Show notes
Allen and Joel sit down with Michael McQueenie, Head of Sales for SkySpecs in Europe at the SkySpecs Customer Forum. They discuss the booming European wind energy market, SkySpecs' role in asset management, and their expansion into solar farm operations.
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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 Spotlight. I have Joel Saxum with me. I'm Allen Hall, the host, and we are here with Michael McQueenie head of sales for SkySpecs over in Europe. Michael, welcome to the show.
Michael McQueenie: Thanks for having me.
Allen Hall: We are at SkySpecs customer Form 2025 and it has been a blowout event, so many operators from all over learning and exchanging information about how they operate their assets.
We wanted to have you on today because you're our reference to Europe and what is happening with SkySpecs in Europe. America and Europe are on different pathways at the moment. What is that status right now in Europe? What are people calling you for today?
Michael McQueenie: the, European market is really booming.
we get calls from customers to support [00:01:00] with internal inspections, external inspections as we always have for, nearly a decade now. We are seeing a lot more, discussions around the, enablement services that we can offer. how did, how do we bring a blade engineer and how do we bring a CMS engineer into support and give us, give us more of an insight on the data that we have or, or the data that Skys fix are producing.
things are evolving. and, it's a buoyant offshore industry at the moment.
Allen Hall: yeah, there's like thousands of turbines going up right now. it used to be when you thought of. Deployment. Unlike Germany, for example, it'd be three turbines on the hillside.
Michael McQueenie: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Now we're talking about in the uk have hundreds of turbines hitting the water.
Michael McQueenie: Yeah.
Allen Hall: And that's change of scale has driven a lot of operators realize I need expertise in blades, I need expertise in CMS. I need an expert in gearbox, but I don't necessarily need them full time.
Michael McQueenie: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Skys spec. Can you help me?
Michael McQueenie: the projects [00:02:00] are, they're fewer projects, but they're, the scale of these projects are massive.
the scale of the turbine scale of the projects and the impact the projects can have on, the country, as a whole is, is massive. So yeah, it's, it is a. It's a, it is a great time to be in Europe and to see the growth. it's been, coming for a long time. I've worked with consultancies who are looking at feasibility studies, in offshore, and onshore.
But the, the growth has been. Just, it's just around the corner. And I do feel like now with some of these big projects that they're installing, and yeah, just given the size of the turbines, it's it's massive.
Joel Saxum: one of the things I want to, I think there's an important context here is that we're talking, we're sitting in Ann Arbor, right?
we're in the us You're over in Europe. I worked for a Danish company for a while and it was always like this seven hour delay. Kinda can I get the in, can I get the support? Can they get the support? Can we work? How do we work back and forth? Sometimes it was cool because you'd send an email at two o'clock and when you woke up in the morning [00:03:00] it was done.
That was awesome. But also there was these delays. Now this is the interesting thing here is, and Skys facts. This morning we listened to Cheryl. always a great presentation. Yeah. the head of the TEI blade stuff here. She was delivering some insights, but with her was Thomas. Thomas is in Europe.
And you have CMS experts in Europe. You have the local talent that's over there that can work with these operators on their timelines, on their regular day stuff. They're not waiting as, and what I'm trying to get to is, is SkySpecs is not a Ann Arbor company. Skyspace is a global company in a big way.
And so this, so thinking like, oh, this is an American company, w. Will we use someone that's more local no. No. Skyspace is a local European company as well.
Michael McQueenie: Yeah, and we've got the SMEs over there. it's not just Cheryl, who's a fantastic en engineer. Having your at your, disposal, Thomas is phenomenal.
customers are seeing real value in integrating him into their team, being the SME [00:04:00] for them, as you, as we said before. Being able to turn 'em off, on and off as required. Don't, you've not got that the FTE cost right. to bring in an SME that, that needs to, support you with a, with an individual component of your, asset.
Yeah. Blades are a huge problem. The industry's seeing that as they're getting bigger, the problems are getting bigger. but yeah, having, a local presence in Europe is, massive. my inbox is full from, all the US. Inquiries and issues, during the night, just like you're saying.
Yeah. And I wake up to dozens of emails with, requirements on inbox and my to-do list is full. But the, but the reality is yeah, we're, grown in Europe. we are. Our real solid presence in Europe and we've, seen massive growth this year.
Joel Saxum: I think it, it's part of the value chain there.
Touching on the Thomas and Cheryl. Right. So in SkySpecs over this week, we've been talking more and more about the, how you guys like to specifically work within a workflow. And that workflow being we have [00:05:00]inspections, we're in the platform now we're in horizon, bam. And we can enable the tech enabled services, which is those SMEs which you have inside.
The company and then rolling that forward to the repair vendor management, which is happening in a big way in the States. Yesterday I saw a number, $13 million in repairs managed by the Sky Spec team. That's huge. And, that same capability. And we're just talking blazes right now, like we haven't even touched on CMS performance monitoring, financial asset monitoring.
That same concept is, is replica replicate in the EU as well.
Michael McQueenie: No, it absolutely is, Our customers have got problems, we can help them with the problems. Thomas is, as you said, we work in workflows and Thomas is, is looking to support customers with how they, touch their data as few times as they possibly can.
How do we get from A to B and how does a customer understand what their problems are and how they fix the problems? And sometimes an [00:06:00]SME is the, way to fix that. Thomas has provide, provided huge value to our customers. The design of workflows in Horizon is the, essence. It exists just to try and get from A to B and, and try and drive insights and then next steps.
And I think that's the important part, being, this is the action to
Joel Saxum: get
Michael McQueenie: to the, we've got the data, we understand what the data's telling us. here's an insight, but actually what is the follow up? And, Thomas is designing that follow up for our customers and providing the support.
Allen Hall: and just a little bit comparison between the United States and Europe, when we still talk to anybody in the United States about a turbine.
Almost always, it's a two megawatt, one and a half megawatt turbine, right? Occasionally a four. Sometimes someone says
Joel Saxum: yesterday like, oh, that's a three megawatt
Allen Hall: turbine. Whoa, what's big? And in Europe, three megawatts was like years ago, particularly offshore that, everything's 6, 8, 10.
Michael McQueenie: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Plus
Michael McQueenie: 3.6 was the common [00:07:00] turbine.
Five, eight.
Allen Hall: Yeah.
Michael McQueenie: Years ago, that was, what everyone was working on. And, they're a very reliable turbine. It's, there was a reason why there were so many of them installed at that time. but nowadays, we're helping OEMs with 50 megawatt turbines.
Allen Hall: and I think that's the, thing that we just don't see in the states is a turbine that's 15 megawatts is down for a day.
Is so much more expensive and particularly offshore and the expenses go astronomical compared to onshore. Yeah, and Michael, I always see your position of you're there to save. Millions of pounds or millions, of euros all the time because a shutdown there is huge.
Joel Saxum: Yeah.
Allen Hall: And because the grids are changing so much in Europe where they're becoming more solar and wind dependent and coal is going to change away.
And
Joel Saxum: triage.
Allen Hall: Yeah. The triage bit, is that the SkySpecs is in that position to really help a lot our operators out. You're [00:08:00] providing the insights and the guidance and the knowledge that. An operator probably doesn't have, because they don't have the staff to go do it. It's a And can you enlighten us like what that is because we just don't see a lot of that here.
Michael McQueenie: Yeah. I think there's a good reason you don't see that this was, we are just providing data to some of these, transactions. Whether it's a due diligence, inspection, or an end of warranty. We are just providing the insights for the customers to. Make their own decisions. Um, so it's not a SkySpecs decision.
We are just providing insights to, to allow them to make a, smart, educated, data-driven decision.
Joel Saxum: I think that's important, concept too. 'cause like here,