Allen and Joel are LIVE from American Clean Power 2023 in New Orleans! Over 8,000 people in attendance with representatives of wind, solar, and energy storage industries. Allen and Joel discuss the news from the floor including the merger of Ping and eologix. GE Vernova had a large presence on the show floor announcing a new parts business and the opening of a 6.1 MW nacelle production line at their facility in Schenectady, New York. In other news, Siemens Gamesa is pushing European regulators for faster access to cash, and technical schools in the US are having a difficult time recruiting future wind energy technicians. And then Joel and Allen discuss how wind energy is a great vocation for military veterans such as Prometheus Wind’s Will Friedl.
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Uptime 167
Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m Allen Hall, president, CEO of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I’m here with the VP from Wind Power LAB, Joel Saxum. And Joel. It has been an insane week. Yes. Yeah.
Joel Saxum: ACP 2023 New Orleans. Absolutely. If, if you can hear this, you’ll hear it on today’s episode. My voice is a little gruff shot.
I wasn’t smoking cigars as my team. Thought from from Copenhagen this morning on our morning meeting. It’s actually just from talking, right? Right now it is Thursday of the show. We’ve been here since Monday. So Monday evening, co course opening, reception and stuff. But Tuesday, Thursday, or Tuesday and Wednesday, Absolutely packed.
I’m, we’re, we’re on one, kind of one end of the Yes. Of the conference. We’re next to ge. Yeah. And I’m looking and I can’t see the other end. That’s how long it is. That’s how many
Allen Hall: that’s, it’s a good here, it’s a quarter half mile. Yeah, it’s huge. It’s down
Joel Saxum: the other end. It’s, it’s, it’s a six block walk from one end of this building to the other.
But yes, as Allen was saying, absolutely busy here. I think in my. ACP experience? Probably the busiest, not probably the busiest ACP clean power that I’ve been to. Oh, yeah, by far. Yeah. Yeah. The setup here in New Orleans is great too. If you’ve, if you’ve frequented trade shows, it, it can be kind of frustrating navigating through the people.
And, but they have a big, nice, like 50 foot wide aisle going, the whole main street going the whole way down. And it’s, it’s easy to get around. So this has been a great show. American Clean
Allen Hall: Power does a nice job of feeding the people. Yeah. Also, some of the conferences we’ve been at, We were talking, not wind, but in aerospace.
The food option has been almost zero. We’re just eating hot dogs all week. And here they actually have some nice, oh, we’re food
Joel Saxum: Dumbo and PO Boys. Yeah. And there’s, there’s plenty of food to eat here. DJ’s, coffee, some beignets, all kinds of good stuff. Yeah,
Allen Hall: it has been tremendously good. Rosemary is obviously in Australia this week so she’s not gonna be here, but she has been texting us.
I got a bunch of text from her this morning. So she’s here at Spirit.
There’s some. Pretty big announcements and then some underlying things that haven’t been announced yet. But there, when you get to see everybody on the show floor, you hear a lot of whispers of what’s about to happen this summer. There’s activity
Joel Saxum: and wind. Yeah. You know, on the show we, we regularly talk about mergers and acquisitions within the field, right?
Like people buying wind farms up and selling wind farms. And we’ve heard some of that activity. We just heard of someone buying five wind farms down in Texas from a, from a major operator. But we also are regularly hearing. ISPs, service companies merging, buying each other, how the culture shifts are within those companies and within the industry.
And what it seems to be is that Alan and I were talking offline here is a lot of the activities centers around strategic procurement. Oh, right. Yes. Everybody knows that it’s hard to get technicians. So if you can get a good company, if you’ve got the cash or the means of an m and a Or, and a merger acquisition or, or I don’t wanna say takeover cause I think that has a negative connotation, but No.
Yeah. But if you have the means and you come along a good group that is for sale everything’s for sale, I think, but if it’s for sale and they’ve got a great company culture to add those technicians and those capabilities to your team we’re, we’re hearing a lot of that going on, on the floor, so, Be aware for some I think we don’t want to be the ones to, to break ’em before they’re public, right.
So, we’ll, we’ll, as they become public, we’ll share in the next few weeks, I think some interesting news will, will definitely become, yeah. And
Allen Hall: there wasn’t a whole bunch of press releases this week. I was a little shocked by that because it seems like the news was just an undercurrent. Like people would stop me and say, Hey, this happened.
Hey, this is about to happen. Yeah. But not a lot of announcements on the floor.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. The two that I do know, I mean, and, and I’m saying this as I look to, I left and I see three of the companies involved, but Yeah. You know, earlier this week or or late last week, sorry, the skys specs announced the I four C?
Yes. Purchase there. And that adds some more analytics, I think on the SCADA side for the Skys specs team. Yeah. And then right next to us, of course, is ping and EEO Logics. And Tuesday morning we did a kind of an exclusive launch for their merger. So now Ping as being an acoustics company listening to your blades and some other additions as well there.
And Logics being a company that has on blade sensors now they’re coming together to offer that product holistically, so they’re getting closer and closer to that. Digital twin that everybody’s talking about. Right? A lot of monitor Digital twins. Yeah. Yeah. So we have seen, you know, some of the, some of the friends of the show, of the podcast here on the show floor.
We saw the the Borealis Wind people with we talked with a little bit with them about their solution, the traction they’re getting. Of course, theones is here and the renewable guys we talked to yesterday, yeah, we talked to Pierce Renewables, you know, ad hoc stopped by the booth and we. Talked a lot about the, you know, the 2,700 people that they’ve got on board and it’s been, it’s been a really busy show.
A lot of, lot of knowledge passing around too. Yeah. And if, if
Allen Hall: you’re new to win, there’s a lot of new entries into the win business. Smaller companies, you have to come to American Clean Power. This, if you’re gonna go to one show, yeah. This is the one you need to be at because the operators are here, the owners are here, the OEMs are here and, and maybe not enforced this time.
GE has really taken a
Joel Saxum: nice corner here. Yeah. GEs really the only big OEM shop here. Right. Right. Now have meeting rooms for Vestas and the seasons and stuff, but, but on the floor, big booths. We found GEs over our shoulder here. They’re the biggest one,
Allen Hall: For an oem. A lot of operators I’ve run into. I lost track how many operators I ran into this week.
Yep. Lightning is one of the big concerns. Yep. Right, right in the middle of springtime and then, and then the south of the United States and. Everybody’s having a lightning issue. It’s been a really strong lightning season already.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. You know, we, we talk about, I mean, if you, again, you follow the show, we go to a lot of trade shows, but we do it, it’s great to have the podcast up, but we do it for our own businesses.
Absolutely. So we’re, we’re constantly traveling. But in the states, if you were to go and say, I’m gonna go to every one of the wind shows, you would go to 15 of them. Oh yeah, you were. There’s tons of ’em, but this one has, I would say everything. Yeah. There’s 10,000 people here. And it’s not just wind, it’s wind, battery storage, a lot more battery storage stuff going on.
Yes. A lot more people talking about solar. There’s along that main stretch I was talking about, there’s some big solar companies. Which not used to seeing massive solar company booths at the clean power bench. The booths are. Yeah. And I was like, I was like, who are these guys? I was like, oh, and they’ve got a coffee machine.
Stop and talk to them. And he had some Bloody Marys in day. Yeah, they had Bloody Marys yesterday. So, so kudos to, what was it? Sun grow, kudos to sun grow. But yeah, so, you know, it’s starting to diversify a little bit. One of the things that I have, I’ve seen kind of a, a, a lack for that I think I’ve seen more in the past is analytics and, and software companies.
Allen Hall: Way down. Yeah. Compared to last year. Yeah. And it could be drone companies too. I,
Joel Saxum: yeah, there’s Skys specs, Skys
Allen Hall: specs. But I mean, just the, the last year there was a number of smaller companies
Joel Saxum: site Fus over here of course, too. Don’t forget about that. Yeah. But Site Fus not small. No, no, no. Huge. No Right site.
Fus massive. Yeah. Robotics
Allen Hall: is here, right? The, the, the big names are here. But there was always, there’s always a couple of, of new entrants and they have new ideas and things just not here. They, they’re just not here this
Joel Saxum: year. You know one that we’ve talked about on the show, we’ve, we all know them personally as Wells Schmidt.
I didn’t see anybody Froms Schmidt here. Yeah. That’s true.
Allen Hall: Yeah. So it’s, it is almost cause we were just in Copenhagen. Both of us were just in Copenhagen. When we went to Copenhagen. There were very few Americans you could tell. Yeah, the Americans because they had a baseball cap on typically, or sneakers on, on the walk around.
Joel Saxum: Nevermind. Yeah. You could
Allen Hall: pick them out pretty quick. Yeah. And when you come to an ACP event, It’s almost exclusively America. It’s the majority America. You still see a lot of people
Joel Saxum: from in Denmark. Yeah. I mean, the Danish pavilion travels well, right, right. They do. They do a great job. Hell yes. And they’re a staple in the industry, right?
You have the companies that have been over there that are aftermarket or service companies that have been around for 20, 30, 40 years, right? You still, and you see the same ones, you see the same guys. Same guys and gals. So they’re here of course, but you don’t see, okay. We’re in, we are in Wind Europe.
You saw the Polish Pavilion, the bass country, the, yeah, the French pavilion. All the OC Ireland. Yeah. Here it’s just they’re out here. It’s just us and the DA and the Danes. And the Dans, yeah. They like the Danes. So that’s, that’s cool. But yeah, it’s, it’s actually kind of surprising.
Allen Hall: Well, and I think that just the whole focus here is more on solar battery and like, just onto our wind.
Yeah. In Europe, it’s almost exclusively offshore wind. The ship builders, the heavy lift cranes, right? All, all the big industry, the, the, the the, the foundries and those sort of things that are just based in Europe that are providing all the parts that come to America. Those shows that Copenhagen show was all about that, that could, every ti time you turned around, there was just another massive company.
I haven’t seen, I haven’t seen a
Joel Saxum: vessel company here. No. No. Right. Not at, so you would think maybe the, the people building vessels might be here. The Schwetz and the, the guys in Louisiana. As we are in Louisiana. We’re in Louisiana yet. But also, think about this from your marketing spend point. They’re busy.
Oh, they don’t need to be here. No. It would be fun to come down here and have a couple cocktails. But they don’t need to have a booth. No, they don’t. They don’t need
Allen Hall: the help at this point yet. No. They got a lot of work
Joel Saxum: to do. Exactly. They’ve got contracts lined up out the door.
Yeah.
Allen Hall: Yeah. It’s a, it’s such a different feel.
Yeah. It’s a, it’s a different feel. It’s in Denmark. It felt like we were just constantly on the go from the second we walked in, which is, yep. I think it was eight, was it eight till five? Eight till six. Yeah. Eight till six. Eight till six. And there were people at our booze from eight till six. Yeah.
Every day. Except for the last day because everybody just kind of hung over traveling. Yeah. Yeah. And they’re, and they’re traveling, but, but here,
Joel Saxum: here, we’re in New Orleans, right. So they’re expecting everybody to have a really good time. Yes. Show doesn’t open until 10 30. Right. So if you’re, if you’re into that, that’s, that’s, that’s great.
It was weird the first day we all showed up and was like, wait a second. We had meetings planned things to do at 8:00 AM Right. Didn’t open for two and a half hours. No, I guess that’s on us for not paying attention. Well, by
Allen Hall: day two they needed to come in at 10 30 because there, there are a couple. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They have the dog situations going on there, but, That’s why they had the Bloody Mary mix on the,
Joel Saxum: on the Yeah. You know, main corridor we’re talking about, you know, the whispers that we’re hearing on the floor. Again, I want to touch on this. I talked to quite a few people from ACP and some other ones.
From some Yes. Some organizations that are tied to the wind industry, but not necessarily products or services companies. Right? Yeah, yeah. And some of the conversations we were having was around permitting. Oh, cues and you know, the individual market operators, how they’re gonna get more of this renewable energy on board.
So spoke with a couple of you know, decision makers and, and of senior management teams from some of the OEMs and a couple of these little, little cocktail parties and stuff. And they were all saying the same thing. Hey, you know, we know the IRA has kicked us off and, and, and there’s a lot to happen here, but it’s going to take a little bit to get this steam train moving.
And once it does, it’ll be rolling. But I even heard some say 20 25, 20 26 before we really,
Allen Hall: I heard a 20, 27 this week. Yeah. That’s crazy. 27. That’s a little
Joel Saxum: ways off, guys. Yeah. And, and, and, you know, and what we’re hearing and what I, what I’ve, the general feel is that it’s mostly now. Permitting. If we can get permitting and the queues lined up and get things actually steel in the ground and stuff moving, then the factories can get moving.
Once the factories can get moving, then the OEMs are getting a little bit more healthy and then everybody else starts to pick up the installation companies and all the above. So why the IR while the IRA passed last July and everybody’s been excited about it and it is a great thing. It’s going to take a little bit of time to get this, this economic machine.
Allen Hall: Yeah. And you know, part of the push from the IRA bill is like the impression from Washington DC is that we’re gonna do this kickoff and then we’re going to just sort of top level news release it to death. Yeah. And it needs to go a little bit deeper from what we see on the show for here. They need to a little more groundwork Yeah.
Of spreading the word and talking to communities and not just around New York because it’s, we’re up Massachusetts obviously, so we hear it from New York and Massachusetts, but, Are they in Kansas? Are they knocking on the door in Kansas? Are they down in Texas promoting the IRA bill? Yeah. I haven’t seen a lot of that and I don’t feel that here.
So you talk to some of the states, I won’t name them. But I’m not sure they’re really feeling the NRA quite, quite yet. Yeah. And they’re, they’re still trying to figure out the permitting issues, which is the big thing. Right. So they know that there’s there’s, there’s a paycheck somewhere in there.
Yeah. They don’t know how to get to it. Yeah. Yet. Yeah. And that’s where I think the disconnect is. That’s where the, I think you’re seeing it’s in the bureaucrat’s hands in the, in the policymaker’s hands, and they’re not sure. Based on previous history how long that’s gonna take. I know there’s a big article in the Wall Street Journal this week talking about the Sun Project down south.
The transmission line one. Yeah, the transmission line one where it took 17 years to get that developed. Right. That’s crazy. That Right. Which is a point in the Wall Street Journal was trying to make, but obviously when you’re doing something that that big, it does take a while to get those. Yep. There’s a lot of, there’s project stakeholders involved, there’s a lot of stakeholders involved, so, Previous history.
I think what comes in when people are making comments like it’s gonna be a couple of years. That’s what they’re
Joel Saxum: basing it on. Yeah. Yeah. But it’s ba But you base your forward-looking ideas on track record and history, right? Yeah, you do. You have to. So the history doesn’t show anything different. So this is what we’re, we’re sitting, well, you know, the, a joke I had with a friend of mine he works up in Minnesota in the civil engineering world, and he, we were talking about, The IRS added 80,000 auditors.
And I started talking to him about, you know, cuz he, in his civil engineering life, he deals with some transmission stuff too. And I said, man, if they take 10,000 of them and just apply it to getting these permits done for some other federal stuff, rather than chasing money down. Yeah, I think we’d be in a better spot.
Yeah, there’s probably more tax income to come from sending them loose on getting projects developed than chasing down x, y, z small company in some Uber drivers somewhere, Montana or something, you know?
Allen Hall: Yeah, it does, it does feel like that. But I would say, you know, last year to this year, many more people at the show.
Yes. Much more activity. Yes. Where was the show gonna be next year,
Joel Saxum: right? I know we have, we’re in Minneapolis. Minneapolis, okay. Yeah. So May 6th to ninth. So it still might be cold, which will be a change in the last two years. Last year we were in San Antonio. It was a hundred. It’s hot, five degrees.
It’s hot. Yeah. Here it’s not, it’s been decent weather. New Orleans this week, but it’s humid, right? It’s, it’s New Orleans. The fish swim in the air here, pretty much humid. But yeah, next year we’ll be in Minneapolis. It’s a little bit, it’ll be a different look and it’ll be cool too, because there’s quite a few operators in that area.
You’ve met your national renewables and elites and there’s some, a lot of people that are support the the industry from the insurance side and some others. Oh, true. In that area. Iowa’s not too far down the road. Chicago’s only a five hour drive, so there might be a different crowd there. That’ll be kind of nice to see some, some different faces that we haven’t seen in a while next year.
No, that’s
Allen Hall: that’s true. Yeah. Cause we’ve been down south for a couple years, so Yeah, I guess it makes sense to bring it up north.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. We were, what was a Salt Lake City a few years ago before that It was, yeah, COVID, so we didn’t have anything. Oh right. And then San Antonio and then will shoot up for the
Allen Hall: springtime and I just hope it snows melted.
You know, I, I don’t mind Minnesota in like July wins
Joel Saxum: game of target field.
Allen Hall: Bring a jacket. You need it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there’s some other things that happened this week at the show floor. Obviously the, the big OEM here this week is GE Renova. This is the first time we’ve seen them in a little while.
Yep. They had a big booth over in Copenhagen and they made a couple of announcements. They’re starting a spare parts business.
Joel Saxum: I think, to be honest with you, so we know the struggles of ge. Yeah. We’ve seen the last round of layoffs. The OEMs aren’t doing too well. They’re gonna come back from it. We, we, we, we fully believe that.
But so some of them are relying ge being one of them as well on their services department to make money. So starting, yes. So starting a spare parts business that’s multi-brand is intelligent in my mind.
Allen Hall: It’s gonna be an Amazon marketplace, perfect for wind turbine parts, and I mean other office supplies and things that’s used in wind turbines.
If
Joel Saxum: you, if you’re an operator that is a, you know, a site manager that is, whether it’s a GE turbine vest, Siemens is gonna be said, now you’ve got a whole nother place that’s got some capital behind them. Paul, for your, your Amazon parts warehouse of wind turbines. It’s a great, a great new option in the market and, and depending on how they are able to basically execute.
It’ll be good for the whole industry. How do you lose money on spare parts? That’s the way I look at it, is like JGs lost quite a bit of money left, so Well, yeah, but
Allen Hall: everybody, well, if in the aerospace community, that’s where they make Yeah. The majority of their profits in the automotive world, that’s where they make the majority of their profits.
Yeah. They’re not making it necessarily on the vehicles fixed margins, man. Yeah, it’s fixed margin. You got a, a lock 10 consumer base and Yeah. Geez. Made the decision to sell other OEM’s spare
Joel Saxum: parts, so it comes timely as well. So if you follow. Follow what asset owners are doing with the IRA bill.
There’s a lot of repowers. It’s a repower boom happening right now. Yeah. And happening for the next few years. Yeah. We’ve talked to a lot of asset owners or we talked to some service and ISP groups that are like, man, repower, repower, repower. So taking advantage GE C and that writing on the wall, putting that spare parts business in place.
Perfect.
Allen Hall: Makes total sense. If you wanna visit the GE spare. Parts site, it’s it’s shop.ge renewable energy.com. Now, Vestus has a very similar thing, but it is only in Europe, Coveo. Okay. Right. So they, they do sell everybody’s obviously Vestus parts, but other OEMs multi our brand. Yeah, right. But I can’t figure out for the life of me why they limited that to just Europe.
When we were over in Copenhagen, I noticed that also like. The, you have a huge market in the States. Why not? Maybe it’s coming. Maybe they, or maybe the new GE was gonna, maybe the new GE was gonna do something and they just didn’t feel like starting to fight there. Maybe that, maybe that’s the reason, you know, everybody just marks their territory in a
Joel Saxum: way they go.
Yeah. I mean, GE from the, the base of it is really, I mean, technically not an American company, but kind of has the American roots, whereas Vestas is just a Danish company. Yeah. So maybe there’s something to do with. Territory maybe, but we like Vestus. Yeah. Bring it on. I don’t, I don’t bring the more, the more the better.
If we have three Amazons, that means prices go down. We’ll get,
Allen Hall: that’s what I’m saying, right? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe they decided just to mark it off and the way they went. Well, GE has some other news this week too, because they’re going to start a, a cell manufacturing line up at their facilities in Connected in New York.
Joel Saxum: Okay. So, so upstream on the hus? Yeah. Yeah.
Allen Hall: For the 6.1 megawatt machines. So they’re Bill gonna build. 6.1 megawatt onshore, the cells ins connected. And my first question was, where are these turbines headed? And my guess is they’re not gonna be in a lot of ’em in New York state.
Joel Saxum: So the six point, the six megawatt machine for GE is the, the twin, the the two part blade.
Two part blades, right. Platform, right? Yes. Yeah. So that platform is designed for areas with low wind speeds. Right? So, and it can, cuz it can capture a lot, right? It’s got a big swept area, so. I mean, you’re on the Hudson there, so you can get transportation downstream, but get it anywhere after that. Yeah, I don’t, and I don’t know, to be honest with you, the, from the design parameters of that turine, I don’t know if it’s good for turbulent.
What, what, what the rating is for turbulence air. Oh, yeah. So I don’t know if it’s gonna be, Hey, we’re gonna install these in the Appalachians because everything in the northeast we know is on top of hills with Turkey. Yeah, absolutely. Messiness. I would imagine fringe in the Midwest, not in the, not in the main Midwest.
Wind resource because it’s higher Wind speeds. Right? Wind speeds. So I could see it like where our buildout is traditionally on the edges of it to the east and west, but if you’re taking the cells from Schenectady,
Allen Hall: blades are coming from Canada. Right. That’s where they’ll come from. Lm,
Joel Saxum: that’s, that’s a, that’s a tough ride west, right?
Because there’s no, oh yeah, no. When you’re on highways, it just,
Allen Hall: it screams East coast, right? Yeah, it does. So they must have some customers on the East Coast that. We haven’t
Joel Saxum: announced yet, unless it’s a crime of opportunity, just because they’re close to the ge, the ge you know, headquarters there. Well, you
Allen Hall: have an existing infrastructure,
Joel Saxum: I think, and there’s a great existing workforce there.
Oh, there
Allen Hall: has been for years, right? Yeah. Yeah. So you, you know what you’re starting with. And they’re gonna put about 50 million into the factory to great. To upgrade it, to, to do this work. But I think they also know that the offshore work coming off of New York and the way that sort of New York politically is set up well, that it’s advantageous to put on the factory there because when those bids come in for the, the onshoring of all that offshore power But Gees has an advantage there.
They, they could go to the politicians and we just open another factory, right. Hey, yeah.
Joel Saxum: Give us this one too. Right. Yeah. So that’s it’s a, it’s a good power play for them. Sure. I like that. That’s their home
Allen Hall: turf. They should have a power
Joel Saxum: play there, you know? And and, and I don’t know the inner workings of the accounting of this thing, but within the IRA bill is, is an ITC thing, so 30% tax breaks back on investment.
So if they’re putting 50 million into it, they’re also getting 30% tax back on it. They are And which is what,
Allen Hall: 20 million? Yeah. And new 15. Well, yeah. And New York state’s throwing some money into it too. The Empire State Development Department has agreed to pay two and a half million dollars in performance based jobs tax credits.
That’s great. And it’s gonna create about, I seen. A couple different opinions about us, about 160 jobs and be up to 200 jobs. So, no, no, that’s not, not anything. That’s not, it’s well, and it’s well, well paying jobs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s, those are good gigs, so that’s really interesting. But those are the two big announcements out of GE this weekend.
Mm-hmm. On the other side of the pond. So, Siemens Mesa’s been making some noise about what’s happening with the IRA bill in, in America because the way the IRA bill’s set up, The money comes pretty much end of the year when you, you file your taxes, bam, you get your credits, the payment happens.
Right. With the way that the Europeans are sort of setting up some of their payment programs, I’ll call ’em. There tend to be a little more long term and Siemens needs cash and it, Siemens Ka Mesa has said like, we need cash. We need it now. Everybody in America has got an advantage because the money’s coming in faster.
Mm-hmm. And it’s all a cash game. Companies go broke because, They don’t have orders. They have orders. They hit, they go broke because they don’t have cash.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. The cash flow isn’t there. Cash
Allen Hall: flow. There’s a PO book, but Right. We have orders. Yeah. But it’s out in the future. I have to pay the bills today.
Maybe they should start a spare parts business. Well, I mean, they should. I hear there’s rumor America keeps
Joel Saxum: that keeps, that keeps the pennies rolling in every
Allen Hall: day, you know? Yeah. I, I think it’s, it’s an interesting take. Obviously Siemens, KA Mesa. Is being acquired back in the Siemens. And I think there’s actually gonna be a special board board meeting to, to bring in the last like percent or two that they didn’t already own.
Like they have 98% or 97% of Seame. You’re just getting greedy. Well, they went all pieces of it. I, that was odd, I thought. But seame is getting more vocal. Yeah. And I don’t think that hurts him. I think that makes, I think that. The European Parliament, the individual countries need to hear that. Yeah.
Loudly. Yeah. If they want Siemens MEA to really do a good job, they want Vestus and Nordex and everybody else Intercon to be around the next 10 years. They better get on it now. They can’t keep waiting. Yeah. They can’t keep waiting. So. That, that’s interesting development. Hey, uptime listeners. We know how difficult it is to keep track of the wind industry.
That’s why we read p e s Wind Magazine. P e s Wind doesn’t summarize the news. It digs into the tough issues. And p e s Wind is written by the experts. So you can get the in-depth info you need. Check out the wind industry’s leading trade publication. PS wind, ps wind.com. Well, the offshore wind market and offshore development are really picking up in the, in the United States.
Some of the parts are coming over from Europe starting to hit ports. Yep. Absolutely. And vineyard winds really the first big project here in the States, and that’s going to you know, there’s gonna start putting turbines in the water this summer and. Hopefully operational end of this year. But the, the towers are arriving from Portugal into the New Bedford port, so there’s been a sort of a grand opening of the New Bedford port because they’ve got these ships and towers coming in from, from Portugal.
So they’re gonna get busy, and that’s not the only one that’s,
Joel Saxum: that’s busy right now. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, for the people on the East coast that have been talking offshore wind for a long time. Yeah. The developers, the whole wind industry, the ACP here. We talked to some people from ACP that are, Directors and, and communications professionals within the offshore world.
Everybody’s excited for it. Right? Yeah. Another headline that we saw yesterday was Bocas. The Boca Lift two Vessel, right. Has left Rotterdam the Porter Rotterdam, and it’s headed this way. There you go. So they’re gonna be coming over to work for Orstad and Eversource on the South Fork Wind Farm.
And they’re gonna start, it sounds like if they’re mobilizing now, they should be installing soon. Yeah. So that’s, that’s the vessel to. I believe that’s the one to put monopiles in. Mono. Mono piles. Yeah. Or jackets. I don’t know. I don’t think your jackets gonna mono piles. It’s monopiles. And if it’s a heavy lift vessel from Bocas, more than likely it sets the cells, it does the whole thing.
Wow. So that it’s really cool to see, Hey guys, you know, we know we have the, the six turbines in the water. We, we up in the seven
Allen Hall: seven, sorry, sorry. How many times have I heard that this week we got seven turbines in the water. Yeah.
Joel Saxum: But we’re about to have a lot more and so at, at the same time of the vessels coming over, We’re seeing in the towers and the parts come in, the, the ports are getting ready, that workforce starting.
Let’s go to mobilize. Let’s go, let’s go. Right, right. I know. Here’s a, here’s a crazy thought for, for some of our viewers, listeners. I saw a contract come across, talked with some friends a couple months ago, and it was for 40 to 50 people or nine months straight offshore, and the only task was touch up painting the towers.
Imagine the mon the money and the efforts that go to, that’s all they were doing. Because it’s all about corrosion control, right? You’re gonna want Yes, it is. To make sure there cannot be a pinhole of rust or a chip mark or in any part of that. It’ll rust in a minute, this tower or anything. So that is 40 to 50 people for six to nine months off offshore with paintbrushes touching stuff up.
Think about now. Now
Allen Hall: think about this seems like a robot could actually do that job. I’m just possibly, I’m just thinking that, think about the robots has got something to go fix that that isn’t bug.
Joel Saxum: Bug that. Yeah, exactly. That’s about as narrow of a scope as you can get and that many people and that much effort.
Yeah. Going
Allen Hall: towards it. Yeah. It’s crazy. Yeah, that’s, that wouldn’t be a job that I would do. No. I
Joel Saxum: hate if painting is something that you painting
Allen Hall: someone else doing. Yeah. And you’re kind of bebopping up and, yeah. No, I’m gonna pass on that one. But it’s good to see some of the, the ports getting active and, and I think the sooner they, they do see.
Parts coming in the sooner they can kind of work out some of the bugs and what’s gonna happen on these ports. Yeah. New, new Bedford’s a weird port because there’s a lot of like small vessels docked there. Right. So it’s not really set up for big vessels and it’s got a a h hurricane protection barrier.
Yeah. Reef out, out front of it with a narrow opening. So some of these
Joel Saxum: ships pilot some pilots bringing ’em in. Yeah. Yeah.
Allen Hall: They’ve got little tugs pulling up through
Joel Saxum: there. I haven’t heard any whispers of this, but I’m think I’m back to my oil and gas past. When there was projects that were controversial.
Mm-hmm. Right. I remember a project one time when I was working up in Alaska and in the summertime, shell was gonna mobilize a drill rig from Seattle around the, across the eu, around the west coast of Alaska to the Arctic Ocean and drill. And they were gonna drill offshore, but the window up there was so tight with ice coming down the pack of ice coming down.
Sure. So they only had a couple weeks that they could leave port and get up there. Now it was a super controversial project and at one point in time they, they were, it was delayed because there was like 500 people in kayaks that paddled out in the port of Seattle and like hung out in front of this vessel.
So it couldn’t move. Yeah, right. So that kind of stuff happens and I’m, I’m hoping that we don’t run into any of that type thing in, in the wind. Installations here that are standing up. Yeah. Now you, how do we see vessels coming?
Allen Hall: Yeah. Now you, you say it, now you say, you know what’s gonna happen? Did I do that?
Joel Saxum: So when it does happen, just call Joel and say, I say, live right now. Do not do that. Right. Please don’t do that.
Allen Hall: That’s just not smart. It’s not safe, it’s not smart. You want, you want to push back on when there are thousand other ways to do it. But call your senator if you wanna push back, right. Call your senator.
Just don’t get caught out in front of the ship and run and run over. That would not be good. One of the things the topics that’s popped up this week is technicians. Yep. Course. And there’s not enough technicians. Everybody’s scrambling. That’s what some of the venture capital and some of the mergers that are about to happen are, are related to getting people.
Yep. And if you can’t. Train ’em fast enough. The way to do it is just acquire another company and bring them into your fold. Yeah. And there’s a good article out on Nebraska this week. There’s a number of community colleges in Nebraska. Nebraska has a really solid community college system they’ve had forever.
So if, if you’re not going to go, go to the University of Nebraska or to Creighton University and become a doctor, an engineer, or whatever the little courses you can take there, the, the community colleges are training. Really the technical workers in Nebraska. High quality. High quality. They’ve been doing it in aviation forever and a number, in a number of their fields.
They’re having a hard time finding wind turbine technicians technicians, people to take the wind turbine training. And there’s, there’s two different sites in Nebraska. There’s one sort of South Central and Grand Island. There’s one sort of Northeast and Norfolk, which is sort of between South Dakota and Iowa up in there.
Mm-hmm. So they got two different spots, which covered a lot of territory. They’re just not seeing the number of new students walk in the
Joel Saxum: door. Yeah. It’s, it’s tough to get, well, everybody, it’s at every level of the supply chain. Yeah. Within it, right? Yeah. So, I mean next week I’m gonna go down to M I A T in Houston.
There they have a win tech program. And they’re, they’re, I think they’re doing something really cool. They’re bringing in a bunch of people from the industry Yeah. To basically be advisors for the program to say, what exactly do you need and how do we help you guys out as a partner? So I’m gonna go and talk with those guys.
Yeah. And hope to share some of that information here on the podcast as well. But one of the things we saw on the, the, the floor here and people we talked to right at the booth is Yes, we have the community college programs going on. Yes. But a gentleman from Opus Renewables opening a G W O training center in Chicago, tk, right.
Tian doing, doing their own similar thing, G v Wind power GW o training in-house in their facility in Dallas. Rango renewables is doing something similar. Rango renewables. Yeah. So like everybody’s starting to see the, the advantage of kind of GW standardization. I’m not gonna say it’s a standard yet, but you’re starting to see, right.
Five years ago you saw just people working basically on Siemens cmaa turbines having tws. Right now you have. Everybody’s starting to go Gw o, gw, gw. So if that train, that level of training is coming up in the States,
Allen Hall: that’s great. Well, Siemens Mesa had the site down in Orlando where they were training everybody.
Yep, yep. Right. So they set up a training, a specific training site to go do that, and that really kickstarted them. Yep. I thought, and it was a good training site. They had a, they had a lot of, oh, it was expensive, but they actually had sort of turban setups in there. So when you’re getting kinda real world on.
Hands on experience. Yeah. It was indoors, but it’s, it’s sort of a little bit of a controlled environment, but it’s nice. Right? Yeah. So if you’re a new student, if you’re a 20 year old kid going in there, like, this is awesome, right? Yeah. It’s, they’re spending money and this is a good program and I’m gonna be able to go earn a living at this.
I think what, what students are missing is sort of two parts to the wind energy one, the freedom. Yeah. Especially in Nebraska. Okay. There’s, there’s sort of limited opportunities. Yeah. There.
Joel Saxum: You can be a farmer or a farmer or you can be working the meat packing
Allen Hall: plant. Yeah. Otherwise you have to go to the big city and work, you know, in an office.
Yeah. If, if, if you’re from Nebraska and you wanna be outdoorsy and a lot, lot of kids are outdoorsy. Yeah. You want to be in wind. Yeah. You’re gonna travel a little bit, you’re gonna see part of the world. But that’s something you like. It’s, this is the job for you and it pays well. Yeah, exactly. You can make a lot of money as a kid.
And I’d call him a kid. A 20 year old is sort of a kid to me now, but you’ve got some gray hair, you know? Yeah. I got a little bit. Yeah. It’s cuz of my daughter mostly. I more than him. Yeah. But, but you can make some good money. I’m, I’m shocked that that message is not being passed out into the high schools, which is where it needs to start.
Yeah. If you’re gonna be an engineer, you’re gonna be an engineer. Right. You’re gonna spend your four years working your tail off being an engineer. Yeah. But that technician group is being missed and that’s a shame. Yeah. That is a real shame. And it’s not just Nebraska, Iowa have similar problems.
Kansas is having similar problems all the way down to Texas. I think they’re having a little bit easier time in Texas of finding people, cuz a lot of people working in construction and oil and gas. And so it just, it’s part of the families have done it. Yeah. So it’s, it’s a family business. And you
Joel Saxum: know, one of the things I like to see too is like this earlier in this week Kevin Doffing from ces clean Energy outta Houston.
Yeah. Put on a veteran’s, well, him and his team put on a veteran’s happy hour here. Yeah. So they’re doing a lot of work trying to get veterans, people just coming outta the military. Yeah. What am I gonna do? I had a lot of friends when I grew up in the military and then they came, they’re like, what’s next?
You know? So it’s that transition job. Now you go to a community college GI Bill can pay for that. Yes. Easily. Right? So easily. So. So now you have this opportunity of a workforce coming out that. Man, if you can hire anybody, military people. Yeah, they’re great. They’re great. They’re fantastic. I, I, I mean, that’s my family.
My brother just retired from the military. Yeah. He’s, he’s sometimes a little bit mean, but he’s a good dude. But, you know, I, I think that’s another part of the workforce that could be Could be a, a transitionary thing that maybe we’re missing on Yeah. As a, as a, as a team, as a renewable energy team.
Allen Hall: Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot of talk about scholarships mm-hmm. That maybe some of the, the GE Renova and the operators of the world sponsor scholarships. I, I’m not sure that’s really the answer. Going to community college is not super expensive, especially in Nebraska
Joel Saxum: and Iowa. My first degree, degree was a, was tech college and I think it was, I mean, it was a quarter of the price of my university degree.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Those are ridiculous anymore. Yeah. That should be our next problem. We tackle lowering tuition price. Is, well, sorry, that’s a different topic.
Allen Hall: University prices are crazy. It makes sense to go to community college for sure. Absolutely. I wanna also touch on a point you raised on the military side.
So I ran into Will Friedl with Prometheus Wind, and they’re based in Colorado. Yep. So Will’s a good example of that. So he’s an Air Force Academy graduate. Mm-hmm. He’s, it’s, he’s running a veteran owned business. Yeah. Which those guys are going out and they’re fixing wind turbines and doing torquing and blade repair and all kinds of good stuff.
You know, the key, the key there is that companies that, operators gotta hire those guys. Right. If. If you have a list of potential service providers and one of them’s a veteran known company, in my opinion, they gotta crawl to the top. Right. That would encourage people coming outta the military to get into Wim.
Absolutely. Because they see them having an advantage. Absolutely. You should have an advantage if you Absolutely. If you served in the military and if you’ve
Joel Saxum: ever met Will. Oh, from, I mean, that is a guy like a and I and I don’t wanna boost him up cuz he probably wouldn’t wanna, he wouldn’t want to hear it or say it, or he is.
He’s a pretty humble dude, but man, the guy screams trust. Yeah, I would hire him in a second to come and work on my project. Yes. Like the, just those guys salt of the earth dude.
Allen Hall: They need to be busy all summer. Yeah. And, and I know those other veteran owned and a lot of veterans in wind energy, they should get that break.
Right? They serve the country. They, they, they provided be a part of building so much work for the country. Absolutely. Now’s the time. You should benefit from that. Absolutely. A thousand percent. So shout out to Will and it’s good to see him here this week. What else is going on, Joel? I know there’s other impressions of the show.
Joel Saxum: I know from my side right now it is day three. We’re a little bit, we’re in survival mode. Bit scrambling, survival mode. You know, as I look out here past the camera and as we’re recording and, and the show is, I mean, there’s, there’s 10% of the people here today than there was the last few days. Yeah.
You, I think a lot of people have said, I got my two days in and I’m I’m gonna head out. But those two days, man. Great event put on here by the second. Congrats
Allen Hall: to ACP American Power. Yeah, nice job. Well, that’s gonna do it for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy podcast. Thanks for listening. And please take a moment to give us a five star rating on your podcast platform.
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