We discussed whether the NRG bat deterrent system works for wind turbines – will it really keep bats safe? Also in this episode: GE news, whether new legislation will help bring a wind farm to reality in the Great Lakes, and whether or not aesthetics play a role in off-shore wind farm approval and acceptance by the public.
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Full Transcript EP20 – Does the NRG Bat Deterrant System Work? GE News, a Great Lakes Wind Farm Gets a Boost, and Are Aesthetics Holding Back Off-Shore Wind in the US?
Today we’ve got a bunch of great topics. So first we’re gonna talk about. This isn’t current news, it’s old news, but a little bit news to us and worth mentioning, which is a blade flew off, off of a windmill, a narrowly missing some homes, uh, back in the end of 2019. So we’re gonna talk about kind of the implications about in general, what happens when things go wrong with, uh, with wind turbines?
Uh, we’re gonna talk a little bit about GE. And their different businesses and what their outlook looks like for the future. And a little bit about offshore wind and people’s conceptions about it because we know that some opposition, especially here in the U S is about the aesthetics and peoples.
Beautiful view out into the, uh, the blue ocean. And then our second segment, we’re gonna talk a little bit about the NRG bat deterrent system. Uh, it’s berberine recently installed on a few wind farms and obviously in the effort to be a little more environmental friendly, environmentally friendly. And keep these little animals safe that eat all of our mosquitoes for us.
And then lastly, we’ll chat a little bit about European, renewables and standardization for systems on wind turbines. So Allen, the big two. Oh. Show 20.
Allen Hall: Yeah, show 20. And we’ve got a blade flying off, down in New Jersey. How about that? Yeah, that’s an interesting news story. I hadn’t seen that news story when it came out, but I don’t know why it showed up in the newsfeed again recently, but the videos pretty amazing.
Dan: Did you
see how far that blade went? Yeah. Terrifying. No. I mean, those things have so much power that, I mean, you see these things in the distance that, you know, the big ones and they look like they’re going kind of slow, but the tip speeds are, you know, 180 miles per hour or whatever. So this one was not a massive one.
This was on a, on a metal kilowatt. Yeah, but still, I mean,
Allen Hall: it’s in a neighborhood or two, I think as well. It just depends on what you think of it as a neighborhood, but that’s a neighborhood now. There’s a lot of homes around there. So when that blade came off, it they’re very lucky. I didn’t hit a car or a house or a person.
So they’re just fortunate.
Dan: Really fortunate. Yeah. Well, and, and I think the bigger point here is also, I think, especially with new technologies, when something goes wrong, like for example, when one of the Tesla self driving cars, you know, Hit a person everyone’s like, Oh my God, this is, this, this can’t work.
This stuff is so dangerous. Where reality comparing it to all the other things that could potentially kill you or cause destruction. Um, I mean, do you feel like there’s a negative misconception about the wind industry or not so much or where you fall on, on incidents like this to these settings, set them back at all.
Allen Hall: It used to happen a lot more than it does now. And I think it’s just because there’s been more oversight and as a Terminus has gotten larger, it’s the consequences are higher. So there’s more redundancy into there and to all the systems, not just the blades themselves, but on older blades. You gotta wonder how often they’re looked at inspected, maintained, particularly smaller truths who’s watching.
Who’s watching that. Who’s watching now everybody’s watching it. Uh, but you gotta wonder if the township there is going to have a little more work to do or they’re on their wind turbines to make sure that. They just don’t set them and forget them. Right. It does require maintenance. They’re like owning an automobile.
You need to go out and do some maintenance. Right. And make sure everything’s a okay. Cause that pick those pictures, look like it broke off right at the hub, like the bolts sheared off, which either indicates bolts or, or elongated holes, or that’s been vibrating for awhile. That’s that wasn’t didn’t happen immediately.
That looks like a longer term issue with just. Probably just not being overseen as much to get that kind of failure.
Dan: Yeah. I pictured the old guy in his overalls climbing up their names, red. Oh, there’s your problem? It’s like, no bolt. There’s like no nuts left. They all worked themselves loose. Nope. Yeah.
Like, no, one’s been up there in 20 years, but I mean, that’s, there’s a lot, I mean, you’ve seen that other video where that. One was caught on tape and like a crazy storm where it started just going so fast where it just couldn’t like deregulate itself and slow back down and just went faster and faster.
The whole thing just blows up essentially bloated that’s the rumble. Cause I mean, the thing crumpled, like it was made of paper. And those things are not made of paper. There may be a very strong, thick steel, and it just shows how much energy they produce. I mean just how Oh, she looks so graceful, but they are terrifying, terrifying when they’re working.
They’re graceful. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so speaking of, of turbine manufacturer, there’s a G he is still having trouble and they say, um, some reporting here that it’s their coronavirus troubles likely to hit, not just their age business, which has been hit hard, but also potentially their power and some of their wind turbine business.
So do you think shareholders of GE should GE executives be pretty concerned? Do you see GE going anywhere?
Allen Hall: I don’t think GE is going anywhere, even though their stock price is Dan what’s their stock price.
Dan: Uh, it’s like $6 and 30 cents plus or minus as of today. Well,
Allen Hall: Okay, well, that’s trouble. The cause that’s just a, uh, an economic value of the company from an outsider’s perspective.
That’s what the stock price is. Right? So they’re not valuing the company is having a lot of extreme value compared to at least tour where once was. Okay. The aviation impact for GE could be short term. Well, it will be short term painful, but it could be longterm productive in a sense that they may come out stronger on the other side and, and be that well, they’ve had fewer problems in some of the other aviation engine manufacturers.
And so you’re seeing a push towards the GE engines as being the reliable source that. Can also take place on the wind turbine side and other industries that GE is in just because it’s been just a longterm player. I’ve had the ability to go get resources when they’ve needed it and to drive their products into the forefront when times are tough.
And this isn’t the first time GE has been through. Rough times at companies hundred 20 ish, years old, roughly. Um, well, if you can look at Edison and then before they combined, so it’s, it’s a, it’s an old, old company they’ve been through world war one, world war two, Korean war, Vietnam war, uh, Other pandemics global catastrophes GE has been able to weather that because I’ve always been in industries that have not all sinked up at the same time as being hit simultaneously.
In terms of economic downturn, they’ve always been in some place where they’re able to make some cash and sustain the company. With their stock price being down so low. Dan, do you think they’re going to be able to raise more cash or do you think that the, the federal government will come in and step in and say here’s some free cash?
Take it and. From the company up a little bit.
Dan: Yeah. I’m not sure. I mean, I know they have a lot of debt and they’ve lost, uh, I mean, they’ve, they’ve lost some of their ability to pay some of that debt back with some other, other business holdings taking also a dive. So it’s like some of their other cash cows are also now not bearing.
Milk, I guess if that’s what a gash gal would, who and who knows what a cash cow produces, but besides cash. But yeah, it just seems like they’re going to struggle for a while to just catch back up. Like all of their industries have been hit pretty hard and they spun off their, their, uh, their, you know, light bulbs that set that side of them a while ago.
And this is a big fan fare bigly goodbye to the core business that made them so great. Or that put, put them on the map. Yeah. I don’t know. It seems like they’ve been. They’re just the Jack Welch era has passed and it just seems uncertain what their future is. I don’t know.
Allen Hall: Well, the Jack Welch era, because that happened in my neck of the woods was driven by a lot of innovation technology.
And at a time when United States had an economic advantage, just because still the impact of world war II was, was there. And, um, the U S had very strong economy and they have a lot of. Uh, engineers and college graduates that join them and it just provide a huge burst of creativity. And so if you look at the seventies, eighties of GE, uh, there was a lot of product creativity, but there’s also a lot of.
Financial creativity. So there are a lot of financial markets and be able to, to, to make money in financial, in a financial sense, not in a physical sense in delivering product, that all that stuff has gone away. That seems like they’re left with, uh, the worst of that. The insurance. Part of it, which they couldn’t sell off, um, is going to be a drag on them for a while.
But I quite honestly, their wind turbines are pretty good. All you hear is very positive things about GE wind turbines and their service and their dedication to service and their willingness to kind of go the extra mile in the United States. The issue I think for GE is that everybody is. Freaking out about the COVID-19 and how to handle it.
And in the wind industry business, there’s a lot of travel that just comes with the territory and, and I’m sure it’s kind of a scary time where they’re trying to keep employees engaged and keep products coming out the door. But how are you going to serve us all those different sites that are around the world?
I, I don’t know. And that’s probably where GE is slowing it down a little bit, say, okay, like, Hey. For the next couple of weeks was just kind of take it easy to see what happens. The problem in the States has been is that we kind of slowed down and everything COVID-19 wise seemed to get better than a seat’s a spike and it seems to get better.
So everybody’s is tentative as to what the next step is, because you think you’ve have some modicum of stability and then it just blows up and. As, as a corporation, I don’t know how you deal with that because the worst thing for a company like GE is to have an unpredictable future. Right. And then that’s where you’re in.
The big dollars is to be able to work your way through those things. But man. Yeah. And it just puts such a huge mental and financial strain and co corporations like that, to be able to figure out what the next steps are, but. My gut tells me that they’re going to be okay. That they’re going to get through this little, it’s a big bump in the road and come out stronger on the opposite side.
So. We’ll see.
Dan: Yeah, well, some pretty recent news, uh, actually as of, uh, yesterday from energy news.us. So we talked about this in a previous episode, which was this wind turbine farm. They were gonna they’re planning in. The great lakes. So off the coast of Ohio, and then basically what happened was that they shut this down by inserting language that they had to turn these wind turbines off at night to protect the wildlife.
And they said, basically this is going to make it not financially viable. This is just like a poison pill, language, insertion. And so that was, you know, that was like, Oh, like a month or two ago. And so there’s this new story out now by again, by energy news.us saying that, um, some lawmakers in the state of Ohio, but like this doesn’t make sense why this happened because there was an environmental study that said basically that they did not need to shut down at night, that it contradicted legitimate evidence.
And that it seems like this was just like a lobbying thing from, cause I know the coal industry in Ohio was. Opposed to when, you know, wind energy coming in. Um, so a bunch of lawmakers have said, we need to revisit this because this is sending a message that we do not want innovation in Ohio, which is not the message we want to send a future companies.
So this was pretty interesting because we were talking about this and it was like, man, like, why are they, why did that happen? It seems except for. The obvious answer was lobbying, but now they look like they’re going to turn, turn this over. And this wind farm might have a chance, um, to be the first one, um, in freshwater and in the U S so how do you feel about this new ruling that I just saw that is sprung on you?
Allen Hall: Well, I think it, here’s the thing about U S laws is that they change rapidly as we well know. Right. So you could take a vote one day to vote down something, and the next day you could vote it up.
Dan: And then you can read it. Yeah. Yeah.
Allen Hall: It’s exactly like that. Get concerned. When you start to make such a huge financial investment, a volleyball, it gets tossed back and forth all the time, because if you’re the ones investing in that.
Power generation site. What are you thinking? Well, I’m going to get it out there and then they’re going to change their mind again. And that’s, and that’s, if you’re trying to stop this thing, that’s all you need to do is provide some sort of significant downside risk that makes it financially, financially viable.
Unless the state wants to back it up with cash, which this point they’re probably going to have to do. They’re going to have to. Secure some of the loans that will go on there. Otherwise I think the, the private investors will not be willing to get too involved in this. If there’s some sort of legislative squabble, they don’t want to be there.
Dan: Yeah, for sure. And so then there’s another interesting article. Um, which is another, I guess the main objective or objection that we’ve talked about in the U S to offshore wind, which is that people don’t want their views disturbed. You know, we’re so spoiled, but university of Delaware research this, I guess, by sort of, uh, doing these online simulations where they’re, you know, showing a, a beautiful, I want to say the word bucolic, but the word bucolic is only applies to farm land.
Does, what, what, what could you say about a ocean view? You know, like you see a rolling rolling Hills in Iowa, it’s such a bucolic landscape, but is there a where that is the equivalent for like ocean? I’m not, I’m not aware we should make one up. And anyway, so they did, they did these studies that said, they’re basically pulling people, showing them these images and saying, Hey, here’s a projection of wind turbines, you know, two and a half miles off shore.
Seven and a half miles, 10 miles, 20 miles. And, uh, I guess the conclusion is that, uh, the farther they get off, the fewer people object to it, ruining their vacation, I guess. Um, but the overall conclusion is that if you know, they’re five miles or more away, most people become pretty indifferent to these wind farms.
So do you feel like this is going to be good fodder to help. Offshore wind,
Allen Hall: I think at a will, as soon as he gets on the wind turbines out there and it becomes commonplace, people will not think about them anymore. And I’ll pose to you this, you ever walked down the street and look at all the power lines.
There are on the side of the street and maybe Washington T Washington DC is not as bad as some other parts of the country because watching T CCE has other priorities, but. If you walk down a normal American street, the amount of wires and poles on any particular corner is astonishing, but you don’t think about them anymore.
You, you actually block them out because you assume that they’re there and you don’t notice me anymore, even though they are ugly as all get out every time I see it, I just think, ah, And you forget about it. And I, I, it’s sort of human nature in the way that vision works and where your brain works is that things that are stationary, you tend to forget about particularly around any length of time.
You just admit them, cause your brain can’t process, all that stuff. So anything is new shows up first and your brain has to process it and keep looking at it and trying to figure out what’s going on. And then like, Oh, this isn’t going to harm me. This is not, this is irrelevant in the background. Poof, it goes away and I bet you pretty soon, people won’t even notice that they’re there like ever they get into the shore and they’re playing in the, in the surf and there’s kids frolicking around in the water.
If you walked up to an adult out there and said, Hey, w. Um, did you notice the wind turbines? They may say what that’s, that’s where it will be, because if you, if you walk down any American street and said, Hey, did you notice the, the power pole over there? No, the streetlight totally. Didn’t right. And it’s just a matter of time.
Matter of
Dan: well, you and I both, uh, Enjoy books about persuasion and human psychology. You wonder why some of these companies aren’t pumping marketing dollars into verbiage, like to convince people, because I mean, think of it this way. There are so many gross foods that people eat culturally, right? They’re called like we eat cottage cheese.
You’re a thought about how gross cottage cheese. Well, lots of you will do with guys she’s with cheese in general is disgusting. Other countries, they eat all sorts of gross stuff, but whatever’s normal. And when you’re a little kid, your mom and dad are like, Hmm, this is delicious. Whereas you’re like, That cockroach, that like roasted Congress is delicious.
You’re like, okay, well, mommy and daddy say it is then I guess it is. We need to be advertising, you know, Vestas. We install these beautiful elegant. You know, graceful, uh, pinnacles of human innovation into the landscape. Look how these fold beautifully into the, into the ocean. Why are we doing that?
Convince people that these things are beautiful and elegant, which I personally think they are, but we should be spinning this web. Constantly towards people are like, Oh yeah, I love seeing those wind farms. They’re just like, so graceful these big white creatures out there in the sea. Whereas if we’re saying, get these ugly machines off of our landscape, more people are gonna be like, Oh yeah, they’re ugly.
Just because someone else planned that in their brain, but we need to be bright. We need to be on the forefront attacking this, that like, these are kind of like. Graceful looking machines, which I, again, I personally think they are, they’re just like slow moving. They’re white. It’s not like there’s some, like they’re pumping out fumes into the air, like a coal plant, you know, I think they kind of funny, they kind of fit in the landscape, especially like one there’s so many light colors and white on the blue it’s I don’t know, but something to think about.
So if you’re a marketing person out there, you gotta start sending the right messages to get people. On board
Allen Hall: now, it’s not that hard as Dan and I know it’s not particularly hard to convince a group of people about anything and to make the, to make a community, uh, believe in helping their neighbors, which is sort of one of those early impulses that people have is to help other people or to be part of a community.
That’s the way to do it as if, but yeah. You know, you gotta be able to deal with the other side, which is going to be pushing back on that. I just, haven’t seen a lot of good arguments there yet. It’s and I here’s what I think has happened. Uh, In America, we have lost trust in government. So anything the federal government or local government say it’s just off the list because you can’t trust it.
And the COVID-19 thing is not helping that the winter company is, are all about trying to sell product, product, product, product, product, because times are tough a little bit and the competitive marketplace. And so they haven’t thought globally like that in a while. It’ll get better. But, um, Yeah, I think relying on your local state, regional federal government to convince people to do anything right now is not going to happen.
Dan: all right. So in our second segment here, we’re going to chat a little bit about, uh, engineering, specifically this interesting device by NRG systems, um, to deter bats from. Colliding with, or just being harmed in general by, by wind terms that turbines, and this is something we also talked about, because again, like with that Lake Erie, a wind farm, there is a big environmental concern and that’s why they were trying to get them turned off in the evenings so that all the wildlife could be safe, which they said that wasn’t even necessary.
So anyway, but, um, Siemens Gamesa has installed some of these, uh, NRG systems. What do you think about this? I mean, do these have the potential work? It seems like they had an, is it ultrasonic waves? I mean, what are they doing to deter bats from being harmed?
Allen Hall: It’s it’s a system that’s based on ultrasound because bats see.
Essentially see you with ultrasound. So they’re sending like a radar or radio waves out in a bouncing back and they’re interpreting those waves. A lot of other creatures do that. The problem was when bats get around in birds for that matter and get around wind turbines, it is such a huge pressure differentials from the positive pressure side to the suction side of the blades that, uh, essentially collapses.
Yeah, they’re little tiny bodies or that pressure change. So you want to really keep those animals away from. The rotors and, uh, energy, which is not very far from where I am. They’re up in Vermont. And they’ve been there for a long time. They’ve been in the wind turbine industry for ever as one of the leaders in sensors and measurement indicators and anemometers and towers and those sorts of things.
Um, it sounds like you’ve been working with some of the researchers. Which I recall was down in Texas, where they were doing studies of just basically putting out ultrasonic noise and say, Hey. So to make the bats not be able to process information, that they would normally be able to process. So they want to avoid those areas.
It’s not harmful harmful to the bats. It’s just saying, Hey, this is a keep out area. And the way that the energy system seems to work is it, you know, a lot of bats are. Close to the ground for the most part, because that’s where food is. Uh, they’re not particularly flying up high, but as the rotor diameters have gotten bigger and bigger and bigger on the wind turbines to create energy, when there’s low wind speeds, the tips have gotten closer to the ground.
So it becomes more important now that we, we provide some sort of deterrent system and this energy system. Does it, it essentially sits up mostly up the tower. It sounds like. And then where, where the bats can get anywhere near the rotors. And Hey, it says keep away. That’s what it says to a bat. And it looks like it’s really effective.
At least the. Videos and things I saw a couple of years ago when was really started doing some of the initial work on this. We’re really, really positive, so great. That’s great. You know, it’s great for energy systems to be creating a system, a local company to us, which is fantastic. And it’s, it’s also great that Siemens can, Mesa is implementing it.
In more than a couple of places, it seems like where they’ve had large bat populations.
Dan: Super. Yeah. And just like what we were just talking about, getting ahead of things where whatever people’s objections are. I mean, this is just like being a good debater, like a good debater is prepared to say, okay, what is someone going to come at me with?
All right, well, they’re going to say, Oh, you know, your stance on taxes is no good because of this and that and that, and you try to be ready for him. So you, and so this is just seems like being ahead of it where it’s like, all right, we know that people are going to come at us. Really just because of wildlife concerns.
Right. And potentially aesthetic concerns. True. So let’s get ahead of it. Even if it’s not something that we have to do, um, that way it’s like, Hey, what obstacles are left to put one of these in your area, which ultimately benefits us all in the long run. So it seems like a smart move and. Hopefully the technology works.
You just, you wonder if it has the same lifespan as a turbine, will it make it 15 years? It’s a good question.
Allen Hall: That’s a great question. Because environments can be really awful. Yeah. But you know, it goes back to the discussions we’ve had for the last couple of weeks, Dan, about the sharing of data. Are we going to get data pushed out for the synergy system on how effective it is at reducing bat losses?
I hope so.
Dan: Do you have a, do you have. Yeah, like your local gym or like a health club or anywhere. Do you have like one of those water bottle fillers where as you feel your bottle at it, the number ratchets up and it was like 32,000 water bottles, plastic water bottles save. That’s what they need. Or like the McDonald’s sign where it’s like 2.5 million bats saved this year.
We’d be like, Oh man, this thing is working. That’s what they need. You know,
Allen Hall: they do well. It’s not pretty, it’s not hard to determine where the bats are because you just put ultrasonic detectors out there. You don’t know what the bats are flying out, so you can pretty well tell if they’re getting close to the turbines or not.
And if the deterrent system is working, turn it on, turn off and see what happens. But again, it gets back to if it, if it. If it is working and it’s doing a good job, then we need to be advertising in the sense of scientific papers and research that justify its existence. If it, it Def it doesn’t work. And I don’t think this is the case, but if it doesn’t work, then we shouldn’t be promoting it very long.
Dan: Yeah. So lastly, um, new Oracle by Forbes explains that in the EU this year, uh, from January to June, Wind solar, hydro and bioenergy generated 40% of the electricity across their 27 members States while fossil fuels generated 34%. So they outran fossil fuels. So we’re no longer burning up all the dinosaurs at the, at the pace that we used to.
Um, how do you feel about this trend? I mean, is this just going to keep running away with it or what’s the, what’s your take here
and
Allen Hall: when it’s going to produce when there’s wind and, um, so the one sort of variable there you can sort of control is the sort of fossil fuel part of it. I, you know, when you see stuff like this, that’s part of a calamity, you know, are we writing the right article right now?
I don’t think so. I think it’s more important that we’re talking about how we should get the economy back role. And again, I guess it’s a point in time you’re gonna take that snapshot and record that data. Great. But I’d rather not be stuck inside for six months then than this.
Dan: Yeah. So it’s kind of like one of those, you know, like you could write an article about.
Deer getting hit less by cars and like the deer populations doing great as to what goes no, one’s driving. Cause we’re all stuck inside because of coronavirus. So same, same, same kind of effect. Totally true.
Allen Hall: Totally true. Like the other day we were driving down the street and there’s a bear sit in the room, just
Dan: chilling.
He’s like, Oh, there’s a bear. Should I just live here now? Just chilling. We’re good.
Allen Hall: It totally chill out. Yeah. Because how many cars are coming down the road? Not many. So it got to the point where
Dan: I was like, I never get to shower, get to do this. This is, this is wonderful. Just find a Pat Nick basket and just sit them on the road.
Allen Hall: It’s kind of looked at us and then decided he was gonna move on. Oh,
Dan: there you go. Yeah, that makes sense. That’s an interesting take because you’re right. I think it’s hard to. Extrapolate anything from 2020 it’s the year of just it’s like this strange, I mean, 2020, just to wipe it off and off the map of history it’s been so bizarre,
Allen Hall: your baseline 20, 20, right?
No, one’s going to make their baseline 2020 on projections going forward.
Dan: Nobody’s Zack. Yep. It’s been, but either way. I mean, it’s a good trend that it’s anywhere even close. Cause maybe 10 years ago just still wouldn’t have been anywhere close. If we had grown a virus back then. So at least it’s going in the right direction.
Sure. Glass, half glass, half full right
Allen Hall: directionality.
Dan: All right. Well, we’re going to wrap up today’s episode of uptime. If you’re new to the show. Welcome. If you’re a regular here, thank you for your continued support. Please subscribe to the show and leave a review on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Don’t forget to check out the weather guard. Lightning tech YouTube channel for video episodes, full interviews and short clips from each show. For Allen and all of us at weather guard stay safe and we’ll see you next week.
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