Joel Saxum and Allen Hall report live from Wind Europe 2023 in Copenhagen, where Maersk and GustoMSC have joined forces to develop an innovative solution for lowering the cost of offshore wind installations. They are designing a cost-effective jack-up vessel and simple feeder barges. Meanwhile, the US Coast Guard is warning captains of supply vessels carrying wind turbine blades to ensure that the blades do not block the view from the bridge. EDF is betting on 20+MW offshore machines, while Norway is investing in both fixed-bottom and floating wind farms. Nordex is expected to restart its Iowa factory, Kansas requires red lights to be turned off, and Colorado is celebrating a wind turbine tower factory expansion.
Visit Pardalote Consulting at https://www.pardaloteconsulting.com
Wind Power Lab – https://windpowerlab.com
Weather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.com
Intelstor – https://www.intelstor.com
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Uptime 163
Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m Allen Hall along with my co-host in Denmark this week, Joel Saxum
Joel Saxum: but we’re here at Wind Europe 2023 in Copenhagen. So it is the, if you’re an American listener, it is like acp. But it is the the yearly one here in Copenhagen. Next year, it’ll be in the Basque country, kind of bounces around.
But yeah, it hasn’t rained on us yet here today, so. No, I know.
Allen Hall: It’s been really sunny Copenhagen. Yeah, the weather, the weather has been good. We took a tour of downtown Copenhagen yesterday. Very exciting lot to
Joel Saxum: see there. Yeah, absolutely. So if the list, if you’re a regular listener, you heard us kind of engage after we were in Hamburg about how that show was if you remember correctly, that show was bonkers.
It was, it was so big. There was it was so large so many people going around this one. Beautifully done. Not quite as big but still fairly busy. I mean, we’ve had we’re here with the, you know, we got the Weather guard booth, we have the Wind Power Lab booth, the ping booth. We’re all kind of in the same area.
Some of the friends we have and, and we’re, we’ve all been busy. We’ve had a steady stream of people interested in what we’re offering all day long, and some, even people talking about the Uptime podcast, maybe even a picture. Yeah. That’s right.
Allen Hall: Walk around the show today, Joel. And we were here yesterday taking a look around as, as all the booths were getting set up. The main emphasis in Copenhagen is offshore wind. Yeah. Yeah. That’s offshore wind like, doesn’t even really
Joel Saxum: exist on some level. Yeah. As you fly in, right? Like if you’re coming to the airport, there’s offshore wind turbines right there.
So if you’re coming over from the US or somewhere else that you don’t normally see offshore wind turbines, you get to see some as I flew in on Sunday afternoon, they were spinning like crazy. So good to see that. But yeah, so the, I mean, we’re here in Denmark, right? So you have Germany and going in towards the Baltic Sea and then the North Sea.
There’s a lot of Dutch companies here. So a lot of offshore wind focus at this show. Definitely there’s a lot of vessel companies. Yeah. There’s a lot of sub sea service companies so cool to see that we don’t normally see in the us for sure.
Allen Hall: Well, I, I think one of the, the big takeaways from me is, is that, Big, heavy industry and in wind, particularly offshore.
It is happening here in Europe. Oh yeah. There’s almost no American presence.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. I mean, we, we joked about we’re, we’re sitting here right now. If you got you, of course you can hear this in the background, but the Polish pavilion is right behind us playing saxophones and, and having a good old time.
But there’s a Polish pavilion, there’s the bass country pavilion. There’s a French pavilion, a Dutch pavilion, the Danish pavilion, of course. But there is no large American presence. It’s actually even kind of rare to be walking around. And run into someone with an American accent. Yeah, that’s true.
Right? So, and you could pick ’em out, see when someone with a ball cap on and definitely from the us. But yeah, the, you would think that we would have an American pavilion here. But of course, like we kind of always say on the podcast, we don’t have a whole lot of aftermarket or you know, we don’t, of course GE is an oem, but GE is mostly on this side of the pond when it comes to It is, yeah.
Their offices and, and create their o e em style stuff for win. But we don’t have the companies, so we don’t have the, the large presence here either.
Allen Hall: Yeah. And, and one of the you know, what happens there is I think American companies are missing out in some of the technology that is. And just even walking around a part of the exhibit, you learn about ropes, sort about change.
You learn about foundations, you learn, you learn about. Yeah. All kinds
Joel Saxum: of underwater apparatus of cable companies. That’s cable companies. Companies.
Allen Hall: Yeah. And, and this is the place. So even if you’re an American company just trying to figure out what’s going on and offshore wind spend,
Joel Saxum: this is the place to come, spend the time to come.
Right. And if you, if you’re, you know, as the offshore wind grows, great to be over here because you can explore some of the offshore wind stuff and understand and be able to have those conversations. But onshore witness way as well. Like you talk about robots and whatever new kind of l e p or these kind of things, like we said this at Hamburg as well.
If you’re an American company, spend a couple bucks, send someone over here or send a couple of people over here to harvest some information and, and bring it back to the states. Cuz it can only help. Yeah.
Allen Hall: So this week, this is kind of an odd week for us because we’re both traveling. We’re over here in Copenhagen and Rosemary’s back in Australia.
So Joel and I have the podcast for this week. We, we wanted to touch upon some of the articles and some of the news that’s been happening mostly in Europe. Yep. Because that’s where the action is. And let me read off a couple of good stories here. So Maersk and GustoMSC are working on a turbine installation concept for offshore wind.
So Maersk Supply Company has announced that it’s developed a new concept for the US market that combines a new wind turbine installation vessel design with a patented load transfer system that would enable safe transfer of cargo. The new design will allow the jack up and wind turbine installation vessel to remain in operation while feet or barges and tugboats transport turbine components from the marshaling hub to the installation site, making it more than 30% more efficient than conventional jack vessels.
And Maersk Supply Service and GustoMSC will start the basic design process shortly and expect to conclude it later this year. The company will believe that the concept is suitable for Europe and the US and can solve some of the bottlenecks that exist in wind turbine installations. And Joel, as we’ve seen in the United States, we have the, obviously out the Jones Act.
So there’s just a limitation on what we’re gonna be able to do in the United States, but we’re seeing some of these new novel ship ideas and installation ideas happen over in Europe. Maersk, GustoMSC being, yeah, there are two companies, probably the largest companies able
Joel Saxum: to do that. Well, I mean, it’s only proper that we talk about Maersk being in Copenhagen.
Yeah. The home of Maersk HQ Right, right. Yeah, that’s right. Street. So, so one of the things here that you’ll like about getting this ready for the Jones Egg. These vessels are a lot easier to build. Right. Yeah. So jack up barges not, not as complex. Also the tugboats and the, the feeder barges and stuff like that’s easy stuff to build.
Those are not crazy new designs. That’s not something that we need to spend 10 years engineering to figure out how to do it. Right. It’s a barge in a tugboat. Like we have those already. Just make ’em a little bit bigger and a little bit different for the barges and we’re good to go. Yeah. But I mean, the concept is great because if you think about.
If you’re, if you were, I don’t know, drilling a well, cuz I’m gonna stuck about my oil and gas, right? If you’re drilling a well, and every time you went to go and drill and keep putting pieces of pipe in the ground, you had to. Take the drill and take the truck and drive back to the shop and grab one more piece of pipe and then come back or grab three pieces of pipe.
Well, it would make sense that you’d have a runner truck to bring you those pieces of pipe while you stayed on site, right? Yeah. And that’s what this is doing, right? It’s, it’s exactly what, it’s, it’s a runner that keeps coming and bringing you materials just so you can just keep working and you’re, you’re efficient.
Then less rest for the technicians on board because they’re just go, go, go, go, go as they’re getting, getting fed parts and as long as the weather is good and you can do ship to ship transfers fine. Right, because that’s another component of this. You’re gonna be picking blades, picking the cell, picking equipment from, from one vessel to another.
As long as the weather envelope is good, this is gonna be great for wind. It’ll make it much faster to install all these offshore
Allen Hall: wind fires. Yeah. And, and, and the, the odd thing I, for me, watching this, it’s like, it just seems so obvious. Yeah. Why
Joel Saxum: wasn’t this done in the past? Right.
Allen Hall: Right. The jacket vessel is the jacket vessel.
You want it installing turbines. Yeah. Nothing else matters besides that. Yep. And because that’s your most expensive component. Mm-hmm. Putting the turbines in the water, that’s, that, that’s the one that makes the money. All the other vessels don’t really matter all that much. Right. They, they gotta be feeders, the jacket.
Joel Saxum: Well, and so if you think about why it happened that way, right. The North Sea has been oil and gas forever. Right. So when offshore wind went in a play, they’re just like, grab that oil and gas vessel that we used forever and just start using it for this. Well, so it wasn’t optimally designed to work in this kind of installation, but now that we’re staring at so much offshore wind going in, Globally from Taiwan to Australia to the us you might as well do something.
If you’re gonna make new vessels, you might as well make ’em Right. Design ’em properly. Yeah.
Allen Hall: So this has a, a following effect of one of the things we’re seeing in the United States and when they start ship, I’ve seen it overseas, is when you start loading ships up with a bunch of lakes. Yep. If you, if you look out from the captive’s perspective, you don’t really see a lot of sea out there.
You just see blades and the US Coast Guard is starting to be concerned about that and rightly so. I think. So the US Coast Guard had issued marine safety information bulletin, stating that it has known as cargo vessels arriving in US ports with winter, and parts that limit visibility from the navigation bridge.
The bulletin requires operators such as of such vessels to comply with us, requirements for navigation, bridge visibility standards, or request deviation before entering US water. So if you’re bringing your wind tur and blades over, you better get clearance before the Coast
Joel Saxum: Guard. Yes. Otherwise close you over.
You’ll be staged up out in
Allen Hall: port for a while. Yeah, you’ll be hanging out for a while. The local Coast Guard captain of the port can authorize a deviation if it does not impair the vessel’s. Safe navigation under anticipated condition and does not violate the rules. We’re preventing collisions at sea.
Okay, so what’s happening is as you get closer to shore, the local Coast Guard is saying, all right guys, we’re gonna give you a deviation, we’re gonna let you travel with this. But just fair warning, this isn’t going to go on
Joel Saxum: forever. Right. Well, so we’re diving into the maritime world in some different rules here, right?
Yeah. If as a, as a follower of new technology and being involved in the maritime world, there’s, there is ghost fleets out there. Now. Oh yeah, sure. Right. Like Ocean Infinity has the Armada fleet. These are not small vessels? No. The, the Armada fleet, if I’m remember correctly, I think they’re somewhere in the range of like 70 meters.
And they can operate globally without a pilot. Now that’s theoretical, right? Yeah, they can, but there are laws that state, like when you’re in these waters near this port, you have to have a pilot, da, da da da. So they have a regular bridge. They look like a regular boat, right? But so we’re, they’re, they’re, they’re starting to integrate cameras, sensors, radars, all these different things, thermal imagery, so that it makes it safer.
So I would imagine that that will be a part of the waiver process in the future. You may not be able to see that well out of the bridge of this boat, but you’re gonna have a FL camera, you’re gonna have AI object detection, you’re gonna have this, this, this, this, and this. Just like you know, the drone world, they have all these rules.
If you wanna waiver, you’ve gotta put all these other safety measures in place. Yeah, sure. It’ll be kind of the same thing.
Allen Hall: Wow. Okay. So, As, as these ships are approaching the United States, they have to be telling the Coast Guard, Hey guys, we just came from Spain, or we just came from the uk. We made it this far.
We can make it into port. Okay. Right. Isn’t, isn’t that part of the
Joel Saxum: discussion? Yeah, absolutely. So I’ll give you an example of this kind of technology and where it might go, and so they can prove these leagues. Right. Last night I went for a ride in a friend’s vehicle here in Copenhagen and in the heads up display, it had a thermal camera.
Wow. That was also doing AI object detection of people and bikes on the road. Whoa. In real time while we were driving, it’s Tesla. Was that a Tesla? Audi Tron. Audi, yeah. Oh. So I mean, I was looking at it going like, This is like futuristic. This is like something I, I didn’t know this existed. I mean, I’ve known you can do these things, right?
Sure. I didn’t know someone had integrated it into the sensor package of an actual vehicle that you can just go buy regularly. Right? So there’s, if it can be in an Audi e-tron, it can definitely be in a. 40 million vessel. Right. We can make that happen. So I would imagine you’ll start to see some more of those things come to these vessels for these protections.
Allen Hall: So how do, how do they do that in the United States? You know, one of the things that’s gonna happen in near us, in, in Massachusetts is there’s some ports up in Albany. Yep. Which is up the Hudson River. So they, they’re gonna travel wind turbine blades, and I think the cells. From upstate New York down the Hudson River.
Yeah. And navigate out to where they’re gonna be planted on the East Coast. So don’t you have that same problem, just visibility as, especially if you’re in the ocean. That’s one thing. If you’re in a narrow river, that’s a much what
Joel Saxum: harder to do. So I would say from my non-educated hundred thousand tongue pilot certification.
Right. I have a friend that we could ask about this. It’s not me, but Tugboats or guide boats or pilot boats to make sure that those things don’t, I mean, at least when you’re in a, in inland like that, you’re not dealing with wind pushing you off course or anything like that. Right, right. So as long as the clearances are measured correctly for the bridges and maybe you have a pilot boat or something that’s Yeah.
Giving you that extra level of protection, but, It’d be certainly a sight to see when you’re driving across the bridge in, in New York and all of a sudden you, you see you know, 16 or 18 blades on a. On a, on a vessel that are 110 meters long Right. Cruising under the bridge in front of you. And it’s gonna stop some traffic.
I can tell you that it will.
Allen Hall: Yeah. I, I wonder the same thing. Was it gonna cause an exit on, on the bridge that, you know, a lot this stuff is traveling. Yeah. Well cuz the, the wind TURs only get bigger. And that’s one thing about being at the, the wind Europe this week is you just see all the wind turine sizes are growing and growing, growing.
Nobody is. Stationary, even though Festus is keeps talking about, we’re gonna stop at 15 megawatts. No one at this show is talking about stopping at 15 mega megawatts. No,
Joel Saxum: you got, you’ve got some of the Chinese OEMs looking at twenties. Yeah. GEs looking at the 18 buckets. It’s,
Allen Hall: it’s gonna, they’re not stop.
Well, so EDF is, is also part of that bet. So in a, in a bit to increase output, E D F is betting on wind turbines to be about 50% more powerful at the start of the next next. Joel,
Joel Saxum: 50% more powerful at this time than today. Next, so that’s 22, 23. 20 fours. Six. Yeah. Six and a half years. You’re gonna have a 25 megawatt turbine, right?
So
Allen Hall: the French utility is already building the country’s largest offshore farm with turbines as big as skyscrapers, which we all know. It’s also planning to construct a facility more than 32 kilometers off the coast of Normandy in 2031, which could use even large machines delivering up to 23.8 megawatts for its one gigawatt farm.
So EDF is, is thinking fewer turbines, bigger turbines to get to that one gigawatt number. Makes
Joel Saxum: sense from an installation standpoint. Right. Well, I, yeah, it does an o m standpoint. Less, less towers in the water, less to maintain, cheaper to, cheaper to install. But I don’t know who’s making that 20, 23 0.8 megawatt machine here in the next six years.
Well, that’s,
Allen Hall: that’s, I think there’s, there’s been a lot of discussion with the French president talking to China and there’s. A number of discussions how the French and the French are encouraged the rest of the European Union to break away and be a separate entity of itself, not to be so reliant on the United States.
Not to say that European unions reliant on the United States right now in terms of when, cause if not, but it seems like the, the French was saying, Hey, we should be building as we need it to be and don’t let the Americans hold us back. Yeah. And, and that. Forges a better relationship with China and then, which is absolutely what they’re
Joel Saxum: doing.
Cause the US won’t install Chinese turbines. Yeah, I, I don’t, I don’t think they’ll be allowed to be on grid.
Allen Hall: No, I don’t think so either. So, right now EDF is installing seven and eight megawatt machines on some wind projects that currently in construction and around France and in Scottish waters. But they’re looking for bigger and bigger tur.
Joel Saxum: You might have to get closer to this thing with this saxophone starting up behind us. Yeah. Yeah.
Allen Hall: The polo show. Having a good time over there. Yeah. Oh, that’s okay. So that’s, that’s something we just need to watch and as we walk around the show this week, I, I think we just pay attention What size turbine.
I saw some there’s a test facility that was advertising itself and it said we are equipped to handle 25 megawatt machines.
Joel Saxum: Wow. You might as well build ’em big now. You know, I guess so. Here, walking around the show, talking about turbine models too. One of the things I would like to say, I saw the new GE Vernova booth.
Yeah. It looks so, so they’ve rebranded GE Vernova. Now they’re, you’re at a trade show and it is now GE Vernova, so maybe they’re the next ones to build a 25 megawatt machine. But I know on their booth they’ve got a TV that’s about 15 feet wide. Yeah. So they’re going big with at least that.
Allen Hall: Yeah. It, it’s really the first show they have been at.
At any level. Yeah. They were not in Hamburg last year. They were not at ACP in Orlando. I assume they’re going to ACP in New Orleans. I would think so. Right. So the, the Copenhagen is the beginning of the show
Joel Saxum: season. Yep. And I, I would imagine we see that booth in a Conex going to Louisiana. I would think that’s where it’s going because they, I mean, if you don’t know, geez, trade show, but one of the really big ones, sometimes they cost a million dollars to Bill.
Oh, that one did.
Allen Hall: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s good. That tells you GE is really gonna be aggressive over the next couple of months. So Norway’s first, offshore wind auction is now open for applications marking a significant milestone in the country’s efforts to meet its ambitious green energy targets. The auction is split into two areas as a southern North C two and Nord offering a combined capacity of three gigawatts.
The first phase of southern North C2 will be awarded to a single candidate through a pre-qualification round following. Followed by an auction and award by the end of this year, 2023. Meanwhile, that ET Sir Nord will be awarded to three bidders based on qualitative criteria, facilitating innovation and technology development and floating offshore wind.
So there’s a fixed bottom and there’s a floating that that, that’s kind ofs broken up right now. Where are they doing
Joel Saxum: Fixed bottom? Because I mean, the majority of offshore wind, Norway, I mean, it’s a cliff.
Allen Hall: It is. Yeah. So it’s gonna be right on edge of the cliff.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Either way I would expect EOR to be involved in this at some level.
Yes. Right. EOR has been involved in some offshore wind. They were, they did some, what we, we joked about a couple years. About what? Being green oil, they put some offshore wind turbines near a platform and powered the platform. Yeah, right. Yeah. Oil platform with it. Yeah. So we’re not using electricity, but it’s green electricity, screen electricity.
But I, yeah, I would expect that in order to be involved in that, it’s, it’s always good to see more players entering the market. That means more opportunities for other people. In, in the marketplace, build turbines, more things to bid on more contracts for, you know, cable, a people and vessels and all the above.
So it’s, it’s good to see more countries opening up and Norway. Of course, it’s got some cash, then
Allen Hall: they’ll build open and, and the way Norway is doing it is different than the way that Denmark is doing. And it’s different the way that’s that’s happening at Scotland. It’s different than what’s happening in France and it’s totally different than what’s happening in the United States in terms of the way they’re.
Trying to get pe, get companies to put turbines in the water. United States is more of a competitive system where you pay hundreds of millions of dollars. Yep. Norway is sort of playing in middle ground, though the way it sounds, it’s not probably gonna be as expensive to lease that site,
Joel Saxum: but I would say the lease is go to Norwegian companies, though I would say it probably
Allen Hall: specific can, yeah.
So does it, does that change because You know, they’re so close. Norway’s pretty close to Denmark, and Denmark has the open system where they’re just saying, you bring a project or take a look at it. It complies with the regulations. We’re probably gonna let you do it. Norway’s ticking a more top down approach to it, much like the United States is almost,
Joel Saxum: I think that goes in hand in hand with, if you look at the past of Norway.
Okay. So Norway’s offshore developments for oil Yep. Have been driven by their government. Oh, sure. Yeah. Norway is the, is the richest country per capita in the world, right? Because of their oil reserves and how they’ve managed them. So they’re gonna take the same approach to managing their wind development, because that’s how, that’s the culturally how it’s gonna operate, whereas, so it’s good to be on top.
Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. But whereas the, I mean, the Danish cultures, Scandinavian cultures are close. None of my Danish friends, please call me after this and, and don’t yell at me, but, They, you know, the Danes do operate things a little bit differently as a, as a society, I think, than where it lends more for the openness of the Yeah.
Of the opportunity rather than, yeah.
Allen Hall: I, I, I think there’s, I had talked to some people just today about that Norway auction here in Copenhagen and they were really interested and thought that was gonna be a, a massive projects to take advantage of. So, There’s interest in it. I wonder if there’s, you know, the thing about the United States, when we put a United States’ perspective on it, we think, well, we have an auction.
We’re gonna get all these players to come in here, but there’s other auctions happening, other parts of the world. Yep. It’s not just the United States still. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Right. So if you have a choice between floating offshore in California or to do a project in Norway, which one are you doing? I do, I would do Norway too.
Cause you’re better getting, you’re probably gonna hire PPA prices right.
Joel Saxum: There’s the ports already. There’s no vapor structures there, there’s no vessels. Trouble. Right. The vessels are already here. Right. If you need a jack up or you’re not gonna have a jack up for floating, but if you need a SOV or something, you just make a phone call and it comes.
I mean, they’re, they’re calling, of course, they are all on, on retainers and they’re on projects and stuff like that. But the re resources are here. The, the Mariners, the people to operate them are here. Yeah. Their experience. They know how to work offshore. The US just lacks. Maturity in that.
Allen Hall: Right. We just don’t have the infrastructure, so that’s gonna be the hard thing for the states is to compete with that is because Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Germany,
Joel Saxum: Germany, France, France,
Allen Hall: Scotland has all the infrastructure in place.
Practice is gonna happen faster. If you look at some of these dates, you’re talking about 2023. 2024. Yeah. Yeah. Much faster than the 2030 in the United States. German Wind turban Maker Nordex is considering restarting its Mothball production site in West Branch, Iowa this year. The move comes following the introduction of the Inflation Reduction Act, which is expected to increase demand for wind and solar power across the United States which, and it it’s also the US’ a huge market for wind at the moment.
Nordex CEO Jose Louis Blanco said that the cost to restart the facility, which has had an annual production capacity of around 1.5 gigawatts or already factored into Nordic’s Plan 2023 CapEx of 200 million. So it sounds like. Things go well that plant in Iowa is gonna be opening for Nordex cuz Nordex really hasn’t had a massive presence in the United States, but it sounds like there’s enough demand that they’re gonna fire up the plan
Joel Saxum: again with the IRA demand.
So I was, I was walking the show with my colleague Millie today, and I said, you know what, one of the jobs I wouldn’t want, cause I wouldn’t want to be a salesperson for one of these OEMs selling turbines and, and, and think just thinking about this now. So there’s gonna be so many options you might be.
Way down the road with a client selling your XYZ turbine to them. But what’s gonna take over in the US shortly is whoever can create these things the fastest it’s gonna win. It’s gonna win, right? So if you can say, I’m a million dollars megawatt and I will deliver you to them by December, and the next person says, I’m 1.1 million, and they go out, but I’ll deliver ’em to you in July.
You’re gonna go July. Yeah, every time. So I think so too. Nordex is, Nordex is probably making a fantastic here by opening a factory there to get their product in the ground, because it’s going to end up being who has the, who has the capacity to manufacture and who can get ’em out the doors quick
Allen Hall: enough, right?
Yeah. So Nordex is also considering temporarily shifting some production to best cost countries to compensate for high inflation at raw material costs. That opens the door to a lot of other countries being evolved, like in Brazil.
Joel Saxum: Well, and there’s quite a few factories right across the border from Texas as well.
We are, there’s, there’s, there’s blade factories in Mexico that are 20 miles from within 20 miles of the border. Yeah. So
Allen Hall: that’s gonna change the landscape at Nord exercise to do that, if you’re going to the lowest cost factory, that’s not necessarily gonna be the United States unless the IRA benefits the production tax credits and those things come, if
Joel Saxum: you can get ITC funds on top of it.
Yeah. Then.
Allen Hall: We’ll see. All right. So I, I want to head back to the United States just for this one topic. Ready? The, the blinking red lights. Okay. Okay. So if, if you watch some American television shows that are based in United States, there’s one in particular where there’s the drag racing across Oklahoma and Kansas.
And they’re doing it in the middle of the nighttime. So anytime you see them racing those cars, you see a whole flood of red blinking lights from all the wind turbines. It’s, and when you watch that show, you think, God, if I lived out there, that’d be just really annoying. It’d dry you nuts. Right? Well, the state of Kansas is, is, and the legislature there has, has been hounding some of the wind operators to, to stop the blinking lights when there’s no aircraft around.
In most nights, there’s not an aircraft near your wind farm cuz the wind farms aren’t. Near highly populated areas. So wind farm developers in Kansas will have to, to mitigate the flashing rail lights of top wind turbines under a new laws signed by the Governor of Kansas. Senate Bill 49 requires developers to install light mitigation technology on new and existing wind farms, but only if the FAA approves.
Okay, so this is the real kicker right here. The FAA has to approve this system. The law was proposed by the wind farm industry after. There are some meetings between the, the, the, the wind industry and the legislature in Kansas. So the supporters of this effort Vieta is an attempt by the industry to be good neighbors.
I think that’s true. I think it’s, I think, yeah, I think, I think it’s a good look. Yeah. Right. So this, all the, all these bills passed, the governor did sign this thing. So starting in July 1st of this year, developers, owners, and operators of new wind farm with at least five turbines. So, so if you have six or five, you have five, you gotta start looking at the system.
You must apply to the FAA for approval to use a mitigation technology that complies with F FAA regulations? Yes. Okay. If approved, they would have 24 months to install it. Right? So you gotta get the system installed. Retrofitting of approximately 40 operational wind farms is delayed until July 1st, 2026.
So it’s gonna give the existing operator some time to figure out how to pay for this. So the, the big, the big red flag about this red light flashing pill is that the system. To turn off the lights and turn ’em back on is a radar based system. It tracks aircraft. They’re like, it’s not a a t cast system.
That is where it’s just picking up the transponders of the aircraft. I, they also have a radar with it too, because there
Joel Saxum: is aircraft that don’t have any transponders. That’s right. Right.
Allen Hall: There’s a lot of ’em that don’t, the little airplanes tend not to, right? Yeah. The bigger airplanes do. Right. So the costs and of installing the systems on the developer, owner or operator, and the system costs around roughly $2 million.
What, $2 million to install and another a hundred grand in annual cost to keep it upright because the, a’s gonna ma a is gonna require you to verify his work. So how are you gonna do that? So you’re talking about $2.1 million in year one. Another a hundred thousand. Another a hundred thousand. Another a hundred thousand.
Right? So do you, so here’s the thing. If, if there are three or four wind farms, Close to one another. Do they all go in for one system? Absolutely. I, I think they, you
Joel Saxum: figure out how much that thing can cover and you try to all try to max them share cost. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
Allen Hall: You’ll try to get the biggest radar system you can buy.
Yeah.
Joel Saxum: For the money. I mean, that’s, that’s just, I mean, I’m all for the good neighbor idea. Yeah. It’s a good, I’ve seen the red lights now driving down I 35 at night. I’m like, oh, that’s kind of neat. Take a look at all the turbines out there. But if I live there, No way. No way. I did not want those. Right. So I, I understand the, the plight of the, the landowners in the area, 2 million to retrofit plus the a hundred grand every year.
Like that’s a little bit of a hard pill to swallow. If it was for, if the new law came into place and said, Hey, newly developed wind farms, you must implement this. Well then someone can put it into their CapEx model, right? When they’re developing the wind farm and I’m. That’s a little bit of easier to, to, to deal with, but being forced to spend 2 million hours of retrofit something that is a iste.
Right. That, cuz that’s what it is at the end of the day. It’s, it’s a nicety, it’s not nothing, it’s not something that is helping environmental wildlife. It’s not really, no. It’s just, it’s just making it less intrusive to the eyeball at night,
Allen Hall: I guess. Yeah. Well if I had a farm out there in. That red light was blinking into my bedroom every night, and I’d be a little upset about it, and then I would ask the guys to turn off the lights.
Yeah. When there’s nothing around. And I think that, I think that makes sense. The question is, how far does this propagate now? Now that Kansas is the middle of wind country, right? So it’s gonna propagate to Oklahoma. Yeah, I think Iowa. Iowa, Nebraska, and there’s not a lot of winters in Nebraska, South Dakota.
Illinois, which is already talking about it, right? Yeah. It also, it, it’ll start to click, click, click. Around the Midwest,
Joel Saxum: technically West Texas though.
Allen Hall: It’s West Texas. It went out there. Anyway, you go, well, that’s possible. Well, so here’s, here’s the, the thing. If they start mandating these systems, I, I, it’s a lot of money.
$2 million for a site that has. Five turbines. I don’t know what site has five turbines in the middle of the United States? There’s, there’s not many of them, but if I had 20 turbines, 2 million bucks to me,
Joel Saxum: 5 million or $2 million for five turbines. Say you had five GE one five s, right. Those are one and a half million each to install.
So you’re. You’re not making that much revenue. Seven and a half million dollars in cost to install the wind farm. Just install it. Yeah. And it’s gonna be two, 2 million to turn the lights on and off. Right. That’s ridiculous. Right. There’s
Allen Hall: gotta be a better way, right?
Joel Saxum: Yeah. It has to be. Well, you know, you could hire a.
For $2 million, you could hire 10 people to sit there with a light switch and turn ’em on and off when they see a plane go by. I don’t know if the A would approve that. No,
Allen Hall: it would not be FA approved, but I find you’d have a difficult time getting it through the FA process. Yeah, I got these 10. 10
Joel Saxum: kids cut.
Yeah. It’s a high school. The switch.
Allen Hall: Yeah, I don’t think that’s gonna happen, but, you know it is one of those problems that needs to be solved. Yeah. The question is, can the cost come down a little bit and does it need the a hundred thousand dollars reinspection every year? Because all those wind TURs are marked, right?
They’re all maps and, and if you have any sort of electronic display in your aircraft, and most,
Joel Saxum: which I mean even like new aircraft too, my brother has a piper Cub and it’s on an iPad. Yeah, so
Allen Hall: he’s got it right. So they’ll, it shows you where those turbines are and tells you not to fly around. I mean, it isn’t like we’re flying in the dark, so
Joel Saxum: I’ll give you a, I’ll give you a cheaper solution than $2 million.
G. Wind Power Lab, a few years ago did a project with university of Our House. Oh, okay. Yeah. And it was the, we called it the Beca Project, B I C A, bird Collision and Avoidance. Okay. So it was part of a project to find the certain species of goose geese and Northern Germany. That were endangered. Okay.
And they want to do curtail the wind turbines when those geese were out. Yeah. So we took two, or not we, the projects took two faro radars off of a boat. Oh sure. Yeah. Recreational ones right. Going to spin around. You see our boats all the time one year, and they spin this way. So we took two of ’em. We put one this way horizontal and then one vertical.
What that did was create a dome radar coverage. Sure. Right. So we created a dome of radar coverage and then Windpower lab. Ran AI algorithms to, on the output of the radar to find the birds. Okay. It’s the same thing, isn’t it?
Allen Hall: It is, but it’s not FA approved.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. But if the A wants to come and knock him, we’ll we’ll do a project for him.
Just bring you 2 million bucks to us. Yeah. Cuz
Allen Hall: your, your worst case nightmare. You’re the a you have nothing to lose. They’ll keep those lights going, right? Yeah. There’s lights on a antenna. Towers, there’s lights on buildings. Theres lights in all kinds of places. There’s lights everywhere. Right. From the a’s perspective.
There’s just is more red lights out there. But
Joel Saxum: the way I look at it, like okay, so just general aviation law, 500 foot is your floor, right? Pretty much, yeah. Is there many turbines out there right now that are 500 foot tall? Six Oh, there’s some
Allen Hall: big ones out in those five megawatt machines. Six megawatt
Joel Saxum: machines.
Yeah. I suppose 500 feet’s. 160 meters, right? Yeah. There’s easily Towers Hotel,
Allen Hall: right? Yeah. No, we should be flying that low. No, we should be going that. That’s another thing too. You could actually raise the, the minimum, the floor raise the floor. It’s maybe the easier solution. Yeah, but that hasn’t happened, right?
Because. My guess is crop dusters and other, other aircraft that need to get into those areas, still wanna operate in. I mean, you’d be surprised in Kansas how many little airstrips there are
Joel Saxum: and there are everywhere. When I was, when I was working oil and gas, I, in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, I saw crop dusters flight under power lines.
Yeah. All the time. Like, like it was just nothing. Like while eating a sandwich, that’s not a big deal. Just in our home. Like, whoa, that guy just feels under a power line. Excuse.
Allen Hall: I hope that we’re not eating a sandwich that doesn’t seem in compliance with FA regulations, so I
Joel Saxum: could be wrong. Yeah,
Allen Hall: that’s true.
But it, it doesn’t feel right to me. Csun south Korean company plans to add 850 new jobs in Pueblo, Colorado, which is a nice place if you haven’t been to Pueblo. Yep. To their turbine tower factory by expanding their existing factory to 1.58 million square feet. And right now it’s about 900,000.
Square feet, so about 600,000 more square feet. It’s a 50 improvement. The factory is currently the largest turbine tower factory in the world, and it currently employs about 650 workers. The expansion of the facility was prompted by the Inflation reduction Act, which includes expanded tax credits for green energy production.
And with the expansion they’re adding a bunch of new jobs and it’s pouring several hundred million into the local economy. So this, this is, there’s been a lot of work on towers and, and they all seem to be sort of New Mexico, Colorado area. Right? So the, the spiral and, and the panhandle of Texas. Yep.
Right. The, the spiral towers are be built in the Panhandle of Texas. There’s a couple others in New Mexico, right? So this one’s in Pueblo. Why are, is it just because there’s incentives to, to be in that part of the world to build towers or is it just more access to steel, more access to, to, to, well, you need a lot of square feet from these factories too.
Joel Saxum: I mean, steel, steel access, I would think Port of Houston, that’s what I
Allen Hall: would think until be, wanna be closer to a port.
Joel Saxum: Right? You, yeah. So that, that I, I, this, this one. I. I don’t even have an armchair answer for you. Right. I know. It’s so odd. I think it’s great for the communities. I know New Mexico is always, everybody wants jobs, right?
But New Mexico, Mexico is specifically, is usually looking for jobs, right? Pueblo is that Southern Colorado, like they’re, they’re looking for some jobs. So I think it’s fantastic. You’re close to your subject matter, right? So those towers are going out the door and they’re not having to go that far down the road for a lot.
But yeah, I don’t know if it’s a. Raw materials
Allen Hall: or, or what, but people, taxes.
Joel Saxum: Taxes. I mean, it’s gonna, Colorado is not the most tax, like compli, it’s not a low tax
Allen Hall: state. No, but maybe we’re making towers. It is.
Joel Saxum: Maybe, yeah. Maybe there’s some tax incentives you in Colorado for wind energy That I don’t know about.
Allen Hall: That’s, that’s, I think that’s a unique one. But we’re just seeing so many more tower companies show up in that general vicinity. Yeah. Avenue, Masco, Texas in Colorado. That’s that’s interesting development. What’s gonna do 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.
