Ex-Ørsted Employees in Demand, CIP Orders Goldwind Turbines

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Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, and I’m here with Rosemary Barnes and Yolanda Padron. And top of the week is Rosemary’s been out and about looking at wind turbines in Australia, and I would like to hear some of the details about that, Rosemary. What did you see out in the wilderness?
Rosemary Barnes: You might have to settle for generalities rather than details.
Allen Hall: Okay.
Rosemary Barnes: I don’t know what’s going on with Australian wind turbines at the moment, but there have been a lot of problems — a lot of lightning damage and a lot of serial defects. That’s the category I’ve been looking at recently. It’s a wide variety, looking at a lot of Australia-specific, or not even Australia-specific, but just local problems. Certain wind farms are getting the same kind of problem over and over again — some of them I’ve never seen anywhere else before. I check in with people like you and other international friends who do similar kinds of work, and some of these damages are just like — everyone’s like, “Well, what is that? I wouldn’t have even believed that was possible.” So that always keeps it really interesting. The last couple of days I’ve spent crawling around inside some blades, getting covered in fiberglass — very reminiscent of my time in the factory, when I used to just be itchy for weeks or months in a row. My hot tip for that: you’ve got to feel the sensation, but it doesn’t bother you. It’s not itching, it’s just zen — zen out, and you can handle being itchy for days in a row.
Allen Hall: It’s sort of the hot sauce analogy. Hot sauce is really not burning you, but it just feels like it is, so if you can think it away, it’s just fine. Similar thing. And you’re headed to Denmark and then to Germany pretty soon, right?
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I’m so sad that you’re not going to be able to come, because I’ve got some really cool tours lined up and cool meetings.
Allen Hall: Me too.
Rosemary Barnes: So yeah, I’ll have more to report back. But definitely anybody who’s going to be at Hamburg — if you’re in Denmark and have something you want to show, feel free to get in touch. I don’t know what that might be. I’ve got some plans currently — it’s pretty jam-packed, itinerary so far, but looking forward. I always love going over.
Allen Hall: Well, when you’re in Denmark, you should go by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, Rosie, because they have an Australian project, and the turbines are coming from China. The Gawarra Bayya site is a 408 megawatt project, and CIP has confirmed to Finnos that Goldwind will supply the machines. That lands smack in the middle of the fight between a lot of countries that would like to use Chinese suppliers and the EU Commission, which is really prohibiting it at the moment.
So in a sense, we have CIP — a Danish company that’s been pretty much avoiding any sort of Chinese wind turbines in the EU — but once they come out of the EU, they’re perfectly comfortable using Chinese wind turbines in Australia. It does seem like a real contradiction there. And my first thought was, well, Scotland has raised their hand and said, “What the heck — why is it okay for this Danish company to buy Chinese wind turbines and put them in Australia if they’re so afraid of all the technology that’s inside them, and maybe the spying or whatever else the concern is?” Is this going to play out okay, do you think, Rosemary? And especially Yolanda — you’ve worked for a Danish operator. This doesn’t feel right.
Rosemary Barnes: I do personally see the contradiction, because Europe is worried about China taking over Europe’s electricity grid. They don’t care what happens to Australia’s electricity grid. Australia doesn’t manufacture any of our own wind turbines, so we don’t care that much. We have so many Chinese solar panels and Chinese cars, and China is our biggest trading partner, so I think we have a lot more comfort with China and Chinese technology in Australia than Europe does. If I’m honest, I think the main reason for Europe’s discomfort is probably primarily to protect their own manufacturing industry, and I don’t disagree with that. So, controversial — is that a hot take?
Allen Hall: Well, it sort of is, yeah. I mean, obviously there is a Danish wind turbine manufacturer in CIP’s backyard, so to speak, that they could have easily chosen — Vestas — and put Vestas turbines in. And Vestas is the number one turbine maker in Australia in terms of quantities of turbines. It’s the vast majority Vestas. So it would have made a lot of sense to choose Vestas here. Don’t you think that’s going to create a little bit of tension between the Vestas group and the CIP group?
Rosemary Barnes: I don’t know. I don’t think so — I mean, they’re not the same company, right? They’re not sister companies or anything like that. There’s no official relationship other than that they come from the same country.
Allen Hall: They’re probably next to one another.
Rosemary Barnes: I think you either have a local content requirement, or you allow free competition. It’s a bit weird when you’re somewhere in the middle — officially there’s no local content, but in practice nothing else can be bought. I would rather it all just be on the table, and everyone knows where they stand from the very first days of project planning. You don’t want to get halfway through a project and realize that, even though it’s technically allowed, you’ll never get approval for this, or that the laws might change partway through. I think that’s worse than just knowing from the start that you’ve got to choose European. But in terms of the wind industry going better, I think it’s not a bad thing to see a bunch of different solutions to some of these challenges, and it would be nice if we could all learn from each other and improve.
Allen Hall: Well, let me ask you a question here, Yolanda — as you used to work for a Danish operator that is considering using Chinese turbines, at least they haven’t eliminated the possibility of it — is this really just a ploy to push down prices from Vestas and Siemens Gamesa?
Yolanda Padron: If it is, it wouldn’t be anything new, right? It’s something that a lot of owner-operators, whether they’re Danish or not, have seen if they can maybe get a lower price. But if they have a fairly homogenous fleet in a country, they might get a site from a different OEM just to prove to themselves, and to their OEM of choice, that they’re not the only ones out there. So this could be something that’s happening. I’m really curious — Rosie, I don’t know if you know, but a lot of times the IT department is all the same in a big company that owns a lot of assets in different countries, and sometimes they’ll try to silo it by continent or by country, or they’ll just keep the same thing everywhere. My understanding was that part of the reason some of these operators didn’t want Chinese wind turbines was because of that whole SCADA system, and everything would have to be integrated into their internal IT. Do you know if they’re siloing their Australian part of their IT department, or their Australian back end, for CIP?
Rosemary Barnes: I don’t know about that, but from the sites that I’ve worked with, for the most part, the SCADA system is whoever’s operating the wind farm — that’s their thing. And who is operating this wind farm? I would have assumed it would be Goldwind, because that’s always how it works —
Allen Hall: Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: — in Australia, at least. So usually it’s a matter of, if the owner wants to get into the SCADA, they get in and grab it and remove it from the system. It’s not like it’s all integrated. Yeah — it is a good point that maybe this is opening a backdoor into Europe somehow. I can see that as a European regulator, I’d be worried about that, and maybe be requiring something of CIP to ensure that that can’t happen.
Allen Hall: Our next story takes us to India, where a Saudi group is writing a $100 million check. Back in a moment.
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Well, Senvion is getting fresh capital, and a lot of it, coming from Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar Group. They’re investing $100 million into Senvion, and obviously Senvion is a huge wind turbine maker in India — Senvion originally started in Germany, and ends up in India. So the first $34 million already went out to Senvion, and the rest follows in the next couple of weeks, so there’ll be a lot of cash floating around at Senvion. Senvion builds about 1.5 gigawatts of turbine capacity a year and has roughly 16 to 17 gigawatts already deployed. The whole effort does seem like a play to expand Senvion internationally, now that India has essentially created a closed marketplace — if you’re going to put turbines into India, the technology must be developed in India, the manufacturing must be in India, the construction companies, everything else, must be India-based. So they have this homegrown market. But in places where Chinese operators or Chinese turbines are prohibited, this could be a huge play. I’ve been talking about this for a couple of months — this may be the first big step where Senvion has a whole bunch of money to start showing up in Hamburg and at American Clean Power, some of these shows, selling turbines, which we haven’t seen them do aggressively in a number of years.
Rosemary, do you think you’ll see some Senvion folks while you’re up in Hamburg?
Rosemary Barnes: I hope so. It’s always good — the more the better. But is $100 million a game changer? It doesn’t feel like that much money.
Allen Hall: Oh, I think it’s a huge amount of money, especially because of where Senvion is right now technology-wise — they have product.
Rosemary Barnes: But is this $100 million for marketing, or are they actually trying to do some factory expansion? I just can’t imagine it goes very far toward factory expansion, or increasing manufacturing capabilities.
Allen Hall: Product roadmap and international expansion — that’s where the money will be used. Could you see them building a factory in Scotland? I 100% can.
Rosemary Barnes: Not with $100 million, I can’t.
Allen Hall: That’s true.
Rosemary Barnes: I mean, am I crazy? It’s just — it’s a lot for a marketing budget. It’s not a lot for —
Allen Hall: Well, that’s true. I mean, the price of a new factory, according to Vestas — the last time I heard somebody talk about building a new factory, the number was 500 million, I think it was euros at the time, €500 million. So, yes, you couldn’t necessarily build a brand new factory and start doing work, but I think you could get pretty well started in a footprint. And we know the Saudis — especially Alfanar — they have cash and availability to deploy it when needed. So if it looks like Senvion is going to make some inroads into Europe, I imagine the pipeline would still be open, so you could go from $100 million to half a billion, probably.
Rosemary Barnes: You can do a very nice feasibility study with $100 million, and maybe that’s the door opener for a larger chunk of Saudi money to roll out and implement the feasibility study.
Allen Hall: The Senvion expansion and approach to global domination — there are a number of marketplaces they could go after today, I think. You just think about Brazil, or a lot of South American countries. There are opportunities all over the place for Senvion if the product fits the marketplace.
Yolanda Padron: If the price is right, I think they could definitely expand into places where some of the European turbine makers don’t see the value in investing a lot.
Allen Hall: What do you mean by that?
Yolanda Padron: I mean, there’s a lot of manufacturing in Mexico and Brazil —
Allen Hall: Right.
Yolanda Padron: — less in Brazil now than there used to be. There’s not a lot of wind turbines in operation in Mexico, a government thing, totally understandable. But it’s not something a lot of the European manufacturers have pursued much, as far as selling to them.
Allen Hall: One has, right now — Nordex. I think Nordex would be just competing with Senvion for a lot of countries in South America in particular. Very strange, right?
Yolanda Padron: Yeah, I think they can very well just pick up the play that Nordex has been doing in the United States —
Allen Hall: Yeah.
Yolanda Padron : — looking at where the other OEMs have been lagging behind in their sales, or where their customers aren’t super happy, and picking up a lot of the contracts. And hopefully for Nordex, making the customers happy enough that they switch from being very homogenous to having a lot more Nordex turbines in their fleet.
Allen Hall: $100 million into Indian manufacturing — that’s an interesting one. Next, we’ll look at where people leaving Ørsted are ending up. Stay with us.
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Ørsted is cutting about a quarter of its workforce — just over 2,000 positions by the end of 2027. Those people are not leaving the industry, as it turns out. Consulting firm Sweco has, in its own words, hired many of them — Tore Lunde, Sweco’s energy director, told Energy Watch the firm is staffing up for an upswing it sees coming. And after years of offshore tenders closing without a single bid, Denmark just ran a successful one, so there’s a lot of work to be had in Denmark. Eight new people joined Sweco in September, and competitors Koeh and NIRAS are moving existing staff around instead. So you see what’s happening — Ørsted people, who are very qualified and have usually deep insight into some of the turbine OEMs and what’s happening on the operations side of wind, are finding homes in other places, because Denmark is a place where wind has been developed for over 100 years, so there’s more work to be done.
But I still think there’s talent out there. And Yolanda, you’re a former Ørsted person, and Rosemary, having been formerly with LM — what’s happened at LM Wind Power is very similar to what’s happened at Ørsted here. Those people just don’t jump into oil and gas — they tend to hang around wind and find other opportunities, and there are opportunities out there.
Yolanda Padron: Yeah, I agree — I think it’s really interesting to see Ørsted people just kind of move around everywhere. We’ve talked about it a lot, but this is a very, very small industry.
Allen Hall: Yes.
Yolanda Padron: Over the years you see people come back to Ørsted, you see people leave and go to the OEMs, leave and go to consulting, leave and go to other operators. And what’s really great about this is that the talent itself doesn’t leave wind, which is important — it doesn’t leave renewable energy. And that information is still there, and honestly, that means the information is a little more readily available.
Allen Hall: Agreed.
Yolanda Padron: That information just stays in your mind, and people are generally open to talking about issues they’ve seen in different wind turbines or different blades, maybe more than they would have been if they had been just, in this case, at Ørsted for 30 years and never leaving, never talking to anybody outside of Ørsted.
Allen Hall: There’s tribal knowledge, right? On some level — as Rosemary pointed out earlier in the podcast, when she ran into some really questionable blade issues, there’s no manual to go to. You have to go to the people that were involved with it, and that’s a small network. And I think you’re right, Yolanda — a lot of people stay in wind just because there’s no knowledge in books. Back to Rosemary’s point — you can’t AI an answer about a wind turbine. Generally you have to ask a human to give you help. That bodes well for the industry in terms of employment, at least on the engineering side.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I think there’s always been a lot of mixing — in Jutland, there were so many wind energy companies, and everyone —
Rosemary Barnes: — kind of moved between them, so it was kind of a big irony that the industry was so secretive. Back in the day, everyone’s contracts required that you couldn’t go work for a competitor for 12 months or more, so you’d have people on gardening leave — they’d have to pay you, because Danish labor laws are good. So if they’ve got that kind of non-compete, they have to pay you out while you’re restricted, and that was very common. I had one of the first contracts that didn’t have that, and I started in 2016, so that’s about when it changed. But there was this big irony, because it was so secretive, but on the other hand, so many people had worked at Siemens, and then went and worked at Vestas, and then went and worked at LM Wind Power, and then went to work for a developer, and then would go back and cycle through them all again. So the knowledge spread, and that’s good — it should, because when similar technical challenges are faced across the manufacturers, it’s really good that everyone gets a solution, so the industry can improve and grow. Because I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t consider wind energy so good, so cheap, and so reliable that it’s an absolute slam dunk that we’ll continue to grow it and grow it into the future. So I think we really do need to share knowledge and improve.
But that said, the job losses at my old company, LM Wind Power, have been so great that not everyone has been absorbed back into the wind industry, and I think some people didn’t want to stay in wind. I know when I left, I was kind of sick of doing only wind, all day, every day, wind. And so, in the end, my company, Pardalote, does about 90% wind energy — only about 10% on other energy technologies, which is what I also like to do, but I also scratch that itch a fair bit through my YouTube channel, so I’m feeling good about the mix at the moment. And I can’t talk about ex-wind engineers in Denmark without pointing out that I really want one working at Pardalote soon — anybody with great blade experience who fancies a move to Australia should get in touch, because it’s not like we have dozens or hundreds of unemployed, experienced ex-wind-turbine-manufacturing engineers sitting around in Australia. So, very keen to get my hands on one.
Allen Hall: Wonderful. Yeah — everybody’s looking for good people, and there are plenty of excellent wind engineers and technicians around right now. Grab some, you’ll be thankful you did.
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. 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. So for Rosie and Yolanda, I’m Allen Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.