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  • Morten Handberg Breaks Down Leading Edge Erosion

    Morten Handberg Breaks Down Leading Edge Erosion
    2026/02/05
    Morten Handberg, Uptime’s blade whisperer, returns to the show to tackle leading edge erosion. He covers the fatigue physics behind rain erosion, why OEMs offer no warranty coverage for it, how operators should time repairs before costs multiply, and what LEP solutions are working in the field. 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: Morten, welcome back to the program. Morten Handberg: Thanks, Allen. It’s fantastic to be back on on, on the podcast. Really excited to, uh, record an episode on Erosion Today. Allen Hall: Wow. Leading as erosion is such a huge worldwide issue and. Operators are having big problems with it right now. It does seem like there’s not a lot of information readily available to operators to understand the issue quite yet. Morten Handberg: Well, it, I mean, it’s something that we’ve been looking at for the, at least the past 10 years. We started looking at it when I was in in DONG or as it back in 2014. But we also saw it very early on because we were in offshore environment, much harsher. Uh, rain erosion conditions, and you were also starting to change the way that the, the, uh, the coatings [00:01:00]that were applied. So there was sort of a, there was several things at play that meant that we saw very early on, early on offshore. Allen Hall: Well, let’s get to the basics of rain erosion and leading edge erosion. What is the physics behind it? What, what happens to the leading edges of these blades as rain? Impacts them. Morten Handberg: Well, you should see it as um, millions of, of small fat, uh, small fatigue loads on the coating because each raindrop, it creates a small impact load on the blade. It creates a rail wave that sort of creates a. Uh, share, share loads out on, uh, into the coating that is then absorbed by the coating, by the filler and and so on. And the more absorbent that your substrate is, the longer survivability you, you’re leading into coating will have, uh, if you have manufacturing defects in the coating, that will accelerate the erosion. But it is a fatigue effect that is then accelerated or decelerate depending on, uh, local blade conditions. Allen Hall: Yeah, what I’ve seen in the [00:02:00] field is the blades look great. Nothing. Nothing. You don’t see anything happening and then all of a sudden it’s like instantaneous, like a fatigue failure. Morten Handberg: I mean, a lot of things is going on. Uh, actually you start out by, uh, by having it’s, they call, it’s called mass loss and it’s actually where the erosion is starting to change the material characteristics of the coating. And that is just the first step. So you don’t see that. You can measure it in a, um, in the laboratory setting, you can actually see that there is a changing in, in the coating condition. You just can’t see it yet. Then you start to get pitting, and that is these very, very, very small, almost microscopic chippings of the coating. They will then accelerate and then you start to actually see the first sign, which is like a slight, a braided surface. It’s like someone took a, a fine grain sandpaper across the surface of the plate, but you only see it on the leading edge. If it’s erosion, it’s only on the center of the leading edge. That’s very important. If you see it on the sides and further down, then it’s, it’s [00:03:00] something else. Uh, it’s not pure erosion, but then you see this fine grain. Then as that progresses, you see more and more and more chipping, more and more degradation across the, the leading edge of the blade. Worse in the tip of it, less so into the inner third of the blade, but it is a gradual process that you see over the leading edge. Finally, you’ll then start to see the, uh, the coating coming off and you’ll start to see exposed laminate. Um, and from there it can, it can accelerate or exposed filler or laminate. From there, it can accelerate because. Neither of those are actually designed to handle any kind of erosion. Allen Hall: What are the critical variables in relation to leading edge erosion? Which variables seem to matter most? Is it raindrop size? Is it tip speed? What factors should we be looking for? Morten Handberg: Tip speeds and rain intensity. Uh, obviously droplet size have an impact, but. But what is an operator you can actually see and monitor for is, well, you know, your tip speed of the blade that matters. Uh, but it is really ...
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    35 分
  • North Sea Summit, Vineyard Wind Back to Work

    North Sea Summit, Vineyard Wind Back to Work
    2026/02/03
    Allen, Joel, and Yolanda discuss the North Sea Summit where nine European countries committed to 100 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity and the massive economic impact that comes with it. They also break down the federal court ruling that allows Vineyard Wind to resume construction with a tight 45-day window before installation vessels leave. Plus GE Vernova’s Q4 results show $600 million in wind losses and Wind Power Lab CEO Lene Helstern raises concerns about blade quality across the industry. 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, Rosemary Barnes, Joel Saxum, and Yolanda Padron. Speaker 2: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Alln Hall. I’m here with Yolanda Padron and Joel Saxum. Rosemary Barnes is snorkeling at the Greek Barrier Reef this week, uh, big news out of Northern Europe. Uh, the Northeast Summit, which happened in Hamburg, uh, about a week or so ago, nine European countries are. Making a huge commitment for offshore wind. So it’s the, the countries involved are Britain, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Iceland, question Mark Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and Norway. That together they want to develop [00:01:00] 100 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity in shared waters. Uh, that’s enough to power about. 85 million households and the PAC comes as Europe is trying to wean itself from natural gas from where they had it previously and the United States. Uh, so they, they would become electricity in independent. Uh, and this is one way to do it. Two big happy, uh, companies. At the moment, Vattenfall who develops s lot offshore and Siemens gaa of course, are really excited by the news. If you run the numbers and you, you, you have a hundred gigawatts out in the water and you’re using 20 megawatt turbines, then you’re talking about 5,000 turbines in the water total. That is a huge offshore wind order, and I, I think this would be great news for. Obviously Vestas and [00:02:00] Siemens cesa. Uh, the, the question is there’s a lot of political maneuvering that is happening. It looks like Belgium, uh, as a country is not super active and offshore and is rethinking it and trying to figure out where they want to go. But I think the big names will stay, right? France and Germany, all in on offshore. Denmark will be Britain already is. So the question really is at the moment then. Can Siemens get back into the win game and start making money because they have projected themselves to be very profitable coming this year, into this year. This may be the, the stepping stone, Joel. Joel Saxum: Well, I think that, yeah, we talked about last week their 21 megawatt, or 21 and a half megawatt. I believe it is. Big new flagship going to be ready to roll, uh, with the big auctions happening like AR seven in the uk. Uh, and you know, that’s eight gigawatts, 8.4 gigawatts there. People are gonna be, the, the order book’s gonna start to fill up, like [00:03:00]Siemens is, this is a possibility of a big turnaround. And to put some of these numbers in perspective, um, a hundred gigawatts of offshore wind. So what does that really mean? Right? Um, what it means is if you, if you take the, if you take two of the industrial big industrial powerhouses that are a part of this pact, the UK and Germany combine their total demand. That’s a hundred gigawatt. That’s what they, that’s what their demand is basically on a, you know, today. Right? So that’s gonna continue to grow, right? As, uh, we electrify a lot of things. And the indus, you know, the, the next, the Industrial Revolution 4.0 or whatever we’re calling it now is happening. Um, that’s, that’s a possibility, right? So this a hundred gigawatts of offshore wind. Is gonna drive jobs all up all over Europe. Right. This isn’t just a jobs at the port in Rotterdam or wherever it may be. Right? This is, this is manufacturing jobs, supply chain jobs, the same stuff we’ve been talking about on the podcast for a while here with [00:04:00] what the UK is doing with OWGP and the, or e Catapult and all the kind of the monies that the, the, the Crown and, and other, uh, private entities are putting in there. They’re starting to really, they’re, or this a hundred gigawatts is really gonna look like building out that local supply chain. Jobs, all these different things. ’cause Alan, like you, you mentioned off air. If you look ...
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    32 分
  • US Offshore Wind Restarts After Court Injunctions

    US Offshore Wind Restarts After Court Injunctions
    2026/02/02
    Allen covers four US offshore wind projects winning injunctions to resume construction, including major updates from Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia project. Plus Ming Yang’s proposed UK manufacturing facility faces security review delays, Seaway 7 lands the Gennaker contract in Germany, and Taiwan’s Fengmiao project hits a milestone. 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! Happy Monday everyone! Four offshore wind projects have secured preliminary injunctions blocking the Trump administration’s stop-work order. Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind. Avangrid’s Vineyard Wind 1. Equinor’s Empire Wind. And Ørsted’s Revolution Wind. All four argued they were at critical stages of construction. The courts agreed. Work has resumed. A fifth project… Ørsted’s Sunrise Wind… has a hearing scheduled for today. Now… within days of getting back to work… milestones are being reached. Dominion Energy reported seventy-one percent completion on Coastal Virginia. The first turbine… installed in January. The Charybdis… America’s only U.S.-flagged wind turbine installation vessel… is finally at work. Fifty-four towers, thirty nacelles, and twenty-six blade sets now staged at Portsmouth Marine Terminal. The third offshore substation has arrived. But here is where the numbers tell the real story. The month-long delay fighting the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management? Two hundred twenty-eight million dollars. New tariffs? Another five hundred eighty million. The project budget now stands at eleven-point-five billion dollars. Nine-point-three billion already invested by end of 2025. Dominion and partner Stonepeak are sharing the cost. Dominion insists offshore wind remains the fastest and most economical way to deliver nearly three gigawatts to Virginia’s grid. A grid that powers military installations… naval shipbuilding… and America’s growing AI and cyber capabilities. First power expected this quarter. Full completion… now pushed to early 2027. Up in New England… Vineyard Wind 1 also resumed work. The sixty-second and final turbine tower shipped from New Bedford this week. Ten blade sets remain at the staging site. The installation vessel is scheduled to depart by end of March. The turbines are going up. But eight hundred eight million dollars in delays and tariffs… That is a price the entire industry is watching. ═══ Scotland Waits on Ming Yang Decision ═══ In Scotland… a decision that could reshape European supply chains… hangs in the balance. Chinese manufacturer Ming Yang wants to build the UK’s largest wind turbine manufacturing facility. The site… Ardersier… near Inverness. The investment… one-point-five billion pounds. The jobs… fifteen hundred. Trade Minister Chris Bryant says the government must weigh security. Critical national infrastructure must be safe and secure. Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney is losing patience. He told reporters this week the decision has taken too long. He called it pivotal to Scotland’s renewable energy potential… and a crucial component of the nation’s just transition. Meanwhile… Prime Minister Keir Starmer met with President Xi Jinping in Beijing this week. He spoke of building a more sophisticated relationship between the two nations. Whisky tariffs… halved to five percent. Wind turbine factories? Still under review. Bryant says they want a steady, eyes-wide-open relationship with China. Drive up trade where possible. Challenge where necessary. But no flip-flopping. For now… Scotland waits. And so does the UK supply chain. ═══ Seaway 7 Lands Gennaker Contract ═══ In the German Baltic Sea… a major contract award. Seaway 7, part of the Subsea 7 Group, will transport and install sixty-three monopiles and transition pieces for the Gennaker offshore wind farm. The contract value… one hundred fifty to three hundred million dollars. Subsea 7 calls it substantial. The client is Skyborn Renewables… a portfolio company of BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners. Nine hundred seventy-six megawatts of capacity. Sixty-three Siemens Gamesa turbines. Four terawatt-hours of annual generation. Enough to power roughly one million German homes. Seaway 7’s work begins next year. ═══ Taiwan’s Fengmiao Hits Milestone ═══ In Taiwan… Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners completed the first batch of jacket foundations for the Fengmiao offshore wind farm. Five hundred megawatts. On schedule for late 2027 completion. Offshore installation begins later this year. The jackets were...
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    3 分
  • Inside ATT and SSE’s Faskally Safety Leadership Centre

    Inside ATT and SSE’s Faskally Safety Leadership Centre
    2026/01/29
    Allen visits the Faskally Safety Leadership Centre with Mark Patterson, Director of Safety, Health, and Environment at SSE, and Dermot Kerrigan, Director and Co-Founder of Active Training Team. They discuss how SSE has put over 9,000 employees and 2,000 contract partners through ATT’s innovative training program, which uses actors and realistic scenarios to create lasting behavioral change across the entire workforce chain, from executives to technicians. Reach out to SSE and ATT 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: Mark and Turnt. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Mark Patterson: Thank you. Allen Hall: We’re in Scotland, present Scotland and per Scotland, which is a place most people probably haven’t ventured to in the United States, but it is quite lovely, although chilly and rainy. It’s Scotland. We’re in December. Uh, and we’re here to take a look at the SSE Training Center. And the remarkable things that active training team is doing here, because we had seen this in Boston in a smaller format, uh, about a year ago almost now. Dermot Kerrigan: Just Yeah, Allen Hall: yeah. Six months Dermot Kerrigan: ago. Allen Hall: Yeah. Yeah. It hasn’t been that long ago. Uh, but IC was on me to say, you gotta come over. You gotta come over. You gotta see the, the whole, uh, environment where we put you into the police room and some of the things we wanna talk about, uh, because it, [00:01:00] it does play different. And you’re right, it does play different. It is very impactful. And it, and maybe we should start off first of Mark, you’re the head of basically health and safety and environment for SSE here in Perth. This is a remarkable facility. It is unlike anything I have seen in the States by far. And SSE has made the commitment to do this sort of training for. Everybody in your employment and outside of your employment, even contractors. Mark Patterson: We have been looking at some quite basic things in safety as everybody does. And there’s a fundamental thing we want to do is get everybody home safe. And uh, it’s easier said than done because you’ve gotta get it right for every single task, every single day. And that’s a massive challenge. And we have like 15,000. 15,000 people in SSE, we probably work with about 50,000 contract [00:02:00] partners and we’re heavily dependent, uh, on get our contract partners to get our activities done. And they’re crucial. Speaker: Mm-hmm. Mark Patterson: And in that it’s one community and we need to make sure everybody there gets home safe. And that’s what drove us to think about adding more rules isn’t gonna do it. Um, you need to give people that sense of a feeling, uh, when a really serious sense of cars and then equip them with tools to, to deal with it. So. We’ve all probably seen training that gives that sense of doom and dread when something goes badly wrong, but actually that needs to be. Coupled with something which is quite powerful, is what are the tools that help people have the conversations that gets everybody home safe. So kind of trying to do two things. Allen Hall: Well, SSC is involved in a number of large projects. You have three offshore wind farms, about a more than a thousand turbines right now. Wind turbines onshore, offshore, and those offshore projects are not easy. There’s a lot of complexity to them. Mark Patterson: Absolutely. So look, I I think [00:03:00] that’s, that’s something that. You’ve gotta partner with the right people. If you wanna be successful, you need to make it easy for people to do the right thing. Yeah, as best you possibly can. You need to partner with the right people, and you need to get people that you need to have a sense that you need to keep checking that as you’re growing your business. The chinks in your armor don’t grow too. But fundamentally there’s something else, which is a sense of community. When people come together to, to do a task, there is a sense of community and people work, put a lot of discretionary effort into to get, uh, big projects done. And in that, um, it’s a sense of community and you wanna make sure everybody there gets home safe to their friends and family. ’cause if we’re all being honest about it, you know, SSE is a brilliant company. What we do is absolutely worth doing. I love SC. But I love my family a fair amount more. And if you bought into that, you ...
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    30 分
  • Siemens Rejects SGRE Sale, Quali Drone Thermal Imaging

    Siemens Rejects SGRE Sale, Quali Drone Thermal Imaging
    2026/01/27
    Allen, Joel, and Yolanda discuss Siemens Energy’s decision to keep their wind business despite pressure from hedge funds, with the CEO projecting profitability by 2026. They cover the company’s 21 megawatt offshore turbine now in testing and why it could be a game changer. Plus, Danish startup Quali Drone demonstrates thermal imaging of spinning blades at an offshore wind farm, and Alliant Energy moves forward with a 270 MW wind project in Wisconsin using next-generation Nordex turbines. 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, Alan Hall, Rosemary Barnes, Joel Saxon, and Yolanda Padron. Welcome to the Allen Hall: Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Alan Hall. I’m here with Yolanda Padron and Joel Saxon. Rosemary Burns is climbing the Himalayas this week, and our top story is Semen’s Energy is rejecting the sail of their wind business, which is a very interesting take because obviously Siemens CESA has struggled. Recently due to some quality issues a couple of years ago, and, and back in 2024 to 25, that fiscal year, they lost a little over 1 billion euros. But the CEO of Siemens energy says they’re gonna stick with the business and that they’re getting a lot of pressure, obviously, from hedge funds to do something with that business to, to raise the [00:01:00] valuations of Siemens energy. But, uh, the CEO is saying, uh, that. They’re not gonna spin it off and that would not solve any of the problems. And they’re, they’re going to, uh, remain with the technology, uh, for the time being. And they think right now that Siemens Gomesa will be profitable in 2026. That’s an interesting take, uh, Joel, because we haven’t seen a lot of sales onshore or offshore from Siemens lately. Joel Saxum: I think they’re crazy to lose. I don’t wanna put this in US dollars ’cause it resonates with my mind more, but 1.36 billion euros is probably what, 1.8 million or 1.8. Billion dollars. Allen Hall: Yeah. It’s, it’s about that. Yeah. Joel Saxum: Yeah. So, so it’s compounding issues. We see this with a lot of the OEMs and blade manufacturers and stuff, right? They, they didn’t do any sales of their four x five x platform for like a year while they’re trying to reset the issues they had there. And now we know that they’re in the midst of some blade issues where they’re swapping blades at certain wind farms and those kind of things.[00:02:00] But when they went to basically say, Hey, we’re back in the market, restarting, uh, sales. Yolanda, have you heard from any of your blade network of people buying those turbines? Yolanda Padron: No, and I think, I mean, we’ve seen with other OEMs when they try to go back into getting more sales, they focus a lot on making their current customers happy, and I’m not sure that I’ve seen that with the, this group. So it’s, it’s just a little bit of lose lose on both sides. Joel Saxum: Yeah. And if you’re, if you’re trying to, if you’re having to go back and basically patch up relationships to make them happy. Uh, that four x five x was quite the flop, uh, I would say, uh, with the issues that it had. So, um, there’s, that’d be a lot of, a lot of, a lot of nice dinners and a lot of hand kissing and, and all kinds of stuff to make those relationships back to what they were. Allen Hall: But at the time, Joel, that turbine fit a specific set of the marketplace, they had basically complete control of that when the four x five [00:03:00] x. Was an option and and early on it did seem to have pretty wide adoption. They were making good progress and then the quality issues popped up. What have we seen since and more recently in terms of. The way that, uh, Siemens Ga Mesa has restructured their business. What have we heard? Joel Saxum: Well, they, they leaned more and pointed more towards offshore, right? They wanted to be healthy in, they had offshore realm and make sales there. Um, and that portion, because it was a completely different turbine model, that portion went, went along well, but in the meantime, right, they fit that four x five x and when I say four x five x, of course, I mean four megawatt, five megawatt slot, right? And if you look at, uh, the models that are out there for the onshore side of things. That, that’s kind of how they all fit. There was like, you know, GE was in that two x and, and, uh, uh, you know, mid two X range...
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    32 分
  • North Sea Summit Commits to 100 GW Offshore Wind

    North Sea Summit Commits to 100 GW Offshore Wind
    2026/01/26
    Allen covers Equinor’s Hywind Tampen floating wind farm achieving an impressive 51.6% capacity factor in 2025. Plus nine nations commit to 100 GW of offshore wind at the North Sea Summit, Dominion Energy installs its first turbine tower off Virginia, Hawaii renews the Kaheawa Wind Farm lease for 25 years, and India improves its repowering policies. 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’s a remarkable sight in the North Sea right now. Eleven wind turbines, each one floating on water like enormous ships, generating electricity in some of the roughest seas on Earth. Norwegian oil giant Equinor operates the Hywind Tampen floating wind farm, and the results from twenty twenty-five are nothing short of extraordinary. These floating giants achieved a capacity factor of fifty-one point six percent throughout the entire year. That means they produced power more than half the time, every single day, despite ocean storms and harsh conditions. The numbers tell the story. Four hundred twelve gigawatt hours of electricity, enough to power seventeen thousand homes. And perhaps most importantly, the wind farm reduced carbon emissions by more than two hundred thousand tons from nearby oil and gas fields. Production manager Arild Lithun said he was especially pleased that they achieved these results without any damage or incidents. Not a single one. But Norway’s success is just one chapter in a much larger story unfolding across the North Sea. Last week, nine countries gathered in Hamburg, Germany for the North Sea Summit. Belgium, Denmark, France, Britain, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and their host Germany came together with a shared purpose. They committed to building one hundred gigawatts of collaborative offshore wind projects and pledged to protect their energy infrastructure from sabotage by sharing security data and conducting stress tests on wind turbine components. Andrew Mitchell, Britain’s ambassador to Germany, explained why this matters now more than ever. Recent geopolitical events, particularly Russia’s weaponization of energy supplies during the Ukraine invasion, have sharpened rather than weakened the case for offshore wind. He said expanding offshore wind enhances long-term security while reducing exposure to volatile global fossil fuel markets. Mitchell added something that resonates across the entire industry. The more offshore wind capacity these countries build, the more often clean power sets wholesale electricity prices instead of natural gas. The result is lower bills, greater security, and long-term economic stability. Now let’s cross the Atlantic to Virginia Beach, where Dominion Energy reached a major milestone last week. They installed the first turbine tower at their massive offshore wind farm. It’s the first of one hundred seventy-six turbines that will stand twenty-seven miles off the Virginia coast. The eleven point two billion dollar project is already seventy percent complete and will generate two hundred ten million dollars in annual economic output. Meanwhile, halfway across the Pacific Ocean, Hawaii is doubling down on wind energy. The state just renewed the lease for the Kaheawa Wind Farm on Maui for another twenty-five years. Those twenty turbines have been generating electricity for two decades, powering seventeen thousand island homes each year. The new lease requires the operator to pay three hundred thousand dollars annually or three point five percent of gross revenue, whichever is higher. And here’s something smart: the state is requiring a thirty-three million dollar bond to ensure taxpayers never get stuck with the bill for removing those turbines when they’re finally decommissioned. Even India is accelerating its wind energy development. The Indian Wind Power Association welcomed major amendments to Tamil Nadu’s Repowering Policy last week. The Indian Wind Power Association thanked the government for addressing critical industry concerns. The changes make it significantly easier and cheaper to replace aging turbines with modern, more efficient ones. So from floating turbines in the North Sea to coastal giants off Virginia, from island power in Hawaii to policy improvements in India, the wind energy revolution is gaining momentum around the world. And that’s the state of the wind industry for the 26th of January 2026. Join us tomorrow for the Uptime Wind Industry Podcast.
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    3 分
  • CanREA Operators Summit Tackles Aging Fleets

    CanREA Operators Summit Tackles Aging Fleets
    2026/01/22
    Allen and Joel are joined by Mathieu Cōté from CanREA to preview the upcoming Operators Summit in Toronto. With many Canadian wind projects reaching 17-20 years old, the industry faces critical decisions about extending, repowering, or decommissioning assets. Register now! 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: Matt, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me. Well, the theme of this Year’s Operator Summit is coming of age and. There’s a lot of things happening in the renewable side up in Canada. What does that mean for Canadian renewable energy operators right now? Mathieu Cōté: Well, we came up with coming of age because, um, the fleet in Canada is in a bit of a different space than it is in the States where, uh, right now we’ve got a lot of projects that are on the cusp of coming to their end of initial lifetime. Right. They’re in that. 17 to 20 year range. There’s some that are a little bit past, and so you, as an operator, you gotta be asking yourself, is this the time to extend this project? What do I have to do [00:01:00] if I need to extend? Um, or am I repowering, am I taking things down, putting them up? And I mean, there’s a lot of different variables there. Sometimes it’s just a re topping, sometimes it’s everything down to ground level and go again. Or it’s, maybe it’s a decommissioning and those decisions are on the cusp of being made in the operation space in Canada. So that’s, that’s a super important part of it. But the other side of it, and the reason we liked, uh, coming of age is from the industry perspective itself. We are no longer the new kid on the block, right? We are now a reliable, uh, professional industry that can deliver power when you need it. Uh, so that’s what we’re trying to, to convey with this coming of age. And, and we’ve got some really good speakers who are gonna talk about that, uh, from. The grid operator’s perspective saying, why is it that renewables are one of the first things they reach for now when they realize they need more power? Joel Saxum: I think it’s an interesting space and I think to, to [00:02:00]comment more deeply on that, right? That you guys are in that, you Mathieu Cōté: know, Joel Saxum: 2005, six you started installing a Mathieu Cōté: lot of the, a lot of wind assets. There was a curve of, as it as every year you get more and more. Trickle and then becomes a flood quite quickly. Joel Saxum: Yeah. And, and, and you know, from, from the operation standpoint, we deal with some of the wind farms in Canada. We love working with, uh, the operators up there because they do exude that professionalism. They’re on top of their game. They know they’ve gotta maintain these things. Whereas in the states, we’ve been a little bit nascent sometimes and, oh, we got PTC coming so we don’t have to do these certain things. Little bit more cowboy. Yeah. Yeah. And up in Canada, they’re, they’re, they’ve been doing the right things for a long time. Um, and I think it’s a good, good model to follow, but you’re a hundred percent correct. We’re coming to that time when it’s like decision time to be made here. And I think we, in our, in our uh, kind of off air chat, you had mentioned that, you know, repower in Canada is. Pretty early stages. I Mathieu Cōté: only know about Joel Saxum: one, Mathieu Cōté: to [00:03:00] be honest, and I try and keep track of these things, Joel Saxum: but that’s coming down the pipeline, Mathieu Cōté: right? So there’s gonna be more and more of these happening. And I mean, there are a lot of operators that have one foot on either side of the border, so some people have some operational experience on what steps you need to take, but it’s also from the regulatory side, like what is your grid operator gonna insist on? So on and so on. But, uh, so we’ve got some panels to talk about things like, one of my favorites is, uh, how much life is left in your machine? And that’s sort of a deeper dive from an engineering standpoint. Like what math do the engineers do to assess, is this foundation good to go for another 10 years? Is this tower gonna stand up to whatever? Should we replace the blades and all those components? We, we’ve got a foundation expert, uh, someone who does. Digital twin sort of things as well as, um, a panelist from, uh, Nordex, so the OEM sort of perspective as well, and how they assess...
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    24 分
  • UK Awards 8.4 GW Offshore, US Allows Offshore Construction

    UK Awards 8.4 GW Offshore, US Allows Offshore Construction
    2026/01/20
    Allen, Joel, Rosemary, and Yolanda cover major offshore wind developments on both sides of the Atlantic. In the US, Ørsted’s Revolution Wind won a court victory allowing construction to resume after the Trump administration’s suspension. Meanwhile, the UK awarded contracts for 8.4 gigawatts of new offshore capacity in the largest auction in European history, with RWE securing nearly 7 gigawatts. Plus Canada’s Nova Scotia announces ambitious 40 gigawatt offshore wind plans, and the crew discusses the ongoing Denmark-Greenland tensions with the US administration. 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, Alan Hall, Rosemary Barnes, Joel Saxon and Yolanda Padron. Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m Allen Hall, along with Yolanda, Joel and Rosie. Boy, a lot of action in the US courts. And as you know, for weeks, American offshore wind has been holding its breath and a lot of people’s jobs are at stake right now. The Trump administration suspended, uh, five major projects on December 22nd, and still they’re still citing national security concerns. Billions of dollars are really in balance here. Construction vessels for most of these. Sites are just doing nothing at the minute, but the courts are stepping in and Sted won a [00:01:00] key victory when the federal judge allowed its revolution wind project off the coast of Rhode Island to resume construction immediately. So everybody’s excited there and it does sound like Osted is trying to finish that project as fast as they can. And Ecuador and Dominion Energy, which are two of the other bigger projects, are fighting similar battles. Ecuador is supposed to hear in the next couple of days as we’re recording. Uh, but the message is pretty clear from developers. They have invested too much to walk away, and if they get an opportunity to wrap these projects up quickly. They are going to do it now. Joel, before the show, we were talking about vineyard wind and vineyard. Wind was on hold, and I think it, it may not even be on hold right now, I have to go back and look. But when they were put on hold, uh, the question was, the turbines that were operating, were they able to continue operating? And the answer initially I thought was no. But it was yes, the, the turbines that were [00:02:00] producing power. We’re allowed to continue to produce powers. What was in the balance were the remaining turbines that were still being installed or, uh, being upgraded. So there’s, there’s a lot going on right now, but it does seem like, and back to your earlier point, Joel, before we start talking and maybe you can discuss this, we, there is an offshore wind farm called Block Island really closely all these other wind farms, and it’s been there for four or five years at this point. No one’s said anything about that wind farm. Speaker: I think it’s been there, to be honest with you, since like 2016 or 17. It’s been there a long time. Is it that old? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So when we were talk, when we’ve been talking through and it gets lost in the shuffle and it shouldn’t, because that’s really the first offshore wind farm in the United States. We keep talking about all these big, you know, utility scale massive things, but that is a utility scale wind farm as well. There’s fi, correct me if I’m wrong, Yolanda, is it five turbos or six? It’s five. Their decent sized turbines are sitting on jackets. They’re just, uh, they’re, they’re only a couple miles offshore. They’re not way offshore. But throughout all of these issues that we’ve had, um, with [00:03:00] these injunctions and stopping construction and stopping this and reviewing permits and all these things, block Island has just been spinning, producing power, uh, for the locals there off the coast of Rhode Island. So we. What were our, the question was is, okay, all these other wind farms that are partially constructed, have they been spinning? Are they producing power? And my mind goes to this, um, as a risk reduction effort. I wonder if, uh, the cable, if the cable lay timelines were what they were. Right. So would you now, I guess as a risk reduction effort, and this seems really silly to have to think about this. If you have your offshore substation, was the, was the main export cable connected to some of these like revolution wind where they have the injunction right now? Was that export...
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    33 分