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  • UK Drops Offshore Wind Tariffs, Ming Yang in Germany

    UK Drops Offshore Wind Tariffs, Ming Yang in Germany
    2026/03/17
    The crew discusses the UK removing tariffs on offshore wind equipment, Vineyard Wind’s final blade shipment from New Bedford, and Ming Yang joining Germany’s offshore wind association. 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! The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by Strike Tape, protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit strike tape.com. And now your hosts. Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall. I’m here with Matthew Stead, Rosemary Barnes and Yolanda Padron. And the UK is really gearing up for offshore wind and they’re making some really smart moves and. One of them is, uh, the change in tariffs. So the British offshore wind manufacturers have been fighting really an uphill battle for a long time and for years. The companies that build turbines and components in the UK have faced import tariffs on the materials needed most, which tends to be steels like steel. Uh, cables, specialized parts from overseas all carried a tariff with it. Well, now the federal government has acted to [00:01:00] remove those tariffs on offshore wind equipment. The move is expected to save UK manufacturers tens of millions of pounds every year. And for an industry trying to cut costs and scale up that kind of relief could make the difference between winning. Losing contracts, and I’m surprised the UK has waited this long and I think other countries have the same problem. Obviously the US is taring the heck out of everything at the minute, but uh, a lot of European countries do put tariffs on the raw materials and the components that are used to make wind turbines. That’s not a smart long term move if you’re trying to deploy. Gigawatts of offshore wind. Matthew Stead: Well, I, I think, uh, the recent events in the world show that energy security and not importing energy is a wonderful thing. And so this completely aligns with that, um, that objective. So I think that’s why we all agree with you, Alan. Allen Hall: Well do, is there a, a. A threshold here where other countries start to do it [00:02:00] and for whatever reason there’s, there’s tends to be tariffs on energy in all forms of it. Right. And there and on steel in particular, that seems to be a big area of concern. Are we gonna start to see some of those come down just to lower the cost of wind turbines and to deploy the middle of the water? ’cause there is a lot of steel in an offshore wind turbine. Matthew Stead: It’s been like China. I mean China has, you know, a lot of clean energy, low cost energy and it is to their advantage. So I, I think it’s a entirely logical approach and I would’ve thought it’s, if you’re a good on policy, you would definitely be looking at this. Allen Hall: Is this has been a concern of the UK steel industry, which has been diminishing over the years? Uh, so it’s always been a pain point with the uk. They’ve been trying to stand up their own steel industry and forever they had a big steel industry In the uk you think of all the. The steel that was built from late 18 hundreds all the way up to the 1980s and nineties. Uh, but it does sound like you, you gotta pick and choose your battles here. And maybe the UK has [00:03:00] finally said, okay, the, the steel battle is a separate issue within offshore wind, and maybe we gotta do something different. Matthew Stead: I mean, I think Australia did the same thing ages ago. I mean, we had a car, car industry and you know, we just didn’t have the scale. So, you know, Australia’s picking its battles and um, yeah, I mean, you can’t be good at everything, so you know why not. Uh, get the, the lower cost energy and um, deal with it that way. Rosemary Barnes: Australia has actually just announced, you know how Australia’s got the policy to support clean energy technology manufacturing in Australia. And they started with, um, solar panels and then they’ve also got something related to battery cells. Well, they just announced wind turbine tower manufacturing, um, which is very simple. The reason why Australia doesn’t have, um, wind turbine tower manufacturing anymore. Is just because we can’t compete on price with Asia, um, in general and China specifically. It’s interesting now to be like, okay, let’s support Australian [00:04:00]manufacturing of wind turbine towers when like there’s no technological barrier. It’s pure cost, cost issues. I would really love to see the Australian government supporting some of the new manufacturing methods and you know, ...
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    25 分
  • Vineyard Wind Finishes, Maersk Viridis Heads to New York

    Vineyard Wind Finishes, Maersk Viridis Heads to New York
    2026/03/16

    Allen covers a week of offshore wind milestones including the Maersk Viridis sailing toward New York, Revolution Wind’s first power delivery, Vineyard Wind’s final blade, RWE’s Thor project in Denmark, and Kinewell Energy’s fundraise in England.

    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 morning, everyone.

    There is a ship sailing toward America right now. And when it arrives, it will be the most powerful wind turbine installation vessel ever to work in United States waters. Her name is Maersk Viridis. Built by Seatrium in Singapore. Forty thousand tonnes of steel. A main crane reaching one hundred and eighty meters into the sky. Designed to lift the next generation of fifteen-megawatt turbines. At her naming ceremony, godmother Charlotte Norkjer Larsen smashed a bottle of champagne against the main crane pedestal. Viridis — the Latin word for green. The Viridis is headed for Equinor’s Empire Wind project off the coast of New York. When complete, five hundred thousand homes will have power.

    Now, there is something worth noting. This vessel was built as a Jones Act-compliant solution. That means it can work legally in United States offshore waters. It was built with zero lost time injuries. And while one great ship sails west, the wind industry is moving forward on every front.

    In New England, the Revolution Wind project delivered its first power to the grid. Seven hundred and four megawatts. Power enough for up to three hundred and fifty thousand homes. Built by local union workers logging more than two million hours. That same week, workers installed the last turbine blade on Vineyard Wind. A project that endured a fractured blade in July of twenty twenty-four, a legal battle to survive a federal stop-work order, and came out the other side — still standing.

    On the other side of the world, Denmark is doing what Denmark does. The first turbine is now installed at the Thor offshore wind project. In the North Sea, off the west coast of Jutland. When finished, Thor will be Denmark’s largest offshore wind farm. Seventy-two turbines. Each capable of fifteen megawatts. Each turbine rising one hundred and forty-eight meters above the sea. Total project capacity — one-point-one gigawatts. The installation vessel is the Brave Tern, operated by Fred. Olsen Windcarrier. She carries three turbines per trip. Some blades on Thor are recyclable. That is not a headline you could have written ten years ago. And the developer building Thor? That would be RWE. RWE is everywhere right now.

    Now, for a small story with a large idea behind it. In Wallsend, England, a twelve-person company called Kinewell just raised seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Founded by an engineer named Andrew Jenkins while he was earning his PhD at Newcastle University. Kinewell builds software — software that optimises the design of offshore wind farms. Cable layouts, turbine placement, transmission systems. All three, working together. Their clients include Equinor, SSE Renewables, and Eurus Energy. The new funding unlocks a further six-figure grant, bringing total new capital to more than one million pounds. Ten new jobs in the next six months. Their software has saved clients hundreds of millions of pounds. That is what the right tool can do.

    So let us step back and look at the week. A ship christened and sailing to New York. A New England grid receiving its first offshore wind power. Vineyard Wind — finished at last. Denmark’s largest wind farm, growing turbine by turbine. And a twelve-person software firm in northeast England, helping shape the invisible architecture of the energy transition.

    That is the Wind Energy News for the 16th of March, 2026. Join us for the Uptime Wind Energy podcast tomorrow.
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    2 分
  • Plaswire’s Blade Recycling Breakthrough

    Plaswire’s Blade Recycling Breakthrough
    2026/03/12
    Andrew Billingsly, CEO at Plaswire, joins to discuss how the company recycles wind turbine blades into construction materials, timber replacements, and utility products. Plus carbon fiber recovery, zero-dust cutting technology, and plans to license blueprint factories worldwide. 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! Andrew Billingsly: Exactly. Allen Hall: Are we good? Andrew Billingsly: I’m truly impressed with this great operation you’ve got. You really moved this forward, isn’t it? That’s great. We try. Yeah. Allen Hall: Yeah, we try. We’re not Andrew Billingsly: trying. You do. Allen Hall: So I, I will put an intro to this episode when we get back to the states. So I’m just gonna say, Andrew, welcome to the show. And then we will start talking. Andrew Billingsly: Where do I look Allen Hall: here? Andrew Billingsly: Right? Just, just here. Allen Hall: Yeah. Don’t worry about those. We’ll figure that out later. That’s, Andrew Billingsly: yeah. A bit of AI in that. Yeah. Allen Hall: Yeah. Andrew Billingsly: And you’ll see as well. Andrew, welcome to the program. Thank you very much, Alan. Joe, really great pleasure to be here today. Allen Hall: So we’re here to learn about PLA wire and all the great things you’re doing in Northern Ireland because you’re involved in a lot of recycling efforts in wind, outside of wind. You’re doing very novel things, which I think the world needs to hear about. Let’s just back up a minute, because not everybody. And particularly [00:01:00]in North America has heard of PLA wire, even though you, you’re all over LinkedIn. What does PLA wire do? What is this basic fundamental of PLA wire? Andrew Billingsly: Basically, we’re a processor of polymers. Okay? Andrew Billingsly: So that’s how we see ourselves, that’s how we frame ourselves. We’re a polymer processor with a waste management license. Uh, Joel Saxum: I think the important thing here, and this is why I wanted to have this conversation, you and I have been talking in the background for a few years, is. The rhetoric around a lot of the world is we have this problem with recycling blades. We can’t figure it out. Nobody’s got any solutions. Um, and if they do, it’s very agricultural as we say, right? They’re just grinding them up, using ’em in this, that, and what I tell people is like, no, no, you’re incorrect here. There are people doing this. There is, there is solutions out there. It just needs to be, we need, we need to talk about it. We need to put it out there. Andrew Billingsly: Absolutely. Uh, I fight very hard to tell the true story. Of course, there’s a [00:02:00] lot of greenwashing in every sector of every industry in the world, and those who do it right have to defend themselves. I mean, unfortunately, that’s what we have to do. Fortunately, mostly we’re able to do that if we work hard at it. For us, we do not have a problem in general, dealing with wind farm waste. Wind farm waste is for us blades. Because we’ve taken a pragmatic approach to it. We have to look at how we deal with any waste coming into our, uh, process to ensure it’s environmentally handled, that it’s handled correctly, environmentally, that it meets a price point so that whatever we do with it, we can sell that product, ensure that it’s sustainable in how we operate, and it’s fully circular. So that’s how we’ve addressed wind blades. We were invited into the industry and we worked out what was needed in the industry. But [00:03:00] before we went all full on with it, we had to make sure we could make products that was saleable, that was usable, and could be utilized within the industry wherever possible. But you thought outside of the box Allen Hall: quite a bit because the way I think the wind turbine blade recycling efforts have gone is to say, well, we’ll, just like Joel was saying, we’ll just grind them up. You’re taking polymer outside of the wind blade world that you’ve been using in aerospace and other industries and saying the valuable part of the wind turbine blade is the fiber and the resin, whatever remains there. If I combine that with other polymers, I can create products with a lifetime that can replace other more expensive items, metal items, cement items. That is the, the, the wisdom that went into what you have done. How did you come up with that? Andrew Billingsly: I think I was born outta the box. Frankly. I’ve been told that several times.[00:04:00] We’re a solution orientated company....
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    21 分
  • ACP OM&S Falls Short, Vestas CEO Threatens Denmark Exit

    ACP OM&S Falls Short, Vestas CEO Threatens Denmark Exit
    2026/03/10
    Allen reports live from ACP OM&S in Orlando, where the crew discusses high attendance costs, a pay-to-play model that shuts out newcomers, and how the event compares to WOMA. Plus, Vestas CEO Henrik Anderson says he’ll leave Denmark if proposed wealth taxes go through, sparking a debate on executive pay and Danish culture. 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 Strike Tape, protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit strike tape.com And now your hosts. Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host Allen Hall, and I’m here with Yolanda Padron, Rosemary Barnes and Matthew Stead. I am at ACP OM&S in Orlando. Home of Mickey Mouse and we’ve had, uh, this is our second day at OM and S and this is the conference where all the operators and the maintenance and the ISPs and all the new technologies show up to, to discuss their products and try to get some work for the summertime. Uh, so there’s a, a good number of vendors here. Solars here, not as much best as I would as expected, and obviously a lot to do with wind. [00:01:00] Uh, I know we’ve been talking internally on Slack and amongst one another. This is one of the, the most expensive conferences I have ever attended. It’s about $2,200 to attend just to get yourself into the door. Rosemary Barnes: And that’s US dollars too. Matthew Stead: Real dollars. Allen Hall: Green backs. Rosemary Barnes: That’s like three and a half times what our event cost. What warmer cost. If you do the conversion Allen Hall: yes. Rosemary Barnes: And you get access to what? An exhibition and all of a whole bunch, a variety of amazing, informative, technical topics included with that ticket price, right? Allen Hall: No. You get access to the exhibition, they will feed you some, uh, enchiladas and some, uh, free beer, but all the technical talks are extra. You have to pay. Uh, a couple hundred dollars Rosemary Barnes: enchiladas and beer are a must have that everyone obviously wants, but talking about wind energy, totally optional. Nobody. Now, obviously not everybody is gonna wanna talk about wind energy, [00:02:00] so that’s, that’s an extra ticket that you need for that one. Allen Hall: Well, in order to go to the, I would call them technical talks, you have to pay for those. They have an A space in the middle of the convention where they’re doing what they call powered cast. Which are kind of modeled on podcasts, uh, that are sort of a produced thing where they have a panel up there. It’s similar what to where you’d done in Melbourne with Woma, but not with real technical people. The more polishing people. That’s what I saw. I don’t know a lot of the names and I’m pretty used to, to recognizing names of wind and it looks like to be a lot more policy people not. Blade experts or people like that. Rosemary Barnes: I’m a little bit confused because it’s very different to, you know, I love to complain about the Australian wind energy events, but this sounds very different to the way that it’s run here. Like usually at the exhibitions, the exhibitors pay like a bunch of money to be there, and what they want is people to come see it. So [00:03:00] usually here the exhibition is. Free to attend because you are there to be advertised to, you know, like it’s not some like amazing, valuable thing to you. It’s super valuable to the exhibitors. That’s why they have to pay, you know, $10,000 plus to, to be there. Right, but you are saying that they’re, they’re charging the, the attendees are, they’re giving the exhibition space away for free then? Allen Hall: No, the exhibition space costs a tremendous amount of money for a little tiny space. I’m actually in our slot, we share. A slot because the prices are so high, we’re sharing it with AC 8 83 who we love and with C and C onsite, who also we love. So it’s a good combination ’cause we like one another. We’re fun to hang out with, but it’s probably a nine by nine space. Uh, and then you have to pay for carpet and all the furniture that happens inside of that space, you can easily spend. $10,000 on a salon. Matthew Stead: Question for you, Allen. So, um, how [00:04:00] does, how does the industry foster, you know, new, new technology, new companies, you know, growth of the industry, new ideas, so, you know, how does this event, um, foster those sorts of things? Allen Hall: It doesn’t because it’s really, it’s pay to play as ...
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    30 分
  • Moray West Offline, Iberdrola in Australia

    Moray West Offline, Iberdrola in Australia
    2026/03/09

    Allen covers a substation failure that has left Scotland’s 882 MW Moray West farm half-offline since November, GE Vernova’s new Italy contract and Milan factory investment, Iberdrola’s sixth Australian acquisition of 2026, and Flender India’s new gearbox test rig near Chennai.

    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!

    The wind industry had quite a week.

    Let us start in Scotland, off the rugged north-east coast, where something has gone quietly wrong. Ocean Winds and Ignitis built Moray West, an eight hundred and eighty-two megawatt offshore wind farm — one of the largest in Scotland. But one of its two offshore substations has been offline since November. Half the farm’s capacity … gone dark. And there is more. The project missed a contractual milestone last September under an off-take agreement. That triggered an event of default under its project lending agreements. The lenders and the sponsors have agreed to a short-term waiver. Discussions are described as constructive. Commercial operations, originally expected last year, are now targeted for sometime in 2026. Eight hundred and eighty-two megawatts … waiting.

    Now, let us travel south to Italy. GE Vernova has won a contract to supply seventeen onshore turbines to IVPC Group’s Fortore wind farm in the Benevento region of southern Italy. The project tops one hundred megawatts. Turbine deliveries begin in twenty twenty-seven. GE Vernova is also investing thirty million dollars to expand its Sesto San Giovanni plant outside Milan. That investment boosts production of transformer bushings, the insulating components that keep high-voltage equipment running. About fifty new jobs are coming to that facility. And GE Vernova’s two-piece blade design for its six-point-one megawatt turbines is already drawing attention as developers scramble to crack Italy’s notoriously complex logistics and permitting hurdles. Italy is a market in motion.

    Now, to the other side of the world. Iberdrola has completed the acquisition of the Ararat wind farm in Victoria, Australia. Two hundred and forty-two megawatts. Operational since twenty seventeen. This is Iberdrola’s sixth transaction of twenty twenty-six alone, and it marks the Spanish giant’s first owned generation asset in Victoria, Australia’s second most populous state. Iberdrola now operates in five Australian states with more than twenty-five hundred megawatts of installed capacity. Victoria has set a target of ninety-five percent renewable energy by twenty thirty-five. Iberdrola intends to help get it there.

    And finally, from Chennai, India, comes a story about getting ready for what is coming. Flender India has just inaugurated its largest and most advanced gearbox test rig for wind turbines at its Walajabad facility near Chennai. The project began in January of twenty twenty-five at Flender’s Voerde site in Germany. From start to finish, thirteen months. Final assembly, three months. This is a collaboration between Flender’s operations in Germany, China, and India. CEO Andreas Evertz called it a testament to their global commitment to driving renewable energy solutions worldwide. India’s wind market is growing fast, and Flender is making sure it can test every gearbox that growth demands.

    So, let us step back and look at the picture. A Scottish offshore wind farm sits half-dark while its owners negotiate with lenders. GE Vernova plants its flag in southern Italy and invests thirty million dollars in an Italian factory. Iberdrola expands to a sixth Australian transaction in a single year. And Flender India builds the biggest gearbox test rig on the subcontinent. And that is the state of the wind industry for the ninth of March, twenty twenty-six. Join us for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast tomorrow
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    2 分
  • OWGP Drives UK Offshore Wind Manufacturing Growth

    OWGP Drives UK Offshore Wind Manufacturing Growth
    2026/03/05
    Peter Giddings of the Offshore Wind Growth Partnership joins to discuss the UK’s industrial growth plan for offshore wind, the five priority supply chain areas being targeted, and how OWGP helps businesses scale from small suppliers into globally competitive manufacturers. 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: Peter, welcome to the program. Peter Giddings: Thanks for having me out. Allen Hall: The UK right now is just a global leader in offshore wind, which I think a, a lot of us in the United States don’t even realize that, but the UK is a. Giant leader in offshore wind. Uh, but we keep hearing about the supply chain constraints that are threatening some of the timelines here. What are some of the fundamental problems that the UK offshore wind supply chain has today? Peter Giddings: We are in a great situation for supply chain, but the 2000 companies, some of them with 25 years experience. At the scale where we can deliver the four gigawatts a year for the next five years that we need to hit our 2030 deployment targets and to keep that deployment rolling. So we are [00:01:00] brilliant at the UK of planning, developing and deploying wind farms. We have a really strong maintenance base. We do some great supply chain work, and IWGP Offshore Wind Growth Partnership has helped those businesses grow, but we don’t have as much capacity as we would like. For the major items. So we have a great set of facilities making blades. We have good facilities, uh, great facilities in JDR making cables, but we don’t capture as much of the manufacturing value of our deployment as we would like. That means we create fewer jobs, we create less economic benefit, and those developers are exposed to more supply chain risk. Specifically, we want to build globally competitive supply chain capacity. We, we we’re, we’re not a charity. We are building businesses that can win contracts. They are attractive to the procurement teams and they’re sustainable, they grow, right? Competitive capacity is what we’re after. Um, and that’s, that’s really what [00:02:00] we’re after. Allen Hall: And if the UK doesn’t really address these problems now, what does that look like for the supply chain? Because you’re talking about moving from roughly 16. Gigawatts in the water to approximately 50 gigawatts, 45, 50 gigawatts by 2030 and beyond. So that’s, you know, it’s roughly a tripling of the amount of capacity in the water supply chain becomes then really critical to that and in order to feed that. But what happens here, if the supply chain has not grown locally, Peter Giddings: it’s a missed opportunity. I mean, the businesses that are here today would be an incremental growth. And that’s not bad. That’s an okay outcome. But if your deployment is a huge opportunity and you get an okay outcome, that’s not acceptable. That’s not a way to run an industry, right? We have this massive opportunity in front of us. There’s a huge amount that we could do that the UK is great at that the opportunity is to stretch [00:03:00] and help communities all around the coast have. Hundreds, thousands of jobs that are there. They’re stable, they’re good quality, and they are prosperous. It’s a real community initiative. Those towns, which are probably seeing a decline in oil and gas revenue or are strapped to tourism or kind of don’t have an industry, those towns, those people as humans are gonna have a much better future. There’s a, actually a really nice exemplar, um, it’s not. The biggest component, but Cable protection Systems is something that the UK is already globally renowned for. If you open up a tender pack, if you’re allowed to in other markets kind of anywhere, and you look to the CPS package, you would more than likely see a couple of, if not all four of CRP techmark, sub C and Balmoral, right? They, they serve the UK market real well, but they are globally renowned. [00:04:00]That’s, that’s one example. We are looking to do that for the priority sections of the industrial growth plan. You know, we’re going to pick and are picking the areas of the supply chain where we think the UK can be genuinely competitive and we have something to offer. A developer is not gonna choose a substandard product that’s a bit more expensive, but we can build up supply chains that offer fantastic products. Cable protection systems, and we can capture big market ...
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    23 分
  • TPI Sale Delayed By $100M Claims, WindEurope Calls for Unity

    TPI Sale Delayed By $100M Claims, WindEurope Calls for Unity
    2026/03/03
    Allen, Rosemary, Yolanda, and Matthew discuss highlights from Blades USA including the carbon blade debate. Plus TPI Composites’ bankruptcy sale hits major obstacles as partners dispute over $100M in claims. And Europe’s offshore and onshore wind developers clash over state aid, with WindEurope’s new CEO urging unity. 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 Strike Tape, protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit strike tape.com. And now your hosts. Allen Hall 2025: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host Alan Hall, and I’m here with Yolanda Padron, Rosemary Barnes and Matthew Stead. Yolanda and Matthew have just wrapped up a couple of days at the Blade USA forum in Austin, Texas. Maybe we should start there. Thoughts on the forum this year? Things that were highlights? Matthew Stead: Yeah. Lightning Root de bond. One positive was that, um, there are a couple of startups there, so, you know, kudos to them for, you know, making the investment. There was a. There was a startup around, you know, data analytics and, you know, bringing machine learning in. And then there was also another startup looking at recycling. [00:01:00] Um, really trying to get that, that food chain through of, um, you know, grinding and then turning into some sort of valuable product. Um, yeah. However, I think someone also from EPRI said that, you know, at the moment, you know, the recycling path is, you know, eight times more expensive than the, um, the landfill path. There was a lot of carbon discussion actually. So, and, um, yeah, a lot of discussion about repairs, a lot of discussion about testing, uh, a lot of discussion about, you know, how maybe a carbon blade can last 40 years. Um, so a lot of discussion about lifetime extensions around carbon. Um, but, but, but, but, you know, really, really hard to repair. Allen Hall 2025: That goes back to the comments Rosemary and Morton Hanberg made about carbon blades. Should we be making. Carbon blades are not. And I think Morton’s opinion, and maybe Rosemary’s, I don’t wanna speak for her, was carbon blades are okay, but they are really difficult to repair. Almost impossible to repair. And is it [00:02:00] worth even building them? Rosemary Barnes: I think if you consider the blade in isolation, then it probably is adding more headaches than it’s worth. But carbon fiber is a bit of an enabler for improvements across the whole system of a, a wind turbine. ’cause when you take, like you can take a lot of weight out of a blade by using carbon fiber. I mean, it’s never been cheaper to make a blade with carbon fiber than an equivalent blade with glass. You do, you buy the more expensive carbon fiber blade because it’s lighter, a like, a lot lighter, and then you can take, um, weight. It, it reduces the requirements for basically every other component in the wind turbine, but especially stuff like the pitch bearings. Um, so you solve a lot of other problems, but you create blade problems. So. I think if you ask some of the only works on maintaining blades, then you’re gonna be like, why would you make a carbon fiber blade? It is so much headache. Um, but that’s not the reason why they were ever made in the first place. [00:03:00] So you’d need to talk to, you know, somebody on, uh, I dunno, front end engineering. Someone from the sales team about why it is that they are going with a more expensive carbon fiber blade. Even acknowledging that they probably underestimate how many problems there are with o and m with, uh, carbon fiber blades. But even so, like they’re already aware that there are trade offs. Um, and yeah, there’s non blade reasons for, for taking, taking that pain. Allen Hall 2025: Are there other fibers that could be substituted besides carbon? There, I, I know fiberglass. A, a good, relatively strong fiber and carbon obviously is much stronger. But are there things in the middle that could be substituted that are non-conductive? Rosemary Barnes: Uh, y yeah, there are, but carbon fibers, it’s not just strong. It’s really stiff. And that’s what its benefit is. Um, like there’s Kevlar but it’s not very stiff. So you would, we would make a really heavy blade if you used Kevlar. It would be probably bulletproof though. So I guess that would be a plus. I, I haven’t looked into it recently, but nothing is [00:04:00] at the, um, like got the performance specs and the cost specs that you would need to, um, make it ...
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    30 分
  • Nova Scotia’s Wind West Plan, Rivian Tries Wind

    Nova Scotia’s Wind West Plan, Rivian Tries Wind
    2026/03/02
    Allen covers Nova Scotia’s ambitious 60 GW Wind West offshore plan and the standoff between Ottawa and developers over who invests first. Plus a scaled-back English onshore project faces local opposition, Blue Elephant Energy triples its German wind portfolio, Adani prepares to build India’s longest onshore blade, and Rivian signs a wind PPA to power its Illinois factory. 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! There is something happening in the wind business right now. Something big … and something small. Let us start with big. In Nova Scotia … Premier Tim Houston has a dream. He calls it Wind West. Sixty gigawatts of offshore wind turbines. A transmission line to move that power across Canada and into the United States. The price tag … sixty billion dollars. Forty billion for the turbines. Twenty billion for the cables. But Ottawa says … not so fast. Federal Energy Minister Tim Hodgson told reporters the Major Projects Office needs to see private industry commit first. No private partners … no national interest designation. And here is the catch. The developers want to see transmission infrastructure before they invest. Ottawa wants to see developers before it invests. Everybody is waiting for everybody else. Still … Houston is not worried. He says the response from developers has been … through the roof. French firm Q Energy has already applied to pre-qualify. And Natural Resources Canada just put up nearly five million dollars for a feasibility study. Houston says the wind is there. It blows … a lot. The only question is where the power goes. Now … across the Atlantic. In England … a developer is learning that sometimes bigger is not better. Calderdale Energy Park wanted to build sixty-five turbines on Walshaw Moor near Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire. That would have made it the largest onshore wind farm in England. Last April they cut it to forty-one. Now … thirty-four. That would match the current largest site at Keadby in Lincolnshire. Campaigners say it will still damage the peat bogs and threaten ground-nesting birds. A local parish council survey found ninety-three percent of residents opposed. The developer says it could power a quarter million homes. That application goes to the Planning Inspectorate in November. Meanwhile … in Hamburg, Germany … Blue Elephant Energy is doing some shopping. The company just acquired a three hundred eighty-one megawatt wind portfolio from Wind-Projekt. That is thirty-seven operating wind farms in northern Germany. Two hundred sixty megawatts already feeding the grid. Another forty-six megawatts under construction … coming online this year. And seventy-five more megawatts in the pipeline for twenty twenty-seven. This deal will triple their German wind capacity … from one hundred seventy-three to five hundred thirty-three megawatts. It still needs approval from the German Federal Cartel Office. Now … to India. The Adani Group is about to build the longest onshore wind turbine blade in the country. Ninety-one-point-two meters. That is the length of a football field. Those blades will create a rotor diameter of one hundred eighty-five meters. Each rotation sweeps an area larger than three football fields combined. The factory is at Mundra in the state of Gujarat. Current capacity … two-point-two-five gigawatts per year. They plan to double that to five … and eventually reach ten. India added six-point-three gigawatts of wind last year alone. That was an eighty-five percent jump over the year before. And finally … back home in the American heartland. Rivian … the electric vehicle maker … just signed a power purchase agreement with Apex Clean Energy. Fifty megawatts from the proposed Goose Creek wind farm in Piatt County, Illinois. That wind farm sits within an hour of Rivian’s flagship plant in Normal, Illinois. With this deal … Rivian could power up to seventy-five percent of its factory with carbon-free energy. An electric truck company … powered by wind. So let us step back. Nova Scotia dreams of sixty gigawatts off its coast. An English moor fights over thirty-four turbines. A German company triples its wind portfolio overnight. India builds blades as long as football fields. And an American truck maker turns to the prairie wind to build its future. From the North Atlantic to the plains of Illinois … from the moors of Yorkshire to the coast of Gujarat … the wind keeps blowing. And people … keep building. And that is the state of the wind industry for the first of March twenty twenty-six. Join us for the Uptime ...
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