Uptime’s Takeaways from Hamburg 2026

Matthew Stead: [00:00:00] Every time Rosie walked past a, a, like a, a QR code with a, a prize of Lego, she had to enter. 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I’m 

Matthew Stead: n- I’m not quite sure, I’m not quite sure whether Rosie was actually entering her real name. 

Rosemary Barnes: Oh, just like 100, 100 different fake emails. Um- 

Matthew Stead: Yeah. 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. And I also- 

Matthew Stead: Yeah … 

Rosemary Barnes: do think I could grab one and run. I was considering it, ’cause, you know, I’ve been to a few of these events now.

I would have entered probably 20 competitions, and I never, I never win 

Speaker 3: The Uptime Wind Energy podcast, brought to you by StrikeTape. Protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit striketape.com. And now your hosts

Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m Allen Hall, and I’m here with Rosemary Barnes, Yolanda Padron, and Matthew Stead. And this has been a busy week because everybody’s been, well, Matthew and Rosemary have been in Hamburg for the big Wind Energy Hamburg show. Organizers [00:01:00] there expect 43,000 people from 100 countries to attend.

There’s roughly 1,600 companies and booths on the show floor. Uh, this is the big show, right? Everybody knows this is the big show, and this is the one to go to. Matthew, you were with EOLOGIX-PING for the week in the booth there. How, what, how did it go? How was it? 

Matthew Stead: Uh, I don’t think I’ve talked for, um, eight hours a day for three days in a row ever.

So it, it, it was, it was crazy. So, um, uh, there were so many people there. I think, um, I, I … There, there was some mixed feelings. So there was a lot of positive vibe about what’s going on and how the industry is progressing and doing better. But at the same time, there were sort of negative comments about, like Germany next year, they were really expecting a, a big drop in the number of installations.

So it was quite a mixed bag. Um, but I mean, personally, I loved seeing old friends. 

Allen Hall: And Rosemary, you were not tied to a [00:02:00] booth, so you could wander around a little bit more. What did you see and hear at the show? 

Rosemary Barnes: Uh, a lot. I have actually learned what a booth is for now, though, because if you don’t have a booth, then you have to, like, just go from

You try and meet people, and you have to navigate your way through the system, and you can’t actually make appointments because you chat, you run into somebody, and then you chat to someone. And, like, you think, “Oh, I’ll talk to everyone for five minutes,” but you end up talking for 15 or 20 minutes. And yeah, so lots of, lots of walking.

But, um, I’ve seen, I’ve seen heaps. I love these exhibitions, you know, when they’ve got the … lot, a lot of them have displays. So, you know, like, there’s a real, a real winch in there. I can’t remember what company it was from, but it’s, like, a real winch that’s been in service for a long time. And you know, you can go get a sense for, uh, that scale.

Real bits of rope. Um, oh, so many robots. So many robots and drones. Um, yeah. All, all kinds [00:03:00] of varieties of robots and drones, which I love. Lots of them doing very useful things. Uh, I don’t know what else. About, yeah, every other stand has some, one of my ex-colleagues from LM Wind Power standing in it, in, um, a wide variety of industries.

So that’s kind of cool. I actually, I had some really, really great conversations with old colleagues. And, um- 

Allen Hall: Mm. 

Rosemary Barnes: Mm … yeah, l- learn, yeah, always learn a lot from that. Um, yeah. I don’t know. It’s been good. Lots of free ice cream as well. Uh, yeah. Free ice cream, free coffees, good coffees. 

Allen Hall: What were the good handouts this year?

What, what were the free giveaways that everybody was distributing? 

Rosemary Barnes: There’s a lot of chocolates, and it’s quite easy to, yeah, just grab handfuls of chocolate. 

Matthew Stead: A weather dice. Is there light- is there lightning today, or is it windy? 

Allen Hall: Who was offering that, Matthew? 

Matthew Stead: Uh, this is, uh, GWU. 

Allen Hall: All right. That’s, that’s a neat handout, giveaway, [00:04:00] right?

Matthew Stead: Great company. 

Allen Hall: Were they, were they auctioning off any cars or anything that was, like, super impressive? A million dollars? 

Matthew Stead: Oh, I gotta tell a story. Like, every time Rosie walked past, uh, uh, like a, a QR code with a, a prize of Lego- She had to enter. 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I’m 

Matthew Stead: not, I’m not quite sure, I’m not quite sure whether Rosie was actually entering her real name or like a, a, a fake name.

Rosemary Barnes: Or just like 100, 100 different fake emails. Um- 

Matthew Stead: Yeah. 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. And I also- 

Matthew Stead: Yeah … 

Rosemary Barnes: every time try and convince them to just give it to me. Um, but all the LEGO is like Danish companies, and Danes are, I think, like literally the most honest people, um, most honest country on Earth. So- 

Matthew Stead: Yeah … 

Rosemary Barnes: they never really, um, allow that.

But I- … do think I could grab one and run. I was considering it, ’cause, you know, I’ve been to a few of these events now. I would have entered probably 20 competitions, and I never, I never win, so. I 

Yolanda Padron: mean, you’re fast enough. You could have beat them. 

Rosemary Barnes: They’re limited edition sets that are not, no longer available [00:05:00] for sale or were never available for sale, so it’s not like you could just say, “Oh, just go buy one, Rosie.”

But these sets are not, not available. There’s, yeah, like lots of like little, um, offshore wind turbine and then a, like a substation. Yeah. Had like a little drone as well involved in that set. There’s another, there’s a Maersk has a ship with like, full of shipping containers. Um- Yeah. I, I don’t know. Like, just lots of cool, cool Lego 

Matthew Stead: I even, even entered on Rosie’s behalf 

Allen Hall: What was the vibe offshore, uh, versus onshore?

‘Cause last time I attended, which was about four years ago now, there was a, a significant amount of offshore, uh, discussion and booths and vendors. Is the ratio growing more offshore versus onshore? Or what, what did that look like? 

Matthew Stead: I felt the opposite. I felt it was all onshore, but- Really? 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, yeah. I think so, and it’s a real contrast.

‘Cause when you go to the big wind, um, conferences in Australia now, it, it’s always, like, 90%-plus offshore wind, which [00:06:00] we don’t have in Australia, and I’ve always found it so weird. 

Matthew Stead: Hmm. 

Rosemary Barnes: And, uh, here in Europe where they do have a whole lot of offshore wind, and that’s where, you know, like, most of their growth is, uh, coming in the industry for new installations- 

Matthew Stead: Hmm

Rosemary Barnes: um, yeah, it’s, it’s a lot more, it’s a lot more balanced. Um, it’s just, like, a lot of small companies doing s- small things. I mean, it’s not, like, really small. It’s, you know, one small task in every single wind farm in the world. There’s obviously still a huge market. But, you know, like, lots of just, like, really precision solutions to very specific problems, I guess.

Yeah, there’s just so much, uh, wind energy here, so many people that just, yeah, learned about a problem and came up with a, a way to solve it. Um, yeah, so it, it’s, it’s a really good balance. 

Allen Hall: Uh, while we’re here, what were the new products on the show floor that you said, “Wow, that’s something innovative”? 

Rosemary Barnes: Like, there’s stuff…

I learned stuff that I didn’t know before, but I don’t think that it’s brand-new. Um, for example, I learned that you’re not supposed to call a drone a robot. Um- [00:07:00]

Allen Hall: Why? 

Rosemary Barnes: I think a drone is a class of robot. In my, in my opinion, a drone is a robot that flies. But I was told off for, um… I’m like, “Oh, do you have any other robots?”

“No, we don’t have any other robots. We’ve got drones.” That’s what they said. 

Matthew Stead: Yeah. Hmm. I learned, I learned two things, and I’m not sure if I’m allowed to say this, but anyway, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll do it. Um, SkySpecs have a MC- MCP connector to their data For their customers. So for those AI nerds out there, that’s a massive thing, I think.

Rosemary Barnes: Can you explain what that is, Matt? 

Allen Hall: For us non-geeks. 

Matthew Stead: My understanding, and I’ll, I’ll be corrected by the audience, is that a MCP, whatever it stands for, um, is basically, uh, like an AI connector where you can query all your data that is h- hosted within- Oh … SkySpecs. So- 

Rosemary Barnes: Ah … 

Matthew Stead: Hey, Mr. SkySpecs- Okay … um, which turbines have been struck by lightning, you know, have lightning damage, and how bad is it?

And, [00:08:00] and then the next thing that SkySpecs has… Uh, I don’t work for SkySpecs. Um, the next, the next thing that SkySpecs have is they have a more of a growth of damage over time and a predictor as to what the damage might look like next year. Um, strangely, Rosie, um, I also heard quite a few people talking about blade temperature.

Um, and I know that’s a sort of deep- Oh, really? … rabbit hole. Yeah. 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, that’s my obsession. How, how, 

Matthew Stead: you know- I don’t know why. 

Rosemary Barnes: Maybe they’ve been- Oh, no … listening to the podcast. I, I, I s- 

Matthew Stead: I seriously think there was, like, three or four people that I spoke to that were definitely interested in, um, blade temperature.

Allen Hall: Wow. 

Rosemary Barnes: Hm. Okay. That’s cool. 

Allen Hall: So i- is, is software then the push because we have the tools now and the industry’s sort of developed? 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, but it’s a bit frustrating ’cause everybody has their own software, right? And so it’s, it’s hard. And then in Australia at least, and you know, a lot of other places, there’s this full service agreement, so [00:09:00]the asset owner doesn’t necessarily get access to the software system.

So I know at Pablo we still primarily just get PDFs. Um, and I will say that, you know, where, where clients will allow it, AI is pretty good now at just automatically pulling everything out of a, a PDF- Mm … and, um, putting it into a, a spreadsheet. And, uh, y- yeah, like making the, putting the image, all the images into a folder so you can just click through.

So that’s good, but it’s kind of like, okay, you got your fancy software system, but, um, yeah, uh, asset owners don’t get access to it, so- it’s only really helpful to the people that are commissioning the, the images, which is probably never gonna b- go away. Uh, I think that the solution is that asset owners do their own, do their own images and get their own software platform 

Yolanda Padron: Yeah, but that being said, I don’t think that all of the images, even if they’re new, are super, super perfect at tagging historical damage.

I know at WeatherGuard we see a lot of lightning [00:10:00] damage from a bunch of different operators, and regardless of whether they’re a really robust engineering team who has a really fixed set of rules, they still have a lot of issues, uh, from different drone inspection providers. I’m not gonna talk about a particular one.

Uh, but yeah, that, I, I think it’s, it’s getting better, and it’s great, but it’s still not at a perfect place where we could just automate it completely. 

Allen Hall: Well, the big turbine makers time their news for the Hamburg Show because that’s when you do it. Vestas and Nordex have both launched new onshore turbines.

That’s next. 

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All right, Vestas and Nordex both timed new turbines for the show, uh, but both of the new turbines are trying to provide more power when the winds are light. Vestas went first, uh, before the show opened with its V182, which is rated for 7.2 megawatts. It is the company’s first new onshore turbine in, in about four years.

Nordex answered on opening day with the N193. It is rated at 7.3 megawatts, and I know this goes into sort of Rosemary’s, uh, rant about should we be building new [00:12:00] turbines or refining the ones that we have. Rosemary, what was the thought on the floor this week? 

Rosemary Barnes: I didn’t talk to anybody about that, not even- Ah

not even one second of one conversation on that. So I can’t, I can’t tell you what, uh, what other people were thinking. 

Allen Hall: Rotor diameters of 182 and 193 meters are really big turbines, and i- is there a real push for that right now in Europe? Is that kinda where Europe is? Is that the seven megawatt stage?

Rosemary Barnes: It’s hard in Europe, isn’t it, to get really big, um, turbines installed? Uh, they, you know, like there’s, you can’t get very… Ev- every wind farm in Europe is pretty close to a village. You know, like there’s just no, there’s not a lot of sp- space in between villages. Uh, I guess that’s not true for, you know, like maybe northern Sweden.

Um, I don’t know if there’s any other, any other exceptions, but not, not many. But I do think that like, you know, in Australia for example, people do want these huge, [00:13:00] huge, huge onshore wind turbines. I think that they’re wrong to want them, but um, that doesn’t change the fact that they are asking for them, and Chinese manufacturers are supplying them, so even if the engineering doesn’t make sense, then I can see, I can see why it’s pretty hard for, um, European manufacturers to say, “No, we’re not gonna do that,” because obviously they’re gonna miss out on a lot of sales if they, if they choose to do that.

Um, yeah, but I just, I don’t know. We’ve had a, a little bit of a pause since y- you know, we were accelerating, um, towers. Uh, sorry, turbines were getting bigger, bigger, bigger so fast, and we had a little pause for a few years. I don’t personally feel like it was a long enough pause that we have been able to, um, you know, catch up with all of the, the quality issues that, that happen from long blades, carbon fiber blades.

I had a, a big, long conversation with a old colleague of mine about all the challenges of putting carbon fiber [00:14:00] into a blade and, uh, you know, what that does in terms of lightning. It’s just incredibly hard and, you know, like we’ve been doing it for a little while. I, I don’t think people have fully taken into account how that’s gonna last over time.

You know, it’s one thing to test a, a blade in a lightning facility when it’s brand new and it’s controlled conditions, and I know, um, the new lightning standard that’s coming out is going to require a whole bunch more testing, but it’s never gonna get away from the fact that you’re testing it brand, brand new.

Um, and y- you know, like- You can cover the carbon fiber with a metal mesh, but that mesh is on the surface of the blade, very high strain environment. It’s gonna get micro cracks. It’s gonna become less effective over time. Um, and then, yeah, like what about, okay, so you treat your carbon fiber as a conductive element and just assume it’s gonna have lightning going through it.

Well, you know, the resin isn’t [00:15:00] conductive. Is it sparking between fibers? And what about in like pultrusions, you know? Then you, um, uh, got little gaps between your pultrusions. Are you gonna have little sparks there over time? I just, I just don’t think that we know enough about how these are gonna last over time, and it’s, yeah.

Uh, to me I don’t know. I won’t say it’s not worth it, but I think that people don’t fully take into account the, the lightning risk of really, really big, um, blades. That’s my, that’s my rant for the day, my pessimistic rant for the day. Ask me something uplifting after. 

Allen Hall: Well, I don’t know if I can, but I, I would say it does seem like, uh, the Chinese manufacturers pushing to Europe are forcing some of the reactions from the Western OEMs.

And Australia’s one of those marketplaces, Brazil, India, that the competitive landscape is changing. Turkey, Türkiye is, is definitely one of those battlegrounds right now for market share, and, uh, Vestas and Nordex [00:16:00] really had nothing to offer there, where the Chinese were coming in with definitely larger turbines.

So it does seem like it’s a reactionary play to what the marketplace is asking for today. It’s a question of whether the Western OEMs can compete there or not on price. 

Rosemary Barnes: It shouldn’t be just a question of price, though. Mm-hmm. You know? It should be a question of are these, you know, is this an appropriate technology and is its total lifetime cost the best?

Um, so I do kind of, yeah, like feel like it’s a, you’re in a difficult spot if you’ve got a competitor that’s offering that. You, you kind of just gotta do the same. 

Allen Hall: Is that the question then coming out of Hamburg, is total lifetime cost? With everything that’s happening in Europe and all the, uh, Chinese manufacturers and Western OEMs battling together, does it come down to more of a 20-year, 30-year, 35-year approach of how much is this turbine going to cost to operate?

And with CMS systems getting so much better and we’re starting to see them actually integrated in the [00:17:00] turbine coming out of the factory, does that help us extend the lifetimes where you can get a better sense of what your true cost of operation’s gonna be? 

Matthew Stead: Yeah, I mean, um, I heard some stories about Nordex being very competitive against some, some of the, you know, the Asian, Chinese, um, manufacturers.

And so I think there’s a, yeah, and that’s a total cost of ownership type question, and so that, that must be factored into how they’re thinking about choosing, um, turbines. So yeah, I, I, yeah, I mean, for Nordex and so forth to be competing on an equal footing, um, considering that was great. 

Yolanda Padron: Can we really make a good plan for new turbines, though, and the lifetime operation of them?

‘Cause we, we had that problem in the US, right, where you have a lot of land, so you have hundreds of turbines in a site, and then you buy, you create these long, long contracts, and you create a plan of action for the next 10, 15, 30 years, and [00:18:00] you assume that everything that the OEM tells you is perfectly right or maybe has like a 2% difference in operational costs, and then you start seeing that over time, and then you start seeing a lot of operational issues.

And a lot of people who come onto these projects and start managing them don’t really have a lot to– a lot of wiggle room to be able to say, “Oh, this is actually not what it’s costing. Now I have to go and talk to my investors and say, ‘Can you please give me more money?'” Because someone initially maybe made some assumptions that at the time were right but didn’t end up being right 10, 15 years later.

Um, if we’re using new turbines that we don’t, we don’t really know a lot of the things that might come up aside from the fact that they’re likely to have larger lighting damage, right? Uh, but How, how are we gonna be able to do a, a long-term plan for these? 

Matthew Stead: Mm. 

Rosemary Barnes: I [00:19:00] agree with you. Like, Yolanda, I don’t think it’s possible to know, and I think that the risks are under- underestimated, or the, the future costs are underestimated.

Matthew Stead: I had a really good chat with Nicholas from PowerCurve today, and he was talking about how, you know, there’s an opportunity to, once the blade is in operation, once y- he’s g- he’s, he’s going, then you know how it performs, and then you can tweak it using aerodynamic add-ons to either increase the power or decrease the power, and then maximize y- the life of the blade.

So I thought that was a really super cool, um, use of looking at it when it’s in real operation and measuring it and seeing what happens, and then fine-tuning it once it’s actually in operation, depending on the site. So anyway, that was a great conversation. 

Rosemary Barnes: I thought of something up- uplifting that I can comment.

Um, one theme that I’ve had is a lot of y- you know, there’s a lot of smart… Like I said, there’s a lot of smart companies that have solved y- you know, like, a [00:20:00] specific problem. And over the last few years, I have often complained that OEMs are not so keen to, you know, work with those companies or even to allow asset owners to work with those companies.

And a lot of, um, companies that I’ve talked to at, at this, at this visit have said, “Now we’re working with the OEMs, and we’re in, you know, X, Y, Z, and- Yeah … ABC. Different, um, OEMs are, uh, qualifying our product now to use in the factories or in the field. And so I think that that’s a real, um, yeah, some real progress that’s really, really promising.

Matthew Stead: Can I also add that blade twists and blade torsion came up multiple times, um, as a factor. You know, is it properly considered? What is the actual blade twist, and what’s happening? How does it impact the, the, the shear webs and the, the junctions and so forth? And I don’t know. That was just seemed random to me that, that that seemed to be pretty common topic.

Came up multiple times. 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Well, it’s, like, completely [00:21:00] related to l- long blades ’cause I think the torsional, um, forces scale with the fourth power of blade length. It never used to be, like, anything to worry about at all, and then it’s suddenly becoming a huge thing. And when I was at, um, D2U’s test facility at Riso in Roskilde last week, that was one of the, the new testing, um, capabilities that they’ve got, is being able to apply either combined loading, um, like edgewise and flapwise together, um, or yeah, torsional loads of, of certain kinds.

It, it’s, it’s pretty hard to apply them in a realistic way, but y- you know, it’s definitely something that’s on, um, at the forefront of people’s minds. 

Yolanda Padron: Is that something that you guys noticed in Hamburg is happening more- Based on operational data, or is it still a lot of, like, the theoretical data? ‘Cause I know in the US a lot of the conferences and a lot of the papers that you see come out are based on theoretical data, and that’s great, but it’s

it doesn’t really do much to help us in operations. [00:22:00] Uh, did you guys see a shift in Hamburg? 

Matthew Stead: Yeah, I mean, I can add to that. I mean, full disclosure, we can measure the torsion of a blade and the twist of a blade. And so hence we were, you know, people are aware of that. And so, yeah, people were asking, um, ’cause they were worried, they were concerned.

You know, maybe it’s designed for, you know, four or five degrees, uh, or, or, you know, two degrees twist along the blade, but, you know, maybe they’re getting six, seven, eight degrees. So, um, yeah. So that’s, that’s, I think it’s fear, as Rosie said, as they get longer, um, they wanna know what’s going on. 

Rosemary Barnes: But how do owners know what their design, uh, like how much it’s designed to twist in torsion?

Like, I, I don’t believe that they would know that. There’s no way that the manufacturer is sharing that with them. 

Matthew Stead: Yeah. I, I, I’m not, I mean, correct me, but I’m not sure if it’s in part of one of the, um, IEC standards around what’s expected. But, yeah, I, I, I’m not, I definitely don’t know the answer, but my understanding [00:23:00] is that in the range of the three, four, five degrees is sort of what they would be aiming for, and if it’s more than that, it’s a problem.

But I could be wrong. 

Yolanda Padron: So there’s a stan- It’s in the standards, but it’s not something that is shared, like, this particular blade, this is what we tested it to. 

Allen Hall: I don’t know if they get any- can’t test it really. 

Matthew Stead: Yeah. And all, all Catapult have a strong push. I, I think we talked about the, um, survey, and all Catapult, um, are really trying to get deep into this, um, question and this challenge.

Allen Hall: I, and Matthew and, and Rosie, uh, your inputs on this podcast are changing the way that the industry does business. It’s hard to see from your desk, but I, I hear it all the time. I do. And that’s good. You should. You, you totally should. And that’s what’s, what we’re trying to do here, is make the world just infinitesimally better every day in wind.

We’re trying. [00:24:00] That wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn or email us at [email protected]. And if you found value in today’s conversation, please leave us a review.

It really helps other wind energy professionals discover the show. And don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. So for Rosie, Yolanda, and Matthew, I’m Allen Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.