After laying off 20% of its US onshore wind employees, there was no good news in Q3 reports from GE’s renewables division. Wind executives are worried. Supply chain snags and warranty issues look like problems only BIG investments can fix. What can turn wind around, and how soon? Allen and Joel have some ideas.
In a recent interview, we discussed technology and improvements with Ping Monitor’s CEO, and he offered some good insights.
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Uptime 137 Audio Pod
Allen Hall: Joel, we have a really interesting show for everyone this week GE has hit a little bit of roadblock in its renewable business. We’ll talk about the details there of, of what’s next for GE renewables and GE renova. Big losses in the third quarter, how are they gonna recover from that? And then we’ll talk about ACP offshore that happened in Providence, Rhode Island, where we had 2000 people show up and discuss the future of offshore, the United States, and what some of the roadblocks are and what, what the OEMs and operators concerns are.
And then we’ll have a special. Matthew Stead, CEO and co-founder of Ping talks us about the growth of their continuous monitoring system. I’m Allen Hall President of Weather Guard Lightning Tech. And I’m here with my good friend from Win Power Lab, Joel Saxum. Rosemary is on a well deserved break, and this is the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.
GE had an announcement this week, they’d. Third quarter results and GE as a whole is doing decently fine. The aircraft division is looking like it’s stabilizing and, and picking up some numbers cuz the airlines are flying again. Mm-hmm. Healthcare seems to be doing okay, but the power and renewable business is really in trouble.
The renewable part, So power and renewables were actually broken out separately, which is gonna be enveloped by renova. So if you take Renova, take power non-renewable and renewables and look at them separately, their renewable energy part lost about it’s $900 million in the quarter and it’s based on about 40% plummet in sales.
Sale and order, Sorry, 40% plummet in orders and about 15% drop in sales. And GEs talking about restructuring that business to save money. And as we’ve heard the onshore business win business for ge, they’re talking about 20% layoffs. It sounds like Those are in process at the moment. They’re trying to save about $500 million annually.
But the, the, the numbers are really depressing. If, if you look at what renewables is gonna lose this year, it’s around 2 billion. At least that’s the way GEs projecting it. So every other part of the GE business is profitable. Depends on how much, you know, it’s relative, right? They’re all not doing wiz bank, but they’re profitable except for renewables.
And it looks like some of the bigger pain points are inflation, supply chain. Warranty claims Looks like that’s a, another big issue. And just overall lower demand because the production tax credit expiring and now being picked up again finally. But boy, Joel, it does not look good for GE right now.
Those kinda losses are really hard to sustain for much longer. You’d think. You know, before
Joel Saxum: we started recording here today, we were talking offline. I’m looking at this chart and anybody that that is knows, you don’t have to know anything about economics or accounting or anything to look at this chart and understand that there’s some problems, right?
It’s just every other, every other portion of GEs business up, up, up and steady study negative income or operating revenue, and then all of a sudden just drop this quarter. So, You know, there’s a lot of, we’ve been talking about a lot of things in renewables and these majors laying off a lot of people.
Siemens laid off a bunch of people. GE has laid off a bunch of people. It’s, it’s, it’s very depressing to, to cruise through my LinkedIn feed lately and see all these really, really bright people from GE searching for jobs. So while bad for them to have to go through that transition, it’s gonna be a bonus to a lot of these other companies picking up some really good talent.
Oh yeah. But you know, so, and I’ve seen a lot of people really cool things about people vouching for other people as well. Like, Hey, I’m looking for a job, and someone else jumping on it going, Hey, I worked with this person. They’re awesome. Someone’s gonna get a real, you know, a real good person there.
So it’s nice to see the, the renewable industry coming together when one of these big companies is taking a drop. But yeah, I mean, $2 billion in the, in the red. You can’t survive that for a whole whole long time. Right. And, and joining up with the ge the, like, the power side of things to become ge renova, when they do that, will alleviate some of these pains.
But man, when they say rising waters floats, all ships, a drought also sinks all ships.
Allen Hall: Yeah. That’s what’s happening. If, if they can manage it right now. Power renewables is are leaning on the aircraft division, the engine division, to keep GE moving in a forward direction. But as soon as these split up into three separate areas where ver Novas by itself, where do you go or cash flow to sustain those kind of losses, you really can’t.
You can’t rely on the bigger GE to do that unless there’s some sort of accommodations made when they decide to finally break into three. , how are they gonna do that financially? That, that becomes a really big marker of time when that split actually happens and they all go independent of one another.
And GE is divesting, by the way. GE is divesting of all sort of corporate assets. Mm-hmm. They got rid of Crotonville, which is a big training center or planning to, So there is won’t be anything left of GE proper. It’ll be three divisions for sure. I, I, I don’t, I don’t know how you sustain. I don’t know where today’s market you get loans to, to, to sustain yourself for
another
Allen Hall: six months.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. We were talking about you know, is it a, is it a too big to fail type thing where, you know, like ge you know, the Ford got the bailouts and stuff and Yes. I, I don’t know. I mean, you wanna think that the, you know, like the US government could help a little bit, but being that they’re gonna move to France, the headquarters that.
Play into that, some decision of that sort. So, you know, Alan, let’s, let’s think about, or I’m looking at another chart here and why they’re having expected losses. They say largely due to incremental warranty, pressure, inflation, and lower demand. So inflation’s an easy one to see. We all feel that.
Right. You feel that at the gas pump, you feel it at the grocery store. The, it, it’s the other day I went to getting milk and it was like $6 a gallon. So yeah. When, when did this, Eggs like this? Eggs, right? Yeah, Eggs. Like simple stuff, right? So we’re all feeling inflation. We can understand that one. That’s number two here.
Lower demand. Lower demand. You know, I wanna think that that’s gonna come back around just simply because how
Allen Hall: far out? Is that? Yeah.
Joel Saxum: And that’s, that’s the problem. That’s the problem. And I, I’m thinking it’s coming back around for IRA reasons. So I had a conversation with, with a friend of mine in the development space.
They are a surveyor planner, mapper for, and they do utility lines and installations, all this stuff, but they do it on a state countrywide basis or a big, big group. And he, this, this gentleman mentioned to me, Hey, 10 D. People coming in with large developments in the last two months since Ira Bill.
So to me, I’m like, Yes, that’s awesome. Now that’s 10, you know, just groundbreaking, looking at permits, looking at survey, looking at this stuff so that doesn’t turn into a wind turbine order or a solar panel order for a long time. And, and then, you know, you have to fight, you know, GE right now is in the middle of that offshore fight, so there’s a little bit of, you know, You might lean more towards Aveta or a Siemens MEA when you’re installing these things.
So there’s, there’s also that pressure within the market. So that’s the lower demand side of things. And then the third one here, incremental warranty pressure. Now, we’ve talked about this before as well. We, we sit in that space where we, we. Are fighting with warranties and or helping asset owners, fighting with warranties, fighting with root cause analysis for manufacturing defects, all these different things.
So I think that some of the last 10, 15 years of this booming incremental growth and short innovation cycles with blades and some things like that are starting to rear their head with these guys. Mm-hmm. , I mean,
Allen Hall: Alan, what are your thoughts on that? No, I, I, I definitely think so. It seems like all the OEMs are concerned about the rapid.
Crease in the number of blades, the types of blades, the types of turbines, the race to, you know, 20 megawatts, which, where we’re all headed is putting a huge strain financially on all the OEMs. And all it takes is a little bit of a hiccup to, to really put a company under financial strain. And GE has hit that hiccup and for whatever reason there is not a lot to do about it.
I mean, just because of the timing, right? So you, you can, you can look at the different reasons why they’re, they, they’ve reached these financial impact numbers, but the, the problem is with the inflationary pressure that’s going to exist, and it’s looking like it’s another year, maybe two, is the discussion in the, in the economic communities that it’s gets really hard to finance.
It’s getting really hard on the supply chain. The supply chain costs are not gonna go down. So you got that. You got the, the pressure from the bottom on your suppliers coming up, giving you less and less margins. And then like we’re gonna see in this California offshore auction there’s gonna be a lot of money set aside.
So the, the, the OEMs don’t have a lot of room to operate in. That doesn’t make for a very attractive. And if GE Renova becomes a, you know, a listed stock, which it will, what happens there and the stock markets are gonna look at what six month future is and they’re gonna see huge losses. I, I would assume, Well, at least, at least in the near term.
But yeah, I mean, what’s the US gonna do about it? I think that’s, I think what you and I are trying to get to is like, what is, what is the US government, state agencies, whatever, Going to do about it because if you, if you do lose ge or GE really ramps down, which it may do, you don’t have a domestic supplier.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. And, and with the contraction of the economy in general and inflation running away with really, I mean from, from my research, not a whole lot of end in sight. It’s hard to get capital right now. Right. And it’s, and, and understanding that every single develop. That GE is gonna be a part of that is gonna, I mean, the pro, the, the product of GE renewables is to turbines, right?
Or the, and the service side of things and the service side of things probably does just fine, but the turbines is where the, the money is and then where the money’s being made and lost, right? If you don’t have capital readily available within your economy all of those projects are super capital intensive.
Like nobody’s gonna, nobody has half a half a billion dollars in their, you know, in a can outback. That’s like, I’m gonna go build a wind farm. You gotta go and finance that thing, right? And when, and the finance rates are so high, you’re going to hold off. Everybody’s kind of holding their horses a little bit going, like, what is this economy gonna do?
When it gets back on track, maybe we’ll pull the trigger, but right now, not so much. So that’s a cascading effect all the way back to that g GEs, wind platforms that just aren’t
Allen Hall: being. Does this lend itself, and I’ve been saying this for the last year, that a developer grabs hold of an oem, maybe not in whole, but at least in part, to provide the financial stability.
So say some, a company like Orad, even though it’s not truly an independent company, is own by Denmark, right? Isn’t that the, the basis of that? Yeah. If Forted decided to grab hold of an OEM basically to lower their costs, that would take pressure. And, but if you combine the two together, an operator, owner operator with a manufacturer, that just seemed like the best combination.
It’s sort of what, Well, it’s sort of what China does in, in a top level sense. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . But if you’re, if you’re looking at it being a, an American need to create wind turbines, particularly in the. . I don’t know how you’re going to do it without someone. A Brookshire Hathaway, an ORs Ted. Somebody’s a big player.
Brookfield. Yeah. Yeah, right. Coming in saying angle, Hey, we’re gonna, we’re gonna buy a quarter of GE Renova, and we’re going to, we’re gonna lower our cost. We can buy turbines at cost, and yet we provide a constant revenue stream for this OEM that’s making these turbines, thereby keeping a stable supply.
Joel Saxum: I think right now the play in that, if you were to look at it, would be someone that’s gonna do floating offshore. Yeah. Yeah. Because that’s, that’s the only gap, right? That’s the only one that’s not quite figured out. Right. Cause I don’t, I don’t know of a whole lot of operators maybe besides or said or and EDF or a NEX era.
Would have that kinda capital
Allen Hall: NextEra would’ve that capital Well, they would you think that they would, But why? Why would, why would GE have go into that marketplace, Right? It with all the downside risks they have right now on onshore and the limited offshore that they’re in. Why would you invest money in floating offshore right now?
I, I think if you’re are lead heading that company, that’d be the last thing you wanna do is make such a huge bet.
Joel Saxum: It would have to be an Someone massively cash rich and eor to, to grab to, to grab someone to say, We are now gonna develop through floating with you. And now we are EOR and whoever it is, s Jevs vest as whatever, and we’re gonna take on offshore, floating.
We’re gonna be the ones.
Allen Hall: I agree, but I mean, I think it has to go.
Joel Saxum: It could, I mean, it’s, so far it’s, it’s, it seems economically farfetched just because of the amount of capital involved and something like that would be wild. I’m thinking,
Allen Hall: well, what’s the book value of a GE Renova though, in, in a year?
Yeah. It’s,
Joel Saxum: it might be a steal,
Allen Hall: right? I mean, I have any choice, right? You, you could get a, a hostile takeover of a, of a GE Renova just because of. The difficulty in which it is in right now, it’s, which we have seen in the United States all the time. You know, very what we, you know, historically great companies have a a, a weak year and they get taken over because they know there’s intrinsic value in this asset.
It’s just, Low at the moment. And so these crazy takeover things happen in these oddly inflationary times. It’s a possibility. And I hope, man, I hope it doesn’t happen, man. I, I hope GE can figure this thing out. I really, really do. But it’s not looking good right now. And you, you just hope that, you know, the leaders that they have in place can steer this ship through these difficult waters.
So it, it, it’s not gonna get easier over the next six. I’m thinking
Joel Saxum: about the last big kind of merger, not, it wasn’t a hostile merger, but like merger takeover and how it worked out. And what comes to mind is MHI Vestus. Right? And it, and it didn’t work out right? Sure. They tried it. They tried it, and it, and it just, they ended up going like, Yeah, nope, and splitting back up.
So, you know, in my mind, and this is, you know, of course this is not, this is just a, a armchair thought. Some dummy in the wind industry I’m thinking GE renova based in France in a bunch of power generation. They start to look pretty poor in six months to a year. EDF is down the street and they’re big into the power generation on the nuclear and renewables,
Allen Hall: everything, right?
So, There’s gonna be a lot of action, right? And I, I just keep an eye on these economic numbers and when we see these quarter reports come out, it’s good to do a little bit of a deep dive into ’em, to quasi predict the future. A little bit, little bit of turbulence ahead.
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Joel Saxum: news.
Allen Hall: So Joel, you know, we talked about the number of conferences that happened simultaneously in the US and Europe, and another one happened, which was ACP Offshore Wind Power. That was in Providence, Rhode Island. And that’s an interesting one because, That’s where most of the offshore development’s gonna happen.
It’s right off the shores of Providence. And they had a number of high level executives from the operators in OEMs. And some of the things they were talking about, I think are indicative of what the industry is feeling now. In particular, Molly Morris, who is the US offshore WIN Chief for Equin. I, I’ll, I’ll quote her cause I don’t wanna get this outta perspective here.
It says, I believe you would paint an image if there were, if there continues to be vital delays and initiatives, which might be already within the pipeline getting pushed again, meaning pushed to the right, schedule-wise, then it’s going to be harder to fulfill that 30 by 30 target. So what she’s saying is there’s been too many delays up to this point, and we’re now getting real close to 2030 because it takes a certain amount of time to develop these projects.
If we don’t get going, we’re gonna miss our target. Obtaining permits was a, a fear of a lot of the owner operators and who mentioned the environmental reviews need to be speedier and carried out with a little more consistency and transparency. You remember that a large operator, developer like ecu.
Sees a lot of permitting within their company, A across the world. So they have a lot of knowledge in the UK and now they’re getting experience in the United States, and I’m sure they can, can cross compare and see how fast things are developed in certain countries and not in others. And they see there’s, there’s headwinds in the United States in terms.
this project is moving faster, is gonna be permitted faster than this other project. They don’t know why. There’s no consistency. That’s a, that’s a big issue. Mm-hmm. because of the number of projects we’re gonna develop that needs to get straightened out pretty quickly. And then from Siemens Gamesa, one of their representatives was talking and said they’re in an industry that’s taking off like a rocket ship.
Yet there’s a lot of, of, of us OEMs across the entire value chain, or suppliers across the value chain that are struggling to do it at profit. That allows us to continue investing in te. Siemens Kame is making same argument. Everybody’s making that the, the potential growth of the industry is very high, and yet the profitability of these companies is struggling.
So it sounds like a, a lot of the discussions at ACP Offshore Wind power ver very similar to some of the things we heard over in Hamburg, that the industry in general is struggling with governmental. On some level, even in the, even in the, in the bid process, the auctions that are happening, I think they feel like they’re, the auctions are drawing too much value out of the, the food chain there where the, the OEMs and operators can’t work effectively.
Does, does, do these comments seem out, align with things that you’re hearing or are pretty much, are you hearing the same sort of things?
Joel Saxum: Same stuff. And it’s onshore as well. You know, grid interconnects and getting, getting those people to jump on board and the environmental permitting and a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, all these different things like we talked about with that facility going on up, and I think it was Massachusetts where they had seven, we counted like seven agencies where they had to get permits from just to extend this thing 500 meters so they could land a vessel there.
You know, one of the roles of ACP within Wind here, American Clean Power Association and they do a pretty good job of it, is, is advocating for the industry at a federal level, a state level, a community level, to make sure that these things move forward for the industry. You know, like at these people, a Siemens Gamesa, or Vestas, or a GE or even, you know, large operators and stuff, like some of their dues that they pay to the ACP.
Organization are massive. You know, you’re talking, there’s, there’s millions in that pot, right? And that money goes to you know, for lack of a better term, lobbying for the industry. Sure. Yeah. So I hope that at this ACP offshore Wind power convention was on the east coast up towards, you know, Rhode Island, where there’s a, there’s it easily accessible for a lot of our elected officials to be there.
And I believe there was quite a few of them speaking there. I hope they heard. And, and in this big forum of offshore energy developers, operators, supply chain was there speaking loud enough for these, for their elected officials to hear, Guys, we need help. We want to hit this 30 by 30. We’re, we’re in lockstep with you by administration to get this done.
We have the capital, we’ve got the people. We’re, we’re, we’re moving assets. We’re trying to build ships, We’re doing all this stuff. But you guys have got to take the damn roadblocks down, get to get these hurdles out of the way. Like let’s, let’s make this happen because you know, what it sounds like as well is in any good organization, say if it was Joel and a and Inc.
We build our company on processes and this is how we do things. It seems like the pro, the processes are rocky and not quite right because the getting approvals over here and doing the same stuff over here, but not getting it over here and it’s kind of individual by the person they’re talking to and.
It’s, it’s frustrating to watch happen from afar because of course we can’t personally do anything about it, but, you know, share our voices and hope they get heard as well. But man, I hope that some of the money that the US government is spending on some things gets put into permitting these offshore energy projects and onshore energy projects to get ’em moving.
Allen Hall: Yeah. And that’s why ACP and nre L and I think there was like 300 people involved in, in the, in the creation of that offshore. Best practice document, I’ll call it. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. to try to clear these roadblocks, but that only clears roadblocks if agencies involved accept that. Okay. And listen to it as the best practices.
Right. And, and take that on. I, I’m not sure they’re, youre getting a, a sort of a top down push from the heads of those administrations, those different agencies to, to implement those. And what we seem to be happening is here in Albany area, Albany New York area. We’re getting sidetracked all the time. And I’m not sure, you know, who knows the reason exactly why, but it does seem like it needs a little bit of management involvement, right?
It’s like running a fast food. Use an analogy. It’s like running a fast food chain. If you walk into say, McDonald’s and there’s no manager there, it tends to be a little chaotic. Everybody’s sort of doing their own thing. That’s what it kind of feels like right now. And I’m sure the OEMs and the developers are sort of feeling the same thing like.
Consistency. Consistency. If I walk into a McDonald’s in California or McDonald’s in Massachusetts, I should have the same experience. I should have the same quality of food. I should get in the same response and what I make in order, it should take a minute to shove it out some, whatever those numbers are, that’s a management, right?
That that tends to be where management comes in and control over controls it over the, the high level processes that. We’re not necessarily seeing that in the government agencies that are involved in permitting all these offshore projects to occur. And that you, there’s a continual repeating chorus.
of, Yeah, . That’s good. I like that. Of, of owners and operators OEM saying, Hey, the, the. Machinations we’re having to go through to get things permitted are really slowing us down and not adding value. I think it’s the adding value piece is really the concerning part. Like, we’re gonna get this permit, but it’s taking us a lot longer than it should.
Why can’t we fix that? And I, I, and I don’t know if acps been super pushy about that. I, I, they’ve noted it and I’m sure, and I’ve been in places where they’ve talked about. You gotta wonder what’s happen. Kind of wonder what’s going on behind the scenes, right? What’s happening behind the curtain is ACP going up to senators and saying, We need you to step in.
Hey congressperson, we need you to make this phone call to the EPA or wherever it’s gonna be to the, the core of engineers. You know, what’s happening behind the scenes because what, whatever they’re doing right now is not seeming to have a huge effect.
Joel Saxum: So is it the fact that because I, and maybe you know this or someone listening knows this answer and could comment to us or let us know, I just don’t personally, but do we have a renewable energy czar or you know, a renewable energy task force in a lead?
And because are we just throwing all these things into a black hole? This, or the, you know, what was into DC and just going like, figure it out. But there’s no racy model to see who’s actually responsible and accountable.
Allen Hall: That’s what it feels like. Joel the head of Department of Energy, which is Jennifer Granholm, is, is traveling around the country and she’s very vocal and energetic and she’s talking up these projects, but there’s, when you start following the chain that she’s created and all the things she’s talking about, you go, Oh my gosh.
A Google couldn’t manage this . There’s, there’s too much going in, too many different directions. It’s, you can’t, you can’t manage it. Right. Which is, I think, the problem they’re having. And obviously the Department of Energy can only do so much. There’s other agencies that they’re working with or competing with, what the, whatever the case is here, right?
Where, you know, what is the head of Department of Energy gonna. Right. If the EPA says, We’re not gonna do this thing, they’re not gonna do it. And that’s where those management steps in, right? That’s where management steps in. Maybe the White House steps in and says, Okay, this is what we’re gonna do, everybody.
I just don’t it. It’s that some total, Right. Now if, if you take the collective comments from all the different OEMs and the, the owner operators and you start to connect them together, isn’t that the message that you’re. Coalesce around?
Joel Saxum: Oh, I think it’s, I think it’s clear. I don’t even think it’s a message that’s starting to coalesce.
I think it’s gelled in it’s concrete. Every single person is saying, This is not going forward fast enough. It’s not going forward in the right way. We need more help. I mean, from OEMs to developers to the supply chain. The only people I know that are, that are eating really well right now are the, the, the geophysical and geotechnical surveyors that are out there just driving around in grids,
Allen Hall: They’re doing all that’s awesome for that. Did you see that on LinkedIn the other day about the surveying? That’s old. That’s my old life, man.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, I know some people that have retired on that stuff already. .
Allen Hall: That particular part of the earth has been scanned pretty well over the last year. It’s, yeah, it’s, it’s a little shocking
Joel Saxum: If anybody is, if anybody’s interested in what we’re talking about, you can go onto a website called marine traffic.com, and it tracks the AIS signals of every vessel, every commercial vessel. In the world, and you can go and zoom in on the area where the New York bite auction is, and you can just see all these vessels, grid left, right, left, right, up, down, left, right up, down for the last few years doing you know, UXO surveys, and geotechnical surveys and geophysical surveys, mapping the cba, all this good jazz.
It has to happen before any of these things go forward for planning purposes. But those guys. They’ve been eating well. They’ve had some good Christmases. .
Allen Hall: Well, you have to know it’s down there, right? We’ve already seen exactly in some places where they’ve had trouble driving mono piles
and,
Allen Hall: and putting cables in.
Right? So there it’s, it’s well worthy investing. I’m sure it’s gonna de-risk a lot of, a lot
Joel Saxum: of things. Well, it’s a big part of the permitting process. It’s a big part of Permiting process. Like, you can’t go, you can’t go forward without having a plan of what’s out there, what you’re gonna put in the ground, all these different things.
So those guys have been cruising out there. I mean, I. People that started out there three years ago shooting stuff or surveying stuff before these auctions even came close
Allen Hall: to happening. Well, do you feel like, let’s put this in perspective. Do you feel like the, the developers, management wise, have been on top of it and, and that they’re really pushing as hard as they can without creating too much chaos?
But there’s just a wall there. There’s just a government wall there, isn’t it? What it’s starting to feel like that. I feel like, like Ann Ecuador is throwing a lot of people at this problem. I definitely Avan Grid and some, or stead or are Throw Dominion are throwing a lot of people at these problems to resolve them.
I mean, there’s, the response back seems slow.
Joel Saxum: There’s 2000 people at ACP Offshore Wind. . Right? Right. And if we know, if we know anything about conferences, it’s a couple of people from each company go, not a hundred. Right? So Right. Then you’re talking a thousand companies that were represented there, or you know, 500 at the least.
That’s a lot of companies for not, for only having seven wind turbines in the water. So, , , there’s, there’s definitely a lot of people and a lot of effort going forward on this thing. And that 30 by 30 goal. As we talk about all the time, it’s just kind of starting to slip. Well,
Allen Hall: and you know, let me throw, let me throw this other angle on it.
Is, is be, is it the last couple of months, have you felt like the administration has been struggling to try to get through November? That the, the, they see the, the elections coming up. As of right now, the polling is not really going their way in a lot of states that they’re. Locked into this election cycle and we’re not gonna see anything until November 9th or 10th when all that resolves itself.
So we’re, we’re a couple weeks question from that. Right. Do we, is it just, Hey, we gotta get through this election thing and then we’ll get back on it and we could really get going? Or will the election and whatever’s gonna resolve on that? And I, who knows right now? Yeah. Does that just create more chaos?
So this doesn’t get resolved? What’s the feeling?
Joel Saxum: A hundred percent the elections are taking over everything right now. I’ll give you a, a picture of the scene from my house on Sunday. I was watching the football game with my lovely, better half, who is Canadian. And she could not believe the amount of political commercials.
I mean, and it was just, this person’s horrible. And that person got a, an F in elementary school and like, just like every commercial, every single one of ’em, 1, 2, 3, 4, after one after another, you’d have a commercial break during a, during a football game, and there would be five. Political commercials.
That’s all that the political world is focused on right now, is these elections. And it’s frustrating cuz I mean, you know, okay, we’re, we’re 10 days, 12 days away, that will calm down, but that will be some fallout from it, right? You’re gonna see sure. Anybody see some power swings in some of those things.
And that always of course affects the economic environment within the us. That’s how things work here. So, Yeah, I think they might be in just kind of a holding pattern. You know, there was this article I saw the other day, and I’m not, I’m, I’m not a CIA spy or anything, I don’t know if this is true or not, but that like, Biden administration was like pissed off at Saudi Arabia because they were gonna Yeah.
Not hold, So the, the fuel prices would increase right before the election. Sure. Like, it literally was like, this is what they said. Like, that’s horrible. If that’s the case. No. You know, I’m not, I’m not politically pandering or anything, but like, Yeah. If that’s your focus right now isn’t,
Allen Hall: Well, I heard somebody give it a good example of this when gas prices rise, that you’ll have lines at the gas, at the gas pump to save 5 cents.
Right? But you, you won’t have those same lines in other places. So gas price, Because it’s so visible in the United States really drive elections in some cases, and this one may be one of them where there’s not a lot that the government is gonna be able to do about it. I know they’re trying to at least obviously, patrolling reserves and talk to Venezuela, it sounds like in Saudi Arabia at times.
It just, you know, the, the, the problem with that is it just devotes so much time to things that may not make any difference and there’s other things happening. You gotta be able to walk and chew. Gum is the . Yeah. It’s temporary phrase. Right? Right. Even if all that is still happening, the economy churns on and you’re missing opportunities, right?
Mm-hmm. , And that’s where I think this is gonna be a struggle.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. And you know, not, not to take anything away from our struggles, but if. European friends and other, other countries, the world friends are listening right now and we’re talking about you know, two, $2 or two two euros a liter fuel and being bent outta shape about it.
They’re laughing at, or, you know, cuz right now it’s, it’s not even close to what their fuel prices are. So we’re feeling pain, but not like our friends are across the seas.
Allen Hall: So, Yeah. And, you know, and you know, I hope this little election bit goes pretty fast when we get over it. And I, I saw some disappointing things today.
Ships full of diesel fuel that was headed to Europe. In fact, some of it was docked over there or now coming to the states because we’re running on a diesel fuel in the United States. So we’re in this tete with tete with Europe on energy. Mm-hmm. . And that’s not helpful. That’s not cool. No. That’s not cool.
No, I’m not cool with that. No. Nope.
Joel Saxum: Diesel, I’m here in northern Wisconsin and I was in town yesterday and regular unleaded was like 360 a. And diesel fuel was like five 40 I think.
Allen Hall: Two bucks a gallon. This has been as low. I think the, the discussion I was, I’ll listen to this trucker, trucker overnight show, and they talking about that we Nothing to get our news
No. Well, cause if you wanna hear about energy prices, that’s where you go. Right? If you wanna hear about diesel prices, fuel prices, that’s where you go. And the, the, the reserves of the United States are all really low, historically low right now. And I, I think this is why you’re seeing tankers come to the United States with diesel fuel.
That doesn’t even make any sense. But I think it goes back to just the energy policies we have in place and who’s, who’s at the, at the controls managing this. You just don’t feel like anybody’s there at the moment and wind is gonna suffer for it, unfortunately. And that, that’s a real shame because United States could do a lot of great things at the moment and, and we are, but we could be doing so much.
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Visit weather guard wind.com to learn more. Read a case study and schedule a call. We have a special guest from down under. We have Matthew Stead co-founder and CEO of Ping at Winn Energy Hamburg. Welcome, Matthew. Thank you. It’s great to be here. So Matthew, this sh show today’s Friday. It’s the last day of the show.
The show’s been massive. There have been thousands of people coming by the ping booth. This. , just give us some of your impressions of all that’s happened this week. It’s been tremendous.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. I mean, so many people, I think there’s a bit of excitement. That wind energy hamburg’s back on again. Yes, that’s true.
Quick side note. We launched here four years ago, so it was, Oh, there you go. A bit of a reunion. a nice one. A nice one. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, people have come past operators mixture of, you know, OEMs. People, industry people. So I guess the, I think blades are a hot topic. no surprise there.
And I think people are becoming aware that there is an ability to have a continuous monitoring program. So I think, you know, the, the tide is turning. People are realizing digitization, continuous monitoring, it’s a thing. It’s here and it’s the way to go.
Allen Hall: And it’s, it’s gotten to the point of it’s beyond the infancy stage.
Yeah, true. Which four years ago it was at the infancy stage. Yeah. Everybody was just trying to figure it out a little bit. But for here, four years later, it seems like the implementation phase is really kicking in. And I know you had a couple of larger orders just inside Scoop, but it’s, it’s, it’s exploded.
I think is is 2023 and the end of 2022 just gonna. Growth years for Siemens.
Matthew Stead: I there’s global shortage of, you know, technicians talent to repair blades. Yeah. People are realizing they need to optimize their repair campaigns. They can’t just keep deferring indefinitely. Right. So yeah, there’s a re increasing reliance on, you know, condition monitoring to optimize the whole process.
So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we’re ready for it. So excited and getting ready for the, For what, what, what will be ahead of.
Allen Hall: What are some of the, the high points you, or some of the key concerns you heard about this week in terms of monitoring systems? What, what problems are the OEMs and the operators bringing in?
Yeah. We gotta be able to check this or check that.
Matthew Stead: I think the aftermarket is always, you know, you know, challenged by how much they can afford. Sure. It’s, you know, quite tightly constrained financially, so that’s always the big thing. Being aware of what’s happening is obviously a part of the whole condition monitoring thing.
Yeah. And there’s more and more continuous monitoring, you know, systems on the market. And it’s good to see, you know, that they all have their strengths. Sure. You know, and so it’s good to see where they all fit into the puzzle cuz there’s Yeah. Yeah, there’s, there’s different ways of attacking or, you know, not attacking you know, passively monitoring all these different challenges that are occurring, like lightning versus root zone damage.
It’s all, it’s all different. Right.
Allen Hall: And the ping module. I, I can’t imagine you envisioned all the things it does now. When you were here, , what? Yeah. Many years ago. 20. You say 2016? 2018. 2018. Okay. So four years ago, could you envision all the things that the ping sensor does? No,
Matthew Stead: No . Yeah.
Allen Hall: Great. No, it’s, it’s, the market has driven some of these, these newer ideas.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. Yeah. And basically getting pulled into different areas. So getting pulled into measuring inside the blade to monitor more. Significant structural cracks in the root zone. We got, we’ve got been pulled into that pulled into ice buildup monitoring, which we released in Sweden this year.
And also being pulled into detecting when there’s a lightning event
Allen Hall: as well. Sure, sure. So the, the, the key then to peeing is that it’s sort of multiverse you can add on these pieces based. Customer demand customers are demanding to know what’s happening inside the blades as well as outside. Correct.
It seems like we’ve heard a lot about this, that this week structural issues near the hub see, be almost top of mind because of some of the failures we’ve seen in the press. What is, what is this new sensor that the new pink singer sensor do that goes inside the blade? How does it work basically? Yeah,
Matthew Stead: so uses the same hardware, so for us it’s exactly the same hardware without the windshield because there’s not much wind inside a blade
Hope not. Well, there shouldn’t be. Right. So we’ve got exactly the same hardware. We’ve got new algorithms which are tuned towards root zone damage, which sounds different from the external damage. So different algorithms. Yeah. So it’s just a sort of repackaging and there’s a small challenge about power inside.
Oh, as well. Yeah.
Allen Hall: You don’t have any solar power to work on.
Matthew Stead: No sun .
Allen Hall: Well, hopefully no sun.
Matthew Stead: Hopefully no wind and no sun inside the blade. Right.
Allen Hall: So you have to come with a different kind of energy source.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. So we’ve got a alternative, a energy source, which Right. Nuclear . No, that’s sun again, . No, no.
Allen Hall: Yeah, so there’s just a lot going on at, at the ping headquarters at the moment, I’m sure. Yes. Next Hamburg event is two years from now, where do you see all the offerings in two years? Where’s, where’s the industry going? Where’s the, the monitoring systems going? Cost is hu obviously top of mind.
Also, we’ve mm-hmm. , we’ve seen a lot of that this week that Yeah. Thousands and thousands of dollars for a system. Yeah. It doesn’t, doesn’t really cut it. Yeah. Especially if you have a thousand turbines, it just doesn’t make any sense. Yes. So cost is obviously one of those things. But where does, where does the industry go?
What, what are next steps here? Yeah.
Matthew Stead: I think it’s really about triangulation of sensors. So what I mean by that is looking at our acoustic signatures Sure. But other, other signatures from other, other sensors whatever they might be. Right. Maybe vibration or like we’ve talked about the lightning detection.
Right. Which is magnetic field. Sensing. There’s other sensors which can go in and around the turbines. So I think it’s sort of triangulation of comparing data points, combining them together and getting more insights.
Allen Hall: So, Matthew, what are the key pieces that I’ve heard in several discussions this week is related to like drone data.
There’s just a lot of information coming into an operator and they’re staff limited also, so there’s just. Time to process to review all those images that are coming in and everybody’s trying to put some parameters around it, try to simplify the data down, try to get some, what I call data funnels.
Yes. In, but that seems really right where Ping is today is that it’s, it’s more of a data funnel. And can you explain like you’re measuring all these different systems, icing, lightning internal to the blade. You have a number of different sensors, but you’re not. Giving all that information to the, to the end user directly.
You simplifying that. But that happens on the tower, right? That happens internally.
Matthew Stead: Partly on the tower or predominantly on the tower, but also at cloud level. So the, yeah, there is too much information. And you know, users of these systems say, you know, I don’t want 15 logins. Right? So I think over the next two years, there’ll also be a sort of con consolidation of combin.
Sensors and drone data imagery inspections. , you know, all the, all the things they need to know about into a sort of combined source. And we are, we are part of that. Yeah. Yeah. It’s probably not our vision to drive that transition though. No.
Allen Hall: But I think in general, you’re, you’re almost there. Or you may be there directly.
Yeah, we are,
Matthew Stead: we have an ability to exchange data already, so, Right. We’ve got a behind the scenes as sort of API data transfer system, so that’s already happening.
Allen Hall: Wow. So the, the, the marketplace is just wide open at, at this point in terms of capabil.
Matthew Stead: And I mean, a number of firms have made great progress on trying to amalgamate data sources, so you know, a number of the ones that are here.
And you know, that’s why we’re partnering up with sort of like-minded organizations where we can help them to enhance the output of their, their results. Yeah, so we, we are fitting into the ecosystem of monitoring
Allen Hall: blades. Yes. So this week has been very busy. It sounds like you had a, a number of large orders I’ll.
don’t wanna get too descriptive there. If someone is interested in the ping unit, they better get on it. They better start reaching out to you pretty soon because you’re the matter of fact wise, there’s, there’s limited of quantity at the moment, and it’s gonna be in high demand. What should people do or interested in, in learning about Ping or maybe acquiring a hundred ping units?
Yeah. How do they get on your radar screen and, and get that process started?
Matthew Stead: Yeah. So yeah. Yeah, absolutely right there for the lightning detection and also the in blade version, we have a bit of a forward order order book there, or orders indicated. So really it’s back to the old website, ping monitor.co or LinkedIn, or Yeah, LinkedIn.
Sure. Or yeah.
Allen Hall: Yeah. And also YouTube. Yeah, YouTube. YouTube channel. Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. So there’s, there’s just this is the end of, this is Friday, so this is the end of the day. On Friday, they just made an announcement to, they’re kicking everybody out of the hall, so we’re gonna have to go here in a minute.
Yep. But in terms of shows, this has been, ah, this fabulous.
Matthew Stead: This is huge. Yeah. And yeah, I think there was a lot of excitement cuz this was the first big, big, big, big. So, yeah, it was great.
Allen Hall: Yeah, it, it, it was, we were in San Antonio together for the American Clean Power, which was a big show, but this is, I dunno, this is Texas scale
Matthew Stead: compared to what we saw in Texas.
Yeah. A factor of five bigger, I don’t know.
Allen Hall: Yeah. At least a factor of five. Maybe we’re talking about maybe a factor of eight bigger. Yeah. Just be the number of people, number of, of booze, number of new concepts. The, the, the Dans Pavilion had about over a hundred exhibitors Wow. In just their pavilion. So you can well imagine there are a ton of new ideas and a ton of, and and a number of new concepts being presented.
You gotta wonder what’s gonna happen with the industry in this sense of, if I was an operator, I’d be overwhelmed right now. Yeah.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. It’s just a lot going on. Evaluation of how do you value ideas? Yeah,
Allen Hall: yeah, yeah. Right. And is is what are ping’s benefit. You’ve been through those trials, you’re beyond the trial phase.
This Yeah. This thing works. We know it works. It gives you great data. Does that really help stabilize
Matthew Stead: a lot of customer concerns? Absolutely. You know, we’ve got some great case studies where we’ve done larger scale deployments and got great correlation with, with data. Yeah. And we’re also have a continuous sort of research and development program to, to improve that, but yeah.
Yeah. We don’t talk about trials and POCs.
Allen Hall: Yeah. Right. You’re in production? Yeah. Yeah, we’re in production. You’re
Matthew Stead: in massive production at the moment. Our last order was a 500 a minimum order size of 500. So that’s where we’re heading towards.
Allen Hall: Well, it’s about time. You know, I think the industry needed to do it, but we were in covid time, so things really slowed down and now coming out it’s pedal to the metal.
Yeah. Sort of monitoring systems. And that’s finally good to see. So Matthew, thanks for. For being with us this week. Congratulations on all the exciting news and, and the news that’s about to come. And yeah, we’ll come back on on uptime anytime you’d like. Big thanks to Matthew Stead of Ping. That was a great interview and I’m glad to see Matthew in Hamburg.
Well 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.
