The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast team covers a variety of interesting stories this week. The first story is about a ship carrying 1500 tons of grain that hit a wind turbine in German waters. The team discusses how such accidents can be avoided in the future. The next story is about DNV starting a joint project to investigate geotechnical and design considerations for earthquake protection for offshore wind in different areas of the world.
The team also talks about NTPC in India requesting to build nine gigawatt hours of battery capacity and Ming Yang’s development of fish farms in offshore wind jackets. In addition, they discuss Nabrawind’s financial backing to get their ideas into reality, and RWE selecting Siemens Gamesa for a large number of wind turbines.
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Uptime 164
Allen Hall: On my trip back home, I seem to. Have caught some sort of Danish infection and I’m, I’m gonna struggle through this entire episodes. I do not blame the Danes, I blame the American. That’s my own damn fault.
Joel Saxum: Is the Danish infection gonna take cause you to take a month off this summer or something? Or what?
What happened?
Allen Hall: I may have to go to Costa Rica to recover. Yeah, there you go. I went to the doctor today and said, Hey, I was over in Denmark and he gave me that little kind of scared look like scared doctor look like, oh really? This could be serious. And I thought I was in Denmark. Denmark is full of nice people.
What, what could they possibly have there that could kill me? You know what I mean? It’s a beautiful country. It’s, I I, yeah. We had a great time in Denmark. We had a great time in Denmark. We really did. And we saw a lot of sights and I was very, Pleased that the weather was good. So, uh, my kudos to everybody in Copenhagen and Denmark for throwing a great event last week.
We really enjoyed it this week in the news. A bunch of, uh, interesting stories.
Joel Saxum: So the first one we’re gonna chat about is not too far from Denmark, actually, just to the, uh, the East Easter in German waters. Uh, a ship carrying 1500 tons of grain hit a wind turbine. So we’re gonna talk about that a little bit and try to understand how we can avoid these things in the future.
And then we’re gonna go and talk about DNV, uh, starting up a joint industry project to look at geotechnical and design considerations for earthquake protection for offshore wind, offshore wind, um, in, in some different
Phil Totaro: areas of the world. Next we talk about, uh, National Thermal Power and NTPC in India building or requesting to build nine gigawatt hours worth of battery capacity and Ming Yang developing fish farms in their offshore wind jackets.
Allen Hall: And then we take a look at Nabrawind based in Spain and some backing the financial back in they received. That’s going to, uh, hopefully. Uh, get some of their great ideas into reality. And RWE has selected Siemens Gamesa for a huge number of wind turbines. So congratulations to RWE and Siemens Gamesa.
Our wind farm of the week is High Banks Wind in Kansas, so stay tuned for that. I’m Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I’m here with the Vice President of North American Sales or Wind Power Lab. Joel Saxum and the CEO and founder of Intelstor Phil Totaro, and this is the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.
Well, we had another ship collide with a wind turbine, a cargo ship named the Petra l Collided with a wind turbine at Orsted’s Gode Wind One offshore wind farm causing a five by three meter hole in the hole and water ingress. Good times in that ship. Uh, the Antigua flag vessel was carrying 1500 tons of grain from, uh, Poland to Antwerp and no wind farm.
They Gode wind farm is about 45 kilometers from the coast. No injuries were reported, thank goodness. Uh, and the incident is currently under investigation. Uh, local authorities and service as a reminder, uh, the potential risk involved in shipping and the importance of maintaining strict safety protocols.
And this obviously is not the first time that a ship has run into a winter, but we’ve all seen that video that pops up on LinkedIn every week or two from a couple years ago. It’s kind of.
Joel Saxum: Bobbing around.
Allen Hall: Yeah. Yeah, right. No one’s paying attention and
Joel Saxum: Kalu. So there’s a difference on this one though. If you look at the AIS S data, this ship looks like it was on a straight line for like a kilometer, and then just like went like right in like someone was asleep at the wheel
Allen Hall: or.
What are, what are the, what happens on the bridge there, Joel does, is there, is there some sort of alarm that says, Hey, wake up, there’s, you’re gonna run into a wind turbine, you know, and,
Joel Saxum: and depending on what vessel you’re on. Yes. But when you’re on a, uh, you know, just a grain hauling heavy haul boat that, that vessel’s probably 30, 40 years old.
There’s not a, usually a whole lot of advanced telemetry systems or sensors on it. It’s just, Oh it hit, that’s, and that’s why these boat captains usually make a lot of money so they can avoid those things. Um, but yeah, I would say probably not on this one. They probably didn’t know it until, uh, oh, we’ve got water coming in.
Um, and that hole was big. I don’t know if anybody’s listening saw the pictures of it. I was thinking, how did this ship not sink? They must have some really good bilge pumps in this thing cuz that hole was massive.
Allen Hall: Well, what does it take to add it to an old ship? Is it just an iPad and a connection to the internet, like a starlink?
Is that what they need to prevent them from running into. Wind TURs. And why are they
Joel Saxum: not doing that? I would think that, um, I mean, yeah, you can, you can always add something like that retroactively, but it’s just cost, right? So if it’s, everything’s a cost game, but I mean, um, I don’t know this because I haven’t been on a vessel in a wind offshore wind farm, but sometimes there’s like aids to navigation.
On your ais s computer systems. Right? So I would think that visually, even if you’re running in high winds, bad seas and something like that, on the AIS system or on your navigation computer, you would see, hey, there’s wind turbines here. So someone was, uh, I, I’m, you know, I’m not, I don’t wanna be the police here, but someone was not paying attention.
Uh, that’s the only way something like that happens that I’ve vessel selected that big. Yeah.
Allen Hall: The last one was, uh, the ship, uh, the, the engine died on the ship. Right. And it just was a drift and it ran into a foundation right now. That was about a year ago if, if that long ago. So this is, A real safety issue more than I thought it’d ever be.
I think everybody kind of waved their hands, say, yeah, it’s, it’s never gonna happen. And we’ve had a couple of incidences already and we, and we’re not even getting started.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. Phil, you’re our resident numbers guy. How, how tall is the turbine off the top of the water?
Phil Totaro: Oh yeah. I mean it’s, but it, that’s also not even the operative thing, right?
Because if you have fog or something, then you know, one would assume that they have to operate on instruments. And you’re right that a lot of these older vessels don’t necessarily have the advanced. Like, there’s no, like aircraft collision avoidance or vessel collision, collision avoidance type of thing that, that you have in, in other industries.
So, uh, especially on an older vessel. So the, the short answer to Alan’s earlier question as well is, why aren’t people outfitting these ships with sensors as cost, as with anything on a wind turbine or solar or whatever. I mean, everybody wants c m s on their turbine, but it, they’d happily take it if it was free.
But if, if there’s a cost to it, then oh, by the way, we’re, we’re, you know, too tight on our budget to, to afford CMS or anything advanced, you know, and it’s, it’s, and that’s what it ultimately comes down to. I wonder if this isn’t gonna trigger more regulatory oversight on, you know, especially throughout Europe, the uk, the US.
Um, Japan, you know, for them to say, you know what, look, we’re gonna have to mandate, um, that older vessels retrofit some type of advanced navigation capability, um, and have more up to date information available for, I mean, the, the go to wind farm, the first phase, which is the, the unit that got hit. Uh, that’s been there for a number of years already, so it’s not like, you know, somebody’s database shouldn’t have been up to date with the turban locations.
Um, but one hopes that, you know, these new turban sites that are being built out, and there’s about to be a lot more in Germany, a lot more in, in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, uh, you know, and the uk of course. And. You know, they’re gonna, this is not gonna be the last of these incidents I, I fear.
Allen Hall: So is the next step then, if the ships continue to run into turbines, which evidently they are, do the, you then put some sort of alarm system on thees themselves, like take the ping unit.
It’s mounted to the turbine tower right there, and just put like a flashing light or some sort of laser beam or a flare system on it as it, it senses an approaching ship like, Hey, we’re here. Don’t run into us. There’s gotta be something we could
Phil Totaro: do. Yeah. It’s not a, it’s not a bad idea. Again, I think it’ll ultimately come down to cost.
I, you know, the insurance companies are the ones that are gonna have to step in on that one because this, this was one of these like, You know, act of God type of things. Although you could argue that there’s, there’s culpability on the, the vessel operator, um, and the captain. But at the end of the day, I mean, you know, insurance is gonna have to pay for the damage on the foundation, the transition piece, you know, whatever, whatever damage there is to the turbine.
I, and again, to Joel’s point, I mean that I. Can also not believe that ship didn’t sink because that, I mean, you, you saw the video of them steaming back into the harbor with this massive hole and you’re just like, really? And they, I mean, like that, that was literally a titanic sized hole, like, you know, in the, in the thing.
And it’s like, you know, watch out ice birds. Uh, here, here comes this thing.
Allen Hall: So how does this get adjudicated because it’s so far off the coast of Germany. Is it go to some international court? Where, where does everybody sue one another at? Where does
Phil Totaro: that happen? Anne? I would assume that it’s still Germany because it’s their, it’s.
International water, but because the turban connection is, you know, it’s like it’s German wind park and the the interconnections to Germany, they would probably claim jurisdiction. I mean, we have the same issue in the United States as well with uh, You know, all these wind farms in the outer continental shelf and whatnot.
It’s, you know, it’s beyond our US territorial waters, but because it still falls into our jurisdiction because of, you know, they, they’ve said that for like liability issues. The, the judge in the GE Siemens patent case even said that, you know, anything in the outer continental shelf would have. The US would’ve patent jurisdiction out there too.
Um, and there’s precedent from oil and gas and whatnot as well. So there’s, yeah, I, I think it, it’ll get taken care of there. The
Joel Saxum: territory of water’s only like three or six miles, but the exclusive, exclusive economic zone goes like 200 for the US right on our waters. So it’s different because if you go 200 miles off of Germany, you’re in somewhere in the middle of Sweden, so that’s, so that’s not gonna work.
Allen Hall: I was just envisioning some sort of pirate to the Caribbean. Event well just draw swords or, and just go at it like there would be an an eventual winner out of that. Gonna be faster than going through the court system, honestly. All right. Moving on from sinking ships to earthquakes, D N V A, global Risk Management and Quality Assurance Company, which we all know and love, has launched a new joint industry project called ACE two to enhance the design process for wind turmans.
In earthquake prone regions, the H two project will cover issue does not address in the previous project, which was just called ace. The project will focus on geotechnical aspects such as damping and liquifaction, seismic load analysis and the specific needs of Taiwan and Japan. Good idea. Uh, the project will involve collaborative efforts by industry players and the results will be used to update DMV’s recommended practice for seismic design for wind.
Power plants. Companies like EOR or Ted Shell investors have already joined ace, the ACE two project and others. Others can apply until the end of April. So the, there is a real considerable effort to put turbines in earthquake prone regions, but there, there wasn’t an industry consensus of how to do that.
And this is a good step, I think, especially off the coast of California. Right. California’s having a lot of earthquake issues at the moment, from what I hear. I assume some of those are offshore. Um, How does this all, and, uh, you would, no, uh, you think, you think that, um, as we get going insurance risk wise, would you put terms out whether it’s an earthquake risk, even if they get this D N V effort to
Joel Saxum: work?
I would off the coast of California, simply because, There will be no fixed bottom. It will all be floating. So the floating will be moed and in a mooring and, and anchored or, or, you know, subsidy, micro piled solution. There’s a lot of give and take. So the, the, the, a chunk of earth can move 10 meters left to right or 10 meters north to south in, not north to south, but you know, in the elevation and on the grand scheme of things for that mooring line, it’s really not gonna affect it that much.
Right. So, so offshore, California, I think you’re okay now. Onshore California, although a lot, there’s of course there, we all know there’s a ton of, um, Foundations and wind turbines there. Um, but a lot of those are outside of, um, fault zones. I mean, of course they’re still gonna feel it, right? But there’s a lot of lattice tower turbines there, old ones.
Um, but the majority of, uh, regular towered turbines there have, I think, bolstered larger, deeper foundations just for that. Well, the one that really, uh, concerns me here or that they’re, I’m, I’m, you know, The ACE two project we’ll cover from D N V is the stuff offshore in Taiwan and Chinese waters and Japanese waters, because liquifaction is a big problem there.
I mean, you’ve, if you’ve seen the, um, there’s a pictures. A couple years ago there was a Jack barge off the coast of Taiwan installing some turbine. Uh, monopiles and one of the legs on the jack up boom, hit a pocket and went down, right? So once that thing tips, the whole thing goes over, uh, or close to it, usually.
Now that’s could be a two, two factored thing, right? That’s you, that’s not doing proper geotechnical analysis before you put that jack up there. But, but the a jacket when installed offshore is just like a jack up. Right. It’s a foundation with four, four things sitting there, and liquifaction is a, is a big problem for that because I’ve seen it in the oil and gas world many times where you have to put mattresses and things down for stuff to sit on because the sea floor is not a.
Like walking on the beach where it’s just like this nice hard sand that you can drive a car down. Most of the time, the sea floor where these things are, it’s very silty and very soft. And when you start to get a little bit of vibration, if you’ve seen liquifaction, it’s super cool to look at. It’s not an awesome thing if you’re building near it or on top of it.
Um, but if you look at a YouTube video of like how Liquifaction works, you’ll see like, um, Little vibrations can cause what looks to be solid ground turn into basically liquid like quicksand. And that can happen sub C. So when that happens, sub C uh, if there’s vibrations from an earthquake, the where your geotechnical analysis once told you this is X, Y, and Z.
Now it’s a, B, C in some completely different. So a leg of a jacket could start to sink or move. If not, um, you know, if the geotechnical design for the. Basically interface between the jacket and the sea floor wasn’t done properly. Uh, you could run into some major issues and you could have whole wind farms start to tilt and move and stuff.
Uh, and that’s ki of course what D M V wants to avoid with this study.
Allen Hall: Yeah. If the substation tilts over, you’re in big trouble. Right. You, you lose the farm essentially. Yeah. I, on, on the flight back from Denmark, um, happened to watch the Godzilla movie. Right. So the, so they were talking about liquefaction there.
That’s where I first learned about liquefaction is on an airplane from Denmark. Yeah. So Phil, Phil, in your area, I don’t know if you know this, but, uh, there’s a gr there’s a bunch of m i t people out there drilling holes into the, uh, uh, faults for geothermal heating. And I thought, oh my gosh. You know, fracking in the.
Plains area has caused earthquakes and, and, and also in, um, Pennsylvania, right? So they’re, they’re really talking about using geothermal around like Nevada, California, where there’s cracks in the air surface, uh, to pump water down there. It’s to warm with the water. Uh, and at the same time, it seems like, Earthquake, like you’re gonna trigger some earthquakes, right?
Am I wrong about
Phil Totaro: that? Triggering it is one thing, but it, you also have a situation with the geothermal where if you’re putting pipes, like fixed pipes to, to get your water or steam, uh, down and then back up after it’s super heated, if there’s an earthquake and it shifts and bends the pipe enough and snaps the pipe, then you’re, you’re, you know, similar to what you’re describing with.
An earthquake taking out half your wind farm, you can have half your power production, uh, impacted by that. So there are any number of technologies that are going to need to pay attention to, um, you know, an increasing set of technical risks. Um, as we continue to try to build out closer to load centers.
Um, the good news is most people don’t. Live in earthquake prone areas, unless you’re talking about Japan and Taiwan, you know, Vietnam, Cambodia, et cetera. But, um, you know, you’re, you’re in, um, a space where this is, you know, this DMV project is important because it, it is going to address some, um, you know, certain technical risks that that need to be looked at further.
Uh, and not just for those core markets where earthquakes are a, um, a. Larger issue, but it, the, the knowledge can be leveraged elsewhere as well. Oh, it’s
Allen Hall: good that DMV’s taken the lead on this. Uh, and it, it, I ran into dmv, uh, down at one of the a c b events, I think it was in Orlando. Um, yeah, they, they got’s a lot going on there at DM V right now, uh, because the industry’s expanding some in, into places they’ve never been before.
It’s like Star Trek, right? Where no man has gone before sort of thing, and, and yeah. And it is getting complicated, right. If you’re planting wind turbines in Kansas, you don’t really think about earthquakes and all this other stuff, but I guess if you get around Japan and some, you know, parts of parts of Asia, you gotta pay attention to it, and that’s good.
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Allen Hall: Well, in India, NTP C Renewable Energy Limited, a subsidiary of India’s largest power generation company has announced, uh, Tinder 49.
Gigawatt hours of energy storage capacity to be connected to the National Grid. The company’s renewable energy assets are all owned by the parent company in TPC Limited, which has, uh, almost all its power generation projects connected to the National Grid infrastructure. The tender condition requires developers is set up at least 100 megawatts of capacity with 600 megawatt hours of storage capacity.
Oh my gosh. Uh, the storage project could be charged. With power from N TPCs renewable energy projects and supplied to buyers seeking predictable and stable renewable energy supply, potentially appealing to power distribution utilities across India. So somebody’s trying to corner the battery market storage market in India, nine gigawatt hours.
Is huge, Phil, I mean, is that the largest you’ve ever heard of
Phil Totaro: before? Oh, by far. And, and it’s interesting because, uh, n TPC stands for National Thermal Power Corporation, um, and they’re, you know, they’re coming off, you know, this whole concept of getting away from coal and natural gas powered base load generation to investing more heavily in renewables.
Um, and starting with batteries is, uh, a great place for them because, um, it’s going to allow for time shifting and grid smoothing capability to be implemented throughout India, which is something they, uh, desperately need if they’re going to leverage more, um, renewable power generation sources. So this is.
This is a hugely important, uh, thing, but as with a lot of things that get announced in India, it doesn’t always come to full fruition. Sometimes they only do like 10% of what they say they’re gonna do. Uh, so just a word of caution I guess, on that as well.
Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s still a lot though. I mean, if they did 10% of that and it is, it’s this indicative of where some other parts of the world are gonna go.
Uh, to these large, uh, storage projects. Well,
Phil Totaro: I don’t think they’re doing the whole thing in a single phase. My understanding was that was the total amount that they wanted to deploy across the entire network. But yeah, I don’t, I’d also, to that point though, Joel, I don’t know if they’re gonna do everything in like a distributed gin type of, you know, like put a battery every, you know, 600 kilometers in, in, you know, their, their grid, uh, connection just for, for grid smoothing.
Um, you know, but they, they could, again, if they wanted to, they, they could do a lot of these, these types of things. Um, I. Get the sense that storage is becoming more important as we run into constraints on grid, um, interconnection, uh, bottlenecks, storage becomes more of an important characteristic for the grid to have because.
If we can’t move the power around, if we don’t have the grid infrastructure to be able to accommodate more renewable power sources, we can’t move the power around. We don’t have effective load balancing, we don’t have ancillary services, the battery steps in to take that, uh, to take up some of that needed capability.
So I, I think that not only in India, but elsewhere in the world, this is gonna become more pervasive.
Joel Saxum: You know, speaking to that, Phil, I’d just read something today. Now, this was just a headline, right? So don’t hold me to the size of it, but I, I read a headline that said Tesla just won a 2.6 billion contract in California to.
Basically the same thing to, to create some battery storage on the grid in California to handle those peak loads. Is it kind of the kind of mirror, the same thing we’re seeing here? Like people are seeing like, okay, we need to have, especially with more renewables coming online to, like you said, smooth out the, the power delivery on the grid.
Phil Totaro: Yeah, and there’s actually another, uh, huge tender that they want to do in Australia that, you know, because Tesla was kind of a, a big battery, you know, champion and pioneer, um, in, I think it was South Australia was the first, uh, state that they, that they developed a, a big battery in, uh, years ago. And so they, they are definitely trying to, um, Deploy more capacity that’s gonna allow for, um, again, this, uh, grid smoothing has been based on the, the state of battery technology today.
Grid smoothing has been the primary focus of a lot of battery technology because you don’t have the capability to do efficient long duration storage. At least not yet, but as batteries get better, um, and the battery technology allows for more time shifting. Of power production versus delivery and demand on the grid.
That’s also going to. Um, facilitate much more, um, desire for that, that type of long duration storage because the utilities want that capability, um, to do price optimal power delivery. Whether they’re, you know, participating in emergent market or on fixed price contracts, um, they may still have certain, you know, guarantees that they have to live up to.
Um, You know, if, if they are on a merchant power contract, uh, you know, or any independent power producer battery is going to help you, um, ensure that you meet your, your obligations so that you don’t have to go buy extra power from, you know, some other form of generation that, uh, that uh, you know, fulfill some commercial obligation that you weren’t able to because of, you know, lack of availability of either the resource or the.
The power generation unit itself. So yeah, I, there’s, there’s a huge, there’s a need for this. There’s, uh, a huge pipeline of projects globally. Um, even in the United States. We’ve got, you know, I I wanna say something like 300 gigawatt hours, um, that are proposed. Um, which is a lot, but again, not all of it’s gonna get built.
There’s a lot that’s in the interconnection queue. A lot of that’s in con being done in conjunction with wind and solar projects. Um, so that, again, it sounds like big numbers, but not all of that stuff is gonna, is gonna end up getting built right away. So the point is that the general trend in battery storage technology is that as the technology improves and you get more.
Long duration storage capability. This will become much more of a pervasive, uh, thing to incorporate a lot of storage capacity on the grid for time shifting and not just the grid
Allen Hall: smoothing, Chinese wind, tur manufacturer, and Ming Yang. Smart energy has started. The construction of a jacket foundation that features a net cage system for fish farming, which be installed at the ING Yang.
Quiz how? Four Offshore wind farm in the South China Sea later this year, and I know I murdered that name. Uh, the jacket is typhoon resistant. And the aquaculture system will have a remote function such as automated feeding, monitoring, detection, and collection. And that’s collection’s. Interesting. Uh, it’ll feature this wind farm is gonna have 25 of the Ming Yang, 11 megawatt, two 30 turbines, and 18.
12 megawatt 2 42, uh, offshore wind turbines with one of those, uh, uh, floating turbine. Uh, they’re saying, or they’re hoping that the high quality fish raised by this, uh, fish farm and a jacket system are comparable to wild fish and less impacted by nearshore marine pollution. So, As we’ve seen in Copenhagen, Joel, there’s a lot of effort A around aquaculture and wind farms.
Joel Saxum: Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, but just like the concept of aquaculture as a fish raising technique is not new. Right? That’s, that’s how a lot of the best, the best salmon in the world up in Norwegian and waters off of Newfoundland and stuff are raised. Um, so now you’re taking the, the idea that we’re putting, we’re gonna put these jackets out anyways.
Why not dual use them? Right. It’s, it’s super smart. And then you’re, you’re maintaining, you’re also maintaining some of the, uh, the biodiversity in the area as well. Cuz like Ted, when they did the, um, Uh, the coral rejuvenation project down there where they’re planting coral on the jackets, kind of this kind of the same concept where you’re, you know, you’re, you’re stewards of the environment while we’re, while we’re putting something there.
Uh, we’re also trying to get, get the most out of the, the use of the space and, um, Yeah, just like wild fish. I mean, you’ve got currents and stuff floating through, cleaning, cleaning out the thing, the tank or the, the, I guess the net. I’m not gonna say tank. It’s not a tank. But yeah, I
Allen Hall: think it’s a good idea.
So in my head, the process went like this. I’m thinking the circle of life, right? I got these fish contained in this vessel. Uh, the next thing I’m gonna have is seals. We know that the fish are there. And once the seals get there, you know, what’s next is sharks. So now, now I got shark infested waters around these wind turbines because of all the fish and the seals that are hanging around.
So it just, and then, you know, next is Godzilla, right? So in you, you know, you just go down this real cycle of, of terror, uh, just because you put some fish in a jacket. So I’m not sure that we’re gonna see this in the United States. Uh, I, I wonder if it’s gonna carry over, obviously. Companies like Orstad that are paying attention will be watching these projects to see how it goes.
Cuz there’s a huge concern all the way up along the east coast, up through Maine, even about the fisheries and what are we gonna do? So I’ll
Joel Saxum: give you, I’ll give you an example or an idea here. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day in my little hometown of, uh, in Wisconsin. They’re saying, Hey, some of these like Airbnbs are ruining the, the small town resorts.
It’s like, okay, well Airbnbs are going to be a reality. Airbnbs and VRBO os are going to be a reality. And your resort that you, that hasn’t been changed to the idea of how you run it or, or market it or anything has never been changed. If you don’t adapt, you’ll get. Kind of run over, right? That, that that’s how business, that’s how business works in a capitalistic society.
So these, uh, fish farmers that are on this isn’t necessarily the same, but kind of the same ideas. These fish, the fishing, fishing industry on the east coast of the US saying, Hey, what about us? What about us? Well, why don’t you. Why don’t, why not adapt instead of fighting against the, the wind farms that are coming in?
Why don’t you, Hey, let’s, let’s farm fish within the jackets. We can create this system. We’ll, we’ll maintain and monitor it because we’re the, we’re the fish experts and we’ll both benefit off of the, this development. So I, I think that I would like to see that happen, right? I think that there’s, I know for a fact there’s a lot of this kind of commercial fishing and nets that goes on like this up in Alaska.
Um, I’m not, I, I have never seen the markets and things off the coast of Maine and Massachusetts and that corner of the world, but I would imagine there’s some out there as well. I know there’s a bunch offshore, Canada and Norway, um, and the UK even. So I say, why not?
Allen Hall: So this gets into something we saw in Denmark at, uh, wind Europe show, which is the eco concrete.
I’m gonna mispronounce this because it’s spelled, it’s spelled E Concrete. But I think they pronounce it e, e, echo, concrete, something like that, or Echo Crete, where it’s a special concrete mix that attracts. Fish and algae and sea life, right? There’s a, there is a big push at the moment in the industry to attract more sea life, to be around the wind turbines.
And I thought initially like a block island, that they were not trying to like have sea creatures around that necessarily on the turbines, but it does feel like there’s been a sh a shift because of the pushback from the fisheries that, hey, um, having more sea life around there, that that could be farmed is a good
Joel Saxum: thing.
Yeah, I mean, naturally if you’re a fisherman at all, you fish around structure, go off of the Gulf Co. If you go off the Gulf Coast out of, say, Galveston, where they’re planning a few auctions for offshore wind, go motor a boat out to those, uh, all those offshore oil and gas platforms on a weekend, that’s where all of the fishing boats are.
They’re surrounding all those jackets that those platforms are on because that’s
Allen Hall: where all the good fishing is. If we start building all these wind farms offshore, we’re gonna induce fish to show up there and see life to show up there. Can you farm those things because they’re so close to the wind. Tur is, is, is there gonna be this, like this plethora of nice rich fish pile that now in crab pile and whatever else that is off limits?
Is that what happens?
Joel Saxum: Yeah, I’m sure there’s an exclusion zone around these turbines that people would wanna see. So you can’t, you’re not dragging your nets along them. So if for commercial fishing, the, you know, to get right up next to ’em I don’t think is really viable or safe. Uh, in my mind, maybe people are, but I would also would hate to be the person dragging my nets along the side of a wind turbine jacket and get caught.
Um, so I think that the proper solution, you’re the, are a good solution is to integrate the, you know, some actual commercial fishing, um, and commercial fishing aquaculture farms, uh, offshore. Um, to, to do
Allen Hall: this. So is it only Rod and reel? Neil, the turbines? Is that where it’s gonna go? Like to do that tuna fishing on the east coast?
Joel Saxum: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Cuz then if you get caught you can just cut your line.
Allen Hall: Right. That’s what I’m thinking too. Oh man. I got a cable. Just, just
Phil Totaro: don’t cast,
Joel Saxum: don’t cast too high. Cuz if you cast too high, you might get hooked on the blade. You don’t wanna do that. That would be there. There goes Iran. Yeah. You don’t wanna do that.
Let it go. Let it go. Right. Keep in
Phil Totaro: mind one other thing too with, with this Ming Yang project, the reason that Ming Yang is instating, this is because where they’re deploying a lot of offshore turbines. In China especially, it’s extremely shallow water, um, where a significant amount of commercial fishing occurs.
Um, and they, they need to have a solution because, uh, more so than in the east coast of the US or, or places throughout Europe, um, the Chinese fishermen and women are being displaced by these offshore wind farms. Um, you’re just not hearing as much. They’re not vociferous about it, uh, because obviously in China they’re going to.
You know, sensor, anything that, that would be adverse to, um, you know, a adverse to what they, they, they, the image that they want to project, I guess is, is the best way to say it. But, uh, you know, they’re, they’re trying to come up with viable solutions to, uh, an increasing issue and to the extent that the technology could be leveraged elsewhere in the world.
I think it is, you know, I’ll agree that, that it’s a good idea. It’s
Allen Hall: a good thing. Down in Spain, Nara Wenda, the Spanish Wind Turman Technology Company has secured funding, uh, support from, for Tuske Future Industries, a green, uh, energy and products company to expand its production ca capacity to meet growing demand from renewable projects in the coming years.
Now, th this is important, right? Because Naper wind has been doing a number of, New concept, new ideas bringing into market. Um, so the funding agreement which is convertible into a minority sh shareholding, uh, aims to reduce the cost of renewable energy production by supporting number one’s innovative products, including the modular blade soft directing tower, that tripod foundation, the crane less blade installation system, and a new system to install.
The whole wind turbine, uh, never one’s strategic plan includes both organic and inorganic growth by key alliances, uh, or joint ventures with other stakeholders all over the world. And we have seen some of that with some Chinese, uh, companies. So this is interesting. So I think over in Copenhagen there was a lot of discussion about investment in renewable energy companies.
A lot of, a lot of businesses looking for funding. There was a lot of VC firms on the floor, uh, shopping around, seeing what was out there that they could invest in. They know that wind energy is gonna be a huge marketplace, so there is money available, weirdly enough, uh, as sort of the VC community collapses in the United States.
On the high tech world, uh, on the software world In Win, there are still players and naber win, which is developing so many different. Kinds of technologies at the same time, must need cash to develop then, well, here we go. Uh, they’re finding a partner to go do that. Phil, is this indicative of what will happen over the next year, two or
Phil Totaro: three?
Yeah. It’s, it’s great to actually see that, you know, companies that have innovative concepts can, can actually go get some funding. Because even going back a few years ago, that wasn’t necessarily the case. You know, like you’ve mentioned a lot of VCs were, were. Adverse to doing, especially like a hardware play in, uh, the renewable energy sector.
You know, they, if you had software, you know, a anything to do with asset performance enhancement, you could get funding. But hardware plays were, were a hard sell. Nowadays it’s, it’s a lot more open. Um, and that’s good for companies like Naber Wind that have. You know, a, a viable technology, uh, that, that serves a, uh, a few different needs.
You know, then they, obviously, they have a few different technologies and, uh, and. You know, they’re, they’re basically that’s trying to make things easier, faster, better. Um, the question is, you know, is this going to help facilitate prototypes and the development, uh, and ma mature maturity of the technology to a point where it becomes commercially viable Because at this point what they have, you know, it’s one of these kind of situations where it’s gonna work.
Technologically, but can they make it work commercially with enough volume that justifies, you know, changing over transportation and logistics, fixtures changing the way we do, um, installation and erection, retraining a lot of people that have experience with cranes and the fixtures and, you know, the, the kind of the industry standard way that it’s done today.
Um, so there’s, there’s a lot of ancillary things that need to happen in order for a new technology, like self-directing towers, um, self-install the cells, um, you know, crane list, um, you know, blade exchange systems, things like that. It’s the, there’s a lot that needs to happen for those technologies to become commercially viable, even if they’re already technologically proven.
Joel Saxum: That’s the one thing that kind of concerns me here. Now. Now, don’t get me wrong. I, I really applaud Navar wind moving forward, coming up with a bunch of solutions. We’ve got all these ideas, we’re gonna change the way things work. Or I try to help and, and do our part for the energy transition. I applaud that.
However, I, I’ve personal experience in being involved in, in groups where, uh, let me, let me give you an idea here. If you’re in the US and you’ve ever went, uh, or know someone that has gone duck hunting, Okay, so ducks come in as a flock and there’s gonna be 5, 10, 15, 20 of them. And if you’re hunting, you’re sitting in your G and you’re ground blind, and everybody goes, all right, let’s shoot some ducks.
And you go up to shoot the ducks. If you just look at that flock and you got 5, 10, 15, 20 of ’em, and you start shooting in them, Not one of ’em is gonna fall. You won’t harvest one of those ducks. You’re not gonna be successful. But if you pick out one of ’em and you focus on that one, you got a better chance of knocking it down.
So my worry here from a PE standpoint, private equity or or the VC standpoint of investing in Navar wind is. While they, they may be a big company, they got a lot of ideas. Do you have the processes and the, the gumption in place to see one of these things through from t r l, you know, technology ready, this level one to technology ready level nine.
Do you have that? Is that in place or will you get lost in the focus of all the shining glitter that you’ve got going on in this company? That’s, that would be my worry.
Allen Hall: Hey uptime listeners. We know how difficult it is to keep track of the wind industry. That’s why we read p e s Wind Magazine. P e s Wind doesn’t summarize the news. It digs into the tough issues. And p e s Wind is written by the experts, so you can get the in-depth info you need. Check out the wind industry’s leading trade publication.
PS Wind, PS wind.com.
All right. R w uh, uh, leading German energy company, which we all, uh, know and love, has signed a framework agreement with Siemens essa, also a company we all know well, uh, uh, which, you know, Siemens Ka Mesa is really starting to crank up here. Uh, and so R W B and Siemens Ka Mesa are. Just signed an agreement for 1000 megawatts, uh, to buy turbines through 2027.
Holy moly. Under the agreement Siemens Ka Meso become the leading supplier of large components for R W’s project Pipeline. Uh, R DB will mainly procure the Siemens Ka Mesa, uh, five x onshore platform, which is one that’s had a little bit of issues, but it sounds like they’ve worked through them. With a flexible rated output up to 6.6 and maybe up to seven megawatts, as well as they’re gonna buy several Siemens Mesa four x uh, turbines.
Uh, the partnership will enable R D B E to carry out maintenance and inspection on its own through a service agreement for the wind turbines. And the two companies have a long, obviously, have a longstanding partnership in the onshore and offshore sector with, uh, R DB selecting Siemens K Mesa as the preferred supplier for its, uh, one gigawatt Thor Wind Farm in the Danish North Sea earlier this year.
Uh, R DB is also using recyclable rotor blades from Siemens K Mesa for its German offshore wind farm. Kasi and its largest construction project, Sophia. So there is a really close relationship, and rightly so, right in Europe it makes sense to hook up with, you know, Avesta as Siemens, GAA and R to be has clearly shown Siemens GAA as a wind terminate choice here.
Which is a huge deal for
Joel Saxum: Seamless Ga Mesa. Yeah. If I was, any, anybody that has the, the clout or the pole like RW is, I would be doing the exact same thing with my OEM of choice, simply because like, like we just, like we have been talking about the IRA bill shooting up, that’s gonna be who can make the turbines the fastest?
And if you’ve got an agreement sign, you should be in the front of the line. Same thing in the eu because it wasn’t. Was it, um, I don’t remember if it was a Macron or someone came and said like, Hey, the IRA Bill’s kind of short sheeting us because now we’re not gonna get turbines because the US is putting so many orders.
And R w E said, you know what, we’re gonna, we’re gonna pull up our, our, our, our big boy big girl pants, and we’re gonna just go and sign an agreement that says we get ’em. Um, I would do, I think it’s a great move
Allen Hall: by both of them. You know, the same thing is happening between GE and Next era. Right Phil. So I, I don’t know if you saw that YouTube video the other day between Nter and ge.
I thought, man, everybody is building this huge relationship this in this direct pipeline to an oem.
Phil Totaro: Yeah, and it, what’s interesting, so the couple of things on the R W e, uh, Siemens GA Mesa deal, so one is that R actually gonna leverage the OEM long-term service agreement to, um, help maintain the assets, which is interesting because.
Uh, traditionally r w e, you know, and previously eon, et cetera. Um, You know, had, had been, uh, doing a lot of self-performance of maintenance, um, or partnering with independent service providers. So this is a bit of a, I mean, they, they certainly leveraged the OEMs already, but for such a, a deal of such a size, you know, one gigawatt on these, you know, five plus megawatt platforms, um, to have the OEM long-term service contract in place is, uh, is also interesting to to note.
The other thing that you kind of touched on, Alan, which I, I, um, kind of am, am curious about, is. You know, not all the teething issues on this 5, 6, 7 megawatt, uh, Siemens Guma platform are actually worked out yet. So it’s a pretty big thing for R W E to actually, um, make this type of a commitment. Uh, although I th I will agree with Joel that the, the largest driving factor is.
Um, probably like let’s get a frame agreement in place so that we can at least secure a certain amount of order book should we choose to avail ourselves of, you know, making firm orders up to a gigawatt in, in
Joel Saxum: size. One of the things that’s interesting about this one, Alan, you and I have talked about it in the background a little bit.
At some point in time, there may be a day when one of these OEMs. Is either partially purchased or purchased by a large asset owner, uh, asset operator. R RW is a big one. NextEra is a big one. You got Ted out there, you got the the Ola family out there. So do you think, and, and this is pure speculation, right, but do you think that some of this might be like, Hey, let’s see how we play well together with the next era and ge let’s, let’s see if we like each other or not.
Allen Hall: I love that idea, but industry hates it. Uh, I’ve talked to, to people in the industry’s, like, there is no way, uh, Siemens Kame is ever gonna hook up with an operator. No chance. And I I, and it, it’s the example they gave that they, they gave me an aerospace example cause that’s where my background is. Like Boeing has never connected with an airline like Boeing.
Never ran an airline. Airbus doesn’t run airlines, so, so why would GE um, and next era combined, they’re just not gonna do that cuz they feel like they’re gonna lose market share because they’re competing against the other customers, which I ki kind of get. But there’s gonna be a huge consolidation in this, in this marketplace over the next two to five years.
There has to be because the OEMs are losing too much money and the operators are making money. So somewhere they have to connect. Right. No,
Phil Totaro: I, I do, I hate the idea, but I, I will also point out that where do you think, you know, United and United Technologies came from? They were initially the same company, and then they split the airline operator versus the, the, you know, equipment fabricator.
So, you know, to that point, I mean, and the of obviously that occurred, you know, almost a hundred years ago at this point. But, you know, this, this is why. The industry hates it is they don’t, the, the more vertical integration that you have for any one single company, you’re, you’re almost getting yourself back into a too big to fail type of a situation.
And, you know, inevitably there’s gonna be some black swan event. Well, but the eventually something will happen in the future that will. Cause some type of a, an issue and you know, it’s gonna, it’s gonna cause chaos.
Allen Hall: Let’s let, let, let, let, let, let’s, let’s, let’s go down that pathway because I think you raised a very good point that they’re too big to fail scenario.
Right. So right now in the United States, we have four banks that are too big to fail because the United States deemed them too big to fail. Now if, if the administration, the current administration believes that it ge can ge renova cannot go away, what do you think they’re gonna do?
Phil Totaro: The government. The government will always, I mean, especially for a company like GE that’s been around for river.
Um, but even in, in Europe, you know, you. You will have a scenario where, you know, somebody will step in and say like, Vestus is too big to fail. Uh, or, you know, but I, I think this whole profitability challenge that’s currently being faced in the market will eventually stabilize when two things happen.
First of all, if the, if governments will provide more commitment for projects, um, and future project pipeline, that’ll get a lot of the OEMs and sub-component suppliers to invest more or at least seek, uh, you know, funding to invest in additional manufacturing capacity. That additional manufacturing capacity is gonna open up a lot more of the roadblocks that you currently see with, um, You know, component availability and, you know, that’s why prices are kind of spiking, um, you know, for, for turbines and things like that.
So, a, I think a lot of that is an issue that does need to be addressed, but it’s a shorter term issue that will eventually, uh, You know, kind of recede into the background and, and the, the bigger issue of everybody’s making money will, you know, need to be addressed vis-a-vis like, alright, if oil is at 80, 90, a hundred dollars a barrel and you know, renewable energy PPAs are only like 35 or $40, then why am I spending my money in renewable energy when I could be making more money?
In oil and gas. And I think there’s two ways to address that, either commercially or through a regulatory requirement. And the more regulatory requirement that can be put in place says you shall invest in renewables. It’s gonna, you know, provide more capital flow. And that’s necessarily going to do things like elevate prices to the point where everybody can get back to making money.
You know, a lot of the analysis we’ve even done lately shows that. The profitability of of projects went way down when PPAs started going through the floor, and that’s why a lot of companies, even though there’s a huge interconnection queue in the United States, in Europe, in Asia, You know, Australia and, and other places, you, you’re still talking about a scenario where companies are making a choice not to sign, you know, a 10, 11, $12 megawatt hour PPA anymore, whereas three, four years ago they were just to get steel in the ground and start collecting, you know, whether it’s feed and tariff revenue, PTC revenue, whatever.
Um, in addition to what they would get from a ppa. So, Again, I think, you know, the, the, going back to our original premise here, this, you know, a a, a utility company getting together with an OEM and doing the vertical integration, it’s something that, to a certain degree makes sense, but you don’t need to vertically integrate if you can just guarantee a certain amount of order book.
The utility is in a much better position to guarantee a certain amount of order book for an oem, if. The utility and the OEM go to the government and say, you know, put a stable, you know, policy regime in place and we can all make money and we can all just get on with our, you know, get on with our business.
Uh, I mean, when’s the last time you ever saw a government get a get out of its own way and, and allow an industry to flourish? I mean, it, it doesn’t always happen that way. So, you know, that’s what we’re all hoping for as an industry.
Allen Hall: Okay. So, so Phil’s. Analysis and I, I, and you’ve explained to this to me a couple of times, and it takes a couple of times for me to absorb all this stuff.
Phil, you know, I’m, I’m not a quick learner, but what Phil is saying is essentially we, they need a pipeline. The factory needs to run all the time, or the Siemens MEA factory needs to be pumping out wind tur all the time, and they need to have a, uh, a, a calendar full of shipments. That’s their dream. But they’re only gonna get there, Phil, if they have big operators that are gonna play ball with them, like r w e.
And you saw, I think you saw that in the California auction, where some of these people, I think it was like 30 or 40 companies that were gonna bid in those California offshore auctions, and it ended up being like five or six because it couldn’t make a deal with that o with that o e em I, I assumed that was the big problem that the OEMs are picking, the rws, the equinos, the ORs of the world because of the pipeline problem, which you’ve
Phil Totaro: nailed.
California was a special situation cuz I mean, even just this morning, by the way, they, the Kaiso just announced that they’re pushing back, um, by another two or three years. The offshore wind transmission infrastructure, uh, the regulations and the, the commencement of the projects, which means you’re not gonna see steel in the water or floating in the water in California until 2032, maybe if you’re lucky.
So it’s gonna be at least nine, 10 years from now. So addressing that
Joel Saxum: pipeline problem right from the government that you’re talking about, like, Hey, the factories need to run all these things. So if we do a root cause analysis and kind of d dive backwards on that thing. The problem here is regulation, permitting, citing, getting these, getting the approvals and permits to interconnect and get these things in the ground.
Because a lot of, I know that the queues are so long that they’re there ready to go. Like, Hey, we could have these factories running, but we can’t get this stuff. We can’t get the permits in place that you just had. California delayed another, I mean, it’s 10 years from now almost. Right. I know in, like in Miso, there’s a huge queue.
There’s, there’s gigawatts in the queue in almost every, uh, interconnector, any e, every, every, uh, power generation facil or, um, area in, in the country. So the problem here is that we need to get our regulators to either put more resources to permitting. Or e not, not necessarily saying easing the permit, re restrictions, but at least get some more resources there so that these things can get pushed through.
Because if those can get pushed through, then the entire industry can start installing and
Phil Totaro: moving. Yes. And, and Joel, that’s exactly to the point of if before, you know, I, I, if you look back at like three, four years, um, What was happening before is companies were still sitting in an interconnection queue, although much shorter than it even, even is today.
But what they were doing is they were saying, all right, we wanna jump the queue. We wanna start collecting PTC revenue or other feed and tariff revenue that we can get. And in order to jump the queue, you can get a power marketing firm to give you a 10, 11, $12 megawatt hour p p a. That at least gets you some kind of an offtake.
Because otherwise you have to wait to get a, you know, a free space, so to speak, in the merchant power market where they’re only gonna allow a certain amount of capacity to be added because they don’t wanna flood the market. It’ll depress prices, or you have to get a utility or corporate power offtake agreement, which are becoming fewer and further between, because you know, in some cases demand hasn’t.
Grown enough to, to warrant, uh, the, such a significant amount of new capacity. So if you don’t have coal and natural gas power retirements, and you’re not willing to sign PPAs at 12 bucks a megawatt hour or less. Then you’re gonna have a huge interconnection queue. So that’s the only other way to resolve that is, um, either you, you compromise the profitability of your project, which everybody doesn’t wanna do anymore because they all recognize the, the fallacy of, uh, and the flawed logic behind taking a a $12 megawatt hour p p a deal.
Um, they’re now gonna sit around and wait in this interconnection queue until they can get, uh, a 35, 40, $50 megawatt hour p p a again. So that just means the, the backup is there. So Phil
Allen Hall: and I have talked about putting together a special episode about the interconnect problem because it’s Department of Energy put out some studies about it, and it is a huge problem, Joel, that the getting green energy on the grid is a major stumbling block.
We can plan all the wind turbines we want into the ground. Hooking up to the grid is the biggest problem of all. And it sounds like California is, is in the midst of that right now. So we, we need to come back Phil and talk about that
Joel Saxum: for sure. Let’s see, cuz we talked a couple months ago about a 10 billion expansion project for Meso for their transmission lines, but that was a part of it, right?
We gotta get this going so we can get these things on board. Yeah, yeah. We need to dive into that. Let’s do it. Our
Allen Hall: farm of the week is high banks wind. And they are located in Washington and Republic counties in Kansas, near the Kansas, Nebraska border. You ever been to Marysville, Kansas? Like I have, you know where this is?
The first turbine has been installed on the site. That’s good news. Right? Uh, so it, it’s a next era energy project that will have a capacity around 600 megawatts of clean renewable energy. Next era has selected GE 2.5 megawatt machines. They’re gonna be 233 of them on the site. And Joel, that means they’re gonna have to have one of those fancy radar systems for the lights.
Oh, yeah, yeah. That’s coming. Uh, next era estimates, uh, 149 million in payments to the landowners and 224 million in tax revenue to the local communities over the 30 year life of the project. Wow, that’s a game changer. That’s a game changer for that part of Kansas in Nebraska. Uh, congratulations. That’s fantastic.
So congratulations to high banks. Wind. You are a wind farm of the week. That’s gonna do it for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy podcast. 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.
