Rosemary Barnes and Allen Hall are joined by Wind Power Lab’s Joel Saxum to discuss the latest news from American Wind Power 2022!

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EP113

Allen Hall: We’re at American clean power in San Antonio, which is gonna have about eight to 10,000 people from the looks of it. So it’s gonna BES gonna be a really, really big show.

Allen Hall: Welcome back to the uptime podcast. I am a co-host Allen hall here. Rosemary Barnes all the way from Australia. And we also have Joel Saxon from wind power lab. Yeah. Exciting. 

Rosemary Barnes: I came all this way, so that’d be good. 

Joel Saxum: in the 95 degree heat. Yeah. 

Rosemary Barnes: Was with the heat. I was not expecting this. 

Allen Hall: It’s really hot in San Antonio this week.

Allen Hall: I, I don’t know how we manage it. Cause it’s, it’s the middle of. And it should be in the eighties and it’s a hundred plus degrees right now. 

Rosemary Barnes: It’s high thirties for everybody out there who uses sensible temperature. 

Joel Saxum: west Texas set records. The last two weeks, the other weekend, it was the first or the earliest in the year they ever had triple digit temperatures the three days in a row.

Allen Hall: Wow. So it’s 

Rosemary Barnes: too hot. Yeah. And it’s interesting cuz I saw when I was just last week, I, it was the first time I looked at the forecast to see what clothes that I should have with me. I saw that they’re already, they’re giving over the weekend. They were giving requests for people to please, you know, turn your thermostat up and, you know, not use the air con if you didn’t need to, because they’re worried about the grid already 

Joel Saxum: in may.

Joel Saxum: I think I read yesterday, Hercu had six plants 

Rosemary Barnes: go offline gas plants. Yep. You have to specify because yeah. Gas plants, no matter what it’s that happens, you know, it’s renewables that are gonna get 

Joel Saxum: the blind. Yes, this is true. This is true. Yes. Six gas plants had just kind of cascaded. 

Allen Hall: Last 

Rosemary Barnes: week. Yeah.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I think a call line is still waiting to come back line after some, some maintenance as well. So yeah. When week in 

Allen Hall: Texas. 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Yeah. So it was a good week to have the, the conference what’s happening.

Allen Hall: so today’s Monday, we’re recording on the Monday before the conference. There we were ex we are exhibiting on the show floor with P.

Allen Hall: We had access to the floor. There are a lot of, of exhibitors at this conference. This is by far, clearly the biggest conference in the United States, not even close. So Vestus GE all the big names are here. Sky specs and all the drone companies are here. It’s just everybody. The Dan Danish consulates here.

Allen Hall: It’s a huge show. And I was surprised. I was thought when we walked in today, it was gonna be a little bit slow, just looking at the number of people on the outside, but it’s 105. So you can’t really tell cause everybody’s in air conditioning, but when you walked in, there was just a massive amounts of people and that was just people registering.

Allen Hall: So I’m expecting yeah. Upwards of 8,000 people here this weekend. I, I think that’s good because we’ve had two years of really not seeing anybody mm-hmm yeah. And, and now we are, we’re finally back to the point. Everybody seems pretty comfortable being around one another. There was hardly a mask on the floor.

Allen Hall: Sorry, rose me. There was hardly a mask on the floor. I dunno what happens in Australia, but this is Texas. So some master really optional here for sure. And I saw hand people hand shaking, which I thought was good though. The COVID is still spreading around the United States. It clearly is, but at least people are starting to get some sense of normal.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I know last week Australia had the highest rate of positive tests in in the world. So things aren’t. Yeah. I mean, my interpretation is it’s because we, we don’t, we haven’t had a lot of it yet. So, you know, it’s all gonna come now, but yeah, Australia is mostly moved away from masks. Although I’m trying to think the last conference I went to in Australia.

Rosemary Barnes: Probably maybe 10% of people were wearing masks. You didn’t have to. Wow. And they didn’t make you take a test before you got in here. There’s a two hour, two hour long wait to get a COVID test before you’re allowed inside. So yeah, I think they’re taking it seriously. 

Allen Hall: Yeah. They’re Def the conferences definitely taken it seriously.

Allen Hall: And we had been to conferences in Texas. We were at the blades conference, Joel and I were at the blades conference and a couple months ago down in Austin. Yeah. Was it March, March, February. Yeah. And there were no test. no requirements at all. I was totally Texas. So you know, American clean power is trying to do their best because there’s, there’s people coming from around the world.

Allen Hall: Yeah, absolutely. That’s one that you could definitely see is there’s people from all over. And that’s a good thing for Texas and it’s a good thing for wind. So that, that that’s really good. And, and there’s some couple of new stories this week that have popped up and, and we want to talk about some of.

Allen Hall: The big one right now is sky specs. So sky specs is huge drone company. In the United States and abroad. I don’t know if they’re down in Australia, Rosemary. 

Rosemary Barnes: I dunno if you know, I haven’t come across ’em down there, but it doesn’t mean they’re not there. I, I dunno everyone. I know in 

Joel Saxum: Europe up they’re onshore, they’re offshore UK, all mainland you’re up everywhere you look they’re, they’ve got some 

Allen Hall: inspections going on.

Allen Hall: Mm-hmm so they’re based in Joel, correct me if I’m wrong. They’re based in Michigan, right? Yep. Ann Arbor, I think. Okay. Ann AOR. That’s right. Yeah. So we’ve had Danny Ellis on the podcast. He’s their CEO. He was one of our first podcast guests, probably two years ago now when they. Fresh probably. Yeah, they’re still fresh.

Allen Hall: Well, they were early startup, right? Right. Their series a still or pre, they may have been a pre a, but now they had an 80 million investment in Goldman Sachs and a, a number of other companies have invested into them. I think they’re on series E so. I don’t know if Roseberry, if you had this stuff down in, 

Rosemary Barnes: oh, we don’t really have venture capital in Australia.

Rosemary Barnes: we just, we just dig things outta the ground and wait for property prices to go up. That’s how, that’s how you make money in Australia. It’s a venture capital. yeah. You don’t need venture capital for that. Yeah, it’s, it’s a real shame. 

Allen Hall: So the, the there’s a huge investment into sky specs. As sky specs has tried to transform itself from being a drone company mm-hmm into more a, a.

Allen Hall: Automated inspection 

Joel Saxum: system and yeah, they’re adding in, I mean, a couple years ago they added into other companies with some AI knowledge and they’ve expanded their horizons platform massively, right. To have more and more analytics capabilities. And I, I think you could probably seize that for some of that from this $80 million influx of cash as well.

Joel Saxum: Oh yeah. What’s what’s next. Right. Horizons is a great platform. Everybody you talk to says it’s 

Allen Hall: they love it. Yeah. Love it. It’s good. It’s a good platform. 

Rosemary Barnes: So what kinds of what are they doing with it? What kinds of doing predictive maintenance, checking for defect? What 

Joel Saxum: sorts of, yeah, it was built on originally you know, much like most of the drone companies that get at great AI to be able to classify defects and whatnot, but then it’s like, okay, that that’s in the market.

Joel Saxum: there’s a lot of companies doing that. Now what’s the next step, but 

Rosemary Barnes: they do it. Well, I, I mean, I’m just asking good. Trying to find devil’s advocate because a lot of the work that I get pulled into with blade defects is because, you know, it’s like, oh, we did all our inspections, you know? And then now all of a sudden, yeah, like a week after a drone inspection, this blade just literally snapped in half what’s.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. What’s going on. So I’m kinda, or our, 

Joel Saxum: our repair campaign is gonna be, it says it’s gonna be 10 million when it doesn’t actually need to be Not a sky specs customer. So I can’t speak to the, the quality of the AI, but I mean their growth says 

Rosemary Barnes: they’re doing something right. Yeah. Mean it’s so needed.

Rosemary Barnes: And especially when we go offshore, I mean, it’s hard to send people up constantly to check on clean grease, smudges and whatnot. Yeah, exactly. So I think obviously you have to have a lot of it for the AI to get, get better, so, yeah. But I’m interested to see. I don’t figure out how they’re measuring, if they’re, you know, getting more accurate, that would be, maybe we should still follow up interview and find out what’s what’s been going on 

Allen Hall: in the last couple years.

Allen Hall: Yeah. Well, I think we’ll probably see Danny on the floor and, and Tom Brady. Who’s our CFO who’s on, should be on the floor. Yeah. So we’ll run across at the show. I, one of the things that America about venture capital, like this is when you see 80 million and I think they have about 110 million invested into in total.

Allen Hall: Usually in those situations, the investors are looking for somewhere between a five and a 10 X, multiple. Mm. So they’re saying that that company is in theory worth about a billion dollars on the street, which is 

Joel Saxum: interesting. Yeah. I mean like you, like you said, starting with we’re a drone company, right.

Joel Saxum: To growing and I mean, you know, the they’ve scaled so much, right. They’re, they’re all over the world doing these inspections, but inspection. As anybody that listens to the podcast that is an asset owner, they know where inspection prices are. Mm-hmm right. You know, you’re not gonna make a billion dollars on 250 and $300 inspections.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. So what are the value ads that they can bring? And I, I see that this influx of cash, like I said, may, may, may spur on some further development and what, what can we do with all this data we’re collecting and, and the possibilities there. So I see it good for the whole. 

Allen Hall: Yeah. It, it could be good.

Allen Hall: It . Yeah. I think the weird part about it is, and, and rightly so, if, if you’re in sky specs shoes and you see the economy starting to go south, the first thing you wanna do is gather as much cash up as you can to, to give yourself runway. Right? And so that gives them at least 24 to 36 months of capital to get through this downturn.

Allen Hall: That’s coming. That makes a lot of sense. It just is unusual because I think some of the wind Turpin companies themselves may not be valued that high there’s a lot of companies that win. Yeah. That don’t have that kind of valuation. Yeah. Absolutely. GE is losing money right now, unfortunately, and we need GE so it’s weird to see yeah.

Allen Hall: A sort of a drone maintenance company valued more 

Joel Saxum: than a OEM. And they’re just an, I mean, not, I’m not gonna say just an inspection company cuz they do other things as well. Right. But. They don’t actually go fix the blades or, or maintain brakes or anything like that, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not yet. Yeah.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. But I mean, there’s a lot of those service companies, I would say the majority of service companies in the industry, aren’t valued at that. 

Allen Hall: Oh, that’s true. You know, and 

Joel Saxum: those are, and that’s what has to keep, keep the assets up and moving? 

Allen Hall: Well, one of the, one of the interesting things I saw this week about the, that announcement was made was that sky specs has inspected.

Allen Hall: I don’t wanna use the word controls, but probably is not the right term, but has inspected 45% of north America’s wind turbines. Yeah. 

Joel Saxum: And that equals what, 35,000 in change. Yeah. Something like that. Right? So you, 

Allen Hall: 35,000 wind turbines at $10, each a hundred dollars each, whatever that multiple. Is that not sure how much it costs to do inspection anymore?

Allen Hall: Probably a couple hundred dollars. 

Joel Saxum: Yeah. Two. Yeah. I mean, you can get, ’em done two 50 to three 50, but depending on Mo. 

Allen Hall: So, yeah, you start doing those multiples and yeah, that’s not small. That’s, that’s a decent amount of money. So the, there is a business there and if they can get into more of the automated inspection mm-hmm, predictive.

Allen Hall: you’re totally right. I think if they get into predictive analysis, then evaluation really does get pushed up there quite a bit, but it it’s it’s yet to be seen. So it’s just one of those really weird stories to see in wind, cuz you just don’t see a lot of venture capital happening. Renewable energy. Like it, it 

Rosemary Barnes: should, yeah.

Rosemary Barnes: When you do say it mm-hmm you say when you do see it badly well, 

Allen Hall: yeah, so we were just talking about another company that’s involved in, in renewable energy, which is one of Rosemary’s favorites is called energy vault. So rose beer, you wanted to explain what energy vault is or was, or, yeah, wherever 

Rosemary Barnes: it is right now.

Rosemary Barnes: So energy vault it it’s an energy storage company and it’s gravity storage and they basically take heavy blocks and they they win it up. And then yeah, they do that when they’ve got too much electricity, they use some electricity to raise the block up and then when they wanna generate electricity, they lower it down and yeah.

Rosemary Barnes: Get some electricity back that. And I first became interested when I was thinking I’d been living in that had won too many winters in Denmark was trying to, trying to move somewhere else in Europe. And I heard of this company in a beautiful, beautiful part of Switzerland working on energy storage. It was like, ah, okay, work this and this was energy vaults.

Rosemary Barnes: I, I looked into it and yeah, I saw they had a little prototype. It’s just like a, a crane set up with a, a, like a steel drum filled with concrete and they. Use that to demonstrate that you can, you know, basically generate electricity in that way. Yeah. Which was not a surprise to anyone because I mean, a lot of normal cranes have you know, some regenerative charging capabilities.

Rosemary Barnes: So yeah, I was a bit surprised that they felt like that was an important part of their design to test. They’d been through another, another prototype, which I actually saw when I was on a mountain biking trip in the area one time it’s right near the border with Italy. It’s just the most beautiful, beautiful place.

Rosemary Barnes: Okay. Yeah, , 

Allen Hall: it’s a weird place to do a demo, but yeah, sure. 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. It’s really funny actually, because it’s surrounded by mountains and you’re like, well, there’s no better place to put in hydro, which is, you know, the other kind of gravity storage . But of course they envision it for places where you don’t have any elevation difference to take advantage of.

Rosemary Barnes: So I got in touch with them. Cause by then I’d started my YouTube channel and I thought that would make a good, good episode for engineering with Rosie got in touch. And they said, yeah, great. We’d love for you to make a video. I said, fantastic. Can I have an interview? Yes, sure. I sent them through some example questions that I wanted to ask and then actually everyone’s really busy at the moment.

Rosemary Barnes: I can’t get in touch and it was just. Really simple questions like that, their initial plan, they had these concrete blocks and they would just stack them up like a I wanted to say like a Jen tower, but Jen tower is quite stable because you know, like the, the blocks are long and they kind of interlock and these ones, it was just more like, if you just get those, you know, like two by two Lego blocks and just stack them one on top of each other, it was more like that.

Rosemary Barnes: But without the, the little knobs to lock it in. So one of my questions was, you know, you’re gonna build a hundred meter tall tower just with concrete block stacked on top of each other. Right. How, how do you make sure that’s not gonna fall over and make sure. Whatever you don’t kill somebody. There 

Joel Saxum: goes all the energy, 

Rosemary Barnes: right.

Rosemary Barnes: in a way you don’t want. Yeah. And what local council is gonna say. Yeah, that’s cool. We’ll just let you build and rebuild these a hundred meter, tall buildings with no, you know, reinforcement. What do you do when it’s windy? You know, cuz they’ve got these blocks on cranes and cranes don’t operate when it’s windy.

Rosemary Barnes: So it was just really simple questions like that. And then they wouldn’t answer. Then a year or so later when I was doing a live stream on gravity, energy storage, I got in touch again. They have a new concept. Now it doesn’t look like the old one. Now it looks like a big warehouse with blocks on like racks.

Rosemary Barnes: They go up and down. Yeah. So I guess that gets rid of both of those, the wind problem and the. The other one, but, you know, I just had some questions like, does this exist or is it, you know, beyond a model beyond, I mean, I know that everything on the internet is just a computer rendering. And again, very enthusiastic to help me out until I sent them the list of questions.

Rosemary Barnes: And then, and they’re like, oh no, we can’t have to share information now that we’re publicly listed. Oh, yeah. Right. That sounds like contrary to my understanding of a publicly listed comp company where you have to share certain amounts of information. Sure. Yeah. So now I mean, as yeah, as you saw, so maybe you can explain what’s what’s happened now.

Rosemary Barnes: So there, 

Allen Hall: there, and we’re all in a, at a class action lawsuit. So as the story goes legal firm, FIMAN shrunk has filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of investors due to alleged stock price inflation scheme. So this is all alleged at the moment. There’s been no settlement of this, but the announcement that they made that the they’re accusing energy vault of paying a company called DG fuels a million dollars.

Allen Hall: And in return, DG fuels agreed to buy over $500 million worth of energy vault products. If you saw a half, a billion dollars of potential purchases that would really bolster your stock price and that’s not a good game to play. So what the lawsuit says is that DG fuels is just basically a shell company has no revenue and couldn’t afford half a billion dollars of anything.

Allen Hall: And that, that wasn’t disclosed to the investors. So now as an investor first of all, that’s a securities. Violation have come down. Sure. SEC’s gonna hammer that if it is true. And then it’s just gonna take it like we were talking earlier. I think it’ll take the stock to zero. Unfortunately, if it, if the accusation is true, even if it’s not true, it’s gonna hurt their stock tremendously.

Allen Hall: So it’s, it’s a big deal because we’ve had, there was a recent case down in Arkansas where there was a, basically a fraud case where. A couple of guys were trying to sell wind turbines and then didn’t actually have a, have a company they had us do wind tur design. They got a lot of investors and then nothing had nothing yet.

Allen Hall: Right. And they ended up going to jail. So you just don’t wanna see that because you, you know, that there is so much activity in renewables. That there’s gonna be these fringe cases of bad actors and that’s not helpful 

Rosemary Barnes: to the industry. Yeah, I agree. That’s what annoys me about energy vault is that, you know, there’s a ton of other companies doing even very similar energy storage, gravity storage, there’s ity there’s errors in the us who have like a rail energy storage system and, and there’s others.

Rosemary Barnes: And when I talk to their engineers, you know, like they’re very forthcoming with, you know, the, the challenges that they’ve solved and sure. The ones that remain and their timeframes and everything, whereas energy bowl are only interested in, in marketing and, and not not anything else when, you know, when I’ve got in touch and I haven’t heard any different from other, other people working in engineering communication.

Rosemary Barnes: And yeah, just, it frustrates me. This is the same with, you know, the, some electric car companies as well, that are, you know, doing similar things. It’s like, you can draw a nice picture of a car or you can draw a nice picture of a energy storage system, even animate it, you know, any like first year engineering student can, can produce, make a nice in solid works or something.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Yeah. And then people go crazy for, for these technologies. And I just, I really worry one that the money isn’t going to, the companies that, that need it. I mean, Engineering, right. Hardware, technol new technology development. It’s a, it’s a slow, expensive process. Yeah. You need patient money in there.

Rosemary Barnes: And if you, you know, try and do the, this alternative model where companies just focus on the marketing first and the product is like a secondary thing. I just worry. It’s gonna yeah. Like de stabilize. Yeah. De stabilize everything. Yeah.

Joel Saxum: In the renewable space, we’re, we’re sometimes fighting up an uphill battle against.

Joel Saxum: Bad propaganda as well. Right. Mm-hmm right. And then you end up with, like you said, bad actors. It, it hit me with like a little bit of a light bulb in the head. As I read an article, not too many weeks ago about it was a company. And they were in the Midwest and it was solar roof panels and they, and they were coming through saying, we can install this.

Joel Saxum: We can install that it’s your, your bill will go to zero and then they come and install it. And. When their Bill’s not going to zero or they’re saving $5 a bill, then people start calling what’s going on here. And then they do investigations and the general public doesn’t see that, you know, like you should have your solar panels on the south facing roof of your house.

Joel Saxum: and they’re installed on the north side. And then they’re like, oh, cut the trees next to your house and you’ll get it then. And. And it was what, there’s a big class action lawsuit going on against the company. And I can’t remember what it was, but it was because they had, they had basically bamboozled people by promising them the world and then just taking their money and running with it.

Joel Saxum: Right. So it’s that uphill battle that we already have to fight in the renewables industry. Right. It’s such, such a pain that something else is going on like that. Yeah. 

Allen Hall: And especially at the ACP this week one of the things I’m interested in, in walking around and seeing in Rosemary, you’ll probably walk around too.

Allen Hall: I know, Joel, you be doing a lot of leg work. This. Is just see where all the new tech is. Right. And, and hopefully we see some good new tech out there because we need some good positive feelings and renewables. And I feel like we’re at a little bit of a lull weirdly enough, after coming outta the pandemic, it feels like we should be going.

Allen Hall: And we, and we’re just kind of getting started. So. Hopefully we’ll see something 

Rosemary Barnes: this week. Yeah. Well, I’ve got a, got a media pass for, for this conference, which I’m I’m really, of course, here we go. Okay. This is my first, my first one. It was your suggestion to try and get it. I didn’t, it was a good idea.

Allen Hall: That’s saying it’s not a good idea actually was 

Rosemary Barnes: a good idea. I’m just. But aside from saving the money on the, the past the really cool thing is that my name must be on a, a list of media. And so companies have been getting in touch with me and they’re nearly all energy storage companies. So really?

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. So I don’t know if that’s because I’ve been covering it a bit recently on the channel, but yeah, lots. I mean, some of them not so exciting in terms of new technology but I think a lot of the energy transition is about the less exciting things, you know, like we have already got batteries, we’ve already got solar panels and that’s true.

Rosemary Barnes: True, true. And winter turbines. And so it is a lot about combining them and using them in the best way. So yeah. I’m excited to see what’s what’s in their own energy storage. Yeah, yeah, 

Allen Hall: yeah. So let’s, we’re gonna take a quick break right here. And when we come back, we have a, a, a couple of techy stories that ping monitor 

Joel Saxum: is a continuous blade monitoring system, which allows 

Allen Hall: wind farm operators to stay ahead of maintenance.

Allen Hall: Wind techs can often hear damaged blades from the ground. But they can’t continuously monitor all the turbines. They also can’t calculate how bad the damage is or how fast it’s propagating based on sound. But ping can Ping’s acoustic system is being used on over 600 turbines worldwide. It allows operators to discover damage before it gets expensive and prioritize maintenance needs across their fleet.

Allen Hall: And it pays for itself the first time it identifies serious damage or saves you from doing an unnecessary visual inspection. Stop flying blind out there. 

Joel Saxum: Get Ping’s ears on your 

Allen Hall: turbines.

Joel Saxum: Learn 

Allen Hall: more@pingmonitor.co we’re gonna dive into. So we’ll be right back after this short break. We’ll welcome back.

Allen Hall: This is the uptown podcast and. We have Rosemary in the United States, hard to believe. And Rosemary, I thought we had a prohibition there for a while because you couldn’t come to the states or wouldn’t come to the states or COVID was the reason we wouldn’t 

Rosemary Barnes: want out of Australia. 

Allen Hall: Oh, that’s right. Yeah.

Allen Hall: The Australian government wasn’t even America government, which will be totally fine with being upset with. But no, it’s your own government keeping your locked in country. 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Yeah. It was really hard for me to get into Australia when I was trying to get back from Denmark and then it was impossible to leave once.

Rosemary Barnes: I knew that once I, I went, yeah. Then I wouldn’t be able to leave again, which is a pretty weird situation that’s over now. 

Allen Hall: So I guess since we said the word COVID, we’re gonna get flagged by YouTube, but at this point, screw it. So one of the things about now that now that you’re actually here in America, and one of the things that we always saw about Australia was you guys were locked down and police were out in the streets and, and keeping people off the streets.

Allen Hall: And maybe that’s a Western Australia. Phenomenon, but that’s what we saw in the, in the us press here. 

Rosemary Barnes: It happened a little bit, but, but for the most part, because they had hard lockdowns, there wasn’t a lot of lockdown, so okay. For the most, and definitely not Western Australia, Western Australia, like really carefully locked their borders down, which is, you know, their, their dream in any sort of time.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. You know, they’ve got a bit of a Texas vibe about them. They wanna, they wanna do their own thing and. Good on, I don’t know what that means, but okay. And they did it very successfully and they had, I don’t know if you added up all the lockdown they had, it was minimal, absolutely minimal in Western Australia beyond the first, the first one at the very start of the pandemic.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. They were basically free. So when it, when it works, it works. But then now you see, you know, what’s happening in, in China is a, a certain point where you have to realize that it’s not worth it anymore. And, you know, as we got the new variants that were just so much more contagious, it, you know yeah.

Rosemary Barnes: Nowhere in Australia is trying to, trying to maintain COVID zero anymore. 

Allen Hall: So, well, good. Yeah. Well, well, cuz we’re pleased to have you in America and you were, you’ve traveled around the world a little bit here. We won’t discuss where, but it seems like are the travel restrictions pretty much free and. Sort of the Western hemisphere 

Rosemary Barnes: or I was in so on this trip, I came through Costa Rica and Mexico on the way here before looking a bit more brown, you might be able to tell 

Allen Hall: isn’t it Suning in Australia.

Allen Hall: It’s not more sunny in Costa Rica. Is it? We’ve had 

Rosemary Barnes: just the worst summer in Australia. It’s. Been I mean, it’s over now, but we just it’s a Nia year, which means we get a lot of water and we just had floods like, oh wow, okay. One in 500 year flood after one in 500 year flood, it just it’s been relentless.

Rosemary Barnes: Not where I live. I live it’s you know, 600 meters above sea level and in some rolling Hills in Canberra, so we don’t have floods up there, but yeah, a lot of Northern new south Wales and Queensland is, is having really, really shocking, shocking time. And it’s happening more and more often, like there’s people whose houses have, were washed away in the floods, you know, like four or five years ago that it rebuilt and lost their home again.

Rosemary Barnes: And so, yeah, it’s a, it’s a big topic of conversation. About how much more we can expect these sort of things to happen. And yeah. Like where you should rebuild the same every time now and what climate statistics to use for your planning, right? Yeah. Sure. Yeah. You used to use the past as a guide for what a one in 500 year flood might look like and where you should build a town and.

Rosemary Barnes: Now it’s kind of becoming clear that that doesn’t make sense, but what’s the better option just invent, you know, no one really knows exactly how things are gonna work out. Yeah. There’s a 

Joel Saxum: reevaluation somewhere that needs to happen. 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So yeah, it’s, it’s not been anyway in summer.

Rosemary Barnes: It’s not been a great summer in Australia. We didn’t see a lot of sun out on the, the east side. . But yeah, in, in Costa Rica it was very hot and humid and people are still wearing masks around most places there. Really? Yeah. And in Mexico, very hot, not nearly as humid and no masks anywhere. Except for when I went in to get my COVID test, then I had to wear a mask and in the airport yeah.

Rosemary Barnes: In the airport, my airport’s 

Allen Hall: everywhere. Yeah. Wow. Okay. That’s well, at least. So I guess in some part of the world, we’re starting to lighten up a little bit and some parts are still kind of in lockdown. I know China obvious been in some sort of, yeah, really restrictive lockdown, least parts of it. I, I didn’t know if that also kind of slowed down to, to Australia, but it didn’t sound like that is 

Rosemary Barnes: at all.

Rosemary Barnes: No, no, it’s too. You can’t go back. Once 

Allen Hall: I’m with yeah. We kind of need to move forward. Yeah. So one of the things about Australia that I saw stead is. Going to great coral reefs with their winter invasives. Like they’re gonna just like green light it and like, alright, fish, whatever have at it. These bases are yours, which is unusual because there’s, there’s always been a little bit of concern about that, but whether it should make the bases.

Allen Hall: And I know we’ve talked about that a couple of times, but it just seems so odd because you know, Australia has done a really good job on its coral reef and also. In terms of bunch of the ecology, like they’re, they’re paying a lot of attention to it. I watch finding Nemo. I’ve seen 

Rosemary Barnes: movies. yeah, that’s a good, a good, great varying 

Joel Saxum: documentary.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. Yeah. 

Rosemary Barnes: I do. I do love that. That film, especially for seas. I got that. Just, just right. Yeah, no, the, the government’s been doing pretty badly with the, the great barrier reef. At least they’re having a fight about, you know, whether it should be listed as threatened or not. Were big, they haven’t solved some big problems.

Rosemary Barnes: It was a big problem with agricultural runoff chemicals causing problems. And then they have really done a lot of work to get that under control so that, that, you know, deserves credit for the government and all the farmers involved to sure have worked just to yeah. Improve that. But we still do see coral bleaching event after coral bleaching event and the government.

Rosemary Barnes: I mean, the federal government won’t do anything much about climate change, which is the most important thing. And then, you know, they’ll do things like announce large amounts of money to be spent saving the reef. And it turns out that, you know, the money’s gone to some company that has one employee. You know’s got 500 million million, or I don’t remember the exact number, but a lot of money to deal with.

Rosemary Barnes: And I just saw on Twitter, I didn’t get a chance to look at the, the details, but apparently one of the big projects at the you know, reef preservation money is going towards is developing heat resistant, coral strains. Like, that’s not the point. That’s, that’s the preservation. That’s not the point. We have a great barrier reef with coral in it.

Rosemary Barnes: Like we can’t just write that off and, you know, start again with a new designer kind of coral. Like, no, it’s not okay with me. If 

Allen Hall: so, what’s, what’s the big offshore wind form. It’s 

Rosemary Barnes: gonna start in Australia. They’re way further south. Yeah. Much further south. Yeah. So there aren’t many plans that I’ve seen to put offshore wind up around the barrier reef.

Rosemary Barnes: Cause it’s all in Northern Queensland, right? So like quite, quite far up there are, if you look at a map that shows where people are, you know, kind of interested, there are some around kind of close. But in general, the barrier reef is, you know, it’s world heritage site, and you shouldn’t do anything with it.

Rosemary Barnes: Sure. It doesn’t stop people trying to, you know, dredge it to put in a new coal export port and stuff like 

Joel Saxum: that. okay. I think that the, like the, the report that came out about block island being good for the fish habitat. Right, right. So that’s, that’s a, a passive thing. Right? So you have jackets and foundations out there and it’s great for the fish around.

Joel Saxum: My mind goes to, and I think it’s fantastic. What SED is trying to do to rebuild some of the coral reefs and like, see if we can use this for something else. But my past of offshore oil and gas makes me think we spent. Millions of dollars removing barnacles and, and growth that’s right. And all this stuff from all of the subsea assets, because it may affect their you know, durability.

Joel Saxum: It may affect that coral might eat into a coating and that once the coating is gone on a jacket, then you’re into the metal. Then you have issues with, you know, there’s engineering motion, Corro right. Corrosion and all these different things. So there’s the oil and gas companies for, for, you know, the last 50, 60 years offshore have been fighting.

Joel Saxum: Marine growth on there. So now we’re switching gears and going, let’s try it. Yeah. Like I said, I think it’s a great, a great idea, but I don’t know, I’m not an engineer in Ted’s back office, so I don’t know if they, yeah. 

Rosemary Barnes: So what is that plan? What’s what’s their still’s plan that they they’re gonna put some like it’s calcium, right?

Joel Saxum: Yeah. There’s, there’s some larva down like larva that can, can grow. Right. And they grow, you know, of course you can see it basically. Yeah. So they’re basically seeding right now. What I think the plan is, is they’re gonna. People some, some really brave rope access technicians in the, basically in the surf zone, putting this stuff on.

Joel Saxum: And then hopefully it takes place and they’re doing it in Taiwan. So the waters are warm and that’s true and whatnot. So, yeah. Like really cool. You know, coral reefs don’t grow that well in the north sea. So no, it’s, it’s good that they’re doing it down in Taiwan. But we’ll see what happens, but 

Allen Hall: even they even, it seems like anywhere we drop.

Allen Hall: Old ships. Yeah. Pylons, anything into the ocean. There has been a boon for fish. I, you know, I think a couple of weeks ago we were talking about this and I decided to look up like, where are the fish? Like, there’s a huge, vast ocean. And most of the fish are near the mm-hmm shorelines. Right? Mm-hmm that they’re not in the middle of the ocean, cuz there’s a tendency to think called the fish are everywhere.

Allen Hall: That’s not the case. And so anywhere there’s sort of. Life right. Is where fish will propagate. And then you kind of create this ecosystem to the point of, I don’t know if you saw the latest news from the ocean cleanup, have you have you guys follow the ocean cleanup? Where in the great specific garbage patch to bright terminology?

Allen Hall: Mm-hmm so there’s a concern. There was an article written. In the New York times, they get in the New York times saying if they pull that plastic outta the ocean, they may change the ecology of all the sea life around it. Mm-hmm and made a destroy that sea life and the, the people at ocean cleanup were like, you gotta be kidding me.

Allen Hall: Right. Yeah. 

Joel Saxum: Right. So it’s false. It’s a false 

Allen Hall: ecosystem, right? Its an ecosystem that’s, it’s sort of based on having plastic out there. Yeah. That’s not healthy either. So you know, there’s a, there’s just this weird balance between ecology. And society. 

Rosemary Barnes: And also another factor is climate change. I, I’m pretty sure in what I’ve seen of that you do better to just leave the plastic there than to drive out there in a fossil, so powered ship, but I think it’s.

Rosemary Barnes: It uses a lot of, a lot of fuel to catch, not that much plastic and plastic, that’s just, they’re capturing tons of everything. Yeah. But the plastic was just sitting there. So that’s why I say you gotta, you know, from the climate point of view, plastic, just sitting there is, you know, that’s a carbon store, that story that’s that’s carbon capture and use your big plastic garbage patch.

Rosemary Barnes: So it’s, it’s. All these competing things. It’s a really interesting kind of like, you know, as a environmentalist, it’s hard to know where to fall on that, on that issue, because it’s doing harm to some things that I care about and helping some things that I care about. So it’s like, yeah, it’s not a 

Allen Hall: single variable problem.

Allen Hall: No. Right, right. You have to look at it that way. There’s Multivariables I think the reason they started the ocean cleanup was because they were detect. Microplastic. Yeah. Everywhere like everywhere. Yeah. They’re in payable too. 

Joel Saxum: That sounds like a PhD project for someone. Yeah. I’m sure like the viability of it.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. You know, speaking of like in the spirit of our location, we’re in San Antonio here, there’s a, we’re we’re close to the Gulf of Mexico, right? There’s a ton of fishermen all along the Gulf of Mexico that will tell you the best place to fish run 40 miles out and fish on the. Oh sure. That’s where they’re catching all the RAs.

Joel Saxum: That’s where all the fish are. Right? So that’s what the guys and I talked to a friend of mine that fishes every weekend. He said, I didn’t, I don’t need to study on block island to tell you that jacket is where the fish are gonna be. He said, I can tell you that every weekend he, you can come to my house on Sundays and have dinner.

Allen Hall: so there’s a there, I guess there’s a, a, that’s a really good point. Rosemary. I hadn’t remember that the ocean cleaned up when they first started? No. Say this about them is that it was not ship powered. Right? The whole goal of that system was to be just kind of free floating, wind powered. And then they got into an issue where it just wouldn’t collect consistently and they needed to bring the ships in.

Allen Hall: So there’s still a possibility. I think they’re still looking at that as being, just let the winds move it where it will, but I think that’s fair. I’m not sure. I’m super worried about the ships burning some diesel. For the time being mm-hmm 

Rosemary Barnes: I’m more interested in what they’re doing in the, the rivers to stop the, the that’s different getting out there to me.

Rosemary Barnes: I think that’s the much more impactful thing to 

Allen Hall: do. I, I agree with you. Yeah. So I, I, I think you’re right about that is that they were going after a thousand rivers. Mm. They were gonna try to one of them outside Philadelphia in all places. Right. So they’re gonna off the thousand reversal through the leading contributors, to the, the plastic coming into the ocean.

Allen Hall: Mm. There may are between those two things. They’re gonna dramatically change what’s happening in the ocean. And just like horses is trying to do, they’re trying to have a positive effect in the ocean. It may work out. It may not something to keep an eye on. So we’re gonna take a quick break right here.

Allen Hall: And when we come back, we’ll have some more. Lightning is an act of God, but lightning damage is not actually is very predictable and very preventable. Strike tape is a lightning protection system. Upgrade for wind turbines made by weather guard. It dramatically improves the effectiveness of the factory LPs.

Allen Hall: So you can stop worrying about lightning damage. Visit weather guard, wind.com to learn more, read a case 

Joel Saxum: study and schedule a call today, 

Allen Hall: time news, and we’ll see you after the break. Welcome back to the uptime podcast. We are here in San Antonio. And one of the big news stories of the last week has been that on the offshore leases.

Allen Hall: There’s been a lot of offshore leases in the United States. Some of them off the east coast have went for $4 billion, one particular sale. And, and Joel, there was another sale just recently down in North 

Joel Saxum: Carolina, north or south. I couldn’t remember which one. Yeah, but yeah, about 300 million in total. Yeah.

Allen Hall: So there, the, these offshore leases are. Huge in terms of the amount of money that is going into a plot of ocean and the rights for it, just for the rights, just for the rights as we had Kevin Ewing on rose, you weren’t on that episode, but Rosemary we had Kevin Ewing on who is an attorney involved in with these leases.

Allen Hall: And that was a really good episode. And I’d watch that episode a couple of times, because there’s so much in, in that episode. But what Kevin Ewing was saying was it’s a competitive bid to. Allow you to then progress down the pathway of possibly maybe having some winters in the ocean. There’s a lot of hurdles to get through.

Allen Hall: And I know we’ve seen that with vineyard winds had some struggles there that the amount of money that people are paying for these offshore leases is a, to me, seems like a huge risk that absolutely all it takes is one election. And you could be in a lot of trouble. Not to say that the legal frame wouldn’t protect you.

Allen Hall: Particular politicians could really slow you down, I think. Yeah. 

Rosemary Barnes: And it’s a lot of money to make up. You know, I worry about the cost of the right? The electricity that’s gonna come outta these wind farms because they’ve, you know, they’ve got a high starting point. You know, they do, it’s, 

Joel Saxum: it’s a lot of faith in a lot of things I think.

Joel Saxum: And one of them is this conversation I’ve had with a few colleagues is we still don’t have a supply chain in the us for offshore. We have zero, like people are diligently working on it, right. There’s different ports and some key side facilities and people have plans to develop them. And, but you know, like the, you know, a lot of parts still coming from overseas, and then you have the Jones act stuff like there’s so many variables that they throw $4 billion at the chance right.

Joel Saxum: To develop something, right. Be like buying a piece of land and saying like, you might be able to build a house. You might not. So it’s piece of real estate, you buy a piece of real estate. Yeah, basically. Yeah. The rights to try to do 

Allen Hall: something. Yeah. Yeah. Which is just a little foreign to us because we’re not involved in that industry too much, but to source, which is a, a large energy provider up in the Northeast has had a partnership or does have a partnership with Ted developed three different sites.

Allen Hall: And they also has. So they were involved in self work and a couple of others when projects that are in process, and then they have another lease there, not a huge one, but it’s a decent size lease. So what’s happening now is Eversource is realizing that has a lot of value. Mm-hmm all those projects have a lot of book value and because the market is so hot that they’re thinking about selling.

Allen Hall: So they own about 50% of this development was a joint partnership with orad and the head of Eversource. Saying, I’ll quote it here in light of the record setting prices. Joel, here you go. In light of the record setting prices in the recent federal lease auction for tracks around the New York bike and the evolving landscape.

Allen Hall: We’re conducting a Folsom review of our interest in the joint venture with Ted to assess alternatives that will allow us to create shareholder value and contend you building a leading clean energy company that is wholly supportive of our region’s climate change goals. Don O. The Eversource presidents said.

Allen Hall: So , that’s a lot of words to say, there’s a lot of value in this, in this holding that we have, maybe we ought unload it. Yeah. Maybe 

Joel Saxum: we flip it, we flip it, you know, and, and we don’t know what their, what the ideas behind plans are. Right. They do a review. So here’s a, here’s a couple of thoughts that come to mind in when we talking about permitting and the supply chain.

Joel Saxum: Sure. And all these different things that get in place. Before first energy comes out of that wind farm, say south fork or resolution sunrise, whichever they’re in before first energy comes out there. Are we looking at 2026? 

Allen Hall: I think south work is getting close. I mean, they’re, they’re putting cable in the streets, in the Hamptons, which is a big problem.

Allen Hall: Okay. So it’s getting 

Joel Saxum: fairly close, but I mean like this, so this offshore thing with, with Ted it’s, there’s a lot, there’s, there’s five hundred’s risk. There’s 500 say, say, I don’t know. I don’t know exactly what the value is, but say even if we’ll say a hundred million just for, for, for place sake. Sure.

Joel Saxum: There’s a hundred million dollars worth of ever sources, capital tied up in, in their. Investment with Ted. Sure. That’s a hundred million dollars of the capital that they may be able to put into somewhere where they get clean energy to market faster tomorrow or the 

Rosemary Barnes: next year or six months. Not easily.

Rosemary Barnes: Because when I look at these projects, they’ve got the right to have this space of ocean, right. There’s so much work to do to be done. Yeah. It’s not just. Just risky. It’s, you know, it’s hard. Have they got the, the staff, you know, it’s hard to get the right people, the moment, it’s hard to get all the materials that you need.

Rosemary Barnes: It’s hard to get the permits that you need. That sounds very hard. And you know, just, it’s very risky flipping . Yeah. Yeah. Just, just flipping this like bit of paper. That sounds very easy. So kinda get behind it on that basis. 

Joel Saxum: And the cap, the capital turnaround might be no more advantageous for ’em. And like I said, who knows?

Joel Saxum: Maybe they’re maybe they’re putting a plan together to put more clean energy into the grid quick. 

Allen Hall: I’m up in the Northeast right now, there’s a ton of solar projects going on. So I, I would imagining that’s where they’re gonna go is gonna push more solar projects. Mm-hmm who, who, who could really say the, really the crossroads what’s happening now in the states?

Allen Hall: Rosemary is like New York is turning off all its nuclear plants and California was supposed to turn off it nuclear plants. And now they’re sort of reconsidering California in particular is reconsidering that. There has to be some sort of balance. And I’m wondering if they’re, I’m wondering if they’re looking at their portfolios saying it may not be as balanced.

Allen Hall: As it needs to be for the energy demands in the Northeast, the Northeast is a huge source, right? You got Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Baltimore, Washington, D DC. You got these 

Joel Saxum: massive look at the nighttime maps of the Northeast part of the us. It’s just glows, glows. You know, there’s no, you don’t get to see stars as well there as you do in 

Allen Hall: Texas.

Allen Hall: So there’s there, there is a, a big draw there, and I, I’m not sure if they’re trying to push renewable future, which they clearly said they’re doing how they’re gonna power that. And I’m wonder if they’re trying to change a mix. Hydro is one of those things to probably involved then nuclear. It seems like it’d be back on the table again, just because of the variable, wind and solar sources, who knows, but how there is probably.

Allen Hall: Well, you’re probably right. Joel, there’s probably a billion dollars worth of value sitting there on the table. Yeah. That they could sell today. You have to for the 

Rosemary Barnes: right buyer. Yeah. And presumably whoever buys it is gonna develop these projects, pay the money for oh, sure. They still 

Joel Saxum: end up with that window too.

Joel Saxum: I would imagine that somewhere in Ted’s the belly of TEDS contract writers, if they get first read refusal on. Surely. So, so it’ll still go and or said, I mean, world class team, we developing offshore when yeah. Unbelievable. You know, the best of the best. So they’ll, it’ll, that’ll still go forward. It’s just, maybe there’s some more capital that gets allocated somewhere else in the Northeast.

Joel Saxum: And it’s good for everybody. 

Allen Hall: Well, that, that, that brings up the other half of this equation. Right. Which is orad. Worst did right now has been steadfastly marching forward with renewables mm-hmm and they have not really backed out on any project. No, and we’ve seen a lot of other companies sort of hedge their bets or slow down projects.

Allen Hall: Worst did still, still seems to be going full steam ahead. Mm-hmm and, and that’s remarkable. Because just the economic conditions they’re in, they do, they do not seem to be fluctuating at all on their drive for 

Joel Saxum: more renewables. Like if, if you wanna listen to a fantastic leader, speak mad snipper, any of the, anything that he puts on.

Joel Saxum: I mean, that was a change over a year ago or so. The company’s just been moving forward and, you know, cool projects that we talked earlier in the episode about the thing in Taiwan, like they’re doing they’re, they’re moving, they’re setting the. They 

Allen Hall: really are. And that, I guess that’s good, cuz you’re gonna need stability there.

Allen Hall: And as we’re at ACP this week, we’re gonna be hearing a lot more about the, what some of these operators are up to. And you know, we’ll talk about it when we’re out on the show floor this week. Hopefully we’ll have a number of people to talk to about renewables and what they’re working on, but there is there, there has to be some balance here.

Allen Hall: I’m just not sure where that balance line is. And if this is gonna be really odd show, I think it’s gonna be really odd show because when we come back to next year, the next year’s is 

Rosemary Barnes: in new Orleans. I’m sure I really wanna go to new Orleans. dunno. A place that floods a lot. That’s 

Joel Saxum: it? Where there in new winter.

Joel Saxum: So it’s better 

Rosemary Barnes: for the music. Doesn’t have a, just a crazy jazz scene there. Oh yeah, you did. Yeah. So I’m, I’m keen to, to come back. I don’t know if I can justify two years in a row, but 

Joel Saxum: Minneapolis is the year after. 

Allen Hall: No, it’s not. Are you serious Uhhuh? why we in Minneapolis. 

Joel Saxum: well, at least it’s may and not February.

Joel Saxum: so 

still 

Allen Hall: snow of the ground in Minneapolis in may. That’s true. Well, we not in 

Rosemary Barnes: Vegas. I’ve been in Vegas. 

Joel Saxum: Vegas. We gotta get on some committees because I 

Allen Hall: don’t know. Big Minneapolis it’s, you know, min Minnesota’s fine, but like July it’s great. I’m not sure about when, when the mosquitoes come out. that’s true, but yeah.

Allen Hall: So next year we’re gonna get the lay of the land here. And then next year in new Orleans, you’re gonna wonder what’s new who’s here. Who’s not how much the landscape has changed us is in a really odd place of being in recession and then having crazy amount of inflation. Yeah. Some of these companies we see here this week are not gonna 

Joel Saxum: be here year from now.

Joel Saxum: You know, one of the, one of the cool things I’ve seen talking within my network as well is a few more solar operators coming here. 

Allen Hall: This. I haven’t seen solar 

Joel Saxum: operators. Yeah. So, so that’s, I mean, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of big companies that do both. Right. But to see some specific solar service companies and some other things like that, starting to get in more into the ACP spirit of things.

Joel Saxum: Well, that’s, that was the 

Allen Hall: point of ACP, right? Cause it was American win energy association now went to ACP, so it covers all renewables. Yep. 

Joel Saxum: Smart move. And, and the hot topic like you, like we were talking about earlier hot topic that I’m hearing as well is storage. Storage, whether it’s batteries, whether it’s cool innovation projects, someone trying to do something, a lot of battery stuff and a lot of battery stuff.

Joel Saxum: And there’s not really a, from my understanding and maybe I’m. Huge precedent set for how it’s installed. What, what the kind of safety things are around it and all that stuff. Yeah. So that’s a developing developing trend as well. And we’ll see where that goes. Hopefully there’d be some cool information 

Rosemary Barnes: around that too.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I think we need it soon. Cause I mean, up until now for household batteries, at least it, it really, the economics didn’t stack up. You kind of, you know, you would take as long to pay back your investment. As the battery warranty was. Right, right. So it’s tipped into positive territory now for, you know, your expected return on your investment, but it’s still not like super attractive, but within the next two or three years, it will be.

Rosemary Barnes: And then we need to make sure that it gets rolled out. Right. Cause I think it’s really interesting to compare solar in Australia compared to the us in Australia, it’s super cheap, you know, just everybody has solar panels on their roof, just purely for the economics and mm-hmm and not necessarily much else.

Rosemary Barnes: And in the us, it’s much, much, much more expensive roof top solar here. Yeah. And my understanding is the main difference is a soft, soft costs. So, you know, for installation, but also for you know, permitting and all these sorts of things, insurance, insurance, insurance, right? Yeah. So I know early on in Australia it was, I think it w