Show notes
The Uptime team does a deep dive on the Mingyang Ocean X offshore turbine, exploring it's engineering features and possible effect on the offshore wind turbine market. Plus, you can wind two free NASCAR VIP tickets with Kyle Weatherman by entering at https://weatherguardwind.com/contest/!
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!
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Allen Hall: Before we start the show, we have an announcement. Our favorite NASCAR driver Kyle Weatherman has two VIP tickets to the Hollywood Casino 400 NASCAR Xfinity race, and you can win these tickets. The race is held at the Kansas Speedway in Kansas City, Kansas. On September 28th, which is a Saturday, VIP tickets include premium access to the race, the pit area and the garage.
You can watch the race on pit road and hang out with Kyle Weatherman and the DGM racing team. You will need to provide your own transportation to and from the race but it'll be a great event. In order to enter this contest you need to visit weatherguardwind.com slash contest where you can enter.
I'm Allen Hall and I'll be joined by the rest of the Uptime hosts after these news headlines. The UK's latest renewable auction has given a significant boost to the offshore wind sector. With a record budget of 1. 5 billion pounds, the auction awarded contracts to 131 wind, solar, and tidal projects, capable of generating almost 10 gigawatts of capacity.
Notable winners include Orsted's Hornsea 4 project in Iberdrola's East Anglia two, and three projects. However, analysts note that this still falls short of the capacity needed to meet the country's target of 60 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. The UK has reached a significant milestone in wind power generation capacity.
The country has surpassed the 30 gigawatt mark of combined offshore and onshore wind installations. This milestone was achieved with the commissioning of SSE Renewable's 443 megawatt Viking Wind Farm. in Shetland this past June. According to Renewable UK, the UK's current wind capacity can meet the annual power demand of over 26 million homes and reduce carbon emissions by more than 35 million tons per year.
In Sweden, Vattenfall has decided to pause the development of the Swedish Krikers Flak offshore wind power project due to unfavorable investment conditions. This project, located about 30 kilometers south of Trollberg, was estimated to generate 2. 7 terawatt hours of fossil free electricity annually.
Fattenfall cited the lack of a reasonable connection point to the national grid offshore as a key factor in this decision. U. S. wind energy investment has seen a significant boost in the first half of 2024, according to Bloomberg NEF's Renewable Energy Investment Tracker. While solar investment fell by 12 percent to 26.
5 billion, wind projects secured 12 billion in funding. This surge has contributed to a 63 percent increase in total renewable energy investment in the U. S.
Orsted, the Danish company developing Rhode Island's first commercial offshore wind project, has announced plans to expand its presence in the Ocean State. The company will open a new engineering, procurement, and construction hub in Providence, relocating to a 17, 000 square foot office building. Orsted also plans to double its existing 100 person workforce in Rhode Island in the coming years.
Over in New Jersey, the leading light wind project is facing challenges. The company has requested a pause from the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities through late December due to difficulties in securing a turbine blade manufacturer. This setback follows Orsted's decision to scrap two offshore wind farms in New Jersey last year, citing financial infeasibility.
Western Australia has declared a new offshore wind zone off the coast of Bunbury, but with significant modifications. The area has been reduced by half to 4, 000 square kilometers and pushed further offshore, now starting at least 30 kilometers from the coast. This change aims to address concerns from local communities, particularly recreational fishers.
The zone has the potential to support 11. 4 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity, enough to power the entire main grid's current demands. And in New Mexico, they're set to grow. to see two new massive wind projects on state land. EDF Renewable's Silver Stallion project in Grant County will generate 400 megawatts, while Energex Renewable Energy's project in Hidalgo County will produce 150 megawatts.
These projects are expected to bring over 146 million in revenue for land beneficiaries, primarily public schools. The projects will likely take about three to five years to become fully operational. And that's this week's top news stories. After the break, I'll be joined by my co host, Renewable Energy Expert and founder of Pardalote Consulting, Rosemary Barnes, CEO and founder of Intel Store, Phil Totaro, and the Chief Commercial Officer of WeatherGuard, Jules Sexum.
Lightning is an act of God, but lightning damage is not. Actually, it's very predictable and very preventable. Strike Tape is a lightning protection system upgrade for wind turbines made by WeatherGuard. It dramatically improves the effectiveness of the factory LPS, so you can stop worrying about lightning damage.
Visit weatherguardwind. com to learn more, read a case study, and schedule a call today.
Allen Hall: We haven't talked about this item. For a number of weeks and I know it keeps popping up. So I thought this is a good time to discuss it, which is the Mingyang OceanX the V turbine has two 8. 3 megawatt nacelles on a V shaped floating platform.
And what this means for the industry as we've been discussing for a number of weeks, months at this point as turban sizes get bigger and bigger, they seem to have more problems that are almost unrecoverable at some level, particularly when they're out in the ocean and this Ming Yang approach seems to simplify it because they're using two smaller, simpler turbans that are just bolted together.
And I want to get Rosie's opinion on this. Thanks. Just to understand, is this a good idea and is it making energy cheaper by this approach?
Rosemary Barnes: I like the, it's called a multi rotor concept when you have two or more rotors on the same tower. And I quite like it for a few reasons. So one of the advantages is there's like a slight aerodynamic advantage from putting rotors close together.
But I think the bigger advantage is that you can have the smaller rotor, which is, like a more reliable design. That's better known, we've been making rotors of that size, like an eight megawatt rotor is a lot more yeah, like well known and I'm a lot more experienced making that size rotor than there is of a 16 megawatt one.
So you can expect better reliability. It's a lot easier, to get a factory that can make components of that size you would expect less defects and less like dire consequences if you stuff something up a little bit. And you can get that, but at the same time, get the advantage of having fewer electrical connections, fewer turbines to like fewer sites to visit, to do maintenance.
That sort of thing. So it is a best of a both world type thing. Minyang aren't the first ones to do it. Vestas like quite a few years ago now, like maybe five or more years ago, they had a multi rotor design that I think had four rotors on the one tower. And they made one, tested a concept turbine and got some interesting results, but found that it wasn't necessarily yeah, like a economically viable at that time, I think that theirs was for onshore.
And then there's other like new concepts like wind catching and yeah, a few other lesser known ones that are also like looking into that. So yeah, I do think that, like going bigger and bigger with rotors is causing a lot of problems. Seems like I even see that onshore as well as offshore.
And so I think that the multi rotor concept is like a really good chance to try to get the best of both worlds with the both big and small kind of.
Joel Saxum: There's some interesting parts of this thing though, too, being that it is for offshore floating because again, we're in the, we're in the early stages of offshore floating when there's not really a whole lot out there for, utility scale, large installments at all.
So you have a, they've integrated some other. Cool marine stuff that's been done before but into this new concept. So there is a, on the back of this thing, it's a single point mooring system. Like in the oil and gas world. We use it on an FPSO, which is like a big floating production facility.
So you take a big thing and you just mow it on one point so that it can actually wind vein around as the prevailing wind direction changes the whole floating. mechanism changes instead of just like we're used to with the pit, the turbine yawing itself. They also put in some weight saving stuff here, some weight and ease of construction savings, as far as not having to have for a 16 megawatt tower, which would be this thing would be a massive piece of steel, very heavy, huge bearings, all kinds of different things.
What they ended up, what they were able to do here is to put small, smaller steel Basically,