The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

• Hitachi Energy Leads the Energy Transition

  Laura Fleming and Alfredo Parres from Hitachi Energy dive into the critical challenges of integrating renewable energy, particularly offshore wind power, into the UK grid. They explore innovative solutions, including HVDC technology and digital advancements, that are driving efficient, reliable energy distribution and shaping the future of the global energy landscape. With Laura's over 25 years of experience in the energy sector and Alfredo's long history in renewables, the two give insights into how Hitachi is making the energy transition possible. 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: With power grids adapting to accommodate growing renewable energy, the challenges of integration had never been more critical. This week, we speak with Alfredo Parres group, senior Vice President and head of Renewables at Hitachi Energy. And Laura Fleming, country managing director at Hitachi Energy UK and Ireland. Together, they explain how Hitachi's technology is enabling efficient, reliable connections between massive wind farms and our existing electrical infrastructure. This is a great interview. Stay tuned. Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind Energy's brightest innovators. This is the progress. Powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Laura and Alfredo, welcome to the podcast. Laura Flemming: Glad to be here. Alfredo Parres: Hey, huh. Allen Hall: How are you? Laura, let's start with you because I've watched a number of your interviews on YouTube and there's just a lot happening within Hitachi. What are some of the main challenges in the UK facing sort of the renewable energy grid and all of the particularly wind power, which is what we're focused on. There's a lot of wind power offshore being deployed in the UK at the minute. How is a Hitachi trying to handle that and distribute that energy? Laura Flemming: Yeah. Thank you for the question. And uh, it's a super exciting time, as you're saying in in the uk energy space. And maybe just to explain briefly what is going on the UK. At the moment, it's very hard at work to decarbonize the electricity grid. It's actually planning to be fully carbon zero by 2030. That's only in five years time now. And that's obviously a very big job. What we're doing in order to reach that as a country is switching away from from carbon sources. And so about six weeks ago. We switched off our last coal-fired power station, for example. But of course we still need energy and we still need a lot of electricity. So what we're doing instead is building out a lot of renewable energy predominantly offshore wind because that allows us to produce vast amounts of electricity quickly cheaply and sustainably. The result of all of that is that actually we're producing electricity in very different places than that we used to. So offshore wind, obviously produced in the sea, mainly in the north of Scotland particularly in Scotland. But the demand centers are all in the s of the country, predominantly around London and Birmingham areas. So we needing to transport this electricity around the system in a very different way. And all of that is triggering lots of grid reinforcements requiring to be done as well. So, and obviously without that grid, we can't move around this this new electricity from the generation source to the to the demand centers in a very efficient and also in a reliable way. And also making sure that we don't have too many losses on the system. So this is a huge task.

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• How Low Cost CMS Stops Catastrophic Damage

  We discuss how using continuous monitoring systems (CMS) can prevent catastrophic blade damage from transportation and lightning. We also share insights from GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik on potential industry growth. And TPI Composites has hit the milestone of manufacturing their 100,000th blade. 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: On this week's Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, we discuss how continuous monitoring systems could prevent catastrophic blade damage due to transportation issues and lightning strikes. And that's a good discussion. GE Renova, CEO Scott Straza sees a soft entree wind market through early 2025, highlighting potential growth in Repowering projects. TPI composites manufactures their 100,000th blade. Congratulations. And our wind farm of the week is the Jericho Rise Wind Farm in upstate New York. You're listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by bill 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: in his first appearance at Barclays Conference. Since GE Vernova's spinoff, CEO Scott Strazik offered a sobering assessment of their wind business while highlighting some positive developments. Now, Strazik, uh, described the onshore wind market. Is currently very soft, quote unquote, with weak order expectations for the first half of 2025, though he noted opportunities in Repowering projects and certain international markets that could, uh, at least partially offset North American weakness. Now, one of the things that was mentioned during the Scott Straza, um, conference or discussion was that they are doing internal inspections and a lot of them using crawlers, which I, I believe is are from Aeros, where they're looking at. Uh, the blades at the factory internally after transportation, and then once they're up on tower trying to capture any defects that are happening. And this, at, at, when I saw this, I thought, oh, it goes back to Phil's comment that a lot of damage is actually happening during transportation. And that there maybe they're trying to, uh, work on that transportation piece or at least be able to make some claims that their blades have been damaged during transportation. That's a unique piece 'cause I don't know any other. OEM that is doing that many inspections at the moment. Joel, do you know any of Joel Saxum: others that are doing that? I know they should be. Uh, but, but, uh, yeah, same page. I don't know anybody that actually is. I think it's a, a bit of a. It's good market response, to be honest with you, from my opinion, because I mean, you know, we've, we've seen so many blades that are brand new or within warranty having issues. Well now you can trace them back. If you get that inspection done at the factory, you put in a, uh, basically a, a. Data point of traceability. If it was good then and it got to site and then all of a sudden there's a damage, well that happened during transportation and handling. So you can start to say, that was your fault. This is who should pay for this. These are the things that are being traced. Right. Um, and we did see in a presentation, uh, just yesterday or two days ago from Arons that they were putting statistics to the findings of their internal crawlers. And one of them was rad at like that. 70% from root to tip mark where that handling happens.

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  28:26
• Nordex Optimistic in US, National Grid Sells US Renewable Portfolio

  This week on News Flash, Nordex's determined stance on US growth, the Cenos Floating Wind Farm project, National Grid's sale of its US renewable assets, and Europe's wind energy production expansion to meet 2030 climate targets. Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Welcome to Uptime Newsflash, industry News Lightning fast. Newsflash is brought to you by IntelStor. For market intelligence that generates revenue, visit www.intelstor.com. Allen Hall: Starting off the week, German wind leader Nordex remains bullish on US growth despite President's Trump Day one, suspension of offshore wind leasing. CEO, Jose Hlu Blanco confidently told Reuters they'll hit targets, quote, even in worse case scenarios. North American business surged 3% to 10% of orders in 2024 while Nordex exceeded profit forecast with 296 million euros. The company now aims to recapture its former 15 to 18% of the US market position and projects five to 7% profit margins for 2025. Energy developers, flotation Energy and Vagrønn have filed for approval of their groundbreaking Cenos floating Wind Farm with Scottish authorities. The 95 turbine project will tower 320 meters above the North Sea, 190 kilometers from Scotland's coast. The innovative offshore wind development secured through Crown Estate Scotland's in into program will power both UK homes and North Sea oil platforms. Public consultation remains open until April 4th, building on momentum from their successful Green Volt project. In a major market move, national Grid is offloading its entire US renewable portfolio to Canadian giant Brookfield for $1.74 billion. The strategic divestment includes 1.8 gigawatts of operational assets and 1.3 gigawatts under development across solar, wind, and battery technologies. This sale follows similar renewable pullbacks by energy majors Shell, BP and Equinor Amid Profitability Challenges. National Grid will now concentrate investment on its core energy network infrastructure with the transaction expected to complete by early 2026. And finally, European wind energy suppliers are rapidly expanding production capacity with over 30 factories across the continent being expanded or newly built to meet ambitious EU 2030 climate targets. SEF is investing 300 million euros in Rotterdam to produce 200 triple XL offshore wind foundations. Annually by mid 2025 while Siemens Gamesa announced a 200 million Euro investment to upgrade its facility in France to produce next generation 14 megawatt turbine blades, creating 200 new jobs. The manufacturing expansion spans cable production in nine European countries and turbine component factories in Denmark, France, Poland, Italy, and the uk. These investments totaling 11 billion euros over two years, strengthens Europe's energy security and creates thousands of jobs.

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• The Global Blade Group Builds Industry Blade Knowledge

  Allen and Joel speak with Birgit Junker, co-founder of the Global Blade Group, a forum created to share knowledge and innovation around wind turbine blades. For over ten years, the group has been making blade information more accessible and approachable. For more information on joining the Global Blade Group, email [email protected]. Link to Blade Handbook - https://www.bladena.com/uploads/8/7/3/7/87379536/cortir_handbook_2019.pdf Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. Today, I'm delighted to welcome Birgit Junker, a true pioneer in wind energy blade technology and the co founder of the Global Blade Group. This organization has become the premier forum for the wind turbine blade experts to collaborate, share knowledge, and drive innovation in areas like structural design, Lightning protection and blade inspection technologies. Welcome to Uptime Spotlight. Shining light on wind energy's brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Birgit, welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight. Birgit Junker: Thank you very much and thanks for having me. Allen Hall: I want to start off by looking back a little bit into 2013. What were some of the challenges that when farm owners were facing with Blade technology and maintenance that led you to create the global Blade group? Birgit Junker: To start with Rege from Vattenfall and I, we were relatively new on the owner operator side. And we both found that when we were speaking to our colleagues, they, their eyes just glazed over every single time we said Blade. Cause nobody knew anything about blade. When I was hired at Eon I came from from Siemens. I was hired at Eon. I was told that they didn't have blade issues. So I should expect to work about 80%, 75 percent on blades. And the rest of the time I should be spending on a drivetrain. 10 years later, when I left, there were 10 blade people. And I never ever had to look at a drivetrain. That was the attitude then. Blades were not a problem. We didn't have blade problems. Blades were like that black box that you had. You just went out there and counted that they were all there. And you listened just to make sure that there wasn't anything strange going on. And about, you 99. 9 percent of the time, nothing happened. There was nothing wrong. We even had contracts that said that blades were maintenance free. But then Reg and I started on the owner operator side. We came, we both came from OEMs. I've done catastrophic failure investigation. I've done field failures. I've done all sorts of things for what, 10 years before that. And knew that we did have blade problems. Ian just hadn't found out yet. So when I started, Reg and I, we decided that we needed to talk to one another because we couldn't talk to colleagues. Joel Saxum: Birgit, from experiences in the field I would, I want to follow up with that as a hard second. Because so many people Don't understand even today what's going on in the with blades. Like I'll give you an anecdotal problem. I was in a field doing an RCA and out there with a site supervisor who was in charge of 120 odd turbines, big wind farms in the States, right? And he was looking up. He said, yeah, those blades, he's they're just, big plastic wings in the skies. And I was like, they're not actually plastic. And he goes what do you mean?

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• SkySpecs Predicts Component Remaining Useful Life

  Allen and Joel speak with Allan Larson, VP of CMS Products at SkySpecs, about their remaining useful life estimates for operators. By predicting component failures, operators can create better maintenance schedules, saving time and money. Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy's brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. And today we're diving into a critical challenge facing wind farm operators, predicting component failures and optimizing maintenance schedules. Imagine if wind farm operators could instantly gauge the cost impact of their decisions And automatically assign a dollar value to the risk. It sounds like science fiction, but it's actually becoming a reality through innovative approaches to remaining useful life assessments and automated risk detection. In today's episode, we'll explore how these technologies are revolutionizing wind turbine maintenance. Helping operators reduce downtime, cut costs, and extend the lifespan of their assets. We'll learn how advanced analytics and artificial intelligence are enabling more precise predictions and smarter decision making in a WinFarm world. Our guest is Allan Larson, the VP of CMS products at SkySpecs. In his role, Allan leads all aspects of product development for the Horizon CMS platform, which is crucial for wind turbine drivetrain monitoring and diagnostics. As part of SkySpecs product team, Allan manages the product roadmap, conducts market research, and oversees the development and launch of new features. His expertise is key. In condition monitoring systems and AI based fault detection for wind turbines makes him a key player in shaping innovative solutions for the wind industry. Allan welcome to the show. Allan Larson: Thank you. Allen Hall: That was pretty good, wasn't it? That was a pretty good intro. I feel pretty good about myself now. Play it when you go home from the show here, yeah. That's the rap, people. Uh, so, you're a drivetrain specialist. CMS drive space. Allan Larson: Yes. Specialist. These days, that's what I've become. Yes. Allen Hall: Yeah. And that is, uh, obviously a really needed, uh, knowledge base, particularly as the number of wind turbines has grown dramatically and we're rapidly producing turbines. We also rapidly produce drive train problems. And CMS is going to be the only way for us to dig ourselves out of a little bit of a hole on gearboxes and bearings and some of the drive train issues. Uh, what do you see as sort of the top level issues out in the field today and what are you, what are you hearing? Allan Larson: Well, I mean, I think about it not so much in terms of, uh, which, uh, which failure mode is occurring most today or whatever. It's more, um, the failure modes that you have today is something that we need to detect early so we can act on it, right? And, uh, that's what CMS is all about. It's about this early and accurate detection of failure. of drive train failure modes so you can take appropriate action at the appropriate time. Allen Hall: Yeah, it's been a very busy crane season in the middle of the United States. We've noticed a lot of gearboxes and main bearings being replaced. The CMS systems are going to play a bigger part in that. I think a lot of operators are becoming much more aware that CMS is needed on drive train.

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  27:35

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