Are environmental and economic concerns posed by fisherman and advocacy groups valid, given commercial fishing’s impact on marine life? We discuss the repowering of a 240MW wind farm in the midwest, along with general implications for old wind turbines, and discuss carbon fiber vs glass fiber in the future of blade construction.
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EP68 Transcript – Fisherman, Repowering Old Wind Farms, Plus Carbon Fiber vs Glass Blade Debate
0:00
This episode is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. At Weather Guard, we make lightning protection easy. If your wind turbines are due for maintenance or repairs, install our StrikeTape retrofit LPS upgrade at the same time. A StrikeTape installation is the quick, easy solution that provides a dramatic long lasting boost to the factory lightning protection system. Forward Thinking wind site owners install StrikeTape today to increase uptime tomorrow. Learn more in the show notes of today’s podcast. Welcome back.
0:38
I’m Allen Hall.
0:39
I’m Dan Blewett. And this is the uptime podcast where we talk about wind energy engineering, lightning protection and ways to keep your wind turbines running.
All right, welcome back to the uptime podcast. I’m your co host Dan Blewett. On today’s episode, we’re gonna talk about the levelized cost of energy. So renewable, renewable sources, including solar and wind are now the lowest to electricity forms, which is pretty cool news. We’ll talk a little bit about fishermen and some of their worries some of their woes as far as offshore wind coming to the US. Siemens Gamesa has their 11 megawatt offshore turbine now certified as typhoon resistant. We’ll talk a little bit about glass first carbon fiber repowering for old wind farms, and some of the challenges and just interesting tech involved there. So before we get going wanna remind you that in the description of this podcast, whether you’re on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, number one, leave us a review, we’d really appreciate it. But number two, you’ll find uptime tech news, which is our new weekly newsletter, you can easily subscribe to that and just get a notification from us every Thursday morning, when the podcast drops. So it’s right on your inbox, you can click through or listen to the new episode, as well as get some other interesting tech news from around the web, as well as clips from the past. Pat from past episodes, so be sure to sign up for uptime tech news in the description of this podcast. So Alan, how are you sir, let’s start with the levelized cost of energy. renewable sources are now cheaper than ever, and solar is in the number one spot with a $37 cost. And onshore wind is now second with $40 per megawatt hour. So this has been a pretty big change a long time coming, the this cost decrease. And now well below gas and other other other forms
2:40
it has in the latest data is interesting to look at. on the solar side, I think there’s just an emphasis by China to flood the market with cheap solar panels. And that seems to be the driver because Europe in the United States and other parts of the world are not really producing solar cells. So they seem to be mostly coming down to China, on the wind turbine side that the cost of energy is going down as the turbines get bigger. Think of it that way. There’s just producing more power for you know, it’s still expensive to install, but you’re generating so much power out of a certain part of land, which just makes it more efficient. And obviously, the winter market has made a lot of improvements in the last several years, which is fantastic. The one the one item in that list, because it talked about gas and nucular. And then the cost of nuclear has gone up even though we haven’t in the United States haven’t built a nuclear power plant in years, which is weird. And I said, well, it’s just because regulations have driven up the cost. Okay. Nuclear is in our future it has to be if we’re talking about reducing co2 emissions, that’s one gigantic way of doing it, where the cost of energy will be relatively low. And you can produce it day and night. It has all those benefits that you’re looking for, and a low co2 emissions front. Same thing for wind, right? So it’s going to be a combination of all these players, and not necessarily eliminating some of them particularly nucular. I think it’s all gonna have to play together if we’re going to transition to a more electric based economy. With the onset of electric vehicles, and all the other things are going to come online in the next 10 years. You’re gonna need a lot more electricity produced. Wind offshore wind is going to be big in Europe in the United States, but also think nuclear who’s going to have to be part of that mix.
4:37
Yeah, I, I’ve always been interested in nuclear power just because I’ve, you hear the one side obviously, like the horrors of, you know, Three Mile Island and all these. But on the other side, those are outliers and nuclear is actually really safe and really efficient and really powerful. Just know, he knows that there’s just that emotional response that people want to be nowhere near A nuclear power plant and somewhat rightly so. But it seems to get a bad rap compared to what they say, yeah, you know, with modern, modern technology, what we know about it now compared to what we knew about it, you know, 50 6070s, like we can do this really, really well and safely and cheaply, and it should be a part of our future. But it’s just again, fighting that public fear of a nuclear power plant where people think their children are going to grow up and to be to have a third and fourth arm and maybe some nice gills, which I’d take gills personally. But, you know, it’s, there were some just, you know, God, I mean, the the meltdowns of the past are just horrific, and they still have an environmental, they’re still a disaster. Right? So yeah, it’s, it seems like that’s going to really be tough to get public support going forward.
5:50
It will be, but the latest generations of nucleolar seem to be have are much more efficient than they were, literally 50 years ago, roughly one, most of the of the nuclear capacity is built in United States at least. So those improvements and efficiency and they’re actually recycling some of the US material back into the to the new reactors makes a lot of sense, overall, because it, if we’re trying to weigh everything out and figure out if it’s just about co2 emissions, then nucular has to be part of it, wind has to be part of that solar has to be part of that they all have to be part of that we can’t ignore one at the benefit of another sort of thing. And I think that that trade offs going on, there seem to be this disparate discussions about well, if we do win, that we don’t have to nuclear war, if we do do nuclear, don’t do wind, neither one is correct, you’re going to do both, because every part of the world has different needs and different access to different things, such as wind and solar, in some places, because we’re tired and sunny, windy, versus places where it’s cold and not as Sunny, maybe they’re in a nuclear situation, right? orient even at a gas situation, because that’s what they have access to. But globally, you know, where we’re going is less coal plants, more renewables. And that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s going to be a good thing long term. We just got to let the levelized cost of energy play out. And and that’s, that’s what Rosie Barnes was talking to us about a couple of weeks ago, and a couple episodes ago. It’s really about levelized cost of energy, and what that looks like, and balancing that versus other forms of energy. And wind has to be competitive, and it looks like is getting more and more competitive,
7:36
which is great. While I’m speaking of hurdles, obviously, as you install these offshore wind farms, and get all the preparations in line, there’s more and more people affected one of them being fishermen. So the fishing industry is starting to feel a little bit like hey, you’re just sort of steamrolling us. You know, this is all we’ve ever known for many of these, you know, generational fishermen, families, and you know, all along the the Northeast, right, Connecticut, Maine, Rhode Island, all these spots, so, so a lot of people that make their living from that, obviously, seafood will continue to be a thing, like it’s not going away. But at the same time, there’s been a pretty, pretty tough environmental impact from commercial fishing as well. It’s not necessarily the best thing for our oceans. So, Alan, I mean, how much credence Do we need to give to fishermen? How do you see this sort of compromise playing out, I mean, it’s really a big deal as maybe they they think that it is,
8:34
I think it’s gonna be a big deal until we get to the details. And in the northeast of the United States, the way these bigger industrial efforts are dealt with is like, everybody’s got their two cents. And it’s just a lot of clamor, and you got to get your stake in, right, you got to put your stake early, and make sure that your corner of the economy doesn’t get affected at all. That’s that’s the goal here. And as as the progress is made, and the definitions of what actually is going to happen, get laid out and explained to everybody, then the real stakeholders start to come up. And in certain cases, I don’t think it’s really going to affect the fish industry in the United States so much when we get to the details, just because it sounds like we’re going to have massive 10 1215 megawatt wind turbines off the coast of New England. And when order to do that, you’re gonna end up spacing relatively far apart, which then reduces the stress on the fishermen like I got, I got to take my boat through this cascading towers that are planted in my way, and maybe affect my fishing. Right and I think bigger tournaments. So here are some of the things that I think I was a fisherman I would worry about. Now wind turbines are not free of oils and contaminants, right? Maybe it takes oils and hydraulic fluids and stuff to make those things go if a wind turbine catches On fire or has a major hydraulic leak or something. And that ends up dumping into the ocean, does it affect my fishery? Possibly? Yes, it sure could. Right. And if happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, I would want to have some say about that, how we’re going to monitor that. I don’t think that’s fair. Right. And I think the wind turbine industry is aware of that, and will, will take measures to mitigate that. Because, again, one of the one of the things that we’ve been talking about on offshore wind is like, how do you maintain all this stuff? And how often going to maintain it? How are you going to do this? Like, who’s gonna go up and grease all the bearings all the time? And make sure there’s no major oil leak or hydraulic leak? And suddenly servants? I don’t know how how’s it going to happen? How often is that done? That may get mandate into some sort of law or code? Just because of the concerns from fisheries? That seems possible to me? And I think it kind of makes sense to don’t, you know, you think so that in alpha wind turbine kind of firing flipped over and then the ocean? That would
11:10
be, that would be a nightmare, and they’re certainly not going to happen? At some point. You can’t have all those wind turbines out there in the world and not have one of them fall over, or just some sort of thing happens gonna happen eventually. Sure. Yeah. And I, I don’t know, I go back and forth with a sentiment like this is all I’ve ever known. Because I think all humans, at some point have to reinvent themselves. I don’t know. I don’t know how much and this is me personally, my own opinion. I don’t know how much sympathy I have for that line of thinking with your, your, your profession. Because again, like, I mean, we don’t have cobblers really, we don’t have blacksmiths like we used to. We don’t have Cooper’s like we used to, I mean, barrels are in high demand, because who makes barrels anymore? Right. I mean, this is a very real thing, right? whiskey industry, and I, you know, all these. So, I mean, I think at some point, this, we do need to care for the fishermen and the economic impact of some of these, you know, potentially stomped on. But at the same time, who speaks for the marine life, I mean, maybe these wind farms protect marine life, because now Yeah, we can fish these to death, you know, like, this is going to give some of this marine life a chance to recover, because it’s gonna be a little bit off limits, I mean, the ocean is gigantic, I feel a little bit like a little bit of, you know, I don’t know, maybe it’s okay, that we have a chunk of chunk of the sea blocked off for a little while, or it just, it’s just going to make it a little bit tougher to wreak havoc on some of our marine life. So, you know, I think there’s give and take both ways. I think the fishermen should be protected, I think, don’t think they should lose their livelihoods. But I think people also need to start to see the writing on the wall, which is that, you know, commercial fishing in general is getting harder. And it takes a toll on the planet. And people maybe need to consider some sort of, I don’t know, I it’s easier said than done to just switch the thing you’ve always done, I totally understand that.
13:14
Right? You got so much invested in it, you have your whole air, all your savings, and all possible. You know, retirement income tied up in about your equipment, all the stuff. If that goes to zero, you’re really in trouble.
13:30
Right. But that also still goes back to sunk costs. And I think it’s really a human of fallacy of ours, like you’re in a marriage for 20 years, and neither of you are happy. And you say, Well, this is, you know, we we spent so much time it’s like, well, do you want to keep banking on past? Or do you want to be happy going forward? You know, you like I was a baseball player for 30 years of my life, it was really hard to move on. And I had to write and that’s not I mean, it was my profession for a little while. But humans are surprisingly good at remaking themselves. And I mean, it’s it certainly is not a lecture to fishermen. But I think all of us have to start to think at some point to what’s coming next, because a lot of jobs have been automated out, right? A lot more jobs will be automated out in the future. And I don’t I think resilience is part of this equation. I mean, I think there again, there should be concessions, and they should be taken care of. But I think there needs to be a level of resilience where, like, Look, the industry, for fishermen might shrink. And so 20% of you might need to move on and find new new work, and people need to start to consider that.
14:35
Yeah, it’s not really any different than any other part of the economy. It’s not, right, it’s not and it was interesting to bring that up because we were driving through sort of Eastern upstate where they call upstate New York, and we happened to pull off to for a moment to get something to drink anyhow, so we’re driving to this town. I don’t want to name the town but at one point, they had a huge A huge factory there. And it’s just, you know, grass. Right? And you go, wow, there’s there are literally 1000s of jobs lay in there. What happened? And where’s everybody? Well, everybody has moved on, right, at least hopefully. And I think that that exists in a lot of industries along the coastlines of the Northeast, where we’ve seen so many changes over the last 50 years. And this is just going to be another one. But you know, in the hopes, hopes are that the wind industry can provide a jobs that would not have otherwise been there. That’s the hope manufacturing jobs, engineering jobs. You know, quality jobs, maintenance jobs, technicians really high paying moderately high to high paying jobs, that wouldn’t have been there. And so you may see a resurgence of communities up and down the Northeast that were just a shipping dock 50 100 years ago, that hasn’t been active, and now they’re back in service again, and that that’s going to take time to flesh out. I think the the key to all this is making sure that just clarity, and that everybody understands what is about to happen.
16:08
Well, and that’s part of my other point is that fishermen are not one trick ponies. These are skilled people. These are not very people they know they live, that’s all they’ve ever known. You could easily see fishermen being great machinists, great welders, just great craftsmen are just, I mean, working with your hands and being adaptable. There’s so many things that can go wrong in a boat. Right? I mean, this is not easy work. It’s not unskilled labor. Right? So Oh, wait, there’s a lot. I feel like there’s a lot of jobs that they could potentially pivot to that are in sort of a, you know, a lot of that could be servicing offshore wind or could just be there’s a real there’s a dearth of workers in skilled labor today. And I think there’s a lot of jobs to pivot to that everyone is go to college and be a knowledge worker. Well, we’re the people that want to work hard with their hands and and do that sort of work. Like being a commercial fisherman. That’s hard work that people don’t want to do, but so I think there are also opportunities out there.
Alright, so moving on typhoon turbines, we’ve talked about typhoon proof stuff in the past. And so Siemens Gamesa there, sg 11.0 dash 200, dd, direct drive, always love Siemens, Gamesa as the names are very, very catalogue of them. But this is achieved, typhoon certification, that it can take up to 57 meters for 10 seconds, or 57 meter per second, per 10 minutes, and three second gusts of up to 79.8 meters per second of wind. So, Alan, obviously that like, you know, the companies that certify these know what they’re doing, they have some pretty high tech models, all this stuff, but Sure. Do you think these still need to be seen?
18:05
Yeah, everybody’s gonna wait and see. Yeah, I think they’re gonna have to, obviously, laboratory testing and computer simulation or one thing, and then putting it on the site is a completely different animal, and has been for a lot of different things, and particularly lightning, where we have had all kinds of lightning tests done on wind turbines, and yet, we get phone calls all the time about wind turbine blades getting destroyed or damaged with lightning, and they went through the IEC testing, but it doesn’t seem to hold out in their particular part of the world. I don’t see that need to be different on the typhoon rating, either. I think the typhoon rating is probably going to be 90%. Right? That’s why a lot of these engineering things go the the specs are covering the 90 percentile case, not the 100%. Okay. So there will be sometime somewhere a wind event typhoon event that may exceed what they have qualified, they’re determined to and we’re gonna have to deal with that. It’s just like, any other cataclysmic event, you don’t really know how much they are willing to throw it. Yeah, until it happens. And then we’re just New Orleans and the floods Fukushima nuclear reactor in Japan, pickup pickup, it’s all it’s all a little bit of variability to it, that you just can’t design for the worst case all the time. It just it just eats up too much engineering and cost and it’s not worth it for that 1% possibility. So most likely, it’s gonna be okay. It’s just that there’s that 1% possibility. So I’m just going to go wrong. Yeah. And
19:44
it’s funny that we’ve discussed that where, you know, if the lifespan is X amount of years, and the runtime needs to be X amount of days for a year, right, then you know, if and the likelihood is that it, there might be a hurricane that can take one down. You know, In one out of every 20 years on average, then it probably doesn’t matter, however, right? As we talk about economic impact of fishermen, to wildlife, all that other stuff, it might not financially matter, but it matters to the ocean if a couple of these Get down. And there’s some sort of fallout from that, obviously. So yeah, I’m sure the insurers are considering that as well. Like, I was watching a classic movie for a little bit the other day Fight Club. And you know, that scene in Fight Club, where he’s talking about what he does on the airplane with this woman about how they decide to either do a recall or not, and it’s purely financial, right? If it kills a ton of people, but it’s cheaper than doing the recall than they don’t do the recall. And those people are just gonna, they know people are gonna die from their automobiles, right? So obviously, that’s going to be a thing to where I’m sure you have to project. Hey, if one of these goes down, these fluids are inside, if they leaked out, or if this happened, or this happened, what would be the you know, the regulatory fallout from it? How much are we going to get fined by the EPA? How much does this cleanup going to cause the salvage to pull up a gigantic turban out of the depths of the ocean? All those things, I’m sure are factored into the insurance calculations. But
21:16
yeah, they have to be on some level. And the one that always wonder about the most, and it’s just the typhoon is, is one, right, the high speed winds and the rain and everything’s rolling around, which is not good for winter. But, but also like in a tsunami event, where you have an earthquake, and you have a number of underground or underwater cables that are tying all these floating wind turbines together. What happens there, how much load Can you put on an underground cable before he starts readings, but cables apart, and then you don’t have not only do you have a flood are a big tidal wave to hit the community, which is bad, but then you don’t have any power or ability to get power back up again, because all your cables are all snapped off. Under the ocean. There’s, there’s a lot of different variables here we haven’t, don’t have a lot of experience with and in engineering wise, like I said, you try to do the best you can have with what you know at the time and what you can afford to do. And then the rest is hoping that the event doesn’t happen that 1% case. But that’s the one that gets me is like tsunami, that’s the one I really worry about how does what does that look like? And because tsunamis we don’t even know that much about them. Honestly, we just don’t we didn’t we did a couple years ago didn’t even know when they were occurring. And now we have a tsunami alert system, which is great. But what are you going to do if you got a set of turbans off the coast of Japan or somewhere? How does that even work? I don’t know. There’s a lot of engineering as Sony’s go on and offshore. And those parts of the world where major wave and wind events can still occur.
22:51
Yeah, it’s a mother nature is a cruel mistress. She’s a quirky lot always on always unpredictable that Mother Nature. So. So I want to talk a little bit about glass fiber versus carbon fiber. With wind turbans going offshore and getting bigger, obviously, there’s going to be more carbon fiber added to these the blade design. And obviously that challenges lightning protection. You see, do you see blades becoming increasingly more filled with carbon fiber and spar? Or are they going to try to have to find a balance with lightning issues as they get offshore? Because they obviously like the least maintenance possible is ideal for offshore? Right? There’s so hard to get people out there to fix them. Right? Is it good? I mean, obviously, carbon fiber is important for weight savings and all the strength and all that stuff as they get bigger. But then there’s a little bit of a trade off of increased lightning activity and punctures in the middle of the blade away from the receptor. Right? Do you find that? Do you think there’s going to be a trade off and where do you fall on this sort of issue as blades get bigger offshore.
24:02
So what’s happening now is carbon fiber, its strength to weight ratio is much better than fiberglass, so you can make longer blades with less weight, which is what you want, because adding weight adds requires more strength. It’s a sort of a vicious cycle with fiberglass. It’s useful to a point but then once you cross that 80 meter 100 meter range, you’re going to have to have some level of carbon fiber in there to keep the weight down. Now, you know, in terms of lightning protection, it does drive you to do different things. I just saw LinkedIn today, repair that was being made on a wind turbine with carbon fiber, spar, spar webs, whether it had aluminum mesh, inside the blade, or the spars were to provide a conductive path along with the carbon. So they were trying to protect the carbon from a lot of light carrying a lot of lightning current and they’re doing Repair internal. So you got this, this ends up being evermore complicated repair as you’re trying to put this metal mesh back where you have grounded out. So we’re already into that, what do we do bit and there is a band a more conscious effort to make sure that the designs are lightning proof in a sense Vestas I think had some problems with that, at least that’s the story on the street, you’re going to see more and more metal meshes being used internally on blades to protect the spars from lightning strike, or like you’re just carrying lightning current. And then what happens at the tips and aren’t the receptors is going to be fascinating, you see, more and more lightning receptors being placed on the trailing edges of blades away from where the carbon is. So they’re trying to catch it on the trailing edges of these blades, and then direct it downward in a controlled means. So they’re not having damage happen to the carbon section of the blade. That’s the philosophy. So all that all that makes sense, when you see those sort of transitions happen right now. What we don’t have a lot of history on though, is how how well those systems are working, because there’s no feedback mechanism. So unless you’re the OEM, and you’re keeping track of how your designs are doing, you don’t have a lot of knowledge, especially after the five year warranty period is up. You don’t have a lot of history, but unless a larger customer calls and complaints like a mid American, yeah, so there is going to be more and more carbon, particularly offshore has to be there’s going to be more and more emphasis on lightning protection, because you’re right, you don’t want to have to go out and service these things. So the blade I saw today was using aluminum mesh on the inside. While aluminum mesh is great, but the problem with aluminum mesh is that that stuff corrodes in salt water. So exposing that to the salt, corrosive salt environment, over 20 years, most likely that aluminum is going to go from aluminum into aluminum powder dust, aluminum oxide is just going to break it down. So the environmental addressing the environmental sealing and corrosion prevention measures are going to be really come to the forefront on offshore. Well, they haven’t really done too much about it onshore.
27:17
So finally, let’s talk a little bit about repowering. So Vito has picked IAA three power 240 megawatt wind farm in Illinois, where I used to live for nine years. Yeah, so go Illinois getting more power. But it’s an interesting prospect as emri powering this, they’re gonna change out generators, cells, hubs, blade staff during stuff like that. There’s 109 on this particular file, this particular form, they’re going to repower 109. And they’re going to decommission, five. And that seems like this is going to become a more and more common thing, obviously, this this forum was created in 2010. Now, here, 11 years later, they’ve decided that it makes financial sense to go ahead and upgrade everything and they’re gonna, it looks like they’re gonna produce 60% more capacity annually when they’re done these upgrades in July of 2022. So I mean, do you expect to see more of this? Alan, as we go forward? These repowering efforts?
28:18
Yeah, because the infrastructure is there all the the real right out of the cables, yeah, cables, transformers, I think maybe we have to update the transformers, but the the towers are there, the concrete pads are there, as long as they can carry the additional load of the larger blades, and the larger the cell, they go along with it, then awesome, because you know, what the winds are. I mean, that’s one thing, you definitely know, because you’ve been there for a long time you so you know, what the winds are, you know, what they increase in production is going to look like, as, and it’s just a lot less expensive, because you have, you just extend the leases with all the landowners that you have. So there’s not a lot of starting over again, and doing all that government approaching the local governments and local fire departments and all that stuff that that happens in the United States, it’s more of Hey, we’re just going to improve what’s here, we’re not going to alter too much visually than then obviously, the blade should be bigger, but essentially, you’re gonna have a wind turbine in the same spot doing the same thing. And it’s just gonna extend the life and which means everybody around there that’s getting paid as a percentage, how much power is being generated, it’s going to make more money for a longer period of time. So you’re going to get up a bonus in the mailbox, which is always always appreciated. As but I it’s, I think this is a really interesting because a several years ago, I think the emphasis was, you know, just knock over the turbans, put new stuff in and go. And we’ve gotten away from that. And that’s an interesting way because it’s going to lower the cost to improve the power performance. But as we saw recently, and we had that in our newsletter recently, the video in New Mexico of the explosive demolition of what 90 tournament’s? I think it was 90 turbans down in New Mexico.
30:07
The video. Yeah,
30:10
right there Mitsubishi 1000s I think one megawatt turbans, or they just basically exploded the towers and collapse them over and then guess hauling them off and trucks. That’s not good and in my opinion, I think if he could repower those those towers with something that’s generates more power, awesome, then maybe the towers weren’t tall enough to repower them. Maybe that was it. That was a key there.
30:34
Yeah. And that’s a question for you is, I mean, say you’re going to build a brand new farm from scratch today, do you perhaps over build the towers or over build the foundation on the idea that maybe in five or 10 years, probably more like 10, you might repower it and put it away bigger generator. So like we build, we build the capability for holding, you know, something 30% bigger and heavier than what we’re gonna put on it. So that way in 10 years, we can definitely reuse the foundation with a significant bump in weight and all that stuff and still be totally good. Maybe they didn’t think of that back in the day. Maybe they have already been thinking of this. And that’s not really an issue. I’m sure there’s, I mean, obviously, these things are always overbuilt. Right. So with stand, there are lots of stuff, but then you can’t max out that capacity completely, because then you run the risk of it.
31:26
Right, you know, right. Right you into lifetime issues. Right. But I do think that’s a possibility now that we could design the wind turbine such that they, after a 10 year period, they know they’re going to put new blades in the cells on them. Yeah, I think that’s definite possibility. It gets back to that discussion that we’ve had with several of our guests about what to do. In the design phase, do you make the ultimate wind turbine, probably the most expensive version of a wind turbine you can make? Or do you make something that’s less expensive that utility wise works, knowing full well that you’re going to have to provide maintenance to it and maybe upgrade it in five to 10 years. And that’s just built into the economics of the model, such that you’re going to make that bonus and power that he already kind of pre built it in there, you have money set aside to go do that. So that the overall economic model gets even more profitable, especially guys, you get two years 10 plus, which is where a lot of other winter midsize searches drop off, right? So you could all of a sudden, like they’re doing in Illinois, right now you can see a major increase in power output, which is a major increase in the amount of money you’re getting paid. Those are big benefits to everybody. So I think there is going to be a shift and somebody has done their homework on determining whether the the towers and the concrete pads that are already in place can handle the additional load, because the rotor diameter was just getting better bigger, which means there’s more load onto the turban itself and in tower. So they must have over designed it in some level in some order providing some reinforcements, which they could do also. But it is a fascinating thing, because you’d hope that these winter, besides you have an operation now you could have an operation for longer periods of time. So this is sort of on a brilliant scale of engineering stuff that you wouldn’t have expected. But it’s really interesting. And we’re going to follow it more as it as it pops up.
33:19
Well. And the other question is, like in this case, these turbines made it 11 years. Right, right. So then if you start to think about the common scourge of turbine blades right now leading edge erosion, well, if you say, well, maybe from year zero to five, leading edge rows is not a problem, and then five to eight, it starts to really take a toll. But if we’ve only got to get to year 11, maybe you’re eight we put on some vortex generators and some aerodynamic add ons just right. And don’t we just wouldn’t never, we never fix the leading edge erosion because as long as we can get ourselves to year 11, or whatever, we’re just swapping out the blades and promise off never have to bother with it. So that’s right. That’s totally
34:02
right. And I think the the other piece to this is the the advent of blade recycling, that’s going to happen. And I know we’re talking with one of the leaders in that industry in a growing industry and hopefully are going to have mine as a guest. But if you can recycle those blades, so you don’t have to bury them, then the PR costs is much lower. So you’re going to recycle that into another wind turbine base, probably concrete base. So it becomes less obtrusive to then basic, pop the top, pop the top off a winter and recycle it and then put a new one in there. It’s just less PR damage, less cost less all this other stuff that goes along with it. It gets more economical and I think you’re right Dan, I think you’re right. I think the VG additions at your five or six or whatever that’s going to be to get it to your 10 will then allow you to put new blades on a repower and that’s that is an end interesting development, I think I think we’re gonna see more but that’s why I want to keep our ear to the ground on it.
35:04
Well, that’s gonna do it for this week of the uptime podcast. Thanks so much for listening. Be sure to subscribe to the show, leave us a review we’d greatly appreciate it. And subscribe to uptime tech news, which you’ll find in the show notes whether you’re listening on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or YouTube. So thanks again for watching and we will see you next week on the uptime wind energy podcast.
operating a profitable wind farm is all about mitigating costs, minimizing risks and being efficient with maintenance repairs and upgrades. It’s incredibly expensive to send a team of rope access technicians up tower to make even simple repairs. We also know how costly lightning damage can be requiring inspection repairs and downtime for even minor lightning strikes. Maximize the time efficiency of your Tech’s and prevent future lightning damage by installing our StrikeTape LPS upgrade the next time your crews are going up on ropes. Learn more in today’s show notes or visit us on the web at Weather Guard wind.com
