This week the gang discusses international news from the U.S., France, Turkey, Scotland, Vietnam and more. Is New York killing gas plants a good move, or short-sighted? Scotland is lending a hand to Vietnam, helping them stand up their wind industry – will we see more of this? And, how do floating Lidar studies work in helping to identify good wind farm sites?

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protection system. Forward thinking wind site owners install strike tape today to increase uptime tomorrow. Learn more in the show notes of today’s podcast. Welcome back. I’m Dan Blewett. I’m Allen Hall and I’m Rosemary Barnes, and this is the Uptime podcast bringing you the latest in wind energy, tech news and policy.

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Unknown
All right, welcome back to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast, I’m your co-host Dan Blewett on today’s episode big global sort of news cycle we’re in talk about GE overtaking vessels here in the U.S.. An interesting, cracked foundation issue over in Canada that we’ll talk about might have some really expensive repairs due for that wind farm.

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We’ll talk about New York state and their contentious relationship now with gas power plants. We’ll talk about Scotland lending some aid to Vietnam, France and their next presidential contender and how hostile she is towards wind energy. We’ll talk about some funding coming out of the U.K. government.

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Turkey’s wind power record and last it was a little bit about floating light hours and how they assess wind farm sites. So before we get going on our mind you, no one definitely subscribe to Rosemary YouTube channels you’ll find in the show notes of this podcast.

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Unknown
She’s doing live streams and, you know, continues to pump out great content, so definitely subscribe. And check out some of her offerings. Also, you’ll find uptime tech news in the show notes wherever you listen or watch. And that’s our weekly email update, just letting you know about the new podcast and some other great news around the web

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Unknown
. So sign up for that today and get that update every week, every Thursday morning, so we’re going to jump right into it. So first thing is now has arrested that top spot over investors, accounting for 34% of new installations in the first nine months of 2021 versus 30% for Vestas.

00:02:29:04 – 00:02:49:09
Unknown
And of course, that is 2.44 gigawatts of turbines for GE versus 2.2 gigawatts for Vestas. And then, interestingly enough, and Nordics really seems to fly under the radar. But Nordics was third and of course, a German manufacturer with a 20% share of this market, with Siemens Gamesa coming up behind and 16%.

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Unknown
But you know, everyone talks about GE versus Siemens Gamesa, but Nordics has had some pretty strong year. So I’ll start with you. Does it surprise you? I mean, this is, you know, GE is home turf, after all. Yeah, it’s a little surprising because he has recently struggle, but they lately have been putting things together and have been

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Unknown
more successful. I know GE is concerned about the rising cost of supplies and raw materials, which are going to throw a wrench into this a little bit. But it is trying to mark their territory in a sense, and they just lower cost to build a factory in the United States.

00:03:29:01 – 00:03:45:10
Unknown
If it’s got the infrastructure already there where Siemens Gamesa can have to start, start from scratch like they’re doing down in Virginia. The odd one here, I think, is really Nordics because on the offshore side, Nordics is not competing or going up for bids on offshore.

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Unknown
So it’s just really three players Siemens Gamesa, Vestas and and GE and I assume is going to be a Chinese offering somewhere in there at some point. But it is really odd that Nordics is doing so well onshore, but is really not looking for offshore.

00:04:02:07 – 00:04:21:09
Unknown
Where the U.S. is going to put 30 gigawatts offshore in the next couple of years seems like a marketplace that everybody would need to be in. So there must be some dispute about where the profit centers lie. Everybody is taking their own position and rosemary, you’re a lot closer to it because you work for one of the

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Unknown
blade manufacturers. How did that play out when you’re actually working inside one of the manufacturers? Did you see that sort of dichotomy of manufacturer versus manufacturer? Yeah. Well, I mean, obviously. So the company I was working at got bought by GE halfway through my time there.

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Unknown
So yeah, I feel I mean, we were we were j. But they also continued to make blades for the other manufacturers. So, yeah, I mean, you’re definitely keeping an eye on on what’s happening. And also, it’s really important for planning out where you’re going to have factories located.

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Unknown
So if they’re winning a lot of work in the U.S., which I’m sure was a strategic goal, I mean, it’s also, you know, like it’s part of your national pride, right, that you want to have American and American companies supplying the turbines.

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Unknown
And I know it is important to GE that they, you know, are a strong player in that market. But I think it’s interesting, like which companies are choosing whether to focus on offshore or onshore. And I know that there’s a lot of perceived risk with making a big, bold play for offshore, like when GE wanted to, you

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Unknown
know, they really went all in on the Halyard X and Y, and at that time, Elm, you know, announced their largest ever played 108 made a blade. And I know people said like, we would never have done that if it wasn’t for that huge company with the, you know, the money behind them because ILM before they were

00:05:48:12 – 00:06:10:14
Unknown
bought by GE could have been ruined by by that. The investment that’s required, you know, needed all new factories and it’s a big technology leap. So there is a risk as. As you can do tons of testing and be pretty sure you’re never 100% sure before you do something so different, you’ve got some warranty exposure that a

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Unknown
small company is going to feel scared of. So I think that I think that that’s what’s driving which companies are going for offshore versus onshore. The onshore is just a lot less risky, a lot more business as usual.

00:06:22:06 – 00:06:37:04
Unknown
Yeah. And that seems like a good, I mean, good business for those who want to stay in it, right? Like I know, you know, it’s not perhaps as sexy of a market to be doing onshore wind farms, but if it’s profitable and it’s steady and it’s consistent, that’s good business, right?

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Unknown
It’s great business. If you can get it right. I think it’s just the question of, you know, where it’s it’s it’s a measure of risk. This the whole thing is especially in the United States, and we just had an election in the last 2448 hours.

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Unknown
And so it looks even more turbulent than when then it was again. And I think that’s the risk, right? And it seems Cabeza on one other podcast talked about that risk, saying, We went through this before not long ago and kind of got burned, and we want to be really careful going forward because we can’t devote too

00:07:09:20 – 00:07:25:23
Unknown
much finance and cash inflow to something that doesn’t happen. So being nimble is key here, and I think Siemens Gamesa is partly playing this the correct way, which are taking a 200 million dollar step, not 1,000,000,000 dollar step into that marketplace.

00:07:26:07 – 00:07:37:02
Unknown
They’re going to go go slow and GE will, too. By the way, GE is also doesn’t is not flush with cash at the moment. And if you look at the stock price, you can see why they’re getting better.

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Unknown
But you’re still going to not going to take super big risks right now and onshore is a lot less risky. And maybe Nordics got the right play like, Hey, we’re just going to wait this out and see how it plays.

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Unknown
It’s an interesting tact. And of course, the other wildcard here in the U.S. is the U.S. production tax credit, which was extended at the end of 2020. So it’ll run through through December 31st, 2021, so projects need to get kicked off on construction before that date.

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Unknown
And there’s a lot of uncertainty, whether that will get renewed or not. So I know companies like GE, we’re trying to figure out, you know, is this going to still be around? Because that’s obviously going to affect whether some of these operators want to place, you know, big orders.

00:08:18:03 – 00:08:38:17
Unknown
So I mean, Alan, do you see that being extended again? Or, you know, I know this is a little bit of a Partizan issue here in the U.S.. It is. I do think it will get extended. There is a minor push in some parts of the country not to do it, but I think sorry, your more conservative

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Unknown
states, red states, as we call in the United States, are full of wind, right? The Midwest is follow in Texas as being number one and wind. So I don’t see a lot of pushback on extending the tax credit.

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Unknown
I think that will happen because everybody sort of agrees on that at the moment. All right. So let’s let’s say this is kind of in the same vein, different countries. So over in France, one of the presidential hopefuls, Marine Le Pen, is very anti wins and you would it would end all subsidies for renewable energy and take

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Unknown
down current wind turbines if she was elected next year. That seems pretty intense, rosemary. Why, like, does she have a huge Luddite base over in France? Like why? I know they’re big on nuclear power there, but why such an extreme aversion and downright anger toward wind, it seems?

00:09:30:08 – 00:09:47:02
Unknown
Well, I mean, I’m not. I’m not totally sure. I have spent a fair bit of time in France, you know, on holidays when I was living in Denmark and especially in the French countryside because I ride bikes and there isn’t, you know, many places in the world, but I feel better for that than the French countryside.

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Unknown
And I think that a lot of that is just because they they love their countryside and they like the way that it is without wind turbines. I think that that’s kind of what it is at heart, and it’s similar to the kind of opposition we see in Australia as well.

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Unknown
I’m probably the U.S. who will just would rather look at a natural environment or farmland rather than wind turbines, which, you know, I I can understand. But you know, at the same time, we do need to make electricity somehow, and I don’t know any forms of electricity generation that are really nice to look at compared to, you

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Unknown
know, just pristine nature. I’d be super surprised if anyone’s tearing down a wind turbine. I mean, that’s just like shocking for business, right? Like how could you feel confident investing in any kind of business in a country that, you know, like tore down some companies private asset that that seems highly implausible to me, and I am without

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Unknown
being very familiar with French politics, I’m going to assume that that’s know kind of a thing that you say in the electric election campaign that isn’t necessarily going to happen. Yeah. But I think it’s also underpinned by the fact that they have so much nuclear.

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Unknown
They don’t they don’t have as big a need to install. All wind and solar as other countries, if they want to move to towards a fully clean electricity grid, you know, in the same way that Germany has committed to no nuclear and decarbonizing at once, but they could not say the same thing about wind because they would

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Unknown
just be left with no, no electricity. Well, and so here’s a quote from wind and solar. These energies are not renewable. They are intermittent. So, I mean, it seems like she doesn’t seem to understand the nature of what renewable means.

00:11:32:04 – 00:11:51:18
Unknown
Yeah, it’s she’s working with a different definition of that word than than I do. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it seems like again, like that whole, I’ve got strong opinions that are relatively poorly informed. Here they are trying to appease someone and maybe I don’t know.

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Unknown
And she has a big alliance with, like I said, nuclear power works pretty well well for them. But I don’t know. It just seems so out there that I can’t imagine who she is, you know, on her own, her soapbox to Alan.

00:12:07:14 – 00:12:17:06
Unknown
I mean, what’s your what’s your take on this? Who is she speaking to? Why does she need to use such strong language about this, about dismantling current projects? I mean, who is that getting the big cheers from the back from?

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Unknown
Well, there is a certain percentage of the population, and it’s not minor in France that doesn’t really care for the government and what it’s done over the last ten, 20 years. And you’re seeing some of that pushback in the vaccine mandates that are going on.

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Unknown
You’re seeing some of that pushback and and some of the policies that have been placed on the on the on that like was the taxes at one point where it’s just the taxation and the fees and the costs are rising and there’s a huge pushback.

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Unknown
And so the I would say there’s a certain part of the community and you can point to renewables. Where do we really need this thing? Because we’re mostly a nuclear country and they are. And so I think it just comes down to, are we placating the European Union or are we actually trying to take care of the

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Unknown
citizens in the country that doesn’t play well in a lot of different countries in Europe at the moment? So I don’t see France being much different. I think what’s happening is there with the with COVID and the stress is being placed on the economy in France.

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Unknown
They don’t need extra expenditures, they don’t need to be subsidizing certain things. And I started to think that, you know, they’re using renewables as something to, you know, to cajole. That’s what it looks like. And then let’s transition to the U.S. So big news from New York, the state, not the country, although there’s enough people in New

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Unknown
York to essentially be its own country at times, but they’ve essentially they’re spelling the end for some gas power plants in New York. Allen, won’t you take us through this, this announcement and this decision? I know you’ve got some.

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Unknown
You did a pretty deep dove on this one. Yeah. And I went to the New York state website. It talks about power generation, and New York is as sort of an odd state in the United States. It’s one it’s way up north where it’s cold, right?

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Unknown
It borders on Canada. Its population base is mostly centered towards New York City. And what New York City decides is what the rest of the state has to live with. And so if you live in kind of where we are in up towards Albany, New York, you don’t get to decide a lot of things if you when

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Unknown
it comes down to it. So it’s kind of like the Buffalo New York City contingent drives the remainder of the state. And what’s happened is they decided to eliminate all petroleum based energy production electricity production by 2040. Like, Okay, that’s a great goal, right?

00:14:52:00 – 00:15:04:13
Unknown
But they don’t have any way to really get there. And in the meantime, what they’re doing is they’re limited to shutting down natural gas generation, which is providing the vast majority of their energy production today, more than half.

00:15:05:16 – 00:15:20:05
Unknown
And so you got sort of two different things happening simultaneously or like two interests that are really pushing this. one, the politicians are saying that, hey, we can go renewable. Hey, hey, New York City residents, we’re going renewable.

00:15:20:13 – 00:15:36:08
Unknown
Awesome. And then you got the environmental groups that are supporting that. In the meanwhile, if you start looking at the math of this, I don’t know how they’re going to do it. I really don’t. They’re shutting down a nuclear power plant called Indian Point, which is just outside New York City on the Hudson River.

00:15:36:19 – 00:15:48:10
Unknown
And these two gas plants. We’re talking about essentially feeding New York City that ones in Newburgh, which is not very far out New York City. And one is kind of on Long Island, where are they going to get power?

00:15:48:20 – 00:16:02:11
Unknown
And if I’m a citizen of New York, of the New York state, forget about the city for a minute that their power electricity rates are like 40% above or 50% above the U.S. average. So they’re paying a premium already for electricity.

00:16:03:18 – 00:16:27:05
Unknown
If you’re starting to take electricity generation off the grid, that’s reliable and it’s continuous right, then you’re left with less reliable, probably more expensive power generation. I don’t see if you live in New York state, how that’s a good mix, I think, and I think it’s being sold very positively in the press.

00:16:27:14 – 00:16:42:08
Unknown
But at some point the engineering catches up with the press and rosemary. You know, at some point, don’t you think that the lack of electricity and a brownout situation is not going to be great for New York state compared to his neighbors?

00:16:42:16 – 00:17:01:15
Unknown
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I think that I’ve always got to have the next thing coming online before you will come online, before you get rid of the thing before. And I do think it’s interesting the way different countries are thinking about gas because it does get very political because it is a fossil fuel.

00:17:02:16 – 00:17:18:21
Unknown
And I definitely think that we need to be using less of it and, you know, aggressively move towards using less gas. But I probably personally wouldn’t favor a moratorium on any new gas or even I think some of these projects a lifetime extension ones, right?

00:17:18:22 – 00:17:35:11
Unknown
So I just think that you focus on the amount of emissions in your grid and then, you know, let the how you do that follow, because if you do get rid of all of your gas, then you might end up using more polluting sources.

00:17:35:11 – 00:17:52:07
Unknown
More gas has the real advantage of being quite quite flexible, so it can really complement renewables. And then as you get the renewable system, the, you know, renewable electricity generation and wind and solar, as you get more storage, you’re going to need to use less and less and less gas.

00:17:52:07 – 00:18:11:09
Unknown
So emissions intensity of your grid will will decrease. But the gas turbines are still there. You’re just using them less. So I think that people do need to be careful about kind of like blanket bans on things that might prevent the most efficient system and the most environmentally friendly system.

00:18:12:15 – 00:18:29:03
Unknown
Electricity grids are very complicated, and now the general public is is interested in them in a way that they haven’t been before. And I think we need to. I now know we need to be careful to not oversimplify to the point where you end up with the worst of both worlds.

00:18:29:15 – 00:18:44:21
Unknown
Well, here’s here’s the thing about New York state, which doesn’t make rational sense at the moment. If you’re taking off nuclear, a huge power, clean power generation device and you’re going to put in solar and wind and which they don’t really have a lot of New York state.

00:18:45:04 – 00:18:57:06
Unknown
I don’t know what’s left you. You’re going to get rid of gas. What’s what’s left? They have hydro because they have, you know, out west, they have the big, big dams, right? But there’s there’s nothing to fill in the gap.

00:18:57:21 – 00:19:10:04
Unknown
And I just have a hard time believing that politicians are going to last that long when the brownouts occur. And they’re like, we saw in Germany. I think the brownouts are sort of inevitable in this case. Where are you going to do?

00:19:10:09 – 00:19:24:08
Unknown
I think people, people are already moving out of New York state. More people and businesses will move out of New York state because of the lack of consistency in power. And plus, it’s really expensive to live there and to use electricity there.

00:19:24:17 – 00:19:42:12
Unknown
And so the combination doesn’t make any sense, and I don’t understand why the state leadership. Doesn’t realize that yet, they’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop. That’s what it looks like, like we’re winning right now. We can’t look six months ahead or five years ahead.

00:19:43:19 – 00:20:02:11
Unknown
That’s where they’re at. This is just odd, very odd, could be wrong, but it just seems odd. If we want to be really forward thinking, then we need to start domesticating dinosaurs, bring them back. So then we can start this fossil fuel cycle over again and then we’ll have oil, a new petroleum ready when we need it

00:20:02:11 – 00:20:17:05
Unknown
in what, 100 years now under million, while you guys got to start sometime a journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step. So this is the kind of forward thinking that we that we need in our governments.

00:20:19:00 – 00:20:36:12
Unknown
It is. It is. It is. Yeah, yeah. So moving on is a positive news. Scotland is going to lend their expertize in wind and renewable energy in general to help Vietnam, who is looking to to make an impact on their climate goals.

00:20:37:13 – 00:20:53:21
Unknown
Rosemary This seems like an obvious step that you know, countries, especially Scotland, who have a wealth of experience, are starting to, you know, lend some some consulting and help other countries stand up their own renewable energy programs. I mean, is this something we’re probably going to see more more of in the future?

00:20:54:18 – 00:21:12:17
Unknown
I hope so, and I’ve been surprised that we haven’t seen more of it in the past because I mean as much from an equity point of view as anything else. I mean, the the rich world has has made all the emissions of historical emissions that have got us to the point where we need to decarbonize quickly, right

00:21:12:17 – 00:21:28:22
Unknown
? So I think that there is an ethical argument to be made that we have the responsibility to do how we need for developing countries to decarbonize much faster or sooner in their economic cycle than what the rich countries did.

00:21:28:22 – 00:21:44:00
Unknown
And I think that, yeah, one, it’s the right thing to do to help them and to it helps us as well. Because, you know, like the carbon emissions for the whole planet is what’s important. It doesn’t really matter what country it came from or if any specific country got to zero.

00:21:44:06 – 00:22:02:13
Unknown
And I think, you know, as countries get, you know, closer and closer to zero emissions, it gets harder and harder and more expensive, right? So in developing countries, we’re seeing a lot more low hanging fruit. You can get dramatic CO2 emissions reductions with less less outlays.

00:22:03:01 – 00:22:16:04
Unknown
So I think that makes sense from that point of view. And I think it also makes sense from a commercial point of view. If you are a country that has, you know, all these technologies that developing countries are going to need to develop, then you know, that’s a that’s a big emerging market for you.

00:22:16:04 – 00:22:29:05
Unknown
So I do see that it makes sense all around, and I’ve been surprised to not see more countries recognize this and aggressively pursue it. So I hope that we see more in the future. And we’ve talked about this in the past.

00:22:29:12 – 00:22:50:04
Unknown
You know, just things like using charcoal for cooking are huge, you know, CO2 polluters, right? And so helping some of these, like third World countries, especially get, you know, better methods of cooking, better methods of just using energy in general seems like a big win, like you said for the planet, because that’s a that’s a good point

00:22:50:14 – 00:23:01:05
Unknown
, that it doesn’t matter if America is zero emissions, it’s the whole planet. Like you don’t get you don’t get to wear a gold star while the rest of the planet still still suffers like you got to lend a hand.

00:23:01:05 – 00:23:14:21
Unknown
I mean, Alan Watts, what’s your take on the situation? I mean, this seems obvious, but how but how much can a country do for another country? I mean, especially someone like Scotland that’s still doing so much actively in their own home country?

00:23:14:21 – 00:23:33:02
Unknown
I mean, are they going to lend their B squad over to to Vietnam or like, how do you see something like this actually working like the nuts and bolts? Oh no. I think the UK in general is trying to be a center for wind energy excellence and and and I’m sure part of the strategic plan in terms

00:23:33:02 – 00:23:49:16
Unknown
of raising their economy up, particularly in Scotland, is to to have exports and exports of any kind are really good. And if you’re exporting out engineering talent and technical ability to another country, those those are premium products that pay a lot of money.

00:23:50:10 – 00:24:10:17
Unknown
So, you know, you got all of a sudden create this sort of vibrant wind energy economy that’s not just within your country, it’s outside of your country. That’s a very smart thing to do and try it on Vietnam as a sort of like a primer for doing more of them, I’m sure there’s probably a good place to

00:24:10:17 – 00:24:23:00
Unknown
start. You know, figure it out, get a country figured out, figure out how you can approach them, then do that. Do the relationship between the two governments and figure out how you going to connect all this stuff together and then keep going right?

00:24:23:00 – 00:24:43:04
Unknown
And I would say that Scotland is going to be heavily involved with that. Vietnam is in a really unique place right now because you actually see a lot of interest in wind energy. Just on the lightning side, I see a lot of research about Lightning and Vietnam and wind turbines and trying to get things.

00:24:43:06 – 00:24:54:11
Unknown
Figured out from a lightning perspective, I’m sure they’re trying to figure it out from all the other perspectives they got to go do. But there is an interest in it and probably because it can be an economic leader if they have power, right?

00:24:54:12 – 00:25:08:09
Unknown
Power is the key to all all economies at the moment. And like the case, I give you the case of India, which I think it was this week where they, the head of India, was talking at the COPD conference about not being net zero until 2070.

00:25:09:12 – 00:25:29:01
Unknown
That’s a long time. Let’s 50 years. Everybody else is trying to do it 2040, 2050 kind of thing in India saying, No, we’re not going to do that. That’s a problem, right? And if countries like Scotland can move India faster, that’s a benefit to everybody.

00:25:29:01 – 00:25:42:21
Unknown
Like you’re saying down there, it’s not just what America does or Australia does or Canada does. It’s what the world does trying to be a one of those big polluters, India being another. The faster they get to a electricity based economy that’s not using coal.

00:25:43:18 – 00:26:00:01
Unknown
The faster we can really reduce emissions across the world and how much does governmental support, I mean, come into this because obviously, like the UK government has just pledged another £230 million for offshore wind, which everyone’s excited about. They like, you know, they’re sort of a world leader.

00:26:00:01 – 00:26:13:15
Unknown
They want to keep that lead and keep that investment locally. I mean, is it going to take a lot of investment from other countries into a country like Vietnam or Vietnam going to be able to fund a lot of this themselves?

00:26:13:16 – 00:26:27:07
Unknown
How is it going to work? How do you see that, Alan? I think it should be funded like a lot of entry level countries or funded through to be funded by banks and global banks and global interests that fund these investments.

00:26:28:03 – 00:26:40:22
Unknown
Because sometimes it can’t be done internally into the country. You’ve seen that in Central and South America for a long time that there’s just been massive amounts of investor money, money, billions of dollars going into them to help start this process.

00:26:40:22 – 00:26:56:15
Unknown
Because if they can get the economy started, it’s kind of like it’s like venture capital. What it is, if they can get the country started in the economy picks up, they can reap a huge amount, you know, ten x 100 x multiple on your investment if it works right?

00:26:56:15 – 00:27:07:14
Unknown
So it’s just like a venture capital, but they’re playing with, you know, not tens of millions or hundreds of millions are talking about billions and billions and billions. So, you know, do you want to take that risk on Vietnam or not?

00:27:07:14 – 00:27:24:17
Unknown
Evidently, Scotland thinks they can, but you know that Scotland is going to drag a lot. Once they make this connection work, you’re going to see other investments start coming in, and Vietnam knows that too, right? This is this is part political, part economics, and you’ve got to merge the two together to be successful at it.

00:27:24:22 – 00:27:46:22
Unknown
So let’s let’s talk about Turkey for a minute. So they have surpassed. Obviously, when you break your own records, you’re surpassing your previous highs. But Turkey? Their goal is to reach 25,000 megawatts by 2030. And they’re, you know, they currently have 3615 turbines operating around the country.

00:27:47:05 – 00:28:04:00
Unknown
So Turkey’s well on its way. But rosemary, I mean, what? What challenges? What challenges do you think that they’re going to face? You know, are there any unique like topographical things or political things that are going to affect their ability to reach those goals long term?

00:28:04:06 – 00:28:25:21
Unknown
Yeah, I don’t know so much about the political or even the topography in Turkey, but I do know that they’ve they’ve got a good wind resource. I assume they’ve got a good solar resource as well. And so I would not single out Turkey for having any particularly different challenges than other countries face when they’re moving towards, you

00:28:25:21 – 00:28:49:03
Unknown
know, a high, high proportion of variable renewables in that grid. So I hope that in combination with the aggressive plan to expand their wind energy, they also got some plans for storage and interconnectors to other geographic areas to, you know, help help balance everything because I think we do see that around 20% is kind of the the

00:28:49:03 – 00:29:09:01
Unknown
sweet spot for being able to get variable renewables without doing much else and then to go far beyond that, to be consistently getting, you know, 30, 40%, you know, like on average over a year, not just on one particular day, but to be consistently getting those levels, then you need to start doing other stuff as well.

00:29:09:01 – 00:29:27:21
Unknown
So I would say the wind plan sounds, sounds excellent, and I don’t think that that will have any particular problems rolling, rolling out that amount of of new wind projects. But it will be all the other things they need to do to make sure that the increased wind doesn’t come with decreased grid reliability.

00:29:27:22 – 00:29:44:00
Unknown
So yeah, that’s that’s why I said, Alan. They’re struggling with inflation over there in Turkey, right? And their inflation rate for the year is at 19.89%, which is crazy. Um, do you see that having any effect on this industry?

00:29:44:00 – 00:30:01:05
Unknown
I mean, is it going to be hard for them to invest or other countries to invest or? Yeah, I mean, what what role that inflation play on their their economic development in general, it limits the amount of outside investment you’re going to get into the country because in order to get gains out of the country, you have

00:30:01:05 – 00:30:15:04
Unknown
to get multiples better than the inflation rate. It’s hard to get gains more than 20% on a particular year. So yeah, for sure. So no matter how well a Turkish company will do, your investment is actually less at the end of the year.

00:30:16:02 – 00:30:34:19
Unknown
And so that was. Yes. All right, so it’s crazy, it’s crazy. And so when it forces companies in Turkey to do is be super aggressive, to get outside funds to come in. So instead of gaining 20, 30% in a particular year, you got to get 5060.

00:30:35:03 – 00:30:46:15
Unknown
And those are just really hard things to do and it really hurts them in the global marketplace. And this is what’s happened in many other countries around the world, and it happened in the United States, too. We’re not immune to this.

00:30:47:08 – 00:31:03:13
Unknown
Rapid inflation is a huge limitation on economic growth, not only for its citizens, because you can’t keep up. So to buy food. But outside investments will start to shrink up because everything feels unstable. And in this global economy, I’m not sure that’s a great thing for Turkey.

00:31:03:13 – 00:31:24:17
Unknown
So things have got to settle down before. I think Turkey can rise up again. And hey, let’s face it, Turkey has been over the millennia, a very strong country. It just has and all kinds of areas. And I think in wind, it’s going to be also because you can see I watch LinkedIn and I see a lot

00:31:24:17 – 00:31:40:10
Unknown
of people in Turkey doing repairs of wind turbines and lightning is an issue there. So I see it all the time. So Turkey will grow. But you got to put some parameters on what’s happening with the economy, and they just haven’t quite done it.

00:31:40:11 – 00:31:54:07
Unknown
Political instability is part of that. But you know, you just just don’t feel great for Turkey right now because you feel bad for the citizens that this is going on. Because historically, like I said, Turkey has been a great nation for a long time.

00:31:54:11 – 00:32:05:02
Unknown
And and what what can a country do to cap inflation, to slow it? I mean, what is the remedy is, is there one? There’s a lot of when you get to that kind of inflation, there are a lot of things that are wrong.

00:32:06:00 – 00:32:23:10
Unknown
So it’s not fixing one thing and it goes away. You know, in the United States, back in the seventies had inflation, we dealt about it in a different way than probably a lot of other countries did. You know, we started, yeah, we started to.

00:32:23:10 – 00:32:37:13
Unknown
This is sort of during the Reagan administration should talk about 1980 is where a lot of us just honestly at the time, I’ve lived it. That was around at the time. I think part of it was just pulling people out of this condition of everything’s terrible.

00:32:39:06 – 00:32:49:15
Unknown
That was part of the message from the government. And it weirdly enough, it seemed to work just changing the attitude of the average citizen like things are going to be better. We just got to get to work. It’ll be better.

00:32:49:15 – 00:33:04:17
Unknown
We just got to put in the time that changing the dynamic on the psychology of the citizens will do that. But if you’re constantly a war, if you’re constantly having chaos in the top of the political spectrum, it doesn’t.

00:33:04:17 – 00:33:22:08
Unknown
It doesn’t build confidence. And so that’s when sort of the black market stuff happens. People start dealing in dollars, right? And, you know, it’s just no quick solution to that kind of inflation, unfortunately. I just got an image of black market turbines like they’re they’re installed.

00:33:22:11 – 00:33:35:06
Unknown
It’s actually like papier maché, like you just push it over a guy. Oh, no, we got it. We got taken like, you know, you rub off GE. You’ve just painted in like watercolor on the side. Oh dang it, we were at.

00:33:36:15 – 00:33:56:18
Unknown
Well, speaking of construction, so in New Brunswick, Canada, there’s a trans alta wind farm and this is there’s three of them. It’s called Ken Hills one, Ken Hills two, and there’s a small five turbines that Ken Hills three but one wind turbine at the kennels, one farm a collapse, and they found a number of cracks in the

00:33:56:18 – 00:34:18:11
Unknown
foundation. And they found more cracks in Ken Hills, one in Ken Hills two. And so right now, they’re stopped and they’re losing $3.7 million per month when these 50 turbines are offline. And it looks like these foundation issues are going to be multi-million dollar fixes for each one 1.5 to $2 million per foundation.

00:34:19:16 – 00:34:36:23
Unknown
That seems like a ton of money because these concrete foundations are not enormous, right? They’re little concrete pad, but rosemary. Take us through a little bit of how difficult it would be to repair a foundation because I assume they have to completely deconstruct the turbine right and lay a new foundation and then just essentially reinstall it.

00:34:36:23 – 00:34:48:16
Unknown
Is that how they would do this? I don’t. I don’t know. So that wouldn’t be my first assumption. My first assumption is that they’re going to try to do it without that. But I don’t know what specifically wrong with the the foundation.

00:34:48:16 – 00:35:06:03
Unknown
So I guess it’s pretty, pretty hard to say some, some things, some potential problems you could never fix with a turbine there and some you could. I know I did work on a project in. I worked on a lot of projects and really cold areas, and in fact, I’ve climbed in that area in New Brunswick.

00:35:06:03 – 00:35:22:10
Unknown
I have climbed turbines and the picture in the article I looked at shows the beautiful autumn leaves and that’s the time of year I was there. It’s starting if you. The whole area, so it’s you know, it’s sad to see a turbine lying on the ground there, but yeah, back to the foundations.

00:35:22:16 – 00:35:38:01
Unknown
one of the projects I was on, they yeah, because the temperatures get really low, obviously in winter in these these locations. And if you pour the foundation at a time when temperatures are low, then you can have big problems.

00:35:38:02 – 00:36:00:16
Unknown
And I did work on one project where they had to redo some foundations and it caused a massive, inconvenient delay. They did it before they realized the problem before the towers went up. But so it was much easier then, and I didn’t have to think about whether they would be, you know, taking the tower down again.

00:36:01:01 – 00:36:11:16
Unknown
But I know in that case they were able to fix it without. They didn’t have to, like, pull it all up and start again. They were able to fix it in some way. And I definitely don’t know the technical details of it.

00:36:13:00 – 00:36:31:20
Unknown
But yeah, I mean, a foundation is expensive and it’s a tricky is tricky when you’re working in these environments, where the temperatures change so much from season to season, you know, you get these weather windows, so you might design something to be installed in summer temperatures.

00:36:31:20 – 00:36:44:03
Unknown
And then if you have a delay, that means you’re doing it a few months later, combined with a freak weather occurrence. And I think these turbines are pretty old. So perhaps they weren’t so knowledgeable about that sort of thing back then.

00:36:44:14 – 00:36:55:07
Unknown
I think that you can you can see problems happen that aren’t immediately obvious. And yeah, I mean, that’s obviously what’s happened here because, you know, it took a turbine falling over before they they knew what they had to do.

00:36:55:12 – 00:37:09:08
Unknown
Yeah. And of course, it’s November. So if there’s a problem that’s fixed now, it’s I don’t know what the temperature cutoff should be. You know, that’s a repair foundations or what their remedies would be. But it’s probably going to mean these are going to be shut off for quite a long time.

00:37:09:08 – 00:37:27:04
Unknown
I mean, six months. I mean, Canada’s not a warm place. Alan, what do you see happening here? I think they’re going to have to do some sort of repair and they’re going to wait till it warms up. We’re working in the snow up there would be really miserable and really, could you even set concrete at that?

00:37:27:11 – 00:37:47:11
Unknown
Those temperatures you can, but it’s not easy. I watched weirdly enough, I think it was on Facebook this past week in one of the wind turbine technicians group there. They were showing a wind turbine that had a cracked foundation, and there were just basically blasting out the bad parts with like high pressure water, like a big water

00:37:47:11 – 00:38:03:01
Unknown
jet to remove the broken pieces of concrete. I thought, Oh, that doesn’t look so good to me, just because what’s supporting the turbine right now works. You pretty cut these big pieces of concrete. Then they put new concrete in like you’re fixing a foundation of a house.

00:38:03:13 – 00:38:18:03
Unknown
Now that doesn’t feel right to be that doesn’t like this. How people bond to itself. Like, it’s not like a weld or you’re melting. You know, the substrate aluminum. It’s steel, right? They become one like, I don’t think concrete works that way.

00:38:18:06 – 00:38:34:01
Unknown
No, but there’s full of rebar, right? So it’s got reinforcement steel bar in it. So that’s what ties it together structurally. So doesn’t crumble. But still, I think once you remove the concrete from under the bases, one of the bolts are and then try to repack that with concrete.

00:38:34:07 – 00:38:49:06
Unknown
Something has shifted. I would say something shifted and I’m not sure how you go around. You have to rotate and all the bolts, I would hope, because I’ve seen pictures lately of of turbines where all the bolts are loose on on the basis, like, wait a minute.

00:38:49:06 – 00:39:06:11
Unknown
All right, come on, everybody. I mean, we got to kick the tires and all these turbines at least want you to hear, like, check the bolts because they’re right there on the ground. You don’t have to climb, but right there, those kind of things are weird that we’re having issues of concrete and towers, foundations cracking.

00:39:06:20 – 00:39:21:12
Unknown
That just seems sort of like we should be over that right at this point. But maybe not. It’s odd. Yeah, really odd. Rosemary. Rosemary How many rolls of duct tape per turbine will it take to solve this problem once and for all?

00:39:22:04 – 00:39:37:01
Unknown
I’m not going to pretend that I’ve never used duct tape to solve an engineering problem, and that may have been some products I worked on were duct tape, nut duct tape like you can buy at the hardware store about, you know, like a gorilla tape equivalent.

00:39:37:05 – 00:39:53:18
Unknown
It’s very solid that has actually featured in the in the design of several things that I’ve worked on. So I mean, it’s like an engineering joke, but it’s not really a joke because duct tape is a type of all kinds is really a very, very useful product.

00:39:55:04 – 00:40:12:01
Unknown
Yeah, but I mean, I don’t think it’s so, such a stretch that you could leave that the tower up because if you feather the blade so that there’s no big lights like the the load on the thrust load on a turbine that’s operating is immensely larger than one that’s just sitting there with the blades feathered out of

00:40:12:01 – 00:40:24:05
Unknown
the wind. So you are going to have I don’t can’t come up with a number of top of my head, but you’re going to reduce the vast majority of load. So you really are you really are taking it to a different point.

00:40:24:05 – 00:40:42:04
Unknown
And obviously, the foundation is designed for the, you know, the strongest thrust load, plus a bit more. So I think that’s not such a big deal and then filling in the cracks as well. I mean, in general, Kong, the the concrete part of the foundation, it’s concrete is good and compression and terrible in tension anyway.

00:40:42:04 – 00:40:57:22
Unknown
So you know the cracks well, the way it’s designed, it’s designed to be strong and compression. So I I don’t see that it’s such a big it’s not so out there the materials aspect of the material science aspect of it.

00:40:58:12 – 00:41:15:01
Unknown
Yeah. I mean, could they retrofit like a brace or something onto it? Like in my mind, I one or two questions like, could they put like guy wires on it? I assume the answer is no. But then could they just sort of like flange out the base extended like weld on some, you know, like a like three

00:41:15:01 – 00:41:30:12
Unknown
gussets almost and make three like secondary concrete pads? Or is that probably just like way more? Is that can it just like make it incredibly cost intensive anyway? Yeah, I think I think if they can get away with filling in the cracks, then they’ll do that.

00:41:31:03 – 00:41:50:12
Unknown
They could potentially make it a little bit bigger by digging around it. They could at guys. They could, you know, add a flange, but they’ll they’ll go with the least cost solution, which is probably not as in, you know, huge change to the design intent than than what you see there today.

00:41:50:12 – 00:42:01:15
Unknown
Because the other thing is, if you dramatically change the designs and I’ve got guys, well, then you’ve got, you know, like any number of other things that can go wrong because now you’ve got like a different natural frequency in your tower.

00:42:01:15 – 00:42:14:05
Unknown
And, you know, like who you just over our huge can of worms. You would never prefer to do it that way because you don’t know what problem you’re going to cause with your solution. Allen, who’s on the hook to pay for.

00:42:14:09 – 00:42:31:17
Unknown
So I guess someone who’s getting sued by who and in this scenario, I think the people who poured the pad or the or even the engineer who figured out what the what it should be made out of and checked it, somebody checked the concrete for it went in right.

00:42:31:19 – 00:42:52:03
Unknown
And that’s something that happens as you check the consistency of concrete and how it’s how it carries out those sort of things. And so there’s either an engineering o or an application or a clearing O or the load in the the loads that they predicted for that turbine are higher than what the foundation was designed for.

00:42:52:03 – 00:43:11:03
Unknown
So somewhere in this mix, somebody’s going to be looking at and I assume that they are because everybody super conscientious around these things is that they’re looking at what the loads are and making sure they did the calculations right and that there’s nothing that they missed, like super high wind speeds, super cold temperatures, polar bears shoving on

00:43:11:03 – 00:43:29:06
Unknown
the turbine. Something and something is off because usually there’s so much margin around these things. You never get to these situations. You usually have factors of two or three in the design of structurally. So it’s really odd that having any sort of turbine based crack, it’s a really unusual, really unusual.

00:43:29:14 – 00:43:47:16
Unknown
And then last up on the docket today is some. Some floating light hours have been deployed offshore in the U.K., and they’re using Fugro Sea Watch when light or buoys for the campaign, they’re going to be out there for two years collecting data.

00:43:48:03 – 00:44:03:17
Unknown
And this for the Morgan and Mona project sites, which used to be called the yellow north and yellow south, is off the Irish Sea coast of northwest England and Wales. Alan, it looks like this is sort of how they go about and this is an interesting topic in general.

00:44:03:17 – 00:44:18:13
Unknown
Like how do people decide where to put an offshore wind farm, right? Like, who decides this swatch of ocean is better than this swatch? And it seems like this late hour situation is why they do that. So. Alan Watts, what’s going to be the purpose of these light, our boys?

00:44:18:13 – 00:44:35:21
Unknown
And what are they going to tell the engineers and prospectors? Well, they can actually measure wind speed at different altitudes rates so he can get a really good bit of information of like what the wind speeds are closer to the water with the wind speeds are up 200 300 feet up there and what the average wind speed

00:44:35:21 – 00:44:53:23
Unknown
is, what the maximum gusts are. So it provides all those little wind details that you wouldn’t ordinarily have down to a very fine level. And if you’re trying to maximize the amount of EP come out of winter and farm, you would want to know that because then you could cite the turbines properly like Rosemary was talking about

00:44:53:23 – 00:45:15:04
Unknown
in earlier in our last live stream, which is how do you decide all these wind turbines? Because the winds change direction and they change speeds with direction a little bit. So now and our supercomputer world, you can actually take that information and design the ultimate wind turbine array and rosemary you want to talk about that your life’s

00:45:15:04 – 00:45:33:18
Unknown
dream is really fascinating this past week. Yeah, I feel like I’ve talked a lot about that. I kind of chose a live topic to talk about basically how the aerodynamics of a wind farm is affected by either one wind turbine is there, and then the turbine behind it says a little bit less wind because of the one

00:45:33:18 – 00:45:52:11
Unknown
in front. And then as I I looked into it, it just became a bigger and bigger and more and more interesting topic. But I mean, the reason I chose that as a lighter topic is because I think that people don’t understand how much effort is spent on putting wind turbines in the right place.

00:45:52:11 – 00:46:09:00
Unknown
I mean, we do. What have we save the figure for that wind farm in New Brunswick? That’s got to shut down how many they were losing millions per 3.7 million a month? Yeah, I mean, and then so those are very small turbines compared to what we see far offshore.

00:46:09:00 – 00:46:33:13
Unknown
So you can imagine I think I saw one study that was optimizing the layout of turbines within a wind farm. They made a point four or something percent improvement on annual energy production. And yeah, that’s that’s millions. That’s millions every year that they’re that they’re making from what sounds like quite a small improvement.

00:46:34:00 – 00:46:52:03
Unknown
So in some ways is offshore measurements are really similar to what they’ve been doing onshore. It’s just harder and more important. And yeah, it’s harder because it’s harder to install a mast in the ocean. And they’ve also got to worry about waves and things like that that you don’t have to worry about onshore.

00:46:52:03 – 00:47:06:13
Unknown
And then it’s more important because it’s just like a much larger investment there. You know, the cost of an offshore wind farm is much more than an onshore one. Well, back in the day, you just slip aside in like a couple of big tuna, you know, bring them and you’d be good to go with.

00:47:06:13 – 00:47:23:22
Unknown
This seems a lot more high tech than that. It seems like we’re moving in the right, the right direction technologically with light art. But my my last question. Either viewers, why one year, why two years, I mean, does it really require that that long was also very rosy round numbers right now to take your name in vain

00:47:23:23 – 00:47:38:10
Unknown
, but do we need one year? Do we need two years? I mean, how sure? How do they how do they come to this quantity of data that they know they need to really be sure with their measurements? Well, it’s it’s how much they can afford to take.

00:47:38:11 – 00:47:51:03
Unknown
You want, you want more, the more the better. And a couple of years, I mean, we all know that every summer is not like the summer before all the next one. You know, wind speeds vary a lot from year to year.

00:47:51:12 – 00:48:10:22
Unknown
So if you only take measurements for one season, you could be totally wrong on your estimates for how much the wind farm is going to make. And you know, it really matters in terms of the financing. If you if you’ve got a business case or you don’t, and I know they do use like a lot of statistical

00:48:10:22 – 00:48:30:23
Unknown
methods because there’s long term wind data from, you know, satellites and stuff, but it’s just on not at the right level that you need. So they will do some statistical adjustments to their one or two year period. But it’s just so critically important to their the profitability of their wind farm that the more data they can get

00:48:30:23 – 00:48:48:13
Unknown
, the better without delaying the projects so long that they, you know, are losing money while they wait. And isn’t that sort of the basis of floating wind? This is a weird thing to think about, but essentially, if you’re constantly measuring the wind and you’re not, you are truly floating rate that you’ve got some anchors in the ground

00:48:48:13 – 00:49:07:20
Unknown
, you could, in theory, ignoring the cable issue and the power coming out somewhere. You could move turbines or reorient them to increase power production based upon what you’re seeing as generic trends in wind, what you can’t do right now on like mountaintops like we do in my state, right?

00:49:08:17 – 00:49:21:04
Unknown
So the floating wind aspect, this is really fascinating because you got to wonder if I can get the same. I got 2% more power if you had to move a turbine or turbines. I think they would do it.

00:49:21:05 – 00:49:34:06
Unknown
I think there’s a very good, strong likelihood if you’ve got a twelve or 15 watt machine out there that you’re going to move them. But you just don’t like we’re learning right now. The winds are down in Europe this past year.

00:49:34:16 – 00:49:45:18
Unknown
Where are you going to do? We’re going to try to maximize that, how we’re going to maximize if you’re going to try to do computer simulations and see how you could maximize it. And the beauty of floating is you can play around with that a little bit.

00:49:45:18 – 00:50:05:14
Unknown
You could adjust it so you can actually adjust even installed onshore wind farms or fixed fixed bottom offshore. one of the actually the paper I mentioned where I said I got a point 4% increase in app that that wasn’t from moving turbine locations around, it was from just changing the angle of the rotors.

00:50:05:14 – 00:50:24:15
Unknown
So it’s called wake steering. And yes, instead of taking each turbine as an individual and and maximizing its power, what they do is the front row turbines. They purposely rotate them. You them a little bit so that their wake then goes out of the way of the one behind it.

00:50:24:15 – 00:50:37:23
Unknown
And then that way you can get more power out of your wind farm. I think it’s still pretty early and more of a research kind of question for now because it’s a bit complicated to implement, but I bet that we see that more in the future.

00:50:37:23 – 00:50:54:17
Unknown
As you know, computers get more powerful. And yeah, why wouldn’t you take an extra point 4% pay if you can get it from just changing your, you know, your controls? Sure. Well, there’s a company in Massachusetts that just announced a product that’s supposed to do that.

00:50:54:23 – 00:51:08:11
Unknown
It’s a software data acquisition system called when the company’s called when dusko and the product, I think it’s called Swarm, which is doing just that. Like, let’s look at the whole array we have and try to make some adjustments and see where we can maximize power.

00:51:08:12 – 00:51:21:21
Unknown
Again, it’s looking at the turbulence between turbines. So I think we’ve reached the capability of doing it now. Now we’re going to see investment in companies, software hardware companies to implement it, which is sort of the more difficult step.

00:51:22:13 – 00:51:39:14
Unknown
But you’re seeing we’re just going for these one to 2% marginal improvements every year or two, and it just makes the whole industry super efficient. It’s crazy. Good. All right. Well, that’s going to do it for this week’s episode of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.

00:51:39:14 – 00:51:53:16
Unknown
Thanks so much for listening. Be sure to subscribe, share the show and leave us a review. We really appreciate it. Obviously, you know how important reviews are when you’re making a trivial Amazon purchase, so he was a review on iTunes or give us a comment on YouTube or wherever you watch or listen.

00:51:53:17 – 00:52:19:08
Unknown
Be sure to subscribe uptime tech news. What you’ll find in the show notes as well as Rosemary, is YouTube channel on everything renewable energy. We’ll see you here next week on uptime. Operating a profitable wind farm is all about mitigating costs, minimizing risks and being efficient with maintenance repairs and upgrades.

00:52:19:21 – 00:52:32:14
Unknown
It’s incredibly expensive to send a team of rope access technicians up tower to make even simple repairs. We also know how costly lightning damage can be, requiring inspection, repairs and downtime for even minor lightning strikes.