Show notes
Allen and Joel discuss their experience at the ACP OMS event in Nashville, Tennessee. Ameren's High Prairie Wind Farm shuts down all turbines following three turbine collapses. GE Vernova partners with Amazon Web Services on wind projects. And a larger discussion about the way OEMs attempt to solve problems.
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You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, brought to you by build 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: To start off the week, Joel and I have just completed a couple of days that.
ACP OMS in Nashville, Tennessee. And if you don't know where Nashville is in the center ish of the country, more towards the eastern part than the western part. It's the same state where it Davey Crockett came from Daniel Boone. Am I right about that, Joel? Sergeant York, Andrew Jackson.
Yeah. This is some old names. Yeah, it's right next to, actually next to North Carolina. So we're like I don't know, an hour's drive from North Carolina with the area that got hit with hurricane a couple of months ago. We're not very far from it. But Nashville, the event was pretty well populated.
I was trying to relate it to the OM and S event that happened in San Diego a year ago. It felt like it was a little bit smaller of an event, Joel, and maybe the attendance was a little bit lower.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, the interesting, we were at the Gaylord Opryland Convention Center. It's absolutely massive. I learned today that it's the largest like resort convention center without a casino in the entire world.
Like it felt like he walked like a mile through the inside of the thing to get to it. Like the conference center. What I think the issue there was, or what it felt like, is it didn't feel like it was as well attended as it was last year. A lot of ISPs, so a lot of blade repair companies, a lot of service companies, all floating around, not as many operators, but my thought is we're used to having this thing in San Diego.
It was 40 degrees and raining today. And in San Diego every year it's like 75, 80 degrees. Beautiful. Everything is fantastic. People bring their families and stuff like that. So you hear a lot of people, oh yeah, I can't grab dinner tonight. I got, my, my wife and kids we're gonna go do this. When you're in the San Diego event here, not so much.
'cause it's, there's live music that's great that but it, you're also 20 minutes from downtown. It is a little bit of a different feel. But yeah the show floor. Of course, Allen and you and I took a couple laps around it and Claire, our producer as well. We took a couple laps around to see what was there.
A lot of the same players that we're used to seeing a lot of the same companies. Nothing super new that stuck out. Nothing groundbreaking, however. A couple cool things, right? We sat down, I think we rec, we recorded a bunch of great material with some of our podcast friends and people new to the podcast at the thing.
You'll hear those in the coming weeks, of course. But we did get to look at the Earth next platform from Earth Wind. That was really cool. Also the Gulf Wind Technology team was there and they were show showcasing their up tower root bushing repair. That was really cool. Other than that, ah, c nnc onsite, right?
The ability to do precision machining up tower, which is really neat. But other than that, yeah, kinda lackluster for new technology or really cool new stuff. I don't know what you thought about that, Allen.
Allen Hall: I didn't see much new there. I motor dock or brought some new stuff in terms of software to analyze wind turbines and that's always cool.
I love when Howard Pinrose. Brings new technology to the market and he's so gung-ho about it. And as an electrical engineer, I just find his approach to solving problems. Interesting. Arons has some cool stuff, obviously. They always bring the robots and they have a New Rover internal drone inspection robot that has en enhanced lighting for some of these offshore blades.
And obviously they're doing a lot of work with GE Renova at the minute. Yeah. But the operator's part of it was really non-existent. GE Renova had a really small booth. Vestas also had a booth. Joel
Joel Saxum: Vestas had the same so you can see the scale Vestas had the same size booth. We did, yes. Yeah.
It was, I would say a lot of ISPs there. We talked to a ton of blade repair companies a lot of people providing services to the industry, which is normally what's at this event. But a, it seemed to be lacking in the operator, the asset owners, the actual purchasers of services and products, almost like.
A pendulum swung and all the operators started to figure out that this is really the event to go to. So there was a ton of them here, but there happened to be less operators. I'm I did hear some really good conversations around the booth business getting done, everybody getting prepared for the upcoming repair, blade repair seasons.
Of course. We talked to a couple of ISPs that say this has been their busiest winter that they've ever had, which is interesting in the states here that people are starting to kick off a bit earlier in the year to try to get more done. I don't know if that's a budget crunch problem or it's, we've just gotten to the point where people are looking for capacity.
If you're looking for blade repair teams that's the conversation we kept hearing. How many teams do you have? I've got 15. 10 of 'em are spoken for, right? If you want to. Be a part of the other five. You better react soon.
Allen Hall: Yeah. I would say in general though, don't you think that this spend was less this year for booze and you didn't see the big flashy booth?
A CP probably had the largest booth this year and the most show type things happening. Of course, they have a couple of speakers that come and all that generally goes on, but you didn't see a lot at the booze themselves. There were a couple of. Rather interesting parties that happened. We should talk about the town for a minute.
The last time I was in Nashville was probably 15 years ago. So the NFL team was here and the Tennessee Titans were here, and Broadway was always there with the live music in the bars. You could always walk along that, but the number of people that are here now is so much more. It's crazy. The airport. Is probably the nicest airport in the United States and it competes with Copenhagen's Airport.
Couldn't believe it, right? We saw Louis Hamilton's Formula one car at the conference center. Like you don't see those things in America. That doesn't happen. So what the activity in Nashville economic activity is off the charts. It is so much different than I remember it and I. I guess that's good for Nashville.
People are tending to move to the southeast of the United States at the minute, so my guess is a lot of my fellow compatriots from Massachusetts and New York that are moving down this way based on the license plates that I saw. And that's good. Obviously you want to go to a city that is vibrant for sort of these trade shows, but I'm not sure early March is the right time to be in Nashville.
April would feel like the right kind of weather. And where are we going next year? Joel. Where? Where's
Joel Saxum: A-C-P-O-M-S. So A-C-P-O-M-S. This same conference will be in Orlando next year in Orlando course. Very fun. And so I said, when I said that to someone our friend Armando from Aland, he said, Ooh, I'll bring my wife and kids.
We'll go to Disneyland and do universal studios and all that. So I think that one could could peak some more interest for some travelers.
Allen Hall: Yeah, it's a lot closer. If you're coming from Europe too, you can usually direct flight. To Orlando, which makes life easier. Yeah, that, that's good. But I still think San Diego is everybody's number one
Joel Saxum: for sure.
Yeah. Next, so the next show if you're. Wondering where you might be able to catch Allen, myself or anybody else will be in Phoenix for a CP up there in late May.
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PES Wind offers a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you're an industry veteran or new to. Wind, PES Wind has the high quality content you need. Don't miss out. Visit PES wind.com today. So most moon turbines at Ameren's High Prairie Wind Farm in Missouri remain offline.
And if you remember, they had three turbines collapse last year due to some blade failures. Now according to Ameren's, director of Renewable operations, only about 15 of the turbines have been reactivated while the company continues to perform inspections to identify which units require blade replacement.
And when I. Saw a blade replacement. I thought, oh, Rosemary, there's, we need to understand why they are going to be replacing blades, because usually they would try to repair them. Now, Joel and I did a little bit of investigation because it's been a while since I've followed this story, but there's about what, 160 V one 20 at this site.
163. There you go. 163 V one twenties at this site, and then a handful of V one twelves.