Show notes
This episode Allen and Phil examine China's move to end its domestic wind turbine price war and its global market implications. They discuss Germany's countermeasures and the complexities of international manufacturing in the U.S. wind industry. Additionally, they highlight an innovative bolt tensioning system featured in PES Wind Magazine, showcasing advancements in wind turbine maintenance technology.
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!
Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com
Allen Hall: Well, Phil, a Minnesota man has won the Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh off with a 2, 400 pound squashy dub. Travis Ginger of Nalvin traveled his gargantuan gourd to the competition in Half Moon Day, California, of course, Phil, not for where you are where it was placed on a massive scale and dubbed the heaviest in the contest.
The win marked Giger's fourth top spot win in the Safeway World Championship pumpkin weigh off. And if you're not from the United States, Safeway is a grocery store. It's Really big in California and a couple other places. So a 2, 400 pound squash. Now that's not the most he's ever. grown. And back in 2023, he raised a 2, 700 pound pumpkin named Michael Jordan.
Now I don't understand why they have to name these things. That is the mystery to me is why would you have to name a pumpkin or a gourd? It is what it is. And it's just heavy, right?
Philip Totaro: I mean, I'm, I'm impressed not only by the, the growing of something that large, but the logistics of getting it from the Midwest out to California.
I mean, we talk in the wind energy industry about the logistics around, shipping components and, and things like that all the time. I mean, how the hell do you even truck a 2, 400 pound? And that's, that's gotta be a pretty, that's got, that's a big rig right there, isn't it? It'd be
Allen Hall: Travis to start.
Moving some blades around. There's been some blades that look like they've been moved like pumpkins, I've seen lately. Yikes.
Philip Totaro: Yeah, well, Aion, we did catalog the fact that blade damage was the number one cost impact on, on repairs, so. Maybe this guy can teach the industry a thing or two.
Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, and I'll be joined by my Uptime co host, After these news headlines, France is making waves in offshore wind development, announcing plans to tender for 9. 2 gigawatts of projects in the coming months. This includes two fixed and three floating wind farms to be built off the coast of the Ficon, Brittany, the Gasconia Gulf, and the southern Mediterranean.
These installations are part of France's ambitious goal to have 45 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2050. Francis, Energy Minister, emphasized the importance of these projects for the industrial value chain, urging companies to maintain their local presence for turbine manufacturing and installation.
Crossing the Atlantic, Hydro Québec and Lyons, de l'Energie de l'Est. has unveiled a plan for a new wind farm in eastern Quebec. The project, which could generate up to one gigawatt, represents a three billion dollar investment in the region and spans over 700 square kilometers. This development also includes First Nations marking a step towards economic reconciliation.
The project aligns with Hydro Quebec's strategic shift towards collaborating with communities from the outset. In the United States, the Vineyard Wind Project faces new scrutiny following a turbine blade failure in July. The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement has ordered the company to conduct a site specific study evaluating the environmental harm caused by the incident.
The study will characterize the subsea debris field and assess potential impacts on onshore, offshore, Coastal and offshore resources. The order requires Vineyard Wind to submit a detailed sampling plan, including methods, media, and biota to sample. The development comes as the project remains under a suspension order, though modified to allow continued installation of turbine towers and nacelles.
while prohibiting power production and blade installation. On a more positive note, Greece's Hellenic Cables has secured a partnership with the Leading Light Wind Project, one of the largest offshore wind farms planned for the U. S. The company will supply 65 kilometers of 132 kilovolt interarray cables for the 2.
4 gigawatt project, which is set to power over 1 million homes in New Jersey. Located about 40 miles off the coast of New Jersey, leading light wind is expected to spur 3. 7 billion in economic development. Benefits and create thousands of local union jobs. Across the pond, GB Energy's chairman, Juergen Meyer, has unveiled ambitious plans to transform the publicly owned company into a UK version of Denmark's Ørsted.
Meyer envisions GB Energy evolving from an investment vehicle into a major power generator. operating its own wind farms, tidal power projects, and carbon capture schemes. The company is set to receive 8. 3 billion pounds over the next five years to drive its investment program with an initial focus on floating wind, offshore wind, hydrogen, and nuclear energy.
Lastly, Abu Dhabi's Mastar and Spain's Iberdrola have completed turbine installations at the 476 megawatt Baltic Eagle offshore wind farm in Germany. The project featuring 50 Vessus turbines, each with a capacity of 9. 5 megawatts, is expected to produce 1. 9 terawatt hours annually, enough to power 475, 000 homes with clean energy.
This milestone is part of a broader partnership between Masdar and Iberdrola which includes a 15 billion euro joint venture announced at COP28 to explore offshore wind and green hydrogen projects in Germany, the UK and the US. Masdar, which aims to reach a 100 gigawatt capacity target by 2030, sees Europe as a key contributor to its growth strategy.
That's this week's top news stories. After the break, I'll be joined by my co host, CEO and founder of IntelStor, Phil Totaro.
Well, Phil, a lot of news coming out of China, where pretty much all the major Chinese wind turbine manufacturers have pledged to end their price war against one another, which is sort of following what the solar industry has done in China. Now, news reports are saying there have been 12 turbine companies involved, which include Gold Wind, Envision, Mingyang, Shanghai, and Dongfeng.
And, as everybody knows, there's been an internal price war there for a little while, and it's hurting the sector and hurting profit margins. Now, this is a little bit unusual because they agreed, these 12 companies agreed to put a price floor. In which they wouldn't cross for both solar and wind to help restore the industry.
That is usually frowned upon pretty much everywhere else in the world, where you get multiple companies to agree to what the, the bottom end of the price market will, will, will be. At that point, it's, it's considered collusion. In the United States, you can't even do that internationally without getting punished in the United States.
I, I understand why they're doing it because they feel like there's a lot of difference between what Vestas charges and what they are charging. Maybe they ought to push themselves up a little bit and get more into the profitable regions of the economy and start forcing, stop forcing themselves to compete with one another.
But doesn't that trigger a lot of EU oversight and U. S. oversight into that marketplace?
Philip Totaro: Well, it's okay. So this is a fascinating kind of occurrence because, as you mentioned, this has been going on for a while where You know, they've been in a race to the bottom with each other in the domestic Chinese market.
Now, what the Chinese also want to be able to do is leverage those cheap labor rates, raw material costs, et cetera, to produce turbines in China for export to other markets, particularly where they're going to be able to go in and and deliver projects, either, deliver turbines or deliver turnkey projects in conjunction with EPC contractors from China and potentially finance from Chinese banks where, they can leverage this, this low production cost to basically undercut Western OEMs.
So this. Move. This, and we can call it a collusion kind of a move. You're, I don't think you're, you're wrong to suggest that, because in, in a Western economic system, this absolutely would be considered anti competitive, but it's actually probably a good thing for them and seems like it might end up trickling down to be a good thing for the rest of the industry, in that If they're going to not continue to gouge each other's eyes out in the domestic Chinese market, keep in mind that this, this price fixing thing is only for China.
So they're, they're basically agreeing that they will create this floor, this price floor and not gouge each other's eyes out on, on margins anymore in an environment where they're actually all Suffering. They all have a lot of cash because their, their top line is good and they're, they're getting a lot of revenue but their margins are, are thinner and thinner every year and that's what they want to be able to address with this is, okay, let's stop hurting each other because at the end of the day, companies, particularly publicly traded companies in the U.
S. or the U. S. Western Europe, they're all focused on next quarter and next quarter's results, next quarter is whatever.