Will the Machin-Schumer bill really change the energy landscape? Tax incentives definitely drive new installations. Speaking of changing the landscape, rare-earth metals do that, in a bad way. We discuss new technology, designs, materials and costs that are wound up in the “rare-Earth free generator.”
Should we mine faults in the seabed floor for metals? The Metals Company says it would deliver a “Net Positive” environmental impact. Yes, the energy landscape is definitely changing. Don’t miss this discussion and the interview with Josh Rangel of Rangel Renewables. The company has grown FAST, and now, repowering is driving even more growth.
Visit Rangel Renewables at https://www.rangelrenewables.com
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/company/rangelrenewables/
Twitter – @RangelRenewable
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Uptime 125
Allen Hall: Hey everybody. Welcome to the Uptime podcast. Really busy episode. We have a discussion on the Manchin-Schumer inflation reduction act and what that’s likely to do for renewable energy. We talk about a company that’s developing a 15 megawatt rare earth free offshore wind turbine generator. And, the implications for that in the future.
Allen Hall: And then we deep dive in a sense with the Metals Company who is trying to pull metals from the ocean floor and why we need to go do that and what the complications and environmental impact of that going to be. At the end of this, we have an interview with Josh Rangel, president and CEO of Rangel Renewables based in Houston, Texas.
Allen Hall: They’re a big O&M wind turbine maintenance company. They’re busy right now, going around the Midwest, replacing blades and, and fixing up wind turbines and doing repowering projects. So it’s a great interview with Josh, stay tuned. It’s gonna be an excellent episode.
Allen Hall: So the Manchin-Schumer administration is putting together a bill that is supposedly going to pass through Congress. It’s called the Inflation Reduction act. I think the first response from everybody in America is like, yeah. Right. Okay. So Rosemary, you don’t even know about inflation in Australia, do you?
Allen Hall: Because here in America, you know, we are like at 8%, 9% inflation rate, we’re talking about a lot too. So the, the, are you, well, we could, we could send you some of our inflation if you’d like, we’d be
Rosemary Barnes: glad. Be pretty cool to not, not going higher.
Rosemary Barnes: Thanks. Anyway. so the there, well,
Allen Hall: don’t say Americans, aren’t generous. so the, the, the, the, the deal is there there’s a broad mix of, so pretty much anything you could think of is in this bill. It’s the craziest thing. It’s like 700 pages long. I was scanning through it over the weekend, thinking my god, who can put all this together, but let me give you a summary.
Allen Hall: Of all the things are inside of it. Basically it’s gonna have include tax rebates or production tax credits is what it sounds like for wind and solar. And then eventually bring in storage, battery storage as part of it green hydrogen. Is part of this mix where they’re gonna give tax incentives to create green hydrogen that is not created by natural gas.
Allen Hall: So, but there is, you’re allowed to create some CO2 when you create this green hydrogen there’s, there’s a graduated scale there. I don’t know whoever came up with that there are also going to open up some oil sites in the Gulf of Mexico for drilling that the administration had said they, they weren’t gonna close but were closed.
Allen Hall: And now they’re gonna open ’em back up again. So there’s a, a weird mix. Now, the goal, the goal for all this is to get to 40% emissions reductions by 2030. And that 40% is based on 2005 emission levels. So the, the people who are in the know, looking at what the emissions are gonna be based on this bill, well, they proposed bill think they’re gonna get to so 40% reduction, which I think is amazing.
Allen Hall: And part of. This conglomeration of items. So there’s tax different taxes, gonna be applied there’s tax rebates being applied, but it it’s now broadening the scope of renewables. It’s very similar. I thought to what’s happening in, in the EU where not that natural gas is. Clean, but nuclear is coming back into the fold batteries are coming into the fold.
Allen Hall: Green hydrogen is coming into the fold, which they haven’t been in the last couple of years. So my, my questions to everybody here is one. Do we really think we’re gonna get to a 40% reduction in emissions? If we’re. Drilling and still using petroleum based products. Two there’s a big push on offshore.
Allen Hall: Wind is, is it now? It just seems like the, the, the golden child is offshore wind and maybe offshore solar. We’ll talk about that in a little while. Is, is that where America’s future is in offshore, wind and drilling off the shorelines, especially on the Gulf of Mexico. Is that where we’re.
Joel Saxum: Oh, some of those things are on, on the way.
Joel Saxum: I, I really have a tough, tough time believing in this. The quote probably cut emissions to roughly 40% below peak estimate. That’s a, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of marketing speak in those, those numbers and the way they’re presented to, to reduce to 40% by the things that this, this bill is saying.
Joel Saxum: It’s more than a long shot. I believe. I believe we, we, you might see it 10% reduction. And of course that’s an uneducated number. To you would have to have sweeping, sweeping change in the way that our culture in general digests energy to have a 40% below cut. I mean it just, right. I mean, Rosemary, maybe you can speak to what you think about that 40% number.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. I,
Rosemary Barnes: I haven’t dived too deeply into it because it’s not my country, I guess. but I have been on Twitter, a. And one really annoying thing about this bill is they’re calling it IRA and it’s like, no, that acronym is already taken. That means something. So you keep on thinking that, you know, like there’s, there’s trouble in island again.
Rosemary Barnes: and yeah, so maybe you guys are American, so maybe you can sort that out for me please. Cuz it’s it’s irritating. But I will say that you know, like I follow a bunch of climate, I don’t know, climate interested, people, climate activists, both on the engineering side, the science side, and you know, some, some other kind of third side.
Rosemary Barnes: And they’re always incredibly cynical about every, every political thing that happens is the general vibe on you know, climate change, Twitter, let’s call it. and they’re not about this. You know, people seem genuinely excited about this as being the first real thing that America has, has done the first real chance that America has to you know, Reduce a big chunk of emissions quickly.
Rosemary Barnes: So yeah, I’ve kind of dodged, dodged out of giving my opinion, but my general sense from the community is that people think, finally, this is something real. And I think the bipartisanship of it is one big thing as well. I doubt they’re
Allen Hall: gonna get that. I don’t think they’re gonna get my partisanship in it at all.
Allen Hall: I think what’s gonna happen is the Republicans are, are not gonna vote for it personally. We’re you’re talking about is yeah. Joe mansion, who is essentially the president of the United States and most matters at this point. So Joe mansion’s from West Virginia and it’s a cold state and has been historically a coal state.
Allen Hall: And, and so when he’s sort of the siding vote for most all bills. So if the Democrats want to pass something, they need. Joe mentioned and Kristen cinema who’s from Arizona to agree to it. They’re the two I dunno what we call ’em Joel they’re they’re like the, the Mustangs, the, the, the renegades of the democratic party.
Allen Hall: So you mean
Rosemary Barnes: they need those two vote, they Republicans, but they’re not like leading the party or anything. It’s just a couple of votes that the Democrat to know that they can sometimes convince over everybody. Here’s
Allen Hall: a Democrat. Everybody here is a de. They have 50 Democrats. They have 50 Republicans in the Senate.
Allen Hall: So they’re split 50 50. The deciding vote is the vice president of the United States who happens to be a Democrat. So if they can get 50 all 50 Democrats to vote for this. Bill or to get it through. There’s some procedural things that have to happen. The vice president will cast the deciding vote, which will be a democratic vote.
Allen Hall: Therefore it’ll be 51 to 50 and it’ll pass that’s the process there in, cause I don’t think any Republican’s gonna vote for it right now. That’s what, so you are saying
Rosemary Barnes: is happening that Democrats have to convince other Democrats to do anything at all? Yes. When that’s their whole platform think of
Joel Saxum: mansion as like this, like a centric.
Joel Saxum: Democrat where he’s like right in the middle where he might go either way, but he’s kind of leaning towards the Democrat side. So right now they just have to convince him. And then they have the 50 50 is, is the way I, I, I would look at it
Joel Saxum: right.
Joel Saxum: 51 50. Yeah. 51 with the, the VP. So the, but the house now. So there’s the Senate in the house, right?
Joel Saxum: House is completely different because the house has 472 members. I think it is of that. 4 35, 4 35 Allen’s it’s paid more attention civics class than I did and, and that goes by the, the, you know, the population of states and different things where they can, you know, have their electoral delegates and whatnot.
Joel Saxum: So that they’re two separate bodies, but they have to be rec or sanction or not sanctioned, but a bill has to be passed by both of them. And then it goes to this. So it’s past the house because the house is Democrat majority by far. Yeah, and then it’s onto the Senate and then they have to ratify it once they do, then it can get signed in the law.
Joel Saxum: There’s a lot of stuff within, in this bill, like you know, even down to reviving some old tax benefits by a buy an EV. If you’re in a certain tax bracket, you can get a $4,500 rebate or a $7,500 rebate. That stuff is cool, but I think the thing that. Pertains to the three of us in our general focus usually is reviving the production tax credits in the us because where I sit in the industry that I.
Joel Saxum: I try to communicate through a lot of people about production tax credits. What does your business model look Lala on? What does it look with them? And now, if this gets passed, you’re going to see a massive push of new installations. And new installations drives. Hopefully we we’ve been talking in the last few months about some of these, you know, a Noel facility in a blade manufacturing facility shutting down.
Joel Saxum: If this, if PTC stuff comes back up and all of a sudden the orders start flowing because now people can get production tax credits when they build new. You might see some of those things open back up. There’s that’s the, I mean, and that’s how this I ideas work. Right? Once we put the, put the incentive back into the market, then we start out some manufacturing facilities.
Joel Saxum: Now we’ve created some jobs. So I mean, I, I can speak. Clearly from at least two examples. I know where I’ve had clients tell me, like, we’re just gonna sit on this project and wait until we see what PTC happens. If PTC gets passed. Because you know, last November, that was the big push. And like, I think it was, it wasn’t the build back better build.
Joel Saxum: There was another one. Either way it didn’t make it. And it was, everybody was kind of waited on, you know, waited on baed breath, like looking at SPTC gonna go. If this thing goes, you’re gonna see wind domestic onshore in the us wind development spur back up. You’re gonna see it kick off. You’re gonna see a demand for cranes.
Joel Saxum: You’re gonna see it. I, I believe so.
Allen Hall: Well, yeah. That’s one of the parts of the bill where they’re really trying to push the domestic content of wind turbines. And I, there’s not a lot of. Offshore wind what I’m, when there’s not a lot of wind Turine components, finished components that are shipped to the United States, maybe except for Mexico.
Allen Hall: Well, I guess Canada doesn’t count either. So from Canada and Mexico is probably where most of those components come from. I’m and they are trying to source them in the United States, but they won’t be run by United States companies. For the most part, they can be run by companies that are based in Denmark
Joel Saxum: or, but at least it’s creating some jobs.
Joel Saxum: Right. You’re bringing some jobs back to these, these communities. So that’s yeah,
Allen Hall: no’s true. That’s good. It’s just, we’re in this really word cycle. Like we’ve been talking about where all those factories have closed. Now they have to start ’em back up again. It’s not the ideal situation, so there’s, there’s more to come and who even knows this is gonna pass.
Allen Hall: Right. It’s probably gonna get altered by the time it finally gets to the president’s desk. So there’s more to come. Get the latest on wind industry news business and technology sent straight to you every week. Sign up for the uptime tech newsletter at weather guard, wind.com/news
Allen Hall: GreenSpur Wind, which is a UK, UK based motor generator developer, not motor, generator developer is working with Niron Magnetics, which is a Minnesota based company to create a rare earth free. Permanent magnet generator. And they’ve been working on this for a number of years and earlier versions of this were just essentially too heavy. So think of a direct drive generator. It. Basically permanent magnets and cause a wire and bang, you make electricity.
Allen Hall: But the, the big problem, obviously, every is worried about rare earth minerals coming from China and Australia and other places where they’re really difficult to get their hands on. And the United States and Europe don’t wanna do that anymore. And they’re trying to develop their own sources. So you have to think about making generators in a completely different way.
Allen Hall: So the way that GreenSpur is thinking about a generat. Is it’s the opposite of the, of every electrical near engineering cell on my body. So the way that the, the way that etic work in a motor everything’s kind of rotary everything’s, everything’s spinning around what GreenSpur is doing is moving the magnetic fields radially, actually, one of the axial is that right?
Allen Hall: Yeah, so, yeah. So moving in radio, flex generators. To a basically a completely new setup. So they have now designed a 15 megawatt generator and I think 15 megawatts it screams Vestas, and it, it screams Siemens. It screams GE. And they’re they have, or I guess they’re still trying to make a deal with one of the, the OEMs on this, on this direct drive generator, but their big problem is weight.
Allen Hall: They’re just trying to drive the weight down. Now. It sounds like at the moment they were able to reduce the weight by like 50% or so. And, and it’s instead of using steel and copper and other things they’re using aluminum, which is just lighter weight. So they’re really trying to hone this design. I guess my question is, are we really that concerned at design like this, a relatively new way of making electricity in a generator is we’re gonna move to something like this.
Allen Hall: Or doesn’t like in the recent bill is going through Congress. Rare earth or rare earth. I think there’s still a feeling like we’re gonna be able to get our hands on some, but maybe not. And what do you do if you, if you can’t, what do you do? You have to change the way you make generators. So is things like green spur and Nira magnetic, which is based do the university of Minnesota, are, are they the future?
Allen Hall: And they have patents around this too, I assume. So that means you have to pay them for the patent. Buy the motors from them. It’s just a very odd setup. I mean, the technology sounds cool, but is this the way we’re gonna
Rosemary Barnes: go? Yeah, I think it’s, it’s good to have a, a variety of options. So rare earth are a supply chain problem at the moment there an environmental problem at the moment.
Rosemary Barnes: And there is definitely plenty of people, companies working on ways to address that. So, you know, you’ve. Projects. I think mothball projects in the us that are opening up again and new new minds coming online and same in Australia, you know, because rares aren’t, aren’t rare despite the, the name they’re everywhere.
Rosemary Barnes: The issue is that processing them is, is hard because right. They come in really low concentrations and they tend to be co-located with some nasty stuff. So, you know, they do nearly all of the, the rare earth mining happens in China at the moment. They’re just incredibly problematic from an environmental and health perspective.
Rosemary Barnes: You end up with, you know, radioactive tailings that are, you know, causing local riverways to become radioactive and, you know, huge, huge health problems for people that live in those areas. And that’s the main reason why countries, other than China have been kind of pretty content to sit back and let China supply these cheap, rare earths.
Rosemary Barnes: Not that other countries couldn’t be mining and processing our own rare earth it’s that we don’t want the environmental impacts of that, or we don’t want the cost to make sure we don’t get those environmental impacts. So that’s one route to go down is to just get, you know, get better and cheaper at processing these minerals.
Rosemary Barnes: A less environmentally destructive way because I mean Australia and the us and other, other countries, probably every, even China now I think is starting to feel like it’s not worth the trade off you know, to get the economic benefit, but the environmental and health impacts. So that’s kinda like one branch and then the second branch is to reduce the, the use of rare earths.
Rosemary Barnes: And I don’t think that there’s anything that we make with rare earths that absolutely needs rare earths. I think there’s always a different way. And I know we were talking earlier about the I was reminiscing about my high school physics class, where I remember we all hand wound electromagnets right.
Rosemary Barnes: You know, you get some copper wire and you sure wind it around. And I remember my dad had. Woodworking lathe than the wood in the workshop. So I was able to leave mine project at the night before and still, still get it all done, cuz I just kind of wound it all on the lathe and it worked really well too.
Rosemary Barnes: so, you know, we all, we all know how to make a, a magnet without rare in it, but it’s just a matter of, you know, optimizing the overall. Whereas make really strong magnets, which means that you can make things smaller, which means you use less materials, which yes means low weight, but usually low weight is also associated with low cost cuz you just use, use less stuff.
Rosemary Barnes: So is it the weight
Allen Hall: Rosemary? Is it the weight that’s a driver or are they concerned about the weight on top of the tower? Is, is that one of the design constraint?
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, they are. And I mean, if you look at the difference between a direct drive generator and a, a, a gearbox generator, then the direct drive ones are huge, right?
Rosemary Barnes: You can easily pick you know, like the Encon ons show, wind turbines use direct drive, and pretty much everyone else uses gearbox. And. That’s why they had those huge eggs for a while around the Noel, because it’s just like a really large yeah, yeah, yeah. Diameter component that needs to fit in there. So you can imagine that you don’t want, there is some pressure to make that smaller.
Rosemary Barnes: It’s a big weight sitting on top of a, you know, like a really tall, skinny power. And it starts oscillating. You know, like it causes problems for the tower and the foundation. If, if you have the bigger, the weight is in generally everything you want everything to be, to be light and maybe the generator weight, isn’t the most important weight on a, a wind turbine.
Rosemary Barnes: You know, probably the blade weight is more important, but it’s certainly not irrelevant, but also just, you know, if you’ve gotta make it huge, then there’s a lot of material in that. And so overall it’s a cost optimization. You’re adding material to actually just make the physical size of the generator and you’re adding material to the tower to make it strong enough to hold this big mass.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. All of those things. So I, I think that definitely, we already have, have some solutions to the rare earth problem, but it’s really great if we have another solution that lets us make stuff, that’s more like what we have now, you know, which, which works really well. And also doesn’t use rare earth.
Rosemary Barnes: So I, I don’t know. How Promising this specific technology is, and they say 56% mass reduction, but they don’t say what relative to, I don’t know if that’s relative to their
Allen Hall: relative to their design, which is too yeah. First design, which is too heavy. We got total is too heavy. Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Yes. Yeah. But what’s that got to do, like, is it, is it lighter now than a rare earth?
Rosemary Barnes: Using generator I’d be surprised. It seems like it’s,
Allen Hall: it seems like it’s, I think it’s more in line with the rare earth generator than it was in the past. It seemed like it. They were told by OEMs, Hey, this is too heavy. We’re not gonna deal with it. So they had to reduce the weight. You cut it in half by using yeah.
Allen Hall: Well just basically a different design and a lot of lighter materials like
Rosemary Barnes: aluminum. Yeah. And then it will depend on how much cost they added for doing that lightweighting. You know, if they, you can, you exactly make something half the weight, but now you’re using unobtainium to, you know, to make it, then that isn’t necessarily gonna be a more appeal.
Rosemary Barnes: More appealing prospect, but isn’t it. And
Allen Hall: OEM in comparison, it’s in comparison to what though it’s in comparison to not having rare earth and the price of a generator just tripled. Right? So because the, the mining of rare earth in America is so expensive. Aren’t they just isn’t. No, definitely. It’s comparison is, yeah.
Allen Hall: It’s a matter of time, right? If I’m green spur, I’m just waiting it out. because
Joel Saxum: it’ll come from
Rosemary Barnes: business will come to technology technology. See if their technology works, see if rare earth turn out to be the big problem everyone thinks, and we see battles like this happening all over the, you know, clean tech space.
Rosemary Barnes: It’s also happening with battery chemistries. You, you know, that people are, are developing lithium alternatives on the expectation that lithium will get prohibitively expensive, but it may not, you know, it may, it may not. And I think we need, we, we need all of these. It’s it’s capitalism, right? You need all of these competing things and then you survival of the fittest.
Rosemary Barnes: We just don’t know yet what natural selection is gonna favor yet because we have to wait for all these commodity things to, to play out. Yeah, so I definitely am pleased that there’s research like there’s happening. But I wouldn’t necessarily place a large bet on this specific company
Joel Saxum: thinking here at about 15 megawatt offshore generators.
Joel Saxum: There’s not gonna be that many of them installed in the. If there’s in the next 10 years, if there’s 5,000 of ’em installed 10,000 of ’em installed that’s five or 10,000 units. Wow. That’s a great influx of cash for green spur. If they were all the green spur designs, that’s one thing. But I think what I like to see here is that this technology’s being explored and investigated because.
Joel Saxum: Every new EV that hits the street has a gen has a, basically a backwards generator in it as well. So as our society starts to electrify itself, more having more options for different kinds of electric motors is only good for like Rosemary said for the, the capitalistic idea of, of how, how we get things done.
Joel Saxum: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Your world changes if you don’t have or earth. Permanent magnets. It changes a lot. It’s hard to think about that. I think most people on the street wouldn’t even consider that, but your life would change dramatically without
Joel Saxum: those yeah. Going forward forward for sure. I can. I’ll give you a life-changing moment.
Joel Saxum: That I had with an N 52 Nidia magnet. It was actually two of them and I was doing the same experiment Rosemary does, but trying to make an omnidirectional power generator. And I had two of them separated on my desk by about four. in little holders, they were an inch and a half in diameter balls, and I happened to bump one of them with my elbow.
Joel Saxum: And what ended up happening was I ended up like this with like right here, an an N 52 here and an N 52 here. And I cracked it, cracked my finger. I ended up was, I was like this taped up in a splint for like three weeks after that. Cuz it broke my finger. So lesson learned. Explain that to your mom. Don’t don’t play with strong.
Joel Saxum: Don’t play with N 52 Nadia magnets.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Oh man. Yeah, that one’s gonna be hard to explain. Yeah, that wasn’t good. I could make up a lot. Like I got into a bar fight or crash. My motorcycles playing with magnets. Those
Joel Saxum: sound cool. Playing with magnets at my desktop.
Rosemary Barnes: Physics is cool, Allen, I dunno what you’re talking about.
Allen Hall: Have you met a physicist lately? Mm . Yeah, ouch. Just saying engineers are cool and physicists and we know what the, where engineers rank in the cool, cool spectrum. We’re way out at the
Joel Saxum: bottom at the top. Right. Have you seen the, have you seen the big, the big bang theory, your, your opposite,
Allen Hall: the metals company is looking to.
Allen Hall: The sea bed floor of the Pacific ocean. So Rosemary, roughly halfway between the United States and Australia. If you draw a line between the two, there is. Area of where catatonic plates are. And there’s like volcanoes on the bottom of the ocean and they’re spewing out these minerals and they, they SP they spew ’em out us.
Allen Hall: Like these, these rocks, these, these mineral filled rocks that are SI that then fall to the ocean floor. Well, evidently somebody a long time ago stumbled across these things. And realized, Hey, they’re full of some really nice metals. There’s nickel, those cobalt, manganese and copper in these rocks. And they’re just sitting on the ocean floor.
Allen Hall: They don’t even call them rocks. They call them nodules. So the metals company is proposing to drop whatever term underwater, drones down to the bottom of the ocean floor and pick these things up and, and they’re not attached to anything. They. Rocks just sitting on the bottom of the ocean. But there are so many deposits down there that it’s a major, I guess, be a major fine.
Allen Hall: The, the whole region’s like 4,500 miles long. It’s huge. But the question right now, Joel, and you, you, you can exploit some of the details is they’re not so concerned about how they’re gonna pick these nodules off the floor. The question is, well, are they gonna be allowed to.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. So you have a, that, that clear and Clipon zone it.
Joel Saxum: Nobody owns it. Right. It’s just, it’s in the middle of nowhere. It’s not in any country’s exclusive economic zone, so there’s no like governing body over the top of the thing. Right? So the people that are out there right now, and it’s, it’s because it’s such a large region, there has there’s many, many, many different corporations backed a lot of ’em backed by state governments or federal, you know, not state, but backed by governments or in In like joint venture with governments that are staking claim to some of these areas because they believe this stuff is there.
Joel Saxum: So what they’re, what they really wanna make sure they do right. For the highly visible ones is they wanna make sure that they’re, as you think it’s just this 4,500 miles of silty sea floor at 4,000 to 5,000 meters deep. So for our Metric speaking people that’s, you know, three miles think tip it this way.
Joel Saxum: If you’re driving 60 miles an hour, it takes you three minutes to drive straight to the bottom. That’s how that’s how far it is. There, you would think that there’s nothing really that you’re gonna harm down there, but the wanna make sure that we, we don’t mess up an ecosystem because eco, you know, all ecosystems are tied together and in some form or another.
Joel Saxum: So we don’t wanna go messing up one that could possibly. You know, maybe we do that and oxygen stops. I don’t know, but neither does anybody else. So right now they’re in the midst of, or they have been for a few years trying to do a lot of environmental assessments you know, with the machines that they have going down, basically think of Roomba that goes around your living room.
Joel Saxum: But with a hose on it, that goes three miles up to the, to the sea or the sea, the surface of the sea and, and trying to suck these things up and then shoot, ’em up to the surface and then deposit ’em on a boat. That’s the idea. So understanding what it looks like when they pull the sediment up and pull the, they call ’em polyatomic nodules.
Joel Saxum: When they pull those out of the sediment, what does the plume look like behind? Are we actually affecting anything? Is there some kind of, you know, rare sea creature that we’re gonna, you know, kick out of their home. If we do this a lot of those things floating around right now, but there’s, there’s been some money shoved into it.
Joel Saxum: The metals company used to be known as. Deep green. They went through an an S P a C as we call ’em here in the states, this with a special purpose acquisition to get listed on the stock market. And now they’re called the metals company. So they’re trying to gather some capital to go and do this.
Joel Saxum: There was a really cool 60 minutes episode, if you’re a fan of the riveting tech TV, that 60 minutes can be all about this stuff, but. There’s a long, long ways to go, but they believe that this could get rid of, you know, the, some of the human rights violations in cobalt, mining in Africa. And. The the intense need, like Rosemary saying of mining, some of these rare earth materials and processing them in China.
Joel Saxum: If you’re looking, if you look at a picture in one of these polyatomic nodules, they’re like potatoes, it’s basically think of like potatoes all over the sea floor and just vacuum ’em
Allen Hall: up. Yeah, they’re really rich. That’s really weird concept and minerals and metals. It’s, it’s a very odd thing to see, and I I’m, I’m not sure what the international bodies are gonna do from just going through the metals company’s website.
Allen Hall: It seems like they’re in a holding pattern a little bit because. When we don’t know, we don’t know. And so then everybody’s imagination starts to run wild. It’s like when we put a man on the moon and we thought we could bring back disease back to the back to earth. So we quarantined the astronauts for like two weeks until we were sure they didn’t bring back a deadly disease.
Allen Hall: I starting to feel like that again, we just don’t know what’s at the bottom of the ocean floor. Maybe we bring up some weird thing or we awaken the crack in. God Zillow or something. That’s what it feels
Joel Saxum: like right now. We just don’t know
Joel Saxum: the abyss yeah. And
Rosemary Barnes: if it could also be, you know, like the, we don’t know that much about the ocean, it’s the most, you know, unexplored part of earth, especially, you know, when it’s that deep.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. So we don’t, we don’t know what we would be disturbing and what role it plays cuz you know, just because it’s out of sight out of mind doesn’t mean that it doesn’t do something important. And so. Yeah, I hope that they’re going to, you know, thoroughly investigate that before disturbing it,
Allen Hall: give me odds, give odds that they find plastic at the, at three miles down at the bottom of the ocean.
Allen Hall: Where are the odds? Rosemary guarantee hundred percent. It’s gotta be close to a hundred percent everywhere.
Rosemary Barnes: right. So at least we could do is vacuum. They’ll find they’ll find some. Yeah, well, they can back you up the plastic while they’re there. I guess that, yeah, they, that they will, but they’ll also, they’ll probably find some creature that, you know, it’s, it’s there’s life there surviving in a way that we didn’t think was biologically possible.
Rosemary Barnes: You know, they’re always discovering stuff, stuff like that. Creatures that getting their energy from, you know, not from the sun from different sources. Might be something cool down there. There might be some process that, you know, affects above the ocean as well. That actually relies on what’s going down there.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, but you’re not gonna know until you do it scientist, but I hope, hope there’s a few involved, right?
Allen Hall: Yeah. This a little, I
Rosemary Barnes: feel there’s you should around doing It’s like, you know, that’s how I feel about what we did with, with Australia. You know, when my ancestors from England came over and just, you know, like did, did whatever and then found out.
Rosemary Barnes: Oh, it turns out that the way that the indigenous people were managing this land was actually, you know, the the only good, the only sustainable way to do it. And, and we’ve come in and, you know, tried to impose our, our English farming methods and it lasted a few generations. And then, and then it was, you know, like run out.
Rosemary Barnes: didn’t, same thing happened in the, the us. That’s my understanding of what happened with that, that whole dust bowl situation. All sorts of things like that. Examples of people not understanding going into a new environment, changing things, and then realizing afterwards, oh, that was a terrible idea, but you can’t go backwards.
Rosemary Barnes: So it’s like, yeah. Are we gonna take our up above water ways and, you know, go in and mess up this, this ecosystem that turns our, you know, natural process. It turns out to be very important to us, even, you know, above the ocean. We won’t know until we’ve done it, you know, like you, like you say. And so, oh, I think there has to be some sort of precautionary principle where you move a bit cautiously, but on the other hand, we’ve got urgent problems above ground as well.
Rosemary Barnes: Right. And if this is a, you know, a solution to a big chunk of it, it would be nice to see less above ground mining, for sure. I mean, I don’t think anybody likes. Impact of mining. We, we like the products of mining and so we, we tolerate it. I think you just converted it yourself. It’s very interesting.
Rosemary Barnes: I, I , no, I’m just, I’m on, I’m on the, on the fans. It’s just one of those tricky it trade off. It’s
Allen Hall: it’s the Rosemary in comparison to what question? Right by itself, ocean mining. Horrible, but in comparison to children digging it out of the ground in, in remote places, ocean mining
Rosemary Barnes: looks pretty good.
Rosemary Barnes: Cobalt is one of those things where there’s alternatives as well. Just like with the rarer. I mean, other places have cobalt, Australia being one of them and, you know, nearly everything that uses cobalt. There’s a you know, a, a very similar product that doesn’t use the cobalt. You don’t need cobalt for batteries.
Rosemary Barnes: For example, plenty of plenty of batteries. Let wine batteries don’t have co. So yeah, Herbo on its own is not , there’ll be solutions to that problem without deep sea mining, if we want them. But yeah, that taken, taken as a whole does sound like this is a big, big resource, so I just hope they go carefully.
Allen Hall: Lightning is an act of God, but lightning damage is not actually is very predictable and very preventable. Strike tape is a lightning protection system. Upgrade for wind turbines made by weather guard. It dramatically improves the effectiveness of the factory LPs. So you can stop worrying about lightning damage.
Allen Hall: Visit weather guard, wind.com to learn more, read a case study and schedule a call. So next step, we have an interview with Josh Ranel president of Ranel renewables based in Houston, Texas. It’s a really fascinating interview. He talks a lot about all the different O and M projects that they’re working on and their capabilities.
Allen Hall: And it’s just a good conversation. So stay tuned for Josh Ranel of Ranel of renewables. Josh, thanks for being on the uptime podcast. And if everybody hasn’t realized Rangel Renewables is huge, right? And, and they’re doing great work and they’re expanding very rapidly. So I thought this would be a good conversation to talk to, Hey, the head of the company.
Allen Hall: Josh Rangel of Rangel renewables and actually hear from the head man of all the things that are, that are happening there. And Josh, welcome to the program,
Josh Rangel: Allen, thank you for having me. I’m very excited. I very much appreciate it.
Allen Hall: So as we all know, Rangel Renewables is a growing business and focus mainly on construction in the larger O and M efforts in wind.
Allen Hall: Saw some things in LinkedIn from you this week. So that goes right to that point. Can you describe some of the work that Rangel Renewables excels in? Yeah, certainly.
Josh Rangel: So Rangel Renewables is a turnkey, wind installation, maintenance, and heavy lift service company here in the us, anywhere from pre-construction all the way to commissioning.
Josh Rangel: We can certainly jump on a project and assist in up tower support, whether it be providing labor. Equipment tools, trucks subcontracting, cranes, different things of that nature really can do the full scope of the work that’s being asked of
Allen Hall: us. Yeah. And you’re relatively newcomer to wind especially since COVID right.
Allen Hall: So you, you started. Rangel Renewables in 2016 and as a small startup. And now you’re, you’re, you’re a large company, actually, you have over, over a hundred employees. Can you just give us a little bit of, of insight and what were those impactful moments that accelerated your business to where it is today?
Josh Rangel: Yes. So you know, you have those moments in time where you you have to really ask yourself, you know, are you willing to put forth all your effort and all your, your cards? Back in December of 2019, had an opportunity to assist the largest OEM Vestas along with a crane company in November of to put it in perspective, November of 2019, we had three employees, myself Aaron, which is on the podcast as well and their sales staff.
Josh Rangel: By the middle of March of 2020, we had 103 and really it it’s a true Testament to the efforts and true grid of the men and women in the field, making it happen from once again, the construction that was happening on site. So offloading the cell prep. Blade prep, hub prep going up tower, making sure that the support was needed up there.
Josh Rangel: Then we had quality and it, you know, also brought in safety. And so really the dynamic of a full-scale project started to be implemented on our end. And that was something that I had always preached. You go into, you know, these pitches and you go into the meetings and the phone calls and the emails, and you’re asking certain customers and.
Josh Rangel: I’m not asking for the moon. I’m just asking for one shot and very humbling and, and very blessed in that prerogative to say that I, you know, kept knocking on the doors, you know, it’s you have to have tough skin. There’s a lot of people that’ll tell you. No. And with the portfolio that we had at the time I come from conventional power with.
Josh Rangel: Combined cycle power plants, but when you’re going into your own and they’re asking you, well, we don’t really wanna know what you’ve done in the past with other companies. We wanna know what you’ve done as rain renewables. So building the portfolio, building the financial status, to be able to hold large payrolls and be able to make sure that you can afford to pay for your equipment and your tools and your trucks.
Josh Rangel: All that’s gathered with it. So you really have to make sure that you also have the right structure around yourself from a, a manpower standpoint and management standpoint, to make sure you can be a success. Yeah,
Allen Hall: that’s really important. It, it, it seems obvious at first, but it’s a difficult thing to implement.
Allen Hall: And as you grew, you grew right through COVID. 2019 kinda getting your real first start. How did, how did you manage all that through COVID? What was some of the keys?
Josh Rangel: there? There was actually the week of my birthday and I love being on site love being with the, the men and women out in the field. So I had left from San Antonio and we had a project in north Texas.
Josh Rangel: Well, right. As I got there, I would say three to four days later. That’s when, you know, the federal government said, all right, we’re shutting everything. Well, you know, on a personal note, I had chronic asthma when I was a young boy. So I was like, well, I don’t wanna have any breathing problems cuz I know what that entails.
Josh Rangel: But I decided to really live the life of a win tech. I ended up staying out there several months. so it was awesome. We were running four main crane, you know, assisting guys being out in the field, you know, running light plants and water buffalos, running taglines, you know, helping with tools. All that really provided the experience as a new industry you know, upcoming business in our industry, I should say, then it derived into.
Josh Rangel: Well, I had some of the biggest head honchos with the OEM at that site that really couldn’t travel anywhere. So then the relationship starting to get built, then identifying well, who is Al without this crane company, who can they become, what is it that, you know, drives them? The vision of Frankel renewables is to leave a legacy and be a blessing that truly wholeheartedly is what I want to do.
Josh Rangel: I know one day it will be a global entity and I preach that with our staff. And my favorite thing to do is praying over all of our staff, the first thing Monday morning in our management call and really. Making sure that that is the foundation of what we do and, you know, talk about our, why, why is it that we do what we do and why we wake up in the morning, very blessed to be able to get up and say, all right, you know, I’m, I’m ready to conquer the day.
Josh Rangel: I don’t care if it’s 12 hours, 15 hours, you know, 18 hours and we’re driving two hours to one site and, you know, three hours to another site to, you know, just go shake a hand and say, hello. I’m big on making sure that they know that I’m in it for the long haul and I’m willing to do, you know, what the techs are doing and just leading by examples.
Josh Rangel: I also had the privilege of working about, of the 12 months in 2020, about nine and a half close to 10 months. We worked around the clock so day and night shift. So learning the aspects of what you can do during the day, learning the aspects of what you can do at. and really that progression to. Hey, if there’s a window that we’re trying to chase and we’re getting close to, you know, the end of production to where we need to go ahead and turn on or energize the towers for the owners.
Josh Rangel: And at that point saying, well, maybe we start a little later and chase the wind there, or we wake up really early and chase the win when the winds are down. So. Was an awesome experience. I miss being out on the road, my staff can tell you I’d rather be out there you know, most of the time, rather than in the office, but that’s just my heart.
Josh Rangel: I, I really enjoy being hands on and, and out in the field.
Allen Hall: And now your geographic area of coverage areas grown considerably, where are some projects taking place this year?
Josh Rangel: So we’re in Iowa. Colorado. We have several projects here in Texas. We have a few bids out in Canada right now. We’re trying to land some work in Puerto Rico.
Josh Rangel: So we’ll know by Friday, as a matter of fact, And then that’s couple, we’re trying to get some cranes on a few sites as
Allen Hall: well. So there’s been a, not only in terms of employee growth in terms of geographic coverage, you’ve really grown a good bit. And on the podcast, we’ve been discussing a lot about repowering and I’ve, I’ve seen you guys on LinkedIn.
Allen Hall: You do. If, if you haven’t followed Regel renewables at LinkedIn, you need to do that because Aaron does a great job. I think it’s Aaron just taking videos and staff shots and things and giving you a perspective of what’s actually happening on the ground. And. I appreciate that. I think, I think everybody that follows you does too.
Allen Hall: And, and so repowering is becoming more and more of a thing, particularly in the United States, as, as new onshore starts to slow down. It’s all about repowering keeping your stuff up and running. So from the outside looking at repowering, it seems relatively simple, but I know it’s really complex and evolves a lot of tasks that I’m sure you guys are, are really good at.
Allen Hall: Can you just highlight a couple of the, sort of the complexities about repairing a site and how ring. Manages those situations.
Josh Rangel: I like to look at it from a 360 perspective. People are asking, why would you repower a site it’s old? There’s, you know, smaller towers. There’s a lot more of them. You know, you could build one tower for what, you know, 20 years ago, 20 towers could do nowadays.
Josh Rangel: So from an owner and developer standpoint, repower provides a lot of reduced cost. So you have your electrical lines, a lot of the civil work. That would go into building a new farm is already there. So you want to make sure that any business, right? How can I improve my return on investment barrier, but also reducing my cost.
Josh Rangel: Repowering is that portion for the developers now in, you know, tangent with that, you have to make sure that all these components, whether they’re gonna be reused, they have oil. You have to look at the environmental aspect, permitting. All those still are encompassed with the site, but because you have existing units out on site, you have to be very careful because you don’t want to.
Josh Rangel: Hit the, let’s just say you’re pulling the rotor, right? You don’t want to have the rotor come out hot. It hits the boom on the crane, and now you’re having a, you know, all stop and just a lot of different variables that come into play that you have to be aware of with it being a site that’s still at, at times live, right.
Josh Rangel: Let’s just say there’s 50 towers. 40 towers still might be online. They’ve shut down. And lot of doubt, 10 of ’em, but you also have to double check and make sure that none of ’em are. but in, you know, in people or people, right. And if there’s a mistake and one’s still on and they didn’t realize it was still on, and then you.
Josh Rangel: You know, technicians in a life tower can really your major issues can happen, right? So you just have to make sure you our three main stays are safety, quality and production. And I want all of our men and women to home at the end of the day of their loved ones. So just making sure we double triple check our work in that sense, but repowering back in 2020 for us was 75% of our.
Josh Rangel: so we had projects in Indiana, Minnesota, South Dakota, Texas, all those really help build to where we’re at now to understand, okay, these are how some of the OEMs like to work. These are how some of the crane companies like to work. These are companies that like to just stay in this lane. And these are companies that like to stay in this lane.
Josh Rangel: From a repowering standpoint, it really has provided kind of a jump start for us because it’s a, a niche market for some contractors. But in, in essence, it it’s given us the experience needed to continue. The the growth that I aspire for.
Allen Hall: Yeah. It seems like repowering is going to be the, the, the big ticket items coming up in the next couple of years.
Allen Hall: Just looking at it. I was just looking at some data today, actually like the average winter turbine age is around seven, eight years old, and usually repowering happens. Plus 10 years. So you’re getting closer and closer. And there’s a lot of farms right now that are 11, 12 years old. And we did talk about in Minnesota where they’re actually shutting down wind turbines because they lost their PTC.
Allen Hall: So there’s just this weird dynamic going on right now. And it seems like. Repowering is the thing. And how long does it usually take to repower a turban? Is it a day long process? Is it a week long process? How what’s the sort of timeframe there always
Josh Rangel: depends on when, right? so really geographical location timing of when you’re gonna have your component ready to go.
Josh Rangel: But in back to Minnesota, we had two projects out there. We assisted a crane company and another O the OEM out there. And so. We were trying to do two towers a week, just based off of if we had all the right tooling, did we have turning gear? You know, where’s the blade gripper. So really just depends on where we’re at.
Josh Rangel: But. At that time, we were trying to do at least two towers a week. And
Allen Hall: what, what components are being replaced? Are they replacing the blades? Replacing in the generators? What’s the typical kind of O and M work that you’re doing for those situations?
Josh Rangel: So on these particular projects, in essence, Minnesota, they were the old Clipper towers.
Josh Rangel: We were taking full rotor, dropping it down. Then we were taking off the hood. Then we were taking down the Noel. Now with that particular tower, we were adding an. And we were installing the vest is V 100. So then we’d come back with the adapter. Then we would fly up the nacelle and then the nacelle was, well, we tripped the hub, flew the nacelle and the hub together, and then we would do single stabs for the the blades.
Allen Hall: Wow. Okay. That’s complicated. Is, is that the kind of repower that’s that basically switches suppliers, right? Clipper was GE. It’s going from like a quote unquote, GE to Vestas. Does that happen a lot? Do they change manufacturers in a repower? Yeah.
Josh Rangel: Yeah. So you actually will see that a lot. Really? Yeah. We’re on a site right now and I call it a hybrid, but the actual tower components are all staying the same.
Josh Rangel: We’re just upgrading all the technology within the tower itself. So whether that be the batteries, blade, bearings yard drives, you know, that. Not typical in a, a repower, because I’m used to taking blades down and taking the cells down and replacing them, you know, with different components. We’ve done Siemens two point threes.
Josh Rangel: We’ve done the GE one point fives. So really just depends on one again, the developer. And what manufacturer we’re going with in that regard.
Allen Hall: That’s good work. And it, your max capabilities as these wind turbines get bigger and bigger. And now we’re talking about, well, on offshore talking about 15 megawatt machines, what’s some of the larger machines you’ve done onshore.
Josh Rangel: So we’ve done upwards of the 4.2, 4.5 megawatt platforms. To that statement. We actually had our first phone call for offshore work this week. I can’t tell you how ecstatic I was. I know that’s a big portion of what I want to do. I wanna open up an offshore office as well and really driving the market in that regard, seeing what we need to do with unions and cranes, and really educating myself to be a subject matter expert along the east coast, but also.
Josh Rangel: You have the Gulf and what’s going on around the Houston port and what we can do here. That’s something that I also will be looking into and have been looking into, but I just very humble is when I, I got the inquiry and we’re jumping on a phone call, we’re talking about, you know, putting. Individuals out in 2023 for some offshore work.
Josh Rangel: So it just really exciting in, in, in having that conversation. Yeah,
Allen Hall: that’s really cool. Obviously, 20, 23 is just gonna be the start. Most things get really ramped up by 2025. So we have a little bit of time, but if you have people on the east coast, you’re gonna have to learn to eat sort of Massachusetts, New York food CDER and thin pizza.
Josh Rangel: And. Oh, yeah. I don’t know if they got any good tacos out there.
Allen Hall: Not so much. Unfortunately, yeah, we, we all have to all go to Texas for that good stuff. So there sounds like there’s a lot of great things going on and Ranel continues to grow. What’s what’s the future for Ranel
Josh Rangel: renewables. Yeah. So, like I said, we will one day be a global entity.
Josh Rangel: We have a 10 year plan of just global growth and what that looks like for our staff. I know we’ve hit the milestone of being over a hundred technicians in the field. I want to hit the milestone of having 250 employees with the goal of. Getting over 500 to a thousand and that’s having a strong foundation having the right culture.
Josh Rangel: It’s very team, family oriented. It’s not just individuals that I come in. I’m like, all right. I’ll, I’d only see you from the, the eight to six, nine to six timeframe. It’s. , we’re still having lunches together. We’re going to have dinners together when we’re out on the road, we’re playing, you know, cornholes and washers and, you know, hanging out and going to the movies, but really the appreciation that I have for the technicians that do this day in and day out, but then also being on the road with them when we’re chasing windows in their needing assistance and wanting to be out there and show ’em like we all came out the same way.
Josh Rangel: I’m gonna respect everyone the same way. I just want us to make sure that we’re working. In a safe manner so that we can execute and continue to have the growth and be provided the opportunities for future individuals in the industry that are gonna be coupled with our training facility, as well as, as we get cranes and you know, where we’re gonna have lay down yards and continue the growth once again to provide a turnkey.
Josh Rangel: So. To our customers.
Allen Hall: Josh, will you explain the, the training piece for a minute? So you’re doing something really exciting here and I, I wanna make sure everybody’s aware of it. So you’re actually gonna establish a training facility down in Houston,
Josh Rangel: correct? We’re gonna do a training facility for GW, with the BST, the BTT, the a R T.
Josh Rangel: And then I want to couple that with the what’s gonna be new to the industry, but GW O blade as well. So that’s a
Allen Hall: real big. Benefit. If you’re a technician within Ranel, as you have onsite training, you can get trained up pretty quick there right in Houston. That’s a fantastic advantage.
Josh Rangel: And that’s really the, the ultimate goal.
Josh Rangel: To be affordable, right. I want our staff to come in and they know that they’re getting a, a great quality product. And then at that point, they’re going out to the field. I don’t want our technicians five, six months down the road saying finally, after, you know, getting training, I can start saving money. I want them to be able to get an affordable training.
Josh Rangel: And then as they come out, be ready to go and excited about their, their field and learning about it and loving it. Right. And. Really the type of staff that I want to continue to grow, to feed into. And once they get to the training facility, I get to see them. I get to say hello, I get to, you know, hang out and joke with them a bit, but you know, all seriousness with what we’re trying to do.
Josh Rangel: I want them to be safe and really driving home. The, the facet of this is why we’re doing this so that you guys can be properly trained and have all the certifications needed. To get to a site and say, I have all my certifications. I ready to go up tower. I can save someone. God forbid something happens up tower and.
Josh Rangel: We’re going home at the end of the day. And that’s really truly what I’m trying to do.
Allen Hall: Yeah. That’s huge. It’s a, it’s a really good idea. And I’m sure you guys are gonna do a great job of implementing it and it’s gonna make a difference in the industry. And that’s fantastic, Josh. Thank thanks for being on the podcast.
Allen Hall: And if. If technicians are trying to reach out to connect with Ranel renewables or a site operator needs to get ahold of you, how do they reach Ranel
Josh Rangel: renewables? Yeah. So of course, www.rangalrenewables.cominforangorenewables.com. And of course, social media, I’m big on marketing and branding. We have our director of marketing here as well, and he knows my heart and how we wanna reach out to, you know, individuals, whether, you know, there.
Josh Rangel: Green hand or seasoned in age and a seasoned technician that maybe wants to do project management or, you know, they want to get into a leadership role. But certainly can reach out to us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Those are some of our social media applications that they can
Allen Hall: reach out to us on.
Allen Hall: Nice. And we’ll put all those links in the show notes. So if you’re interested, just go to the show notes. Josh has been great having you on the program. Thank you so much and appreciate having you on up. I
Josh Rangel: appreciate it. Allen, look forward to continuing to see your success as well. And hope to see you guys down the road.
Allen Hall: That’s gonna do for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy podcast. Thanks for listening, please take a moment and give us a five-star rating on your podcast platform. Be sure to subscribe in the show notes below to the Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter, as well as Rosemary’s YouTube channel Engineering with Rosie.
Allen Hall: And we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.
