Show notes
Alex Øbell Nielsen, CEO of Danish Wind Power Academy, discusses their customized, on-site, hands-on training programs for wind turbine technicians. The academy's comprehensive approach improves wind farm efficiency and technician retention through targeted assessments and real-world problem-solving.
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Allen Hall: Alex, welcome to the show.
Alex Øbell Nielsen: Thank you. Good to be on the show.
Allen Hall: You've been in wind about 20 years, and, uh, when we had talked a couple of weeks ago now, uh, you were highlighting some of the challenges that exist in wind energy, especially on the training side. What are those challenges? What do you see as, uh, Danish Wind Power Academy as challenges out in the world
Alex Øbell Nielsen: from a training provider perspective?
Uh, of course, uh, the. The, the great demand for technicians, not only now, but also in the future, and not having a formal training, if you like, for wind turbine technicians. Um, we see that as a challenge. Uh, but of course it's also an opportunity for us as a training provider. [00:01:00] Um, but, um, I mean, as you mentioned, Danish Wind Power Academy has delivered training for more than 20 years.
Uh, we do so globally, um, headquartered in Denmark, but, um. Before I, you know, deep dive into all our, our trainings, uh, as an example, we deliver troubleshooting training. Uh, a lot of customers are asking for that, but we quickly learned that many of the participants didn't have the skillset to enter or join a troubleshooting training.
So what we begun doing two and a half years ago is to assess, uh, technicians before they actually go on one of our trainings to make sure that they have the right skillset. From that, then we've learned, uh, assessing more than I think 1500, maybe two, uh, yeah, more than 1500 technicians. Now that we see two or or more challenges.
One is hydraulics. They always score low on hydraulics and the others and controls where they also score low. So those are some of the challenges we see and we do [00:02:00] these assessments globally
Joel Saxum: and I think that's an important point there globally, right? Because Danish Wind Power Academy of course, like when you think wind, you think the Danes, right?
The Danes know what they're doing, right? Uh, we're, we're over here on uh, wind sites in the US all the time and they're like, yeah, some Danish guy was here last week fixing this. Like that happens all the time. But I, I, I wanna focus on that a little bit, saying like, we talk about, okay. The, the, the, the podcast here, of course, we're based in the states.
You can hear it by our voices, but we cover things globally, right? So we cover from the eu what's going on offshore, onshore, India, Australia, apac, down in Brazil, Mexico, you name it. We're, we're covering it. We're talking to people. The, the tech, the global technician problem in wind. Is not localized. It is everywhere.
It doesn't matter what locale you're in, where there's wind turbines, there is a shortage of qualified, trained, and good people. And I think, um, kudos to you guys for, you know, exporting your knowledge around the world. But that's something to focus on here, is that this [00:03:00] is a global issue and you guys are working to solve that.
Alex Øbell Nielsen: We try to at least, but, but as you said, it is global and we have done these assessments, uh, globally in 2024. We delivered training in more than 19 countries. Uh, the assessments we've done for technicians that work both in North North America, uh, Europe and, and, and the APAC region. Uh, so, so we do get, uh, you know, uh, assessments from around the world, uh, covering all these technicians and yeah, repeating myself, hydraulics and controls are big challenges for sure.
Joel Saxum: What's the, what's the best region? Who's got the best text?
Alex Øbell Nielsen: Yeah, it, I'm not gonna go into that. What I can say though is that, uh, I mean, just briefly the assessment, it's one hour. We ask 40 questions, uh, and, uh, whoever participates has a link where they, they can spend this one hour. We asked 40 questions within hydraulics, controls, mechanics, and electrics.
Uh, and, and based on this, uh, we do see some patterns, uh, also on we ask how many years of, uh, industry [00:04:00] experience do these participants have? And, and funnily enough, or maybe not, uh, but those, uh, with more than 15 years experience score the lowest. So, and there could be a wide range of, uh, reasons for that, but they score the lowest.
Uh, usually we see the technicians that have between two and four years experience. They score the best. So, so we, we, we can see, and I'm sure we can deep dive into the regions, but I don't have those numbers in front of me, so, um, maybe not, but what I can say is it's the same challenge. It doesn't matter North America, Europe, far east.
Hydraulics and controls.
Allen Hall: So what are some of the real world consequences when, uh, wind farm operators don't invest in training for their people?
Alex Øbell Nielsen: I'm sure there are multiple, but at least from our point of view, what we want to do is help asset owners improve performance of their turbines, of their wind farms, and we believe you can do so by training.
And we have data to back that up, that between. Point four and one [00:05:00]point per, uh, 2%, uh, uh, performance increase you can expect from following training. And, and what we do is that we, um, we look at performance data before we enter training. We provide training over X amount of time. Uh, and then of course we look at performance data from the wind farms following the training, and we can see a drop in again, let's say it's hydraulics or any other.
Areas that we've focused on, and then we can see an increase in performance. So I think as an asset owner, you want performance out of your turbines, out of your assets, and, and if you do not train your technicians, if they don't have the right skills, um, yeah, then you, then you potentially will lack performance and.
I also think there's a lot of talk about troubleshooting being a good troubleshooter, which is great, but in our point of view, maintenance is where you need to excel. If you're good at maintaining your turbines, if you're good at maintaining your assets, then you will require less troubleshooting, of course.
[00:06:00] So maintenance is very much where we would like to focus. So if you're good at that. You have less spare parts consumptions. You spend less downtime if you have, uh, malfunctions or what whatnot and whatnot on your turbine, and then you increase performance away.
Joel Saxum: I think that's something that Alan and I both, we talk about regularly and we can get on board with, and we want to talk to the uptime listeners and the uptime family uptime network about this back your business up with a good business case.
And that's what Danish Wind Power Academy has done here, right? They've taken the performance data, looked at training, and then showed the increase, boom, business case built. Uh, I love to hear that and I know a Alan does too. 'cause we, we harp on people about that all the time.
Allen Hall: Well, there's an performance improvement aspect, right?
That you can get the turbines operating, uh, more efficiently and have more uptime. There's also, I think what I see a lot of times in the United States is you don't see the, uh, ohs and the cost of the U lows. A hydraulic lines are [00:07:00] leaking down all over the place onto the tower, right? So now you gotta clean up, you gotta do the same thing for like, uh, some pitch motors or hydraulic pitch motors where there's just hydraulic fluid down the blade.
Uh, and some of the more. Catastrophic ones. If you can get more uptime, yes, but there's also stopping some of the more expensive downtime events that occur because of maintenance issues.
Alex Øbell Nielsen: Exactly.
Allen Hall: From a training standpoint, then you're going deep into how turbines operate and there is that quiz or test that you provide to potential trainees before you get into the the details of training.
I am not sure that we have seen a lot of that in the United States at all. Uh, like if you have basic, fundamental skills, you know how to repair cars, you've, you've welded before, you've played around in hydraulics in a previous job. That usually is the qualifications to get started in the United States, but that doesn't really trend out too well as you [00:08:00] get further down the line because wind turbines 10 years ago, pretty standard.
You can move between turbines. I think today when we're talking about. Six and seven megawatts being the platforms. Those turbine are a lot more complicated than 10 years ago. And the challenges that brings to technicians and maybe wanna explain. How much more a technician needs to know now than even maybe even five years ago.
Alex Øbell Nielsen: Yeah, uh, for sure. And yes, the, the machines are getting bigger and they're definitely getting more complicated as well. Um, I have a commercial background, so I can't go into, uh, specific details, but what I can tell you is that the course curriculum that we develop over time is getting. Uh, just by the number of pages they need to go through.
Um, on the latest, uh,