Joel has first impressions from the 2022 Sandia Blade Workshop, where engineers and manufacturers talked development, standards, and (just a little) about LCOE. The first California offshore wind auction is scheduled for December 6th. If you like risk, there’s still time to get your bids in. 

BONUS: in a brief interview with Rope Robotics CEO Martin Bjerge, find out how new tools and techniques can make structural repairs and improve LEP.

Visit Pardalote Consulting at https://www.pardaloteconsulting.com

Wind Power Lab – https://windpowerlab.com

Weather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.com

Ping – ping.services

Rope Robotics – www.roperobotics.com

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

Uptime 136

Allen Hall: Hello everyone. We have a great show for you this week. Joel reports on the Sandia Blade conference down in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And then we have a discussion about the California offshore wind auction, how much money is gonna be bid in that auction in December. And then we have a special interview from our time at Wind Energy Hamburg, where I discussed the latest news from Rope Robotics with their CEO Martin Bjerge.

Allen Hall: I’m Allen Hall, President of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I’m here with my good friend from Wind Power Lab, Joel Saxum, Rosemary is on a well deserved break, and this is the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

Allen Hall: Well, Joel, you’re down in Albuquerque at the Sandia Blade Conference. Do you wanna give us a little bit of highlights of what’s happening down there this week? 

Joel Saxum: Yeah, absolutely. I think the last count, there was about 200 people here which is good turn out for, you know, a technical workshop focusing on just one, one portion.

Joel Saxum: So the majority of the people you’re seeing here, a lot of owner operators, because it is Sandia. All the, all the smart researchers are here from Sandia and NREL, and Berkeley. And I met a couple of guys from GE that are up by you in the Oh, wow. Schenectady and they’re, they’re a part of research, but they’re like, Oh, we work a little bit in aerospace, a little bit wind, a little bit of this.

Joel Saxum: So some really cool smart people here. Of course, but a lot of good, interesting topics. They’ve got the, the conference or workshops. Kind of neat. I like it because it’s four days, right. But if you are just able to come in for, to listen to some panel discussions, all the panel discussions are on Tuesday.

Joel Saxum: All the podium talks are on Wednesday, and then it’s bookmarked by on Monday. There’s like like working group kind of things. And then on Thursday it’s the same thing. So they’re looking at talking through some standards and some other stuff on those in like more of a, a town hall type situation.

Joel Saxum: Wow. Yeah. And then you know, the panels were great. Some of the panels were, one of ’em was full of owners and operators and getting to hear some of their pain points and the things that they’re doing was great. And then that led into today, which is Wednesday of a lot of podium talks.

Joel Saxum: But one thing I wanted to touch on as well is that this, the people from Sandia put the conference. And, and they opened it with saying, Hey, we’re just a bunch of engineers. We threw this conference together in our spare time, in between experiments. But they’ve done a great job. You know, the, the, the hotel and stuff that we’re at has been fantastic.

Joel Saxum: They’ve organized some events put the, the the program together in a very, very good way. So congrats and, and kudos to the Sandia people for putting this thing on. And that the content. Fantastic. If you’re into blades, as, as of course Alan, you and I are, that’s our, our bread and butter here.

Joel Saxum: It’s all blades, every talk, whether it’s talking about instrumenting blades with the new sensor technologies that are out there, or problems with lightning or problems with data analytics, or what are we doing with all the data we’re collecting? From, you know, drone inspections and SCADA data and all this stuff.

Joel Saxum: So now there’s, now it’s the last few conferences in the last few years has been, let’s, let’s get as much data as we can. And now everybody’s going like, Whoa, what are we gonna do with all this data ? Right. You know? So being able to listen to more of a, it’s less commercial, more technical, more of an open talk around some of the issues people are having and how they’re solving them.

Joel Saxum: So those kind of things have, of course, there’s a lot of value in that for other owner operators. Sitting right next to them is the actual blade design engineers. So there’s people from Siemens, MEA here, Envision here. TPIs got a good presence and so it’s it’s a, it’s a lot of. A lot of smart blade design engineers and whatnot.

Joel Saxum: And, and you know, we kind of talk sometimes about OEMs not really wanting to share too much. They’re, they’re still not doing that in a formal fashion. But at least in the, in the coffee line and, and around cookies and lunch, you can hear some conversations that are a little bit more open, which is nice.

Joel Saxum: Which is nice to hear. It’s amazing 

Allen Hall: what a cookie will bring out of somebody, isn’t it, ? 

Joel Saxum: Yeah. Good cup of coffee, you know. Right. . 

Allen Hall: Well, what are some of the top issues I. I’m guessing monitoring systems, We saw that in in Hamburg. Mm-hmm. monitoring seems to be a big issue, even though the OEMs are not really providing monitoring systems directly on the blades.

Allen Hall: Is that one of the discussion points is what’s everybody doing about monitoring? 

Joel Saxum: Yeah. So there’s I mean, one of the owner operator panels was a bunch of them standing up there going. Hey, now there’s a bunch of options out in the marketplace, but we really haven’t settled on which one is the best for us.

Joel Saxum: So you hear them talking about getting some more tests done in the field, and you know, of course those things have to cook. You can’t just go out and see if they’re good or not in a day. Right. So putting it, putting them in a different situations. You know, there’s some standard stuff like everybody knows how to get API handles and data back.

Joel Saxum: Like that’s fine, but. How, what is the best system for what each individual operator and their pain points they have. And then also again, talking coffee and cookie conversations. I was, and they had a kind of a, a reception last night and I was talking to one of the people from Sandia, from the actual Sandia Laboratories.

Joel Saxum: Fun fact. 13,000 employees in the Sandia Laboratories. I bet you didn’t know that. Wow, 

Allen Hall: that’s a lot of 

Joel Saxum: people. Yeah. So I was talking with him. This very small portion of their are win, just so everybody’s clear. That’s mostly other things. Yes. But I was talking with him and he said like, Hey, you know, we’re thinking about this idea of a project where we basically are gonna try to sponsor or get sponsors on board as a co-op to get a turbine where we can.

Joel Saxum: Test anything like you want to test an anti icing thing, put it on there. You want to test a sensor, put it on there, you wanna test this. And it’s sponsored from the industry forward. And so he is like, What’s the best way to do this? So we talked about some ideas like, okay, if someone is in. West Texas, and they’re putting up a new wind farm.

Joel Saxum: If you could sister onto that and say, Hey, one of those turbines, what if we be, you know, the costs get reduced because of, you know, oh, bulk, bulk costs and, and right. Building that wind farm. But if you could get some, you know, coalition of people together, and I, and I, my thing to him as a, as we share on the podcast, and this is what, you know, our goal here is to spread news and, and, and technology and what’s going on.

Joel Saxum: I said, You guys need to be more vocal about it. I said, If you’re gonna put it up, Don’t put barriers to entry to this turbine. Like, don’t make it. You have to qualify for a grant to get on there. Or you have to know someone who knows someone who knows someone. I said, Yes. Yeah. Make this thing so visible that any person that’s coming into the wind industry with a new product has access to it.

Joel Saxum: And he was like, Man, that’s a good idea. That’s a good idea. Because he said, You’re a taxpayer. See, you go, I pay way too much in taxes. And he said so we’re here for. Like, that’s great. So let’s make that happen. Let’s make, let’s make Sandia Labs more accessible. Right. If I had one thing to take away from this that I, I wouldn’t normally have thought is some of the research that’s being done in the money that’s being spent at a lot of these with RPA e and the doe and n Re and Sandia, and I’ve seen this before in Los Alamos and some of the other, you know, government labs.

Joel Saxum: Things that they’re spending money on might not be completely aligned with the goals of the general public. Right. The research. So like, you know, one of the biggest things right now in wind is okay how do we lower lcoe? So I would think that there’d be a big project centered around lowering lcoe.

Joel Saxum: Well, there’s nothing like that. So it would be nice to see, we, you and I in Rosemary have talked about it before, some of these government funds being spent. Products and solutions and services from TRL five to TRL nine instead of trl. Zero to TRL four 

Allen Hall: or five, you know. That seems to be the little twist, right?

Allen Hall: Is there’s an initiative to get things just barely off the ground. And in the meantime we’re installing wind turbines off the coast of California in a couple years and we don’t have any plan to go do that. That’s . Yeah. Quite defined 

Joel Saxum: yet, right? ? Yeah. One of the, one of the things that actually I’d like to share to, to the listeners as well, and I think anybody that works in the wind industry will have, can see this and vouch for it is some of the conversation actually.

Joel Saxum: Innovation cycles and wind are too fast right now. It used to be. Oh yeah. It used to be like, and Rosemary says this too, about blade design. It used to be like you put out, you, you spent a year in designing a blade and testing a little bit and you know, doing some statistical models and then you built a scaled model and then you tested that and then you went out and it was, there was a time, and then that blade was good in the market for three to five years and now, Innovation cycle is so fast and the newest technology, and there’s like this race to be the best at everything by a millimeter.

Joel Saxum: Sure. And so during one of the panels, the guy asked the question, So, so how do we slow this innovation cycle down to one of the asset owners? And he was like, I guess it’s on us , the asset owners themselves that are calling for all this, this new stuff. So it, it, that’s something that’s been talked about in, in quite a few circles here that I’ve been in and some panels and some, some other talks about.

Joel Saxum: It’s one of the issues we have and then we tied it back in a conversation with someone too. You know, the other day I read an article from the CEO of ASTA’s, I believe it was, where we said, our pricing of our turbines isn’t really enough to sustain our business model. We have to raise our prices. If you slowed down on the innovation cycle and you weren’t throwing, so you know, that you weren’t throwing so much money at as, as the market demands.

Joel Saxum: If that market demand wasn’t as high for these new products, you wouldn’t have to throw so much money to innovation. And you might be able to, everybody take a deep breath, install some of the things that we know work, and stop throwing new products at the market and just build and scale these things to get to our energy goals without trying to do everything at once.

Joel Saxum: So there’s a lot of opinions on it. That’s. Some of the report from the, the Sandia conference here. So 

Allen Hall: is there any consensus on , on a, on a number of issues? It, it is there consensus a about standardizing some of the way We’re, do we do things? I, I know that, that there’s a new Ansys standard that’s coming out and we’ll discuss that in the podcast here.

Allen Hall: It does seem like it’s still a little bit of the wild west and everybody’s going their own direction and things are still rapidly developing. Is there any sense of like, All right, everybody’s slow down a second, let’s figure this thing out cuz we’re just gonna be spinning our wheels and, and blowing millions of dollars if we’re not 

Joel Saxum: careful.

Joel Saxum: There’s talk of it, but no action on it. Right. So one of the things that someone had brought up as well is, you know, there’s these standards, there’s. You know, the different IEC standards and some other things. And when you really read into ’em, some of it’s pretty vague, right? They don’t, they kind of put enough in there to say, Yeah, you gotta get to this point.

Joel Saxum: And someone from one of the owner operators was saying there’s a late owner’s group. With Platina and Berga. Junker from RWE runs it over there in the eu. She was speaking, which is nice, to have her over here and EU presence. She was the only one that I know of speaking from that side of the pond.

Joel Saxum: And she was talking like, Hey, we had at one point in time delivered what we think from the owners has needs to be done in these standards. This is the things that we want in our blades. And. Like it wasn’t listened to. You know, the OEMs still don’t quite wanna share information. They don’t quite wanna you know, play ball with all the the owner operators.

Joel Saxum: So they’re stuck figuring things out. And they, they’re kind of in that spot. Like the guy from, or one of the guys from NextEra was speaking. He’s like, We have 12,000 turbines. And we’ve kind of just figured that once they go out of warranty, it’s on us. So we boasted our engineering groups and we’re taking the steps to make sure that we do that because we can’t re or we won’t rely on the OEMs to get to that point.

Joel Saxum: Wow. Wow. It’s kind of telling, isn’t it? Yeah. It’s same thing that we always talk about. The OEMs don’t wanna, they don’t wanna share engineering designs. They don’t wanna really play ball. They just kind of, Here you go and, and we’ll move 

Allen Hall: forward. Is, is the Sandia conference held annually? I know it was not held because of Covid for a couple of years, but is it an annual event or is it every other year?

Allen Hall: Sort of like Hamburg is, 

Joel Saxum: I think it’s every other year. I was looking at some classical stuff and it was like 14, 16, 18. Oh, I don’t, then, I don’t think it was held in 20. And then maybe they did a virtual one in there or something. But you know, as we, we all did a couple years of virtual meetings and conferences.

Joel Saxum: It’s so nice to be back. Bumping elbows with people and meeting, meeting new faces and, you know, Well that’s, that’s 

Allen Hall: the question is do these things need to happen every year to be effective? Like every other year I get on the big conference, it’s the Hamburg Conference you couldn’t do every year. It would just wipe people out.

Allen Hall: There’s so much more going into that one. But in these smaller conferences where you’re bringing people together to talk technical shop, does every year make more sense because of the speed? 

Joel Saxum: Yeah. I guess there’s two thoughts on that. I think there could be a conglomeration of a lot of things, right? Like I don’t see the need for ACP offshore this week and ACP regular conference in a couple more months.

Joel Saxum: Like to me, it’s. Why it’s, they’re both ACP events. They both deal with the exact same thing. Why not make one big one put ’em all together? Yeah. And o and m, like, why do we have three of these? I don’t get me wrong. I love to, you know, go to San Diego to Corona for o and m and, and go here and go there. Like, but, but it’s, it’s draining on my, on my budgets, but it’s also draining on my, you know, my lovely better half likes to have me at home too.

Joel Saxum: So I, I don’t see why we can’t put some of these together, like the o and m conference. Make it five days long. Make one day offshore, one day on and m in a couple days of everything. If you wanna separate some stuff up like that farm and go. Yeah. So I don’t see the need for, you know, and like some of these things as well, I believe are, it’s, it’s capitalism.

Joel Saxum: Some of it’s market grab, some of people just trying to make money like we do the Blades USA one. I liked Blades USA last year. But yeah, it was good. It was like two grand to walk in the. That’s someone, that’s someone trying to make money. That’s . Oh yeah. 

Allen Hall: They have. I mean, they have to pay for those things.

Allen Hall: Those, those conferences are expensive. I do, I do think in, in aerospace, I’ll use my aerospace hat for a minute. In aerospace, what we tended to do was go to OEM sites. Mm-hmm. and I have meetings there and try to share information. That’s what the owners groups do. Also, something similar in wind. Mm-hmm. , but it, it, you, you think getting people together a little more often, once a year for.

Allen Hall: Would help with the communication. Yeah. Cause we all go home to our separate little offices and we’re all working away, but we’re all going in different directions and there’s no con, there’s no consensus. Like, Oh yeah, I didn’t know that. What’s going on in the industry because I’m too busy working on some other thing.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. I talked to a guy from, He works for Envision now. Envision is an oddity in the US cuz it’s a Chinese manufacturer and they have their blade design offices in. and they’re really the only one set up that way. And he’s like, this, this gentleman I was talking to, he used to work for Siemens, he used to work for he worked at Sandia for a little while.

Joel Saxum: It was ge, couple of different players. And he’s like, Yeah, it’s weird working for Envision now because I don’t know what’s going on in the industry in the US cuz that doesn’t affect me. . He’s like, so I like coming to the event so I can actually catch up on what everybody else is doing, You know? Yeah. So that was, that was one perspective.

Joel Saxum: But I think that this, this, having a conference that’s really technical is, But I don’t see the need for the more commercial ones to be so many. Could make ’em pull ’em together and make one big one. That’s the way I look at it. 

Allen Hall: I, I think industry’s gonna do that as it, as it ages a little bit. You’re gonna start seeing consolidation.

Allen Hall: Mm-hmm. that has, that has to happen because it’s, otherwise, it’s just, you’re right. You were spending too much money traveling and not enough time with the right people in the. Doing the right thing. Yeah. 

Joel Saxum: Yeah. So the, the definite value to this one here on the technical side listening to some of the basically o and m strategies around what do you do with analytics and data and, and are you, how are you classifying blade failures and what is, you know, what is it?

Joel Saxum: The ad from RW was here and he was. His beau beautiful presentation on exactly how RW is handling their massive fleet. Like they’re huge, right? They have so many blades and he was like, Okay, this is how we handle this. This is how we handle this. We have a logic this way and we do this this way. And, and he, you know, he was very clear in saying like, while AI is out there and machine learning is out there, like right now, we don’t use as much of it because we really need.

Joel Saxum: Be able to focus on the things. And he’s like, Some of it is, we have a team of five blade engineers and a lot of it, the things we do boil down to judgment calls from engineers. Oh, sure. You know, and, and so they were very frank about it. And that was kind of, it’s 

Allen Hall: the reality of the situation, right?

Allen Hall: It’s the reality of the situation. You have to produce power, you gotta keep on top of the projects. Mm-hmm. and it’s nice to, to tinker in, in new technologies, but at the end of the day, that’s not necessarily what you’re getting paid. Yeah, 

Joel Saxum: you gotta mix. That’s right about that, that reliability of your blades, that’s what you’re there for.

Joel Saxum: So yeah, get that done and then you can play with stuff in the background. 

Allen Hall: Well that sounds like, like a really good conference. I haven’t attended that one in particular. So it’s good to hear from those conf This conference in Sandia, there’s, There’s like we said, where there’s so many conferences going on, it’s, it’s hard to keep track, but it’s nice to hear that the industry is coalescing around blades down in Albuquerque this week.

Allen Hall: That’s good to hear. 

Joel Saxum: Get the latest on wind industry, news, business, and technology sent straight to you every week. Sign up for the Uptime tech newsletter@weatherguardwind.com slash news. 

Allen Hall: Joel, the first California offshore wind auction is scheduled for December 6th, and I don’t know if you put in your application to buy a plot of of Ocean out there.

Allen Hall: I know I thought about it for about 30 seconds when I realized, Oh, you’re talking about millions and millions of dollars. There’s no way to do that. But they’re gonna at least five separate areas and 350 thousands square acres of, of. The goal is to generate four and a half gigawatts of, of power and deliver that to about a million and a half homes so far.

Allen Hall: When the notice was put out, they had listed 43 bidders that had been vetted by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. And it’s the usual players and a bunch more Avan Grid, bp, ClearWay, edf, Ed, P R eor, and Energy Worsted, R w e Shell. So there’s a number of big players there. And you know, the question is, what are they gonna pay for this thing there?

Allen Hall: There seems to be some unknowns and I, I’m curious if. The experience like Ecuador had in, in the bite in, in some of those auctions off the coast of New York is gonna play into the decision in the Pacific because I think everybody’s trying to feel the way out, out still on the Atlantic side of him.

Allen Hall: of America. Mm-hmm. . And now we’re going to something a little more complex with floating wind. And all the unknowns in the Pacific Ocean. Do prices that the, Do you think the bids are gonna drop substantially from what we saw over on, on the East coast of America? 

Joel Saxum: I do, and there’s a couple of reasons.

Joel Saxum: The first one being just, I’m looking at history. When the bite auction happened, it was crazy expensive. And then when they had the auction right after that, in South Carolina, North Carolina, it was way cheaper. North Carolina. Yeah. It went for like 150 million for a spot instead of a billion, you know?

Joel Saxum: So I think that’s, that’s one thing. Also, it’s so, so the, the, the, the capital might not be as easy to get for these companies this time around. The second one is, it’s completely, it’s so risk. It’s very risky to do. It’s risky for a, any random, It’s risky to go paint houses in ca. . Yes. Like, like it’s just risky business there.

Joel Saxum: Right? So, and we have reviewed some of this stuff a few months ago on the show here about the, the different bullet points they had put in about investment in the local communities, investment in local workforces, right. And da, da da. And that’s all good things, but those are also very expensive. So I, you know, personally, like I’ve done a lot of work in California in my past, and I know that when we were doing a job, Texas, or Oklahoma, or North Dakota, and we took that same crew and we went to California, we automatically put like 22% on top.

Joel Saxum: Ooh. And that was because of, it was like tax because once you were there, you had to pay different tax rates for to employment taxes unemployment insurance, taxes, all those things just for employees that are based out of there are so much more expensive. Not, and that’s, that leaves completely alone.

Joel Saxum: The idea that putting people in hotels there is. More expensive and putting like, cuz these things are be built. I think the area, the area is one of them’s like off of San Francisco. Imagine having to bring in a workforce into camp out hotels in San Francisco. It’s most expensive area. Yeah. It’s gonna be ridiculous.

Joel Saxum: So those are little things about cost. But the regulatory environment in California is inherently risky. While they, while they wanna see green energy and everybody else does as well at certain levels it’s a very risky play. So, and that we haven’t even talked about the fact that this is gonna be floating.

Joel Saxum: There’s gonna be no bottom fixed stuff here, unless you’re putting it in the, you know, San Francisco Bay. It’s not gonna be bottom fixed. And they’re definitely not going there. So, so they’re gonna be floating. And we don’t, the, the, when you talk, start talking about the development cost of a project, you have to understand all of the infrastructure.

Joel Saxum: All the permitting fees, all of this. Like, there’s the whole cost model and now they’ve been vetted. So the, the idea’s been out there for a year, two years. So people have been kind of in the background working on this thing, but saying, Okay, now we’re gonna have the lease, and now you need your prices by December 6th.

Joel Saxum: That’s less than two months away. I think that, I don’t think it’s gonna be as competitive. I don’t think the prices will be there. I mean, on this list, there’s only a few that actually have experience. Offshore floating wind that have actually put it out in the wind. Oh yeah. And, and, and are, and are deriving power from it.

Joel Saxum: So, I mean, I’m just thinking high wind in Scotland. Right. I think that was, and correct me if I’m wrong, I think that’s, EOR was a big part of 

Allen Hall: that at the beginning. EOR I think has experience with that. Yeah. But 

Joel Saxum: EOR has got experience with Mo and like I know most of the others don’t. They just, they haven’t touched it.

Joel Saxum: So. It’s, it’s very risky. From almost every standpoint you look at it. There’s nothing safe about this one in my mind. So how do you hedge 

Allen Hall: your bets here? You feel like you’d probably want to buy some of the territory just because maybe the, the, the first company in figures out how to make this happen.

Allen Hall: Or a GE or a Siemens Cmaa figures out how to make all this work and, and then the risk goes down. How do you, how do you weigh that when you’re, you’re bidding with 40 other companies for this, for this land or the solution? 

Joel Saxum: So one of the things that I like to talk about in really love economics, so I talk about with people in general, is California, in the US is the land of risk.

Joel Saxum: So in a land of risk, you can lose big, but you can also win big. So if you think about the population there and the things that are going on in that state, well, you see report after report of people leaving, people leaving, people moving out. That doesn’t change the fact that power prices are high.

Joel Saxum: There’s a lot of people there. Yes, they will always, If anybody has vacations to the coast of California, they will always be a lot of people there because it’s fantastic. That’s my opinion, and, and I’ll stick to it. It’s true. But so, so there is, you know, if you have this much space, depending on, you know, if you can get whatever kind of PPA you could sign or whatever, there’s a, there’s a chance that there’s actually a lot of money to be made there.

Joel Saxum: And of course we like to see new development and offshore wind. And if you’re one of these first movers to put some utility scale offshore wind in the United States, that’s a nice feather. . Yeah. 

Allen Hall: I, I, I’m wondering though also with, with the inflation and the interest rates bumping up, how much effect that’s gonna have on suppressing the bid prices.

Allen Hall: Mm-hmm. Your, your cost of cost of cash goes up, right? Cost of borrowing goes way up, and you don’t know where that’s stopping at the moment. So again, it’s one of those, it’s gonna, it’s gonna be depressants on where I think that the peak will be. And remember, some of these auctions have gone over a day long, they’ve been into day two.

Allen Hall: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Here’s one that was in day three, right? So they, they’re kind of, they’re still trying to figure out where the marketplace is. And as it, they, if, if you read the notice I was reading through the notice, you have a, a practice. On December 5th, they have a, a mock auction and I assume that, so everybody makes sure all their data communication systems work, they can put a bid in and it properly pops up.

Allen Hall: It’s kinda like the NFL draft, right? 

Joel Saxum: Mm-hmm. like $1 . Yeah. Right? $1. Bob. I got a good right. , 

Allen Hall: so I’m sure that, I just thought that was kind of a music. Hey, we gotta make sure the system works because when we get to the, the real day, If you got one shot at it and if you miss it, it’s over. But then those, those auctions evolve, right?

Allen Hall: So, It’s a series of rounds. And as they, as they price goes up, obviously more and more people start dropping out and you kinda get whittled to the top. I’m, I would be curious to see who the last three are. , you know, like who, who is who, who, who’s really in it till the end and, and how far are they willing to go?

Allen Hall: Cause they’ll tell a lot about their philosophy as a company. I think. 

Joel Saxum: How cool would it be though? Like, I now you said NFL draft, I’m thinking about when they, when they flash to like the camera scenes of I’m a Packers fan, Right. So they’re like, this is just the Packer’s war room during the draft, like to be a fly on the wall in one of those, in like BP’s room.

Joel Saxum: Like, oh, what are they gonna say? What’s going on? But he Yeah, The war rooms. Yeah, the war room, man. So like, I think the one thing that we shouldn’t miss here in conversation, Alan, is this is the first auction after the IRA bill has. . Yes. So how does that play into it right now? They know that they can get because, Okay, so now switch gears, Talking vessels.

Joel Saxum: Cuz you need vessels over there. There is no vessels over there. Yeah. Like, you know, like porta. Seattle’s got some, there’s no work, there’s not a lot of. There’s a container ships coming in and out in some tugboats, like that’s it on that whole coast. There’s no other infrastructure out to sea that needs to be really, I mean, there’s some pipelines and stuff out there, but that really needs to be maintained like it is in the Gulf Coast or like it is on the East Coast where there’s some, some actual, So all of those, any resource that you need.

Joel Saxum: It’s either sailing through the Panama Canal from somewhere else, or Right. It’s gotta get built. So now you know you have funds or maybe not funds, but relief, tax relief to build some of these vessels and stuff. So We’ll see what I know like Crowley’s a big player on that side of the world in logistics between Seattle and Alaska and all that stuff.

Joel Saxum: So maybe we’ll see some, I’m considered, I’m, again, a fly on the wall thing and I’m, I’m thinking like, what are the, what are the, what thoughts are going through their heads now and how does the IRA bill play into this? And I guess we’ll have to wait until December 6th to see. Yeah. 

Allen Hall: Well do you. There.

Allen Hall: Do you think these companies have war rooms where they make these bids? Do, do you think there’s 10 people in a room and they’re have to, I guess you for as much money is, is at stake? I would think they would have to, but it, it’s hard to envision that happening. , I’m 

Joel Saxum: in this option, but it must, I’m thinking that you’re, if you’re talking the names in this list, this, the CEO of Orstad is definitely, at least on a team’s call with the whole team while this is going on because he’s, it’s so high.

Joel Saxum: There has to be and, and if not like more power to their pro, their organizations and their processes that they figure out and they trust all the people that are put in place. That’s great. But I’m just, I guess I’m imagining a movie in my head. You know, all these people sitting around, someone smashing their fist on the table, bp, he got us again, you know,

Allen Hall: Well, it does lead to a documentary style of thinking about this. Because it would be interesting to see behind the scenes of what is, what’s happening. I not, not so much you have to know all the, you know, intimate details, but just to see the interactions and how that all plays out. Cuz it is a time limited thing.

Allen Hall: You have to pack your bids in. You have to figure out where you’re willing to go. I’m sure there’s a lot of back room dealings last minute trades that are happening coalescing with, with uh, 

Joel Saxum: suppliers. You can’t trade your quarterback for a first rounder here for the next year. So it’s a little bit different.

Joel Saxum: I don’t know. Yeah. You, you, I’ll sell you this wind farm if you’d get out of the lease maybe. Well, 

Allen Hall: for as much money as we’re talking about, I wouldn’t, wouldn’t shock me. You know, like, where’s, where’s the Walmarts in this? Right? Like, who are some of the people gonna buy this power? What, where are they in this?

Allen Hall: Where’s the Amazons? They might Facebook someone 

Joel Saxum: sitting in there too. They might have someone in the war room. 

Allen Hall: Wouldn’t you think? So if I was Facebook, and I’m gonna use a bunch of this, this power coming off the coast, which I’m invariably gonna do. Yeah. Don’t I have a seat in that war room? 

Joel Saxum: I think so.

Joel Saxum: You know, here’s another one for you, like Alan, you have a long engineering and aerospace background as well as wind, myself, wind offshore oil and gas on oil and gas. Think about the tender process for this thing and what kind of a team puts that to. Cause I’ve put some tenders together with, with some really smart people before, and I mean, it’ll take.

Joel Saxum: For small projects, weeks to put tenders together to win the, and then when you win it, you’re like, Yeah, it’s awesome. Imagine the tender and how thick and how much due diligence and how many things the size of the team and coordinating all that. You have to have project managers, plural, just to get the tender done and coordinate the whole thing.

Joel Saxum: Like it’s it’s nothing to shake a stick at. Well, in 

Allen Hall: the, in the risk. I, I think one of the early risks, we had talked to Kevin Ewing who was an. Out on, in the Washington, DC area who was helping with some of the, the bite auction at the time. I remember him describing, and you can go back and, and watch that episode, but he was describing like what you get with this auction, what you actually win.

Allen Hall: You win the right to apply for a permit to put, to review the site and to, to put turbines out there at some point. So it is just to open the dang. Then the fund really starts, like you were saying, the fund really starts when, Okay, we’re in now what? Now? The hard work begins. And I thought writing the check was gonna be the hard work.

Allen Hall: No, no, no. That’s just beginning. It’s gonna get a lot more fun after that. And, and those sort of things. I I, this is such a complicated beast when, when these auctions happen and what happens afterwards. That’s why I think a documentary on Netflix should be really, . 

Joel Saxum: You know, one of the things that I’ve seen happen as well, and, and anybody that follows the industry, especially the offshore wind industry coming to the us, you’ve seen now, okay, ORs, TED winds, the site in New York bike ORs, Ted doesn’t come and develop it.

Joel Saxum: Mm-hmm. . X, Y, Z wind does. And that is two people from this company and two people from that company, and five people from this company that run it. And they’re all these different consortiums and LLCs and JVs and all these things. So now not only do you have all of these different companies popping up, starting up, but they’re not really popping up, starting up.

Joel Saxum: They’re just people coming from the other ones that won the auction to actually develop the thing. You know, like the vineyard win one organization, whatever. So now not only are you doing that, but all of a sudden you’ve got a whole new company that you’ve gotta coalesce the. Get that culture going, get the processes in place, all this stuff.

Joel Saxum: And of course they have help from their parent, the parent companies, whatever. But that just makes it so much more complicated when I see so and so get appointed as the new SVP of development or the new CEO of so such and such win, you’re like, What is this company? And all of a sudden you see their website and you’re like, Do they have like a.

Joel Saxum: 10 billion budget. I was like, Oh, that’s actually Osted and Meor together in one company. Oh, okay. So there, But it’s just like, there’s just so much juggling, so many balls in the air for these things to happen. 

Allen Hall: And that’s why you see a lot of turnover, I think. Mm-hmm. , it’s, it’s such a fast moving, expensive game, I’ll call it that their enterprise at.

Allen Hall: That it’s, it’s really hard to find that perfect person to get you from the beginning to the end. Mm-hmm. , it, it is almost like running in an NFL football team in a sense, right? Yeah. If you’re, if you’re rebuilding, it takes a different coach, and if you’re kind of halfway there, it’s a second coach. Mm-hmm.

Allen Hall: as you get to go into the Super Bowl, you probably have a third coach, right. So there’s, there’s, there’s this different time frames and different people need it for each of these little phases. I, I, I’m thinking that the companies that are involved in that in the United States are really trying, are finding.

Allen Hall: The, the, the person you installed in there to, to kick this thing off was probably Wang at . Getting the energy, getting it started and then the, the, the grind out work has to start different personality. So you have to prepare for that. And I, I, I, I wonder is everybody thinking that when they start, maybe they are.

Allen Hall: Maybe cuz these projects are so long, they realize like, I could retire on this project Yeah. If I wanted to. I, How do, how do we manage that? How do we handle that? This is just a fascinating Piece of, of you know, Americana. Mm-hmm. , which is what we learn here in America, obviously. We’re last to the table on floating wind, essentially.

Allen Hall: We are. But yet we’re gonna go through the, the, that same learning process the Europeans did several years ago, right? Mm-hmm. Who knows who, who knows where we end. Supposedly with a lot more power offshore. I guess that’s where we wanna go. 

Joel Saxum: And a crazy thing here, Alan, is like the, we’re we’re still, I mean, offshore wind, ACP was this week as well, right?

Joel Saxum: None of Right. None. None of our team, none of our crew, none of our network really went, went there directly. But cuz there’s too many of these things to go to. Yeah. But we’re, I mean that conference and I saw stuff all over LinkedIn and, Oh, this is a great conference. This, we’re moving forward so fast, we’re doing this stuff.

Joel Saxum: We have six turbines in the water in the United States. Seven. Seven. Seven, Sorry. Seven. Seven. We have five and five and two, right? Yeah. Five and two. We have seven turbines in the water and this is what’s going on, right? There’s comp companies changing hands already and like bio it’s happening and these things, and it’s like, man, this is crazy.

Joel Saxum: We’re not even, we haven’t even stabbed a mother mono pile, you know? 

Allen Hall: So, yeah, there’s a lot more to come. There’s a lot more to come and, and as, as this auction happens, we’ll follow up when, after the auction and, and just see where we’re at, see many, how many hundreds of millions or billions of dollars is put down for these leases.

Allen Hall: It, it will be a really interesting time. 

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Joel Saxum: Visit weather guard wind.com to learn more. Read a case study and schedule a call.

Allen Hall: We have Rope Robotics CEO and founder, Martin Birge who is all the way from. Denmark, Denmark , where all the cool innovative things happen in wind, It seems like and Rope Robotics is 

Martin Bjerge: one of those. We, we call it Silicon Wind in Denmark . 

Allen Hall: Well, that’s, that’s a good way to describe it actually. That’s kind of what it is.

Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s there’s a lot of new technology as we’ve seen here where at Wind Energy Hamburg today is the last day, Friday, and we were just talking about the number. new technologies that are popping up. You’re not new though. 

Martin Bjerge: Not completely. We’ve been there for a couple of years. Yes. And we have a robot in operation now for a couple of years.

Martin Bjerge: Right. And it’s but we can also see they’re starting to come out the robotic solutions out there. It’s, it’s quite, it’s really interesting to see what’s going on in the, in that market. Well, there’s, there’s 

Allen Hall: been a big shift Yeah. From technicians because you’ve run outta technic. 

Martin Bjerge: The it, I dunno if you’ve run out of them, but it’s really difficult to get, to get the qualified technicians and get enough technicians trained to actually have the level of skills that’s required to do a good, good job.

Allen Hall: Right. And speed is of the essence. It is 

Martin Bjerge: Operators. There’s so many turbines out there that need some tend to loving care. 

Allen Hall: Right. And they need it relatively quickly. Yeah. They want to get in, do the job. Exactly. Power production. And that’s where you come in. 

Martin Bjerge: Exactly. So we can train the technician significantly faster in being able to operate a robot than it is to get all the skills and certificates to work from rope.

Martin Bjerge: Sure. So definitely we can speed up some of the processes there. Of course. Then there’s the. Whole health and safety aspects of having a robot sitting up there in the height working instead of having people working from Rob or platform or whatever it is. So, so definitely we increasing health and safety 

Allen Hall: there.

Allen Hall: So if you haven’t seen Rope Robotics, YouTube channel. Please do you, you need to go look at it first. Yeah. But you have a couple of key things that you’re doing for blades at the moment. Do you wanna describe some of 

Martin Bjerge: those? Yeah. So our, our main thing is leading its protections. Yeah. So we, we have the tool and CAPA capabilities to sand and clean the leading it.

Martin Bjerge: And then we apply, apply a liquid l Okay. We are using a product from from TEUs called Techno Blade. Okay. Techno Blade 9,000. But in principle, we could use other liquid L systems as well. Sure. But this is, this is this product we have chosen and that’s the one we are running with. Okay.

Martin Bjerge: Yeah. Okay. 

Allen Hall: I, it does, Do operators want to choose that material? 

Martin Bjerge: Is it relying on your experience? Yeah, it, it’s, it’s a really nice product. It has, Yeah. I’ve heard things about it. Great. Great. LEP performance, so, 

Allen Hall: So the, the, the robot ha performs what tasks that a technician would do in terms of l eep.

Allen Hall: So, so it’s, 

Martin Bjerge: it’s the full process, basically. Oh, good. Okay. So, so it’s cleaning, sanding, and applying the, the coating. So everything 

Allen Hall: to, and now is it limited to certain sizes of blades or is it any size blade? 

Martin Bjerge: We can, There’s the problem is actually the smaller blades. Oh, okay. So if I forget to, we actually, we tried a, I think it was a V 47, oh wow.

Martin Bjerge: That, that, that’s a client that’s, that’s very small turbine. It is, yeah. And that was too small, so, Oh, there, there’s not enough space on those plates to, for the robot. But as soon as we get to these plates, 30 meter length or something like that, which the vast majority are today. Yeah. Then then the robot fits verifying on these plates and we can 

Allen Hall: do the work.

Allen Hall: Wow. Okay. And you had, how did this past summer go? You were out on some campaign? 

Martin Bjerge: Yeah, we, we, we, we done a project together with with GV and and, and we, it’s, it’s really nice project. Good good partners there and sure. And had a nice, nice project. We did a bunch of turbines in in us.

Martin Bjerge: Good. So l p applied there and it’s, it’s actually a on that project it was a hybrid solution you can call it. Oh. So it’s a combination of some some shells at the very tip, and then the, the liquid l p a little bit higher on the blade. Okay. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. So it’s, it’s, you can see there’s no doubt that the Polytech has a fantastic product in, in their shelves, and they and so having that and the very high erosion shown in some cases actually makes sense.

Allen Hall: Yeah. It just, Yeah, the, the combination does make sense. You know, put the, put the product where it’s best used. Exactly. Exactly. So you’re in the United States, I assume that means you are global at this point? 

Martin Bjerge: Pretty much. We, we mainly focusing on the European area and the North American area. Okay.

Martin Bjerge: It’s not let, I’m, you know, if if I get a call from elsewhere, we are probably also gonna do that. But, but that’s where we focus. 

Allen Hall: Okay. And so does a robot go with you? Like did you ship the robot with you in 

Martin Bjerge: and a crew of a couple? We have a we have a setup in, in in us with the, Oh, so the main thing is, is the, we have a control center.

Martin Bjerge: A mobile control center. Yeah. Which basically a trailer with With a little bit of a, of course with some computer screens and stuff like that. So that’s where we, we run robot from. So we have such a trailer in North America and we have in in Europe. So if we have to go other places, that also means we would have to take stuff 

Allen Hall: with you.

Allen Hall: Yeah. Well that makes a sense to do that in the United States. There’s so many wind tur. Engine. Engine. Exactly. Yeah, a base of operations, so to speak, in the 

Martin Bjerge: US and then we shipped the robots in. So yeah, the trailer we built locally and then we shipped the robots in. 

Allen Hall: So the last time we spoke with you was probably just pre pandemic.

Allen Hall: It may have been in 2019. It’s been a couple years. Yeah. 

Martin Bjerge: I can’t actually remember, but I think it’s a couple years. 

Allen Hall: It’s been a while. Yeah. And I remember at the time the discussion was, did anybody go back and look at her on YouTube and see the episode that your robot has essentially univers.

Allen Hall: Pieces, it’s sort of plug and play. Yeah. If I wanna do a specific task, I add an arm and I can do this task. Yeah. So it makes it really versatile. What are some of the things that you’re thinking about doing? Where, where’s this going now? You have the leading edge Yeah. Protection thing going, what’s 

Martin Bjerge: next?

Martin Bjerge: So we, we, the last couple of year, we just put all of energy into getting that leading edge system up and running. So that’s, that’s now running and commercial product we have there. Yeah. Go and get it. . Yes. But we have some, we have some RD work going on, of course. And we have some projects going on actually together with some other technology companies and also universities.

Martin Bjerge: Involves where we are. Sure. We are doing something with force technology and dtu where we are looking into also sonic scannings of the blades. Oh, wow. Okay. Uh, And then we actually just started another project that we got funded by the EU Horizon. A Horizon Europe program. Okay. Yeah. And there we also have a collaboration of, of various partners.

Martin Bjerge: So we have we have EDP as a as as a no owner operator. And we have fantastic, we have Telia, we have Chester University, we have Arian, and. So there’s a bunch of companies there. That’s really good. Yeah, that’s nice. Pretty, pretty pretty big consortium there. Right? And we are trying to build a system where, for also in dt, but we are looking in some other technologies Sure.

Martin Bjerge: For, for, for inspection and also how we can do small structure repairs on the blade. Ooh. Okay. So, so actually there, there are some of these research guys really looking deep into how we can, how we can actually str do structure repairs. Well, 

Allen Hall: that, that makes a lot of sense because not all structural damage is super deep.

Allen Hall: We 

Martin Bjerge: do see it. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I think we might not go with the really huge cracks in the beginning, but, you know Right. Get some of the small stuff be able to do that. So, 

Allen Hall: Well, speed is of the essence all the time. All the discussion this week is about how quickly can this be done? How much time does it take a technician to be here?

Allen Hall: How fast can you turn around? And it all boils 

Martin Bjerge: down to the costs. And 

Allen Hall: yeah, eventually it boils down to cost. Yeah, right. How, how fast can you put on an l e system onto a blade right now? 

Martin Bjerge: Yeah, so, so it of, of course it depends, a lot depends on what’s the level of erosion, how, how many meters do you want applied and stuff like that.

Martin Bjerge: Yeah. But the stuff we did this summer was a a 12 meter l Okay. And that’s approximately one day per per 

Allen Hall: blade. Wow. All right. Cause you have to go all the way from cleaning it up. Yeah, yeah. Fixing it up, getting to a point where you can apply the Yeah. Lap is probably the easiest part of that. Yeah.

Martin Bjerge: The eep actually only take 10 minutes. . It’s all the other structural. So, so, so it’s all, it’s all the, the getting everything sanded and cleaned and, Yeah. And Yeah. Preparations, preparation takes time. Yeah. And, and this is also one of the areas that we are looking into. How can we speed up that part of the process?

Martin Bjerge: Sure. I really want to be able to, to do two or three blades in one day. That’s that’s where we want to go. 

Allen Hall: Well, I think it’s very doable. Yeah. It just takes some experience in which you guys have, Right. Exactly. And that, that’s an advantage using Rope Robotics compared to some others. Is that, Experience.

Allen Hall: You’ve done it, you’ve been out in the field, you’ve gone through those growing pains, you know where those are. Exactly. And you’re, you’re moving on to the next stage and it’s just gonna get quicker and faster and better as you go. Yeah. 

Martin Bjerge: We just, yeah. We are out there getting some mileage and then you look forward and Exactly.

Martin Bjerge: And, and then speed will also increase over time. It’ll follow 

Allen Hall: naturally with it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Great that you get to finally see you . Actually, there’s so many people we’ve met that we, we’ve only met on Zoom previously. Yeah. During Covid times. And we’re all in one place. I swear. All of wind industries, it’s, it’s 

Martin Bjerge: great to put faces to Oh, we got faces, but you know that’s some faces.

Allen Hall: Yeah. It’s actually see people. Yeah, hear it’s been very nice and it’s good to see you and congratulations. Saw the, saw the robot. It’s impressive. It’s a, if, if you haven’t seen it, go, go on YouTube because it’s 

Martin Bjerge: impressive. Definitely. Well come visit me in Denmark. You’re so also welcome to do that.

Martin Bjerge: Oh, I, I’d love to just when it’s sunny 

Allen Hall: outside so you can tell me the day it’s sunny and Denmark and we’ll come over. Yeah, that sounds good. So Martin, I appreciate you coming on the podcast and good luck. 

Martin Bjerge: Thank you very much. And thank you for having, 

Allen Hall: That’s gonna do it for this week’s Uptime Win Energy podcast.

Allen Hall: Thanks for listening. Let take a moment and give us a five star rating on your podcast platform. Be sure to subscribe in the show notes below to the Uptime Tech news, our weekly newsletter, as well as Rosemary’s YouTube Channel Engineering with Rosie. And we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.