GE Vernova and Vineyard Wind Settle, UK Approves Irish Sea Cables

Speaker: [00:00:00] The Uptime Wind Energy podcast, brought to you by StrikeTape. Protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit StrikeTape.com. And now your hosts

Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m Allen Hall here with Rosemary Barnes and Jelanta Padron. And f- first off, Rosemary is in Denmark in preparation to visit Wind Energy Hamburg. 

Rosemary Barnes: I am. I’m in, uh, Ringkøbing, which is on the west coast of Jutland. Just, uh, took the, a train and hired a car from Copenhagen.

Drove past a whole lot of wind turbines. It’s very nice to be back. 

Allen Hall: So the Wind Energy Hamburg event is the event, in my opinion. There’s really two, right? Wind Europe and Wind Energy Hamburg. Uh, Husum is a big event, but not of the scale of Wind Energy Hamburg. I think they’re [00:01:00] predicting 40-ish thousand people probably are gonna come through the event.

It’s massive. Have you been there before, Rosemary? 

Rosemary Barnes: I haven’t. I’ve only been to WindEurope once, and other than that I’ve been to some big composites conferences back when I was doing my PhD, but I’m kind of, like, ’cause y- when I went to WindEurope last year, that was my first big wind energy conference, and I was so overwhelmed.

I walked in the door, I saw the exhibition, and within 90 seconds all the energy had drained from my body and I’m like, “I wanna go home now.” But, um, so I’ve kind of like, I, I have just, I’ve spent a couple of days in, in Copenhagen and surrounds and, um, and that, that was really good. Lots of talking, lots of seeing stuff, and I’m sure we’ll talk about that in a minute.

Um, but now I have preemptively, like, taken myself to a quiet corner of Denmark to just, yeah, like, put my, put my head down and, uh, yeah, have some quiet activities, some n- nature. The nature is really nice over this [00:02:00] part of Denmark. There’s lots of… Like, I wanna go for some long runs in sand dunes and heaths and, um, yeah, planning to drive up to Østerild where there’s a big wind turbine test center.

Uh, I just wanna see what’s there just out of pure, pure geekiness, see what’s there, ’cause y- you know, like, there’s new, new stuff there, right? And there’s often, like, offshore wind turbines being tested. I don’t know what’s there. That’ll be cool to see. Um, and yeah, I’m trying to put together a video about how wind turbines are tested, so that will be part of it and, yeah, potentially a good recording location.

So yeah, just a bit of quiet time, trying to rest up ahead of next week where I know that there will be just so many conversations. I love, I love talking about wind energy technology, and I love catching up with old people that I know, but I just, I’m not an extrovert. Um, yeah, at best an ambivert maybe, slightly introverted.

I was actually discussing this with somebody, how, like, inappropriate it is to have such [00:03:00] sensory overload at, um, a conference that is mostly attended by engineers. It’s, like, we’re not known for being, you know, like, really social people. Um, and we came up with the idea that there should be, like, a what? A sensory deprivation room in there where, um, you know, you can just go in and like- Oh my 

Yolanda Padron: gosh, that would be 

Rosemary Barnes: great

yeah, like, get in a, one of those tanks or a soundproof booth, uh, star- just yeah, so, like, you can just go in and reset and, um, yeah, refill your social battery. I think that that would be, yeah, that would be a real, a real winner if someone… I’m sure someone could charge a, charge money for that there. Or you sell the sponsorship for, like, a million dollars because it’s just so popular and everyone’s so grateful that it exists.

Allen Hall: Well, Ro- Rosemary, if you want to talk to Rosemary, she’s gonna be hanging around the EOLOGIX- I’m gonna be hiding … Ping Booth. Oh. She may be hiding, but she will be somewhere near the EOLOGIX- You can find her … Ping Booth. Yeah. Y- you just listen for the Australian accent and a bunch of, uh, German [00:04:00] accents, right?

It’s pretty easy to pick out in my opinion. Austrian. Oh, yeah, and Austrian too. Yeah. So there, there’s, um- A, a ton of people, obviously, that we know are gonna be at Hamburg for the week. It, it starts Tuesday. I think it finishes on Friday. Uh, uh, Rosemary will be there, Matthew Stead will be there, our own Nikki Briggs from Weather Guard will be there.

When you run into them, say hi. Uh, although Rosemary talks about not being so social, she’s very social, so- 

Rosemary Barnes: That’s my problem, is that I get really social and then I get exhausted, like absolutely exhausted. 

Allen Hall: Yeah. Yes. So, uh, uh, it’ll be a fun time. I hope everybody has a good time and, and all the travels to and from are safely done.

Uh, so go visit, uh, EOLOGIX-PING. Our, our friends at CNC Onsite will also be there. Uh, they have some big announcements, uh, having to do with, uh, a new place in the United States. PES Wind will be there. Uh, s- I think [00:05:00] Stefan’s gonna be there, so say hi to Stefan and pick up the, the newest copy of PES Wind.

There’s an article by Weather Guard in PES Wind, uh, so go ahead and pick one of those up. Uh, and, uh, one of the o- items before we get too deep into the news this week, the SkySpecs Forum. So if you work with SkySpecs or if you d- even if you don’t and know SkySpecs, obviously a huge, uh, drone inspection company doing CMS and vendor management and all the above They’re having their SkySpecs Forum October 6th and 7th in Detroit, uh, at the MGM Grand, which is a, a magnificent place.

Uh, and if you’re, are involved in inspections of blades or deal with CMS or doing a lot of repairs on wind farms, you should try to get to the SkySpecs Forum. There are onl- as I understand it, there’s only a couple of seats left, so y- you need to go to SkySpecs and register for that event and get yourself to Detroit.

So just [00:06:00] a note, if you really want to go, and you should, you better do it quickly. Well, there’s good news out of Massachusetts, which doesn’t happen all that often lately. Uh, Vineyard Wind and GE Vernova has settled their fight. Now, GE Vernova had tried to quit the $4.5 billion project, and it said the developer owed it about $360 million.

Well, GE Vernova has pulled back that threat, and thank goodness. It, it has dropped all its courts appeals, and both sides are dropping every claim. So everything that was happening in the court cases in Massachusetts are all gonna go away, and GE is gonna be on site to, uh, support Vineyard Wind, which, Yolanda, has to be a huge win for both sides and the state of Massachusetts, which is the recipient of a lot of that electricity.

Yolanda Padron: Absolutely, and it’s a win, too, for just the US offshore market in general, right? It’s, it’s something that’s been happening for quite a bit of time. [00:07:00] Uh, we were talking about it pre-recording, that this is– the idea of, of settling in court is really not typical for onshore or offshore. It’s kind of, it’s almost like a game of chicken, I feel like, and this time it just, it took a little bit longer than, than usual for them to settle on something.

But happy that they settled. Um, yeah, no, this is a big, a big win for the US. 

Allen Hall: Yeah, the optics around it was just bad for US offshore wind. With everything else going on, to have two of the bigger parties fighting one another in court is, that just did not look good. And I, I think everybody knew at the, at the time, I think Rosemarie had said it even, that they’re gonna have to settle.

They’re gonna have to work together. That, that’s the only outcome that, that can happen here. No one is walking away from this project. That will not happen. So it’s good this has finally been settled, because we gotta get moving on. I know there’s, there’s, contrary to what you probably hear in the press, there are some other [00:08:00] offshore wind farms that are still being constructed quietly, dutifully, and will be done roughly on time.

So more to come on the US offshore side. So GE also has better news this week. They won a turbine order in Japan, and we’ll have that after the break.

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Well, GE Vernova has won an order in Japan. It’ll supply seven turbines to Eurus Energy. That wind farm will be up in, in the northern part of the country. Uh, it’s a small market obviously for GE Vernova, but it is a steady one and it gives a, a little bit of a positive sign because the news coming out of GE Vernova for onshore wind has been really quiet.

A little bit over in, I think it was Northern Europe, if I remember correctly, or at least Europe, and then this small order in Japan. It does seem like GE’s being very selective on who they’re working with and what marketplace they’re willing to deal in right now. 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I haven’t seen any GE turbine wind farms getting announced.

Um, yeah, there’s quite a few Vestas and there’s some Goldwind. Um, hmm, there were some Nordex maybe? [00:10:00]

Allen Hall: Nordex is making big moves. 

Rosemary Barnes: But yeah, not so many GE, which is interesting because there are plenty of GE turbines in the ground already. But yeah, not so many sales recently. But yeah, I’m not sure, like have they pulled back intentionally or are people choosing not to choose GE turbines?

I’m not, I’m not sure. One thing I do know is that like you might think, um, you know, maybe it says something about how happy people have been with the turbines, but I don’t think that that’s got anything to do with it. I really don’t think that the developers are talking too much to the O&M people to actually l- learn about things like that.

It’s also, it’s, it’s tricky because things change as well. Y- you know, like, um, there’s known issues on f- probably y- you know, like every manufacturer has one or two platforms that everyone’s like, “Oh God, those ones, they, you know, have whatever problems, X, Y, Z.” Um, but they fix them, you know? So you can’t just use that as a, as a rule of thumb.

S- problems get fixed and go away and then new problems emerge [00:11:00]on plat- um, yeah, from manufacturers that previously didn’t have any. So yeah, I don’t, I, I don’t think you should just, um, think about yeah, your previous experiences to guide y- your next purchasing decisions. 

Yolanda Padron: It’s also one of those things, right, if GE was really, in this case GE, right, was really, really popular like in the United States and everybody was really, really used to all of the issues that they were having and not necess- and paying a lot of attention to it now, not necessarily because GE was having more issues than everybody else, but because there was so many more GE turbines, then the issue seemed more prevalent because you were listening to it a lot more for a lot of these operators.

Um, so I think sometimes things can just get lost in the noise. Um, but Rosie, uh, if, I’m really curious, um, once you’re in, in Hamburg, just pay attention to, to who’s, who has more people around their booths and just kind of who who has, who seems to be getting a lot of the, the clientele. Uh, I’m really, really curious to see if [00:12:00] it’s still just kind of the same groups of people or if people are gonna be a lot more spread out.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I’m definitely gonna be hanging around, uh, visiting all of the different OEMs, because one of the things that I wanna do, or Matt and I both wanna do while we’re in Hamburg, is try to convince the OEMs to make it over to Australia. It’s one of the, um, yeah, for wind, um, for WOMA, Wind O&M Australia in March next year in Melbourne.

It’s one of the things that has been, like, the most consistent feedback from the asset owners, um, and operators here is that they want more access to the OEMs, and specifically they have mentioned, yes, so some of them do come to some of the Australian events, but they’re not sending anyone technical, and people are desperate to get technical questions answered, um, for new, new turbines.

There are some of the companies now are starting to involve the O&M team with the decision on which turbines to select, or at least, like, the specific technology [00:13:00] options in them. And so yeah, they want more information about the actual technologies that are available and how suitable they are for Australian-specific conditions, ’cause it’s definitely not a given.

Um, and then the other thing is that y- the people are looking into uplift projects where they want to, you know, add enhancements to their existing turbines, and the OEMs offer, offer those technologies. But we don’t so often get, like, really technical people here that can e- y- you know, ex- explain and answer questions that, um, like, have enough knowledge not to just, like, recite a sales brochure, but to actually be able to y- y- they know the technology well enough that they can answer something that hasn’t been asked of them before.

You know, like maybe if there’s a unique operating environment that they, uh, you know, haven’t put a turbine in before. So, um, yeah. I’m really hopeful that we can convince some of those people to send technical people to Australia, and yeah, I mean, the, the pull for that, the request for that is, is huge, so I think it’s definitely going to be worth their while to come over to Australia.

And yeah, like, let’s have a look at how big [00:14:00] every OEM’s, uh, booth is at Hamburg, because I know that you can sense one or two technical people on an airplane to Australia is gonna cost a whole lot less than, um, yeah, than putting together a booth at a, a big exhibition like this one. So yeah. Anyway, OEMs, I’m coming for you in Hamburg.

Allen Hall: After the break, we’re headed to the Celtic Sea. Scientists have put listening devices on the sea floor and they want to know what wildlife hears, so stay with us As wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it, difficult. That’s why the Uptime podcast recommends PES Wind magazine.

PES Wind offers a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high-quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit peswind.com today. Floating wind in the Celtic Sea needs [00:15:00] better data, obviously.

Nobody knows where the marine mammals are necessarily, and nobody knows how noisy it is in the water. Well, our friends at ORE Catapult are gonna spend 2.7 million pounds to find out, and it has placed 21 listening devices on the sea floor, and they’re recording 24 hours a day to understand what is happening with the marine mammals in undersea, uh, areas around floating wind farms.

This is gonna be interesting. ORE Catapult more recently is, uh, well, obviously for the last several years has been involved in offshore energy projects in the UK. Uh, and the number of projects they’ve been in has been quite well-documented. But some of these areas are very technically challenging, and understanding what’s happening On the sea floor or in a sea with, particularly with marine mammals, is really complicated.

There’s a lot of variables there. [00:16:00] I’m glad finally someone like Orri Catabolt’s gonna tackle this because I think there’s a lot of questions worldwide, particularly for floating wind, as to what happens when turbines hit the water. What kind of mammals have they got there? Do you know? The one that, that affects the United States all the time it, are whales, right?

So that’s the big one. Uh, seals, everything else, right? But I think the question really is do we really, really know what’s even there y- today? I think the answer to that is probably no. And until we instrument the sea floor, we’re just not going to know. Because remember the times on the East Coast here when we were looking into the right whale, uh, where it was moving up and down.

I thought that it was already known, and it turns out we don’t know exactly where those whales are moving until more recently, in the last couple of years, mostly because of offshore wind that we actually have a better understanding of that. Hopefully, through some of these energy projects, renewable energy projects, that we’re gonna learn more [00:17:00] about what is happening in the sea.

Rosemary Barnes: Well, you know, Allen, what they say, that we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the surface of the sea floor. 

Allen Hall: This is true. 

Rosemary Barnes: Smart- And- A smart, a smart man t- told me that once Long 

Allen Hall: ago. Did he? Uh, that, well. Could’ve been somebody had mentioned that once in a while. I think that’s true, Rosemary.

If you think about the, the billions of dollars that has been spent on the moon/Mars and many other planets, we haven’t necessarily devoted that kind of, uh, effort to what’s happening in the oceans. Maybe it’s time. Maybe we know more since Starship. You guys saw the last Starship launch where it landed in the Indian Ocean and it tipped over, but it didn’t sink I think that probably caused a l- a little bit of concern for people at SpaceX like, “Ooh, what now?

Uh, and what are we doing to the sea life around it?” Uh, so sometimes weird experiments end up with knowledge you wouldn’t otherwise, o- [00:18:00] o- otherwise have. 

Yolanda Padron: There were some of the offshore US sites that instrumented, I think the monopiles, right, to try to learn what the- The noise level … what the patterns of the whales were and, and- Yeah

if they were actually being deterred by the, um, by the monopiles and the wind turbines and everything. Uh, and that was, that seemed to be a really successful project in just improving to the communities around them that, that they weren’t, that offshore wind wasn’t hurting the, the whales, uh, at least in that area.

So this is really exciting. I mean, the, at least this way we’ll be able to, to actually know what’s going on before everything gets set up and after. 

Rosemary Barnes: I thought it was incredible that in, in America, the whales seem to be bothered by or killed… The whales were getting killed by offshore wind turbines that didn’t even exist yet, so it was just like- Yeah.

even just the very- Ghost turbines … thought of wind turbines was forcing them to swim into ships [00:19:00] and, and kill themselves. Obviously. Something to watch out for. Obviously. 

Allen Hall: Two projects in the Irish Sea just won approval. UK has signed off on their power cables, but there’s more to the story. Back in a moment.

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Allen Hall: A wind farm needs a whole bunch of approvals. One of them is for power cables, and the UK has just given that approval to two projects in the Irish Sea. Uh, they are Morgan and Morcum. [00:20:00] Morcum has everything it needs. It’s about 480 megawatts of a project. It starts building in 2027. Morgan is a little bit different.

ENBV and Jira, next BP, walked away from that project in January. So it has cables that are approved, but nobody owns the project. Is this an indication that the UK is really pushing to get turbines in the water? Because if they’re approving things that are not connected to a wind farm, that– it’s, it’s gotta be indicating something that’s happening in the UK.

Rosemary Barnes: It’s, um, not an uncommon way to do things, or if it is uncommon, it’s not uncommon in Australia. There’s a few… Like, transmission is the hard part, and so I think it does make sense to, you know, like, put some of that in place first. Because if you can’t get that, then y- there’s no point developing a whole wind farm that you’ll never be able to connect to the, the grid, right?

So if there’s a showstopper for a [00:21:00] project, then it’s good to know that before you do all of the stuff that you know that you’ll be able to do. Like, everyone knows how to build a wind farm by now. Maybe not everyone, but at least the people that are trying to, you know, know, know the steps involved. Um, but yeah, y- if there’s gonna be a showstopper for transmission, then don’t bother doing the rest of it.

So I think it makes sense. 

Yolanda Padron: Yeah. It, it, it certainly incentivizes people to buy this project, right? It’s already approved. It’s, I mean, like you said, you just kind of have to build it a little bit backwards, but that’s fine. 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. We’ve got these things in Australia, um, REZs, Renewable Energy Zones, and they’ve had some, like, mixed success, I would say.

It hasn’t been like a slam dunk winner. But where they work well, it’s because they, you know, do the, put the hard things in place so that then people can go and develop the, the other stuff. Um, and y- you should ideally be choosing projects that the community wants, and y- you know, like you do the, the easy stuff.

So instead of saying, “Okay, where’s the [00:22:00] very, very, very best wind resource? Okay, we’ll build a wind farm there. Develop that all up. Okay, now let’s convince all of the land holders that, um, y- you know, along the way to where we will connect it to the grid. Let’s all convince them about transmission. Oh, they, they don’t want it.”

It’s like, okay, well, what about if we find the place where we can get transmission in place, um, and there’s a community that does want the jobs that come with building solar and wind farms and batteries, then, you know, put that in place, and then it’s, it’s relatively easy then for the, a wind or a solar battery developer to, to come in and do the rest of it.

That’s kind of the trivial part. And yeah, like maybe it’s not the very, very, very best wind resource that there was available, but it will be a better project overall because it can actually get built in a timely manner without heaps of, um, community opposition. So I, I do think that when it works well, that’s a really good approach.

Yolanda Padron: Yeah. I think it’s really common in the United States as well to have a different developer than operational owner [00:23:00] for the project. Yeah. Even if it’s a different developer, just in really, really early stages and you pass it on to the operational owner uh, when it’s really, really close to, to construction, uh, that it’s, it’s not unheard of here.

And from what it sounds like, it’s not unheard of in Australia either. 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I th- it’s not, um, developers, though, doing the, the resos. It’s a government thing, um, I’m pretty sure at least. 

Allen Hall: So we received a, a note from a listener last week, uh, when we were talking about CIP and Goldwind turbines for an Australian wind farm.

Uh, Nick Ingram wrote in with something that we did not cover, which at Vestas owns 25% of CIP The two companies are more connected than they look, and, and thanks for that note, Nick. Um, so here’s how that relationship works. Vestas does own 25% of CIP, however, uh, when this topic is brought up in the press, uh, pretty much anywhere, that they remain at arm’s length, that they’re not [00:24:00] in each other’s boardrooms necessarily, although they kind of are.

There… Some people from Vestas are on the board of CIP because they own 25% of it, so you, you would expect there to be some bodies there. But in terms of commercial work and handing them over, like, confidential information, that doesn’t happen, at least that’s the description right now. So Rosemary, you wanna add some color to that?

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, now I remember, ’cause when you raised it before, I’m like, “I don’t recall ever s- having said anything about this. It c- surely wasn’t me that got this, uh, got this wrong.” Yeah. Um, and now I- That’s the thing … I do remember that sometimes Allen will say, “What do you think, Rosemary?” And I don’t think anything, or I have been just tuning out or, um, s- something.

And I have to, I have to say some, say some words. Um, and I, I love feedback of all kinds, including negative feedback, although, I mean, I wouldn’t even call it negative. Everyone was very polite with their feedback. So I would love for, [00:25:00] um, viewers or listeners to please provide feedback when we get stuff wrong, because that’s how we improve.

Um, get on… YouTube is the easiest way. If you, y- yeah, even if you’re listening on a, on, on the podcast, you can, you know, find the episode on YouTube, write a comment, we will see it, and, um, we will take note and correct course, and that’s how everyone gets better. So yeah, don’t ever worry about offending me, and I, I don’t think that Allen is easily offendable either, nor Yolanda or, yeah, any of the other podcast people, Matt, et cetera.

So yeah, go crazy. 

Yolanda Padron: Yeah, it’s part of the whole thing that we talk about all the time, right? It’s important to learn from our mistakes and share when that happens with each other. So it’s just bringing the community together, and it’s good. Uh, I think, uh, Clara, our producer, was saying that as we’re recording this, uh, someone else mentioned something similar about the topic.

So, um, if you’re still listening, hi, Jacob. [00:26:00] It’s, it’s great to hear from you. Uh, Jacob’s great, amazing person, also very kind in his comment. Um, he has his own consulting firm and everything, so- Great people to have listening to the podcast. 

Allen Hall: That wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.

If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn, on YouTube, or you can email us at [email protected]. And if you found value in today’s conversation, please leave us a review. It really helps other wind energy professionals discover the show.

And don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. For Rosie, Yolanda, and Matthew, I’m Allen Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy [00:27:00] podcast.