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This week we discuss Sinonus’ innovative approach to using wind turbine blades for energy storage and the G+ Global Offshore Wind Health and Safety Organization’s report on safety incidents. Allen and Joel discuss Active Training Team’s (ATT) immersive safety training methods, featured in PES Wind Magazine. We also highlight Mississippi’s first utility-scale wind farm, Delta Wind, featuring 41 Vestas 4.5 MW turbines.
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!
Pardalote Consulting – https://www.pardaloteconsulting.com
Weather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.com
Intelstor – https://www.intelstor.com
Allen Hall: A UK plane passenger awoke from a long nap thinking he’d arrived at the destination, only to realize the aircraft was still stuck at the gate. And if you haven’t seen this little clip, this guy was sleeping for a couple of hours. Over in the UK, wakes up, asks his neighbor, Hey, are we there yet? And she turns and says, no, we haven’t left.
We recently had that happen to us coming back from San Diego, where I took a nap, and I swear, it must have been an hour and a half later, we hadn’t moved. And I don’t, I think Rosemary, you’ve been on some really long flights too. Are you getting stuck on the ground for some of these flights?
Rosemary Barnes: It is so annoying when you’re stuck on the ground, like before you’ve got a, I don’t know, an 18 hour flight or whatever to get stuck on the ground for hours.
And you’re like, we’re not even, we’re not even progressing. It’s really hard to deal with mentally. But they do often make it up because obviously they can, they don’t fly as fast as they can around the world all the time. They fly in the way that’s most fuel, more fuel efficient. So sometimes they can burn a bit more fuel to get you there faster. If they, yeah, if there’s an economic reason for them to they’re going to have to, pay some penalties or hold a, of the next flight for people who are, yeah, need to transfer.
Joel Saxum: You could have been on a flight like Allen and I were. Where, we were supposed to board at 4pm, we didn’t end up boarding until 9pm, and then once we boarded, and everybody got settled down and we were ready to push back from the gate, then they informed us that the pilots had timed out on their daily time limit, so they Did we all off boarded and then had to get moved to flights the next day.
Philip Totaro: I once fell asleep on a train in Switzerland that eventually led me to being escorted out of the country. It can happen.
Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m Allen Hall and here’s this week’s headlines. Vestas has received a massive 577 megawatt order from Tag Energy to supply wind turbines for the second stage of the landmark 1. gigawatt Golden Plains onshore wind project in Australia. Vestas will deliver 93 of their megawatt turbines during the first quarter of 2025 with commissioning expected in 2026.
Vestas is currently working on the first stage of the project that will utilize 122 of the V162 6. 2 megawatt machines. When completed, the Golden Plains site will be Vestas largest onshore wind farm to date. Vestas has also secured a 660 megawatt order from RWE for the Nord Sea Cluster A offshore wind project in Germany.
A delivery of the 44 15 megawatt turbines is expected in 2026. Vestas will also service the turbines under a five year agreement followed by an operational support agreement. Meanwhile in the U. S., Dominion Energy is installing its first model pile foundations for the 6. 2 gigawatt coastal Virginia offshore wind project, marking the official construction kickoff.
The 9. 8 billion project, slated for completion in late 2026, will ultimately feature 176 turbines. On the West Coast, RWE is set to commence site surveys for its planned 1. 6 gigawatt floating wind farm 20 miles off of Humboldt County, California. RWE is using an autonomous underwater vehicle for the surveys to minimize impacts on marine life and fishing.
In other U. S. news, the future of popular Chinese drone maker DJI remains uncertain as Congress weighs a potential ban over national security concerns. A ban could disrupt key industries reliant on DJI drones from agriculture to search and rescue and stifle competition and innovation in the drone market.
However, proponents argue it would bolster American drone companies. This situation highlights the complex considerations around foreign technology, and national security. And finally, a new Columbia University report reveals surging local opposition is blocking hundreds of renewable energy projects across the U. S. with dozens of new restrictions in just the last year.
Offshore wind faces particularly tough Stiff challenges as high profile developments battle lawsuits over impacts on endangered species and shorelines. While some opposition appears coordinated, experts believe much reflects the genuine grassroots concerns over perceived ecological risks.
The report warns that growing resistance could seriously impede climate progress, underscoring the urgent need for officials and developers. To better address local worries and build community support for critical and renewable energy development. Failure to effectively navigate this opposition may threaten the nation’s ability to achieve a cleaner energy future.
That’s the week’s top news stories. Now here’s our panel renewable energy expert and founder of Pardalote Consulting, Rosemary Barnes. CEO and founder of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum. In the race to transition to a cleaner, more sustainable future, as everybody has talked about on this podcast the rise of renewable energy sources like wind and solar have been a game changer, everybody.
But the, one of the biggest challenges is storage, right? So there’s been a lot of companies looking at different kinds of storage. There is a Swedish startup that’s looking at, using the carbon fiber in wind turbine blades as a storage device. That company is named Sinonus and they are talking about structural batteries.
So essentially taking the carbon fiber that’s used as structure for these really long wind turbine blades and using the carbon fiber as an electrode and a conductor and also load bearing structural aspects. Now, And this is Rosemary, and this is where I want to get you involved in this. They’re saying that they can add electricity storage without adding any extra weight to the structure.
And I’m trying to understand. For multiple reasons, Rosemary, because you’ve been involved in blade design, structural design. You’re a composites expert. And you had the opportunity to play around with lightning and icing systems or de icing systems on blades. There’s a lot, electrically, that can happen on a wind turbine blade.
Is using the carbon a good way to store energy? on a blade?
Rosemary Barnes: I, it’s really disappointing that they haven’t even given a stab at how much could be stored in a blade. Because and I don’t fully understand the mechanism. I have worked on projects that used carbon fiber in blades as a, yeah, as a heating element.
And even considered the possibility of using the. Connective parts of a blade as a lightning conductor, purposely doing it rather than, having to try. Obviously the blade wants that to happen. When lightning hits it, it does want to go through all those conductive elements, but to, design it so that it’s on purpose and that it won’t damage the blade structure.
So definitely consider all that, but it was never like this article that I’ve read says that it’s a way of getting something for nothing. And I think that’s a a really strange interpretation of that phrase. Like when I hear the phrase getting something for nothing, I don’t think, Oh, you don’t add any weight to a turbine.
I would think you don’t add any cost to a turbine, which obviously is not going to be true. It’s also not going to be true that you don’t add any weight to the turbine, because obviously there are components that need to be added. It doesn’t, there isn’t batteries in every single cup of fiber blade out there already, or you’re going to need to do some sort of tweaks, and I don’t know what they are, because it hasn’t been mentioned in the article.
Yeah, definitely not something for nothing whether or not it’s worth it or not would just totally depend on how much energy storage could be in there. But it, I don’t know, to me, it feels so much it’s a kind of a recurring idea that pops up again and again in conversations that I used to have when I was, working, leading the Blade de icing team and now it pops up in comments on YouTube.
People always want to, take what’s there. there and then get something else out of it. So a really common one that I hear is, okay, why don’t we store weights at the top of a wind turbine and then lower them with an electric winch when you the wind isn’t blowing and then you’ve got energy storage.
Oh, Hey, you’ve got this big steel cylinder. You could be using that for compressed energy storage. Yeah, or pumped hydro, put a reservoir at the top of the nacelle. Everyone always wants to do these like little add ons. And I think that the first thing that you’ve got to consider is, how much would it cost to add a lithium ion battery that does the same thing as what you’re trying to do?
If it’s a small amount of energy stored and it’s a small lithium ion battery, Then, but it’s so obvious that’s what you would do. It’s, it’s a very neat, simple system. You can just tie it into the existing electronics. It’s a pain working with electricity in the blades because, the blades rotate, you can’t just connect it with a cable cause it would just, spool itself up and I don’t know, and break it.
So you need to get electricity through a slip ring and. That’s hard. If it’s a meaningful amount of of electricity, that’s always been a big constraint on anything that I’ve done electrically inside a blade. And obviously for lightning protection systems too, they’ve got to make sure that connection is maintained, even when the.
The rotors turning, the blades are pitching. So there’s a lot of complication there and yeah, without knowing how much energy can be stored, it’s impossible to say if the cost benefit is there, it’s definitely not something for nothing. And my initial expectation is that it’s no way going to be worth the hassle to put it inside a blade.
Yeah, but other things, that aren’t so hard to work with as a, a wind turbine and especially, yeah, electricity in the blaze. Yeah, sure. Maybe in. Buildings like they say, or I don’t know. But a lot of times people work from solution to problem. And it’s like the solution here is using less space to store energy in how many examples is space really the constraint for your energy storage?
Not that many, not in buildings, I would suggest you can, quite easily shove a lithium ion battery in a basement or a garage or whatever. Yeah, so that’s my tentative negative take on it, but don’t know the details.
Joel Saxum: Can I ask you a physics question, Rosemary? Maybe this is an Allen and Rosemary question, but if you’re going to somehow use basically a carbon fiber plank or sheet or structural member as a electricity storing mechanism, as a capacitor per se, Doesn’t that, wouldn’t that make it more attractive to lightning?
Allen Hall: Maybe?
Rosemary Barnes: It depends what you’re adding. If you’re adding, if you’re adding cables, like electrical cables and or wires or something, then yeah, that’s going to complicate your lightning protection system for sure. If all you’re doing is just connecting two little wires at the root of the blade, then that will be small compared to the other large, many large problems that you’ll need to solve.
Joel Saxum: I’m just thinking yeah, we have enough problems with trying to keep lightning away from carbon fiber structural elements. Let’s not make them more electrically Charged or conductive already? I don’t, but I don’t, again, I don’t know the physics behind that.
Allen Hall: In one of Rosemary’s YouTube videos, I’m pretty sure you talked about galvanic batteries.
Two different metals touching or two different elements touching, creating a voltage. I think I remember that. You explained that. So the carbon fiber is like one of, galvanic chart that’s way over to one side. If they hooked it to something like aluminum, the other side, you can make a nice little battery with it.
But I’ve never seen anybody implement that into a structure, that’s for sure. And it would need some sort of electrolyte on top of it, right?
Rosemary Barnes: I’ve seen people do it by accident plenty of times. I haven’t seen it done.
Joel Saxum: But by design, isn’t the battery gonna have, not, I’m not gonna say half life, it’s not nuclear, but doesn’t it degrade over time, the structural properties? If you’re going to make a battery out of it, so you’re going to be compromising the structural integrity of it while using it as a battery.
Allen Hall: Rosemary, correct me if I’m wrong here, but the carbon fiber is the one that doesn’t get absorbed or broken down, so it would remain, I think, it’s pretty much inert, you really can’t really mess with carbon fiber and destroy it.
So I think it would be fine.
Rosemary Barnes: I don’t know. It also depends on the temperature as well. If the temperature is rising noticeably, then that’s going to cause issues. There’s a lot of testing that would need to be done. I’m not going to rule it out categorically. I’m assuming that these guys have at least made small scale examples in the lab and that the science is there.
Maybe they’ve gone so far as to, consider what the lifetime of the system would be, I don’t know, but I’d be pretty, I think it’s pretty safe to say they wouldn’t have done any of the the work that you would need to do to integrate it into a blade and make sure that it’s not affecting the blade structure, the blade lifetime, that it’s not messing with the manufacturing process.
There’s a whole big range of things that would need to be considered. And it’d be really interesting to talk to them. I think we should try and see if we can get them on for a special episode to find out more about it because, yeah, like all I’ve got for now is the same, yeah, need to yeah I don’t know, non, non fun interpretation that’s the same as every time.
Yeah. Some way that you can shove an energy storage system into a wind turbine. Yeah, you, of course you could, you can fill your whole tower up with, I dunno, kerosene and then have a generator at the bottom if you wanted to there’s any number of , there’s any number of ways you can store energy in a wind turbine.
And there’s a lot fewer ways that you should store energy in a wind turbine item. And currently they’re also, they’re connected to the electricity grid. Or they’ve got an electricity as a prop supply. They don’t just, they don’t only have electricity available when the turbine’s turning so if it’s only like a small amount of electricity that you could use to run a light or keep a data logger logging while there’s no wind, then that’s not useful because they already have that power connection and that problem’s already been solved.
So yeah, it would have to be a meaningful amount of energy that you would actually make money from, selling that energy yeah, for it to make any sense.
Philip Totaro: Okay. One, one thing with that though is there is, there are applications where this could come in handy. One would be if it’s enough power and we, neither of us knows whether or not it is, but if it’s enough power to, to power the the pumps and fans for an ice protection system, that could be one use case where this would come in handy.
Again, if it’s, if it would work. The other one is if you lose the grid and you still need to power some of your ancillary systems, like pumps, motors, and fans on the turbine, having this capability, like being able to power your pitch system right now we use batteries or supercapacitors to power the pitch system.
If this could be hooked up to that would be a useful. Or a, that would be a use case that would be beneficial. So that, that’s something that I would like to explore, but I don’t know how much power this thing really produces or could store.
Rosemary Barnes: No, that’s it. And It’s got competition doing all the things that it could potentially do.
There is already alternatives available, so it has to be better than them. It’s not a game changer. It would be potentially an incremental improvement is my expectation of it for a winter, incremental improvements are where it’s at for wind energy at the moment being a mature technology.
So it’s not to say that it’s not worth pursuing, but Yeah, without any numbers.
Joel Saxum: At that rate, you could just duct tape a bunch of those shake weight flashlights inside of it and make power.
Rosemary Barnes: I did reference that shaker flashlight in a video one time about wave energy, because they have the problem of trying to convert back and forth motion into electricity generation, which is, yeah, harder than a rotational one.
Allen Hall: Rosemary, you and I are probably the only two that have been around large carbon fiber structures and have gotten shocked by them. When did you were doing lightning testing and anti ice system? So you had electricity and carbon fiber. Have you ever been shocked by a carbon structure?
Rosemary Barnes: I haven’t. I have set them on fire though.
Accidentally. Let’s underscore that, accidentally.
Allen Hall: Is that, yeah, is that on purpose or how does this work?
Rosemary Barnes: No. One time, one time we were testing to see if it would catch fire. So I guess that you can say that’s not really accidental, but then also, yeah, times when I had thought that the risk of fire had been designed out It had not.
Obviously, that’s better to know that this was not in, this was not in the field. This was in the research and development stage. That’s where you want to catch it. That’s why you do all that testing. But yeah, that’s why I know that when people say, you’ve designed out the risk of whatever happening you might have.
Allen Hall: Carbon fiber airplane design days. We were involved with the carbon fiber hand layup, so this is very similar to wind turbine blades. So they made a carbon fiber airplane with hand laid up, and when that airplane would go fly through icing conditions, it would build up a really significant charge on it, and it would hold that charge.
So if you, the technician or engineer walked up to the airplane without grounding the airplane first, you would get walloped, knocked to the ground. Even several hours later, it still would bite you.
Rosemary Barnes: It can happen with glass blades as well. You have to, when you’re working on a blade in the factory, you have to ground the blade while you’re grinding because otherwise all that grinding builds up a static charge.
And it can be severe enough that I heard of a a technician who, or yeah, a factory worker who was grinding an un, an ungrounded blade, and shocked themselves bad enough to stop their heart and have to go to hospital. They didn’t die, but. It was pretty serious. So static electricity sounds like it always sounds so trivial, right?
Because every kid will, get a buzz by running down the, carpeted corridor and zapping themselves on the doorknob at the end of it. And, that’s what static electricity means, but it’s still electricity, it’ll still, build it up.
Build up a big enough potential and you can hurt yourself.
Lightning is an act of God, but lightning damage is not. Actually, it’s very predictable and very preventable. Strike Tape is a lightning protection system upgrade for wind turbines made by WeatherGuard. It dramatically improves the effectiveness of the factory LPS so you can stop worrying about lightning damage.
Allen Hall: A troubling report was recently released by the G plus global Offshore Wind Health and Safety Organization, and the data shows an alarming 94% increase in safety incidents in 2023 compared to 2022.
In total, there were almost 1700 reported incidents up from about 860 in 2022. These numbers are pretty alarming. The sharp rise can be attributed in part to the operational hours increasing because of offshore wind installations. Overall, if you look at the industry, the hazards were up pretty much everywhere.
The biggest hazard tended to be during construction. That about a thousand incidents in total took place on construction sites. 560 happened during operational projects. About 70 occurred during the site development. So there seems to be an increased risk during construction, which would make the most sense Joel, that there’s just a lot of big moving pieces and moving parts and a lot of or mostly organized activity.
But when things go sideways, it can, someone can get hurt.
Joel Saxum: And there’s a lot of old development going on globally right now, right? You’ve got a lot of offshore stuff going on in Taiwan. We have the south fork going on in the U. S. Sunrise is coming in the U. S. There’s a bunch of wind farms coming, right?
So that means that you’re going to be putting new people to work in these situations that they haven’t done before. So that’s usually the biggest hazard is when you introduce new people to new tasks, new jobs. You can train all day, but until you’ve been out there hooking things up, moving things around, you aren’t gonna see it.
You’re not gonna know it, right? And if you look at the past installations, like I said, like most of the stuff is during construction. Absolutely. That’s when there’s the most moving parts. Of course, it’s gonna be during construction, but if you look at the, past history of offshore wind construction.
Offshore wind construction has been mainly offshore. North Sea, right? And up in one specific area. There’s a few specific companies that have been doing the majority of that, and that means that you have the same people doing the same tasks as they’ve done before. All this other new development and all these different places in the world means new people, new tasks, new vessels, even just learning how a vessel works and getting that thing ironed out.
Because you know how say you’re a crane operator, you know how the crane on this vessel works. Now you’ve got a brand new crane. You got to figure out how that one works. And there’s little nuances to everything. To me, it’s unfortunate. You hate to see these things grow. However, with the breakneck speed that we’re trying to install offshore wind capacity at It makes sense.
I I could see foresee this happening.
Philip Totaro: It is unfortunate. And the reality of it too, is the G plus doesn’t even have a complete picture for a lot of the injuries and even deaths that have happened in China. Where it’s obviously the biggest segment now of the offshore market and the biggest market globally.
And they’ve had, from our, local affiliates and contacts there we’ve gotten reports that they’ve had multiple incidents over the years. They even had an incident with a vessel going down after it rammed into a monopile. They’ve, Unfortunately, this is, as Joel’s mentioned, a serious situation and something that really requires the proper training that, you know whether it’s GWO or some other organization that can provide the necessary background.
It’s as much training as we can get for people. It’s going to be helpful, but you’re right. It’s Joel it’s procedures when you’re out there in the field or in the ocean, as it were. That are really gonna make the difference between, hazards becoming serious hazards or something, a situation that can be diffused.
Joel Saxum: Yeah Phil, I’m gonna make an odd tie here, and I’m sure this is sitting in the back of your head, but If you’re talking about just the United States, if our injury rate looks any bit higher than it would to the same kind of insulation going in Northern Europe, you can attribute that directly to the Jones Act.
Philip Totaro: To an extent, yes, because we’re precluding people that have experience from being able to crew the vessels that, we would be using over here and to, to a certain extent, this is why I’ve actually made the proposal to say, all right, look, maybe we make a Jones Act exemption or something, tweak it so that in the first 10 years, while we’re trying to ramp up the industry, let’s get it.
Maybe it’s a foreign flagged vessel, but let’s have it crewed at least 50 percent or something by, U. S. citizens, green card holders, and the rest are people that have the requisite experience from Europe or Asia that, are going to be able to, because again, we can have those people come over and do you. Training, which is also important, but, having an experienced crew do something is going to make it safer and speed up the time it’s going to take to get up the learning curve. And that’s, I think a practical, I don’t know why that’s not being talked about as a practical solution to this Jones Act situation.
Um, every time I talk about the Jones Act, the U. S. Merchant Mariners are always, chirping in my ear that you’re costing us jobs, but you want to be safe in your job too, and you need to be experienced in your job, and how better to do that than learning from the people who have pioneered this and been doing it for 30 years?
Joel Saxum: Yeah, when you talk about the advantages of union labor, the advantages usually are this. They’re highly trained. They know their jobs they have support in the background, all these things, right? So that’s why you go and, you hire a union electrician or something, because you assume that they are the top tier people in that category to do the work.
However, you may be a union mariner or someone, an offshore worker, but. I can guarantee you if you’re, there’s 99 percent chance you’ve never installed a wind turbine offshore in the U. S. If that’s what you are. So the things that you go for, the union labor work for, the qualities that you’re shooting for there, they don’t exist yet.
They will, right? We will build that capacity. That’ll come in the next few years. But right now on T zero with our first, with just self work is just done, they’re all rookies.
Allen Hall: Is offshore wind assembly and construction, is that just plain on the job training? There’s no place to go to school to get some semblance of how to do this, right?
Or in, not in the States, there’s not.
Joel Saxum: Allen, you and I talked to someone from Orsted a while back, and one of the things that they were doing was grabbing some people and putting them through rotations over in Europe before we did some stuff here. Remember that? And man, high five, virtual high five to that person because that is a great plan to get some people and now you’re not going to be able to do that with every single person, right?
These, there’s a lot of, at the end of the day, there’s some people on these vessels that are cooks and stuff like that. Like they don’t, cooking, right? Nothing to take away from that. I love food. But there’s specialized activities that go on in these vessels that you will only learn unless you’re out there doing it.
You know what I mean? You’re not going to understand it.
Allen Hall: Isn’t there a problem right now? Onshore are trying to find new people to enter onshore. I’m guessing they’re having the same trouble offshore. Oh, absolutely.
Philip Totaro: But again that’s partly a training issue. And that’s partly just being able to attract the right kind of people.
Obviously the industry wants a depth and breadth of knowledge from as many people as they can get. But if we’re understaffed Then the only way you close that gap is with A, appropriate training and B, on the job experience. But we have to make sure that on the job experience is safe for everybody.
It’s got to be a safe environment.
Allen Hall: Yeah, I totally agree with you there. Going back to the new entries into the wind market, I’ve seen some more articles recently talking about how difficult it is for community colleges to attract students to their wind energy programs, and I’m assuming part of that is the location where these wind farms are.
They’re not really near big civilization. So if you want to live next to a shopping center, you’re not going to be working at a wind farm. Generally speaking, this doesn’t, that does exist. For offshore wind, where you’re near big cities, but it’s just on off, right? You’re around New York City, you’re around Boston, you’re around Philadelphia.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, but those skill sets don’t really cross, right? Someone that can go, someone that has built wind farms in Texas has no those, the only thing that makes sense is oh yes, when the bolts come together, they, that, okay. But going offshore that person’s skill set does not immediately transfer.
Also, you have to be part of a maritime union, probably, to get offshore anyway, so that’s not a
Philip Totaro: easy transition. And keep in mind, too, that going back to the point raised earlier, we do have some universities that have partnered with industry and have partnered with organizations like GWO to provide, Rutgers University is one, there’s one up in Rhode Island, there’s another one in Massachusetts, I can’t remember all the names of them, unfortunately, there’s another one in New York so we are starting to roll this out, but it’s slower, as with the pace of, installations in the U.
S. The rollout of these training facilities and programs has been slower than it probably needs to be, if you’re hoping to deploy a workforce to start constructing sunrise or empire wind or et cetera, these people, revolution wind, these people need to be trained yesterday, to be able to get out there next week when, a lot of these companies are, desperately looking for people to start construction with how long it’s taken to get through the permitting process and the offtake and PPA execution process.
ATT
Allen Hall: And this quarter’s PES Wind Magazine, really good articles inside of there. If you haven’t downloaded it already, just go to peswind.com. You can download this issue. And this issue, there’s a really good article by Active Training Team, which is based in the United Kingdom, who do safety training. And they were involved in the Horn C2 project with Ørsted.
And Ørsted was integral with the ATT on, and making the training more interactive, more immersive. And Joel, I know you have looked at the videos online from Active Training Team. It’s not like any other training program that I have ever been to.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, to me, it reminds me of in the States here, sometimes you have a high school thing where they bring in a wrecked up car.
And it’s, to avert people from drinking and driving. So they bring it out, they show you what can happen, and they bring in, they may bring in, to speak, a parent. Of a child who’s been, affected by it or by drunk driving or even the person who was drinking and driving and affected others lives and have them speak to you, so it’s an immersion into The reality of what the situation could bring.
And that’s what it seems to me like this, that active training team is bringing to the industrial education space, because let’s face it, we’ve all been through, if you’re in any kind of industry, whether it’s oil and gas or wind or solar, or I don’t know, a smelting plant, whatever, you’ve been through a bunch of training videos that are boring.
You sit there, you have to watch these twelve videos and sign off that you watched them and it’s like a checkbox. Yes, that gives you some knowledge. I have some knowledge of, smell H2S, look and see which way the wind is going. Go uphill and upwind. I remember those things from training, but this what they’re doing is, So immersive and engaging to all the senses you’re in there, you have actors in some of the situations showing, how people’s feelings and emotions can change what’s happening on the ground in real time. And everything you read from people that have done this training from companies like SSE, Siemens Energy, Siemens Gamesa, National Grid, RWE’s been the sit, the site, Ocean Winds, Equinor, Scottish Power, all of these operators up in North Atlantic, they’re taking advantage of this training that can really give their people a dose of reality and show them the ramifications of What it’s like if they don’t adhere to the safety culture that’s being built.
Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s remarkable that many other safety organizations haven’t tried this method because it’s so interactive. And the actors, I thought, was a really interesting piece. There’s real people portraying an accident scenario right in front of you. And that makes it a lot more real. And ORSID have invested a good bit of money in the original training facility, like over a million pounds, going ahead.
To do this.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, I think it was like one, 1.4 million pounds. And when you break it down, they’ve or Ted put that money up, they’ve put over 2000 people through the program and that includes, it’s like a one day from senior leaders to the back office and frontline staff, anybody from horn C two.
Break it down. 2000 people that have been out there over 1. 4 billion pounds. That’s only 700 pound per person investment. Of course, you’re paying for their wages and, ongoing people at the training facility. But 1. 4 billion pounds. If you’re a large company and you’re putting together training materials, you can spend that much, just putting together videos to have.
So putting something in that’s in person, that’s immersive, that really shows the the outcome and can get the people to buy into it better. I think it’s a great investment.
Allen Hall: It looks like Active Training Team is actually building a facility up in Scotland at the moment, or has built one. So it’s expanding, which is fantastic.
I, I, Would personally like to see this up close because it’s so unique in the space, I’m thinking about all the onshore situations in the United States where this kind of training would make a huge impact on the level of safety. And I know we’ve had a couple of incidences in the United States recently, and this would, I think, would help to make it a little more real.
When you look at
Joel Saxum: the the little short bio about the author of the article here, that’s contributing to PES Wind is a Dermot Kerrigan. And what it says is they have an award winning team. ATT has an award winning team of professional writers, trainers, facilitators, actors, psychologists, and digital learning specialists.
So they’ve got it, they’re taking a completely different approach to training, and I think it’s from my perspective, at least, it’s going to pay off.
Allen Hall: Yeah. It’s unique. And I do think this, we’ll see this on the shores of America relatively soon. So if you haven’t picked up the latest PES Wind Magazine, go to peswind.com. And download it and take a look at the active training team article. It’s really good.
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Allen Hall: As we do develop more offshore wind farms off the east coast of the United States and eventually off the coast of California the federal bureaucrats are looking into safety of these sites and one of those unannounced inspections happened just recently where the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement conducted its first ever inspection of an operational wind turbine farm.
It took place at the South Fork Wind Project located off the coast of New York and Rhode Island. During the visit, the Safety and Environmental Enforcement Folks evaluated South Fork’s risk analysis procedures and controls, both at the onshore control center and the offshore turbine. Just give you a little bit of background on this.
What they did is make an unannounced visit that was based upon a sort of a plan and a scenario. And the scenario went like this. A fisherman was out fishing. By one of these wind turbines out by South Fork and notice that there was some sheen on the top of the water Assumed it was oil called the call the beds I guess and the inspectors came out to go do an unannounced visit to South Fork and to see what South Fork would do In this sort of scenario and make sure they were ready I haven’t seen, I assume South Fork did just fine, but if you’re, my concern about this is that if this is something really new, somebody is going to screw up, right?
Because it’s not, it’s everything is so new at South Fork, you really would have a hard time responding to that as cleanly as you would wish probably, because. Everything is new. You don’t, do you have the people on staff that would, you know, that just part of their daily life is thinking about this? If they drip some oil into the water?
Joel Saxum: Yeah, you should. And from my, I hate federal oversight or government oversight in general. That’s who I am as a person. However, I think this is a good idea. South Fork Wind is a brand new wind farm. It’s going to be, it’s square in the public eye from, for the whole country, right?
Everybody’s looking at this thing, especially anybody on the East coast. Whether you’re for renewables or not, what these audits are for is to make sure that, everything is in place, right? So if you do fail or you miss a couple of check boxes, perfect. Let’s get those up to speed because I can guarantee you that.
You know the orsted people are the people in the construction companies. Everybody’s Dotting their eyes and crossing their t’s and doing everything they can to make sure safety is at all the safety policies procedures engineering design is adhered to however, you have to understand if you’ve never been offshore working the offshore environment is It’s its own animal, right?
So it is, it’s very unforgiving. Something bad happens out there, it’s not oh darn, get it, grab, have Billy Bob run out here in his truck and grab this. Like if something bad happens people can die, right? It’s an animal. So having this inspection or audit and having them regular and unannounced, this is one of the times I don’t really have a problem with it.
The one thing I don’t understand here is I’ve never heard of the Bureau of Safety Environmental Enforcement. Like we have OSHA and like the EPA and how many freaking agencies do we have? Ooh, I don’t understand. That’s the one that gets me on this. I
Philip Totaro: will concur with what Joel’s saying and also remind everybody of when Deepwater Horizon happened in 2010.
The government agency responsible for inspections and oversight had the guy who was responsible for doing the inspections for Deepwater Horizon was still in training and I don’t blame him for that. I, again, that’s an institutional issue, the, and the number of rigs multiplied by the number of inspections that are supposed to be required for the rigs meant that we would have had to employed as something like.
10, 000 more inspectors than what that agency at the time even had. Having moved on 14 years later from that, To something like this where, all right, this is the first time they’re doing it and they have to, yes, everybody’s got a learning curve to get up, Allen, the reality of it is that obviously the turbines usually not going to explode and spew oil all over.
In the first place, but in the event that, we’ve all seen wind turbines that are leaking grease and oil and whatnot. If it starts becoming more of a problem, then the industry, looks bad. And the scenario that they’re gaming out here. Is not an impractical one, particularly for some of the fishermen in the Northeast who already feel a bit slighted about the process that’s been undertaken to get these wind farms approved.
It’s easy for them to trigger, Hey, we’re going to bring the government out to, to just waste everybody’s time and do a bunch of unnecessary inspections because I don’t like wind energy. And that’s the sort of thing that we have to be able to be on top of as an industry is let’s not give these people a reason to raise a red flag.
Joel Saxum: In most industries the number one hazard at work is driving. So here, and I’m not, I don’t, I’m not an HSE professional for offshore wind, but I would be in from cause I have been offshore. I have done boat to boat jobs. I haven’t done boat to platform jobs. The most dangerous thing that we always recognize on those projects was transfers.
If you’re transferring from vessel to vessel or vessel to platform, that’s the most dangerous part of your day. It’s like the transit thing, right? Like driving onshore work, driving is the hazardous offshore work transfers is the most hazardous. So I would say that’s one thing that they wanted to make sure because that’s very hazardous activity and people, let alone the environmental part of things, oil sheens and stuff we’re talking about, but like the actual occupational hazard.
I would say in offshore wind, the highest one is transfers and so they’re probably definitely putting a microscope on that. The wind farm of the week, this week we’re gonna go to a state we’ve never been before. So Mississippi is announced its first utility scale. Wind farm is officially online. It’s called Delta Wind.
It’s near the Arkansas and Tennessee border, and it has the tallest onshore turbines in the us. There are 41 Vestas units There. At four and a half megawatts each and with a tip height of almost 700 feet in the air Amazon is purchasing the power from the 184 and a half megawatt facility, which is owned by a E S.
And what they’re doing with it is powering data centers and logistics hubs. So back in January, Amazon had announced 10, a 10 billion investment in two data centers, the single largest capital investment in Mississippi’s history. So a lot of things moving down there. Yeah. For the wind farm sits on 14, 000 acres of private farmland, and it will generate over a hundred million dollars in tax revenue over its lifetime.
So congrats to Mississippi with their first utility scale wind farm Delta wind.
Allen Hall: That’s going to do it for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. Thanks for listening. Please provide us a five star rating on your podcast platform and subscribe in the show notes below to Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter.
And check out Rosemary’s YouTube channel, Engineering with Rosie. And we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.
