Nordex Outsells Vestas, GE Vernova Rebuilds Wind Team

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Allen Hall: Well, welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall. I’m here with R- Rosemary Barnes, Matthew Stead, and Yolanda Padron, and it is another crazy week in wind energy. Uh, we should start off with GE Vernova, because if you’ve been following your LinkedIn pages, you will see a number of new faces and even a couple of press releases.

And if you do follow wind closely, you know that GE Vernova has been in a little bit of a tailspin, and that won’t go on very long before they will try to right that ship. Well, here we go. Uh, GE Vernova, uh, is grabbing a bunch of talent. Claire McDonough, the chief financial officer who took [00:01:00] Rivian, the, the truck maker, through its IPO recently and led its cost-cutting push, uh, is leaving the electric vehicle maker to become the CFO of GE Vernova.

So not just wind, the whole kit and caboodle, uh, gas turbines and the, all the transformer businesses. Uh, and she’ll start at the beginning of 2027. She replaces, uh, the retiring Ken Parks, and it sounds like Ken is gonna stay on and help Scott Strazik as an advisor, which I’m sure he appreciates. Uh, but, uh, Claire is not the only new face there.

Christie Hopkins, who spent more than 26 years at Siemens Energy and Siemens Gamesa, has joined as executive director for Wind North America New Units, leading sales across US, Canada, and Mexico. And then Gio Scialdone, who has been on the podcast many times with 3S Left, is leaving 3S Left. I’m– That’s a big hit, I’m sure.

Uh, and he’s coming back to GE, where he started at many, many years ago as a technician and built the wind [00:02:00] farm outside my front door when I lived in Massachusetts. He’ll come back as global head of, of commercial services and a number of other, uh, repowers and a number of other things. So basically between, uh, Christie and Gio, it sounds like they’re gonna cover the planet, uh, for wind energy This is a big change, everybody.

Uh, our concern was, was GE gonna shut down the wind division? Yolanda, it looks like they’re keeping it and reinforcing it with some really strong candidates. 

Yolanda Padron: If they can hopefully get everything together and, and get at least the wind side, um, back to where it once was or close to it, uh, it could be a really good win for their operations sites, right?

Their operational sites who currently don’t really know what the forecast is gonna be for their sites in five, 10 years if GE just goes down. 

Rosemary Barnes: I was actually watching… There’s this new creator, I don’t know who they [00:03:00] are, but some creator I’ve been watching Instagram reels from where they go through just, uh, you know, like, historical things, but mostly related to business or government, and one of the ones that he was talking about that I thought was interesting was about, um, when engineering companies get a non-technical CEO in for the first time, like an MBA type, and what they typically do.

And I think that GE is usually, like, the just shining example of how to run businesses in that way. But the typical pattern is, and he had some examples, which I can’t recall, so yeah, sorry, my, um, anecdote will be fact-free, but trust me, there are, is some data behind it. But it, it gave the example of, yeah, so the, um, y- you know, like, a traditional engineering company like Boeing might be an example, and GE Vernova would be another one.

They build up their strength and dominance by investing a lot in R&D, and all of the technical staff really care about the company and are [00:04:00] all contributing to, um, you know, making sure that they continue to dominate technologically. And then if you get an MBA-type manager in, the sh- the typical pattern goes that they fire a bunch of people that were working in R&D, like reduce the R&D spend massively, reduce the wages of all the technical people.

Technical people start to have less say in how the company, um, is managed. And in the short term, they get spectacular results from that, right? You know, profits go massively up if you stop investing in R&D for a few years, um, because, you know, R&D takes quite a while to, to pay off, so you’re not gonna notice the pain.

You’re gonna see the financial benefit immediately. You’re not p- notice the pain for ages. And, you know, without going into too d- in-depth analysis about the wind energy companies that are around today, I think if you look at the companies that are going well You see that there are companies that continue to prioritize, um, research and [00:05:00] development and continue to prioritize the opinions of the technical people working for them.

And I personally think that GE is maybe gone just a little bit too long with the MBA-type way of running a company. Um, and that, yeah, like that’s really great for a little while, but it’s not a long-term strategy, and I don’t know how you pull back from it. Um, I haven’t seen any turnaround stories like that.

But yeah, just some, some food for thought that that might be part of the reason why they’re struggling. But I would say that ’cause I’m an engineer, and yeah, engineers hate to be managed by non-technical people, so.

Allen Hall: I wanna get Gio’s title right because he is responsible for a lot at GE Vernova on the wind side. It would be Global Head of Commercial Services and Repower at GE Vernova. So global repower, that’s a huge area, and in services, as we know, is one of the profitable areas within GE Vernova Wind. Very important position, and he’s an engineer [00:06:00] That’s good Maybe 

Rosemary Barnes: that’s the start of the comeback, comeback king.

Allen Hall: It, it def- definitely could be. Yeah. Well, the numbers are in for the first half of 2026, and Europe is having the best wind year ever. Wind Europe reported, uh, 8.8 gigawatts of new capacity installed in the first six months, uh, up 30% from the same period last year. Germany alone put up more than 500 turbines.

That’s quite a few. Uh, but behind those numbers, there’s another story that is unfolding, which is Nordex, the German turbine maker, is closing in on Vestas, the Danish wind tu- turbine maker, in the onshore market. Uh, in August, Nordex booked more than twice the megawatts that Vestas did. Uh, a Danske Bank analyst says Nordex has been quicker on its feet, picking up market share that left behind b- by Siemens Gamesa and GE Vernova.

Uh, although [00:07:00] Vestas is still way out in front in, in terms of total gigawatts that they’re gonna produce. This is an interesting shift, right? I mean, we’ve been li- seeing this the last, ooh, year or so, where Nordex is picking up clients that were formerly GE Vernova or are even, like, massively dedicated to GE Vernova or Siemens Gamesa.

Uh, it does seem like there’s an opening there, and so far, at, at least people we’ve talked to, uh, from the Weather Guard side, l- literally like Nordex. They like the response to problems and questions and things that maybe they hadn’t seen out of other suppliers. Was this unexpected, or is this a, a sort of a natural outgrowth of where Nordex is headed?

Rosemary Barnes: Is this one year of this trend, or is it, has it been growing for a few? I, 

Allen Hall: I think it’s been growing for a couple. It’s been growing 

Rosemary Barnes: for a few years 

Matthew Stead: now. Isn’t it one month? Yeah. One month? 

Allen Hall: It’s one month, but if you- … if you beat Ves- if you beat Vestas at all and you’re Nordex, think, if you look, think [00:08:00] about four or five years ago, and I’ve, if I said Nordex had outsold Vestas, and maybe it had happened, uh, but it would just seem implausible 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah

Allen Hall: that that would 

Rosemary Barnes: even occur No, I mean, if it’s, if it’s several years then, then fair enough, that’s a turn. I just say that because y- you know, most of this capacity is offshore, right? And offshore projects are so lumpy. You, you know, like, when you make a sale, you make, like, a gigawatt sale. Um, and so I think it’s pretty hard to take, like, a single year, or even, like, within a couple of years it could still be the same project.

So, um, that’s one point. And then the other point is, like, when you look at the breakdown of, uh, what did we say? Europe put in 8.8 gigawatts, and 3.4 of that was in Germany. I think European countries do tend to be a little bit, like, protective of their own companies. Or, I mean, ev- it’s natural for, for everyone, you know, has some sort of preference- Mm

whether it’s explicit encouragement or support, or whether it’s just, like, a warm, fuzzy feeling that you have for a company that’s from your [00:09:00] country. I think that that possibly has something to do with it. So yeah, if I would no- if I was Nordex, I would see this as encouraging and probably not just consider it a slam dunk from here.

But, you know, something to, to grow on. ‘Cause I, I know traditionally German companies have had some trouble succeeding as much outside of Germany as within it. 

Matthew Stead: Mm. I think this is a good example of the, the last discussion we had about GE. I mean, you know, Nordex, Vestas, Siemens, Gamesa are investing in their development, investing in their technology, improving the quality.

Nordex in particular, um, in contrast to GE. So I think it’s, it’s quite a, a bit of a, an example of what’s going on. 

Allen Hall: And don’t think that Gio Chardon didn’t notice from all his years at 3S|LIFT watch this go on, because he had his feet on the ground, and particularly United States, uh, watching all the action in, in terms of sales for wind turbines.

So this is gonna be a competitive battle. [00:10:00] Maybe not in Germany too much. And Rosemary, I think you’re right, that Nordex is gonna win a lot of the contracts in Germany, and rightly so. Uh, but the rest of the world, it’s gonna be a competitive playground f- at least for a little while. 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. And competition is good- Hopefully that’s good news

but I do think- 

Yolanda Padron: Yeah … 

Rosemary Barnes: I, I do think that the competition we had in the wind industry in the 20-teens was an unhealthy kind of competition. It was purely price-based, and it’s gotta be a combination of price and technology, so reliability and productivity. And I do think that it was, like, nearly exclusively just price, price, price, price, price with, you know, like, when those, um, reverse auctions came in and y- I think, I, I personally think that we pushed the price below what the real, the real price was of wind energy.

If you look at the curve of, you know, steep price reductions, it doesn’t really follow the kind of, like, gentle gentle even curve that you see in other technologies. I think it’s a bit artificially accelerated through the 20-teens, and then, yeah, when [00:11:00] inflation hit and you couldn’t rely on, y- yeah, like, price reductions and cheap capital to, you know, help you make money on projects, then we saw costs start to rise, especially in Australia.

You, you know, like, the cost of wind energy has increased l- a lot here recently. So yeah, I do think that competition is good, but I do hope that it’s gonna be more based around the good technology these days. 

Allen Hall: Mm. That is an indicator, though, for Nordex, right, is that, uh, Yolanda, we’re hearing that people love N- Nordex.

Even when they’ve had problems, at least they’re active on trying to do something about it. 

Yolanda Padron: Yeah, I agree, especially in the… Lately it seems like they’re a lot more open to hearing from their customers than they were in the past. Uh, I think that they, they did have a little bit of a, of a cultural hurdle when they started picking up on a lot of the con- contracts compared to Vestas, who was a little, a lot more established in the [00:12:00] United States.

Um, but yeah, that, I completely, completely agree with Rosie’s sentiments that competition can be really good, um, if it’s done right. Hopefully we’ve learned enough as an industry to, to make sure that, that we’re still double-checking and inspecting, and double-inspecting and doing everything that, that we need to do to make sure a site is properly maintained from the beginning instead of 10 years in.

Allen Hall: Well, the, the, the big news out of, uh, the UK is that BladeBug has been acquired by Nexus, which is a Perth, Australia company, a, a kind of a robotics company based in Perth. And if you’re not familiar with BladeBug, uh, Chris Cieslak, Stacy Rivers and the gang have been that, developing that crawler, the little steppy crawler.

Looks like a bug, that’s why it’s called BladeBug. That d- is now doing NDT, and then, and they’ve been using, uh, that tool to do some NDT on blades. Uh, that, that… If I remember correctly, they were [00:13:00] doing some down in offshore in France, and then they had, uh, some work or potential work with a large OEM that needed some, uh, NDT done.

But now th- they’re gonna be working with Nexus, which I don’t know a, a lot about, but the Australians on the show at least do. 

Rosemary Barnes: I believe that they do, they have, like, similar ro- robot solutions that work in mining industry and that sort of thing, um, so that can, yeah, like autonomously do inspections and, and feed data back.

Um, so in that sense it’s pretty, pretty similar. However, the, the NDT of wind turbine blades is, is not just like a device kind of pr- like it’s not a solution that a device alone will solve. There’s just incredibly specific knowledge that’s needed about composite materials, but not just about composite materials, about specifically the ultrasound and, uh, yeah, like [00:14:00] how to interpret the results.

A en- an engineer needs to be involved l- looking at the data, um, at least in real time for the first few blades that they would look at. If they have a, you know, a whole fleet-wide campaign, they might not need in, in real time an engineer to be there, but, um, someone would have to review it later on. So it’s not, it…

My understanding is it is not close to being at, being, um, taken care of by AI, this particular thing. It’s still very laborious, uh, um, by very technically experienced… Like specific technical expertise is needed for it that doesn’t exist everywhere. Like, I don’t believe that there is an Australian with the specific knowledge that you would need to interpret the data, for example.

Um, so it’s a team of engineers sitting in, um, in Denmark. Not that you can’t develop the capability, but it’s not a matter of taking someone off the street and a week later they’re interpreting this. You know, you take an engineer who also has composite experience and then teach [00:15:00] them the ultrasound on top of it or, you know, some- something like that.

Like Nexus already had these robots and remote inspection capability. It would’ve been hard for them to just start doing that on wind turbine blades because- 

Allen Hall: Yeah … 

Rosemary Barnes: the composites specific knowledge is the hard part. So in that sense, it does make sense that if they, that’s an industry they wanted to get into, that they would pair up with BladeBug who y- you know, that’s, that’s what they, what they do.

Allen Hall: Well, Matthew, do you think they’re taking the BladeBug technology and applying it to different industries? Which would make sense to me 

Matthew Stead: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, for me it makes complete sense. Um, developing hardware is hard, um, and to have a bit more support and experience and, you know, that, that, that sounds perfect.

And I mean, I, I’m not gonna go anywhere near the actual NDT tech. Rosie, um, I’ll leave that one with you. Um, but the actual robotics and developing the hardware, um, yeah, it should be applicable to multiple industries like mining, um, wind, [00:16:00] oil, gas. There’s a, there’s a whole range of composites, um, which where, where this sort of tech is, is helpful.

So yeah, I think it’s a wonderful thing and, um, you know, shout out to Chris and Stacy, and they really should join us at WOMA 2027, really shouldn’t they? I mean, now that they- They should … are owned by an Australian company, um, they should really come out to Australia. 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Or at least someone from Nexus can.

Allen Hall: Yes. Uh, because Chris and Stacy are still gonna be based in the UK, 

Speaker: right? 

Matthew Stead: Yeah. So we’ll get, we’ll get Chris and Stacy out to Australia. They can tell us all about BladeBug, um, at WOMA 2027. 

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Well, wind turbine blades have an end-of-life problem, and we’ve d- discussed that on the podcast for the last couple of years. Recycling can be problematic. Uh, o- obviously, what do you do? You grind them up maybe? You bury them? Uh, th- but there’s, there’s a lot of options. But the people at, uh, Vouden Blade Technology think it’s better to make the blades out of wood so you don’t have that problem at the end of life.

And Vouden has made, uh, 63-foot blades from laminated veneer lumber, uh, using Nordic spruce and computer-controlled milling. The, the idea is not really new, of course. Uh, in the 1980s, NASA worked with, uh, Michigan boat builders, uh, the Gougeon brothers, on wood composite blades, and those held up through, oh, like 8,000 hours of testing.

So we know that wood works. It’s a pretty effective natural material. But is it the right choice for wind turbine blades, Rosemary? 

Rosemary Barnes: First of all, wanna start by challenging [00:19:00] your framing that, uh, wind turbine blades have an end of life problem. It’s not true any more than anything that we make has an end of life problem.

I think I, I’ve come up with a better framing- … ’cause I have, um, become- Go 

Allen Hall: ahead … 

Rosemary Barnes: for a while I was sounding, like, quite anti-recycling, and I don’t think that that’s quite right. 

Allen Hall: But- You did … I think- You said, “We should bury them.” That’s what you said. 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. 

Allen Hall: That’s a direct quote. And, and I f- “We should not 

Rosemary Barnes: recycle them.

It’s not worth it.” I, I still, I stand by that that’s the, the, the best thing to do in most cases. But I think the right way to look of it, look at it, is not y- you know, like, what do we do with wind turbine blades at the, at the end of life? The right thing to do is to say, “Okay, do we have a problem with too much landfill?

Is this, is this a problem that as a society we need to tackle? In that case, let’s solve that. And do we start with something that makes up a fraction of a percent of landfill mass, um, and doesn’t contain anything toxic in it? Or do we start with some of the, y- you know, some of the more significant cr- contributors to landfill?”

So that, I think, is a, a better… I wa- I wanna talk about, [00:20:00] every time we have to talk about wind turbine blade end of life, I wanna reframe that to be, what do we do about landfill in general? And, um, I wanna give a little anecdote as well. There’s a, there’s a m- a mine or a quarry near to… Well, yeah, let’s, let’s not mention it specifically.

There is a mine or a quarry in Australia that is being, um, rehabilitated with landfill going into the, the mine to, to fill it, and the, um… So it’s industrial companies that are sending their, their waste to this facility, and paying a premium to do it in this ecological way, y- you know, like, better environmental, um, outputs, because it’s rehabilitating a mine site, right?

Filling in a hole and then, uh, presumably they’ll put, like, dirt and grass over the top of it. However, the liner is leaking and, like, the, uh, the leachate, you know, the rainwater goes through all the garbage. We call it bin juice in Australia. The bin juice leaks into the water system, and y- you know, a- actually is getting into drinking water, um, in some cases.

So I would [00:21:00] suggest y- y- you know, like, that’s not a, a great environmental outcome, obviously. But if they would fill that with wind turbine blades instead, they are very inert. The, if the liner leaks and you’ve just filled your, uh, quarry with wind turbine blade waste, well, then no real issue. You’re not gonna have any water quality problems as a result.

So it’s funny to me because if you did fill a quarry with wind turbine blade waste, there would be massive outrage, and the photos of it would be all over the news, and people would be just, like, so upset about it. But when it’s another kind of waste that’s, like, an environmental, environmentally sustainable, like, warm and fuzzy green thing to do.

So I just think that, yeah, there’s this huge, huge contrast. Um- That’s the end of my rant. I’ll pass over to somebody else to talk about the actual question that Allen asked. 

Matthew Stead: I’m gonna go on a- Well, let me- … segue as well. So 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Veer, veer off in another, in another, another direction. Um- 

Matthew Stead: I’m gonna veer off in another direction, because actually, a few of, when we were in Melbourne, um, [00:22:00] researching the WOMA conference and agenda items, actually, this topic came up a few times.

So while, um, while, um, yeah, I, I, completely hear what you’re saying, Rosie, um, but there is still interest in the industry for doing better. Um, and you know, so there is the desire for knowledge exchange on, on this topic. So I think you’re right, Rosie, but at the same time we can also do better. 

Rosemary Barnes: I agree. I just think that the real problem that we’re solving is the public, um, perception a- a- about wind turbine blade waste.

That’s, that’s the problem that we’re solving. Let’s, let’s be honest, it’s not about landfill. Um, it’s about people don’t like the look of wind turbine blades- Yeah … going into waste. Um, and I’m fully supportive of that. I would, I would happily, I would love to actually work on a, a project to, you know, get some, like, smart things to do with wind turbine blade recycling in Australia, because you can certainly get terrible outcomes.

If you are just so hellbent on recycling it that you don’t care how much it costs, how, um, much energy it uses, how many CO2 emissions go into the [00:23:00]atmosphere, you know, you can for sure, like, the, the… In fact, the most likely thing that would happen is you would end up with bad environmental outcome from a recycling project compared to just landfilling the blade.

So would very happily participate. I would just say let’s consider it, uh, you know, for the entire composite materials waste stream. So it can also deal with boats and yeah, like, um, aviation and cars. There’s surfboards. Easy. I don’t know. The, you know, 90% of composite waste- … is not wind turbine blade waste.

So it doesn’t- Yeah. Yeah … make sense to me to, you know, get so specific on a really small, um, portion of the problem. Let’s solve the problem for wind turbine blades and beyond that as well. 

Allen Hall: Is the problem they’re looking to solve the repowering situation where you can’t get a blade because it’s 20, 25 years old?

Mm. And knowing that the EU has provided Vattenfall Blade Technologies about 50 million euros to build a factory down [00:24:00] in Spain, and, and we know Spain is gonna go through that repowering process over the next 10-ish years, y- you think there’s a possibility that they’re just gonna produce, uh, or quote, unquote, “new blades” for existing turbines, where they’re- we’re not gonna start over like we h- have done historically in the States?

Does that make the a more viable project? 

Matthew Stead: Why not? And also, and also, um, you know, new, some of the other technologies like, you know, fabric, fabric, um, supported and, uh, other, uh, other technologies. Why not? Why not? 

Allen Hall: I- I- I– It would, it would make sense, uh, just because y- you can’t get blades that are 20, 25 years old.

The molds are gone, the people are gone, the factories are gone, and if you just need a replacement blade, it does seem like you could whittle one out of wood and get it up and running 

Rosemary Barnes: I’m imagining that- That’s what we’re talking about, right? … all these blades are made, they take a tree and just CNC whittle it down into a, a blade shape.[00:25:00]

But I think maybe- I think it’s t- … Yolanda can add something here, because if you’ve got a 25-year-old wind farm, how much are you really willing to spend on replacing all the blades across the- Oh, no … across the site? These blades are 

Allen Hall: cheap, though. 

Rosemary Barnes: They’re ch- how- What would it… 

Allen Hall: Wait, wait. What’s the cost? The, what 

Rosemary Barnes: do you think- How are they so much cheaper than, you know, like when they were originally made and, uh, you know, the whole factory was set up- Well, I mean, n- n-

to produce one of these every 24 hours on the dot, you know, like really just, uh, doing everything possible to make- You, you- … cost as cheap as possible. 

Allen Hall: You don’t think they can float- It costs- … some wood from Norway down to Spain, and then put on a CNC machine and make a blade a day? I think 

Yolanda Padron: they 

Allen Hall: probably 

Yolanda Padron: can.

Just make a bla- are you saying, like replace all three blades and keep the rest of the components in the tower? 

Allen Hall: Right, keep the drivetrain basically the same, the generator and, like, like we normally do, right? Replace the components that need help, and then leave everything else the same. Leave the tower alone, leave the generator alone.

Hmm. Maybe replace the main bearings. I, I assume there’s a weight delta between the wood and the fiberglass. There must be. 

Yolanda Padron: [00:26:00] Mm-hmm. 

Rosemary Barnes: But how long are they looking- Yeah … to extend the, the wind farm? Maybe they don’t need to be as strong if they’re only lasting another 10 years. I, I just think it’s- Well, that, that may be it

gonna be a really hard financial- Five-year life … like case for this. Five-year life, 

Matthew Stead: 10-year life. 

Yolanda Padron: Well, I know financially, I mean, if you’re, if you’re going– I’ve, I’ve seen sites in, in Europe where they try to make it last as close to the 50 year lease that they can, right? So they’ll replace what they need to just to, to make sure that they, they can at least get some money out of it.

Uh, but, but it’s… I 

Allen Hall: think 

Yolanda Padron: it’s 100,000. Uh, y- we almost go back into that, I know we talk about it a lot, but just the, we change so many things, and now we want to get this new thing to work, and then before fixing all the other problems. So I feel like it’s just gonna bring so many more issues. Um, 

Allen Hall: Termites.

Yolanda Padron: There’s a really interesting Engineering with Rosie video too, I think, that- 

Allen Hall: What? … 

Yolanda Padron: people should, should pull up about, um- 

Allen Hall: What is this thing? Engineering with Rosie? … 

Yolanda Padron: with blades. Engineering with Rosie. Where, 

Allen Hall: where does that 

Yolanda Padron: appear at? It’s a really great, [00:27:00] it’s, uh, it’s on YouTube. YouTube? Ah. It’s a really, really great YouTube channel.

I enjoy it a lot. It’s a 10 out of 10. Um, actually in our household, before I met Rosie, I would listen to the Engineering with Rosie, and so, uh, I said something the other day, and I was like, “Rosie blah, blah, blah.” And my husband Manuel goes, “Engineering with Rosie?” And I was like, “Yeah.” Same. 

Allen Hall: Oh, no. So 

Yolanda Padron: yeah, great, great, um, channel if anybody wants to check out that video.

Rosemary Barnes: Oh, that’s kind of you, Landa. Okay. But my latest video is on wind turbine blade repair, which I thought was- I saw it … gonna be very, very niche, but it’s been my m- most popular first day of a release ever. Um- Yeah, Yuri. You’re a blade technician Yeah, but Yuri from, um, Direct Wind Services, he, he’s interviewed in the, in the video.

Um, and he mentioned some of the real repairs that they’ve worked on. And y- you know, sometimes they will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a, a blade repair because that’s cheaper than getting another blade in at, at end of life. So I think that, you [00:28:00] know, if you can make one-offs, then I think that your price point can be quite high for a, a new blade at the end of life.

But I don’t- Could be, yeah … think that if you, you know, extend that across a whole wind farm, I find it hard to believe that someone with a 25-year-old wind farm is gonna wanna buy all new blades for their whole, their whole fleet. So I think that would really… Like, the, the likely success of this product is, is probably going to rely more on how flexible they are, what’s their minimum order quantity.

I, I think that that will help them. Like, there’s an easy niche for them to fill if they can just make a few one-offs. But, um, and the, and that you’re able to just swap in. Um, yeah, but I don’t know. They’re… When they’re p- A lot of the information that I see about wooden is, you know, related to end of life, and I don’t necessarily see that they have solved so many problems.

Um, like yeah, you can shred it or burn it or, yeah, use it for mulch or whatever. You can do all that with a fiberglass wind turbine blade. Do [00:29:00] y- I, I think, don’t they actually literally mention mulch? I th- I thought that they did. Um- 

Allen Hall: They probably do. Why not, right? Yeah, sure. 

Rosemary Barnes: I, I also, like first of all, I don’t think that anybody want, like, uh, these, they’re gonna be coated, right?

They’re not gonna just be natural wood left out- They have to be. They’re gonna paint it … to age gracefully Sure. Um, so I don’t think people will want bits of plastic shredded up and put into their garden. Um, think that’s unlikely. So, but I mean, you can already shred wind turbine blades and hide that, hi- hide that material somewhere in a semi-useful way that just costs a little bit more than, you know, something else that you could use.

Like, we already have that level of recycling available, so I don’t think, like as much as I understand why you would put this stuff out in your marketing because that is, um, you know, like very likely to grab attention from media, I don’t see that as being, like in the terms of the business succeeding, I don’t see that as being a big part of a success.

It needs to make sense for other reasons. Um, and I know when I toured, um, Modvion, the Swedish wooden [00:30:00] wind turbine tower manufacturer, Yeah … they were very careful to say all of the, you know, like warm, fuzzy feelings that you have about wood, that’s all, like, nice for people to write stories about, but that is not why our tower is worth, um, you know, worth buying or worth investing in, worth, uh, developing.

Right. They see it as having real engineering and financial benefits. I haven’t looked into the wooden enough to know, um, their story about that. Presumably- Well … they also, you know, think that it stacks up for those reasons, but I do know that it has to, otherwise, like warm, fuzzy feelings don’t, don’t mean enough- Mm

for people to actually buy enough of these for the company to succeed. 

Matthew Stead: I think you raised a good point there because, you know, you’re gonna contaminate the skin of the wood with resins and so forth. And so therefore you’re gonna have to, like, shave off any contaminated wood before you could even consider reusing that wood.

So i- it just creates a, a headache down the track. 

Rosemary Barnes: [00:31:00] Yeah, it’s, it’s- I don’t know. I mean, we’ve seen a- It’s labor, it’s cost- … lot of wooden ships … it’s energy, it’s logistical challenges when- Yeah … you’ve got specialized equipment and, you know, blades spread all over the place. Mm-hmm. Like, I do think that it’s like, it’s a nice soundbite, but if you are actually, if you actually went to organize a blade recycling program, I don’t think you would have necessarily a easier time doing it for a wooden blade than a fiberglass blade in, in reality.

I think you would encounter all the same problems to a more or less degree for- Yeah … you know, different parts of it. Um, I’m not gonna say which one would come out better overall, but I don’t think it would be straightforward. You’re certainly not eliminating problems. 

Matthew Stead: There’s already wood in blades anyway.

There’s already balsa wood. Quite 

Allen Hall: a bit of it. 

Matthew Stead: Yeah. Why, why… So we’ve already got the headline: there’s already wood in blades. 

Allen Hall: Well, last week, or actually two weeks, uh, ago when you’re hearing this podcast, uh, I was wandering around the house after r- returning back from Melbourne, Australia, where I hung out with Matthew and Rosemary for a couple of days for [00:32:00] WOMA 2027, and I had sudden chest pain.

Uh, and it was like nothing else. Um, producer Claire was, was at the house, and I said, “It’s time to go to the hospital.” Turns out I was having a heart attack. I’m 58, in pretty good shape, uh, see doctors regularly, have things monitored, the whole bit. Uh, and on the ambulance ride over, it’s kind of a shocker, like, “Hey, you’re, we’re really having a heart attack here.”

Now, I, I live in a place where we’re, uh, maybe a couple of miles from a heart hospital. So I was one of the fortunate ones because we rolled up into the heart hospital. The ambulance workers handed me straight to the heart surgeon, and they put a catheter in me. Lickety-split. So from the time that I started feeling chest pains to the time that a catheter was installed in my heart was about an hour, which is, [00:33:00] uh, in, in terms of heart health, great.

Uh, so I was one of the fortunate ones. Now- Heart failure and heart attacks happen to a lot of people. If you have heart problems, get to the hospital. Do not play with them. Uh, as a getting older male, uh, it’s pretty, uh, conclusive that if you have chest pains, something is seriously wrong and you need to not, uh, delay it.

You need to get on the horn, get on with emergency services, get to the hospital, and get that taken care of. If you’re an older woman like Rosemary is, the pains are a little bit different. You tend to be like you’re feeling like you’re having the flu or not feeling well, and a lot of women die from heart attacks because they just don’t have that im- immense of chest pain that men tend to have.

Uh, so Rosie, uh, keep that in, in mind as you get older. Uh, so I am fine. I am under the [00:34:00] good care of doctors. I’m actually wearing a, uh, a little device that monitors my heart 24/7 and will shock me back to life if I decide to pass out. So that’s fun. As an electrical engineer, I get to play around with, uh, high voltage capacitors attached to my body.

Uh, but it’s not fun if you can, you know, avoid it. Uh, so just know I, I w- I will not be at Hamburg and I’ve been telling people I won’t be at Wind Energy Hamburg, which is a real disappointment ’cause I was looking forward to that. But, uh, a couple people from Weather Guard will be there. Nikki and Rachel will be going, and Rosemary will be there, and Matthew will be there.

So it’ll be a f- full crew of, uh, representatives there. So I’ll miss everybody in Hamburg, but I just want to let everybody know that you’re hearing a lot of stuff and I’m fine. And the doctors say I’m gonna have a very long extended life now to the much– to much chagrin of my wife. But hey, that’s the way it goes.

So that wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or [00:35:00] ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn. Uh, if you do not subscribe to the show, please subscribe so you’d never miss an episode. Uh, for Rosie, Matthew, and Yolanda, I am Allen Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.