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  • ECO TLP Brings Concrete Foundations to Floating Wind

    ECO TLP Brings Concrete Foundations to Floating Wind
    2026/04/16
    Nicole Johnson Murphy, CEO of ECO TLP, and Gordon Jackson join to discuss concrete floating wind foundations, production-line construction, and markets from Hawaii to Japan. 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: Offshore wind obviously is a big deal right now. There’s a lot of, uh, countries looking at it and investigating it, doing it, uh, but not really at scale yet. And this is where ECO TLP comes in and. Nicole, let’s just start there with a background. What problem were you trying to solve when you started Eco TLP? Nicole Johnson-Murphy: Yeah, so, so we were designing for, uh, a site off of Hawaii in 2011, uh, for the Hico RFP. And so we were designing for 300 meter water depth from the beginning. Um, so we were always trying to find a way to work with the ports, with the vessel, with the infrastructure that was existing off Hawaii. And with, and that worked with Jones Act vessels. So we were always trying to meet that [00:01:00] requirement with, you know, and meet the cost, try to, we saw there were much tighter margins in offshore wind than in oil and gas, for example, at that water depth. So we’re trying to find something that was cost effective. Allen Hall: Next question, obviously is what makes those deep water foundations so difficult? Gordon Jackson: Well, it’s the water depth, uh, primarily, um, you know, uh, you need to put foundations down in, uh, extremely deep water. Um, and they’re gonna be pretty flexible. Um, so you’re trying to control the, the amount of motion that you get at the surface through your, uh, uh, you know, your deep water, uh, facility. So, um, it’s really. Really that challenge, you know, and, uh, you know, the weight of components through the water depth, like, um, you know, likes of chain would be completely impossible. Um, in 300 meters of water. Uh, you need to use something that’s a little bit lighter. Yeah, to mow you to the, uh, to the seabed Allen Hall: [00:02:00] because it does seem a little odd just not to make the foundations taller, basically. More steel drive it down in, we know that process, we understand that process. It works offshore, uh, near shore in a, in a lot of locations. But once you get to what depth as it becomes financially or engineering wise, impossible Gordon Jackson: for offshore wind, fixed, fixed structures in, I mean, maybe a hundred meters of water are gonna be. Economic. Um, but you know, they’ll be costly compared to what’s been done now because, uh, you know, of all the extra structure you need for the, uh, for the deeper water. But, uh, I think you’ll see, you know, a crossover between fixed and floating, you know, around the, um, you know, 70 to a hundred meter water mark. You know, that’s sort the range. Allen Hall: Well, and that leads to the next question, which is. It’s all financial, right? At some point, the numbers [00:03:00] don’t work. If the cost of foundations don’t come down, especially in fixed bottom offshore or floating offshore, we lose a lot of offshore wind resource. Uh, Nicole can, can you gimme a scale at what we’re missing if we don’t get to a more economical solution for floating offshore? Nicole Johnson-Murphy: So we’ve estimated for our market for, um, a very deep water market. So we, we now actually have a, a solution that goes across all water depths. So we’re starting with, um, you know, this, this gravity based structure now with, and, and Gordon’s team has been really involved in that, uh, development. And then now we can take that same slip form, concrete cylinder. Format and take it across all the water depths. So, so we basically can hit every water depth now for a very low cost. It’s a very simple, just, you know, local, regionally designed and built, uh, system. We, we crowdsource the labor and the inputs. Um, and so we [00:04:00] try to, and we also try to give the procurement team of our clients their, you know, an ability to do their job and, and be able to bid out aspects of our design, um, across. Different vendors. So you always wanna give, in construction, you always wanna give, uh, the procurement team a job to do so they can actually get that price, keep that price down on the installation. Allen Hall: Yeah, that’s a unique look that eco TOP is putting to this problem. Which is moving away from steel, which is expensive obviously, and it’s sort of difficult to transport at times to a more ...
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    28 分
  • White House Misses Appeal Deadline, France Targets Chinese Magnets

    White House Misses Appeal Deadline, France Targets Chinese Magnets
    2026/04/14
    The crew discusses the White House missing its offshore wind appeal deadline, France’s 12 GW tender with restrictions on Chinese permanent magnets, and WOMA 2027 planning. 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. I’m here with Rosemary Barnes, who is in Australia, and our newest guest is Nikki Briggs, who is the new CCO of Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Welcome to the show, Nikki. Nikki Briggs: Thank you. Nice to, nice to be here. Allen Hall: So there’s the full docket, and Nikki’s gonna get indoctrinated today to the podcast, and she’s gonna be holding on tight because we have a really, uh, very controversial podcast. I think once Rosemary gets in here and starts talking about. Offshore wind. And I wanna lead off this week ’cause it is a big deal, although not many people are talking about it, that, uh, the White House missed a deadline to file an [00:01:00] appeal against all the offshore wind farms in the United States. And the feeling was, is that there was gonna be an appeal and they’re gonna push to slow down those projects or cancel those projects. And obviously, uh, one of the purchasers of one of the sites decided to sell it back to the US for about a. Billion US dollars, but the administration missed a key deadline for appeals, uh, which may indicate that they have other things to do besides fight offshore wind Now. The question really remains is, is this going to continue on that nothing is going to happen. Uh, hopefully all the wind projects that are being built at the moment will complete and we’ll be providing power to all the onshore locations, particularly up and down along the East coast. But, uh, there’s still a long way to go here. Rosemary, I know there’s been a lot of concern about what’s happened in the United States on offshore [00:02:00] wind for several months now. You think this is gonna be just a change of direction because there’s other things happening in the world. Rosemary Barnes: To me, it just sounded like too hard to, unlikely to actually succeed and kind of keeps on drawing attention back to the issue. So better to just kind of let it quietly fade away and not talk about it anymore. Allen Hall: And there is a financial emphasis for those companies that have these wind farms because if they can get their projects done. They get paid sooner. They can produce power, obviously they’re gonna get paid sooner. So there is a big incentive to push, push, push, push. And a lot of the projects are delivering power right now. And I think the, the biggest one, which is uh, dominion Energy’s Project of Coastal Virginia, offshore Wind is doing that. So. All these wind projects that are kinder in a way I think are going to finish, which is gonna be a, a big relief to a lot of the states. Rosemary Barnes: I don’t wanna talk about us, um, politics because I am not living there. But don’t you have midterms coming up and potential [00:03:00] for the situation to dramatically change? Like, my understanding is that the expectation is that there will be. More, um, democratic involvement in, in decision making after the midterms. And so surely, you know, like if they don’t, if they’re not acting now, then things are likely to be easier from here on out. Is that, is that a correct interpretation of what’s going on over there? Allen Hall: Not correct. And Nikki, you can jump in here too. Congress can change and does every two years there’s elections in the US and so the full House of Representatives is voted in or out. So all 435 members of the House of Representatives have an election, but about a third of the Senate has an election. So the Senate doesn’t change as dramatically as the House does, but, uh, for everything that’s been codified into law, which happened a year and a half ago, uh, the executive branch can kind of do what they [00:04:00] want there. So there will be very little that Congress can do. Once a law is a pass and the executive branch can continue on, Rosemary Barnes: it’s two year terms for your house of reps. Allen Hall: Yeah. It’s two years terms. Yeah. Rosemary Barnes: That’s not very long. That’s not very good job security. Allen Hall: It was never meant to be Rosemary Barnes: in school. About a thousand years ago, I learned that, um, the ...
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    31 分
  • Vineyard Wind Sues GE Vernova, US Monopile Factory Bankrupt

    Vineyard Wind Sues GE Vernova, US Monopile Factory Bankrupt
    2026/04/13
    Allen covers EEW American Offshore Structures’ Chapter 11 filing, Vineyard Wind suing GE Vernova for $545 million, Europe’s exit from Korea, and wind project wins in Australia and Canada. 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 a story unfolding across this industry right now. It is a story of two worlds. One world is closing its doors. The other is throwing them wide open. Let us start in New Jersey. EEW American Offshore Structures filed for Chapter Eleven bankruptcy on April eighth. This was the first monopile manufacturing facility ever built in the United States. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy announced a two hundred fifty million dollar investment in the Paulsboro Marine Terminal back in twenty twenty. It was called the largest industrial offshore wind investment in the country at the time. At full buildout… five hundred thousand square feet of production space. More than one hundred monopiles per year. Five hundred workers. They even built the first American-made monopile… for Orsted’s Ocean Wind project. It weighed three million pounds. It measured three hundred feet long. Then Orsted canceled Ocean Wind One and Two. Then Shell pulled out of Atlantic Shores. Without contracted work… workers disassembled and recycled finished monopiles for scrap. Federal policy shifts removed the pipeline of future projects. A landlord eviction filing followed. And then… Chapter Eleven. That is a two hundred fifty million dollar facility… with nowhere left to go. Now stay with us. Because just offshore… another American offshore wind story is fighting for its life. Vineyard Wind… the sixty-two turbine project fifteen miles south of Martha’s Vineyard… filed suit in Massachusetts against GE Renewables. GE Vernova says Vineyard Wind owes it three hundred million dollars for work already performed… and it wants to walk away at the end of April. Vineyard Wind says not so fast. The developer says GE still owes five hundred forty-five million dollars for what it calls inexcusably poor performance after a catastrophic turbine blade collapse in July of twenty twenty-four. Fiberglass blade fragments washed onto Nantucket beaches during peak tourist season. Sixty-eight of seventy-two blades had to be removed and replaced. That set the project back nearly two years. Construction did reach completion in March… making Vineyard Wind the first offshore project to finish under the current administration. But now the only contractor capable of completing the remaining work… wants out. A court hearing was scheduled for Thursday. And now… look eastward. Something similar is playing out in Korea. European offshore wind companies are exiting the Korean market one by one. Corio Generation, a British firm owned by Macquarie, disbanded its Korean unit and pulled out of joint projects in Busan and Ulsan. Germany’s RWE quit offshore wind projects in Taean and Sinan counties. Vestas postponed its turbine factory in Mokpo… indefinitely. Equinor began reducing its Korean workforce. Shell exited the Korean offshore market entirely in twenty twenty-four. These companies point to worsening global profitability… and Korean government policies they say favor domestic companies over firms with greater experience. Korea had a target of three gigawatts of offshore wind by twenty thirty. That goal is now in serious doubt. But here is where the story turns. Not every market is closing its door. Eight thousand miles from New Jersey… in the Sunshine State of Queensland, Australia… the final forty-one turbines just arrived at the Wambo wind project. Cubico Sustainable Investments and Stanwell are building a five hundred six megawatt project on the Darling Downs. Stage One… two hundred fifty-two megawatts… already feeding the Queensland grid. Stage Two deliveries are now complete. Commissioning and full operations are on track for the end of twenty twenty-six. And up in Ontario, Canada… the province just approved fourteen new wind and solar projects totaling more than thirteen hundred megawatts. The average price… eight point eight cents per kilowatt hour. Compare that to twenty-one point four cents for some proposed nuclear projects… and more than thirty-two cents for certain new reactor designs. Contracts run for twenty years, with all projects online before twenty thirty. So let us step back. In New Jersey… the first American monopile factory files for bankruptcy. Off Massachusetts… a completed offshore wind farm fights to keep its contractor. In Korea… European developers pack their bags. But in ...
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    3 分
  • Tilt Renewables’ Dr. Liz Beavis on Wind O&M in Australia

    Tilt Renewables’ Dr. Liz Beavis on Wind O&M in Australia
    2026/04/09
    Dr. Liz Beavis, Asset Manager at Tilt Renewables, joins to discuss O&M contracts, balance of plant, and lessons from Australia’s biggest and oldest wind farms. Contact Liz on LinkedIn or by email. 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! Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Liz, welcome to the program. Thanks, Liz Beavis: Alan. I feel I’m a long time listener. First time caller, so it’s exciting. Allen Hall: You are a long time listener and thanks for doing that. Uh, and Liz, I just find you to be a wealth of knowledge and, uh, we met on a couple occasions since I’ve been in Australia and it’s just, uh, a fun to connect here because I think a lot of the things that are happening in Australia need to be spread around the world. A lot of, uh, good o and m practices happening in Australia, uh, from hard lessons learned. So that’s what I want to dive into today. And then the first one is, I don’t think many people realize this, that you went. From commissioning, Australia’s largest wind farm, Cooper’s gap to managing seven [00:01:00] of the 10 oldest operational wind farms in the country. So you got some of the biggest, newest to some of the oldest assets. Uh. Uh, my question is like, when you started that, did you just kind of assume like wind, wind farms or wind farms or wind turbines or wind turbines and you could just basically own and end them the same, or do, or did it just occur to you immediately like, I need to take a different plan of attack here? Liz Beavis: I think I, I knew nothing about wind farms when I turned up at Cooper’s Gap, so, so yeah, I got my, well, okay, we’ll go right back to the start. So I was working at a thermal power station and I was just thinking. There’s no future in coal. How do I get into renewables? And then a wind farm got built like 50 kilometers from my house. I can, I can see it in the horizon. Um, and I thought, oh, they’re not gonna need a chemical engineer there, but I wonder if they need a site manager or something. And then the site manager role came up, I applied for it. So the services site manager. So, [00:02:00] um. That was July, 2020. That’s when I first started listening to the podcast. ’cause I thought I better find out something about this industry before I do my job interview. And so I’ve been listening ever since. But, um, yeah, so I don’t know. I was just lucky to get that role. And I turned up and, um, I think it was the end of September, 2020 first time I’d ever set foot on a wind farm ’cause of COVID and everything. I didn’t, I didn’t go there for the interview. My manager was in Thailand. I just turned up. And, um, so they, they’d finished construc, they’d built all the towers where they hadn’t finished commissioning. And so we’re still working out of construction, dongas, you know, temporary buildings and um, and there was hundreds of people on site and it was just the absolute chaos of. Constructing a two hundred, a hundred and twenty three turbines. You know, like there’s just people everywhere. And I thought, wow, I’ve just gotta figure out what I’m supposed to be doing here. There were a few technicians. I found out how many technicians I supposed to have. Just started recruiting, started figuring out what I was supposed to be doing there, and I just [00:03:00] learned so much. In the two years we took over the new r and m building. We had failed gear, boxes, generators, transformers, overhead line, underground line, pretty much. Anything that could fail failed, and I got to see what we needed to do. Um, but through all of that, I was also thinking, oh, how do I manage this wind farm better? I don’t know anything about wind farms, and I’m reaching out to the other GE sites, but the, the next biggest site was 75 turbines, and all of the rest of them are 30 and 40. So they’re saying to me, oh, you just get a team to go around. And I’m thinking. Well, that’s six weeks of work. You know, like, like everything is so much bigger on a bigger wind farm. And then I’d reach out to the, the American sites. That had big wind farms, but their contracts were so different, and I didn’t understand at first, I started to realize, well, their contracts are completely different and their focus is different, and so they’re not facing the same issues that I’m facing. Um, and then, you know, even speaking to a wind farm in [00:04:00] Sweden that was a similar size, but...
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    32 分
  • Vestas Withholds Collapse Data, Nordex Iowa and Tariffs

    Vestas Withholds Collapse Data, Nordex Iowa and Tariffs
    2026/04/07
    Vestas hasn’t shared SCADA data after a South Korea turbine collapse, citing an expired warranty. Plus workers at Nordex in Iowa are concerned about tariffs. 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! Transcript The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by StrikeTape, protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit strikeTape.com. And now your hosts. Allen Hall Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m Allen Hall and I’m here with Rosemary Barnes. And Fergus is here. Hi. Welcome to our top story. This week is a wind turbine collapse that happened in South Korea at the Changpo Wind Power Complex in Yeongdeok, and the turbine lost a blade. There’s some video here that was recorded when the turbine collapsed, so it happened a couple of months ago, and investigators have been trying to determine the cause of that failure. They’re having a little bit of difficulty because they would like to access the SCADA system of that turbine because that would have a lot of more information about [00:01:00] how the tower was operating at that particular moment. And they’re having trouble in that it is a Vestas turbine and Vestas has not released the SCADA data and it’s citing an expired warranty. Now, Rosemary, this leads to a lot of problems because obviously there’s a ton of sensors in wind turbines today, and they can help determine causes of failures pretty rapidly. But without it, you’re just really looking at video in this particular collapse. Rosemary Barnes It’s amazing that you can look at video. The video is far more useful than the SCADA data is, probably. Um, yeah, it’s, well, I’ve never actually, like, I’ve worked on a lot of RCAs and I’ve never actually got to see video footage of the incident, so that’s actually really cool that they’ve got this dash cam footage. Looking at it now, you can, um, see the lower, probably two thirds of the turbine tower, so you can see the blades coming past. I wish the video would start just like 10 seconds earlier. [00:02:00] Um, because maybe you can see a bit of wobble in the tower. You can see that one of the blades is already missing a tip, or the tip kind of flies off anyway, so maybe it was bent. So definitely looks to me like the root cause was that there was a blade failure. The, um, part of the blade broke off, caused a rotor imbalance, which then meant that one of the blades hit the tower and then it’s really easy for a tower to buckle once it’s got some damage in it. So that, that in itself, like, that’s not an uncommon scenario. Um, and yeah, for sure, like you would ask for the SCADA data, but, uh, I don’t think it’s accurate that they’re saying. There must have been a faulty sensor or something because when there’s a rotor imbalance, it should stop, um, stop the turbine. But I do know from experience, it does not always stop the turbine quickly enough to stop this happening. So, um, I’m not, I’m not sure that the SCADA data would tell you anything [00:03:00] groundbreaking. However, I think it is very interesting Vestas are very publicly not sharing because it’s out of warranty because to me, access to the SCADA data is a key part of being able to operate your turbine safely. And you don’t sell a turbine — like you might sell a turbine with a two year warranty, sure, but that doesn’t mean that you are selling a turbine that can only be operated safely for two years. That’s just like absolutely insane and contrary to — at least a lot of the world’s laws, there’s laws around, you know, how safely you can operate equipment, and especially energy generation assets have specific laws about that. You have to be able to operate them safely and yeah, from what we can see here, like you can’t get access to the SCADA data. So in, in this case, I don’t know if there was a problem with the turbine controller that contributed to this problem. I, I mean, I’m, I’m always a bit surprised that a turbine can shake itself apart and it’s not, you know, there isn’t a sensor in there that can stop it in time to stop the collapse because if you take just the population of turbines that have collapsed, which is, you know, [00:04:00] very, very few from considering the whole global population, but looking at those ones that have collapsed, it’s pretty common way that it happens is from, um, part of a blade falling off and then a rotor imbalance causing the tower to, um, start wobbling and the blades to hit the tower. Allen Hall So would it be in the control laws, Rosemary, where the ...
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    27 分
  • Quebec Wind Boom, Aikido’s Floating AI Platform

    Quebec Wind Boom, Aikido’s Floating AI Platform
    2026/04/06

    Allen covers Quebec’s record wind project, Madawaska’s financial close, Nova Scotia’s first direct-to-consumer wind sales, PEI’s retiring wind farm, and Aikido’s floating offshore AI data center.

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

    Good Monday everyone.

    Canada is building.

    On the last day of March… the province of Quebec broke ground on the largest wind energy project in Canadian history.

    It is called Des Neiges… French for “of the snows.”

    One hundred and fourteen turbines. Two hundred meters tall each. Seven megawatts apiece.

    When the first two phases are complete… those turbines will power one hundred and forty thousand homes.

    The partners are Boralex, Énergir, and Hydro-Quebec. The investment: three billion dollars.

    Quebec Premier Francois Legault said it plainly at a recent ceremony: “There is a global race right now to dramatically increase electricity production.”

    He is not wrong.

    Also in Quebec… the Madawaska Wind Energy Project just reached financial close. EDF Renewables and Hydro-Quebec are behind that one. Two hundred and seventy-four megawatts. Forty-five turbines. Financed under Green Loan Principles. Expected to power more than forty-four thousand homes.

    Now… across the Gulf of Saint Lawrence… Nova Scotia is launching the Mersey River Wind project. One hundred and forty-eight-point-five megawatts. Thirty-three turbines.

    And here is where it gets interesting. For the first time… consumers in the province will be able to buy electricity directly from a wind farm. Not from the utility. From the source. A company called Renewall Energy is already signing contracts with homeowners… businesses… even the city of Halifax.

    And then there is Prince Edward Island. That province is saying goodbye to its very first wind farm.

    North Cape began in two thousand and one. Sixteen turbines. Each rated at just point-six-six megawatts. The province’s newest turbines? Four-point-two megawatts each. The P.E.I. Energy Corporation is seeking bids for an environmental impact assessment… the first step toward replacement.

    Twenty-five years ago… North Cape was a pioneer. Today… it is showing its age. That is how progress works.

    But let us end on this.

    Out in California… a company called Aikido Technologies has unveiled a floating wind platform… that also serves as an AI data center. The platform pairs an eighteen-megawatt turbine with onboard computing power… cooled by the surrounding ocean. A prototype is being built in Norway. Commercial launch: the United Kingdom… twenty twenty-eight.

    The CEO put it simply: “Before we go off-world… we should go offshore.”

    So… from Quebec to Nova Scotia to Prince Edward Island… Canada is building its energy future at full speed. And somewhere out on the open ocean… someone is building the next chapter altogether.

    And that is the state of the wind industry for the 6th of April 2026.

    Join us tomorrow for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.
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    4 分
  • Wavepiston Brings Wave Energy to Island Communities

    Wavepiston Brings Wave Energy to Island Communities
    2026/04/02
    Michael Henriksen, CEO at Wavepiston, joins to discuss wave energy’s advantages for island communities, the company’s hydraulic piston system, offshore wind co-location, and the Barbados pilot project. 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: Michael, welcome to the program. Thanks, Allen. A pleasure. Allen Hall: Well, this is gonna be a, a really interesting discussion today because, uh, I don’t know a lot about wave power, but. Obviously the world has made some substantial progress in wind and solar, but the ocean energy is still relatively unknown and. I want you to, just to paint the picture of the problem, what gap exists in renewable energy today that wave energy can fill? Michael Henriksen: Thanks. Thanks. A yes. Uh, that’s right. So ocean energy as such. And we have, um, we are working with the wave energy side of the other things here in Wave Piston has a very large potential because there’s a lot of waves around us. We all feel it when we are out in the sea, when we’re out swimming or whatever.[00:01:00] So what can it fill out that is that, that the, the interesting thing about wave energy is that is, um, timewise shift compared to wind. You know, it’s the wind that builds up the waves. The waves come, uh, the wind comes and goes, but the waves that keep rolling also afterwards. Yeah. So this timewise shift that gives some extra value. Of the energy that you can actually produce at the same time, it’s actually also, it’s a more of stable resource. So you, you don’t have these large fluctuation, it, it, it comes slowly and then dies away slowly depending on where you are in the world, of course. And then the last for the least is it’s very predictable. So stable days advantage, you can actually very precise predict what sort of your energy production profile. So by adding an extra renewable energy source, you can actually sort of, it gives extra value to both have sort as much solar PV as possible, as much wind as possible, but also have wave energy there to have sort of a better, uh, in the end, uh, [00:02:00] uh, energy production. Allen Hall: Yeah. And that, and the technology is really applicable to, uh, a lot of regions, uh, around just like island communities and places of a little more remote. Uh, because the cost of electricity on islands is incredibly high. They’re buying diesel usually, and they have a kind of a, a double problem in that they have to buy diesel to run electricity plants, and then at the same time they’re, they’re having to make fresh water all the time ’cause fresh water’s a problem. Wave Piston solves both of these problems together. But why are we in this? Space right now. I, I just wanna back up a minute. I mean, there, there does seem like for the last 30, 40 years that I can remember, the island communities have been really stuck. Solar hasn’t really filled the void. Wind has been intermittent option at times. Why waves? Michael Henriksen: Yeah. But that’s actually, uh, where we see our, like our step to, uh, [00:03:00] you know, uh, go to market strategy, so to speak. See, that is the first step because as you mentioned, all the island communities, I would also say remote coastal communities still have this, this challenge of being dependent on fossil fuels. And as you know, it’s, it’s mainly because of course you have limited, uh, uh, uh, land space. Uh, of course they should have as much solar PB as wind as possible, but you still have this, you know, you don’t wanna have it in your backyard. It’s difficult to have, you know, spatial beautiful islands where you have, uh, tourism, et cetera. And then you have, uh, solar PB and winter turbines all over the place. It’s not gonna happen. So they’re looking at to go to, of course, offshore. What they have a lot of us is they have ocean. Yeah. And the challenge there again, is. Most places when you go just a few kilometers from shore get very, very deep. Yeah. So you need to find something that is sustainable, something that it will not spoil the view. Something that is actually, uh, uh, an [00:04:00]environmental friendly way, you know, of harnessing the energy that that is where wave energy come into the picture because. It’s happening below the sea. So the, the surface and, and, and the, it can sort of coexist with other things happening there. Of course, you need to have an area where just say this is for wave minute. Yeah. ...
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    25 分
  • UK Bans Ming Yang, Vestas Plans Scotland Factory

    UK Bans Ming Yang, Vestas Plans Scotland Factory
    2026/03/31
    The UK bars Ming Yang on security grounds while Vestas announces a €250M nacelle factory in Scotland. Also, Nordex reaches a 199-meter hub height milestone and male bats use turbines as courtship song perches. 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 Rosemary Barnes, Matthew Stead, and Yolanda Padron. And. The hot news this week is Scotland, and Scotland is gonna be a major hub for manufacturing for all the offshore wind that is happening in the UK and around Europe. Well, the UK government ruled that Chinese turbine maker Ming Yang poses a national security threat and blocked its products from UK offshore wind projects, which in turn killed a plan for a one and a half billion pound Scottish factory. And then a couple of hours later, Dana Danish Giant Vestus announced plans to build its own cell [00:01:00] and hub factory in Scotland with an investment of about 250 million euros and up to about 500 jobs. Uh, but there is still a catch. Vestus is only going to move forward if it wins enough orders from the UK’s offshore wind. Auction program and allocation round eight was announced recently, so that’s gonna happen. So obviously Vestus would like to win a number of turbine orders from that, but that’s a pretty major announcement by the UK and by Vestus. It does seem like Vestus will be the leader in offshore winds in the uk. Is that the long term play now? Is that there’ll be a primary. Wind turbine source for the uk and that would be Vestas. Rosemary Barnes: Weren’t we just covering, didn’t we just cover last week about another Danish manufacturer who just closed in a cell, uh, manufacturing facility in Denmark? Allen Hall: Siemens did. Rosemary Barnes: So yeah, one week [00:02:00] Siemens is closing a factory in Denmark and the next week. As Bestus is opening similar factory in the uk. So that’s a interesting little geographic, uh, bit of information, Matthew Stead: isn’t it? Thanks to our friends, the royal family in the uk, that they’re really promoting offshore wind. Matthew Stead: Uh, my understanding is they own the rights to the offshore water. Uh, well, obviously the offshore, offshore area, and they, they have promoted, um, the use of leases. And I, I understand, I might be cor incorrect, that the royal family is the one that may gain the, the benefit from the leases. Allen Hall: It’s the crown of state in the UK that. Manages the royal family’s holdings. [00:03:00] Some part of the awarded amount or the, the leases are going to go to the royal family. I forget what that number is. Maybe 10% of ’em. And the rest basically are the treasury of the uk. Matthew Stead: Oh, not all of it. Allen Hall: Yeah, not all of it. But yeah, I mean it definitely benefits the royal family. Matthew Stead: Yeah. So kiosk to the royal family for promoting it. Allen Hall: Well, the price of petroleum in oil products recently has skyrocketed, of course. And, uh. The push to get renewables as the leading source of electricity generation in the UK is a massive move, which will. Promulgate all through Europe, everybody’s gonna be on that same pathway, I would think. Right now, the, the, the unique part about the UK and these, these Scottish efforts is that the speed at which the UK and Scotland in particular are going after it, you see some commitment by the Scandinavians in Germany to get to some of these numbers. But, uh, the UK is putting in an action. And they have a in, uh, industrial growth plan, which [00:04:00] is a little bit unique that this is part of the growth strategy of the UK is they’re trying to grow jobs, they’re trying to get higher paying jobs into the uk and this is the, the one way they’re trying to accomplish it. I was listening to a podcast today talking about this. It was someone representing, I think it was great British energy, but they are at least the, as the discussion points, they were trying to show comparisons. To what will happen and when to What has happened in the past with aerospace that the UK realized it’s good at composites, manufacturing wings, doing power plants, rolls Royce is there, right? So there’s a number of parallel. Tracks that the UK is going to to try to do through, um, their knowledge of aerospace into the wind turbine ...
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