• WindEurope Conference, Renewables Surpass Coal in US
    Apr 7 2025
    Allen discusses the WindEurope 2025 conference in Copenhagen, EDP Renewables' equipment sale in Colombia, RWE's rescue exercise in Germany, and the milestone of U.S. renewable energy surpassing coal. We also highlight Oklahoma's wind energy growth and the UK’s Rampion Two offshore wind farm expansion. 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. Speaker: Well, this week the Premier Annual Wind Energy Conference and Exhibition Wind Europe 2025 kicks off from April 8th to 10th at the Bella Center in Copenhagen. With over 15,000 attendees and more than 550 exhibitors at the event. This year's conference is going to be huge. It's going to have over 350 speakers covering wind Energy's role in the future of energy systems sectors. Coupling through electrification and power to X technologies for decarbonization. Now students receive free entry and can participate in a dedicated program exploring careers in the industry. Rosemary Barnes and I will be attending wind Europe this week, so if you'd like to be on the podcast, please meet with us on the show floor. Over in Columbia, EDP renewables is selling equipment earmarked for its alpha and beta wind farms as part of its exit from Columbia. The Portuguese company is auctioning 90 complete Vestas V 1 62, 5 0.6 megawatt units through its Spanish portal. The auction includes nacelles, hubs, powertrains, 450 tower sections and 270 blades. And all the turbines have been maintained by Vestas and audited by an independent certified company. If you're interested in these 90 turbines, reach out to EDP renewables for more details. RWE recently conducted a six hour rescue exercise at its North Sea Ost Offshore wind farm in Germany, simulating various emergency scenarios. The company temporarily suspended operations to practice rescuing injured technicians under real conditions, uh, scenarios included evacuating and injured worker from inside a turbine and rescuing a technician [00:02:00] from a service vessel. The exercise was planned in collaboration with the German Association for Maritime Emergency Management and involved a rescue helicopter and paramedics. A new report from Global Energy Think tank. Ember shows renewable energy from wind and solar generated more electricity in the US than coal last year, a first since coal peaked in 2007. Coal generation has fallen to a historic lows of 15% of total usage while wind and solar produced 17% of the nation's electricity. In the middle of the United States, Oklahoma now generates about 41% of, of its electricity from wind and solar outpacing coals since 2016. Now this transition continues despite state legislators considering bills that would restrict the location of new renewable energy projects. Over in the uk the Rampion two offshore wind farm off England's Sussex coast has received government consent to add up to 90 new wind turbines. The expansion project will nearly double the [00:03:00] size of the existing 116 turbine facility. Developers say the enlarged wind farm could power over 1 million homes and reduce carbon emissions by about 1.8 million tons annually. Construction is planned to begin in 2027 with completion expected by 2030.
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    2 mins
  • SOCOBLADE Protects Against Leading Edge Erosion
    Apr 4 2025
    Max Le Tallec from SOCOMORE speaks about their new SOCOBLADE product, in partnership with Hontek. The product was originally created to protect military helicopters, and is now an LEP solution that reduces downtime, maintenance costs, and power losses. 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: Imagine spending half a million dollars on leading edge repairs only to watch them fail again in just 18 months. That's the reality many wind operators face today. This week on the Uptime Spotlight, Max Le Tallec joins us from Socomore to discuss how helicopter technology designed to withstand combat conditions is now protecting wind turbine blades. The wait for a military grade leading edge solution is finally over. Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind Energy's brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Max, welcome to the program. Maxime Le Tallec: Thank you. Thanks for welcoming me. Allen Hall: I think we're gonna talk leading edge erosion and what to do about it. I want to back up a little bit because there's a lot of operators with a lot of leading edge erosion. Why should they care about the leading edge erosion? Why does that matter? Maxime Le Tallec: The, we've seen the blade today been eroded, almost destroyed with holes of the size [00:01:00] of a fist which. Create issues on the aerodynamics of the blade and the downtime and major repairs or major downtimes on the blade. Allen Hall: Yeah. And that turns into a lot of expensive repairs, obviously. And we're also hearing from a lot of operators about the power. Loss of you hear numbers from anywhere from a fraction of a percent to somewhere north of three 4%. Are you hearing those same sort of things? Just the power loss gets to be so expensive. Maxime Le Tallec: Yes. And even up to five certain are saying so that's why you need to be preventive on this aspect and actually not to wait for the damage to come on the plate. Joel Saxum: I think that when we talk a EP loss, it's exacerbated even more in the market nowadays when we're starting to look at these 5.5, 6.1, 6.8, and I'm just talking about onshore turbines, these big megawatt turbines. If you're losing 1% from that big turbine, that's a lot more than it would've been, 10, 15 years ago on a GE 1.5, or you're not lo, you're [00:02:00] losing, but 1% doesn't hurt you as much. But when you start talking these big, long blades, like everybody has to have a leading edge, erosion, leading edge. Protection strategy in place to make sure that they don't get to that point where they have big repairs or they're losing a bunch of production. Are you, are operators engaging with you guys now with your with the new product? Socoblade? Maxime Le Tallec: Yes. A lot of companies, so our product today has been on the market for a while. This is the non-tech technology, which actually we scale up today. So we've worked for more than a year now with Ontech to scale up the manufacturing, to make the product available worldwide. So the product is pretty well known already in North America and the world spread farms to farms. Now with our headquarter in Europe and our local forces we are reaching more and more European farms as well. We've seen a very high interest back in December during a Dusseldorf show. The everyone is coming. Yes. Allen Hall: Yeah. That's unique. [00:03:00] So Hontek has developed a leading edge erosion, preventive coating that came from the military and on helicopters originally. And that technology has now evolved quite a bit. Into,
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    21 mins
  • HeliService USA Leads the Way in Offshore EMS
    Apr 3 2025
    Allen interviews Michael Tosi, Paul Russo, and Dr. Kenneth Williams, from HeliService USA about their Helicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS) offerings for offshore wind farms. As large offshore wind projects develop off the US east coast, the need for high-standard EMS operations has become critical. HeliService USA steps in to offer comprehensive EMS solutions, featuring a fully-equipped paramedic-level air ambulance service designed exclusively for offshore wind sites. 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 Spotlight, shining Light on Wind Energy's brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering Tomorrow. Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight. I'm your host, Allen Hall. As large offshore wind projects take shape off. The coast of Massachusetts and New York keeping technicians safe presents unique challenges that require innovative solutions. We are here at HeliService USA's Hangar in Rhode Island, discussing offshore wind operations, specifically emergency medical services and search and rescue capabilities. Joining us today are three leaders in emergency response, Dr. Kenneth Williams, division director of EMS and Professor of Emergency Medicine at Brown University. Michael Tosi, founder and CEO of HeliService, USA, and Paul Russo, director of Operations at HeliService USA. Together we'll be discussing their collaboration to provide comprehensive emergency medical services and search and rescue operations for a US offshore wind. Michael, let's start with you today. And thanks for the invite to come out. This is tremendous. Of Michael Tosi: course. You're welcome. Thanks for coming. Thanks for spending the time, Allen Hall: as always, when we come to HeliService. The facilities are immaculate, the aircraft are immaculate. You run a really high class operation, which is desperately needed for offshore wind in the United States, but now you're expanding into emergency services rather than just carrying technicians out to site and dropping 'em on the top of turbines, now you're looking out for their health and safety a lot more. So what does offshore wind in the US involve in terms of EMS operations? It must throw a lot of hurdles at you. How do you even approach that problem? Michael Tosi: Absolutely. Thanks for spending the time today. A thanks for coming out and I certainly appreciate the compliments. The first thing for us is always safety, and it starts with your facility, starts with making sure everything's immaculate before people get on your helicopters. Regarding EMS and Emergency Medical Services offshore this has obviously been I wouldn't go as far as to a contentious topic, but it's been one that the industry knows there's some issues with. And knew that they're gonna need a solution for it. Of course, there's always budget challenges, but the biggest issue is you have folks offshore who are isolated who are it's almost like a town out there. At any given time, there'll be a thousand, 1500, 2000 people. If you run the numbers with all the heavy lift vessels offshore. So at any given time, you're talking hundreds if not thousands of people, and they don't have an ambulance service. There is no ambulance service. Out there, there's, you don't just call 9 1 1 and have a ambulance show up. Up to this point, they've been using the Coast Guard. To a limited degree, but the problem is the Coast Guard is also not an ambulance service. The Coast Guard serves the entire region of New England with one helicopter. They are out there for folks in the water.
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    37 mins
  • Uptime 5th Anniversary, Carbon Negative Materials
    Apr 1 2025
    The Uptime Podcast team celebrates their fifth anniversary, reflecting on their journey and contributions from team members. They also discuss Siemens Gamesa's India operations acquisition by TPG and future renewable energy investments. Additionally, the episode covers innovations in carbon-negative building materials. 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: We just celebrated our fifth year of podcasting, everybody. So the uptime podcast is of officially five years old. I can't believe we've made it this far. That's we were trying to do the math on it the other day at five times 50. Roughly. It's 250 odd episodes. That's a lot of episodes, Rosemary Barnes: but that's only the weekly episodes. What about all the others? You're not only putting out one a week these days. Allen Hall: No, it's two or three or four, right? It's somewhere in there. But I just wanted to say congratulations to each of you on behalf of the Uptime podcast and all the work that happens behind the scenes. Everybody listens to the finished product, and I know it sounds great and the comments are great, and the ideas are great, but there's. A ton of work that goes into this every week to give you this content, and everybody that's been on the podcast as a guest, it was just trying to remember all the faces and names that are. Big and wind that have been on the podcast. It's amazing the people we've touched, the people we've met that are friends that have come from the podcast. It's a nice little family, weirdly enough. And it's one of those it feels like a pair of comfortable shoes that hey, when you go to a conference, you just know everybody and you, and they know us. You feel like we've known them forever because we just spend every week together talking about what's happening in wind. It's a great little experience. Phil Totaro: Can we add that, a big thank you to everyone who listens because we wouldn't keep doing it if you weren't also showing up. Thank you to everyone that listens. Again, your feedback is fantastic. Good and bad. It it keeps us entertained. So we thank you all. Joel Saxum: I would say from my seat as well, Alan, thank you for having all of us and organizing the things that you do. And the unsung hero that you guys don't hear from or usually see unless you're a guest on the podcast is Claire Hall in the background. Who's our producer who puts all of these episodes together and is juggling work life. School, a million different things to make sure this thing goes out every week. So thank you Claire as well. And of course, Rosemary. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah I was gonna say that, Alan has abnormal persistence. I think it took it like now it's obvious why, the value and why we would all keep going and why we come back every week. But yeah, Alan's efforts, especially in the early years was like, just. Just kept on doing it week after week. And, when I started, all I had to do was show up and try and read the material beforehand. I definitely would not have been doing a weekly podcast for, I think I've been on it for four years or so. I wouldn't have been doing that on my own, that's for sure. I think yeah, 90% of the success comes from Alan's abnormal persistence. So Thanks Alan. Allen Hall: Yeah. I appreciate everybody coming every week. I know we've all been through ups and downs over the last several years, rosemary, you've grown a family. And Joel is. Been in and out and I've been in and out and Phil too, right? So between the four of us, we can actually make a decent podcast,
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    33 mins
  • GE Vernova Customer Center, Sophia Offshore Wind Project
    Mar 31 2025
    This week, SSE appoints Martin Pibsworth as the next CEO, GE Vernova inaugurates a new customer center in Florida, RWE advances its Sophia Offshore Wind Project, and Nantucket challenges three offshore wind projects along Massachusetts coast. 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 intelligence that generates revenue, visit www.intelstor.com. Allen Hall: Starting off the week, British Utility Company SSE has named Martin Pibsworth as its chief executive designate. Pibsworth joined SSE in 1998 and currently serves as Chief Commercial Officer. Pibsworth will take over from Alistair Phillips Davies, who has been CEO since 2013 and will hand over the reigns following the annual general meeting on July 17th. Before leaving the company in November, uh, the new CEO will lead SSE renewables push helping the UK deliver on its decarbonization goals. During Philip's Davies tenure, SSE made a strategic shift toward networks and renewables with shares gaining about 4% during his leadership. Last year. SSE announced plans to invest at least 22 billion pounds in grid infrastructure over five years. Over in the United States, GE Vernova has opened a new customer experience center at its Pensacola facility in Florida, marked by a ribbing cutting event hosted by CEO Scott Strazik. The center includes multiple conference rooms, collaboration areas, and direct access to production space. The investments are part of GE Vernova's broader plan announced in January to invest nearly $600 million in its US factories and facilities. Over the next two years, the Pensacola factory has already produced enough turbines to supply over 1.2 gigawatts of the 2.4 gigawatts ordered for the Sunzia Wind Farm in New Mexico. German Energy group RWE has installed its first turbines at its 1.4 Gigawatt Sophia Offshore Wind Project in the uk Located on Dogger Bank, 195 kilometers off the northeast coast of Britain. Sophia is set to become one of the world's largest single offshore wind farms. The project will consist of 100 Siemens Gamesa turbines featuring 150 recyclable blades. The wind park is scheduled to be fully operational in the second half of 2026. RWE's Chief Operating Officer for offshore wind commented that Sophia will make a significant contribution to the UK's clean power 2030 targets. And over in Massachusetts, the town of Nantucket and a Nantucket based activist group are challenging three offshore wind projects off the Massachusetts coast. The town recently sued the US Department of Interior and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management requesting that the government set aside its approval of South Coast Wind and restart the environmental review. Meanwhile, the group ACK for Whales is asking the Environmental Protection Agency to rescind permits granted to Vineyard Wind and New England wind. These challenges come amid the Trump administration's opposition to offshore wind. Industry analyst Timothy Fox's Vineyard Wind faces less risk from these challenges since it's already under construction while projects in planning stages are at higher risk. South Coast wind, which receive final federal approval on the last business day of the Biden administration could be delayed by up to four years. Vineyard wind is the furthest along among these projects with more than half of its 62 turbine towers already installed. Massachusetts Energy Secretary Rebecca Tepper has reiterated the state support for offshore wind emphasizing the need for energy independence...
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    4 mins
  • AC883 Solves the Spare Parts Crisis
    Mar 28 2025
    Lars Bendsen joins the spotlight to discuss how AC883 helps operators source turbine parts to cut costs and reduce downtime. AC883 can offer faster response times and better pricing than manufacturers based in Europe. Lars shares how his company's approach helps prevent extended turbine downtime by providing quick access to critical components. 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: In the wind industry, a turbine standing still often means one thing, waiting for parts that should be readily available. This week on the uptime spotlight, we're joined by Lars Benson of AC 8 83, which is based in Canada. AC883 has direct connections to manufacturers in Denmark where most critical worm turbine components are actually produced Lars shares, house site operators can cut costs and dramatically reduce downtime by bypassing the OEM middleman and sourcing parts directly from the original suppliers. Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on wind Energy's brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Lars, welcome back to the show. Thank you. Spare Parts is a huge issue all over the world, but it seems like in the US and Canada, there's always a shortage. They're looking for spare parts. They don't know where to get them, and the easy answer has been to call the original equipment manufacturer in terms of the GE Vestus Siemens, cesa, Nordex, whoever that may be, and just to place a order. There are other opportunities out there. What happens when a wind side in Texas just decides to buy from the wind turbine manufacturer? How much are they paying overpaying for that part? Lars Bendsen: I can't say exactly on on dollars and cents, but but we know the markup from the OEMs. Then they're not shy of earning money on that, those parts. And yeah, so it's very simple. We can get those parts directly from Europe directly from the suppliers to the OEMs. Allen Hall: Yeah. And if I'm an operator, and I haven't been over to Denmark to look at the situation there, a significant number of critical parts are actually manufactured in Denmark or in the surrounding areas. You have no way of knowing that if you own the turbine, Lars Bendsen: that's true. You don't. Somehow the OEMs have been really good and keeping a bit of cloud cloudy around that area. It's actually pretty simple. They all produced either in in Denmark and Germany for basically all turbines. GE turbines is a target turbine from Germany that that they bought back when. So that's why sim that's a German turbine as well. It's not a US turbine at all. Allen Hall: And the supply chain has remained that way for a long time. Lars Bendsen: It's a BP parts. It's standard parts. There's no rocket sites in it. Of course, there's some legacy some software parts and stuff that we could be desk, some, what we call it electronic boards, which software on, of course we can't do that. That's fair enough, right? That's actually where the OOM has its value. That's totally good. Joel Saxum: I think part of the reason that you see this, that gap there in the industry is the simple fact that, and I don't take this as a slight Lars because I love your website and what you guys do for marketing and branding, but in that corner of the world, and Alan, you and I were just talking about this couple of German companies we're talking about they're not that good at global branding and global marketing. As a unit like culturally, so you don't see really what's going on almost behind t...
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    19 mins
  • EchoBolt Advances Wind Turbine Bolt Maintenance
    Mar 27 2025
    Pete Andrews from EchoBolt discusses their advanced ultrasonic technology for inspecting and maintaining wind turbine bolts, which can reduce maintenance costs by up to 90%. He emphasizes the importance of proper bolt tensioning during installation and highlights recent improvements in their automated inspection processes. 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: With wind turbines growing larger and critical bolted connections under strain, the wind industry needs smarter inspection methods to prevent costly failures. This week we speak with Pete Andrews, managing director at EchoBolt. EchoBolt has developed ultrasonic technology that makes bolt inspections faster, more reliable, and saves wind farm operators up to 90% on maintenance costs while preventing catastrophic failures. Stay tuned. Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy's brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering tomorrow. Pete, welcome back to the show. Pete Andrews: Hi, Allen. Hi Joel. Good to be back. I was trying to work out when I was last on here, but it was it two years ago. It's been a while. Anyway, we've had a lot change at alt yeah, it's good to catch up with you guys again. Allen Hall: It's been too long and so we're glad to have you back because I know there's been a lot of improvements and EchoBolt has been really busy checking bolts all over the place and we've, Joel and I have been traveling around quite a bit and we've noticed problems with. Bolts in the United States and we think where's Pete? Where's Ebol? We could really use you in the United States to help us on some of these bolted connections because it does seem like there's a lot of issues from tower bolts to blade bolts to bolts in general, there are a number of problems that exist. And I wanna start off there, Pete, because I think you're the knowledge base for bolts. Are bolts being tightened correctly based upon all the measurements that you have done? Pete Andrews: Say, it's a very mixed picture. I think you're right to point out, it's every wind operator will have issues in their fleets with the bolt of connections, but it's almost always. Blade studs that caused the most headache. You do see things on towers. You do see a kind of occasional issues elsewhere, maybe with foundations. I'd say it's probably, I. In our experience, once, once sites are in operation, there's not too much that happens that influences the integrity. An awful lot happens at the point of installation, and it's what we always try and say to customers if it. If you confirm that the bolts are tightened to the load, you expect at the point of installation, you've set yourself up for a fantastic operational li life. But if it's wrong at the start, you've got embedded integrity issues that are really hard to manage going forward. So yeah it's a mixed picture, but what I'd always say is focus on the QA at the point of installation and things should go easy from there on in. Allen Hall: It does seem like blade bolts are becoming more of an issue. As you mentioned, the blade insert question of are we over tightening fasteners that go into the blades and pulling out these inserts and causing some of the problems downstream root cracking, instruments becoming loose, blades becoming loose and wobbling on the pitch bearings. It does seem like we don't have a really good way of consistently tightening or tensioning. Those fasteners are bolts that are in composite structure just a lot more sensitive to or the composites more sensitive to the tensioning tightening that happe...
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    31 mins
  • US Wind Unionization, Blade Weather Damage Insights
    Mar 25 2025
    This week, we cover the unionization of Vestas technicians in Michigan, and research revealing significant blade damage occurs in short but intense weather events. At the Atlantic Shores offshore farm, an environmental permit was remanded by a judge. Dermot Wind Farm in Texas, also known as the Amazon Wind Farm, is our wind farm of the week. Register for the start of our webinar series with SkySpecs! 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! You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now here's your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes. Allen Hall: Before we start the program this week on March 26th. At 11:00 AM Uptime sits down with Josh Goryl CRO of SkySpecs, and their newly appointed CEO Dave Roberts for an exclusive conversation in our new joint webinar series. You may have heard about Dave recently stepping into the role. Now's your chance to hear from him directly and we'll dive into what's new at SkySpecs, the latest industry insights, and what their newest announcement means for the future of wind turbine inspections. Wind o and m. And asset health management, so don't miss it. Tune in on March 26th, 11:00 AM Eastern, and we'll include the webinar registration link in the show notes. Up in Michigan, wind turbine technicians who perform operations and maintenance on Vestas turbines have voted to join the Utility Workers Union of America. Marks the first Vestas wind technicians in North America to unionize. The 11 member group voted nine to one, so someone abstained obviously in favor of organizing and will become members of the UWUA local 2, 2 3, which also represents winex at DTE in Michigan. Now these workers are responsible for operations and maintenance on about 120 odd turbines, including MCE. So Joel, this one's a little unique and maybe 'cause it's Michigan unions are really strong in Michigan, have been for a hundred years. 'cause the auto workers, and this seems like an outgrowth of that, but what is the relationship with Vestus in unions? Is that something that they have done in Europe quite often and this is just carrying over into the United States? Or is this. An American move. Joel Saxum: I think it's an American move. If you look at the state of Michigan, like you said, auto workers are there. They're heavily unionized. And because they're heavily unionized and that state has looked at them as, they do well. It's in good middle class incomes and, that, that's driven some progress over the last a hundred years in Michigan. My, some of my in-laws are from Michigan and they're boilermakers and they're all unionized. And when they say get that union job, they've got it. They've made it right. So I understand the city or the state of Michigan and some of the ideas around there. And I think that if you, in wind, if you were to pick a state that would've unionized first. Michigan would be at the top of your list probably. So I don't think it's a Vesta thing necessarily. I think this is a local Michigan thing, but I don't also believe, Vesta is being a Danish company and they have, a lot of trade representation there from in all trades in that northern part of Europe. I think that's, it's not abnormal to Vestas either. It's probably abnormal to Vestas. United States Management, but Vestas as a company, eh, pretty standard thing. I'm curious to see what their package looks like, because now we're in this era of IRA bill things, right? So we,
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    32 mins