The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

American Clean Power’s Q1 report shows the weakest quarter since 2023, China plugs an undersea data center into offshore wind, and thermal imaging spots hidden blade damage.

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Allen Hall: The Uptime Wind Energy podcast, brought to you by StrikeTape. Protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit StrikeTape.com. And now your hosts

Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall. I’m here with Rosemary Barnes, Matthew Stead, and Yolanda Padron. And three out of the four of us, everyone except Rosie, went to Houston this past week. Matthew, you were on the floor. Yolanda, you were on the floor this week. What did you think?

Matthew Stead: I think there was a few sort of common themes that I picked up. One, the obvious one which keeps coming up every time is insurance and lightning, and insurance, and all those sort of things. probably the other point that I observed was really strong supply chain. they had everyone, all the people, e- even people, building boxes.

And [00:01:00] so they had boxes, transportation, cranes, really strong, supply chain. also really strong on the batteries, like the CATL batteries, et cetera, et cetera, and solar. I think that seems to be getting a bit more, a bit more, mature and more obvious. obviously blades, lots of people talk to us about blades, maybe ’cause we talk about blades.

But, lightning root issues, blade bolts, those sorts of things, leading edge erosion, robotic repair, et cetera, et cetera. a bit about, add-ons like PowerCurve, were fairly visible, so that was good. but there was a lot of secret meetings in rooms away from the actual event.

so that was one observation. and the other observation was perhaps not so many operators that actually [00:02:00] work on a day-to-day basis. That was my subjective impression 

Rosemary Barnes: Speaking of secret meetings in rooms, what were you guys doing around the time of ACP? 

Matthew Stead: So the Australian American Chamber of Commerce organized a special event, with two Australian companies to launch a new product, which monitors lightning and then transmits the results using satellite communications.

So it was very open, but invitation only, Rose. 

Rosemary Barnes: I, actually, I- the comments, ’cause people are always, after our first go organizing wind O&M event in Australia, I would hear about it from people who didn’t, just chatting at, on, different wind farm sites. They didn’t know I was involved, and they’re like, “Oh, yeah, there’s a secret event now.”

And it’s we did our very best to publicize this, the most that we could. It was not intended to be secret. So yeah, I’m just wondering if, people are gonna think the same if [00:03:00] they, they missed out on, your event. But how was it re- received? Do, we need more events in the US? 

Matthew Stead: Yes, absolutely.

And I, I don’t have my pin on here, but, yeah, I do have a pin from the Australian American Chamber of Commerce Texas division, 

Rosemary Barnes: How was the event for you, Yolanda? 

Yolanda Padron: It was good. It was good. the showroom was the, or the exhibit floor was a little bit em- more empty than I thought it would be, but it was good.

It was good to, to see people, to catch up with everybody. There were some really good chats happening everywhere. and I got … I don’t know about you guys, but I saw a lot more people not from the US that wanted to come in and understand the market better than I did other years, which was nice to see.

Matthew Stead: Was there any new technology on the floor this year? I thought there was a new robot company, but it was actually solar cleaning. 

Yolanda Padron: I saw some rebranding from some companies, moving from former ties to [00:04:00] OEMs just m- moving into their own little companies and stuff. in a very interesting, PR move, a, an insurance company was raffling a motorcycle, which was really, funny for us to see.

Allen Hall: Not very safe, is it? 

Yolanda Padron: Was 

Rosemary Barnes: it at least an l- an electric 

Yolanda Padron: motorbike? 

Allen Hall: Rosemary, you’re in America. 

Yolanda Padron: I don’t know very much about bikes, but it was big and scary for me. did I put my name in there? Yes. We’ll see how that turns out, but 

Rosemary Barnes: I’m always trying to win Lego sets at, events and, try to sweet talk the, the stall managers or s- stall minders into “Oh, if somebody wins and they don’t show up, could I have it?”

yeah, so far unsuccessfully. Although I do have, actually you can see I’ve, I’ve got a Le- a L- Lego, in inverted commas, not Lego TM, wind turbine that we’ve just started making. So that’s a, [00:05:00] or a tower for a… that we have created. I have succeeded in getting some sort of Lego for my podcast background.

Allen Hall: Are you gonna buy the Sagrada Família Lego set that just appeared? 

Rosemary Barnes: I haven’t. I’m not like the hugest Lego fan. I wouldn’t call myself an, what is it? AF- AFOL, adult fan of Lego? Is that what, There’s a, there’s an acronym. I’m not one. None of us are apparently. 

Allen Hall: Oh, I don’t know. I think we’ll buy that one.

Allen, does it take 200 years to make? Probably. I think there’s around 10,000 pieces. that’s what I re- recall. It, there’s a lot of pieces. It’s built in sections. I watched had a little discussion about it. It is really complex, but we may purchase one and put it in the lobby of our shop because that cathedral is protected by strike tape, some of the ornamental features at the top.

So we’ll, probably build one, but it’ll, it will take a year

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Let’s talk about American Clean Power’s, first quarter 2026 market report. So the American Clean Power Association’s first quarter 2026 market report shows United States developers brought 6.4 gigawatts [00:07:00] of new clean power online in Q1, but overall capacity was down 17% year over year, the weakest quarter since 2023.

Onshore wind took the hardest hit with less than 500 megawatts installed, the slowest pace since about 2018. the Department of Defense delayed approximately, 165 projects totaling 30 gigawatts and $54 billion of investment. Ken Young, the CEO of Apex Clean Energy, put it plainly, quote, “This DoD thing is real.

They found a button to hit, and we got punched in the face.” Unquote. Developers won a preliminary injunction in Massachusetts federal court, but the Interior Department has pledged to appeal in regards to offshore wind. Is this gonna be a permanent setback, Matthew? You think this is gonna continue on, or will this eventually get wrapped up and wind will be back on track?

Matthew Stead: If I wanted cheap power, I would be building wind, [00:08:00]battery, and solar. So I think, if people want cheap power, it, will definitely come back. That’s my view. 

Allen Hall: Yolanda, you see some of the development. You’re close to it in Austin, Texas. What are you seeing on the ground there? I think there’s repowering going on, but is there much in terms of new development?

Yolanda Padron: There’s repowering. I think new development slowed down a little bit than this time last year, but it’s still going on, both for wind, solar, and battery, which is good. on the ground level in some of these very rural towns, this is a very important source of income for a lot of those people, regardless of political affiliation.

so it’s important for some of these people to get these on their, in their land. 

Allen Hall: Does American Clean Power have a plan to try to address this situation? Are there any lawsuits in place or any legal action on the docket? 

Yolanda Padron: Not that I know of. I, know there was a, there was that lawsuit end of last year, for offshore.[00:09:00]

but from American Clean Power itself, I don’t know of anything off the top of my head. Do you guys know? 

Allen Hall: I haven’t seen much of a roadmap from American Clean Power on this particular issue on the onshore wind. I haven’t seen much e-except but for a couple of summary pieces explaining what is happening on the ground, but n-no action to push back.

And maybe there’s some lobbying going on with Congress people and, senators, but you think we would hear about some of it. I haven’t heard anything, and I’m watching pretty close. it is a little confounding because it does seem like this could be broken with one court case. Maybe not. Maybe it’s more difficult than that.

Yolanda Padron: I don’t know. There’s always a lot of, yeah, there’s always a lot of lobbying going on by, not just by American Clean Power, but by a lot of these larger owners, right? A lot of them have some sort of office in DC

and people coming in and out and going to meetings [00:10:00] with everybody, So I don’t know. I’m also very curious to see what goes behind the scenes for that political side of things. 

Allen Hall: just as a quick aside, one of the discussions I was having during the week was about AI data centers and the push for power.

If gas turbines aren’t available for a couple of years and they’re gonna… the administration’s gonna push back on renewables, AI data centers are gonna have a hard time getting the power they need. I know the administration wants them to, be powered by natural gas, but that’s not possible right now. I don’t see how this ends easily.

Rosemary Barnes: It seems like e- everybody’s looking into any single way that you can power a data center. There are people making serious plans to do it. There’s obviously, we’ve talked about space-based data centers before. then there was a podcast I listened to this week. Allen, you actually suggested it to me, but it’s one that comes up for me anyway, Catalyst podcast about, [00:11:00] data centers on ships.

It, actually isn’t just purely about data centers on ships. It’s about, this company, and they have a ship that’s designed to fairly passively capture energy from waves of a ship out on the o- open ocean. They’ve actually designed the shape of the hull so that it is, will actually capture energy.

They choose the location of their factories very carefully, put it in the ocean where there’s already enough energy, and it just, phew, off it goes, just powers itself off to the, I think it was somewhere in the South Pacific, where there’s nice big fetches of, of water and power whatever, including data centers.

But I think each ship was about a megawatt or something like that, so you’ll need a lot of them. And then wasn’t there one that you were, you wanted to bring up today, Allen, an, underwater data center? 

Allen Hall: The one that I think you’re talking about is Penthalassa, which has recently come out of the dark mode, and they have been working on this, in at least a couple of years from far as I can tell, [00:12:00] trying to develop data centers that…

using a, system driven by not necessarily the waves. It’s not the waves, Rosemary. I think it’s more to do with the pressure, of the ocean. It’s, something to that effect, which is really interesting. but, China has, like in many things, working offshore and trying to get data centers up and running.

they’ve commissioned the first undersea data center powered directly by offshore wind. The Shanghai Lingang project, built by a subsidiary of China Communications Construction, CCC, began operations off Shanghai’s eastern coast in May. Planned capacity is 24 megawatts, and the core design transmits offshore wind power directly to submerged data modules via subsea photoelectric composite cables.

I’m not sure what that is, but I’ll have to dig into that deeper. And by bypassing grid routing entirely. Seawater obviously will serve as the cooling medium [00:13:00] through circulating pipes in the heat exchangers, reducing electricity consumption by about 20%. one of the local v- university professors estimates that this kind of data center model could save about 50 billion kilowatt hours annually across China’s data center fleet, equivaling, equivalent to not burning 15 million metric tons of coal per year, and that would be nice.

Is there a future in offshore data centers that use the ocean to cool themselves and Plug ’em into wind turbines offshore, just get the electricity straight from the wind. Does this have growth futures, 

Matthew Stead: particularly in China? I love it. I think it’s absolutely fantastic, and it just means you don’t have to send them into space, because that’s a silly idea.

The other point, do you remember a couple of years ago they were going to build, hydrogen electrolyzers, offshore n- next to wind turbines? So all they do is [00:14:00] just scrap the electrolyzer and then put in the data center. It’s just perfect. 

Rosemary Barnes: But that’s what this, ship one that I was, I listened to the podcast of, that’s their, thing.

It’s just power for whatever. whatever, obviously it has to be something that’s capable of, operating on a ship environment. You’re not gonna be doing probably precision manufacturing or anything out there. But, apparently failure rates for, data center stuff is not…

They’re not expecting it to be higher. Higher in some types of failures will be higher, and some will be lower, but, they think that overall it’s so much, so much cheaper. But yeah, they did also talk about doing, yeah, I don’t know, hydrogen. Is anybody, is anyone still talking about hydrogen anymore?

I feel like we’re finally, not n- not doing that. 

Allen Hall: Rosie, I think you killed it. I’ve seen more news reports about it, where they’re not proceeding and there’s been some funding challenges, and those things are happening. Like any new technology, it’s, hard. The beginning is hard. 

Rosemary Barnes: But, you know that, already hyd- making [00:15:00]hydrogen the way that we make it today is something like 2% of the world’s, emissions.

So it’s okay, we do need heaps of clean hydrogen for that 2%. So I’m definitely not against, some hydrogen projects happening, ’cause we’ve gotta… That’s the, same size as y- you know, nearly as much as aviation, for example. so not insignificant. 

Matthew Stead: Yeah, someone actually came up to us and s- I had a bit of a discussion about that, Rosie.

We’ve got a bit of information to share with you about that- 

Rosemary Barnes: Oh, yeah … 

Matthew Stead: that will dispute some of your claims. we’ll share that with you 

Rosemary Barnes: offline. They’re not my claims. I’m merely reporting what people who are working on it say. But I, was saying to Allen, ’cause we had a big chat offline about contrails and how challenging it is to just alter an aircraft’s path to reduce them, I need to, Engineering with Rosie video on this and get an expert on and ask them all of Allen’s very informed questions.

maybe I’ll get you on as a co- co-interviewer. I’m actually keen on viewer input, listener input. we’ve got a, Pardalote actually has a training course [00:16:00]coming up. I’ve been trying to organize this training so that I and my employees can learn more about blade repairs. So we have a course coming up, organizing it in collaboration with Direct Wind Services.

We’ve got a great, blade repair guy who’s gonna be taking the course- It’s gonna start out with an optional day that I’ll be running about blade design, manufacturing, certification, those sorts of things. And then three days on blade repair. So we’ll go through the theory, also, hands-on stuff.

So we’ll be doing grinding, we’ll be doing layups, infusions, all that sort of thing for three days in Ballarat. but the extra cool part is that I’m gonna be using this opportunity to make a video about wind turbine blade repairs, ’cause, one, I’ve been si- trying, I’ve wanted to make a video on this ever since I started my YouTube channel, six years ago.

So this is the opportunity that I can take to, talk about what kinds of repairs are actually done. I think people will be really surprised to see, even in, when they’re brand new out of the factory, they still gotta do, dozens of repairs on a [00:17:00] blade before it’s ready to go out.

And people will also probably be surprised at, the extent of, repair that you can do and get a blade back up to its original design intent. So I would ask, anyone listening to this that has questions about those sorts of topics, let me know, and I’ll try my best to include that in the video.

‘Cause I think it’s a topic that’s not, super well understood. 

Matthew Stead: Can I come along as well? 

Rosemary Barnes: Nice, nice segue into me advertising. So this is our first one. We’ve got, we’ve got a few spots. I think that they’re gonna very easily fill, but we are planning to run them periodically. So yeah, you can get in touch and, let me know.

yeah. Anybody. You, Matt, I’ll send you over the, the information. 

Yolanda Padron: That’s a really good idea, Rosie, ’cause I feel like a lot of people, you either have, a really robust, understanding of blades and a really good background on it, or you’re starting fresh. And when you’re starting fresh, it’s really difficult to know what exactly you’re [00:18:00] doing.

Or you know in theory, not until you go into the nitty-gritty or until you watch Rosie’s videos, do you then get a better understanding of everything that’s going on. 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. It’s, a fascinating topic. obviously that’s what I spend 90, 90%-plus of my time working on. yeah.

Blade damage and blade repairs. But there’s so much, there’s so much information that would be better off if it was shared, if everybody, knew a bit more about what, what was possible, what was normal, what’s best practice. Then I think that the, O&M for blades would go a lot more smoothly.

Allen Hall: We had Matt Sagala on the podcast this past week, and one of the items he was talking about, some of the basic fundamentals of repairs, the little checkpoints that need to be in place when you’re looking at a repair, and the photographs that come in a repair report and some of the details, how they get skipped.

And there should be more emphasis on some of the basics, and making sure that the photos show the different layers that have been ground, where each of the plies are. [00:19:00] Something simple like that, which in a lot of good blade reports. You don’t necessarily see in all of them and Rosie, if you’re training people up and showing them what the fundamentals are, that’d be really helpful in getting that information out where you can access- where it’s accessible, like on YouTube.

Rosemary Barnes: I’m always giving that, that feedback back, “Can you please at least show, an image of what it looked like before you started repairing?” Nobody ever does that, and it’s y- we have the inspection, the drone image, but, you don’t have… you had, you were right there. You had the opportunity to take the , photo from every, angle, because you wanna be able to recognize what does this damage look like the next time that we see it.

What’s it gonna look like in a drone image? And, yeah, be able to… sometimes you get in there and you think that you’re just gonna be repairing a couple of layers, and it turns out to a huge, thing. like I’ve seen repair , repairs come in that, hundreds of thousands or more, to do just one repair that was totally unexpected by the person who was paying the bill.[00:20:00]

the more information that you take about that repair, then the more possible it is for engineers like me to be able to, a- at least predict, okay, you’ve, you’re likely to have a big repair here, and plan for it. 

Allen Hall: Trying to find someone doing blade repair correctly on YouTube is hard to find.

It really is. I s- you see people with grinders and things, and yeah, they’re working hard and they’re doing a job. But someone to actually walk through from beginning to end, and made it, and explained it as they did it, would be helpful to the industry. Tremendously helpful. 

Yolanda Padron: Just to make sure that your budget’s right, for the year.

if you’re on the owner’s side, and then you think, “Oh, okay. Sure. this AI-based drone inspection told me that I need to tackle all of these, and I know that these are gonna cost me, I don’t know, X amount of dollars,” you can, take a, human pass through those images and make sure that, your expectations and your reality is, closer, just by [00:21:00] looking at Rosie’s videos.

So that’ll be, really exciting. 

Allen Hall: Rosemary, how do people join in on your blade repair fun? 

Rosemary Barnes: for, first of all, get in touch if you wanna do the course, especially in Australia. we could definitely organize one. In, the US coming up, piggyback off a- another event or somewhere else.

But also get in touch with me at pardaloteconsulting.com, and you can, yeah, send me a message through the contact form and let me know that you’re interested. Maybe spell pardalote, 

Yolanda Padron: though, for people. 

Rosemary Barnes: Pardaloteconsulting.com. P-A-R-D-A-L-O-T-E and then consulting. 

Allen Hall: As wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it, difficult.

That’s why the Uptime Podcast recommends PES Wind Magazine. PES Wind offers a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high-quality [00:22:00] content you need. Don’t miss out.

Visit peswind.com today. in this quarter’s PES Wind magazine, which you can get at peswind.com, there’s an article from Minerva Energy, ABJ Renewables, and Concept X where they have developed a product called WindView, which is an advanced inspection system using high-res optical capture with thermographic analysis for a full subsurface, inspection from rotor to tip.

the system detects defects as small as three to four millimeters, which is quite small, and a- analyzes the blade structures up to about 15 centimeters, which is quite deep, so that it does seem like a pretty useful inspection tool. as we all know, just the generic, visual drone inspection can give you an idea of what’s happening on the surface, but a lot of the structural issues are deeper [00:23:00]inside the blade, so thermal inspection combined with optical inspection can give insights into some places that otherwise go unseen.

And Rosemary, as a blade expert, and Yolanda too, there’s a lot that happens inside of blades, and having a- an additional tool to inspect blades and to get more understanding of what’s happening underneath the paint service could be really useful. 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I’m always trying to recommend th- this. I haven’t got any clients that have actually used thermal imaging, to look for damages, but especially in, areas where you suspect that there are r- some repairs that haven’t been done correctly or you’re looking for early signs of a serial defect.

Y- like one of the weird things with the full service agreement, actually it’s probably true with, yeah, any kind of turbine sale, is there’s this serial defect liability period, and you’ve got to hit usually, a crazy high, stupid high number, like 20%, 30% of all your blades have to have the [00:24:00] same damage within it might be a two or three-year period, not, very long.

It’s better when it’s more like 20% in five years. That’s, enough time to actually catch things. But so one of the things that you’ve got to do is like you really want to catch things early in order to be able to, y- make a claim on that. And so this is one of the tools that people would have to catch things earlier, like it’s not yet visible, with a crack on the surface that– Or even, like even small cracks on the surface will fly under the radar as well because, they won’t be flagged in the inspection reports.

So if you’ve got a few of something that’s looks like it might be the same, it, and you’re still within your defect, your serial defect liability period, it’s definitely worth doing something, the, some kind of NDT, and this, is one of the good options it’s actually worth spending a whole lot of money to, to try and get that in because, like the numbers are, millions and millions of dollars, maybe tens, maybe hundreds, depending on, the extent of the problem.

So yeah, it’s always good [00:25:00] to be well aware of what your deadlines are and what tools are available, and this is one of the good ones. 

Allen Hall: Yolanda, you think it’ll open up access to carbon pultrusion inspections on blades without actually cracking the blade open? 

Yolanda Padron: Hopefully, yeah. in, internal inspections you can only go so far, right?

And Rosie, you have a lot more experience with this in action than I do. but yeah, so I, I think it’d be really interesting to see just what, what people can get done without actually happing- having to go and carving everything out, and without having to already start a s- a, a repair that maybe you don’t have the budget to do.

Allen Hall: If its speed is fast enough, I- thermal imaging can be slow at times, but from what I’ve seen, the, cameras have really improved over the last couple of years. If they have this down where you could really inspect blades quickly, it would be a tremendous help to have insights into [00:26:00] depth of damage, especially with c- I think carbon pultrusions are the one that we just don’t have a lot of oversight with, and it’s very difficult to inspect.

And so if you could actually see damage to the pultrusion ahead of time, that would be a, major advantage. I, can’t imagine the insurance companies wouldn’t love this system. S- 

Matthew Stead: it’s interesting. Yeah, I’ve got a question. GE Vernova has a patent around some of this, technology. They’ve had it obviously for many years.

But, I know one of the challenges with the GE Vernova approach was that through the day, if you’ve got ambient temperatures, it was a bit hard to pick up, the actual damage. So at least for the GE, solution, it had to be done at dusk or, when the sun wasn’t out. So I don’t know the answer to that, but is that one of the technical challenges around, when it can actually be taken?

Do you need to take it when the sun’s not out? 

Allen Hall: Yeah, I wonder that too I’ve– The way I’ve seen it is they try to catch it at sunrise or sunset where there’s [00:27:00] a thermal gradient on the blade. However, the thermal imaging cameras is, are, cameras are so much better than they used to be. it may be possible to just do it during the daytime.

Rosemary Barnes: I think the different companies are approaching it in different ways and, I’m sure that some of them can do it, like especially under direct sunlight, then that can be actually a really good way to get some, some heating. And then g- it relies– Mostly it’s relying on the fact that different materials heat up at different rates.

So as long as you’ve got some sort of change in, in temperature happening, then you should be able to see. Yeah, like obviously if there’s a big, crack or a delamination, there’s some air there that’s gonna heat up differently than the composite around it. 

Allen Hall: Oh, sure. Yeah. 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I think also like when cracks propagate, they are actually generating some heat at that site and you, can catch that too.

But, I’m, actually not on top of it enough to know how much it’s one or the other. I think it’s mostly about, when a blade heats up, air will heat up differently to, to composite and you’ll be able to see it. that’s my limited [00:28:00] understanding anyway. Something worth more of a deep dive.

I’m actually looking forward to some, hopefully some clients getting over the line to, doing some more of the, taking advantage of some of the NDT tests that are, available because it can just help you do such a better job of, management and huge risk redus- reductions too. 

Allen Hall: So if you haven’t seen this quarter’s PES Wind, you can download it now at peswind.com.

That wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn, and don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. If you found value in today’s conversation, please leave us a review.

It really helps other wind energy professionals discover the show. For Rosie, Yolanda, and Matthew, I am Allen Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy [00:29:00] podcast.

Allen covers GE Vernova ordered to stay on Vineyard Wind, TotalEnergies filing for France’s largest renewable project, Spain’s repowering grants, and Dajin’s Hong Kong stock debut.

Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

Good Monday.

Wind energy made news this week from Boston courtrooms…

to the coast of Normandy …

to the stock exchange floors of Hong Kong.

Let us start in Massachusetts.

A Boston judge has once again told GE VERNOVA it cannot walk away from VINEYARD WIND.

To understand why GE VERNOVA wants out…

you have to look at the money.

VINEYARD WIND owes GE VERNOVA three hundred and sixty million dollars

on a one-point-two-billion-dollar turbine supply contract.

VINEYARD WIND is withholding that payment.

GE VERNOVA says it has the contractual right to walk when it is not paid.

In February, they sent VINEYARD WIND a termination notice.

VINEYARD WIND sued.

In April, Judge PETER KRUPP issued an injunction ordering GE to stay.

GE VERNOVA came back and asked the judge to reconsider.

Vernova pointed to statements from state officials and VINEYARD WIND’s own parent company describing the eight-hundred-and-six-megawatt project as essentially complete.

If the project is done, GE argued, there is no harm in letting us leave.

Judge KRUPP did not buy it.

Here is why this matters so much to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

VINEYARD WIND is the largest offshore wind project in New England.

It is owned jointly by Spain’s IBERDROLA

and Denmark’s COPENHAGEN INFRASTRUCTURE PARTNERS.

It began initial operations just this past February…

after the developer won a separate court fight to keep federal construction permits intact.

Sixty-two turbines.

A four-point-five-billion-dollar investment.

The anchor project for offshore wind in the entire region.

The judge found that GE VERNOVA’s proprietary expertise

is still needed to bring those turbines to full operational capacity.

Pull GE’s more than two hundred employees and subcontractors off the job…

and the project’s financing structure could collapse.

Massachusetts Governor MAURA HEALEY has weighed in publicly.

The state has too much riding on this project to let it unravel in court.

GE VERNOVA still has its appeal of the April injunction pending.

But for now… the turbines keep turning.

Now let us cross the Atlantic.

Off the coast of Normandy, France…

TOTALENERGIES has filed for government authorization

of a massive offshore wind farm called CENTRE MANCHE ENERGIES.

This will be France’s largest renewable energy project… ever.

One-point-five gigawatts of offshore wind.

Located more than forty kilometers off the Normandy coast.

Four-point-five billion euros in investment.

Up to twenty-five hundred construction jobs over three years.

Once running, the wind farm will generate

roughly six terawatt-hours of clean electricity per year…

enough to power more than one million French homes.

TOTALENERGIES was awarded this project by the French government

eight months ago.

Filing for authorization is the next milestone on the path to construction.

Meanwhile… across the Pyrenees in Spain…

The Spanish government has awarded grants for eighty wind repowering projects

totaling two-point-four gigawatts of capacity.

With Nearly four hundred and sixty million euros in subsidies.

The goal: replace older turbines with more efficient technology by twenty-thirty.

The names on the award list read like a who’s who of European wind energy.

IBERDROLA… STATKRAFT… EDP…

ENEL GREEN POWER… NATURGY…

RWE … and others.

IBERDROLA alone picked up four hundred megawatts of new capacity.

And this repowering wave is not just replacing old machines.

Some projects are swapping out turbines that were once the industry standard…

one-point-five and two-megawatt machines…

for the far more powerful equipment available today.

The industry is not just building forward.

It is rebuilding smarter.

And finally… a story from the other side of the world.

A Chinese manufacturer of offshore wind foundations and towers

called DAJIN HEAVY INDUSTRY

made its debut on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange this past Friday.

The share sale raised up to eight hundred and forty-seven million dollars.

DAJIN claims a notable distinction:

it says it ranked as Europe’s largest offshore wind foundation supplier

by monopile sales value in the first half of twenty twenty-five.

The company plans to use more than half the proceeds

to expand its deep-sea wind power services…

and one-fifth to build an assembly facility in Europe.

As we know wind energy is continues to push forward.

On every front.

And that is the state of the wind industry for the eighth of June, twenty twenty-six.

Join us for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

Alejandro Cabrera Muñoz, co-founder and CEO of Green Eagle Solutions, returns to discuss automating 70 GW of renewable assets and why operators are self-operating their fleets. Reach out to sales@greeneaglesolutions.com to learn more!

Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow

Allen Hall: Alejandro, welcome back to the program. 

Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Thank you so much, Allen. It’s a pleasure to be here. 

Allen Hall: Well, so last time we talked, you had so much happening at Green Eagle, and it is, uh, amazing to watch the progress there. You’ve been around for quite a while now. You started, what, in 2011 working on SCADA systems.

Uh, uh, there’s been a lot of evolution since then. Walk me through, like, the process where you thought, “Hey, there’s a business here.” 

Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Of course. Uh, we actually started officially back in 2012. It’s been a, quite a, of a long journey to, to get here. Uh, yeah, we started, uh, back, back then. We say it’s a whole new world, right?

If we look backwards, like, almost 15 years. Makes me, makes me feel, like, extremely [00:01:00] old. Uh, but ne- nevertheless, um, yeah, back then we were trying to, to cover, like, a lot of issues that were based on OEM SCADAs, which by the way, we still are dealing with. But, but that, that was starting point. It was, um- It was, uh, based on understanding that the, the renewable energy industry is so complex.

Every wind farm, every solar plant has different issues, different systems. Even, even the same models from the same manufacturer sometimes have complete different systems, which complicates everything. So it was very exciting to, to start our careers in a, in an industry where nothing is standard and where everyone is looking for something that is standard.

So that’s, that’s where we fit in. Um, yeah, and in these years, we, we started basically creating the f- the foundations, uh, uh, on top of, uh, SCADA systems. [00:02:00] But as soon as we had that, those foundations, we realized that this sector is not gonna evolve, uh, it’s gonna cope up with the complexity, uh, of the technical complexity, market volatility, regulatory compliance.

That’s not gonna be solved by just having more SCADAs. So we created a layer of automation in place, which is basically what we’ve been, um, evolving in the last 10 years now, um, with the, with the mindset and with the goal that every wind turbine should be running autonomously without having to have people behind it, uh, supervising and taking control of it.

Allen Hall: Yeah, and that’s a great founding idea, but that has grown from an idea to you’re automating, what, 40 gigawatts of renewable assets right now? 

Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Oh, we’re actually now connected to over 70 gigawatts. 

Allen Hall: That’s amazing. Alejandro, that’s incredible. 

Alejandro Cabrera Muños: And all of them are different. 

Allen Hall: Sure. So that, that’s a combination– 70 gigawatts is a combination of wind and solar and anything else?

Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Yes. [00:03:00] Well, actually, one of the, one of the main, um, needs that we try to cover from day one is to be able to connect to all, um, asset classes. So we understand that, um, the challenge of operating a large portfolio for our customers, um, can only be solved if we have the ability to connect to all type of asset classes.

So we can have to connect to wind turbines, inverters, trackers, substations, um, energy meters, you name it. You– we have to connect to every single asset class, um, because what’s important is how you manage that data on top of that and how you react on the anomalies. 

Allen Hall: Right. Because I think a lot of operators are now considering taking your model, the Green Eagle model of s-self-operating, but they need that help, they need that insight into the operation of a solar farm or a wind farm or, or any of those assets, renewable assets, ensure those inverter-driven assets.

You’re, you’re seeing– I, I think we’re seeing the same thing, which is a lot of operators decide to [00:04:00] leave full service agreements globally, and what do you think is driving that now? Uh, is it a financial decision? Is it a performance decision, or is it both? 

Alejandro Cabrera Muños: I think there are many factors, but I think the main driver is the financial aspects of it.

I think when you, when you delegate the operations to a third-party, uh, entity They are gonna optimize their services to whatever service level agreement or availability they are committed to. And for that reason, you’re never gonna get– effectively, you’re never gonna get the extra mile. You’re never gonna get any extra from there.

Um, and that’s okay when the market is– has great conditions and everything w- is going well. But we are seeing how in the last years we have, uh, a lot of market volatility, negative pricing. Everything is becoming more and more complex, so many projects are actually under stake financially. And I think that’s, um, that’s pressuring everyone to look for opportunities to squeeze their assets a little bit more or a little bit better, I would say.[00:05:00]

Um, and part of that is to take operations in-house so you at least you have the opportunity to, to do, um, a better job, uh, let’s say. 

Allen Hall: Yeah, and part of what we’re seeing is, at least in the United States and, and globally now, I think it’s, there’s more action globally than there has been on mergers and acquisitions.

So an operator that has historically had a particular OEM in wind, you know, say it’s Vestas or Siemens or GE, whoever, Nordex, it could be any of them. Uh, when they acquire another competitor or another farm, they’re bringing in a f- a wind turbine they probably don’t know much about. And, and that’s a huge problem.

And, and there’s not a lot of resources for them to grab hold of. Uh, that’s one of the marketplaces you’re trying to fill right now, right? 

Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Of course. Uh, as I mentioned before, if something describes our sector is that nothing is standard, despite everyone is seeking standardization of everything, right? Uh, but nothing is standard for, [00:06:00] for– and that, that’s the reality.

So the first thing when, when you have a portfolio and you are incorporating new assets into it, you need, um, a solution that is able to connect to all type of assets, right? Um, w-we call our solution a three-in-one solution because first of all, it acts as a second level SCADA, so you can connect everything there, uh, everything there, and you have access to all the data across all your assets.

Then we have the SCADA automation layer, and then we have the data analysis layer on top of that. Okay. But let’s focus on the operations, which was, uh, your question, right? So you have a new bunch of assets. Sometimes you don’t have any documentation whatsoever, but these are Gamesas, Nordex, a bunch of them from different years.

Um, the first thing that we provide is a second level SCADA, so you can connect to all of those. But We have, uh, something that we believe is very unique. So what we provide to our [00:07:00] customers is ability to automate all these assets autonomously. And what that gives you, it’s, um, set of data that can be analyzed, and we can learn from what’s working, what’s not working, beyond what the manufacturer’s gonna tell you to do, right?

So we have thousands of General Electric turbines connected to our software, for instance. Um, we know what works, what doesn’t works, uh, what are the faults that can be resetted remotely, what are the ones that are not, what is the success ratio of those resets, ’cause that’s a metric that nobody else has unless you have automation in place.

Uh, but we can actually understand, is it working? Is it not working? Is it creating fatigue for no reason to these turbines? So what– we have all this, this, uh, un- this knowledge and this, um, knowhow, uh, for all these models. Um- I believe one of the main, um, value that we provide to our customers is, is not only the, the solution itself, but it’s also the [00:08:00] ability to be somehow prescriptive.

It’s, it’s not that we’re gonna know more about how to operate the assets than our customers, but, uh, we have a sense of what’s the benchmark, right? So I, I– And that benchmark is very, very useful for them as well. 

Allen Hall: So th- that’s part of getting to scale, and 70 gigawatts is a, a lot of scale, where you have seen a number of turbines in different places operating in different environments and performing at different levels.

That’s unique, right? That gives you insight into really what’s happening to a turbine or a solar asset globally and also locally. For a lot of operators that just happen to acquire or, or, or take on a- an older wind farm, uh, they tend to get stuck, right? They, they, they, they don’t tend to be able to, to find their way through those little nuances.

That’s a huge financial impact to them eventually, right? 

Alejandro Cabrera Muños: It is. And I, and I believe that for many years this was something that in a way got, um– [00:09:00] didn’t get a lot of visibility. I think people were not fully aware of how much revenue, how much production they were losing just because they were not operating their assets at the best capacity.

Um, now we have the data to prove what, what better can look like. W- uh, we have data to prove that if you follow the OEM’s, uh, protocols, you may be creating fatigue for no reason. Um, and there are improv- there are ways to improve that thing. So I think it’s, um– We are, we are opening the door for a new, complete new way to operate your, your portfolio and get more benefit from it.

Allen Hall: I think that’s a very interesting aspect of the sort of the structural aspects of how a, a wind turbine performs, and a lot of that is driven by software. And you, you realize if you’re paying close attention to the OEMs that some of the software updates are not necessarily performance enhancements.

They’re more of protecting the turbine because they realize they may have a problem. So it may be a slight derate, it may be a, a different sort of power curve that happens. [00:10:00] But a lot of operators don’t really sense that that is happening up close because they’re not into the details of that. That’s where Green Eagle separates itself.

You are into all those details. And do you have a lot of operators just reach out for help immediately saying, “Hey, I have this Siemens Gamesa or Gamesa wind farm,” think about an older wind farm, a Gamesa wind farm Help. Just please help. Uh, whatever you can do, just show us you can do it. Do you, do you start to run a little test campaign on that site, or do you, or do you go pull back from the 70 gigawatts and 15 years of history to, to show this is what you can do with that particular asset to, to get them involved in a thinking about the problem a little bit differently?

Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Well, I wish, I wish it was that way. Um, but what, what– It, it was that transparent, but what happens is that we’re working with the largest, uh, some of the largest utilities and IPPs in the world. So what happens is that they, they will never come to us saying, [00:11:00] “We don’t know how to operate this turbine,” or, “We don’t have enough information.”

Um, the way they ask for it is like, “Are you compatible with this?” And, “Do you know… Do you have some protocols? Do you know the standard protocols to run these turbines?” Um, and that’s the way we, we start the conversation, and then they, uh, they, they get confident that we can actually help them with that. We only know about how, how much or how little they know about a specific model once we start working with them.

And it’s not all or nothing. I- Ev-Even the largest manufacturer, e-even the largest utilities, their portfolio is constantly evolving. They’re incorporating new sites almost every month. So there’s always one site that they don’t, they don’t have expertise in the, in the house, so it’s, it’s normal. Like, basically not many people have expertise in some of the models from old Nordex or Gamesas or you name it.

It, it’s impossible basically to have to understand all models in the world. So I think we [00:12:00] have the, the data, the benchmarks, and experience, and on top of that, the of course, the, the tools, so you can actually operate better those, those assets. 

Allen Hall: So the name of your system is called ARSOS, A-R-S-O-S, and for anybody listening to this podcast, you can just Google it, and it’s gonna take you to Green Eagle.

What is that product? How would, how would you define or describe that product? 

Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Well, ARSOS is a suite. Um, what– The way I like to think about it is a, is a three-in-one solution, right? So it’s first of all, it acts, it, it, it fits in between the SCADA world and the REMs, uh, the REMs, uh, solutions. Okay? And they’re complete different worlds even though you see dashboards and they look the same thing.

But SCADAs must be, um, must be able to be installed on premises. They require OT enterprise cybersecurity level. They can be, they should be installed on air-gapped infrastructure, so no access to internet whatsoever. [00:13:00]Um, and that they tend to be extremely complex to configure and, and, uh, adapt to every, uh, every different site.

So that’s one world. Um, on the other hand, we have the, the REM solutions that are like more like a SaaS platform, like a Power- it could be Power BI, it could be like the, the normal use cases that you need it. You need something, some tools to create the reports at the end of the month to understand the performance of your assets, right?

So you have these two, two worlds. So what we are proposing here is a solution that has been built for the past 15 years, but it fits right in the middle. So it covers Almost everything that you need from a SCADA and second level SCADA solution. It puts automation in place, and then it also gives you all the data so you can consume it in the best way, uh, possible, which by the way, now with, uh, artificial intelligence, it’s incredible what you can do with it.

So this is basically what we have built, um, right [00:14:00] now. And the main differentiation here is that since we are in the middle, we are trying to solve all this complexity from a SCADA world with a product that is already pre-configured. So you can basically connect to your sites in a completely easy way, um, doing clicks and not a lot of complexity because it’s already pre-made for your needs.

Um, because of that, the time to market is extremely much, uh, faster compared to a SCADA solution, so you can have a solution in thing, in hours and not in months. It’s, it’s not a project anymore, right? Which is, which it sounds like normal when you, when you talk about applications, it sounds like a normal thing to do, that you have a, a system running in hours or minutes.

But when you’re talking about SCADAs, that’s like sci- uh, sci-fiction, right? Um, that’s what we’re bringing to, into, onto the table. It’s, it’s, uh, something that you can connect to all your assets in a seamless way, painless, and, uh, and, uh, off the [00:15:00] shelf. 

Allen Hall: Well, that’s a very interesting way of framing, uh, the product because, uh, you do see both ends of the spectrum here, where y- there’s a number of companies that are offering a c- completely SaaS product, which is a very pretty dashboard, and it still relies on a human to watch this dashboard and, and to make sense of it, and it provides some insight.

And then you get to the other side, which is almost a completely mechanical system, where it’s just SCADA data and, and you’re just picking up data for datas, uh, to have, basically. So you, you f- you sort of find that middle ground. The, the, the amount of software and technology that it’s in that space, though, must be huge, and what is the effect of AI bring to you?

Does that help you more with just on the, on the, on the model side or just the, the statistical analysis of all the data that you have access to now? 

Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Let me make a, um, clarification. Because since, uh, we are, we are providing automation [00:16:00] in a world that is mission critical, right? So there’s no, a lot of, there’s no room for creativity or probabilistic approach.

It all has to be the deterministic, right? Uh, so when we talk about automation, we’ve always been focused on deterministic automation, so rule-based, uh, automation, and that’s what we have implemented on top of the level of the SCADAs, right? So that’s, that’s the part where you know how to deal with an asset.

You have the protocols. You want to understand how they work, but you want to have certainty of what happens if the turbine is on fault and the fault is related to the gearbox temperature and so on. So you wanna make sure that there’s a reset automatically executed only if the temperature of the gearbox is under X threshold.

So this very deterministic approach. Uh, but we have, uh, something, um, very unique when we go on the, on the other side, when we go on the side of the REMs. Because we not only have the data of, of the assets, we [00:17:00] not only have statuses, performance, availability, uh, production. We also have the data of how these assets, assets have been operated, right?

So we know how much fatigue they have received, how they’ve been operated, um, have they received curtailments or not? How many curtailments? What were the reasons? So we can actually have a 360, uh, degree of all the data, including all the control, not only how they’re performing, but also how we are operating those assets.

And we believe that this is very unique because only if you have all these 360 data, then you can actually enhance what you have on top of that. And that is where AI come, comes in, right? So AI, AI is great in, um, helping our customers in doing root cause analysis, um, dealing with anomalies are not well, um, uh, procedure.

Uh, there’s no course of action that is clear, that you don’t know. It’s, they’re not like too [00:18:00] frequent to, to have one. Uh, mixing different type of data. Like I mentioned before, you have, uh, market data, you have curtailments, you have, uh, commands to stop or start a turbine. You have a lot of information there, and you can put all together.

Uh, also along with the CMMS information. Um- Lastly, they get– they can pull that together to do whatever they need, right? Uh, they can build with AI. You, you can now do your own dashboards. You can create your own APMs if you wanted to. Um, and I like to think about it, like, with these new tools that you can create disposable dashboards.

And, uh, the concept is that it doesn’t matter how many different dashboards you have in an APM, but tomorrow you have a, a specific case. And I think it’s amazing that now with AI and the right, uh, data structure, you can now create a dashboard, and maybe it’s just for one use case, you know? And you just build it today, look at the data.

You have [00:19:00] a, um, a case study, and that’s it. May– you never use it that again. The trick for being able to, to, to create this ecosystem where you analyze the data in a completely different way is that we have been working on how to structure the data so the AI is gonna be able to understand the data itself.

So once that, that layer is structured in the right way, then you can actually create your own APMs or your own dashboards as you need to. 

Allen Hall: That’s fascinating. So instead of just thinking of a turbine or a, a solar field as a asset where you’re trying to maximize performance necessarily, you’re looking at it from the marketplace, the, the, uh, the shutdowns, all the, the things that are contr- overriding the performance and trying to optimize performance in this market environment, which may be very turbulent, and I think for a lot of wind operators is very turbulent, uh, at, at the minute just [00:20:00] because of the nature of the electricity grid.

So you’re, you’re then thinking about Having an AI tool to help you do investigative work on the particulars, not just the global data set of how this turbine globally operates, but the specifics, that’s fascinating because that allows you then to treat each turbine as its own separate power plant, in a sense, but also to, to think about lifetime issues and how to maintain that piece of equipment in a much more efficient way.

That’s remarkable. 

Alejandro Cabrera Muños: And you have the– With AI, you also have the capabilities to automate all these type of analysis. So once you have a specific, uh, case to be analyzed, then you can automate that case to be analyzed in a daily basis, in a weekly basis. But that’s, uh, that, that’s, uh, that’s, uh, the world that we are moving to.

Allen Hall: So a lot of what’s happening at Green Eagle at the moment is being automated and, and making it easy for, for customers to get [00:21:00]onboarded to the RSO system. What does that look like today? Uh, how do, how do I get onboarded? I have an asset of I got 1,000 turbines and a couple of solar fields. What does it look like to get me started in the RSO system with Green Eagle?

Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Well, if you’re using our cloud, it’s, it’s gonna be a process of If you have a, a portfolio of 500 gigawatts, you can connect to our, to our cloud in a matter of like one month to two months So that’s something that you can do by yourself. So, um, you can create the assets, you can create the connectivity.

The connectivity is done through IP filtering or VPN tunnels. All that is from the, from the dashboards, from, from the cloud. Um, then you can, based on the model directory, you can choose which is the, the assets that you want to connect to and through what channels, whether you have Modbus, OPC, and so on.

Um, but that’s a- as complex as, as it gets. Really? It’s n- it’s not easy either, because [00:22:00] you need to understand what is a Modbus, what is a OPC, but that’s what it is. It, it’s not a matter of, like, installing something on site and doing tons of, uh, complex, uh, um, configurations. You don’t need, uh, SCADA engineers to be, like, building these dashboards tailor-made for your sites and, and all that is, is something from the past in o- in our opinion.

Allen Hall: So you’re not on the telephone, or you’re not on a, a online chat with the Green Eagle team, because it’s, it’s, it’s– you’ve, you’ve done enough capacity now that you’ve automated this. 

Alejandro Cabrera Muños: You don’t have to. 

Allen Hall: That’s amazing, because I think that’s the first worry for any operator that is gonna make that leap saying, “Hey, I need a little bit of help with this wind farm or this solar site,” is that, “Oh, I gotta be on the phone.

I gotta– There’s a lot of im- of onboarding that has to happen,” and you’ve eliminated that. 

Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Well, first, w- I, I totally understand this hesitation. Um, many of our customers are living in, in the, in the SCADA world, right? Uh, and which w- it was probably once a pain [00:23:00] to be configured to begin with, and I think half the sector is traumatized by these processes.

So I, I tot- I totally understand that that pain is, is still there, right? I understand that. But what we’re trying to do is to, to move forward and say like, “Yeah, that, that’s gone. That was the past. Now we have a different way to do it.” And if you have, uh, either new assets that you need to connect or you even consider, like, moving to something more modern, something with more capabilities, something that comes with automation in place, uh, well, we have a solution that is painless.

Allen Hall: Can I discuss, or can we go back and forth about the, the use of inverter-based resources, the solar and the wind sites, in terms of the, the move from grid following to grid forming and stabilizing the grid? I think there’s gonna be a lot of changes in the way that we operate these assets over the next year.

Mostly, uh, I see action in the United States from the Iberian blackout about a year ago. They’re changing the thought process of how they want to run the grid so that the wind [00:24:00] and solar can keep the grid operating. Is– Are you involved in, are you involved in that aspect of how you operate those assets and how those inverters perform and, and configuring them to, to do more of the, of the grid forming and keeping the grid stable?

Alejandro Cabrera Muños: I believe, to be honest, this is more related to power plant controllers and hybrid plants. So we have, we have made several projects with, um- With a mix, uh, of, uh, wind, solar, um, and storage. And wh- but what we’re doing here, uh, to be completely honest, we are not involved in the power plant controllers. Uh, we believe that that’s an electrical device and has, uh, uh, particularities that are out of us- our scope.

But what we do is to, again, we connect to all asset classes, right? So we also w- connect to the PPCs, and we can monitor the PPC, the performance of the PPC, and we integrate that into everything else, right? So [00:25:00] that’s, for us, that’s another asset that we are connecting to, and that it make– it completes the view of, um, of sites that are now, like, almost like mini portfolios at, at the same place, right?

‘Cause you have, uh, different technologies, service stations. You have so many things that you need to orchestrate as well. So we’re, we’re w- moving into, into that area as well, uh, f- with the same concepts. 

Allen Hall: B- so in a, in a sense, you’re able to monitor the health or status of the grid. Because you’re connected to so many of these assets, you have a pretty good understanding of how the grid is doing at any particular moment then.

Alejandro Cabrera Muños: That’s right, yeah, especially in, in Spain, of course, ’cause we’re connected to, um, over 25 gigawatts at the, uh, at, in Spain, so. 

Allen Hall: Alejandro, that’s amazing. 

Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Over 25 gigawatts at the, uh, at, in Spain. So, so that’s s- it’s almost a third of the, of the installed capacity in Spain. 

Allen Hall: Is there a movement in Spain to, to use technology like yours [00:26:00] to better monitor, regulate, control the, uh, wind and solar assets so- such that they stay engaged when, when the, the grid starts to, to vary a little bit?

Has anybody asked you to, to be involved with that? Because it seems like you’re the right– you’re in the right place at the right time. 

Alejandro Cabrera Muños: The challenge of all these grid codes, uh, in, in most of cases is just that There are tons of curtailments that are coming from many different reasons, technical restrictions, market, uh, dispatch, um, other type of compliance.

Um, the, the first challenge is to just execute on them, right? So they’re coming, you need to apply on the, on the sites. Um, that was the first, the first phase. But now that we have so many gigawatts connected, and that we’re also participating in balance mechanis- balance mechanisms and ancillary services, what we are seeing is that depending on how your assets perform and how quickly they are in regulating, um, you are gonna [00:27:00] have penalties or more, uh, profitability in the participation of the markets.

So that’s, that’s extremely important as well ’cause it’s, it’s quite difficult to, to measure. But we have all the– Since everything is automated, you can always track, and you can statistically understand which of the sites are performing better or worse, in what cases, and therefore you have opportunities to improve the regulation and get more revenue from it.

Allen Hall: Okay. So Green Eagle then is, because of the scale that it has at the minute, can look at the grid and is involved in, in the, the grid requirements, so to speak, of, of, uh, curtailments and what assets are operating when, and also the voltage control aspects and frequency control, which is the other part of it.

You, because you’re, because you have so many assets in Spain and globally, you, it’s amazing the number of assets you have. You, you then can actually, one, see health of the grid, two, [00:28:00] provide insights to operators on what that looks like. I mean, real time you could, you can do that. And then are, are, are the regulators then coming to, to you asking advice on how these assets should perform?

Because it does seem like you would be a tremendous resource on how the grid is actually doing on a larger scale from a renewables standpoint. 

Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Yeah. Well, fortunately, the, the regulator has its own also, uh, system, so it’s, uh, redundant, right? So as far as we, we are working to, to have, uh, the best system in the world, but, but it will be a lot of, uh, responsibility for us to just have the whole grid depending on us.

That would be a lot of weight. Uh, but in a, in a way, in, in a, in a way, it already depends on us, uh, effectively. So, so the pressure is, is there. We have, we have talked to them, um, since we have so many customers, um, in the, in the– at this level, uh, we have to be very quick in implementing new grid codes and new [00:29:00] regulatory, uh, compliance issues and, and so on.

So that’s, that’s, um… It’s a challenge, but at the same time, it’s, it’s very exciting that we are always ahead in, in this regard. 

Allen Hall: Right. If, if I was an operator and I had Green Eagle as one of my, uh, helpers in a sense, uh, assistants in a sense, that helps with the, the grid code i-in terms of, one, understanding it, and two, being able to implement the changes that are coming down all the time.

You have a resource there that understands it from a larger perspective because you see it from multiple operators in multiple places trying to do the same thing. That’s a huge advantage instead of you trying to na-navigate or try to understand all those grid code changes and why they’re happening and what it means to you and how do you operate your assets.

So you can provide a little bit of guidance there for the operators. 

Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Of, of course. Um, uh, the main, the main value proposition that we can have here for anyone that wants to participate or be part of the Spanish market is that we already have all this figured out. So if you wanna start from the scratch [00:30:00] with, uh, with a SCADA, industrial SCADA, well, let’s, let’s go with, let’s go with that.

You’re gonna be probably traumatized in the future, right? Uh, but with us you have an off-the-shelf product that is already compliance. It, uh, h- we have already set, uh, the system certified by the TSO in Spain. So we have already gone through this process so many times, and it’s off the shelf, so you don’t have to worry about any of this.

And on top of that, you have the Peace of mind that if tomorrow there’s gonna be a, a, a new change in the, in the, in a new grid code, well, which most likely is gonna happen, um, soon, uh, we have to, we have to do it. Because we have already, uh, a lot of customers that, that, that need it. So for us, it’s actually also, uh, strategic to, to be ahead and be fast in implementing these grid codes.

Allen Hall: That’s amazing. That’s such a huge resource for Spain and the rest of the world. Yeah, that’s amazing. Well, I, I know people who are listening to this podcast right now are thinking, “Okay, I haven’t heard of Green [00:31:00]Eagle, but now I’m interested, and I need to f- find out more.” How do they contact you? Where do they go first?

What’s the best first step? 

Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Well, they can connect, uh, directly to me through LinkedIn, or they can just write to sales@greeneaglesolutions.com. 

Allen Hall: Great, yeah, and Alejandro’s available on LinkedIn, so you can f- find him there. And we’ll put his contact information in the show notes to, so you have quick access.

Alejandro, you gotta come back more often because the, the things that you’re doing with Green Eagle are amazing, and, uh, the, the scale is incredible. Congratulations on that. Uh, and, and I, I, I need you to come back and tell us what the next generation looks like because I know when you guys get ahold of AI and start thinking through some of these real challenging problems, Green Eagle will have solutions.

So you’re welcome back anytime. 

Alejandro Cabrera Muños: Super exciting to come back, uh, when you invite me. Thank you so [00:32:00] much.

Ørsted closes its European offshore sale to CIP and weighs a $1 billion exit from the US market. Plus MingYang commissions a 20 MW offshore turbine, and ZF’s plain bearings log 36 GW with no measurable wear.

Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

[00:00:00] The Uptime Wind Energy podcast, brought to you by StrikeTape, protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit StrikeTape.com. And now, your hosts

Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m your host for today, Allen Hall, along with Matthew Stead, Rosemary Barnes, and Yolanda Padron. If you’re going to be in Houston for Clean Power 2026, mark Wednesday, June 3rd on your calendar. The Australian American Chamber of Commerce, Texas is hosting an invitation-only panel and networking reception with cocktails from 6:00 to 8:00 PM at the Houston Club, and I’ll be moderating.

We’re bringing together Australian and US wind energy experts to compare notes on how two markets handle O&M, lightning risks, blade inspections, remote monitoring, and where operational gaps [00:01:00] are. The evening also marks the North American commercial launch of EOLOGIX-PING’s satellite-based lightning monitoring system, developed with Adelaide-based satellite IoT company, Myriota.

So in joining me on the panel, our own Matt Stead, co-founder of EOLOGIX-PING, and Mark Norman, VP of Edge Solutions at Myriota, and Weather Guard’s Yolanda Padron. EOLOGIX-PING and Myriota have systems already deployed in Japan and Australia, and a little bit in the US here at Weather Guard, and they’re stepping into the North American market at American Clean Power with this advanced lightning monitoring product.

So you’ll want to be there and see this new product introduced. It is an invitation-only event, so if you’re at Clean Power and want to be in the room, reach out to us on LinkedIn so we can get you on the list. Orsted finished selling off its European offshore wind business to Copenhagen [00:02:00]Infrastructure Partners, better known as CIP or as it’s a-affectionately called CIP.

Now, Bloomberg reports the Danish company is exploring a sale of its US portfolio also, which includes a whole bunch of wind. It’s a decent amount of solar and battery storage in a deal that could bring more than about a billion dollars. Uh, the business generated more than one-fifth of Orsted’s total operating income just last year.

Uh, meanwhile, uh, more than 50 US organizers are urging RWE CEO, Markus Kroeker, not to hand back over $1 billion in US offshore wind leases as part of a reported deal with the Trump administration. Uh, so the, the pattern is clear, everybody. European developers are being pushed towards the exit in the American market.

The Ørsted situation’s been going on several months now. I, I think it’s pretty much common [00:03:00] knowledge, I would assume at this point. W- we’ve known for months, and I th- think a lot of people we’ve talked to have been saying Ørsted is prepping for a sale. The question is who? And the, the RWE getting rid of their offshore leases in the United States would be a little bit of a odd move.

However, a billion dollars back in your bank account is probably a smart move today. So are the, the Germans and the Danish leaving America? 

Yolanda Padron: Ørsted’s still keeping their offshore in the US, right? 

Allen Hall: Yeah, I don’t know if they’ll be able to sell it off. They own it 100% at this point, right? All the partners have pulled out But I wonder if that’s on the auction block also.

That it could be 

Matthew Stead: So why? Why are they, why are they selling? I mean, there has to be a reason. I mean, do they have better use for the money elsewhere, or do they just have lost faith in the, the USA? 

Allen Hall: It could be a combination of both, right? Both can be true at the same time. I do think the cash flow is an issue [00:04:00] for renewable energy companies at the minute, so if they can get some money back into the coffers and to get ready for the next big run of development, they probably should do it now.

But things, especially it does seem a little bit on the slow side on the re- renewable development, except in the UK where it’s going crazy. 

Do you think then that they’re looking for American people to sell it to? 

Allen Hall: Or Canadian. If Ørsted sells their onshore business, uh, to CIP, it still remains in Danish hands, so it wouldn’t necessarily be a, uh, removal of the Danes from America, not, not quite.

Matthew Stead: Yeah. I’m just a bit confused why, you know, why, you know, why would it, um, attract a good price at the moment? So I would’ve thought, you know, if it was me, I would’ve take the long-term view and just hang onto it. 

Allen Hall: Well, the, the tax credit’s already built into those businesses, right? I, I at least that’s what I would assume, that the, the tax credits are still [00:05:00] available on a number of the Ørsted sites.

They’re not that old. A lot of the wind sites are not that old, so you could gain that tax advantage. It may make sense. It may be a, a Berkshire Hathaway or somebody like that may, may jump into the mix. 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, and maybe because there’s not so much opportunity for new developments at the moment, that might be maybe it’s appealing for that reason, that there’s, yeah, not, not so many wind opportunities around, and companies want wind in their portfolios, so.

Allen Hall: Or data centers like we just saw with NextEra and Dominion. The, the drive for, for data centers, uh, is pushing the, the power demand, and if you could buy wind, solar, and battery all together, most of it kind of co-located, you could put some data centers in Texas ’cause a vast majority of that Ørsted fleet is in a place where you could plant a data center right next to it.

Maybe that’s, maybe that’s the thought. Uh, if they saw NextEra and Dominion join hands, maybe there’s another partnership in the mix. That would be really interesting. Maybe it’s Elon. Maybe [00:06:00] SpaceX or, uh, Tesla could just buy Ørsted’s onshore wind business. That would be a- amazing. 

Matthew Stead: I thought they were going into space.

Why would they be bothering with the Earth? 

Allen Hall: You gotta power the rockets before you launch them, right? You get so- 

Matthew Stead: gotta get some power from somewhere.

Allen Hall: Delamination and bondline failures in blades are difficult problems to detect early. These hidden issues can cost you millions in repairs and lost energy production. CIC-NDT are specialists to detect these critical flaws before they become expensive burdens. Their nondestructive test technology penetrates deep into blade materials to find voids and cracks traditional inspections completely miss.

CIC-NDT maps every critical defect, delivers actionable reports, and provides support to get your blades back in service. So visit cicndt.com because catching blade problems early will save you millions[00:07:00]

China has commissioned what is being called the world’s largest offshore wind turbine. It’s a 20-megawatt machine built by MingYang Smart Energy, installed off the coast of China in the South China Sea. The structure stands about 240 meters tall with blades around 128 meters long. That’s a pretty good-sized blade.

And it’s rated to survive gusts up to 80 meters per second. But the real story is what researchers are watching after the turbine starts up. Early reports say that the rotor that is massively big will create measurable changes in local air currents and temperature distribution. At this scale, offshore wind creating a physical footprint that scientists want to measure and We have seen this effect here at Weather Guard Lightning Tech, watching storms go through the big wind farms [00:08:00] in the United States.

So you can actually see storm behaviors change because of the quantity of turbines, and the turbines are getting to be high enough with the hub heights approaching 100 meters. But nothing as big as a 20 megawatt machine out on the ocean. It’s mixing the t- the, the air quite a bit, changing the temperature.

Uh, is this something that climatologists are looking at, Rosemary, or, or, or watching closely, particularly with the, uh, fish life and sea life around the wind turbines? 

Rosemary Barnes: I don’t know. My thing with MingYang is that they’re always, like, you only ever hear about them ’cause they’re announcing the biggest something, right?

Um, that’s like the extent of it. It’s not like you hear about, oh, there’s a wind farm near you and it’s gonna have MingYang turbines in it. You never hear that. You only hear about they’ve got the biggest, and now next year they’ve got the new biggest, the biggest, the biggest, the biggest. And, uh, it’s like I know that they do actually make some, like, a lot of turbines.

I think they’re in the, we mentioned last week, they’re in the top five manufacturers, um, mostly or maybe [00:09:00] pretty much entirely for the Chinese market. Um, so it’s not like I think they don’t make anything. But I do think it’s quite easy to announce the biggest something. This announcement is also like, yeah, okay, but is it real?

Like it’s the, it’s a big, it’s a really big turbine. It’s going pretty high, but like offshore, um, there are, I think, onshore turbines being announced that are gonna go as high or higher because, you know, onshore, um, turbines have much taller towers than, than offshore. So I actually don’t think that it probably is a record for the tallest, like, tip that’s scraping.

This is a thing that’s always happened, and sure, that’s interesting to have a look at and see if it has any local impact. It’s not like it’s, it’s not creating energy, right? It’s not gonna warm up, um, the, the planet. I mean, it’s, yeah, taking energy out of the, the air and then converting it to electricity.

Um, so overall you’re gonna end up with the same amount of, of energy. But yeah, could be interesting to study, study what’s happening specifically. 

Matthew Stead: I think it’s a so what question. You know, so what? I mean, I can sneeze and [00:10:00] I’d change the local environment, but who cares if I sneeze and change the local environment?

You know, the, you know, the weather is inherently turbulent and, you know- There’s mixing and there’s all sorts of stuff naturally occurring. Yeah, my question is, so what? 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting in terms of, like, wakes of wind turbines and, you know, there’s, uh, people are researching that more because it’s not well enough understood, I think, for some of the really big offshore wind regions where there’s heaps of different wind farms and, you know, like, you’re gonna wanna know if you’ve got a win- an existing wind farm or you’re planning one, and then they sell, um, rights to build one immediately upstream of you, then, you know, you’re gonna wanna understand how, how all that local atmospheric stuff is, is happening exactly.

Um, but yeah, like, it’s not, it’s not quite new and it’s not, yeah, like you said, it’s not unique to wind turbines. Um, so yeah, it is, like, slightly interesting, I would say. 5 out of 10 interesting. 

Allen Hall: How much time should we spend on contrails? [00:11:00] Because we spent a good 20 minutes before we started this podcast talking about contrails, which is a one or maybe a negative one on the scale of should I follow this?

Rosemary Barnes: How interesting is the fact that air travel is contributing to climate change? How interesting is that on a scale of one to 10? 

Allen Hall: Zero. 

Matthew Stead: Eight. 

Allen Hall: It’s like the, it’s like the cow argument, right? 

Rosemary Barnes: Allen doesn’t care about climate change. That’s okay. 

Allen Hall: You asked me to put it on a ranking of where it is in importance.

It’s, it’s nowhere near m- even a five. 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. So Yves said zero. Matt said eight. What about you, Yolanda? How, how interesting is the fact that air travel impacts climate change? 

Yolanda Padron: I think it’s, like, a six. 

Rosemary Barnes: Six. Okay. And so did you know that, um, airplanes are 2.5% of the world’s emissions, um, come from air, air travel?

And did you know that I think it’s [00:12:00] 4% of the world’s warming comes from air travel? Of the warming, two-thirds of the warming that is caused by air travel or airplanes, uh, could be freight as well, it’s not to do with CO2. So some of that is, you know, like other, um, gases like NOx is a pretty potent greenhouse gas.

Contrails are the biggest single component, the single biggest factor causing warming from, um, from air travel. And it’s not, it’s not necessary. You know, every airplane doesn’t create contrails in every trip. It’s, it’s a small number. Like, it’s a pretty small number of trips that are making contrails, and if we can better understand how

like, what are the factors that lead to a contrail being formed or not, then we can avoid them and, you know, get rid of a, a percent or two of the world’s global warming. I think that’s just really huge. 

Matthew Stead: What would you do about it, Rosie? 

Rosemary Barnes: There’s a couple of solutions I know that other people are working on that sound very interesting to me.

So the first is that if you change the fuel, like, [00:13:00] um, to sustainable aviation fuel, like a, a biofuel, some of those that have been tested also produce less contrails. I don’t know the exact reason why. Would be interesting to find out. That’s one thing. But secondly, um, if you can get good data about, like, very local atmospheric conditions and, you know, let the world’s airplane fleet can communicate with each other and some AI processing in real time, you can make small changes to your flight path to avoid making contrails, and yeah, you get, um, a small increase in, in f- fuel burn, I guess, from deviating from the most efficient route, but a big, big inc- um, decrease in contrails.

Uh, so I think both of those are really promising solutions. 

Allen Hall: It’s not that easy It isn’t like every airplane’s out there changing its altitude to keep away from creating contrails. There’s whole systems, thousands of people working at any one moment to keep airplanes up in the air. So it, it’s not something you just willy-nilly say, [00:14:00] “AI can adjust my altitude or my flight plan to deviate so I can prevent contrails.”

It’s not that easy. It’s actually a huge undertaking, and it may end up burning more fuel. 

Rosemary Barnes: Oh, I mean, it’s an incredibly complex system to keep airplanes up and not colliding. Um, I believe it’s not centrally planned. It’s not like you’re not logging your whole flight path any- anymore. I, I listened to a podcast about this the other day, and in the past you used to log your entire flight plan and not deviate from it, but now it, it’s done a bit on the fly.

So I’m sure that there are already hundreds or thousands of factors that an aircraft computer is taking into account, um, when it’s figuring out exactly where it’s gonna go, and this would be another bit of complexity. I don’t, I don’t think it’s easy, otherwise we’d already be doing it. But I think it’s, it’s promising.

And I think it’s easier than making hydrogen airplanes, for example. I think it’s easier than electrifying airplanes. And the fact of it is that even if you do [00:15:00] have sustainable aviation fuel, if it’s still making contrails, it’s still causing warming. So if you wanna actually s- solve, uh, you know, heating from flying, then you have to, you have to tackle the contrail part of the problem.

It’s the biggest, it’s the biggest chunk on its own, bigger than CO2. 

Matthew Stead: So did we get here by talking about possible contrails from wind turbines? Is that what we were talking about? 

Rosemary Barnes: No. It was because Allen was saying before that we were gonna go off the rails, and he’s like, “Oh, you know what? In no time we’ll be talking about contrails,” like using it as an example of a tinfoil hat-wearing person.

And I’m like, “Actually, that is a tinfoil hat that I do like to wear,” the contrails one. Um, not because I think the government is controlling me, uh, with with, you know, targeted hor- hormone or chemical releases via contrails, but because of the global warming potential. 

Matthew Stead: Could a, a really tall wind turbine create contrails?

What, what’s the physics behind that? 

Allen Hall: [00:16:00] It’s just, um, water, right? So you’re just condensing water and shoving it out the back. When you’re burning hydrocarbons, it’s one of the byproducts, right? It’s like in, when, in an internal combustion engine, you see water dripping out the tailpipe. It’s this very similar kind of thing.

Uh, so how much water comes out is dependent upon somewhat the fuel, as Rosie’s pointed out, so you can slightly change it, but a lot of it has to do with the temperature, altitude, pressure moisture content of the air, all those different factors play into it. So you’d have to have, in order to go look at it, you’d have to have a bunch of sensors on the airplane, which, which the aircraft may have some of them, but probably not enough to determine if they’re creating contrails besides looking out the window to see what’s coming out on the backside of the engine.

Matthew Stead: A wind turbine could not create contrails. The pressure differential and the, the vapor pressure- 

Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s not enough to, you’re, you’re not, you’re not changing temperatures enough, [00:17:00] right? So you, you basically have to change the dew point. That’s the way I would think about it. You have to change the dew point somehow, which I guess you could do maybe by a degree or so locally, you may be able to, to change it, and maybe you could.

Um, well, we have seen tip vortices, right? So tip vortices, you have seen these contrails off the, the tips of, of, of aircraft wings. 

Rosemary Barnes: But are they durable? You know, ’cause like, yeah, you see tip vortices off, yeah, off wing, wingtips, off wind turbine tips as well. But I don’t think they stay in the air after, you know, they, um, you can see them, and then they dissipate usually.

Allen Hall: Yeah, it, it depends. You’ll see it when aircraft land quite a bit. Depends on what the temperature, humidity is at that particular moment, but th- those will, those will hang around a little bit 

Rosemary Barnes: But I mean, certainly you can, you can, um, cause droplets to freeze from a wind turbine being there. That’s how they get iced up, is that their…

Or either their water was super cooled to begin with and it just needs a, a surface to latch onto so that the crystal can, [00:18:00] um, form or also, yeah, like, I mean, in the aerodynamics there is that point between where the air goes over and under and you, um, sta- stagnation or- 

Allen Hall: Stagnation point? 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. So you can, um, you, you could get some freezing there.

Allen Hall: You can create cold zones. 

Rosemary Barnes: I, as far as I know, all that stuff is just causing ice to build up on the blade. I don’t think that it’s, um… Yeah. And anyway, even if it did, like even if you did affect the, um, you know, have some ice particles forming in the, um, the wake then it’s just going to, or I don’t know, get hit the next time the, the, the blade goes through or, yeah, fa- fall out I would think ’cause it’s quite close to the ground 

Allen Hall: but- Just to tie into what Rosemary’s saying, although I think wasting time on contrails is not worth the effort, I do think meteorologists do not do enough work on big changes that are happening to the planet in regards to, like, renewable energy is one of them, like wind turbines.

I [00:19:00] haven’t seen a lot of work done about are wind turbines changing the temperature locally or not. I mean, they- I’ve seen some top level things, solar panels, but the same thing could be seen about shipping. 

Rosemary Barnes: Oh, I mean shipping, shipping was, shipping was, um, cooling the planet until we, um, brought in restrictions on how much, um, sulfur emissions that you could, you could make.

But can I use this to actually plug a, um, a, a pro- a collaborative project that we’re about to start where actually, uh, this is quite specific to Australia, to Queensland and Northern New South Wales. We’ve got a study, uh, collaborative study from a bunch of wind farms in that area and getting some academic researchers involved to look at how, like very detailed how lightning is in that region.

And one of the questions that we’re gonna look at is what, h- how has the, um, the presence of wind farms, like when wind farms are built, how has that affected the local lightning, um, area? [00:20:00] So we’re gonna be able to answer, uh, you know, like to what extent have these wind farms caused increases in In lightning 

Allen Hall: Or decreases 

Rosemary Barnes: Or decreases.

I’d, I, oof, yeah. I, I’d be surprised if it was decreases, and I will say, like, yeah, that area of Queensland, northern New South Wales, um, you know, they get kind of tropical storms, um, heaps and heaps of lightning, you know, hundreds hundreds of, um, strikes in a single storm sometimes, you know, and, you know, in one wind farm.

But even if you think, like, uh, down in Victoria, New South Wales and Victoria, where you look at a lightning map and there should be very little lightning there, there are certain sites that are actually having huge problems with lightning, like way more strikes than you would expect based on the map, and I think that partly that’s also ’cause it just varies locally.

But the other thing is, like, a l- a lot more of really damaging strikes. It is something that’s the world needs to do more of, is looking into, like, really local lightning, understanding how the wind farm is interacting with the lightning, causing lightning, how it differs from place to place. [00:21:00] I’m really hoping that, yeah, this, this one study that we’re working on now, and anyone who has a wind farm in that area, Queensland, northern New South Wales, if you wanna be involved, get in touch.

The more people involved, the cheaper it is. But I think that that’s definitely something that can improve how lightning protection systems are, are designed, if we just know, like, what’s, what’s happening. ‘Cause there aren’t great links between OEMs doing the design and people in the field experiencing damage.

Like, they don’t talk. Even when it’s the same company, you know, if it’s Vestas or GE that designed the turbine and is now servicing the turbines, they, they don’t necessarily talk to each other as much as, um, would be ideal. 

Allen Hall: Using the EOLOGIX-PING lightning sensors, we just completed a study over a five-year period, uh, just about that subject.

Rosemary Barnes: Where, where did you do that? 

Allen Hall: In the States. 

Rosemary Barnes: And will you be publishing the results and sending a, a letter to Vestas and GE and Siemens and whoever else and send them a letter, “Attention lightning expert”? [00:22:00]

Matthew Stead: We’re probably just gonna put it on the website. 

Rosemary Barnes: But is there even a, a, a conference, a, a conference for wind turbines and lightning?

Con- considering it’s, like, one of the number one O&M things, like we’re- 

Matthew Stead: There’s one in Melbourne next year in February. 

Rosemary Barnes: I wasn’t attempting to, um, set the stage for, uh, this is why everyone has to come to our event. I mean, it, it, it’s so strange to me that there isn’t just, you know, like, a big conference every year.

I mean, it could be every two years where all of the univ- like there’s heaps of people researching it, heaps of people working on designing on it, heaps of people working on operating it, repairing it when it doesn’t work, and, um- 

Allen Hall: I think they’re looking at it from a very, uh, local scale And looking at a turbine taking a lightning strike and the things you can do to reduce damage or what the, the physics are locally, ’cause we don’t understand all that much about lightning, honestly.

However, on a, on a larger scale, which is what the effort we’re working on right now, is that we’re looking at several states that are right in the thunderstorm alley and where [00:23:00] there’s a lot of wind turbines, thousands and thousands of wind turbines. What you see is, uh, a real change in the, in the weather patterns and in lightning, but it depends on the time of year.

And having the EOLOGIX-PING lightning sensors on gives us a better sense of the number of strikes that are occurring, where they’re occurring on the wind farms. Uh, o- otherwise, all the other services that you could use wouldn’t be nearly as accurate. A lot of false positives. 

Rosemary Barnes: But I wanna say, like, I think you’re so right that lightning it- it’s very local, like, and s- lightning behaves differently depending where you are.

It dep- dep- behaves differently or it affects your turbine differently depending on what kind of LPS you’ve got. But the problem is that it’s not like there’s, um, you know, a catalog of LPSs and you’re like, “This one suits the lightning in Japan, and this one suits the lightning in Queensland.” It’s one– Y- if you want a GE turbine, this is the, it comes with a certain type of LPS, and the same with, with Vestas and, you know, ev- every other manufacturer.

And they’ve all, I’m sure, got types of lightning that [00:24:00] they are better or worse suited to, but the information is, is certainly not out there for someone who’s choosing a turbine, and I don’t think that it’s actually properly understood by, by anyone. Because, like, who’s measuring all of the characteristics that you would need to know to design the LPS better?

Almost no one. Most of the people doing that in the world are probably, yeah, on this podcast today. Um, but it’s, uh… And, and when they are being measured, is it being communicated back to every OEM so they can know? Like, of course it’s, it’s not. 

Allen Hall: I’ll give you a good example because it happened over the past week or two.

Looking at a wind turbine blade that had some damage to it, and the question was, was it caused by lightning? That was the question. And that’s a really good question. So I thought, “Oh, this will be easy,” because there’s gonna be a plethora of- lightning test data reports talking about testing of this particular kind of aluminum mesh on fiberglass surfaces, and [00:25:00] there really is not much.

I was shocked by it. So I always think like if, if I can’t put my fingers on it readily, then what is a blade engineer or a site supervisor or someone who owns an asset’s gonna do? 

Rosemary Barnes: I saw a presentation at Wind Europe last year or whenever I went, when I met with, with you both, probably both of you there, um, uh, that Polytech did where they had done some fatigue testing, um, of copper mesh and its lightning, um, protecting capabilities.

And they did f- they, so they, you know, put some mesh into, um, fatigue testing, I, I think, or they, they damaged it a bit with a bit fatigue, some micro cracks and stuff. And they just did find that it heated up a lot after that. Um, you know, after it was a bit damaged, they were getting like real hot spots.

And so then you’re gonna start to see laminate damage, um, in the, the area underneath that. So yeah, I, I think that more, more, like it’s a, it’s a good step that we’re now thinking [00:26:00] of, you know, protecting better than what we used to do with just, you know, one receptor in the, the tip and a cable, especially, you know, throw in carbon fiber and you, you know, make a second electrically conductive path and have flashover and stuff.

It’s really great that, you know, we’ve evolved beyond that design, but it’s not finished yet. Like th- all those designs are new. There’s a lot of them out there. It sound like everyone’s like, “Oh, it’s, you know, we don’t have to worry if it’s got mesh over the whole blade.” It’s like, okay, maybe you don’t have to worry.

Maybe, maybe you do. We, we kind of have to, have to keep on monitoring those for a few years and sharing the information. 

Allen Hall: As wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it, difficult. That’s why the Uptime Podcast recommends PES Wind Magazine. PES Wind offers a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future.

Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high-quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit [00:27:00] peswind.com today. In the current issue of PES Wind Magazine, there are a number of great articles. If you haven’t received your copy, you should just go to peswind.com and where you can read it and download a copy.

Well, uh, this issue has an article from ZF and talking about gearboxes. And as we all know, inside every gearbox there are bearings and surfaces. Those tend to be the weak links when things break. And for decades, the industry has used roller bearings and, uh, the same kind basically you find in other machines.

Uh, they work, but they do wear out. And how many times have you seen bearings, roller bearings wear out inside of gearboxes? Quite a bit. So– And they, they, they break down, they go offline. It’s, it’s a big problem. But ZF Wind Power says it has cracked the code with its hydrodynamic plain bearings. The company has already installed 36 gigawatts of gearboxes [00:28:00] using this technology, and they say field inspections show no measurable wear.

Uh, the next generation, uh, which is a single film design, is heading to production in 2027. So ZF uses a different technique to keep their gearboxes running for a long time, which is, uh, it’s a simple device mechanically, but it is quite complicated in the way you have to design materials. Uh, basically plain bearings are what’s used in, in internal combustion engine around camshafts and things of that sort.

But designing those and making sure you have the right materials is the trick, Matthew, and you’ve been around cars for quite a while. It’s, it’s the right approach if you can make it work, and it looks like ZF has done a really good job of making these, uh, bearing services work. 

Matthew Stead: Yeah, it sounds like a, a perfect, uh, innovation.

I, I heard about this the first time, I think it was a couple of years ago. And, and like you said, Allen, um, you know, cars for the [00:29:00] last 100 years or so have, have been using journal bearings. I probably need to fact check that one. It may not be 100 years yet, but definitely cars from a long time ago have been using these, um, these bearings.

Um, I, I think, uh, one question is, though, around condition monitoring. You know, how do you actually monitor the condition of the, the s- the surfaces? Um, you know, with a traditional roller bearing, you can use, you know, vibration techniques. I’m not aware of as many condition monitoring techniques for, for the journal bearings.

Um, perhaps, um, obviously the oil, oil particle and, you know, checking the oil quality, et cetera, et cetera. But, um, that might be where the gap might occur. But You know, if they’re lasting, if they’re not degrading, um, there’s no moving parts, um, yeah, great 

Allen Hall: The issue is lubrication, right? Because you’ve got basically two well-designed flat metal surfaces that you have to provide lubrication to, and those two surfaces are moving relative to one another.

The lubrication [00:30:00] matters ’cause you’re literally riding on a very, very thin layer of lubricant. So making sure the lubricant gets in there, that it’s, it’s clean, and it’s always available, uh, is the trick. That’s why in today’s world, a lot of internal combustion engines can go several hundred thousand miles in a vehicle because the lubrication systems have gotten so much better over the last 50, 60 years.

And ZF is probably using something very similar, where the, the technology has gotten better and the metallurg- the metallurgy has gotten way better, and control of that. Because the, the bearing surface really matters, and there’s two pieces to it, right? You got this rotating– To simplify it, you got a rotating shaft, and then you have this bearing surface that that shaft sits on.

The, the rotating shaft is gonna be made out of something relatively hard, where the bearing surface is gonna be made out of a mixture of metals that is a little bit soft. So if anything goes wrong, that bearing surface, that little race right there, uh, will wear, [00:31:00] and you can replace it. But if kept lubricated and cleaned and proper, that will run dang near forever, as ZF has proven.

Matthew Stead: I think it’s the starting load. I think it’s when it’s at stationary and then starts. So I’m getting that initial lubrication. From my understanding, that’s where the, where the challenge lies. And, you know, obviously in a combustion engine in a vehicle, it’s starting and stopping all the time. So, um, but I just wonder, are the loads higher?

Um, how does that occur in a, in a actual, um, gearbox on a, a turbine? 

Allen Hall: Right. It’s not like a main, uh, shaft bearing, right? The– It’s, it’s in a gearbox. You have a lot of planetary gears and a lot of rotating com- pieces there But the, I think the trick is, one, understanding what’s happening load-wise, and hydrodynamic bearings can have some issues if things are twisting in weird ways.

So a gearbox is probably the right place to do this technique because of it’s a [00:32:00] controlled environment necessarily. 

Matthew Stead: Alignment. 

Allen Hall: Yeah. So you can, you can control how the, the loads are carried internally to it, which would make it last a lot longer. S- because roller bearings and, and all of the complexities around that, uh, we’ve seen those fail so many times inside of wind turbines because it’s hard to control everything about that.

Al- although they, they can be extremely durable, I would say ZF is onto something in, in terms of delivering a gearbox that can actually run longer using, uh, good engineering. That’s what it is. It’s just really good engineering. So if you haven’t seen this issue of PES Wind, you should download it today.

Go to peswind.com. That wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn. And don’t forget to subscribe so you [00:33:00] never miss an episode. And if you found value in today’s conversation, please leave us a review.

It really helps other wind energy professionals discover the show. So for Rosie, Yolanda, and Matthew, I’m Allen Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.

Allen covers how private equity firm Energy Capital Partners ended up owning wind blade factories, TPI Composites’ bankruptcy, and the decades-long GE Vernova relationship behind the rescue.

Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

Speaker: Happy Monday, everyone. Well, there is a company most people have never heard of quietly positioning itself at the very center of America’s energy future. Its name is Energy Capital Partners. It’s a private equity firm headquartered up in Summit, New Jersey. But to understand how ECP ended up owning wind blade factories, you have to start with gas turbines and a power company called Calpine.

See, back in 2001, Calpine placed one of the most audacious turbine orders ever recorded, 203 GE gas turbines. enough to power 50,000 megawatts of base load generation. GE did [00:01:00] not just sell Calpine turbines.

The two companies co-developed power plants together. GE co-owned facilities. Calpine held options to buy them back. It was a less a vendor relationship and more of a marriage. In 2018, Energy Capital Partners bought Calpine, All 77 power plants, 26,000 megawatts of generation capacity, and every long-term GE service agreement that came with it.

And for the next seven years, ECP was GE’s single most consequential private sector gas turbine customer in the Western Hemisphere. That relationship, built on decades of iron and service contracts, would soon reach far beyond gas. Because on the other side of the energy world, a very different kind of company was falling apart, and that was TPI Composites.

For years, the world’s largest independent maker of wind turbine blades. [00:02:00] facilities in Iowa, in Mexico, in India, and in Turkey. More than 9,600 employees worldwide.

But the cracks were forming long before anyone said bankruptcy. First came the debt. TPI had borrowed heavily from Oaktree Capital Management and by the time the end arrived, the company owed Oaktree $476 million, secured against substantially all of its assets.

Then came the customers. Nordex walked away from its Matamoros facility, shutting it down at the end of the second quarter of 2024. Then came customs. US Customs and Border Protection launched a review of TPI’s Mexico facilities under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. TPI maintained its supply chain had no connection to forced labor, but the law did not care about confidence.

Cared about proof, and while TPI worked to prove its innocence, a substantial portion of its Mexico-made blades could not cross the border into [00:03:00] the United States. The backlog told the story in numbers. At the end of 2024, there were $237 million in orders. One year later, $114 million in orders, cut nearly in half.

On August 11th of last year, TPI filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, delisted from NASDAQ about eight days later. Now, when a company heads into bankruptcy, the first thing it has to solve is a very human problem. How do you keep the people who know how to run the place from walking out the door? Well, TPI’s board had an answer.

Two months before the bankruptcy filing, the compensation committee approved retention bonuses for key executives, paid in cash within 30 days. The CEO, $1,225,000. The CFO, $518,000. The COO, [00:04:00] $487,000. And of course, the general counsel, $435,000. But there was one condition, you had to stay through restructuring.

If you left early, you had to give it all back. Well, they stayed, at least most of them have. In the months that followed, TPI sold off its Turkish operations. Vestas moved quickly, claiming the India and Matamoros plants for roughly $24 million. And then the phone rang in Summit, New Jersey. GE Vernova needed its blade supply secured.

It had a decades-long relationship with the firm on the other end of that call, a relationship forged not in composite factories, but in gas turbine halls. Through a newly formed entity called ECP Blade Holdings, Energy Capital Partners is acquiring TPI’s remaining North American assets , plants up in Newton, Iowa, down in Juarez, Mexico, for about $20 [00:05:00] million.

The management team that had guided TPI through its darkest chapter came with it. And embedded in the transaction was a five-year supply agreement requiring GE Vernova to direct a defined share of its blade procurement exclusively to ECP-operated facilities. Well, if this deal had fallen apart, GE Vernova itself was contractually bound as a backup buyer, obligated to step in and at least purchase the Iowa plant for $21 million. GE Vernova was simultaneously ECP’s partner, its customer , and in this case, its buyer of last resort. Two companies, one relationship stretching back about 25 years through gas turbine orders, power plant co-ownership, long-term service contracts, and now wind blade factories rescued from bankruptcy court.

A company laid low by debt, customs blockades, and lost contracts, its people paid to [00:06:00] stay, its factory sold for pennies on the dollar, and now rising again under new ownership to supply the very turbines powering America’s AI-driven energy future And that’s the state of the wind industry for the 1st of June 2026.

Have a great week