Rosemary’s back, and the full Uptime crew has a lively discussion about PPAs, wind’s political problems, shipping challenges, and the future of QC for offshore blades. PLUS, if you’d like to double your retention rate for wind turbine techs, don’t miss the 3S Lift interview.
Earlier this month, New York’s Arthur Kill Offshore Wind Terminal Project got a $48M grant to begin work on the offshore wind staging and assembly facility off Staten Island, NY – and other ports got funding, too. But all is not well on the US side of the Atlantic: Avangrid said its Commonwealth Wind project is “no longer viable” and asked for a one-month delay to review and renegotiate PPAs. Massachusetts DPU denied the request. Who will blink? What will it take to get the project back on track?
Visit Pardalote Consulting at https://www.pardaloteconsulting.com
Wind Power Lab – https://windpowerlab.com
Weather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.com
3S Lift – http://www.3Slift.com
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Uptime 138 Audio Pod Cut 1
Allen Hall: Well, it’s been a busy week at Uptime. We have a pack show in Rosemary’s back. We’re
Joel Saxum: happy to have her as well. So we’re gonna speak about Avan grid raising some red flags in their US offshore development plans with pricing and PPAs, and also kind of slide into what that means for the US ship builders and, and what they’re thinking about of being a little bit hesitant to start building some of these vessels.
And then also along the same lines of the US offshore push is a Staten Island area is getting some. To build out a good port facility to get these New York facilities
Allen Hall: up and running. And China is building the first offshore solar and wind combined facility. And then I have a great interview with RS Lift, America’s President, Jill Shone, and we talk about all things lifts.
So stay tuned. It’s, it’s a great episode. I’m Allen Hall, President of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I’m here with Australian Blade Wiz Rosemary Barnes, and my good friend from Wind Power Lab, Joel Saxon. And this is the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.
Rosemary Barnes: Well,
Allen Hall: Rosemary’s back. After a long break and welcome Rosemary to the show again. . Thank you for being here. We had a really nice break, I take it. We missed
Rosemary Barnes: you. Yeah. Very relaxing. Yeah. , I’ve got a three and a half old little boy now, so. Yeah, he’s been taking up my time, but he’s with his dad now, so hope we can get through a podcast without any crying babies.
Allen Hall: we have a new policy. We’re calling it the Rosemary policy and, and Rosemary, you can’t leave anymore because since you left, the Queen died. UK has two, has had two prime ministers, , Right? We’re in some sort of conflict in Ukraine. No one can figure out quite yet. And you know, inflation is rampant. The world’s practically on fire at this point.
You know, it all seems to correlate about the time you. Took off. So welcome back. Maybe the world will come
Rosemary Barnes: back in order. I think some of those things happened before I went away, and others, I’m not a hundred percent sure that I’m directly responsible.
Joel Saxum: And we got no diesel fuel after the United States either.
Allen Hall: And no diesel fuel. That’s exact. Yeah. Right. Really? Yeah. Pretty much out of everything in the states right now.
Rosemary Barnes: More
Allen Hall: electric cars than That’s right. It’s so, it’s, it is a, a great time to have rosemary back because we have a lot to talk about. The world is on fire and, and that affects wind turbines around the world.
So we’re gonna have a really good show. Right top of the order, Avan grid raises a huge red flag in you have offshore and Avan Grid has been talking with the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities, and in my wonderful state, all the rates are sort of set. Electricity rates are set with the Department of Public Utilities, Avan Grid, you know, they’re, they’re working on the Common Wealth Wind Project, which is a 1.2 gigawatt project.
Offshore wind project is big. And they had negotiated PPAs with the state back in May, but now they’re rethinking it and they’ve asked, actually filed a motion to, to put talks on hold for a month while they kind of regroup because they think the project is no longer viable. And, and Rosemary, they had agreed to PPAs of seven, roughly $72 a megawatt.
But it looks like they’re gonna be searching for some more PPA money. And obviously the major issues are, like we were talking about commodity pricing, rising interest rates, supply chain delays, inflation seems to be how to control at the minute. What do we do ? Like where does it go from heroes? Mary is, is there, is, do these things tamp down after a while?
Is it just part of the process that the, the companies installing the wind turbines are gonna be in conflict with the states that are sort of regulating the electricity?
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I wonder, and I wonder how many more are gonna come after this cuz there’s, I mean, there’s two sides to it that costs have definitely increased and probably, I mean, maybe it’s fair enough that they’ve increased faster than anyone was expecting a year or two ago.
But I also think that, you know, the being such a bidding frenzy for these offshore locations, and we’ve all been surprised at how much people have been prepared to, or, you know, developing comp developers have been prepared to pay for the rights to these areas. It seems like maybe they didn’t include enough of a buffer for, you know, surprises in the future.
But on the other hand, you know, energy prices are so high at the moment that I. Probably expect that people would renegotiate and pay a bit more because it’ll probably still be a good, a good deal. So I think that there’s kind of, yeah, two, two sides that are kind. I don’t know, balancing out and probably see these agreements renegotiated to be a little bit of a higher, higher price.
And I don’t know, maybe developers will be more prudent going forward to how much value they think that they’re gonna get out of these offshore locations. But I guess it’s hard when you’ve got so many people interested than you, You know, you end up with a bidding war and you. Gonna have high prices because of that.
I wonder how
Joel Saxum: long this PPA is for? I’ve been trying to find some, some numbers online and I, I read some stuff 20 years and whatever, but I don’t think that was applied to this one. I think that was more the vineyard wind things. And there was a couple other contracts in there, but I think I would have, I mean with, I mean if you’re looking at the shorthand in the last year, how much commodity prices, like you said, Rosemary have changed dramatically.
I would have a hard time signing a 10, 15, 20 year ppa. Right. Basically, you know, if you’re looking at inflation numbers and, and the cost of labor and whatnot, like that’s gonna, if, if we continue down the path we are in the next few years, that’s gonna changed drastically. And you may not, like they said, it might not be viable anymore.
So maybe they need to shorten up the PPA or have a, Hey, we can renegotiate after three years, or something like that in there. Besides having a set price for so long, I
Rosemary Barnes: guess the construction cost is you know, all the commodity prices are gonna gonna come in the upfront costs, and then the PPA is their long term.
Investment. I would’ve thought longer PPA would suit them better. At this stage, especially cuz energy prices are so high right now. But, you know, if you’re thinking 20 years in the future, it’s hard to imagine that the average price over, over that time is gonna be anything like what it is now. I mean, I hope that the, the, you know, the conflict in Ukraine is, is not still going on for, you know, most of that period.
And I hope that commodity prices are gonna settle down. Yeah, so I think that there’s, if I was a developer, I’d probably be keen to lock in a really, really long ppa now, if it could remotely resemble the price of electricity. And other energy has been, if it could,
Joel Saxum: if it could help your financing.
But I know like right in, right now in the US the, like the finance rates are 7%. It’s the first time it’s been that high in like 16. 18 years or something. Right? Since 2004. I think they, that I, I read last when that’s that high. I mean, the cost of, you know, if you, if you bought a three or $400,000 house, it’s gonna increase your payment by a thousand dollars.
So if you’re gonna be spending millions and millions and millions of the any kind of Financing rates that you have and that are gonna be astronomical so that that’s a part of it. Of course, commodities right now, like you said, Rosemary Steel, all the manufacturers saying they want to increase the price of turbines.
Anything cable, I bet you the subsea cable prices have just gotten crazy. I don’t know what they are, but I’m sure they’ve gone nuts because of , all the precious metals and stuff inside ‘
Rosemary Barnes: em. Yeah,
Allen Hall: I bet you’re right. Is this perfect timing by Avan Grid? Because the election is coming up. We’re, we’re about, I don’t know, a week away right now when we’re recording from the election.
By the time this pops out, the election will have happened, but it seems like the perfect time if you’re going to put a project on hold and as much push that the federal government’s been pushing towards offshore. It. It seems like this is the perfect time to renegotiate because the other side is not desperate, but almost desperate to complete this and to show that the A project’s moving.
So can you just basically ask for anything right now? I think you probably can and you may get it. Yeah. Yeah. The,
Joel Saxum: you know, with that being said, they should have done this about two months ago. Just so they have that window of like, Hey, let’s get this signed before the election cycle.
Allen Hall: See, that’s, that’s true.
It’s gonna be No, that’s very true. And the, the government change in Massachusetts, it will change enough where it’ll be to the advantage, I think to Avan Grid afterwards. That will be really interesting thing to watch because this is not the only project that’s sort of floating around right now. Not sure it’s gonna happen.
There’s one off the coach with Connecticut’s same. And as we were talking about before the show, the ship builders are also very nervous about building wind turbine installation vessels to put the ships, put the ships in the water because they’re not sure these projects are gonna happen. And the other variable is there’s a need to maybe make the turbines larger.
Instead of doing 15 megawatt, you may wanna do 20, maybe you wanna do 25, You just need to wait. And so the turine sizes may grow dramatically, and then if you built the ship today, it may not be useful for very long. So there’s, the whole supply chain is up in chaos because there’s no bottom yet.
Joel Saxum: I think the ship builders are gonna feel the same pinch, right?
Because right now with the, with capital at such an expensive rate and you’re talking, you know, building a 20 million vessel, if you’re not a hundred percent sure that it’s gonna go to work the day it gets put in the water, you might be a little bit apprehensi. Stick 20 million in capital into a thing, you know?
So I know there’s only what we are looking at, Dominion Energy’s the only one and they’ve got a 470 plus foot vessel is the only firm order in the US and we need up to six more to reach that 30 gigawatts by 2030 goal, so, Right. It just doesn’t look like it’s happening. Nothing’s moving. Right.
We’re running out of time.
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Allen Hall: So down at Staten Island and Rosemary, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Staten Island. It’s just near New York City. Close to New York City. There. Yeah, they’re, they’re gonna build, they’re gonna build a terminal down there to stage for offshore wind so they can do some construction and assembly work right there next to the water.
And they received a 48 million federal grant to, to move that project forward. And the, the reason they’re doing it in Staten Island versus like Albany, and then there’s a project going on in Albany, or supposed to be happening in Albany, is Staten Island doesn’t have any bridges. So all the. Potential port sites would have to go through a bridge to, and they’re talking about Albany to go through under a bridge to get to the greater ocean , to, to move wind turbines out there.
So the Staten Island Arthur killed terminal will take care of that problem. It’s a start, right? It’s supposed to open or start digging the ground. Geez, in 2023, developers in the process of really finalizing all the approvals for the project and 2023 is when the, I guess they’re gonna start, and then 2025, they would hope to have it finished.
As we were just talking about. The sequencing of events is really important here, right? So even if this project gets kicked off, which is probably the right thing to. Is it soon enough to handle everything that comes afterwards? Cuz if we do kick this open by 2025, then we’re 26, 27, 28, 29. You know, we’re kind of, it’s a short timeframe to put a lot of wind, TURs.
Yeah. Yeah. In the water. Do we need another one of these terminals? Do we need to put one in New Jersey to do the same thing? To, to speed up the process Is one enough? How many sites?
Joel Saxum: How many sites will be you know, continuously. Out of there. There’s five, There was five leases in the New York bite, right?
Yes. Five or five or six. Yes. So Eco North scatter. Yeah. So there will be, there’s gonna be more than one consecutively. And to be honest with you, in my mind, I would think that you’re gonna need a port per wind farm while it’s actively building.
Allen Hall: You think so? Oh boy. I think so. Yeah. We’re, we’re not there yet.
I think so.
Joel Saxum: There’s one somewhat. Yeah, maybe, maybe our UK or Danish offshore installation friends can correct us or, or add something in here if we can get a comment on that. But knowing how fast they can move these things. Now I know when they’re in the blade and hub installation process, it’s boom, ship in, ship out, ship in, ship out.
They’re quick. And when they’re, and I think they’re gonna be this, most of the construction here will be pounding monopiles. They’re pretty quick as. Because it’ll be the ship out there pounding them, and then the other ones are just delivering monopiles and sections, right? So it, it’s, and, and a 38 or a 32.
This is a 32 acre facility. A 32 acre facility is nothing really in the grand scheme of things. If you think 40, 40 acres is 1,320 by 1,320 feet, if one of these vessels is 500 feet long or 472 feet long, the Dominion Energy one that takes up the whole port. That’s it. That you get one vessel in their head,
Allen Hall: right?
Joel Saxum: Just by, by simple, by simple math, you’re not gonna have more than, You might have one work vessel and one jack or one barge be able to use it at the same time. So maybe two smaller ships. But when the big ones come in and out when they’re loading blades you’re not gonna have these, the blades themselves are gonna be 300 feet plus long, you know?
Yeah. So there’s not space there for, for more than one vessel at.
Allen Hall: Well, Rosemary, you’ve been involved in Blades a little bit in your lifetime. I had looked at Vestus a little bit. A little bit. I was looking at, Vestus is gonna be building winter tur and blades over in Italy for their V 2 36 15 megawatt machines.
So they’re gonna have two plants, one in Denmark and one in Italy to make it the wind turbine blades. And then those, a lot of those blades are gonna end up with Ecuador off the coast of New York. So, They gotta ship those blades a long ways to get to the states. I, I assume that’s what’s gonna happen.
Does, does that, does that make sense? And do, are there vessels to haul that big of winter term blades across the ocean? Is that a thing?
Rosemary Barnes: Yes. So that is definitely a long, a long way for those blades to travel all the way across the, the Atlantic. Right. That’s the , that’s the ocean between Europe and the US and New York.
Mm-hmm. is today. Yeah. So I assume that they’re kind of testing the waters to see if this huge predicted us offshore. Boom happens. And that’s why that their planning to build them in Europe, because you know, offshore wind is already booming in, in Europe, so building factories there is not such a huge risk.
But I mean, we don’t have a lot, or you don’t have a lot in the. Yet. And whilst there’s a huge pipeline, you know, we already saw that, you know, some of these early developers are already having to renegotiate the terms and say they’re not profitable. So I think it’s, it’s fair to hedge your bets a little bit, you know, bid for projects in the US but not commit to building a brand new, you know, offshore wind turbine facility manufacturing facility over there.
But my expectation would be that once you know, that pipeline starts to firm up and people are pretty confident about being able to use their factory 24 7 for years in the future, that you’ll get some, some factories being built in the US cuz it doesn’t make sense to ship everything all the way across the Atlantic for, you know, what is it?
30 kilowatts of, of wind turbines. Yeah. Offshore wind turbines.
Joel Saxum: Well, I know the ge the ge Haylight Haley. X Halle platform. Yeah, Halle. Sorry, Alan. They’re, they’re building the blades up in Gas Bay. Right. So in, and they’re, so those blades will won’t have to run as far, but we do know right now that there’s only two wind farms that GE gets to put that platform in as of today.
Yeah. So they, hopefully they can resolve some of those issues that they’ve having in the legal side. And more of those platforms will get built. But, you know, I have a good friend at Martin Venture over in. And we’ve used them in the past to, to, you know, Hey, can you give us a bid on this? We gotta get a blade to, well, one, we have to get one blade to the Dominican Republic, or one blade to ua.
Like those kind of things. Mm-hmm. . And so he, he, he gives us some insights on those. But that’s, so, like Martin Bencher specifically is a, they move LM blades and they do a very good job at it. So they’ve got vessels and bunks and stuff specifically made for. And, you know, a specialty company like that will probably get a bite of these contracts to move them across.
But I wonder what the the difference in logistics cost is coming from Berg versus coming from IFS has made ’em somewhere in the US and South Carolina or something. I don’t know.
Allen Hall: Right. Yeah. Don’t you wonder that? I didn’t realize there was an Uber for Blades, but it makes sense that there is,
Rosemary Barnes: but yeah, you mentioned that the, the gas bay factory is making the, the hex blades for North America.
That’s cool cuz that was the first wind turbine factory that I ever, ever went to. I did my, my training there. Oh really? Back, back in the day and I. It’s probably my favorite factory, I’d say. I loved it there. It’s such a nice , nice area, but it’s a very small town. I it’ll be interesting to see how they can, you know, scale that up.
They obviously must have you know, physically expanded the, the factory there because you could not have fit. 108 meter long blade in the factory that I, I did my training in. But even for personnel, you know, it’s small, small town, it would be hard to see how you could, you know, all of a sudden get a lot more, more workers if you needed them.
So it’d be interesting to see how that goes. But I’m, I’m really glad to hear that they’re still going strong cuz that’s beautiful part of the world.
Joel Saxum: I would say with my, a little bit of knowledge about Quebec, if the workers. And installation texts that are gonna be on those vineyard wind projects.
We’re smart right now. They take some French classes because the, the Ians will definitely write in French on those blades. They’re gonna have to learn it. . You can’t even order Tim Hortons there if you speak English .
Allen Hall: Oh really? I would struggle. I might just die right on the street. If that was the case.
Maybe
Joel Saxum: it’s just, maybe it’s just cause they smelled the American on me and they didn’t wanna deal with me. But French is not my, You could really
Allen Hall: blame ’em. Forte. Yeah. Right. . So how does that, Let me ask the question. How does this work on the, on the Jones Act bit? So the Vestus blades are made in Italy.
They put on a ship, I assume, of some carrier from somewhere, not America. They float to America, can they just hand those blaze over to the wind turbine installation vehicle in the water, or will they have to dock up, drop ’em somewhere, and then let an American vessel take ’em back out? What’s, what’s the rule there?
Joel Saxum: I think they, I think they could swap them out at sea, but I don’t believe that any Q HSE professionals would like that too much. So I think, I think they’ll, they’ll come in, they’ll drop ’em at port. I mean, you could, you could swap ’em out there, right? You could, you could go out 201, you know, outside of the exclusive economic zone, drop ’em and never come to port.
And that’s the way around the Jones. That’s how you get around the Jones Act. Right. I know people that have done, I know people that have worked in the Gulf of Mexico. And have gone to the edge of the e e Z to do oil changes and ships and then have come back. Wow. Okay.
Allen Hall: Because it save, save so much money.
There may be a, a lot of logistics involved with it in these blades and the cells. Yeah. Cause I think in cells we made in Poland, so they’re, they’re coming the same way. Yeah.
Joel Saxum: If you want to do that, the swap at sea, you can do it and get away with it, but it. I hope that doesn’t happen, to be honest with you.
I know everybody’s trying to find ways around the Jones Act because it is you know, pretty intrusive. But I, I hope that stuff doesn’t happen. I’m, I’m hoping that they’ll come to shore, drop them off the proper qa, QC gets down on the blades you know, on on land once they arrive and then they get loaded
Allen Hall: out, boom, boom.
Do they have to be qcd on the ground before they fly ’em? Is that part of the regular process, or do you say, I can inspect ’em on the ship up? They. We’re moving on. They never touched the land.
Joel Saxum: He could, but I don’t think, and I mean, Rosemary, we do this a lot at Wind Power Lab, but I think Rosemary probably has a better view of the offshore plan.
But I know we, we recommend when they come off the line, have a third party inspection before they get shipped, and we also recommend have a third party inspection before they get flown for, to cover basically CYA all the way through the process to ensure that when you’re putting the blades up, you don’t have issues.
But Rosemary, maybe you know more about that from a production stand.
Rosemary Barnes: Well, certainly for onshore, that’s, that’s the way it’s happening. I mean, you definitely don’t wanna discover transport damage when it’s already up on the turbine. That’s that, yeah, that’s like a nightmare scenario, I think. And all of the issues that I get called out to for transport damage, they blades are always still on the ground.
So I, I , I believe that that’s what everybody’s doing and that’s only gonna be more relevant, more important for offshore than onshore. So, yeah, definitely. It’s cause
Joel Saxum: yeah. Offshore you have a, You know where onshore, you may have like a double handling, you might have factory. Then they move ’em out to the yard, then it gets put on a truck.
That truck goes to site, drops it off. So you’re handling it basically three times. But now if you’re doing this offshore stuff, you’re, you’re building it, you’re handling it, you’re putting it on the vessel, which is a handle. You’re shipping it, you’re taking it off the vessel, which is a handle, and you’re putting it back on another vessel, which is another handle, moving em around like da da.
All of a sudden you’re touching ’em six times and that’s not.
Rosemary Barnes: No, I mean, transport damage is, is pretty common. I mean, yeah, it’s one of the more, more common sources of large problems with blades, I think. I don’t think you necessarily need to check the blades every time it, you know, changes transport mode, but definitely every time that the responsibility for it changes, you know, so if it’s, you know, the manufacturer that is You know, in charge of logistics up until, up until the port in the US then, you know, you wouldn’t need to necessarily check it until then because it doesn’t really matter how the damage occurred.
You know, from the developer’s point of view, it just it doesn’t matter which, which leg it got damaged on, It just only matters that the manufacturer needs to fix it at that point. And you don’t wanna find out after you’ve taken responsibility for it, because then you’re gonna have a nice big fight with your
With the manufacturer about who’s responsible for it. And I, I love those kinds of fights because that’s the exact sort of thing where I get involved to, to help out developers. But it’s not easy to resolve and no one ends up fully happy in, in those situations. So I would suggest, you know what
Joel Saxum: last, not, not a Hamburg, but the year before at Electric City in Copenhagen, excuse me, I had a conversation with a company that was doing some logistics tracking.
They had a nice little, I don’t know, unit one of these kind of things. And it had into a cell modem, a gps and some other things. And they were, they were using it to track. They had, you know, you could track vehicles, track vest of a vessel, you could track a expensive toolbox, you could track whatever you want.
And we actually talked to them about putting like four or five of these down the blade. And they had a little IMU in a little inertial measurement unit to sense G-force and things. And we talked to them cuz the customer had any idea thought of like, can we track these blades somehow? So then you would have, in the bending moments and stuff, you’d have a sensor on these things that would give you.
Basically if there’s a heavy impact G-force shock load, anything like that, you would know it throughout the entire transportation process. And also you could pull up on your little dashboard and know where your blades are at all times as well. So that’s, that’s nice. We never, we, we, we had the conversations a few times, so it’s an idea.
We never, you know, came to fruition with it, but, Just a thought.
Rosemary Barnes: Well, they do it. I’ve seen people on Twitter tracking their Tesla delivery in that same way. So, you know, obviously that’s a, that’s a thing that’s happening. I, I guess that you know, it’s not an, an individual buying an individual wind turbine that is, you know, gonna be tracking the exact location of it.
On its journey. That’s probably the reason why we don’t see it now, because, you know, what difference does it, does it make to the developer, you know exactly where it is in the ocean. But yeah, no, I think getting information about about conditions during travel is definitely something that happens in all sorts of, all sorts of products do that, so why not?
We design it has a great idea.
Allen Hall: I think it makes sense. Yeah.
Joel Saxum: The, the idea came from a developer where they had exactly, like you say, Rosemary, one of these big battle. Where they got the blade and then the, the, the OEM was like, Nah, man, all good manufacturing company, all good on our end trucking company said we didn’t do anything.
But they were thinking, they actually pinpointed it to. It was like a a mile section of road where they were doing construction on it, that they took the wide load like the truck through, it was in the US and they, and they went through a bunch of, like, they thought they could have went through a bunch of like potholes and stuff, and the blade was doing this, and they’re like, Why can’t we, can we use this sensor to track those forces and that inertial measurement through those things so we could have a, We might be able to pinpoint a moment when this happened and be able to point a.
It’s basically what it is. Who, who has to cover cost or whose insurance company has
Allen Hall: to cover cost? How about that? Good idea with all the continuous monitoring systems are out on the market. One of them should be able to do it. You’d think today? Yeah,
Rosemary Barnes: you can get really cheap. Like I was using vibration sensors on some products that I was developing you know, just to, I was using them so I could measure what, what types of, of vibrations I needed to test at the frequency and, and amplitude and stuff.
And the sensors that I was using, they were, they were basically made for that purpose, not for wind turbine blades, but for other products to put in the equip the. Sorry, in the packaging, the product packaging and see, you know, what sorts of shocks has it been subject to in the transport? So they exist, they’re, they’re very cheap.
I, I think that the main thing probably stopping people doing it is just now you’ve got this bunch of extra data that somebody has to be employed to, to deal with. More likely, you know, from the projects that I’ve said, it’s very easy to get data and a lot harder to find the time to actually manage it.
So you just end up collecting data and doing nothing with it. And then when you find, Oh, there’s a problem, let’s go look at the data, you’re like, Oh, we’d never turn that on because you never use it, or, you know Right. It, it’s, it’s a bit easier said than done, but I think if it is a big problem, then people will.
We’ll use this technology cuz it already exists. The solution already exists.
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Allen Hall: So Norway. You don’t think of solar when you think of Norway, but Norway’s Ocean Sun has licensed their float floating solar technology to the Chinese state owned group, State Power Investment Corporation, S P I C. So, S P I C has built the first commercial offshore floating solar plant that has also integrated with an offshore wind turbine.
So what it looks like, there’s two circular pads of solar cells that are floating in the water, and there’s a wind turbine sort in the middle. And it’s a private project and it is it’s believed that if everything works the way it should, they’re gonna try to create a 20 megawatt facility in 2023. So we’ve, we’ve seen a, a lot of talk about floating wind and floating solar being joined together, but the first place that’s being done is China.
So is this something that we can piggyback on when I say we California piggyback on because they’re gonna, the flourish floating wind in the United States. Do, do they want to piggyback some solar on it? Does that make any sense to do that?
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I, I remain a little bit skeptical about floating solar, but I can see that the.
There is a trend towards it. There’s plenty of developers interested in it, so it’s probably has more value than what immediately jumps out at me. Yeah, I mean, you can save on infrastructure. You know, you don’t have to build separate. Subsea cables just for the floating solar. So I mean, all of these kind of less appealing offshore energy sources or energy storage, they’re always, you know, based on the idea, Oh, we can just, you know, piggyback off all the infrastructure for the, the wind because, you know, the wind in most cases is already profitable on its own, own merits.
And then these other, you know, technologies yeah, whether it’s floating solar or there’s, you know, a huge number of Ocean energy storage companies in development at the moment. I just did a video on that actually, and it’s the same thing where it’s like, okay, yeah, it’s, it’s complicated. But the offshore wind’s already there, so we might as well just stick it on and wave energy often, you know, makes that argument as well.
So, yeah, there’s a synergy there, but I, I don’t know to what extent it, a solar, adding solar to an offshore wind farm is really going to smooth the, the output. I mean, you have a little bit less variability, but it’s not like wind is only at night. Solar is obviously only in the daytime, but you are gonna have times where you’re gonna have both of them running at maximum capacity.
And then are you curtailing one or the other, or are you building the system that’s big enough for, you know, both of them at their maximum capacity? Or are you putting, you know, your ocean energy storage in there as well to, you know smooth it out more? I think it’s a little bit complicated. I’ll be surprised if these are really commercially attractive in the next few years.
I know that the articles say that it’s, you know, got the potential to dramatically decrease levelized cost of energy. And I, I think that that’s just hyperbole, you know, the kind that investors wait, people say to attract investors. . So yeah, there’s, there’s some potential, but it’s not straightforward and simple.
To me. It’s not a slam dunk that this is gonna make cheaper energy. I think it will start off being more expensive. But at least, you know, we can iron, iron out some of the kinks in floating solar. They say this is the first commercial floating solar, but, you know, it’s 500 kilowatts. So you know, you can call that commercial if you want, but I it’s not right.
Not, not a lot compared to a wind farm, obviously. So we’ll see how. ,
Joel Saxum: I think it looks like an o and m nightmare to be honest. Like may, maybe if your, if your wind farm’s close enough to shore and if one of these things goes down or has issues, you just tow it back. I don’t know. That may, maybe that makes o and m sense, but otherwise, if they’re big enough or large enough commercial scale to have to be maintained in the.
I don’t
Rosemary Barnes: know about that. Yeah, it’s interesting to get a good look at it. It’s like a like a saucer with a little lip around it. And I mean, I guess that their big problem, normally solar is so low maintenance. You know, you, if you’re in a dusty area, then you probably go and you know, hose them off once a year.
And , if you live somewhere with snow, then you gotta clear the snow off. Occasionally. But when you’re offshore, then obviously the salt water is gonna be, you know, like spilling in there and then evaporating. And so you’re gonna get, you know, a salty, salty film. So I’m imagining that there’s gonna be like a, what are those vacuum robots called a, a Roomba.
It’s gonna be like a room squeegee. Yeah. I remember with a squeegy that’s, that’s gonna be participating. Yeah, maybe something like that. But hopefully it can be done without personnel going out there every, every week to to wash it down to do it.
Joel Saxum: So what do you think about if someone wanted to put like, say green hydrogen behind the meter load wise, that might be the, a way to make it, Oh boy.
Make more sense.
Allen Hall: Hang
Rosemary Barnes: on. Yeah, there’s so many options. You have, you have to watch my my recent video. Everyone should go, go watch it on Ocean Energy Storage. . We didn’t actually, I didn’t actually talk too much about having Yeah, an ELECTROLYZER plus a, you know, some sort of, Place to store hydrogen.
That would be one way to do it with a pretty low round trip efficiency though. Then there’s companies in various stages of development. Most of them, you know, quite low maturity doing like gravity energy storage offshore. There’s a lot of different pumped hydro versions. So they’re using the, you know, the hydrostatic pressure from the, the water at at depth to make a pressure difference.
And yeah, and then there’s buoyancy storage as well, which is kind of like gravity storage in reverse. But there’s a couple of companies say they’re working on it, but it’s, you know, like sketches on a, on a website kind of level. Yeah, but for both the gravity storage and the pumped hydro, you get some advantage going offshore because you can have like a huge depth instead of, you know, onshore if you wanted to build something like the energy Vault, Jenga Tower, you know, like.
50 or a hundred meters is a huge, huge distance to go up with a, you know, a structure above ground. But you’ve got floating floating wind, then you’re gonna have it in depth, could be up to, you know, a kilometer deep. So you get, you know, a much, much bigger potential energy change between the ocean floor and the surface.
And the same with pump tied or the pressure difference. You know, you can get a good. Offshore site somewhere where you might be far away from a good onshore site where you need, you know, a big hill to make pumped hydro work cost effectively. So yeah, there’s a lot of the options. None of them are mature yet, and if they’re in an offshore wind farm that’s gonna be putting power onshore.
I struggle to see why you wouldn’t just put a battery on shore, whether, whether off takers, you know, That to me seems like. Far, far, far easier way to do it. And to me, I’d say the main reason why you would bother with some complicated offshore energy storage is going to be either if you’re powering an offshore facility, you know, like oil and gas platform.
So the energy, the electricity never needs to go on shore. Or if you need some long duration storage somewhere where there’s not really good opportunity for pumped hydro. Whether because the land is flat or because people don’t wanna look at it you know, maybe it’s easy to put a lot of duration under, under the water because people, you know, there’s no one’s backyard so well, no humans’ backyard anyway.
And the fish fish won’t complain about it. That’s the, that’s the two, two places I see where it might happen.
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Allen Hall: Next up is G Shone President of three s.
Lift Americas where we talk. How to keep your technicians on the jar set longer and with less stress by using lifts. J Sheldon, welcome to the Uptime Win Energy Podcast. Thank you,
Gio Scialdone: Alan. Happy to be here
Allen Hall: with you. Gio is the president of three s Lift America, and this is gonna be a great discussion. Because we just got back from Wind Energy Hamburg, where every operator and owner was talking about technicians, retaining technicians, keeping ’em on the job longer, and technician productivity.
There were so many different Kinds of systems that we’re trying to improve. Technician’s, response time, technician’s ability to repair or make quick fixes to turbines. And I thought of threes lift when I was over there and I you were there represented at that show. But lifts are, have. Are really gonna be a big discussion point in the United States because there, there, there’s a limited number of technicians.
Making them more productive is gonna be where the action is. So threes lift makes this climb auto system and that’s what I want to talk about today is this climb auto system. And Joe, could you describe what the Climb auto system is? The sort of the fundamentals. Yeah,
Gio Scialdone: absolutely. It’s, so basically it’s a single technician, ladder mounted lift that allows technicians to get up and down a tower without climbing.
So essentially it’s, it’s kind of a, a climb assist like device with a platform and a couple of handles. That one’s behind me in our training center here in Dallas, Texas. And, you know, it’s, it’s a system that can be put on turbines during the construction phase aftermarket, a lot of retro. Repowers.
So it’s a real simple system that’s, that’s a traction, motor driven lift that that goes up and down the ladder on a, on a rail track. And, and really it’s, we’ve, you know, we’ve only been here for four and a half years or so in the US and the product for the product now is reaching some maturity.
And it’s really exciting. I think it’s, I think it’s prob, it’s pretty interesting to think, you know, your, your comment. Europe focusing on anything efficiency, specifically related to technicians in Europe. They have lists in nearly every turbine, you know, and they’re still focused to me, that shows, okay, well, well, they already have lists, yet they’re still focused on how to improve retention efficiency.
Technician gain, you know, so that, that, that tells us something. I think we’re a little behind here in, in the states. Yeah. We do
Allen Hall: a lot of things manually in the states, and that is very clear from seeing some of the systems off offered in Europe. So what is the difference between a climb auto system and what we would typically call a lift?
What separates those two? You know, we,
Gio Scialdone: we sometimes call the climb auto system a lift it, it, it, it lifts you from the bottom of the tower to the top of the tower. But traditionally, a service lift in a wind turbine is, is an enclosed structure that most of them here are, are, are are traction unit driven.
They’re, they’re cable driven from the, the top of the tower down. Some are. Mounted to a ladder as well. But the main difference is service lifts are enclosed one, two, sometimes three persons. And our, our climb auto system is, is an open cart that you stand on and are fixed to the rail fall arrest system.
And, and go up the tower that way. So
Allen Hall: once you have a service lift, where is an enclosure? Those systems actually fall under different regulations in the United States, right?
Gio Scialdone: Typically, there are some different regulations. Some states, not all states. There are certain states that, that have more strict regulations that require annual licensing, re-certification of the service lifts.
You know, you know all of these systems in a wind tower, including a client assist, they, they require some, some form. Annual inspection, maintenance. Our system, the climb auto system is self maintained by our owner, the owner operators. Our customers maintain them themselves. It’s, it’s a quite a simple system that way, and that’s one of the benefits of it.
The climb auto system versus maybe a service lift, which our company sells. And we, we sell predominantly in, into Europe and Asian. But one of the benefits is, is the maintenance of our climb Auto system is very simple. You know, you in, we see owners and operators incorporating, incorporating that into their, their annual cycles.
And
Allen Hall: we saw your system in action down in San Antonio at the American Clean Power 2022 in Texas. It’s really interesting because it is a retrofit system. It, it, it takes your existing. Ladder system and just clamps onto it. So there really is not a lot to do there. What are some of the pieces that you have to add onto the existing ladder to make the climb model system function?
Gio Scialdone: Yeah, we, it’s, that’s a good question. You know, the, the system can be installed in one day. We have technicians you know, right now we’ve got somewhere around, 20 or 30 teams of two technicians installing these lists around the US currently. And, and you know, after some training, they can install it in eight hour, an eight hour day.
Very basically you take out the existing fall arrest cable you replace that with our center rail, which is your new fall arrest system. You can climb the tower manually that way anyway. And, and, and that’s it. You know, we put a pulley on the bottom, a pulley on the top, a traction. And the car glides into the rail.
So it’s, it’s not a, you know, there, there’s no modifications that are done to the ladder, to the tower itself. We, we, you know, our power system is, is our control system is plugged directly into the down tower control system in the turbine. So, It’s a, it’s a fairly straightforward process even. And you know, in construction when there’s no back feed power, we use a generator to power the lift and install it.
And when the back feed’s available, your lifts available.
Allen Hall: That, that makes a lot of sense. So from a operators or technician standpoint, there’s an climb model system in. What are you doing? You’re standing on it. I guess you’re grabbing on to a couple handles. I am assuming you’re latching into the safety system.
Is, is that all it’s needed to get on it? Yeah, really.
Gio Scialdone: I mean, you step up onto the foot pedals, you insert your fallers runner into the rail. There’s two handles upon which you have to press the, the handle switches simultaneously. There’s a dial switch on the, on the panel to go up or. And that’s it. You know, we, we, we spend about a half an hour per technicians training each technician to perform the basic operations, the, the pre-use inspection, the startup stuff.
And we certify each technician that way before they’re, they use the lift. And, and then, you know, finally we, we, we teach them how to perform an evacuation up or down the foot. Pedals fold up. They’re able to climb down and around the. If for whatever reason the, the tower lost power and they need to come down, they can get around the lift and easily.
So we train each tech in that, in that process as well. And the
Allen Hall: system can also take tools and gear and equipment up and down. It can act like a standard equipment lift. Yep.
Gio Scialdone: If, you know, having been in, in, as a, I started in the industry as a technician and it’s, it’s one of the worst things when you forget a tool or.
Oh, I should have brought that card up, or I left my lunch in the truck. Those are things that you don’t, you know, you, you have to call somebody and kinda have them come out to the tower, maybe send out a lift bag. In the past, that’s what was done. Now a lot of our customers are using a lift. There’s a basket that that latches into onto the foot pedals, and they can send up 130 pounds of tools, equipment.
Yeah remotely. So each technician will have their own remote control to operate the lift in, in that remote mode, which is which is handy.
Allen Hall: So it’s really a huge time saver. We, we, we
Gio Scialdone: see, we’ve seen a few a few key examples of, of how, and we’re still measuring it. Alan, you know, it’s, it’s only been a few year.
Right now we’ve got we’re nearing 4,000 units installed. By the end of this year, we’ll have 5,000 units installed. Put that, put that into perspective with how many towers are in the installed sort of post, 1.5 megawatt era. You know, there, there’s still a lot left but some of the savings we see are, you know, the 3:00 PM climb when your technician, your day is over at three 30 and you’re down tower at two 30 and the turbine next to you falls and maybe.
It’s as simple as going up to the top box and, and, and, and swapping out a vibration sensor or something simple that you could do in a half an hour. You may not do that because you’re avoiding the climb. So those are some of the, that that’s one, one efficiency gain. We also see some proactive measures happening.
So a traditional annual inspection day, and let’s say you and I are on a team and we’re performing annual inspections, we’re gonna be in that tower all day. What we’re seeing customers do now is when they come down tower, they go to the next tower and they just take a ride up the climb auto system, five minutes up, five minutes down, they spend five minutes, 10 minutes, and then they sell just a visual inspection.
Is there oil up here? Or, you know, what does it look like? Cause that prepares you for the next day. So they’re, they’re gaining some efficiencies that way into the, into the following day, which I find, you know, really interesting. We see An improvement in morale, I guess I’ll say morale because we’ve, we’ve, we’ve got a customer that’s had these lifts for the 99 turbine site in Kansas.
They’ve had lifts for two years. And the site manager told me prior to the lifts being installed, they’d get to the office at. They’d mosey around. They wouldn’t leave the office until eight 30 after they decide what they’re gonna do, get their tools head to the tower by nine, maybe they’re not up tower until nine 30 or 10.
Now there’s, and he, he coined it sort of, they’re no longer afraid of the climb, right? They’re, they’re not trying to avoid the climb. And, and they’re at the tower at 8:00 AM So what, how does that flow down from an efficiency perspective? If you’re an. Now my technicians are getting to the hour or maybe spending another hour in the tower each day that that’s beneficial.
You know, so that that flows, That adds up pretty quickly.
Allen Hall: Yeah. That that results in. Longer running turbines, more produced power, all those things start to climb because the technicians are busy enough. Right? And if they’re spending a lot of time going up and down, it just takes away from being productive.
It makes sense, right? It makes sense why the Europeans have done that because. The cost of energy and everything’s more expensive in Europe typically compared to the United States. And the American states tends to be more manual until they, we figure it out a little bit and then we go, then we start automating things.
And this climb auto system does make a lot of sense in terms of just technicians and, and as we’re seeing the, the age of technicians sort of creep up a little bit. Cause it’s so hard to get people into this technician world. It would makes sense that we’re losing technicians who have all the experience.
Does the Climb auto system help keep them around for a couple more years to, in those productive technician
Gio Scialdone: years? We, we think it does. We, we really think it does. You know, I, I’ve, I’ve gathered some data from a large global OEM that has shared the following information with us. It basically, . If you have a site with a lift, whether that’s a traditional service lift or a climb auto system your retention has improved significantly.
So, so their data basically says the, the, the average tenure on, on their sites that they looked at a, a, a significant number was somewhere in the six or seven year mark for sites with lifts. Now, sites without lifts, where you’re manually climbing or using a cl. was about three years. So you’re doubling the retention factor.
Now, we don’t have enough data to see that yet here, but what we do know, and we, we, we did a, you know, there’s, there’s two surveys. I’m glad you brought this, this up because there was a survey that the Can WEA group did a couple years ago ago which, which really showed the demographic pool is really small.
99%. Significant, you know, the average, I think it’s, I think only, only sort of what is it? Three of four technicians are under the age of 35. Three in three of four technicians have less than seven years. So you have, and, and you know, part of that in the US is because our industry is younger than than Europe potentially.
But we certainly see that the, the number one reason from this, can we, a survey, the number one reason that technicians are leaving is because it’s a strenuous job and their, their number one claim for why it’s so strenuous was climbing. So climbing is, it’s, climbing is the hardest thing. And, and that’s the main reason that we have technicians that are either getting into the industry and leav.
Then, then let’s eliminate it. And, and there are various products out there including our climb auto system that can do that. And there’s, there’s, there’s certainly byproducts on the efficiency side that you can gain. But number one is, you know, we, we’ve got a huge industry and let’s employ these people to, to have a career rather than just a, a job for a couple of years, you know, So we, we certainly see that as, One of the big reasons our customers are interested in this product is, is recruitment and retention.
For sure is, is improving. You know, I’ve, I’ve spoken to a lot of technicians over the last few years that are younger than me, that’ve had multiple, you know, knee surgeries and, and I think I forget, you know, when I, I started at ge, you know, in 2008 era and my first time out at a wind farm, you know, we liked to.
We were excited about it. It was, it was something macho about it. And after about a month or two, it’s not that cool, you know? And, and, and I remember one of the techs saying that, you know, win being in wind, you, you start at the top and work your way down. And from a field perspective, right? But you, you, there’s only so many site manager jobs.
There’s only so many you know, safety manager jobs and, and things like that. So a lot of these guys and, and, and, and girls hopefully that are good at their job, they should have the opportunity to stay in that job. And I think the product that we have can, can enable that. Yeah,
Allen Hall: it, it does seem like a really intuitive product and.
How do people try out the Climb model system? Like, do they have to come down to your site down in Texas to try it out or, I’ve seen it a couple places. Some of the shows, How do they, how do they introduce themselves to the Climb model system? A
Gio Scialdone: lot of our customers we have given them units to try. You know, we, we, we enabled some pilot programs where, you know, we’ve allowed customers, we’ve installed a few units at their site.
And ask them to try them at no cost. Other customers are friends with each other and they would invite others to come to their site and, and, and have a look and, and have a test, a test drive, so to speak. You know, we have our facility in, in Plano, Texas, here near Dallas, that we’ve had customers come and, and take a look at the system.
But certainly, you know, there’s, yeah, there’s, there’s a lot of opportunities out there for us to install. I think. I think you know, we’re probably in 20 states or so where we’ve gotta lift, so, Yeah. Almost, almost, you know, the wind belt and a little bit out west. So
Allen Hall: I can’t believe once a technician gets onto the, the climb system and uses it a couple times, doesn’t fall in love with it
Cause it’s,
Gio Scialdone: it’s, they don’t wanna go back to climbing. Right. That’s for sure. So, you know, they get, they, I, I look, they. They still there’s some technicians who, who have used our lift and said, Look, this is the best thing ever. And, and now, and, and then, but that tells them they don’t wanna go to another site, which is good for the owner.
That’s good for the operator because now you’re keeping the people that are in the know at your site. There’s an example. You know, we’ve, we’ve installed these lifts and turbines that are 15, 20 years old. It, it’s not, Yeah, yeah. It’s not just a, a product for a new tower. Yes. We’re installing them in towers today that are 120 meters.
But we have installed them in 80 meter towers, 65 meter towers. And think about it this, this way, there’s, you know, the old GE SSB pitch system. How many technicians out there are trained in that? Well, if you have those turbin, You probably have technicians who are, have a unique skill set and, and we have a customer that, that retrofitted their site in order to keep those people who know the system around.
And some of those technicians were in their late forties and very directly said to us, Look, if if not for this system, I would’ve had to quit. And that’s a real thing. That’s a, that’s, you know, It makes you feel good. That kind is the personal aspect of it.
Allen Hall: Yeah, and because wind is really gonna explode over the next couple years, we already have a huge number of wind TURs already in the States, but that’s gonna have to increase rapidly to meet some of our climate goals.
How do people get ahold of you, g? I mean, do, do they find you on LinkedIn? Do they go to the Threes Lift website? How do, how do they connect with you to get more information about the client model system?
Yeah,
Gio Scialdone: they, they can, they can look us up on LinkedIn for sure. Our website, threes lift.com has a contact us section and they can reach us at at.
I think even my, my cell phone number is still on the website. Look, we’re, you know, we’re a small growing company. We’ve, we’ve, we’ve got about 25 or 30, 30 employees now. But yeah, they, they can reach out to me directly. Our team is available on LinkedIn or, you know, a group of sales folks. So yeah, certainly a lot of different ways to get through us.
We, we also sell directly to the oem. So, so that’s something if you know developers or are looking at building new projects and they want to supply or interested in our lift, the OEMs may be the route to go as well. So yeah, a few different, a few different routes of contact there. Geo
Allen Hall: has been great to have you on the podcast.
I’ve learned a ton here today. As Threes Lift continues to install the Climb Model System across turbines in America, I’d like to get an update from you guys to see how it’s going because it’s, it’s really positive news and, and your company’s doing great things and let’s just stay in touch because Threes Lift is doing, doing neat things.
Gio Scialdone: Appreciate you. Maybe you can come out and and have a ride. I, I’d love
Allen Hall: to do that. Big thanks to Gio with 3S Lift on the Climb Auto System. Really interesting system. Check it out at Threes Lift’s website, or you can visit LinkedIn and and, and connect with Geo there. That’s gonna do it for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy podcast.
Thanks for listening. Please take a moment and give us a five star rating on your podcast platform and be sure to subscribe in the show notes below to 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.
