Brazil re Vestas, the partnership has an agile solution to serve customers, especially those in the key wind region of Brazil. Phil. So it sounds like Vestas is making some friends in Brazil at the moment.

Phil Totaro: They are, and they are not only the number one o e m in that market but they also have a rather substantial order book for the V 150 platform. And they’re looking at also deploying the V 162 and as well as the offshore market. ZF is a key, you know, component supplier for them. And what this does is it actually provides the asset owners more or less what they’ve been asking for, which is better visibility and transparency to a service provider like ABS.

That has the ability now to get technical documentation and information about how these things function. They can get operational data from Vestas, if not the asset owner themselves, about how the assets being run. All that combines together to provide a higher quality maintenance capability and aftermarket parts and supply capability.

So, I think this is a win-win for everybody for once. 

Allen Hall: Is, is it letting loose of the reigns a little bit for Vestas to, to bring in some other companies to, to serve the customers that way? 

Phil Totaro: Yeah, a little bit. I mean, they, you know, they have obviously their own in-house expertise. They have their own service teams.

But bringing in the actual gearbox vendor is important because again, there are things that ZF knows about the gearbox that nobody else in the world does. Having an independent service provider also, you know, kind of embedding themselves together with this capability means that either Vestas can serve or this independent service provider can also you know, provide the, the same kind of quality of maintenance as, as the OEM at this point.

So that’s appealing for for asset owners. 

Allen Hall: Well, back here in the States, US Wind Power Company, One Energy has just got a big cash infusion to super, its growth. Ohio based turbine builder has agreed to merge with Tortoise Ecofin Acquisition Corp. Number three, as a special purpose investment firm, a spac, the deal valued at over $300 million will create a new public company called One Power That Will trade on the New York Stock Exchange.

One Energy will contribute its industry expertise while Tortoise Ecofin provides funding raised specifically to take a private company public. One Energy’s focus is helping large factories electrify operations through onsite power like wind turbines. 

Phil Totaro: That’s right, Allen. So they’ve, one energy’s actually done a tremendous amount of work with companies like Whirlpool and others throughout the state of Ohio in basically bringing onsite power.

They’ve actually also, interestingly enough, utilized a lot of gold wind or venous turbines. You know, these tend to be the, the 1.5 or 2.5 megawatt variants that have actually proven to be fairly reliable and, and perform well. So this cache infusion is going to allow them to substantially increase the, the volume of development projects that they can undertake along with the the factory owners and the, the asset owners.

That would be, you know, Doing a bit of a, a land lease for them to be able to place these power generation facilities there. Obviously they get the benefit. The factory owners get the benefit of the power offtake and whatever wrecks may be. Renewable energy certificates or credits might be associated with the, the power generation.

And one energy continues to, to kind of build their pipeline which they, like I said, they’ve already done a, a pretty substantial amount. Throughout Ohio and I think a few other neighboring states but this could enable them to dramatically expand what they’re doing. One other thing to add about this is Ecofin actually has experience in investing in renewables projects as well throughout Spain and, and some South American investments.

They’ve done a, a significant amount in. Kind of utility scale power generation projects. But this wind energy partnership gives them the opportunity to do a lot more distributed generation. So this is a very interesting move for, for both companies, and I think ultimately a very good thing.

Allen Hall: Does it compete with PPAs, like the Amazons and Googles of the world? Is just, it’s a different approach to putting wind turbines on your site versus, you know, a far off PPA?

Phil Totaro: It, it is, it’s, this is more geared towards the companies that understand what their power consumption is, and they have a relatively fixed power consumption.

You put a wind turbine on site that offsets like 80% of what you would normally buy from a utility. And then, you know, you can buy the rest of your power from the utility or through the merchant market or what have you. So yeah, it’s, it’s a different approach. But it’s a. You have kind of fixed, you know, a, a relatively fixed base load and most factories do because they’re, they’re typically running 24/7.

Allen Hall: Well, thanks Phil, for those insights. If you want to learn more about mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships in wind energy, check out Intelstor at intelstor.com.