Show notes
Allen, Joel and Phil discuss Germany's failed offshore wind auction, India's new regulations for domestic wind turbine components, and the need for renewable energy in the US to meet AI data center demands. They also highlight Ohio's efforts to plug abandoned oil and gas wells and feature Quebec's Rivière-du-Moulin as the Wind Farm of the Week.
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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 Saxon, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes.
Allen Hall: Well, welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.
I'm Allen Hall from the Queen City, Charlotte, North Carolina. Joel Saxum is down in Texas, and Phil Totaro of IntelStor is in Cali. Phil, you had a tsunami alert just recently. Did you see any waves in your neighborhood?
Phil Totaro: No 'cause it didn't actually amount to anything. And that's good, right?
Phil Totaro: It it, have you had tsunami warnings like that in the past?
Y yes. And actually more serious ones from earthquakes that are smaller than the 8.8 that was in Russia that caused this one. [00:01:00] Um, but we've had earthquakes off the coast of. California where, you know, they're like four point something or five something, and that actually triggers a tsunami warning that's potentially more serious because of the close proximity.
Uh, so we actually developed, uh, in California an early detection and warning system that is triggered, um, you know, mobile phone, uh, alerts and updates based on the, the detection of the P waves from an earthquake.
Allen Hall: What's a P wave?
Joel Saxum: P Wave is down, ShearWave is left and right. So sheer wave would be moving this way.
P wave would be moving up and down.
Phil Totaro: The P waves, um, are the first indication on, you know, like for the US geological survey, they've got those things that, you know, monitor the, the, um, vibration of the earth or whatever it is that they're monitoring. Um, a P wave will be the first thing triggered when there's an actual earthquake.
[00:02:00] That's the thing that happens fast, like super fast, and they can detect it. Anyway, so we've de we've developed an early warning system when, when we have issues and inclusive of, uh, you know, tsunami warnings. But I'm, I'm kind of, you know, 300 feet up, so I have less to worry about.
Allen Hall: It's a good place to be.
Well, there's some offshore warnings off the coast of Germany because, uh, they held their latest offshore wind auction. And it was for about two and a half gigawatts of capacity in about 180 square kilometers of water. And they didn't have any bidders at all. Zero bidders and the industry from wind Europe to the, uh, German Offshore Wind Association or, or saying like, yeah, no one's gonna bid on these things because there's too much risk and there's negative bidding, quote unquote negative bidding, which means that you have to.
Pay money for the rights [00:03:00] to build out the wind farm and everybody in at least Germany. And when Europe is saying that CFD contract for difference is, is the way to go. And until Germany switches over to a CFD model, you're gonna continue to have no bidders. Now Phil, this is a big problem because Germany is planning to develop a, a.
Significant amount of offshore wind gigawatts worth many gigawatts worth by 2030. Is there gonna be a change into the German auction system? Will they move to A
Phil Totaro: CFD? We certainly hope so, because what they've been doing up to this point with, you know, trying to attract like zero subsidy bids is clearly not working.
Germany's economy minister, uh, came out after the, the auction result and said, um, well, we'll have to look at this and why that happened. Um, you know, were the designed areas actually appropriate and did we. Consider the potential risks for [00:04:00] developers? Were they underestimated? Um, well, yes, they were, uh, first of all, and there was nothing wrong with the design areas of the, you know, the 10.1 and 10.2 that they were trying to auction off.
It's the fact that. You know, in a high interest rate environment, nobody's gonna wanna make, uh, a zero subsidy bid on something where they're not gonna necessarily be guaranteed the, the PPA that they need. Um, and when you're not willing to, to guarantee them the PPA in advance of the auction, that's, that's one part of it.
Um, the other part is that, you know, with uncertainty and, and risk associated with, um, you know. Access to supply chain components and things like that. Um, you know, you've got countries like Germany and the EU in general saying that they wanna wean themselves off of China and, and Chinese parts. Well, good luck with that, first of all.
Second, second. If you're gonna domesticate everything that's [00:05:00]necessarily gonna raise the cost. So you've gotta be in a position to, you know, accept, uh, a higher price and, and give, you know, if you're the government, you have to be able to give some kind of certainty.
Joel Saxum: I'd love for someone from, from that, uh, how do I say this?
Like, not organization, but from that area, from who's been involved in this to reach out to the podcast. 'cause uh, what I'd like to be a fly on the wall. 'cause this is what I don't understand, Germany. Big wind market onshore, big wind market, offshore, large player, and wind in general, right? Big companies over there.
We got RWE over there. That has done a lot of offshore things like where was the consultation between the government and trade groups, organizations, because you know, like there should be a feedback mechanism in the early stages of planning this that says, Hey, potential suitors, what do you think about this process?
Will it work? And I have to imagine that they all emailed back and said. This isn't gonna work for me. Um, I don't know though. Right? So I'd love to hear from someone involved in that process to be able to kind of share with [00:06:00] us this is how it went, because we've watched it happen now time and time again.
There was another one of these not too long ago, Denmark had the one that was, had basically zero subscribers, right? So, hey, governments, uh, you have a great trade organization over there. Wind Europe, you have, um, a lot of players local to you. It's not like you're trying to figure this out, uh, blindly. Why not
Allen Hall: collaborate?
Oh yeah, that's totally true. We had just had MAD and Andres Nash on, uh, who were talking about the Nord project up in Norway, and that's going through a bidding process sort of starting now. It's in September. It really gets serious. But even there, there's a significant number of changes that are happening in companies that are dropping out because they're raising the stakes and trying to get companies that have a lot of offshore wind experience and not.
Bring somebody new into the game where they were gonna make mistakes. They, they figure if you have developed a, was it 200 megawatts or 500 megawatts [00:07:00] Joel Offshore already? It was some significant number. I think it was 500.
Phil Totaro: I mean, if, if there was any way that they could try and like, make this about like, we only wanna work with eor.
Like that's basically what they're trying to do. I mean, like, I mean, you know, I mean, yeah, sure. But like if Simply Blue Group comes in there and says that they wanna be able to develop if Stat Craft who had previously been involved in that, was in there and then pulled out because they weren't getting the, the, you know, guarantees from the Norwegian government either.
I mean, this is, this is kind of the, the systematic. Uh, issue within Europe at the moment anyway, because they're the ones talking about, well, we wanna wean ourselves off of Russian gas. Well then do it. Like, don't sit there and say, you can only do it if you're doing it with, you know, 18,000 criteria in place.
Like, make it easy for the developers. Um, the money will flow, like investors will want to plow money into, you know, the development of these [00:08:00]projects, but get outta your own way and, and make it happen.
Joel Saxum: It's kind of reminiscent to me. I guess this is for our US listeners. I was reading an article today about the, the, uh, no offense Phil, but the flight out of California.
It was the amount of people leaving there and there, and it was a, it was a, it was a, uh, letter written from a CEO of a development company that was saying basically like. It's the hardest place in the United States to do business, and businesses are leaving in droves. People are leaving in droves. It's like last year, 920,000 people left the state of California like a net loss.
Wow. Yeah. It was crazy. Like there's 52, 50 5 million people there. But to lose. Basically 2% of your population in one year. That's crazy. But the reason being is, is it's the hardest place to do business in the United States. There's barriers all the time. There's, there's permitting issues, there's this, there's that.
For real estate development companies, taxes, all this stuff that makes things difficult. Taxes is a big one. Right. But, but that's what this, that's what this to me looks like over in the, the EU right now is like you're making it difficult for people to [00:09:00] do. And no wonder why people don't want to do it.