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Nordex invests $1.1B in Turkey’s wind industry, Singapore plans to invest $3.7B in clean energy transition, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners invests $1.9B in offshore wind farm in the Philippines.
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Allen Hall: I’m Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I’m here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum, and this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you want market intelligence that generates revenue, then book a demonstration of IntelStor at intelstor.com.
Spanish German Nordex Group plans investing a little over a billion dollars in Turkey in 2024. Turkey is seen as a major wind market due to its young population on short potential and strong supply chains. Turkey is taking the lead in the wind supply chain as an uptick. Alternative to Asia. So this is a sweet spot for Turkey at the moment, Phil, where they do have a strong workforce.
They do have a lot of internal capabilities and Nordex is picking up on that.
Philip Totaro: Exactly. And to the extent that they’ve already established themselves as a kind of a wind manufacturing hub you’ve got Enercon there, you’ve got Nordex already there, LM. And a couple other smaller players.
But you also have subcomponent suppliers there. ASCA is there as a material supplier for blades. So there’s a significant amount of opportunity. This investment represents largely project development activities is my understanding, but there will also be some factory expansion potential there as well as they look to expand Turkey as an export hub for for components and not just used in the domestic market, but also elsewhere throughout Europe.
Joel Saxum: To double down on talking about Nordex here, it was Wind Europe Bilbao last week, Nordex, it was, that, that show was the return of the OEMs. So you saw GE Vernova, Siemens Gamesa, Nordex, Enercon, everybody having their big booths again. To focus on this, Nordex had a, Fantastic, large booth, huge presence putting some of their new models out there.
They’re really pushing that Delta 4000 platform. So you can see that the Nordex group is spending a lot of money to expand their footprint and could be capitalizing a little bit of that Siemens Gamesa absence from the market in that 4X, 5X area as well.
Allen Hall: Singapore is setting up a 3. 7 billion future energy fund and investing in clean energy tech and infrastructure.
Singapore aims to move quickly on its infrastructure and invest in clean energy security as part of its goal to reach net zero by 2050. Currently, 95 percent of electricity is produced from natural gas in Singapore. So there is now a plan to import low carbon power from its neighbors, which will require Obviously, investments in submarine cables and the grid, Phil, with that kind of money being invested in Singapore, that’s going to bring a lot of clean tech to that area.
Philip Totaro: Absolutely. And they already have a lot of offshore wind capability that’s headquartered in Singapore, a lot of, vessel owners and operators, et cetera. So there’s an experience base there. To up to a point but it’s also interesting because, this is a big city state I would say country, but this is a city state led initiative on decarbonization.
And so that’s that’s an important thing is again, countries or city states in the case of Singapore wants to ensure kind of future compliance with any regulations or established protocols that come out of future cop meetings or things like that.
Always good to see. Anybody getting together a big pot of money and spending it on things that are desperately needed, like grid infrastructure and renewable power generation.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, if you look at Singapore as a city there’s a lot of, the financial world of the Asia Pacific.
Basically realm is based in there. So there’s a lot of money there. There’s a lot of smart people there. There is a large contingent of, like Phil said, from the maritime and shipping sector there. So there is the experience to operate offshore. There’s also the horsepower with some vessels and things in that area.
A lot of the other ones operating in that same theater could move right on, so you have some experience. I also do think that there could be a pretty good play here for some HVDC transmission. In the submarine cable side. I know there’s been talks of a possible line from Australia, northern Australia as well.
That is a long line. It could be there. But good on Singapore for making these moves. I know it’s a very interesting place to visit. If you haven’t gone, go. But looking to see some big things coming from that corner of the world.
Allen Hall: Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners is investing 1. 92 billion in a 650 megawatt offshore wind farm in northern Samar province in the Philippines. The wind farm is located across about six towns there. Construction is supposed to begin in Q1 of 2024. So really soon. Operations expected in late 2025. This is part of CIP’s expansion in Southeast Asia after a 1.
3 billion investment in Bangladesh. Wow. Southeast Asia is getting a lot of cash flow and renewable energy and they seem to be able to develop the projects faster than what’s happening in Europe and the United States.
Philip Totaro: Which is the key to all this. You’ve got high PPA prices from conventional power generation that they would be competing with, you’ve got easier time of permitting and you’ve got healthier financial returns that you can see.
So it’s really no surprise and it’s not just, this project in the Philippines you mentioned Thailand, Vietnam there are plenty of other Southeast Asian countries Indonesia as well. That are seeing a significant amount of interest in in renewables generation and project development.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, CIP is specifically well suited for doing. They’ve been operating in that same area for a while. They have experience in Taiwan and some other areas as well over there. Good team down in the area to be able to put these projects out and the capital behind them. More moves to make.
Allen Hall: InfraRed Capital Partners acquired a 60 percent stake in the 182 megawatt Brazos wind project in Texas and a 50 percent stake in a 180 megawatt Madison Field solar project in Ohio from Shell. Shell remains the asset and energy manager, of course. Brazos is currently undergoing a repower and is expected to generate power next year.
Sometime in the next couple of months Phil, when we see these sort of transactions happen to older facilities, Brazos Wind Farm has been around since 2001, 2002 and had Mitsubishi turbines, and now they’re upgrading them at the moment. Those are valuable assets to have. Can you explain why that is?
Philip Totaro: Yeah, sure. It’s because you’re leveraging pre existing electrical infrastructure that’s, the cables have already been laid in this case, because it was, these one megawatt Mitsubishi turbines, you’re necessarily going to have to recable for more modern, three, four, five megawatt units.
However lease agreements are already in place with the landowners. There, the, a lot of the Basically, you’re short cutting the development timeline.
