Octopus Buys Golden Plains, Blade Defects, Hotel Pet Peeves

Announcer: The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, brought to you by StrikeTape, protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit striketape.com. And now, your hosts.
Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, here with Rosemary Barnes, Matthew Stead, and Yolanda Padron. Rosemary is at a conference in Melbourne called All-Energy, and she wanted to give us a few highlights from the event, mostly to do with booth technology. So what’s the latest in booth technology, Rosemary?
All-Energy Australia and hotel pet peeves
Rosemary Barnes: So the most exciting thing about the event so far is I’ve been hanging out at the CATL booth. CATL, the battery company. I’ve been hearing about their technology, and that’s pretty cool. But even more exciting than that, their booth has carpet, and they’ve got what feels like a memory foam underlay to the carpet.
You know when you’re at an event with a big exhibition and you’re doing 20,000 steps a day on a concrete floor, and you get so tired? When I was at Hamburg a few weeks ago, I actually got tendonitis down the fronts of both of my ankles from too much walking. And I’m in sneakers. I’ve already learned not to try and wear heels or anything like that. Just skater shoes, so not with heaps of foam absorption, which is my next conference upgrade. But you get so tired, and you’re standing up all the time, and it really sucks. And then you come over to the CATL booth, and it is so comforting on your legs, and you just want to stay there.
Allen Hall: That will be at the next event you’re at. Everyone’s going to start to have comfy flooring in their booths, and the organizer will probably charge you $10,000 additional to rent memory foam for you.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, if you’ve got like four square meters, if you’re lucky. But anyway, I think it’s a really good investment, because people then want to hang out there. And once you’re standing somewhere, you want to get talking about the company whose booth you’re at. So that’s my hot tip.
Allen Hall: Your hot tip is memory foam. Okay, I just want to make sure we’re clear about that. It’s memory foam underneath the carpet. Got it.
Rosemary Barnes: In general, this conference exhibition is different from the European ones I’ve been at recently, in that there’s way less merch. Way, way less. I’ve only seen one competition where you could scan a QR code and try to win some Lego. Just a lot less stuff. In general I do agree with that, but it’s also probably the most exciting part of it.
This event is always a little bit funny to me because it’s All-Energy, but Envision is here for their batteries. Three quarters of the booths are batteries, between grid-scale and home batteries. Then 20% are solar. I’m planning a rooftop solar addition to my home next year, so that’s particularly interesting to me at the moment: lots of different racking solutions and installers and different panels. And then the other 5% is probably EV stuff, EV chargers.
Allen Hall: We ought to decide what the minimum hotel room is when you’re at a conference of any sort, because there are a variety of rooms available, but a lot of them are not adequate. I used to be in inadequate hotel rooms all the time for conferences. I’d say to myself, it’s only two days, it’s only three days, I’ll just suck it up. But as I’ve gotten smarter, I don’t do that anymore. And Rosemary, you probably get as many hotel rooms as I do because you travel so much.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I have started noticing good and bad hotel rooms. And it’s funny, because the cost doesn’t necessarily indicate the amenities. The one I stayed in in Hamburg, I think it was €400 a night to be anywhere remotely close to the venue, and I booked like six weeks out. It’s not like I was booking the day of. I probably should book now for next year. If anyone wants to go to Hamburg, maybe you can avoid €400 a night. That was a very nice hotel. It had a great breakfast, but no gym. I thought that was weird. I did find a techno bouldering gym nearby in a converted bunker, very, very German, and it was amazing. Actually my favorite thing that I did in Hamburg. So it all worked out.
This hotel room I’m in now is nice other than the lighting. I’ve got no ability to get it well lit for a call. But my biggest problem with this hotel room is there’s no milk available. There are no little things of milk, no cream, no sachets of anything that’s going to make my drink look like it’s got milk in it. Nothing. So it’s green tea and espresso shots for me.
And then just in general, in America they don’t have kettles in the room. They’ll often have a tea bag, but there’s only a coffee machine, and you’re supposed to put your tea bag in a cup and run the water through the dirty coffee machine on top of that. It’s lukewarm, and it’s old stale coffee flavor mixed with whatever your tea bag is. And that’s what they think you’re going to drink before you go to bed. So last time, I got a kettle. I’m safe now. I’m covered for America.
Allen Hall: One of the most annoying things in a hotel room, I think, is when they don’t have any lights, or they have lights that are barely functional. There’s a little bit of luminescence coming out of them, but it’s so little it doesn’t even count as a proper light. And it’s terrible. I understand they’re trying to save electricity, but especially in the wintertime, it’s rough. You can’t see anything.
Matthew Stead: LED lighting uses nothing.
Yolanda Padron: Yeah. And for those of us who use makeup, you end up with two different skin tones all day. You checked it 20,000 times in the room, and it’s like, no.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, sure. Everything looks the same in the dark.
Allen Hall: So, the hanger situation in America. There must be rampant hanger theft. When you get to the hotel room, they’ve got these unique, well-engineered devices where either you cannot remove the hanger, which, okay, I get, or it’s so complicated you need a third arm to put the device together. It’s not even really a hanger. It’s more like some sort of crazy machinery. I don’t understand it, but it’s more and more common. When I go to a Walmart or a Target or some discount merchandiser, hangers are like 50 for $2. So you could put infinite hangers in these hotel rooms, but they refuse to do it. I think it’s a leftover from the 1970s when things were stolen all the time. It is odd.
Rosemary Barnes: The room I’m in, and this is a trend in Australia and Europe, I don’t know about America, they don’t give you a little mini bottle of everything anymore. They’ve just got full-sized pump bottles. But then they put a price list on them. So if you like it so much that you want to take it, if you’re going to steal it, they’re going to charge you. Guess how much it is if I want to take the shampoo, conditioner, or hand soap. And by the way, this stuff is not spectacular. Sometimes you use a soap or a moisturizer and it’s amazing. This is not some luxury spa. It’s maybe 500 mils. Guess how much they want.
Allen Hall: Half a liter? I was going to say 20.
Rosemary Barnes: Higher than 20. 75 dollars. So I guess they’re not trying to sell it. They’re just trying to say, don’t steal this.
Allen Hall: That’s it. It’s a don’t-steal price. Wow. Well, it must be effective because they’re doing it, or at least someone is trying it.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I mean, it is better than these little bottles where you get half of it out and it’s all that plastic that’s thrown away. And I always felt like I should collect them for, I don’t know what.
Allen Hall: Two other things about hotel rooms. It’s got to have some decent pillows. You get to a hotel room in some parts of this planet, and I don’t know what they’re making pillows out of, but it’s either really hard or it’s so soft it envelops you, and you can’t breathe because the pillow is covering your face. The second one is decent restroom facilities. Bathrooms, and more importantly, showers. I don’t get it. Clean the shower.
Yolanda Padron: I don’t think so. There’s water running in it all the time. How dirty can it possibly get?
Allen Hall: But in some locales I’ve been to, oh my god, I don’t think they’ve ever cleaned it. It’s the minimum requirement.
Matthew Stead: Can I add two more? This is really super nerdy because I’m an acoustician, but having carpet in the hallways, so you don’t hear people clomping up and down the hallway.
Allen Hall: Oh, I hate carpet in the hallways. Carpet is acoustically pleasing, but it makes it really hard to roll your luggage down the hallway. Have you noticed that all your luggage is rollable now? Carpet makes the wheels not spin. Okay, go ahead. What’s number two?
Matthew Stead: Door seals. A lot of hotels have really, really rubbish door seals. So once again, you’ve got guests coming in at 2 a.m., and if you’re a light sleeper, you can hear their conversations. I always take earplugs with me. That’s my stash.
WOMA 2027
Allen Hall: And if you want to stay in a nice hotel room and enjoy yourself for a couple of days, you need to attend WOMA 2027, March 3rd to the 5th in Melbourne. It’s at one of the nicest hotels in Melbourne, the Pullman.
Rosemary Barnes: The Pullman does have a kettle. It does have milk available for you to put in your beverages in your room. I can’t remember the coat hanger situation, actually. It might have those.
Matthew Stead: I reckon they’ve got carpet too.
Allen Hall: They do have carpet.
Rosemary Barnes: They’ve got a good breakfast.
Yolanda Padron: I think they’ve got coat hangers, because I remember taking things from the closet to steam in the shower. And they had a really nice view, and the staff is really, really nice. They were really accommodating and sweet.
Allen Hall: And Matthew, if you want to register for WOMA 2027, you’d better do it pretty soon, because Rosemary is getting upset that we’re running out of space and people are starting to complain they can’t get in. You’re going to get a phone call from Rosemary if you can’t figure it out. It’s constant right now. But if you want to register, and I suggest that you do, Matthew, what website do they visit?
Matthew Stead: woma2027.com. WOMA 2027 dot com.
PES Wind and internal blade inspections
Allen Hall: In this edition of PES Wind magazine, which I’m holding up for all you YouTube viewers, there are a number of great articles, and you can download the entire magazine at peswind.com. There’s a really interesting article from Windbotix, which makes a robot that is primarily used internal to the blades. As we well know at this point, and especially Yolanda, who looks at a lot of internal blade images, you really need to know what’s happening inside of your blade. What happens on the outside doesn’t necessarily carry over to what’s happening on the inside of the blade structure. A lot of it is on the inside of the blade, so checking bond lines and making sure your spar caps are good. And if you have the particular kinds of wind turbines that have problems with internal lightning flashovers, you’d better get some pictures of the internal structure. Otherwise you can have blade breaks and other horrible things. Yolanda, it seems like more recently, internal inspections are becoming routine.
Yolanda Padron: Yeah, especially in the US. I know we’ve talked a lot about it, but with people having to extend the life of their blades a lot more than they thought they would, internal inspections are becoming a lot more of a trend.
Matthew Stead: Through the IEC committee, there’s a new blade O&M standard coming out, IEC 61400-32-2, and that will set the inspection regime, which includes internal inspection. So I think it’s pretty much becoming the norm.
Allen Hall: So you should check out the article by Windbotix in this edition of PES Wind. Just go to peswind.com.
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Golden Plains sale and due diligence
Allen Hall: Well, UK-based Octopus Investments has reportedly agreed to buy the second stage of Golden Plains, which is Australia’s biggest wind farm, from TagEnergy. The price is more than 2 billion Australian dollars, about 1.4 billion US. Stage two is 577 megawatts, and it’s near Geelong. I think that’s how I pronounce it. Guys, how would you pronounce that word?
Rosemary Barnes: Geelong, of course.
Allen Hall: Anything to do with Australian cities is not a joke. I take it very seriously, and I pretty much always stumble, so I’m learning as we go. Pilbara.
Rosemary Barnes: Pilbara.
Allen Hall: Instead of “Pilbara,” I ignore the extra vowel. All right, go ahead. Tell me about Octopus.
Rosemary Barnes: I don’t know any more about the deal than what you’ve basically just said. But it is interesting in Australia, and I don’t know if it’s the same everywhere else, that there’s always buying and selling. One company originates a project and does the first little bit, then another company takes over and develops it a bit further, and it just seems to change hands constantly, including after construction, often.
But I think the hardest thing is when it gets bought midway through, when it’s already been operating for a while or already been constructed, because all of the decisions have already been made, but the new buyer has to live with them. Unless there was really great documentation and an open transfer of data and information, it can be pretty hard to know the condition of the asset. So the due diligence process is a really big, important thing at that point. And I think it’s hard sometimes for companies looking to buy an asset like that, if they’re not super experienced with wind farm operation. They might not know what to look for. So, you know what they should do? They should look at the back catalog of episodes about all of the common failure modes that we’ve covered and dig into that. Matt, what are some of the ones that you’ve been seeing?
Matthew Stead: I think delamination, which may or may not be visible on the outside of the blade, is probably one of the big sleepers. How do you know if you’ve got delamination? How do you know if it’s a serial issue? Has it come to light yet? Maybe this wind farm being bought or sold is five years old, and maybe it comes to light at year ten. How do you understand what’s beneath the surface? I saw you nodding, Yolanda, when I mentioned delamination, because I think that’s probably a big issue. Are you going to get stuck having to repair a third of your blades at $100,000 each because you’ve got to take them down tower? I think due diligence is a really big risk.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. And even beyond blades, are you going to have bearing issues or generator issues? There’s some stuff you can learn from just knowing whether that’s a frequent problem with this specific turbine. But some other stuff is very site by site, and especially with blades, there could be damage that might have accumulated. You might be able to find it, but it hasn’t yet been repaired, so there won’t be a record of it. You need to commission some inspections and have a look. I think people do underestimate how big a ticking time bomb they can inherit if they’re not on top of that sort of thing. We have seen projects in Australia recently where nearly every single blade in a wind farm has to be replaced, or every single blade needs to be repaired with some extra layers of glass added to it. And those add up very quickly into many millions of dollars for those kinds of campaigns. So it is something that’s worth doing.
Matthew Stead: I think also insert failures are another growing trend across the industry. Pitch bearings, pitch bearing cracking, hub cracking. These are all make- and model-specific issues that occur over time.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. But I think the key thing is that you can’t just take the documentation, have someone review it, and say, oh yeah, it’s all fine, because a lot of issues aren’t going to have any documentation in the very early stages. It’s the same sort of issues, actually. They come up again when you’re getting near the end of your warranty period, the end of your serial defect liability period, or the end of your full service agreement. If you want to put it out to tender to maybe get a new supplier, or even just negotiate to get a good deal, you need to know what your plan B is if it doesn’t continue.
And then the other time I see it is at lifetime extension, when you’re thinking about how much longer you can operate this wind farm. I’ve seen some wind farms going through that process where they’ll do an assessment of every component: is this a replaceable component, is it in good condition? And often with blades, they’ll just say, oh yeah, that’s a replaceable component, so they don’t really look into it further. But for the most part, for a wind farm at the end of its lifetime, you’re not replacing blades that are 20 or 30 years old very easily, if at all. So I think people might not even realize, if they’re not a blade expert, that you need to do a thorough investigation into your blades and see how much life they’ve actually got in them.
Yolanda Padron: No, I agree, and I think it’s important to look at it throughout the lifetime of the site too. I’ve seen a lot of times where someone buys a new site, and the asset manager is really happy because in the first golden years it’s generating a lot of money because it’s generating a lot of electricity. And the PR team is really excited because it’s this huge-capacity site. And the engineering team is struggling so much, because they don’t know how long they can make the site work. They don’t have a lot of data, or the data they do have doesn’t point to something that can last the 20 years they wanted the site to last. So I completely agree. The teams really need to talk to each other, and they really need to make sure they’re monitoring the systems, because from your desk miles and miles away, you can’t just say, oh yeah, sure, this blade that’s had one inspection over the last five years will make it for the next 20 years. So yeah, I completely agree, Rosie. It’s really important.
Outro
Allen Hall: Well, that wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn or email us at [email protected]. And if you found value in today’s conversation, please leave us a review. It really helps other wind energy professionals discover the show. And don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. For Rosie, Yolanda, and Matthew, I’m Allen Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.