The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

By: Allen Hall Rosemary Barnes Joel Saxum & Phil Totaro
  • Summary

  • Uptime is a renewable energy podcast focused on wind energy and energy storage technologies. Experts Allen Hall, Rosemary Barnes, Joel Saxum and Phil Totaro break down the latest research, tech, and policy.
    Copyright 2024, Weather Guard Lightning Tech
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Episodes
  • WindEurope 2025 Key Takeaways
    Apr 15 2025
    In this episode, Rosemary and Allen discuss their experiences at WindEurope 2025 in Copenhagen, covering exhibitor highlights, offshore wind projects, industry challenges, and the evolving focus on quality and technology in wind energy. Register for the next SkySpecs Webinar! Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update 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 Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. Rosemary Barnes and I are in Copenhagen at Wind Europe 2025 at the Bella Center, which is a full with about 15,000 visitors and 350 exhibitors. This is a massive show. It's the second largest, I would say, in Europe typically. Right? So Hamburg is bigger, but this is, this is. Still massive. Rosemary: I haven't been to Hamburg. This is the biggest probably conference that I've been to. I think probably, 'cause I used to go to, I used to go to a lot of European conferences, but like niche ones, you know, on specific topics like winter wind or, I don't know, various types of manufacturing. But this is, yeah. All wind and you say 350 exhibitors. If you had told me three and a half thousand, I, I would've believed you because I feel like I have seen so, so few. I mean, I've seen so many good exhibits, but not, I haven't scratched the surface of what's here. And we've only got, I've only got one day left. You're going home, so yeah, your time's over. We've [00:01:00] just Allen Hall: walked. Through the hallways quite a bit and the highways to see what is here. It's a different vibe than what you would see in Australia or see in the United States. It is much more focused on offshore. Rosemary: Yeah. Allen Hall: And big scale offshore wind projects. Rosemary: Yeah. But you know what the Australian NCES are all about offshore wind as well. It's like a, a, a weird thing that those of us. Working in the industry, you know, in operations. Can't quite get our head around how little people talk about the kind of wind energy that we actually have. Um, but here in Europe, obviously they do actually have offshore and a lot of the future development will be in offshore. So it makes sense here. Allen Hall: Bristol's here. R B's here. Ge Renova. Vestus. Of course, they all have massive displays. Rosemary: Za not a lot. Nordic Allen Hall: had some. Yeah. New, new items. Rosemary: I haven't seen much, um, Chinese presence here, like Allen Hall: almost none. Yeah. Rosemary: Which this time, time surpris me a little bit. [00:02:00] Yeah. Allen Hall: And there's not a lot of American presence here either, besides ge Renova as the American, but they're sort of split, right? They're all over the world. Rosemary: Americans are busy right now. There's stuff going on at home Allen Hall: just a little bit. Sure. Uh, but I, uh, I think some perspective there would be good as we get going, because I'm gonna, I'm bringing the American perspective, Rosie, you're bringing the Australian perspective a lot of. Uncertainty about the United States at the minute. Uh, much talk of aren't you super concerned about what's happening in America? And I said, it's just another day in America really. And uh, what you read in the papers is not necessarily what's happening on the ground, uh, but I think other, and Europeans have a different perspective and that's great. Speaker 3: Yeah. Allen Hall: Uh, but it does lead to some weird discussions and maybe Australia, well, you, Australia has a similar problem with America at the moment, but. It, it's, it's still, it's, it feels real.
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    36 mins
  • Nordex 2100MW in Orders, Ørsted Innovative Foundations
    Apr 14 2025
    In this episode, Allen discusses Nordex's successful Q1 2025 turbine orders, Ørsted's innovative suction bucket jacket foundations in Taiwan, and Europe's proposed offshore wind deal aiming for 100 gigawatts by 2040. Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update 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 Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Welcome to Uptime Newsflash, industry News Lightning fast. Newsflash is brought to you by IntelStor. For Market in intelligence that generates revenue, visit www.intelstor.com. Leading off the week German wind turbine manufacturer, Nordex secured orders for 2100 megawatts of turbines in the first quarter of 2025. A 5% increase from the same period last year. The company received contracts to deliver 337 wind turbines for projects across 10 countries with Turkey, Germany, Finland, Latvia, and Brazil being the largest markets. The average sales price increased slightly to 870,000 euros per megawatt from 850,000 euros per megawatt a year earlier. CEO Jose Louise Blanco expects this positive momentum to continue throughout 2025. Nordex has installed approximately 57 gigawatts of wind [00:01:00] power capacity in over 40 markets globally, and operates factories in Germany, Spain, Brazil, India, USA, and Mexico. The first suction bucket jacket foundation has been installed at Ørsted's Greater Changhua 2B and 4 Offshore Wind Farm Site in Taiwan. The 920 megawatt project will comprise 66 Siemens Gamesa 14-236DD wind turbines all mounted on suction bucket jackets foundations. This marks the first large scale use of this foundation type in the Asia Pacific region. According to Ørsted, the suction bucket jacket design minimizes seabed disturbances, generates almost no noise during installation, and can be fully removed at the end of the wind farm's life. The foundations are being installed by Heerema Marine Contractors, heavy lift vessel Aegir and supplied by HSG Sungdong in South Korea and Petrovietnam Technical Services Corporation in [00:02:00] Vietnam. Europe's wind industry has proposed a new offshore wind deal calling on European governments to auction at least 100 gigawatts of new offshore wind capacity between 2031 and 2040. The proposal announced at Wind Europe's annual event in Copenhagen. Recommends using two-sided contracts for difference to provide revenue, stability, and reduce investment risk. The plan calls for more coordinated offshore wind development among European countries with capacity evenly distributed over time at approximately 10 gigawatts annually. In return, the industry commits to reducing offshore wind costs by 30% by 2040. Major developers and suppliers, including Ørsted, RWE, Vattenfall Iberdrola, Vestas, and Siemens Gamesa have signed the proposal pledging to invest in projects, manufacturing capacity and workforce development.
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    2 mins
  • Deutsche Windtechnik’s Repower Approach
    Apr 11 2025
    Allen Hall and Joel Saxum speak with Tyler Gifford, Director of Repower at Deutsche Windtechnik, about the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act on wind turbine repowering. They explore the 80/20 rule, overcoming challenges, and optimizing older wind assets to improve reliability and efficiency. Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update 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 Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with my co-host Joel Saxum. Today we're diving deep into one of the most significant developments in wind energy, the Inflation Reduction Act, and its impact on wind turbine repowering. Joining us is Tyler Gifford, director of Repower at Deutsche Windtechnik. Tyler leads Repowering initiatives across nine wind energy facilities in five states, managing over one gigawatts. Of clean energy capacity. His hands-on experience with multiple turbine platforms and deep understanding of wind farm operations makes Tyler the perfect guest to discuss the complexities of wind turbine repowering under the IRA. Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy's brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Tyler, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Guys, there's a bunch of questions that we want to ask you about the IRA bill and how Repowering is happening, but as we talk across the United States, there seems to be a lot of challenges there. What are some of those challenges that wind farms that are getting close to Repowering are facing? As they start to make some of these decisions? Tyler Gifford: Good question, Allen. I mean, typically with Repowering, a lot of people think of, I'm gonna tear the tower down and I'm gonna start fresh and I'm gonna put a whole new one up. So what we think about is there's another approach to this, the 80 20 and the IRA has really introduced a new opportunity in the industry to where we can take older assets that are, have been operating reliably for years. And you, you can evaluate, understand your fair market value, and there's an opportunity to where that fair market value is so low to where you can go out and you can understand what, what is a value add upgrade for this, this asset. Does it ha doesn't necessarily have to be a whole drive, train or take off the hole in the cell and put a hole in the cell on it. It could be that your fair market value is so low that you wanna evaluate. Typically owners wanna evaluate two things they want. Hire a EP, they want to increase a EP or they want to improve reliability. Those are the two big things that owners want. So with, for, so for Deutsche Wind Technic, that's what we do. We meet with those owners and we understand, okay, you may have an asset that's 2015 or 15 to 20 years old but there's a way that, that you can take advantage of these PTCs, just like the bigger operating assets out there. So we'll evaluate, look at, what, what are your pain points? What's causing you to lose reliability, lose availability. What's causing turbine or what's causing technicians to have to go out there and climb? What are your pain points? And then we start to target those pain points by finding upgrades that will go after those, those things that are causing causing. Those, those reliability concerns. So that could be things, it could be drivetrain it could be, it could be that you need to focus on your blades. But it could also be smaller things, things that get overlooked. It could be condition monitoring systems that some ...
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    24 mins
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