Rosemary is back in action to discuss Suzlon’s new 3MW machine and SGRE designing a 4MW turbine for the US. It’s good to see new turbines and new orders! Scotland is concerned about floating turbines being dragged to Rotterdam for repairs, and discussions are underway for an offshore HVDC cable between Canada and the US. The Gode 1 wind turbine was amazingly back in service 24 hours after being hit by a cargo ship – Joel does a back of the envelope calculation. The new Lisheen III Wind Farm in Ireland is our Wind Farm of the Week!
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Allen Hall: We just got back from New Orleans and we spent a little time on the road after New Orleans. Just checking out the general area. I have never been to Mobile, Alabama. I haven’t been to Pensacola in a long time. Boy, the Gulf of Mexico is a nice place to hang out. Uh, some parts of America are really cool.
Yeah,
Joel Saxum: you know, it, uh, my better half and I, Kayla, we always talk about traveling. Oh, let’s travel here. Let’s go to, we want to go, you know, south of Spain, we want to check this, we’re gonna go to India, check this up. And like, man, the US is so big and it’s so beautiful in all corners of it. Like you could spend a lifetime traveling around just these freaking 48 lower states even and not see it all.
Allen Hall: Yeah, that was amazing. And, and we. Did enjoy New Orleans quite a bit. We had some really good food in, in fact, Joel, you’re the one who took us to this really great restaurant. I don’t know if we would’ve found it otherwise, but we had a, a great time there. Hopefully everybody else is recovering from ACP 2023.
There’s gonna be an offshore, uh, wind conference in London, and about a week from when this episode releases, that’s gonna be a huge deal that that one’s a, a, a big one. So these wind conferences are getting to be massive and. Just like this week’s episode, this is a massive episode cause we have so much, uh, good news about wind.
Denmark has a massive tender for offshore wind, like it’s gonna put America to shame. This, this thing is huge. And, and Rosemary and Joel talk about the implications. Uh, In Denmark and the surrounding, uh, countries, and also what it means for America, uh, because there’s a lot of activities is happening in Europe on offshore wind.
Then Sulan down in India has a new three megawatt machine, and they are attracting orders right now, and it’s, and they’re. Turning a profit, their stock is up. Really good things happening in India with Sulan and Siemens. Ka Mesa has announced a new megawatt turbine for the US for some sort of US weather conditions, and we’re not sure what that is.
Joel talks about what possible wind situations exist in the US that don’t exist elsewhere, but. Ira Bill is playing a lot into that Siemens S Sch Mesa decision. Yeah, absolutely.
Joel Saxum: And as we are always talking about what’s going on in the new, in the industry, we’re gonna be visiting one of the, uh, oldest floating.
Wind farms. There’s a Scottish turbine up by Aberdeen that actually gets tow, is being towed to Rotterdam for some repairs. Um, which is kind of odd, but, we’ll, we’ll jump into that one. And then also, uh, Rosemary lends some, some, some really good insights to a proposed US Canadian transmission corridor. So the, there’s a.
Plan that’s kind of being played with right now up in the northeast corner of the United States to share with, uh, share some wind energy back and forth with, uh, Canada and the US through some high voltage DC lines there. Uh, and then we’ll jump back into the past a few weeks when, uh, there was a, a ship carrying some grain up in the.
Northern Europe that ran into a wind turbine out in the go to wind one, uh, wind farm. And we’re gonna talk about that one coming back into service, uh, very quickly. Uh, and then jumping over to Ireland. Um, Alan has a difficult time pronouncing the wind farm of the week this week, which is the Laine three wind farm.
In Ireland. That
Allen Hall: was so smooth, Joel. I had such a hard time with that word. Uh, speaking of hard times, if you’re having a hard time finding us on YouTube, which there’s a lot of stuff happening on YouTube, there may be an easier platform for you, which is Twitter. So we’re now offering the uptime podcast and full episodes on Twitter.
So you can pick us up there and it has a nice little feature. Uh, there’s a. Actually, there’ve been a lot of new features on Twitter lately, so we thought we’d give it a try. So check us out on Twitter. Just go to the Weather Guard, lightning Tech, uh, Twitter page, and you’ll see the episodes posted there.
I’m Alan Hall, president of Weather, Gar Lightning Tech, and I’m here with the Vice President of North American Sales for Wind Power Lab, Joel Saxon and the Bill Nye of Australia, Rosemary Barnes, and this is the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.
Up in Denmark, the Danish government and several of the political parties there have reached an agreement to establish, uh, the framework for the largest offshore wind tenor tender in Danish history. Oh my gosh, Rosemary, this is unbelievable. Uh, the tender aims to develop nine gigawatts of offshore wind capacity with the potential to expand to 14 gigawatts.
Or more Holy smokes. Uh, the agreement includes provisions for Dana, ownership of the offshore wind projects, making it the first time the Danes will be part of the ownership circle. So I guess our friends at Wind Power Lab may be getting a check in the mailbox when these wind farms come in. My friend Morton up there have has some fish money, right?
Joel Saxum: More money for pumpkins and potato seeds for the summer and Right.
Allen Hall: Bread sandwiches. There you go. Well, that, that, okay, so this is a very interesting development because. Uh, basically the Danes have blown the doors off of everybody else in terms of offshore wind development and including the United States.
And when I read this article, it’s like, wow, this is, this is fantastic. Uh, the, the Dans are really going after offshore wind and, and obviously they have the technology and the, and the industry to go off and do this, but America’s gonna get. Cold shoulder, uh, because we’re developing much slower and we’re, and we’re not gonna have the ships nearby.
So the, the Danes are gonna pull all that, uh, all the assets that are needed to do offshore wind are gonna be sitting up there in the North Sea. And, and rightly so, I guess. Uh, but the second part of this, Joel, is payments to the citizens and to the state. Where in the United States, when we do offshore wind, there are the, the people along the shoreline get nothing besides a, a change in their scenery.
Of course. Uh, and I’m wondering if this is intended to sort of quell that a little bit of, yeah, we’re gonna develop all this wind and you’re gonna participate in it. So when you participate, you tend to want to play along a little bit, particularly if it’s, it’s a check in the mailbox.
Joel Saxum: I would say so. I, I guess a couple things around check in the mailbox for Danes is, uh, I’m, I feel bad for them from the, when we.
Complain about paying taxes in the US and oh, our taxes are so high. Like, no, like they’re, they’re, they, a lot of them are getting more than 50% taken out of their paychecks every, every month, so, or every two weeks. So if they get a couple bucks back, I’m a hundred percent happy for them. But I did reading this, I know that they’re gonna do some workout on like Bon Home.
Which is an island of, it’s a Danish island. It’s out east of the Danish mainland, north of Germany. But Bon Home is a place where a lot of Danes will just run off for the summer and do their summer vacation and stuff. And it actually has, like, you wouldn’t think this, but it’s like north of Germany in the sea up there where it’s kind of cold in between Sweden, Norman, but there’s beautiful sandy beaches on, so.
You, you know, getting that kind of payment and stuff, uh, flowing for the citizens there might help a little bit. I’ve got a friend out there as well, uh, his name’s Bjorn. Um, and they, and actually ace our, our, um, our CT over at WPO lab. He does some, he does some summertime over there, so they, that might be a little bit of a, You know, a carrot, uh, per se in front of the, uh, citizens there to get some things going.
Rosemary, did you
Allen Hall: go surf board out in that, in that area?
Rosemary Barnes: No, I never went to Bon home. I, I wanted to, um, it’s interesting place because, you know, if you ever say something like, oh, you can’t go rock climbing in Denmark, then Danes would be like, yes, you can, you can go in Bon home. But it’s, um, it’s much closer, like geographically, it looks like it should be part of Sweden perhaps rather than, than Denmark.
So it’s a little bit of an anno. Anomaly. Um, but there’s, there’s plenty of nice, um, beaches in, in Denmark, um, in Jutland as well. So they’re not, they’re not sure on that sort of thing. Um, but yeah, Bonham is a, is a cool Danish place that I never got to go. Uh, but I think that this, this wind farm is interesting because it’s, uh, it’s huge compared to Denmark.
Denmark only has about 5 million, um, citizens. So, uh, I think I just quickly Googled, so it might be wrong, but I think that they’re. Peak electricity load is only about five gigawatts. So you know, if they’re adding 14 to that, that’s a lot. They already export a ton of, um, wind power and already get about, you know, half of their electricity from winds.
So, you know, they’re used to that. But I can see why since like, it’s clearly not for Danish consumption of. Of course you need to, um, you know, uh, find some way for the Danish people to feel like they’re benefiting from it. I, I think that most Danish people are a little bit, they still feel a little bit hard done by about the fact that Norway, um, you know, got all of the oil resources, um, Denmark.
Didn’t, no, they, they literally talk about that quite often. So I think that like that, that’s, that’s a
Joel Saxum: thing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, I know. That’s what they are cousins.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Yeah. I said, I mentioned to my boss when I was at lm, I mentioned to him once that, you know, the Norwegian accent to me just sounds like people speaking Danish, but they’re laughing and he said, yeah, they’re laughing all the way to the bank cuz I took our oil without missing a beat.
I mean, in, in my understanding, this is the reason why Denmark is so far ahead on, um, wind energy. It’s because while everybody else was, you know, pursuing all of their fossil fuel natural resources, Denmark didn’t have any. And so they’re pursuing their natural resource, which is, which is wind. And it’s, um, you know, that.
Has put them in a good position for now, and it makes sense that they would exploit that to, you know, now this is their, their moment to, you know, have, um, really rich natural resources and, and
Joel Saxum: profit from it. If you wanna see some funny conversations, get the Norwegians and Danes drinking together, and then when, after three or four beers, when one, when one of the Danes calls one of the Norwegians, like little or something like that.
And then you start, oh, Oh yeah. Yeah. You’re a hundred percent correct. And that would make sense, Rosemary, then why the Danish government would want a piece of this, right? Because they’re gonna just export a lot of it. Right. So they’ll sell it to Germany or sell it to the Swedes or Norwegians or, or somewhere else.
Right. So a lot of it will, will get exported, which makes sense. Um, but I mean, like they’ve got the mothership there, right? Orstad, so they’ve got some, they’ve got some people that know how to develop. They’ve got all the port facilities all around the, the whole dang country. Except for the what, hundred kilometer border with Denmark or with Germany.
So they’ve got all the port facilities, they’ve got all kinds of vessels. They’ve got some of the best expertise in wind. Of course, the Danes are first and offshore wind. They’ve been doing it since the, you know, mid eighties. Yeah, it was early,
Rosemary Barnes: early
Joel Saxum: nineties. Yeah. So they, they, they, it’s, this is, it’s fan.
It’s gonna be great for the, for the Danish community. And I think, Alan, you are correct too, that, um, if I was. A vessel company and someone was saying, Hey, do you want to come to the US and work, or do you want to just like go a couple hundred kilometers that way and work? What, what would you rather take?
So we’ll see how it develops, I guess. Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: It’s interesting that you mentioned that, you know, it’s going to make the US um, offshore wind industry suffer. Um, and I think that this may be, you know, it’s really similar to what. Europe is feeling about the IRA in general, taking all of the, you know, battery manufacturing capabilities.
And there’s a, there’s a whole lot of stuff that, um, that is, you know, the US is really, you know, with that bold, bold, bold incentive. They are making the rest of the world feel like that about nearly every other part of the, the energy transition. So, um, maybe this is the, the right way to counter and. I guess it’s good if y you know, a bit of specialization, um, and hopefully some of the, the solutions and new ships that, um, you know, come into existence because of this plan.
Hopefully they’ll, you know, that expertise will make its way over to the US and, and help speed that too. Whoever is
Allen Hall: the high voltage GC cable salesperson in that region is gonna make it a killing. Don’t you think that this, this is the perfect place for H V D C and I? Isn’t it Hitachi one of the leaders in that?
At least that’s when I seen at some of the shows. I think it was Copenhagen where I saw that, but man, H V D C was gonna be the way to go if they’re gonna deliver power even down to the uk. That would make sense, right,
Rosemary Barnes: Rosemary? Yeah, well there’s already a few, um, cables in the region and some really interesting ones.
So the world’s longest sub-sea cable is between Norway and the uk. Um, so I guess that’s not. Uh, it’s more the win from the UK is, you know, going to Norway and then the hydro from Norway is going to the UK is kind of how that that works. But usually the business model, um, for the HV DC cables is an energy arbitrage.
You know, you got one price of electricity at one end of the cable and a different price that the other one. And when there’s a big difference and there’s a lot of money to be made by being the only one that can, you know, sell between those two regions. Um, I know that there’s one cable that came online in 2022.
It’s called AEC Link, and it, um, it goes along the Euro tunnel, so connecting the UK to, um, to France and that. Paid for itself in about a year. It took about a year for its revenue to To match, yeah, to match what, um, the cost was. I don’t know how the figure is right here, but you know, it costs something like 400 and something billion, um, net million euros to build and then.
600 and something million euros to construct it. And then from like, when it start came online in May or something, 2022. And by the end of that year, um, it had made over 400, 420 or something like that. Um, and if you look at the, you look at the financial results, it’s kind of like they, they’re hiding it.
They’re hiding how well that. That it did trying to, you know, like shift, um, costs, uh, from Euro Tunnel over onto that project cuz it’s, you know, like, it’s just, it’s taking the piss a bit, isn’t it? Just, you know, that kind of a profit. It’s brutal. Yeah. I think that that sort of, um, financial result is one of the reasons why we see so many H V D C projects popping up around the world.
But, um, I’m actually making a video on this topic at the moment and I was speaking to somebody, um, an an expert in this last night actually, and she mentioned that it seems like everything’s happening at once, but really all these projects started 10 years ago trying to work out approvals and stuff, but you can’t, you know, really get started until you’ve got that final approval in place and everything has kind of happened at once.
So there’s a lot of stuff, um, being squished up. But she mentioned that one of the really big, um, Big constraints to all of these projects happening is that they aren’t enough ships and there aren’t big enough ships. You know, you gotta roll up a, a lot of cable onto a, a ship to get these really long distance cables in place.
Um, and the. You know, the ships simply don’t exist to manage that much cable for the really long routes that are being planned. Um, and so one of the big H V D C projects that is, um, you know, in planning at the moment, the one that links Morocco to the UK is called X Links. Um, they, one, they don’t think they’re gonna be able to source enough cable.
The amount of cable that they’re gonna need is more than Europe makes. So they’re, um, they’ve started a cable manufacturing company. Um, and two, the ship that they would need to install it doesn’t exist. So they’re building, they’ve started their ship building company too. It’s just, yeah, it’s, it’s crazy.
The little, you know, the little details, uh, the big. The big problems. Actually,
Joel Saxum: I was at this insurance conference the other day and we were talking about, uh, a lot of it was around cable claims. So cable claims some of, some cable claims in offshore wind are 30 million for one claim. There was an ongoing, over the last few years, an ongoing billion dollar claim in the North Sea about cables.
And one of the jokes that someone said there was, man, someone would be smart to spend 120 to 150 million building their own cable lay vessel. You’d probably pay it off in two or three years. And I was like, man, That is a good idea. If you could get the capital together and just, this is all we’re gonna do, we’re just gonna go lay cable.
That’s all. That’s it. That would be, I mean, there’s opportunity there for someone. I
Rosemary Barnes: won’t be remotely surprised if the X Links, um, company ends up wildly successful but never actually puts in their, their Morocco to the UK project. It won’t surprise me at all if they just make a killing from their cable manufacturing facility and their ship building facility.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. And, and the, and a vessel.
Allen Hall: Yeah. Can I ask a stupid question about substations? And, and maybe I’m just totally off here, but are there people permanently stationed or like, are there people inside the substations running those things? These big substations, particularly the DC ones, who’s Are there people on them?
I would say
Joel Saxum: there’s gotta be a couple people, but, but there’s also a push for, have you seen like Annie Mall? A robot? No, Annie Mall was a dog looking robot before Boston Robot. Boston Dynamics made one. And they’re, they’re making the, the push was to make unmanned platforms for oil and gas because it’s so expensive to have people and move people back and forth here in helicopter helicopters and all this stuff.
Right. And the people cost so much. It was like, well, if we can, we can spend a $150,000 on a robot and that robot can run the platform. You know, that’s, that’s six months of a guy person
Allen Hall: offshore. So it’s gonna be run by robot dogs. Is that where we’re going, Wally?
Joel Saxum: Or whatever, R two D two out there.
Rosemary Barnes: I assume that they, they don’t give it like dog intelligence though, right?
They, they try and try and make human-like intelligence to the,
Joel Saxum: to the robot. There’s a super cool video, uh, if, if anybody that let’s listening wants to look at it, us on YouTube, and it’s called Mall like Animal, but N A N Y M A L. And the, it’s got, so it’s got slam navigation in it so it can navigate itself with simultaneous like location mapping with lidar and color imagery.
But it also has. Uh, color cameras, thermal cameras, and then it’s like, it’s like, like reading gauges, reading analog gauges and giving feedback, and it’s, it’s really cool. It’s a really cool like minute or two minute long video to, to watch how this could happen in the future or what is happening now, to be honest with you.
Moving
Allen Hall: on to India Sulan Group. India’s largest renewable energy solutions provider as we all. Nolan Love has secured another order for its three megawatt series wind turbine, uh, from Saraca renewables. Uh, the order includes installation of 68 wind turbines, uh, with the rated capacity of three megawatts each for, uh, roughly 204 megawatt project.
It’s supposed to be commissioned in early 2024, and it marks the fifth order for SU’s three megawatt. Series in less than a month, man, they were killing it. The salespeople down there are doing a great job. Uh, Sulan would supply the turbines and, and also, uh, include erecting the, the turbines and doing the commissioning and providing, uh, o and m.
Post commissioning, and this is all part of India’s transition goal of 500 gigawatts by 2030. Does that seem right? 500 gigawatts by 2030. Oh my gosh. That seems like a lot, guys. Uh, that’s, that’s a huge marketplace, right? Isn’t it? Like if, if I’m su lawn, and I know I got 500 gigawatts of machines to produce, Data is awesome.
The Indian
Joel Saxum: market’s growing, uh, big time. If you’re, if you’re, you just kind of watch like in the weeds, like between the lines on like LinkedIn and stuff, you start to see, I mean, tp, there’s a lot of factories down there too, right? But you’re gonna starting to see companies installing quite a bit and it’s cuz it’s not just one region in India that is good with wind either, there’s.
Pockets all over the place.
Allen Hall: If you watch, uh, clon, they had an announcement on the q4 uh, financials and they had a really good quarter. They went year on year. Last year they had lost a bunch of money. This year they were profitable. Not a hugely, but definitely profitable. And then looking forward, it’s only up.
And so the stock was up like 10% on the day, uh, which is remarkable. Right, and cuz you haven’t seen that out of a GE or a Vestus or, uh, Intercon or somebody like that, it, it’s been pretty flat there. Positive, but not 10%. So someone’s cranking the numbers and clan all, all the company officials are saying great things about the company and its future.
And that’s good. India needed that. We need salan to be one of those players in, in the marketplace, so it’s good to see them doing well. Meanwhile, Siemens Ka Mesa, uh, has a new onshore wind turbine, specifically designed for us weather conditions. And Joel, I, I never know what that means. Like what is the deal with us weather?
Uh, maybe it’s gusty. Is that what they’re talking about? That’s
Joel Saxum: a crazy thing to say because if you say US weather conditions, it’s not like we just talked about the Danes, right? It’s not like Danish weather conditions where it’s pretty much the same across the country. It’s so different everywhere. You got turbulent, you got flat, you got desert, you’ve got high altitude, you’ve got.
Um, things in, you know, in the northeast, up on the top peaks of hills, and you got stuff in the plains where there isn’t a hill for a hundred miles. Like it does that, that statement is someone, someone from marketing did not have the proper meeting with someone from the technical department. When they said that, my first thought
Allen Hall: was it has something, something to do with lightning, but.
I, I have received a number of like, uh, phone calls and random emails from there asking about lightning protection. So maybe it’s something to do with lightning. We’ll see. Uh, so the, the, obviously it has a rotor diameter of 164 meters, which is huge. And, uh, they’re gonna assemble this new wind turbine is a 4.4 megawatt machine.
They’re gonna assemble it in Kansas. And in Iowa, so blades in Iowa and the cells in Kansas. So both those factors have been sort of mothballed recently. So they’re gonna open both of them up and make this 4.4 megawatt machine. Wow. And, and, uh, and this is a, I’m sure driven by the IRA Bell, where those, they want American content.
So Siemens can design a wind turbine specifically for the US market. It’s bigger than the typical GE wind turbine, uh, bigger. And it’s new, which everybody is gonna be hesitant about, but it’s built on shore so that there may be a, a market for it very quickly. And I, I just hearing rumblings, they are trying to sell this thing like crazy that they’re trying to reach out to a bunch of different operators about it.
It’s good. Right? And we need to get a couple of different wind turbine factories going in the United States. And this is another one. Obviously GE and LM are are big in the United States. That’s good. So we’ll see what the 4.4 megawatt market has to say. 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. The Kin Cardine wind turbine, uh, site located 10 miles off of Aberdeen, Scotland is, uh, they’re towing the turbines when they go in, in for scheduled maintenance all the way up to Rotterdam.
Now, Joel, that’s not like next door, right? That’s a, that’s a little bit of a. Sale to
Joel Saxum: get to there. Mm-hmm. A cruise, if you will. Mm.
Allen Hall: Cruise. Yeah. I guess it could be a call, a cruise. Uh, so this is the second time that, uh, winter wind’s been floated up to Rotterdam for repairs or maintenance. Uh, but this is causing a lot of consternation within Scotland because, uh, there, there Scotland in the uk it’s like wondering like, well, why can’t we just fix it where it is?
We have capability. Why are, why are we dragging these turbines up to Rotterdam to get ’em. Getting fixed. So there’s a, a big push to keep every, all, everything locally. And basically, uh, it sounds like they’re not gonna drag the wind turbines to Rotterdam anymore. They’re gonna, they’re gonna stop all that and they’re gonna, uh, keep the wind turbine repair stuff locally now.
So this has consequences, I think, for the United States and other places where the intent was, and you steal a lot of proposals like this, when a wind turman would go in for routine maintenance, they would just drag it off the grid, take it to wherever it was gonna get repaired and drag and, and basically bring another.
Turbine in place, right? So you always have like a couple of spare turbines sitting in dock somewhere and do this, the swap. But country to country, I don’t think that’s gonna play very well. Right? And very re seeing this problem.
Joel Saxum: There’s something going on here that we don’t know about because when someone says scheduled maintenance, Why would you need, why would you need to tow that into port for scheduled maintenance to towing to port?
In my mind is, is CE work, right? It’s major component exchange. It’s a new generator, new blades, new, new something. Scheduled. Maintenance is, is the basic stuff that should be dropping someone on a transition piece or dropping someone on the floating platform and having them run up and, and get done what they gotta get done.
Um, That, that, that side of the things don’t really, doesn’t really make sense to me. But, um, you know, I’ve, I’ve been to Aberdeen quite a few times, and if this, this is just off the coast of Aberdeen, they’ve got great port facilities there, right? They’ve been running oil, oil and gas has been running out of Aberdeen for 40 years.
Um, they don’t have a lack of space at the dock. They don’t have a lack of cranes. They’ve, they’ve got it all there. So there’s gotta be something else in the background here that we’re not seeing because the, the, the cost to drag one of these also. So, so you, so people know as well, you don’t tow something offshore with one tow towboat when it’s this big.
You’d a lot of times tow it with three or at least two. So you’ll have like a, a nose and two tails and it’s to keep it square and moving. Now, when you’re going a long distance, sometimes those boats just tag along, but you don’t, it’s, it’s not cheap. You’re gonna be burning thousands of tons of fuel to do this.
So there’s, there’s something here that doesn’t make sense. Rosemary,
Allen Hall: is there more behind the scenes than we can see?
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I mean, I can only speculate, but I mean the . Wind farm is one of the very first off floating offshore wind farms, like maybe the third in the world. Um, and so I wonder if some of the, you know, scheduled maintenance is really checks, you know, like when I would put a new product out into the field, I’m definitely planning to go up and check on it.
Um, At least every year. And, you know, I would always try and get up more just to make sure that the assumptions that I made are, you know, playing out in the field. Cuz it, it’s just so hard to actually, um, you know, you, you try and test as much as possible in the, in the lab beforehand, um, in a test facility.
But you can’t, you can’t properly recreate operational environments of a wind turbine. And especially when you’re throwing, you know, all the offshore stuff into the Knicks as well. You’ve got. Weather conditions, you’ve got, um, the loads of the, the ocean. Then, you know, you wanna make sure that what you’ve designed is what’s, what’s actually happening.
So I would wonder if it’s something like
Joel Saxum: that. So maybe they’re bringing it back to the, to the, to the Netherlands. Just it’s because they can bring it into port where they built it and have a, the whole fleet of Dutch engineers crawling all over this thing to make sure that it’s. Back to snuff. And it was more co cost effective to do
Rosemary Barnes: that than a lot of times you pick the first location for your prototype.
It’s not because it’s a really great wind energy location, it’s because it’s convenient for the whole team of engineers to be nearby and, um, checking yet a lot and, um, you know, repairing, um, little things as they happen. Uh, so it might be that kind of situation. I mean, if, if there were a lot of Dutch engineers involved, um, then that would make it easy for them.
But then again, I mean, Scotland’s not so. Far to go. Right. Uh, it, it’s, it’s a little strange. Maybe they didn’t
Joel Saxum: want to get away from the chocolate bars. They need to stay in the Netherlands. I don’t know. It’s tulip season. It’s beautiful there right now. So maybe they just wanted to stay for that. Yeah, true.
In
Allen Hall: the United States, there’s a growing coalition of, uh, offshore wind, green hydrogen and transmission companies looking at a US Canadian transmission corridor offshore. Uh, the theory kind of goes like this. You’d have some offshore wind in Nova Scotia, some offshore wind in, up in Maine, and then you’d tie them together with a basically, uh, a big DC high voltage DC cable, and you could share about two gigawatts with the power between United States and Canada.
That kind of exists right now because of Hydro-Quebec, and I think Hydro-Quebec. Provides power to the us. I think actually some of our power in Massachusetts actually comes from Canada at the moment. Uh, so this is not off the realm of possibility here, but doing something offshore is because we kind of get into sort of federal water territory and having, which is not well settled at the moment, but it does open the possibility like in, in, like we were just talking about, between Norway and the uk and a lot of interconnects that are gonna happen in Europe.
The United States really hasn’t done that too much. Like there’s no connector between Mexico and Texas that doesn’t exist, or Mexico and anywhere, and it seems like if. They’re talking about making an offshore H V D C interconnect up north. Why wouldn’t you do it down south? Why wouldn’t you do between California and um, Mexico?
Why, why couldn’t you do it there? It seems like that would make a lot of sense to connect the two where the winds may be strong. Uh, just, just a cable. And Rosemary, it does, does it makes sense financially to do that, right?
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. One thing I’ve noticed with the H V D C, there’s um, you know, on the one hand there’s all the engineering benefits, and then on the other hand there’s all the political headaches.
And so I would guess that the reason why there isn’t a link between Mexico and the us um, is because politically it’s more challenging. Um, so you, you know, US and Canada are, are very close, very similar, a lot of trust there that, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years in the future, you’re still gonna be close and wanting to, um, trade electricity and, and trust it.
But yeah, when you’ve got, uh, you know, uh, Interconnector that is a big part of your, you know, energy security. Then you really want to trust that that two gigawatts isn’t just gonna get shut off because, you know, the Canadian Prime Minister is upset at the um, US President,
Joel Saxum: right? That has happened before.
Trudeau and Trump are not best friends. Oh,
Rosemary Barnes: that is true. You obviously can’t, like, if you’re go in between two countries that you can’t guarantee that there aren’t gonna be differences. But, um, especially, you know, we’re like, we’re talking decades of, um, useful lifetime for these projects. So who knows what.
What the global politics are gonna look like in, you know, 20 50, 20 60. Um, but I, I think that the projects that you see actually coming online, the interconnectors are all between very like-minded countries. So, you know, the two of those. Projects that, um, I mentioned one of them before, the X links from Morocco to the uk.
I would suggest that that’s probably gonna be their biggest problem, that they’re not that similar. The, um, the countries politically. And then in Australia we’ve got plans, um, to put a sub cable from north of Australia up. To Singapore by Indonesia and both of those countries, you know, we have a lot of trade with those countries, but it’s not the sort of place where you can guarantee that in, you know, in 50 years everything’s gonna still be, um, you know, smooth sailing.
So, uh, I, I think that that’s a challenge, but they also. Circumvent other challenges cuz in the US you’ve got such trouble getting enough transmission in place. Building new transmission, you know, on onshore on land in the US is so hard. Um, And I do understand that there is, um, legislation before Congress at the moment that’s gonna make it more similar to the way that they do it for gas pipelines now, which is a bit more, more simple.
So maybe that’s about to be slightly simplified. Um, but you know, if you, instead of having to build transmission across the whole country and, you know, think about every single farmer’s land that you’re gonna have to get permission from them. Or at least, you know, like worry about them stirring up community opposition to your project.
It’s. More expensive to put a subsea cable in, like obviously like a lot more, but it might be faster, even though it’s technically harder, the engineering is harder politically. And um, yeah, just in terms of community license, it, you know, um, fish, um, going to start any protests or, you know, like go to go to parliament and, um, Yeah, and bring a pluck card or anything like that.
So, um, yeah, I think that it might actually be an easier way to get the security that you need because I mean, the, we’ve got, you know, such big plans, big needs for the amount of clean energy that we’ve gotta bring on. And if we can’t be connecting different regions, then it’s just gonna make this. The whole thing so hard because, you know, the good wind resources aren’t where all the people live for one thing and for a second thing, you need multiple different wind locations that are, you know, spaced far apart.
Um, so that you, when it’s not windy in one place, it is windy in the other place. So we just, yeah, we need this interconnection and, um, I think that the subsea cables are an alternative path if you can’t get all of the onshore transmission built that you’d like to. Joel,
Allen Hall: when you and I were down in New Orleans, one of the big discussion points was technicians and trying to get technicians and find technicians and there’s not enough technicians.
And we talked to, um, Alex Jones from renewable and dispatch about their app and, and how many technicians there were in the United States right now. And it really isn’t a good solid number for what we could tell, but it’s around 10,000, right? Something like that. And we’re gonna need about 40,000. In the near future.
So there’s a huge deficit of when technicians, technicians tend to be on the younger end, you know, 20 to 25 years old. Uh, the new ones are, and they tend to be male. And we also discussed how the Nebraska Community College system, which is a very efficient and good system, is having difficulty finding students to study wind energy.
And the whole thing was just bothering me on, on the way home from New Orleans. I was just thinking about what is going on? Why are we having such a hard time? Well, I running kind a couple of studies having to do about men in these younger age groups and sort of where they are mentally. And I thought, man, this, this is must be part of the issue.
Uh, 40% of all men show depressive symptoms. Now, this is a study based out of UPEN and some, and it, it’s a published study. I can send you this study here, but it’s really on the younger end, it’s even worse. Uh, men aged 18 to 23 had the least optimism for their futures and the lowest levels of social support.
65% of men age 18 to 23. Say that quote, no one really knows me well, holy smokes. So if, if you’re looking for technicians, finding a technician who is, uh, you know, in good mental condition to go out to some remote location and operate. By themselves or with a couple of people and do a job. It’s gonna be really hard to find.
So one, basically one outta two technicians you may bring in is struggling mentally.
Joel Saxum: I’m glad this study’s there cuz I think it’s a silent problem that doesn’t get talked about very much. I know. Um, there’s like, okay, so one of the large operators that I’m involved with, all or large ISPs I’m involved with all the time is GE V.
Wind Power and GE V. Wind Power has a back office platform called It’s Babe, my Facebook it’s called Um, Workplace. It’s basically an internal, like an intranet, Facebook type thing. And one of, one of the things they did, uh, about a year ago, a year and a half ago, it’s really cool, is they, they basically created an ambassador program within the company of mental health first aiders.
And these people, and these people got, or have training on, you know, Seeing, seeing the signs of someone in, in a depressed state or someone that’s just having a tough time. They, they’ve been trained to basically see these symptoms and reach out to these people to lend a helping hand. Right. And it’s some of the same stuff that we’ve talked about with Neil from T C G M, like the brothers keeper type thing is, you know, as everybody needs to, to give each other a hand.
But I think, so I’ve been doing a little bit of, this is funny that you bring this up cause I’ve actually been doing quite a bit of research of this on, on the side myself. Uh, cuz it’s an interesting phenomenon that I’ve been trying to, I’ve been talking through it with a couple of people in my network.
And one of the things is this is the first generation of young people, not just young men, young people, young men and women to grow up completely immersed in social media. And, and, and some of the research that’s actually coming out is saying like, when people are constantly looking through social media, they say all this.
They have that, but I don’t, they have that, but I don’t, this person has this, but I don’t, cuz it’s so visible and able to see all the time. So everybody’s in a, or not everybody, but it’s, it’s, it’s easier for people to slide into a, a. Depressive state when they’re looking at why is everybody else doing so well?
But the reality of it is, is not that not everybody else is doing so well either. They’re just living their Instagram life trying to show the best of the best things. Right. So it’s actually, um, it’s a, it’s a, it’s really a, a. To, in my mind, it’s a pandemic of, of de depression and young people, but I don’t, it’s not just men.
Men are, they’re, they are affected by it. And, and you have this, this thing that’s not catching up as well. Right? There’s still a classical thought around a lot of young men, or men in general of you’re tough. Shut up. You’ll get through it, figure it out. Like when I was a kid, my parents are always like, I’ll give you something to cry about if you’re gonna cry.
I didn’t cry a lot, but I’m just saying that, see there, there, but there I go again. Right. With, with perpetuating that same, that same, that same thing is men are still, there’s still, I would say, and this is armchair stuff, right? I’m not an expert, but more, um, susceptible or more um, I don’t know what the best, best term is to, but push towards, keep it in.
You’ll figure it out. Things will get better and not, and not being able to feel comfortable reaching out for that
Allen Hall: help. Yeah, and I, I was looking for corresponding studies on women. And I didn’t see those same sort of numbers and Rosemary being our, uh, representative of, you know, mostly younger women on, on the podcast, I, and, and you’ve been around wind a little bit and you’ve seen a lot of technicians kind of come and go.
I’m sure it, it is the same sort of thing happening on, on the. Female side of that equation around female technicians. It must be a different experience, I’m sure.
Rosemary Barnes: But yeah, I’m really sh shocked at those numbers, especially cuz you said it was in the last two weeks. So it’s, you know, it’s a current, current thing and that’s definitely disturbing.
I, I can’t say that I, I haven’t noticed any male technicians, uh, having those problems. I wouldn’t really be able to compare to female. I hope that it’s, um, you know, it’s definitely not. I, I would really hope that it’s not contributing to these kinds of problems and maybe it’s, you know, the type of job that could be a bit of a solution.
It is nice to work on something like renewable energy where it makes you feel a purpose. Um, I know that that’s, you know, given me driving energy throughout my career. Um, and a lot of the young people that I talk to that I’m moving, like changing jobs to go into that industry, they. Do say, you know, like, say an an electrician who’s been, you know, wiring, um, rich people’s renovations and then they’ve left the big city and gone to a, a wind turbine job in a smaller town.
They feel better about what they’re doing with their time. That it, you know, it’s contributing to solving the world’s problems. And, um, I know that a big. Issue with mental health for younger generations is, um, this, you know, negativity about the, the future in terms of climate change. And for me personally, I used to feel that, um, until I started working on that in my career and now, um, I feel much more positive.
So I, I hope that it’s a solution to some of these issues, so not a problem.
Allen Hall: Let, let me throw out one more stat here. Uh, roughly 30% of men in these younger age groups has not interacted with another human for over a week outside the household. Does that make sense, Joel? I think it does. To
Joel Saxum: be honest with you, COVID, think about that, right?
Covid you’re sitting and, and every, and people get if you, and if you were a young, so now it’s different for us. I’m. 36. So I had two years of my 36 years of isolation and things like this. If I was 18 right now, and the last two or three years of my life have been isolation, all I really know from my adult life is also isolation, right?
So that’s, that’s what’s been hammered into you as a young person. That’s all you’ve seen. Like, you didn’t go to school, you didn’t, all you saw was your parents and maybe a, you know, your grandma threw the window or something like that. Like, so, so people like, they, they’ve just gotten so used to that, that it’s become, and it’s, and ad on top of that, the, the ad, you know, the, the, I don’t say advent, but the, the surging.
Capabilities of technology, right? Cell phone. I get everybody has a cell phone or hand right here. Look around a restaurant. When you see young people, they’re just fricking, they don’t need to see their friends. I’ll, I’ll give, let me give you one more example before I move on. I know some, I know some kids that this isn’t, some kids, this is many kids where they sit at home and they’re on and they’re on an iPad hanging out with their friends virtually.
When the friends live two blocks down the street and they could just walk outside and go down there and hang out, right? When I was a kid, you got on your bike and you rode it into town to go see your buddy and you, you met somewhere. Now they, now with technology and everybody’s got, if wifi goes down in the house, you’re screwed.
It
Allen Hall: does lead to a big problem, I think for operators. ISPs, if you’re trying to recruit technicians. That age group is 18 to 25 males for the most part. A large part of them are not there, are not ready to go. And I think Rosemary’s right, if you want to get out of that sort of doldrums being outside and Joel, you’re saying the same thing, being outside really helps get rid of some of that, that boredom, I think, and, and having something productive to do would, would really help.
The mental state, probably of a lot of men in that situation is just really shocking to see it. And I wonder how the larger companies, the OEMs, operators, ISPs, are trying to deal with it and they must be seeing it every day. And it’s good to hear Rosemary’s input on that too, because it’s, it’s good to have a different perspective on it.
And, and Joel and me and I, I don’t know if there’s an answer. It’s just good to get it out there and to put some numbers
Joel Saxum: to it. You know what institution probably has a ton of data on this and grabs people from all over the country is the US military. I’d love to see what they have for data on it, but what we’ve also, what we’ve talked to in the past for getting people into.
Platforms into school, into into the wind energy industries, ex-military people. Man, I
Allen Hall: agree with you there. I, I just think we gotta highlight it. I’m not sure there’s an answer. We’re gonna, I know we’re gonna have a Neil on from TC g m, uh, in the near future, and I want to hear his thoughts on it, but I, it, it’s something that needs to be discussed.
Definitely.
Joel Saxum: And, and I, and I, you know, earlier in the segment, I. Mentioned to the, the listeners here as well, the mental health first aider thing. There’s a lot of resources online. There’s a lot of little quick little YouTube videos to watch. I’d encourage everybody to watch a YouTube video on it. Take a little class on it.
There’s all kinds of resources online, uh, whether it’s your partner, your friend, someone down the street, your, your aunt, uncle, mom, dad, whatever. If you can recognize those things happening in someone else’s life and, and reach out with a hand that, uh, the world is a better place.
Allen Hall: Get help. Get help.
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Joel Saxum: schedule a call today.
Allen Hall: The go to wind one offshore wind farm in Germany has put its turbine back into service within 24 hour hours after it was hit by the cargo vessel. And if you remember, the petrol ran into it and cut a huge go and, uh, cut a huge hole into its bow, uh, from running into the wind turbine.
And the thoughts about the ship itself were that it was on autopilot. And people weren’t watching and it just sort of ran into this wind turbine. Uh, the ship was lucky to make it to port. Now, I’m one shocked that the wind turbine could be returned back on within 24 hours. I’m not sure there is a checklist.
As to what you would verify after that? Like, did you put a level on the side of the tower and go, yep. It’s not leaning. We’re we’re good to go guys? Or, uh, it’s, I, I don’t even know, right. It’s gonna get rocked pretty hard. I’m not sure the components inside of the turbine are designed to take that kind of shock load bit.
Maybe. Maybe they are. Yeah. I
Joel Saxum: mean it depends on if, uh, we, we’ve confirmed that that’s a monopile, right? Not a jacket. Yeah, it’s a monopile. So if it’s a monopile, I mean that thing’s buried into the sea floor quite a ways so, I mean, it’s not gonna shake around, right? Like you’re either gonna dent it, crush it, or bend it over.
And if it hasn’t crushed or bent or, I mean, 24 hours is see is a bit amazing to me. Cause I’d think they would want to do at least some N D T, you know, some non-destructive testing work, some scans and stuff of some of the, like the impact area to make sure like nothing happened there. Like you didn’t, cause I, in my mind I think of this like you can, you can put a.
I weigh 240 pounds. I’m, I’m not a, I’m not a small fella. You can stand, I can stand on a, on a beer can and it won’t crush, right? I can stand on a beer can with one foot and it won’t crush. But if you, if you, if you just tap the side of it, that beer can, will crush in an instant, right? So my thought is, is you need to make sure that structurally, that that monopile where that thing was hit is good there.
Because if there’s one diker ding in that cylindrical piece, it’s possible that that thing could just come down at some point in time. A strong wind, uh, I don’t know, but I do know that they’re built very robust. The engineers offshore are always over-engineer things, but man, it 24 hours is a bit quick for my liking.
But I guess in, in the grand scheme of things, what does on and off mean? The rotor’s spinning or the rotor’s not, like, that’s not gonna add that much. Like structural issues into the turbine itself. So like if it’s gonna come down, it’s gonna come down. Might as well get some juice out of
Allen Hall: it. Speaking of beer cans, I actually worked at oaa for a summer where we made the aluminum for, uh, beer cans and every, all the other cans used in food.
In the food world, there’s a lot of engineering. Behind aluminum cans in a beer can. There is, there’s different alloys for the different parts. It’s pretty strong. It’s designed to take a lot of loads, so I’m, I’m not shocked that it can hold you. It probably hold a lot more weight, but it, it’s because it’s well-engineered.
It must be like this turbine, it must be well-engineered to handle this load. Exactly,
Joel Saxum: exactly.
Allen Hall: That Alcoa place smelled like beer, as you can well imagine. We did a lot of recycling of beer cans there. So when, if you even get. Close to the plant, it had the smell of stale beer, which is not very attractive.
You know, you don’t think to yourself, yeah, let’s go back into that factory the next day. Uh, but there were a lot of recycling of aluminum, of course. And in, in the, in this case of, um, a wind turbin g a wall up, just like we had at Alcoa. We had a lot of structural engineers about how this, this aluminum should be processed.
Somebody on the tower side and the monopole side. Must have done an analysis on it, right, to say it’s down, it’s 30 meters into the, into the earth, or however far down it is, and as long as it doesn’t have a huge dent in it, we’re good. Right. That’s the weak spot, Joel. Right. If you, you take that aluminum candy, you put a little dent stand on, it’s gonna crush.
Must be the same sort of analysis going on. Oh, I mean,
Joel Saxum: so we, there’s some simple math we can do here too. Like, well, how big was that vessel? That vessel was, had to be, uh, it
Allen Hall: was full, it was grain, right? It was
Joel Saxum: heavy. Yeah. It’s Is it a thousand tons? Oh yeah. If it’s a thousand tons and it’s cruising at. It’s on autopilot, so maybe it’s going, I don’t know, eight knots.
Allen Hall: Eight 10 knots. Yeah, probably. Yeah. That’s an impact. One half ENV squared.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. We gotta get Rosemary back. What are we doing? That’s a, that’s a lot of impact. That’s a lot of force, right? I know it didn’t hit it head on. It was a glancing blow. But either way, I mean, cuz the way that that mo, it’s monopile and then there’s basically a, like a key on top of the monopile, right?
And then the transmi transition piece is set on top of that, and then the tower is set on top of that. And, but it had to have hit the tower on a, maybe it, maybe it didn’t hit the transition piece and just hit the tower. And the ship wasn’t high enough to mess up the trans because the transmission piece, if you hit that with a boat that’s walk gangways and walkways and railings and stairs, and so it had to have just hit the tower.
It had to be low enough draft when it was, it was full. So if it was low enough draft, it just glanced off the tower, but it ripped the fricking hu open on the ship. I don’t either way. This, this, this is a mess, right? These, these
Allen Hall: guys. Yeah, they didn’t report that the ship had run into the wind turbine. A and they just kind of got off the, they parked the boat on, on shore at the dock and just walked away.
It sounded like they didn’t tell anybody that it
Joel Saxum: happened. Did they know that the a, there was an Ais S system tracking them, like, oh, is it their first day on the boat? Like they thought they’re gonna’ get away with it? I don’t know. Well, that’s
Allen Hall: a, that’s a really good question. Right. I had a, I had that thought that, If you’re tracking ships and you know where these wind turbines are, do you, is there an alert that goes out somewhere to Vestus or Siemens?
Whoever’s turbines they are like, Hey, there’s a ship within like a hundred yards of your turbine right now. Uh, you know, when you need to check it, you need to check it. Just like with a lightning sensors light now, like there’s an a lightning strike within a hundred feet of your winter, but you probably gotta go out and check it.
Is there a similar thing for ships and. Uh, monopiles someone
Joel Saxum: in either whoever it is, OSTED, whatever, someone in their remote operations center. Definitely has a screen with all of the vessels that are in the, within the wind farm on a s for sure. A hundred percent. Can
Allen Hall: you imagine sitting there watching that
Joel Saxum: happen live now?
I can, I can do that on a raspberry pie in the TV in your house in an afternoon. I’m sure Ted’s got
Allen Hall: it. Wow. That would had to be really nerve-wracking. Great. And, and maybe that’s why, maybe that’s why the ship got reported so fast is that they knew that had happened. Somebody knew that had happened, had reported it to the authorities.
So when they. Showed up on at the dock, they knew the German authorities knew what to go do. That must have happened. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Wow. Let’s just hope this doesn’t happen anymore, but it feels like it will. It’s terrible. Orstad has opened a new wind farm in Ireland through a corporate power purchase agreement with meta.
Uh, so your favorite Facebook company is buying power from wind energy again, which is good. Right? Uh, the Lisheen III Wind Farm has capacity of 28 megawatts and is located in. County Kilkenny, which is in it’s adjacent to Lisheen one and two wind farms. The, the combined three laine farms have a capacity to generate 89 megawatts of green energy, making it, uh, Orsted’s largest wind farm in Ireland.
Hot dog. Uh, so all that energy’s actually be dumped to the grid, and, and Meta is buying the energy in sort of in theory, um, as green energy. So this is good. Right? So Ted is building partnerships with larger companies like. Meta, uh, to offload the energy and to fight off global warming. So our Wind Farm of the week is a Laine three Wind Farm in Ireland.
Congratulations to Lisheen III and Orsted. That’s gonna do it for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy podcast. Thanks for listening. 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.
