Rosemary and Allen dig into the use of black paint on wind turbine blades to prevent bird strikes. Painting blades black is not a simple fix – there are structural concerns from Rosemary. Washington State and many other states are passing laws to abolish wind turbine blade disposal in landfills. Are old blades toxic? Philip Totaro of Intelstor joins the show to discuss BP’s latest move out of onshore wind and solar and into offshore wind and green hydrogen.
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Uptime 156
Allen Hall: Rosemary, your fully charged live event is happening this weekend, so when you listen to this podcast, it’ll, it’ll have been over, but that’s a big event in Australia, isn’t it ?
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I’m excited. It’s the first one this year, but they’ve already locked in for next year as well, so I guess that the response was good.
Rosemary Barnes: So I’m looking forward to seeing how many people show up and yeah, and checking out all. All the stuff that they’ve got there. They, you can do like electric car test drives and other electric stuff like electrical lawn mowers and scooters and and other fun stuff like that. So it should be, should be a really good weekend.
Allen Hall: Well speaking as an electric lawnmower owner, battery powered lawnmower owner. They are fantastic. So I, I encourage everyone in Australia to buy a battery powered lawnmower is the, it is the most awesome thing because you don’t have to mess with the gas change of oil, none of it. You, you charge it, you run it.
Allen Hall: It’s brilliant. This week we have a, a number of stories about wind turbines have been a problem for birds, or at least thought to be a problem for birds. But a number of studies on offshore wind indicate that the birds. Avoid the wind turbines, which is great. And another study has popped out in regards to painting wind turbine blades and towers, sort of black and white and, and almost a checkup board pattern to help keep birds away.
Allen Hall: And it, it may work, but Rosemary has deep concern about the structural impacts to the blades.
Rosemary Barnes: Yep. And we’re going to talk about wind turine blade recycling. If it makes sense to require that this that this happens, technologies are available to do it. Should we just do it? We’re gonna talk about some of the trade-offs that you might not think of.
Rosemary Barnes: It’s not, not really the slam dunk that it sounds like.
Allen Hall: Then we have Phil Totaro from Intelstor back to talk about BP’s plan to reset its renewable business and focus on offshore wind and green hydrogen. And our wind Farm of the week is Bloom Wind in Southwest Kansas, so stay tuned for that. I’m Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I’m here with our Australian Blade Guru Rosemary Barnes.
Allen Hall: And this is the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.
Allen Hall: There has been a number of news articles in the press over the last couple of months looking at birds flying into offshore wind turbines and there, and there’s been a number of research efforts to look into that. One of the research efforts was led by vain. And it looked at wind turbines offshore of Scotland in the North Sea.
Allen Hall: And for two years they studied seabird behavior at the Aberdeen offshore wind farm. Tracking these birds to make sure they kept track if any of them hit, hit turbines, right? So they looked at a couple of different birds herring goals, gannets kitty wakes, and great black backed goals. So birds you typically see on the seashore and they, they watched ’em from April to October when they’re ac had the most activity.
Allen Hall: They did not record a single collision between a bird and a wind tur blade zero. In fact, they found that seabird deliberately avoided the wind tur blades of these offshore turbines. So there’s some people who ran this, this project. One of ’em, Hendrix Scv says quote, people have claimed that as that very costly solution would be needed to ensure birds avoid collision with the wind turb blaze.
Allen Hall: But the species they’ve tracked do a great job avoiding them. They seem highly capable, capable of surviving in a wind power environment. . So for these particular breeds of birds, they, they seem fine around wind TURs. Like they can see them, they can sense them, that they’re not gonna fly around them. But that’s not the case worldwide, right?
Allen Hall: I mean, we, we know that birds run into wind turbines. That seems to be common knowledge, particularly onshore. We know that. So it. Is it just because these birds are a little bit smarter, maybe a little more street wise, that they’re not running into wind turbines?
Rosemary Barnes: Well, I think that o overall birds are not hitting wind turbines at any sort of, you know, huge rate.
Rosemary Barnes: I think if you’re gonna talk about wind turbines and birds in general, it’s not. Problem. You know, buildings, cats and cars are, you know, thousands of times worse for birds. As you know, human cause problems for birds than wind turbines are. And you’ve also gotta remember that climate change is becoming a problem for plenty of bird species as well, and we’ll be more in the future and balance all that.
Rosemary Barnes: But the issue is that while that’s true, Globally, it’s not true for every single kind of bird. So you kind of really can’t talk about birds in general. This is a solution that stops birds in general from getting hit by wind turbines. I think you really have to take it species by species and wind farm by wind farm.
Rosemary Barnes: There are some large bird species. Already endangered, not due to wind turbines, due to other mostly manmade reasons. And then, you know, even if you’ve got a really, really endangered bird species, then even a couple of extra deaths from wind turbines is, becomes a big deal. It’s really good to see the news that these gulls and whatever other bird species they were looking at in this.
Rosemary Barnes: Study, they’re, they’re able to see the wind turbines and avoid them. I, I’ll be surprised if it really silences any critics because it’s beside the point for what people are upset about, which is specific endangered bird populations being hurt by specific wind farms.
Allen Hall: That’s kind of a mystery, right? We just don’t know a lot about it, but at least somebody’s.
Allen Hall: Doing studies, which is what needs to be done. And then there’s, there’s more news in this front because there’s, there’s a couple of efforts have been done on some wind farms where they paint the blades black and white and the towers too, evidently so they everything. It’s got this kind of massive black and white color.
Allen Hall: Which is unique, I thought. I mean, why are they just don’t paint them red or orange or something that’s highly visible. And there’s good reason for that actually. So there, there’s a recent study about painting wind turbines, black and white. And the, the rationale is, is that birds the way they have to see if the eyes are on the side of their heads.
Allen Hall: They really don’t see that well straight ahead. Right. And those big birds of prey, like we were talking about, vultures and eagles and things like that are constantly flying at high altitude, looking down for little mice or fish or whatever they’re gonna go eat. . So they’re the kind of division is located down and they’re not looking sort of side to side.
Allen Hall: So the, the thought is that these birds, these bigger birds, which have a, just a different vision system than like a seagull does, evidently they, they notice these, these chains in shades. It’s like when someone’s approaching you from behind, you kinda see their shadow. It’s sort of like that evidently.
Allen Hall: And, but it, that looks to be very effective. Now my question is if it, it is effective and great, then we can paint the wind as black and white. But I, I thought that we don’t like painting composites black for a a com, a structural reason, right? Doesn’t it make the blades hotter? Warmer?
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. It, it can, and that’s one of the reasons why you wouldn’t just, y you know paint one of the wind turbine blades black, just in case it helps.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, because they can heat up and wind turbine blades. The materials that they’re made for, made from, they get softer and less stiff as they heat up. So that’s definitely a, a problem. But the, the thing with. The thing with that, that study about painting one blade black so it was, the original study was done ages ago, but just really, really tiny.
Rosemary Barnes: And yeah, it was not obvious whether it would be, you know, whether it was a real result. Yeah. So the, the latest study hasn’t really gone too much further than that. It’s still very small, but I hear it all the time. Oh, all you need to do is paint one blade black and then birds don’t die. So why aren’t they doing it?
Rosemary Barnes: when turbine designers just hate birds or something. It’s the conclusion, but the reality is it hasn’t been rolled out widely, and I can’t really understand why it, it wouldn’t be, it’s not, it’s not so hard. I mean, it’s painting one blade out of a a rotor black. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Because you are going to add some, some mass, and you also have issues where, you know, each wind turbine rotor, it’s, it’s blades of balance.
Rosemary Barnes: You don’t, you can’t just put, pick any three random blades and put them in, you know, a set because they have a weight variation. The manufacturing tolerance is, Is bigger than what you can actually have on any one rotor. You couldn’t have two heavy blades and one light, one, it would be imbalanced.
Rosemary Barnes: And so at the factory, they don’t know which three blades, you know, they don’t, they don’t know when they’re making them, which blades are gonna make, which set. They wait until they’re made and wait, and then they will pick. Pick them, like arrange them in sets that are balanced, right? So by the time that you’ve done that, you might end up, oh, this, this rotor has three black blades.
Rosemary Barnes: This one has, you know, two yeah, two black blades or, or whatever. It’s not. Not so straightforward, so you’d probably end up having to paint them afterwards, which is extra work would slightly affect the aerodynamics, would slightly affect the weight, all those things. So it’s not totally trivial, as trivial as it sounds to, you know, someone who’s maybe not involved in the industry.
Rosemary Barnes: But it just clearly hasn’t been proved, it hasn’t been demonstrated to actually work.
Allen Hall: The study says that it does work, and they’re giving reasons why it should work. Right. I I, I, I don’t know if it’s gonna be implemented everywhere. Right. I think that’s the big step is All right, let’s just, let’s just assume that if I paint.
Allen Hall: Powder blade black, all the blade black, and, and put it out in the service that it’s gonna reduce. So just say it re reduces bird deaths by 10%. Right. Which is probably enough to do something with.
Rosemary Barnes: I I wouldn’t assume that I, I, I, I, I can’t say that it’s like a conservative thing. I, I reckon it’s probably incredibly close to zero for the majority of projects.
Rosemary Barnes: Otherwise, I do feel like it would be rolled out by now. Why, why it’s such, such an easy solution to a problem that it’s not a big problem, the bird deaths, but it is a problem that people talk about a lot.
Allen Hall: Well, the, the thing that I worry about the most is, like you said, if you, when you paint part of.
Allen Hall: Blade black or one blade completely black. It it, the flexibility is gonna change, right? So you don’t have a weight imbalance. You have this flexibility imbalance. And we were talking with we were at the American Clean Power last week and ran into large Benson from AC 8 83 up in Canada. And those, and those guys do pitch alignment.
Allen Hall: and they were describing how bad of a problem pitch alignment is on bearings and gear boxes and all of that. It seems like having a blade a little more flexible. It maybe has a little more load, less load in some instances, would put stresses on the gear box, all the bearings, and basically age or.
Allen Hall: That would, that would be my big concern. Wouldn’t it be yours?
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, definitely. And also on the, on the tower, you know, if you’ve got one, one blade bending a lot more than the other, than you’re gonna get some, you know, funny, funny loads. Ha happening some, you know, maybe exciting the natural frequency of the, the tower in a way that wasn’t expected.
Rosemary Barnes: But Rhoda is a huge, huge problem. And, you know, every turbine has a sensor for or. At some sort of a way to determine when there’s a, a rotor imbalance and they, they shut down because otherwise you end up shaking your turbine apart and that’s how you end up with collapsed wind turbines.
Allen Hall: Oh, you do, you, you can, if they get way outta balance.
Allen Hall: I think one of the things that Lars was des describing to me was it may not move the tower all that much, but it’s definitely putting bearings in. And so may, it may not knock down your turbine , but it will shorten its lifetime and yeah. That’s why I wonder if everybody’s a little cautious about this technique because the OEMs haven’t really blessed it yet.
Allen Hall: Right. If Vestus comes out and says, Hey, we’ve done a study. We put all the, the string Gs on a, a couple of turbines. It’s not gonna affect anything. Everybody go ahead and do it. And I then I think that you’ll see lawmakers probably recommend that. Not that I think that’s a great idea, but I, I do see it being implemented in certain parts of, at least the United States.
Rosemary Barnes: Well, I think that the one blade black thing is definitely a high risk. Idea to, to, to, to roll out. And you wouldn’t do it without compelling evidence. And then I think you’d only be putting it in places where you expected there to be a problem with birds or where you were surprised to find that there was a problem with birds because I mean, at least in Australia, and I’m sure worldwide, they are doing bird studies when they’re planning a, a site for a new wind farm.
Rosemary Barnes: So, you know, they. Generally not putting them where they think that there are gonna be big problems with birds. Especially if there’s, you know, endangered birds that are going to be significantly affected. They will, they will experience some extra bird deaths from a wind farm being there.
Rosemary Barnes: Definitely. But you know, like I was saying at the start, it’s not to the scale of, you know, you put a new road in somewhere, you’re gonna see a lot more extra bird deaths from that than you would from the wind farm. In fact, one of the studies that I read about it they studied all the bird deaths from the wind industry and found that the number one cause of bird deaths in the wind industry was employees driving to and from the wind farm, hitting them in their car E even the employees hitting them in their cars is a bigger, was a bigger effect in this particular study than birds hitting wind turbines in the wind farm.
Rosemary Barnes: So, You gotta keep it in perspective. And if there’s a real risk of causing problems for the wind turbines, and ultimately it’ll be a safety problem in the end you’re not going to say on the off chance that this saves a, a bird we’re going to put out some unknown risk across our whole fleet of wind turbines.
Rosemary Barnes: I mean, that’s just not a. A smart thing to do. Sounds so easy. Just paint one third of you in turbines black. And then birds won’t die anymore. But one, the evidence is not there, that it’s gonna save significant numbers of birds. And two, it’s not as easy as it sounds. All right.
Allen Hall: You heard it from the , beca Roseberry, who is our resident?
Allen Hall: Ornithologist, is that how you pronounce it? Ornithologist. . That’s a big word for a, a kid from Nebraska. More to come. There’s more to come on this. I, I, I think, I think if they can make it work, it’s great cuz it’s probably the cheapest solution to help reduce bird
Rosemary Barnes: death. But the stripy idea is one I hadn’t heard about before, but I wasn’t, and I, I will admit that I didn’t spend hours researching this before the show.
Rosemary Barnes: But have they actually done it? Or is it just somebody that’s an expert in bird vision that’s saying, I expect this would work. Where? Where’s this stripy wind turbine? How, how many have they tried? You can’t just like, you know, try one, one wind turbine and, and think that you’ve got now globally applicable results.
Rosemary Barnes: You need. At least tens of them, you know, in different locations. And you know, more before you’d really be sure, but the stripy thing, at least you’re gonna avoid most of the problems that we’re talking about with having one blade black and the other two white. No, I, I think it’s a same problem.
Rosemary Barnes: It depends how, I guess, how much area you need black. I guess you need quite a lot of them to be black. Yeah. You might end up with stress concentrations as well, cuz you’ve got like a really flexible part of the blade and then it’s, and then it’s stiff and then it’s flexible and then it’s stiff. So, yeah.
Allen Hall: That’s what I’m saying. Right. . It’s, it’s a complicated problem. It’s a complicated problem without any mechanical composites effort analysis behind it. Somebody means to get down with a couple of pencils and erasers and sketch out . How this goes wrong? Cuz this is not gonna go away if, if, if they, if the ornithologist can get something to work in the field and it looks promising, you know, regulators can be knocking on the OEM stores.
Allen Hall: Ask them to try
Rosemary Barnes: it. . Yeah. But I think people need to remember as well that it’s not a case of we just let birds die in the meantime until we solve this. Like they are taking this into account when they’re citing wind farms and where there are problems they de get declined. And, and there are definitely contentious wind farms.
Rosemary Barnes: There’s a couple in Australia, one, one especially on the north. Coast of Tasmania at the moment that there, you know, it’s been, it’s been approved, it’s environmental assessment was, you know, accepted. But a lot of green groups think that it’s gonna be terrible for birds. So I’m not saying that in every case there’s agreement and you never put a wind farm in where it would damage a bird.
Rosemary Barnes: But there is at least a process and people are already trying to avoid this problem by yeah. Putting wind farms where endangered birds are gonna be hit. And there’s all the methods too, like, you know, they’ve you got some vision systems looking out for endangered birds and shutting them down in some places, and all, all sorts of stuff.
Rosemary Barnes: Well, that,
Allen Hall: that’s a trade off, right? You can either turn the turine off, which is gonna be one solution, or slow it down, which is a solution implemented right now, or leave ’em running at full speed with some black and white blade. I’m not sure which is the more expensive of the options. It may be equal by the time you’re.
Allen Hall: Get the latest on wind industry, news, business, and technology sent straight to you every week. Sign up for the uptime tech newsletter@weatherguardwind.com slash news. Well, there’s numerous efforts across the United States at the moment to prevent the burial of aged out wind turbine blades. So as we retire wind turine blades, they need to go some.
Allen Hall: Historically they have been cut up and, and buried in landfills because they are considered to be essentially construction waste and inert. And so that’s the method that’s been happening. But a lot of states are starting to push back because it just, the photographs look bad. That’s just some total of what I can understand.
Allen Hall: It, it just doesn’t look good. So this bill in Washington State and it, it passed the Senate up there. Aims to quote, hold green energy to green standards and would require Washington State University University to examine the feasibility of recycling wind turbine blades. The the bill sponsor Jeff Wilson said he was concerned about creating waste burdening landfills, and the importance of stewardship of winter wind blades during the disposal process.
Allen Hall: What are we gonna do with the thousands of used wind tur blades when they reach into their lifecycle? Simply bearing these giants in our landfills is not acceptable given our commitment to the environment. This bill provides the opportunity to explore the potential to manufacture and recycle these components right here in Washington, expanding job creation in the green energy sector.
Allen Hall: So wind power is the second largest energy source in Washington state producing about 3.4 gigawatt. Pretty good amount. This, this Washington State effort is being copied all over the United States currently. The, the one thing about these efforts, Rosemary, which I always find odd, is they want to connect the local university into finding out if they can recycle blades.
Allen Hall: You can recycle blades today. If you wish, there are plenty of opportunities to do that. Am am I off?
Rosemary Barnes: Yes and no. . You, you can, you can recycle. There are, there are ways if you, if you wish, if you wish to pay the, the bill for it. And. Yeah, it’s not economically sensible at the moment. You know, like there’s no argument.
Rosemary Barnes: If you’ve got some aluminum waste or some steel waste, you’re definitely gonna recycle them because you will get, you’ll get more money from that than you would from having it sending it to landfill. And for wind turbine blades, that’s definitely not the case. Partly because the product that you get at the end is very low value.
Rosemary Barnes: It and. part of the problem is it’s very expensive to recycle them because of the logistics of it. You know, they’re huge, big blades. And they’re very distributed. So when you know a wind farm comes offline, are you gonna go and move a, you know, some processing factory onsite to deal with them and then the next wind farm in another different state goes offline.
Rosemary Barnes: So you just relocate your factory. Cuz you know, obviously once the. The blades have been recycled. You don’t need it anymore. The new wind farm comes in and, you know, in 30 years time you’ll wanna recycle those blades. You, you’re not gonna leave a factory sitting around until then. Or you can chop them up and chuck them around.
Rosemary Barnes: But the. There’s heaps of environmental trade-offs with it. So I think that it’s a bit disingenuous that you would say we can’t send wind turbine blades to landfill because of the environment. Because actually if you have enough space for landfill and it’s managed properly, which I assume in the US they are then.
Rosemary Barnes: It’s just gonna sit there iner. It’s not, it’s not harming the environment when it’s just sitting in landfill. Whereas recycling, there’s definitely environmental harms associated with it. First in terms of transporting them, you know, thousands of kilometers to the recycling facility, that’s gonna be a problem.
Rosemary Barnes: But then second, some recycling processes, especially for plastics, can actually. You know, consume more energy, release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than if you just made virgin every time. So it’s like, what environmental issue are you actually trying to solve by recycling these blades? And I think that.
Rosemary Barnes: You hit the nail on the head. I can’t remember if you said it while we were recording or beforehand, but that the real problem is that there’s photos of blades in, in landfill, and people don’t like how that looks. That’s, that’s the real problem. Well,
Allen Hall: in the cowboy state, which is Wyoming there’s a article in a.
Allen Hall: Publication there, talking about the amount of wind turbine waste that’s gonna happen over by 2050. So the according to an old study in 2017 they’re predicting 43 million tons of blade waste annually by 2050. And they give a comparison that’s equivalent to the weight of 215,000 locomotives. Now, I, I don’t have no idea how much a locomotive weighs, so it’s not a good unit of measure
Allen Hall: So I can’t tell you why they chose a locomotive for this, but Okay. That seems like it’s pretty heavy. And, and Europe and the United States are always gonna account for about 40% of that waste. China being the other 60 percentish probably this article goes on in very interesting ways to describe.
Allen Hall: Blades are not toxic, right? They’re, they’re, they. Considered to be construction material. In fact, they, they contacted the waste supervisor in the city of Casper, Wyoming, actually a great town who said, landfill isn’t taking blades there right now. I’m not sure why they’re writing this article, but they also say that they don’t have any leaky leaching potential.
Allen Hall: There’s really nothing inside of them. And they’re not put in line pits where they put some other solid waste. They’re treated like construction or demolition waste. So if you knock down a house, knock down a building where those materials get buried is the same place where they would bury wind turbine blades.
Allen Hall: So they don’t consider them to be toxic at all. In fact, they, they talked to. The Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality, and they said, Hey, we treat them like construction material, , unless they contain asbestos, which they don’t they can just be permitted like other debris. So, although they’re, may be the concerned about the, the, the quantity, the weight, maybe, I’m not sure why the earth cares about the weight of the landfill, wouldn’t care about the, the weight of the wind turbine as much as maybe the volume.
Allen Hall: Right? It seems like a better number. It, it’s not a, it is not a, a big environmental deal, in fact that it has no environmental impact on just burying the blades. And as you said, it could be the least environmentally least the most environmental way to dispose of. Of those blades instead of chopping up and shipping it
Rosemary Barnes: somewhere.
Rosemary Barnes: And then you’ve gotta compare to, I mean, it sounds really big, that number. And it is a projection 25 years in the future. So let’s, let’s see. Also, the, those blades that are gonna be recycled in 2050 are probably only, you know, they’ll be made in the next few years. Probably they’ll be 500 meters. I did a quick, a quick search on the E P A and found that in 2018 there was already 292.4 million tons of municipal solid waste in the us So I, I don’t know what that growth rate is, how much that would be in 2050, but, There is a lot there, there’s a lot more waste than you would you would think.
Rosemary Barnes: It sounds scary to say something in, in tons, but it’s a lot smaller than the current waste problem that we’ve all gotten. Ignore and, you know, don’t change our con consumption habits in, in the slightest e you know, way to try and reduce it at all for the, for the most part. So keep it in perspective.
Allen Hall: Yeah.
Allen Hall: And anytime you try to protect 25 years out rough. You, you just can’t. It assumes that nothing changes between now and 2050 and all kinds. We’ll, things will change between now and then. We’ll have people walk around on the surface of Mars in 2050 the way things are going. So are we gonna really worry about recycling a winter blades in 2050?
Allen Hall: I doubt it because we’ll have it figured out. Things
Rosemary Barnes: change. All the major manufacturers are, are working on this, on this problem. So they, they. Solutions. They’re not economic yet, so I think it would take a bit more public outrage or a bit more you know, advancement in the, the science before.
Rosemary Barnes: Whether the technology before we see that rolled out there needs to be some sort of push other than the, you know, the fact of it being technically possible. Cuz it, you know, it already is. But you, you gotta, you gotta prioritize this, you know, but you can’t do anything in engineering without you know, realizing what the, the trade offs are.
Rosemary Barnes: And the fact is, if we, okay, so we’ve got this technology that’s available and if we. To tomorrow, you have to recycle every single wind turbine blade that you retire. And every new wind turbine blade has to be easily recyclable. It would make things more expensive. Divert workforce away from, you know, other, other important problems like rolling out wind farms as fast as possible to you know, to offset fossil fuels.
Rosemary Barnes: So it’s not, you know, it sounds really nice to say, okay, well let’s make wind energy. environmentally perfectly responsible with not, you know, any tiny problem. But by doing that, you’re just maintaining the status quo longer. And it’s, it’s really urgent that , you know, that we get wind farms in the ground and get fossil fuel generation R reducing.
Rosemary Barnes: So I think that it, it, people, environmental activists do need to see. Picture, it’s not enough to just focus on a, a small issue and demand no more wind turbine blades and landfill. You have to understand where the effort and money to solve that problem is gonna come
Allen Hall: from. Right. Next, every energy was asked about this concern cuz they have a couple of wind farms out there and Mike Maser from Next Air Energy.
Allen Hall: Responded because they have Cedar Springs and Roundhouse wind farms. He said that almost all the components in their wind turbines are recyclable. True. There’s a lot of metal. It’s in it’s recyclable, the copper to the steel when the winds are decommissioned. They work with the turbine manufacturers to break apart the components and recycle the pieces.
Allen Hall: And then they also donate parts and pieces to wind turbine training programs across the country, which is true. So the, you, you know, that wind turbine operators are actually trying to recycle as much as they can. It makes total financial sense to do that particularly for metal components. And they just gotta figure out what to do with the blades.
Allen Hall: And I think that answer is coming faster than 2050. It’s probably a 2025. We’ve, we’ve transitioned to a long-term.
Allen Hall: Lightning is an act of God, but lightning damage is not actually, it’s 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.
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Allen Hall: Well, we have filter tower here from Intel’s store. Welcome back to the program, Phil. Thanks, Alan. Thanks for having me. I always save the toughest financial business Questions for you? So, VP was trying to cut its oil and gas business down and start bringing up its renewables. Well, it’s not slowing the gas in oil business down as much and it’s not accelerating the renewables as much.
Allen Hall: and they have been reviewing their solar and onshore wind business and thinking maybe they need to slow those down also. And the, the goal here is it looks like they’re going to move to a more offshore based company, offshore wind based company. And as part of that, getting to the hydrogen business.
Allen Hall: So they see the hydrogen as being a big draw over the next several. And there, there green Chief Anja, Isabel Dusen Wrath has made a, a couple of really interesting statements here. Quote, we’ve made some changes internally and focused, created a focused hydrogen organization, a focused offshore wind organization.
Allen Hall: And she’s just starting to renew review the onshore renewables portion of the business. So it looks like BP is, is headed towards green hydrogen, and that doesn’t make a lot of sense based on what other renewable companies are doing is this. Is this because BP is coming outta oil and gas and the players with the, their competitors they see are sort of the Exxons of the world.
Allen Hall: they need to stay into the liquid fuel, hydrogen based fuel, carbon-based fuel game.
Philip Totaro: Well, it’s a, it’s an interesting topic because I think based on the amount of hype that hydrogen has right now everybody at least wants to, you know, claim that they’re either getting into it, they are in it they’re developing a project, they wanna develop a project.
Philip Totaro: You know, it’s, it’s I guess trendy you could say to be involved with, with hydrogen at this point, even if their ultimate ambition is just to capitalize on the momentum of the hype train for, for hydrogen at the moment. Now that said I would think an oil and gas company is better positioned than most to be able to pivot.
Philip Totaro: oil and gas to hydrogen. They, you know, BP in particular has several projects that they’re working on in Europe where there’s going to be offshore wind linked to some type of an electrolyzer either offshore or nearshore. And it’s gonna produce, you know, either green hydrogen, you know, ammonia or some other type of you know, chemical.
Philip Totaro: That they would, or gass that they would be able to use for, well, it’s, it’s interesting because you can, there are plenty of different potential uses for it. There’s transportation fuels, there’s, you know, potential for storage there’s blending of hydrogen with natural gas, et cetera, et cetera. So there’s a lot.
Philip Totaro: Interesting things that could be done. Now, the question right now is, are any of them actually economically viable? And the answer is not really. The, the reason for that is that one, you haven’t really hit, you know, significant economies of scale with a lot of that technology yet. The other one is demand.
Philip Totaro: And while everybody and their uncle says that they’re doing green hydrogen, now the question is, , are we really going to, you know, instead of utilizing some type of synthetic drop-in fuel to replace petroleum based you know, gasoline, are we really going to use hydrogen or a hydrogen blend for, for transportation?
Philip Totaro: To be perfectly honest, probably not. It, it’s more expensive to do that versus some type of synthetic you know, so then the question is, okay, industrial uses of hydrogen, . Is there really enough demand to warrant, you know, how many, you know, gigawatts worth of wind energy are gonna be powering hydrogen electrolyzers if, you know everybody’s, you know, proposed project actually comes to fruition?
Philip Totaro: Not the, the answer is also no. So we’re, we’re kind of in this weird space, I guess at the moment where there’s a significant amount of interest. in hydrogen again, presumably because of the, the hype train and the momentum that they’ve, they’ve built. The question is, is there really a significant enough amount of offtake for it to warrant everybody doing a hydrogen project everywhere in the world?
Philip Totaro: I don’t see it.
Allen Hall: So are they thinking they’re gonna just take a large piece of the pie then, Phil? Is, is is that the, is that the game is they’re gonna try to get it early enough that they’re just gonna control that market
Philip Totaro: again? That’s a great point because for all the companies that are talking about doing it, first and foremost, if you need to develop any new technology, you need to cost reduce it.
Philip Totaro: You again, you need to get to a point where there are economies of scale, et cetera, et cetera. So a well capitalized company that already has experience in, off. and now offshore wind and then, you know hydrogen production, presumably the oil and gas companies in general, and BP in particular will be better positioned than most to be able to capitalize on this.
Philip Totaro: So I think the answer to your question is yes, getting in early will put them in kind of poll position, if you will. But again, I don’t, I, I just don’t see you. enough demand yet for hydrogen to be, you know, like everybody is talking about, you know, hydrogen in Australia, hydrogen in Brazil, hydrogen in the us, Canada, you know, all throughout Europe.
Philip Totaro: We don’t have enough industrial demand or consumer demand or you know, any other uses for that much hydrogen at this point. So I don’t see how this is how you’re really. , you know, get to significant economies of scale, even with these big companies like a BP talking about investing. So it, it’s still a, a bit of a challenge.
Allen Hall: Well, that cer certainly points to BP remaining in oil and gas in the long term. I, if the hydrogen market’s not gonna pick up, they can always rely on oil and gas for the next 20, 30 years for sure. It’s gonna hedge their bets, and then if they add hydrogen, then that’s just a bonus because you, you would think that the markups in that marketplace are much higher than onshore wind or onshore solar.
Allen Hall: It’s an industry that goes up and down so much that there’s, as, as we know, there’s billions of dollars in profit in it right now.
Philip Totaro: Exactly. And, and the reality is especially precipitated by the geopolitical situation. You know, the Europeans are all talking about this great energy crisis next winter that they’re trying to gear up for now.
Philip Totaro: So as long as oil prices are gonna remain high and there’s profits to be made, it’s gonna necessarily slow down any kind of energy transition. That begs the question as to whether or not this whole hydrogen thing is, is just, you know, I, I hate to use the term greenwash, but I mean, because, you know, BP to their credit is, is serious about, you know, and again, they’re, they’re best positioned as an oil and gas company to actually do you know, to become a serious player in, in the hydrogen space.
Philip Totaro: But it’s just how big is the hydrogen space really gonna. . So there’s, there’s a commercial challenges. The technical challenges aren’t really that big of a deal. You know, there’s, this type of chemistry has been around for like 200 years, you know, at this point it’s just making a more efficient electrolyzer or, you know, different conversion technologies.
Philip Totaro: But you know, it’s just the, the, the business case and the commercial case for, for that much hydrogen. Is, is a bit of a head scratcher
Allen Hall: at this point. Yeah. And well, I think this does make sense in, in terms of searching for higher margin businesses because BP’s been having conversations sort of off the record with eor.
Allen Hall: For the last several weeks trying to get more involved in some other joint projects where the bp staff wants to be more involved and try to understand. It sounds like you do understand more of what’s happening on these offshore wind projects to train staff to expand that business. Who, who’s the best to learn from?
Allen Hall: EOR is probably one of the better companies to learn from. So it, that would make sense to me. They wanna kind of get into those joint projects and, and get their people in and learn something. If they’re gonna be focused on offshore wind, where the margins are higher, the PPAs are higher, that that sort of fits the mold, doesn’t it?
Allen Hall: Exactly.
Philip Totaro: And, and with Ecuador’s experience, especially with floating offshore. You know, I think it, it makes sense, obviously EOR and BP are also partnered on several development projects throughout the rest of the world, not just in, in Europe. And so it, I think it’s gonna make a lot of sense for them to continue.
Philip Totaro: Continue seeing that relationship flourish. But also it’s, it’s interesting because you, you brought up something before about bp, you know, potentially, you know, refocusing their, their business strategy and, and even exiting things like onshore wind. The reason to bring EOR in as more of a development partner is also because of eor.
Philip Totaro: Deep pockets as well. You know, let’s share the pain of all these inflation induced increases in you know, in, in the cost capital and, and the, the you know, project expenses at this point. So, you know, it, it makes sense for BP to, to wanna be able to facilitate that. Well,
Allen Hall: Phil, this is why we have you on the program because you can clarify some of these really complicated decisions that are being made at oil and gas companies and renewable energy companies.
Allen Hall: There is so much activity. It is hard to keep track of. So everybody you can connect with Phil totaro@intelstore.com or reached out to him on LinkedIn. He’s always there and he has great content on his LinkedIn on profile. So thanks Phil for being on the program. Thanks, K. Our Wind Farm of the week is Bloom Wind in Southwest Kansas and Bloom Wind is owned by Capital Power and it went online in 2017.
Allen Hall: It’s a, it’s a wind farm just south of Dodge City, Kansas. They have 54 Vestas, V 1 17, 3 0.3 megawatt machines. They have an a permanent employee on site and four contractor companies, including Vestas, which must be doing all the maintenance on those wind turbines. They pay a little over $700,000 in property tax each year for that wind site.
Allen Hall: If you’re not familiar with Dodge City, Kansas, and if you haven’t watched any cowboy movies from the 1950s, Dodge City was a real rough and tumble place for a long time. It is called the Queen of the Cow Towns Texas Longhorn Cattle were driven to Kansas where they could be offloaded onto whale cars.
Allen Hall: And there was a thing at the time where there was a. On the Texas Longhorns that would infect other cattle. So the state of Kansas kept pushing the Texas Longhorns path up north from Texas further and further west, and they ended up in Dodge City. So Dodge Chevy became a boom town during the, the 1880s.
Allen Hall: and it grew tremendously and it is infamous for gun fighters. And at one time they had probably the large number of gunfights anywhere in the country. It also boasts a whole bunch of saloons and gambling halls, brothels and all, all kinds of crazy things. And at one point in the late 1880s, Eden had a bull fighting.
Allen Hall: Where bull fighters are put on shows with Longhorn bulls. So it’s kind of a rough and tumble place that has transitioned over time and now it’s it’s into the renewable energy business. So congratulations to Bloom Wind in southwest Kansas. You are our wind farm of the week. That’s gonna do it for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy podcast.
Allen Hall: Thanks for listening. Please give us a five star rating on your podcast platform and subscribe in the show notes below to Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s YouTube channel Engineering with Rosie. And we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.
