Show notes
Allen and Joel are joined by Matthew Stead, Chief Product Officer and Co-founder of EOLIGIX-PING, at the SkySpecs Customer Forum 2025. They discuss the biggest takeaways from the forum, new developments at EOLOGIX-PING, and the upcoming Wind Energy O&M Australia event.
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Intro: [00:00:00] 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, Alan Hall, and I'm with Joel Saxon. And we are in Ann Arbor, Michigan with Matthew Stead, chief Product Officer. And co-founder of eLog Ping and he is traveled all the way from Australia to be here in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We are at the Skys Specs customer Forum 2025.
We've been spending the last couple of days with most of the operators in the United States, uh, learning about what issues they are having and how they're using Skys specs to reduce their overall operational costs. Boy, Matthew, it, it is been a really interesting couple of days hearing where customers are struggling and where they are trying to attack lost revenue.
Matthew Stead: Yeah, I think it's [00:01:00] been amazing. I'm so pleased to be here. And, you know, it was great to get the invitation, uh, from Skyspace. I, I think, um, really the things that I've been hearing is the data and pulling data together, uh, to getting those insights as to what's going wrong and then, and then fixing it and getting the money back.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. Yeah. The, the big thing here, we're talking about the one big beautiful build, and it's followed on the industry.
Matthew Stead: Yeah.
Joel Saxum: Right. So the, the theme of the event is prevent, perform, or prevent, prevent, predict, perform, I'm gonna get it wrong again.
Allen Hall: There's three Ps,
Joel Saxum: three very important ps. But what we're looking at is, is how, how can digitalization, how can the next generation of op intelligent asset management change the way we do things?
Because you can't do things reactively like we were in the past anymore.
Matthew Stead: Yeah,
Joel Saxum: right. Even when budgets were tight before they're gonna get even tighter. We're gonna, and we're gonna have to make sure that these assets are running. And that's where like your smarter, smarter, smarter, smarter, right? Yeah.
Your solutions come into play. The Skys specs team. The, the, the conversations in the sessions. The [00:02:00] conversations around the sessions, the conversations over a beer.
Matthew Stead: Yeah. Yeah.
Joel Saxum: They have all been about the same concepts, right? About how can we do this better, more efficiently. And one of the reasons I really like events.
Like this is, like you said, Allen, you have all these operators. Yeah. You have all of these engine. It's a, it's a room full of 50 engineers that probably control man, 60 to 70% of the
Allen Hall: Oh yeah.
Matthew Stead: The US
Joel Saxum: fleet. In the US fleet. Right. So you have so much knowledge, so much sharing, and it's an open forum. You have people p piping up, Hey, we use this strategy.
Hey, we do this. I heard some really cool things this week.
Matthew Stead: Yeah, I, I, at breakfast this morning, I was sitting to two guys, one from Canada, one from the US and they were talking about Repowering. One guy's got GE turbines. He didn't know that he could put a vestas in a cell on a G turbine.
Joel Saxum: Yeah.
Matthew Stead: And so these guys have exchanged details.
Ban.
Joel Saxum: Yeah.
Matthew Stead: That was beautiful to watch together.
Allen Hall: Well, yeah, we've, Joel and I have been hosting a number of panels, uh, during the Sky Specs event. If [00:03:00] those have been eyeopening, uh, I hosted one earlier yesterday and it, uh, the panelists, I don't get too deep about who the panelists were because a lot of this is obviously.
It's just be kept in house. But some of the approaches, uh, to the one big beautiful bill act mm-hmm. Were unique. The insights there that a lot of operators were planning for since last year.
Joel Saxum: Mm-hmm.
Allen Hall: Mm-hmm. And that they felt like this where we are today was likely to happen and they were making adjustments way back in October, November of last year.
So the repowering issues that we talk about a lot, and you hear smaller operators really struggling with bigger operators. Already had a plan of attack.
Joel Saxum: Safe harbor. Safe harbor. Safe harbor. Yeah. I've heard that word a lot. Right. And that was a, it was a plan from some of those, those, those big operators, uh, their senior leadership that shared some of their strategy, which I was surprised they did.
It was fantastic. But, um, if you haven't been safe harboring, uh, or in, in contact with some good tax lawyers to understand the fall of these things and what it means to your [00:04:00] operation, do that now. Mm-hmm. Um, because you have, we have this cliff coming July 4th next year, and then at the end of the year after that.
Allen Hall: Yeah. So the, the amount of planet assets is going to, uh, go down and I think everybody in the industry has been. Talking about that. You see a lot of news reports about the number of wind turbines that will likely, uh, be repowered is gonna drop down. However, uh, a lot of operators have 10 year plans and those plans have not really changed all that much.
They, they weren't super aggressive. They knew that during the Biden administration, this was just an extension mm-hmm. Of the Obama administration, but eventually it was going to end. Mm-hmm. That's say they were preparing for the end anyway. And you hear that in their operational strategy.
Joel Saxum: Mm-hmm.
Allen Hall: You hear about how they're trying to reduce their overall spend every year.
They're trying to reduce their o and m budgets by a percent or two, even though the fleet's getting bigger.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. An interesting conversation I had this morning was right around that was we're, it was, this was not the same operator you and I talked to, but a different one saying that, Hey, we're good through 28, 29.
Now [00:05:00] what happens with the next administration changes things. But then another person at the table, this was breakfast again, um, said, uh. That being said, what does the job market look like for engineers? My take on it was engineering staffs are being changed. However, if you're an SME, that's where, that's where it lies.
And this person at the table was like, that's awesome to hear, because my new boss just asked me to be the SME for blades in our company. It's like
Matthew Stead: burn
Joel Saxum: chase it. Yes. The bonus that raised today. Yeah,
Matthew Stead: I, I, two things struck me. One was the, first of all that actually having the bill. Is clarity. I mean it's actually good.
So I mean, that struck me as a real positive that actually there can be
Joel Saxum: getting outta the gray area.
Matthew Stead: There is some optimism there. And the other thing I heard, um, many people were talking about, not necessarily repowering, they were talking about. Whole of life, you know, o and m strategies, right? And then if Repowering happens.
So that was a bit of a, a lesson learned for me.
Allen Hall: Well, because a lot of operators that are in the United States have [00:06:00] a European branch, or they were, or European base, or they came
Matthew Stead: from
Allen Hall: there, right? So, and that's a just completely different model than what we've been talking about in the United States and what has been offered in the United States.
But that stra, that European strategy has. Transferred over. And so it's always
Matthew Stead: been,
Allen Hall: yeah. And the plans are there now. Yeah. And, and because they started several months ago, practically a year ago now. Mm-hmm. They have some sanity looking forward. Mm-hmm. They're not panicking. And I was expecting to hear a little more cautiousness, a little more panic.
No. Mm-hmm. Not really.
Joel Saxum: It's the same conversation that we've been having on the podcast for, for, since the follow out of this thing back in July of. This is going to change operational strategies, but being here we're only what, three months removed from that?
Allen Hall: Mm-hmm.
Joel Saxum: And it seems like the strategies are already there.
Allen Hall: It was,
Joel Saxum: right. They're already like, yeah, we're we're moving. Yeah. They're big companies,
Allen Hall: right? Shore is different. Yeah. I think, I think offshore is where they got a little broadsided.
Joel Saxum: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Onshore not so much. And because [00:07:00] every operator pretty much has. Some level of solar, some level of battery. They just see, all right, if, if wind's gonna get pummeled for a few months, we're gonna put in a bunch of solar and we're the plans, were already in place to do it anyway.
So we're gonna do the solars, we're gonna do the batteries, we're gonna make the grid more resilient regardless of what happens to wind, which is great. I, in my opinion, some of the discussions happening in Skys specs this week, were the grid's gonna get more resilient. We're gonna handle the AI data power increase, and here's how we're gonna do it.
Joel Saxum: I heard this morning in another major operator, five to one solar farms to wind farms.
Matthew Stead: Yeah,